The Secret City Part 37

"The Revolution has come--it has really come," he cried.

"Yes," she answered, "it has come into this very house. The world has changed."

"The Czar has abdicated.... The old world has gone, the old wicked world! Russia is born again!"

His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic.

Her eyes, too, were alight. She gazed past him.

"I know--I know," she whispered as though to herself.

"Russia--Russia," he went on coming closer and closer, "Russia and you.

We will build a new world. We will forget our old troubles. Oh, Vera, my darling, my darling, we're going to be happy now! I love you so. And now I can hope again. All our love will be clean in this new world. We're going to be happy at last!"

But she did not hear him. She saw into s.p.a.ce. A great exultation ran through her body. All lost for love! At last she was awakened, at last she lived, at last, at last, she knew what love was.

"I love him! I love him... him," her soul whispered. "And nothing now in this world or the next can separate us."

"Vera--Vera," Nicholas cried, "we are together at last--as we have never been. And now we'll work together again--for Russia."

She looked at the man whom she had never loved, with a great compa.s.sion and pity. She put her arms around him and kissed him, her whole maternal spirit suddenly aware of him and seeking to comfort him.

At the touch of her lips his body trembled with happiness. But he did not know that it was a kiss of farewell....

XIII

I have no idea at all what Lawrence did during the early days of that week. He has never told me, and I have never asked him. He never, with the single exception of the afternoon at the Astoria, came near the Markovitches, and I know that was because he had now reached a stage where he did not dare trust himself to see Vera--just as she at that time did not trust herself to see him....

I do not know what he thought of those first days of the Revolution. I can imagine that he took it all very quietly, doing his duty and making no comment. He had of course his own interest in it, but it would be, I am sure, an entirely original interest, unlike any one else's. I remember Dune once, in the long-dead days, saying to me, "It's never any use guessing what Lawrence is thinking. When you think it's football it's Euripides, and when you think it's Euripides it's Marie Corelli."

Of all the actors in this affair he remains to me to the last as the most mysterious. I know that he loved Vera with the endurance of the rock, the heat of the flame, the ruthlessness of a torrent, but behind that love there sat the man himself, invisible, silent, patient, watching.

He may have had Semyonov's contempt for the Revolutionary idealist, he may have had Wilderling's belief in the Czar's autocracy, he may have had Boris Grogoff's enthusiasm for freedom and a general holiday. I don't know. I know nothing at all about it. I don't think that he saw much of the Wilderlings during the earlier part of the week. He himself was a great deal with the English Military Mission, and Wilderling was with _his_ party whatever that might be. He could see of course that Wilderling was disturbed, or perhaps indignant is the right word. "As though you know," he said, "some dirty little boy had been pullin'

snooks at him." Nevertheless the Baroness was the human link. Lawrence would see from the first--that is, from the morning of the Sunday--that she was in an agony of horror. She confided in n.o.body, but went about as though she was watching for something, and at dinner her eyes never left her husband's face for a moment. Those evening meals must have been awful. I can imagine the dignity, the solemn heavy room with all the silver, the ceremonious old man-servant and Wilderling himself behaving as though nothing at all were the matter. To do him all justice he was as brave as a lion, and as proud as a gladiator, and as conceited as a Prussian. On the Wednesday evening he did not return home. He telephoned that he was kept on important business.

The Baroness and Lawrence had the long slow meal together. It was almost more than Jerry could stand having, of course, his own private tortures to face. "It was as though the old lady felt that she had been deputed to support the honour of the family during her husband's absence. She must have been wild with anxiety, but she showed no sign except that her hand trembled when she raised her gla.s.s."

"What did you talk about?" I asked him.

"Oh, about anything! Theatres and her home, when she was a girl and England.... Awful, every minute of it!"

There was a moment towards the end of the meal, when the good lady nearly broke down. The bell in the hall rang and there was a step; she thought it was her husband and half rose. It was, however, the Dvornik with a message of no importance. She gave a little sigh. "Oh, I do wish he would come!... I do wish he would come!" she murmured to herself.

"Oh, he'll come," Lawrence rea.s.sured her, but she seemed indignant with him for having overheard her. Afterwards, sitting together desolately in the magnificent drawing-room, she became affectionately maternal. I have always wondered why Lawrence confided to me the details of their very intimate conversation. It was exactly the kind of thing he was most reticent about.

She asked him about his home, his people, his ambitions. She had asked him about these things before, but to-night there was an appeal in her questions, as though she said:

"Take my mind off that other thing. Help me to forget, if it's only for a moment."

"Have you ever been in love?" she asked.

"Yes. Once," he said.

"Was he in love now?"

"Yes."

"With some one in Russia?"

"Yes."

She hoped that he would be happy. He told her that he didn't think happiness was quite the point in this particular case. There were other things more important--and, anyway, it was inevitable.

"He had fallen in love at first sight?"

"Yes. The very first moment."

She sighed. So had she. It was, she thought, the only real way. She asked him whether it might not, after all, turn out better than he expected.

No, he did not think that it could. But he didn't mind how it turned out--at least he couldn't look that far. The point was that he was in it, up to the neck, and he was never going to be out of it again.

There was something boyish about that that pleased her. She put her plump hand on his knee and told him how she had first met the Baron, down in the South, at Kieff, how grand he had looked; how, seeing her across a room full of people, he had smiled at her before he had ever spoken to her or knew her name. "I was quite pretty then," she added. "I have never regretted our marriage for a single moment," she said. "Nor, I know, has he."

"We hoped there would he children...." She gave a pathetic little gesture. "We will get away down to the South again as soon as the troubles are over," she ended.

I don't suppose he was thinking much of her--his mind was on Vera all the time--but after he had left her and lay in bed, sleepless, his mind dwelt on her affectionately, and he thought that he would like to help her. He realised, quite clearly, that Wilderling was in a very dangerous position, but I don't think that it ever occurred to him for a moment that it would be wise for him to move to another flat.

On the next day, Thursday, Lawrence did not return until the middle of the afternoon. The town was, by now, comparatively quiet again. Numbers of the police had been caught and imprisoned, some had been shot and others were in hiding; most of the machine-guns shooting from the roofs had ceased. The abdication of the Czar had already produced the second phase of the Revolution--the beginning of the struggle between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen and Soldiers'

Deputies, and this was proceeding, for the moment, inside the walls of the Duma rather than in the streets and squares of the town. Lawrence returned, therefore, that afternoon with a strange sense of quiet and security.

"It was almost, you know, as though this tommy-rot about a White Revolution might be true after all--with this jolly old Duma and their jolly old Kerensky runnin' the show. Of course I'd seen the nonsense about their not salutin' the officers and all that, but I didn't think any fellers alive would be such dam fools.... I might have known better."

He let himself into the flat and found there a death-like stillness--no one about and no sound except the tickings of the large clock in the drawing-room.

He wandered into that horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn't know why he was so tired, he had felt quite "bobbish" all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had a bad ache down his spine and his legs were as heavy as lead. He sat in a kind of trance on that sofa, he was not asleep, but he was also, quite certainly, not awake. He wondered why the place was so "beastly still" after all the noise there had been all the week. There was no one left alive--every one dead--except himself and Vera... Vera... Vera.

Then he was conscious that some one was looking at him through the double-doors. At first he didn't realise who it was, the face was so white and the figure so quiet, then, pulling himself together, he saw that it was the old servant.

"What is it, Andre?" he asked, sitting up.

The old man didn't answer, but came into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. Lawrence saw that he was trembling with fright, but was still endeavouring to behave with dignity.

"Barin! Barin!" he whispered, as though Lawrence were a long way from him. "Paul Konstantinovitch! (that was Wilderling). He's mad.... He doesn't know what he's doing. Oh, sir, stop him, stop him, or we shall all be murdered!"

"What is he doing?" asked Lawrence, standing up.

"In the little hack room," Andre whispered, as though now he were confiding a terrible secret. "Come quickly...!"