The direct cause of her rising was the sound of the doorbell accompanied by a sound of quite a number of voices in the street.
‘Here they are!’ she cried, moving to the window and drawing aside the curtain. ‘They’ve come all together. Let them in, will you Richard? You’ve got cigarettes for them? We’ll have the coffee at once. I’ve got two of those cakes.’
He ran downstairs. A few minutes later the little apartment was full of tobacco smoke and lively conversation.
Roger Lamb sat by Nelly’s side on the sofa. Robert Canyot established himself on the windowsill, his long legs dangling awkwardly, and his dusty boots looking large and prominent.
Karmakoff and Catharine shared the armchair; while Richard seated at the table before his coffee cup munched one piece of cake after another, as if by the mere process of devouring this sticky substance he fortified himself against unhappy thoughts.
‘It’s all very well for you to speak of Russia as if nothing but sweetness and goodness emerged from it,’ said Karmakoff suddenly, throwing the remark like a hand grenade straight at the head of Roger Lamb. ‘Russia’s no better and no worse than the rest of the world. All this sentimentality is as false as all this savage abuse.
‘Where we Russians differ from you people is simply that we’ve no false shame. We express everything — all that there is to be expressed — and a good deal more sometimes!’ He laughed a rather bitter laugh.
Nelly made an unconscious little movement of her hand towards the young man as if to protect him from this frontal attack; but Roger Lamb seemed quite unruffled.
‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I ought not to have dragged Russia into it at all. It was a lapse. It was only that Mrs Storm seemed so awfully pessimistic. I just reminded her of the nicer side of things — of human nature, you know? I was trying to explain my own feeling about it. Russia was a by-issue and a silly one. I apologize to Russia, Ivan.’
‘Oh Roger,’ cried Catharine Gordon, ‘while I think of it Elise wants you to write her up in The Manhattan. She’s getting sick of the rotten notices they give her.’
The colour rose in Nelly’s cheeks at this name. Karmakoff deliberately pinched Catharine in the arm. Richard put an enormous piece of cake into his mouth. Canyot, kicking the wall with his heels, remarked surlily, ‘She gets better ones than she deserves as it is. I’d leave her alone, Roger.’
Nelly, who had bent her head over her lap, raised it at this. ‘The Manhattan ought to have something about her,’ she said calmly, looking straight at her husband.
Roger Lamb smiled. ‘I don’t think any of you know much about the difficulties of journalism. I’ve been trying for three months to get her a satisfactory write-up. The old man won’t have it. He says we’re too modern as it is.’
Karmakoff, who had been regarding Roger Lamb with a fixed scrutiny for some minutes, moved a little away from his companion in the armchair and, leaning forward, startled them all by suddenly saying — ‘Something’s wrong with you, Roger. You’re not well. What is it?’
Richard rose from his seat at the table. ‘Shall I get you a glass of water or anything, Lamb? Ivan’s right. You look pale and worried.’
Nelly turned towards the young man at her side with a look full of solicitude. Catharine Gordon leapt to her feet and rushing up to him took his head in both her hands and gazed into his face. ‘You’re not ill are you? No you can’t be ill. I won’t have you getting ill!’ She slipped down beside him at the very end of the sofa and hugged him with her strong young arms.
The general disturbance produced by all this concern on his behalf did not seem to ruffle Roger Lamb. He drew himself gently out of the young girl’s embrace and rising from his place moved over to the chair vacated by Richard. With an amused and friendly smile he rejected the glass of water which this latter offered him. ‘You can give me a match if you like,’ he said and proceeded to light a cigarette.
Catharine Gordon possessed herself of Nelly’s hand. Canyot returned to his place on the windowsill. Richard sat down by his wife’s side.
‘You haven’t answered my question yet,’ resumed Karmakoff who had not ceased to regard the journalist with a searching scrutiny.
‘Don’t tease him, Ivan!’ cried Catharine. ‘You’re looking at him as if you were a magician or one of these horrid psychoanalysts. Don’t — don’t look at him like that!’ And she waved her arm backwards and forwards in the air as if to break the spell.
‘He doesn’t tease me,’ remarked Roger Lamb. ‘I love Karmakoff’s way of looking at people. And he is quite right too. He’s found me out. He’s called my bluff, as they say. I hadn’t meant to tell any of you anything about it. But it was silly of me to hide it up — a sort of pride I suppose. I don’t know! One does these things sometimes. Perhaps it didn’t seem so real to me as long as I kept it to myself. But Ivan has found me out with his confounded Slavic intuition; so I’ll confess …’
There was a perceptible hush in the small apartment as he said these words; his youthful figure, in its trim dark-coloured suit, seemed to isolate itself from the rest. His queer-shaped skull under its closely cropped hair assumed the appearance of an archaic statue as it emerged from the clouds of his cigarette smoke. His grey unhappy eyes looked quizzically round him as he paused in his speech; and his sensuous mouth with its impassioned red lips seemed more than ever as if it had been carved out of his white face by the hands of some insane god, forgetful of all proportion.
‘Don’t tell us! Don’t tell us!’ cried Catharine Gordon suddenly, putting her fingers in her ears. ‘I hate you for this, Ivan. It’s a cruel thing. And you’re a devil to do it.’
Karmakoff smiled at her with a smile of infinite indulgence. A strange contest of looks passed between them full of complicated vibrations;
‘If it’s anything to do with your nerves, Roger,’ said Canyot earnestly, ‘I’d much rather you didn’t tell us—’ and he looked anxiously at Nelly.
Roger Lamb interpreted his glance. ‘You needn’t be afraid, Robert. It’s nothing that could scare anyone. It’s simple enough. It’s only that I am—’
‘Don’t tell him! Don’t tell him!’ cried Catharine again, pressing her fingers wildly into her ears.
But the young man proceeded without regarding her. ‘It’s only that I learnt from the doctor this morning that if I don’t have an operation at once I’ve no chance of living; and that the operation I’ve got to have is a ticklish matter, a matter of even chances.’
There was a moment of embarrassed silence in the room. Catharine, who seemed to have understood his words, took her hands from her ears and covered her face.
‘How long does he give you without the operation?’ asked Karmakoff.
‘About a week,’ replied the other smiling. ‘Just about a week.’
‘And you’ve arranged to have it?’
‘I go into the hospital tomorrow.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Postgraduate.’
‘I am very glad you told us this,’ said Nelly quietly. ‘I should have hated not to know.’
‘How does this affect your old pessimistic apathy?’ inquired Canyot from the windowsill, speaking roughly and almost harshly.
‘I shouldn’t have thought that he was either pessimistic or apathetic,’ protested Richard.
‘He isn’t! How can you say such things, Robert?’ reiterated Nelly.
‘Speak up, Roger, and tell them I’m right,’ cried Canyot. ‘You know you’ve always said that down at the bottom, except for the theatre, you cared nothing for anything in life; that you’d just as soon be dead as be alive.’