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I clasp your hand, N. Markovitch. They went away together. I was greatly surprised to receive, a few days later, an invitation from Baron Wilderling; he asked me to go with him on one of the first evenings in March to a performance of Lermontov's "Masquerade" at the Alexandra Theatre.
He himself was a great deal with the English Military Mission, and Wilderling was with his party whatever that might be. He could see of course that Wilderling was disturbed, or perhaps indignant is the right word. "As though you know," he said, "some dirty little boy had been pullin' snooks at him." Nevertheless the Baroness was the human link.
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.
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 damn 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.
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.
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 Japanese embroidery.
I can imagine the dignity, the solemn heavy room with all the silver, the ceremonious old man-servant and Wilderling himself behaving as though nothing at all were the matter. To do him all justice he was as brave as a lion, and as proud as a gladiator, and as conceited as a Prussian. On the Wednesday evening he did not return home. He telephoned that he was kept on important business.
He realised, quite clearly, that Wilderling was in a very dangerous position, but I don't think that it ever occurred to him for a moment that it would be wise for him to move to another flat. On the next day, Thursday, Lawrence did not return until the middle of the afternoon. The town was, by now, comparatively quiet again.
I came twice," he answered, looking at me shyly. "Your old woman wouldn't let me see you." "Never mind that," I said; "let's have an evening together soon." "Yes as soon as you like." He looked up and down the street. "There are some things I'd like to ask your advice about." "Certainly," I said. "What do you say to coming and dining at my place? Ever met Wilderling?" "Wilderling?"
Nevertheless Bohun was not able to be for ever in his company; work separated them, and then Lawrence lodged with Baron Wilderling on the Admiralty Quay, a long way from Anglisky Prospect. Therefore, at the end of three weeks, Henry Bohun discovered himself to be profoundly wretched. There seemed to be no hope anywhere. Even the artist in him was disappointed.
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