The paper was wall-paper, old and tattered. The fire twisted it, and as it caught, for an instant the long dead pattern showed against the glow. Roses that had been red burned crimson once again. Then the pine-branches crackled and snapped. Bright firelight filled the room.
Stephen dragged the bench over to the hearth for Elizabeth. He continued to feed the fire, whilst she sat forward with her chin in her hands watching him. After the strain, the fear, the rush of joy, everything seemed to have come to a standstill. She was tired and content. The future concerned her as little as the past. She had been cold, and she was warm. She had been alone, and Stephen was here. She had been afraid, and the fear was gone.
She watched Stephen make up the fire. It filled the room with a warm glow. In this rosy firelight the painted panels recaptured some of their old grace and beauty. She said,
“Was this your mother’s room, Stephen?”
“Yes. It used to be pretty. A bit gim-cracky, you know—all gilding, and little tables, and fluffy cushions. I was always knocking things over. But it suited her. It’s bare enough now—isn’t it?” He straightened himself up by the fire and touched Elizabeth on the arm. “Come back here a little and I’ll show you something.”
When they were in the middle of the room, he pointed to the chimney breast. There was the open hearth with its blazing fire framed in carved alabaster, and above a narrow shelf, in the midst of the white panelling, a picture. Everything else was gone, but the picture still looked down on the ruined room. Shadows veiled it. Elizabeth could see no more than that it was a portrait. Then the ray of Stephen’s torch touched it, and she saw that it was a portrait of Fay Darenska. She looked very young. She had a girl’s slim body and a girl’s unshadowed eyes. They were as blue as Stephen’s. But her hair wasn’t red, it was gold. She stood smiling out of the picture with rosy childish lips. There was a row of pearls about her throat. A second row touched her breast, and a third hung almost to her knee. A white fur wrap was slipping from her shoulders. The ray passed to and fro, bringing out the pale rose of the dress, the delicate flesh tints, the shimmer of the pearls, the whole aspect of smiling youth.
“How young!” said Elizabeth.
Stephen nodded beside her.
“She really looked like that. But she was thirty when that was painted, and I was ten years old.”
The light slid down across the pearls. Fay and her pearls … Such frail things to have survived so great a ruin.…
Stephen answered her thought as if she had spoken it aloud.
“Look!” he said, and turned the ray to the edge of the picture.
There was no frame. The portrait had been painted upon the central panel above the hearth.
“If it had been an ordinary picture, they’d have torn it down when they murdered Paul and wrecked the house. Someone did throw a knife at it. There—you can see the mark, just at her knee. It looks as if she had torn her dress—doesn’t it? Well, the man who threw the knife slipped and fell. They’d been down into the cellars and they were all roaring drunk, so the wonder was not that one of them fell, but that any of them managed to keep his feet—only it just happened that when this particular man fell he broke his leg. After that no one would touch the picture, so there it is. If it was a canvas, I’d have got it away long ago, but I can’t manage that panel.”
“What happened to the pearls?”
Stephen switched off the torch. Fay Darenska and her rosy dress and her pearls went back into the shadows. The firelight glowed, faded, and glowed again. There was a little pause before he said,
“Funny you should ask that.”
“Did you mind?” There was a quick compunction in her voice. “They’re so lovely—and I just wondered—what happened to them.”
“I should like to know,” said Stephen soberly.
“Don’t you know?”
They were suddenly so intimate that there was no longer any question of his minding what she asked.
He shook his head.
“I thought they’d been looted. But the other day when I was in Paris I ran across a man who was staying here with Paul just before the crash. He said Paul knew it was coming, but he wouldn’t get out—said he didn’t fancy being an emigré. That was so like Paul.”
“Well?”
“Well, Paul gave him a message. By the time he thought of delivering it I was off the map, and he’d forgotten all about it till I ran into him in Paris.”
“What was the message?”
“An odd one. He swears Paul told him to tell me that my mother’s pearls were where she had always kept them.”
“Don’t you know where she kept them?”
“That’s just it—she didn’t keep them anywhere. She wore them always, day and night.”
“What do you think he meant?”
He hesitated for a moment and then said,
“Well, it sounded as if he’d buried them with her. He might have done it—I never saw them after she died.”
A bright flame shot up in the fire, and for a moment the pearls caught the light. Then they were gone again. Elizabeth shivered.
“Well, that’s that,” said Stephen. “Now come along and warm yourself and have something to eat. I’m afraid it’ll have to be bully beef again.”
“Is it safe here?” said Elizabeth when they had camped down before the fire for their meal. It was quite a good meal, because there was tinned soup as well as the beef.
He laughed a little at the question.
“It depends on what you call safe. If you don’t have a fire and something to eat, you’ll die—and that’s not safe. On the other hand I don’t think anyone can possibly get here after us until well on into to-morrow. You see, this is how I figure it out. Glinka wouldn’t get going until daylight. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I’m pretty sure he’d go back to Orli. Of course he could follow the track of our sledge and come after us here, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
Stephen ticked the reasons off on his fingers.
“One. It’s not a run anyone in that village is specially keen about—the wolves got two men last winter. I’m considered—or rather Nikolai is considered—the sort of fool who’ll do it once too often. I don’t think Glinka would be much of a hand with a rifle, and I don’t see anyone lending him a horse for the job or being keen on going with him. That’s three reasons. And the fourth is that he hasn’t got any authority. No—I think he’ll go into Orli, say he suspects us of being the two people who are wanted, and then see what happens.”
“What will happen?”
Stephen laughed.
“Well, they may tell Glinka to go and boil his head, or they may raise a posse and come chasing after us. It won’t matter to us which they do, because we shall be in Poland by then.”
Elizabeth’s heart jumped. She said in a low voice,
“Suppose Glinka didn’t go to Orli. Suppose he did get a horse and come after us.”
“Well, he’d be here by now, or else the wolves would have got him. I’m not worrying about Glinka.”
After a minute or two Elizabeth said,
“What about the people in this village?”
He laughed again.
“They think we’re smugglers, Nikolai and me. They believe firmly in us both. I’m quite sure it has never occurred to anyone in the village that they’ve never seen us together. They’d probably be quite ready to swear that they had. They’ve heard us talking in the dark. Smugglers always come and go in the dark.
“Heard you talk?”
“Nikolai and me—or let’s say Nikolai and Mikhail. I can do different voices, you know, and make them sound as if they came from different places. It’s quite useful sometimes. So there it is, we come and go and they don’t ask any questions—there are pickings you know. If Glinka did manage to get here, I think the chances are that he might be quite roughly handled.”
Elizabeth shivered.
“Are you cold?”
&n
bsp; “No.”
“Because I’m afraid we can’t stay here.”
She looked at him with something like dismay. The black night—the snow—the cold—the forest—wolves.… She said on a caught breath,
“Are we going on to-night?”
“Suppose I say Yes?”
“I hope you won’t.”
“But suppose I do?”
She managed the ghost of a smile.
“Then I suppose I’d come.”
“Come along then,” he said and took her by the arm.
“What—now?”
“Well, I don’t think we ought to stay here.”
In the firelight she could see a dancing light of mischief in his eyes.
“Where are we going?”
“Across the frontier,” said Stephen with a note of triumph in his voice.
She had not known that they were so near, and her heart leapt. Of course the crossing would have to be at night. Cold, darkness, and danger—nothing mattered if the goal was really in sight. Eager words came stammering to her lips.
“The frontier! Stephen, are we so near?”
“Come and see,” said Stephen.
He swept her into the hall. Its cold silence met them on the threshold. Their feet made ghostly echoes on the stone flags. He flashed his torch to show her what a huge cavern of a place it was. The great stone stair rose up to a gallery. He turned the torch upon it, and she saw how it was littered with fallen masonry.
“The hall is much older than the rest of the house. It’s a feudal hall with a seventeenth-century house built round it. Paul’s several times great-grandfather had a French architect over. He was a most intelligent and cultured person, and a patron of the arts, but by all accounts you didn’t have to scratch very deep to find the Tartar. He had one of his serfs knouted to death in this hall. Paul wasn’t very fond of the story, but it happened.”
“What had the man done?” said Elizabeth. No wonder the house had felt horrible.
“Oh, he was a groom. He’d lamed the prince’s favourite horse, I believe.”
They crossed the hall and passed through a gaping doorway into a long stone passage.
“Where are we going?”
“To the kitchens.”
“Do we go out that way?”
“We don’t go out,” said Stephen.
“What do you mean?”
He said, “Wait and see,” and with that they came to a heavy door hanging drunkenly from wrenched hinges. The lock had been smashed and then burnt out. The wood showed pitted and blackened in the ray of the torch. Beyond, stone steps went down and out of sight.
“The cellars are as old as the hall,” said Stephen.
Elizabeth stared into the black depths.
“Are we going down there?”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
They went down fifteen steps, and were in a vaulted hall, stone paved and quite dry under foot. The air was heavy and cold. Stephen took out a piece of candle and lit it. The yellow flame burned unstirred by any draught. The place was very big, and seemed all the bigger for the shadows which thronged it. That the wreckers had been here was very plain. Doors to the right and left had been smashed, casks rolled out and broken, bottles splintered. The stone under foot was deeply stained. Elizabeth hoped, shuddering, that the darkest stains were wine, not blood.
“They made a pretty fair mess of things,” said Stephen dispassionately. “Paul was most awfully proud of his cellar. Some of the wine was absolutely priceless.” He laughed a little. “They just smashed everything and wallowed. Well, here we are.”
The last door on the left had been dragged right off its hinges. It lay where it had fallen, and they had to step over it to enter the cellar it had guarded. It was a small place with an arched roof and a row of wine-bins running round three sides of it.
“Look out for the glass,” said Stephen. He held the candle up to show the littered floor.
There were smashed bottles everywhere. The candlelight picked up the shining splinters and the jagged edges of larger fragments.
“This was the old madeira,” said Stephen. “Paul’s grandfather laid it down. If anyone had told him his serf’s grandsons would drink it, he would have had a fit. He was a bit of a connoisseur. Well, they found the madeira, but here’s something they didn’t find. And that’s a thing I’ve been thankful for ever since.”
He stood the candle on the side of one of the bins and went into the far corner of the cellar, where he carefully moved some of the litter aside, shifting it this way and that with his foot. Then he seemed to press downwards with considerable force, whilst at the same time he grasped the corner bin with a hand on either of its wooden sides. With a grinding sound the whole bin swung out, disclosing a narrow arch some four feet in height. He laughed, let go, and turned round upon Elizabeth.
“There’s our road into Poland,” he said.
CHAPTER XXVII
Elizabeth put out a hand to steady herself. She took a step nearer the wall, and a piece of glass under her foot cracked and splintered. She looked at the black mouth of the arch and said,
“Poland?”
Stephen nodded. He was dusting his hands and picking up the candle.
“The house is just on the frontier. Thank the Lord no one knows about this old passage. Paul told me the last time I saw him, and my word, it’s been useful.”
Elizabeth looked at the black arch with a sort of fascinated horror. There was the way to safety and freedom. A horrible way. Its dank breath sickened her. She said faintly,
“Who made it?”
“Well, I gather there was an old passage running from here to a sort of shrine or chapel, but the chapel fell down and a good deal of the passage fell in. Then when Paul’s great-great-grandfather built on to the house, he had men down from his estates in the north and he had the passage cleared out and rebuilt. The men who did it were told they’d lose their tongues if they talked, and the secret never got out. I don’t know why Prince Boris wanted the passage restored, but I believe he was a desperate intriguer, and I daresay it was useful. Anyhow there it is. It’s about half a mile long and it’s in quite decent repair. It comes out on the Polish side of the frontier in the ruins of the old chapel, and it has been an absolute god-send to me.”
“Are we going now?” said Elizabeth.
All her life she had had a horror of just such a place as this. It was like the horror of a nightmare. Dark passages—low passages—dark cramping walls, and a low slimy roof—places where you could not lift your head, or breathe, or see the terrors that pursued you. There was always a pursuing terror, and you could not run from it, because the roof closed down.
When Stephen said “Come along,” she took a step forward, but her face was suddenly so drawn that he said,
“What’s the matter?”
She found herself looking at him with entreaty.
“It’s the passage—”
“What’s the matter with the passage?”
His voice made the nightmare seem farther off. He patted her shoulder encouragingly.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. I have to look after my head the whole way, but you’ll be able to straighten up as soon as you’re through the arch. I’ll go first with the light. I always take a candle through here in case of bad air. It’s a good danger signal.”
“Is there bad air?” said Elizabeth by the arch.
“Not now. There are ventilating shafts. Some of them were blocked, and I had to clear them out. Now stand just where you are while I shut the door.”
She was about a yard inside the arch, and she could stand upright, though she guessed that there was very little room over her head. She saw Stephen with a candle in his hand replacing the broken glass which he had pushed aside in order to open the secret door. Then he caught hold of the bin and swung it back. The door shut with a click and he squeezed past her, holding up the light.
The passage stretched away before them. After a yard
or two there were some steps, seven or eight of them, taking them still farther down under the earth. The steps were of stone, and the passage was floored, and walled, and roofed with stone. It was like being in a great stone drain. The air had an odd dead feeling. It was not nearly so cold as it had been in the house or even in the cellar.
A yard or two beyond the foot of the steps a second passage ran away to the left. The candle-light hardly penetrated its blackness. Elizabeth looked, and looked away quickly. She had a feeling of the earth pressing down on them, over-weighted by the ruin of Paul Darensky’s house.
“Where does that go to?” she said in a voice that would not rise above a whisper.
“Guess.”
“How can I guess?”
He laughed.
“It wouldn’t have suited old Boris to have his secret visitors trekking through the cellars and the kitchen premises. Publicity was about the last thing he wanted. That passage comes out in the room we were in.”
“Then why did we come round by the cellars?”
“Well, the passage isn’t too safe. There is a wooden stair, and some of the steps have gone, but at a pinch it might have come in handy. If Glinka had rolled up unexpectedly, there was our bolt-hole. That’s why I chose that room.”
“Where does the passage come out?”
“Behind my mother’s picture. The panel opens like a door. No one has ever found it.”
So Fay Darenska stood guard over Prince Boris’ secret door.… Elizabeth wondered what kind of visitors had come through it—hooded, cloaked, perhaps a little breathless from the darkness and the danger. She wondered if any of them were women. She wondered whether she could love any man enough to go to him at night through these dark passages.
They had gone a little way past the second passage, when Stephen uttered a sharp exclamation and stopped. He held up the candle, and Elizabeth looked over his shoulder. Her first impression was that there was a wall in front of them, and then she saw that it wasn’t a wall of any man’s building. The candle-light was stopped by a ragged fall of earth. The black arch of the passage was blocked. The roof had fallen in.
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