The Secret City Part 54

I climbed the stairs to the flat and found Vera waiting for me. She was with Uncle Ivan, who, I found to my disappointment, was coming with us.

We started off.

"We can walk across to the Bourse," she said. "It's such a lovely evening, and we're a little early."

We talked of nothing but the most ordinary things; Uncle Ivan's company prevented anything else. To say that I cursed him is to put it very mildly. He had been, I believe, oblivious of all the scenes that had occurred during the last weeks. If the Last Judgement occurred under his very nose, and he had had a cosy meal in front of him, he would have noticed nothing. The Revolution had had no effect on him at all; it did not seem strange to him that Semyonov should come to live with them; he had indeed fancied that Nicholas had not "been very well" lately, but then Nicholas had always been an odd and cantankerous fellow, and he, as he told me, never paid too much attention to his moods. His one anxiety was lest Sacha should be hindered from her usual shopping on the morrow, it being May Day, when there would be processions and other tiresome things. He hoped that there was enough food in the house.

"There will be cold cutlets and cheese," Vera said.

He told me that he really did not know why he was going to this meeting.

He took no interest in politics, and he hated speeches, but he would like to see our Amba.s.sador. He had heard that he was always excellently dressed....

Vera said very little. Her troubles that evening must have been acc.u.mulating upon her with terrible force--I did not know, at that time, about her night-scene with Nicholas. She was very quiet, and just as we entered the building she whispered to me:

"Once over to-morrow--"

I did not catch the rest. People pressed behind us, and for a moment we were separated; we were not alone again. I have wondered since what she meant by that, whether she had a foreboding or some more definite warning, or whether she simply referred to the danger of riots and general lawlessness. I shall never know now.

I had expected a crowded meeting, but I was not prepared for the mult.i.tude that I found. We entered by a side-door, and then pa.s.sed up a narrow pa.s.sage, which led us to the reserved seats at the side of the platform. I had secured these some days before. In the dark pa.s.sage one could realise nothing; important gentlemen in frock-coats, officers, and one or two soldiers, were hurrying to and fro, with an air of having a great deal to do, and not knowing at all how to do it. Beyond the darkness there was a steady hum, like the distant whirr of a great machine. There was a very faint smell in the air of boots and human flesh. A stout gentleman with a rosette in his b.u.t.tonhole showed us to our seats. Vera sat between Uncle Ivan and myself. When I looked about me I was amazed. The huge hall was packed so tightly with human beings that one could see nothing but wave on wave of faces, or, rather, the same face, repeated again and again and again, the face of a baby, of a child, of a credulous, cynical dreamer, a face the kindest, the navest, the cruellest, the most friendly, the most human, the most savage, the most Eastern, and the most Western in the world.

That vast presentation of that reiterated visage seemed suddenly to explain everything to me. I felt at once the stupidity of any appeal, and the instant necessity for every kind of appeal. I felt the negation, the sudden slipping into insignificant unimportance of the whole of the Western world--and, at the same time, the dismissal of the East. "No longer my masters" a voice seemed to cry from the very heart of that mult.i.tude. "No longer will we halt at your command, no longer will your words be wisdom to us, no longer shall we smile with pleasure at your stories, and cringe with fear at your displeasure; you may hate our defection, you may lament our disloyalty, you may bribe us and smile upon us, you may preach to us and bewail our sins. We are no longer yours--WE ARE OUR OWN--Salute a new world, for it is nothing less that you see before you!..."

And yet never were there forces more unconscious of their destiny--utterly unselfconscious as animals, babies, the flowers of the field. Still there to be driven, perhaps to be persuaded, to be whipped, to be cajoled, to be blinded, to be tricked and deceived, drugged and deafened--but not for long! The end of that old world had come--the new world was at hand--"Life begins to-morrow!"

The dignitaries came upon the platform, and, beyond them all, in distinction, n.o.bility, wisdom was our own Amba.s.sador. This is no place for a record of the discretion and tact and forbearance that he had shown during those last two years. To him had fallen perhaps the most difficult work of all in the war. It might seem that on broad grounds the Allies had failed with Russia, but the end was not yet, and in years to come, when England reaps unexpected fruit from her Russian alliance, let her remember to whom she owed it. No one could see him there that night without realising that there stood before Russia, as England's representative, not only a great courtier and statesman, but a great gentleman, who had bonds of courage and endurance that linked him to the meanest soldier there.

I have emphasised this because he gave the note to the whole meeting.

Again and again one's eyes came back to him and always that high brow, that unflinching carriage of the head, the n.o.bility and breeding of every movement gave one rea.s.surance and courage. One's own troubles seemed small beside that example, and the tangled morality of that vexed time seemed to be tested by a simpler and higher standard.

It was altogether a strange affair. At first it lacked interest, some member of the Italian Emba.s.sy spoke, I think, and then some one from Serbia. The audience was apathetic. All those bodies, so tightly wedged together that arms and legs were held in an iron vice, stayed motionless, and once and again there would be a short burst of applause or a sibilant whisper, but it would be something mechanical and uninspired. I could see one soldier, in the front row behind the barrier, a stout fellow with a face of supreme good humour, down whose forehead the sweat began to trickle; he was patient for a while, then he tried to raise his hand. He could not move without sending a ripple down the whole front line. Heads were turned indignantly in his direction. He submitted; then the sweat trickled into his eyes. He made a superhuman effort and half raised his arm; the crowd pushed again and his arm fell.

His face wore an expression of ludicrous despair....

The hall got hotter and hotter. Soldiers seemed to be still pressing in at the back. The Italian gentleman screamed and waved his arms, but the faces turned up to his were blank and amiably expressionless.

"It is indeed terribly hot," said Uncle Ivan.

Then came a sailor from the Black Sea Fleet who had made himself famous during these weeks by his impa.s.sioned oratory. He was a thin dark-eyed fellow, and he obviously knew his business. He threw himself at once into the thick of it all, paying no attention to the stout frock-coated gentlemen who sat on the platform, dealing out no compliments, whether to the audience or the speakers, wasting no time at all. He told them all that they had debts to pay, that their honour was at stake, and that Europe was watching them. I don't know that that Face that stared at him cared very greatly for Europe, but it is certain that a breath of emotion pa.s.sed across it, that there was a stir, a movement, a response....

He sat down, there was a roar of applause; he regarded them contemptuously. At that moment I caught sight of Boris Grogoff. I had been on the watch for him. I had thought it very likely that he would be there. Well, there he was, at the back of the crowd, listening with a contemptuous sneer on his face, and a long golden curl poking out from under his cap.

And then something else occurred--something really strange. I was conscious, as one sometimes is in a crowd, that I was being stared at by some one deliberately. I looked about me, and then, led by the attraction of the other's gaze, I saw quite close to me, on the edge of the crowd nearest to the platform, the Rat.

He was dressed rather jauntily in a dark suit with his cup set on one side, and his hair s.h.i.+ning and curled. His face glittered with soap, and he was smiling in his usual friendly way. He gazed at me quite steadily.

My lips moved very slightly in recognition. He smiled and, I fancy, winked.

Then, as though he had actually spoken to me, I seemed to hear him say:

"Well, good-bye.... I'm never coming to you again. Good-bye, good-bye."

It was as definite a farewell as you can have from a man, more definite than you will have from most, as though, further, he said: "I'm gone for good and all. I have other company and more profitable plunder. On the back of our glorious Revolution I rise from crime to crime....

Good-bye."

I was, in sober truth, never to speak to him again. I cannot but regret that on the last occasion when I should have a real opportunity of looking him full in the face, he was to offer me a countenance of friendly good-humour and amiable rascality.

I shall have, until I die, a feeling of tenderness....

I was recalled from my observation of Grogoff and the Rat by the sensation that the waters of emotion were rising higher around me. I raised my eyes and saw that the Belgian Consul was addressing the meeting. He was a stout little man, with eye-gla.s.ses and a face of no importance, but it was quite obvious at once that he was most terribly in earnest. Because he did not know the Russian language he was under the unhappy necessity of having a translator, a thin and amiable Russian, who suffered from short sight and a nervous stammer.

He could not therefore have spoken under heavier disadvantages, and my heart ached for him. It need not have done so. He started in a low voice, and they shouted to him to speak up. At the end of his first paragraph the amiable Russian began his translation, sticking his nose into the paper, losing the place and stuttering over his sentences.

There was a restless movement in the hall, and the poor Belgian Consul seemed lost. He was made, however, of no mean stuff. Before the Russian had finished his translation the little man had begun again. This time he had stepped forward, waving his gla.s.ses and his head and his hand, bending forward and backward, his voice rising and rising. At the end of his next paragraph he paused and, because the Russian was slow and stammering once again, went forward on ids own account. Soon he forgot himself, his audience, his translator, everything except his own dear Belgium. His voice rose and rose; he pleaded with a marvellous rhythm of eloquence her history, her fate, her shameful devastation. He appealed on behalf of her murdered children, her ravished women, her slaughtered men.

He appealed on behalf of her Arts, her Cathedrals, and libraries ruined, her towns plundered. He told a story, very quietly, of an old grandfather and grandmother murdered and their daughter ravished before the eyes of her tiny children. Here he himself began to shed tears. He tried to brush them back. He paused and wiped his eyes.... Finally, breaking down altogether, he turned away and hid his face....

I do not suppose that there were more than a dozen persons in that hall who understood anything of the language in which he spoke. Certainly it was the merest gibberish to that whole army of listening men.

Nevertheless, with every word that he uttered the emotion grew tenser.

Cries--little sharp cries like the bark of a puppy--broke out here and there. "_Verrno! Verrno! Verrno_! (True! True! True!)" Movements, like the swift finger of the wind on the sea, hovered, wavered, and vanished....

He turned back to them, his voice broken with sobs, and he could only cry the one word "Belgia... Belgia... Belgia"... To that they responded. They began to shout, to cry aloud. The screams of "_Verrno...

Verrno_" rose until it seemed that the roof would rise with them.

The air was filled with shouts, "Bravo for the Allies." "_Soyousniki!

Soyousniki_!" Men raised their caps and waved them, smiled upon one another as though they had suddenly heard wonderful news, shouted and shouted and shouted... and in the midst of it all the little rotund Belgian Consul stood bowing and wiping his eyes.

How pleased we all were! I whispered to Vera: "You see! They do care!

Their hearts are touched. We can do anything with them now!"

Even Uncle Ivan was moved, and murmured to himself "Poor Belgium! Poor Belgium!"

How delighted, too, were the gentlemen on the platform. Smiling, they whispered to one another, and I saw several shake hands. A great moment.

The little Consul bowed finally and sat down.

Never shall I forget the applause that followed. Like one man the thousands shouted, tears raining down their cheeks, shaking hands, even embracing! A vast movement, as though the wind had caught them and driven them forward, rose, lifted them, so that they swayed like bending corn towards the platform, for an instant we were all caught up together. There was one great cry: "Belgium!"

The sound rose, fell, sunk into a muttering whisper, died to give way to the breathless attention that awaited the next speaker.

I whispered to Vera: "I shall never forget that. I'm going to leave on that. It's good enough for me."

"Yes," she said, "we'll go."

"What a pity," whispered Uncle Ivan, "that they didn't understand what they were shouting about."

We slipped out behind the platform; turned down the dark long pa.s.sage, hearing the new speaker's voice like a bell ringing beyond thick walls, and found our way into the open.

The evening was wonderfully fresh and clear. The Neva lay before us like a blue scarf, and the air faded into colourless beauty above the dark purple of the towers and domes. Vera caught my arm: "Look!" she whispered. "There's Boris!" I knew that she had on several occasions tried to force her way into his flat, that she had written every day to Nina (letters as it afterwards appeared, that Boris kept from her). I was afraid that she would do something violent.

"Wait!" I whispered, "perhaps Nina is here somewhere."

Grogoff was standing with another man on a small improvised platform just outside the gates of the Bourse.