When you get this letter cease to sorrow for what will have happened,
for I shall be at rest, and in peace at last, freed from a world in
which I have known bitter sorrow and, until you came into my life, but
little joy.
For these past months I am grateful to God, if such a being exists and
regulates the conduct of a world gone mad.
For in a few hours I am to die.
It is harder for you than for me; one moment of agony I suffered, a
moment that seemed to last a century, when, amidst the sea of faces
that swam in a confused mass before me at the trial, I saw your eyes
and the torture that you were suffering. When I saw your eyes I knew
that the President had said I must die. I am glad that I was told this
by you, the only one amongst all these men who loved me. I suppose the
President spoke; I never heard him, but I saw your eyes and I knew.
My darling, it was cruel of you to come, cruel to me and cruel to
yourself, but I loved you for being there; it showed me that up till
the last you would stand by me, and until you read this you cannot know
all the facts. That to you, as to the others, I must have seemed a
woman spy and that nevertheless you stood by me, is to me a
recollection of unsurpassable sweetness, compared with which all other
thoughts of you fade into insignificance.
Know now, oh, well beloved, that I was not unworthy of your love.
I have a story to tell you, and I have such a little time left that I
must write quickly. The priest who has been with me comes again an hour
before the dawn, and he has promised to deliver these my last words of
love into your hands.
My real name is Zoe Xenia Olga Sbeiliez, and I was born twenty-nine
years ago at my father's country house at Inkovano, near Koniesfol. I
am Polish; at least, my father was, and my mother comes from the Don
country. There was a day when my father's ancestors were Princes in
Poland. Poor Poland was torn by the vultures of Europe, just as your
countrymen, my Karl, are tearing poor Belgium and France, and so my
family lost estates year by year, and my grandfather is buried
somewhere in the dreary steppes of Siberia because he dared to be a
Polish patriot.
My father bowed before the storm, and under my mother's influence he
never became mixed up with politics. Thus he lived on his estates at
Inkovano, and nursed them for my younger brother, Alexandrovitch, the
child of his old age. Alex would be nineteen now, had he lived. The
estates were large as these things go in Western Europe, but they were
but a garden as compared with the lands held by my great-grandfather,
Boris Sbeiliez.
My father had a dream, and he dreamed this dream from the day Alex was
born to the day they both died in each other's arms.
My father dreamt that one day the Tsars would soften their heart to
Poland, and raise her up from the dust to a place amongst the nations,
and my father dreamt that Alexandrovitch Sbeiliez would become a leader
of Poland, as his ancestors had been before him. And so my father
nursed his estates and pinched and saved, in preparation for the day
when his beautiful dream should come true.
[Illustration: "A trapdoor near her bows fell down, the White Ensign
was broken at the fore, and a 4-inch gun opened fire from the embrasure
that was revealed on her side."]
[ILLUSTRATION: "I sighted two convoys, but there were destroyers
there...."]
My poor idealistic father never realized, oh, my Karl, that when one
wants a thing one must fight--to the death. Alex was the apple of his
eye, but I was much loved by my mother; perhaps she dreamed a dream
about me--I know not, but she determined that I should have all that
was necessary. Paris, Berlin, Munich, Dresden, and a season in London,
then I came home at twenty-one, perfectly educated according to the
world, beautiful according to men, and dressed according to Paris. But
I was only to find out how little I knew. My mother and I used to take
a house in Warsaw for the season, and I met many notable men and women.
In these days I, also, thought I could do something for Poland, but
after two or three seasons I found that I, too, was only dreaming idle
dreams. Oh! my beloved, beware of dreaming idle dreams.
Listen! I once met the Prime Minister of all Russia at a reception. I
captivated him, and thought, now! now! I shall do something.
I sat next to him at dinner; I talked of Poland--and I knew my
subject--I talked brilliantly; he listened, he hung on my words, and
he, the Prime Minister of all Russia, the Tsar's right-hand man, asked
me to drive with him next day in his sledge. I, an almost unknown
Polish girl!
When I accepted, I was in the seventh heaven of delight.
Next day he called and we set forth; at a deserted spot in the woods
near Warsaw he tried to kiss me--I struck him in the face with the butt
of his own whip.
That was why he had hung on my words, that was why he had taken me for
my drive; it was my Polish body that interested _him_--not Poland.
The Prime Minister of Russia was confined to his room for two days,
"owing to an indisposition." How I laughed when I saw the bulletin in
the paper, signed by two doctors, but it taught me a lesson; I never
dreamt idle dreams again.
No, I am wrong, my beloved. I dreamt an idle dream, a lovely dream
about you and I. An after-the-war dream, if this war should ever end,
but like other dreams it has ended--in dreams.
But I must hurry, for my little watch tells me that one hour of my five
has gone, and I have much to say.
I could have married, and married brilliantly, but Poland held me back.
I did not know what I could do for my country, it all seemed so
hopeless, and yet I felt that perhaps one day ... and I felt I ought to
be single when that day came.
It was not easy, my Karl, sometimes it was hard; one man there was,
Sergius was his Christian name; he loved me madly, and sometimes I
thought--but no matter, he is dead now, killed at Tannenberg, and
I--well, I will tell you more of my story.
When the war broke out and clouded over that last beautiful summer in
1914 (I wonder will there ever be another like it in your lifetime, my
Karl? No, I don't think it can ever be quite the same after all this!),
we were all in the country. Alex was back from his school in Petrograd,
and my father kept him at home for the autumn term.
How well I remember the excitement, the mobilization, the blessing of
the colours, the wave of patriotism which swept over the country; even
I, under the influence of the specious proclamations that were issued
broadcast by the Government, with their promises of reform, and redress
for Poland after the war was over, felt more Russian than Polish. Lies!
Lies! Lies! that was what the Government promises were, my Karl.
Under the stress of war the rottenness of that great whited sepulchre,
Russia, feared the revival of the Polish spirit; it might have been
awkward, and so they lied with their tongues in their cheeks, and we
simple Poles believed them; the peasantry flocked to their depots,
little knowing whom they fought, but the proclamations which were read
to them told them they fought for Poland, and we women worked and
prayed for the success of Russian arms.
Then the tide of war swept westward, and all day long and every day the
troops, and the guns and the motor-cars and the wagons rolled through
the village to the west.
Guarded hints in the papers seemed to say that all was not well in
France, but France was so far away, and all the time the Russians were
going west through our village. Mighty Russia was putting forth her
strength, and the Austrian debacle was in full swing; these were great
days, my Karl, for a Russian!
Then one day the long columns of men and all the traffic seemed to
hesitate in the sluggish westward flow, and then it stopped, and then
it began to go east. The weeks went on, and one day, very, very
faintly, there was a rumbling like a distant thunderstorm. It was the
guns! The front was coming back.
Have you ever seen forest fires, my Karl? We had them every autumn in
our woods. If you have, then you know how all the small animals and the
birds, the rabbits and the foxes, and perhaps a wolf or two, and the
deer, and the thrushes and the linnets come out from the shelter of the
trees, fleeing blindly from the great peril, anxious only to save their
lives. So it was when the front came back. Herds of moujiks, the old
men, the women, the children, the poor little babies, struggled blindly
eastwards through the village.
Pushing their miserable household gods on handcarts, or staggering
along with loads on their backs, and weary children dragging at their
arms, the human tide flowed eastwards, round our house, begged perhaps
a drink of water, and then wandered feverishly onwards.
They knew not in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where they were
going; their only destination was summed up in the words, "Away from
the Front"--away from the ominous rumbling which began to get louder,
away from that western horizon which was beginning to have a lurid glow
at nights, like a sunset prolonged to dawn.
Then, as the Germans advanced more and more, the character of the tide
changed, the civilian element was outnumbered by the military.
Companies, battalions, brigades, sometimes in good order, sometimes in
no order, marched through the village. They would often halt for a
short time, and the officers would come up to the house, where my
mother and I gave them what we could. My father lived amongst his books
and accounts, and bemoaned the extravagance of the war. Then there were
the deserters, the stragglers, the walking wounded, the--but you know,
my Karl, what an army in retreat means.