PART II

LAWRENCE

LAWRENCE

I

Of some of the events that I am now about to relate it is obvious that I

could not have been an eye-witness--and yet, looking back from the

strange isolation that is now my world I find it incredibly difficult to

realise what I saw and what I did not. Was I with Nina and Vera on that

Tuesday night when they stood face to face with one another for the

first time? Was I with Markovitch during his walk through that

marvellous new world that he seemed himself to have created? I know that

I shared none of these things..., and yet it seems to me that I was at

the heart of them all. I may have been told many things by the actors in

those events--I may not. I cannot now in retrospect see any of it save

as my own personal experience, and as my own personal experience I must

relate it; but, as I have already said at the beginning of this book, no

one is compelled to believe either my tale or my interpretation. Every

man would, I suppose, like to tell his story in the manner of some other

man. I can conceive the events of this part of my narration being

interpreted in the spirit of the wildest farce, of the genteelest

comedy, of the most humorous satire--"Other men, Other gifts." I am a

dull and pompous fellow, as Semyonov often tells me; and I hope that I

never allowed him to see how deeply I felt the truth of his words.

Meanwhile I will begin with a small adventure of Henry Bohun's.

Apparently, one evening soon after Nina's party, he found himself about

half-past ten in the evening, lonely and unhappy, walking down the

Nevski. Gay and happy crowds wandered by him, brushing him aside,

refusing to look at him, showing in fact no kind of interest in his

existence. He was suddenly frightened, the distances seemed terrific and

the Nevski was so hard and bright and shining--that it had no use at all

for any lonely young man. He decided suddenly that he would go and see

me. He found an Isvostchick, but when they reached the Ekaterinsgofsky

Canal the surly coachman refused to drive further, saying that his horse

had gone lame, and that this was as far as he had bargained to go.

Henry was forced to leave the cab, and then found himself outside the

little people's cinema, where he had once been with Vera and myself.

He knew that my rooms were not far away, and he started off beside the

white and silent canal, wondering why he had come, and wishing he were

back in bed.

There was still a great deal of the baby in Henry, and ghosts and giants

and scaly-headed monsters were not incredibilities to his young

imagination. As he left the main thoroughfare and turned down past the

widening docks, he suddenly knew that he was terrified. There had been

stories of wild attacks on rich strangers, sand-bagging and the rest,

often enough, but it was not of that kind of thing that he was afraid.

He told me afterwards that he expected to see "long thick crawling

creatures" creeping towards him over the ice. He continually turned

round to see whether some one were following him. When he crossed the

tumbledown bridge that led to my island it seemed that he was absolutely

alone in the whole world. The masts of the ships dim through the cold

mist were like tangled spiders' webs. A strange hard red moon peered

over the towers and chimneys of the distant dockyard. The ice was

limitless, and of a dirty grey pallor, with black shadows streaking it.

My island must have looked desolate enough, with its dirty snow-heaps,

old boards and scrap-iron and tumbledown cottages.

Again, as on his first arrival in Petrograd, Henry was faced by the

solemn fact that events are so often romantic in retrospect, but grimly

realistic in experience. He reached my lodging and found the door open.

He climbed the dark rickety stairs and entered my sitting-room. The

blinds were not drawn, and the red moon peered through on to the grey

shadows that the ice beyond always flung. The stove was not burning, the

room was cold and deserted. Henry called my name and there was no

answer. He went into my bedroom and there was no one there. He came back

and stood there listening.

He could hear the creaking of some bar beyond the window and the

melancholy whistle of a distant train.

He was held there, as though spellbound. Suddenly he thought that he

heard some one climbing the stairs. He gave a cry, and that was answered

by a movement so close to him that it was almost at his elbow.

"Who's there?" he cried. He saw a shadow pass between the moon and

himself. In a panic of terror he cried out, and at the same time struck

a match. Some one came towards him, and he saw that it was Markovitch.

He was so relieved to find that it was a friend that he did not stop to

wonder what Markovitch should be doing hiding in my room. It afterwards

struck him that Markovitch looked odd. "Like a kind of conspirator, in

old shabby Shuba with the collar turned up. He looked jolly ill and

dirty, as though he hadn't slept or washed. He didn't seem a bit

surprised at seeing me there, and I think he scarcely realised that it

_was_ me. He was thinking of something else so hard that he couldn't

take me in."

"Oh, Bohun!" he said in a confused way.

"Hullo, Nicolai Leontievitch," Bohun said, trying to be unconcerned.

"What are you doing here?"

"Came to see Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "Wasn't here; I was going to

write to him."

Bohun then lit a candle and discovered that the place was in a very

considerable mess. Some one had been sifting my desk, and papers and

letters were lying about the floor. The drawers of my table were open,

and one chair was over-turned. Markovitch stood back near the window,

looking at Bohun suspiciously. They must have been a curious couple for

such a position. There was an awkward pause, and then Bohun, trying to

speak easily, said:

"Well, it seems that Durward isn't coming. He's out dining somewhere I

expect."

"Probably," said Markovitch drily.

There was another pause, then Markovitch broke out with: "I suppose you

think I've been here trying to steal something."

"Oh no--oh no--no--" stammered Bohun.

"But I have," said Markovitch. "You can look round and see. There it is

on every side of you. I've been trying to find a letter."

"Oh yes," said Bohun nervously.

"Well, that seems to you terrible," went on Markovitch, growing ever

fiercer. "Of course it seems to you perfect Englishmen a dreadful thing.

But why heed it?... You all do things just as bad, only you are

hypocrites."

"Oh yes, certainly," said Bohun.

"And now," said Markovitch with a snarl. "I'm sure you will not think me

a proper person for you to lodge with any longer--and you will be right.

I am not a proper person. I have no sense of decency, thank God, and no

Russian has any sense of decency, and that is why we are beaten and

despised by the whole world, and yet are finer than them all--so you'd

better not lodge with us any more."

"But of course," said Bohun, disliking more and more this uncomfortable

scene--"of course I shall continue to stay with you. You are my friends,

and one doesn't mind what one's friends do. One's friends are one's

friends."

Suddenly, then, Markovitch jerked himself forward, "just as though,"

Bohun afterwards described it to me, "he had shot himself out of a

catapault."

"Tell me," he said, "is your English friend in love with my wife?"

What Bohun wanted to do then was to run out of the room, down the dark

stairs, and away as fast as his legs would carry him. He had not been in

Russia so long that he had lost his English dislike of scenes, and he

was seriously afraid that Markovitch was, as he put it, "bang off his

head."

But at this critical moment, he remembered, it seems, my injunction to

him, "to be kind to Markovitch--to make a friend of him." That had

always seemed to him before impossible enough, but now, at the very

moment when Markovitch was at his queerest, he was also at his most

pathetic, looking there in the mist and shadows too untidy and dirty and

miserable to be really alarming. Henry then took courage. "That's all

nonsense, Markovitch," he said. "I suppose by 'your English friend' you

mean Lawrence. He thinks the world of your wife, of course, as we all

do, but he's not the fellow to be in love. I don't suppose he's ever

been really in love with a woman in his life. He's a kindly good-hearted

chap, Lawrence, and he wouldn't do harm to a fly."

Markovitch peered into Bohun's face. "What did you come here for, any of

you?" he asked. "What's Russia over-run with foreigners for? We'll clear

the lot of you out, all of you...." Then he broke off, with a pathetic

little gesture, his hand up to his head. "But I don't know what I'm

saying--I don't mean it, really. Only things are so difficult, and they

slip away from one so.

"I love Russia and I love my wife, Mr. Bohun--and they've both left me.

But you aren't interested in that. Why should you be? Only remember when

you're inclined to laugh at me that I'm like a man in a cockle-shell

boat--and it isn't my fault. I was put in it."

"But I'm never inclined to laugh," said Bohun eagerly. "I may be young

and only an Englishman--but I shouldn't wonder if I don't understand

better than you think. You try and see.... And I'll tell you another

thing, Nicolai Leontievitch, I loved your wife myself--loved her

madly--and she was so good to me and so far above me, that I saw that it

was like loving one of the angels. That's what we all feel, Nicolai

Leontievitch, so that you needn't have any fear--she's too far above all

of us. And I only want to be your friend and hers, and to help you in

any way I can."

(I can see Bohun saying this, very sincere, his cheeks flushed, eager.)

Markovitch held out both his hands.

"You're right," he cried. "She's above us all. It's true that she's an

angel, and we are all her servants. You have helped me by saying what

you have, and I won't forget it. You are right; I am wasting my time

with ridiculous suspicions when I ought to be working. Concentration,

that's what I want, and perhaps you will give it me."

He suddenly came forward and kissed Bohun on both cheeks. He smelt,

Bohun thought, of vodka. Bohun didn't like the embrace, of course, but

he accepted it gracefully.

"Now we'll go away," said Markovitch.

"We ought to put things straight," said Bohun.

"No; I shall leave things as they are," said Markovitch, "so that he

shall see exactly what I've done. I'll write a note."

He scribbled a note to me in pencil. I have it still. It ran:

Dear Ivan Andreievitch--I looked for a letter from my wife to you. In

doing so I was I suppose contemptible. But no matter. At least you see

me as I am. I clasp your hand, N. Markovitch.

They went away together.

II

I was greatly surprised to receive, a few days later, an invitation from

Baron Wilderling; he asked me to go with him on one of the first

evenings in March to a performance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" at the

Alexandra Theatre. I say Lermontov, but heaven knows that that great

Russian poet was not supposed to be going to have much to say in the

affair. This performance had been in preparation for at least ten years,

and when such delights as Gordon Craig's setting of "Hamlet," or Benois'

dresses for "La Locandiera" were discussed, the Wise Ones said:

"Ah,--all very well--just wait until you see 'Masquerade.'"

These manifestations of the artistic spirit had not been very numerous

of late in Petrograd. At the beginning of the war there had been many

cabarets--"The Cow," "The Calf," "The Dog," "The Striped Cat"--and these

had been underground cellars, lighted by Chinese lanterns, and the halls

decorated with Futurist paintings by Yakkolyeff or some other still more

advanced spirit. It seemed strange to me as I dressed that evening. I do

not know how long it was since I had put on a dinner-jacket. With the

exception of that one other visit to Baron Wilderling this seemed to be

my one link with the old world, and it was curious to feel its

fascination, its air of comfort and order and cleanliness, its courtesy

and discipline. "I think I'll leave these rooms," I thought as I looked

about me, "and take a decent flat somewhere."

It is a strange fact, behind which there lies, I believe, some odd sort

of moral significance, that I cannot now recall the events of that

evening in any kind of clear detail. I remember that it was bitterly

cold, with a sky that was flooded with stars. The snow had a queer

metallic sheen upon it as though it were coloured ice, and I can see now

the Nevski like a slab of some fiercely painted metal rising out of the

very smack of our horses' hoofs as my sleigh sped along--as though,

silkworm-like, I spun it out of the entrails of the sledge. It was all

light and fire and colour that night, with towers of gold and frosted

green, and even the black crowds that thronged the Nevski pavements shot

with colour.

Somewhere in one of Shorthouse's stories--in _The Little Schoolmaster

Mark_, I think--he gives a curious impression of a whirling fantastic

crowd of revellers who evoke by their movements some evil pattern in the

air around them, and the boy who is standing in their midst sees this

dark twisted sinister picture forming against the gorgeous walls and the

coloured figures until it blots out the whole scene and plunges him into

darkness. I will not pretend that on this evening I discerned anything

sinister or ominous in the gay scene that the Alexandra Theatre offered

me, but I was nevertheless weighed down by some quite unaccountable

depression that would not let me alone. For this I can see now that

Lawrence was very largely responsible. When I met him and the

Wilderlings in the foyer of the theatre I saw at once that he was

greatly changed.

The clear open expression of his eyes was gone; his mind was far away

from his company--and it was as though I could see into his brain and

watch the repetition of the old argument occurring again and again and

again with always the same questions and answers, the same reproaches,

the same defiances, the same obstinacies. He was caught by what was

perhaps the first crisis of his life. He had never been a man for much

contact with his fellow-beings, he had been aloof and reserved, generous

in his judgements of others, severe and narrow in his judgement of

himself. Above all, he had been proud of his strength....

Now he was threatened by something stronger than himself. He could have

managed it so long as he was aware only of his love for Vera.... Now,

when, since Nina's party, he knew that also Vera loved him, he had to

meet the tussle of his life.

That, at any rate, is the kind of figure that I give to his mood that

evening. He has told me much of what happened to him afterwards, but

nothing of that particular night, except once. "Do you remember that

'Masquerade' evening?... I was in hell that night...." which, for

Lawrence, was expressive enough.

Both the Baron and his wife were in great spirits. The Baron was more

than ever the evocation of the genius of elegance and order; he seemed

carved out of some coloured ivory, behind whose white perfection burnt a

shining resolute flame.

His clothes were so perfect that they would have expressed the whole of

him even though his body had not been there. He was happy. His eyes

danced appreciatively; he waved his white gloves at the scene as though

blessing it.

"Of course, Mr. Durward," he said to me, "this is nothing compared with

what we could do before the war--nevertheless here you see, for a

moment, a fragment of the old Petersburg--Petersburg as it shall be,

please God, again one day...."

I do not in the least remember who was present that evening, but it was,

I believe, a very distinguished company. The lights blazed, the jewels

flashed, and the chatter was tremendous. The horseshoe-shaped seats

behind the stalls clustered in knots and bunches of colour under the

great glitter of electricity about the Royal Box. Artists--Somoff and

Benois and Dobujinsky; novelists like Sologub and Merejkowsky; dancers

like Karsavina--actors from all over Petrograd--they were there, I

expect, to add criticism and argument to the adulation of friends and of

the carelessly observant rich Jews and merchants who had come simply to

display their jewellery. Petrograd, like every other city in the world,

is artistic only by the persistence of its minority.

I'm sure that there were Princesses and Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses

for any one who needed them, and it was only in the gallery where the

students and their girl-friends were gathered that the name of Lermontov

was mentioned. The name of the evening was "Meyerhold," the gentleman

responsible for the production. At last the Event that had been brewing

ceaselessly for the last ten years--ever since the last Revolution in

fact--was to reach creation. The moment of M. Meyerhold's life had

arrived--the moment, had we known it, of many other lives also; but we

did not know it. We buzzed and we hummed, we gasped and we gaped, we

yawned and we applauded; and the rustle of gold tissue, the scent of

gold leaf, the thick sticky substance of gold paint, filled the air,

flooded the arena, washed past us into the street outside. Meanwhile M.

Meyerhold, white, perspiring, in his shirt-sleeves with his collar

loosened and his hair damp, is in labour behind the gold tissue to

produce the child of his life... and Behold, the Child is produced!

And such a child! It was not I am sure so fantastic an affair in reality

as in my rememberance of it. I have, since then, read Lermontov's play,

and I must confess that it does not seem, in cold truth, to be one of

his finest works. It is long and old-fashioned, melodramatic and

clumsy--but then it was not on this occasion Lermontov's play that was

the thing. But it was a masquerade, and that in a sense far from the

author's intention. As I watched I remember that I forgot the bad acting

(the hero was quite atrocious), forgot the lapses of taste in the colour

and arrangement of the play, forgot the artifices and elaborate

originalities and false sincerities; there were, I have no doubt, many

things in it all that were bad and meretricious--I was dreaming. I saw,

against my will and outside my own agency, mingled with the gold

screens, the purple curtains, the fantasies and extravagances of the

costumes, the sudden flashes of unexpected colour through light or dress

or backcloth--pictures from those Galician days that had been, until

Semyonov's return, as I fancied, forgotten.

A crowd of revellers ran down the stage, and a shimmering cloud of gold

shot with red and purple was flung from one end of the hall to the

other, and behind it, through it, between it, I saw the chill light of

the early morning, and Nikitin and I sitting on the bench outside the

stinking but that we had used as an operating theatre, watching the

first rays of the sun warm, the cold mountain's rim. I could hear

voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the

wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous

figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden

with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang,

and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together

on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked

back to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was that

terrific crash as of the smashing of a world of china, the fierce

crackle of the machine-guns, and then the boom of the cannon from under

our very feet... the garden was filled with revellers, laughing,

dancing, singing, the air was filled again with the air of gold paint,

the tenor's voice rose higher and higher, the golden screens closed--the

act was ended.

It was as though I had received, in some dim, bewildered fashion, a

warning. When the lights went up, it was some moments before I realised

that the Baron was speaking to me, that a babel of chatter, like a

sudden rain storm on a glass roof, had burst on every side of us, and

that a huge Jewess, all bare back and sham pearls, was trying to pass me

on her way to the corridor. The Baron talked away: "Very amusing, don't

you think? After Reinhardt, of course, although they say now that

Reinhardt got all his ideas from your man Craig. I'm sure I don't know

whether that's so.... I hope you're more reassured to-night, Mr.

Durward. You were full of alarms the other evening. Look around you and

you'll see the true Russia...."

"I can't believe this to be the true Russia," I said. "Petrograd is not

the true Russia. I don't believe that there _is_ a true Russia."

"Well, there you are," he continued eagerly. "No true Russia! Quite so.

Very observant. But we have to pretend there is, and that's what you

foreigners are always forgetting. The Russian is an individualist--give

him freedom and he'll lose all sense of his companions. He will pursue

his own idea. Myself and my party are here to prevent him from pursuing

his own idea, for the good of himself and his country. He may be

discontented, he may grumble, but he doesn't realise his luck. Give him

his freedom, and in six months you'll see Russia back in the Middle

Ages."

"And another six months?" I asked.

"The Stone Age."

"And then?"

"Ah," he said, smiling, "you ask me too much, Mr. Durward. We are

speaking of our own generation."

The curtain was up again and I was back in my other world. I cannot tell

you anything of the rest of the play--I remember nothing. Only I know

that I was actually living over again those awful days in the

forest--the heat, the flies, the smells, the glassy sheen of the trees,

the perpetual rumble of the guns, the desolate whine of the shells--and

then Marie's death, Trenchard's sorrow, Trenchard's death, that last

view of Semyonov... and I felt that I was being made to remember it all

for a purpose, as though my old friend, rich now with his wiser

knowledge, was whispering to me, "All life is bound up. You cannot leave

anything behind you; the past, the present, the future are one. You had

pushed us away from you, but we are with you always for ever. I am your

friend for ever, and Marie is your friend, and now, once more, you have

to take your part in a battle, and we have come to you to share it with

you. Do not be confused by history or public events or class struggle or

any big names; it is the individual and the soul of the individual alone

that matters. I and Marie and Vera and Nina and Markovitch--our love for

you, your love for us, our courage, our self-sacrifice, our weakness,

our defeat, our progress--these are the things for which life exists;

it exists as a training-ground for the immortal soul...."

With a sweep of colour the stage broke into a mist of movement. Masked

and hooded figures in purple and gold and blue and red danced madly off

into a forest of stinking, sodden leaves and trees as thin as

tissue-paper burnt by the sun. "Oh--aye! oh--aye! oh--aye!" came from

the wounded, and the dancers answered, "Tra-la-la-la! Tra-la-la-la,'"

The golden screens were drawn forward, the lights were up again, and the

whole theatre was stirring like a coloured paper ant heap.

Outside in the foyer I found Lawrence at my elbow.

"Go and see her," he whispered to me, "as soon as possible! Tell

her--tell her--no, tell her nothing. But see that she's all right and

let me know. See her to-morrow--early!"

I could say nothing to him, for the Baron had joined us.

"Good-night! Good-night! A most delightful evening!... Most amusing!...

No, thank you, I shall walk!"

"Come and see us," said the Baroness, smiling.

"Very soon," I answered. I little knew that I should never see either of

them again.

III

I awoke that night with a sudden panic that I must instantly see Vera.

I, even in the way that one does when, one is only half awake, struggled

out of bed and felt for my clothes. Then I remembered and climbed back

again, but sleep would not return to me. The self-criticism and

self-distrust that were always attacking me and paralysing my action

sprang upon me now and gripped me. What was I to do? How was I to act? I

saw Vera and Nina and Lawrence and, behind them, smiling at me,

Semyonov. They were asking for my help, but they were, in some strange,

intangible way, most desperately remote. When I read now in our papers

shrill criticisms on our officials, our Cabinet, our generals, our

propagandists, our merchants, for their failure to deal adequately with

Russia, I say: Deal adequately? First you must catch your bird... and

no Western snare has ever caught the Russian bird of paradise, and I

dare prophesy that no Western snare ever will. Had I not broken my

heart in the pursuit, and was I not as far as ever from attainment? The

secret of the mystery of life is the isolation that separates every man

from his fellow--the secret of dissatisfaction too; and the only purpose

in life is to realise that isolation, and to love one's fellow-man

because of it, and to show one's own courage, like a flag to which the

other travellers may wave their answer; but we Westerners have at least

the waiting comfort of our discipline, of our materialism, of our

indifference to ideas. The Russian, I believe, lives in a world of

loneliness peopled only by ideas. His impulses towards self-confession,

towards brotherhood, towards vice, towards cynicism, towards his belief

in God and his scorn of Him, come out of this world; and beyond it he

sees his fellow-men as trees walking, and the Mountain of God as a

distant peak, placed there only to emphasise his irony.

I had wanted to be friends with Nina and Vera--I had even longed for

it--and now at the crisis when I must rise and act they were so far away

from me that I could only see them, like coloured ghosts, vanishing into

mist.

I would go at once and see Vera and there do what I could. Lawrence must

return to England--then all would be well. Markovitch must be

persuaded.... Nina must be told.... I slept and tumbled into a

nightmare of a pursuit, down endless streets, of flying figures.

Next day I went to Vera. I found her, to my joy, alone. I realised at

once that our talk would be difficult. She was grave and severe, sitting

back in her chair, her head up, not looking at me at all, but beyond

through the window to the tops of the trees feathery with snow against

the sky of egg-shell blue. I am always beaten by a hostile atmosphere.

To-day I was at my worst, and soon we were talking like a couple of the

merest strangers.

She asked me whether I had heard that there were very serious

disturbances on the other side of the river.

"I was on the Nevski early this afternoon," I said, "and I saw about

twenty Cossacks go galloping down towards the Neva. I asked somebody and

was told that some women had broken into the bakers' shops on Vassily

Ostrov...."

"It will end as they always end," said Vera. "Some arrests and a few

people beaten, and a policeman will get a medal."

There was a long pause. "I went to 'Masquerade' the other night," I

said.

"I hear it's very good...."

"Pretentious and rather vulgar--but amusing all the same."

"Every one's talking about it and trying to get seats...."

"Yes. Meyerhold must be pleased."

"They discuss it much more than they do the war, or even politics. Every

one's tired of the war."

I said nothing. She continued:

"So I suppose we shall just go on for years and years.... And then the

Empress herself will be tired one day and it will suddenly stop." She

showed a flash of interest, turning to me and looking at me for the

first time since I had come in.

"Ivan Andreievitch, what do you stay in Russia for? Why don't you go

back to England?"

I was taken by surprise. I stammered, "Why do I stay? Why,

because--because I like it."

"You can't like it. There's _nothing_ to like in Russia."

"There's _everything_!" I answered. "And I have friends here," I added.

But she didn't answer that, and continued to sit staring out at the

trees. We talked a little more about nothing at all, and then there was

another long pause. At last I could endure it no longer, I jumped to my

feet.

"Vera Michailovna," I cried, "what have I done?"

"Done?" she asked me with a look of self-conscious surprise. "What do

you mean?"

"You know what I mean well enough," I answered. I tried to speak firmly,

but my voice trembled a little. "You told me I was your friend. When I

was ill the other day you came to me and said that you needed help and

that you wanted me to help you. I said that I would--"

I paused.

"Well?" she said, in a hard, unrelenting voice.

"Well--" I hesitated and stammered, cursing myself for my miserable

cowardice. "You are in trouble now, Vera--great trouble--I came here

because I am ready to do anything for you--anything--and you treat me

like a stranger, almost like an enemy."

I saw her lip tremble--only for an instant. She said nothing.

"If you've got anything against me since you saw me last," I went on,

"tell me and I'll go away. But I had to see you and also Lawrence--"

At the mention of his name her whole body quivered, but again only for

an instant.

"Lawrence asked me to come and see you."

She looked up at me then gravely and coldly, and without the sign of any

emotion either in her face or voice.

"Thank you, Ivan Andreievitch, but I want no help--I am in no trouble.

It was very kind of Mr. Lawrence, but really--"

Then I could endure it no longer. I broke out:

"Vera, what's the matter. You know all this isn't true.... I don't know

what idea you have now in your head, but you must let me speak to you.

I've got to tell you this--that Lawrence must go back to England, and as

soon as possible--and I will see that he does--"

That did its work. In an instant she was upon me like a wild beast,

springing from her chair, standing close to me, her head flung back, her

eyes furious.

"You wouldn't dare!" she cried. "It's none of your business, Ivan

Andreievitch. You say you're my friend. You're not. You're my enemy--my

enemy. I don't care for him, not in the very least--he is nothing to

me--nothing to me at all. But he mustn't go back to England. It will

ruin his career. You will ruin him for life, Ivan Andreievitch. What

business is it of yours? You imagine--because of what you fancied you

saw at Nina's party. There was nothing at Nina's party--nothing. I love

my husband, Ivan Andreievitch, and you are my enemy if you say anything

else. And you pretend to be his friend, but you are his enemy if you try

to have him sent back to England.... He must not go. For the matter of

that, I will never see him again--never--if that is what you want. See,

I promise you never--never--" She suddenly broke down--she, Vera

Michailovna, the proudest woman I had ever known, turning from me, her

head in her hands, sobbing, her shoulders bent.

I was most deeply moved. I could say nothing at first, then, when the

sound of her sobbing became unbearable to me, I murmured,

"Vera, please. I have no power. I can't make him go. I will only do what

you wish. Vera, please, please--"

Then, with her back still turned to me, I heard her say,

"Please, go. I didn't mean--I didn't... but go now... and come

back--later."

I waited a minute, and then, miserable, terrified of the future, I went.

IV

Next night (it was Friday evening) Semyonov paid me a visit. I was just

dropping to sleep in my chair. I had been reading that story of De la

Mare's _The Return_--one of the most beautiful books in our language,

whether for its spirit, its prose, or its poetry--and something of the

moon-lit colour of its pages had crept into my soul, so that the

material world was spun into threads of the finest silk behind which

other worlds were more and more plainly visible. I had not drawn my

blind, and a wonderful moon shone clear on to the bare boards of my

room, bringing with its rays the mother-of-pearl reflections of the

limitless ice, and these floated on my wall in trembling waves of opaque

light. In the middle of this splendour I dropped slowly into slumber,

the book falling from my hands, and I, on my part, seeming to float

lazily backwards and forwards, as though, truly, one were at the bottom

of some crystal sea, idly and happily drowned.

From all of this I was roused by a sharp knock on my door, and I started

up, still bewildered and bemused, but saying to myself aloud, "There's

some one there! there's some one there!..." I stood for quite a while,

listening, on the middle of my shining floor, then the knock was almost

fiercely repeated. I opened the door and, to my surprise, found Semyonov

standing there. He came in, smiling, very polite of course.

"You'll forgive me, Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "This is terribly

unceremonious. But I had an urgent desire to see you, and you wouldn't

wish me, in the circumstances, to have waited."

"Please," I said. I went to the window and drew the blinds. I lit the

lamp. He took off his Shuba and we sat down. The room was very dim now,

and I could only see his mouth and square beard behind the lamp.

"I've no Samovar, I'm afraid," I said. "If I'd known you were coming I'd

have told her to have it ready. But it's too late now. She's gone to

bed."

"Nonsense," he said brusquely. "You know that I don't care about that.

Now we'll waste no time. Let us come straight to the point at once. I've

come to give you some advice, Ivan Andreievitch--very simple advice. Go

home to England." Before he had finished the sentence I had felt the

hostility in his voice; I knew that it was to be a fight between us, and

strangely, at once the self-distrust and cowardice from which I had been

suffering all those weeks left me. I felt warm and happy. I felt that

with Semyonov I knew how to deal. I was afraid of Vera and Nina,

perhaps, because I loved them, but of Semyonov, thank God, I was not

afraid.

"Well, now, that's very kind of you," I said, "to take so much interest

in my movements. I didn't know that it mattered to you so much where I

was. Why must I go?"

"Because you are doing no good here. You are interfering in things of

which you have no knowledge. When we met before you interfered, and you

must honestly admit that you did not improve things. Now it is even more

serious. I must ask you to leave my family alone, Ivan Andreievitch."

"Your family!" I retorted, laughing. "Upon my word, you do them great

honour. I wonder whether they'd be very proud and pleased if they knew

of your adoption of them. I haven't noticed on their side any very great

signs of devotion."

He laughed. "No, you haven't noticed, Ivan Andreievitch. But there, you

don't really notice very much. You think you see the devil of a lot and

are a mighty clever fellow; but we're Russians, you know, and it takes

more than sentimental mysticism to understand us. But even if you did

understand us--which you don't--the real point is that we don't want

you, any of you, patronising, patting us on the shoulder, explaining us

to ourselves, talking about our souls, our unpunctuality, and our

capacity for drink. However, that's merely in a general way. In a

personal, direct, and individual way, I beg you not to visit my family

again. Stick to your own countrymen."

Although he spoke obstinately, and with a show of assurance, I realised,

behind his words, his own uncertainty.

"See here, Semyonov," I said. "It's just my own Englishmen that I am

going to stick to. What about Lawrence? And what about Bohun? Will you

prevent me from continuing my friendship with them?"

"Lawrence... Lawrence," he said slowly, in a voice quite other than his

earlier one, and as though he were talking aloud to himself. "Now,

that's strange... there's a funny thing. A heavy, dull, silent

Englishman, as ugly as only an Englishman can be, and the two of them

are mad about him--nothing in him--nothing--and yet there it is. It's

the fidelity in the man, that's what it is, Durward...." He suddenly

called out the word aloud, as though he'd made a discovery. "Fidelity...

fidelity... that's what we Russians admire, and there's a man with

not enough imagination to make him unfaithful. Fidelity!--lack of

imagination, lack of freedom--that's all fidelity is.... But I'm

faithful.... God knows I'm faithful--always! always!"

He stared past me. I swear that he did not see me, that I had vanished

utterly from his vision. I waited. He was leaning forward, pressing both

his thick white hands on the table. His gaze must have pierced the ice

beyond the walls, and the worlds beyond the ice.

Then quite suddenly he came back to me and said very quietly,

"Well, there it is, Ivan Andreievitch.... You must leave Vera and Nina

alone. It isn't your affair."

We continued the discussion then in a strange and friendly way. "I

believe it to be my affair," I answered quietly, "simply because they

care for me and have asked me to help them if they were in trouble. I

still deny that Vera cares for Lawrence.... Nina has had some girl's

romantic idea perhaps... but that is the extent of the trouble. You are

trying to make things worse, Alexei Petrovitch, for your own

purposes--and God only knows what they are."

He now spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear his words. He was

leaning forward on the table, resting his head on his hands and looking

gravely at me.

"What I can't understand, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, "is why you're

always getting in my way. You did so in Galicia, and now here you are

again. It is not as though you were strong or wise--no, it is because

you are persistent. I admire you in a way, you know, but now, this time,

I assure you that you are making a great mistake in remaining. You will

be able to influence neither Vera Michailovna nor your bullock of an

Englishman when the moment comes. At the crisis they will never think of

you at all, and the end of it simply will be that all parties concerned

will hate you. I don't wish you any harm, and I assure you that you will

suffer terribly if you stay.... By the way, Ivan Andreievitch," his

voice suddenly dropped, "you haven't ever had--by chance--just by

chance--any photograph of Marie Ivanovna with you, have you? Just by

chance, you know...."

"No," I said shortly, "I never had one."

"No--of course--not. I only thought.... But of course you

wouldn't--no--no.... Well, as I was saying, you'd better leave us all to

our fate. You can't prevent things--you can't indeed." I looked at him

without speaking. He returned my gaze.

"Tell me one thing," I said, "before I answer you. What are you doing to

Markovitch, Alexei Petrovitch?"

"Markovitch!" He repeated the name with an air of surprise as though he

had never heard it before. "What do you mean?"

"You have some plan with regard to him," I said. "What is it?"

He laughed then. "I a plan! My dear Durward, how romantic you always

insist on being! I a plan! Your plunges into Russian psychology are as

naïve as the girl who pays her ten kopecks to see the Fat Woman at the

Fair! Markovitch and I understand one another. We trust one another. He

is a simple fellow, but I trust him."

"Do you remember," I said, "that the other day at the Jews' Market you

told me the story of the man who tortured his friend, until the man shot

him--simply because he was tired of life and too proud to commit

suicide. Why did you tell me that story?"

"Did I tell it you?" he asked indifferently. "I had forgotten. But it is

of no importance. You know, Ivan Andreievitch, that what I told you

before is true.... We don't want you here any more. I tell you in a

perfectly friendly way. I bear you no malice. But we're tired of your

sentimentality. I'm not speaking only for myself--I'm not indeed. We

feel that you avoid life to a ridiculous extent, and that you have no

right to talk to us Russians on such a subject. What, for instance, do

you know about women? For years I slept with a different woman every

night of the week--old and young, beautiful and ugly, some women like

men, some like God, some like the gutter. That teaches you something

about women--but only something. Afterwards I found that there was only

one woman--I left all the others like dirty washing--I was supremely

faithful... so I learnt the rest. Now you have never been faithful nor

unfaithful--I'm sure that you have not. Then about God? When have you

ever thought about Him? Why, you are ashamed to mention His name. If an

Englishman speaks of God when other men are present every one

laughs--and yet why? It is a very serious and interesting question. God

exists undoubtedly, and so we must make up our minds about Him. We must

establish some relationship--what it is does not matter--that is our

individual 'case'--but only the English establish no relationship and

then call it a religion.... And so in this affair of my family. What

does it matter what they do? That is the only thing of which you think,

that they should die or disgrace their name or be unhappy or quarrel....

Pooh! What are all those things compared with the idea behind them? If

they wish to sacrifice happiness for an idea, that is their good luck,

and no Russian would think of preventing them. But you come in with your

English morality and sentiment, and scream and cry.... No, Ivan

Andreievitch, go home! go home!"

I waited to be quite sure that he had finished, and then I said,

"That's all as it may be, Alexei Petrovitch. It may be as you say. The

point is, that I remain here."

He got up from his chair. "You are determined on that?"

"I am determined," I answered.

"Nothing will change you?"

"Nothing."

"Then it is a battle between us?"

"If you like."

"So be it."

I helped him on with his Shuba. He said, in an ordinary conversational

tone,

"There may be trouble to-morrow. There's been shooting by the Nicholas

Station this afternoon, I hear. I should avoid the Nevski to-morrow."

I laughed. "I'm not afraid of that kind of death, Alexei Petrovitch," I

said.

"No," he said, looking at me. "I will do you justice. You are not."

He pulled his Shuba close about him.

"Good-night, Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "It's been a very pleasant

talk."

"Very," I answered. "Good-night,"

After he had gone I drew back the blinds and let the moonlight flood the

room.

V

I feel conscious, as I approach the centre of my story, that there is an

appearance of uncertainty in the way that I pass from one character to

another. I do not defend that uncertainty.

What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of

us--myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the

Rat himself--was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us,

outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the

eyes... used against our own human agency, and yet free within that

domination for the exercise of our own free will. Have you never felt

when you have been swept into the interaction of some group of persons

that you were being employed as a part of a figure that without you

would be incomplete? The figure is formed.... For an instant it remains,

gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a

judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played

some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment,

as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet

expressed that same individuality more nobly than any poor assertion of

your own small lonely figure could afford. You have been used and now

you are alone again.... You were caught up and united to your fellowmen.

God appeared to you--not, as you had expected, in a vision cut off from

the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was

only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your

individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified.

And the vision of the figure remains....

When I woke on Saturday morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was

conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some

affair whose uncertainty had worried me. I lay in bed chuckling as

though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself,

"Well, I needn't be afraid of him any longer." It was a most beautiful

day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet

of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving.

I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied

that the faces of the passers-by were anxious and nervous. Nevertheless,

the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow

reassured me--the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to

allow disturbance. Then at the corner of the English shop where the

Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had

occurred. It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with

whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its

face and showed me a new grin.

The broad space of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very

quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly

stirring stream.

As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the

first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had

never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to

stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped

past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along,

amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country.

Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone. So far as my

eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way.

I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an

amiable, aimless manner up the street.

"What's the matter?" I asked a cheerful, fat little "Chinovnik," who

seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force.

"I don't know...." he said. "They're saying there's been some shooting

up by the Nicholas Station--but that was last night. Some women had a

procession about food.... _Tak oni gavoryat_--so they say.... But I

don't know. People have just come out to see what they can see...."

And so they had--women, boys, old men, little children. I could see no

signs of ill-temper anywhere, only a rather open-mouthed wonder and

sense of expectation.

A large woman near me, with a shawl over her head and carrying a large

basket, laughed a great deal. "No, I wouldn't go," she said. "You go and

get it for yourself--I'm not coming. Not I, I was too clever for that."

Then she would turn, shrilly calling for some child who was apparently

lost in the crowd. "Sacha!... Ah! Sacha!" she cried--and turning again,

"Eh! look at the Cossack!... There's a fine Cossack!"

It was then that I noticed the Cossacks. They were lined up along the

side of the pavement, and sometimes they would suddenly wheel and

clatter along the pavement itself, to the great confusion of the crowd

who would scatter in every direction.

They were fine-looking men, and their faces expressed childish and

rather worried amiability. The crowd obviously feared them not at all,

and I saw a woman standing with her hand on the neck of one of the

horses, talking in a very friendly fashion to the soldier who rode it.

"That's strange," I thought to myself; "there's something queer here."

It was then, just at the entrance of the "Malaia Koniushennaia," that a

strange little incident occurred. Some fellow--I could just see his

shaggy head, his pale face, and black beard--had been shouting

something, and suddenly a little group of Cossacks moved towards him and

he was surrounded. They turned off with him towards a yard close at

hand. I could hear his voice shrilly protesting; the crowd also moved

behind, murmuring. Suddenly a Cossack, laughing, said something. I could

not hear his words, but every one near me laughed. The little Chinovnik

at my side said to me, "That's right. They're not going to shoot,

whatever happens--not on their brothers, they say. They'll let the

fellow go in a moment. It's only just for discipline's sake. That's

right. That's the spirit!"

"But what about the police?" I asked.

"Ah, the police!" His cheery, good-natured face was suddenly dark and

scowling. "Let them try, that's all. It's Protopopoff who's our

enemy--not the Cossacks."

And a woman near him repeated.

"Yes, yes, it's Protopopoff. Hurrah for the Cossacks!"

I was squeezed now into a corner, and the crowd swirled and eddied about

me in a tangled stream, slow, smiling, confused, and excited. I pushed

my way along, and at last tumbled down the dark stone steps into the

"Cave de la Grave," a little restaurant patronised by the foreigners and

certain middle-class Russians. It was full, and every one was eating his

or her meal very comfortably as though nothing at all were the matter. I

sat down with a young American, an acquaintance of mine attached to the

American Embassy.

"There's a tremendous crowd in the Nevski," I said.

"Guess I'm too hungry to trouble about it," he answered.

"Do you think there's going to be any trouble?" I asked.

"Course not. These folks are always wandering round. M. Protopopoff has

it in hand all right."

"Yes, I suppose he has," I answered with a sigh.

"You seem to want trouble," he said, suddenly looking up at me.

"No, I don't want trouble," I answered. "But I'm sick of this mess, this

mismanagement, thievery, lying--one's tempted to think that anything

would be better--"

"Don't you believe it," he said brusquely. "Excuse me, Durward, I've

been in this country five years. A revolution would mean God's own

upset, and you've got a war on, haven't you?"

"They might fight better than ever," I argued.

"Fight!" he laughed. "They're dam sick of it all, that's what they are.

And a revolution would leave 'em like a lot of silly sheep wandering on

to a precipice. But there won't be no revolution. Take my word."

It was at that moment that I saw Boris Grogoff come in. He stood in the

doorway looking about him, and he had the strangest air of a man walking

in his sleep, so bewildered, so rapt, so removed was he. He stared about

him, looked straight at me, but did not recognise me; finally, when a

waiter showed him a table, he sat down still gazing in front of him. The

waiter had to speak to him twice before he ordered his meal, and then he

spoke so strangely that the fellow looked at him in astonishment. "Guess

that chap's seen the Millennium," remarked my American. "Or he's drunk,

maybe."

This appearance had the oddest effect on me. It was as though I had been

given a sudden conviction that after all there was something behind this

disturbance. I saw, during the whole of the rest of that day, Grogoff's

strange face with the exalted, bewildered eyes, the excited mouth, the

body tense and strained as though waiting for a blow. And now, always

when I look back I see Boris Grogoff standing in the doorway of the

"Cave de la Grave" like a ghost from another world warning me.

In the afternoon I had a piece of business that took me across the

river. I did my business and turned homewards. It was almost dark, and

the ice of the Neva was coloured a faint green under the grey sky; the

buildings rose out of it like black bubbles poised over a swamp. I was

in that strange quarter of Petrograd where the river seems, like some

sluggish octopus, to possess a thousand coils. Always you are turning

upon a new bend of the ice, secretly stretching into darkness; strange

bridges suddenly meet you, and then, where you had expected to find a

solid mass of hideous flats, there will be a cluster of masts and the

smell of tar, and little fierce red lights like the eyes of waiting

beasts.

I seemed to stand with ice on every side of me, and so frail was my

trembling wooden bridge that it seemed an easy thing for the ice, that

appeared to press with tremendous weight against its banks, to grind the

supports to fragments. There was complete silence on every side of me.

The street to my left was utterly deserted. I heard no cries nor

calls--only the ice seemed once and again to quiver as though some

submerged creature was moving beneath it. That vast crowd on the Nevski

seemed to be a dream. I was in a world that had fallen into decay and

desolation, and I could smell rotting wood, and could fancy that frozen

blades of grass were pressing up through the very pavement stones.

Suddenly an Isvostchick stumbled along past me, down the empty street,

and the bumping rattle of the sledge on the snow woke me from my

laziness. I started off homewards. When I had gone a little way and was

approaching the bridge over the Neva some man passed me, looked back,

stopped and waited for me. When I came up to him I saw to my surprise

that it was the Rat. He had his coat-collar turned over his ears and his

dirty fur cap pulled down over his forehead. His nose was very red, and

his thin hollow cheeks a dirty yellow colour.

"Good-evening, Barin," he said, grinning.

"Good-evening," I said. "Where are you slipping off to so secretly?"

"Slipping off?" He did not seem to understand my word. I repeated it.

"Oh, I'm not slipping off," he said almost indignantly. "No, indeed. I'm

just out for a walk like your Honour, to see the town."

"What have they been doing this afternoon?" I asked. "There's been a

fine fuss on the Nevski."

"Yes, there has...." he said, chuckling. "But it's nothing to the fuss

there will be."

"Nonsense," I said. "The police have got it all in control already.

You'll see to-morrow...."

"And the soldiers, Barin?"

"Oh, the soldiers won't do anything. Talk's one thing--action's

another."

He laughed to himself and seemed greatly amused. This irritated me.

"Well, what do you know?" I asked.

"I know nothing," he chuckled. "But remember, Barin, in a week's time,

if you want me I'm your friend. Who knows? In a week I may be a rich

man."

"Some one else's riches," I answered.

"Certainly," he said. "And why not? Why should he have things? Is he a

better man than I? Possibly--but then it is easy for a rich man to keep

within the law. And then Russia's meant for the poor man. However," he

continued, with great contempt in his voice, "that's politics--dull

stuff. While the others talk I act."

"And what about the Germans?" I asked him. "Does it occur to you that

when you've collected your spoils the Germans will come in and take

them?"

"Ah, you don't understand us, Barin," he said, laughing. "You're a good

man and a kind man, but you don't understand us. What can the Germans

do? They can't take the whole of Russia. Russia's a big country.... No,

if the Germans come there'll be more for us to take."

We stood for a moment under a lamp-post. He put his hand on my arm and

looked up at me with his queer ugly face, his sentimental dreary eyes,

his red nose, and his hard, cruel little mouth.

"But no one shall touch you--unless it's myself if I'm very drunk. But

you, knowing me, will understand afterwards that I was at least not

malicious--"

I laughed. "And this mysticism that they tell us about in England. Are

you mystical, Rat? Have you a beautiful soul?"

He sniffed and blew his nose with his hand.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Barin--I suppose you haven't a

rouble or two on you?"

"No, I haven't," I answered. He looked up and down the bridge as though

he were wondering whether an attack on me was worth while. He saw a

policeman and decided that it wasn't.

"Well, good-night, Barin," he said cheerfully. He shuffled off. I looked

at the vast Neva, pale green and dim grey, so silent under the bridges.

The policeman, enormous under his high coat, the sure and confident

guardian of that silent world, came slowly towards me, and I turned away

home.

VI

The next day, Sunday, I have always called in my mind Nina's day, and so

I propose to deal with it here, describing it as far as possible from

her point of view and placing her in the centre of the picture.

The great fact about Nina, at the end, when everything has been said,

must always be her youth. That Russian youthfulness is something that no

Western people can ever know, because no Western people are accustomed,

from their very babyhood, to bathe in an atmosphere that deals only with

ideas.

In no Russian family is the attempt to prevent children from knowing

what life really is maintained for long; the spontaneous impetuosity of

the parents breaks it down. Nevertheless the Russian boy and girl, when

they come to the awkward age, have not the least idea of what life

really is. Dear me, no! They possess simply a bundle of incoherent

ideas, untested, ill-digested, but a wonderful basis for incessant

conversation. Experience comes, of course, and for the most part it is

unhappy experience.

Life is a tragedy to every Russian simply because the daily round is

forgotten by him in his pursuit of an ultimate meaning. We in the West

have learnt to despise ultimate meanings as unpractical and rather

priggish things.

Nina had thought so much and tested so little. She loved so vehemently

that her betrayal was the more inevitable. For instance, she did not

love Boris Grogoff in the least, but he was in some way connected with

the idea of freedom. She was, I am afraid, beginning to love Lawrence

desperately--the first love of her life--and he too was connected with

the idea of freedom because he was English. We English do not understand

sufficiently how the Russians love us for our easy victory over tyranny,

and despise us for the small use we have made of our victory--and then,

after all, there is something to be said for tyranny too....

But Nina did not see why she should not capture Lawrence. She felt her

vitality, her health, her dominant will beat so strongly within her that

it seemed to her that nothing could stop her. She loved him for his

strength, his silence, his good-nature, yes, and his stupidity. This

last gave her a sense of power over him, and of motherly tenderness too.

She loved his stiff and halting Russian--it was as though he were but

ten years old.

I am convinced, too, that she did not consider that she was doing any

wrong to Vera. In the first place she was not as yet really sure that

Vera cared for him. Vera, who had been to her always a mother rather

than a sister, seemed an infinite age. It was ridiculous that Vera

should fall in love--Vera so stately and stern and removed from passion.

Those days were over for Vera, and, with her strong sense of duty and

the fitness of things, she would realise that. Moreover Nina could not

believe that Lawrence cared for Vera. Vera was not the figure to be

loved in that way. Vera's romance had been with Markovitch years and

years ago, and now, whenever Nina looked at Markovitch, it made it at

once impossible to imagine Vera in any new romantic situation.

Then had come the night of the birthday party, and suspicion had at once

flamed up again. She was torn that night and for days afterwards with a

raging jealousy.

She hated Vera, she hated Lawrence, she hated herself. Then again her

mood had changed. It was, after all, natural that he should have gone to

protect Vera; she was his hostess; he was English, and did not know how

trivial a Russian scene of temper was. He had meant nothing, and poor

Vera, touched that at her matronly age any one should show her

attention, had looked at him gratefully.

That was all. She loved Vera; she would not hurt her with such

ridiculous suspicions, and, on that Friday evening when Semyonov had

come to see me, she had been her old self again, behaving to Vera with

all the tenderness and charm and affection that were her most delightful

gifts.

On this Sunday morning she was reassured; she was gay and happy and

pleased with the whole world. The excitement of the disturbances of the

last two days provided an emotional background, not too thrilling to be

painful, because, after all, these riots would, as usual, come to

nothing, but it was pleasant to feel that the world was buzzing, and

that without paying a penny one might see a real cinematograph show

simply by walking down the Nevski.

I do not know, of course, what exactly happened that morning until

Semyonov came in, but I can see the Markovitch family, like ten thousand

other Petrograd families, assembling somewhere about eleven o'clock

round the Samovar, all in various stages of undress, all sleepy and

pale-faced, and a little befogged, as all good Russians are when,

through the exigencies of sleep, they've been compelled to allow their

ideas to escape from them for a considerable period. They discussed, of

course, the disturbances, and I can imagine Markovitch portentously

announcing that "It was all over, he had the best of reasons-for

knowing...."

As he once explained to me, he was at his worst on Sunday, because he

was then so inevitably reminded of his lost youth.

"It's a gloomy day, Ivan Andreievitch, for all those who have not quite

done what they expected. The bells ring, and you feel that they ought to

mean something to you, but of course one's gone past all that.... But

it's a pity...."

Nina's only thought that morning was that Lawrence was coming in the

afternoon to take her for a walk. She had arranged it all. After a very

evident hint from her he had suggested it. Vera had refused, because

some aunts were coming to call, and finally it had been arranged that

after the walk Lawrence should bring Nina home, stay to half-past six

dinner, and that then they should all go to the French theatre. I also

was asked to dinner and the theatre. Nina was sure that something must

happen that afternoon. It would be a crisis.... She felt within her such

vitality, such power, such domination, that she believed that to-day she

could command anything.... She was, poor child, supremely confident, and

that not through conceit or vanity, but simply because she was a

fatalist and believed that destiny had brought Lawrence to her feet....

It was the final proof of her youth that she saw the whole universe

working to fulfil her desire.

The other proof of her youth was that she began, for the first time, to

suffer desperately. The most casual mention of Lawrence's name would

make her heart beat furiously, suffocating her, her throat dry, her

cheeks hot, her hands cold. Then, as the minute of his arrival

approached, she would sit as though she were the centre of a leaping

fire that gradually inch by inch was approaching nearer to her, the

flames staring like little eyes on the watch, the heat advancing and

receding in waves like hands. She hoped that no one would notice her

agitation. She talked nonsense to whomsoever was near to her with little

nervous laughs; she seemed to herself to be terribly unreal, with a

fierce hostile creature inside her who took her heart in his hot hands

and pressed it, laughing at her.

And then the misery! That little episode at the circus of which I had

been a witness was only the first of many dreadful ventures. She

confessed to me afterwards that she did not herself know what she was

doing. And the final result of these adventures was to encourage her

because he had not repelled her. He _must_ have noticed, she thought,

the times when her hand had touched his, when his mouth had been, so

close to hers that their very thoughts had mingled, when she had felt

the stuff of his coat, and even for an instant stroked it. He _must_

have noticed these things, and still he had never rebuffed her. He was

always so kind to her; she fancied that his voice had a special note of

tenderness in it when he spoke to her, and when she looked at his ugly,

quiet, solid face, she could not believe that they were not meant for

one another. He _must_ want her, her gaiety, happiness, youth--it would

be wrong for him _not_ to! There could be no girls in that stupid,

practical, far-away England who would be the wife to him that she would

be.

Then the cursed misery of that waiting! They could hear in their

sitting-room the steps coming up the stone stairs outside their flat,

and every step seemed to be his. Ah, he had come earlier than he had

fixed. Vera had stupidly forgotten, perhaps, or he had found waiting any

longer impossible. Yes, surely that was his footfall; she knew it so

well. There, now he was turning towards the door; there was a pause;

soon there would be the tinkle of the bell!...

No, he had mounted higher; it was not Lawrence--only some stupid,

ridiculous creature who was impertinently daring to put her into this

misery of disappointment. And then she would wonder suddenly whether she

had been looking too fixedly at the door, whether they had noticed her,

and she would start and look about her self-consciously, blushing a

little, her eyes hot and suspicious.

I can see her in all these moods; it was her babyhood that was leaving

her at last. She was never to be quite so spontaneously gay again,

never quite so careless, so audacious, so casual, so happy. In Russia

the awkward age is very short, very dramatic, often enough very tragic.

Nina was as helpless as the rest of the world.

At any rate, upon this Sunday, she was sure of her afternoon. Her eyes

were wild with excitement. Any one who looked at her closely must have

noticed her strangeness, but they were all discussing the events of the

last two days; there were a thousand stories, nearly all of them false

and a few; true facts.

No one in reality knew anything except that there had been some

demonstrations, a little shooting, and a number of excited speeches. The

town on that lovely winter morning seemed absolutely quiet.

Somewhere about mid-day Semyonov came in, and without thinking about it

Nina suddenly found herself sitting in the window talking to him. This

conversation, which was in its results to have an important influence on

her whole life, continued the development which that eventful Sunday was

to effect in her. Its importance lay very largely in the fact that her

uncle had never spoken to her seriously like a grown-up woman before.

Semyonov was, of course, quite clever enough to realise the change which

was transforming her, and he seized it, at once, for his own advantage.

She, on her side, had always, ever since she could remember, been

intrigued by him. She told me once that almost her earliest memory was

being lifted into the air by her uncle and feeling the thick solid

strength of his grasp, so that she was like a feather in the air, poised

on one of his stubborn fingers; when he kissed her each hair of his

beard seemed like a pale, taut wire, so stiff and resolute was it. Her

Uncle Ivan was a flabby, effeminate creature in comparison. Then, as she

had grown older, she had realised that he was a dangerous man, dangerous

to women, who loved and feared and hated him. Vera said that he had

great power over them and made them miserable, and that he was,

therefore, a bad, wicked man. But this only served to make him, in

Nina's eyes, the more a romantic figure.

However, he had never treated her in the least seriously, had tossed her

in the air spiritually just as he had done physically when she was a

baby, had given her chocolates, taken her once or twice to the cinema,

laughed at her, and, she felt, deeply despised her. Then came the war

and he had gone to the Front, and she had almost forgotten him. Then

came the romantic story of his being deeply in love with a nurse who had

been killed, that he was heartbroken and inconsolable and a changed man.

Was it wonderful that on his return to Petrograd she should feel again

that old Byronic (every Russian is still brought up on Byron) romance?

She did not like him, but--well--Vera was a staid old-fashioned

thing.... Perhaps they all misjudged him; perhaps he really needed

comfort and consolation. He certainly seemed kinder than he used to be.

But, until to-day, he had never talked to her seriously.

How her heart leapt into her throat when he began, at once, in his quiet

soft voice,

"Well, Nina dear, tell me all about it. I know, so you needn't be

frightened. I know and I understand."

She flung a terrified glance around her, but Uncle Ivan was reading the

paper at the other end of the room, her brother-in-law was cutting up

little pieces of wood in his workshop, and Vera was in the kitchen.

"What do you mean?" she said in a whisper. "I don't understand."

"Yes, you do," he answered, smiling at her. "You know, Nina, you're in

love with the Englishman, and have been for a long time. Well, why not?

Don't be so frightened about it. It is quite time that you should be in

love with some one, and he's a fine strong young man--not over-blessed

with brains, but you can supply that part of it. No, I think it's a very

good match. I like it. Believe me, I'm your friend, Nina." He put his

hand on hers.

He looked so kind, she told me afterwards, that she felt as though she

had never known him before; her eyes were filled with tears, so

overwhelming a relief was it to find some one at last who sympathised

and understood and wanted her to succeed. I remember that she was

wearing that day a thin black velvet necklet with a very small diamond

in front of it. She had been given it by Uncle Ivan on her last

birthday, and instead of making her look grown-up it gave her a

ridiculously childish appearance as though she had stolen into Vera's

bedroom and dressed up in her things. Then, with her fair tousled hair

and large blue eyes, open as a rule with a startled expression as though

she had only just awakened into an astonishingly exciting world, she was

altogether as unprotected and as guileless and as honest as any human

being alive. I don't know whether Semyonov felt her innocence and

youth--I expect he considered very little beside the plans that he had

then in view.... and innocence had never been very interesting to him.

He spoke to her just as a kind, wise, thoughtful uncle ought to speak to

a niece caught up into her first love-affair. From the moment of that

half-hour's conversation in the window Nina adored him, and believed

every word that came from his mouth.

"You see, Nina dear," he went on, "I've not spoken to you before because

you neither liked me nor trusted me. Quite rightly you listened to what

others said about me--"

"Oh no," interrupted Nina. "I never listen to anybody."

"Well then," said Semyonov, "we'll say that you were very naturally

influenced by them. And quite right--perfectly right. You were only a

girl then--you are a woman now. I had nothing to say to you then--now I

can help you, give you a little advice perhaps--"

I don't know what Nina replied. She was breathlessly pleased and

excited.

"What I want," he went on, "is the happiness of you all. I was sorry

when I came back to find that Nicholas and Vera weren't such friends as

they used to be. I don't mean that there's anything wrong at all, but

they must be brought closer together--and that's what you and I, who

know them and love them, can do--"

"Yes, yes," said Nina eagerly. Semyonov then explained that the thing

that really was, it seemed to him, keeping them apart were Nicholas's

inventions. Of course Vera had long ago seen that these inventions were

never going to come to anything, that they were simply wasting

Nicholas's time when he might, by taking an honest clerkship or

something of the kind, be maintaining the whole household, and the very

thought of him sitting in his workshop irritated her. The thing to do,

Semyonov explained, was to laugh Nicholas out of his inventions, to show

him that it was selfish nonsense his pursuing them, to persuade him to

make an honest living.

"But I thought," said Nina, "you approved of them. I heard you only the

other day telling him that it was a good idea, and that he must go on--"

"Ah!" said Semyonov. "That was my weakness, I'm afraid. I couldn't bear

to disappoint him. But it was wrong of me--and I knew it at the time."

Now Nina had always rather admired her brother-in-law's inventions. She

had thought it very clever of him to think of such things, and she had

wondered why other people did not applaud him more.

Now suddenly she saw that it was very selfish of him to go on with these

things when they never brought in a penny, and Vera had to do all the

drudgery. She was suddenly indignant with him. In how clear a light her

uncle placed things!

"One thing to do," said Semyonov, "is to laugh at him about them. Not

very much, not unkindly, but enough to make him see the folly of it."

"I think he does see that already, poor Nicholas," said Nina with wisdom

beyond her years.

"To bring Nicholas and Vera together," said Semyonov, "that's what we

have to do, you and I. And believe me, dear Nina, I on my side will do

all I can to help you. We are friends, aren't we?--not only uncle and

niece."

"Yes," said Nina breathlessly. That was all that there was to the

conversation, but it was quite enough to make Nina feel as though she

had already won her heart's desire. If any one as clever as her uncle

believed in this, then it _must_ be true. It had not been only her own

silly imagination--Lawrence cared for her. Her uncle had seen it,

otherwise he would never have encouraged her--Lawrence cared for her....

Suddenly, in the happy spontaneity of the moment she did what she very

seldom did, bent forward and kissed him.

She told me afterwards that that kiss seemed to displease him.

He got up and walked away.

VII

I do not know exactly what occurred during that afternoon. Neither

Lawrence nor Nina spoke about it to me. I only know that Nina returned

subdued and restrained. I can imagine them going out into that quiet

town and walking along the deserted quay; the quiet that afternoon was,

I remember, marvellous. The whole world was holding its breath. Great

events were occurring, but we were removed from them all. The ice

quivered under the sun and the snowclouds rose higher and higher into

the blue, and once and again a bell chimed and jangled.... There was an

amazing peace. Through this peaceful world Nina and Lawrence walked. His

mind must, I know, have been very far away from Nina, probably he saw

nothing of her little attempts at friendship; her gasping sentences

that seemed to her so daring and significant he scarcely heard. His only

concern was to endure the walk as politely as possible and return to

Vera.

Perhaps if she had not had that conversation with her uncle she would

have realised more clearly how slight a response was made to her, but

she thought only that this was his English shyness and gaucherie--she

must go slowly and carefully. He was not like a Russian. She must not

frighten him. Ah, how she loved him as she walked beside him, seeing and

not seeing the lovely frozen colours of the winter day, the quickly

flooding saffron sky! The first bright star, the great pearl-grey cloud

of the Neva as it was swept into the dark. In the dark she put, I am

sure, her hand on his arm, and felt his strength and took her small

hurried steps beside his long ones. He did not, I expect, feel her hand

on his sleeve at all. It was Vera whom he saw through the dusk. Vera

watching the door for his return, knowing that his eyes would rush to

hers, that every beat of his heart was for her....

I found them all seated at dinner when I entered. I brought them the

news of the shooting up at the Nicholas Station.

"Perhaps, we had better not go to the theatre," I said. "A number of

people were killed this afternoon, and all the trams are stopped."

Still it was all remote from us. They laughed at the idea of not going

to the theatre. The tickets had been bought two weeks ago, and the walk

would be pleasant. Of course we would go. It would be fun, too, to see

whether anything were happening.

With how strange a clarity I remember the events of that evening. It is

detached and hangs by itself among the other events of that amazing

time, as though it had been framed and separated for some especial

purpose. My impression of the colour of it now is of a scene intensely

quiet.

I saw at once on my arrival that Vera was not yet prepared to receive me

back into her friendship. And I saw, too, that she included Lawrence in

this ostracism. She sat there, stiff and cold, smiling and talking

simply because she was compelled, for politeness sake, to do so. She

would scarcely speak to me at all, and when I saw this I turned and

devoted myself to Uncle Ivan, who was always delighted to make me a

testing-ground for his English.

But poor Jerry! Had I not been so anxious lest a scene should burst upon

us all I could have laughed at the humour of it. Vera's attitude was a

complete surprise to him. He had not seen her during the preceding week,

and that absence from her had heightened his desire until it burnt his

very throat with its flame. One glance from her, when he came in, would

have contented him. He could have rested then, happily, quietly; but

instead of that glance she had avoided his eye, her hand was cold and

touched his only for an instant. She had not spoken to him again after

the first greeting. I am sure that he had never known a time when his

feelings threatened to be too much for him. His hold on himself and his

emotions had been complete. "These fellers," he once said to me about

some Russians, "are always letting their feelings overwhelm them--like

women. And they like it. Funny thing!" Well, funny or no, he realised it

now; his true education, like Nina's, like Vera's, like Bohun's, like

Markovitch's, perhaps like my own, was only now beginning. Funny and

pathetic, too, to watch his broad, red, genial face struggling to

express a polite interest in the conversation, to show nothing but

friendliness and courtesy. His eyes were as restless as minnows; they

darted for an instant towards Vera, then darted off again, then flashed

back. His hand moved for a plate, and I saw that it was shaking. Poor

Jerry! He had learnt what suffering was during those last weeks. But the

most silent of us all that evening was Markovitch. He sat huddled over

his food and never said a word. If he looked up at all he glowered, and

so soon as he had finished eating he returned to his workshop, closing

the door behind him. I caught Semyonov looking at him with a pleasant,

speculative smile....

At last Vera, Nina, Lawrence, and I started for the theatre. I can't say

that I was expecting a very pleasant evening, but the deathlike

stillness, both of ourselves and the town did, I confess, startle me.

Scarcely a word was exchanged by us between the English Prospect and

Saint Isaac's Square. The square looked lovely in the bright moonlight,

and I said something about it. It was indeed very fine, the cathedral

like a hovering purple cloud, the old sentry in his high peaked hat, the

black statue, and the blue shadows over the snow. It was then that

Lawrence, with an air of determined strength, detached Vera from us and

walked ahead with her. I saw that he was talking eagerly to her.

Nina said, with a little shudder, "Isn't it quiet, Durdles? As though

there were ghosts round every corner."

"Hope you enjoyed your walk this afternoon," I said.

"No, it was quiet then. But not like it is now. Let's walk faster and

catch the others up. Do you believe in ghosts, Durdles?"

"Yes, I think I do."

"So do I. Was it true, do you think, about the people being shot at the

Nicholas Station to-day?"

"I daresay."

"Perhaps all the dead people are crowding round here now. Why isn't any

one out walking?"

"I suppose they are all frightened by what they've heard, and think it

better to stay at home."

We were walking down the Morskaia, and our feet gave out a ringing echo.

"Let's keep up with them," Nina said. When we had joined the others I

found that they were both silent--Lawrence very red, Vera pale. We were

all feeling rather weary. A woman met us. "You aren't allowed to cross

the Nevski," she said; "the Cossacks are stopping everybody." I can see

her now, a stout, red-faced woman, a shawl over her head, and carrying a

basket. Another woman, a prostitute I should think, came up and joined

us.

"What is it?" she asked us.

The stout woman repeated in a trembling, agitated voice, "You aren't

allowed to cross the Nevski. The Cossacks are stopping everybody."

The prostitute shook her head in her alarm, and little flakes of powder

detached themselves from her nose. "_Bozhe moi_--_bozhe moi_!" she

said, "and I promised not to be late."

Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation.

"We'll go and see," she said, "what is really the truth."

We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered

crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight.

There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The

Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us

like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked.

Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye

could see between its high black banks of silent houses.

At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony

statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse

not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon,

so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first

time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski

deserted. How happy it must have been that night!...

For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a

strange superstition, as though something said to me, "You cross that

and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and

you will avoid danger." Nina must have had something of the same

feeling, because she said:

"Let's go home. They won't let us cross. I don't want to cross. Let's go

home."

But Vera said firmly, "Nonsense! We've gone so far. We've got the

tickets. I'm going on."

I felt the note in her voice, superstitiously, as a kind of desperate

challenge, as though she had said:

"Well, you see nothing worse can happen to me than has happened."

Lawrence said roughly, "Of course, we're going on."

The prostitute began, in a trembling voice, as though we must all of

necessity understand her case:

"I don't want to be late this time, because I've been late so often

before.... It always is that way with me... always unfortunate...."

We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface

we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force.

"That's it," said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself. "So it always is

with us. All revolutions in Russia end this way--"

An unmounted Cossack came forward to us.

"No hanging about there," he said. "Cross quickly. No one is to delay."

We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge. I thought of the

Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people that they would not

fire--well, that impulse had passed. Protopopoff and his men had

triumphed.

We were all now in the shallows on the other bank of the canal. The

prostitute, who was still at our side, hesitated for a moment, as though

she were going to speak. I think she wanted to ask whether she might

walk with us a little way. Suddenly she vanished without sound, into the

black shadows.

"Come along," said Vera. "We shall be dreadfully late." She seemed to be

mastered by an overpowering desire not to be left alone with Lawrence.

She hurried forward with Nina, and Lawrence and I came more slowly

behind. We were now in a labyrinth of little streets and black

overhanging flats. Not a soul anywhere--only the moonlight in great

broad flashes of light--once or twice a woman hurried by keeping in the

shadow. Sometimes, at the far end of the street, we saw the shining,

naked Nevski.

Lawrence was silent, then, just as we were turning into the square where

the Michailovsky Theatre was he began:

"What's the matter?... What's the matter with her, Durward? What have I

done?"

"I don't know that you've done anything," I answered.

"But don't you see?" he went on. "She won't speak to me. She won't look

at me. I won't stand this long. I tell you I won't stand it long. I'll

make her come off with me in spite of them all. I'll have her to myself.

I'll make her happy, Durward, as she's never been in all her life. But I

must have her.... I can't live close to her like this, and yet never be

with her. Never alone, never alone. Why is she behaving like this to

me?"

He spoke really like a man in agony. The words coming from him in little

tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately,

with pain at every breath that he drew.

"She's afraid of herself, I expect, not of you." I put my hand on his

sleeve. "Lawrence," I said, "go home. Go back to England. This is

becoming too much for both of you. Nothing can come of it, but

unhappiness for everybody."

"No!" he said. "It's too late for any of your Platonic advice, Durward.

I'm going to have her, even though the earth turns upside down."

We went up the steps and into the theatre. There was, of course,

scarcely any one there. The Michailovsky is not a large theatre, but the

stalls looked extraordinarily desolate, every seat watching one with a

kind of insolent wink as though, like the Nevski ten minutes before it

said, "Well, now you humans are getting frightened, you're all stopping

away. We're coming back to our own!"

There was some such malicious air about the whole theatre. Above, in the

circle, the little empty boxes were dim and shadowy, and one fancied

figures moved there, and then saw that there was no one. Someone up in

the gallery laughed, and the laugh went echoing up and down the empty

spaces. A few people came in and sat nervously about, and no one spoke

except in a low whisper, because voices sounded so loud and impertinent.

Then again the man in the gallery laughed, and every one looked up

frowning. The play began. It was, I think, _Les Idées de Françoise_, but

of that I cannot be sure. It was a farce of the regular French type,

with a bedroom off, and marionettes who continually separated into

couples and giggled together. The giggling to-night was of a sadly

hollow sort. I pitied and admired the actors, spontaneous as a rule, but

now bravely stuffing any kind of sawdust into the figures in their

hands, but the leakage was terrible, and the sawdust lay scattered all

about the stage. The four of us sat as solemn as statues--I don't think

one of us smiled. It was during the second Act that I suddenly laughed.

I don't know that anything very comic was happening on the stage, but I

was aware, with a kind of ironic subconsciousness, that some of the

superior spirits in their superior Heaven must be deriving a great deal

of fun from our situation. There was Vera thinking, I suppose, of

nothing but Lawrence, and Lawrence thinking of nothing but Vera, and

Nina thinking of nothing but Lawrence, and the audience thinking of

their safety, and the players thinking of their salaries, and

Protopopoff at home thinking of his victory, and the Czar in Tsarskoe

thinking of his Godsent autocracy, and Europe thinking of its ideals,

and Germany thinking of its militarism--all self-justified, all

mistaken, and all fulfilling some deeper plan at whose purpose they

could not begin to guess. And how intermingled we all were! Vera and

Nina, M. Robert and Mdlle. Flori on the other side of the footlights,

Trenchard and Marie killed in Galicia, the Kaiser and Hindenburg, the

Archbishop of Canterbury and the postmaster of my village in Glebeshire.

The curtain is coming down, the fat husband is deceived once again, the

lovers are in the bedroom listening behind the door, the comic waiter is

winking at the chamber-maid....

The lights are up and we are alone again in the deserted theatre.

Towards the end of the last interval I went out into the passage behind

the stalls to escape from the chastened whispering that went trembling

up and down like the hissing of terrified snakes. I leaned against the

wall in the deserted passage and watched the melancholy figure of the

cloak-room attendant huddled up on a chair, his head between his hands.

Suddenly I saw Vera. She came up to me as though she were going to walk

past me, and then she stopped and spoke. She talked fast, not looking at

me, but beyond, down the passage.

"I'm sorry, Ivan Andreievitch," she said. "I was cross the other day. I

hurt you. I oughtn't to have done that."

"You know," I said, "that I never thought of it for a minute."

"No, I was wrong. But I've been terribly worried during these last

weeks. I've thought it all out to-day and I've decided--" there was a

catch in her breath and she paused; she went on--"decided that there

mustn't be any more weakness. I'm much weaker than I thought. I would be

ashamed if I didn't think that shame was a silly thing to have. But now

I am quite clear; I must make Nicholas and Nina happy. Whatever else

comes I must do that. It has been terrible, these last weeks. We've all

been angry and miserable, and now I must put it right. I can if I try.

I've been forgetting that I chose my own life myself, and now I mustn't

be cowardly because it's difficult. I will make it right myself...."

She paused again, then she said, looking me straight in the face,

"Ivan Andreievitch, does Nina care for Mr. Lawrence?"

She was looking at me, with large black eyes so simply, with such trust

in me, that I could only tell her the truth.

"Yes," I said, "she does."

Her eyes fell, then she looked up at me again.

"I thought so," she said. "And does he care for her?"

"No," I said, "he does not."

"He must," she said. "It would be a very happy thing for them to marry."

She spoke very low, so that I could scarcely hear her words.

"Wait, Vera," I said. "Let it alone. Nina's very young. The mood will

pass. Lawrence, perhaps, will go back to England."

She drew in her breath and I saw her hand tremble, but she still looked

at me, only now her eyes were not so clear. Then she laughed. "I'm

getting an old woman, Ivan Andreievitch. It's ridiculous...." She broke

off. Then held out her hand.

"But we'll always be friends now, won't we? I'll never be cross with you

again."

I took her hand. "I'm getting old too," I said. "And I'm useless at

everything. I only make a bungle of everything I try. But I'll be your

true friend to the end of my time--"

The bell rang and we went back into the theatre.

VIII

And yet, strangely enough, when I lay awake that night in my room on my

deserted island, it was of Markovitch that I was thinking. Of all the

memories of the preceding evening that of Markovitch huddled over his

food, sullen and glowering, with Semyonov watching him, was

predominant.

Markovitch was, so to speak, the dark horse of them all, and he was also

when one came to look at it all the way round the centre of the story.

And yet it was Markovitch with his inconsistencies, his mysteries, his

impulses, and purposes, whom I understood least of them all. He makes,

indeed, a very good symbol of my present difficulties.

In that earlier experience of Marie in the forests of Galicia the matter

had been comparatively easy. I had then been concerned with the outward

manifestation of war--cannon, cholera, shell, and the green glittering

trees of the forest itself. But the war had made progress since then. It

had advanced out of material things into the very souls of men. It was

no longer the forest of bark and tinder with which the chiefs of this

world had to deal, but, to adapt the Russian proverb itself, "with the

dark forest of the hearts of men."

How much more baffling and intangible this new forest, and how deeply

serious a business now for those who were still thoughtlessly and

selfishly juggling with human affairs.

"There is no ammunition," I remember crying desperately in Galicia. We

had moved further than the question of ammunition now.

I had a strange dream that night. I saw my old forest of two years

before--the very woods of Buchatch with the hot painted leaves, the

purple slanting sunlight, the smell, the cries, the whirr of the shell.

But in my dream the only inhabitant of that forest was Markovitch. He

was pursued by some animal. What beast it was I could not see, always

the actual vision was denied to me, but I could hear it plunging through

the thickets, and once I caught a glimpse of a dark crouching body like

a shadow against the light.

But Markovitch I saw all the time, sweating with heat and terror, his

clothes torn, his eyes inflamed, his breath coming in desperate pants,

turning once and again as though he would stop and offer defiance, then

hasting on, his face and hands scratched and bleeding. I wanted to offer

him help and assistance, but something prevented me; I could not get to

him. Finally he vanished from my sight and I was left alone in the

painted forest....

All the next morning I sat and wondered what I had better do, and at

last I decided that I would go and see Henry Bohun.

I had not seen Bohun for several weeks. I myself had been, of late, less

to the flat in the English Prospect, but I knew that he had taken my

advice that he should be kind to Nicholas Markovitch with due British

seriousness, and that he had been trying to bring some kind of

relationship about. He had even asked Markovitch to dine alone with him,

and Markovitch, although he declined the invitation was, I believe,

greatly touched.

So, about half-past one, I started off for Bohun's office on the

Fontanka. I've said somewhere before, I think, that Bohun's work was in

connection with the noble but uphill task of enlightening the Russian

public as to the righteousness of the war, the British character, and

the Anglo-Russian alliance. I say "uphill," because only a few of the

_real_ population of Russia showed the slightest desire to know anything

whatever about any country outside their own. Their interest is in ideas

not in boundaries--and what I mean by "real" will be made patent by the

events of this very day. However, Bohun did his best, and it was not his

fault that the British Government could only spare enough men and money

to cover about one inch of the whole of Russia--and, I hasten to add,

that if that same British Government had plastered the whole vast

country from Archangel to Vladivostock with pamphlets, orators, and

photographs it would not have altered, in the slightest degree, after

events.

To make any effect in Russia England needed not only men and money but a

hundred years' experience of the country. That same experience was

possessed by the Germans alone of all the Western peoples--and they have

not neglected to use it.

I went by tram to the Fontanka, and the streets seemed absolutely

quiet. That strange shining Nevski of the night before was a dream. Some

one in the tram said something about rifle-shots in the Summer Garden,

but no one listened. As Vera had said last night we had, none of us,

much faith in Russian revolutions.

I went up in the lift to the Propaganda office and found it a very nice

airy place, clean and smart, with coloured advertisements by Shepperson

and others on the walls, pictures of Hampstead and St. Albans and Kew

Gardens that looked strangely satisfactory and homely to me, and rather

touching and innocent. There were several young women clicking away at

typewriters, and maps of the Western front, and a colossal toy map of

the London Tube, and a nice English library with all the best books from

Chaucer to D.H. Lawrence and from the _Religio Medici_ to E.V. Lucas'

_London_.

Everything seemed clean and simple and a little deserted, as though the

heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there.

I think "guileless" was the adjective that came to my mind, and

certainly Burrows, the head of the place--a large, red-faced, smiling

man with glasses--seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with

life to penetrate the wicked recesses of Russian pessimism.

I went into Bohun's room and found him very hard at work in a serious,

emphatic way which only made me feel that he was playing at it. He had a

little bookcase over his table, and I noticed the _Georgian Book of

Verse_, Conrad's _Nostromo_, and a translation of Ropshin's _Pale

Horse_.

"Altogether too pretty and literary," I said to him; "you ought to be

getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer--not admiring the

Intelligentzia."

"I daresay you're right," he said, blushing. "But whatever we do we're

wrong. We have fellows in here cursing us all day. If we're simple we're

told we're not clever enough; if we're clever we're told we're too

complicated. If we're militant we're told we ought to be

tender-hearted, and if we're tender-hearted we're told we're

sentimental--and at the end of it all the Russians don't care a damn."

"Well, I daresay you're doing some good somewhere," I said indulgently.

"Come and look at my view," he said, "and see whether it isn't

splendid."

He spoke no more than the truth. We looked across the Canal over the

roofs of the city--domes and towers and turrets, grey and white and

blue, with the dark red walls of many of the older houses stretched like

an Arabian carpet beneath white bubbles of clouds that here and there

marked the blue sky. It was a scene of intense peace, the smoke rising

from the chimneys, Isvostchicks stumbling along on the farther banks of

the Canal, and the people sauntering in their usual lazy fashion up and

down the Nevski. Immediately below our window was a skating-rink that

stretched straight across the Canal. There were some figures, like

little dolls, skating up and down, and they looked rather desolate

beside the deserted band-stands and the empty seats. On the road outside

our door a cart loaded with wood slowly moved along, the high hoop over

the horse's back gleaming with red and blue.

"Yes, it _is_ a view!" I said. "Splendid!--and all as quiet as though

there'd been no disturbances at all. Have you heard any news?"

"No," said Bohun. "To tell the truth I've been so busy that I haven't

had time to ring up the Embassy. And we've had no one in this morning.

Monday morning, you know," he added; "always very few people on Monday

morning"--as though he didn't wish me to think that the office was

always deserted.

I watched the little doll-like men circling placidly round and round

the rink. One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun.

Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig. "What's

that?" I said, stepping forward on to the balcony. "It sounded like a

shot."

"I didn't hear anything," said Bohun. "You get funny echoes up here

sometimes." We stepped back into Bohun's room and, if I had had any

anxieties, they would at once, I think, have been reassured by the

unemotional figure of Bohun's typist, a gay young woman with peroxide

hair, who was typing away as though for her very life.

"Look here, Bohun, can I talk to you alone for a minute?" I asked.

The peroxide lady left us.

"It's just about Markovitch I wanted to ask you," I went on. "I'm

infernally worried, and I want your help. It may seem ridiculous of me

to interfere in another family like this, with people with whom I have,

after all, nothing to do. But there are two reasons why it isn't

ridiculous. One is the deep affection I have for Nina and Vera. I

promised them my friendship, and now I've got to back that promise. And

the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence

into the family. They never would have known him if it hadn't been for

us. There's danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as

you know, is helping it on wherever he can. Well, now, what I want to

know is, how much have you seen of Markovitch lately, and has he talked

to you?"

Bohun considered. "I've seen very little of him," he said at last. "I

think he avoids me now. He's such a weird bird that it's impossible to

tell of what he's really thinking. I know he was pleased when I asked

him to dine with me at the Bear the other night. He looked _most

awfully_ pleased. But he wouldn't come. It was as though he suspected

that I was laying a trap for him."

"But what have you noticed about him otherwise?"

"Well, I've seen very little of him. He's sulky just now. He suspected

Lawrence, of course--always after that night of Nina's party. But I

think that he's reassured again. And of course it's all so ridiculous,

because there's nothing to suspect, absolutely nothing--is there?"

"Absolutely nothing," I answered firmly.

He sighed with relief. "Oh, you don't know how glad I am to hear that,"

he said. "Because, although I've _known_ that it was all right, Vera's

been so odd lately that I've wondered--you know how I care about Vera

and--"

"How do you mean--odd?" I sharply interrupted.

"Well--for instance--of course I've told nobody--and you won't tell any

one either--but the other night I found her crying in the flat, sitting

up near the table, sobbing her heart out. She thought every one was

out--I'd been in my room and she hadn't known. But Vera, Durward--Vera

of all people! I didn't let her see me--she doesn't know now that I

heard her. But when you care for any one as I care for Vera, it's awful

to think that she can suffer like that and one can do nothing. Oh,

Durward, I wish to God I wasn't so helpless! You know before I came out

to Russia I felt so old; I thought there was nothing I couldn't do, that

I was good enough for anybody. And now I'm the most awful ass. Fancy,

Durward! Those poems of mine--I thought they were wonderful. I

thought--"

He was interrupted by a sudden sharp crackle like a fire bursting into a

blaze quite close at hand. We both sprang to the windows, threw them

open (they were not sealed, for some unknown reason), and rushed out on

to the balcony. The scene in front of us was just what it had been

before--the bubble clouds were still sailing lazily before the blue, the

skaters were still hovering on the ice, the cart of wood that I had

noticed was vanishing slowly into the distance. But from the

Liteiny--just over the bridge--came a confused jumble of shouts, cries,

and then the sharp, unmistakable rattle of a machine-gun. It was funny

to see the casual life in front of one suddenly pause at that sound. The

doll-like skaters seemed to spin for a moment and then freeze; one

figure began to run across the ice. A small boy came racing down our

street shouting. Several men ran out from doorways and stood looking up

into the sky, as though they thought the noise had come from there. The

sun was just setting; the bubble clouds were pink, and windows flashed

fire. The rattle of the machine-gun suddenly stopped, and there was a

moment's silence when the only sound in the whole world was the clatter

of the wood-cart turning the corner. I could see to the right of me the

crowds in the Nevski, that had looked like the continual unwinding of a

ragged skein of black silk, break their regular movement and split up

like flies falling away from an opening door.

We were all on the balcony by now--the stout Burrows, Peroxide, and

another lady typist, Watson, the thin and most admirable secretary (he

held the place together by his diligence and order), two Russian clerks,

Henry, and I.

We all leaned over the railings and looked down into the street beneath

us. To our left the Fontanka Bridge was quite deserted--then, suddenly,

an extraordinary procession poured across it. At that same moment (at

any rate it seems so now to me on looking back) the sun disappeared,

leaving a world of pale grey mist shot with gold and purple. The stars

were, many of them, already out, piercing with their sharp cold

brilliance the winter sky.

We could not at first see of what exactly the crowd now pouring over the

bridge was composed. Then, as it turned and came down our street, it

revealed itself as something so theatrical and melodramatic as to be

incredible. Incredible, I say, because the rest of the world was not

theatrical with it. That was always to be the amazing feature of the new

scene into which, without knowing it, I was at that moment stepping. In

Galicia the stage had been set--ruined villages, plague-stricken

peasants, shell-holes, trenches, roads cut to pieces, huge trees

levelled to the ground, historic châteaux pillaged and robbed. But here

the world was still the good old jog-trot world that one had always

known; the shops and hotels and theatres remained as they had always

been. There would remain, I believe, for ever those dull Jaeger

undergarments in the windows of the bazaar, and the bound edition of

Tchekov in the book-shop just above the Moika, and the turtle and the

gold-fish in the aquarium near Elisseieff; and whilst those things were

there I could not believe in melodrama.

And we did not believe. We dug our feet into the snow, and leaned over

the balcony railings absorbed with amused interest. The procession

consisted of a number of motor lorries, and on these lorries soldiers

were heaped. I can use no other word because, indeed, they seemed to be

all piled upon one another, some kneeling forward, some standing, some

sitting, and all with their rifles pointing outwards until the lorries

looked like hedgehogs. Many of the rifles had pieces of red cloth

attached to them, and one lorry displayed proudly a huge red flag that

waved high in air with a sort of flaunting arrogance of its own. On

either side of the lorries, filling the street, was the strangest mob of

men, women, and children. There seemed to be little sign of order or

discipline amongst them as they were all shouting different cries: "Down

the Fontanka!" "No, the Duma!" "To the Nevski!" "No, no, _Tovaristchi_

(comrades), to the Nicholas Station!"

Such a rabble was it that I remember that my first thought was of

pitying indulgence. So this was the grand outcome of Boris Grogoff's

eloquence, and the Rat's plots for plunder!--a fitting climax to such

vain dreams. I saw the Cossack, that ebony figure of Sunday night. Ten

such men, and this rabble was dispersed for ever! I felt inclined to

lean over and whisper to them, "Quick! quick! Go home!... They'll be

here in a moment and catch you!"

And yet, after all, there seemed to be some show of discipline. I

noticed that, as the crowd moved forward, men dropped out and remained

picketing the doorways of the street. Women seemed to be playing a large

part in the affair, peasants with shawls over their heads, many of them

leading by the hand small children.

Burrows treated it all as a huge joke. "By Jove," he cried, speaking

across to me, "Durward, it's like that play Martin Harvey used to

do--what was it?--about the French Revolution, you know."

"'The Only Way,'" said Peroxide, in a prim strangled voice.

"That's it--'The Only Way'--with their red flags and all. Don't they

look ruffians, some of them?"

There was a great discussion going on under our windows. All the lorries

had drawn up together, and the screaming, chattering, and shouting was

like the noise of a parrots' aviary. The cold blue light had climbed now

into the sky, which was thick with stars; the snow on the myriad roofs

stretched like a filmy cloud as far as the eye could see. The moving,

shouting crowd grew with every moment mistier.

"Oh, dear! Mr. Burrows," said the little typist, who was not Peroxide.

"Do you think I shall ever be able to get home? We're on the other side

of the river, you know. Do you think the bridges will be up? My mother

will be so terribly anxious."

"Oh, you'll get home all right," answered Burrows cheerfully. "Just wait

until this crowd has gone by. I don't expect there's any fuss down by

the river..."

His words were cut short by some order from one of the fellows below.

Others shouted in response, and the lorries again began to move forward.

"I believe he was shouting to us," said Bohun. "It sounded like 'Get

off' or 'Get away.'"

"Not he!" said Burrows; "they're too busy with their own affairs."

Then things happened quickly. There was a sudden strange silence below;

I saw a quick flame from some fire that had apparently been lit on the

Fontanka Bridge; I heard the same voice call out once more sharply, and

a second later I felt rather than heard a whizz like the swift flight of

a bee past my ear; I was conscious that a bullet had struck the brick

behind me. That bullet swung me into the Revolution....

IX

...We were all gathered together in the office. I heard one of the

Russians say in an agitated whisper, "Don't turn on the light!... Don't

turn on the light! They can see!"

We were all in half-darkness, our faces mistily white. I could hear

Peroxide breathing in a tremulous manner, as though in a moment she

would break into hysteria.

"We'll go into the inside room. We can turn the light on there," said

Burrows. We all passed into the reception-room of the office, a nice

airy place with the library along one wall and bright coloured maps on

the other. We stood together and considered the matter.

"It's real!" said Burrows, his red, cheery face perplexed and strained.

"Who'd have thought it?"

"Of course it's real!" cried Bohun impatiently (Burrows' optimism had

been often difficult to bear with indulgence).

"Now you see! What about your beautiful Russian mystic now?"

"Oh dear!" cried the little Russian typist. "And my mother!... What ever

shall I do? She'll hear reports and think that I'm being murdered. I

shall never get across."

"You'd better stay with me to-night, Miss Peredonov," said Peroxide

firmly. "My flat's quite close here in Gagarinsky. We shall be delighted

to have you."

"You can telephone to your mother, Miss Peredonov," said Burrows. "No

difficulty at all."

It was then that Bohun took me aside.

"Look here!" he said. "I'm worried. Vera and Nina were going to the

Astoria to have tea with Semyonov this afternoon. I should think the

Astoria might be rather a hot spot if this spreads. And I wouldn't trust

Semyonov. Will you come down with me there now?"

"Yes," I said, "of course I'll come."

We said a word to Burrows, put on our Shubas and goloshes, and started

down the stairs. At every door there were anxious faces. Out of one flat

came a very fat Jew.

"Gentlemen, what is this all about?"

"Riots," said Bohun.

"Is there shooting?"

"Yes," said Bohun.

"_Bozhe moi! Bozhe moi!_ And I live over on Vassily Ostrov! What do you

advise, _Gaspoda_? Will the bridges be up?"

"Very likely," I answered. "I should stay here."

"And they are shooting?" he asked again.

"They are," I answered.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen--stay for a moment. Perhaps together we could

think.... I am all alone here except for a lady... most

unfortunate...."

But we could not stay.

The world into which we stepped was wonderful. The background of snow

under the star-blazing sky made it even more fantastic than it naturally

was. We slipped into the crowd and, becoming part of it, were at once,

as one so often is, sympathetic with it. It seemed such a childish,

helpless, and good-natured throng. No one seemed to know anything of

arms or directions. There were, as I have already said, many women and

little children, and some of the civilians who had rifles looked quite

helpless. I saw one boy holding his gun upside down. No one paid any

attention to us. There was as yet no class note in the demonstration,

and the only hostile cries I heard were against Protopopoff and the

police. We moved back into the street behind the Fontanka, and here I

saw a wonderful sight. Some one had lighted a large bonfire in the

middle of the street and the flames tossed higher and higher into the

air, bringing down the stars in flights of gold, flinging up the snow

until it seemed to radiate in lines and circles of white light high over

the very roofs of the houses. In front of the fire a soldier, mounted on

a horse, addressed a small crowd of women and boys. On the end of his

rifle was a ragged red cloth.

I could not see his face. I saw his arms wave, and the fire behind him

exaggerated his figure and then dropped it into a straggling silhouette

against the snow. The street seemed deserted except for this group,

although now I could hear distant shouting on every side of me, and the

monotonous clap-clap-clap-clap of a machine-gun.

I heard him say, "_Tovaristchi!_ now is your time! Don't hesitate in the

sacred cause of freedom! As our brethren did in the famous days of the

French Revolution, so must we do now. All the Army is coming over to our

side. The Preobrojenski have come over to us and have arrested their

officers and taken their arms. We must finish with Protopopoff and our

other tyrants, and see that we have a just rule. _Tovaristchi_! there

will never be such a chance again, and you will repent for ever if you

have not played your part in the great fight for freedom!"

So it went on. It did not seem that his audience was greatly impressed.

It was bewildered and dazed. But the fire leapt up behind him giving him

a legendary splendour, and the whole picture was romantic and unreal

like a gaudy painting on a coloured screen.

We hurried through into the Nevski, and this we found nearly deserted.

The trams of course had stopped, a few figures hurried along, and once

an Isvostchick went racing down towards the river.

"Well, now, we seem to be out of it," said Bohun, with a sigh of relief.

"I must say I'm not sorry. I don't mind France, where you can tell which

is the front and which the back, but this kind of thing does get on

one's nerves. I daresay it's only local. We shall find them all as easy

as anything at the Astoria, and wondering what we're making a fuss

about."

At that moment we were joined by an English merchant whom we both knew,

a stout elderly man who had lived all his life in Russia. I was

surprised to find him in a state of extreme terror. I had always known

him as a calm, conceited, stupid fellow, with a great liking for Russian

ladies. This pastime he was able as a bachelor to enjoy to the full.

Now, however, instead of the ruddy, coarse, self-confident merchant

there was a pallid, trembling jelly-fish.

"I say, you fellows," he asked, catching my arm. "Where are you off to?"

"We're off to the Astoria," I answered.

"Let me come with you. I'm not frightened, not at all--all the same I

don't want to be left alone. I was in the 1905 affair. That was enough

for me. Where are they firing--do you know?"

"All over the place," said Bohun, enjoying himself. "They'll be down

here in a minute."

"Good God! Do you really think so? It's terrible--these fellows--once

they get loose they stick at nothing.... I remember in 1905.... Good

heavens! Where had we better go? It's very exposed here, isn't it?"

"It's very exposed everywhere," said Bohun. "I doubt whether any of us

are alive in the morning."

"Good heavens! You don't say so! Why should they interfere with us?"

"Oh, rich, you know, and that kind of thing. And then we're Englishmen.

They'll clear out all the English."

"Oh, I'm not really English. My mother was Russian. I could show them my

papers...."

Bohun laughed. "I'm only kidding you, Watchett," he said. "We're safe

enough. Look, there's not a soul about!" We were at the corner of the

Moika now; all was absolutely quiet. Two women and a man were standing

on the bridge talking together. A few stars clustered above the bend of

the Canal seemed to shift and waver ever so slightly through a gathering

mist, like the smoke of blowing candles.

"It seems all right," said the merchant, sniffing the air suspiciously

as though he expected to smell blood. We turned towards the Morskaia.

One of the women detached herself from the group and came to us.

"Don't go down the Morskaia," she said, whispering, as though some

hostile figure were leaning over her shoulder. "They're firing round the

Telephone Exchange." Even as she spoke I heard the sharp clatter of the

machine-gun break out again, but now very close, and with an intimate

note as though it were the same gun that I had heard before, which had

been tracking me down round the town.

"Do you hear that?" said the merchant.

"Come on," said Bohun. "We'll go down the Moika. That seems safe

enough!"

How strangely in the flick of a bullet the town had changed! Yesterday

every street had been friendly, obvious, and open; they were now no

longer streets, but secret blind avenues with strange trees, fantastic

doors, shuttered windows, a grinning moon, malicious stars, and snow

that lay there simply to prevent every sound. It was a town truly

beleaguered as towns are in dreams. The uncanny awe with which I moved

across the bridge was increased when the man with the women turned

towards me, and I saw that he was--or seemed to be--that same grave

bearded peasant whom I had seen by the river, whom Henry had seen in the

Cathedral, who remained with one, as passing strangers sometimes do,

like a symbol or a message or a threat.

He stood, with the Nevski behind him, calm and grave, and even it seemed

a little amused, watching me as I crossed. I said to Bohun, "Did you

ever see that fellow before?"

Bohun turned and looked.

"No," he said.

"Don't you remember? The man that first day in the Kazan?"

"They're all alike," Bohun said. "One can't tell...."

"Oh, come on," said the merchant. "Let's get to the Astoria."

We started down the Moika, past that faded picture-shop where there are

always large moth-eaten canvases of cornfields under the moon and

Russian weddings and Italian lakes. We had got very nearly to the little

street with the wooden hoardings when the merchant gripped my arm.

"What's that?" he gulped. The silence now was intense. We could not hear

the machine-gun nor any shouting. The world was like a picture smoking

under a moon now red and hard. Against the wall of the street two women

were huddled, one on her knees, her head pressed against the thighs of

the other, who stood stretched as though crucified, her arms out,

staring on to the Canal. Beside a little kiosk, on the space exactly in

front of the side street, lay a man on his face. His bowler-hat had

rolled towards the kiosk; his arms were stretched out so that he looked

oddly like the shadow of the woman against the wall.

Instead of one hand there was a pool of blood. The other hand with all

the fingers stretched was yellow against the snow.

As we came up a bullet from the Morskaia struck the kiosk.

The woman, not moving from the wall, said, "They've shot my husband...

he did nothing."

The other woman, on her knees, only cried without ceasing.

The merchant said, "I'm going back--to the Europe," and he turned and

ran.

"What's down that street?" I said to the woman, as though I expected her

to say "Hobgoblins." Bohun said, "This is rather beastly.... We ought to

move that fellow out of that. He may be alive still."

And how silly such a sentence when only yesterday, just here, there was

the beggar who sold boot-laces, and just there, where the man lay, an

old muddled Isvostchick asleep on his box!

We moved forward, and instantly it was as though I were in the middle of

a vast desert quite alone with all the hosts of heaven aiming at me

malicious darts. As I bent down my back was so broad that it stretched

across Petrograd, and my feet were tiny like frogs.

We pulled at the man. His head rolled and his face turned over, and the

mouth was full of snow. It was so still that I whispered, whether to

Bohun or myself, "God, I wish somebody would shout!" Then I heard the

wood of the kiosk crack, ever so slightly, like an opening door, and

panic flooded me as I had never known it do during all my time at the

Front.

"I've no strength," I said to Bohun.