“And the other—the weak, disappointed, excitable man—can’t you see that Semyonov has him close to his hand, that he has only to stretch a finger—”
“Markovitch!” cried Bohun.
“Now you know,” I said, “why you’ve got to stay on in that flat.”
VI
I have said already, I think, that the instinctive motive of Vera’s life was her independent pride. Cling to that, and however the world might rock and toss around her she could not be wrecked. Imagine, then, what she must have suffered during the weeks that followed her surrender to Lawrence. Not that for a moment she intended to go back on her surrender, which was, indeed, the proudest moment of her whole life. She never looked back for one second after that embrace, she never doubted herself or him or the supreme importance of love itself; but the rest of her—her tenderness, her fidelity, her loyalty, her self-respect—this was all tortured now by the things that she seemed compelled to do. It must have appeared to her as though Fate, having watched that complete abandonment, intended to deprive her of everything upon which she had depended. She was, I think, a woman of very simple instincts. The things that had been in her life—her love for Nina, her maternal tenderness for Nicholas, her sense of duty—remained with her as strongly after that tremendous Thursday afternoon as they had been before it. She did not see why they need be changed. She did not love Nina any the less because she loved Lawrence; indeed, she had never loved Nina so intensely as on the night when she had realised her love for Lawrence to the full, that night when they had sheltered the policeman. And she had never pretended to love Nicholas. She had always told him that she did not love him. She had been absolutely honest with him always, and he had often said to her, “If ever real love comes into your life, Vera, you will leave me,” and she had always answered him, “No, Nicholas, why should I? I will never change. Why should I?”
She honestly thought that her love for Lawrence need not alter things. She would tell Nicholas, of course, and then she would act as he wished. If she were not to see Lawrence she would not see him—that would make no difference to her love for him. What she did not realise—and that was strange after living with him for so long—was that he was always hoping that her tender kindliness towards him would, one day, change into something more passionate. I think that, subconsciously, she did realise it, and that was why she was, during those weeks before the Revolution, so often uneasy and unhappy. But I am sure that definitely she never admitted it.
The great fact was that, as soon as possible, she must tell Nicholas all about it. And the days went by, and she did not. She did not, partly because she had now someone else as well as herself to consider. I believe that in those weeks between that Thursday and Easter Day she never had one moment alone with Lawrence. He came, as Bohun had told me, to see them; he sat there and looked at her, and listened and waited. She herself, I expect, prevented their being alone. She was waiting for something to happen. Then Nina’s flight overwhelmed everything. That must have been the most awful thing. She never liked Grogoff, never trusted him, and had a very clear idea of his character. But more awful to her than his weakness was her knowledge that Nina did not love him. What could have driven her to do such a thing? She knew of her affection for Lawrence, but she had, perhaps, never taken that seriously. How could Nina really love Lawrence when he, so obviously, cared nothing at all for her? She reasoned then, as everyone always does, on the lines of her own character. She herself could never have cared seriously for anyone had there been no return. Her pride would not have allowed her. …
But Nina had been the charge of her life. Before Nicholas, before her own life, before everything. Nina was her duty, her sacred cause—and now she was betraying her trust! Something must be done—but what? but what? She knew Nina well enough to realise that a false step would only plunge her farther than ever into the business. It must have seemed to her indeed that because of her own initial disloyalty the whole world was falling away from her.
Then there came Semyonov; I did not at this time at all sufficiently realise that her hatred of her uncle—for it was hatred, more, much more than mere dislike—had been with her all her life. Many months afterwards she told me that she could never remember a time when she had not hated him. He had teased her when she was a very little girl, laughing at her naive honesty, throwing doubts on her independence, cynically ridiculing her loyalty. There had been one horrible winter month (then ten or eleven years of age) when she had been sent to stay
