Part + 

III + 

Markovitch and Semyonov + 

I + 

On the evening of that very afternoon, Thursday, I again collapsed. I was coming home in the dusk through a whispering world. All over the streets, everywhere on the broad shining snow, under a blaze of stars so sharp and piercing that the sky seemed strangely close and intimate, the talk went on. Groups everywhere and groups irrespective of all class distinction⁠—a well-to-do woman in rich furs, a peasant woman with a shawl over her head, a wild, bearded soldier, a stout, important officer, a maidservant, a cabdriver, a shopman⁠—talking, talking, talking, talking.⁠ ⁠… The eagerness, the ignorance, the odd fairytale world spun about those groups, so that the coloured domes of the churches, the silver network of the stars, the wooden booths, the mist of candles before the icons, the rough painted pictures on the shops advertising the goods sold within⁠—all these things shared in that crude idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairytale of brutality, goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition and devotion that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic, hard-fighting, brave and unthinking Europe!⁠ ⁠… + 

That, however, was not now my immediate business⁠—enough of that presently. My immediate business, as I very quickly discovered, was to pluck up enough strength to drag my wretched body home. The events of the week had, I suppose, carried me along. I was to suffer now the inevitable reaction. I felt exactly as though I had been shot from a gun and landed, suddenly, without breath, without any strength in any of my limbs in a new and strange world. I was standing, when I first realised my weakness, beside the wooden booths in the Sadovaya. They were all closed of course, but along the pavement women and old men had baskets containing sweets and notepaper and red paper tulips offered in memory of the glorious Revolution. Right across the Square the groups of people scattered in little dusky pools against the snow, until they touched the very doors of the church.⁠ ⁠… I saw all this, was conscious that the stars and the church candles mingled⁠ ⁠… then suddenly I had to clutch the side of the booth behind me to prevent myself from falling. My head swam, my limbs were as water, and my old so well-remembered friend struck me in the middle of the spine as though he had cut me in two with his knife. How was I ever to get home? No one noticed me⁠—indeed they seemed to my sick eyes to have ceased to be human. Ghosts in a ghostly world, the snow gleaming through them so that they only moved like a thin diaphanous veil against the wall of the sky⁠ ⁠… I clutched my booth. In a moment I should be down. The pain in my back was agony, my legs had ceased to exist, and I was falling into a dark, dark pool of clear jet-black water, at the bottom of which lay a star.⁠ ⁠… + 

The strange thing is that I do not know who it was who rescued me. I know that someone came. I know that to my own dim surprise an isvostchick was there and that very feebly I got into it. Someone was with me. Was it my black-bearded peasant? I fancy now that it was. I can even, on looking back, see him sitting up, very large and still, one thick arm holding me. I fancy that I can still smell the stuff of his clothes. I fancy that he talked to me, very quietly, reassuring me about something. But, upon my word, I don’t know. One can so easily imagine what one wants to be true, and now I want, more than I would then ever have believed to be possible, to have had actual contact with him. It is the only conversation between us that can ever have existed: never, before or after, was there another opportunity. And in any case there can scarcely have been a conversation, because I certainly said nothing, and I cannot remember anything that he said, if indeed he said anything at all. At any rate I was there in the Sadovaya, I was in a cab, I was in my bed. The truth of the rest of it anyone may decide for himself.⁠ ⁠… + 

II + 

That Thursday was March 15. I was conscious of my existence again on Sunday, April 1st. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a thaw. That was the first thing of which I was aware⁠—that water was apparently dripping on every side of me. It is a strange sensation to lie on your bed very weak, and very indifferent, and to feel the world turning to moisture all about you.⁠ ⁠… My ramshackle habitation had never been a very strong defence against the outside world. It seemed now to have definitely decided to abandon the struggle. The water streamed down the panes of my window opposite my bed. One patch of my ceiling (just above my only bookcase, confound it!) was coloured a mouldy grey, and from this huge drops like elephant’s tears, splashed monotonously. (Already The Spirit of Man was disfigured by a long grey streak, and the green back of Galleon’s Roads was splotched with stains.) Someone had placed a bucket near the door to catch a perpetual stream flowing from the corner of the room. Down into the bucket it pattered with a hasty, giggling, hysterical jiggle. I rather liked the companionship of it. I didn’t mind it at all. I really minded nothing whatever.⁠ ⁠… I sighed my appreciation of my return to life. My sigh brought someone from the corner of my room and that someone was, of course, the inevitable Rat. He came up to my bed in his stealthy, furtive fashion, and looked at me reproachfully. I asked him, my voice sounding to myself strange and very far away, what he was doing there. He answered that if it had not been for him I should be dead. He had come early one morning and found me lying in my bed and no one in the place at all. No one⁠—because the old woman had vanished. Yes, the neighbours had told him. Apparently on that very Thursday she had decided that the Revolution had given her her freedom, and that she was never going to work for anybody ever again. She had told a woman-neighbour that she heard that the land now was going to be given back to everybody, and she was returning therefore to her village somewhere in the Moscow Province. She had not been back there for twenty years. And first, to celebrate her liberty, she would get magnificently drunk on furniture polish. + 

“I did not see her of course,” said the Rat. “No. When I came, early in the morning, no one was here. I thought that you were dead, barin, and I began collecting your property, so that no one else should take it. Then you made a movement, and I saw that you were alive⁠—so I got some cabbage soup and gave it you. That certainly saved you.⁠ ⁠… I’m going to stay with you now.” + 

I did not care in the least whether he went or stayed. He chattered on. By staying with me he would inevitably neglect his public duties. Perhaps I didn’t know that he had public duties? Yes, he was now an Anarchist, and I should be astonished very shortly, by the things the Anarchists would do. All the same, they had their own discipline. They had their own processions, too, like anyone else. Only four days ago he had marched all over Petrograd carrying a black flag. He must confess that he was rather sick of it. But they must have processions.⁠ ⁠… Even the prostitutes had marched down the Nevski the other day demanding shorter hours. + 

But of course I cannot remember all that he said. During the next few days I slowly pulled myself out of the misty dead world in which I had been lying. Pain came back to me, leaping upon me and then receding, finally, on the third day suddenly leaving me altogether. The Rat fed me on cabbage soup and glasses of tea and caviar and biscuits. During those three days he never left me, and indeed tended me like a woman. He would sit by my bed and with his rough hand stroke my hair, while he poured into my ears ghastly stories of the many crimes that he had committed. I noticed that he was cleaner and more civilised. His beard was clipped and he smelt of cabbage and straw⁠—a rather healthy smell. One morning he suddenly took the pail, filled it with water and washed himself in front of my windows. He scrubbed himself until I should have thought that he had no skin left. + 

“You’re a fine big man, Rat,” I said. + 

He was delighted with that, and came quite near my bed, stretching his naked body, his arms and legs and chest, like a pleased animal. + 

“Yes, I’m a fine man, barin,” he said; “many women have loved me, and many will again⁠ ⁠…” Then he went back, and producing clean drawers and vest from somewhere (I suspect that they were mine but I was too weak to care), put them on. + 

On the second and third days I felt much better. The thaw was less violent, the wood crackled in my stove. On the morning of Wednesday April 14 I got up, dressed, and sat in front of my window. The ice was still there, but over it lay a faint, a very faint, filmy sheen of water. It was a day of gleams, the sun flashing in and out of the clouds. Just beneath my window a tree was pushing into bud. Pools of water lay thick on the dirty melting snow. I got the Rat to bring a little table and put some books on it. I had near me The Spirit of Man, Keats’s Letters, The Roads, Beddoes, and Pride and Prejudice. A consciousness of the outer world crept, like warmth, through my bones. + 

“Rat,” I said, “who’s been to see me?” + 

“No one,” said he. + 

I felt suddenly a ridiculous affront. + 

“No one?” I asked, incredulous. + 

“No one,” he answered. “They’ve all forgotten you, barin,” he added maliciously, knowing that that would hurt me. + 

It was strange how deeply I cared. Here was I who, only a short while before, had declared myself done with the world forever, and now I was almost crying because no one had been to see me! Indeed, I believe in my weakness and distress I actually did cry. No one at all? Not Vera nor Nina nor Jeremy nor Bohun? Not young Bohun even⁠ ⁠… ? And then slowly my brain realised that there was now a new world. None of the old conditions held any longer. + 

We had been the victims of an earthquake. Now it was⁠—every man for himself! Quickly then there came upon me an eager desire to know what had happened in the Markovitch family. What of Jerry and Vera? What of Nicholas? What of Semyonov⁠ ⁠… ? + 

“Rat,” I said, “this afternoon I am going out!” + 

“Very well, barin,” he said, “I, too, have an engagement.” + 

In the afternoon I crept out like an old sick man. I felt strangely shy and nervous. When I reached the corner of Ekateringofsky Canal and the English Prospect I decided not to go in and see the Markovitches. For one thing I shrank from the thought of their compassion. I had not shaved for many days. I was that dull sickly yellow colour that offends the taste of all healthy vigorous people. I did not want their pity. No.⁠ ⁠… I would wait until I was stronger. + 

My interest in life was reviving with every step that I took. I don’t know what I had expected the outside world to be. This was April 14. It was nearly a month since the outburst of the Revolution, and surely there should be signs in the streets of the results of such a cataclysm. There were, on the surface, no signs. There was the same little cinema on the canal with its gaudy coloured posters, there was the old woman sitting at the foot of the little bridge with her basket of apples and bootlaces, there was the same wooden hut with the sweets and the fruit, the same figures of peasant women, soldiers, boys hurrying across the bridge, the same slow, sleepy isvostchick stumbling along carelessly. One sign there was. Exactly opposite the little cinema, on the other side of the canal, was a high grey block of flats. This now was starred and sprayed with the white marks of bullets. It was like a man marked for life with smallpox. That building alone was witness to me that I had not dreamt the events of that week. + 

The thaw made walking very difficult. The water poured down the sides of the houses and gurgled in floods through the pipes. The snow was slippery under the film of gleaming wet, and there were huge pools at every step. Across the middle of the English Prospect, near the Baths, there was quite a deep lake.⁠ ⁠… + 

I wandered slowly along, enjoying the chill warmth of the soft spring sun. The winter was nearly over! Thank God for that! What had happened during my month of illness? Perhaps a great Revolutionary army had been formed, and a mighty, free, and united Russia was going out to save the world! Oh, I did hope that it was so! Surely that wonderful white week was a good omen. No Revolution in history had started so well as this one.⁠ ⁠… + 

I found my way at last very slowly to the end of the Quay, and the sight of the round towers of my favourite church was like the reassuring smile of an old friend. The sun was dropping low over the Neva. The whole vast expanse of the river was coloured very faintly pink. Here, too, there was the film of the water above the ice; the water caught the colour, but the ice below it was grey and still. Clouds of crimson and orange and faint gold streamed away in great waves of light from the sun. The long line of buildings and towers on the farther side was jet-black; the masts of the ships clustering against the Quay were touched at their tips with bright gold. It was all utterly still, not a sound nor a movement anywhere; only one figure, that of a woman, was coming slowly towards me. I felt, as one always does at the beginning of a Russian spring, a strange sense of expectation. Spring in Russia is so sudden and so swift that it gives an overwhelming impression of a powerful organising Power behind it. Suddenly the shutters are pulled back and the sun floods the world! Upon this afternoon one could feel the urgent business of preparation pushing forward, arrogantly, ruthlessly. I don’t think that I had ever before realised the power of the Neva at such close quarters. I was almost ashamed at the contrast of its struggle with my own feebleness. + 

I saw then that the figure coming towards me was Nina. + 

III + 

As she came nearer I saw that she was intensely preoccupied. She was looking straight in front of her but seeing nothing. It was only when she was quite close to me that I saw that she was crying. She was making no sound. Her mouth was closed; the tears were slowly, helplessly, rolling down her cheeks. + 

She was very near to me indeed before she saw me; then she looked at me closely before she recognised me. When she saw that it was I, she stopped, fumbled for her handkerchief, which she found, wiped her eyes, then turned away from me and looked out over the river. + 

“Nina, dear,” I said, “what’s the matter?” + 

She didn’t answer; at length she turned round and said: + 

“You’ve been ill again, haven’t you?” + 

One cheek had a dirty tear-stain on it, which made her inexpressibly young and pathetic and helpless. + 

“Yes,” I said, “I have.” + 

She caught her breath, put out her hand, and touched my arm. + 

“Oh, you do look ill!⁠ ⁠… Vera went to ask, and there was a rough-looking man there who said that no one could see you, but that you were all right.⁠ ⁠… One of us ought to have forced a way in⁠—M. Bohun wanted to⁠—but we’ve all been thinking of ourselves.” + 

“What’s the matter, Nina?” I asked. “You’ve been crying.” + 

“Nothing’s the matter. I’m all right.” + 

“No, you’re not. You ought to tell me. You trusted me once.” + 

“I don’t trust anyone,” she answered fiercely. “Especially not Englishmen.” + 

“What’s the matter?” I asked again. + 

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… We’re just as we were. Except,” she suddenly looked up at me, “Uncle Alexei’s living with us now.” + 

“Semyonov!” I cried out sharply, “living with you!” + 

“Yes,” she went on, “in the room where Nicholas had his inventions is Uncle Alexei’s bedroom.” + 

“Why, in Heaven’s name?” I cried. + 

“Uncle Alexei wanted it. He said he was lonely, and then he just came. I don’t know whether Nicholas likes it or not. Vera hates it, but she agreed at once.” + 

“And do you like it?” I asked. + 

“I like Uncle Alexei,” she answered. “We have long talks. He shows me how silly I’ve been.” + 

“Oh!” I said⁠ ⁠… “and what about Nicholas’ inventions?” + 

“He’s given them up forever.” She looked at me doubtfully, as though she were wondering whether she could trust me. “He’s so funny now⁠—Nicholas, I mean. You know he was so happy when the Revolution came. Now he’s in a different mood every minute. Something’s happened to him that we don’t know about.” + 

“What kind of thing?” I asked. + 

“I don’t know. He’s seen something or heard something. It’s some secret he’s got. But Uncle Alexei knows.” + 

“How can you tell?” + 

“Because he’s always saying things that make Nicholas angry, and we can’t see anything in them at all.⁠ ⁠… Uncle Alexei’s very clever.” + 

“Yes, he is,” I agreed. “But you haven’t told me why you were crying just now.” + 

She looked at me. She gave a little shiver. “Oh, you do look ill!⁠ ⁠… Everything’s going wrong together, isn’t it?” + 

And with that she suddenly left me, hurrying away from me, leaving me miserable and apprehensive of some great trouble in store for all of us. + 

IV + 

It is impossible to explain how disturbed I was by Nina’s news. Semyonov living in the flat! He must have some very strong reason for this, to leave his big comfortable flat for the pokiness of the Markovitches’! + 

And then that the Markovitches should have him! There were already inhabitants enough⁠—Nicholas, Vera, Nina, Uncle Ivan, Bohun. Then the inconvenience and discomfort of Nicholas’s little hole as a bedroom! How Semyonov must loathe it! + 

From that moment the Markovitches’ flat became for me the centre of my drama. Looking back I could see now how all the growing development of the story had centred round those rooms. I did not of course know at this time of that final drama of the Thursday afternoon, but I knew of the adventure with the policeman, and it seemed to me that the flat was a cup into which the ingredients were being poured one after another until at last the preparation would be complete, and then.⁠ ⁠… + 

Oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas⁠—yes, and Jerry too! I wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them⁠—in especial Nicholas. + 

And Semyonov came closer to them and closer, following some plan of his own and yet, after all, finally like a man driven by a power, constructed it might be, out of his own very irony. + 

I made a kind of bet with fate that by Easter Day everyone should be happy by then. + 

Next day, the 15th of April, was the great funeral for the victims of the Revolution. I believe, although of course at that time I had heard nothing, that there had been great speculation about the day, many people thinking that it would be an excuse for further trouble, the Monarchists rising, or the “Soviet” attacking the Provisional Government, or Milyukoff and his followers attacking the Soviet. They need not have been alarmed. No one had as yet realised the lengths that Slavonic apathy may permit itself.⁠ ⁠… + 

I went down about half-past ten to the Square at the end of the Sadovaya and found it filled with a vast concourse of peasants, not only the Square was filled, but the Sadovaya as far as the eye could see. They were arranged in perfect order, about eight in a row, arm in arm. Every group carried its banner, and far away into the distance one could see the words “Freedom,” “Brotherhood,” “The Land for All,” “Peace of the World,” floating on the breeze. Nevertheless, in spite of these fine words, it was not a very cheering sight. The day was wretched⁠—no actual rain, but a cold damp wind blowing and the dirty snow, half ice and half water; the people themselves were not inspiring. They were all, it seemed, peasants. I saw very few workmen, although I believe that multitudes were actually in the procession. Those strange, pale, Eastern faces, passive, apathetic, ignorant, childish, unreasoning, stretched in a great cloud under the grey overhanging canopy of the sky. They raised if once and again a melancholy little tune that was more wail than anything else. They had stood there, I was told, in pools of frozen water for hours, and were perfectly ready to stand thus for many hours more if they were ordered to do so. As I regarded their ignorance and apathy I realised for the first time something of what the Revolution had already done. + 

A hundred million of these children⁠—ignorant, greedy, pathetic, helpless, revengeful⁠—let loose upon the world! Where were their leaders? Who, indeed, would their leaders be? The sun sometimes broke through for a moment, but the light that it threw on their faces only made them more pallid, more deathlike. They did not laugh nor joke as our people at home would have done.⁠ ⁠… I believe that very few of them had any idea why they were there.⁠ ⁠… + 

Suddenly the word came down the lines to move forward. Very slowly, wailing their little tune, they advanced. + 

But the morning was growing old and I must at once see Vera. I had made up my mind, during the night, to do anything that lay in my power to persuade Vera and Nina to leave their flat. The flat was the root of all their trouble, there was something in its atmosphere, something gloomy and ominous. They would be better at the other end of the town, or, perhaps, over on the Vassily Ostrov. I would show Vera that it was a fatal plan to have Semyonov to live with them (as in all probability she herself knew well enough), and their leaving the flat was a very good excuse for getting rid of him. I had all this in my head as I went along. I was still feeling ill and feeble, and my half-hour’s stand in the marketplace had seriously exhausted me. I had to lean against the walls of the houses every now and then; it seemed to me that, in the pale watery air, the whole world was a dream, the high forbidding flats looking down on to the dirty ice of the canals, the water dripping, dripping, dripping.⁠ ⁠… No one was about. Everyone had gone to join in the procession. I could see it, with my mind’s eye, unwinding its huge tails through the watery-oozing channels of the town, like some pale-coloured snake, crawling through the misty labyrinths of a marsh. + 

In the flat I found only Uncle Ivan sitting very happily by himself at the table playing patience. He was dressed very smartly in his English black suit and a black bow tie. He behaved with his usual elaborate courtesy to me but, to my relief, on this occasion, he spoke Russian. + 

It appeared that the Revolution had not upset him in the least. He took, he assured me, no interest whatever in politics. The great thing was “to live inside oneself,” and by living inside oneself he meant, I gathered, that one should be entirely selfish. Clothes were important, and food and courteous manners, but he must say that he could not see that one would be very much worse off even though one were ruled by the Germans⁠—one might, indeed, be a great deal more comfortable. And as to this Revolution he couldn’t really understand why people made such a fuss. One class or another class what did it matter? (As to this he was, I fear, to be sadly undeceived. He little knew that, before the year was out, he would be shovelling snow in the Morskaia for a rouble an hour.) So centred was he upon himself that he did not notice that I looked ill. He offered me a chair, indeed, but that was simply his courteous manners. Very ridiculous, he thought, the fuss that Nicholas made about the Revolution⁠—very ridiculous the fuss that he made about everything.⁠ ⁠… + 

Alexei had been showing Nicholas how ridiculous he was. + 

“Oh, has he?” said I. “How’s he been doing that?” + 

Laughing at him, apparently. They all laughed at him. It was his own fault. + 

“Alexei’s living with us now, you know.” + 

“Yes, I know,” I said, “what’s he doing that for?” + 

“He wanted to,” said Uncle Ivan simply. “He’s always done what he’s wanted to, all his life.” + 

“It makes it a great many of you in one small flat.” + 

“Yes, doesn’t it?” said Uncle Ivan amiably. “Very pleasant⁠—although, Ivan Andreievitch, I will admit to you quite frankly that I’ve always been frightened of Alexei. He has such a very sharp tongue. He discovers one’s weak spots in a marvellous manner.⁠ ⁠… We all have weak spots you know,” he added apologetically. + 

“Yes, we have,” I said. + 

Then, to my relief, Vera came in. She was very sweet to me, expressing much concern about my illness, asking me to stay and have my meal with them.⁠ ⁠… She suddenly broke off. There was a letter lying on the table addressed to her. I saw at once that it was in Nina’s handwriting. + 

“Nina! Writing to me!” She picked it up, stood back looking at the envelope before she opened it. She read it, then turned on me with a cry. + 

“Nina!⁠ ⁠… She’s gone!” + 

“Gone!” I repeated, starting at once. + 

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… Read!” She thrust it into my hand. + 

In Nina’s sprawling schoolgirl hand I read: + 

Dear Vera⁠—I’ve left you and Nicholas forever.⁠ ⁠… I have been thinking of this for a long time, and now Uncle Alexei has shown me how foolish I’ve been, wanting something I can’t have. But I’m not a child any longer. I must lead my own life.⁠ ⁠… I’m going to live with Boris who will take care of me. It’s no use you or anyone trying to prevent me. I will not come back. I must lead my own life now. + 

Vera was beside herself. + 

“Quick! Quick! Someone must go after her. She must be brought back at once. Quick! Scora! Scora!⁠ ⁠… I must go. No, she is angry with me. She won’t listen to me. Ivan Andreievitch, you must go. At once! You must bring her back with you. Darling, darling Nina!⁠ ⁠… Oh, my God, what shall I do if anything happens to her!” + 

She clutched my arm. Even as she spoke, she had got my hat and stick. + 

“This is Alexei Petrovitch,” I said. + 

“Never mind who it is,” she answered. “She must be brought back at once. She is so young. She doesn’t know.⁠ ⁠… Boris⁠—Oh! it’s impossible. Don’t leave without bringing her back with you.” + 

Even old Uncle Ivan seemed distressed. + 

“Dear, dear⁠ ⁠…” he kept repeating, “dear, dear.⁠ ⁠… Poor little Nina. Poor little Nina⁠—” + 

“Where does Grogoff live?” I asked. + 

“16 Gagarinskaya.⁠ ⁠… Flat 3. Quick. You must bring her back with you. Promise me.” + 

“I will do my best,” I said. + 

I found by a miracle of good fortune an isvostchick in the street outside. We plunged along through the pools of water in the direction of the Gagarinskaya. That was a horrible drive. In the Sadovaya we met the slow, winding funeral procession. + 

On they went, arm in arm, the same little wailing tune, monotonously repeating, but sounding like nothing human, rather exuding from the very cobbles of the road and the waters of the stagnant canals. + 

The march of the peasants upon Petrograd! I could see them from all the quarters of the town, converging upon the Marsovoie Pole, stubborn, silent, wraiths of earlier civilisation, omens of later dominations. I thought of Boris Grogoff. What did he, with all his vehemence and conceit, intend to do with these? First he would flatter them⁠—I saw that clearly enough. But then when his flatteries failed, what then? Could he control them? Would they obey him? Would they obey anybody until education had shown them the necessities for coordination and self-discipline? The river at last was overflowing its banks⁠—would not the savage force of its power be greater than anyone could calculate? The stream flowed on.⁠ ⁠… My isvostchick took his cab down a side street, and then again met the strange sorrowful company. From this point I could see several further bridges and streets, and over them all I saw the same stream flowing, the same banners blowing⁠—and all so still, so dumb, so patient. + 

The delay was maddening. My thoughts were all now on Nina. I saw her always before me as I had beheld her yesterday, walking slowly along, her eyes fixed on space, the tears trickling down her face. “Life,” Nikitin once said to me, “I sometimes think is like a dark room, the door closed, the windows bolted and your enemy shut in with you. Whether your enemy or yourself is the stronger who knows?⁠ ⁠… Nor does it matter, as the issue is always decided outside.⁠ ⁠… Knowing that you can at least afford to despise him.” + 

I felt something of that impotence now. I cursed the isvostchick, but wherever he went this slow endless stream seemed to impede our way. Poor Nina! Such a baby! What was it that had driven her to this? She did not love the man, and she knew quite well that she did not. No, it was an act of defiance. But defiance to whom⁠—to Vera? to Lawrence?⁠ ⁠… and what had Semyonov said to her? + 

Then, thank Heaven, we crossed the Nevski, and our way was clear. The old cabman whipped up his horse and, in a minute or two we were outside 16 Gagarinskaya. I will confess to very real fears and hesitations as I climbed the dark stairs (the lift was, of course, not working). I was not the kind of man for this kind of job. In the first place I hated quarrels, and knowing Grogoff’s hot temper I had every reason to expect a tempestuous interview. Then I was ill, aching in every limb and seeing everything, as I always did when I was unwell, mistily and with uncertainty. Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogoff would take, and Nina, perhaps also. I felt, as I rang the bell of No. 3, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tells you that you’re going to make a fool of yourself. + 

Well, it would not be for the first time. + 

“Boris Nicolaievitch, doma?” I asked the cross-looking old woman who opened the door. + 

“Doma,” she answered, holding it open to let me pass. + 

I was shown into a dark, untidy sitting-room. It seemed at first sight to be littered with papers, newspapers, Revolutionary sheets and proclamations, the Pravda, the Novaya Jezn, the Soldatskaya Mwyssl.⁠ ⁠… On the dirty wallpaper there were enormous dark photographs, in faded gilt frames, of family groups; on one wall there was a large garishly coloured picture of Grogoff himself in student’s dress. The stove was unlighted and the room was very cold. My heart ached for Nina. + 

A moment after Grogoff came in. He came forward to me very amiably, holding out his hand. + 

“Nu, Ivan Andreievitch.⁠ ⁠… What can I do for you?” he asked, smiling. + 

And how he had changed! He was positively swollen with self-satisfaction. He had never been famous for personal modesty, but he seemed now to be physically twice his normal size. He was fat, his cheeks puffed, his stomach swelling beneath the belt that bound it. His fair hair was long, and rolled in large curls on one side of his head and over his forehead. He spoke in a loud, overbearing voice. + 

“Nu, Ivan Andreievitch, what can I do for you?” he repeated. + 

“Can I see Nina?” I asked. + 

“Nina?⁠ ⁠…” he repeated as though surprised. “Certainly⁠—but what do you want to say to her?” + 

“I don’t see that that’s your business,” I answered. “I have a message for her from her family.” + 

“But of course it’s my business,” he answered. “I’m looking after her now.” + 

“Since when?” I asked. + 

“What does that matter?⁠ ⁠… She is going to live with me.” + 

“We’ll see about that,” I said. + 

I knew that it was foolish to take this kind of tone. It could do no good, and I was not the sort of man to carry it through. + 

But he was not at all annoyed. + 

“See, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, smiling. “What is there to discuss? Nina and I have long considered living together. She is a grown-up woman. It’s no one’s affair but her own.” + 

“Are you going to marry her?” I asked. + 

“Certainly not,” he answered; “that would not suit either of us. It’s no good your bringing your English ideas here, Ivan Andreievitch. We belong to the new world, Nina and I.” + 

“Well, I want to speak to her,” I answered. + 

“So you shall, certainly. But if you hope to influence her at all you are wasting your time, I assure you. Nina has acted very rightly. She found the home life impossible. I’m sure I don’t wonder. She will assist me in my work. The most important work, perhaps, that man has ever been called on to perform.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He raised his voice here as though he were going to begin a speech. But at that moment Nina came in. She stood in the doorway looking across at me with a childish mixture of hesitation and boldness, of anger and goodwill in her face. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes heavy. Her hair was done in two long plaits. She looked about fourteen. + 

She came up to me, but she didn’t offer me her hand. Boris said: + 

“Nina dear, Ivan Andreievitch has come to give you a message from your family.” There was a note of scorn in his voice as he repeated my earlier sentence. + 

“What is it?” she asked, looking at me defiantly. + 

“I’d like to give it you alone,” I said. + 

“Whatever you say to me it is right that Boris should hear,” she answered. + 

I tried to forget that Grogoff was there. I went on: + 

“Well then, Nina, you must know what I want to say. They are heartbroken at your leaving them. You know of course that they are. They beg you to come back.⁠ ⁠… Vera and Nicholas too. They simply won’t know what to do without you. Vera says that you have been angry with her. She doesn’t know why, but she says that she will do her very best if you come back, so that you won’t be angry any more.⁠ ⁠… Nina, dear, you know that it is they whom you really love. You never can be happy here. You know that you cannot.⁠ ⁠… Come back to them! Come back! I don’t know what it was that Alexei Petrovitch said to you, but whatever it was you should not listen to it. He is a bad man and only means harm to your family. He does indeed.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I paused. She had never moved whilst I was speaking. Now she only said, shaking her head, “It’s no good, Ivan Andreievitch.⁠ ⁠… It’s no good.” + 

“But why? Why?” I asked. “Give me your reasons, Nina.” + 

She answered proudly, “I don’t see why I should give you any reasons, Ivan Andreievitch. I am free. I can do as I wish.” + 

“There’s something behind this that I don’t know,” I said. “I ought to know.⁠ ⁠… It isn’t fair not to tell me. What did Alexei Petrovitch say to you?” + 

But she only shook her head. + 

“He had nothing to do with this. It is my affair, Ivan Andreievitch. I couldn’t live with Vera and Nicholas any longer.” + 

Grogoff then interfered. + 

“I think this is about enough.⁠ ⁠…” he said. “I have given you your opportunity. Nina has been quite clear in what she has said. She does not wish to return. There is your answer.” He cleared his voice and went on in rather a higher tone: “I think you forget, Ivan Andreievitch, another aspect of this affair. It is not only a question of our private family disputes. Nina has come here to assist me in my national work. As a member of the Soviet I may, without exaggeration, claim to have an opportunity in my hands that has been offered in the past to few human beings. You are an Englishman, and so hidebound with prejudices and conventions. You may not be aware that there has opened this week the greatest war the world has ever seen⁠—the war of the proletariats against the bourgeoisies and capitalists of the world.” I tried to interrupt him, but he went on, his voice ever rising and rising: “What is your wretched German war? What but a struggle between the capitalists of the different countries to secure greater robberies and extortions, to set their feet more firmly than ever on the broad necks of the wretched People! Yes, you English, with your natural hypocrisy, pretend that you are fighting for the freedom of the world. What about Ireland? What about India? What about South Africa?⁠ ⁠… No, you are all alike. Germany, England, Italy, France, and our own wretched Government that has, at last, been destroyed by the brave will of the People. We declare a People’s War!⁠ ⁠… We cry aloud to the People to throw down their arms! And the People will hear us!” + 

He paused for breath. His arms were raised, his eyes on fire, his cheeks crimson. + 

“Yes,” I said, “that is all very well. But suppose the German people are the only ones who refuse to listen to you. Suppose that all the other nations, save Germany, have thrown down their arms⁠—a nice chance then for German militarism!” + 

“But the German people will listen!” he screamed, almost frothing at the mouth. “They are ready at any moment to follow our example. William and your George and the rest of them⁠—they are doomed, I tell you!” + 

“Nevertheless,” I went on, “if you desert us now by making peace and Germany wins this war you will have played only a traitor’s part, and all the world will judge you.” + 

“Traitor! Traitor!” The word seemed to madden him. “Traitor to whom, pray? Traitor to our Czar and your English king? Yes, and thank God for it! Did the Russian people make the war? They were led like lambs to the slaughter. Like lambs, I tell you. But now they will have their revenge. On all the Bourgeoisie of the world. The Bourgeoisie of the world!⁠ ⁠…” + 

He suddenly broke off, flinging himself down on the dirty sofa. “Pheugh. Talking makes one hot!⁠ ⁠… Have a drink, Ivan Andreievitch.⁠ ⁠… Nina, fetch a drink.” + 

Through all this my eyes had never left her for a moment. I had hoped that this empty tub-thumping to which we had been listening would have affected her. But she had not moved nor stirred. + 

“Nina!” I said softly. “Nina. Come with me!” + 

But she only shook her head. Grogoff, quite silent now, lolled on the sofa, watching us. I went up to her and put my hand on her sleeve. + 

“Dear Nina,” I said, “come back to us.” + 

I saw her lip tremble. There was unshed tears in her eyes. But again she shook her head. + 

“What have they done,” I asked, “to make you take this step?” + 

“Something has happened.⁠ ⁠…” she said slowly. “I can’t tell you.” + 

“Just come and talk to Vera.” + 

“No, it’s hopeless⁠ ⁠… I can’t see her again. But, Durdles⁠ ⁠… tell her it’s not her fault.” + 

At the sound of my pet name I took courage again. + 

“But tell me, Nina.⁠ ⁠… Do you love this man?” + 

She turned round and looked at Grogoff as though she were seeing him for the first time. + 

“Love?⁠ ⁠… Oh no, not love! But he will be kind to me, I think. And I must be myself, be a woman, not a child any longer.” + 

Then, suddenly clearing her voice, speaking very firmly, looking me full in the face, she said: + 

“Tell Vera⁠ ⁠… that I saw⁠ ⁠… what happened that Thursday afternoon⁠—the Thursday of the Revolution week. Tell her that⁠—when you’re alone with her. Tell her that⁠—then she’ll understand.” + 

She turned and almost ran out of the room. + 

“Well, you see,” said Grogoff smiling lazily from the sofa. + 

“That settles it.” + 

“It doesn’t settle it,” I answered. “We shall never rest until we have got her back.” + 

But, I had to go. There was nothing more just then to be done. + 

V + 

On my return I found Vera alone waiting for me with restless impatience. + 

“Well?” she said eagerly. Then when she saw that I was alone her face clouded. + 

“I trusted you⁠—” she began. + 

“It’s no good,” I said at once. “Not for the moment. She’s made up her mind. It’s not because she loved him nor, I think, for anything very much that her uncle said. She’s got some idea in her head. Perhaps you can explain it.” + 

“I?” said Vera, looking at me. + 

“Yes. She gave me a message for you.” + 

“What was it?” But even as she asked the question she seemed to fear the answer, because she turned away from me. + 

“She told me to tell you that she saw what happened on the afternoon of the Thursday in Revolution week. She said that then you would understand.” + 

Vera looked at me with the strangest expression of defiance, fear, triumph. + 

“What did she see?” + 

“I don’t know. That’s what she told me.” + 

Vera did a strange thing. She laughed. + 

“They can all know. I don’t care. I want them to know. Nina can tell them all.” + 

“Tell them what?” + 

“Oh, you’ll hear with the rest. Uncle Alexei has done this. He told Nina because he hates me. He won’t rest until he ruins us all. But I don’t care. He can’t take from me what I’ve got. He can’t take from me what I’ve got.⁠ ⁠… But we must get her back, Ivan Andreievitch. She must come back⁠—” + 

Nicholas came in and then Semyonov and then Bohun. + 

Bohun, drawing me aside, whispered to me: “Can I come and see you? I must ask your advice⁠—” + 

“Tomorrow evening,” I told him, and left. + 

Next day I was ill again. I had I suppose done too much the day before. I was in bed alone all day. My old woman had suddenly returned without a word of explanation or excuse. She had not, I am sure, even got so far as the Moscow Province. I doubt whether she had even left Petrograd. I asked her no questions. I could tell of course that she had been drinking. She was a funny old creature, wrinkled and yellow and hideous, very little different in any way from a native in the wilds of Central Africa. The savage in her liked gay colours and trinkets, and she would stick flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places and rheumy at the eyes, who was all her passion, and this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage⁠—and then, when it growled, she, too, would make strange noises as though sympathising with it. + 

She returned to me from no sort of sense of duty, but simply because, I think, she did not know where else to go. She scowled on me and informed me that now that there had been the Revolution everything was different; nevertheless the sight of my sick yellow face moved her as sickness and misfortune always move every Russian, however old and debased he may be. + 

“You shouldn’t have gone out walking,” she said crossly. “That man’s been here again?” referring to the Rat, whom she hated. + 

“If it hadn’t been for him,” I said, “I would have died.” + 

But she made the flat as cheerful as she could, lighting the stove, putting some yellow flowers into a glass, dusting the Benois watercolour, putting my favourite books beside my bed. + 

When Henry Bohun came in he was surprised at the brightness of everything. + 

“Why, how cosy you are!” he cried. + 

“Ah, ha,” I said, “I told you it wasn’t so bad here.” + 

He picked up my books, looked at Galleon’s Roads and then Pride and Prejudice. + 

“It’s the simplest things that last,” he said. “Galleon’s jolly good, but he’s not simple enough. Tess is the thing, you know, and Tono-Bungay, and The Nigger of the Narcissus⁠ ⁠… I usen’t to think so. I’ve grown older, haven’t I?” + 

He had. + 

“What do you think of Discipline now?” I asked. + 

“Oh, Lord!” he blushed, “I was a young cuckoo.” + 

“And what about knowing all about Russia after a week?” + 

“No⁠—and that reminds me!” He drew his chair closer to my bed. “That’s what I’ve come to talk about. Do you mind if I gas a lot?” + 

“Gas as much as you like,” I said. + 

“Well, I can’t explain things unless I do.⁠ ⁠… You’re sure you’re not too seedy to listen?” + 

“Not a bit. It does me good,” I told him. + 

“You see in a way you’re really responsible. You remember, long ago, telling me to look after Markovitch when I talked all that rot about caring for Vera?” + 

“Yes⁠—I remember very well indeed.” + 

“In a way it all started from that. You put me on to seeing Markovitch in quite a different light. I’d always thought of him as an awfully dull dog with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top-story too. I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it. Then sometimes he’d look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you’d fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the best thing for everybody. + 

“Well, you explained him to me and I saw him different⁠—not that I’ve ever got very much out of him. I don’t think that he either likes me or trusts me, and anyway he thinks me too young and foolish to be of any importance⁠—which I daresay I am. He told me, by the way, the other day, that the only Englishman he thought anything of was yourself⁠—” + 

“Very nice of him,” I murmured. + 

“Yes, but not very flattering to me when I’ve spent months trying to be fascinating to him. Anyhow, although I may be said to have failed in one way, I’ve got rather keen on the pursuit. If I can’t make him like me I can at least study him and learn something. That’s a leaf out of your book, Durward. You’re always studying people, aren’t you?” + 

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. + 

“Yes, of course you are. Well, I’ll tell you frankly I’ve got fond of the old bird. I don’t believe you could live at close quarters with any Russian, however nasty, and not get a kind of affection for him. They’re so damned childish.” + 

“Oh yes, you could,” I said. “Try Semyonov.” + 

“I’m coming to him in a minute,” said Bohun. “Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy. That’s one thing one saw about him at once⁠—unhappy of course because Vera didn’t love him and he adored her. But there was more in it than that. He let himself go one night to me⁠—the only time he’s ever talked to me really. He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me. But there was more in it than that. He talked to me about Russia. That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began that it was going to lead to the most marvellous patriotism all through Russia. It seemed to begin like that, and do you know, Durward, as he talked I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything, that you could talk about Internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you’d learnt first what nationality was⁠—that you couldn’t really love all mankind until you’d first learnt to love one or two people close to you. And that you couldn’t love the world as a vast democratic state until you’d learnt to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower. Markovitch had it all as plain as plain. ‘Make your own house secure and beautiful. Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme. We Russians always begin at the wrong end,’ he said. ‘We jump all the intermediate stages. I’m as bad as the rest.’ I know you’ll say I’m so easily impressed, Durward, but he was wonderful that night⁠—and so right. So that as he talked I just longed to rush back and see that my village⁠—Topright in Wiltshire⁠—was safe and sound with the highgate at the end of the village street, and the village stores with the lollipop windows, and the green with the sheep on it, and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high Down beyond.⁠ ⁠… Oh well, you know what I mean⁠—” + 

“I know,” said I. + 

“I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn’t have Vera he’d have Russia, and if he couldn’t have Russia he’d have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago he’d lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn’t very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything. Wasn’t he wonderful that week? Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise.⁠ ⁠… Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything? Why a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week. It wouldn’t be decent.⁠ ⁠… Well, then.⁠ ⁠…” He paused dramatically. “What’s happened to him since, Durward?” + 

“How do you mean? What’s happened to him since?” I asked. + 

“I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day⁠—the Thursday of that week. What was it? That’s one of the things I’ve come to ask you about?” + 

“I don’t know. I was ill,” I said. + 

“No, but has nobody told you anything?” + 

“I haven’t heard a word,” I said. + 

His face fell. “I felt sure you’d help me?” he said. + 

“Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together,” I suggested. + 

“The rest is really Semyonov. The queerest things have been happening. Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one’s English ideas, isn’t it? and that’s so damned difficult. It’s no use saying an English fellow wouldn’t do this or that. Of course he wouldn’t.⁠ ⁠… Oh, they are queer!” + 

He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair. + 

“Giving them up in despair, Bohun, is as bad as thinking you understand them completely. Just take what comes.” + 

“Well, ‘what came’ was this. On that Thursday evening Markovitch was as though he’d been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of course we all noticed it. White and sickly, saying nothing to anybody. Next morning, quite early, Semyonov came over and proposed lodging with us. + 

“It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the feller, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet, stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way. + 

“To my amazement Markovitch seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed, but offered his own room as a bedroom. ‘What about your inventions?’ someone asked him. + 

“ ‘I’ve given them up,’ he said, looking at us all just like a caged animal⁠—‘forever.’ + 

“I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn’t been so interested, but this was all so curious that I was determined to see it out to the end. And you’d told me to look after Markovitch. If ever he’d wanted looking after it was now! I could see that Vera hated the idea of Semyonov coming, but after Markovitch had spoken she never said a word. So then it was all settled.” + 

“What did Nina do?” I asked. + 

“Nina? She never said anything either. At the end she went up to Semyonov and took his hand and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re coming, Uncle Alexei,’ and looked at Vera. Oh! they’re all as queer as they can be, I tell you!” + 

“What happened next?” I asked eagerly. + 

“Everything’s happened and nothing’s happened,” he replied. “Nina’s run away. Of course you know that. What she did it for I can’t imagine. Fancy going to a fellow like Grogoff! Lawrence has been coming every day and just sitting there, not saying anything. Semyonov’s amiable to everybody⁠—especially amiable to Markovitch. But he’s laughing at him all the time I think. Anyway he makes him mad sometimes, so that I think Markovitch is going to strike him. But of course he never does.⁠ ⁠… Now here’s a funny thing. This is really what I want to ask you most about.” + 

He drew his chair closer to my bed and dropped his voice as though he were going to whisper a secret to me. + 

“The other night I was awake⁠—about two in the morning it was⁠—and wanted a book⁠—so I went into the dining-room. I’d only got bedroom slippers on and I was stopped at the door by a sound. It was Semyonov sitting over by the further window, in his shirt and trousers, his beard in his hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break. I’d never heard a man cry like that. I hate hearing a man cry anyway. I’ve heard fellers at the Front when they’re off their heads or something⁠ ⁠… but Semyonov was worse than that. It was a strong man crying, with all his wits about him.⁠ ⁠… Then I heard some words. He kept repeating again and again. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear!⁠ ⁠… Wait for me!⁠ ⁠… Wait for me! Wait for me!⁠ ⁠…’ over and over again⁠—awful! I crept back to my room frightened out of my life. I’ve never known anything so awful. And Semyonov of all people! + 

“It was like that man in Wuthering Heights. What’s his name? Heathcliff! I always thought that was a bit of an exaggeration when he dashed his head against a tree and all that. But, by Jove, you never know!⁠ ⁠… Now, Durward, you’ve got to tell me. You’ve known Semyonov for years. You can explain. What’s it all about, and what’s he trying to do to Markovitch?” + 

“I can scarcely think what to tell you,” I said at last. “I don’t really know much about Semyonov, and my guesses will probably strike you as insane.” + 

“No, they won’t,” said Bohun. “I’ve learnt a bit lately.” + 

“Semyonov,” I said, “is a deep-dyed sensualist. All his life he’s thought about nothing but gratifying his appetites. That’s simple enough⁠—there are plenty of that type everywhere. But unfortunately for him he’s a very clever man, and like every Russian both a cynic and an idealist⁠—a cynic in facts because he’s an idealist. He got everything so easily all through his life that his cynicism grew and grew. He had wealth and women and position. He was as strong as a horse. Every one gave way to him and he despised everybody. He went to the Front, and one day came across a woman different from any other whom he had ever known.” + 

“How different?” asked Bohun, because I paused. + 

“Different in that she was simpler and naiver and honester and better and more beautiful⁠—” + 

“Better than Vera?” Bohun asked. + 

“Different,” I said. “She was younger, less strong-willed, less clever, less passionate perhaps. But alone⁠—alone, in all the world. Everyone must love her⁠—No one could help it.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I broke off again. Bohun waited. + 

I went on. “Semyonov saw her and snatched her from the Englishman to whom she was engaged. I don’t think she ever really loved the Englishman, but she loved Semyonov.” + 

“Well?” said Bohun. + 

“She was killed. A stray shot, when she was giving tea to the men in the trenches.⁠ ⁠… It meant a lot⁠ ⁠… to all of us. The Englishman was killed too, so he was all right. I think Semyonov would have liked that same end; but he didn’t get it, so he’s remained desolate. Really desolate, in a way that only your thorough sensualist can be. A beautiful fruit just within his grasp, something at last that can tempt his jaded appetite. He’s just going to taste it, when whisk! it’s gone, and gone, perhaps, into someone else’s hands. How does he know? How does he know anything? There may be another life⁠—who can really prove there isn’t? and when you’ve seen something in the very thick and glow of existence, something more alive than life itself, and, click! it’s gone⁠—well, it must have gone somewhere, mustn’t it? Not the body only, but that soul, that spirit, that individual personal expression of beauty and purity and loveliness? Oh, it must be somewhere yet!⁠ ⁠… It must be!⁠ ⁠… At any rate he didn’t know. And he didn’t know either that she might not have proved his idealism right after all. Ah! to your cynic there’s nothing more maddening! Do you think your cynic loves his cynicism? Not a bit of it! Not he! But he won’t be taken in by sham any more. That he swears.⁠ ⁠… + 

“So it was with Semyonov. This girl might have proved the one real exception; she might have lasted, she might have grown even more beautiful and more wonderful, and so proved his idealism true after all. He doesn’t know, and I don’t know. But there it is. He’s haunted by the possibility of it all his days. He’s a man now ruled by an obsession. He thinks of one thing and one thing only, day and night. His sensuality has fallen away from him because women are dull⁠—sterile to him beside that perfect picture of the woman lost. Lost! he may recover her! He doesn’t know. The thought of death obsesses him. What is there in it? Is she behind there or no? Is she behind there, maddening thought, with her Englishman? + 

“He must know. He must know. He calls to her⁠—she won’t come to him. What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that’s a miserable confession of weakness. How they’d laugh at him, these other despicable human beings, if he did that! He’d prove himself as weak as they. No, that’s not for him. What then? + 

“This is a fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select someone, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, someone whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, the food for his conceit such a game would be to Semyonov. Is this going to do it? Or this? Or this? Now I’ve got him far enough? Another five minutes!⁠ ⁠… Think of the hairbreadth escapes, the check and counter check, the sense, above all, that to a man like Semyonov is almost everything, that he is master of human emotions, that he can direct wretched, weak human beings whither he will. + 

“And the other⁠—the weak, disappointed, excitable man⁠—can’t you see that Semyonov has him close to his hand, that he has only to stretch a finger⁠—” + 

“Markovitch!” cried Bohun. + 

“Now you know,” I said, “why you’ve got to stay on in that flat.” + 

VI + 

I have said already, I think, that the instinctive motive of Vera’s life was her independent pride. Cling to that, and however the world might rock and toss around her she could not be wrecked. Imagine, then, what she must have suffered during the weeks that followed her surrender to Lawrence. Not that for a moment she intended to go back on her surrender, which was, indeed, the proudest moment of her whole life. She never looked back for one second after that embrace, she never doubted herself or him or the supreme importance of love itself; but the rest of her⁠—her tenderness, her fidelity, her loyalty, her self-respect⁠—this was all tortured now by the things that she seemed compelled to do. It must have appeared to her as though Fate, having watched that complete abandonment, intended to deprive her of everything upon which she had depended. She was, I think, a woman of very simple instincts. The things that had been in her life⁠—her love for Nina, her maternal tenderness for Nicholas, her sense of duty⁠—remained with her as strongly after that tremendous Thursday afternoon as they had been before it. She did not see why they need be changed. She did not love Nina any the less because she loved Lawrence; indeed, she had never loved Nina so intensely as on the night when she had realised her love for Lawrence to the full, that night when they had sheltered the policeman. And she had never pretended to love Nicholas. She had always told him that she did not love him. She had been absolutely honest with him always, and he had often said to her, “If ever real love comes into your life, Vera, you will leave me,” and she had always answered him, “No, Nicholas, why should I? I will never change. Why should I?” + 

She honestly thought that her love for Lawrence need not alter things. She would tell Nicholas, of course, and then she would act as he wished. If she were not to see Lawrence she would not see him⁠—that would make no difference to her love for him. What she did not realise⁠—and that was strange after living with him for so long⁠—was that he was always hoping that her tender kindliness towards him would, one day, change into something more passionate. I think that, subconsciously, she did realise it, and that was why she was, during those weeks before the Revolution, so often uneasy and unhappy. But I am sure that definitely she never admitted it. + 

The great fact was that, as soon as possible, she must tell Nicholas all about it. And the days went by, and she did not. She did not, partly because she had now someone else as well as herself to consider. I believe that in those weeks between that Thursday and Easter Day she never had one moment alone with Lawrence. He came, as Bohun had told me, to see them; he sat there and looked at her, and listened and waited. She herself, I expect, prevented their being alone. She was waiting for something to happen. Then Nina’s flight overwhelmed everything. That must have been the most awful thing. She never liked Grogoff, never trusted him, and had a very clear idea of his character. But more awful to her than his weakness was her knowledge that Nina did not love him. What could have driven her to do such a thing? She knew of her affection for Lawrence, but she had, perhaps, never taken that seriously. How could Nina really love Lawrence when he, so obviously, cared nothing at all for her? She reasoned then, as everyone always does, on the lines of her own character. She herself could never have cared seriously for anyone had there been no return. Her pride would not have allowed her.⁠ ⁠… + 

But Nina had been the charge of her life. Before Nicholas, before her own life, before everything. Nina was her duty, her sacred cause⁠—and now she was betraying her trust! Something must be done⁠—but what? but what? She knew Nina well enough to realise that a false step would only plunge her farther than ever into the business. It must have seemed to her indeed that because of her own initial disloyalty the whole world was falling away from her. + 

Then there came Semyonov; I did not at this time at all sufficiently realise that her hatred of her uncle⁠—for it was hatred, more, much more than mere dislike⁠—had been with her all her life. Many months afterwards she told me that she could never remember a time when she had not hated him. He had teased her when she was a very little girl, laughing at her naive honesty, throwing doubts on her independence, cynically ridiculing her loyalty. There had been one horrible winter month (then ten or eleven years of age) when she had been sent to stay with him in Moscow. + 

He had a fine house near the Arbat, and he was living (although she did not of course know anything about that at the time) with one of his gaudiest mistresses. Her mother and father being dead she had no protection. She was defenceless. I don’t think that he in any way perverted her innocence. I except that he was especially careful to shield her from his own manner of life (he had always his own queer tradition of honour which he affected indeed to despise), but she felt more than she perceived. The house was garish, over-scented and over-lighted. There were many gilt chairs and large pictures of naked women and numbers of coloured cushions. She was desperately lonely. She hated the woman of the house, who tried, I have no doubt, to be kind to her, and after the first week she was left to herself. + 

One night, long after she had gone to bed there was a row downstairs, one of the scenes common enough between Semyonov and his women. Terrified, she went to the head of the stairs and heard the smash of falling glass and her uncle’s voice raised in a scream of rage and vituperation. A great naked woman in a gold frame swung and leered at her in the lighted passage. She fled back to her dark room and lay, for the rest of that night, trembling and quivering with her head beneath the bedclothes. + 

From that moment she feared her uncle as much as she hated him. Long afterwards came his influence over Nicholas. No one had so much influence over Nicholas as he. Nicholas himself admitted it. He was alternately charmed and frightened, beguiled and disgusted, attracted and repulsed. Before the war Semyonov had, for a time, seen a good deal of them, and Nicholas steadily degenerated. Then Semyonov was bored with it all and went off after other game more worthy of his doughty spear. Then came the war, and Vera devoutedly hoped that her dear uncle would meet his death at the hands of some patriotic Austrian. He did indeed for a time disappear from their lives, and it seemed that he might never come back again. Then on that fateful Christmas Day he did return, and Vera’s worst fears were realised. She hated him all the more because of her impotence. She could do nothing against him at all. She was never very subtle in her dealings with people, and her own natural honesty made her often stupid about men’s motives. But the thing for which she feared her uncle most was his, as it seemed to her, supernatural penetration into the thoughts of others. + 

She of course greatly exaggerated his gifts in that direction simply because they were in no way her gifts, and he, equally of course, discovered very early in their acquaintance that this was the way to impress her. He played tricks with her exactly as a conjurer produces a rabbit out of a hat.⁠ ⁠… + 

When he announced his intention of coming to live in the flat she was literally paralyzed with fright. Had it been anyone else she would have fought, but in her uncle’s drawing gradually nearer and nearer to the centre of all their lives, coming as it seemed to her so silently and mysteriously, without obvious motive, and yet with so stealthy a plan, against this man she could do nothing.⁠ ⁠… + 

Nevertheless she determined to fight for Nicholas to the last⁠—to fight for Nicholas, to bring back Nina, these were now the two great aims of her life; and whilst they were being realised her love for Lawrence must be passive, passive as a deep passionate flame beats with unwavering force in the heart of the lamp.⁠ ⁠… + 

They had made me promise long before that I would spend Easter Eve with them and go with them to our church on the Quay. I wondered now whether all the troubles of the last weeks would not negative that invitation, and I had privately determined that if I did not hear from them again I would slip off with Lawrence somewhere. But on Good Friday Markovitch, meeting me in the Morskaia, reminded me that I was coming. + 

It is very difficult to give any clear picture of the atmosphere of the town between Revolution week and this Easter Eve, and yet all the seeds of the later crop of horrors were sewn during that period. Its spiritual mentality corresponded almost exactly with the physical thaw that accompanied it⁠—mist, then vapour dripping of rain, the fading away of one clear world into another that was indistinct, ghostly, ominous. I find written in my Diary of Easter Day⁠—exactly five weeks after the outbreak of the Revolution⁠—these words: “From long talks with K. and others I see quite clearly that Russians have gone mad for the time being. It’s heartbreaking to see them holding meetings everywhere, arguing at every street corner as to how they intend to arrange a democratic peace for Europe, when meanwhile the Germans are gathering every moment force upon the frontiers.” + 

Pretty quick, isn’t it, to change from Utopia to threatenings of the worst sort of Communism? But the great point for us in all this⁠—the great point for our private personal histories as well as the public one⁠—was that it was during these weeks that the real gulf between Russia and the Western world showed itself! Yes, for more than three years we had been pretending that a week’s sentiment and a hurriedly proclaimed Idealism could bridge a separation which centuries of magic and blood and bones had gone to build. For three years we tricked ourselves (I am not sure that the Russians were ever really deceived)⁠ ⁠… but we liked the ballet, we liked Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (we translated their inborn mysticism into the weakest kind of sentimentality), we liked the theory of inexhaustible numbers, we liked the picture of their pounding, steamroller like, to Berlin⁠ ⁠… we tricked ourselves, and in the space of a night our trick was exposed. + 

Plain enough the reasons for these mistakes that we in England have made over that same Revolution, mistakes made by none more emphatically than by our own Social Democrats. Those who hailed the Revolution as the fulfilment of all their dearest hopes, those who cursed it as the beginning of the damnation of the world⁠—all equally in the wrong. The Revolution had no thought for them. Russian extremists might shout as they pleased about their leading the fight for the democracies of the world⁠—they never even began to understand the other democracies. Whatever Russia may do, through repercussion, for the rest of the world, she remains finally alone⁠—isolated in her Government, in her ideals, in her ambitions, in her abnegations. For a moment the world-politics of her foreign rulers seemed to draw her into the Western whirlpool. For a moment only she remained there. She has slipped back again behind her veil of mist and shadow. We may trade with her, plunge into her politics, steal from her Art, emphasise her religion⁠—she remains alone, apart, mysterious.⁠ ⁠… + 

I think it was with a kind of gulping surprise, as after a sudden plunge into icy cold water, that we English became conscious of this. It came to us first in the form that to us the war was everything⁠—to the Russian, by the side of an idea the war was nothing at all. How was I, for instance, to recognise the men who took a leading part in the events of this extraordinary year as the same men who fought with bare hands, with fanatical bravery through all the Galician campaign of two years before? + 

Had I not realised sufficiently at that time that Russia moves always according to the Idea that governs her⁠—and that when that Idea changes the world, his world changes with it.⁠ ⁠… + 

Well, to return to Markovitch.⁠ ⁠… + 

VII + 

I was on the point of setting out for the English Prospect on Saturday evening when there was a knock on my door, and to my surprise Nicholas Markovitch came in. He was in evening dress⁠—rather quaint it seemed to me, with his pointed collar so high, his tailcoat so much too small, and his large-brimmed bowler hat. He explained to me confusedly that he wished to walk with me alone to the church⁠ ⁠… that he had things to tell me⁠ ⁠… that we should meet the others there. I saw at once two things, that he was very miserable, that he was a little drunk. His misery showed itself in his strange, pathetic, gleaming eyes, that looked so often as though they held unshed tears (this gave him an unfortunate ridiculous aspect), in his hollow pale cheeks and the droop of his mouth, not petulant nor peevish, simply unhappy in the way that animals or very young children express unhappiness. His drunkenness showed itself in quite another way. He was unsteady a little on his feet, and his hands trembled, his forehead was flushed, and he spoke thickly, sometimes running his words together. At the same time he was not very drunk, and was quite in control of his thoughts and intentions. + 

We went out together. It could not have been called a fine night⁠—it was too cold, and there was a hint of rain in the air⁠—and yet there is beauty, I believe, in every Russian Easter Eve. The day comes so wonderfully at the end of the long heavy winter. The white nights with their incredible, almost terrifying beauty are at hand, the ice is broken, the new world of sun and flowers is ready, at an instant’s magic word, to be born. Nevertheless this year there was an incredible pathos in the wind. The soul of Petrograd was indeed stirring, but mournfully, ominously. There were not, for one thing, the rows of little fairy lamps that on this night always make the streets so gay. They hang in chains and clusters of light from street to street, blazing in the square, reflected starlike in the canals, misty and golden-veiled in distance. Tonight only the churches had their lights; for the rest, the streets were black chasms of windy desolation, the canals burdened with the breaking ice which moved restlessly against the dead barges. Very strong in the air was the smell of the sea; the heavy clouds that moved in a strange kind of ordered procession overhead seemed to carry that scent with them, and in the dim pale shadows of the evening glow one seemed to see at the end of every street mysterious clusters of masts, and to hear the clank of chains and the creak of restless boards. There were few people about and a great silence everywhere. The air was damp and thick, and smelt of rotten soil, as though dank grass was everywhere pushing its way up through the cobbles and paving-stones. + 

As we walked Markovitch talked incessantly. It was only a very little the talk of a drunken man, scarcely disconnected at all, but every now and again running into sudden little wildnesses and extravagances. I cannot remember nearly all that he said. He came suddenly, as I expected him to do, to the subject of Semyonov. + 

“You know of course that Alexei Petrovitch is living with us now?” + 

“Yes. I know that.” + 

“You can understand, Ivan Andreievitch, that when he came first and proposed it to me I was startled. I had other things⁠—very serious things to think of just then. We weren’t⁠—we aren’t⁠—very happy at home just now⁠ ⁠… you know that⁠ ⁠… I didn’t think he’d be very gay with us. I told him that. He said he didn’t expect to be gay anywhere at this time, but that he was lonely in his flat all by himself, and he thought for a week or two he’d like company. He didn’t expect it would be for very long. No.⁠ ⁠… He said he was expecting ‘something to happen.’ Something to himself, he said, that would alter his affairs. So, as it was only for a little time, well, it didn’t seem to matter. Besides, he’s a powerful man. He’s difficult to resist⁠—very difficult to resist.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Why have you given up your inventions, Nicolai Leontievitch?” I said to him, suddenly turning round upon him. + 

“My inventions?” he repeated, seeming very startled at that. + 

“Yes, your inventions.” + 

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… Understand, I have no more use for them. There are other things now to think about⁠—more important things.” + 

“But you were getting on with them so well?” + 

“No⁠—not really. I was deceiving myself as I have often deceived myself before. Alexei showed me that. He told me that they were no good⁠—” + 

“But I thought that he encouraged you?” + 

“Yes⁠—at first⁠—only at first. Afterwards he saw into them more clearly; he changed his mind. I think he was only intending to be kind. A strange man⁠ ⁠… a strange man.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“A very strange man. Don’t you let him influence you, Nicholas Markovitch.” + 

“Influence me? Do you think he does that?” He suddenly came close to me, catching my arm. + 

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen you often together.” + 

“Perhaps he does⁠ ⁠… Mojet bweet⁠ ⁠… You may be right. I don’t know⁠—I don’t know what I feel about him at all. Sometimes he seems to me very kind; sometimes I’m frightened of him, sometimes”⁠—here he dropped his voice⁠—“he makes me very angry, so angry that I lose control of myself⁠—a despicable thing⁠ ⁠… a despicable thing⁠ ⁠… just as I used to feel about the old man to whom I was secretary. I nearly murdered him once. In the middle of the night I thought suddenly of his stomach, all round and white and shining. It was an irresistible temptation to plunge a knife into it. I was awake for hours thinking of it. Every man has such hours.⁠ ⁠… At the same time Alexei can be very kind.” + 

“How do you mean⁠—kind?” I asked. + 

“For instance he has some very good wine⁠—fifty bottles at least⁠—he has given it all to us. Then he insists on paying us for his food. He is a generous-spirited man. Money is nothing to us⁠—” + 

“Don’t you drink his wine,” I said. + 

Nicholas was instantly offended. + 

“What do you mean, Ivan Andreievitch? Not drink his wine? Am I an infant? Can I not look after myself?⁠—Blagadaryoo Vas.⁠ ⁠… I am more than ten years old.” He took his hand away from my arm. + 

“No, I didn’t mean that at all,” I assured him. “Of course not⁠—only you told me not long ago that you had given up wine altogether. That’s why I said what I did.” + 

“So I have! So I have!” he eagerly assured me. “But Easter’s a time for rejoicing⁠ ⁠… Rejoicing!”⁠—his voice rose suddenly shrill and scornful⁠—“rejoicing with the world in the state that it is. Truly, Ivan Andreievitch, I don’t wonder at Alexei’s cynicism. I don’t indeed. The world is a sad spectacle for an observant man.” He suddenly put his hand through my arm, so close to me now that I could feel his beating heart. “But you believe, don’t you, Ivan Andreievitch, that Russia now has found herself?” His voice became desperately urgent and beseeching. “You must believe that. You don’t agree with those fools who don’t believe that she will make the best of all this? Fools? Scoundrels! Scoundrels! That’s what they are. I must believe in Russia now or I shall die. And so with all of us. If she does not rise now as one great country and lead the world, she will never do so. Our hearts must break. But she will⁠ ⁠… she will! No one who is watching events can doubt it. Only cynics like Alexei doubt⁠—he doubts everything. And he cannot leave anything alone. He must smear everything with his dirty finger. But he must leave Russia alone⁠ ⁠… I tell him.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He broke off. “If Russia fails now,” he spoke very quietly, “my life is over. I have nothing left. I will die.” + 

“Come, Nicolai Leontievitch,” I said, “you mustn’t let yourself go like that. Life isn’t over because one is disappointed in one’s country. And even though one is disappointed one does not love the less. What’s friendship worth if every disappointment chills one’s affection? One loves one’s country because she is one’s country, not because she’s disappointing.⁠ ⁠…” And so I went on with a number of amiable platitudes, struggling to comfort him somewhere, and knowing that I was not even beginning to touch the trouble of his soul. + 

He drew very close to me, his fingers gripping my sleeve⁠—“I’ll tell you, Ivan Andreievitch⁠—but you mustn’t tell anybody else. I’m afraid. Yes, I am. Afraid of myself, afraid of this town, afraid of Alexei, although that must seem strange to you. Things are very bad with me, Ivan Andreievitch. Very bad, indeed. Oh! I have been disappointed! yes, I have. Not that I expected anything else. But now it has come at last, the blow that I have always feared has fallen⁠—a very heavy blow. My own fault, perhaps, I don’t know. But I’m afraid of myself. I don’t know what I may do. I have such strange dreams⁠—Why has Alexei come to stay with us?” + 

“I don’t know,” I said. + 

Then, thank God, we reached the church. It was only as we went up the steps that I realised that he had never once mentioned Vera. + 

VIII + 

And yet with all our worries thick upon us it was quite impossible to resist the sweetness and charm and mystery of that service. + 

I think that perhaps it is true, as many have said, that people did not crowd to the churches on that Easter as they had earlier ones, but our church was a small one, and it seemed to us to be crammed. We stumbled up the dark steps, and found ourselves at the far end of the very narrow nave. At the other end there was a pool of soft golden light in which dark figures were bathed mysteriously. At the very moment of our entering, the procession was passing down the nave on its way round the outside of the church to look for the Body of Our Lord. Down the nave they came, the people standing on either side to let them pass, and then, many of them, falling in behind. Everyone carried a lighted candle. First there were the singers, then men carrying the coloured banners, then the priest in stiff gorgeous raiment, then officials and dignitaries, finally the crowd. The singing, the forest of lighted candles, the sudden opening of the black door and the blowing in of the cold night wind, the passing of the voices out into the air, the soft, dying away of the singing and then the hushed expectation of the waiting for the return⁠—all this had in it something so elemental, so simple, and so true to the very heart of the mystery of life that all trouble and sorrow fell away and one was at peace. + 

How strange was that expectation! We knew so well what the word must be; we could tell exactly the moment of the knock of the door, the deep sound of the priest’s voice, the embracings and dropping of wax over everyone’s clothes that would follow it⁠—and yet every year it was the same! There was truth in it, there was some deep response to the human dependence, some whispered promise of a future good. We waited there, our hearts beating, crowded against the dark walls. It was a very democratic assembly, bourgeoisie, workmen, soldiers, officers, women in evening dress and peasant women with shawls over their heads. No one spoke or whispered. + 

Suddenly there was a knock. The door was opened. The priest stood there, in his crimson and gold. “Christ is risen!” he cried, his voice vibrating as though he had indeed but just now, out there in the dark and wind, made the great discovery. + 

“He is risen indeed!” came the reply from us all. Markovitch embraced me. “Let us go,” he whispered, “I can’t bear it somehow tonight.” + 

We went out. Everywhere the bells were ringing⁠—the wonderful deep boom of St. Isaac’s, and then all the other bells, jangling, singing, crying, chattering, answering from all over Petrograd. From the other side of the Neva came the report of the guns and the fainter, more distant echo of the guns near the sea. I could hear behind it all the incessant chuck-chuck, chuck-chuck, of the ice colliding on the river. + 

It was very cold, and we hurried back to Anglisky Prospect. Markovitch was quite silent all the way. + 

When we arrived we found Vera and Uncle Ivan and Semyonov waiting for us (Bohun was with friends). On the table was the paskha, a sweet paste made of eggs and cream, curds and sugar, a huge ham, a large cake or rather, sweet bread called kulich, and a big bowl full of Easter eggs, as many-coloured as the rainbow. This would be the fare during the whole week, as there was to be no cooking until the following Saturday⁠—and very tired of the ham and the eggs one became before that day. There was also wine⁠—some of Semyonov’s gift, I supposed⁠—and a tiny bottle of vodka. + 

We were not a very cheerful company. Uncle Ivan, who was really distinguished by his complete inability to perceive what was going on under his nose, was happy, and ate a great deal of the ham and certainly more of the paskha than was good for him. + 

I do not know who was responsible for the final incident⁠—Semyonov perhaps⁠—but I have often wondered whether some word or other of mine precipitated it. We had finished our meal and were sitting quietly together, each occupied with his own thoughts. I had noticed that Markovitch had been drinking a great deal. + 

I was just thinking it was time for me to go when I heard Semyonov say: + 

“Well, what do you think of your Revolution now, Nicholas?” + 

“What do you mean⁠—my Revolution?” he asked. + 

(The strange thing on looking back is that the whole of this scene seems to me to have passed in a whisper, as though we were all terrified of somebody.) + 

“Well⁠—do you remember how you talked to me?⁠ ⁠… about the saving of the world and all the rest of it that this was going to be? Doesn’t seem to be quite turning out that way, does it, from all one hears? A good deal of quarrelling, isn’t there? And what about the army⁠—breaking up a bit, isn’t it?” + 

“Don’t, Uncle Alexei,” I heard Vera whisper. + 

“What I said I still believe,” Nicholas answered very quietly. “Leave Russia alone, Alexei⁠—and leave me alone, too.” + 

“I’m not touching you, Nicholas,” Semyonov answered, laughing softly. + 

“Yes you are⁠—you know that you are. I’m not angry⁠—not yet. But it’s unwise of you⁠—unwise.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Unwise⁠—how?” + 

“Never mind. ‘Below the silent pools there lie hidden many devils.’ Leave me alone. You are our guest.” + 

“Indeed, Nicholas,” said Semyonov, still laughing, “I mean you no harm. Ask our friend Durward here whether I ever mean anyone any harm. He will, I’m sure, give me the best of characters.” + 

“No⁠—no harm perhaps⁠—but still you tease me.⁠ ⁠… I’m a fool to mind.⁠ ⁠… But then I am a fool⁠—everyone knows it.” + 

All the time he was looking with his pathetic eyes and his pale face at Vera. + 

Vera said again, very low, almost in a whisper: “Uncle Alexei⁠ ⁠… please.” + 

“But really, Nicholas,” Semyonov went on, “you underrate yourself. You do indeed. Nobody thinks you a fool. I think you a very lucky man. With your talents⁠—” + 

“Talents!” said Nicholas softly, looking at Vera. “I have no talents.” + 

“⁠—And Vera’s love for you,” went on Semyonov⁠— + 

“Ah! that is over!” Nicholas said, so low that I scarcely heard it. I do not know what then exactly happened. I think that Vera put out her hand to cover Nicholas’. At any rate I saw him draw his away, very gently. It lay on the table, and the only sound beside the voices was the tiny rattle of his nails as his hand trembled against the woodwork. + 

Vera said something that I did not catch. + 

“No⁠ ⁠…” Nicholas said. “No⁠ ⁠… We must be true with one another, Vera. I have been drinking too much wine. My head is aching, and perhaps my words are not very clear. But it gives me courage to say what I have in my mind. I haven’t thought out yet what we must do. Perhaps you can help me. But I must tell you that I saw everything that happened here on that Thursday afternoon in the week of the Revolution⁠—” + 

Vera made a little movement of distress. + 

“Yes, you didn’t know⁠—but I was in my room⁠—where Alexei sleeps now, you know. I couldn’t help seeing. I’m very sorry.” + 

“No, Nicholas, I’m very glad,” Vera answered quietly. + 

“I would have told you in any case. I should have told you before. I love him and he loves me, just as you saw. I would like Ivan Andreievitch and Uncle Ivan and everyone to know. There is nothing to conceal. I have never loved anyone before, and I’m not ashamed of loving someone now.⁠ ⁠… It doesn’t alter our life, Nicholas. I care for you just as I did care, and I will do just as you tell me. I will never see him again if that’s what you wish, but I shall always love him.” + 

“Ah, Vera⁠—you are cruel.” Nicholas gave a little cry like a hurt animal, then he went away from us, standing for a moment looking at us. + 

“We’ll have to consider what we must do. I don’t know. I can’t think tonight.⁠ ⁠… And you, Alexei, you leave me alone.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He went stumbling away towards his bedroom. + 

Vera said nothing to any of us. She got up slowly, looked about her for a moment as though she were bewildered by the light and then went after Nicholas. I turned to Semyonov. + 

“You’d better go back to your own place,” I said. + 

“Not yet, thank you,” he answered, smiling. + 

IX + 

On the afternoon of Easter Monday I was reminded by Bohun of an engagement that I had made some weeks before to go that evening to a party at the house of a rich merchant, Rozanov by name. I have, I think, mentioned him earlier in this book. I cannot conceive why I had ever made the promise, and in the afternoon, meeting Bohun at Watkins’ bookshop in the Morskaia, I told him that I couldn’t go. + 

“Oh, come along!” he said. “It’s your duty.” + 

“Why my duty?” + 

“They’re all talking as hard as they can about saving the world by turning the other cheek, and so on; and a few practical facts about Germany from you will do a world of good.” + 

“Oh, your propaganda!” I said. + 

“No, it isn’t my propaganda,” he answered. “It’s a matter of life and death to get these people to go on with the war, and every little helps.” + 

“Well, I’ll come,” I said, shaking my head at the bookseller, who was anxious that I should buy the latest works of Mrs. Elinor Glyn and Miss Ethel Dell. I had in fact reflected that a short excursion into other worlds would be good for me. During these weeks I had been living in the very heart of the Markovitches, and it would be healthy to escape for a moment. + 

But I was not to escape. + 

I met Bohun at the top of the English Prospect, and we decided to walk. Rozanov lived in the street behind the Kazan Cathedral. I did not know very much about him except that he was a very wealthy merchant, who had made his money by selling cheap sweets to the peasant. He lived, I knew, an immoral and self-indulgent life, and his hobby was the quite indiscriminate collection of modern Russian paintings, his walls being plastered with innumerable works by Benois, Somoff, Dobeijinsky, Yakofflyeff, and Lançeray. He had also two Serovs, a fine Vrubel, and several Ryepins. He had also a fine private collection of indecent drawings. + 

“I really don’t know what on earth we’re going to this man for,” I said discontentedly. “I was weak this afternoon.” + 

“No, you weren’t,” said Bohun. “And I’ll tell you frankly that I’m jolly glad not to be having a meal at home tonight. Do you know, I don’t believe I can stick that flat much longer!” + 

“Why, are things worse?” I asked. + 

“It’s getting so jolly creepy,” Bohun said. “Everything goes on normally enough outwardly, but I suppose there’s been some tremendous row. Of course I don’t knew anything about that. After what you told me the other night though, I seem to see everything twice its natural size.” + 

“What do you mean?” I asked him. + 

“You know when something queer’s going on inside a house you seem to notice the furniture of the rooms much more than you ordinarily do. I remember once a fellow’s piano making me quite sick whenever I looked at it. I didn’t know why; I don’t know why now, but the funny thing is that another man who knew him once said exactly the same thing to me about it. He felt it too. Of course we’re none of us quite normal just now. The whole town seems to be turning upside down. I’m always imagining there are animals in the canals; and don’t you notice what lots of queer fellows there are in the Nevski now, and Chinese and Japs⁠—all sorts of wild men. And last night I had a dream that all the lumps of ice in the Nevski turned into griffins and went marching through the Red Square eating everyone up on their way.⁠ ⁠…” Bohun laughed. “That’s because I’d eaten something of course⁠—too much paskha probably. + 

“But, seriously, I came in this evening at five o’clock, and the first thing I noticed was that little red lacquer musical box of Semyonov’s. You know it. The one with a sportsman in a top hat and a horse and a dog on the lid. He brought it with some other little things when he moved in. It’s a jolly thing to look at, but it’s got two most irritating tunes. One’s like ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland.’ You said yourself the other day it would drive you mad if you heard it often. Well, there it was, jangling away in its self-sufficient wheezy voice. Semyonov was sitting in the armchair reading the newspaper, Markovitch was standing behind the chair with the strangest look on his face. Suddenly, just as I came in he bent down and I heard him say: ‘Won’t you stop the beastly thing?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Semyonov, and he went across in his heavy plodding kind of way and stopped it. I went off to my room and then, upon my word, five minutes after I heard it begin again, thin and reedy through the walls. But when I came back into the dining-room there was no one there. You can’t think how that tune irritated me, and I tried to stop it. I went up to it, but I couldn’t find the hinge or the key. So on it went, over and over again. Then there’s another thing. Have you ever noticed how some chairs will creak in a room, just as though someone were sitting down or getting up? It always, in ordinary times, makes you jump, but when you’re strung up about something⁠—! There’s a chair in the Markovitches’ dining-room just like that. It creaks more like a human being than anything you ever heard, and tonight I could have sworn Semyonov got up out of it. It was just like his heavy slow movement. However, there wasn’t anyone there. Do you think all this silly?” he asked. + 

“No, indeed I don’t,” I answered. + 

“Then there’s a picture. You know that awful painting of a mid-Victorian ancestor of Vera’s⁠—a horrible old man with bushy eyebrows and a high, rather dirty-looking stock?” + 

“Yes, I know it,” I said. + 

“It’s one of those pictures with eyes that follow you all round the room. At least it has now. I usen’t to notice them. Now they stare at you as though they’d eat you, and I know that Markovitch feels them because he keeps looking up at the beastly thing. Then there’s⁠—But no, I’m not going to talk any more about it. It isn’t any good. One gets thinking of anything these days. One’s nerves are all on edge. And that flat’s too full of people anyway.” + 

“Yes, it is,” I agreed. + 

We arrived at Rozanov’s house, and went up in a very elegant heavily-gilt lift. Once in the flat we were enveloped in a cloud of men and women, tobacco smoke, and so many pictures that it was like tumbling into an art-dealer’s. Where there weren’t pictures there was gilt, and where there wasn’t gilt there was naked statuary, and where there wasn’t naked statuary there was Rozanov, very red and stout and smiling, gay in a tightly fitting black tail coat, white waistcoat and black trousers. Who all the people were I haven’t the least idea. There was a great many. A number of Jews and Jewesses, amiable, prosperous, and kindly, an artist or two, a novelist, a lady pianist, two or three actors. I noticed these. Then there was an old maid, a Mlle. Finisterre, famous in Petrograd society for her bitterness and acrimony, and in appearance an exact copy of Balzac’s Sophie Gamond. + 

I noticed several of those charming, quiet, wise women of whom Russia is so prodigal, a man or two whom I had met at different times, especially one officer, one of the finest, bravest, and truest men I have ever known; some of the inevitable giggling girls⁠—and then suddenly, standing quite alone, Nina! + 

Her loneliness was the first thing that struck me. She stood back against the wall underneath the shining frames, looking about her with a nervous, timid smile. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in the old way that she used to do when she was trying to imitate Vera, and I don’t know why but that seemed to me a good omen, as though she were already on her way back to us. She was wearing a very simple white frock. + 

In spite of her smile she looked unhappy, and I could see that during this last week experience had not been kind to her, because there was an air of shyness and uncertainty which had never been there before. I was just going over to speak to her when two of the giggling girls surrounded her and carried her off. + 

I carried the little picture of her in my mind all through the noisy, strident meal that followed. I couldn’t see her from where I sat, nor did I once catch the tones of her voice, although I listened. Only a month ago there would have been no party at which Nina was present where her voice would not have risen above all others. + 

No one watching us would have believed any stories about food shortage in Petrograd. I daresay at this very moment in Berlin they are having just such meals. Until the last echo of the last trump has died away in the fastnesses of the advancing mountains the rich will be getting from somewhere the things that they desire! I have no memory of what we had to eat that night, but I know that it was all very magnificent and noisy, kindhearted and generous and vulgar. A great deal of wine was drunk, and by the end of the meal everyone was talking as loudly as possible. I had for companion the beautiful Mlle. Finisterre. She had lived all her life in Petrograd, and she had a contempt for the citizens of that fine town worthy of Semyonov himself. Opposite us sat a stout, good-natured Jewess, who was very happily enjoying her food. She was certainly the most harmless being in creation, and was probably guilty of a thousand generosities and kindnesses in her private life. Nevertheless, Mlle. Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred, and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing voice, must have reached their victim. She also abused her host very roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an especially unpleasant scandal in which he had notoriously figured. I stopped her at last. + 

“It seems to me,” I said, “that it would be better not to say these things about him while you’re eating his bread and salt.” + 

She laughed shrilly, and tapped me on the arm with a bony finger. + 

“Oh, you English!⁠ ⁠… always so moral and strict about the proprieties⁠ ⁠… and always so hypercritical too. Oh, you amuse me! I’m French, you see⁠—not Russian at all; these poor people see through nothing⁠—but we French!” + 

After dinner there was a strange scene. We all moved into the long, over-decorated drawing-room. We sat about, admired the pictures (a beautiful one by Somoff I especially remember⁠—an autumn scene with eighteenth-century figures and colours so soft and deep that the effect was inexpressibly delicate and mysterious), talked and then fell into one of those Russian silences that haunt every Russian party. I call those silences “Russian,” because I know nothing like them in any other part of the world. It is as though the souls of the whole company suddenly vanished through the windows, leaving only the bodies and clothes. Everyone sits, eyes half closed, mouths shut, hands motionless, host and hostess, desperately abandoning every attempt at rescue, gaze about them in despair. + 

The mood may easily last well into the morning, when the guests, still silent, will depart, assuring everybody that they have enjoyed themselves immensely, and really believing that they have; or it may happen that some remark will suddenly be made, and instantly back through the windows the souls will come, eagerly catching up their bodies again, and a babel will arise, deafening, baffling, stupefying. Or it may happen that a Russian will speak with sudden authority, almost like a prophet, and will continue for half an hour and more, pouring out his soul, and no one will dream of thinking it an improper exhibition. + 

In fine, anything can happen at a Russian party. What happened on this occasion was this. The silence had lasted for some minutes, and I was wondering for how much longer I could endure it (I had one eye on Nina somewhere in the background, and the other on Bohun restlessly kicking his patent-leather shoes one against the other), when suddenly a quiet, ordinary little woman seated near me said: + 

“The thing for Russia to do now is to abandon all resistance and so shame the world.” She was a mild, pleasant-looking woman, with the eyes of a very gentle cow, and spoke exactly as though she were still pursuing her own private thoughts. It was enough; the windows flew open, the souls came flooding in, and such a torrent of sound poured over the carpet that the naked statuary itself seemed to shiver at the threatened deluge. Everyone talked; everyone, even, shouted. Just as, during the last weeks, the streets had echoed to the words “Liberty,” “Democracy,” “Socialism,” “Brotherhood,” “Anti-annexation,” “Peace of the world,” so now the art gallery echoed. The very pictures shook in their frames. + 

One old man in a white beard continued to cry, over and over again, “Firearms are not our weapons⁠ ⁠… bullets are not our weapons. It’s the Peace of God, the Peace of God that we need.” + 

One lady (a handsome Jewess) jumped up from her chair, and standing before us all recited a kind of chant, of which I only caught sentences once, and again: + 

“Russia must redeem the world from its sin⁠ ⁠… this slaughter must be slayed⁠ ⁠… Russia the Saviour of the world⁠ ⁠… this slaughter must be slayed.” + 

I had for some time been watching Bohun. He had travelled a long journey since that original departure from England in December; but I was not sure whether he had travelled far enough to forget his English terror of making a fool of himself. Apparently he had.⁠ ⁠… He said, his voice shaking a little, blushing as he spoke: + 

“What about Germany?” + 

The lady in the middle of the floor turned upon him furiously: + 

“Germany! Germany will learn her lesson from us. When we lay down our arms her people, too, will lay down theirs.” + 

“Supposing she doesn’t?” + 

The interest of the room was now centred on him, and everyone else was silent. + 

“That is not our fault. We shall have made our example.” + 

A little hum of applause followed this reply, and that irritated Bohun. He raised his voice: + 

“Yes, and what about your allies, England and France, are you going to betray them?” + 

Several voices took him up now. A man continued: + 

“It is not betrayal. We are not betraying the proletariat of England and France. They are our friends. But the alliance with the French and English Capitalistic Governments was made not by us but by our own Capitalistic Government, which is now destroyed.” + 

“Very well, then,” said Bohun. “But when the war began did you not⁠—all of you, not only your Government, but you people now sitting in this room⁠—did you not all beg and pray England to come in? During those days before England’s intervention, did you not threaten to call us cowards and traitors if we did not come in? Pomnite?” + 

There was a storm of answers to this. I could not distinguish much of what it was. I was fixed by Mlle. Finisterre’s eagle eye, gleaming at the thought of the storm that was rising. + 

“That’s not our affair.⁠ ⁠… That’s not our affair,” I heard voices crying. “We did support you. For years we supported you. We lost millions of men in your service.⁠ ⁠… Now this terrible slaughter must cease, and Russia show the way to peace.” + 

Bohun’s moment then came upon him. He sprang to his feet, his face crimson, his body quivering; so desperate was his voice, so urgent his distress that the whole room was held. + 

“What has happened to you all? Don’t you see, don’t you see what you are doing? What has come to you, you who were the most modest people in Europe and are now suddenly the most conceited? What do you hope to do by this surrender? + 

“Do you know, in the first place, what you will do? You will deliver the peoples of three-quarters of the globe into hopeless slavery; you will lose, perhaps forever, the opportunity of democracy; you will establish the grossest kind of militarism for all time. Why do you think Germany is going to listen to you? What sign has she ever shown that she would? When have her people ever turned away or shown horror at any of the beastly things her rulers have been doing in this war?⁠ ⁠… What about your own Revolution? Do you believe in it? Do you treasure it? Do you want it to last? Do you suppose for a moment that, if you bow to Germany, she won’t instantly trample out your Revolution and give you hack your monarchy? How can she afford to have a revolutionary republic close to her own gates? What is she doing at this moment? Piling up armies with which to invade you, and conquer you, and lead you into slavery. What have you done so far by your Revolutionary orders? What have you done by relaxing discipline in the army? What good have you done to anyone or anything? Is anyone the happier? Isn’t there disorder everywhere⁠—aren’t all your works stopping and your industries failing? What about the eighty million peasants who have been liberated in the course of a night? Who’s going to lead them if you are not? This thing has happened by its own force, and you are sitting down under it, doing nothing. Why did it succeed? Simply because there was nothing to oppose it. Authority depended on the army, not on the Czar, and the army was the people. So it is with the other armies of the world. Do you think that the other armies couldn’t do just as you did if they wished. They could, in half an hour. They hate the war as much as you do, but they have also patriotism. They see that their country must be made strong first before other countries will listen to its ideas. But where is your patriotism? Has the word Russia been mentioned once by you since the Revolution? Never once.⁠ ⁠… ‘Democracy,’ ‘Brotherhood’⁠—but how are Democracy and Brotherhood to be secured unless other countries respect you.⁠ ⁠… Oh, I tell you it’s absurd!⁠ ⁠… It’s more than absurd, it’s wicked, it’s rotten.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Poor boy, he was very near tears. He sat down suddenly, staring blankly in front of him, his hands clenched. + 

Rozanov answered him, Rozanov flushed, his fat body swollen with food and drink, a little unsteady on his legs, and the light of the true mystic in his pig-like eyes. He came forward into the middle of the circle. + 

“That’s perhaps true what you say,” he cried; “it’s very English, very honest, and, if you will forgive me, young man, very simple. You say that we Russians are conceited. No, we are not conceited, but we see farther than the rest of the world. Is that our curse? Perhaps it is, but equally, perhaps, we may save the world by it. Now look at me! Am I a fine man? No, I am not. Everyone knows I am not. No man could look at my face and say that I am a fine man. I have done disgraceful things all my life. All present know some of the things I have done, and there are some worse things which nobody knows save myself. Well, then.⁠ ⁠… Am I going to stop doing such things? Am I now, at fifty-five, about to become instantly a saint? Indeed not. I shall continue to do the things that I have already done, and I shall drop into a beastly old age. I know it. + 

“So, young man, I am a fair witness. You may trust me to speak the truth as I see it. I believe in Christ. I believe in the Christ-life, the Christ-soul. If I could, I would stop my beastliness and become Christlike. I have tried on several occasions, and failed, because I have no character. But does that mean that I do not believe in it when I see it? Not at all. I believe in it more than ever. And so with Russia⁠—you don’t see far enough, young man, neither you nor any of your countrymen. It is one of your greatest failings that you do not care for ideas. How is this war going to end? By the victory of Germany? Perhaps.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps even it may be that Russia by her weakness will help to that victory. But is that the end? No.⁠ ⁠… If Russia has an Idea and because of her faith in that Idea, she will sacrifice everything, will be buffeted on both cheeks, will be led into slavery, will deliver up her land and her people, will be mocked at by all the world⁠ ⁠… perhaps that is her destiny.⁠ ⁠… She will endure all that in order that her Idea may persist. And her Idea will persist. Are not the Germans and Austrians human like ourselves? Slowly, perhaps very slowly, they will say to themselves: ‘There is Russia who believes in the peace of the world, in the brotherhood of man, and she will sacrifice everything for it, she will go out, as Christ did, and be tortured and be crucified⁠—and then on the third day she will rise again.’ Is not that the history of every triumphant Idea?⁠ ⁠… You say that meanwhile Germany will triumph. Perhaps for a time she may, but our Idea will not die. + 

“The further Germany goes, the deeper will that Idea penetrate into her heart. At the end she will die of it, and a new Germany will be born into a new world.⁠ ⁠… I tell you I am an evil man, but I believe in God and in the righteousness of God.” + 

What do I remember after those words of Rozanov? It was like a voice speaking to me across a great gulf of waters⁠—but that voice was honest. I do not know what happened after his speech. I think there was a lot of talk. I cannot remember. + 

Only just before I was going I was near Nina for a moment. + 

She looked up at me just as she used to do. + 

“Durdles⁠—is Vera all right?” + 

“She’s miserable, Nina, because you’re not there. Come back to us.” + 

But she shook her head. + 

“No, no, I can’t. Give her my⁠—” Then she stopped. “No, tell her nothing.” + 

“Can I tell her you’re happy?” I asked. + 

“Oh, I’m all right,” she answered roughly, turning away from me. + 

X + 

But the adventures of that Easter Monday night were not yet over. I had walked away with Bohun; he was very silent, depressed, poor boy, and shy with the reaction of his outburst. + 

“I made the most awful fool of myself,” he said. + 

“No, you didn’t,” I answered. + 

“The trouble of it is,” he said slowly, “that neither you nor I see the humorous side of it all strongly enough. We take it too seriously. It’s got a funny side all right.” + 

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But you must remember that the Markovitch situation isn’t exactly funny just now⁠—and we’re both in the middle of it. Oh! if only I could find Nina back home and Semyonov away, I believe the strain would lift. But I’m frightened that something’s going to happen. I’ve grown very fond of these people, you know, Bohun⁠—Vera and Nina and Nicholas. Isn’t it odd how one gets to love Russians⁠—more than one’s own people? The more stupid things they do the more you love them⁠—whereas with one’s own people it’s quite the other way. Oh, I do want Vera and Nina and Nicholas to be happy!” + 

“Isn’t the town queer tonight?” said Bohun, suddenly stopping. (We were just at the entrance to the Mariensky Square.) + 

“Yes,” I said. “I think these days between the thaw and the white nights are in some ways the strangest of all. There seems to be so much going on that one can’t quite see.” + 

“Yes⁠—over there⁠—at the other end of the Square⁠—there’s a kind of mist⁠—a sort of water-mist. It comes from the Canal.” + 

“And do you see a figure like an old bent man with a red lantern? Do you see what I mean⁠—that red light?” + 

“And those shadows on the further wall like riders passing with silver-tipped spears? Isn’t it⁠ ⁠… ? There they go⁠—ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“How still the Square is? Do you see those three windows all alight? Isn’t there a dance going on? Don’t you hear the music?” + 

“No, it’s the wind.” + 

“No, surely.⁠ ⁠… That’s a flute⁠—and then violins. Listen! Those are fiddles for certain!” + 

“How still, how still it is!” + 

We stood and listened whilst the white mist gathered and grew over the cobbles. Certainly there was a strain of music, very faint and dim, threading through the air. + 

“Well, I must go on,” said Bohun. “You go up to the left, don’t you? Good night.” I watched Bohun’s figure cross the Square. The light was wonderful, like fold on fold of gauze, but opaque, so that buildings showed with sharp outline behind it. The moon was full and quite red. I turned to go home and ran straight into Lawrence. + 

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Are you a ghost too?” + 

He didn’t seem to feel any surprise at meeting me. He was plainly in a state of tremendous excitement. He spoke breathlessly. + 

“You’re exactly the man. You must come back with me. My diggings now are only a yard away from here.” + 

“It’s very late,” I began, “and⁠—” + 

“Things are desperate,” he said. “I don’t know⁠—” he broke off. “Oh! come and help me, Durward, for God’s sake!” + 

I went with him, and we did not exchange another word until we were in his rooms. + 

He began hurriedly taking off his clothes. “There! Sit on the bed. Different from Wilderling’s, isn’t it? Poor devil.⁠ ⁠… I’m going to have a bath if you don’t mind⁠—I’ve got to clear my head.” + 

He dragged out a tin bath from under his bed, then a big can of water from a corner. Stripped, he looked so thick and so strong, with his short neck and his bulldog build, that I couldn’t help saying, + 

“You don’t look a day older than the last time you played Rugger for Cambridge.” + 

“I am, though.” He sluiced the cold water over his head, grunting. “Not near so fit⁠—gettin’ fat too.⁠ ⁠… Rugger days are over. Wish all my other days were over too.” + 

He got out of the bath, wiped himself, put on pyjamas, brushed his teeth, then his hair, took out a pipe, and then sat beside me on the bed. + 

“Look here, Durward,” he said. “I’m desperate, old man.” (He said “desprite.”) “We’re all in a hell of a mess.” + 

“I know,” I said. + 

He puffed furiously at his pipe. + 

“You know, if I’m not careful I shall go a bit queer in the head. Get so angry, you know,” he added simply. + 

“Angry with whom?” I asked. + 

“With myself mostly for bein’ such a bloody fool. But not only myself⁠—with Civilisation, Durward, old cock!⁠—and also with that swine Semyonov.” + 

“Ah, I thought you’d come to him,” I said. + 

“Now the points are these,” he went on, counting on his thick stubbly fingers. “First, I love Vera⁠—and when I say love I mean love. Never been in love before, you know⁠—honest Injun, never.⁠ ⁠… Never had affairs with tobacconists’ daughters at Cambridge⁠—never had an affair with a woman in my life⁠—no, never. Used to wonder what was the matter with me, why I wasn’t like other chaps. Now I know. I was waitin’ for Vera. Quite simple. I shall never love anyone again⁠—never. I’m not a kid, you know, like young Bohun⁠—I love Vera once and for all, and that’s that⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes,” I said. “And the next point?” + 

“The next point is that Vera loves me. No need to go into that⁠—but she does.” + 

“Yes, she does,” I said. + 

“Third point, she’s married, and although she don’t love her man she’s sorry for him. Fourth point, he loves her. Fifth point, there’s a damned swine hangin’ round called Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.⁠ ⁠… Well, then, there you have it.” + 

He considered, scratching his head. I waited. Then he went on: + 

“Now it would be simpler if she didn’t want to be kind to Nicholas, if Nicholas didn’t love her, if⁠—a thousand things were different. But they must be as they are, I suppose. I’ve just been with her. She’s nearly out of her mind with worry.” + 

He paused, puffing furiously at his pipe. Then he went on: + 

“She’s worrying about me, about Nina, and about Nicholas. And especially about Nicholas. There’s something wrong with him. He knows about my kissing her in the flat. Well, that’s all right. I meant him to know. Everything’s just got to be aboveboard. But Semyonov knows too, and that devil’s been raggin’ him about it, and Nicholas is just like a bloomin’ kid. That’s got to stop. I’ll wring that feller’s neck. But even that wouldn’t help matters much. Vera says Nicholas is not to be hurt whatever happens. ‘Never mind us,’ she says, ‘we’re strong and can stand it.’ But he can’t. He’s weak. And she says he’s just goin’ off his dot. And it’s got to be stopped⁠—it’s just got to be stopped. There’s only one way to stop it.” + 

He stayed: suddenly he put his heavy hand on my knee. + 

“What do you mean?” I asked. + 

“I’ve got to clear out. That’s what I mean. Right away out. Back to England.” + 

I didn’t speak. + 

“That’s it,” he went on, but now as though he were talking to himself. “That’s what you’ve got to do, old son.⁠ ⁠… She says so, and she’s right. Can’t alter our love, you know. Nothing changes that. We’ve got to hold on⁠ ⁠… Ought to have cleared out before.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Suddenly he turned. He almost flung himself upon me. He gripped my arms so that I would have cried out if the agony in his eyes hadn’t held me. + 

“Here,” he muttered, “let me alone for a moment. I must hold on. I’m pretty well beat. I’m just about done.” + 

For what seemed hours we sat there. I believe it was, in reality, only a few minutes. He sat facing me, his eyes staring at me but not seeing me, his body close against me, and I could see the sweat glistening on his chest through the open pyjamas. He was rigid as though he had been struck into stone. + 

He suddenly relaxed. + 

“That’s right,” he said; “thanks, old man. I’m better now. It’s a bit late, I expect, but stay on a while.” + 

He got into bed. I sat beside him, gripped his hand, and ten minutes later he was asleep. + 

XI + 

The next day, Tuesday, was stormy with wind and rain. It was strange to see from my window the whirlpool of ice-encumbered waters. The rain fell in slanting, hissing sheets upon the ice, and the ice, in lumps and sheets and blocks, tossed and heaved and spun. At times it was as though all the ice was driven by some strong movement in one direction, then it was like the whole pavement of the world slipping down the side of the firmament into space. Suddenly it would be checked and, with a kind of quiver, station itself and hang chattering and clutching until the sweep would begin in the opposite direction! + 

I could see only dimly through the mist, but it was not difficult to imagine that, in very truth, the days of the flood had returned. Nothing could be seen but the tossing, heaving welter of waters with the ice, grim and grey through the shadows, like “ships and monsters, sea-serpents and mermaids,” to quote Galleon’s Spanish Nights. + 

Of course the water came in through my own roof, and it was on that very afternoon that I decided, once and for all, to leave this abode of mine. Romantic it might be; I felt it was time for a little comfortable realism. My old woman brought me the usual cutlets, macaroni, and tea for lunch; then I wrote to a friend in England; and finally, about four o’clock, after one more look at the hissing waters, drew my curtains, lit my candles, and sat down near my stove to finish that favourite of mine, already mentioned in these pages, De la Mare’s The Return. + 

I read on with absorbed attention. I did not hear the dripping on the roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught, and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you remember the book’s closing words?⁠— + 

“Once, like Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard the steady surge of multitudinous raindrops, like the roar of Time’s winged chariot hurrying near, then he too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friend’s denuded battlefield.” + 

“Shadowy companion,” “multitudinous raindrops,” “a weary old sentinel,” “his friend’s denuded battlefield”⁠ ⁠… the words echoed like little muffled bells in my brain, and it was, I suppose, to their chiming that I fell into dreamless sleep. + 

From this I was suddenly roused by the sharp noise of knocking, and starting up, my book clattering to the floor, I saw facing me, in the doorway, Semyonov. Twice before he had come to me just like this⁠—out of the heart of a dreamless sleep. Once in the orchard near Buchatch, on a hot summer afternoon; once in this same room on a moonlit night. Some strange consciousness, rising, it seemed, deep out of my sleep, told me that this would be the last time that I would so receive him. + 

“May I come in?” he said. + 

“If you must, you must,” I answered. “I am not physically strong enough to prevent you.” + 

He laughed. He was dripping wet. He took off his hat and overcoat, sat down near the stove, bending forward, holding his cloak in his hands and watching the steam rise from it. + 

I moved away and stood watching. I was not going to give him any possible illusion as to my welcoming him. He turned round and looked at me. + 

“Truly, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, “you are a fine host. This is a miserable greeting.” + 

“There can be no greetings between us ever again,” I answered him. “You are a blackguard. I hope that this is our last meeting.” + 

“But it is,” he answered, looking at me with friendliness; “that is precisely why I’ve come. I’ve come to say goodbye.” + 

“Goodbye?” I repeated with astonishment. This chimed in so strangely with my premonition. “I never was more delighted to hear it. I hope you’re going a long distance from us all.” + 

“That’s as may be,” he answered. “I can’t tell you definitely.” + 

“When are you going?” I asked. + 

“That I can’t tell you either. But I have a premonition that it will be soon.” + 

“Oh, a premonition,” I said, disappointed. “Is nothing settled?” + 

“No, not definitely. It depends on others.” + 

“Have you told Vera and Nicholas?” + 

“No⁠—in fact, only last night Vera begged me to go away, and I told her that I would love to do anything to oblige her, but this time I was afraid that I couldn’t help her. I would be compelled, alas, to stay on indefinitely.” + 

“Look here, Semyonov,” I said, “stop that eternal fooling. Tell me honestly⁠—are you going or not?” + 

“Going away from where?” he asked, laughing. + 

“From the Markovitches, from all of us, from Petrograd?” + 

“Yes⁠—I’ve told you already,” he answered. “I’ve come to say goodbye.” + 

“Then what did you mean by telling Vera⁠—” + 

“Never you mind, Ivan Andreievitch. Don’t worry your poor old head with things that are too complicated for you⁠—a habit of yours, I’m afraid. Just believe me when I say that I’ve come to say goodbye. I have an intuition that we shall never talk together again. I may be wrong. But my intuitions are generally correct.” + 

I noticed then that his face was haggard, his eyes dark, the light in them exhausted as though he had not slept.⁠ ⁠… I had never before seen him show positive physical distress. Let his soul be what it might, his body seemed always triumphant. + 

“Whether your intuition is right or no,” I said, “this is the last time. I never intend to speak to you again if I can help it. The day that I hear that you have really left us, never to return, will be one of the happiest days of my life.” + 

Semyonov gave me a strange look, humorous, ironical, and, upon my word, almost affectionate: “That’s very sad what you say, Ivan Andreievitch⁠—if you mean it. And I suppose you mean it, because you English always do mean what you say.⁠ ⁠… But it’s sad because, truly, I have friendly feelings towards you, and you’re almost the only man in the world of whom I could say that.” + 

“You speak as though your friendship were an honour,” I said hotly. “It’s a degradation.” + 

He smiled. “Now that’s melodrama, straight out of your worst English plays. And how bad they can be!⁠ ⁠… But you hadn’t always this vehement hatred. What’s changed your mind?” + 

“I don’t know that I have changed my mind,” I answered. “I think I’ve always disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course⁠—but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you’ve been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You’ve set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth.⁠ ⁠… You deserve hanging, if any murderer ever did!” + 

He looked at me so mildly and with such genuine interest that I was compelled to feel my indignation a whit melodramatic. + 

“If you are going,” I said more calmly, “for Heaven’s sake go! It can’t be any pleasure to you, clever and talented as you are, to bait such harmless people as Vera and Nicholas. You’ve done harm enough. Leave them, and I forgive you everything.” + 

“Ah, of course your forgiveness is of the first importance to me,” he said, with ironic gravity. “But it’s true enough. You’re going to be bothered with me⁠—I do seem a worry to you, don’t I?⁠—for only a few days more. And how’s it going to end, do you think? Who’s going to finish me off? Nicholas or Vera? Or perhaps our English Byron, Lawrence? Or even yourself? Have you your revolver with you? I shall offer no resistance, I promise you.” + 

Suddenly he changed. He came closer to me. His weary, exhausted eyes gazed straight into mine: “Ivan Andreievitch, never mind about the rest⁠—never mind whether you do or don’t hate me, that matters to nobody. What I tell you is the truth. I have come to you, as I have always come to you, like the moth to the flame. Why am I always pursuing you? Is it for the charm and fascination of your society? Your wit? Your beauty? I won’t flatter you⁠—no, no, it’s because you alone, of all these fools here, knew her. You knew her as no one else alive knew her. She liked you⁠—God knows why! At least I do know why⁠—it was because of her youth and innocence and simplicity, because she didn’t know a wise man from a fool, and trusted all alike.⁠ ⁠… But you knew her, you knew her. You remember her and can talk of her. Ah, how I’ve hungered, hungered, to talk to you about her! Sometimes I’ve come all this way and then turned back at the door. How I’ve prayed that it might have been some other who knew her, some real man, not a sentimental, gloomy old woman like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. And yet you have your points. You have in you the things that she saw⁠—you are honest, you are brave.⁠ ⁠… You are like a good English clergyman. But she!⁠ ⁠… I should have had someone with wit, with humour, with a sense of life about her. All the things, all the little things⁠—the way she walked, her clothes, her smile⁠—when she was cross! Ah, she was divine when she was cross!⁠ ⁠… Ivan Andreievitch, be kind to me! Think for a moment less of your morals, less of your principles⁠—and talk to me of her! Talk to me of her!” + 

He had drawn quite close to me; he looked like a madman⁠—I have no doubt that, at that moment, he was one. + 

“I can’t!⁠ ⁠… I won’t!” I answered, drawing away. “She is the most sacred memory I have in my life. I hate to think of her with you. And that because you smirch everything you touch. I have no feeling of jealousy.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You? Jealousy!” he said, looking at me scornfully. “Why should you be jealous?” + 

“I loved her too,” I said. + 

He looked at me. In spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot⁠—my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame⁠—everything was comprehended in the scorn of that glance. + 

“No,” I said, “you need not suppose that she ever realised. She did not. I would have died rather than have spoken of it. But I will not talk about her. I will not.” + 

He drew away from me. His face was grave; the mockery had left it. + 

“Oh, you English, how strange you are!⁠ ⁠… In trusting, yes.⁠ ⁠… But the things you miss! I understand now many things. I give up my desire. You shan’t smirch your precious memories.⁠ ⁠… And you, too, must understand that there has been all this time a link that has bound us.⁠ ⁠… Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I?⁠ ⁠… Rather ask, what am I? I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit⁠—what you like. If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at all, Ivan Andreievitch. Perhaps this is a ghost that you see.⁠ ⁠… What if the town has changed in the night and strange souls have slipped into our old bodies? + 

“Isn’t there a stir about the town? Is it I that pursue Nicholas, or is it my ghost that pursues myself? Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I follow?⁠ ⁠… Don’t be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb: ‘There’s a secret city in every man’s heart. It is at that city’s altars that the true prayers are offered.’ There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months.” + 

He came up to me: + 

“Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I’m a haunted man, you know.” + 

He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone. + 

XII + 

That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave⁠—and beyond it, I expect. + 

He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough. Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as it had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading tablecloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov’s musical-box, on the old knickknacks and the untidy shelf of books. (Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day’s efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenev’s House of Gentlefolks, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber. + 

He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing this, of course, from Bohun’s account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front. + 

“There!” Semyonov would say, pausing. “Now, Nicholas⁠ ⁠… What do you say to that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course, although our friend the Retch doesn’t put it quite so bluntly. The Novaya Jezn of course highly approves. Here’s another.⁠ ⁠…” This went on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov’s voice was Markovitch’s padding steps. “Ah! here’s another bit!⁠ ⁠… Now what about that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they’ve been doing near Riga! It says.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Can’t you leave it alone, Alexei? Keep your paper to yourself!” + 

These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch’s ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder. + 

“There’s gratitude⁠—when I’m trying to interest you! How childish, too, not to face the real situation! Do you think you’re going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn’t exist? So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution! How long is it? Let me see⁠ ⁠… March, April⁠ ⁠… yes, just about six weeks.⁠ ⁠… Well, well!” + 

“Leave me alone, Alexei!⁠ ⁠… Leave me alone!” + 

Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at control behind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable. He wanted, there and then, to have left the room. It would have been better for him had he done so. But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scene developed, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid too emphatic a stress on the discomfort of it. + 

He hoped that in a moment Vera or Uncle Ivan would come and the scene would end. + 

Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: “What were those words you used to me not so long ago? Something about free Russia, I think⁠—Russia moving like one man to save the world⁠—Russia with an unbroken front.⁠ ⁠… Too optimistic, weren’t you?” + 

The padding feet stopped. In a whisper that seemed to Bohun to fill the room with echoing sound Markovitch said: + 

“You have tempted me for weeks now, Alexei.⁠ ⁠… I don’t know why you hate me so, nor why you pursue me. Go back to your own place. If I am an unfortunate man, and by my own fault, that should be nothing to you who are more fortunate.” + 

“Torment you! I?⁠ ⁠… My dear Nicholas, never! But you are so childish in your ideas⁠—and are you unfortunate? I didn’t know it. Is it about your inventions that you are speaking? Well, they were never very happy, were they?” + 

“You praised them to me!” + 

“Did I?⁠ ⁠… My foolish kindness of heart, I’m afraid. To tell the truth, I was thankful when you saw things as they were⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You took them away from me.” + 

“I took them away? What nonsense! It was your own wish⁠—Vera’s wish too.” + 

“Yes, you persuaded both Vera and Nina that they were no good. They believed in them before you came.” + 

“You flatter me, Nicholas. I haven’t such power over Vera’s opinions, I’m afraid. If I tell her anything she believes at once the opposite. You must have seen that yourself.” + 

“You took her belief away from me. You took her love away from me.” + 

Semyonov laughed. That laugh seemed to rouse Markovitch to frenzy. He screamed out. “You have taken everything from me!⁠ ⁠… You will not leave me alone! You must be careful. You are in danger, I tell you.” + 

Semyonov sprang up from his chair, and the two men, advancing towards one another, came into Bohun’s vision. + 

Markovitch was like a madman, his hands raised, his eyes staring from his head, his body trembling. Semyonov was quiet, motionless, smiling, standing very close to the other. + 

“Well, what are you going to do?” he asked. + 

Markovitch stood for a moment, his hands raised, then his whole body seemed to collapse. He moved away, muttering something which Bohun could not hear. With shuffling feet, his head lowered, he went out of the room. Semyonov returned to his seat. + 

To Bohun, an innocent youth with very simple and amiable ideas about life, the whole thing seemed “beastly beyond words.” + 

“I saw a man torture a dog once,” he told me. “He didn’t do much to it really. Tied it up to a tree and dug into it with a penknife. I went home and was sick.⁠ ⁠… Well, I felt sick this time, too.” + 

Nevertheless his own “sickness” was not the principal affair. The point was the sense of danger that seemed now to tinge with its own faint stain every article in the room. Bohun’s hatred of Semyonov was so strong that he felt as though he would never be able to speak to him again; but it was not really of Semyonov that he was thinking. His thoughts were all centred round Markovitch. You must remember that for a long time now he had considered himself Markovitch’s protector. This sense of his protection had developed in him an affection for the man that he would not otherwise have felt. He did not, of course, know of any of Markovitch’s deepest troubles. He could only guess at his relations with Vera, and he did not understand the passionate importance that he attached to his Russian idea. But he knew enough to be aware of his childishness, his simplicity, his naivete, and his essential goodness. “He’s an awfully decent sort, really,” he used to say in a kind of apologetic defence. The very fact of Semyonov’s strength made his brutality seem now the more revolting. “Like hitting a fellow half your size”.⁠ ⁠… + 

He saw that things in that flat were approaching a climax, and he knew enough now of Russian impetuosity to realise that climaxes in that country are, very often, no ordinary affairs. It was just as though there were an evil smell in the flat, he explained to me. “It seemed to hang over everything. Things looked the same and yet they weren’t the same at all.” + 

His main impression that “something would very soon happen if he didn’t look out,” drove everything else from his mind⁠—but he didn’t quite see what to do. Speak to Vera? To Nicholas? To Semyonov?⁠ ⁠… He didn’t feel qualified to do any of these things. + 

He went to bed that night early, about ten o’clock. He couldn’t sleep. His door was not quite closed and he could hear first Vera, then Uncle Ivan, lastly Markovitch go to bed. He lay awake then, with that exaggerated sense of hearing that one has in the middle of the night, when one is compelled, as it were, against one’s will, to listen for sounds. He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creaking of some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all the thousand and one little uncertainties, like the agitated beating of innumerable hearts that penetrate the folds and curtains of the night. As he lay there he thought of what he would do did Markovitch really go off his head. He had a revolver, he knew. He had seen it in his hand. And then what was Semyonov after? My explanation had seemed, at first, so fantastic and impossible that Bohun had dismissed it, but now, after the conversation that he had just overheard, it did not seem impossible at all⁠—especially in the middle of the night. His mind travelled back to his own first arrival in Petrograd, that first sleep at the France with the dripping water and the crawling rats, the plunge into the Kazan Cathedral, and everything that followed. + 

He did not see, of course, his own progress since that day, or the many things that Russia had already done for him, but he did feel that such situations as the one he was now sharing were, today, much more in the natural order of things than they would have been four months before.⁠ ⁠… + 

He dozed off and then was awakened, sharply, abruptly, by the sound of Markovitch’s padded feet. There could be no mistaking them; very softly they went past Bohun’s door, down the passage towards the dining-room. He sat up in bed, and all the other sounds of the night seemed suddenly to be accentuated⁠—the dripping of the tap, the blowing of the wind, and even the heavy breathing of old Sacha, who always slept in a sort of cupboard near the kitchen, with her legs hanging out into the passage. Suddenly no sound! The house was still, and, with that, the sense of danger and peril was redoubled, as though the house were holding its breath as it watched.⁠ ⁠… + 

Bohun could endure it no longer; he got up, put on his dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, and went out. When he got as far as the dining-room door he saw that Markovitch was standing in the middle of the room with a lighted candle in his hand. The glimmer of the candle flung a circle, outside which all was dusk. Within the glimmer there was Markovitch, his hair rough and strangely like a wig, his face pale yellow, and wearing an old quilted bed-jacket of a purple green colour. He was in a nightdress, and his naked legs were like sticks of tallow. + 

He stood there, the candle shaking in his hand, as though he were uncertain as to what he would do next. He was saying something to himself, Bohun thought. + 

At any rate his lips were moving. Then he put his hand into the pocket of his bed-coat and took out a revolver. Bohun saw it gleam in the candlelight. He held it up close to his eyes as though he were shortsighted and seemed to sniff at it. Then, clumsily, Bohun said, he opened it, to see whether it were loaded, I suppose, and closed it again. After that, very softly indeed, he shuffled off towards the door of Semyonov’s room, the room that had once been the sanctuary of his inventions. + 

All this time young Bohun was paralysed. He said that all his life now, in spite of his having done quite decently in France, he would doubt his capacity in a crisis because, during the whole of this affair, he never stirred. But that was because it was all exactly like a dream. “I was in the dream, you know, as well as the other fellows. You know those dreams when you’re doing your very damnedest to wake up⁠—when you struggle and sweat and know you’ll die if something doesn’t happen⁠—well, it was like that, except that I didn’t struggle and swear, but just stood there, like a painted picture, watching.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Markovitch had nearly reached Semyonov’s door (you remember that there was a little square window of glass in the upper part of it) when he did a funny thing. He stopped dead as though someone had rapped him on the shoulder. He stopped and looked round, then, very slowly, as though he were compelled, gazed with his nervous blinking eyes up at the portrait of the old gentleman with the bushy eyebrows. Bohun looked up too and saw (it was probably a trick of the faltering candlelight) that the old man was not looking at him at all, but steadfastly, and, of course, ironically at Markovitch. The two regarded one another for a while, then Markovitch, still moving with the greatest caution, slipped the revolver back into his pocket, got a chair, climbed on to it and lifted the picture down from its nail. He looked at it for a moment, staring into the cracked and roughened paint, then hung it deliberately back on its nail again, but with its face to the wall. As he did this his bare, skinny legs were trembling so on the chair that, at every moment, he threatened to topple over. He climbed down at last, put the chair back in its place, and then once more turned towards Semyonov’s door. + 

When he reached it he stopped and again took out the revolver, opened it, looked into it, and closed it. Then he put his hand on the doorknob. + 

It was then that Bohun had, as one has in dreams, a sudden impulse to scream: “Look out! Look out! Look out!” although, Heaven knows, he had no desire to protect Semyonov from anything. But it was just then that the oddest conviction came over him, namely, an assurance that Semyonov was standing on the other side of the door, looking through the little window and waiting. He could not have told, any more than one can ever tell in dreams, how he was so certain of this. He could only see the little window as the dimmest and darkest square of shadow behind Markovitch’s candle, but he was sure that this was so. He could even see Semyonov standing there, in his shirt, with his thick legs, his head a little raised, listening⁠ ⁠… + 

For what seemed an endless time Markovitch did not move. He also seemed to be listening. Was it possible that he heard Semyonov’s breathing?⁠ ⁠… But, of course, I have never had any actual knowledge that Semyonov was there. That was simply Bohun’s idea.⁠ ⁠… + 

Then Markovitch began very slowly, bending a little, as though it were stiff and difficult, to turn the handle. I don’t know what then Bohun would have done. He must, I think, have moved, shouted, screamed, done something or other. There was another interruption. He heard a quick, soft step behind him. He moved into the shadow. + 

It was Vera, in her nightdress, her hair down her back. + 

She came forward into the room and whispered very quietly: “Nicholas!” + 

He turned at once. He did not seem to be startled or surprised; he had dropped the revolver at once back into his pocket. He came up to her, she bent down and kissed him, then put her arm round him and led him away. + 

When they had gone Bohun also went back to bed. The house was very still and peaceful. Suddenly he remembered the picture. It would never do, he thought, if in the morning it were found by Sacha or Uncle Ivan with its face to the wall. After hesitating he lit his own candle, got out of bed again, and went down the passage. + 

“The funny thing was,” he said, “that I really expected to find it just as it always was, face outwards⁠ ⁠… as though the whole thing really had been a dream. But it wasn’t. It had its face to the wall all right. I got a chair, turned it round, and went back to bed again.” + 

XIII + 

That night, whether as a result of my interview with Semyonov I do not know, my old enemy leapt upon me once again. I had, during the next three days, one of the worst bouts of pain that it has ever been my fortune to experience. For twenty-four hours I thought it more than any man could bear, and I hid my head and prayed for death; during the next twenty-four I slowly rose, with a dim faraway sense of deliverance; on the third day I could hear, in the veiled distance, the growls of my defeated foe.⁠ ⁠… + 

Through it all, behind the wall of pain, my thoughts knocked and thudded, urging me to do something. It was not until the Friday or the Saturday that I could think consecutively. My first thought was driven in on me by the old curmudgeon of a doctor, as his deliberate opinion that it was simply insanity to stay on in those damp rooms when I suffered from my complaint, that I was only asking for what I got, and that he, on his part, had no sympathy for me. I told him that I entirely agreed with him, that I had determined several weeks ago to leave these rooms, and that I thought that I had found some others in a different, more populated part of the town. He grunted his approval, and, forbidding me to go out for at least a week, left me. At least a week!⁠ ⁠… No, I must be out long before that. Now that the pain had left me, weak though I was, I was wildly impatient to return to the Markovitches. Through all these last days’ torments I had been conscious of Semyonov, seen his hair and his mouth and his beard and his square solidity and his tired, exhausted eyes, and strangely, at the end of it all, felt the touch of his lips on mine. Oddly, I did not hate Semyonov; I saw quite clearly that I had never hated him⁠—something too impersonal about him, some sense, too, of an outside power driving him. No, I did not hate him, but God! how I feared him⁠—feared him not for my own sake, but for the sake of those who had⁠—was this too arrogant?⁠—been given as it seemed to me⁠—into my charge. + 

I remembered that Monday was the 30th of April, and that, on that evening, there was to be a big Allied meeting at the Bourse, at which our Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, the Belgian Consul, and others, were to speak. I had promised to take Vera to this. Tuesday the 1st of May was to see a great demonstration by all the workmen’s and soldiers’ committees. It was to correspond with the Labour demonstrations arranged to take place on that day all over Europe, and the Russian date had been altered to the new style in order to provide for this. Many people considered that the day would be the cause of much rioting, of definite hostility to the Provisional Government, of anti-foreign demonstrations, and so on; others, idealistic Russians, believed that all the soldiers, the world over, would on that day throw down their arms and proclaim a universal peace.⁠ ⁠… + 

I for my part believed that it would mark the ending of the first phase of the Revolution and the beginning of the second, and that for Russia at any rate it would mean the changing from a war of nations into a war of class⁠—in other words, that it would mean the rising up of the Russian peasant as a definite positive factor in the world’s affairs. + 

But all that political business was only remotely, at that moment, my concern. What I wanted to know was what was happening to Nicholas, to Vera, to Lawrence, and the others. Even whilst I was restlessly wondering what I could do to put myself into touch with them, my old woman entered with a letter which she said had been brought by hand. + 

The letter was from Markovitch. + 

I give this odd document here exactly as I received it. I do not attempt to emphasise or explain or comment in any way. I would only add that no Russian is so mad as he seems to any Englishman, and no Englishman so foolish as he seems to any Russian. + 

I must have received this letter, I think, late on Sunday afternoon, because I was, I remember, up and dressed, and walking about my room. It was written on flimsy grey paper in pencil, which made it difficult to read. There were sentences unfinished, words misspelt, and the whole of it in the worst of Russian handwritings. Certain passages, I am, even now, quite unable to interpret: + 

It ran as follows: + 

Dear Ivan Andreievitch⁠—Vera tells me that you are ill again. She has been round to enquire, I think. I did not come because I knew that if I did I should only talk about my own troubles, the same as you’ve always listened to, and what kind of food is that for a sick man? All the same, that is just what I am doing now, but reading a letter is not like talking to a man; you can always stop and tear the paper when perhaps it would not be polite to ask a man to go. But I hope, nevertheless, that you won’t do that with this⁠—not because of any desire I may have to interest you in myself, but because of something of much more importance than either of us, something I want you to believe⁠—something you must believe.⁠ ⁠… Don’t think me mad. I am quite sane sitting here in my room writing.⁠ ⁠… Everyone is asleep. Everyone but not everything. I’ve been queer, now and again, lately⁠ ⁠… off and on. Do you know how it comes? When the inside of the world goes further and further within dragging you after it, until at last you are in the bowels of darkness choking. I’ve known such moods all my life. Haven’t you known them? Lately, of course, I’ve been drinking again. I tell you, but I wouldn’t own it to most people. But they all know, I suppose.⁠ ⁠… Alexei made me start again, but it’s foolish to put everything on to him. If I weren’t a weak man he wouldn’t be able to do anything with me, would he? Do you believe in God, and don’t you think that He intended the weak to have some compensation somewhere, because it isn’t their fault that they’re weak, is it! They can struggle and struggle, but it’s like being in a net. Well, one must just make a hole in the net large enough to get out of, that’s all. And now, ever since two days ago, when I resolved to make that hole, I’ve been quite calm. I’m as calm as anything now writing to you. Two days ago Vera told me that he was going back to England.⁠ ⁠… Oh, she was so good to me that day, Ivan Andreievitch. We sat together all alone in the flat, and she had her hand in mine, just as we used to do in the old days when I pretended to myself that she loved me. Now I know that she did not, but the warmer and more marvellous was her kindness to me, her goodness, and nobility. Do you not think, Ivan Andreievitch, that if you go deep enough in every human heart, there is this kernel of goodness, this fidelity to some ideal. Do you know we have a proverb: “In each man’s heart there is a secret town at whose altars the true prayers are offered!” Even perhaps with Alexei it is so, only there you must go very deep, and there is no time. + 

But I must tell you about Vera. She told me so kindly that he was going to England, and that now her whole life would be led in Nina and myself. I held her hand very close in mine and asked her, Was it really true that she loved him. And she said, yes she did, but that that she could not help. She said that she had spoken with him, and that they had decided that it would be best for him to go away. Then she begged my forgiveness for many things, because she had been harsh or cross⁠—I don’t know what things.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, she to beg forgiveness of me! + 

But I held her hand closer and closer, because I knew that it was the last time that I would be able so truly to hold it. How could she not see that now everything was over⁠—everything⁠—quite everything! Am I one to hold her, to chain her down, to keep her when she has already escaped? Is that the way to prove my fidelity to her? + 

Of course I did not speak to her of this, but for the first time in all our years together, I felt older than her and wiser. But of course Alexei saw it. How he heard I do not know, but that same day he came to me and he seemed to be very kind. + 

I don’t know what he said, but he explained that Vera would always be unhappy now, always, longing and waiting and hoping.⁠ ⁠… “Keep him here in Russia!” he whispered to me. “She will get tired of him then⁠—they will tire of one another; but if you send him away.⁠ ⁠…” Oh! he is a devil, Ivan Andreievitch, and why has he persecuted me so? What have I ever done to him? Nothing⁠ ⁠… but for weeks now he has pursued me and destroyed my inventions, and flung Russia in my face and made Nina, dear Nina, laugh at me, and now, when the other things are finished, he shows me that Vera will be unhappy so long as I am alive. What have I ever done, Ivan Andreievitch? I am so unimportant, why has he taken such a trouble? Today I gave him his last chance⁠ ⁠… or last night⁠ ⁠… it is four in the morning now, and the bells are already ringing for the early Mass. I said to him: + 

“Will you go away? Leave us all forever? Will you promise never to return?” + 

He said in that dreadful quiet sure way of his: “No, I will never go away until you make me.” + 

Vera hates him. I cannot leave her alone with him, can I? I (here there are three lines of illegible writing)⁠ ⁠… so I will think again and again of that last time when we sat together and all the good things that she said. What greatness of soul, what goodness, what splendour! And perhaps after all I am a fortunate man to be allowed to be faithful to so fine a grandeur! Many men have poor ambitions, and God bestows His gifts with strange blindness, I often think. But I am tired, and you too will be tired. Perhaps you have not got so far. I must thank you for your friendship to me. I am very grateful for it. And you, if afterwards you ever think of me, think that I always wished to⁠ ⁠… no, why should you think of me at all? But think of Russia! That is why I write this. You love Russia, and I believe that you will continue to love Russia whatever she will do. Never forget that it is because she cares so passionately for the good of the world that she makes so many mistakes. She sees farther than other countries, and she cares more. But she is also more ignorant. She has never been allowed to learn anything or to try to do anything for herself. + 

You are all too impatient, too strongly aware of your own conditions, too ignorant of hers! Of course there are wicked men here and many idle men, but every country has such. You must not judge her by that nor by all the talk you hear. We talk like blind men on a dark road.⁠ ⁠… Do you believe that there are no patriots here? Ah! how bitterly I have been disappointed during these last weeks! It has broken my heart⁠ ⁠… but do not let your heart be broken. You can wait. You are young. Believe in Russian patriotism, believe in Russian future, believe in Russian soul.⁠ ⁠… Try to be patient and understand that she is blindfolded, ignorant, stumbling⁠ ⁠… but the glory will come; I can see it shining far away!⁠ ⁠… It is not for me, but for you⁠—and for Vera⁠ ⁠… for Vera⁠ ⁠… Vera.⁠ ⁠… + 

Here the letter ended; only scrawled very roughly across the paper the letters N. M.⁠ ⁠… + 

XIV + 

As soon as I had finished reading the letter I went to the telephone and rang up the Markovitches’ flat. Bohun spoke to me. I asked him whether Nicholas was there, he said, “Yes, fast asleep in the armchair,” Was Semyonov there? “No, he was dining out that night.” I asked him to remind Vera that I was expecting to take her to the meeting next day, and rang off. There was nothing more to be done just then. Two minutes later there was a knock on my door and Vera came in. + 

“Why!” I cried. “I’ve just been ringing up to tell you that, of course, I was coming on Monday.” + 

“That is partly what I wanted to know,” she said, smiling. “And also I thought that you’d fancied we’d all deserted you.” + 

“No,” I answered. “I don’t expect you round here every time I’m ill. That would be absurd. You’ll be glad to know at any rate that I’ve decided to give up these ridiculous rooms. I deserve all the illness I get so long as I’m here.” + 

“Yes, that’s good,” she answered. “How you could have stayed so long⁠—” She dropped into a chair, closed her eyes and lay back. “Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, but I’m tired!” + 

She looked, lying there, white-faced, her eyelids like grey shadows, utterly exhausted. I waited in silence. After a time she opened her eyes and said, suddenly: + 

“We all come and talk to you, don’t we? I, Nina, Nicholas, Sherry (she meant Lawrence), even Uncle Alexei. I wonder why we do, because we never take your advice, you know.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps it’s because you seem right outside everything.” + 

I coloured a little at that. + 

“Did I hurt you?⁠ ⁠… I’m sorry. No, I don’t know that I am. I don’t mind now whether I hurt anyone. You know that he’s going back to England?” + 

I nodded my head. + 

“He told you himself?” + 

“Yes,” I said. + 

She lay back in her chair and was silent for a long time. + 

“You think I’m a noble woman, don’t you. Oh yes, you do! I can see you just thirsting for my nobility. It’s what Uncle Alexei always says about you, that you’ve learnt from Dostoevsky how to be noble, and it’s become a habit with you.” + 

“If you’re going to believe⁠—” I began angrily. + 

“Oh, I hate him! I listen to nothing that he says. All the same, Durdles, this passion for nobility on your part is very irritating. I can see you now making up the most magnificent picture of my nobility. I’m sure if you were ever to write a book about us all, you’d write of me something like this: ‘Vera Michailovna had won her victory. She had achieved her destiny.⁠ ⁠… Having surrendered her lover she was as fine as a Greek statue!’ Something like that.⁠ ⁠… Oh, I can see you at it!” + 

“You don’t understand⁠—” I began. + 

“Oh, but I do!” she answered. “I’ve watched your attitude to me from the first. You wanted to make poor Nina noble, and then Nicholas, and then, because they wouldn’t either of them do, you had to fall back upon me: memories of that marvellous woman at the Front, Marie someone or other, have stirred up your romantic soul until it’s all whipped cream and jam⁠—mulberry jam, you know, so as to have the proper dark colour.” + 

“Why all this attack on me?” I asked. “What have I done?” + 

“You’ve done nothing,” she cried. “We all love you, Durdles, because you’re such a baby, because you dream such dreams, see nothing as it is.⁠ ⁠… And perhaps after all you’re right⁠—your vision is as good as another. But this time you’ve made me restless. You’re never to see me as a noble woman again, Ivan Andreievitch. See me as I am, just for five minutes! I haven’t a drop of noble feeling in my soul!” + 

“You’ve just given him up,” I said. “You’ve sent him back to England, although you adore him, because your duty’s with your husband. You’re breaking your heart⁠—” + 

“Yes, I am breaking my heart,” she said quietly. “I’m a dead woman without him. And it’s my weakness, my cowardice, that is sending him away. What would a French woman or an English woman have done? Given up the world for their lover. Given up a thousand Nicholases, sacrificed a hundred Ninas⁠—that’s real life. That’s real, I tell you. What feeling is there in my soul that counts for a moment beside my feeling for Sherry? I say and I feel and I know that I would die for him, die with him, happily, gladly. Those are no empty words. + 

“I who have never been in love before, I am devoured by it now until there is nothing left of me⁠—nothing.⁠ ⁠… And yet I remain. It is our weakness, our national idleness. I haven’t the strength to leave Nicholas. I am soft, sentimental, about his unhappiness. Pah! how I despise myself.⁠ ⁠… I am capable of living on here for years with husband and lover, going from one to another, weeping for both of them. Already I am pleading with Sherry that he should remain here. We will see what will happen. We will see what will happen! Ah, my contempt for myself! Without bones, without energy, without character. + 

“But this is life, Ivan Andreievitch! I stay here, I send him away because I cannot bear to see Nicholas suffer. And I do not care for Nicholas. Do you understand that? I never loved him, and now I have a contempt for him⁠—in spite of myself. Uncle Alexei has done that. Oh yes! He has made a fool of Nicholas for months, and although I have hated him for doing that, I have seen, also, what a fool Nicholas is! But he is a hero, too. Make him as noble as you like, Ivan Andreievitch. You cannot colour it too high. He is the real thing and I am the sham.⁠ ⁠… But oh! I do not want to live with him any more, I am tired of him, his experiments, his lamentations, his weakness, his lack of humour⁠—tired of him, sick of him. And yet I cannot leave him, because I am soft, soft without bones, like my country, Ivan Andreievitch.⁠ ⁠… My lover is strong. Nothing can change his will. He will go, will leave me, until he knows that I am free. Then he will never leave me again. + 

“Perhaps I will get tired of his strength one day⁠—it may be⁠—just as now I am tired of Nicholas’s weakness. Everything has its end. + 

“But no! he has humour, and he sees life as it is. I shall be able always to tell him the truth. With Nicholas it is always lies.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She suddenly sprang up and stood before me. + 

“Now, do you think me noble?” she cried. + 

“Yes,” I answered. + 

“Ah! you are incorrigible! You have drunk Dostoevsky until you can see nothing but God and the muzhik! But I am alive, Ivan Andreievitch, not a heroine in a book! Alive, alive, alive! Not one of your Lisas or Annas or Natashas. I’m alive enough to shoot Uncle Alexei and poison Nicholas⁠—but I’m soft too, soft so that I cannot bear to see a rabbit killed⁠ ⁠… and yet I love Sherry so that I am blind for him and deaf for him and dead for him⁠—when he is not there. My love⁠—the only one of my life⁠—the first and the last⁠—” + 

She flung out her arms: + 

“Life! Now! Before it is too late! I want it, I want him, I want happiness!” + 

She stood thus for a moment, staring out to the sea. Then her arms dropped, she laughed, fastening her cloak⁠— + 

“There’s your nobility, Ivan Andreievitch⁠—theatrical, all of it. I know what I am, and I know what I shall do. Nicholas will live to eighty; I also. I shall hate him, but I shall he in an agony when he cuts his finger. I shall never see Sherry again. Later, he will marry a fresh English girl like an apple.⁠ ⁠… I, because I am weak, soft putty⁠—I have made it so.” + 

She turned away from me, staring desperately at the wall. When she looked back to me her face was grey. + 

She smiled. “What a baby you are!⁠ ⁠… But take care of yourself. Don’t come on Monday if it’s bad weather. Goodbye.” + 

She went. + 

After a bad, sleepless night, and a morning during which I dozed in a nightmareish kind of way, I got up early in the afternoon, had some tea, and about six o’clock started out. + 

It was a lovely evening; the spring light was in the air, the tufted trees beside the canal were pink against the pale sky, and thin layers of ice, like fragments of jade, broke the soft blue of the water. How pleasant to feel the cobbles firm beneath one’s feet, to know that the snow was gone for many months, and that light now would flood the streets and squares! Nevertheless, my foreboding was not raised, and the veils of colour hung from house to house and from street to street could not change the realities of the scene. + 

I climbed the stairs to the flat and found Vera waiting for me. She was with Uncle Ivan, who, I found to my disappointment, was coming with us. + 

We started off. + 

“We can walk across to the Bourse,” she said. “It’s such a lovely evening, and we’re a little early.” + 

We talked of nothing but the most ordinary things; Uncle Ivan’s company prevented anything else. To say that I cursed him is to put it very mildly. He had been, I believe, oblivious of all the scenes that had occurred during the last weeks. If the Last Judgement occurred under his very nose, and he had had a cosy meal in front of him, he would have noticed nothing. The Revolution had had no effect on him at all; it did not seem strange to him that Semyonov should come to live with them; he had indeed fancied that Nicholas had not “been very well” lately, but then Nicholas had always been an odd and cantankerous fellow, and he, as he told me, never paid too much attention to his moods. His one anxiety was lest Sacha should be hindered from her usual shopping on the morrow, it being May Day, when there would be processions and other tiresome things. He hoped that there was enough food in the house. + 

“There will be cold cutlets and cheese,” Vera said. + 

He told me that he really did not know why he was going to this meeting. He took no interest in politics, and he hated speeches, but he would like to see our Ambassador. He had heard that he was always excellently dressed.⁠ ⁠… + 

Vera said very little. Her troubles that evening must have been accumulating upon her with terrible force⁠—I did not know, at that time, about her night-scene with Nicholas. She was very quiet, and just as we entered the building she whispered to me: + 

“Once over tomorrow⁠—” + 

I did not catch the rest. People pressed behind us, and for a moment we were separated; we were not alone again. I have wondered since what she meant by that, whether she had a foreboding or some more definite warning, or whether she simply referred to the danger of riots and general lawlessness. I shall never know now. + 

I had expected a crowded meeting, but I was not prepared for the multitude that I found. We entered by a side-door, and then passed up a narrow passage, which led us to the reserved seats at the side of the platform. I had secured these some days before. In the dark passage one could realise nothing; important gentlemen in frock-coats, officers, and one or two soldiers, were hurrying to and fro, with an air of having a great deal to do, and not knowing at all how to do it. Beyond the darkness there was a steady hum, like the distant whirr of a great machine. There was a very faint smell in the air of boots and human flesh. A stout gentleman with a rosette in his buttonhole showed us to our seats. Vera sat between Uncle Ivan and myself. When I looked about me I was amazed. The huge hall was packed so tightly with human beings that one could see nothing but wave on wave of faces, or, rather, the same face, repeated again and again and again, the face of a baby, of a child, of a credulous, cynical dreamer, a face the kindest, the naivest, the cruellest, the most friendly, the most human, the most savage, the most Eastern, and the most Western in the world. + 

That vast presentation of that reiterated visage seemed suddenly to explain everything to me. I felt at once the stupidity of any appeal, and the instant necessity for every kind of appeal. I felt the negation, the sudden slipping into insignificant unimportance of the whole of the Western world⁠—and, at the same time, the dismissal of the East. “No longer my masters” a voice seemed to cry from the very heart of that multitude. “No longer will we halt at your command, no longer will your words be wisdom to us, no longer shall we smile with pleasure at your stories, and cringe with fear at your displeasure; you may hate our defection, you may lament our disloyalty, you may bribe us and smile upon us, you may preach to us and bewail our sins. We are no longer yours⁠—we are our own⁠—Salute a new world, for it is nothing less that you see before you!⁠ ⁠…” + 

And yet never were there forces more unconscious of their destiny⁠—utterly unselfconscious as animals, babies, the flowers of the field. Still there to be driven, perhaps to be persuaded, to be whipped, to be cajoled, to be blinded, to be tricked and deceived, drugged and deafened⁠—but not for long! The end of that old world had come⁠—the new world was at hand⁠—“Life begins tomorrow!” + 

The dignitaries came upon the platform, and, beyond them all, in distinction, nobility, wisdom was our own Ambassador. This is no place for a record of the discretion and tact and forbearance that he had shown during those last two years. To him had fallen perhaps the most difficult work of all in the war. It might seem that on broad grounds the Allies had failed with Russia, but the end was not yet, and in years to come, when England reaps unexpected fruit from her Russian alliance, let her remember to whom she owed it. No one could see him there that night without realising that there stood before Russia, as England’s representative, not only a great courtier and statesman, but a great gentleman, who had bonds of courage and endurance that linked him to the meanest soldier there. + 

I have emphasised this because he gave the note to the whole meeting. Again and again one’s eyes came back to him and always that high brow, that unflinching carriage of the head, the nobility and breeding of every movement gave one reassurance and courage. One’s own troubles seemed small beside that example, and the tangled morality of that vexed time seemed to be tested by a simpler and higher standard. + 

It was altogether a strange affair. At first it lacked interest, some member of the Italian Embassy spoke, I think, and then someone from Serbia. The audience was apathetic. All those bodies, so tightly wedged together that arms and legs were held in an iron vice, stayed motionless, and once and again there would be a short burst of applause or a sibilant whisper, but it would be something mechanical and uninspired. I could see one soldier, in the front row behind the barrier, a stout fellow with a face of supreme good humour, down whose forehead the sweat began to trickle; he was patient for a while, then he tried to raise his hand. He could not move without sending a ripple down the whole front line. Heads were turned indignantly in his direction. He submitted; then the sweat trickled into his eyes. He made a superhuman effort and half raised his arm; the crowd pushed again and his arm fell. His face wore an expression of ludicrous despair.⁠ ⁠… + 

The hall got hotter and hotter. Soldiers seemed to be still pressing in at the back. The Italian gentleman screamed and waved his arms, but the faces turned up to his were blank and amiably expressionless. + 

“It is indeed terribly hot,” said Uncle Ivan. + 

Then came a sailor from the Black Sea Fleet who had made himself famous during these weeks by his impassioned oratory. He was a thin dark-eyed fellow, and he obviously knew his business. He threw himself at once into the thick of it all, paying no attention to the stout frock-coated gentlemen who sat on the platform, dealing out no compliments, whether to the audience or the speakers, wasting no time at all. He told them all that they had debts to pay, that their honour was at stake, and that Europe was watching them. I don’t know that that Face that stared at him cared very greatly for Europe, but it is certain that a breath of emotion passed across it, that there was a stir, a movement, a response.⁠ ⁠… + 

He sat down, there was a roar of applause; he regarded them contemptuously. At that moment I caught sight of Boris Grogoff. I had been on the watch for him. I had thought it very likely that he would be there. Well, there he was, at the back of the crowd, listening with a contemptuous sneer on his face, and a long golden curl poking out from under his cap. + 

And then something else occurred⁠—something really strange. I was conscious, as one sometimes is in a crowd, that I was being stared at by someone deliberately. I looked about me, and then, led by the attraction of the other’s gaze, I saw quite close to me, on the edge of the crowd nearest to the platform, the Rat. + 

He was dressed rather jauntily in a dark suit with his cup set on one side, and his hair shining and curled. His face glittered with soap, and he was smiling in his usual friendly way. He gazed at me quite steadily. My lips moved very slightly in recognition. He smiled and, I fancy, winked. + 

Then, as though he had actually spoken to me, I seemed to hear him say: + 

“Well, goodbye.⁠ ⁠… I’m never coming to you again. Goodbye, goodbye.” + 

It was as definite a farewell as you can have from a man, more definite than you will have from most, as though, further, he said: “I’m gone for good and all. I have other company and more profitable plunder. On the back of our glorious Revolution I rise from crime to crime.⁠ ⁠… Goodbye.” + 

I was, in sober truth, never to speak to him again. I cannot but regret that on the last occasion when I should have a real opportunity of looking him full in the face, he was to offer me a countenance of friendly good-humour and amiable rascality. + 

I shall have, until I die, a feeling of tenderness.⁠ ⁠… + 

I was recalled from my observation of Grogoff and the Rat by the sensation that the waters of emotion were rising higher around me. I raised my eyes and saw that the Belgian Consul was addressing the meeting. He was a stout little man, with eyeglasses and a face of no importance, but it was quite obvious at once that he was most terribly in earnest. Because he did not know the Russian language he was under the unhappy necessity of having a translator, a thin and amiable Russian, who suffered from short sight and a nervous stammer. + 

He could not therefore have spoken under heavier disadvantages, and my heart ached for him. It need not have done so. He started in a low voice, and they shouted to him to speak up. At the end of his first paragraph the amiable Russian began his translation, sticking his nose into the paper, losing the place and stuttering over his sentences. There was a restless movement in the hall, and the poor Belgian Consul seemed lost. He was made, however, of no mean stuff. Before the Russian had finished his translation the little man had begun again. This time he had stepped forward, waving his glasses and his head and his hand, bending forward and backward, his voice rising and rising. At the end of his next paragraph he paused and, because the Russian was slow and stammering once again, went forward on his own account. Soon he forgot himself, his audience, his translator, everything except his own dear Belgium. His voice rose and rose; he pleaded with a marvellous rhythm of eloquence her history, her fate, her shameful devastation. He appealed on behalf of her murdered children, her ravished women, her slaughtered men. + 

He appealed on behalf of her Arts, her Cathedrals, and libraries ruined, her towns plundered. He told a story, very quietly, of an old grandfather and grandmother murdered and their daughter ravished before the eyes of her tiny children. Here he himself began to shed tears. He tried to brush them back. He paused and wiped his eyes.⁠ ⁠… Finally, breaking down altogether, he turned away and hid his face.⁠ ⁠… + 

I do not suppose that there were more than a dozen persons in that hall who understood anything of the language in which he spoke. Certainly it was the merest gibberish to that whole army of listening men. Nevertheless, with every word that he uttered the emotion grew tenser. Cries⁠—little sharp cries like the bark of a puppy⁠—broke out here and there. “Verrno! Verrno! Verrno!” Movements, like the swift finger of the wind on the sea, hovered, wavered, and vanished.⁠ ⁠… + 

He turned back to them, his voice broken with sobs, and he could only cry the one word “Belgia⁠ ⁠… Belgia⁠ ⁠… Belgia”⁠ ⁠… To that they responded. They began to shout, to cry aloud. The screams of “Verrno⁠ ⁠… Verrno” rose until it seemed that the roof would rise with them. The air was filled with shouts, “Bravo for the Allies.” “Soyousniki! Soyousniki!” Men raised their caps and waved them, smiled upon one another as though they had suddenly heard wonderful news, shouted and shouted and shouted⁠ ⁠… and in the midst of it all the little rotund Belgian Consul stood bowing and wiping his eyes. + 

How pleased we all were! I whispered to Vera: “You see! They do care! Their hearts are touched. We can do anything with them now!” + 

Even Uncle Ivan was moved, and murmured to himself “Poor Belgium! Poor Belgium!” + 

How delighted, too, were the gentlemen on the platform. Smiling, they whispered to one another, and I saw several shake hands. A great moment. The little Consul bowed finally and sat down. + 

Never shall I forget the applause that followed. Like one man the thousands shouted, tears raining down their cheeks, shaking hands, even embracing! A vast movement, as though the wind had caught them and driven them forward, rose, lifted them, so that they swayed like bending corn towards the platform, for an instant we were all caught up together. There was one great cry: “Belgium!” + 

The sound rose, fell, sunk into a muttering whisper, died to give way to the breathless attention that awaited the next speaker. + 

I whispered to Vera: “I shall never forget that. I’m going to leave on that. It’s good enough for me.” + 

“Yes,” she said, “we’ll go.” + 

“What a pity,” whispered Uncle Ivan, “that they didn’t understand what they were shouting about.” + 

We slipped out behind the platform; turned down the dark long passage, hearing the new speaker’s voice like a bell ringing beyond thick walls, and found our way into the open. + 

The evening was wonderfully fresh and clear. The Neva lay before us like a blue scarf, and the air faded into colourless beauty above the dark purple of the towers and domes. Vera caught my arm: “Look!” she whispered. “There’s Boris!” I knew that she had on several occasions tried to force her way into his flat, that she had written every day to Nina (letters as it afterwards appeared, that Boris kept from her). I was afraid that she would do something violent. + 

“Wait!” I whispered, “perhaps Nina is here somewhere.” + 

Grogoff was standing with another man on a small improvised platform just outside the gates of the Bourse. + 

As the soldiers came out (many of them were leaving now on the full tide of their recent emotions) Grogoff and his friend caught them, held them, and proceeded to instruct their minds. + 

I caught some of Grogoff’s sentences: “Tovaristchi!” I heard him cry, “Comrades! Listen to me. Don’t allow your feelings to carry you away! You have serious responsibilities now, and the thing for you to do is not to permit sentiment to make you foolish. Who brought you into this war? Your leaders? No, your old masters. They bled you and robbed you and slaughtered you to fill their own pockets. Who is ruling the world now? The people to whom the world truly belongs? No, the Capitalists, the moneygrubbers, the old thieves like Nicholas who is now under lock and key⁠ ⁠… Capitalists⁠ ⁠… England, France⁠ ⁠… Thieves, Robbers.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Belgium? What is Belgium to you? Did you swear to protect her people? Does England, who pretends such loving care for Belgium, does she look after Ireland? What about her persecution of South Africa? Belgium? Have you heard what she did in the Congo?⁠ ⁠…” + 

As the men came, talking, smiling, wiping their eyes, they were caught by Grogoff’s voice. They stood there and listened. Soon they began to nod their heads. I heard them muttering that good old word “Verrno! Verrno!” again. The crowd grew. The men began to shout their approval. “Aye! it’s true,” I heard a solder near me mutter. “The English are thieves”; and another “Belgium?⁠ ⁠… After all I could not understand a word of what that little fat man said.” + 

I heard no more, but I did not wonder now at the floods that were rising and rising, soon to engulf the whole of this great country. The end of this stage of our story was approaching for all of us. + 

We three had stood back, a little in the shadow, gazing about to see whether we could hail a cab. + 

As we waited I took my last look at Grogoff, his stout figure against the purple sky, the masts of the ships, the pale tumbling river, the black line of the farther shore. He stood, his arms waving, his mouth open, the personification of the disease from which Russia was suffering. + 

A cab arrived. I turned, said as it were, my farewell to Grogoff and everything for which he stood, and went. + 

We drove home almost in silence. Vera, staring in front of her, her face proud and reserved, building up a wall of her own thoughts. + 

“Come in for a moment, won’t you?” she asked me, rather reluctantly I thought. But I accepted, climbed the stairs and followed Uncle Ivan’s stubby and self-satisfied progress into the flat. + 

I heard Vera cry. I hurried after her and found, standing close together, in the middle of the room Henry Bohun and Nina! + 

With a little sob of joy and shame too, Nina was locked in Vera’s arms. + 

XV + 

This is obviously the place for the story, based, of course, on the very modest and slender account given me by the hero of it, of young Bohun’s knightly adventure. In its inception the whole affair is still mysterious to me. Looking back from this distance of time I see that he was engaged on one knightly adventure after another⁠—first Vera, then Markovitch, lastly Nina. The first I caught at the very beginning, the second I may be said to have inspired, but to the third I was completely blind. I was blind, I suppose, because, in the first place, Nina had, from the beginning, laughed at Bohun, and in the second, she had been entirely occupied with Lawrence. + 

Bohun’s knight-errantry came upon her with, I am sure, as great a shock of surprise as it did upon me. And yet, when you come to think of it, it was the most natural thing. They were the only two of our party who had any claim to real youth, and they were still so young that they could believe in one ideal after another as quick as you can catch goldfish in a bowl of water. Bohun would, of course, have indignantly denied that he was out to help anybody, but that, nevertheless, was the direction in which his character led him; and once Russia had stripped from him that thin coat of self-satisfaction, he had nothing to do but mount his white charger and enter the tournament. + 

I’ve no idea when he first thought of Nina. He did not, of course, like her at the beginning, and I doubt whether she caused him any real concern, too, until her flight to Grogoff. That shocked him terribly. He confessed as much to me. She had always been so happy and easy about life. Nothing was serious to her. I remember once telling her she ought to take the war more deeply. I was a bit of a prig about it, I suppose. At any rate she thought me one.⁠ ⁠… And then to go off to a fellow like Grogoff! + 

He thought of it the more seriously when he saw the agony Vera was in. She did not ask him to help her, and so he did nothing; but he watched her efforts, the letters that she wrote, the eagerness with which she ravished the post, her fruitless visits to Grogoff’s flat, her dejected misery over her failure. He began himself to form plans, not, I am convinced, from any especial affection for Nina, but simply because he had the soul of a knight, although, thank God, he didn’t know it. I expect, too, that he was pretty dissatisfied with his knight-errantries. His impassioned devotion to Vera had led to nothing at all, his enthusiasm for Russia had led to a most unsatisfactory Revolution, and his fatherly protection of Markovitch had inspired apparently nothing more fruitful than distrust. I would like to emphasise that it was in no way from any desire to interfere in other people’s affairs that young Bohun undertook these Quests. He had none of my own meddlesome quality. He had, I think, very little curiosity and no psychological self-satisfaction, but he had a kind heart, an adventurous spirit, and a hatred for the wrong and injustice which seemed just now to be creeping about the world; but all this, again thank God, was entirely subconscious. He knew nothing whatever about himself. + 

The thought of Nina worried him more and more. After he went to bed at night, he would hear her laugh and see her mocking smile and listen to her shrill imitations of his own absurdities. She had been the one happy person amongst them all, and now⁠—! Well, he had seen enough of Boris Grogoff to know what sort of fellow he was. He came at last to the conclusion that, after a week or two she would be “sick to death of it,” and longing to get away, but then “her pride would keep her at it. She’d got a devil of a lot of pride.” He waited, then, for a while, and hoped, I suppose, that some of Vera’s appeals would succeed. They did not; and then it struck him that Vera was the very last person to whom Nina would yield⁠—just because she wanted to yield to her most, which was pretty subtle of him and very near the truth. + 

No one else seemed to be making any very active efforts, and at last he decided that he must do something himself. He discovered Grogoff’s address, went to the Gagarinskaya and looked up at the flat, hung about a bit in the hope of seeing Nina. Then he did see her at Rozanov’s party, and this, although he said nothing to me about it at the time, had a tremendous effect on him. He thought she looked “awful.” All the joy had gone from her; she was years older, miserable, and defiant. He didn’t speak to her, but from that night he made up his mind. Rozanov’s party may be said to have been really the turning-point of his life. It was the night that he came out of his shell, grew up, faced the world⁠—and it was the night that he discovered that he cared about Nina. + 

The vision of her poor little tired face, her “rather dirty white dress,” her “grown-up” hair, her timidity and her loneliness, never left him for a moment. All the time that I thought he was occupied only with the problem of Markovitch and Semyonov, he was much more deeply occupied with Nina. So unnaturally secretive can young men be! + 

At last he decided on a plan. He chose the Monday, the day of the Bourse meeting, because he fancied that Grogoff would be present at that and he might therefore catch Nina alone, and because he and his fellow-propagandists would be expected also at the meeting and he would therefore be free of his office earlier on that afternoon. He had no idea at all how he would get into the flat, but he thought that fortune would be certain to favour him. He always thought that. + 

Well, fortune did. He left the office and arrived in the Gagarinskaya about half-past five in the evening. He walked about a little, and then saw a bearded tall fellow drive up in an isvostchick. He recognised this man as Lenin, the soul of the anti-Government party, and a man who was afterwards to figure very prominently in Russia’s politics. This fellow argued very hotly with the isvostchick about his fare, then vanished through the double doors. Bohun followed him. Outside Grogoff’s flat Lenin waited and rang the bell. Bohun waited on the floor below; then, when he heard the door open, he noiselessly slipped up the stairs, and, as Lenin entered, followed behind him whilst the old servant’s back was turned helping Lenin with his coat. He found, as he had hoped, a crowd of cloaks and a shuba hanging beside the door in the dark corner of the wall. He crept behind these. He heard Lenin say to the servant that, after all, he would not take off his coat, as he was leaving again immediately. Then directly afterwards Grogoff came into the hall. + 

That was the moment of crisis. Did Grogoff go to the rack for his coat and all was over; a very unpleasant scene must follow⁠—a ludicrous expulsion, a fling or two at the amiable habits of thieving and deceit on the part of the British nation, and any hope of seeing Nina ruined perhaps forever. Worst of all, the ignominy of it! No young man likes to be discovered hidden behind a coatrack, however honest his original intentions! + 

His heart beat to suffocation as he peeped between the coats.⁠ ⁠… Grogoff was already wearing his own overcoat. It was, thank God, too warm an evening for a shuba. The men shook hands, and Grogoff saying something rather deferentially about the meeting, Lenin, in short, brusque tones, put him immediately in his place. Then they went out together, the door closed behind them, and the flat was as silent as an aquarium. He waited for a while, and then, hearing nothing, crept into the hall. Perhaps Nina was out. If the old servant saw him she would think him a burglar and would certainly scream. He pushed back the door in front of him, stepped forward, and almost stepped upon Nina! + 

She gave a little cry, not seeing whom it was. She was looking very untidy, her hair loose down her back, and a rough apron over her dress. She looked ill, and there were heavy black lines under her eyes as though she had not slept for weeks. + 

Then she saw who it was and, in spite of herself, smiled. + 

“Genry!” she exclaimed. + 

“Yes,” he said in a whisper, closing the door very softly behind him. “Look here, don’t scream or do anything foolish. I don’t want that old woman to catch me.” + 

He has no very clear memory of the conversation that followed. She stood with her back to the wall, staring at him, and every now and again taking up a corner of her pinafore and biting it. He remembered that action of hers especially as being absurdly childish. But the overwhelming impression that he had of her was of her terror⁠—terror of everything and of everybody, of everybody apparently except himself. (She told him afterwards that he was the only person in the world who could have rescued her just then because she simply couldn’t be frightened of someone at whom she’d laughed so often.) She was terrified, of course, of Grogoff⁠—she couldn’t mention his name without trembling⁠—but she was terrified also of the old servant, of the flat, of the room, of the clock, of every sound or hint of a sound that there was in the world. She to be so frightened! She of whom he would have said that she was equal to anyone or anything! What she must have been through during those weeks to have brought her to this!⁠ ⁠… But she told him very little. He urged her at once that she must come away with him, there and then, just as she was. She simply shook her head at that. “No⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠…” she kept repeating. “You don’t understand.” + 

“I do understand,” he answered, always whispering, and with one ear on the door lest the old woman should hear and come in. “We’ve got very little time,” he said. “Grogoff will never let you go if he’s here. I know why you don’t come back⁠—you think we’ll all look down on you for having gone. But that’s nonsense. We are all simply miserable without you.” + 

But she simply continued to repeat “No⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠…” Then, as he urged her still further, she begged him to go away. She said that he simply didn’t know what Grogoff would do if he returned and found him, and although he’d gone to a meeting he might return at any moment. Then, as though to urge upon him Grogoff’s ferocity, in little hoarse whispers she let him see some of the things that during these weeks she’d endured. He’d beaten her, thrown things at her, kept her awake hour after hour at night making her sing to him⁠ ⁠… and, of course, worst things, things far, far worse that she would never tell to anybody, not even to Vera! Poor Nina, she had indeed been punished for her innocent impetuosities. She was broken in body and soul; she had faced reality at last and been beaten by it. She suddenly turned away from him, buried her head in her arm, as a tiny child does, and cried.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was then that he discovered he loved her. He went to her, put his arm round her, kissed her, stroked her hair, whispering little consoling things to her. She suddenly collapsed, burying her head in his breast and watering his waistcoat with her tears.⁠ ⁠… + 

After that he seemed to be able to do anything with her that he pleased. He whispered to her to go and get her hat, then her coat, then to hurry up and come along.⁠ ⁠… As he gave these last commands he heard the door open, turned and saw Masha, Grogoff’s old witch of a servant, facing him. + 

The scene that followed must have had its ludicrous side. The old woman didn’t scream or make any kind of noise, she simply asked him what he was doing there; he answered that he was going out for a walk with the mistress of the house. She said that he should do nothing of the kind. He told her to stand away from the door. She refused to move. He then rushed at her, caught her round the waist, and a most impossible struggle ensued up and down the middle of the room. He called to Nina to run, and had the satisfaction of seeing her dart through the door like a frightened hare. The old woman bit and scratched and kicked, making sounds all the time like a kettle just on the boil. Suddenly, when he thought that Nina had had time to get well away, he gave the old woman a very unceremonious push which sent her back against Grogoff’s chief cabinet, and he had the comfort to hear the whole of this crash to the ground as he closed the door behind him. Out in the street he found Nina, and soon afterwards an isvostchick. She crouched up close against him, staring in front of her, saying nothing, shivering and shivering.⁠ ⁠… As he felt her hot hand shake inside his, he vowed that he would never leave her again. I don’t believe that he ever will. + 

So he took her home, and his Knight Errantry was justified at last. + 

XVI + 

These events had for a moment distracted my mind, but as soon as I was alone I felt the ever-increasing burden of my duty towards Markovitch. + 

The sensation was absolutely dreamlike in its insistence on the one hand that I should take some kind of action, and its preventing me, on the other, from taking any action at all. I felt the strange inertia of the spectator in the nightmare, who sees the house tumbling about his head and cannot move. Besides, what action could I take? I couldn’t stand over Markovitch, forbid him to stir from the flat, or imprison Semyonov in his room, or warn the police⁠ ⁠… besides, there were now no police. Moreover, Vera and Bohun and the others were surely capable of watching Markovitch. Nevertheless something in my heart insisted that it was I who was to figure in this.⁠ ⁠… Through the dusk of the streets, in the pale ghostly shadows that prelude the coming of the white nights, I seemed to see three pursuing figures, Semyonov, Markovitch, and myself. I was pursuing, and yet held. + 

I went back to my flat, but all that night I could not sleep. Already the first music of the May Day processions could be heard, distant trumpets and drums, before I sank into uneasy, bewildered slumber. + 

I dreamt then dreams so fantastic and irresolute that I cannot now disentangle them. I remember that I was standing beside the banks of the Neva. The river was rising, flinging on its course in the great tempestuous way that it always has during the first days of its release from the ice. The sky grew darker⁠—the water rose. I sought refuge in the top gallery of a church with light green domes, and from here I watched the flood, first as it covered the quays, tumbling in cascades of glittering water over the high parapet, trickling in little lines and pools, then rising into sheeted levels, then billowing in waves against the walls of the house, flooding the doors and the windows, until so far as the eye could reach there were only high towers remaining above its grasp. I do not know what happened to my security, and saw at length the waters stretch from sky to sky, one dark, tossing ocean. + 

The sun rose, a dead yellow; slowly the waters sank again, islands appeared, stretches of mud and waste. Heaving their huge bodies out of the ocean, vast monsters crawled through the mud, scaled and horned, lying like logs beneath the dead sun. The waters sank⁠—forests rose. The sun sank and there was black night, then a faint dawn, and in the early light of a lovely morning a man appeared standing on the beach, shading his eyes, gazing out to sea. I fancied that in that strong bearded figure I recognised my peasant, who had seemed to haunt my steps so often. Gravely he looked round him, then turned back into the forest.⁠ ⁠… + 

Was my dream thus? Frankly I do not know⁠—too neat an allegory to be true, perhaps⁠—and yet there was something of this in it. I know that I saw Boris, and the Rat, and Vera, and Semyonov, and Markovitch, appearing, vanishing, reappearing, and that I was strongly conscious that the submerged and ruined world did not touch them, and was only a background to their own individual activities.⁠ ⁠… I know that Markovitch seemed to come to me again and cry, “Be patient⁠ ⁠… be patient.⁠ ⁠… Have faith⁠ ⁠… be faithful!” + 

I know that I woke struggling to keep him with me, crying out that he was not to leave me, that that way was danger.⁠ ⁠… I woke to find my room flooded with sunshine, and my old woman looking at me with disapproval. + 

“Wake up, Barin,” she was saying, “it’s three o’clock.” + 

“Three o’clock?” I muttered, trying to pull myself together. + 

“Three in the afternoon⁠ ⁠… I have some tea for you.” + 

When I realised the time I had the sensation of the wildest panic. I jumped from my bed, pushing the old woman out of the room. I had betrayed my trust! I had betrayed my trust! I felt assured that some awful catastrophe had occurred, something that I might have prevented. When I was dressed, disregarding my housekeeper’s cries, I rushed out into the street. At my end of the Ekaterinsgofsky Canal I was stopped by great throngs of men and women returning homewards from the procession. They were marching, most of them, in ordered lines across the street, arm in arm, singing the “Marseillaise.” + 

Very different from the procession a few weeks before. That had been dumb, cowed, bewildered. This was the movement of a people conscious of their freedom, sure of themselves, disdaining the world. Everywhere bands were playing, banners were glittering, and from the very heart of the soil, as it seemed, the “Marseillaise” was rising. + 

Although the sun only shone at brief intervals, there was a sense of spring warmth in the air. For some time I could not cross the street, then I broke through and almost ran down the deserted stretch of the Canal. I arrived almost breathless at the door in the English Prospect. There I found Sacha watching the people and listening to the distant bands. + 

“Sacha!” I cried, “is Alexei Petrovitch at home?” + 

“No, Barin,” she answered, looking at me in some surprise. “He went out about a quarter of an hour ago.” + 

“And Nicholas Markovitch?” + 

“He went out just now.” + 

“Did he tell you where he was going?” + 

“No, Barin, but I heard Alexei Petrovitch tell him, an hour back, that he was going to Katerinhof.” + 

I did not listen to more. I turned and went. Katerinhof was a park, ten minutes distant from my island; it was so called because there was there the wooden palace of Katherine the Great. She had once made it her place of summer residence, but it was now given over to the people and was, during the spring and summer, used by them as a kind of fair and pleasure-garden. The place had always been to me romantic and melancholy, with the old faded wooden palace, the deserted ponds, and the desolate trees. I had never been there in the summer. I don’t know with what idea I hurried there. I can only say that I had no choice but to go, and that I went as though I were still continuing my dream of the morning. + 

Great numbers of people were hurrying there also. The road was thronged, and many of them sang as they went. + 

Looking back now it has entirely a dreamlike colour. I stepped from the road under the trees, and was at once in a world of incredible fantasy. So far as the eye could see there were peasants; the air was filled with an indescribable din. As I stepped deeper into the shelter of the leafless trees the colour seemed, like fluttering banners, to mingle and spread and sway before my eyes. Near to me were the tub-thumpers now so common to us all in Petrograd⁠—men of the Grogoff kind stamping and shouting on their platforms, surrounded by open-mouthed soldiers and peasants. + 

Here, too, were the quacks such as you might see at any fair in Europe⁠—quack dentists, quack medicine-men, men with ointments for healing sores, men with pills, and little bottles of bright liquid, and tricks for ruptures and broken legs and arms. A little way beyond them were the pedlars. Here were the wildest men in the world. Tartars and Letts and Indians, Asiatics with long yellow faces, and strange fellows from Northern Russia. They had everything to sell, bright beads and looking-glasses and little lacquered trays, coloured boxes, red and green and yellow, lace and silk and cloths of every colour, purple and crimson and gold. From all these men there rose a deafening gabble. + 

I pressed farther, although the crowd now around me was immense, and so I reached the heart of the fair. Here were enormous merry-go-rounds, and I had never seen such glittering things. They were from China, Japan, where you will. They were hung in shining, gleaming colours, covered with tinsel and silver, and, as they went tossing round, emitting from their hearts a wild barbaric wail that may have been, in some far Eastern city, the great song of all the lovers of the world for all I know, the colours flashed and wheeled and dazzled, and the light glittered from stem to stem of the brown silent trees. Here was the very soul of the East. Near me a Chinaman, squatting on his haunches, was showing before a gaping crowd the exploits of his trained mice, who walked up and down little crimson ladders, poked their trembling noses through holes of purple silk, and ran shivering down precipices of golden embroidery. Near to him two Japanese were catching swords in their mouths, and beyond them again a great number of Chinese were tumbling and wrestling, and near to them again some Japanese children did little tricks, catching coloured balls in wooden cups and turning somersaults. + 

Around all these a vast mass of peasants pushed and struggled. Like children they watched and smiled and laughed, and always, like the flood of the dream, their numbers seemed to increase and increase.⁠ ⁠… + 

The noise was deafening, but always above the merry-go-rounds and the cheap-jacks and the shrill screams of the Japanese and the cries of the pedlars I heard the chant of the “Marseillaise” carried on high through the brown leafless park. I was bewildered and dazzled by the noise and the light. I turned desperately, pushing with my hands as one does in a dream. + 

Then I saw Markovitch and Semyonov. + 

I had no doubt at all that the moment had at last arrived. It was as though I had seen it all somewhere before. Semyonov was standing a little apart leaning against a tree, watching with his sarcastic smile the movements of the crowd. Markovitch was a little way off. I could see his eyes fixed absolutely on Semyonov. He did not move nor notice the people who jostled him. Semyonov made a movement with his hand as though he had suddenly come to some decision. He walked slowly away in the direction of the palace. Markovitch, keeping a considerable distance from him, followed. For a moment I was held by the crowd around me, and when at last I got free Semyonov had disappeared, and I could just see Markovitch turning the corner of the palace. + 

I ran across the grass, trying to call out, but I could not hear my own voice. I turned the corner, and instantly I was in a strange place of peace. The old building with its wooden lattices and pillars stood melancholy guard over the dead pond on whose surface some fragments of ice still lay. There was no sun, only a heavy, oppressive air. All the noise was muffled as though a heavy door had swung to. + 

They were standing quite close to me. Semyonov had turned and faced us both. I saw him smile, and his lips moved. A moment later I saw Markovitch fling his hand forward, and in the air the light on the revolver twinkled. I heard no sound, but I saw Semyonov raise his arm, as though in self-defence. His face, lifted strangely to the bare branches, was triumphant, and I heard quite clearly the words, like a cry of joy and welcome: + 

“At last!⁠ ⁠… At last!” + 

He tumbled forward on his face. + 

I saw Markovitch turn the revolver on himself, and then heard a report, sharp and deafening, as though we had been in a small room. I saw Markovitch put his hand to his side, and his mouth, open as though in astonishment, was suddenly filled with blood. I ran to him, caught him in my arms; he turned on me a face full of puzzled wonder, I caught the word “Vera,” and he crumpled up against my heart. + 

Even as I held him, I heard coming closer and closer the rough triumphant notes of the “Marseillaise.” + 