“Oh yes, you could,” I said. “Try Semyonov.”
“I’m coming to him in a minute,” said Bohun. “Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy. That’s one thing one saw about him at once—unhappy of course because Vera didn’t love him and he adored her. But there was more in it than that. He let himself go one night to me—the only time he’s ever talked to me really. He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me. But there was more in it than that. He talked to me about Russia. That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began that it was going to lead to the most marvellous patriotism all through Russia. It seemed to begin like that, and do you know, Durward, as he talked I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything, that you could talk about Internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you’d learnt first what nationality was—that you couldn’t really love all mankind until you’d first learnt to love one or two people close to you. And that you couldn’t love the world as a vast democratic state until you’d learnt to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower. Markovitch had it all as plain as plain. ‘Make your own house secure and beautiful. Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme. We Russians always begin at the wrong end,’ he said. ‘We jump all the intermediate stages. I’m as bad as the rest.’ I know you’ll say I’m so easily impressed, Durward, but he was wonderful that night—and so right. So that as he talked I just longed to rush back and see that my village—Topright in Wiltshire—was safe and sound with the highgate at the end of the village street, and the village stores with the lollipop windows, and the green with the sheep on it, and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high Down beyond. … Oh well, you know what I mean—”
“I know,” said I.
“I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn’t have Vera he’d have Russia, and if he couldn’t have Russia he’d have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago he’d lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn’t very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the Revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything. Wasn’t he wonderful that week? Like a child who has suddenly found Paradise. … Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything? Why a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week. It wouldn’t be decent. … Well, then. …” He paused dramatically. “What’s happened to him since, Durward?”
“How do you mean? What’s happened to him since?” I asked.
“I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day—the Thursday of that week. What was it? That’s one of the things I’ve come to ask you about?”
“I don’t know. I was ill,” I said.
“No, but has nobody told you anything?”
“I haven’t heard a word,” I said.
His face fell. “I felt sure you’d help me?” he said.
“Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together,” I suggested.
“The rest is really Semyonov. The queerest things have been happening. Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one’s English ideas, isn’t it? and that’s so damned difficult. It’s no use saying an English fellow wouldn’t do this or that. Of course he wouldn’t. … Oh, they are queer!”
He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair.
“Giving them up in despair, Bohun, is as bad as thinking you understand them completely. Just take what comes.”
“Well, ‘what came’ was this. On that Thursday evening Markovitch was as though he’d been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of course we all noticed it. White and sickly, saying nothing to anybody. Next morning, quite early, Semyonov came over and proposed lodging with us.
“It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the feller, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet, stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way.
“To my amazement Markovitch seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed, but offered his own room as a bedroom. ‘What about your inventions?’ someone asked him.
“ ‘I’ve given them up,’ he said, looking at us all just like a caged animal—‘forever.’
“I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn’t been so interested, but this was all so curious that I was determined to see it out to the end. And you’d told me to look after Markovitch. If ever he’d wanted looking after it was now! I could see that Vera hated the idea of Semyonov coming, but after Markovitch had spoken she never said a word. So then it was all settled.”
“What did Nina do?” I asked.
“Nina? She never said anything either. At the end she went up to Semyonov and took his hand and said, ‘I’m so glad you’re coming, Uncle Alexei,’ and looked at Vera. Oh! they’re all as queer as they can be, I tell you!”
“What happened next?” I asked eagerly.
“Everything’s happened and nothing’s happened,” he replied. “Nina’s run away. Of course you know that. What she did it for I can’t imagine. Fancy going to a
