Red Stefan (15 page)

Irina jerked herself upright and came to him, moving stiffly.

“Do you mean that?”

“Do I mean what?”

“That there's an end of it.”

“Do you think I'd stay married to a counter-revolutionary?” His voice was hot with rage.

“Don't be angry, Stefan.” Irina spoke quite humbly.

“Then don't make me angry! How would you like someone to say you'd marry a counter-revolutionary?”

The colour rose in Irina's cheeks. She laid a hand on his breast and said,

“Don't be angry, Stefan.”

Petroff might not have been there at all—a circumstance very annoying to Petroff. He thought it time to intervene. He rose to his feet and rapped on the table.

“It remains to be seen if this Varvara really is Elizabeth Radin. What is the good of talking about it? I must see her. If she is Elizabeth Radin, she must be arrested without delay. Whilst we are wasting time she may be making her escape.”

Irina laughed, and for that laugh Stephen came near to hating her.

“No, no, she won't get away—I've seen to that. There are half a dozen Comrades on the stair waiting to see that she stays in Boris Andreieff's room until you come. She won't get past them—you may be quite sure about that. There are six of them, and they are armed.”

“That was well thought of,” said Petroff. “I will get my coat and we will go at once.”

He hurried into the next room, leaving the door open.

Irina turned searching eyes on Stephen's face. She did not touch him, but they were so close that if he had bent his head, they might have kissed.

“I knew you didn't love her,” she said.

CHAPTER XV

Elizabeth sat in Boris Andreieff's room in the shabby, comfortable armchair and waited for Stephen to come back. It was an ugly room with high, bare walls which at some very distant date had been washed pink. Dirt and age had now converted them to the semblance of some ancient map. Here a trail of smoke simulated a mountain range, there a long crack did duty for a river, whilst holes in the plaster might have been lakes. The original pink, lingering where a picture, now removed, had protected it, looked as ghastly as rouge on an old woman's face. The room contained no single object which was not of a utilitarian nature except the inevitable portrait of Lenin. The window, which looked upon the frozen river, was curtained against the cold with hangings of a stuff so aged that its original colour could no longer be discerned. It reminded Elizabeth of a London fog, and at once there leapt up in her a sickness for home—London mud under her feet, and the smell of a London fog, queer, sooty, cold. What a ridiculous thing to feel homesick about!

She laughed at herself, and came back.

If the room was ugly, it was warm. The stove was giving out a good heat, the lamplight softened the bare outlines, and the chair was really comfortable. It was more than a year since she had had any privacy, more than a year since she had sat alone in a room like this with the freedom of her own thoughts. She was not really in a hurry for Stephen to come back. They had lived at such close quarters that she felt a need to step back and look at him.

She began to go over everything that had happened from the time of their first meeting. Strange meeting. Strange life together. Strange prelude to another life. She had been so frozen, so nearly dead, that it was as if he had brought her up from the grave itself. If it had not been for him, she would have died on that first night when she had run from Petroff's lodging into the bitter streets. If it had not been for him, she would have died on that other night in Yuri's hut. She thought of him with a little trembling laughter at her heart. He was so big and sure, so strong and yet so gentle with her, and as naïve as a boy. In one and the same breath he would tell her she was like a frozen star and ask her if she would like some more cabbage soup. Stephen was always practical.

She went on thinking about him until a sound on the stair broke in upon her thoughts. She sat up and listened. She had not expected Stephen back so soon. And then, all alone as she was, she blushed, because she did not really know how long she had been dreaming about him.

She got up and went to the window. If this was Stephen, he should not find her watching the door for him. Instead she lifted the curtain and looked at the frosted pane. The river was there beyond, all frozen now. She could not see it, but she knew that it was there. This, then, must be one of those tall dark houses at which she had stared from the bridge. It was so curious to think of herself as she was then, shelterless and without hope, and to come back to this new self, sheltered, and with new hope springing.

She turned from the window at what she took to be his step. Or was it only the stair creaking? Old stairs did creak, and this house must be very old. She let fall the curtain, crossed the floor, and opened the door a little way. There was no light anywhere. The open space was a handsbreadth of darkness.

She stood there listening, with one hand on the door and one on the jamb, and it seemed to her as if the darkness were coming into the room.

It was a darkness full of sounds—an unquiet darkness—a whispering, shuffling darkness. There was no word spoken, no sound of which she could say, a foot moved, or one man jostled another. Yet, standing there with the wide black crack between her right hand and her left, Elizabeth knew that there were men upon the stair. Three, four, five, six … How could she tell whether there were four or six of them? More than three, and not more than six. What did it matter how many there were? She would be as surely trapped by two as by a dozen. And there were more than two. The sounds were not all the same sounds. The whispers were different whispers.

Elizabeth's left hand, which held the door, began very slowly to push it to. The handsbreath of darkness became a finger's breadth, and then was altogether gone. The door was shut. Her hands groped below the handle, found the key, and turned it in the lock. Then she went back from the door as far as the table and leaned upon it. The lamp which stood there made a warm glow against her shoulder and her neck.

Elizabeth leaned upon her hands and bit into her lip, Presently she put up her right hand and wiped away a drop of sweat which was running down her cheek. She had locked the door—an old frail door, with an old frail lock. How long would it keep anyone out? No, not anyone—any six.

An old German nursery rhyme came humming through her frightened thoughts:

Ach du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin.

Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.

Rock ist weg,

Stock ist weg,

Mädel ist weg,

Alles ist weg—

Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”

Everything's gone—everything's gone—everything's gone.…

“Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”

And then:

“Rock ist weg,

Stock ist weg,

Mädel ist weg—”

What would Stephen say when he came back and found her gone?

Everything gone—everything gone—everything gone.…

“Ach du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin.”

The rhythm came with the beating of her heart, and louder, louder, louder. She could neither think nor move. Breathless, she could only wait for the door to be broken in.

And then, as she stared at it, she saw the handle move. The latch rattled, the handle moved again.

All at once Elizabeth became able to think and speak. The tune stopped beating out its jingle of words amongst her disorganized thoughts. It was as if a very loud noise had suddenly stopped.

The handle of the door was shaken. She said in a quiet voice,

“Who is there?”

And Stephen said,

“Open the door—it's me.”

A warm weakness flowed over Elizabeth. She had forced herself to such a pitch of self-control, and the danger it was to meet had dissolved unmet. It was as if she had nerved herself for some terrible fall, only to find that the imagined precipice was an illusion. She was so shaken with relief and happiness that for a moment she could not move. Then she ran to the door and turned the key.

The door was pushed open so roughly that she was flung backwards, and at once the room was full of people—Stephen, Irina, Petroff, and half a dozen young men pushing eagerly past one another till the last of them was in and the door slammed to.

Elizabeth stood where the thrust of the door had sent her, and looked on this unbelievable scene. She saw Irina who hated her, Petroff from whom she had fled, and a Stephen whom she did not know. A Stephen whose arm was linked with Petroff's as he shouted noisily,

“There, Comrade! There she is! And it's for you to say
who
she is. She's my wife Varvara all right, but if she's your Elizabeth what's-her-name, you're welcome to her, and I'll call it a good riddance.”

There was a murmur of talk among the Young Communists. Petroff shook off Stephen's hand and came forward, those shallow Tartar eyes of his fixed maliciously upon Elizabeth. As he advanced, she went back step by step until the wall stopped her, her eyes glassy, her hands palm outwards as if to fend him off. When she reached the wall, she braced herself against it. Her hands fell to her sides. She waited for what would come next.

Petroff came to within about a yard of her and said,

“You've been in a great hurry to change your name, haven't you?”

Stephen looked over his head and laughed.

“I was right then. Didn't I say so? It would be a good joke against me if I hadn't found it out for myself. She is really your Elizabeth Radin?”

Elizabeth held up her head and looked at Petroff. She could not look at Stephen.

She heard Petroff say, “Yes, she is Elizabeth Radin,” and at once the room was full of loud buzzing voices. Irina talked, the Young Communists talked, Stephen shouted, and Petroff, coming quite near, said in a tone which somehow pierced the noise,

“What a fool you were to run away!”

The word echoed bitterly in the lost and arid place where Elizabeth's consciousness struggled with the approach of darkness. A fool … a fool who had climbed up a little way out of the pit, only to slide back again—and deeper. No, she had not climbed, she had been drawn up, and the hand that had drawn her up had thrust her down again—Stephen's hand. She shuddered from the thought that she had clung to it. It fell now on her shoulder with a heavy grip.

Stephen, still laughing, shook her a little.

“Well, what's to be done with her, Comrade? Here she is!”

At his touch Elizabeth screamed. It was the faintest of sounds, no more in reality than a sharply drawn breath of agony, but it rang in her own ears as a scream. It drowned Stephen's voice and Stephen's words. It was the last thing she heard, because in that moment the darkness fell.

CHAPTER XVI

Elizabeth opened her eyes because a bright light was shining on them. She shut them again quickly because the light hurt her. It continued to shine through her closed lids. After a moment she put up her hand to shield her eyes, and with that movement consciousness flowed back and she was aware of her body again. She was lying down … on a bed … her hands and feet were cold … the light was shining on her eyes.…

A shiver ran over her. She raised herself on her elbow and once more opened her eyes. She was lying on a narrow bed in a square white-washed room. There were more beds like the one she was lying on—three or four more. An unshaded electric light hung from the ceiling.

Elizabeth frowned, raised herself a little more, and looked about her. There were three other beds. On the edge of one of them a young woman sat looking at her. She had a foolish flat face, rather light eyes, and hands with stubby fingers and bitten nails. There was a finger at her mouth most of the time. She looked over her shoulder and said,

“She's awake, Marfa.”

Elizabeth sat up and saw a little old woman peering at her.

“Where am I?”

She felt sick at the sound of her own voice, because it brought back to her those other voices—Irina's—Petroff's—
Stephen's
. She said the words again, because she had stammered over them the first time.

“Where am I?”

The old woman went on peering. The young one said,

“Prison.”

Elizabeth repeated the word as if saying it to herself:

“Prison—”

She sat on the edge of the bed and put her feet to the floor. She felt giddy when she moved. When her head was clear again she became conscious of some relief. If this was a prison, it was at least a clean and decent place. It was, she discovered, a woman's ward in the ordinary civil prison, and for this she felt thankful. The lot of the political prisoner was generally cast in fouler places. Stories she had heard of horrible over-crowding, filth and vermin came back to her as she looked at the neat beds, the whitewash, and the well scrubbed floor.

Her two companions were serving sentences, one for selling illicit vodka—all intoxicants being a government monopoly—and the other for murder. It was the young woman, Anna, who was the murderess. She had got tired of looking after some aged relative and had strangled her. She spoke of it without a trace of compunction. For the rest she seemed a stupid, amiable person who could talk by the hour about nothing. The old woman never spoke at all. Her grey hair fell over her eyes in an unkempt tangle, and through the elf-locks she watched Elizabeth's every move with the suspicious air of an animal.

“He was a big man, that one who carried you in,” said Anna presently—“a fine man, though I don't like red hair myself. They say you can never trust a red-haired person.”

Elizabeth winced. Stephen had carried her in. She had trusted him with all her heart. She winced now at the thought that he had touched her. Her sheepskin coat and cap were laid at the foot of the bed. Was it Stephen who had put them on her before he carried her through the cold streets? Or was it Petroff, who would not want her to die until she had given him the formula?