But she shook her head.
"No, no, I can't. Give her my--" Then she stopped. "No, tell her nothing."
"Can I tel her you're happy?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm all right," she answered roughly, turning away from me.
X
But the adventures of that Easter Monday night were not yet over. I had walked away with Bohun; he was very silent, depressed, poor boy, and shy with the reaction of his outburst.
"I made the most awful fool of myself," he said.
"No, you didn't," I answered.
"The trouble of it is," he said slowly, "that neither you nor I see the humorous side of it al strongly enough. We take it too seriously. It's got a funny side al right."
"Maybe you're right," I said. "But you must remember that the Markovitch situation isn't exactly funny just now--and we're both in the middle of it. Oh! if only I could find Nina back home and Semyonov away, I believe the strain would lift. But I'm frightened that something's going to happen. I've grown very fond of these people, you know, Bohun--Vera and Nina and Nicholas. Isn't it odd how one gets to love Russians--more than one's own people? The more stupid things they do the more you love them--whereas with one's own people it's quite the other way. Oh, I do _want_ Vera and Nina and Nicholas to be happy!"
"Isn't the town queer to-night?" said Bohun, suddenly stopping. (We were just at the entrance to the Mariensky Square.)
"Yes," I said. "I think these days between the thaw and the white nights are in some ways the strangest of al . There seems to be so much going on that one can't quite see."
"Yes--over there--at the other end of the Square--there's a kind of mist--a sort of water-mist. It comes from the Canal."
"And do you see a figure like an old bent man with a red lantern? Do you see what I mean--that red light?"
"And those shadows on the further wal like riders passing with silver-tipped spears? Isn't it...? There they go--ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen...."
"How still the Square is? Do you see those three windows all alight?
Isn't there a dance going on? Don't you hear the music?"
"No, it's the wind."
"No, surely.... That's a flute--and then violins. Listen! Those are fiddles for certain!"
"How still, how still it is!"
We stood and listened whilst the white mist gathered and grew over the cobbles. Certainly there was a strain of music, very faint and dim, threading through the air.
"Well, I must go on," said Bohun. "You go up to the left, don't you?
Good-night." I watched Bohun's figure cross the Square. The light was wonderful, like fold on fold of gauze, but opaque, so that buildings showed with sharp outline behind it. The moon was ful and quite red. I turned to go home and ran straight into Lawrence.
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Are you a ghost too?"
He didn't seem to feel any surprise at meeting me. He was plainly in a state of tremendous excitement. He spoke breathlessly.
"You're exactly the man. You must come back with me. My diggings now are only a yard away from here."
"It's very late," I began, "and--"
"Things are desperate," he said. "I don't know--" he broke off. "Oh!
come and help me, Durward, for God's sake!"
I went with him, and we did not exchange another word until we were in his rooms.
He began hurriedly taking off his clothes. "There! Sit on the bed.
Different from Wilderling's, isn't it? Poor devil.... I'm going to have a bath if you don't mind--I've got to clear my head."
He dragged out a tin bath from under his bed, then a big can of water from a corner. Stripped, he looked so thick and so strong, with his short neck and his bull-dog build, that I couldn't help saying,
"You don't look a day older than the last time you played Rugger for Cambridge."
"I am, though." He sluiced the cold water over his head, grunting. "Not near so fit--gettin' fat too.... Rugger days are over. Wish al my other days were over too."
He got out of the bath, wiped himself, put on pyjamas, brushed his teeth, then his hair, took out a pipe, and then sat beside me on the bed.
"Look here, Durward," he said. "I'm desperate, old man." (He said
"desprite.") "We're all in a hell of a mess."
"I know," I said.
He puffed furiously at his pipe.
"You know, if I'm not careful I shal go a bit queer in the head. Get so angry, you know," he added simply.
"Angry with whom?" I asked.
"With myself mostly for bein' such a bloody fool. But not only myself--with Civilisation, Durward, old cock!--and also with that swine Semyonov."
"Ah, I thought you'd come to him," I said.
"Now the points are these," he went on, counting on his thick stubbly fingers. "First, I love Vera--and when I say love I mean love. Never been in love before, you know--honest Injun, never.... Never had affairs with tobacconists' daughters at Cambridge--never had an affair with a woman in my life--no, never. Used to wonder what was the matter with me, why I wasn't like other chaps. Now I know. I was waitin' for Vera. Quite simple. I shal never love any one again--never. I'm not a kid, you know, like young Bohun--I love Vera once and for all, and that's that..."
"Yes," I said. "And the next point?"
"The next point is that Vera loves me. No need to go into that--but she does."
"Yes, she does," I said.
"Third point, she's married, and although she don't love her man she's sorry for him. Fourth point, he loves her. Fifth point, there's a damned swine hangin' round called Alexei Petrovitch Semyonov.... Wel , then, there you have it."
He considered, scratching his head. I waited. Then he went on:
"Now it would be simpler if she didn't want to be kind to Nicholas, if Nicholas didn't love her, if--a thousand things were different. But they must be as they are, I suppose. I've just been with her. She's nearly out of her mind with worry."
He paused, puffing furiously at his pipe. Then he went on:
"She's worrying about me, about Nina, and about Nicholas. And especial y about Nicholas. There's something wrong with him. He knows about my kissing her in the flat. Wel , that's al right. I meant him to know.
Everything's just got to be above-board. But Semyonov knows too, and that devil's been raggin' him about it, and Nicholas is just like a bloomin' kid. That's got to stop. I'll wring that fel er's neck. But even that wouldn't help matters much. Vera says Nicholas is not to be hurt whatever happens. 'Never mind us,' she says, 'we're strong and can stand it.' But he can't. He's weak. And she says he's just goin' off his dot. And it's got to be stopped--it's just got to be stopped. There's only one way to stop it."
He stayed: suddenly he put his heavy hand on my knee.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I've got to clear out. That's what I mean. Right away out. Back to England."
I didn't speak.
"That's it," he went on, but now as though he were talking to himself.
"That's what you've got to do, old son.... She says so, and she's right.
Can't alter our love, you know. Nothing changes that. We've got to hold on... Ought to have cleared out before...."
Suddenly he turned. He almost flung himself upon me. He gripped my arms so that I would have cried out if the agony in his eyes hadn't held me.
"Here," he muttered, "let me alone for a moment. I must hold on. I'm pretty wel beat. I'm just about done."
For what seemed hours we sat there. I believe it was, in reality, only a few minutes. He sat facing me, his eyes staring at me but not seeing me, his body close against me, and I could see the sweat glistening on his chest through the open pyjamas. He was rigid as though he had been struck into stone.
He suddenly relaxed.
"That's right," he said; "thanks, old man. I'm better now. It's a bit late, I expect, but stay on a while."
He got into bed. I sat beside him, gripped his hand, and ten minutes later he was asleep.
XI
The next day, Tuesday, was stormy with wind and rain. It was strange to see from my window the whirlpool of ice-encumbered waters. The rain fell in slanting, hissing sheets upon the ice, and the ice, in lumps and sheets and blocks, tossed and heaved and spun. At times it was as though all the ice was driven by some strong movement in one direction, then it was like the whole pavement of the world slipping down the side of the firmament into space. Suddenly it would be checked and, with a kind of quiver, station itself and hang chattering and clutching until the sweep would begin in the opposite direction!
I could see only dimly through the mist, but it was not difficult to imagine that, in very truth, the days of the flood had returned. Nothing could be seen but the tossing, heaving welter of waters with the ice, grim and grey through the shadows, like "ships and monsters, sea-serpents and mermaids," to quote Gal eon's _Spanish Nights_.
Of course the water came in through my own roof, and it was on that very afternoon that I decided, once and for al , to leave this abode of mine.
Romantic it might be; I felt it was time for a little comfortable realism. My old woman brought me the usual cutlets, macaroni, and tea for lunch; then I wrote to a friend in England; and final y, about four o'clock, after one more look at the hissing waters, drew my curtains, lit my candles, and sat down near my stove to finish that favourite of mine, already mentioned in these pages, De la Mare's _The Return_.
I read on with absorbed attention. I did not hear the dripping on the roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught, and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you remember the book's closing words?--
"Once, like Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard the steady surge of multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of Time's winged chariot hurrying near, then he too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friend's denuded battlefield."
"Shadowy companion," "multitudinous rain-drops," "a weary old sentinel,"
"his friend's denuded battlefield"... the words echoed like little muffled bel s in my brain, and it was, I suppose, to their chiming that I fell into dreamless sleep.
From this I was suddenly roused by the sharp noise of knocking, and starting up, my book clattering to the floor, I saw facing me, in the doorway, Semyonov. Twice before he had come to me just like this--out of the heart of a dreamless sleep. Once in the orchard near Buchatch, on a hot summer afternoon; once in this same room on a moonlit night. Some strange consciousness, rising, it seemed, deep out of my sleep, told me that this would be the last time that I would so receive him.
"May I come in?" he said.
"If you must, you must," I answered. "I am not physically strong enough to prevent you."
He laughed. He was dripping wet. He took off his hat and overcoat, sat down near the stove, bending forward, holding his cloak in his hands and watching the steam rise from it.
I moved away and stood watching. I was not going to give him any possible illusion as to my welcoming him. He turned round and looked at me.
"Truly, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, "you are a fine host. This is a miserable greeting."
"There can be no greetings between us ever again," I answered him. "You are a blackguard. I hope that this is our last meeting."
"But it is," he answered, looking at me with friendliness; "that is precisely why I've come. I've come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?" I repeated with astonishment. This chimed in so strangely with my premonition. "I never was more delighted to hear it. I hope you're going a long distance from us al ."
"That's as may be," he answered. "I can't tell you definitely."
"When are you going?" I asked.
"That I can't tel you either. But I have a premonition that it will be soon."
"Oh, a premonition," I said, disappointed. "Is nothing settled?"
"No, not definitely. It depends on others."
"Have you told Vera and Nicholas?"
"No--in fact, only last night Vera begged me to go away, and I told her that I would love to do anything to oblige her, but this time I was afraid that I couldn't help her. I would be compel ed, alas, to stay on indefinitely."
"Look here, Semyonov," I said, "stop that eternal fooling. Tell me honestly--are you going or not?"
"Going away from where?" he asked, laughing.
"From the Markovitches, from al of us, from Petrograd?"
"Yes--I've told you already," he answered. "I've come to say good-bye."
"Then what did you mean by telling Vera--"
"Never you mind, Ivan Andreievitch. Don't worry your poor old head with things that are too complicated for you--a habit of yours, I'm afraid.
Just believe me when I say that I've come to say good-bye. I have an intuition that we shal never talk together again. I may be wrong. But my intuitions are general y correct."
I noticed then that his face was haggard, his eyes dark, the light in them exhausted as though he had not slept.... I had never before seen him show positive physical distress. Let his soul be what it might, his body seemed always triumphant.
"Whether your intuition is right or no," I said, "this _is_ the last time. I never intend to speak to you again if I can help it. The day that I hear that you have real y left us, never to return, will be one of the happiest days of my life."
Semyonov gave me a strange look, humorous, ironical, and, upon my word, almost affectionate: "That's very sad what you say, Ivan Andreievitch--if you mean it. And I suppose you mean it, because you English always do mean what you say.... But it's sad because, truly, I have friendly feelings towards you, and you're almost the only man in the world of whom I could say that."
"You speak as though your friendship were an honour," I said hotly.
"It's a degradation."
He smiled. "Now that's melodrama, straight out of your worst English plays. _And_ how bad they can be!... But you hadn't always this vehement hatred. What's changed your mind?"
"I don't know that I _have_ changed my mind," I answered. "I think I've always disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course--but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you've been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You've set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth.... You deserve hanging, if any murderer ever did!"
He looked at me so mildly and with such genuine interest that I was compelled to feel my indignation a whit melodramatic.
"If you are going," I said more calmly, "for Heaven's sake go! It _can't_ be any pleasure to you, clever and talented as you are, to bait such harmless people as Vera and Nicholas. You've done harm enough.
Leave them, and I forgive you everything."
"Ah, of course your forgiveness is of the first importance to me," he said, with ironic gravity. "But it's true enough. You're going to be bothered with me--I _do_ seem a worry to you, don't I?--for only a few days more. And how's it going to end, do you think? Who's going to finish me off? Nicholas or Vera? Or perhaps our English Byron, Lawrence?
Or even yourself? Have you your revolver with you? I shal offer no resistance, I promise you."
Suddenly he changed. He came closer to me. His weary, exhausted eyes gazed straight into mine: "Ivan Andreievitch, never mind about the rest--never mind whether you do or don't hate me, that matters to nobody. What I tel you is the truth. I have come to you, as I have always come to you, like the moth to the flame. Why am I always pursuing you? Is it for the charm and fascination of your society? Your wit? Your beauty? I won't flatter you--no, no, it's because you alone, of all these fools here, knew her. You knew her as no one else alive knew her.
She liked you--God knows why! At least I do know why--it was because of her youth and innocence and simplicity, because she didn't know a wise man from a fool, and trusted al alike.... But you knew her, you knew her. You remember her and can talk of her. Ah, how I've hungered, hungered, to talk to you about her! Sometimes I've come al this way and then turned back at the door. How I've prayed that it might have been some other who knew her, some real man, not a sentimental, gloomy old woman like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. And yet you have your points.
You have in you the things that she saw--you are honest, you are brave.... You are like a good English clergyman. But she!... I should have had some one with wit, with humour, with a sense of life about her.
Al the things, al the little things--the way she walked, her clothes, her smile--when she was cross! Ah, she was divine when she was cross!...
Ivan Andreievitch, be kind to me! Think for a moment less of your morals, less of your principles--and talk to me of her! Talk to me of her!"
He had drawn quite close to me; he looked like a madman--I have no doubt that, at that moment, he was one.
"I can't!... I won't!" I answered, drawing away. "She is the most sacred memory I have in my life. I hate to think of her with you. And that because you smirch everything you touch. I have no feeling of jealousy...."
"You? Jealousy!" he said, looking at me scornful y. "Why should you be jealous?"
"I loved her too," I said.
He looked at me. In spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot--my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame--everything was comprehended in the scorn of that glance.
"No," I said, "you need not suppose that she ever realised. She did not.
I would have died rather than have spoken of it. But I will not talk about her. I will not."
He drew away from me. His face was grave; the mockery had left it.
"Oh, you English, how strange you are!... In trusting, yes.... But the things you miss! I understand now many things. I give up my desire. You shan't smirch your precious memories.... And you, too, must understand that there has been all this time a link that has bound us.... Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I?... Rather ask, what am I? I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit--what you like. If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at al , Ivan Andreievitch.
Perhaps this is a ghost that you see.... What if the town has changed in the night and strange souls have slipped into our old bodies?
"Isn't there a stir about the town? Is it I that pursue Nicholas, or is it my ghost that pursues myself? Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I fol ow?... Don't be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb:
'There's a secret city in every man's heart. It is at that city's altars that the true prayers are offered.' There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months."
He came up to me:
"Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I'm a haunted man, you know."
He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone.
XII
That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave--and beyond it, I expect.
He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough.
Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as it had always been. The storm that had raged al day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading table-cloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov's musical-box, on the old knick-knacks and the untidy shelf of books.
(Bohun looked especial y to see whether the musical-box were still there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day's efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenieff's _House of Gentle-folks_, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.
He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing this, of course, from Bohun's account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front.
"There!" Semyonov would say, pausing. "Now, Nicholas... What do you say to that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course, although our friend the _Retch_ doesn't put it quite so bluntly. The _Novaya Jezn_ of course highly approves. Here's another...." This went on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov's voice was Markovitch's padding steps. "Ah! here's another bit!... Now what about that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they've been doing near Riga! It says...."
"Can't you leave it alone, Alexei? Keep your paper to yourself!"
These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch's ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder.
"There's gratitude--when I'm trying to interest you! How childish, too, not to face the real situation! Do you think you're going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn't exist? So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution! How long is it? Let me see... March, April...
yes, just about six weeks.... Wel , wel !"
"Leave me alone, Alexei!... Leave me alone!"
Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at control behind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable. He wanted, there and then, to have left the room. It would have been better for him had he done so. But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scene developed, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid too emphatic a stress on the discomfort of it.
He hoped that in a moment Vera or Uncle Ivan would come and the scene would end.
Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: "What were those words you used to me not so long ago? Something about free Russia, I think--Russia moving like one man to save the world--Russia with an unbroken front.... Too optimistic, weren't you?"
The padding feet stopped. In a whisper that seemed to Bohun to fill the room with echoing sound Markovitch said:
"You have tempted me for weeks now, Alexei.... I don't know why you hate me so, nor why you pursue me. Go back to your own place. If I am an unfortunate man, and by my own fault, that should be nothing to you who are more fortunate."
"Torment you! I?... My dear Nicholas, never! But you are so childish in your ideas--and are you unfortunate? I didn't know it. Is it about your inventions that you are speaking? Well, they were never very happy, were they?"
"You praised them to me!"
"Did I?... My foolish kindness of heart, I'm afraid. To tel the truth, I was thankful when you saw things as they were..."
"You took them away from me."
"I took them away? What nonsense! It was your own wish--Vera's wish too."
"Yes, you persuaded both Vera and Nina that they were no good. They believed in them before you came."
"You flatter me, Nicholas. I haven't such power over Vera's opinions, I'm afraid. If I tel her anything she believes at once the opposite.
You must have seen that yourself."
"You took her belief away from me. You took her love away from me."
Semyonov laughed. That laugh seemed to rouse Markovitch to frenzy. He screamed out. "You have taken everything from me!... You will not leave me alone! You must be careful. You are in danger, I tel you."
Semyonov sprang up from his chair, and the two men, advancing towards one another, came into Bohun's vision.
Markovitch was like a madman, his hands raised, his eyes staring from his head, his body trembling. Semyonov was quiet, motionless, smiling, standing very close to the other.
"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked.
Markovitch stood for a moment, his hands raised, then his whole body seemed to col apse. He moved away, muttering something which Bohun could not hear. With shuffling feet, his head lowered, he went out of the room. Semyonov returned to his seat.
To Bohun, an innocent youth with very simple and amiable ideas about life, the whole thing seemed "beastly beyond words."
"I saw a man torture a dog once," he told me. "He didn't do much to it really. Tied it up to a tree and dug into it with a pen-knife. I went home and was sick.... Wel , I felt sick this time, too."
Nevertheless his own "sickness" was not the principal affair. The point was the sense of danger that seemed now to tinge with its own faint stain every article in the room. Bohun's hatred of Semyonov was so strong that he felt as though he would never be able to speak to him again; but it was not really of Semyonov that he was thinking. His thoughts were all centred round Markovitch. You must remember that for a long time now he had considered himself Markovitch's protector. This sense of his protection had developed in him an affection for the man that he would not otherwise have felt. He did not, of course, know of any of Markovitch's deepest troubles. He could only guess at his relations with Vera, and he did not understand the passionate importance that he attached to his Russian idea. But he knew enough to be aware of his childishness, his simplicity, his _naivete_, and his essential goodness. "He's an awful y decent sort, real y," he used to say in a kind of apologetic defence. The very fact of Semyonov's strength made his brutality seem now the more revolting. "Like hitting a fellow half your size"....
He saw that things in that flat were approaching a climax, and he knew enough now of Russian impetuosity to realise that climaxes in that country are, very often, no ordinary affairs. It was just as though there were an evil smel in the flat, he explained to me. "It seemed to hang over everything. Things looked the same and yet they weren't the same at all."
His main impression that "something would very soon happen if he didn't look out," drove everything else from his mind--but he didn't quite see what to do. Speak to Vera? To Nicholas? To Semyonov?... He didn't feel qualified to do any of these things.
He went to bed that night early, about ten o'clock. He couldn't sleep.
His door was not quite closed and he could hear first Vera, then Uncle Ivan, lastly Markovitch go to bed. He lay awake then, with that exaggerated sense of hearing that one has in the middle of the night, when one is compelled, as it were, against one's will, to listen for sounds. He heard the dripping of the tap in the bathroom, the creaking of some door in the wind (the storm had risen again) and all the thousand and one little uncertainties, like the agitated beating of innumerable hearts that penetrate the folds and curtains of the night.
As he lay there he thought of what he would do did Markovitch real y go off his head. He had a revolver, he knew. He had seen it in his hand.
And then what was Semyonov after? My explanation had seemed, at first, so fantastic and impossible that Bohun had dismissed it, but now, after the conversation that he had just overheard, it did not seem impossible at al --especially in the middle of the night. His mind travel ed back to his own first arrival in Petrograd, that first sleep at the "France"
with the dripping water and the crawling rats, the plunge into the Kazan Cathedral, and everything that fol owed.
He did not see, of course, his own progress since that day, or the many things that Russia had already done for him, but he did feel that such situations as the one he was now sharing were, to-day, much more in the natural order of things than they would have been four months before....
He dozed off and then was awakened, sharply, abruptly, by the sound of Markovitch's padded feet. There could be no mistaking them; very softly they went past Bohun's door, down the passage towards the dining-room.
He sat up in bed, and