HOME AGAIN.
One day, early in November 1695, when the palace of the Tsar in the
Kremlin was thronged with officers and dignitaries awaiting audience in
the ante-chambers, and crowding one another in the halls and passages,
discussing the news and transacting various matters of state business,
a tall but ragged-looking figure strode in at the principal entrance of
the palace, pushing aside the doorkeepers, and elbowed his way through
the crowded entrance-hall. Up the wide stairs he went, taking no notice
of the protests and smothered curses of those whose toes he trod upon,
or into whose sides he had insinuated his sharp elbows. Many of those
who had turned round to see who this audaciously rough individual
might be, stopped open-mouthed when they beheld him, the protest
half-uttered, and gazed after him with wide eyes, muttering prayers,
as men who believe they see a ghost. But the ragged courtier looked
neither to the right hand nor to the left, but pursued his reckless
march over the toes of the highest dignitaries in the realm, without
noticing the fact or the persons, and making straight for the private
cabinet of the Tsar as though, until he should reach that haven, there
could be no thought for anything else.
Arrived at the ante-chamber, wherein were assembled Lefort and
Menshikoff and a few others of the inner circle of favour, the new
arrival paid no more heed to these august personages than he had done
to the rest, but elbowed them out of his way and went straight to
the door which led into the sanctum of the great Peter, altogether
disregarding the exclamations of surprise and awe which were all that
these found time to utter as he passed rapidly through the room and in
at the Tsar's own door.
Peter was sitting alone at the writing-table, busily penning letters
to foreign potentates--applications, in fact, for the loan of talented
engineer and artillery officers for the new campaign against the Turk
on the Black Sea; a project upon which his mind was so fixed that his
whole time was spent in planning and organizing it in advance. The
Tsar raised his eyes as the ragged figure entered the room and stood
before his table. But though Peters eyes fixed themselves upon the
strange, wild object before them, the speculation in them had nothing
to do with the object of their regard. Peter lowered his head again and
wrote; he finished his letter, and signed it. Then, once more he raised
his eyes, and this time those orbs were looking outwards, not inwards.
Peter started, and spat on the ground; then he crossed himself, and
shaded his eyes, and stared at the figure that stood before him. For a
moment the strong face looked scared and bewildered; then the Tsar rose
with his big laugh, and walking round to the other side of the table
caught the man by both shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled.
"It is true flesh and blood," he cried, "and no ghost! Boris, my most
miraculous of bear-hunters, whence come you, and why is this ragged
body of yours not eaten by Turkish rats? This is the best and most
wonderful thing that mortal man ever heard of." Peter drew the grimy
traveller to his own broad breast and embraced him in the most approved
Russian manner, kissing both cheeks and his forehead.--"Here! Lefort,
Menshikoff, all you fellows in there!" continued the Tsar, shouting
aloud, "here's Boris come back, our faithful, Streltsi-sticking,
Turk-spitting Bear-eater!--Come, sit down, my Boris, quickly, and tell
us all about it. Why are you alive--have you a plan of Azof--how did
you get out of the place--has that Yakooshka had his sneaking German
tongue cut out of him yet? Tell me that first of all, quick!"
Boris replied that as far as he knew the head of Jansen was still upon
his shoulders with his tongue in it.
"Then," said Peter, "we shall have at least the satisfaction of
removing it ourselves instead of relinquishing the privilege to the
Turk, as I had feared." Peter took two or three turns about the room,
looking his blackest; then he recovered his equanimity. "Come," he
said, "let's talk of pleasanter subjects; tell us all about your
adventures."
Boris told his plain tale amid frequent interjections from the four
or five men present. Peter roared with laughter over the account of
how Boris with his sword had kept at bay for ten minutes any number of
Turks who chose to come on, and how he was ultimately scragged by a
pasha while in the very act of fainting from sheer exhaustion. "Bravo,
Bear-eater," he cried, "and bravo again! Ho, if I had but five thousand
bear-hunters like you, my son, I should attack Sweden to-morrow! But
there is some good in the Turk after all; for think how easily any one
of a thousand of them might have blown your brains out with musket or
pistol. Yet they preferred to see a good fight out to the end; but, ha!
ha! that pasha. You shall scrag that same pasha with your own hands, my
son, next summer, as sure as I am standing here. Go on!"
[Illustration: "Out sprang Boris, and alighted with terrific force upon
Menshikoff's back."
_Page 186._ ]
Peter's pleasant mood underwent a great change when Boris went on
to tell of his interview with Jansen in prison. His face worked in
terrible contortions, and he rose and paced the room once more without
a word. "So you would have throttled him, would you?" he said at last.
"I am thankful that you did not interfere with what is my privilege.
Enough about Yakooshka. Go on."
But the Tsar fairly roared with laughter as Boris described how he
had leaped upon the back of the sentinel, a distance of fifteen feet,
and stuck the poor fellow with his little broken bit of sword-end. He
must have that little weapon, he said, as a keepsake from his good
bear-eater. But nothing would satisfy the Tsar with regard to the
mighty spring upon the back of the sentry but a rehearsal of the feat
then and there, in that very room.
Menshikoff said the thing was impossible; no man, he said, could
leap five yards from a cramped position upon a window ledge. Boris
must have miscalculated the distance. But Menshikoff regretted this
remark a moment after he had made it; for Peter declared he believed
the bear-eater could perform the feat if no one else could, and that
he should try it at once, in order to put this sceptic to confusion.
Menshikoff should act the part of sentry, and walk along while Boris
jumped on him. Afterwards they would all try it. Then two tables
were piled together, and Boris was instructed to bend himself into
the original position as far as possible, and thence spring upon the
unhappy Menshikoff, who paced the floor at a distance of fifteen feet.
Menshikoff eyed the heavy figure of Boris, soon to be launched at him,
with gloomy foreboding; but there was no help for it, Peter was in
earnest. As Menshikoff reached the necessary point, out sprang Boris,
and without difficulty covering the distance, alighted with terrific
force upon Menshikoff's back. Over rolled the favourite, and over went
Boris with him, amid the boisterous laughter of the Tsar and the rest,
the crash making such a commotion that frightened courtiers from
the room beneath presently rushed in to see what had happened to his
Majesty.
Peter insisted upon attempting the feat himself, and insisted also that
Lefort and Menshikoff should leap as well. The Tsar easily accomplished
the leap; but so tremendous was the shock of his descent, that poor
Lefort, who was detailed to receive the ponderous imperial body after
its flight through space, was well-nigh wiped out of the land of the
living. Both Menshikoff and Lefort failed to accomplish the feat, and
Boris was obliged to repeat it, in order that the Tsar might try the
sensations of the sentinel, as a "bolt from the blue," in the shape of
some thirteen stone of humanity, came crashing down upon his shoulders.
Peter was better built to stand the shock than the unfortunate Turkish
soldier, and Boris's big body hardly caused him to stagger; though when
the two changed places, and the huge Tsar sprang through the air and
alighted upon the back of Boris, that hardy young hunter, for all his
sturdiness, rolled over like a rabbit.
Then at length the Tsar, now in the highest good-humour, permitted
Boris to finish his tale--how he had plunged into the dark waters of
the Azof Sea, and found his way to land; how he had been befriended
in a village of the Cossacks of the Don--Peter making a note of the
name of the village; and of his long adventurous journey through moor
and forest, where he supplied himself with food from day to day by
means of his knowledge of woodcraft, until he reached Moscow that very
morning. Then the Tsar informed Boris of his own designs for a renewed
siege of Azof by land and sea, and of all that had happened in the
regiment and out of it since his disappearance. The officers had all
mourned him as certainly lost, the Tsar said, and had even included
his name in their service for the repose of the souls of those slain
beneath the walls of the city; they would be overjoyed to see his face
again. Then Peter told of how little Nancy Drury had come to scold him
for losing "her Boris," and of how he had promised faithfully to go
and fetch her friend home again in the summer. When Peter mentioned
Nancy, the face of Boris flushed, but his eyes glowed with great
tenderness; and presently he asked leave to retire, in order to visit
his fellow-officers, "and others." The Tsar permitted him to go, on
condition that he went first to see "those others;" for, said Peter,
those others might be even more rejoiced to see him home again than
the officers of the regiment, who, at least, had not blushed whenever
his name had been mentioned. Then Boris blushed again, and thanked the
Tsar, and went out to do his kind bidding.
When Boris reached the house of the Drurys, and was ushered into the
sitting-room by the frightened servant, who took him for a ghost, and
did not announce him because his tongue refused to speak for very fear,
Mrs. Drury was busy over her needlework, while Nancy sat at her lessons
at the same table. Mother and daughter looked up together, but their
first impressions were entirely different. Mrs. Drury had never felt
the slightest doubt that her little daughter's faithful friend was long
since dead and buried in the far-away Tartar city, and had mourned his
death in secret, while concealing her convictions from Nancy, in the
hope that when the truth must be known time would have softened the
blow. When, therefore, the door opened noiselessly, and the scared
servant, speechless and pale, admitted the ragged figure which so
strongly resembled the dead friend of the family, Mrs. Drury was taken
by surprise, and screamed and hid her face in her hands. But Nancy's
instincts did not err. No sooner did she raise her eyes than she knew
that this was no ghost, but her own beloved and familiar friend; and
with a cry of great joy and surprise she sprang to her feet, and was in
his arms in a moment, her head buried in his tanned neck, sobbing and
laughing, and conscious of nothing excepting that here was her Boris
alive and well and come home again.
When Mrs. Drury recovered her equanimity, which she did in a minute,
her English ideas of propriety were a little shocked at Nancy's
undisguised demonstration towards her friend, and, after warmly
greeting Boris, she reminded her little daughter that her fifteenth
birthday was at hand, and that she would shock Boris Ivanitch by her
demonstrativeness. But Boris begged her to let Nancy be as affectionate
as she pleased, for, he said, he had sadly needed the comfort of a
little love for many a long and dreary month. So Mrs. Drury let matters
be as they were, and Nancy clung to her friend's neck, and cried and
laughed in turns, though saying but little, until Boris gently detached
her arms from about his neck and placed her upon his knee to hear the
stirring tale of his adventures and escape and return home.
Boris left the Drurys' house presently with a new conviction looming
large and prominent in his inner consciousness, and that was that
there was nothing in all the world quite so good as the love of an
innocent girl; neither the delights of bear-hunting, nor the glory of
successful fight, nor the favour of a great king, nor the applause of
his fellows, nor rank in the army, nor wealth, nor the pride of great
strength, nor anything else. All these things were good, especially
the praise of a beloved master and Tsar; but the clinging arms of this
child had revealed a new yet a very old thing to him, and Boris walked
towards the barracks of the Preobrajensk Guards on feet that felt not
the wooden pavement beneath them, and with his manly heart so full of
tenderness towards that other confiding and loving little heart that he
almost wished all the world would rise up and menace that one little
child, that he might rise also and defend her.
Then Boris went and proved for a third time that he was no ghost, but a
solid and able-bodied bear-hunter, and retold once again the story of
his adventures for the benefit of an admiring mess. Here Boris learned
also from the officers of his regiment that he had narrowly escaped
a shot in the back as he stood alone upon the wall of Azof; for a
former companion of the Streltsi, one Zaitzoff, had deliberately taken
a shot at him, in order, as he had declared, to pay off old scores.
Another member of the corps, one Platonof, being wounded to death, and
horrified at the dastardliness of the proceeding, had communicated
Zaitzoff's words to the surgeon who attended him. The surgeon in his
turn reported to the officers of the Preobrajensk, and these took
summary vengeance. They had gone in a body to the Streltsi quarters
that very evening on hearing the surgeon's tale, had pulled Zaitzoff
out of his tent, held an improvised court-martial on the spot, and shot
the miscreant then and there, and in the presence of all his comrades,
who did nothing to protect him, being themselves horrified with his
action.
One more danger escaped, added to the many, was as nothing to this man
returned, as it were, from the very gates of death; yet Boris did not
fail to offer thanks for the erring flight of Zaitzoff's bullet when he
counted up the mercies of God on this first evening of his return, and
knelt long and fervently within the cathedral of the Kremlin. Neither
did Nancy forget to be grateful when she knelt at her bedside and said
her daily prayers, which were the old English ones, in spite of the
fact that Colonel Drury and all his house were now within the fold of
the Russo-Greek Church and naturalized Russians.