“You are a soldier?” she asked, with a new note in her voice.
“I was then—till the war finished.”
“And now? Why have you come here?”
“To offer you help if you need it. If not, to ask your pardon and go away.”
The shrouded figure in the chair burst suddenly into rapid hysterical talk in some foreign tongue which Dickson suspected of being French. Heritage replied in the same language, and the girl joined in with sharp questions. Then the Poet turned to Dickson.
“This is my friend. If you will trust us we will do our best to help you.”
The eyes rested on Dickson’s face, and he realized that he was in the presence of something the like of which he had never met in his life before. It was a loveliness greater than he had imagined was permitted by the Almighty to His creatures. The little face was more square than oval, with a low broad brow and proud exquisite eyebrows. The eyes were of a colour which he could never decide on; afterwards he used to allege obscurely that they were the colour of everything in Spring. There was a delicate pallor in the cheeks, and the face bore signs of suffering and care, possibly even of hunger; but for all that there was youth there, eternal and triumphant! Not youth such as he had known it, but youth with all history behind it, youth with centuries of command in its blood and the world’s treasures of beauty and pride in its ancestry. Strange, he thought, that a thing so fine should be so masterful. He felt abashed in every inch of him.
As the eyes rested on him their sorrowfulness seemed to be shot with humour. A ghost of a smile lurked there, to which Dickson promptly responded. He grinned and bowed.
“Very pleased to meet you, Mem. I’m Mr. McCunn from Glasgow.”
“You don’t even know my name,” she said.
“We don’t,” said Heritage.
“They call me Saskia. This,” nodding to the chair, “is my cousin Eugenie … We are in very great trouble. But why should I tell you? I do not know you. You cannot help me.”
“We can try,” said Heritage. “Part of your trouble we know already through that boy. You are imprisoned in this place by scoundrels. We are here to help you to get out. We want to ask no questions—only to do what you bid us.”
“You are not strong enough,” she said sadly. “A young man—an old man—and a little boy. There are many against us, and any moment there may be more.”
It was Dougal’s turn to break in, “There’s Lean and Spittal and Dobson and four tinklers in the Dean—that’s seven; but there’s us three and five more Gorbals Die-hards—that’s eight.”
There was something in the boy’s truculent courage that cheered her.
“I wonder,” she said, and her eyes fell on each in turn.
Dickson felt impelled to intervene.
“I think this is a perfectly simple business. Here’s a lady shut up in this house against her will by a wheen blagyirds. This is a free country and the law doesn’t permit that. My advice is for one of us to inform the police at Auchenlochan and get Dobson and his friends took up and the lady set free to do what she likes. That is, if these folks are really molesting her, which is not yet quite clear to my mind.”
“Alas! It is not so simple as that,” she said. “I dare not invoke your English law, for perhaps in the eyes of that law I am a thief.”
“Deary me, that’s a bad business,” said the startled Dickson.
The two women talked together in some strange tongue, and the elder appeared to be pleading and the younger objecting. Then Saskia seemed to come to a decision.
“I will tell you all,” and she looked straight at Heritage. “I do not think you would be cruel or false, for you have honourable faces… Listen, then. I am a Russian, and for two years have been an exile. I will not now speak of my house, for it is no more, or how I escaped, for it is the common tale of all of us. I have seen things more terrible than any dream and yet lived, but I have paid a price for such experience. First I went to Italy where there were friends, and I wished only to have peace among kindly people. About poverty I do not care, for, to us, who have lost all the great things, the want of bread is a little matter. But peace was forbidden me, for I learned that we Russians had to win back our fatherland again, and that the weakest must work in that cause. So I was set my task, and it was very hard … There were others still hidden in Russia which must be brought to a safe place. In that work I was ordered to share.”
She spoke in almost perfect English, with a certain foreign precision. Suddenly she changed to French, and talked rapidly to Heritage.
“She has told me about her family,” he said, turning to Dickson. “It is among the greatest in Russia, the very greatest after the throne.” Dickson could only stare.
“Our enemies soon discovered me,” she went on. “Oh, but they are very clever, these enemies, and they have all the criminals of the world to aid them. Here you do not understand what they are. You good people in England think they are well-meaning dreamers who are forced into violence by the persecution of Western Europe. But you are wrong. Some honest fools there are among them, but the power—the true power—lies with madmen and degenerates, and they have for allies the special devil that dwells in each country. That is why they cast their nets as wide as mankind.”
She shivered, and for a second her face wore a look which Dickson never forgot, the look of one who has looked over the edge of life into the outer dark.
“There were certain jewels of great price which were about to be turned into guns and armies for our enemies. These our people recovered, and the charge of them was laid on me. Who would suspect, they said, a foolish girl? But our enemies were very clever, and soon the hunt was cried against me. They tried to rob me of them, but they failed, for I too had become clever. Then they asked for the help of the law—first in Italy and then in France. Ah, it was subtly done. Respectable bourgeois, who hated the Bolsheviki but had bought long ago the bonds of my country, desired to be repaid their debts out of the property of the Russian crown which might be found in the West. But behind them were the Jews, and behind the Jews our unsleeping enemies. Once I was enmeshed in the law I would be safe for them, and presently they would find the hiding-place of the treasure, and while the bourgeois were clamouring in the courts it would be safe in their pockets. So I fled. For months I have been fleeing and hiding. They have tried to kidnap me many times, and once they have tried to kill me, but I, too, have become clever—oh, so clever. And I have learned not to fear.”
This simple recital affected Dickson’s honest soul with the liveliest indignation. “Sich doings!” he exclaimed, and he could not forbear from whispering to Heritage an extract from that gentleman’s conversation the first night at Kirkmichael. “We needn’t imitate all their methods, but they’ve got hold of the right end of the stick. They seek truth and reality.” The reply from the Poet was an angry shrug.
“Why and how did you come here?” he asked.
“I always meant to come to England, for I thought it the sanest place in a mad world. Also it is a good country to hide in, for it is apart from Europe, and your police, as I thought, do not permit evil men to be their own law. But especially I had a friend, a Scottish gentleman, whom I knew in the days when we Russians were still a nation. I saw him again in Italy, and since he was kind and brave I told him some part of my troubles. He was called Quentin Kennedy, and now he is dead. He told me that in Scotland he had a lonely château, where I could hide secretly and safely, and against the day when I might be hard-pressed he gave me a letter to his steward, bidding him welcome me as a guest when I made application. At that time I did not think I would need such sanctuary, but a month ago the need became urgent, for the hunt in France was very close on me. So I sent a message to the steward as Captain Kennedy told me.”
“What is his name?” Heritage asked.
She spelt it, “Monsieur Loudon—L-O-U-D-O-N