by Hugh Walpole
The delay was maddening. My thoughts were all now on Nina. I saw her always before me as I had beheld her yesterday, walking slowly along, her eyes fixed on space, the tears trickling down her face. “Life,” Nikitin once said to me, “I sometimes think is like a dark room, the door closed, the windows bolted and your enemy shut in with you. Whether your enemy or yourself is the stronger who knows?… Nor does it matter, as the issue is always decided outside…. Knowing that you can at least afford to despise him.”
I felt something of that impotence now. I cursed the Isvostchick, but wherever he went this slow endless stream seemed to impede our way. Poor Nina! Such a baby! What was it that had driven her to this? She did not love the man, and she knew quite well that she did not. No, it was an act of defiance. But defiance to whom — to Vera? to Lawrence?… and what had Semyonov said to her?
Then, thank Heaven, we crossed the Nevski, and our way was clear. The old cabman whipped up his horse and, in a minute or two we were outside 16 Gagarinskaya. I will confess to very real fears and hesitations as I climbed the dark stairs (the lift was, of course, not working). I was not the kind of man for this kind of job. In the first place I hated quarrels, and knowing Grogoff’s hot temper I had every reason to expect a tempestuous interview. Then I was ill, aching in every limb and seeing everything, as I always did when I was unwell, mistily and with uncertainty. Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogoff would take, and Nina, perhaps also. I felt, as I rang the bell of No. 3, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tells you that you’re going to make a fool of yourself.
Well, it would not be for the first time.
“Boris Nicolaievitch, doma?” I asked the cross-looking old woman who opened the door.
“Doma,” she answered, holding it open to let me pass.
I was shown into a dark, untidy sitting-room. It seemed at first sight to be littered with papers, newspapers, Revolutionary sheets and proclamations, the Pravda, the Novaya Jezn, the Soldatskaya Mwyssl…. On the dirty wall-paper there were enormous dark photographs, in faded gilt frames, of family groups; on one wall there was a large garishly coloured picture of Grogoff himself in student’s dress. The stove was unlighted and the room was very cold. My heart ached for Nina.
A moment after Grogoff came in. He came forward to me very amiably, holding out his hand.
“Nu, Ivan Andreievitch…. What can I do for you?” he asked, smiling.
And how he had changed! He was positively swollen with self-satisfaction. He had never been famous for personal modesty, but he seemed now to be physically twice his normal size. He was fat, his cheeks puffed, his stomach swelling beneath the belt that bound it. His fair hair was long, and rolled in large curls on one side of his head and over his forehead. He spoke in a loud, overbearing voice.
“Nu, Ivan Andreievitch, what can I do for you?” he repeated.
“Can I see Nina?” I asked.
“Nina?…” he repeated as though surprised. “Certainly — but what do you want to say to her?”
“I don’t see that that’s your business,” I answered. “I have a message for her from her family.”
“But of course it’s my business,” he answered. “I’m looking after her now.”
“Since when?” I asked.
“What does that matter?… She is going to live with me.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
I knew that it was foolish to take this kind of tone. It could do no good, and I was not the sort of man to carry it through.
But he was not at all annoyed.
“See, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, smiling. “What is there to discuss? Nina and I have long considered living together. She is a grown-up woman. It’s no one’s affair but her own.”
“Are you going to marry her?” I asked.
“Certainly not,” he answered; “that would not suit either of us. It’s no good your bringing your English ideas here, Ivan Andreievitch. We belong to the new world, Nina and I.”
“Well, I want to speak to her,” I answered.
“So you shall, certainly. But if you hope to influence her at all you are wasting your time, I assure you. Nina has acted very rightly. She found the home life impossible. I’m sure I don’t wonder. She will assist me in my work. The most important work, perhaps, that man has ever been called on to perform….”
He raised his voice here as though he were going to begin a speech. But at that moment Nina came in. She stood in the doorway looking across at me with a childish mixture of hesitation and boldness, of anger and goodwill in her face. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes heavy. Her hair was done in two long plaits. She looked about fourteen.
She came up to me, but she didn’t offer me her hand. Boris said:
“Nina dear, Ivan Andreievitch has come to give you a message from your family.” There was a note of scorn in his voice as he repeated my earlier sentence.
“What is it?” she asked, looking at me defiantly.
“I’d like to give it you alone,” I said.
“Whatever you say to me it is right that Boris should hear,” she answered.
I tried to forget that Grogoff was there. I went on:
“Well then, Nina, you must know what I want to say. They are heartbroken at your leaving them. You know of course that they are. They beg you to come back…. Vera and Nicholas too. They simply won’t know what to do without you. Vera says that you have been angry with her. She doesn’t know why, but she says that she will do her very best if you come back, so that you won’t be angry any more…. Nina, dear, you know that it is they whom you really love. You never can be happy here. You know that you cannot…. Come back to them! Come back! I don’t know what it was that Alexei Petrovitch said to you, but whatever it was you should not listen to it. He is a bad man and only means harm to your family. He does indeed….”
I paused. She had never moved whilst I was speaking. Now she only said, shaking her head, “It’s no good, Ivan Andreievitch…. It’s no good.”
“But why? Why?” I asked. “Give me your reasons, Nina.”
She answered proudly, “I don’t see why I should give you any reasons,
Ivan Andreievitch. I am free. I can do as I wish.”
“There’s something behind this that I don’t know,” I said. “I ought to
know…. It isn’t fair not to tell me. What did Alexei Petrovitch say to
you?”
But she only shook her head.
“He had nothing to do with this. It is my affair, Ivan Andreievitch. I couldn’t live with Vera and Nicholas any longer.”
Grogoff then interfered.
“I think this is about enough….” he said. “I have given you your opportunity. Nina has been quite clear in what she has said. She does not wish to return. There is your answer.” He cleared his voice and went on in rather a higher tone: “I think you forget, Ivan Andreievitch, another aspect of this affair. It is not only a question of our private family disputes. Nina has come here to assist me in my national work. As a member of the Soviet I may, without exaggeration, claim to have an opportunity in my hands that has been offered in the past to few human beings. You are an Englishman, and so hidebound with prejudices and conventions. You may not be aware that there has opened this week the greatest war the world has ever seen — the war of the proletariats against the bourgeoisies and capitalists of the world.” I tried to interrupt him, but he went on, his voice ever rising and rising: “What is your wretched German war? What but a struggle between the capitalists of the different countries to secure greater robberies and extortions, to set their feet more firmly than ever on the broad necks of the wretched People! Yes, you English, with your natural hypocrisy, pretend that you are fighting for the freedom of the world. What about Ireland? What about India? What about South Africa?… No, you are all alike. Germany,
England, Italy, France, and our own wretched Government that has, at last, been destroyed by the brave will of the People. We declare a People’s War!… We cry aloud to the People to throw down their arms! And the People will hear us!”
He paused for breath. His arms were raised, his eyes on fire, his cheeks crimson.
“Yes,” I said, “that is all very well. But suppose the German people are the only ones who refuse to listen to you. Suppose that all the other nations, save Germany, have thrown down their arms — a nice chance then for German militarism!”
“But the German people will listen!” he screamed, almost frothing at the mouth. “They are ready at any moment to follow our example. William and your George and the rest of them — they are doomed, I tell you!”
“Nevertheless,” I went on, “if you desert us now by making peace and Germany wins this war you will have played only a traitor’s part, and all the world will judge you.”
“Traitor! Traitor!” The word seemed to madden him. “Traitor to whom, pray? Traitor to our Czar and your English king? Yes, and thank God for it! Did the Russian people make the war? They were led like lambs to the slaughter. Like lambs, I tell you. But now they will have their revenge. On all the Bourgeoisie of the world. The Bourgeoisie of the world!…”
He suddenly broke off, flinging himself down on the dirty sofa. “Pheugh. Talking makes one hot!… Have a drink, Ivan Andreievitch…. Nina, fetch a drink.”
Through all this my eyes had never left her for a moment. I had hoped that this empty tub-thumping to which we had been listening would have affected her. But she had not moved nor stirred.
“Nina!” I said softly. “Nina. Come with me!”
But she only shook her head. Grogoff, quite silent now, lolled on the sofa, watching us. I went up to her and put my hand on her sleeve.
“Dear Nina,” I said, “come back to us.”
I saw her lip tremble. There was unshed tears in her eyes. But again she shook her head.
“What have they done,” I asked, “to make you take this step?”
“Something has happened….” she said slowly. “I can’t tell you.”
“Just come and talk to Vera.”
“No, it’s hopeless… I can’t see her again. But, Durdles… tell her it’s not her fault.”
At the sound of my pet name I took courage again.
“But tell me, Nina…. Do you love this man?”
She turned round and looked at Grogoff as though she were seeing him for the first time.
“Love?… Oh no, not love! But he will be kind to me, I think. And I must be myself, be a woman, not a child any longer.”
Then, suddenly clearing her voice, speaking very firmly, looking me full in the face, she said:
“Tell Vera… that I saw… what happened that Thursday afternoon — the Thursday of the Revolution week. Tell her that — when you’re alone with her. Tell her that — then she’ll understand.”
She turned and almost ran out of the room.
“Well, you see,” said Grogoff smiling lazily from the sofa.
“That settles it.”
“It doesn’t settle it,” I answered. “We shall never rest until we have got her back.”
But, I had to go. There was nothing more just then to be done.
V
On my return I found Vera alone waiting for me with restless impatience.
“Well?” she said eagerly. Then when she saw that I was alone her face clouded.
“I trusted you—” she began.
“It’s no good,” I said at once. “Not for the moment. She’s made up her mind. It’s not because she loved him nor, I think, for anything very much that her uncle said. She’s got some idea in her head. Perhaps you can explain it.”
“I?” said Vera, looking at me.
“Yes. She gave me a message for you.”
“What was it?” But even as she asked the question she seemed to fear the answer, because she turned away from me.
“She told me to tell you that she saw what happened on the afternoon of the Thursday in Revolution week. She said that then you would understand.”
Vera looked at me with the strangest expression of defiance, fear, triumph.
“What did she see?”
“I don’t know. That’s what she told me.”
Vera did a strange thing. She laughed.
“They can all know. I don’t care. I want them to know. Nina can tell them all.”
“Tell them what?”
“Oh, you’ll hear with the rest. Uncle Alexei has done this. He told Nina because he hates me. He won’t rest until he ruins us all. But I don’t care. He can’t take from me what I’ve got. He can’t take from me what I’ve got…. But we must get her back, Ivan Andreievitch. She must come back—”
Nicholas came in and then Semyonov and then Bohun.
Bohun, drawing me aside, whispered to me: “Can I come and see you? I must ask your advice—”
“To-morrow evening,” I told him, and left.
Next day I was ill again. I had I suppose done too much the day before. I was in bed alone all day. My old woman had suddenly returned without a word of explanation or excuse. She had not, I am sure, even got so far as the Moscow Province. I doubt whether she had even left Petrograd. I asked her no questions. I could tell of course that she had been drinking. She was a funny old creature, wrinkled and yellow and hideous, very little different in any way from a native in the wilds of Central Africa. The savage in her liked gay colours and trinkets, and she would stick flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places and rheumy at the eyes, who was all her passion, and this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage — and then, when it growled, she, too, would make strange noises as though sympathising with it.
She returned to me from no sort of sense of duty, but simply because, I think, she did not know where else to go. She scowled on me and informed me that now that there had been the Revolution everything was different; nevertheless the sight of my sick yellow face moved her as sickness and misfortune always move every Russian, however old and debased he may be.
“You shouldn’t have gone out walking,” she said crossly. “That man’s been here again?” referring to the Rat, whom she hated.
“If it hadn’t been for him,” I said, “I would have died.”
But she made the flat as cheerful as she could, lighting the stove, putting some yellow flowers into a glass, dusting the Benois water-colour, putting my favourite books beside my bed.
When Henry Bohun came in he was surprised at the brightness of everything.
“Why, how cosy you are!” he cried.
“Ah, ha,” I said, “I told you it wasn’t so bad here.”
He picked up my books, looked at Galleon’s Roads and then Pride and
Prejudice.
“It’s the simplest things that last,” he said. “Galleon’s jolly good, but he’s not simple enough. Tess is the thing, you know, and Tono-Bungay, and The Nigger of the Narcissus… I usen’t to think so. I’ve grown older, haven’t I?”
He had.
“What do you think of Discipline now?” I asked.
“Oh, Lord!” he blushed, “I was a young cuckoo.”
“And what about knowing all about Russia after a week?”
“No — and that reminds me!” He drew his chair closer to my bed. “That’s what I’ve come to talk about. Do you mind if I gas a lot?”
“Gas as much as you like,” I said.
“Well, I can’t explain things unless I do…. You’re sure you’re not too seedy to listen?”
“Not a bit. It does me good,” I told him.
“You see in a way you’re really responsible. You remember, long ago, telling me to look after Markovitch when I talked all that rot about caring for Vera?”
“Yes — I rememb
er very well indeed.”
“In a way it all started from that. You put me on to seeing Markovitch in quite a different light. I’d always thought of him as an awfully dull dog with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top-story too. I thought it a terrible shame a ripping woman like Vera having married him, and I used to feel sick with him about it. Then sometimes he’d look like the devil himself, as wicked as sin, poring over his inventions, and you’d fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the best thing for everybody.
“Well, you explained him to me and I saw him different — not that I’ve ever got very much out of him. I don’t think that he either likes me or trusts me, and anyway he thinks me too young and foolish to be of any importance — which I daresay I am. He told me, by the way, the other day, that the only Englishman he thought anything of was yourself—”
“Very nice of him,” I murmured.
“Yes, but not very flattering to me when I’ve spent months trying to be fascinating to him. Anyhow, although I may be said to have failed in one way, I’ve got rather keen on the pursuit. If I can’t make him like me I can at least study him and learn something. That’s a leaf out of your book, Durward. You’re always studying people, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.
“Yes, of course you are. Well, I’ll tell you frankly I’ve got fond of the old bird. I don’t believe you could live at close quarters with any Russian, however nasty, and not get a kind of affection for him. They’re so damned childish.”
“Oh yes, you could,” I said. “Try Semyonov.”
“I’m coming to him in a minute,” said Bohun. “Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy. That’s one thing one saw about him at once — unhappy of course because Vera didn’t love him and he adored her. But there was more in it than that. He let himself go one night to me — the only time he’s ever talked to me really. He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me. But there was more in it than that. He talked to me about Russia. That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began that it was going to lead to the most marvellous patriotism all through Russia. It seemed to begin like that, and do you know, Durward, as he talked I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything, that you could talk about Internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you’d learnt first what nationality was — that you couldn’t really love all mankind until you’d first learnt to love one or two people close to you. And that you couldn’t love the world as a vast democratic state until you’d learnt to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower. Markovitch had it all as plain as plain. ‘Make your own house secure and beautiful. Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme. We Russians always begin at the wrong end,’ he said. ‘We jump all the intermediate stages. I’m as bad as the rest.’ I know you’ll say I’m so easily impressed, Durward, but he was wonderful that night — and so right. So that as he talked I just longed to rush back and see that my village — Topright in Wiltshire — was safe and sound with the highgate at the end of the village street, and the village stores with the lollipop windows, and the green with the sheep on it, and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high Down beyond…. Oh well, you know what I mean—”