The Man From St. Petersburg

by Ken Follett

  It was turning out to be a very eventful season in the worst possible way. After the suffragette protest at the court and the madman in the park, she had thought there could be no more catastrophes. And for a few days life had been calm. Charlotte was successfully launched. Aleks was no longer around to disturb Lydia's equanimity, for he had fled to the Savoy Hotel and did not appear at society functions. Belinda's ball had been a huge success. That night Lydia had forgotten her troubles and had a wonderful time. She had danced the waltz, the polka, the two-step, the tango and even the Turkey Trot. She had partnered half the House of Lords, several dashing young men, and--most of all--her husband. It was not really chic to dance with one's own husband quite as much as she had. But Stephen looked so fine in his white tie and tails, and he danced so well, that she had given herself up to pleasure. Her marriage was definitely in one of its happier phases. Looking back over the years, she had the feeling that it was often like this in the season. And then Annie had turned up to spoil it all.

  Lydia had only the vaguest recollection of Annie as a housemaid at Walden Hall. One could not possibly know all the servants at an establishment as large as that: there were some fifty indoor staff, and then the gardeners and grooms. Nor was one known to all the servants: on one famous occasion, Lydia had stopped a passing maid in the hall and asked her whether Lord Walden was in his room, and had received the reply: "I'll go and see, madam--what name shall I say?"

  However, Lydia remembered the day Mrs. Braithwaite, the housekeeper at Walden Hall, had come to her with the news that Annie would have to go because she was pregnant. Mrs. Braithwaite did not say "pregnant," she said "overtaken in moral transgression." Both Lydia and Mrs. Braithwaite were embarrassed, but neither was shocked: it had happened to housemaids before and it would happen again. They had to be let go--it was the only way to run a respectable house--and naturally they could not be given references in those circumstances. Without a "character" a maid could not get another job in service, of course; but normally she did not need a job, for she either married the father of the child or went home to mother. Indeed, years later, when she had brought up her children, such a girl might even find her way back into the house, as a laundry-maid or kitchenmaid, or in some other capacity which would not bring her into contact with her employers.

  Lydia had assumed that Annie's life would follow that course. She remembered that a young undergardener had left without giving notice and run away to sea--that piece of news had come to her attention because of the difficulty of finding boys to work as gardeners for a sensible wage these days--but of course no one ever told her the connection between Annie and the boy.

  We're not harsh, Lydia thought; as employers we're relatively generous. Yet Charlotte reacted as if Annie's plight were my fault. I don't know where she gets her ideas. What was it she said? "I know what Annie did and I know who she did it with." In Heaven's name, where did the child learn to speak like that? I dedicated my whole life to bringing her up to be pure and clean and decent, not like me don't even think that--

  She dipped her pen in the inkwell. She would have liked to share her worries with her sister, but it was so hard in a letter. It was hard enough in person, she thought. Charlotte was the one with whom she really wanted to share her thoughts. Why is it that when I try I become shrill and tyrannical?

  Pritchard came in. "A Mr. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin to see you, my lady."

  Lydia frowned. "I don't think I know him."

  "The gentleman said it was a matter of urgency, m'lady, and seemed to think you would remember him from St. Petersburg." Pritchard looked dubious.

  Lydia hesitated. The name was distinctly familiar. From time to time Russians whom she hardly knew would call on her in London. They usually began by offering to take back messages, and ended by asking to borrow the passage money. Lydia did not mind helping them. "All right," she said. "Show him in."

  Pritchard went out. Lydia inked her pen again, and wrote: What can one do when the child is eighteen years old and has a will of her own? Stephen says I worry too much. I wish--

  I can't even talk to Stephen properly, she thought. He just makes soothing noises.

  The door opened, and Pritchard said: "Mr. Konstantin Dmitrich Levin."

  Lydia spoke over her shoulder in English. "I'll be with you in a moment, Mr. Levin." She heard the butler close the door as she wrote:--that I could believe him. She put down her pen and turned around.

  He spoke to her in Russian. "How are you, Lydia?"

  Lydia whispered: "Oh, my God."

  It was as if something cold and heavy descended over her heart, and she could not breathe. Feliks stood in front of her: tall, and thin as ever, in a shabby coat with a scarf, holding a foolish English hat in his left hand. He was as familiar as if she had seen him yesterday. His hair was still long and black, without a hint of gray. There was that white skin, the nose like a curved blade, the wide, mobile mouth and the sad soft eyes.

  He said: "I'm sorry to shock you."

  Lydia could not speak. She struggled with a storm of mixed emotions: shock, fear, delight, horror, affection and dread. She stared at him. He was older. His face was lined: there were two sharp creases in his cheeks, and downturning wrinkles at the corners of his lovely mouth. They seemed like lines of pain and hardship. In his expression there was a hint of something which had not been there before--perhaps ruthlessness, or cruelty, or just inflexibility. He looked tired.

  He was studying her, too. "You look like a girl," he said wonderingly.

  She tore her eyes away from him. Her heart pounded like a drum. Dread became her dominant feeling. If Stephen should come back early, she thought, and walk in here now, and give me that look that says Who is this man? and I were to blush, and mumble, and--

  "I wish you'd say something," Feliks said.

  Her eyes returned to him. With an effort, she said: "Go away."

  "No."

  Suddenly she knew she did not have the strength of will to make him leave. She looked over to the bell which would summon Pritchard. Feliks smiled as if he knew what was in her mind.

  "It's been nineteen years," he said.

  "You've aged," she said abruptly.

  "You've changed."

  "What did you expect?"

  "I expected this," he said. "That you would be afraid to admit to yourself that you are happy to see me."

  He had always been able to see into her soul with those soft eyes. What was the use of pretending? He knew all about pretending, she recalled. He had understood her from the moment he first set eyes on her.

  "Well?" he said. "Aren't you happy?"

  "I'm frightened, too," she said, and then she realized she had admitted to being happy. "And you?" she added hastily. "How do you feel?"

  "I don't feel much at all, anymore," he said. His face twisted into an odd, pained smile. It was a look she had never seen on him in the old days. She felt intuitively that he was telling the truth at that moment.

  He drew up a chair and sat close to her. She jerked back convulsively. He said: "I won't hurt you--"

  "Hurt me?" Lydia gave a laugh that sounded unexpectedly brittle. "You'll ruin my life!"

  "You ruined mine," he replied; then he frowned as if he had surprised himself.

  "Oh, Feliks, I didn't mean to."

  He was suddenly tense. There was a heavy silence. He gave that hurt smile again, and said: "What happened?"

  She hesitated. She realized that all these years she had been longing to explain it to him. She began: "That night you tore my gown . . ."

  "What are you going to do about this tear in your gown?" Feliks asked.

  "The maid will put a stitch in it before I arrive at the embassy," Lydia replied.

  "Your maid carries needles and thread around with her?"

  "Why else would one take one's maid when one goes out to dinner?"

  "Why indeed?" He was lying on the bed watching her dress. She knew that he loved to see her put her clothes on. He had once
done an imitation of her pulling up her drawers which had made her laugh until it hurt.

  She took the gown from him and put it on. "Everybody takes an hour to dress for the evening," she said. "Until I met you I had no idea it could be done in five minutes. Button me up."

  She looked in the mirror and tidied her hair while he fastened the hooks at the back of her gown. When he had finished he kissed her shoulder. She arched her neck. "Don't start again," she said. She picked up the old brown cloak and handed it to him.

  He helped her on with it. He said: "The lights go out when you leave."

  She was touched. He was not often sentimental. She said: "I know how you feel."

  "Will you come tomorrow?"

  "Yes."

  At the door she kissed him and said: "Thank you."

  "I love you dearly," he said.

  She left him. As she went down the stairs she heard a noise behind her and looked back. Feliks's neighbor was watching her from the door of the next apartment. He looked embarrassed when he caught her eye. She nodded politely to him, and he withdrew. It occurred to her that he could probably hear them making love through the wall. She did not care. She knew that what she was doing was wicked and shameful but she refused to think about it.

  She went out into the street. Her maid was waiting on the corner. Together they walked to the park where the carriage was waiting. It was a cold evening, but Lydia felt as if she were glowing with her own warmth. She often wondered whether people could tell, just by looking at her, that she had been making love.

  The coachman put down the step of the carriage for her and avoided her eyes. He knows, she thought with surprise; then she decided that that was fanciful.

  In the coach the maid hastily repaired the back of Lydia's gown. Lydia changed the brown cloak for a fur wrap. The maid fussed with Lydia's hair. Lydia gave her ten rubles for her silence. Then they were at the British Embassy.

  Lydia composed herself and went in.

  It was not difficult, she found, to assume her other personality and become the modest, virginal Lydia whom polite society knew. As soon as she entered the real world she was terrified by the brute power of her passion for Feliks and she became quite genuinely a trembling lily. It was no act. Indeed, for most of the hours in the day she felt that this well-behaved maiden was her real self, and she thought she must be somehow possessed while she was with Feliks. But when he was there, and also when she was alone in bed in the middle of the night, she knew that it was her official persona that was evil, for it would have denied her the greatest joy she had ever known.

  So she entered the hall, dressed in becoming white, looking young and a little nervous.

  She met her cousin Kiril, who was nominally her escort. He was a widower of thirty-something years, an irritable man who worked for the Foreign Minister. He and Lydia did not much like each other, but because his wife was dead, and because Lydia's parents did not enjoy going out, Kiril and Lydia had let it be known that they should be invited together. Lydia always told him not to trouble to call for her. This was how she managed to meet Feliks clandestinely.

  "You're late," Kiril said.

  "I'm sorry," she replied insincerely.

  Kiril took her into the salon. They were greeted by the ambassador and his wife, and then introduced to Lord Highcombe, elder son of the Earl of Walden. He was a tall, handsome man of about thirty, in well-cut but rather sober clothes. He looked very English, with his short, light brown hair and blue eyes. He had a smiling, open face, which Lydia found mildly attractive. He spoke good French. They made polite conversation for a few moments; then he was introduced to someone else.

  "He seems rather pleasant," Lydia said to Kiril.

  "Don't be fooled," Kiril told her. "Rumor has it that he's a tearaway."

  "You surprise me."

  "He plays cards with some officers I know, and they were telling me that he drinks them under the table some nights."

  "You know so much about people, and it's always bad."

  Kiril's thin lips twisted in a smile. "Is that my fault or theirs?"

  Lydia said: "Why is he here?"

  "In St. Petersburg? Well, the story is that he has a very rich and domineering father, with whom he doesn't see eye to eye; so he's drinking and gambling his way around the world while he waits for the old man to die."

  Lydia did not expect to speak to Lord Highcombe again, but the ambassador's wife, seeing them both as eligible, seated them side by side at dinner. During the second course he tried to make conversation. "I wonder whether you know the Minister of Finance?" he said.

  "I'm afraid not," Lydia said coldly. She knew all about the man, of course, and he was a great favorite of the Czar; but he had married a woman who was not only divorced but also Jewish, which made it rather awkward for people to invite him. She suddenly thought how scathing Feliks would be about such prejudices; then the Englishman was speaking again.

  "I should be most interested to meet him. I understand he's terribly energetic and forward-looking. His Trans-Siberian Railway project is marvelous. But people say he's not very refined."

  "I'm sure Sergey Yulevich Witte is a loyal servant of our adored sovereign," Lydia said politely.

  "No doubt," Highcombe said, and turned back to the lady on his other side.

  He thinks I'm boring, Lydia thought.

  A little later she asked him: "Do you travel a great deal?"

  "Most of the time," he replied. "I go to Africa almost every year, for the big game."

  "How fascinating! What do you shoot?"

  "Lion, elephant . . . a rhinoceros, once."

  "In the jungle?"

  "The hunting is in the grasslands to the east, but I did once go as far south as the rain forest, just to see it."

  "And is it how it is pictured in books?"

  "Yes, even to the naked black pygmies."

  Lydia felt herself flush, and she turned away. Now why did he have to say that? she thought. She did not speak to him again. They had conversed enough to satisfy the dictates of etiquette, and clearly neither of them was keen to go further.

  After dinner she played the ambassador's wonderful grand piano for a while; then Kiril took her home. She went straight to bed to dream of Feliks.

  The next morning after breakfast a servant summoned her to her father's study.

  The count was a small, thin, exasperated man of fifty-five. Lydia was the youngest of his four children--the others were a sister and two brothers, all married. Their mother was alive but in continual bad health. The count saw little of his family. He seemed to spend most of his time reading. He had one old friend who came to play chess. Lydia had vague memories of a time when things were different and they were a jolly family around a big dinner table; but it was a long time ago. Nowadays a summons to the study meant only one thing: trouble.

  When Lydia went in he was standing in front of the writing table, his hands behind his back, his face twisted with fury. Lydia's maid stood near the door with tears on her cheeks. Lydia knew then what the trouble was, and she felt herself tremble.

  There was no preamble. Her father began by shouting: "You have been seeing a boy secretly!"

  Lydia folded her arms to stop herself shaking. "How did you find out?" she said with an accusing look at the maid.

  Her father made a disgusted noise. "Don't look at her," he said. "The coachman told me of your extraordinarily long walks in the park. Yesterday I had you followed." His voice rose again. "How could you act like that--like a peasant girl?"

  How much did he know? Not everything, surely! "I'm in love," Lydia said.

  "In love?" he roared. "You mean you're in heat!"

  Lydia thought he was about to strike her. She took several paces backward and prepared to run. He knew everything. It was total catastrophe. What would he do?

  He said: "The worst of it is, you can't possibly marry him."

  Lydia was aghast. She was prepared to be thrown out of the house, cut off without a penny an
d humiliated; but he had in mind worse punishment than that. "Why can't I marry him?" she cried.

  "Because he's practically a serf and an anarchist to boot. Don't you understand--you're ruined!"

  "Then let me marry him and live in ruin!"

  "No!" he yelled.

  There was a heavy silence. The maid, still in tears, sniffed monotonously. Lydia heard a ringing in her ears.

  "This will kill your mother," the count said.

  Lydia whispered: "What are you going to do?"

  "You'll be confined to your room for now. As soon as I can arrange it, you'll enter a convent."

  Lydia stared at him in horror. It was a sentence of death.

  She ran from the room.

  Never to see Feliks again--the thought was utterly unbearable. Tears rolled down her face. She ran to her bedroom. She could not possibly suffer this punishment. I shall die, she thought; I shall die.

  Rather than leave Feliks forever she would leave her family forever. As soon as this idea occurred to her she knew it was the only thing to do--and the time to do it was now, before her father sent someone to lock her into her room.

  She looked in her purse: she had only a few rubles. She opened her jewelry case. She took out a diamond bracelet, a gold chain and some rings, and stuffed them into her purse. She put on her coat and ran down the back stairs. She left the house by the servants' door.

  She hurried through the streets. People stared at her, running in her fine clothes, with tears on her face. She did not care. She had left society for good. She was going to elope with Feliks.

  She quickly became exhausted and slowed to a walk. Suddenly the whole affair did not seem so disastrous. She and Feliks could go to Moscow, or to a country town, or even abroad, perhaps Germany. Feliks would have to find work. He was educated, so he could at least be a clerk, possibly better. She might take in sewing. They would rent a small house and furnish it cheaply. They would have children, strong boys and pretty girls. The things she would lose seemed worthless: silk dresses, society gossip, ubiquitous servants, huge houses and delicate foods.

  What would it be like, living with him? They would get into bed and actually go to sleep together--how romantic! They would take walks, holding hands, not caring who saw that they were in love. They would sit by the fireside in the evenings, playing cards or reading or just talking. Any time she wanted, she could touch him, or kiss him, or take off her clothes for him.