British -- Russia -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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