The Secret City Part 51

"Whether your intuition is right or no," I said, "this _is_ the last time. I never intend to speak to you again if I can help it. The day that I hear that you have really left us, never to return, will be one of the happiest days of my life."

Semyonov gave me a strange look, humorous, ironical, and, upon my word, almost affectionate: "That's very sad what you say, Ivan Andreievitch--if you mean it. And I suppose you mean it, because you English always do mean what you say.... But it's sad because, truly, I have friendly feelings towards you, and you're almost the only man in the world of whom I could say that."

"You speak as though your friends.h.i.+p were an honour," I said hotly.

"It's a degradation."

He smiled. "Now that's melodrama, straight out of your worst English plays. _And_ how bad they can be!... But you hadn't always this vehement hatred. What's changed your mind?"

"I don't know that I _have_ changed my mind," I answered. "I think I've always disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course--but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you've been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You've set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth.... You deserve hanging, if any murderer ever did!"

He looked at me so mildly and with such genuine interest that I was compelled to feel my indignation a whit melodramatic.

"If you are going," I said more calmly, "for Heaven's sake go! It _can't_ be any pleasure to you, clever and talented as you are, to bait such harmless people as Vera and Nicholas. You've done harm enough.

Leave them, and I forgive you everything."

"Ah, of course your forgiveness is of the first importance to me," he said, with ironic gravity. "But it's true enough. You're going to be bothered with me--I _do_ seem a worry to you, don't I?--for only a few days more. And how's it going to end, do you think? Who's going to finish me off? Nicholas or Vera? Or perhaps our English Byron, Lawrence?

Or even yourself? Have you your revolver with you? I shall offer no resistance, I promise you."

Suddenly he changed. He came closer to me. His weary, exhausted eyes gazed straight into mine: "Ivan Andreievitch, never mind about the rest--never mind whether you do or don't hate me, that matters to n.o.body. What I tell you is the truth. I have come to you, as I have always come to you, like the moth to the flame. Why am I always pursuing you? Is it for the charm and fascination of your society? Your wit? Your beauty? I won't flatter you--no, no, it's because you alone, of all these fools here, knew her. You knew her as no one else alive knew her.

She liked you--G.o.d knows why! At least I do know why--it was because of her youth and innocence and simplicity, because she didn't know a wise man from a fool, and trusted all alike.... But you knew her, you knew her. You remember her and can talk of her. Ah, how I've hungered, hungered, to talk to you about her! Sometimes I've come all this way and then turned back at the door. How I've prayed that it might have been some other who knew her, some real man, not a sentimental, gloomy old woman like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. And yet you have your points.

You have in you the things that she saw--you are honest, you are brave.... You are like a good English clergyman. But she!... I should have had some one with wit, with humour, with a sense of life about her.

All the things, all the little things--the way she walked, her clothes, her smile--when she was cross! Ah, she was divine when she was cross!...

Ivan Andreievitch, be kind to me! Think for a moment less of your morals, less of your principles--and talk to me of her! Talk to me of her!"

He had drawn quite close to me; he looked like a madman--I have no doubt that, at that moment, he was one.

"I can't!... I won't!" I answered, drawing away. "She is the most sacred memory I have in my life. I hate to think of her with you. And that because you smirch everything you touch. I have no feeling of jealousy...."

"You? Jealousy!" he said, looking at me scornfully. "Why should you be jealous?"

"I loved her too," I said.

He looked at me. In spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot--my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame--everything was comprehended in the scorn of that glance.

"No," I said, "you need not suppose that she ever realised. She did not.

I would have died rather than have spoken of it. But I will not talk about her. I will not."

He drew away from me. His face was grave; the mockery had left it.

"Oh, you English, how strange you are!... In trusting, yes.... But the things you miss! I understand now many things. I give up my desire. You shan't smirch your precious memories.... And you, too, must understand that there has been all this time a link that has bound us.... Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I?... Rather ask, what am I? I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit--what you like. If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at all, Ivan Andreievitch.

Perhaps this is a ghost that you see.... What if the town has changed in the night and strange souls have slipped into our old bodies?

"Isn't there a stir about the town? Is it I that pursue Nicholas, or is it my ghost that pursues myself? Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I follow?... Don't be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb: 'There's a secret city in every man's heart. It is at that city's altars that the true prayers are offered.' There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months."

He came up to me:

"Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I'm a haunted man, you know."

He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone.

XII

That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave--and beyond it, I expect.

He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough.

Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as it had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading table-cloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov's musical-box, on the old knick-knacks and the untidy shelf of books.

(Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day's efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenieff's _House of Gentle-folks_, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.

He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing this, of course, from Bohun's account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front.

"There!" Semyonov would say, pausing. "Now, Nicholas... What do you say to that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course, although our friend the _Retch_ doesn't put it quite so bluntly. The _Novaya Jezn_ of course highly approves. Here's another...." This went on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov's voice was Markovitch's padding steps. "Ah! here's another bit!... Now what about that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they've been doing near Riga! It says...."

"Can't you leave it alone, Alexei? Keep your paper to yourself!"

These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch's ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder.

"There's grat.i.tude--when I'm trying to interest you! How childish, too, not to face the real situation! Do you think you're going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn't exist? So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution! How long is it? Let me see... March, April...

yes, just about six weeks.... Well, well!"

"Leave me alone, Alexei!... Leave me alone!"

Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at control behind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable. He wanted, there and then, to have left the room. It would have been better for him had he done so. But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scene developed, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid too emphatic a stress on the discomfort of it.

He hoped that in a moment Vera or Uncle Ivan would come and the scene would end.

Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: "What were those words you used to me not so long ago? Something about free Russia, I think--Russia moving like one man to save the world--Russia with an unbroken front.... Too optimistic, weren't you?"

The padding feet stopped. In a whisper that seemed to Bohun to fill the room with echoing sound Markovitch said:

"You have tempted me for weeks now, Alexei.... I don't know why you hate me so, nor why you pursue me. Go back to your own place. If I am an unfortunate man, and by my own fault, that should be nothing to you who are more fortunate."

"Torment you! I?... My dear Nicholas, never! But you are so childish in your ideas--and are you unfortunate? I didn't know it. Is it about your inventions that you are speaking? Well, they were never very happy, were they?"

"You praised them to me!"

"Did I?... My foolish kindness of heart, I'm afraid. To tell the truth, I was thankful when you saw things as they were..."

"You took them away from me."

"I took them away? What nonsense! It was your own wish--Vera's wish too."

"Yes, you persuaded both Vera and Nina that they were no good. They believed in them before you came."

"You flatter me, Nicholas. I haven't such power over Vera's opinions, I'm afraid. If I tell her anything she believes at once the opposite.

You must have seen that yourself."