Chapter VII: Part III: Intervening in Siberia (3)

The table was littered with bottles of the very best wine, procured from the Admiral’s private cellar, and the expression of my guests became, as they do become under the influence of wine, more impulsive and less amenable to the control of the will. Their will seemed, as the feast proceeded, to become less and less amenable to the authority of the conscience. Kniaz had been drinking cocktails wholesale. He had never tasted one before, and found that his life had been wasted. “They are exquisite,” he said.

“They are,” Sir Hugo said. “They induce one to forget their price.... Oh, no, no! I didn’t mean it in that way, Prince. Do have another cocktail.”

I sat still among my guests, strangely flushed, and the vast sea of Russian life seemed to be closing over me. I saw Fanny Ivanovna talking to Magda Nikolaevna, somewhat timidly perhaps and with undue reserve, but still _talking_! Eisenstein was gleaming with silent satisfaction as he surveyed “the family.” He felt, I think, that he was one of it at last, and now he was all right. Nikolai Vasilievich on more than one occasion addressed Eisenstein as “Moesei Moeseiech” in an amiable if not familiar _sotto voce_. Zina’s mother spoke very eagerly to Sir Hugo about the persecution of the Russian priesthood by the Bolsheviks, but much of her eloquence was lost upon him. Sir Hugo’s knowledge of her language, in spite of his long residence in Russia, was inexplicably remote. When he was asked if he could talk Russian well, he would say “Moderately.” But, as a matter of fact, his ability to express himself in Russian was, I think, confined to hailing a cab in that language by crying out the word “Izvozchik,” and then, seated therein, muttering the word “Poshol!” which he usually mispronounced as “Push off”--both words happily meaning literally the same thing and so adequately similar in sound as to serve his purpose.

General Bologoevski, on my left, was holding forth on the situation.

“Looks pretty hopeless,” I remarked.

“Not a bit of it,” rejoined the General.

“But they are retreating everywhere.”

“On purpose,” said the General.

“But whatever for?”

“Well, there was a conference of generals ... I presume ... who have decided it. I think it a good thing myself.”

“Why?”

“Well ... we’ll entrap them.”

“I am most pessimistic.”

“I am perfectly optimistic--quite certain of victory.”

“Why, General?”

“Denikin.”

“He is advancing very slowly.”

“Ah, but he is about to enter Great Russian territory.”

“Well, what’s there in that?”

“Why,” he explained, “the Great Russians are the only real decent Russians. I am a Great Russian myself.”

I nodded with significance, as if to indicate that this made all the difference in the situation.

Then, once again, Fanny Ivanovna sat silent. Perhaps she thought of her position, insecure and unconventional, disused, no longer wanted; and of her instincts so discordant with her life, her instincts that had always been on the side of respectability, the purity of home life, the sanctity of marriage, and the very things, in fact, that had always been denied her: so much so that in her unstable, questionable position she had yet been stringently insistent on this aspect of their life, and always in her heart was reminded that she had no title to enforce that law, no claim, beyond a doleful craving for the decencies of usage and convention. Perhaps the presence of Nikolai Vasilievich’s two other wives had served to remind her of the painful irony of her life; perhaps the wine affected her with melancholy as it had affected me. Perhaps she pondered on her broken life, her sacrifices that had gone unnoticed; or pictured to herself her eventual return to Germany, the cruel astonishment of those for whom she too had sacrificed her life. And it may have occurred to her, as a belated after-thought in life, that possibly she had been “sat upon” too often and too much.

But no; it was not quite that. There was something fatalistic, and yet almost defiant, in her look. A blend of optimistic resignation. What was it? What was she discovering? Why that smile? It was as though in desperation she had given him full rein and found, to her amazement, that he did not seem to pull as hard as when she held him tight.

I perceived that my dinner-party promised well. I caught Fanny Ivanovna’s eye and raised my glass; and instantly I had her glass refilled. My head began to swim. I discovered an agreeable warmth in my body, and the expression that had come on my face seemed to be getting out of my control. “Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “never mind my expression: I know it is stupid. It has come on of its own accord, and I cannot quite remove it, though I feel that a smile may develop of itself at any moment.”

“Look,” Nina said to Sonia, “how awfully funnily his face changes from smile to seriousness. Look!”

I smiled a drunken smile.

“Look: there again!”

I should have explained here that I had a passion for that white and pasty substance that Russians eat at Easter--paskha, and when I was in Russia I made it my habit to eat it in and out of season. I had a pyramid of considerable dimensions locked up in the safe.... And now, at the close of dinner, the secret was betrayed. A dash was made for it. The guests armed themselves with knives, forks, and spoons and dug into the substance and cleared it away in less than twenty minutes. They then lay moaning and suffering not a little from its effect on their abounding stomachs.

We were jolly, exuberant, self-centred and sentimental. I felt distinctly pleased with myself. I knew not why; that is the secret of good wine. Some people laughed, others after the manner of the Slav were fain to weep; and outside there raged the snowstorm of a Siberian winter night.

Fanny Ivanovna, Magda Nikolaevna, Čečedek, Eisenstein, Nikolai Vasilievich, reclined on sofas and arm-chairs, smoked and sipped liqueurs; and Sonia, Nina, Vera, Zina and her sisters and Baron Wunderhausen made a noise in the adjoining rooms and did wild things with the furniture.

Uncle Kostia stood on the hearth-rug, dazed and very red in the face, and held forth at great length: his Russian soul a reservoir of overflowing feeling. “I feel positively strange,” he said. “I swear I never felt like this before. I nodded, do you know, to some point in an argument with which at the time I happened to agree, and to my great embarrassment I somehow kept on nodding quite in spite of myself, and keep on nodding--do you see me, Fanny Ivanovna?--though the portion of the argument with which I had expressed agreement long died in oblivion. I know it is the wine. It is good wine, and--to make a long story short--I am drunk. But I don’t care. This is an exceptional night. It is a memorable night. Fanny Ivanovna and Nikolai Vasilievich and Magda Nikolaevna, Moesei Moeseiech, Zina, Sonia, Nina, Vera, Kniaz: I swear I never felt so near to you as I do feel to-night. I feel beastly sentimental. I feel that I could howl aloud. I feel that presently I will go round and kiss each one of you in turn. Look into your own hearts. What is the use of pretending? We are all one family and Nikolai Vasilievich, our dearly beloved, much-respected Nikolai Vasilievich, is our parent and guardian. He stood by us well in our hour of need. His task has been an uphill task; but has he complained of us? Not once. He has borne the burden of many families without a sigh of protest. Speaking for myself, we men of letters have to lean for our support on stalwart men like Nikolai Vasilievich, and it is indeed largely on their generous help that art and literature must depend. As you know, we men of letters are no business men, but if as a writer and a student of life and human nature I may presume to give advice: don’t lose courage, Nikolai Vasilievich. Remember, we are all behind you; we shall follow you, if need be, to the end of the earth. Courage, Nikolai Vasilievich! Keep hard at it! Keep hard at it!”

We became agitated. We all spoke at once, perhaps for no other reason than that we had been deprived of speaking for so long. And then, suddenly, we subsided, for on the floor above us, occupied by a Russian family, some one was playing the piano. It was Chopin. We listened to the music and grew still, and our souls were all music as though he had touched their strings. And the house seemed charmed, and the gruff Siberian night looked in through the window and listened in silence.... For his is the grace and sweet melancholy of romance, and his the laughter of silver trumpets, and tears as bright as the dew at dawn. His sorrows are no graver than the sorrow of the gold-red sunset, and his sobs are the sobs of the sea, the echo of the waves weeping on the rocks. And it has all been to him a dream in music, and when we hear it we dream with him....

“And Fanny Ivanovna,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “is now a widow!”

A thought flashed across my brain. “Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “I had meant to ask you what was that funeral procession you all followed yesterday?”

“My husband’s,” she said, and I was struck unpleasantly by her tone of mirth and triumph.

“Eberheim?”

“Yes,” smiled Nikolai Vasilievich; “she is a widow now. A _merry widow_!” And Fanny Ivanovna laughed in a loud and jarring manner. It seemed odd why I had not guessed so obvious a candidate when I had seen the funeral procession pass by my window, and had supposed that the corpse had been some victim of the Gaida outbreak. We all felt that it was the best thing for the man, and nothing more was said on the subject. Eisenstein, in an impossible condition, sang sentimental gipsy songs to his own accompaniment on the piano, and his voice was such that the cat hid itself in the house and could not be found for three days afterwards; and Nikolai Vasilievich was assisting him in a rather timid staccato baritone. Sonia, Nina, Vera, Zina and her sisters, Baron Wunderhausen and I were jazzing in the adjoining room. Fanny Ivanovna and Magda Nikolaevna, seated side by side on the sofa, were discussing, somewhat timidly it seemed, Magda Nikolaevna’s proposal that they should start a millinery establishment together, procuring fashionable “Parisian” hats from Peking and Shanghai and selling them at great profit in Vladivostok; and Zina’s father was sleeping, mouth wide open, in his chair.

IX

She was going along quickly, wrapped in the familiar fur; and it was snowing merrily.

“Nina!”

She turned round and stopped, smiling. And the bright white winter day seemed to be smiling with her. It was the day of the Social Revolutionary _coup d’état_. Early in the morning troops of revolutionary partisans had occupied the city peacefully and taken possession of the public buildings, to wild cheering from the local crowds. The Russian national flag had been hauled down and a red one hoisted in its stead. Processions had appeared with revolutionary banners, and the town was decorated in red. “Have you heard the news?” she said. “Pàvel Pàvlovich, the Baron, has fled to Japan overnight, without telling us a word.”

“Of course, he was in danger of being arrested by the Reds,” I said. “But I suppose he’ll come back some day.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“What does Sonia think?”

“She’s glad.”

“_Glad?_”

“Yes. She was going to leave him herself ... to marry Holdcroft. But now....”

“Now what?”

“But now _he’s_ left her.”

“Well, all the better, then. Saves trouble.”

“It’s ... humiliating.”

We went on together and, nearing home, we cut through masses of new snow. It was one o’clock. The sun shone yellow. She put her hand into my coat pocket. Tender flecks, falling from the sky, would linger on her brows and lashes. We fumbled and wrangled in the snow; and, with that bird-like look of hers, she said, “To-day ... I like you.”

At the American Headquarters dance last night she had been strangely, inexplicably hostile; and Fanny Ivanovna had made it worse by exhorting her to dance with me against her will. And, of course, there were Ward and White and Holdcroft. I remember sitting there that night with a sense of injury. What was the matter? Had I usurped too many of her dances? I felt as a man might feel who in a moment of particular goodwill towards mankind discovers that his watch has been pickpocketed. I said nothing, but strove to put it all into my look. She came up to me, rapturous, delicious. There was about her that night a disquieting, elusive charm. “I told you that I love you. What else do you want?” She said it with just that torturing proportion of smile and earnestness that you could not tell how it was meant: and very likely that was just how it was meant. I remember I ransacked my soul for something stinging. “You can’t love,” I said. “You’re not a woman; you’re a fish.” It is unfair to analyse love-reasoning unless in a similar emotional temperature. The dance over, our coats on, we sat and waited for the car, Nina looking rather sulky.... And to-day what a change the sunshine has wrought!

We reached their house. “Come in,” she said.

“No.”

She went in, took off her coat, and while I lingered, came back and stood on the steps.

“You’ll catch cold like that.”

She shook her head.

“I wish,” said I, “that women would propose to men.... I should love to say, ‘Oh, why can’t we remain just friends?’”

She looked at me. “You would say it to _me_?”

“Jokingly, of course.”

“I shan’t propose then.”

“And if I said it seriously, would you propose then?”

“Yes,” she laughed.

“Aren’t we supposed to be engaged, though?”

“Are we?”

“I think so.”

“We’ll marry but divorce at once,” she said, “and live separately, and meet only once a year.”

And then the door opened and Nikolai Vasilievich said somewhat angrily to me: “Either come inside, or go. She’ll catch cold standing here with nothing on.” And as he vanished he rather slammed the door.

“Go in, Nina, or he’ll be angry.”

“Take no notice of him. None of us take any notice of him. That’s why he is angry.”

“Then I’ll go in,” I said. And we both went in, and heard Fanny Ivanovna saying: “Believe me, Sonia, it’s all for the best. If you like, send him a post-card with ‘Good riddance’ on it. That’s all you need say.” And as I listened, it transpired further--for misfortunes never come alone--that Baron Wunderhausen was not a baron, and not even Wunderhausen.

Sonia was downcast. “What the devil does it matter, anyhow,” argued Nikolai Vasilievich, “above all now that he is gone, whether he is a baron or no baron, Wunderhausen or no Wunderhausen?” But Sonia would not hear of it. That he should have left without telling her a word! That he should have lied to her all these years! Also she had always scoffed at him for his title, thought it ridiculous, almost a deliberate affectation. But now that the truth had been revealed to her and she knew that he had never had a title, she felt that she had been insulted rudely, married under false pretences. Well, she would insist on a divorce; she would take good care that she was the first in the field to insist on it. Holdcroft was extraordinarily attractive. He seemed rather keen on Vera, though. But how beautifully he danced.

And just that moment the gramophone, which Vera was fiddling with, broke loose into an intoxicating one-step. Nina, standing by it, echoed at the end of each refrain--“My-y-y _cell_-ar!” as the music galloped into syncopation.

“Whose is the gramophone?”

It was Olya Olenin’s, the timid “football” little niece of Uncle Kostia.

“There they are!” cried Sonia. Three U.S. naval uniforms appeared in the window.

“If only we had more room here,” sighed Fanny Ivanovna. But how scrupulously clean she kept the little that there was of it.

“_I_’m for ever _blow_-ing bub-_bles_,” hissed the gramophone....

“_Fu_--fu fu fu _fu_--fu fu----” whistled Nikolai Vasilievich. And, forgetful of her prodigal baronial spouse, Sonia dodged the chairs and sofa in the embrace of Holdcroft, while Kniaz sat in his corner seat, a little in the way, and read his paper and sucked sweets.

“You want to go?” Fanny Ivanovna looked at Nikolai Vasilievich with a solicitude that suggested a desire to anticipate his wishes. “All right. We’ll have our tea now. Sonia! Nina! Vera! Tea.”

“There’s no hurry,” he calmed her.

During tea he was hilarious. He had been out in the streets and mixed with the crowds. What hilarious, happy crowds! The change had come about at last. Something would happen _now_. He said he thought it would be a few days only till the thing was finally settled. He meant to go and see some of the new ministers. A quite decent Government, it seemed; and what good order, all things considering. The Social-Revolutionaries had a double platform; they appealed to those who had no use for international militarism on revolutionary grounds, and to those who had no use for revolution on national grounds. And Nikolai Vasilievich thought that such broad-minded, reasonable people could not fail to see his point as regards the gold-mines. I sat listening to him and in my influx of sudden happiness eating more than I really wanted to; for I felt she was _à moi_ once more.

He went out at last, and Fanny Ivanovna shut the door behind him. She looked at me, smiled, and then heaved a little sigh. “I let him do as he pleases,” she said. “Perhaps it’s better so. We’ll see....”

As it darkened we took Olya home, and trailing our feet in the deep snow, carried the uncomfortably heavy gramophone, and marched in various formations, halted, marched again, and then, towards the climax, carried Nina in a burial procession. At the Olenins we danced again, I claiming Nina and the three American boys having to put up with what was “second best.” Madame Olenin, a suckling in a jumper at her breast, stood in the doorway and watched. A ten-years-old military cadet had followed her into the room and also stood in the doorway, in a civilian overcoat, and gaped at us. “Our Peter,” said she, “is a loyal little monarchist and refuses to take off his shoulder-straps in spite of the Red _coup d’état_.” The maternal hand stroked the offspring’s hair in a tender gesture. “But I made him put on this civilian overcoat on top. It isn’t safe, you know.”

I came up and cuddled little Fanny in a rather inefficient fashion and lavished unmitigated praise, as is the classic way when talking to a mother of her babe. And then little Fanny, as is the classic way with babies, for no apparent cause, began howling, howling without rhyme or reason. I was made to play the piano, and I was pleasantly aware that Nina advertised me and showed me off as though I was her own special merchandise. The snow in the yard was pink from the sun as we jumped about on the sofa. She took water in her mouth and blew it out into my face, whereon I got her into a corner and slapped her hard, while the others looked on in amusement. She was trying to bite my hands; and then as we went out she _would_ insist on fastening my overcoat.

The others trailed behind, and we could hear their laughter growing fainter as we walked ahead. The snow creaked agreeably beneath our feet. It was five o’clock and there were the first signs of twilight. We passed the sombre silhouette of their little wooden house. Oh, how sad were these things in the winter.... Darkness was swiftly setting in. We crossed the wood. The tall pine-trees, covered with a thick coating of snow, stood mute and dreaming in the twilight; only their peaks moved ever so gently to and fro, murmuring some vague complaint.

Then, suddenly, we came out into the open and saw the sea. Clad in an armour of ice, it was as smooth as a mirror. Here and there a monstrous snow-covered lump rose from the surface. The sky was grey and fretful and darkness fell upon us with every minute. The sun, as it set, slowly cast a feeble red flame on the sea chained in ice, and the crescent moon spread a yellow light over the surface, glimmering in varied colours on the ice, the snow, the glaciers. The wind strengthened and the frost pricked at my ears.

“Say something! Say something!”

“What shall I say?”

“Why, you’re worse than Kniaz!” I exclaimed.

She smiled.

“Say that the sea is a dazzling sight, that the moon is ... well, anything you like, that the sun is red copper.”

She looked as though all this was nothing, but she alone was real. “Why falsify the tone? It’s there: I can see it.”

“Is this not beautiful then? You’re an amazing creature! One doesn’t know which side to get hold of you. I talk to you about ... about ... _this_” (a florid gesture to the sea). “You tell me it is false.”

“_This_” (an imitative florid gesture) “is all right. But please don’t talk about it to me.”

She was silent.

“I liked you this morning,” she said then. “But _now_----!”

“You see, the trouble is,” said I, “that you can’t talk of anything but fox-trots.”

“Last night at the American dance,” she said, “I danced with Ward.”

“I know, I saw you,” I said in a tone of condemnation.

“He’s very nice; I like him; but I can’t talk of anything to him. He asked me, ‘Do you like fox-trots?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And when later on we danced the waltz, he said, ‘Do you like waltzes?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said. ‘I like them too.’”

“There you are!” I cried triumphantly. “You’ve got to stick to me and sack all the rest!”

“You are nice,” she said, “and there are days when I like you--though _you_ never know when they are. But ... I can’t talk to you.”

And she added, “I am going home.”

The sun contracted and grew more red and feeble as the moon shone brighter and cast an even yellow light upon the space around us. Fretful fantastic shadows flitted across the ice. Objects about us grew black. Darkness was now hard upon us.

We returned by moonlight that glimmered on the snow.

X

Six weeks elapsed, and the snow was melting in the valley. When the sun appeared behind the trees the birches, steeped in water, had that silvery appearance which is beautiful beyond measure. Spring was in the air.

It was a dinner, a formal, drunken, tedious affair that I must needs attend. I sat between General Bologoevski and a British flag-lieutenant, who had fallen in love with Nina at first sight and now drank in greedily everything I had to say about her. In this building, not so long ago, other men had met their death. At each _coup d’état_ this house had been besieged. Fugitives had taken shelter in these rooms. Even on this sofa a body had been stabbed to death. And now we revelled noisily. The dark, dark night of early spring was a breathing, watching presence. The bare white-plastered walls seemed to prick their ears.

What has happened? Nothing. The nights were drawing in. The three sisters had gone to a dance. And so had Ward, White and Holdcroft. When now I called on them, more often I would find the older folks alone. How melancholy, but strangely fascinating, were these evenings: this gathering of souls dissatisfied with life, yet always waiting patiently for betterment: enduring this unsatisfactory present because they believed that this present was not really _life_ at all: that _life_ was somewhere in the future: that _this_ was but a temporary and transitory stage to be spent in patient waiting. And so they waited, year in, year out, looking out for _life_: while life, unnoticed, had noiselessly piled up the years that they had cast away promiscuously in waiting, and stood behind them--while they still waited....

What Nikolai Vasilievich actually waited for was best known to himself. His hopes had been built up on the assumption of a sudden recovery of his gold-mines, a possibility he connected somehow with political developments in the Far East. It would not be fair to examine critically the grounds he had for this ambitious expectation, from any rational standpoint. Nikolai Vasilievich had built up enchanted castles of a rare magnitude and beauty upon this somewhat flimsy and elusive foundation; and he could not have now examined this foundation with an open mind without ruining his dreams. And Nikolai Vasilievich had further committed himself to the continued sustaining of illusions by identifying in his mind certain definite promises of a financial nature that he had made to Zina and her people, his daughters, Fanny Ivanovna, his wife and Kniaz, with his dreams, indeed in such a manner that his dreams had become vital realities to them; and this important consideration had served the further purpose of giving his dreams all the more the appearance of realities. He had private doubts, of course; but he brushed them aside in a manly manner: he could not afford to do otherwise. He waited for political changes. He was not clear in his mind as to what particular political changes would serve his purpose. He did not know. He was wise enough to know that in conditions so complex and multitudinous as those in Siberia there was no telling which particular political combination would affect his gold-mines favourably. Moreover, he did not want to know. He did not want to know because he felt that if he knew, his happiness henceforth must needs depend on the single chance of that particular political combination, alone likely to affect his gold-mines favourably, coming into power; rather did he like to think that his happiness depended on _any kind_ of change on the political horizon--a more than likely possibility.

At last he saw hopeful signs. The Social Revolutionary partisans had occupied the city, and from day to day he waited for an indication of their attitude towards his gold-mines. This indication came to hand at last when they called for him and put him into prison for having taken part in that lamentable punitive expedition of which, as a matter of fact, he was the chief victim. His term of imprisonment, unpleasant as it was, had yet served the good purpose of further cementing his multitudinous family. His daughters, Zina, Čečedek, Kniaz, Fanny Ivanovna, his wife, Eisenstein, Uncle Kostia, Zina’s father, and the book-keeper Stanitski, all met in their frequent calls in the cell of the bread-winner.

On dragged the dinner. General Bologoevski at my side was telling me that he was at heart a democrat, that he sincerely wished to see a government that was more democratic than the old “damrotten government” under the Czar. Yes, his heart, he said, was democratic, and even when he was in Tokio he could not suffer himself, yes, he could not suffer himself (he put his hands upon his heart), big and strong as he was, to be pulled by a dwarf slave. So he placed the coolie in his riksha and pulled the man himself. And yesterday he went with his own Chink cook to a Chinese theatre and sat out the whole performance in an incredible atmosphere. Now was that not democracy? And if it wasn’t, well, he questioned what democracy really was. He did his bit. What else did the people want? They were never satisfied.

And then that unknown quantity, that strange old man Sir Hugo, fired off a jewel. Sitting opposite, I could hear a Captain of the U.S. Navy talking of the decline of discipline; to which Sir Hugo answered in his heckling manner, “Well, Captain Larkin, I don’t think I can agree with you, and I should be inclined, if you’ll allow me, to suggest to you that your people are not as disciplined as our men, or, should I say, they have not had the same experience of discipline.”

“Well, may be yes; may be no,” said the other. “It seems, though, Sir H_ugo_, they have done about equally well in the war, anyhow.”

Whereon Sir Hugo was convulsed with merriment. “Splendid fellow, Captain Larkin! Good. Very good. Splendid! Ha, ha, ha, ha! You’re a diplomat, Captain Larkin, you know. Oh, yes, you are. Very clever, very diplomatic indeed. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I notice you use just the right word. Ha, ha, ha, ha! You say ‘it _seems_.’ You’re not _committing_ yourself, now are you, eh?”

Captain Larkin ate his fish in silence. What was the world indeed coming to?

On dragged the dinner. The black panes of the big bare windows stared unflinchingly. Yes, the three sisters had gone to a dance with the three American boys; and I could picture to myself that other private little dance when I had quarrelled with her deliberately, to bring matters to a head, to know where I stood. But the quarrel had not “come off,” and her attitude was as ever unintelligibly vague. Then I sat there and watched her outline--what a girl!--and her side-long, bird-like look....

In came two Italian tenors, fingering their guitars. We leaned back in our chairs, watched the cigar smoke descend on the wine, listened how the southern mellow voices defied the breaking rigour of the night of early spring.

“To-morrow,” said the Flag-Lieutenant, “at 7.30 comes the ice-breaker, and off we barge into the open.”

“To-o-re-e-_ador_----! To-o-rrre-ado-o-o-o-_or_! Tam-tram-taram-tam----”

“Two vermouths!”

“That’s the stuff to give ’em!”

Hand upon heart, the singers emptied the glasses.

“Stenka Razin! Stenka Razin! The Russian robber song,” enjoined the table.

“_Ah! je ne connais pas, messieurs._”

And we sang the Russian robber song as best we could, and the Italianos both joined in as soon as they had got the hang of it. Dinner over, we sat about anyhow, and another soloist, a Hungarian prisoner of war, half-wailed, half-sobbed a Russian song that ended with the desperate refrain of “Never, never, _never_, never ... never....” The Russian General’s eyes blinked in the cigar smoke. “What’s that play, you remember--‘Those are not tears: it’s the juice of my soul. The juice of my soul....’” Then the old Hawaian band--we had been well provided for that evening--played “_Tell me_,” by request.

“They played this at that dance,” said the Flag-Lieutenant. “To-morrow at 7.30 we’re off. I wonder if we shall ever come back.”

“Those are not tears: it’s the juice of my soul....”

As we passed into the ante-room, the company was getting rowdy. A French Colonel, cigar in mouth, was throwing gramophone records on the floor, as though they were quoits, adding, with a blissful side-long smile at me, “_Les disques!_” Somebody had released the gramophone, and a rowdy one-step was the result. Cocktails, wine, liqueurs, whisky ... 7.30, the ice-breaker, the juice of my soul, never, never, _les disques_.... Like dregs, they had been stirred from the bottom, swam up and began to flow hither and thither with the rolling of the tide. Abrupt impressions crowd my brain. Nina. Spring. A trip by motor to the Garden City. We lose our way. A bearded student of the intellectual brand offers to see us through, gets in next to the chauffeur and directs him, but presently loses his way too. “This hill,” says he, as if to justify himself, “used to be on the right bank of the river.” “Heaven knows what’s happened to it,” say I. She laughs. Oh, how she laughs! We arrive at last--and, oh! horror! We meet her father and Zina. We lunch at the new Casino restaurant. The old proprietor shakes his clients by the hand respectfully, but bullies the waiters. It is Sunday. The sunlit sea, too, has a festive, leisurely appearance. We walk into a public park with the notice “Cattle and Other Ranks not admitted.” Supper at the Casino restaurant. When evening comes the bullied waiters, conscious of the approach of the Red Army, demand a share in the profits in addition to their wage. The old proprietor shouts louder than he would and looks to the public for moral support. “None of your Bolshevism here, please!” he shouts, putting on in emphasis what he lacks in weight; and they can all feel that he is frightened of them. We talk to two Russian soldiers. One of them has never heard of Admiral Kolchak. “You fool,” says the other, “he’s that English General who gives you clothing.” We return in the early evening. The sky is flushed; the _datchas_ steeped in foliage. The seaway sunlit route. Pink light everywhere. The approach of summer, the feeling that we should act in unison with nature, and the crushing, curbing sense that we dare not--oh! for so many reasons. The waiting, the suspension of plans owing, among other things, to the civil war. The prevailing Russian atmosphere--chronic uncertainty. The wild flowers in the grass at the road-side. The American regimental dance that night. She looks at me, sits near me. I help her on with her coat; then to step into the car. And the nocturnal moonlit journey homeward.... Youth! Her splendid, wonderful youth. How trivial, how great. How much, how little. That’s how we live. A flash here; a scent there. It’s gone, and it’s the devil to recapture....

The big black window-panes still stare at you indecently; that’s why somebody throws a bottle through them. The gramophone shoots painful memories through my feverish brain. Now she is dancing with them.... They are playing rugger with a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. Oh! the pictures. Somebody has set a match to the imitation palm-tree. Good job! And somebody else has poured a bottle of whisky into the piano. Uproarious shouts. A fat, flabby Major stands on the table, shouting “Charing Cross. All change here!” and then begins to sell the furniture by auction and imitate a Bolshevik speaker all in the same breath. I am dragged up on the table. Shouts of “Speech! Speech!” My mouth begins to move but the voice seems to be coming out of an empty barrel; both I and they seem some one else. The table begins to sway like a ship--a pendulum--and I feel that I am being supported on my legs only by some outward spirit. _Les disques._ The juice of my soul. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I laugh feebly but awfully funnily, as I am being carried out under the arms. My room. Never, _never_.... Oh!... The bed is a merry-go-round, a spindle. I dash out on to the floor. The floor revolves the other way. Damn! Somebody ties a wet handkerchief round my head, and says, “You’re a brick.... Nina. _Les disques_.... Youth.... Your splendid, wonderful youth....”

XI

That evening I called on them to say good-bye, for we were leaving on the morrow. The occasion coincided with the release of Nikolai Vasilievich from prison, following on the seizure of the fortress by the Japanese. Already through the windows there gazed the evening of early spring. The church bells on that Easter Sunday, the most festal day in the year, rang dolefully through the Christian city seized by a heathen yellow race, and spoke of better days.

There had been another night of firing. The headquarters of the Russian Zemstvo had been fiercely bombarded in the night. Then when at last the building was stormed by Japanese troops they found, to their amazement, that there was no one there. General Bologoevski, who had been attached of late to the Russian Staff, discovered on the morrow that he had lost yet another government overnight. Down came the red flag and up went the flag of the Rising Sun. Russian prisoners tied to their Korean colleagues were being led through the streets on a rope, like cattle. Then, these lives wasted, this damage done, “their honour satisfied,” as said the Nippon officers, they turned to the scattered government and invited them to return to their shattered offices and resume their interrupted duties. And Nikolai Vasilievich, released from prison, was inclined to think that the little Nippons were, on the whole, good fellows.

Fanny Ivanovna and he, alone in the house, were about to have tea. The canary in the cage seemed livelier at the approach of spring. The cat was growing fatter. The samovar could not be made to work. Nikolai Vasilievich, dressed up in a morning-coat, put on white leather gloves and blackened them considerably as he grappled inefficiently with the large insurgent samovar that blew up columns of black smoke in the little hall; while Fanny Ivanovna, as usual, shouted advice to him from the adjoining room that really only served to annoy him.

“Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said, “he won’t be long. Well, Nikolai,” she shouted, “can you manage it? Andrei Andreiech is _waiting_ for his tea.”

“Shut up!” came his angry voice amid angry, recalcitrant hissing.

“Nikolai! Please! What will Andrei Andreiech think of you?”

There was no _kulich_, no _paskha_. But Fanny Ivanovna had done up the table as well as she could for the occasion; and there was something pathetic about the poor results she had attained compared with the lustre of pre-war Easter-week in Petersburg. We sat at table, and no one spoke. Nikolai Vasilievich was sad. Was he sad because he had returned from prison to something that was only prison in a mitigated form? Was it that the suspense had been too long, that he had succumbed in the waiting? Was it that he had suddenly, secretly, for no particular reason, on the eve of great changes, lost faith in the recovery of his mines? Or was it just reaction, the unexpectedness of his release? How much the one, how much the other, who can tell? The emotion of the soul is an elusive thing. There is a subtlety about the moods that bears no introspection. These nights in early spring in Vladivostok are so intolerably sad that oft-times one might weep for no other reason than that life was passing untouched, unrealized, a drudgery with but a gleam of beauty....

Only later in the evening it transpired from his conversation that he hesitated. He hesitated what to do. His mind was in a state of perplexity and doubt. His finances were coming to an end. Should they all follow Baron Wunderhausen to Yokohama on the off-chance that he has secured some post there? But he remembered that the Baron was not a baron, and not even Wunderhausen, and he felt that he would be safer not to count on him. They might follow the Admiral to England, as the Russian General was doing; or remain with Eisenstein in Vladi, who was beginning to succeed as a dentist here--there was a dearth of them--and wait till the mines materialize? Perhaps he had better wait. Things seemed to be moving now at last, and perhaps there was more hope now than there had been hitherto.

After supper the Admiral and Sir Hugo came to say good-bye. Also, gradually, the family collected. The room was now full of people. The talk, as ever, lapsed into politics. The Russians have a habit of suspecting the “Allies” of unheard-of calumnies, so much so in fact that even the surprising attitude of innocence adopted by the allied representatives, who sincerely know no better, seems a fairer statement of the true position. The incentive to bloodshed in this miserable Russian business, as in fact the incentive to all murder, is not so much a matter of wanton wickedness as wanton ignorance: a metaphysical confusion of motive: a chaos of the mind: a matter of muddled ethics. It is an integral part of Russian hospitality that they blackguard an “ally” to his face for the “calumnious machinations” practised by his Government in foreign affairs. The amusing thing about it is that this blackguarding is so deplorably inconsistent. One is apt to be shouted down for the “betrayal” of Kolchak, the “annexation” of the Caucasus, and the starvation by blockade by one’s host, who will have it that all these diabolical acts have been deliberately designed by Mr. Lloyd George in order to “humiliate” Russia for her early exit from the war. But really all this angry denunciation is almost meant as a compliment: to show how much they like you personally despite your racial blackguardism, which they take for granted. Thus accosted, one is apt to become heated, stick up for the Government of one’s country, and overstate facts. The room becomes a bear-garden.

Eisenstein opened the attack. “Your allied diplomats,” he said, “are hopeless. Some months ago I had occasion to see one of these worthy representatives of the diplomatic corps on behalf of a number of Jews that were in danger of being massacred by Kolchak’s officers. The diplomat, my client, by the way, was a marvellous linguist, a wonderful specimen of humanity. There he sat before me, maintaining a most distressing silence in twenty-eight foreign languages. ‘I beg of you to intercede,’ I said, ‘to prevent their being massacred. I entreat you, sir, to protest.’

“‘My dear Mr. Eisenstein,’ he said at last, ‘how can I protest--before they are killed? I want facts to go upon. I cannot act before I have facts. Facts, Mr. Eisenstein, facts!’

“‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘you will have _deadly_ facts, if you are satisfied to wait at all.’

“‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I am not going to risk my reputation for flimsy rumours of this kind. I have been a diplomat now for thirty-six years, and never once in my career, sir, have I said anything that ... well, could be misconstrued ... to mean something. And I am certainly not going to revise my methods now.’ And that was all I got out of him.”

“You Allies,” said Uncle Kostia, “have no sense of humour. I’m a sedentary worker, a man of letters, no fighting man in any sense. I sit in my room all day and watch your intervention through the window, so to speak. And it amuses me to see how you are fussing over us and always in the wrong direction, running about like clowns in a circus. A naval gentleman of yours will arrive at the port, fresh and raw from the high seas, and will be moved to request enlightenment from his more experienced colleagues on this rather elementary question: ‘Who is Kolchak? Is he a Bolshevik?’ He will be corrected in his erroneous supposition; and then, a week later, he will begin to dabble in Russian politics and will undertake brief excursions along the coast and fire now and then, somewhat promiscuously, at groups of villagers, whom in his simplicity he believes to be Bolsheviks--boom--boom--boom--boom! He will set them flying in all directions, perhaps kill a cow or so. After such a trip he will return to port, cheery and in good spirits; and after some little while the scattered villagers will return to their village, consume the cow, and resume their interrupted occupations.... Wonderful minds you have! You will prop up some half-witted general and send in stores of clothing and munitions. And the fruit of it? The Bolshevik divisions wearing British uniforms with royal buttons, and the Bolshevik minority in Moscow nationally strengthened in the face of foreign enemies. I sit at my window, writing, reading, and the news dribbles through: ‘Omsk fallen. Kolchak shot. Allies packing up.’ It seems ... silly.”

“Quite,” said the book-keeper Stanitski. It was a curious thing that the book-keeper Stanitski should not have been seen in Nikolai Vasilievich’s household till the absence of finances in the firm of Nikolai Vasilievich provided him with nothing to record. Nikolai Vasilievich still went to his office every afternoon to talk things over with Stanitski and possibly to keep up the feeling that he was still a business man; and sometimes Zina would come and see him at his office. Stanitski was glad of these visits; for he would then drop the paper he had been reading--there was absolutely nothing to do--and take part in their conversation. As business gradually dribbled down to nothing, one felt that the book-keeper Stanitski was becoming less of an employee and more of a friend and hanger-on. He was absolutely indispensable to Nikolai Vasilievich, for Stanitski was an optimist.

“Kolchak was impulsive and well-meaning,” said Eisenstein, “but unfortunate in his selection of a task. He dismissed General Ditrich, who wanted to give up Omsk to save the Army, and replaced him by General Saharov, who undertook to keep Omsk; whereon General Saharov lost both Omsk and the Army.”

“You Jews,” said the Admiral, “are all damned Bolsheviks.” When the Admiral spoke of Jews he was filled with anger and, curiously, his face assumed a kind of Semitic expression.

“I wasn’t, Admiral,” he said. “I might be one now. There may be a gleam of hope there at least. There’s none here.”

“_I_ wasn’t one,” said Kniaz, his eyes and nostrils flaming with passion, “till you Allies made me one!” The room grew still. We all turned round and stared at him. He had come in an hour or so ago, said nothing and consumed a box of chocolates all by himself. For twenty years or more he had said nothing. We felt that he had had ample time to think deep thoughts: and there at last he was pouring them out: giving us the benefit of all these years of silent contemplation: releasing the compressed fervour of his humiliated and down-trodden patriotism.

“Kniaz! Kniaz!” cried Fanny Ivanovna in alarm. “Kniaz!”

But there was no stopping him. He spoke with the tremor and vehemence of a man who had held his tongue for twenty years. He overwhelmed us with surprise, but he seemed no less overwhelmed himself, flushed and marvelling at what was the matter with him. “Why I personally object to your meddling in our affairs,” he cried, “is because it implies the impression as if you could manage your own.” Fearful, flaming words spat from his fiery mouth. “Ireland. India. Egypt.” Etc., etc, etc.

An Admiral contradicted by an adult person not subject to Naval regulations is a man at a disadvantage.

“They are just a pack of damned Bolsheviks, the lot of them, that’s all they are,” said he.

“Jew-led, I suppose,” laughed Eisenstein.

“The Russian question,” said the Admiral, “is a very big question, and I do not propose to discuss it here.”

“You have made it into a big question,” they all shouted, “because you had not the imagination to foresee how it would grow into a big question when it was yet a little one.”

“I wonder,” said the Admiral, “if you have held these views consistently throughout the revolution, if you had always been opposed to our help?”

“Well,” said Kniaz, “when I thought you would back up a moderate democratic party I was at least more hopeful of the issue.”

“_Which_ ‘moderate party,’ pray?”

“Avksentiev’s Government. The Directorate.”

“Oh, those!” scoffed the Admiral. “They weren’t much good. They did not believe in armies, and fighting, and that sort of thing.”

Kniaz looked up at him and pondered over the Admiral’s uniform and probably thought that fighting, for the gallant sailor, was really an end in itself. And Kniaz concluded with the words: “And now having thoroughly muddled up our issues, you leave us to the tender mercies of the Japanese.” But Sir Hugo, conceiving that they were arguing beside the point, snatched that phrase from him and stepped in between them with much dignity. He must have felt that the occasion called for a clear brain like his own to clear the misunderstanding.

“I think, Prince Borisov” (and we all stared at Kniaz: it was indeed characteristic that Sir Hugo should be the first to know the Prince’s name), “that you are totally mistaken as to the object of the Allies in Siberia. You use that most unfortunate word ‘invasion.’ There was no question of ‘invasion.’ Our sole object in coming out to Russia, and the Admiral will confirm it, was to establish one indivisible national Russia by creating one strong united Russian Army--and that object, I am glad to say, we have now achieved.”

“One national Russia! Excuse me, but--but--but--but if there is any national Russia to-day it is all on the other side. As for the Russian Army, the only Russian Army now is the Bolshevik Army. The others have all melted away.”

“Ho! Kniaz is a Bolshevik!” cried Fanny Ivanovna.

“Ho! ho!” cried the others.

“I will not argue about details, Prince Borisov. I am not a biologist and I don’t dissect. And I don’t propose to be dragged into pedantic microscopic analysis as to which is the particular political party to which the army, for the moment, swears allegiance. I am satisfied that it is a strong _Russian_ Army, which it has been our object to create. And I will now say good-bye to you, and I will ask you to accept my very best wishes for the welfare of your great country, sir, and your personal welfare, too. Good-bye.”

The Admiral and Sir Hugo then vanished with Nikolai Vasilievich, and Fanny Ivanovna went after them into the little hall to see them out, while I remained behind.

“Sonia! Vera! Nina!” came from Fanny Ivanovna. “How dark! Light the _elektrichno_!”

“Why don’t you tell her,” I said to the three sisters, “that it is not ‘_elektrichno_,’ but ‘_elektrichestvo_’?”

“We’ve told her hundreds of times,” they replied in unison, “but she will have it her own way ‘_elektrichno_’ and ‘_elektrichno_.’”

The Admiral’s departure had set the ball spinning. Very soon the bulk of them was gone. And then the incredible happened. The three American boys arrived and took the three sisters to a dance. And on the eve of my departure! I heard their laughing voices in the street, as the door closed upon them. That settled it. How they enjoyed themselves! How they enjoyed life! As for me, I would have to go home and pack.... That settled it.

I sat alone with Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna.

“Wasn’t Kniaz great?” said Nikolai Vasilievich.

“Who could have expected such eloquence from Kniaz?” said Fanny Ivanovna.

“Last night,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz sat alone and drank. They were quite drunk when I got home.” And he laughed in a sad, kindly manner.

“We only had a little port,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “Kniaz drank but said nothing. He _is_ a funny man. He bought some live chickens, and he keeps telling me every day at supper that he will bring me fresh eggs as soon as the chicks grow up and begin to lay. His contribution, you see, to the supper he consumes here! The chickens have had time to grow into old hens--but the eggs are not forthcoming. And when I say to him, ‘Kniaz, what about these eggs?’ he answers in a tone as though I had wronged him, ‘But, Fanny Ivanovna, they are only chickens yet.’”

“He is always borrowing money from me,” said Nikolai Vasilievich, “and he owes me many hundred thousand roubles--we have lost count, what with the exchange!--and two days ago he borrowed forty roubles just to pay his cab. He plays cards all day, and yesterday he won twenty thousand roubles; and when Fanny Ivanovna suggested that he should pay me back, at any rate some of his debt, he gave me back the forty roubles!” Nikolai Vasilievich smiled again in a sad and kindly manner. What beautiful and kindly eyes he had....

And then we talked of Petersburg and the old days, of pre-war Easter, and their charming house in the Mohovaya.

“And do you remember the _Three Sisters_, Nikolai Vasilievich?”

“Don’t I! I was so wild that night because I had to miss an appointment I had made with Zina. Oh, I was so wild that night....” He looked at his watch.

“Well!” he said, and rose, yawning. “I’ve got to go.”

He put on his coat, for the night was fresh and damp, and his goloshes, as the roads were muddy. We heard the door close on him as he went out.

“Always going to Zina’s?”

“Yes,” said Fanny Ivanovna. “But it’s quite all right. They play cards there every night.” And then added for further reassurance: “He is passionately fond of cards ... and it keeps him occupied....”

“And do you remember that other play ... at the Saburov?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.... Oh, what was the ending of that play? We had to leave before the end. I was curious how it would end. But I think you stayed to the last?”

“Yes.... She is waiting for him to come back to her. She is waiting confidently because he has left his silk hat on the table. So she is waiting. But his valet comes and takes the hat; and she breaks down--and curtain!”

“Oh,” she said.

“Nikolai Vasilievich liked it,” I observed.

“Did he like it?”