Part + 

II + 

Lawrence + 

I + 

Of some of the events that I am now about to relate it is obvious that I could not have been an eyewitness⁠—and yet, looking back from the strange isolation that is now my world I find it incredibly difficult to realise what I saw and what I did not. Was I with Nina and Vera on that Tuesday night when they stood face to face with one another for the first time? Was I with Markovitch during his walk through that marvellous new world that he seemed himself to have created? I know that I shared none of these things⁠ ⁠… , and yet it seems to me that I was at the heart of them all. I may have been told many things by the actors in those events⁠—I may not. I cannot now in retrospect see any of it save as my own personal experience, and as my own personal experience I must relate it; but, as I have already said at the beginning of this book, no one is compelled to believe either my tale or my interpretation. Every man would, I suppose, like to tell his story in the manner of some other man. I can conceive the events of this part of my narration being interpreted in the spirit of the wildest farce, of the genteelest comedy, of the most humorous satire⁠—“Other men, Other gifts.” I am a dull and pompous fellow, as Semyonov often tells me; and I hope that I never allowed him to see how deeply I felt the truth of his words. + 

Meanwhile I will begin with a small adventure of Henry Bohun’s. Apparently, one evening soon after Nina’s party, he found himself about half-past ten in the evening, lonely and unhappy, walking down the Nevski. Gay and happy crowds wandered by him, brushing him aside, refusing to look at him, showing in fact no kind of interest in his existence. He was suddenly frightened, the distances seemed terrific and the Nevski was so hard and bright and shining⁠—that it had no use at all for any lonely young man. He decided suddenly that he would go and see me. He found an isvostchick, but when they reached the Ekaterinsgofsky Canal the surly coachman refused to drive further, saying that his horse had gone lame, and that this was as far as he had bargained to go. + 

Henry was forced to leave the cab, and then found himself outside the little people’s cinema, where he had once been with Vera and myself. + 

He knew that my rooms were not far away, and he started off beside the white and silent canal, wondering why he had come, and wishing he were back in bed. + 

There was still a great deal of the baby in Henry, and ghosts and giants and scaly-headed monsters were not incredibilities to his young imagination. As he left the main thoroughfare and turned down past the widening docks, he suddenly knew that he was terrified. There had been stories of wild attacks on rich strangers, sandbagging and the rest, often enough, but it was not of that kind of thing that he was afraid. He told me afterwards that he expected to see “long thick crawling creatures” creeping towards him over the ice. He continually turned round to see whether someone were following him. When he crossed the tumbledown bridge that led to my island it seemed that he was absolutely alone in the whole world. The masts of the ships dim through the cold mist were like tangled spiders’ webs. A strange hard red moon peered over the towers and chimneys of the distant dockyard. The ice was limitless, and of a dirty grey pallor, with black shadows streaking it. My island must have looked desolate enough, with its dirty snow-heaps, old boards and scrap-iron and tumbledown cottages. + 

Again, as on his first arrival in Petrograd, Henry was faced by the solemn fact that events are so often romantic in retrospect, but grimly realistic in experience. He reached my lodging and found the door open. He climbed the dark rickety stairs and entered my sitting-room. The blinds were not drawn, and the red moon peered through on to the grey shadows that the ice beyond always flung. The stove was not burning, the room was cold and deserted. Henry called my name and there was no answer. He went into my bedroom and there was no one there. He came back and stood there listening. + 

He could hear the creaking of some bar beyond the window and the melancholy whistle of a distant train. + 

He was held there, as though spellbound. Suddenly he thought that he heard someone climbing the stairs. He gave a cry, and that was answered by a movement so close to him that it was almost at his elbow. + 

“Who’s there?” he cried. He saw a shadow pass between the moon and himself. In a panic of terror he cried out, and at the same time struck a match. Someone came towards him, and he saw that it was Markovitch. + 

He was so relieved to find that it was a friend that he did not stop to wonder what Markovitch should be doing hiding in my room. It afterwards struck him that Markovitch looked odd. “Like a kind of conspirator, in old shabby shuba with the collar turned up. He looked jolly ill and dirty, as though he hadn’t slept or washed. He didn’t seem a bit surprised at seeing me there, and I think he scarcely realised that it was me. He was thinking of something else so hard that he couldn’t take me in.” + 

“Oh, Bohun!” he said in a confused way. + 

“Hullo, Nicolai Leontievitch,” Bohun said, trying to be unconcerned. “What are you doing here?” + 

“Came to see Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “Wasn’t here; I was going to write to him.” + 

Bohun then lit a candle and discovered that the place was in a very considerable mess. Someone had been sifting my desk, and papers and letters were lying about the floor. The drawers of my table were open, and one chair was overturned. Markovitch stood back near the window, looking at Bohun suspiciously. They must have been a curious couple for such a position. There was an awkward pause, and then Bohun, trying to speak easily, said: + 

“Well, it seems that Durward isn’t coming. He’s out dining somewhere I expect.” + 

“Probably,” said Markovitch drily. + 

There was another pause, then Markovitch broke out with: “I suppose you think I’ve been here trying to steal something.” + 

“Oh no⁠—oh no⁠—no⁠—” stammered Bohun. + 

“But I have,” said Markovitch. “You can look round and see. There it is on every side of you. I’ve been trying to find a letter.” + 

“Oh yes,” said Bohun nervously. + 

“Well, that seems to you terrible,” went on Markovitch, growing ever fiercer. “Of course it seems to you perfect Englishmen a dreadful thing. But why heed it?⁠ ⁠… You all do things just as bad, only you are hypocrites.” + 

“Oh yes, certainly,” said Bohun. + 

“And now,” said Markovitch with a snarl. “I’m sure you will not think me a proper person for you to lodge with any longer⁠—and you will be right. I am not a proper person. I have no sense of decency, thank God, and no Russian has any sense of decency, and that is why we are beaten and despised by the whole world, and yet are finer than them all⁠—so you’d better not lodge with us any more.” + 

“But of course,” said Bohun, disliking more and more this uncomfortable scene⁠—“of course I shall continue to stay with you. You are my friends, and one doesn’t mind what one’s friends do. One’s friends are one’s friends.” + 

Suddenly, then, Markovitch jerked himself forward, “just as though,” Bohun afterwards described it to me, “he had shot himself out of a catapault.” + 

“Tell me,” he said, “is your English friend in love with my wife?” + 

What Bohun wanted to do then was to run out of the room, down the dark stairs, and away as fast as his legs would carry him. He had not been in Russia so long that he had lost his English dislike of scenes, and he was seriously afraid that Markovitch was, as he put it, “bang off his head.” + 

But at this critical moment, he remembered, it seems, my injunction to him, “to be kind to Markovitch⁠—to make a friend of him.” That had always seemed to him before impossible enough, but now, at the very moment when Markovitch was at his queerest, he was also at his most pathetic, looking there in the mist and shadows too untidy and dirty and miserable to be really alarming. Henry then took courage. “That’s all nonsense, Markovitch,” he said. “I suppose by ‘your English friend’ you mean Lawrence. He thinks the world of your wife, of course, as we all do, but he’s not the fellow to be in love. I don’t suppose he’s ever been really in love with a woman in his life. He’s a kindly good-hearted chap, Lawrence, and he wouldn’t do harm to a fly.” + 

Markovitch peered into Bohun’s face. “What did you come here for, any of you?” he asked. “What’s Russia overrun with foreigners for? We’ll clear the lot of you out, all of you.⁠ ⁠…” Then he broke off, with a pathetic little gesture, his hand up to his head. “But I don’t know what I’m saying⁠—I don’t mean it, really. Only things are so difficult, and they slip away from one so. + 

“I love Russia and I love my wife, Mr. Bohun⁠—and they’ve both left me. But you aren’t interested in that. Why should you be? Only remember when you’re inclined to laugh at me that I’m like a man in a cockleshell boat⁠—and it isn’t my fault. I was put in it.” + 

“But I’m never inclined to laugh,” said Bohun eagerly. “I may be young and only an Englishman⁠—but I shouldn’t wonder if I don’t understand better than you think. You try and see.⁠ ⁠… And I’ll tell you another thing, Nicolai Leontievitch, I loved your wife myself⁠—loved her madly⁠—and she was so good to me and so far above me, that I saw that it was like loving one of the angels. That’s what we all feel, Nicolai Leontievitch, so that you needn’t have any fear⁠—she’s too far above all of us. And I only want to be your friend and hers, and to help you in any way I can.” + 

(I can see Bohun saying this, very sincere, his cheeks flushed, eager.) + 

Markovitch held out both his hands. + 

“You’re right,” he cried. “She’s above us all. It’s true that she’s an angel, and we are all her servants. You have helped me by saying what you have, and I won’t forget it. You are right; I am wasting my time with ridiculous suspicions when I ought to be working. Concentration, that’s what I want, and perhaps you will give it me.” + 

He suddenly came forward and kissed Bohun on both cheeks. He smelt, Bohun thought, of vodka. Bohun didn’t like the embrace, of course, but he accepted it gracefully. + 

“Now we’ll go away,” said Markovitch. + 

“We ought to put things straight,” said Bohun. + 

“No; I shall leave things as they are,” said Markovitch, “so that he shall see exactly what I’ve done. I’ll write a note.” + 

He scribbled a note to me in pencil. I have it still. It ran: + 

Dear Ivan Andreievitch⁠—I looked for a letter from my wife to you. In doing so I was I suppose contemptible. But no matter. At least you see me as I am. I clasp your hand, + 

They went away together. + 

II + 

I was greatly surprised to receive, a few days later, an invitation from Baron Wilderling; he asked me to go with him on one of the first evenings in March to a performance of Lermontov’s Masquerade at the Alexandra Theatre. I say Lermontov, but heaven knows that that great Russian poet was not supposed to be going to have much to say in the affair. This performance had been in preparation for at least ten years, and when such delights as Gordon Craig’s setting of Hamlet, or Benois’ dresses for La Locandiera were discussed, the Wise Ones said: + 

“Ah⁠—all very well⁠—just wait until you see Masquerade.” + 

These manifestations of the artistic spirit had not been very numerous of late in Petrograd. At the beginning of the war there had been many cabarets⁠—The Cow, The Calf, The Dog, The Striped Cat⁠—and these had been underground cellars, lighted by Chinese lanterns, and the halls decorated with Futurist paintings by Yakkolyeff or some other still more advanced spirit. It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening. I do not know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket. With the exception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to be my one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel its fascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesy and discipline. I think I’ll leave these rooms, I thought as I looked about me, and take a decent flat somewhere. + 

It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sort of moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of that evening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterly cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queer metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the very smack of our horses’ hoofs as my sleigh sped along⁠—as though, silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was all light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted green, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shot with colour. + 

Somewhere in one of Shorthouse’s stories⁠—in The Little Schoolmaster Mark, I think⁠—he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantastic crowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in the air around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees this dark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and the coloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him into darkness. I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anything sinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offered me, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountable depression that would not let me alone. For this I can see now that Lawrence was very largely responsible. When I met him and the Wilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he was greatly changed. + 

The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far away from his company⁠—and it was as though I could see into his brain and watch the repetition of the old argument occurring again and again and again with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches, the same defiances, the same obstinacies. He was caught by what was perhaps the first crisis of his life. He had never been a man for much contact with his fellow-beings, he had been aloof and reserved, generous in his judgements of others, severe and narrow in his judgement of himself. Above all, he had been proud of his strength.⁠ ⁠… + 

Now he was threatened by something stronger than himself. He could have managed it so long as he was aware only of his love for Vera.⁠ ⁠… Now, when, since Nina’s party, he knew that also Vera loved him, he had to meet the tussle of his life. + 

That, at any rate, is the kind of figure that I give to his mood that evening. He has told me much of what happened to him afterwards, but nothing of that particular night, except once. “Do you remember that Masquerade evening?⁠ ⁠… I was in hell that night.⁠ ⁠…” which, for Lawrence, was expressive enough. + 

Both the Baron and his wife were in great spirits. The Baron was more than ever the evocation of the genius of elegance and order; he seemed carved out of some coloured ivory, behind whose white perfection burnt a shining resolute flame. + 

His clothes were so perfect that they would have expressed the whole of him even though his body had not been there. He was happy. His eyes danced appreciatively; he waved his white gloves at the scene as though blessing it. + 

“Of course, Mr. Durward,” he said to me, “this is nothing compared with what we could do before the war⁠—nevertheless here you see, for a moment, a fragment of the old Petersburg⁠—Petersburg as it shall be, please God, again one day.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I do not in the least remember who was present that evening, but it was, I believe, a very distinguished company. The lights blazed, the jewels flashed, and the chatter was tremendous. The horseshoe-shaped seats behind the stalls clustered in knots and bunches of colour under the great glitter of electricity about the Royal Box. Artists⁠—Somoff and Benois and Dobujinsky; novelists like Sologub and Merejkowsky; dancers like Karsavina⁠—actors from all over Petrograd⁠—they were there, I expect, to add criticism and argument to the adulation of friends and of the carelessly observant rich Jews and merchants who had come simply to display their jewellery. Petrograd, like every other city in the world, is artistic only by the persistence of its minority. + 

I’m sure that there were Princesses and Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses for anyone who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where the students and their girlfriends were gathered that the name of Lermontov was mentioned. The name of the evening was “Meyerhold,” the gentleman responsible for the production. At last the Event that had been brewing ceaselessly for the last ten years⁠—ever since the last Revolution in fact⁠—was to reach creation. The moment of M. Meyerhold’s life had arrived⁠—the moment, had we known it, of many other lives also; but we did not know it. We buzzed and we hummed, we gasped and we gaped, we yawned and we applauded; and the rustle of gold tissue, the scent of gold leaf, the thick sticky substance of gold paint, filled the air, flooded the arena, washed past us into the street outside. Meanwhile M. Meyerhold, white, perspiring, in his shirtsleeves with his collar loosened and his hair damp, is in labour behind the gold tissue to produce the child of his life⁠ ⁠… and Behold, the Child is produced! + 

And such a child! It was not I am sure so fantastic an affair in reality as in my rememberance of it. I have, since then, read Lermontov’s play, and I must confess that it does not seem, in cold truth, to be one of his finest works. It is long and old-fashioned, melodramatic and clumsy⁠—but then it was not on this occasion Lermontov’s play that was the thing. But it was a masquerade, and that in a sense far from the author’s intention. As I watched I remember that I forgot the bad acting (the hero was quite atrocious), forgot the lapses of taste in the colour and arrangement of the play, forgot the artifices and elaborate originalities and false sincerities; there were, I have no doubt, many things in it all that were bad and meretricious⁠—I was dreaming. I saw, against my will and outside my own agency, mingled with the gold screens, the purple curtains, the fantasies and extravagances of the costumes, the sudden flashes of unexpected colour through light or dress or backcloth⁠—pictures from those Galician days that had been, until Semyonov’s return, as I fancied, forgotten. + 

A crowd of revellers ran down the stage, and a shimmering cloud of gold shot with red and purple was flung from one end of the hall to the other, and behind it, through it, between it, I saw the chill light of the early morning, and Nikitin and I sitting on the bench outside the stinking but that we had used as an operating theatre, watching the first rays of the sun warm, the cold mountain’s rim. I could hear voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, someone sang, and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked back to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was that terrific crash as of the smashing of a world of china, the fierce crackle of the machine-guns, and then the boom of the cannon from under our very feet⁠ ⁠… the garden was filled with revellers, laughing, dancing, singing, the air was filled again with the air of gold paint, the tenor’s voice rose higher and higher, the golden screens closed⁠—the act was ended. + 

It was as though I had received, in some dim, bewildered fashion, a warning. When the lights went up, it was some moments before I realised that the Baron was speaking to me, that a babel of chatter, like a sudden rain storm on a glass roof, had burst on every side of us, and that a huge Jewess, all bare back and sham pearls, was trying to pass me on her way to the corridor. The Baron talked away: “Very amusing, don’t you think? After Reinhardt, of course, although they say now that Reinhardt got all his ideas from your man Craig. I’m sure I don’t know whether that’s so.⁠ ⁠… I hope you’re more reassured tonight, Mr. Durward. You were full of alarms the other evening. Look around you and you’ll see the true Russia.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I can’t believe this to be the true Russia,” I said. “Petrograd is not the true Russia. I don’t believe that there is a true Russia.” + 

“Well, there you are,” he continued eagerly. “No true Russia! Quite so. Very observant. But we have to pretend there is, and that’s what you foreigners are always forgetting. The Russian is an individualist⁠—give him freedom and he’ll lose all sense of his companions. He will pursue his own idea. Myself and my party are here to prevent him from pursuing his own idea, for the good of himself and his country. He may be discontented, he may grumble, but he doesn’t realise his luck. Give him his freedom, and in six months you’ll see Russia back in the Middle Ages.” + 

“And another six months?” I asked. + 

“The Stone Age.” + 

“And then?” + 

“Ah,” he said, smiling, “you ask me too much, Mr. Durward. We are speaking of our own generation.” + 

The curtain was up again and I was back in my other world. I cannot tell you anything of the rest of the play⁠—I remember nothing. Only I know that I was actually living over again those awful days in the forest⁠—the heat, the flies, the smells, the glassy sheen of the trees, the perpetual rumble of the guns, the desolate whine of the shells⁠—and then Marie’s death, Trenchard’s sorrow, Trenchard’s death, that last view of Semyonov⁠ ⁠… and I felt that I was being made to remember it all for a purpose, as though my old friend, rich now with his wiser knowledge, was whispering to me, “All life is bound up. You cannot leave anything behind you; the past, the present, the future are one. You had pushed us away from you, but we are with you always forever. I am your friend forever, and Marie is your friend, and now, once more, you have to take your part in a battle, and we have come to you to share it with you. Do not be confused by history or public events or class struggle or any big names; it is the individual and the soul of the individual alone that matters. I and Marie and Vera and Nina and Markovitch⁠—our love for you, your love for us, our courage, our self-sacrifice, our weakness, our defeat, our progress⁠—these are the things for which life exists; it exists as a training-ground for the immortal soul.⁠ ⁠…” + 

With a sweep of colour the stage broke into a mist of movement. Masked and hooded figures in purple and gold and blue and red danced madly off into a forest of stinking, sodden leaves and trees as thin as tissue-paper burnt by the sun. “Oh⁠—aye! oh⁠—aye! oh⁠—aye!” came from the wounded, and the dancers answered, “Tra-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la,” The golden screens were drawn forward, the lights were up again, and the whole theatre was stirring like a coloured paper ant heap. + 

Outside in the foyer I found Lawrence at my elbow. + 

“Go and see her,” he whispered to me, “as soon as possible! Tell her⁠—tell her⁠—no, tell her nothing. But see that she’s all right and let me know. See her tomorrow⁠—early!” + 

I could say nothing to him, for the Baron had joined us. + 

“Good night! Good night! A most delightful evening!⁠ ⁠… Most amusing!⁠ ⁠… No, thank you, I shall walk!” + 

“Come and see us,” said the Baroness, smiling. + 

“Very soon,” I answered. I little knew that I should never see either of them again. + 

III + 

I awoke that night with a sudden panic that I must instantly see Vera. I, even in the way that one does when, one is only half awake, struggled out of bed and felt for my clothes. Then I remembered and climbed back again, but sleep would not return to me. The self-criticism and self-distrust that were always attacking me and paralysing my action sprang upon me now and gripped me. What was I to do? How was I to act? I saw Vera and Nina and Lawrence and, behind them, smiling at me, Semyonov. They were asking for my help, but they were, in some strange, intangible way, most desperately remote. When I read now in our papers shrill criticisms on our officials, our Cabinet, our generals, our propagandists, our merchants, for their failure to deal adequately with Russia, I say: Deal adequately? First you must catch your bird⁠ ⁠… and no Western snare has ever caught the Russian bird of paradise, and I dare prophesy that no Western snare ever will. Had I not broken my heart in the pursuit, and was I not as far as ever from attainment? The secret of the mystery of life is the isolation that separates every man from his fellow⁠—the secret of dissatisfaction too; and the only purpose in life is to realise that isolation, and to love one’s fellow-man because of it, and to show one’s own courage, like a flag to which the other travellers may wave their answer; but we Westerners have at least the waiting comfort of our discipline, of our materialism, of our indifference to ideas. The Russian, I believe, lives in a world of loneliness peopled only by ideas. His impulses towards self-confession, towards brotherhood, towards vice, towards cynicism, towards his belief in God and his scorn of Him, come out of this world; and beyond it he sees his fellow-men as trees walking, and the Mountain of God as a distant peak, placed there only to emphasise his irony. + 

I had wanted to be friends with Nina and Vera⁠—I had even longed for it⁠—and now at the crisis when I must rise and act they were so far away from me that I could only see them, like coloured ghosts, vanishing into mist. + 

I would go at once and see Vera and there do what I could. Lawrence must return to England⁠—then all would be well. Markovitch must be persuaded.⁠ ⁠… Nina must be told.⁠ ⁠… I slept and tumbled into a nightmare of a pursuit, down endless streets, of flying figures. + 

Next day I went to Vera. I found her, to my joy, alone. I realised at once that our talk would be difficult. She was grave and severe, sitting back in her chair, her head up, not looking at me at all, but beyond through the window to the tops of the trees feathery with snow against the sky of eggshell blue. I am always beaten by a hostile atmosphere. Today I was at my worst, and soon we were talking like a couple of the merest strangers. + 

She asked me whether I had heard that there were very serious disturbances on the other side of the river. + 

“I was on the Nevski early this afternoon,” I said, “and I saw about twenty Cossacks go galloping down towards the Neva. I asked somebody and was told that some women had broken into the bakers’ shops on Vassily Ostrov.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It will end as they always end,” said Vera. “Some arrests and a few people beaten, and a policeman will get a medal.” + 

There was a long pause. “I went to Masquerade the other night,” I said. + 

“I hear it’s very good.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Pretentious and rather vulgar⁠—but amusing all the same.” + 

“Everyone’s talking about it and trying to get seats.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes. Meyerhold must be pleased.” + 

“They discuss it much more than they do the war, or even politics. Everyone’s tired of the war.” + 

I said nothing. She continued: + 

“So I suppose we shall just go on for years and years.⁠ ⁠… And then the Empress herself will be tired one day and it will suddenly stop.” She showed a flash of interest, turning to me and looking at me for the first time since I had come in. + 

“Ivan Andreievitch, what do you stay in Russia for? Why don’t you go back to England?” + 

I was taken by surprise. I stammered, “Why do I stay? Why, because⁠—because I like it.” + 

“You can’t like it. There’s nothing to like in Russia.” + 

“There’s everything!” I answered. “And I have friends here,” I added. But she didn’t answer that, and continued to sit staring out at the trees. We talked a little more about nothing at all, and then there was another long pause. At last I could endure it no longer, I jumped to my feet. + 

“Vera Michailovna,” I cried, “what have I done?” + 

“Done?” she asked me with a look of self-conscious surprise. “What do you mean?” + 

“You know what I mean well enough,” I answered. I tried to speak firmly, but my voice trembled a little. “You told me I was your friend. When I was ill the other day you came to me and said that you needed help and that you wanted me to help you. I said that I would⁠—” + 

I paused. + 

“Well?” she said, in a hard, unrelenting voice. + 

“Well⁠—” I hesitated and stammered, cursing myself for my miserable cowardice. “You are in trouble now, Vera⁠—great trouble⁠—I came here because I am ready to do anything for you⁠—anything⁠—and you treat me like a stranger, almost like an enemy.” + 

I saw her lip tremble⁠—only for an instant. She said nothing. + 

“If you’ve got anything against me since you saw me last,” I went on, “tell me and I’ll go away. But I had to see you and also Lawrence⁠—” + 

At the mention of his name her whole body quivered, but again only for an instant. + 

“Lawrence asked me to come and see you.” + 

She looked up at me then gravely and coldly, and without the sign of any emotion either in her face or voice. + 

“Thank you, Ivan Andreievitch, but I want no help⁠—I am in no trouble. It was very kind of Mr. Lawrence, but really⁠—” + 

Then I could endure it no longer. I broke out: + 

“Vera, what’s the matter? You know all this isn’t true.⁠ ⁠… I don’t know what idea you have now in your head, but you must let me speak to you. I’ve got to tell you this⁠—that Lawrence must go back to England, and as soon as possible⁠—and I will see that he does⁠—” + 

That did its work. In an instant she was upon me like a wild beast, springing from her chair, standing close to me, her head flung back, her eyes furious. + 

“You wouldn’t dare!” she cried. “It’s none of your business, Ivan Andreievitch. You say you’re my friend. You’re not. You’re my enemy⁠—my enemy. I don’t care for him, not in the very least⁠—he is nothing to me⁠—nothing to me at all. But he mustn’t go back to England. It will ruin his career. You will ruin him for life, Ivan Andreievitch. What business is it of yours? You imagine⁠—because of what you fancied you saw at Nina’s party. There was nothing at Nina’s party⁠—nothing. I love my husband, Ivan Andreievitch, and you are my enemy if you say anything else. And you pretend to be his friend, but you are his enemy if you try to have him sent back to England.⁠ ⁠… He must not go. For the matter of that, I will never see him again⁠—never⁠—if that is what you want. See, I promise you never⁠—never⁠—” She suddenly broke down⁠—she, Vera Michailovna, the proudest woman I had ever known, turning from me, her head in her hands, sobbing, her shoulders bent. + 

I was most deeply moved. I could say nothing at first, then, when the sound of her sobbing became unbearable to me, I murmured, + 

“Vera, please. I have no power. I can’t make him go. I will only do what you wish. Vera, please, please⁠—” + 

Then, with her back still turned to me, I heard her say, + 

“Please, go. I didn’t mean⁠—I didn’t⁠ ⁠… but go now⁠ ⁠… and come back⁠—later.” + 

I waited a minute, and then, miserable, terrified of the future, I went. + 

IV + 

Next night (it was Friday evening) Semyonov paid me a visit. I was just dropping to sleep in my chair. I had been reading that story of De la Mare’s The Return⁠—one of the most beautiful books in our language, whether for its spirit, its prose, or its poetry⁠—and something of the moonlit colour of its pages had crept into my soul, so that the material world was spun into threads of the finest silk behind which other worlds were more and more plainly visible. I had not drawn my blind, and a wonderful moon shone clear on to the bare boards of my room, bringing with its rays the mother-of-pearl reflections of the limitless ice, and these floated on my wall in trembling waves of opaque light. In the middle of this splendour I dropped slowly into slumber, the book falling from my hands, and I, on my part, seeming to float lazily backwards and forwards, as though, truly, one were at the bottom of some crystal sea, idly and happily drowned. + 

From all of this I was roused by a sharp knock on my door, and I started up, still bewildered and bemused, but saying to myself aloud, “There’s someone there! there’s someone there!⁠ ⁠…” I stood for quite a while, listening, on the middle of my shining floor, then the knock was almost fiercely repeated. I opened the door and, to my surprise, found Semyonov standing there. He came in, smiling, very polite of course. + 

“You’ll forgive me, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “This is terribly unceremonious. But I had an urgent desire to see you, and you wouldn’t wish me, in the circumstances, to have waited.” + 

“Please,” I said. I went to the window and drew the blinds. I lit the lamp. He took off his shuba and we sat down. The room was very dim now, and I could only see his mouth and square beard behind the lamp. + 

“I’ve no Samovar, I’m afraid,” I said. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have told her to have it ready. But it’s too late now. She’s gone to bed.” + 

“Nonsense,” he said brusquely. “You know that I don’t care about that. Now we’ll waste no time. Let us come straight to the point at once. I’ve come to give you some advice, Ivan Andreievitch⁠—very simple advice. Go home to England.” Before he had finished the sentence I had felt the hostility in his voice; I knew that it was to be a fight between us, and strangely, at once the self-distrust and cowardice from which I had been suffering all those weeks left me. I felt warm and happy. I felt that with Semyonov I knew how to deal. I was afraid of Vera and Nina, perhaps, because I loved them, but of Semyonov, thank God, I was not afraid. + 

“Well, now, that’s very kind of you,” I said, “to take so much interest in my movements. I didn’t know that it mattered to you so much where I was. Why must I go?” + 

“Because you are doing no good here. You are interfering in things of which you have no knowledge. When we met before you interfered, and you must honestly admit that you did not improve things. Now it is even more serious. I must ask you to leave my family alone, Ivan Andreievitch.” + 

“Your family!” I retorted, laughing. “Upon my word, you do them great honour. I wonder whether they’d be very proud and pleased if they knew of your adoption of them. I haven’t noticed on their side any very great signs of devotion.” + 

He laughed. “No, you haven’t noticed, Ivan Andreievitch. But there, you don’t really notice very much. You think you see the devil of a lot and are a mighty clever fellow; but we’re Russians, you know, and it takes more than sentimental mysticism to understand us. But even if you did understand us⁠—which you don’t⁠—the real point is that we don’t want you, any of you, patronising, patting us on the shoulder, explaining us to ourselves, talking about our souls, our unpunctuality, and our capacity for drink. However, that’s merely in a general way. In a personal, direct, and individual way, I beg you not to visit my family again. Stick to your own countrymen.” + 

Although he spoke obstinately, and with a show of assurance, I realised, behind his words, his own uncertainty. + 

“See here, Semyonov,” I said. “It’s just my own Englishmen that I am going to stick to. What about Lawrence? And what about Bohun? Will you prevent me from continuing my friendship with them?” + 

“Lawrence⁠ ⁠… Lawrence,” he said slowly, in a voice quite other than his earlier one, and as though he were talking aloud to himself. “Now, that’s strange⁠ ⁠… there’s a funny thing. A heavy, dull, silent Englishman, as ugly as only an Englishman can be, and the two of them are mad about him⁠—nothing in him⁠—nothing⁠—and yet there it is. It’s the fidelity in the man, that’s what it is, Durward.⁠ ⁠…” He suddenly called out the word aloud, as though he’d made a discovery. “Fidelity⁠ ⁠… fidelity⁠ ⁠… that’s what we Russians admire, and there’s a man with not enough imagination to make him unfaithful. Fidelity!⁠—lack of imagination, lack of freedom⁠—that’s all fidelity is.⁠ ⁠… But I’m faithful.⁠ ⁠… God knows I’m faithful⁠—always! always!” + 

He stared past me. I swear that he did not see me, that I had vanished utterly from his vision. I waited. He was leaning forward, pressing both his thick white hands on the table. His gaze must have pierced the ice beyond the walls, and the worlds beyond the ice. + 

Then quite suddenly he came back to me and said very quietly, + 

“Well, there it is, Ivan Andreievitch.⁠ ⁠… You must leave Vera and Nina alone. It isn’t your affair.” + 

We continued the discussion then in a strange and friendly way. “I believe it to be my affair,” I answered quietly, “simply because they care for me and have asked me to help them if they were in trouble. I still deny that Vera cares for Lawrence.⁠ ⁠… Nina has had some girl’s romantic idea perhaps⁠ ⁠… but that is the extent of the trouble. You are trying to make things worse, Alexei Petrovitch, for your own purposes⁠—and God only knows what they are.” + 

He now spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear his words. He was leaning forward on the table, resting his head on his hands and looking gravely at me. + 

“What I can’t understand, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, “is why you’re always getting in my way. You did so in Galicia, and now here you are again. It is not as though you were strong or wise⁠—no, it is because you are persistent. I admire you in a way, you know, but now, this time, I assure you that you are making a great mistake in remaining. You will be able to influence neither Vera Michailovna nor your bullock of an Englishman when the moment comes. At the crisis they will never think of you at all, and the end of it simply will be that all parties concerned will hate you. I don’t wish you any harm, and I assure you that you will suffer terribly if you stay.⁠ ⁠… By the way, Ivan Andreievitch,” his voice suddenly dropped, “you haven’t ever had⁠—by chance⁠—just by chance⁠—any photograph of Marie Ivanovna with you, have you? Just by chance, you know.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“No,” I said shortly, “I never had one.” + 

“No⁠—of course⁠—not. I only thought.⁠ ⁠… But of course you wouldn’t⁠—no⁠—no.⁠ ⁠… Well, as I was saying, you’d better leave us all to our fate. You can’t prevent things⁠—you can’t indeed.” I looked at him without speaking. He returned my gaze. + 

“Tell me one thing,” I said, “before I answer you. What are you doing to Markovitch, Alexei Petrovitch?” + 

“Markovitch!” He repeated the name with an air of surprise as though he had never heard it before. “What do you mean?” + 

“You have some plan with regard to him,” I said. “What is it?” + 

He laughed then. “I a plan! My dear Durward, how romantic you always insist on being! I a plan! Your plunges into Russian psychology are as naive as the girl who pays her ten kopecks to see the Fat Woman at the Fair! Markovitch and I understand one another. We trust one another. He is a simple fellow, but I trust him.” + 

“Do you remember,” I said, “that the other day at the Jews’ Market you told me the story of the man who tortured his friend, until the man shot him⁠—simply because he was tired of life and too proud to commit suicide. Why did you tell me that story?” + 

“Did I tell it you?” he asked indifferently. “I had forgotten. But it is of no importance. You know, Ivan Andreievitch, that what I told you before is true.⁠ ⁠… We don’t want you here any more. I tell you in a perfectly friendly way. I bear you no malice. But we’re tired of your sentimentality. I’m not speaking only for myself⁠—I’m not indeed. We feel that you avoid life to a ridiculous extent, and that you have no right to talk to us Russians on such a subject. What, for instance, do you know about women? For years I slept with a different woman every night of the week⁠—old and young, beautiful and ugly, some women like men, some like God, some like the gutter. That teaches you something about women⁠—but only something. Afterwards I found that there was only one woman⁠—I left all the others like dirty washing⁠—I was supremely faithful⁠ ⁠… so I learnt the rest. Now you have never been faithful nor unfaithful⁠—I’m sure that you have not. Then about God? When have you ever thought about Him? Why, you are ashamed to mention His name. If an Englishman speaks of God when other men are present everyone laughs⁠—and yet why? It is a very serious and interesting question. God exists undoubtedly, and so we must make up our minds about Him. We must establish some relationship⁠—what it is does not matter⁠—that is our individual ‘case’⁠—but only the English establish no relationship and then call it a religion.⁠ ⁠… And so in this affair of my family. What does it matter what they do? That is the only thing of which you think, that they should die or disgrace their name or be unhappy or quarrel.⁠ ⁠… Pooh! What are all those things compared with the idea behind them? If they wish to sacrifice happiness for an idea, that is their good luck, and no Russian would think of preventing them. But you come in with your English morality and sentiment, and scream and cry.⁠ ⁠… No, Ivan Andreievitch, go home! go home!” + 

I waited to be quite sure that he had finished, and then I said, + 

“That’s all as it may be, Alexei Petrovitch. It may be as you say. The point is, that I remain here.” + 

He got up from his chair. “You are determined on that?” + 

“I am determined,” I answered. + 

“Nothing will change you?” + 

“Nothing.” + 

“Then it is a battle between us?” + 

“If you like.” + 

“So be it.” + 

I helped him on with his shuba. He said, in an ordinary conversational tone: + 

“There may be trouble tomorrow. There’s been shooting by the Nicholas Station this afternoon, I hear. I should avoid the Nevski tomorrow.” + 

I laughed. “I’m not afraid of that kind of death, Alexei Petrovitch,” I said. + 

“No,” he said, looking at me. “I will do you justice. You are not.” + 

He pulled his shuba close about him. + 

“Good night, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “It’s been a very pleasant talk.” + 

“Very,” I answered. “Good night.” + 

After he had gone I drew back the blinds and let the moonlight flood the room. + 

V + 

I feel conscious, as I approach the centre of my story, that there is an appearance of uncertainty in the way that I pass from one character to another. I do not defend that uncertainty. + 

What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of us⁠—myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the Rat himself⁠—was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us, outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the eyes⁠ ⁠… used against our own human agency, and yet free within that domination for the exercise of our own free will. Have you never felt when you have been swept into the interaction of some group of persons that you were being employed as a part of a figure that without you would be incomplete? The figure is formed.⁠ ⁠… For an instant it remains, gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment, as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet expressed that same individuality more nobly than any poor assertion of your own small lonely figure could afford. You have been used and now you are alone again.⁠ ⁠… You were caught up and united to your fellow-men. God appeared to you⁠—not, as you had expected, in a vision cut off from the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified. + 

And the vision of the figure remains.⁠ ⁠… + 

When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some affair whose uncertainty had worried me. I lay in bed chuckling as though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself, “Well, I needn’t be afraid of him any longer.” It was a most beautiful day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving. I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied that the faces of the passersby were anxious and nervous. Nevertheless, the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow reassured me⁠—the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to allow disturbance. Then at the corner of the English shop where the Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had occurred. It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its face and showed me a new grin. + 

The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly stirring stream. + 

As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of isvostchicks galloped past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along, amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country. Now the elephants were gone; the isvostchicks were gone. So far as my eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way. + 

I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an amiable, aimless manner up the street. + 

“What’s the matter?” I asked a cheerful, fat little chinovnik, who seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force. + 

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠…” he said. “They’re saying there’s been some shooting up by the Nicholas Station⁠—but that was last night. Some women had a procession about food.⁠ ⁠… Tak oni gavoryat⁠—so they say.⁠ ⁠… But I don’t know. People have just come out to see what they can see.⁠ ⁠…” + 

And so they had⁠—women, boys, old men, little children. I could see no signs of ill-temper anywhere, only a rather open-mouthed wonder and sense of expectation. + 

A large woman near me, with a shawl over her head and carrying a large basket, laughed a great deal. “No, I wouldn’t go,” she said. “You go and get it for yourself⁠—I’m not coming. Not I, I was too clever for that.” Then she would turn, shrilly calling for some child who was apparently lost in the crowd. “Sacha!⁠ ⁠… Ah! Sacha!” she cried⁠—and turning again, “Eh! look at the Cossack!⁠ ⁠… There’s a fine Cossack!” + 

It was then that I noticed the Cossacks. They were lined up along the side of the pavement, and sometimes they would suddenly wheel and clatter along the pavement itself, to the great confusion of the crowd who would scatter in every direction. + 

They were fine-looking men, and their faces expressed childish and rather worried amiability. The crowd obviously feared them not at all, and I saw a woman standing with her hand on the neck of one of the horses, talking in a very friendly fashion to the soldier who rode it. That’s strange, I thought to myself; there’s something queer here. It was then, just at the entrance of the Malaia Koniushennaia, that a strange little incident occurred. Some fellow⁠—I could just see his shaggy head, his pale face, and black beard⁠—had been shouting something, and suddenly a little group of Cossacks moved towards him and he was surrounded. They turned off with him towards a yard close at hand. I could hear his voice shrilly protesting; the crowd also moved behind, murmuring. Suddenly a Cossack, laughing, said something. I could not hear his words, but everyone near me laughed. The little chinovnik at my side said to me, “That’s right. They’re not going to shoot, whatever happens⁠—not on their brothers, they say. They’ll let the fellow go in a moment. It’s only just for discipline’s sake. That’s right. That’s the spirit!” + 

“But what about the police?” I asked. + 

“Ah, the police!” His cheery, good-natured face was suddenly dark and scowling. “Let them try, that’s all. It’s Protopopoff who’s our enemy⁠—not the Cossacks.” + 

And a woman near him repeated. + 

“Yes, yes, it’s Protopopoff. Hurrah for the Cossacks!” + 

I was squeezed now into a corner, and the crowd swirled and eddied about me in a tangled stream, slow, smiling, confused, and excited. I pushed my way along, and at last tumbled down the dark stone steps into the Cave de la Grave, a little restaurant patronised by the foreigners and certain middle-class Russians. It was full, and everyone was eating his or her meal very comfortably as though nothing at all were the matter. I sat down with a young American, an acquaintance of mine attached to the American Embassy. + 

“There’s a tremendous crowd in the Nevski,” I said. + 

“Guess I’m too hungry to trouble about it,” he answered. + 

“Do you think there’s going to be any trouble?” I asked. + 

“Course not. These folks are always wandering round. M. Protopopoff has it in hand all right.” + 

“Yes, I suppose he has,” I answered with a sigh. + 

“You seem to want trouble,” he said, suddenly looking up at me. + 

“No, I don’t want trouble,” I answered. “But I’m sick of this mess, this mismanagement, thievery, lying⁠—one’s tempted to think that anything would be better⁠—” + 

“Don’t you believe it,” he said brusquely. “Excuse me, Durward, I’ve been in this country five years. A revolution would mean God’s own upset, and you’ve got a war on, haven’t you?” + 

“They might fight better than ever,” I argued. + 

“Fight!” he laughed. “They’re damm sick of it all, that’s what they are. And a revolution would leave ’em like a lot of silly sheep wandering on to a precipice. But there won’t be no revolution. Take my word.” + 

It was at that moment that I saw Boris Grogoff come in. He stood in the doorway looking about him, and he had the strangest air of a man walking in his sleep, so bewildered, so rapt, so removed was he. He stared about him, looked straight at me, but did not recognise me; finally, when a waiter showed him a table, he sat down still gazing in front of him. The waiter had to speak to him twice before he ordered his meal, and then he spoke so strangely that the fellow looked at him in astonishment. “Guess that chap’s seen the Millennium,” remarked my American. “Or he’s drunk, maybe.” + 

This appearance had the oddest effect on me. It was as though I had been given a sudden conviction that after all there was something behind this disturbance. I saw, during the whole of the rest of that day, Grogoff’s strange face with the exalted, bewildered eyes, the excited mouth, the body tense and strained as though waiting for a blow. And now, always when I look back I see Boris Grogoff standing in the doorway of the Cave de la Grave like a ghost from another world warning me. + 

In the afternoon I had a piece of business that took me across the river. I did my business and turned homewards. It was almost dark, and the ice of the Neva was coloured a faint green under the grey sky; the buildings rose out of it like black bubbles poised over a swamp. I was in that strange quarter of Petrograd where the river seems, like some sluggish octopus, to possess a thousand coils. Always you are turning upon a new bend of the ice, secretly stretching into darkness; strange bridges suddenly meet you, and then, where you had expected to find a solid mass of hideous flats, there will be a cluster of masts and the smell of tar, and little fierce red lights like the eyes of waiting beasts. + 

I seemed to stand with ice on every side of me, and so frail was my trembling wooden bridge that it seemed an easy thing for the ice, that appeared to press with tremendous weight against its banks, to grind the supports to fragments. There was complete silence on every side of me. The street to my left was utterly deserted. I heard no cries nor calls⁠—only the ice seemed once and again to quiver as though some submerged creature was moving beneath it. That vast crowd on the Nevski seemed to be a dream. I was in a world that had fallen into decay and desolation, and I could smell rotting wood, and could fancy that frozen blades of grass were pressing up through the very pavement stones. Suddenly an isvostchick stumbled along past me, down the empty street, and the bumping rattle of the sledge on the snow woke me from my laziness. I started off homewards. When I had gone a little way and was approaching the bridge over the Neva some man passed me, looked back, stopped and waited for me. When I came up to him I saw to my surprise that it was the Rat. He had his coat-collar turned over his ears and his dirty fur cap pulled down over his forehead. His nose was very red, and his thin hollow cheeks a dirty yellow colour. + 

“Good evening, barin,” he said, grinning. + 

“Good evening,” I said. “Where are you slipping off to so secretly?” + 

“Slipping off?” He did not seem to understand my word. I repeated it. + 

“Oh, I’m not slipping off,” he said almost indignantly. “No, indeed. I’m just out for a walk like your Honour, to see the town.” + 

“What have they been doing this afternoon?” I asked. “There’s been a fine fuss on the Nevski.” + 

“Yes, there has.⁠ ⁠…” he said, chuckling. “But it’s nothing to the fuss there will be.” + 

“Nonsense,” I said. “The police have got it all in control already. You’ll see tomorrow.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“And the soldiers, barin?” + 

“Oh, the soldiers won’t do anything. Talk’s one thing⁠—action’s another.” + 

He laughed to himself and seemed greatly amused. This irritated me. + 

“Well, what do you know?” I asked. + 

“I know nothing,” he chuckled. “But remember, barin, in a week’s time, if you want me I’m your friend. Who knows? In a week I may be a rich man.” + 

“Someone else’s riches,” I answered. + 

“Certainly,” he said. “And why not? Why should he have things? Is he a better man than I? Possibly⁠—but then it is easy for a rich man to keep within the law. And then Russia’s meant for the poor man. However,” he continued, with great contempt in his voice, “that’s politics⁠—dull stuff. While the others talk I act.” + 

“And what about the Germans?” I asked him. “Does it occur to you that when you’ve collected your spoils the Germans will come in and take them?” + 

“Ah, you don’t understand us, barin,” he said, laughing. “You’re a good man and a kind man, but you don’t understand us. What can the Germans do? They can’t take the whole of Russia. Russia’s a big country.⁠ ⁠… No, if the Germans come there’ll be more for us to take.” + 

We stood for a moment under a lamppost. He put his hand on my arm and looked up at me with his queer ugly face, his sentimental dreary eyes, his red nose, and his hard, cruel little mouth. + 

“But no one shall touch you⁠—unless it’s myself if I’m very drunk. But you, knowing me, will understand afterwards that I was at least not malicious⁠—” + 

I laughed. “And this mysticism that they tell us about in England. Are you mystical, Rat? Have you a beautiful soul?” + 

He sniffed and blew his nose with his hand. + 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, barin⁠—I suppose you haven’t a rouble or two on you?” + 

“No, I haven’t,” I answered. He looked up and down the bridge as though he were wondering whether an attack on me was worth while. He saw a policeman and decided that it wasn’t. + 

“Well, good night, barin,” he said cheerfully. He shuffled off. I looked at the vast Neva, pale green and dim grey, so silent under the bridges. The policeman, enormous under his high coat, the sure and confident guardian of that silent world, came slowly towards me, and I turned away home. + 

VI + 

The next day, Sunday, I have always called in my mind Nina’s day, and so I propose to deal with it here, describing it as far as possible from her point of view and placing her in the centre of the picture. + 

The great fact about Nina, at the end, when everything has been said, must always be her youth. That Russian youthfulness is something that no Western people can ever know, because no Western people are accustomed, from their very babyhood, to bathe in an atmosphere that deals only with ideas. + 

In no Russian family is the attempt to prevent children from knowing what life really is maintained for long; the spontaneous impetuosity of the parents breaks it down. Nevertheless the Russian boy and girl, when they come to the awkward age, have not the least idea of what life really is. Dear me, no! They possess simply a bundle of incoherent ideas, untested, ill-digested, but a wonderful basis for incessant conversation. Experience comes, of course, and for the most part it is unhappy experience. + 

Life is a tragedy to every Russian simply because the daily round is forgotten by him in his pursuit of an ultimate meaning. We in the West have learnt to despise ultimate meanings as unpractical and rather priggish things. + 

Nina had thought so much and tested so little. She loved so vehemently that her betrayal was the more inevitable. For instance, she did not love Boris Grogoff in the least, but he was in some way connected with the idea of freedom. She was, I am afraid, beginning to love Lawrence desperately⁠—the first love of her life⁠—and he too was connected with the idea of freedom because he was English. We English do not understand sufficiently how the Russians love us for our easy victory over tyranny, and despise us for the small use we have made of our victory⁠—and then, after all, there is something to be said for tyranny too.⁠ ⁠… + 

But Nina did not see why she should not capture Lawrence. She felt her vitality, her health, her dominant will beat so strongly within her that it seemed to her that nothing could stop her. She loved him for his strength, his silence, his good-nature, yes, and his stupidity. This last gave her a sense of power over him, and of motherly tenderness too. She loved his stiff and halting Russian⁠—it was as though he were but ten years old. + 

I am convinced, too, that she did not consider that she was doing any wrong to Vera. In the first place she was not as yet really sure that Vera cared for him. Vera, who had been to her always a mother rather than a sister, seemed an infinite age. It was ridiculous that Vera should fall in love⁠—Vera so stately and stern and removed from passion. Those days were over for Vera, and, with her strong sense of duty and the fitness of things, she would realise that. Moreover Nina could not believe that Lawrence cared for Vera. Vera was not the figure to be loved in that way. Vera’s romance had been with Markovitch years and years ago, and now, whenever Nina looked at Markovitch, it made it at once impossible to imagine Vera in any new romantic situation. + 

Then had come the night of the birthday party, and suspicion had at once flamed up again. She was torn that night and for days afterwards with a raging jealousy. + 

She hated Vera, she hated Lawrence, she hated herself. Then again her mood had changed. It was, after all, natural that he should have gone to protect Vera; she was his hostess; he was English, and did not know how trivial a Russian scene of temper was. He had meant nothing, and poor Vera, touched that at her matronly age anyone should show her attention, had looked at him gratefully. + 

That was all. She loved Vera; she would not hurt her with such ridiculous suspicions, and, on that Friday evening when Semyonov had come to see me, she had been her old self again, behaving to Vera with all the tenderness and charm and affection that were her most delightful gifts. + 

On this Sunday morning she was reassured; she was gay and happy and pleased with the whole world. The excitement of the disturbances of the last two days provided an emotional background, not too thrilling to be painful, because, after all, these riots would, as usual, come to nothing, but it was pleasant to feel that the world was buzzing, and that without paying a penny one might see a real cinematograph show simply by walking down the Nevski. + 

I do not know, of course, what exactly happened that morning until Semyonov came in, but I can see the Markovitch family, like ten thousand other Petrograd families, assembling somewhere about eleven o’clock round the Samovar, all in various stages of undress, all sleepy and pale-faced, and a little befogged, as all good Russians are when, through the exigencies of sleep, they’ve been compelled to allow their ideas to escape from them for a considerable period. They discussed, of course, the disturbances, and I can imagine Markovitch portentously announcing that “It was all over, he had the best of reasons for knowing.⁠ ⁠…” + 

As he once explained to me, he was at his worst on Sunday, because he was then so inevitably reminded of his lost youth. + 

“It’s a gloomy day, Ivan Andreievitch, for all those who have not quite done what they expected. The bells ring, and you feel that they ought to mean something to you, but of course one’s gone past all that.⁠ ⁠… But it’s a pity.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Nina’s only thought that morning was that Lawrence was coming in the afternoon to take her for a walk. She had arranged it all. After a very evident hint from her he had suggested it. Vera had refused, because some aunts were coming to call, and finally it had been arranged that after the walk Lawrence should bring Nina home, stay to half-past six dinner, and that then they should all go to the French theatre. I also was asked to dinner and the theatre. Nina was sure that something must happen that afternoon. It would be a crisis.⁠ ⁠… She felt within her such vitality, such power, such domination, that she believed that today she could command anything.⁠ ⁠… She was, poor child, supremely confident, and that not through conceit or vanity, but simply because she was a fatalist and believed that destiny had brought Lawrence to her feet.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was the final proof of her youth that she saw the whole universe working to fulfil her desire. + 

The other proof of her youth was that she began, for the first time, to suffer desperately. The most casual mention of Lawrence’s name would make her heart beat furiously, suffocating her, her throat dry, her cheeks hot, her hands cold. Then, as the minute of his arrival approached, she would sit as though she were the centre of a leaping fire that gradually inch by inch was approaching nearer to her, the flames staring like little eyes on the watch, the heat advancing and receding in waves like hands. She hoped that no one would notice her agitation. She talked nonsense to whomsoever was near to her with little nervous laughs; she seemed to herself to be terribly unreal, with a fierce hostile creature inside her who took her heart in his hot hands and pressed it, laughing at her. + 

And then the misery! That little episode at the circus of which I had been a witness was only the first of many dreadful ventures. She confessed to me afterwards that she did not herself know what she was doing. And the final result of these adventures was to encourage her because he had not repelled her. He must have noticed, she thought, the times when her hand had touched his, when his mouth had been, so close to hers that their very thoughts had mingled, when she had felt the stuff of his coat, and even for an instant stroked it. He must have noticed these things, and still he had never rebuffed her. He was always so kind to her; she fancied that his voice had a special note of tenderness in it when he spoke to her, and when she looked at his ugly, quiet, solid face, she could not believe that they were not meant for one another. He must want her, her gaiety, happiness, youth⁠—it would be wrong for him not to! There could be no girls in that stupid, practical, faraway England who would be the wife to him that she would be. + 

Then the cursed misery of that waiting! They could hear in their sitting-room the steps coming up the stone stairs outside their flat, and every step seemed to be his. Ah, he had come earlier than he had fixed. Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfall; she knew it so well. There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause; soon there would be the tinkle of the bell!⁠ ⁠… + 

No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence⁠—only some stupid, ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her, and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a little, her eyes hot and suspicious. + 

I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again, never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic. Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world. + 

At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes were wild with excitement. Anyone who looked at her closely must have noticed her strangeness, but they were all discussing the events of the last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false and a few; true facts. + 

No one in reality knew anything except that there had been some demonstrations, a little shooting, and a number of excited speeches. The town on that lovely winter morning seemed absolutely quiet. + 

Somewhere about midday Semyonov came in, and without thinking about it Nina suddenly found herself sitting in the window talking to him. This conversation, which was in its results to have an important influence on her whole life, continued the development which that eventful Sunday was to effect in her. Its importance lay very largely in the fact that her uncle had never spoken to her seriously like a grown-up woman before. Semyonov was, of course, quite clever enough to realise the change which was transforming her, and he seized it, at once, for his own advantage. She, on her side, had always, ever since she could remember, been intrigued by him. She told me once that almost her earliest memory was being lifted into the air by her uncle and feeling the thick solid strength of his grasp, so that she was like a feather in the air, poised on one of his stubborn fingers; when he kissed her each hair of his beard seemed like a pale, taut wire, so stiff and resolute was it. Her Uncle Ivan was a flabby, effeminate creature in comparison. Then, as she had grown older, she had realised that he was a dangerous man, dangerous to women, who loved and feared and hated him. Vera said that he had great power over them and made them miserable, and that he was, therefore, a bad, wicked man. But this only served to make him, in Nina’s eyes, the more a romantic figure. + 

However, he had never treated her in the least seriously, had tossed her in the air spiritually just as he had done physically when she was a baby, had given her chocolates, taken her once or twice to the cinema, laughed at her, and, she felt, deeply despised her. Then came the war and he had gone to the Front, and she had almost forgotten him. Then came the romantic story of his being deeply in love with a nurse who had been killed, that he was heartbroken and inconsolable and a changed man. Was it wonderful that on his return to Petrograd she should feel again that old Byronic (every Russian is still brought up on Byron) romance? She did not like him, but⁠—well⁠—Vera was a staid old-fashioned thing.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps they all misjudged him; perhaps he really needed comfort and consolation. He certainly seemed kinder than he used to be. But, until today, he had never talked to her seriously. + 

How her heart leapt into her throat when he began, at once, in his quiet soft voice, + 

“Well, Nina dear, tell me all about it. I know, so you needn’t be frightened. I know and I understand.” + 

She flung a terrified glance around her, but Uncle Ivan was reading the paper at the other end of the room, her brother-in-law was cutting up little pieces of wood in his workshop, and Vera was in the kitchen. + 

“What do you mean?” she said in a whisper. “I don’t understand.” + 

“Yes, you do,” he answered, smiling at her. “You know, Nina, you’re in love with the Englishman, and have been for a long time. Well, why not? Don’t be so frightened about it. It is quite time that you should be in love with someone, and he’s a fine strong young man⁠—not over-blessed with brains, but you can supply that part of it. No, I think it’s a very good match. I like it. Believe me, I’m your friend, Nina.” He put his hand on hers. + 

He looked so kind, she told me afterwards, that she felt as though she had never known him before; her eyes were filled with tears, so overwhelming a relief was it to find someone at last who sympathised and understood and wanted her to succeed. I remember that she was wearing that day a thin black velvet necklet with a very small diamond in front of it. She had been given it by Uncle Ivan on her last birthday, and instead of making her look grown-up it gave her a ridiculously childish appearance as though she had stolen into Vera’s bedroom and dressed up in her things. Then, with her fair tousled hair and large blue eyes, open as a rule with a startled expression as though she had only just awakened into an astonishingly exciting world, she was altogether as unprotected and as guileless and as honest as any human being alive. I don’t know whether Semyonov felt her innocence and youth⁠—I expect he considered very little beside the plans that he had then in view⁠ ⁠… and innocence had never been very interesting to him. He spoke to her just as a kind, wise, thoughtful uncle ought to speak to a niece caught up into her first love-affair. From the moment of that half-hour’s conversation in the window Nina adored him, and believed every word that came from his mouth. + 

“You see, Nina dear,” he went on, “I’ve not spoken to you before because you neither liked me nor trusted me. Quite rightly you listened to what others said about me⁠—” + 

“Oh no,” interrupted Nina. “I never listen to anybody.” + 

“Well then,” said Semyonov, “we’ll say that you were very naturally influenced by them. And quite right⁠—perfectly right. You were only a girl then⁠—you are a woman now. I had nothing to say to you then⁠—now I can help you, give you a little advice perhaps⁠—” + 

I don’t know what Nina replied. She was breathlessly pleased and excited. + 

“What I want,” he went on, “is the happiness of you all. I was sorry when I came back to find that Nicholas and Vera weren’t such friends as they used to be. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong at all, but they must be brought closer together⁠—and that’s what you and I, who know them and love them, can do⁠—” + 

“Yes, yes,” said Nina eagerly. Semyonov then explained that the thing that really was, it seemed to him, keeping them apart were Nicholas’s inventions. Of course Vera had long ago seen that these inventions were never going to come to anything, that they were simply wasting Nicholas’s time when he might, by taking an honest clerkship or something of the kind, be maintaining the whole household, and the very thought of him sitting in his workshop irritated her. The thing to do, Semyonov explained, was to laugh Nicholas out of his inventions, to show him that it was selfish nonsense his pursuing them, to persuade him to make an honest living. + 

“But I thought,” said Nina, “you approved of them. I heard you only the other day telling him that it was a good idea, and that he must go on⁠—” + 

“Ah!” said Semyonov. “That was my weakness, I’m afraid. I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. But it was wrong of me⁠—and I knew it at the time.” + 

Now Nina had always rather admired her brother-in-law’s inventions. She had thought it very clever of him to think of such things, and she had wondered why other people did not applaud him more. + 

Now suddenly she saw that it was very selfish of him to go on with these things when they never brought in a penny, and Vera had to do all the drudgery. She was suddenly indignant with him. In how clear a light her uncle placed things! + 

“One thing to do,” said Semyonov, “is to laugh at him about them. Not very much, not unkindly, but enough to make him see the folly of it.” + 

“I think he does see that already, poor Nicholas,” said Nina with wisdom beyond her years. + 

“To bring Nicholas and Vera together,” said Semyonov, “that’s what we have to do, you and I. And believe me, dear Nina, I on my side will do all I can to help you. We are friends, aren’t we?⁠—not only uncle and niece.” + 

“Yes,” said Nina breathlessly. That was all that there was to the conversation, but it was quite enough to make Nina feel as though she had already won her heart’s desire. If anyone as clever as her uncle believed in this, then it must be true. It had not been only her own silly imagination⁠—Lawrence cared for her. Her uncle had seen it, otherwise he would never have encouraged her⁠—Lawrence cared for her.⁠ ⁠… + 

Suddenly, in the happy spontaneity of the moment she did what she very seldom did, bent forward and kissed him. + 

She told me afterwards that that kiss seemed to displease him. + 

He got up and walked away. + 

VII + 

I do not know exactly what occurred during that afternoon. Neither Lawrence nor Nina spoke about it to me. I only know that Nina returned subdued and restrained. I can imagine them going out into that quiet town and walking along the deserted quay; the quiet that afternoon was, I remember, marvellous. The whole world was holding its breath. Great events were occurring, but we were removed from them all. The ice quivered under the sun and the snow-clouds rose higher and higher into the blue, and once and again a bell chimed and jangled.⁠ ⁠… There was an amazing peace. Through this peaceful world Nina and Lawrence walked. His mind must, I know, have been very far away from Nina, probably he saw nothing of her little attempts at friendship; her gasping sentences that seemed to her so daring and significant he scarcely heard. His only concern was to endure the walk as politely as possible and return to Vera. + 

Perhaps if she had not had that conversation with her uncle she would have realised more clearly how slight a response was made to her, but she thought only that this was his English shyness and gaucherie⁠—she must go slowly and carefully. He was not like a Russian. She must not frighten him. Ah, how she loved him as she walked beside him, seeing and not seeing the lovely frozen colours of the winter day, the quickly flooding saffron sky! The first bright star, the great pearl-grey cloud of the Neva as it was swept into the dark. In the dark she put, I am sure, her hand on his arm, and felt his strength and took her small hurried steps beside his long ones. He did not, I expect, feel her hand on his sleeve at all. It was Vera whom he saw through the dusk. Vera watching the door for his return, knowing that his eyes would rush to hers, that every beat of his heart was for her.⁠ ⁠… + 

I found them all seated at dinner when I entered. I brought them the news of the shooting up at the Nicholas Station. + 

“Perhaps, we had better not go to the theatre,” I said. “A number of people were killed this afternoon, and all the trams are stopped.” + 

Still it was all remote from us. They laughed at the idea of not going to the theatre. The tickets had been bought two weeks ago, and the walk would be pleasant. Of course we would go. It would be fun, too, to see whether anything were happening. + 

With how strange a clarity I remember the events of that evening. It is detached and hangs by itself among the other events of that amazing time, as though it had been framed and separated for some especial purpose. My impression of the colour of it now is of a scene intensely quiet. + 

I saw at once on my arrival that Vera was not yet prepared to receive me back into her friendship. And I saw, too, that she included Lawrence in this ostracism. She sat there, stiff and cold, smiling and talking simply because she was compelled, for politeness sake, to do so. She would scarcely speak to me at all, and when I saw this I turned and devoted myself to Uncle Ivan, who was always delighted to make me a testing-ground for his English. + 

But poor Jerry! Had I not been so anxious lest a scene should burst upon us all I could have laughed at the humour of it. Vera’s attitude was a complete surprise to him. He had not seen her during the preceding week, and that absence from her had heightened his desire until it burnt his very throat with its flame. One glance from her, when he came in, would have contented him. He could have rested then, happily, quietly; but instead of that glance she had avoided his eye, her hand was cold and touched his only for an instant. She had not spoken to him again after the first greeting. I am sure that he had never known a time when his feelings threatened to be too much for him. His hold on himself and his emotions had been complete. “These fellers,” he once said to me about some Russians, “are always letting their feelings overwhelm them⁠—like women. And they like it. Funny thing!” Well, funny or no, he realised it now; his true education, like Nina’s, like Vera’s, like Bohun’s, like Markovitch’s, perhaps like my own, was only now beginning. Funny and pathetic, too, to watch his broad, red, genial face struggling to express a polite interest in the conversation, to show nothing but friendliness and courtesy. His eyes were as restless as minnows; they darted for an instant towards Vera, then darted off again, then flashed back. His hand moved for a plate, and I saw that it was shaking. Poor Jerry! He had learnt what suffering was during those last weeks. But the most silent of us all that evening was Markovitch. He sat huddled over his food and never said a word. If he looked up at all he glowered, and so soon as he had finished eating he returned to his workshop, closing the door behind him. I caught Semyonov looking at him with a pleasant, speculative smile.⁠ ⁠… + 

At last Vera, Nina, Lawrence, and I started for the theatre. I can’t say that I was expecting a very pleasant evening, but the deathlike stillness, both of ourselves and the town did, I confess, startle me. Scarcely a word was exchanged by us between the English Prospect and Saint Isaac’s Square. The square looked lovely in the bright moonlight, and I said something about it. It was indeed very fine, the cathedral like a hovering purple cloud, the old sentry in his high peaked hat, the black statue, and the blue shadows over the snow. It was then that Lawrence, with an air of determined strength, detached Vera from us and walked ahead with her. I saw that he was talking eagerly to her. + 

Nina said, with a little shudder, “Isn’t it quiet, Durdles? As though there were ghosts round every corner.” + 

“Hope you enjoyed your walk this afternoon,” I said. + 

“No, it was quiet then. But not like it is now. Let’s walk faster and catch the others up. Do you believe in ghosts, Durdles?” + 

“Yes, I think I do.” + 

“So do I. Was it true, do you think, about the people being shot at the Nicholas Station today?” + 

“I daresay.” + 

“Perhaps all the dead people are crowding round here now. Why isn’t anyone out walking?” + 

“I suppose they are all frightened by what they’ve heard, and think it better to stay at home.” + 

We were walking down the Morskaia, and our feet gave out a ringing echo. + 

“Let’s keep up with them,” Nina said. When we had joined the others I found that they were both silent⁠—Lawrence very red, Vera pale. We were all feeling rather weary. A woman met us. “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski,” she said; “the Cossacks are stopping everybody.” I can see her now, a stout, red-faced woman, a shawl over her head, and carrying a basket. Another woman, a prostitute I should think, came up and joined us. + 

“What is it?” she asked us. + 

The stout woman repeated in a trembling, agitated voice, “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski. The Cossacks are stopping everybody.” + 

The prostitute shook her head in her alarm, and little flakes of powder detached themselves from her nose. “Bozhe moi⁠—bozhe moi!” she said, “and I promised not to be late.” + 

Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation. “We’ll go and see,” she said, “what is really the truth.” + 

We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight. + 

There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked. Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye could see between its high black banks of silent houses. + 

At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon, so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski deserted. How happy it must have been that night!⁠ ⁠… + 

For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a strange superstition, as though something said to me, “You cross that and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and you will avoid danger.” Nina must have had something of the same feeling, because she said: + 

“Let’s go home. They won’t let us cross. I don’t want to cross. Let’s go home.” + 

But Vera said firmly, “Nonsense! We’ve gone so far. We’ve got the tickets. I’m going on.” + 

I felt the note in her voice, superstitiously, as a kind of desperate challenge, as though she had said: + 

“Well, you see nothing worse can happen to me than has happened.” + 

Lawrence said roughly, “Of course, we’re going on.” + 

The prostitute began, in a trembling voice, as though we must all of necessity understand her case: + 

“I don’t want to be late this time, because I’ve been late so often before.⁠ ⁠… It always is that way with me⁠ ⁠… always unfortunate.⁠ ⁠…” + 

We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force. + 

“That’s it,” said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself. “So it always is with us. All revolutions in Russia end this way⁠—” + 

An unmounted Cossack came forward to us. + 

“No hanging about there,” he said. “Cross quickly. No one is to delay.” + 

We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge. I thought of the Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people that they would not fire⁠—well, that impulse had passed. Protopopoff and his men had triumphed. + 

We were all now in the shallows on the other bank of the canal. The prostitute, who was still at our side, hesitated for a moment, as though she were going to speak. I think she wanted to ask whether she might walk with us a little way. Suddenly she vanished without sound, into the black shadows. + 

“Come along,” said Vera. “We shall be dreadfully late.” She seemed to be mastered by an overpowering desire not to be left alone with Lawrence. She hurried forward with Nina, and Lawrence and I came more slowly behind. We were now in a labyrinth of little streets and black overhanging flats. Not a soul anywhere⁠—only the moonlight in great broad flashes of light⁠—once or twice a woman hurried by keeping in the shadow. Sometimes, at the far end of the street, we saw the shining, naked Nevski. + 

Lawrence was silent, then, just as we were turning into the square where the Michailovsky Theatre was he began: + 

“What’s the matter?⁠ ⁠… What’s the matter with her, Durward? What have I done?” + 

“I don’t know that you’ve done anything,” I answered. + 

“But don’t you see?” he went on. “She won’t speak to me. She won’t look at me. I won’t stand this long. I tell you I won’t stand it long. I’ll make her come off with me in spite of them all. I’ll have her to myself. I’ll make her happy, Durward, as she’s never been in all her life. But I must have her.⁠ ⁠… I can’t live close to her like this, and yet never be with her. Never alone, never alone. Why is she behaving like this to me?” + 

He spoke really like a man in agony. The words coming from him in little tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately, with pain at every breath that he drew. + 

“She’s afraid of herself, I expect, not of you.” I put my hand on his sleeve. “Lawrence,” I said, “go home. Go back to England. This is becoming too much for both of you. Nothing can come of it, but unhappiness for everybody.” + 

“No!” he said. “It’s too late for any of your Platonic advice, Durward. I’m going to have her, even though the earth turns upside down.” + 

We went up the steps and into the theatre. There was, of course, scarcely anyone there. The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the stalls looked extraordinarily desolate, every seat watching one with a kind of insolent wink as though, like the Nevski ten minutes before it said, “Well, now you humans are getting frightened, you’re all stopping away. We’re coming back to our own!” + 

There was some such malicious air about the whole theatre. Above, in the circle, the little empty boxes were dim and shadowy, and one fancied figures moved there, and then saw that there was no one. Someone up in the gallery laughed, and the laugh went echoing up and down the empty spaces. A few people came in and sat nervously about, and no one spoke except in a low whisper, because voices sounded so loud and impertinent. + 

Then again the man in the gallery laughed, and everyone looked up frowning. The play began. It was, I think, Les Idées de Françoise, but of that I cannot be sure. It was a farce of the regular French type, with a bedroom off, and marionettes who continually separated into couples and giggled together. The giggling tonight was of a sadly hollow sort. I pitied and admired the actors, spontaneous as a rule, but now bravely stuffing any kind of sawdust into the figures in their hands, but the leakage was terrible, and the sawdust lay scattered all about the stage. The four of us sat as solemn as statues⁠—I don’t think one of us smiled. It was during the second act that I suddenly laughed. I don’t know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and Nina thinking of nothing but Lawrence, and the audience thinking of their safety, and the players thinking of their salaries, and Protopopoff at home thinking of his victory, and the Czar in Tsarskoe thinking of his God-sent autocracy, and Europe thinking of its ideals, and Germany thinking of its militarism⁠—all self-justified, all mistaken, and all fulfilling some deeper plan at whose purpose they could not begin to guess. And how intermingled we all were! Vera and Nina, M. Robert and Mdlle. Flori on the other side of the footlights, Trenchard and Marie killed in Galicia, the Kaiser and Hindenburg, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the postmaster of my village in Glebeshire. + 

The curtain is coming down, the fat husband is deceived once again, the lovers are in the bedroom listening behind the door, the comic waiter is winking at the chambermaid.⁠ ⁠… + 

The lights are up and we are alone again in the deserted theatre. + 

Towards the end of the last interval I went out into the passage behind the stalls to escape from the chastened whispering that went trembling up and down like the hissing of terrified snakes. I leaned against the wall in the deserted passage and watched the melancholy figure of the cloakroom attendant huddled up on a chair, his head between his hands. + 

Suddenly I saw Vera. She came up to me as though she were going to walk past me, and then she stopped and spoke. She talked fast, not looking at me, but beyond, down the passage. + 

“I’m sorry, Ivan Andreievitch,” she said. “I was cross the other day. I hurt you. I oughtn’t to have done that.” + 

“You know,” I said, “that I never thought of it for a minute.” + 

“No, I was wrong. But I’ve been terribly worried during these last weeks. I’ve thought it all out today and I’ve decided⁠—” there was a catch in her breath and she paused; she went on⁠—“decided that there mustn’t be any more weakness. I’m much weaker than I thought. I would be ashamed if I didn’t think that shame was a silly thing to have. But now I am quite clear; I must make Nicholas and Nina happy. Whatever else comes I must do that. It has been terrible, these last weeks. We’ve all been angry and miserable, and now I must put it right. I can if I try. I’ve been forgetting that I chose my own life myself, and now I mustn’t be cowardly because it’s difficult. I will make it right myself.⁠ ⁠…” + 

She paused again, then she said, looking me straight in the face, + 

“Ivan Andreievitch, does Nina care for Mr. Lawrence?” + 

She was looking at me, with large black eyes so simply, with such trust in me, that I could only tell her the truth. + 

“Yes,” I said, “she does.” + 

Her eyes fell, then she looked up at me again. + 

“I thought so,” she said. “And does he care for her?” + 

“No,” I said, “he does not.” + 

“He must,” she said. “It would be a very happy thing for them to marry.” + 

She spoke very low, so that I could scarcely hear her words. + 

“Wait, Vera,” I said. “Let it alone. Nina’s very young. The mood will pass. Lawrence, perhaps, will go back to England.” + 

She drew in her breath and I saw her hand tremble, but she still looked at me, only now her eyes were not so clear. Then she laughed. “I’m getting an old woman, Ivan Andreievitch. It’s ridiculous.⁠ ⁠…” She broke off. Then held out her hand. + 

“But we’ll always be friends now, won’t we? I’ll never be cross with you again.” + 

I took her hand. “I’m getting old too,” I said. “And I’m useless at everything. I only make a bungle of everything I try. But I’ll be your true friend to the end of my time⁠—” + 

The bell rang and we went back into the theatre. + 

VIII + 

And yet, strangely enough, when I lay awake that night in my room on my deserted island, it was of Markovitch that I was thinking. Of all the memories of the preceding evening that of Markovitch huddled over his food, sullen and glowering, with Semyonov watching him, was predominant. + 

Markovitch was, so to speak, the dark horse of them all, and he was also when one came to look at it all the way round the centre of the story. And yet it was Markovitch with his inconsistencies, his mysteries, his impulses, and purposes, whom I understood least of them all. He makes, indeed, a very good symbol of my present difficulties. + 

In that earlier experience of Marie in the forests of Galicia the matter had been comparatively easy. I had then been concerned with the outward manifestation of war⁠—cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering trees of the forest itself. But the war had made progress since then. It had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men. It was no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, “with the dark forest of the hearts of men.” + 

How much more baffling and intangible this new forest, and how deeply serious a business now for those who were still thoughtlessly and selfishly juggling with human affairs. + 

“There is no ammunition,” I remember crying desperately in Galicia. We had moved further than the question of ammunition now. + 

I had a strange dream that night. I saw my old forest of two years before⁠—the very woods of Buchatch with the hot painted leaves, the purple slanting sunlight, the smell, the cries, the whirr of the shell. But in my dream the only inhabitant of that forest was Markovitch. He was pursued by some animal. What beast it was I could not see, always the actual vision was denied to me, but I could hear it plunging through the thickets, and once I caught a glimpse of a dark crouching body like a shadow against the light. + 

But Markovitch I saw all the time, sweating with heat and terror, his clothes torn, his eyes inflamed, his breath coming in desperate pants, turning once and again as though he would stop and offer defiance, then hasting on, his face and hands scratched and bleeding. I wanted to offer him help and assistance, but something prevented me; I could not get to him. Finally he vanished from my sight and I was left alone in the painted forest.⁠ ⁠… + 

All the next morning I sat and wondered what I had better do, and at last I decided that I would go and see Henry Bohun. + 

I had not seen Bohun for several weeks. I myself had been, of late, less to the flat in the English Prospect, but I knew that he had taken my advice that he should be kind to Nicholas Markovitch with due British seriousness, and that he had been trying to bring some kind of relationship about. He had even asked Markovitch to dine alone with him, and Markovitch, although he declined the invitation was, I believe, greatly touched. + 

So, about half-past one, I started off for Bohun’s office on the Fontanka. I’ve said somewhere before, I think, that Bohun’s work was in connection with the noble but uphill task of enlightening the Russian public as to the righteousness of the war, the British character, and the Anglo-Russian alliance. I say “uphill,” because only a few of the real population of Russia showed the slightest desire to know anything whatever about any country outside their own. Their interest is in ideas, not in boundaries⁠—and what I mean by “real” will be made patent by the events of this very day. However, Bohun did his best, and it was not his fault that the British Government could only spare enough men and money to cover about one inch of the whole of Russia⁠—and, I hasten to add, that if that same British Government had plastered the whole vast country from Archangel to Vladivostock with pamphlets, orators, and photographs it would not have altered, in the slightest degree, after events. + 

To make any effect in Russia England needed not only men and money but a hundred years’ experience of the country. That same experience was possessed by the Germans alone of all the Western peoples⁠—and they have not neglected to use it. + 

I went by tram to the Fontanka, and the streets seemed absolutely quiet. That strange shining Nevski of the night before was a dream. Someone in the tram said something about rifle-shots in the Summer Garden, but no one listened. As Vera had said last night we had, none of us, much faith in Russian revolutions. + 

I went up in the lift to the Propaganda office and found it a very nice airy place, clean and smart, with coloured advertisements by Shepperson and others on the walls, pictures of Hampstead and St. Albans and Kew Gardens that looked strangely satisfactory and homely to me, and rather touching and innocent. There were several young women clicking away at typewriters, and maps of the Western front, and a colossal toy map of the London Tube, and a nice English library with all the best books from Chaucer to D. H. Lawrence and from the Religio Medici to E. V. Lucas’ London. + 

Everything seemed clean and simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there. I think “guileless” was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place⁠—a large, red-faced, smiling man with glasses⁠—seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked recesses of Russian pessimism. + 

I went into Bohun’s room and found him very hard at work in a serious, emphatic way which only made me feel that he was playing at it. He had a little bookcase over his table, and I noticed the Georgian Book of Verse, Conrad’s Nostromo, and a translation of Ropshin’s Pale Horse. + 

“Altogether too pretty and literary,” I said to him; “you ought to be getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer⁠—not admiring the Intelligentzia.” + 

“I daresay you’re right,” he said, blushing. “But whatever we do we’re wrong. We have fellows in here cursing us all day. If we’re simple we’re told we’re not clever enough; if we’re clever we’re told we’re too complicated. If we’re militant we’re told we ought to be tenderhearted, and if we’re tenderhearted we’re told we’re sentimental⁠—and at the end of it all the Russians don’t care a damn.” + 

“Well, I daresay you’re doing some good somewhere,” I said indulgently. + 

“Come and look at my view,” he said, “and see whether it isn’t splendid.” + 

He spoke no more than the truth. We looked across the Canal over the roofs of the city⁠—domes and towers and turrets, grey and white and blue, with the dark red walls of many of the older houses stretched like an Arabian carpet beneath white bubbles of clouds that here and there marked the blue sky. It was a scene of intense peace, the smoke rising from the chimneys, isvostchicks stumbling along on the farther banks of the Canal, and the people sauntering in their usual lazy fashion up and down the Nevski. Immediately below our window was a skating-rink that stretched straight across the Canal. There were some figures, like little dolls, skating up and down, and they looked rather desolate beside the deserted bandstands and the empty seats. On the road outside our door a cart loaded with wood slowly moved along, the high hoop over the horse’s back gleaming with red and blue. + 

“Yes, it is a view!” I said. “Splendid!⁠—and all as quiet as though there’d been no disturbances at all. Have you heard any news?” + 

“No,” said Bohun. “To tell the truth I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to ring up the Embassy. And we’ve had no one in this morning. Monday morning, you know,” he added; “always very few people on Monday morning”⁠—as though he didn’t wish me to think that the office was always deserted. + 

I watched the little doll-like men circling placidly round and round the rink. One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun. Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig. “What’s that?” I said, stepping forward on to the balcony. “It sounded like a shot.” + 

“I didn’t hear anything,” said Bohun. “You get funny echoes up here sometimes.” We stepped back into Bohun’s room and, if I had had any anxieties, they would at once, I think, have been reassured by the unemotional figure of Bohun’s typist, a gay young woman with peroxide hair, who was typing away as though for her very life. + 

“Look here, Bohun, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” I asked. + 

The peroxide lady left us. + 

“It’s just about Markovitch I wanted to ask you,” I went on. “I’m infernally worried, and I want your help. It may seem ridiculous of me to interfere in another family like this, with people with whom I have, after all, nothing to do. But there are two reasons why it isn’t ridiculous. One is the deep affection I have for Nina and Vera. I promised them my friendship, and now I’ve got to back that promise. And the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence into the family. They never would have known him if it hadn’t been for us. There’s danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as you know, is helping it on wherever he can. Well, now, what I want to know is, how much have you seen of Markovitch lately, and has he talked to you?” + 

Bohun considered. “I’ve seen very little of him,” he said at last. “I think he avoids me now. He’s such a weird bird that it’s impossible to tell of what he’s really thinking. I know he was pleased when I asked him to dine with me at the Bear the other night. He looked most awfully pleased. But he wouldn’t come. It was as though he suspected that I was laying a trap for him.” + 

“But what have you noticed about him otherwise?” + 

“Well, I’ve seen very little of him. He’s sulky just now. He suspected Lawrence, of course⁠—always after that night of Nina’s party. But I think that he’s reassured again. And of course it’s all so ridiculous, because there’s nothing to suspect, absolutely nothing⁠—is there?” + 

“Absolutely nothing,” I answered firmly. + 

He sighed with relief. “Oh, you don’t know how glad I am to hear that,” he said. “Because, although I’ve known that it was all right, Vera’s been so odd lately that I’ve wondered⁠—you know how I care about Vera and⁠—” + 

“How do you mean⁠—odd?” I sharply interrupted. + 

“Well⁠—for instance⁠—of course I’ve told nobody⁠—and you won’t tell anyone either⁠—but the other night I found her crying in the flat, sitting up near the table, sobbing her heart out. She thought everyone was out⁠—I’d been in my room and she hadn’t known. But Vera, Durward⁠—Vera of all people! I didn’t let her see me⁠—she doesn’t know now that I heard her. But when you care for anyone as I care for Vera, it’s awful to think that she can suffer like that and one can do nothing. Oh, Durward, I wish to God I wasn’t so helpless! You know before I came out to Russia I felt so old; I thought there was nothing I couldn’t do, that I was good enough for anybody. And now I’m the most awful ass. Fancy, Durward! Those poems of mine⁠—I thought they were wonderful. I thought⁠—” + 

He was interrupted by a sudden sharp crackle like a fire bursting into a blaze quite close at hand. We both sprang to the windows, threw them open (they were not sealed, for some unknown reason), and rushed out on to the balcony. The scene in front of us was just what it had been before⁠—the bubble clouds were still sailing lazily before the blue, the skaters were still hovering on the ice, the cart of wood that I had noticed was vanishing slowly into the distance. But from the Liteiny⁠—just over the bridge⁠—came a confused jumble of shouts, cries, and then the sharp, unmistakable rattle of a machine-gun. It was funny to see the casual life in front of one suddenly pause at that sound. The doll-like skaters seemed to spin for a moment and then freeze; one figure began to run across the ice. A small boy came racing down our street shouting. Several men ran out from doorways and stood looking up into the sky, as though they thought the noise had come from there. The sun was just setting; the bubble clouds were pink, and windows flashed fire. The rattle of the machine-gun suddenly stopped, and there was a moment’s silence when the only sound in the whole world was the clatter of the wood-cart turning the corner. I could see to the right of me the crowds in the Nevski, that had looked like the continual unwinding of a ragged skein of black silk, break their regular movement and split up like flies falling away from an opening door. + 

We were all on the balcony by now⁠—the stout Burrows, Peroxide, and another lady typist, Watson, the thin and most admirable secretary (he held the place together by his diligence and order), two Russian clerks, Henry, and I. + 

We all leaned over the railings and looked down into the street beneath us. To our left the Fontanka Bridge was quite deserted⁠—then, suddenly, an extraordinary procession poured across it. At that same moment (at any rate it seems so now to me on looking back) the sun disappeared, leaving a world of pale grey mist shot with gold and purple. The stars were, many of them, already out, piercing with their sharp cold brilliance the winter sky. + 

We could not at first see of what exactly the crowd now pouring over the bridge was composed. Then, as it turned and came down our street, it revealed itself as something so theatrical and melodramatic as to be incredible. Incredible, I say, because the rest of the world was not theatrical with it. That was always to be the amazing feature of the new scene into which, without knowing it, I was at that moment stepping. In Galicia the stage had been set⁠—ruined villages, plague-stricken peasants, shell-holes, trenches, roads cut to pieces, huge trees levelled to the ground, historic châteaux pillaged and robbed. But here the world was still the good old jog-trot world that one had always known; the shops and hotels and theatres remained as they had always been. There would remain, I believe, forever those dull Jaeger undergarments in the windows of the bazaar, and the bound edition of Chekhov in the bookshop just above the Moika, and the turtle and the goldfish in the aquarium near Elisseieff; and whilst those things were there I could not believe in melodrama. + 

And we did not believe. We dug our feet into the snow, and leaned over the balcony railings absorbed with amused interest. The procession consisted of a number of motor lorries, and on these lorries soldiers were heaped. I can use no other word because, indeed, they seemed to be all piled upon one another, some kneeling forward, some standing, some sitting, and all with their rifles pointing outwards until the lorries looked like hedgehogs. Many of the rifles had pieces of red cloth attached to them, and one lorry displayed proudly a huge red flag that waved high in air with a sort of flaunting arrogance of its own. On either side of the lorries, filling the street, was the strangest mob of men, women, and children. There seemed to be little sign of order or discipline amongst them as they were all shouting different cries: “Down the Fontanka!” “No, the Duma!” “To the Nevski!” “No, no, Tovaristchi, to the Nicholas Station!” + 

Such a rabble was it that I remember that my first thought was of pitying indulgence. So this was the grand outcome of Boris Grogoff’s eloquence, and the Rat’s plots for plunder!⁠—a fitting climax to such vain dreams. I saw the Cossack, that ebony figure of Sunday night. Ten such men, and this rabble was dispersed forever! I felt inclined to lean over and whisper to them, “Quick! quick! Go home!⁠ ⁠… They’ll be here in a moment and catch you!” + 

And yet, after all, there seemed to be some show of discipline. I noticed that, as the crowd moved forward, men dropped out and remained picketing the doorways of the street. Women seemed to be playing a large part in the affair, peasants with shawls over their heads, many of them leading by the hand small children. + 

Burrows treated it all as a huge joke. “By Jove,” he cried, speaking across to me, “Durward, it’s like that play Martin Harvey used to do⁠—what was it?⁠—about the French Revolution, you know.” + 

“ ‘The Only Way,’ ” said Peroxide, in a prim strangled voice. + 

“That’s it⁠—‘The Only Way’⁠—with their red flags and all. Don’t they look ruffians, some of them?” + 

There was a great discussion going on under our windows. All the lorries had drawn up together, and the screaming, chattering, and shouting was like the noise of a parrots’ aviary. The cold blue light had climbed now into the sky, which was thick with stars; the snow on the myriad roofs stretched like a filmy cloud as far as the eye could see. The moving, shouting crowd grew with every moment mistier. + 

“Oh, dear! Mr. Burrows,” said the little typist, who was not Peroxide. “Do you think I shall ever be able to get home? We’re on the other side of the river, you know. Do you think the bridges will be up? My mother will be so terribly anxious.” + 

“Oh, you’ll get home all right,” answered Burrows cheerfully. “Just wait until this crowd has gone by. I don’t expect there’s any fuss down by the river⁠ ⁠…” + 

His words were cut short by some order from one of the fellows below. Others shouted in response, and the lorries again began to move forward. + 

“I believe he was shouting to us,” said Bohun. “It sounded like ‘Get off’ or ‘Get away.’ ” + 

“Not he!” said Burrows; “they’re too busy with their own affairs.” + 

Then things happened quickly. There was a sudden strange silence below; I saw a quick flame from some fire that had apparently been lit on the Fontanka Bridge; I heard the same voice call out once more sharply, and a second later I felt rather than heard a whizz like the swift flight of a bee past my ear; I was conscious that a bullet had struck the brick behind me. That bullet swung me into the Revolution.⁠ ⁠… + 

IX + 

… We were all gathered together in the office. I heard one of the Russians say in an agitated whisper, “Don’t turn on the light!⁠ ⁠… Don’t turn on the light! They can see!” + 

We were all in half-darkness, our faces mistily white. I could hear Peroxide breathing in a tremulous manner, as though in a moment she would break into hysteria. + 

“We’ll go into the inside room. We can turn the light on there,” said Burrows. We all passed into the reception-room of the office, a nice airy place with the library along one wall and bright coloured maps on the other. We stood together and considered the matter. + 

“It’s real!” said Burrows, his red, cheery face perplexed and strained. “Who’d have thought it?” + 

“Of course it’s real!” cried Bohun impatiently (Burrows’ optimism had been often difficult to bear with indulgence). + 

“Now you see! What about your beautiful Russian mystic now?” + 

“Oh dear!” cried the little Russian typist. “And my mother!⁠ ⁠… What ever shall I do? She’ll hear reports and think that I’m being murdered. I shall never get across.” + 

“You’d better stay with me tonight, Miss Peredonov,” said Peroxide firmly. “My flat’s quite close here in Gagarinsky. We shall be delighted to have you.” + 

“You can telephone to your mother, Miss Peredonov,” said Burrows. “No difficulty at all.” + 

It was then that Bohun took me aside. + 

“Look here!” he said. “I’m worried. Vera and Nina were going to the Astoria to have tea with Semyonov this afternoon. I should think the Astoria might be rather a hot spot if this spreads. And I wouldn’t trust Semyonov. Will you come down with me there now?” + 

“Yes,” I said, “of course I’ll come.” + 

We said a word to Burrows, put on our shubas and goloshes, and started down the stairs. At every door there were anxious faces. Out of one flat came a very fat Jew. + 

“Gentlemen, what is this all about?” + 

“Riots,” said Bohun. + 

“Is there shooting?” + 

“Yes,” said Bohun. + 

“Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi! And I live over on Vassily Ostrov! What do you advise, Gaspoda? Will the bridges be up?” + 

“Very likely,” I answered. “I should stay here.” + 

“And they are shooting?” he asked again. + 

“They are,” I answered. + 

“Gentlemen, gentlemen⁠—stay for a moment. Perhaps together we could think.⁠ ⁠… I am all alone here except for a lady⁠ ⁠… most unfortunate.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But we could not stay. + 

The world into which we stepped was wonderful. The background of snow under the star-blazing sky made it even more fantastic than it naturally was. We slipped into the crowd and, becoming part of it, were at once, as one so often is, sympathetic with it. It seemed such a childish, helpless, and good-natured throng. No one seemed to know anything of arms or directions. There were, as I have already said, many women and little children, and some of the civilians who had rifles looked quite helpless. I saw one boy holding his gun upside down. No one paid any attention to us. There was as yet no class note in the demonstration, and the only hostile cries I heard were against Protopopoff and the police. We moved back into the street behind the Fontanka, and here I saw a wonderful sight. Someone had lighted a large bonfire in the middle of the street and the flames tossed higher and higher into the air, bringing down the stars in flights of gold, flinging up the snow until it seemed to radiate in lines and circles of white light high over the very roofs of the houses. In front of the fire a soldier, mounted on a horse, addressed a small crowd of women and boys. On the end of his rifle was a ragged red cloth. + 

I could not see his face. I saw his arms wave, and the fire behind him exaggerated his figure and then dropped it into a straggling silhouette against the snow. The street seemed deserted except for this group, although now I could hear distant shouting on every side of me, and the monotonous clap-clap-clap-clap of a machine-gun. + 

I heard him say, “Tovaristchi! now is your time! Don’t hesitate in the sacred cause of freedom! As our brethren did in the famous days of the French Revolution, so must we do now. All the Army is coming over to our side. The Preobrojenski have come over to us and have arrested their officers and taken their arms. We must finish with Protopopoff and our other tyrants, and see that we have a just rule. Tovaristchi! there will never be such a chance again, and you will repent forever if you have not played your part in the great fight for freedom!” + 

So it went on. It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed. It was bewildered and dazed. But the fire leapt up behind him giving him a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal like a gaudy painting on a coloured screen. + 

We hurried through into the Nevski, and this we found nearly deserted. The trams of course had stopped, a few figures hurried along, and once an isvostchick went racing down towards the river. + 

“Well, now, we seem to be out of it,” said Bohun, with a sigh of relief. “I must say I’m not sorry. I don’t mind France, where you can tell which is the front and which the back, but this kind of thing does get on one’s nerves. I daresay it’s only local. We shall find them all as easy as anything at the Astoria, and wondering what we’re making a fuss about.” + 

At that moment we were joined by an English merchant whom we both knew, a stout elderly man who had lived all his life in Russia. I was surprised to find him in a state of extreme terror. I had always known him as a calm, conceited, stupid fellow, with a great liking for Russian ladies. This pastime he was able as a bachelor to enjoy to the full. Now, however, instead of the ruddy, coarse, self-confident merchant there was a pallid, trembling jellyfish. + 

“I say, you fellows,” he asked, catching my arm. “Where are you off to?” + 

“We’re off to the Astoria,” I answered. + 

“Let me come with you. I’m not frightened, not at all⁠—all the same I don’t want to be left alone. I was in the 1905 affair. That was enough for me. Where are they firing⁠—do you know?” + 

“All over the place,” said Bohun, enjoying himself. “They’ll be down here in a minute.” + 

“Good God! Do you really think so? It’s terrible⁠—these fellows⁠—once they get loose they stick at nothing.⁠ ⁠… I remember in 1905.⁠ ⁠… Good heavens! Where had we better go? It’s very exposed here, isn’t it?” + 

“It’s very exposed everywhere,” said Bohun. “I doubt whether any of us are alive in the morning.” + 

“Good heavens! You don’t say so! Why should they interfere with us?” + 

“Oh, rich, you know, and that kind of thing. And then we’re Englishmen. They’ll clear out all the English.” + 

“Oh, I’m not really English. My mother was Russian. I could show them my papers.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Bohun laughed. “I’m only kidding you, Watchett,” he said. “We’re safe enough. Look, there’s not a soul about!” We were at the corner of the Moika now; all was absolutely quiet. Two women and a man were standing on the bridge talking together. A few stars clustered above the bend of the Canal seemed to shift and waver ever so slightly through a gathering mist, like the smoke of blowing candles. + 

“It seems all right,” said the merchant, sniffing the air suspiciously as though he expected to smell blood. We turned towards the Morskaia. One of the women detached herself from the group and came to us. + 

“Don’t go down the Morskaia,” she said, whispering, as though some hostile figure were leaning over her shoulder. “They’re firing round the Telephone Exchange.” Even as she spoke I heard the sharp clatter of the machine-gun break out again, but now very close, and with an intimate note as though it were the same gun that I had heard before, which had been tracking me down round the town. + 

“Do you hear that?” said the merchant. + 

“Come on,” said Bohun. “We’ll go down the Moika. That seems safe enough!” + 

How strangely in the flick of a bullet the town had changed! Yesterday every street had been friendly, obvious, and open; they were now no longer streets, but secret blind avenues with strange trees, fantastic doors, shuttered windows, a grinning moon, malicious stars, and snow that lay there simply to prevent every sound. It was a town truly beleaguered as towns are in dreams. The uncanny awe with which I moved across the bridge was increased when the man with the women turned towards me, and I saw that he was⁠—or seemed to be⁠—that same grave bearded peasant whom I had seen by the river, whom Henry had seen in the Cathedral, who remained with one, as passing strangers sometimes do, like a symbol or a message or a threat. + 

He stood, with the Nevski behind him, calm and grave, and even it seemed a little amused, watching me as I crossed. I said to Bohun, “Did you ever see that fellow before?” + 

Bohun turned and looked. + 

“No,” he said. + 

“Don’t you remember? The man that first day in the Kazan?” + 

“They’re all alike,” Bohun said. “One can’t tell.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Oh, come on,” said the merchant. “Let’s get to the Astoria.” + 

We started down the Moika, past that faded picture-shop where there are always large moth-eaten canvases of cornfields under the moon and Russian weddings and Italian lakes. We had got very nearly to the little street with the wooden hoardings when the merchant gripped my arm. + 

“What’s that?” he gulped. The silence now was intense. We could not hear the machine-gun nor any shouting. The world was like a picture smoking under a moon now red and hard. Against the wall of the street two women were huddled, one on her knees, her head pressed against the thighs of the other, who stood stretched as though crucified, her arms out, staring on to the Canal. Beside a little kiosk, on the space exactly in front of the side street, lay a man on his face. His bowler-hat had rolled towards the kiosk; his arms were stretched out so that he looked oddly like the shadow of the woman against the wall. + 

Instead of one hand there was a pool of blood. The other hand with all the fingers stretched was yellow against the snow. + 

As we came up a bullet from the Morskaia struck the kiosk. + 

The woman, not moving from the wall, said, “They’ve shot my husband⁠ ⁠… he did nothing.” + 

The other woman, on her knees, only cried without ceasing. + 

The merchant said, “I’m going back⁠—to the Europe,” and he turned and ran. + 

“What’s down that street?” I said to the woman, as though I expected her to say “Hobgoblins.” Bohun said, “This is rather beastly.⁠ ⁠… We ought to move that fellow out of that. He may be alive still.” + 

And how silly such a sentence when only yesterday, just here, there was the beggar who sold bootlaces, and just there, where the man lay, an old muddled isvostchick asleep on his box! + 

We moved forward, and instantly it was as though I were in the middle of a vast desert quite alone with all the hosts of heaven aiming at me malicious darts. As I bent down my back was so broad that it stretched across Petrograd, and my feet were tiny like frogs. + 

We pulled at the man. His head rolled and his face turned over, and the mouth was full of snow. It was so still that I whispered, whether to Bohun or myself, “God, I wish somebody would shout!” Then I heard the wood of the kiosk crack, ever so slightly, like an opening door, and panic flooded me as I had never known it do during all my time at the Front. + 

“I’ve no strength,” I said to Bohun. + 

“Pull for God’s sake!” he answered. We dragged the body a little way; my hand clutched the thigh, which was hard and cold under the stuff of his clothing. His head rolled round, and his eyes now were covered with snow. We dragged him, and he bumped grotesquely. We had him under the wall, near the two women, and the blood welled out and dripped in a spreading pool at the women’s feet. + 

“Now,” said Bohun, “we’ve got to run for it.” + 

“Do you know,” said I, as though I were making a sudden discovery, “I don’t think I can.” I leaned back against the wall and looked at the pool of blood near the kiosk where the man had been. + 

“Oh, but you’ve got to,” said Bohun, who seemed to feel no fear. “We can’t stay here all night.” + 

“No, I know,” I answered. “But the trouble is⁠—I’m not myself.” And I was not. That was the trouble. I was not John Durward at all. Some stranger was here with a new heart, poor shrivelled limbs, an enormous nose, a hot mouth with no eyes at all. This stranger had usurped my clothes and he refused to move. He was tied to the wall and he would not obey me. + 

Bohun looked at me. “I say, Durward, come on, it’s only a step. We must get to the Astoria.” + 

But the picture of the Astoria did not stir me. I should have seen Nina and Vera waiting there, and that should have at once determined me. So it would have been had I been myself. This other man was there.⁠ ⁠… Nina and Vera meant nothing to him at all. But I could not explain that to Bohun. “I can’t go⁠ ⁠…” I saw Bohun’s eyes⁠—I was dreadfully ashamed. “You go on⁠ ⁠…” I muttered. I wanted to tell him that I did not think that I could endure to feel again that awful expansion of my back and the turning my feet into toads. + 

“Of course I can’t leave you,” he said. + 

And suddenly I sprang back into my own clothes again. I flung the charlatan out and he flumped off into air. + 

“Come on,” I said, and I ran. No bullets whizzed past us. I was ashamed of running, and we walked quite quietly over the rest of the open space. + 

“Funny thing,” I said, “I was damned frightened for a moment.” + 

“It’s the silence and the houses,” said Bohun. + 

Strangely enough I remember nothing between that moment and our arrival at the Astoria. We must have skirted the Canal, keeping in the shadow of the wall, then crossed the Saint Isaac’s Square. The next thing I can recall is our standing, rather breathless, in the hall of the Astoria, and the first persons I saw there were Vera and Nina, together at the bottom of the staircase, saying nothing, waiting. + 

In front of them was a motley crowd of Russian officers all talking and gesticulating together. I came nearer to Vera and at once I said to myself, “Lawrence is here somewhere.” She was standing, her head up, watching the doors, her eyes glowed with anticipation, her lips were a little parted. She never moved at all, but was so vital that the rest of the people seemed dolls beside her. As we came towards them Nina turned round and spoke to someone, and I saw that it was Semyonov who stood at the bottom of the staircase, his thick legs apart, stroking his beard with his hand. + 

We came forward and Nina began at once⁠— + 

“Durdles⁠—tell us! What’s happened?” + 

“I don’t know,” I answered. The lights after the dark and the snow bewildered me, and the noise and excitement of the Russian officers were deafening. + 

Nina went on, her face lit. “Can’t you tell us anything? We haven’t heard a word. We came just in an ordinary way about four o’clock. There wasn’t a sound, and then, just as we were sitting down to tea, they all came bursting in, saying that all the officers were being murdered, and that Protopopoff was killed, and that⁠—” + 

“That’s true anyway,” said a young Russian officer, turning round to us excitedly. “I had it from a friend of mine who was passing just as they stuck him in the stomach. He saw it all; they dragged him out of his house and stuck him in the stomach⁠—” + 

“They say the Czar’s been shot,” said another officer, a fat, red-faced man with very bright red trousers, “and that Rodziancko’s formed a government⁠ ⁠…” + 

I heard on every side such words as “People⁠—Rodziancko⁠—Protopopoff⁠—Freedom,” and the officer telling his tale again. “And they stuck him in the stomach just as he was passing his house⁠ ⁠…” + 

Through all this tale Vera never moved. I saw, to my surprise, that Lawrence was there now, standing near her but never speaking. Semyonov stood on the stairs watching. + 

Suddenly I saw that she wanted me. + 

“Ivan Andreievitch,” she said, “will you do something for me?” She spoke very low, and her eyes did not look at me, but beyond us all out to the door. + 

“Certainly,” I said. + 

“Will you keep Alexei Petrovitch here? Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Bohun can see us home. I don’t want him to come with us. Will you ask him to wait and speak to you?” + 

I went up to him. “Semyonov,” I said, “I want a word with you, if I may⁠—” + 

“Certainly,” he said, with that irritating smile of his, as though he knew exactly of what I was thinking. + 

We moved up the dark stairs. As we went I heard Vera’s clear, calm voice: + 

“Will you see us home, Mr. Lawrence?⁠ ⁠… I think it’s quite safe to go now.” + 

We stopped on the first floor under the electric light. There were two easy-chairs there, with a dusty palm behind them. We sat down. + 

“You haven’t really got anything to say to me,” he began. + 

“Oh yes, I have,” I said. + 

“No⁠ ⁠… You simply suggested conversation because Vera asked you to do so.” + 

“I suggested a conversation,” I answered, “because I had something of some seriousness to tell you.” + 

“Well, she needn’t have been afraid,” he went on. “I wasn’t going home with them. I want to stop and watch these ridiculous people a little longer.⁠ ⁠… What had you got to say, my philosophical, optimistic friend?” + 

He looked quite his old self, sitting stockily in the chair, his strong thighs pressing against the cane as though they’d burst it, his thick square beard more wiry than ever, and his lips red and shining. He seemed to have regained his old self-possession and confidence. + 

“What I wanted to say,” I began, “is that I’m going to tell you once more to leave Markovitch alone. I know the other day⁠—that alone⁠—” + 

“Oh that!” he brushed it aside impatiently. “There are bigger things than that just now, Durward. You lack, as I have always said, two very essential things, a sense of humour and a sense of proportion. And you pretend to know Russia whilst you are without those two admirable gifts! + 

“However, let us forget personalities.⁠ ⁠… There are better things here!” + 

As he spoke two young Russian officers came tumbling up the stairs. They were talking excitedly, not listening to one another, red in the face and tripping over their swords. They went up to the next floor, their voices very shrill. + 

“So much for your sentimental Russia,” said Semyonov. He spoke very quietly. “How I shall love to see these fools all toppled over, and then the fools who toppled them toppled in their turn. + 

“Durward, you’re a fool too, but you’re English, and at least you’ve got a conscience. I tell you, you’ll see in these next months such cowardice, such selfishness, such meanness, such ignorance as the world has never known⁠—and all in the name of Freedom! Why, they’re chattering about freedom already downstairs as hard as they can go!” + 

“As usual, Semyonov,” I answered hotly, “you believe in the good of no one. If there’s really a Revolution coming, which I still doubt, it may lead to the noblest liberation.” + 

“Oh, you’re an ass!” he interrupted quietly. “Nobility and the human race! I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch of the noble character, that the human race is rotten; that it is composed of selfishness, vice, and meanness; that it is hypocritical beyond the bounds of hypocrisy, and that of all mean cowardly nations on this earth the Russian nation is the meanest and most cowardly!⁠ ⁠… That fine talk of ours that you English slobber over!⁠—a mere excuse for idleness, and you’ll know it before another year is through. I despise mankind with a contempt that every day’s fresh experience only the more justifies. Only once have I found someone who had a great soul, and she, too, if I had secured her, might have disappointed me.⁠ ⁠… No, my time is coming. I shall see at last my fellow-men in their true colours, and I shall even perhaps help them to display them. My worthy Markovitch, for example⁠—” + 

“What about Markovitch?” I asked sharply. + 

He got up, smiling. He put his hand on my shoulder. + 

“He shall be driven by ghosts,” he answered, and turned off to the stairs. + 

He looked back for a moment. “The funny thing is, I like you, Durward,” he said. + 

X + 

I remember very little of my return to my island that night. The world was horribly dark and cold, the red moon had gone, and a machine-gun pursued me all the way home like a barking dog. I crossed the bridge frankly with nerves so harassed, with so many private anxieties and so much public apprehension, with so overpowering a suspicion that every shadow held a rifle that my heart leapt in my breast, and I was suddenly sick with fear when someone stepped across the road and put his hand on my arm. You see I have nothing much to boast about myself. My relief was only slightly modified when I saw that it was the Rat. The Rat had changed! He stood, as though on purpose under the very faint grey light of the lamp at the end of the bridge, and seen thus, he did in truth seem like an apparition. He was excited of course, but there was more in his face than that. The real truth about him was, that he was filled with some determination, some purpose. He was like a child who is playing at being a burglar, his face had exactly that absorption, that obsessing preoccupation. + 

“I’ve been waiting for you, barin,” he said in his hoarse musical voice. + 

“What is it?” I asked. + 

“This is where I live,” he said, and he showed me a very dirty piece of paper. “I think you ought to know.” + 

“Why?” I asked him. + 

“Kto snaiet? The Czar’s gone and we are all free men.⁠ ⁠…” + 

I felt oddly that suddenly now he knew himself my master. That was now in his voice. + 

“What are you going to do with your freedom?” I asked. + 

He sighed. + 

“I shall have my duties now,” he said. “I’m not a free man at all. I obey orders for the first time. The people are going to rule. I am the people.” + 

He paused. Then he went on very seriously. “That is why, barin, I give you that paper. I have friendly feelings towards you. I don’t know what it is, but I am your brother. They may come and want to rob your house. Show them that paper.” + 

“Thank you very much,” I said. “But I’m not afraid. There’s nothing I mind them stealing. All the same I’m very grateful.” + 

He went on very seriously. + 

“There’ll be no Czar now and no police. We will stop the war and all be rich.” He sighed. “But I don’t know that it will bring happiness.” He suddenly seemed to me forlorn and desolate and lonely, like a lost dog. I knew quite well that very soon, perhaps directly he had left me, he would plunder and murder and rob again. + 

But that night, the two of us alone on the island and everything so still, waiting for great events, I felt close to him and protective. + 

“Don’t get knocked on the head, Rat,” I said, “during one of your raids. Death is easily come by just now. Look after yourself.” + 

He shrugged his shoulders. “Shto boodet, boodet. Neechevo.” He had vanished into the shadows. + 

XI + 

I realise that the moment has come in my tale when the whole interest of my narrative centres in Markovitch. Markovitch is really the point of all my story as I have, throughout, subconsciously, recognised. The events of that wonderful Tuesday when for a brief instant the sun of freedom really did seem to all of us to break through the clouds, that one day in all our lives when hopes, dreams, Utopias, fairy tales seemed to be sober and realistic fact, those events might be seen through the eyes of any of us. Vera, Nina, Grogoff, Semyonov, Lawrence, Bohun and I, all shared in them and all had our sensations and experiences. But my own were drab and ordinary enough, and from the others I had no account so full and personal and true as from Markovitch. He told me all about that great day afterwards, only a short time before that catastrophe that overwhelmed us all, and in his account there was all the growing suspicion and horror of disillusion that after-events fostered in him. But as he told me, sitting through the purple hours of the night, watching the light break in ripples and circles of colour over the sea, he regained some of the splendours of that great day, and before he had finished his tale he was right back in that fantastic world that had burst at the touch like bubbles in the sun. I will give his account, as accurately as possible in his own words. I seldom interrupted him, and I think he soon forgot that I was there. He had come to me that night in a panic, for reasons which will be given later and I, in trying to reassure him, had reminded him of that day, when the world was suddenly Utopia. + 

“That did exist, that world,” I said. “And once having existed it cannot now be dead. Believe, believe that it will come back.” + 

“Come back!” He shook his head. “Even if it is still there I cannot go back to it. I will tell you, Ivan Andreievitch, what that day was⁠ ⁠… and why now I am so bitterly punished for having believed in it. Listen, what happened to me. It occurred, all of it, exactly as I tell you. You know that, just at that time, I had been worrying very much about Vera. The Revolution had come I suppose very suddenly to everyone; but truly to myself, because I had been thinking of Vera, it was like a thunderclap. It’s always been my trouble, Ivan Andreievitch, that I can’t think of more than one thing at once, and the worry of it has been that in my life there has been almost invariably more than one thing that I ought to think of.⁠ ⁠… I would think of my invention, you know, that I ought to get on with it a little faster. Because really⁠—it was making a sort of cloth out of bark that I was working at; as every day passed, I could see more and more clearly that there was a great deal in this particular invention, and that it only needed real application to bring it properly forward. Only application as you know is my trouble. If I could only shut my brain up.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He told me then, I remember, a lot about his early childhood, and then the struggle that he had had to see one thing at once, and not two or three things that got in the way and hindered him from doing anything. He went on about Vera. + 

“You know that one night I had crept up into your room, and looked to see whether there were possibly a letter there. That was a disgraceful thing to do, wasn’t it? But I felt then that I had to satisfy myself. I wonder whether I can make you understand. It wasn’t jealousy exactly, because I had never felt that I had had any very strong right over Vera, considering the way that she had married me; but I don’t think I ever loved her more than I did during those weeks, and she was unattainable. I was lonely, Ivan Andreievitch, that’s the truth. Everything seemed to be slipping away from me, and in some way Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov seemed to accentuate that. He was always reminding me of one day or another when I had been happy with Vera long ago⁠—some silly little expedition we had taken⁠—or he was doubtful about my experiments being any good, or he would recall what I had felt about Russia at the beginning of the war.⁠ ⁠… All in a very kindly way, mind you. He was more friendly than he had ever been, and seemed to be altogether softer-hearted. But he made me think a great deal about Vera. He talked often so much. He thought that I ought to look after her more, and I explained that that wasn’t my right. + 

“The truth is that ever since Nina’s birthday-party I had been anxious. I knew really that everything was right. Vera is of course the soul of honour⁠—but something had occurred then which made me.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Well, well, that doesn’t matter now. The only point is that I was thinking of Vera a great deal, and wondering how I could make her happy. She wasn’t happy. I don’t know how it was, but during those weeks just before the Revolution we were none of us happy. We were all uneasy as though we expected something were going to happen⁠—and we were all suspicious.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I only tell you this because then you will see why it was that the Revolution broke upon me with such surprise. I had been right inside myself, talking to nobody, wanting nobody to talk to me. I get like that sometimes, when words seem to mean so much that it seems dangerous to throw them about.⁠ ⁠… And perhaps it is. But silence is dangerous too. Everything is dangerous if you are unlucky by nature.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I had been indoors all that Monday working at my invention, and thinking about Vera, wondering whether I’d speak to her, then afraid of my temper (I have a bad temper), wanting to know what was the truth, thinking at one moment that if she cared for someone else that I’d go away⁠ ⁠… and then suddenly angry and jealous, wishing to challenge him, but I am a ludicrous figure to challenge anyone, as I very well know. Semyonov had been to see me that morning, and he had just sat there without saying anything. I couldn’t endure that very long, so I asked him what he came for and he said, ‘Oh, nothing.’ I felt as though he were spying and I became uneasy. Why should he come so often now? And I was beginning to think of him when he wasn’t there. It was as though he thought he had a right over all of us, and that irritated me.⁠ ⁠… Well, that was Monday. They all came late in the afternoon and told me all the news. They had been at the Astoria. The whole town seemed to be in revolt, so they said. + 

“But even then I didn’t realise it. I was thinking of Vera just the same. I looked at her all the evening just as Semyonov had looked at me. And didn’t say anything.⁠ ⁠… I never wanted her so badly before. I made her sleep with me all that night. She hadn’t done that for a long time, and I woke up early in the morning to hear her crying softly to herself. She never used to cry. She was so proud. I put my arms round her, and she stopped crying and lay quite still. It wasn’t fair what I did, but I felt as though Alexei Petrovitch had challenged me to do it. He always hated Vera I knew. I got up very early and went to my wood. You can imagine I wasn’t very happy.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Then suddenly I thought I’d go out into the streets, and see what was happening. I couldn’t believe really that there had been any change. So I went out. + 

“Do you know of recent years I’ve walked out very seldom? What was it? A kind of shyness. I knew when I was in my own house, and I knew whom I was with. Then I was never a man who cared greatly about exercise, and there was no one outside whom I wanted very much to see. So when I went out that morning it was as though I didn’t know Petrograd at all, and had only just arrived there. I went over the Ekateringofsky Bridge, through the Square, and to the left down the Sadovaya. + 

“Of course the first thing that I noticed was that there were no trams, and that there were multitudes of people walking along and that they were all poor people and all happy. And I was glad when I saw that. Of course I’m a fool, and life can’t be as I want it, but that’s always what I had thought life ought to be⁠—all the streets filled with poor people, all free and happy. And here they were!⁠ ⁠… with the snow crisp under their feet, and the sun shining, and the air quite still, so that all the talk came up, and up into the sky like a song. But of course they were bewildered as well as happy. They didn’t know where to go, they didn’t know what to do⁠—like birds let out suddenly from their cages. I didn’t know myself. That’s what sudden freedom does⁠—takes your breath away so that you go staggering along, and get caught again if you’re not careful. No trams, no policemen, no carriages filled with proud people cursing you.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, I’d be proud myself if I had money, and servants to put on my clothes, and new women every night, and different food every day.⁠ ⁠… I don’t blame them⁠—but suddenly proud people were gone, and I was crying without knowing it⁠—simply because that great crowd of poor people went pushing along, all talking under the sunny sky as freely as they pleased. + 

“I began to look about me. I saw that there were papers posted on the walls. They were those proclamations, you know, of Rodziancko’s new government, saying that while everything was unsettled, Milyukoff, Rodziancko, and the others would take charge in order to keep order and discipline. It seemed to me that there was little need to talk about discipline. Had beggars appeared there in the road I believed that the crowd would have stripped off their clothes and given them, rather than that they should want. + 

“I stood by one proclamation and read it out to the little crowd. They repeated the names to themselves, but they did not seem to care much. ‘The Czar’s wicked they tell me,’ said one man to me. ‘And all our troubles come from him.’ + 

“ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said another. ‘There’ll be plenty of bread now.’ + 

“And indeed what did names matter now? I couldn’t believe my eyes or my ears, Ivan Andreievitch. It looked too much like Paradise and I’d been deceived so often. So I determined to be very cautious. ‘You’ve been taken in, Nicolai Leontievitch, many many times. Don’t you believe this?’ But I couldn’t help feeling that if only this world would continue, if only the people could always be free and happy and the sun could shine, perhaps the rest of the world would see its folly and the war would stop and never begin again. This thought would grow in my mind as I walked, although I refused to encourage it. + 

“Motor lorries covered with soldiers came dashing down the street. The soldiers had their guns pointed, but the crowd cheered and cheered, waving hands and shouting. I shouted too. The tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hold the sun and the snow and the people all in my arms fixed so that it should never change, and the world should see how good and innocent life could be. + 

“On every side people had asked what had really happened, and of course no one knew. But it did not matter. Everyone was so simple. A soldier, standing beside one of the placards was shouting: ‘Tovaristchi! What we must have is a splendid Republic and a good Czar to look after it.’ + 

“And they all cheered him and laughed and sang. I turned up one of the side streets on to the Fontanka, and here I saw them emptying the rooms of one of the police. That was amusing! I laugh still when I think of it. Sending everything out of the windows⁠—underclothes, ladies’ bonnets, chairs, books, flowerpots, pictures, and then all the records, white and yellow and pink paper, all fluttering in the sun like so many butterflies. The crowd was perfectly peaceful, in an excellent temper. Isn’t that wonderful when you think that for months those people had been starved and driven, waiting all night in the street for a piece of bread, and that now all discipline was removed, no more policemen except those hiding for their lives in houses, and yet they did nothing, they touched no one’s property, did no man any harm. People say now that it was their apathy, that they were taken by surprise, that they were like animals who did not know where to go, but I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch, that it was not so. I tell you that it was because just for an hour the soul could come up from its dark waters and breathe the sun and the light and see that all was good. Oh, why cannot that day return? Why cannot that day return?⁠ ⁠…” + 

He broke off and looked at me like a distracted child, his brows puckered, his hands beating the air. I did not say anything. I wanted him to forget that I was there. + 

He went on: “… I could not be there all day, I thought that I would go on to the Duma. I flowed on with the crowd. We were a great river swinging without knowing why, in one direction and only interrupted, once and again, by the motor lorries that rattled along, the soldiers shouting to us and waving their rifles, and we replying with cheers. I heard no firing that morning at all. They said, in the crowd, that many thousands had been killed last night. It seemed that on the roof of nearly every house in Petrograd there was a policeman with a machine-gun. But we marched along, without fear, singing. And all the time the joy in my heart was rising, rising, and I was checking it, telling myself that in a moment I would be disappointed, that I would soon be tricked as I had been so often tricked before. But I couldn’t help my joy, which was stronger than myself.⁠ ⁠… + 

“It must have been early afternoon, so long had I been on the road, when I came at last to the Duma. You saw yourself, Ivan Andreievitch, that all that week the crowd outside the Duma was truly a sea of people with the motor lorries that bristled with rifles for sea-monsters and the gun-carriages for ships. And such a babel! Everyone talking at once and nobody listening to anyone. + 

“I don’t know now how I pushed through into the Court, but at last I was inside and found myself crushed up against the doors of the Palace by a mob of soldiers and students. Here there was a kind of hush. + 

“When the door of the Palace opened there was a little sigh of interest. At intervals armed guards marched up with some wretched pale dirty Gorodovoi whom they had taken prisoner⁠—” + 

Nicholas Markovitch paused again and again. He had been looking out to the sea over whose purple shadows the sky pale green and studded with silver stars seemed to wave magic shuttles of light, to and fro, backwards and forwards. + 

“You don’t mind all these details, Ivan Andreievitch? I am trying to discover, for my own sake, all the details that led me to my final experience. I want to trace the chain link by link⁠ ⁠… nothing is unimportant⁠ ⁠…” + 

I assured him that I was absorbed by his story. And indeed I was. That little, uncouth, lost, and desolate man was the most genuine human being whom I had ever known. That quality, above all others, stood forth in him. He had his secret as all men have their secret, the key to their pursuit of their own immortality.⁠ ⁠… But Markovitch’s secret was a real one, something that he faced with real bravery, real pride, and real dignity, and when he saw what the issue of his conduct must be he would, I knew, face it without flinching. + 

He went on, but looking at me now rather than the sea⁠—looking at me with his grave, melancholy, angry eyes. “… After one of these convoys of prisoners the door remained for a moment open, and I seeing my chance slipped in after the guards. Here I was then in the very heart of the Revolution; but still, you know, Ivan Andreievitch, I couldn’t properly seize the fact, I couldn’t grasp the truth that all this was really occurring and that it wasn’t just a play, a pretence, or a dream⁠ ⁠… yes, a dream⁠ ⁠… especially a dream⁠ ⁠… perhaps, after all, that was what it was. The Circular Hall was piled high with machine-guns, bags of flour, and provisions of all kinds. There were some armed soldiers of course and women, and beside the machine guns the floor was strewn with cigarette ends and empty tins and papers and bags and cardboard boxes and even broken bottles. Dirt and Desolation! I remember that it was then when I looked at that floor that the first little suspicion stole into my heart⁠—not a suspicion so much as an uneasiness. I wanted at once myself to set to work to clean up all the mess with my own hands. + 

“I didn’t like to see it there, and no one caring whether it were there or no. + 

“In the Catherine Hall into which I peered there was a vast mob, and this huge mass of men stirred and coiled and uncoiled like some huge ant-heap. Many of them, as I watched, suddenly turned into the outer hall. Men jumped on to chairs and boxes and balustrades, and soon, all over the place there were speakers, some shouting, some shrieking, some with tears rolling down their cheeks, some swearing, some whispering as though to themselves⁠ ⁠… and all the regiments came pouring in from the station, tumbling in like puppies or babies with pieces of red cloth tied to their rifles, some singing, some laughing, some dumb with amazement⁠ ⁠… thicker and thicker and thicker⁠ ⁠… standing round the speakers with their mouths open and their eyes wide, pushing and jostling, but good-naturedly, like young dogs. + 

“Everywhere, you know, men were forming committees, committees for social right, for a just Peace, for Women’s Suffrage, for Finnish Independence, for literature and the arts, for the better treatment of prostitutes, for education, for the just division of the land. I had crept into my corner, and soon as the soldiers came thicker and thicker, the noise grew more and more deafening, the dust floated in hazy clouds. The men had their kettles and they boiled tea, squatting down there, sometimes little processions pushed their way through, soldiers shouting and laughing with some white-faced policeman in their midst. Once I saw an old man, his shuba about his ears, stumbling with his eyes wide open, and staring as though he were sleepwalking. That was Stürmer being brought to judgement. Once I saw a man so terrified that he couldn’t move, but must be prodded along by the rifles of the soldiers. That was Pitirim.⁠ ⁠… + 

“And the shouting and screaming rose and rose like a flood. Once Rodziancko came in and began shouting, ‘Tovaristchi! Tovaristchi!⁠ ⁠…’ but his voice soon gave away, and he went back into the Salle Catherine again. The Socialists had it their way. There were so many, and their voices were so fresh and the soldiers liked to listen to them. ‘Land for everybody!’ they shouted. ‘And Bread and Peace! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ cried the soldiers. + 

“ ‘That’s all very well,’ said a huge man near me. ‘But Nicholas is coming, and tomorrow he will eat us all up!’ + 

“But no one seemed to care. They were all mad, and I was mad too. It was the drunkenness of dust. It got in our heads and our brains. We all shouted. I began to shout too, although I didn’t know what it was that I was shouting. + 

“A grimy soldier caught me round the neck and kissed me. ‘Land for everybody!’ he cried. ‘Have some tea, Tovaristch!’ and I shared his tea with him. + 

“Then through the dust and noise I suddenly saw Boris Grogoff! That was an astonishing thing. You see I had dissociated all this from my private life. I had even, during these last hours, forgotten Vera, perhaps for the very first moment since I met her. She had seemed to have no share in this⁠—and then suddenly the figure of Boris showed me that one’s private life is always with one, that it is a secret city in which one must always live, and whose gates one will never pass through, whatever may be going on in the world outside. But Grogoff! What a change! You know, I had always patronised him, Ivan Andreievitch. It had seemed to me that he was only a boy with a boy’s crude ideas. You know his fresh face with the way that he used to push back his hair from his forehead, and shout his ideas. He never considered anyone’s feelings. He was a complete egoist, and a man, it seemed to me, of no importance. But now! He stood on a bench and had around him a large crowd of soldiers. He was shouting in just his old way that he used in the English Prospect, but he seemed to have grown in the meantime, into a man. He did not seem afraid any more. I saw that he had power over the men to whom he was speaking.⁠ ⁠… I couldn’t hear what he said, but through the dust and heat he seemed to grow and grow until it was only him whom I saw there. + 

“ ‘He will carry off Nina’ was my next thought⁠—ludicrous there at such a time, in such a crowd, but it is exactly like that that life shifts and shifts until it has formed a pattern. I was frightened by Grogoff. I could not believe that the new freedom, the new Russia, the new world would be made by such men. He waved his arms, he pushed back his hair, the men shouted. Grogoff was triumphant: ‘The New World⁠ ⁠… Novaya Jezn, Novaya Jezn!’ I heard him shout. + 

“The sun before it set flooded the hall with light. What a scene through the dust! The red flags, the women and the soldiers and the shouting! + 

“I was suddenly dismayed. ‘How can order come out of this?’ I thought. ‘They are all mad.⁠ ⁠… Terrible things are going to happen.’ I was dirty and tired and exhausted. I fought my way through the mob, found the door. For a moment I looked back, to that sea of men lit by the last light of the sun. Then I pushed out, was thrown, it seemed to me, from man to man, and was at last in the air.⁠ ⁠… Quiet, fires burning in the courtyard, a sky of the palest blue, a few stars, and the people singing the ‘Marseillaise.’ + 

“It was like drinking great draughts of cold water after an intolerable thirst.⁠ ⁠… + 

“… Hasn’t Chekhov said somewhere that Russians have nostalgia but no patriotism? That was never true of me⁠—can’t remember how young I was when I remember my father talking to me about the idea of Russia. I’ve told you that he was by any kind of standard a bad man. He had, I think, no redeeming points at all⁠—but he had, all the same, that sense of Russia. I don’t suppose that he put it to any practical use, or that he even tried to teach it to his pupils, but it would suddenly seize him and he would let himself go, and for an hour he would be a fine master⁠—of words. And what Russian is ever more than that at the end? + 

“He spoke to me and gave me a picture of a world inside a world, and this inside world was complete in itself. It had everything in it⁠—beauty, wealth, force, power; it could be anything, it could do anything. But it was held by an evil enchantment as though a wicked magician had it in thrall, and everything slept as in Tchaikovsky’s Ballet. But one day, he told me, the Prince would come and kill the Enchanter, and this great world would come into its own. I remember that I was so excited that I couldn’t bear to wait, but prayed that I might be allowed to go out and find the Enchanter⁠ ⁠… but my father laughed and said that there were no Enchanter now, and then I cried. All the same I never lost my hope. I talked to people about Russia, but it was never Russia itself they seemed to care for⁠—it was women or drink or perhaps freedom and socialism, or perhaps some part of Russia, Siberia, or the Caucasus⁠—but my world they none of them believed in. It didn’t exist they said. It was simply my imagination that had painted it, and they laughed at me and said it was held together by the lashes of the knout, and when those went Russia would go too. As I grew up some of them thought that I was revolutionary, and they tried to make me join their clubs and societies. But those were no use to me. They couldn’t give me what I wanted. They wanted to destroy, to assassinate someone, or to blow up a building. They had no thought beyond destruction, and that to me seemed only the first step. And they never think of Russia, our revolutionaries. You will have noticed that yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. Nothing so small and trivial as Russia! It must be the whole world or nothing at all. Democracy⁠ ⁠… Freedom⁠ ⁠… the Brotherhood of Man! Oh, the terrible harm that words have done to Russia! Had the Russians of the last fifty years been born without the gift of speech we would be now the greatest people on the earth! + 

“But I loved Russia from end to end. The farthest villages in Siberia, the remotest hut beyond Archangel, from the shops in the Sadovaya to the Lavra at Kiev, from the little villages on the bank of the Volga to the woods round Tarnopol⁠—all, all one country, one people, one world within a world. The old man to whom I was secretary discovered this secret hope of mine. I talked one night when I was drunk and told him everything. I mentioned even the Enchanter and the Sleeping Beauty! How he laughed at me! He would never leave me alone. ‘Nicolai Leontievitch believes in Holy Russia!’ he would say. ‘Not so much Holy, you understand, as Bewitched. A Fairy Garden, ladies, with a sleeping beauty in the middle of it. Dear me, Nicolai Leontievitch, no wonder you are heart-free!’ + 

“How I hated him and his yellow face and his ugly stomach! I would have stamped on it with delight. But that made me shy. I was afraid to speak of it to anyone, and I kept to myself. Then Vera came and she didn’t laugh at me. The two ideas grew together in my head. Vera and Russia! The two things in my life by which I stood⁠—because man must have something in life round which he may nestle as a cat curls up by the fire. + 

“But even Vera did not seem to care for Russia as Russia. ‘What can Siberia be to me?’ she would say. ‘Why, Nicholas, it is no more than China.’ + 

“But it was more than China; when I looked at it on the map I recognised it as though it were my own country. Then the war came and I thought the desire of my heart was fulfilled. At last men talked about Russia as though she truly existed. For a moment all Russia was united, all classes, rich and poor, high and low. Men were patriotic together as though one heart beat through all the land. But only for a moment. Divisions came, and quickly things were worse than before. There came Tannenburg and afterwards Warsaw. + 

“All was lost.⁠ ⁠… Russia was betrayed, and I was a sentimental fool. You know yourself how cynical even the most sentimental Russians are⁠—that is because if you stick to facts you know where you are, but ideas are always betraying you. Life simply isn’t long enough to test them, that’s all, and man is certainly not a patient animal. + 

“At first I watched the war going from bad to worse, and then I shut myself in and refused to look any longer. I thought only of Vera and my work. I would make a great discovery and be rich, and then Vera at last would love me. Idiot! As though I had not known that Vera would not love for that kind of reason.⁠ ⁠… I determined that I would think no more of Russia, that I would be a man of no country. Then during those last weeks before the Revolution I began to be suspicious of Vera and to watch her. I did things of which I was ashamed, and then I despised myself for being ashamed. + 

“I am a man, I can do what I wish. Even though I am imprisoned I am free.⁠ ⁠… I am my own master. But all the same, to be a spy is a mean thing, Ivan Andreievitch. You Englishmen, although you are stupid, you are not mean. It was that day when your young friend, Bohun, found me looking in your room for letters, that in spite of myself I was ashamed. + 

“He looked at me in a sort of way as though, down to his very soul he was astonished at what I had done. Well, why should I mind that he should be astonished? He was very young and all wrong in his ideas of life. Nevertheless that look of his influenced me. I thought about it afterwards. Then came Alexei Petrovitch. I’ve told you already. He was always hinting at something. He was always there as though he were waiting for something to happen. He hinted things about Vera. It’s strange, Ivan Andreievitch, but there was a day just a week before the Revolution, when I was very nearly jumping up and striking him. Just to get rid of him so that he shouldn’t be watching me.⁠ ⁠… Why even when I wasn’t there he.⁠ ⁠… + 

“But what’s that got to do with my walk? Nothing perhaps. All the same, it was all these little things that made me, when I walked out of the Duma that evening so queer. You see I’d been getting desperate. All that I had left was being taken from me, and then suddenly this Revolution had come and given me back Russia again. I forgot Alexei Petrovitch and your Englishman Lawrence and the failure of my work⁠—I remembered, once again, just as I had those first days of the war, Vera and Russia. + 

“There, in the clear evening air, I forgot all the talk there had been inside the Duma, the mess and the noise and the dust. I was suddenly happy again, and excited, and hopeful.⁠ ⁠… The Enchanter had come after all, and Russia was to awake. + 

“Ah, what a wonderful evening that was! You know that there have been times⁠—very, very rare occasions in one’s life⁠—when places that one knows well, streets and houses so common and customary as to be like one’s very skin⁠—are suddenly for a wonderful half-hour places of magic, the trees are gold, the houses silver, the bricks jewelled, the pavement of amber. Or simply perhaps they are different, a new country of new colour and mystery⁠ ⁠… when one is just in love or has won some prize, or finished at last some difficult work. Petrograd was like that to me that night; I swear to you, Ivan Andreievitch, I did not know where I was. I seem now on looking back to have been in places that night, magical places, that by the morning had flown away. I could not tell you where I went. I know that I must have walked for miles. I walked with a great many people who were all my brothers. I had drunk nothing, not even water, and yet the effect on me was exactly as though I were drunk, drunk with happiness, Ivan Andreievitch, and with the possibility of all the things that might now be. + 

“We, many of us, marched along, singing the ‘Marseillaise’ I suppose. There was firing I think in some of the streets, because I can remember now on looking back that once or twice I heard a machine-gun quite close to me and didn’t care at all, and even laughed.⁠ ⁠… Not that I’ve ever cared for that. Bullets aren’t the sort of things that frighten me. There are other terrors.⁠ ⁠… All the same it was curious that we should all march along as though there were no danger and the peace of the world had come. There were women with us⁠—quite a number of them I think⁠—and, I believe, some children. I remember that some of the way I carried a child, fast asleep in my arms. How ludicrous it would be now if I, of all men in the world, carried a baby down the Nevski! But it was quite natural that night. The town seemed to me blazing with light. Of course that it cannot have been; there can have only been the stars and some bonfires. And perhaps we stopped at the police-courts which were crackling away. I don’t remember that, but I know that somewhere there were clouds of golden sparks opening into the sky and mingling with the stars⁠—a wonderful sight, flocks of golden birds and behind them a roar of sound like a torrent of water⁠ ⁠… I know that, most of the night, I had one man especially for my companion. I can see him quite clearly now, although, whether it is all my imagination or not I can’t say. Certainly I’ve never seen him since and never will again. He was a peasant, a bigly made man, very neatly and decently dressed in a workman’s blouse and black trousers. He had a long black beard and was grave and serious, speaking very little but watching everything. Kindly, our best type of peasant⁠—perhaps the type that will one day give Russia her real freedom⁠ ⁠… one day⁠ ⁠… a thousand years from now.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I don’t know why it is that I can still see him so clearly, because I can remember no one else of that night, and even this fellow may have been my imagination. But I think that, as we walked along, I talked to him about Russia and how the whole land now from Archangel to Vladivostock might be free and be one great country of peace and plenty, first in all the world. + 

“It seemed to me that everyone was singing, men and women and children.⁠ ⁠… + 

“We must, at last, have parted from most of the company. I had come with my friend into the quieter streets of the city. Then it was that I suddenly smelt the sea. You must have noticed how Petrograd is mixed up with the sea, how suddenly, where you never would expect it, you see the masts of ships all clustered together against the sky. I smelt the sea, the wind blew fresh and strong and there we were on the banks of the Neva. Everywhere there was perfect silence. The Neva lay, tranquil, bound under its ice. The black hulks of the ships lay against the white shadows like sleeping animals. The curve of the sky, with its multitude of stars, was infinite. + 

“My friend embraced me and left me and I stayed alone, so happy, so sure of the peace of the world that I did what I had not done for years, sent up a prayer of gratitude to God. Then with my head on my hands, looking down at the masts of the ships, feeling Petrograd behind me with its lights as though it were the City of God, I burst into tears⁠—tears of happiness and joy and humble gratitude.⁠ ⁠… I have no memory of anything further.” + 

XII + 

So much for the way that one Russian saw it. There were others. For instance Vera.⁠ ⁠… + 

I suppose that the motive of Vera’s life was her pride. Quite early, I should imagine, she had adopted that as the sort of talisman that would save her from every kind of ill. She told me once that when she was a little girl, the story of the witch who lured two children into the wood and then roasted them in her oven had terrified her beyond all control, and she would lie awake and shiver for hours because of it. It became a symbol of life to her⁠—the Forest was there and the Oven and the Witch⁠—and so clever and subtle was the Witch that the only way to outwit her was by pride. Then there was also her maternal tenderness; it was through that that Markovitch won her. She had not of course loved him⁠—she had never pretended to herself that she had⁠—but she had seen that he wanted caring for, and then, having taken the decisive step, her pride had come to her aid, had shown her a glimpse of the Witch waiting in the Forest darkness, and had proved to her that here was her great opportunity. She had then, with the easy superiority of a young girl, ignorant of life, dismissed love as of something that others might care for but that would, in no case, concern herself. Did Love for a moment smile at her or beckon to her Pride came to her and showed her Nina and Nicholas, and that was enough. + 

But Love knows its power. He suddenly put forth his strength and Vera was utterly helpless⁠—far more helpless than a Western girl with her conventional code and traditional training would have been. Vera had no convention and no tradition. She had only her pride and her maternal instinct and these, for a time, fought a battle for her⁠ ⁠… then they suddenly deserted her. + 

I imagine that they really deserted her on the night of Nina’s birthday-party, but she would not admit defeat so readily, and fought on for a little. On this eventful week when the world, as we knew it, was tumbling about our ears, she had told herself that the only thing to which she must give a thought was her fixed loyalty to Nina and Nicholas. She would not think of Lawrence.⁠ ⁠… She would not think of him. And so resolving, thought of him all the more. + 

By Wednesday morning her nerves were exhausted. The excitements of this week came as a climax to many months of strain. With the exception of her visit to the Astoria she had been out scarcely at all and, although the view from her flat was peaceful enough she could imagine every kind of horror beyond the boundaries of the Prospect⁠—and in every horror Lawrence figured. + 

There occurred that morning a strange little conversation between Vera, Semyonov, Nicholas Markovitch, and myself. I arrived about ten o’clock to see how they were and to hear the news. I found Vera sitting quietly at the table sewing. Markovitch stood near to her, his anxious eyes and trembling mouth perched on the top of his sharp peaky collar and his hands rubbing nervously one within another. He was obviously in a state of very great excitement. Semyonov sat opposite Vera, leaning his thick body on his arms, his eyes watching his niece and every once and again his firm pale hand stroking his beard. + 

When I joined them he said to me: + 

“Well, Ivan Andreievitch, what’s the latest news of your splendid Revolution?” + 

“Why my Revolution?” I asked. I felt an especial dislike this morning of his sneering eyes and his thick pale honey-coloured beard. “Whose ever it was he should be proud of it. To see thousands of people who’ve been hungry for months wandering about as I’ve seen them this morning and none of them touching a thing⁠—it’s stupendous!” + 

Semyonov smiled but said nothing. His smile irritated me. “Oh, of course you sneer at the whole thing, Alexei Petrovitch!” I said. “Anything fine in human nature excites your contempt as I know of old.” + 

I think that that was the first time that Vera had heard me speak to him in that way, and she looked up at me with sudden surprise and I think gratitude. + 

Semyonov treated me with complete contempt. He answered me slowly: “No, Ivan Andreievitch, I don’t wish to deprive you of any kind of happiness. I wouldn’t for worlds. But do you know our people, that’s the question? You haven’t been here very long; you came loaded up with romantic notions, some of which you’ve discarded but only that you may pick up others.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to insult you at all, but you simply don’t know that the Christian virtues that you are admiring just now so extravagantly are simply cowardice and apathy.⁠ ⁠… Wait a little! Wait a little! and then tell me whether I’ve not been right.” + 

There was a moment’s pause like the hush before the storm, and then Markovitch broke in upon us. I can see and hear him now, standing there behind Vera with his ridiculous collar and his anxious eyes. The words simply pouring from him in a torrent, his voice now rising into a shrill scream, now sinking into a funny broken bass like the growl of a young baby tiger. And yet he was never ridiculous. I’ve known other mortals, and myself one of the foremost, who, under the impulse of some sudden anger, enthusiasm, or regret, have been simply figures of fun.⁠ ⁠… Markovitch was never that. He was like a dying man fighting for possession of the last plank. I can’t at this distance of time remember all that he said. He talked a great deal about Russia; while he spoke I noticed that he avoided Semyonov’s eyes, which never for a single instant left his face. + 

“Oh, don’t you see, don’t you see?” he cried. “Russia’s chance has come back to her? We can fight now a holy, patriotic war. We can fight, not because we are told to by our masters, but because we, of our own free will, wish to defend the soil of our sacred country. Our country! No one has thought of Russia for the last two years⁠—we have thought only of ourselves, our privations, our losses⁠—but now⁠—now. O God! the world may be set free again because Russia is at last free!” + 

“Yes,” said Semyonov quietly (his eyes covered Markovitch’s face as a searchlight finds out the running figure of a man). “And who has spoken of Russia during the last few days? Russia! Why, I haven’t heard the word mentioned once. I may have been unlucky, I don’t know. I’ve been out and about the streets a good deal⁠ ⁠… I’ve listened to a great many conversations.⁠ ⁠… Democracy, yes, and Brotherhood and Equality and Fraternity and Bread and Land and Peace and Idleness⁠—but Russia! Not a sound.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“It will come! It will come!” Markovitch urged. “It must come! You didn’t walk, Alexei, as I did last night, through the streets, and see the people and hear their voices and see their faces.⁠ ⁠… Oh! I believe that at last that good has come to the world, and happiness and peace; and it is Russia who will lead the way.⁠ ⁠… Thank God! Thank God!” Even as he spoke some instinct in me urged me to try and prevent him. I felt that Semyonov would not forget a word of this, and would make his own use of it in the time to come. I could see the purpose in Semyonov’s eyes. I almost called out to Nicholas, “Look out! Look out!” just as though a man were standing behind him with a raised weapon.⁠ ⁠… + 

“You really mean this?” asked Semyonov. + 

“Of course I mean it!” cried Markovitch. “Do I not sound as though I did?” + 

“I will remind you of it one day,” said Semyonov. + 

I saw that Markovitch was trembling with excitement from head to foot. He sat down at the table near Vera and put one hand on the tablecloth to steady himself. Vera suddenly covered his hand with hers as though she were protecting him. His excitement seemed to stream away from him, as though Semyonov were drawing it out of him. + 

He suddenly said: + 

“You’d like to take my happiness away from me if you could, Alexei. You don’t want me to be happy.” + 

“What nonsense!” Semyonov said, laughing. “Only I like the truth⁠—I simply don’t see the thing as you do. I have my view of us Russians. I have watched since the beginning of the war. I think our people lazy and selfish⁠—think you must drive them with a whip to make them do anything. I think they would be ideal under German rule, which is what they’ll get if their Revolution lasts long enough⁠ ⁠… that’s all.” + 

I saw that Markovitch wanted to reply, but he was trembling so that he could not. + 

He said at last: “You leave me alone, Alexei; let me go my own way.” + 

“I have never tried to prevent you,” said Semyonov. + 

There was a moment’s silence. + 

Then, in quite another tone, he remarked to me: “By the way, Ivan Andreievitch, what about your friend Mr. Lawrence? He’s in a position of very considerable danger where he is with Wilderling. They tell me Wilderling may be murdered at any moment.” + 

Some force stronger than my will drove me to look at Vera. I saw that Nicolai Leontievitch also was looking at her. She raised her eyes for an instant, her lips moved as though she were going to speak, then she looked down again at her sewing. + 

Semyonov watched us all. “Oh, he’ll be all right,” I answered. “If anyone in the world can look after himself it’s Lawrence.” + 

“That’s all very well,” said Semyonov, still looking at Markovitch. “But to be in Wilderling’s company this week is a very unhealthy thing for anyone. And that type of Englishman is not noted for cowardice.” + 

“I tell you that Lawrence can look after himself,” I insisted angrily. + 

Semyonov knew and Markovitch knew that I was speaking to Vera. No one then said a word. There was a long pause. At last Semyonov saw fit to go. + 

“I’m off to the Duma,” he said. “There’s a split, I believe. And I want to hear whether it’s true that the Czar’s abdicated.” + 

“I believe you’d rather he hadn’t, Alexei Petrovitch,” Markovitch broke in fiercely. + 

He laughed at us all and said, “Whose interests am I studying? My own?⁠ ⁠… Holy Russia’s?⁠ ⁠… Yours?⁠ ⁠… When will you learn, Nicholas my friend, that I am a spectator, not a participator?” + 

Vera was alone during most of that day; and even now, after the time that has passed, I cannot bear to think of what she suffered. She realised quite definitely and now, with no chance whatever of self-deception, that she loved Lawrence with a force that no denial or sacrifice on her part could alter. She told me afterwards that she walked up and down that room for hours, telling herself again and again that she must not go and see whether he were safe. She did not dare even to leave the room. She felt that if she entered her bedroom the sight of her hat and coat there would break down her resolution, that if she went to the head of the stairs and listened she must then go farther and then farther again. She knew quite well that to go to him now would mean complete surrender. She had no illusions about that. The whole of her body was quivering with desire for his embrace, for the warm strength of his body, for the kindness in his eyes, and the compelling mastery of his hands. + 

She had never loved a man before; but it seemed to her now that she had known all these sensations always, and that she was now, at last, her real self, and that the earlier Vera had been a ghost. And what ghosts were Nina and Markovitch! + 

She told me afterwards that, on looking back, this seemed to her the most horrible part of the horrible afternoon. These two, who had been for so many years the very centre of her life, whom she had forced to hold up, as it were, the whole foundation of her existence, now simply were not real at all. She might call to them, and their voices were like far echoes or the wind. She gazed at them, and the colours of the room and the street seemed to shine through them.⁠ ⁠… She fought for their reality. She forced herself to recall all the many things that they had done together, Nina’s little ways, the quarrels with Nicholas, the reconciliations, the times when he had been ill, the times when they had gone to the country, to the theatre⁠ ⁠… and through it all she heard Semyonov’s voice, “By the way, what about your friend Lawrence?⁠ ⁠… He’s in a position of very considerable danger⁠ ⁠… considerable danger⁠ ⁠… considerable danger⁠ ⁠…” + 

By the evening she was almost frantic. Nina had been with a girl friend in the Vassily Ostrov all day. She would perhaps stay there all night if there were any signs of trouble. No one returned. Only the clock ticked on. Old Sacha asked whether she might go out for an hour. Vera nodded her head. She was then quite alone in the flat. + 

Suddenly, about seven o’clock, Nina came in. She was tired, nervous, and unhappy. The Revolution had not come to her as anything but a sudden crumbling of all the life that she had known and believed in. She had had, that afternoon, to run down a side street to avoid a machine-gun, and afterwards on the Morskaia she had come upon a dead man huddled up in the snow like a piece of offal. These things terrified her and she did not care about the larger issues. Her life had been always intensely personal⁠—not selfish so much as vividly egoistic through her vitality. And now she was miserable, not because she was afraid for her own safety, but because she was face to face, for the first time, with the unknown and the uncertain. + 

She came in, sat down at the table, put her head into her arms and burst into tears. She must have looked a very pathetic figure with her little fur hat askew, her hair tumbled⁠—like a child whose doll is suddenly broken. + 

Vera was at her side in a moment. She put her arms around her. + 

“Nina, dear, what is it?⁠ ⁠… Has somebody hurt you? Has something happened? Is anybody⁠—killed?” + 

“No!” Nina sobbed. “Nobody⁠—nothing⁠—only⁠—I’m frightened. It all looks so strange. The streets are so funny, and⁠—there was⁠—a dead man on the Morskaia.” + 

“You shouldn’t have gone out, dear. I oughtn’t to have let you. But now we can just be cosy together. Sacha’s gone out. There’s no one here but ourselves. We’ll have supper and make ourselves comfortable.” + 

Nina looked up, staring about her. “Has Sacha gone out? Oh, I wish she hadn’t!⁠ ⁠… Supposing somebody came.” + 

“No one will come. Who could? No one wants to hurt us! I’ve been here all the afternoon, and no one’s come near the flat. If anybody did come we’ve only got to telephone to Nicholas. He’s with Rozanov all the afternoon.” + 

“Nicholas!” Nina repeated scornfully. “As though he could help anybody.” She looked up. Vera told me afterwards that it was at that moment, when Nina looked such a baby with her tumbled hair and her flushed cheeks stained with tears, that she realised her love for her with a fierceness that for a moment seemed to drown even her love for Lawrence. She caught her to her and hugged her, kissing her again and again. + 

But Nina was suspicious. There were many things that had to be settled between Vera and herself. She did not respond, and Vera let her go. She went into her room, to take off her things. + 

Afterwards they lit the samovar and boiled some eggs and put the caviar and sausage and salt fish and jam on the table. At first they were silent, and then Nina began to recover a little. + 

“You know, Vera, I’ve had an extraordinary day. There were no trams running, of course, and I had to walk all the distance. When I got there I found Katerina Ivanovna in a terrible way because their Masha⁠—whom they’ve had for years, you know⁠—went to a Revolutionary meeting last evening, and was out all night, and she came in this morning and said she wasn’t going to work for them any more, that everyone was equal now, and that they must do things for themselves. Just fancy! When she’s been with them for years and they’ve been so good to her. It upset Katerina Ivanovna terribly, because of course they couldn’t get anyone else, and there was no food in the house.” + 

“Perhaps Sacha won’t come back again.” + 

“Oh, she must! She’s not like that⁠ ⁠… and we’ve been so good to her. Nu⁠ ⁠… Patom, some soldiers came early in the afternoon and they said that some policeman had been firing from Katya’s windows and they must search the flat. They were very polite⁠—quite a young student was in charge of them, he was rather like Boris⁠—and they went all over everything. They were very polite, but it wasn’t nice seeing them stand there with their rifles in the middle of the dining-room. Katya offered them some wine. But they wouldn’t touch it. They said they had been told not to, and they looked quite angry with her for offering it. They couldn’t find the policeman anywhere of course, but they told Katya they might have to burn the house down if they didn’t find him. I think they just said it to amuse themselves. But Katya believed it, and was in a terrible way and began collecting all her china in the middle of the floor, and then Ivan came in and told her not to be silly.” + 

“Weren’t you frightened to come home?” asked Vera. + 

“Ivan wanted to come with me but I wouldn’t let him. I felt quite brave in the flat, as though I’d face anybody. And then every step I took outside I got more and more frightened. It was so strange, so quiet with the trams not running and the shops all shut. The streets are quite deserted except that in the distance you see crowds, and sometimes there were shots and people running.⁠ ⁠… Then suddenly I began to run. I felt as though there were animals in the canals and things crawling about on the ships. And then, just as I thought I was getting home, I saw a man, dead on the snow.⁠ ⁠… I’m not going out alone again until it’s over. I’m so glad I’m back, Vera darling. We’ll have a lovely evening.” + 

They both discovered then how hungry they were, and they had an enormous meal. It was very cosy with the curtains drawn and the wood crackling in the stove and the samovar chuckling. There was a plateful of chocolates, and Nina ate them all. She was quite happy now, and sang and danced about as they cleared away most of the supper, leaving the samovar and the bread and the jam and the sausage for Nicholas and Bohun when they came in. + 

At last Vera sat down in the old red armchair that had the holes and the places where it suddenly went flat, and Nina piled up some cushions and sat at her feet. For a time they were happy, saying very little, Vera softly stroking Nina’s hair. Then, as Vera afterwards described it to me, “Some fright or sudden dread of loneliness came into the room. It was exactly as though the door had opened and someone had joined us⁠ ⁠… and, do you know, I looked up and expected to see Uncle Alexei.” + 

However, of course, there was no one there; but Nina moved away a little, and then Vera, wanting to comfort her, tried to draw her closer, and then of course, Nina (because she was like that) with a little peevish shrug of the shoulders drew even farther away. There was, after that, silence between them, an awkward ugly silence, piling up and up with discomfort until the whole room seemed to be eloquent with it. + 

Both their minds were, of course, occupied in the same direction, and suddenly Nina, who moved always on impulse and had no restraint, burst out: + 

“I must know how Andrey Stepanovitch (their name for Lawrence, because Jeremy had no Russian equivalent) is⁠—I’m going to telephone.” + 

“You can’t,” Vera said quietly. “It isn’t working⁠—I tried an hour ago to get on to Nicholas.” + 

“Well then, I shall go off and find out,” said Nina, knowing very well that she would not. + 

“Oh, Nina, of course you mustn’t.⁠ ⁠… You know you can’t. Perhaps when Nicholas comes in he will have some news for us.” + 

“Why shouldn’t I?” + 

“You know why not. What would he think? Besides, you’re not going out into the town again tonight.” + 

“Oh, aren’t I? And who’s going to stop me?” + 

“I am,” said Vera. + 

Nina sprang to her feet. In her later account to me of this quarrel she said, “You know, Durdles, I don’t believe I ever loved Vera more than I did just then. In spite of her gravity she looked so helpless and as though she wanted loving so terribly. I could just have flung my arms round her and hugged her to death at the very moment that I was screaming at her. Why are we like that?” + 

At any rate Nina stood up there and stamped her foot, her hair hanging all about her face and her body quivering. “Oh, you’re going to keep me, are you? What right have you got over me? Can’t I go and leave the flat at any moment if I wish, or am I to consider myself your prisoner?⁠ ⁠… Tzuineeto, pajalueesta⁠ ⁠… I didn’t know. I can only eat my meals with your permission, I suppose. I have to ask your leave before going to see my friends.⁠ ⁠… Thank you, I know now. But I’m not going to stand it. I shall do just as I please. I’m grown up. No one can stop me.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Vera, her eyes full of distress looked helplessly about her. She never could deal with Nina when she was in these storms of rage, and today she felt especially helpless. + 

“Nina, dear⁠ ⁠… don’t.⁠ ⁠… You know that it isn’t so. You can go where you please, do what you please.” + 

“Thank you,” said Nina, tossing her head. “I’m glad to hear it.” + 

“I know I’m tiresome very often. I’m slow and stupid. If I try you sometimes you must forgive me and be patient.⁠ ⁠… Sit down again and let’s be happy. You know how I love you. Nina, darling⁠ ⁠… come again.” + 

But Nina stood there pouting. She was loving Vera so intensely that it was all that she could do to hold herself back, but her very love made her want to hurt.⁠ ⁠… “It’s all very well to say you love me, but you don’t act as though you do. You’re always trying to keep me in. I want to be free. And Andrey Stepanovitch.⁠ ⁠…” + 

They both paused at Lawrence’s name. They knew that that was at the root of the matter between them, that it had been so for a long time, and that any other pretence would be false. + 

“You know I love him⁠—” said Nina, “and I’m going to marry him.” + 

I can see then Vera taking a tremendous pull upon herself as though she suddenly saw in front of her a gulf into whose depths, in another moment, she would fall. But my vision of the story, from this point, is Nina’s. + 

Vera told me no more until she came to the final adventure of the evening. This part of the scene then is witnessed with Nina’s eyes, and I can only fill in details which, from my knowledge of them both, I believe to have occurred. Nina, knew, of course, what the effect of her announcement would be upon Vera, but she had not expected the sudden thin pallor which stole like a film over her sister’s face, the withdrawal, the silence. She was frightened, so she went on recklessly. “Oh, I know that he doesn’t care for me yet.⁠ ⁠… I can see that of course. But he will. He must. He’s seen nothing of me yet. But I am stronger than he, I can make him do as I wish. I will make him. You don’t want me to marry him and I know why.” + 

She flung that out as a challenge, tossing her head scornfully, but nevertheless watching with frightened eyes her sister’s face. Suddenly Vera spoke, and it was in a voice so stern that it was to Nina a new voice, as though she had suddenly to deal with some new figure whom she had never seen before. + 

“I can’t discuss that with you, Nina. You can’t marry because, as you say, he doesn’t care for you⁠—in that way. Also if he did it would be a very unhappy marriage. You would soon despise him. He is not clever in the way that you want a man to be clever. You’d think him slow and dull after a month with him.⁠ ⁠… And then he ought to beat you and he wouldn’t. He’d be kind to you and then you’d be ruined. I can see now that I’ve always been too kind to you⁠—indeed, everyone has⁠—and the result is, that you’re spoilt and know nothing about life at all⁠—or men. You are right. I’ve treated you as a child too long. I will do so no longer.” + 

Nina turned like a little fury, standing back from Vera as though she were going to spring upon her. “That’s it, is it?” she cried. “And all because you want to keep him for yourself. I understand. I have eyes. You love him. You are hoping for an intrigue with him.⁠ ⁠… You love him! You love him! You love him!⁠ ⁠… and he doesn’t love you and you are so miserable.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Vera looked at Nina, then suddenly turned and burying her head in her hands sobbed, crouching in her chair. Then slipping from the chair, knelt catching Nina’s knees, her head against her dress. + 

Nina was aghast, terrified⁠—then in a moment overwhelmed by a surging flood of love so that she caught Vera to her, caressing her hair, calling her by her little name, kissing her again and again and again. + 

“Verotchka⁠—Verotchka⁠—I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t indeed. I love you. I love you. You know that I do. I was only angry and wicked. Oh, I’ll never forgive myself. Verotchka⁠—get up⁠—don’t kneel to me like that⁠ ⁠… !” + 

She was interrupted by a knock on the outer hall door. To both of them that sound must have been terribly alarming. Vera said afterwards, that “at once we realised that it was the knock of someone more frightened than we were.” + 

In the first place, no one ever knocked, they always rang the rather rickety electric bell⁠—and then the sound was furtive and hurried, and even frantic; “as though,” said Vera, “someone on the other side of the door was breathless.” + 

The sisters stood, close together, for quite a long time without moving. The knocking ceased and the room was doubly silent. Then suddenly it began again, very rapid and eager, but muffled, almost as though someone were knocking with a gloved hand. + 

Vera went then. She paused for a moment in the little hall, for again there was silence and she fancied that perhaps the intruder had given up the matter in despair. But, no⁠—there it was again⁠—and this third time seemed to her, perhaps because she was so close to it, the most urgent and eager of all. She went to the door and opened it. There was no light in the passage save the dim reflection from the lamp on the lower floor, and in the shadow she saw a figure cowering back into the corner behind the door. + 

“Who is it?” she asked. The figure pushed past her, slipping into their own little hall. + 

“But you can’t come in like that,” she said, turning round on him. + 

“Shut the door!” he whispered. “Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi.⁠ ⁠… Shut the door.” + 

She recognised him then. He was the policeman from the corner of their street, a man whom they knew well. He had always been a pompous little man, stout and short of figure, kindly so far as they knew, although they had heard of him as cruel in the pursuit of his official duties. They had once talked to him a little and he explained: “I wouldn’t hurt a fly, God knows,” he had said, “of myself, but a man likes to do his work efficiently⁠—and there are so many lazy fellows about here.” + 

He prided himself, they saw, on a punctilious attention to duty. When he had to come there for some paper or other he was always extremely polite, and if they were going away he helped them about their passports. He told them on another occasion that “he was pleased with life⁠—although one never knew of course when it might come down upon one⁠—” + 

Well, it had come down on him now. A more pitiful object Vera had never seen. He was dressed in a dirty black suit and wore a shabby fur cap, his padded overcoat was torn. + 

But the overwhelming effect of him was terror. Vera had never before seen such terror, and at once, as though the thing were an infectious disease, her own heart began to beat furiously. He was shaking so that the fur cap, which was too large for his head, waggled up and down over his eye in a ludicrous manner. + 

His face was dirty as though he had been crying, and a horrid pallid grey in colour. + 

His collar was torn, showing his neck between the folds of his overcoat. + 

Vera looked out down the stairs as though she expected to see something. The flat was perfectly still. There was not a sound anywhere. She turned back to the man again, he was crouching against the wall. + 

“You can’t come in here,” she repeated. “My sister and I are alone. What do you want?⁠ ⁠… What’s the matter?” + 

“Shut the door!⁠ ⁠… Shut the door!⁠ ⁠… Shut the door!⁠ ⁠…” he repeated. + 

She closed it. “Now what is it?” she asked, and then, hearing a sound, turned to find that Nina was standing with wide eyes, watching. + 

“What is it?” Nina asked in a whisper. + 

“I don’t know,” said Vera, also whispering. “He won’t tell me.” + 

He pushed past them then into the dining-room, looked about him for a moment, then sank into a chair as though his legs would no longer support him, holding on to the cloth with both hands. + 

The sisters followed him into the dining-room. + 

“Don’t shiver like that!” said Vera, “tell us why you’ve come in here?⁠ ⁠…” + 

His eyes looked past them, never still, wandering from wall to wall, from door to door. + 

“They’re after me⁠ ⁠…” he said. “That’s it⁠—I was hiding in our cupboard all last night and this morning. They were round there all the time breaking up our things.⁠ ⁠… I heard them shouting. They were going to kill me. I’ve done nothing⁠—O God! what’s that?” + 

“There’s no one here,” said Vera, “except ourselves.” + 

“I saw a chance to get away and I crept out. But I couldn’t get far.⁠ ⁠… I knew you would be good-hearted⁠ ⁠… good-hearted. Hide me somewhere⁠—anywhere!⁠ ⁠… and they won’t come in here. Only until the evening. I’ve done no one any harm.⁠ ⁠… Only my duty.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He began to snivel, taking out from his coat a very dirty pocket-handkerchief and dabbing his face with it. + 

The odd thing that they felt, as they looked at him, was the incredible intermingling of public and private affairs. Five minutes before they had been passing through a tremendous crisis in their personal relationship. The whole history of their lives together, flowing through how many years, through how many phases, how many quarrels, and happiness and adventures had reached here a climax whose issue was so important that life between them could never be the same again. + 

So urgent had been the affair that during that hour they had forgotten the Revolution, Russia, the war. Moreover, always in the past, they had assumed that public life was no affair of theirs. The Russo-Japanese War, even the spasmodic revolt in 1905, had not touched them except as a wind of ideas which blew so swiftly through their private lives that they were scarcely affected by it. + 

Now in the person of that trembling, shaking figure at their table, the Revolution had come to them, and not only the Revolution, but the strange new secret city that Petrograd was⁠ ⁠… the whole ground was quaking beneath them. + 

And in the eyes of the fugitive they saw what terror of death really was. It was no tale read in a storybook, no recounting of an adventure by some romantic traveller, it was here with them in the flat and at any moment.⁠ ⁠… + 

It was then that Vera realised that there was no time to lose⁠—something must be done at once. + 

“Who’s pursuing you?” she asked, quickly. “Where are they?” + 

He got up and was moving about the room as though he was looking for a hiding-place. + 

“All the people.⁠ ⁠… Everybody!” He turned round upon them, suddenly striking, what seemed to them, a ludicrously grand attitude. “Abominable! That’s what it is. I heard them shouting that I had a machine-gun on the roof and was killing people. I had no machine-gun. Of course not. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had one. But there they were. That’s what they were shouting! And I’ve always done my duty. What’s one to do? Obey one’s superior officer? Of course, what he says one does. What’s life for?⁠ ⁠… and then naturally one expects a reward. Things were going well with me, very well indeed⁠—and then this comes. It’s a degrading thing for a man to hide for a day and a night in a cupboard.” His teeth began to chatter then so that he could scarcely speak. He seemed to be shaking with ague. + 

He caught Vera’s hand. “Save me⁠—save me!” he said. “Put me somewhere.⁠ ⁠… I’ve done nothing disgraceful. They’ll shoot me like a dog⁠—” + 

The sisters consulted. + 

“What are we to do?” asked Nina. “We can’t let him go out to be killed.” + 

“No. But if we keep him here and they come in and find him, we shall all be involved.⁠ ⁠… It isn’t fair to Nicholas or Uncle Ivan.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“We can’t let him go out.” + 

“No, we can’t,” Vera replied. She saw at once how impossible that was. Were he caught outside and shot they would feel that they had his death forever on their souls. + 

“There’s the linen cupboard,” she said. + 

She turned round to Nina. “I’m afraid,” she said, “if you hide here, you’ll have to go into another cupboard. And it can only be for an hour or two. We couldn’t keep you here all night.” + 

He said nothing except “Quick. Take me.” Vera led him into her bedroom and showed him the place. Without another word he pressed in amongst the clothes. It was a deep cupboard, and, although he was a fat man, the door closed quite evenly. + 

It was suddenly as though he had never been, Vera went back to Nina. + 

They stood close to one another in the middle of the room, and talked in whispers. + 

“What are we going to do?” + 

“We can only wait!” + 

“They’ll never dare to search your room, Vera.” + 

“One doesn’t know now⁠ ⁠… everything’s so different.” + 

“Vera, you are brave. Forgive me what I said just now.⁠ ⁠… I’ll help you if you want⁠—” + 

“Hush, Nina dear. Not that now. We’ve got to think⁠—what’s best.⁠ ⁠…” + 

They kissed very quietly, and then they sat down by the table and waited. There was simply nothing else to do. + 

Vera said that, during that pause, she could see the little policeman everywhere. In every part of the room she found him, with his fat legs and dirty, streaky face and open collar. The flat was heavy, portentous with his presence, as though it stood with a self-important finger on its lips saying, “I’ve got a secret in here. Such a secret. You don’t know what I’ve got.⁠ ⁠…” + 

They discussed in whispers as to who would come in first. Nicholas or Uncle Ivan or Bohun or Sacha? And supposing one of them came in while the soldiers were there? Who would be the most dangerous? Sacha? She would scream and give everything away. Suppose they had seen him enter and were simply waiting, on the cat-and-mouse plan, to catch him? That was an intolerable thought. + 

“I think,” said Nina, “I must go and see whether there’s anyone outside.” + 

But there was no need for her to do that. Even as she spoke they heard the steps on the stairs; and instantly afterwards there came the loud knocking on their door. Vera pressed Nina’s hand and went into the hall. + 

“Kto tam⁠ ⁠… Who’s there?” she asked. + 

“Open the door!⁠ ⁠… The Workmen and Soldiers’ Committee demand entrance in the name of the Revolution.” + 

She opened the door at once. During those first days of the Revolution they cherished certain melodramatic displays. + 

Whether consciously or no they built on all the old French Revolution traditions, or perhaps it is that every Revolution produces of necessity the same clothing with which to cover its nakedness. A strange mixture of farce and terror were those detachments of so-called justice. At their head there was, as a rule, a student, often smiling and bespectacled. The soldiers themselves, from one of the Petrograd regiments, were frankly out for a good time and enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but, as is the Slavonic way, playfulness could pass with surprising suddenness to dead earnest⁠—with, indeed, so dramatic a precipitance that the actors themselves were afterwards amazed. Of these “little, regrettable mistakes” there had already, during the week, been several examples. To Vera, with the knowledge of the contents of her linen-cupboard, the men seemed terrifying enough. Their leader was a fat and beaming student⁠—quite a boy. He was very polite, saying “Zdrastvuite,” and taking off his cap. The men behind him⁠—hulking men from one of the Guards regiments⁠—pushed about in the little hall like a lot of puppies, joking with one another, holding their rifles upside down, and making sudden efforts at a seriousness that they could not possibly sustain. + 

Only one of them, an older man with a thick black beard, was intensely grave, and looked at Vera with beseeching eyes, as though he longed to tell her the secret of his life. + 

“What can I do for you?” she asked the student. + 

“Prosteete⁠ ⁠… Forgive us.” He smiled and blinked at her, then put on his cap, clicked his heels, gave a salute, and took his cap off again. “We wish to be in no way an inconvenience to you. We are simply obeying orders. We have instructions that a policeman is hiding in one of these flats.⁠ ⁠… We know, of course, that he cannot possibly be here. Nevertheless we are compelled⁠ ⁠… Prosteete.⁠ ⁠… What nice pictures you have!” he ended suddenly. It was then that Vera discovered that they were by this time in the dining-room, crowded together near the door and gazing at Nina with interested eyes. + 

“There’s no one here, of course,” said Vera, very quietly. “No one at all.” + 

“Tak Tochno,” said the black-bearded soldier, for no particular reason, suddenly. + 

“You will allow me to sit down?” said the student, very politely. “I must, I am afraid, ask a few questions.” + 

“Certainly,” said Vera quietly. “Anything you like.” + 

She had moved over to Nina, and they stood side by side. But she could not think of Nina, she could not think even of the policeman in the cupboard.⁠ ⁠… She could think only of that other house on the Quay where, perhaps even now, this same scene was being enacted. They had found Wilderling.⁠ ⁠… They had dragged him out.⁠ ⁠… Lawrence was beside him.⁠ ⁠… They were condemned together.⁠ ⁠… Oh! love had come to her at last in a wild, surging flood! Of all the steps she had been led until at last, only half an hour before in that scene with Nina, the curtains had been flung aside and the whole view revealed to her. She felt such a strength, such a pride, such a defiance, as she had not known belonged to human power. She had, for many weeks, been hesitating before the gates. Now, suddenly, she had swept through. His death now was not the terror that it had been only an hour before. Nina’s accusation had shown her, as a flash of lightning flings the mountains into view, that now she could never lose him, were he with her or no, and that beside that truth nothing mattered. + 

Something of her bravery and grandeur and beauty must have been felt by them all at that moment. Nina realised it.⁠ ⁠… She told me that her own fear left her altogether when she saw how Vera was facing them. She was suddenly calm and quiet and very amused. + 

The student officer seemed now to be quite at home. He had taken a great many notes down in a little book, and looked very important as he did so. His chubby face expressed great self-satisfaction. He talked half to himself and half to Vera. “Yes⁠ ⁠… Yes⁠ ⁠… quite so. Exactly. And your husband is not yet at home, Madame Markovitch.⁠ ⁠… Nu da.⁠ ⁠… Of course these are very troublesome times, and as you say things have to move in a hurry. + 

“You’ve heard perhaps that Nicholas Romanov has abdicated entirely⁠—and refused to allow his son to succeed. Makes things simpler.⁠ ⁠… Yes.⁠ ⁠… Very pleasant pictures you have⁠—and Ostroffsky⁠—six volumes. Very agreeable. I have myself acted in Ostroffsky at different times. I find his plays very enjoyable. I am sure you will forgive us, Madame, if we walk through your charming flat.” + 

But indeed by this time the soldiers themselves had begun to roam about on their own account. Nina remembers one soldier in especial⁠—a large dirty fellow with ragged moustache⁠—who quite frankly terrified her. He seemed to regard her with particular satisfaction, staring at her, and, as it were, licking his lips over her. He wandered about the room fingering things, and seemed to be immensely interested in Nicholas’s little den, peering through the glass window that there was in the door and rubbing the glass with his finger. He presently pushed the door open and soon they were all in there. + 

Then a characteristic thing occurred. Apparently Nicholas’s inventions⁠—his little pieces of wood and bark and cloth, his glass bottles, and tubes⁠—seemed to them highly suspicious. There was laughter at first, and then sudden silence. Nina could see part of the room through the open door and she watched them as they gathered round the little table, talking together in excited whispers. The tall, rough-looking fellow who had frightened her before picked up one of the tubes, and then, whether by accident or intention, let it fall, and the tinkling smash of the glass frightened them all so precipitately that they came tumbling out into the larger room. The big fellow whispered something to the student, who at once became more self-important than ever, and said very seriously to Vera: + 

“That is your husband’s room, Madame, I understand?” + 

“Yes,” said Vera quietly, “he does his work in there.” + 

“What kind of work?” + 

“He is an inventor.” + 

“An inventor of what?” + 

“Various things.⁠ ⁠… He is working at present on something to do with the making of cloth.” + 

Unfortunately this serious view of Nicholas’s inventions suddenly seemed to Nina so ridiculous that she tittered. She could have done nothing more regrettable. The student obviously felt that his dignity was threatened. He looked at her very severely: + 

“This is no laughing matter,” he said. He himself then got up and went into the inner room. He was there for some time, and they could hear him fingering the tubes and treading on the broken glass. He came out again at last. + 

He was seriously offended. + 

“You should have told us your husband was an inventor.” + 

“I didn’t think it was of importance,” said Vera. + 

“Everything is of importance,” he answered. The atmosphere was now entirely changed. The soldiers were angry⁠—they had, it seemed, been deceived and treated like children. The melancholy fellow with the black beard looked at Vera with eyes of deep reproach. + 

“When will your husband return?” asked the student. + 

“I am afraid I don’t know,” said Vera. She realised that the situation was now serious, but she could not keep her mind upon it. In that house on the Quay what was happening? What had, perhaps, already happened?⁠ ⁠… + 

“Where has he gone?” + 

“I don’t know.” + 

“Why didn’t he tell you where he was going?” + 

“He often does not tell me.” + 

“Ah, that is wrong. In these days one should always say where one is going.” + 

He stood up very stiff and straight. “Search the house,” he said to his men. + 

Suddenly then Vera’s mind concentrated. It was as though, she told me “I came back into the room and saw for the first time what was happening.” + 

“There is no one in the rest of the flat,” she said, “and nothing that can interest you.” + 

“That is for me to judge,” said the little officer grimly. + 

“But I assure you there is nothing,” she went on eagerly. “There is only the kitchen and the bathroom and the five bedrooms.” + 

“Whose bedrooms?” said the officer. + 

“My husband’s, my own, my sister’s, my uncle’s, and an Englishman’s,” she answered, colouring a little. + 

“Nevertheless we must do our duty.⁠ ⁠… Search the house,” he repeated. + 

“But you must not go into our bedrooms,” she said, her voice rising. “There is nothing for you there. I am sure you will respect our privacy.” + 

“Our orders must be obeyed,” he answered angrily. + 

“But⁠—” she cried. + 

“Silence, Madame,” he said, furiously, staring at her as though she were his personal, deadly enemy. + 

“Very well,” said Vera proudly. “Please do as you wish.” + 

The officer walked past her with his head up, and the soldiers followed him, their eyes malicious and inquisitive and excited. The sisters stood together waiting. Of course the end had come. They simply stood there fastening their resolution to the extreme moment. + 

“I must go with them,” said Vera. She followed them into her bedroom. It was a very little place and they filled it, they looked rather sheepish now, whispering to one another. + 

“What’s in there?” said the officer, tapping the cupboard. + 

“Only some clothes,” said Vera. + 

“Open it!” he ordered. + 

Then the world did indeed stand still. The clock ceased to tick, the little rumble in the stove was silenced, the shuffling feet of one of the soldiers stayed, the movement of some rustle in the wall paper was held. The world was frozen. + 

Now I suppose we shall all be shot, was Vera’s thought, repeated over and over again with a ludicrous monotony. Then she could see nothing but the little policeman, tumbling out of the cupboard, dishevelled and terrified. Terrified! what that look in his eyes would be! That at any rate she could not face and she turned her head away from them, looking out through the door into the dark little passage. + 

She heard as though from an infinite distance the words: + 

“Well, there’s nobody there.” + 

She did not believe him of course. He said that whoever he was, to test her, to tempt her to give herself away. But she was too clever for them. She turned back and faced them, and then saw, to the accompaniment of an amazement that seemed like thunder in her ears, that the cupboard was indeed empty. + 

“There is nobody,” said the black-bearded soldier. + 

The student looked rather ashamed of himself. The white clothes, the skirts, and the blouses in the cupboard reproached him. + 

“You will of course understand, Madame,” he said stiffly, “that the search was inevitable. Regrettable but necessary. I’m sure you will see that for your own satisfaction.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“You are assured now that there is no one here?” Vera interrupted him coldly. + 

“Assured,” he answered. + 

But where was the man? She felt as though she were in some fantastic nightmare in which nothing was as it seemed. The cupboard was not a cupboard, the policeman not a policeman.⁠ ⁠… + 

“There is the kitchen,” she said. + 

In the kitchen of course they found nothing. There was a large cupboard in one corner but they did not look there. They had had enough. They returned into the dining-room and there, looking very surprised, his head very high above his collar was Markovitch. + 

“What does this mean?” he asked. + 

“I regret extremely,” said the officer pompously. “I have been compelled to make a search. Duty only⁠ ⁠… I regret. But no one is here. Your flat is at liberty. I wish you good afternoon.” + 

Before Markovitch could ask further questions the room was emptied of them all. They tramped out, laughing and joking, children again, the hall door closed behind them. + 

Nina clutched Vera’s arm. + 

“Vera.⁠ ⁠… Vera, where is he?” + 

“I don’t know,” said Vera. + 

“What’s all this?” asked Nicholas. + 

They explained to him but he scarcely seemed to hear. He was radiant⁠—smiling in a kind of ecstasy. + 

“They have gone? I am safe?” + 

In the doorway was the little policeman, black with grime and dust, so comical a figure that in reaction from the crisis of ten minutes before, they laughed hysterically. + 

“Oh look! look!⁠ ⁠…” cried Nina. “How dirty he is!” + 

“Where have you been?” asked Vera. “Why weren’t you in the cupboard?” + 

The little man’s teeth were chattering, so that he could scarcely speak.⁠ ⁠… + 

“I heard them in the other room. I knew that the cupboard would be the first place. I slipped into the kitchen and hid in the fireplace.” + 

“You’re not angry, Nicholas?” Vera asked. “We couldn’t send him out to be shot.” + 

“What does that matter?” he almost impatiently brushed it aside. “There are other things more important.” He looked at the trembling dirty figure. “Only you’d better go back and hide again until it’s dark. They might come back.⁠ ⁠…” + 

He caught Vera by the arm. His eyes were flames. He drew her with him back into her little room. He closed the door. + 

“The Revolution has come⁠—it has really come,” he cried. + 

“Yes,” she answered, “it has come into this very house. The world has changed.” + 

“The Czar has abdicated.⁠ ⁠… The old world has gone, the old wicked world! Russia is born again!” + 

His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic. + 

Her eyes, too, were alight. She gazed past him. + 

“I know⁠—I know,” she whispered as though to herself. + 

“Russia⁠—Russia,” he went on coming closer and closer, “Russia and you. We will build a new world. We will forget our old troubles. Oh, Vera, my darling, my darling, we’re going to be happy now! I love you so. And now I can hope again. All our love will be clean in this new world. We’re going to be happy at last!” + 

But she did not hear him. She saw into space. A great exultation ran through her body. All lost for love! At last she was awakened, at last she lived, at last, at last, she knew what love was. + 

“I love him! I love him⁠ ⁠… him,” her soul whispered. “And nothing now in this world or the next can separate us.” + 

“Vera⁠—Vera,” Nicholas cried, “we are together at last⁠—as we have never been. And now we’ll work together again⁠—for Russia.” + 

She looked at the man whom she had never loved, with a great compassion and pity. She put her arms around him and kissed him, her whole maternal spirit suddenly aware of him and seeking to comfort him. + 

At the touch of her lips his body trembled with happiness. But he did not know that it was a kiss of farewell.⁠ ⁠… + 

XIII + 

I have no idea at all what Lawrence did during the early days of that week. He has never told me, and I have never asked him. He never, with the single exception of the afternoon at the Astoria, came near the Markovitches, and I know that was because he had now reached a stage where he did not dare trust himself to see Vera⁠—just as she at that time did not trust herself to see him.⁠ ⁠… + 

I do not know what he thought of those first days of the Revolution. I can imagine that he took it all very quietly, doing his duty and making no comment. He had of course his own interest in it, but it would be, I am sure, an entirely original interest, unlike anyone else’s. I remember Dune once, in the long-dead days, saying to me, “It’s never any use guessing what Lawrence is thinking. When you think it’s football it’s Euripides, and when you think it’s Euripides it’s Marie Corelli.” Of all the actors in this affair he remains to me to the last as the most mysterious. I know that he loved Vera with the endurance of the rock, the heat of the flame, the ruthlessness of a torrent, but behind that love there sat the man himself, invisible, silent, patient, watching. + 

He may have had Semyonov’s contempt for the Revolutionary idealist, he may have had Wilderling’s belief in the Czar’s autocracy, he may have had Boris Grogoff’s enthusiasm for freedom and a general holiday. I don’t know. I know nothing at all about it. I don’t think that he saw much of the Wilderlings during the earlier part of the week. He himself was a great deal with the English Military Mission, and Wilderling was with his party whatever that might be. He could see of course that Wilderling was disturbed, or perhaps indignant is the right word. “As though you know,” he said, “some dirty little boy had been pullin’ snooks at him.” Nevertheless the Baroness was the human link. Lawrence would see from the first⁠—that is, from the morning of the Sunday⁠—that she was in an agony of horror. She confided in nobody, but went about as though she was watching for something, and at dinner her eyes never left her husband’s face for a moment. Those evening meals must have been awful. I can imagine the dignity, the solemn heavy room with all the silver, the ceremonious old manservant and Wilderling himself behaving as though nothing at all were the matter. To do him all justice he was as brave as a lion, and as proud as a gladiator, and as conceited as a Prussian. On the Wednesday evening he did not return home. He telephoned that he was kept on important business. + 

The Baroness and Lawrence had the long slow meal together. It was almost more than Jerry could stand having, of course, his own private tortures to face. “It was as though the old lady felt that she had been deputed to support the honour of the family during her husband’s absence. She must have been wild with anxiety, but she showed no sign except that her hand trembled when she raised her glass.” + 

“What did you talk about?” I asked him. + 

“Oh, about anything! Theatres and her home, when she was a girl and England.⁠ ⁠… Awful, every minute of it!” + 

There was a moment towards the end of the meal, when the good lady nearly broke down. The bell in the hall rang and there was a step; she thought it was her husband and half rose. It was, however, the dvornik with a message of no importance. She gave a little sigh. “Oh, I do wish he would come!⁠ ⁠… I do wish he would come!” she murmured to herself. + 

“Oh, he’ll come,” Lawrence reassured her, but she seemed indignant with him for having overheard her. Afterwards, sitting together desolately in the magnificent drawing-room, she became affectionately maternal. I have always wondered why Lawrence confided to me the details of their very intimate conversation. It was exactly the kind of thing he was most reticent about. + 

She asked him about his home, his people, his ambitions. She had asked him about these things before, but tonight there was an appeal in her questions, as though she said: + 

“Take my mind off that other thing. Help me to forget, if it’s only for a moment.” + 

“Have you ever been in love?” she asked. + 

“Yes. Once,” he said. + 

“Was he in love now?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“With someone in Russia?” + 

“Yes.” + 

She hoped that he would be happy. He told her that he didn’t think happiness was quite the point in this particular case. There were other things more important⁠—and, anyway, it was inevitable. + 

“He had fallen in love at first sight?” + 

“Yes. The very first moment.” + 

She sighed. So had she. It was, she thought, the only real way. She asked him whether it might not, after all, turn out better than he expected. + 

No, he did not think that it could. But he didn’t mind how it turned out⁠—at least he couldn’t look that far. The point was that he was in it, up to the neck, and he was never going to be out of it again. + 

There was something boyish about that that pleased her. She put her plump hand on his knee and told him how she had first met the Baron, down in the South, at Kiev, how grand he had looked; how, seeing her across a room full of people, he had smiled at her before he had ever spoken to her or knew her name. “I was quite pretty then,” she added. “I have never regretted our marriage for a single moment,” she said. “Nor, I know, has he.” + 

“We hoped there would be children.⁠ ⁠…” She gave a pathetic little gesture. “We will get away down to the South again as soon as the troubles are over,” she ended. + 

I don’t suppose he was thinking much of her⁠—his mind was on Vera all the time⁠—but after he had left her and lay in bed, sleepless, his mind dwelt on her affectionately, and he thought that he would like to help her. He realised, quite clearly, that Wilderling was in a very dangerous position, but I don’t think that it ever occurred to him for a moment that it would be wise for him to move to another flat. + 

On the next day, Thursday, Lawrence did not return until the middle of the afternoon. The town was, by now, comparatively quiet again. Numbers of the police had been caught and imprisoned, some had been shot and others were in hiding; most of the machine-guns shooting from the roofs had ceased. The abdication of the Czar had already produced the second phase of the Revolution⁠—the beginning of the struggle between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen and Soldiers’ Deputies, and this was proceeding, for the moment, inside the walls of the Duma rather than in the streets and squares of the town. Lawrence returned, therefore, that afternoon with a strange sense of quiet and security. + 

“It was almost, you know, as though this tommyrot about a White Revolution might be true after all⁠—with this jolly old Duma and their jolly old Kerensky runnin’ the show. Of course I’d seen the nonsense about their not salutin’ the officers and all that, but I didn’t think any fellers alive would be such damn fools.⁠ ⁠… I might have known better.” + 

He let himself into the flat and found there a deathlike stillness⁠—no one about and no sound except the tickings of the large clock in the drawing-room. + 

He wandered into that horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn’t know why he was so tired, he had felt quite “bobbish” all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had a bad ache down his spine and his legs were as heavy as lead. He sat in a kind of trance on that sofa, he was not asleep, but he was also, quite certainly, not awake. He wondered why the place was so “beastly still” after all the noise there had been all the week. There was no one left alive⁠—everyone dead⁠—except himself and Vera⁠ ⁠… Vera⁠ ⁠… Vera. + 

Then he was conscious that someone was looking at him through the double-doors. At first he didn’t realise who it was, the face was so white and the figure so quiet, then, pulling himself together, he saw that it was the old servant. + 

“What is it, Andre?” he asked, sitting up. + 

The old man didn’t answer, but came into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. Lawrence saw that he was trembling with fright, but was still endeavouring to behave with dignity. + 

“Barin! Barin!” he whispered, as though Lawrence were a long way from him. “Paul Konstantinovitch! (that was Wilderling). He’s mad.⁠ ⁠… He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, sir, stop him, stop him, or we shall all be murdered!” + 

“What is he doing?” asked Lawrence, standing up. + 

“In the little hack room,” Andre whispered, as though now he were confiding a terrible secret. “Come quickly⁠ ⁠… !” + 

Lawrence followed him; when he had gone a few steps down the passage he heard suddenly a sharp, muffled report. + 

“What’s that?” + 

Andre came close to him, his old, seamed face white like plaster. + 

“He has a rifle in there⁠ ⁠…” he said. “He’s shooting at them!” Then as Lawrence stepped up to the door of the little room that was Wilderling’s dressing-room, Andre caught his arm⁠—. + 

“Be careful, barin.⁠ ⁠… He doesn’t know what he’s about. He may not recognise you.” + 

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Lawrence. He pushed the door open and walked in. To give for a moment his own account of it: “You know that room was the rummiest thing. I’d never been into it before. I knew the old fellow was a bit of a dandy, but I never expected to see all the pots and jars and glasses there were. You’d have thought one wouldn’t have noticed a thing at such a time, but you couldn’t escape them⁠—his dressing-table simply covered⁠—white round jars with pink tops, bottles of hair-oil with ribbons round the neck, manicure things, heaps of silver things, and boxes with Chinese patterns on them, and one thing, open, with what was mighty like rouge in it. And clothes all over the place⁠—red silk dressing-gown with golden tassels, and red leather slippers! + 

“I don’t remember noticing any of this at the moment, but it all comes back to me as soon as I begin to think of it⁠—and the room stank of scent!” + 

But of course it was the old man in the corner who mattered. It was, I think, very significant of Lawrence’s character and his unEnglish-English tradition that the first thing that he felt was the pathos of it. No other Englishman in Petrograd would have seen that at all. + 

Wilderling was crouched in the corner against a piece of gold Japanese embroidery. He was in the shadow, away from the window, which was pushed open sufficiently to allow the muzzle of the rifle to slip between the woodwork and the pane. The old man, his white hair disordered, his clothes dusty, and his hands grimy, crept forward just as Lawrence entered, fired down into the side-street, then moved swiftly back into his corner again. He muttered to himself without ceasing in French, “Chiens! Chiens!⁠ ⁠… Chiens!” He was very hot, and he stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then he saw Lawrence. + 

“What do you want?” he asked, as though he didn’t recognize him. + 

Lawrence moved down the side of the room, avoiding the window. He touched the little man’s arm. + 

“I say, you know,” he said, “this won’t do.” + 

Wilderling smelt of gunpowder, and he was breathing hard as though he had been running desperately. He quivered when Lawrence touched him. + 

“Go away!” he said, “you mustn’t come here.⁠ ⁠… I’ll get them yet⁠—I tell you I’ll get them yet⁠—I tell you I’ll get them⁠—Let them dare⁠ ⁠… Chiens⁠ ⁠… Chiens⁠ ⁠…” He jerked his rifle away from the window and began, with trembling fingers, to load it again. + 

Lawrence gripped his arm. “When I did that,” he said, “it felt as though there wasn’t an arm there at all, but just a bone which I could break if I pressed a bit harder.” + 

“Come away!” he said. “You damn fool⁠—don’t you see that it’s hopeless?” + 

“And I’d always been so respectful to him.⁠ ⁠…” he added in parenthesis. + 

Wilderling hissed at him, saying no words, just drawing in his breath. + 

“I’ve got two of them,” he whispered suddenly. “I’ll get them all.” + 

Then a bullet crashed through the window, burying itself in the opposite wall. + 

After that things happened so quickly that it was impossible to say in what order they occurred. There was suddenly a tremendous noise in the flat. + 

“It was just as though the whole place was going to tumble about our ears. All the pots and bottles began to jump about, and then another bullet came through, landed on the dressing-table, and smashed everything. The looking-glass crashed, and the hair-oil was all over the place. I rushed out to see what was happening in the hall.⁠ ⁠…” + 

What “was happening” was that the soldiers had broken the hall door in. Lawrence saw then a horrible thing. One of the men rushed forward and stuck Andre, who was standing, paralysed, by the drawing-room door, in the stomach. The old man cried out “just like a shot rabbit,” and stood there “for what seemed ages,” with the blood pouring out of his middle. + 

That finished Lawrence. He rushed forward, and they would certainly have “stuck” him too if someone hadn’t cried out, “Look out, he’s an Englishman⁠—an Anglichanin⁠—I know him.” + 

After that, for a time, he was uncertain of anything. He struggled; he was held. He heard noises around him⁠—shouts or murmurs or sighs⁠—that didn’t seem to him to be connected with anything human. He could not have said where he was nor what he was doing. Then, quite suddenly, everything cleared. He came to himself with a consciousness of that utter weariness that he had felt before. He was able to visualise the scene, to take it all in, but as a distant spectator. “It was like nothing so much as watching a cinematograph,” he told me. He could do nothing; he was held by three soldiers, who apparently wished him to be a witness of the whole affair. Andre’s body lay there, huddled up in a pool of drying blood, that glistened under the electric light. One of his legs was bent crookedly under him, and Lawrence had a strange mad impulse to thrust his way forward and put it straight. + 

It was then, with a horrible sickly feeling, exactly like a blow in the stomach, that he realised that the Baroness was there. She was standing, quite alone, at the entrance of the hall, looking at the soldiers, who were about eight in number. + 

He heard her say, “What’s happened? Who are you?⁠ ⁠…” and then in a sharper, more urgent voice, “Where’s my husband?” + 

Then she saw Andre.⁠ ⁠… She gave a sharp little cry, moved forward towards him, and stopped. + 

“I don’t know what she did then,” said Lawrence. “I think she suddenly began to run down the passage. I know she was crying, ‘Paul! Paul! Paul!’⁠ ⁠… I never saw her again.” + 

The officer⁠—an elderly kindly-looking man like a doctor or a lawyer (I am trying to give every possible detail, because I think it important)⁠—then came up to Lawrence and asked him some questions: + 

“What was his name?” + 

“Jeremy Ralph Lawrence.” + 

“He was an Englishman.” + 

“Yes.” + 

“Working at the British Embassy?” + 

“No, at the British Military Mission.” + 

“He was officer?” + 

“Yes.” + 

“In the British Army?” + 

“Yes. He had fought for two years in France.” + 

“He had been lodging with Baron Wilderling?” + 

“Yes. Ever since he came to Russia.” + 

The officer nodded his head. They knew about him, had full information. A friend of his, a Mr. Boris Grogoff, had spoken of him. + 

The officer was then very polite, told him that they regretted extremely the inconvenience and discomfort to which he might be put, but that they must detain him until this affair was concluded⁠—“which will be very soon” added the officer. He also added that he wished Lawrence to be a witness of what occurred so that he should see that, under the new regime in Russia, everything was just and straightforward. + 

“I tried to tell him,” said Lawrence to me, “that Wilderling was off his head. I hadn’t the least hope, of course.⁠ ⁠… It was all quite clear, and, at such a time, quite just. Wilderling had been shooting them out of his window.⁠ ⁠… The officer listened very politely, but when I had finished he only shook his head. That was their affair he said. + 

“It was then that I realised Wilderling. He was standing quite close to me. He had obviously been struggling a bit, because his shirt was all torn, and you could see his chest. He kept moving his hand and trying to pull his shirt over; it was his only movement. He was as straight as a dart, and except for the motion of his hand as still as a statue, standing between the soldiers, looking directly in front of him. He had been mad in that other room, quite dotty. + 

“He was as sane as anything now, grave and serious and rather ironical, just as he always looked. Well it was at that moment, when I saw him there, that I thought of Vera. I had been thinking of her all the time of course. I had been thinking of nothing else for weeks. But that minute, there in the hall, settled me. Callous, wasn’t it? I ought to have been thinking only of Wilderling and his poor old wife. After all, they’d been awfully good to me. She’d been almost like a mother all the time.⁠ ⁠… But there it was. It came over me like a storm. I’d been fighting for nights and days and days and nights not to go to her⁠—fighting like hell, trying to play the game the sentimentalists would call it. I suppose seeing the old man there and knowing what they were going to do to him settled it. It was a sudden conviction, like a blow, that all this thing was real, that they weren’t playing at it, that anyone in the town was as near death as winking.⁠ ⁠… And so there it was! Vera! I’d got to get to her⁠—at once⁠—and never leave her again until she was safe. I’d got to get to her! I’d got to get to her! I’d got to get to her!⁠ ⁠… Nothing else mattered. Not Wilderling’s death nor mine either, except that if I was dead I’d be out of it and wouldn’t be able to help her. They talk about men with one idea. From that moment I had only one idea in all the world⁠—I don’t know that I’ve had any other one since. They talk about scruples, moralities, traditions. They’re all right, but there just are moments in life when they simply don’t count at all.⁠ ⁠… Vera was in danger⁠—Well, that was all that mattered. + 

“The officer said something to Wilderling. I heard Wilderling answer: ‘You’re rebels against His Majesty.⁠ ⁠… I wish I’d shot more of you!’ Fine old boy, you know, whatever way you look at it. + 

“They moved him forward then. He went quite willingly, without any kind of resistance. They motioned to me to follow. We walked out of the flat down the stairs, no one saying a word. We went out on to the Quay. There was no one there. They stood him up against the wall, facing the river. It was dark, and when he was against the wall he seemed to vanish⁠—only I got one kind of gesture, a sort of farewell, you know, his grey hair waving in the breeze from the river. + 

“There was a report, and it was as though a piece of the wall slowly unsettled itself and fell forward. No sound except the report. Oh, he was a fine old boy! + 

“The officer came up to me and said very politely: + 

“ ‘You are free now, sir,’ and something about regretting incivility, and something, I think, about them perhaps wanting me again to give some sort of evidence. Very polite he was. + 

“I was mad, I suppose, I don’t know. I believe I said something to him about Vera, which of course he didn’t understand. + 

“I know I wanted to run like hell to Vera to see that she was safe. + 

“But I didn’t. I walked off as slowly as anything. It was awful. They’d been so good to me, and yet I wasn’t thinking of Wilderling at all.⁠ ⁠…” + 

XIV + 

Markovitch on that same afternoon came back to the flat early. He also, like Lawrence, felt the strange peace and tranquillity of the town, and it seemed inevitably like the confirmation of all his dearest hopes. The Czar was gone, the Old Regime was gone, the people, smiling and friendly, were maintaining their own discipline⁠—above all, Vera had kissed him. + 

He did not go deeper into his heart and see how strained all their recent relations must have been for this now to give him such joy. He left that⁠—it simply was that at last he and Vera understood one another, she had found that she cared for him after all, and that he was necessary to her happiness. What that must mean for their future life together he simply dared not think.⁠ ⁠… It would change the world for him. He felt like the man in the story from whom the curse is suddenly lifted.⁠ ⁠… + 

He walked home through the quiet town, humming to himself. He fancied that there was a warmth in the air, a strange kindly omen of spring, although the snow was still thick on the ground, and the Neva a grey carpet of ice. + 

He came into the flat and found it empty. He went into his little room and started on his inventions. He was so happy that he hummed to himself as he worked and cut slices off his pieces of wood, and soaked flannel in bottles, and wrote funny little sentences in his abominable handwriting in a red notebook. + 

One need not grudge it him, poor Markovitch. It was the last happy half-hour of his life. + 

He did not turn on his green-shaded lamp, but sat there in the gathering dusk, chipping up the wood and sometimes stopping, idly lost in happy thoughts. + 

Someone came in. He peered through his little glass window and saw that it was Nina. She passed quickly through the dining-room, beyond, towards her bedroom, without stopping to switch on the light. + 

Nina had broken the spell. He went back to his table, but he couldn’t work now, and he felt vaguely uneasy and cold. He was just going to leave his work and find the Retch and settle down to a comfortable read, when he heard the hall door close. He stood behind his little glass window and watched; it was Vera, perhaps⁠ ⁠… it must be⁠ ⁠… his heart began eagerly to beat. + 

It was Vera. At once he saw that she was strangely agitated. Before she had switched on the light he realised it. With a click the light was on. Markovitch had intended to open his door and go out to her, smiling. He saw at once that she was waiting for someone.⁠ ⁠… He stood, trembling, on tiptoe, his face pressed against the glass of the pane. + 

Lawrence came in. He had the face, Markovitch told me many weeks afterwards, “of a triumphant man.” + 

They had obviously met outside, because Vera said, as though continuing a conversation: + 

“And it’s only just happened?” + 

“I’ve come straight from there,” Lawrence answered. + 

Then he went up to her. She let herself at once go to him and he half carried her to a chair near the table and exactly opposite Markovitch’s window. + 

They kissed “like people who had been starving all their lives.” Markovitch was trembling so that he was afraid lest he should tumble or make some noise. The two figures in the chair were like statues in their immobile, relentless, unswerving embrace. + 

Suddenly he saw that Nina was standing in the opposite doorway “like a ghost.” She was there for so brief a moment that he could not be sure that she had been there at all. Only her white, frightened face remained with him. + 

One of his thoughts was: + 

“This is the end of my life.” + 

Another was: + 

“How could they be so careless, with the light on, and perhaps people in the flat!” + 

And after that: + 

“They need it so much that they don’t care who sees⁠—Starved people.⁠ ⁠…” + 

And after that: + 

“I’m starved too.” + 

He was so cold that his teeth were chattering, and he crept back from his window, crept into the farthest farthest corner of his little room, and crouched there on the floor, staring and staring, but seeing nothing at all. + 