puzzled and distressed and seemed to shrink. Waters, removing his
eyes from her face, stood deliberately upright. His vagueness and
dreaminess gathered themselves into gravity. His lips moved as though
on the brink of an answer, but he said nothing.
"Go on!" yapped Selby again.
"I'm goin'," replied Waters, turning from him.
He sent the girl a look that was a claim upon her. "Pleased to meet
ye," he said clearly. "Me name's Waters; I'm an American too."
Selby bounced in his chair behind him, squeaking and spluttering; the
girl, surprised and uncertain, stammered something. But her face, for
all her embarrassment, acknowledged his claim. He took his reply from
it, nodded slowly in satisfied comprehension and walked past her
towards the door. His worn blouse glimmered white in the shadows of
the entry; and he was gone.
Behind him, the office was suddenly uncomfortable and cheerless.
Selby was no longer sure of himself and the figure he had cut; the
girl looked at him with eyes in which he read a doubt.
"You don't want to take any notice of that fellow," he blustered.
"He'd no right to speak to you. He's just a tough in trouble with the
police and wanting me to fix it for him. He won't come here again in
a hurry."
"But" she hesitated. "Isn't he an American?" she ventured.
"Huh!" snorted Selby. "Americans like him are three for a nickel
round here."
"Oh!" she murmured, and sat looking at him while he plunged into the
question of "terms." His glasses wobbled on his nose; his hands moved
jerkily as he talked, fidgeting with loose papers on his desk; but
his weak eyes did not return her gaze.
Nikolaieff, which yet has a quality of its own, has this in common
with other abiding places of men that life there shapes itself as a
posture or a progress in the measure that one gives to it or receives
from it. Tim Waters, who fed upon life like a leech, returned to it
after a six weeks' enforced absence (the protocol had valued a
damaged istvostchik at that price) with a show of pallor under the
bronze on his skin and a Rip van Winkle feeling of having slumbered
through far-reaching changes. During his absence the lingering
southern autumn had sloped towards winter; the trees along the sad
boulevard were already leafless; the river had changed from luminous
blue to the blank hue of steel. The men in the streets went fortified
with sheepskins or furs; Waters, still in his linen blouse, with
hands sunk deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the acid
of the air, passed among them as conspicuous as a naked man, marking
as he moved the stares he drew across high, raised collars.
He was making his way across the city to his old haunts by the
waterside; he crossed the Gogol Street through its brisk, disorderly
traffic of trams and droschkies and gained the farther sidewalk hard
by where a rank of little cabs stood along the gutter. A large sedate
officer, moving like a traction-engine, jostled him back into the
gutter; he swore silently, and heard a shout go up behind him, a
blatant roar of jeers and laughter. Startled, he turned; the
istvostchiks, the padded, long-skirted drivers of the little waiting
cabs, were gathered together in the roadway; their bearded and brutal
faces, discolored with the cold, were agape and hideous with their
laughter; and in the forefront of them, pointing with a great hand
gloved to the likeness of a paw, stood and roared hoarsely the
particular istvostchik on whose account he had suffered the protocol
and the prison. The discord of their mirth rilled the street; the big
men, padded out under their clothes to a grotesque obesity, their
long coats hanging to their heels giving them the aspect of figures
out of a Noah's Ark, drew all eyes. The beginnings of a crowd
gathered to watch and listen.
"The Amerikanetz," the foremost istvostchik was roaring. "Look at
him! Look at his clothes! Just out of prison Look at him!"
Everybody looked; the word "Amerikanetz" fled from lip to lip like a
witticism. Waters, stunned by the suddenness of it all, daunted and
overwhelmed, turned to move away, to get out of sound and hearing.
Forthwith a fresh howl went up. He caught at his self-possession and
turned back.
The moment had epic possibilities; the istvostchiks were not fewer
than eight in number and the crowd was with them. Waters's face was
dark and calm and his movements had the deliberate quiet of purpose.
Another instant and Nikolaieff would have been gladdened and
scandalized by something much more spectacular than a pogrom. The
leading istvostchik, still pointing and bellowing, was inviting
disaster; when from behind him, ploughing through the onlookers',
came the overdue policeman, traffic baton in hand.
"Circulate, circulate!" he cried to the loiterers, waving at them
with his stick. "It is not permitted to congregate. Circulate,
gentlemen!"
He advanced into the clear space of roadway behind the rearmost cab,
between Waters and his tormentors. His darting official eye fell on
the former, standing in his conspicuous blouse, his thin face tense
and dire.
"And this?" he demanded. "What is this?"
A chorus of explanations from the istvostchiks answered him.
"Amerikanetz," they told him, "just out of prison!" They thronged
round him, bubbling over with the story, while he stood, trim and
armed, his hard, neat face arrogant under the sideways-tilted peak of
his cap, hearing them augustly. Then he smiled.
"Tak!" he said briefly. "So!" He turned on Waters, coming round on
him with a movement like a slow swoop. Never was anything so galling
as the air he had of contemptuous and amused comprehension.
"You march!" he ordered. "Get off this street!" He pointed with his
white-painted baton to the nearest turning. "Don't say anything,
now," he warned. "March!"
Waters hesitated. The istvostchiks, still hopeful of sport, pressed
nearer. To disobey and resist meant being cut down and stamped to
death under their heavy boots. Across the policeman's pointing arm,
Waters saw the face of his enemy, expectant, avid, bestial with
hideous and cruel mirth. He regarded it for a moment thoughtfully.
Then, with a shrug, he turned and moved in the direction he had been
ordered to go.
Again, behind him, there was that jeering outcry, as the policeman,
smiling indulgently and watching his departure, seemed to preside
over the chorus.
He came at length, going slowly, to the water side. It was dark by
then; the sheds of the wharves shut out the river and made a barrier
against the sweep of the wind. From over their roofs came the glare
of the high arc-lamps at the wharf-edge and the masts and the rigging
of ships lifted into view. The stridency of day was over in the
shabby street; its high houses, standing like cliffs, showed tier
upon tier of windows, dimly lighted or dark, while from under the
feet of the buildings, from cellar-saloons to traktirs below the
street-level, there spouted up the ruddiness of lamplight and the
jangle of voices. There was a smell in the sharp air of ships and
streets blended, the aromatic freshness of tar, the sourness of
crowds and uncleanliness.
Waters, halting upon the cobbles, sniffed with recognition and
unstiffened his mind as he gazed along the dreary street. He was
here, on his own ground; somewhere in the recesses of those gaunt
houses he would sleep that night, and next day he would wedge himself
back into his place in that uneasy waterside community and all would
be as before. He shivered under the lee of the sheds as he stood,
looking, scarcely thinking, merely realizing the scene in its evening
disguise.
Down the street towards him, walking with strong and measured steps
that resounded upon the cobbles, vague under the shadow of the sheds,
came a man. Waters glanced casually in his direction as he came near,
aware of him merely as in shape that inhabited the darkness, a dim
thing that fitted in with the hour and the furtive street. Then the
man was close to him and visible.
"By gosh!" exclaimed Waters aloud.
It was, of all possible people, "the sergeant with the medals." He
stared at him helplessly.
"Nu!" cried the sergeant heartily. He possessed all that patronizing
geniality which policemen can show to evil-doers, as to colleagues
in another department of the same industry. "You are back again yes?
And how did you find it up there?"
Waters swallowed and hesitated. The sergeant was a vast man, blond as
a straw and bearded like an Assyrian bull, the right shape of man to
wear official buttons. His short sword hung snugly along his leg in
its black, brass-tipped scabbard; his medals, for war-service in the
army, for exemplary conduct, for being alive and in the police at the
time of the Tsar's coronation and so forth, made a bright bar on the
swell of his chest. A worthy and responsible figure; yet the sum of
him was to Waters an offence and a challenge.
He found his tongue. "About the same as you left it, I guess," he
answered unpleasantly.
The big man laughed, standing largely a-straddle with the thumbs of
his gloved hands hooked into his sword-belt. He was rosy as a pippin
and cheery as a host.
"It has done you good," he declared. "For one thing, I can see that
you speak Russian better now oh, much better! It is a fine school. By
and by, we will send you up for six months, and after that nobody
will know you for an Amerikanetz. Ah, you will thank me some day!"
Waters heard him stonily and nodded with meaning.
"You bet I will," he replied. "And when I'm through with you, you'll
know just how grateful I am." The need for words with a taste to them
mastered him. He broke into his own tongue. "You'll get yours, you
big slob!"
"Eh?" The sergeant cocked an ear alertly, "Beek slab? What is that in
Russian?"
"It's your middle name," retorted Waters cryptically and made to move
on.
"Do svidania!" called the sergeant mockingly, raising his voice to a
shout. "Till we meet again! Because I shall be watching you, Votters;
I shall be."
"Here!" Waters wheeled on him, hands withdrawn from his pockets and
cleared for action.
"You start bellerin' at me in the street that way an' I'll just
about."
There was no cohort of hostile istvostchiks here, and anger ached in
him like a cancer. He stepped up to the sergeant with a couple of
long, cat-footed strides and the out-thrust jaw of war. But the
sergeant, instead of bristling and giving battle, held up one large,
leather-clad hand with the motion of hushing him.
"St!" he clicked warningly. "Not now! Be orderly, Votters. See your
lady-consul!"
"What?" Waters halted, taken by surprise, and turned his head. The
sergeant, rigid and formal upon the instant, was saluting. Upon the
high sidewalk, a dozen paces away, a girl was passing; she
acknowledged the sergeant's salute with a small bow. Her eyes seemed
to fall on Waters and she stopped.
"Why, it's" she began, and hesitated as though at a loss for his
name. She stood, inspecting the grouping of the pair in the road, the
massive sergeant and his slighter, more vivid companion. "Is there is
there anything the matter?"
Waters turned his back upon the sergeant and moved slowly towards
her, peering at her where she waited in the growing darkness.
"Not with me," he answered.
"Oh!" It was, of course, Miss Pilgrim, the girl whom he had watched
across the top of the vice consul's desk. She stood above him now at
the edge of the high sidewalk, whence the deep cobbled revetment of
the gutter sloped like a fortification. Gazing at her with all his
eyes, he identified again, like dear and long-remembered landmarks,
the poise of her head, the fragile slope of her shoulders, the softly
lustrous pallor of her face. Even her attitude, perched over him
there and leaning a little towards him, was a thing individual and
characteristic.
"I wondered," she said. "I thought, perhaps."
"We are just talking" Waters reassured her. "Him and me's old
friends."
He endeavored to be convincing; but it happened that she had seen as
she approached the motion with which he had turned on the sergeant a
moment before, and she still waited.
"Perhaps," she suggested then in her pleasant voice, "if you could
spare the time, you'd walk along a little way with me?"
He smiled. It was protection she was offering him, the shield of her
company, dropping it from above like a gentle gift, like a flower let
fall from a balcony. She saw the white gleam of his smile in his
shadowed face and made a small, quick movement as though she shrank.
Waters made haste to accept.
"With you, Miss Pilgrim? Why, sure I will," he replied warmly, and
strode across the gutter to her side.
To the sergeant, watching dumbly this pairing and departure, he said
nothing; he did not even turn to enjoy his face.
It was strange to pass along that familiar street with her, to glance
down at her and see her forward bent face in profile against the dark
doorways leading to interiors whose secrets he knew. The drinking
dens were noisy at their feet; the tall houses were dark and sinister
above them. He heard her breath as she walked at his elbow in the
vicious chill of the evening and out upon the water, visible between
the sheds as a low green and a high white light sliding, slowly
across the night, an outgoing steamer wailed like a hoarse banshee.
Once upon a time he had seen the Black Hundred come roaring and
staggering along that street under the eyes of the ships, and had
backed into one of the doorways past which they now walked to fight
for his life. The memory of it came curiously to him now, as the girl
at his side led him on, hurrying to bring him to safety.
They turned a corner ere she spoke to him again, and advanced along a
street which showed a vista of receding darkness, beaded by the dull
house-lamps set over the courtyard gates. Not till then did she
slacken the hurry of her gait. She lifted her face towards him.
"But there was something, wasn't there?" she asked. "Between you and
that policeman, I mean. You weren't really just chatting?"
Waters shrugged the policeman into the void.
"It's nothin' that you'd need to worry about, Miss Pilgrim," he
answered. "He don't amount to anything."
She was still looking at him. She had on a big muffling coat and her
face lifted out of the high collar of it.
"But" she paused. "I was watching, you for a minute; I saw you go
back to talk to him," she said. "That's why I stopped. You see, that
day in the office, I was ever so sorry."
"Oh, that!" Waters was vaguely embarrassed; he was not used to
sympathy so openly expressed. "You mean Selby an' all that? That
didn't hurt me."
But she would not be denied. "It hurt me," she answered. "To see you
go out like that, so quietly, after asking for help and nobody to say
a word for you! I've been hoping ever since that I'd see you so that
I'd be able to tell you. Of course," she added, in the tone of one
who makes reasonable allowances, "of course, Mr. Selby's in a
difficult position; he has to consider the authorities. Naturally,
being our consul, he'd like to do his best for all Americans; but he
has to be careful. You can understand that, can't you?"
"Why, sure!" agreed Waters warmly. "It's mighty good of you to feel
like that about me, Miss Pilgrim; and I ain't blamin' Selby any. He
was born like that, I guess sort o' poor white trash and his folks
didn't find it out in time to smother him. But I wish I was consul
here for a time and he'd come to me to have me fix somethin' for him.
I'd cert'nly like to have him know how it feels."
"Ah, but I know," she said earnestly. "I can guess like having no
home or friends or even a country of your own to belong to. Like
finding out suddenly that Uncle Sam wasn't your uncle after all! Tell
me, was it what they did to you, I mean was it very bad?"
He smiled a little wryly, looking down into her serious face.
"Well, it wasn't very good," he answered. "It wasn't meant to be. It
ain't often these people get a white man to practice on, an' they
sure made the most o' the chance. But it didn't kill me; and, anyway,
there ain't any reason why it should trouble you, Miss Pilgrim."
He had a feeling that he preferred her to be immune from the
knowledge and understanding of such things, to be and remain a mere
eyeful of delicate and stimulating feminine effect. But upon his
words she half halted, turning to him; she drew a hand from her muff
and her fingers touched his sleeve.
"No reason?" she repeated. "Ah, but there is! There is a reason. I
haven't got any official position or anything to lose at all. I don't
have to consider anybody. So next time if there is a next time I want
you to come straight away to me."
He stared at her, not understanding her sudden excitement. "To you,
Miss Pilgrim? You mean come round to Selby's again?"
"No, no!" She shook her head impatiently. "You know it's no use to go
there. But I live close by here; I'm taking you there now; and I want
you to come to me. Then I'll see the Chief of Police for you; I know
him quite well."
"So do I," said Waters. "He's a crook. But say, Miss Pilgrim, I don't
just see."
She interrupted him. "I'll explain what I mean and then you'll see
that it's all right. But now I want you to come home and have a glass
of tea and see where I live. It's Number Thirteen only two houses
more. You will come, won't you?"
"I'll be glad to," answered he.
The house to which she brought him had a cavernous courtyard arch
like a tunnel, outside whose gates the swaddled dvornik huddled upon
the sheltered side of the arch. Of all his body, only his eyes moved
as they approached, pivoting under his great hood to scan them and
follow them through the gate. Within, the small court was a pit of
gloom roofed by the windy sky; a glass-paneled door let them in to a
winding stone stair with an iron handrail that was greasy to the
touch. It was upon the second floor that Miss Pilgrim halted and put
a key into a door.
There was a hall within, a narrow passage cumbered with big
furniture, wardrobes and the like, which had obviously overflowed
from the rooms. At the far end of it, a door was ajar, letting out a
slit of bright light and a smell of cabbage. Miss Pilgrim opened a
nearer door, reached for the switch and turned to summon Waters
where he waited in the entry, browsing with those eager eyes of his
upon this new pasture.
"Here's where you'll come when you want me," she said.
He entered the room, walked as far as the middle of it and looked
about him. To his sensitive apprehension, whetted to fineness in the
years of his wandering and gazing, it was as though a chill and dead
air filled the place, a suggestion as of funerals. Opposite the door,
two tall windows, like sepulchral portals, framed oblongs of the
outer darkness; and the white-tiled stove in the corner was like a
mausoleum. The cheap parquet of the floor had a clammy gleam; a tiny
icon, roosting high in a corner, showed a tawdry shine of gilding;
the whole room, square and lofty, with its sparse furniture grouped
stiffly about its emptiness, was gaunt and forbidding. Of a
personality that should be at home within it and leave the impress of
its life upon the place, there was not a sign; it was the corpse of a
room. Waters turned from his scrutiny of it towards Miss Pilgrim,
standing yet by the door and clear to see at last in the light. She
smiled at him with her pale, quiet face, and he marked how, when she
ceased to smile, her mouth drooped and her face returned to shadow.
"That's Selby," he told himself hotly. "Selby done that to her!"
There was another door in the corner, near the white stove. It stood
a few inches open, revealing nothing. But as he glanced towards it,
it seemed to him that he detected in the lifeless air a nuance of
fragrance, something elusive as a shade that emanated from the
farther room, and had in its very slightness and delicacy a
suggestion of femininity. He knew that it must be her bedroom that
lay beyond the door, and he found himself wondering what that was
like.
Presently he was seated by the little sham mahogany table, upon which
the big brass samovar steamed and whispered, listening to her and
watching her. She gave him his glass of the pale-yellow Russian tea
that neither cheers nor inebriates, but merely distends and
irrigates, and sat over against him, sipping at her glass and
returning his gaze with her steady eyes.
"I've only had this room a little time," she remarked. "I've had just
a bedroom before. But I had to have somewhere for people to come the
people who can't go to Mr. Selby, I mean. You know what they call me
at the Police Bureau? Mr. Selby's the vice-consul and I'm the
vice-vice. So this," her gaze traveled round the barren room with
gentle complacency "this is my Vice-vice Consulate."
"Oh!" Waters looked up at her over the rim of his glass with a
changed interest. "The vice-vice? That's a pretty good name. Then
you've been doin' this for fellers already?"
He marked a faintness of pink that dawned for a moment in her face at
the question. She smiled involuntarily and a little ruefully.
"Well," she hesitated; "I've tried, but I'm afraid I haven't actually
done anything for anybody. I haven't had a real chance yet. But,
anyhow, there's this room all ready and there's me; and any American
who can't go to Mr. Selby for help can come here."
He nodded.
"It was really from you I got the idea," she went on; "when you went
out of the Consulate like that and there was nowhere you could go.
And later on, there was a sailor from one of the ships, and
afterwards a man who said he was a Mormon missionary; and Mr. Selby
wouldn't couldn't see his way to do anything for them. The sailor was
brought in by two policemen, though he was only a boy! He couldn't
speak a word of Russian, of course, and it made me so sorry to think
of him all alone with those people, having things done to him and not
understanding anything. So, after hours, I went round to see the
Chief of Police."
Waters moved a little on his chair. Her face had a mild glow of
enthusiasm which touched it with sober beauty. He shook his head.
"He's no good," he said. "You hadn't oughter gone to him by
yourself."
"But," Miss Pilgrim protested, "lots of people have said that, and
it's all wrong. It was he that nicknamed me the 'vice-vice,' and now
all the police in the streets salute me when they see me. Even that
first time, before I knew him or anything, he was just as nice as he
could be. He was in his office, writing at a table under a lamp, and
he just looked up at me, hard and well, taking stock of me, you know,
while I told him who I was and what I'd come for. And then he gave me
a chair and sat and listened to everything I'd got to say, leaning on
his elbow and watching me close. I suppose a Chief of Police gets
used to watching people like that."
"I, I wouldn't wonder," answered Waters vaguely. He was seeing, in a
swift vision, that interview, with the black-browed man in uniform
under the lamp, listening and staring.
"I told him how I felt about it," Miss Pilgrim continued, "and how,
since there wasn't anybody else to speak for the boy, I'd come along
to see if I could do anything. And when I'd finished he let me go on
till I hadn't another word to say that I could think of! he just
bowed and said he'd have been delighted to oblige me, but the
sailor's captain had been in and paid his fine and taken him away
three hours before. Then he sent for glasses of tea and we sat and
had a talk, and I got him to say I could always come again when I
wanted to. But, you see, if it hadn't been for the captain."
"Sure," agreed Waters. "They'd have turned the kid loose for you. And
the Mormon? Seems to me I seen that Mormon, unless there's a couple
of them strayin' around. How did you fix it for him?"
Again, at the query, that ghost of pink showed on her cheeks.
"Oh, he--he wasn't very nice," she answered. "He was a big stout man,
with a curly black beard like fur growing close to his face all round
and shiny round knobs of cheek bulging out of it. I never did get to
hear just what the trouble was with him, because when he was telling
Mr. Selby, he looked round at me first and then bent over the desk
and whispered. Whatever it was, it made Mr. Selby very angry; he
simply bounced out of his chair and shouted the man right out of the
room. And the man, I couldn't help being sorry for him, just went
walking backwards, fending Mr. Selby off with his hands, with his
mouth open and his eyes staring, looking as helpless and aghast as
could be. And when he got to the door, he burst out crying like a
little child."