Sometimes
they would talk, telling how the thing had happened to them:
"And there, your Honour, before I could move, she had come--such a
noise--eh, eh, a terrible thing--I called out '_Zemliac_. Here it is!'
I said, and he...."
But as a rule they were very quiet, starting perhaps at the sting of
the iodine, asking for a bandage to be tighter or not so tight,
sometimes suddenly slipping in a faint to the ground, and then
apologising afterwards. And in their eyes always that look as though,
very shortly, they would hear some story so marvellous that it would
compensate for all their present pain and distress. There would be the
doctors, generally two at a time--Semyonov, unmoved, rough apparently
in his handling of the men but always accomplishing his work with
marvellous efficiency, abusing the nurses and sanitars without
hesitation if they did not do as he wished, but never raising his soft
ironic voice, his square body of a solidity and composure that nothing
could ruffle, his fair beard, his blue eyes, his spotless linen all
sharing in his self-assured superiority to us all; one of the Division
doctors, Alexei Ivanovitch, a man from Little Russia, beloved of us
all, whether in the Otriad or the army, a character possessing it
seemed none of the Russian moods and sensibilities, of the kindest
heart but no sentimentality, utterly free from self-praise,
self-interest, self-assertion, humorous, loving passionately his
country and, with all his Russian romance and even mysticism, packed
with practical common sense; another Division doctor, a young man,
carving for himself a practice out of Moscow merchants, crammed with
all the latest inventions and discoveries, caring for nothing save his
own career and frankly saying so, but a lively optimist whose belief
in his own powers was quite refreshing in its sincerity.
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