"Fear!" He interrupted me, his voice swift and soft and triumphant. "M.
Durward, are you so ignorant of Russia that you consider the outpourings of a few idealistic Intel igentzia, professors and teachers and poets, as important? What about the people, M. Durward? You ask any peasant in the Moscow Government, or little Russia, or the Ukraine whether he will remain loyal to his Little Father or no! Ask--and the question you suggested to me will be answered."
"Then, you feel both secure and justified?" I said.
"We feel both secure and justified"--he answered me, smiling.
After that our conversation was personal and social. Lawrence was very quiet. I observed that the Baroness had a motherly affection for him, that she saw that he had everything that he wanted, and that she gave him every now and then little friendly confidential smiles. As the meal proceeded, as I drank the most excel ent wine and the warm austerity of my surroundings gathered ever more closely around me, I wondered whether after all my apprehensions and forebodings of the last weeks had not been the merest sick man's cowardice. Surely if any kingdom in the world was secure, it was this official Russia. I could see it stretching through the space and silence of that vast land, its servants in every village, its paths and roads al leading back to the central citadel, its whispered orders flying through the air from district to district, its judgements, its rewards, its sins, its virtues, resting upon a basis of superstition and ignorance and apathy, the three sure friends of autocracy through history!
And on the other side--who? The Rat, Boris Grogoff, Markovitch. Yes, the Baron had reason for his confidence.... I thought for a moment of that figure that I had seen on Christmas Eve by the river--the strong grave bearded peasant whose gaze had seemed to go so far beyond the bounds of my own vision. But no! Russia's mystical peasant--that was an old tale.
Once, on the Front, when I had seen him facing the enemy with bare hands, I had, myself, believed it. Now I thought once more of the Rat--_that_ was the type whom I must now confront.
I had a most agreeable evening. I do not know how long it had been since I had tasted luxury and comfort and the true fruits of civilisation. The Baron was a most admirable teller of stories, with a capital sense of humour. After dinner the Baroness left us for half an hour, and the Baron became very pleasantly Rabelaisian, speaking of his experiences in Paris and London, Vienna and Berlin so easily and with so ready a wit that the evening flew. The Baroness returned and, seeing that it was after eleven, I made my farewells. Lawrence said that he would walk with me down the quay before turning into bed. My host and hostess pressed me to come as often as possible. The Baron's last words to me were:
"Have no fears, M. Durward. There is much talk in this country, but we are a lazy people."
The "we" rang strangely in my ears.
"He's of course no more a Russian than you or I," I said to Lawrence, as we started down the quay.
"Oh yes, he is!" Lawrence said. "Quite genuine--not a drop of German blood in spite of the name. But he's a Prussian at heart--a Prussian of the Prussians. By that I don't mean in the least that he wants Germany to win the war. He doesn't--his interests are al here, and you mayn't believe me, but I assure you he's a Patriot. He loves Russia, and he wants what's best for her--and believes that to be Autocracy."
After that Lawrence shut up. He would not say another word. We walked for a long time in silence. The evening was most beautiful. A golden moon flung the snow into dazzling relief against the deep black of the palaces. Across the Neva the line of towers and minarets and chimneys ran like a huge fissure in the golden, light from sky to sky.
"You said there was something you wanted to ask my advice about?"
I broke the silence.
He looked at me with his long slow considering stare. He mumbled something; then, with a sudden gesture, he gripped my arm, and his heavy body quivering with the urgency of his words he said:
"It's Vera Markovitch.... I'd give my body and soul and spirit for her happiness and safety.... God forgive me, I'd give my country and my honour.... I ache and long for her, so that I'm afraid for my sanity.
I've never loved a woman, nor lusted for one, nor touched one in my whole life, Durward--and now... and now... I've gone right in. I've spoken no word to any one; but I couldn't stand my own silence....
Durward, you've got to help me!"
I walked on, seeing the golden light and the curving arc of snow and the little figures moving like dol s from light to shadow. Lawrence! I had never thought of him as an urgent lover; even now, although I could still feel his hand quivering on my arm, I could have laughed at the ludicrous incongruity of romance, and that stolid thick-set figure. And at the same time I was afraid. Lawrence in love was no boy on the threshold of life like Bohun... here was no trivial passion. I realised even in that first astonished moment the trouble that might be in store for all of us.
"Look here, Lawrence!" I said at last. "The first thing that you may as wel realise is that it is hopeless. Vera Michailovna has confided in me a good deal lately, and she is devoted to her husband, thinks of nothing else. She's simple, naive, with all her sense and wisdom...."
"Hopeless!" he interrupted, and he gave a kind of grim chuckle of derision. "My dear Durward, what do you suppose I'm after?... rape and adultery and Markovitch after us with a pistol? I tel you--" and here he spoke fiercely, as though he were challenging the whole ice-bound world around us--"that I want nothing but her happiness, her safety, her comfort! Do you suppose that I'm such an ass as not to recognise the kind of thing that my loving her would lead to? I tell you I'm after nothing for myself, and that not because I'm a fine unselfish character, but simply because the thing's too big to let anything into it but herself. She shall never know that I care twopence about her, but she's got to be happy and she's got to be safe.... Just now, she's neither of those things, and that's why I've spoken to you.... She's unhappy and she's afraid, and that's got to change. I wouldn't have spoken of this to you if I thought you'd be so short-sighted...."
"Al right! Al right!" I said testily. "You may be a kind of Galahad, Lawrence, outside al natural law. I don't know, but you'll forgive me if I go for a moment on my own experience--and that experience is, that you can start on as highbrow an elevation as you like, but love doesn't stand still, and the body's the body, and to-morrow isn't yesterday--not by no means. Moreover, Markovitch is a Russian and a peculiar one at that. Final y, remember that I want Vera Michailovna to be happy quite as much as you do!"
He was suddenly grave and almost boyish in his next words.
"I know that--you're a decent chap, Durward--I know it's hard to believe me, but I just ask you to wait and test me. No one knows of this--that I'd swear--and no one shal ; but what's the matter with her, Durward, what's she afraid of? That's why I spoke to you. You know her, and I'll throttle you here where we stand if you don't tel me just what the trouble is. I don't care for confidences or anything of the sort. You must break them all and tel me--"
His hand was on my arm again, his big ugly face, now grim and obstinate, close against mine.
"I'll tell you," I said slowly, "al I know, which is almost nothing.
The trouble is Semyonov, the doctor. Why or how I can't say, although I've seen enough of him in the past to know the trouble he _can_ be.
She's afraid of him, and Markovitch is afraid of him. He likes playing on people's nerves. He's a bitter, disappointed man, who loved desperately once, as only real sensualists can... and now he's in love with a ghost. That's why real life maddens him."
"Semyonov!" Lawrence whispered the name.
We had come to the end of the quay. My dear church with its round grey wal stood glistening in the moonlight, the shadows from the snow rippling up its sides, as though it lay under water. We stood and looked across the river.
"I've always hated that fellow," Lawrence said. "I've only seen him about twice, but I believe I hated him before I saw him.... All right, Durward, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. Good-night."
And before I could speak he had gripped my hand, had turned back, and was walking swiftly away, across the golden-lighted quay.
XIX
From the moment that Lawrence left me, vanishing into the heart of the snow and ice, I was obsessed by a conviction of approaching danger and peril. It has been one of the most disastrous weaknesses of my life that I have always shrunk from precipitate action. Before the war it had seemed to many of us that life could be jockeyed into decisions by words and theories and speculations. The swift, and, as it were, revengeful precipitancy of the last three years had driven me into a self-distrust and cowardice which had grown and grown until life had seemed veiled and distant and mysteriously obscure. From my own obscurity, against my will, against my courage, against my own knowledge of myself, circumstances were demanding that I should advance and act. It was of no avail to myself that I should act unwisely, that I should perhaps only precipitate a crisis that I could not help. I was forced to act when I would have given my soul to hold aloof, and in this town, whose darkness and light, intrigue and display, words and action, seemed to derive some mysterious force from the very soil, from the very air, the smal est action achieved monstrous proportions. When you have lived for some years in Russia you do not wonder that its citizens prefer inaction to demonstration--the soil is so much stronger than the men who live upon it.
Nevertheless, for a fortnight I did nothing. Private affairs of an especially tiresome kind filled my days--I saw neither Lawrence nor Vera, and, during that period, I scarcely left my rooms.
There was much expectation in the town that February 14th, when the Duma was appointed to meet, would be a critical day. Fine things were said of the challenging speeches that would be made, of the firm stand that the Cadet party intended to take, of the crisis with which the Court party would be faced.
Of course nothing occurred. It may be safely said that, in Russian affairs, no crisis occurs, either in the place or at the time, or in the manner in which it is expected. Time with us here refuses to be caught by the throat. That is the revenge that it takes on the scorn with which, in Russia, it is always covered.
On the 20th of February I received an invitation to Nina's birthday party. She would be eighteen on the 28th. She scribbed at the bottom of Vera's note:
Dear Durdles--If you don't come I will never forgive you.--Your loving Nina.
The immediate problem was a present. I knew that Nina adored presents, but Petrograd was now no easy place for purchases, and I wished, I suppose as a kind of tribute to her youth and freshness and colour, to give her something for which she would real y care. I sallied out on a wonderful afternoon when the town was a blaze of colour, the wal s dark red, dark brown, violet, pink, and the snow a dazzling glitter of crystal. The bel s were ringing for some festival, echoing as do no other bel s in the world from wal to wall, roof to roof, canal to canal. Everybody moved as though they were inspired with a gay sense of adventure, men and women laughing; the Isvostchicks surveying possible fares with an eye less patronising and lugubrious than usual, the flower women and the beggars and the little Chinese boys and the wicked old men who stare at you as though they were dreaming of Eastern debauches, shared in the sun and tang of the air and high colour of the sky and snow.
I pushed my way into the shop in the Morskaia that had the coloured stones--the blue and azure and purple stones--in the window. Inside the shop, which had a fine gleaming floor, and an old man with a tired eye, there were stones of every colour, but there was nothing there for Nina--al was too elaborate and grand.
Near the Nevski is a fine shop of pictures with snow scenes and blue rivers and Italian landscapes, and copies of Repin and Verestchagin, and portraits of the Czar. I searched here, but all were too sophisticated in their bright brown frames, and their air of being the latest thing from Paris and London. Then I crossed the road, threading my way through the carriages and motor cars, past the old white-bearded sweeper with the broom held aloft, gazing at the sky, and plunged into the English Shop to see whether I might buy something warm for Nina. Here, indeed, I could fancy that I was in the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, or Truro, or Canterbury. A demure English provincialism was over everything, and a young man in a high white collar and a shiny black coat, washed his hands as he told me that "they hadn't any in stock at the moment, but they were expecting a delivery of goods at any minute."
Russian shopmen, it is almost needless to say, do not care whether they have goods in stock or no. They have other things to think about. The air was filled with the chatter of English governesses, and an English clergyman and his wife were earnestly turning over a selection of wool en comforters.
Nothing here for Nina--nothing at al . I hurried away. With a sudden flash of inspiration I realised that it was in the Jews' Market that I would find what I wanted. I snatched at the bulging neck of a sleeping coachman, and before he was fully awake was in his sledge, and had told him my destination. He grumbled and wished to know how much I intended to pay him, and when I said one and a half roubles, answered that he would not take me for less than three. I threatened him then with the fat and good-natured policeman who always guarded the confused junction of the Morskaia and Nevski, and he was frightened and moved on. I sighed as I remembered the days not so long before, when that same coachman would have thought it an honour to drive me for half a rouble. Down the Sadovya we slipped, bumping over the uneven surface of the snow, and the shops grew smaller and the cinemas more stringent, and the women and men with their barrows of fruit and coloured notepaper and toys more frequent. Then through the market with the booths and the church with its golden towers, until we stood before the hooded entrance to the Jews' Paradise. I paid him, and without listening to his discontented cries pushed my way in. The Jews' Market is a series of covered arcades with a square in the middle of it, and in the middle of the square a little church with some dol -like trees. These arcades are Western in their hideous covering of glass and the ugliness of the exterior of the wooden shops that line them, but the crowd that throngs them is Eastern, so that in the strange eyes and voices, the wild gestures, the laughs, the cries, the singing, and the dancing that meets one here it is as though a new world was suddenly born--a world offensive, dirty, voluble, blackguardly perhaps, but intriguing, tempting, and ironical. The arcades are generally so crowded that one can move only at a slow pace and, on every side one is pestered by the equivalents of the old English cry: "What do you lack? What do you lack?"
Every mixture of blood and race that the world contains is to be seen here, but they are al --Tartars, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Arabs, Moslem, and Christian--formed by some subtle colour of atmosphere, so that they seem al alike to be citizens of some secret little town, sprung to life just for a day, in the heart of this other city. Perhaps it is the dul pale mist that the glass flings down, perhaps it is the uncleanly dust-clogged air; whatever it be, there is a stain of grey shadowy smoke upon al this world, and Ikons and shabby jewels, and piles of Eastern clothes, and old brass pots, and silver, hilted swords, and golden-tassel ed Tartar coats gleam through the shadow and wink and stare.
To-day the arcades were so crowded that I could scarcely move, and the noise was deafening.
Many soldiers were there, looking with indulgent amusement upon the scene, and the Jews with their skul -caps and the fat, huge-breasted Jewish women screamed and shrieked and waved their arms like boughs in a storm. I stopped at many shops and fingered the cheap silver toys, the little blue and green Ikons, the buckles and beads and rosaries that thronged the trays, but I could not find anything for Nina. Then suddenly I saw a square box of mother-of-pearl and silver, so charming and simple, the figures on the silver lid so graceful y carved that I decided at once.
The Jew in charge of it wanted twice as much as I was ready to give, and we argued for ten minutes before a kindly and appreciative crowd. At last we arranged a compromise, and I moved away, pleased and satisfied.
I stepped out of the arcade and faced the little Square. It was, at that instant, fantastic and oddly coloured; the sun, about to set, hung in the misty sky a perfect round crimson globe, and it was perched, almost maliciously, just above the tower of the little church.
The rest of the world was grey. The Square was a thick mass of human beings so tightly wedged together that it seemed to move backwards and forwards like a floor of black wood pushed by a lever. One lamp burnt behind the window of the church, the old houses leaned forward as though listening to the babel below their eaves.
But it was the sun that seemed to me then so evil and secret and cunning. Its deep red was aloof and menacing, and its outline so sharp that it was detached from the sky as though it were human, and would presently move and advance towards us. I don't know what there was in that crowd of struggling human beings and that detached red sun.... The air was cruel, and through all the arcades that seemed to run like veins to this heart of the place I could feel the cold and the dark and the smoky dusk creeping forward to veil us all with deepest night.
I turned away and then saw, advancing towards me, as though he had just come from the church, pushing his way, and waving a friendly hand to me, Semyonov.
XX
His greeting was most amiable. He was wearing a rather short fur coat that only reached to a little below his knees, and the fur of the coat was of a deep rich brown, so that his pale square yellow beard contrasted with this so abruptly as to seem false. His body was as ever thick and self-confident, and the round fur cap that he wore was cocked ever so slightly to one side. I did not want to see him, but I was caught. I fancied that he knew very wel that I wanted to escape, and that now, for sheer perversity, he would see that I did not. Indeed, he caught my arm and drew me out of the Market. We passed into the dusky streets.
"Now, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, "this is very pleasant... very....
You elude me, you know, which is unkind with two so old acquaintances.
Of course I know that you dislike me, and I don't suppose that I have the highest opinion of _you_, but, nevertheless, we should be interested in one another. Our common experience...." He broke off with a little shiver, and pulled his fur coat closer around him.
I knew that all that I wanted was to break away. We had passed quickly on leaving the Market into some of the meanest streets of Petrograd.
This was the Petrograd of Dostoeffsky, the Petrograd of "Poor Folk" and
"Crime and Punishment" and "The Despised and Rejected."... Monstrous groups of flats towered above us, and in the gathering dusk the figures that slipped in and out of the doors were furtive shadows and ghosts. No one seemed to speak; you could see no faces under the spare pale-flamed lamps, only hear whispers and smel rotten stinks and feel the snow, foul and soiled under one's feet....
"Look here, Semyonov," I said, slipping from the control of his hand,
"it's just as you say. We don't like one another, and we know one another wel enough to say so. Neither you nor I wish to revive the past, and there's nothing in the present that we have in common."
"Nothing!" He laughed. "What about my delightful nieces and their home circle? You were always one to shrink from the truth, Ivan Andreievitch.
You fancy that you can sink into the bosom of a charming family and escape the disadvantages.... Not at al . There are always disadvantages in a Russian family. _I_ am the disadvantage in this one." He laughed again, and insisted on taking my arm once more. "If you feel so strongly about me, Durward" (when he used my surname he always accented the second syllable very strongly) "al you have to do is to cut my niece Vera out of your visiting list. That, I imagine, is the last thing that you wish. Wel , then--"
"Vera Michailovna is my friend," I said hotly--it was foolish of me to be so easily provoked, but I could not endure his sneering tone. "If you imply--"
"Nonsense," he answered sharply, "I imply nothing. Do you suppose that I have been more than a month here without discovering the facts? It's your English friend Lawrence who is in love with Vera--and Vera with him."
"That is a lie!" I cried.
He laughed. "You English," he said, "are not so unobservant as you seem, but you hate facts. Vera and your friend Lawrence have been in love with one another since their first meeting, and my dear nephew-in-law Markovitch knows it."
"That's impossible," I cried. "He--"
"No," Semyonov replied, "I was wrong. He does not know it--he suspects.
And my nephew-in-law in a state of suspicion is a delightful study."
By now we were in a narrow street, so dark that we stumbled at every step. We seemed to be quite alone.
It was I who now caught his arm. "Semyonov!" I said, and my urgency stopped him so that he stood where he was. "Leave them alone! Leave them alone! They've done no harm to you, they can offer you nothing, they are not intelligent enough for you nor amusing enough. Even if it is true what you say it will pass--Lawrence will go away. I will see that he does. Only leave them alone! For God's sake, let them be!"
His face was very close to mine, and, looking at it in the gathering dark, it was as though it were a face of glass behind which other faces passed and repassed. I cannot hope to give any idea of the strange mingling of regret, malice, pride, pain, scorn, and humour that those eyes showed. His red lips parted as though he would speak, for a moment he turned away from me and looked down the black tunnel of the street, then he walked forward again.
"You are wrong, my friend," he said, "if you imagine that there is no amusement for me in the study of my family. It _is_ my family, you know.
I have none other. Perhaps it has never occurred to you, Durward, that possibly I am a lonely man."
As he spoke I heard again the echo of that voice as it vanished into the darkness.... "No one?" and the answer: "No one."...
"Don't imagine," he continued, "that I am asking for your pity. That indeed would be humorous. I pity no one, and I despise the men who have it to bestow... but there are situations in life that are intolerable, Ivan Andreievitch, and any man who _is_ a man will see that he escapes from such a thing. May I not find in the bosom of my family such an escape?" He laughed.
"I know nothing about that," I began hotly. "Al I know is--"
But he went on as though he had not heard me.
"Have you ever thought about death since you came away from the Front, Durward? It used to occupy your mind a good deal while you were there, I remember--in a foolish, romantic, sentimental way of course. You'll forgive my saying that your views of death were those of a second-hand novelist--al the same I'll do you the justice of acknowledging that you had studied it at first hand. You're not a coward, you know."
I was struck most vividly with a sense of his uneasiness. During those other days uneasy was the very last thing that I ever would have said that he was--even after his catastrophe his grip of his soul did not loosen. It was just that loosening that I felt now; he had less control of the beasts that dwelt beneath the ground of his house, and he could hear them snarl and whine, and could feel the floor quiver with the echo of their movements.
I suddenly knew that I was afraid of him no longer.
"Now, see, Alexei Petrovitch," I said, "it isn't death that we want to talk about now. It is a much simpler thing. It is, that you shouldn't for your own amusement simply go in and spoil the lives of some of my friends for nothing at all except your own stupid pride. If that's your plan I'm going to prevent it."
"Why, Ivan Andreievitch," he cried, laughing, "this is a challenge."
"You can take it as what you please," I answered gravely.
"But, incorrigible sentimentalist," he went on, "tel me--are you, English and moralist and believer in a good and righteous God as you are, are you real y going to encourage this abominable adultery, this open, ruthless wrecking of a good man's home? You surprise me; this is a new light on your otherwise rather uninteresting character."
"Never mind my character," I answered him; "al you've got to do is to leave Vera Michailovna alone. There'll be no wrecking of homes, unless you are the wrecker."
He put his hand on my arm again.
"Listen, Durward," he said, "I'll tel you a little story. I'm a doctor you know, and many curious things occur within my province. Wel , some years ago I knew a man who was very miserable and very proud. His pride resented that he should be miserable, and he was always suspecting that people saw his weakness, and as he despised human nature, and thought his companions fools and deserving of all that they got, and more, he couldn't bear the thought that they should perceive that he al owed himself to be unhappy. He coveted death. If it meant extinction he could imagine nothing pleasanter than so restful an aloofness, quiet and apart and alone, whilst others hurried and scrambled and pursued the future....
"And if death did not mean extinction then he thought that he might snatch and secure for himself something which in life had eluded him. So he coveted death. But he was too proud to reach it by suicide. That seemed to him a contemptible and cowardly evasion, and such an easy solution would have denied the purpose of all his life. So he looked about him and discovered amongst his friends a man whose character he knew well, a man idealistic and foolish and romantic, like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch, only caring more for ideas, more impulsive and more reckless. He found this man and made him his friend. He played with him as a cat does with a mouse. He enjoyed life for about a year and then he was murdered...."
"Murdered!" I exclaimed.
"Yes--shot by his idealistic friend. I envy him that year. He must have experienced many breathless sensations. When the murderer was tried his only explanation was that he had been irritated and disappointed.
"'Disappointed of what?' asked the judge.
"'Of everything in which he believed....' said the man.
"It seemed a poor excuse for a murder; he is still, I have no doubt, in Siberia.
"But I envy my friend. That was a delightful death to die....
Good-night, Ivan Andreievitch."
He waved his hand at me and was gone. I was quite alone in the long black street, engulfed by the high, overhanging flats.
XXI
Late on the afternoon of Nina's birthday, when I was on the point of setting out for the English Prospect, the Rat appeared. I had not seen him for several weeks; but there he was, stepping suddenly out of the shadows of my room, dirty and disreputable and cheerful. He had been, I perceived, drinking furniture polish.
"Good-evening, Barin."
"Good-evening," I said sternly. "I told you not to come here when you were drunk."
"I'm not drunk," he said, offended, "only a little. It's not much that you can get these days. I want some money, Barin."
"I've none for you," I answered.
"It's only a little--God knows that I wouldn't ask you for much, but I'm going to be very busy these next days, and it's work that won't bring pay quickly. There'll be pay later, and then I will return it to you."
"There's nothing for you to-night," I said.
He laughed. "You're a fine man, Barin. A foreigner is fine--that's where the poor Russian is unhappy. I love you, Barin, and I will look after you, and if, as you say, there isn't any money here, one must pray to God and he will show one the way."
"What's this work you're going to do?" I asked him.
"There's going to be trouble the other side of the river in a day or two," he answered, "and I'm going to help."
"Help what?" I asked.
"Help the trouble," he answered, smiling.
"Behave like a blackguard, in fact."
"Ah, blackguard, Barin!" he protested, using a Russian word that is worse than blackguard. "Why these names?... I'm not a good man, God have mercy on my soul, but then I pretend nothing. I am what you see.... If there's going to be trouble in the town I may as well be there. Why not I as wel as another? And it is to your advantage, Barin, that I should be."
"Why to my advantage?" I asked him.
"Because I am your friend, and we'll protect you," he answered.
"I wouldn't trust you a yard," I told him.
"Well, perhaps you're right," he said. "We are as God made us--I am no better than the rest."
"No, indeed you're not," I answered him. "Why do you think there'll be trouble?"
"I know.... Perhaps a lot of trouble, perhaps only a little. But it will be a fine time for t