The Secret City | Page 3

of the language gave him a
tremendous advantage over his friends. "I assure you that's not so," he
would say. "You can't judge Tchehov till you've read him in the
original. Wait till you can read him in Russian." "No, I don't think the
Russian characters are like that," he would declare. "It's a queer thing,
but you'd almost think I had some Russian blood in me... I sympathise
so." He followed closely the books that emphasised the more
sentimental side of the Russian character, being of course grossly
sentimental himself at heart. He saw Russia glittering with fire and
colour, and Russians, large, warm, and simple, willing to be patronised,
eagerly confessing their sins, rushing forward to make him happy,
entertaining him for ever and ever with a free and glorious hospitality.
"I really think I do understand Russia," he would say modestly. He said
it to me when he had been in Russia two days.
Then, in addition to the success of his poems and the general interest
that he himself aroused the final ambition of his young heart was
realised. The Foreign Office decided to send him to Petrograd to help
in the great work of British propaganda.
He sailed from Newcastle on December 2, 1916....

III
At this point I am inevitably reminded of that other Englishman who,
two years earlier than Bohun, had arrived in Russia with his own pack
of dreams and expectations.
But John Trenchard, of whose life and death I have tried elsewhere to

say something, was young Bohun's opposite, and I do not think that the
strange unexpectedness of Russia can he exemplified more strongly
than by the similarity of appeal that she could make to two so various
characters. John was shy, self-doubting, humble, brave, and a
gentleman,--Bohun was brave and a gentleman, but the rest had yet to
be added to him. How he would have patronised Trenchard if he had
known him! And yet at heart they were not perhaps so dissimilar. At
the end of my story it will be apparent, I think, that they were not.
That journey from Newcastle to Bergen, from Bergen to Torneo, from
Torneo to Petrograd is a tiresome business. There is much waiting at
Custom-houses, disarrangement of trains and horses and meals, long
wearisome hours of stuffy carriages and grimy window-panes. Bohun I
suspect suffered, too, from that sudden sharp precipitance into a world
that knew not Discipline and recked nothing of the Granta. Obviously
none of the passengers on the boat from Newcastle had ever heard of
Discipline. They clutched in their hands the works of Mr. Oppenheim,
Mr. Compton Mackenzie, and Mr. O'Henry and looked at Bohun, I
imagine, with indifferent superiority. He had been told at the Foreign
Office that his especial travelling companion was to be Jerry Lawrence.
If he had hoped for anything from this direction one glance at Jerry's
brick-red face and stalwart figure must have undeceived him. Jerry,
although he was now thirty-two years of age, looked still very much the
undergraduate. My slight acquaintance with him had been in those
earlier Cambridge days, through a queer mutual friend, Dune, who at
that time seemed to promise so magnificently, who afterwards
disappeared so mysteriously. You would never have supposed that
Lawrence, Captain of the University Rugger during his last two years,
Captain of the English team through all the Internationals of the season
1913-14, could have had anything in common, except football, with
Dune, artist and poet if ever there was one. But on the few occasions
when I saw them together it struck me that football was the very least
part of their common ground. And that was the first occasion on which
I suspected that Jerry Lawrence was not quite what he seemed....
I can imagine Lawrence standing straddleways on the deck of the
Jupiter, his short thick legs wide apart, his broad back indifferent to

everything and everybody, his rather plump, ugly, good-natured face
staring out to sea as though he saw nothing at all. He always gave the
impression of being half asleep, he had a way of suddenly lurching on
his legs as though in another moment his desire for slumber would be
too strong for him, and would send him crashing to the ground. He
would be smoking an ancient briar, and his thick red hands would be
clasped behind his back....
No encouraging figure for Bohun's aestheticism.
I can see as though I had been present Bohun's approach to him, his
patronising introduction, his kindly suggestion that they should eat their
meals together, Jerry's smiling, lazy acquiescence. I can imagine how
Bohun decided to himself that "he must make the best of this chap.
After all, it was a long tiresome journey, and anything was better than
having