Knight Without Armour

On the fifth day they fell in with a peasant who told them of a quick way into the plains. He was a bent and gnarled fellow of an age that looked to be anything between sixty and eighty, and with the manner of one to whom Bolshevism and revolution were merely the pranks of a young and foolish generation. He was full of chatter, and told A.J. all his family affairs, besides pointing to a small timbered roof on a distant hillside that was his own. He had left a sick daughter alone in that hut with five small children; her husband was a soldier, fighting somewhere or other—or perhaps dead—no news had been received for many months. “Of course he will never come back—they never do. She has had no baby now for over two years—is it not dreadful? And she would make a good wife for any man when she is in good health—oh yes, a very good wife.”

A.J. made some sympathetic remark and the old man continued: “But what are young men nowadays? Mere adventurers pretending to want to see the world! What is the world, after all? When you have seen one forest you have seen them all, and one field is very much like another. I myself am quite happy to have been no further than Vremarodar, seventy versts away.” He chuckled amidst the odorous depths of a heavy matted beard and still continued: “I don’t suppose you’d ever guess my age, either, brother. I’m a hundred and three, though people don’t always believe me when I tell them. You see my youngest daughter’s only thirty-five, and people say it’s impossible.” He chuckled again, “but it isn’t impossible, I assure you—I’m not the sort of fellow to tell you a lie. Why, look at me now, still fit and hearty, as you can see, and if there was a pretty woman about, and my honour as a man depended on it, I don’t know but what…” His chuckles boiled over into resonant laughter. “Mind you, I’m not what I used to be, by a long way, and I think it’s a girl’s duty to look after her father when he lives to be my age, don’t you? She’s not a bad girl, you know, but she’s inclined to be lazy and I have to thrash her now and again. Not that I like doing it, but women—well, you know all about them, I daresay. Ah well, there’s your path—it leads out into a long valley and at the end of that there are the plains as far as you can sec. Good- day to you, brother, and to you too, madam.”

The next day they reached the edge of the forests and saw the plains stretching illimitably into the hazy distance. But before descending, it was necessary to make arrangements. It was certain that they would meet man’’ strangers once they left the hillsides, and with the prospect, too, of colder weather, they could no longer rely on sleeping out of doors. A soldier’s disguise, for the woman especially, seemed therefore likely to be a source of danger, and A.J. decided that it would be Better for them to resume their peasant roles. In his own case the change was inconsiderable, since so many peasants wore army clothes whenever they could acquire them; and as for Daly, she had only to change into the female attire that she had been carrying with her all the way from Saratursk.