by Hugh Walpole
And with all this noise not a living soul to be seen! We had before us as we slowly bumped down the hill a fair view. The river was hidden from us, but there was a little hamlet guarded happily by a green wood; there was a line of fair hills, fields of corn, and the long dusty white road. Not a soul to be seen, only our bumping cart and, now and then, against the burning sky those little curling circles of smoke. The world slumbered....
Suddenly from the ditch at the side of the road a soldier appeared, spoke to our driver and disappeared again.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He says, your Honour, that we must hasten. We may be hit.”
“Hit here — on this road?”
“Tak totchno.”
“Well, hurry then.”
I caught a little frightened sigh behind me from Andrey Vassilievitch, whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We hurried, bumping along; at the bottom of the hill there was a farmhouse. From behind it an officer appeared.
“What are you doing there? You’re under fire.... Red Cross? Ah yes, we had a message about you. Dr. Semyonov?... Yes. Please come this way. Hurry, please!”
We were led across the farmyard and almost tumbled into a trench at the farther end of it.
It wasn’t until I felt some one touch my shoulder that I realised my position. We were sitting, the three of us, in a slanting fashion with our backs to the earthworks of the trench. To our right, under an improvised round roof, a little dried-up man like a bee, with his tunic open at the neck and a beard of some days on his chin, was calling down a telephone.
Next to me on the left a smart young officer, of a perfect neatness and even dandiness, was eating his supper, which his servant, crouching in front of him, ladled with a spoon out of a tin can. Beyond him again the soldiers in a long line under the farm wall were sewing their clothes, eating, talking in whispers, and one of them reading a newspaper aloud to himself.
A barn opposite us in ruins showed between its bare posts the green fields beyond. Now and then a soldier would move across the yard to the door of the farm, and he seemed to slide with something between walking and running, his shoulders bent, his head down. The sun, low now, showed just above the end of the farm roof and the lines of light were orange between the shadows of the barn. All the batteries seemed now very far away; the only sound in the world was the occasional sigh of the shrapnel. The farmyard was bathed in the peace of the summer evening.
The Colonel, when he had finished his conversation with some humorous sally that gave him great pleasure, greeted us.
“Very glad to see you, gentlemen.... Two Englishmen! Well, that’s the Alliance in very truth ... yes.... How’s London, gentlemen? Yes, golubchik, that small tin — the grey one. No, durak, the small one. Dr. Semyonov sent a message. Pray make yourselves comfortable, but don’t raise your heads. They may turn their minds in this direction at any moment again. We’ve had them once already this afternoon. Eh, Piotr Ivanovitch (this to the smart young officer), that would have made your Ekaterina Petrovna jump in her sleep — ha, ha, ha — oh, yes, but I can see her jumping.... Hullo, telephone — Give it here! That you, Ivan Leontievitch? No ... very well for the moment.... Two Englishmen here sitting in my trench — truth itself! Well, what about the Second ‘Rota’? Are they coming down?... Yeh Bogu, I don’t know! What do you say?...”
The young officer, in a very gentle and melodious voice, offered Trenchard, who was sitting next to him, some supper.
“One of these cutlets?”
Trenchard, blushing and stammering, refused.
“A cigarette, then?”
Trenchard again refused and Piotr Ivanovitch, having done his duty, relapsed into his muffled elegance. We sat very quietly there; Trenchard staring with distressed eyes in front of him. Andrey Vassilievitch, very uncomfortable, his fat body sliding forward on the slant, pulling itself up, then sliding again — always he maintained his air of importance, giving his cough, twisting the ends of his moustache, staring, fiercely, at some one suddenly that he might disconcert him, patting, with his plump little hands, his clothes.
The shadows lengthened and a great green oak that hung over the barn seemed, as the evening advanced, to grow larger and larger and to absorb into its heart all the flaming colours of the day, to press them into its dark shadow and to hide them, safe and contented, until another morning.
I sat there and gradually, caught, as it seemed to me, into a world of whispers and half-lights, I slipped forward a little down into the dark walls of the trench and half-slumbered, half clung still to the buzzing voice of the Colonel, the languid replies of the young officer. I felt then that some one was whispering to me that my real adventure was about to begin. I could see quite plainly, like a road up which I had gone, the events of the day behind me. I saw the ride under the stars, the cold red dawn. Marie Ivanovna standing beneath my cart, the sudden battery and the desolate hours of waiting, the wounded men stumbling out of the forest, the ride down the hill and the green bottles bursting in the sun, the sudden silences and the sudden sounds, my own weariness and discomfort and loneliness and now Something — was it the dark green oak that bent down and hid the world for me? — whispered, “You’re drawing near — you’re close — you’re almost there.... In a moment you will see ... you will see ... you will see....”
Somewhere the soldiers were singing, and then all sounds ceased. We were standing, many of us, in the dark, the great oak and many other giant trees were about us and the utter silence was like a sudden plunge into deep water on a hot day. We were waiting, ready for the Creature, breathless with suspense.
“Now!” some one cried, and instantly there was such a roar that I seemed to be lifted by it far into the sky, held, rocked, then dropped gently. I woke to find myself standing up in the trench, my hands to my ears. I was aware first that the sky had changed from blue into a muddy grey, then that dust and an ugly smell were in my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I remembered that I repeated stupidly, again and again: “What? what? what?” Then the grey sky slowly fell away as though it were pushed by some hand and I saw the faint evening blue, with (so strange and unreal they seemed) silver-pointed stars. I caught my breath and realised that now the whole right corner of the barn was gone. The field stretched, a dark shadow, to the edge of the yard. In the ground where the stakes of the barn had been there was a deep pit; scattered helter-skelter were bricks, pieces of wood, and over it all a cloud of thin fine dust that hovered and swung a little like grey silk. The line of soldiers was crouched back into the trench as though it had been driven by some force. From, as it appeared, a great distance, I heard the Colonel’s voice: “Slava Bogu, another step to the right and we’d not have had time to say ‘good-bye.’... Get in there, you ... with your head out like that, do you want another?” I was conscious then of Andrey Vassilievitch sitting huddled on the ground of the trench, his head tucked into his chest.
“You’re not hurt, are you?” I said, bending down to him,
He got up and to my surprise seemed quite composed. He was rubbing his eyes as though he had waked from sleep.
“Not at all,” he answered in his shrill little voice. “No.... What a noise! Did you hear it, Ivan Andreievitch?”
Did I hear it? A ridiculous question!
“But I assure you I was not alarmed,” he said eagerly, turning round to the young officer, who was rather red in the face but otherwise unruffled. “The first time that one has been so close to me. What a noise!”
Trenchard searched in his pockets for something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My handkerchief!” he answered. “So dusty after that. It’s in my eyes!”
He tumbled on to the ground a large clasp pocket-knife, a hunk of black bread, a cigarette-case and some old letters. “I had one,” he muttered anxiously. “Somewhere, I know....”
I heard the Colonel’s voice again. “No one touched! There’s some more of their precious ammunition wasted
.... What about your Ekaterina, Piotr Ivanovitch — Ho, ho, ho!... Here, golubchik, the telephone!... Hullo! Hullo!”
For myself I had the irritation that one might feel had a boy thrown a stone over the wall, broken a window and run away. Moreover, I felt that again I had missed — IT. Always round the corner, always just out of sight, always mocking one’s clumsy pursuit. And still, even now, I felt no excitement, no curiosity. My feet had not yet touched the enchanted ground....
The trench had at once slipped back into its earlier composure. The dusk was now creeping down the hill; with every stir of the breeze more stars were blown into the sky; the oak was all black now like a friendly shadow protecting me.
“There’ll be no more for a while,” said the Colonel. He was right. There was stillness; no battery, however distant, no pitter-patter of rifle fire, no chattering report of the machine guns.
Men began to cross the yard, slowly, without caution. The dusk caught us so that I could not see the Colonel’s face; a stream that cut the field, hidden in the day, was now suddenly revealed by a grinning careless moon.
Then a soldier crossed the yard to us, told us that Dr. Semyonov wished us to start and had sent us a guide; the wagons were ready.
At that instant, whence I know not, for the first time that day, excitement leapt upon me.
Events had hitherto passed before me like the shadowed film of a cinematograph; it had been as though some one had given me glimpses of a life, an adventure, a country with which I should later have some concern but whose boundaries I was not yet to cross. Now, suddenly, whether it was because of the dark and the silence I cannot say, I had become, myself, an actor in the affair. It was not simply that we were given something definite to do — we had had wounded during the morning — it was rather that, as in the children’s game we were “hot,” we had drawn in a moment close to some one or something of whose presence we were quite distinctly aware. As we walked across the yard into the long low field, speaking in whispers, watching a shaft of light, perhaps some distant projector that trembled in pale white shadows on the horizon, we seemed to me to be, in actual truth, the hunters of Trenchard’s dream.
Never, surely, before, had I known the world so silent. Under the hedges that lined the field there were soldiers like ghosts; our own wagons, with the sanitars walking beside them, moved across the ground without even the creak of a wheel. Semyonov was to meet us in an hour’s time at a certain crossroad. I was given the command of the party. I was now, in literal truth, breathlessly excited. My heart was beating in my breast like some creature who makes running leaps at escape. My tongue was dry and my brain hot. But I was happy ... happy with a strange exaltation that was unlike any emotion that I had known before. It was in part the happiness that I had known sometimes in Rugby football or in tennis when the players were evenly matched and the game hard, but it was more than that. It had in it something of the happiness that I have known, after many days at sea, on the first view of land — but it was more than that. Something of the happiness of possessing, at last, some object which one has many days desired and never hoped to attain — but more, too, than that. Something of the happiness of danger or pain that one has dreaded and finds, in actual truth, give way before one’s resolution — but more, again, than that. This happiness, this exultation that I felt now but dimly, and was to know more fully afterwards (but never, alas, as my companions were to know it) is the subject of this book. The scent of it, the full revelation of it, has not, until now, been my reward; I can only, as a spectator, watch that revelation as it came afterwards to others more fortunate than I. But what I write is the truth as far as I, from the outside, have seen it. If it is not true, this book has no value whatever.
We were warned by the soldier who guarded us not to walk in a group and we stole now, beneath a garden-wall, white under the moon, in a long line. I could hear Trenchard behind me stumbling over the stones and ruts, walking as he always did with little jerks, as though his legs were beyond his control. We came then on to the high road, which was so white and clear in the moonlight that it seemed as though the whole Austrian army must instantly whisper to themselves: “Ah, there they are!” and fire. The ditch to our right, as far as I could see, was lined with soldiers, hidden by the hedge behind them, their rifles just pointing on to the white surface of the land. Our guide asked them their division and was answered in a whisper. The soldiers were ghosts: there was no one, save ourselves, alive in the whole world....
Then a little incident occurred. I was walking in the rear of our wagons that I might see that all were there. I felt a touch on my arm and found Andrey Vassilievitch standing in the middle of the road. His face, staring at me as though I were a stranger, expressed desperate determination.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ve no time to waste.”
“I’m not coming,” he whispered back. His voice was breathless as though he had been running.
“Nonsense,” I answered roughly, and I put my hand on his arm. His body trembled in jerks and starts.
“It’s madness ... this road ... the moon.... Of course they’ll fire.... We’ll all be killed. But it isn’t ... it isn’t ... I can’t move....”
“You must move.... Come, Andrey Vassilievitch, you’ve been brave enough all day. There’s no danger, I tell you. See how quiet everything is. You must....”
“I can’t.... It’s nothing ... nothing to do with me.... It’s awful all day — and now this!”
I thought of Marie Ivanovna early in the morning. I looked down the road and saw that the wagons were slowly moving into the distant shadows.
“You must come,” I repeated. “We can’t leave you here. Don’t think of yourself. And nothing can touch you — nothing, I tell you.”
“I’ll go back, I must. I can’t go on.”
“Go back? How can you? Where to? You can’t go back to the trench. We shan’t know where to find you.” A furious anger seized me; I caught his arm. “I’ll leave you, if you like. There are other things more important.”
I move away from him. He looked down the long road, looked back.
“Oh, I can’t ... I can’t,” he repeated.
“What did you come for?” I whispered furiously. “What did you think war was?... Well, good-bye, do as you please!”
As I drew away I saw a look of desperate determination in his eyes. He looked at me like a dog who expects to be beaten. Then what must have been one of the supreme moments of his life came to him. I saw him struggle to command, with the effort of his whole soul, his terror. For a moment he wavered. He made a hopeless gesture with his hand, took two little steps as though he would run into the hedge amongst the soldiers and hide there, then suddenly walked past me, quickly, towards the wagons, with his own absurd little strut, with his head up, giving his cough, looking, after that, neither to the right, nor to the left.
In silence we caught up the wagons. Soon, at some cross-roads, they came to a pause. The guide was waiting for me. “It would be better, your Honour,” he whispered, “for the wagons to stay here. We shall go now simply with the stretchers....”
We left the wagons and, some fifteen of us, turned off down a lane to the left. Sometimes there were soldiers in the hedges, sometimes they met us, slipping from shadow to shadow. Always we asked whether they knew of any wounded. We found a wounded soldier groaning under the hedge. One leg was soaked in blood and he gave little shrill desperate cries as we lifted him on to the stretcher. Another soldier, lying on the road in the moonlight, murmured incessantly: “Bojé moi! Bojé moi! Bojé moi!” But they were all ghosts. We alone, in that familiar and yet so unreal world, were alive. When a stretcher was filled, four sanitars turned back with it to the wagons, and we were soon a very small party. We arrived at a church — a large fantastic white church with a green turret that I had seen from the opposite hill in the morning. Then it had seemed small and very remote. I had been told that much firing had been centring round it, and it seemed now for me very strange that
we should be standing under its very shadow, its outline so quiet and grave under the moon, with its churchyard, a little orchard behind it, and a garden, scenting the night air, close at hand. Here in the graveyard there was a group of wounded soldiers, in their eyes that look of faithful expectation of certain relief. Our stretchers were soon full.
We were about to turn back when suddenly the road behind us was filled with shadows. As we came out of the churchyard an officer stepped forward to meet us. We saluted and shook hands. He seemed a boy, but stood in front of his men with an air as though he commanded the whole of this world of ghosts.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
We explained.
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, you’d better make haste. An attack very shortly ... yes. I should advise you to be out of this. Petrogradsky Otriad? Yes ... very glad to have the pleasure....”
We left him, his men a grey cloud behind him, and when we had taken a few steps he seemed, with his young air of importance, his happy serious courtesy, to have been called out of the ground, then, with all his shadows behind him, to have been caught up into the air. These were not figures that had anything to do with the little curling wreaths of smoke, the bottles cracking in the sun, our furious giants of the morning.
“Ah, Bojé moi, Bojé moi!” sighed the wounded.... It was impossible, in such a world of dim shadow, that there should ever be any other sound again.