CHAPTER VII

ONE NIGHT

Marie Ivanovna herself spoke to me of Semyonov. She found me alone

waiting for my morning tea. We were before the others, and could hear,

in the next room, Molozov splashing water about the floor and crying

to Michail, his servant, to pour "_Yestsho! Yestsho!" "Yestsho!

Yestsho!_"--"Still more! Still more," over his head.

She stood in the doorway looking as though she hated my presence.

"The others have not arrived," I said. "It's late to-day."

"I can see," she answered. "Every one is idle now."

Then her voice changed. She came across to me. We talked of

unimportant things for a while. Then she said: "I'm very happy, Mr.

Durward.... Be kind about it. Alexei Petrovitch and I...." She

hesitated.

I looked at her and saw that she was again the young and helpless girl

whom I had not seen since that early morning before our first battle.

I said, very lamely, "If you are happy, Marie Ivanovna, I am glad."

"You think it terrible of me," she said swiftly. "And why do you all

talk of being happy? What does _that_ matter? But I can trust him.

He's strong and afraid of nothing."

I could say nothing.

"Of course you think me very bad--that I have treated

--John--shamefully--yes?... I will not defend myself to you. What is

there to defend? John and I could never have lived together, _never_.

You yourself must see that."

"It does not matter what I think," I answered. "I am Trenchard's

friend, and he has no knowledge of life nor human nature. He has made

a bad start. You must forgive me if I think more of him than of you,

Marie Ivanovna."

"Yes," she said fiercely. "It is John--John--John, you all think of.

But John would not have loved me if he knew me as I truly am. And now,

at last, I can be myself. It does not matter to Alexei Petrovitch what

I am."

"But you have known him so short a time--and you have been so quick.

If you had waited...."

"Waited!" she caught me up. "Waited! How can one wait when one isn't

allowed to wait? It must be finished here, at once, and I'm not going

to finish alone. I'm frightened, Mr. Durward, but also I must see it

right through. He makes me brave. He's afraid of nothing. I couldn't

leave this, and yet I was frightened to go on alone. With him beside

me I'm not afraid."

Anna Petrovna interrupted us.

"It's Goga's stomach again," she said placidly. "He's had great pain

all night. It was those sweets yesterday. Just give me that glass, my

dear. Weak tea's the only thing he can have."

Well, I had said nothing to Marie Ivanovna. What was there I could

have said?

And the next thing about Trenchard was that he had got his wish, and

was lying on his back once more, in one of our nice, simple,

uncomfortable haycarts, looking up at the evening sky. This was the

evening after his conversation with Semyonov. Quite suddenly the

battle had caught us into its arms again. It was raging now in the

woods to the right of us, woods on the further side of the Nestor,

situated on a tributary. I will quote now directly from his diary:

As our line of carts crossed the great river I could hear

the muffled "brum-brum" of the cannons and "tap-tap-tap" of

the machine-guns now so conventionally familiar. Nikitin was

lying in silence at my side. Behind us came twenty wagons

with the sanitars; the evening was very still, plum-colour

in the woods, misty over the river; the creaking of our

carts was the only sound, save the "brum-brum" and the

"tap-tap-tap"....

I lay on my back and thought of Semyonov and myself. I had

in my mind two pictures. One was of Semyonov sitting on the

stone under the cross, looking up at me with comfortable and

ironical insolence, Semyonov so strong and resolute and

successful. Semyonov who got what he wanted, did what he

wanted, said what he wanted.

The other picture was of myself, as I had been the other

night when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff to fetch

the wounded. I saw myself standing in a muddy little lane

just outside the town, under pouring rain. The wagons waited

there, the horses stamping now and then, and the wounded men

on the only wagon that was filled, moaned and cried.

Shrapnel whizzed overhead--sometimes crying, like an echo,

in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a

hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly

past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the

high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming.

At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with

wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and

isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the

body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions,

the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also

cry--after that, there would be the dismal silence again,

silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping

smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes

were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping

from me, slipping down my neck, squelching under my boots.

And as I stood there I was afraid. That was what I now saw.

I had been terribly afraid for the first time since I had

come to the war. I had worked all day in the bandaging room,

and perhaps my physical weariness was responsible; but

whatever it might be there I was, a coward. At the threat of

every shrapnel I bent my head and shrugged my shoulders, at

every cry of the wounded men--one man was delirious and sang

a little song--a shudder trembled all down my body. I

thought of the bridge between myself and the Otriad--how

easily it might be blown up! and then, if the Division were

beaten back what massacre there would be! I wanted to go

home, to sleep, to be safe and warm--above all, to be safe!

I saw before me some of the wounded whom I had bandaged

to-day--men without faces or with hanging jaws that must be

held up with the hand whilst the bandage was tied. One man

blind, one man mad (he thought he was drowning in hot

water), one man holding his stomach together with his hands.

I saw all these figures crowding round me in the lane--I

also saw the dead men in the forest, the skull, the flies,

the strong blue-grey trousers.... I shook so that my teeth

chattered--a very pitiful figure.

Well, that was the other night. It was true that to-night I

did not feel frightened--at least not as yet. But then it

was a beautiful evening, very peaceful, still and warm--and

there was Nikitin. In any case there were those two figures

whom I must consider--Semyonov and myself. That brief

conversation last night had brought us quite sharply face to

face. I found to my own surprise that Semyonov's declaration

of his engagement had not been a great shock to me, had not

indeed altered very greatly the earlier situation. But it

had shown me quite clearly that my own love for Marie

Ivanovna was in no way diminished, that I must protect her

from a man who was, I felt, quite simply a "beastly" man.

_Well_, then if Semyonov and I were to fight it out, I would

need to be at my best. Did that little picture of the other

evening show me at my best? This business presented a bigger

fight than the simple one with Semyonov. I knew, quite

clearly, as I lay on my back in the cart, that the fight

against Semyonov and the fight against ... was mingled

together, depended for their issue one upon the other--that

the dead men in the forest had no merely accidental

connexion with Marie Ivanovna's safety and Semyonov's

scornful piracies.

Well, _then_ ... Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle,

myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain!

What was to be the issue of all of it?

I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of

events that had brought me to this point. One: that drive

with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the

trench and heard the frogs. Two: the evening at O----, when

Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the

cannon. Three: the day at S---- and Marie kneeling on the

cart with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. Four: her refusal

of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night

Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now). Five: the

talk with Marie in the park. Six: the wet night at

Nijnieff. Seven: last night's little talk with Semyonov....

Yes, I could see now that I had been advancing always

forward into the forest, growing ever nearer and nearer,

perceiving now the tactics of the enemy, beaten here,

frightened there, but still penetrating--not, as yet,

retreating ... and always, my private little history

marching with me, confused with the private little histories

of all of the others, all of them penetrating more deeply

and more deeply....

And if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve

no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov--and, far

beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest.

_If_ I had lost my nerve!... _Had_ I? Was it only weariness

the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten,

and why, after all, should I imagine that I would be able to

put up a fight--I who had never in all my life fought

anything successfully? I lay on my back, looked at the sky.

I sat up, looked at the country, I set my teeth, looked at

Nikitin.

Nikitin grunted. "I've had a good nap," he said. "You should

have had one. There'll be plenty of work for us to-night by

the sound of it." We turned a corner of the road through the

wood and one of our own batteries jumped upon us.

"I'm glad it's not raining," I said.

"We've still some way to go," said Nikitin, sitting up.

"What a lovely evening!" Then he added, quite without

apparent connexion, "Well, you're more at home amongst us

all now, aren't you?"

"Yes," said I.

"I'm glad of that. And what do you think of Andrey

Vassilievitch?"

I answered: "Oh! I like him! ... but I don't think he's

happy at the war," I added.

"I want you to like him," Nikitin said. "He's a splendid man ... I

have known him many years. He is merry and simple and

it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh

at the best people. You must like him, 'Mr.'... He likes you

very much."

I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance

between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked

Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some

way behind us, then said:

"Of course, I am his friend if he wishes."

Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a

splendid fellow."

Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest

there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern

of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in

the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital,

fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on

trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full

moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know,

several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who

had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted

Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man

with twinkling eyes. "_Noo tak._ Fine, our hospital, don't

you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here,

_golubchik_, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing.

Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors,

some one. One moment.... _One_ ... moment. Ah! there you

are!" The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into

the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his

knees, his face grey under the moon, then huddled into

nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly

away.

"Here, water!... No, take him over there! That's right.

Well, 'Mr.'--how are you? Lovely night.... Plenty of work

there'll be, too. Oh! you're going down to the _Vengerovsky

Polk_? Yes, they're down to the right there

somewhere--across the fields.... Warm over there."

The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were

compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us

bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some

distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as

of a stone falling into water.[A] The candles twinkled in

the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree

celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as

children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the

effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn

ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the

sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall

under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path

stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn

stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in

the dark shadows of the forest.

[Footnote A: It must be remembered that this account is

Trenchard's--taken from his diary. In my own experience I

have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least

like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of

this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are

many statements for which I have only his authority.--P.D.]

A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin

spoke to them.

"Here, _golubchik_ ... tell me! what _polk_?"

"Moskovsky, your Honour."

"And the Vengerovsky ... they're to the right, are they?"

"Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the

forest."

"What? There where the road turns?"

"_Tak totchno._"

"How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?"

"_Ne mogoo znat._ I'm unable to say, your Honour ... but

there's been an attack there an hour ago."

"Are those ours?"--listening to a battery across the fields.

"Ours, your Honour."

"Well, we'll go on and see."

I had listened to this conversation with the sensation of a

man who has stopped himself on the very edge of a precipice.

I thought in those few moments with a marvellous and

penetrating clarity. I had, after all, been always until now

at the battle of S----, or when I had gone with the wagons

to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that

to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the

middle--the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the

pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been

shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle

of laconic brevity: "6.30 A. M., down to the battery. All

quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours killed, two

wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived

from the 'Doll's House'--all quiet there," and so on. This,

I knew, was the proper way to look at the affair: "6.0 A.

M., down to the battery. 7.0 A. M., breakfasted. 8.0 A. M.,

dead...." For the life of me now I could not look at it like

that. I saw a thousand things that were, perhaps, not really

there, but were there at any rate for me. If I was beaten

to-night I was beaten once and for all.... I saw the shining

road under the starlight and shadows of wounded men,

groaning and stumbling, whispering their way along.

"Let's go," said Nikitin.

I drew a breath and stepped out into the moonlight. A shell

burst with a delicate splash of fire amongst the stars. The

road looked very long and very, very lonely.

However, soon I found myself walking along it quite casually

and talking about unimportant peaceful things. "Come," I

thought to myself. "This really isn't so bad."

"It's a great pity," Nikitin said, "that I can't read

English. Have to take your novelists as they choose to give

them us. Who is there now in England?"

"Well," said I as one talks in a dream, "there's Hardy, and

Henry James, and Conrad. I've seen translations of Conrad in

Petrograd. And then there's Wells--"

"Yes, Wells I know. But he writes stories for boys....

There's Jack London, but his are American. I like to read an

English novel sometimes. Your English life is so cosy. You

have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We

don't know what comfort is in Russia."

A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three

rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly

together on the far horizon.

"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I

fancy that an English country-house...."

We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away

from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the

reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and

unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep.

On the left of the road there was a house standing back in

its own garden. I could see dimly that this was a row of

country villas.

"Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me.

"I must find the Colonel. The sanitars will come and fetch

you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging."

Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly

desolate. I stood back against the gate of the villa

watching soldiers hurry by, seeing high mysterious hedges,

the roofs of houses, a line of lighted sky, the tops of

trees, all these things rising and falling as the glare in

the heavens rose and fell. There was sometimes a terrible

noise and sometimes an equally terrible stillness. Somewhere

in the darkness a man was groaning, "Oh! ah!--Oh! ah!"

without cessation. Somewhere the gate of one of the villas

swung to and fro, creaking. Sometimes soldiers would stare

at my motionless figure and then pass on. All this time, as

in one's dreams sometimes one holds off a nightmare, I was

keeping my fear at bay. I had now exactly the sensation that

I had known so often in my dream, that I was standing

somewhere in the dark, that the Enemy was watching me and

waiting to spring. But to-night I was only _nearly_ afraid.

One step on my part, one extra noise, one more flare of

light, and I would abandon myself to panic, but, although

the perspiration was wet on my forehead, my heart thumping,

and my hands dry and hot, I was not yet _quite_ afraid.

I had a strange sensation of suffocation, as though I were

at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the

stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind

of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at

home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a

palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the

door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book

with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged"

above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood

under the picture in the summer.

A soldier stopped and spoke to me: "Your Honour, it's on the

right--the next gate." I followed him without attention,

having no doubt but that this was one of our own sanitars,

and accompanied a group of soldiers that surrounded a

bobbing kitchen on wheels. I was puzzled by the kitchen

because I knew that one had not been brought by our Otriad,

but I thought that the doctors of the Division had perhaps

begged our men to aid the army sanitars.

We hurried through a gate to the right, where in what

appeared to be a yard of some kind, the kitchen was

established and then, from out of the very earth as it

seemed, soldiers appeared, clustering around it with their

tin cans. The soldier who was in charge of the party said to

me in a confidential whisper: "There's plenty of _Kasha_,

your Honour, and the soup will last us, too."

"Very good," said I in a bewildered voice. At the strange

accent the soldier looked at me, and then I looked at the

soldier. The soldier was a stranger to me (a pleasant round

man with a huge smiling mouth and two chins) and I was a

stranger to the soldier.

"Well," said the soldier, looking, "I thought...."

"I thought--" said I, most uncomfortable.

The soldiers vanished back into the darknesses round the

kitchen. Voices, whispering, could be heard.

"Now, that's the end," thought I. "I'm shot as a German

spy."

I looked at the soldiers, clustered like bees round the

kitchen, then I slipped through the gate into the dark road.

I stood there listening. The battle seemed to have drawn

away, because I could hear rifles, machine-guns, cannon

muffled round a corner of the hill. Here there was now

silence, broken only by soldiers who hurried up the road or

went in and out at the villa gates. I felt abandoned. How

was I to discover Nikitin again? Before what gate had I

stood? I did not know; I seemed to know nothing.

I moved down the road, very miserable and very cold. I had

stupidly left my coat in one of the wagons. I walked on, my

boots knocking against one another, thinking to myself: "If

I'm not given something to do very soon I shall be just as I

was the other night at Nijnieff--and then I shall suddenly

take to my heels down this road as hard as I can go!"

It was then that I tumbled straight into the arms of

Nikitin, who was standing at the edge of the forest,

watching for me. I was so happy that I felt now afraid of

nothing. I held Nikitin's arm, babbling something about

kitchens and Germans.

"Well, I don't understand what you say," I remember Nikitin

replied; "but you must come and work. There's plenty of it."

We moved to a cottage on the very boundary of the forest,

where a little common ran down to the moonlight. Passing

through a narrow passage, I entered into a little room with

a large white stove. On the top of the stove, under the

roof, crouched a boy or a young man with long black hair and

a white face. This youth wore what resembled a white shirt

over baggy white trousers. His feet were bare and very

dirty. Nothing moved except his eyes. He sat there, in

exactly that position, all night.

The room was small but was the best that could be obtained.

Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect

shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and

under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and I worked

until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It

dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The

wounds were horrible. No man seemed to come into the room

with an unmangled body. The smell rose higher and higher,

the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms,

smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying

and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin,

his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting,

digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my

hands were doing.... Then suddenly the battle coming right

back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon

shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen

dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery

about the walls of the cottage--and through it all the white

youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without

pause....

"Ah, no, your Honour.... Ah, no! ... I can't! I can't! Oh,

oh, oh, oh!" and then sobs, the man breaking down like a

child, hiding his face in his arms, his wounded leg

twitching convulsively. I paused, wiped the sweat from my

eyes, stood up. Nikitin looked at me.

"Take some fresh air!" he said. "Go out with the stretcher

for half an hour. I can manage here."

I wiped my forehead.

"Sure you can manage?" I asked.

"Quite," said Nikitin. "Here, hold his back!... No, _durak_,

his _back_. _Bojé moi_, can't you get your arm under?

There--like that. _Horosho, golubchik, horosho_ ... only a

minute! There! There!"

I washed my hands and went out. The air caressed my forehead

like cold water; from the little garden at the back there

came scents of flowers; the moonlight was blue on the

common. Eight sanitars were waiting to start. The Feldscher

in charge of them did not, I thought, seem greatly pleased

when he saw me, but then I am often stupidly sensitive; no

one said anything and we started. We carried two stretchers

and a soldier from the trenches was with us to guide us.

I could see that the men were not happy. I heard one of them

mutter to another that they should not have been sent now;

that they should have waited until the attack was over ...

"and the full moon.... Did any one ever see such a moon?"

We came to cross-roads and advanced very carefully.

As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement.

The noise around us was terrific and different from any

noise that I heard before. I did not think at the time, but

was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost

directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position

about whose possession the battle was being fought), that

the noise was so tremendous. The echo flung everything back

so that each report sounded three or four times. This

certainly had the strangest effect--a background as it were

of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close

and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and

then suddenly an absolutely _smashing_ effect as though some

one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals

one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head

and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns. At every

_smashing_ noise the sanitars, who were, I believe,

schoolmasters and little clerks, and therefore of a more

sensitive head than the peasant soldier, ducked their heads,

and one fat red-faced man tried to lie down flat on two

occasions and was cursed heartily by the Feldscher. I myself

felt no fear but only a pounding exhilarating excitement,

because I was at last "really in it." We found one wounded

man very soon, lying under the hedge with the top of his

head gone. Four sanitars (their relief showed very plainly

in their faces) returned with him. We advanced again,

skirting now a little orchard and keeping always in the

shadow under the hedge. Our guide, the soldier, assured us

that the wounded man was "very near--quite close." Then we

came to a large barn on the edge of what seemed a silver

lake but was in reality a long field under the full light of

the moon. As we paused I saw, on the further side of the

field, two shells burst, very quickly, one after the other.

We all stopped under the shelter of the barn.

"Well," said the Feldscher to the soldier, "where's your

man?"

"Only a short way," said the soldier. "Quite close."

"Across that field?" asked the Feldscher, pointing to the

moonlight.

"Yes, certainly," said the soldier.

The Feldscher scratched his head. "We can't go further

without orders," he said. "That's very dangerous in front

there. I'm responsible for these men. We must return and

ask, your Honour," he said, turning to me.

"We shall be nearly an hour returning," I said. "Is your

friend badly wounded?" I asked the soldier.

"Very," said he.

"You see ..." I said to the Feldscher. "We can't possibly

leave him like that. It's only a little way."

The Feldscher shook his head. "I can't be responsible. I had

my orders to go so far and no further. I must see that my

men are safe."

The sanitars who were sitting in a row on their haunches

under the shadow of the barn all nodded their heads.

"I didn't know Russians were cowards," I said fiercely.

The Feldscher shook his head quite unmoved: "Your Honour

must understand that I had my orders." Then he added slowly:

"but of course if your Honour wishes to go yourself ... I

would come with you. The others ... they must do as they

please. They are in their right to return. But I should

advise that we return."

"I'm going on," I said.

I must say here that I felt no other sensation than a blind

and quite obstinate selfishness. I had no thought of Nikitin

or of the sanitars. I did not (and this I must emphasise)

think, for a moment, of the wounded man. If the situation

had been that by returning I should save many lives and by

advancing should save only my own I should still have

advanced. If the only hope for the wounded man was my

instant speech with Nikitin I would not have gone back to

speak with him. I was at this moment neither brave nor

fearful. I repeat that I had no sensation except an

absolutely selfish obstinate challenge that I, myself, was

addressing to Something in space. I was saying: "At last, my

chance has come. Now you shall see whether I fly from you or

no. _Now_ you shall do your worst and fail. I'm the hunter

now, not the hunted."

I was conscious of nothing but this quite childish

preoccupation with myself. I was, nevertheless, pleased with

myself. "There, you see," some one near me seemed to say,

"he's not quite so unpractical after all. He's full of

common sense." I looked at the row of sanitars squatting on

the ground, and felt like a schoolmaster with his children.

"You'd better go home then," I said scornfully. The

Feldscher, who was a short stocky man, with a red face and

melancholy eyes (something like a prize-fighter turned

poet), dismissed them. They went off in a line under the

hedge.

The man obviously thought me a tiresome prig. He had no

romantic illusions about the business; he had not been a

Feldscher during twenty years for nothing and knew that a

wound was a wound; when a man was dead he was _dead_.

However.... "Truly it's not far?" he asked the soldier.

"_Tak totchno_," the man answered, his face quite without

expression.

We crossed the moonlit field and for a brief moment silence

fell, as though an audience were holding its breath watching

us. On the other side were cottages, the outskirts of a tiny

village. Here beside these cottages we fell into a fantastic

world. That small village must in other times have been a

pretty place, nestling with its gardens by the river under

the hill. It seemed now to rock and rattle under the noise

of the cannon. All the open spaces were like white marble in

the moonlight and in these open spaces there was utter

silence and emptiness. The place seemed deserted--and yet,

in every shadow, in long lines under the cottage wells, in

little clumps and clusters round trees or ruins there were

eyes staring, the gleam of muskets shone, little specks of

light, dancing from wall to wall. Everywhere there were

bodies, legs, boots, arms, heads, sudden caps, sudden

fingers, sudden hot and streaming breaths. And over

everything this infernal noise and yet no human sound. A

nightmare of the true nightmare of dreams. The open silver

spaces, the little gardens thick with flowers, the high moon

and the starry sky, not a living soul to be seen--and

nevertheless watchers everywhere. "Step forward on to that

little plot of grass in front of the cottage windows and

you're a dead man"--the moonlight said. There were men in

the body of the earth, not in trenches, but in holes--my

foot stepped on a head of hair and some low voice cursed me.

I was, I suppose, by this time, a little delirious with my

adventure. I know that I could now distinguish no separate

sounds--shells and bullets had vanished and in their stead

were whispers and screams and shouts of triumph and bursts

of laughter. Songs in chorus, somewhere miners hammering

below the earth, somewhere storm at sea with the crash of

waves on rocks and the shriek of wind through rigging,

somewhere some one who dropped heavy loads of furniture so

carelessly that I cursed him--and always these little

patches of moonlight, so tempting just because one was

forbidden....

We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered

to us "to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire.

What did we want here now?"

"Have you any wounded?" we whispered in return.

"No, no," the answer came. "Keep away from the moonlight."

The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an

eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself.

"There's a man wounded behind the next lines," some voice

murmured.

We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep

banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If this

_had_ in reality been a nightmare this river could not have

obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our

dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in

a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river

(bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking

and quivering beneath us.

We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath

the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the

soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their boots stretched

to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain.

We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between

the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the

water.

"Any wounded?" we whispered again and again.

"No," the whisper came back. "Hasten.... Take care of the

moonlight."

And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the

cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard

here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldscher made an

exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together,

over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third

stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes,

smiled and said:

"Eh, _Bojé moi_ ... at last!"

As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he

fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up

the stretcher, the Feldscher wiped his forehead and crossed

himself.

"It's a heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man,"

looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently

not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in

the air, as though one were living in a world in which all

the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have

drawn away, and the "Boom--Boom--boom" in front of us was

echo from the hill....

We picked up the stretcher and started. It was fortunate for

us that we had that difficult bit beside the river at the

beginning of our journey. I don't know how we managed it,

stepping over the endless row of legs, with every side step

the stretcher lurching over to the left and threatening to

pitch us into the river. So slippery too was the ground that

our boots refused to grip. The man on the stretcher was

dreaming, making a little sound like an unceasing lullaby on

two notes--"Na ... na! Na ... na! Na ... na!"

We were compelled to cross the river twice, and the planks

bent under our weight until I was assured that they would

snap. My arms were beginning to ache and the sweat to

trickle down my spine. My right boot had rubbed my heel. We

left the river behind us and then, suddenly, my right hand

began to slip off the iron handle of the stretcher.

"We'll have to put it down a moment," I said. We laid it on

the ground and at the same instant a bullet sang so close to

my ear that I felt it as though an insect had bitten me.

Then a shell, exploding, as it seemed to us, amongst the

very cottages where we had just been, startled us.

"We saved our man," said the Feldscher, looking at the

soldier, "but we'd better move on. It's uncomfortable here."

We picked the thing up and started again, and at once my

hand began to slip away from its hold (nightmare sensation

exactly). I bent my head down, managed to lick my hand

without raising it, and stiffened the muscles of my arm. We

were watched, once more, by a million eyes--again I stepped

on a head of hair buried somewhere in the ground. Then some

voice cried shrilly: "Ah! Ah!" ... some man hit.

Every bone in my body began to ache. I was, of course,

rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my

legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and

sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders

seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would

separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began

again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain.

Once he asked me to stop. He apologised; I could see the

sweat pouring down his face: "A very big man'" he said.

Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time

been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now

the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly

from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one

of those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when

the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would

not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and

swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to

hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my

face was for some reason covered with mud.... There was a

snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers,

as though they had waited for their opportunity, slipped

down over my knees. I felt the cold night wind on my flesh.

Neither decency nor comfort mattered to me now--I would have

walked gladly naked through the world. The Feldscher was

making a grinding noise between his teeth. I was no longer

conscious of shell or bullets. I heard no noise. I was aware

of neither light nor darkness. I could not have told my name

had any one asked me it. I did not recognise trees nor

houses, nor was I at all aware that with a muddy face and my

trousers down to my knees I was a strange figure. I was

aware of one thing only--that I must keep my right hand on

the stretcher. My left behaved decently enough, but my right

was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I

said to it: "Ah! but I'll punish you when I get back!" I

with all my mental consciousness "willed" it to remain on

the handle. It slipped. I drove it back. It slipped further,

it was almost gone.... With a supreme effort I drove it back

again, "I _will_ fall off," said my hand. "You shall

_not_," said I. "I have!" cried my hand triumphantly.

"Back!" I swore, driving it.

We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded

man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I

have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any

effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my

aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered

about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I

thought.... "I shall sleep." I heard, from a great distance

as it seemed, the soldier's "Na ... Na! Na ... na!" I

replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ...

na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....

Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn

flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the

cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy

things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours

on our journey!

Well--I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right

were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree.

Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed,

their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the

young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night

and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a

scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt

and white trousers and had long black hair.

"Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him.

"Consumptive," he said.

I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the

trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint

blue like the colour of a bird's egg flood the sky, staining

it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased. There was

not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning

to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard,

was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He

was naked save for his white drawers. There was, I repeat,

not a sound. Our cottage looked so peaceful--smoke coming

from the chimney. No sign of the shambles, no sign except

the four dead men, all so grave and quiet. The blue in the

sky grew deeper. Then the sun rose, a jolly gold ball with

red clouds swinging in streamers away from it.

The birds sang above my head so loudly that the boy who was

mowing looked up at them. The soldier finished his washing,

put on his shirt. He was a Mahommedan, I perceived, because

he prayed, very solemnly, his face to the sun, bowing to the

ground. The grass fell before the flashing scythe, the sun

flamed behind the trees, and I was happy as I had never

known happiness in my life before.

I had done only what all the soldiers are doing every day of

their lives. I had been only where they always were.... But

I felt that I need never be afraid again. Every one knows

how an early summer morning can give one confidence; in my

happiness, God forgive me, I thought that my struggles were

at an end, that I had met my enemy and defeated him ... that

I was worthy and able to defend Marie.

These things may seem foolish now when one knows what

followed them, but the happiness of that morning at least

was real. Perhaps all over Europe there were men, at that

moment, happy as I was, because they had proved something to

themselves. Then Nikitin called to me, laughing.

"Tea, 'Mr.' and _bulki_ (white bread) and sausage?"

"All right, I'm coming," I answered. "Listen, _golubchik_,"

I called to the soldier. "Bring me some water in your

kettle. I'll wash my hands."

He came, smiling, towards me.

I have given the incidents of this night in great detail for

my own satisfaction, because I wish to forget nothing. To

others the little adventure must seem trivial, but to myself

it represented the climax of a chain of events.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

THE LOVERS

Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised

love--they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they

were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in

any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite

frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves. To expect that of

Semyonov at any time showed a lamentable lack of interest in human

character, but, as I have already said, our Otriad was always excited

by results rather than causes. Semyonov had never shown himself

ashamed of anything, and he most certainly did not intend to begin

now. He had never disguised his love for Marie Ivanovna and now she

was his "spoils"--won by his own strong piratical hand from the good

but rather feeble bark Trenchard--he manifested his scorn of us more

openly than ever.

He seemed to have grown rather stronger and stouter during these last

months, and his square stolidity was a thing at which to marvel. Had

he been taller, had his beard been pointed rather than square, he

would have been graceful and even picturesque--but his figure, as he

strode along, showed foursquare, as though it had been hewn out of

wood; one of those pale, almost white, honey-coloured woods would

give the effect of his fair beard and eyebrows. His thick red lips

were more startling than ever, curved as they usually were in cynical

contempt of some foolish victim. How he did despise us!

When one of our childish quarrels arose at meal-times he would say

nothing, but would continue stolidly his serious business of eating.

He was very fond of his food, which he ate in the greediest manner.

When the quarrel was subsiding, as it usually did, into the first

glasses of tea, he would look up, watch us with his contemptuous blue

eyes, laugh and say: "Well, and now?... Who is it next?"--and every

one would be clumsily embarrassed.

We were often, as are all Russian companies, ridiculously amused about

nothing. At the most serious crises we would, like Gayeff in "The

Cherry Orchard," suddenly break into stupid bursts of laughter, quite

aimless but with a great deal of sincerity. Whirls of laughter would

invade our table. "Oh, do look at Goga!" some one would say, and there

we all were, perhaps for a quarter of an hour! Semyonov, strangely

enough, shared this childish habit, and there was nothing odder than

to see the man lose control of himself, double himself up, laugh until

the tears ran down his face--simply at nothing at all!

The truth is that now I was very far from hating him. There were

moments, certainly, when he was rude to the Sisters, when he was

abominably greedy, when he was ruthlessly selfish, when he poured

scorn upon me; at such times I thought him, as Trenchard has expressed

it, a "beastly" man. He certainly had no great opinion of myself. "You

think yourself very clever, Ivan Andreievitch. Yes, you think you're

watching all of us and studying all our characters. And I suppose

there'll be a book one day, another of those books by Englishmen about

poor Russians--and you'll flatter yourself that now at last one true

picture has been given ... but let me tell you that you'll never know

anything really about us so long as you're a sentimentalist!"

Yes, there were moments when I hated him, but those moments never

continued for long. For one thing one could not hate so magnificent, so

honest, so uncompromising, so efficient a worker! He was worthy of some

very high position in the army, and he could certainly have attained any

height had he chosen. He had a genius for compelling other men to obey

him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no

attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed

incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he

had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed

with us when he, so openly, despised us all. Until the arrival of Marie

Ivanovna there was no answer to these questions--after that the answer

was obvious enough. Again, one could not hate a man of his sterling

independence of character. We were, all of us I think, emotionalists, of

one kind or another, and went up and down in our feelings, alliances,

severances, trusts and distrusts, as a thermometer goes up and down. We

were good enough people in our way, but we were most certainly not "a

strong lot." Even Nikitin, the best of the rest of us, was a dreamy

idealist, far enough from life as it was and quite unprepared to come

down from his dreams and see things as they were.

But Semyonov never relaxed for an instant from his position. He asked

no man's help nor advice, minded no man's scorn, sought no man's love.

During my experience of him I saw him moved only once by an

overmastering emotion, and that was, of course, his love for Marie

Ivanovna. That, I believe, _did_ master him, but deep down, deep down,

he kept his rebellions, his anxieties, his surmises; only as the

light of a burning house is seen by men, pale and faint upon the sky

many miles from the conflagration, did we catch signs of his trouble.

If I had not had those talks with Trenchard and read his diary I

should have known nothing. Even now I can offer no solution....

Meanwhile he showed fiercely and openly enough his love for Marie

Ivanovna. He behaved to her with the vulgarest ostentation, as a rich

merchant behaves when he has snatched some priceless picture from a

defeated rival. As he laughed at us he seemed to say: "Now, I have

really a thing of value here. You are, all of you, too stupid to

realise this, but you must take my word for it. Show yourself off, my

dear, and let them all see!"

Marie Ivanovna most certainly did _not_ "show herself off." The

beginning of his trouble was that he could not do with her as he

pleased. She had fallen into his hands so easily that he thought, I

suppose, that "she had been dying of love for him" from the first

moment of seeing him. But this was I believe very far from the truth.

My impression of her acceptance of him was that she had done it "with

her eyes fixed upon something else." That _she_ had not realised all

the consequences of accepting _him_ any more than she had realised the

consequences of her accepting Trenchard was obvious from the first.

She simply was ignorant of life, and at the same time wanted to cram

into her hands the full sense of it (as one crushes rose-leaves) as

quickly as possible. She admired Semyonov--it may be that she loved

him; but she certainly had not surrendered herself to him, and in her

lively ignorant way she was as strong as he.

During the first weeks of her engagement she was, as she had been at

her first arrival amongst us, as happy and light-hearted as a child.

She knew that we disapproved of her treatment of Trenchard, but she

thought that we must see, as she did, that "she had behaved in the

only possible way." Once again she was straight and honest to the

world--and she could behave now like a real friend of her John. That

strange irrational temper that she had shown during the Retreat had

now entirely disappeared. She approved of us all and wished us to

approve of her--which we, as we were Russians and could not possibly

dislike pleasant agreeable people whatever there might be against

them, speedily did. She was charming to us. I can see her now, leaning

her chin on her hands; looking at us, the colour, shell-pink, coming

and going delicately in her cheek, like flame behind china. Her

delicacy, her height, her slender figure, her wide childish eyes, her

charmingly ugly large mouth and short nose, her black hair, the appeal

of her ignorance and strength and credulity--ah! she won our hearts

simply whenever she pleased! Of course we disliked her when she was

rude to us, our self-respect demanded it, but let her "come round" and

round we came too.

Her treatment of Semyonov was strange. She was quite fearless,

laughing at his temper, his sarcasm, rebuking his selfishness and bad

manners, avoiding his coarse and unhesitating love-making, and above

all, trusting him in the oddest way as though, in spite of his faults,

she placed all her reliance on him and knew that he would not fail

her. Nothing annoyed him more than her behaviour to Trenchard. It

would, of course, be absurd to say that he was jealous of Trenchard;

he despised the man too deeply and was, himself, too sure of his lady

to know jealousy; but he was irritated by the attention paid to him,

irritated even by the attention he himself paid to him.

"Wherever I go there's that man," he said once to me. "Why doesn't he

go back to his own country?"

"I suppose," I would answer hotly, "he has other things to do than to

consider your individual wishes, Alexei Petrovitch."

Then he would laugh: "Well, well, Ivan Andreievitch, you

sentimentalists all hang together."

"Why can't you leave him alone?" I remember that I continued.

"Because he doesn't leave me alone," he answered shortly.

It was, of course, Marie Ivanovna who brought them together. She could

not see, or rather she _would_ not see, that friendship between two

such men was an impossibility. For herself she liked Trenchard better

than she had ever done. She had now no responsibility towards him; we

were all fond of him, pleased ourselves by saying that "he was more

Russian than English." The Sisters mended his clothes, cared for his

stomach, and listened with pleased gravity to his innocent chatter.

Marie Ivanovna was now really proud of him. There were great stories

of the courage and enterprise he had shown during the night when he

had been with Nikitin. Nikitin, in his lofty romantic fashion, spoke

of him as though he had been the hero of the Russian army. Trenchard

was, of course, quite unspoiled by this praise and popularity. He

remained for me at least very much the same innocent, clumsy,

pathetic, and frequently irritating figure that he had been at the

beginning. I will honestly confess that I was often heartily tired of

his Glebeshire stories, tired too of a certain childish obstinacy with

which he clung to his generally crude and half-baked opinions.

But then I do not care to be contradicted by people of whom,

intellectually, I have a low estimation; it is one of my most

unfortunate weaknesses. I had no opinion of Trenchard's intellect at

all, and in that I was quite wrong. Semyonov at this time flung

Nikitin, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself into one basket.

We were all "crazy romantics" and there came an occasion, which I have

reason most clearly to remember, when he told us what he thought of

us. We were together, Semyonov, Nikitin, Trenchard and I, after

breakfast, smoking cigarettes, enjoying half an hour's idleness before

setting about our various business. It was a blazing hot morning and

the air quivered, like a silver curtain before our eyes, separating us

from the dim blue forest of S---- beyond the river, the Nestor itself,

the deep green slopes of our own hill. We had been silent, then

Trenchard said a foolish thing: "War brings all the best out of

people, I think," he said. God knows what private line of thought he

had been pursuing, some sentimental reflections, I suppose, that were

in him perfectly honest and sincere. But he did not look his best that

morning, sitting back in his chair with his mouth open, his forehead

damp with the heat, his tunic up about his neck and a rather dirty

blue pocket-handkerchief in his hand.

I saw Semyonov's lip curl.

"Yes. That's very interesting, Mr.," he said. "I'm glad at any rate

that we've had the honour of seeing the best of _you_. That's very

pleasant to know."

"What I mean--" said Trenchard, blushing and stammering. "What ...

that is--"

"I agree with Mr.," suddenly said Nikitin, who had been dreamily

watching the blue forest. "War _does_ bring out the best in the human

character--always."

Semyonov turned smilingly to him. "Yes, Vladimir Stepanovitch, we know

your illusions. Forgive me for insisting that they are illusions. I

would not disturb your romantic happiness for the world."

"You can't disturb me, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered sleepily.

"What a hot morning!"

"No," said Semyonov. "I would be very wrong to disturb you. Believe

me, I've never tried. It's very agreeable to me to see you and Mr. so

happy together and it must be pleasant for both of you to feel that

you've got a nice God all of your own who sleeps a good deal but

still, on the whole, gives you what you want. We may wonder a little

what Mr. has done to be so favoured--never very much I fancy--but

still I like the friendliness and comfort of it and I'm really lucky

to have the good fortune of your acquaintance. So nice for Russia too

to have plenty of people about who don't do any work nor take any

trouble about anything because they've got a nice fat God who'll do it

all for them if they'll only be patient. Thats why we're beating the

Germans so handsomely--the poor Germans, who only, ignorant heathens

as they are, believe in themselves."

He looked at us all with a friendly patronising contempt.

"That's your point of view, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered

rather hotly. "Think as you please of course. But there's more in life

than you can see--there is indeed."

"Of course there is," said Semyonov lazily, "much more. I'm an

ignorant, rough man. I like things as they are and make the best of

them, so, of course, I'm not clever. Mr.'s clever, aren't you, Mr.?

All the same he doesn't know how to put his boots on properly. If he

put his boots on better and knew less about God he might be of more

use at the Front, perhaps. That's only my idea, and I daresay I'm

wrong.... All the same, for the sake of the comfort _and_ the pockets

of all of us I do hope you'll really rouse your God and ask Him to do

something sensible--something with method in it and a few more bullets

in it and a little more efficiency in it. You might ask Him to do what

He can...."

He looked at us, laughing; then he said to Trenchard, "But don't you

fear, Mr. You'll go to heaven all right. Even though it's the wise men

who succeed in this world, I don't doubt it's the fools who have their

way in the next."

He left us.

Semyonov was with every new day more baffled by Marie Ivanovna. In the

first place she quietly refused to obey him. We were now much occupied

with the feeding of the peasants in a village stricken with cholera on

the other side of the river. A gloomy enough business it was and I

shall have, very shortly, to speak of it in detail. For the moment it

is enough to say that two of us went off every morning with a kitchen

on wheels, distributed the food, and returned in the afternoon.

Semyonov intensely disliked Marie Ivanovna's share in this work, but

he could not, of course, object to her taking, with the other Sisters,

the risks and unpleasantness of it. He made, whenever it was possible,

objections, found her work at the hospital where he himself was,

occupied her in every possible way. But he did this against her will.

She seemed to find a very especial pleasure and excitement in the

cholera work; she wished often to take the place of some other Sister.

Indeed everything on the other side of the river seemed to have a

great fascination for her. She herself told me: "The moment I cross

the bridge I feel as though I were on enchanted ground." On the

occasions when I accompanied her to the cholera village she was

radiant, so happy that she seemed to have nothing further in the world

to desire. She herself was puzzled. "What is it?" she said to me. "Is

it the forest? It must be, I think, the forest. I would remain on this

side for ever if I had my way."

When I saw Semyonov's anxiety about her I could not but remember that

little scene at the battle of S---- when he had taken her off with

him, leaving Trenchard in so pitiful a condition. Certainly Time

brings in his revenges! And Marie Ivanovna would listen to nothing

that he said.

"I want you at the hospital this morning," he would say.

"Do you really want me?" she would ask, looking up, laughing, in his

face.

"Of course I do."

"Well, you should have told me last night. This morning I go with Anna

Petrovna to the cholera. All is arranged."

"I'm afraid you must change your plans."

"I'm afraid not."

"Goga may go...."

"No, I wish to go."

And she went. He had certainly never before in his life been thus

defied. He simply did not know what to do about it. If he had thought

that bullying would frighten her he would, I believe, have bullied

her, but he knew quite well that it wouldn't. And then, as I now began

to perceive (I had at first thought otherwise), he was for the first

time in his life experiencing something deeper and more confusing than

his customary animal passions. He may at first have wanted Marie

Ivanovna as he wanted his dinner or his supper ... now he wanted her

differently. New emotions, surprising confusing emotions stirred in

him. At least that is how I interpret the uneasiness, the hesitation,

which I now seemed to perceive in him. He was no longer sure of

himself.

I witnessed just at this time a little scene that surprised me. I had

been in the bandaging room alone one evening, cutting up bandages. I

was going through the passage into the other part of the house when a

sound stopped me. I could not avoid seeing beyond the open door a

little scene that happened so swiftly that I could neither retire nor

advance.

Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov were coming together towards the bandaging

room. She was in front of him when he put his hand on her arm.

"Do you love me?" he said in a low voice.

She turned round to him, laughing.

"Yes," she said, looking at him.

"Then kiss me."

"No, not now."

"Why not now?"

"I don't want to."

"Why don't you want to?"

She shook her head, still laughing into his eyes.

"But if I command you?"

"Ah! _command_!... Then I certainly will not."

His hand tightened on her arm and she did not draw away.

"Kiss me."

"No."

"I say yes."

"I say no."

He suddenly caught her, held her to him as though he would kill her

and kissed her furiously, on her eyes, her mouth, her hair. With his

violence he pushed back her head-dress. I could see his back bent like

a bow, and his thick short legs wide apart, every muscle taut. She lay

quite motionless, as though asleep in his arms, giving him no

response--then quite suddenly she flung her hands round his neck and

kissed him as passionately as he had kissed her. At last they parted,

both of them laughing.

He looked at her, and then with a gentleness and courtesy that I had

never seen in him before nor dreamed that he possessed, very softly

kissed her hand.

"I love you and--and you love me," he said.

"Yes ... I love you," she answered gravely. "At least, part of me

does."

"It shall be all of you soon," he answered.

"If there's time enough," she replied.

"Time!... I'll follow you wherever you go--"

"I really believe you will," she answered, laughing again. They waited

then, looking at one another. A bell rang. "Ah! I'm hungry.... Supper

time...." To my relief they passed away from the bandaging room

towards the other part of the house.

Meanwhile his irritation at Marie Ivanovna's kindness to Trenchard

increased with every hour. His attitude to the man had changed since

Trenchard's night at the Position; he was vexed, I think, to hear that

the fellow had proved himself a man--and a practical man with common

sense. Semyonov was honest about this. He did not doubt Nikitin's

word, he even congratulated Trenchard, but he certainly disliked him

more than ever. He thought, I suppose, as he had thought about

Nikitin: "How can a man with his wits about him be at the same time

such a fool?" And then he saw that Marie Ivanovna was delighted with

Trenchard's little piece of good luck. She laughed at Semyonov about

it. "We all know you're a very brave man," she cried. "But you're not

so brave as Mr." And Semyonov, because he knew that Trenchard was a

fool and that he himself was not, was vexed, as a bull is vexed by a

red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I

have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he

would satisfy himself why this gnat of a man worried him!

Then, finally, was Andrey Vassilievitch.... The little man had not

given me much of his company during these last weeks. I fancy that

since that night at the battle of S---- when he had revealed his

terror he had been shy of me although, God knows, he had no need to

be. He never forgot if any one had seen him in an unfortunate

position, and, although he bore me no grudge, he was nervous and

embarrassed with me. It happened, however, that during this same week

of which I have been speaking I had a conversation with him. I was

standing alone by the Cross watching a long trail of wagons cross the

bridge far beneath me, watching too a high bank of black cloud that

was passing away from the sky above the forest, blown by a wind that

rolled the surface of the river into silver. He too had come to look

at the view and was surprised and disturbed at finding me there. Of

course he was exaggerated in expressions of pleasure: "Why, Ivan

Andreievitch, this is delightful!" he cried. "If I only had known we

might have walked here together!"

We sat down on the stone seat.

"You don't think it will rain?" he asked anxiously. "No, those clouds

are going away, I see. Well ... this is delightful ..." and then sat

there gloomily looking in front of him.

I could see that he was depressed.

"Well, Andrey Vassilievitch," I said to him. "You're depressed about

something?"

"Yes," he said very gloomily indeed. "I have many unhappy hours, Ivan

Andreievitch."

I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had

had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a

desire to know the little man's side of that affair. In some curious

fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my

thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin's account to explain to

me his passion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the

memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes,

to be present with us....

I waited.

"Tell me frankly," Andrey Vassilievitch said at last, "am I of any use

here?"

"Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise.

"Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be

better perhaps if another were here?"

"No, certainly not," I answered warmly. "Your business training is of

the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me 'that he does not

know what we should do without you.'"

(This was not strictly true.)

"Ah!" the little man was greatly pleased. "I am glad, very glad--to

hear what you say. Semyonov made me feel--"

"You should not be influenced," I hurriedly interrupted him, "by what

Semyonov thinks. It is of no importance."

"He has a bad character," Andrey Vassilievitch said suddenly with

great excitement, "a bad character. And why cannot he leave me alone?

Why should he laugh always? I do my best. I am quiet and not in his

way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I

do not rob men of their women."

He was shaking with anger, his head trembling and his hands

quivering--it was difficult not to smile.

"You must not listen nor notice nor think of it," I said firmly. "We

are grateful for your work--all of us. Semyonov laughs at us all."

"That poor Marie Ivanovna," he burst out. "She does not know. She is

ignorant of life. At first I was angry with her but now I see that she

is helpless. There will be terrible things afterwards, Ivan

Andreievitch!" he cried.

"I think she understands him better than we do."

"I have never," he said vehemently, "hated a man in my life as I hate

him." But in spite of his passionate declaration he was obviously

reassured by my defence of him. He was quiet suddenly, looked at the

view mildly and, in a moment, thought me the best friend he had in the

world--in the Russian manner.

"You see, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, looking at me with the eyes of

an unnaturally wise baby, "that I cannot help wishing that my wife

were here to advise Marie Ivanovna. She would have loved my wife very

much, as every one did, and would have confided in her. That would

have helped a girl who, like Marie Ivanovna, is ignorant of the world

and the loves of men."

"You miss your wife very much?" I asked.

"There is not a moment of the day but I do not think of her," he

answered very solemnly, staring in front of him. "That must seem

strange to you who did not know her, and even I sometimes think it is

not good. But what to do? She was a woman so remarkable that no one

who knew her can forget."

"I have often been told that every one who knew her loved her," I

said.

"Ah! you have heard that.... They talk of her, of course. She will

always be remembered." His eyes shone with pleasure. "Yes, every one

loved her. I myself loved her with a passion that nothing can ever

change. And why?... I cannot tell you--unless it were that she was the

only person I have known who did not wish me another kind of man. I

could be myself with her and know that she still cared for me.... I

will not pretend to you, Ivan Andreievitch, that I think myself a fine

man," he continued. "I have never thought myself so. When I was very

young I envied tall men and handsome men and men who knew what was the

best thing to do without thinking of it. I have always known that

people would only come to me for what I have got to give and I have

pretended that I do not care. And once I had an English merchant as my

guest. He was very agreeable and pleasant to me--and then by chance I

overheard him say: 'Ah, Andrey Vassilievitch! A vulgar little snob!'

That is perhaps what I am--I do not know--we are all what God pleases.

But I had mistresses, I had friends, acquaintances. They despised me.

They left me always for some one finer. They say that we Russians care

too much what others think of us--but when in your own house

people--your friends--say such things of you...."

He broke off, then, smiling, continued:

"My wife came. There was something in me, just as I was, that she

cared for. She did not passionately love me, but she loved me with her

heart because she saw that I needed love. She always saw people just

as they were.... And I understood. I understood from the beginning

exactly what I was to her...."

He paused again, put his hand on my knee, then spoke, looking very

serious with his comic little nose and mouth like the nose and mouth

of a poodle. "I had a friend, Ivan Andreievitch. A fine man.... He

loved my wife and my wife loved him. He was not vulgar. He had a fine

taste, he was handsome and clever. What was I to do? I knew that my

wife loved him, and she must be happy. I knew that I owed her

everything because of all that she had done for me. I helped them in

their love.... For five years I wished them well. Do you think it was

easy for me? I suffered, Ivan Andreievitch, the tortures of hell. I

was jealous, God forgive me! How jealous! Sometimes alone in my room I

would cry all night--not a fine thing to do. But then how should I

act? She gave him what she could never give to me. She loved him with

passion--for me she cared as good women care for the poor. I was

foolish perhaps. I tried to be as they were, with their taste and easy

judgments ... I failed, of course. What could I do all at once? One is

as God has pleased from the beginning. Ah! how I was unhappy those

five years! I wished that he would die and then cursed myself for

wishing it. And yet I knew that I had something that he had not. I

needed her more than he, and she knew that. Her charm for him would

fade perhaps as the years passed. He was a passionate man who had

loved many women. For me, as she well knew, it would never pass.

"She died. For a time I was like a dead man. And she was not enough

with me. I talked to her friends, but they had not known her--not as

she was. Only one had known her and he was the friend whom she had

loved.

"Of course he found me as he had always done--tiresome, irritating, of

vulgar taste. But he, too, wanted to speak of her. And so we were

drawn together.... Now ... is he my friend? I say always that he is. I

say to myself: 'Andrey Vassilievitch, he is your best friend'--but I

am jealous. Yes, Ivan Andreievitch, I am jealous of him. I think that

perhaps he will die before me and that then--somewhere--together--they

will laugh at me. And he has _such_ memories of her! At the last she

cried his name! He is so much a grander man than I! Fine in every way!

Did I say that she would laugh? No, no ... that never. But she will

say: 'Poor Andrey Vassilievitch!' She will pity me!... I think that I

would be happier if I did not see my friend. But I cannot leave

him.... We talk of her often. And yet he despises me and wonders that

she can have loved me...."

I had a fear lest Andrey Vassilievitch should cry. He seemed so

desolate there, giving strange little self-important coughs and

sniffs, beating the ground with his smart little military boot.

Across the river the black wall of cloud had returned and now hung

above the forest of S----, that lay sullenly, in its shadow,

forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the

Nestor like a snake.... I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of

coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were often strangely

chill.

"Look," cried Andrey Vassilievitch, starting to his feet "There's

Marie Ivanovna!"

I turned and saw her standing there, smiling at us, silently and

without movement, like an apparition.

CHAPTER II

MARIE IVANOVNA

It was on July 23 that I first entered the Forest of S----. I did not,

I remember, pay the event any especial attention. I went with Anna

Petrovna to the cholera village that is on the outskirts of the

forest, and I recollect that we hastened back because that evening we

were to celebrate the conclusion of the first six months' work of our

Otriad. Of my entrance into the forest I remember absolutely nothing;

it seemed, I suppose, an ordinary enough forest to me. Of the

festivities in the evening I have a very clear recollection. I

remember that it was the loveliest summer weather, not too hot, with a

little breeze coming up from the river, and the green glittering on

every side of us with the quiver of flashing water. In the little

garden outside our house a table had been improvised and on this were

a large gilt ikon, a vase of flowers in a hideous purple jar, and two

tall candles whose flames looked unreal and thin in the sunlight.

There was the priest, a fine stout man with a long black beard and

hair falling below his shoulders, clothed in silk of gold and purple,

waving a censer, monotoning the prayers in a high Russian tenor, with

one eye on the choir of sanitars, one eye on the candles blown by the

wind, the breeze meanwhile playing irreverent jests on his splendid

skirts of gold. Then there was the congregation in three groups. The

first group--two generals, two colonels, four or five other officers,

the Sisters (Sister K---- bowing and crossing herself incessantly,

Anna Petrovna with her attention obviously on the dinner cooking

behind a tree in the garden, Marie Ivanovna looking lovely and happy

and good), ourselves--Molozov official, Semyonov sarcastic, Nikitin in

a dream, Andrey Vassilievitch busy with his smart uniform, Trenchard

(forgotten his sword, his blue handkerchief protruding from his

pocket) absorbed by the ceremony, myself thinking of Trenchard,

Goga--and the rest. The second group--the singing sanitars, some ten

of them, stout and healthy, singing as Russians do with complete

self-forgetfulness and a rapturous happiness in front of them, a funny

little man with spectacles and a sharp-pointed beard, once a

schoolmaster, now a sanitar, conducting their music with a long bony

finger--all of them chanting the responses with perfect precision and

harmony. Third group, the other sanitars, the strangest collection of

faces, wild, savage and eastern: Tartars, Lithuanians, Mongolian, mild

and northern, cold and western, merry and human from Little Russia,

gigantic and fierce from the Caucasus, small and frozen from

Archangel, one or two civilised and superior _and_ uninteresting from

Petrograd and Moscow.

Over the wall a long row of interested Galician peasants and soldiers

passing in carts or on horseback. Seeing the ikon, the priest, the

blowing candles, hearing the singing they would take off their hats,

cross themselves, for a moment their eyes would go dreamy, mild,

forgetful, then on their hats would go again, back they would turn

their horses, cursing them up the hill, chaffing the Galician women,

down deep in the everyday life again.

The service ended. The priest turns to us, the gold Cross is raised,

we advance one by one: the generals, the colonels, the lieutenants,

the Sisters, Semyonov, Nikitin, Goga, then the choir, then the

sanitars, even to hunch-backed Alesha, who is always given the

dirtiest work to do and is only half a human being; one by one we kiss

the Cross, the candles are blown out, the ikon folded up and put away

in a cardboard box, we are introduced to the generals, there is

general conversation, and the stars and the moon come out "blown

straight up, it seems, out of the bosom of the Nestor...."

It was a very happy and innocent evening. For extracting the utmost

happiness possible out of the simplest materials the Russians have

surely no rivals. How our generals and our colonels enjoyed that

evening! A wonderful dinner was cooked between two stones in the

garden--little pig, young chickens, _borshtsh_, that most luxurious of

soups, and ices--yes, and ices. Then there were speeches, many, many

glasses of tea, strawberry and cherry jam, biscuits and cigarettes. We

were all very, very happy....

It was arranged on the morning after the feast that I should go again

to the cholera village with Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Under a

morning of a blazing relentless heat, bars of light ruling the sky, we

started, the three of us, at about ten o'clock, in the little low

dogcart, followed by the kitchen and the boiler. Marie Ivanovna sat

next to Semyonov, I facing them. Semyonov was happier than I had ever

seen him before. Happiness was not a quality with which I would ever

have charged him; he had seemed to despise it as something too simple

and sentimental for any but sentimental fools--but now this morning (I

had noticed something of the same thing in him the evening before) he

was quite _simply_ happy, looking younger by many years, the ironical

curve of his lip gone, his eyes smiling, his attitude to the world

gentle and almost benevolent. Of course she, Marie Ivanovna, had

wrought this change in him. There was no doubt this morning that she

loved him. She had in her face and bearing all the pride and also all

the humility that a love, won, secured, ensured, brings with it. She

did not look at him often nor take his hand. She spoke to me during

the drive and only once and again smiled up at him; but her soul,

shining through the thin covering of her body, laughed to me, crying:

"I am happy because I have my desire. Of yesterday I remember nothing,

of to-morrow I can know nothing, but to-day is mine!"

He was very quiet. When he looked at her his eyes took complete

possession of her. I did not, that morning, count at all to either of

them, but I too felt a kind of pride as though I were sharing in some

triumphal procession. She chattered on, and then at last was silent. I

remember that the great heat of the morning wrought in us all a kind

of lethargy. We were lazily confident that day that nothing evil could

overtake us. We idly watched the sky, the river, the approaching

forest, with a luxurious reliance on the power of man, and I caught

much of my assurance from Semyonov himself. He did really seem to me,

that morning, a "tremendous" figure, as he sat there, so still, so

triumphant. He had never before, perhaps, been quite certain of Marie

Ivanovna, had been alarmed at her independence, or at his own

passionate love for her. But this morning he _knew_. She loved him.

She was his--no one could take her from him. She was the woman he

wanted as he had never wanted a woman before, and _she was his--she

was his_!

I do not remember our entering the forest. I know that first you climb

a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close

about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green

turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn

avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any

sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of

corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of

N----. It was here, on passing the first houses of the village, that I

felt the heat to be almost unbearable; it seemed strange to me, I

remember, that they (whoever "they" were), having so many trees here,

a forest that stretched many miles behind them, should have chosen to

pitch their village upon the only exposed and torrid bit of ground

that they could find. Behind us was the forest, in front of us also

the forest, but here, how the sun blazed down on the roofs and little

blown patches of garden, how it glared in through the broken windows,

and penetrated into the darkest corners of the desolate rooms!

Poor N----! In the second month of the war it had been shelled and

many of the houses destroyed. The buildings that remained seemed to

have given up the struggle and abandoned themselves to inevitable

degradation. Moreover, down the principal street, at every other door

there hung the sinister black flag, a piece of dirty black cloth

fastened to a stick, and upon the filthy wall was scrawled in Russian

"cholera." Dead, indeed, under the appalling heat of the morning the

whole place lay. No one was to be seen until we neared the ruins of

what had once been a little town-hall or meeting-place, a procession

turned the corner--a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted

candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled

silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five

white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the

miserable party. They did not look at us as we passed....

A rumble of cannon, once and again, sounded like the lazy snore of

some sleeping beast.

Near the town-hall we found a company of fantastic creatures awaiting

us. They were pressed together in a dense crowd as though they were

afraid of some one attacking them. There were many old men, like the

clowns in Shakespeare, dirty beyond belief in tattered garments,

wide-brimmed hats, broad skirts and baggy trousers; old men with long

tangled hair, bare bony breasts and slobbering chins. Many of the

women seemed strong and young; their faces were on the whole

cheerful--a brazen indifference to anything and everything was their

attitude. There were many children. Two gendarmes guarded them with

rough friendly discipline. I thought that I had seen nothing more

terrible at the war than the eager pitiful docility with which they

moved to and fro in obedience to the gendarmes' orders. A dreadful,

broken, creeping submission....

But it was their fantasy, their coloured incredible unreality that

overwhelmed me. The building, black and twisted against the hard blue

sky, raised its head behind us like a malicious monster. Before us

this crowd, all tattered faded pieces of scarlet and yellow and blue,

men with huge noses, sunken eyes, sharp chins, long skinny hands,

women with hard, bright, dead faces, little children with eyes that

were afraid and indifferent, hungry and mad, all this crowd swaying

before us, with the cannon muttering beyond the walls, and the thin

miserable thread of the funeral hymn trickling like water under our

feet.... I looked from these to Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna, they in

their white overalls working at the meat kitchen and the huge

bread-baskets, radiant in their love, their success, their struggle,

confident, both of them, this morning that they had the fire of life

in their hands to do with it as they pleased.

I have not wished during the progress of this book, which is the

history of the experiences of others rather than of myself, to lay any

stress on my personal history, and here I would only say that any one

who is burdened with a physical disease or encumbrance that will

remain to the end of life must know that there are certain moments

when this hindrance leaps up at him like the grinning face of a

devil--despairing hideous moments they are! I have said that during

our drive I had felt a confident happy participation in the joy of

those others who were with me ... now as we stood there feeding that

company of scarecrows, a sudden horror of my own lameness, a sudden

consciousness that I belonged rather to that band of miserable

diseased hungry fugitives than to the two triumphant figures on the

other side of me, overwhelmed and defeated me. I bent my head; I felt

a shame, a degradation as though I should have crept into some shadow

and hidden.... I would not mention this were it not that afterwards,

in retrospect, the moment seemed to me an omen. After all, life is not

always to the victorious!...

Our scarecrows wanted, horribly, their food. It was dreadful to see

the anxiety with which they watched the portioning of the thick heavy

hunks of black bread. They had to show Marie Ivanovna their dirty

little scraps of paper which described the portions to which they were

entitled. How their bony fingers clutched the paper afterwards as they

pressed it back into their skinny bosoms! Sometimes they could not

wait to return home, but would squat down on the ground and lap their

soup like dogs. The day grew hotter and hotter, the world smelt of

disease and dirt, waste and desolation. Marie Ivanovna's face was

soft with tenderness as she watched them. Semyonov had always his eye

upon her, seeing that she did not touch them, sometimes calling out

sharply: "Now! Marie! ... take care! Take care!" but this morning he

also seemed kind and gentle to them, leading a small girl back to her

haggard bony old guardian, carrying her heavy can of soup for her, or

joking with some of the old men.... "Now, uncle ... you ought to be at

the war! What have they done, leaving you? So young and so vigorous!

They'll take you yet!" and the old man, a toothless trembling

creature, clutching his hunk of bread with shaking hands, would grin

like the head of Death himself! How close to death they all seemed!

How alive were my friends, strong in the sun, compassionate but also

perhaps a little despising this poor gathering of wastrels.

The work went on; then at last the final scraps of meat and bread had

been shared, the kitchen closed its oven, we took off our overalls,

shook ourselves, and bade farewell to the scarecrows. The kitchen was

then sent home and we moved forward with the tea boiler and two

sanitars further into the forest. Our destination was a large empty

house behind the trenches. From here we were to take tea in the boiler

to certain regiments, tea with wine in it as preventative against

cholera. It was the early afternoon now, and we moved very slowly. The

heat was intense and although the trees were thick on every side of us

there seemed to be no shade nor coolness, as though the leaves had

been made of paper.

"This is a strange forest," I said. "Although there are trees there's

no shade. It burns like a furnace."

No one replied. We passed as though in a dream, meeting no one,

hearing no sound, the light dancing and flickering on our path. I

nodded on my seat. I was half asleep when we arrived at our

destination. This was the accustomed white deserted house standing in

a desolate tangled garden. There was no one there on our arrival. All

the doors were open, the sun blazing along the dusty passages. It was

inhabited, just then, I believe, by some artillery officers, but I saw

none of them. Semyonov went off to find the Colonel of the regiment to

whom we were to give tea; Marie Ivanovna and I remained in one of the

empty rooms, the only sound the buzzing flies. Every detail of that

room will remain in my heart and brain until I die. Marie Ivanovna,

looking very white and cool, with the happiness shining in her large

clear eyes, sat on an old worn sofa near the window. In the glass of

the window there were bullet holes, and beyond the window a piece of

blazing golden garden. The room was very dirty, dust lay thick upon

everything. Some one had eaten a meal there, and there was a plate, a

knife, also egg-shells, an empty sardine-tin, and a hunk of black

bread. There was a book which I picked up, attracted by the English

lettering on the faded red cover. It was a "Report on the Condition of

New Mexico in 1904"--a heavy fat volume with the usual photographs of

water-falls, cornfields and enormous sheep. On the walls there was

only one picture, a torn supplement from some German magazine showing

father returning to his family after a long absence--welcomed, of

course, by child (fat and ugly), wife (fatter and uglier), and dog (a

mongrel). There was the usual pile of fiction in Polish, translations

I suspect of Conan Doyle and Jerome; there was a desolate palm in a

corner and a chipped blue washing stand. A hideous place: the sun did

not penetrate and it should have been cool, but for some reason the

air was heavy and hot as though we were enclosed in a biscuit-tin.

I leaned against the table and looked at Marie Ivanovna.

"Isn't it strange?" I said, "we're only a verst or two from the

Austrians and not a sound to be heard. But the gendarme told me that

we must be careful here. A good many bullets flying about, I believe."

"Ah!" she said laughing. "I don't feel as though anything could touch

me to-day. I never loved life before as I love it now. Is it right to

be so happy at such a time as this and in such a place?... And how

strange it is that through all the tragedy one can only truly see

one's own little affairs, and only feel one's own little troubles and

joys. That's bad ... one should be punished for that!"

I loved her at that moment; I felt bitterly, I remember, that I,

because I was plain and a cripple, silent and uninteresting, would

never win the love of such women. I remembered little Andrey

Vassilievitch's words about his wife: "For me she cared as good women

care for the poor." In that way for me too women would care--when they

cared at all. And always, all my life, it would be like that. How

unfair that everything should be given to the Semyonovs and the

Nikitins of this world, everything denied to such men as Trenchard,

Andrey Vassilievitch and I!...

But my little grumble passed as I looked at her.

How honest and straight and true with her impulses, her enthusiasms,

her rebellions and ignorances she was! Yes, I loved her and had always

loved her. That was why I had cared for Trenchard, why now I was

attracted by Semyonov, because, shadow of a man as I was, not man

enough to be jealous, I could see with her eyes, stand beside her and

share her emotion.... But God! how that day I despised myself!

"You're tired!" she said, looking at me. "Is your leg hurting you?"

"Not much," I answered.

"Sit down here beside me." She made way for me on the sofa. "Ivan

Andreievitch, you will always be my friend?"

"Always," I answered.

"I believe you will. I'm a little afraid of you, but I think that I

would rather have you as a friend than any one--except John. How

fortunate I am! Two Englishmen for my friends! You do not change as

R-russians do! You will be angry with me when you think that I am

wrong, but then I can believe you. I know that you will tell me the

truth."

"Perhaps," I said slowly, "Alexei Petrovitch will not wish that I

should be your friend!"

"Alexei?" she said, laughing. "Oh, thank you very much, I shall choose

my own friends. That will always be my affair."

I had an uneasy suspicion that perhaps she knew as little about

Semyonov as she had once known about Trenchard. It might be that all

her life she might never learn wisdom. I do not know that I wished her

to learn it.

"No," she continued. "But you forgive me now? Forgive me for all my

mistakes, for thinking that I loved John when I did not and treating

him so badly. Ah! but how unhappy I was! I wished to be honourable and

honest--I wished it passionately--and I seemed only to make mistakes.

And then because I was ashamed of myself I was angry with every

one--at least it seemed that it was with every one, but it was really

with myself."

"I did you injustice," I said. "And I did Alexei Petrovitch an

injustice also. I know now that he truly and deeply loves you.... I

believe that you will be very happy ... yes, it is better, much

better, than that you should have married Trenchard."

Her face flushed with happiness, that strange flush of colour behind

her pale cheeks, coming and going with the beats of her heart.

She continued happily, confidently: "When I was growing up I was

always restless. My mother allowed me to do as I pleased and I had no

one in authority over me. I was restless because I knew nothing and no

one could tell me anything that seemed to me true. I would have, like

other girls, sudden enthusiasms for some one who seemed strong and

wonderful--and then they were never wonderful--only like every one

else. I would be angry, impatient, miserable. Russian girls begin life

so early.... After a time, mother began to treat me as though I was

grown up. We went to Petrograd and I thought about clothes and

theatres. But I never forgot--I always waited for the man or the work

or the friend that was to make life real. Then suddenly the war came

and I thought that I had found what I wanted. But there too there were

disappointments. John was not John, the war was not the war ... and

it's only to-day now that I feel as though I were r-right inside. I've

been so stupid--I've made so many mistakes." She dropped her voice:

"I've always been afraid, Ivan Andreievitch, that is the truth. You

remember that morning before S----?"

"Yes," I said. "I remember it."

"Well, it has been often, often like that. I've been afraid of myself

and--of something else--of dying. I found that I didn't want to die,

that the thought of death was too horrible to me. That day of the

Retreat how afraid I was! John could not protect me, no one could. And

I was ashamed of myself! How ashamed, how miserable. And I was afraid

because I thought of myself more than of any one else--always. I had

fine ideals but--in practice--it was only that--that I always was

selfish. Now, for the first time ever, I care for some one more than

myself and suddenly I am afraid of death no longer. It is true, Ivan

Andreievitch, I do not believe that death can separate Alexei from me;

I have more reason now to wish to live than I have ever had, but now I

am not afraid. Wherever I am, Alexei will come--wherever he is, I will

go...."

She broke off--then laughed. "You think it silly in England to talk

about such things. No English girl would, would she? In Russia we are

silly if we like. But oh! how happy it is, after all these weeks, not

to be afraid--not to wake up early and lie there and think--think and

shudder. They used to say I was brave about the wounded, brave at

S----, brave at operations ... if they only knew! You only, Ivan

Andreievitch, have seen me afraid, you only!..." She looked at me, her

eyes searching my face: "Isn't it strange that you who do not love me

know me, perhaps, better than John--and yes, better than Alexei.

That's why I tell you--I can talk to you. I never could talk to

women--I never cared for women. You and John for my friends--yes, I am

indeed happy!"

She got up from the old sofa, walked a little about the room, looked

at the remains of the meal, at the book, then turned round to me:

"Don't ever tell any one, Ivan Andreievitch, that I have been

afraid.... I'm never to be afraid again. And I'm not going to die. I

know now that life is wonderful--at last all that when I was young I

expected it to be.... Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I feel to-day as

though I would live for ever!..."

Semyonov came in. He was in splendid spirits; I had never seen him so

gay, so carelessly happy.

"Well," he cried to me, "we're to go now--at once ... and the next

time at eight. We'll leave you this time. We'll be back by half-past

six. We'll do the Third and Fourth Roti now. The Eighth and Ninth

afterwards. Can you wait for tea until we return? Good.... Half-past

six, then!"

They departed. As she went out of the door she turned and gave me a

little happy smile as though to bind me to an intimate enduring

confidence. I smiled back at her and she was gone.

After they had left me I felt very lonely. The house was still and

desolate, and I took a book that I had brought with me--the "Le Deuil

des Primeveres" of François Jammes. I had learnt the habit during my

first visit to the war of always taking a book in my pocket when

engaged upon any business; there were so many long weary hours of

waiting when the nerves were stretched, and a book--quiet and real and

something apart from all wars and all rumours of wars--was a most

serious necessity. What "Tristram Shandy" was to me once under fire

near Nijnieff, and "Red-gauntlet" on an awful morning when our whole

Otriad meditated on the possibility of imprisonment before the

evening--with nothing to be done but sit and wait! I went into the

garden with M. Jammes.

As I walked along the little paths through a tangle of wood and green

that might very well have presented the garden of the Sleeping Beauty,

I heard now and then a sound that resembled the swift flight of a bird

or the sudden "ting" of a telegraph-wire. The Austrians were amusing

themselves; sometimes a bullet would clip a tree in its passing or one

would see a leaf, quite suddenly detached, hover for a moment idly in

the air and then circle slowly to the ground. Except for this sound

the garden was fast held in the warm peace of a summer afternoon. I

found a most happy little neglected orchard with old gnarled

apple-trees and thick waving grass. Here I lay on my back, watching

the gold through the leaves, soaked in the apathy and somnolence of

the day, sinking idly into sleep, rising, sinking again, as though

rocked in a hammock. I was in England once more--at intervals there

came a sharp click that exactly resembled the sound that one hears in

an English village on a summer afternoon when they are playing cricket

in the field near by--oneself at one's ease in the garden, half

sleeping, half building castles in the air, the crack of the ball on

the bat, the cooing of some pigeons on the roof.... Once again that

sharp pleasant sound, again the flight of the bird above one's head,

again the rustle of some leaves behind one's head ... soon there will

be tea, strawberries and cream, a demand that one shall play tennis,

that saunter through the cool dark house, up old stairs, along narrow

passages to one's room where one will slowly, happily change into

flannels--hearing still through the open window the crack of the bat

upon the ball from the distant field....

But as I lay there I was unhappy, rebellious. The confidence and

splendour of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov had driven me into exile. I

hated myself that afternoon. That pursuit--the excitement of the

penetration into the dark forest--the thrill of the chase--those

things were for the strong men, the brave women--not for the halt and

maimed ... not love nor glory, neither hate nor fierce rebellion were

for such men as I.... I cursed my fate, my life, because I loved, not

for the first time, a woman who was glad that I did not love her and

was so sure that I did not and could not, that she could proclaim her

satisfaction openly to me!

I had an hour of bitterness--then, as I had so often done before, I

laughed, drove the little devil into his cage, locked it, dropped the

thick curtain in front of it.

I claimed the company of M. François Jammes.

He has a delightful poem about donkeys and as I read it I regained my

tranquillity. It begins:

_Lorsqu'il faudra aller vers Vous, ô mon Dieu, faites

Que ce soit par un jour ou la campagne en fete

Poudroiera. Je désire, ainsi que je fis ici-bas,

Choisir un chemin pour aller, comme il me plaira,

Au Paradis, où sont en plein jour les étoiles.

Je prendrai mon bâton et sur la grande route

J'irai et je dirai aux ânes, mes amis:

Je suis Francois Jammes et je vais au Paradis,

Car il n'y a pas d'enfer au pays du Bon Dieu.

Je leur dirai: Venez, doux amis du ciel bleu,

Pauvres bêtes chéries qui d'un brusque mouvement d'oreilles,

Chassez les mouches plates, les coups et les abeilles...._

That brought tranquillity back to me. I found another poem--his

"Amsterdam."

_Les maisons pointues ont l'air de pencher. On dirait

Qu'elles tombent. Les mâts des vaisseaux qui s'embrouillent

Dans le ciel sont penchés comme des branches sèches

Au milieu de verdure, de raye, de rouille,

De harengs saurs, de peaux de moutons et de bouille._

_Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam

(Je crois du moins qu'il y passa) en revenant

De l'île ombreuse et verte aux noix de coco fraîches.

Quelle émotion il dut avoir quand il vit luire

Les portes énormes, aux lourds marteaux, de cette ville!..._

_Regardait-il curieusement les entresols

Ou les commis écrivent les livres de comptes?

Eut-il envie de pleurer en resongeant

A son cher perroquet, à son lourd parasol,

Qui l'abritait dans l'île attristée et clémente?..._

I was asleep; my eyes closed; the book fell from my hand. Some one

near me seemed to repeat in the air the words:

_Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam

(Je crois, du moins, qu'il y passa) en revenant

De l'île ombreuse....

"De l'île ombreuse" ... "Robinson Crusoë passa" ..._

I was rocked in the hot golden air. I slept heavily, deeply, without

dreams....

I was awakened by a cold fierce apprehension of terror. I sat up,

stared slowly around me with the sure, certain conviction that some

dreadful thing had occurred. The orchard was as it had been--the sun,

lower now, shone through the green branches. All was still and even,

as I listened I heard the sharp crack of the ball upon the bat

breaking the evening air. My heart had simply ceased to beat. I

remember that with a hand that trembled I picked up the book that was

lying open on the grass and read, without understanding them, the

words. I remember that I said, out aloud: "Something's happened," then

turning saw Semyonov's face.

I realised nothing save his face with its pale square beard and red

lips, framed there by the shining green and blue. He stood there,

without moving, staring at me, and the memory of his eyes even now as

I write of it hurts me physically so that my own eyes close.

That was perhaps the worst moment of my life, that confrontation of

Semyonov. He stood there as though carved in stone (his figure had

always the stiff clear outline of stone or wood). I realised nothing

of his body--I simply saw his eyes, that were staring straight in

front of him, that were blazing with pain, and yet were blind. He

looked past me and, if one had not seen the live agony of his eyes,

one would have thought that he was absorbed in watching something that

was so distant that he must concentrate all his attention upon it.

I got upon my feet and as my eyes met his I knew without any question

at all that Marie Ivanovna was dead.

When I had risen we stood for a moment facing one another, then

without a word he turned towards the house. I followed him, leaving my

book upon the grass. He walking slowly in front of me with his usual

assured step, except that once he walked into a bush that was to his

right; he afterwards came away from it, as a man walking in his sleep

might do, without lowering his eyes to look at it. We entered by a

side-door. I, myself, had no thoughts at all at this time. I felt only

the cold, heavy oppression at my heart, and I had, I remember, no

curiosity as to what had occurred. We passed through passages that

were strangely dark, in a silence that was weighted and mysterious. We

entered the room where we had been earlier in the afternoon; it seemed

now to be full of people, I saw now quite clearly, although just

before the whole world had seemed to be dark. I saw our two soldiers

standing back by the door; a doctor, whose face I did not know, a very

corpulent man, was on his knees on the floor--some sanitars were in a

group by the window. In the middle of the room lay Marie Ivanovna on a

stretcher. Even as I entered the stout doctor rose, shaking his head.

I had only that one glimpse of her face on my entry, because, at the

shake of the doctor's head, a sanitar stepped forward and covered her

with a cloth. But I shall see her face as it was until I die. Her eyes

were closed, she seemed very peaceful.... But I cannot write of it,

even now....

My business here is simply with facts, and I must be forgiven if now I

am brief in my account.

The room was just as it had been earlier in the afternoon; I saw the

sardine-tin, the dirty plate that had a little cloud of flies upon it;

the room seemed under the evening sun full of gold dust. I crossed

over to our soldiers and asked them how it had been. One of them told

me that they had gone with the boiler to the trenches. Everything had

been very quiet. They had taken their stand behind a small ruined

house. Semyonov had just returned from telling the officers of the

Rota that the tea was ready when, quite suddenly, the Austrians had

begun to fire. Bullets had passed thickly overhead. Marie Ivanovna had

seemed quite fearless, and laughing, had stepped, for a moment, from

behind the shelter to see whether the soldiers were coming for their

tea. She was struck instantly; she gave a sharp little cry and fell.

They rushed to her side, but death had been instantaneous. She had

been struck in the heart.... There was nothing to be done.... The

soldiers seemed to feel it very deeply, and one of them, a little

round fellow with a merry face whom I knew well, turned away from me

and began to cry, with his hand to his eyes.

Semyonov was standing in the room with exactly that same dead burning

expression in his eyes. His mouth was set severely, his legs apart,

his hands at his sides.

"A terrible misfortune," I heard the stout doctor say.

Semyonov looked at him gravely.

"Thank you very much for your kindness," he said courteously. Then, by

a common instinct, without any spoken word between us, we all went

from the room, leaving Semyonov alone there.

I remember very little of our return to Mittövo. We borrowed a cart

upon which we laid the body. I sat in the trap with Semyonov. I was, I

remember, afraid lest he should suddenly go off his head. It seemed

quite a possible thing then, he was so quiet, so motionless, scarcely

breathing. I concentrated all my thought upon this. I had my hand upon

his arm and I remember that it relieved me in some way to feel it so

thick and strong beneath his sleeve. He did not look at me once.

I do not know what my thoughts were, a confused incoherent medley of

nonsense. I did not think of Marie Ivanovna at all. I repeated again

and again to myself, in the silly, insane way that one does under the

shock of some trouble, the words of the poem that I had read that

afternoon:

_Robinson Crusoë passa par Amsterdam

(Je crois du moins qu'il y passa) en revenant

De l'île ombreuse et verte--ombreuse et verte--ombreuse et verte...._

It was dark, or at any rate, it seemed to me dark. The weather was

still and close; every sound echoed abominably through the silence.

When we arrived at Mittövo I suddenly thought of Trenchard. I had

utterly forgotten him until that moment. I got out of the trap and

when Semyonov climbed out he put his hand on my arm. I don't know why

but that touched me so deeply and sharply that I felt, suddenly, as

though in another instant I should lose my self-control. It was so

unlike him, so utterly unlike him, to do that. I trembled a little,

then steadied myself, and we walked together into the house. They must

all instantly have known what had occurred because I heard running

steps and sharp anxious voices.

I felt desperately, as a man runs when he is afraid, that I must be

alone. I slipped away into the passage that leads from the hall. This

passage was quite dark and I was feeling my direction with my hands

when some one, carrying a candle, turned the corner. It was

Trenchard. He raised the candle high to look at me.

"Hallo, Durward," he cried. "You're back. What sort of a time?..."

I told him at once what had occurred. The candle dropped from his

hand, falling with a sharp clatter. There was a horrible pause, both

of us standing there close to one another in the sudden blackness. I

could hear his fast nervous breathing. I was myself unstrung I

suppose, because I remember that I was dreadfully afraid lest

Trenchard should do something to me, there, as we stood.

I felt his hand groping on my clothes. But he was only feeling his

way. I heard his steps, creeping, stumbling down the passage. Once I

thought that he had fallen.

Then there was silence, and at last I was alone.

CHAPTER III

THE FOREST

And now I am confronted with a very serious difficulty. There is

nothing stranger in this whole business of the life and character of

war than the fashion in which an atmosphere that has been of the

intensest character can, by the mere advance or retreat of a pace or

two, disappear, close in upon itself, present the blindest front to

the soul that has, a moment before, penetrated it. It is as though one

had visited a house for the first time. The interior is of the most

absorbing and unique interest. There are revealed in it beauties,

terrors, of so sharp a reality that one believes that one's life is

changed for ever by the sight of them. One passes the door, closes it

behind one, steps into the outer world, looks back, and there is only

before one's view a thick cold wall--the windows are dead, there is no

sound, only bland, dull, expressionless space. Moreover this dull

wall, almost instantly, persuades one of the incredibility of what one

has seen. There were no beauties, there were no terrors.... Ordinary

life closes round one, trivial things reassume their old importance,

one disbelieves in fantastic dreams.

I believe that every one who has had experience of war will admit the

truth of this. I had myself already known something of the kind and

had wondered at the fashion in which the crossing of a mere verst or

two can bring the old life about one. I had known it during the battle

of S----, in the days that followed the battle, in moments of the

Retreat, when for half an hour we would suddenly be laughing and

careless as though we were in Petrograd.

And so when I look back to the weeks of whose history I wish now to

give a truthful account, I am afraid of myself. I wish to give nothing

more than the facts, and yet that something that is _more_ than the

facts is of the first, and indeed the only, importance. Moreover the

last impression that I wish to convey is that war is a _hysterical_

business. I believe that that succession of days in the forest of

S----, the experience of Nikitin, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch,

Trenchard and myself--might have occurred to any one, must have

occurred to many other persons, but from the cool safe foundation on

which now I stand it cannot but seem exceptional, even exaggerated.

Exaggerated, in very truth, I know that it is not. And yet this

life--so ordered, so disciplined, so rational, and THAT life--where do

they join?... I penetrated but a little way; my friends penetrated

into the very heart ... and, because I was left outside, I remain the

only possible recorder: but a recorder who can offer only signs,

moments, glimpses through a closing door....

I am waiting now for the return of my opportunity.

On the night of the death of Marie Ivanovna I slept a heavy, dreamless

sleep. I was wakened between six and seven the next morning by

Nikitin, who told me that he, Trenchard, Andrey Vassilievitch and I

were to return at once to the forest. I realised at once that

indescribable quiver in the air of momentous events. The house was

quite still, the summer morning very fresh and clear, but the air was

weighted with some crisis. It was not only the death of Marie Ivanovna

that was present with us, it was rather something that told us that

now no individual life or death counted ... individualities,

personalities, were swallowed up in the sweeping urgency of a great

climax. Nikitin simply told me that a furious battle was raging some

ten versts on the other side of the river, that we were to go at once

to form a temporary hospital behind the lines in the Forest; that the

nurses and the rest of the Otriad would remain in Mittövo to wait for

the main tide of the wounded, but that we were to go forward to help

the army doctors. He spoke very quietly. We said nothing of Marie

Ivanovna.