And to Trenchard and myself? For Trenchard she had, perhaps, taken to herself some part of his beloved country. He has told me—and I will witness in myself to the truth of this—that he never in his life felt more burningly his love for England than at this first moment of his consciousness of Russia. The lanes and sea of his remembered vision were not far from that dirty, disordered town in Galicia—and for both of them he was rendering his service.
At any rate there we sat, huddled together, reflected in the countless looking-glasses as a helpless miserable "lot," falling into long silences, hoping for the coming of Molozov with later news, listening to the confusion in the street below. Marie Ivanovna with her hands behind her back and her head up walked, nervously, up and down the long room. Her eyes stared beyond us and the place, striving perhaps to find some reason why life should so continually insist on being a different thing from her imaginings of it.
Lighted by the hot sun, blown upon by the dust, her figure, tall, thin, swaying a little in its many reflections, had the determined valour of some Joan of Arc. But Joan of Arc, I thought to myself, had at least some one definite against whom to wave her white banner; we were fighting dust and the sun.
Trenchard and Nikitin had left us to go into the town to search for news. We were silent. Suddenly Marie Ivanovna, turning upon us all as though she hated us, cried fiercely:
"I think you should know that Mr. Trenchard and I are no longer engaged."
It was neither the time nor the place for such a declaration. I cannot suggest why Marie Ivanovna spoke unless it were that she felt life that was betraying her so basely that she, herself, at least, must be honest. We none of us knew what to say. What could we say? This appalling day had sunk for us all individualities. We were scarcely aware of one another's names and here was Marie Ivanovna thrusting all these personalities upon us. Sister Sofia's red-rimmed eyes glittered with pleasure but she only said: "Oh, dear, I'm very sorry." Sister K—— who was always without tact made a most uncomfortable remark: "Poor Mr.!..."
That, I believe, was what we were all feeling. I had an impulse to run out into the street, find Trenchard, and make him comfortable. I felt furiously indignant with the girl. We all looked at her, I suppose, with indignation, because she regarded us with a fierce, insulting smile, then turned her back upon us and went to a window.
At that moment Molozov with Trenchard, Nikitin and Semyonov, entered. I have said earlier in this book that only upon one occasion have I seen Molozov utterly overcome, a defeated man. This was the occasion to which I refer. He stood there in the doorway, under a vulgar bevy of gilt and crimson cupids, his face dull paste in colour, his hands hanging like lead; he looked at us without seeing us. Semyonov said something to him: "Why, of course," I heard him reply, "we've got to get out as quickly as we can.... That's all."
He came over towards us and we were all, except Marie Ivanovna, desperately frightened. She cried to him: "Well, what's the truth? How bad is it?"
He didn't turn to her but answered to us all.