Knight Without Armour

But soon a small wood fire was burning in the hearth and a scanty meal of black bread and thin soup was being prepared. The two travellers ate, drank, and dried themselves as well as they could, but A.J. s pleasure at such comparative good fortune was offset by anxiety about Daly. She seemed to have taken a bad chili, and he promised a further bribe to one of the daughters of the house in return for the loan of dry clothes. The daughter, a clean and neatly-dressed girl, helped him to prepare a bed near the fire, and Daly, by that time feverishly tired, was helped into it. She was soon asleep. He sat up for a time by the fire, and towards midnight the girl entered the room and brought him a small tumbler of vodka. The gift was so unexpectedly welcome that he was profuse in his thanks, and he was still more astonished when she went on: “You see, sir, I think I know who you are. You are Count Adraxine.”

“What?” he cried, and was about to make an indignant denial; then he checked himself and added more cautiously: “Why, whatever makes you think that?”

“I remember the Countess, sir. I used to be a maid at Baron Morvenstein’s house in Moscow, and I remember her quite distinctly.”

He still stared in bewilderment, and she continued: “You need not be afraid, sir—we are all very happy to be of service to you and the Countess.”

The revelation had been so sudden that, coming with the vodka after all the hardships and adventures of the day, it made him a little dizzy. Then, before his uncertain eyes, a curious pageant was enacted. The rest of the household, which till then had been rather unfriendly and had bargained greedily for every rouble, came into the room and were solemnly and separately presented to him by the girl, whose name was Annetta. They all bowed or curtseyed, and stared hard at the woman asleep in bed. Then they said polite things, and he said (or thought he said—he was too dazed to be sure of it) polite things in return. And afterwards, which was more to the point, Annetta brought him a second glass of vodka.

She told him that they had all been servants in big houses until the Revolution; the men had been footmen and the girls lady’s-maids. Madame Valimoff had been a housekeeper. They had all saved money, so that the loss of their jobs had not meant instant poverty; besides, their masters and mistresses had been generous with farewell gifts. But much more important than money, Annetta confessed, was the fact that they had managed to hoard up supplies of food.

After she had gone, A.J. sat for another hour in front of the fire. The vodka had set the blood tingling in his veins; his mind was still bewildered. He partly undressed and lay down in the bed beside Daly; he went to sleep and awoke to find himself somehow in her arms. She was asleep then, and fever-hot; the fire in the hearth was smouldering; rain was still falling outside. How fortunate was their lot compared with that of the night before…Then she awoke and he told her all that had happened. She was quietly astonished and confirmed the one fact confirmable—that she had, on several occasions before her marriage, visited Baron Morvenstein’s house in Moscow. He listened to her, yet all the time he was thinking of something rather different; he was thinking how strange, yet how natural, that they should both be lying together, he and she, ex-commissar and ex-countess, there in a workman’s cottage in a town whose name they did not yet know. (Which reminded him that he must ask Annetta in the morning.) He said: “Of course, they take me for the Count—which is funny, in a way.”

She shivered with laughter. “Isn’t it all funny? Isn’t everything rather a bad joke? Everything except—” And she cast over him again the spell of her own dark and sleepy passion.

In the morning they both rose late, the household evidently preferring not to waken them. As soon, however, as they were up and dressed, Annetta appeared with a pot of steaming coffee, fresh rolls made of white flour, and cherry jam. It was miraculous, and they guzzled over it like children at a party.