Part 6

What emotions, what a multitude of moods he experienced in those few brief hours. Till twelve he was sprightly and not very nervous. The hangman, peeping at him through the observation hole, to decide what “drop” to give him, saw him pacing up and down in the cell, puffing calmly at a cigarette. But as, at midnight, the prison clock boomed out the hours, he got agitated, threw away the cigarette and began counting the remaining hours on his fingers. He tried to think of the noble souls who went before him:--of Anton Chehov, who, after gravely saying to the doctor who had been called to him during the night, “I am dying,” drinking the glass of champagne prescribed to him to the bottom and remarking, with a smile, to his wife, “It’s a long while since I have had champagne,” turning over on one side, and presently being quiet for ever;--of Goethe asking that the window might be opened to admit of more air and more light, and the faithful Eckermann coming to look at him, lying dead. “And I turned aside,” he records, “to give a free run to my tears.” And with a shudder he recalled that _his_ body would fall into lime to be instantly consumed like a foul thing. He must go not knowing why he lived, and nobody in those bleak immensities would know or care: no father, no mother, no love in the world would intervene on his behalf; not even memory would be left him to recall his single spell of life, as if he never had been, as if indeed he was never meant to matter. There was but to “curse God and die.”

And suddenly his soul stirred within him, as if it had wings. “It’s the end here,” he thought. “But it’s not the end there.” Weaver believed in the world-soul--which meant that in a while he and Weaver would be one. It was night, but he could not sleep. Perhaps now, all over the world, there were people who could not sleep on his account and lay thinking of him. As by imponderable wireless waves he, alone in the dark cell with the gallows adjoining, felt himself linked to all compassionate souls; and to them he sent greetings--his desperate greetings.... At last he slept.

His sleep was troubled. He dreamt he had shrunk back from the pale gate of death, a bleak coldness in his chest and limbs, and was going past a park where there were children playing and people lounging wearily after their strenuous day’s work. And he thought that the trivialities of living were manna compared with death. But by the faces of the people who came out of the park he knew that they, not realising it, could not enjoy the gift of life. He walked on, and suddenly found himself in a beautiful, totally unfamiliar part of the town, the existence of which he had not even suspected. And he told himself how he would come home and tell his father of it. He woke--and there was nothing to tell but that he had dreamt it. And at once an incredible coldness invaded his heart.

Besides, it was cold in the cell. Our courage is at its lowest ebb in the early morning: it is wicked to hang people at dawn, he reflected. The warder came in. “Get up. Here is your suit.” His old suit that knew him in different circumstances. No collar to-day. “I’ll go and fetch you yer breakfast now.”

Perhaps at the last minute the Home Secretary might ...? He remembered seeing a film where also at the last moment, also the Home Secretary.... How cold. They wouldn’t tell his father. Or would they? The warder brought in a tray with some cocoa and porridge and an apple. He could not eat. He nibbled at the apple, and the savoury juice reminded him of some utopian land of fruit and flowers, like Italy, which he had never known. And he thought that when they had done their worst, and he was left in peace, perhaps in dreamland he would fly to such a land.

He looked strangely at the warder. “Is it very bad? Does it ... hurt?” he asked uneasily.

“No. A second--and it’s all over. Like having yer tooth out--no more. All over in a wink.”

The chaplain, a young man, was more confused than he--and more miserable. “Perhaps some spiritual consolation?” he stammered.

“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Proudfoot. “The indivisible universe speaks and lives only through each separate creature, as if no other creature existed at all. But it is the same indivisible universe which so expresses itself. And they--absurd--they want to do away with me--that means with the universe.”

“Perhaps a last communion....”

“Why?”

“Or a confession? After all, you’ve killed a human being.”

He thought of Weaver, and would have felt sorry for him if he did not feel so overwhelmingly sorry for himself. If they’d let him off now he’d put back what he had taken, put back into the spiritual cosmos what he’d taken from it. If they would leave it to him, he’d see that humanity did not lose.

He was brave, resigned. But a quarter of an hour before time, suddenly he felt he wanted to live, love, breathe in through these nostrils the fresh air of, not this, but other, future mornings, when _he_ would be no more.... He remembered a windy day when the big chestnuts swayed and lashed their branches like drunken things, and nuts and sticks fell off like missiles aimed at passers-by. A little boy had turned round to his mother, hiding his eyes from the dust and the wind in the folds of her skirt. This had moved him then somehow. And now an intolerable thought obsessed him that, when, in a few minutes from now, he would be buried in a pool of lime, he would feel the wind no more. And he thought that if this life he was leaving was the only life in a bleak universe, then he could not face the anguish of leaving it. But if there was another life, he wanted to hide his face in the lap of his Maker, hide from the missiles that fell all about him and hurt him, weep on His breast, and be quiet for ever....

But perhaps--two minutes yet--perhaps the Home Secretary ...? And before he could realise it the hangman stood in the cell. Was this it? Was it this? Was _this_, then, what he had to come to? Could mother but have known! But the warder, who up to this had been like a friend and confidant, suddenly began to shout at the executioner, “Come on, you there, get a move on and get about it quick!” (as though anxious to get the nasty job over). And Mr. Proudfoot felt almost as though his friend the warder had betrayed him to that other man. That other man had a soft, drooping, yellow moustache and glassy eyes, and seemed slow and good-natured. You wouldn’t think by the mild look of him that he bit off the heads of live rats. Somehow Mr. Proudfoot wanted to claim acquaintance: to tell him about Weaver: that Weaver and himself were about to call on him that fatal Sunday: if they had called he would not now be here. But the man with his assistants and the warder were resolutely coming up to him as if they were intent on making a swift end of him, the governor, the chaplain and the doctor looking on. Yes, yes, he would die--if they would leave him alone, or do it--handsomely. He killed Weaver--however inadvertently, he killed him, and he would forfeit his life, on his word of honour he would. But not so---- The hangman and his assistant were trying to pinion him; and suddenly he put up a fight for his life. What right had they? All nonsense apart, what right? A glimpse of the jurymen all back in their homes, and at breakfast, flashed through his brain. What right? Where he got the strength from he did not know, but the prison bell was already tolling for the soul departing, and its last stroke had boomed its melancholy message across the yard into the streets, but Mr. Proudfoot was still alive and struggling desperately with the executioner and three warders, who only knew that they had to despatch him: he should have been liquidated ten minutes ago: there was no document to account for his unwarranted existence after 8 a.m. They were shocked: it was improper in the extreme. “Don’t! Oh!” He wanted to tell them--if they would only stop to listen--he wanted to tell them that--yes--he was a soul, a universe with things in it which had nothing to do with that devil in him they were intent on destroying. It was unjust. A whole universe. “Stop! Think: what are you doing?... _No!_” he cried, struggling in their grip and realising that nothing save his poor physical exertion now stood between him and their grim determination to do away with him. “No! You _mustn’t_!” he pleaded, his soul filled with a sickening animal fear. But they dragged him on without respite, the chaplain leading the way, reading words from the Bible. And if--he thought--there was a God in heaven, why did He stand aside? What God was He to stand aside? “No! No!... _Oh!_ ...” But they were dragging him on none the less, dragging him on to his doom. Swiftly he looked at each of them, for a spark of compassion. But they were all men who valued their duty before everything else. He was in the open. And suddenly a wave of awe came over him, standing as he did on the brink of eternity or extinction: so that the hangman at his neck seemed like a friend who was assisting at a parting, and those others, too, seemed as if they’d come to see him off at the railway station as he was about to step into the train on his awful journey; and he clung to them with fraternal, desperate farewell. But they only looked as though they had no time for that, but wanted to get the nasty business, long overdue, over at last. It seemed minutes before he toed the chalk line on the drop--when suddenly he fell, it seemed minutes, he expected it with drawn breath, the pulling up--when _snap!_ it came!

And all was darkness.

* * * * *

The great harbour was awakening in the cold fog. From the terminus a tramcar set off half empty. The conductor strode inside and began collecting the fare. Then newspapers appeared on the street corners, and posters announced in red and black letters:

“SPECIAL EDITION. “PROUDFOOT EXECUTED.”

They were eagerly snapped up by busy hurrying people, who stopped and read:

“Proudfoot had a quiet night and is believed to have been greatly relieved at the end by confessing his crime to the chaplain. The condemned man breakfasted lightly and walked with a firm step to the scaffold. From the moment of prisoner leaving his cell to the execution of the sentence there barely elapsed twenty-five seconds.”

IN THE WOOD

Lieutenant Barahmeiev, late of the Hussars, was making amorous advances to his landlord’s wife, a Jewish lady of about thirty. “Your lips are saying No! No! No! whereas your eyes are saying Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Vera Solomonovna looked at him with her golden eyes and shook her handsome head and said to him,

“Boris Nikolàech, you’re thirty-eight, and you have no more sense than a boy of twelve.”

Lieutenant Barahmeiev looked more self-confident than ever. It was a fixed idea with him that no woman could refuse his amorous advances, and that no landlord really meant him, seriously, to pay his rent. To whatever women said in proof of their refusal, to whatever landlords said in confirmation of their claims, Lieutenant Barahmeiev had a simple answer. He called it “bluff.” Some English words like “bluff” and “gentleman” have passed into the Russian tongue in the original. He wasn’t born yesterday, he said.

And fully confident of the result, the Russian officer continued, “Why this pretence, this hypocritical reluctance? Why not be frank about it? To-night,” he whispered. “In my room....”

“Go to the devil!” she said, but her eyes seemed to say, “Go on talking.”

“You say ‘Go to the devil!’ But what do you mean? I know what you mean. Wasn’t born yesterday. Why not be honest about it?”

Odessa had been changing hands from Bolshevik to anti-Bolshevik in turn; but the habit of love-making persists through such irrelevancies as wars and revolutions. Life in the flat of Finkelstein, where Lieutenant Barahmeiev occupied a bedroom, went on essentially as it had gone on before the war. I liked my hosts. She, a woman of considerable beauty, greedy for admiration. He, a successful broker, tall, handsome, prepossessing, inordinately proud of being a Jew and always selling foreign currencies to his guests at table. I liked the free and easy manner in the household, the total absence of suspicion on the part of Finkelstein as regards his handsome wife. No doubt he also had no small opinion of himself, and thought that as compared with the Lieutenant he was the better specimen of male all round. And I think that perhaps he was.

At lunch he was saying to Lieutenant Barahmeiev, “Yes, Boris Nikolàech, you Christians like to run us down. You say that we are swindlers, and ‘Never trust a Jew.’ But the fact is that we Jews can trust each other, but I am dashed if we are often given an opportunity to trust a Christian. Take yourself. You call yourself a ‘paying guest.’ But what right have you to the adjective? If it comes to that, what right have you to the noun? Have I asked you to come and stay with us, and overlooking that point, is it a usual thing for guests to stay indefinitely? But your conscience doesn’t seem to trouble you a bit. You eat and sleep, and there! you even seem to have designs on my wife. Ah, you’re a funny fellow, Boris Nikolàech, but, at any rate, it’s some good to us that you are an officer; it will keep them from commandeering our flat while you are here. But what was I saying? Ah, yes, does any one want to buy Romanov roubles? Or I can sell you francs.”

But the Lieutenant went on talking to the hostess. “What I can’t get over is this utter want of frankness in you, Vera Solomonovna. Your soul, your eyes cry out, ‘Take me! I am yours!’ whereas your lying lips pretend to say, ‘Go to the devil.’ Bluff! All bluff, all bluff!”

She turned to her husband and looking at her guest with compassion, said:

“What _can_ I do with him, Lyova? He doesn’t understand. He _can’t_. He really thinks he’s irresistible to women. I’ve never seen anything so brazen in my life. To be quite frank, Boris Nikolàech, you’re not the least bit attractive. I wonder who put that idea into your head?”

“Vera Solomonovna,” he implored her, “be frank for once. You know you are in love with me; why all this hypocritical nonsense about my being ‘not the least bit attractive’? Why all this bluff? I wasn’t born yesterday!”

“In matters of love you’re a school boy.”

“Yes, when I was a school boy I had the innocence to take a woman’s No for No. But now, I need hardly say, I believe it no longer.”

“You wise old man then,” she said ironically, rising.

We followed her into the drawing-room. The window panes were blurred with rain. The sea, the sky, was one grey mass, doleful and monotonous. Below, in the street, one could see the shining hoods of passing cabs; the muffled sound of hoofs reached our windows. In the indoor twilight of the flat one felt at rest, one’s limbs were seized with languor. Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates retired to his study to play cards.

“The rain reminds me, Vera Solomonovna,” said the Lieutenant, “of an incident in my youth. The woman--oh, she had the self-same psychology, if I may say so, as yourself, and in the end, and in the end ... complete capitulation.”

“I am tired of you,” said she, looking languorous rather than tired.

“Vera Solomonovna,” he said, bending over her; then in a whisper: “Don’t forget to-night ... my room.”

She shook her head.

“How blatantly deceitful women really are,” he said. “You shake your head. Why? Why, when I know----”

She flushed. “This is really getting idiotic!”

“Ha! ha! ha! That is exactly what Zina used to say: ‘idiotic.’ I was going to tell you about Zina when you interrupted me. This was a long time ago--let me see--yes, twenty-one years ago, to be exact. I was seventeen then. I was a cadet at the X---- Military School and I was spending the summer vacation with my aunt at S----, a sea side resort some twenty miles from Petersburg. It was an evening in early June, and we were sitting on the open balcony of the pavilion at the local tennis club. We were discussing something--literature I think, and then, quite relevantly, we switched off on to love. There was this Zina I am telling you about, a beautifully developed girl of twenty-five, who was quite vehement in her denunciation of everything relating to the attraction between the sexes, and as she spoke it was urged upon her that for a person with her views the convent was the only proper place. It was a lovely night, but we sat there and exchanged inanities. Gradually some of us dispersed.

“I was standing by a street stall, buying cigarettes, when I noticed Zina coming up. She bought herself some chocolate. We sauntered away from the stall together.”

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Nowhere in particular.”

We went along the big road leading to the sea. Our shoulders touched occasionally as we stumbled over the uneven ground.

“They’re so absurd with their revolting sentimentality,” I said.

“Why talk about them? Look at the clouds,” she said. “How they chase each other. We couldn’t keep pace with them if we ran. And the moon! Gone--and out again!”

We made our way together along a narrow lane. The wooden _datchas_ had been left behind.

“Is this ‘The Alley of Kisses’?”

“No, this is ‘The Alley of Sighs.’”

We went on.

“The moon again!”

“Yes.”

“This is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” she said, as we turned to our left. Beyond I could hear the sound of the sea.

“Let us sit down here.”

It was an old bench considerably disfigured by a penknife; it bore initials, monograms and names of lovers probably who had sat there in former times.

“So this is ‘The Alley of Kisses,’” I repeated. One seizes with gratitude on such openings.

“Yes.” She looked at me strangely. “And the fools at the tennis club talking rubbish!”

“Yes.”

“The sea and the air! and--as I was saying--this ‘Alley of Kisses.’ Can you feel it?”

I moved closer to her. “May I kiss you?” I said.

“Why do you ask?” she whispered.

“What?” said I. (I am slightly deaf, as you know.)

She waited, and I, being timid, added, “After all, we are ‘allies’ in a sort of way....”

She repeated softly: “Why do you ask?”

She had soft, warm lips; I held my breath back; it was long before I released it; and I wasn’t thinking of the night. “My hand----”

Vera Solomonovna became fidgety with excitement. “Lyova! Lyova!” she cried out; and when Finkelstein appeared, she said, “Come here, all of you. Boris Nikolàech is telling of a romantic episode from his life. It’s most attractive, I assure you, most _piquant_.”

Finkelstein and his stock-exchange associates, abandoning their game of cards, sauntered into the drawing-room, and, still smoking, sank into chairs and stretched out their legs, ready to listen.

“Well, go on,” said Vera Solomonovna.

“My hand, I think I said, was round her waist----”

“Whose waist?” said Finkelstein.

“Zina’s,” explained his wife.

“Who’s Zina, anyhow?”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Go on, Boris Nikolàech.”

“My hand was round her waist. She pressed it to her bosom. I looked round. There was not a soul around, not a sound abroad but for the waves that broke on the sea shore. Dark clouds ran swiftly across the sky.

“Let us go there,” she said, pointing to the wood. We made our way across the shrubbery. I held her in my arms; she began to breathe in a queer, panting way.

“What is it?” I asked ignorantly.

“It’s ... good,” she whispered.

The moon showed between the tall trees; in a few yards’ distance the sea roared before us. Then a big, heavy drop of rain fell on my face--it was warm; and then another.

I sat on the moss, dazed, completely overtaken by the wonder of it all. Suddenly, I heard the rustle of her movements; she had disappeared behind a bush.

“What are you doing?”

There was no answer. I was rather shy about it all, for I was only seventeen. “Don’t!”

She stood behind a shrub and I could hear the rustle of the twigs, the rustle of silk linen, the hollow sound of press-studs. “Don’t,” I said.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“But why? Why?” I said confusedly. “I don’t want to.”

Unveiled, she stood behind me. The big pale moon looked down upon her, but she didn’t mind it. The dark blue wood leered from behind at her; and the roaring sea rushed to her--and receded, rushed and receded. Drop after drop, at long interval, the soft warm rain fell from the dark gathering clouds. “I want, I want you to remember me,” she said softly, “_always_, and now you can’t forget ... that the first woman you have ever seen like that ... was _me_.” Then she crouched to the ground. She began to sob and laugh at the same time. “What am I doing? Oh, I’m mad, mad.... I couldn’t help it. I’ve been reading--all day long I’ve been reading ... such a wicked book. It was awful, unbearable. These silly people on the veranda talked such nonsense, but it wouldn’t have really mattered what they’d said; I would’ve disagreed with them all the same. I couldn’t bear it any longer. And then I felt I wanted--I wanted to do as she, the woman in the book, had done to him. Besides,” she added, “you really are rather attractive, aren’t you? Oh, do you think it’s going to rain properly? It didn’t in the book.”

The Lieutenant ceased.

“Well?” we said. “Go on.”

“That’s all,” said the Lieutenant.

“But what happened afterwards?” asked Vera Solomonovna.

“Nothing happened.”

“But _how_?” she said in a tone as though she had been wronged.

“Well, that’s all there is to tell.”

“But--it’s no proper story even.”

“I can’t help that,” he answered almost angrily. “This is what happened, and this is where it ended. I can’t falsify the facts to suit your taste. We don’t, my dear Vera Solomonovna, live our lives to provide plots for stories.”

“Well, I _am_ disappointed in you, Boris Nikolàech. Really! To begin so well, so fascinatingly, and then, suddenly, to break off ... so shamelessly! Well, really, you’re just like a boy of twelve. You have no sense of proportion, Boris Nikolàech. None whatever! The whole thing, as it stands, is silly....”

“You are a hopeless washout!” Finkelstein was teasing him. “Miss your opportunity like that! My goodness! And call yourself a Don Juan at that!”