Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
The
DARK FOREST
by
HUGH WALPOLE
GROSSET & DUNLAP _Publishers_, _New York_
_by arrangement with_ GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
* * * * *
TO
KONSTANTINE SAMOFF
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
BY HIS FRIEND THE AUTHOR
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PART ONE
CHAPTER
I. SPRING IN THE TRAIN
II. THE SCHOOL-HOUSE
III. THE INVISIBLE BATTLE
IV. NIKITIN
V. FIRST MOVE TO THE ENEMY
VI. THE RETREAT
VII. ONE NIGHT
PART TWO
I. THE LOVERS
II. MARIE IVANOVNA
III. THE FOREST
IV. FOUR?
V. THE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND THEM
* * * * *
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
SPRING IN THE TRAIN
His was the first figure to catch my eye that evening in Petrograd; he
stood under the dusky lamp in the vast gloomy Warsaw station, with
exactly the expression that I was afterwards to know so well,
impressed not only upon his face but also upon the awkwardness of his
arms that hung stiffly at his side, upon the baggy looseness of his
trousers at the knees, the unfastened straps of his long black
military boots. His face, with its mild blue eyes, straggly fair
moustache, expressed anxiety and pride, timidity and happiness,
apprehension and confidence. He was in that first moment of my sight
of him as helpless, as unpractical, and as anxious to please as any
lost dog in the world--and he was also as proud as Lucifer. I knew him
at once for an Englishman; his Russian uniform only accented the
cathedral-town, small public-school atmosphere of his appearance. He
was exactly what I had expected. He was not, however, alone, and that
surprised me. By his side stood a girl, obviously Russian, wearing her
Sister's uniform with excitement and eager anticipation, her eyes
turning restlessly from one part of the platform to another, listening
with an impatient smile to the remarks of her companion.
From where I stood I could hear his clumsy, hesitating Russian and
her swift, preoccupied replies. I came up to them.
"Mr. Trenchard?" I asked.
He blushed, stammered, held out his hand, missed mine, blushed the
more, laughed nervously.
"I'm glad ... I knew ... I hope...."
I could feel that the girl's eyes were upon me with all the excited
interest of one who is expecting that every moment of her new
wonderful experience will be of a stupendous, even immortal quality.
"I am Sister Marie Ivanovna, and you are, of course, Mr. Durward," she
said. "They are all waiting for you--expecting you--you're late, you
know!" She laughed and moved forward as though she would accompany me
to the group by the train. We went to the train together.
"I should tell you," she said quickly and suddenly with nervousness,
"that we are engaged, Mr. Trenchard and I--only last night. We have
been working at the same hospital.... I don't know any one," she
continued in the same intimate, confiding whisper. "I would be
frightened terribly if I were not so excited. Ah! there's Anna
Mihailovna.... I know _her_, of course. It was through, her aunt--the
one who's on Princess Soboleff's train--that I had the chance of going
with you. Oh! I'm so happy that I had the chance--if I hadn't had
it...."
We were soon engulfed now. I drew a deep breath and surrendered
myself. The tall, energetic figure of Anna Mihailovna, the lady to
whose practical business gifts and unlimited capacity for compelling
her friends to surrender their last bow and button in her service we
owed the existence of our Red Cross unit, was to be seen like a
splendid flag waving its followers on to glory and devotion. We _were_
devoted, all of us. Even I, whose second departure to the war this
was, had after the feeblest resistance surrendered myself to the drama
of the occasion. I should have been no gentleman had I done otherwise.
After the waters had closed above my head for, perhaps, five minutes
of strangled, half-protesting, half-willing surrender I was suddenly
compelled, by what agency I know not, to struggle to the surface, to
look around me, and then quite instantly to forget my immersion. The
figure of Trenchard, standing exactly as I had left him, his hands
uneasily at his sides, a half-anxious, half-confident smile on his
lips, his eyes staring straight in front of him, absolutely compelled
my attention. I had forgotten him, we had all forgotten him, his own
lady had forgotten him. I withdrew from the struggling, noisy group
and stepped back to his side. It was then that, as I now most clearly
remember, I was conscious of something else, was aware that there was
a strange faint blue light in the dark clumsy station, a faint
throbbing glow, that, like the reflection of blue water on a sunlit
ceiling, hovered and hung above the ugly shabbiness of the engines and
trucks, the rails with scattered pieces of paper here and there, the
iron arms that supported the vast glass roof, the hideous funnel that
hung with its gaping mouth above the water-tank. The faint blue light
was the spring evening--the spring evening that, encouraged by God
knows what brave illusion, had penetrated even these desperate
fastnesses. A little breeze accompanied it and the dirty pieces of
paper blew to and fro; then suddenly a shaft of light quivered upon
the blackness, quivered and spread like a golden fan, then flooded the
huge cave with trembling ripples of light. There was even, I dare
swear, at this safe distance, a smell of flowers in the air.
"It's a most lovely ..." Trenchard said, smiling at me, "spring here ... I
find...."
I was compelled by some unexpected sense of fatherly duty to be
practical.
"You've got your things?" I said. "You've found your seat?"
"Well, I didn't know ..." he stammered.
"Where are they?" I asked him.
He was not quite sure where they were. He stood, waving his hands,
whilst the golden sunlight rippled over his face. I was suddenly
irritated.
"But please," I said, "there isn't much time. Four of us men have a
compartment together. Just show me where your things are and then I'll
introduce you." He seemed reluctant to move, as though the spot that
he had chosen was the only safe one in the whole station; but I forced
him forward, found his bags, had them placed in their carriage, then
turned to introduce him to his companions.
Anna Mihailovna had said to me: "This detachment will be older than
the last. Doctor Nikitin--he'll take that other doctor's place, the
one who had typhus--and Andrey Vassilievitch--you've known him for
years. He talks a great deal but he's sympathetic and such a good
business man. He'll be useful. Then there's an Englishman; I don't
know much about him, except that he's been working for three months at
the English Hospital. He's not a correspondent, never written a line
in his life. I only saw him for a moment, but he seemed
sympathetic...."
Anna Mihailovna, as is well known to all of us, finds every one
sympathetic simply because she has so much to do and so many people to
see that she has no time to go deeply into things. If you have no time
for judging character you must have some good common rule to go by. I
had known little Andrey Vassilievitch for some years and had found him
tiresome. Finally, I did not care about the possibility of an
Englishman. Perhaps I had wished (through pride) to remain the only
Englishman in our "Otriad." I had made friends with them all, I was at
home with them. Another Englishman might transplant me in their
affections. Russians transfer, with the greatest ease, their emotions
from one place to another; or he might be a failure and so damage my
country's reputation. Some such vain and stupid prejudice I had. I
know that I looked upon our new additions with disfavour.
There, at any rate, Dr. Nikitin and little Andrey Vassilievitch were,
and a strange contrast they made. Nikitin's size would have compelled
attention anywhere, even in Russia, which is, of course, a country of
big men. It was not only that he was tall and broad; the carriage of
his head, the deep blackness of his beard, his eyebrows, his eyes, the
sure independence with which he held himself, as though he were
indifferent to the whole world (and that I know that he was), must
anywhere have made him remarked and remembered. He looked now
immensely fine in his uniform, which admirably suited him. He stood,
without his greatcoat, his hand on his sword, his eyes half-closed as
though he were almost asleep, and a faint half-smile on his face as
though he were amused at his thoughts. I remember that my first
impression of him was that he was so completely beneath the domination
of some idea or remembrance that, at that moment, no human being could
touch him. When I took Trenchard up to him I was so conscious of his
remoteness that I was embarrassed and apologetic.
And if I was aware of Nikitin's remoteness I was equally conscious of
Andrey Vassilievitch's proximity. He was a little man of a round plump
figure; he wore a little imperial and sharp, inquisitive moustaches;
his hair was light brown and he was immensely proud of it. In
Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in
London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends,
a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to
brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had
given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his
epaulettes glittered, his boots shone, his sword was magnificent, but
he looked, in spite of all his efforts, exactly what he was, a rich
successful merchant; never was there any one less military. He had
dressed up, one might suppose, for some fancy-dress ball.
I could see at once that he was ill at ease, anxious as ever to please
every one, to like every one, to be liked in return, but unable,
because of some thought that troubled him, to give his whole attention
to this business of pleasing.
He greeted me with a warmth that was really genuine although he
bestowed it upon his merest acquaintances. His great dream in life was
a universal popularity--that every one should love him. At any rate at
that time I thought that to be his dream--I know now that there was
something else.
"But Ivan Petrovitch!... This is delightful! Here we all are! What
pleasure! Thank God, we're all here, no delays, nothing unfortunate.
An Englishman?... Indeed, I am very glad! Your friend speaks Russian?
Not very much, but enough?... You know Vladimir Stepanovitch? Dr.
Nikitin ... my friend Meester Durward. Also Meester?... ah, I beg your
pardon, Tronsart. Two Englishmen in our Otriad ... the alliance, yes,
delightful!"
Nikitin slowly opened his eyes, shook hands with me and with
Trenchard, said that he was glad to see us and was silent again.
Trenchard stammered and blushed, said something in very bad Russian,
then glanced anxiously, with an eager light in his mild blue eyes, in
the direction of the excited crowd that chattered and stirred about
the train. There was something, in that look of his, that both touched
and irritated me. "What does he come for?" I thought to myself. "With
his bad Russian and his English prejudices. Of course he'll be lonely
and then he'll be in every one's way."
I could remember, readily enough, some of the loneliness of those
first months of my own, when both war and the Russians had differed so
from my expectations. This fellow looked just the figure for high
romantic pictures. He had, doubtless, seen Russia in the colours of
the pleasant superficial books of travel that have of late, in
England, been so popular, books that see in the Russian a blessed sort
of Idiot unable to read or write but vitally conscious of God, and in
Russia a land of snow, ikons, mushrooms and pilgrims. Yes, he would be
disappointed, unhappy, and tiresome. Upon myself would fall the chief
burden of his trouble--I should have enough upon my shoulders without
him.
The golden fan had vanished from the station walls. A dim pale glow,
with sparkles as of gold dust shining here and there upon that grimy
world, faltered and trembled before the rattle and roar that
threatened it. Nevertheless, Spring was with us at our departure. As
the bells rang, as the ladies of our Committee screamed and laughed,
as Anna Mihailovna showered directions and advice upon us, as we
crowded backwards into our compartment before the first jolt of the
departing train, Spring was with us ... but of course we were all of
us too busy to be aware of it.
Nikitin, I remember, reduced us very quickly, for all practical
purposes, to a company of three. He lowered one of the upper beds,
climbed into it, stretched himself out and lay in silence staring at
the carriage-roof. His body was a shadow in the half-light, touched
once and again by the gesture of the swinging lamp, that swept him out
of darkness and back into it again. The remaining three of us did not
during either that evening or the next day make much progress. At
times there would of course be tea, and then the two Sisters who were
in a compartment close at hand joined us.
Marie Ivanovna, Trenchard's lady, was quieter than she had been
before. Her face, which now seemed younger than ever, wore a look of
important seriousness as though she were conscious of the indecency of
her earlier excitement. She spoke very little, but no one could be in
her presence without feeling the force of her vitality like some
hammer, silent but of immense power, beating relentlessly upon the
atmosphere. Its effect was the stronger in that one realised how
utterly at present she was unable to deal with it. Her very
helplessness was half of her power--half of her danger too. She was
most certainly not beautiful; her nose was too short, her mouth too
large, her forehead, from which her black hair was brushed straight
back, too high. Her complexion was pale and when she was confused,
excited, or pleased, the colour came into her face in a faint flush
that ebbed and flowed but never reached its full glow. Her hands were
thin and pale. It was her eyes that made her so young; they were so
large and round and credulous, scornful sometimes with the scorn of
the very young for all the things in the world that they have not
experienced--but young especially in all their urgent capacity for
life, in their confidence of carrying through all the demands that
the High Gods might make upon them. I knew as I looked at her that at
present her eagerness for experience was stronger, by far, than her
eagerness for any single human being. I wondered whether Trenchard
knew that. He was, beyond discussion, most desperately in love; the
love of a shy man who has for so many years wondered and dreamed and
finds, when the reality comes to him, that it is more, far more, than
he had expected. When she came in to us he sat very quietly by her
side and talked, if he talked at all, to the other Sister, a stout
comfortable woman with no illusions, no expectations, immense capacity
and an intensely serious attitude to food and drink.
Trenchard let his eyes rest upon his lady's face whenever she was
unaware, but I could see that he was desperately anxious not to offend
her. His attitude to all women, even to Anna Petrovna, the motherly
Sister, was that of a man who has always blundered in their company,
who has been mocked, perhaps, for his mistakes. I could see, however,
that his pride in his new possession, his pride and his happiness,
carried with it an absolute assurance of his security. He had no
doubts at all. He seemed, in this, even younger than she.
Through all that long Spring day we wandered on--wandering it seemed
as the train picked its way through the fields under a sky of blue
thin and fine like glass; through a world so quiet and still that
birds and children sang and called as though to reassure themselves
that they were not alone. Nothing of the war in all this. At the
stations there were officers eating "Ztchee" soup and veal and
drinking glasses of weak tea, there were endless mountains of hot meat
pies; the ikons in the restaurants looked down with benignancy and
indifference upon the food and the soldiers and beyond the station the
light green trees blowing in the little wind; the choruses of the
soldiers came from their trains as though it were the very voice of
Spring itself. It sounded in the distance like--
_Barinisha Barinisha--Pop.
Barinisha--Pop.
So--la, la--la ...
Bar ... inisha la._
The bell rang, officers with meat pies in their hands came running
across the platform. We swung on again through the green golden day.
Andrey Vassilievitch of course chattered to us all. It was his way,
and after a very brief experience of it one trained oneself to regard
it as an inevitable background, like the jerking and smoke of the
train, the dust, the shrill Russian voices in the next compartment,
the blowing of paper to and fro in the corridor. I very quickly
discovered that he was intensely conscious of Nikitin, who scarcely
throughout the day moved from his upper bunk. Andrey Vassilievitch
handed him his tea, brought his meat pies and sandwiches from the
station, and offered him newspapers. He did not, however, speak to him
and I was aware that throughout that long day he was never once
unconscious of him. His chatter, which was always the most
irrepressible thing in the world, had, perhaps, to-day some direction
behind it. For the first time in my long acquaintance with Andrey
Vassilievitch he interested me. The little man was distressed by the
heat and dirt; his fingers were always flickering about his clothes.
He was intensely polite to every one, especially to Trenchard, paying
him many compliments about England and the English. The English were
the only "sportsmen" in the world. He had been once in London for a
week; it had rained very much, but one afternoon it had been fine,
and then what clothes he had seen! But the City! He had been down into
the City and was lost in admiration; he had also been lost in
practical earnest and had appealed to one of the splendid policemen as
to the way to Holborn Viaduct, a name that he was quite unable to
pronounce. This incident he told us several times. Meanwhile ... he
hoped he might ask without offence ... what was our Navy doing? Why
weren't our submarines as active as the German submarines? And in
France ... how many soldiers had we now? He did hope that he was not
offending.... He spoke rapidly and indistinctly and much of his
conversation Trenchard did not understand; he made some rather stupid
replies and Marie Ivanovna laughed.
She spoke English very well, with an accent that was charming. She had
had, she said, an English nurse, and then an English governess.
Of course they asked me many questions about the future. Would we be
close to the Front? How many versts? Would there be plenty of work,
and would we _really_ see things? We wanted to be useful, no use going
if we were not to be useful. How many Sisters were there then already?
Were they "sympathetic"? Was Molozov, the head of the Otriad, an
agreeable man? Was he kind, or would he be angry about simply nothing?
Who would bandage and who would feed the villagers and who would bathe
the soldiers? Were the officers of the Ninth Army pleasant to us?
Where? Who? When? The day slipped away, the colours were drawn from
the sky, the fields, the hills, the stars came out in their myriads,
thickly clustered in ropes, and lakes and coils of light; the air was
scented with flowers. The second night passed.
The greater part of the next day was spent in H----, a snug town with
a little park like a clean handkerchief, streets with coloured shops,
neat and fresh-painted like toys from a toy-shop, little blue trains,
statues of bewigged eighteenth-century kings and dukes, and a
restaurant, painted Watteau-fashion with bright green groves, ladies
in hoops and powder, and long-legged sheep. Here we wandered, five of
us. Nikitin told us that he would meet us at the station that evening.
He had his own business in the place. The little town was delivered
over to the Russian army but seemed happy enough in its deliverance. I
have never realised in any place more completely the spirit of bright
cheerfulness, and the soldiers who thronged the little streets were as
far from alarm and thunder as the painted sheep in the restaurant.
Marie Ivanovna was as excited as though she had never been in a town
before. She bought a number of things in the little expensive
shops--eau-de-Cologne, sweets, an electric lamp, a wrist-watch, and
some preserved fruit. Trenchard made her presents; she thanked him
with a gratitude that made him so happy that he stumbled over his
sword more than ever, blushing and pushing his cap back from his head.
There are some who might have laughed at him, carrying her parcels,
his face flushed, his legs knocking against one another, but it was
here, at H----, that, for the first time, I positively began to like
him. By the evening when we were assembled in the station again as I
looked at him standing, waiting for directions, smiling, hot, untidy
and awkward, I knew that I liked him very much indeed....
Our new train overflowed: with the greatest difficulty we secured a
small wooden compartment with seats sharp and narrow and a smell of
cabbage, bad tobacco, and dirty clothes. The floor was littered with
sunflower seeds and the paper wrappings of cheap sweets. The air came
in hot stale gusts down the corridor, met the yet closer air of our
carriage, battled with it and retired defeated. We flung open the
windows and a cloud of dust rose gaily to meet us. The whole of the
Russian army seemed to be surging upon the platform; orderlies were
searching for their masters, officers shouting for their orderlies,
soldiers staggering along under bundles of clothes and rugs and
pillows; here a group standing patiently, each man with his
blue-painted kettle and on his face that expression of happy,
half-amused, half-inquisitive, wholly amiable tolerance which reveals
the Russian soldier's favourite attitude to the world. Two priests
with wide dirty black hats, long hair, and soiled grey gowns slowly
found their way through the crowd. A bunch of Austrian prisoners in
their blue-grey uniform made a strange splash of colour in a corner of
the platform, where, very contentedly, they were drinking their tea;
some one in the invisible distance was playing the balalaïka and every
now and then some church bell in the town rang clearly and sharply
above the tumult. The thin films of dust, yellow in the evening sun,
hovered like golden smoke under the station roof. At last with a
reluctant jerk and shiver the train was slowly persuaded to totter
into the evening air; the evening scents were again around us, the
balalaïka, now upon the train, hummed behind us, as we pushed out upon
her last night's journey.
The two Sisters had the seats by the windows; Nikitin curled up his
great length in another corner and Andrey Vassilievitch settled
himself with much grunting and many exclamations beside him. I and
Trenchard sat stiffly on the other side.
I had, long ago, accustomed myself to sleep in any position on any
occasion, however sudden it might be, and I fancied that I should now,
in a moment, be asleep, although I had never, in my long travelling
experience, known greater discomfort. I looked at the dim lamp, at the
square patch beyond the windows, at Nikitin's long body, which seemed
nevertheless so perfectly comfortable, and at Andrey Vassilievitch's
short fat one, which was so obviously miserably uncomfortable; I smelt
the cabbage, the dust, the sunflower seeds; first one bone then
another ached, in the centre of my back there was an intolerable
irritation; above all, there was in my brain some strange insistent
compulsion, as though some one were forcing me to remember something
that I had forgotten, or as though again some one were fore-warning me
of some peril or complication. I had, very distinctly, that
impression, so familiar to all of us, of passing through some
experience already known: I had seen already the dim lamp, the square
patch of evening sky, Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch.... I knew that in
a moment Trenchard.... He did.... He touched my arm.
"Can you sleep?" he whispered.
"No," I answered.
"It's terribly hot, close--smell.... Are you going to sleep?"
"No," I whispered back again.
"Let us move into the corridor. It will be cooler there."
There seemed to me quite a new sound of determination and resolve in
his voice. His nervousness had left him with the daylight. He led the
way out of the carriage, turned down the little seats in the corridor,
provided cigarettes.
"It isn't much better here, but we'll have the window open. It'll get
better. This is really war, isn't it, being so uncomfortable as this?
I feel as though things were really beginning."
"Well, we shall be there to-morrow night," I answered him. "I hope
you're not going to be disappointed."
"Disappointed in what?" His voice was quite sharp as he spoke to me,
"You don't know what I want."
"I suppose you're like the rest of us. You want to see what war really
is. You want to do some good if you can. You want to be seriously
occupied in it to prevent your thinking too much about it. Then,
because you're English, you want to see what the Russians are really
like. You're curious and sympathetic, inquisitive and, perhaps, a
little sentimental about it.... Am I right?"
"No, not quite--there are other things. I'd like to tell you. Do you
mind," he said suddenly looking up straight into my face with a
confiding smile that was especially his own, "if I talk, if I tell you
why I've come? I've no right, I don't know you--but I'm so happy
to-night that I _must_ talk--I'm so happy that I feel as though I
shall never get through the night alive."
Of our conversation after this, or rather of _his_ talk, excited,
eager, intimate and shy, old and wise and very, very young, I remember
now, I think, every word with especial vividness. After events were to
fix it all in my brain with peculiar accuracy, but his narration had
that night of itself its own individual quality. His was no ordinary
personality, or, at any rate, the especial circumstances of the time
drove it into no ordinary shape, and I believe that never before in
all his days had he spoken freely and eagerly to any one. It was
simply to-night his exultation and happiness that impelled him,
perhaps also some sense of high adventure that his romantic character
would, most inevitably, extract from our expedition and its purposes.
At any rate, I listened, saying a word now and then, whilst the hour
grew dark, lit only by the stars, then trembled into a pale dawn
overladen with grey dense clouds, which again broke, rolled away,
before another shining, glittering morning. I remember that it was
broad daylight when we, at last, left the corridor.
"I'm thirty-three," he said. "I don't feel it, of course; I seem to be
now only just beginning life. I'm a very unpractical person and in
that way, perhaps, I'm younger than my age."
I remember that I said something to him about his, most certainly,
appearing younger.
"Most certainly I do. I'm just the same as when I went up to Cambridge
and I was then as when I first went to Rugby. Nothing seems to have
had any effect upon me--except, perhaps, these last two days. Do you
know Glebeshire?" he asked me abruptly.
I said that I had spent one summer there with a reading party.
"Ah," he answered, smiling, "I can tell, by the way you say that, that
you don't really know it at all. To us Glebeshire people it's
impossible to speak of it so easily. There are Trenchards all over
Glebeshire, you know, lots of them. In Polchester, our cathedral town,
where I was born, there are at least four Trenchard families. Then in
Truxe, at Garth, at Rasselas, at Clinton--but why should I bother you
with all this? It's only to tell you that the Trenchards are simply
Glebeshire for ever and ever. To a Trenchard, anywhere in the world,
Glebeshire is hearth and home."
"I believe I've met," I said, "your Trenchards of Garth. George
Trenchard.... She was a Faunder. They have a house in Westminster.
There's a charming Miss Trenchard with whom I danced."
"Yes, those are the George Trenchards," he answered with eagerness and
delight, as though I had formed a new link with him. "Fancy your
knowing them! How small the world is! My father was a cousin, a first
cousin, of George Trenchard's. The girl--you must mean Millie--is
delightful. Katherine, the elder sister, is married now. She too is
charming, but in a different, graver way."
He spoke of them all with a serious lingering pleasure, as though he
were summoning them all into the dusty, stuffy corridor, carrying them
with him into these strange countries and perilous adventures.
"They always laughed at me--Millie especially; I've stayed sometimes
with them at Garth. But I didn't mean really to talk about _them_--I
only wanted to show you how deeply Glebeshire matters to the
Trenchards, and whatever happens, wherever a Trenchard goes, he always
really takes Glebeshire with him. I was born in Polchester, as I said.
My father had a little property there, but we always lived in a little
round bow-windowed house in the Cathedral Close. I was simply brought
up on the Cathedral. From my bedroom windows I looked on the whole of
it. In our drawing-room you could hear the booming of the organ. I was
always watching the canons crossing the cathedral green, counting the
strokes of the cathedral bell, listening to the cawing of the
cathedral rooks, smelling the cathedral smell of cold stone, wet
umbrellas and dusty hassocks, looking up at the high tower and
wondering whether anywhere in the world there was anything so grand
and fine. My moral world, too, was built on the cathedral--on the
cathedral 'don'ts' and 'musts,' on the cathedral hours and the
cathedral prayers, and the cathedral ambitions and disappointments. My
father's great passion was golf. He was not a religious man. But my
mother believed in the cathedral with a passion that was almost a
disease. She died looking at it. Her spirit is somewhere round it now,
I do believe."
He paused, then went on:
"It was the cathedral that made me so unpractical, I suppose. I who am
an only child--I believed implicitly in what I was told and it always
was my mother who told me everything."
He was, I thought, the very simplest person to whom I had ever
listened. The irritation that I had already felt on several occasions
in his company again returned. "My father's great passion was golf"
would surely in the mouth of another have had some tinge of irony.
In Trenchard's mild blue eyes irony was an incredible element. I could
fancy what he would have to say to the very gentlest of cynics; some
of the sympathy I had felt for him during the afternoon had left me.
"He's very little short of an idiot," I thought. "He's going to be
dreadfully in the way."
"I was the only child, you see," he continued. "Of course I was a
great deal to my mother and she to me. We were always together. I
don't think that even when I was very young I believed all that she
told me. She seemed to me always to take everything for granted.
Heaven to me was so mysterious and she had such definite knowledge. I
always liked things to be indefinite ... I do still." He laughed,
paused for a moment, but was plainly now off on his fine white horse,
charging the air, to be stopped by no mortal challenge. I had for a
moment the thought that I would slip from my seat and leave him; I
didn't believe that he would have noticed my absence; but the thought
of that small stuffy carriage held me.
But he _was_ conscious of me; like the Ancient Mariner he fixed upon
my arm his hand and stared into my eyes:
"There were other things that puzzled me. There was, for instance, the
chief doctor in our town. He was a large, fat, jolly red-faced man,
clean-shaven, with white hair. He was considered the best doctor in
the place--all the old maids went to him. He was immensely jolly, you
could hear his laugh from one end of the street to the other. He was
married, had a delightful little house, where his wife gave charming
dinners. He was stupid and self-satisfied. Even at his own work he was
stupid, reading nothing, careless and forgetful, thinking about golf
and food only all his days. He was a snob too and would give up any
one for the people at the Castle. Even when I was a small boy I
somehow knew all this about him. My father thought the world of him
and loved to play golf with him.... He was completely happy and
successful and popular. Then there was another man, an old canon who
taught me Latin before I went to Rugby, an old, untidy, dirty man,
whose sermons were dull and his manners bad. He was a failure in
life--and he was a failure to himself; dissatisfied with what he used
to call his 'bundle of rotten twigs,' his life and habits and
thoughts. But he thought that somewhere there was something he would
find that would save him--somewhere, sometime ... not God
merely--'like a key that will open all the doors in the house.' To me
he was fascinating. He knew so much, he was so humble, so kind, so
amusing. Nobody liked him, of course. They tried to turn him out of
the place, gave him a little living at last, and he married his cook.
Was she his key? She may have been ... I never saw him again. But I
used to wonder. Why was the doctor so happy and the little canon so
unhappy, the doctor so successful, the canon so unsuccessful? I
decided that the great thing was to be satisfied with oneself. I
determined that I would be satisfied with myself. Well, of course I
never was--never have been. Something wouldn't let me alone. The key
to the door, perhaps ... everything was shut up inside me, and at
last I began to wonder whether there was anything there at all. When
at nineteen I went to Cambridge I was very unhappy. Whilst I was there
my mother died. I came back to the little bow-windowed house and lived
with my father. I was quite alone in the world."
In spite of myself I had a little movement of impatience.
"How self-centred the man is! As though his case were at all peculiar!
Wants shaking up and knocking about."
He seemed to know my thought.
"You must think me self-centred! I was. For thirteen whole years I
thought of nothing but myself, my miserable self, all shut up in that
little town. I talked to no one. I did not even read--I used to sit in
the dark of the cathedral nave and listen to the organ. I'd walk in
the orchards and the woods. I would wonder, wonder, wonder about
people and I grew more and more frightened of talking, of meeting
people, of little local dinner-parties. It was as though I were on one
side of the river and they were all on the other. I would think
sometimes how splendid it would be if I could cross--but I couldn't
cross. Every year it became more impossible!"
"You wanted some one to take you out of yourself," I said, and then
shuddered at my own banality. But he took me very seriously.
"I did. Of course," he answered. "But who would bother? They all
thought me impossible. The girls all laughed at me--my own cousins.
Sometimes people tried to help me. They never went far enough. They
gave me up too soon."
"He evidently thinks he was worth a lot of trouble," I thought
irritably. But suddenly he laughed.
"That same doctor one day spoke of me, not knowing that I was near
him; or perhaps he knew and thought it would be good for me. 'Oh,
Trenchard,' he said. 'He ought to be in a nunnery ... and he'd be
quite safe, too. _He'd_ never cause a scandal!' They thought of me as
something not quite human. My father was very old now. Just before he
died, he said: 'I'd like to have had a son!' He never noticed me at
his bedside when he died. I was a great disappointment to him."
"Well," I said at last to break a long pause that followed his last
words, "what did you think about all that time you were alone?"
"I used to think always about two things," he said very solemnly. "One
was love. I used to think how splendid it would be if only there would
be some one to whom I could dedicate my devotion. I didn't care if I
got much in return or no, but they must be willing to have it ready
for me to devote myself altogether. I used to watch the ladies in our
town and select them, one after another. Of course they never knew and
they would only have laughed had they known. But I felt quite
desperate sometimes. I had so much in me to give to some one and the
years were all slipping by and it became, every day, more difficult.
There _was_ a girl ... something seemed to begin between us. She was
the daughter of one of the canons, dark-haired, and she used to wear a
lilac-coloured dress. She was very kind; once when we were walking
through the town I began to talk to her. I believe she understood,
because she was very, very young--only about eighteen--and hadn't
begun to laugh at me yet. She had a dimple in one cheek, very
charming--but some man from London came to stay at the Castle and she
was engaged to him. Then there were Katherine and Millie Trenchard, of
whom we were talking. Katherine never laughed at me; she was serious
and helped her mother about all the household things and the village
where they lived. Afterwards she ran away with a young man and was
married in London--very strange because she was so serious. There was
a great deal of talk about it at the time. Millie too was charming.
She laughed at me, of course, but she laughed at every one. At any
rate she was only cousinly to me; she would not have cared for my
devotion."
As he spoke I had a picture in my mind of poor Trenchard searching the
countryside for some one to whom he might be devoted, tongue-tied,
clumsy, stumbling and stuttering, a village Don Quixote with a stammer
and without a Dulcinea.
"They must have been difficult years," I said, and again cursed myself
for my banality.
"They were," he answered very gravely, "Very difficult."
"And your other thoughts?" I asked him.
"They were about death," he replied. "I had, from my very earliest
years, a great terror of death. You might think that my life was not
so pleasant that I should mind, very greatly, leaving it. But I was
always thinking--hoping that I should live to be very old, even though
I lost all my limbs and faculties. I believed that there was life of
some sort after death, but just as I would hesitate outside a house a
quarter of an hour from terror of meeting new faces so I felt about
another life--I couldn't bear all the introductions and the clumsy
mistakes that I should be sure to make. But it was more personal than
that. I had a horrible old uncle who died when I was a boy. He was a
very ugly old man, bent and whitened and gnarled, a face and hands
twisted with rheumatism. I used to call him Quilp to myself. He always
wore, I remember, an old-fashioned dress. Velvet knee-breeches, a
white stock, black shoes with buckles. I remember that his hands were
damp and hair grew in bushes out of his ears. Well, I saw him once or
twice and he filled me with terror like a figure out of the tapestry
up at the Castle. Then he died.
"Our house was small and badly shaped, full of dark corners, and after
his death he seemed to me to haunt the place. He figured Death to me
and until I was quite old, until I went to Rugby, I fancied that he
was sitting in a dark corner, on a chair, waiting, with his hands on
his lap, until the time came for him to take me. Sometimes I would
fancy that I heard him moving from one room to another, bringing his
chair with him. Then I began to have a dream, a dream that frequently
recurred all the time that I was growing up. It was a dream about a
huge dark house in a huge dark forest. It was early morning, the light
just glimmering between the thick damp trees. A large party of people
gathered together in a high empty room prepared for an expedition. I
was one of them and I was filled with sharp agonising terror.
Sometimes in my dream I drank to give myself courage and the glass
clattered against my lips. Sometimes I talked with one of the company;
the room was very dark and I could see no faces. Then we would start
trooping out into the bitterly cold morning air. There would be many
horses and dogs. We would lead off into the forest and soon (it always
happened) I would find myself alone--alone with the dripping trees
high around me and the light that seemed to grow no lighter and the
intense cold. Then suddenly it would be that I was the hunted, not the
hunter. It was Death whom we were hunting--Death, for me my uncle--and
I would fancy him waiting in the darkness, watching me, smiling,
hearing his hunters draw off the scent, knowing that they would not
find him, but that _he_ had found _me_. Then my knees would fail me, I
would sink down in a sweat of terror, and--wake!... Brrr!... I can see
it now!"
He shook himself, turning round to me as though he were suddenly
ashamed of himself, with a laugh half-shy, half-retrospective.
"We all have our dreams," he continued. "But this came too
often--again and again. The question of death became my constant
preoccupation as I grew to think I would never see it, nor hear men
speak of it, nor--"
"And you have come," I could not but interrupt him, "here, to the very
fortress--Why, man!--"
"I know," he answered, smiling at me. "It must seem to you ridiculous.
But I am a different person now--very different. Now I am ready, eager
for anything. Death can be nothing to me now, or if that is too bold,
at least I may say that I am prepared to meet him--anywhere--at any
time. I want to meet him--I want to show--"
"We have all," I said, "in our hearts, perhaps, come like that--come
to prove that our secret picture of ourselves, that picture so
different from our friends' opinion of us, is really the true one. We
can fancy them saying afterwards: 'Well, I never knew that so-and-so
had so much in him!' _We_ always knew."
"No, you see," Trenchard said eagerly, "there can be only one person
now about whose opinion I care. If _she_ thinks well of me--"
"You are very much in love," I said, and loosed, as I had expected,
the torrents of his happiness upon me.
"I was in Polchester when the war broke out. The town received it
rather as though a first-class company had come from London to act in
the Assembly Rooms for a fortnight. It was dramatic and picturesque
and pleasantly patriotic. They see it otherwise now, I fancy. I seemed
at once to think of Russia. For one thing I wanted desperately to
help, and I thought that in England they would only laugh at me as
they had always done. I am short-sighted. I knew that I should never
be a soldier. I fancied that in Russia they would not say: 'Oh, John
Trenchard of Polchester.... _He's_ no good!' before they'd seen
whether I could do anything. Then of course I had read about the
country--Tolstoi and Turgeniev, and a little Dostoevsky and even Gorki
and Tchekov. I went quite suddenly, making up my mind one evening. I
seemed to begin to be a new man out of England. The journey delighted
me.... I was in Moscow before I knew. I was there three months trying
to learn Russian. Then I came to Petrograd and through the English
Embassy found a place in one of the hospitals, where I worked as a
sanitar for three months. I did not leave England until November, so
that I have been in Russia now just six months. It was in this
hospital that I met Miss Krassovsky--Marie Ivanovna. From the first
moment I loved her, of course. And she liked me. She was the first
woman, since my mother, who had really liked me. She quickly saw my
devotion and she laughed a little, but she was always kind. I could
talk to her and she liked to listen. She had--she has, great ideals,
great hopes and ambitions. We worked together there and then,
afterwards, in those beautiful spring evenings in Petrograd when the
canals shone all night and the houses were purple, we walked.... The
night before last night I begged her to marry me ... and she accepted.
She said that we would go together to the war, that I should be her
knight and she my lady and that we would care for the wounds of the
whole world. Ah! what a night that was--shall I ever forget it? After
she had left me, I walked all night and sang.... I was mad.... I am
mad now. That she should love _me_! She, so beautiful, so pure, so
wonderful. I at whom women have always laughed. Ah! God forgive me, my
heart will break--"
As he spoke the heavy grey clouds of the first dawn were parting and a
faint very liquid blue, almost white and very cold, hovered above dim
shapeless trees and fields. I flung open the corridor window and a
sound of running water and the first notes of some sleepy bird met me.
"And her family?" I said. "Who are they, and will they not mind her
marrying an Englishman?"
"She has only a mother," he answered. "I fancy that Marie has always
had her own way."
"Yes," I thought to myself. "I also fancy that that is so." A sense of
almost fatherly protection had developed in myself towards him. How
could he, who knew nothing at all of women, hope to manage that
self-willed, eager, independent girl? Why, why, why had she engaged
herself to him? I fancied that very possibly there were qualities in
him--his very childishness and helplessness--which, if they only
irritated an Englishman, would attract a Russian. Lame dogs find a
warm home in Russia. But did she know anything about him? Would she
not, in a week, be irritated by his incapacity? And he--he--bless his
innocence!--was so confident as though he had been married to her for
years!
"Look here!" I said, moved by a sudden impulse. "Will you mind if,
sometimes, I tell you things? I've been to the war before. It's a
strange life, unlike anything you've ever known--and Russians too are
strange--especially at first. You won't take it badly, if--"
He touched my arm with his hand while his whole face was lighted with
his smile. "Why, my dear fellow, I shall be proud. No one has ever
thought me worth the bother. I want to be--to be--at my best here.
Practical, you know--like others. I don't want her to think me--"
"No, exactly," I said hurriedly, "I understand." Gold was creeping
into the sky. A lark rose, triumphant. A pool amongst the reeds blazed
like a brazen shield. The Spring day had flung back her doors. I saw
that suddenly fatigue had leapt upon my friend. He tottered on his
little seat, then his face, grey in the light, fell forward. I caught
him in my arms, half carried, half led him into our little carriage,
arranged him in the empty corner, and left him, fast, utterly fast,
asleep.