“No,” he said, answering this call of conscience, “I’ve been loyal long enough, by God! And now I’m absolved.”
LV
He invited Nadia to dinner one night in the little restaurant in the Arbat, and she accepted with the permission of her mother and father, who saw no harm in it, but only a little danger from secret police.
Nadia laughed at that peril. She was under the protection of “Ara,” she said, and the Cheka could not touch her. That was true. Bertram had taken Dr. Weekes to the gipsy-like room in which Prince Alexander lived with his family, and he had been shocked by their dire poverty. He knew their name in Russian history, and their former palace in Petrograd, now used as a soup-kitchen by the American Relief.
A cheery young American of the South, with a slow, drawling speech and quiet manners, he was a man of delicate physique who seemed to have worn himself out in service to a suffering world. He was chief medical officer of “Ara,” and had devoted himself to the hunger-stricken and diseased children of Austria, Germany, Poland, and Armenia since the ending of war. Nadia had lit his eyes with enthusiasm for her courage. “Some girl,” was his verdict, and his word was enough to secure her appointment as interpreter and woman secretary on the “Ara” staff.
“There’s a heap to do for a girl like that in Kazan,” he said. “Our boys there are clamouring for interpreters and secretaries. But I fancy I’ve got a special job for her, where her medical training will count. We’ll see about that later, when we get to Kazan.”
So that part of the programme was fixed. She was to travel with them to Kazan, with two other ladies selected by the Colonel for office duty in that city, and she was very happy at the thought, in spite of the tragic nature of the adventure ahead. She had the zeal of Dr. Weekes himself who was restless until he reached the famine district.
“My job is with typhus,” he said. “I’ve declared a Holy War against it. It’s my personal vendetta. Where typhus is worst, there I go. One day, of course, it’s going to get me! But that’s the fortune of war, and meanwhile it’s a good game.”
Nadia had the same kind of philosophy, it seemed.
“I want to help Russia. The best way I can help is to make use of my medical training where the people suffer most. There’s a dreadful dearth of doctors, and the poor peasants are hopelessly ignorant of the most primitive rules of health. I can teach them, wash them, help them to kill their lice.”