"Because you are doing no good here. You are interfering in things of which you have no knowledge. When we met before you interfered, and you must honestly admit that you did not improve things. Now it is even more serious. I must ask you to leave my family alone, Ivan Andreievitch."

"Your family!" I retorted, laughing. "Upon my word, you do them great honour. I wonder whether they'd be very proud and pleased if they knew of your adoption of them. I haven't noticed on their side any very great signs of devotion."

He laughed. "No, you haven't noticed, Ivan Andreievitch. But there, you don't really notice very much. You think you see the devil of a lot and are a mighty clever fellow; but we're Russians, you know, and it takes more than sentimental mysticism to understand us. But even if you did understand us--which you don't--the real point is that we don't want you, any of you, patronising, patting us on the shoulder, explaining us to ourselves, talking about our souls, our unpunctuality, and our capacity for drink. However, that's merely in a general way. In a personal, direct, and individual way, I beg you not to visit my family again. Stick to your own countrymen."

Although he spoke obstinately, and with a show of a.s.surance, I realised, behind his words, his own uncertainty.

"See here, Semyonov," I said. "It's just my own Englishmen that I am going to stick to. What about Lawrence? And what about Bohun? Will you prevent me from continuing my friendship with them?"

"Lawrence... Lawrence," he said slowly, in a voice quite other than his earlier one, and as though he were talking aloud to himself. "Now, that's strange... there's a funny thing. A heavy, dull, silent Englishman, as ugly as only an Englishman can be, and the two of them are mad about him--nothing in him--nothing--and yet there it is. It's the fidelity in the man, that's what it is, Durward...." He suddenly called out the word aloud, as though he'd made a discovery. "Fidelity...

fidelity... that's what we Russians admire, and there's a man with not enough imagination to make him unfaithful. Fidelity!--lack of imagination, lack of freedom--that's all fidelity is.... But I'm faithful.... G.o.d knows I'm faithful--always! always!"

He stared past me. I swear that he did not see me, that I had vanished utterly from his vision. I waited. He was leaning forward, pressing both his thick white hands on the table. His gaze must have pierced the ice beyond the walls, and the worlds beyond the ice.

Then quite suddenly he came back to me and said very quietly,

"Well, there it is, Ivan Andreievitch.... You must leave Vera and Nina alone. It isn't your affair."

We continued the discussion then in a strange and friendly way. "I believe it to be my affair," I answered quietly, "simply because they care for me and have asked me to help them if they were in trouble. I still deny that Vera cares for Lawrence.... Nina has had some girl's romantic idea perhaps... but that is the extent of the trouble. You are trying to make things worse, Alexei Petrovitch, for your own purposes--and G.o.d only knows what they are."

He now spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear his words. He was leaning forward on the table, resting his head on his hands and looking gravely at me.

"What I can't understand, Ivan Andreievitch," he said, "is why you're always getting in my way. You did so in Galicia, and now here you are again. It is not as though you were strong or wise--no, it is because you are persistent. I admire you in a way, you know, but now, this time, I a.s.sure you that you are making a great mistake in remaining. You will be able to influence neither Vera Michailovna nor your bullock of an Englishman when the moment comes. At the crisis they will never think of you at all, and the end of it simply will be that all parties concerned will hate you. I don't wish you any harm, and I a.s.sure you that you will suffer terribly if you stay.... By the way, Ivan Andreievitch," his voice suddenly dropped, "you haven't ever had--by chance--just by chance--any photograph of Marie Ivanovna with you, have you? Just by chance, you know...."

"No," I said shortly, "I never had one."

"No--of course--not. I only thought.... But of course you wouldn't--no--no.... Well, as I was saying, you'd better leave us all to our fate. You can't prevent things--you can't indeed." I looked at him without speaking. He returned my gaze.

"Tell me one thing," I said, "before I answer you. What are you doing to Markovitch, Alexei Petrovitch?"

"Markovitch!" He repeated the name with an air of surprise as though he had never heard it before. "What do you mean?"

"You have some plan with regard to him," I said. "What is it?"

He laughed then. "I a plan! My dear Durward, how romantic you always insist on being! I a plan! Your plunges into Russian psychology are as nave as the girl who pays her ten kopecks to see the Fat Woman at the Fair! Markovitch and I understand one another. We trust one another. He is a simple fellow, but I trust him."

"Do you remember," I said, "that the other day at the Jews' Market you told me the story of the man who tortured his friend, until the man shot him--simply because he was tired of life and too proud to commit suicide. Why did you tell me that story?"

"Did I tell it you?" he asked indifferently. "I had forgotten. But it is of no importance. You know, Ivan Andreievitch, that what I told you before is true.... We don't want you here any more. I tell you in a perfectly friendly way. I bear you no malice. But we're tired of your sentimentality. I'm not speaking only for myself--I'm not indeed. We feel that you avoid life to a ridiculous extent, and that you have no right to talk to us Russians on such a subject. What, for instance, do you know about women? For years I slept with a different woman every night of the week--old and young, beautiful and ugly, some women like men, some like G.o.d, some like the gutter. That teaches you something about women--but only something. Afterwards I found that there was only one woman--I left all the others like dirty washing--I was supremely faithful... so I learnt the rest. Now you have never been faithful nor unfaithful--I'm sure that you have not. Then about G.o.d? When have you ever thought about Him? Why, you are ashamed to mention His name. If an Englishman speaks of G.o.d when other men are present every one laughs--and yet why? It is a very serious and interesting question. G.o.d exists undoubtedly, and so we must make up our minds about Him. We must establish some relationship--what it is does not matter--that is our individual 'case'--but only the English establish no relationship and then call it a religion.... And so in this affair of my family. What does it matter what they do? That is the only thing of which you think, that they should die or disgrace their name or be unhappy or quarrel....

Pooh! What are all those things compared with the idea behind them? If they wish to sacrifice happiness for an idea, that is their good luck, and no Russian would think of preventing them. But you come in with your English morality and sentiment, and scream and cry.... No, Ivan Andreievitch, go home! go home!"

I waited to be quite sure that he had finished, and then I said,

"That's all as it may be, Alexei Petrovitch. It may be as you say. The point is, that I remain here."

He got up from his chair. "You are determined on that?"

"I am determined," I answered.

"Nothing will change you?"

"Nothing."

"Then it is a battle between us?"

"If you like."

"So be it."

I helped him on with his Shuba. He said, in an ordinary conversational tone,

"There may be trouble to-morrow. There's been shooting by the Nicholas Station this afternoon, I hear. I should avoid the Nevski to-morrow."

I laughed. "I'm not afraid of that kind of death, Alexei Petrovitch," I said.

"No," he said, looking at me. "I will do you justice. You are not."

He pulled his Shuba close about him.

"Good-night, Ivan Andreievitch," he said. "It's been a very pleasant talk."

"Very," I answered. "Good-night,"

After he had gone I drew back the blinds and let the moonlight flood the room.

V

I feel conscious, as I approach the centre of my story, that there is an appearance of uncertainty in the way that I pa.s.s from one character to another. I do not defend that uncertainty.

What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of us--myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the Rat himself--was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us, outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the eyes... used against our own human agency, and yet free within that domination for the exercise of our own free will. Have you never felt when you have been swept into the interaction of some group of persons that you were being employed as a part of a figure that without you would be incomplete? The figure is formed.... For an instant it remains, gigantic, splendid, towering above mankind, as a symbol, a warning, a judgement, an ideal, a threat. Dimly you recognise that you have played some part in the creation of that figure, and that living for a moment, as you have done, in some force outside your individuality, you have yet expressed that same individuality more n.o.bly than any poor a.s.sertion of your own small lonely figure could afford. You have been used and now you are alone again.... You were caught up and united to your fellowmen.

G.o.d appeared to you--not, as you had expected, in a vision cut off from the rest of the world, but in a revelation that you shared and that was only revealed because you were uniting with others. And yet your individuality was still there, strengthened, heightened, purified.

And the vision of the figure remains....

When I woke on Sat.u.r.day morning, after my evening with Semyonov, I was conscious that I was relieved as though I had finally settled some affair whose uncertainty had worried me. I lay in bed chuckling as though I had won a triumph over Semyonov, as though I said to myself, "Well, I needn't be afraid of him any longer." It was a most beautiful day, crystal clear, with a stainless blue sky and the snow like a carpet of jewels, and I thought I would go and see how the world was behaving.

I walked down the Morskaia, finding it quiet enough, although I fancied that the faces of the pa.s.sers-by were anxious and nervous. Nevertheless, the brilliant sunshine and the clear peaceful beauty of the snow rea.s.sured me--the world was too beautiful and well-ordered a place to allow disturbance. Then at the corner of the English shop where the Morskaia joins the Nevski Prospect, I realised that something had occurred. It was as though the world that I had known so long, and with whom I felt upon such intimate terms, had suddenly screwed round its face and showed me a new grin.

The broad s.p.a.ce of the Nevski was swallowed up by a vast crowd, very quiet, very amiable, moving easily, almost slothfully, in a slowly stirring stream.

As I looked up the Nevski I realised what it was that had given me the first positive shock of an altered world. The trams had stopped. I had never seen the Nevski without its trams; I had always been forced to stand on the brink, waiting whilst the stream of Isvostchicks galloped past and the heavy, lumbering, coloured elephants tottered along, amiable and slow and good-natured like everything else in that country.

Now the elephants were gone; the Isvostchicks were gone. So far as my eye could see, the black stream flooded the shining way.

I mingled with the crowd and found myself slowly propelled in an amiable, aimless manner up the street.

"What's the matter?" I asked a cheerful, fat little "Chinovnik," who seemed to be tethered to me by some outside invincible force.