Red Stefan (21 page)

Anger and laughter contended in Elizabeth. Laughter won.

“You call those little things!” she said, and with that the door was pushed open and Ilya came in.

There was no more opportunity for talk with Stephen. They sat about the stove, and he told stories and sang songs. Elizabeth went over the little scene in her mind—not the words, but the swift current of emotion which had run between them all the time. It was as if they had been facing one another across swift flashing water, glittering, darkening, swirling over unknown depths and flinging up a light inconsequent spray of words. It wasn't the words that mattered, it was this strange current that ran between them. She felt it all the time. Did Stephen feel it too?… Stephen? Oh no—why should he? He was too busy with being Nikolai—and her brother. It would be against his principles to remember that he was Stephen and she Elizabeth.

She went to sleep without any more comfort than that.

CHAPTER XXII

Elizabeth did not know how long she had been asleep when something waked her. There was no light in the house. Someone was moving in the dark. The sound that had waked Elizabeth came again, a tapping on one of the two small windows which flanked the door. Then the door itself was opened a cautious inch and a breath of icy air came through the chink, and at the same moment she was aware of Stephen brushing past her and going towards the door.

It was Stasia who had opened it. Elizabeth caught her whispered word as Stephen joined her. Then the chink was widened. The cold blew in, and when the door was shut again there were three of them whispering there in the dark. Her heart beat heavily. She sat up, listening, but the whispering had no words for her. It was like a rustling of leaves—a senseless, wordless rustling which mixed confusedly with the children's breathing, with Ilya's snores, and with the hammering of her heart.

Over by the door Stephen said, “What is it?”

And Stasia, with her hand on the bolt, answered, “It is Peter.” And with that she drew back and let him in.

They stood so near together that they were touching one another, all the three of them, like the three sticks of a tripod, heads close, lips moving over words that were more breath than sound. First Stasia: “Oh, Peter!” Then Stephen: “What is it?” And after that Peter, breathing deep because he had been running, and shivering with cold and excitement:

“Anton Glinka!”

Stephen had a hand on the boy's shoulder.

“Steady! Take your time.”

“There isn't any time! You must get away—at once!”

Stasia shrank and trembled. They were so close that her tremor shook them all.

Stephen said, “Quiet, Peter, and tell me.”

“Yes—yes—it is Anton!” he said.

“What does he say?”

“That you are
bourzhuis
—that it is you—that are wanted by the police. He says—she has the scar on her hand. He says—he saw it.”

Stasia drew in her breath. Stephen said,

“Don't be frightened, Stasia. It doesn't matter what he says. We'll be gone by cock-crow.”

Peter caught his breath.

“You must be gone before that. He has been round to every house. Not ours—he knows better than that—but everywhere else. Boris came and told me. He said, ‘Tell Nikolai to be gone before the moon is up. Anton will raise the village. He means mischief. Tell Nikolai to cut and run.'”

“Before the moon is up?” said Stasia faintly.

Peter shivered under Stephen's hand.

“Boris is right—Anton means mischief. He is like a wolf on the trail. His kind are all like wolves.”

Stasia shuddered from head to foot.

“Wolves—”
she said, and the three of them stood there silent.

It was Stephen who broke the silence.

“What does Glinka mean to do? Did Boris say?”

“He has got at least a dozen who will join him, perhaps more. They're coming now—at once—as soon as they have stopped talking about it. They will search you both and take you to Orli to answer for yourselves there. You know best whether that is safe for you, Nikolai.”

Stephen's laugh just stirred the silence.

“Not as safe as it might be.” And then, “We must go.”

Stasia said again the word that she had said before—a word with a shudder in it:

“Wolves—”

Sitting up in the dark on the other side of the room, Elizabeth felt Stasia's fear come flowing towards her like a cold draught. She had not heard what Stasia had said, or what any of them had said, but she felt the fear. Then, very faintly, she heard Stephen laugh, and the fear went past her. She could not hear what he was saying, but she was reassured.

A moment later he came over to the stove and said,

“Are you awake?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth.

He knelt down close to her and spoke again.

“We've got to move on. Peter has come to warn us. It's the schoolmaster of course. He's roused the village. We must get away before they come and take us. Will you get up? I don't want to wake Ilya. He and Stasia can say we slipped away while they were asleep.”

It was the strangest and most hurried flight. There were no more words, only a groping to find her shoes, her coat—and the door opening twice, once to let Peter out, and again for her and Stephen. Stasia pressed her arm as they touched in the dark, and then they were outside in the snow and the door was shut.

It was not so dark here as it had been in the house. The snow lighted them, and the sky was bare and starry with no more than a belt of cloud at the horizon. Elizabeth stood in the yard behind the house and watched the sky whilst Stephen brought out the horse and harnessed him to the sledge. The stars were very bright and the air was still. The belt of cloud to the east was luminous. If there was going to be a moon, it would help them on their way. She thought it was a long time since she had seen the moon or the sun. She thought it was a friendly thing to see the stars.

And then Stephen was ready. He tucked her in and led the horse out of the yard. He jumped in beside her and took the reins, and they were off—down the long village street, past the dark houses, past one house which was not dark, and out on the open snowy road. There was no tinkling of bells to proclaim their flight. They drove with muffled harness. The snow deadened the sound of the horse's feet. Only when they were clear Stephen broke into a laugh.

“Schoolmasters talk too much,” he said. “Did you see the house with the lighted windows? I think Glinka and his friends were there, talking about how they were going to arrest us. Peter's a good lad. We'd have been caught if he hadn't come to warn us. I hope he won't get into trouble.”

“Do you think he will?”

“No—he's rather a protégé of Glinka's. He'll be in bed and asleep, and not know anything until he's told. Stasia will do the same, and Ilya really won't know anything, which is much the safest plan.”

“Will they come after us?” said Elizabeth.

Stephen laughed a little grimly.

“I don't think so. People hereabouts don't care for travelling at night.”

“I wonder why,” said Elizabeth vaguely. And then, “Will they come after us in the morning?”

Stephen cracked his whip.

“It won't matter if they do.”

“Why?”

“The morning's a long way off, and we shall be a long way off by the morning.”

Elizabeth looked to the east. The morning was far away. It was not the sun that was rising now, but the moon. Already the sky above the clouds was transparent and faintly golden. Presently the rim of the moon showed clear. It came up full like a bubble of fire, in colour at first an orange-red, which changed imperceptibly through orange to gold. It seemed as if the gold were draining away from it into the sky. In a little while it was all quite gone and the moon was white among the stars.

It was at this time that they entered the forest. Elizabeth saw it first as a shadow below the cloud-belt, then as a black mass coming nearer and nearer. They passed its outposts—stark clumps of trees standing up in the moonlight; thickets bent under a weight of snow; a tangle of bushes with the glitter of frost on them; more stark trees; and at last the forest itself.

The trees were very tall. The trunks ran up on either side to a black roof of pine branches. Here and there the moonlight barred their path, here and there it lay like a silver pool in a clearing, once and again it flooded a stretch of the forest road, but for the most part they drove in a shadowy gloom which made everything seem unreal.

Unreal. The word crept into Elizabeth's mind and stayed there. An unreal world, frozen into the semblance of reality. At any moment it might flow away from them, dissolving as ice and mist dissolve. They were past midnight, or it might have vanished at the stroke of twelve. No, midnight was the hour that ushered enchantment in. It was cock-crow which would break the spell. Meanwhile it stayed about them a glamour of frost and night.

When the gold had drained out of the moon the last trace of living colour died. Only black and white were left. Black, and white, and all the mysterious gradations through which light lapses into darkness.

Elizabeth began to try and find means for these strange, half luminous shades. Black, and white, and silver. Ink, and snow, and ebony. Grey velvet, and black velvet, and white velvet. Diamond, and pearl. Jet, and crystal. Bone—white scraped bone—moon-bleached bone. Tears, and ivory, and the black of black deep water.

“What are you thinking about, Elizabeth?” said Stephen without turning his head.

“I was thinking about all the black and white things in the world,” said Elizabeth. “But there aren't enough of them. This is all black and white—a hundred kinds of black, and a hundred kinds of white. I can't get names for them.”

“Are you cold?”

“Cold is one of the white things,” she said with a little shuddering laugh.

“Why did you shiver?” said Stephen. “Are you afraid?”

“Fear is one of the black things,” said Elizabeth. “No, I'm not afraid, Stephen.”

That wasn't the way one talked in real life. It was like an answer in a dream.

They went on driving between the black walls of the forest. Its dark rafters stirred above them in a wind which was so high over head that it never touched the sledge. It moved those high, solemn branches. Sometimes a ghostly snow-fall cascaded down, sending out a spray which flew up against their faces like the tangible breath of the frost. The roar of such a fall and the movement overhead were the only sounds which came to them from beyond. There was Grischa the horse and their two selves, three living beings, moving, alive and sentient, through this strange world in which there was no other life, no sound or movement of any other living thing.

Elizabeth did not know how long they had been driving when the first sound came to them. She turned her head and listened until it came again, a thin, high sound more like the echo of a sound than a sound itself.

Stephen looked over his shoulder and said,

“An owl.”

Ahead of them the trees were thinning away. They came out upon a clearing dimly bright with the moon. The snow crisped and glittered under foot. The forest walled the clearing in, and the owls hunted there. They were half across it, when Elizabeth turned her head sharply because another sound had reached her—not a sound of the upper air like the owl's cry, but a faint far off whine or howl. She held her breath a little to listen, and caught the sound again. It was like a dog baying the moon, but a long, long, long way off. And then all at once it was nearer, and nearer again. And it wasn't a dog, but a wolf.

No, it wasn't a wolf. It was Stephen playing a trick on her, trying to frighten her as he had tried to frighten Yuri on the day they drove away from Tronsk in the early morning. How could he be so stupid as to think that the same trick would serve him twice? Perhaps he had imitated the owl's cry too. No, he hadn't done that, because she had seen the spread of the great soft wings, white and silent as snow in the moonlight—seen them dip and glance, and rise again, and pass shadow-like into the shadows.

A long howling note came from the forest they had left. All at once Elizabeth was angry. She called out,

“Don't do it! Why do you do it? I hate it!”

Stephen nodded without turning round.

“Stupid of me—wasn't it? I'm sorry, Elizabeth.”

“You've frightened the horse,” she said in an indignant voice.

“He'll get us there all the quicker,” said Stephen with half a laugh.

Grischa had reared and started. Stephen made no attempt to hold him in. He called him by name, spoke to him in Russian terms of endearment, and let him take his own pace.

As they reached the farther side of the clearing, Elizabeth saw the owl again. It swooped, light as thistledown and soundless as air, swooped and rose. It must have missed its aim. Its floating cry had a harsher note. Suddenly it was gone. She turned and looked back across the empty clearing. The moon was bright upon the snow. The forest road in front of them was dark and deeply shadowed. She looked back into the light.

And very far away, at the far edge of the clearing where the trees ended and the shining snow began, she saw a black moving speck.

CHAPTER XXIII

Elizabeth stared at the moving speck. It was a long way off and very small. The far end of the clearing was a quarter of a mile away. She could see the path of their sledge across the snow. The trees stood all round, and the moon shone down. There was just that one black moving thing on the snowy trail. No, there was more than one. She drew in a long cold breath as she counted up to seven, and then stopped, not because there were no more of those black moving things to count, but because the rest ran close-packed, a moving mass, a—what was the word that she had already used in her own mind?—a pack.

She turned to Stephen and saw him looking over his shoulder, past her. Then his eyes came back and met hers.