The Birds Fall Down

by Rebecca West

  It was vulgar to tell people who one was for the sake of impressing them. But now she was in danger, she felt she had to use everything at her disposal to grapple the two men to her. She told them her grandfather was Count Diakonov and had been Minister of Justice in Russia, and that her uncle had been Russian Ambassador in Paris. The stationmaster inclined his head several times to show his respect, and the doctor intimated that he had not needed to be informed of the social importance of her and her grandfather, he had divined it at sight. From his manner she realized that he was not over-awed at meeting grand people, though he was pleased that to the number of grand people he knew pure chance had added two more. She thought no worse of him for that. There were many such people in Kensington, where she would have liked to be. She went on to exploit this vein by confiding that she had been travelling alone with her grandfather only because the Diakonov household was disorganized by her grandmother’s illness and that she was quite at a loss.

  “But what relatives have you in Paris who could come immediately?” asked the stationmaster, taking out a notebook. “You see, the body of your poor grandfather the Count must be left here till a policeman has viewed it, and I’ve already sent for one, and then it has to be removed to a mortuary attached to the hospital, where, since it is also a convent, they’ll take you in till your relatives come to make arrangements, and come they must, for—”

  “But the young lady’s grandfather isn’t dead,” said the doctor. “Not dead!” exclaimed the stationmaster, and a woman standing by said quite sharply that all she knew was that her husband had looked just like the old gentleman when he had fallen down in his shop, and he had been dead all right.

  “Well, I can’t claim to see as many dead people as some members of my profession,” said the doctor. “A certain number of my patients recover. But my experience, such as it is, inclines me to believe that that old gentleman is for the moment alive, not so much alive as some of us but more alive than others.”

  A hush fell. The crowd was losing sympathy. It was even with coldness that they watched him as he bent down and put his fingers on the old man’s wrist. He straightened himself and mocked them with a smile, just slightly more elegant than a clown’s grin.

  “A disappointment for you all,” he said, “he’s got a pulse.” But he turned to Laura and murmured, “That’ll get rid of them. But he’s very ill. He has a pulse, but it’s only a pulse of sorts. The stationmaster’s quite right. You must send for your relatives. But what’s this? It’s formidable.”

  Nikolai had groaned, stirred, and turned his head from side to side, and now he was sitting up. A deep part of Laura silently exclaimed, “Oh, God, he is alive, I won’t be able to get away.” Now she knew for certain that she had been relieved when she thought he was dead because she had a better chance of escaping Kamensky if she were alone. Nothing in the day had been so bitter as this revelation that she was a coward. She sat down on the trolley beside her grandfather and wrapped him in her arms and told him again and again how glad she was he was better, how frightened she had been, while her heart said, “I am a coward, I am that for ever, I can’t rub it out.”

  Above her the doctor said, “Why is he staring up at the clock?”

  The old man said in this new diluted voice, which had gone halfway back to a childish pipe, “Little Laura, you were right. The hands are moving.”

  “I told you,” she said, “nothing has happened, everything is as usual.”

  “I should have known it,” he said, shaking his great head. “I should have known it to be unlikely that time would come to an end because a child had blown a trumpet, a child of no importance, Pravdine’s daughter. There are archangels and angels, cherubim and seraphim, it will be their appointed task. Ah well, I must wait a little longer.”

  Laura’s arms were still about him, and she felt a tensing of his muscles which she took for strength. But it was only effort. He could not get on to his feet. He lost hope and softened into a heap of clothes. Most of the crowd had dispersed, but a few people still watched him, as they might have watched a cab-horse fallen in the street, with maudlin smiles of pity confused with gratification at their own pity and a cold expectation of further calamity. The stationmaster, without troubling to lower his voice, said, “We must do something. I don’t know why that policeman doesn’t come. The Paris express is due in twenty minutes. We must have the platform cleared by then.”

  Nikolai gave himself the face of an unstricken man and said, “The Paris express is the train I and my granddaughter must catch.” A great part of him had gone, spilled out, but some was left. He would not catch that train, but when the train came in he might be obstinately sitting there, in everybody’s way.

  The doctor said coldly, “You can’t catch any train.” He said it as if he were throwing a stone at him. Then he threw another. “You’re very ill.” He threw a third. “You’re going to a hospital.”

  Nikolai threw them all back. “I must catch that train. I am never ill. I will not go to a hospital.”

  The doctor answered, “Good. You’re not ill, and it is an absurd idea for you to go into hospital. See where your hat and cane are lying. Since you are not ill, pick them up.”

  Nikolai looked at them with the sad gaze of an old dog. They were not four feet away from him. He made no reply.

  “Since you can’t do it,” said the doctor, “I’ll do it for you.” He stooped and recovered them with ostentatious suppleness and dexterity. “How dirty they are,” he commented. “What a pity you had to let them fall when you had a seizure.” He dusted the hat with his handkerchief, shook out its folds fastidiously, murmured, “Excuse me, Count,” and set it on Nikolai’s head.

  Nikolai meekly inclined his head in thanks. “Ah, ah,” said the doctor, “that nearly sent your hat spinning again, didn’t it? Now we’ll get on to the hospital. These two porters will help you to my carriage, and we’ll drop you at the hospital.”

  “You are very courteous, sir,” said Nikolai. “But not to a hospital. Not to a hospital. It would be a Catholic hospital, wouldn’t it? I’d be looked after by nuns, wouldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor.

  “Then no,” said Nikolai, and turned away like a sulking child.

  The doctor said loudly and blithely to Laura, “Oh, you are liberal exiles? Well, you needn’t fear any lack of sympathy. The Voltairean spirit isn’t dead among Frenchmen yet.”

  “Oh, hush, hush! My grandfather thinks Voltaire worse than nuns. He’s a very devout member of the Orthodox Church and they all hate Catholics.”

  “The Catholic Church disbelieves the doctrine of the Procession of the Holy Ghost, and whoever rejects that doctrine does not know how divinity is placed in relation to itself, and therefore cannot know where he himself is placed in relation to the universe,” said Nikolai. “Also, what evil has the Roman Church not wrought on our poor Byzantium? Who can forget the Fourth Crusade?”

  “Alas, your Excellency, we’ve all a right to our own opinions. That is Voltairean too,” said the surgeon. In an undertone he asked Laura, “Your grandfather isn’t like this ordinarily? He’s delirious, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t say so. It’s true that he’s had a lot of trouble lately and since then he’s talked more like a preacher than he used to, but what he’s saying isn’t so mad as you might think. In fact it isn’t mad at all. He’s just talking about the things Russians go on and on about, just as you French go on and on about Napoleon.” She went on slowly, “You see, we met a Russian in the train …” But it was no use. If she told him the truth this man would not believe her, and she might lose his kindness. She simply stood there, her mouth a little open.

  “And this Russian frightened you and your grandfather.”

  “Oh, no. No.”

  “Odd. For a moment you looked very frightened indeed.” He remained silent and questioning till he saw she was not going to speak. “Well, then let’s not bother about that. I see you’re very fond of your gr
andfather, which is to his credit.” He turned to Nikolai and said, quite gently now, “Since you don’t like my hospital I’ll find you a room in a hotel and you can go to bed there, and I’ll put in a nurse.”

  “Not a nun?”

  The surgeon smiled brilliantly. “No, not a nun.”

  The two porters closed in on Nikolai and gently heaved him upright, and the three joined figures staggered off. Laura started to follow them, but the doctor held her back. “They know where my carriage is and they’ll take some time getting him there. We’d better settle about sending for your relatives now. The station-master can send a telegram from here more quickly than any post-office in the town would do it. What’s your family’s address?”

  She stared at him blankly. Nobody at the apartment in the Avenue Kléber must know where she and Nikolai were till she had a chance to tell them about Chubinov. Otherwise they might tell Monsieur Kamensky. “Please, please believe me. It’s no use telegraphing to Paris. It would be cruel to do it. My mother’s almost out of her mind with worry about my grandmother, she’s so ill, she’s gone to a clinic today.” She stopped and thought what she should say next; and in the midst of the clang and bustle which the arrival of the Paris express was starting off, she received some intimation that though the silvery little man standing in front of her would not understand what it meant that Gorin was Kamensky, his experience had taught him nearly everything else. She said gravely, “And my mother’s very unhappy, specially unhappy even for that situation,” and paused. “But my father and mother live in London, and my father’s there. Just let’s send a telegram to him, asking him to come at once. We’ll have to send a telegram to the people at Mûres-sur-Mer we were going to stay with, so that they don’t fuss. But it’s my father I want. Only my father. We’ll have to send two telegrams. One to 80, Radnage Square, the other to the House of Commons. Then he’ll be sure to come at once.”

  “It shall be done. We will send for your father. And how beautiful you are when you look happy.”

  It was odd. He meant to be kind. She knew he would do anything for her that he could. Yet he understood so little what she was like that he did not realize how she hated people to say that sort of thing. It was really very odd that people wanted to be kind to one when they had absolutely no sense of what one was.

  IX

  For quite some time Laura sat with Nikolai in the carriage outside the hotel, his hand clutching hers, loosening, falling to his lap, then clutching hers again. The hotel was the one large and solid building in a square of tall old houses, themselves crooked, with pale shutters hanging slightly crooked on their crookedness. In the gravelled centre of the square a market bubbled and boiled, the crowd here and there divided by strings of cattle being led away, past stalls hooded by tarpaulins, shaking and bellying in a high wind, which was making the white linen caps of the women rock on their heads like little ships on a rough sea. She hoped the Channel would be smooth for her father’s crossing. Presently Professor Saint-Gratien put his head into the carriage and explained that he had had to keep them waiting because he had forgotten something: that the most important ball of the year was held in this hotel on this very night, and the place was upside-down. All the same, he had got rooms for them, and what was more, two men strong enough to help her grandfather up the staircase, which was, it appeared, for a staircase, quite a staircase. This hotel had been a nobleman’s palace in the time of Louis Quinze, and it had its grandeurs, which were sometimes inconvenient, but these two men could handle anything; and when they came that seemed plausible enough. One was an ostler in a leather jerkin and breeches, the other a blacksmith smelling of metallic toast and wearing a tawny apron as long as a woman’s dress, and both had to bend their knees before they could look in at the carriage window. They offered soft, gruff exclamations at what they saw. “They’re surprised,” said the doctor to Laura in halting English, “to find that one of their size can be old and helpless. Human beings are very amusing.”

  The vestibule was so splendid that the ordinary people and the servants who were standing about made both the splendour and themselves seem not quite real. This might have been a rehearsal on a stage by players who had not yet been given their costumes though the stage was set, and the landlord bowed and greeted her with the sincerity and over-emphasis of a bad actor. He said that until Monsieur le Comte could be found a room in the hospital he would be the hotel’s honoured guest, but that he himself had a thousand things to do, the Mayor’s secretary was there at that actual moment to talk about the night’s festivity, he would have to go to him at once, but it was a pity, such a pity. In his effort to make his excuses he conveyed the impression that to attend on Nikolai, ill as he was, would be a gay and carnivalesque diversion, and that the ball, on the contrary was, in his eyes, sad as a funeral. That was the sort of thing, Laura reflected, that her brothers called flannel. But the landlord kept it up well when it appeared that the staircase, which was indeed magnificent, presented a difficulty.

  It rose in merciless elegance, climbing first in a diminishing semicircle, then dividing into two flights curved like soaring wings, its wrought-iron balustrades were mineral lace, not to be clung to, and the blond wooden steps shone like ice. Before this lovely peril the two giants halted, and Nikolai, drooping between them, uttered faint sounds of command which everyone disregarded. The landlord, in tones suggesting that it was all merely a matter of academic interest, asked the porter if the back-stairs would be better, but no, they weren’t broad enough for three abreast. The landlord lifted up his voice and called for Rose and Marthe, they hurried in, they hurried out, they came hurrying back, they knelt before the ostler and the blacksmith and wrapped dusters round their boots. The two men took care not to let go of Nikolai while they were working on their feet, they managed to keep him propped up, swaying and continuing to issue orders which became less and less audible, while they struggled to keep their balance. A censorious and contented male voice came clearly to Laura’s ear, “The old man shouldn’t have been allowed to travel in this state,” and another voice, belonging to a woman, agreed, “Yes, it can’t be good for him, and it’s causing so much trouble.” What made it worse was that the words were spoken sweetly, with no sense of what they meant, out of a desire to make agreeable small talk. The two giants swung Nikolai up the stairs between them, but his feet were blind and wilful animals off on their own. The doctor called the men to halt and said to Laura, “Go ahead of them up to the landing. Look at our assembly room there. It’s very pretty, if life were what it should be you’d have come to Grissaint to dance there.”

  The wide door was just ajar. She did not open it any farther, she could see without being seen. She wanted to hide, for she felt dirty from the train, dirty from disaster, and this place was so clean it abashed her. The assembly room was white and was flooded with light from tall windows on one side, and it was being preened to further brightness for the evening’s festivity. There were four chandeliers, three of them in full glitter, and under the fourth was a stepladder, with a man in a green baize apron standing half-way up and cautiously freeing the lustres from a holland bag. At work on a low stage at the end of the room other men in green baize aprons were setting up music-stands, and two were on their knees beside a harp, which was rocking slowly, like a sensitive animal recoiling from the human touch. Behind the stage, in high relief, a plaster Apollo in a semicircle of plaster nymphs struck a gilded lyre, and in alcoves on each side of the stage stood statues of slender young men, one with a bow and arrow, one carrying a fawn. On the polished floor two women in blue-grey cotton gowns knelt among patches of sunshine, devoutly leaning forward as they pried at the parquet with little tools, while two others, erect but with heads bowed, pushed forward mops and their own reflections across the gleaming wood. There was a high stepladder by one of the tall windows, and on the topmost rung stood a graceful girl, seeming to greet a friend up in the clouds, for she was rubbing a duster round and round on the pane of glass above he
r head; and at the foot of the ladder a blond and spectacled young man, with his back to her, held a sheet of music at arm’s length and sang with widely open mouth, but silently. All these people were so grave that they might have been preparing for some religious or philanthropic meeting rather than a ball, but the light from the wind-scavenged sky, shining through the high windows down on the bright brown floor, the sugar-white gods, the chandeliers, the white-and-gold walls, lit up a formal but extreme gaiety built into the place. They must have been using beeswax on the parquet, there was a smell of honey. But behind her came the panting and stumbling sounds of the people it was her duty to be with, and she had to turn round and follow the knot of bodies along the corridor, up another staircase, along another corridor, and into a salon which gave out the ruined sweetness of an old scent-bottle.

  Nikolai groaned, “To the sofa, to the sofa.”

  The blacksmith said, “But it’s too short for you. You’d never be able to lie down.”

  “I don’t want to lie down on it,” said Nikolai, “I want to sit on it.”

  “What a ridiculous idea,” said the doctor. “You’re not going to lie down or sit up or do anything else in this room. Your place is not in the salon, it’s in that bedroom behind those folding-doors.”

  Nikolai drew back his head like a scolded child. “Da, da,” he mumbled, and the ostler and the blacksmith exchanged kindly glances and nodded and said, “Yes, da, da.” Laura exclaimed angrily, “He’s saying ‘yes,’ in Russian.”

  Nikolai said in a neutral tone, as if he were telling her the time, “You need not trouble. My dignity does not matter any more.” Then he said in French, “I’m quite willing to go to bed, if it’s ready.”