For a moment Elizabeth felt as if she were going to faint. Then Stephen broke in with a hearty laugh.
“They won’t get far, those two. A man who’s got red hair ought to be careful about getting into trouble. He’s a marked man, and with a description like this out against him anyone who sees him half a mile away can’t help smelling a rat. Oh no—he won’t get far, you’ll see.”
He began to tell a story about a man who had stolen a horse.
“Down in the Ukraine it was, about five years ago last summer. There were three horses he might have taken, and what does the fool do but take the one with the white star on its forehead. Well then, as soon as the description was out, there was everyone looking for that white star, whereas if he’d stuck to a plain brown or black, he might have got away with it—you never can tell.”
“You came from Orli?” said the schoolmaster abruptly. He addressed Elizabeth, but it was Stephen who answered.
“Yes, this morning.”
“And before that?”
“From Moscow.” Again it was Stephen who spoke.
The schoolmaster turned and looked at him.
“Does your sister never speak?”
“Oh, sometimes—sometimes,” said Stephen, laughing.
Stasia’s father threw back his head and laughed too.
“That’s a good joke! Don’t you call that a good joke, Ilya? She’s a woman, isn’t she? And he asks if she can talk! I call that as good a joke as I’ve heard. Can she talk indeed! It’s easily seen you’re not married, schoolmaster.”
Anton Glinka took no notice. He asked Elizabeth directly,
“Is your husband alive?”
Without looking up, Elizabeth said, “No.”
“And when he was alive you lived in Moscow?”
Elizabeth said, “Yes.”
“What was he, this husband of yours?”
Now he and everyone must see how she was trembling. What a poor weak fool she was to shake at a word and betray Stephen. It didn’t matter about herself, but it mattered about Stephen. She was betraying Stephen. She sat there dumb, and heard Stephen answer for her.
“Ah!—you’d better ask me about that. Her husband? Poor Anna! Look how she shakes at the very sound of his name. You shouldn’t torment her with your questions, because she’s silly in her head and strangers frighten her.” He dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “Do you know who she was married to? You’ll never guess. Why, to a Chinese—one of those Chinese executioners. Li Fan Tung was his name. A great big hulk of a man and as yellow as corn. No wonder she shivers and shakes when anyone asks her about him. Yellow as corn and eyes like slits, and one of those big curved knives at his belt, and a revolver on the top of that. He’d come home to his dinner and tell her about the people he’d shot—thirty and forty in a day—all counter-revolutionaries, and a good riddance of course, but it put Anna off her food. A woman hasn’t the stomach for that sort of thing. I can tell you he gave one the creeps. And why she married him nobody knows. But she was always a bit weak in the head—I suppose she couldn’t say No.”
The whole circle stared, fascinated, at the widow of a Chinese executioner. Only Stasia leaned sideways and put her baby down on Elizabeth’s lap.
“Would you like to hold him?” she said.
The baby was soft and warm, and very deeply asleep. Elizabeth put an arm about it, and felt safer. She could even begin to be angry with Stephen for saying she had been married to a Chinaman.
“And he is dead?” said the schoolmaster.
“A month ago,” said Stephen. “Someone shot him in the back on a dark night, so I had to go and fetch Anna away. We are going to the Collective Farm at Rasni. That’s the life—isn’t it Ilya? All working together, with the State behind you. What’s the good of straining and sweating to wring a living out of a paltry acre or two? On a Collective Farm you can plough a hundred acres with a tractor and not feel tired at the end of it. The food’s good too, and you get first chance with boots and clothes. It’s only what’s left over that comes to the villages.” He went on talking about the Collective Farm at Rasni.
The schoolmaster listened, frowning. Presently he went back to the piece of paper from which he had read the broadcast message. When Stephen stopped, he turned it again to catch the light.
“Six foot in height and very powerfully built—”
CHAPTER XXI
Late in the evening when the guests had all gone and the children were asleep, Elizabeth had a word with Stephen. He had been out with Ilya to see to the beasts, and she came across to the door and leaned against it, not speaking at first but looking at him, her eyes bright and angry. On the platform of the stove Stasia was feeding her baby, her shoulder turned to the room and her head bent. Just so might Mary have watched her child. To all intents and purposes they were alone.
“What is it?” said Stephen.
Elizabeth leaned on the door.
“That man—suspected us.”
Stephen nodded.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be gone before dawn. By the time he finds out that we’re not at Rasni we’ll be over the frontier.”
“Shall we?”
Their voices came and went with the least breath of sound. If Stasia had listened, she would have heard nothing. But Stasia was not listening. She was letting her love flow out to her baby. She had no thought for anyone in all the world beside.
“Shall we?” said Elizabeth.
“Of course we shall. I told you that before.”
They were so close together that with the least movement she could have touched him, or he her. Neither of them made that movement. A bright anger sprang up in Elizabeth like a bright, brittle flame. She said a little breathlessly,
“Why did you tell that horrible story?”
“What horrible story?”
“Why did you say I had been married to a Chinaman?”
The expression in his eyes changed. There was a fleeting touch of amusement which melted into concern.
“Did you mind?”
“Of course I minded! It was horrible!”
The amusement was there again.
“Well, I’m sorry—but you were giving yourself away. I suppose you know you were shaking.”
The flame of anger died. She had so nearly betrayed them both.
“I tried not to.”
“Well, I had to say something to account for it. I’m sorry you minded the Chinese executioner. I thought I invented him rather well. You see, the important thing just then was to produce something that would take the wind out of the schoolmaster’s sails. A Chinese executioner was a whole heap more exciting than a broadcast about a couple of bourzhuis. People in a village aren’t really much worked up over bourzhuis, but they like stories of what goes on in Moscow, and the more blood and thunder the better.”
Quite suddenly Elizabeth’s eyes laughed up at him. They at least were not disfigured. When she laughed, they were very starry.
“I’m so tired of being weak in the head,” she said.
Stephen’s eyes smiled back at hers, but behind the smile he was serious.
“You ought to throw yourself into your part.”
“Into being weak in the head?”
He nodded.
“You’d find it much easier. You ought to think of yourself as Anna—rather a poor thing and weak in the head. You want to let it soak into you, so that you’re not in danger of giving yourself away like you did just now.”
“I was afraid,” said Elizabeth with wide blank eyes on his. The laughter had gone out of them and they were not starry any more.
Stephen patted her shoulder.
“There—that’s just what I mean. If you were my widowed sister Anna, there wasn’t anything to make you afraid. You were afraid because in your own thoughts you were letting yourself be Elizabeth Radin. That’s fatal if you want to carry off a disguise—it makes the wrong atmosphere.”
A quick little devil commandeered Elizabeth’s ton
gue.
“Am I to remember that you are my brother—all the time?”
Stephen refused to be drawn. He said,
“If you did, you wouldn’t worry about little things like having warts on your face or a Chinese husband. They’d be part of your disguise, and they’d help you to feel safe and not get into a panic.”
Anger and laughter contended in Elizabeth. Laughter won.
“You call those little things!” she said, and with that the door was pushed open and Ilya came in.
There was no more opportunity for talk with Stephen. They sat about the stove, and he told stories and sang songs. Elizabeth went over the little scene in her mind—not the words, but the swift current of emotion which had run between them all the time. It was as if they had been facing one another across swift flashing water, glittering, darkening, swirling over unknown depths and flinging up a light inconsequent spray of words. It wasn’t the words that mattered, it was this strange current that ran between them. She felt it all the time. Did Stephen feel it too?… Stephen? Oh no—why should he? He was too busy with being Nikolai—and her brother. It would be against his principles to remember that he was Stephen and she Elizabeth.
She went to sleep without any more comfort than that.
CHAPTER XXII
Elizabeth did not know how long she had been asleep when something waked her. There was no light in the house. Someone was moving in the dark. The sound that had waked Elizabeth came again, a tapping on one of the two small windows which flanked the door. Then the door itself was opened a cautious inch and a breath of icy air came through the chink, and at the same moment she was aware of Stephen brushing past her and going towards the door.
It was Stasia who had opened it. Elizabeth caught her whispered word as Stephen joined her. Then the chink was widened. The cold blew in, and when the door was shut again there were three of them whispering there in the dark. Her heart beat heavily. She sat up, listening, but the whispering had no words for her. It was like a rustling of leaves—a senseless, wordless rustling which mixed confusedly with the children’s breathing, with Ilya’s snores, and with the hammering of her heart.
Over by the door Stephen said, “What is it?”
And Stasia, with her hand on the bolt, answered, “It is Peter.” And with that she drew back and let him in.
They stood so near together that they were touching one another, all the three of them, like the three sticks of a tripod, heads close, lips moving over words that were more breath than sound. First Stasia: “Oh, Peter!” Then Stephen: “What is it?” And after that Peter, breathing deep because he had been running, and shivering with cold and excitement:
“Anton Glinka!”
Stephen had a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Steady! Take your time.”
“There isn’t any time! You must get away—at once!”
Stasia shrank and trembled. They were so close that her tremor shook them all.
Stephen said, “Quiet, Peter, and tell me.”
“Yes—yes—it is Anton!” he said.
“What does he say?”
“That you are bourzhuis—that it is you—that are wanted by the police. He says—she has the scar on her hand. He says—he saw it.”
Stasia drew in her breath. Stephen said,
“Don’t be frightened, Stasia. It doesn’t matter what he says. We’ll be gone by cock-crow.”
Peter caught his breath.
“You must be gone before that. He has been round to every house. Not ours—he knows better than that—but everywhere else. Boris came and told me. He said, ‘Tell Nikolai to be gone before the moon is up. Anton will raise the village. He means mischief. Tell Nikolai to cut and run.’”
“Before the moon is up?” said Stasia faintly.
Peter shivered under Stephen’s hand.
“Boris is right—Anton means mischief. He is like a wolf on the trail. His kind are all like wolves.”
Stasia shuddered from head to foot.
“Wolves—” she said, and the three of them stood there silent.
It was Stephen who broke the silence.
“What does Glinka mean to do? Did Boris say?”
“He has got at least a dozen who will join him, perhaps more. They’re coming now—at once—as soon as they have stopped talking about it. They will search you both and take you to Orli to answer for yourselves there. You know best whether that is safe for you, Nikolai.”
Stephen’s laugh just stirred the silence.
“Not as safe as it might be.” And then, “We must go.”
Stasia said again the word that she had said before—a word with a shudder in it:
“Wolves—”
Sitting up in the dark on the other side of the room, Elizabeth felt Stasia’s fear come flowing towards her like a cold draught. She had not heard what Stasia had said, or what any of them had said, but she felt the fear. Then, very faintly, she heard Stephen laugh, and the fear went past her. She could not hear what he was saying, but she was reassured.
A moment later he came over to the stove and said,
“Are you awake?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
He knelt down close to her and spoke again.
“We’ve got to move on. Peter has come to warn us. It’s the schoolmaster of course. He’s roused the village. We must get away before they come and take us. Will you get up? I don’t want to wake Ilya. He and Stasia can say we slipped away while they were asleep.”
It was the strangest and most hurried flight. There were no more words, only a groping to find her shoes, her coat—and the door opening twice, once to let Peter out, and again for her and Stephen. Stasia pressed her arm as they touched in the dark, and then they were outside in the snow and the door was shut.
It was not so dark here as it had been in the house. The snow lighted them, and the sky was bare and starry with no more than a belt of cloud at the horizon. Elizabeth stood in the yard behind the house and watched the sky whilst Stephen brought out the horse and harnessed him to the sledge. The stars were very bright and the air was still. The belt of cloud to the east was luminous. If there was going to be a moon, it would help them on their way. She thought it was a long time since she had seen the moon or the sun. She thought it was a friendly thing to see the stars.
And then Stephen was ready. He tucked her in and led the horse out of the yard. He jumped in beside her and took the reins, and they were off—down the long village street, past the dark houses, past one house which was not dark, and out on the open snowy road. There was no tinkling of bells to proclaim their flight. They drove with muffled harness. The snow deadened the sound of the horse’s feet. Only when they were clear Stephen broke into a laugh.
“Schoolmasters talk too much,” he said. “Did you see the house with the lighted windows? I think Glinka and his friends were there, talking about how they were going to arrest us. Peter’s a good lad. We’d have been caught if he hadn’t come to warn us. I hope he won’t get into trouble.”
“Do you think he will?”
“No—he’s rather a protégé of Glinka’s. He’ll be in bed and asleep, and not know anything until he’s told. Stasia will do the same, and Ilya really won’t know anything, which is much the safest plan.”
“Will they come after us?” said Elizabeth.
Stephen laughed a little grimly.
“I don’t think so. People hereabouts don’t care for travelling at night.”
“I wonder why,” said Elizabeth vaguely. And then, “Will they come after us in the morning?”
Stephen cracked his whip.
“It won’t matter if they do.”
“Why?”
“The morning’s a long way off, and we shall be a long way off by the morning.”
Elizabeth looked to the east. The morning was far away. It was not the sun that was rising now, but the moon. Already the sky above the clouds was transparent and faintly golden. Presently the rim of the moon showed
clear. It came up full like a bubble of fire, in colour at first an orange-red, which changed imperceptibly through orange to gold. It seemed as if the gold were draining away from it into the sky. In a little while it was all quite gone and the moon was white among the stars.
It was at this time that they entered the forest. Elizabeth saw it first as a shadow below the cloud-belt, then as a black mass coming nearer and nearer. They passed its outposts—stark clumps of trees standing up in the moonlight; thickets bent under a weight of snow; a tangle of bushes with the glitter of frost on them; more stark trees; and at last the forest itself.
The trees were very tall. The trunks ran up on either side to a black roof of pine branches. Here and there the moonlight barred their path, here and there it lay like a silver pool in a clearing, once and again it flooded a stretch of the forest road, but for the most part they drove in a shadowy gloom which made everything seem unreal.
Unreal. The word crept into Elizabeth’s mind and stayed there. An unreal world, frozen into the semblance of reality. At any moment it might flow away from them, dissolving as ice and mist dissolve. They were past midnight, or it might have vanished at the stroke of twelve. No, midnight was the hour that ushered enchantment in. It was cock-crow which would break the spell. Meanwhile it stayed about them a glamour of frost and night.
When the gold had drained out of the moon the last trace of living colour died. Only black and white were left. Black, and white, and all the mysterious gradations through which light lapses into darkness.
Elizabeth began to try and find means for these strange, half luminous shades. Black, and white, and silver. Ink, and snow, and ebony. Grey velvet, and black velvet, and white velvet. Diamond, and pearl. Jet, and crystal. Bone—white scraped bone—moon-bleached bone. Tears, and ivory, and the black of black deep water.
“What are you thinking about, Elizabeth?” said Stephen without turning his head.
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