CHAPTER VII
ONE NIGHT
Marie Ivanovna herself spoke to me of Semyonov. She found me alonewaiting for my morning tea. We were before the others, and could hear,in the next room, Molozov splashing water about the floor and cryingto Michail, his servant, to pour "_Yestsho! Yestsho!" "Yestsho!Yestsho!_"--"Still more! Still more," over his head.
She stood in the doorway looking as though she hated my presence.
"The others have not arrived," I said. "It's late to-day."
"I can see," she answered. "Every one is idle now."
Then her voice changed. She came across to me. We talked ofunimportant things for a while. Then she said: "I'm very happy, Mr.Durward.... Be kind about it. Alexei Petrovitch and I...." Shehesitated.
I looked at her and saw that she was again the young and helpless girlwhom I had not seen since that early morning before our first battle.I said, very lamely, "If you are happy, Marie Ivanovna, I am glad."
"You think it terrible of me," she said swiftly. "And why do you alltalk of being happy? What does _that_ matter? But I can trust him.He's strong and afraid of nothing."
I could say nothing.
"Of course you think me very bad--that I have treated--John--shamefully--yes?... I will not defend myself to you. What isthere to defend? John and I could never have lived together, _never_.You yourself must see that."
"It does not matter what I think," I answered. "I am Trenchard'sfriend, and he has no knowledge of life nor human nature. He has madea bad start. You must forgive me if I think more of him than of you,Marie Ivanovna."
"Yes," she said fiercely. "It is John--John--John, you all think of.But John would not have loved me if he knew me as I truly am. And now,at last, I can be myself. It does not matter to Alexei Petrovitch whatI am."
"But you have known him so short a time--and you have been so quick.If you had waited...."
"Waited!" she caught me up. "Waited! How can one wait when one isn'tallowed to wait? It must be finished here, at once, and I'm not goingto finish alone. I'm frightened, Mr. Durward, but also I must see itright through. He makes me brave. He's afraid of nothing. I couldn'tleave this, and yet I was frightened to go on alone. With him besideme I'm not afraid."
Anna Petrovna interrupted us.
"It's Goga's stomach again," she said placidly. "He's had great painall night. It was those sweets yesterday. Just give me that glass, mydear. Weak tea's the only thing he can have."
Well, I had said nothing to Marie Ivanovna. What was there I couldhave said?
And the next thing about Trenchard was that he had got his wish, andwas lying on his back once more, in one of our nice, simple,uncomfortable haycarts, looking up at the evening sky. This was theevening after his conversation with Semyonov. Quite suddenly thebattle had caught us into its arms again. It was raging now in thewoods to the right of us, woods on the further side of the Nestor,situated on a tributary. I will quote now directly from his diary:
As our line of carts crossed the great river I could hear the muffled "brum-brum" of the cannons and "tap-tap-tap" of the machine-guns now so conventionally familiar. Nikitin was lying in silence at my side. Behind us came twenty wagons with the sanitars; the evening was very still, plum-colour in the woods, misty over the river; the creaking of our carts was the only sound, save the "brum-brum" and the "tap-tap-tap"....
I lay on my back and thought of Semyonov and myself. I had in my mind two pictures. One was of Semyonov sitting on the stone under the cross, looking up at me with comfortable and ironical insolence, Semyonov so strong and resolute and successful. Semyonov who got what he wanted, did what he wanted, said what he wanted.
The other picture was of myself, as I had been the other night when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff to fetch the wounded. I saw myself standing in a muddy little lane just outside the town, under pouring rain. The wagons waited there, the horses stamping now and then, and the wounded men on the only wagon that was filled, moaned and cried. Shrapnel whizzed overhead--sometimes crying, like an echo, in the far distance, sometimes screaming with the rage of a hurt animal close at hand. Groups of soldiers ran swiftly past me, quite silent, their heads bent. Somewhere on the high road I could hear motor-cars spluttering and humming. At irregular intervals Red Cross men would arrive with wounded, would ask in a whisper that was inhuman and isolating whether there were room on my carts. Then the body would be lifted up; there would be muttered directions, the wounded man would cry, then the other wounded would also cry--after that, there would be the dismal silence again, silence broken only by the shrapnel and the heavy plopping smothers of the rain. But it was myself upon whom my eyes were fixed, myself, a miserable figure, the rain dripping from me, slipping down my neck, squelching under my boots. And as I stood there I was afraid. That was what I now saw. I had been terribly afraid for the first time since I had come to the war. I had worked all day in the bandaging room, and perhaps my physical weariness was responsible; but whatever it might be there I was, a coward. At the threat of every shrapnel I bent my head and shrugged my shoulders, at every cry of the wounded men--one man was delirious and sang a little song--a shudder trembled all down my body. I thought of the bridge between myself and the Otriad--how easily it might be blown up! and then, if the Division were beaten back what massacre there would be! I wanted to go home, to sleep, to be safe and warm--above all, to be safe! I saw before me some of the wounded whom I had bandaged to-day--men without faces or with hanging jaws that must be held up with the hand whilst the bandage was tied. One man blind, one man mad (he thought he was drowning in hot water), one man holding his stomach together with his hands. I saw all these figures crowding round me in the lane--I also saw the dead men in the forest, the skull, the flies, the strong blue-grey trousers.... I shook so that my teeth chattered--a very pitiful figure.
Well, that was the other night. It was true that to-night I did not feel frightened--at least not as yet. But then it was a beautiful evening, very peaceful, still and warm--and there was Nikitin. In any case there were those two figures whom I must consider--Semyonov and myself. That brief conversation last night had brought us quite sharply face to face. I found to my own surprise that Semyonov's declaration of his engagement had not been a great shock to me, had not indeed altered very greatly the earlier situation. But it had shown me quite clearly that my own love for Marie Ivanovna was in no way diminished, that I must protect her from a man who was, I felt, quite simply a "beastly" man.
_Well_, then if Semyonov and I were to fight it out, I would need to be at my best. Did that little picture of the other evening show me at my best? This business presented a bigger fight than the simple one with Semyonov. I knew, quite clearly, as I lay on my back in the cart, that the fight against Semyonov and the fight against ... was mingled together, depended for their issue one upon the other--that the dead men in the forest had no merely accidental connexion with Marie Ivanovna's safety and Semyonov's scornful piracies.
Well, _then_ ... Semyonov and I, I and my old dead uncle, myself shaking in the road the other night under the rain! What was to be the issue of all of it?
I, on this lovely evening, saw quite clearly the progress of events that had brought me to this point. One: that drive with Durward on the first day when we had stopped at the trench and heard the frogs. Two: the evening at O----, when Marie Ivanovna had been angry and we had first heard the cannon. Three: the day at S---- and Marie kneeling on the cart with her hand on Semyonov's shoulder. Four: her refusal of me, the bodies in the forest, the Retreat, that night Nikitin (getting well into the thick of it now). Five: the talk with Marie in the park. Six: the wet night at Nijnieff. Seven: la
st night's little talk with Semyonov.... Yes, I could see now that I had been advancing always forward into the forest, growing ever nearer and nearer, perceiving now the tactics of the enemy, beaten here, frightened there, but still penetrating--not, as yet, retreating ... and always, my private little history marching with me, confused with the private little histories of all of the others, all of them penetrating more deeply and more deeply....
And if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov--and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest. _If_ I had lost my nerve!... _Had_ I? Was it only weariness the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten, and why, after all, should I imagine that I would be able to put up a fight--I who had never in all my life fought anything successfully? I lay on my back, looked at the sky. I sat up, looked at the country, I set my teeth, looked at Nikitin.
Nikitin grunted. "I've had a good nap," he said. "You should have had one. There'll be plenty of work for us to-night by the sound of it." We turned a corner of the road through the wood and one of our own batteries jumped upon us.
"I'm glad it's not raining," I said.
"We've still some way to go," said Nikitin, sitting up. "What a lovely evening!" Then he added, quite without apparent connexion, "Well, you're more at home amongst us all now, aren't you?"
"Yes," said I.
"I'm glad of that. And what do you think of Andrey Vassilievitch?"
I answered: "Oh! I like him! ... but I don't think he's happy at the war," I added.
"I want you to like him," Nikitin said. "He's a splendid man ... I have known him many years. He is merry and simple and it is easy to laugh at him, but it is always easy to laugh at the best people. You must like him, 'Mr.'... He likes you very much."
I felt as though Nikitin were here forming an alliance between the three of us. Well, I liked Nikitin, I liked Andrey Vassilievitch. I listened to the battery, now some way behind us, then said:
"Of course, I am his friend if he wishes."
Nikitin repeated solemnly: "Andrey Vassilievitch is a splendid fellow."
Then we arrived. Here, beside the broad path of the forest there was a clearing and above the clearing a thick pattern of shining stars curved like the top of a shell. Here, in the open, the doctors had made a temporary hospital, fastening candles on the trees, arranging two tables on trestles, all very white and clean under a brilliant full moon. There were here two Sisters whom I did not know, several doctors, one of them a fat little army doctor who had often been a visitor to our Otriad. The latter greeted Nikitin warmly, nodded to me. He was a gay, merry little man with twinkling eyes. "_Noo tak._ Fine, our hospital, don't you think? Plenty to do this night, my friend. Here, _golubchik_, this way.... Finger, is it? Oh! that's nothing. Here, courage a moment. Where are the scissors?... scissors, some one. One moment.... _One_ ... moment. Ah! there you are!" The finger that had been hanging by a shred fell into the basin. The soldier muttered something, slipped on to his knees, his face grey under the moon, then huddled into nothing, like a bundle of old clothes, fainted helplessly away.
"Here, water!... No, take him over there! That's right. Well, 'Mr.'--how are you? Lovely night.... Plenty of work there'll be, too. Oh! you're going down to the _Vengerovsky Polk_? Yes, they're down to the right there somewhere--across the fields.... Warm over there."
The noise just then of the batteries was terrific. We were compelled to shout at one another. A battery behind us bellowed like a young bull and the shrapnel falling at some distance amongst the trees had a strange splashing sound as of a stone falling into water.[A] The candles twinkled in the breeze and the place had the air of a Christmas-tree celebration, the wounded soldiers waiting their turn as children wait for their presents. The starlight gave the effect of a blue-frosted crispness to the pine-strewn ground. We arranged our wagons safely, then, followed by the sanitars, walked off, Nikitin almost fantastically tall under the starlight as he strode along. The forest-path stopped and we came to open country. Fields with waving corn stretched before us to be lost in the farther distance in the dark shadows of the forest.
[Footnote A: It must be remembered that this account is Trenchard's--taken from his diary. In my own experience I have never known the bursting of shell to sound in the least like a stone in water. But he insists on the accuracy of this. Throughout this and the succeeding chapters there are many statements for which I have only his authority.--P.D.]
A little bunch of soldiers crouched here, watching, Nikitin spoke to them.
"Here, _golubchik_ ... tell me! what _polk_?"
"Moskovsky, your Honour."
"And the Vengerovsky ... they're to the right, are they?"
"Yes, your Honour. By the high road, when it comes into the forest."
"What? There where the road turns?"
"_Tak totchno._"
"How are things down there just now? Wounded, do you think?"
"_Ne mogoo znat._ I'm unable to say, your Honour ... but there's been an attack there an hour ago."
"Are those ours?"--listening to a battery across the fields.
"Ours, your Honour."
"Well, we'll go on and see."
I had listened to this conversation with the sensation of a man who has stopped himself on the very edge of a precipice. I thought in those few moments with a marvellous and penetrating clarity. I had, after all, been always until now at the battle of S----, or when I had gone with the wagons to Nijnieff, on the outskirts of the thing. I knew that to-night, in another ten minutes, I would be in the middle--the "very middle." As I waited there I recalled the pages of the diary of some officer, a diary that had been shown me quite casually by its owner. It had been a miracle of laconic brevity: "6.30 A. M., down to the battery. All quiet. 8.0, three of their shells. One of ours killed, two wounded. Five yards' distance. 8.30, breakfasted; K. arrived from the 'Doll's House'--all quiet there," and so on. This, I knew, was the proper way to look at the affair: "6.0 A. M., down to the battery. 7.0 A. M., breakfasted. 8.0 A. M., dead...." For the life of me now I could not look at it like that. I saw a thousand things that were, perhaps, not really there, but were there at any rate for me. If I was beaten to-night I was beaten once and for all.... I saw the shining road under the starlight and shadows of wounded men, groaning and stumbling, whispering their way along.
"Let's go," said Nikitin.
I drew a breath and stepped out into the moonlight. A shell burst with a delicate splash of fire amongst the stars. The road looked very long and very, very lonely.
However, soon I found myself walking along it quite casually and talking about unimportant peaceful things. "Come," I thought to myself. "This really isn't so bad."
"It's a great pity," Nikitin said, "that I can't read English. Have to take your novelists as they choose to give them us. Who is there now in England?"
"Well," said I as one talks in a dream, "there's Hardy, and Henry James, and Conrad. I've seen translations of Conrad in Petrograd. And then there's Wells--"
"Yes, Wells I know. But he writes stories for boys.... There's Jack London, but his are American. I like to read an English novel sometimes. Your English life is so cosy. You have tea before the fire and everything is comfortable. We don't know what comfort is in Russia."
A machine gun "rat-tat-tat-tated" close to us, and three rockets, like a flight of startled birds, rose suddenly together on the far horizo
n.
"No, we have no comfort in Russia," repeated Nikitin. "Now I fancy that an English country-house...."
We had reached the further wood; the moonlight fell away from us and the shadows shifted and trembled under the reflection of rockets and a projector that swung lazily and unsteadily, like something nodding in its sleep.
On the left of the road there was a house standing back in its own garden. I could see dimly that this was a row of country villas.
"Stand by this gate five minutes," Nikitin whispered to me. "I must find the Colonel. The sanitars will come and fetch you when I've settled the spot for our bandaging."
Nikitin disappeared and I was quite alone. I felt terribly desolate. I stood back against the gate of the villa watching soldiers hurry by, seeing high mysterious hedges, the roofs of houses, a line of lighted sky, the tops of trees, all these things rising and falling as the glare in the heavens rose and fell. There was sometimes a terrible noise and sometimes an equally terrible stillness. Somewhere in the darkness a man was groaning, "Oh! ah!--Oh! ah!" without cessation. Somewhere the gate of one of the villas swung to and fro, creaking. Sometimes soldiers would stare at my motionless figure and then pass on. All this time, as in one's dreams sometimes one holds off a nightmare, I was keeping my fear at bay. I had now exactly the sensation that I had known so often in my dream, that I was standing somewhere in the dark, that the Enemy was watching me and waiting to spring. But to-night I was only _nearly_ afraid. One step on my part, one extra noise, one more flare of light, and I would abandon myself to panic, but, although the perspiration was wet on my forehead, my heart thumping, and my hands dry and hot, I was not yet _quite_ afraid.
I had a strange sensation of suffocation, as though I were at the bottom of a well, a well black and damp, with the stars of the sky miles away. There came to me, with a kind of ironic sentimentality, the picture of the drawing-room at home in Polchester, the corner where the piano stood with a palm in an ugly brass pot just behind it, the table near the door with a brass Indian tray and a fat photograph-book with, gilt clasps, the picture of "Christ being Scourged" above the fireplace, and the green silk screen that stood under the picture in the summer.
A soldier stopped and spoke to me: "Your Honour, it's on the right--the next gate." I followed him without attention, having no doubt but that this was one of our own sanitars, and accompanied a group of soldiers that surrounded a bobbing kitchen on wheels. I was puzzled by the kitchen because I knew that one had not been brought by our Otriad, but I thought that the doctors of the Division had perhaps begged our men to aid the army sanitars.
We hurried through a gate to the right, where in what appeared to be a yard of some kind, the kitchen was established and then, from out of the very earth as it seemed, soldiers appeared, clustering around it with their tin cans. The soldier who was in charge of the party said to me in a confidential whisper: "There's plenty of _Kasha_, your Honour, and the soup will last us, too."
"Very good," said I in a bewildered voice. At the strange accent the soldier looked at me, and then I looked at the soldier. The soldier was a stranger to me (a pleasant round man with a huge smiling mouth and two chins) and I was a stranger to the soldier.
"Well," said the soldier, looking, "I thought...."
"I thought--" said I, most uncomfortable.
The soldiers vanished back into the darknesses round the kitchen. Voices, whispering, could be heard.
"Now, that's the end," thought I. "I'm shot as a German spy."
I looked at the soldiers, clustered like bees round the kitchen, then I slipped through the gate into the dark road. I stood there listening. The battle seemed to have drawn away, because I could hear rifles, machine-guns, cannon muffled round a corner of the hill. Here there was now silence, broken only by soldiers who hurried up the road or went in and out at the villa gates. I felt abandoned. How was I to discover Nikitin again? Before what gate had I stood? I did not know; I seemed to know nothing.
I moved down the road, very miserable and very cold. I had stupidly left my coat in one of the wagons. I walked on, my boots knocking against one another, thinking to myself: "If I'm not given something to do very soon I shall be just as I was the other night at Nijnieff--and then I shall suddenly take to my heels down this road as hard as I can go!"
It was then that I tumbled straight into the arms of Nikitin, who was standing at the edge of the forest, watching for me. I was so happy that I felt now afraid of nothing. I held Nikitin's arm, babbling something about kitchens and Germans.
"Well, I don't understand what you say," I remember Nikitin replied; "but you must come and work. There's plenty of it."
We moved to a cottage on the very boundary of the forest, where a little common ran down to the moonlight. Passing through a narrow passage, I entered into a little room with a large white stove. On the top of the stove, under the roof, crouched a boy or a young man with long black hair and a white face. This youth wore what resembled a white shirt over baggy white trousers. His feet were bare and very dirty. Nothing moved except his eyes. He sat there, in exactly that position, all night.
The room was small but was the best that could be obtained. Within the space of ten minutes it became a perfect shambles. The wounded were brought in without pause and under the candlelight Nikitin, two sanitars, and I worked until the sweat ran down our backs and arms in streams. It dripped from my nose, into my mouth, into my eyes. The wounds were horrible. No man seemed to come into the room with an unmangled body. The smell rose higher and higher, the bloody rags lay about the kitchen floor, torn arms, smashed legs, heads with gaping wounds, the pitiful crying and praying, the shrill voices of the delirious, Nikitin, his arms steeped in blood to the elbows, probing, cutting, digging, I myself bandaging until I did not know what my hands were doing.... Then suddenly the battle coming right back to us again, overhead now as it seemed; the cannon shaking three silly staring china dogs on the kitchen dresser, the rifle fire clattering like tumbling crockery about the walls of the cottage--and through it all the white youth, crouched like a ghost on the stove, watching without pause....
"Ah, no, your Honour.... Ah, no! ... I can't! I can't! Oh, oh, oh, oh!" and then sobs, the man breaking down like a child, hiding his face in his arms, his wounded leg twitching convulsively. I paused, wiped the sweat from my eyes, stood up. Nikitin looked at me.
"Take some fresh air!" he said. "Go out with the stretcher for half an hour. I can manage here."
I wiped my forehead.
"Sure you can manage?" I asked.
"Quite," said Nikitin. "Here, hold his back!... No, _durak_, his _back_. _Boje moi_, can't you get your arm under? There--like that. _Horosho, golubchik, horosho_ ... only a minute! There! There!"
I washed my hands and went out. The air caressed my forehead like cold water; from the little garden at the back there came scents of flowers; the moonlight was blue on the common. Eight sanitars were waiting to start. The Feldscher in charge of them did not, I thought, seem greatly pleased when he saw me, but then I am often stupidly sensitive; no one said anything and we started. We carried two stretchers and a soldier from the trenches was with us to guide us.
I could see that the men were not happy. I heard one of them mutter to another that they should not have been sent now; that they should have waited until the attack was over ... "and the full moon.... Did any one ever see such a moon?"
We came to cross-roads and advanced very care
fully.
As we crossed the road I was conscious of great excitement. The noise around us was terrific and different from any noise that I heard before. I did not think at the time, but was informed afterwards that it was because we were almost directly under a high-wooded cliff (the actual position about whose possession the battle was being fought), that the noise was so tremendous. The echo flung everything back so that each report sounded three or four times. This certainly had the strangest effect--a background as it were of rolling thunder, sometimes distant, sometimes very close and, in front of this, clapping, bellowing, stamping, and then suddenly an absolutely _smashing_ effect as though some one cried: "Well, this will settle it!" In quieter intervals one heard the birdlike flight of bullets above one's head and the irritated bad temper of the machine-guns. At every _smashing_ noise the sanitars, who were, I believe, schoolmasters and little clerks, and therefore of a more sensitive head than the peasant soldier, ducked their heads, and one fat red-faced man tried to lie down flat on two occasions and was cursed heartily by the Feldscher. I myself felt no fear but only a pounding exhilarating excitement, because I was at last "really in it." We found one wounded man very soon, lying under the hedge with the top of his head gone. Four sanitars (their relief showed very plainly in their faces) returned with him. We advanced again, skirting now a little orchard and keeping always in the shadow under the hedge. Our guide, the soldier, assured us that the wounded man was "very near--quite close." Then we came to a large barn on the edge of what seemed a silver lake but was in reality a long field under the full light of the moon. As we paused I saw, on the further side of the field, two shells burst, very quickly, one after the other.
We all stopped under the shelter of the barn.
"Well," said the Feldscher to the soldier, "where's your man?"
"Only a short way," said the soldier. "Quite close."
"Across that field?" asked the Feldscher, pointing to the moonlight.
"Yes, certainly," said the soldier.
The Feldscher scratched his head. "We can't go further without orders," he said. "That's very dangerous in front there. I'm responsible for these men. We must return and ask, your Honour," he said, turning to me.
"We shall be nearly an hour returning," I said. "Is your friend badly wounded?" I asked the soldier.
"Very," said he.
"You see ..." I said to the Feldscher. "We can't possibly leave him like that. It's only a little way."
The Feldscher shook his head. "I can't be responsible. I had my orders to go so far and no further. I must see that my men are safe."
The sanitars who were sitting in a row on their haunches under the shadow of the barn all nodded their heads.
"I didn't know Russians were cowards," I said fiercely.
The Feldscher shook his head quite unmoved: "Your Honour must understand that I had my orders." Then he added slowly: "but of course if your Honour wishes to go yourself ... I would come with you. The others ... they must do as they please. They are in their right to return. But I should advise that we return."
"I'm going on," I said.
I must say here that I felt no other sensation than a blind and quite obstinate selfishness. I had no thought of Nikitin or of the sanitars. I did not (and this I must emphasise) think, for a moment, of the wounded man. If the situation had been that by returning I should save many lives and by advancing should save only my own I should still have advanced. If the only hope for the wounded man was my instant speech with Nikitin I would not have gone back to speak with him. I was at this moment neither brave nor fearful. I repeat that I had no sensation except an absolutely selfish obstinate challenge that I, myself, was addressing to Something in space. I was saying: "At last, my chance has come. Now you shall see whether I fly from you or no. _Now_ you shall do your worst and fail. I'm the hunter now, not the hunted."
I was conscious of nothing but this quite childish preoccupation with myself. I was, nevertheless, pleased with myself. "There, you see," some one near me seemed to say, "he's not quite so unpractical after all. He's full of common sense." I looked at the row of sanitars squatting on the ground, and felt like a schoolmaster with his children.
"You'd better go home then," I said scornfully. The Feldscher, who was a short stocky man, with a red face and melancholy eyes (something like a prize-fighter turned poet), dismissed them. They went off in a line under the hedge.
The man obviously thought me a tiresome prig. He had no romantic illusions about the business; he had not been a Feldscher during twenty years for nothing and knew that a wound was a wound; when a man was dead he was _dead_.
However.... "Truly it's not far?" he asked the soldier.
"_Tak totchno_," the man answered, his face quite without expression.
We crossed the moonlit field and for a brief moment silence fell, as though an audience were holding its breath watching us. On the other side were cottages, the outskirts of a tiny village. Here beside these cottages we fell into a fantastic world. That small village must in other times have been a pretty place, nestling with its gardens by the river under the hill. It seemed now to rock and rattle under the noise of the cannon. All the open spaces were like white marble in the moonlight and in these open spaces there was utter silence and emptiness. The place seemed deserted--and yet, in every shadow, in long lines under the cottage wells, in little clumps and clusters round trees or ruins there were eyes staring, the gleam of muskets shone, little specks of light, dancing from wall to wall. Everywhere there were bodies, legs, boots, arms, heads, sudden caps, sudden fingers, sudden hot and streaming breaths. And over everything this infernal noise and yet no human sound. A nightmare of the true nightmare of dreams. The open silver spaces, the little gardens thick with flowers, the high moon and the starry sky, not a living soul to be seen--and nevertheless watchers everywhere. "Step forward on to that little plot of grass in front of the cottage windows and you're a dead man"--the moonlight said. There were men in the body of the earth, not in trenches, but in holes--my foot stepped on a head of hair and some low voice cursed me. I was, I suppose, by this time, a little delirious with my adventure. I know that I could now distinguish no separate sounds--shells and bullets had vanished and in their stead were whispers and screams and shouts of triumph and bursts of laughter. Songs in chorus, somewhere miners hammering below the earth, somewhere storm at sea with the crash of waves on rocks and the shriek of wind through rigging, somewhere some one who dropped heavy loads of furniture so carelessly that I cursed him--and always these little patches of moonlight, so tempting just because one was forbidden....
We were not popular here. Husky, breathless voices whispered to us "to be away from here, quick. We would draw the fire. What did we want here now?"
"Have you any wounded?" we whispered in return.
"No, no," the answer came. "Keep away from the moonlight." The voices came to us connected sometimes with a nose, an eye, or a leg, often enough out of the heaven itself.
"There's a man wounded behind the next lines," some voice murmured.
We stumbled on and suddenly came to a river with very steep banks and a number of narrow and slender bridges. If this _had_ in reality been a nightmare this river could not have obtruded itself more often than it did. We discovered to our dismay that our soldier-guide had disappeared (exactly as in a nightmare he would have done). We crossed the river (bathed of course in moonlight), the plank bridge shaking and quivering
beneath us.
We had then a difficult task. Here a row of cottages beneath the very edge of the bank and in the cottage shadow the soldiers were ranged in a long line. Their boots stretched to the verge of the bank, which was slippery and uncertain. We had to walk on this with our stretchers, stepping between the boots, stumbling often and slipping down towards the water.
"Any wounded?" we whispered again and again.
"No," the whisper came back. "Hasten.... Take care of the moonlight."
And then, to my infinite relief and comfort, behind the cottages we found our wounded man. There was a dark yard here, apparently quite deserted. The Feldscher made an exclamation and stepped forward. Three bodies lay together, over one another; two men were dead and cold, the third stirred, very faintly, as we came up, opened his eyes, smiled and said:
"Eh, _Boje moi_ ... at last!"
As we moved him on to the stretcher, with a little sigh he fainted again. He had a bad stomach-wound. Before picking up the stretcher, the Feldscher wiped his forehead and crossed himself.
"It's a heavy thing for two," he said. "He's a big man," looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the "Boom--Boom--boom" in front of us was echo from the hill....
We picked up the stretcher and started. It was fortunate for us that we had that difficult bit beside the river at the beginning of our journey. I don't know how we managed it, stepping over the endless row of legs, with every side step the stretcher lurching over to the left and threatening to pitch us into the river. So slippery too was the ground that our boots refused to grip. The man on the stretcher was dreaming, making a little sound like an unceasing lullaby on two notes--"Na ... na! Na ... na! Na ... na!"
We were compelled to cross the river twice, and the planks bent under our weight until I was assured that they would snap. My arms were beginning to ache and the sweat to trickle down my spine. My right boot had rubbed my heel. We left the river behind us and then, suddenly, my right hand began to slip off the iron handle of the stretcher.
"We'll have to put it down a moment," I said. We laid it on the ground and at the same instant a bullet sang so close to my ear that I felt it as though an insect had bitten me. Then a shell, exploding, as it seemed to us, amongst the very cottages where we had just been, startled us.
"We saved our man," said the Feldscher, looking at the soldier, "but we'd better move on. It's uncomfortable here."
We picked the thing up and started again, and at once my hand began to slip away from its hold (nightmare sensation exactly). I bent my head down, managed to lick my hand without raising it, and stiffened the muscles of my arm. We were watched, once more, by a million eyes--again I stepped on a head of hair buried somewhere in the ground. Then some voice cried shrilly: "Ah! Ah!" ... some man hit.
Every bone in my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain. Once he asked me to stop. He apologised; I could see the sweat pouring down his face: "A very big man'" he said.
Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that I have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yawned and swallowed me. Every plague now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with mud.... There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for their opportunity, slipped down over my knees. I felt the cold night wind on my flesh. Neither decency nor comfort mattered to me now--I would have walked gladly naked through the world. The Feldscher was making a grinding noise between his teeth. I was no longer conscious of shell or bullets. I heard no noise. I was aware of neither light nor darkness. I could not have told my name had any one asked me it. I did not recognise trees nor houses, nor was I at all aware that with a muddy face and my trousers down to my knees I was a strange figure. I was aware of one thing only--that I must keep my right hand on the stretcher. My left behaved decently enough, but my right was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I said to it: "Ah! but I'll punish you when I get back!" I with all my mental consciousness "willed" it to remain on the handle. It slipped. I drove it back. It slipped further, it was almost gone.... With a supreme effort I drove it back again, "I _will_ fall off," said my hand. "You shall _not_," said I. "I have!" cried my hand triumphantly. "Back!" I swore, driving it.
We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded man pitching from side to side. Of the rest of our journey I have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I thought.... "I shall sleep." I heard, from a great distance as it seemed, the soldier's "Na ... Na! Na ... na!" I replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ... na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....
Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours on our journey!
Well--I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed, their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and had long black hair.
"Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him.
"Consumptive," he said.
I had washed my face, hitched up my trousers. I sat on the trunk of a tree, watched the dew on the grass and the faint blue like the colour of a bird's egg flood the sky, staining it pale yellow. All firing had utterly ceased. There was not a sound except the birds in the trees who were beginning to sing. A soldier, a fine grave figure with a black beard, was washing in a little pool at the end of the garden. He was naked save for his white drawers. There was, I repeat, not a sound. Our cottage looked so peaceful--smoke coming from the chimney. No sign of the shambles, no sign except the four dead men, all so grave and quiet. The blue in the sky grew deeper. Then the sun rose, a jolly gold ball with red clouds swinging in streamers away from it.
The birds sang above my head so loudly that the boy who was mowing looked up at them. The soldier finished his washing, put on his shirt. He was a Mahommedan, I perceived, because he prayed, very solemnly, his face to the sun, bowing to the ground. The grass fell before the flashing scythe, the sun flamed behind the trees, and I was happy as I had never known happiness in my life before.
I had done only what all the soldiers are doing every day of their lives. I ha
d been only where they always were.... But I felt that I need never be afraid again. Every one knows how an early summer morning can give one confidence; in my happiness, God forgive me, I thought that my struggles were at an end, that I had met my enemy and defeated him ... that I was worthy and able to defend Marie.
These things may seem foolish now when one knows what followed them, but the happiness of that morning at least was real. Perhaps all over Europe there were men, at that moment, happy as I was, because they had proved something to themselves. Then Nikitin called to me, laughing.
"Tea, 'Mr.' and _bulki_ (white bread) and sausage?"
"All right, I'm coming," I answered. "Listen, _golubchik_," I called to the soldier. "Bring me some water in your kettle. I'll wash my hands."
He came, smiling, towards me.
I have given the incidents of this night in great detail for my own satisfaction, because I wish to forget nothing. To others the little adventure must seem trivial, but to myself it represented the climax of a chain of events.
The Dark Forest Page 7