there. Wilbur’s tired spirit leaned against his big, quiet strength. In
the dusk Aunt Susan and poppa sat on the porch and talked. Wilbur stood
beside poppa’s chair. It was peaceful and cool in the late evening.
Wilbur liked to hear the noise the katydids made in the trees. It went
on, over and over and over--
Suddenly, as if recollecting something he had forgotten, poppa put his
hand into his coat pocket and drew out--It was the ball of Wilbur’s
dreams. Poppa, still talking to Aunt Susan, was holding it out to him.
He saw it in all its utterly desirable excellence, its natty charms,
hard and heavy and smooth and gleaming white. Wilbur’s small brown
fingers curved themselves feebly upon its taut sides. He did not speak,
but his long-lashed eyes, brooding upon the perfection within his grasp,
lifted for a moment to his father’s face a deep look of such intensity
that poppa was startled.
'It’s your birthday, old chap,' he said, putting his arm around Wilbur.
'I thought you might like a new ball.'
He felt Wilbur trembling slightly and wondered whether, in spite of the
little fellow’s seemingly perfect health, he could be an over-strung and
nervous child.
'Now you have two balls,' Aunt Susan said fatuously, rocking herself in
her old rocker.
'Yes’m,' said Wilbur.
From the security of his immense felicity he smiled at her kindly, very
kindly, very indulgently, for how could she understand?
BABANCHIK
BY CHRISTINA KRYSTO
I
IT was my smallest brother who called him that, because, at the time of
their meeting, he could not manage the whole of his very long name. But
his friends took it up presently, liking the ridiculous yet oddly
caressing sound of it, until all who knew him well knew him only as
Babanchik.
I remember him first as a chance guest in my father’s house by the side
of the Black Sea--a big, deep-chested man in a badly wrinkled pongee
suit, who missed his train because we children had drawn him into a game
of hide-and-seek. I can still hear his laughter-filled voice demanding
fiercely, 'Where are they? Where are they?' as he flung himself about
the room, making wide détours to avoid our feet, which protruded from
under the cloth-hung table, while the train, with his car attached,
paused a moment at the 'half station' at the far end of the pasture and
went roaring on along the shore. He stayed the night with us, and our
child-world changed forthwith.
During the two years which followed, the play-times of Babanchik and his
children were inextricably bound with ours, and the distance between our
homes grew very short. At Christmas we danced around the scintillating
tree in his spacious Tiflis house, and at Easter he helped us with the
beating of the innumerable eggs which go into the Easter bread of
Russia, spattering the kitchen wall most dreadfully.
Business brought him often to Batum, which lay just over the hill from
us--so often that we fell into the habit of racing down to the
pasture-bars every Saturday to wait for the afternoon train. It was long
and wearying, that walk back, on the days when the train clattered by
without pausing. But on other days, when, just this side of the cliff,
the engine whistled to announce the stop,--when we listened, breathless,
for the setting of the brakes, when we saw his huge figure swing lightly
from the steps, coat-pockets bulging with mysteries, and heard the gay
voice shouting that his own car would not come by until Monday,--the
walk home was a march of triumph. Two summers we spent together in a
half-starved Georgian village high in the Caucasus Mountains, where we
lived on bread and eggs, both reeking with the wild garlic which grew
thick among the wheat; ran, bare of head and foot, over the pine-grown
canons; and loved every moment of it.
It was in those two summers that we came to know Babanchik best and to
adore him accordingly. We might emulate the manners of Manya, his
young-lady daughter of twelve; we might acknowledge the leadership of
his harum-scarum son Kolya; but it was Babanchik who really counted. It
was he who led our marvelous expeditions to the neighboring peaks, his
clothes steaming with the effort of that leadership--he who showed us
where to look for mushrooms, and later fried those mushrooms for us,
surreptitiously, lest mother begrudge us the butter where no new supply
was to be had. His mind it was which settled, wisely and fairly, all our
momentous quarrels, and invented countless new and fascinating games
when we had tired of the everlasting croquet. But for him we should
never have bathed in the yellow water of the mad Kura, water so muddy
that it left great streaks across the bath-towels; but for him we should
never have been forgiven for robbing the little forest church of candles
with which to rub the porch floor whenever we wanted to dance.
That the merry existence of his vacations was but a small part of his
life, we knew, even as we guessed that the man who frolicked with us
lived only in the hours of play. For often at tea-time on the porch we
came upon the other Babanchik, a bitter and fearsome man who talked to
father in a voice which, to us, was the voice of a stranger. They made
us very wretched, those tea-times, when from an obscure porch corner we
watched him striding up and down along the railing, the smile gone from
his eyes, his cheeks flushed, his arms waving wildly. For we could never
understand why the man who taught us that it was cruel to step on ants,
seemed so ready and eager, at those times, to throttle some one, we knew
not whom, unless it were the terrible creature he called the Russian
government. It all hurt us inexpressibly. Yet hour after hour we watched
him and listened to his long, involved denunciations of oppression and
dishonesty and selfishness and class-distinction and many other long
words which we could not grasp. And most difficult to fathom was his
oft-repeated assertion that he was doing all that talking in behalf of
us.
'It is for the children that I fight!' he would shout, stamping
feverishly up and down the long porch; 'for my Manya and Kolya, and for
your boys and girls and all the countless thousands of others whose lot
has been cast with this accursed country! I must fight, for I know what
will come to them! Their souls will be dwarfed and crippled by our
stupid schools and our stupid laws, and their minds poisoned and
embittered by suspicion and hatred and the damning sense of their
impotence, as long as conditions here remain what they are! Our lives
are behind us, yours and mine. But we must make theirs different for
them, must keep them away from strait-jacket regulations, must keep them
happy and trustful and brave! It is for this that I fight! And I would
fight if I knew that I could not change a word of our laws and our
statutes!'
He did fight. Unceasingly, along with his rouad, work,--he was one of
the managers of a Caucasian railrotine--went the bigger work of making
his corner of the world a better place for those who came behind him. He
fought in the ranks of his employees, that the least of these might
claim justice and equality; pleaded with school boards and schoolmasters
for patience and generosity toward their charges; and fought--and this
was the most bitter fight of all--against those who held in their hands
the destinies of his city.
In all this he was severely handicapped. An Armenian by birth, which in
itself matters even in cosmopolitan Caucasus, he had inherited the
ungovernable temper and unbridled tongue of his people; and this,
coupled with his love for truth, worked him unceasing woe among the
hidebound conservatism of his associates.
All this Babanchik knew. And yet, in spite of the knowledge, he had a
dream of becoming a member of the city Duma, that he might have a real
voice in the direction of the city’s fortunes. It should not have been a
thing so difficult of attainment. Time after time his name was proposed
for the city ballot; time after time hordes of enthusiastic friends made
his election a certainty; and time after time, as the deciding day drew
near, his candidature was suppressed, his name withheld from the ballot,
his adherents silenced--and the dream remained a dream. No one knew just
when it happened, or just how: he was an Armenian and a revolutionist, a
freethinker and an enemy of the government, marked '_neblagonadejny_'
(not to be depended upon) in the police-books of the city--and no
country knows so well as does Russia how best to curtail the activities
of such men.
What he could do in spite of these drawbacks, he did. Was he not our
undauntable Babanchik? If he could not insure fair play for the men of
his railroad, he could give them of his advice and sympathy, and they
forgot to ask for more. If additional factory windows did not come into
being at his command, he could still lend his money to those of the
workers who fell victims to the foul air; and how beautifully he lost
his temper when a borrower spoke of interest! And if school boards and
schoolmasters remained unyielding in their demands upon the children he
loved, at least the holidays were his, when he could take those children
on long walks in the open and teach them to respect their souls and not
to step on ants.
All of which we learned much later. At the time, he was merely our
Babanchik, without whom the world could no longer be imagined; who came
in the evening to blow out our candles because he had guessed that the
memory of his good-night laugh cheated the dark of its dangers; whose
rumbling shout awakened us in the morning and opened up for us a new day
of unsuspected possibilities.
II
The third summer we did not go to the mountains. Some one else was
sharing Babanchik’s cottage in the Georgian village; he was leading a
band of new children in search of mushrooms and adventure. But we were
too excited to care, even in the face of this.
A new unrest hung over our house. All the day long father was showing
strangers about the place, pointing out to them the value of the
untouched forest, the richness of the pasture land, the clearness of the
drinking water, the glories of the mountains and the sea. In the
sun-filled glass room which served as library mother was superintending
the sorting and packing of books. And a placid-faced woman with the
patience of a saint was fitting our squirming bodies into trim,
tight-fitting clothes, which, after the loose, shapeless things we had
always worn, vexed us endlessly. We were going to America.
Babanchik came to us often in those last weeks, inexpressibly saddened
by our impending departure; and his discussions, to which father
listened a bit abstractedly now, grew ever more violent. Though their
invariable ending filled us with an unexpected hope:--
'When my work is done here, I will come to you, in the United States. I
cannot, now--there is still so much to be done for my weaker friends.
But when I am very tired, so tired that I can no longer endure it, I
shall take my children and come to you--to forget the Russia that I
hate.'
So we parted. We leaned over the rail of an Odessa steamer, our arms
overflowing with the packages he had brought us; and he stood on the
edge of the wharf, waving his hat and smiling. But tears were running
down his brown cheeks and losing themselves in his beard.
The new life, the new language, new interests, caught us. From the first
Russia seemed very far behind. Several letters followed us. Kolya wrote
three or four in his uneven round hand--funny little letters which
began, 'We have two ducks and two puppies. How many dogs have you?' and
which were properly answered in kind. After that, we forgot very
quickly.
But Babanchik did not forget. Once every month we found in our mail-box
a fat, square, carelessly addressed envelope, which held a letter for
father and a folded note for each of us. The notes were full of gay
nonsense, stories and rhymes and caricatures; but father grew very
thoughtful over the letters.
Life was pressing Babanchik hard. He was still without thought of
defeat. But his enemies were bringing more stringent methods into the
combat; he was now being constantly watched. Other troubles were even
harder to bear. The government was consciously setting the hot-headed
Georgians and Armenians at each other’s throats, that neither might have
time to think of greater issues. And Babanchik could but stand by and
watch the suffering of his people. Manya was in school, in the hands of
narrow and incompetent teachers, teachers selected for their political
views. Kolya’s turn would soon come. After that, so ran the letters, his
children would have the choice between becoming power-seeking sycophants
of the government, and going, as he had gone, into battle with it,
knowing beforehand of their certain defeat. He could not take them away
from it--yet. But he realized, he said, that each day, besides giving to
him its measure of sorrow, brought a little nearer the fulfillment of
his new dream. He was beginning to study English.
The years marched on. The square envelopes came less often, but they
came, still full of their old-time warmth for us--full, too, of
increasing enmity toward the country which we had left. Manya had gone
to Petrograd to attend women’s 'courses.' Two years later Kolya followed
her, and entered the University in the same city at the time I was
enrolled in mine. And when, a care-free sophomore, I was working off
surplus energy in basket-ball and dramatics, a new alarm crept into
Babanchik’s letters. Manya and Kolya were becoming involved in the
revolutionary movement.
It is hard, in these clean war days, to remember the murky chaos of the
Russia of 1904-06. If a revolution could have come at all, it would have
come in those years, and it would have been led by students. The younger
minds were afire with visions of freedom,--irrepressible combinations
of deep conviction and the ardor of youth,--visions which took no
cognizance of the wide and weary space which lies between desire and
accomplishment. Class-rooms were hotbeds of revolutionary plots,--mad,
illogical, glorious plots,--for which their authors, usually still in
their teens, paid so heavily. Too heavily, for the government, alarmed,
was losing its head a bit.
The heart of Babanchik beat fearfully. 'I am proud of the trend of their
convictions,' he wrote, 'but sometimes I am a little afraid. They can so
easily be led into a spectacular prank, a bit of mischief for which the
government might take it into its head to punish them too harshly. And
though we have all become accustomed to that sort of thing, it would
hurt me sorely to have them spend two or three months in prison.'
He conjectured mildly. There was news one day, in our American
newspapers, of the attempted assassination of a Petrograd official. We
passed it by--attempted assassinations were no rare events just
then--until the next letter came from Babanchik, a letter of two brief
paragraphs. Both Manya and Kolya were implicated in the crime. Manya had
waved her handkerchief from a window which commanded a view of the
official’s residence; Kolya had passed the signal to twenty fellow
conspirators. All had been caught and all had confessed. The official
was unhurt and there was hope of a light sentence. Still--the two or
three months of prison lengthened into a prospective two or three years.
Once more he conjectured mildly. Manya was sentenced to be hanged.
Kolya, because of extreme youth, was punished by life-imprisonment. We
read the story of it, scarce believing, page after anguished page in a
handwriting we did not recognize. We never knew--no one ever did know,
save Babanchik himself--all that went after that. His letters no longer
came regularly, and, when they did come, were so incoherent with rage
and despair that we gathered little information from them. We learned,
however, that by some superhuman means he had obtained a stay in the
execution of the sentence, had taken a leave of absence from his office
in Tiflis, had called in all the money which he had loaned, borrowed
what additional money he could, and had gone to Petrograd. At the end of
eighteen months there was a new trial, and we were left to guess of much
that went between.
It was not difficult to guess, in part. His way to that new trial had
lain along the ways of personal influence, and the men who possessed
that influence were the officials whom all his life he had hated and who
knew him only as one 'not to be depended upon.' Could he have abandoned
to their fate the twenty whom he did not even know, and worked for his
children alone, his task would have been less difficult; but then he
would not have been Babanchik.
So for eighteen months he worked; seeking audience in the studies of his
enemies, humbling himself before their insolent eyes, accepting from
them what taunts they chose to give, holding in calm control the hot
temper which was hourly made less manageable by the strain under which
he lived, pleading where he longed to curse, smiling where he would
kill--and knowing, with a knowledge which made all these things
possible, that a careless word on his part would take forever from
twenty-two youngsters the one hope to which they clung. And so he
accomplished the inconceivable. Somehow the new trial was held, somehow
the twenty-two sentences were made lighter, unbelievably lighter. For
Manya was sent into a far province and given hard labor for life, and
Kolya would be free in ten years. But what those eighteen months did to
the loving big soul of Babanchik can best be told in the barely legible
words of the letter which brought us the news.
'It has finished us at last, this country! It has strangled my children
and torn my heart to shreds! I burn with shame at the thought of being
its subject, and there is no wretchedness which I hold too great for it,
no plague which I would not send upon it if I could! I long to take the
first steamer away from it.'
But he had his lost fortune to recover before he could go. There were
his debts, too; and the children needed money, even in prison. He went
back to his work with redoubled energy. But as he fought for the money
which would bring him to America, he found himself fighting against a
new enemy. The splendid body had not been able to with-stand the ravages
upon his mind; he remembered suddenly that he was nearly seventy. He
spoke little of this,--perhaps he would not believe it, quite,--but
there was dejection in every word he wrote. And we began to wonder
whether we should ever see our Babanchik again.
Yet in the winter of 1913 he came to us, a tired and feeble old man.
There was a burned-out look in his eyes, and his wrinkled pongee suit
hung limp from stooping shoulders. The journey across Siberia had been
hard, that across the Pacific still more trying; there had been an
alarming wireless from the nurse who accompanied him. But he reached us,
and as I remember the sound of his laugh on that first day twenty years
ago, so shall I never forget the ineffable happiness in his face when he
stood, a few days after his coming, and looked out over our sunlit
valley.
'Peace,' he said, 'and joy. And the end of Russia forever. God has been
good.'
He built for himself a tiny bungalow in a corner of our garden,--one
that could be moved when Kolya should have come to him,--and was soon
deeply engrossed in the simple tasks in which erstwhile busy men
sometimes find such keen delight. All day long he spaded and raked and
planted, wrote letters home, and went on ever-lengthening walks; but
evening brought him to our living-room where, beside the humming
samovar, we swung the conversation round to his wild Caucasian tales.
The stories he told were not new; we had heard them all many times
before. Accounts of his own trips in pathless mountains, adventures of
the danger-loving Georgians, legends of his own people, the
Armenians--they had lost not a shade of their interest in the years
which had gone since those other winter evenings, when the sea raged
just beyond the pasture-bars and made us crowd close to the fireplace
and to him. Often, too, he talked of his children, but always it was of
their life before Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window. Only
of Russia itself he would not speak, nor would he read our Russian
newspapers.
'Let her be,' he once said, 'the vampire! I ask only to forget.'
And we thought that he did forget, for the months brought to him an
ever-deepening contentment. His shoulders were squaring themselves into
old accustomed lines, the illness which had menaced gave no sign. Spring
found him searching for a plot of land which would be his own, for Kolya
had but two more years to serve.
III
And then, in the summer, came the war.
We translated the news to Babanchik--he had never finished learning his
English. A smile twisted his mouth.
'Retribution!' he said; and there was something very dreadful in his
uplifted hand. 'I pray that Germany will destroy all Russia.'
We turned upon him in indignation. Under our accusing eyes his arm came
down and hung limp by his side. He swung on his heel and left us,
muttering as he went,--
'Nothing but German shells will ever break down her prisons.'
There followed the weeks and months of tense living. The Russian papers
were filled with opportunities for the new work; names of old friends
appeared in committee lists. As for us, we could but talk of it
endlessly, and dream of it, wait for the morning paper, and talk again.
We still saw Babanchik every day, but, every day, he mattered less. We
could, and did, accept without comment his attitude toward the country
which still held our affection, but, somehow, we had lost interest in
his stories.
The war went on. The enemy was halted before Paris; the Russians swarmed
over Prussia and were promptly driven back, far over their own boundary.
Riga began to figure in the dispatches, and life seemed a solemn
thing--so solemn that we had no time at all for noticing that something
was very much amiss with Babanchik, until he said one evening,
diffidently,--
'If you could ask your doctor to stop in--some day.'
We stared at him curiously. Why did he have that ghastly look about him?
He was perfectly well only the day before--or was it last week--or was
it a month ago? When was it that we had really looked at him? What had
checked so suddenly the straightening of his shoulders? We could not
say. But we were vaguely ashamed.
The doctor was terse and explicit.
'There is nothing wrong, chronically, save a general hardening of the
arteries and a very high blood-pressure. He must have had bad news
recently, a sorrow of some sort.'
'Nothing new,' I contradicted. 'He has been perfectly happy until now.'
'The war perhaps? or Russian reverses?'
'Oh,' I answered lightly, 'he cares nothing for the war, and Russian
reverses would cause him no sorrow.'
The doctor left no medicine.
'Keep him amused,' he ordered, 'and don’t let him grow excited. That is
the only remedy.'
Keep him amused! With no thought in our minds, no word on our tongues
which did not deal with the war, the war of which he never spoke, with
which he had no concern!
It was the youngest brother who broke through our quandary.
'I think we have all been blind--and stupid! Babanchik never asks for
war news. But why does he always happen to be about when the paper comes
in the morning? Why does he never change the subject as long as we talk
of the battles? Haven’t you seen the embarrassed look on his face when
Germany claims victory? And why didn’t he need the doctor until Warsaw
was endangered?'
Thus did we chance upon the truth. Though even then we were not
certain--not until a letter, six months delayed, came to him from Kolya.
Babanchik’s hands shook when he laid it down.
'The little rat! What do you think he has done? He has sent a petition
to the Tsar, the Tsar himself! To beg to be released from prison that he
may join the army. He promises to go to the most dangerous position, to
do the hardest work, if the Tsar will only set him free and let him
fight. The blessed little rat!'
'Fight?' I asked, and looked Babanchik straight in the face, 'fight for
Russia?'
The embarrassed look came into his eyes. But, even then, he did not at
once capitulate.
'O my dear,' he replied, 'youth forgets so easily!'