The Secret City Read online

  Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Jeremy Eble and the Online DistributedProofreading Team.

  BY HUGH WALPOLE

  _STUDIES IN PLACE_ THE SECRET CITY THE DARK FOREST THE GOLDEN SCARECROW THE WOODEN HORSE MARADICK AT FORTY THE GODS AND MR. PERRIN

  _TWO PROLOGUES_ THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE FORTITUDE

  _THE RISING CITY_ 1. THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 2. THE GREEN MIRROR

  THE SECRET CITY

  A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS

  BY

  HUGH WALPOLE

  AUTHOR OF "FORTITUDE," "THE DARK FOREST," "THE DUCHESS OF WREXE," ETC.

  NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

  COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  TO

  MAJOR JAMES ANNAND (15TH BATTALION 48TH HIGHLANDERS, C.E.F.)

  IN RETURN FOR THE GIFT OF HIS FRIENDSHIP

  In the eastern quarter dawn breaks, the stars flicker pale.The morning cock at Ju-nan mounts the wall and crows.The songs are over, the clock run down, but still the feast is set.The Moon grows dim and the stars are few; morning has come to the world.At a thousand gates and ten thousand doors the fish-shaped keys turn;Round the Palace and up by the Castle, the crows and magpies are flying.

  _Cock-Crow Song_. Anon. (1st Century B.C.).

  CONTENTS

  PART I Vera And Nina

  PART II Lawrence

  PART III Markovitch And Semyonov

  PART I

  VERA AND NINA

  THE SECRET CITY

  VERA AND NINA

  I

  There are certain things that I feel, as I look through this bundle ofmanuscript, that I must say. The first is that of course no writer everhas fulfilled his intention and no writer ever will; secondly, thatthere was, when I began, another intention than that of dealing with mysubject adequately, namely that of keeping myself outside the whole ofit; I was to be, in the most abstract and immaterial sense of the word,a voice, and that simply because this business of seeing Russianpsychology through English eyes has no excuse except that it _is_English. That is its only interest, its only atmosphere, its onlymotive, and if you are going to tell me that any aspect of Russiapsychological, mystical, practical, or commercial seen through anEnglish medium is either Russia as she really is or Russia as Russianssee her, I say to you, without hesitation, that you don't know of whatyou are talking.

  Of Russia and the Russians I know nothing, but of the effect upon myselfand my ideas of life that Russia and the Russians have made during theselast three years I know something. You are perfectly free to say thatneither myself nor my ideas of life are of the slightest importance toany one. To that I would say that any one's ideas about life are ofimportance and that any one's ideas about Russian life are ofinterest... and beyond that, I have simply been compelled to write. Ihave not been able to help myself, and all the faults and any virtues inthis story come from that. The facts are true, the inferences absolutelymy own, so that you may reject them at any moment and substitute others.It is true that I have known Vera Michailovna, Nina, Alexei Petrovitch,Henry, Jerry, and the rest--some of them intimately--and many of theconversations here recorded I have myself heard. Nevertheless theinferences are my own, and I think there is no Russian who, were he toread this book, would not say that those inferences were wrong. In anearlier record, to which this is in some ways a sequel,[1] my inferenceswere, almost without exception, wrong, and there is no Russian alive forwhom this book can have any kind of value except as a happy example ofthe mistakes that the Englishman can make about the Russian.

  But it is over those very mistakes that the two souls, Russian andEnglish, so different, so similar, so friendly, so hostile, may meet....And in any case the thing has been too strong for me. I have no otherdefence. For one's interest in life is stronger, God knows how muchstronger, than one's discretion, and one's love of life than one'swisdom, and one's curiosity in life than one's ability to record it. Atleast, as I have said, I have endeavoured to keep my own history, my owndesires, my own temperament out of this, as much as is humanlypossible....

  And the facts are true.

  [Footnote 1: _The Dark Forest_.]