Knight Without Armour (25 page)

Again and again the train came to sudden jangling stops, till at last the
occupants were too tired and disspirited to say anything, even to ask each
other why; they just lay where they were, crouching away from the wind, and
trying not to listen to the tattoo of rain on the roof. But after one
particularly long wait the engine-driver and fireman carne walking together
along the track and to a few dismally enquiring faces announced that the
train could proceed no further; a heavy storm just ahead had caused part of
the line to subside. As for how long it would take to repair the damage, they
could only shrug their shoulders and mutter ‘Nichevo.’ Where were
they?—someone asked; and the same answer
came—’Nichevo’—neither the driver nor the fireman had
had any previous knowledge of that line. After which, cursing the rain that
was drenching their thin clothes, they returned to the warmth and dryness of
the engine-cab.

For the passengers in the box-cars, however, such consolations were not
available. They were wet, cold, miserable, ravenous with hunger, and stranded
in an unknown land. It was the little one-eyed man, who, still dreaming of
Krokol, gave them their first lift of hope when, for a few seconds, the rain
slackened. During that interval he alone chanced to be searching the horizon
with his single eye and saw the towers and roofs of a town in the far
distance. It gave him no thrill, for the place was decidedly not Krokol, but
the others, when he told them, were swept into a flurry of anticipation. A
town—perhaps a large
town—food—shelter—warmth—their cravings soared
dizzily as they began in frantic haste to gather up their bundles and clamber
out of the train. How even a large town could instantly supply the wants of a
thousand starving and penniless refugees was a question that did not, in that
first intoxicating moment, occur to them.

A.J. shared, though more soberly, the general jubilation, but he had the
more reason to, since money was in his pocket and he could buy if there were
anything at all to be bought. Daly, tired and chilled, summoned all her
strength for the effort, and they climbed out of the train with the others
and began the dismal trek over the fields. To those already weak and
feverish, it was a perilous journey. The rain continued to fall in heavy
slanting swathes, through which, from time to time, the distant town showed
like a mocking mirage; and the dry brown dust of the steppes had been
transformed to a jelly of squelching mud, into which the feet sank ankle-deep
with every pace. After the first mile the procession had thinned out into a
trail of weary, mud- smeared stragglers, floundering along at scarcely a mile
an hour.

It was dark when A.J. and Daly reached the outskirts of the town, and he
had had to lift her practically every step during that last half-mile. She
was so obviously on the verge of collapse that when he saw a large barn not
far away he made for it eagerly, anxious to reach any place where she could
rest out of the rain. There were already several shelterers in the
barn—women and children, mostly, to whom weariness had grown to mean
more than hunger, cold, or any other feeling. He laid her gently on a heap of
sodden straw; the others were too tired to speak, and so was she. “Wait
here till I come back,” he whispered, and she gave him a faintly
answering smile.

Then, bracing himself for the renewed buffeting of rain and wind, he
struggled on into the town. It seemed fairly large, but he looked vainly for
shop-signs or public notices from which he might learn its name. The streets
were deserted in the downpour, but it was good, anyhow, to leave the mud and
reach the firm foothold of paved roads. And he had roubles in his
pocket—that, in the circumstances, was the most cheering thing of
all.

He walked so quickly that he arrived at the apparent centre of the town
well ahead of the others, many of whom had committed the tactical error of
knocking at the first habitations they came to and begging for food. The
cottagers, fearing invasion by a seemingly vast rabble, had replied by
barricading their doors and refusing even to parley. A.J. had guessed that
this would happen, and his own plan was based on it, though perhaps it was
not much of a plan in any event. He passed the church and the town-hall,
noticing that most of the shops were closed and shuttered and that even those
whose windows were on view looked completely empty of foods. Soon he came to
a district of small houses such as might belong to better-class artisans or
factory-workers. He turned down a deserted street, passing house after house
that looked as if it might be equally deserted, till at length he saw one
whose chimney showed a thin curl of ascending smoke. He tapped quietly on the
front door. After a pause it was opened very cautiously by an elderly
respectable-looking woman, but his hopes fell heavily as he observed her. The
too vivid eyes and jutting cheek-bones told the tale he had feared most, and
her first words, in answer to his question, confirmed it. The whole town, she
told him quite simply, was half- starving. Factories had closed down; men
scoured the countryside every day in quest of food which became ever scarcer
and dearer; food-shops opened only twice a week, and there were long queues
for even the scanty allowance permitted by the new rationing system.

A.J. mentioned that he had a little money and was prepared to pay
generously for food and shelter for himself and his wife, but the woman shook
her head, “We
have
no food,” she said “no matter
what you were to offer us for it We haven’t had a meal since the day
before yesterday and as soon as the rain stops my daughters and myself are
going to take turns in the bread-queue. The shop opens to-morrow morning but
to be in time for anything we shall have to wait all night.”

He thanked her and went on to another house a little further along the
street. There he was told a similar tale. He entered another street. In all
he tried nearly a dozen houses before he found one whose occupants, very
cautiously and grudgingly, offered a little bread and a promise of shelter in
return for a quite fantastic sum of money. He gave them something on account,
took a piece of the bread, and hastened back to the other side of the town.
There he found rioting already going on between the invading refugees and the
local inhabitants; several persons had been seriously hurt. He reached the
barn where women were still sheltering, took Daly in his arms, helped her to
her feet, and almost carried her across the town. He dared not offer her the
bread until they were well away from the others.

At last, at last, he had her safely under the roof of the cottage, and its
occupiers, with a promise of more money, were lighting a fire.

They were curious people, and he could not at first place them. There
seemed to be a mother, two sons, and two daughters, all living in four small
rooms; their name was Valimoff. They had much better manners and cleaner
habits than were usual amongst working people; they were secretive, too,
about their personal affairs, though inquisitive enough about A.J.’s.
When later in the evening news reached them of the rioting at the other end
of the town, Madame Valimoff asked A.J. if he were one of the refugees from
the train. He said yes, he was. She replied severely: “We should have
had nothing to do with you if we had known that. Why can’t you wretched
people stay in your own towns, the same as we have to stay in
ours?”

But soon a small wood fire was burning in the hearth and a scanty meal of
black bread and thin soup was being prepared. The two travellers ate, drank,
and dried themselves as well as they could, but A.J. s pleasure at such
comparative good fortune was offset by anxiety about Daly. She seemed to have
taken a bad chili, and he promised a further bribe to one of the daughters of
the house in return for the loan of dry clothes. The daughter, a clean and
neatly-dressed girl, helped him to prepare a bed near the fire, and Daly, by
that time feverishly tired, was helped into it. She was soon asleep. He sat
up for a time by the fire, and towards midnight the girl entered the room and
brought him a small tumbler of vodka. The gift was so unexpectedly welcome
that he was profuse in his thanks, and he was still more astonished when she
went on: “You see, sir, I think I know who you are. You are Count
Adraxine.”

“What?” he cried, and was about to make an indignant denial;
then he checked himself and added more cautiously: “Why, whatever makes
you think that?”

“I remember the Countess, sir. I used to be a maid at Baron
Morvenstein’s house in Moscow, and I remember her quite
distinctly.”

He still stared in bewilderment, and she continued: “You need not be
afraid, sir—we are all very happy to be of service to you and the
Countess.”

The revelation had been so sudden that, coming with the vodka after all
the hardships and adventures of the day, it made him a little dizzy. Then,
before his uncertain eyes, a curious pageant was enacted. The rest of the
household, which till then had been rather unfriendly and had bargained
greedily for every rouble, came into the room and were solemnly and
separately presented to him by the girl, whose name was Annetta. They all
bowed or curtseyed, and stared hard at the woman asleep in bed. Then they
said polite things, and he said (or thought he said—he was too dazed to
be sure of it) polite things in return. And afterwards, which was more to the
point, Annetta brought him a second glass of vodka.

She told him that they had all been servants in big houses until the
Revolution; the men had been footmen and the girls lady’s-maids. Madame
Valimoff had been a housekeeper. They had all saved money, so that the loss
of their jobs had not meant instant poverty; besides, their masters and
mistresses had been generous with farewell gifts. But much more important
than money, Annetta confessed, was the fact that they had managed to hoard up
supplies of food.

After she had gone, A.J. sat for another hour in front of the fire. The
vodka had set the blood tingling in his veins; his mind was still bewildered.
He partly undressed and lay down in the bed beside Daly; he went to sleep and
awoke to find himself somehow in her arms. She was asleep then, and
fever-hot; the fire in the hearth was smouldering; rain was still falling
outside. How fortunate was their lot compared with that of the night
before…Then she awoke and he told her all that had happened. She was
quietly astonished and confirmed the one fact confirmable—that she had,
on several occasions before her marriage, visited Baron Morvenstein’s
house in Moscow. He listened to her, yet all the time he was thinking of
something rather different; he was thinking how strange, yet how natural,
that they should both be lying together, he and she, ex-commissar and
ex-countess, there in a workman’s cottage in a town whose name they did
not yet know. (Which reminded him that he must ask Annetta in the morning.)
He said: “Of course, they take me for the Count—which is funny,
in a way.”

She shivered with laughter. “Isn’t it
all
funny?
Isn’t everything rather a bad joke? Everything except—” And
she cast over him again the spell of her own dark and sleepy passion.

In the morning they both rose late, the household evidently preferring not
to waken them. As soon, however, as they were up and dressed, Annetta
appeared with a pot of steaming coffee, fresh rolls made of white flour, and
cherry jam. It was miraculous, and they guzzled over it like children at a
party.

Thus, for the time, they settled down with the Valimoffs in that once-
prosperous town (whose name, by the way, was Novarodar). Daly, as A.J. had
suspected, had caught a severe chill, and only very slowly recovered. But the
Valimoffs did not appear to mind the delay; on the contrary, they showed
every sign of wishing it to continue. Nor, now that they knew or thought they
knew the identity of their guests, would they accept a single rouble in
payment. A.J. was grateful, but he found it perplexingly difficult to like
them for it all. Their obsequiousness got on his nerves, and he was a little
disconcerted, at times, by the utter ruthlessness of their attitude towards
their less fortunate neighbours. The cottage was certainly a treasure-trove;
it contained sacks of white flour, dozens of tins of meat, fruit, and
vegetables, and large quantities of wines and spirits. Knowing what servants
were, A.J. was of the opinion that most of it had been systematically thieved
during the decade preceding the Revolution. Anyhow, it was there;
fortunately, in the house of the Valimoffs, stowed away carefully in
wardrobes and cupboards, while the rest of the town raked for potato peelings
in rubbish-heaps. A.J. had ample evidence of this, for the took many walks
about the streets. Sometimes, fresh from an almost luxurious meal, he would
pass the bread-queue, stretching its unhappy length for nearly a quarter of a
mile along the main street. He saw women who had been waiting for many hours
faint and shriek hysterically when they were told that nothing was left for
them. The Valimoffs were careful never to give any cause of suspicion to
their neighbours; they took turns in the bread-queues themselves, and they
banged the door relentlessly on every beggar—more relentlessly, indeed,
than they need have done. They seemed quite confident that A.J. could be
trusted with their secret; they had his secret in return, and doubtless felt
it to be sufficient security. What puzzled him most was why they should
trouble to be so generous; he hardly thought it could be because they hoped
for future favours, for they probably knew how slender were the chances of
the old aristocracy ever getting back their former possessions. He knew, too,
that it could not be from any altruistic notion of helping a stranger, since
before they had identified him they had been eager to drive the hardest of
bargains. In the end he was forced to the conclusion that their motive was
one of simple snobbery—they were just delighted to be in a position to
help a Count and Countess. They had lived so comfortably (and perhaps thieved
so comfortably too) in a world of superiors and inferiors that now, when that
world seemed completely capsized, they clung to any floating shred of it with
a fervour born of secret panic.