OCR Text |
Show 902 THE DARK FOREST gised: I could see the sweat pouring down his face: very big man.U he said. time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble ot‘ the cannon seemed to come I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that l have seen in London at a fair when the ground shakes and quivers beneath you. It really would not have surprised me had the earth suddenly yavmed and swallowed me. livery plague, now beset me. My hand refused to hold the stretcher, my body was wet with perspiration, my face was for some reason covered with nmd. . . . There was a snap and my braces burst. My belt was loose and my trousers, as though they had waited for their opportunity, slipped down over my knees. I felt the cold night wind on my flesh. Neither decency nor comfort mattered to me now I would have walked gladly naked through the world. The Feldscher was making a grinding noise between his teeth. I was no longer conscious of shell or bullets. I heard no noise. I was aware of neither light nor darkness. my name had any one asked me it. I could not have told I did not recognise trees nor houses, nor was I at all aware that with a muddy7 face and my trousers down to my knees I was a strange figure. I was aware of one thing only-that I must keep my right hand on the stretcher. My left behaved decently enough but my right was a rebel. I felt a personal fury against it, as though I said to it: get back!" "Ahl but I'll punish you when I I with all my mental consciousness "willed" 1t tt‘uremain on the handle. It slipped. 203 "You shall not," said I. "I have!" cried my "A Whether it were the echo, whether my ears had by this directly from under my feet. ONE NIGHT I drove it back. It slipped further, it was almost gone. . . . With a su- preme effort I drove it back again. "I will fall off," said my hand. hand triumphantly. "Back!" I swore, driving it. We were now, I believe, both stumbling along, the wounded man pitching from side to side. (If the rest of our journey I have the most confused memory. The firing had no longer any effect upon me. I was thinking of my rebellious hand, my aching heel, and the irritation of my trousers clustered about my legs. "Another step and I shall fall!" I thought. . . . "I shall sleep." I h‘ard, from a great distance as it seemed, the soldier's "Na . . . Na! Na . . . nal" I replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na . . . nal Na . . . nal" . . . Then I heard Nikitin's voice. . . . Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn flood the sky from the little garden at the hack of the, cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy things for any two men to carry. . . . \Ve had been three hours on our journeyl \Vell-I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right; were four dead men neatly laid out. in a row under a tree. Their faces had not been t‘o\'cl‘t‘tl but their eyes were closed. their checks. hands. and hat like. wax. In front of them the young" man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night and watched us at work was mowingr the tall grass with a scythe. He was going to dig graves. lle Wore a white. shirt and whitt- tt'oltscrs‘ and had long black hair. "Why didn't they take you tor a soldier?" I asked him. '‘Consnmptivc,n he said. I had washed my tat-c, hitched up my Homers. I sat, on the trunk ot. a trcc. watched the dew on the grass: and tin: faint ldne like the colour of a bird‘s egg tlood the "'l‘u‘v staining it pale \t,~llow. All tiring had utterly ct-ast-tl. |