Plain enough the reasons for these mistakes that we in England have made over that same Revolution, mistakes made by none more emphatically than by our own Social Democrats. Those who hailed the Revolution as the fulfilment of all their dearest hopes, those who cursed it as the beginning of the damnation of the world—all equally in the wrong. The Revolution had no thought for them. Russian extremists might shout as they pleased about their leading the fight for the democracies of the world—they never even began to understand the other democracies. Whatever Russia may do, through repercussion, for the rest of the world, she remains finally alone—isolated in her Government, in her ideals, in her ambitions, in her abnegations. For a moment the world-politics of her foreign rulers seemed to draw her into the Western whirlpool. For a moment only she remained there. She has slipped back again behind her veil of mist and shadow. We may trade with her, plunge into her politics, steal from her Art, emphasise her religion—she remains alone, apart, mysterious. …
I think it was with a kind of gulping surprise, as after a sudden plunge into icy cold water, that we English became conscious of this. It came to us first in the form that to us the war was everything—to the Russian, by the side of an idea the war was nothing at all. How was I, for instance, to recognise the men who took a leading part in the events of this extraordinary year as the same men who fought with bare hands, with fanatical bravery through all the Galician campaign of two years before?
Had I not realised sufficiently at that time that Russia moves always according to the Idea that governs her—and that when that Idea changes the world, his world changes with it. …
Well, to return to Markovitch. …
VII
I was on the point of setting out for the English Prospect on Saturday evening when there was a knock on my door, and to my surprise Nicholas Markovitch came in. He was in evening dress—rather quaint it seemed to me, with his pointed collar so high, his tailcoat so much too small, and his large-brimmed bowler hat. He explained to me confusedly that he wished to walk with me alone to the church … that he had things to tell me … that we should meet the others there. I saw at once two things, that he was very miserable, that he was a little drunk. His misery showed itself in his strange, pathetic, gleaming eyes, that looked so often as though they held unshed tears (this gave him an unfortunate ridiculous aspect), in his hollow pale cheeks and the droop of his mouth, not petulant nor peevish, simply unhappy in the way that animals or very young children express unhappiness. His drunkenness showed itself in quite another way. He was unsteady a little on his feet, and his hands trembled, his forehead was flushed, and he spoke thickly, sometimes running his words together. At the same time he was not very drunk, and was quite in control of his thoughts and intentions.
We went out together. It could not have been called a fine night—it was too cold, and there was a hint of rain in the air—and yet there is beauty, I believe, in every Russian Easter Eve. The day comes so wonderfully at the end of the long heavy winter. The white nights with their incredible, almost terrifying beauty are at hand, the ice is broken, the new world of sun and flowers is ready, at an instant’s magic word, to be born. Nevertheless this year there was an incredible pathos in the wind. The soul of Petrograd was indeed stirring, but mournfully, ominously. There were not, for one thing, the rows of little fairy lamps that on this night always make the streets so gay. They hang in chains and clusters of light from street to street, blazing in the square, reflected starlike in the canals, misty and golden-veiled in distance. Tonight only the churches had their lights; for the rest, the streets were black chasms of windy desolation, the canals burdened with the breaking ice which moved restlessly against the dead barges. Very strong in the air was the smell of the sea; the heavy clouds that moved in a strange kind of ordered procession overhead seemed to carry that scent with them, and in the dim pale shadows of the evening glow one seemed to see at the end of every street mysterious clusters of masts, and to hear the clank of chains and the creak of restless boards. There were few people about and a great silence everywhere. The air was damp and thick, and smelt of rotten soil, as though dank grass was everywhere pushing its way up through the cobbles and paving-stones.
As we walked Markovitch talked incessantly. It was only a very little the talk of a drunken man, scarcely disconnected at all, but every now and again running into sudden little wildnesses and extravagances. I cannot remember nearly all that he said. He came suddenly, as I expected him to do, to the subject of Semyonov.
“You know of course that Alexei Petrovitch is living with us now?”
“Yes. I know that.”
“You can understand, Ivan Andreievitch, that when he came first and proposed it to me I was startled. I had other things—very serious things to think of just then. We weren’t—we aren’t—very happy at home just now … you know that … I didn’t think he’d be very gay with us. I told him that. He said he didn’t expect to be gay anywhere at this time, but that he was lonely in his flat all by himself, and he thought for a week or two he’d like company. He didn’t expect it would be for very long. No. … He said he was expecting ‘something to happen.’ Something to himself, he said, that would alter his affairs. So, as it
