“Truly, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, “you are a fine host. This is a miserable greeting.”
“There can be no greetings between us ever again,” I answered him. “You are a blackguard. I hope that this is our last meeting.”
“But it is,” he answered, looking at me with friendliness; “that is precisely why I’ve come. I’ve come to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” I repeated with astonishment. This chimed in so strangely with my premonition. “I never was more delighted to hear it. I hope you’re going a long distance from us all.”
“That’s as may be,” he answered. “I can’t tell you definitely.”
“When are you going?” I asked.
“That I can’t tell you either. But I have a premonition that it will be soon.”
“Oh, a premonition,” I said, disappointed. “Is nothing settled?”
“No, not definitely. It depends on others.”
“Have you told Vera and Nicholas?”
“No—in fact, only last night Vera begged me to go away, and I told her that I would love to do anything to oblige her, but this time I was afraid that I couldn’t help her. I would be compelled, alas, to stay on indefinitely.”
“Look here, Semyonov,” I said, “stop that eternal fooling. Tell me honestly—are you going or not?”
“Going away from where?” he asked, laughing.
“From the Markovitches, from all of us, from Petrograd?”
“Yes—I’ve told you already,” he answered. “I’ve come to say goodbye.”
“Then what did you mean by telling Vera—”
“Never you mind, Ivan Andreievitch. Don’t worry your poor old head with things that are too complicated for you—a habit of yours, I’m afraid. Just believe me when I say that I’ve come to say goodbye. I have an intuition that we shall never talk together again. I may be wrong. But my intuitions are generally correct.”
I noticed then that his face was haggard, his eyes dark, the light in them exhausted as though he had not slept. … I had never before seen him show positive physical distress. Let his soul be what it might, his body seemed always triumphant.
“Whether your intuition is right or no,” I said, “this is the last time. I never intend to speak to you again if I can help it. The day that I hear that you have really left us, never to return, will be one of the happiest days of my life.”
Semyonov gave me a strange look, humorous, ironical, and, upon my word, almost affectionate: “That’s very sad what you say, Ivan Andreievitch—if you mean it. And I suppose you mean it, because you English always do mean what you say. … But it’s sad because, truly, I have friendly feelings towards you, and you’re almost the only man in the world of whom I could say that.”
“You speak as though your friendship were an honour,” I said hotly. “It’s a degradation.”
He smiled. “Now that’s melodrama, straight out of your worst English plays. And how bad they can be! … But you hadn’t always this vehement hatred. What’s changed your mind?”
“I don’t know that I have changed my mind,” I answered. “I think I’ve always disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course—but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you’ve been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You’ve set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth. … You deserve hanging, if any murderer ever did!”
He looked at me so mildly and with such genuine interest that I was compelled to feel my indignation a whit melodramatic.
“If you are going,” I said more calmly, “for Heaven’s sake go! It can’t be any pleasure to you, clever and talented as you are, to bait such harmless people as Vera and Nicholas. You’ve done harm enough. Leave them, and I forgive you everything.”
“Ah, of course your forgiveness is of the first importance to me,” he said, with ironic gravity. “But it’s true enough. You’re going to be bothered with me—I do seem a worry to you, don’t I?—for only a few days more. And how’s it going to end, do you think? Who’s going to finish me off? Nicholas or Vera? Or perhaps our English Byron, Lawrence? Or even yourself? Have you your revolver with you? I shall offer no resistance, I promise you.”
Suddenly he changed. He came closer to me. His weary, exhausted eyes gazed straight into mine: “Ivan Andreievitch, never mind about the rest—never mind whether you do or don’t hate me, that matters to nobody. What I tell you is the truth. I have come to you, as I have always come to you, like the moth to the flame. Why am I always pursuing you? Is it for the charm and fascination of your society? Your wit? Your beauty? I won’t flatter you—no, no, it’s because you alone, of all these fools here, knew her. You knew her as no one else alive knew her. She liked you—God knows why! At least I do know why—it was because of her youth and innocence and simplicity, because she didn’t know a wise man from a fool, and trusted all alike. … But you knew her, you knew her. You remember her and can talk of her. Ah, how I’ve hungered, hungered, to talk to you about her! Sometimes I’ve come all this way and then turned back at the door. How I’ve prayed that it might have been some other who knew her, some real man, not a sentimental, gloomy old woman like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. And yet you have your points. You have in you the things that she saw—you are honest, you are brave. … You are like a good English clergyman. But she! … I should have had someone with wit, with humour, with a sense of life about her. All the things, all the little things—the way she walked, her clothes, her smile—when she was cross! Ah, she was divine when she was
