Part 13

Dearests:--

Peter is here. Last night, about nine o'clock the door opened and he rushed into the room. I got to my feet on impulse, and then tried to brace myself and control my disordered reason, for, of course, I believed myself delirious. He stopped by the door long enough to throw down his suitcase, and in that instant I struggled fiercely to disbelieve my eyes. I was fighting myself. My legs trembled. But when I fell, his arms were around me, supporting me.

"Is it you? Is it you?" I don't know whether I said the words out loud or not, but I remember feeling the muscle in Peter's shoulder and wondering if I could have gone out of my head as much as that.

"What on earth has happened to you two?" he said at last.

"Let me sit down," I said, feeling suddenly very sick and faint, and a black spot in front of my eyes expanded all at once and shut out the swaying room.

"Why didn't you come to Bucharest?" he asked again.

"How white and thin you are. Isn't he, Marie?" I observed, the blackness gone from my eyes.

"Please answer me. What is the matter? You both look sick."

"We are under arrest for espionage," Marie and I suddenly burst out in chorus, and we both began talking as fast and as loud as we could.

"That's all right. I'll fix things for you," Peter reassured us when we stopped at last, out of breath. I suddenly wanted to hide him so they wouldn't get him as well as ourselves. He was so self-confident. What did he know of how things happened over here? He was talking and acting like a rational human being, which was sure proof he was in no position to cope with the Russian Secret Service. I felt a frantic desire to get him out of the room and make him promise that on no account would he admit he knew us.

"You must go at once," I whispered. "There's a spy at the door. If he sees you, they'll arrest you, too. Please go, go at once." And I tried to push him away.

"You poor things," he said, laughing. "There's no need to be frightened like this. Of course I won't go. Why should they arrest me?"

"Why should they have arrested us? Oh, you don't know." My teeth were chattering.

"Now, look here," he said seriously. "You've been alone and scared, and I'm sure you haven't eaten anything for days. Now, don't think about this any more. I'll get you out in no time. Have you a cigarette, anybody?"

I sat back, and my body stopped shaking. Everything seemed very still. I had the distinct thought, "What is to come, will come," and I drew a deep breath that seemed to come from my toes. It was enough Peter was here, after all.

We talked till three in the morning. Peter had gone to Bucharest to meet us, and when we didn't arrive, he took the first train to Kiev. I began to believe in his bodily presence. Before he left to go back to his hotel, I had regained my conviction he was a match for even the Russian Secret Service.

Can you imagine how we feel to-day? We go tottering round the room, taking things up and putting them down again, in a nervous anxiety to do something. We chirp the rag-times popular in America two years ago. We feel as though we were just recovering from a sickness, with a pleasant bodily weakness like a convalescent's in the springtime. Peter brought me a bunch of red roses when he came over this morning. I am writing this while he is seeing Mr. Douglas, the English Consul.

So much love to you from

RUTH.

September.

Darlingest ones:--

It has been three weeks since our arrest, and to-day is the first time we have been allowed to leave the room and go outdoors. We are still under house-arrest, but we can go out in the garden, while two soldiers guard the entrance. Isn't it ludicrous? A gendarme came last night and announced with ponderous importance that we were to be permitted the liberty of the garden if we gave our word of honor not to try to escape. We signed two red-sealed documents, and so we can go into the garden while two soldiers with bayonets look to it that we don't go any farther.

Peter had to bully me into leaving my room this afternoon. I didn't want to get healthy. I had grown so used to the proportions of our rooms I hated to make the effort to adjust myself to any others. But Peter came back from his daily round of visits to the English Consul, and the Army Headquarters, and the office of Kiev's civil governor, and produced from his coat-pocket a rubber ball. We were to play ball out in the garden, he said. So, after some persuasion Marie and I went out into the garden with him. How weak I was. My legs trembled going downstairs, and I was exhausted when I reached the benches in the garden.

Janchu, seeing us, ran up joyfully and took his mother by the hand. "This is my mother," he said in Polish, looking around proudly at the other children who were playing there.

Every one looked at us curiously. A head appeared at every window in the big stone apartment house. I saw the two women spies who had undressed us. They were evidently employed as servants in some family, for one was ironing and the other fixing a roast for the oven. They, too, looked out at us. I felt hot and indignant and, yes, ashamed as though I had been guilty. I wanted to hide. I felt inadequate to life. People were too much for me. People--people, the living and the dead. What a weight of life! I could hardly control my tears. Weakness, I suppose, for the soles of my feet and my fingertips hurt me as though my nerves were bared to the touch.

I looked up over the garden-wall. The tree-tops were yellow. While we had been locked in our room, the season had changed. Autumn was upon us. I shivered. There was a lavender mist over the city dimming the radiance of the gold and silver church domes. How beautiful Kiev was! The church-bells were so mellow-toned; and the children's shrill laughter and cries as they played in the garden. But it tired me. Every impression seemed to bruise me.

Peter bought some little Polish cakes, and we had hot tea to cheer us up--three and four glasses of tea.

Good-night. Sometimes, when I think of you, I don't see all of you, but instead a particular gesture, or I hear an inflection of voice that is too familiar to be borne. Now I see mother's hands and they are beautiful.