Red Stefan (24 page)

After a minute or two she let her hands fall. It didn't matter now whether she screamed or not, because Stephen wouldn't hear her. She felt her way to the bench and sat down. It was all very well to say walk about and keep warm. If she was moving herself, how could she hear whether anyone else was moving too—any
one
, or any
thing?
The horrible thing about an empty house is that you are never quite sure that it really is empty. Sitting there in the dark, Elizabeth found herself straining her ears for the sounds which might be hiding behind the silence. At first she could hear nothing. A house that is lived in has always some sounds. At first the dead house seemed to have none.

Then sounds began. They were so faint that as each one ceased, she could not have said for certain that she had heard anything. Something rustled a long way off—something creaked—something moved with a gentle flowing sound—paper stirring in the draught—old broken shutters settling—snow on the broken roof moving, sliding.

And then suddenly a crash that sent echo following echo through the house.

Elizabeth crouched down on the bench, her heart thudding. There were so many echoes, and they took so long to die. The house that had been so silent seemed all at once to be whispering round her. Whispering just on the edge of sound. Whispering up in the rafters, where the dark night looked in through gaps in the roof. Whispering through the icy corridors and the desolate untenanted rooms in which people had loved, and hated, and been afraid. Now there was only Elizabeth Radin, a stranger and very much afraid. An icy sweat came out on her temples. The darkness seemed moving towards her with all those stealthy sounds.

There was a lapse of time. She steadied herself. The sweat dried. Her hands relaxed their agonized grip of the bench. What she had heard was the fall of broken masonry brought down by the weight of the snow. What else could it be? By daylight, nothing at all. In this dark loneliness, any fear-suggested horror.

If she sat here and listened, she would go on hearing things. To listen for sounds which are not there is one of the ways to madness. Stephen had been perfectly right when he said “Walk about and keep yourself warm.” Only he might have made it “Walk about and keep yourself sane.” Stephen was always right.

A spurt of anger behind the thought got her on to her feet and started her pacing the room. To be always right—was there a more enraging faculty in the world? Was it a faculty, or a virtue? If it was a virtue, it was certainly the most disagreeable of all the virtues—a tyrannical prig of a virtue, the sort of virtue which makes you want to go and wallow in vice.

Elizabeth walked up and down, and thought how much she hated prigs, and tyrants, and people who are always right. And then the heartening spurt of anger died and left her cold. What a fool she was! She couldn't even be angry with Stephen for more than five minutes. It was just as well their time together was nearly over. The words went stabbing through her mind. Not to see Stephen any more—not to have him to be angry with—not to know whether he was alive or dead.… “He'll write. Why should he write? I'll ask him to write.”… And have him forget, or do it once or twice and be bored.… “I can't let him go.” “You've got to let him go.…”

She stood in the middle of the dusty floor and pressed both hands down over the pain at her heart. The house began to whisper round her again.

CHAPTER XXVI

Stephen came across the hall and called her name from the doorway.

“Elizabeth—are you there? I've been as quick as I could. I hope you're not frightfully cold. I've got some wood and we'll soon have a fire.”

She could hear him dragging the wood in—branches. And then a clatter of falling logs. She felt her way to the bench and sat down again. The rush of relief and joy with which she had heard his step really frightened her. What was she going to do when he went away—and didn't come back?

There was a crackling of paper from the hearth.
Paper
. How had he come by it? A match spurted, and a little creeping edge of flame ate flickering into the darkness. She could hear Stephen blowing at it. The paper must be very damp. It smouldered, died, and revived again. A sudden flare showed her the shape of his head and shoulders, and the black arch of the open fireplace. Then with a rush the flame sprang up.

The paper was wall-paper, old and tattered. The fire twisted it, and as it caught, for an instant the long dead pattern showed against the glow. Roses that had been red burned crimson once again. Then the pine-branches crackled and snapped. Bright firelight filled the room.

Stephen dragged the bench over to the hearth for Elizabeth. He continued to feed the fire, whilst she sat forward with her chin in her hands watching him. After the strain, the fear, the rush of joy, everything seemed to have come to a standstill. She was tired and content. The future concerned her as little as the past. She had been cold, and she was warm. She had been alone, and Stephen was here. She had been afraid, and the fear was gone.

She watched Stephen make up the fire. It filled the room with a warm glow. In this rosy firelight the painted panels recaptured some of their old grace and beauty. She said,

“Was this your mother's room, Stephen?”

“Yes. It used to be pretty. A bit gim-cracky, you know—all gilding, and little tables, and fluffy cushions. I was always knocking things over. But it suited her. It's bare enough now—isn't it?” He straightened himself up by the fire and touched Elizabeth on the arm. “Come back here a little and I'll show you something.”

When they were in the middle of the room, he pointed to the chimney breast. There was the open hearth with its blazing fire framed in carved alabaster, and above a narrow shelf, in the midst of the white panelling, a picture. Everything else was gone, but the picture still looked down on the ruined room. Shadows veiled it. Elizabeth could see no more than that it was a portrait. Then the ray of Stephen's torch touched it, and she saw that it was a portrait of Fay Darenska. She looked very young. She had a girl's slim body and a girl's unshadowed eyes. They were as blue as Stephen's. But her hair wasn't red, it was gold. She stood smiling out of the picture with rosy childish lips. There was a row of pearls about her throat. A second row touched her breast, and a third hung almost to her knee. A white fur wrap was slipping from her shoulders. The ray passed to and fro, bringing out the pale rose of the dress, the delicate flesh tints, the shimmer of the pearls, the whole aspect of smiling youth.

“How young!” said Elizabeth.

Stephen nodded beside her.

“She really looked like that. But she was thirty when that was painted, and I was ten years old.”

The light slid down across the pearls. Fay and her pearls … Such frail things to have survived so great a ruin.…

Stephen answered her thought as if she had spoken it aloud.

“Look!” he said, and turned the ray to the edge of the picture.

There was no frame. The portrait had been painted upon the central panel above the hearth.

“If it had been an ordinary picture, they'd have torn it down when they murdered Paul and wrecked the house. Someone did throw a knife at it. There—you can see the mark, just at her knee. It looks as if she had torn her dress—doesn't it? Well, the man who threw the knife slipped and fell. They'd been down into the cellars and they were all roaring drunk, so the wonder was not that one of them fell, but that any of them managed to keep his feet—only it just happened that when this particular man fell he broke his leg. After that no one would touch the picture, so there it is. If it was a canvas, I'd have got it away long ago, but I can't manage that panel.”

“What happened to the pearls?”

Stephen switched off the torch. Fay Darenska and her rosy dress and her pearls went back into the shadows. The firelight glowed, faded, and glowed again. There was a little pause before he said,

“Funny you should ask that.”

“Did you mind?” There was a quick compunction in her voice. “They're so lovely—and I just wondered—what happened to them.”

“I should like to know,” said Stephen soberly.

“Don't you know?”

They were suddenly so intimate that there was no longer any question of his minding what she asked.

He shook his head.

“I thought they'd been looted. But the other day when I was in Paris I ran across a man who was staying here with Paul just before the crash. He said Paul knew it was coming, but he wouldn't get out—said he didn't fancy being an
emigré
. That was so like Paul.”

“Well?”

“Well, Paul gave him a message. By the time he thought of delivering it I was off the map, and he'd forgotten all about it till I ran into him in Paris.”

“What was the message?”

“An odd one. He swears Paul told him to tell me that my mother's pearls were where she had always kept them.”

“Don't you know where she kept them?”

“That's just it—she didn't keep them anywhere. She wore them always, day and night.”

“What do you think he meant?”

He hesitated for a moment and then said,

“Well, it sounded as if he'd buried them with her. He might have done it—I never saw them after she died.”

A bright flame shot up in the fire, and for a moment the pearls caught the light. Then they were gone again. Elizabeth shivered.

“Well, that's that,” said Stephen. “Now come along and warm yourself and have something to eat. I'm afraid it'll have to be bully beef again.”

“Is it safe here?” said Elizabeth when they had camped down before the fire for their meal. It was quite a good meal, because there was tinned soup as well as the beef.

He laughed a little at the question.

“It depends on what you call safe. If you don't have a fire and something to eat, you'll die—and that's not safe. On the other hand I don't think anyone can possibly get here after us until well on into to-morrow. You see, this is how I figure it out. Glinka wouldn't get going until daylight. I've thought about it a lot, and I'm pretty sure he'd go back to Orli. Of course he
could
follow the track of our sledge and come after us here, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't.”

“Why?”

Stephen ticked the reasons off on his fingers.

“One. It's not a run anyone in that village is specially keen about—the wolves got two men last winter. I'm considered—or rather Nikolai is considered—the sort of fool who'll do it once too often. I don't think Glinka would be much of a hand with a rifle, and I don't see anyone lending him a horse for the job or being keen on going with him. That's three reasons. And the fourth is that he hasn't got any authority. No—I think he'll go into Orli, say he suspects us of being the two people who are wanted, and then see what happens.”

“What will happen?”

Stephen laughed.

“Well, they may tell Glinka to go and boil his head, or they may raise a posse and come chasing after us. It won't matter to us which they do, because we shall be in Poland by then.”

Elizabeth's heart jumped. She said in a low voice,

“Suppose Glinka didn't go to Orli. Suppose he did get a horse and come after us.”

“Well, he'd be here by now, or else the wolves would have got him. I'm not worrying about Glinka.”

After a minute or two Elizabeth said,

“What about the people in this village?”

He laughed again.

“They think we're smugglers, Nikolai and me. They believe firmly in us both. I'm quite sure it has never occurred to anyone in the village that they've never seen us together. They'd probably be quite ready to swear that they had. They've heard us talking in the dark. Smugglers always come and go in the dark.

“Heard you talk?”

“Nikolai and me—or let's say Nikolai and Mikhail. I can do different voices, you know, and make them sound as if they came from different places. It's quite useful sometimes. So there it is, we come and go and they don't ask any questions—there are pickings you know. If Glinka did manage to get here, I think the chances are that he might be quite roughly handled.”

Elizabeth shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Because I'm afraid we can't stay here.”

She looked at him with something like dismay. The black night—the snow—the cold—the forest—wolves.… She said on a caught breath,

“Are we going on to-night?”

“Suppose I say Yes?”

“I hope you won't.”

“But suppose I do?”

She managed the ghost of a smile.

“Then I suppose I'd come.”

“Come along then,” he said and took her by the arm.

“What—now?”

“Well, I don't think we ought to stay here.”

In the firelight she could see a dancing light of mischief in his eyes.

“Where are we going?”

“Across the frontier,” said Stephen with a note of triumph in his voice.

She had not known that they were so near, and her heart leapt. Of course the crossing would have to be at night. Cold, darkness, and danger—nothing mattered if the goal was really in sight. Eager words came stammering to her lips.

“The frontier! Stephen, are we so near?”

“Come and see,” said Stephen.

He swept her into the hall. Its cold silence met them on the threshold. Their feet made ghostly echoes on the stone flags. He flashed his torch to show her what a huge cavern of a place it was. The great stone stair rose up to a gallery. He turned the torch upon it, and she saw how it was littered with fallen masonry.

“The hall is much older than the rest of the house. It's a feudal hall with a seventeenth-century house built round it. Paul's several times great-grandfather had a French architect over. He was a most intelligent and cultured person, and a patron of the arts, but by all accounts you didn't have to scratch very deep to find the Tartar. He had one of his serfs knouted to death in this hall. Paul wasn't very fond of the story, but it happened.”