"John, I'm your friend. I've been bad to you, but I'm your friend. I don't understand why I've been so bad to you because, I would be fur-rious—yes, fur-rious—if any one else were bad to you. And be mine, John, whatever I do, be mine. I'm not really a bad character—only I think it's too exciting now, here—everything—for me to stop and think."
"You know," he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked in that hot theatre all the morning) "that I am always the same—but you must not marry Semyonov," he added fiercely.
She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after a time:
"I hate Sister K——. She is not really religious. She doesn't wash either. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little."
They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappy than ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that he did not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than ever and loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things. If he hadtaken that sentence of hers—"I think it's too exciting—now—here—for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy, have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was so simple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatest discomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for a moment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic.
"June 23rd.In X——. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandaged thirty. Operation 1—arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battle round the school-house at O—— where we first were. Wonderful weather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Evening moved—thirty versts to P——. Much dust, very slow, owing to the Guards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and Andrey Vassilievitch in aPodvoda—Like the latter, but he's out of place here. Arrived 1.30.
"June 24th.Off early morning. This time black carriage with Sisters K—— and Anna Petrovna. More dust—thousands of soldiers passing us, singing as though there were no retreat. News from L—— very bad. Say there's no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7.30. Very hungry and thirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little town in a valley. Nestor seems huge—very beautiful with wooded hills. But whole place so swallowed in dust impossible to see anything. Heaps of wounded again. I and Molozov in nice room alone. Have not seen M. all day.
"June 25th.This morning Nikitin, Sister K——, Goga, and I attempted to get back to P—— to see whether there were wounded. Started off on the carts but when we got to the hill above the village met the whole of our Division coming out. The village abandoned, so back we had to goagain through all the dust. Evening nothing doing. Every one depressed.
"June 26th.Very early—half-past five in the morning—we were roused and had to take part in an exodus like the Israelites. Most unpleasant, moving an inch an hour, Cossacks riding one down if one preferred to go on foot to being bumped in the haycart. Every one in the depths of depression. Crossed the Nestor, a perfectly magnificent river. Five versts further, then stopped at a farmhouse, pitched tents. Instantly hundreds of wounded. Battle fierce just other side of Nijnieff. Worked like a nigger—from two to eight never stopped bandaging. About ten went off to the position with Molozov. Strange to be back in the little town under such different circumstances. Dark as pitch—raining. Much noise, motors, soldiers like ghosts though—shrapnel all the time. Tired, depressed and nervous. Horrid waiting doing nothing; two houses under the shrapnel. Expected also at every moment bridge behind us to be blown up. At last wagons filled with wounded, started back and got home eventually, taking two hours over it. Very glad when it was over...."
We had arrived, indeed, although we did not then know it and were expecting, every moment, to move back again, at the conclusion of our first exodus. Our only other transition, after a day or two longer at our farmhouse, was forward four versts to a tiny village on a high hill overlooking the Nestor, to the left of Nijnieff. This village was called Mittövo. Mittövo was to be our world for many weeks to come. We inhabited once again the large white deserted country-house with the tangled garden, the dusty bare floors, the broken windows. At the end of the tangled garden there was a white stone cross, and here was a most wonderful view, the high hill running precipitously down to theflat silver expanse of the Nestor that ran like a gleaming girdle under the breasts of the slopes beyond. These further slopes were clothed with wood. I remember, on the first day that I watched, the forest beyond was black and dense like a cloud resting on the hill; the Nestor and our own country was soaked with sun.
"That's a fine forest," I said to my companion.
"Yes, the forest of S——, stretches miles back into Galicia." It was Nikitin that day who spoke to me. We turned carelessly away. Meanwhile how difficult and unpleasant those first weeks at Mittövo were! We had none of us realised, I suppose, how sternly those days of retreat had tested our nerves. We had been not only retreating, but (at the same time) working fiercely, and now, when for some while the work slackened and, under the hot blazing sun, we found nothing for our hands to do, a grinding irritable reaction settled down upon us.
I had known in my earlier experience at the war the troubles that inevitably rise from inaction; the little personal inconveniences, the tyrannies of habits and manners and appearances, when you've got nothing to do but sit and watch your immediate neighbour. But on that earlier occasion our army had been successful; it seemed that the war would soon find its conclusion in the collapse of Germany, and good news from Europe smiled upon us every morning at breakfast. Now we were tired and over-wrought. Good news there was none—indeed every day brought disastrous tidings. We, ourselves, must look back upon a hundred versts of fair smiling country that we had conquered with the sacrifice of many thousands of lives and surrendered without the giving of a blow. And always the force that compelled us to this was sinister and ironical by its invisibility.
It was the Russian temperament to declare exactly what it felt, to give free rein to its moods and dislikes and discomforts. The weather was beginning to be fiercely hot, there were many rumours of cholera and typhus—we, all of us, lost colour and appetite, slept badly and suffered from sudden headaches.
Three days after our arrival at Mittövo we had all discovered private hostilities and resentments. I was as bad as any one. I could not endure the revolutionary student, Ivan Mihailovitch. I thought him most uncleanly in his habits, and I was compelled to sleep in the same room with him. Certainly it was true that washing was not one of the most important things in the world to him. In the morning he would lurch out of bed, put on a soiled shirt and trousers, dab his face with a decrepit sponge, take a tiny piece of soap from an old tin box, look at it, rub it on his fingers and put it hurriedly away again as though he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, getting out of bed, he would cry: "Have you heard the latest scandal? About the ammunition in the Tenth Army! They say—" and then he would forget his washing altogether. He did not shave his head, as most of us had done, but allowed his hair to grow very long, and this, of course, was often a subject of irritation to him. He had also a habit of sitting on his bed in his nightclothes, yawning and scratching his body all over, very slowly, with his long (and I'm afraid dirty) finger-nails, for the space, perhaps, of a quarter of an hour. This I found difficult to endure. His long white face was always a dirty shade of grey and his jacket was stained with reminiscences of his meals. His habits at table were terrible; he was always so deeply interested in what he was saying that he had not time to close his mouth whilst he was eating, to ask people to pass him food (he stretchedhis long dirty hand across the table) or to pass food to others. He shouted a great deal and was in a furious passion every five minutes. I also just at this time found the boy Goga tiresome; the boy had not been taught by his parents the duty that children owe to their elders and I am inclined to believe that this duty is almost universally untaught in Russia. To Goga a General was as nothing, he would contradict our old white-haired General T——, when he came to dine with us, would patronise the Colonel and assure the General's aide-de-camp that he knew better. He would advance his father as a perpetual and faithful witness to the truth of his statements. "You may say what you like," he would cry to myself or a Sister, "but my father knows better than you do. He has the front seat in the Moscow Opera all through the season and has been to England three times." Goga also had been once to England for a week (spent entirely on the Brighton Pier) and he told me many things. He would forget, for a moment, that I was an Englishman and would assure me that he knew better than I did. He was a being with the best heart in the world, but his parents loved him so much that they had neglected his education.
These things may seem trifling enough, but they had, nevertheless, their importance. Among the Sisters, Sister K—— was the unpopular one. I myself must honestly confess that she was a woman ill-suited to company less worthy than herself. She had an upright virtuous character but she was narrow (a rare fault in a Russian), superstitious, dogmatically religious, and entirely without tact. She quite honestly thought us a poor lot and would say to me: "I hope, Mr. Durward, you don't judge Russia by the specimens you find here," and was, of course, always overheard. She was a strict moralist, but was also generouswith all the warmth of Russian generosity in money matters. She was a marvellous hard worker, quite fearless, accurate, and punctual in all things. She fought incessant battles with Anna Petrovna who hated her as warmly as it was in her quiet, unruffled heart to hate any one. The only thing stranger than the fierceness of their quarrels was the suddenness of their conclusion. I remember that at dinner one day they fought a battle over the question of a clean towel with a heat and vigour that was Homeric. A quarter of an hour later I found them quietly talking together. Anna Petrovna was showing Sister K—— a large and hideous photograph of her children.
"How sympathetic! How beautiful!" said Sister K——.
"But I thought you hated her?" I said afterwards in confusion to Anna Petrovna.
"She was very sympathetic about my children," said Anna Petrovna placidly.
Then, of course, Sister Sofia Antonovna, the sister with the red eyes, made trouble when she could. She was, as I discovered afterwards, a bitterly disappointed woman, having been deserted by her fiancé only a week before her marriage. That had happened three years ago and she still loved him, so that she had her excuse for her view of the world. My friends seemed to me, during those first weeks at Mittövo, simply a company of good-hearted, ill-disciplined children. I had gone directly back to my days in the nursery. Restraint of any kind there was none, discipline as to time or emotions was undreamed of, and with it all a vitality, a warmth of heart, a sincerity and honesty that made that Otriad, perhaps, the most lovable company I have ever known. Russians are fond of sneering at themselves; for him who declares that he likes Russia and Russians they have either polite disbelief or gentle contempt.In England we have qualities of endurance, of reliability, of solidity, to which, often enough, I long to return—but that warmth of heart that I have known here for two long years, a warmth that means love for the neglected, for the defeated, for the helpless, a warmth that lights a fire on every hearth in every house in Russia—that is a greater thing than the possessors of it know.
Through all the little quarrels and disputes of our company there ran the thread of the affair of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Trenchard was lighted now with the pleasure of their affection, and Marie Ivanovna, who had been at first so popular amongst them, was held to be hard and capricious. She, at least, did not make it easy for them to like her. She had seemed in those first days in O—— as though she wished to win all their hearts, but now it was as though she had not time to consider any of us, as though she had something of far greater importance to claim her attention. She was now very continually with Semyonov and yet it seemed to me that it was rather respect for his opinion and admiration of his independence than liking that compelled her. He was, beyond any question, in love with her, if the name of love can be given to the fierce, intolerant passion that governed him.
He made no attempt to disguise his feelings, was as rude to the rest of us as he pleased, and, of course, flung his scorn plentifully over Trenchard. But now I seemed to detect in him some shades of restlessness and anxiety that I had never seen in him before. He was not sure of her; he did not, I believe, understand her any more than did the rest of us. With justice, indeed, I was afraid for her. His passion, I thought, was as surely and as nakedly a physical one as any other that I had seen precede it, and would as certainly pass as all purely physical passions do. She wasas ignorant of the world as on the day when she arrived amongst us; but my feeling about her was that she would receive his love almost as though in a dream, her thoughts fixed on something far from him and in no way depending on him. At any rate she was with him now continually. We judged her proud and hard-hearted, all of us except Trenchard who loved her, Semyonov who wanted her, and Nikitin, who, as I now believe, even then understood her.
Trenchard meanwhile was confused and unsettled: inaction did not suit him any better than it did the rest of us. He had too much time to think about Marie Ivanovna.
He was undoubtedly pleased at his new popularity. He expanded under it and became something of the loquacious and uncalculating person that he had shown himself during his confession to me in the train. To the Russians his loquacity was in no way strange or unpleasant. They were in the habit of unburdening themselves, their hopes, their disappointments, their joys, their tragedies, to the first strangers whom they met. It seemed quite natural to them that Trenchard, puffing his rebellious pipe, should talk to them about Glebeshire, Polchester, Rafiel, Millie and Katherine Trenchard.
"I'd like you to meet Katherine, Anna Petrovna," he would say. "You would find her delightful. She's married now to a young man she ran away with, which surprised every one—her running away, I mean, because she was always considered such a serious character."
"I forget whether you've seen my children, 'Mr.'" Anna Petrovna would reply. "I must show you their photograph."
And she would produce the large and hideous picture.
He was the same as in those first days, and yet how immensely not the same. He bore himself now with a chivalrous tact towards Marie Ivanovna that was beyond all praise. He always cherished in his heart his memory of their little conversation in the orchard. "How I wish," he told me, "that I had made that conversation longer. It was so very short and I might so easily have lengthened it. There were so many things afterwards that I might have said—and she never gave me another chance."
She never did—she kept him from her. Kind to him, perhaps, but never allowing him another moment's intimacy. He had almost the air, it seemed to me, of patiently waiting for the moment when she should need him, the air too of a man who was sure, in his heart, that that moment would come.
And the other thing that stiffened him was his hatred for Semyonov. Hatred may seem too fierce a word for the emotion of any one as mild and gentle as Trenchard—and yet hatred at this time it was. He seemed no longer afraid of Semyonov and there was something about him now which surprised the other man. Through all those first days at Mittövo, when we seemed for a moment almost to have slipped out of the war and to be leading the smaller more quarrelsome life of earlier days, Trenchard was occupied with only one question—"What was he feeling about Semyonov?"—"I felt as though I could stand anything if only she didn't love him. Since that awful night of the Retreat I had resigned myself to losing her; any one should marry her who would make her happy—but he—never! But it was the indecision that I could not bear. I didn't know—I couldn't tell, what she felt."
The indecision was not to last much longer. One evening, when we had been at Mittövo about a week, he was at the Cross watching the sun, like a crimson flower, sink behind the dim grey forest. The Nestor, in the evening mist, wasa golden shadow under the hill. This beauty made him melancholy. He was wishing passionately, as he stood there, for work, hard, dangerous, gripping work. He did not know that that was to be the last idle minute of his life. Hearing a step on the path he turned round to find Semyonov at his side.
"Lovely view, isn't it?" said Semyonov, watching him.
"Lovely," answered Trenchard.
Semyonov sat down on the little stone seat beneath the Cross and looked up at his rival. Trenchard looked down at him, hating his square, stolid composure, his thick thighs, his fair beard, his ironical eyes. "You're abeastlyman!" he thought.
"How long are you going to be with us, do you think?" asked Semyonov.
"Don't know—depends on so many things."
"Why don't you go back to England? They want soldiers."
"Wouldn't pass my eyesight."
"When are they going to begin doing something on the other Front, do you think?"
"When they're ready, I suppose."
"They're very slow. Where's all your army we heard so much about?"
"There's a big army going to be ready soon."
"Yes, but we were told things would begin in May. It's only the Germans who've begun."
"I don't know; I've seen no English papers for some weeks."
There was a pause. Semyonov smiled, stood up, looked into Trenchard's eyes.
"I must go to England," he said slowly, "after the war. Marie Ivanovna and I will go, I hope, together. She toldme to-day that that is one of the things that she hopes we will do together—later on."
Trenchard returned Semyonov's gaze. After a moment he said:
"Yes—you would enjoy it." He waited, then added: "I must be walking back now. I'm late!" And he turned away to the house.
Marie Ivanovna herself spoke to me of Semyonov. She found me alone waiting for my morning tea. We were before the others, and could hear, in the next room, Molozov splashing water about the floor and crying to Michail, his servant, to pour "Yestsho! Yestsho!" "Yestsho! Yestsho!"—"Still more! Still more," over his head.
She stood in the doorway looking as though she hated my presence.
"The others have not arrived," I said. "It's late to-day."
"I can see," she answered. "Every one is idle now."
Then her voice changed. She came across to me. We talked of unimportant things for a while. Then she said: "I'm very happy, Mr. Durward.... Be kind about it. Alexei Petrovitch and I...." She hesitated.
I looked at her and saw that she was again the young and helpless girl whom I had not seen since that early morning before our first battle. I said, very lamely, "If you are happy, Marie Ivanovna, I am glad."
"You think it terrible of me," she said swiftly. "And why do you all talk of being happy? What doesthatmatter? But I can trust him. He's strong and afraid of nothing."
I could say nothing.
"Of course you think me very bad—that I have treated—John—shamefully—yes?... I will not defend myself to you. What is there to defend? John and I could never have lived together,never. You yourself must see that."
"It does not matter what I think," I answered. "I am Trenchard's friend, and he has no knowledge of life nor human nature. He has made a bad start. You must forgive me if I think more of him than of you, Marie Ivanovna."
"Yes," she said fiercely. "It is John—John—John, you all think of. But John would not have loved me if he knew me as I truly am. And now, at last, I can be myself. It does not matter to Alexei Petrovitch what I am."
"But you have known him so short a time—and you have been so quick. If you had waited...."
"Waited!" she caught me up. "Waited! How can one wait when one isn't allowed to wait? It must be finished here, at once, and I'm not going to finish alone. I'm frightened, Mr. Durward, but also I must see it right through. He makes me brave. He's afraid of nothing. I couldn't leave this, and yet I was frightened to go on alone. With him beside me I'm not afraid."
Anna Petrovna interrupted us.
"It's Goga's stomach again," she said placidly. "He's had great pain all night. It was those sweets yesterday. Just give me that glass, my dear. Weak tea's the only thing he can have."
Well, I had said nothing to Marie Ivanovna. What was there I could have said?
And the next thing about Trenchard was that he had got his wish, and was lying on his back once more, in one of our nice, simple, uncomfortable haycarts, looking up at the evening sky. This was the evening after his conversation with Semyonov. Quite suddenly the battle had caught usinto its arms again. It was raging now in the woods to the right of us, woods on the further side of the Nestor, situated on a tributary. I will quote now directly from his diary:
As our line of carts crossed the great river I could hear the muffled "brum-brum" of the cannons and "tap-tap-tap" of the machine-guns now so conventionally familiar. Nikitin was lying in silence at my side. Behind us came twenty wagons with the sanitars; the evening was very still, plum-colour in the woods, misty over the river; the creaking of our carts was the only sound, save the "brum-brum" and the "tap-tap-tap"....I lay on my back and thought of Semyonov and myself. I had in my mind two pictures. One was of Semyonov sitting on the stone under the cross, looking up at me with comfortable and ironical insolence, Semyonov so strong and resolute and successful. Semyonov who got what he wanted, did what he wanted, said what he wanted.The other picture was of myself, as I had been the other night when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff to fetch the wounded. I saw myself standing in a muddy little lane just outside the town, under pouring rain. The wagons waited there, the horses stamping now and then, and the wounded men on the only wagon that was filled, moaned and cried. Shrapnel whizzed overhead—sometimes crying, like an echo, in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming. At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and isolating whether there were room on mycarts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also cry—after that, there would be the dismal silence again, silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping from me, slipping down my neck, squelching under my boots. And as I stood there I was afraid. That was what I now saw. I had been terribly afraid for the first time since I had come to the war. I had worked all day in the bandaging room, and perhaps my physical weariness was responsible; but whatever it might be there I was, a coward. At the threat of every shrapnel I bent my head and shrugged my shoulders, at every cry of the wounded men—one man was delirious and sang a little song—a shudder trembled all down my body. I thought of the bridge between myself and the Otriad—how easily it might be blown up! and then, if the Division were beaten back what massacre there would be! I wanted to go home, to sleep, to be safe and warm—above all, to be safe! I saw before me some of the wounded whom I had bandaged to-day—men without faces or with hanging jaws that must be held up with the hand whilst the bandage was tied. One man blind, one man mad (he thought he was drowning in hot water), one man holding his stomach together with his hands. I saw all these figures crowding round me in the lane—I also saw the dead men in the forest, the skull, the flies, the strong blue-grey trousers.... I shook so that my teeth chattered—a very pitiful figure.Well, that was the other night. It was true that to-night I did not feel frightened—at least not as yet. But then it was a beautiful evening, very peaceful, still and warm—and there was Nikitin. In any case there were those two figures whom I must consider—Semyonov and myself. That brief conversation last night had brought us quite sharply face to face. I found to my own surprise that Semyonov's declaration of his engagement had not been a great shock to me, had not indeed altered very greatly the earlier situation. But it had shown me quite clearly that my own love for Marie Ivanovna was in no way diminished, that I must protect her from a man who was, I felt, quite simply a "beastly" man.Well, then if Semyonov and I were to fight it out, I would need to be at my best. Did that little picture of the other evening show me at my best? This business presented a bigger fight than the simple one with Semyonov. I knew, quite clearly, as I lay on my back in the cart, that the fight against Semyonov and the fight against ... was mingled together, depended for their issue one upon the other—that the dead men in the forest had no merely accidental connexion with Marie Ivanovna's safety and Semyonov's scornful piracies.Well,then... Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle, myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain! What was to be the issue of all of it?I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of events that had brought me to this point. One: that drive with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the trench and heard the frogs. Two: the evening at O——, when Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the cannon. Three: the day at S—— and Marie kneeling on the cart with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. Four: her refusal of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now). Five: the talk with Marie in the park. Six: thewet night at Nijnieff. Seven: last night's little talk with Semyonov.... Yes, I could see now that I had been advancing always forward into the forest, growing ever nearer and nearer, perceiving now the tactics of the enemy, beaten here, frightened there, but still penetrating—not, as yet, retreating ... and always, my private little history marching with me, confused with the private little histories of all of the others, all of them penetrating more deeply and more deeply....And if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov—and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest.IfI had lost my nerve!...HadI? Was it only weariness the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten, and why, after all, should I imagine that I would be able to put up a fight—I who had never in all my life fought anything successfully? I lay on my back, looked at the sky. I sat up, looked at the country, I set my teeth, looked at Nikitin.Nikitin grunted. "I've had a good nap," he said. "You should have had one. There'll be plenty of work for us to-night by the sound of it." We turned a corner of the road through the wood and one of our own batteries jumped upon us."I'm glad it's not raining," I said."We've still some way to go," said Nikitin, sitting up. "What a lovely evening!" Then he added, quite without apparent connexion, "Well, you're more at home amongst us all now, aren't you?""Yes," said I."I'm glad of that. And what do you think of Andrey Vassilievitch?"I answered: "Oh! I like him! ... but I don't think he's happy at the war," I added."I want you to like him," Nikitin said. "He's a splendid man ... I have known him many years. He is merry and simple and it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh at the best people. You must like him, 'Mr.'... He likes you very much."I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some way behind us, then said:"Of course, I am his friend if he wishes."Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow."Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital, fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "Noo tak.Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here,golubchik, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment....One... moment. Ah! there you are!" The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his knees, his face grey underthe moon, then huddled into nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly away."Here, water!... No, take him over there! That's right. Well, 'Mr.'—how are you? Lovely night.... Plenty of work there'll be, too. Oh! you're going down to theVengerovsky Polk? Yes, they're down to the right there somewhere—across the fields.... Warm over there."The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as of a stone falling into water.[A]The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in the dark shadows of the forest.[A]It must be remembered that this account is Trenchard's—taken from his diary. In my own experience I have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are many statements for which I have only his authority.—P.D.A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin spoke to them."Here,golubchik... tell me! whatpolk?""Moskovsky, your Honour.""And the Vengerovsky ... they're to the right, are they?""Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the forest.""What? There where the road turns?""Tak totchno.""How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?""Ne mogoo znat.I'm unable to say, your Honour ... but there's been an attack there an hour ago.""Are those ours?"—listening to a battery across the fields."Ours, your Honour.""Well, we'll go on and see."I had listened to this conversation with the sensation of a man who has stopped himself on the very edge of a precipice. I thought in those few moments with a marvellous and penetrating clarity. I had, after all, been always until now at the battle of S——, or when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the middle—the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle of laconic brevity: "6.30A. M., down to the battery. All quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours killed, two wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived from the 'Doll's House'—all quiet there," and so on. This, I knew, was the proper way to look at the affair: "6.0A. M., down to the battery. 7.0A. M., breakfasted. 8.0A. M., dead...." For the life of me now I could not look at it like that. I saw a thousand things that were, perhaps, not really there, but were there at any ratefor me. If I was beaten to-night I was beaten once and for all.... I saw the shining road under the starlight and shadows of wounded men, groaning and stumbling, whispering their way along."Let's go," said Nikitin.I drew a breath and stepped out into the moonlight. A shell burst with a delicate splash of fire amongst the stars. The road looked very long and very, very lonely.However, soon I found myself walking along it quite casually and talking about unimportant peaceful things. "Come," I thought to myself. "This really isn't so bad.""It's a great pity," Nikitin said, "that I can't read English. Have to take your novelists as they choose to give them us. Who is there now in England?""Well," said I as one talks in a dream, "there's Hardy, and Henry James, and Conrad. I've seen translations of Conrad in Petrograd. And then there's Wells—""Yes, Wells I know. But he writes stories for boys.... There's Jack London, but his are American. I like to read an English novel sometimes. Your English life is so cosy. You have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We don't know what comfort is in Russia."A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on the far horizon."No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I fancy that an English country-house...."We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep.On the left of the road there was a house standing backin its own garden. I could see dimly that this was a row of country villas."Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me. "I must find the Colonel. The sanitars will come and fetch you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging."Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly desolate. I stood back against the gate of the villa watching soldiers hurry by, seeing high mysterious hedges, the roofs of houses, a line of lighted sky, the tops of trees, all these things rising and falling as the glare in the heavens rose and fell. There was sometimes a terrible noise and sometimes an equally terrible stillness. Somewhere in the darkness a man was groaning, "Oh! ah!—Oh! ah!" without cessation. Somewhere the gate of one of the villas swung to and fro, creaking. Sometimes soldiers would stare at my motionless figure and then pass on. All this time, as in one's dreams sometimes one holds off a nightmare, I was keeping my fear at bay. I had now exactly the sensation that I had known so often in my dream, that I was standing somewhere in the dark, that the Enemy was watching me and waiting to spring. But to-night I was onlynearlyafraid. One step on my part, one extra noise, one more flare of light, and I would abandon myself to panic, but, although the perspiration was wet on my forehead, my heart thumping, and my hands dry and hot, I was not yetquiteafraid.I had a strange sensation of suffocation, as though I were at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged" above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood under the picture in the summer.A soldier stopped and spoke to me: "Your Honour, it's on the right—the next gate." I followed him without attention, having no doubt but that this was one of our own sanitars, and accompanied a group of soldiers that surrounded a bobbing kitchen on wheels. I was puzzled by the kitchen because I knew that one had not been brought by our Otriad, but I thought that the doctors of the Division had perhaps begged our men to aid the army sanitars.We hurried through a gate to the right, where in what appeared to be a yard of some kind, the kitchen was established and then, from out of the very earth as it seemed, soldiers appeared, clustering around it with their tin cans. The soldier who was in charge of the party said to me in a confidential whisper: "There's plenty ofKasha, your Honour, and the soup will last us, too.""Very good," said I in a bewildered voice. At the strange accent the soldier looked at me, and then I looked at the soldier. The soldier was a stranger to me (a pleasant round man with a huge smiling mouth and two chins) and I was a stranger to the soldier."Well," said the soldier, looking, "I thought....""I thought—" said I, most uncomfortable.The soldiers vanished back into the darknesses round the kitchen. Voices, whispering, could be heard."Now, that's the end," thought I. "I'm shot as a German spy."I looked at the soldiers, clustered like bees round the kitchen, then I slipped through the gate into the dark road. I stood there listening. The battle seemed to have drawn away, because I could hear rifles, machine-guns, cannonmuffled round a corner of the hill. Here there was now silence, broken only by soldiers who hurried up the road or went in and out at the villa gates. I felt abandoned. How was I to discover Nikitin again? Before what gate had I stood? I did not know; I seemed to know nothing.I moved down the road, very miserable and very cold. I had stupidly left my coat in one of the wagons. I walked on, my boots knocking against one another, thinking to myself: "If I'm not given something to do very soon I shall be just as I was the other night at Nijnieff—and then I shall suddenly take to my heels down this road as hard as I can go!"It was then that I tumbled straight into the arms of Nikitin, who was standing at the edge of the forest, watching for me. I was so happy that I felt now afraid of nothing. I held Nikitin's arm, babbling something about kitchens and Germans."Well, I don't understand what you say," I remember Nikitin replied; "but you must come and work. There's plenty of it."We moved to a cottage on the very boundary of the forest, where a little common ran down to the moonlight. Passing through a narrow passage, I entered into a little room with a large white stove. On the top of the stove, under the roof, crouched a boy or a young man with long black hair and a white face. This youth wore what resembled a white shirt over baggy white trousers. His feet were bare and very dirty. Nothing moved except his eyes. He sat there, in exactly that position, all night.The room was small but was the best that could be obtained. Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and Iworked until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The wounds were horrible. No man seemed to come into the room with an unmangled body. The smell rose higher and higher, the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms, smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin, his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting, digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my hands were doing.... Then suddenly the battle coming right back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery about the walls of the cottage—and through it all the white youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without pause...."Ah, no, your Honour.... Ah, no! ... I can't! I can't! Oh, oh, oh, oh!" and then sobs, the man breaking down like a child, hiding his face in his arms, his wounded leg twitching convulsively. I paused, wiped the sweat from my eyes, stood up. Nikitin looked at me."Take some fresh air!" he said. "Go out with the stretcher for half an hour. I can manage here."I wiped my forehead."Sure you can manage?" I asked."Quite," said Nikitin. "Here, hold his back!... No,durak, hisback.Bojé moi, can't you get your arm under? There—like that.Horosho, golubchik, horosho... only a minute! There! There!"I washed my hands and went out. The air caressed my forehead like cold water; from the little garden at the back there came scents of flowers; the moonlight was blue on the common. Eight sanitars were waiting to start. The Feldscher in charge of them did not, I thought, seem greatly pleased when he saw me, but then I am often stupidly sensitive; no one said anything and we started. We carried two stretchers and a soldier from the trenches was with us to guide us.I could see that the men were not happy. I heard one of them mutter to another that they should not have been sent now; that they should have waited until the attack was over ... "and the full moon.... Did any one ever see such a moon?"We came to cross-roads and advanced very carefully.As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement. The noise around us was terrific and different from any noise that I heard before. I did not think at the time, but was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position about whose possession the battle was being fought), that the noise was so tremendous. The echo flung everything back so that each report sounded three or four times. This certainly had the strangest effect—a background as it were of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and then suddenly an absolutelysmashingeffect as though some one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns. At everysmashingnoise the sanitars, who were, I believe, schoolmasters and little clerks, and therefore of a more sensitive head than the peasant soldier, ducked their heads, and one fat red-faced man tried to lie down flat on two occasions and was cursed heartily by the Feldscher. I myself felt no fear but only a pounding exhilarating excitement, because I was at last "really in it." We found one woundedman very soon, lying under the hedge with the top of his head gone. Four sanitars (their relief showed very plainly in their faces) returned with him. We advanced again, skirting now a little orchard and keeping always in the shadow under the hedge. Our guide, the soldier, assured us that the wounded man was "very near—quite close." Then we came to a large barn on the edge of what seemed a silver lake but was in reality a long field under the full light of the moon. As we paused I saw, on the further side of the field, two shells burst, very quickly, one after the other.We all stopped under the shelter of the barn."Well," said the Feldscher to the soldier, "where's your man?""Only a short way," said the soldier. "Quite close.""Across that field?" asked the Feldscher, pointing to the moonlight."Yes, certainly," said the soldier.The Feldscher scratched his head. "We can't go further without orders," he said. "That's very dangerous in front there. I'm responsible for these men. We must return and ask, your Honour," he said, turning to me."We shall be nearly an hour returning," I said. "Is your friend badly wounded?" I asked the soldier."Very," said he."You see ..." I said to the Feldscher. "We can't possibly leave him like that. It's only a little way."The Feldscher shook his head. "I can't be responsible. I had my orders to go so far and no further. I must see that my men are safe."The sanitars who were sitting in a row on their haunches under the shadow of the barn all nodded their heads."I didn't know Russians were cowards," I said fiercely.The Feldscher shook his head quite unmoved: "Your Honour must understand that I had my orders." Then he added slowly: "but of course if your Honour wishes to go yourself ... I would come with you. The others ... they must do as they please. They are in their right to return. But I should advise that we return.""I'm going on," I said.I must say here that I felt no other sensation than a blind and quite obstinate selfishness. I had no thought of Nikitin or of the sanitars. I did not (and this I must emphasise) think, for a moment, of the wounded man. If the situation had been that by returning I should save many lives and by advancing should save only my own I should still have advanced. If the only hope for the wounded man was my instant speech with Nikitin I would not have gone back to speak with him. I was at this moment neither brave nor fearful. I repeat that I had no sensation except an absolutely selfish obstinate challenge that I, myself, was addressing to Something in space. I was saying: "At last, my chance has come. Now you shall see whether I fly from you or no.Nowyou shall do your worst and fail. I'm the hunter now, not the hunted."I was conscious of nothing but this quite childish preoccupation with myself. I was, nevertheless, pleased with myself. "There, you see," some one near me seemed to say, "he's not quite so unpractical after all. He's full of common sense." I looked at the row of sanitars squatting on the ground, and felt like a schoolmaster with his children."You'd better go home then," I said scornfully. The Feldscher, who was a short stocky man, with a red face and melancholy eyes (something like a prize-fighter turnedpoet), dismissed them. They went off in a line under the hedge.The man obviously thought me a tiresome prig. He had no romantic illusions about the business; he had not been a Feldscher during twenty years for nothing and knew that a wound was a wound; when a man was dead he wasdead.However.... "Truly it's not far?" he asked the soldier."Tak totchno," the man answered, his face quite without expression.We crossed the moonlit field and for a brief moment silence fell, as though an audience were holding its breath watching us. On the other side were cottages, the outskirts of a tiny village. Here beside these cottages we fell into a fantastic world. That small village must in other times have been a pretty place, nestling with its gardens by the river under the hill. It seemed now to rock and rattle under the noise of the cannon. All the open spaces were like white marble in the moonlight and in these open spaces there was utter silence and emptiness. The place seemed deserted—and yet, in every shadow, in long lines under the cottage wells, in little clumps and clusters round trees or ruins there were eyes staring, the gleam of muskets shone, little specks of light, dancing from wall to wall. Everywhere there were bodies, legs, boots, arms, heads, sudden caps, sudden fingers, sudden hot and streaming breaths. And over everything this infernal noise and yet no human sound. A nightmare of the true nightmare of dreams. The open silver spaces, the little gardens thick with flowers, the high moon and the starry sky, not a living soul to be seen—and nevertheless watchers everywhere. "Step forward on to that little plot of grass in front of the cottage windows and you're a dead man"—the moonlight said.There were men in the body of the earth, not in trenches, but in holes—my foot stepped on a head of hair and some low voice cursed me. I was, I suppose, by this time, a little delirious with my adventure. I know that I could now distinguish no separate sounds—shells and bullets had vanished and in their stead were whispers and screams and shouts of triumph and bursts of laughter. Songs in chorus, somewhere miners hammering below the earth, somewhere storm at sea with the crash of waves on rocks and the shriek of wind through rigging, somewhere some one who dropped heavy loads of furniture so carelessly that I cursed him—and always these little patches of moonlight, so tempting just because one was forbidden....We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered to us "to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire. What did we want here now?""Have you any wounded?" we whispered in return."No, no," the answer came. "Keep away from the moonlight." The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself."There's a man wounded behind the next lines," some voice murmured.We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If thishadin reality been a nightmare this river could not have obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river (bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking and quivering beneath us.We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their bootsstretched to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain. We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the water."Any wounded?" we whispered again and again."No," the whisper came back. "Hasten.... Take care of the moonlight."And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldscher made an exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together, over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes, smiled and said:"Eh,Bojé moi... at last!"As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up the stretcher, the Feldscher wiped his forehead and crossed himself."It's a heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man," looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the "Boom—Boom—boom" in front of us was echo from the hill....We picked up the stretcher and started. It was fortunate for us that we had that difficult bit beside the river at the beginning of our journey. I don't know how we managed it, stepping over the endless row of legs, with every side step the stretcher lurching over to the left and threatening to pitch us into the river. So slippery too was the ground that our boots refused to grip. The man onthe stretcher was dreaming, making a little sound like an unceasing lullaby on two notes—"Na ... na! Na ... na! Na ... na!"We were compelled to cross the river twice, and the planks bent under our weight until I was assured that they would snap. My arms were beginning to ache and the sweat to trickle down my spine. My right boot had rubbed my heel. We left the river behind us and then, suddenly, my right hand began to slip off the iron handle of the stretcher."We'll have to put it down a moment," I said. We laid it on the ground and at the same instant a bullet sang so close to my ear that I felt it as though an insect had bitten me. Then a shell, exploding, as it seemed to us, amongst the very cottages where we had just been, startled us."We saved our man," said the Feldscher, looking at the soldier, "but we'd better move on. It's uncomfortable here."We picked the thing up and started again, and at once my hand began to slip away from its hold (nightmare sensation exactly). I bent my head down, managed to lick my hand without raising it, and stiffened the muscles of my arm. We were watched, once more, by a million eyes—again I stepped on a head of hair buried somewhere in the ground. Then some voice cried shrilly: "Ah! Ah!" ... some man hit.Every bone in my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain. Once he asked me to stop. He apologised; I could see the sweat pouring down his face: "A very big man'" he said.Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with mud.... There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for their opportunity, slipped down over my knees. I felt the cold night wind on my flesh. Neither decency nor comfort mattered to me now—I would have walked gladly naked through the world. The Feldscher was making a grinding noise between his teeth. I was no longer conscious of shell or bullets. I heard no noise. I was aware of neither light nor darkness. I could not have told my name had any one asked me it. I did not recognise trees nor houses, nor was I at all aware that with a muddy face and my trousers down to my knees I was a strange figure. I was aware of one thing only—that I must keep my right hand on the stretcher. My left behaved decently enough, but my right was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I said to it: "Ah! but I'll punish you when I get back!" I with all my mental consciousness "willed" it to remain on the handle. It slipped. I drove it back. It slipped further, it was almost gone.... With a supreme effort I drove it back again, "Iwillfall off," saidmy hand. "You shallnot," said I. "I have!" cried my hand triumphantly. "Back!" I swore, driving it.We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I thought.... "I shall sleep." I heard, from a great distance as it seemed, the soldier's "Na ... Na! Na ... na!" I replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ... na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours on our journey!Well—I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed, their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and had long black hair."Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him."Consumptive," he said.I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint blue like the colour of a bird's egg flood the sky, staining it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased.There was not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard, was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He was naked save for his white drawers. There was, I repeat, not a sound. Our cottage looked so peaceful—smoke coming from the chimney. No sign of the shambles, no sign except the four dead men, all so grave and quiet. The blue in the sky grew deeper. Then the sun rose, a jolly gold ball with red clouds swinging in streamers away from it.The birds sang above my head so loudly that the boy who was mowing looked up at them. The soldier finished his washing, put on his shirt. He was a Mahommedan, I perceived, because he prayed, very solemnly, his face to the sun, bowing to the ground. The grass fell before the flashing scythe, the sun flamed behind the trees, and I was happy as I had never known happiness in my life before.I had done only what all the soldiers are doing every day of their lives. I had been only where they always were.... But I felt that I need never be afraid again. Every one knows how an early summer morning can give one confidence; in my happiness, God forgive me, I thought that my struggles were at an end, that I had met my enemy and defeated him ... that I was worthy and able to defend Marie.These things may seem foolish now when one knows what followed them, but the happiness of that morning at least was real. Perhaps all over Europe there were men, at that moment, happy as I was, because they had proved something to themselves. Then Nikitin called to me, laughing."Tea, 'Mr.' andbulki(white bread) and sausage?""All right, I'm coming," I answered. "Listen,golubchik," I called to the soldier. "Bring me some water in your kettle. I'll wash my hands."He came, smiling, towards me.I have given the incidents of this night in great detail for my own satisfaction, because I wish to forget nothing. To others the little adventure must seem trivial, but to myself it represented the climax of a chain of events.
As our line of carts crossed the great river I could hear the muffled "brum-brum" of the cannons and "tap-tap-tap" of the machine-guns now so conventionally familiar. Nikitin was lying in silence at my side. Behind us came twenty wagons with the sanitars; the evening was very still, plum-colour in the woods, misty over the river; the creaking of our carts was the only sound, save the "brum-brum" and the "tap-tap-tap"....
I lay on my back and thought of Semyonov and myself. I had in my mind two pictures. One was of Semyonov sitting on the stone under the cross, looking up at me with comfortable and ironical insolence, Semyonov so strong and resolute and successful. Semyonov who got what he wanted, did what he wanted, said what he wanted.
The other picture was of myself, as I had been the other night when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff to fetch the wounded. I saw myself standing in a muddy little lane just outside the town, under pouring rain. The wagons waited there, the horses stamping now and then, and the wounded men on the only wagon that was filled, moaned and cried. Shrapnel whizzed overhead—sometimes crying, like an echo, in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming. At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and isolating whether there were room on mycarts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also cry—after that, there would be the dismal silence again, silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping from me, slipping down my neck, squelching under my boots. And as I stood there I was afraid. That was what I now saw. I had been terribly afraid for the first time since I had come to the war. I had worked all day in the bandaging room, and perhaps my physical weariness was responsible; but whatever it might be there I was, a coward. At the threat of every shrapnel I bent my head and shrugged my shoulders, at every cry of the wounded men—one man was delirious and sang a little song—a shudder trembled all down my body. I thought of the bridge between myself and the Otriad—how easily it might be blown up! and then, if the Division were beaten back what massacre there would be! I wanted to go home, to sleep, to be safe and warm—above all, to be safe! I saw before me some of the wounded whom I had bandaged to-day—men without faces or with hanging jaws that must be held up with the hand whilst the bandage was tied. One man blind, one man mad (he thought he was drowning in hot water), one man holding his stomach together with his hands. I saw all these figures crowding round me in the lane—I also saw the dead men in the forest, the skull, the flies, the strong blue-grey trousers.... I shook so that my teeth chattered—a very pitiful figure.
Well, that was the other night. It was true that to-night I did not feel frightened—at least not as yet. But then it was a beautiful evening, very peaceful, still and warm—and there was Nikitin. In any case there were those two figures whom I must consider—Semyonov and myself. That brief conversation last night had brought us quite sharply face to face. I found to my own surprise that Semyonov's declaration of his engagement had not been a great shock to me, had not indeed altered very greatly the earlier situation. But it had shown me quite clearly that my own love for Marie Ivanovna was in no way diminished, that I must protect her from a man who was, I felt, quite simply a "beastly" man.
Well, then if Semyonov and I were to fight it out, I would need to be at my best. Did that little picture of the other evening show me at my best? This business presented a bigger fight than the simple one with Semyonov. I knew, quite clearly, as I lay on my back in the cart, that the fight against Semyonov and the fight against ... was mingled together, depended for their issue one upon the other—that the dead men in the forest had no merely accidental connexion with Marie Ivanovna's safety and Semyonov's scornful piracies.
Well,then... Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle, myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain! What was to be the issue of all of it?
I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of events that had brought me to this point. One: that drive with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the trench and heard the frogs. Two: the evening at O——, when Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the cannon. Three: the day at S—— and Marie kneeling on the cart with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. Four: her refusal of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now). Five: the talk with Marie in the park. Six: thewet night at Nijnieff. Seven: last night's little talk with Semyonov.... Yes, I could see now that I had been advancing always forward into the forest, growing ever nearer and nearer, perceiving now the tactics of the enemy, beaten here, frightened there, but still penetrating—not, as yet, retreating ... and always, my private little history marching with me, confused with the private little histories of all of the others, all of them penetrating more deeply and more deeply....
And if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov—and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest.IfI had lost my nerve!...HadI? Was it only weariness the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten, and why, after all, should I imagine that I would be able to put up a fight—I who had never in all my life fought anything successfully? I lay on my back, looked at the sky. I sat up, looked at the country, I set my teeth, looked at Nikitin.
Nikitin grunted. "I've had a good nap," he said. "You should have had one. There'll be plenty of work for us to-night by the sound of it." We turned a corner of the road through the wood and one of our own batteries jumped upon us.
"I'm glad it's not raining," I said.
"We've still some way to go," said Nikitin, sitting up. "What a lovely evening!" Then he added, quite without apparent connexion, "Well, you're more at home amongst us all now, aren't you?"
"Yes," said I.
"I'm glad of that. And what do you think of Andrey Vassilievitch?"
I answered: "Oh! I like him! ... but I don't think he's happy at the war," I added.
"I want you to like him," Nikitin said. "He's a splendid man ... I have known him many years. He is merry and simple and it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh at the best people. You must like him, 'Mr.'... He likes you very much."
I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some way behind us, then said:
"Of course, I am his friend if he wishes."
Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow."
Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital, fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "Noo tak.Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here,golubchik, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment....One... moment. Ah! there you are!" The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his knees, his face grey underthe moon, then huddled into nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly away.
"Here, water!... No, take him over there! That's right. Well, 'Mr.'—how are you? Lovely night.... Plenty of work there'll be, too. Oh! you're going down to theVengerovsky Polk? Yes, they're down to the right there somewhere—across the fields.... Warm over there."
The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as of a stone falling into water.[A]The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in the dark shadows of the forest.
[A]It must be remembered that this account is Trenchard's—taken from his diary. In my own experience I have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are many statements for which I have only his authority.—P.D.
[A]It must be remembered that this account is Trenchard's—taken from his diary. In my own experience I have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are many statements for which I have only his authority.—P.D.
A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin spoke to them.
"Here,golubchik... tell me! whatpolk?"
"Moskovsky, your Honour."
"And the Vengerovsky ... they're to the right, are they?"
"Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the forest."
"What? There where the road turns?"
"Tak totchno."
"How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?"
"Ne mogoo znat.I'm unable to say, your Honour ... but there's been an attack there an hour ago."
"Are those ours?"—listening to a battery across the fields.
"Ours, your Honour."
"Well, we'll go on and see."
I had listened to this conversation with the sensation of a man who has stopped himself on the very edge of a precipice. I thought in those few moments with a marvellous and penetrating clarity. I had, after all, been always until now at the battle of S——, or when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the middle—the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle of laconic brevity: "6.30A. M., down to the battery. All quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours killed, two wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived from the 'Doll's House'—all quiet there," and so on. This, I knew, was the proper way to look at the affair: "6.0A. M., down to the battery. 7.0A. M., breakfasted. 8.0A. M., dead...." For the life of me now I could not look at it like that. I saw a thousand things that were, perhaps, not really there, but were there at any ratefor me. If I was beaten to-night I was beaten once and for all.... I saw the shining road under the starlight and shadows of wounded men, groaning and stumbling, whispering their way along.
"Let's go," said Nikitin.
I drew a breath and stepped out into the moonlight. A shell burst with a delicate splash of fire amongst the stars. The road looked very long and very, very lonely.
However, soon I found myself walking along it quite casually and talking about unimportant peaceful things. "Come," I thought to myself. "This really isn't so bad."
"It's a great pity," Nikitin said, "that I can't read English. Have to take your novelists as they choose to give them us. Who is there now in England?"
"Well," said I as one talks in a dream, "there's Hardy, and Henry James, and Conrad. I've seen translations of Conrad in Petrograd. And then there's Wells—"
"Yes, Wells I know. But he writes stories for boys.... There's Jack London, but his are American. I like to read an English novel sometimes. Your English life is so cosy. You have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We don't know what comfort is in Russia."
A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on the far horizon.
"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I fancy that an English country-house...."
We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep.
On the left of the road there was a house standing backin its own garden. I could see dimly that this was a row of country villas.
"Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me. "I must find the Colonel. The sanitars will come and fetch you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging."
Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly desolate. I stood back against the gate of the villa watching soldiers hurry by, seeing high mysterious hedges, the roofs of houses, a line of lighted sky, the tops of trees, all these things rising and falling as the glare in the heavens rose and fell. There was sometimes a terrible noise and sometimes an equally terrible stillness. Somewhere in the darkness a man was groaning, "Oh! ah!—Oh! ah!" without cessation. Somewhere the gate of one of the villas swung to and fro, creaking. Sometimes soldiers would stare at my motionless figure and then pass on. All this time, as in one's dreams sometimes one holds off a nightmare, I was keeping my fear at bay. I had now exactly the sensation that I had known so often in my dream, that I was standing somewhere in the dark, that the Enemy was watching me and waiting to spring. But to-night I was onlynearlyafraid. One step on my part, one extra noise, one more flare of light, and I would abandon myself to panic, but, although the perspiration was wet on my forehead, my heart thumping, and my hands dry and hot, I was not yetquiteafraid.
I had a strange sensation of suffocation, as though I were at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged" above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood under the picture in the summer.
A soldier stopped and spoke to me: "Your Honour, it's on the right—the next gate." I followed him without attention, having no doubt but that this was one of our own sanitars, and accompanied a group of soldiers that surrounded a bobbing kitchen on wheels. I was puzzled by the kitchen because I knew that one had not been brought by our Otriad, but I thought that the doctors of the Division had perhaps begged our men to aid the army sanitars.
We hurried through a gate to the right, where in what appeared to be a yard of some kind, the kitchen was established and then, from out of the very earth as it seemed, soldiers appeared, clustering around it with their tin cans. The soldier who was in charge of the party said to me in a confidential whisper: "There's plenty ofKasha, your Honour, and the soup will last us, too."
"Very good," said I in a bewildered voice. At the strange accent the soldier looked at me, and then I looked at the soldier. The soldier was a stranger to me (a pleasant round man with a huge smiling mouth and two chins) and I was a stranger to the soldier.
"Well," said the soldier, looking, "I thought...."
"I thought—" said I, most uncomfortable.
The soldiers vanished back into the darknesses round the kitchen. Voices, whispering, could be heard.
"Now, that's the end," thought I. "I'm shot as a German spy."
I looked at the soldiers, clustered like bees round the kitchen, then I slipped through the gate into the dark road. I stood there listening. The battle seemed to have drawn away, because I could hear rifles, machine-guns, cannonmuffled round a corner of the hill. Here there was now silence, broken only by soldiers who hurried up the road or went in and out at the villa gates. I felt abandoned. How was I to discover Nikitin again? Before what gate had I stood? I did not know; I seemed to know nothing.
I moved down the road, very miserable and very cold. I had stupidly left my coat in one of the wagons. I walked on, my boots knocking against one another, thinking to myself: "If I'm not given something to do very soon I shall be just as I was the other night at Nijnieff—and then I shall suddenly take to my heels down this road as hard as I can go!"
It was then that I tumbled straight into the arms of Nikitin, who was standing at the edge of the forest, watching for me. I was so happy that I felt now afraid of nothing. I held Nikitin's arm, babbling something about kitchens and Germans.
"Well, I don't understand what you say," I remember Nikitin replied; "but you must come and work. There's plenty of it."
We moved to a cottage on the very boundary of the forest, where a little common ran down to the moonlight. Passing through a narrow passage, I entered into a little room with a large white stove. On the top of the stove, under the roof, crouched a boy or a young man with long black hair and a white face. This youth wore what resembled a white shirt over baggy white trousers. His feet were bare and very dirty. Nothing moved except his eyes. He sat there, in exactly that position, all night.
The room was small but was the best that could be obtained. Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and Iworked until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The wounds were horrible. No man seemed to come into the room with an unmangled body. The smell rose higher and higher, the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms, smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin, his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting, digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my hands were doing.... Then suddenly the battle coming right back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery about the walls of the cottage—and through it all the white youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without pause....
"Ah, no, your Honour.... Ah, no! ... I can't! I can't! Oh, oh, oh, oh!" and then sobs, the man breaking down like a child, hiding his face in his arms, his wounded leg twitching convulsively. I paused, wiped the sweat from my eyes, stood up. Nikitin looked at me.
"Take some fresh air!" he said. "Go out with the stretcher for half an hour. I can manage here."
I wiped my forehead.
"Sure you can manage?" I asked.
"Quite," said Nikitin. "Here, hold his back!... No,durak, hisback.Bojé moi, can't you get your arm under? There—like that.Horosho, golubchik, horosho... only a minute! There! There!"
I washed my hands and went out. The air caressed my forehead like cold water; from the little garden at the back there came scents of flowers; the moonlight was blue on the common. Eight sanitars were waiting to start. The Feldscher in charge of them did not, I thought, seem greatly pleased when he saw me, but then I am often stupidly sensitive; no one said anything and we started. We carried two stretchers and a soldier from the trenches was with us to guide us.
I could see that the men were not happy. I heard one of them mutter to another that they should not have been sent now; that they should have waited until the attack was over ... "and the full moon.... Did any one ever see such a moon?"
We came to cross-roads and advanced very carefully.
As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement. The noise around us was terrific and different from any noise that I heard before. I did not think at the time, but was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position about whose possession the battle was being fought), that the noise was so tremendous. The echo flung everything back so that each report sounded three or four times. This certainly had the strangest effect—a background as it were of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and then suddenly an absolutelysmashingeffect as though some one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns. At everysmashingnoise the sanitars, who were, I believe, schoolmasters and little clerks, and therefore of a more sensitive head than the peasant soldier, ducked their heads, and one fat red-faced man tried to lie down flat on two occasions and was cursed heartily by the Feldscher. I myself felt no fear but only a pounding exhilarating excitement, because I was at last "really in it." We found one woundedman very soon, lying under the hedge with the top of his head gone. Four sanitars (their relief showed very plainly in their faces) returned with him. We advanced again, skirting now a little orchard and keeping always in the shadow under the hedge. Our guide, the soldier, assured us that the wounded man was "very near—quite close." Then we came to a large barn on the edge of what seemed a silver lake but was in reality a long field under the full light of the moon. As we paused I saw, on the further side of the field, two shells burst, very quickly, one after the other.
We all stopped under the shelter of the barn.
"Well," said the Feldscher to the soldier, "where's your man?"
"Only a short way," said the soldier. "Quite close."
"Across that field?" asked the Feldscher, pointing to the moonlight.
"Yes, certainly," said the soldier.
The Feldscher scratched his head. "We can't go further without orders," he said. "That's very dangerous in front there. I'm responsible for these men. We must return and ask, your Honour," he said, turning to me.
"We shall be nearly an hour returning," I said. "Is your friend badly wounded?" I asked the soldier.
"Very," said he.
"You see ..." I said to the Feldscher. "We can't possibly leave him like that. It's only a little way."
The Feldscher shook his head. "I can't be responsible. I had my orders to go so far and no further. I must see that my men are safe."
The sanitars who were sitting in a row on their haunches under the shadow of the barn all nodded their heads.
"I didn't know Russians were cowards," I said fiercely.
The Feldscher shook his head quite unmoved: "Your Honour must understand that I had my orders." Then he added slowly: "but of course if your Honour wishes to go yourself ... I would come with you. The others ... they must do as they please. They are in their right to return. But I should advise that we return."
"I'm going on," I said.
I must say here that I felt no other sensation than a blind and quite obstinate selfishness. I had no thought of Nikitin or of the sanitars. I did not (and this I must emphasise) think, for a moment, of the wounded man. If the situation had been that by returning I should save many lives and by advancing should save only my own I should still have advanced. If the only hope for the wounded man was my instant speech with Nikitin I would not have gone back to speak with him. I was at this moment neither brave nor fearful. I repeat that I had no sensation except an absolutely selfish obstinate challenge that I, myself, was addressing to Something in space. I was saying: "At last, my chance has come. Now you shall see whether I fly from you or no.Nowyou shall do your worst and fail. I'm the hunter now, not the hunted."
I was conscious of nothing but this quite childish preoccupation with myself. I was, nevertheless, pleased with myself. "There, you see," some one near me seemed to say, "he's not quite so unpractical after all. He's full of common sense." I looked at the row of sanitars squatting on the ground, and felt like a schoolmaster with his children.
"You'd better go home then," I said scornfully. The Feldscher, who was a short stocky man, with a red face and melancholy eyes (something like a prize-fighter turnedpoet), dismissed them. They went off in a line under the hedge.
The man obviously thought me a tiresome prig. He had no romantic illusions about the business; he had not been a Feldscher during twenty years for nothing and knew that a wound was a wound; when a man was dead he wasdead.
However.... "Truly it's not far?" he asked the soldier.
"Tak totchno," the man answered, his face quite without expression.
We crossed the moonlit field and for a brief moment silence fell, as though an audience were holding its breath watching us. On the other side were cottages, the outskirts of a tiny village. Here beside these cottages we fell into a fantastic world. That small village must in other times have been a pretty place, nestling with its gardens by the river under the hill. It seemed now to rock and rattle under the noise of the cannon. All the open spaces were like white marble in the moonlight and in these open spaces there was utter silence and emptiness. The place seemed deserted—and yet, in every shadow, in long lines under the cottage wells, in little clumps and clusters round trees or ruins there were eyes staring, the gleam of muskets shone, little specks of light, dancing from wall to wall. Everywhere there were bodies, legs, boots, arms, heads, sudden caps, sudden fingers, sudden hot and streaming breaths. And over everything this infernal noise and yet no human sound. A nightmare of the true nightmare of dreams. The open silver spaces, the little gardens thick with flowers, the high moon and the starry sky, not a living soul to be seen—and nevertheless watchers everywhere. "Step forward on to that little plot of grass in front of the cottage windows and you're a dead man"—the moonlight said.There were men in the body of the earth, not in trenches, but in holes—my foot stepped on a head of hair and some low voice cursed me. I was, I suppose, by this time, a little delirious with my adventure. I know that I could now distinguish no separate sounds—shells and bullets had vanished and in their stead were whispers and screams and shouts of triumph and bursts of laughter. Songs in chorus, somewhere miners hammering below the earth, somewhere storm at sea with the crash of waves on rocks and the shriek of wind through rigging, somewhere some one who dropped heavy loads of furniture so carelessly that I cursed him—and always these little patches of moonlight, so tempting just because one was forbidden....
We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered to us "to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire. What did we want here now?"
"Have you any wounded?" we whispered in return.
"No, no," the answer came. "Keep away from the moonlight." The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself.
"There's a man wounded behind the next lines," some voice murmured.
We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If thishadin reality been a nightmare this river could not have obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river (bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking and quivering beneath us.
We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their bootsstretched to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain. We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the water.
"Any wounded?" we whispered again and again.
"No," the whisper came back. "Hasten.... Take care of the moonlight."
And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldscher made an exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together, over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes, smiled and said:
"Eh,Bojé moi... at last!"
As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up the stretcher, the Feldscher wiped his forehead and crossed himself.
"It's a heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man," looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the "Boom—Boom—boom" in front of us was echo from the hill....
We picked up the stretcher and started. It was fortunate for us that we had that difficult bit beside the river at the beginning of our journey. I don't know how we managed it, stepping over the endless row of legs, with every side step the stretcher lurching over to the left and threatening to pitch us into the river. So slippery too was the ground that our boots refused to grip. The man onthe stretcher was dreaming, making a little sound like an unceasing lullaby on two notes—"Na ... na! Na ... na! Na ... na!"
We were compelled to cross the river twice, and the planks bent under our weight until I was assured that they would snap. My arms were beginning to ache and the sweat to trickle down my spine. My right boot had rubbed my heel. We left the river behind us and then, suddenly, my right hand began to slip off the iron handle of the stretcher.
"We'll have to put it down a moment," I said. We laid it on the ground and at the same instant a bullet sang so close to my ear that I felt it as though an insect had bitten me. Then a shell, exploding, as it seemed to us, amongst the very cottages where we had just been, startled us.
"We saved our man," said the Feldscher, looking at the soldier, "but we'd better move on. It's uncomfortable here."
We picked the thing up and started again, and at once my hand began to slip away from its hold (nightmare sensation exactly). I bent my head down, managed to lick my hand without raising it, and stiffened the muscles of my arm. We were watched, once more, by a million eyes—again I stepped on a head of hair buried somewhere in the ground. Then some voice cried shrilly: "Ah! Ah!" ... some man hit.
Every bone in my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain. Once he asked me to stop. He apologised; I could see the sweat pouring down his face: "A very big man'" he said.
Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with mud.... There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for their opportunity, slipped down over my knees. I felt the cold night wind on my flesh. Neither decency nor comfort mattered to me now—I would have walked gladly naked through the world. The Feldscher was making a grinding noise between his teeth. I was no longer conscious of shell or bullets. I heard no noise. I was aware of neither light nor darkness. I could not have told my name had any one asked me it. I did not recognise trees nor houses, nor was I at all aware that with a muddy face and my trousers down to my knees I was a strange figure. I was aware of one thing only—that I must keep my right hand on the stretcher. My left behaved decently enough, but my right was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I said to it: "Ah! but I'll punish you when I get back!" I with all my mental consciousness "willed" it to remain on the handle. It slipped. I drove it back. It slipped further, it was almost gone.... With a supreme effort I drove it back again, "Iwillfall off," saidmy hand. "You shallnot," said I. "I have!" cried my hand triumphantly. "Back!" I swore, driving it.
We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I thought.... "I shall sleep." I heard, from a great distance as it seemed, the soldier's "Na ... Na! Na ... na!" I replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ... na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....
Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours on our journey!
Well—I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed, their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and had long black hair.
"Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him.
"Consumptive," he said.
I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint blue like the colour of a bird's egg flood the sky, staining it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased.There was not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard, was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He was naked save for his white drawers. There was, I repeat, not a sound. Our cottage looked so peaceful—smoke coming from the chimney. No sign of the shambles, no sign except the four dead men, all so grave and quiet. The blue in the sky grew deeper. Then the sun rose, a jolly gold ball with red clouds swinging in streamers away from it.
The birds sang above my head so loudly that the boy who was mowing looked up at them. The soldier finished his washing, put on his shirt. He was a Mahommedan, I perceived, because he prayed, very solemnly, his face to the sun, bowing to the ground. The grass fell before the flashing scythe, the sun flamed behind the trees, and I was happy as I had never known happiness in my life before.
I had done only what all the soldiers are doing every day of their lives. I had been only where they always were.... But I felt that I need never be afraid again. Every one knows how an early summer morning can give one confidence; in my happiness, God forgive me, I thought that my struggles were at an end, that I had met my enemy and defeated him ... that I was worthy and able to defend Marie.
These things may seem foolish now when one knows what followed them, but the happiness of that morning at least was real. Perhaps all over Europe there were men, at that moment, happy as I was, because they had proved something to themselves. Then Nikitin called to me, laughing.
"Tea, 'Mr.' andbulki(white bread) and sausage?"
"All right, I'm coming," I answered. "Listen,golubchik," I called to the soldier. "Bring me some water in your kettle. I'll wash my hands."
He came, smiling, towards me.
I have given the incidents of this night in great detail for my own satisfaction, because I wish to forget nothing. To others the little adventure must seem trivial, but to myself it represented the climax of a chain of events.
Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised love—they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin now. He had never disguised his love for Marie Ivanovna and now she was his "spoils"—won by his own strong piratical hand from the good but rather feeble bark Trenchard—he manifested his scorn of us more openly than ever.
He seemed to have grown rather stronger and stouter during these last months, and his square stolidity was a thing at which to marvel. Had he been taller, had his beard been pointed rather than square, he would have been graceful and even picturesque—but his figure, as he strode along, showed foursquare, as though it had been hewn out of wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-colouredwoods would give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical contempt of some foolish victim. How he did despise us!
When one of our childish quarrels arose at meal-times he would say nothing, but would continue stolidly his serious business of eating. He was very fond of his food, which he ate in the greediest manner. When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue eyes, laugh and say: "Well, and now?... Who is it next?"—and every one would be clumsily embarrassed.
We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayeff in "The Cherry Orchard," suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would invade our table. "Oh, do look at Goga!" some one would say, and there we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until the tears ran down his face—simply at nothing at all!
The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed it, a "beastly" man. He certainly had no great opinion of myself. "You think yourself very clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you're watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose there'll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about poor Russians—andyou'll flatter yourself that now at last one true picture has been given ... but let me tell you that you'll never know anything really about us so long as you're a sentimentalist!"
Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed with us when he, so openly, despised us all. Until the arrival of Marie Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions—after that the answer was obvious enough. Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling independence of character. We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances, severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down. We were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come down from his dreams and see things as they were.
But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position. He asked no man's help nor advice, minded no man's scorn, sought no man's love. During my experience of him I saw him moved only once by an overmastering emotion, and that was, of course, his love for Marie Ivanovna. That, I believe,didmaster him, but deep down, deep down, he kept his rebellions, his anxieties, his surmises; only as the light of a burning house is seen by men, pale and faint upon the sky many miles from the conflagration, did we catch signs of his trouble. If I had not had those talks with Trenchard and read his diary I should have known nothing. Even now I can offer no solution....
Meanwhile he showed fiercely and openly enough his love for Marie Ivanovna. He behaved to her with the vulgarest ostentation, as a rich merchant behaves when he has snatched some priceless picture from a defeated rival. As he laughed at us he seemed to say: "Now, I have really a thing of value here. You are, all of you, too stupid to realise this, but you must take my word for it. Show yourself off, my dear, and let them all see!"
Marie Ivanovna most certainly didnot"show herself off." The beginning of his trouble was that he could not do with her as he pleased. She had fallen into his hands so easily that he thought, I suppose, that "she had been dying of love for him" from the first moment of seeing him. But this was I believe very far from the truth. My impression of her acceptance of him was that she had done it "with her eyes fixed upon something else." Thatshehad not realised all the consequences of acceptinghimany more than she had realised the consequences of her accepting Trenchard was obvious from the first. She simply was ignorant of life, and at the same time wanted to cram into her hands the full sense of it (as one crushes rose-leaves) as quickly as possible. She admired Semyonov—it may be that she loved him; but she certainly had not surrendered herself to him, and in her lively ignorant way she was as strong as he.
During the first weeks of her engagement she was, as she had been at her first arrival amongst us, as happy andlight-hearted as a child. She knew that we disapproved of her treatment of Trenchard, but she thought that we must see, as she did, that "she had behaved in the only possible way." Once again she was straight and honest to the world—and she could behave now like a real friend of her John. That strange irrational temper that she had shown during the Retreat had now entirely disappeared. She approved of us all and wished us to approve of her—which we, as we were Russians and could not possibly dislike pleasant agreeable people whatever there might be against them, speedily did. She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal of her ignorance and strength and credulity—ah! she won our hearts simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, but let her "come round" and round we came too.
Her treatment of Semyonov was strange. She was quite fearless, laughing at his temper, his sarcasm, rebuking his selfishness and bad manners, avoiding his coarse and unhesitating love-making, and above all, trusting him in the oddest way as though, in spite of his faults, she placed all her reliance on him and knew that he would not fail her. Nothing annoyed him more than her behaviour to Trenchard. It would, of course, be absurd to say that he was jealous of Trenchard; he despised the man too deeply and was, himself, too sure of his lady to know jealousy; but he was irritated by the attention paid to him, irritated even by the attention he himself paid to him.
"Wherever I go there's that man," he said once to me. "Why doesn't he go back to his own country?"
"I suppose," I would answer hotly, "he has other things to do than to consider your individual wishes, Alexei Petrovitch."
Then he would laugh: "Well, well, Ivan Andreievitch, you sentimentalists all hang together."
"Why can't you leave him alone?" I remember that I continued.
"Because he doesn't leave me alone," he answered shortly.
It was, of course, Marie Ivanovna who brought them together. She could not see, or rather shewouldnot see, that friendship between two such men was an impossibility. For herself she liked Trenchard better than she had ever done. She had now no responsibility towards him; we were all fond of him, pleased ourselves by saying that "he was more Russian than English." The Sisters mended his clothes, cared for his stomach, and listened with pleased gravity to his innocent chatter. Marie Ivanovna was now really proud of him. There were great stories of the courage and enterprise he had shown during the night when he had been with Nikitin. Nikitin, in his lofty romantic fashion, spoke of him as though he had been the hero of the Russian army. Trenchard was, of course, quite unspoiled by this praise and popularity. He remained for me at least very much the same innocent, clumsy, pathetic, and frequently irritating figure that he had been at the beginning. I will honestly confess that I was often heartily tired of his Glebeshire stories, tired too of a certain childish obstinacy with which he clung to his generally crude and half-baked opinions.
But then I do not care to be contradicted by people of whom, intellectually, I have a low estimation; it is oneof my most unfortunate weaknesses. I had no opinion of Trenchard's intellect at all, and in that I was quite wrong. Semyonov at this time flung Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself into one basket. We were all "crazy romantics" and there came an occasion, which I have reason most clearly to remember, when he told us what he thought of us. We were together, Semyonov, Nikitin, Trenchard and I, after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, enjoying half an hour's idleness before setting about our various business. It was a blazing hot morning and the air quivered, like a silver curtain before our eyes, separating us from the dim blue forest of S—— beyond the river, the Nestor itself, the deep green slopes of our own hill. We had been silent, then Trenchard said a foolish thing: "War brings all the best out of people, I think," he said. God knows what private line of thought he had been pursuing, some sentimental reflections, I suppose, that were in him perfectly honest and sincere. But he did not look his best that morning, sitting back in his chair with his mouth open, his forehead damp with the heat, his tunic up about his neck and a rather dirty blue pocket-handkerchief in his hand.
I saw Semyonov's lip curl.
"Yes. That's very interesting, Mr.," he said. "I'm glad at any rate that we've had the honour of seeing the best ofyou. That's very pleasant to know."
"What I mean—" said Trenchard, blushing and stammering. "What ... that is—"