Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “How absurd!... To let them all see ... to let them know....” Perhaps I, who was sitting next to her, alone heard her words.

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

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

  “I say, come out again — just as though nothing had happened. No one noticed anything, only I....”

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

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

  “Wait! Wait!” I cried. “Be patient!”

  As I spoke I could hear him in the railway carriage:

  “I am mad with happiness.... God forgive me, my heart will break.”

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

  “Look here,” I said. “You mustn’t take things so hard. You go up and down.... Your emotions....”

  But he only shook his head:

  “She shouldn’t have said it — like that — before every one,” he repeated.

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

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

  CHAPTER III

  THE INVISIBLE BATTLE

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

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

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

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

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

  “They say — to-night — for certain,” said Andrey Vassilievitch, his fat hand trembling on my bed. He began to talk, his voice shaking with excitement. “Do you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I am continually surprised at myself: ‘Here you are, Andrey Vassilievitch, here, at the war. What do you make of it?? I say to myself. Just consider.... No, but seriously, Ivan Andreievitch, of course I must seem to all of you something of a comic figure. When my wife was alive — how I wish that you could have known her! Such a remarkable woman; every one who met her was struck by her fine character — when my wife was alive I had my position to support. That I should have been a comic figure would have distressed her. But now, who cares? Nobody, you may very truly say.... Well, well. But the point is that this evening we shall really be in the thick of it. And — may I tell you something, Ivan Andreievitch? Only for yourself, because you are an Englishman and can be trusted: to speak quite truthfully I’m frightened. I say to myself that one is at the war and that one must be frightened at nothing, and still I remain frightened.... Frightened of what?... I really cannot tell you. Death, perhaps? But no, I should not be sorry to die — there are reasons....

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

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

  “You seem very fond of Nikitin,” I said.

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

  “And Semyonov?” I asked.

  “I have nothing to say against Alexei Petrovitch,” he answered stiffly.

  When later I joined the others at the cottage higher up the road taken by the doctors of the Division, I discovered Trenchard in an ecstasy of happiness. He did not speak to me but his shining eyes, the eagerness with which standing back from the group he watched us all, told me everything. Marie Ivanovna had been kind to him, and when I found her in the centre of them, her whole body alert with excitement, I forgot my anger at her earlier unkindness or, if I remembered it, laid it to the charge of my own imagination or Trenchard’s sensitiveness.

  Indeed we were all excited. How could we fail to be! There was some big business toward, and in it we were to have our share. We were, perhaps this very day, to penetrate into the reality of the thing that for nine months now we had been watching. All of us, with our little private histories like bundles on our backs, are venturing out to try our fortune.... What are we going to find?

  I remember indeed that early on that afternoon I felt the drama of the whole affair so heavily that I saw in every soldier who passed me a messenger of fate. They called me to a meal. Eat! Now! How absurd it seemed! Semyonov watched me cynically:

  “Eat and then sleep,” he said, “or you’ll be no use to any one.”

  Afterwards I went back to the kitchen and slept. That sleep was the end of my melodrama. I was awakened by a rough hand on my shoulder to find it dark beyond the windows and Semyonov watching me impatiently:

  “Come, get up! It’s time for us to start,” and then moved out. I was conscious that I was cold and irritable. I looked back with surprised contempt to my earlier dramatic emotions. I was hungry; I put on my overcoat, shivered, came out into the evening, saw the line of wagons silhouetted against the sky, listened to the perfect quiet on every side of me, yawned and was vexed to find Trenchard at my side.

  “Why this is actually dull!” I thought to myself. “It is as though I were going to some dinner that I know beforehand will be exceedingly tiresome — only then I should get some food.”

  I was disappointed at the lack of drama in the affair. I looked at my watch — it was ten o’clock. Semyonov was arranging everything with a masterly disregard of personal feelings. He swore fine Russian oaths, abused the sanitars, always in his cold rather satirical voice, his heavy figure moving up and down the road with a practical vivid alertness that stirred my envy and also my annoyance. I felt utterly useless. He ordered me on to my wagon in a manner that, in my present half-sleepy, half-surly mood seemed to me abominably abrupt. Trenchard climbed up, very clumsily, after me.

  I leaned back on the straw, let my arms fall and lay there, flat on my back, staring straight into the sky.... With that my mood suddenly changed. I was at peace with the whole world. To-night was again thick with a heavy burden of stars that seemed to weigh like the silver lid of some mighty box heavily down, down upon us, until trees and hills and the dim Carpathians were bent flat beneath the pressure. I lying upon my back, seeing only that sheet of stars, in my nostrils the smell of the straw, rocked by the slow dreamy motion of the wagon, was filled with an exquisite ease and lethargy. I was going into battle, was I? I was to have to-night the supreme experience of my life? It might be that to-night I should die — only last week two members of the Red Cross — a nurse and a doctor — had been killed. It might be that these stars, this straw, this quiet night were round me for the last time. It did not matter to me — nothing could touch me. My soul was somewhere far away, upon some business of its own, and how happy was my body without the soul, how contented, how undisturbed! I could fancy that I should go, thus rocking, into battle and there die before my soul had time to return to me. What would my soul do then? Find some other body, or go wandering, searching for me? A star, a flash of light like a cry of happiness or of glad surprise, fell through heaven and the other stars trembled at the sight.

  My wagon stopped with a jerk. Some voice asked: what the devil were we doing filling the road with our carts at the exact moment that such-and-such a Division wished to move.

  I heard Semyonov’s voice, very cold, official and polite. Then again: “Well, in God’s name, hurry then! ... taking up the road! ... hurry, I tell you!”

  On we jogged again. Trenchard’s voice came to me: he had been, it might be, talking for some time.

  “And so I’m not surprised, Durward, that you thought me a terrible fool to show my feelings as I’ve done this last fortnight. But you don’t know what it is to me — to have something at last in your hands that you’ve dreamed of all your life and never dared to hope for: to have it and feel that at any moment it may slip away and leave you in a worse state than you were before. I’d been wishing, these last weeks, that I’d never met her, that I’d simply come to the war by myself. But now — to-day — when she spoke to me as she did, asked me to forgive her for what happened last night, my God, Durward! I to forgive her!... But I’ll show her this very night what I can do — this very night! They’ll give me a chance, won’t they? It would be terrible if they didn’t. Semyonov won’t give me a chance if he can help it. What have I done to Semyonov that he should hate me? What have....”

  But I didn’t answer Trenchard. That part of me that had any concern with him and his affairs was far away. But his voice had stirred some more active life in me. I thought to myself now: Will there be some concrete definite moment in this affair when I shall say to myself: “Ah, there it is! There’s the heart of this whole business! There’s the enemy! Slay him and you have settled the matter!” or, perhaps, “Ah, now I’ve seen the secret. Now I’ve hunted the animal to his lair. This is war, this thing here. Now all my days I remain quiet. There is nothing more to fear” — or would it be perhaps that I should face something and be filled, then, with ungovernable terror so that I should run for my life, run, hide me in the hills, cover up my days so that no one shall ever find me again?...

  I raised myself on my elbow and looked at the country. We jolted over a little brook, brushed through a thicket of trees, came on to a path running at the forest’s foot, and saw on our left a little wooden house, a high wood fire burning in front of it. I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. Already a very faint glow throbbed in the sky. Out of the forest, at long intervals, came a dull booming sound like the shutting of a heavy iron door.

  The wagons drew up. We had arrived at our destination.

  “We shall be here,” I heard Semyonov say, “some five hours or so. You’d better sleep if you can.”

  A group of soldiers round the wood fire were motionless, their faces glowing, their bodies dark. Our wagons, drawn up together, resembled in the twilight strange beasts; the two Sisters lay down on one wagon, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and I on another. My irritated mood had returned. I had been the last to climb on to the straw and the others had so settled themselves that I had no room to lie flat. Semyonov’s big body occupied half the wagon, Andrey Vassilievitch’s boots touched my head and at intervals his whole body gave nervous jerks. It was also quite bitterly cold, which was curious enough after the warmth of the earlier nights. And always, at what seemed to be regular intervals, there came, from the forest, the banging of the iron door.

  I felt a passionate irritation against Andrey Vassilievitch. Why could he not keep quiet? What, after all, was he doing here? I could hear that he was dreaming. He muttered some woman’s name:

  “Sasha ... Sasha ... Sasha....”

&nbs
p; “Can’t you keep still?” I whispered to him, but in the cold I myself was trembling. The dawn came at last with reluctance, flushing the air with colour, then withdrawing into cold grey clouds, then stealing out once more behind the forest in scattered strips of pale green gold, then suddenly sending up into the heaven a flock of pink clouds like a flight of birds, that spread in extending lines to the horizon, covering at last a sky now faintly blue, with rosy bars. The flame of the soldiers’ fire grew faint, white mists rose in the fields, the cannon in the forest ceased and the birds began.

  I sat up on the cart, looked at my sleeping companions, and thought how unpleasant they looked. Semyonov like a dead man, Andrey Vassilievitch like a happy pig, Trenchard like a child who slept after a scolding. I felt intense loneliness. I wanted some one to comfort me, to reassure me against life which seemed to me suddenly now perilous and remorseless; moreover some one seemed to be reviewing my life for me and displaying it to me, laying bare all its uselessness and insignificance.

  “But I’m in no way a fine fellow,” I could fancy myself crying. “I’m sleepy and cold and hungry. If you’ll remove Andrey Vassilievitch’s boots for me I’ll lie flat on this wagon and you can let loose every shrapnel in the world over my head and I’ll never stir. I thought I was interested in your war, and I’m not.... I thought no discomfort mattered to me, but I find that I dislike so much being cold and hungry that it outweighs all heroism, all sense of danger ... let me alone!”

  Then something occurred. Looking down over the side of the cart I saw, to my great surprise, Marie Ivanovna.

  “You!” I whispered.

  “Hush!” she answered. “Come down.”

  I let myself down and at once she put her hand into mine.

  “Walk with me just a little way,” she whispered, “to those trees and back.” I had noticed at once that her voice trembled; now I perceived that her whole body was shaking; her hand gave little startled quivers under mine.