NINA
I
And this now is the ending, the _Liebestod_ of my theme. We had left so
suddenly. Her last words, look, gesture had “settled it.” But now, in
retrospect, the things that “settled it” were, in their very vagueness,
just the things striving to unsettle me, as I resumed my interrupted
course at Oxford, having “relinquished my commission,” thanks to the
conclusion of the war. Was she _à moi_, or wasn’t she? Well, was she?
She was. She wasn’t. Oh--how the hell could I know!
The art of living is the ability to subordinate minor motives to major
ones. And it is an unsatisfactory art. You must make up your mind what
you want, and when you have made up your mind what you want, you might
as well, for the difference it makes to you, have never had a mind to
make up. For the consequences have a way of getting out of hand and
laying out the motives indiscriminately. And then _you_ with your intent
and will seem rather in the way. That is the truth.... (But it would
serve us right if we thought so!)
Since childhood I had more or less earmarked my future, and the
circumscription did not _really_ take in Nina. I had in those early days
conceived a novel that, oh! was to knock all existing novels flat. This
novel was to be my goal in life, and then later on the novel was to
follow my _real_ life, a life of augmented splendour and achievement.
Pending that achievement, there was, of course, that other life,
essentially out of focus with the novel, not really life at all, a
transitory, irritating phase not meriting attention. The novel was
begun--invariably begun. The quite indefinably peculiar atmosphere of it
seemed to defy the choice of language. For I happen to belong to that
elusive class of people knowing several languages who, when challenged
in one tongue, find it convenient to assure you that their knowledge is
all in another. And I am one of those uncomfortable people whose
national “atmosphere” had been somewhat knocked on the head--an
Englishman brought up and schooled in Russia, and born there,
incidentally, of British parents (with a mixed un-English name into the
bargain!), and here I am. The war claimed me. And then, the war over, I
looked at the novel. Heaven! How it had shrunk. I had contrived to
overlook real life since it was out of focus with my novel, and now I
found that it was just the novel that was out of focus with real life.
Nothing more than that. But what a discovery! I had lived these years
like an automaton, giving scarcely any heed to the life about me but
vaguely cherishing the “masterpiece,” and I found that I had really
lived unconsciously and was alive, while the “masterpiece” had stifled
and was dead.
It must have been at this point that the thought of Nina came to me
identified with the idea of _living_ as against _recording_. She would
come to me in dreams. I was walking with some people, and she was
walking with some other people. And then we met, and the people she was
with stopped to talk to the people I was with, and she looked at me, a
little bashful, “repentance” written on her face, as if to say, “I am
waiting”--but never said a word. And in my sleep the “truth” would dawn
on me: “So all this other ... was mere whimsicality? Oh yes, of course!
I should have _understood_ her.”
And in my waking hours, that were like dreams, involuntarily I would
find myself asking General Bologoevski, whom I always went to see in
town, if _he_ “understood her.” But the General understood nothing. “I
know why you are always coming here,” he once remarked. “It is because I
know her, because you want to talk to me of her.... And you have reason
to. My God! what eyes! What calves! What ankles! Look here: why in the
world don’t you marry her?”
I had come to his hotel a while ago, which he had chosen on account of
the “nice little women there,” as he explained, and overtook him in the
act of making amorous advances to the pretty chamber-maid who was
giggling loudly in his bedroom. “English women,” he confided to me,
“always let themselves go with foreigners. They’re somehow ashamed with
their own countrymen. However.”
We went downstairs. “Yes,” he sighed, “things are getting a little
difficult just now. All I’ve got is ten pounds. And when those are gone
I won’t know where to turn to. And there’s that motor-cycle I’ve bought,
and they are pressing me for payment. I give dem h-h-hell! But it is all
a damrotten game, you know. The only consolation is that it really is a
good motor-cycle--a fine big thing. But there seems no one I could
borrow from.”
“But you _will_ ride in taxis, General,” I gently reprimanded him.
“Well, what is ten pounds?” he asked. “Whether I ride in taxis or go by
‘bus, it’s all one. It won’t _last_ in any case. No: all my hope is in
the claim I’ve lodged with the Russian Embassy. I understand it’s now
only a question of the Allies recognizing General Wrangel before the
claim is paid. But come, I’ll introduce you to that Russian Colonel
there. He’s been to Vladivostok and knows your friends, no doubt--Nina.
Come.”
We shook hands, and then compared experiences. “And do you remember that
good-looking girl, Nina Bursànova?” at length I ventured.
The Colonel thought hard, and then said:
“No, I don’t remember.”
Silence. The subdued hum of London was like the burden note of a distant
organ. Two other Russian Colonels and a Captain, all of the Denikin
Army, sauntered up, and the General called the waiter and stood
liqueurs and cigars all round. The faint sounds of a hidden orchestra
reached our ears and set a match to the emotions stored away in my
subconscious warehouse.... The tepid air within, surrounded by the cold
outside, the shaded lights contrasted by the dark of night without, the
easy atmosphere of crowded, dazzling excitement, enshrouded by the
loneliness of space, and our intimate seclusion within this gay
tumultuousness--these things spoke. And the soft music told me that life
_is_, and that she was all this that it meant....
No more novels! Life, I thought, was worth all the novels in the world.
And life was Nina. And Nina was life. And, by contrast, the people I
encountered seemed pretentious and insincere. The women in particular
were unreal. They talked of things that did not interest them with an
affected geniality. They pretended a silly superiority or else an
unconvincing inferiority. They said “_Really?_” and “_Indeed?_” and “How
fascinating!” and “How perfectly delightful!” Nina was not like that. My
three sisters were not like that. They were real. They would laugh when
they liked; they would say exactly what they thought; and they would say
nothing if there was nothing to be said. Nina was so childish in her
ways, and yet so very wise. She bit. She took water in her mouth and
blew it out straight at your face, and threw herself on the sofa
recklessly and stretched herself across, head downward.... She would
never quite grow up. And by contrast, Oxford with its sham clubs and
sham societies appeared a doll’s house, a thing stationary and extinct
of life, while the world, the Outside World, was going by. And I asked
myself: What am I waiting for?
In fine, it was Tristan pining for Isolde--with the important variation
that Tristan journeyed to Isolde for the reason that Isolde failed to
come to Tristan. One evening, very suddenly, I left England and set out
back to the Far East.
II
I travelled with Sir Hugo and the Russian General, and we took the
eastern route. I had recognized Sir Hugo’s gait as he came my way one
day in crowded Piccadilly, but stopped in front of a shop window. And
when I came up I saw Sir Hugo gazing at long rows of D.S.O.’s and
O.B.E.’s displayed behind the window. He was going out as professional
adviser--to Siam, I think, he said--or some such-like place, and we
arranged to leave together. And then the General who was going out to
Wrangel’s Army in Constantinople joined us. He was to get off at Port
Said.
On board next morning I showed the General an alarming Reuter message
from Constantinople. The French Government, it ran, had ordered the
disbandment of General Wrangel’s Army, offering to transport the
refugees back to Russia or to Brazil, but General Wrangel declined the
offer, refused the invitation to go to Paris, and demanded the return
of his arms and munitions which the French had already sold to Georgia,
where they had fallen into Bolshevik hands. Money, gold and silver
valuables and jewels had been stolen from the steamer in which General
Wrangel was staying. Important military documents regarding the campaign
in the Crimea had also been stolen.
“I know,” he said, “it is a most damrotten game, you know. I give dem
h-h-hell, those damrotten Frenchmen. They are all damrotten Bolsheviks,
they are.”
“Well,” I said quietly, “Kolchak has tried it. Denikin has tried it.
Yudenich has tried it. I should give it a rest now.”
“Ah,” he laughed, “all this has merely been a little rehearsal. We shall
begin seriously in a year or two. It’s the only way to stop bloodshed.”
He puffed at his heavy cigar and his eyes twitched in the smoke.
“A rehearsal.... Yes, I too intend to begin ‘seriously’ when I get to
Vladivostok,” I laughed.
“Is it not rather an adventure in futility?” Sir Hugo asked.
“He has taken my advice at last.” The General kissed his finger-tips.
“What eyes!----”
“What calves! What ankles!” I completed automatically.
Silence.
“The boat’s beginning to roll.”
“Where are all the passengers?” asked the General.
“I fear they must be indisposed,” Sir Hugo said, “in consequence of the
heavy sea.”
The General paused a little, gazing down at the cause of the passengers’
indisposition. “Of course,” he said, “this rolling and pitching ought
never to be.”
“Oh!” said Sir Hugo.
“It is entirely due to bad steering. Now on Russian ships when there is
rolling or pitching the captain leaves his breakfast-table without a
word, goes up to the man at the steering-wheel, beats him in the face
the number of times he considers adequate (_v mordoo_, do you
understand?)--”
Sir Hugo nodded to indicate that he understood.
“--and retires, without a word, to the saloon and continues his
breakfast. And believe me, Sir Hugo, there is no more--ha, ha,
ha--_rolling_ or--ha, ha, ha--_pitching_! No more.”
“Hm,” said Sir Hugo. “Doesn’t the man at the steering-wheel ever ...
protest?”
“No,” said the General. “He knows what it’s for. The whole beauty of it
is that the transaction is carried out swiftly, efficiently, quietly,
without a sound ... to everybody’s satisfaction.”
“This quietude of method, General, seems to have produced, to put it
mildly, quite a stir recently?”
“Not carried out quietly enough,” explained the General, indicating the
root of the trouble.
“The times are dead and over, anyhow.”
“They are dead and over,” sighed the General, as if mourning a dear
relation.
Silence again. The wind full of that vigour of the sea swept across my
face.
“Do you see that ship there, sir?”
“_Which_ ship _where_?” came the answer.
“_That_ ship _there_,” said I, pointing at the only vessel on the only
sea.
Sir Hugo looked.
“It’s _not_ a ship,” he said. “It’s a boat.”
“But, oh! sir,” I breathed in courteous remonstrance.
“Only His Majesty’s ships are ships,” came the dry rejoinder. “All other
vessels are boats.... But to return to the question at issue, what were
you going to say about the boat?”
“Well, I thought it was the _Aquitania_, but now I see it isn’t,” I
said, looking down into the green-blue waves. “Do you remember the
U-boat scare three years ago when we crossed to New York? It was a time
when you felt that at any moment you might find yourself floating on the
water owing to the disappearance of the boat.”
“The _ship_,” corrected Sir Hugo. “The _Aquitania_ ... I mean the _boat_
... I beg your pardon, you’re right this time and I apologize. But why
the devil didn’t you say so straight out instead of wasting my time and
your time with ... with ... with such a rubbishy matter?”
Ominous silence.
Then said the General, “Perhaps we might go and have a drink?”
A week later we were entering the harbour of Port Said. We stood at the
rail, balancing ourselves on our heels, as the liner, rolling heavily,
turned into port.
“We’re already four days late,” Sir Hugo said.
“I know. I have never been on such a damrotten ship before,” remarked
the General. “Now I remember on a Russian ship I once crossed the
Pacific in, the captain promised to reach Yokohama by a certain date,
but, as usual of course, failed to do so by a week or more. Well, all
the passengers on board, officers and civilians, men and women,
first-class passengers and even those who worked their passage, used to
go up to the captain’s cabin every morning and beat him in the face (_v
mordoo_, you understand?) until it had swollen to, oh--oh----” (he
indicated the size of the captain’s face)--“immense proportions.”
“Hm,” said Sir Hugo, seemingly very interested. “I think I caught you,
General, saying ‘first-class passengers and those who worked their
passage.’ Now do you, or don’t you, purposely omit second-class
passengers and such passengers as may, or may not, have been going
steerage? Or am I putting words into your mouth? But let this matter
drift: it is of no consequence. My sympathies in this incident, I hope
you will forgive me, General, are all on the side of the captain.”
The General listened, but did not understand. We parted with him next
morning, as we left Port Said....
Then, one afternoon, armed with binoculars, we peered at the horizon to
see if we could spot dry land. It was towards seven in the evening that
the throbbing liner came into sight of Aden. She stole up carefully, and
then lay still outside the harbour.
We could feel the Sahara breathe upon us, like an oven. I leaned across
the rail and watched the sandy, ominous desert coast, the strange,
almost pathetic stillness of the place, the malicious yellow water of
the harbour.
I remember those disturbing, endless nights at Aden, when I fancied that
the boat would never move again. I remember a kind of jeering look about
that ancient liner (captured from the Germans in the war) as she broke
down every now and then at God-forsaken places like Perim. I was in a
hurry, but circumstances had conspired to make my journey inordinately
slow.... But we were moving now at last. I gazed at the sombre, yellow
water as the liner glided off the shark-infested coast of Aden in the
heavy, stifling silence of the eastern night. And it seemed to me that
from the surface to its depths the sea writhed in agony, and that the
sun-scorched desert withered in its age-long weariness, all from a want
of motive. And it seemed to me the stars had spent themselves in
waiting....
Then, one evening at Colombo, I parted with Sir Hugo, who was changing
boats for Singapore. We shook hands warmly. “Thank you so much for all
your splendid, excellent work,” he was saying; and we were both
obviously touched. And though I did not know what the splendid,
excellent work he was thanking me for really was, I now felt that it
was enormous, overwhelming, but that I would gladly do it all again, and
more if necessary: so sweet was it to be thanked! “Splendid! Splendid!”
he repeated, as I helped him with his things. “Good. Very good. Thank
you! Thank you again! Splendid! Splendid fellow! Splendid fellow! Thank
you! Good-bye!” And as he settled in the throbbing motor-launch below
that then took him ashore, he waved his hand to me and his lips seemed
to be moving still and saying “Splendid!” Then he was gone ... on his
new mission of advice.
I was sorry to part with the old man. There was a quality about him that
made him almost human. Later in the journey I had a letter from him.
“_We have had a good voyage, so far_,” he wrote, “_with only two days’
rough weather, when we were skirting a typhoon, or a similar storm_....”
And now I was alone on board the old ocean liner, as she steamed away
carefully past the bright, foam-washed breakwaters of Colombo’s sunlit
coast, and bulged into the open sea.
* * * * *
I was in bed on deck, on the point of going to sleep. Suddenly the dream
of Nina, like a wave from nowhere, flowed upon my brain. I was still
awake that second: I caught the dream as if with both my hands. I smiled
broadly to myself. I had _caught_ a dream!...
The sea was like a mirror of black glass. I listened to the nocturnal
silence. Now and then a wilful dolphin would splash the surface of the
water; then everything was still. The liner glided noiselessly across
the sea.
Towards Singapore, Hongkong, Shanghai.... I had vague fears of being
“late.” In my emotional anxiety the East itself appeared emotionally
coloured. The eastern night was veiled with sorrow. It was a night of
_Why?_ I discovered pathos in the animation of the Peking streets at
night. Even as I write I can see Canton with its narrow, crowded streets
sheltering beneath the dripping, overlapping roofs of shops, and feel
the sombre enigmatic calm of their interior, the lethargic stare of
Chinese merchants seated on the floor, and the thudding of the rain upon
the roof; and I can see the dull and yellow water of the rivers, the
swarming multitudes of lives upon the quays, the _sampans_ crowding the
canals; and I recall again the din of Mukden, the stretch of ancient
muddy soil receding from my sight as I watched it from the window of the
train, the fall of evening, and the melancholy of the ages. And I was
made to feel that I was in another age, another world, that somewhere I
must have dreamt this, or perhaps had known it ere I was born on earth,
that deep in the recesses of my memory was an imprint of this peculiar
light, this noise and din, this languid stillness of the East.
III
Finally I arrived at Vladivostok. The moment I set my foot on the
platform I flew by well-known streets and curves and turnings to their
house. I remember I felt in the manner of Tristan at the end of the last
act: very sure, impatient, overwhelmed with love. I felt that I would
just fly into the room and cry “_Isolde!_” and she would fly into my
arms--“_Tristan!_” And then, immediately, we would get busy with the
love duet.
I knocked at the window, and I felt that they should hear the throbbing
of my heart. I knocked again, and then the blind behind the window was
tampered with, and there was Sonia peering at me through the glass. Her
frown developed into a radiant smile and her voice rang through the
building:
“Andrei Andreiech!”
She ran away and then came to the door, half opened it, and said,
“Andrei Andreiech, we aren’t dressed yet; but come into the drawing-room
... wait, let me run away first.”
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. She ran away, and I went
into the drawing-room. Everything was exactly as I had left it. The
canary in the cage went on with his usual “Chic!... cherric!...” hopping
to and fro. The sun was shining brightly through the window. It was one
of those glorious autumn days that are like the unfolding days of
spring.
“We shall be ready in ten minutes,” Sonia shouted from the adjoining
room.
I waited ten minutes, and another ten minutes. Then the door opened and
Sonia, radiant, came in. “Nina will be ready in ten minutes,” she said.
“No, she won’t be ready!” came Nina’s voice--a discontented voice.
“Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz have gone out shopping,” Sonia said.
“How is Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.
“He is probably at the office ... or else with Zina.”
“How are the mines?”
She only waved her hand.
“Hopeless?”
“Oh, he _hopes_--we all _hope_, of course....”
“Well then,” said I, “ ... we must hope.”
Then Vera, radiant and marvellously pretty, came in. “Nina will come in
five minutes,” she said.
“Not in five but in ten minutes,” came Nina’s voice, this time a
whimsical voice.
I sat on the old sofa, and Sonia and Vera both stared at me in a curious
manner, wondering, no doubt, why the dickens I had arrived.
Then the door of the adjoining room flew open, and Nina flitted in,
shook hands without looking at me and flitted over to the window.
I still sat on the old sofa, of which the spring had burst, and no one
spoke. It was a somewhat silly situation.
“That spring I am sitting on is burst,” I said at length.
“Oh, Vera burst it,” Nina said.
“It’s a lie!” Vera flared. “You know yourself you burst it last night
when you jumped about with Ward.”
“No, it’s Vera,” Nina said.
“It’s a lie! a lie! a lie!”
“It really doesn’t matter in the least who burst it,” I intervened. “I
noticed that the spring was burst because I happened to be sitting on it
... otherwise everything seems to be very much the same.”
We sat still for a little while. Then Nina turned to me impulsively and
said, “And you haven’t seen the three sisters!”
I stared at her with blank expression.
She ran out, and returning quickly, thrust three tiny kittens on my lap.
The old cat followed her into the room and looked up at me suspiciously.
“This is Sonia. This is Nina. This is Vera,” she explained.
For a while we admired the “three sisters”; then with the same swift
motion, she grabbed the kittens in her hands and carried them away. The
old cat followed her back into the adjoining room.
Again there was silence. The canary in the cage went on: “Chic!...
cherric!...”
“And Andrei Andreiech always goes on with his “Chic!... cherric!...”
said Nina.
“Which Andrei Andreiech?”
She pointed at the canary.
“What do you mean?”
“We call him Andrei Andreiech.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just so ... there is something of you about him ... something ...
unsubstantial.”
“Nina, come for a walk,” I said.
I helped her on with her coat.
We went by the Aleutskaya, bathed in sunshine, switched off down the
Svetlanskaya and turned into a park overhanging the sea. Autumn stood at
the door with its sombre moods of hopes frustrated, of joys gone, and
aims blown to the wind, like leaves of autumn.
“Why did you come?” she said. “Why? I never asked you.”
“You told me that you love me,” I said.
“I never loved you.”
“Why did you lie then?” I cried.
“Go to the devil!” she answered, and turned her face away.
“I have been three months on the way ... three months. Good God, Nina,
travelling _three months_ to come and see you--and there!...”
“It was an unusually long journey. You must have been moving very
slowly.”
“There!” I went on protestingly, “I chuck Oxford, come all the way to
Vladivostok, spend three months on the journey ... because ... because I
love you, and you----”
“You have a speck of soot on your nose,” she remarked.
“Nina!” I cried laughing, my heart all weeping tears. “Nina!”
“Go and wash your face,” she said, “and then come back again. I’ll wait
for you here.”
I gave it up. We sat together, saying nothing, and something about the
autumn sun, the wind that came defiant from the roaring sea and
harassed the fallen yellow leaves at our feet, suggested that I was late
in the season with my love--perhaps too late. _Tristan_ became a thing
alien and remote, and I felt that I was singing in an altogether
different opera.
IV
We did not go home. She said, “I’m tired of seeing Papa, Fanny Ivanovna
and Kniaz. They always quarrel, always quarrel.... Kniaz is the best of
the lot.” Instead we went to the Olenins who lived in a remote _datcha_
by the sea. It was a place scarcely accessible by night, for there was
not a light and the roads were pools of mud. The environment
concentrated all the angry dogs and robbers in the town.
We found Sonia and Vera there chatting with the three American boys, now
known as the “three brothers.” The hostess seated at the piano was
sending forth sounds of syncopated music, and then the three sisters
with their corresponding “brothers” jazzed, while I was left alone with
my sense of the three months’ journey east gnawing at my heart.... The
fact of the matter was that I failed to see exactly where _I_ came in in
this combination.
I strolled into the dining-room with its familiar pictures in gilt
frames, poorly furnished. Colonel Olenin, now out of work, was playing
cards with a brother officer, also out of work, and with Zina’s father,
while a Japanese paying guest was looking on, picking his teeth the
while. Madame Olenin, little Fanny clinging to her skirt, came up and
stood, a little bored, and with that look of hers as though she could
have loved a lot.
“You do not dance?” the paying guest inquired on our being introduced.
“Why?”
“Andrei Andreiech is smitten,” said Madame Olenin.
“Ah!... Iz zas so ... zzz ...?”
“Has lost his heart to Nina.”
The paying guest chuckled and picked his teeth. “Ah!... Iz zas so?” he
said and sucked his breath in “ ... zzz ...” as Japanese do in their
politeness. “Ah!... Very nice! Very nice!”
“Andrei Andreiech wants to marry her,” continued Madame Olenin.
“Ah!... Iz zas so?... zzz.... Very nice! Very nice!”
“But she doesn’t want to,” I said.
“Ask her,” she said.
“I have asked her. She won’t.”
“Well, you ask her again.”
“How many times?”
“Never mind how many times. Go on asking her. If you go on at it long
enough any woman will give way. You go on asking her. Or else marry our
little Olya, our little football. You’ll suit each other well.”
The paying guest chuckled loudly and picked his teeth.
She was trifling, trifling with a serious question, and I smiled, as
one smiles on these occasions--an economic and reluctant smile.
I learnt that one of the veteran grandfathers had died a month ago; the
other was alive. He sat and frowned before him, and little Fanny seemed
to shun his frown each time she passed him in the dining-room. I spoke
to him and found that he would not admit that any revolution had ever
taken place in Russia. “Nonsense,” he kept saying. “Nonsense. In France
there has been a revolution. But this is Russia. This is not France.”
“But--but what of the Bolsheviks?” I asked.
The antiquated veteran suddenly relapsed into a fit of anger. “I’ll show
these Bolsheviks!” he threatened. “I’ll make them dance! I’ll stand no
nonsense! Not I! They’ll soon see the man they’ve got to deal with!
They’ll get short shrift from me, I can tell you! I’ll show these
Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing!...” The feeble old man was seized by a
violent fit of coughing. His body shook and reeled, and his vain threats
only emphasized the wretched impotence, the piteous weakness of his
senility. Madame Olenin came to his rescue and beat him on the back to
alleviate his coughing and prayed him not to talk of the wicked
Bolsheviks as it was injurious to his health, but even through his
coughing, choking hopelessly, he threatened angrily: “I’ll show these
Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing!... these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them
dance!” and then again relapsed into a violent fit a of senile
coughing.
Uncle Kostia, as I went to him, was sitting on the sofa, unshaven and
unkempt, in the dim and dreary light of early evening. An empty glass of
tea stood on the table. “They are dancing,” he said, with a strange
gleam in his eye. “Let them dance. They think I am useless. Let them
think. They’ve been complaining of me?”
“Who, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“No, he wouldn’t. I respect him. The _others_. I know they have. It’s
life’s own joke that its superior humanity is not good enough for their
inferiors. To the superior humanity the provocation is past a joke, I
can tell you; to the inferior, the situation is just a matter of fact;
so whose is the joke unless it is life’s own? Life is like that. Here am
I--writing away unselfishly. Heaven only knows if what I write will be
published in my lifetime. Then, years afterwards, they will read my
books; they will think of me, wonder how I looked and spoke and felt.
And I won’t know....”
“Yes. But to dwell prematurely on the sadness of one’s death to others,
Uncle Kostia, is like asking for money in advance. It’s commercially
unsound.”
Then, as our talk continued, I became aware of awful symptoms of Uncle
Kostia’s condition. Uncle Kostia assured me positively that he had never
had a father: that he was the son of his grandfather. And when I pointed
out that the omission seemed to me to err a little on the side of the
extravagant, he replied quite earnestly that he did not “see it.”
V
Such pitiful, heartrending scenes as this became a frequent occurrence.
Each of the three sisters walked arm in arm with each of the “three
brothers,” and I trailed alone behind them, a kind of tutor, with a
heinous sense of my three months’ voyage ripening into a grievance. A
poor thing, sir, but mine own! The three sisters, escorted safely home,
would cry out from the house steps, “Good night, Brothers!” The “three
brothers” then would answer, “Good night, Sisters!” I alone said
nothing. I felt that an additional “brother” might spoil the symmetry of
the arrangement. The fact of the matter, as you will see, was that I was
not one of the “three brothers.” That settled it.
A very similar situation would ensue at dances, those delightful dances
of the American Red Cross. We, that is, the three sisters, the “three
brothers” and I (the odd number), would drive down in an American
Service limousine, rolling gently through the dark and gruesome streets,
the mellow moon shining feebly on the muddy road. Next we entered that
long draughty room in the Naval Barracks taken over by the American Red
Cross. In a little while the three sisters reappeared in the room,
looking the bouquet that they were, that big nigger band would blurt out
its syncopated music, and they would slide away in the embrace of the
“three brothers” and vanish in a paraphernalia of Allied uniforms, while
I was reduced to being a “wall-flower,” or else to dance with plump and
heavy women, which after my experience with Nina felt very much like
moving heavy chairs about the floor. It was idiotic to have travelled
sixteen thousand miles to do this sort of thing!... That settled it.
I dare say it was my fault--but my somewhat inartistic intrusions on a
party that was otherwise complete, began to tire Nina. She asked me to
give up “pursuing” her. I resolved not to pursue her. I told her so. I
kept telling her so. My passionate explanations of my aloofness began to
anger her. My vehement assurances of resignation to my lonely lot struck
her as discordant and dishonest. And she conferred on me the sentence
which in love is hardest of all sentences to bear--the sentence of
indifference. Now there is but one way to combat indifference in love,
and that is by a feud. You tell yourself: She may think of the quarrel
at times, perhaps regret the loss, or be annoyed, or feel hostile. There
is then some link between you and her. However small, that is at least
something. Indifference is simply nowhere. Acting on these lines, my
three months’ journey always in my mind, I developed a grievance that
outraged my soul. I swore there and then to myself that never again, so
long as I lived, would I go to see Nina. That settled it.
I found myself going there that same afternoon, it seemed in spite of
myself and partly under the influence of the wine that I had consumed at
lunch. The day was a peculiarly sunny and friendly kind of day and the
blue sky and the clear air and even the shops themselves seemed to
beckon to me not to be a fool, not to stand upon my silly dignity; and
so I discovered, as I walked along till I could see their house
beckoning to me in the distance, that her indifference, even if
confirmed (and I now refused to confirm it), had the overlooked
advantage of admitting me of being in her presence. But when I returned
I found I had innumerable occasions to revert to my original
interpretation of indifference.
And feeling that my affairs were in a bad way I made a bold _coup_ to
regain my tottering prestige. I appeared furiously, almost indecently
intellectual, talked in quick succession of Turgenev, Goethe,
Dostoevski, Chehov, Flaubert, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It impressed
nobody. She hardly listened to me. So I tried Wagner, Scriabin, Debussy
and Richard Strauss. Nothing doing. I tackled Ibsen, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Shaw, Bennett, Chesterton and H. G. Wells; quoted them. It
cut no ice. She showed that this sort of thing “did not go down with
her” at all. Clearly she wasn’t “having any.” And the great men, I fear,
looked small beneath her scornful look.
I met her once in the street. It had been snowing in the night,
prematurely for the season; now the snow was thawing and the ground was
muddy. The sun was yellow, honey-coloured, and her side-long look seemed
warmer in the sunshine.
“Will you marry me?” I said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I am tired of you.”
“I know that,” I replied, and walked silently beside her.
“If I were really tired of you I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Then why do you tell me?” I took it up, hungering for something
positive, however small.
“I don’t always say what I think,” was the answer.
We walked on.
“We are leaving in any case,” she said.
“When? Where?”
“Next month ... for Shanghai. Mama is going to start a business there.
Hats. We have to do _something_.... We shall have a good time in
Shanghai.”
“Ah, you won’t!” I said.
She looked at me.
“What of your ‘three brothers’?” I gloated.
“Their ship is going there next month. Aha! Do you think Mama would get
us to come otherwise?”
“Good riddance!” I said.
“What’s happened?”
“Go!” I cried. “But for heaven’s sake _go_. Off with you! I haven’t time
to waste. I want to get back. I am missing my examination!”
“You can go back now if you like. I’m not keeping you.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with _you_?”
“I shall see you off first,” I said, “and then I’ll go.”
VI
And then I only wished that they would go, and that I could return at
once to England. The date of sailing was put off from week to week
because of passport difficulties and dearth of accommodation in the
steamers of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. I was frightened lest they
should not be able to get away. For if they stayed, my soul was ruined.
And then, thank heaven, they were going.
Fanny Ivanovna and Nikolai Vasilievich preferred to part with them in
their own rooms. It was, I think, because they would rather hide their
emotion from the people who they knew were sure to come to see the girls
off on the boat, and too, I think, because the relations with Magda
Nikolaevna were not entirely satisfactory.
Yesterday I had met them in the Aleutskaya as they returned from the
restaurant ‘Zolotoy Rog,’ where they now always went to lunch: the
cooking arrangements in the rooms were thoroughly inadequate. Nikolai
Vasilievich in his mackintosh and bowler hat looked markedly older and
more worn than he had looked two years ago. Perhaps it was the shrewd
light of the afternoon that scrutinized his features. There was a
curious, mysterious, Monna Lisa look about the face of Fanny Ivanovna:
as if she knew a thing or two: as if she had grounds for reassurance.
And had she not? The partnership with Magda Nikolaevna was an engaging
proposition. The only two deterrents to her going into partnership with
Magda Nikolaevna were those two unfortunate words that had not lost
their sting for her--“governess” and “lapdog.” She told me she might
overlook the “governess”: the suggestion had not a shadow of foundation
and could be forgiven--at a pinch. But the “lapdog”--never! Henceforth,
as in the past, their destiny hung on the mines, and Fanny Ivanovna’s
ideas as to their recovery were somewhat mixed. But the Japanese were
now in possession of the Province, and if Nikolai Vasilievich got back
his mines she said she would be able to return to Germany. She hated
Vladivostok. And yet, she told me privately this morning, they had been
so long together, had gone through so much misery together, that she
doubted if she could ever leave him. And even if the mines materialized,
she thought--there was that suspicion in her heart and consequently that
look of reassurance in her face, that youthful ease about her
manner--that the passion between Nikolai and Zina was wearing off.
And--nothing ever happens....
They were both visibly perturbed. Nikolai Vasilievich walked up and down
the room, obviously to hide his emotion. The luggage had already been
removed to the boat, and the three sisters, dressed for the voyage, had
sat down before the final parting. Kniaz read his paper to himself, and
we talked inconsequently of anything and everything, and incidentally I
learnt that Uncle Kostia, in pursuance of a logical analysis of his
position as an author, had arrived at the conclusion that it was
futility to get up at all, and of late conformed to his discovery.
“_And_----” said I significantly.
“Yes ... yes,” said Nikolai Vasilievich knowingly. “I’m sorry for him.”
Fanny Ivanovna surveyed the three sisters with a doleful look. “_Ach_,
Nikolai Vasilievich!” she said. “Look at us! Even our children are
leaving us. There will be no one left when they are gone but you and I
and Kniaz and the kittens. Sonia, Nina and Vera, the kittens. The real
Sonia, Nina and Vera have lost patience with us.”
“Don’t, Fanny Ivanovna, don’t,” Vera murmured.
“And we have lived together a long time, through a maze of trouble, yet
I think we lived happily--as happily as we could. Why that parting now?
Why?...”
Someone sighed, and Nikolai Vasilievich turned his face away.
“Now it is October. It will soon be winter and this roof and yard will
be deep in snow. Outside it will be cold and dark and wretched, and we
shall be short of wood, and there will be another _coup d’état_. But you
and I, Nikolai Vasilievich, you and I will be here ... going out to
lunch at the ‘Zolotoy Rog’ then as ever ... ever!...”
She sighed deeply. “What shall we do all by ourselves in the winter?”
Nikolai Vasilievich, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, stood at the
window and did not answer. When he was perturbed, I noticed, he always
stood at the window with his hands deep in his trouser pockets, and
thought. And I fancied that he must be thinking: Strange were the ways
of the world: there! all along he had planned to escape from her--but
life has taken its course, and nothing has come of it. And now those
others, for whom he had stayed, were going away from him, and he, the
would-be deserter, was left all alone with her; and in a thousand and
one indefinable ways she has captured him. And when I met his eyes I had
a feeling, an unmistakable feeling, that indeed I was right in my
surmise.
Then came that hush, familiar in farewells, that comes in anticipation
of the signal. Nikolai Vasilievich pulled out his watch and said,
“Well----”
We rose, and I went out and waited for them in the street.
Then they came out. Fanny Ivanovna, Nikolai Vasilievich and Kniaz stood
on the steps and looked at us, as we walked away, turning round again
and again as we went. The sharp autumn wind ruffled Nikolai
Vasilievich’s scanty hair, and the three of them, as they stood there
hatless in the open, looked frail and weak and helplessly exposed to the
storms of life. Then Kniaz went back into the house, as if in a hurry to
resume an interrupted occupation. We looked round a last time, and
turned the corner. The three sisters blew their noses frequently and
gulped, and Vera’s eyes were red. And as I went I too was thinking:
Strange were the ways of the world: there! I had arrived from the other
end of the earth in time to see them off on a two-days’ trip: to assist
at an ordinary farewell in this unholy outskirt of the world, when I
ought to be swotting hard for my Final Schools! And, by contrast, Oxford
seemed a place of _doing things_.
Even now that they have gone and the steamer is about to reach the docks
of that far eastern Paris, I can see them very vividly before me as they
stood on the deck of the _Simbirsk_: three pretty kittens, each lovelier
than the other and quite irresistible together. It was long over two
hours since we had been told to clear the decks, but the steamer was
still there. I stood on the quay with Magda Nikolaevna, who was to
follow her three daughters in a day or two by rail, and while she was
telling me delightful tales of Nina’s childhood, I looked at Nina
leaning with her folded hands upon the rail and her chin upon her folded
hands, looking at us with that exquisite, disquieting side-long look,
evidently intent on catching what her mother was telling me about her. I
do not remember how long I stood there. There were the “three brothers”
to see them off, on the eve of their own departure for Shanghai; then
they left: they had to get back to their ship. Time after time I would
go up close to the steamer; but I gathered from her look that the effort
was superfluous: there was nothing we could talk about. Each time I went
back and stood by Magda Nikolaevna and the Olenins and wished to heaven
that the steamer would depart. But the steamer, despite all its hooting,
seemed intent on remaining. Then, suddenly, I realized that it was
indeed impossible to keep on standing there for ever. I felt that this
was now the end and that now I must make haste to go. I turned to Magda
Nikolaevna and the Olenins, and we shook hands; then I approached the
boat and waved good-bye to them. Nina stretched her hand down to me
without a word; but a handshake would have involved a cold bath!
I went hastily, without looking back. I walked briskly to the ‘Zolotoy
Rog’ and lunched lavishly and drank much wine--a luxury in these
times!--as if to celebrate the occasion of my soul’s release. I felt as
if I was being freed from prison. I sat in the crowded, heated
restaurant and watched the life bubbling about me--watched it in
excitement, in exultation. But after lunch I thought I wanted to make
certain--for real freedom could not come till I was certain--that the
steamer had finally departed. Accordingly I strolled down to the wharf
of the Volunteer Fleet. As I approached it I perceived the two impassive
funnels of the _Simbirsk_ still showing from above the godowns. I turned
back into town, my mind a rising sea of tribulation. I longed to see the
end of it, to know that they had gone. Why this heartrending delay? I
paced the streets of Vladivostok, seething with emotion. I must have
looked odd that afternoon, for strangers turned round in the streets to
look at me as I passed. I walked on and on, increasing my pace as I did
so. An hour later, or thereabouts, I made my way back to the wharf. The
steamer was still there. I turned back into town. I could scarcely
endure the torture of the suspense. I walked the length of the
Svetlanskaya, and then switched off until I reached the race-course. I
turned into the wood. I climbed the hills.
Then, late in the afternoon, before twilight had set in, I made my way
back to the wharf. My heart sick with palpitation, I looked over the
godowns of the Volunteer Fleet. The steamer had departed. I went past
innumerable barrels piled together, steam-heating pipes and wire rusting
in the open, machinery dumped on the quay, and bales of cotton rotting
in the dockyard, until finally I stood on the very spot where I had
parted with them. The space at the quay where the _Simbirsk_ had been
showed empty; dull, dirty water heaved at my feet and a cork from a
bottle and some bits of wood heaved upon it. I looked out upon the sea
for a sign of the steamer. It had completely vanished. I peered at the
horizon to see if I could spot the smoke from its two funnels. But there
was none.
THE END