“Please hurry,” he said again. “And we had better not talk much.”
“I’m ready now, except for the boots.”
“Let me do them.”
He knelt on one knee and laced them quickly.
She whispered, looking down at him in the darkness: “You are very, very kind.”
“It will be safer not to talk just yet—your voice, you know. And when you do talk, you must call me ’Tovarish’—it’s the word the soldiers use. We must be very careful, even in details.”
“Yes, of course. I understand. Now I’m ready.”
“Good. We must try to get a long way into the forests by daylight.”
“Still en route for Moscow, I suppose?”
He answered, shouldering his bundle and helping her quickly over the uneven ground: “No. I have decided to accept your suggestion and will try to get you to the coast, where you can take ship for abroad. Now don’t answer me—don’t talk at all just save all your strength for the long journey.”
PART IV
He stood on the summit of the first low ridge that lifted out of the long level of the plains. Dawn was creeping over the horizon; distant and below lay the clustered roofs of the town. He and his companion had stopped for but a moment, to share bread and water together; she was so tired that she was already half asleep on the springy turf.
He stared strangely upon that refreshing August dawn, yet in his own mind, for some reason, he saw another picture—a frozen Arctic river under sunshine, all still and stiff, and then suddenly the splitting shiver of the ice-crust and the surge of water over the quickening land. He felt as if something like that were happening within himself. “Come now,” he said, picking up the bundles. She was asleep and he had to waken her. She smiled without a word and stumbled forward.
He dared not have allowed more than that moment’s halt, for though they had had good fortune so far, there was still danger, and perhaps the greatest of all now that daylight had come. They plunged on and on as the glow in the eastern sky deepened and became glorified by sunrise; over pine-covered ridges and down into little lonely valleys, through swishing gullies of dead leaves and round curving slopes whence Saratursk, glimpsed between tree-trunks, seemed ever further away yet ever dangerously near. By ten o’clock they had covered seven or eight miles, and were already deep in the foothill forests; but she was so tired that she could not take another step. There was nothing for it but to rest for at least a few moments. They sat on a fallen tree-trunk and she was asleep again instantly, with her head leaning forward into her hands.
He was tired himself and after a short time, being afraid of falling asleep also, he got up and moved about. Ten minutes—a quarter of an hour—might be enough to give her just the needful strength to scramble a few miles further. Even during those few minutes, he guessed, pursuers would be gaining on them. He had no illusions or false optimism; he knew that the escape must have been discovered within a few hours, at most, of its taking place, and that immense efforts would certainly be made to recapture such a fugitive. He had seen the whole routine carried through so often before—a price upon some prisoner, dead or alive—a whole army setting out on perhaps the cruellest and therefore the most intoxicatingly thrilling game in the world—a man-hunt. And a woman-hunt would be even a degree better than that. Then suddenly, even while he was pondering over it, he heard, very faintly in the distance, a shrill whistle, and, a few seconds later, a still fainter whistle answering it. The hunt had begun already.
He touched the woman on the shoulder, but it was no use—he had to shake her thoroughly to get her awake. He said quietly: “We must hide for a time—I think searchers are somewhere in the woods.” She answered in a dazed way: “All right. I’m ready.” He helped her to her feet and they moved away, he with eyes alert for a good hiding- place.
He was fortunate in finding one quite soon. A steep valley ended in a lame and desolate tract of undergrowth amidst whose tangle there seemed a good chance of escaping notice. Even if pursuers ever reached it, they would not be likely to give every thicket the attention it deserved. He plunged eagerly into the bushes and for ten minutes, out of sight of the world around them, they both wriggled further and deeper into the dense undergrowth. At last the seemingly perfect spot revealed itself—a little hollow hidden behind thick brambles and knee-deep in litter of twigs and leaves. “Here,” he cried, with sudden satisfaction. He stared thankfully about him at the protecting foliage, and then upwards at the blue sky just visible through the lacery of branches. Then he heard once again, but a little nearer, that shrill whistle and its answer.
He laid her gently on the ground and yet again she fell asleep instantly—so instantly that he smiled a rather rueful smile, for he had intended to give her some cautionary advice. No matter; it could probably wait. He would not think of wakening her. And then as the moments passed and he watched her sleeping, a feeling of tenderness came over him, like a slow warmth from another world, and he did something he had never done before in all his life—he put his arm round a woman and drew her gently towards him. She would sleep more comfortably so. He gazed on her with quiet, almost proprietary triumph; all the way from Khalinsk he had not ceased to guard her, through all manner of difficulty and peril, and here she was still, by miracle, under his protection. He was hungry and thirsty and tired and anxious, yet also, in a way he had never known before, he was satisfied.
The thicket was noisy with buzzing insects, but every few moments over the distant air came the whistling—now quite distinctly nearer. His heart beat no faster for it; he felt: We are here, and here is our only chance; we must wait and take whatever comes…The nearest of the pursuers, he judged, must be perhaps half a mile away; there were others, too, not far behind, and probably hundreds already combing the forests on the way from Saratursk. Soon the whistling became less intermittent and seemed to come from north and south as well as west; once, too, he thought he heard voices a long way off. Hunger and thirst were now beginning to be importunate, but he dared not satisfy them, since it might be night before he could risk leaving the thicket in quest of any fresh supplies.
Then he saw that her eyes were wide open—dark, sleepy eyes staring up at him. She whispered, half smiling: “How uncomfortable you must be—with me leaning on you like this!”
“All the better,” he answered, with a wry smile. “It helps me to keep awake.”
“I think it is your turn to sleep now.”
“No, no—you go on sleeping.”
“But I can’t.” Her voice dropped agonisingly. “I’ve kept my nerve pretty well up to now, but I’m afraid—I’m beginning to be just—terrified.”
“Terrified? Oh, no need for that.”
“Those whistles that keep on sounding—we’re being hunted—that’s what they mean, don’t they?”
“They’re looking for us, of course. That was to be expected. But it doesn’t follow that they’re going to find us.”
“Promise me—promise me one thing—that you’ll kill me rather than let them get me again!”
“Yes, I promise.”
“You mean it?”
“Absolutely.”
A whistle suddenly shrilled quite close to them—perhaps two or three hundred yards away, on the edge of the undergrowth. Even he was startled, and he felt her trembling silently against him. He whispered: “Keep calm—they’re a long way off yet—they might easily come within ten yards and not see us in a place like this. Don’t worry.”