FIRST MOVE TO THE ENEMY
It was during two nights in the forest of S----, about which I must
afterwards write, that I had those long conversations with Trenchard,
upon whose evidence now I must very largely depend. Before me as I
write is his Diary, left to me by him. In this whole business of the
war there is nothing more difficult than the varied and confused
succession with which moods, impressions, fancies, succeed one upon
another, but Trenchard told me so simply and yet so graphically of the
events of these weeks that followed the battle of S---- that I believe
I am departing in no way from the truth in my present account, the
truth, at any rate as he himself believed it to be....
The only impression that he brought away with him from the battle of
S---- was that picture, lighted by the horizon fires, of Marie
Ivanovna kneeling with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. That, every
detail and colour of it, bit into his brain.
In understanding him it is of the first importance to remember that
this was the one and only love business of his life. The effect of
those days in Petrograd when Marie Ivanovna had shown him that she
liked him, the thundering stupefying effect of that night when she had
accepted his love, must have caught his soul and changed it as glass
is caught by the worker and blown into shape and colour. There he was,
fashioned and purified, ready for her use. What would she make of
him? That she should make nothing of him at all was as incredible to
him as that there should not be, somewhere in the world, Polchester
town in Glebeshire county.
There had been with him, I think, from the first a fear that "it was
all too good to be true"--_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_. It is not
easy for any man, after thirty years' shy shrinking from the world, to
shake himself free of superstitions, and such terrors the quiet and
retired Polchester had bred in Trenchard's heart as though it had been
the very epitome of life at its lowest and vilest. It simply came to
this, that he refused to believe that Marie Ivanovna had been given to
him only to be taken away again. About women he knew simply nothing
and Russian women are not the least complicated of their sex. About
Marie Ivanovna he of course knew nothing at all.
His first weeks in our Otriad had been like the painful return to drab
reality after a splendid dream. "After all I am the hopeless creature
I thought I was. What was there, in those days in Petrograd, that
could blind me?" His shyness returned, his awkwardness, his mistakes
in tact and resource were upon him again like a suit of badly made
clothes. He knew this but he believed that it could make no difference
to his lady. So sure was he of himself in regard to her--she might be
transformed into anything hideous or vile and still now he would love
her--that he could not believe that she would change. The love that
had come to them was surely eternal--it must be, it must be, it must
be....
He failed altogether to understand her youth, her inexperience, above
all her coloured romantic fancy. Her romantic fancy had made him in
her eyes for a brief hour something that he was not. After a month at
the war I believe that she had grown into a woman. She had loved him
for an instant as a young girl loves a hero of a novel. And although
she was now a woman she must still keep her romantic fancy. He was no
longer part of that--only a clumsy man at whom people laughed. She
must, I think, have suffered at her own awakening, for she was honest,
impetuous, pure, if ever woman was those things.
He did not see her as she was--he still clung to his confidence; but
he began as the days advanced to be terribly afraid. His fears centred
themselves round Semyonov. Semyonov must have seemed to him an awful
figure, powerful, contemptuous, all-conquering. Any blunders that he
committed were doubled by Semyonov's presence. He could do nothing
right if Semyonov were there. He was only too ready to believe that
Semyonov knew the world and he did not, and if Semyonov thought him a
fool--it was quite obvious what Semyonov thought him--then a fool he
must be. He clung desperately to the hope that there would be a
battle--a romantic dramatic battle--and that in it he would most
gloriously distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, he
would face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were no
terrors of hell--only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded,
and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture of
Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw his own most miserable exclusion.
In the days that followed there was much work and he was forgotten. He
assisted in the bandaging-room; in later days he was to prove most
efficient and capable, but at first he was shy and nervous and
Semyonov, who seemed always to be present, did not spare him.
Then, quite suddenly, Marie Ivanovna changed. She was kinder to him
than she had ever been, yes, kinder than during those early days in
Petrograd. We all noticed the change in her. When she was with him in
the bandaging-room she whispered advice to him, helped him when she
had a free moment, laughed with him, put him, of course, into a heaven
of delight. How happy at once he was! His clumsiness instantly fell
away from him, he only smiled when Semyonov sneered, his Russian
improved in a remarkable manner. She was tender to him as though she
were much older than he. He has told me that, in spite of his joy,
that tenderness alarmed him. Also when he kissed her she drew back a
little--and she did not reply when he spoke of their marriage.
But for four days he was happy! He used to sing to himself as he
walked about the house in a high cracked voice--one song _I did but
see her passing by_--another _Early one morning_--I can hear him now,
his voice breaking always on the high notes.
_Early one morning
Just as the sun was rising
I heard a maid singing
In the valley below:
"Ah! don't deceive me! Pray never leave me,'
How could you treat a poor maiden so!"_
His pockets were more full than ever of knives and string and buttons.
His smile when he was happy lightened his face, changing the lines of
it, making it if not handsome pleasant and friendly. He would talk to
himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at
three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder
whether she'll mind if I ask--" He had a large briar pipe at which he
puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of
matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's
damp," he explained to us a hundred times. "It's better damp...."
Then, quite suddenly, the blow fell.
One evening, as they were standing alone together in the yard watching
the yellow sky die into dusk, without any preparation, she spoke to
him.
"John," she said, "I can't marry you."
He heard her as though she had spoken to another man. It was as though
he said: "Ah, that will be bad news for so-and-so."
"I don't understand," he said, and instantly afterwards his heart
began to beat like a raging beast and his knees trembled.
"I can't marry you," she told him, "because I don't love you. Ah, I've
known it a long time--ever since we left Petrograd. I've often, often
wanted to tell you ... I've been afraid."
"You can't marry me?" he repeated, "But you must...." Then hurriedly:
"No, I shouldn't say that. You must forgive me ... you have confused
me."
"I'm very unhappy ... I've been unhappy a long time. It was a mistake
in Petrograd. I don't love you--but it isn't only that.... You
wouldn't be happy with me. You think now ... but it's a mistake."
He has told me that as the idea worked through to his brain his only
thought was that he must keep her at all costs, under any conditions,
keep her.
"You can't--you mustn't," he whispered, staring as though he would
hold her by her eyes. "Don't you see that you mustn't? What am I to do
after all this? What are we both to do? It's breaking everything. I
shan't believe in anything if you.... Ah! but no, you don't really
mean anything...."
He saw that she was trembling and he bent forward, put his arm very
gently round her as though he would protect her.
But she very strongly drew away from him, looked him in the face, then
dropped her eyes, let her whole body droop as though she were most
bitterly ashamed.
"I don't know," she said, "what I've been ... what I've done. During
these last weeks I've been terrible to myself--and yet it's better
too. I didn't live a real life before, and now I see things as they
are. I don't love you, John, and so we mustn't marry."
He looked at her and then suddenly wild, furious, shouting at her:
"You mustn't.... You dare not.... Then go if you wish. I don't want
you, do you hear?... I don't want.... I don't want you!"
She turned and walked swiftly into the house. He watched her go, then
with quick stumbling steps hurried into the field below the farm.
There he stood, thinking of nothing, knowing nothing, seeing nothing.
The dusk came up, there had been rain during the day, the mist was in
grey sheets, the wet dank smell of the earth and of the vegetables
amongst which he stood grew stronger as the light faded. He thought of
nothing, nothing at all. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, something
dropped--and he knelt down there on the soaking ground, searching. He
searched furiously, raging to himself again and again: "Oh! I must
find it! I must find it! I must find it!" His hands tore the wet
vegetables, were thick with the soil. Other things fell from his
pockets, Then the rain began to descend again, thin and cold. In some
building he could hear a horse moving, stamping. He pulled up the
vegetables by their roots in his search. As though a sword had struck
him his brain was clear. He knew of his loss. He flung himself on the
ground, rubbing the wet soil on to his face, whispering desperately:
"Oh God!--Oh God!--Oh God!"
On the day following we did not know of what had happened. Trenchard
was not with us, as he was sent about midday with some sanitars to
bury the dead in a wood five miles from M----. That must have been, in
many ways, the most terrible day of his life and during it, for the
first time, he was to know that unreality that comes to every one,
sooner or later, at the war. It is an unreality that is the more
terrible because it selects from reality details that cannot be
denied, selects them without transformation, saying to his victim:
"These things are as you have always seen them, therefore this world
is as you have always seen it. It is real, I tell you." Let that false
reality be admitted and there is no more peace.
On this day there were the two sanitars, whose faces now he knew,
walking solidly beside his cart, there were the little orchards with
the soldiers' tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the old
men, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage,
the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first trembling
heat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the world
but peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay back
on his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing
pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long
ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in
which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of
reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his
relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that
relationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a character
that was the stronger for misfortune. He submitted, crushed to the
ground. His mind now dwelt upon that journey from Petrograd, a journey
of incredible, ironic ecstasy lighted with the fires of the wonderful
spring that had accompanied it. He recalled every detail of his
conversation with me. His confidence that life would now be fine for
him--how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, the
treasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them?
It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair--blame of Marie
Ivanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile,
idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he not
have said that he refused to let her go, held to her, dominated her,
as a strong man would have done? No, without a word, except a cry of
impotent childish rage, he had submitted.... So, all his life it had
been--so, all his life it would be.
He could only wonder now at his easy ready belief that happiness would
last for him. Had happiness ever lasted? As a man began so he ended.
Life laughed at him and would always laugh. Nevertheless, he _had_
that journey--five days of perfect unalloyed delight. Nobody could rob
him of that. She had said to him that even at the beginning of the
journey she had known that she did not love him--she had known but he
had not, and even though he had cheated himself with the glittering
bubble of an illusion the splendour had been there....
Meanwhile behind his despair there was something else stirring. He has
told me that upon that afternoon he was only very dimly, very very
faintly aware of it, aware of it only fiercely to deny it. He knew,
however stoutly he might refuse to acknowledge it, that the events of
the last weeks had bred in him some curiosity, some excitement that
he could not analyse. He would like to have thought that his life
began and ended only in Marie Ivanovna, but the Battle of S---- had,
as it were in spite of himself, left something more.
He found that he recalled the details of that battle as though his
taking part in it had bound him to something. Even it was suggested to
him that there was something now that he must do outside his love for
Marie Ivanovna, something that had perhaps no connexion with her at
all. In the very heart of his misery he was conscious that a little
pulse was beating that was strange to him, foreign to him; it was as
though he were warned that he had embarked upon some voyage that must
be carried through to the very end. He was, in truth, less completely
overwhelmed by his catastrophe than he knew.
As they now advanced and entered upon the first outworks of the
Carpathians the day clouded. They stumbled down into a little narrow
brown valley and drove there by the side of an ugly naked stream,
wandering sluggishly through mud and weeds. Over them the woods, grey
and sullen, had completely closed. The sun, a round glazed disk
sharply defined but without colour, was like a dirty plate in the sky.
Up again into the woods, then over rough cart tracks, they came
finally to a standstill amongst thick brushwood and dripping
undergrowth.
They could hear, very far away, the noise of cannon. The sanitars were
inclined to grumble. "Nice sort of business, looking for dead men
here, your Honour.... We must leave the carts here and go on foot.
What's it wet for? It hasn't been raining."
Why was it wet, indeed? A heavy brooding inertia, Trenchard has told
me, seemed to seize them all. "They were not pleasant trees, you
know," I remember his afterwards telling me, "all dirty and tangled,
and we all looked dirty too. There was an unpleasant smell in the air.
But that afternoon I simply didn't care about anything, nothing
mattered." I don't think that the sanitars at that time respected
Trenchard very greatly. He wasn't, in any case, a man of authority and
his broken stammering Russian wouldn't help him. Then there is nothing
stranger than the fashion in which the Russian language will (if you
are a timid foreigner), of a sudden wilfully desert you. Be bold with
it and it may, somewhat haughtily, perhaps, consent to your use of
it ... be frightened of it and it will despise you for ever. Upon that
afternoon it deserted Trenchard; even his own language seemed to have
left him. His brain was cold and damp like the woods around him.
They passed through the thickets and came, to their great surprise,
upon a trench occupied by soldiers. This surprised them because they
had heard that the Austrians were many versts distant. The soldiers
also seemed to wonder. They explained their mission to a young officer
who seemed at first as though he would ask them something, then
checked himself, gave them permission to pass through and watched them
with grave gaze. After they had crossed the barbed wire the woods
suddenly closed about them as though a door had been softly shut
behind them. The ground now squelched beneath their feet, the sky
between the trees was like damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had
been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown
in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could
be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of
sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket
bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters
in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I
could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall
but I might have been alone at the end of the world. It was obvious
that the regimental sanitars had been there before us because there
were many new roughly made graves. There were letters too and post
cards lying about all heavy with wet and dirt. I picked up some of
these--letters from lovers and sisters and brothers. One letter I
remember in a large baby-hand from a boy to his father telling him
about his lessons and his drill, 'because he would soon be a soldier.'
One letter, too, from a girl to her lover saying that she had had a
dream and knew now that her 'dear Franz, whom she loved with all her
soul, would return to her!... I am quite confident now that we shall
be happy here again very soon....' In such a place, those words."
As he walked alone there he felt, as I had felt before the battle of
S----, that he had already been there. He knew those trees, that
smell, that heavy overhanging sky. Then he remembered, as I had
remembered, his dream. But whereas that dream had been to me only a
reflected story, with him it had lasted throughout his life. He knew
every step of that first advance into the forest, the look back to the
long dim white house with shadowy figures still about it, the avenue
with many trees, the horses and dogs down the first grey path, then
the sudden loneliness, the quiet broken only by the dripping of the
trees.
Always that had caught him by the throat with terror, and now to-day
he was caught once again. He was watched: he fancied that he could see
the eyes behind the thicket and hear the rustling movement of
somebody. To-day he could hear nothing. If at last his dream was to be
fashioned into reality let it be so. Did the creature wish to destroy
him, let it be so. He had no strength, no hope, no desire....
"It was there," he told me, "when I scarcely knew what was real and
what was not, that I saw that for which I was searching. I noticed
first the dark grey-blue of the trousers, then the white skull. There
was a horrible stench in the air. I called and the sanitars answered
me. Then I looked at it. I had never seen a dead man before. This man
had been dead for about a fortnight, I suppose. Its grey-blue trousers
and thick boots were in excellent condition and a tin spoon and some
papers were showing out of the top of one boot. Its face was a
grinning skull and little black animals like ants were climbing in and
out of the mouth and the eye-sockets. Its jacket was in good
condition, its arms were flung out beyond its head. I felt sick and
the whole place was so damp and smelt so badly that it must have been
horribly unhealthy. The sanitars began to dig a grave. Those who were
not working smoked cigarettes, and they all stood in a group watching
the body with a solemn and serious interest. One of them made a little
wooden cross out of some twigs. There was a letter just beside the
body which they brought me. It began: 'Darling Heinrich,--Your last
letter was so cheerful that I have quite recovered from my depression.
It may not be so long now before ...' and so on, like the other
letters that I had read. It grinned at us there with a devilish
sarcasm, but its trousers and boots were pitiful and human. The men
finished the grave and then, with their feet, turned it over. As it
rolled a flood of bright yellow insects swarmed out of its jacket, and
a grey liquid trickled out of the skull. The last I saw of it was the
gleam of the tin spoon above its boot...."
"We searched after that," he told me, "for several hours and found
three more bodies. They were Austrians, in the condition of the first.
I walked in a dream of horror. It was, I suppose, a bad day for me to
have come with my other unhappiness weighing upon me, but I was, in
some stupid way, altogether unprepared for what I had seen. I had, as
I have told you, thought of death very often in my life but I had
never thought of it like this. I did not now think of death very
clearly but only of the uselessness of trying to bear up against
anything when that was all one came to in the end. I felt my very
bones crumble and my flesh decay on my body, as I stood there. I felt
as though I had really been caught at last after a silly aimless
flight and that even if I had the strength or cleverness to escape I
had not the desire to try. I had been mocked with a week's happiness
only to have it taken from me for my enemy's ironic enjoyment. I had a
quite definite consciousness of my enemy. I had as a boy thought, you
remember, of my uncle--and now, as I moved through the wood, I could
hear the old man's chuckle just as he had chuckled in the old days,
snapping his fingers together and twitching his nose...."
They searched the wood until late in the afternoon, trampling through
the wet, peering through thickets, listening for one another's voices,
finding sometimes a trophy in the shape of an empty shrapnel case, an
Austrian cap or dagger. Then, quite suddenly, a sanitar noticed that
the bursting of the shrapnel was much closer than it had been during
the early afternoon. It was now, indeed, very near and they could
sometimes see the flash of fire between the trees.
"There's something strange about this, your Honour," said one of the
sanitars nervously, and they all looked at Trenchard as though it were
his fault that they were there. Then close behind them, with a snap of
rage, a shrapnel broke amongst the trees. After that they turned for
home, without a word to one another, not running but hastening with
flushed faces as though some one were behind them.
They came to the trench and to their surprise found it absolutely
deserted. Then, plunging on, they arrived at the two wagons, climbed
on to one of them, leaving Trenchard alone with the driver on the
other. "I tell you," he remarked to me afterwards, "I sank into that
wagon as though into my grave. I don't know that ever before or since
in my life have I felt such exhaustion. It was reaction, I suppose--a
miserable, wretched exhaustion that left me well enough aware that I
was the most unhappy of men and simply forced me, without a protest,
to accept that condition. Moreover, I had always before me the vision
of the dead body. Wherever I turned there it was, grinning at me, the
black flies crawling in and out of its jaws, and behind it something
that said to me: 'There! now I have shown you what I can do.... To
that you're coming.'..."
He must have slept because he was suddenly conscious of sitting up in
his car, surrounded by an intense stillness. He looked about him but
could see nothing clearly, as though he were still sleeping. Then he
was aware of a sanitar standing below the cart, looking up at him with
great agitation and saying again and again: "_Borjé moi! Borjé moi!
Borjé moi!_"
"What is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. The sanitar then seemed to
slip away leaving him alone with a vague sense of disaster. The sun
had set, but there was a moon, full and high, and now by its light he
could see that his wagon was standing outside the gate of the house at
M----. There was the yard, the bandaging-room, the long faded wall of
the house, the barn, but where? ... where?... He sat up, then jumped
down on to the road. The big white tent on the further side of the
yard, the tent that had, that very morning, been full of wounded, was
gone. The lines of wagons, horses and tents that had filled the field
across the road were gone. No voices came from the house--somewhere a
door banged persistently--other sound there was none.
The sanitars then surrounded him, speaking all together, waving their
arms, their faces white under the moon, their eyes large and
frightened like the eyes of little children. He tried to push their
babel off from him. He could not understand.... Was this a
continuation of the nightmare of the afternoon? There was a roar just
behind their ears as it seemed. They saw a light flash upon the sky
and fade, flash again and fade. With their faces towards the horizon
they watched.
"What is it?" Trenchard said at last. There advanced towards him then
from out of the empty house an old man in a wide straw hat with a
broom.
"What is it?" Trenchard said again.
"It's the Austrians," said the old man in Polish, of which Trenchard
understood very little. "First it's the Russians.... Then it's the
Austrians.... Then it's the Russians.... Then it's the Austrians. And
always between each of them I have to clean things up"--and some more
which Trenchard did not understand. The old man then stood at his gate
watching them with a gaze serious, sad, reflective. Meanwhile the
sanitars had discovered one of our own soldiers: this man, who had
been sitting under a hedge and listening to the Austrian cannon with
very uncomfortable feelings, told them of the affair. At three o'clock
that afternoon our Otriad had been informed that it must retreat
"within half an hour." Not only our own Sixty-Fifth Division, but the
whole of the Ninth Army was retreating "within half an hour." Moreover
the Austrians were advancing "a verst a minute." By four o'clock the
whole of our Otriad had disappeared, leaving only this soldier to
inform us that we must move on at once to T---- or S----, twenty or
thirty versts distant.
"Retreating!" cried Trenchard. "But we were winning! We'd just won a
battle!"
"_Tak totchno!_" said the soldier gravely, "Twenty versts! the horses
won't do it, your Honour!"
"They've got to do it!" said Trenchard sharply, and the echo of the
Austrian cannon, again as it seemed quite close at hand, emphasised
his words. Except for this the silence of the world around them was
eerie; only far away they seemed to hear the persistent rumble of
carts on the road.
"They're gone! They're all gone! We're left last of all!" and "The
Austrians advancing a verst a minute!"
He took a last look at the house which had seemed yesterday so
absolutely to belong to them and now was already making preparations
for its new guests. As he gazed he thought of his agony in that field
below the house. Only last night and now what years ago it seemed!
What years, what years ago!
He climbed wearily again upon his wagon. There had entered into his
unhappiness now a new element. This was a sensation of cold despairing
anger that ground should be yielded so helplessly. About every field,
every hedge and lane and tree, as slowly they jogged along he felt
this. Only to-day this corn, these stones, these flowers were Russian,
and to-morrow Austrian! This, as it seemed, simply out of the air,
dictated by some whispering devil crouching behind a hedge, afraid to
appear! This, too, when only a few hours ago there had been that
battle of S---- won by them after a struggle of many days; that
position, soaked with Russian blood, to be surrendered now as a leaf
blows in the wind.
When they arrived at T---- and found our Otriad he was, I believe, so
deeply exhausted that he was not conscious of his actions. His account
to me of what then occurred is fantastic and confused. He discovered
apparently the house where we were; it was then one o'clock in the
morning. Every one was asleep. There seemed to be no place for him to
be, he could find neither candles nor matches, and he wandered out
into the road again. Then, it seems, he was standing beside a deep
lake. "I can remember nothing clearly except that the lake was black
and endless. I stood looking at it. I could see the bodies out of the
forest, only now they were slipping along the water, their skulls
white and gleaming. I had also a confused impression that Russia was
beaten and the war over. And that for me too life was utterly at an
end.... I remember that I deliberately thought of Marie because it
hurt so abominably. I repeated to myself the incidents of the night
before, all of them, talking aloud to myself. I decided then that I
would drown myself in the lake. It seemed the only thing to do. I took
my coat off. Then sat down in the mud and took off my boots. Why I did
this I don't know. I looked at the water, thought that it would be
cold, but that it would soon be over because I couldn't swim. I heard
the frogs, looked back at the flickering fires amongst our wagons,
then walked down the bank...."
Nikitin must for some time have been watching him, because at that
moment he stepped forward, took Trenchard's arm, and drew him back.
Nikitin has himself told me that he was walking up and down the road
that night because he could not sleep. When he spoke to Trenchard the
man seemed dazed and bewildered, said something about "life being all
over for him and--death being horrible!"
Nikitin put his arm round him, took him back to his room, where he
made him a bed on the floor, gave him a sleeping-draught and watched
him until he slept.
That was the true beginning of the friendship between Nikitin and
Trenchard.