Then, suddenly, without reason or provocation, she turned on the old Kniaz, sitting neatly in his usual armchair, imperturbable like a butler:
“Kniaz! Don’t sit there like that, like. … Oh, God, you’ve been sitting like that in that chair for thirteen years. … Say something! Say something!”
“What can I say?” he smiled faintly.
“What can you say!” she echoed; and again there was silence.
“Hasn’t he got any relations?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“No money?”
“Penniless.”
“Is he … good?”
“Yes, but … exacting.”
“Oh, poor fellow, he can’t help it,” said Nikolai Vasilievich.
“Poor fellow,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
“Poor fellow,” I echoed.
For a moment we sat in silence. We waited for Eberheim to groan again; but he too was silent; and we could just hear the measured ticking of the great oak-panelled clock in the corner and the subdued tumult of the streets below.
“And where is Magda Nikolaevna?” I asked.
“She is with Cecedek.”
“One burden less, what, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
Nikolai Vasilievich sighed.
“You would hardly say so,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “for Nikolai Vasilievich still has to keep his wife.”
“But what of Cecedek?”
“I am very sorry for him,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
And I learnt that at the outbreak of hostilities the Russian authorities had found it necessary to confiscate the whole of Cecedek’s property. They were then going to intern him, but he succeeded in proving to them that he was now a Czech; and so they set him free. But the property which they had taken from him as an Austrian they did not return to him as a Czech. He had been in correspondence with the authorities on this subject ever since , and on his ultimate success in getting some of it refunded his marriage with Magda Nikolaevna must henceforth depend. Whether the revolution would assist him in his ambitious expectations, or would delay them further, it was hard to prophesy. Nikolai Vasilievich helped him as much as he was able in his present circumstances. In the meantime Magda Nikolaevna had suspended her application for a divorce and was still on Nikolai Vasilievich’s books for payment. But Cecedek’s attitude had not changed. He now rather liked to emphasize the Slavic side to their union, had in the last three years developed a Czech intonation in his Russian speech, professed an undue regard for his “Brother-Slavs,” pronounced his own name “Chechedek,” and in signing put those funny little accents on the C’s.
I left them very early next morning; in the excitement of the day there had been much work left overnight unaccomplished. It was about when I crossed the Field of Mars. Soldiers in odd groups strolled along in the snow, now and then firing off a rifle in the air, just for the fun of the thing; and the capital wore that appearance of a banqueting-hall in the shrewd light of the morning after a particularly heavy feast. Fretful clouds moved swiftly across the winter sky. The morning promised a fine day.
III
The revolution dragged on through the winter and “deepened” as the months advanced. The forerunners of confusion became visible: food and commodities were being procured in an irregular manner. All were waiting. …
Pictures of them recur continually to my mind, as I write. I can see Fanny Ivanovna, and particularly I can see the three sisters, always sitting in the same positions, perched on sundry chairs and sofas, Fanny Ivanovna engaged in silent contemplation over needlework, and Kniaz sitting in his usual chair, reading, or more often sitting idly, thinking into space. The seasons would be changing rapidly from one to the other—but their position never! Rain would drum against the windowpane, snow would be falling on the street below; then the ice on the Neva would begin to break and slowly move toward the Bay; and again one would feel the onset of spring, the unfolding of white nights. …
“How tiring this is, Andrei Andreiech,” Fanny Ivanovna complained. “To be always waiting to begin to live. When is that upward movement in happiness, that splendid life that we are always waiting for, to begin at last? Somehow you wait for the spring. But spring has come … alone, and only emphasizes our misery, by the contrast. … Spring makes me mad. I begin to want impossible things. …”
“You are an active woman, Fanny Ivanovna,” said I. “You ought not to sit still. It’s bad for you. You ought to run about.”
“But … I’ve got to wait.”
“I suppose waiting is sitting still. It is, in a sense. …”
“It isn’t that. But what am I going to run about for? I go out shopping. But that doesn’t advance things, you understand. Besides, I simply dread asking Nikolai Vasilievich for money.”
“He hasn’t got any?”
“He has. He’s always borrowing—crescendo, forte, fortissimo! But where will it end? When? Borrowing money is all right if you can do it. But it’s not, as it were, an income; it’s not—how shall I put it?—an end in itself, is it? There’s got to be something, somewhere, sometime. Those goldmines have got to justify themselves. Our plans, our movements, everything depends on them. That’s why it’s so annoying. They’ve got to pay, and I am confident that they will pay. But when? …”
She rose abruptly, as was her wont, her black silk skirt rustling as she swept out.
It was “Papa this” and “Mamma that” and “Fanny Ivanovna the other thing.”
“Won’t you stop sighing?” I suggested.
“It’s all very well for you,” protested the three sisters simultaneously. “But do you think it’s very nice for us?”
“What do you want, anyhow?”
They did not answer; they looked at the window, brooding.
I said in a jovial tone of voice:
“Well, I tried to help you. But you won’t be helped.”
“Helped us indeed!” they
