Knight Without Armour (15 page)

At last came news that Omsk itself had been taken by the counter-
revolutionaries. Khalinsk was then caught up in another sudden scurry of
panic; military and civilian authority both made preparations to evacuate the
town; stores and ammunition were packed and sent away west; and
Baumberg’s speeches grew more and more tumultuous. Kashvin’s
invented atrocity stories now began to trickle back with many elaborations;
they drove the Red garrison to the highest pitch of fury, and this, in the
absence of any convenient battlefield enemy, was vented upon the White
captives in the prison.

One night the quarrelling between Baumberg and Vronstein came to a head.
Difficulties had arisen over the provision of transport for sending certain
of the prisoners to safer places—safer, that was, from White capture.
Rather than run the risk of any being rescued by their friends, Vronstein was
for a wholesale massacre; but this was too much for Baumberg. The two stormed
and threatened each other, Vronstein declaring in the end that he would march
at the head of his soldiers and take the prison by storm. As soon as he had
left the commissary office, Baumberg turned to A.J. in his suddenly normal
and placid way and said: “I do believe the fellow means it. He’ll
have them all murdered before the night’s out. Andreyeff, I think you
ought to go to the prison and get out the two women. Petrograd will be
furious if they are slaughtered by those drunken hogs.” He added, a
little pompously: “The women are both very important links in the chain
of evidence against the enemies of the Revolution, and I have already
received strict orders that they are to be taken care of. When the
counterrevolution has been crushed, they are to be put on trial in
Petrograd—I tell you that in confidence, of course.”

It was almost midnight when A.J. reached the prison. Even so soon there
was in the atmosphere a queer feeling of impending terror; the prison-guards
were nervous and inclined to question his authority. It was obvious that most
of them, if only to save their own skins, would join with the soldiers in
whatever bloodthirsty orgy was to ensue. A.J. sought Countess Vandaroff
first; she was kept in an outlying part of the prison under semi-hospital
conditions. As soon as the warder unlocked her door she sprang screaming out
of bed and crouched in the furthest corner of the cell. A.J. began: “Do
not alarm yourself, Countess, but get ready to move away at once. You are to
be taken elsewhere.” Then, as he saw the warder’s eyes upon him,
he knew that he had blundered. In the hurry of the moment he had called her
‘Countess’. Commissars had been degraded and private soldiers
shot, he knew, for less than that. Perturbed by the possible results of his
slip, he went on to the other woman’s cell. She was asleep and had to
be awakened. He gave her the same message, but with careful omission of the
forbidden word.

Waiting in the prison-hall for the two women to present themselves, he
could hear the sound of shouting and rifle-fire from the barracks not far
away. Intense nervousness had by this time communicated itself to warders and
prisoners alike; all were wide awake and chattering, and A.J. wondered what
might be in store for them during the next few hours.

Countess Adraxine appeared first; she had put over her shoulders a light
travelling cloak that still retained a trace of its original fashionableness,
and she carried a few personal belongings in a small bundle. In the presence
of the guards he did not speak to her; they waited for a moment in silence,
and then he despatched one of the guards to fetch Countess Vandaroff. A
little later the guard returned with the astonishing news that the woman was
dead. A.J. rushed to her cell; it was true. Mad with terror at the thought
that she was to be taken away and shot, the woman had killed herself by a
desperate and rather difficult method: she had stabbed herself repeatedly in
the throat with an ordinary safety-pin, and had died from shock and loss of
blood.

A.J. was a little paler when he rejoined the other prisoner. There was no
time to be lost, and accompanied by guards the two hurried out of the prison
and across the town-square to the commissary office. Baumberg was waiting; he
had heard of the suicide by telephone and was in a fine fury. The Petrograd
authorities would hold him responsible; how was it that the woman had been
allowed to have in her possession such a dangerous weapon as a safety-pin;
and much else that was extreme and absurd. Then, with one of those sudden
returns to mildness that were such an odd trait in his character, he handed
his assistant a sheaf of papers. “You are to take the remaining
prisoner to Moscow, Andreyeff; there you will hand her over to the
authorities. Two guards will go with you. Here are all the necessary papers;
you will board the first train west from Tarkarovsk. The horses are waiting
outside—you must set out instantly, for the latest news is that the
Whites are advancing quickly along the line from Omsk.”

In the courtyard of the office building stood a couple of
tarantasses—the ordinary Siberian conveyance which, badly sprung and
yoked to relays of horses, would sometimes accomplish the journey to
Tarkarovsk in five or six hours. There was a small moon shining, and a sky of
starlight. The roads, after the grip of winter, were on the point of thawing;
in a few days they would be choked with mud. A.J., clad in a heavy
soldier’s greatcoat and fur cap, superintended the stowing away of the
luggage into the first vehicle, which, driven by one of the guards, pulled
out into the deserted street and clattered away south towards one
o’clock in the morning. A few minutes later the second tarantass
followed; A.J. and the woman sat together in the back of the swaying, rickety
vehicle, while the other guard drove.

In the commissary yard A.J. had spoken a few words to his
prisoner—formal courtesies and so on, but as soon as the journey began
he relapsed into silence. He was, to begin with, physically tired; he had
been working at more than normal pressure for weeks, and now reaction was on
him. Apart from that, the stir of Countess Vandaroff’s death and the
sudden unfolding of a new future gave him a certain weariness of mind; he
felt too mentally fatigued to realise what was happening. Fortunately,
fatigue drove away anxiety; he felt again as if he were living in the midst
of some vague and curious dream, full of happenings over which he had no
control and with which, in any major sense, he was completely unconcerned. He
was, he supposed, bound for Moscow, yet how and even whether he would ever
get there did not seem in the least important. He had a pocketful of
documents stamped with all the official seals and signatures Baumberg had
been able to commandeer, but he had no confidence that they were worth more
than the paper they were written on. The ex-Emperor, it was rumoured, had
been seized by the local Soviet at Ekaterinburg in defiance of official
orders; things like that were constantly happening; anything, indeed, might
happen. The only course was to drift onwards, somehow or other, inside this
busy dream, always ready, in an emergency, to grope into a wakefulness that
was but another dream of another kind.

Steadily through the night the horses galloped over the softening earth.
Only once was anything said, and that was at Pokroevensk, where the horses
were changed and rumours were shared with the local telegraph official. The
latest report was that Tarkarovsk had already fallen to the Whites. A.J.,
with better knowledge of distances, did not credit this, but it was futile to
argue. As the journey was resumed, the woman said: “So you are going on
to Tarkarovsk, Commissar?”

“Yes.”

“But if the Whites hold the place, that means we shall be running
into them?”

“Yes. Only I don’t believe they do hold it.”

“What would happen if they did?”

“You would be freed and I should be shot, most probably.”

“Whereas, if all goes well and we get to Moscow safely, it is
I
who will be shot?”

“Possibly.”

“You strike the Napoleonic attitude rather well,
Commissar.”

“Pardon me, I am not striking any attitude at all. I am merely very
tired—really too tired to talk.”

After that she said nothing.

He was right; Tarkarovsk was still Red, though the town and district were
being rapidly prepared for evacuation. The two jolting vehicles drove up to
the railway station towards dawn, after a journey of nightmare weariness.
Hour after hour the Commissar and his prisoner had been bumped along over the
interminable Siberian plain, and now, at the station, with limbs sore and
aching, they had to begin the next and perhaps more arduous task of finding
scats on the train. The station was swarming with refugees from the
surrounding country, most of them in a pitiable condition, and all
frantically anxious to be out of the way when the White troops should enter.
There had been no trains since the previous evening, though several were
rumoured to be on their way. The stationmaster bowed respectfully when A.J.
presented his papers; yes, he should certainly be given a compartment in the
next train, but would there be any next train—that was the real
question? “I cannot, you see, invent a train, Commissar—not being
God, that is to say.” A.J. detected a slight impertinence behind the
man’s outward obsequiousness. Of course the Whites were coming and the
Reds were leaving; the fellow was adroitly trimming his sails to catch the
new wind.

Throughout the hardships of the journey and now amidst the throng and
scurry of the railway platform, the woman prisoner preserved a calm that had
in it still that same slight touch of mockery. Of course it was not her place
to worry about the train or the White advance; if the latter arrived before
the former, the advantage would all be hers. She could afford to watch with
equanimity and even exultation the growing congestion of the station
precincts and the increasing anxiety on the faces of the two Red guards. Yet
for all that, her attitude was no more than calm; it was as if she were
neither hoping nor fearing anything at all. She sat on her bundle of
possessions and watched the frantic pageant around her with a sleepy, almost
mystical detachment. Even when, at three in the afternoon, the stationmaster
came shouting the news that the train was arriving after all, she did not
move or betray by a murmur that the matter concerned her; and this attitude,
because it so queerly accorded with his own, stirred in A.J. a slight and
puzzled attention.

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.”