by Hugh Walpole
But the overwhelming effect of him was terror. Vera had never before seen such terror, and at once, as though the thing were an infectious disease, her own heart began to beat furiously. He was shaking so that the fur cap, which was too large for his head, waggled up and down over his eye in a ludicrous manner.
His face was dirty as though he had been crying, and a horrid pallid grey in colour.
His collar was torn, showing his neck between the folds of his overcoat.
Vera looked out down the stairs as though she expected to see something. The flat was perfectly still. There was not a sound anywhere. She turned back to the man again, he was crouching against the wall.
“You can’t come in here,” she repeated. “My sister and I are alone. What do you want?… What’s the matter?”
“Shut the door!… Shut the door!… Shut the door!…” he repeated.
She closed it. “Now what is it?” she asked, and then, hearing a sound, turned to find that Nina was standing with wide eyes, watching.
“What is it?” Nina asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” said Vera, also whispering. “He won’t tell me.”
He pushed past them then into the dining-room, looked about him for a moment, then sank into a chair as though his legs would no longer support him, holding on to the cloth with both hands.
The sisters followed him into the dining-room.
“Don’t shiver like that!” said Vera, “tell us why you’ve come in here?”…
His eyes looked past them, never still, wandering from wall to wall, from door to door.
“They’re after me…” he said. “That’s it — I was hiding in our cupboard all last night and this morning. They were round there all the time breaking up our things…. I heard them shouting. They were going to kill me. I’ve done nothing — O God! what’s that?”
“There’s no one here,” said Vera, “except ourselves.”
“I saw a chance to get away and I crept out. But I couldn’t get far…. I knew you would be good-hearted… good-hearted. Hide me somewhere — anywhere!… and they won’t come in here. Only until the evening. I’ve done no one any harm…. Only my duty….”
He began to snivel, taking out from his coat a very dirty pocket-handkerchief and dabbing his face with it.
The odd thing that they felt, as they looked at him, was the incredible intermingling of public and private affairs. Five minutes before they had been passing through a tremendous crisis in their personal relationship. The whole history of their lives together, flowing through how many years, through how many phases, how many quarrels, and happiness and adventures had reached here a climax whose issue was so important that life between them could never be the same again.
So urgent had been the affair that during that hour they had forgotten the Revolution, Russia, the war. Moreover, always in the past, they had assumed that public life was no affair of theirs. The Russo-Japanese War, even the spasmodic revolt in 1905, had not touched them except as a wind of ideas which blew so swiftly through their private lives that they were scarcely affected by it.
Now in the person of that trembling, shaking figure at their table, the Revolution had come to them, and not only the Revolution, but the strange new secret city that Petrograd was… the whole ground was quaking beneath them.
And in the eyes of the fugitive they saw what terror of death really was. It was no tale read in a story-book, no recounting of an adventure by some romantic traveller, it was here with them in the flat and at any moment….
It was then that Vera realised that there was no time to lose — something must be done at once.
“Who’s pursuing you?” she asked, quickly. “Where are they?”
He got up and was moving about the room as though he was looking for a hiding-place.
“All the people…. Everybody!” He turned round upon them, suddenly striking, what seemed to them, a ludicrously grand attitude. “Abominable! That’s what it is. I heard them shouting that I had a machine-gun on the roof and was killing people. I had no machine-gun. Of course not. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I had one. But there they were. That’s what they were shouting! And I’ve always done my duty. What’s one to do? Obey one’s superior officer? Of course, what he says one does. What’s life for?… and then naturally one expects a reward. Things were going well with me, very well indeed — and then this comes. It’s a degrading thing for a man to hide for a day and a night in a cupboard.” His teeth began to chatter then so that he could scarcely speak. He seemed to be shaking with ague.
He caught Vera’s hand. “Save me — save me!” he said. “Put me somewhere…. I’ve done nothing disgraceful. They’ll shoot me like a dog—”
The sisters consulted.
“What are we to do?” asked Nina. “We can’t let him go out to be killed.”
“No. But if we keep him here and they come in and find him, we shall all be involved…. It isn’t fair to Nicholas or Uncle Ivan….”
“We can’t let him go out.”
“No, we can’t,” Vera replied. She saw at once how impossible that was. Were he caught outside and shot they would feel that they had his death for ever on their souls.
“There’s the linen cupboard,” she said.
She turned round to Nina. “I’m afraid,” she said, “if you hide here, you’ll have to go into another cupboard. And it can only be for an hour or two. We couldn’t keep you here all night.”
He said nothing except “Quick. Take me.” Vera led him into her bedroom and showed him the place. Without another word he pressed in amongst the clothes. It was a deep cupboard, and, although he was a fat man, the door closed quite evenly.
It was suddenly as though he had never been, Vera went back to Nina.
They stood close to one another in the middle of the room, and talked in whispers.
“What are we going to do?”
“We can only wait!”
“They’ll never dare to search your room, Vera.”
“One doesn’t know now… everything’s so different.”
“Vera, you are brave. Forgive me what I said just now…. I’ll help you if you want—”
“Hush, Nina dear. Not that now. We’ve got to think — what’s best….”
They kissed very quietly, and then they sat down by the table and waited. There was simply nothing else to do.
Vera said that, during that pause, she could see the little policeman everywhere. In every part of the room she found him, with his fat legs and dirty, streaky face and open collar. The flat was heavy, portentous with his presence, as though it stood with a self-important finger on its lips saying, “I’ve got a secret in here. Such a secret. You don’t know what I’ve got….”
They discussed in whispers as to who would come in first. Nicholas or Uncle Ivan or Bohun or Sacha? And supposing one of them came in while the soldiers were there? Who would be the most dangerous? Sacha? She would scream and give everything away. Suppose they had seen him enter and were simply waiting, on the cat-and-mouse plan, to catch him? That was an intolerable thought.
“I think,” said Nina, “I must go and see whether there’s any one outside.”
But there was no need for her to do that. Even as she spoke they heard the steps on the stairs; and instantly afterwards there came the loud knocking on their door. Vera pressed Nina’s hand and went into the hall.
“Kto tam… Who’s there?” she asked.
“Open the door!… The Workmen and Soldiers’ Committee demand entrance in the name of the Revolution.”
She opened the door at once. During those first days of the Revolution they cherished certain melodramatic displays.
Whether consciously or no they built on all the old French Revolution traditions, or perhaps it is that every Revolution produces of necessity the same clothing with which to cover its nakedness. A strange mixture of farce and terror were those detachments of so-called justice. At their head there was, as a rule, a student, of
ten smiling and bespectacled. The soldiers themselves, from one of the Petrograd regiments, were frankly out for a good time and enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but, as is the Slavonic way, playfulness could pass with surprising suddenness to dead earnest — with, indeed, so dramatic a precipitance that the actors themselves were afterwards amazed. Of these “little, regrettable mistakes” there had already, during the week, been several examples. To Vera, with the knowledge of the contents of her linen-cupboard, the men seemed terrifying enough. Their leader was a fat and beaming student — quite a boy. He was very polite, saying “Zdrastvuite,” and taking off his cap. The men behind him — hulking men from one of the Guards regiments — pushed about in the little hall like a lot of puppies, joking with one another, holding their rifles upside down, and making sudden efforts at a seriousness that they could not possibly sustain.
Only one of them, an older man with a thick black beard, was intensely grave, and looked at Vera with beseeching eyes, as though he longed to tell her the secret of his life.
“What can I do for you?” she asked the student.
“Prosteete… Forgive us.” He smiled and blinked at her, then put on his cap, clicked his heels, gave a salute, and took his cap off again. “We wish to be in no way an inconvenience to you. We are simply obeying orders. We have instructions that a policeman is hiding in one of these flats…. We know, of course, that he cannot possibly be here. Nevertheless we are compelled… Prosteete…. What nice pictures you have!” he ended suddenly. It was then that Vera discovered that they were by this time in the dining-room, crowded together near the door and gazing at Nina with interested eyes.
“There’s no one here, of course,” said Vera, very quietly. “No one at all.”
“Tak Tochno (quite so),” said the black-bearded soldier, for no particular reason, suddenly.
“You will allow me to sit down?” said the student, very politely. “I must, I am afraid, ask a few questions.”
“Certainly,” said Vera quietly. “Anything you like.”
She had moved over to Nina, and they stood side by side. But she could not think of Nina, she could not think even of the policeman in the cupboard…. She could think only of that other house on the Quay where, perhaps even now, this same scene was being enacted. They had found Wilderling…. They had dragged him out…. Lawrence was beside him…. They were condemned together…. Oh! love had come to her at last in a wild, surging flood! Of all the steps she had been led until at last, only half an hour before in that scene with Nina, the curtains had been flung aside and the whole view revealed to her. She felt such a strength, such a pride, such a defiance, as she had not known belonged to human power. She had, for many weeks, been hesitating before the gates. Now, suddenly, she had swept through. His death now was not the terror that it had been only an hour before. Nina’s accusation had shown her, as a flash of lightning flings the mountains into view, that now she could never lose him, were he with her or no, and that beside that truth nothing mattered.
Something of her bravery and grandeur and beauty must have been felt by them all at that moment. Nina realised it…. She told me that her own fear left her altogether when she saw how Vera was facing them. She was suddenly calm and quiet and very amused.
The student officer seemed now to be quite at home. He had taken a great many notes down in a little book, and looked very important as he did so. His chubby face expressed great self-satisfaction. He talked half to himself and half to Vera. “Yes… Yes… quite so. Exactly. And your husband is not yet at home, Madame Markovitch…. Nu da…. Of course these are very troublesome times, and as you say things have to move in a hurry.
“You’ve heard perhaps that Nicholas Romanoff has abdicated entirely — and refused to allow his son to succeed. Makes things simpler…. Yes…. Very pleasant pictures you have — and Ostroffsky — six volumes. Very agreeable. I have myself acted in Ostroffsky at different times. I find his plays very enjoyable. I am sure you will forgive us, Madame, if we walk through your charming flat.”
But indeed by this time the soldiers themselves had begun to roam about on their own account. Nina remembers one soldier in especial — a large dirty fellow with ragged moustache — who quite frankly terrified her. He seemed to regard her with particular satisfaction, staring at her, and, as it were, licking his lips over her. He wandered about the room fingering things, and seemed to be immensely interested in Nicholas’s little den, peering through the glass window that there was in the door and rubbing the glass with his finger. He presently pushed the door open and soon they were all in there.
Then a characteristic thing occurred. Apparently Nicholas’s inventions — his little pieces of wood and bark and cloth, his glass bottles, and tubes — seemed to them highly suspicious. There was laughter at first, and then sudden silence. Nina could see part of the room through the open door and she watched them as they gathered round the little table, talking together in excited whispers. The tall, rough-looking fellow who had frightened her before picked up one of the tubes, and then, whether by accident or intention, let it fall, and the tinkling smash of the glass frightened them all so precipitately that they came tumbling out into the larger room. The big fellow whispered something to the student, who at once became more self-important than ever, and said very seriously to Vera:
“That is your husband’s room, Madame, I understand?”
“Yes,” said Vera quietly, “he does his work in there.”
“What kind of work?”
“He is an inventor.”
“An inventor of what?”
“Various things…. He is working at present on something to do with the making of cloth.”
Unfortunately this serious view of Nicholas’s inventions suddenly seemed to Nina so ridiculous that she tittered. She could have done nothing more regrettable. The student obviously felt that his dignity was threatened. He looked at her very severely:
“This is no laughing matter,” he said. He himself then got up and went into the inner room. He was there for some time, and they could hear him fingering the tubes and treading on the broken glass. He came out again at last.
He was seriously offended.
“You should have told us your husband was an inventor.”
“I didn’t think it was of importance,” said Vera.
“Everything is of importance,” he answered. The atmosphere was now entirely changed. The soldiers were angry — they had, it seemed, been deceived and treated like children. The melancholy fellow with the black beard looked at Vera with eyes of deep reproach.
“When will your husband return?” asked the student.
“I am afraid I don’t know,” said Vera. She realised that the situation was now serious, but she could not keep her mind upon it. In that house on the Quay what was happening? What had, perhaps, already happened?…
“Where has he gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t he tell you where he was going?”
“He often does not tell me.”
“Ah, that is wrong. In these days one should always say where one is going.”
He stood up very stiff and straight. “Search the house,” he said to his men.
Suddenly then Vera’s mind concentrated. It was as though, she told me “I came back into the room and saw for the first time what was happening.”
“There is no one in the rest of the flat,” she said, “and nothing that can interest you.”
“That is for me to judge,” said the little officer grimly.
“But I assure you there is nothing,” she went on eagerly. “There is only the kitchen and the bath-room and the five bedrooms.”
“Whose bedrooms?” said the officer.
“My husband’s, my own, my sister’s, my uncle’s, and an Englishman’s,” she answered, colouring a little.
“Nevertheless we must do our duty…. Search the house,” he repeated.
“But you must not go into our bedrooms,” she said, her v
oice rising. “There is nothing for you there. I am sure you will respect our privacy.”
“Our orders must be obeyed,” he answered angrily.
“But—” she cried.
“Silence, Madame,” he said, furiously, staring at her as though she were his personal, deadly enemy.
“Very well,” said Vera proudly. “Please do as you wish.”
The officer walked past her with his head up, and the soldiers followed him, their eyes malicious and inquisitive and excited. The sisters stood together waiting. Of course the end had come. They simply stood there fastening their resolution to the extreme moment.
“I must go with them,” said Vera. She followed them into her bedroom. It was a very little place and they filled it, they looked rather sheepish now, whispering to one another.
“What’s in there?” said the officer, tapping the cupboard.
“Only some clothes,” said Vera.
“Open it!” he ordered.
Then the world did indeed stand still. The clock ceased to tick, the little rumble in the stove was silenced, the shuffling feet of one of the soldiers stayed, the movement of some rustle in the wall paper was held. The world was frozen.
“Now I suppose we shall all be shot,” was Vera’s thought, repeated over and over again with a ludicrous monotony. Then she could see nothing but the little policeman, tumbling out of the cupboard, dishevelled and terrified. Terrified! what that look in his eyes would be! That at any rate she could not face and she turned her head away from them, looking out through the door into the dark little passage.
She heard as though from an infinite distance the words:
“Well, there’s nobody there.”
She did not believe him of course. He said that whoever he was, to test her, to tempt her to give herself away. But she was too clever for them. She turned back and faced them, and then saw, to the accompaniment of an amazement that seemed like thunder in her ears, that the cupboard was indeed empty.
“There is nobody,” said the black-bearded soldier.
The student looked rather ashamed of himself. The white clothes, the skirts, and the blouses in the cupboard reproached him.