The Man From St. Petersburg

  The Duchess was an overweight woman in her sixties: she made Charlotte think of an old wooden ship rotting beneath a new coat of paint. The lunch was a real hen party. If this were a play, Charlotte thought, there would be a wild-eyed poet, a discreet Cabinet Minister, a cultured Jewish banker, a Crown Prince, and at least one remarkably beautiful woman. In fact, the only men present, apart from Freddie, were a nephew of the Duchess and a Conservative M.P. Each of the women was introduced as the wife of so-and-so. If I ever get married, Charlotte thought, I shall insist on being introduced as myself, not as somebody's wife.

  Of course it was difficult for the Duchess to have interesting parties because so many people were banned from her table: all Liberals, all Jews, anybody in trade, anybody who was on the stage, all divorcees, and all of the many people who had at one time or another offended against the Duchess's idea of what was the done thing. It made for a dull circle of friends.

  The Duchess's favorite topic of conversation was the question of what was ruining the country. The main candidates were subversion (by Lloyd George and Churchill), vulgarity (Diaghilev and the Post-impressionists), and supertax (one shilling and threepence in the pound).

  Today, however, the ruin of England took second place to the death of the Archduke. The Conservative M.P. explained at somewhat tedious length why there would be no war. The wife of a South American ambassador said in a little-girlish tone which infuriated Charlotte: "What I don't understand is why these Nihilists want to throw bombs and shoot people."

  The Duchess had the answer to that. Her doctor had explained to her that all suffragettes had a nervous ailment known to medical science as hysteria; and in her view the revolutionists suffered from the male equivalent of this disease.

  Charlotte, who had read The Times from cover to cover that morning, said: "On the other hand, perhaps the Serbs simply don't want to be ruled by Austria." Mama gave her a black look and everyone else glanced at her for a moment as if she were quite mad and then ignored what she had said.

  Freddie was sitting next to her. His round face always seemed to gleam slightly. He spoke to her in a low voice. "I say, you do say the most outrageous things."

  "What was outrageous about it?" Charlotte demanded.

  "Well, I mean to say, anyone would think you approved of people shooting Archdukes."

  "I think if the Austrians tried to take over England, you would shoot Archdukes, wouldn't you?"

  "You're priceless," Freddie said.

  Charlotte turned away from him. She was beginning to feel as if she had lost her voice: nobody seemed to hear anything she said. It made her very cross.

  Meanwhile the Duchess was getting into her stride. The lower classes were idle, she said; and Charlotte thought: You who have never done a day's work in your life! Why, the Duchess said, she understood that nowadays each workman had a lad to carry his tools around: surely a man could carry his own tools, she said as a footman held out for her a silver salver of boiled potatoes. Beginning her third glass of sweet wine, she said that they drank so much beer in the middle of the day that they were incapable of working in the afternoon. People today wanted to be mollycoddled, she said as three footmen and two maids cleared away the third course and served the fourth; it was no business of the government's to provide Poor Relief and medical insurance and pensions. Poverty would encourage the lower orders to be thrifty, and that was a virtue, she said at the end of a meal which would have fed a working-class family of ten for a fortnight. People must be self-reliant, she said as the butler helped her rise from the table and walk into the drawing room.

  By this time Charlotte was boiling with suppressed rage. Who could blame revolutionists for shooting people like the Duchess?

  Freddie handed her a cup of coffee and said: "She's a marvelous old warhorse, isn't she?"

  Charlotte said: "I think she's the nastiest old woman I've ever met."

  Freddie's round face became furtive and he said: "Hush!"

  At least, Charlotte thought, no one could say I'm encouraging him.

  A carriage clock on the mantel struck three with a tinkling chime. Charlotte felt as if she were in jail. Feliks was now waiting for her on the steps of the National Gallery. She had to get out of the Duchess's house. She thought: What am I doing here when I could be with someone who talks sense?

  The Conservative M.P. said: "I must get back to the House." His wife stood up to go with him. Charlotte saw her way out.

  She approached the wife and spoke quietly. "I have a slight headache," she said. "May I come with you? You must pass my house on the way to Westminster."

  "Certainly, Lady Charlotte," said the wife.

  Mama was talking to the Duchess. Charlotte interrupted them and repeated the headache story. "I know Mama would like to stay a little longer, so I'm going with Mrs. Shakespeare. Thank you for a lovely lunch, your grace."

  The Duchess nodded regally.

  I managed that rather well, Charlotte thought as she walked out into the hall and down the stairs.

  She gave her address to the Shakespeares' coachman and added: "There's no need to drive into the courtyard--just stop outside."

  On the way, Mrs. Shakespeare advised her to take a spoonful of laudanum for the headache.

  The coachman did as he had been told, and at three-twenty Charlotte was standing on the pavement outside her home, watching the coach drive off. Instead of going into the house she headed for Trafalgar Square.

  She arrived just after three-thirty and ran up the steps of the National Gallery. She could not see Feliks. He's gone, she thought, after all that. Then he emerged from behind one of the massive pillars, as if he had been lying in wait, and she was so pleased to see him she could have kissed him.

  "I'm sorry to have made you wait about," she said as she shook his hand. "I got involved in a dreadful luncheon party."

  "It doesn't matter, now that you're here." He was smiling, but uneasily, like--Charlotte thought--someone saying hello to a dentist before having a tooth pulled.

  They went inside. Charlotte loved the cool, hushed museum, with its glass domes and marble pillars, gray floors and beige walls, and the paintings shouting out color and beauty and passion. "At least my parents taught me to look at pictures," she said.

  He turned his sad dark eyes on her. "There's going to be a war."

  Of all the people who had spoken of that possibility today, only Feliks and Papa had seemed to be moved by it. "Papa said the same thing. But I don't understand why."

  "France and Germany both think they stand to gain a lot by war. Austria, Russia and England may get sucked in."

  They walked on. Feliks did not seem to be interested in the paintings. Charlotte said: "Why are you so concerned? Shall you have to fight?"

  "I'm too old. But I think of all the millions of innocent Russian boys, straight off the farm, who will be crippled or blinded or killed in a cause they don't understand and wouldn't care about if they did."

  Charlotte had always thought of war as a matter of men killing one another, but Feliks saw it as men being killed by war. As usual, he showed her things in a new light. She said: "I never looked at it that way."

  "The Earl of Walden never looked at it that way either. That's why he will let it happen."

  "I'm sure Papa wouldn't let it happen if he could help--"

  "You're wrong," Feliks interrupted. "He is making it happen."

  Charlotte frowned, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

  "That's why Prince Orlov is here."

  Her puzzlement deepened. "How do you know about Aleks?"

  "I know more about it than you do. The police have spies among the anarchists, but the anarchists have spies among the police spies. We find things out. Walden and Orlov are negotiating a treaty, the effect of which will be to drag Russia into the war on the British side."

  Charlotte was about to protest that Papa would not do such a thing; then she realized that Feliks was right. It explained some of the remarks passed between Papa and
Aleks while Aleks was staying at the house, and it explained why Papa was shocking his friends by consorting with Liberals like Churchill.

  She said: "Why would he do that?"

  "I'm afraid he doesn't care how many Russian peasants die so long as England dominates Europe."

  Yes, of course, Papa would see it in those terms, she thought. "It's awful," she said. "Why don't you tell people? Expose the whole thing--shout it from the rooftops!"

  "Who would listen?"

  "Wouldn't they listen in Russia?"

  "They will if we can find a dramatic way of bringing the thing to their notice."

  "Such as?"

  Feliks looked at her. "Such as kidnapping Prince Orlov."

  It was so outrageous that she laughed, then stopped abruptly. It crossed her mind that he might be playing a game, pretending in order to make a point; then she looked at his face and knew that he was deadly serious. For the first time she wondered whether he was perfectly sane. "You don't mean that," she said incredulously.

  He smiled awkwardly. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

  She knew he was not. She shook her head. "You're the sanest man I ever met."

  "Then sit down, and I'll explain it to you."

  She allowed herself to be led to a seat.

  "The Czar already distrusts the English, because they let political refugees like me come to England. If one of us were to kidnap his favorite nephew there would be a real quarrel--and then they could not be sure of each other's help in a war. And when the Russian people learn what Orlov was trying to do to them, they will be so angry that the Czar will not be able to make them go to war anyway. Do you see?"

  Charlotte watched his face as he talked. He was quiet, reasonable and only a little tense. There was no mad light of fanaticism in his eye. Everything he said made sense, but it was like the logic of a fairy tale--one thing followed from another, but it seemed to be a story about a different world, not the world she lived in.

  "I do see," she said, "but you can't kidnap Aleks; he's such a nice man."

  "That nice man will lead a million other nice men to their deaths if he's allowed to. This is real, Charlotte, not like the battles in these paintings of gods and horses. Walden and Orlov are discussing war--men cutting each other open with swords, boys getting their legs blown off by cannonballs, people bleeding and dying in muddy fields, screaming in pain with no one to help them. This is what Walden and Orlov are trying to arrange. Half the misery in the world is caused by nice young men like Orlov who think they have the right to organize wars between nations."

  She was struck by a frightening thought. "You've already tried once to kidnap him."

  He nodded. "In the park. You were in the carriage. It went wrong."

  "Oh, my word." She felt sickened and depressed.

  He took her hand. "You know I'm right, don't you?"

  It seemed to her that he was right. His world was the real world: she was the one who lived in a fairy tale. In fairyland the debutantes in white were presented to the King and Queen, and the Prince went to war, and the Earl was kind to his servants who all loved him, and the Duchess was a dignified old lady, and there was no such thing as sexual intercourse. In the real world Annie's baby was born dead because Mama let Annie go without a reference, and a thirteen-year-old mother was condemned to death because she had let her baby die, and people slept on the streets because they had no homes, and there were baby farms, and the Duchess was a vicious old harridan, and a grinning man in a tweed suit punched Charlotte in the stomach outside Buckingham Palace.

  "I know you're right," she said to Feliks.

  "That's very important," he said. "You hold the key to the whole thing."

  "Me? Oh, no!"

  "I need your help."

  "No, please don't say that!"

  "You see, I can't find Orlov."

  It's not fair, she thought; it has all happened too quickly. She felt miserable and trapped. She wanted to help Feliks, and she could see how important it was, but Aleks was her cousin, and he had been a guest in her house--how could she betray him?

  "Will you help me?" Feliks said.

  "I don't know where Aleks is," she said evasively.

  "But you could find out."

  "Yes."

  "Will you?"

  She sighed. "I don't know."

  "Charlotte, you must."

  "There's no must about it!" she flared. "Everyone tells me what I must do--I thought you had more respect for me!"

  He looked crestfallen. "I wish I didn't have to ask you."

  She squeezed his hand. "I'll think about it."

  He opened his mouth to protest, and she put a finger to his lips to silence him. "You'll have to be satisfied with that," she said.

  At seven-thirty Walden went out in the Lanchester, wearing evening dress and a silk hat. He was using the motor car all the time, now: in an emergency it would be faster and more maneuverable than a carriage. Pritchard sat in the driving seat with a revolver holstered beneath his jacket. Civilized life seemed to have come to an end. They drove to the back entrance of Number Ten Downing Street. The Cabinet had met that afternoon to discuss the deal Walden had worked out with Aleks. Now Walden was to hear whether or not they had approved it.

  He was shown into the small dining room. Churchill was already there with Asquith, the Prime Minister. They were leaning on the sideboard drinking sherry. Walden shook hands with Asquith.

  "How do you do, Prime Minister."

  "Good of you to come, Lord Walden."

  Asquith had silver hair and a clean-shaven face. There were traces of humor in the wrinkles around his eyes, but his mouth was small, thin-lipped and stubborn-looking, and he had a broad, square chin. Walden thought there was in his voice a trace of Yorkshire accent which had survived the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford. He had an unusually large head, which was said to contain a brain of machinelike precision; but then, Walden thought, people always credit prime ministers with more brains than they've got.

  Asquith said: "I'm afraid the Cabinet would not approve your proposal."

  Walden's heart sank. To conceal his disappointment he adopted a brisk manner. "Why not?"

  "The opposition came mainly from Lloyd George."

  Walden looked at Churchill and raised his eyebrows.

  Churchill nodded. "You probably thought, like everyone else, that L.G. and I vote alike on every issue. Now you know otherwise."

  "What's his objection?"

  "Matter of principle," Churchill answered. "He says we're passing the Balkans around like a box of chocolates: help yourself, choose your favorite flavor, Thrace, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia. Small countries have their rights, he says. That's what comes of having a Welshman in the Cabinet. A Welshman and a solicitor, too; I don't know which is worse."

  His levity irritated Walden. This is his project as much as mine, he thought: why isn't the man as dismayed as I am?

  They sat down to dinner. The meal was served by one butler. Asquith ate sparingly. Churchill drank too much, Walden thought. Walden was gloomy, mentally damning Lloyd George with every mouthful.

  At the end of the first course Asquith said: "We must have this treaty, you know. There will be a war between France and Germany sooner or later; and if the Russians stay out of it, Germany will conquer Europe. We can't have that."

  Walden asked: "What must be done to change Lloyd George's mind?"

  Asquith smiled thinly. "If I had a pound note for every time that question has been asked I'd be a rich man."

  The butler served a quail to each man and poured claret. Churchill said: "We must come up with a modified proposal which will meet L.G.'s objection."

  Churchill's casual tone infuriated Walden. "You know perfectly well it's not that simple," he snapped.

  "No indeed," Asquith said mildly. "Still, we must try. Thrace to be an independent country under Russian protection, something like that."

  "I've spent the past month beating them down," Walden said
wearily.

  "Still, the murder of poor old Francis Ferdinand changes the complexion of things," Asquith said. "Now that Austria is getting aggressive in the Balkans again, the Russians need more than ever that toehold in the area, which, in principle, we're trying to give them."

  Walden set aside his disappointment and began to think constructively. After a moment he said: "What about Constantinople?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Suppose we offered Constantinople to the Russians--would Lloyd George object to that?"

  "He might say it was like giving Cardiff to the Irish Republicans," Churchill said.

  Walden ignored him and looked at Asquith.

  Asquith put down his knife and fork. "Well. Now that he has made his principled stand, he may be keen to show how reasonable he can be when offered a compromise. I think he may buy it. Will it be enough for the Russians?"

  Walden was not sure, but he was buoyed by his new idea. Impulsively he said: "If you can sell it to Lloyd George, I can sell it to Orlov."

  "Splendid!" said Asquith. "Now, then, what about this anarchist?"

  Walden's optimism was punctured. "They're doing everything possible to protect Aleks, but still it's damned worrying."

  "I thought Basil Thomson was a good man."

  "Excellent," Walden said. "But I'm afraid Feliks might be even better."

  Churchill said: "I don't think we should let the fellow frighten us--"

  "I am frightened, gentlemen," Walden interrupted. "Three times Feliks has slipped through our grasp: the last time we had thirty policemen to arrest him. I don't see how he can get at Aleks now, but the fact that I can't see a way doesn't mean that he can't see a way. And we know what will happen if Aleks is killed: our alliance with Russia will fall through. Feliks is the most dangerous man in England."

  Asquith nodded, his expression somber. "If you're less than perfectly satisfied with the protection Orlov is getting, please contact me directly."

  "Thank you."

  The butler offered Walden a cigar, but he sensed that he was finished here. "Life must go on," he said, "and I must go to a crush at Mrs. Glenville's. I'll smoke my cigar there."

  "Don't tell them where you had dinner," Churchill said with a smile.

  "I wouldn't dare--they'd never speak to me again." Walden finished his port and stood up.