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.