She started. She had not heard him come in. The cold was about her heart. The warmth of the stove would not help that kind of cold. She said,
“No.”
The snow in the bucket had melted. Stephen tipped some of the water into a tin can, put in the soup cubes, and set it on the hottest part of the fire. Then he touched Elizabeth’s hand, and found it icy.
“Why did you say you were not cold? You’re frozen. It’s a pity about that good rug I had on the sledge. We could have done with it in here.”
“What has happened to it?”
He laughed.
“Oh, they’ve eaten it hair and hide. They don’t leave much, poor starving brutes. Never mind—the soup will warm you.”
He had her hands between his own now, rubbing them. He was being kind to her as he had been kind to Grischa. If she had any pride left, she wouldn’t want his kindness. She had no pride. His hands warmed hers. His kindness comforted her. When he had finished with her hands, he rubbed her feet. After which he gave her scalding soup in a wooden bowl and told her to drink it up.
It did not occur to him for a moment that she was unhappy. She had behaved with great coolness and courage, she had shot one of the wolves, and she had done what she was told. The last was the greatest virtue of the three. Once they were safe in the hut there was nothing for her to worry about. He was concerned that she should have some hot soup as soon as possible, but having made provision for this by lighting the stove and setting the bucket where the snow would melt and the water heat, he had naturally to get on with the job of making Grischa comfortable. He was distressed that Elizabeth should be so cold, and that her voice should sound so faint. He regretted the sheepskin rug very much, but there was hay to spare in the inner room, and he would be able to make her quite a comfortable bed. The hay would, of course, have to be dried before she could sleep on it, but that would be easy as soon as the stove got heated up. That Elizabeth should fancy him estranged or offended had never once entered his head. His love for her was so much a solid and unalterable fact that he had never considered it possible that she did not know of it. It would have been against his code to make love to her while she was under his care. He had simple, definite views about that sort of thing. She was his star, and his love, and when the right time came he would tell her so. He did not consider that this was the right time.
And Elizabeth, with her pride in the dust, drank her scalding soup, and was grateful because he had been kind.
He made her eat bully beef and a stick of chocolate.
“When did you have chocolate last?” he said as he gave it to her.
Elizabeth managed to smile. He was so evidently proud of his chocolate. It was, in fact, something to be proud of. Such things are scarce in the Union of Soviet Republics. She said,
“I don’t know—a long time ago—before I died and came to Russia.”
Stephen looked at her for a moment out of those bright blue eyes of his. They made her forget the lank black hair and the darkened skin. When he looked at her like that he was Red Stefan again. She loved him with all her heart. If she had been dead, she was alive again. But it hurt to be alive.
“Are you dead?” said Stephen.
She nodded because it wasn’t very easy to speak.
Stephen went on looking at her for about half of an unbearable minute. Then he said, “You talk a lot of nonsense, Elizabeth,” and went off into the inner room to fetch the hay which had to be dried.
Elizabeth was ready for him when he came back. He shouldn’t have to tell her a second time that she talked nonsense. She asked him where he got his chocolate and his bully beef in just the voice which she would have used in that far-away world where some people shopped at Fuller’s and some at Rumpelmayer’s. He smiled at her over the hay which he was spreading on the warm stove.
“I do a bit of smuggling every time I come over.”
“But how do you get the things across? I thought they searched everyone.”
“They don’t search me,” said Stephen cheerfully.
“Why not?”
She was prepared to hear that he was a Frontier Guard. It really seemed quite possible.
“They don’t catch me,” said Stephen with a grin.
“Suppose they did catch you?” It weighed on her mind that she was a danger to him.
“They’d shoot me first and search me afterwards. But you needn’t worry—they won’t catch me.”
When the hay was dry, he heaped it into a comfortable bed, made her lie down, and covered her with his coat. It must have been about five o’clock in the morning when she sank into a light, uneasy sleep.
It was a sleep in which dreams and odd dream-like wakings came and went. At one moment she rode with Stephen over a pathless waste of snow. He held her in his arms, and the horse flew like the wind. There was a roaring in her ears, and when she looked back she could see a torrent of fire blown furiously up behind them by some unseen storm. It blew as the wrack is blown from a tempestuous sunset. Great banners of flame were flung up against the sky. A river of fire came rolling on, and as it came it threw up flights and drifts of singing sparks. Then straight upon that, and without any apparent break, she was looking across the hut and watching Stephen shave. He had his pocket mirror propped up on the table. The oil lamp with its tin reflector shone down on him. It went through her mind that the fire had not reached them after all, and she slipped into another dream in which she and Stephen were skating hand in hand down a broad river of ice to a glassy distant sea. The swing and rhythm of their pace was like the flight of birds. And then again, without any conscious waking, they were in the hut and Stephen was dyeing his hair. He had taken off the wig and the false eyebrows and he was staining his own hair black with some stuff out of a bottle. She was sleepily impatient for him to finish with it. She wanted him to take her hand again and skate with her down the river of ice to that far, shining sea.
The dreams kept on coming and going. Sometimes they were terrible, and sometimes they were foolish, and sometimes they were sweet. In one most comforting dream Stephen looked into her eyes and said, “You talk a lot of nonsense, Elizabeth.” She had no idea why she should find this comforting in the dream, because when Stephen had said it to her waking it had wounded her very much. But in the dream it did not wound her; it comforted her. Perhaps it was because in the dream his eyes had smiled into hers.
She woke with a start to find that the lamp was out, and that the small window framed a square of cold daylight. Stephen had waked her. He had a hot drink ready, and more food. He told her that she had slept for six hours and that it was past midday. The wolves were gone, and they must take the road again.
After that there was the business of getting off. The traces had to be mended, the firearms reloaded. Stephen took what remained of his store of food and packed it on the sledge. The hut had been very dark, for the tiny window was frozen over. When they came out into the cold daylight, Elizabeth saw that he really had discarded his wig. The closely curling black hair and the strong sweep of black eyebrow achieved by the dyeing of his own hair made him look much younger than he had looked as Nikolai, and quite a different person from Red Stefan. She thought, “If it wasn’t for me, he’d be safe. No one would know him.”
They had to retrace their path of the night before as far as the forest road. As they started off across the clearing, Stephen said regretfully,
“I would have liked to have altered you, but I didn’t know what to do about it.”
It was as if he had read her thoughts, which were saying all the time, “You’re a danger to him.”
She said, “Why?” just for something to say. She knew well enough that she was a danger to him. The thought never left her except when she was angry, and that was a short respite, because she could only be angry with him for a very little while. It was a hot anger while it lasted, but she could not make it last.
“Why?” said Stephen. “Oh well, you know, a wig is a most awful give-away. If it comes to being
searched, you’re done. I never use a wig when I’ve got time to do things to my hair. If I have to use one, I get rid of it as soon as possible. Of course it’s much easier to change a man, because a beard makes such a tremendous difference. But you needn’t worry—you’ll be all right. You don’t correspond in the least with the broadcast description, and we’ll be over the frontier before that ass Glinka can follow us up.”
The frontier—the rainbow’s end—the ever shifting goal—the unattained and unattainable—a line men draw on maps—a line between life and death, between safety and danger.…
Across the chill melancholy of these thoughts Stephen’s words:
“What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, that’s not much good, is it? It’s not true, either. You were thinking ‘I wonder if we shall ever get to the frontier.’”
Melancholy was in her voice as she said,
“Not quite.”
“Well then, it was ‘We shan’t ever get there.’ Wasn’t it?” He turned to look at her with a flash of white teeth and a challenging sparkle in his eyes.
All at once the frontier ceased to be unattainable. She felt ashamed of her fears.
They passed from the clearing into the narrow track down which they had fled with the wolves behind them. It was very dark under the trees. After the brilliant night the sky had clouded. They came to the place where they had left the road, and drove on through the forest. The snow over which they drove was untrodden. Since the last fall nothing had passed this way. The whole forest might have been dead and the snow its winding-sheet. There was no wind and nothing stirred. It was most bitterly cold.
“Snow coming,” said Stephen. And then, “Don’t worry—we haven’t far to go.”
CHAPTER XXV
It was early dusk when they came to what remained of Paul Darensky’s house. Elizabeth never forgot her first sight of it. They came out of the trees and saw it standing above its snow-covered terraces with a belt of dark forest at its back. Then a turn of what had been the drive, and the upper windows were against the sky.
Elizabeth caught her breath. It was like seeing a face turn into a skull. The house was dead and eyeless, the windows smashed and the roof gutted. As they drew nearer, she could see that one whole wing had fallen in. In the front not a pane of glass remained unbroken.
It was an easy house to enter, though the great door was, most ironically, shut and barred. There had been some attempt to fasten the shutters of the ground floor rooms, but it was not hard to find one that had been overlooked. Stephen knew his way. He lifted Elizabeth up to a snowy sill, held a loose shutter aside for her, and there they were, in a room much darker than dusk, that smelled of cold mouldering ruin.
He took her briskly across the bare floor and into what seemed to be the great hall of the house. Their steps echoed upon stone, and the echoes went whispering away to a great height overhead. It was quite dark in the hall. Elizabeth hated the echoes.
He hurried her on. She would have walked through worse places with his arm about her. They turned, their feet left the stone, and then Stephen’s torch flashed out and showed a small octagonal room. It had been panelled in white, each panel the frame of an exquisite flower-piece. Even now Stephen could not enter it without seeing the delicate artificial setting which Paul Darensky had prepared for his bride. Fay Darenska had fitted very well into the picture. But where Stephen had that momentary flashing glimpse of his lovely butterfly mother in a French fairy-tale room Elizabeth saw only dust and decay—the smashed chandelier, its gilt stem blackened and pushed awry and not one lustre left to make a rainbow of the moving ray; panelling dirty and defaced; shutters fastened indeed, but with here a long splinter and there a gash, as if an axe had been used upon them.
The gilded furniture was all gone—couches and chairs with spindle legs and pale brocaded cushions. There had been a white bear-skin in front of the hearth, an ormolu cabinet on either side of the two long windows, and a mirror with a faceted rim which hung between them. There had been curtains of ivory brocade patterned with wreaths of flowers and small shining birds. There had been a great many little tables. Now there was only a massive wooden bench, too large for a peasant house, too hard to be worth the labour of chopping it into firewood. It stood across the shuttered windows as if it had been pushed there to bar them. Stephen indicated it by directing the ray of his torch upon it.
“I must take Grischa down to the village. There’s a man there who looks after him for me. He’ll get him for keeps this time, but of course he doesn’t know that. I won’t be longer than I can help.”
Elizabeth’s blood went cold with horror.
“You’re going to leave me here?”
“Well, I can’t take you to the village—can I?” said Stephen reasonably.
Elizabeth said, “Oh!” It was really a gasp of protest. He met it kindly but firmly.
“You mustn’t be seen, you know. I’m quite well known here—so is Nikolai. At the moment I am Mikhail, who is Nikolai’s younger brother. We’re a good deal alike—brothers often are. It would be frightfully silly to let anyone see you. Besides you’d have to walk half a verst through the snow, and you don’t want to have to do that. I should walk about a little here and get warm if I were you. I’ll make a fire as soon as I come back. I won’t be longer than I can help.”
Elizabeth said nothing. It was no use saying anything, because he was gone. The light of his torch went first, and then he was gone and she was alone in the dark. She could hear his footsteps getting fainter and fainter. Then they died away.
It was a most horrible moment. The room was quite, quite dark, and everything was still. The house was dead, and had been dead for a long time. She stood in the middle of the floor and pressed her hands against her lips to keep herself from screaming. If she screamed now—at once—Stephen would come back. She mustn’t scream. If she screamed, Stephen would despise her. He would be quite kind to her, but he would despise her. It would be better to die of fear than to know that Stephen was despising her.
After a minute or two she let her hands fall. It didn’t matter now whether she screamed or not, because Stephen wouldn’t hear her. She felt her way to the bench and sat down. It was all very well to say walk about and keep warm. If she was moving herself, how could she hear whether anyone else was moving too—any one, or any thing? The horrible thing about an empty house is that you are never quite sure that it really is empty. Sitting there in the dark, Elizabeth found herself straining her ears for the sounds which might be hiding behind the silence. At first she could hear nothing. A house that is lived in has always some sounds. At first the dead house seemed to have none.
Then sounds began. They were so faint that as each one ceased, she could not have said for certain that she had heard anything. Something rustled a long way off—something creaked—something moved with a gentle flowing sound—paper stirring in the draught—old broken shutters settling—snow on the broken roof moving, sliding.
And then suddenly a crash that sent echo following echo through the house.
Elizabeth crouched down on the bench, her heart thudding. There were so many echoes, and they took so long to die. The house that had been so silent seemed all at once to be whispering round her. Whispering just on the edge of sound. Whispering up in the rafters, where the dark night looked in through gaps in the roof. Whispering through the icy corridors and the desolate untenanted rooms in which people had loved, and hated, and been afraid. Now there was only Elizabeth Radin, a stranger and very much afraid. An icy sweat came out on her temples. The darkness seemed moving towards her with all those stealthy sounds.
There was a lapse of time. She steadied herself. The sweat dried. Her hands relaxed their agonized grip of the bench. What she had heard was the fall of broken masonry brought down by the weight of the snow. What else could it be? By daylight, nothing at all. In this dark loneliness, any fear-suggested horror.
I
f she sat here and listened, she would go on hearing things. To listen for sounds which are not there is one of the ways to madness. Stephen had been perfectly right when he said “Walk about and keep yourself warm.” Only he might have made it “Walk about and keep yourself sane.” Stephen was always right.
A spurt of anger behind the thought got her on to her feet and started her pacing the room. To be always right—was there a more enraging faculty in the world? Was it a faculty, or a virtue? If it was a virtue, it was certainly the most disagreeable of all the virtues—a tyrannical prig of a virtue, the sort of virtue which makes you want to go and wallow in vice.
Elizabeth walked up and down, and thought how much she hated prigs, and tyrants, and people who are always right. And then the heartening spurt of anger died and left her cold. What a fool she was! She couldn’t even be angry with Stephen for more than five minutes. It was just as well their time together was nearly over. The words went stabbing through her mind. Not to see Stephen any more—not to have him to be angry with—not to know whether he was alive or dead.… “He’ll write. Why should he write? I’ll ask him to write.”… And have him forget, or do it once or twice and be bored.… “I can’t let him go.” “You’ve got to let him go.…”
She stood in the middle of the dusty floor and pressed both hands down over the pain at her heart. The house began to whisper round her again.
CHAPTER XXVI
Stephen came across the hall and called her name from the doorway.
“Elizabeth—are you there? I’ve been as quick as I could. I hope you’re not frightfully cold. I’ve got some wood and we’ll soon have a fire.”
She could hear him dragging the wood in—branches. And then a clatter of falling logs. She felt her way to the bench and sat down again. The rush of relief and joy with which she had heard his step really frightened her. What was she going to do when he went away—and didn’t come back?
There was a crackling of paper from the hearth. Paper. How had he come by it? A match spurted, and a little creeping edge of flame ate flickering into the darkness. She could hear Stephen blowing at it. The paper must be very damp. It smouldered, died, and revived again. A sudden flare showed her the shape of his head and shoulders, and the black arch of the open fireplace. Then with a rush the flame sprang up.
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