Part 12

He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly. His spies clustered about him, and they left the room.

All at once my bones seemed to crumble and my flesh dissolve. I fell into a chair. Marie and I looked at each other. We began to laugh. "We mustn't get hysterical," we said, and kept on laughing.

The room was so dark that we looked like two shadows. Panna Lolla had come after Janchu and taken him into Count S----'s room. We imagined the excited curiosity of the rest of the pension.

"I'll wager that woman was a spy, after all."

"But why--why should we have a revision?"

"Anyway, they couldn't have found much. We'll be set free in a few days," Marie said.

"They found my letter about the Jews," I replied.

"What letter? Oh, my dear, what did you say?"

"I forget. But everything I saw or heard, I think."

We began to laugh again.

"Will they send our telegrams?"--"Will Peter come on?"--"What shall we do for money?"

The room was pitch-dark except for the electric light from the street. We heard the creak and rattle of the empty commissariat wagons returning from the barracks. We fell silent, feeling suddenly very tired and lethargic.

"Where is Janchu? It's time for his supper," Marie said, without moving.

I started out of the room to call him, and fell across a dark figure sitting in front of the door. He grunted and pushed me back into the room.

"I want Janchu," I said in perfectly good English, while he closed the door in my face.

"There's a spy outside our door," I whispered to Marie.

Panna Lolla came in with Janchu and turned on the light.

"There's a man outside our door, and two secret-service men at the pension door and two soldiers downstairs," she whispered excitedly in one breath. "No one can leave the pension, and they take the name and address of every one who comes here. And that woman was a spy. Antosha saw the chief go into her room and heard them talking together. And she left when they did."

I lay all night, half asleep, half awake, hearing the street noises clearly through the open windows. I cried a little from exhaustion and nerves, and then controlled myself, for my head began to ache, and who knew what would happen the next day? I had to keep strength to meet something that was coming. I had no idea what it was, but the uncertainty of the future only made it more ominous and threatening. That letter--In the darkness I saw the chief's watchful, narrow eyes, and the horn-rimmed spectacles of the friendly spy, and the stuffed portfolio.

Later.

Nothing has happened yet. We have our meals brought to us by Antosha, who tries to comfort us with extra large pickled cucumbers and portions of sour cream. We are allowed to send Panna Lolla downtown for cigarettes and books from the circulating library. Thank Heaven for books! With our nerves stretched to the snapping-point and a pinwheel of thoughts everlastingly spinning round in our heads, I think we should go mad except for books. It is very hot, but my body is always cool and damp, because I can't eat much, I suppose, and lie on a chaise longue motionless all day long. I can feel myself growing weak, and there is nothing to do but sit and wait.

Marie and I go over and over the whole thing, and finish at the point where we began. "But why?" We think it may be because Marie came to Bulgaria to visit me and brought me back here, and now we want to leave Russia together. The papers say that Bulgaria already has German officers over her troops. But I can't believe it. She is too independent. They say that she will certainly go with the Central Powers. That, too, is inconceivable. Perhaps, however, if it is true, and already known by the Russian authorities, the secret service is suspicious of our going back there, and of Marie's intention of sailing home from Dedeagatch, via Greece. What else could it be? How this uncertainty maddens us! Yet we are thankful for every day that passes and leaves us together. What will happen when they translate my letter? Bojé moy! I hear a step outside the door, and my heart simply ceases to beat.

Pan Tchedesky to-day tiptoed into our room when the spy was having his lunch. He whispered to us that he had seen the English Consul, Mr. Douglas, and told him about our case. He begged us not to be discouraged, and to eat. He said that he almost wept when he saw our plates come back to the kitchen, untouched. How flabby and livid he looked, his vague, blurred eyes watery with tears! Yet we could have embraced him. He is the only person who has spoken to us.

The sun is golden on the old convent wall across the street. The convent is empty during the summer. Only the richest Court ladies send their daughters there to be educated, and the Dowager Empress visits them when she passes through Kiev. The trees in the garden are gold and green in the late afternoon sun. A little bell tinkles musically.

Below in the street some passing soldiers are singing. How fresh and strong and beautiful their untrained voices are. I wonder if they are off to the front, for each one carries a pack and a little tea-kettle swung on his back and a wooden spoon stuck along the side of his leg in his boot. Where will they be sent? Up north, to try and stem the German advance? To Riga? Where? The Germans are still advancing. Something is wrong somewhere. And still soldiers go to the front, singing. They are thrown into the breach. I can't help but think of the fields of Russian dead, unburied. Who has a chance to bury the dead on a retreat? There is nothing "decent" in it. Yet they say the retreat is "orderly." I wonder what that means?

At night when I try to sleep, I see the map of Russia as if it was printed on my eyeballs. It is so big and black with a thin red line of fire eating into it. America seems millions of miles away. I wish I could touch you just for a minute. If I could only feel your arms about me for one moment. The only way is not to think beyond this room and this minute.

RUTH.

August.