And then the misery! That little episode at the circus of which I had been a witness was only the first of many dreadful ventures. She confessed to me afterwards that she did not herself know what she was doing. And the final result of these adventures was to encourage her because he had not repelled her. Hemusthave noticed, she thought, the times when her hand had touched his, when his mouth had been, so close to hers that their very thoughts had mingled, when she had felt the stuff of his coat, and even for an instant stroked it. Hemusthave noticed these things, and still he had never rebuffed her. He was always so kind to her; she fancied that his voice had a special note of tenderness in it when he spoke to her, and when she looked at his ugly, quiet, solid face, she could not believe that they were not meant for one another. Hemustwant her, her gaiety, happiness, youth—it would be wrong for himnotto! There could be no girls in that stupid, practical, far-away England who would be the wife to him that she would be.
Then the cursed misery of that waiting! They could hear in their sitting-room the steps coming up the stone stairs outside their flat, and every step seemed to be his. Ah, he had come earlier than he had fixed. Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfall; she knew it so well. There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause; soon there would be the tinkle of the bell!...
No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence—only some stupid, ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her, and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a little, her eyes hot and suspicious.
I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again, never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic. Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world.
At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes were wild with excitement. Any one who looked at her closely must have noticed her strangeness, but they were all discussing the events of the last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false and a few; true facts.
No one in reality knew anything except that there had been some demonstrations, a little shooting, and a number of excited speeches. The town on that lovely winter morning seemed absolutely quiet.
Somewhere about mid-day Semyonov came in, and without thinking about it Nina suddenly found herself sitting in the window talking to him. This conversation, which was in its results to have an important influence on her whole life, continued the development which that eventful Sunday was to effect in her. Its importance lay very largely in the fact that her uncle had never spoken to her seriously like a grown-up woman before. Semyonov was, of course, quite clever enough to realise the change which was transforming her, and he seized it, at once, for his own advantage. She, on her side, had always, ever since she could remember, been intrigued by him. She told me once that almost her earliest memory was being lifted into the air by her uncle and feeling the thick solid strength of his grasp, so that she was like a feather in the air, poised on one of his stubborn fingers; when he kissed her each hair of his beard seemed like a pale, taut wire, so stiff and resolute was it. Her Uncle Ivan was a flabby, effeminate creature in comparison. Then, as she had grown older, she had realised that he was a dangerous man, dangerous to women, who loved and feared and hated him. Vera said that he had great power over them and made them miserable, and that he was, therefore, a bad, wicked man. But this only served to make him, in Nina’s eyes, the more a romantic figure.
However, he had never treated her in the least seriously, had tossed her in the air spiritually just as he had done physically when she was a baby, had given her chocolates, taken her once or twice to the cinema, laughed at her, and, she felt, deeply despised her. Then came the war and he had gone to the Front, and she had almost forgotten him. Then came the romantic story of his being deeply in love with a nurse who had been killed, that he was heartbroken and inconsolable and a changed man. Was it wonderful that on his return to Petrograd she should feel again that old Byronic (every Russian is still brought up on Byron) romance? She did not like him, but—well—Vera was a staid old-fashioned thing.... Perhaps they all misjudged him; perhaps he really needed comfort and consolation. He certainly seemed kinder than he used to be. But, until to-day, he had never talked to her seriously.
How her heart leapt into her throat when he began, at once, in his quiet soft voice,
“Well, Nina dear, tell me all about it. I know, so you needn’t be frightened. I know and I understand.”
She flung a terrified glance around her, but Uncle Ivan was reading the paper at the other end of the room, her brother-in-law was cutting up little pieces of wood in his workshop, and Vera was in the kitchen.
“What do you mean?” she said in a whisper. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do,” he answered, smiling at her. “You know, Nina, you’re in love with the Englishman, and have been for a long time. Well, why not? Don’t be so frightened about it. It is quite time that you should be in love with some one, and he’s a fine strong young man—not over-blessed with brains, but you can supply that part of it. No, I think it’s a very good match. I like it. Believe me, I’m your friend, Nina.” He put his hand on hers.
He looked so kind, she told me afterwards, that she felt as though she had never known him before; her eyes were filled with tears, so overwhelming a relief was it to find some one at last who sympathised and understood and wanted her to succeed. I remember that she was wearing that day a thin black velvet necklet with a very small diamond in front of it. She had been given it by Uncle Ivan on her last birthday, and instead of making her look grown-up it gave her a ridiculously childish appearance as though she had stolen into Vera’s bedroom and dressed up in her things. Then, with her fair tousled hair and large blue eyes, open as a rule with a startled expression as though she had only just awakened into an astonishingly exciting world, she was altogether as unprotected and as guileless and as honest as any human being alive. I don’t know whether Semyonov felt her innocence and youth—I expect he considered very little beside the plans that he had then in view.... and innocence had never been very interesting to him. He spoke to her just as a kind, wise, thoughtful uncle ought to speak to a niece caught up into her first love-affair. From the moment of that half-hour’s conversation in the window Nina adored him, and believed every word that came from his mouth.
“You see, Nina dear,” he went on, “I’ve not spoken to you before because you neither liked me nor trusted me. Quite rightly you listened to what others said about me—”
“Oh no,” interrupted Nina. “I never listen to anybody.”
“Well then,” said Semyonov, “we’ll say that you were very naturally influenced by them. And quite right—perfectly right. You were only a girl then—you are a woman now. I had nothing to say to you then—now I can help you, give you a little advice perhaps—”
I don’t know what Nina replied. She was breathlessly pleased and excited.
“What I want,” he went on, “is the happiness of you all. I was sorry when I came back to find that Nicholas and Vera weren’t such friends as they used to be. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong at all, but they must be brought closer together—and that’s what you and I, who know them and love them, can do—”
“Yes, yes,” said Nina eagerly. Semyonov then explained that the thing that really was, it seemed to him, keeping them apart were Nicholas’s inventions. Of course Vera had long ago seen that these inventions were never going to come to anything, that they were simply wasting Nicholas’s time when he might, by taking an honest clerkship or something of the kind, be maintaining the whole household, and the very thought of him sitting in his workshop irritated her. The thing to do, Semyonov explained, was to laugh Nicholas out of his inventions, to show him that it was selfish nonsense his pursuing them, to persuade him to make an honest living.
“But I thought,” said Nina, “you approved of them. I heard you only the other day telling him that it was a good idea, and that he must go on—”
“Ah!” said Semyonov. “That was my weakness, I’m afraid. I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. But it was wrong of me—and I knew it at the time.”
Now Nina had always rather admired her brother-in-law’s inventions. She had thought it very clever of him to think of such things, and she had wondered why other people did not applaud him more.
Now suddenly she saw that it was very selfish of him to go on with these things when they never brought in a penny, and Vera had to do all the drudgery. She was suddenly indignant with him. In how clear a light her uncle placed things!
“One thing to do,” said Semyonov, “is to laugh at him about them. Not very much, not unkindly, but enough to make him see the folly of it.”
“I think he does see that already, poor Nicholas,” said Nina with wisdom beyond her years.
“To bring Nicholas and Vera together,” said Semyonov, “that’s what we have to do, you and I. And believe me, dear Nina, I on my side will do all I can to help you. We are friends, aren’t we?—not only uncle and niece.”
“Yes,” said Nina breathlessly. That was all that there was to the conversation, but it was quite enough to make Nina feel as though she had already won her heart’s desire. If any one as clever as her uncle believed in this, then itmustbe true. It had not been only her own silly imagination—Lawrence cared for her. Her uncle had seen it, otherwise he would never have encouraged her—Lawrence cared for her....
Suddenly, in the happy spontaneity of the moment she did what she very seldom did, bent forward and kissed him.
She told me afterwards that that kiss seemed to displease him.
He got up and walked away.
I do not know exactly what occurred during that afternoon. Neither Lawrence nor Nina spoke about it to me. I only know that Nina returned subdued and restrained. I can imagine them going out into that quiet town and walking along the deserted quay; the quiet that afternoon was, I remember, marvellous. The whole world was holding its breath. Great events were occurring, but we were removed from them all. The ice quivered under the sun and the snowclouds rose higher and higher into the blue, and once and again a bell chimed and jangled.... There was an amazing peace. Through this peaceful world Nina and Lawrence walked. His mind must, I know, have been very far away from Nina, probably he saw nothing of her little attempts at friendship; her gasping sentences that seemed to her so daring and significant he scarcely heard. His only concern was to endure the walk as politely as possible and return to Vera.
Perhaps if she had not had that conversation with her uncle she would have realised more clearly how slight a response was made to her, but she thought only that this was his English shyness and gaucherie—she must go slowly and carefully. He was not like a Russian. She must not frighten him. Ah, how she loved him as she walked beside him, seeing and not seeing the lovely frozen colours of the winter day, the quickly flooding saffron sky! The first bright star, the great pearl-grey cloud of the Neva as it was swept into the dark. In the dark she put, I am sure, her hand on his arm, and felt his strength and took her small hurried steps beside his long ones. He did not, I expect, feel her hand on his sleeve at all. It was Vera whom he saw through the dusk. Vera watching the door for his return, knowing that his eyes would rush to hers, that every beat of his heart was for her....
I found them all seated at dinner when I entered. I brought them the news of the shooting up at the Nicholas Station.
“Perhaps, we had better not go to the theatre,” I said. “A number of people were killed this afternoon, and all the trams are stopped.”
Still it was all remote from us. They laughed at the idea of not going to the theatre. The tickets had been bought two weeks ago, and the walk would be pleasant. Of course we would go. It would be fun, too, to see whether anything were happening.
With how strange a clarity I remember the events of that evening. It is detached and hangs by itself among the other events of that amazing time, as though it had been framed and separated for some especial purpose. My impression of the colour of it now is of a scene intensely quiet.
I saw at once on my arrival that Vera was not yet prepared to receive me back into her friendship. And I saw, too, that she included Lawrence in this ostracism. She sat there, stiff and cold, smiling and talking simply because she was compelled, for politeness sake, to do so. She would scarcely speak to me at all, and when I saw this I turned and devoted myself to Uncle Ivan, who was always delighted to make me a testing-ground for his English.
But poor Jerry! Had I not been so anxious lest a scene should burst upon us all I could have laughed at the humour of it. Vera’s attitude was a complete surprise to him. He had not seen her during the preceding week, and that absence from her had heightened his desire until it burnt his very throat with its flame. One glance from her, when he came in, would have contented him. He could have rested then, happily, quietly; but instead of that glance she had avoided his eye, her hand was cold and touched his only for an instant. She had not spoken to him again after the first greeting. I am sure that he had never known a time when his feelings threatened to be too much for him. His hold on himself and his emotions had been complete. “These fellers,” he once said to me about some Russians, “are always letting their feelings overwhelm them—like women. And they like it. Funny thing!” Well, funny or no, he realised it now; his true education, like Nina’s, like Vera’s, like Bohun’s, like Markovitch’s, perhaps like my own, was only now beginning. Funny and pathetic, too, to watch his broad, red, genial face struggling to express a polite interest in the conversation, to show nothing but friendliness and courtesy. His eyes were as restless as minnows; they darted for an instant towards Vera, then darted off again, then flashed back. His hand moved for a plate, and I saw that it was shaking. Poor Jerry! He had learnt what suffering was during those last weeks. But the most silent of us all that evening was Markovitch. He sat huddled over his food and never said a word. If he looked up at all he glowered, and so soon as he had finished eating he returned to his workshop, closing the door behind him. I caught Semyonov looking at him with a pleasant, speculative smile....
At last Vera, Nina, Lawrence, and I started for the theatre. I can’t say that I was expecting a very pleasant evening, but the deathlike stillness, both of ourselves and the town did, I confess, startle me. Scarcely a word was exchanged by us between the English Prospect and Saint Isaac’s Square. The square looked lovely in the bright moonlight, and I said something about it. It was indeed very fine, the cathedral like a hovering purple cloud, the old sentry in his high peaked hat, the black statue, and the blue shadows over the snow. It was then that Lawrence, with an air of determined strength, detached Vera from us and walked ahead with her. I saw that he was talking eagerly to her.
Nina said, with a little shudder, “Isn’t it quiet, Durdles? As though there were ghosts round every corner.”
“Hope you enjoyed your walk this afternoon,” I said.
“No, it was quiet then. But not like it is now. Let’s walk faster and catch the others up. Do you believe in ghosts, Durdles?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“So do I. Was it true, do you think, about the people being shot at the Nicholas Station to-day?”
“I daresay.”
“Perhaps all the dead people are crowding round here now. Why isn’t any one out walking?”
“I suppose they are all frightened by what they’ve heard, and think it better to stay at home.”
We were walking down the Morskaia, and our feet gave out a ringing echo.
“Let’s keep up with them,” Nina said. When we had joined the others I found that they were both silent—Lawrence very red, Vera pale. We were all feeling rather weary. A woman met us. “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski,” she said; “the Cossacks are stopping everybody.” I can see her now, a stout, red-faced woman, a shawl over her head, and carrying a basket. Another woman, a prostitute I should think, came up and joined us.
“What is it?” she asked us.
The stout woman repeated in a trembling, agitated voice, “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski. The Cossacks are stopping everybody.”
The prostitute shook her head in her alarm, and little flakes of powder detached themselves from her nose. “Bozhe moi—bozhe moi!” she said, “and I promised not to be late.”
Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation. “We’ll go and see,” she said, “what is really the truth.”
We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight.
There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked. Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye could see between its high black banks of silent houses.
At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon, so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski deserted. How happy it must have been that night!...
For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a strange superstition, as though something said to me, “You cross that and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and you will avoid danger.” Nina must have had something of the same feeling, because she said:
“Let’s go home. They won’t let us cross. I don’t want to cross. Let’s go home.”
But Vera said firmly, “Nonsense! We’ve gone so far. We’ve got the tickets. I’m going on.”
I felt the note in her voice, superstitiously, as a kind of desperate challenge, as though she had said:
“Well, you see nothing worse can happen to me than has happened.”
Lawrence said roughly, “Of course, we’re going on.”
The prostitute began, in a trembling voice, as though we must all of necessity understand her case:
“I don’t want to be late this time, because I’ve been late so often before.... It always is that way with me... always unfortunate....”
We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force.
“That’s it,” said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself. “So it always is with us. All revolutions in Russia end this way—”
An unmounted Cossack came forward to us.
“No hanging about there,” he said. “Cross quickly. No one is to delay.”
We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge. I thought of the Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people that they would not fire—well, that impulse had passed. Protopopoff and his men had triumphed.
We were all now in the shallows on the other bank of the canal. The prostitute, who was still at our side, hesitated for a moment, as though she were going to speak. I think she wanted to ask whether she might walk with us a little way. Suddenly she vanished without sound, into the black shadows.
“Come along,” said Vera. “We shall be dreadfully late.” She seemed to be mastered by an overpowering desire not to be left alone with Lawrence. She hurried forward with Nina, and Lawrence and I came more slowly behind. We were now in a labyrinth of little streets and black overhanging flats. Not a soul anywhere—only the moonlight in great broad flashes of light—once or twice a woman hurried by keeping in the shadow. Sometimes, at the far end of the street, we saw the shining, naked Nevski.
Lawrence was silent, then, just as we were turning into the square where the Michailovsky Theatre was he began:
“What’s the matter?... What’s the matter with her, Durward? What have I done?”
“I don’t know that you’ve done anything,” I answered.
“But don’t you see?” he went on. “She won’t speak to me. She won’t look at me. I won’t stand this long. I tell you I won’t stand it long. I’ll make her come off with me in spite of them all. I’ll have her to myself. I’ll make her happy, Durward, as she’s never been in all her life. But I must have her.... I can’t live close to her like this, and yet never be with her. Never alone, never alone. Why is she behaving like this to me?”
He spoke really like a man in agony. The words coming from him in little tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately, with pain at every breath that he drew.
“She’s afraid of herself, I expect, not of you.” I put my hand on his sleeve. “Lawrence,” I said, “go home. Go back to England. This is becoming too much for both of you. Nothing can come of it, but unhappiness for everybody.”
“No!” he said. “It’s too late for any of your Platonic advice, Durward. I’m going to have her, even though the earth turns upside down.”
We went up the steps and into the theatre. There was, of course, scarcely any one there. The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the stalls looked extraordinarily desolate, every seat watching one with a kind of insolent wink as though, like the Nevski ten minutes before it said, “Well, now you humans are getting frightened, you’re all stopping away. We’re coming back to our own!”
There was some such malicious air about the whole theatre. Above, in the circle, the little empty boxes were dim and shadowy, and one fancied figures moved there, and then saw that there was no one. Someone up in the gallery laughed, and the laugh went echoing up and down the empty spaces. A few people came in and sat nervously about, and no one spoke except in a low whisper, because voices sounded so loud and impertinent.
Then again the man in the gallery laughed, and every one looked up frowning. The play began. It was, I think,Les Idées de Françoise, but of that I cannot be sure. It was a farce of the regular French type, with a bedroom off, and marionettes who continually separated into couples and giggled together. The giggling to-night was of a sadly hollow sort. I pitied and admired the actors, spontaneous as a rule, but now bravely stuffing any kind of sawdust into the figures in their hands, but the leakage was terrible, and the sawdust lay scattered all about the stage. The four of us sat as solemn as statues—I don’t think one of us smiled. It was during the second Act that I suddenly laughed. I don’t know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and Nina thinking of nothing but Lawrence, and the audience thinking of their safety, and the players thinking of their salaries, and Protopopoff at home thinking of his victory, and the Czar in Tsarskoe thinking of his Godsent autocracy, and Europe thinking of its ideals, and Germany thinking of its militarism—all self-justified, all mistaken, and all fulfilling some deeper plan at whose purpose they could not begin to guess. And how intermingled we all were! Vera and Nina, M. Robert and Mdlle. Flori on the other side of the footlights, Trenchard and Marie killed in Galicia, the Kaiser and Hindenburg, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the postmaster of my village in Glebeshire.
The curtain is coming down, the fat husband is deceived once again, the lovers are in the bedroom listening behind the door, the comic waiter is winking at the chamber-maid....
The lights are up and we are alone again in the deserted theatre.
Towards the end of the last interval I went out into the passage behind the stalls to escape from the chastened whispering that went trembling up and down like the hissing of terrified snakes. I leaned against the wall in the deserted passage and watched the melancholy figure of the cloak-room attendant huddled up on a chair, his head between his hands.
Suddenly I saw Vera. She came up to me as though she were going to walk past me, and then she stopped and spoke. She talked fast, not looking at me, but beyond, down the passage.
“I’m sorry, Ivan Andreievitch,” she said. “I was cross the other day. I hurt you. I oughtn’t to have done that.”
“You know,” I said, “that I never thought of it for a minute.”
“No, I was wrong. But I’ve been terribly worried during these last weeks. I’ve thought it all out to-day and I’ve decided—” there was a catch in her breath and she paused; she went on—“decided that there mustn’t be any more weakness. I’m much weaker than I thought. I would be ashamed if I didn’t think that shame was a silly thing to have. But now I am quite clear; I must make Nicholas and Nina happy. Whatever else comes I must do that. It has been terrible, these last weeks. We’ve all been angry and miserable, and now I must put it right. I can if I try. I’ve been forgetting that I chose my own life myself, and now I mustn’t be cowardly because it’s difficult. I will make it right myself....”
She paused again, then she said, looking me straight in the face,
“Ivan Andreievitch, does Nina care for Mr. Lawrence?”
She was looking at me, with large black eyes so simply, with such trust in me, that I could only tell her the truth.
“Yes,” I said, “she does.”
Her eyes fell, then she looked up at me again.
“I thought so,” she said. “And does he care for her?”
“No,” I said, “he does not.”
“He must,” she said. “It would be a very happy thing for them to marry.”
She spoke very low, so that I could scarcely hear her words.
“Wait, Vera,” I said. “Let it alone. Nina’s very young. The mood will pass. Lawrence, perhaps, will go back to England.”
She drew in her breath and I saw her hand tremble, but she still looked at me, only now her eyes were not so clear. Then she laughed. “I’m getting an old woman, Ivan Andreievitch. It’s ridiculous....” She broke off. Then held out her hand.
“But we’ll always be friends now, won’t we? I’ll never be cross with you again.”
I took her hand. “I’m getting old too,” I said. “And I’m useless at everything. I only make a bungle of everything I try. But I’ll be your true friend to the end of my time—”
The bell rang and we went back into the theatre.
And yet, strangely enough, when I lay awake that night in my room on my deserted island, it was of Markovitch that I was thinking. Of all the memories of the preceding evening that of Markovitch huddled over his food, sullen and glowering, with Semyonov watching him, was predominant.
Markovitch was, so to speak, the dark horse of them all, and he was also when one came to look at it all the way round the centre of the story. And yet it was Markovitch with his inconsistencies, his mysteries, his impulses, and purposes, whom I understood least of them all. He makes, indeed, a very good symbol of my present difficulties.
In that earlier experience of Marie in the forests of Galicia the matter had been comparatively easy. I had then been concerned with the outward manifestation of war—cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering trees of the forest itself. But the war had made progress since then. It had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men. It was no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, “with the dark forest of the hearts of men.”
How much more baffling and intangible this new forest, and how deeply serious a business now for those who were still thoughtlessly and selfishly juggling with human affairs.
“There is no ammunition,” I remember crying desperately in Galicia. We had moved further than the question of ammunition now.
I had a strange dream that night. I saw my old forest of two years before—the very woods of Buchatch with the hot painted leaves, the purple slanting sunlight, the smell, the cries, the whirr of the shell. But in my dream the only inhabitant of that forest was Markovitch. He was pursued by some animal. What beast it was I could not see, always the actual vision was denied to me, but I could hear it plunging through the thickets, and once I caught a glimpse of a dark crouching body like a shadow against the light.
But Markovitch I saw all the time, sweating with heat and terror, his clothes torn, his eyes inflamed, his breath coming in desperate pants, turning once and again as though he would stop and offer defiance, then hasting on, his face and hands scratched and bleeding. I wanted to offer him help and assistance, but something prevented me; I could not get to him. Finally he vanished from my sight and I was left alone in the painted forest....
All the next morning I sat and wondered what I had better do, and at last I decided that I would go and see Henry Bohun.
I had not seen Bohun for several weeks. I myself had been, of late, less to the flat in the English Prospect, but I knew that he had taken my advice that he should be kind to Nicholas Markovitch with due British seriousness, and that he had been trying to bring some kind of relationship about. He had even asked Markovitch to dine alone with him, and Markovitch, although he declined the invitation was, I believe, greatly touched.
So, about half-past one, I started off for Bohun’s office on the Fontanka. I’ve said somewhere before, I think, that Bohun’s work was in connection with the noble but uphill task of enlightening the Russian public as to the righteousness of the war, the British character, and the Anglo-Russian alliance. I say “uphill,” because only a few of therealpopulation of Russia showed the slightest desire to know anything whatever about any country outside their own. Their interest is in ideas not in boundaries—and what I mean by “real” will be made patent by the events of this very day. However, Bohun did his best, and it was not his fault that the British Government could only spare enough men and money to cover about one inch of the whole of Russia—and, I hasten to add, that if that same British Government had plastered the whole vast country from Archangel to Vladivostock with pamphlets, orators, and photographs it would not have altered, in the slightest degree, after events.
To make any effect in Russia England needed not only men and money but a hundred years’ experience of the country. That same experience was possessed by the Germans alone of all the Western peoples—and they have not neglected to use it.
I went by tram to the Fontanka, and the streets seemed absolutely quiet. That strange shining Nevski of the night before was a dream. Some one in the tram said something about rifle-shots in the Summer Garden, but no one listened. As Vera had said last night we had, none of us, much faith in Russian revolutions.
I went up in the lift to the Propaganda office and found it a very nice airy place, clean and smart, with coloured advertisements by Shepperson and others on the walls, pictures of Hampstead and St. Albans and Kew Gardens that looked strangely satisfactory and homely to me, and rather touching and innocent. There were several young women clicking away at typewriters, and maps of the Western front, and a colossal toy map of the London Tube, and a nice English library with all the best books from Chaucer to D.H. Lawrence and from theReligio Medicito E.V. Lucas’London.
Everything seemed clean and simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there. I think “guileless” was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place—a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses—seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked recesses of Russian pessimism.
I went into Bohun’s room and found him very hard at work in a serious, emphatic way which only made me feel that he was playing at it. He had a little bookcase over his table, and I noticed theGeorgian Book of Verse, Conrad’sNostromo, and a translation of Ropshin’sPale Horse.
“Altogether too pretty and literary,” I said to him; “you ought to be getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer—not admiring the Intelligentzia.”
“I daresay you’re right,” he said, blushing. “But whatever we do we’re wrong. We have fellows in here cursing us all day. If we’re simple we’re told we’re not clever enough; if we’re clever we’re told we’re too complicated. If we’re militant we’re told we ought to be tender-hearted, and if we’re tender-hearted we’re told we’re sentimental—and at the end of it all the Russians don’t care a damn.”
“Well, I daresay you’re doing some good somewhere,” I said indulgently.
“Come and look at my view,” he said, “and see whether it isn’t splendid.”
He spoke no more than the truth. We looked across the Canal over the roofs of the city—domes and towers and turrets, grey and white and blue, with the dark red walls of many of the older houses stretched like an Arabian carpet beneath white bubbles of clouds that here and there marked the blue sky. It was a scene of intense peace, the smoke rising from the chimneys, Isvostchicks stumbling along on the farther banks of the Canal, and the people sauntering in their usual lazy fashion up and down the Nevski. Immediately below our window was a skating-rink that stretched straight across the Canal. There were some figures, like little dolls, skating up and down, and they looked rather desolate beside the deserted band-stands and the empty seats. On the road outside our door a cart loaded with wood slowly moved along, the high hoop over the horse’s back gleaming with red and blue.
“Yes, itisa view!” I said. “Splendid!—and all as quiet as though there’d been no disturbances at all. Have you heard any news?”
“No,” said Bohun. “To tell the truth I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to ring up the Embassy. And we’ve had no one in this morning. Monday morning, you know,” he added; “always very few people on Monday morning”—as though he didn’t wish me to think that the office was always deserted.
I watched the little doll-like men circling placidly round and round the rink. One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun. Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig. “What’s that?” I said, stepping forward on to the balcony. “It sounded like a shot.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” said Bohun. “You get funny echoes up here sometimes.” We stepped back into Bohun’s room and, if I had had any anxieties, they would at once, I think, have been reassured by the unemotional figure of Bohun’s typist, a gay young woman with peroxide hair, who was typing away as though for her very life.
“Look here, Bohun, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” I asked.
The peroxide lady left us.
“It’s just about Markovitch I wanted to ask you,” I went on. “I’m infernally worried, and I want your help. It may seem ridiculous of me to interfere in another family like this, with people with whom I have, after all, nothing to do. But there are two reasons why it isn’t ridiculous. One is the deep affection I have for Nina and Vera. I promised them my friendship, and now I’ve got to back that promise. And the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence into the family. They never would have known him if it hadn’t been for us. There’s danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as you know, is helping it on wherever he can. Well, now, what I want to know is, how much have you seen of Markovitch lately, and has he talked to you?”
Bohun considered. “I’ve seen very little of him,” he said at last. “I think he avoids me now. He’s such a weird bird that it’s impossible to tell of what he’s really thinking. I know he was pleased when I asked him to dine with me at the Bear the other night. He lookedmost awfullypleased. But he wouldn’t come. It was as though he suspected that I was laying a trap for him.”
“But what have you noticed about him otherwise?”
“Well, I’ve seen very little of him. He’s sulky just now. He suspected Lawrence, of course—always after that night of Nina’s party. But I think that he’s reassured again. And of course it’s all so ridiculous, because there’s nothing to suspect, absolutely nothing—is there?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I answered firmly.
He sighed with relief. “Oh, you don’t know how glad I am to hear that,” he said. “Because, although I’veknownthat it was all right, Vera’s been so odd lately that I’ve wondered—you know how I care about Vera and—”
“How do you mean—odd?” I sharply interrupted.
“Well—for instance—of course I’ve told nobody—and you won’t tell any one either—but the other night I found her crying in the flat, sitting up near the table, sobbing her heart out. She thought every one was out—I’d been in my room and she hadn’t known. But Vera, Durward—Vera of all people! I didn’t let her see me—she doesn’t know now that I heard her. But when you care for any one as I care for Vera, it’s awful to think that she can suffer like that and one can do nothing. Oh, Durward, I wish to God I wasn’t so helpless! You know before I came out to Russia I felt so old; I thought there was nothing I couldn’t do, that I was good enough for anybody. And now I’m the most awful ass. Fancy, Durward! Those poems of mine—I thought they were wonderful. I thought—”
He was interrupted by a sudden sharp crackle like a fire bursting into a blaze quite close at hand. We both sprang to the windows, threw them open (they were not sealed, for some unknown reason), and rushed out on to the balcony. The scene in front of us was just what it had been before—the bubble clouds were still sailing lazily before the blue, the skaters were still hovering on the ice, the cart of wood that I had noticed was vanishing slowly into the distance. But from the Liteiny—just over the bridge—came a confused jumble of shouts, cries, and then the sharp, unmistakable rattle of a machine-gun. It was funny to see the casual life in front of one suddenly pause at that sound. The doll-like skaters seemed to spin for a moment and then freeze; one figure began to run across the ice. A small boy came racing down our street shouting. Several men ran out from doorways and stood looking up into the sky, as though they thought the noise had come from there. The sun was just setting; the bubble clouds were pink, and windows flashed fire. The rattle of the machine-gun suddenly stopped, and there was a moment’s silence when the only sound in the whole world was the clatter of the wood-cart turning the corner. I could see to the right of me the crowds in the Nevski, that had looked like the continual unwinding of a ragged skein of black silk, break their regular movement and split up like flies falling away from an opening door.
We were all on the balcony by now—the stout Burrows, Peroxide, and another lady typist, Watson, the thin and most admirable secretary (he held the place together by his diligence and order), two Russian clerks, Henry, and I.
We all leaned over the railings and looked down into the street beneath us. To our left the Fontanka Bridge was quite deserted—then, suddenly, an extraordinary procession poured across it. At that same moment (at any rate it seems so now to me on looking back) the sun disappeared, leaving a world of pale grey mist shot with gold and purple. The stars were, many of them, already out, piercing with their sharp cold brilliance the winter sky.
We could not at first see of what exactly the crowd now pouring over the bridge was composed. Then, as it turned and came down our street, it revealed itself as something so theatrical and melodramatic as to be incredible. Incredible, I say, because the rest of the world was not theatrical with it. That was always to be the amazing feature of the new scene into which, without knowing it, I was at that moment stepping. In Galicia the stage had been set—ruined villages, plague-stricken peasants, shell-holes, trenches, roads cut to pieces, huge trees levelled to the ground, historic châteaux pillaged and robbed. But here the world was still the good old jog-trot world that one had always known; the shops and hotels and theatres remained as they had always been. There would remain, I believe, for ever those dull Jaeger undergarments in the windows of the bazaar, and the bound edition of Tchekov in the book-shop just above the Moika, and the turtle and the gold-fish in the aquarium near Elisseieff; and whilst those things were there I could not believe in melodrama.
And we did not believe. We dug our feet into the snow, and leaned over the balcony railings absorbed with amused interest. The procession consisted of a number of motor lorries, and on these lorries soldiers were heaped. I can use no other word because, indeed, they seemed to be all piled upon one another, some kneeling forward, some standing, some sitting, and all with their rifles pointing outwards until the lorries looked like hedgehogs. Many of the rifles had pieces of red cloth attached to them, and one lorry displayed proudly a huge red flag that waved high in air with a sort of flaunting arrogance of its own. On either side of the lorries, filling the street, was the strangest mob of men, women, and children. There seemed to be little sign of order or discipline amongst them as they were all shouting different cries: “Down the Fontanka!” “No, the Duma!” “To the Nevski!” “No, no,Tovaristchi(comrades), to the Nicholas Station!”
Such a rabble was it that I remember that my first thought was of pitying indulgence. So this was the grand outcome of Boris Grogoff’s eloquence, and the Rat’s plots for plunder!—a fitting climax to such vain dreams. I saw the Cossack, that ebony figure of Sunday night. Ten such men, and this rabble was dispersed for ever! I felt inclined to lean over and whisper to them, “Quick! quick! Go home!... They’ll be here in a moment and catch you!”
And yet, after all, there seemed to be some show of discipline. I noticed that, as the crowd moved forward, men dropped out and remained picketing the doorways of the street. Women seemed to be playing a large part in the affair, peasants with shawls over their heads, many of them leading by the hand small children.
Burrows treated it all as a huge joke. “By Jove,” he cried, speaking across to me, “Durward, it’s like that play Martin Harvey used to do—what was it?—about the French Revolution, you know.”
“‘The Only Way,’” said Peroxide, in a prim strangled voice.
“That’s it—‘The Only Way’—with their red flags and all. Don’t they look ruffians, some of them?”
There was a great discussion going on under our windows. All the lorries had drawn up together, and the screaming, chattering, and shouting was like the noise of a parrots’ aviary. The cold blue light had climbed now into the sky, which was thick with stars; the snow on the myriad roofs stretched like a filmy cloud as far as the eye could see. The moving, shouting crowd grew with every moment mistier.
“Oh, dear! Mr. Burrows,” said the little typist, who was not Peroxide. “Do you think I shall ever be able to get home? We’re on the other side of the river, you know. Do you think the bridges will be up? My mother will be so terribly anxious.”
“Oh, you’ll get home all right,” answered Burrows cheerfully. “Just wait until this crowd has gone by. I don’t expect there’s any fuss down by the river...”
His words were cut short by some order from one of the fellows below. Others shouted in response, and the lorries again began to move forward.
“I believe he was shouting to us,” said Bohun. “It sounded like ‘Get off’ or ‘Get away.’”
“Not he!” said Burrows; “they’re too busy with their own affairs.”
Then things happened quickly. There was a sudden strange silence below; I saw a quick flame from some fire that had apparently been lit on the Fontanka Bridge; I heard the same voice call out once more sharply, and a second later I felt rather than heard a whizz like the swift flight of a bee past my ear; I was conscious that a bullet had struck the brick behind me. That bullet swung me into the Revolution....
...We were all gathered together in the office. I heard one of the Russians say in an agitated whisper, “Don’t turn on the light!... Don’t turn on the light! They can see!”
We were all in half-darkness, our faces mistily white. I could hear Peroxide breathing in a tremulous manner, as though in a moment she would break into hysteria.
“We’ll go into the inside room. We can turn the light on there,” said Burrows. We all passed into the reception-room of the office, a nice airy place with the library along one wall and bright coloured maps on the other. We stood together and considered the matter.
“It’s real!” said Burrows, his red, cheery face perplexed and strained. “Who’d have thought it?”
“Of course it’s real!” cried Bohun impatiently (Burrows’ optimism had been often difficult to bear with indulgence).
“Now you see! What about your beautiful Russian mystic now?”
“Oh dear!” cried the little Russian typist. “And my mother!... What ever shall I do? She’ll hear reports and think that I’m being murdered. I shall never get across.”
“You’d better stay with me to-night, Miss Peredonov,” said Peroxide firmly. “My flat’s quite close here in Gagarinsky. We shall be delighted to have you.”
“You can telephone to your mother, Miss Peredonov,” said Burrows. “No difficulty at all.”
It was then that Bohun took me aside.
“Look here!” he said. “I’m worried. Vera and Nina were going to the Astoria to have tea with Semyonov this afternoon. I should think the Astoria might be rather a hot spot if this spreads. And I wouldn’t trust Semyonov. Will you come down with me there now?”
“Yes,” I said, “of course I’ll come.”
We said a word to Burrows, put on our Shubas and goloshes, and started down the stairs. At every door there were anxious faces. Out of one flat came a very fat Jew.
“Gentlemen, what is this all about?”
“Riots,” said Bohun.
“Is there shooting?”
“Yes,” said Bohun.
“Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi!And I live over on Vassily Ostrov! What do you advise,Gaspoda? Will the bridges be up?”
“Very likely,” I answered. “I should stay here.”
“And they are shooting?” he asked again.
“They are,” I answered.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen—stay for a moment. Perhaps together we could think.... I am all alone here except for a lady... most unfortunate....”
But we could not stay.
The world into which we stepped was wonderful. The background of snow under the star-blazing sky made it even more fantastic than it naturally was. We slipped into the crowd and, becoming part of it, were at once, as one so often is, sympathetic with it. It seemed such a childish, helpless, and good-natured throng. No one seemed to know anything of arms or directions. There were, as I have already said, many women and little children, and some of the civilians who had rifles looked quite helpless. I saw one boy holding his gun upside down. No one paid any attention to us. There was as yet no class note in the demonstration, and the only hostile cries I heard were against Protopopoff and the police. We moved back into the street behind the Fontanka, and here I saw a wonderful sight. Some one had lighted a large bonfire in the middle of the street and the flames tossed higher and higher into the air, bringing down the stars in flights of gold, flinging up the snow until it seemed to radiate in lines and circles of white light high over the very roofs of the houses. In front of the fire a soldier, mounted on a horse, addressed a small crowd of women and boys. On the end of his rifle was a ragged red cloth.
I could not see his face. I saw his arms wave, and the fire behind him exaggerated his figure and then dropped it into a straggling silhouette against the snow. The street seemed deserted except for this group, although now I could hear distant shouting on every side of me, and the monotonous clap-clap-clap-clap of a machine-gun.
I heard him say, “Tovaristchi!now is your time! Don’t hesitate in the sacred cause of freedom! As our brethren did in the famous days of the French Revolution, so must we do now. All the Army is coming over to our side. The Preobrojenski have come over to us and have arrested their officers and taken their arms. We must finish with Protopopoff and our other tyrants, and see that we have a just rule.Tovaristchi! there will never be such a chance again, and you will repent for ever if you have not played your part in the great fight for freedom!”
So it went on. It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed. It was bewildered and dazed. But the fire leapt up behind him giving him a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal like a gaudy painting on a coloured screen.
We hurried through into the Nevski, and this we found nearly deserted. The trams of course had stopped, a few figures hurried along, and once an Isvostchick went racing down towards the river.
“Well, now, we seem to be out of it,” said Bohun, with a sigh of relief. “I must say I’m not sorry. I don’t mind France, where you can tell which is the front and which the back, but this kind of thing does get on one’s nerves. I daresay it’s only local. We shall find them all as easy as anything at the Astoria, and wondering what we’re making a fuss about.”
At that moment we were joined by an English merchant whom we both knew, a stout elderly man who had lived all his life in Russia. I was surprised to find him in a state of extreme terror. I had always known him as a calm, conceited, stupid fellow, with a great liking for Russian ladies. This pastime he was able as a bachelor to enjoy to the full. Now, however, instead of the ruddy, coarse, self-confident merchant there was a pallid, trembling jelly-fish.
“I say, you fellows,” he asked, catching my arm. “Where are you off to?”
“We’re off to the Astoria,” I answered.
“Let me come with you. I’m not frightened, not at all—all the same I don’t want to be left alone. I was in the 1905 affair. That was enough for me. Where are they firing—do you know?”
“All over the place,” said Bohun, enjoying himself. “They’ll be down here in a minute.”
“Good God! Do you really think so? It’s terrible—these fellows—once they get loose they stick at nothing.... I remember in 1905.... Good heavens! Where had we better go? It’s very exposed here, isn’t it?”
“It’s very exposed everywhere,” said Bohun. “I doubt whether any of us are alive in the morning.”
“Good heavens! You don’t say so! Why should they interfere with us?”
“Oh, rich, you know, and that kind of thing. And then we’re Englishmen. They’ll clear out all the English.”
“Oh, I’m not really English. My mother was Russian. I could show them my papers....”
Bohun laughed. “I’m only kidding you, Watchett,” he said. “We’re safe enough. Look, there’s not a soul about!” We were at the corner of the Moika now; all was absolutely quiet. Two women and a man were standing on the bridge talking together. A few stars clustered above the bend of the Canal seemed to shift and waver ever so slightly through a gathering mist, like the smoke of blowing candles.
“It seems all right,” said the merchant, sniffing the air suspiciously as though he expected to smell blood. We turned towards the Morskaia. One of the women detached herself from the group and came to us.
“Don’t go down the Morskaia,” she said, whispering, as though some hostile figure were leaning over her shoulder. “They’re firing round the Telephone Exchange.” Even as she spoke I heard the sharp clatter of the machine-gun break out again, but now very close, and with an intimate note as though it were the same gun that I had heard before, which had been tracking me down round the town.
“Do you hear that?” said the merchant.
“Come on,” said Bohun. “We’ll go down the Moika. That seems safe enough!”
How strangely in the flick of a bullet the town had changed! Yesterday every street had been friendly, obvious, and open; they were now no longer streets, but secret blind avenues with strange trees, fantastic doors, shuttered windows, a grinning moon, malicious stars, and snow that lay there simply to prevent every sound. It was a town truly beleaguered as towns are in dreams. The uncanny awe with which I moved across the bridge was increased when the man with the women turned towards me, and I saw that he was—or seemed to be—that same grave bearded peasant whom I had seen by the river, whom Henry had seen in the Cathedral, who remained with one, as passing strangers sometimes do, like a symbol or a message or a threat.
He stood, with the Nevski behind him, calm and grave, and even it seemed a little amused, watching me as I crossed. I said to Bohun, “Did you ever see that fellow before?”
Bohun turned and looked.
“No,” he said.
“Don’t you remember? The man that first day in the Kazan?”
“They’re all alike,” Bohun said. “One can’t tell....”
“Oh, come on,” said the merchant. “Let’s get to the Astoria.”
We started down the Moika, past that faded picture-shop where there are always large moth-eaten canvases of cornfields under the moon and Russian weddings and Italian lakes. We had got very nearly to the little street with the wooden hoardings when the merchant gripped my arm.
“What’s that?” he gulped. The silence now was intense. We could not hear the machine-gun nor any shouting. The world was like a picture smoking under a moon now red and hard. Against the wall of the street two women were huddled, one on her knees, her head pressed against the thighs of the other, who stood stretched as though crucified, her arms out, staring on to the Canal. Beside a little kiosk, on the space exactly in front of the side street, lay a man on his face. His bowler-hat had rolled towards the kiosk; his arms were stretched out so that he looked oddly like the shadow of the woman against the wall.
Instead of one hand there was a pool of blood. The other hand with all the fingers stretched was yellow against the snow.
As we came up a bullet from the Morskaia struck the kiosk.
The woman, not moving from the wall, said, “They’ve shot my husband... he did nothing.”
The other woman, on her knees, only cried without ceasing.
The merchant said, “I’m going back—to the Europe,” and he turned and ran.
“What’s down that street?” I said to the woman, as though I expected her to say “Hobgoblins.” Bohun said, “This is rather beastly.... We ought to move that fellow out of that. He may be alive still.”
And how silly such a sentence when only yesterday, just here, there was the beggar who sold boot-laces, and just there, where the man lay, an old muddled Isvostchick asleep on his box!
We moved forward, and instantly it was as though I were in the middle of a vast desert quite alone with all the hosts of heaven aiming at me malicious darts. As I bent down my back was so broad that it stretched across Petrograd, and my feet were tiny like frogs.
We pulled at the man. His head rolled and his face turned over, and the mouth was full of snow. It was so still that I whispered, whether to Bohun or myself, “God, I wish somebody would shout!” Then I heard the wood of the kiosk crack, ever so slightly, like an opening door, and panic flooded me as I had never known it do during all my time at the Front.
“I’ve no strength,” I said to Bohun.
“Pull for God’s sake!” he answered. We dragged the body a little way; my hand clutched the thigh, which was hard and cold under the stuff of his clothing. His head rolled round, and his eyes now were covered with snow. We dragged him, and he bumped grotesquely. We had him under the wall, near the two women, and the blood welled out and dripped in a spreading pool at the women’s feet.
“Now,” said Bohun, “we’ve got to run for it.”
“Do you know,” said I, as though I were making a sudden discovery, “I don’t think I can.” I leaned back against the wall and looked at the pool of blood near the kiosk where the man had been.
“Oh, but you’ve got to,” said Bohun, who seemed to feel no fear. “We can’t stay here all night.”
“No, I know,” I answered. “But the trouble is—I’m not myself.” And I was not. Thatwasthe trouble. I was not John Durward at all. Some stranger was here with a new heart, poor shrivelled limbs, an enormous nose, a hot mouth with no eyes at all. This stranger had usurped my clothes and he refused to move. He was tied to the wall and he would not obey me.
Bohun looked at me. “I say, Durward, come on, it’s only a step. We must get to the Astoria.”
But the picture of the Astoria did not stir me. I should have seen Nina and Vera waiting there, and that should have at once determined me. So it would have been had I been myself. This other man was there.... Nina and Vera meant nothing to him at all. But I could not explain that to Bohun. “I can’t go...” I saw Bohun’s eyes—I was dreadfully ashamed. “You go on...” I muttered. I wanted to tell him that I did not think that I could endure to feel again that awful expansion of my back and the turning my feet into toads.
“Of course I can’t leave you,” he said.
And suddenly I sprang back into my own clothes again. I flung the charlatan out and he flumped off into air.
“Come on,” I said, and I ran. No bullets whizzed past us. I was ashamed of running, and we walked quite quietly over the rest of the open space.
“Funny thing,” I said, “I was damned frightened for a moment.”
“It’s the silence and the houses,” said Bohun.
Strangely enough I remember nothing between that moment and our arrival at the Astoria. We must have skirted the Canal, keeping in the shadow of the wall, then crossed the Saint Isaac’s Square. The next thing I can recall is our standing, rather breathless, in the hall of the Astoria, and the first persons I saw there were Vera and Nina, together at the bottom of the staircase, saying nothing, waiting.
In front of them was a motley crowd of Russian officers all talking and gesticulating together. I came nearer to Vera and at once I said to myself, “Lawrence is here somewhere.” She was standing, her head up, watching the doors, her eyes glowed with anticipation, her lips were a little parted. She never moved at all, but was so vital that the rest of the people seemed dolls beside her. As we came towards them Nina turned round and spoke to some one, and I saw that it was Semyonov who stood at the bottom of the staircase, his thick legs apart, stroking his beard with his hand.
We came forward and Nina began at once—
“Durdles—tell us! What’s happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. The lights after the dark and the snow bewildered me, and the noise and excitement of the Russian officers were deafening.
Nina went on, her face lit. “Can’t you tell us anything? We haven’t heard a word. We came just in an ordinary way about four o’clock. There wasn’t a sound, and then, just as we were sitting down to tea, they all came bursting in, saying that all the officers were being murdered, and that Protopopoff was killed, and that—”
“That’s true anyway,” said a young Russian officer, turning round to us excitedly. “I had it from a friend of mine who was passing just as they stuck him in the stomach. He saw it all; they dragged him out of his house and stuck him in the stomach—”
“They say the Czar’s been shot,” said another officer, a fat, red-faced man with very bright red trousers, “and that Rodziancko’s formed a government...”
I heard on every side such words as “People—Rodziancko —Protopopoff—Freedom,” and the officer telling his tale again. “And they stuck him in the stomach just as he was passing his house...”
Through all this tale Vera never moved. I saw, to my surprise, that Lawrence was there now, standing near her but never speaking. Semyonov stood on the stairs watching.
Suddenly I saw that she wanted me.
“Ivan Andreievitch,” she said, “will you do something for me?” She spoke very low, and her eyes did not look at me, but beyond us all out to the door.
“Certainly,” I said.
“Will you keep Alexei Petrovitch here? Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Bohun can see us home. I don’t want him to come with us. Will you ask him to wait and speak to you?”
I went up to him. “Semyonov,” I said, “I want a word with you, if I may—”
“Certainly,” he said, with that irritating smile of his, as though he knew exactly of what I was thinking.
We moved up the dark stairs. As we went I heard Vera’s clear, calm voice:
“Will you see us home, Mr. Lawrence?... I think it’s quite safe to go now.”