"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 real y was. It was no tale read in a story-book, no recounting of an adventure by some romantic travel er, 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.
"Al 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 wel 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 shal al 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 for ever 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 al 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 col ar. 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 any one 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-cal ed 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 tel 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 compel ed... _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_ (quite so)," 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 al 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 al 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 Romanoff 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 tal , rough-looking fellow who had frightened her before picked up one of the tubes, and then, whether by accident or intention, let it fal , and the tinkling smash of the glass frightened them al so precipitately that they came tumbling out into the larger room. The big fel ow 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 tel you where he was going?"
"He often does not tel 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 bath-room 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 wel ," 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 fol owed 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 al 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 col ar 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 al . They tramped out, laughing and joking, children again, the hal door closed behind them.
Nina clutched Vera's arm.
"Vera.... Vera, where is he?"
"I don't know," said Vera.
"What's al 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 real y 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. Al 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 al 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 al 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 any one 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 footbal 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 al 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 al the silver, the ceremonious old man-servant 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 bel 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 to-night 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 some one 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 al , 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 Kieff, 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 he 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 wal s 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 tommy-rot about a White Revolution might be true after all--with this jolly old Duma and their jol y old Kerensky runnin' the show. Of course I'd seen the nonsense about their not salutin' the officers and al that, but I didn't think any fel ers alive would be such dam fools.... I might have known better."
He let himself into the flat and found there a death-like 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" al 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--every one dead--except himself and Vera... Vera... Vera.
Then he was conscious that some one 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 mur