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,”6 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 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 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. …