The Secret City Part 38

Lawrence followed him; when he had gone a few steps down the pa.s.sage he heard suddenly a sharp, m.u.f.fled report.

"What's that?"

Andre came close to him, his old, seamed face white like plaster.

"He has a rifle in there..." he said. "He's shooting at them!" Then as Lawrence stepped up to the door of the little room that was Wilderling's dressing-room, Andre caught his arm--.

"Be careful, Barin.... He doesn't know what he's about. He may not recognise you."

"Oh, that's all right!" said Lawrence. He pushed the door open and walked in. To give for a moment his own account of it: "You know that room was the rummiest thing. I'd never been into it before. I knew the old fellow was a bit of a dandy, but I never expected to see all the pots and jars and gla.s.ses there were. You'd have thought one wouldn't have noticed a thing at such a time, but you couldn't escape them,--his dressing-table simply covered,--white round jars with pink tops, bottles of hair-oil with ribbons round the neck, manicure things, heaps of silver things, and boxes with Chinese patterns on them, and one thing, open, with what was mighty like rouge in it. And clothes all over the place--red silk dressing-gown with golden ta.s.sels, and red leather slippers!

"I don't remember noticing any of this at the moment, but it all comes back to me as soon as I begin to think of it--and the room stank of scent!"

But of course it was the old man in the corner who mattered. It was, I think, very significant of Lawrence's character and his unEnglish-English tradition that the first thing that he felt was the pathos of it. No other Englishman in Petrograd would have seen that at all.

Wilderling was crouched in the corner against a piece of gold j.a.panese embroidery. He was in the shadow, away from the window, which was pushed open sufficiently to allow the muzzle of the rifle to slip between the woodwork and the pane. The old man, his white hair disordered, his clothes dusty, and his hands grimy, crept forward just as Lawrence entered, fired down into the side-street, then moved swiftly back into his corner again. He muttered to himself without ceasing in French, "Chiens! Chiens!... Chiens!" He was very hot, and he stopped for a moment to wipe the sweat from his forehead, then he saw Lawrence.

"What do you want?" he asked, as though he didn't recognize him.

Lawrence moved down the side of the room, avoiding the window. He touched the little man's arm.

"I say, you know," he said, "this won't do."

Wilderling smelt of gunpowder, and he was breathing hard as though he had been running desperately. He quivered when Lawrence touched him.

"Go away!" he said, "you mustn't come here.... I'll get them yet--I tell you I'll get them yet--I tell you I'll get them--Let them dare...

Chiens... Chiens..." He jerked his rifle away from the window and began, with trembling fingers, to load it again.

Lawrence gripped his arm. "When I did that," he said, "it felt as though there wasn't an arm there at all, but just a bone which I could break if I pressed a bit harder."

"Come away!" he said. "You d.a.m.n fool--don't you see that it's hopeless?"

"And I'd always been so respectful to him...." he added in parenthesis.

Wilderling hissed at him, saying no words, just drawing in his breath.

"I've got two of them," he whispered suddenly. "I'll get them all."

Then a bullet crashed through the window, burying itself in the opposite wall.

After that things happened so quickly that it was impossible to say in what order they occurred. There was suddenly a tremendous noise in the flat.

"It was just as though the whole place was going to tumble about our ears. All the pots and bottles began to jump about, and then another bullet came through, landed on the dressing-table, and smashed everything. The looking-gla.s.s crashed, and the hair-oil was all over the place. I rushed out to see what was happening in the hall...."

What "was happening" was that the soldiers had broken the hall door in.

Lawrence saw then a horrible thing. One of the men rushed forward and stuck Andre, who was standing, paralysed, by the drawing-room door, in the stomach. The old man cried out "just like a shot rabbit," and stood there "for what seemed ages," with the blood pouring out of his middle.

That finished Lawrence. He rushed forward, and they would certainly have "stuck" him too if someone hadn't cried out, "Look out, he's an Englishman--an _Anglichanin_--I know him."

After that, for a time, he was uncertain of anything. He struggled; he was held. He heard noises around him--shouts or murmurs or sighs--that didn't seem to him to be connected with anything human. He could not have said where he was nor what he was doing. Then, quite suddenly, everything cleared. He came to himself with a consciousness of that utter weariness that he had felt before. He was able to visualise the scene, to take it all in, but as a distant spectator. "It was like nothing so much as watching a cinematograph," he told me. He could do nothing; he was held by three soldiers, who apparently wished him to be a witness of the whole affair. Andre's body lay there, huddled up in a pool of drying blood, that glistened under the electric light. One of his legs was bent crookedly under him, and Lawrence had a strange mad impulse to thrust his way forward and put it straight.

It was then, with a horrible sickly feeling, exactly like a blow in the stomach, that he realised that the Baroness was there. She was standing, quite alone, at the entrance of the hall, looking at the soldiers, who were about eight in number.

He heard her say, "What's happened? Who are you?..." and then in a sharper, more urgent voice, "Where's my husband?"

Then she saw Andre.... She gave a sharp little cry, moved forward towards him, and stopped.

"I don't know what she did then," said Lawrence. "I think she suddenly began to run down the pa.s.sage. I know she was crying, 'Paul! Paul!

Paul!'... I never saw her again."

The officer--an elderly kindly-looking man like a doctor or a lawyer (I am trying to give every possible detail, because I think it important)--then came up to Lawrence and asked him some questions:

"What was his name?"

"Jeremy Ralph Lawrence."

"He was an Englishman."

"Yes."

"Working at the British Emba.s.sy?"

"No, at the British Military Mission."

"He was officer?"

"Yes."

"In the British Army?"

"Yes. He had fought for two years in France."

"He had been lodging with Baron Wilderling?"

"Yes. Ever since he came to Russia."

The officer nodded his head. They knew about him, had full information.

A friend of his, a Mr. Boris Grogoff, had spoken of him.

The officer was then very polite, told him that they regretted extremely the inconvenience and discomfort to which he might be put, but that they must detain him until this affair was concluded--"which will be very soon" added the officer. He also added that he wished Lawrence to be a witness of what occurred so that he should see that, under the new regime in Russia, everything was just and straightforward.

"I tried to tell him," said Lawrence to me, "that Wilderling was off his head. I hadn't the least hope, of course.... It was all quite clear, and, at such a time, quite just. Wilderling had been shooting them out of his window.... The officer listened very politely, but when I had finished he only shook his head. That was their affair he said.

"It was then that I realised Wilderling. He was standing quite close to me. He had obviously been struggling a bit, because his s.h.i.+rt was all torn, and you could see his chest. He kept moving his hand and trying to pull his s.h.i.+rt over; it was his only movement. He was as straight as a dart, and except for the motion of his hand as still as a statue, standing between the soldiers, looking directly in front of him. He had been mad in that other room, quite dotty.

"He was as sane as anything now, grave and serious and rather ironical, just as he always looked. Well it was at that moment, when I saw him there, that I thought of Vera. I had been thinking of her all the time of course. I had been thinking of nothing else for weeks. But that minute, there in the hall, settled me. Callous, wasn't it? I ought to have been thinking only of Wilderling and his poor old wife. After all, they'd been awfully good to me. She'd been almost like a mother all the time.... But there it was. It came over me like a storm. I'd been fighting for nights and days and days and nights not to go to her--fighting like h.e.l.l, trying to play the game the sentimentalists would call it. I suppose seeing the old man there and knowing what they were going to do to him settled it. It was a sudden conviction, like a blow, that all this thing was real, that they weren't playing at it, that any one in the town was as near death as winking.... And so there it was! Vera! I'd got to get to her--at once--and never leave her again until she was safe. I'd got to get to her! I'd got to get to her! I'd got to get to her!... Nothing else mattered. Not Wilderling's death nor mine either, except that if I was dead I'd be out of it and wouldn't be able to help her. They talk about men with one idea. From that moment I had only one idea in all the world--I don't know that I've had any other one since. They talk about scruples, moralities, traditions.

They're all right, but there just are moments in life when they simply don't count at all.... Vera was in danger--Well, that was all that mattered.

"The officer said something to Wilderling. I heard Wilderling answer: "You're rebels against His Majesty.... I wish I'd shot more of you!"