Dasha felt stunned by the torrent of words. Kulichok stabbed the air with a black-rimmed fingernail, and froth bubbled in the corners of his lips. Apparently he was finding compensation in speech for the prolonged silence he had had perforce maintained on the roof of the railway carriage.
"Darya Dmitrevna, I won't conceal it from you.... I have been sent here, to the north, to scout and recruit.
There are many who still have no conception of our forces.... In your papers we are simply spoken of as White-Guard bands, a miserable handful which they will finally erase from the face of the earth in a day or two.... No wonder our officers are afraid to come.... But do you know what is really going on in the Don and Kuban?
The army of the Don Ataman is increasing like a snowball.
The province of Voronezh is already cleared of Reds.
Stavropol will soon fall. We are waiting from day to day for Krasnov to arrive at the Volga and seize Tsaritsyn.... He is making up to the Germans, it's true, but that's just temporary.... We, Denikin's men, are advancing to the south of Kuban, as on parade.
We have taken Torgovaya, Tikhoretskaya and Velikoknyazheskaya.
Sorokin has been smashed into smithereens.
All the villages are giving the Volunteer Army an enthusiastic welcome.
There was veritable carnage at Belaya Glina, we waded through such a sea of corpses that your humble servant was soaked in blood to the waist."
Looking into his eyes, Dasha turned pale.
Kulichok laughed scornfully.
"You think that's all?
That's only the beginning of our reprisals.
The flames will spread all over the country.
The Samara, Orenburg, and Ufa provinces, the whole of the Urals, are ablaze.
The better elements among the peasantry are organizing White armies themselves.
The whole of the Middle Volga is in the hands of the Czechs.
From Samara to Vladivostok the whole country is one solid rising.
If it weren't for the damned Germans, Little Russia would rise as one man.
The towns in the Upper Volga district are powder magazines, only waiting for the touch of a match.... I don't give the Bolsheviks another month, I wouldn't give a straw for their chances...."
Kulichok trembled with excitement.
He was no longer like a small wild beast.
Dasha looked at his sharp-featured face, weather-beaten by the winds of the steppe, hardened in the heat of battle.
Some hot-blooded life had thrust itself upon her transparent solitude.
She felt a sharp pain in her temples, and her heart beat violently.
When Kulichok, baring his small teeth, stopped talking and began rolling home-grown tobacco into a cigarette, Dasha said:
"You will win.
But war won't go on for ever... then what will happen?"
"Then?" Inhaling, he narrowed his eyes.
"Then—war against the Germans to a victorious finish, a peace congress, which we will attend as conquering heroes, and after that—with the combined forces of the Allies, of the whole of Europe—the restoration of Russia, order, lawful conduct, parliamentarism, freedom.... That's for the future.... But for now...."
Suddenly he clutched at the right side of his chest, feeling for something beneath his coat.
He cautiously extracted a piece of cardboard, folded down the middle —the lid of a cigarette box—and turned it over and over between his fingers.
Once more his searching gaze swept over Dasha's face.
"I can't take any risks. You see how it is.... People are liable to be searched in the streets here.... I want to give you something."
He unfolded the cardboard and took from it a small triangle cut out of a visiting card.
There were two letters written on it: I and K.... "Put it away somewhere, Darya Dmitrevna—guard it as something sacred.... I'll teach you how to make use of it.
Forgive me—you're not afraid?"
"No."
"Good girl!"
Almost unconsciously, simply drawn in by a will stronger than her own, Dasha had fallen into the very thick of the conspiracy being carried on by the so-called
"League for the Protection of the Native Land and Freedom," a conspiracy which was sweeping over the two capitals and a number of other cities of Great Russia.
The behaviour of Kulichok, an emissar of Denikin's headquarters, was unbelievably reckless: to confide in a woman he hardly knew, the wife of a Red Army officer, at the very first word.
But he had once been in love with Dasha, and now, gazing into her grey eyes, he could not help trusting her, for the eyes said: "You may trust me."
At that time people's minds were guided, not by calm reflection, but by intuition.
The hurricane of events roared, the sea of humanity surged, each one felt himself to be the saviour of the sinking ship, and, erect on the bridge, flourished a revolver, ordering the helm to be turned now to port, now starboard.
All was then illusion, and White-Guard will-o'-the-wisps danced over the illimitable plains of Russia.
Eyes were dull with hatred.
The illusions were born of brief glimpses of mirage.
Thus the imminent overthrow of the Bolsheviks seemed absolutely inevitable; the troops of the Intervention seemed to be already closing in from the four corners of the globe to the assistance of the White armies; millions of Russian peasants seemed to be eager for a Constituent Assembly; the towns of the united and indivisible empire seemed only to be waiting for a sign to break up the Soviets, and, the day after, to restore order and constitutional law.