He may have had Semyonov’s contempt for the Revolutionary idealist, he may have had Wilderling’s belief in the Czar’s autocracy, he may have had Boris Grogoff’s enthusiasm for freedom and a general holiday. I don’t know. I know nothing at all about it. I don’t think that he saw much of the Wilderlings during the earlier part of the week. He himself was a great deal with the English Military Mission, and Wilderling was with his party whatever that might be. He could see of course that Wilderling was disturbed, or perhaps indignant is the right word. “As though you know,” he said, “some dirty little boy had been pullin’ snooks at him.” Nevertheless the Baroness was the human link. Lawrence would see from the first—that is, from the morning of the Sunday—that she was in an agony of horror. She confided in nobody, but went about as though she was watching for something, and at dinner her eyes never left her husband’s face for a moment. Those evening meals must have been awful. I can imagine the dignity, the solemn heavy room with all the silver, the ceremonious old manservant and Wilderling himself behaving as though nothing at all were the matter. To do him all justice he was as brave as a lion, and as proud as a gladiator, and as conceited as a Prussian. On the Wednesday evening he did not return home. He telephoned that he was kept on important business.
The Baroness and Lawrence had the long slow meal together. It was almost more than Jerry could stand having, of course, his own private tortures to face. “It was as though the old lady felt that she had been deputed to support the honour of the family during her husband’s absence. She must have been wild with anxiety, but she showed no sign except that her hand trembled when she raised her glass.”
“What did you talk about?” I asked him.
“Oh, about anything! Theatres and her home, when she was a girl and England. … Awful, every minute of it!”
There was a moment towards the end of the meal, when the good lady nearly broke down. The bell in the hall rang and there was a step; she thought it was her husband and half rose. It was, however, the dvornik with a message of no importance. She gave a little sigh. “Oh, I do wish he would come! … I do wish he would come!” she murmured to herself.
“Oh, he’ll come,” Lawrence reassured her, but she seemed indignant with him for having overheard her. Afterwards, sitting together desolately in the magnificent drawing-room, she became affectionately maternal. I have always wondered why Lawrence confided to me the details of their very intimate conversation. It was exactly the kind of thing he was most reticent about.
She asked him about his home, his people, his ambitions. She had asked him about these things before, but tonight there was an appeal in her questions, as though she said:
“Take my mind off that other thing. Help me to forget, if it’s only for a moment.”
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked.
“Yes. Once,” he said.
“Was he in love now?”
“Yes.”
“With someone in Russia?”
“Yes.”
She hoped that he would be happy. He told her that he didn’t think happiness was quite the point in this particular case. There were other things more important—and, anyway, it was inevitable.
“He had fallen in love at first sight?”
“Yes. The very first moment.”
She sighed. So had she. It was, she thought, the only real way. She asked him whether it might not, after all, turn out better than he expected.
No, he did not think that it could. But he didn’t mind how it turned out—at least he couldn’t look that far. The point was that he was in it, up to the neck, and he was never going to be out of it again.
There was something boyish about that that pleased her. She put her plump hand on his knee and told him how she had first met the Baron, down in the South, at Kiev, how grand he had looked; how, seeing her across a room full of people, he had smiled at her before he had ever spoken to her or knew her name. “I was quite pretty then,” she added. “I have never regretted our marriage for a single moment,” she said. “Nor, I know, has he.”
“We hoped there would be children. …” She gave a pathetic little gesture. “We will get away down to the South again as soon as the troubles are over,” she ended.
I don’t suppose he was thinking much of her—his mind was on Vera all the time—but after he had left her and lay in bed, sleepless, his mind dwelt on her affectionately, and he thought that he would like to help her. He realised, quite clearly, that Wilderling was in a very dangerous position, but I don’t think that it ever occurred to him for a moment that it would be wise for him to move to another flat.
On the next day, Thursday, Lawrence did not return until the middle of the afternoon. The town was, by now, comparatively quiet again. Numbers of the police had been caught and imprisoned, some had been shot and others were in hiding;
