"Yes, the forest of S——, stretches miles back into Galicia." It was Nikitin that day who spoke to me. We turned carelessly away. Meanwhile how difficult and unpleasant those first weeks at Mittövo were! We had none of us realised, I suppose, how sternly those days of retreat had tested our nerves. We had been not only retreating, but (at the same time) working fiercely, and now, when for some while the work slackened and, under the hot blazing sun, we found nothing for our hands to do, a grinding irritable reaction settled down upon us.
I had known in my earlier experience at the war the troubles that inevitably rise from inaction; the little personal inconveniences, the tyrannies of habits and manners and appearances, when you've got nothing to do but sit and watch your immediate neighbour. But on that earlier occasion our army had been successful; it seemed that the war would soon find its conclusion in the collapse of Germany, and good news from Europe smiled upon us every morning at breakfast. Now we were tired and over-wrought. Good news there was none—indeed every day brought disastrous tidings. We, ourselves, must look back upon a hundred versts of fair smiling country that we had conquered with the sacrifice of many thousands of lives and surrendered without the giving of a blow. And always the force that compelled us to this was sinister and ironical by its invisibility.
It was the Russian temperament to declare exactly what it felt, to give free rein to its moods and dislikes and discomforts. The weather was beginning to be fiercely hot, there were many rumours of cholera and typhus—we, all of us, lost colour and appetite, slept badly and suffered from sudden headaches.
Three days after our arrival at Mittövo we had all discovered private hostilities and resentments. I was as bad as any one. I could not endure the revolutionary student, Ivan Mihailovitch. I thought him most uncleanly in his habits, and I was compelled to sleep in the same room with him. Certainly it was true that washing was not one of the most important things in the world to him. In the morning he would lurch out of bed, put on a soiled shirt and trousers, dab his face with a decrepit sponge, take a tiny piece of soap from an old tin box, look at it, rub it on his fingers and put it hurriedly away again as though he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, getting out of bed, he would cry: "Have you heard the latest scandal? About the ammunition in the Tenth Army! They say—" and then he would forget his washing altogether. He did not shave his head, as most of us had done, but allowed his hair to grow very long, and this, of course, was often a subject of irritation to him. He had also a habit of sitting on his bed in his nightclothes, yawning and scratching his body all over, very slowly, with his long (and I'm afraid dirty) finger-nails, for the space, perhaps, of a quarter of an hour. This I found difficult to endure. His long white face was always a dirty shade of grey and his jacket was stained with reminiscences of his meals. His habits at table were terrible; he was always so deeply interested in what he was saying that he had not time to close his mouth whilst he was eating, to ask people to pass him food (he stretched his long dirty hand across the table) or to pass food to others. He shouted a great deal and was in a furious passion every five minutes. I also just at this time found the boy Goga tiresome; the boy had not been taught by his parents the duty that children owe to their elders and I am inclined to believe that this duty is almost universally untaught in Russia. To Goga a General was as nothing, he would contradict our old white-haired General T——, when he came to dine with us, would patronise the Colonel and assure the General's aide-de-camp that he knew better. He would advance his father as a perpetual and faithful witness to the truth of his statements. "You may say what you like," he would cry to myself or a Sister, "but my father knows better than you do. He has the front seat in the Moscow Opera all through the season and has been to England three times." Goga also had been once to England for a week (spent entirely on the Brighton Pier) and he told me many things. He would forget, for a moment, that I was an Englishman and would assure me that he knew better than I did. He was a being with the best heart in the world, but his parents loved him so much that they had neglected his education.
These things may seem trifling enough, but they had, nevertheless, their importance. Among the Sisters, Sister K—— was the unpopular one. I myself must honestly confess that she was a woman ill-suited to company less worthy than herself. She had an upright virtuous character but she was narrow (a rare fault in a Russian), superstitious, dogmatically religious, and entirely without tact. She quite honestly thought us a poor lot and would say to me: "I hope, Mr. Durward, you don't judge Russia by the specimens you find here," and was, of course, always overheard. She was a strict moralist, but was also generous with all the warmth of Russian generosity in money matters. She was a marvellous hard worker, quite fearless, accurate, and punctual in all things. She fought incessant battles with Anna Petrovna who hated her as warmly as it was in her quiet, unruffled heart to hate any one. The only thing stranger than the fierceness of their quarrels was the suddenness of their conclusion. I remember that at dinner one day they fought a battle over the question of a clean towel with a heat and vigour that was Homeric. A quarter of an hour later I found them quietly talking together. Anna Petrovna was showing Sister K—— a large and hideous photograph of her children.
"How sympathetic! How beautiful!" said Sister K——.
"But I thought you hated her?" I said afterwards in confusion to Anna Petrovna.
"She was very sympathetic about my children," said Anna Petrovna placidly.
Then, of course, Sister Sofia Antonovna, the sister with the red eyes, made trouble when she could. She was, as I discovered afterwards, a bitterly disappointed woman, having been deserted by her fiancé only a week before her marriage. That had happened three years ago and she still loved him, so that she had her excuse for her view of the world. My friends seemed to me, during those first weeks at Mittövo, simply a company of good-hearted, ill-disciplined children. I had gone directly back to my days in the nursery. Restraint of any kind there was none, discipline as to time or emotions was undreamed of, and with it all a vitality, a warmth of heart, a sincerity and honesty that made that Otriad, perhaps, the most lovable company I have ever known. Russians are fond of sneering at themselves; for him who declares that he likes Russia and Russians they have either polite disbelief or gentle contempt. In England we have qualities of endurance, of reliability, of solidity, to which, often enough, I long to return—but that warmth of heart that I have known here for two long years, a warmth that means love for the neglected, for the defeated, for the helpless, a warmth that lights a fire on every hearth in every house in Russia—that is a greater thing than the possessors of it know.
Through all the little quarrels and disputes of our company there ran the thread of the affair of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Trenchard was lighted now with the pleasure of their affection, and Marie Ivanovna, who had been at first so popular amongst them, was held to be hard and capricious. She, at least, did not make it easy for them to like her. She had seemed in those first days in O—— as though she wished to win all their hearts, but now it was as though she had not time to consider any of us, as though she had something of far greater importance to claim her attention. She was now very continually with Semyonov and yet it seemed to me that it was rather respect for his opinion and admiration of his independence than liking that compelled her. He was, beyond any question, in love with her, if the name of love can be given to the fierce, intolerant passion that governed him.