“Oh! very small! I made it as English as I could. It had central heating and, in the winter, with the double windows, it got very stuffy. I had English pictures and English books, but it was never very comfortable. I don’t know why. Nothing in Russia’s comfortable. I had a funny old servant called Sonia. She was fond of me, but she drank; she was always having relations to stay with her. I would find funny-looking men in the kitchen in the morning. She had no idea of time, and would cook well or badly as she pleased. She liked to tell fairy stories; she stole and she drank and she lied, but I kept her because I couldn’t bother to change her.”
He stopped—then began again, but now more dreamily than before, as though he’d been carried far away from the train, from England, from Katherine. “Yes—that was it—one couldn’t be bothered. One couldn’t be bothered about anything, and one didn’t need to bother, because no one else bothered either. Perhaps that’s just why I loved it, as I see now that I did love it. No one cared for anything but what was in the air—dreams, superstitions, stories. The country itself was like that too—so vague, so vast and boundless, so careless and heedless, so unpractical, so good for dreams, so bad for work, so unfinished, letting so many things go to pieces, so beautiful and so ugly, so depressing and so cheerful, so full of music and of ugly sounds ... so bad to live in, so good to dream in. I was happy there and I didn’t know it—I was happy and didn’t know it.” His voice had sunk to a whisper, so that Katherine could not catch his words. She touched the sleeve of his coat.
“Come back, Phil, come back,” she said, laughing. “You’re lost.”
He started, then smiled at her.
“It’s all right ... but it’s odd. There are so many things that didn’t seem to me to be curious and beautiful then that are so now.” Then, looking at Katherine very intently, as though he were calling her back to him, he said:
“But don’t talk to me about Russia. It’s bad for me. I don’t want to think of it. I’ve left it for ever. And when you ask me questions it revives me, as though it still had some power.... You say that you’re afraid of it—why,” he ended, laughing, “I believe I’m afraid of it too—I don’t want to think of it. It’s England now and Glebeshire and you—and you,” he whispered. They were interrupted then by an attendant, who told them that it was time for the first luncheon.
Afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening across the fields and the misty sun rode low above the far hills, they sat silently dreaming of their great happiness. It was an afternoon that was to remain, for both of them, throughout their lives, in spite of all after events, a most perfect memory. There are moments in the histories of all of us when we are carried into heights that by the splendour of their view, the fine vigour of their air, the rapture of their achievement offer to us a sufficient reassurance against the ironic powers. We find in them a justification of our hopes, our confidences, our inspirations, our faith....
So, for these few hours at least, Katherine and Philip found their justification.
This was a moment that two others, also, in that carriage were never afterwards to forget. Millie, under the warm afternoon sun, had fallen asleep. She woke to a sudden, half-real, half-fantastic realisation of Philip. She was awake, of course, and yet Philip was not quite human to her—or was it that he was more human than he had ever been before? She watched him, with her young, eager, inquisitive gaze, over the cover of her book. She watched him steadily for a long time.