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 repel ed 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, far-away England who would be the wife to him that she would be.
Then the cursed misery of that waiting! They could hear in their sitting-room the steps coming up the stone stairs outside their flat, and every step seemed to be his. Ah, he had come earlier than he had fixed. Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfal ; she knew it so wel . There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause; soon there would be the tinkle of the bel !...
No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence--only some stupid, ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her, and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a little, her eyes hot and suspicious.
I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again, never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic.
Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world.
At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes were wild with excitement. Any one who looked at her closely must have noticed her strangeness, but they were al discussing the events of the last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false and a few; true facts.
No one in reality knew anything except that there had been some demonstrations, a little shooting, and a number of excited speeches. The town on that lovely winter morning seemed absolutely quiet.
Somewhere about mid-day Semyonov came in, and without thinking about it Nina suddenly found herself sitting in the window talking to him. This conversation, which was in its results to have an important influence on her whole life, continued the development which that eventful Sunday was to effect in her. Its importance lay very largely in the fact that her uncle had never spoken to her seriously like a grown-up woman before.
Semyonov was, of course, quite clever enough to realise the change which was transforming her, and he seized it, at once, for his own advantage.
She, on her side, had always, ever since she could remember, been intrigued by him. She told me once that almost her earliest memory was being lifted into the air by her uncle and feeling the thick solid strength of his grasp, so that she was like a feather in the air, poised on one of his stubborn fingers; when he kissed her each hair of his beard seemed like a pale, taut wire, so stiff and resolute was it. Her Uncle Ivan was a flabby, effeminate creature in comparison. Then, as she had grown older, she had realised that he was a dangerous man, dangerous to women, who loved and feared and hated him. Vera said that he had great power over them and made them miserable, and that he was, therefore, a bad, wicked man. But this only served to make him, in Nina's eyes, the more a romantic figure.
However, he had never treated her in the least seriously, had tossed her in the air spiritual y 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--wel --Vera was a staid old-fashioned thing.... Perhaps they al misjudged him; perhaps he real y needed comfort and consolation. He certainly seemed kinder than he used to be.
But, until to-day, he had never talked to her seriously.
How her heart leapt into her throat when he began, at once, in his quiet soft voice,
"Well, Nina dear, tell me all about it. I know, so you needn't be frightened. I know and I understand."
She flung a terrified glance around her, but Uncle Ivan was reading the paper at the other end of the room, her brother-in-law was cutting up little pieces of wood in his workshop, and Vera was in the kitchen.
"What do you mean?" she said in a whisper. "I don't understand."
"Yes, you do," he answered, smiling at her. "You know, Nina, you're in love with the Englishman, and have been for a long time. Well, why not?
Don't be so frightened about it. It is quite time that you should be in love with some one, and he's a fine strong young man--not over-blessed with brains, but you can supply that part of it. No, I think it's a very good match. I like it. Believe me, I'm your friend, Nina." He put his hand on hers.
He looked so kind, she told me afterwards, that she felt as though she had never known him before; her eyes were filled with tears, so overwhelming a relief was it to find some one at last who sympathised and understood and wanted her to succeed. I remember that she was wearing that day a thin black velvet necklet with a very smal 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 natural y 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 al 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 al that there was to the conversation, but it was quite enough to make Nina feel as though she had already won her heart's desire. If any one as clever as her uncle believed in this, then 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 al . The ice quivered under the sun and the snowclouds rose higher and higher into the blue, and once and again a bell chimed and jangled.... There was an amazing peace. Through this peaceful world Nina and Lawrence walked. His mind must, I know, have been very far away from Nina, probably he saw nothing of her little attempts at friendship; her gasping sentences that seemed to her so daring and significant he scarcely heard. His only concern was to endure the walk as politely as possible and return to Vera.
Perhaps if she had not had that conversation with her uncle she would have realised more clearly how slight a response was made to her, but she thought only that this was his English shyness and gaucherie--she must go slowly and careful y. 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 al . 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 al 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!" Wel , 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 al that evening was Markovitch. He sat huddled over his food and never said a word. If he looked up at al he glowered, and so soon as he had finished eating he returned to his workshop, closing the door behind him. I caught Semyonov looking at him with a pleasant, speculative smile....
At last Vera, Nina, Lawrence, and I started for the theatre. I can't say that I was expecting a very pleasant evening, but the deathlike stillness, both of ourselves and the town did, I confess, startle me.
Scarcely a word was exchanged by us between the English Prospect and Saint Isaac's Square. The square looked lovely in the bright moonlight, and I said something about it. It was indeed very fine, the cathedral like a hovering purple cloud, the old sentry in his high peaked hat, the black statue, and the blue shadows over the snow. It was then that Lawrence, with an air of determined strength, detached Vera from us and walked ahead with her. I saw that he was talking eagerly to her.
Nina said, with a little shudder, "Isn't it quiet, Durdles? As though there were ghosts round every corner."
"Hope you enjoyed your walk this afternoon," I said.
"No, it was quiet then. But not like it is now. Let's walk faster and catch the others up. Do you believe in ghosts, Durdles?"
"Yes, I think I do."
"So do I. Was it true, do you think, about the people being shot at the Nicholas Station to-day?"
"I daresay."
"Perhaps al the dead people are crowding round here now. Why isn't any one out walking?"
"I suppose they are all frightened by what they've heard, and think it better to stay at home."
We were walking down the Morskaia, and our feet gave out a ringing echo.
"Let's keep up with them," Nina said. When we had joined the others I found that they were both silent--Lawrence very red, Vera pale. We were all feeling rather weary. A woman met us. "You aren't allowed to cross the Nevski," she said; "the Cossacks are stopping everybody." I can see her now, a stout, red-faced woman, a shawl over her head, and carrying a basket. Another woman, a prostitute I should think, came up and joined us.
"What is it?" she asked us.
The stout woman repeated in a trembling, agitated voice, "You aren't allowed to cross the Nevski. The Cossacks are stopping everybody."
The prostitute shook her head in her alarm, and little flakes of powder detached themselves from her nose. "_Bozhe moi_--_bozhe moi_!" she said, "and I promised not to be late."
Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation.
"We'll go and see," she said, "what is real y 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 chal enge, 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 al 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 al 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--wel , that impulse had passed. Protopopoff and his men had triumphed.
We were al now in the shal ows 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 shal 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 real y like a man in agony. The words coming from him in little tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately, with pain at every breath that he drew.
"She's afraid of herself, I expect, not of you." I put my hand on his sleeve. "Lawrence," I said, "go home. Go back to England. This is becoming too much for both of you. Nothing can come of it, but unhappiness for everybody."
"No!" he said. "It's too late for any of your Platonic advice, Durward.
I'm going to have her, even though the earth turns upside down."
We went up the steps and into the theatre. There was, of course, scarcely any one there. The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the stal s 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 al 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 gal ery laughed, and every one looked up frowning. The play began. It was, I think, _Les Idees de Francoise_, but of that I cannot be sure. It was a farce of the regular French type, with a bedroom off, and marionettes who continually separated into couples and giggled together. The giggling to-night was of a sadly hol ow 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 al about the stage. The four of us sat as solemn as statues--I don't think one of us smiled. It was during the second Act that I suddenly laughed.
I don't know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and Nina thinking of nothing but Lawrence, and the audience thinking of their safety, and the players thinking of their salaries, and Protopopoff at home thinking of his victory, and the Czar in Tsarskoe thinking of his Godsent autocracy, and Europe thinking of its ideals, and Germany thinking of its militarism--all self-justified, al mistaken, and al 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 Mdl e. Flori on the other side of the footlights, Trenchard and Marie killed in Galicia, the Kaiser and Hindenburg, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the postmaster of my village in Glebeshire.
The curtain is coming down, the fat husband is deceived once again, the lovers are in the bedroom listening behind the door, the comic waiter is winking at the chamber-maid....
The lights are up and we are alone again in the deserted theatre.
Towards the end of the last interval I went out into the passage behind the stal s to escape from the chastened whispering that went trembling up and down like the hissing of terrified snakes. I leaned against the wal in the deserted passage and watched the melancholy figure of the cloak-room attendant huddled up on a chair, his head between his hands.
Suddenly I saw Vera. She came up to me as though she were going to walk past me, and then she stopped and spoke. She talked fast, not looking at me, but beyond, down the passage.
"I'm sorry, Ivan Andreievitch," she said. "I was cross the other day. I hurt you. I oughtn't to have done that."
"You know," I said, "that I never thought of it for a minute."
"No, I was wrong. But I've been terribly worried during these last weeks. I've thought it all out to-day and I've decided--" there was a catch in her breath and she paused; she went on--"decided that there mustn't be any more weakness. I'm much weaker than I thought. I would be ashamed if I didn't think that shame was a silly thing to have. But now I am quite clear; I must make Nicholas and Nina happy. Whatever else comes I must do that. It has been terrible, these last weeks. We've all been angry and miserable, and now I must put it right. I can if I try.
I've been forgetting that I chose my own life myself, and now I mustn't be cowardly because it's difficult. I will make it right myself...."
She paused again, then she said, looking me straight in the face,
"Ivan Andreievitch, does Nina care for Mr. Lawrence?"
She was looking at me, with large black eyes so simply, with such trust in me, that I could only tell her the truth.
"Yes," I said, "she does."
Her eyes fel , 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 bel 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 al the memories of the preceding evening that of Markovitch huddled over his food, sul en and glowering, with Semyonov watching him, was predominant.
Markovitch was, so to speak, the dark horse of them al , 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 al . 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 deepl