III
Finally I arrived at Vladivostok. The moment I set my foot on the platform I flew by well-known streets and curves and turnings to their house. I remember I felt in the manner of Tristan at the end of the last act: very sure, impatient, overwhelmed with love. I felt that I would just fly into the room and cry “Isolde!” and she would fly into my arms—“Tristan!” And then, immediately, we would get busy with the love duet.
I knocked at the window, and I felt that they should hear the throbbing of my heart. I knocked again, and then the blind behind the window was tampered with, and there was Sonia peering at me through the glass. Her frown developed into a radiant smile and her voice rang through the building:
“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 eleven o’clock 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 datcha 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 though she could have loved a lot.
“You do not dance?” the paying guest inquired on our being introduced. “Why?”
“Andrei Andreiech is smitten,” said Madame Olenin.
“Ah!... Iz zas so ... zzz ...?”
“Has lost his heart to Nina.”
The paying guest chuckled and picked his teeth. “Ah!... Iz zas so?” he said and sucked his breath in “ ... zzz ...” as Japanese do in their politeness. “Ah!... Very nice! Very nice!”
“Andrei Andreiech wants to marry her,” continued Madame Olenin.
“Ah!... Iz zas so?... zzz.... Very nice! Very nice!”
“But she doesn’t want to,” I said.
“Ask her,” she said.
“I have asked her. She won’t.”
“Well, you ask her again.”
“How many times?”
“Never mind how many times. Go on asking her. If you go on at it long enough any woman will give way. You go on asking her. Or else marry our little Olya, our little football. You’ll suit each other well.”
The paying guest chuckled loudly and picked his teeth.
She was trifling, trifling with a serious question, and I smiled, as one smiles on these occasions—an economic and reluctant smile.
I learnt that one of the veteran grandfathers had died a month ago; the other was alive. He sat and frowned before him, and little Fanny seemed to shun his frown each time she passed him in the dining-room. I spoke to him and found that he would not admit that any revolution had ever taken place in Russia. “Nonsense,” he kept saying. “Nonsense. In France there has been a revolution. But this is Russia. This is not France.”
“But—but what of the Bolsheviks?” I asked.
The antiquated veteran suddenly relapsed into a fit of anger. “I’ll show these Bolsheviks!” he threatened. “I’ll make them dance! I’ll stand no nonsense! Not I! They’ll soon see the man they’ve got to deal with! They’ll get short shrift from me, I can tell you! I’ll show these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing!...” The feeble old man was seized by a violent fit of coughing. His body shook and reeled, and his vain threats only emphasized the wretched impotence, the piteous weakness of his senility. Madame Olenin came to his rescue and beat him on the back to alleviate his coughing and prayed him not to talk of the wicked Bolsheviks as it was injurious to his health, but even through his coughing, choking hopelessly, he threatened angrily: “I’ll show these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing!... these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them dance!” and then again relapsed into a violent fit a of senile coughing.
Uncle Kostia, as I went to him, was sitting on the sofa, unshaven and unkempt, in the dim and dreary light of early evening. An empty glass of tea stood on the table. “They are dancing,” he said, with a strange gleam in his eye. “Let them dance. They think I am useless. Let them think. They’ve been complaining of me?”
“Who, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“No, he wouldn’t. I respect him. The others. I know they have. It’s life’s own joke that its superior humanity is not good enough for their inferiors. To the superior humanity the provocation is past a joke, I can tell you; to the inferior, the situation is just a matter of fact; so whose is the joke unless it is life’s own? Life is like that. Here am I—writing away unselfishly. Heaven only knows if what I write will be published in my lifetime. Then, years afterwards, they will read my books; they will think of me, wonder how I looked and spoke and felt. And I won’t know....”
“Yes. But to dwell prematurely on the sadness of one’s death to others, Uncle Kostia, is like asking for money in advance. It’s commercially unsound.”
Then, as our talk continued, I became aware of awful symptoms of Uncle Kostia’s condition. Uncle Kostia assured me positively that he had never had a father: that he was the son of his grandfather. And when I pointed out that the omission seemed to me to err a little on the side of the extravagant, he replied quite earnestly that he did not “see it.”
V
Such pitiful, heartrending scenes as this became a frequent occurrence. Each of the three sisters walked arm in arm with each of the “three brothers,” and I trailed alone behind them, a kind of tutor, with a heinous sense of my three months’ voyage ripening into a grievance. A poor thing, sir, but mine own! The three sisters, escorted safely home, would cry out from the house steps, “Good night, Brothers!” The “three brothers” then would answer, “Good night, Sisters!” I alone said nothing. I felt that an additional “brother” might spoil the symmetry of the arrangement. The fact of the matter, as you will see, was that I was not one of the “three brothers.” That settled it.
A very similar situation would ensue at dances, those delightful dances of the American Red Cross. We, that is, the three sisters, the “three brothers” and I (the odd number), would drive down in an American Service limousine, rolling gently through the dark and gruesome streets, the mellow moon shining feebly on the muddy road. Next we entered that long draughty room in the Naval Barracks taken over by the American Red Cross. In a little while the three sisters reappeared in the room, looking the bouquet that they were, that big nigger band would blurt out its syncopated music, and they would slide away in the embrace of the “three brothers” and vanish in a paraphernalia of Allied uniforms, while I was reduced to being a “wall-flower,” or else to dance with plump and heavy women, which after my experience with Nina felt very much like moving heavy chairs about the floor. It was idiotic to have travelled sixteen thousand miles to do this sort of thing!... That settled it.
I dare say it was my fault—but my somewhat inartistic intrusions on a party that was otherwise complete, began to tire Nina. She asked me to give up “pursuing” her. I resolved not to pursue her. I told her so. I kept telling her so. My passionate explanations of my aloofness began to anger her. My vehement assurances of resignation to my lonely lot struck her as discordant and dishonest. And she conferred on me the sentence which in love is hardest of all sentences to bear—the sentence of indifference. Now there is but one way to combat indifference in love, and that is by a feud. You tell yourself: She may think of the quarrel at times, perhaps regret the loss, or be annoyed, or feel hostile. There is then some link between you and her. However small, that is at least something. Indifference is simply nowhere. Acting on these lines, my three months’ journey always in my mind, I developed a grievance that outraged my soul. I swore there and then to myself that never again, so long as I lived, would I go to see Nina. That settled it.
I found myself going there that same afternoon, it seemed in spite of myself and partly under the influence of the wine that I had consumed at lunch. The day was a peculiarly sunny and friendly kind of day and the blue sky and the clear air and even the shops themselves seemed to beckon to me not to be a fool, not to stand upon my silly dignity; and so I discovered, as I walked along till I could see their house beckoning to me in the distance, that her indifference, even if confirmed (and I now refused to confirm it), had the overlooked advantage of admitting me of being in her presence. But when I returned I found I had innumerable occasions to revert to my original interpretation of indifference.
And feeling that my affairs were in a bad way I made a bold coup to regain my tottering prestige. I appeared furiously, almost indecently intellectual, talked in quick succession of Turgenev, Goethe, Dostoevski, Chehov, Flaubert, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It impressed nobody. She hardly listened to me. So I tried Wagner, Scriabin, Debussy and Richard Strauss. Nothing doing. I tackled Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shaw, Bennett, Chesterton and H. G. Wells; quoted them. It cut no ice. She showed that this sort of thing “did not go down with her” at all. Clearly she wasn’t “having any.” And the great men, I fear, looked small beneath her scornful look.
I met her once in the street. It had been snowing in the night, prematurely for the season; now the snow was thawing and the ground was muddy. The sun was yellow, honey-coloured, and her side-long look seemed warmer in the sunshine.
“Will you marry me?” I said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I am tired of you.”
“I know that,” I replied, and walked silently beside her.
“If I were really tired of you I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Then why do you tell me?” I took it up, hungering for something positive, however small.
“I don’t always say what I think,” was the answer.
We walked on.
“We are leaving in any case,” she said.
“When? Where?”
“Next month ... for Shanghai. Mama is going to start a business there. Hats. We have to do something.... We shall have a good time in Shanghai.”
“Ah, you won’t!” I said.
She looked at me.
“What of your ‘three brothers’?” I gloated.
“Their ship is going there next month. Aha! Do you think Mama would get us to come otherwise?”
“Good riddance!” I said.
“What’s happened?”
“Go!” I cried. “But for heaven’s sake go. Off with you! I haven’t time to waste. I want to get back. I am missing my examination!”
“You can go back now if you like. I’m not keeping you.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I shall see you off first,” I said, “and then I’ll go.”
VI
And then I only wished that they would go, and that I could return at once to England. The date of sailing was put off from week to week because of passport difficulties and dearth of accommodation in the steamers of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. I was frightened lest they should not be able to get away. For if they stayed, my soul was ruined.
And then, thank heaven, they were going.
Fanny Ivanovna and Nikolai Vasilievich preferred to part with them in their own rooms. It was, I think, because they would rather hide their emotion from the people who they knew were sure to come to see the girls off on the boat, and too, I think, because the relations with Magda Nikolaevna were not entirely satisfactory.
Yesterday I had met them in the Aleutskaya as they returned from the restaurant ‘Zolotoy Rog,’ where they now always went to lunch: the cooking arrangements in the rooms were thoroughly inadequate. Nikolai Vasilievich in his mackintosh and bowler hat looked markedly older and more worn than he had looked two years ago. Perhaps it was the shrewd light of the afternoon that scrutinized his features. There was a curious, mysterious, Monna Lisa look about the face of Fanny Ivanovna: as if she knew a thing or two: as if she had grounds for reassurance. And had she not? The partnership with Magda Nikolaevna was an engaging proposition. The only two deterrents to her going into partnership with Magda Nikolaevna were those two unfortunate words that had not lost their sting for her—“governess” and “lapdog.” She told me she might overlook the “governess”: the suggestion had not a shadow of foundation and could be forgiven—at a pinch. But the “lapdog”—never! Henceforth, as in the past, their destiny hung on the mines, and Fanny Ivanovna’s ideas as to their recovery were somewhat mixed. But the Japanese were now in possession of the Province, and if Nikolai Vasilievich got back his mines she said she would be able to return to Germany. She hated Vladivostok. And yet, she told me privately this morning, they had been so long together, had gone through so much misery together, that she doubted if she could ever leave him. And even if the mines materialized, she thought—there was that suspicion in her heart and consequently that look of reassurance in her face, that youthful ease about her manner—that the passion between Nikolai and Zina was wearing off. And—nothing ever happens....
They were both visibly perturbed. Nikolai Vasilievich walked up and down the room, obviously to hide his emotion. The luggage had already been removed to the boat, and the three sisters, dressed for the voyage, had sat down before the final parting. Kniaz read his paper to himself, and we talked inconsequently of anything and everything, and incidentally I learnt that Uncle Kostia, in pursuance of a logical analysis of his position as an author, had arrived at the conclusion that it was futility to get up at all, and of late conformed to his discovery.
“And——” said I significantly.
“Yes ... yes,” said Nikolai Vasilievich knowingly. “I’m sorry for him.”
Fanny Ivanovna surveyed the three sisters with a doleful look. “Ach, Nikolai Vasilievich!” she said. “Look at us! Even our children are leaving us. There will be no one left when they are gone but you and I and Kniaz and the kittens. Sonia, Nina and Vera, the kittens. The real Sonia, Nina and Vera have lost patience with us.”
“Don’t, Fanny Ivanovna, don’t,” Vera murmured.
“And we have lived together a long time, through a maze of trouble, yet I think we lived happily—as happily as we could. Why that parting now? Why?...”
Someone sighed, and Nikolai Vasilievich turned his face away.
“Now it is October. It will soon be winter and this roof and yard will be deep in snow. Outside it will be cold and dark and wretched, and we shall be short of wood, and there will be another coup d’état. But you and I, Nikolai Vasilievich, you and I will be here ... going out to lunch at the ‘Zolotoy Rog’ then as ever ... ever!...”
She sighed deeply. “What shall we do all by ourselves in the winter?”
Nikolai Vasilievich, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, stood at the window and did not answer. When he was perturbed, I noticed, he always stood at the window with his hands deep in his trouser pockets, and thought. And I fancied that he must be thinking: Strange were the ways of the world: there! all along he had planned to escape from her—but life has taken its course, and nothing has come of it. And now those others, for whom he had stayed, were going away from him, and he, the would-be deserter, was left all alone with her; and in a thousand and one indefinable ways she has captured him. And when I met his eyes I had a feeling, an unmistakable feeling, that indeed I was right in my surmise.
Then came that hush, familiar in farewells, that comes in anticipation of the signal. Nikolai Vasilievich pulled out his watch and said, “Well——”
We rose, and I went out and waited for them in the street.
Then they came out. Fanny Ivanovna, Nikolai Vasilievich and Kniaz stood on the steps and looked at us, as we walked away, turning round again and again as we went. The sharp autumn wind ruffled Nikolai Vasilievich’s scanty hair, and the three of them, as they stood there hatless in the open, looked frail and weak and helplessly exposed to the storms of life. Then Kniaz went back into the house, as if in a hurry to resume an interrupted occupation. We looked round a last time, and turned the corner. The three sisters blew their noses frequently and gulped, and Vera’s eyes were red. And as I went I too was thinking: Strange were the ways of the world: there! I had arrived from the other end of the earth in time to see them off on a two-days’ trip: to assist at an ordinary farewell in this unholy outskirt of the world, when I ought to be swotting hard for my Final Schools! And, by contrast, Oxford seemed a place of doing things.
Even now that they have gone and the steamer is about to reach the docks of that far eastern Paris, I can see them very vividly before me as they stood on the deck of the Simbirsk: three pretty kittens, each lovelier than the other and quite irresistible together. It was long over two hours since we had been told to clear the decks, but the steamer was still there. I stood on the quay with Magda Nikolaevna, who was to follow her three daughters in a day or two by rail, and while she was telling me delightful tales of Nina’s childhood, I looked at Nina leaning with her folded hands upon the rail and her chin upon her folded hands, looking at us with that exquisite, disquieting side-long look, evidently intent on catching what her mother was telling me about her. I do not remember how long I stood there. There were the “three brothers” to see them off, on the eve of their own departure for Shanghai; then they left: they had to get back to their ship. Time after time I would go up close to the steamer; but I gathered from her look that the effort was superfluous: there was nothing we could talk about. Each time I went back and stood by Magda Nikolaevna and the Olenins and wished to heaven that the steamer would depart. But the steamer, despite all its hooting, seemed intent on remaining. Then, suddenly, I realized that it was indeed impossible to keep on standing there for ever. I felt that this was now the end and that now I must make haste to go. I turned to Magda Nikolaevna and the Olenins, and we shook hands; then I approached the boat and waved good-bye to them. Nina stretched her hand down to me without a word; but a handshake would have involved a cold bath!
I went hastily, without looking back. I walked briskly to the ‘Zolotoy Rog’ and lunched lavishly and drank much wine—a luxury in these times!—as if to celebrate the occasion of my soul’s release. I felt as if I was being freed from prison. I sat in the crowded, heated restaurant and watched the life bubbling about me—watched it in excitement, in exultation. But after lunch I thought I wanted to make certain—for real freedom could not come till I was certain—that the steamer had finally departed. Accordingly I strolled down to the wharf of the Volunteer Fleet. As I approached it I perceived the two impassive funnels of the Simbirsk still showing from above the godowns. I turned back into town, my mind a rising sea of tribulation. I longed to see the end of it, to know that they had gone. Why this heartrending delay? I paced the streets of Vladivostok, seething with emotion. I must have looked odd that afternoon, for strangers turned round in the streets to look at me as I passed. I walked on and on, increasing my pace as I did so. An hour later, or thereabouts, I made my way back to the wharf. The steamer was still there. I turned back into town. I could scarcely endure the torture of the suspense. I walked the length of the Svetlanskaya, and then switched off until I reached the race-course. I turned into the wood. I climbed the hills.
Then, late in the afternoon, before twilight had set in, I made my way back to the wharf. My heart sick with palpitation, I looked over the godowns of the Volunteer Fleet. The steamer had departed. I went past innumerable barrels piled together, steam-heating pipes and wire rusting in the open, machinery dumped on the quay, and bales of cotton rotting in the dockyard, until finally I stood on the very spot where I had parted with them. The space at the quay where the Simbirsk had been showed empty; dull, dirty water heaved at my feet and a cork from a bottle and some bits of wood heaved upon it. I looked out upon the sea for a sign of the steamer. It had completely vanished. I peered at the horizon to see if I could spot the smoke from its two funnels. But there was none.
THE END