“I must go with them,” said Vera. She followed them into her bedroom. It was a very little place and they filled it, they looked rather sheepish now, whispering to one another.
“What’s in there?” said the officer, tapping the cupboard.
“Only some clothes,” said Vera.
“Open it!” he ordered.
Then the world did indeed stand still. The clock ceased to tick, the little rumble in the stove was silenced, the shuffling feet of one of the soldiers stayed, the movement of some rustle in the wall paper was held. The world was frozen.
Now I suppose we shall all be shot,
was Vera’s thought, repeated over and over again with a ludicrous monotony. Then she could see nothing but the little policeman, tumbling out of the cupboard, dishevelled and terrified. Terrified! what that look in his eyes would be! That at any rate she could not face and she turned her head away from them, looking out through the door into the dark little passage.
She heard as though from an infinite distance the words:
“Well, there’s nobody there.”
She did not believe him of course. He said that whoever he was, to test her, to tempt her to give herself away. But she was too clever for them. She turned back and faced them, and then saw, to the accompaniment of an amazement that seemed like thunder in her ears, that the cupboard was indeed empty.
“There is nobody,” said the black-bearded soldier.
The student looked rather ashamed of himself. The white clothes, the skirts, and the blouses in the cupboard reproached him.
“You will of course understand, Madame,” he said stiffly, “that the search was inevitable. Regrettable but necessary. I’m sure you will see that for your own satisfaction. …”
“You are assured now that there is no one here?” Vera interrupted him coldly.
“Assured,” he answered.
But where was the man? She felt as though she were in some fantastic nightmare in which nothing was as it seemed. The cupboard was not a cupboard, the policeman not a policeman. …
“There is the kitchen,” she said.
In the kitchen of course they found nothing. There was a large cupboard in one corner but they did not look there. They had had enough. They returned into the dining-room and there, looking very surprised, his head very high above his collar was Markovitch.
“What does this mean?” he asked.
“I regret extremely,” said the officer pompously. “I have been compelled to make a search. Duty only … I regret. But no one is here. Your flat is at liberty. I wish you good afternoon.”
Before Markovitch could ask further questions the room was emptied of them all. They tramped out, laughing and joking, children again, the hall door closed behind them.
Nina clutched Vera’s arm.
“Vera. … Vera, where is he?”
“I don’t know,” said Vera.
“What’s all this?” asked Nicholas.
They explained to him but he scarcely seemed to hear. He was radiant—smiling in a kind of ecstasy.
“They have gone? I am safe?”
In the doorway was the little policeman, black with grime and dust, so comical a figure that in reaction from the crisis of ten minutes before, they laughed hysterically.
“Oh look! look! …” cried Nina. “How dirty he is!”
“Where have you been?” asked Vera. “Why weren’t you in the cupboard?”
The little man’s teeth were chattering, so that he could scarcely speak. …
“I heard them in the other room. I knew that the cupboard would be the first place. I slipped into the kitchen and hid in the fireplace.”
“You’re not angry, Nicholas?” Vera asked. “We couldn’t send him out to be shot.”
“What does that matter?” he almost impatiently brushed it aside. “There are other things more important.” He looked at the trembling dirty figure. “Only you’d better go back and hide again until it’s dark. They might come back. …”
He caught Vera by the arm. His eyes were flames. He drew her with him back into her little room. He closed the door.
“The Revolution has come—it has really come,” he cried.
“Yes,” she answered, “it has come into this very house. The world has changed.”
“The Czar has abdicated. … The old world has gone, the old wicked world! Russia is born again!”
His eyes were the eyes of a fanatic.
Her eyes, too, were alight. She gazed past him.
“I know—I know,” she whispered as though to herself.
“Russia—Russia,” he went on coming closer and closer, “Russia and you. We will build a new world. We will forget our old troubles. Oh, Vera, my darling, my darling, we’re going to be happy now! I love you so. And now I can hope again. All our love will be clean in this new world. We’re going to be happy at last!”
But she did not hear him. She saw into space. A great exultation ran through her body. All lost for love! At last she was awakened, at last she lived, at last, at last, she knew what love was.
“I love him! I love him … him,” her soul whispered. “And nothing now in this world or the next can separate us.”
“Vera—Vera,” Nicholas cried, “we are together at last—as we have never been. And now we’ll work together again—for Russia.”
She looked at the man whom she had never loved, with a great compassion and pity. She put her arms around him and kissed him, her whole maternal spirit suddenly aware of him and seeking to comfort him.
At the touch of her lips his body trembled with happiness. But he did not know that it was a kiss of farewell. …
XIII
I have no idea at all what Lawrence did during the early days of that week. He has never told me, and I have never asked him. He never, with the single exception of the afternoon at the Astoria, came near the Markovitches, and I know that was because he had now reached a stage where he did not dare trust himself to see Vera—just as she at that time did not trust herself to see him. …
I do not know what he thought of those first days of the Revolution. I can imagine that he took
