The Secret City | Page 4

no one to talk to...." But Jerry, unfortunately, was in a bad
temper at the start. He did not want to go out to Russia at all. His father,
old Stephen Lawrence, had been for many years the manager of some
works in Petrograd, and the first fifteen years of Jerry's life had been
spent in Russia. I did not, at the time when I made Jerry's acquaintance
at Cambridge, know this; had I realised it I would have understood
many things about him which puzzled me. He never alluded to Russia,
never apparently thought of it, never read a Russian book, had, it
seemed, no connection of any kind with any living soul in that country.
Old Lawrence retired, and took a fine large ugly palace in Clapham to
end his days in....
Suddenly, after Lawrence had been in France for two years, had won
the Military Cross there and, as he put it, "was just settling inside his
skin," the authorities realised his Russian knowledge, and decided to
transfer him to the British Military Mission in Petrograd. His anger
when he was sent back to London and informed of this was extreme.
He hadn't the least desire to return to Russia, he was very happy where
he was, he had forgotten all his Russian; I can see him, saying very
little, looking like a sulky child and kicking his heel up and down
across the carpet.

"Just the man we want out there, Lawrence," he told me somebody said
to him; "keep them in order."
"Keep them in order!" That tickled his sense of humour. He was to
laugh frequently, afterwards, when he thought of it. He always chewed
a joke as a cow chews the cud.
So that he was in no pleasant temper when he met Bohun on the decks
of the Jupiter. That journey must have had its humours for any
observer who knew the two men. During the first half of it I imagine
that Bohun talked and Lawrence slumbered. Bohun patronised, was
kind and indulgent, and showed very plainly that he thought his
companion the dullest and heaviest of mortals. Then he told Lawrence
about Russia; he explained everything to him, the morals, psychology,
fighting qualities, strengths, and weaknesses. The climax arrived when
he announced: "But it's the mysticism of the Russian peasant which
will save the world. That adoration of God...."
"Rot!" interrupted Lawrence.
Bohun was indignant. "Of course if you know better--" he said.
"I do," said Lawrence, "I lived there for fifteen years. Ask my old
governor about the mysticism of the Russian peasant. He'll tell you."
Bohun felt that he was justified in his annoyance. As he said to me
afterwards: "The fellow had simply been laughing at me. He might
have told me about his having been there." At that time, to Bohun, the
most terrible thing in the world was to be laughed at.
After that Bohun asked Jerry questions. But Jerry refused to give
himself away. "I don't know," he said, "I've forgotten it all. I don't
suppose I ever did know much about it."
At Haparanda, most unfortunately, Bohun was insulted. The Swedish
Customs Officer there, tired at the constant appearance of self-satisfied
gentlemen with Red Passports, decided that Bohun was carrying
medicine in his private bags. Bohun refused to open his portmanteau,

simply because he "was a Courier and wasn't going to be insulted by a
dirty foreigner." Nevertheless "the dirty foreigner" had his way and
Bohun looked rather a fool. Jerry had not sympathised sufficiently with
Bohun in this affair.... "He only grinned," Bohun told me indignantly
afterwards. "No sense of patriotism at all. After all, Englishmen ought
to stick together."
Finally, Bohun tested Jerry's literary knowledge. Jerry seemed to have
none. He liked Fielding, and a man called Farnol and Jack London.
He never read poetry. But, a strange thing, he was interested in Greek.
He had bought the works of Euripides and Aeschylus in the Loeb
Library, and he thought them "thundering good." He had never read a
word of any Russian author. "Never _Anna_? Never _War and Peace_?
Never _Karamazov_? Never Tchehov?"
No, never.
Bohun gave him up.

IV
It should be obvious enough then that they hailed their approaching
separation with relief. Bohun had been promised by one of the
secretaries at the Embassy that rooms would be found for him. Jerry
intended to "hang out" at one of the hotels. The "Astoria" was, he
believed, the right place.
"I shall go to the 'France' for to-night," Bohun declared, having lived, it
would seem, in Petrograd all his days. "Look me up, old man, won't
you?"
Jerry smiled his slow smile. "I will," he said. "So long."
We will now follow the adventures of Henry. He had in him, I