Meanwhile the astonishing fact was that the success of the dinner was Jerry Lawrence. He was placed on Vera Michailovna’s left hand, Rozanov, the Moscow merchant near to him, and I did not hear him say anything very bright or illuminating, but every one felt, I think, that he was a cheerful and dependable person. I always felt, when I observed him, that he understood the Russian character far better than any of us. He had none of the self-assertion of the average Englishman and, at the same time, he had his opinions and his preferences. He took every kind of chaff with good-humoured indifference, but I think it was above everything else his tolerance that pleased the Russians. Nothing shocked him, which did not at all mean that he had no code of honour or morals. His code was severe and stern, but his sense of human fallibility, and the fine fight that human nature was always making against stupendous odds stirred him to a fine and comprehending clarity. He had many faults. He was obstinate, often dull and lethargic, in many ways grossly ill-educated and sometimes wilfully obtuse—but he was a fine friend, a noble enemy, and a chivalrous lover. There was nothing mean nor petty in him, and his views of life and the human soul were wider and more all-embracing than in any Englishman I have ever known. You may say of course that it is sentimental nonsense to suppose at all that the human soul is making a fine fight against odds. Even I, at this period, was tempted to think that it might be nonsense, but it is a view as good as another, after all, and so ignorant are all of us that no one has a right to say that anything is impossible!
After drinking the vodka and eating the “Zakuska,” we sat down to table and devoured crayfish soup. Every one became lively. Politics of course, were discussed.
I heard Rozanov say, “Ah, you in Petrograd! What do you know of things? Don’t let me hurt any one’s feelings, pray.... Most excellent soup, Vera Michailovna—I congratulate you.... But you just wait until Moscow takes things in hand. Why only the other day Maklakoff said to a friend of mine—‘It’s all nonsense,’ he said.”
And the shrill-voiced young man told a story—“But it wasn’t the same man at all. She was so confused when she saw what she’d done, that I give you my word she was on the point of crying. I could see tears... just trembling—on the edge. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ she said, and the man was such a fool....”
Markovitch was busy about the drinks. There was some sherry and some light red wine. Markovitch was proud of having been able to secure it. He was beaming with pride. He explained to everybody how it had been done. He walked round the table and stood, for an instant, with his hand on Vera Michailovna’s shoulder. The pies with fish and cabbage in them were handed round. He jested with the old great-aunt. He shouted in her ear:
“Now, Aunt Isabella... some wine. Good for you, you know—keep you young....”
“No, no, no...” she protested, laughing and shaking her earrings, with tears in her eyes. But he filled her glass and she drank it and coughed, still protesting.
“Thank you, thank you,” she chattered as Bohun dived under the table and found her bag for her. I saw that he did not like the crayfish soup, and was distressed because he had so large a helping.
He blushed and looked at his plate, then began again to eat and stopped.
“Don’t you like it?” one of the giggling girls asked him. “But it’s very good. Have another ‘Pie!’”
The meal continued. There were little suckling pigs with “Kasha,” a kind of brown buckwheat. Every one was gayer and gayer. Now all talked at once, and no one listened to anything that any one else said. Of them all, Nina was by far the gayest. She had drunk no wine—she always said that she could not bear the nasty stuff, and although every one tried to persuade her, telling her that now when you could not get it anywhere, it was wicked not to drink it, she would not change her mind. It was simply youth and happiness that radiated from her, and also perhaps some other excitement for which I could not account. Grogoff tried to make her drink. She defied him. He came over to her chair, but she pushed him away, and then lightly slapped his cheek. Every one laughed. Then he whispered something to her. For an instant the gaiety left her eyes. “You shouldn’t say that!” she answered almost angrily. He went back to his seat. I was sitting next to her, and she was very charming to me, seeing that I had all that I needed and showing that she liked me. “You mustn’t be gloomy and ill and miserable,” she whispered to me. “Oh! I’ve seen you! There’s no need. Come to us and we’ll make you as happy as we can—Vera and I.... We both love you.”
“My dear, I’m much too old and stupid for you to bother about!”
She put her hand on my arm. “I know that I’m wicked and care only for pleasure.... Vera’s always saying so. But I can be better if you want me to be.”
This was flattering, but I knew that it was only her general happiness that made her talk like that. And at once she was after something else. “Your Englishman,” she said, looking across the table at Lawrence, “I like his face. I should be frightened of him, though.”
“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” I answered. “He wouldn’t hurt any one.”
She continued to look at him and he, glancing up, their eyes met. She smiled and he smiled. Then he raised his glass and drank.
“I mustn’t drink,” she called across the table. “It’s only water and that’s bad luck.”
“Oh, you can challenge any amount of bad luck—I’m sure,” he called back to her.
I fancied that Grogoff did not like this. He was drinking a great deal. He roughly called Nina’s attention.
“Nina... Ah—Nina!”
But she, although I am certain that she heard him, paid no attention.
He called again more loudly:
“Nina... Nina!”
“Well?” She turned towards him, her eyes laughing at him.
“Drink my health.”
“I can’t. I have only water.”
“Then you must drink wine.”
“I won’t. I detest it.”
“But you must.”
He came over to her and poured a little red wine into her water. She turned and emptied the glass over his hand. For an instant his face was dark with rage.
“I’ll pay you for that,” I heard him whisper.
She shrugged her shoulders. “He’s tiresome, Boris....” she said, “I like your Englishman better.”
We were ever gayer and gayer. There were now of course no cakes nor biscuits, but there was jam with our tea, and there were even some chocolates. I noticed that Vera and Lawrence were getting on together famously. They talked and laughed, and her eyes were full of pleasure.
Markovitch came up and stood behind them, watching them. His eyes devoured his wife.
“Vera!” he said suddenly.
“Yes!” she cried. She had not known that he was behind her; she was startled. She turned round and he came forward and kissed her hand. She let him do this, as she let him do everything, with the indulgence that one allows a child. He stood, afterwards, half in the shadow, watching her.
And now the moment for the event of the evening had arrived. The doors of Markovitch’s little work-room were suddenly opened, and there—instead of the shabby untidy dark little hole—there was a splendid Christmas Tree blazing with a hundred candles. Coloured balls and frosted silver and wooden figures of red and blue hung all about the tree—it was most beautifully done. On a table close at hand were presents. We all clapped our hands. We were childishly delighted. The old great-aunt cried with pleasure. Boris Grogoff suddenly looked like a happy boy of ten. Happiest and proudest of them all was Markovitch. He stood there, a large pair of scissors in his hand, waiting to cut the string round the parcels. We said again and again, “Marvellous!” “Wonderful!” “Splendid!”... “But this year—however did you find it, Vera Michailovna?” “To take such trouble!...” “Splendid! Splendid!” Then we were given our presents. Vera, it was obvious had chosen them, for there was taste and discrimination in the choice of every one. Mine was a little old religious figure in beaten silver—Lawrence had a silver snuff-box.... Every one was delighted. We clapped our hands. We shouted. Some one cried “Cheers for our host and hostess!”
We gave them, and in no half measure. We shouted. Boris Grogoff cried, “More cheers!”
It was then that I saw Markovitch’s face that had been puckered with pleasure like the face of a delighted child suddenly stiffen, his hand moved forward, then dropped. I turned and found, standing in the doorway, quietly watching us, Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.
I stared at him. I could not take my eyes away. I instantly forgot every one else, the room, the tree, the lights.... With a force, with a poignancy and pathos and brutality that were more cruel than I could have believed possible that other world came back to me. Ah! I could see now that all these months I had been running away from this very thing, seeking to pretend that it did not exist, that it had never existed. All in vain—utterly in vain. I saw Semyonov as I had just seen him, sitting on his horse outside the shining white house at O——. Then Semyonov operating in a stinking room, under a red light, his arms bathed in blood; then Semyonov and Trenchard; then Semyonov speaking to Marie Ivanovna, her eyes searching his face; then that day when I woke from my dream in the orchard to find his eyes staring at me through the bright green trees, and afterwards when we went in to look at her dead; then worst of all that ride back to the “Stab” with my hand on his thick, throbbing arm.... Semyonov in the Forest, working, sneering, hating us, despising us, carrying his tragedy in his eyes and defying us to care; Semyonov that last time of all, vanishing into the darkness with his “Nothing!” that lingering echo of a defiant desperate soul that had stayed with me, against my bidding, ever since I had heard it.
What a fool had I been to know these people! I had felt from the first to what it must lead, and I might have avoided it and I would not. I looked at him, I faced him, I smiled. He was the same as he had been. A little stouter, perhaps, his pale hair and square-cut beard looking as though it had been carved from some pale honey-coloured wood, the thick stolidity of his long body and short legs, the squareness of his head, the coldness of his eyes and the violent red of his lips, all were just as they had been—the same man, save that now he was in civilian clothes, in a black suit with a black bow tie. There was a smile on his lips, that same smile half sneer half friendliness that I knew so well. His eyes were veiled....
He was, I believe, as violently surprised to see me as I had been to see him, but he held himself in complete control!
He said, “Why, Durward!... Ivan Andreievitch!” Then he greeted the others.
I was able, now, to notice the general effect of his arrival. It was as though a cold wind had suddenly burst through the windows, blown out all the candles upon the tree and plunged the place into darkness. Those who did not know him felt that, with his entrance, the gaiety was gone. Markovitch’s face was pale, he was looking at Vera who, for an instant, had stood, quite silently, staring at her uncle, then, recovering herself, moved forward.
“Why, Uncle Alexei!” she cried, holding out her hand. “You’re too late for the tree! Why didn’t you tell us? Then you could have come to dinner... and now it is all over. Why didn’t you tell us?”
He took her hand, and, very solemnly, bent down and kissed it.
“I didn’t know myself, dear Vera Michailovna. I only arrived in Petrograd yesterday; and then in my house everything was wrong, and I’ve been busy all day. But I felt that I must run in and give you the greetings of the season.... Ah, Nicholas, how are you? And you, Ivan?... I telephoned to you.... Nina, my dear....” And so on. He went round and shook hands with them all. He was introduced to Bohun and Lawrence. He was very genial, praising the tree, laughing, shouting in the ears of the great-aunt. But no one responded. As so frequently happens in Russia the atmosphere was suddenly changed. No one had anything to say. The candles on the tree were blown out. Of course, the evening was not nearly ended. There would be tea and games, perhaps—at any rate every one would sit and sit until three or four if, for no other reason, simply because it demanded too much energy to rise and make farewells. But the spirit of the party was utterly dead....
The samovar hissed at the end of the table. Vera Michailovna sat there making tea for every one. Semyonov (I should now in the heart of his relations, have thought of him as Alexei Petrovitch, but so long had he been Semyonov to me that Semyonov he must remain) was next to her, and I saw that he took trouble, talking to her, smiling, his stiff strong white fingers now and then stroking his thick beard, his red lips parting a little, then closing so firmly that it seemed that they would never open again.
I noticed that his eyes often wandered towards me. He was uneasy about my presence there, I thought, and that disturbed me. I felt as I looked at him the same confusion as I had always felt. I did not hate him. His strength of character, his fearlessness, these things in a country famous for neither quality I was driven to admire and to respect. And I could not hate what I admired.
And yet my fear gathered and gathered in volume as I watched him. What would he do with these people? What plans had he? What purpose? What secret, selfish ambitions was he out now to secure?
Markovitch was silent, drinking his tea, watching his wife, watching us all with his nervous frowning expression.
I rose to go and then, when I had said farewell to every one and went towards the door, Semyonov joined me.
“Well, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “So we have not finished with one another yet.”
He looked at me with his steady unswerving eyes; he smiled.
I also smiled as I found my coat and hat in the little hall. Sacha helped me into my Shuba. He stood, his lips a little apart, watching me.
“What have you been doing all this time?” he asked me.
“I’ve been ill,” I answered.
“Not had, I hope.”
“No, not had. But enough to keep me very idle.”
“As much of an optimist as ever?”
“Was I an optimist?”
“Why, surely. A charming one. Do you love Russia as truly as ever?”
I laughed, my hand on the door. “That’s my affair, Alexei Petrovitch,” I answered.
“Certainly,” he said, smiling. “You’re looking older, you know.”
“You too,” I said.
“Yes, perhaps. Would I still think you sentimental, do you suppose?”
“It is of no importance, Alexei Petrovitch,” I said. “I’m sure you have other better things to do. Are you remaining in Petrograd?”
He looked at me then very seriously, his eyes staring straight into mine.
“I hope so.”
“You will work at your practice?”
“Perhaps.” He nodded to me. “Strange to find you here....” he said. “We shall meet again. Good-night.”
He closed the door behind me.
Next day I fell ill. I had felt unwell for several weeks, and now I woke up to a bad feverish cold, my body one vast ache, and at the same time impersonal, away from me, floating over above me, sinking under me, tied to me only by pain....
I was too utterly apathetic to care. The old woman who looked after my rooms telephoned to my doctor, a stout, red-faced jolly man, who came and laughed at me, ordered me some medicine, said that I was in a high fever, and left me. After that, I was, for several days, caught into a world of dreams and nightmares. No one, I think, came near me, save my old woman, Marfa, and a new acquaintance of mine, the Rat.
The Rat I had met some weeks before outside my house. I had been returning one evening, through the dark, with a heavy bag of books which I had fetched from an English friend of mine who lodged in the Millionnaya. I had had a cab for most of the distance, but that had stopped on the other side of the bridge—it could not drive amongst the rubbish pebbles and spars of my island. As I staggered along with my bag a figure had risen, as it seemed to me, out of the ground and asked huskily whether he could help me. I had only a few steps to go, but he seized my burden and went in front of me. I submitted. I told him my door and he entered the dark passage, climbed the rickety stairs and entered my room. Here we were both astonished. He, when I had lighted my lamp, was staggered by the splendour and luxury of my life, I, as I looked at him, by the wildness and uncouthness of his appearance. He was as a savage from the centre of Africa, thick ragged hair and beard, a powerful body in rags, and his whole attitude to the world primeval and utterly primitive. His mouth was cruel; his eyes, as almost always with the Russian peasant, mild and kindly. I do not intend to take up much space here with an account of him, but he did, after this first meeting, in some sort attach himself to me. I never learned his name nor where he lived; he was I should suppose an absolutely abominable plunderer and pirate and ruffian. He would appear suddenly in my room, stand by the door and talk—but talk with the ignorance, naïvete, brutal simplicity of an utterly abandoned baby. Nothing mystical or beautiful about the Rat. He did not disguise from me in the least that there was no crime that he had not committed—murder, rape, arson, immorality of the most hideous, sacrilege, the basest betrayal of his best friends—he was not only savage and outlaw, he was deliberate anarchist and murderer. He had no redeeming point that I could anywhere discover. I did not in the least mind his entering my room when he pleased. I had there nothing of any value; he could take my life even, had he a mind to that.... The naïve abysmal depths of his depravity interested me. He formed a kind of attachment to me. He told me that he would do anything for me. He had a strange tact which prevented him from intruding upon me when I was occupied. He was as quick as any cultured civilised cosmopolitan to see if he was not wanted. He developed a certain cleanliness; he told me, with an air of disdainful superiority, that he had been to the public baths. I gave him an old suit of mine and a pair of boots. He very seldom asked for anything; once and again he would point to something and say that he would like to have it; if I said that he could not he expressed no disappointment; sometimes he stole it, but he always acknowledged that he had done so if I asked him, although he would lie stupendously on other occasions for no reason at all.
“Now you must bring that back,” I would say sternly.
“Oh no, Barin.... Why? You have so many things. Surely you will not object. Perhaps I will bring it—and perhaps not.”
“You must certainly bring it,” I would say.
“We will see,” he would say, smiling at me in the friendliest fashion.
He was the only absolutely happy Russian I have ever known. He had no passages of despair. He had been in prison, he would be in prison again. He had spasms of the most absolute ferocity. On one occasion I thought that I should be his next victim, and for a moment my fate hung, I think, in the balance. But he changed his mind. He had a real liking for me, I think. When he could get it, he drank a kind of furniture polish, the only substitute in these days for vodka. This was an absolutely killing drink, and I tried to prove to him that frequent indulgence in it meant an early decease. That did not affect him in the least. Death had no horror for him although, I foresaw, with justice as after events proved, that if he were faced with it he would be a very desperate coward. He liked very much my cigarettes, and I gave him these on condition that he did not spit sunflower seeds over my floor. He kept his word about this.
He chatted incessantly, and sometimes I listened and sometimes not. He had no politics and was indeed comfortably ignorant of any sort of geography or party division. There were for him only the rich and the poor. He knew nothing about the war, but he hoped, he frankly told me, that there would be anarchy in Petrograd, so that he might rob and plunder.
“I will look after you then, Barin,” he answered me, “so that no one shall touch you.” I thanked him. He was greatly amused by my Russian accent, although he had no interest in the fact that I was English, nor did he want to hear in the least about London or any foreign town. Marfa, my old servant, was, of course, horrified at this acquaintanceship of mine, and warned me that it would mean both my death and hers. He liked to tease and frighten her, but he was never rude to her and offered sometimes to help her with her work, an offer that she always indignantly refused. He had some children, he told me, but he did not know where they were. He tried to respect my hospitality, never bringing any friends of his with him, and only once coming when he was the worse for drink. On that occasion he cried and endeavoured to embrace me. He apologised for this the next day.
They would try to take him soon, he supposed, for a soldier, but he thought that he would be able to escape. He hated the Police, and would murder them all if he could. He told me great tales of their cruelty, and he cursed them most bitterly. I pointed out to him that society must be protected, but he did not see why this need be so. It was, he thought, wrong that some people had so much and others so little, but this was as far as his social investigations penetrated.
He was really distressed by my illness. Marfa told me that one day when I was delirious he cried. At the same time he pointed out to her that, if I died, certain things in my rooms would be his. He liked a silver cigarette case of mine, and my watch chain, and a signet ring that I wore. I saw him vaguely, an uncertain shadow in the mists of the first days of my fever. I was not, I suppose, in actual fact, seriously ill, and yet I abandoned myself to my fate, allowing myself to slip without the slightest attempt at resistance, along the easiest way, towards death or idiocy or paralysis, towards anything that meant the indifferent passivity of inaction. I had bad, confused dreams. The silence irritated me. I fancied to myself that the sea ought to make some sound, that it was holding itself deliberately quiescent in preparation for some event. I remember that Marfa and the doctor prevented me from rising to look from my window that I might see why the sea was not roaring. Some one said to me in my dreams something about “Ice,” and again and again I repeated the word to myself as though it were intensely significant. “Ice! Ice! Ice!... Yes, that was what I wanted to know!” My idea from this was that the floor upon which I rested was exceedingly thin, made only of paper in fact, and that at any moment it might give way and precipitate me upon the ice. This terrified me, and the way that the cold blew up through the cracks in the floor was disturbing enough. I knew that my doctor thought me mad to remain in such a place. But above all I was overwhelmed by the figure of Semyonov. He haunted me in all my dreams, his presence never left me for a single instant. I could not be sure whether he were in the room or no, but certainly he was close to me... watching me, sneering at me as he had so often done before.
I was conscious also of Petrograd, of the town itself, in every one of its amazingly various manifestations. I saw it all laid out as though I were a great height above it—the fashionable streets, the Nevski and the Morskaia with the carriages and the motor-cars and trams, the kiosks and the bazaars, the women with their baskets of apples, the boys with the newspapers, the smart cinematographs, the shop in the Morskaia with the coloured stones in the window, the oculist and the pastry-cook’s and the hairdressers and the large “English shop” at the corner of the Nevski, and Pivato’s the restaurant, and close beside it the art shop with popular post cards and books on Serov and Vrubel, and the Astoria Hotel with its shining windows staring on to S. Isaac’s Square. And I saw the Nevski, that straight and proud street, filled with every kind of vehicle and black masses of people, rolling like thick clouds up and down, here and there, the hum of their talk rising like mist from the snow. And there was the Kazan Cathedral, haughty and proud, and the book shop with the French books and complete sets of Tchekov and Merejkowsky in the window, and the bridges and the palaces and the square before the Alexander Theatre, and Elisseieff’s the provision shop, and all the banks, and the shops with gloves and shirts, all looking ill-fitting as though they were never meant to be worn, and then the little dirty shops poked in between the grand ones, the shop with rubber goods and the shop with an Aquarium, gold-fish and snails and a tortoise, and the shop with oranges and bananas. Then, too, there was the Arcade with the theatre where they actedRomanceandPotash and Perlmutter(almost as they do in London), and on the other side of the street, at the corner of the Sadovia, the bazaar with all its shops and its trembling mist of people. I watched the Nevski, and saw how it slipped into the Neva with the Red Square on one side of it, and S. Isaac’s Square on the other, and the great station at the far end of it, and about these two lines the Neva and the Nevski, the whole town sprawled and crept, ebbed and flowed. Away from the splendour it stretched, dirty and decrepit and untended, here piles of evil flats, there old wooden buildings with cobbled courts, and the canals twisting and creeping up and down through it all. It was all bathed, as I looked down upon it, in coloured mist. The air was purple and gold and light blue, fading into the snow and ice and transforming it. Everywhere there were the masts of ships and the smell of the sea and rough deserted places—and shadows moved behind the shadows, and yet more shadows behindthem, so that it was all uncertain and unstable, and only the river knew what it was about.
Over the whole town Semyonov and I moved together, and the ice and snow silenced our steps, and no one in the whole place spoke a word, so that we had to lower our voices and whispered....
Suddenly I was better. I quite recovered from my fever and only lay still on my bed, weak, and very hungry. I was happy, happy as I had not been since I came to Petrograd. I felt all the luxury of convalescence creeping into my bones. All that I need do was to lie there and let people feed me and read a little if it did not make my head ache. I had a water-colour painted by Alexander Benois on the wall opposite me, a night in the Caucasus, with a heavy sweep of black hill, a deep blue steady sky, and a thin grey road running into endless distance. A pleasing picture, with no finality in its appeal—intimate too, so that it was one’s own road and one’s own hill. I had bought it extravagantly, at last year’s “Mir Eskoustva,” and now I was pleased at my extravagance.
Marfa was very good to me, feeding me, and being cross with me to make me take an interest in things, and acting with wonderful judgement about my visitors. Numbers of people, English and Russian, came to see me—I had not known that I had so many friends. I felt amiable to all the world, and hopeful about it, too. I looked back on the period before my illness as a bad dream.
People told me I was foolish to live out in this wretched place of mine, where it was cold and wild and lonely. And then when they came again they were not so sure, and they looked out on the ice that shone in waves and shadows of light under the sun, and thought that perhaps they too would try. But of course, I knew well that they would not....
As I grew stronger I felt an intense and burning interest in the history that had been developing when I fell ill. I heard that Vera Michailovna and Nina had called many times. Markovitch had been, and Henry Bohun and Lawrence.
Then, one sunny afternoon, Henry Bohun came in and I was surprised at my pleasure at the sight of him. He was shocked at the change in me, and was too young to conceal it.
“Oh, you do look bad!” were his first words as he sat down by my bed. “I say, are you comfortable here? Wouldn’t you rather be somewhere with conveniences—telephone and lifts and things?”
“Not at all!” I answered. “I’ve got a telephone. I’m very happy where I am.”
“It is a queer place,” he said. “Isn’t it awfully unhealthy?”
“Quite the reverse—with the sea in front of it! About the healthiest spot in Petrograd!”
“But I should get the blues here. So lonely and quiet. Petrograd is a strange town! Most people don’t dream there’s a queer place like this.”
“That’s why I like it,” I said. “I expect there are lots of queer places in Petrograd if you only knew.”
He wandered about the room, looking at my few pictures and my books and my writing-table. At last he sat down again by my bed.
“Now tell me all the news,” I said.
“News?” he asked. He looked uncomfortable, and I saw at once that he had come to confide something in me. “What sort of news? Political?”
“Anything.”
“Well, politics are about the same. They say there’s going to be an awful row in February when the Duma meets—but then other people say there won’t be a row at all until the war is over.”
“What else do they say?”
“They say Protopopoff is up to all sorts of tricks. That he says prayers with the Empress and they summon Rasputin’s ghost.... That’s all rot of course. But he does just what the Empress tells him, and they’re going to enslave the whole country and hand it over to Germany.”
“What will they do that for?” I asked.
“Why, then, the Czarevitch will have it—under Germany. They say that none of the munitions are going to the Front, and Protopopoff’s keeping them all to blow up the people here with.”
“What else?” I asked sarcastically.
“No, but really, there’s something in it, I expect.” Henry looked serious and important. “Then on the other hand, Clutton-Davies says the Czar’s absolutely all right, dead keen on the war and hates Germany...Idon’t know—but Clutton-Davies sees him nearly every day.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Oh, food’s worse than ever! Going up every day, and the bread queues are longer and longer. The Germans have spies in the queues, women who go up and down telling people it’s all England’s fault.”
“And people are just the same?”
“Just the same; Donons’ and the Bear are crowded every day. You can’t get a table. So are the cinematographs and the theatres. I went to the Ballet last night.”
“What was it?”
“‘La fille mal gardée’—Karsavina dancing divinely. Every one was there.”
This closed the strain of public information. I led him further.
“Well, Bohun, what about our friends the Markovitches?” I asked. “How are you getting on there?”
He blushed and looked at his boots.
“All right,” he said. “They’re very decent.”
Then he burst out with: “I say, Durward, what do you think of this uncle that’s turned up, the doctor chap?”
“Nothing particular. Why?”
“You were with him at the Front, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“Was he a good doctor?”
“Excellent.”
“He had a love affair at the Front, hadn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And she was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Poor devil....” Then he added: “Did he mind very much?”
“Very much.”
“Funny thing, you wouldn’t think he would.”
“Why not,” I asked.
“Oh, he looks a hard sort of fellow—as though he’d stand anything. I wouldn’t like to have a row with him.”
“Has he been to the Markovitches much lately?”
“Yes—almost every evening.”
“What does he do there?”
“Oh, just sits and talks. Markovitch can’t bear him. You can see that easily enough. He teases him.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, he laughs at him all the time, at his inventions and that kind of thing. Markovitch gets awfully wild. He is bit of an ass, isn’t he?”
“Do you like Semyonov?” I asked.
“I do rather,” said Henry. “He’s very decent to me. I had a walk with him one afternoon. He said you were awfully brave at the Front.”
“Thank him for nothing,” I said.
“And he said you didn’t like him—don’t you?”
“Ah, that’s too old a story,” I answered. “We know what we feel about one another.”
“Well, Lawrence simply hates him,” continued Bohun. “He says he’s the most thundering cad, and as bad as you make them. I don’t see how he can tell.”
This interested me extremely. “When did he tell you this?” I asked.
“Yesterday. I asked him what he had to judge by and he said instinct. I said he’d no right to go only by that.”
“Has Lawrence been much to the Markovitches?”
“Yes—once or twice. He just sits there and never opens his mouth.”
“Very wise of him if he hasn’t got anything to say.”
“No, but really—do you think so? It doesn’t make him popular.”
“Why, who doesn’t like him?”
“Nobody,” answered Henry ungrammatically. “None of the English anyway. They can’t stand him at the Embassy or the Mission. They say he’s fearfully stuck-up and thinks about nothing but himself.... I don’t agree, of course—all the same, he might make himself more agreeable to people.”
“What nonsense!” I answered hotly. “Lawrence is one of the best fellows that ever breathed. The Markovitches don’t dislike him, do they?”
“No, he’s quite different with them. Vera Michailovna likes him I know.”
It was the first time that he had mentioned her name to me. He turned towards me now, his face crimson. “I say—that’s really what I came to talk about, Durward. I care for her madly!... I’d die for her. I would really. I love her, Durward. I see now I’ve never loved anybody before.”
“Well, what will you do about it?”
“Do about it?... Why nothing, of course. It’s all perfectly hopeless. In the first place, there’s Markovitch.”
“Yes. There’s Markovitch,” I agreed.
“She doesn’t care for him—does she? You know that—” He waited, eagerly staring into my face.
I had a temptation to laugh. He was so very young, so very helpless, and yet—that sense of his youth had pathos in it too, and I suddenly liked young Bohun—for the first time.
“Look here, Bohun,” I said, trying to speak with a proper solemnity. “Don’t be a young ass. You know that it’s hopeless, any feeling of that kind. Shedoescare for her husband. She could never care for you in that way, and you’d only make trouble for them all if you went on with it.... On the other hand, she needs a friend badly. You can do that for her. Be her pal. See that things are all right in the house. Make a friend of Markovitch himself. Look afterhim!”
“Look after Markovitch!” Bohun exclaimed.
“Yes... I don’t want to be melodramatic, but there’s trouble coming there; and if you’re the friend of them all, you can help—more than you know. Only none of the other business—”
Bohun flushed. “She doesn’t know—she never will. I only want to be a friend of hers, as you put it. Anything else is hopeless, of course. I’m not the kind of fellow she’d ever look at, even if Markovitch wasn’t there. But if I can do anything... I’d be awfully glad. What kind of trouble do you mean?” he asked.
“Probably nothing,” I said; “only she wants a friend. And Markovitch wants one too.”
There was a pause—then Bohun said, “I say, Durward—what an awful ass I was.”
“What about?” I asked.
“About my poetry—and all that. Thinking it so important.”
“Yes,” I said, “you were.”
“I’ve written some poetry to her and I tore it up,” he ended.
“That’s a good thing,” said I.
“I’m glad I told you,” he said. He got up to go. “I say, Durward—”
“Well,” I asked.
“You’re an awfully funny chap. Not a bit what you look—”
“That’s all right,” I said; “I know what you mean.”
“Well, good-night,” he said, and went.
I thought that night, as I lay cosily in my dusky room, of those old stories by Wilkie Collins that had once upon a time so deeply engrossed my interest—stories in which, because some one has disappeared on a snowy night, or painted his face blue, or locked up a room and lost the key, or broken down in his carriage on a windy night at the cross-roads, dozens of people are involved, diaries are written, confessions are made, and all the characters move along different roads towards the same lighted, comfortable Inn. That is the kind of story that intrigues me, whether it be written about out-side mysteries by Wilkie Collins or inside mysteries by the great creator of “The Golden Bowl” or mysteries of both kinds, such as Henry Galleon has given us. I remember a friend of mine, James Maradick, once saying to me, “It’s no use trying to keep out of things. As soon as they want to put you in—you’re in. The moment you’re born, you’re done for.”
It’s just that spectacle of some poor innocent being suddenly caught into some affair, against his will, without his knowledge, but to the most serious alteration of his character and fortunes, that one watches with a delight almost malicious—whether it beThe Woman in White, The Wings of the Dove,orThe Roadsthat offer it us. Well, I had now to face the fact that something of this kind had happened to myself.
I was drawn in—and I was glad. I luxuriated in my gladness, lying there in my room under the wavering, uncertain light of two candles, hearing the church bells clanging and echoing mysteriously beyond the wall. I lay there with a consciousness of being on the very verge of some adventure, with the assurance, too, that I was to be of use once more, to play my part, to fling aside, thank God, that old cloak of apathetic disappointment, of selfish betrayal, of cynical disbelief. Semyonov had brought the old life back to me and I had shrunk from the impact of it; but he had brought back to me, too, the presences of my absent friends who, during these weary months, had been lost to me. It seemed to me that, in the flickering twilight, John and Marie were bringing forward to me Vera and Nina and Jerry and asking me to look after them.... I would do my best.
And while I was thinking of these things Vera Michailovna came in. She was suddenly in the room, standing there, her furs up to her throat, her body in shadow, but her large, grave eyes shining through the candlelight, her mouth smiling.
“Is it all right?” she said, coming forward. “I’m not in the way? You’re not sleeping?”
I told her that I was delighted to see her.
“I’ve been almost every day, but Marfa told me you were not well enough. Shedoesguard you—like a dragon. But to-night Nina and I are going to Rozanov’s, to a party, and she said she’d meet me here.... Shan’t I worry you?”
“Worry me! You’re the most restful friend I have—” I felt so glad to see her that I was surprised at my own happiness. She sat down near to me, very quietly, moving, as she always did, softly and surely.
I could see that she was distressed because I looked ill, but she asked me no tiresome questions, said nothing about my madness in living as I did (always so irritating, as though I were a stupid child), praised the room, admired the Benois picture, and then talked in her soft, kindly voice.
“We’ve missed you so much, Nina and I,” she said. “I told Nina that if she came to-night she wasn’t to make a noise and disturb you.”
“She can make as much noise as she likes,” I said. “I like the right kind of noise.”
We talked a little about politics and England and anything that came into our minds. We both felt, I know, a delightful, easy intimacy and friendliness and trust. I had never with any other woman felt such a sense of friendship, something almost masculine in its comradeship and honesty. And to-night this bond between us strengthened wonderfully. I blessed my luck. I saw that there were dark lines under her eyes and that she was pale.
“You’re tired,” I said.
“Yes, I am,” she acknowledged. “And I don’t know why. At least, I do know. I’m going to use you selfishly, Durdles. I’m going to tell you all my troubles and ask your help in every possible way. I’m going to let you off nothing.”
I took her hand.
“I’m proud,” I said, “now and always.”
“Do you know that I’ve never asked any one’s help before? I was rather conceited that I could get on always without it. When I was very small I wouldn’t take a word of advice from any one, and mother and father, when I was tiny, used to consult me about everything. Then they were killed and Ihadto go on alone.... And after that, when I married Nicholas, it was I again who decided everything. And my mistakes taught me nothing. I didn’t want them to teach me.”
She spoke that last word fiercely, and through the note that came into her voice I saw suddenly the potentialities that were in her, the other creature that she might be if she were ever awakened.
She talked then for a long time. She didn’t move at all; her head rested on her hand and her eyes watched me. As I listened I thought of my other friend Marie, who now was dead, and how restless she was when she spoke, moving about the room, stopping to demand my approval, protesting against my criticism, laughing, crying out.... Vera was so still, so wise, too, in comparison with Marie, braver too—and yet the same heart, the same charity, the same nobility.
But she was my friend, and Marie I had loved.... The difference in that! And how much easier now to help than it had been then, simply because one’s own soulwasone’s own and one stood by oneself!
How happy a thing freedom is—and how lonely!
She told me many things that I need not repeat here, but, as she talked, I saw how, far more deeply than I had imagined, Nina had been the heart of the whole of her life. She had watched over her, protected her, advised her, warned her, and loved her, passionately, jealously, almost madly all the time.
“When I married Nicholas,” she said, “I thought of Nina more than any one else. That was wrong.... I ought to have thought most of Nicholas; but I knew that I could give her a home, that she could have everything she wanted. And still she would be with me. Nicholas was only too ready for that. I thought I would care for her until some one came who was worthy of her, and who would look after her far better than I ever could.
“But the only person who had come was Boris Grogoff. He loved Nina from the first moment, in his own careless, conceited, opinionated way.”
“Why did you let him come so often to the house if you didn’t approve of him?” I asked.
“How could I prevent it?” she asked me. “We Russians are not like the English. In England I know you just shut the door and say, ‘Not at home.’
“Here if any one wanted to come he comes. Very often we hate him for coming, but still there it is. It is too much trouble to turn him out, besides it wouldn’t be kind—and anyway they wouldn’t go. You can be as rude as you like here and nobody cares. For a long while Nina paid no attention to Boris. She doesn’t like him. She will never like him, I’m sure. But now, these last weeks, I’ve begun to be afraid. In some way, he has power over her—not much power, but a little—and she is so young, so ignorant—she knows nothing.
“Until lately she always told me everything. Now she tells me nothing. She’s strange with me; angry for nothing. Then sorry and sweet again—then suddenly angry.... She’s excited and wild, going out all the time, but unhappy too.... Iknowshe’s unhappy. I can feel it as though it were myself.”
“You’re imagining things,” I said. “Now when the war’s reached this period we’re all nervous and overstrung. The atmosphere of this town is enough to make any one fancy that they see anything. Nina’s all right.”
“I’m losing her! I’m losing her!” Vera cried, suddenly stretching out her hand as though in a gesture of appeal. “She must stay with me. I don’t know what’s happening to her. Ah, and I’m so lonely without her!”
There was silence between us for a little, and then she went on.
“Durdles, I did wrong to marry Nicholas—wrong to Nina, wrong to Nicholas, wrong to myself, I thought it was right. I didn’t love Nicholas—I never loved him and I never pretended to. He knew that I did not. But I thought then that I was above love, that knowledge was what mattered. Ideas—saving the world—and he hadsuchideas! Wonderful! There was, I thought, nothing that he would not be able to do if only he were helped enough. He wanted help in every way. He was such a child, so unhappy, so lonely, I thought that I could give him everything that he needed. Don’t fancy that I thought that I sacrificed myself. I felt that I was the luckiest girl in all the world—and still, now when I see that he is not strong enough for his ideas I care for him as I did then, and I would never let any trouble touch him if I could help it. But if—if—”
She paused, turned away from me, looking towards the window.
“If, after all, I was wrong. If, after all, I was meant to love. If love were to come now... real love... now....”
She broke off, suddenly stood up, and very low, almost whispering, said:
“I have fancied lately that it might come. And then, what should I do? Oh, what should I do? With Nicholas and Nina and all the trouble there is now in the world—and Russia—I’m afraid of myself—and ashamed....”
I could not speak. I was utterly astonished. Could it be Bohun of whom she was speaking? No, I saw at once that the idea was ludicrous. But if not—.
I took her hand.
“Vera,” I said. “Believe me. I’m much older than you, and I know. Love’s always selfish, always cruel to others, always means trouble, sorrow, and disappointment. But it’s worth it, even when it brings complete disaster. Life isn’t life without it.”
I felt her hand tremble in mine.
“I don’t know,” she said, “I know nothing of it, except my love for Nina. It isn’t that now there’s anybody. Don’t think that. There is no one—no one. Only my self-confidence is gone. I can’t see clearly any more. My duty is to Nina and Nicholas. And if they are happy nothing else matters—nothing. And I’m afraid that I’m going to do them harm.”
She paused as though she were listening. “There’s no one there, is there?” she asked me—“there by the door?”
“No—no one.”
“There are so many noises in this house. Don’t they disturb you?”
“I don’t think of them now. I’m used to them—and in fact I like them.”
She went on: “It’s Uncle Alexei of course. He comes to see us nearly every day. He’s very pleasant, more pleasant than he has ever been before, but he has a dreadful effect on Nicholas—”
“I know the effect he can have,” I said.
“I know that Nicholas has been feeling for a long time that his inventions are no use. He will never own it to me or to any one—but I can tell. I know it so well. The war came and his new feeling about Russia carried him along. He put everything into that. Now that has failed him, and he despises himself for having expected it to do otherwise. He’s raging about, trying to find something that he can believe in, and Uncle Alexei knows that and plays on that.... He teases him; he drives him wild and then makes him happy again. He can do anything with him he pleases. He always could. But now he has some plan. I used to think that he simply laughed at people because it amused him to see how weak they can be. But now there’s more than that. He’s been hurt himself at last, and that has hurt his pride, and he wants to hurt back.... It’s all in the dark. The war’s in the dark... everything....” Then she smiled and put her hand on my arm. “That’s why I’ve come to you, because I trust you and believe you and know you say what you mean.”
Once before Marie had said those same words to me. It was as though I heard her voice again.
“I won’t fail you,” I said.
There was a knock on the door, it was flung open as though by the wind, and Nina was with us. Her face was rosy with the cold, her eyes laughed under her little round fur cap. She came running across the room, pulled herself up with a little cry beside the bed, and then flung herself upon me, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me.
“My dear Nina!” cried Vera.
She looked up, laughing.
“Why not? Poor Durdles. Are you better?Biédnie... give me your hands. But—how cold they are! And there are draughts everywhere. I’ve brought you some chocolates—and a book.”
“My dear!...” Vera cried again. “He won’t likethat,” pointing to a work of fiction by a modern Russian literary lady whose heart and brain are of the succulent variety.
“Why not? She’s very good. It’s lovely! All about impossible people! Durdles,dear! I’ll give up the party. We won’t go. We’ll sit here and entertain you. I’ll send Boris away. We’ll tell him we don’t want him.”
“Boris!” cried Vera.
“Yes,” Nina laughed a little uneasily, I thought. “I know you said he wasn’t to come. He’ll quarrel with Rozanov of course. But he said he would. And so how was one to prevent him? You’re always so tiresome, Vera.... I’m not a baby now, nor is Boris. If he wants to come he shall come.”
Vera stood away from us both. I could see that she was very angry. I had never seen her angry before.
“You know that it’s impossible, Nina,” she said. “You know that Rozanov hates him. And besides—there are other reasons. You know them perfectly well, Nina.”
Nina stood there pouting, tears were in her eyes.
“You’re unfair,” she said. “You don’t let me do anything. You give me no freedom, I don’t care for Boris, but if he wants to go he shall go. I’m grown up now. You have your Lawrence. Let me have my Boris.”
“My Lawrence?” asked Vera.
“Yes. You know that you’re always wanting him to come—always looking for him. I like him, too. I like him very much. But you never let me talk to him. You never—”
“Quiet, Nina.” Vera’s voice was trembling. Her face was sterner than I’d ever seen it. “You’re making me angry.”
“I don’t care how angry I make you. It’s true. You’re impossible now. Why shouldn’t I have my friends? I’ve nobody now. You never let me have anybody. And I like Mr. Lawrence—”
She began to sob, looking the most desolate figure.
Vera turned.
“You don’t know what you’ve said, Nina, nor how you’ve hurt.... You can go to your party as you please—”
And before I could stop her she was gone.
Nina turned to me a breathless, tearful face. She waited; we heard the door below closed.
“Oh, Durdles, what have I done?”
“Go after her! Stop her!” I said.
Nina vanished and I was alone. My room was intensely quiet.
They didn’t come to see me again together. Vera came twice, kind and good as always, but with no more confidences; and Nina once with flowers and fruit and a wild chattering tongue about the cinemas and Smyrnov, who was delighting the world at the Narodny Dom, and the wonderful performance of Lermontov’s “Masquerade” that was shortly to take place at the Alexander Theatre.
“Are you and Vera friends again?” I asked her.
“Oh yes! Why not?” And she went on, snapping a chocolate almond between her teeth—“The one at the ‘Piccadilly’ is the best. It’s an Italian one, and there’s a giant in it who throws people all over the place, out of windows and everywhere. Ah! how lovely!... I wish I could go every night.”
“You ought to be helping with the war,” I said severely.
“Oh, I hate the war!” she answered. “We’re all terribly tired of it. Tanya’s given up going to the English hospital now, and is just meaning to be as gay as she can be; and Zinaida Fyodorovna had just come back from her Otriad on the Galician front, and she says it’s shocking there now—no food or dancing or anything. Why doesn’t every one make peace?”
“Do you want the Germans to rule Russia?” I asked.
“Why not?” she said, laughing. “We can’t do it ourselves. We don’t care who does it. The English can do it if they like, only they’re too lazy to bother. The German’s aren’t lazy, and if they were here we’d have lots of theatres and cinematographs.”
“Don’t you love your country?” I asked.
“This isn’t our country,” she answered. “It just belongs to the Empress and Protopopoff.”
“Supposing it became your country and the Emperor went?”
“Oh, then it would belong to a million different people, and in the end no one would have anything. Can’t you see how they’d fight?”... She burst out laughing: “Boris and Nicholas and Uncle Alexei and all the others!”
Then she was suddenly serious.
“I know, Durdles, you consider that I’m so young and frivolous that I don’t think of anything serious. But I can see things like any one else. Can’t you see that we’re all so disappointed with ourselves that nothing matters? We thought the war was going to be so fine—but now it’s just like the Japanese one, all robbery and lies—and we can’t do anything to stop it.”
“Perhaps some day some one will,” I said.
“Oh yes!” she answered scornfully, “men like Boris.”
After that she refused to be grave for a moment, danced about the room, singing, and finally vanished, a whirlwind of blue silk.
A week later I was out in the world again. That curious sense of excitement that had first come to me during the early days of my illness burnt now more fiercely than ever. I cannot say what it was exactly that I thought was going to happen. I have often looked back, as many other people must have done, to those days in February and wondered whether I foresaw anything of what was to come, and what were the things that might have seemed to me significant if I had noticed them. And here I am deliberately speaking of both public and private affairs. I cannot quite frankly dissever the two. At the Front, a year and a half before, I had discovered how intermingled the souls of individuals and the souls of countries were, and how permanent private history seemed to me and how transient public events; but whether that was true or no before, it was now most certain that it was the story of certain individuals that I was to record,—the history that was being made behind them could at its best be only a background.
I seemed to step into a city ablaze with a sinister glory. If that appears melodramatic I can only say that the dazzling winter weather of those weeks was melodramatic. Never before had I seen the huge buildings tower so high, never before felt the shadows so vast, the squares and streets so limitless in their capacity for swallowing light and colour. The sky was a bitter changeless blue; the buildings black; the snow and ice, glittering with purple and gold, swept by vast swinging shadows as though huge doors opened and shut in heaven, or monstrous birds hovered, their wings spread, motionless in the limitless space.
And all this had, as ever, nothing to do with human life. The little courtyards with their woodstacks and their coloured houses, carts and the cobbled squares and the little stumpy trees that bordered the canals and the little wooden huts beside the bridges with their candles and fruit—these were human and friendly and good, but they had their precarious condition like the rest of us.
On the first afternoon of my new liberty I found myself in the Nevski Prospect, bewildered by the crowds and the talk and trams and motors and carts that passed in unending sequence up and down the long street. Standing at the corner of the Sadovia and the Nevski one was carried straight to the point of the golden spire that guarded the farther end of the great street. All was gold, the surface of the road was like a golden stream, the canal was gold, the thin spire caught into its piercing line all the colour of the swiftly fading afternoon; the wheels of the carriages gleamed, the flower-baskets of the women glittered like shining foam, the snow flung its crystal colour into the air like thin fire dim before the sun. The street seemed to have gathered on to its pavements the citizens of every country under the sun. Tartars, Mongols, Little Russians, Chinamen, Japanese, French officers, British officers, peasants and fashionable women, schoolboys, officials, actors and artists and business men and priests and sailors and beggars and hawkers and, guarding them all, friendly, urbane, filled with a pleasant self-importance that seemed at that hour the simplest and easiest of attitudes, the Police. “Rum—rum—rum—whirr—whirr—whirr—whirr”—like the regular beat of a shuttle the hum rose and fell, as the sun faded into rosy mist and white vapours stole above the still canals.
I turned to go home and felt some one touch my elbow.
I swung round and there, his broad face ruddy with the cold, was Jerry Lawrence.
I was delighted to see him and told him so.
“Well, I’m damned glad,” he said gruffly. “I thought you might have a grudge against me.”
“A grudge?” I said. “Why?”
“Haven’t been to see you. Heard you were ill, but didn’t think you’d want me hanging round.”
“Why this modesty?” I asked.
“No—well—you know what I mean.” He shuffled his feet. “No good in a sick-room.”
“Mine wasn’t exactly a sick-room,” I said. “But I heard that you did come.”
“Yes. I came twice,” he answered, looking at me shyly. “Your old woman wouldn’t let me see you.”
“Never mind that,” I said; “let’s have an evening together soon.”
“Yes—as soon as you like.” He looked up and down the street. “There are some things I’d like to ask your advice about.”
“Certainly,” I said.
“What do you say to coming and dining at my place? Ever met Wilderling?”
“Wilderling?” I could not remember for the moment the name.
“Yes—the old josser I live with. Fine old man—got a point of view of his own!”
“Delighted,” I said.
“To-morrow. Eight o’clock. Don’t dress.”
He was just going off when he turned again.
“Awfully glad you’re better,” he said. He cleared his throat, looked at me in a very friendly way, then smiled.
“Awfullyglad you’re better,” he repeated, then went off, rolling his broad figure into the evening mist.
I turned towards home.