by Hugh Walpole
“What I said I still believe,” Nicholas answered very quietly. “Leave
Russia alone, Alexei — and leave me alone, too.”
“I’m not touching you, Nicholas,” Semyonov answered, laughing softly.
“Yes you are — you know that you are. I’m not angry — not yet. But it’s unwise of you — unwise….”
“Unwise — how?”
“Never mind. ‘Below the silent pools there lie hidden many devils.’
Leave me alone. You are our guest.”
“Indeed, Nicholas,” said Semyonov, still laughing, “I mean you no harm. Ask our friend Durward here whether I ever mean any one any harm. He will, I’m sure, give me the best of characters.”
“No — no harm perhaps — but still you tease me…. I’m a fool to mind….
But then I am a fool — every one knows it.”
All the time he was looking with his pathetic eyes and his pale face at
Vera.
Vera said again, very low, almost in a whisper: “Uncle Alexei… please.”
“But really, Nicholas,” Semyonov went on, “you under-rate yourself. You do indeed. Nobody thinks you a fool. I think you a very lucky man. With your talents—”
“Talents!” said Nicholas softly, looking at Vera. “I have no talents.”
“ — And Vera’s love for you,” went on Semyonov —
“Ah! that is over!” Nicholas said, so low that I scarcely heard it. I do not know what then exactly happened. I think that Vera put out her hand to cover Nicholas’. At any rate I saw him draw his away, very gently. It lay on the table, and the only sound beside the voices was the tiny rattle of his nails as his hand trembled against the woodwork.
Vera said something that I did not catch.
“No…” Nicholas said. “No… We must be true with one another, Vera. I have been drinking too much wine. My head is aching, and perhaps my words are not very clear. But it gives me courage to say what I have in my mind. I haven’t thought out yet what we must do. Perhaps you can help me. But I must tell you that I saw everything that happened here on that Thursday afternoon in the week of the Revolution—”
Vera made a little movement of distress
“Yes, you didn’t know — but I was in my room — where Alexei sleeps now, you know. I couldn’t help seeing. I’m very sorry.”
“No, Nicholas, I’m very glad,” Vera answered quietly.
“I would have told you in any case. I should have told you before. I love him and he loves me, just as you saw. I would like Ivan Andreievitch and Uncle Ivan and every one to know. There is nothing to conceal. I have never loved any one before, and I’m not ashamed of loving some one now…. It doesn’t alter our life, Nicholas. I care for you just as I did care, and I will do just as you tell me. I will never see him again if that’s what you wish, but I shall always love him.”
“Ah, Vera — you are cruel.” Nicholas gave a little cry like a hurt animal, then he went away from us, standing for a moment looking at us.
“We’ll have to consider what we must do. I don’t know. I can’t think to-night…. And you, Alexei, you leave me alone….”
He went stumbling away towards his bedroom.
Vera said nothing to any of us. She got up slowly, looked about her for a moment as though she were bewildered by the light and then went after Nicholas. I turned to Semyonov.
“You’d better go back to your own place,” I said.
“Not yet, thank you,” he answered, smiling.
IX
On the afternoon of Easter Monday I was reminded by Bohun of an engagement that I had made some weeks before to go that evening to a party at the house of a rich merchant, Rozanov by name. I have, I think, mentioned him earlier in this book. I cannot conceive why I had ever made the promise, and in the afternoon, meeting Bohun at Watkins’ bookshop in the Morskaia, I told him that I couldn’t go.
“Oh, come along!” he said. “It’s your duty.”
“Why my duty?”
“They’re all talking as hard as they can about saving the world by turning the other cheek, and so on; and a few practical facts about Germany from you will do a world of good.”
“Oh, your propaganda!” I said.
“No, it isn’t my propaganda,” he answered. “It’s a matter of life and death to get these people to go on with the war, and every little helps.”
“Well, I’ll come,” I said, shaking my head at the book-seller, who was anxious that I should buy the latest works of Mrs. Elinor Glyn and Miss Ethel Dell. I had in fact reflected that a short excursion into other worlds would be good for me. During these weeks I had been living in the very heart of the Markovitches, and it would be healthy to escape for a moment.
But I was not to escape.
I met Bohun at the top of the English Prospect, and we decided to walk. Rozanov lived in the street behind the Kazan Cathedral. I did not know very much about him except that he was a very wealthy merchant, who had made his money by selling cheap sweets to the peasant. He lived, I knew, an immoral and self-indulgent life, and his hobby was the quite indiscriminate collection of modern Russian paintings, his walls being plastered with innumerable works by Benois, Somoff, Dobeijinsky, Yakofflyeff, and Lançeray. He had also two Serovs, a fine Vrubel, and several Ryepins. He had also a fine private collection of indecent drawings.
“I really don’t know what on earth we’re going to this man for,” I said discontentedly. “I was weak this afternoon.”
“No, you weren’t,” said Bohun. “And I’ll tell you frankly that I’m jolly glad not to be having a meal at home to-night. Do you know, I don’t believe I can stick that flat much longer!”
“Why, are things worse?” I asked.
“It’s getting so jolly creepy,” Bohun said. “Everything goes on normally enough outwardly, but I suppose there’s been some tremendous row. Of course I don’t knew any-thing about that. After what you told me the other night though, I seem to see everything twice its natural size.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“You know when something queer’s going on inside a house you seem to notice the furniture of the rooms much more than you ordinarily do. I remember once a fellow’s piano making me quite sick whenever I looked at it. I didn’t know why; I don’t know why now, but the funny thing is that another man who knew him once said exactly the same thing to me about it. He felt it too. Of course we’re none of us quite normal just now. The whole town seems to be turning upside down. I’m always imagining there are animals in the canals; and don’t you notice what lots of queer fellows there are in the Nevski now, and Chinese and Japs — all sorts of wild men. And last night I had a dream that all the lumps of ice in the Nevski turned into griffins and went marching through the Red Square eating every one up on their way….” Bohun laughed. “That’s because I’d eaten something of course — too much paskha probably.
“But, seriously, I came in this evening at five o’clock, and the first thing I noticed was that little red lacquer musical box of Semyonov’s. You know it. The one with a sports-man in a top hat and a horse and a dog on the lid. He brought it with some other little things when he moved in. It’s a jolly thing to look at, but it’s got two most irritating tunes. One’s like ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland.’ You said yourself the other day it would drive you mad if you heard it often. Well, there it was, jangling away in its self-sufficient wheezy voice. Semyonov was sitting in the armchair reading the newspaper, Markovitch was standing behind the chair with the strangest look on his face. Suddenly, just as I came in he bent down and I heard him say: ‘Won’t you stop the beastly thing?’ ‘Certainly,’ said Semyonov, and he went across in his heavy plodding kind of way and stopped it. I went off to my room and then, upon my word, five minutes after I heard it begin again, thin and reedy through the walls. But when I came back into the dining-room there was no one there. You can’t think how that tune irritated me, and I tried to stop it. I went up to it, but I couldn’t find
the hinge or the key. So on it went, over and over again. Then there’s another thing. Have you ever noticed how some chairs will creak in a room, just as though some one were sitting down or getting up? It always, in ordinary times, makes you jump, but when you’re strung up about something — ! There’s a chair in the Markovitches’ dining-room just like that. It creaks more like a human being than anything you ever heard, and to-night I could have sworn Semyonov got up out of it. It was just like his heavy slow movement. However, there wasn’t any one there. Do you think all this silly?” he asked.
“No, indeed I don’t,” I answered.
“Then there’s a picture. You know that awful painting of a mid-Victorian ancestor of Vera’s — a horrible old man with bushy eyebrows and a high, rather dirty-looking stock?”
“Yes, I know it,” I said.
“It’s one of those pictures with eyes that follow you all round the room. At least it has now. I usen’t to notice them. Now they stare at you as though they’d eat you, and I know that Markovitch feels them because he keeps looking up at the beastly thing. Then there’s — But no, I’m not going to talk any more about it. It isn’t any good. One gets thinking of anything these days. One’s nerves are all on edge. And that flat’s too full of people any way.”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed.
We arrived at Rozanov’s house, and went up in a very elegant heavily-gilt lift. Once in the flat we were enveloped in a cloud of men and women, tobacco smoke, and so many pictures that it was like tumbling into an art-dealer’s. Where there weren’t pictures there was gilt, and where there wasn’t gilt there was naked statuary, and where there wasn’t naked statuary there was Rozanov, very red and stout and smiling, gay in a tightly fitting black-tail coat, white waistcoat and black trousers. Who all the people were I haven’t the least idea. There was a great many. A number of Jews and Jewesses, amiable, prosperous, and kindly, an artist or two, a novelist, a lady pianist, two or three actors. I noticed these. Then there was an old maid, a Mlle. Finisterre, famous in Petrograd society for her bitterness and acrimony, and in appearance an exact copy of Balzac’s Sophie Gamond.
I noticed several of those charming, quiet, wise women of whom Russia is so prodigal, a man or two whom I had met at different times, especially one officer, one of the finest, bravest, and truest men I have ever known; some of the inevitable giggling girls — and then suddenly, standing quite alone, Nina!
Her loneliness was the first thing that struck me. She stood back against the wall underneath the shining frames, looking about her with a nervous, timid smile. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in the old way that she used to do when she was trying to imitate Vera, and I don’t know why but that seemed to me a good omen, as though she were already on her way back to us. She was wearing a very simple white frock.
In spite of her smile she looked unhappy, and I could see that during this last week experience had not been kind to her, because there was an air of shyness and uncertainty which had never been there before. I was just going over to speak to her when two of the giggling girls surrounded her and carried her off.
I carried the little picture of her in my mind all through the noisy, strident meal that followed. I couldn’t see her from where I sat, nor did I once catch the tones of her voice, although I listened. Only a month ago there would have been no party at which Nina was present where her voice would not have risen above all others.
No one watching us would have believed any stories about food shortage in Petrograd. I daresay at this very moment in Berlin they are having just such meals. Until the last echo of the last Trump has died away in the fastnesses of the advancing mountains the rich will be getting from somewhere the things that they desire! I have no memory of what we had to eat that night, but I know that it was all very magnificent and noisy, kind-hearted and generous and vulgar. A great deal of wine was drunk, and by the end of the meal every one was talking as loudly as possible. I had for companion the beautiful Mlle. Finisterre. She had lived all her life in Petrograd, and she had a contempt for the citizens of that fine town worthy of Semyonov himself. Opposite us sat a stout, good-natured Jewess, who was very happily enjoying her food. She was certainly the most harmless being in creation, and was probably guilty of a thousand generosities and kindnesses in her private life. Nevertheless, Mlle. Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred, and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing voice, must have reached their victim. She also abused her host very roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an especially unpleasant scandal in which he had notoriously figured. I stopped her at last.
“It seems to me,” I said, “that it would be better not to say these things about him while you’re eating his bread and salt.”
She laughed shrilly, and tapped me on the arm with a bony finger.
“Oh, you English!… always so moral and strict about the proprieties… and always so hypercritical too. Oh, you amuse me! I’m French, you see — not Russian at all; these poor people see through nothing — but we French!”
After dinner there was a strange scene. We all moved into the long, over-decorated drawing-room. We sat about, admired the pictures (a beautiful one by Somoff I especially remember — an autumn scene with eighteenth-century figures and colours so soft and deep that the effect was inexpressibly delicate and mysterious), talked and then fell into one of those Russian silences that haunt every Russian party. I call those silences “Russian,” because I know nothing like them in any other part of the world. It is as though the souls of the whole company suddenly vanished through the windows, leaving only the bodies and clothes. Every one sits, eyes half closed, mouths shut, hands motionless, host and hostess, desperately abandoning every attempt at rescue, gaze about them in despair.
The mood may easily last well into the morning, when the guests, still silent, will depart, assuring everybody that they have enjoyed themselves immensely, and really believing that they have; or it may happen that some remark will suddenly be made, and instantly back through the windows the souls will come, eagerly catching up their bodies again, and a babel will arise, deafening, baffling, stupefying. Or it may happen that a Russian will speak with sudden authority, almost like a prophet, and will continue for half an hour and more, pouring out his soul, and no one will dream of thinking it an improper exhibition.
In fine, anything can happen at a Russian party. What happened on this occasion was this. The silence had lasted for some minutes, and I was wondering for how much longer I could endure it (I had one eye on Nina somewhere in the background, and the other on Bohun restlessly kicking his patent-leather shoes one against the other), when suddenly a quiet, ordinary little woman seated near me said:
“The thing for Russia to do now is to abandon all resistance and so shame the world.” She was a mild, pleasant-looking woman, with the eyes of a very gentle cow, and spoke exactly as though she were still pursuing her own private thoughts. It was enough; the windows flew open, the souls came flooding in, and such a torrent of sound poured over the carpet that the naked statuary itself seemed to shiver at the threatened deluge. Every one talked; every one, even, shouted. Just as, during the last weeks, the streets had echoed to the words “Liberty,” “Democracy,” “Socialism,” “Brotherhood,” “Anti-annexation,” “Peace of the world,” so now the art gallery echoed. The very pictures shook in their frames.
One old man in a white beard continued to cry, over and over again,
“Firearms are not our weapons… bullets are not our weapons. It’s the
Peace of God, the Peace of God that we need.”
One lady (a handsome Jewess) jumped up from her chair, and standing before us all recited a kind of chant, of which I only caught sentences once, and again:
“Russia must redeem the world from its sin… this slaughter must be slayed… Russia the Saviour of the world… this slaughter must be slayed.”
I had for some time been watching Bohun. He had travelled
a long journey since that original departure from England in December; but I was not sure whether he had travelled far enough to forget his English terror of making a fool of himself. Apparently he had…. He said, his voice shaking a little, blushing as he spoke:
“What about Germany?”
The lady in the middle of the floor turned upon him furiously:
“Germany! Germany will learn her lesson from us. When we lay down our arms her people, too, will lay down theirs.”
“Supposing she doesn’t?”
The interest of the room was now centred on him, and every one else was silent.
“That is not our fault. We shall have made our example.”
A little hum of applause followed this reply, and that irritated Bohun.
He raised his voice:
“Yes, and what about your allies, England and France, are you going to betray them?”
Several voices took him up now. A man continued:
“It is not betrayal. We are not betraying the proletariat of England and
France. They are our friends. But the alliance with the French and
English Capitalistic Governments was made not by us but by our own
Capitalistic Government, which is now destroyed.”
“Very well, then,” said Bohun. “But when the war began did you not — all of you, not only your Government, but you people now sitting in this room — did you not all beg and pray England to come in? During those days before England’s intervention, did you not threaten to call us cowards and traitors if we did not come in? Pomnite?”
There was a storm of answers to this. I could not distinguish much of what it was. I was fixed by Mlle. Finisterre’s eagle eye, gleaming at the thought of the storm that was rising.
“That’s not our affair…. That’s not our affair,” I heard voices crying. “We did support you. For years we supported you. We lost millions of men in your service…. Now this terrible slaughter must cease, and Russia show the way to peace.”
Bohun’s moment then came upon him. He sprang to his feet, his face crimson, his body quivering; so desperate was his voice, so urgent his distress that the whole room was held.