CHAPTER XXIV

When he called her name, she was still half kneeling, half sitting with her forehead pressed against the rough unpainted wood of the door. It was pine-wood, for a faint aromatic scent still came from it and one of her hands was a little sticky as if it had touched resin. It was odd that she should notice things like that. She was conscious of the piny smell, and of her sticky fingers. But for a moment she could not find any voice with which to answer Stephen, nor did it seem as if she could get upon her feet.

He called again, this time urgently.

“Elizabeth—are you all right? Where are you?”

She drew in a long breath. Surely with as much breath as that she should be able at least to say his name. She said it in a wavering whisper which hardly carried a yard, yet through the closed door Stephen heard. It may be said that it took a most horrible load off his mind. If Elizabeth had not done as he told her—if she had remained in the outer room—if the horse had kicked her … All these suppositions were dispersed by that very faint, wavering “Stephen.”

Grischa was quiet now, though still sweating and trembling. Stephen stood gentling him. He said,

“Elizabeth—are you all right?”

“Yes.”

It was not a yes that carried much conviction. Stephen frowned in the dark, but he let it go.

“You can come out now. I want to put Grischa in there. Turn to the right as soon as you get through the door. Feel your way along the wall until you come to the stove. Climb up on to it and then you’ll be out of the way. I’ll get a light as soon as I’ve shut Grischa in.”

Elizabeth got to her feet. Her knees still shook, but the floor had stopped tilting. She did exactly what Stephen had told her to do and, having reached the stove, sank down there and waited.

Stephen spoke to the horse and fondled him. Grischa blew into Stephen’s hand, after which he allowed himself to be led into the inner room. It was not the first time that a horse had been stabled there. Stephen fastened the halter to a peg and came back again, shutting the door behind him.

Presently a match flared. It pierced the darkness with its sharp orange flame, gave Elizabeth a momentary picture of Stephen bending over a rough table, and went out. With the next match she could see him coaxing a frozen wick. In the end he got the lamp to light. It was a wall-lamp with a tin reflector. He hung it from a nail in the party wall and proceeded to light the stove. There was wood piled ready in a corner of the hut—logs, and branches of resinous pine which burned up quickly. The worst of the icy cold began to pass. Elizabeth had not known how very cold she was until it began to pass. She felt forlorn and useless. There did not seem to be anything that she could do.

Stephen moved to and fro, large, competent, and cheerful. From a cunningly devised hiding-place behind the stove he produced materials for a meal—cubes of solidified soup to be boiled up with snow water, bully beef, and bars of chocolate. When he opened the door to fill a bucket with snow, Elizabeth shuddered, but not with cold. He was out and back again in a flash. He laughed as he set the bucket down and shot the bolts.

“They’re sitting round with their tongues hanging out. I’ll have a shot at them presently. There aren’t more than half a dozen of them left.”

Elizabeth crouched down against the stove. It was beginning to get warm, and she needed warmth. She felt most forlorn, cold, and uncomforted. Stephen was a hundred miles away and more concerned with his horse than he was with her.

He set the bucket of snow by the fire to melt and disappeared into the inner room, where she could hear him rubbing Grischa down and talking kindly to him. He came back with another bucket for some of the water. She could hear the rustling sound of hay being stirred and pulled about. Grischa was being fed and watered. She could hear Stephen praising him for saving their lives. He was a kind master to his horse. It was she who was a hundred miles away and on the far side of a gulf which seemed to widen continually. It came to her that the gulf was of her own making. If she had trusted Stephen instead of believing herself betrayed, there would have been no gulf. She had believed her eyes and her ears instead of believing her heart. It was her own fault.

But Nicolas had betrayed her.

What had that to do with Stephen? She ought to have known that it was not in Stephen to betray a trust. He had risked his life to-night to save his horse.… A shiver ran through her.

“Are you cold?” said Stephen kindly.

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.”