The Secret City Part 27

Everything seemed clean and simple and a little deserted, as though the heart of the Russian public had not, as yet, quite found its way there.

I think "guileless" was the adjective that came to my mind, and certainly Burrows, the head of the place--a large, red-faced, smiling man with gla.s.ses--seemed to me altogether too cheerful and pleased with life to penetrate the wicked recesses of Russian pessimism.

I went into Bohun's room and found him very hard at work in a serious, emphatic way which only made me feel that he was playing at it. He had a little bookcase over his table, and I noticed the _Georgian Book of Verse_, Conrad's _Nostromo_, and a translation of Ropshin's _Pale Horse_.

"Altogether too pretty and literary," I said to him; "you ought to be getting at the peasant with a pitchfork and a hammer--not admiring the Intelligentzia."

"I daresay you're right," he said, blushing. "But whatever we do we're wrong. We have fellows in here cursing us all day. If we're simple we're told we're not clever enough; if we're clever we're told we're too complicated. If we're militant we're told we ought to be tender-hearted, and if we're tender-hearted we're told we're sentimental--and at the end of it all the Russians don't care a d.a.m.n."

"Well, I daresay you're doing some good somewhere," I said indulgently.

"Come and look at my view," he said, "and see whether it isn't splendid."

He spoke no more than the truth. We looked across the Ca.n.a.l over the roofs of the city--domes and towers and turrets, grey and white and blue, with the dark red walls of many of the older houses stretched like an Arabian carpet beneath white bubbles of clouds that here and there marked the blue sky. It was a scene of intense peace, the smoke rising from the chimneys, Isvostchicks stumbling along on the farther banks of the Ca.n.a.l, and the people sauntering in their usual lazy fashion up and down the Nevski. Immediately below our window was a skating-rink that stretched straight across the Ca.n.a.l. There were some figures, like little dolls, skating up and down, and they looked rather desolate beside the deserted band-stands and the empty seats. On the road outside our door a cart loaded with wood slowly moved along, the high hoop over the horse's back gleaming with red and blue.

"Yes, it _is_ a view!" I said. "Splendid!--and all as quiet as though there'd been no disturbances at all. Have you heard any news?"

"No," said Bohun. "To tell the truth I've been so busy that I haven't had time to ring up the Emba.s.sy. And we've had no one in this morning.

Monday morning, you know," he added; "always very few people on Monday morning"--as though he didn't wish me to think that the office was always deserted.

I watched the little doll-like men circling placidly round and round the rink. One bubble cloud rose and slowly swallowed up the sun.

Suddenly I heard a sharp crack like the breaking of a twig. "What's that?" I said, stepping forward on to the balcony. "It sounded like a shot."

"I didn't hear anything," said Bohun. "You get funny echoes up here sometimes." We stepped back into Bohun's room and, if I had had any anxieties, they would at once, I think, have been rea.s.sured by the unemotional figure of Bohun's typist, a gay young woman with peroxide hair, who was typing away as though for her very life.

"Look here, Bohun, can I talk to you alone for a minute?" I asked.

The peroxide lady left us.

"It's just about Markovitch I wanted to ask you," I went on. "I'm infernally worried, and I want your help. It may seem ridiculous of me to interfere in another family like this, with people with whom I have, after all, nothing to do. But there are two reasons why it isn't ridiculous. One is the deep affection I have for Nina and Vera. I promised them my friendship, and now I've got to back that promise. And the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence into the family. They never would have known him if it hadn't been for us. There's danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as you know, is helping it on wherever he can. Well, now, what I want to know is, how much have you seen of Markovitch lately, and has he talked to you?"

Bohun considered. "I've seen very little of him," he said at last. "I think he avoids me now. He's such a weird bird that it's impossible to tell of what he's really thinking. I know he was pleased when I asked him to dine with me at the Bear the other night. He looked _most awfully_ pleased. But he wouldn't come. It was as though he suspected that I was laying a trap for him."

"But what have you noticed about him otherwise?"

"Well, I've seen very little of him. He's sulky just now. He suspected Lawrence, of course--always after that night of Nina's party. But I think that he's rea.s.sured again. And of course it's all so ridiculous, because there's nothing to suspect, absolutely nothing--is there?"

"Absolutely nothing," I answered firmly.

He sighed with relief. "Oh, you don't know how glad I am to hear that,"

he said. "Because, although I've _known_ that it was all right, Vera's been so odd lately that I've wondered--you know how I care about Vera and--"

"How do you mean--odd?" I sharply interrupted.

"Well--for instance--of course I've told n.o.body--and you won't tell any one either--but the other night I found her crying in the flat, sitting up near the table, sobbing her heart out. She thought every one was out--I'd been in my room and she hadn't known. But Vera, Durward--Vera of all people! I didn't let her see me--she doesn't know now that I heard her. But when you care for any one as I care for Vera, it's awful to think that she can suffer like that and one can do nothing. Oh, Durward, I wish to G.o.d I wasn't so helpless! You know before I came out to Russia I felt so old; I thought there was nothing I couldn't do, that I was good enough for anybody. And now I'm the most awful a.s.s. Fancy, Durward! Those poems of mine--I thought they were wonderful. I thought--"

He was interrupted by a sudden sharp crackle like a fire bursting into a blaze quite close at hand. We both sprang to the windows, threw them open (they were not sealed, for some unknown reason), and rushed out on to the balcony. The scene in front of us was just what it had been before--the bubble clouds were still sailing lazily before the blue, the skaters were still hovering on the ice, the cart of wood that I had noticed was vanishing slowly into the distance. But from the Liteiny--just over the bridge--came a confused jumble of shouts, cries, and then the sharp, unmistakable rattle of a machine-gun. It was funny to see the casual life in front of one suddenly pause at that sound. The doll-like skaters seemed to spin for a moment and then freeze; one figure began to run across the ice. A small boy came racing down our street shouting. Several men ran out from doorways and stood looking up into the sky, as though they thought the noise had come from there. The sun was just setting; the bubble clouds were pink, and windows flashed fire. The rattle of the machine-gun suddenly stopped, and there was a moment's silence when the only sound in the whole world was the clatter of the wood-cart turning the corner. I could see to the right of me the crowds in the Nevski, that had looked like the continual unwinding of a ragged skein of black silk, break their regular movement and split up like flies falling away from an opening door.

We were all on the balcony by now--the stout Burrows, Peroxide, and another lady typist, Watson, the thin and most admirable secretary (he held the place together by his diligence and order), two Russian clerks, Henry, and I.

We all leaned over the railings and looked down into the street beneath us. To our left the Fontanka Bridge was quite deserted--then, suddenly, an extraordinary procession poured across it. At that same moment (at any rate it seems so now to me on looking back) the sun disappeared, leaving a world of pale grey mist shot with gold and purple. The stars were, many of them, already out, piercing with their sharp cold brilliance the winter sky.

We could not at first see of what exactly the crowd now pouring over the bridge was composed. Then, as it turned and came down our street, it revealed itself as something so theatrical and melodramatic as to be incredible. Incredible, I say, because the rest of the world was not theatrical with it. That was always to be the amazing feature of the new scene into which, without knowing it, I was at that moment stepping. In Galicia the stage had been set--ruined villages, plague-stricken peasants, sh.e.l.l-holes, trenches, roads cut to pieces, huge trees levelled to the ground, historic chateaux pillaged and robbed. But here the world was still the good old jog-trot world that one had always known; the shops and hotels and theatres remained as they had always been. There would remain, I believe, for ever those dull Jaeger undergarments in the windows of the bazaar, and the bound edition of Tchekov in the book-shop just above the Moika, and the turtle and the gold-fish in the aquarium near Elisseieff; and whilst those things were there I could not believe in melodrama.

And we did not believe. We dug our feet into the snow, and leaned over the balcony railings absorbed with amused interest. The procession consisted of a number of motor lorries, and on these lorries soldiers were heaped. I can use no other word because, indeed, they seemed to be all piled upon one another, some kneeling forward, some standing, some sitting, and all with their rifles pointing outwards until the lorries looked like hedgehogs. Many of the rifles had pieces of red cloth attached to them, and one lorry displayed proudly a huge red flag that waved high in air with a sort of flaunting arrogance of its own. On either side of the lorries, filling the street, was the strangest mob of men, women, and children. There seemed to be little sign of order or discipline amongst them as they were all shouting different cries: "Down the Fontanka!" "No, the Duma!" "To the Nevski!" "No, no, _Tovaristchi_ (comrades), to the Nicholas Station!"

Such a rabble was it that I remember that my first thought was of pitying indulgence. So this was the grand outcome of Boris Grogoff's eloquence, and the Rat's plots for plunder!--a fitting climax to such vain dreams. I saw the Cossack, that ebony figure of Sunday night. Ten such men, and this rabble was dispersed for ever! I felt inclined to lean over and whisper to them, "Quick! quick! Go home!... They'll be here in a moment and catch you!"

And yet, after all, there seemed to be some show of discipline. I noticed that, as the crowd moved forward, men dropped out and remained picketing the doorways of the street. Women seemed to be playing a large part in the affair, peasants with shawls over their heads, many of them leading by the hand small children.

Burrows treated it all as a huge joke. "By Jove," he cried, speaking across to me, "Durward, it's like that play Martin Harvey used to do--what was it?--about the French Revolution, you know."

"'The Only Way,'" said Peroxide, in a prim strangled voice.

"That's it--'The Only Way'--with their red flags and all. Don't they look ruffians, some of them?"

There was a great discussion going on under our windows. All the lorries had drawn up together, and the screaming, chattering, and shouting was like the noise of a parrots' aviary. The cold blue light had climbed now into the sky, which was thick with stars; the snow on the myriad roofs stretched like a filmy cloud as far as the eye could see. The moving, shouting crowd grew with every moment mistier.

"Oh, dear! Mr. Burrows," said the little typist, who was not Peroxide.

"Do you think I shall ever be able to get home? We're on the other side of the river, you know. Do you think the bridges will be up? My mother will be so terribly anxious."

"Oh, you'll get home all right," answered Burrows cheerfully. "Just wait until this crowd has gone by. I don't expect there's any fuss down by the river..."

His words were cut short by some order from one of the fellows below.

Others shouted in response, and the lorries again began to move forward.

"I believe he was shouting to us," said Bohun. "It sounded like 'Get off' or 'Get away.'"

"Not he!" said Burrows; "they're too busy with their own affairs."

Then things happened quickly. There was a sudden strange silence below; I saw a quick flame from some fire that had apparently been lit on the Fontanka Bridge; I heard the same voice call out once more sharply, and a second later I felt rather than heard a whizz like the swift flight of a bee past my ear; I was conscious that a bullet had struck the brick behind me. That bullet swung me into the Revolution....

IX

...We were all gathered together in the office. I heard one of the Russians say in an agitated whisper, "Don't turn on the light!... Don't turn on the light! They can see!"

We were all in half-darkness, our faces mistily white. I could hear Peroxide breathing in a tremulous manner, as though in a moment she would break into hysteria.

"We'll go into the inside room. We can turn the light on there," said Burrows. We all pa.s.sed into the reception-room of the office, a nice airy place with the library along one wall and bright coloured maps on the other. We stood together and considered the matter.

"It's real!" said Burrows, his red, cheery face perplexed and strained.

"Who'd have thought it?"

"Of course it's real!" cried Bohun impatiently (Burrows' optimism had been often difficult to bear with indulgence).

"Now you see! What about your beautiful Russian mystic now?"