Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  He failed altogether to understand her youth, her inexperience, above all her coloured romantic fancy. Her romantic fancy had made him in her eyes for a brief hour something that he was not. After a month at the war I believe that she had grown into a woman. She had loved him for an instant as a young girl loves a hero of a novel. And although she was now a woman she must still keep her romantic fancy. He was no longer part of that — only a clumsy man at whom people laughed. She must, I think, have suffered at her own awakening, for she was honest, impetuous, pure, if ever woman was those things.

  He did not see her as she was — he still clung to his confidence; but he began as the days advanced to be terribly afraid. His fears centred themselves round Semyonov. Semyonov must have seemed to him an awful figure, powerful, contemptuous, all-conquering. Any blunders that he committed were doubled by Semyonov’s presence. He could do nothing right if Semyonov were there. He was only too ready to believe that Semyonov knew the world and he did not, and if Semyonov thought him a fool — it was quite obvious what Semyonov thought him — then a fool he must be. He clung desperately to the hope that there would be a battle — a romantic dramatic battle — and that in it he would most gloriously distinguish himself. He believed that, for her sake, he would face all the terrors of hell. The battle came and there were no terrors of hell — only sick headache, noise, men desperately wounded, and, once again, his own clumsiness. Then, in that final picture of Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov he saw his own most miserable exclusion.

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

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

  But for four days he was happy! He used to sing to himself as he walked about the house in a high cracked voice — one song I did but see her passing by — another Early one morning — I can hear him now, his voice breaking always on the high notes.

  Early one morning

  Just as the sun was rising

  I heard a maid singing

  In the valley below:

  “Ah! don’t deceive me! Pray never leave me,’

  How could you treat a poor maiden so!”

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

  Then, quite suddenly, the blow fell.

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

  “John,” she said, “I can’t marry you.”

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

  “I don’t understand,” he said, and instantly afterwards his heart began to beat like a raging beast and his knees trembled.

  “I can’t marry you,” she told him, “because I don’t love you. Ah, I’ve known it a long time — ever since we left Petrograd. I’ve often, often wanted to tell you ... I’ve been afraid.”

  “You can’t marry me?” he repeated, “But you must....” Then hurriedly: “No, I shouldn’t say that. You must forgive me ... you have confused me.”

  “I’m very unhappy ... I’ve been unhappy a long time. It was a mistake in Petrograd. I don’t love you — but it isn’t only that.... You wouldn’t be happy with me. You think now ... but it’s a mistake.”

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

  “You can’t — you mustn’t,” he whispered, staring as though he would hold her by her eyes. “Don’t you see that you mustn’t? What am I to do after all this? What are we both to do? It’s breaking everything. I shan’t believe in anything if you.... Ah! but no, you don’t really mean anything....”

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

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

  “I don’t know,” she said, “what I’ve been ... what I’ve done. During these last weeks I’ve been terrible to myself — and yet it’s better too. I didn’t live a real life before, and now I see things as they are. I don’t love you, John, and so we mustn’t marry.”

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

  “You mustn’t.... You dare not.... Then go if you wish. I don’t want you, do you hear?... I don’t want.... I don’t want you!”

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

  There he stood, thinking of nothing, knowing nothing, seeing nothing. The dusk came up, there had been rain during the day, the mist was in grey sheets, the wet dank smell of the earth and of the vegetables amongst which he stood grew stronger as the light faded. He thought of nothing, nothing at all. He felt in his pocket for his pipe, something dropped — and he knelt down there on the soaking ground, searching. He searched furiously, raging to himself again and again: “Oh! I must find it! I must find it! I must find it!” His hands tore the wet vegetables, were thick with the soil. Other things fell from his pockets, Then the rain began to descend again, thin and cold. In some building he could hear a horse moving, stamping. He pulled up the vegetables by their roots in his search. As though a sword had struck him his brain was clear. He knew of his loss. He flung himself on the ground, rubbing the wet soil on to his face, whispering desperately: “Oh God! — Oh God! — Oh God!”

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

  On this day there were the two sanitars, whose faces now he knew, walking solidly beside his cart, there were the little orchards with the soldiers’ tents sheltering beneath them, the villages with the old men, the women, the children, watching, like ghosts, their passage, the fields in which the summer corn was ripening, the first trembling heat and beauty of a quiet day in early June. No sound in the world but peace, the woods opening around them as they advanced. He lay back on
his bumping cart, watching the world as though he was seeing pictures of some place where he had once been but long left. Yes, long ago he had left it. His world was now a narrow burning chamber, in which dwelt with him a taunting jeering torturing spirit of reminiscence. He saw with the utmost clearness every detail of his relationship with Marie Ivanovna. He had no doubt at all that that relationship was finally, hopelessly closed. His was not a character that was the stronger for misfortune. He submitted, crushed to the ground. His mind now dwelt upon that journey from Petrograd, a journey of incredible, ironic ecstasy lighted with the fires of the wonderful spring that had accompanied it. He recalled every detail of his conversation with me. His confidence that life would now be fine for him — how could life ever be fine for a man who let the prizes, the treasures, slip from his fingers, without an attempt to clutch them? It was so now that he saw the whole of the affair — blame of Marie Ivanovna there was none, only of his own weakness, his imbecile, idiotic weakness. In that last conversation with her why could he not have said that he refused to let her go, held to her, dominated her, as a strong man would have done? No, without a word, except a cry of impotent childish rage, he had submitted.... So, all his life it had been — so, all his life it would be.

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

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

  He found that he recalled the details of that battle as though his taking part in it had bound him to something. Even it was suggested to him that there was something now that he must do outside his love for Marie Ivanovna, something that had perhaps no connexion with her at all. In the very heart of his misery he was conscious that a little pulse was beating that was strange to him, foreign to him; it was as though he were warned that he had embarked upon some voyage that must be carried through to the very end. He was, in truth, less completely overwhelmed by his catastrophe than he knew.

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

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

  Why was it wet, indeed? A heavy brooding inertia, Trenchard has told me, seemed to seize them all. “They were not pleasant trees, you know,” I remember his afterwards telling me, “all dirty and tangled, and we all looked dirty too. There was an unpleasant smell in the air. But that afternoon I simply didn’t care about anything, nothing mattered.” I don’t think that the sanitars at that time respected Trenchard very greatly. He wasn’t, in any case, a man of authority and his broken stammering Russian wouldn’t help him. Then there is nothing stranger than the fashion in which the Russian language will (if you are a timid foreigner), of a sudden wilfully desert you. Be bold with it and it may, somewhat haughtily, perhaps, consent to your use of it ... be frightened of it and it will despise you for ever. Upon that afternoon it deserted Trenchard; even his own language seemed to have left him. His brain was cold and damp like the woods around him.

  They passed through the thickets and came, to their great surprise, upon a trench occupied by soldiers. This surprised them because they had heard that the Austrians were many versts distant. The soldiers also seemed to wonder. They explained their mission to a young officer who seemed at first as though he would ask them something, then checked himself, gave them permission to pass through and watched them with grave gaze. After they had crossed the barbed wire the woods suddenly closed about them as though a door had been softly shut behind them. The ground now squelched beneath their feet, the sky between the trees was like damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: “Soon,” Trenchard told me, “I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall but I might have been alone at the end of the world. It was obvious that the regimental sanitars had been there before us because there were many new roughly made graves. There were letters too and post cards lying about all heavy with wet and dirt. I picked up some of these — letters from lovers and sisters and brothers. One letter I remember in a large baby-hand from a boy to his father telling him about his lessons and his drill, ‘because he would soon be a soldier.’ One letter, too, from a girl to her lover saying that she had had a dream and knew now that her ‘dear Franz, whom she loved with all her soul, would return to her!... I am quite confident now that we shall be happy here again very soon....’ In such a place, those words.”

  As he walked alone there he felt, as I had felt before the battle of S —— , that he had already been there. He knew those trees, that smell, that heavy overhanging sky. Then he remembered, as I had remembered, his dream. But whereas that dream had been to me only a reflected story, with him it had lasted throughout his life. He knew every step of that first advance into the forest, the look back to the long dim white house with shadowy figures still about it, the avenue with many trees, the horses and dogs down the first grey path, then the sudden loneliness, the quiet broken only by the dripping of the trees.

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

  “It was there,” he told me, “when I scarcely knew what was real and what was not, that I saw that for which I was searching. I noticed first the dark grey-blue of the trousers, then the white skull. There was a horrible stench in the air. I called and the sanitars answered me. Then I looked at it. I had never seen a dead man before. This man had been dead for about a fortnight, I suppose. Its grey-blue trousers and thick boots were in excellent condition and a tin spoon and some papers were showing out of the top of one boot. Its face was a grinning skull and little black animals like ants were climbing in and out of the mouth and the eye-sockets. Its jacket was in good condition, its arms were flung out beyond its head. I felt sick and the whole place was so damp and smelt so badly that it must have been horribly unhealthy. The sanitars began to dig a grave. Those who were not working smoked cigarettes, and they all stood in a group watching the body with a solemn and serious interest. One of t
hem made a little wooden cross out of some twigs. There was a letter just beside the body which they brought me. It began: ‘Darling Heinrich, — Your last letter was so cheerful that I have quite recovered from my depression. It may not be so long now before ...’ and so on, like the other letters that I had read. It grinned at us there with a devilish sarcasm, but its trousers and boots were pitiful and human. The men finished the grave and then, with their feet, turned it over. As it rolled a flood of bright yellow insects swarmed out of its jacket, and a grey liquid trickled out of the skull. The last I saw of it was the gleam of the tin spoon above its boot....”

  “We searched after that,” he told me, “for several hours and found three more bodies. They were Austrians, in the condition of the first. I walked in a dream of horror. It was, I suppose, a bad day for me to have come with my other unhappiness weighing upon me, but I was, in some stupid way, altogether unprepared for what I had seen. I had, as I have told you, thought of death very often in my life but I had never thought of it like this. I did not now think of death very clearly but only of the uselessness of trying to bear up against anything when that was all one came to in the end. I felt my very bones crumble and my flesh decay on my body, as I stood there. I felt as though I had really been caught at last after a silly aimless flight and that even if I had the strength or cleverness to escape I had not the desire to try. I had been mocked with a week’s happiness only to have it taken from me for my enemy’s ironic enjoyment. I had a quite definite consciousness of my enemy. I had as a boy thought, you remember, of my uncle — and now, as I moved through the wood, I could hear the old man’s chuckle just as he had chuckled in the old days, snapping his fingers together and twitching his nose....”