“Can’t find them, sir,” I said, rising.
“They’ve gone, I hope,” said the Admiral.
“They’ve hidden themselves somewhere, I think.”
“Damn them! I shan’t be able to sleep all night.”
“Good night, sir,” said I.
The Admiral could not sleep. I heard him get out of bed and fumble with his stick beneath the furniture. I think the uncertainty of the whereabouts of the animals disturbed his peace of mind. Then I heard him creep into bed, and all was still. I could just hear the rain drum against the windowpane; and I thought that by now the cat had probably eaten up the rat.
II
Nikolai Vasilievich was to call for me after lunch. At lunch there were many guests, and the conversation was necessarily political. I was impatient, for Nikolai Vasilievich might call at any moment; and the entire scheme of “Intervention” seemed to me, in my mood of acute expectancy, singularly unimportant. I watched the Admiral who in his serious, deliberate way looked straight into his principal guest’s eyes and listened very earnestly and nodded with approval, while the guest, a Russian General, was talking arrant nonsense. In that stiff and martial attitude common to a certain type of Russian officer (who assumes it as it were in proof of grim determination) the guest was saying: “All these complaints about arrests and executions by the loyal troops—I decline to take them seriously. In the present wavering state of mind of the population you can’t guarantee that there won’t be people who will complain because the sun shines in the daytime only and not at night as well.”
The Admiral gave an emphatic nod; and at a glance I could see that he had classed his guest as a “good fellow.” The Admiral, I may explain, divided the world into two big camps: the humanity that he called “good fellows,” and the humanity that he called “rotters”—and there you are! Simple. (As a matter of fact, he used a substitute for this last word, but I am afraid the original is unprintable.) But while the guest was being engaged by General Bologoevski, a quiet silver-haired British Colonel took the opportunity of telling the Admiral in his quiet silvery manner the conclusion he in his quiet silvery mind had quietly arrived at after interviewing for many months innumerable Russian officers. “I am afraid,” said he, “that whenever you come to examine very carefully a Russian officer’s scheme for the restoration and salvation of his country, it invariably boils down to giving him a job.”
And at a glance I could see that the Admiral had classed the fellow as a “rotter.”
I forget the substance of the conversation of that lunch, which stands out in my memory merely on account of its coincidence with the day on which I met the family; but I remember how a remark of General Bologoevski’s, that he understood the Bolshevik commissaries never washed, lit up the Admiral’s face with ominous glee, and one could guess at sight that he condemned the Bolshevik commissaries.
About Nikolai Vasilievich called for me. We drove uphill, the driver flogging his two horses with unwarranted zeal. The day was bright, but the roads were muddy from the flood overnight. As we arrived, another cab drove up at the porch, and from it emerged Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz. Kniaz made an insincere attempt to pay the cabfare; but when Fanny Ivanovna said “It’s all right, I have some money,” Kniaz said “Very well,” and replaced the empty purse in his pocket. …
And for the next few minutes the three-roomed lodging of the little house was the scene of a happy reunion.
Nina alone was absent from the household. Fanny Ivanovna was much annoyed and tackled Sonia on the subject.
“How do I know where she is?” Sonia remonstrated. Then she smiled and I felt that she knew all right; and then immediately she grew angry, and I felt that after all, perhaps, she did not know.
“We have no means of knowing, Fanny Ivanovna,” said Baron Wunderhausen.
“Pàv’l Pàvlch,” she said, “please don’t annoy me. You annoy me with your inconsequent talk, and I have asked you not to meddle … and to wash your neck.”
“He’s like Uncle Kostia!” Vera cried. “Has a bath once a year—whether clean or dirty.” She was pretty, growing prettier.
Baron Wunderhausen only shrugged his shoulders.
Then the door opened and Nina slipped into the room. I was staggered by her looks. To my mind she was irresistible. When she saw me she stopped dead.
“Where have you come from?” she asked.
I explained confusedly, and a minute later she dismissed me and my arrival as a thing entirely commonplace, and turned to the others.
“Nina,” said Fanny Ivanovna sternly, “where have you been? I insist on your telling me.”
“And I won’t tell,” said Nina curtly.
“Nina,” I took it up, jokingly but with a sneaking sense of secretive authority resting on our “engagement” of four years ago, “where have you been? I too insist on your telling me.”
She looked at me with the expression that comes over people who are about to put out their tongue at you, and said:
“And I won’t tell.”
“And how do you find us?” Fanny Ivanovna asked. “Have we grown older? I think I have grown older. And Nikolai Vasilievich, too. And Kniaz.”
“No,” I lied. And assuredly the lie pleased her.
“And the children are just the same?”
“The children are just the same,” I agreed. “A bouquet. Three pretty kittens.”
Vera purred like one.
“But you haven’t much room here, have you?” I observed.
“What can we do?” she asked. “The town is packed with refugees. We can’t find anything better.”
“À la guerre comme à la guerre,” remarked the Baron.
“Still, it is more comfortable than living in an hotel. Sonia, Nina and Vera sleep here on the sofa and the bed we drag out from the other room. The adjoining room is Nikolai Vasilievich’s and mine. The third is Pàv’l Pàvlch’s, the Baron’s. The others have remained at the hotel—I mean Kniaz and Eberheim.
