The Secret City Part 44

"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 gla.s.s, 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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 remember 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 d.a.m.ned 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 Wilts.h.i.+re--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--"

"I know," said I.

"I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn't have Vera he'd have Russia, and if he couldn't have Russia he'd have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago he'd lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn't very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything.

Wasn't he wonderful that week? Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise.... Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything? Why a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week. It wouldn't be decent.... Well, then...." He paused dramatically. "What's happened to him since, Durward?"

"How do you mean? What's happened to him since?" I asked.

"I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day--the Thursday of that week. What was it? That's one of the things I've come to ask you about?"

"I don't know. I was ill," I said.

"No, but has n.o.body told you anything?"

"I haven't heard a word," I said.

His face fell. "I felt sure you'd help me?" he said.

"Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together," I suggested.

"The rest is really Semyonov. The queerest things have been happening.

Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one's English ideas, isn't it?

and that's so d.a.m.ned difficult. It's no use saying an English fellow wouldn't do this or that. Of course he wouldn't.... Oh, they _are_ queer!"

He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair.

"Giving them up in despair, Bohun, is as bad as thinking you understand them completely. Just take what comes."

"Well, 'what came' was this. On that Thursday evening Markovitch was as though he'd been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of course we all noticed it. White and sickly, saying nothing to anybody.

Next morning, quite early, Semyonov came over and proposed lodging with us.

"It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the feller, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet, stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way.

"To my amazement Markovitch seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed, but offered his own room as a bedroom. 'What about your inventions?'

some one asked him.

"'I've given them up,' he said, looking at us all just like a caged animal--'for ever.'

"I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn't been so interested, but this was all so curious that I was determined to see it out to the end. And you'd told me to look after Markovitch. If ever he'd wanted looking after it was now! I could see that Vera hated the idea of Semyonov coming, but after Markovitch had spoken she never said a word.

So then it was all settled."

"What did Nina do?" I asked.

"Nina? She never said anything either. At the end she went up to Semyonov and took his hand and said, 'I'm so glad you're coming, Uncle Alexei,' and looked at Vera. Oh! they're all as queer as they can be, I tell you!"

"What happened next?" I asked eagerly.

"Everything's happened and nothing's happened," he replied. "Nina's run away. Of course you know that. What she did it for I can't imagine.

Fancy going to a fellow like Grogoff! Lawrence has been coming every day and just sitting there, not saying anything. Semyonov's amiable to everybody--especially amiable to Markovitch. But he's laughing at him all the time I think. Anyway he makes him mad sometimes, so that I think Markovitch is going to strike him. But of course he never does.... Now here's a funny thing. This is really what I want to ask you most about."