Knight Without Armour

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.

Throughout the day they did not see a solitary habitation or come within rumour of a village. All about them stretched the lonely forest-covered foothills of the Urals, dark with pine-trees and soaring into the hazy distance where a few of the peaks still kept their outlines hidden in mist. The air was full of aromatic scents, and by the wayside, as they trudged, high banks of wildflowers waved their softer perfumes.

Towards evening they met an old bearded peasant of whom A.J. asked the distance to the nearest village. “Three versts,” he answered. “But if you are travellers seeking a night’s shelter, you had better not go there.” A.J. asked why, and the man answered: “A band of soldiers have been raiding the place in search of someone supposed to have murdered a Red guard in the forests. The soldiers are still there, and if you were to arrive as a stranger they might arrest you on suspicion. You know what ruffians those fellows are when they are dealing with us simple folk.” A.J. agreed and thanked the man; it was a fine night, he added, and it would do himself and his daughter no harm to rest in the forest. “Oh, but there is no need to do that,” urged the other.

“You can have shelter at my cottage just away up yonder hill. I am a woodcutter—Dorenko by name—but I am not a ruffian like most woodcutters. As soon as I saw you and your daughter coming along the road I thought how tired she looked and I felt sorry for her. Yes, indeed, brother, you are fortunate—not many woodcutters are like me. I have a kind heart, having lost my wife last year. Perhaps I may marry again some day. I have a nice little cottage and it is clean and very comfortable, though the cockroaches are a nuisance. Come, brother, you and your girl will enjoy a good meal and a night’s rest under a roof.”