by Hugh Walpole
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.