He had drawn quite close to me; he looked like a madman—I have no doubt that, at that moment, he was one.
“I can’t! … I won’t!” I answered, drawing away. “She is the most sacred memory I have in my life. I hate to think of her with you. And that because you smirch everything you touch. I have no feeling of jealousy. …”
“You? Jealousy!” he said, looking at me scornfully. “Why should you be jealous?”
“I loved her too,” I said.
He looked at me. In spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot—my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame—everything was comprehended in the scorn of that glance.
“No,” I said, “you need not suppose that she ever realised. She did not. I would have died rather than have spoken of it. But I will not talk about her. I will not.”
He drew away from me. His face was grave; the mockery had left it.
“Oh, you English, how strange you are! … In trusting, yes. … But the things you miss! I understand now many things. I give up my desire. You shan’t smirch your precious memories. … And you, too, must understand that there has been all this time a link that has bound us. … Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I? … Rather ask, what am I? I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit—what you like. If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at all, Ivan Andreievitch. Perhaps this is a ghost that you see. … What if the town has changed in the night and strange souls have slipped into our old bodies?
“Isn’t there a stir about the town? Is it I that pursue Nicholas, or is it my ghost that pursues myself? Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I follow? … Don’t be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb: ‘There’s a secret city in every man’s heart. It is at that city’s altars that the true prayers are offered.’ There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months.”
He came up to me:
“Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I’m a haunted man, you know.”
He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone.
XII
That Tuesday night poor young Bohun will remember to his grave—and beyond it, I expect.
He came in from his work about six in the evening and found Markovitch and Semyonov sitting in the dining-room. Everything was ordinary enough. Semyonov was in the armchair reading a newspaper; Markovitch was walking very quietly up and down the farther end of the room. He wore faded blue carpet slippers; he had taken to them lately. Everything was the same as it had always been. The storm that had raged all day had now died down, and a very pale evening sun struck little patches of colour on the big table with the fading tablecloth, on the old brown carpet, on the picture of the old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, on Semyonov’s musical-box, on the old knickknacks and the untidy shelf of books. (Bohun looked especially to see whether the musical-box were still there. It was there on a little side-table.) Bohun, tired with his long day’s efforts to shove the glories of the British Empire down the reluctant throats of the indifferent Russians, dropped into the other armchair with a tattered copy of Turgenev’s House of Gentlefolks, and soon sank into a state of half-slumber.
He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing this, of course, from Bohun’s account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front.
“There!” Semyonov would say, pausing. “Now, Nicholas … What do you say to that? A nice state of things. The Colonel was murdered, of course, although our friend the Retch doesn’t put it quite so bluntly. The Novaya Jezn of course highly approves. Here’s another. …” This went on for some ten minutes, and the only sound beside Semyonov’s voice was Markovitch’s padding steps. “Ah! here’s another bit! … Now what about that, my fine upholder of the Russian Revolution? See what they’ve been doing near Riga! It says. …”
“Can’t you leave it alone, Alexei? Keep your paper to yourself!”
These words came in so strange a note, a tone so different from Markovitch’s ordinary voice, that they were, to Bohun, like a warning blow on the shoulder.
“There’s gratitude—when I’m trying to interest you! How childish, too, not to face the real situation! Do you think you’re going to improve things by pretending that anarchy doesn’t exist? So soon, too, after your beautiful Revolution! How long is it? Let me see … March, April … yes, just about six weeks. … Well, well!”
“Leave me alone, Alexei! … Leave me alone!”
Bohun had with that such a sense of a superhuman effort at control behind the words that the pain of it was almost intolerable. He wanted, there and then, to have left the room. It would have been better for him had he done so. But some force held him in his chair, and, as the scene developed, be felt as though his sudden departure would have laid too emphatic a stress on the discomfort of it.
He hoped that in a moment Vera or Uncle Ivan would come and the scene would end.
Semyonov, meanwhile, continued: “What were those words you
