by Hugh Walpole
Our tea was brought to us. Then quite suddenly Trenchard said to me:
“Did she say anything before she died?”
“No,” I answered quietly. “She died instantly, they told me.”
“How exactly was she killed?”
His eyes watched my face without falter, clearly, gravely, steadfastly.
“She was killed by a bullet. Stepped out from behind her shelter and it happened at once. She can have suffered nothing.”
“And Semyonov let her?”
“He could not have prevented it. It might have happened to any one.”
“I would have prevented it,” he said, nodding his head gravely.
He was silent for a little; then with a sudden jerk he said:
“Where has she gone?”
“Gone?” I repeated stupidly after him.
“Yes — that’s not death — to go like that. She must be somewhere still — somewhere in this beastly forest. What — afterwards — when you saw her — what? ... her face?...”
“She looked very peaceful — quite happy.”
“No restlessness in her face? No anxiety?”
“None.”
“But all that life — that energy. It can’t have stopped. Quite suddenly. It can’t. She can’t have wanted not to know all those things that she was so eager about before.” He was suddenly voluble, excited, leaning forward, staring at me. “You know how she was. You must have seen it numbers of times — how she never looked at any of us really, how we were none of us — no, not even Semyonov — anything to her really; always staring past us, wanting to know the answer to questions that we couldn’t solve for her. She wouldn’t give it all up simply for nothing, simply for a bullet ...” he broke off.
“Look here, Trenchard,” I said, “try not to think of her just now more than you can help, just now. We’re in for a stiff time, I believe. This will be our last easy afternoon, I fancy, and even now we ought to be back helping Nikitin. You’ve got to work all you know. One’s nerves get wrong easily enough in a place like this — and after what has happened I feel this damned Forest already. But we mustn’t let our nerves go. We’ve simply got to work and think about nothing at all — think about nothing at all.”
I don’t believe that he heard me.
“Semyonov?” he said slowly. “What did he do?”
“He was very quiet,” I answered. “He didn’t say anything. He looked awful.”
“Yes. She snapped her fingers at him anyway. He couldn’t keep her for all his bullying.”
“It pretty well killed him,” I said rather fiercely. “Look here, Trenchard. Don’t think of yourself — or of her. Every one’s in it now. There isn’t any personality about it. We’ve simply got to do our best and not think about it. It’s thinking that beats one if one lets it.”
“Semyonov ... Semyonov,” he repeated to himself, smiling. “No, he had not power over her.” Then looking at me very calmly, he remarked: “This Death, you know, Durward.... It simply doesn’t exist. It can’t stop her. It can’t stop any one if they’re determined. I’ll find her before Semyonov does, too.”
Then, as though he had waked from sleep, he said to me, his voice trembling a little: “Am I talking queerly, Durward? If I am, don’t think anything of it. It’s this heat — and this place. Let’s get back.” He only spoke once more. He said: “Do you remember that first drive — ages ago, when we saw the trenches and heard the frogs and I thought there was some one there?”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”
“Well, it’s rather like that now, isn’t it?”
A pretty girl, twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, obviously the daughter of the red-faced proprietor, came up to us and asked us if we would like any more tea. She would be stout later on, her red cheeks were plump and her black hair arranged coquettishly in little shining curls. She smiled on us.
“No more tea?” she said.
“No more,” I answered.
“You will not be staying here?”
“Not to-night.”
“We have a nice room here.”
“No, thank you.”
“Perhaps one of you—”
“No. We are returning to-night,”
“Perhaps, for an hour or two.” Then smiling at me and laughing a little, “I have known many officers ... very many.”
“No, thank you,” I said sternly.
“I have a sister,” she said. She turned, crying: “Marie, Marie!”
A little girl, who could not have been more than fourteen years of age, appeared from the background. She also was red-cheeked and plump; her hair also was arranged in black, shining curls. She stood looking at us, half smiling, half defiant, sucking her finger.
“She also has known officers,” said the girl. “She would be very glad, if you cared—”
I heard their father behind the bar humming to himself.
“Come out of this!” I said to Trenchard. “Come away!”
He followed me quietly, bowing very politely to the staring sisters....
“Go on,” I said to Nikolai. “Drive on. No time to waste. We’ve got work to do.”
On our return we found that the press of work was not as yet severe. Half the building belonged to us, the remaining half being used by the officers of the battery. Nikitin had arranged a large room, that must I think have been a dining-room in happier days, with beds; to the right was the operating-room, overhead were our bedrooms and the room where originally I had sat with Marie Ivanovna was a general meeting place. The officers of the battery, two middle-aged and two very young indeed, were extremely courteous and begged us to make use of them in any way possible. They were living in the raggedest fashion, a week’s growth of beard on their chins, their beds unmade, the floor littered with ends of cigarettes, pieces of paper, journals.
“Been here weeks,” they apologetically explained to us. “Come in and have a meal with us whenever you like.” They resembled animals in a cave. When they were not on duty they played chemin-de-fer and slept. Meanwhile for three days and nights our work was slight. The battle drew further away into the Forest. Wagons with wounded came to us only at long intervals.
The result of these three days was a strange new intimacy between the four of us. I have never in all my life seen anything more charming than the behaviour of Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch to Trenchard. There is something about Russian kindness that is both simpler and more tactful than any other kindness in the world. Tact is too often another name for insincerity, but Russian kindheartedness is the most honest impulse in the Russian soul, the quality that comes first, before anger, before injustice, before prejudice, before slander, before disloyalty, and overrides them all. They were, of course, conscious that Trenchard’s case was worse than their own. Marie Ivanovna’s death had shocked them, but she had been outside their lives and already she was fading from them. Trenchard was another matter. Nikitin seemed to me for the first time in my knowledge of him to come down from his idealistic dreaming. He cared for Trenchard like a child, but never obtrusively. Trenchard seemed to appreciate it, but there was something about him that I did not like. His nerves were tensely strained, he did his work with his eyes fixed upon some impossible distance, he often did not hear us when we spoke to him.
And so the three of us formed a kind of hedge about him to protect him, a hedge of which he was perfectly unconscious. He was very silent and I would have given a great deal to hear again one of those Glebeshire stories that I had once found so tiresome. That some plan or purpose was in his head one could not doubt.
We had, all of us, much in common in our characters. We liked the sentimental easy coloured view of life. We suddenly felt a strange freedom here in this place. For myself, on the third day, I found that Marie Ivanovna was most strangely present with me, and on the afternoon of that day, our wounded quiet on their beds, our wagons sent into the tent with no prospect of their return for several hours, we sat together, Nikitin, Andrey V
assilievitch and I, looking out through a break in the garden towards the Forest, and talked about her. The weather was now very heavy — certainly a thunderstorm was coming. I was also weighted down by an intense desire for sleep, at the same time knowing that if I were to fling myself on my bed sleep would not come to me. This is an experience that is not unusual at the Front, and officers have told me that in the middle of a battle when there comes a sudden lull, their longing for sleep has been so overpowering that no imminent danger could lift it from their eyes.
We sat there then and talked in low voices of Marie Ivanovna. I was aware of the buzzing of the flies, of the dull yellow light beyond the windows, of the Forest crouching a little as it seemed to me like a creature who expects a blow. We were all half asleep perhaps, the room dark behind us, and we talked of her as we might talk of a picture, a book, an experience ended and dismissed — something outside our present affairs. And yet I knew that for me at any rate she was not outside them. I felt as though at any moment she might enter the room. We discussed her aloofness, her sudden happiness and her sudden distress, her intimacies and withdrawals, Nikitin and Andrey Vassilievitch slowly elaborating her into a high romantic figure. Behind her, behind all our thoughts of her, there was the presence of Semyonov. Nothing was stranger during our time here than the way that Semyonov had always kept us company.
Our consciousness of relief from him had begun it. We had been more under his influence than any of us had cared to confess and, in his presence, had checked our natural impulses. I also was strongly aware of him through Trenchard. Trenchard seemed now to have a horror of him that could be explained only by the fact that he held him responsible for Marie Ivanovna’s death. “It’s a good thing,” I thought to myself, “that Semyonov’s not here.”
These hours of waiting, when there was nothing to do, was bad for all our nerves. Upon this afternoon I remember that after a time silence fell between us. We were all staring in front of us, seeing pictures of other places and other people. I was aware, as I always was, of the Forest, seeing it shine with its sinister green haze, seeing the white bleached town, the huddled villagers waiting for their food, but seeing yet more vividly the deep silences, the dark hollows, the silent avenues of silver birch. Against this were the figures of the people who were dear to me. It is strange how war selects and brings forward as one’s eternal company the one or two souls who have been of importance in one’s life. One knows then, in those long, long threatening pauses, when the battle seems to gather itself together before it thunders its next smashing blow, those who are one’s true companions. Certain English figures were now with me outlined against the Forest — and joined together with them Marie Ivanovna as I had last seen her, turning round to me by the door and smiling upon me. I did truthfully feel, as Trenchard had said to me, that she was not dead; I sat, staring before me, conjuring her to appear. The others also sat there, staring in front of them. Were they also summoning some figure? I knew, as though Andrey Vassilievitch had told me, that he was thinking of his wife. And Nikitin?...
He sat there, lying back on the old sofa that Marie had used, his black beard, his long limbs, his dark eyes giving him the colour of some Eastern magician. He did indeed, with his intense, absorbed gaze, seem to be casting a spell As I looked Andrey Vassilievitch caught his glance — they exchanged the strangest flash — something that was intimate and yet foreign, something appealing and yet hostile. It was as though Andrey Vassilievitch had said: “I know you are thinking of her. Leave her to me,” and Nikitin had replied: “My poor friend. What can you do?... I do as I please.”
I know at least that I saw Andrey Vassilievitch frown, make as though he would get up and leave the room, then think better of it, and sink back into his chair.
I remember that just at that moment Trenchard entered. He joined us and sat on the sofa near Nikitin without speaking, staring in front of him like the rest of us. His face was tired and old, his cheeks hollow.
I waited and the silence began to get on my nerves. Then there came an interruption. The door opened quite silently: we all turned our eyes towards it without moving our heads. In the doorway stood Semyonov.
We were startled as though by a ghost. I remember that Andrey Vassilievitch jumped to his feet, crying. Trenchard never moved. Semyonov with his usual stolid self-possession came towards us, greeted us, then turning to me said:
“I’ve come to take your place, Ivan Andreievitch.”
“My place?” I stammered.
“Yes. You’re wanted there. You’re to return at once in the britchka.... In half an hour, if you don’t mind.”
“And you’ll stay?”
“And I’ll stay.”
No one else said anything. I remember that I had some half-intention of protesting, of begging to be allowed to remain. But I was no match for Semyonov. I could fancy the futility of my saying: “But really, Alexei Petrovitch, we don’t want you here. It’s much better to leave me. You’ll upset them all. It’s a nervous place, this.” I said nothing, except: “All right. I’ll go.” He watched me. He watched us all. I fancy that he smiled.
Outside I had a desperate absurd thought that I would return and ask him to be kind to Trenchard. As I turned away some one seemed to whisper in my ear:
“He’s come, you know, to find Marie Ivanovna.”
CHAPTER IV
FOUR?
Before I give the extracts from Trenchard’s diary that follow I would like to say that I do not believe that Trenchard had any thought whatever, as he wrote, of publication. He says quite clearly that he wrote simply for his own satisfaction and later interest. At the same time I am convinced that he would not now object to their publication. If he had been here he would, I know, have supported my intention. The diary lies before me, here on my table, written in two yellow, stiff-covered manuscript books without lines. They are written very unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper Rupert Brooke’s sonnet, beginning:
“Blow out, you Bugles, over the rich Dead!”
and pasted it on to the blank page.
At times he sticks on to the other pages newspaper descriptions that have pleased him. His own descriptions of the Forest seem to me influenced by my talks with him, and I remember that it was Nikitin who spoke of the light like a glass ball and of the green-like water. For the most part he exhibits, from the beginning of the diary to the end, extreme practical common sense and he makes, I fancy, a very strong effort to record quite simply and even naïvely the truth as he sees it. At other times he is quite frankly incoherent....
I will give, on another page, my impression of him when I saw him on my return to the Forest. I am, of course, in no way responsible for inconsistencies or irrelevances. He had kept a diary since his first coming to the war and I have already given some extracts from it. The earlier diary, in one place only, namely his account of his adventure during his night with Nikitin, is of the full descriptive order. That one occasion I have already quoted in its entirety. With that exception the early diary is brief and concerned only with the dryest recital of events. After the death of Marie Ivanovna, however, its character entirely changes for reasons which he himself shows. I would have expected perhaps a certain solemnity or even pomposity in the style of it; he had never a strong sense of humour. But I find it written in the very simplest fashion; words here and there are misspelt and his handwriting is large and round like a schoolboy’s.
Thursday, July 29th. I intend to write this diary with great fulness for two reasons — in the first place because I can see that it is of the greatest importance, if one is to get through this business properly, to leave no hours empty. The trying thing in this affair is having nothing to do — nothing one can possibly do. They all, officers, soldiers, from Nikolai Nikolaievitch to my Nikolai here, will tell you that. No empty hours for me if I can help it.... Secondly, I really do wish to record exactly my experiences here. I am perfec
tly aware that when I’m out of it all, when it’s even a day’s march behind me, I shall regard it as frankly incredible — not the thing itself but the way I felt about it. When I come out of it into the world again I shall be overwhelmed with other people’s impressions of it, people far cleverer than I. There will be brilliant descriptions of battles, of what it feels like to be under fire, of marches, victories, retreats, wounds, death — everything. I shall forget what my own little tiny piece of it was like — and I don’t want to forget. I want intensely to remember the truth always, because the truth is bound up with Marie, and Marie with the truth. Why need I be shy now about her? Why should I hesitate, under the fear of my own later timidity, of saying exactly now what I feel? God knows what I do feel! I am confused, half-numb, half-dead, I believe, with moments of fiery biting realisation. I’m neither sad, nor happy — only breathlessly expectant. The only adventure I have ever had in my life is not — no, it is not — yet ended. And I know that Marie could not have left me like that, without a word, unless she were returning or were going to send for me.
Meanwhile to-day a beastly thing has happened, a thing that will make life much harder for me here. All the morning there was work. Bandaged twenty — had fifty in altogether — sent thirty-four on, kept the rest. Two died during the morning. This isn’t really a good place to be, it’s so hemmed in with trees. We ought to be somewhere more open. The Forest is unhealthy, too. There’s been fighting in and out of it almost since the war began — it can’t be healthy. In this hot weather the place smells.... Then there are the Flies. I write them with a capital letter because I’ve got to keep my head about the Flies. Does any one at home or away from this infernal strip of fighting realise what flies are? Of course one’s read of the tropical sorts, all red and stinging, or white and bloated — what you like, evil and horrid, but these here are just the ordinary household kind. Quite ordinary, but sheets, walls of them. I came into the little larder place near our sitting-room this morning. I thought they’d painted the walls black during the night. Then, at my taking the cover off some sugar, it was exactly as though the walls hovered and then fell inward breaking into black dust as they fell. They’ll cluster over a drop of wine on the table just like an evil black flower with grey petals. With one’s body they can play tricks beyond belief. They laugh at one, hovering at a distance, waiting. They watch one with their wicked little eyes ... yes, I shall have to be careful about flies.