The Secret City

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  XVII

  They didn't come to see me again together. Vera came twice, kind andgood as always, but with no more confidences; and Nina once with flowersand fruit and a wild chattering tongue about the cinemas and Smyrnov,who was delighting the world at the Narodny Dom, and the wonderfulperformance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" that was shortly to take placeat the Alexander Theatre.

  "Are you and Vera friends again?" I asked her.

  "Oh yes! Why not?" And she went on, snapping a chocolate almond betweenher teeth--"The one at the 'Piccadilly' is the best. It's an Italianone, and there's a giant in it who throws people all over the place, outof windows and everywhere. Ah! how lovely!... I wish I could go everynight."

  "You ought to be helping with the war," I said severely.

  "Oh, I hate the war!" she answered. "We're all terribly tired of it.Tanya's given up going to the English hospital now, and is just meaningto be as gay as she can be; and Zinaida Fyodorovna had just come backfrom her Otriad on the Galician front, and she says it's shocking therenow--no food or dancing or anything. Why doesn't every one make peace?"

  "Do you want the Germans to rule Russia?" I asked.

  "Why not?" she said, laughing. "We can't do it ourselves. We don't carewho does it. The English can do it if they like, only they're too lazyto bother. The German's aren't lazy, and if they were here we'd havelots of theatres and cinematographs."

  "Don't you love your country?" I asked.

  "This isn't our country," she answered. "It just belongs to the Empressand Protopopoff."

  "Supposing it became your country and the Emperor went?"

  "Oh, then it would belong to a million different people, and in the endno one would have anything. Can't you see how they'd fight?"... Sheburst out laughing: "Boris and Nicholas and Uncle Alexei and all theothers!"

  Then she was suddenly serious.

  "I know, Durdles, you consider that I'm so young and frivolous that Idon't think of anything serious. But I can see things like any one else.Can't you see that we're all so disappointed with ourselves that nothingmatters? We thought the war was going to be so fine--but now it's justlike the Japanese one, all robbery and lies--and we can't do anything tostop it."

  "Perhaps some day some one will," I said.

  "Oh yes!" she answered scornfully, "men like Boris."

  After that she refused to be grave for a moment, danced about the room,singing, and finally vanished, a whirlwind of blue silk.

  * * * * *

  A week later I was out in the world again. That curious sense ofexcitement that had first come to me during the early days of my illnessburnt now more fiercely than ever. I cannot say what it was exactly thatI thought was going to happen. I have often looked back, as many otherpeople must have done, to those days in February and wondered whether Iforesaw anything of what was to come, and what were the things thatmight have seemed to me significant if I had noticed them. And here I amdeliberately speaking of both public and private affairs. I cannot quitefrankly dissever the two. At the Front, a year and a half before, I haddiscovered how intermingled the souls of individuals and the souls ofcountries were, and how permanent private history seemed to me and howtransient public events; but whether that was true or no before, it wasnow most certain that it was the story of certain individuals that I wasto record,--the history that was being made behind them could at itsbest be only a background.

  I seemed to step into a city ablaze with a sinister glory. If thatappears melodramatic I can only say that the dazzling winter weather ofthose weeks was melodramatic. Never before had I seen the huge buildingstower so high, never before felt the shadows so vast, the squares andstreets so limitless in their capacity for swallowing light and colour.The sky was a bitter changeless blue; the buildings black; the snow andice, glittering with purple and gold, swept by vast swinging shadows asthough huge doors opened and shut in heaven, or monstrous birds hovered,their wings spread, motionless in the limitless space.

  And all this had, as ever, nothing to do with human life. The littlecourtyards with their woodstacks and their coloured houses, carts andthe cobbled squares and the little stumpy trees that bordered the canalsand the little wooden huts beside the bridges with their candles andfruit--these were human and friendly and good, but they had theirprecarious condition like the rest of us.

  On the first afternoon of my new liberty I found myself in the NevskiProspect, bewildered by the crowds and the talk and trams and motors andcarts that passed in unending sequence up and down the long street.Standing at the corner of the Sadovia and the Nevski one was carriedstraight to the point of the golden spire that guarded the farther endof the great street. All was gold, the surface of the road was like agolden stream, the canal was gold, the thin spire caught into itspiercing line all the colour of the swiftly fading afternoon; the wheelsof the carriages gleamed, the flower-baskets of the women glittered likeshining foam, the snow flung its crystal colour into the air like thinfire dim before the sun. The street seemed to have gathered on to itspavements the citizens of every country under the sun. Tartars, Mongols,Little Russians, Chinamen, Japanese, French officers, British officers,peasants and fashionable women, schoolboys, officials, actors andartists and business men and priests and sailors and beggars and hawkersand, guarding them all, friendly, urbane, filled with a pleasantself-importance that seemed at that hour the simplest and easiest ofattitudes, the Police. "Rum--rum--rum--whirr--whirr--whirr--whirr"--likethe regular beat of a shuttle the hum rose and fell, as the sun fadedinto rosy mist and white vapours stole above the still canals.

  I turned to go home and felt some one touch my elbow.

  I swung round and there, his broad face ruddy with the cold, was JerryLawrence.

  I was delighted to see him and told him so.

  "Well, I'm damned glad," he said gruffly. "I thought you might have agrudge against me."

  "A grudge?" I said. "Why?"

  "Haven't been to see you. Heard you were ill, but didn't think you'dwant me hanging round."

  "Why this modesty?" I asked.

  "No--well--you know what I mean." He shuffled his feet. "No good in asick-room."

  "Mine wasn't exactly a sick-room," I said. "But I heard that you didcome."

  "Yes. I came twice," he answered, looking at me shyly. "Your old womanwouldn't let me see you."

  "Never mind that," I said; "let's have an evening together soon."

  "Yes--as soon as you like." He looked up and down the street. "There aresome things I'd like to ask your advice about."

  "Certainly," I said.

  "What do you say to coming and dining at my place? Ever met Wilderling?"

  "Wilderling?" I could not remember for the moment the name.

  "Yes--the old josser I live with. Fine old man--got a point of view ofhis own!"

  "Delighted," I said.

  "To-morrow. Eight o'clock. Don't dress."

  He was just going off when he turned again.

  "Awfully glad you're better," he said. He cleared his throat, looked atme in a very friendly way, then smiled.

  "_Awfully_ glad you're better," he repeated, then went off, rolling hisbroad figure into the evening mist.

  I turned towards home.