WE kept up a fair pace for nearly an hour, the horse moving at a slow, loping canter, with spells of walking for me to recover breath; and in this way we covered six or seven miles, which brought us to the foot of the steep rugged hills that divide Bratinsk from Pulta.
“We’ve about a mile and a half climb here, then a stretch of a mile or so along the top, and after that a tremendous hill down into Pulta,” I told “Peggy,” as we pulled up.
“Are you not tired?”
“No. I could cover a lot of ground at that jog trot. I’m pretty tough, you see.”
“Ride up the hill and let me walk.”
“Not a bit of it. We’ll push on as we are, if you don’t mind.” I had no breath left for talking, so I plodded on in silence. There had been so much to do in the interval since we had left the Devil’s Staircase that I seemed to have had no time to think of anything except the pressing affair of the moment. But I had time now, as I strode up the hill; and for the first time I seemed to awake to a recognition of the supreme confidence and unquestioning trust which Volna showed in me.
The night was very dark; we were miles from everywhere; she knew nothing of me, and had only seen me first some eight or nine hours before; and yet she rode by my side as contentedly as though we had been friends for life, and were just out for a sort of conventional picnic in conventional hours. The pluck of it appealed to me as much as anything.
“You are a wonderful girl, Peggy,” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“Peggy? Do you know, I think I begin to like that name. I have been saying it over and over to myself during the ride. But why am I wonderful? I wish I could get used to saying Bob. But I have a sort of something in the throat that seems to jump up and stop me.”
“Ah, that’s a spasm of the naming tissues. One only has it when a name is fresh. You’ll get over that. The best cure is to say it often.”
“Is it, Bob? But why am I wonderful?”
“You do this unconventional thing as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world!”
“Do you mean I oughtn’t to trust—my brother Bob? You see, I just can’t help myself. I had to trust you. Besides, if you knew”—she broke off, and after a pause added a little eagerly—“you understand, don’t you?”
“I understand that chance has given me a very delightful sister.”
“Why, didn’t you begin by keeping my secret from that stationmaster—about Mary Smith. I felt like—like nothing I ever felt before when he brought you up and said you were English.”
“You tried your best to speak English.”
“It was like—like a glorious dream come true when you looked so grave and answered me in German. I’m not used to having people do kind things for me, except my dear mother. And when we stood outside the station, I—well, I’d have given anything just to have unloaded my whole stock of trouble to you.”
“Poor Peggy!”
“No, not Peggy, she hasn’t any troubles of that sort yet. They are—Bob’s. But it’s poor Volna; and Peggy will soon be Volna again.”
I did not know how to answer this. There was such a touch of sadness in it: so I said nothing.
“May I tell you?” she asked presently.
“Sylvia always tells me hers; so I know how to keep a secret.”
“I told you I had a half-sister and brother, didn’t I?”
“Are they like you at all?”
“No, no. They are both members of this terrible Fraternity—revolutionaries. My father was one and lost his life in the cause. My uncle, Count Peter—he was the brother of my father’s first wife—has always dominated our family: even my poor dear mother.”
“Is she involved with the Fraternity, too?”
“No, and yet yes. She has no sympathy with the movement at all; but my uncle influenced her and she has given large sums of money. She is rich, you know, and, if it is found out, the government would be glad to get any pretext for confiscating her fortune. They would throw her into prison, and it would kill her.”
“But surely your uncle was not so mad as to leave anything implicating her in existence.”
“I wish I could think that. It may be so; but only this morning he warned me that if these papers did not get to Cracow and a raid was made there, things would be found which would place her in danger.”
I thought some things about Count Peter which I did not express. “I hope he was exaggerating matters,” I said.
“We have not been happy at home because I would never join in any of these miserable conspiracies. My sister Katinka, and Paul too, always upbraided me.”
“You put your sister first, I notice.”
“She influences Paul. She is very strong willed, and very—very zealous for the ‘Fraternity.’”
“I don’t think you would make a very formidable conspirator, you know.”
“It is not that, exactly. I am too much of a coward, I know. But mother’s fortune comes to me and—oh, this miserable money; they want it for the cause.”
“Phew!” I whistled. “I begin to understand.”
“You thought it strange, I expect, that I was so little affected by my uncle’s fate; but I——”
“Don’t say any more if it worries you,” I said when she paused.
“Oh, I must tell you; only—the fact is, I was always afraid of him and he brought me away from home this time, saying only that I was to go on a visit to some friends; but when we were near Bratinsk he told me what the real object was and—and that mother and he had agreed that I was to be married.”
“Married!” I exclaimed.
“Married to a man who is high up in the Fraternity, and that I should not go back home until—until that was done.”
I thought more things about Count Peter—stronger and harsher things too, this time.
“I had not heard this an hour before you saw me at the station.”
“No wonder you looked troubled.”
“I stayed there hoping to get a train back to Warsaw. I meant to run away. There is another reason, a terrible entanglement, which made me so eager to get back.”
“Involving you?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you all about it some time. It closely concerns my mother’s safety, too.”
“What brought your uncle to Bratinsk?”
“Affairs of the Fraternity; to consult with one of the leaders.”
“Well, I won’t say all I think of your uncle for having involved you in all this.”
“He is dead. Perhaps if he had not been killed he would have listened to me.”
“Perhaps!” But I had my own opinion. “You are right. Volna has had her troubles.”
“I could not feel so sorry for him as I should, if—if things had been different. I am glad I have told you. It’s such a relief to have told some one. And now you know all about me.”
“Did you manage to write to your mother from Bratinsk?”
“Yes, just a short note—that all was well with me.”
“We must try to keep it so, too. Here we are at the top of the hill. Now we’ll push along again: and then, the first train for Cracow.”
We soon covered the flat along the top and I pointed out to her the twinkling lights of Pulta below us.
“How quickly we’ve come,” she cried.
“We must have a straight story to tell. I shall say we are driving in from Vashtic—a place on the other side of Pulta—and that our carriage broke down and we had to continue the journey in this fashion. I shall ask whether Mr. Trevor, a tall fair man, was in the train at the time of the wreck. But you’ll leave the lies for Bob to tell of course.”
“How bluntly you put it.”
“Oh, we can’t help telling some. But it’s in a good cause; so we must hope they’ll pass as white ones.”
I began to understand that night that artistic lying is really a very difficult accomplishment, when inquisitive officials have to be satisfied.
I found the railway station at Pulta in the hands of the police. It had been taken into custody so to speak. When anything happens in Russian Poland, it immediately becomes an object of suspicion; and any one seeking information is at once suspected of complicity. An officer stopped us and asked in a peremptory manner: “Who are you and what do you want?”
“There has been an accident, I believe.”
“Who are you and what do you want? Answer.” A little more sharpness in the tone.
“I am an Englishman, Robert Garrett, and this is my sister. We wish to know whether a friend, Mr. James Trevor, of London, has been hurt in the accident!”
“What accident?”
“The accident to the Cracow express!”
“Who told you there had been an accident?”
“I heard it at Vashtic.”
“Who told you there had been an accident?” he repeated.
“It seemed to be generally known. The servants in the house where I was staying heard it somewhere.”
“What are the servants’ names?”
“I don’t know. I think the man who told me was called Paul. But what I want to know——”
“Where were you staying at Vashtic?” he interrupted.
“What can that matter. Mr. Trevor of London——”
“Ah! You refuse to answer?” He turned away and beckoned to a companion, with whom he conferred, nodding toward us. Then turned to me again. “How did you get here?”
“I started in a caleche but the wheel came off and we had to finish the journey in this fashion.”
“Which wheel?”
“The left hind wheel.”
“Whose carriage was it?”
“I hired it from Gorlas Malstrom.” My inventive faculty for names was getting strained.
“Where does he live?”
“At Vashtic close to the hotel.”
“Which hotel?”
“The Imperial.” I remembered the name of a place where I once had lunch.
“Are you staying there?”
“I am not going back.”
“How long were you there?”
“Not more than an hour or two.”
“Where were you before?”
My local geography not being strong enough to stand a fusillade of this kind, I threw up an earthwork of anger.
“Look here, do you want me to give you a history of my tour with all particulars of my hotel bills since I left London?”
“Ah, you refuse to answer,” he said again, stolidly regarding me with a gloomy stare of suspicion.
“Oh, no; but I’ve had enough of your impertinent curiosity. I am an Englishman, let me see your superior officer.”
“Go away,” he said curtly.
“I demand to see——”
“Go away; or you will be arrested.”
Then I had an inspiration. I said, with a show of great indignation: “Very well. I’ll go, and what’s more I’ll go by the first train to Cracow and lay the matter before the British Consul. When is the first train? You’ll see whether you can smash up English travellers in your infernal trains and then refuse their friends any information.”
This appeared to make an impression. He hesitated, spoke to his companion, and then said: “Come back in the morning. There is no train until eleven o’clock.”
I had gained the information I needed; but I kept up my pretence of anger, muttering and grumbling and mumbling about what the British Consul would do, and so on, as I turned the horse’s head and moved off.
“Bad luck again,” I whispered to Volna. “No train to-night. You may as well try to get a night’s rest.”
“It’s a dark wood that has no clearing,” she said cheerily. “You need rest too, I am sure.”
We went off to find a hotel: and presently Volna whispered: “One of the men is following us.”
“The best thing we can do is to make use of him, then,” said I; and I halted to let him come up. It was the companion of the man who had questioned me, and I resolved to try a different method with him.
I took out a gold piece and let him see it. “You have been told off to follow me, I suppose?”
He glanced at the money and thought I was going to bribe him. “I have only my duty to do,” he said.
“If you’ll be guide instead of follower and show me where my sister and I can get rooms, I’ll give you this.”
He was my man instantly. “There will be no difficulty about that. The accident on the line has filled up the place, but I can manage it for you. You are English?” he said, as we walked.
“I only wanted to see if my poor friend, Trevor, was in that smash. But you heard what passed?”
He shrugged his shoulders and grinned. “You did not ask in the right way;” and he glanced at the money I had given him. “To-morrow it will be all right. There is a train to Cracow at eleven o’clock. I shall be there. No Englishman was hurt in the accident. You may feel quite at ease.”
“I am glad to hear that,” I said. I was; but not for the reasons he thought.
He earned his gold piece; for he soon found accommodation for us and for the horse; and bade us good-night, repeating his assurances that all would be well in the morning.