“Andrei Andreiech!”
She ran away and then came to the door, half opened it, and said, “Andrei Andreiech, we aren’t dressed yet; but come into the drawing-room … wait, let me run away first.”
It was about in the morning. She ran away, and I went into the drawing-room. Everything was exactly as I had left it. The canary in the cage went on with his usual “Chic! … cherric! …” hopping to and fro. The sun was shining brightly through the window. It was one of those glorious autumn days that are like the unfolding days of spring.
“We shall be ready in ten minutes,” Sonia shouted from the adjoining room.
I waited ten minutes, and another ten minutes. Then the door opened and Sonia, radiant, came in. “Nina will be ready in ten minutes,” she said.
“No, she won’t be ready!” came Nina’s voice—a discontented voice.
“Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz have gone out shopping,” Sonia said.
“How is Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.
“He is probably at the office … or else with Zina.”
“How are the mines?”
She only waved her hand.
“Hopeless?”
“Oh, he hopes—we all hope, of course. …”
“Well then,” said I, “… we must hope.”
Then Vera, radiant and marvellously pretty, came in. “Nina will come in five minutes,” she said.
“Not in five but in ten minutes,” came Nina’s voice, this time a whimsical voice.
I sat on the old sofa, and Sonia and Vera both stared at me in a curious manner, wondering, no doubt, why the dickens I had arrived.
Then the door of the adjoining room flew open, and Nina flitted in, shook hands without looking at me and flitted over to the window.
I still sat on the old sofa, of which the spring had burst, and no one spoke. It was a somewhat silly situation.
“That spring I am sitting on is burst,” I said at length.
“Oh, Vera burst it,” Nina said.
“It’s a lie!” Vera flared. “You know yourself you burst it last night when you jumped about with Ward.”
“No, it’s Vera,” Nina said.
“It’s a lie! a lie! a lie!”
“It really doesn’t matter in the least who burst it,” I intervened. “I noticed that the spring was burst because I happened to be sitting on it … otherwise everything seems to be very much the same.”
We sat still for a little while. Then Nina turned to me impulsively and said, “And you haven’t seen the three sisters!”
I stared at her with blank expression.
She ran out, and returning quickly, thrust three tiny kittens on my lap. The old cat followed her into the room and looked up at me suspiciously.
“This is Sonia. This is Nina. This is Vera,” she explained.
For a while we admired the “three sisters”; then with the same swift motion, she grabbed the kittens in her hands and carried them away. The old cat followed her back into the adjoining room.
Again there was silence. The canary in the cage went on: “Chic! … cherric! …”
“And Andrei Andreiech always goes on with his ‘Chic! … cherric!’ …” said Nina.
“Which Andrei Andreiech?”
She pointed at the canary.
“What do you mean?”
“We call him Andrei Andreiech.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just so … there is something of you about him … something … unsubstantial.”
“Nina, come for a walk,” I said.
I helped her on with her coat.
We went by the Aleutskaya, bathed in sunshine, switched off down the Svetlanskaya and turned into a park overhanging the sea. Autumn stood at the door with its sombre moods of hopes frustrated, of joys gone, and aims blown to the wind, like leaves of autumn.
“Why did you come?” she said. “Why? I never asked you.”
“You told me that you love me,” I said.
“I never loved you.”
“Why did you lie then?” I cried.
“Go to the devil!” she answered, and turned her face away.
“I have been three months on the way … three months. Good God, Nina, travelling three months to come and see you—and there! …”
“It was an unusually long journey. You must have been moving very slowly.”
“There!” I went on protestingly, “I chuck Oxford, come all the way to Vladivostok, spend three months on the journey … because … because I love you, and you—”
“You have a speck of soot on your nose,” she remarked.
“Nina!” I cried laughing, my heart all weeping tears. “Nina!”
“Go and wash your face,” she said, “and then come back again. I’ll wait for you here.”
I gave it up. We sat together, saying nothing, and something about the autumn sun, the wind that came defiant from the roaring sea and harassed the fallen yellow leaves at our feet, suggested that I was late in the season with my love—perhaps too late. Tristan became a thing alien and remote, and I felt that I was singing in an altogether different opera.
IV
We did not go home. She said, “I’m tired of seeing Papa, Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz. They always quarrel, always quarrel. … Kniaz is the best of the lot.” Instead we went to the Olenins who lived in a remote dacha by the sea. It was a place scarcely accessible by night, for there was not a light and the roads were pools of mud. The environment concentrated all the angry dogs and robbers in the town.
We found Sonia and Vera there chatting with the three American boys, now known as the “three brothers.” The hostess seated at the piano was sending forth sounds of syncopated music, and then the three sisters with their corresponding “brothers” jazzed, while I was left alone with my sense of the three months’ journey east gnawing at my heart. … The fact of the matter was that I failed to see exactly where I came in in this combination.
I strolled into the dining-room with its familiar pictures in gilt frames, poorly furnished. Colonel Olenin, now out of work, was playing cards with a brother officer, also out of work, and with Zina’s father, while a Japanese paying guest was looking on, picking his teeth the while. Madame Olenin, little Fanny clinging to her skirt, came up and stood, a little bored, and with that look of hers as
