Then Daly, who had not so far spoken, interposed: “Still less are we blaming you, Captain Poushkoff. On the contrary, we owe you far more than we can ever repay.” A.J. nodded emphatically.
“Not at all,” Poushkoff courteously replied. “Yet even that, now you mention it, is a case in point—it could not have happened without hard lying.”
Daly smiled. “On our part, Captain?”
“Well, no—I was rather thinking of Tamirsky. He lies so marvellously—it is a pure art with him. And so faithfully, too—his lies are almost more steadfast than the truth. You certainly owe your life to him, Madame.”
“And why not also to you, Captain, who told him what lie to tell?”
“Oh no, no—you must not look at it in that way. My own little lie was only a very poor and unsuccessful one compared with Tamirsky’s.”
“What was your lie, Captain?”
He answered, rather slowly, and with his eyes, implacable yet curiously tender, fixed upon her: “I said, Madame, that in my opinion the photograph bore only a slight resemblance to you. That was my lie. For the photograph, in fact, was of you beyond all question.”
She laughed. “Nevertheless, don’t suppose for one moment that I shall admit it.”
“Of course not. Your best plan is so clearly a denial that I don’t find your denial either surprising or convincing.” He suddenly smiled, and as he did so the years seemed to fall away and leave him just a boy. “But really, don’t let’s worry ourselves. Quite frankly, I don’t care in the least who you are.”
A.J. had been listening to the conversation with growing astonishment and apprehension. There was such a charm about Poushkoff that he had been in constant dread of what Daly might be lured into saying; yet an almost equal lure had worked upon himself and had kept him from intervening. Even now he was waiting for her answer with curiosity that quite outdistanced fear. She said: “That leads up to a rather remarkable conclusion, Captain. You believed I was really the Countess, yet you made every effort to save my life.”
“Yes, perhaps I did, but I don’t see anything very remarkable in it.”
They sat in silence for some time, while the train-wheels jog jogged over the uneven track, across a world that was but a white desert meeting a grey and infinite horizon. A.J. was puzzled still, but less apprehensive; it was queer how the fellow’s charm could melt away even deepest misgivings. More than queer—there was something uncanny in it; and he knew, too, that Daly was aware of the same uncanniness. He glanced at her, and she smiled half- enquiringly, half-reassuringly. Then she said, all at once serene: “Captain, since you do not care who I am, there is no reason why we should not all be the greatest of friends.” And turning to A.J. she added: “Don’t you think we might share our food with the Captain?”
A.J., after a moment’s hesitation, returned her smile; in another moment one of the bundles that had been so neatly and carefully packed at the Valimoffs’ cottage was being opened on that shabby but only slightly verminous compartment-seat. There was a tin of pork and beans, a tin of American mixed fruits, shortbread, chocolate, and—rarest delicacy of all—a bottle of old cognac. As these treasures were displayed one after another, Poushkoff showed all the excitement of a well-mannered schoolboy. “But this is charming of you!” he exclaimed rapturously, and then, with swift prudence, rushed to lock the door leading to the corridor and pull down the blinds. “It will be best for us not to be observed,” he laughed, and continued: “And to think that I offered you my poor biscuits!”
“We were very grateful for them,” Daly said, with a shining sweetness in her eyes.
Then began a most incredible and extraordinary picnic. Zest came over them all, as if they had been friends from the beginning of the world, as if there were no future ever to fear, as if all life held nothing but such friendship and such joyous appetite. Poushkoff’s winsomeness overflowed into sheer, radiant high spirits; Daly laughed and joked with him like a carefree child; A.J. became the suddenly suave and perfect host, handing round the food as gaily as if they had all been on holiday together. It was like some strange dream that they were all, as by a miracle, dreaming at once. They shouted with laughter when Poushkoff tried to open the tin of fruit with the knife-blade and squirted juice over his tunic. They had to eat everything with their fingers and to drink the brandy out of the bottle—but how wonderful it all was, and how real compared with that unreal background of moving snowfields and flicking telegraph-poles! They did silly inconsequential things for no reason but that they wanted to do them; Poushkoff made a fantastic impromptu after-dinner speech; A.J. followed it by another; and Daly exclaimed, in the midst of everything: “Captain, I’m sure you speak French—wouldn’t you like to?” And they all, in madness to be first, began gabbling away like children.
The brandy passed round again, and Poushkoff made cigarettes out of the coarse army tobacco, and they puffed away furiously as they chattered. It was brilliant chatter, for the most part; Daly and Poushkoff were perfect foils for each other, and the queerest thing of all was that they talked in an intricate, intimate way that somehow needed neither questioning nor explaining on either side. A.J., not talking quite so much, was nevertheless just as happy—with a keenness, indeed, that was almost an ache of memory, for he felt the had known Poushkoff not only before but many times before. Then Poushkoff interrupted one of his own fantastic speeches to thank them both with instant tragic simplicity. “I suppose,” he said, “we shall not see one another again after we reach Samara. That is a pity. The French say—’Faire ses adieux, c’est mourir un peu’—but in this country it is ‘mourir entičrement.’ We have all of us died a thousand deaths like that during these recent years.” He seized Daly’s hand and pressed it to his lips with a strange blending of gallantry and shyness. “Oh, how cruel the world is, to have taken away my life far more than it can ever take away yours…” Then he suddenly broke down into uncontrollable sobbing. They were astounded and moved beyond speech; Daly put her arm round the boy and drew his head gently against her breast. He went on sobbing, and they could not step him; his whole body shook as if the soul were being wrenched out of it. Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was all over, and he was looking up at her, his eyes swimming in tears, and saying: “I humbly beg your pardon. I don’t know what you must think of me—behaving like this It was the brandy—I’m unused to it.”
They both smiled at him, trying to mean all they could without speaking, and he took up his book and pretended to read again. A.J., for something to do, cleared away the remains of the meal and repacked the bundle, while lolly stared out of the window at the dazzling snow. A long time passed, and at length came the same cairn, controlled voice that they had heard first of all in the market-place at Novarodar. “Do you know Samara?” he was asking.
“I’ve been through it, that’s all;” A.J. answered.
Poushkoff continued: “It’s a fairly large town—much larger than Novarodar. As you know, our army has just taken it from the Czechs. Its full of important people—all kinds of people who were all kinds of things before the Revolution. There are bound to be many who knew Countess Adraxine personally.”
Daly said still smiling: “And no Tamirskys, eh?”
“Probably not. The perfect Tamirsky is the rarest of all creatures.”
“I see So you are warning us?”
“Well, Hardly so much as that. But I am rather wondering what is going to happen to you.”
“Ah, we none of us know that, do we?”
“No, but I thought you alight possibly have something in mind.”