And it's a good thing." He smiled--that strange,
happy, confident mysterious smile that I had seen first on the
Petrograd platform. Then he turned and walked slowly towards the
house.
What Nikitin had said about Trenchard's expectation of "romantic war"
was perhaps true, in different degrees, of all of us. Even I, in spite
of my earlier experience, felt some irritation at this delay, and to
those of us who had arrived flaming with energy, bravery, resolution
to make their name before Europe, this feasting in a country garden
seemed a deliberate insult. Was this "romantic war?" These long meals
under the trees, deep sleeps in the afternoon when the pigeons cooed
round the little red bell-tower and the pump creaked in the cobbled
courtyard and the bees hummed in the garden? Bees, cold water shining
deep in the well, and the samovar chuckling behind the flower-beds,
and fifteen versts away the Austrians challenging the Russian
nation!... "You know," Andrey Vassilievitch said to me, "it's very
disheartening.
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