The Dark Forest

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 bumped down the hill a fair view. The river was hidden from us, but there was a little hamlet guarded happily by a green wood; there was a line of fair hills, fields of corn, and the long dusty white road. Not a soul to be seen, only our bumping cart and, now and then, against the burning sky those little curling circles of smoke. The world slumbered.⁠ ⁠…

Suddenly from the ditch at the side of the road a soldier appeared, spoke to our driver and disappeared again.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He says, your Honour, that we must hasten. We may be hit.”

“Hit here⁠—on this road?”

“Tak totchno.”

“Well, hurry then.”

I caught a little frightened sigh behind me from Andrey Vassilievitch, whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We hurried, bumping along; at the bottom of the hill there was a farmhouse. From behind it an officer appeared.

“What are you doing there? You’re under fire.⁠ ⁠… Red Cross? Ah yes, we had a message about you. Dr. Semyonov?⁠ ⁠… Yes. Please come this way. Hurry, please!”

We were led across the farmyard and almost tumbled into a trench at the farther end of it.

It wasn’t until I felt someone touch my shoulder that I realised my position. We were sitting, the three of us, in a slanting fashion with our backs to the earthworks of the trench. To our right, under an improvised round roof, a little dried-up man like a bee, with his tunic open at the neck and a beard of some days on his chin, was calling down a telephone.

Next to me on the left a smart young officer, of a perfect neatness and even dandiness, was eating his supper, which his servant, crouching in front of him, ladled with a spoon out of a tin can. Beyond him again the soldiers in a long line under the farm wall were sewing their clothes, eating, talking in whispers, and one of them reading a newspaper aloud to himself.

A barn opposite us in ruins showed between its bare posts the green fields beyond. Now and then a soldier would move across the yard to the door of the farm, and he seemed to slide with something between walking and running, his shoulders bent, his head down. The sun, low now, showed just above the end of the farm roof and the lines of light were orange between the shadows of the barn. All the batteries seemed now very far away; the only sound in the world was the occasional sigh of the shrapnel. The farmyard was bathed in the peace of the summer evening.

The Colonel, when he had finished his conversation with some humorous sally that gave him great pleasure, greeted us.

“Very glad to see you, gentlemen.⁠ ⁠… Two Englishmen! Well, that’s the Alliance in very truth⁠ ⁠… yes.⁠ ⁠… How’s London, gentlemen? Yes, golubchik, that small tin⁠—the grey one. No, durak, the small one. Dr. Semyonov sent a message. Pray make yourselves comfortable, but don’t raise your heads. They may turn their minds in this direction at any moment again. We’ve had them once already this afternoon. Eh, Piotr Ivanovitch (this to the smart young officer), that would have made your Ekaterina Petrovna jump in her sleep⁠—ha, ha, ha⁠—oh, yes, but I can see her jumping.⁠ ⁠… Hullo, telephone⁠—Give it here! That you, Ivan Leontievitch? No⁠ ⁠… very well for the moment.⁠ ⁠… Two Englishmen here sitting in my trench⁠—truth itself! Well, what about the Second Rota? Are they coming down?⁠ ⁠… Yeh Bogu, I don’t know! What do you say?⁠ ⁠…”

The young officer, in a very gentle and melodious voice, offered Trenchard, who was sitting next to him, some supper.

“One of these cutlets?”

Trenchard, blushing and stammering, refused.

“A cigarette, then?”

Trenchard again refused and Piotr Ivanovitch, having done his duty, relapsed into his muffled elegance. We sat very quietly there; Trenchard staring with distressed eyes in front of him. Andrey Vassilievitch, very uncomfortable, his fat body sliding forward on the slant, pulling itself up, then sliding again⁠—always he maintained his air of importance, giving his cough, twisting the ends of his moustache, staring, fiercely, at someone suddenly that he might disconcert him, patting, with his plump little hands, his clothes.

The shadows lengthened and a great green oak that hung over the barn seemed, as the evening advanced, to grow larger and larger and to absorb into its heart all the flaming colours of the day, to press them into its dark shadow and to hide them, safe and contented, until another morning.

I sat there and