The Dark Forest Part 9

"Because he doesn't leave me alone," he answered shortly.

It was, of course, Marie Ivanovna who brought them together. She could not see, or rather she would not see, that friendship between two such men was an impossibility. For herself she liked Trenchard better than she had ever done. She had now no responsibility towards him; we were all fond of him, pleased ourselves by saying that "he was more Russian than English." The Sisters mended his clothes, cared for his stomach, and listened with pleased gravity to his innocent chatter. Marie Ivanovna was now really proud of him. There were great stories of the courage and enterprise he had shown during the night when he had been with Nikitin. Nikitin, in his lofty romantic fashion, spoke of him as though he had been the hero of the Russian army. Trenchard was, of course, quite unspoiled by this praise and popularity. He remained for me at least very much the same innocent, clumsy, pathetic, and frequently irritating figure that he had been at the beginning. I will honestly confess that I was often heartily tired of his Glebeshire stories, tired too of a certain childish obstinacy with which he clung to his generally crude and half-baked opinions.

But then I do not care to be contradicted by people of whom, intellectually, I have a low estimation; it is one of my most unfortunate weaknesses. I had no opinion of Trenchard's intellect at all, and in that I was quite wrong. Semyonov at this time flung Nikitin, Andrey Va.s.silievitch, Trenchard and myself into one basket. We were all "crazy romantics" and there came an occasion, which I have reason most clearly to remember, when he told us what he thought of us. We were together, Semyonov, Nikitin, Trenchard and I, after breakfast, smoking cigarettes, enjoying half an hour's idleness before setting about our various business. It was a blazing hot morning and the air quivered, like a silver curtain before our eyes, separating us from the dim blue forest of S---- beyond the river, the Nestor itself, the deep green slopes of our own hill. We had been silent, then Trenchard said a foolish thing: "War brings all the best out of people, I think," he said. G.o.d knows what private line of thought he had been pursuing, some sentimental reflections, I suppose, that were in him perfectly honest and sincere. But he did not look his best that morning, sitting back in his chair with his mouth open, his forehead damp with the heat, his tunic up about his neck and a rather dirty blue pocket-handkerchief in his hand.

I saw Semyonov's lip curl.

"Yes. That's very interesting, Mr.," he said. "I'm glad at any rate that we've had the honour of seeing the best of you. That's very pleasant to know."

"What I mean--" said Trenchard, blushing and stammering. "What ... that is--"

"I agree with Mr.," suddenly said Nikitin, who had been dreamily watching the blue forest. "War does bring out the best in the human character--always."

Semyonov turned smilingly to him. "Yes, Vladimir Stepanovitch, we know your illusions. Forgive me for insisting that they are illusions. I would not disturb your romantic happiness for the world."

"You can't disturb me, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered sleepily. "What a hot morning!"

"No," said Semyonov. "I would be very wrong to disturb you. Believe me, I've never tried. It's very agreeable to me to see you and Mr. so happy together and it must be pleasant for both of you to feel that you've got a nice G.o.d all of your own who sleeps a good deal but still, on the whole, gives you what you want. We may wonder a little what Mr. has done to be so favoured--never very much I fancy--but still I like the friendliness and comfort of it and I'm really lucky to have the good fortune of your acquaintance. So nice for Russia too to have plenty of people about who don't do any work nor take any trouble about anything because they've got a nice fat G.o.d who'll do it all for them if they'll only be patient. Thats why we're beating the Germans so handsomely--the poor Germans, who only, ignorant heathens as they are, believe in themselves."

He looked at us all with a friendly patronising contempt.

"That's your point of view, Alexei Petrovitch," Nikitin answered rather hotly. "Think as you please of course. But there's more in life than you can see--there is indeed."

"Of course there is," said Semyonov lazily, "much more. I'm an ignorant, rough man. I like things as they are and make the best of them, so, of course, I'm not clever. Mr.'s clever, aren't you, Mr.? All the same he doesn't know how to put his boots on properly. If he put his boots on better and knew less about G.o.d he might be of more use at the Front, perhaps. That's only my idea, and I daresay I'm wrong.... All the same, for the sake of the comfort and the pockets of all of us I do hope you'll really rouse your G.o.d and ask Him to do something sensible--something with method in it and a few more bullets in it and a little more efficiency in it. You might ask Him to do what He can...."

He looked at us, laughing; then he said to Trenchard, "But don't you fear, Mr. You'll go to heaven all right. Even though it's the wise men who succeed in this world, I don't doubt it's the fools who have their way in the next."

He left us.

Semyonov was with every new day more baffled by Marie Ivanovna. In the first place she quietly refused to obey him. We were now much occupied with the feeding of the peasants in a village stricken with cholera on the other side of the river. A gloomy enough business it was and I shall have, very shortly, to speak of it in detail. For the moment it is enough to say that two of us went off every morning with a kitchen on wheels, distributed the food, and returned in the afternoon. Semyonov intensely disliked Marie Ivanovna's share in this work, but he could not, of course, object to her taking, with the other Sisters, the risks and unpleasantness of it. He made, whenever it was possible, objections, found her work at the hospital where he himself was, occupied her in every possible way. But he did this against her will. She seemed to find a very especial pleasure and excitement in the cholera work; she wished often to take the place of some other Sister. Indeed everything on the other side of the river seemed to have a great fascination for her. She herself told me: "The moment I cross the bridge I feel as though I were on enchanted ground." On the occasions when I accompanied her to the cholera village she was radiant, so happy that she seemed to have nothing further in the world to desire. She herself was puzzled. "What is it?" she said to me. "Is it the forest? It must be, I think, the forest. I would remain on this side for ever if I had my way."

When I saw Semyonov's anxiety about her I could not but remember that little scene at the battle of S---- when he had taken her off with him, leaving Trenchard in so pitiful a condition. Certainly Time brings in his revenges! And Marie Ivanovna would listen to nothing that he said.

"I want you at the hospital this morning," he would say.

"Do you really want me?" she would ask, looking up, laughing, in his face.

"Of course I do."

"Well, you should have told me last night. This morning I go with Anna Petrovna to the cholera. All is arranged."

"I'm afraid you must change your plans."

"I'm afraid not."

"Goga may go...."

"No, I wish to go."

And she went. He had certainly never before in his life been thus defied. He simply did not know what to do about it. If he had thought that bullying would frighten her he would, I believe, have bullied her, but he knew quite well that it wouldn't. And then, as I now began to perceive (I had at first thought otherwise), he was for the first time in his life experiencing something deeper and more confusing than his customary animal pa.s.sions. He may at first have wanted Marie Ivanovna as he wanted his dinner or his supper ... now he wanted her differently. New emotions, surprising confusing emotions stirred in him. At least that is how I interpret the uneasiness, the hesitation, which I now seemed to perceive in him. He was no longer sure of himself.

I witnessed just at this time a little scene that surprised me. I had been in the bandaging room alone one evening, cutting up bandages. I was going through the pa.s.sage into the other part of the house when a sound stopped me. I could not avoid seeing beyond the open door a little scene that happened so swiftly that I could neither retire nor advance.

Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov were coming together towards the bandaging room. She was in front of him when he put his hand on her arm.

"Do you love me?" he said in a low voice.

She turned round to him, laughing.

"Yes," she said, looking at him.

"Then kiss me."

"No, not now."

"Why not now?"

"I don't want to."

"Why don't you want to?"

She shook her head, still laughing into his eyes.

"But if I command you?"

"Ah! command!... Then I certainly will not."

His hand tightened on her arm and she did not draw away.

"Kiss me."

"No."

"I say yes."

"I say no."

He suddenly caught her, held her to him as though he would kill her and kissed her furiously, on her eyes, her mouth, her hair. With his violence he pushed back her head-dress. I could see his back bent like a bow, and his thick short legs wide apart, every muscle taut. She lay quite motionless, as though asleep in his arms, giving him no response--then quite suddenly she flung her hands round his neck and kissed him as pa.s.sionately as he had kissed her. At last they parted, both of them laughing.

He looked at her, and then with a gentleness and courtesy that I had never seen in him before nor dreamed that he possessed, very softly kissed her hand.

"I love you and--and you love me," he said.

"Yes ... I love you," she answered gravely. "At least, part of me does."

"It shall be all of you soon," he answered.

"If there's time enough," she replied.

"Time!... I'll follow you wherever you go--"

"I really believe you will," she answered, laughing again. They waited then, looking at one another. A bell rang. "Ah! I'm hungry.... Supper time...." To my relief they pa.s.sed away from the bandaging room towards the other part of the house.

Meanwhile his irritation at Marie Ivanovna's kindness to Trenchard increased with every hour. His att.i.tude to the man had changed since Trenchard's night at the Position; he was vexed, I think, to hear that the fellow had proved himself a man--and a practical man with common sense. Semyonov was honest about this. He did not doubt Nikitin's word, he even congratulated Trenchard, but he certainly disliked him more than ever. He thought, I suppose, as he had thought about Nikitin: "How can a man with his wits about him be at the same time such a fool?" And then he saw that Marie Ivanovna was delighted with Trenchard's little piece of good luck. She laughed at Semyonov about it. "We all know you're a very brave man," she cried. "But you're not so brave as Mr." And Semyonov, because he knew that Trenchard was a fool and that he himself was not, was vexed, as a bull is vexed by a red flag. These things made him think a great deal about Trenchard. I have seen him watching him with angry and puzzled gaze as though he would satisfy himself why this gnat of a man worried him!

Then, finally, was Andrey Va.s.silievitch.... The little man had not given me much of his company during these last weeks. I fancy that since that night at the battle of S---- when he had revealed his terror he had been shy of me although, G.o.d knows, he had no need to be. He never forgot if any one had seen him in an unfortunate position, and, although he bore me no grudge, he was nervous and embarra.s.sed with me. It happened, however, that during this same week of which I have been speaking I had a conversation with him. I was standing alone by the Cross watching a long trail of wagons cross the bridge far beneath me, watching too a high bank of black cloud that was pa.s.sing away from the sky above the forest, blown by a wind that rolled the surface of the river into silver. He too had come to look at the view and was surprised and disturbed at finding me there. Of course he was exaggerated in expressions of pleasure: "Why, Ivan Andreievitch, this is delightful!" he cried. "If I only had known we might have walked here together!"

We sat down on the stone seat.

"You don't think it will rain?" he asked anxiously. "No, those clouds are going away, I see. Well ... this is delightful ..." and then sat there gloomily looking in front of him.

I could see that he was depressed.

"Well, Andrey Va.s.silievitch," I said to him. "You're depressed about something?"

"Yes," he said very gloomily indeed. "I have many unhappy hours, Ivan Andreievitch."

I did not get up and leave him as I very easily might have done. I had had, since the night when Nikitin had spoken to me so frankly, a desire to know the little man's side of that affair. In some curious fashion that silent plain wife of his had been very frequently in my thoughts; there had not been enough in Nikitin's account to explain to me his pa.s.sion for her, and yet her ghost, as though evoked by the memories both of Nikitin and her husband, had seemed to me, sometimes, to be present with us....

I waited.

"Tell me frankly," Andrey Va.s.silievitch said at last, "am I of any use here?"

"Of use?" I repeated, taken by surprise.

"Yes. Am I doing only what any one else can do as well? Would it be better perhaps if another were here?"

"No, certainly not," I answered warmly. "Your business training is of the greatest value to us. Molozov has said to me 'that he does not know what we should do without you.'"

(This was not strictly true.) "Ah!" the little man was greatly pleased. "I am glad, very glad--to hear what you say. Semyonov made me feel--"

"You should not be influenced," I hurriedly interrupted him, "by what Semyonov thinks. It is of no importance."

"He has a bad character," Andrey Va.s.silievitch said suddenly with great excitement, "a bad character. And why cannot he leave me alone? Why should he laugh always? I do my best. I am quiet and not in his way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I do not rob men of their women."

He was shaking with anger, his head trembling and his hands quivering--it was difficult not to smile.

"You must not listen nor notice nor think of it," I said firmly. "We are grateful for your work--all of us. Semyonov laughs at us all."

"That poor Marie Ivanovna," he burst out. "She does not know. She is ignorant of life. At first I was angry with her but now I see that she is helpless. There will be terrible things afterwards, Ivan Andreievitch!" he cried.

"I think she understands him better than we do."

"I have never," he said vehemently, "hated a man in my life as I hate him." But in spite of his pa.s.sionate declaration he was obviously rea.s.sured by my defence of him. He was quiet suddenly, looked at the view mildly and, in a moment, thought me the best friend he had in the world--in the Russian manner.

"You see, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, looking at me with the eyes of an unnaturally wise baby, "that I cannot help wishing that my wife were here to advise Marie Ivanovna. She would have loved my wife very much, as every one did, and would have confided in her. That would have helped a girl who, like Marie Ivanovna, is ignorant of the world and the loves of men."

"You miss your wife very much?" I asked.

"There is not a moment of the day but I do not think of her," he answered very solemnly, staring in front of him. "That must seem strange to you who did not know her, and even I sometimes think it is not good. But what to do? She was a woman so remarkable that no one who knew her can forget."

"I have often been told that every one who knew her loved her," I said.

"Ah! you have heard that.... They talk of her, of course. She will always be remembered." His eyes shone with pleasure. "Yes, every one loved her. I myself loved her with a pa.s.sion that nothing can ever change. And why?... I cannot tell you--unless it were that she was the only person I have known who did not wish me another kind of man. I could be myself with her and know that she still cared for me.... I will not pretend to you, Ivan Andreievitch, that I think myself a fine man," he continued. "I have never thought myself so. When I was very young I envied tall men and handsome men and men who knew what was the best thing to do without thinking of it. I have always known that people would only come to me for what I have got to give and I have pretended that I do not care. And once I had an English merchant as my guest. He was very agreeable and pleasant to me--and then by chance I overheard him say: 'Ah, Andrey Va.s.silievitch! A vulgar little sn.o.b!' That is perhaps what I am--I do not know--we are all what G.o.d pleases. But I had mistresses, I had friends, acquaintances. They despised me. They left me always for some one finer. They say that we Russians care too much what others think of us--but when in your own house people--your friends--say such things of you...."

He broke off, then, smiling, continued: "My wife came. There was something in me, just as I was, that she cared for. She did not pa.s.sionately love me, but she loved me with her heart because she saw that I needed love. She always saw people just as they were.... And I understood. I understood from the beginning exactly what I was to her...."

He paused again, put his hand on my knee, then spoke, looking very serious with his comic little nose and mouth like the nose and mouth of a poodle. "I had a friend, Ivan Andreievitch. A fine man.... He loved my wife and my wife loved him. He was not vulgar. He had a fine taste, he was handsome and clever. What was I to do? I knew that my wife loved him, and she must be happy. I knew that I owed her everything because of all that she had done for me. I helped them in their love.... For five years I wished them well. Do you think it was easy for me? I suffered, Ivan Andreievitch, the tortures of h.e.l.l. I was jealous, G.o.d forgive me! How jealous! Sometimes alone in my room I would cry all night--not a fine thing to do. But then how should I act? She gave him what she could never give to me. She loved him with pa.s.sion--for me she cared as good women care for the poor. I was foolish perhaps. I tried to be as they were, with their taste and easy judgments ... I failed, of course. What could I do all at once? One is as G.o.d has pleased from the beginning. Ah! how I was unhappy those five years! I wished that he would die and then cursed myself for wishing it. And yet I knew that I had something that he had not. I needed her more than he, and she knew that. Her charm for him would fade perhaps as the years pa.s.sed. He was a pa.s.sionate man who had loved many women. For me, as she well knew, it would never pa.s.s.

"She died. For a time I was like a dead man. And she was not enough with me. I talked to her friends, but they had not known her--not as she was. Only one had known her and he was the friend whom she had loved.

"Of course he found me as he had always done--tiresome, irritating, of vulgar taste. But he, too, wanted to speak of her. And so we were drawn together.... Now ... is he my friend? I say always that he is. I say to myself: 'Andrey Va.s.silievitch, he is your best friend'--but I am jealous. Yes, Ivan Andreievitch, I am jealous of him. I think that perhaps he will die before me and that then--somewhere--together--they will laugh at me. And he has such memories of her! At the last she cried his name! He is so much a grander man than I! Fine in every way! Did I say that she would laugh? No, no ... that never. But she will say: 'Poor Andrey Va.s.silievitch!' She will pity me!... I think that I would be happier if I did not see my friend. But I cannot leave him.... We talk of her often. And yet he despises me and wonders that she can have loved me...."

I had a fear lest Andrey Va.s.silievitch should cry. He seemed so desolate there, giving strange little self-important coughs and sniffs, beating the ground with his smart little military boot.

Across the river the black wall of cloud had returned and now hung above the forest of S----, that lay sullenly, in its shadow, forbidding and thick, itself like a cloud. The world was cold, the Nestor like a snake.... I shivered, seized by some sudden sense of coming disaster and trouble. The evenings there were often strangely chill.

"Look," cried Andrey Va.s.silievitch, starting to his feet "There's Marie Ivanovna!"

I turned and saw her standing there, smiling at us, silently and without movement, like an apparition.

CHAPTER II.

MARIE IVANOVNA.

It was on July 23 that I first entered the Forest of S----. I did not, I remember, pay the event any especial attention. I went with Anna Petrovna to the cholera village that is on the outskirts of the forest, and I recollect that we hastened back because that evening we were to celebrate the conclusion of the first six months' work of our Otriad. Of my entrance into the forest I remember absolutely nothing; it seemed, I suppose, an ordinary enough forest to me. Of the festivities in the evening I have a very clear recollection. I remember that it was the loveliest summer weather, not too hot, with a little breeze coming up from the river, and the green glittering on every side of us with the quiver of flashing water. In the little garden outside our house a table had been improvised and on this were a large gilt ikon, a vase of flowers in a hideous purple jar, and two tall candles whose flames looked unreal and thin in the sunlight. There was the priest, a fine stout man with a long black beard and hair falling below his shoulders, clothed in silk of gold and purple, waving a censer, monotoning the prayers in a high Russian tenor, with one eye on the choir of sanitars, one eye on the candles blown by the wind, the breeze meanwhile playing irreverent jests on his splendid skirts of gold. Then there was the congregation in three groups. The first group--two generals, two colonels, four or five other officers, the Sisters (Sister K---- bowing and crossing herself incessantly, Anna Petrovna with her attention obviously on the dinner cooking behind a tree in the garden, Marie Ivanovna looking lovely and happy and good), ourselves--Molozov official, Semyonov sarcastic, Nikitin in a dream, Andrey Va.s.silievitch busy with his smart uniform, Trenchard (forgotten his sword, his blue handkerchief protruding from his pocket) absorbed by the ceremony, myself thinking of Trenchard, Goga--and the rest. The second group--the singing sanitars, some ten of them, stout and healthy, singing as Russians do with complete self-forgetfulness and a rapturous happiness in front of them, a funny little man with spectacles and a sharp-pointed beard, once a schoolmaster, now a sanitar, conducting their music with a long bony finger--all of them chanting the responses with perfect precision and harmony. Third group, the other sanitars, the strangest collection of faces, wild, savage and eastern: Tartars, Lithuanians, Mongolian, mild and northern, cold and western, merry and human from Little Russia, gigantic and fierce from the Caucasus, small and frozen from Archangel, one or two civilised and superior and uninteresting from Petrograd and Moscow.

Over the wall a long row of interested Galician peasants and soldiers pa.s.sing in carts or on horseback. Seeing the ikon, the priest, the blowing candles, hearing the singing they would take off their hats, cross themselves, for a moment their eyes would go dreamy, mild, forgetful, then on their hats would go again, back they would turn their horses, cursing them up the hill, chaffing the Galician women, down deep in the everyday life again.

The service ended. The priest turns to us, the gold Cross is raised, we advance one by one: the generals, the colonels, the lieutenants, the Sisters, Semyonov, Nikitin, Goga, then the choir, then the sanitars, even to hunch-backed Alesha, who is always given the dirtiest work to do and is only half a human being; one by one we kiss the Cross, the candles are blown out, the ikon folded up and put away in a cardboard box, we are introduced to the generals, there is general conversation, and the stars and the moon come out "blown straight up, it seems, out of the bosom of the Nestor...."

It was a very happy and innocent evening. For extracting the utmost happiness possible out of the simplest materials the Russians have surely no rivals. How our generals and our colonels enjoyed that evening! A wonderful dinner was cooked between two stones in the garden--little pig, young chickens, borshtsh, that most luxurious of soups, and ices--yes, and ices. Then there were speeches, many, many gla.s.ses of tea, strawberry and cherry jam, biscuits and cigarettes. We were all very, very happy....

It was arranged on the morning after the feast that I should go again to the cholera village with Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Under a morning of a blazing relentless heat, bars of light ruling the sky, we started, the three of us, at about ten o'clock, in the little low dogcart, followed by the kitchen and the boiler. Marie Ivanovna sat next to Semyonov, I facing them. Semyonov was happier than I had ever seen him before. Happiness was not a quality with which I would ever have charged him; he had seemed to despise it as something too simple and sentimental for any but sentimental fools--but now this morning (I had noticed something of the same thing in him the evening before) he was quite simply happy, looking younger by many years, the ironical curve of his lip gone, his eyes smiling, his att.i.tude to the world gentle and almost benevolent. Of course she, Marie Ivanovna, had wrought this change in him. There was no doubt this morning that she loved him. She had in her face and bearing all the pride and also all the humility that a love, won, secured, ensured, brings with it. She did not look at him often nor take his hand. She spoke to me during the drive and only once and again smiled up at him; but her soul, shining through the thin covering of her body, laughed to me, crying: "I am happy because I have my desire. Of yesterday I remember nothing, of to-morrow I can know nothing, but to-day is mine!"

He was very quiet. When he looked at her his eyes took complete possession of her. I did not, that morning, count at all to either of them, but I too felt a kind of pride as though I were sharing in some triumphal procession. She chattered on, and then at last was silent. I remember that the great heat of the morning wrought in us all a kind of lethargy. We were lazily confident that day that nothing evil could overtake us. We idly watched the sky, the river, the approaching forest, with a luxurious reliance on the power of man, and I caught much of my a.s.surance from Semyonov himself. He did really seem to me, that morning, a "tremendous" figure, as he sat there, so still, so triumphant. He had never before, perhaps, been quite certain of Marie Ivanovna, had been alarmed at her independence, or at his own pa.s.sionate love for her. But this morning he knew. She loved him. She was his--no one could take her from him. She was the woman he wanted as he had never wanted a woman before, and she was his--she was his!

I do not remember our entering the forest. I know that first you climb a rough, rather narrow road up from the river, that the trees close about you very gradually, that there is a little church with a green turret and a fine view of the Nestor, and that there a broad solemn avenue of silver birch leads you forward, gently and without any sinister omens. Then again the forest clears and there are fields of corn and, built amongst the thin scattering of trees, the village of N----. It was here, on pa.s.sing the first houses of the village, that I felt the heat to be almost unbearable; it seemed strange to me, I remember, that they (whoever "they" were), having so many trees here, a forest that stretched many miles behind them, should have chosen to pitch their village upon the only exposed and torrid bit of ground that they could find. Behind us was the forest, in front of us also the forest, but here, how the sun blazed down on the roofs and little blown patches of garden, how it glared in through the broken windows, and penetrated into the darkest corners of the desolate rooms!

Poor N----! In the second month of the war it had been sh.e.l.led and many of the houses destroyed. The buildings that remained seemed to have given up the struggle and abandoned themselves to inevitable degradation. Moreover, down the princ.i.p.al street, at every other door there hung the sinister black flag, a piece of dirty black cloth fastened to a stick, and upon the filthy wall was scrawled in Russian "cholera." Dead, indeed, under the appalling heat of the morning the whole place lay. No one was to be seen until we neared the ruins of what had once been a little town-hall or meeting-place, a procession turned the corner--a procession of a peasant with a tall lighted candle, another peasant with a tattered banner, a priest in soiled silk, a coffin of white wood on a haycart, and four or five white-faced and apathetic women. A doleful singing came from the miserable party. They did not look at us as we pa.s.sed....

A rumble of cannon, once and again, sounded like the lazy snore of some sleeping beast.