...
Yes, I was now Trenchard's friend. What had occurred since that night
in the train, when I had felt, during the greater part of the time,
nothing but irritation? Frankly, I do not know. It may be, partly,
that he was given to me by the rest of the Otriad. He was spoken of
now as "my" Englishman. And then, poor Trenchard!... How, during this
fortnight, he was unhappy! It had begun with him as I had foreseen. In
the first place he had been dismayed and silenced by the garrulity of
his new companions. It had seemed to him that he had understood
nothing of their conversation, that he was in the way, that finally he
was more lonely than he had ever been in his life before. Then,
however strongly he might to himself deny it, he had arrived in Russia
with what Nikitin called "his romantic notions." He had read his
Dostoevski and Turgenev; he had looked at those books of Russian
impressions that deal in nothing but snow, ikons, and the sublime
simplicity of the Russian peasant. He was a man whose circumstances
had led him to believe profoundly in his own incapacity, unpopularity,
ignorance.
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