The next day, Tuesday, was stormy with wind and rain. It was strange to see from my window the whirlpool of ice-encumbered waters. The rain fell in slanting, hissing sheets upon the ice, and the ice, in lumps and sheets and blocks, tossed and heaved and spun. At times it was as though all the ice was driven by some strong movement in one direction, then it was like the whole pavement of the world slipping down the side of the firmament into space. Suddenly it would be checked and, with a kind of quiver, station itself and hang chattering and clutching until the sweep would begin in the opposite direction!
I could see only dimly through the mist, but it was not difficult to imagine that, in very truth, the days of the flood had returned. Nothing could be seen but the tossing, heaving welter of waters with the ice, grim and grey through the shadows, like “ships and monsters, sea-serpents and mermaids,” to quote Galleon’s Spanish Nights.
Of course the water came in through my own roof, and it was on that very afternoon that I decided, once and for all, to leave this abode of mine. Romantic it might be; I felt it was time for a little comfortable realism. My old woman brought me the usual cutlets, macaroni, and tea for lunch; then I wrote to a friend in England; and finally, about four o’clock, after one more look at the hissing waters, drew my curtains, lit my candles, and sat down near my stove to finish that favourite of mine, already mentioned in these pages, De la Mare’s The Return.
I read on with absorbed attention. I did not hear the dripping on the roof, nor the patter-patter of the drops from the ceiling, nor the beating of the storm against the glass. My candles blew in the draught, and shadows crossed and recrossed the page. Do you remember the book’s closing words? —
“Once, like Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard the steady surge of multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of Time’s winged chariot hurrying near, then he too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friend’s denuded battlefield.”
“Shadowy companion,” “multitudinous rain-drops,” “a weary old sentinel,” “his friend’s denuded battlefield”… the words echoed like little muffled bells in my brain, and it was, I suppose, to their chiming that I fell into dreamless sleep.
From this I was suddenly roused by the sharp noise of knocking, and starting up, my book clattering to the floor, I saw facing me, in the doorway, Semyonov. Twice before he had come to me just like this — out of the heart of a dreamless sleep. Once in the orchard near Buchatch, on a hot summer afternoon; once in this same room on a moonlit night. Some strange consciousness, rising, it seemed, deep out of my sleep, told me that this would be the last time that I would so receive him.
“May I come in?” he said.
“If you must, you must,” I answered. “I am not physically strong enough to prevent you.”
He laughed. He was dripping wet. He took off his hat and overcoat, sat down near the stove, bending forward, holding his cloak in his hands and watching the steam rise from it.
I moved away and stood watching. I was not going to give him any possible illusion as to my welcoming him. He turned round and looked at me.
“Truly, Ivan Andreievitch,” he said, “you are a fine host. This is a miserable greeting.”
“There can be no greetings between us ever again,” I answered him. “You are a blackguard. I hope that this is our last meeting.”
“But it is,” he answered, looking at me with friendliness; “that is precisely why I’ve come. I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?” I repeated with astonishment. This chimed in so strangely with my premonition. “I never was more delighted to hear it. I hope you’re going a long distance from us all.”
“That’s as may be,” he answered. “I can’t tell you definitely.”
“When are you going?” I asked.
“That I can’t tell you either. But I have a premonition that it will be soon.”
“Oh, a premonition,” I said, disappointed. “Is nothing settled?”
“No, not definitely. It depends on others.”
“Have you told Vera and Nicholas?”
“No — in fact, only last night Vera begged me to go away, and I told her that I would love to do anything to oblige her, but this time I was afraid that I couldn’t help her. I would be compelled, alas, to stay on indefinitely.”
“Look here, Semyonov,” I said, “stop that eternal fooling. Tell me honestly — are you going or not?”
“Going away from where?” he asked, laughing.
“From the Markovitches, from all of us, from Petrograd?”
“Yes — I’ve told you already,” he answered. “I’ve come to say good-bye.”
“Then what did you mean by telling Vera—”
“Never you mind, Ivan Andreievitch. Don’t worry your poor old head with things that are too complicated for you — a habit of yours, I’m afraid. Just believe me when I say that I’ve come to say good-bye. I have an intuition that we shall never talk together again. I may be wrong. But my intuitions are generally correct.”
I noticed then that his face was haggard, his eyes dark, the light in them exhausted as though he had not slept…. I had never before seen him show positive physical distress. Let his soul be what it might, his body seemed always triumphant.
“Whether your intuition is right or no,” I said, “this is the last time. I never intend to speak to you again if I can help it. The day that I hear that you have really left us, never to return, will be one of the happiest days of my life.”
Semyonov gave me a strange look, humorous, ironical, and, upon my word, almost affectionate: “That’s very sad what you say, Ivan Andreievitch — if you mean it. And I suppose you mean it, because you English always do mean what you say…. But it’s sad because, truly, I have friendly feelings towards you, and you’re almost the only man in the world of whom I could say that.”
“You speak as though your friendship were an honour,” I said hotly.
“It’s a degradation.”
He smiled. “Now that’s melodrama, straight out of your worst English plays. And how bad they can be!… But you hadn’t always this vehement hatred. What’s changed your mind?”
“I don’t know that I have changed my mind,” I answered. “I think I’ve always disliked you. But there at the Front and in the Forest you were brave and extraordinarily competent. You treated Trenchard abominably, of course — but he rather asked for it in some ways. Here you’ve been nothing but the meanest skunk and sneak. You’ve set out deliberately to poison the lives of some of the best-hearted and most helpless people on this earth…. You deserve hanging, if any murderer ever did!”
He looked at me so mildly and with such genuine interest that I was compelled to feel my indignation a whit melodramatic.
“If you are going,” I said more calmly, “for Heaven’s sake go! It can’t be any pleasure to you, clever and talented as you are, to bait such harmless people as Vera and Nicholas. You’ve done harm enough. Leave them, and I forgive you everything.”
“Ah, of course your forgiveness is of the first importance to me,” he said, with ironic gravity. “But it’s true enough. You’re going to be bothered with me — I do seem a worry to you, don’t I? — for only a few days more. And how’s it going to end, do you think? Who’s going to finish me off? Nicholas or Vera? Or perhaps our English Byron, Lawrence? Or even yourself? Have you your revolver with you? I shall offer no resistance, I promise you.”
Suddenly he changed. He came closer to me. His weary, exhausted eyes gazed straight into mine: “Ivan Andreievitch, never mind about the rest — never mind whether you do or don’t hate me, that matters to nobody. What I tell you is the truth. I have come to you, as I have always come to you, like the moth to the flame. Why am I always pursuing you? Is it for the charm and fascination of your society? Your wit? Your beauty? I won’t flatter you — no, no, it’s because you alone, of all these fools here, knew her. You knew her as no one else alive knew her. She liked you — God knows why! At least I do know why — it was because of her youth and innocence and simplicity, because she didn’t know a wise man from a fool, and trusted all alike…. But you knew her, you knew her. You remember her and can talk of her. Ah, how I’ve hungered, hungered, to talk to you about her! Sometimes I’ve come all this way and then turned back at the door. How I’ve prayed that it might have been some other who knew her, some real man, not a sentimental, gloomy old woman like yourself, Ivan Andreievitch. And yet you have your points. You have in you the things that she saw — you are honest, you are brave…. You are like a good English clergyman. But she!… I should have had some one with wit, with humour, with a sense of life about her. All the things, all the little things — the way she walked, her clothes, her smile — when she was cross! Ah, she was divine when she was cross!… Ivan Andreievitch, be kind to me! Think for a moment less of your morals, less of your principles — and talk to me of her! Talk to me of her!”
He had drawn quite close to me; he looked like a madman — I have no doubt that, at that moment, he was one.
“I can’t!… I won’t!” I answered, drawing away. “She is the most sacred memory I have in my life. I hate to think of her with you. And that because you smirch everything you touch. I have no feeling of jealousy….”
“You? Jealousy!” he said, looking at me scornfully. “Why should you be jealous?”
“I loved her too,” I said.
He looked at me. In spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot — my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame — everything was comprehended in the scorn of that glance.
“No,” I said, “you need not suppose that she ever realised. She did not. I would have died rather than have spoken of it. But I will not talk about her. I will not.”
He drew away from me. His face was grave; the mockery had left it.
“Oh, you English, how strange you are!… In trusting, yes…. But the things you miss! I understand now many things. I give up my desire. You shan’t smirch your precious memories…. And you, too, must understand that there has been all this time a link that has bound us…. Well, that link has snapped. I must go. Meanwhile, after I am gone, remember that there is more in life, Ivan Andreievitch, than you will ever understand. Who am I?… Rather ask, what am I? I am a Desire, a Purpose, a Pursuit — what you like. If another suffer for that I cannot help it, and if human nature is so weak, so stupid, it is right that it should suffer. But perhaps I am not myself at all, Ivan Andreievitch. Perhaps this is a ghost that you see…. What if the town has changed in the night and strange souls have slipped into our old bodies?
“Isn’t there a stir about the town? Is it I that pursue Nicholas, or is it my ghost that pursues myself? Is it Nicholas that I pursue? Is not Nicholas dead, and is it not my hope of release that I follow?… Don’t be so sure of your ground, Ivan Andreievitch. You know the proverb: ‘There’s a secret city in every man’s heart. It is at that city’s altars that the true prayers are offered.’ There has been more than one Revolution in the last two months.”
He came up to me:
“Do not think too badly of me, Ivan Andreievitch, afterwards. I’m a haunted man, you know.”
He bent forward and kissed me on the lips. A moment later he was gone.