V
On my return I found Vera alone waiting for me with restless impatience.
“Well?” she said eagerly. Then when she saw that I was alone her face clouded.
“I trusted you—” she began.
“It’s no good,” I said at once. “Not for the moment. She’s made up her mind. It’s not because she loved him nor, I think, for anything very much that her uncle said. She’s got some idea in her head. Perhaps you can explain it.”
“I?” said Vera, looking at me.
“Yes. She gave me a message for you.”
“What was it?” But even as she asked the question she seemed to fear the answer, because she turned away from me.
“She told me to tell you that she saw what happened on the afternoon of the Thursday in Revolution week. She said that then you would understand.”
Vera looked at me with the strangest expression of defiance, fear, triumph.
“What did she see?”
“I don’t know. That’s what she told me.”
Vera did a strange thing. She laughed.
“They can all know. I don’t care. I want them to know. Nina can tell them all.”
“Tell them what?”
“Oh, you’ll hear with the rest. Uncle Alexei has done this. He told Nina because he hates me. He won’t rest until he ruins us all. But I don’t care. He can’t take from me what I’ve got. He can’t take from me what I’ve got. … But we must get her back, Ivan Andreievitch. She must come back—”
Nicholas came in and then Semyonov and then Bohun.
Bohun, drawing me aside, whispered to me: “Can I come and see you? I must ask your advice—”
“Tomorrow evening,” I told him, and left.
Next day I was ill again. I had I suppose done too much the day before. I was in bed alone all day. My old woman had suddenly returned without a word of explanation or excuse. She had not, I am sure, even got so far as the Moscow Province. I doubt whether she had even left Petrograd. I asked her no questions. I could tell of course that she had been drinking. She was a funny old creature, wrinkled and yellow and hideous, very little different in any way from a native in the wilds of Central Africa. The savage in her liked gay colours and trinkets, and she would stick flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places and rheumy at the eyes, who was all her passion, and this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage—and then, when it growled, she, too, would make strange noises as though sympathising with it.
She returned to me from no sort of sense of duty, but simply because, I think, she did not know where else to go. She scowled on me and informed me that now that there had been the Revolution everything was different; nevertheless the sight of my sick yellow face moved her as sickness and misfortune always move every Russian, however old and debased he may be.
“You shouldn’t have gone out walking,” she said crossly. “That man’s been here again?” referring to the Rat, whom she hated.
“If it hadn’t been for him,” I said, “I would have died.”
But she made the flat as cheerful as she could, lighting the stove, putting some yellow flowers into a glass, dusting the Benois watercolour, putting my favourite books beside my bed.
When Henry Bohun came in he was surprised at the brightness of everything.
“Why, how cosy you are!” he cried.
“Ah, ha,” I said, “I told you it wasn’t so bad here.”
He picked up my books, looked at Galleon’s Roads and then Pride and Prejudice.
“It’s the simplest things that last,” he said. “Galleon’s jolly good, but he’s not simple enough. Tess is the thing, you know, and Tono-Bungay, and The Nigger of the Narcissus … I usen’t to think so. I’ve grown older, haven’t I?”
He had.
“What do you think of Discipline now?” I asked.
“Oh, Lord!” he blushed, “I was a young cuckoo.”
“And what about knowing all about Russia after a week?”
“No—and that reminds me!” He drew his chair closer to my bed. “That’s what I’ve come to talk about. Do you mind if I gas a lot?”
“Gas as much as you like,” I said.
“Well, I can’t explain things unless I do. … You’re sure you’re not too seedy to listen?”
“Not a bit. It does me good,” I told him.
“You see in a way you’re really responsible. You remember, long ago, telling me to look after Markovitch when I talked all that rot about caring for Vera?”
“Yes—I remember very well indeed.”
“In a way it all started from that. You put me on to seeing Markovitch in quite a different light. I’d always thought of him as an awfully dull dog with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top-story too. I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it. Then sometimes he’d look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you’d fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the best thing for everybody.
“Well, you explained him to me and I saw him different—not that I’ve ever got very much out of him. I don’t think that he either likes me or trusts me, and anyway he thinks me too young and foolish to be of any importance—which I daresay I am. He told me, by the way, the other day, that the only Englishman he thought anything of was yourself—”
“Very nice of him,” I murmured.
“Yes, but not very flattering to me when I’ve spent months trying to be fascinating to him. Anyhow, although I may be said to have failed in one way, I’ve got rather keen on the pursuit. If I can’t make him like me I can at least study him and learn something. That’s a leaf out of your book, Durward. You’re always studying people, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.
“Yes, of course you are. Well, I’ll tell you frankly I’ve got fond of the old bird. I don’t believe you could live at close quarters with any Russian, however nasty, and not get a kind of affection for him. They’re so damned childish.”
“Oh yes, you could,” I said. “Try Semyonov.”
“I’m coming to him in a minute,” said Bohun. “Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy. That’s one thing one saw about him at once—unhappy of course because Vera didn’t love him and he adored her. But there was more in it than that. He let himself go one night to me—the only time he’s ever talked to me really. He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me. But there was more in it than that. He talked to me about Russia. That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began that it was going to lead to the most marvellous patriotism all through Russia. It seemed to begin like that, and do you know, Durward, as he talked I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything, that you could talk about Internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you’d learnt first what nationality was—that you couldn’t really love all mankind until you’d first learnt to love one or two people close to you. And that you couldn’t love the world as a vast democratic state until you’d learnt to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower. Markovitch had it all as plain as plain. ‘Make your own house secure and beautiful. Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme. We Russians always begin at the wrong end,’ he said. ‘We jump all the intermediate stages. I’m as bad as the rest.’ I know you’ll say I’m so easily impressed, Durward, but he was wonderful that night—and so right. So that as he talked I just longed to rush back and see that my village—Topright in Wiltshire—was safe and sound with the highgate at the end of the village street, and the village stores with the lollipop windows, and the green with the sheep on it, and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high Down beyond. … Oh well, you know what I mean—”
“I know,” said I.
“I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn’t have Vera he’d have Russia, and if he couldn’t have Russia he’d have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago he’d lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn’t very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything. Wasn’t he wonderful that week? Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise. … Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything? Why a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week. It wouldn’t be decent. … Well, then. …” He paused dramatically. “What’s happened to him since, Durward?”
“How do you mean? What’s happened to him since?” I asked.
“I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day—the Thursday of that week. What was it? That’s one of the things I’ve come to ask you about?”
“I don’t know. I was ill,” I said.
“No, but has nobody told you anything?”
“I haven’t heard a word,” I said.
His face fell. “I felt sure you’d help me?” he said.
“Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together,” I suggested.
“The rest is really Semyonov. The queerest things have been happening. Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one’s English ideas, isn’t it? and that’s so damned difficult. It’s no use saying an English fellow wouldn’t do this or that. Of course he wouldn’t. … Oh, they are queer!”
He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair.
“Giving them up in despair, Bohun, is as bad as thinking you understand them completely. Just take what comes.”
“Well, ‘what came’ was this. On that Thursday evening Markovitch was as though he’d been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of course we all noticed it. White and sickly, saying nothing to anybody. Next morning, quite early, Semyonov came over and proposed lodging with us.
“It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the feller, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet, stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way.
“To my amazement Markovitch seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed, but offered his own room as a bedroom. ‘What about your inventions?’ someone asked him.
“ ‘I’ve given them up,’ he said, looking at us all just like a caged animal—‘forever.’
“I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn’t been so interested, but this was all so curious that I was determined to see it out to the end. And you’d told me to look after Markovitch. If ever he’d wanted looking after it was now! I could see that Vera hated the idea of Semyonov coming, but after Markovitch had spoken she never said a word. So then it was all settled.”
“What did Nina do?” I asked.
“Nina? She never said anything either. At the end she went up to Semyonov and took his hand and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re coming, Uncle Alexei,’ and looked at Vera. Oh! they’re all as queer as they can be, I tell you!”
“What happened next?” I asked eagerly.
“Everything’s happened and nothing’s happened,” he replied. “Nina’s run away. Of course you know that. What she did it for I can’t imagine. Fancy going to a fellow like Grogoff! Lawrence has been coming every day and just sitting there, not saying anything. Semyonov’s amiable to everybody—especially amiable to Markovitch. But he’s laughing at him all the time I think. Anyway he makes him mad sometimes, so that I think Markovitch is going to strike him. But of course he never does. … Now here’s a funny thing. This is really what I want to ask you most about.”
He drew his chair closer to my bed and dropped his voice as though he were going to whisper a secret to me.
“The other night I was awake—about two in the morning it was—and wanted a book—so I went into the dining-room. I’d only got bedroom slippers on and I was stopped at the door by a sound. It was Semyonov sitting over by the further window, in his shirt and trousers, his beard in his hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break. I’d never heard a man cry like that. I hate hearing a man cry anyway. I’ve heard fellers at the Front when they’re off their heads or something … but Semyonov was worse than that. It was a strong man crying, with all his wits about him. … Then I heard some words. He kept repeating again and again. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear! … Wait for me! … Wait for me! Wait for me! …’ over and over again—awful! I crept back to my room frightened out of my life. I’ve never known anything so awful. And Semyonov of all people!
“It was like that man in Wuthering Heights. What’s his name? Heathcliff! I always thought that was a bit of an exaggeration when he dashed his head against a tree and all that. But, by Jove, you never know! … Now, Durward, you’ve got to tell me. You’ve known Semyonov for years. You can explain. What’s it all about, and what’s he trying to do to Markovitch?”
“I can scarcely think what to tell you,” I said at last. “I don’t really know much about Semyonov, and my guesses will probably strike you as insane.”
“No, they won’t,” said Bohun. “I’ve learnt a bit lately.”
“Semyonov,” I said, “is a deep-dyed sensualist. All his life he’s thought about nothing but gratifying his appetites. That’s simple enough—there are plenty of that type everywhere. But unfortunately for him he’s a very clever man, and like every Russian both a cynic and an idealist—a cynic in facts because he’s an idealist. He got everything so easily all through his life that his cynicism grew and grew. He had wealth and women and position. He was as strong as a horse. Every one gave way to him and he despised everybody. He went to the Front, and one day came across a woman different from any other whom he had ever known.”
“How different?” asked Bohun, because I paused.
“Different in that she was simpler and naiver and honester and better and more beautiful—”
“Better than Vera?” Bohun asked.
“Different,” I said. “She was younger, less strong-willed, less clever, less passionate perhaps. But alone—alone, in all the world. Everyone must love her—No one could help it. …”
I broke off again. Bohun waited.
I went on. “Semyonov saw her and snatched her from the Englishman to whom she was engaged. I don’t think she ever really loved the Englishman, but she loved Semyonov.”
“Well?” said Bohun.
“She was killed. A stray shot, when she was giving tea to the men in the trenches. … It meant a lot … to all of us. The Englishman was killed too, so he was all right. I think Semyonov would have liked that same end; but he didn’t get it, so he’s remained desolate. Really desolate, in a way that only your thorough sensualist can be. A beautiful fruit just within his grasp, something at last that can tempt his jaded appetite. He’s just going to taste it, when whisk! it’s gone, and gone, perhaps, into someone else’s hands. How does he know? How does he know anything? There may be another life—who can really prove there isn’t? and when you’ve seen something in the very thick and glow of existence, something more alive than life itself, and, click! it’s gone—well, it must have gone somewhere, mustn’t it? Not the body only, but that soul, that spirit, that individual personal expression of beauty and purity and loveliness? Oh, it must be somewhere yet! … It must be! … At any rate he didn’t know. And he didn’t know either that she might not have proved his idealism right after all. Ah! to your cynic there’s nothing more maddening! Do you think your cynic loves his cynicism? Not a bit of it! Not he! But he won’t be taken in by sham any more. That he swears. …
“So it was with Semyonov. This girl might have proved the one real exception; she might have lasted, she might have grown even more beautiful and more wonderful, and so proved his idealism true after all. He doesn’t know, and I don’t know. But there it is. He’s haunted by the possibility of it all his days. He’s a man now ruled by an obsession. He thinks of one thing and one thing only, day and night. His sensuality has fallen away from him because women are dull—sterile to him beside that perfect picture of the woman lost. Lost! he may recover her! He doesn’t know. The thought of death obsesses him. What is there in it? Is she behind there or no? Is she behind there, maddening thought, with her Englishman?
“He must know. He must know. He calls to her—she won’t come to him. What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that’s a miserable confession of weakness. How they’d laugh at him, these other despicable human beings, if he did that! He’d prove himself as weak as they. No, that’s not for him. What then?
“This is a fantastic world, Bohun, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select someone, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, someone whose every foible and weakness he knew, suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day, in a fury of rage and despair, that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, the food for his conceit such a game would be to Semyonov. Is this going to do it? Or this? Or this? Now I’ve got him far enough? Another five minutes! … Think of the hairbreadth escapes, the check and counter check, the sense, above all, that to a man like Semyonov is almost everything, that he is master of human emotions, that he can direct wretched, weak human beings whither he will.
“And the other—the weak, disappointed, excitable man—can’t you see that Semyonov has him close to his hand, that he has only to stretch a finger—”
“Markovitch!” cried Bohun.
“Now you know,” I said, “why you’ve got to stay on in that flat.”