She put her case compactly.
"I would not DO in Cambridge," she said with an infinitesimal glance at Prothero.
"Mr. Benham," she said, and her manner had the gravity of a woman of affairs, "now do you see me in Cambridge? Now do you see me? Kept outside the walls? In a little DATCHA? With no occupation? Just to amuse him."
And on another occasion when Prothero was not with her she achieved still completer lucidity.
"I would come if I thought he wanted me to come," she said. "But you see if I came he would not want me to come. Because then he would have me and so he wouldn't want me. He would just have the trouble. And I am not sure if I should be happy in Cambridge. I am not sure I should be happy enough to make him happy. It is a very learned and intelligent and charming society, of course; but here, THINGS HAPPEN. At Cambridge nothing happens—there is only education. There is no revolution in Cambridge; there are not even sinful people to be sorry for.... And he says himself that Cambridge people are particular. He says they are liberal but very, very particular, and perhaps I could not always act my part well. Sometimes I am not always well behaved. When there is music I behave badly sometimes, or when I am bored. He says the Cambridge people are so liberal that they do not mind what you are, but he says they are so particular that they mind dreadfully how you are what you are.... So that it comes to exactly the same thing...."
"Anna Alexievna," said Benham suddenly, "are you in love with Prothero?"
Her manner became conscientiously scientific.
"He is very kind and very generous—too generous. He keeps sending for more money—hundreds of roubles, I try to prevent him."
"Were you EVER in love?"
"Of course. But it's all gone long ago. It was like being hungry. Only very fine hungry. Exquisite hungry.... And then being disgusted...."
"He is in love with you."
"What is love?" said Anna. "He is grateful. He is by nature grateful." She smiled a smile, like the smile of a pale Madonna who looks down on her bambino.
"And you love nothing?"
"I love Russia—and being alone, being completely alone. When I am dead perhaps I shall be alone. Not even my own body will touch me then."
Then she added, "But I shall be sorry when he goes."
Afterwards Benham talked to Prothero alone. "Your Anna," he said, "is rather wonderful. At first, I tell you now frankly I did not like her very much, I thought she looked 'used,' she drank vodka at lunch, she was gay, uneasily; she seemed a sham thing. All that was prejudice. She thinks; she's generous, she's fine."
"She's tragic," said Prothero as though it was the same thing.
He spoke as though he noted an objection. His next remark confirmed this impression. "That's why I can't take her back to Cambridge," he said.
"You see, Benham," he went on, "she's human. She's not really feminine. I mean, she's—unsexed. She isn't fitted to be a wife or a mother any more. We've talked about the possible life in England, very plainly. I've explained what a household in Cambridge would mean.... It doesn't attract her.... In a way she's been let out from womanhood, forced out of womanhood, and I see now that when women are let out from womanhood there's no putting them back. I could give a lecture on Anna. I see now that if women are going to be wives and mothers and homekeepers and ladies, they must be got ready for it from the beginning, sheltered, never really let out into the wild chances of life. She has been. Bitterly. She's REALLY emancipated. And it's let her out into a sort of nothingness. She's no longer a woman, and she isn't a man. She ought to be able to go on her own—like a man. But I can't take her back to Cambridge. Even for her sake."
His perplexed eyes regarded Benham.
"You won't be happy in Cambridge—alone," said Benham.
"Oh, damnably not! But what can I do? I had at first some idea of coming to Moscow for good—teaching."
He paused. "Impossible. I'm worth nothing here. I couldn't have kept her."
"Then what are you going to do, Billy?"
"I don't KNOW what I'm going to do, I tell you. I live for the moment. To-morrow we are going out into the country."
"I don't understand," said Benham with a gesture of resignation. "It seems to me that if a man and woman love each other—well, they insist upon each other. What is to happen to her if you leave her in Moscow?"
"Damnation! Is there any need to ask that?"
"Take her to Cambridge, man. And if Cambridge objects, teach Cambridge better manners."
Prothero's face was suddenly transfigured with rage.
"I tell you she won't come!" he said.
"Billy!" said Benham, "you should make her!"
"I can't."
"If a man loves a woman he can make her do anything—"
"But I don't love her like that," said Prothero, shrill with anger. "I tell you I don't love her like that."
Then he lunged into further deeps. "It's the other men," he said, "it's the things that have been. Don't you understand? Can't you understand? The memories—she must have memories—they come between us. It's something deeper than reason. It's in one's spine and under one's nails. One could do anything, I perceive, for one's very own woman...."
"MAKE her your very own woman, said the exponent of heroic love.
"I shirk deeds, Benham, but you shirk facts. How could any man make her his very own woman now? You—you don't seem to understand—ANYTHING. She's nobody's woman—for ever. That—that might-have-been has gone for ever.... It's nerves—a passion of the nerves. There's a cruelty in life and— She's KIND to me. She's so kind to me...."
And then again Prothero was weeping like a vexed child.
15
The end of Prothero's first love affair came to Benham in broken fragments in letters. When he looked for Anna Alexievna in December—he never learnt her surname—he found she had left the Cosmopolis Bazaar soon after Prothero's departure and he could not find whither she had gone. He never found her again. Moscow and Russia had swallowed her up.
Of course she and Prothero parted; that was a foregone conclusion. But Prothero's manner of parting succeeded in being at every phase a shock to Benham's ideas. It was clear he went off almost callously; it would seem there was very little crying. Towards the end it was evident that the two had quarrelled. The tears only came at the very end of all. It was almost as if he had got through the passion and was glad to go. Then came regret, a regret that increased in geometrical proportion with every mile of distance.
In Warsaw it was that grief really came to Prothero. He had some hours there and he prowled the crowded streets, seeing girls and women happy with their lovers, abroad upon bright expeditions and full of delicious secrets, girls and women who ever and again flashed out some instant resemblance to Anna....
In Berlin he stopped a night and almost decided that he would go back. "But now I had the damned frontier," he wrote, "between us."
It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the "damned frontier" tip the balance against him.
Then came a scrawl of passionate confession, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured. "I can't stand this business," he wrote. "It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance—you can have no idea! In the train—luckily I was alone in the compartment—I sat and thought, and suddenly, I could not help it, I was weeping—noisy weeping, an uproar! A beastly German came and stood in the corridor to stare. I had to get out of the train. It is disgraceful, it is monstrous we should be made like this....