I went up to him. “Semyonov,” I said, “I want a word with you, if I may—”
“Certainly,” he said, with that irritating smile of his, as though he knew exactly of what I was thinking.
We moved up the dark stairs. As we went I heard Vera’s clear, calm voice:
“Will you see us home, Mr. Lawrence? … I think it’s quite safe to go now.”
We stopped on the first floor under the electric light. There were two easy-chairs there, with a dusty palm behind them. We sat down.
“You haven’t really got anything to say to me,” he began.
“Oh yes, I have,” I said.
“No … You simply suggested conversation because Vera asked you to do so.”
“I suggested a conversation,” I answered, “because I had something of some seriousness to tell you.”
“Well, she needn’t have been afraid,” he went on. “I wasn’t going home with them. I want to stop and watch these ridiculous people a little longer. … What had you got to say, my philosophical, optimistic friend?”
He looked quite his old self, sitting stockily in the chair, his strong thighs pressing against the cane as though they’d burst it, his thick square beard more wiry than ever, and his lips red and shining. He seemed to have regained his old self-possession and confidence.
“What I wanted to say,” I began, “is that I’m going to tell you once more to leave Markovitch alone. I know the other day—that alone—”
“Oh that!” he brushed it aside impatiently. “There are bigger things than that just now, Durward. You lack, as I have always said, two very essential things, a sense of humour and a sense of proportion. And you pretend to know Russia whilst you are without those two admirable gifts!
“However, let us forget personalities. … There are better things here!”
As he spoke two young Russian officers came tumbling up the stairs. They were talking excitedly, not listening to one another, red in the face and tripping over their swords. They went up to the next floor, their voices very shrill.
“So much for your sentimental Russia,” said Semyonov. He spoke very quietly. “How I shall love to see these fools all toppled over, and then the fools who toppled them toppled in their turn.
“Durward, you’re a fool too, but you’re English, and at least you’ve got a conscience. I tell you, you’ll see in these next months such cowardice, such selfishness, such meanness, such ignorance as the world has never known—and all in the name of Freedom! Why, they’re chattering about freedom already downstairs as hard as they can go!”
“As usual, Semyonov,” I answered hotly, “you believe in the good of no one. If there’s really a Revolution coming, which I still doubt, it may lead to the noblest liberation.”
“Oh, you’re an ass!” he interrupted quietly. “Nobility and the human race! I tell you, Ivan Andreievitch of the noble character, that the human race is rotten; that it is composed of selfishness, vice, and meanness; that it is hypocritical beyond the bounds of hypocrisy, and that of all mean cowardly nations on this earth the Russian nation is the meanest and most cowardly! … That fine talk of ours that you English slobber over!—a mere excuse for idleness, and you’ll know it before another year is through. I despise mankind with a contempt that every day’s fresh experience only the more justifies. Only once have I found someone who had a great soul, and she, too, if I had secured her, might have disappointed me. … No, my time is coming. I shall see at last my fellow-men in their true colours, and I shall even perhaps help them to display them. My worthy Markovitch, for example—”
“What about Markovitch?” I asked sharply.
He got up, smiling. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“He shall be driven by ghosts,” he answered, and turned off to the stairs.
He looked back for a moment. “The funny thing is, I like you, Durward,” he said.
X
I remember very little of my return to my island that night. The world was horribly dark and cold, the red moon had gone, and a machine-gun pursued me all the way home like a barking dog. I crossed the bridge frankly with nerves so harassed, with so many private anxieties and so much public apprehension, with so overpowering a suspicion that every shadow held a rifle that my heart leapt in my breast, and I was suddenly sick with fear when someone stepped across the road and put his hand on my arm. You see I have nothing much to boast about myself. My relief was only slightly modified when I saw that it was the Rat. The Rat had changed! He stood, as though on purpose under the very faint grey light of the lamp at the end of the bridge, and seen thus, he did in truth seem like an apparition. He was excited of course, but there was more in his face than that. The real truth about him was, that he was filled with some determination, some purpose. He was like a child who is playing at being a burglar, his face had exactly that absorption, that obsessing preoccupation.
“I’ve been waiting for you, barin,” he said in his hoarse musical voice.
“What is it?” I asked.
“This is where I live,” he said, and he showed me a very dirty piece of paper. “I think you ought to know.”
“Why?” I asked him.
“Kto snaiet?3 The Czar’s gone and we are all free men. …”
I felt oddly that suddenly now he knew himself my master. That was now in his voice.
“What are you going to do with your freedom?” I asked.
He sighed.
“I shall have my duties now,” he said. “I’m not a free man at all. I obey orders for the first time. The people are going to rule. I am the people.”
He paused. Then he went on very seriously. “That is why, barin, I give you that
