Knight Without Armour

A mood of curious fatalism sank upon A.J. during those days and nights of travel. The journey was not too arduous; the food was coarse, but sufficient in quantity and fairly nourishing; the military guards were easygoing fellows, especially after all the politicals had given parole that they would not attempt to escape during the train-journey. The future, of course, loomed grimly enough, but A.J. did not seem to feel it; his mind had already attuned itself to grimness. He kept remembering his interviews with Stanford and Forrester, and their repeated assurances that the game was one of ’heads somebody else wins and tails you lose.’ Well, he had lost, and he could not complain that he had not been amply warned of the possibility. He felt, however, that he had had distinctly bad luck; it had been pure misfortune, and not any personal carelessness or stupidity of his own, that had led to his present position. But for his friendship with Maronin all would have still been well. Yet he did not regret that friendship. It was, on the contrary, one of the few things in his life that he prized in memory.

He remembered one of Stanfield’s remarks: “If anything goes wrong, you will have to become a Russian subject completely.” That seemed of peculiar significance now that things had gone wrong, and it was true, too, that whether he willed it so or not, he was becoming Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov in a way he had certainly never been before. He wondered frequently whether by this time the Secret Service people knew all about his trouble. Most probably information had reached them, by their own secret channels, within a few hours of his arrest. He could picture their attitude—a shrug of the shoulders, a vaguely pitying look, and then—forgetfulness. Perhaps Stanfield might have commented to Forrester or Forrester to Stanfield: “Well, he didn’t last long, eh? Still, we warned him. Wonder if he’ll play the fool by trying to make out he’s English?”

A.J. had no intention of so playing the fool. It was not merely that he had given his word, but that his common sense informed him how utterly useless it would be. Apart from his knowledge of the English language, there was nothing at all he could advance in support of any claim he might make to be other than the Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov set out with authentic-looking detail on his passport and papers of identity. And even supposing he managed to persuade the authorities to enquire into his case, the result could only mean a communication to the British Embassy, with what result he had been warned. “The British authorities would merely arch their eyebrows with great loftiness and disown you,” had been Stanfield’s way of putting it. No, there was nothing to be gained by attempting the impossible; the only course was simple endurance for the time being, and later, if he could manage it, escape. Henceforward he was doomed to be Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov without qualification, and, rather curiously, he now began to feel what he had hardly felt before—a certain pride in his new identity. He was Peter Vasilevitch Ouranov, exiled to Siberia for a political offence; and he felt that same quiet, unending antagonism towards the imperial authorities that the other exiles felt; he began to understand it, to understand them, to understand why they were so calm, why they so rarely roused the sleeping fury in their souls. They were saving it, as themselves also, for some vaguely future day.