"Well," I said to Trenchard, "what"s to be done?"
He pulled himself back from his thoughts.
He had been sitting in the cart, quite motionless, his face white and hidden, as though he slept. He raised his tired, heavy eyes to my face.
"Do?" he said.
"Yes," I answered impatiently. "Didn"t you hear what Nikolai said? There are no soldiers here. We can"t find Maximoff because he isn"t here. We must go back, I suppose."
"Very well," he answered indifferently.
"I"m not going back," I said, "until I"ve had something to drink--tea or coffee. I wonder whether there"s anything here--any place we could go to."
Nikolai inquired. Old Shylock pointed with his bony finger down the street.
"Very fine restaurant there," he said.
"Will you come and see?" I asked Trenchard.
"Very well," said Trenchard.
I told Nikolai to stay there and wait for us. I walked down the street, followed by Trenchard. I found on my left, at the top of a little flight of steps, a house that was for the most part untouched by the general havoc around and about it. The lower windows were cracked and the door open and gaping, but there stood, quite bravely with new paint, the word "Restoration" on the lintel and there were even curtains about the upper windows. Pa.s.sing through the door we found a room decently clean, and behind the little bar a stout red-faced Galician in white shirt and grey trousers, a citizen of the normal world. We were just then his only customers. We asked him for tea and sat down at a little table in the corner of the room. He did not talk to us but stood in his place humming cheerfully to himself and cleaning gla.s.ses. He was a rogue, I thought, looking at his little eyes, but at any rate a merry rogue; he certainly had kept off from him the general death and desolation that had overwhelmed his neighbours. I sat opposite to Trenchard and wondered what to say to him. His expression had never varied. As I looked at him I could not but think of the strength of his eyes, of his mouth, the quiet concentration of his hands ... a different figure from the smiling uncertain man on the Petrograd station--how many years ago?
Our tea was brought to us. Then quite suddenly Trenchard said to me: "Did she say anything before she died?"
"No," I answered quietly. "She died instantly, they told me."
"How exactly was she killed?"
His eyes watched my face without falter, clearly, gravely, steadfastly.
"She was killed by a bullet. Stepped out from behind her shelter and it happened at once. She can have suffered nothing."
"And Semyonov let her?"
"He could not have prevented it. It might have happened to any one."
"I would have prevented it," he said, nodding his head gravely.
He was silent for a little; then with a sudden jerk he said: "Where has she gone?"
"Gone?" I repeated stupidly after him.
"Yes--that"s not death--to go like that. She must be somewhere still--somewhere in this beastly forest. What--afterwards--when you saw her--what? ... her face?..."
"She looked very peaceful--quite happy."
"No restlessness in her face? No anxiety?"
"None."
"But all that life--that energy. It can"t have stopped. Quite suddenly. It can"t. She can"t have wanted not to know all those things that she was so eager about before." He was suddenly voluble, excited, leaning forward, staring at me. "You know how she was. You must have seen it numbers of times--how she never looked at any of us really, how we were none of us--no, not even Semyonov--anything to her really; always staring past us, wanting to know the answer to questions that we couldn"t solve for her. She wouldn"t give it all up simply for nothing, simply for a bullet ..." he broke off.
"Look here, Trenchard," I said, "try not to think of her just now more than you can help, just now. We"re in for a stiff time, I believe. This will be our last easy afternoon, I fancy, and even now we ought to be back helping Nikitin. You"ve got to work all you know. One"s nerves get wrong easily enough in a place like this--and after what has happened I feel this d.a.m.ned Forest already. But we mustn"t let our nerves go. We"ve simply got to work and think about nothing at all--think about nothing at all."
I don"t believe that he heard me.
"Semyonov?" he said slowly. "What did he do?"
"He was very quiet," I answered. "He didn"t say anything. He looked awful."
"Yes. She snapped her fingers at him anyway. He couldn"t keep her for all his bullying."
"It pretty well killed him," I said rather fiercely. "Look here, Trenchard. Don"t think of yourself--or of her. Every one"s in it now. There isn"t any personality about it. We"ve simply got to do our best and not think about it. It"s thinking that beats one if one lets it."
"Semyonov ... Semyonov," he repeated to himself, smiling. "No, he had not power over her." Then looking at me very calmly, he remarked: "This Death, you know, Durward.... It simply doesn"t exist. It can"t stop her. It can"t stop any one if they"re determined. I"ll find her before Semyonov does, too."
Then, as though he had waked from sleep, he said to me, his voice trembling a little: "Am I talking queerly, Durward? If I am, don"t think anything of it. It"s this heat--and this place. Let"s get back." He only spoke once more. He said: "Do you remember that first drive--ages ago, when we saw the trenches and heard the frogs and I thought there was some one there?"
"Yes," I said. "I remember."
"Well, it"s rather like that now, isn"t it?"
A pretty girl, twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, obviously the daughter of the red-faced proprietor, came up to us and asked us if we would like any more tea. She would be stout later on, her red cheeks were plump and her black hair arranged coquettishly in little shining curls. She smiled on us.
"No more tea?" she said.
"No more," I answered.
"You will not be staying here?"
"Not to-night."
"We have a nice room here."
"No, thank you."
"Perhaps one of you--"
"No. We are returning to-night,"
"Perhaps, for an hour or two." Then smiling at me and laughing a little, "I have known many officers ... very many."
"No, thank you," I said sternly.
"I have a sister," she said. She turned, crying: "Marie, Marie!"
A little girl, who could not have been more than fourteen years of age, appeared from the background. She also was red-cheeked and plump; her hair also was arranged in black, shining curls. She stood looking at us, half smiling, half defiant, sucking her finger.
"She also has known officers," said the girl. "She would be very glad, if you cared--"
I heard their father behind the bar humming to himself.
"Come out of this!" I said to Trenchard. "Come away!"
He followed me quietly, bowing very politely to the staring sisters....
"Go on," I said to Nikolai. "Drive on. No time to waste. We"ve got work to do."
On our return we found that the press of work was not as yet severe. Half the building belonged to us, the remaining half being used by the officers of the battery. Nikitin had arranged a large room, that must I think have been a dining-room in happier days, with beds; to the right was the operating-room, overhead were our bedrooms and the room where originally I had sat with Marie Ivanovna was a general meeting place. The officers of the battery, two middle-aged and two very young indeed, were extremely courteous and begged us to make use of them in any way possible. They were living in the raggedest fashion, a week"s growth of beard on their chins, their beds unmade, the floor littered with ends of cigarettes, pieces of paper, journals.
"Been here weeks," they apologetically explained to us. "Come in and have a meal with us whenever you like." They resembled animals in a cave. When they were not on duty they played chemin-de-fer and slept. Meanwhile for three days and nights our work was slight. The battle drew further away into the Forest. Wagons with wounded came to us only at long intervals.
The result of these three days was a strange new intimacy between the four of us. I have never in all my life seen anything more charming than the behaviour of Nikitin and Andrey Va.s.silievitch to Trenchard. There is something about Russian kindness that is both simpler and more tactful than any other kindness in the world. Tact is too often another name for insincerity, but Russian kindheartedness is the most honest impulse in the Russian soul, the quality that comes first, before anger, before injustice, before prejudice, before slander, before disloyalty, and overrides them all. They were, of course, conscious that Trenchard"s case was worse than their own. Marie Ivanovna"s death had shocked them, but she had been outside their lives and already she was fading from them. Trenchard was another matter. Nikitin seemed to me for the first time in my knowledge of him to come down from his idealistic dreaming. He cared for Trenchard like a child, but never obtrusively. Trenchard seemed to appreciate it, but there was something about him that I did not like. His nerves were tensely strained, he did his work with his eyes fixed upon some impossible distance, he often did not hear us when we spoke to him.
And so the three of us formed a kind of hedge about him to protect him, a hedge of which he was perfectly unconscious. He was very silent and I would have given a great deal to hear again one of those Glebeshire stories that I had once found so tiresome. That some plan or purpose was in his head one could not doubt.
We had, all of us, much in common in our characters. We liked the sentimental easy coloured view of life. We suddenly felt a strange freedom here in this place. For myself, on the third day, I found that Marie Ivanovna was most strangely present with me, and on the afternoon of that day, our wounded quiet on their beds, our wagons sent into the tent with no prospect of their return for several hours, we sat together, Nikitin, Andrey Va.s.silievitch and I, looking out through a break in the garden towards the Forest, and talked about her. The weather was now very heavy--certainly a thunderstorm was coming. I was also weighted down by an intense desire for sleep, at the same time knowing that if I were to fling myself on my bed sleep would not come to me. This is an experience that is not unusual at the Front, and officers have told me that in the middle of a battle when there comes a sudden lull, their longing for sleep has been so overpowering that no imminent danger could lift it from their eyes.
We sat there then and talked in low voices of Marie Ivanovna. I was aware of the buzzing of the flies, of the dull yellow light beyond the windows, of the Forest crouching a little as it seemed to me like a creature who expects a blow. We were all half asleep perhaps, the room dark behind us, and we talked of her as we might talk of a picture, a book, an experience ended and dismissed--something outside our present affairs. And yet I knew that for me at any rate she was not outside them. I felt as though at any moment she might enter the room. We discussed her aloofness, her sudden happiness and her sudden distress, her intimacies and withdrawals, Nikitin and Andrey Va.s.silievitch slowly elaborating her into a high romantic figure. Behind her, behind all our thoughts of her, there was the presence of Semyonov. Nothing was stranger during our time here than the way that Semyonov had always kept us company.
Our consciousness of relief from him had begun it. We had been more under his influence than any of us had cared to confess and, in his presence, had checked our natural impulses. I also was strongly aware of him through Trenchard. Trenchard seemed now to have a horror of him that could be explained only by the fact that he held him responsible for Marie Ivanovna"s death. "It"s a good thing," I thought to myself, "that Semyonov"s not here."
These hours of waiting, when there was nothing to do, was bad for all our nerves. Upon this afternoon I remember that after a time silence fell between us. We were all staring in front of us, seeing pictures of other places and other people. I was aware, as I always was, of the Forest, seeing it shine with its sinister green haze, seeing the white bleached town, the huddled villagers waiting for their food, but seeing yet more vividly the deep silences, the dark hollows, the silent avenues of silver birch. Against this were the figures of the people who were dear to me. It is strange how war selects and brings forward as one"s eternal company the one or two souls who have been of importance in one"s life. One knows then, in those long, long threatening pauses, when the battle seems to gather itself together before it thunders its next smashing blow, those who are one"s true companions. Certain English figures were now with me outlined against the Forest--and joined together with them Marie Ivanovna as I had last seen her, turning round to me by the door and smiling upon me. I did truthfully feel, as Trenchard had said to me, that she was not dead; I sat, staring before me, conjuring her to appear. The others also sat there, staring in front of them. Were they also summoning some figure? I knew, as though Andrey Va.s.silievitch had told me, that he was thinking of his wife. And Nikitin?...
He sat there, lying back on the old sofa that Marie had used, his black beard, his long limbs, his dark eyes giving him the colour of some Eastern magician. He did indeed, with his intense, absorbed gaze, seem to be casting a spell As I looked Andrey Va.s.silievitch caught his glance--they exchanged the strangest flash--something that was intimate and yet foreign, something appealing and yet hostile. It was as though Andrey Va.s.silievitch had said: "I know you are thinking of her. Leave her to me," and Nikitin had replied: "My poor friend. What can you do?... I do as I please."
I know at least that I saw Andrey Va.s.silievitch frown, make as though he would get up and leave the room, then think better of it, and sink back into his chair.
I remember that just at that moment Trenchard entered. He joined us and sat on the sofa near Nikitin without speaking, staring in front of him like the rest of us. His face was tired and old, his cheeks hollow.
I waited and the silence began to get on my nerves. Then there came an interruption. The door opened quite silently: we all turned our eyes towards it without moving our heads. In the doorway stood Semyonov.
We were startled as though by a ghost. I remember that Andrey Va.s.silievitch jumped to his feet, crying. Trenchard never moved. Semyonov with his usual stolid self-possession came towards us, greeted us, then turning to me said: "I"ve come to take your place, Ivan Andreievitch."
"My place?" I stammered.
"Yes. You"re wanted there. You"re to return at once in the britchka.... In half an hour, if you don"t mind."
"And you"ll stay?"
"And I"ll stay."
No one else said anything. I remember that I had some half-intention of protesting, of begging to be allowed to remain. But I was no match for Semyonov. I could fancy the futility of my saying: "But really, Alexei Petrovitch, we don"t want you here. It"s much better to leave me. You"ll upset them all. It"s a nervous place, this." I said nothing, except: "All right. I"ll go." He watched me. He watched us all. I fancy that he smiled.
Outside I had a desperate absurd thought that I would return and ask him to be kind to Trenchard. As I turned away some one seemed to whisper in my ear: "He"s come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna."
CHAPTER IV.
FOUR?
Before I give the extracts from Trenchard"s diary that follow I would like to say that I do not believe that Trenchard had any thought whatever, as he wrote, of publication. He says quite clearly that he wrote simply for his own satisfaction and later interest. At the same time I am convinced that he would not now object to their publication. If he had been here he would, I know, have supported my intention. The diary lies before me, here on my table, written in two yellow, stiff-covered ma.n.u.script books without lines. They are written very unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper Rupert Brooke"s sonnet, beginning: "Blow out, you Bugles, over the rich Dead!"
and pasted it on to the blank page.
At times he sticks on to the other pages newspaper descriptions that have pleased him. His own descriptions of the Forest seem to me influenced by my talks with him, and I remember that it was Nikitin who spoke of the light like a gla.s.s ball and of the green-like water. For the most part he exhibits, from the beginning of the diary to the end, extreme practical common sense and he makes, I fancy, a very strong effort to record quite simply and even navely the truth as he sees it. At other times he is quite frankly incoherent....
I will give, on another page, my impression of him when I saw him on my return to the Forest. I am, of course, in no way responsible for inconsistencies or irrelevances. He had kept a diary since his first coming to the war and I have already given some extracts from it. The earlier diary, in one place only, namely his account of his adventure during his night with Nikitin, is of the full descriptive order. That one occasion I have already quoted in its entirety. With that exception the early diary is brief and concerned only with the dryest recital of events. After the death of Marie Ivanovna, however, its character entirely changes for reasons which he himself shows. I would have expected perhaps a certain solemnity or even pomposity in the style of it; he had never a strong sense of humour. But I find it written in the very simplest fashion; words here and there are misspelt and his handwriting is large and round like a schoolboy"s.
Thursday, July 29th. I intend to write this diary with great fulness for two reasons--in the first place because I can see that it is of the greatest importance, if one is to get through this business properly, to leave no hours empty. The trying thing in this affair is having nothing to do--nothing one can possibly do. They all, officers, soldiers, from Nikolai Nikolaievitch to my Nikolai here, will tell you that. No empty hours for me if I can help it.... Secondly, I really do wish to record exactly my experiences here. I am perfectly aware that when I"m out of it all, when it"s even a day"s march behind me, I shall regard it as frankly incredible--not the thing itself but the way I felt about it. When I come out of it into the world again I shall be overwhelmed with other people"s impressions of it, people far cleverer than I. There will be brilliant descriptions of battles, of what it feels like to be under fire, of marches, victories, retreats, wounds, death--everything. I shall forget what my own little tiny piece of it was like--and I don"t want to forget. I want intensely to remember the truth always, because the truth is bound up with Marie, and Marie with the truth. Why need I be shy now about her? Why should I hesitate, under the fear of my own later timidity, of saying exactly now what I feel? G.o.d knows what I do feel! I am confused, half-numb, half-dead, I believe, with moments of fiery biting realisation. I"m neither sad, nor happy--only breathlessly expectant. The only adventure I have ever had in my life is not--no, it is not--yet ended. And I know that Marie could not have left me like that, without a word, unless she were returning or were going to send for me.
Meanwhile to-day a beastly thing has happened, a thing that will make life much harder for me here. All the morning there was work. Bandaged twenty--had fifty in altogether--sent thirty-four on, kept the rest. Two died during the morning. This isn"t really a good place to be, it"s so hemmed in with trees. We ought to be somewhere more open. The Forest is unhealthy, too. There"s been fighting in and out of it almost since the war began--it can"t be healthy. In this hot weather the place smells.... Then there are the Flies. I write them with a capital letter because I"ve got to keep my head about the Flies. Does any one at home or away from this infernal strip of fighting realise what flies are? Of course one"s read of the tropical sorts, all red and stinging, or white and bloated--what you like, evil and horrid, but these here are just the ordinary household kind. Quite ordinary, but sheets, walls of them. I came into the little larder place near our sitting-room this morning. I thought they"d painted the walls black during the night. Then, at my taking the cover off some sugar, it was exactly as though the walls hovered and then fell inward breaking into black dust as they fell. They"ll cl.u.s.ter over a drop of wine on the table just like an evil black flower with grey petals. With one"s body they can play tricks beyond belief. They laugh at one, hovering at a distance, waiting. They watch one with their wicked little eyes ... yes, I shall have to be careful about flies.
I"ve had a headache all day, but then in the afternoon there was a thunderstorm hovering somewhere near and there was no work to do. I feel tired, too, and yet I can"t sleep. Later in the afternoon we were all sitting together, very quiet, not talking. I was thinking about Semyonov then. I wondered whether he felt her death. How had he taken it? Durward would tell me so little. I was so glad, all the same, that he wasn"t here. And yet, in the strangest way, I would like to have spoken to him, to have asked him, if I had dared, a little about her. He was the only man to whom she really gave herself. I don"t grudge him that--but there"s so much that I want to know--and yet I"d die rather than ask him. Die! That"s an old phrase now--death would tell me much more than Semyonov ever could. Just when we were sitting there he came in. It was the most horrible shock. I don"t want to put it melodramatically but that was exactly what it was. I had been thinking of him, thinking even of speaking to him, but I had known at the time that he wasn"t here, that he couldn"t be here--then there he was in the doorway--square and solid and grave and scornful. Now the horrible thing is that the moment I realised him I felt afraid. I didn"t feel anger or hatred or fine desires for revenge--anything like that--simply a miserable contemptible fear. It seems that as soon as I climb out of one fear I tumble into another. They are not physical now, but worse!
Later. The last bit seems rather silly. But I"ll leave it.... As to Semyonov. Of course he was very quiet and scornful with all of us. He told Durward that he"d come to take his place and Durward went without a word, Semyonov went off then with Nikitin, looking about, and making suggestions! He changed some things but not very much. We had been pretty intimate, all of us, before he came. I had really felt this last day that Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Va.s.silievitch were understood by me. Russians come and go so. At one moment they are close to you, intimate, open-hearted, then suddenly they shut up, are miles away, look at you with distrust and suspicion. So with these two. On Semyonov"s arrival they changed absolutely. He shut them up of course. We were all as gloomy at supper as though we were deadly enemies. But the worst thing was at night. Durward and I had slept in one little room, Vladimir Stepanovitch and Andrey Va.s.silievitch in another. Of course Semyonov took Durward"s bed. There was nowhere else for him to go. I don"t know what he thought about it. Of course he said nothing. He talked a little about ordinary things and I answered stupidly as I always do with him. I hated the solemn way he undressed. He was a long time cleaning his teeth, making noises in his mouth as though he were laughing at me. Then he sat on his bed, naked except for his shirt, combing his moustache and beard very carefully with a pocket-comb. He was so thick and solid and scornful, not looking at me exactly, just staring in front of him. There was no sound except his comb sc.r.a.ping through his beard. The room was so small and he seemed absolutely to fill it, so that I felt really flattened against the wall. It was as though he were showing me deliberately how much finer a man he was than I, how much stronger his body, that he could do anything with me if he liked. He asked me, very politely, whether I"d mind blowing out the candle and I did it at once. He watched me as I walked across the floor and I felt ashamed of my thinness and my ugliness and I know that he knew that I was ashamed. After the light was blown out I heard him settle into his bed with a great heavy plop. I couldn"t sleep for a long time, and at every movement that he made I felt as though he were laughing at me. And yet with all this I had also the strangest impulse to get up, there in the dark, to walk across the room, to put my hand on his shoulder and to ask him about her. What would he do? He"d refuse to speak, I suppose. I should only get insulted--and yet.... He must be thinking of her--all the time just as I am. He must want to talk of her and I know her better than any one else did. And perhaps if I once broke down his pride ... and yet every time that his body moved and the bed creaked I felt that I hated him, that I never wanted to speak to him again, that.... Oh! but I"m ashamed of myself. He is right to despise me....
Sat.u.r.day, July 31st. It is just midnight. I am on duty to-night. Everything is quiet and there are not likely I think to be any more wounded until the morning. I am sitting in the room where they brought Marie. It"s strange to think of that, and when you"re sitting with a candle in a dark room you can imagine anything. It"s odd in this affair how little things affect one. There"s a book here, a "Report on New Mexico." I looked at it idly the other day and now I"m for ever picking it up. It always opens at the same page and I find myself thinking, speculating about it in a ridiculous manner. I shall throw the thing away to-morrow, but I know the page by heart anyway. It"s an account of the work of some school or other. Here are a few of the lectures that were given: Mr. Fred. A. Bush. What the Community owes the Newspaper and what the Newspaper owes the Community.--Rev. I. R. Gla.s.s. Fools.--Hon. W. T. Cessna. Don"t Pay too dearly for the Whistle.--Prof. Wellington Putman. Rip van Winkle.--Rev. R. S. Hanshaw. The Mind"s Picture Gallery.
Then they acted Oth.e.l.lo--The "Normal Students," whoever they may be. Oth.e.l.lo, E. F. Dunlavey. Iago--Douglas Giffard. Desdemona--Carrie Whitehill. Emilia--Gussie Rodgers.... Afterwards I see that Miss Gussie Rodgers gave a lecture on the Anglo-Saxon in Literature. She must have been a clever young woman. Then I see that they decorated one of their rooms with "a large number of carbon prints of celebrated paintings," "the cla.s.s picture being the most important and costing in the neighbourhood of $100--this is the hunting scene of Ruysdael...." Also they added to their Museum "manufactured articles from abroad ill.u.s.trative of the habits and customs of foreigners."
Now isn"t that all incredible after the day that I"ve had? Where do the things join? What"s all that got to do with the horrors I"ve been through to-day, with the Forest, the cholera, Marie, Semyonov.... With all that"s happening in Europe? With this mad earthquake of a catastrophe? And yet one thinks of such silly things. I can see them doing Oth.e.l.lo with their cheap ermine, bad jewellery and impossible wigs. I expect Oth.e.l.lo"s black came off as he got hotter and hotter; and the Rev. I. R. Gla.s.s on "Fools".... There"d be all the cheap morality--"It"s better, my young friends, to be good than to be bad. It pays better in the end"--and there"d be little stories, sentimental some of them and humorous some of them. There"d be a general t.i.tter of laughter at the humorous ones.... And the carbon prints, the "Ruysdael" always pointed out to visitors ... and after the war it will all be going on again. At Polchester, too, they"ll be having cheap lectures in the Town-Hall and Shakespeare Readings and High-School Prize-givings.... Where"s the Connexion between That and This? Where"s the permanent thing in us that goes on whatever life may do to us? Is life still beautiful and n.o.ble in spite of whatever man may do with it, or is Semyonov right and there is no meaning in my love for Marie, nothing real and true except the things we see with our eyes, hear with our ears? Is Semyonov right, or are Nikitin, Andrey Va.s.silievitch and I?... And now let me stick to facts. I left this morning about six with twenty wagons to fetch wounded. Such a wonderful summer morning--the Forest quite incredibly beautiful, birds singing in thousands, and that strange little stream that runs near our house and can look so abominable when it pleases, was trembling and lovely as though it didn"t know what evil was. We got to the first Red Cross place about eight. Here was Krylov. What a good fellow! Always cheerful, always kindhearted, nothing can dismay him. A Russian type that"s common enough in spite of all the "profound pessimism of the Russian heart" that we"re always hearing of. There he was anyway, working like a butcher before a feast-day. Dirty looking barn they were working in and it smelt like h.e.l.l. Cannon pretty close too. They say the Austrians are fearfully strong just here and of course our ammunition is climbing down to less than nothing--looks as though we were going to have a hot time soon. I turned in and helped Krylov all the morning and somehow his fat, ugly face, his little exclamations, his explosive comical rages, his sudden rough kindnesses did one a world of good. We filled the wagons and sent them back, then about midday, under a blazing hot sun, we went on with the others. Is there any place in the globe hot and suffocating quite as this Forest is? Even in the open s.p.a.ces one can"t breathe and there"s never any proper shade under the trees. At first we were at a loss, No one seemed quite to know where the Vengrovsky Polk were. I had to go on alone and reconnoitre. I was right out in the open then and more alone than one could believe. Cannon were blazing away and one battery seemed just behind me--and yet I couldn"t see it. I could see nothing--only great ridges of hills with the Forest like gigantic torrents of green water under the mist, and just at my feet cornfields thick with cornflowers. Then I saw rather a wonderful thing. I came to the edge of my hill and looked down into a cup of a valley, quite a little valley with the green waves towering on every side of it. Through the mist there shimmered below me a blue lake. I was puzzled--there was no water here that I knew, but by this time the Forest has so bewitched my senses that I"m ready to believe anything of it. There it was, anyway, a blue lake, shifting a little under gold haze. I climbed down the hill a yard or two and then you can believe that I jumped! My blue lake was Austrian prisoners, nothing more nor less! Has any one quite seen them like that before, I wonder, and isn"t this Forest really the old witch"s forest, able to do what it pleases with anything? There they were, hundreds of them, covering the whole floor of the little valley. I walked down into the middle of them, found an officer, asked him about wounded, and got directed some two versts in front of me. Then I climbed up the hill back to my wagons and we started off. We went down the hill round by the road and came to the prisoners, crossed a stream and plunged into a shining dazzling nightmare. Where the cannon were I don"t know--all a considerable distance away, I suppose, because the only sign of sh.e.l.l were the little breaking puffs of smoke in the blue sky with just a pin-flash of light as they broke; but really amongst that welter of wooded hill the sounds were uncanny. They"d be under one"s feet, over one"s head, in one"s ear, up against one"s stomach, straight in the small of one"s back. Since my night with Nikitin physical fear really seems to have left me--the whole outward paraphernalia of the war has become an entirely commonplace thing, but it was the Forest that I felt--exactly as though it were playing with me. Wasn"t there an old mediaeval torture when they shot arrows at their victim, always just missing him, first on one side, then on another, until at last, tired of the game, they fixed him through the head? Well, that"s what the old beast was trying to do to me, anything to doubt what"s real and what is not, anything to make me question my senses.... We tumbled quite suddenly on to some men, a small Red Cross shelter and two or three hundred soldiers sitting under the trees by the road resting--most of them sleeping. The doctor in the Red Cross place--a small fussy man--was ill-tempered and overworked. There were at least thirty dead men lying in a row outside the shelter, and the army sanitars were bringing in more wounded every minute. "Why weren"t there more wagons? What was the use of coming with so few? Where was the other doctor, some one or other who ought to have relieved him?" There he was, like a little monkey on wires, dancing up and down in the blazing road, his arms covered with blood, pincers in one hand and bandages in the other and the inside of his shelter with such a green, filthy smell coming out of it that you"d think the roof would burst! I filled seven of my wagons, sent them back and went forward with the remaining three. We were climbing now, up through the Forest road, the sh.e.l.l, very close, making a terrific noise, and in between the scream of the sh.e.l.l the birds singing like anything!
The road turned the corner and then we were in the middle of it! Now here"s the worst thing I"ve seen with my eyes since I came to the war--worst thing I shall ever see perhaps. One looks back, you know, to one of those old average afternoons at Polchester, my father coming back from golf, I myself going into the old red-walled garden for tea, with some novel under my arm, the cathedral bell ringing for Evensong just over the wall across the Green, then slowly dropping to its close, then the faint murmur of the organ. Some bird twittering in a tree overhead, b.u.t.tered toast in a neat pile placed carefully over hot water to keep it warm; honey, heavy home-made cake, perhaps the local weekly paper with the "Do you know that ..." column demanding one"s critical attention. One"s annoyed because to-morrow some tiresome fellow"s coming to luncheon, because one wishes to buy some china that one can"t afford, because the wife of the Precentor said to the Dean"s sister that young Trenchard would be an old man in a year or two.... One sips one"s tea, the organ leads the chants, the sun sinks below the wall.... That! This! ... there"s the Forest road hot like red-hot iron under the sun; it winds away into the Forest, but so far as the eye can see it is covered with things that have been left by flying men--such articles! Swords, daggers, rifles, cartridge-cases, of course, but also books, letters, a hair-brush, underclothes, newspapers, these tilings in thick, tangled profusion, rifles in heaps, cartridge-cases by the hundred! Under the sun up and down the road there are dead and dying, Russians and Austrians together. The Forest is both above and below the road and from out of it there comes a continual screaming. There is every note in this babel of voices, mad notes, plaintive notes, angry notes, whimpering notes. One wounded man is very slowly trying to drag himself across the road, and his foot which is nearly severed from his leg waggles behind him. One path that leads from the road to the Forest is piled with bodies and is a stream of blood. Some of the dead are lying very quietly in the ditch, their heads pillowed on their arms--every now and then something that you had thought dead stirs.... And the screaming from the Forest is incessant so that you simply don"t hear the sh.e.l.l (now very close indeed)....
There is, you know, that world somewhere with the Rev. Someone lecturing on Fools and "the cla.s.s "Ruysdael" costing in the neighbourhood of $100." At least, it"s very important if I"m to continue to keep my head steady that I should know that it is there!
It seemed that we were the first Red Cross people to arrive. Oh! what rewards would I have offered for another ten wagons! How lamentably insufficient our three carts appeared standing there in the road with this screaming Forest on every side of one! As I waited there, overwhelmed by the blind indifference of the place, listening still to the incredible birds, seeing in the businesslike attentions of my sanitars only a further incredible indifference, a great stream of soldiers came up the road, pa.s.sing into the first line of trenches, only a little deeper in the Forest. They were very hot, the perspiration dripping down their faces, but they went through to the position without a glance at the dead and wounded. No concern of theirs--that. Life had changed; they had changed with it.... Meanwhile they did as they were told....
We worked there, filling our wagons. The selection was a horrible difficulty. All the wounded were Austrians and how they begged not to be left! It would be many hours, perhaps, before the next Red Cross Division would appear. An awful business! One man dying in the wood tore at his stomach with an unceasing gesture and the air came through his mouth like gas screaming through an "escape" hole. One Austrian, quite an old man, died in my arms in the middle of the road. He was not conscious, but he fumbled for his prayer-book, which he gave me, muttering something. His name "Schneidher Gyorgy Pelmonoster" was written on the first page.
We started for home at length. Our drive back was terrible. I find that I cannot linger any longer over this affair. Our carts drove over rough stones and ruts and we were four hours on the journey. Our wounded screamed all the way--one man died.... My candle is nearly out. I must find another. In one of its frantic leaps just now I fancied that I saw Marie standing near the door. She looked just as she always did, very kind though smiling.... Of course it was only the candle. I must be careful not to encourage these fancies. But G.o.d! how lonely I am to-night! I realise, I suppose, that there isn"t one single living soul in the world who cares whether I die to-night or not--not one. Durward will remember me, perhaps. No one else. And Marie would have cared. Yes, even married to Semyonov she would have cared--and remembered. And I could always have cared for her, been her friend, as she asked me. I"m pretty low to-night. If I could sleep.... Boof!... There goes the candle!
Wednesday, August 4th.... I am growing accustomed, I suppose, to Semyonov"s company. After all, his contempt for me is an old thing, dating from the very first moment that he ever saw me. It has become now a commonplace to both of us. He is very silent now compared with the old days. There has been much work yesterday and to-day, but still last night I could not sleep. I think that he also did not sleep and we both lay there in the dark, thinking, I suppose, of the same thing. I thought even of myself, my sense of humour has never been very strong, but I can at any rate see that I am no very fine figure in life, and that whether such a man as I live or die can be of no great importance to any one or anything, but I do most truly desire not to make more of the matter than is just. A man may have felt himself the most insignificant and useless of human creatures all his days, but face him with death and he becomes, by very force of the contrast, something of a figure.
Here am I, deprived of the only thing in life that gave me joy or pride. I should, after that deprivation, have slipped back, I suppose, to my old life of hopeless uninterest and insignificance, but now here the death of Marie Ivanovna has been no check at all. I half believe now that one can do with life or death what one will. If I had known that from the beginning what things I might have found! As it is, I must simply make the best of it. Semyonov"s contempt would once have frightened the very life out of me, but after that night of his arrival here it has been nothing compared with the excitement of our relationship--the things that are keeping us together in spite of ourselves and the strange changes, I do believe, that this situation here is making in him. The loss of Marie Ivanovna would two months ago perhaps have finished me. What is it now beside the wonder as to whether I have lost her after all, the consciousness of pursuit, the longing to know?...
Durward and I have spoken sometimes of my dream of the Forest. It must seem to him now, as to myself, strangely fulfilled; but I believe that if I catch the beast it will only be to discover that there is a further quest beyond, and then another maybe beyond that....
At the same time there"s the practical question of one"s nerve. If this strain of work continues, if the hot weather lasts, and if I don"t sleep, I shall have to take care. Three times during the last three days I have fancied that I have seen Marie Ivanovna, once in broad daylight in the Forest, once sitting on the sofa in our room, once at night near my bed. Of course this is the merest illusion, but I have hours now when I am not quite sure of things. Andrey Va.s.silievitch told me something of the same to-day--that he thought that he saw his wife and that Nikitin told him the same yesterday. The flies also are confusing and there"s a hot dry smell that"s disagreeable and prevents one from eating. I know that I must keep a clear head on these things. If only one could get away for an hour or two, right outside--but one is shut up in this Forest as though it were a green oven.... I ought to be sleeping now instead of writing all this.... I must say that I had a curious illusion ten minutes ago while I was writing this, that one of the wounded, in a bed near the door which is open, began to slip, bed and all, across the floor towards me. He did indeed come closer and closer to me, the bed moving in jerks as though it were pushed. This was, of course, simply because my eyes were tired. When I try to sleep they are hot and smarting....
I interrupt Trenchard"s diary to give a very brief account of the impression that was made on me by my visit to the three of them with some wagons four days after the date of the above entry. It must be remembered that I had not, of course, at this time read any of Trenchard"s diary, nor had I seen anything of him since the moment of Semyonov"s arrival. My chief impression during the interval had been my memory of Trenchard as I had last seen him, miserable, white-faced, unnerved. I had thought about him a good deal. Those days at the Otriad had been for the rest of us rather pleasantly tranquil. There was no question that we were relieved by the absence of Semyonov and Trenchard. Semyonov was no easy companion at any time and we had the very natural desire to throw off from us the weight of Marie Ivanovna"s unexpected death. I will not speak of myself in this matter, but for the others. She had not been very long in their company, she had been strange and unsettled in her behaviour, she had been engaged to a man, jilted him, and engaged herself to another--all within a very short period of time. I, myself, was occupied incessantly by my thoughts of her, but that was my own affair. The past week then with us had been tranquil and easy. On my arrival at the "Point" in the Forest I was met at once by a new atmosphere. For one thing the war here was on the very top of us. Only a few yards away, towards the end of the garden, they were digging trenches. Somewhere beyond the windows, in the Forest, a battery had established itself near a clearing at the edge of a hill, the guns disguised with leaves and branches. Soldiers were moving incessantly to and fro. The house seemed full of wounded, wagons coming and going. They were digging graves in the garden, and sheeted bodies were lying in the orchard.