Oddly enough, of all the many
backgrounds that were, during the next months, to follow in procession
behind me, there only remain to me with enduring vitality: this
school-house at O----, the banks of the River Nestor which I had
indeed good reason to remember, and finally the forest of S----. How
strange a contrast, that school-house with its little garden and white
cobbles and that forest which will, to the end of my life, ever haunt
my dreams.
And yet, by its very contrast, how fitting a background to our
Prologue this school-house made! I wonder whether Nikitin sees it
still in his visions? Trenchard and Semyonov ... does it mean anything
to them, where they now are? First of them all, Marie Ivanovna.... I
see her still, bending over the well looking down, then suddenly
flinging her head back, laughing as we stood behind her, the sunlight
through the apple-trees flashing in her eyes.... That fortnight must
be to many of us of how ironic, of how tragic a tranquillity!
So we settled down and did our best to become happily accustomed to
one another.
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