Nina said, with a little shudder, “Isn’t it quiet, Durdles? As though there were ghosts round every corner.”
“Hope you enjoyed your walk this afternoon,” I said.
“No, it was quiet then. But not like it is now. Let’s walk faster and catch the others up. Do you believe in ghosts, Durdles?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“So do I. Was it true, do you think, about the people being shot at the Nicholas Station today?”
“I daresay.”
“Perhaps all the dead people are crowding round here now. Why isn’t anyone out walking?”
“I suppose they are all frightened by what they’ve heard, and think it better to stay at home.”
We were walking down the Morskaia, and our feet gave out a ringing echo.
“Let’s keep up with them,” Nina said. When we had joined the others I found that they were both silent—Lawrence very red, Vera pale. We were all feeling rather weary. A woman met us. “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski,” she said; “the Cossacks are stopping everybody.” I can see her now, a stout, red-faced woman, a shawl over her head, and carrying a basket. Another woman, a prostitute I should think, came up and joined us.
“What is it?” she asked us.
The stout woman repeated in a trembling, agitated voice, “You aren’t allowed to cross the Nevski. The Cossacks are stopping everybody.”
The prostitute shook her head in her alarm, and little flakes of powder detached themselves from her nose. “Bozhe moi—bozhe moi!” she said, “and I promised not to be late.”
Vera then, very calmly and quietly, took command of the situation. “We’ll go and see,” she said, “what is really the truth.”
We turned up the side street to the Moika Canal, which lay like powdered crystal under the moon. Not a soul was in sight.
There arrived then one of the most wonderful moments of my life. The Nevski Prospect, that broad and mighty thoroughfare, stretched before us like a great silver river. It was utterly triumphantly bare and naked. Under the moon it flowed, with proud tranquillity, so far as the eye could see between its high black banks of silent houses.
At intervals of about a hundred yards the Cossack pickets, like ebony statues on their horses, guarded the way. Down the whole silver expanse not one figure was to be seen; so beautiful was it under the high moon, so still, so quiet, so proud, that it was revealing now for the first time its real splendour. At no time of the night or day is the Nevski deserted. How happy it must have been that night! …
For us, it was as though we hesitated on the banks of a river. I felt a strange superstition, as though something said to me, “You cross that and you are plunged irrevocably into a new order of events. Go home, and you will avoid danger.” Nina must have had something of the same feeling, because she said:
“Let’s go home. They won’t let us cross. I don’t want to cross. Let’s go home.”
But Vera said firmly, “Nonsense! We’ve gone so far. We’ve got the tickets. I’m going on.”
I felt the note in her voice, superstitiously, as a kind of desperate challenge, as though she had said:
“Well, you see nothing worse can happen to me than has happened.”
Lawrence said roughly, “Of course, we’re going on.”
The prostitute began, in a trembling voice, as though we must all of necessity understand her case:
“I don’t want to be late this time, because I’ve been late so often before. … It always is that way with me … always unfortunate. …”
We started across, and when we stepped into the shining silver surface we all stopped for an instant, as though held by an invisible force.
“That’s it,” said Vera, speaking it seemed to herself. “So it always is with us. All revolutions in Russia end this way—”
An unmounted Cossack came forward to us.
“No hanging about there,” he said. “Cross quickly. No one is to delay.”
We moved to the other side of the Moika bridge. I thought of the Cossacks yesterday who had assured the people that they would not fire—well, that impulse had passed. Protopopoff and his men had triumphed.
We were all now in the shallows on the other bank of the canal. The prostitute, who was still at our side, hesitated for a moment, as though she were going to speak. I think she wanted to ask whether she might walk with us a little way. Suddenly she vanished without sound, into the black shadows.
“Come along,” said Vera. “We shall be dreadfully late.” She seemed to be mastered by an overpowering desire not to be left alone with Lawrence. She hurried forward with Nina, and Lawrence and I came more slowly behind. We were now in a labyrinth of little streets and black overhanging flats. Not a soul anywhere—only the moonlight in great broad flashes of light—once or twice a woman hurried by keeping in the shadow. Sometimes, at the far end of the street, we saw the shining, naked Nevski.
Lawrence was silent, then, just as we were turning into the square where the Michailovsky Theatre was he began:
“What’s the matter? … What’s the matter with her, Durward? What have I done?”
“I don’t know that you’ve done anything,” I answered.
“But don’t you see?” he went on. “She won’t speak to me. She won’t look at me. I won’t stand this long. I tell you I won’t stand it long. I’ll make her come off with me in spite of them all. I’ll have her to myself. I’ll make her happy, Durward, as she’s never been in all her life. But I must have her. … I can’t live close to her like this, and yet never be with her. Never alone, never alone. Why is she behaving like this to me?”
He spoke really like a man in agony. The words coming from him in little tortured sentences as though they were squeezed from him desperately, with pain at every breath that he drew.
“She’s afraid of herself, I expect, not of you.”
