"Will you go away? Leave us all for ever? Will you promise never to return?"

He said in that dreadful quiet sure way of his: "No, I will never go away until you make me."

Vera hates him. I cannot leave her alone with him, can I? I (here there are three lines of illegible writing)... so I will think again and again of that last time when we sat together and all the good things that she said. What greatness of soul, what goodness, what splendour!

And perhaps after all I am a fortunate man to be allowed to be faithful to so fine a grandeur! Many men have poor ambitions, and G.o.d bestows His gifts with strange blindness, I often think. But I am tired, and you too will be tired. Perhaps you have not got so far. I must thank you for your friendship to me. I am very grateful for it. And you, if afterwards you ever think of me, think that I always wished to... no, why should you think of me at all? But think of Russia! That is why I write this.

You love Russia, and I believe that you will continue to love Russia whatever she will do. Never forget that it is because she cares so pa.s.sionately for the good of the world that she makes so many mistakes.

She sees farther than other countries, and she cares more. But she is also more ignorant. She has never been allowed to learn anything or to try to do anything for herself.

You are all too impatient, too strongly aware of your own conditions, too ignorant of hers! Of course there are wicked men here and many idle men, but every country has such. You must not judge her by that nor by all the talk you hear. We talk like blind men on a dark road.... Do you believe that there are no patriots here? Ah! how bitterly I have been disappointed during these last weeks! It has broken my heart... but do not let your heart be broken. You can wait. You are young. Believe in Russian patriotism, believe in Russian future, believe in Russian soul.... Try to be patient and understand that she is blindfolded, ignorant, stumbling... but the glory will come; I can see it shining far away!... It is not for me, but for you--and for Vera... for Vera...

Vera....

Here the letter ended; only scrawled very roughly across the paper the letters N.M....

XIV

As soon as I had finished reading the letter I went to the telephone and rang up the Markovitches' flat. Bohun spoke to me. I asked him whether Nicholas was there, he said, "Yes, fast asleep in the arm-chair," Was Semyonov there? "No, he was dining out that night." I asked him to remind Vera that I was expecting to take her to the meeting next day, and rang off. There was nothing more to be done just then. Two minutes later there was a knock on my door and Vera came in.

"Why!" I cried. "I've just been ringing up to tell you that, of course, I was coming on Monday."

"That is partly what I wanted to know," she said, smiling. "And also I thought that you'd fancied we'd all deserted you."

"No," I answered. "I don't expect you round here every time I'm ill.

That would be absurd. You'll be glad to know at any rate that I've decided to give up these ridiculous rooms. I deserve all the illness I get so long as I'm here."

"Yes, that's good," she answered. "How you could have stayed so long--"

She dropped into a chair, closed her eyes and lay back. "Oh, Ivan Andreievitch, but I'm tired!"

She looked, lying there, white-faced, her eyelids like grey shadows, utterly exhausted. I waited in silence. After a time she opened her eyes and said, suddenly:

"We all come and talk to you, don't we? I, Nina, Nicholas, Sherry (she meant Lawrence), even Uncle Alexei. I wonder why we do, because we never take your advice, you know.... Perhaps it's because you seem right outside everything."

I coloured a little at that.

"Did I hurt you?... I'm sorry. No, I don't know that I am. I don't mind now whether I hurt any one. You know that he's going back to England?"

I nodded my head.

"He told you himself?"

"Yes," I said.

She lay back in her chair and was silent for a long time.

"You think I'm a n.o.ble woman, don't you. Oh yes, you do! I can see you just thirsting for my n.o.bility. It's what Uncle Alexei always says about you, that you've learnt from Dostoieffsky how to be n.o.ble, and it's become a habit with you."

"If you're going to believe--" I began angrily.

"Oh, I hate him! I listen to nothing that he says. All the same, Durdles, this pa.s.sion for n.o.bility on your part is very irritating. I can see you now making up the most magnificent picture of my n.o.bility.

I'm sure if you were ever to write a book about us all, you'd write of me something like this: 'Vera Michailovna had won her victory. She had achieved her destiny.... Having surrendered her lover she was as fine as a Greek statue!' Something like that.... Oh, I can see you at it!"

"You don't understand--" I began.

"Oh, but I do!" she answered. "I've watched your att.i.tude to me from the first. You wanted to make poor Nina n.o.ble, and then Nicholas, and then, because they wouldn't either of them do, you had to fall back upon me: memories of that marvellous woman at the Front, Marie some one or other, have stirred up your romantic soul until it's all whipped cream and jam--mulberry jam, you know, so as to have the proper dark colour."

"Why all this attack on me?" I asked. "What have I done?"

"You've done nothing," she cried. "We all love you, Durdles, because you're such a baby, because you dream such dreams, see nothing as it is.... And perhaps after all you're right--your vision is as good as another. But this time you've made me restless. You're never to see me as a n.o.ble woman again, Ivan Andreievitch. See me as I am, just for five minutes! I haven't a drop of n.o.ble feeling in my soul!"

"You've just given him up," I said. "You've sent him back to England, although you adore him, because your duty's with your husband. You're breaking your heart--"

"Yes, I am breaking my heart," she said quietly. "I'm a dead woman without him. And it's my weakness, my cowardice, that is sending him away. What would a French woman or an English woman have done? Given up the world for their lover. Given up a thousand Nicholases, sacrificed a hundred Ninas--that's real life. That's real, I tell you. What feeling is there in my soul that counts for a moment beside my feeling for Sherry? I say and I feel and I know that I would die for him, die with him, happily, gladly. Those are no empty words.

"I who have never been in love before, I am devoured by it now until there is nothing left of me--nothing.... And yet I remain. It is our weakness, our national idleness. I haven't the strength to leave Nicholas. I am soft, sentimental, about his unhappiness. Pah! how I despise myself.... I am capable of living on here for years with husband and lover, going from one to another, weeping for both of them. Already I am pleading with Sherry that he should remain here. We will see what will happen. We will see what will happen! Ah, my contempt for myself!

Without bones, without energy, without character.

"But this is life, Ivan Andreievitch! I stay here, I send him away because I cannot bear to see Nicholas suffer. And I do not care for Nicholas. Do you understand that? I never loved him, and now I have a contempt for him--in spite of myself. Uncle Alexei has done that. Oh yes! He has made a fool of Nicholas for months, and although I have hated him for doing that, I have seen, also, what a fool Nicholas is!

But he is a hero, too. Make _him_ as n.o.ble as you like, Ivan Andreievitch. You cannot colour it too high. He is the real thing and I am the sham.... But oh! I do not want to live with him any more, I am tired of him, his experiments, his lamentations, his weakness, his lack of humour--tired of him, sick of him. And yet I cannot leave him, because I am soft, soft without bones, like my country, Ivan Andreievitch.... My lover is strong. Nothing can change his will. He will go, will leave me, until he knows that I am free. Then he will never leave me again.

"Perhaps I will get tired of his strength one day--it may be--just as now I am tired of Nicholas's weakness. Everything has its end.

"But no! he has humour, and he sees life as it is. I shall be able always to tell him the truth. With Nicholas it is always lies...."

She suddenly sprang up and stood before me.

"Now, do you think me n.o.ble?" she cried.

"Yes," I answered.

"Ah! you are incorrigible! You have drunk Dostoieffsky until you can see nothing but G.o.d and the moujik! But I am alive, Ivan Andreievitch, not a heroine in a book! Alive, alive, alive! Not one of your Lisas or Annas or Natashas. I'm alive enough to shoot Uncle Alexei and poison Nicholas--but I'm soft too, soft so that I cannot bear to see a rabbit killed... and yet I love Sherry so that I am blind for him and deaf for him and dead for him--when he is not there. My love--the only one of my life--the first and the last--"

She flung out her arms:

"Life! Now! Before it is too late! I want it, I want him, I want happiness!"

She stood thus for a moment, staring out to the sea. Then her arms dropped, she laughed, fastening her cloak--

"There's your n.o.bility, Ivan Andreievitch--theatrical, all of it. I know what I am, and I know what I shall do. Nicholas will live to eighty; I also. I shall hate him, but I shall he in an agony when he cuts his finger. I shall never see Sherry again. Later, he will marry a fresh English girl like an apple.... I, because I am weak, soft putty--I have made it so."

She turned away from me, staring desperately at the wall. When she looked back to me her face was grey.

She smiled. "What a baby you are!... But take care of yourself. Don't come on Monday if it's bad weather. Good-bye."

She went.

After a bad, sleepless night, and a morning during which I dozed in a nightmareish kind of way, I got up early in the afternoon, had some tea, and about six o'clock started out.

It was a lovely evening; the spring light was in the air, the tufted trees beside the ca.n.a.l were pink against the pale sky, and thin layers of ice, like fragments of jade, broke the soft blue of the water. How pleasant to feel the cobbles firm beneath one's feet, to know that the snow was gone for many months, and that light now would flood the streets and squares! Nevertheless, my foreboding was not raised, and the veils of colour hung from house to house and from street to street could not change the realities of the scene.