So I said no more. Stepanovna had very decided notions of things. If she had been an Englishwoman before the war she would have been a militant suffragette.
It was at the beginning of February that I saw Stepanovna for the last time. My acquaintance with her ceased abruptly, as with other people under similar circumstances. Varia, it transpired, got into trouble through trying to communicate with Ivan Sergeievitch in Finland.
Before going to Stepanovna’s flat I always phoned and asked, “Is your father any better?”—which meant, May I come and stay the night? To which she or Varia would reply, “Quite well, thank you, and he would like you to go and see him when you have time.”
On the last occasion when I called up, Stepanovna did not at once answer. Then in a voice full of indecision she stammered, “I don’t know—I think—I will ask—please wait a moment.” I waited and could hear she had not left the telephone. At last she continued tremblingly, “No, he is no better, he is very bad indeed—dying.” There was a pause. “I am going to see him,” she went on, stammering all the time, “at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, do—do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said; “I will go too and wait for you.”
Wondering if we had understood each other, I stationed myself at the corner of the street a little before eleven, and watched from a distance the entrance to Stepanovna’s house. One glance, when she came out, satisfied her I was there. Walking off in the other direction, she followed Kazanskaya Street, only once looking round to make sure I was behind, and, reaching the Kazan Cathedral, entered it. I found her in a dark corner to the right.
“Varia is arrested,” she said, in great distress. “You must come to our flat no more, Ivan Pavlovitch. A messenger came from Viborg the day before yesterday and asked Varia, if she could, to get out to Finland. They went together to the Finland Station and got on the train. There they met another man who was to help them get over the frontier. He was arrested on the train and the other two with him.”
“Is there any serious charge?” I asked. “Simply running away is no grave offence.”
“They say the two men will be shot,” she replied. “But Varia only had some things she was taking to Ivan Sergeievitch’s wife.”
I tried to reassure her, saying I would endeavour to discover how Varia’s case stood, and would find some means of communication.
“I am expecting a search,” she went on, “but of course I have made preparations. Maybe we shall meet again some day, Ivan Pavlovitch. I hope so.”
I felt very sorry for poor Stepanovna in her trouble. She was a fine type of woman in her way, though her views on things were often crude. But it must be remembered that she was only a peasant. As I was crossing the threshold of the cathedral, something moved me to turn back for a moment, and I saw Stepanovna shuffle up to the altar and fall on her knees. Then I came away.
I was resolved to get the Policeman on the job at once to find out the circumstances of Varia’s case, which I felt sure could not be serious. But I was not destined to make this investigation. I never saw either Varia or Stepanovna again, nor was it possible for me to discover what ultimately became of them. Tossed hither and thither by the caprice of circumstance, I found myself shortly afterwards suddenly placed in a novel and unexpected situation, of which and its results, if the reader have patience to read a little further, he will learn.
VII
Finland
Stáraya Derévnya, which means “the Old Village,” is a remote suburb of Petrograd, situated at the mouth of the most northerly branch of the River Neva, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It is a poor and shabby locality, consisting of second-rate summer villas and a few small timber-yards and logmen’s huts. In winter when the gulf is frozen it is the bleakest of bleak places, swept by winds carrying the snow in the blizzard-like clouds across the dreary desert of ice. You cannot tell then where land ends and seas begins, for the flats, the shores, the marshes, and the sea lie hidden under a common blanket of soft and sand-like snowdrifts. In olden times I loved to don my skis and glide gently from the world into that vast expanse of frozen water, and there, miles out, lie down and listen to the silence.
A few days after I had parted from Stepanovna in the Kazan Cathedral, I sat in one of the smallest and remotest huts of Stáraya Derévnya. It was eleven o’clock of a dark and windless night. Except for the champing of a horse outside, the silence was broken only by the grunting and snoring of a Finnish contrabandist lying at full length on the dirty couch. Once, when the horse neighed, the Finn rose hurriedly with a curse. Lifting the latch cautiously, he stole out and led the animal round to the seaward side of the cottage, where it would be less audible from the road. Having recently smuggled a sleigh-load of butter into the city, he was now returning to Finland—with me.
It was after midnight when we drove out, and, conditions being good, the drive over the sea to a point well along the Finnish coast, a distance of some forty-odd miles, was to take us between four and five hours. The sledge was of the type known as
