The Dark Forest Part 2

"They were engaged the evening before they left."

"I know ... nothing to do about it, but it would have been better otherwise. And Andrey Va.s.silievitch! Whatever put it into Anna Mihailovna's head to send him! He's a tiresome little man--I've known him earlier in Petrograd! He's on my nerves already with his chatter. No, it's too bad. What can he do with us?"

"He has a very good business head," I said. "And he's not really a bad little man. And he's very anxious to do everything."

"Ah, I know those people who are 'anxious to do everything.'... Don't I know? Don't you remember Sister Anna Maria? anxious to do everything, anything--and then, when it came to it, not even the simplest bandage.... Nikitin's a good man," he added, "one of the best doctors in Petrograd. We've no doctors of our own now, you know--except of course Alexei Petrovitch. The others are all from the Division--"

"Ah, Semyonov!" I said. "How is he?"

At that moment he rode up to us. Seen on horseback Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov appeared a large man; he was, in reality, of middle height but his back was broad, his whole figure thickly-set and muscular. He wore a thick square-cut beard of so fair a shade that it was almost white! His whole colour was pale and yet, in some way, expressive of immense health and vitality. His lips showed through his beard and moustache red and very thick. His every movement showed great self-possession and confidence. He had, indeed, far more personality than any other member of our Otriad.

Although he was an extremely capable doctor his main business in life seemed to be self-indulgence. He apparently did not know the meaning of the word "restraint." The serious questions in life to him were food, drink, women.

He believed in no woman's virtue and no man's sincerity. He hailed any one as a friend but if he considered some one a fool he said so immediately. He concealed his opinions from no one.

When he was at work his indulgence seemed for the moment to leave him. He was a surgeon of the first order and loved his profession. He was a man now of fifty, but had never married, preferring a long succession of mistresses--women who had loved him, at whom he had always laughed, to whom he had been kind in a careless fas.h.i.+on.... He always declared that no woman had ever touched his heart.

He had come to the war voluntarily, forsaking a very lucrative practice. This was always a puzzle to me. He had no romantic notions about the war, no altruistic compulsions, no high conceptions of his duty ... no one had worked more magnificently in the war than he. He could not be said to be popular amongst us; we were all of us perhaps a little afraid of him. He cared, so obviously, for none of us. But we admired his vitality, his courage, his independence. I myself was a.s.sured that he allowed us to see him only with the most casual superficiality.

As he rode up to me I wondered how he and Nikitin would fare. These were two personalities worthy of attention. Also, what would he think of Trenchard? His opinion of any one had great weight amongst us.

I had not seen him last night and he leant over his horse now and shook hands with me with a warm friendliness that surprised me. He laughed, joked, was evidently in excellent spirits. He rode on a little, then came back to us.

"I like your new Sister," he said. "She's charming."

"She's engaged," I answered, "to the new Englishman."

"Ah! the new Englishman!" He laughed. "Apologies, Ivan Andreievitch (myself), to your country ... but really ... what's he going to do with us?"

"He'll work," I said, surprised at the heat that I felt in Trenchard's defence. "He's a splendid fellow."

"I have no doubt"--again Semyonov laughed. "We all know your enthusiasms, Ivan Andreievitch, ... but an Englishman! Ye Bogu!..."

"Engaged to that girl!" I heard him repeat to himself as again he rode forward. Trenchard, little Andrey Va.s.silievitch, Semyonov, Nikitin ... yes, there was promise of much development here.

We had dropped down into the valley and, at a sudden turn, saw the school-house in front of us. It is before me now as I write with its long low whitewashed two-storied front, its dormer-windows, its roof faintly pink with a dark red bell-tower perched on the top. Behind it is a long green field stretching to where hills, faintly blue in the morning light, rose, with very gradual slopes against the sky. To the right I could see there was a garden hidden now by trees, on the left a fine old barn, its thatched roof deep brown, the props supporting it black with age. In front of the pillared porch there was a little square of white cobble-stones and in the middle of these an old grey sundial. The whole place was bathed in the absolute peace of the spring morning.

As we drove up a little old lady with two tiny children clinging to her skirts came to the porch. I could see, as we came up to her, that she was trembling with terror; she put up her hand to her white hair, clutched again desperately the two children, found at last her voice and hoped that we would be "indulgent."

Molozov a.s.sured her that she would suffer in no kind of way, that we must use her school for a week or so and that any loss or damage that she incurred would of course be made up to her. She was then, of a sudden, immensely fluent, explaining that her husband--"a most excellent husband to me in every way one might say"--had been dead fifteen years now, that her two sons were both fighting for the Austrians, that she looked after the school a.s.sisted by her daughter. These were her grandchildren.... Such a terrible year she, in all her long life, had never remembered. She....

The arrival of the rest of the Oboz silenced her. She remained, with wide-open staring eyes, her hand at her breast, watching, saying absent-mindedly to the children: "Now Katya.... Now Anna.... See what you're about!"

The school was spotlessly clean. In the schoolroom the rough benches were marked with names and crosses. On the whitewashed walls were coloured maps of Galicia and tables of the Austrian kings and queens; on the blackboard still an unfinished arithmetical sum and on the master's desk a pile of exercise books.

In a moment everything was changed; the sanitars had turned the schoolroom into a dormitory, another room was to be our dining-room, another a bedroom for the Sisters. In the high raftered kitchen our midday meal was already cooking; the little cobbled court was piled high with luggage. In the field beyond the house the sanitars had pitched their tents.

I walked out into the little garden--a charming place with yew hedges, a lichen-covered well and old thick apple-trees, and here I found an old man in a broad-brimmed straw hat tending the bees. The hives were open and he was working with a knife whilst the bees hung in a trembling hovering cloud about him. I spoke to him but he paid no attention to me at all. I watched him then spoke again; he straightened himself then looked at me for a moment with eyes full of scorn. Words of fury, of abuse perhaps, seemed to tremble on his lips, then shaking his head he turned his back upon me and continued his work. Behind us I could hear the soldiers breaking the garden-fence to make stakes for their tents.

Here we were for a fortnight and it was strange to me, in the days of stress and excitement that followed, to look back to that fortnight and remember that we had, so many of us, been restless and discontented at the quiet of it. Oddly enough, of all the many backgrounds that were, during the next months, to follow in procession behind me, there only remain to me with enduring vitality: this school-house at O----, the banks of the River Nestor which I had indeed good reason to remember, and finally the forest of S----. How strange a contrast, that school-house with its little garden and white cobbles and that forest which will, to the end of my life, ever haunt my dreams.

And yet, by its very contrast, how fitting a background to our Prologue this school-house made! I wonder whether Nikitin sees it still in his visions? Trenchard and Semyonov ... does it mean anything to them, where they now are? First of them all, Marie Ivanovna.... I see her still, bending over the well looking down, then suddenly flinging her head back, laughing as we stood behind her, the sunlight through the apple-trees flas.h.i.+ng in her eyes.... That fortnight must be to many of us of how ironic, of how tragic a tranquillity!

So we settled down and did our best to become happily accustomed to one another. Our own immediate company numbered twenty or so--Molozov, two doctors, myself, Trenchard and Andrey Va.s.silievitch, the two new Sisters and the three former ones, five or six young Russians, gentlemen of ease and leisure who had had some "bandaging" practice at the Petrograd hospitals, and three very young medical students, directly attached to our two doctors. In addition to these there were the doctors, Sisters and students belonging to the army itself--the Sixty-Fifth Division of the Ninth Army. These sometimes lived with us and sometimes by themselves; they had at their head Colonel Oblonsky, a military doctor of much experience and wide knowledge. There were also the regular sanitars, some thirty or forty, men who were often by profession schoolmasters or small merchants, of a better cla.s.s for the most part than the ordinary soldier.

It is not, of course, my intention to describe with any detail the individuals of this company. I have chosen already those of us who are especially concerned with my present history, but these others made a continually fluctuating and variable background, at first confusing and, to a stranger, almost terrifying. When the army doctors and Sisters dined with us we numbered from thirty to forty persons: sometimes also the officers of the Staff of the Sixty-Fifth came to our table. There were other occasions when every one was engaged on one business or another and only three or four of us were left at the central station or "Punkt," as it was called.

And, of all these persons, who now stands out? I can remember a Sister, short, plain, with red hair, who felt that she was treated with insufficient dignity, whose voice rising in complaint is with me now; I can see her small red-rimmed eyes watching for some insult and then the curl of her lip as she s.n.a.t.c.hed her opportunity.... Or there was the jolly, fat Sister who had travelled with us, an admirable worker, but a woman, apparently, with no personal life at all, no excitements, dreads, angers, dejections. Upon her the war made no impression at all. She spoke sometimes to us of her husband and her children. She was not greedy, nor patriotic, neither vain nor humble, neither egoistic nor unselfish. She was simply reliable.

Or there was the tall gaunt Sister, intensely religious and serious. She was regarded by all of us as an excellent woman, but of course we did not like her.

One would say to another: "Sister K----, what an excellent worker!"

"Yes. How she works!"

"Splendid! Splendid!"

When owing to the illness of her old mother she was compelled to return to Petrograd what relief we all felt! How gay was our supper the night of her departure! There was something very childish at the heart of all of us.

Of the young gentlemen from Petrograd I remember only three. The family name of one was Ivanoff, but he was always known to the Otriad as Goga, a pet diminutive of George. He was perhaps the youngest person whom I have ever known. He must have been eighteen years of age; he looked about eleven, with a round red face and wide-open eyes that expressed eternal astonishment. Like Mr. Toots', his mind was continually occupied with his tailor and he told me on several occasions that he hoped I should visit him in Petrograd because there in the house of his mother he had many splendid suits, s.h.i.+rts, ties, that it would give him pleasure to show me. In spite of this little weakness, he showed a most energetic character, willing to do anything for anybody, eager to please the whole world. I can hear his voice now: "Yeh Bogu! Ivan Andreievitch!... Imagine my position! There was General Polinoff and the whole Staff.... What to do? Only three versts from the position too and already six o'clock...."

Or there was another serious gentleman, whose mind was continually occupied with Russia: "It may be difficult for you, Ivan Andreievitch, to see with our eyes, but for those of us who have Russia in our hearts ... what rest or peace can there be? I can a.s.sure you...."

He wore pince-nez and with his long pear-shaped head, shaven to the skin, his white cheeks, protruding chin and long heavy white hands he resembled nothing so much as a large fish hanging on a nail at a fishmonger's. He worked always in a kind of cold desperate despair, his pince-nez slipping off his s.h.i.+ny nose, his mouth set grimly. "What is the use?" he seemed to say, "of helping these poor wounded soldiers when Russia is in such a desperate condition? Tell me that!"

Or there was a wild rough fellow from some town in Little Russia, a boy of the most primitive character, no manners at all and a heart of s.h.i.+ning gold. Of life he had the very wildest notions. He loved women and would sing Southern Russian songs about them. He had a strain of fantasy that continually surprised one. He liked fairy tales. He would say to me: "There's a tale? Ivan Andreievitch, about a princess who lived on a lake of gla.s.s. There was a forest, you know, round the lake and all the trees were of gold. The pond was guarded by three dwarfs. I myself, Ivan Andreievitch, have seen a dwarf in Kiev no higher than your leg, and in our town they say there was once a whole family of dwarfs who lived in a house in the chief street in our town and sold potatoes.... I don't know.... People tell one such things. But for the rest of that tale, do you remember how it goes?"

He could ride any horse, carry any man, was never tired nor out of heart. He had the vaguest ideas about the war. "I knew a German once in our town," he told me. "I always hated him.... He was going to Petrograd to make his fortune. I hope he's dead." This fellow was called Petrov.

My chief interest during this fortnight was to watch the fortunes of Marie Ivanovna and Trenchard with their new companions. It was instantly apparent that Marie Ivanovna was a success. On the second day after our arrival at the school-house there were continual exclamations: "But how charming the new Sister! How sympathetic!... Have you talked to the new Sister?"

Even Sister K----, so serious and religious, approved. It was evident at once that Marie Ivanovna was, on her side, delighted with every one. I could see that at present she was a.s.sured that what she wanted from life would be granted to her. She gave herself, with complete confidence, to any one and every one, and, with that triumphing vitality that one felt in her from the first moment of meeting her, she carried all before her. In the hospital at Petrograd they had been, I gathered, "all serious and old," had treated her I fancy with some sternness. Here, at any rate, "serious and old" she would not find us. We welcomed, with joy, her youth, her enthusiasm, her happiness.

Semyonov, who never disguised nor restrained his feelings, was, from the first instant, strangely attracted to her. She, I could see, liked him very much, felt in him his strength and capacity and scorn of others. Molozov also yielded her his instant admiration. He always avoided any close personal relations.h.i.+p with any of us but I could see that he was delighted with her vitality and energy. She pleased the older Sisters by her frank and quite honest desire to be told things and the younger Sisters by her equally honest admiration of their gifts and qualities. She was honest and sincere, I do believe, in every word and thought and action. She had, in many ways, the naive purity, the unconsidered faith and confidence of a child still in the nursery. She amazed me sometimes by her ignorance; she delighted me frequently by her refres.h.i.+ng truth and straightforwardness. She felt a little, I think, that I did not yield her quite the extravagant admiration of the others. I was Trenchard's friend....

Yes, I was now Trenchard's friend. What had occurred since that night in the train, when I had felt, during the greater part of the time, nothing but irritation? Frankly, I do not know. It may be, partly, that he was given to me by the rest of the Otriad. He was spoken of now as "my" Englishman. And then, poor Trenchard!... How, during this fortnight, he was unhappy! It had begun with him as I had foreseen. In the first place he had been dismayed and silenced by the garrulity of his new companions. It had seemed to him that he had understood nothing of their conversation, that he was in the way, that finally he was more lonely than he had ever been in his life before. Then, however strongly he might to himself deny it, he had arrived in Russia with what Nikitin called "his romantic notions." He had read his Dostoevski and Turgenev; he had looked at those books of Russian impressions that deal in nothing but snow, ikons, and the sublime simplicity of the Russian peasant. He was a man whose circ.u.mstances had led him to believe profoundly in his own incapacity, unpopularity, ignorance. For a moment his love had given him a new confidence but now how was that same love deserting him? He had foreseen a glorious campaign, his lady and himself side by side, death and terror flying before him. He found himself leading a country life of perfect quiet and comfort, even as he might have led it in England, with a crowd of people, strangely unfamiliar to him, driving him, as he had been driven in the old days, into a host of awkwardnesses, confusions and foolishnesses. I could not forgive Marie Ivanovna for her disappointment in him, and yet I could understand how different he must have appeared to her during those last days in Petrograd, when alone with her and on fire with love, he had shown his true and bravest self to her. She was impatient, she had hoped that the others would see him as she had seen him. She watched them as they expressed their surprise that he was not the practical, fearless and unimaginative Englishman who was their typical figure. Whilst he found them far from the Karamazovs, the Raskolnikoffs, of his imagination, they in their turn could not create the "sportsman" and "man of affairs" whom they had expected.

To all of this Semyonov added, beyond question, his personal weight. He had from the first declared Trenchard "a ridiculous figure." Whilst the others were unfailingly kind, hospitable and even indulgent to Trenchard, Semyonov was openly satirical, making no attempt to hide his sarcastic irony. I do not know how much Trenchard's engagement to Marie Ivanovna had to do with this, but I know that "my Englishman" could not to his misfortune have had a more practical, more efficient figure against whom to be contrasted than Semyonov.

During these weeks I think that I hated Semyonov. There was, however, one silent observer of all this business upon whose personal interference I had not reckoned. This was Nikitin, who, at the end of our first week at the school-house, broke his silence in a conversation with me.

Nikitin, although he spoke as little as possible to any one, had already had his effect upon the Otriad. They felt behind his silence a personality that might indeed be equal to Semyonov's own. By little Andrey Va.s.silievitch they were always being a.s.sured: "Nikitin! A most remarkable man! You may believe me. I have known him for many years. A great friend of my poor wife's and mine...."

They did not appear to be great friends. Nikitin quite obviously avoided the little man whenever it was possible. But then he avoided us all.

Upon a lovely afternoon Nikitin and I were alone in the wild little garden, he lying full length on the gra.s.s, I reading a very ancient English newspaper, with my back against a tree.

He looked up at me with a swift penetrating glance, as though he were seeing me for the first time and would wish at once to weigh my character and abilities.

"Your Englishman," he said. "He's not happy, I'm afraid."

"No," I said, feeling the surprise of his question--it had become almost a tradition with me that he never spoke unless he were first spoken to. "He feels strange and a little lonely, perhaps ... it's natural enough!"

"Yes," repeated Nikitin, "it's natural enough. What did he come for?"

"Oh, he'll be all right," I said hastily, "in a day or two."

Nikitin lay on his back looking at the green, layer upon layer, light and dark, with golden fragments of broken light leaping in the breeze from branch to branch. "Why did he come? What did he expect to see? I know what he expected to see--romantic Russia, romantic war. He expected to find us, our hearts exploding with love, G.o.d's smile on our simple faces, G.o.d's simple faith in our souls.... He has been told by his cleverest writers that Russia is the last stronghold of G.o.d. And war? He thought that he would be plunged into a scene of smoke and flame, shrapnel, horror upon horror, danger upon danger. He finds instead a country house, meals long and large, no sounds of cannon, not even an aeroplane. Are we kind to him? Not at all.... We are not unkind but we simply have other things to think about, and because we are primitive people we do what we want to do, feel what we want to feel, and show quite frankly our feelings. He is not what we expected, so that we prefer to fill our minds with things that do not give us trouble. Later, like all Englishmen, he will dismiss us as savages, or, if he is of the intellectual kind, he will talk about our confusing subtleties and contradictions. But we are neither savages nor confusing. We have simply a skin less than you.... We are a very young people, a real and genuine Democracy, and we care for quite simple things, women, food, sleep, money, quite simply and without restraint. We show our eagerness, our disgust, our disappointment, our amus.e.m.e.nt simply as the mood moves us. In Moscow they eat all day and are not ashamed. Why should they be? In Kiev they think always about women and do not pretend otherwise ... and so on. We have, of course, no sense of time, nor method, nor system. If we were to think of these things we would be compelled to use restraint and that would bother us. We may lose the most important treasure in the world by not keeping an appointment ... on the other hand we have kept our freedom. We care for ideas for which you care nothing in England but we have a sure suspicion of all conclusions. We are pessimists, one and all. Life cannot be good. We ironically survey those who think that it can.... We give way always to life but when things are at their worst then we are relieved and even happy. Here at any rate we are on safe ground. We have much sentiment, but it may, at any moment, give way to some other emotion. We are therefore never to be relied upon, as friends, as enemies, as anything you please. Except this--that in the heart of every Russian there is a pa.s.sionate love of goodness. We are tolerant to all evil, to all weakness because we ourselves are weak. We confess our weakness to any one because that permits us to indulge in it--but when we see in another goodness, strength, virtue, we wors.h.i.+p it. You may bind us to you with bands of iron by your virtues--never, as all foreigners think, by your vices. In this, too, we are sentimentalists. We may not believe in G.o.d but we have an intense curiosity about Him--a curiosity that with many of us never leaves us alone, compels us to fill our lives, to fill our lives.... We love Russia.... But that is another thing.... Never forget too that behind every Russian's simplicity there is always his Ideal--his secret Ideal, perhaps, that he keeps like an ikon sacred in his heart. Yes, of every Russian, even of the worst of us, that is true. And it complicates our lives, delivers us to our enemies, defeats all our worldly aims, renders us helpless at the moment when we should be most strong. But it is good, before G.o.d, that it should be so...."

He suddenly sprang up and stood before me. "To-morrow I shall think otherwise--and yet this is part of the truth that I have told you.... And your Englishman? I like him ... I like him. That girl will treat him badly, of course. How can she do otherwise? He sees her like Turgenev's Liza. Well, she is not that. No girl in Russia to-day is like Turgenev's Liza. And it's a good thing." He smiled--that strange, happy, confident mysterious smile that I had seen first on the Petrograd platform. Then he turned and walked slowly towards the house.

What Nikitin had said about Trenchard's expectation of "romantic war" was perhaps true, in different degrees, of all of us. Even I, in spite of my earlier experience, felt some irritation at this delay, and to those of us who had arrived flaming with energy, bravery, resolution to make their name before Europe, this feasting in a country garden seemed a deliberate insult. Was this "romantic war?" These long meals under the trees, deep sleeps in the afternoon when the pigeons cooed round the little red bell-tower and the pump creaked in the cobbled courtyard and the bees hummed in the garden? Bees, cold water s.h.i.+ning deep in the well, and the samovar chuckling behind the flower-beds, and fifteen versts away the Austrians challenging the Russian nation!... "You know," Andrey Va.s.silievitch said to me, "it's very disheartening."

Marie Ivanovna at the end of the first week spoke her mind. I found her one evening before supper leaning over the fence, gazing across the long flat field, pale gold in the dusk with the hills like grey clouds beyond it.

"They tell me," she said, turning to me, "that we may be another fortnight like this."

"Yes," I said, "it's quite possible, or even longer. We can't provide wounded and battles for you if there aren't any."

"But there are!" she cried. "Isn't the whole of Europe fighting and isn't it simply disgusting of us to be sitting down here, eating and sleeping, just as though we were in a dacha in the country? At least in the hospital in Petrograd I was working ... here...."

"We've got to stick to our Division," I answered. "They can't have it in reserve very long. When it goes, we'll go. The whole secret of leading this life out here is taking exactly what comes as completely as you can take it. If it's a time for sleeping and eating, sleep and eat--there'll be days enough when you'll get nothing of either."

She laughed then, swinging round to me, with the dusk round her white nurse's cap and her eyes dark with her desires and hopes and disappointments.

"Oh, I've no right to be discontented.... Every one is so good to me. I love them all--even you, Mr. Durward. But I want to begin, to begin, to begin! I want to see what it's like, to find what there is there that frightens them, or makes them happy. We had a young officer in our hospital who died. He was too ill ... he could tell us nothing, but he was so excited by something ... something he was in the middle of.... Who was it? What was it? I must be there, hunt it out, find that I'm strong enough not to be afraid of anything." She suddenly dropped her voice, changing with sharp abruptness. "And John? He's not happy here, is he?"

"You should know," I answered, "better than any of us."

"Why should I know?" she replied, flaming out at me. "You always blame me about him, but you are unfair. I want him to be happy--I would make him so if I could. But he's so strange, so different from his time at the hospital. He will scarcely speak to me or to any one. Why can't he be agreeable to every one? I want them to like him but how can they when he won't talk to them and runs away if they come near him? He's disappointed perhaps at its being so quiet here. It isn't what he expected to find it, but then isn't that the same for all of us? And we don't sulk all day. He's disappointed with me perhaps but he won't tell me what he wants. If I ask him he only says 'Oh, it's all r-right--it's all r-right'--I hate that 'all r-right' of your language--so stupid! What a purpose not to say if he wants something?"

I said nothing. My silence urged her to a warmer defence.

"And then he makes such mistakes--always everything wrong that he's asked to do. Doctor Semyonov laughs at him--but of course! He's like a little boy, a man as old as he is. And Englishmen are always so practical, capable. Oh! speak to him, Mr. Durward; you can, please. If I say anything he's at once so miserable.... I don't understand, I don't understand!" she cried, raising her hands with a little despairing gesture. "How can he have been like that in Petrograd, and now like this!"

"Give him time, Marie Ivanovna," I answered her. "This is all new to him, confusing, alarming. He's led a very quiet life. He's very sensitive. He cares for you so deeply that the slightest thing wounds him. He would hide that if he could--it's his tragedy that he can't."

She would have answered had not supper arrived and with it our whole company. Shall I ever know a more beautiful night? As we sat there the moon came up, red-gold and full; the stars were cl.u.s.tered so thickly between the trees that their light lay heavy like smoke upon the air. The little garden seemed to be never still as our candlelight blew in the breeze; so it hovered and trembled about us, the trees bending beneath their precious load of stars, shuddering in their happiness at so good an evening.

We sat there as though we had known that it was to be our last night of peace.... Many times the gla.s.ses of tea were filled, many times the little blue tin boxes of sweets were pushed up and down the table, many times the china teapot on the top of the samovar was fed with fresh tea, many times spoons were dipped into the strawberry jam and then plunged into the gla.s.ses of tea, such being the Russian pleasure.

There occurred then an unfortunate incident. Some one had said something about England: there had been a joke then about "sportsmen," some allusion was made to some old story connected with myself, and I had laughingly taken up the challenge. Suddenly Semyonov leaned across the table and spoke to Trenchard. Trenchard, who had been silent throughout the meal, misunderstood the Russian, thought that Semyonov was trying to insult him, and sat there colouring, flaming at last, silent. We all of us felt the awkwardness of it. There was a general pause--Semyonov himself drew back with a little laugh.

Suddenly Marie Ivanovna, across the table, in English said softly but with a strange eager hostility: "How absurd!... To let them all see ... to let them know...." Perhaps I, who was sitting next to her, alone heard her words.

The colour left Trenchard's face; he looked at her once, then got up and left the table. I could see then that she was distressed, but she talked, laughed more eagerly, more enthusiastically than before. Sometimes I saw her look towards the school-house.

When there came an opportunity I rose and went to find him. He was standing near his bed, his back to the door, his hands clenched.

"I say, come out again--just as though nothing had happened. No one noticed anything, only I...."

He turned to me, his face working and with a pa.s.sionate gesture, in a voice that choked over the words, he cried: "She should not have said it. She should not ... every one there.... She knew how it would wound me.... Semyonov...."

He positively was silent over that name. The mild expression of his eyes, the clumsy kindness of his mouth gave a ludicrous expression to his rage.

"Wait! Wait!" I cried. "Be patient!"

As I spoke I could hear him in the railway carriage: "I am mad with happiness.... G.o.d forgive me, my heart will break."

Breaking from me, despair in his voice, he whispered to the empty room, the desolate row of white beds watching him: "I always knew that I was hopeless ... hopeless ... hopeless."

"Look here," I said. "You mustn't take things so hard. You go up and down.... Your emotions...."

But he only shook his head: "She shouldn't have said it--like that--before every one," he repeated.

I left him. Afterwards as I stood in the pa.s.sage, white and ghostly in the moonlight, something suddenly told me that this night the prologue of our drama was concluded.

I waited on the steps of the house, heard the laughing voices in the distance, while over the rest of the world there was absolute silence; then abruptly, quite sharply, across the long low fields there came the rumble of cannon. Three times it sounded. Then hearing no more I returned into the house.

CHAPTER III.

THE INVISIBLE BATTLE.

On the evening of the following day Trenchard, Andrey Va.s.silievitch and I were sent with sanitars and wagons to the little hamlet of M----, five versts only from the Position. It was night when we arrived there; no sound of cannon, only on the high hills (the first lines of the Carpathians) that faced us the scattered watchfires of our own Sixty-Fifth Division, and in the little village street a line of cavalry moving silently, without a spoken word, on to the high-road beyond. After much difficulty (the village was filled with the officers of the Sixty-Fifth) we found a kitchen in which we might sleep. Upon the rough earth floor our mattresses were spread, my feet under the huge black oven, my head beneath a gilt picture of the Virgin and Child that in the candlelight bowed and smiled, in company with eight other pictures of Virgins and Children, to give us confidence and encouragement.

It was a terrible night. On a high pillared bed set into the farther wall, an old Galician woman, her head bound up in a red handkerchief, knelt all night and prayed aloud. Her daughter crouched against the wall, sleeping, perhaps, but nevertheless rocking ceaselessly a wooden cradle that hung from a black bar in the ceiling. In this cradle lay her son, aged one or two, and once and again he cried for half an hour or so, protesting, I suppose, against our invasion. There was a smell in the kitchen of sour bread, mice, and bad water. The heat was terrible but the old lady told us that the grandchild was ill and would certainly die were the window opened. The candle we blew out but there remained a little burning lamp under the picture of the Virgin immediately over the old lady's bed. I slept, but for how long I do not know. I was only aware that suddenly I was awake, staring through the tiny diamond-paned window, at the faint white light now breaking in the sky. I could see from my mattress only a thin strip of this light above the heavy ma.s.s of dark forest on the mountain-side.

I must have been still only half-awake because I could not clearly divide, before my eyes, the true from the false. I could see quite plainly in the dim white shadow the face of Trenchard; he was not asleep, but was leaning on his elbow staring in front of him. I could see the old woman with her red handkerchief kneeling in front of her lamp and her prayer came like the turning of a wheel, harsh and incessant. The cradle creaked, in the air was the heavy smell, and suddenly, beyond the window, a c.o.c.k crowed. These things were real. But also I seemed to be in some place much vaster than the stuffy kitchen of the night before. Under the light that was with every minute growing stronger, I could fancy that many figures were moving in the shadows; it seemed to me as though I were in some place where great preparations were being made. I fancied then that I could discern Marie Ivanovna's figure, then Nikitin, then Semyonov, then Molozov.... There was a great silence but I felt that every one was busily occupied in making ready for some affair. This was with half my consciousness--with the other half I was perfectly aware of the actual room, of Trenchard, the creaking cradle and the rest.

Then the forest that had been on the hills seemed to draw closer to the house. I felt that it had invaded the garden and that its very branches were rubbing against the windows. With all of this I was aware that I was imagining some occurrence that I had already seen, that was not, in any way, new to me, I was a.s.sured of the next event. When we, all of us, Marie Ivanovna, Semyonov, Nikitin and the rest, were ready we should move out into the forest, would stand, a vast company, with our dogs and horses....

Why, it was Trenchard's dream that I was seeing! I was merely repeating to myself his own imaginations--and with that I had suddenly, as though some one had hypnotised me, fallen back into a heavy dreamless sleep. It was already midday when I was wakened by little Andrey Va.s.silievitch, who, sitting on my bed and evidently in a state of the very greatest excitement, informed me that Dr. Semyonov and the Sisters Marie Ivanovna and Anna Petrovna had arrived from ----, and that we might be off at any moment. I was aware, as he spoke, of a great stir beyond the window and saw, pa.s.sing up through the valley, a flood of soldiers, infantry, cavalry, kitchens with clumsy black funnels bobbing on their unsteady wheels, cannon, hundreds of carts; the soldiers came up through our own garden treading down the cabbages, stopping at the well near our door and filling their tin kettles, tramping up the road, spreading, like smoke, in the far distance, up the high road that led into the furthest forest.

"They say--to-night--for certain," said Andrey Va.s.silievitch, his fat hand trembling on my bed. He began to talk, his voice shaking with excitement. "Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I am continually surprised at myself: 'Here you are, Andrey Va.s.silievitch, here, at the war. What do you make of it?? I say to myself. Just consider.... No, but seriously, Ivan Andreievitch, of course I must seem to all of you something of a comic figure. When my wife was alive--how I wish that you could have known her! Such a remarkable woman; every one who met her was struck by her fine character--when my wife was alive I had my position to support. That I should have been a comic figure would have distressed her. But now, who cares? n.o.body, you may very truly say.... Well, well. But the point is that this evening we shall really be in the thick of it. And--may I tell you something, Ivan Andreievitch? Only for yourself, because you are an Englishman and can be trusted: to speak quite truthfully I'm frightened. I say to myself that one is at the war and that one must be frightened at nothing, and still I remain frightened.... Frightened of what?... I really cannot tell you. Death, perhaps? But no, I should not be sorry to die--there are reasons....

"And yet although I should not be sorry to die, I remain frightened--all night I was awake--I do my utmost to control it, but there is something stronger than I--something. I feel as though if I once discovered what that something was I should not be frightened any longer. Something definite that you could meet and say to yourself: 'There, Andrey Va.s.silievitch, you're not frightened of that, are you? What is there to be frightened of?... Why then, you know, I don't believe I should be frightened any more!'"

I remember that he then explained to me that he wished Nikitin had been sent instead of Semyonov. Nikitin was much more sympathetic.

"You seem very fond of Nikitin," I said.

"We are friends ... we have been friends for many years. My wife was very fond of him. I am a lonely man, Ivan Andreievitch, since the death of my wife, and to be with any one who knew her is a great happiness ... yes, a great happiness."