The Secret City Part 33

considerable danger..."

By the evening she was almost frantic. Nina had been with a girl friend in the Va.s.sily Ostrov all day. She would perhaps stay there all night if there were any signs of trouble. No one returned. Only the clock ticked on. Old Sacha asked whether she might go out for an hour. Vera nodded her head. She was then quite alone in the flat.

Suddenly, about seven o'clock, Nina came in. She was tired, nervous, and unhappy. The Revolution had not come to _her_ as anything but a sudden crumbling of all the life that she had known and believed in. She had had, that afternoon, to run down a side street to avoid a machine-gun, and afterwards on the Morskaia she had come upon a dead man huddled up in the snow like a piece of offal. These things terrified her and she did not care about the larger issues. Her life had been always intensely personal--not selfish so much as vividly egoistic through her vitality.

And now she was miserable, not because she was afraid for her own safety, but because she was face to face, for the first time, with the unknown and the uncertain.

She came in, sat down at the table, put her head into her arms and burst into tears. She must have looked a very pathetic figure with her little fur hat askew, her hair tumbled--like a child whose doll is suddenly broken.

Vera was at her side in a moment. She put her arms around her.

"Nina, dear, what is it?... Has somebody hurt you? Has something happened? Is anybody--killed?"

"No!" Nina sobbed. "n.o.body--nothing--only--I'm frightened. It all looks so strange. The streets are so funny, and--there was--a dead man on the Morskaia."

"You shouldn't have gone out, dear. I oughtn't to have let you. But now we can just be cosy together. Sacha's gone out. There's no one here but ourselves. We'll have supper and make ourselves comfortable."

Nina looked up, staring about her. "Has Sacha gone out? Oh, I wish she hadn't!... Supposing somebody came."

"No one will come. Who could? No one wants to hurt _us!_ I've been here all the afternoon, and no one's come near the flat. If anybody did come we've only got to telephone to Nicholas. He's with Rozanov all the afternoon."

"Nicholas!" Nina repeated scornfully. "As though he could help anybody."

She looked up. Vera told me afterwards that it was at that moment, when Nina looked such a baby with her tumbled hair and her flushed cheeks stained with tears, that she realised her love for her with a fierceness that for a moment seemed to drown even her love for Lawrence. She caught her to her and hugged her, kissing her again and again.

But Nina was suspicious. There were many things that had to be settled between Vera and herself. She did not respond, and Vera let her go. She went into her room, to take off her things.

Afterwards they lit the samovar and boiled some eggs and put the caviare and sausage and salt fish and jam on the table. At first they were silent, and then Nina began to recover a little.

"You know, Vera, I've had an extraordinary day. There were no trams running, of course, and I had to walk all the distance. When I got there I found Katerina Ivanovna in a terrible way because their Masha--whom they've had for years, you know--went to a Revolutionary meeting last evening, and was out all night, and she came in this morning and said she wasn't going to work for them any more, that every one was equal now, and that they must do things for themselves. Just fancy! When she's been with them for years and they've been so good to her. It upset Katerina Ivanovna terribly, because of course they couldn't get any one else, and there was no food in the house."

"Perhaps Sacha won't come back again."

"Oh, she must! _She's_ not like that... and we've been so good to her.

_Nu... Patom_, some soldiers came early in the afternoon and they said that some policeman had been firing from Katya's windows and they must search the flat. They were very polite--quite a young student was in charge of them, he was rather like Boris--and they went all over everything. They were very polite, but it wasn't nice seeing them stand there with their rifles in the middle of the dining-room. Katya offered them some wine. But they wouldn't touch it. They said they had been told not to, and they looked quite angry with her for offering it. They couldn't find the policeman anywhere of course, but they told Katya they might have to burn the house down if they didn't find him. I think they just said it to amuse themselves. But Katya believed it, and was in a terrible way and began collecting all her china in the middle of the floor, and then Ivan came in and told her not to be silly."

"Weren't you frightened to come home?" asked Vera.

"Ivan wanted to come with me but I wouldn't let him. I felt quite brave in the flat, as though I'd face anybody. And then every step I took outside I got more and more frightened. It was so strange, so quiet with the trams not running and the shops all shut. The streets are quite deserted except that in the distance you see crowds, and sometimes there were shots and people running.... Then suddenly I began to run. I felt as though there were animals in the ca.n.a.ls and things crawling about on the s.h.i.+ps. And then, just as I thought I was getting home, I saw a man, dead on the snow.... I'm not going out alone again until it's over. I'm so glad I'm back, Vera darling. We'll have a lovely evening."

They both discovered then how hungry they were, and they had an enormous meal. It was very cosy with the curtains drawn and the wood crackling in the stove and the samovar chuckling. There was a plateful of chocolates, and Nina ate them all. She was quite happy now, and sang and danced about as they cleared away most of the supper, leaving the samovar and the bread and the jam and the sausage for Nicholas and Bohun when they came in.

At last Vera sat down in the old red arm-chair that had the holes and the places where it suddenly went flat, and Nina piled up some cus.h.i.+ons and sat at her feet. For a time they were happy, saying very little, Vera softly stroking Nina's hair. Then, as Vera afterwards described it to me, "Some fright or sudden dread of loneliness came into the room. It was exactly as though the door had opened and some one had joined us...

and, do you know, I looked up and expected to see Uncle Alexei."

However, of course, there was no one there; but Nina moved away a little, and then Vera, wanting to comfort her, tried to draw her closer, and then of course, Nina (because she was like that) with a little peevish shrug of the shoulders drew even farther away. There was, after that, silence between them, an awkward ugly silence, piling up and up with discomfort until the whole room seemed to be eloquent with it.

Both their minds were, of course, occupied in the same direction, and suddenly Nina, who moved always on impulse and had no restraint, burst out:

"I must know how Andrey Stepanovitch (their name for Lawrence, because Jeremy had no Russian equivalent) is--I'm going to telephone."

"You can't," Vera said quietly. "It isn't working--I tried an hour ago to get on to Nicholas."

"Well then, I shall go off and find out," said Nina, knowing very well that she would not.

"Oh, Nina, of course you mustn't.... You know you can't. Perhaps when Nicholas comes in he will have some news for us."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"You know why not. What would he think? Besides, you're not going out into the town again to-night."

"Oh, aren't I? And who's going to stop me?"

"I am," said Vera.

Nina sprang to her feet. In her later account to me of this quarrel she said, "You know, Durdles, I don't believe I ever loved Vera more than I did just then. In spite of her gravity she looked so helpless and as though she wanted loving so terribly. I could just have flung my arms round her and hugged her to death at the very moment that I was screaming at her. Why are we like that?"

At any rate Nina stood up there and stamped her foot, her hair hanging all about her face and her body quivering. "Oh, you're going to keep me, are you? What right have you got over me? Can't I go and leave the flat at any moment if I wish, or am I to consider myself your prisoner?...

_Tzuineeto, pajalueesta_... I didn't know. I can only eat my meals with your permission, I suppose. I have to ask your leave before going to see my friends.... Thank you, I know now. But I'm not going to stand it. I shall do just as I please. I'm grown up. No one can stop me...."

Vera, her eyes full of distress looked helplessly about her. She never could deal with Nina when she was in these storms of rage, and to-day she felt especially helpless.

"Nina, dear... don't.... You know that it isn't so. You can go where you please, do what you please."

"Thank you," said Nina, tossing her head. "I'm glad to hear it."

"I know I'm tiresome very often. I'm slow and stupid. If I try you sometimes you must forgive me and be patient.... Sit down again and let's be happy. You know how I love you. Nina, darling... come again."

But Nina stood there pouting. She was loving Vera so intensely that it was all that she could do to hold herself back, but her very love made her want to hurt.... "It's all very well to say you love me, but you don't act as though you do. You're always trying to keep me in. I want to be free. And Andrey Stepanovitch...."

They both paused at Lawrence's name. They knew that that was at the root of the matter between them, that it had been so for a long time, and that any other pretence would be false.

"You know I love him--" said Nina, "and I'm going to marry him."

I can see then Vera taking a tremendous pull upon herself as though she suddenly saw in front of her a gulf into whose depths, in another moment, she would fall. But my vision of the story, from this point, is Nina's.

Vera told me no more until she came to the final adventure of the evening. This part of the scene then is witnessed with Nina's eyes, and I can only fill in details which, from my knowledge of them both, I believe to have occurred. Nina, knew, of course, what the effect of her announcement would be upon Vera, but she had not expected the sudden thin pallor which stole like a film over her sister's face, the withdrawal, the silence. She was frightened, so she went on recklessly.

"Oh, I know that he doesn't care for me yet.... I can see that of course. But he will. He must. He's seen nothing of me yet. But I am stronger than he, I can make him do as I wish. I _will_ make him. You don't want me to marry him and I know why."

She flung that out as a challenge, tossing her head scornfully, but nevertheless watching with frightened eyes her sister's face. Suddenly Vera spoke, and it was in a voice so stern that it was to Nina a new voice, as though she had suddenly to deal with some new figure whom she had never seen before.

"I can't discuss that with you, Nina. You can't marry because, as you say, he doesn't care for you--in that way. Also if he did it would be a very unhappy marriage. You would soon despise him. He is not clever in the way that you want a man to be clever. You'd think him slow and dull after a month with him.... And then he ought to beat you and he wouldn't. He'd be kind to you and then you'd be ruined. I can see now that I've always been too kind to you--indeed, every one has--and the result is, that you're spoilt and know nothing about life at all--or men. You are right. I've treated you as a child too long. I will do so no longer."

Nina turned like a little fury, standing back from Vera as though she were going to spring upon her. "That's it, is it?" she cried. "And all because you want to keep him for yourself. I understand. I have eyes.

You love him. You are hoping for an intrigue with him.... You love him!

You love him! You love him!... and he doesn't love you and you are so miserable...."

Vera looked at Nina, then suddenly turned and burying her head in her hands sobbed, crouching in her chair. Then slipping from the chair, knelt catching Nina's knees, her head against her dress.

Nina was aghast, terrified--then in a moment overwhelmed by a surging flood of love so that she caught Vera to her, caressing her hair, calling her by her little name, kissing her again and again and again.