by James Hilton
So he settled down at Rostov. It was a pleasantly prosperous city, with a climate cold and invigorating in winter and mild as the French Riviera in summer; it was also very much more cosmopolitan than most places of its size, for, as the business capital of the Don Cossack country, it contained many Jews, Armenians, Greeks and even small colonies of English, French, and Germans. Picturesquely built, with many fine churches, it was interesting to live in, though A.J. had no initial intention of staying in it for long. He did, in fact, stay there for two years, which was about four times his estimate. His work was simple—merely to teach English to the sons and daughters of Rostov’s plutocratic rather than aristocratic families. He made a successful teacher, which is to say that he did not need to work very hard; he had plenty of leisure, and during holidays was able to take trips into the Caucasus, the Crimea, and several times to Moscow and Petersburg.. With a natural aptitude for languages, he came to talk Russian without a trace of foreign accent, besides picking up a working knowledge of Tartar, Armenian, and various local dialects. He was moderately happy and only bored now and again. A physical change became noticeable in him; he lost, rather suddenly, the boyish undergraduate air that had surprised the other war-correspondents when they had first seen him. He was liked by his pupils and respected by their parents; he moved a little on the fringe of the better-class town society, which was as high as a schoolmaster could well expect. He soon found that his profession carried with it little dignity of its own. During his first week at school the daughter of one of Rostov’s wealthiest families, in sending up a very bad English translation exercise, enclosed a ten-rouble note between the pages, clearly assuming that it would ensure high marks.
At the close of his first year he saw in a literary paper that Sir Henry Jergwin, the celebrated English critic, editor, and man of letters, had died suddenly in London whilst replying to a toast at the annual dinner of a literary society.
Hamarin pressed him to stay another year at Rostov, and he did so chiefly because he could not think of anything else to do or anywhere else to go. It was during this second year that he began to gain insight into the close network of revolutionary activity that was spread throughout the entire country. Even bourgeois Rostov had its secret clubs and government spies, and there seemed to be an ever-widening gulf between the wealthier classes and the workpeople. When occasionally he went into better-class houses to give private English lessons he was often amazed at the way servants were bullied by everyone, from the master of the house even down to the five-year-old baby who had already learned whom he might kick and scratch with impunity. One youth, the son of a wealthy mill-owner, went out of his way to explain. “You see, they’re all thieves and rogues. We know it, and they know we know it. They steal everything they can—they have no loyalty—they lie to us a dozen times a day as a matter of course. Why should we treat them any better than the scum that they are? It’s their fault as much as ours.”
A.J. became quite friendly with this youth, who had travelled in Germany and France, and looked at affairs from a somewhat wider standpoint than the usual Rostov citizen. His name was Sergius Willenski, and he was destined for the army. He had no illusions about the country or its people. “You simply have to treat them like that,” he often said. “It’s the only basis on which life becomes at all possible.”
“And yet,” A.J. answered, “I have met some of the most charming folk among the common people—ignorant soldiers whom I would certainly have trusted with my life.”
“A good job you didn’t. They may have been charming—quite likely—but they were rogues, I’ll wager, and would probably have killed you for a small bribe. Our people have no morals—only a sort of good humour that impresses foreigners.”
A.J. went to the Willenskis’ twice a week to teach English to the two girls, aged fifteen and seventeen respectively. Neither learned anything, except in the dullest and least intelligent way; neither considered that life held any possible future except a successful marriage. The older girl would have flirted with him if he had been inclined for the diversion. The younger girl was the prettier, but had a ferocious temper. She boasted that she had once maimed for life a man who had come to the house to polish the floors. It was his custom to take off one of his shoes and tie a polishing cloth round his stockinged foot so that he could polish without stooping. The girl, then aged eleven, had flown into a temper because he had accidentally disturbed some toy of hers; she had seized a heavy silver samovar and dropped it on to his foot, breaking several bones. “And it wasn’t at all a bad thing for him,” she told A.J., “because father pays him something every now and then and he doesn’t have to polish the floors for it.”
A.J. sometimes went to parties at the Willenskis’ house; monsieur and madame (as they liked to be called) were hospitable, and refrained from treating him as they would have done a native teacher. Once he met Willenski’s brother, who was a publisher in Petersburg. Anton Willenski, well known to all the Russian reading public, took considerable interest in the young Englishman and, after an hour’s conversation, offered him a post in his own Petersburg office. “You are far too good a scholar to be teaching in a little place like Rostov,” he said. The post offered was that of English translator and proof-reader, and the salary double that which Hamarin paid. A.J. mentioned his contract at the school, but Willenski said: “Oh, never mind that—I’ll deal with Hamarin,” and he did, though A.J. could only guess how.
So A.J. left Rostov and went to Petersburg. That was in 1907, when he was twenty-seven. The change from the provincial atmosphere to the liveliness and culture of the capital was immeasurably welcome to him. The gaiety of the theatres and cafés, the fine shops on the Nevsky, the splendour of the Cathedral and of the Winter Palace, all pleased the eye of the impressionable youth whose job left him leisure for thinking and observing. He had been to Petersburg before, but to see it as a visitor had been vastly different from living in it. His rooms were across the river in the Viborg district; from his windows he could see, at sunset, the Gulf of Finland bathed in saffron splendour, and there was something of everlasting melancholy in that pageant of sky and water ushering in the silver northern night. Before he had been long in Petersburg he received other impressions—the glitter of Cossack bayonets and scarlet imperial uniforms, and in the darker background, the huge scowling mass of misery and corruption through which revolutionary currents ran like threads of doom. It was fascinating to watch those ever-changing scenes of barbaric magnificence and sordid degradation—to cheer the imperial sleigh as it swept over the snow-bound boulevards, to gaze on the weekly batches of manacled prisoners marching to the railway station en route for the Ural convict-mines, to see the crowds of wild-eyed strikers surging around the mills of the new industrialism. His work at Willenski’s office was easy; he had to superintend the translation of English works into Russian and to give them final proof-reading. It was also expected that he should make suggestions for new translations, and it was over this branch of his work that, after a successful and enjoyable year, he came to sudden grief. At his recommendation a certain English novel had been translated, printed, published, and sent to the shops; it was selling quite well when all at once the police authorities detected or pretended to detect in it some thinly-veiled allusions to the private life of the Emperor. Willenski was thus put in a most awkward position, since he supplied text-books to the government schools and had a strictly orthodox reputation to keep up; his only chance of escaping business ruin and perhaps personal imprisonment was by laying the entire blame on his subordinate. As he told A.J. quite frankly: “It just can’t be helped. They won’t do anything to you, as you’re English. If you were Russian they’d probably send you to Siberia—as it is, they can only cancel your permit.”
So Willenski made a great show of dismissing with ignominy a subordinate who had disgracefully let him down, and managed, by such strategy, to escape with a severe warning so far as he himself was concerned. As for A.J., he received a polite n
ote from police headquarters informing him that he must leave Russia within a week.
He felt this as a rather considerable blow, for in the first place he was sorry to have brought so much trouble on Willenski, whom he had grown to like; and besides, he had his own problems to solve. He did not wish to return to England. He had no idea of anything that he could do if he did return; he had no specialist qualifications except a knowledge of Russian, which would be hardly as useful in London as was a knowledge of English in Petersburg. Journalism was hopeless; he could realise now, over the perspective of several years, what a complete failure he had been in Fleet Street. Teaching, of which he had had some experience, would be impossible in any good English school owing to his poor degree, while as for the other professions, he neither inclined towards them nor had any hope that they would incline towards him.
Beyond even this he had grown to like Petersburg. He had lived in it now for over a year, had seen it in all its climatic moods; and now it was April again and the sledge-roads on the frozen Neva would soon be closing for the thaw. The prospect of summer had been alluring to him more than he had realised; he had been looking forward to many a swim at Peterhof and many an excursion into the flower-decked woods that fringed the city on so many sides.
His permitted week expired on Easter Tuesday and on Easter Eve he strolled rather sadly along the Nevski and watched the quaint and fascinating ceremonial. Thousands of poor work-people had brought their Easter suppers to be blest, and the priests were walking quickly amongst the crowds sprinkling the holy water out of large buckets. The food was set out on glistening white napkins on which stood also lighted tapers, and there was a fairy-like charm in that panorama of flickering lights, vestmented priests, and rapt, upturned faces. A.J. had seen it all the previous year, but it held additional poignancy now that it seemed almost the last impression he would have of the city. He was observing it with rather more than a sight-seer’s interest when a well- dressed man in expensive furs, who happened to be pushed against him by the pressure of the crowd, made some polite remark about the beauty of the scene. A.J. answered appropriately and conversation followed. The man was middle-aged and from his speech a person of culture. He was not, A.J. judged, an Orthodox believer, but he showed a keen sympathy and understanding of the religious motive, and was obviously as fascinated by the spectacle as A.J. himself.
The two, indeed, soon found that they had a great many common ideas and interests, and talked for perhaps a quarter of an hour before the stranger said: “Excuse my curiosity, but I’m just wondering if you’re Russian. It isn’t the accent that betrays you—don’t think that—merely a way of looking at things that one doesn’t often find in this country. At a venture I should guess you French.”
“You’d be wrong,” answered A.J., smiling. “I’m English.”
“Are you, by Jove?” responded the other, dropping the Russian language with sudden fervour. “That’s odd, because so am I. My name’s Stanfield.”
“Mine’s Fothergill.”
They talked now with even greater relish, and though Stanfield did not say who he was, A.J. surmised that he had some connection with the British Embassy. They, discussed all kinds of things during the whole four-mile walk down the Nevski and back, after which Stanfield said: “Did you ever go to midnight Mass at St. Isaac’s?” A.J. shook his head, and the other continued: “You ought to—it’s really worth seeing. If you’ve nothing else on this evening we might go together.”
They did, and the experience was one that A.J. was sure he would never forget. They arrived at the church about eleven, when the building was already thronged and in almost total darkness. Under the dome stood a catafalque on which lay an open coffin containing a painted representation of the dead Christ. Thousands of unlighted candles marked the form of the vast interior, and Stanfield explained that they were all linked with threads of gun-cotton. There was no light anywhere save from a few tall candles round the bier.
Soon the members of the diplomatic corps arrived, gorgeously uniformed and decorated, and took up their allotted positions, while black-robed priests began the mournful singing of the Office for the Dead. Then followed an elaborate ritual in which the priests pretended to search in vain for the Body. Despite its touch of theatricalism the miming was deeply impressive. Then sharply, on the first stroke of midnight, the marvellous climax arrived; the chief priest cried loudly—’Christ is risen!’ while the gun-cotton, being fired, touched into gradual flame the thousands of candles. Simultaneously cannon crashed out from the neighbouring fortress, and the choir, led by the clergy (no longer in black but in their richest cloth of gold), broke out into the triumphant cadences of the Easter Hymn. The sudden transference from gloom to dazzling brilliance and from silence to deafening jubilation stirred emotions that were almost breath-taking.
Afterwards, amidst the chorus of Easter salutations the two men sauntered by the banks of the river. A.J. said how glad he was to have seen such a spectacle, and Stanfield answered: “Yes, it’s one of the things I never miss if I happen to be here. I’ve seen it now at least a dozen times, yet it’s always fresh, and never fails to give me a thrill.”
Something then impelled A.J. to say: “I’m particularly glad to have seen it, because I don’t suppose I’ll ever have the chance again.”
“Oh, indeed? You’re only on a visit? You spoke Russian so well I imagined you lived here.”
“I do—or rather I have done for some time—but I’m going away—very soon, I’m afraid—for good.”
“Really?”
A.J. was not a person to confide easily, but the difficulty of his problem, combined with Stanfield’s sympathetic attitude and the emotional mood in which the Cathedral ceremony had left them both, made it easy for him to hint that the circumstances of his leaving Petersburg were not of the happiest. Stanfield was immediately interested, and within half an hour (it was by that time nearly two in the morning) most of A.J.’s position had been explained and explored. Once the process began it was difficult to stop, and in the end A.J. found himself confessing even the ridiculous suffragette episode which had been the immediate cause of his departure from England four years before. Stanfield was amused at that. “So I gather,” he summarised at last, “that you’re in the rather awkward position of having to leave this country and of having no other country that you particularly want to go to?”
“That’s it.”
“You definitely don’t want to return to England?”
“I’d rather go anywhere else.”
“But you must have friends there—a few, at any rate. Four years isn’t such a tremendous interval.”
“I know. That’s why I’d rather go anywhere else.”
“Don’t you think you’re taking the suffragette affair rather too seriously? After all, most people will have forgotten it by now, and in any case it wasn’t anything particularly disgraceful.”
“Yes, but—there are other reasons—much more important ones. I—I don’t want to go back to England.” He gave Stanfield a glance which decided the latter against any further questioning in that direction. “Besides, even if I were to go back there, what could I do?”
“I don’t know, do I? What are your accomplishments?”
A.J. smiled. “Very few, and all of them extremely unmarketable. I can speak Russian, that’s about all. Oh yes, and I can swim and fence, and I’m a bit of a geologist in my spare time. It doesn’t really sound the sort of thing to impress an employment agency, does it?”
“Do you fancy an outdoor life?”
“I don’t mind, provided it isn’t just merely physical work. It may sound conceited, but I rather want something where I have to use a small amount of brains. Yet I wouldn’t care for a job at a desk all the time. I’m afraid I’m talking as though I were likely to be given any choice in the matter.”
“What about danger—personal danger? Would that be a disadvantage?”
“I’d hate the army, if that’s what you mean.”
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“No, that isn’t what I mean. I meant some kind of job where you had occasionally to take risks—pretty big risks, in their way—playing for high stakes—that sort of thing.”
“I’m afraid your description doesn’t help me to imagine such a job, but as a guess I should say it would suit me very well.”
Stanfield laughed. “I can’t be more explicit. How about the money?”
“Oh well, I’d like enough to live on and a little bit more. But isn’t it rather absurd to be talking in this way, since I shall be very lucky to get any sort of job at all?”
“On the contrary, it’s just possible—yes, it is just possible that I might be able to put you in the way of the kind of job you say you would like. And here in Petersburg, too.”
“You forget that I have to leave. My police permit expires on Tuesday.”
“No, I don’t forget that at all. I am remembering it most carefully.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Let me explain. But first, I must pledge you to the strictest secrecy. Whether or not you and I can come to terms, you must give me that assurance.”
“I do, of course.”
“Good. Then listen.”
Briefly, Stanfield’s suggestion was that A.J. should become attached to the British Secret Service. That sounded simple enough, but an examination of all that it implied revealed a network of complication and detail. Stanfield, relying on A.J.’s promise of secrecy, was as frank as he needed to be, but no more so. British diplomacy, he explained, had its own reasons for wishing to know the precise strength and significance of the revolutionary movement in Russia. It was impossible to obtain reliable information from official channels, whether British or Russian; the only sources were devious and underground. “Supposing, for instance, you decided to help us, you would have to join one of the revolutionary societies, identify yourself with the cause, gain the confidence of its leaders, and judge for yourself how much the whole thing counts. I think you’ll agree with me that such a job calls for brains and might well involve considerable personal risks.”