 Part 2. CHAPTER XIV. Markovitch, on that same afternoon, came back to the flat early. He also, like Lawrence, felt the strange peace and tranquility of the town, and it seemed inevitably like the confirmation of all his dearest hopes. The Tsar was gone, the old regime was gone, the people, smiling and friendly, were maintaining their own discipline. Above all, Vera had kissed him. He did not go deeper into his heart and see how strained all their recent relations must have been for this now to give him such joy. He left that, it simply was that at last he and Vera understood one another. She had found that she cared for him after all, and that he was necessary to her happiness. What that must mean for their future life together, he simply dared not think. It would change the world for him. He felt like the man in the story from whom the curse is suddenly lifted. He walked home through the quiet town humming to himself. He fancied that there was a warmth in the air, a strange kindly omen of spring, although the snow was still thick on the ground, and the neva a gray carpet of ice. He came into the flat and found it empty. He went into his little room and started on his inventions. He was so happy that he hummed to himself as he worked and cut slices off his pieces of wood and soaked flannel in bottles and wrote funny little sentences in his abominable handwriting in a red notebook. One need not grudged him, poor Markovitch. It was the last happy half hour of his life. He did not turn on his green shaded lamp, but sat there in the gathering desk chipping up the wood and sometimes stopping, idly lost in happy thoughts. Someone came in. He peered through his little glass window and saw that it was Nina. She passed quickly through the dining room beyond towards her bedroom without stopping to switch on the light. Nina had broken the spell. He went back to his table, but he couldn't work now, and he felt vaguely uneasy and cold. He was just going to leave his work and find the wretch and settle down to a comfortable read when he heard the hall door close. He stood behind his little glass window and watched. It was Vera, perhaps. It must be. His heart began eagerly to beat. It was Vera. At once he saw that she was strangely agitated. Before she had switched on the light, he realized it. With a click, the light was on. Markovich had intended to open his door and go out to her, smiling. He saw at once that she was waiting for someone. He stood trembling on tiptoe. His face pressed against the glass of the pane. Lawrence came in. He had the face, Markovich told me, many weeks afterwards, of a triumphant man. They had obviously met outside because Vera said as though continuing a conversation. And it's only just happened. I've come straight from there, Lawrence answered. Then he went up to her. She let herself at once go to him and he half carried her to a chair near the table and exactly opposite Markovich's window. They kissed like people who had been starving all their lives. Markovich was trembling so that he was afraid lest he should tumble or make some noise. The two figures in the chair were like statues in their immobile, relentless, unswerving embrace. Suddenly he saw that Nina was standing in the opposite doorway, like a ghost. She was there for so brief a moment that he could not be sure that she had been there at all. Only her white, frightened face remained with him. One of his thoughts was, this is the end of my life. Another was, how could they be so careless with the light on and perhaps people in the flat? And after that they needed so much that they don't care who sees. Starved people. And after that I'm starved too. He was so cold that his teeth were chattering and he crept back from his window, crept into the farthest, farthest corner of his little room and crouched there on the floor, staring and staring, but seeing nothing at all. End of Part 2 Chapter 14 Part 3 Chapter 1 of The Secret City This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Secret City by Hugh Walpole Part 3 Markovich and Seminov Chapter 1 On the evening of that very afternoon, Thursday, I again collapsed. I was coming home in the dusk through a whispering world, all over the streets, everywhere on the broad shining snow, under a blaze of stars so sharp and piercing, that the sky seemed strangely close and intimate, the talk went on. Groups everywhere, and groups irrespective of all class distinction. A well-to-do woman in rich furs, a peasant woman with a shawl over her head, a wild bearded soldier, a stout important officer, a maid servant, a cab driver, a shopman, talking, talking, talking, talking, the eagerness, the ignorance, the odd fairytale world spun about those groups, so that the colored domes of the churches, the silver network of the stars, the wooden booths, the mist of candles before the icons, the rough painted pictures on the shops advertising the goods sold within, all these things shared in that crude idealistic, cynical ignorance, in that fairytale of brutality, goodness, cowardice, and bravery, malice and generosity, superstition and devotion, that was so shortly to be offered to a materialistic, hard-fighting, brave and unthinking Europe. That, however, was not now my immediate business, enough of that presently. My immediate business, as I very quickly discovered, was to pluck up enough strength to drag my wretched body home. The events of the week had, I suppose, carried me along. I was to suffer now the inevitable reaction. I felt exactly as though I had been shot from a gun and landed, suddenly, without breath, without any strength in any of my limbs, in a new and strange world. I was standing, when I first realized my weakness, beside the wooden booths in the Sadovaya. They were all closed, of course, but along the pavement women and old men had baskets containing sweets and note-paper and red paper tulips offered in memory of the glorious revolution. Right across the square the groups of people scattered in little dusky pools against the snow until they touched the very doors of the church. I saw all this, was conscious that the stars and the church candles mingled. Then suddenly I had to clutch the side of the booth behind me to prevent myself from falling. My head swam, my limbs were as water, and my old so well-remembered friend struck me in the middle of the spine as though he had cut me in two with his knife. How was I ever to get home? No one noticed me. Indeed they seemed to my sick eyes to have ceased to be human. Ghosts in a ghostly world, the snow gleaming through them so that they only moved like a thin, diaphanous veil against the wall of the sky. I clutched my booth. In a moment I should be down. The pain in my back was agony. My legs had ceased to exist, and I was falling into a dark, dark pool of clear jet-black water, at the bottom of which lay a star. The strange thing is that I do not know who it was who rescued me. I know that someone came. I know that to my own dim surprise, Anistvostchik was there, and that very feebly I got into it. Someone was with me. Was it my black-bearded peasant? I fancy now that it was. I can even, on looking back, see him sitting up, very large and still, one thick arm holding me. I fancy that I can still smell the stuff of his clothes. I fancy that he talked to me, very quietly, reassuring me about something. But, upon my word, I don't know. One can so easily imagine what one wants to be true, and now I want, more than I would then ever have believed to be possible, to have had actual contact with him. It is the only conversation between us that can ever have existed. Never, before, or after, was there another opportunity. And in any case, there can scarcely have been a conversation, because I certainly said nothing, and I cannot remember anything that he said, if indeed he said anything at all. At any rate, I was there in the Sarovaya, I was in a cab, I was in my bed. The truth of the rest of it, anyone may decide for himself. Part 3 Chapter 2 of The Secret City This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Secret City by Hugh Walpole Part 3 Chapter 2 That Thursday was March 15th. I was conscious of my existence again on Sunday, April 1st. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a thaw. That was the first thing of which I was aware, that water was apparently dripping on every side of me. It is a strange sensation to lie on your bed very weak and very indifferent, and to feel the world turning to moisture all about you. My ramshackle habitation had never been a very strong defense against the outside world. It seemed now to have definitely decided to abandon the struggle. The water streamed down the panes of my window opposite my bed. One patch of my ceiling, just above my only bookcase, confound it, was colored a moldy gray, and from this huge drops like elephants' tears splashed monotonously. Already the spirit of man was disfigured by a long gray streak, and the green back of Gallion's roads was splotched with stains. Someone had placed a bucket near the door to catch a perpetual stream flowing from the corner of the room. Down into the bucket, it pattered with a hasty, giggling, hysterical jiggle. I rather liked the companionship of it. I didn't mind it at all. I really minded nothing whatever. I sighed my appreciation of my return to life. My sigh brought someone from the corner of my room, and that someone was, of course, the inevitable rat. He came up to my bed in his stealthy, furtive fashion, and looked at me reproachfully. I asked him, my voice sounding to myself strange and very far away, what he was doing there. He answered that if it had not been for him I should be dead. He had come early one morning, and found me lying in my bed, and no one in the place at all. No one, because the old woman had vanished. Yes, the neighbours had told him. Apparently on that very Thursday she had decided that the revolution had given her her freedom, and that she was never going to work for anybody ever again. She had told a woman neighbour that she heard that the land now was going to be given back to everybody, and she was returning therefore to her village somewhere in the Moscow province. She had not been back there for twenty years, and first, to celebrate her liberty, she would get magnificently drunk on furniture polish. I did not see her, of course, said the rat. No, when I came early in the morning no one was here. I thought that you were dead, Baron, and I began collecting your property so that no one else should take it. Then you made a movement, and I saw that you were alive, so I got some cabbage soup and gave it to you. That certainly saved you. I'm going to stay with you now. I did not care in the least whether he went or stayed. He chattered on. By staying with me he would inevitably neglect his public duties. Perhaps I didn't know that he had public duties. Yes, he was now an anarchist, and I should be astonished very shortly by the things the anarchists would do. All the same they had their own discipline. They had their own processions too, like any one else. Only four days ago he had marched all over Petrograd, carrying a black flag. He must confess that he was rather sick of it, but they must have processions. Even the prostitutes had marched down the Nevsky the other day, demanding shorter hours. But of course I cannot remember all that he said. During the next few days I slowly pulled myself out of the misty dead world in which I had been lying. Pain came back to me, leaping upon me and then receding. Finally, on the third day, suddenly leaving me altogether. The rat fed me on cabbage soup and glasses of tea and caviar and biscuits. During those three days he never left me, and indeed tended me like a woman. He would sit by my bed and, with his rough hand, stroke my hair, while he poured into my ears ghastly stories of the many crimes that he had committed. I noticed that he was cleaner and more civilized. His beard was clipped, and he smelt of cabbage and straw, a rather healthy smell. One morning he suddenly took the pail, filled it with water, and washed himself in front of my windows. He scrubbed himself until I should have thought that he had no skin left. You're a fine big man, rat, I said. He was delighted with that, and came quite near my bed, stretching his naked body, his arms and legs and chest, like a pleased animal. Yes, I am a fine man, Byron, he said. Many women have loved me, and many will again. Then he went back, and producing clean drawers and vests from somewhere, I suspect that they were mine but I was too weak to care, put them on. On the second and third days I felt much better. The thaw was less violent, the wood crackled in my stove. On the morning of Wednesday, April 14th, I got up, dressed and sat in front of my window. The ice was still there, but over it lay a faint, a very faint, filmy sheen of water. It was a day of gleams, the sun flashing in and out of the clouds. Just beneath my window a tree was pushing into bud. Pools of water lay thick on the dirty melting snow. I got the rat to bring a little table and put some books on it. I had near me the spirit of man, Keats's letters, the roads, bettos, and pride and prejudice, a consciousness of the outer world crept like warmth through my bones. Rat, I said, who's been to see me? No one, said he. I felt suddenly a ridiculous affront. No one, I asked, incredulous. No one, he answered. They've all forgotten you, Baron. He added maliciously, knowing that that would hurt me. It was strange how deeply I cared. Here was I who, only a short while before, had declared myself done with the world for ever, and now I was almost crying because no one had been to see me. Indeed, I believe in my weakness and distress I actually did cry. No one at all, not Vera nor Nina nor Jeremy nor Bohun, not young Bohun even, and then slowly my brain realized that there was now a new world. None of the old conditions held any longer. We had been the victims of an earthquake. Now it was every man for himself. Quickly then there came upon me an eager desire to know what had happened in the Markovitch family. What of Jerry and Vera? What of Nicholas? What of Samunov? Rat, I said, this afternoon I am going out. Very well, Baron, he said. I, too, have an engagement. In the afternoon I crept out like an old sick man. I felt strangely shy and nervous. When I reached the corner of a Kateringovsky canal, and the English prospect, I decided not to go in and see the Markovitches. For one thing I shrank from the thought of their compassion. I had not shaved for many days. I was that dull, sickly yellow color that offends the taste of all healthy vigorous people. I did not want their pity. No. I would wait until I was stronger. My interest in life was reviving with every step that I took. I don't know what I had expected the outside world to be. This was April 14. It was nearly a month since the outburst of the revolution, and surely there should be signs in the streets of the results of such a cataclysm. There were, on the surface, no signs. There was the same little cinema on the canal with its gaudy colored posters. There was the old woman sitting at the foot of the little bridge with her basket of apples and bootlaces. There was the same wooden hut with the sweets and the fruit, the same figures of peasant women, soldiers, boys herring across the bridge, the same slow, sleepy Svostik, stumbling along carelessly. One sign there was, exactly opposite the little cinema, on the other side of the canal, was a high gray block of flats. This now was starred and sprayed with the white marks of bullets. It was like a man marked for life with smallpox. That building alone was witness to me that I had not dreamt the events of that week. The thaw made walking very difficult. The water poured down the sides of the houses and gurgled and fludged through the pipes. The snow was slippery under the film of gleaming wet, and there were huge pools at every step. Across the middle of the English prospect, near the baths, there was quite a deep lake. I wandered slowly along, enjoying the chill warmth of the soft spring sun. The winter was nearly over. Thank God for that. What had happened during my month of illness? Perhaps a great revolutionary army had been formed, and a mighty, free, and united Russia was going out to save the world. Oh, I did hope that it was so. Surely that wonderful white week was a good omen. No revolution in history had started so well as this one. I found my way at last very slowly to the end of the Kay, and the sight of the round towers of my favorite church was like the reassuring smile of an old friend. The sun was dropping low over the Neva. The whole vast expanse of the river was colored very faintly pink. Here, too, there was the film of the water above the ice. The water cut the color, but the ice below it was gray and still. Clouds of crimson and orange and faint gold streamed away in great waves of light from the sun. The long line of buildings and towers on the farther side was jet black. The masts of the ships clustering against the Kay were touched at their tips with bright gold. It was all utterly still, not a sound nor a movement anywhere. Only one figure, that of a woman, was coming slowly towards me. I felt as one always does at the beginning of a Russian spring. A strange sense of expectation. Spring in Russia is so sudden and so swift that it gives an overwhelming impression of a powerful organizing power behind it. Suddenly the shutters are pulled back and the sun floods the world. Upon this afternoon one could feel the urgent business of preparation pushing forward. Arrogantly, ruthlessly. I don't think that I had ever before realized the power of the Neva at such close quarters. I was almost ashamed at the contrast of its struggle with my own feebleness. I saw then that the figure coming towards me was Nina. As she came nearer, I saw that she was intensely preoccupied. She was looking straight in front of her but seeing nothing. It was only when she was quite close to me that I saw that she was crying. She was making no sound. Her mouth was closed. The tears were slowly, helplessly, rolling down her cheeks. She was very near to me indeed before she saw me. Then she looked at me closely before she recognized me. When she saw that it was I, she stopped, fumbled for her handkerchief, which she found, wiped her eyes, then turned away from me and looked out over the river. Nina dear, I said, what's the matter? She didn't answer. At length she turned round and said, you've been ill again, haven't you? One cheek had a dirty tear stain on it which made her inexpressibly young and pathetic and helpless. Yes, I said, I have. She caught her breath, put out her hand, and touched my arm. Oh, you do look ill. Vera went to ask. And there was a rough-looking man there who said that no one could see you, but that you were all right. One of us ought to have forced a way in. Mr. Bohan wanted to, but we've all been thinking of ourselves. What's the matter, Nina? I asked. You've been crying. Nothing's the matter. I'm all right. No, you're not. You ought to tell me. You trusted me once. I don't trust anyone, she answered fiercely, especially not Englishmen. What's the matter? I asked again. Nothing. We're just as we were, except she suddenly looked up at me. Uncle Alexey's living with us now. Semyonov? I cried out sharply, living with you. Yes, she went on. In the room where Nicholas had his inventions is Uncle Alexey's bedroom. Why, in Heaven's name, I cried. Uncle Alexey wanted it. He said he was lonely, and then he just came. I don't know whether Nicholas likes it or not. Vera hates it, but she agreed at once. And do you like it? I asked. I like Uncle Alexey, she answered. We have long talks. He shows me how silly I've been. Oh, I said. And what about Nicholas's inventions? He's given them up forever. She looked at me doubtfully, as though she were wondering whether she could trust me. He's so funny now, Nicholas, I mean. You know, he was so happy when the revolution came. Now he's in a different mood every minute. Some things happen to him that we don't know about. What kind of thing, I asked. I don't know. He's seen something or heard something. It's some secret he's got. But Uncle Alexey knows. How can you tell? Because he's always saying things that make Nicholas angry, and we can't see anything in them at all. Uncle Alexey's very clever. Yes, he is, I agreed. But you haven't told me why you were crying just now? She looked at me. She gave a little shiver. Oh, you do look ill. Everything's going wrong together, isn't it? And with that she suddenly left me, hurrying away from me, leaving me miserable and apprehensive of some great trouble in store for all of us. End of Part Three, Chapter Three. Part Three, Chapter Four of The Secret City. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Rita Butros. The Secret City by Hugh Walpole. Part Three, Chapter Four. It is impossible to explain how disturbed I was by Nina's news, Semyonov living in the flat. He must have some very strong reason for this, to leave his big comfortable flat for the pokiness of the Markovitches. And then that the Markovitches should have him. There were already inhabitants enough, Nicholas, Vera, Nina, Uncle Ivan, Bohen. Then the inconvenience and discomfort of Nicholas's little hole as a bedroom, how Semyonov must loathe it. From that moment the Markovitches flat became for me the centre of my drama. Looking back I could see now how all the growing development of this story had centred round those rooms. I did not of course know at this time of that final drama of the Thursday afternoon. But I knew of the adventure with the policemen, and it seemed to me that the flat was a cup into which the ingredients were being poured one after another, until at last the preparation would be complete. And then, oh, but I cared for Nina and Vera and Nicholas, yes, and Jerry too. I wanted to see them happy and at peace before I left them in a special Nicholas. And Semyonov came closer to them and closer, following some plan of his own, and yet, after all, finally like a man driven by a power, constructed it might be, out of his own very irony. I made a kind of bet with fate that by Easter day everyone should be happy by then. Next day, the 15th of April, was the great funeral for the victims of the revolution. I believe, although of course at that time I had heard nothing, that there had been great speculation about the day, many people thinking that it would be an excuse for further trouble. The monarchist rising, or the Soviet attacking the provisional government, or Milyukov and his followers attacking the Soviet. They need not have been alarmed. No one had as yet realized the lengths that Slavonic apathy may permit itself. I went down about half past ten to the square at the end of the Sarovaya, and found it filled with a vast concourse of peasants. Not only the square was filled, but the Sarovaya as far as the eye could see. They were arranged in perfect order, about eight in a row, arm in arm. Every group carried its banner, and far away into the distance one could see the words, freedom, brotherhood, the land for all, peace of the world, floating on the breeze. Nevertheless, in spite of these fine words, it was not a very cheering sight. The day was wretched, no actual rain, but a cold damp wind blowing, and the dirty snow, half ice and half water. The people themselves were not inspiring. They were all its seemed peasants. I saw very few workmen, although I believe that multitudes were actually in the procession. Those strange pale, eastern faces, passive, apathetic, ignorant, childish, unreasoning, stretched in a great cloud under the gray overhanging canopy of the sky. They raised, once and again, a melancholy little tune that was more wail than anything else. They had stood there, I was told, in pools of frozen water for hours, and were perfectly ready to stand thus for many hours more if they were ordered to do so. As I regarded their ignorance and apathy, I realized for the first time something of what the revolution had already done. A hundred million of these children, ignorant, greedy, pathetic, helpless, revengeful, let loose upon the world. Where were their leaders? Who indeed would their leaders be? The sun sometimes broke through for a moment, but the light that it threw on their faces only made them more pallid, more deathlike. They did not laugh nor joke as our people at home would have done. I believe that very few of them had any idea why they were there. Suddenly the word came down the lines to move forward, very slowly wailing their little tune they advanced. But the morning was growing old, and I must at once see Vera. I had made up my mind during the night to do anything that lay in my power to persuade Vera and Nina to leave their flat. The flat was the root of all their trouble. There was something in its atmosphere, something gloomy and ominous. They would be better at the other end of the town, or perhaps over on the Vasiliostrov. I would show Vera that it was a fatal plan to have Semyonov to live with them, as in all probability she herself knew well enough. And their leaving the flat was a very good excuse for getting rid of him. I had all this in my head as I went along. I was still feeling ill and feeble, and my half-hour stand in the marketplace had seriously exhausted me. I had to lean against the walls of the houses every now and then. It seemed to me that, in the pale watery air, the whole world was a dream, the high forbidding flats looking down onto the dirty ice of the canals, the water dripping, dripping, dripping. No one was about. Everyone had gone to join in the procession. I could see it with my mind's eye, unwinding its huge tails through the watery oozing channels of the town, like some pale-colored snake crawling through the misty labyrinths of a marsh. In the flat I found only Uncle Ivan sitting very happily by himself at the table playing patience. He was dressed very smartly in his English black suit and a black bow tie. He behaved with his usual elaborate courtesy to me, but to my relief on this occasion he spoke Russian. It appeared that the revolution had not upset him in the least. He took, he assured me, no interest whatever in politics. The great thing was to live inside oneself, and by living inside oneself he meant, I gathered, that one should be entirely selfish. Clothes were important, and food and courteous manners, but he must say that he could not see that one would be very much worse off, even though one were ruled by the Germans. One might indeed be a great deal more comfortable. And as to this revolution he couldn't really understand why people made such a fuss. One class or another class, what did it matter? As to this he was, I fear, to be sadly undeceived. He little knew that before the year was out he would be shoveling snow in the Morskaya for a rublin hour. So centered was he upon himself that he did not notice that I looked ill. He offered me a chair indeed, but that was simply his courteous manners. Very ridiculous, he thought, the fuss that Nicholas made about the revolution. Very ridiculous, the fuss that he made about everything. Alexi had been showing Nicholas how ridiculous he was. Oh, has he, said I, how's he been doing that? Laughing at him apparently. They all laughed at him. It was his own fault. Alexi's living with us now, you know? Yes, I know, I said. What's he doing that for? He wanted to, said Uncle Yvonne, simply. He's always done what he's wanted to, all his life. It makes it a great many of you in one small flat. Yes, doesn't it? Said Uncle Yvonne, amiably. Very pleasant, although Yvonne Andreevich, I will admit to you quite frankly that I've always been frightened of Alexi. He has such a very sharp tongue. He discovers once weak spots in a marvelous manner. We all have weak spots, you know, he added apologetically. Yes, we have, I said. Then to my relief Vera came in. She was very sweet to me, expressing much concern about my illness, asking me to stay and have my meal with them. She suddenly broke off. There was a letter lying on the table addressed to her. I saw it once that it was in Nina's handwriting. Nina writing to me? She picked it up, stood back, looking at the envelope before she opened it. She read it, then turned on me with a cry. Nina, she's gone! Gone, I repeated, starting at once. Yes, read. She thrust it into my hand. In Nina's sprawling schoolgirl hand, I read, Dear Vera, I've left you and Nicholas forever. I have been thinking of this for a long time. And now Uncle Alexi has shown me how foolish I've been, wanting something I can't have. But I'm not a child any longer. I must lead my own life. I'm going to live with Boris, who will take care of me. It's no use, you are anyone trying to prevent me. I will not come back. I must lead my own life now. Nina. Vera was beside herself. Quick, quick, someone must go after her. She must be brought back at once. Quick, scora, scora, I must go. No, she is angry with me. She won't listen to me. Ivana Andreyevich, you must go. At once, you must bring her back with you. Darling, darling Nina. Oh my God, what shall I do if anything happens to her? She clutched my arm. Even as she spoke, she had got my hat and stick. This is Alexi Petrovich, I said. Never mind who it is, she answered. She must be brought back at once. She is so young. She doesn't know. Boris, oh, it's impossible. Don't leave without bringing her back with you. Even old Uncle Ivan seemed distressed. Dear, dear, he kept repeating. Dear, dear, poor little Nina, poor little Nina. Where does Grogov live? I asked. Sixteen Gagatinskaya, flat three. Quick, you must bring her back with you. Promise me. I will do my best, I said. I found by a miracle of good fortune Anis Voschik in the street outside. We plunged along through the pools of water in the direction of the Gagatinskaya. That was a horrible drive. In the Sarovaya we met the slow winding funeral procession. On they went, arm in arm, the same little wailing tune, monotonously repeating, but sounding like nothing human, rather exuding from the very cobbles of the road and the waters of the stagnant canals. The march of the peasants upon Petrograd, I could see them from all the quarters of the town converging upon the Marsovoye Pole, stubborn, silent, wraiths of earlier civilization, omens of later dominations. I thought of Boris Grogov. What did he, with all his vehemence and conceit, intend to do with these? First he would flatter them. I saw that clearly enough. But then, when his flatteries failed, what then? Could he control them? Would they obey him? Would they obey anybody until education had shown them the necessities for coordination and self-discipline? The river, at last, was overflowing its banks. Would not the savage force of its power be greater than anyone could calculate? The stream flowed on. My Isbatschik took his cab down a side street, and then again met the strange, sorrowful company. From this point I could see several further bridges and streets. And over them all I saw the same stream flowing, the same banners blowing, and all so still, so dumb, so patient. The delay was maddening. My thoughts were all now on Nina. I saw her always be for me, as I had beheld her yesterday, walking slowly along, her eyes fixed on space, the tears trickling down her face. Life, Nikitin once said to me, I sometimes think, is like a dark room, the door closed, the windows bolted, and your enemy shut in with you. Whether your enemy or yourself is the stronger, who knows? Nor does it matter, as the issue is always decided outside, knowing that you can at least afford to despise him. I felt something of that impotence now. I cursed the Isbatschik, but wherever he went, this slow andless stream seemed to impede our way. Poor Nina, such a baby. What was it that had driven her to this? She did not love the man, and she knew quite well that she did not. No, it was an act of defiance, but defiance to whom, to Vera, to Lawrence, and what had Semyonov said to her. Then, thank heaven, we crossed the Nevsky, and our way was clear. The old cab man whipped up his horse, and in a minute or two we were outside, sixteen Gagarinskaya. I will confess to very real fears and hesitations, as I climbed the dark stairs. The lift was, of course, not working. I was not the kind of man for this kind of job. In the first place I hated quarrels, and knowing Grogov's hot temper, I had every reason to expect a tempestuous interview. Then I was ill, aching in every limb and seeing everything as I always did when I was unwell, mystally and with uncertainty. Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogov would take, and Nina perhaps also. I felt, as I rang the bell of number three, that unpleasant pain in the pit of the stomach that tells you that you're going to make a fool of yourself. Well, it would not be for the first time. Boris Nikolaevich Doma, I asked the cross-looking old woman who opened the door. Doma, she answered, holding it open to let me pass. I was shown into a dark, untidy sitting-room. It seemed at first sight to be littered with papers, newspapers, revolutionary sheets, and proclamations. The pravda, the soldatskaya muzzle. On the dirty wallpaper, there were enormous dark photographs in faded guilt frames of family groups. On one wall, there was a large, garishly colored picture of Grogov himself in student stress. The stove was unlighted and the room was very cold. My heart ached for Nina. A moment after Grogov came in, he came forward to me very amably, holding out his hand. New Ivan Andreevich, what can I do for you? he asked, smiling. And how he had changed. He was positively swollen with self-satisfaction. He had never been famous for personal modesty. But he seemed now to be physically twice his normal size. He was fat, his cheeks puffed, his stomach swelling beneath the belt that bounded. His fair hair was long and rolled in large curls on one side of his head and over his forehead. He spoke in a loud, overbearing voice. New Ivan Andreevich, what can I do for you? he repeated. Can I see Nina? I asked. Nina, he repeated, as though surprised. Certainly. But what do you want to say to her? I don't see that that's your business, I answered. I have a message for her from her family. But of course it's my business, he answered. I'm looking after her now. Since when, I asked. What does that matter? She is going to live with me. We'll see about that, I said. I knew that it was foolish to take this kind of tone. It could do no good. And I was not the sort of man to carry it through. But he was not at all annoyed. See, Ivan Andreevich, he said, smiling. What is there to discuss? Nina and I have long considered living together. She is a grown-up woman. It's no one's affair but her own. Are you going to marry her? I asked. Certainly not, he answered, that would not suit either of us. It's no good you're bringing your English ideas here, Ivan Andreevich. We belong to the New World, Nina and I. Well, I want to speak to her, I answered. So you shall, certainly. But if you hope to influence her at all, you are wasting your time, I assure you. Nina has acted very rightly. She found the home life impossible. I'm sure I don't wonder. She will assist me in my work, the most important work perhaps that man has ever been called on to perform. He raised his voice here, as though he were going to begin a speech. But at that moment Nina came in. She stood in the doorway looking across at me, with a childish mixture of hesitation and boldness, of anger and goodwill in her face. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes heavy. Her hair was done in two long plates. She looked about fourteen. She came up to me, but she didn't offer me her hand. Boris said, Nina dear, Ivan Andreevich has come to give you a message from your family. It was a note of scorn in his voice as he repeated my earlier sentence. What is it, she asked, looking at me defiantly. I'd like to give it you alone, I said. Whatever you say to me, it is right that Boris should hear, she answered. I tried to forget that Grogov was there. I went on. Well then Nina, you must know what I want to say. They are heartbroken at your leaving them. You know of course that they are. They beg you to come back. Vera and Nicholas too. They simply won't know what to do without you. Vera says that you have been angry with her. She doesn't know why, but she says that she will do her very best if you come back, so that you won't be angry anymore. Nina dear, you know that it is they whom you really love. You never can be happy here. You know that you cannot. Come back to them. Come back. I don't know what it was that Alexey Petrovich said to you, but whatever it was you should not listen to it. He is a bad man, and only means harm to your family. He does indeed, I paused. She had never moved whilst I was speaking. Now she only said, shaking her head. It's no good, Ivana Andreevich. It's no good. But why? Why? I asked. Give me your reasons, Nina. She answered proudly, I don't see why I should give you any reasons, Ivana Andreevich. I am free. I can do as I wish. There's something behind this that I don't know, I said. I ought to know. It isn't fair not to tell me. What did Alexey Petrovich say to you? But she only shook her head. He had nothing to do with this. It is my affair, Ivana Andreevich. I couldn't live with Vera and Nicholas any longer. Grogov then interfered. I think this is about enough, he said. I have given you your opportunity. Nina has been quite clear in what she has said. She does not wish to return. There is your answer. He cleared his voice and went on in rather a higher tone. I think you forget, Ivana Andreevich, another aspect of this affair. It is not only a question of our private family disputes. Nina has come here to assist me in my national work. As a member of the Soviet, I may, without exaggeration, claim to have an opportunity in my hands that has been offered in the past to few human beings. You are an Englishman, and so hide bound with prejudices and conventions. You may not be aware that there has opened this week the greatest war the world has ever seen, the war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and capitalists of the world. I tried to interrupt him, but his voice went on, his voice ever rising and rising. What is your wretched German war? What about a struggle between the capitalists of the different countries to secure greater robberies and extortions to set their feet more firmly than ever on the broad necks of the wretched people? Yes, you, English, with your natural hypocrisy, pretend that you are fighting for the freedom of the world. What about Ireland? What about India? What about South Africa? No, you are all alike. Germany, England, Italy, France, and our own wretched government that has at last been destroyed by the brave will of the people. We declare a people's war. We cry aloud to the people to throw down their arms and the people will hear us. He paused for breath, his arms were raised, his eyes on fire, his cheeks crimson. Yes, I said, that is all very well, but suppose the German people are the only ones who refuse to listen to you. Suppose that all the other nations, save Germany, have thrown down their arms, a nice chance then for German militarism. But the German people will listen, he screamed, almost frothing at the mouth. They are ready at any moment to follow our example. William and your George and the rest of them, they are doomed, I tell you. Nevertheless, I went on, if you desert us now by making peace and Germany wins this war, you will have played only a traitor's part and all the world will judge you. Traitor, traitor, the words seem to madden him. Traitor to whom, pray? Traitor to our czar and your English king? Yes, and thank God for it. Did the Russian people make the war? They were led like lambs to the slaughter, like lambs, I tell you. But now they will have their revenge. On all the bourgeoisie of the world. The bourgeoisie of the world. He suddenly broke off, flinging himself down on the dirty sofa. Talking makes one hot. Have a drink, Ivan Andreevich. Nina, fetch a drink. Through all this, my eyes had never left her for a moment. I had hoped that this empty tub thumping to which we had been listening would have affected her. But she had not moved nor stirred. Nina, I said softly. Nina, come with me. But she only shook her head, grog off, quite silent now, lulled on the sofa, watching us. I went up to her and put my hand on her sleeve. Dear Nina, I said, come back to us. I saw her look tremble. There were unshed tears in her eyes. But again she shook her head. What have they done, I asked, to make you take this step? Something has happened, she said slowly. I can't tell you. Just come and talk to Vera. No, it's hopeless. I can't see her again. But, Dirtles, tell her it's not her fault. At the sound of my pet name, I took courage again. But tell me, Nina, do you love this man? She turned round and looked at grog off as though she was seeing him for the first time. Love? Oh no, not love. But he will be kind to me, I think. And I must be myself, be a woman, not a child any longer. Then suddenly, clearing her voice, speaking very firmly, looking me full in the face, she said, Tell Vera that I saw what happened that Thursday afternoon, the Thursday of the Revolution Week. Tell her that when you're alone with her. Tell her that, then she'll understand. She turned and almost ran out of the room. Well, you see, said grog off, smiling lazily from the sofa. That settles it. It doesn't settle it, I answered. We shall never rest until we have got her back. But I had to go. There was nothing more just then to be done. End of Part 3, Chapter 4 Part 3, Chapter 5 of The Secret City This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rita Butros The Secret City by Hugh Walpole Part 3, Chapter 5 On my return, I found Vera alone waiting for me with restless impatience. Well, she said eagerly. Then, when she saw that I was alone, her face clouded. I trusted you, she began. It's no good, I said at once. Not for the moment. She's made up her mind. It's not because she loved him, nor I think for anything very much that her uncle said. She's got some idea in her head. Perhaps you can explain it. I, said Vera, looking at me. Yes, she gave me a message for you. What was it? But even as she asked the question, she seemed to fear the answer because she turned away from me. She told me to tell you that she saw what happened on the afternoon of the Thursday in Revolution Week. She said that then you would understand. Vera looked at me with the strangest expression of defiance, fear, triumph. What did she see? I don't know. That's what she told me. Vera did a strange thing. She laughed. They can all know. I don't care. I want them to know. Nina can tell them all. Tell them what? Oh, you'll hear with the rest. Uncle Alexi has done this. He told Nina because he hates me. He won't rest until he ruins us all. But I don't care. He can't take from me what I've got. He can't take from me what I've got. But we must get her back. Ivana Andreevich, she must come back. Nicholas came in and then Semyonov and then Bowen. Bowen, drawing me aside, whispered to me, Can I come and see you? I must ask your advice. Tomorrow evening I told him and left. Next day I was ill again. I had, I suppose, done too much the day before. I was in bed alone all day. My old woman had suddenly returned without a word of explanation or excuse. She had not, I am sure, even got so far as the Moscow Province. I doubt whether she had even left Petrograd. I asked her no questions. I could tell, of course, that she had been drinking. She was a funny old creature, wrinkled and yellow and hideous, very little different in any way from a native in the wilds of Central Africa. The savage in her liked gay colors and trinkets, and she would stick flowers in her hair and wear a tinkling necklace of bright red and blue beads. She had a mangy dog, hairless in places, and roomy at the eyes, who was all her passion. And this creature she would adore, taking it to sleep with her, talking to it by the hour together, pulling its tail and twisting its neck so that it growled with rage. And then, when it growled, she too would make strange noises as though sympathizing with it. She returned to me from no sort of sense of duty, but simply because I think she did not know where else to go. She scowled on me, and informed me that now that there had been the revolution, everything was different. Nevertheless, the sight of my sick yellow face moved her, as sickness and misfortune always move every Russian, however old and debased he may be. You shouldn't have gone out walking, she said crossly. That man's been here again? Referring to the rat whom she hated. If it hadn't been for him, I said, I would have died. But she made the flat as cheerful as she could, lighting the stove, putting some yellow flowers into a glass, dusting the Benoit watercolor, putting my favorite books beside my bed. When Henry Bowen came in, he was surprised at the brightness of everything. Why, how cozy you are, he cried. Aha! I said. I told you it wasn't so bad here. He picked up my books, looked at Galleon's roads, and then pride and prejudice. It's the simplest things that last, he said. Galleon's jolly good, but he's not simple enough. Tess is the thing, you know? Anton Bungay and the nigger of the Narcissus. I use him to think so. I've grown older, haven't I? He had. What do you think of discipline now? I asked. Oh Lord, he blushed. I was a young cuckoo. And what about knowing all about Russia after a week? No, and that reminds me. He drew his chair closer to my bed. That's what I've come to talk about. Do you mind if I gas a lot? Gas as much as you like, I said. Well, I can't explain things unless I do. You're sure you're not too seedy to listen. Not a bit. It does me good, I told him. You see, in a way, you're really responsible. You remember long ago telling me to look after Markovitch when I talked all that rot about caring for Vera? Yes, I remember very well indeed. In a way, it all started from that. You put me on to seeing Markovitch in quite a different light. I'd always thought of him as an awfully dull dog, with very little to say for himself, and a bit loose in the top story, too. I thought it a terrible shame, a ripping woman like Vera having married him. And I used to feel sick with him about it. Then, sometimes, he'd look like the devil himself as wicked as sin pouring over his inventions, and you'd fancy that to stick a knife in his back might be perhaps the best thing for everybody. Well, you explained him to me, and I saw him different. Not that I've ever got very much out of him. I don't think that he either likes me or trusts me. And anyway, he thinks me too young and foolish to be of any importance, which I daresay I am. He told me, by the way, the other day, that the only Englishman he thought anything of was yourself. Very nice of him, I murmured. Yes, but not very flattering to me when I've spent months trying to be fascinating to him. Anyhow, although I may be said to have failed in one way, I've got rather keen on the pursuit. If I can't make him like me, I can at least study him and learn something. That's a leaf out of your book, Derward. You're always studying people, aren't you? Oh, I don't know, I said. Yes, of course you are. Well, I'll tell you, frankly, I've got fond of the old bird. I don't believe you could live at close quarters with any Russian, however nasty, and not get a kind of affection for him. They're so damn childish. Oh, yes you could, I said. Try Semyonov. I'm coming to him in a minute, said Bohan. Well, Markovitch was most awfully unhappy. That's one thing one saw about him at once. Unhappy, of course, because Vera didn't love him, and he adored her. But there was more in it than that. He let himself go one night to me, the only time he's ever talked to me really. He was drunk a bit, and he wanted to borrow money off me. But there was more in it than that. He talked to me about Russia. That seemed to have been his great idea when the war began, that it was going to lead to the most marvelous patriotism all through Russia. It seemed to begin like that. And do you know, Derwood, as he talked, I saw that patriotism was at the bottom of everything. That you could talk about internationalism until you were blue in the face, and that it only began to mean anything when you'd learned first what nationality was. That you couldn't really love all mankind until you'd first learned to love one or two people close to you. And that you couldn't love the world as a vast democratic state until you'd learned to love your own little bit of ground, your own fields, your own river, your own church tower. Markovitch had it all as plain as plain. Make your own house secure and beautiful. Then it is ready to take its place in the general scheme. We Russians always begin at the wrong end, he said. We jump all the intermediate stages. I'm as bad as a rest. I know you'll say I'm so easily impressed, Derwood, but he was wonderful that night and so right. So that, as he talked, I just longed to rush back and see that my village, top right in Wiltshire, was safe and sound with the high gate at the end of the village street and the village stores with the lollipop windows and the green with the sheep on it and the ruddy stream with the small trout and the high down beyond. Oh, well, you know what I mean. I know, said I. I saw that the point of Markovitch was that he must have some ideal to live up to. If he couldn't have Vera, he'd have Russia, and if he couldn't have Russia, he'd have his inventions. When we first came along a month or two ago, he'd lost Russia, he was losing Vera, and he wasn't very sure about his inventions. A bad time for the old boy, and you were quite right to tell me to look after him. Then came the revolution, and he thought that everything was saved. Vera and Russia and everything. Wasn't he wonderful that week, like a child who has suddenly found paradise? Could any Englishman ever be cheated like that by anything? Why, a fellow would be locked up for a loony if he looked as happy as Markovitch looked that week. It wouldn't be decent. Well, then he paused dramatically. What's happened to him since, Derward? How do you mean what's happened to him since, I asked? I mean just what I say. Something happened to him at the end of that week. I can put my finger almost exactly on the day, the Thursday of that week. What was it? That's one of the things I've come to ask you about. I don't know. I was ill, I said. No, but has nobody told you anything? I haven't heard a word, I said. His face fell. I felt sure you'd helped me, he said. Tell me the rest and perhaps I can put things together, I suggested. The rest is really semi-on-off. The queerest things have been happening. Of course, the thing is to get rid of all one's English ideas, isn't it? And that's so damn difficult. It's no use saying an English fellow wouldn't do this or that. Of course he wouldn't. Oh, they are queer. He sighed, poor boy, with the difficulty of the whole affair. Giving them up in despair, Bowen, is as bad as thinking you understand them completely. Just take what comes. Well, what came was this. On that Thursday evening Markovich was as though he'd been struck in the face. You never saw such a change. Of course we all noticed it. White and sickly saying nothing to anybody. Next morning, quite early, semi-on-off came over and proposed lodging with us. It absolutely took my breath away, but no one else seemed very astonished. What on earth did he want to leave his comfortable flat and come to us for? We were packed tight enough as it was. I never liked the fellow, but upon my word I simply hated him as he sat there, so quiet, stroking his beard and smiling at us in his sarcastic way. To my amazement, Markovich seemed quite keen about it. Not only agreed, but offered his own room as a bedroom. What about your invention? Someone asked him. I've given them up, he said, looking at us all, just like a caged animal. Forever. I would have offered to retire myself if I hadn't been so interested, but this was also curious that I was determined to see it out to the end. And you told me to look after Markovich. If ever he'd wanted looking after it was now, I could see that Vera hated the idea of semi-on-off coming, but after Markovich had spoken she never said a word. So then it was all settled. What did Nina do? I asked. Nina? She never said anything either. At the end she went up to semi-on-off and took his hand and said, I'm so glad you're coming, Uncle Alexi, and looked at Vera. Oh, they're all as queer as they can be, I tell you. What happened next? I asked eagerly. Everything's happened and nothing's happened, he replied. Nina's run away, of course you know that. What she did it for, I can't imagine. Fancy going to a fellow like Grogov. Lawrence has been coming every day and just sitting there, not saying anything. Semyonov's amiable to everybody, especially amiable to Markovich, but he's laughing at him all the time, I think. Anyway, he makes him mad sometimes, so that I think Markovich is going to strike him. But of course he never does. Now here's a funny thing. This is really what I want to ask you most about. He drew his chair closer to my bed and dropped his voice as though he were going to whisper a secret to me. The other night it was awake, about two in the morning it was, and wanted a book, so I went into the dining room. I'd only got bedroom slippers on and I was stopped at the door by a sound. It was Semyonov sitting over by the further window, in his shirt and trousers, his beard and his hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break. I'd never heard a man cry like that. I hate hearing a man cry anyway. I've heard fellers at the front when they're off their heads or something, but Semyonov was worse than that. It was a strong man crying, with all his wits about him. Then I heard some words. He kept repeating, again and again. Oh, my dear, my dear, my dear, wait for me, wait for me, wait for me, over and over again. Awful! I crept back to my room, frightened out of my life. I've never known anything so awful, and Semyonov of all people. It was like that man in Wuthering Heights. What's his name? Heathcliff. I always thought that was a bit of exaggeration, when he dashed his head against a tree and all that. But by Jove, you never know. Now, Derward, you've got to tell me. You've known Semyonov for years. You can explain. What's it all about? And what's he trying to do to Markovitch? I can scarcely think what to tell you, I said at last. I don't really know much about Semyonov, and my guesses will probably strike you as insane. No, they won't, said Bohan. I've learned a bit lately. Semyonov, I said, is a deep-dyed sensualist. All his life he's thought about nothing but gratifying his appetites. That simple enough, there are plenty of that type everywhere. But unfortunately for him, he's a very clever man, and like every Russian, both a cynic and an idealist. A cynic, in fact, because he's an idealist. He got everything so easily, all through his life, that his cynicism grew and grew. He had wealth and women and position. He was as strong as a horse. Everyone gave way to him, and he despised everybody. He went to the front, and one day came across a woman different from any other whom he had ever known. How different, asked Bohan, because I paused. Different in that she was simpler and naver and honester and better and more beautiful. Better than Vera, Bohan asked. Different, I said. She was younger, less strong-willed, less clever, less passionate perhaps. But alone, alone in all the world, everyone must love her. No one could help it. I broke off again, Bohan waited. I went on. Semyonov saw her and snatched her from the Englishman to whom she was engaged. I don't think she ever really loved the Englishman, but she loved Semyonov. Well, said Bohan. She was killed, a stray shot, when she was giving tea to the men in the trenches. It meant a lot to all of us. The Englishman was killed too, so he was all right. I think Semyonov would have liked that same end, but he didn't get it, so he's remained desolate. Really desolate, in a way that only your thorough sensualist can be. A beautiful fruit just within his grasp, something at last that contempt his jaded appetite. He's just going to taste it when, whisk, it's gone. And gone perhaps into someone else's hands. How does he know? How does he know anything? There may be another life. Who can really prove there isn't? And when you've seen something in the very thick and glow of existence, something more alive than life itself, and click, it's gone. Well, it must have gone somewhere, mustn't it? Not the body only, but that soul, that spirit, that individual personal expression of beauty and purity and loveliness. Oh, it must be somewhere yet. It must be at any rate he didn't know, and he didn't know either that she might not have proved his idealism right after all. Ah, to your cynic there's nothing more maddening. Do you think your cynic loves his cynicism? Not a bit of it, not he, but he won't be taken in by sham anymore. That, he swears. So it was with Semyonov. This girl might have proved the one real exception. She might have lasted. She might have grown even more beautiful and more wonderful, and so proved his idealism true after all. He doesn't know, and I don't know, but there it is. He's haunted by the possibility of it all his days. He's a man now ruled by an obsession. He thinks of one thing, and one thing only, day and night. His sensuality has fallen away from him because women are dull, sterile to him beside that perfect picture of the woman lost, lost. He may recover her. He doesn't know. The thought of death obsesses him. What is there in it? Is she behind there or no? Is she behind there maddening thought with her Englishman? He must know. He must know. He calls to her. She won't come to him. What is he to do? Suicide? No, to a proud man like Semyonov that's a miserable confession of weakness. How they'd laugh at him, these other despicable human beings if he did that. He'd prove himself as weak as they. No, that's not for him. What then? This is a fantastic world, Bowen, and nothing is impossible for it. Suppose he were to select someone, some weak and irritable and sentimental and disappointed man, someone whose every foyable and weakness he knew. Suppose he were to place himself near him and so irritate and confuse and madden him that at last one day in a fury of rage and despair that man were to do for him what he is too proud to do for himself. Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, the food for his conceit such a game would be to Semyonov. Is this going to do it? Or this? Or this? Now I've got him far enough? Another five minutes. Think of the hair breath escapes, the check and counter check, the sense above all that to a man like Semyonov is almost everything, that he is master of human emotions, that he can direct wretched, weak human beings whether he will. 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? Markovic cried Bohin. Now you know I said why you've got to stay on in that flat. End of Part 3, Chapter 5. Part 3, Chapter 6 of The Secret City. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. The Secret City. By Hugh Walpole. Part 3, Chapter 6. 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 that night when she had realized her love for Lawrence to the full, that night when they had sheltered the policemen. 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 realize, and that was strange after living with him for so long, was that he was always hoping that her tender kindness toward him would, one day, change into something more passionate. I think that subconsciously she did realize 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 Bohen had told me, to see them. He sat there and looked at her, and listened, and waited. She, herself I expect, prevented there 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 Grogov, 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 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 realize that a false step would only plunge her father 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 realize 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 with him in Moscow. He had a fine house near the Arbat, and he was living, although she did not, of course, know anything about that at the time, with one of his gaudiest mistresses. Her mother and father being dead, she had no protection. She was defenseless. I don't think that he in any way perverted her innocence. I accept that he was especially careful to shield her from his own manner of life. He had always his own queer tradition of honor, which he effected indeed to despise. But she felt more than she perceived. The house was garish, over-scented, and over-lighted. There were many gilt chairs and large pictures of naked women and numbers of colored cushions. She was desperately lonely. She hated the woman of the house, who tried, I have no doubt, to be kind to her, and after the first week she was left to herself. One night, long after she had gone to bed, there was a row downstairs, one of the scenes common enough between Semyonov and his women. Terrified, she went to the head of the stairs and heard the smash of falling glass, and her uncle's voice raised in a scream of rage and vituperation. A great naked woman in a gold frame swung and leered at her in the lighted passage. She fled back to her own dark room and lay, for the rest of that night, trembling and quivering with her head beneath the bedclothes. From that moment she feared her uncle as much as she hated him. Long afterwards came his influence over Nicholas. No one had so much influence over Nicholas as he. Nicholas himself admitted it. He was alternately charmed and frightened, beguiled and disgusted, attracted and repulsed. Before the war Semyonov had, for a time, seen a good deal of them, and Nicholas steadily degenerated. Then Semyonov was bored with it all and went off after other game more worthy of his dowdy spear. Then came the war, and Vera devoutedly hoped that her dear uncle would meet his death at the hands of some patriotic Austrian. He did indeed for a time disappear from their lives, and it seemed that he might never come back again. Then on that fateful Christmas day he did return, and Vera's worst fears were realized. She hated him all the more because of her impotence. She could do nothing against him at all. She was never very subtle in her dealings with people, and her own natural honesty made her often stupid about men's motives. But the thing for which she feared her uncle most was his, as it seemed to her, supernatural penetration into the thoughts of others. She, of course, greatly exaggerated his gifts in that direction, simply because they were in no way her gifts. And he, equally, of course, discovered very early in their acquaintance that this was the way to impress her. He played tricks with her exactly as a conjurer produces a rabbit out of a hat. When he announced his intention of coming to live in the flat, she was literally paralyzed with fright. Had it been anyone else, she would have fought. But in her uncle's drawing, gradually nearer and nearer to the center of all their lives, coming as it seemed to her so silently and mysteriously, without obvious motive, and yet with so stealthy a plan, against this man she could do nothing. Nevertheless, she determined to fight for Nicholas to the last, to fight for Nicholas to bring back Nina. These were now the two great aims of her life. And whilst they were being realized, her love for Lawrence must be passive. Passive as a deep passionate flame beats with unwavering force in the heart of the lamp. They had made me promise long before that I would spend Easter Eve with them and go with them to our church on the key. I wondered now whether all the troubles of the last weeks would not negative that invitation, and I had privately determined that if I did not hear from them again, I would slip off with Lawrence somewhere. But on Good Friday, Markovitch meeting me in the Morskaya reminded me that I was coming. It is very difficult to give any clear picture of the atmosphere of the town between Revolution Week and this Easter Eve. And yet all the seeds of the later crop of horrors were sown during that period. Its spiritual mentality corresponded almost exactly with the physical thought that accompanied it. Mist then vapor dripping of rain, the fading away of one clear world into another that was indistinct, ghostly, ominous. I find written in my diary of Easter day, exactly five weeks after the outbreak of the Revolution, these words. From long talks with Kaye and others I see quite clearly that Russians have gone mad for the time being. It's heartbreaking to see them holding meetings everywhere, arguing at every street corner as to how they intend to arrange a democratic peace for Europe, when meanwhile the Germans are gathering every moment force upon the frontiers. Pretty quick, isn't it, to change from utopia to threatenings of the worst sort of communism? But the great point for us in all this, the great point for our private personal histories, as well as the public one, was that it was during these weeks that the real gulf between Russia and the Western world showed itself. Yes, for more than three years we had been pretending that a weak sentiment and a hurriedly proclaimed idealism could bridge a separation which centuries of magic and blood and bones had gone to build. For three years we tricked ourselves. I am not sure that the Russians were ever really deceived, but we liked the ballet, we liked Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, we translated their inborn mysticism into the weakest kind of sentimentality, we liked the theory of inexhaustible numbers, we liked the picture of their pounding steam roller-like to Berlin. We tricked ourselves and in the space of a night our trick was exposed. Plain enough the reasons for these mistakes that we in England have made over that same revolution, mistakes made by none more emphatically than by our own social democrats, those who hailed the revolution as the fulfillment of all their dearest hopes, those who cursed it as the beginning of the damnation of the world, all equally in the wrong, the revolution had no thought for them. Russian extremists might shout as they pleased about their leading the fight for the democracies of the world. They never even began to understand the other democracies. Whatever Russia may do through repercussion for the rest of the world, she remains finally alone, isolated in her government, in her ideals, in her ambitions, in her abnegations. For a moment the world politics of her foreign rulers seemed to draw her into the western whirlpool. For a moment only she remained there. She has slipped back again behind her veil of mist and shadow. We may trade with her, plunge into her politics, steal from her art, emphasize her religion. She remains alone, apart, mysterious. I think it was with a kind of gulping surprise as after a sudden plunge into icy cold water that we English became conscious of this. It came to us first in the form that to us the war was everything. To the Russian, by the side of an idea, the war was nothing at all. How was I, for instance, to recognize the men who took a leading part in the events of this extraordinary year as the same men who fought with bare hands with fanatical bravery through all the Galician campaign of two years before? Had I not realized sufficiently at that time that Russia moves always according to the idea that governs her and that when that idea changes the world his world changes with it? Well, to return to Markovitch. End of Part 3, Chapter 6. Part 3, Chapter 7 of The Secret City. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. The Secret City by Hugh Wellpole. Part 3, Chapter 7. I was on the point of setting out for the English prospect on Saturday evening when there was a knock on my door and to my surprise Nicholas Markovitch came in. He was in evening dress, rather quaint it seemed to me, with his pointed collar so high, his tailcoat so much too small, and his large brimmed bowler hat. He explained to me, confusably, that he wished to walk with me alone to the church, that he had things to tell me, that we should meet the others there. I saw it once, two things, that he was very miserable, that he was a little drunk. His misery showed itself in his strange, pathetic, gleaming eyes that looked so often as though they held unshed tears. This gave him an unfortunate, ridiculous aspect. In his hollow pale cheeks and the droop of his mouth, not petulant nor peevish, simply unhappy in the way that animals or very young children express unhappiness. His drunkenness showed itself in quite another way. He was unsteady a little on his feet and his hands trembled, his forehead was flushed, and he spoke thickly, sometimes running his words together. At the same time, he was not very drunk and was quite in control of his thoughts and intentions. We went out together. It could not have been called a fine night. It was too cold, and there was a hint of rain in the air. And yet there is beauty, I believe, in every Russian Easter eve. The day comes so wonderfully at the end of the long, heavy winter. The white nights with their incredible, almost terrifying beauty are at hand. The ice is broken. The new world of sun and flowers is ready, at an instant's magic word, to be born. Nevertheless, this year, there was an incredible pathos in the wind. The soul of Petrograd was indeed starring, but mournfully, ominously. There were not, for one thing, the rows of little fairy lamps that on this night always make the streets so gay. They hang in chains and clusters of light from street to street, blazing in the square, reflected star-like in the canals, misty and golden veiled in distance. Tonight, only the churches had their lights. For the rest, the streets were black chasms of windy desolation. The canals burdened with the breaking ice, which moved restlessly against the dead barges. Very strong in the air was the smell of the sea. The heavy clouds that moved in a strange kind of ordered procession overhead seemed to carry that scent with them. And in the dim pale shadows of the evening glow one seemed to see at the end of every street mysterious clusters of mass and to hear the clank of chains and the creak of restless boards. There were few people about and a great silence everywhere. The air was damp and thick and smelled of rotten soil as though dank grass was everywhere pushing its way up through the cobbles and paving stones. As we walked, Markovich talked incessantly. It was only a very little the talk of a drunken man scarcely disconnected at all. But every now and again running into sudden little wildnesses and extravagances, I cannot remember nearly all that he said. He came suddenly as I expected him to do to the subject of Semyonov. You know, of course, that Olexey Petrovich is living with us now. Yes, I know that. You can understand, Ivan Andreyevich, that when he came first and proposed it to me, I was startled. I had other things, very serious things, to think of just then. We weren't, we aren't very happy at home just now. You know that. I didn't think he'd be very gay with us. I told him that. He said he didn't expect to be gay anywhere at this time but that he was lonely in his flat all by himself and he thought for a week or two he'd like company. He didn't expect it would be for very long? No. He said he was expecting something to happen. Something to himself, he said, that would alter his affairs. So, as it was only for a little time. Well, it didn't seem to matter. Besides, he's a powerful man. He's difficult to resist. Very difficult to resist. Why have you given up your inventions? Nikolai Leonovich, I said to him, suddenly turning round upon him. My inventions, he repeated, seeming very startled at that. Yes, your inventions. No, no, understand. I have no more use for them. There are other things now to think about, more important things. But you were getting on with them so well? No, not really. I was deceiving myself as I have often deceived myself before. Alexei showed me that. He told me that they were no good. But I thought that he encouraged you. Yes, at first, only at first. Afterwards, he saw into them more clearly. He changed his mind. I think he was only intending to be kind. A strange man. A strange man. A very strange man. Don't you let him influence you, Nikolai Leonovich? Influence me? Do you think he does that? He suddenly came close to me, catching my arm. I don't know. I haven't seen you often together. Perhaps he does. Mojet buit. You may be right. I don't know. I don't know what I feel about him at all. Sometimes he seems to me very kind. Sometimes I'm frightened of him. Sometimes, here, he dropped his voice. He makes me very angry. So angry that I lose control of myself. A despicable thing. A despicable thing. Just as I used to feel about the old man to whom I was secretary, I nearly murdered him once. In the middle of the night, I thought suddenly of his stomach, all round and white and shining. It was an irresistible temptation to plunge a knife into it. I was awake for hours thinking of it. Every man has such hours. At the same time, Alexey can be very kind. How do you mean kind, I asked. For instance, he has some very good wine. Fifty bottles at least. He has given it all to us. Then he insists on paying us for his food. He is a generous, spirited man. Money is nothing to us. Don't you drink his wine, I said. Nicholas was instantly offended. What do you mean, Ivan Andreevich, not drink his wine? Am I an infant? Can I not look after myself? Blagged are you vast. I am more than ten years old. He took his hand away from my arm. No, I didn't mean that at all, I assured him. Of course not. Only you told me not long ago that you had given up wine altogether. That's why I said what I did. So I have, so I have, he eerily assured me. But Easter's a time for rejoicing. Rejoicing! His voice rose suddenly shrill and scornful. Rejoicing with the world in the state that it is. Truly, Ivan Andreevich, I don't wonder at Alexey's cynicism. I don't, indeed. The world is a sad spectacle for an observant man. He suddenly put his hand through my arm, so close to me now that I could feel his beating heart. But you believe, don't you, Ivan Andreevich, that Russia now has found herself? His voice became desperately urgent and beseeching. You must believe that. You don't agree with those fools who don't believe that you will make the best of all this? Fools! Scoundrels! Scoundrels! That's what they are. I must believe in Russia now, or I shall die, and so with all of us. If she does not rise now as one great country and lead the world, she will never do so. Our hearts must break, but she will, she will. No one who is watching events can doubt it. Only cynics, like Alexey, doubt. He doubts everything, and he cannot leave anything alone. He must smear everything with his dirty finger. But he must leave Russia alone, I tell him. He broke off. If Russia fails now, he spoke very quietly, my life is over, I have nothing left, I will die. Come, Nikolai Leonovich, I said you mustn't let yourself go like that. Life isn't over because one is disappointed in one's country. And even though one is disappointed, one does not love, though less. What's friendship worth if every disappointment chills one's affection? One loves one's country because she is one's country. Not because she's disappointing. And so I went on with a number of amiable platitudes, struggling to comfort him somewhere, and knowing that I was not even beginning to touch the trouble of his soul. He drew very close to me, his fingers gripping my sleeve. I'll tell you, Ivan Andreyevich, but you mustn't tell anybody else. I'm afraid. Yes, I am. Afraid of myself, afraid of this town, afraid of Alexei, although that must seem strange to you. Things are very bad with me, Ivan Andreyevich. Very bad indeed. Oh, I have been disappointed. Yes, I have. Not that I expected anything else. But now it has come at last. The blow that I have always feared has fallen. A very heavy blow. My own fault, perhaps, I don't know. But I'm afraid of myself. I don't know what I may do. I have such strange dreams. Why has Alexei come to stay with us? I don't know, I said. Then, thank God, we reached the church. It was only as we went up the steps that I realized that he had never once mentioned Vera. End of Part 3, Chapter 7. Part 3, Chapter 8 of The Secret City. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Secret City, by Hugh Walpole. Part 3, Chapter 8. And yet, with all our worries thick upon us, it was quite impossible to resist the sweetness and charm and mystery of that service. I think that perhaps it is true, as many have said, that people did not crowd to the churches on that Easter, as they had earlier ones. But our church was a small one, and it seemed us to be crammed. We stumbled up the dark steps and found ourselves at the far end of the very narrow nave. At the other end, there was a pool of soft golden light, which dark figures were bathed mysteriously. At the very moment of our entering, the procession was passing down the nave on its way around the outside of the church to look for the body of our Lord. Down the nave, they came, the people standing on either side to let them pass, and then many of them falling in behind. Everyone carried a lighted candle. First there were the singers, then men carrying the colored banners, then the priests in stiff, gorgeous raiment, then officials and dignitaries. Finally the crowd. The singing, the forest of lighted candles, the sudden opening of the black door, and the blowing in of the cold night wind, the passing of the voices out into the air, the soft dying away of the singing, and then the hushed expectation of the waiting for the return. All this had in it something so elemental, so simple and so true to the very heart of the mystery of life that all trouble and sorrow fell away, and one was at peace. How strange was that expectation? We knew so very well what the word must be. We could tell exactly the moment of the knock on the door, the deep sound of the priest's voice, the embracing and dropping of wax over everyone's clothes that would follow it, and yet every year it was the same. There was truth in it. There was some deep response to the human dependence, some whispered promise of a future good. We waited, there our hearts beating, crowded against the dark walls. It was a very democratic assembly. bourgeoisie, workmen, soldiers, officers, women in evening dress and peasant women with shawls over their heads. No one spoke or whispered. Suddenly there was a knock. The door was open. The priest stood there in his crimson and gold. Christ is risen, he cried. His voice vibrating as though he had indeed, but just now, out there in the dark and wind, made the great discovery. He is risen indeed, came the reply from us all. Markovitch embraced me. Let us go, he whispered. I can't bear it somehow tonight. We went out, everywhere the bells were ringing, the wonderful deep boom of St. Isaac's, and then all the other bells jangling, singing, crying, chattering, answering from all over Petrograd. From the other side of the Neva came the report of the guns and the fainter, more distant echo of the guns near the sea. I could hear it behind all the incessant chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck of the ice colliding on the river. It was very cold, and we hurried back to anglisky prospect. Markovitch was quite silent all the way. When we arrived, we found Vera and Uncle Ivan and Semyonov waiting for us. Bohen was with friends. On the table was the Poska, a sweet paste made of eggs and cream, curds and sugar, a huge ham, a large cake, or rather sweetbread, called kulak, a big bowl full of Easter eggs, as many colored as the rainbow. This would be the fair during the whole week, as there was to be no cookie until the following Saturday. Very tired of the ham and eggs one became before that day. There was also wine, some of Semyonov's gifts, I supposed, in a tiny bottle of vodka. We were not a very cheerful company. Uncle Ivan, who was really distinguished by his complete inability to perceive what was going on under his nose, was happy, and ate a great deal of the ham, and certainly more of the Poska, than was good for him. I do not know who was responsible for the final incident. Semyonov, perhaps, but I have often wondered whether some word or other of mine precipitated it. We had finished our meal and were sitting quietly together, each occupied with his own thoughts. I had noticed that Markovich had been drinking a great deal. I was just thinking it was time for me to go when I heard Semyonov say, Well, what do you think of your revolution now, Nicholas? What do you mean my revolution? he asked. The strange thing on looking back is that the whole of the scene seems to me to have passed in a whisper, as though we were all terrified of somebody. Well, do you remember how you talked to me about the saving of the world and all the rest of it that this was going to be? Doesn't seem to be quite turning out that way, does it, from all one hears. A good deal of quarrelling, isn't there? And what about the army, breaking up a bit, isn't it? Don't uncle Alexei, I heard Farrell whisper. What I said, I still believe Nicholas answered very quietly. Leave Russia alone, Alexei, and leave me alone, too. I'm not touching you, Nicholas, Semyonov answered, laughing softly. Yes you are, you know that you are. I'm not angry, not yet, but it's unwise of you. Unwise? Unwise? How? Never mind. Below the silent pools there lie hidden many devils. Leave me alone, you are our guest. Indeed, Nicholas said, Semyonov, still laughing. I mean you no harm. Ask our friend Dorwood here whether I ever mean anyone any harm. He will, I'm sure, give me the best of characters. No, no harm perhaps, but still you tease me. I am a fool to mine, but then I am a fool. Everyone knows it. All the time he was looking with his pathetic eyes in his pale face at Vera. Vera said again, very low, almost in a whisper. Uncle Alexei, please. But really, Nicholas, Semyonov went on. You underrate yourself. You do indeed. Nobody thinks you a fool. I think you are a very lucky man. With your talents, talents, said Nicholas softly, looking at Vera. I have no talents. In Vera's love for you went on Semyonov. Ah, that is over, Nicholas said, so low that I scarcely heard it. I do not know what then exactly happened. I think that Vera put out her hand to cover Nicholas's. At any rate I saw him draw his way, very gently. It lay on the table and the only sound beside the voices was the tiny rattle of his nails as his hand trembled against the woodwork. Vera said something that I did not catch. No, Nicholas said, no, we must be true with one another, Vera. I've been drinking too much wine. My head is aching and perhaps my words are not very clear. But it gives me courage to say what I have in my mind. I haven't thought out yet what we must do. Perhaps you can help me. But I must tell you that I saw everything that happened here on that Thursday afternoon in the week of the revolution. Vera made a little movement of distress. Yes, you didn't know. But I was in my room where Alexei sleeps now, you know. I couldn't help seeing. I'm very sorry. No, Nicholas, I'm very glad, Vera answered quietly. I would have told you in any case. I should have told you before. I love him and he loves me just as you saw. I would like Ivan Andreevich and Uncle Ivan and everyone to know. There is nothing to conceal. I've never loved anyone before. And I'm not ashamed of loving someone now. It doesn't alter our life, Nicholas. I care for you just as I did care. And I will do just as you tell me. I will never see him again, if that's what you wish. But I shall always love him. Ah, Vera, you are cruel. Nicholas gave a little cry like a herd animal. Then he went away from us, standing for a moment, looking at us. We'll have to consider what we must do. I don't know. I can't think tonight. And you, Alexei, you leave me alone. He went stumbling away towards his bedroom. Vera said nothing to any of us. She got up slowly, looked about her for a moment as though she were bewildered by the light, and then went after Nicholas. I turned to Semianov. You'd better go back to your own place, I said. Not yet, thank you, he answered, smiling. End of Part 3 Chapter 8