Knight Without Armour (26 page)

Novarodar was Red, but not as Red as many other places; its geographical
position had kept it so far out of the battle area, and also, owing to its
small importance as a railway centre, it had escaped Czecho-Slovak
occupation. The Valimoffs, of course, dreamed secret dreams ’of the day
when they should see the Revolution overthrown, the Imperial flag floating
again over the town hall, and strings of leading Reds lined up in the market
square before a firing squad. Perhaps, too, they envisaged a certain bitter
prestige appertaining to them when all Novarodar should learn that they, the
Valimoffs, had given shelter to two such illustrious persons as Count and
Countess Adraxine.

That day, remote as it seemed, looked infinitely more so after an event
which took place in mid-September. That was the capture of Kazan by the
Bolsheviks. The new army, under Trotsky, drove out the Czechs after a two-day
fight, thereby changing the entire military and political situation. With the
Czechs in retreat down the Volga it was no longer likely that the pincers
would close and the British troops from Archangel link up with the Czech
drive from the south. The news of the fall of Kazan caused great commotion in
Novarodar, for it was hoped that the Bolshevist victory would mean the
release of quantities of food that had been hitherto held up. Its first
effect, however, was disappointingly contrary. Hundreds of White refugees,
many belonging to wealthy families, streamed into the town from Kazan, where
they had been living for some time under Czech protection. The whole
situation was further complicated by exceptionally heavy rainfall, which had
flooded the surrounding country and made all the roads to the south of the
town impassable. Many White refugees, caught between the floods and the
Bolsheviks, preferred to remain in the town and come to terms with its
inhabitants, whose redness did not preclude the acceptance of large bribes
for temporary shelter. Thus Novarodar actually received more mouths for
feeding instead of more food to feed them, and the plight of those who had
little money became much worse than before.

To A.J., living through those strange days while Daly slowly recuperated,
it seemed impossible to state any sort of case or draw any sort of moral from
the chaos that was everywhere. It was as if the threads of innumerable events
had got themselves tied up in knots that no historian would ever unravel. The
starved townspeople, the wealthy refugees, the poverty-stricken refugees, the
youths of seventeen and eighteen in civilian clothes who had obviously been
Imperialist cadets, the streams of ragged, famished, diseased, and homeless
wanderers who passed into the town as vaguely and with as little reason as
they passed out of it—all presented a nightmare pageant of the
inexplicable. Novarodar’s small-town civilisation had crumbled
instantly beneath that combined onslaught of flood, famine, and invasion; all
the niceties of metropolitan life—cafés, cinemas, electric light,
shop-windows—had disappeared in quick succession, leaving the place
more stark and dreary than the loneliest village of the steppes.

Daly grew gradually stronger, though the strain of recent weeks had been
more considerable than either A.J. or herself had supposed. A.J. was divided
between two desires—to give her ample time to rest and recover, and to
continue the journey. He did not like the way events were developing in
Novarodar, especially when, towards the end of the month, came further news
that the Bolshevik army had taken Sembirsk. At last, to his great relief,
Daly seemed well enough again to face the risks of travel—so much the
more formidable now that the cold weather had arrived. Their plans were of
necessity altered owing to the Czech retreat; indeed, it had been a bitter
disappointment to have to stay in Novarodar day after day and know that every
hour put extra miles between themselves and safety. The nearest city now at
which they could hope to link up with the Whites was Samara, some two hundred
miles distant.

Meanwhile affairs at Novarodar very rapidly worsened. As the inflowing
stream of refugees continued, the last skeleton organisation of the town
collapsed; bread-riots took the place of the bread-queues, and the main
streets were the scenes of frequent clashes between Red police and bands of
White fugitives. It looked, indeed, as if the latter were planning a
coup
d’état
; so many had entered the town that they stood a good chance,
if they were to try. The inhabitants, starved and dispirited, were hardly in
a mood to care what happened, so long as, somehow or other, they received
supplies of food.

Then came news that the Bolsheviks were moving down the Volga towards
Samara. This sent a wave of panic amongst the White refugees, for, unless
they got away quickly eastward, there was every possibility of their being
trapped. Yet eastward lay the floods, still rising, that had turned vast
areas into lakeland and swamps. Some took the risk of drowning and starvation
and set out, but for most there began a period of anxious tension, with one
eye on the floodwater and the other on the maps which showed the rapid Red
advance. A shower of rain was enough to plunge the town in almost tangible
gloom, and groups of White cadets, a little scared beyond their boyish
laughter, climbed the church tower at all times of the day and scanned
impatiently that horizon of inundated land. Even the local inhabitants were
beginning to be apprehensive. Their position was a ticklish one, and the
worried expression on the faces of local Soviet officials was wholly
justified. Was it wise to have been so complacent with the White refugees?
The latter were too numerous now to be intimidated, but at first, when they
had begun to enter the town, would it not have been better to have been more
severe? Troubled by these and similar misgivings, and with their eyes fixed
feverishly on the war-map, the Novarodar Soviet, from being mildly pink,
flushed to deep vermilion in almost record time.

A.J. and Daly, like the rest, were waiting for the floods to subside. They
were both keen to get away, and even the hospitality of the Valimoffs, so
unstintingly given, would not induce them to stay an hour longer than had to
be. The Valimoffs assured them that Novarodar was quite safe whatever
happened, but A.J. did not think so. At last a day came when the floods
showed signs of falling. He had made all preparations for departure, had
accepted supplies of food from the still generous Valimoffs, had thanked
them, and pressed them in vain to take some money in return for all their
gifts and services; and then, just as he was tying up a final bundle, one of
the young men rushed in from the street with the news that Samara had
fallen.

All Novarodar was in instant uproar. With Samara in Bolshevik hands the
last hope that the Czech retirement was only temporary disappeared. Worse
still, the White line of retreat was cut off; Novarodar was now ringed round
on three sides by Red troops, and the fourth and only line of escape was
waterlogged. White refugees were gathering in little excited groups to
discuss the matter; some set out across the swamps, and later on that very
day a few stragglers carne back, mud-caked from head to foot, to report
catastrophes as horrible as any that were to be feared.

Once again A.J.’s plans suffered a blow. There seemed little hope
now of ever catching up with the recreating Czechs. A.J. and Daly talked the
whole question over with the Valimoffs; the latter, of course, thought that
the best plan would be for them to stay, disguised as they were, in
Novarodar. But A.J. was still all for movement; he felt instinctively that
every moment in Novarodar was, as it were, a challenge flung to Fate. He
talked of making for the Don country, where White troops, under Denikin, had
already driven a northward wedge to within a few score miles of Voronesk. His
eagerness increased as he computed the chances of the plan. Denikin’s
army, he argued, was more likely to advance than to retreat, since, unlike
the Czechs, it had a solid backing of support from the local populations. And
it was an advantage, too, that the way towards Denikin was the way towards
the Black Sea ports. Had he and Daly succeeded in reaching the Czechs, their
sole line of escape would have been by the long and tedious Trans-Siberian
journey, during which anything might have happened, and with the chance of
being held up indefinitely in the Far East. But to reach Denikin’s army
was to reach at once a far simpler gateway to the outer world.

In the end it was agreed that the southward plan should be tried; it was,
in fact, the only practical alternative to remaining in Novarodar. “We
shall trust to our disguise,” A.J. said, “and work our way, by
trains, if we can find any, through Kuszneszk and Saratof.” He agreed,
however, in view of the change of plans, to postpone departure to the
following morning.

The Valimoffs were keenly interested in the adventure, and, though
discouraging at first, soon came to regard it with tempered enthusiasm. In
particular the mention of Saratof roused them to a curious interchange of
looks amongst one another which A.J. did not fail to notice. That evening,
after the excellent dinner with which he and Daly were always provided,
Madame Valimoff humbly presented herself and craved an interview. He treated
her politely, as he always did, but with reserve. Daly was more cordial, and
this cordiality, natural as it was in the circumstances, had often given him
a feeling which he could only diagnose as petulance. The fact was that Madame
Valimoff, behind her obsequious manners, was an exceedingly strong-willed
person and had, he was sure, acquired a considerable influence over Daly,
whether the latter was aware of it or not. He had no reason, of course, to
believe that this influence was for the bad, yet somehow, though he could not
explain it, he had misgivings.

Madame Valimoff, with many apologies for troubling them, soon came to the
point. Before the Revolution, she said, she and two of her sons had been
servants in Petrograd at the house of the Rosiankas. Prince and Princess
Rosianka had been murdered by the Reds at Yaroslav; there was a large family,
all of whom had been massacred with their parents except the youngest—a
girl of six. This child, the sole survivor of the family and inheritor of the
title, had been hidden away by loyal servants and taken south. It had been
intended to smuggle the child abroad, but, owing to increased Bolshevist
vigilance, it had not been possible to reach the Black Sea ports in time. The
two servants, a former butler named Stapen and his wife, who had been a cook
in the same household, were now living in Saratof, and the child was still
with them there.

Madame Valimoff then produced a letter from this ex-butler, written some
weeks previously and delivered by secret messenger. It conveyed the
information that the child was in fairly good health, and that Stapen was
constantly on the watch for some chance of sending her south, especially now
that Denikin was advancing so rapidly. It was a risky business, however, and
the person to be trusted with such a task could not be selected in a hurry.
“You see,” Madame Valimoff explained, after A.J. and Daly had
both examined the letter, “the Bolshevists have photographs of all the
persons they are looking out for, and the little princess is of course one of
them. So many escapes have been made lately that the examination is now
stricter than ever.”

Briefly, Madame’s suggestion was that he and Daly, when they reached
Saratof, should call at Stapen’s house and take the princess with them
into safety. She was sure they were the right sort of people to carry through
such a dangerous enterprise successfully. She gave them Stapen’s
address and also a little amber bead which, she said, would convince him of
their bona-fides, even if he did not recognise them. “But he probably
will,” she added. “Butlers have a good memory for faces, and
I’m sure you must sometime or other have visited the
Rosiankas.”

Daly admitted that she had.

After Madame Valimoff had gone, A.J. was inclined to be doubtful.
Madame’s dominant personality, the delivery of Stapen’s letter by
secret messenger, and various other significant details, had all made him
gradually aware that Madame was a person of some importance in the sub-world
of counter-revolutionary plotting. He did not himself wish to be drawn into
White intrigue; his only aim was to get himself and Daly out of the country,
and he had no desire to jeopardise their chances of success for the sake of a
small child whom they had neither of them ever seen. “If the child is
safe at Saratof,” he argued, “why not let her stay
there?”

All that Daly would say was that there could be no harm in promising the
Valimoffs to do what they could. “Our plans,” she said,
“may have to be altered again, so that we may never go anywhere near
Saratof. We can only give a conditional promise, but I think we might give
that—we really owe them a great deal, you know.”

It was true, beyond question, and later that evening A.J. assured Madame
Valimoff that he would certainly call on Stapen if it were at all possible.
Privately he meant the reservation to mean a great deal.

Very early next morning he bade farewell to his hosts, to whom he felt
immensely grateful, even though he had not been able to like them as much as
he felt he ought. He could not imagine how Daly and himself would have
managed without them; they had provided food and shelter just when it had
been most of all needed, and now they were prodigal to the last, making up
bundles of well- packed and artfully disguised food supplies for them to take
with them on their journey. A.J. thanked them sincerely, yet was never more
relieved than when he turned the corner of the street.

Only a few moments afterwards a loud boom sounded from the distance,
together with a shattering explosion somewhere over the centre of the town.
The streets, which till then had been nearly empty, filled suddenly with
scurrying inhabitants, all in panic to know what had happened, while a few
youths, White cadets, rushed by in civilian clothes, hastily buckling on
belts and accoutrements as they ran. A.J. did not stop to make enquiries, but
he gathered from overheard question and answer that the White refugees had
organised a
coup d’état
during the night, had killed the Soviet
guard, taken possession of all strategic points, and were now preparing to
defend the town against the approaching Red army. The latter, however, had
evidently learned of these events, and were bombarding the town (so the
rumour ran) from an armoured train some miles away.