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 armchair,” 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 anyone. 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 noble woman, don’t you. Oh yes, you do! I can see you just thirsting for my nobility. It’s what Uncle Alexei always says about you, that you’ve learnt from Dostoevsky how to be noble, 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 passion for nobility on your part is very irritating. I can see you now making up the most magnificent picture of my nobility. 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 attitude to me from the first. You wanted to make poor Nina noble, 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 someone 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 noble woman again, Ivan Andreievitch. See me as I am, just for five minutes! I haven’t a drop of noble 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
