“Well, how goes it?” I asked.
“Well enough.” He touched his cheek then sucked his fingers. “I must wash. We have a guest tonight. And the news, what’s the latest?”
He always asked me this question, having apparently the firm conviction that an Englishman must know more about the war than a man of any other nationality. But he didn’t pause for an answer—“News—but of course there is none. What can you expect from this Russia of ours?—and the rest—it’s all too far away for any of us to know anything about it—only Germany’s close at hand. Yes. Remember that. You forget it sometimes in England. She’s very near indeed. … We’ve got a guest coming—from the English Embassy. His name’s Boon and a funny name too. You don’t know him, do you?”
No, I didn’t know him. I laughed. Why should he think that I always knew everybody, I who kept to myself so?
“The English always stick together. That’s more than can be said for us Russians. We’re a rotten lot. Well, I must go and wash.”
Then, whether by a sudden chance of light and shade, or if you like to have it, by a sudden revelation on the part of a beneficent Providence, he really did look malevolent, standing in the middle of the dirty little room, malevolent and pathetic too, like a cross, sick bird.
“Vera’s got a good dinner ready. That’s one thing, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said; “and vodka—a little bottle. We got it from a friend. But I don’t drink now, you know.”
He went off and I, going into the other room, found Vera Michailovna giving last touches to the table. I sat and watched with pleasure her calm assured movements. She really was splendid, I thought, with the fine carriage of her head, her large mild eyes, her firm strong hands.
“All ready for the guest, Vera Michailovna?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered, smiling at me, “I hope so. He won’t be very particular, will he, because we aren’t princes?”
“I can’t answer for him,” I replied, smiling back at her. “But he can’t be more particular than the Hon. Charles—and he was a great success.”
The Hon. Charles was a standing legend in the family, and we always laughed when we mentioned him.
“I don’t know”—she stopped her work at the table and stood, her hand up to her brow as though she would shade her eyes from the light—“I wish he wasn’t coming—the new Englishman, I mean. Better perhaps as we were—Nicholas—” she stopped short. “Oh, I don’t know! They’re difficult times, Ivan Andreievitch.”
The door opened and old Uncle Ivan came in. He was dressed very smartly with a clean white shirt and a black bow tie and black patent leather shoes, and his round face shone as the sun.
“Ah, Mr. Durward,” he said, trotting forward. “Good health to you! What excellent weather we’re sharing.”
“So we are, M. Semyonov,” I answered him. “Although it did rain most of yesterday you know. But weather of the soul perhaps you mean? In that case I’m very glad to hear that you are well.”
“Ah—of the soul?” He always spoke his words very carefully, clipping and completing them, and then standing back to look at them as though they were china ornaments arranged on a shining table. “No—my soul today is not of the first rank, I’m afraid.”
It was obvious that he was in a state of the very greatest excitement; he could not keep still, but walked up and down beside the long table, fingering the knives and forks.
Then Nina burst in upon us in one of her frantic rages. Her tempers were famous both for their ferocity and the swiftness of their passing. In the course of them she was like some impassioned bird of brilliant plumages, tossing her feathers, fluttering behind the bars of her cage at some impertinent, teasing passerby. She stood there now in the doorway, gesticulating with her hands.
“Nu, Tznaiesh schto? Michael Alexandrovitch has put me off—says he is busy all night at the office. He busy all night! Don’t I know the business he’s after? And it’s the third time—I won’t see him again—no, I won’t. He—”
“Good evening, Nina Michailovna,” I said, smiling. She turned to me.
“Durdles—Mr. Durdles—only listen. It was all arranged for tonight—the Parisian, and then we were to come straight back—”
“But your guest—” I began.
However the torrent continued. The door opened and Boris Grogoff came in. Instantly she turned upon him.
“There’s your fine friend!” she cried; “Michael Alexandrovitch isn’t coming. Put me off at the last moment, and it’s the third time. And I might have gone to Musikalnaya Drama. I was asked by—”
“Well, why not?” Grogoff interrupted calmly. “If he had something better to do—”
Then she turned upon him, screaming, and in a moment they were at it, tooth and nail, heaping up old scores, producing fact after fact to prove, the one to the other, false friendship, lying manners, deceitful promises, perjured records. Vera tried to interrupt, Markovitch said something, I began a remonstrance—in a moment we were all at it, and the room was a whirl of noise. In the tempest it was only I who heard the door open. I turned and saw Henry Bohun standing there.
I smile now when I think of that moment of his arrival, go fitting to the characters of the place, so appropriate a symbol of what was to come. Bohun was beautifully dressed, spotlessly neat, in a bowler hat a little to one side, a light-blue silk scarf, a dark-blue overcoat. His face wore an expression of dignified self-appreciation. It was as though he stood there breathing blessings on the house that he had sanctified by his arrival. He looked, too, with it all, such a boy that my heart was touched. And there was something good and honest about his eyes.
He may have spoken, but
