My friends greeted me, seemed glad to see me for a moment, and then pursued their business. I was entirely outside their life. Only ten days before I had felt a closer intimacy with Trenchard, Andrey Va.s.silievitch and Nikitin than I had ever had with any of them. Now I simply did not exist for them. It was not the work that excluded me. The evening that pa.s.sed then was an easy evening--very little to do. We spent most of the night in playing chemin-de-fer. No, it was not the work. It was quite simply that something was happening to all of them in which I had no concern. They were all changed and about them all--yes, even, I believe, about Semyonov--there was an air of suppressed excitement, rather the excitement that schoolboys have, when they have prepared some secret forbidden defiance or adventure. Trenchard, whom I had left in the depths of a lethargic depression, was most curiously preoccupied. He looked at me first as though he did not perfectly remember me. He, a.s.suredly, was not well. His eyes were lined heavily, his white cheeks had a flush of red that burnt there feverishly, and he seemed extraordinarily thin. He was restless, his eyes were never still, and I saw him sometimes fix them, in a strange way, upon some object as though he would a.s.sure himself that it was there. He was obviously under the influence of some deep excitement. He told me that he was sleeping badly, that his head ached, and that his eyes hurt him, but he did not seem distressed by these things. He was too strongly absorbed by something to be depressed. He treated me and everything around him with impatience, as though he could not wait for something that he was expecting.
I have seen in this business of the war strange things that nerves can do with the human mind and body. I have seen many men who remain with their nerves as strong as steel from the first to the last, but this is, I should say, the exception and only to be found with men of a very unimaginative character. As regards Trenchard one must take into account his recent loss, the sudden stress of incessant exhausting work, the flaming weather and the constant companionship of the one human being of all others most calculated to disturb his tranquillity. But in varying degrees I think that every one in this place was at this time working under a strain of something abnormal and uncalculated. The very knowledge that the attack was now being pressed severely and that we had so little ammunition with which to reply, was enough to strain the nerves of every one. Trenchard told me, in the course of the conversation, that I had with him during my second day"s stay, that his visit to the lines some days earlier (this is the visit of which he speaks in his diary) had greatly upset him. He had been disturbed apparently by the fact that there were not sufficient wagons. The whole sense of the Forest, he told me, was a strain to him, the feeling that he could not escape from it, the thought of its colour and heat and at the same time its ugliness and horror, the cholera scarecrow in it, and the deserted town and all the horrors of the recent attacks. The dead Austrians and Russians.... But I repeat, most emphatically, that he was not depressed by this. It was rather that he wished to keep his energies fresh and clear for some purpose of his own, and was therefore disturbed by anything that threatened his health. He was not quite well, he told me--headaches, not sleeping--but that "he had it well in control."
And here now is a strange thing. One of the chief purposes of my visit had been to persuade one of the four men to return with me to the Otriad. Molozov had a.s.serted very emphatically that none of them should be compelled against their will to return to Mittovo, but he thought that it would be well if, considering the strain of the work and the Position, they were to take it in turns to have a day or two"s rest and so relieve one another. I had had no doubt that this would be very acceptable to them, but on my proposing it, was surprised to receive from each of them individually an abrupt refusal even to consider the matter. At the same time they a.s.sured me, severally, that the one or the other of them needed, very badly, a rest. After I had spoken, Nikitin, taking me aside, told me that he thought that Andrey Va.s.silievitch would be better at Mittovo. "He is a little in the way here," he said. "Certainly he does his best, but this is not his place." Nikitin wore the same preoccupied air as the others.--"Whatever you do," he said, "don"t let Andrey know that I spoke to you." Andrey Va.s.silievitch, on his side with much nervousness and self-importance, told me that he thought that Nikitin was suffering from overwork and needed a complete rest. "You know, Ivan Andreievitch, he is really not at all well; I sleep in the same room. He talks in his sleep, fancies that he sees things ... very odd--although this hot weather ... I myself for the matter of that ..." and then he nervously broke off.
But with all this they did not seem to quarrel with one another. It is true that I discovered a kind of impatience, especially between Andrey Va.s.silievitch and Nikitin, the kind of restlessness that you see sometimes between two horses which are harnessed together. Semyonov (he paid no attention to me at all during my visit) treated Trenchard quite decently, and I observed on several occasions his look of puzzled curiosity at the man--a look to which I have alluded before. He spoke to him always in the tone of contemptuous banter that he had from the beginning used to him: "Well, Mr., I suppose that you couldn"t bring a big enough bandage however much you were asked to. But why choose the smallest possible...."
Or, "That"s where Mr. writes his poetry--being a nice romantic Englishman. Isn"t it, Mr.?"
But I was greatly struck by Trenchard"s manner of taking these remarks. He behaved now as though he had secret reasons for knowing that he was in every way as good a man as Semyonov--a better one, maybe. He laughed, or sometimes simply looked at his companion, or he would reply in his bad halting Russian with some jest at Semyonov"s expense.
Finally, to end this business, if ever a man were affected to the heart by the loss of a friend or a lover, Semyonov was that man. He was a man too strong in himself and too contemptuous of weakness to show to all the world his hurt. I myself might have seen nothing had I not always before me the memory of that vision of his face between the trees. But from that I had proceeded-- It was, I suppose, the first time in his life that the fulfilment of his desire had been denied him. Had Marie Ivanovna lived, and had he attained with her his complete satisfaction, he would have tired of her perhaps as he had tired of many others, and have remained only the stronger cynic. But she had eluded him, eluded him at the very moment of her freshness and happiness and triumph. What defeat to his proud spirit was working now in him? What longing? What fierce determination to secure even now his ends? The change that I fancied in him was perhaps no more than his bracing of his strength and courage to face new conditions. Death had robbed him of his possession--so much the worse then for Death!
Upon this day of icy cold, as I write these words, I am afraid that my account may be taken as an extravagant and unjustified conceit. But that I do most honestly believe it not to be. I myself felt, during my two days" stay in that place, the strangest contact with new experiences, new developments, new relationships. Normal life had been left utterly behind and there was nothing to remind one of it save perhaps that "Report on New Mexico" still there on the dusty table. But there was the heat; there were the wheeling, circling clouds of flies, now in lines, now in squares, now broken like smoke, now dim like vapour; there was that old familiar smell of dust and flesh, chemicals and blood; there were the men dying and broken, fighting like giants, defeating fears and terrors that hung like grey shadows about the doors and windows of the house.... Every incident and experience that we had had at the war, every incident and experience that I have related in these pages seemed to be gathered into this house.... As I look back upon it now it seems, without any extravagance at all, the very heart of the fortress of the enemy. I do not mean in the least that life was solemn or pretentious or heavy. It was careless, casual, as liable to the ridiculous intervention of unimportant things as ever it had been; but it was life pressed so close to the fine presence of Fate that you could hear the very beating of his heart. And in this Fortress it seemed to me that I, who was watching, outside the lives of these others, an observer only whom, perhaps, this same Fate despised, asked of G.o.d a sign. I saw suddenly here the connexion, for which I had been waiting, between the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard--Two Wise Men and Two Fools--surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality ... and yet G.o.d does not judge as men do. Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and who left? I recalled Semyonov"s jesting words: "Even though it"s the wise men succeed in this world I don"t doubt it"s the fools have their way in the next."
I waited for my Sign....
Last of all I can hear it objected that every one was surely too busy to attend to relationships or shades of relationships. But it was this very thing that contributed to the situation, namely, that, in the very stress of the work, there were hours, many hours, when there was simply nothing to be done. Then if one could not sleep times were bad indeed. Moreover, even in the throng of work itself one would be conscious of that slipping off from one of all the trappings of reality. One by one they would slip away and then, bewildered, one would doubt the evidence of one"s eyes, one"s brain, one"s ears, the fatigue hammering, hammering at one"s consciousness.... I have known what that kind of strain can be.
I left on the second morning after my arrival and returned to Mittovo alone.
Trenchard"s Diary. Tuesday, August 10. Durward has been here for two days. He"s a good fellow but I seem rather to have lost touch with him during these last days. Then he"s rather bloodless--a little more humour would cheer him up wonderfully. We"ve all been in mad spirits to-day as though we were drunk. The battery officers have got a gramophone that we turned on. We danced a bit although it"s hot as h.e.l.l.... Then in the evening my spirits suddenly went; Andrey Va.s.silievitch gets on one"s nerves. His voice is tiresome and I"m tired of his wife. He tells me that he thinks he sees her at night. "Do I think it likely?" Silly little a.s.s--just the way to rot his nerves. Funny thing to-night. We were playing chemin-de-fer. Suddenly Semyonov said: "Supposing Molozov says that only one of us is to stay on here." There was silence after that. We all four looked at one another. All I knew was nothing was going to move me away from this place if I could help it. Then Semyonov said: "Of course I would have to stay."
We went for him then. You should have heard Nikitin! I didn"t believe that he had it in him. Semyonov was quiet, of course, smiling that beastly smile of his.
Then at last he said: "Suppose we play for it?"
We agreed. The one who turned up the Ace of Hearts was to stay. You could have heard a pin drop after that. I have never before felt what I felt then. If I had to return and leave Semyonov here! They say that the attack may develop in this direction at any moment. If Semyonov were to be here and I not.... And yet what was it that I wanted? What I want is to be close to Marie again, to be there where Semyonov cannot reach us. I believe that she might always have cared for me if he had not been there. Whatever death may be, I must know.... If there is nothing more, no matter. If there is something more--then there is something for her as well as for me and I shall find her, and I must find her alone. There"s nothing left in life now to me save that. As I sat there looking at the cards I knew all this, knew quite clearly that I must escape Semyonov. There"s no madness in this. Whilst he is there I"m nothing--but without him, if I were with her again--I was always beaten easily by anybody but in this at least I can be strong. I don"t hate him but I know that he will always be first as long as we"re together. And we seem to be tied now like dogs by their tails, tied by our thoughts of Marie....
Well, anyway I turned up the Ace. My heart seemed to jump right upside down when I saw it. The others said nothing. Only Semyonov at last: "Well, Mr., if it comes to it we"ll have to see that it"s necessary for two of us to be here. It will never do for you and me to be parted--"
Meanwhile, the firing"s very close to-night. They say the Austrians have taken Vulatch. Shocking, our lack of ammunition.... G.o.d! The heat!
CHAPTER V.
THE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND THEM.
Trenchard"s Diary. Sat.u.r.day, August 14th....
Captain T---- died this afternoon at four-thirty. A considerable shock to me. He was so young, so strong. They all said that he had a remarkable future. He had dined with us several times at Mittovo and his vitality had always attracted me; vitality restrained and drilled towards some definite purpose. He might have been a great man.... His wound in the stomach did not hurt him, I think. He was wonderfully calm at the last. How strange it is that at home death is so horrible with its long ceremonies, its crowd of relations, its gradual decay--and here, in nine out of every ten deaths that I have seen there has been peace or even happiness. This is the merest truth and will be confirmed by any one who has worked here. Again and again I have seen that strange flash of surprised, almost startled interest, again and again I have been conscious--behind not in the eyes--of the expression of one who is startled by fresh conditions, a fine view, a sudden piece of news. This is no argument for religion, for any creed or dogma, I only say that here it is so, that Death seems to be happiness and the beginning of something new and unexpected.... I believe that even so hardy a cynic as Semyonov would support me in this. I and Semyonov were alone with young Captain T---- when he died. Semyonov had liked the man and had done everything possible to save him. But he was absorbed by his death--absorbed as though he would tear the secret of it from the body that looked suddenly so empty, and so meaningless.
"Well, I"m glad he was happy," he said to me. Then he stood, looking at me curiously. I returned the look. We neither of us said anything. These are all commonplaces, I suppose, that I am discovering. The only importance is that some ten million human beings are, in this war, making these discoveries for themselves, just as I am. Who can tell what that may mean? I have seen here no visions, nor have I met any one who has seen them, but there are undoubted facts--not easy things to discount.
Sunday, August 15. Things are pretty bad here. The Austrians have taken Vulatch. Both on the right and on the left they have advanced. They may arrive here at any moment. The magnificence of the Russian soldier is surely beyond all praise. I wonder whether people in France and England realise that for the last three months here he has been fighting with one bullet as against ten. He stands in his trench practically unarmed against an enemy whose resources seem, endless--but nothing can turn him back. Whatever advances the Germans may make I see Russia returning again and again. I do from the bottom of my soul, and, what is of more importance, from the sober witness of my eyes, here believe that nothing can stop the impetus born of her new spirit. This war is the beginning of a world history for her.
Krylov this afternoon said that he thought that we should leave this place, get out our wagons and retire. But how can we? At this moment, how can we? We are just now at the most critical meeting of the ways--the extra twelve versts back to Mittovo may make the whole difference to many of the cases, and the doctors of the Division, Krylov himself admits, have got their arms full. We simply can"t leave them.... There has been some confusion here. There doesn"t seem any responsible person to give us orders. Colonel Maximoff has forgotten us, I believe. In any case I think that we must stay on here for another day and night. Perhaps we shall get away to-morrow....
I had a queer experience this afternoon. I don"t want to make too much of it but here it is. I went up to my room this afternoon at five to get some sleep, as I"m on duty to-night. I lay down and shut my eyes and then, of course, as I always do, immediately saw Marie Ivanovna. I know quite clearly that this present relationship to her cannot continue for long or I shall be off my head. I can see myself quite clearly as though I were outside myself, and I know that I"m madder now than I was a week ago. For instance in this business of Marie Ivanovna, I knew then that my seeing her was an illusion--now I am not quite sure. I knew a week ago that I saw her because she is so much in my thoughts, because of the intolerable heat, because of the Flies and the Forest, because of Semyonov. I am not sure now whether it is not her wish that I should see her. She comes as she came on those last days before she left me--with all the kindness in her eyes that no other human being has ever given me before, nor will ever give me again. To-day I looked and was not sure whether she were gone or no. I was not sure of several things in the room and as I lay there I said to myself, "Is that really a looking-gla.s.s or no?" "If I tried could I touch it or would it fade from under my hand?" The room was intolerably close and there was a fly who persecuted me. As I lay there he came and settled on my hand. He waited, watching me with his wicked sneering eyes, then he crept forward, and waited again, rubbing his legs one against the other. Then very slyly, laughing to himself, he began to tickle me. I slashed with my hand at him, he flew into the air, sneering, then with a little "ping" settled on the back of my neck. I vowed that I would not mind him; I lay still. He began then to crawl very slowly forward towards my chin, and it was as though he were dragging spidery strands of nerves through my body, fitting them all on to stiff, tight wires. He reached my chin, and then again, sneering up into my eyes, he began to tickle. I thought once more that I had him, but once again he was in the air. Then, after waiting until I had almost sunk back into sleep, he did the worst thing that a fly can do, began, very slowly, to crawl down the inside of my pince-nez (I had been trying to read). He got between the gla.s.s and my eyelash and moved very faintly with his d.a.m.nable legs. Then my patience went--I did what during these last days I have vowed not to do, lost my control, jumped from my bed, and cursed with rage....
Then with my head almost bursting with heat and my legs trembling I had an awful moment, I thought that I was really mad. I thought that I would get the looking-gla.s.s and smash it and that then I would jump from the window. In another moment I thought that something would break in my head, the something with which I kept control over myself--I seemed to hear myself praying aloud: "Oh G.o.d! let me keep my reason! Oh G.o.d! let me keep my reason!" and I could see the Forest like a great green hot wave rising beyond the window to a towering height ready to leap down upon me.
Then Semyonov came in. He stood in the doorway and looked at me. He must have thought me strange and I know that I waited, staring at him, feeling foolish as I always do with him. But he spoke to me kindly, with the sort of kindness that there is sometimes in his voice, patronising and reluctant of course.
"You can"t sleep, Mr.?" he said.
"No," I answered, and said something about flies.
"What have you been doing to the looking-gla.s.s?" he asked, laughing, for there the thing was on the floor, broken into pieces. I am sure that I never touched it.
"That"s unlucky," he said. "Never mind, Mr.," he said smiling at me, "twenty-two misfortunes, aren"t you? Always dropping something," he added quite kindly. "More, perhaps, than the rest of us.... Wash your face in cold water. It"s this infernal heat that worries us all."
I remember then that he poured the water into the blue tin basin for me and then, taking the tin mug himself, poured it in cupfuls over my hands and arms. I afterwards did the same for him. At that moment I very nearly spoke to him of Marie. I wished desperately to try; but I looked at his face, and his eyes, laughing at me as they always did, stopped me.
When I had finished he thanked me, wiped his hands, then turning round at the door he said: "Why don"t you go back to Mittovo, Mr. ---- You"re tired out."
"You know why," I answered, without looking at him He seemed then as though he would speak, but he stopped himself and went away. I lay down again and tried to sleep, but when I closed my eyes the green beyond the window burnt through my eyelids--and then the fly (I am sure it was the same fly) returned....
Monday, August 16.... Lord! but I am tired of this endless bandaging, cleaning of filthy wounds, paring away of ragged ends of flesh, smelling, breathing, drinking blood and dust and dirt. The poor fellows! Their bravery is beyond any word of mine. They have come these last few days with their eyes dazed and their ears deafened. Indeed the roaring of the cannon has been since yesterday afternoon incessant. They say that the Austrians are straining every nerve to break through to the river and cross. We are doing what we can to prevent them, but what can we do? There simply IS NOT AMMUNITION! The officers here are almost crying with despair, and the men know it and go on, with their cheerfulness, their obedience, their mild kindliness--go into that green h.e.l.l to be butchered, and come out of it again, if they are lucky, with their bodies mangled and twisted, and horror in their eyes. It"s n.o.body"s fault, I suppose, this business. How easy to write in the daily papers that the Germans prepared for war and that we did not, and that after a month or two all will be well.... After a month or two! tell that to us here stuck in this Forest and hear us how we laugh!...
Meanwhile, for the good of my health, I"m figuring very clearly to myself all the physical features of this place. It"s a long white house, two-storied. The front door has broken gla.s.s over it and there"s a litter of tumbled bricks on the top step. After you"ve gone through the front door you come into the hall where the wounded are as thick as flies. You go through the hall and turn to the left. There"s a pantry place on your right all full of flies and when you open the door they unsettle with a great buzz and shift into all sorts of shapes and patterns. Next to them is our sitting-room, the horrid place always dirty and stifling. Then there"s the operating-room, then another room for beds, then the kitchen. Outside to the right there"s the garden, dry now with the heat, and the orchard smells of the men they"ve buried in it. To the left, after a little clearing, there"s the forest always green and glittering. The men are in the trenches now, the new ones that were made last week, so I suppose that we shall be in the thick of it very shortly. That battery at the edge of the hill has been banging away all the morning. What else is there? There"s an old pump just outside the sitting-room window. There"s a litter of dirty paper and refuse there, too, that the flies gather round. There"s an old barn away to the right where some horses are and two cows. I have to keep my mind on these things because I know they"re real. You can touch them with your hands and they"ll still be there even if you go away--they won"t walk with you as you move. So I must fasten on to these things about which there can"t be any doubt. In the same way I like to remember that book in the sitting-room--Mr. Gla.s.s who lectured on "Fools," the Ruysdael, and the Normal Pupils who acted Oth.e.l.lo. They"re real enough and are probably somewhere now quietly studying, or teaching, or sleeping--I envy them....
A thing that happened this morning disturbed us all. Four soldiers came out of the Forest quite mad. They seemed rational enough at first and said that they"d been sent out of the first line trenches with contusion--one of them had a bleeding finger, but the others were untouched. Then one of them, a middle-aged man with a black beard, began quite gravely to tell us that the Forest was moving. They had seen it with their own eyes. They had watched all the trees march slowly forward like columns of soldiers and soon the whole Forest would move and would crush every one in it. It was all very well fighting Austrians, but whole forests was more than any one could expect of them. Then suddenly one of them cried out, pointing with his finger: "See, Your Honour--there it comes!... Ah! let us run! let us run!" One of them began to cry. It was very disagreeable. I saw Andrey Va.s.silievitch who was present glance anxiously through the window at the Forest and then gravely check himself and look at me nervously to see whether I had noticed. The men afterwards fell into a strange kind of apathy. We sent them off to Mittovo in the afternoon.
I want now to remember as exactly as possible a strange conversation I had this evening with Semyonov. I came up when it was getting dusk to the bedroom. One of the Austrian batteries was spitting away over the hill but we were not replying. Everything this afternoon has looked as though they were preparing for a heavy attack. Our little window was open and the sky beyond was a sort of very pale green, and against this you could see a flush of colour rising and falling like the opening and shutting of a door. Everything quite silent except the Austrian cannon and a soldier, delirious, downstairs, singing.
The Forest was deep black, but you could see the soldiers" fires gleaming here and there like beasts" eyes. Our room was almost dark and I was very startled to find Semyonov sitting on his bed and staring in front of him. He looked like a wooden figure sitting there, and he didn"t move as I came in. I"m glad that although I"m still awkward and clumsy with him (as I am, and always will be, I suppose, with every one) I"m not afraid of him any more. The room was so dark that he looked like a shadow. I had intended to fetch something and go away, but instead of that I sat down on my bed, feeling suddenly very tired and lethargic.
"Well, Mr.," he said in the ironical voice he always uses to me.
(I would wish now to repeat if I can every word of our conversation.) "Krylov has been again," I said. "He told Nikitin that we ought to go to-night. Nikitin asked him whether the Division had plenty of wagons and Krylov admitted that there weren"t nearly enough. He agreed that it would make a lot of difference if we could keep this place going until to-morrow night--all the same he advised us to leave."
"We"ll stay until some one orders us to go," said Semyonov. "It will make a difference to a hundred men or more probably. If they do start firing on to this place we can get the men off in the wagons in time."
"And what if the wagons have left for Mittovo?"
"We"ll have to wait until they come back," he answered.
We sat there listening to the cannon. Then Semyonov said very quietly and not at all ironically, "I wish to ask you--I have wished before--tell me. You blame me for her death?"
I thought for a moment, then I replied: "I did so at first. Now I do not think that it had anything to do with you or with me or with any one--except herself."
"Except herself?" he said. "What do you mean?"
"She wished it, I think."
His irony returned. "You believe in the power of others, Mr., too much. You should believe more in your own."
"I believe in her power. She was stronger than you," I answered.
"I"m sure that you like to think so," he said laughing.
"She is still stronger than you...."
"So you are a mystic, Mr.," he said. "Of course, with your romantic mind that is only natural. You believe, I suppose, that she is with us here in the room?"
"It cannot be of interest to you," I answered quietly, "what I believe."
"Yes, it is of interest," he replied in a voice that was friendly and humorously indulgent, as though he spoke to a child. "I find it strange--I have found it strange for many weeks now--that I should think so frequently of you. You are not a man who would naturally be interesting to me. You are an Englishman and I am not interested in Englishmen. You are sentimental, you have no idea of life as it is, you like dull things, dull safe things, you believe always in what you are told. You have no sense of humour.... You should be of no interest to me, and yet during these last weeks I have not been able to get rid of you."
"That is not my fault," I said. "I have not been so anxious for your company."
"No," he said, speaking rather thoughtfully, as though he were seriously thinking something out, "you regard me, of course, as a very bad character. I have no desire to defend myself to you. But the point is that I have found myself often thinking of you, that I have even taken trouble sometimes to be with you."
He waited as though he expected me to say something, but I was silent.
"It was perhaps that I saw that Marie Ivanovna cared for you. She gave you up to the end something that she never gave to me. That I suppose was tiresome to me."
"You thought you knew her," I said, hoping to hurt him. "You did not know her at all."
"That may be," he answered. "I certainly did not understand her, but that was attractive to me. And so, Mr., you thought that you understood her?"
But I did not answer him. My head ached frantically, I was wretchedly in want of sleep. I jumped to my feet, standing in front of him: "Leave me alone! Leave me alone!" I cried. "Let us part. I am nothing to you--you despise me and laugh at me--you have from the first done so. It was because you laughed at me that she began to laugh. If you had not been there she might have continued to love me--she was very inexperienced. And now that she is gone I am of no more importance to you--let me be! For G.o.d"s sake, let me be!"
"You are free," he said. "You can return to Mittovo in an hour"s time when the wagons go."
I did not speak.
"No, you will not go," he went on, "because you think that she is here. She died here--and you believe that she is not dead. I also will not go--for my own reasons."
Then he jumped off his bed, stood upright against me, his clothes touching mine. He put his hand on my shoulder.
"No, Mr., we will remain together. I find you really rather charming. And you are changed, you know. You are not the silly fool you were when you first came to us!"
I moved away from him. I could not bear the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I had, I repeat, no fear of him. He might laugh at me or no as he pleased, but I did not want his kindness.
"My beliefs seem to you the beliefs of a child," I said, trying to speak more calmly. "Well, then, leave me to them. They at least do you no harm. I love her now as I loved her when I first saw her. I cannot believe that I shall never be with her again. But that is my own affair and matters to no one but myself!"
He answered me: "You have a simple fashion of looking at things which I envy you. I a.s.sure you that I am not laughing at you. You believe, if I understand you, that after your death you will meet her again. You are afraid that if I die before you she will belong to me, but that if you die first you will be with her again as you were "at the beginning"?... Is not that so?"
I did not answer him.
"I swear to you," he continued, "that I am not mocking you. What my own thoughts may be does not interest you, but I have not, in my life, found many things or persons that are worth one"s devotion, and she was worthy of being loved as you love her. Such days as these in such a place as this must bring strange thoughts to any man. When we return to Mittovo to-morrow night I a.s.sure you that you will see everything differently."
He felt, I suppose, that he had been speaking too seriously because the ironic humour with which he always treated me returned.
"Here, Mr., at any rate we are. I"m sorry for you--tiresome to be tied to some one as uncongenial as myself--but be a little sorry for me, too. You"re not, you know, the ideal companion I would have chosen."
"Why did you come?" I asked him. "Durward was here--we were doing very well--"
"Without me"--he caught me up. "Yes, I suppose so. But your fascination is so strong that--" He broke off laughing, then continued almost sharply: "Here we are anyway. To-night and to-morrow we are going to be lively enough if I know anything about it. I"ll do you the justice, Mr., of saying you"ve worked admirably here. I wouldn"t have believed it of you. Let us both of us drop our romantic fancies. We"ve no time to spare." Then, turning at the door, he ended: "And you needn"t hate me so badly, you know. She cared for you in a way that she never gave me. Perhaps, after all, in the end, you will win--"
He gave me one last word: "All the same I don"t give her up to you," he said.
When I came downstairs again it was to find confusion and noise. In the first place little Andrey Va.s.silievitch was quarrelling loudly with Nikitin. He was speaking Russian very fast and I did not discover his complaint. There was something comic in the sight of his small body towering to a perfect tempest of rage, his plump hands gesticulating and always his eyes, anxious and self-important, doing their best to look after his dignity. Nikitin explained to me that he had been urging Andrey Va.s.silievitch to return to Mittovo with the wagons. "There"s no need," he said, "for us all to stay. It"s only taking unnecessary risks--and somebody should take charge of the wagons."
"There"s Feodor Constantinovitch," said Andrey, naming a feldscher and stammering in his rage. "He"s re-responsible enough." Then, seeing that he was creating something of a scene, he relapsed into a would-be dignified sulkiness, finally said he would not go, and strutted away.
There were many other disturbances, men coming and going, one of the battery officers appearing for a moment dirty and dishevelled, and always the wounded drowsy or in delirium, watching with dull eyes the evening shadows, talking excitedly in their sleep. Semyonov called me to help in the operating room. Within the next two hours he had carried out two amputations with admirable cool composure. During the second one, when the man"s arm tumbled off into the basin and lay there amongst the filthy rags with the dirty white fingers curved, their nails dead and grey, I suddenly felt violently sick.
A sanitar took my place and I went out into the cool of the forest, where a silver pattern of stars swung now above the branches and a full moon, red and cold, was rising beyond the hill. After a time I felt better and, finding that I was not needed for a time, I wrote this diary.
Tuesday, August 17th. It is just six o"clock--a most lovely evening. Strangely enough everything is utterly quiet--not a sound anywhere. You might fancy yourself in the depths of England somewhere. However, considering what has happened to-day and what they expect will happen now at any moment, the strain on our nerves is pretty severe, and as usual at such times I will fill in my diary. This is probably the last time that I write it here as we move as soon as the wagons return, which should be in about two hours from now.
All our things are packed and I shall slip this book into my bag as soon as I have written this entry; but I have probably two or three hours clear for writing, as everything is ready for departure. Meanwhile I am wonderfully tranquil and at peace, able, too, to think clearly and rationally for the first time since Marie"s death. I want to give an account of the events since my last entry minutely and as truthfully as my memory allows me.
At about half-past eleven last night Semyonov and I went up to our bedroom to sleep, Nikitin being on duty. There was not much noise, the cannon sounding a considerable distance away, but the flashlights and rockets against the night-sky were wonderful, and when we had blown out the candle our dark little room leapt up and down or turned round and round, the window flashing into vision and out again. Semyonov was almost immediately asleep, but I lay on my back and, of course, as usual, thought of Marie. My headache of the evening still raged furiously and I was in desperately low spirits. I had been able to eat nothing during the preceding day. I lay there half asleep, half awake, for, I suppose, a long time, hearing the window rattle sometimes when the cannon was noisy and feeling under the jerky reflections on the wall as though I were in an old shambling cab driving along a dark road, I thought a good deal about that talk with Semyonov that I had. What a strange man! But then I do not understand him at all. I don"t think I understand any Russian, such a mixture of hardness and softness as they are, kind and then indifferent, cruel and then sentimental. But I understand people very little, and in all my years at Polchester there was never one single person whom I knew. Semyonov is perfectly right, I suppose, from his point of view to think me a fool. I lay there thinking of Semyonov. He was sleeping on his back, looking very big under the clothes, his beard square and stiff, lit up by the flashing light and then sinking into darkness again. I thought of him and of myself and of the strange contrast that we were, and how queer it was that the same woman should have cared for both of us. And I know that, although I did not hate him at all, I would give almost anything for him not to have been there, never to have been there. Whilst he was there I knew that I had no chance. Marie had not laughed at me during those days at Petrograd; she had believed in me then and I had been worth believing in. If people had believed in me more I might be a very different man now.
I was almost asleep, scarcely conscious of the room, when suddenly I heard a voice cry, "Marie! Marie! Marie!" three times. It was a voice that I had never heard before, strong but also tender, full of pain, with a note in it too of a struggling self-control that would break in a moment and overwhelm its possessor. As I look back at it I remember that I felt the pa.s.sion and strength in it so violently that I seemed to shrink into myself, as though I were witnessing something that no man should see, and as though also I were conscious of my own weakness and insignificance.
It was Semyonov. The flashlight flashed into the room, shining for an instant upon him. He was sitting up in bed, his shirt open and his chest bare. His eyes were fixed upon the window, but he was fast asleep. He seemed to me a new man. I had grown so accustomed to his sarcasm, his irony, that I had almost persuaded myself that he had never truly loved Marie, but had felt some sensual attraction for her that would, by realisation, have been at once satisfied. This was another man. Here was a struggle, an agony that was not for such men as I.
He cried again, "Marie! Marie!" then got up out of bed, walked on his naked feet in his shirt to the window, stood there and waited. The moonlight had, by this, struck our room and flooded it. He turned suddenly and faced me. I could not believe that he did not see me, but I could not endure the unhappiness in his eyes and I turned, looking down. I did not look at him again but I heard his feet patter back to the bed; then he stood there, his whole body strung to meet some overmastering crisis. He whispered her name as though she had come to him since his first call. "Ah, Marie, my darling," he whispered.
I could not bear that. I crept from my bed, slipped away, closed the door softly behind me and stole downstairs.
I cannot write at length of what followed. It was the crisis of everything that has happened to me since I left Petrograd. Every experience that I had had was suddenly flung into this moment. I was in our sitting-room now, pitch dark because shutters had been placed outside the windows to guard against bullets. I stood there in my shirt and drawers: shuddering, shivering with hatred of myself, shivering with fear of Semyonov, shivering above all, with a desperate, agonising, torturing hunger for Marie. Semyonov"s voice had appalled me. I hadn"t realised before how strongly I had relied on his not truly caring for her. Everything in the man had seemed to persuade me of this, and I had even flattered myself on my miserable superiority to him, that I was the true faithful lover and he the vulgar sensualist. How small now I seemed beside him!--and how I feared him! Then I was at sudden fierce grip with the beast!... At grips at last!
I had once before, on another night, been tempted to kill myself, but that had been nothing to this. Now sick and ill, faint for food, I swayed there on the floor, hearing always in my ear--"Give way! Give way!... You"ll be in front of him, you"ll have left him behind you, he can do nothing ... a moment more and you can be with her--and he cannot reach you!"
I do not know how long I fought there. I was not fighting with an evil devil, a fearful beast as in my dreams I had always imagined it--I was fighting myself: every weakness in the past to which I had ever surrendered, every little sc.r.a.p of personal history, every slackness and cowardice and lethargy was there on the floor against me.
I don"t know what it was that prevented me stealing back to my room, fetching my revolver and so ending it. I could see Marie close to me, to be reached by the stretching of a finger. I could see myself living on, always conscious of Semyonov, his thick beastly confident body always there between myself and her.
I sank into the last depths of self-despair and degradation. No fine thing saved me, no help from n.o.ble principles, nothing fine. The whole was as sordid as possible. I knew, even as I struggled, that I was a silly figure there, with my bony ugliness, in my shirt and drawers, my hair on end and my teeth chattering. But I responded, I suppose, to some little pulse of manly obstinacy that beat somewhere in me. I would not be beaten by the Creature. Even in the middle of it I realised that this was the hardest tussle of my life and worth fighting. I know too that some thought of Nikitin came to me as though, in some way, my failure would damage him. I remembered that night of the Retreat when he had helped me and, as though he were appealing visibly to me there in the room, I responded; I seemed to feel that he was fighting some battle of his own and that my victory would fortify him. I stood with him beside me. So I fought it, fought it with the sweat dripping down my nose and my tongue dry. "No!" something suddenly cried in me. "If she"s his, she"s his--I will not take her this way!"--then in a snivelling, miserable fashion I began to cry, simply from exhaustion and nerves and headache. I slipped down into a chair. I sat there feeling utterly beaten and yet in some dim way, as one hears a trumpet sounding behind a range of hills, I was triumphant. There with my head on the table and my nose, I believe, in a plate left from some one"s last night"s supper, I slept a heavy, dreamless sleep.
I woke and heard a clock in the room strike three. I got up, stretched my arms, yawned and knew that my head was clear and my brain at peace. I can"t describe my feelings better than by saying that it was as though I had put my brain and my heart and all my fears and terrors under a good stiff pump of cold water. I felt a different man from four hours before, although still desperately tired and physically weak.
I went softly upstairs. The light of a most lovely summer morning flooded the room. Semyonov was lying, sleeping like a child, his head pillowed on his arm. Very cautiously I dressed, then went downstairs again. I did not understand now--the peace and happiness in my heart. All the time I was saying to myself: "Why am I so happy? Why am I so happy?"...
The world was marvellously fresh, with little white glittering clouds above the trees, the gra.s.s wet and shining, and the sky a high dome of blue light, like the inside of a gla.s.s bell that has the sun behind it. Here and there on the outskirts of the Forest fires were still dimly burning, pale and dim yellow shadows beneath the sun. Men wrapped in their coats were sleeping in little groups under the trees. Horses cropped at the gra.s.s; soldiers were moving with buckets of water. Two men, at the very edge of the Forest, stripped to the waist, were washing in a pool that was like a blue handkerchief in the great forest of green. I found a little glade, very bright and fresh, under a group of silver birch, and there I lay down on my back, my hands behind my head, looking up into the little dancing atoms of blue between the trees and the golden stars of sunlight that flashed and sparkled there.
Happiness and peace wrapped me round. I cannot pretend to disentangle and produce in proper sequence all the thoughts and memories that floated into my vision and away again, but I know that whereas before thoughts had attacked me as though they were foul animals biting at my brain, now I seemed myself gently to invite my memories.