“You must be crazy.”
“Not at all. The partridges do it, and suffer no grievous harm. I’ve done it often enough myself, and very rarely died of it. You don’t seem to understand the situation. Ambling along as we are, it’ll take us about a week to get to Innsbruck. At the moment, we are the proud possessors of some thirty-five marks. You pay four marks for a bed in a gasthaus, and we’ve still got to eat.”
She realized that the man in the corner was watching her curiously. It came to her that at all costs her dignity must leave that room untouched. The inexorable mathematics of Simon’s argument scarcely made any impression on her; she was in the grip of circumstances that were crushing her till she could have screamed, but she could not make a scene and bring herself down to the level she had just despised.
She stood up and went out without speaking, Simon following her. It had grown darker, and the twitter and chirp and rustle of night creatures was all around them as they entered the wood. Simon took the lead, humming. The spot the gamekeeper had described was near a tributary of the river they had recently quitted, a grassy hollow away from the footpath and a few feet above the stream. Simon’s expert eye appraised it and found no fault. He lowered his pack to the ground and began to unfasten it.
“Will you get some water while I make the fire?” he said.
He put the billy-can down beside her and went off to gather dry logs. In a very short time he had kindled a cheerful blaze, and she huddled gratefully up to it, for it had turned colder after the sun went down. Simon took bread, eggs, and butter from his rucksack, and picked up the billy. It was empty.
“I asked you to get some water,” he said.
She raised her sullen eyes to him over the fire.
“I’m not a servant,” she said.
“Neither am I,” said the Saint quietly. “You’ll do your share or go hungry — whichever you prefer.”
The girl struggled to her feet.
“Oh, I could kill you!” she cried passionately, and went groping down to the stream.
3
Belinda fell asleep at first out of pure exhaustion, but it was still dark when she woke up again. The fire had died down to a cone of red embers, and there was a chill in the air that made her shiver. She pulled the spare width of her groundsheet over her, as Simon had shown her how to do if it began to rain, but it was too thin to give any warmth. Even a summer night turns cool out of doors towards two and three o’clock: unsuspected little breezes stir the air and strike through the thickest blankets. The body’s warmth, unguarded by the moderating vigilance of walls and ceilings, drifts away like smoke in the limitless vastness of space.
The grass, which had looked so flat and felt so soft, developed innumerable bumps and hardnesses which bruised her bones. A tenuous dampness rose from it and when she moved her head on the unsympathetic pillow of her sandals rolled up in a towel it felt wet and cold. The star-sprinkled sky, lofting billions of empty miles over her head, panicked her with its aloofness from her own microscopic insignificance. Oh, blessed civilization and the flattering barricades of pigmy architecture, which has made us afraid of the supernal majesty of our first home!.. The woods around her were full of moving shadows and the whisper of tiny scuttering feet, the flutter of a miniature cosmos hunting and fighting and dying and marching on. The throbbing wings of an owl passing overhead made her heart leap into her mouth... She lay there aching and fearful, waiting and praying for the sky to pale with the dawn, hating and yet glad of the company of the man who slept peacefully on the other side of the fire. She dozed and woke again, stiff and cold and miserable. Untold ages passed before the roof of the world lightened; other countless æons went by before the first beams of the sun gilded the topmost leaves of the trees. When the rays reached her they might give her a little warmth, and she would be able to sleep again. A flock of birds whirred cheeping across the faded stars. The golden radiance on the tree-tops crept down with maddening slowness...
When her eyes opened again it was broad daylight. The fire had been coaxed to life again. It crackled and hissed cheerily, while Simon Templar bent over it on one knee and juggled with the billy and a sizzling frying-pan.
“Eight o’clock and a lovely morning, Belinda,” he said. The fragrance of boiling coffee came to her nostrils, and she felt half sick with hunger and sleeplessness. She pulled herself up, instinctively searching for comb and mirror, and what she saw in the glass horrified her. “I must get a wash,” she said.
He passed her a cake of soap.
“The bath’s right on the doorstep, and breakfast will be ready in five minutes.”
The cold water nipped her face and hands, but it freshened her. Afterwards she dealt ravenously with scrambled eggs and two slices of the coarse black bread, and smoked a cigarette with her coffee. When it was done, the Saint climbed to his feet and stretched himself.
“I’ll make the beds,” he said. “It’s your turn to wash up.”
She looked resentfully at the pan, slimy with the congealed yellowness of egg, and shuddered.
“How do you expect me to do that?” she asked dangerously.
“It’s easy enough. I’ll show you.”
He led the way down the bank to the edge of the stream. He scooped a handful of earth into the pan, plucked up a tuft of grass by the roots, and held the two things out to her.
“Scrub the earth around with the grass, and repeat until clean. Rinse and dry.”
All her hatred and disgust was seething up again, but she tried to keep her balance. To lose her temper was the worst way to go about undermining his insolent assurance.
“There are limits,” she said, as evenly as she could, “and I think you’ve reached them.”
“Hadn’t it occurred to you that dishes have to be washed?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me that a man could ask me to put my hands into a foul mess like that. But perhaps I still thought you might have some of the more elementary instincts of a gentleman. It was rather an absurd mistake to make, wasn’t it?”
“Very,” said the Saint carefully. “Especially after last night. As I explained to you — camp chores are split two ways. Can you make a fire?”
“I’ve never tried.”
“Then it’s safe to assume you can’t. Can you cook?”
“Unfortunately I wasn’t brought up in a kitchen.”
“In that case you can only make yourself useful by fetching water and washing up. If you like eating scrambled eggs, you can help by cleaning up after them. If you don’t like that, you can live on bread and water, which involves no washing. The diet is dull, but you won’t starve on it. Let’s have it quite clear. You chose to travel this way—”
“I’ve never regretted anything so much in my life.”
“You might have regretted being locked up in a German prison still more. I’m not running a conducted tour with a team of cooks and bottle-washers trailing behind. This is a simple matter of the fair division of labor. There are six more days of it coming, and you may as well try to get through them decently.”
“What do you think I am?” she flared. “A working slut like that girl at the inn?”
His eyes met hers steadily.
“I think you’re an idle loafer who ought to learn a little about honest work. I think you’ve lain so soft all your life that you need some hardship and crude discomfort to catch your spine before it dissolves altogether. Both those things are going to happen to you before we get to Innsbruck. You’ve ceased to be ornamental, so now you’re going to turn into a useful working squaw — and like it!”
“Am I?” she said, and then her open hand struck him across the face.