The Dark Forest

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  CHAPTER V

  FIRST MOVE TO THE ENEMY

  It was during two nights in the forest of S----, about which I mustafterwards write, that I had those long conversations with Trenchard,upon whose evidence now I must very largely depend. Before me as Iwrite is his Diary, left to me by him. In this whole business of thewar there is nothing more difficult than the varied and confusedsuccession with which moods, impressions, fancies, succeed one uponanother, but Trenchard told me so simply and yet so graphically of theevents of these weeks that followed the battle of S---- that I believeI am departing in no way from the truth in my present account, thetruth, at any rate as he himself believed it to be....

  The only impression that he brought away with him from the battle ofS---- was that picture, lighted by the horizon fires, of MarieIvanovna kneeling with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. That, everydetail and colour of it, bit into his brain.

  In understanding him it is of the first importance to remember thatthis was the one and only love business of his life. The effect ofthose days in Petrograd when Marie Ivanovna had shown him that sheliked him, the thundering stupefying effect of that night when she hadaccepted his love, must have caught his soul and changed it as glassis caught by the worker and blown into shape and colour. There he was,fashioned and purified, ready for her use. What would she make ofhim? That she should make nothing of him at all was as incredible tohim as that there should not be, somewhere in the world, Polchestertown in Glebeshire county.

  There had been with him, I think, from the first a fear that "it wasall too good to be true"--_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_. It is noteasy for any man, after thirty years' shy shrinking from the world, toshake himself free of superstitions, and such terrors the quiet andretired Polchester had bred in Trenchard's heart as though it had beenthe very epitome of life at its lowest and vilest. It simply came tothis, that he refused to believe that Marie Ivanovna had been given tohim only to be taken away again. About women he knew simply nothingand Russian women are not the least complicated of their sex. AboutMarie Ivanovna he of course knew nothing at all.

  His first weeks in our Otriad had been like the painful return to drabreality after a splendid dream. "After all I am the hopeless creatureI thought I was. What was there, in those days in Petrograd, thatcould blind me?" His shyness returned, his awkwardness, his mistakesin tact and resource were upon him again like a suit of badly madeclothes. He knew this but he believed that it could make no differenceto his lady. So sure was he of himself in regard to her--she might betransformed into anything hideous or vile and still now he would loveher--that he could not believe that she would change. The love thathad come to them was surely eternal--it must be, it must be, it mustbe....

  He failed altogether to understand her youth, her inexperience, aboveall her coloured romantic fancy. Her romantic fancy had made him inher eyes for a brief hour something that he was not. After a month atthe war I believe that she had grown into a woman. She had loved himfor an instant as a young girl loves a hero of a novel. And althoughshe was now a woman she must still keep her romantic fancy. He was nolonger part of that--only a clumsy man at whom people laughed. Shemust, I think, have suffered at her own awakening, for she was honest,impetuous, pure, if ever woman was those things.

  He did not see her as she was--he still clung to his confidence; buthe began as the days advanced to be terribly afraid. His fears centredthemselves round Semyonov. Semyonov must have seemed to him an awfulfigure, powerful, contemptuous, all-conquering. Any blunders that hecommitted were doubled by Semyonov's presence. He could do nothingright if Semyonov were there. He was only too ready to believe thatSemyonov knew the world and he did not, and if Semyonov thought him afool--it was quite obvious what Semyonov thought him--then a fool hemust be. He clung desperately to the hope that there would be abattle--a romantic dramatic battle--and that in it he would mostgloriously distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, hewould face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were noterrors of hell--only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded,and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture ofMarie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw his own most miserable exclusion.

  In the days that followed there was much work and he was forgotten. Heassisted in the bandaging-room; in later days he was to prove mostefficient and capable, but at first he was shy and nervous andSemyonov, who seemed always to be present, did not spare him.

  Then, quite suddenly, Marie Ivanovna changed. She was kinder to himthan she had ever been, yes, kinder than during those early days inPetrograd. We all noticed the change in her. When she was with him inthe bandaging-room she whispered advice to him, helped him when shehad a free moment, laughed with him, put him, of course, into a heavenof delight. How happy at once he was! His clumsiness instantly fellaway from him, he only smiled when Semyonov sneered, his Russianimproved in a remarkable manner. She was tender to him as though shewere much older than he. He has told me that, in spite of his joy,that tenderness alarmed him. Also when he kissed her she drew back alittle--and she did not reply when he spoke of their marriage.

  But for four days he was happy! He used to sing to himself as hewalked about the house in a high cracked voice--one song _I did butsee her passing by_--another _Early one morning_--I can hear him now,his voice breaking always on the high notes.

  _Early one morning Just as the sun was rising I heard a maid singing In the valley below: "Ah! don't deceive me! Pray never leave me,' How could you treat a poor maiden so!"_

  His pockets were more full than ever of knives and string and buttons.His smile when he was happy lightened his face, changing the lines ofit, making it if not handsome pleasant and friendly. He would talk tohimself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, atthree o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonderwhether she'll mind if I ask--" He had a large briar pipe at which hepuffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession ofmatches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco'sdamp," he explained to us a hundred times. "It's better damp...."

  Then, quite suddenly, the blow fell.

  One evening, as they were standing alone together in the yard watchingthe yellow sky die into dusk, without any preparation, she spoke tohim.

  "John," she said, "I can't marry you."

  He heard her as though she had spoken to another man. It was as thoughhe said: "Ah, that will be bad news for so-and-so."

  "I don't understand," he said, and instantly afterwards his heartbegan to beat like a raging beast and his knees trembled.

  "I can't marry you," she told him, "because I don't love you. Ah, I'veknown it a long time--ever since we left Petrograd. I've often, oftenwanted to tell you ... I've been afraid."

  "You can't marry me?" he repeated, "But you must...." Then hurriedly:"No, I shouldn't say that. You must forgive me ... you have confusedme."

  "I'm very unhappy ... I've been unhappy a long time. It was a mistakein Petrograd. I don't love you--but it isn't only that.... Youwouldn't be happy with me. You think now ... but it's a mistake."

  He has told me that as the idea worked through to his brain his onlythought was that he must keep her at all costs, under any conditions,keep her.

  "You can't--you mustn't," he whispered, staring as though he wouldhold her by her eyes. "Don't you see that you mustn't? What am I to doafter all this? What are we both to do? It's breaking everything. Ishan't believe in anything if you.... Ah! but no, you don't reallymean anything...."

  He saw that she was trembling and he bent forward, put his arm verygently round her as though he would protect her.

  But she very strongly drew away from him, looked him in the face, thendropped her eyes, let her whole body droop as though she were mostbitterly ashamed.

  "I don't know," she said, "what I've been ... what I've done. Duringthese last weeks I've been terrible to myself--and yet it's bettertoo. I didn't live a real life before, and now I see things as theyare. I don
't love you, John, and so we mustn't marry."

  He looked at her and then suddenly wild, furious, shouting at her:

  "You mustn't.... You dare not.... Then go if you wish. I don't wantyou, do you hear?... I don't want.... I don't want you!"

  She turned and walked swiftly into the house. He watched her go, thenwith quick stumbling steps hurried into the field below the farm.

  There he stood, thinking of nothing, knowing nothing, seeing nothing.The dusk came up, there had been rain during the day, the mist was ingrey sheets, the wet dank smell of the earth and of the vegetablesamongst which he stood grew stronger as the light faded. He thought ofnothing, nothing at all. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, somethingdropped--and he knelt down there on the soaking ground, searching. Hesearched furiously, raging to himself again and again: "Oh! I mustfind it! I must find it! I must find it!" His hands tore the wetvegetables, were thick with the soil. Other things fell from hispockets, Then the rain began to descend again, thin and cold. In somebuilding he could hear a horse moving, stamping. He pulled up thevegetables by their roots in his search. As though a sword had struckhim his brain was clear. He knew of his loss. He flung himself on theground, rubbing the wet soil on to his face, whispering desperately:"Oh God!--Oh God!--Oh God!"

  On the day following we did not know of what had happened. Trenchardwas not with us, as he was sent about midday with some sanitars tobury the dead in a wood five miles from M----. That must have been, inmany ways, the most terrible day of his life and during it, for thefirst time, he was to know that unreality that comes to every one,sooner or later, at the war. It is an unreality that is the moreterrible because it selects from reality details that cannot bedenied, selects them without transformation, saying to his victim:"These things are as you have always seen them, therefore this worldis as you have always seen it. It is real, I tell you." Let that falsereality be admitted and there is no more peace.

  On this day there were the two sanitars, whose faces now he knew,walking solidly beside his cart, there were the little orchards withthe soldiers' tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the oldmen, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage,the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first tremblingheat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the worldbut peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay backon his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeingpictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, longago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, inwhich dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit ofreminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of hisrelationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that thatrelationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a characterthat was the stronger for misfortune. He submitted, crushed to theground. His mind now dwelt upon that journey from Petrograd, a journeyof incredible, ironic ecstasy lighted with the fires of the wonderfulspring that had accompanied it. He recalled every detail of hisconversation with me. His confidence that life would now be fine forhim--how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, thetreasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them?It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair--blame of MarieIvanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile,idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he nothave said that he refused to let her go, held to her, dominated her,as a strong man would have done? No, without a word, except a cry ofimpotent childish rage, he had submitted.... So, all his life it hadbeen--so, all his life it would be.

  He could only wonder now at his easy ready belief that happiness wouldlast for him. Had happiness ever lasted? As a man began so he ended.Life laughed at him and would always laugh. Nevertheless, he _had_that journey--five days of perfect unalloyed delight. Nobody could robhim of that. She had said to him that even at the beginning of thejourney she had known that she did not love him--she had known but hehad not, and even though he had cheated himself with the glitteringbubble of an illusion the splendour had been there....

  Meanwhile behind his despair there was something else stirring. He hastold me that upon that afternoon he was only very dimly, very veryfaintly aware of it, aware of it only fiercely to deny it. He knew,however stoutly he might refuse to acknowledge it, that the events ofthe last weeks had bred in him some curiosity, some excitement thathe could not analyse. He would like to have thought that his lifebegan and ended only in Marie Ivanovna, but the Battle of S---- had,as it were in spite of himself, left something more.

  He found that he recalled the details of that battle as though histaking part in it had bound him to something. Even it was suggested tohim that there was something now that he must do outside his love forMarie Ivanovna, something that had perhaps no connexion with her atall. In the very heart of his misery he was conscious that a littlepulse was beating that was strange to him, foreign to him; it was asthough he were warned that he had embarked upon some voyage that mustbe carried through to the very end. He was, in truth, less completelyoverwhelmed by his catastrophe than he knew.

  As they now advanced and entered upon the first outworks of theCarpathians the day clouded. They stumbled down into a little narrowbrown valley and drove there by the side of an ugly naked stream,wandering sluggishly through mud and weeds. Over them the woods, greyand sullen, had completely closed. The sun, a round glazed disksharply defined but without colour, was like a dirty plate in the sky.Up again into the woods, then over rough cart tracks, they camefinally to a standstill amongst thick brushwood and drippingundergrowth.

  They could hear, very far away, the noise of cannon. The sanitars wereinclined to grumble. "Nice sort of business, looking for dead menhere, your Honour.... We must leave the carts here and go on foot.What's it wet for? It hasn't been raining."

  Why was it wet, indeed? A heavy brooding inertia, Trenchard has toldme, seemed to seize them all. "They were not pleasant trees, youknow," I remember his afterwards telling me, "all dirty and tangled,and we all looked dirty too. There was an unpleasant smell in the air.But that afternoon I simply didn't care about anything, nothingmattered." I don't think that the sanitars at that time respectedTrenchard very greatly. He wasn't, in any case, a man of authority andhis broken stammering Russian wouldn't help him. Then there is nothingstranger than the fashion in which the Russian language will (if youare a timid foreigner), of a sudden wilfully desert you. Be bold withit and it may, somewhat haughtily, perhaps, consent to your use ofit ... be frightened of it and it will despise you for ever. Upon thatafternoon it deserted Trenchard; even his own language seemed to haveleft him. His brain was cold and damp like the woods around him.

  They passed through the thickets and came, to their great surprise,upon a trench occupied by soldiers. This surprised them because theyhad heard that the Austrians were many versts distant. The soldiersalso seemed to wonder. They explained their mission to a young officerwho seemed at first as though he would ask them something, thenchecked himself, gave them permission to pass through and watched themwith grave gaze. After they had crossed the barbed wire the woodssuddenly closed about them as though a door had been softly shutbehind them. The ground now squelched beneath their feet, the skybetween the trees was like damp blotting-paper, and the smell that hadbeen only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blownin thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now couldbe distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap ofsound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricketbat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beatersin a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. Icould hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfallbut I might have been alone at the end of the world. It was obviousthat the regimental sanitars had been there before us because therewere many new roughly made graves. There were letters too and postcards lying about all heavy with wet and dirt. I picked up some ofthese--letters from lovers and sisters and brothers. One letter Ire
member in a large baby-hand from a boy to his father telling himabout his lessons and his drill, 'because he would soon be a soldier.'One letter, too, from a girl to her lover saying that she had had adream and knew now that her 'dear Franz, whom she loved with all hersoul, would return to her!... I am quite confident now that we shallbe happy here again very soon....' In such a place, those words."

  As he walked alone there he felt, as I had felt before the battle ofS----, that he had already been there. He knew those trees, thatsmell, that heavy overhanging sky. Then he remembered, as I hadremembered, his dream. But whereas that dream had been to me only areflected story, with him it had lasted throughout his life. He knewevery step of that first advance into the forest, the look back to thelong dim white house with shadowy figures still about it, the avenuewith many trees, the horses and dogs down the first grey path, thenthe sudden loneliness, the quiet broken only by the dripping of thetrees.

  Always that had caught him by the throat with terror, and now to-dayhe was caught once again. He was watched: he fancied that he could seethe eyes behind the thicket and hear the rustling movement ofsomebody. To-day he could hear nothing. If at last his dream was to befashioned into reality let it be so. Did the creature wish to destroyhim, let it be so. He had no strength, no hope, no desire....

  "It was there," he told me, "when I scarcely knew what was real andwhat was not, that I saw that for which I was searching. I noticedfirst the dark grey-blue of the trousers, then the white skull. Therewas a horrible stench in the air. I called and the sanitars answeredme. Then I looked at it. I had never seen a dead man before. This manhad been dead for about a fortnight, I suppose. Its grey-blue trousersand thick boots were in excellent condition and a tin spoon and somepapers were showing out of the top of one boot. Its face was agrinning skull and little black animals like ants were climbing in andout of the mouth and the eye-sockets. Its jacket was in goodcondition, its arms were flung out beyond its head. I felt sick andthe whole place was so damp and smelt so badly that it must have beenhorribly unhealthy. The sanitars began to dig a grave. Those who werenot working smoked cigarettes, and they all stood in a group watchingthe body with a solemn and serious interest. One of them made a littlewooden cross out of some twigs. There was a letter just beside thebody which they brought me. It began: 'Darling Heinrich,--Your lastletter was so cheerful that I have quite recovered from my depression.It may not be so long now before ...' and so on, like the otherletters that I had read. It grinned at us there with a devilishsarcasm, but its trousers and boots were pitiful and human. The menfinished the grave and then, with their feet, turned it over. As itrolled a flood of bright yellow insects swarmed out of its jacket, anda grey liquid trickled out of the skull. The last I saw of it was thegleam of the tin spoon above its boot...."

  "We searched after that," he told me, "for several hours and foundthree more bodies. They were Austrians, in the condition of the first.I walked in a dream of horror. It was, I suppose, a bad day for me tohave come with my other unhappiness weighing upon me, but I was, insome stupid way, altogether unprepared for what I had seen. I had, asI have told you, thought of death very often in my life but I hadnever thought of it like this. I did not now think of death veryclearly but only of the uselessness of trying to bear up againstanything when that was all one came to in the end. I felt my verybones crumble and my flesh decay on my body, as I stood there. I feltas though I had really been caught at last after a silly aimlessflight and that even if I had the strength or cleverness to escape Ihad not the desire to try. I had been mocked with a week's happinessonly to have it taken from me for my enemy's ironic enjoyment. I had aquite definite consciousness of my enemy. I had as a boy thought, youremember, of my uncle--and now, as I moved through the wood, I couldhear the old man's chuckle just as he had chuckled in the old days,snapping his fingers together and twitching his nose...."

  They searched the wood until late in the afternoon, trampling throughthe wet, peering through thickets, listening for one another's voices,finding sometimes a trophy in the shape of an empty shrapnel case, anAustrian cap or dagger. Then, quite suddenly, a sanitar noticed thatthe bursting of the shrapnel was much closer than it had been duringthe early afternoon. It was now, indeed, very near and they couldsometimes see the flash of fire between the trees.

  "There's something strange about this, your Honour," said one of thesanitars nervously, and they all looked at Trenchard as though it werehis fault that they were there. Then close behind them, with a snap ofrage, a shrapnel broke amongst the trees. After that they turned forhome, without a word to one another, not running but hastening withflushed faces as though some one were behind them.

  They came to the trench and to their surprise found it absolutelydeserted. Then, plunging on, they arrived at the two wagons, climbedon to one of them, leaving Trenchard alone with the driver on theother. "I tell you," he remarked to me afterwards, "I sank into thatwagon as though into my grave. I don't know that ever before or sincein my life have I felt such exhaustion. It was reaction, I suppose--amiserable, wretched exhaustion that left me well enough aware that Iwas the most unhappy of men and simply forced me, without a protest,to accept that condition. Moreover, I had always before me the visionof the dead body. Wherever I turned there it was, grinning at me, theblack flies crawling in and out of its jaws, and behind it somethingthat said to me: 'There! now I have shown you what I can do.... Tothat you're coming.'..."

  He must have slept because he was suddenly conscious of sitting up inhis car, surrounded by an intense stillness. He looked about him butcould see nothing clearly, as though he were still sleeping. Then hewas aware of a sanitar standing below the cart, looking up at him withgreat agitation and saying again and again: "_Borje moi! Borje moi!Borje moi!_"

  "What is it?" he asked, rubbing his eyes. The sanitar then seemed toslip away leaving him alone with a vague sense of disaster. The sunhad set, but there was a moon, full and high, and now by its light hecould see that his wagon was standing outside the gate of the house atM----. There was the yard, the bandaging-room, the long faded wall ofthe house, the barn, but where? ... where?... He sat up, then jumpeddown on to the road. The big white tent on the further side of theyard, the tent that had, that very morning, been full of wounded, wasgone. The lines of wagons, horses and tents that had filled the fieldacross the road were gone. No voices came from the house--somewhere adoor banged persistently--other sound there was none.

  The sanitars then surrounded him, speaking all together, waving theirarms, their faces white under the moon, their eyes large andfrightened like the eyes of little children. He tried to push theirbabel off from him. He could not understand.... Was this acontinuation of the nightmare of the afternoon? There was a roar justbehind their ears as it seemed. They saw a light flash upon the skyand fade, flash again and fade. With their faces towards the horizonthey watched.

  "What is it?" Trenchard said at last. There advanced towards him thenfrom out of the empty house an old man in a wide straw hat with abroom.

  "What is it?" Trenchard said again.

  "It's the Austrians," said the old man in Polish, of which Trenchardunderstood very little. "First it's the Russians.... Then it's theAustrians.... Then it's the Russians.... Then it's the Austrians. Andalways between each of them I have to clean things up"--and some morewhich Trenchard did not understand. The old man then stood at his gatewatching them with a gaze serious, sad, reflective. Meanwhile thesanitars had discovered one of our own soldiers: this man, who hadbeen sitting under a hedge and listening to the Austrian cannon withvery uncomfortable feelings, told them of the affair. At three o'clockthat afternoon our Otriad had been informed that it must retreat"within half an hour." Not only our own Sixty-Fifth Division, but thewhole of the Ninth Army was retreating "within half an hour." Moreoverthe Austrians were advancing "a verst a minute." By four o'clock thewhole of our Otriad had disappeared, leaving only this soldier toinform us that we must move on at once to T---- or S----, twenty orthirty versts distant.

&
nbsp; "Retreating!" cried Trenchard. "But we were winning! We'd just won abattle!"

  "_Tak totchno!_" said the soldier gravely, "Twenty versts! the horseswon't do it, your Honour!"

  "They've got to do it!" said Trenchard sharply, and the echo of theAustrian cannon, again as it seemed quite close at hand, emphasisedhis words. Except for this the silence of the world around them waseerie; only far away they seemed to hear the persistent rumble ofcarts on the road.

  "They're gone! They're all gone! We're left last of all!" and "TheAustrians advancing a verst a minute!"

  He took a last look at the house which had seemed yesterday soabsolutely to belong to them and now was already making preparationsfor its new guests. As he gazed he thought of his agony in that fieldbelow the house. Only last night and now what years ago it seemed!What years, what years ago!

  He climbed wearily again upon his wagon. There had entered into hisunhappiness now a new element. This was a sensation of cold despairinganger that ground should be yielded so helplessly. About every field,every hedge and lane and tree, as slowly they jogged along he feltthis. Only to-day this corn, these stones, these flowers were Russian,and to-morrow Austrian! This, as it seemed, simply out of the air,dictated by some whispering devil crouching behind a hedge, afraid toappear! This, too, when only a few hours ago there had been thatbattle of S---- won by them after a struggle of many days; thatposition, soaked with Russian blood, to be surrendered now as a leafblows in the wind.

  When they arrived at T---- and found our Otriad he was, I believe, sodeeply exhausted that he was not conscious of his actions. His accountto me of what then occurred is fantastic and confused. He discoveredapparently the house where we were; it was then one o'clock in themorning. Every one was asleep. There seemed to be no place for him tobe, he could find neither candles nor matches, and he wandered outinto the road again. Then, it seems, he was standing beside a deeplake. "I can remember nothing clearly except that the lake was blackand endless. I stood looking at it. I could see the bodies out of theforest, only now they were slipping along the water, their skullswhite and gleaming. I had also a confused impression that Russia wasbeaten and the war over. And that for me too life was utterly at anend.... I remember that I deliberately thought of Marie because ithurt so abominably. I repeated to myself the incidents of the nightbefore, all of them, talking aloud to myself. I decided then that Iwould drown myself in the lake. It seemed the only thing to do. I tookmy coat off. Then sat down in the mud and took off my boots. Why I didthis I don't know. I looked at the water, thought that it would becold, but that it would soon be over because I couldn't swim. I heardthe frogs, looked back at the flickering fires amongst our wagons,then walked down the bank...."

  Nikitin must for some time have been watching him, because at thatmoment he stepped forward, took Trenchard's arm, and drew him back.Nikitin has himself told me that he was walking up and down the roadthat night because he could not sleep. When he spoke to Trenchard theman seemed dazed and bewildered, said something about "life being allover for him and--death being horrible!"

  Nikitin put his arm round him, took him back to his room, where hemade him a bed on the floor, gave him a sleeping-draught and watchedhim until he slept.

  That was the true beginning of the friendship between Nikitin andTrenchard.