The Secret City

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  XX

  His greeting was most amiable. He was wearing a rather short fur coatthat only reached to a little below his knees, and the fur of the coatwas of a deep rich brown, so that his pale square yellow beardcontrasted with this so abruptly as to seem false. His body was as everthick and self-confident, and the round fur cap that he wore was cockedever so slightly to one side. I did not want to see him, but I wascaught. I fancied that he knew very well that I wanted to escape, andthat now, for sheer perversity, he would see that I did not. Indeed, hecaught my arm and drew me out of the Market. We passed into the duskystreets.

  "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 havethe highest opinion of _you_, but, nevertheless, we should be interestedin one another. Our common experience...." He broke off with a littleshiver, and pulled his fur coat closer around him.

  I knew that all that I wanted was to break away. We had passed quicklyon 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."... Monstrousgroups of flats towered above us, and in the gathering dusk the figuresthat slipped in and out of the doors were furtive shadows and ghosts. Noone seemed to speak; you could see no faces under the spare pale-flamedlamps, only hear whispers and smell 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 oneanother well enough to say so. Neither you nor I wish to revive thepast, and there's nothing in the present that we have in common."

  "Nothing!" He laughed. "What about my delightful nieces and their homecircle? You were always one to shrink from the truth, Ivan Andreievitch.You fancy that you can sink into the bosom of a charming family andescape the disadvantages.... Not at all. There are always disadvantagesin a Russian family. _I_ am the disadvantage in this one." He laughedagain, and insisted on taking my arm once more. "If you feel so stronglyabout me, Durward" (when he used my surname he always accented thesecond syllable very strongly) "all you have to do is to cut my nieceVera out of your visiting list. That, I imagine, is the last thing thatyou wish. Well, then--"

  "Vera Michailovna is my friend," I said hotly--it was foolish of me tobe so easily provoked, but I could not endure his sneering tone. "If youimply--"

  "Nonsense," he answered sharply, "I imply nothing. Do you suppose that Ihave been more than a month here without discovering the facts? It'syour English friend Lawrence who is in love with Vera--and Vera withhim."

  "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 withone another since their first meeting, and my dear nephew-in-lawMarkovitch 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 everystep. We seemed to be quite alone.

  It was I who now caught his arm. "Semyonov!" I said, and my urgencystopped him so that he stood where he was. "Leave them alone! Leave themalone! They've done no harm to you, they can offer you nothing, they arenot intelligent enough for you nor amusing enough. Even if it is truewhat you say it will pass--Lawrence will go away. I will see that hedoes. Only leave them alone! For God's sake, let them be!"

  His face was very close to mine, and, looking at it in the gatheringdark, it was as though it were a face of glass behind which other facespassed and repassed. I cannot hope to give any idea of the strangemingling of regret, malice, pride, pain, scorn, and humour that thoseeyes showed. His red lips parted as though he would speak, for a momenthe 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 noamusement 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, thatpossibly I am a lonely man."

  As he spoke I heard again the echo of that voice as it vanished into thedarkness.... "No one?" and the answer: "No one."...

  "Don't imagine," he continued, "that I am asking for your pity. Thatindeed would be humorous. I pity no one, and I despise the men who haveit to bestow... but there are situations in life that are intolerable,Ivan Andreievitch, and any man who _is_ a man will see that he escapesfrom such a thing. May I not find in the bosom of my family such anescape?" He laughed.

  "I know nothing about that," I began hotly. "All 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, Iremember--in a foolish, romantic, sentimental way of course. You'llforgive my saying that your views of death were those of a second-handnovelist--all the same I'll do you the justice of acknowledging that youhad studied it at first hand. You're not a coward, you know."

  I was struck most vividly with a sense of his uneasiness. During thoseother days uneasy was the very last thing that I ever would have saidthat he was--even after his catastrophe his grip of his soul did notloosen. It was just that loosening that I felt now; he had less controlof the beasts that dwelt beneath the ground of his house, and he couldhear them snarl and whine, and could feel the floor quiver with the echoof 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 totalk about now. It is a much simpler thing. It is, that you shouldn'tfor your own amusement simply go in and spoil the lives of some of myfriends for nothing at all except your own stupid pride. If that's yourplan 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, "tell me--are you,English and moralist and believer in a good and righteous God as youare, are you really going to encourage this abominable adultery, thisopen, ruthless wrecking of a good man's home? You surprise me; this is anew light on your otherwise rather uninteresting character."

  "Never mind my character," I answered him; "all you've got to do is toleave Vera Michailovna alone. There'll be no wrecking of homes, unlessyou are the wrecker."

  He put his hand on my arm again.

  "Listen, Durward," he said, "I'll tell you a little story. I'm a doctoryou know, and many curious things occur within my province. Well, someyears ago I knew a man who was very miserable and very proud. His prideresented that he should be miserable, and he was always suspecting thatpeople saw his weakness, and as he despised human nature, and thoughthis companions fools and deserving of all that they got, and more, hecouldn't bear the thought that they should perceive that he allowedhimself to be unhappy. He coveted death. If it meant extinction he couldimagine nothing pleasanter than so restful an aloofness, quiet and apartand alone, whilst others hurried and scrambled and pursued thefuture....

  "And if death did not mean extinction then he thought that he mightsnatch and secure for himself something which in life had eluded him. Sohe coveted death. But he was too proud to reach it by suicide. Thatseemed to him a contemptible and cowardly evasion, and such an easysolution would have denied the purpose of all his life. So he lookedabout him and discovered amongst his friends a man whose character heknew well, a man idealistic and foolish and romantic, like yourself,Ivan Andreievitch, only caring more for ideas, more impulsive and morereckless. He found this man and made him his friend. He played with himas a cat does with a mouse. He enjoyed life for about a year and then hewas m
urdered...."

  "Murdered!" I exclaimed.

  "Yes--shot by his idealistic friend. I envy him that year. He must haveexperienced many breathless sensations. When the murderer was tried hisonly 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, inSiberia.

  "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 longblack street, engulfed by the high, overhanging flats.