Knight Without Armour

“Not a bit. I hate her, even, because I see in her a possible danger to you. It’s all very selfish, I know, but I can’t help it. I won’t even try to help it. The world is so full of misery that one cant—one daren’t—one’s eyes to it all. The most to be done is to make sure of what one loves and never to let it go. All the rest must be put outside—entirely.”

“Do you think Poushkoff felt like that?”

“Probably. He loved you too.”

She smiled and closed her eyes, and he went down to talk to Stapen. Her words, however, had made him rather more friendly towards the old man, who proved, on acquaintance, the pleasantest and simplest of types. His wife, who came in later in the evening after failing to secure any bread, was very different, but perhaps necessarily so in order to strike a balance with a husband of such benignity. She was a shrewd and rather embittered woman, who gave A.J. hut the chilliest of welcomes. A fruitless four-hour wait in a bread- queue had put her into a mood of outspokenness that her husband sought in vain to check; she almost began by saying: “Well, if Denikin’s men are on the way, let hem bring some food with them. For my part, I don’t care whether we are governed by Reds or Whites, so long as working people can get enough to eat.”

Afterwards Stapen apologised for her with stately courtesy. “She was always like that,” he said. “Many’s the time that my dear old master, Prince Borosil, said to me—’Stapen, you should whip her!’—and I promised I would. But, somehow, I could never bring myself to do it.”

In the morning Daly seemed much better, and A.J.’s hopes began to be optimistic again. It was all, of course, a little more difficult now that they had met Stapen. The fellow assumed so completely that they intended to take the child along with them when they made their dash for safety; it was a dream he had been dreaming for months, and now it seemed about to be accomplished he could only build pretty details all around it. Would they take her to Paris? Or to Rome? Or to London? There were royalties and semi-royalties all over Europe who, it appeared, would be delighted to extend unlimited hospitality to such an exalted babe. For she was, Stapen explained in a whisper, within measurable distance of being heir to all the Russias. The Bolsheviks had killed so many of the ex-Emperor’s family and relatives—far more than anyone could estimate exactly—and the careful, systematic process of extermination was still being carried out. “That is why they are always on the watch for the princess,” he added, “but so far I don’t think they have the slightest idea where she is. They have her photograph, of course, but it is bound to be an old one, and she is different now, especially after her illness.”

A.J. and Daly were solemnly presented to the princess that morning. She was a thin and sad little thing, wasted by fever and obviously very weak. Stapen treated her with rather absurd decorum, while his wife treated her exactly as if she had been her own child; and the princess showed unmistakable affection for them both.

But the more Stapen outlined the child’s social and dynastic importance the more unwilling A.J. was to encumber himself with her. Yet it became increasingly difficult to convey this to Stapen. It was not only that A.J. did not wish to offend the fellow, but rather that no means existed by which Stapen could be brought to conceive A.J.’s point of view. “He won’t see that we have our own future to think of,” A.J. told Daly. “Frankly, I’m not interested in dynastic intrigues—it doesn’t matter a jot to me that the child’s a princess, next in succession, and so on. All I care about in the world is getting you to safety, and I won’t agree to anything that will lessen the chance of it.”

She smiled. “Very well, then, we shall have to tell Stapen that we can’t take her.”

“Yes, and the sooner the better. I’ll tell him in the morning.”

But in the morning Daly was ill again, after being sick and feverish during the night. Their departure looked as if it must be postponed for another day or two, and so, in the circumstances, there did not seem any particular need to present Stapen with the arranged ultimatum.

By noon the whole situation was changed utterly and for the worse, for Daly was by this time very ill indeed, and A.J., with fair experience of such matters, diagnosed typhus. It was not really astonishing, and yet, for some reason, it was a mischance that he had never even considered.