Without Armor

by James Hilton

  After their short rest he climbed the hill while she remained more prudently below. The moon was now fast sinking over a distant ridge, and while he crouched in the long grass trying to get his bearings he saw the first whiff of dawn creeping over the eastern horizon. Soon he could see the forests turning from black to green and the sky from grey to palest blue; then, very slowly, the mist unrolled along the floor of the valley. But there was no sign of any village. It was, he knew, a sparsely populated district, and quite possibly the nearest settlement might be a score or more miles away. If that were so, he and his prisoner must hide in the forest during the day and push on as fast as they could when night fell.

  By the time he rejoined her it was quite light, and the clear cloudless sky showed promise of a hot day. He took off his coat and then looked around for a stream from which to fill his water-bottle. Cautiously he descended the slope, skirting the hill in a wide curve, with the first rays of sunlight splitting joyously through the foliage. How lovely the world seemed, but for human beastliness, and how disgusting to wish that the birds were not singing so loudly, because they made it difficult to listen for anyone approaching in the distance. Yet behind a certain quiet rage and perturbation, excitement was on him, and when at last he found a stream, bubbling crystal-clear over pearl- grey rocks, he knelt to it and, dashing the icy water over his face and head, felt what was almost a new sensation—happiness.

  After filling his water-bottle he looked up and saw something that gave him a sudden shock. It was a timbered roof half-hidden among the trees no more than a hundred yards away, yet even so close it would have been easy to miss it. Probably a woodman’s cottage, he thought, and with still cautious steps approached a little nearer to find out. Then he saw a thin wisp of smoke curling up amidst the treetops that screened the tiny habitation. The loneliness of the place as well as its look of cosy comfortableness lured him to an even closer examination; he worked his way through the trees towards a side which no window overlooked. In another moment he was standing against the outside wall and listening carefully—but there were no sounds of voices or of movement from within. Then he turned the corner and, crouching near the window, slowly lifted his head and peered over the sill. It was the usual one-roomed habitation of the peasant, very dirty and untidy; two persons, man and woman, were sleeping on a heap of straw and rags in a corner, and from their attitude and state of attire, A.J. guessed it to be a sleep of drunkenness. With greater interest, however, he saw the heap of clothes on the floor which the couple had thrown off. That settled it; it seemed that fortune had given him a chance which it would be far bigger folly to miss than to take. With his revolver in one hand he lifted the door-latch with the other; as he had hoped and expected, the door was not locked. He simply walked in, picked up the litter of clothes, walked out, closed the door carefully behind him, and climbed the hill through the trees. Nothing could have been easier, and he was glad that, from their appearance, the couple would still have many hours to sleep.

  His prisoner laughed when he threw down the heap of clothes in front of her. Then she took grateful gulps of water from the bottle he offered. “You are very kind, Commissar,” she said. “But you had better not make a habit of leaving me alone as you did just then. I warn you that I shall escape at any suitable opportunity.”

  “Naturally,” he answered, with a shade of irony. “But for the present remember that we are both escaping.”

  “Yes, that’s queer, isn’t it? You are taking me to Moscow, where I shall probably be put on trial and shot; but for the time being I haven’t to think about that—I must only bother about preserving my life during the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m afraid it all strikes me as rather illogical. If I am to be killed anyhow, does it matter very much who does the job?”

  “That, of course, is for you to decide. Personally, if I were in your place, I should rather think it did matter.”

  She suddenly put a hand on his sleeve. “Commissar, I can lose nothing, can I, by asking a question? Just this—must you really take me to Moscow and hand me over? Hasn’t my own—our own—our rather unusual fate so far—given you a hint of anything else? To me it almost seems as if fate were asking you to give me a chance. Briefly, Commissar, I have friends abroad—influential friends—who would make it considerably worth your while if you would take me somewhere else instead of Moscow. Odessa, shall we say—or Rostov? You would have earned the reward by your courtesy alone, and as for me, how can the Revolution suffer because one poor woman takes ship for a foreign country?”

  He looked at her for a moment in absolute silence. Then he merely replied: “You are mistaken in me—I am not bribable. And also, by the way, you must remember in future not to call me ‘Commissar.’”

  “I see.” And after a pause she added: “You are quite incorruptible, then?”

  “Quite.”

  She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, anyhow, let’s not quarrel about it. Perhaps, after all, you think I deserve to be shot?”

  “No, I don’t say that. I don’t think anything at all about it. You are my prisoner and I am taking you to Moscow. That is all.” He went on, more quickly: “Will you please put on these clothes without delay? We must get on—every minute increases the danger.”

  “Are they clean?”

  “I don’t know—I hadn’t time to look. Probably not, but you must wear them, anyhow.”

  She laughed and their serious conversation ended by tacit agreement. She was amused at having to dress herself in a peasant’s long skirt and coarse coloured blouse, and she was still further amused when he told her how he had obtained them. Her own clothes they buried in a hiding-place under a heap of dead leaves; it was safer, he decided, than trying to burn them. Then he cut his beard and moustache, transforming his appearance to an extent that caused her a good deal of additional amusement. Next their joint luggage was carefully sorted out and all articles that might seem suspicious were also hidden away under the leaves. Finally he slit open the lining of his coat and carefully concealed all his commissary papers and a few government banknotes of large denomination.

  These preparations took some time, and it was after eight o’clock when a fairly typical pair of peasant wanderers made their way down the hill to the valley on the far side of it. The man was tall and well-built, with a thin stubble of beard round his chin (he had not dared to give himself a close shave because of the deep tan that covered the rest of his face). The woman, slighter in build and pale even in the sunlight, trudged along beside him. They did not converse a great deal, but the man exchanged cheerful greetings with fellow- peasants passing in the opposite direction.

  Arrangements had been reached about other matters. They had given each other names that were common enough, yet not suspiciously so; he was Peter Petrovitch Barenin, of the imaginary village of Nikolovsk, in the province of Orenburg; she was his daughter Natasha (called ’Daly’). They were trying to reach Petrograd, where he had a brother who had formerly been a workman in the Putilov factory. They were both poor people, he a simple-minded peasant who could neither read nor write, but his daughter, thank God, had had an education and had spent some years as lady’s maid in an aristocratic family. (Hence her accent and soft hands.) But they had both fallen lately on evil times—she, of course, had lost her job, and he had had his cottage burned down by White brigands. It was all just the sort of ordinary and quite unexceptionally pathetic case of which there were probably some millions of examples at that time throughout the country.

  The morning warmed and freshened as the couple wound their way along the valley road. They met few people, and none save humble travellers like themselves; from one of these peasant wayfarers A.J. bargained a loaf of bread. With this and a few wild strawberries gathered by the roadside they made a simple but satisfactory meal, washed down with icy mountain-water from a stream.

  Throughout the day they did not see a solitary habitation or come within rumou
r of a village. All about them stretched the lonely forest-covered foothills of the Urals, dark with pine-trees and soaring into the hazy distance where a few of the peaks still kept their outlines hidden in mist. The air was full of aromatic scents, and by the wayside, as they trudged, high banks of wildflowers waved their softer perfumes.

  Towards evening they met an old bearded peasant of whom A.J. asked the distance to the nearest village. “Three versts,” he answered. “But if you are travellers seeking a night’s shelter, you had better not go there.” A.J. asked why, and the man answered: “A band of soldiers have been raiding the place in search of someone supposed to have murdered a Red guard in the forests. The soldiers are still there, and if you were to arrive as a stranger they might arrest you on suspicion. You know what ruffians those fellows are when they are dealing with us simple folk.” A.J. agreed and thanked the man; it was a fine night, he added, and it would do himself and his daughter no harm to rest in the forest. “Oh, but there is no need to do that,” urged the other.

  “You can have shelter at my cottage just away up yonder hill. I am a woodcutter—Dorenko by name—but I am not a ruffian like most woodcutters. As soon as I saw you and your daughter coming along the road I thought how tired she looked and I felt sorry for her. Yes, indeed, brother, you are fortunate—not many woodcutters are like me. I have a kind heart, having lost my wife last year. Perhaps I may marry again some day. I have a nice little cottage and it is clean and very comfortable, though the cockroaches are a nuisance. Come, brother, you and your girl will enjoy a good meal and a night’s rest under a roof.”

  A.J., thinking chiefly of the soldiers in the neighbouring village, accepted the invitation, and the three began to walk uphill, turning off the road after a short distance and entering again the steep and already darkening forest. A.J. told the old man the barest facts about himself; and was glad to note that they were accepted quite naturally and without the least curiosity. “I, too, had a daughter once,” said Dorenko, “but she ran away and I never heard of her afterwards. She was not so good-looking as yours.”

  After a quarter of an hour’s hard climb they came to another of those forest cottages, timber-built, and completely hidden from any distant view. The interior was not particularly clean and comfortable, despite Dorenko’s contrary opinion, and though also, after his warning, they were prepared for cockroaches, they had hardly imagined such a plague of them as existed. They swarmed over everything; they were on walls and roof, and in every crack and corner; they had to be shaken off the bread and skimmed out of liquids; they crackled underfoot and fell in soft sizzling pats on to the smouldering hearth. “Yes,” admitted Dorenko, tranquilly, “they are a nuisance, but I will say this for them—they never bite.”

  Dorenko was certainly hospitable. He made his guests an appetising meal of soup and eggs; barring the cockroaches, there would have been much to enjoy. He talked a good deal, especially about his late wife and his loneliness since she had died. “Yes, indeed, I may marry again some day. I am on the lookout for the right sort of person, as you may guess. And, of course, it would not be a bad match in these days for a girl to marry an honest woodcutter who has his own cottage and perhaps a little money hidden away, too.” He leered cunningly. “You see I am trusting you, Peter Petrovitch. I know you are not the kind that would rob an honest woodcutter. But it is a fact, I assure you—I have hundreds of silver roubles buried in the ground beneath this cottage. Think of it—and you are, without doubt, a poor man!”

  “I am a poor man, it is true, but I certainly would not rob you.”

  “I know that, brother. As soon as I saw you coming along the road I thought—Here comes an honest man. And honest men are rare in these days—nearly as rare as gold roubles, eh? Or shall we say nearly as rare as a good-looking woman?”

  A.J. conversed with him amiably for a time and then, as it was quite dark and Dorenko possessed no lamp, suggested settling down for the night. He was, in fact, dead tired, and he knew that Daly (as he had already begun to think of her) must be the same. He arranged for her to have the best place—near the fire and for that reason not so popular with the cockroaches; he and Dorenko shared the ground nearer the door. He was so sleepy that he felt almost afraid of going to sleep; he guessed that in any emergency he would be hard to awaken. However, Dorenko seemed trustworthy and there was always the revolver at hand. He lay down with it carefully concealed beneath the bundle of clothes that formed his pillow. Neither he nor Daly undressed at all, but Dorenko took off his outer clothes and performed the most intimate ritual of toilet quite frankly and shamelessly in the darkness. A decent, honest fellow, no doubt.

  A.J. went to sleep almost instantly and knew nothing thenceforward till he felt himself being energetically shaken. “What’s the matter?” he cried, rubbing his eyes and groping for his revolver. It was still dark and all was perfectly silent except for the scurry of cockroaches disturbed by his sudden movement. “It’s only me, brother—Dorenko the woodcutter,” came a hoarse whisper a few inches from his right ear. “I waited till your daughter was asleep so that we could have a little talk together in private.”

  “But I’m really far too sleepy to talk—”

  “Ah, but listen, brother. You are a poor man, are you not?”

  “Certainly, but does it matter at this time of night?”

  “It matters a great deal when you have to tramp the roads with a poor sick daughter. She looked so very tired and ill to-night, brother—it’s plain she isn’t used to walking the roads.”

  “Of course she isn’t—as I told you, she’s been used to a much more delicate life.”

  “In a fine house no doubt, eh, brother? Ah, that’s it—it’s a home she wants—a roof over her head—not to be tramping the roads all day long. And you—wouldn’t you be able to get to Petrograd quicker without her? After all, a man can rough things, but it’s different when he has a girl dragging along with him.” He added in a fierce whisper: “Brother, haven’t you ever thought of her getting married to some decent hardworking fellow who, maybe, has a comfortable house and a bit of money put away? I’m a good fellow, I assure you, though I am only a woodcutter, and to tell the truth, your daughter’s just the kind of woman I’ve been looking out for ever since my poor wife died. And you shall have a hundred silver roubles for yourself, brother, if you give her to me.”

  A.J. was still too sleepy to be either amused or annoyed. He said merely: “Dorenko, it’s quite out of the question. My daughter, I know, wouldn’t consider it.”

  “But if, as her father, you ordered her to?”

  “She wouldn’t, even then.”

  “She would disobey you?”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  “Ah, I sympathise. My own daughter was like that—disobedient to her own father. It is a dreadful thing to have children like that. All the same, brother, I will make it a hundred and fifty roubles for you if you could manage to persuade her.”

  “No, Dorenko, it’s no use—it’s impossible.”

  “Not because I am only a woodcutter?”

  “Oh no, by no means. Not in the least for that reason.”

  “Ah, Peter Petrovitch, you are a good fellow like myself, I can see. It is a pity we could not have come to some arrangement. However, perhaps it is God’s will that I should look elsewhere. Good-night—Good- night.”

  A.J. was soon asleep again and did not wake till the sunlight was pouring through the narrow window. Dorenko was already up and preparing a breakfast meal. He did not refer to the matter he had broached during the night, and after a homely meal the two travellers thanked him and set out to continue their journey. A.J. would have liked to offer him money, but that such generosity would not have suited the story of being poor.

  Dorenko had given them directions before starting, telling them how they might travel so as to avoid the village which the soldiers had raided, and reach another less dangerous one by the end of the day. The route led them through the forest for several miles and th
en along a narrow winding track amidst the hills. It was again very hot in the middle of the day. They slept for a time in the shade of the pines, and then, towards evening, walked into a small town named Saratursk, whose market-place was full of Red soldiers, bedraggled and badly disciplined after long marches. It was hardly likely that they could be bothering about a casual forest murder, for much more serious events had happened during the past twenty-four hours. The Whites and the Czecho-Slovaks, acting together, had crossed the Urals and were reported in rapid invasion; the entire Revolution seemed in danger. All day long a steadily increasing stream of refugees had been entering Saratursk from the east; A.J. and Daly were but two out of thousands, and quite inconspicuous. They found it impossible to obtain any food except black bread at an extortionate price, and every room in the town was full of sleepers. Fortunately the night was warm, and it was not unpleasant to spread out one’s bundle on the cobbled stones and breathe the mountainy air. Sleep, however, was interrupted by the constant noise and shouting; fresh detachments of soldiers were entering the town from the west and south and reuniting with their comrades already in possession. They were a fierce-looking crowd, all of them, dressed in shabby, tattered, and nondescript uniforms—dirty, unkempt, heavy with fatigue. They had no obvious leaders, but throughout the night they held meetings in the market-square to elect new officers. There was much fervid oratory and cheering. The news of the White advance had put them in considerable consternation, for they themselves were badly armed—only one man in five or six possessing a rifle. The rest carried swords, knives, and even sticks. Some of them had been dragged out of hospitals too soon, and still wore dirty red-stained bandages. This curious, slatternly throng was, for the moment, all that stood between Moscow and counter-revolution.