by James Hilton
The train arrived at half-past four, already full, with Red soldiers and refugees crouching between and on the roofs of the coaches. The two guards, doubtfully assisted by the stationmaster, opened the door of a second-class compartment (there was no first-class on the train) and drove its occupants on to the platform at the point of the revolver. They were refugees from Omsk, and pity for them was tempered with indignation at the horrible state in which they had left the compartment. They had ripped up the cushioned seats to make puttees to wind round their legs; they had scattered filth of every description all over the floor; and they (or some previous occupants) had also stripped the compartment bare of every detachable object. The two guards worked for half an hour to make the place habitable, and even then its interior atmosphere was still unpleasant.
The train left Tarkarovsk about dusk and crawled slowly westward. A.J., his prisoner, and the guards made a frugal breakfast of coffee and black bread. Both guards were huge fellows—one of a typical peasant type, and the other of superior intelligence but less likeable. As for the prisoner, her attitude remained exactly the same. At the first station west of Tarkarovsk news came that the Whites were on the point of entering that town; the train had apparently escaped by only the narrowest of margins. Yet the woman betrayed no suspicion of disappointment. She obeyed all A.J.’s requests with unassuming calmness; she sat where he told her to sit, ate when he told her to eat, and so on. He had now time to notice her appearance. She was perhaps under thirty years of age, though her type was that whose years are difficult to guess. Her hair was smooth and jet-black, framing a face of considerable beauty. Her lips had the clean, accurate curvings of the thoroughbred, and her eyes, when they were in repose, held a rather sleepy, mystical look. And she was not only calm; she was calming.
Towards evening the train reached Ekaterinburg. The Ural mountain city, noted for its extreme brand of revolutionary sentiment, was in a state of wild excitement, and for two reasons—the White advance along the railway, and the murder of the ex-Emperor that had taken place a few nights before. The station was packed with Red soldiers, and from their looks as the train sailed past their faces to a standstill, A.J. did not anticipate pleasant encounters. The first thing that happened was the invasion of the compartment by a dozen or so of them, extravagantly armed and more than half drunk. The two guards wisely made no attempt to resist, but A.J. said, authoritatively: “I am a Commissar on my way to Moscow on important government business. This compartment is reserved for me.” His manner of speaking was one which usually impressed, and most of the invaders, despite their ruffianism, would probably have retired but for one of them, a swaggering little Jew about five feet high, who cried shrilly: “Not at all—nothing is reserved, except by order of the Ekaterinburg Soviet. Besides, how do we know you are what you say? And who is this woman with you?” A.J. pulled out his wallet of documents and displayed them hopefully. They were so magnificently sealed and stamped that most of the men, who could not read, seemed willing enough to accept their validity. But again the Jew was truculent. He read through everything very carefully and critically examined the seals. Then he stared insolently at the woman. “So you are taking her to Moscow?” he remarked at length. “Well, I’m afraid you can’t. Khalinsk has no authority over Ekaterinburg and we refuse you permission to pass. I must see Patroslav about this. Meanwhile, you fellows, stand here on guard till I come back.”
He jumped down to the platform and disappeared amidst the throng. The soldiers remained in the compartment, talking among themselves and getting into conversation with the two Khalinsk guards. One of the latter talked rather indiscreetly but A.J. did not think it wise to interfere.
After a few moments the little Jew returned, accompanied by another obvious Jew, taller and rather fine-looking. Without preamble he addressed himself to A.J.
“You are the Assistant-Commissar at Khalinsk?”
“Yes.”
“And this woman was formerly the Countess Marie Alexandra Adraxine?”
“Yes.”
“Then we cannot permit you to pass—either of you. In fact, you are both arrested.”
A.J. argued with sudden and rather startling vehemence: the central government wanted this woman; she was to supply evidence which would be wanted at a full-dress trial of all the counter-revolutionary ringleaders; there would be a tremendous row if some local Soviet were to interfere with such intentions. A.J. ended by an astute appeal to the men personally—“You two are doubtless ambitious—you would perhaps like to see yourselves in higher positions than a local Soviet? Do you think it will help you to countermand the orders of the central government? Whereas if, on the other hand—” It was pretty bluff, but he played it well, and the two Jews were reluctantly impressed. At last the man called Patroslav said something to his colleague in a language A.J. did not understand, and a lively and evidently acrimonious argument developed between them. Then Patroslav swung round on his heel and went off. The other Jew turned to A.J. “You are to be allowed to proceed with your prisoner,” he announced, with sullen insolence. “But your guards must return to Khalinsk—we will replace them by two others. And your prisoner will travel in a third-class compartment with the guards—we do not allow privileges of any kind to enemies of the Revolution. You yourself, being a government official, may remain here.”
“On the contrary, I shall go wherever the prisoner goes, since I am still in charge and responsible.”
“As you prefer.”
It was all, A.J. perceived, a scheme of petty annoyance, and on the whole he was glad to be escaping from Ekaterinburg with nothing worse. During the whole of the delay the woman had not spoken a word, but as they walked down the platform to change their compartment she said: “I am sorry, Commissar, to be inconveniencing you so much. If I give my parole not to escape, would you not prefer to stay in comfort where you were?”
“There is little difference in comfort between one place and another,” he answered.
But there was, for the third-class coaches were filthy and verminous, and there was neither time nor opportunity to make even the most perfunctory turnout.
The night had a brilliant moon, and the hills, seen through the windows of the train, upreared like heaving seas of silver. There was no light in the compartment save that of a candle-stump fixed in the neck of a bottle. The heavy bearded faces of the guards shone fiercely in the flickering light. They were Ukrainians and sometimes exchanged a few husky words in their local dialect. A.J. had a slight understanding of this, but the men talked so quietly that he could not catch more than a few words here and there.
Suddenly the train came to a jangling standstill, and after some delay a train official walked along the track with the information that a bridge had been blown up just ahead and that all passengers must walk on several miles to the next station, where another train would be waiting. A.J., his prisoner, and the two guards, climbed down to the track, which ran in a wide curve through densely wooded country. One of the guards declared that he knew the spot quite well, and that there was an easy short-cut to the station across country. A.J. doubtfully agreed and they set off along a wide pathway that met the railway at a tangent. They all walked in silence for a few minutes, with the voices of the other passengers still within hearing; but soon they were amongst tall pine- trees, and A.J. imagined, though he could not be certain, that the path was veering too far to the north. He said to the guards: “Are you quite sure that this is the way?”—and one of them answered: “Oh yes—you can hear the engine-whistle in the distance.” A.J. listened and could certainly hear it, but it sounded very remote.
They all walked on a little further, with the two guards chattering softly together in Ukrainian. A.J.’s acute sense of direction again warned him, and a somewhat similar feeling of apprehension must have seized on his prisoner, for she said “Don’t you think we should have done better to keep to the railway line?”
At last even the guards seemed to be undecided; they had been w
alking a little ahead and now stopped and began arguing together in excited undertones.
“Don’t you think it would have been better?” she repeated.
“Possibly,” he answered, in a whisper. “It was certainly foolish to let them lead us into this forest.”
“You think they have lost the way?”
“Maybe—or maybe not.”
“Ah,” she answered. “So you too are wondering?”
“Wondering what?”
“What they are chatting about so quietly.”
He said quickly: “I have a revolver. I am keeping a look- out.”
He was, in fact, beginning not to like the appearance of things at all. Had the two guards led them deliberately astray, and if so, with what intention? In the train he had heard them chattering together, but they could hardly have been plotting this particular piece of strategy since the blown-up railway bridge could not have been foreseen. Perhaps, however, the idea had come to one of them as a quick impromptu, a variant upon some less immediate scheme that they had had in mind.
One of the guards approached him with a measured deliberation which, in the moonlight, seemed peculiarly sinister. “If you will both wait here with me,” he began, “my friend says he will find out where we are and will come back to tell us.”
At first it seemed an innocent and reasonable suggestion, involving the somewhat lessened danger of being left alone with one possible enemy instead of two. But then A.J. recollected an ancient ruse that bandits sometimes played on their victims in Siberian forests; they said they were going away, but they did not really do so; they crept back and sprang on their enemies from behind. “No,” he answered, with sudden decision. “It doesn’t matter—we’ll go back to where we began and then walk along the track. I think I can remember the way.”
He began to walk in the reverse direction with the woman at his side and the two guards following him at a little distance. They seemed rather disconcerted by his decision, and continued to exchange remarks in whispers.
After a few moments A.J. said quietly to his companion: “I want you to be on your guard. I don’t trust those fellows.”
“Neither do I. What do you think their game is?”
“Robbery. Perhaps murder. This going back to the railway has upset their plans—I can gather that from the way they’re talking.”
“What can we do?”
“Nothing—except keep our heads. Have you good nerve?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then take this revolver and use it if necessary, but not otherwise.” He handed it to her quickly as they passed into the shadow of dark trees.
For the next few moments there came no sound except the crunch of four pairs of footsteps over the fir-cones. Neither A.J. nor the woman spoke, and the two guards also had ceased their whispered conversation.
A.J.’s eyes were searching ahead for any sign of the railway as well as preparing for any lightning emergency in the rear. The silence and darkness of the forest were both uncanny, and though he listened acutely for any repetition of that distant engine-whistle, he heard nothing. After walking for some ten minutes, by which time he estimated that the railway ought to have come into view, the track narrowed and began to twist uphill. He whispered suddenly: “I’ve lost my way.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we may have to spend the rest of the night in the forest with these ruffians.” A moment later he added: “They’re talking again—they’re guessing we’re lost, and I’m afraid it suits them only too well. I think I’d rather have it out with them than go on like this.”
He stopped abruptly, facing the guards so quickly that they had not time to conceal the revolvers in their hands. “Gentlemen,” he said calmly, “I think you must find it a burden to carry those weapons as well as our luggage. Suppose you hand them over to me—I can guard the party if we are attacked.”
The very unexpectedness of the request might have succeeded with one of the men, had not the other, with a snarl of rage, flung himself all at once upon A.J. The other then went to his companion’s assistance, and the three men were soon engaged in a desperate struggle in which darkness seemed an extra enemy of them all. One powerful pair of arms gripped A.J. round the neck, while another seized his right arm and sought to wrest away the revolver. Both assailants were exceedingly strong, and though A.J. was strong also, he could not have held out for long against such odds. Suddenly one of the guards managed to wrench his own revolver free and aimed it full in A.J.’s face; and simultaneously a second revolver swung on to the scene and glinted in a shaft of moonlight. The two triggers were pressed almost together, but there was only one report. The guard’s weapon misfired, and a second later its owner collapsed to the ground. A.J. turned to deal with the second guard, but with a sharp movement the latter drew back and plunged wildly into the undergrowth and away.
A.J. was left, revolver in hand, peering down at a huddled body. The woman stood close to him, also holding a weapon, but hers was smoking.
He stooped and said, after a pause: “He’s dead.”
“Is he? I did it.”
“Probably saving your own life as well as mine.”
“Yes, I daresay. But what has to be done now?”
“This—before anything else.”
He dragged the body to one side of the path and pushed it into the midst of thick undergrowth.
“Was the other fellow hurt?” she then asked.
“No—only terrified. He’ll soon find his way to the nearest village and tell everybody. There’ll be a pretty big fuss.”
“But we were being attacked—it was self-defence, surely?”
“In a way, yes, but he’s hardly likely to say so, and nobody’s likely to take our word for it against his. Probably he’ll say we’re counter-revolutionary spies and that we seized the chance of a train hold-up to lure our two guards into the forest and attack them.”
“But you have your papers to prove who you are?”
“You saw for yourself how doubtfully they were accepted in Ekaterinburg. After the stories that fellow will spread about us, they’ll count even less.”
“Then it looks as if we’d better move on.”
“Yes. Instantly.”
“Do you know which way to go?”
“Away from the nearest village. That means, almost certainly, uphill.”
Then they discovered that they were both quite breathless. All about them were the dark pillars of tree-trunks, with here and there a delicate pattern on the undergrowth where moonlight spilled through. He began to gather up the various bundles that the two guards had thrown down. Then they hurried away. They climbed in silence for some time, till at last she asked, in a very ordinary casual voice, what he was thinking about. He answered: “To be exact, about a packet of chocolate I left on the seat in the train.”
She laughed softly. “Never mind. I have some. Shall we share it?”
“Not yet. Better get on further.”
They went on climbing amongst the trees, stopping only now and then to listen for any distant sound. But none could be heard distinctly, though once, from the very edge of the world, it seemed, there came what might have been the wail of a train-whistle. As they climbed higher, the trees thinned out into the open, and suddenly they reached a high curving summit outlined against the moonlight like a knife-edge. The air, after the cool forest depths, was warm, and they themselves were again breathless. “Keep in shadow,” he ordered, and they took a few backward steps into a little hollow full of dead leaves. A squirrel scampered past them as they halted. “Now for your chocolate,” he said.
They sat down on a leafy slope and shared the chocolate and also a hunk of black bread that he had brought from Tarkarovsk. There was nothing to drink, but he had a water-bottle and they could find a stream as soon as it grew daylight. They ate ravenously and were still hungry when they had finished. Then it was necessary to make plans, tentatively, at any rate, for the future.
A.J. was not disposed to minimise the seriousness of the situation. The story that the runaway guard would doubtless tell was just as credible as theirs—perhaps more so to those he would be addressing. A man supposed to be a Siberian assistant-commissar, supposed also to be escorting to Moscow a dangerous female counter-revolutionary and member of the aristocracy; the doubts that the Ekaterinburg officials had had, and their precautionary escort of two Red guards; the shooting of one of these guards in the middle of a forest—such a story would not seem difficult either to believe or to interpret in a district notorious for its ‘redness.’ And as for the wallet-full of assorted stamps and seals, A.J. began to feel that their presence might be a danger quite as much as a safeguard.
If they could only make their way to another district, across country, say, to the northern railway at Perm, they could there continue their journey to Moscow incognito, as it were. A.J. was fairly sure that his story would be credited at headquarters, especially as the Moscow authorities had had so much trouble themselves with the turbulent Uralian provinces. Anyhow, all that remained in the less immediate future; the more pressing problem was to avoid detection by search-parties who might soon be scouring the forests.
Fortunately for their chances of escape, the surrounding country was full of wanderers, refugees driven from their homes by the press of war or famine, seeking friends or relatives in distant parts of the country, or else tramping vaguely from village to village in default of anything more definite to do. Even in the forest country there were folk of this kind to be met with, and A.J. could not think of any better disguise than for the two of them to appear to be such wanderers. His own attire was reasonably suitable as it stood, but he realised that it would take a certain amount of adjustment to make his prisoner look like anything but a former aristocrat. Her clothes, though old and shabby, were hardly such as a peasant would ever have possessed, and her shoes, even after repeated patchings, were still recognisably foreign. He dared not allow her to be seen until these incongruities were removed, and he explained the matter to her briefly. “We shall have to be particularly careful during the next twenty-four hours,” he insisted. “As soon as it is daylight I will leave you in some arranged spot and try to get clothes for you. If there is a village anywhere within a few miles I ought to be able to manage it.”