I found myself going there that same afternoon, it seemed in spite of myself and partly under the influence of the wine that I had consumed at lunch. The day was a peculiarly sunny and friendly kind of day and the blue sky and the clear air and even the shops themselves seemed to beckon to me not to be a fool, not to stand upon my silly dignity; and so I discovered, as I walked along till I could see their house beckoning to me in the distance, that her indifference, even if confirmed (and I now refused to confirm it), had the overlooked advantage of admitting me of being in her presence. But when I returned I found I had innumerable occasions to revert to my original interpretation of indifference.
And feeling that my affairs were in a bad way I made a bold coup to regain my tottering prestige. I appeared furiously, almost indecently intellectual, talked in quick succession of Turgenev, Goethe, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Flaubert, Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It impressed nobody. She hardly listened to me. So I tried Wagner, Scriabin, Debussy and Richard Strauss. Nothing doing. I tackled Ibsen, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shaw, Bennett, Chesterton and H. G. Wells; quoted them. It cut no ice. She showed that this sort of thing “did not go down with her” at all. Clearly she wasn’t “having any.” And the great men, I fear, looked small beneath her scornful look.
I met her once in the street. It had been snowing in the night, prematurely for the season; now the snow was thawing and the ground was muddy. The sun was yellow, honey-coloured, and her sidelong look seemed warmer in the sunshine.
“Will you marry me?” I said.
“No.” She shook her head. “I am tired of you.”
“I know that,” I replied, and walked silently beside her.
“If I were really tired of you I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Then why do you tell me?” I took it up, hungering for something positive, however small.
“I don’t always say what I think,” was the answer.
We walked on.
“We are leaving in any case,” she said.
“When? Where?”
“Next month … for Shanghai. Mama is going to start a business there. Hats. We have to do something.… We shall have a good time in Shanghai.”
“Ah, you won’t!” I said.
She looked at me.
“What of your ‘three brothers’?” I gloated.
“Their ship is going there next month. Aha! Do you think Mama would get us to come otherwise?”
“Good riddance!” I said.
“What’s happened?”
“Go!” I cried. “But for heaven’s sake go. Off with you! I haven’t time to waste. I want to get back. I am missing my examination!”
“You can go back now if you like. I’m not keeping you.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“I shall see you off first,” I said, “and then I’ll go.”
VI
AND THEN I ONLY WISHED THAT THEY WOULD GO, and that I could return at once to England. The date of sailing was put off from week to week because of passport difficulties and dearth of accommodation in the steamers of the Russian Volunteer Fleet. I was frightened lest they should not be able to get away. For if they stayed, my soul was ruined.
And then, thank heaven, they were going.
Fanny Ivanovna and Nikolai Vasilievich preferred to part with them in their own rooms. It was, I think, because they would rather hide their emotion from the people who they knew were sure to come to see the girls off on the boat, and too, I think, because the relations with Magda Nikolaevna were not entirely satisfactory.
Yesterday I had met them in the Aleutskaya as they returned from the restaurant ‘Zolotoy Rog,’ where they now always went to lunch: the cooking arrangements in the rooms were thoroughly inadequate. Nikolai Vasilievich in his mackintosh and bowler hat looked markedly older and more worn than he had looked two years ago. Perhaps it was the shrewd light of the afternoon that scrutinized his features. There was a curious, mysterious, Mona Lisa look about the face of Fanny Ivanovna: as if she knew a thing or two: as if she had grounds for reassurance. And had she not? The partnership with Magda Nikolaevna was an engaging proposition. The only two deterrents to her going into partnership with Magda Nikolaevna were those two unfortunate words that had not lost their sting for her—“governess” and “lapdog.” She told me she might overlook the “governess”: the suggestion had not a shadow of foundation and could be forgiven — at a pinch. But the “lap-dog”—never! Henceforth, as in the past, their destiny hung on the mines, and Fanny Ivanovna’s ideas as to their recovery were somewhat mixed. But the Japanese were now in possession of the Province, and if Nikolai Vasilievich got back his mines she said she would be able to return to Germany. She hated Vladivostok. And yet, she told me privately this morning, they had been so long together, had gone through so much misery together, that she doubted if she could ever leave him. And even if the mines materialized, she thought — there was that suspicion in her heart and consequently that look of reassurance in her face, that youthful ease about her manner — that the passion between Nikolai and Zina was wearing off. And — nothing ever happens.…
They were both visibly perturbed. Nikolai Vasilievich walked up and down the room, obviously to hide his emotion. The luggage had already been removed to the boat, and the three sisters, dressed for the voyage, had sat down before the final parting. Kniaz read his paper to himself, and we talked inconsequently of anything and everything, and incidentally I learnt that Uncle Kostia, in pursuance of a logical analysis of his position as an author, had arrived at the conclusion that it was futility to get up at all, and of late conformed to his discovery.
“And—” said I significantly.
“Yes … yes,” said Nikolai Vasilievich knowingly. “I’m sorry for him.”
Fanny Ivanovna surveyed the three sisters with a doleful look. “Ach, Nikolai Vasilievich!” she said. “Look at us! Even our children are leaving us. There will be no one left when they are gone but you and I and Kniaz and the kittens. Sonia, Nina and Vera, the kittens. The real Sonia, Nina and Vera have lost patience with us.”
“Don’t, Fanny Ivanovna, don’t,” Vera murmured.
“And we have lived together a long time, through a maze of trouble, yet I think we lived happily — as happily as we could. Why that parting now? Why?…”
Someone sighed, and Nikolai Vasilievich turned his face away.
“Now it is October. It will soon be winter and this roof and yard will be deep in snow. Outside it will be cold and dark and wretched, and we shall be short of wood, and there will be another coup d’état. But you and I, Nikolai Vasilievich, you and I will be here … going out to lunch at the ‘Zolotoy Rog’ then as ever … ever!..”
She sighed deeply. “What shall we do all by ourselves in the winter?”
Nikolai Vasilievich, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, stood at the window and did not answer. When he was perturbed, I noticed, he always stood at the window with his hands deep in his trouser pockets, and thought. And I fancied that he must be thinking: Strange were the ways of the world: there! all along he had planned to escape from her — but life has taken its course, and nothing has come of it. And now those others, for whom he had stayed, were going away from him, and he, the would-be deserter, was left all alone with her; and in a thousand and one indefinable ways she has captured him. And when I met his eyes I had a feeling, an unmistakable feeling, that indeed I was right in my surmise.