Next night (it was Friday evening) Semyonov paid me a visit. I was just dropping to sleep in my chair. I had been reading that story of De la Mare’s The Return — one of the most beautiful books in our language, whether for its spirit, its prose, or its poetry — and something of the moon-lit colour of its pages had crept into my soul, so that the material world was spun into threads of the finest silk behind which other worlds were more and more plainly visible. I had not drawn my blind, and a wonderful moon shone clear on to the bare boards of my room, bringing with its rays the mother-of-pearl reflections of the limitless ice, and these floated on my wall in trembling waves of opaque light. In the middle of this splendour I dropped slowly into slumber, the book falling from my hands, and I, on my part, seeming to float lazily backwards and forwards, as though, truly, one were at the bottom of some crystal sea, idly and happily drowned.
From all of this I was roused by a sharp knock on my door, and I started up, still bewildered and bemused, but saying to myself aloud, “There’s some one there! there’s some one there!…” I stood for quite a while, listening, on the middle of my shining floor, then the knock was almost fiercely repeated. I opened the door and, to my surprise, found Semyonov standing there. He came in, smiling, very polite of course.
“You’ll forgive me, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “This is terribly unceremonious. But I had an urgent desire to see you, and you wouldn’t wish me, in the circumstances, to have waited.”
“Please,” I said. I went to the window and drew the blinds. I lit the lamp. He took off his Shuba and we sat down. The room was very dim now, and I could only see his mouth and square beard behind the lamp.
“I’ve no Samovar, I’m afraid,” I said. “If I’d known you were coming I’d have told her to have it ready. But it’s too late now. She’s gone to bed.”
“Nonsense,” he said brusquely. “You know that I don’t care about that. Now we’ll waste no time. Let us come straight to the point at once. I’ve come to give you some advice, Ivan Andreievitch — very simple advice. Go home to England.” Before he had finished the sentence I had felt the hostility in his voice; I knew that it was to be a fight between us, and strangely, at once the self-distrust and cowardice from which I had been suffering all those weeks left me. I felt warm and happy. I felt that with Semyonov I knew how to deal. I was afraid of Vera and Nina, perhaps, because I loved them, but of Semyonov, thank God, I was not afraid.
“Well, now, that’s very kind of you,” I said, “to take so much interest in my movements. I didn’t know that it mattered to you so much where I was. Why must I go?”
“Because you are doing no good here. You are interfering in things of which you have no knowledge. When we met before you interfered, and you must honestly admit that you did not improve things. Now it is even more serious. I must ask you to leave my family alone, Ivan Andreievitch.”
“Your family!” I retorted, laughing. “Upon my word, you do them great honour. I wonder whether they’d be very proud and pleased if they knew of your adoption of them. I haven’t noticed on their side any very great signs of devotion.”
He laughed. “No, you haven’t noticed, Ivan Andreievitch. But there, you don’t really notice very much. You think you see the devil of a lot and are a mighty clever fellow; but we’re Russians, you know, and it takes more than sentimental mysticism to understand us. But even if you did understand us — which you don’t — the real point is that we don’t want you, any of you, patronising, patting us on the shoulder, explaining us to ourselves, talking about our souls, our unpunctuality, and our capacity for drink. However, that’s merely in a general way. In a personal, direct, and individual way, I beg you not to visit my family again. Stick to your own countrymen.”
Although he spoke obstinately, and with a show of assurance, I realised, behind his words, his own uncertainty.
“See here, Semyonov,” I said. “It’s just my own Englishmen that I am going to stick to. What about Lawrence? And what about Bohun? Will you prevent me from continuing my friendship with them?”
“Lawrence… Lawrence,” he said slowly, in a voice quite other than his earlier one, and as though he were talking aloud to himself. “Now, that’s strange… there’s a funny thing. A heavy, dull, silent Englishman, as ugly as only an Englishman can be, and the two of them are mad about him — nothing in him — nothing — and yet there it is. It’s the fidelity in the man, that’s what it is, Durward….” He suddenly called out the word aloud, as though he’d made a discovery. “Fidelity… fidelity… that’s what we Russians admire, and there’s a man with not enough imagination to make him unfaithful. Fidelity! — lack of imagination, lack of freedom — that’s all fidelity is…. But I’m faithful…. God knows I’m faithful — always! always!”
He stared past me. I swear that he did not see me, that I had vanished utterly from his vision. I waited. He was leaning forward, pressing both his thick white hands on the table. His gaze must have pierced the ice beyond the walls, and the worlds beyond the ice.
Then quite suddenly he came back to me and said very quietly,
“Well, there it is, Ivan Andreievitch…. You must leave Vera and Nina alone. It isn’t your affair.”
We continued the discussion then in a strange and friendly way. “I believe it to be my affair,” I answered quietly, “simply because they care for me and have asked me to help them if they were in trouble. I still deny that Vera cares for Lawrence…. Nina has had some girl’s romantic idea perhaps… but that is the extent of the trouble. You are trying to make things worse, Alexei Petrovitch, for your own purposes — and God only knows what they are.”
He now spoke so quietly that I could scarcely hear his words. He was leaning forward on the table, resting his head on his hands and looking gravely at me.
“What I can’t understand, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, “is why you’re always getting in my way. You did so in Galicia, and now here you are again. It is not as though you were strong or wise — no, it is because you are persistent. I admire you in a way, you know, but now, this time, I assure you that you are making a great mistake in remaining. You will be able to influence neither Vera Michailovna nor your bullock of an Englishman when the moment comes. At the crisis they will never think of you at all, and the end of it simply will be that all parties concerned will hate you. I don’t wish you any harm, and I assure you that you will suffer terribly if you stay…. By the way, Ivan Andreievitch,” his voice suddenly dropped, “you haven’t ever had — by chance — just by chance — any photograph of Marie Ivanovna with you, have you? Just by chance, you know….”
“No,” I said shortly, “I never had one.”
“No — of course — not. I only thought…. But of course you wouldn’t — no — no…. Well, as I was saying, you’d better leave us all to our fate. You can’t prevent things — you can’t indeed.” I looked at him without speaking. He returned my gaze.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, “before I answer you. What are you doing to
Markovitch, Alexei Petrovitch?”
“Markovitch!” He repeated the name with an air of surprise as though he had never heard it before. “What do you mean?”
“You have some plan with regard to him,” I said. “What is it?”
He laughed then. “I a plan! My dear Durward, how romantic you always insist on being! I a plan! Your plunges into Russian psychology are as naïve as the girl who pays her ten kopecks to see the Fat Woman at the Fair! Markovitch and I understand one another. We trust one another. He is a simple fellow, but I trust him.”
“Do you remember,” I said, “that the other day at the Jews’ Market you told me the story of the man who tortured his friend, until the man shot him — simply because he was tired of life and too proud to commit suicide. Why did you tell me that story?”
“Did I tell it you?” he asked indifferently. “I had forgotten. But it is of no importance. You know, Ivan Andreievitch, that what I told you before is true…. We don’t want you here any more. I tell you in a perfectly friendly way. I bear you no malice. But we’re tired of your sentimentality. I’m not speaking only for myself — I’m not indeed. We feel that you avoid life to a ridiculous extent, and that you have no right to talk to us Russians on such a subject. What, for instance, do you know about women? For years I slept with a different woman every night of the week — old and young, beautiful and ugly, some women like men, some like God, some like the gutter. That teaches you something about women — but only something. Afterwards I found that there was only one woman — I left all the others like dirty washing — I was supremely faithful… so I learnt the rest. Now you have never been faithful nor unfaithful — I’m sure that you have not. Then about God? When have you ever thought about Him? Why, you are ashamed to mention His name. If an Englishman speaks of God when other men are present every one laughs — and yet why? It is a very serious and interesting question. God exists undoubtedly, and so we must make up our minds about Him. We must establish some relationship — what it is does not matter — that is our individual ‘case’ — but only the English establish no relationship and then call it a religion…. And so in this affair of my family. What does it matter what they do? That is the only thing of which you think, that they should die or disgrace their name or be unhappy or quarrel…. Pooh! What are all those things compared with the idea behind them? If they wish to sacrifice happiness for an idea, that is their good luck, and no Russian would think of preventing them. But you come in with your English morality and sentiment, and scream and cry…. No, Ivan Andreievitch, go home! go home!”
I waited to be quite sure that he had finished, and then I said,
“That’s all as it may be, Alexei Petrovitch. It may be as you say. The point is, that I remain here.”
He got up from his chair. “You are determined on that?”
“I am determined,” I answered.
“Nothing will change you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then it is a battle between us?”
“If you like.”
“So be it.”
I helped him on with his Shuba. He said, in an ordinary conversational tone,
“There may be trouble to-morrow. There’s been shooting by the Nicholas
Station this afternoon, I hear. I should avoid the Nevski to-morrow.”
I laughed. “I’m not afraid of that kind of death, Alexei Petrovitch,” I said.
“No,” he said, looking at me. “I will do you justice. You are not.”
He pulled his Shuba close about him.
“Good-night, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said. “It’s been a very pleasant talk.”
“Very,” I answered. “Good-night,”
After he had gone I drew back the blinds and let the moonlight flood the room.