An Englishman?... Indeed, I am very glad! Your friend speaks Russian?
Not very much, but enough?... You know Vladimir Stepanovitch? Dr.
Nikitin ... my friend Meester Durward. Also Meester?... ah, I beg your
pardon, Tronsart. Two Englishmen in our Otriad ... the alliance, yes,
delightful!"
Nikitin slowly opened his eyes, shook hands with me and with
Trenchard, said that he was glad to see us and was silent again.
Trenchard stammered and blushed, said something in very bad Russian,
then glanced anxiously, with an eager light in his mild blue eyes, in
the direction of the excited crowd that chattered and stirred about
the train. There was something, in that look of his, that both touched
and irritated me. "What does he come for?" I thought to myself. "With
his bad Russian and his English prejudices. Of course he'll be lonely
and then he'll be in every one's way."
I could remember, readily enough, some of the loneliness of those
first months of my own, when both war and the Russians had differed so
from my expectations.
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