By the time he rejoined her it was quite light, and the clear cloudless sky showed promise of a hot day. He took off his coat and then looked around for a stream from which to fill his water-bottle. Cautiously he descended the slope, skirting the hill in a wide curve, with the first rays of sunlight splitting joyously through the foliage. How lovely the world seemed, but for human beastliness, and how disgusting to wish that the birds were not singing so loudly, because they made it difficult to listen for anyone approaching in the distance. Yet behind a certain quiet rage and perturbation, excitement was on him, and when at last he found a stream, bubbling crystal-clear over pearl- grey rocks, he knelt to it and, dashing the icy water over his face and head, felt what was almost a new sensation—happiness.
After filling his water-bottle he looked up and saw something that gave him a sudden shock. It was a timbered roof half-hidden among the trees no more than a hundred yards away, yet even so close it would have been easy to miss it. Probably a woodman’s cottage, he thought, and with still cautious steps approached a little nearer to find out. Then he saw a thin wisp of smoke curling up amidst the treetops that screened the tiny habitation. The loneliness of the place as well as its look of cosy comfortableness lured him to an even closer examination; he worked his way through the trees towards a side which no window overlooked. In another moment he was standing against the outside wall and listening carefully—but there were no sounds of voices or of movement from within. Then he turned the corner and, crouching near the window, slowly lifted his head and peered over the sill. It was the usual one-roomed habitation of the peasant, very dirty and untidy; two persons, man and woman, were sleeping on a heap of straw and rags in a corner, and from their attitude and state of attire, A.J. guessed it to be a sleep of drunkenness. With greater interest, however, he saw the heap of clothes on the floor which the couple had thrown off. That settled it; it seemed that fortune had given him a chance which it would be far bigger folly to miss than to take. With his revolver in one hand he lifted the door-latch with the other; as he had hoped and expected, the door was not locked. He simply walked in, picked up the litter of clothes, walked out, closed the door carefully behind him, and climbed the hill through the trees. Nothing could have been easier, and he was glad that, from their appearance, the couple would still have many hours to sleep.
His prisoner laughed when he threw down the heap of clothes in front of her. Then she took grateful gulps of water from the bottle he offered. “You are very kind, Commissar,” she said. “But you had better not make a habit of leaving me alone as you did just then. I warn you that I shall escape at any suitable opportunity.”
“Naturally,” he answered, with a shade of irony. “But for the present remember that we are both escaping.”
“Yes, that’s queer, isn’t it? You are taking me to Moscow, where I shall probably be put on trial and shot; but for the time being I haven’t to think about that—I must only bother about preserving my life during the next twenty-four hours.”
“Well?”
“I’m afraid it all strikes me as rather illogical. If I am to be killed anyhow, does it matter very much who does the job?”
“That, of course, is for you to decide. Personally, if I were in your place, I should rather think it did matter.”
She suddenly put a hand on his sleeve. “Commissar, I can lose nothing, can I, by asking a question? Just this—must you really take me to Moscow and hand me over? Hasn’t my own—our own—our rather unusual fate so far—given you a hint of anything else? To me it almost seems as if fate were asking you to give me a chance. Briefly, Commissar, I have friends abroad—influential friends—who would make it considerably worth your while if you would take me somewhere else instead of Moscow. Odessa, shall we say—or Rostov? You would have earned the reward by your courtesy alone, and as for me, how can the Revolution suffer because one poor woman takes ship for a foreign country?”
He looked at her for a moment in absolute silence. Then he merely replied: “You are mistaken in me—I am not bribable. And also, by the way, you must remember in future not to call me ‘Commissar.’”
“I see.” And after a pause she added: “You are quite incorruptible, then?”
“Quite.”
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Well, anyhow, let’s not quarrel about it. Perhaps, after all, you think I deserve to be shot?”
“No, I don’t say that. I don’t think anything at all about it. You are my prisoner and I am taking you to Moscow. That is all.” He went on, more quickly: “Will you please put on these clothes without delay? We must get on—every minute increases the danger.”
“Are they clean?”
“I don’t know—I hadn’t time to look. Probably not, but you must wear them, anyhow.”
She laughed and their serious conversation ended by tacit agreement. She was amused at having to dress herself in a peasant’s long skirt and coarse coloured blouse, and she was still further amused when he told her how he had obtained them. Her own clothes they buried in a hiding-place under a heap of dead leaves; it was safer, he decided, than trying to burn them. Then he cut his beard and moustache, transforming his appearance to an extent that caused her a good deal of additional amusement. Next their joint luggage was carefully sorted out and all articles that might seem suspicious were also hidden away under the leaves. Finally he slit open the lining of his coat and carefully concealed all his commissary papers and a few government banknotes of large denomination.
These preparations took some time, and it was after eight o’clock when a fairly typical pair of peasant wanderers made their way down the hill to the valley on the far side of it. The man was tall and well-built, with a thin stubble of beard round his chin (he had not dared to give himself a close shave because of the deep tan that covered the rest of his face). The woman, slighter in build and pale even in the sunlight, trudged along beside him. They did not converse a great deal, but the man exchanged cheerful greetings with fellow- peasants passing in the opposite direction.
Arrangements had been reached about other matters. They had given each other names that were common enough, yet not suspiciously so; he was Peter Petrovitch Barenin, of the imaginary village of Nikolovsk, in the province of Orenburg; she was his daughter Natasha (called ’Daly’). They were trying to reach Petrograd, where he had a brother who had formerly been a workman in the Putilov factory. They were both poor people, he a simple-minded peasant who could neither read nor write, but his daughter, thank God, had had an education and had spent some years as lady’s maid in an aristocratic family. (Hence her accent and soft hands.) But they had both fallen lately on evil times—she, of course, had lost her job, and he had had his cottage burned down by White brigands. It was all just the sort of ordinary and quite unexceptionally pathetic case of which there were probably some millions of examples at that time throughout the country.
The morning warmed and freshened as the couple wound their way along the valley road. They met few people, and none save humble travellers like themselves; from one of these peasant wayfarers A.J. bargained a loaf of bread. With this and a few wild strawberries gathered by the roadside they made a simple but satisfactory meal, washed down with icy mountain-water from a stream.