The Red Symbol Part 46

How far we rode I can't say; but it was still dark when we halted at a small isolated farmhouse, where Mishka roused the farmer, who came out grumbling at being disturbed before daybreak. After a muttered colloquy, he led us in and called his wife to prepare tea and food for us, while he took charge of the horses.

"You must eat and sleep," Mishka announced in his gruff way. "You ought to be still in the hospital; but we are fools, in these days, every one of us! Ho--little father--shake down some hay in the barn; we will sleep there."

I must have been utterly exhausted, for I slept heavily, dreamlessly, for many hours, and only woke under Mishka's hand, as he shook me.

Through the doorway of the barn, the level rays of the westering sun showed that the short November day was drawing to a close.

"You have slept long; that is well. But now we must be up and away if we are to reach Kutno to-night."

"You go with me?"

"So far, yes. If there are no trains running yet, we go on to Alexandrovo. I shall not leave you till I have set you safely on your way. Those are my orders."

"I don't know why I'm going," I muttered dejectedly, sitting up among the hay. "I would rather have stayed."

"You go because he ordered you to; and we all obey him, whether we like it or not!" he retorted. "And he was right to send you. Why should you throw your life away for nothing? Come, there is no time to waste in words. I have brought you water; wash and dress. Remember you are no longer a disreputable revolutionist, but a respectable American citizen, and we must make you look a little more like one."

There was something queer in his manner. Gruff as ever, he yet spoke to me, treated me, almost as if I were a child who had to be heartened up, as well as taken care of. But I didn't resent it. I knew it was his way of showing affection; and it touched me keenly. We had learned to understand each other well, and no man ever had a stancher comrade than I had in Mishka Pavloff.

During that last of our many rides together he was far less taciturn then usual; I had never heard him say so much at one stretch as he did while we pressed on through the dusk.

"We have shown you something of the real Russia since you came back--how many weeks since? And now, if you get safe across the frontier, you will be wise to remain there, as any wise man--or woman either--who values life."

"I don't value my life," I interrupted bitterly.

"You think you do not. That is because you are hasty and ignorant, though the ignorance is not your fault. You think your heart is broken, _hein_? Well, one of these days, not long hence, perhaps, you will think differently; and find that life is a good thing after all,--when it has not to be lived in Russia! If we ever meet again, you will know I have spoken the truth."

I knew that before many days had pa.s.sed, and wondered then how much he could have told me if he had been minded.

"If we meet again!" I echoed sadly. "Is that likely, friend Mishka?"

"G.o.d knows! Stranger things have happened. If I die with, or before my master,--well, I die. If I do not, I, too, shall make for the frontier when he no longer has need of me. Where is the good of staying? What should I do here? I would like to see peace--yes, but there will be no peace within this generation--"

"But your father?" I asked, thinking of the stanch old man, who had gone back to his duty at Zostrov.

"My father is dead."

"Dead!" I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of the inertness that paralyzed my brain.

"He was murdered a week after he returned to Zostrov. There was trouble with the _moujiks_,--as I knew there would be. The garrison at the castle was helpless, and there was trouble there also, first about my little bomb that covered our retreat. You knew I planned that,--_hein_?"

"No, but I suspected it."

"And you said nothing; you are discreet enough in your way. _He_ never suspected,--does not even now; he thinks it was a plot hatched by his enemies--perhaps by Stravensky himself, the old fox! But we should never have got through to Warsaw, if, for a time, at least, all had not believed that he and I and you were finished off in that affair. Better for him perhaps, if it had been so!"

He fell silent, and I know he was thinking of the last tragedy, as I was. The memory of it was hard enough for me to bear; what must it not be for Loris?

"Yes, there was much trouble," Mishka resumed. "Old Stravensky was summoned to Petersburg, and he had scarcely set out before the revolution began, and the troops were recalled. There was but a small garrison left; I doubt if they would have moved a finger in any case; and so the _moujiks_ took their own way, and my father--went to his reward. He was a good man, and their best friend for many a year, but that they did not understand, since the Almighty has made them beasts without understanding!"

The darkness had fallen, but I guessed he shrugged his shoulders in the way I knew so well. A fatalist to the finger-tips was Mishka.

"The news came three days since," he continued. "And such news will come, in time, from every country district. I tell you all you have seen and known is but the beginning, and G.o.d knows what the end will be!

Therefore, as I have said, this is no country for honest peaceable folk.

My mother died long since, G.o.d be thanked; and now but one tie holds me here."

"Look, yonder are the lights of Kutno."

The town was comparatively quiet, though it was thronged with soldiers, and there were plenty of signs that Kutno had pa.s.sed through its own days of terror, and was probably in for more in the near future.

We left our horses at a _kabak_ and walked through the squalid streets to the equally squalid railway depot where we parted, almost in silence.

"G.o.d be with you," Mishka growled huskily. His face looked more grim than ever under the poor light of a street-lamp near, and he held my hands in a grip whose marks I bore for a week after.

He strode heavily away, never once looking back, and I turned into the depot, where I found the entrance, the ticket office, and the platform guarded by surly, unkempt soldiers with fixed bayonets. I lost count of the times I had to produce my pa.s.sport; and turned a deaf ear to the insults lavished upon me by most of my interlocutors. I thought I had better resume my pretended ignorance of Russian and trust to German to carry me through, as it did. I was allowed to board one of the cars at last; they were filthy, lighted only by a candle here and there, and crowded with refugees of all cla.s.ses. I was lucky to get in at all, and, though all the cars were soon crammed to their utmost capacity, it was an hour or more before the train started. Then it crawled and jolted through the darkness at a pace that I reckoned would land us at Alexandrovo somewhere about noon next day,--if we ever got there at all.

But the indescribable discomforts of that long night journey at least prevented anything in the way of coherent thought. I look back on it now as a blank interval; a curtain dropped at the end of a long and lurid act in the drama of life.

At Alexandrovo more soldiers, more hustling, more interrogations; then the barrier, and beyond,--freedom!

I've a hazy notion that I arrived at a big, well-lighted station, and was taken possession of by some one who hustled me into a cab; but the next thing I remember clearly was waking and finding myself in bed,--a nice clean bed, with a huge down pillow affair on top,--in a big well-furnished room. That down affair--I couldn't remember the name of it for the moment--and the whole aspect of the room showed that I was in a German hotel; though how I got there I really couldn't remember. I rang the bell; my hand felt so heavy that I could scarcely lift it as far, and it looked curiously thin, with blue marks, like faint bruises on it, and the veins stood out.

A plump, comfortable looking woman, in a nurse's uniform, bustled in; and beamed at me quite affectionately.

"Now, this is better! Yes, I said it would be so!" she exclaimed in German. "You feel quite yourself again, but weak,--yes, that is only to be expected--"

"Will you be so good as to tell me where I am?" I asked, as politely as I knew how; staring at her, and wondering if I'd ever seen her before.

"Oh, you men! No sooner do you find your tongue and your senses than you begin to ask questions! And yet you say it is women who are the talkers!" she answered, with a kind of ponderous archness. "You are at the Hotel Reichshof to be sure; and being well taken care of. The head?"

she touched my forehead with her firm, cool fingers. "It hurts no more?

Ah, it has healed beautifully; I did well to remove the strappings yesterday. There will be a scar, yes, but that cannot be helped. And now you are hungry? Ah, we will soon set that right! It is as I said, though even the doctor would not believe me. The wounds are nothing,--so to speak; the exhaustion was the mischief. You came through from Russia?

What times they are having there! You were fortunate to get through at all. Yes, you are a very fortunate man, and an excellent patient; therefore you shall have some breakfast!"

She worried me, with her persistent cheerfulness, but it would have been ungracious to tell her so. She was right in one way, though. I was ravenously hungry; and when she returned, bringing a tray with delicious coffee and rolls, I started on them, and let her babble away, as she did,--nineteen to the dozen.

I gathered that nearly a week had pa.s.sed since I got to Berlin. The hotel tout had captured me at the depot, and I collapsed as I got out of the cab.

"In the ordinary way, you would have been sent to a hospital, but when they saw the portrait--"

"What portrait?" I asked; but even as I spoke my memory was returning, and I knew she must mean the miniature Loris had given me.

"What portrait? Why, the Fraulein Pendennis, to be sure!"

CHAPTER L

ENGLAND ONCE MORE