“It was almost, you know, as though this tommyrot about a White Revolution might be true after all—with this jolly old Duma and their jolly old Kerensky runnin’ the show. Of course I’d seen the nonsense about their not salutin’ the officers and all that, but I didn’t think any fellers alive would be such damn fools. … I might have known better.”
He let himself into the flat and found there a deathlike stillness—no one about and no sound except the tickings of the large clock in the drawing-room.
He wandered into that horribly impressive place and suddenly sat down on the sofa with a realisation of extreme physical fatigue. He didn’t know why he was so tired, he had felt quite “bobbish” all the week; suddenly now his limbs were like water, he had a bad ache down his spine and his legs were as heavy as lead. He sat in a kind of trance on that sofa, he was not asleep, but he was also, quite certainly, not awake. He wondered why the place was so “beastly still” after all the noise there had been all the week. There was no one left alive—everyone dead—except himself and Vera … Vera … Vera.
Then he was conscious that someone was looking at him through the double-doors. At first he didn’t realise who it was, the face was so white and the figure so quiet, then, pulling himself together, he saw that it was the old servant.
“What is it, Andre?” he asked, sitting up.
The old man didn’t answer, but came into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. Lawrence saw that he was trembling with fright, but was still endeavouring to behave with dignity.
“Barin! Barin!” he whispered, as though Lawrence were a long way from him. “Paul Konstantinovitch! (that was Wilderling). He’s mad. … He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Oh, sir, stop him, stop him, or we shall all be murdered!”
“What is he doing?” asked Lawrence, standing up.
“In the little hack room,” Andre whispered, as though now he were confiding a terrible secret. “Come quickly … !”
Lawrence followed him; when he had gone a few steps down the passage he heard suddenly a sharp, muffled report.
“What’s that?”
Andre came close to him, his old, seamed face white like plaster.
“He has a rifle in there …” he said. “He’s shooting at them!” Then as Lawrence stepped up to the door of the little room that was Wilderling’s dressing-room, Andre caught his arm—.
“Be careful, barin. … He doesn’t know what he’s about. He may not recognise you.”
“Oh, that’s all right!” said Lawrence. He pushed the door open and walked in. To give for a moment his own account of it: “You know that room was the rummiest thing. I’d never been into it before. I knew the old fellow was a bit of a dandy, but I never expected to see all the pots and jars and glasses there were. You’d have thought one wouldn’t have noticed a thing at such a time, but you couldn’t escape them—his dressing-table simply covered—white round jars with pink tops, bottles of hair-oil with ribbons round the neck, manicure things, heaps of silver things, and boxes with Chinese patterns on them, and one thing, open, with what was mighty like rouge in it. And clothes all over the place—red silk dressing-gown with golden tassels, and red leather slippers!
“I don’t remember noticing any of this at the moment, but it all comes back to me as soon as I begin to think of it—and the room stank of scent!”
But of course it was the old man in the corner who mattered. It was, I think, very significant of Lawrence’s character and his unEnglish-English tradition that the first thing that he felt was the pathos of it. No other Englishman in Petrograd would have seen that at all.
Wilderling was crouched in the corner against a piece of gold Japanese embroidery. He was in the shadow, away from the window, which was pushed open sufficiently to allow the muzzle of the rifle to slip between the woodwork and the pane. The old man, his white hair disordered, his clothes dusty, and his hands grimy, crept forward just as Lawrence entered, fired down into the side-street, then moved swiftly back into his corner again. He muttered to himself without ceasing in French, “Chiens! Chiens! … Chiens!” He was very hot, and he stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then he saw Lawrence.
“What do you want?” he asked, as though he didn’t recognize him.
Lawrence moved down the side of the room, avoiding the window. He touched the little man’s arm.
“I say, you know,” he said, “this won’t do.”
Wilderling smelt of gunpowder, and he was breathing hard as though he had been running desperately. He quivered when Lawrence touched him.
“Go away!” he said, “you mustn’t come here. … I’ll get them yet—I tell you I’ll get them yet—I tell you I’ll get them—Let them dare … Chiens … Chiens …” He jerked his rifle away from the window and began, with trembling fingers, to load it again.
Lawrence gripped his arm. “When I did that,” he said, “it felt as though there wasn’t an arm there at all, but just a bone which I could break if I pressed a bit harder.”
“Come away!” he said. “You damn fool—don’t you see that it’s hopeless?”
“And I’d always been so respectful to him. …” he added in parenthesis.
Wilderling hissed at him, saying no words, just drawing in his breath.
“I’ve got two of them,” he whispered suddenly. “I’ll get them all.”
Then a bullet crashed
