The Dark Forest Part 3

"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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 Va.s.silievitch, 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 Va.s.silievitch'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 pa.s.sionate irritation against Andrey Va.s.silievitch. 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...."

"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 Va.s.silievitch 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 rea.s.sure 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 Va.s.silievitch'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.

"You're cold," I said.

"No, I'm not cold," she answered still in a whisper, although we were now some way from the wagons. "I'm frightened, Mr. Durward, that's what's the matter--desperately frightened."

"Nonsense," I answered her. "You! Frightened! Never!"

"But I am. I've been terribly fr-frightened all night; and that Sister Anna Petrovna, he (she sometimes confused her p.r.o.nouns) sleeps like a log. How can he? I've never slept, not for a moment, and I've been so cold and every time the cannon sounded I wanted to run away.... Oh, Mr. Durward, I'm so ashamed!"

Then, suddenly, desperately clutching my hand: "Mr. Durward, you'll never tell any one, any one never.... Promise!"

"Never a soul," I answered. "It's only because you're cold and hungry and sleepy that you think you're frightened. You're not frightened really. But wouldn't you like me to wake Trenchard and get him to come to you.... He'd be so happy?..."

She started fiercely from me. "Never! Never! Why, what can you think! You must never tell, most of all you must never tell him.... He must never know--nothing--"

The cannon began again. She caught my arm and stood with her body trembling, pressed against mine. I could feel her draw a deep breath. As I looked at her, her face white in the dawn, her large eyes staring like a child's, her body so young and slender, she seemed another creature, utterly, absolutely apart from the woman of this last fortnight.

"Look here!" I said to her sternly. "You mustn't go on like this. You've got work to do to-day. You've simply got to hold yourself in, to tell yourself that nothing can touch you. Why to-night you'll laugh at me if I remind you of this. You'll...."

But there was better tonic than my words, Semyonov's voice came to us--"Hullo, you there! It's five o'clock--we're moving."

She drew herself sharply away from me. She raised her head, smiled at me, then said: "Thank you, Mr. Durward. It's all well now. There's Dr. Semyonov--let us go back."

She greeted him with a voice that had in it not the slightest tremor.

There comes now a difficult matter. During the later months when I was to reflect on the whole affair I saw quite clearly that that hour between our leaving the wooden house and arriving in the trenches bridged quite clearly for me the division in this business between imagination and reality: that is, I was never after this to speak of war as I would have spoken of it an hour before. I was never again to regard the paraphernalia of it with the curiosity of a stranger--I had become part of it. This hour then may be regarded as in some ways the most important of all my experiences. It is certainly the occasion to which if I were using my invention I should make the most. Here then is my difficulty.

I have nothing to say about it. There's nothing at all to be made of it....

I may say at once that there was no atom of drama in it. At one moment I was standing with Marie Ivanovna under the sunrise, at another I was standing behind a trench in the heart of the forest with a battery to my left and a battery to my right, a cuckoo somewhere not very far away, and a dead man with his feet sticking out from under the cloth that covered him peacefully beneath a tree at my side. There had, of course, been that drive in the wagons, b.u.mping over the uneven road whilst the sun rose gallantly in the heavens and the clanging of the iron door grew, with every roll of our wheels, louder and louder. But it was rather as though I had been lifted in a sheet from one life--a life of speculation, of viewing war from a superior and safe distance, of viewing indeed all catastrophe and reality from that same distance--into the other. I had been caught up, had hung for a moment in midair, had been "planted" in this new experience. For us all there must have been at this moment something of this pa.s.sing from an old life into a new one, and yet I dare swear that not for any one of us was there any drama, any thrill, any excitement. We stood, a rather lonely little group, in the forest clearing whilst the soldiers in the trench flung us a careless glance, then turned back to their business of the day with an indifference that showed how ordinary and drab a thing custom had made it.

Yes, we made a desolate little group. Semyonov had gone to a house on the farther side of the road up which we had come, a house that flew the Red Cross flag. We had only the right to care for the wounded of certain Divisions and our presence had to be reported. We were left then, Marie Ivanovna, Anna Petrovna, Andrey Va.s.silievitch, Trenchard and I, all rather close together, uncomfortable, desolate and shy, as boys feel on their first day at school. The battery on our left was very near to us and we could see the sharp flash of its flame behind the trees. The noise that it made was terrific, a sharp, angry, clumsy noise, as though some huge giant clad in mail armour was flinging his body, in a violent rage, against an iron door that echoed through an empty house--my same iron door that I had heard all night. The rage of the giant spread beyond his immediate little circle of trees and one wondered at the men in the trenches because they were indifferent to his temper.

The noise of the more distant batteries was still, as it had been before, like the clanging of many iron doors very mild and gentle against the clamour of our own enraged fury. The Austrian reply seemed like the sleepy echo of this confusion, so sleepy and pleasant that one felt almost friendly to the enemy.

Our own battery was inconsistent in his raging. Had he only chosen to fling himself at his door every three minutes, say, or even every minute, we could have prepared ourselves, but he was moved by nothing, apparently, but his own irrational impulse. There would be a pause of two minutes, then three furious explosions, then a pause of five minutes, then another explosion.... I mastered quickly my impulse to leap into the air at every report, by a kind of prolonged extension in my mind of one report into another. Little Andrey Va.s.silievitch was not so successful. At each explosion his body jerked as though it had been worked by wires; then he glanced round to see whether any one had noticed his agitation, then drew himself up, brushed off imaginary dust from his uniform, coughed and frowned. Trenchard stood close to Marie Ivanovna and looked at her anxiously once or twice as though he would like to speak to her, but she, holding herself very stiffly, watched with sternness the whole world as though she personally had arranged the spectacle and was responsible for its success.

Soon Semyonov came back and said that he must go on to some further trenches to discover the best position for us. To my intense surprise Andrey Va.s.silievitch asked whether he might accompany him. I fancy that he felt that he would venture anything to escape our adjacency to the battery.

So they departed, leaving us more forlorn than before We sat down on the stretchers: Anna Petrovna, fat, heavy, phlegmatic, silent; Marie Ivanovna silent too but with a look now of expectation in her eyes as though she knew that something was coming for her very shortly; Trenchard near her, trying to be cheerful, but conscious of the dead soldier under the tree from whom he seemed unable to remove his eyes. There was, in the open s.p.a.ce near us, a kipiatilnik, that is, a large boiler on wheels in which tea is made. To this the soldiers were crowding with their tin cans; the cuckoo, far away now, continued his cry....

At long intervals, out of the forest, a wounded soldier would appear. He seemed to be always the same figure, sometimes wounded in the head, sometimes in the leg, sometimes in the stomach, sometimes in the hand--but always the same, with a look in his eyes of mild protest because this had happened to him, also a look of dumb confidence that some one somewhere would make things right for him. He came either to us or to the Red Cross building across the road, according to his company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers, still with that look of wonder and trust in their eyes.

And how glad we were when there was any work to do! The sun rose high in the sky, the morning advanced, Semyonov and Andrey Va.s.silievitch did not return. For the greater part of the time we did not speak, nor move. I was conscious of an increasing rage against the battery. I felt that if it was to cease I might observe, be interested, feel excitement--as it was, it kept everything from me. It kept everything from me because it insistently demanded my attention, like a vulgar garrulous neighbour who persists in his tiresome story. Its perpetual hammering had soon its physical effect. A sick headache crept upon me, seized me, held me. I might look at the soldiers, sleeping now like dead men in the trench, I might look at the Red Cross flag lazily flapping in the breeze across the road, I might look at the corpse with the soiled marble feet under the tree, I might look at Trenchard and Marie Ivanovna silent and unhappy on the stretchers, on Anna Petrovna comfortably slumbering with an open mouth, I might listen to the distant batteries, to the sudden quick impatient chatter of the machine guns, to the rattling give-and-take of the musketry somewhere far away where the river was, I might watch the cool green hollows of the forest glades, the dark sleepy shadows, the bright patches of burning sky between the branches, I might say to myself that all these things together made the impression of my first battle ... and then would know, in my heart, that there was no impression at all, no thrill, no drama, no personality--only a sick throb in my head and a cold hand upon my chest and a desire to fling myself into any horror, any danger, if I could but escape this indigestible monotony....

Once Trenchard, treading very softly as though every one around him were asleep, came across and talked to me.

"You know," he said in a whisper, "this isn't at all what I expected."

"You needn't whisper," I answered irritably, "that battery's making such a noise that I can't hear anything you say."

"Yes, isn't it!" he said with a little sigh. "It's very unpleasant indeed. Do you think Semyonov's forgotten us? We've been here a good many hours and we aren't doing very much."

"No," I answered. "We're doing nothing except get sick headaches."

There was a pause, then he said: "Where is everything?"

"Everything?--What?"

"Well, the battle, for instance!"

"Oh, that's down the hill, I suppose. We're trying to cross the river and they're trying to prevent us."

"Yes," he answered. "But that isn't exactly what I mean.... It's hard to explain, but even if we were to see our soldiers trying to cross the river and the Austrians trying to prevent them that wouldn't be--well, wouldn't be exactly the real thing, would it? It would only be a kind of side-show, rather unimportant like that dead man there!"

But my headache prevented my interest in his speculations. I said nothing.

He added as though to himself: "Perhaps each individual soldier sees the real thing for himself but can't express what he sees...."

As I still made no answer, with another little sigh he got up and walked back, on tip-toe, to the side of Marie Ivanovna.

Then suddenly, in the early hours of the afternoon, to our intense relief, Semyonov and Andrey Va.s.silievitch appeared. Semyonov was, as ever, short, practical, and unemotional.

"Been a long time, I'm afraid. We found it difficult to see exactly where would be the best place. And, after all, we've got to separate.... One Sister's wanted at the Red Cross over there. They've asked for our help. The other will come with me on to the Position until this evening. You three gentlemen, if you'll be so good, will wait here until a wagon comes. Then it will take you down to the trenches at the bottom of the hill. Then, if you don't mind, I would like you to wait until dusk when we shall go out to fetch the wounded.... Is that clear?"

We answered yes.

"Now which Sister will come with me? Marie Ivanovna, I think it would interest you. No danger, except a stray shrapnel or two. Will you come?"

There leapt upon us then, with an agitation that seemed to silence the very battery itself, Trenchard's voice: "No.... No ... Marie. No, it's dangerous. Semyonov says so. Your first day...."

He spoke in English, his voice trembling. I turned to see his face white, his eyes wide open and at the same time blind; he pa.s.sionately addressed himself to Marie Ivanovna and to her alone.

But she turned impatiently.

"Why, of course, Doctor. I'm ready at once."

Trenchard put his hand on her arm.

"You are not to go--Marie, do you hear? I have a right ... I tell you, you are not to go!"

"Don't be so stupid, John," she shook off his arm. "Please, Doctor, I'm ready."

Semyonov turned to Trenchard with a smile: "Mr. (they all called him Mr. now), it will be quite well ... I will look after her."

"You ... you" (Trenchard could not control his voice), "you can't prevent shrapnel--bullets. You don't care, you...."

Semyonov's voice was sharp: "I think it better that Sister Marie Ivanovna should come with me. You understand, the rest of you.... We shall meet at dusk."

Trenchard only said "Marie ..." then turned away from us. Anna Petrovna, who had said nothing during this scene and had, indeed, seemed to be oblivious of it, plunged with her heavy clumsy walk across the road to the Red Cross house. The Doctor and Marie Ivanovna disappeared behind the trench. I was, as was always my case with Trenchard, both sympathetic and irritated. It was difficult for him, of course, but what did he expect the girl to do? Could he have supposed for a single moment that she would remain? Could it be possible that he knew her so little as that? And why make a scene now before Semyonov when he obviously could do nothing? I knew, moreover, with a certainty that was almost ironic in its clarity, that Marie Ivanovna did not love, did not, perhaps, even care for him. By what moment in Petrograd, a moment flaming with their high purposes and the purple shadows of a Russian "white night," had she been entranced into some glorious vision of him? On the very day that followed, she had known, I was convinced, her mistake. At the station she had known it, and instead of the fine Sir Galahad "without reproach" of the previous night she saw some figure that, had she been English born, would have appeared to her as Alice's White Knight perchance, or at best the warm-hearted Uncle Toby, or that most Christian of English heroes--Parson Adams. I could imagine that life had been so impulsive, so straightforward, so simple a thing to her that this sudden implication in an affair complicated and even dishonest caused her bitter disquiet. Looking back now I could trace again and again the sudden flashes, through her happiness, of this distress.

He perhaps should have perceived it, but I could understand that he could not believe that his treasure had at last after all these years been given to him for so brief a moment. He could not, he would not, believe it. Well, I knew that his eyes must very soon be opened to the truth....

As I turned to see him sitting on the stretcher with his back to me, his head hanging a little as though it were too heavy for his neck, his back bent, his long arms fallen loose at his sides, I thought that Alice's White Knight he, in solemn truth, presented.

He had a talent for doing things to his uniform. His cap, instead of being raised in front, was flat, his jacket bulged out above his belt, and the straps on his boot had broken from their holdings. He filled the pockets of his trousers, in moments of absent-minded absorption, with articles that he fancied that he would need--sometimes food, black bread and sausage, sometimes a large pocket-knife, a folding drinking gla.s.s, a ball of string, a notebook. These things protruded, or gave his clothes a strange bulky look, fat in some places, thin in others. As I saw him his shoulder-blades seemed to pierce his coat: I could fancy with what agitation his hands were clenched.

We sat down, the three of us together, and again the battery leapt upon us. Now the sun was hot above the trees and the effect of the noise behind us was that we ourselves, every two or three minutes, were caught up, flung to the ground, recovered, breathless, exhausted, only to be hurled again!

How miserable we were, how lost, how desolate, Trenchard hearing in every sound the death of his lady, Andrey Va.s.silievitch dreaming, I fancy, that he had been caught in some cage out of which he would never again escape. I, sick, almost blind with headache, and yet exasperated, irritated by the emptiness of it all. If only we might run down that hill! There surely we should find....

At the very moment when the battery had finished as it seemed to me its work of smashing my head into pulp the wagon arrived.

"Now," I thought to myself as I climbed on to the straw, "I shall begin to be excited!" We, all three of us, kneeling on the cart, peered forward into the dim blue afternoon. We were very silent--only once Trenchard said to me, "Perhaps we shall find her down here: where we're going. What do you think, Durward?"

"I'm afraid not!" I answered. "But still she'll be all right. Semyonov will look after her!"

"Oh! Semyonov!" he answered.

How joyful we were to leave our battery behind us. As the trees closed around it we could fancy its baffled rage. Other batteries now seemed to draw nearer to us and the whole forest was filled with childish quarrelling giants; but as we began to b.u.mp down the hill out of the forest stranger sounds attacked us. On either side of us were cornfields and out of the heart of those from under our very feet as it seemed there were explosions of a strange stinging metallic kind--not angry and human as the battery had been, but rather like some huge bottle cracking in the sun. These huge bottles--one could fancy them green and shining somewhere in the corn--cracked one after another; positively the sound intensified the heat of the sun upon one's head. There were too now, for the first time in our experience, shrapnel. They were not over us, but ran somewhere on our right across the valley. Their sound was "fireworks" and nothing more--so that alarm at their gentle holiday temper was impossible. Brock's Fireworks on a Thursday evening at the Crystal Palace, oneself a small boy sitting with both hands between one's knees, one's mouth open, a damp box of chocolates on one's lap, the murmured "Ah ..." of the happy crowd as the little gentle "Pop!" showed green and red against the blue night sky. Ah! there was the little "Pop!" and after it a tiny curling cloud of smoke in the air, the whole affair so gentle, so kind even. There! sighing overhead they go! Five, six little curls of smoke, and then beneath our very horses' feet again a huge green bottle cracking in the sun!

And with all this noise not a living soul to be seen! We had before us as we slowly b.u.mped 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 b.u.mping 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 Va.s.silievitch, whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We hurried, b.u.mping 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.