CHAPTER VI
THE RETREAT
The retreat struck us as breathlessly as though we had been whirled bya wind-storm into midair on the afternoon of a summer day. At fiveminutes to three we had been sitting round the table in the garden ofthe house at M---- drinking tea. We were, I remember, very gay. We hadheard only the day before of the Russian surrender of Przemysl andthat had for a moment depressed us; but as always we could see verylittle beyond our own immediate Division. Here, on our own Front, wehad at last cleared the path before us. On that very afternoon we weregaily anticipating our advance. Even Sister K---- who, for religiousreasons, took always a gloomy view of the future, was cheerful. Shesipped her cherry jam and smiled upon us. Anna Petrovna, imperturbablysewing, calmly sighed her satisfaction.
"Perhaps to-morrow we shall move. I feel like it. It will be splendidto go through the Carpathians--beautiful scenery, I believe." Molozovwas absent in the town of B---- collecting some wagons that hadarrived from Petrograd. "He'll be back to-night, I believe," saidSister K----. "Dear me, what a pleasant afternoon!"
It was then that I saw the face of the boy Goga. I had turned,smiling, pleased with the sunshine, cherry jam, and a good Russiancigarette straight from Petrograd. The boy Goga stared across the yardat me, his round red cheeks pale, mouth open, and his eyes confusedand unbelieving.
He seemed then to jump across the intervening space. Then he screamedat us:
"We're retreating.... We're retreating!" he shrieked in the hightrembling voice peculiar to agitated Russians. "We have only half anhour and the Austrians are almost here now!"
We were flung after that into a hurry of movement that left us no timefor reasoning or argument. Semyonov appeared and in Molozov's absencetook the lead. He was, of course, entirely unmoved, and as I nowremember, combed his fair beard with a little tortoiseshell pocketcomb as he talked to us. "Yes, we must move in half an hour. Verysad ... the whole army is retreating. Why, God knows...."
There arose clouds of dust in the yard where we had had our happyluncheon. The tents had disappeared. The wounded were once more lyingon the jolting carts, looking up through their pain and distress to aheaven that was hot and grey and indifferent. An old man whom we hadnot seen during the whole of our stay suddenly appeared from nowherewith a long broom and watched us complacently. We had our own privateproperty to pack. As I pressed my last things into my bag I turnedfrom my desolate little tent, looked over the fields, the garden, thehouse, the barns.... "But it was ours--OURS," I thought passionately.We had but just now won a desperately-fought battle; across the longpurple misty fields the bodies of those fallen Russians seemed to riseand reproach us. "We had won that land for you--and now--like this,you can abandon us!"
At that moment I cursed my lameness that would prevent me from everbeing a soldier. How poor, on that afternoon, it seemed to be unableto defend with one's own hand those fields, those rivers, thosehills! "Ah but Russia, I will serve you faithfully for this!" was theprayer at all our hearts that afternoon....
Semyonov had wisely directed our little procession away from the mainroad to O---- which was filled now with the carts and wagons of ourSixty-Fifth Division. We were to spend the night at the small villageof T----, twenty versts distant; then, to-morrow morning, to arrive atO----.
The carts were waiting in a long line down the road, the soldiers, hotand dusty, carried bags and sacks and bundles. A wounded man criedsuddenly: "Oh, Oh, Oh," an ugly mongrel terrier who had attachedhimself to our Otriad tried to leap up at him, barking, in the air.There was a scent of hay and dust and flowers, and, very faintly,behind it all, came the soft gentle rumble of the Austrian cannon.
Nikitin, splendid on his horse, shouted to Semyonov:
"What of Mr.? Hadn't some one better go to meet him?"
"I've arranged that!" Semyonov answered shortly.
It was of course my fate to travel in the ancient black carriage thatwas one of the glories of our Otriad, with Sister Sofia Antonovna, theSister with the small red-rimmed eyes of whom I have spoken on anearlier page. She was a woman who found in every arrangement in life,whether made by God, the Germans, or the General of our Division, muchcause for complaint and dismay. She had never been pretty but hadalways felt that she ought to be; she was stupid but comforted herselfby the certain assurance that every one else was stupid too. She hadcome to the war because a large family of brothers and sisters refusedto have her at home. I disliked her very much, and she hated myselfand Marie Ivanovna more than any one else in the world. I don't knowwhy she grouped us together--she always did.
Marie Ivanovna was sitting with us now in the carriage, white-facedand silent. Sofia Antonovna was very patronising.... "When you'veworked a little more at the Front, dear, you'll know that these thingsmust happen. Bad work somewhere, of course. What can you expect from acountry like Russia? Everything mismanaged ... nothing but thieves androbbers. Of course we're beaten and always will be."
"How can you, Sofia Antonovna?" Sister Marie interrupted in a lowtrembling voice. "It is nobody's fault. It is only for a moment. Wewill return--soon--at once. I know it. Ah, we _must_, we _must_! ...and your courage all goes. Of course it would."
Sister Sofia Antonovna smiled and her eyes watched us both. "I'mafraid your Mr. will be left behind," she said.
"Dr. Semyonov," Marie Ivanovna began--then stopped. We were all of ussilent during the rest of the journey.
And how is one to give any true picture of the confusion into which weflung ourselves at O----? O---- had been the town at which, a littlemore than a month ago, we had arrived so eagerly, so optimistically.It had been to us then the quietest retreat in the world--irritating,provoking by reason of its peace. The little school-house, the greenwell, the orchard, the bees, the long light evenings with no sound butthe birds and running water--those things had been a month ago.
We were hurled now into a world of dust and despair. The square marketplace, the houses that huddled round it were swallowed up by soldiers,horses, carts and whirling clouds. A wind blew and through the wind ahot sun blazed. Everywhere horses were neighing, cows and sheep weredriven in thick herds through columns of soldiers, motor carsfrantically pushed their way from place to place, and always,everywhere, covering every inch of ground flying, as it seemed, fromthe air, on to roofs, in and out of windows, from house to house, fromcorner to corner, was the humorous, pathetic, expectant,matter-of-fact, dreaming, stolid Russian soldier. He was to come tome, later on, in a very different fashion, but on this dreadful day inO---- he was simply part of the intolerable, depressing background.
If this day were dreadful to me what must it have been to Trenchard!We were none of us aware at this time of what had happened to him twodays before, nor did we know of his adventure of yesterday. O----seemed to him, he has told me, like hell.
We spent the day gathered together in a large white house that hadformerly been the town-hall of O----. It had, I remember, high emptyrooms all gilt and looking-glasses; the windows were broken and thedust came, in circles and twisting spirals, blowing over the giltchairs and wooden floors.
We made tea and sat miserably together. Semyonov was in some otherpart of the town. We were to wait here until Molozov arrived fromB----.
There can be few things so bad as the sense of insecurity that we hadthat afternoon. The very ground seemed to have been cut away fromunder our feet. We had gathered enough from the officers of ourDivision to know that something very disastrous "somewhere" hadoccurred. It was the very vagueness of the thing that terrified us.What could have happened? Only something very monstrous could havecompelled so general a retirement. We might all of us be prisonersbefore the evening. That seemed to us, and indeed was afterwardsproved in reality, to have been no slender possibility. There was nospot on earth that belonged to us. So firm and solid we had been atM----. Even we had hung pictures on the walls and planted flowersoutside the dining-room. Now all that remained for us was thishorrible place with its endless looking-glasses, its bare gleamingf
loors and the intolerable noise through its open windows of carts,soldiers, horses, the smell of dung and tobacco, and the hot air, likegas, that flung the dust into our faces.
Beyond the vague terrors of our uncertainty was the figure, seen quiteclearly by all of us without any sentiment, of Russia. CertainlyTrenchard and I could feel with less poignancy the appeal of herpresence, and yet I swear that to us also on that day it was she ofwhom we were thinking. We had been, until then, her allies; we werenow her servants.
By Russia every one of us, sitting in that huge room, meant somethingdifferent. To Goga she was home, a white house on the Volga, tennis,long evenings, early mornings, holidays in a tangled wilderness ofhappiness. To Sister K---- she was "Holy Russia," Russia of theKremlin, of the Lavra, of a million ikons in a million little streets,little rooms, little churches. To Sister Sofia she was Petrograd withcafes, novels by such writers as Verbitzkaia and our own Jack London,the cinematograph, and the Islands on a fine evening in May. To thestudent like a white fish she was a platform for frantic speeches,incipient revolutions, little untidy hysterical meetings in a dirtyroom in a back street, newspapers, the incapacities of the Douma, therobberies and villainies of the Government. To Anna Petrovna she wascomfortable, unspeculative, friendly "home." To Nikitin she was theface of one woman upon whose eyes his own were always fixed. To MarieIvanovna she was a flaming glorious wonder, mystical, transplendent,revealed in every blade of grass, every flash of sun across the sky,every line of the road, the top of every hill.
And to Trenchard and myself? For Trenchard she had, perhaps, taken toherself some part of his beloved country. He has told me--and I willwitness in myself to the truth of this--that he never in his life feltmore burningly his love for England than at this first moment of hisconsciousness of Russia. The lanes and sea of his remembered visionwere not far from that dirty, disordered town in Galicia--and for bothof them he was rendering his service.
At any rate there we sat, huddled together, reflected in the countlesslooking-glasses as a helpless miserable "lot," falling into longsilences, hoping for the coming of Molozov with later news, listeningto the confusion in the street below. Marie Ivanovna with her handsbehind her back and her head up walked, nervously, up and down thelong room. Her eyes stared beyond us and the place, striving perhapsto find some reason why life should so continually insist on being adifferent thing from her imaginings of it.
Lighted by the hot sun, blown upon by the dust, her figure, tall,thin, swaying a little in its many reflections, had the determinedvalour of some Joan of Arc. But Joan of Arc, I thought to myself, hadat least some one definite against whom to wave her white banner; wewere fighting dust and the sun.
Trenchard and Nikitin had left us to go into the town to search fornews. We were silent. Suddenly Marie Ivanovna, turning upon us all asthough she hated us, cried fiercely:
"I think you should know that Mr. Trenchard and I are no longerengaged."
It was neither the time nor the place for such a declaration. I cannotsuggest why Marie Ivanovna spoke unless it were that she felt lifethat was betraying her so basely that she, herself, at least, must behonest. We none of us knew what to say. What _could_ we say? Thisappalling day had sunk for us all individualities. We were scarcelyaware of one another's names and here was Marie Ivanovna thrusting allthese personalities upon us. Sister Sofia's red-rimmed eyes glitteredwith pleasure but she only said: "Oh, dear, I'm very sorry." SisterK---- who was always without tact made a most uncomfortable remark:"Poor Mr.!..."
That, I believe, was what we were all feeling. I had an impulse to runout into the street, find Trenchard, and make him comfortable. I feltfuriously indignant with the girl. We all looked at her, I suppose,with indignation, because she regarded us with a fierce, insultingsmile, then turned her back upon us and went to a window.
At that moment Molozov with Trenchard, Nikitin and Semyonov, entered.I have said earlier in this book that only upon one occasion have Iseen Molozov utterly overcome, a defeated man. This was the occasionto which I refer. He stood there in the doorway, under a vulgar bevyof gilt and crimson cupids, his face dull paste in colour, his handshanging like lead; he looked at us without seeing us. Semyonov saidsomething to him: "Why, of course," I heard him reply, "we've got toget out as quickly as we can.... That's all."
He came over towards us and we were all, except Marie Ivanovna,desperately frightened. She cried to him: "Well, what's the truth? Howbad is it?"
He didn't turn to her but answered to us all.
"It's abominable--everywhere."
I know that then the great feeling of us all was that we must escapefrom the horrible place in some way. This beastly town of O---- (oncecursed by us for its gentle placidity) was responsible for the wholedisaster; it was as though we said to ourselves, "If we had not beenhere this would not have happened."
We all stood up as though we felt that we must leave at once, andwhile we stood thus there was a report that shook the floor so that werocked on our feet, brought a shower of dust and whitewash from thewalls, cracked the one remaining pane of glass and drove two micescattering with terror wildly across the floor. The noise had beenterrific. Our very hearts stood still. The Austrians were herethen.... This was the end....
"It's the bridge," Semyonov said quietly, and of course ironically."We've blown it up. There'll be the other in a moment."
There was--a second shock brought down more dust and a large scale ofgilt wood from one of the cornices. We waited then for our orders,looking down from the windows on to what seemed a perfect babel ofdisorder and confusion.
"We must be at X---- to-night," Molozov told us. "The Staff is on itsway already. We should be moving in half an hour."
We made our preparations.
Trenchard, meanwhile, had had during this afternoon one drivingcompelling impulse beyond all others, that he must, at all costs,escape all personal contact with Marie Ivanovna. It seemed to him themost awful thing that could possibly happen to him now would be acompulsory conversation with her. He did not, of course, know thatshe had spoken to us, and he thought that it would be the easiestthing in all the confusion that this retreat involved that he shouldbe flung up against her. He sought his chief refuge in Nikitin. I amaware that in the things I have said of Nikitin, in speaking both ofhis relation to Andrey Vassilievitch's wife and to Trenchard himself,I have shown him as something of a sentimental figure. And yetsentimental was the very last thing that he really was. He had not the"open-heartedness" that is commonly asserted to be the chief glory andthe chief defect of the Russian soul. He had talked to me because Iwas a foreigner and of no importance to him--some one who would beentirely outside his life. He took Trenchard now for his friend Ibelieve because he really was attracted by the admixture of chivalryand helplessness, of simplicity and credulity, of timidity and couragethat the man's character displayed. I am sure that had it been I whohad been in Trenchard's position he would not have stretched out onefinger to help me.
Trenchard himself had only vague memories of the events of thepreceding evening. He was aware quite simply that the whole thing hadbeen a horrible dream and that "nothing so bad could ever possiblyhappen to him again." He had "touched the worst," and he undoubtedlyfound some relief to-day in the general distress and confusion. Itcovered his personal disaster and forced him to forget himself inother persons' misfortunes. He was, as it happened, of more use thanany one just then in getting every one speedily out of O----. He ranmessages, found parcels and bags for the Sisters, collected sanitars,even discovered the mongrel terrier, tied a string to him and gave himto one of our soldiers to look after. In what a confusion, as theevening fell, was the garden of our large white house! Huge wagonscovered its lawn; horses, neighing, stamping, jumping, were draggedand pulled and threatened; officers, from stout colonels to very younglieutenants, came cursing and shouting, first this way and that. Ahuge bag of biscuits broke away from a provision van and fellscattering on to the ground; the soldiers, told that they might helpthemselves, la
ughing and shouting like babies, fell upon the store.But for the most part there was gloom, gloom, gloom under the eveningsky. Sometimes the reflections of distant rockets would shudder andfade across the pale blue; incessantly, from every corner of theworld, came the screaming rattle of carts, a sound like many pencilsdrawn across a gigantic slate--and always the dust rose and fell inwebs and curtains of filmy gold, under the evening sun.
At last Trenchard found himself with Molozov and Ivan Mihailovitch,the student like a fish, in the old black carriage. Molozov had "flungthe world to the devil," Trenchard afterwards said, "and I sat there,you know, looking at his white face and wondering what I ought to talkabout." Trenchard suddenly found himself narrowly and aggressivelyEnglish--and it is certain that every Englishman in Russia on Tuesdaythanks God that he is a practical man and has some common sense, andon Wednesday wonders whether any one in England knows the true valueof anything at all and is ashamed of a country so miserably without apassion for "ideas."
To-night Trenchard was an Englishman. He had been really useful atO---- and he had felt a new spirit of kindness around him. He did notknow that Marie Ivanovna had made her declaration to us and that wewere therefore all anxious to show him that we thought that he hadbeen badly treated. Moreover he suspected, with a true Englishdistrust of emotions, that the Russians before him were inclined toluxuriate in their gloom. Molozov's despair and Ivan Mihailovitch'spassionate eyes and jerking white hands irritated him.
He smiled a practical English smile and looked about him at theswaying procession of carts and soldiers with a practical eye.
"Come," he said to Molozov, "don't despair. There's nothing really tobe distressed about. There _must_ be these retreats, you know. There_must_ be. The great thing in this war is to see the whole thing inproportion--the _whole_ thing. France and England and the Dardanellesand Italy--_everything_. In another month or two--"
But Molozov, frowning, shook his head.
"This country ... no method ... no system. _Nothing._ It is terrible...._That's_ a pretty girl!" he added moodily, looking at a group ofpeasants in a doorway. "A _very_ pretty girl!" he added, sitting up alittle and staring. Then he relapsed, "No system--_nothing_," hemurmured.
"But there _will_ be," continued Trenchard in his English voice. (Hetold me afterwards that he was conscious at the time of a horriblepriggish superiority.) "Here in Russia you go up and down so. You'veno restraint. Now if you had discipline--"
But he was interrupted by the melancholy figure of an officer who hungon to our slowly moving carriage, walking beside it with his hand onthe door. He did not seem to have anything very much to say but lookedat us with large melancholy eyes. He was small and needed dusting.
"What is it?" asked Molozov, saluting.
"I've had contusion," said the little officer in a dreamy voice."Contusion ... I don't feel very well. I don't quite know where Iought to go."
"Our doctors are just behind," said Molozov. "You can come on withthem."
"Your doctors ..." the little officer repeated dreamily. "Verywell...." But he continued with us. "I've had contusion," he said. "AtM----. Yes.... And now I don't quite know where I am. I'm verydepressed and unhappy. What do you advise?"
"There are our doctors," Molozov repeated rather irritably. "You'llfind them ... behind there."
"Yes, I suppose so," the melancholy little figure repeated anddisappeared.
In some way this figure affected Trenchard very dismally and drove allhis English common sense away. We were moving now slowly throughclouds of dust, and peasants who watched us from their doorways with acold indifference that was worse than exultation.
When we arrived, at two or three in the morning, at X----, ourdestination, the spirits of all of us were heavily weighted. Tired,cross, dirty, driven and pursued, and always with us that harassingfear that we had now no ground upon which we might rest our feet, thatnothing in the world belonged to us, that we were fugitives andvagabonds by the will of God.
As our carriage stopped before the door of the large white building inX---- that seemed just like the large white building in O----, thelittle officer was again at our side.
"I've got contusion ..." he said. "I'm very unhappy, and I don't knowwhere to go."
Trenchard felt now as though in another moment he would tumble backagain into his nightmare of yesterday. The house at X---- indeed wasfantastic enough. I feel that I am in danger of giving too manydescriptions of our various halting-places. For the most part theylargely resembled one another, large deserted country houses withbroken windows, bare walls and floors, a tangled garden and a tatteredcollection of books in the Polish language. But this building at X----was like no other of our asylums.
It was a huge place, a strange combination of the local town-hall andthe local theatre. It was the theatre that at that early hour in themorning seemed to our weary eyes so fantastic. As we peered into it itwas a huge place, already filled with wounded and lighted only bycandles, stuck here and there in bottles. I could see, dimly, thestage at the back of the room, and still hanging, tattered andrestless in the draught, a forgotten backcloth of some old play. Icould see that it was a picture of a gay scene in an impossibly highlycoloured town--high marble stairs down which flower-girls with swollenlegs came tripping into a market-place filled with soldiers and theirlovers--"Carmen" perhaps. It seemed absurd enough there in theuncertain candlelight with the wounded groaning and crying in front ofit. There was already in the air that familiar smell of blood andiodine, the familiar cries of: "Oh, _Sestritza_--Oh, _Sestritza_!" thefamiliar patient faces of the soldiers, sitting up, waiting for theirturn, the familiar sharp voice of the sanitar: "What Division? Whatregiment? bullet or shrapnel?"
I remember that some wounded man, in high fever, was singing, and thatno one could stop him.
"He's dead," I heard Semyonov's curt voice behind me, and turning sawthem cover the body on the stretcher with a sheet.
"Oh! Oh!... Oh! Oh!" shrieked a man from the middle of whose backNikitin, probing with his finger, was extracting a bullet. The candlesflared, the ladies from "Carmen" wavered on the marble steps, thehigh cracked voice of the soldier continued its song. I stood therewith Trenchard and Andrey Vassilievitch. Then we turned away.
"We're not wanted to-night," I said. "We'd better get out of the wayand sleep somewhere. There'll be plenty to do to-morrow!" LittleAndrey Vassilievitch, whom during the retreat I had entirelyforgotten, looked very pathetic. He was dusty and dirty and hated hisdiscomfort. He did not know where to go and was in everybody's way.Nikitin was immensely busy and had no time to waste on his friend.Poor Andrey was tired and terribly depressed.
"What I say is," he confided to us in a voice that trembled a little,"that we are not to despair. We have to retreat to-day, but who knowswhat will happen to-morrow? Every one is aware that Russia is aglorious country and has endless resources. Well then.... What I sayis ..."; an officer bundled into him, apologised but quite obviouslycursed him for being in the way.
"Come along," said Trenchard, putting his arm on AndreyVassilievitch's sleeve. "We'll find somewhere to sleep. Of coursewe're not in despair. Why should we be? You'll feel better to-morrow."
They departed, and as they went I wondered at this new side inTrenchard's character. He seemed strong, practical, and almostcheerful. I, knowing his disaster, was puzzled. My lame leg washurting me to-night. I found a corner to lie down in, rolled myself inmy greatcoat and passed through a strange succession of fantasticdreams in which Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna, Nikitin, and Semyonov allfigured. Behind them I seemed to hear some voice crying: "I've got youall!... I've got you all!... You're caught!... You're caught!...You're caught!"
On the following day there happened to Trenchard the thing that he haddreaded. Writing of it now I cannot disentangle it from thecircumstances and surroundings of his account of it to me. He waslooking back then, when he spoke to me, to something that seemedalmost fantastic in its ironical reality. Every word of thatconversation he afterwards recall
ed to himself again and again. As toMarie Ivanovna I think that he never even began to understand her;that he should believe in her was a different matter from hisunderstanding her. That he should worship her was a tribute both tohis inexperience and to his sentiment. But his relation to her and tothis whole adventure of his was confused and complicated by the factthat he was not, I believe, in himself a sentimental man. What onesupposed to be sentiment was a quite honest and naked lack ofknowledge of the world. As experience came to him sentiment fell awayfrom him. But experience was never to come to him in regard to MarieIvanovna; he was to know as little of her at the end as he had knownat the beginning, and this whole conversation with her (of course, Ihave only his report of it) is clouded with his romantic conception ofher. To that I might add also my own romantic conception; if Trenchardnever saw her clearly because he loved her, I never saw her clearlybecause--because--why, I do not know.... She was, from first to last,a figure of romance, irritating, aggressive, enchanting, baffling,always blinding, to all of us.
During the morning after our arrival in M---- Trenchard worked in thetheatre, bandaging and helping with the transport of the wounded upthe high and difficult staircase. Then at midday, tired with the heat,the closeness of the place, he escaped into the little park thatbordered the farther side of the road. It was a burning day inJune--the sun came beating through the trees, and as soon as he hadturned the corner of the path and had lost the line of ruined andblackened houses to his right he found himself in the wildest and mostglittering of little orchards. The grass grew here to a greatheight--the apple-trees were of a fine age, and the sun in squares andcircles and stars of light flashed like fire through the thick green.He stepped forward, blinded by the quivering gold, and walked into thearms of Marie Ivanovna. He, quite literally, ran against her and puthis arms about her for a moment to steady her, not seeing who she was.
Then he gave a little cry.
She was also frightened. "It was the only time," he told me, "that Ihad ever seen her show fear."
They were silent, neither of them knowing the way to speak.
Then she said: "John, don't r-run away. It is very good. I wanted tospeak to you. Here, sit down here."
She herself sat down and patted the grass, inviting him. He at oncesat down beside her, but he could say nothing--nothing at all.
She waited for a time and then, seeing him, I suppose, at a loss andhelpless, regained her own courage. "Are you still angry with me?"
"No," he answered, not looking at her.
"You have a right to be; I behaved very badly."
"I don't understand," he replied, "why you thought in Petrograd thatyou loved me and then--so soon--found that you did not--so soon."
He looked at her and then lowered his eyes.
"What do you know or I know?" she suddenly asked him impetuously. "Arewe not both always thinking that things will be so fine--_seichass_--andthen they are not. How could we be happy together when we are both soignorant? Ah, you know, John, _you know_ that happy together we couldnever be."
He looked at her clearly and without hesitation.
"I was very stupid," he said. "I thought that because I had come intoa big thing I would be big myself. It is not so; I am the same personas I was in England. I have not changed at all and I shall neverchange ... only in this one thing that whether you go from me orwhether you stay I shall never love anybody but you. All men say that,I know," he added, "but there are not many men who have had so littlein their lives as I, and so perhaps it means more with me than it doeswith others."
She made no reply to him. She had not, I believe, heard him. She said,as though she were speaking to herself: "If we had not come, John, ifwe had stayed in Petrograd, anything might have been. But here thereis something more than people. I don't know whether I love or hate anyone. I cannot marry you or any man until this is all over."
"And then," he interrupted passionately, touching her sleeve with hishand. "After the war? Perhaps--again, you will--"
She took his hand in hers, looking at him as though she were suddenlyseeing him for the first time:
"No--_you_, John, never. In Petrograd I didn't know what this couldbe--no idea--none. And now that I'm here I can think of nothing elsethan what I'm going to find. There is something here that I'd beafraid of if I let myself be and that's what I love. What will happenwhen I meet it? Shall I feel fear or no? And so, too, if there were aman whom I feared...."
"Semyonov!" Trenchard cried.
She looked at him and did not answer. He caught her hand urgently."No, Marie, no--any one but Semyonov. It doesn't matter about me. Butyou _must_ be happy--you _must_ be. Nothing else--and he won't makeyou. He isn't--"
"Happy!" she answered scornfully. "I don't want to be happy. _That_isn't it. But to be sure that one's not afraid--" (She repeated toherself several times _Hrabrost_--the Russian for "bravery.") "That ismore than you, John, or than I or than--"
She broke off, looked at him suddenly as he told me "very tenderly andkindly as though she liked me."
"John, I'm your friend. I've been bad to you, but I'm your friend. Idon't understand why I've been so bad to you because, I would befur-rious--yes, fur-rious--if any one else were bad to you. And bemine, John, whatever I do, be mine. I'm not really a badcharacter--only I think it's too exciting now, here--everything--forme to stop and think."
"You know," he answered with a rather tired gesture (he had worked inthat hot theatre all the morning) "that I am always the same--but youmust not marry Semyonov," he added fiercely.
She did not answer him, looked up at the sunlight and said after atime:
"I hate Sister K----. She is not really religious. She doesn't washeither. Let us go back. I was away, I said, only for a little."
They walked back, he told me, in perfect silence. He was more unhappythan ever. He was more unhappy because he saw quite clearly that hedid not understand her at all; he felt farther away from her than everand loved her more devotedly than ever: a desperate state of things.If he had taken that sentence of hers--"I think it's tooexciting--now--here--for me to stop and think," he would, I fancy,have found the clue to her, but he would not believe that she was sosimple as that. In the two days that followed, days of the greatestdiscomfort, disappointment and disorder, his mind never left her for amoment. His diary for these four days is very short and unromantic.
"_June 23rd._ In X----. Morning worked in the theatre. Bandagedthirty. Operation 1--arm amputated. Learn that there has been a battleround the school-house at O---- where we first were. Wonderfulweather. Spent some time in the park. Talked to M. there. Eveningmoved--thirty versts to P----. Much dust, very slow, owing to theGuards retreating at same time. Was with Durward and AndreyVassilievitch in a _Podvoda_--Like the latter, but he's out of placehere. Arrived 1.30.
"_June 24th._ Off early morning. This time black carriage with SistersK---- and Anna Petrovna. More dust--thousands of soldiers passing us,singing as though there were no retreat. News from L---- very bad. Saythere's no ammunition. Arrived Nijnieff evening 7.30. Very hungry andthirsty. We could find no house for some hours; a charming little townin a valley. Nestor seems huge--very beautiful with wooded hills. Butwhole place so swallowed in dust impossible to see anything. Heaps ofwounded again. I and Molozov in nice room alone. Have not seen M. allday.
"_June 25th._ This morning Nikitin, Sister K----, Goga, and Iattempted to get back to P---- to see whether there were wounded.Started off on the carts but when we got to the hill above the villagemet the whole of our Division coming out. The village abandoned, soback we had to go again through all the dust. Evening nothing doing.Every one depressed.
"_June 26th._ Very early--half-past five in the morning--we wereroused and had to take part in an exodus like the Israelites. Mostunpleasant, moving an inch an hour, Cossacks riding one down if onepreferred to go on foot to being bumped in the haycart. Every one inthe depths of depression. Crossed the Nestor, a perfectly magnificentriver. Five versts further, then stopped at a farmh
ouse, pitchedtents. Instantly hundreds of wounded. Battle fierce just other side ofNijnieff. Worked like a nigger--from two to eight never stoppedbandaging. About ten went off to the position with Molozov. Strange tobe back in the little town under such different circumstances. Dark aspitch--raining. Much noise, motors, soldiers like ghoststhough--shrapnel all the time. Tired, depressed and nervous. Horridwaiting doing nothing; two houses under the shrapnel. Expected also atevery moment bridge behind us to be blown up. At last wagons filledwith wounded, started back and got home eventually, taking two hoursover it. Very glad when it was over...."
We had arrived, indeed, although we did not then know it and wereexpecting, every moment, to move back again, at the conclusion of ourfirst exodus. Our only other transition, after a day or two longer atour farmhouse, was forward four versts to a tiny village on a highhill overlooking the Nestor, to the left of Nijnieff. This village wascalled Mittoevo. Mittoevo was to be our world for many weeks to come. Weinhabited once again the large white deserted country-house with thetangled garden, the dusty bare floors, the broken windows. At the endof the tangled garden there was a white stone cross, and here was amost wonderful view, the high hill running precipitously down to theflat silver expanse of the Nestor that ran like a gleaming girdleunder the breasts of the slopes beyond. These further slopes wereclothed with wood. I remember, on the first day that I watched, theforest beyond was black and dense like a cloud resting on the hill;the Nestor and our own country was soaked with sun.
"That's a fine forest," I said to my companion.
"Yes, the forest of S----, stretches miles back into Galicia." It wasNikitin that day who spoke to me. We turned carelessly away. Meanwhilehow difficult and unpleasant those first weeks at Mittoevo were! We hadnone of us realised, I suppose, how sternly those days of retreat hadtested our nerves. We had been not only retreating, but (at the sametime) working fiercely, and now, when for some while the workslackened and, under the hot blazing sun, we found nothing for ourhands to do, a grinding irritable reaction settled down upon us.
I had known in my earlier experience at the war the troubles thatinevitably rise from inaction; the little personal inconveniences, thetyrannies of habits and manners and appearances, when you've gotnothing to do but sit and watch your immediate neighbour. But on thatearlier occasion our army had been successful; it seemed that the warwould soon find its conclusion in the collapse of Germany, and goodnews from Europe smiled upon us every morning at breakfast. Now wewere tired and over-wrought. Good news there was none--indeed everyday brought disastrous tidings. We, ourselves, must look back upon ahundred versts of fair smiling country that we had conquered with thesacrifice of many thousands of lives and surrendered without thegiving of a blow. And always the force that compelled us to this wassinister and ironical by its invisibility.
It was the Russian temperament to declare exactly what it felt, togive free rein to its moods and dislikes and discomforts. The weatherwas beginning to be fiercely hot, there were many rumours of choleraand typhus--we, all of us, lost colour and appetite, slept badly andsuffered from sudden headaches.
Three days after our arrival at Mittoevo we had all discovered privatehostilities and resentments. I was as bad as any one. I could notendure the revolutionary student, Ivan Mihailovitch. I thought himmost uncleanly in his habits, and I was compelled to sleep in the sameroom with him. Certainly it was true that washing was not one of themost important things in the world to him. In the morning he wouldlurch out of bed, put on a soiled shirt and trousers, dab his facewith a decrepit sponge, take a tiny piece of soap from an old tin box,look at it, rub it on his fingers and put it hurriedly away again asthough he were ashamed of it. Sometimes, getting out of bed, he wouldcry: "Have you heard the latest scandal? About the ammunition in theTenth Army! They say--" and then he would forget his washingaltogether. He did not shave his head, as most of us had done, butallowed his hair to grow very long, and this, of course, was often asubject of irritation to him. He had also a habit of sitting on hisbed in his nightclothes, yawning and scratching his body all over,very slowly, with his long (and I'm afraid dirty) finger-nails, forthe space, perhaps, of a quarter of an hour. This I found difficult toendure. His long white face was always a dirty shade of grey and hisjacket was stained with reminiscences of his meals. His habits attable were terrible; he was always so deeply interested in what he wassaying that he had not time to close his mouth whilst he was eating,to ask people to pass him food (he stretched his long dirty handacross the table) or to pass food to others. He shouted a great dealand was in a furious passion every five minutes. I also just at thistime found the boy Goga tiresome; the boy had not been taught by hisparents the duty that children owe to their elders and I am inclinedto believe that this duty is almost universally untaught in Russia. ToGoga a General was as nothing, he would contradict our oldwhite-haired General T----, when he came to dine with us, wouldpatronise the Colonel and assure the General's aide-de-camp that heknew better. He would advance his father as a perpetual and faithfulwitness to the truth of his statements. "You may say what you like,"he would cry to myself or a Sister, "but my father knows better thanyou do. He has the front seat in the Moscow Opera all through theseason and has been to England three times." Goga also had been onceto England for a week (spent entirely on the Brighton Pier) and hetold me many things. He would forget, for a moment, that I was anEnglishman and would assure me that he knew better than I did. He wasa being with the best heart in the world, but his parents loved him somuch that they had neglected his education.
These things may seem trifling enough, but they had, nevertheless,their importance. Among the Sisters, Sister K---- was the unpopularone. I myself must honestly confess that she was a woman ill-suited tocompany less worthy than herself. She had an upright virtuouscharacter but she was narrow (a rare fault in a Russian),superstitious, dogmatically religious, and entirely without tact. Shequite honestly thought us a poor lot and would say to me: "I hope, Mr.Durward, you don't judge Russia by the specimens you find here," andwas, of course, always overheard. She was a strict moralist, but wasalso generous with all the warmth of Russian generosity in moneymatters. She was a marvellous hard worker, quite fearless, accurate,and punctual in all things. She fought incessant battles with AnnaPetrovna who hated her as warmly as it was in her quiet, unruffledheart to hate any one. The only thing stranger than the fierceness oftheir quarrels was the suddenness of their conclusion. I remember thatat dinner one day they fought a battle over the question of a cleantowel with a heat and vigour that was Homeric. A quarter of an hourlater I found them quietly talking together. Anna Petrovna was showingSister K---- a large and hideous photograph of her children.
"How sympathetic! How beautiful!" said Sister K----.
"But I thought you hated her?" I said afterwards in confusion to AnnaPetrovna.
"She was very sympathetic about my children," said Anna Petrovnaplacidly.
Then, of course, Sister Sofia Antonovna, the sister with the red eyes,made trouble when she could. She was, as I discovered afterwards, abitterly disappointed woman, having been deserted by her fiance only aweek before her marriage. That had happened three years ago and shestill loved him, so that she had her excuse for her view of the world.My friends seemed to me, during those first weeks at Mittoevo, simply acompany of good-hearted, ill-disciplined children. I had gone directlyback to my days in the nursery. Restraint of any kind there was none,discipline as to time or emotions was undreamed of, and with it all avitality, a warmth of heart, a sincerity and honesty that made thatOtriad, perhaps, the most lovable company I have ever known. Russiansare fond of sneering at themselves; for him who declares that he likesRussia and Russians they have either polite disbelief or gentlecontempt. In England we have qualities of endurance, of reliability,of solidity, to which, often enough, I long to return--but that warmthof heart that I have known here for two long years, a warmth thatmeans love for the neglected, for the defeated, for the helpless, awarmth that lights a fire on every heart
h in every house inRussia--that is a greater thing than the possessors of it know.
Through all the little quarrels and disputes of our company there ranthe thread of the affair of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov.Trenchard was lighted now with the pleasure of their affection, andMarie Ivanovna, who had been at first so popular amongst them, washeld to be hard and capricious. She, at least, did not make it easyfor them to like her. She had seemed in those first days in O---- asthough she wished to win all their hearts, but now it was as thoughshe had not time to consider any of us, as though she had something offar greater importance to claim her attention. She was now verycontinually with Semyonov and yet it seemed to me that it was ratherrespect for his opinion and admiration of his independence than likingthat compelled her. He was, beyond any question, in love with her, ifthe name of love can be given to the fierce, intolerant passion thatgoverned him.
He made no attempt to disguise his feelings, was as rude to the restof us as he pleased, and, of course, flung his scorn plentifully overTrenchard. But now I seemed to detect in him some shades ofrestlessness and anxiety that I had never seen in him before. He wasnot sure of her; he did not, I believe, understand her any more thandid the rest of us. With justice, indeed, I was afraid for her. Hispassion, I thought, was as surely and as nakedly a physical one as anyother that I had seen precede it, and would as certainly pass as allpurely physical passions do. She was as ignorant of the world as onthe day when she arrived amongst us; but my feeling about her was thatshe would receive his love almost as though in a dream, her thoughtsfixed on something far from him and in no way depending on him. At anyrate she was with him now continually. We judged her proud andhard-hearted, all of us except Trenchard who loved her, Semyonov whowanted her, and Nikitin, who, as I now believe, even then understoodher.
Trenchard meanwhile was confused and unsettled: inaction did not suithim any better than it did the rest of us. He had too much time tothink about Marie Ivanovna.
He was undoubtedly pleased at his new popularity. He expanded under itand became something of the loquacious and uncalculating person thathe had shown himself during his confession to me in the train. To theRussians his loquacity was in no way strange or unpleasant. They werein the habit of unburdening themselves, their hopes, theirdisappointments, their joys, their tragedies, to the first strangerswhom they met. It seemed quite natural to them that Trenchard, puffinghis rebellious pipe, should talk to them about Glebeshire, Polchester,Rafiel, Millie and Katherine Trenchard.
"I'd like you to meet Katherine, Anna Petrovna," he would say. "Youwould find her delightful. She's married now to a young man she ranaway with, which surprised every one--her running away, I mean,because she was always considered such a serious character."
"I forget whether you've seen my children, 'Mr.'" Anna Petrovna wouldreply. "I must show you their photograph."
And she would produce the large and hideous picture.
He was the same as in those first days, and yet how immensely not thesame. He bore himself now with a chivalrous tact towards MarieIvanovna that was beyond all praise. He always cherished in his hearthis memory of their little conversation in the orchard. "How I wish,"he told me, "that I had made that conversation longer. It was so veryshort and I might so easily have lengthened it. There were so manythings afterwards that I might have said--and she never gave meanother chance."
She never did--she kept him from her. Kind to him, perhaps, but neverallowing him another moment's intimacy. He had almost the air, itseemed to me, of patiently waiting for the moment when she should needhim, the air too of a man who was sure, in his heart, that that momentwould come.
And the other thing that stiffened him was his hatred for Semyonov.Hatred may seem too fierce a word for the emotion of any one as mildand gentle as Trenchard--and yet hatred at this time it was. He seemedno longer afraid of Semyonov and there was something about him nowwhich surprised the other man. Through all those first days atMittoevo, when we seemed for a moment almost to have slipped out of thewar and to be leading the smaller more quarrelsome life of earlierdays, Trenchard was occupied with only one question--"What was hefeeling about Semyonov?"--"I felt as though I could stand anything ifonly she didn't love him. Since that awful night of the Retreat I hadresigned myself to losing her; any one should marry her who would makeher happy--but he--never! But it was the indecision that I could notbear. I didn't know--I couldn't tell, what she felt."
The indecision was not to last much longer. One evening, when we hadbeen at Mittoevo about a week, he was at the Cross watching the sun,like a crimson flower, sink behind the dim grey forest. The Nestor, inthe evening mist, was a golden shadow under the hill. This beautymade him melancholy. He was wishing passionately, as he stood there,for work, hard, dangerous, gripping work. He did not know that thatwas to be the last idle minute of his life. Hearing a step on the pathhe turned round to find Semyonov at his side.
"Lovely view, isn't it?" said Semyonov, watching him.
"Lovely," answered Trenchard.
Semyonov sat down on the little stone seat beneath the Cross andlooked up at his rival. Trenchard looked down at him, hating hissquare, stolid composure, his thick thighs, his fair beard, hisironical eyes. "You're a _beastly_ man!" he thought.
"How long are you going to be with us, do you think?" asked Semyonov.
"Don't know--depends on so many things."
"Why don't you go back to England? They want soldiers."
"Wouldn't pass my eyesight."
"When are they going to begin doing something on the other Front, doyou think?"
"When they're ready, I suppose."
"They're very slow. Where's all your army we heard so much about?"
"There's a big army going to be ready soon."
"Yes, but we were told things would begin in May. It's only theGermans who've begun."
"I don't know; I've seen no English papers for some weeks."
There was a pause. Semyonov smiled, stood up, looked into Trenchard'seyes.
"I must go to England," he said slowly, "after the war. Marie Ivanovnaand I will go, I hope, together. She told me to-day that that is oneof the things that she hopes we will do together--later on."
Trenchard returned Semyonov's gaze. After a moment he said:
"Yes--you would enjoy it." He waited, then added: "I must be walkingback now. I'm late!" And he turned away to the house.
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