The Ruvno family had finished supper. There were no servants in the
room. Father Constantine was in bed, worn out with the excitement of
the night before; and Joseph was still lying low. Martin, the old
butler, waited on him; none of the other servants knew he was in the
house. All they heard was that a Cossack officer who wished to be quiet
had been given the blue guest-room. He had a nasty wound in his hand;
but Father Constantine, who was something of a surgeon, said he could
treat it without calling in the Russian Red Cross doctor who looked
after the wounded. So the four, the Countess, Ian, Vanda and Minnie,
were all alone in the room.
Ian had been unusually taciturn during the simple evening meal which
replaced the elaborate dinners of peaceful days, and after several
attempts to make him talk the others let him alone. Somebody had
brought a batch of papers from Warsaw and he seemed to be absorbed in
them. Minnie, whose intentions were good, though unfortunate, began the
trouble by saying she supposed there would be a wedding soon.
Ian looked up at once. He had been listening all the time. Minnie
scented trouble, because of a gleam in his eyes, and was sorry she had
spoken. But it was too late now.
"Whose wedding?" he asked.
"Why, mine, of course," put in Vanda.
He thrust aside the paper and took a cigarette from a large box at his
mother's elbow, set it alight and began to walk up and down the large
room. He remained in shadow for several seconds; there was no electric
light in Ruvno and they were obliged to economize in oil in these
difficult times. He passed and repassed under the one lamp and they
noticed that each time he emerged out of the shadows he looked graver,
more determined to perform some unpleasant task. Vanda had grown as
pale as when the priest told her Joseph was sentenced to death. Minnie,
ever watchful, thought she had changed greatly of late; she used to
think her commonplace and dull; but not now. She, too, followed Ian
with her eyes.
At last he spoke. And there was all the authority of the head of the
house in look, tone and manner.
"Vanda, you cannot marry him, now."
"Why?"
He stopped before her, the table between them, the light shining on his
large, well-shaped head. He was calm, his voice low; yet great emotion
lay beneath.
"Why did Rennenkampf sentence him to death?"
You could have heard a pin drop in that vast room. All knew the answer,
but none had the courage to give it, least of all Vanda, white to the
lips, shaking with nervous excitement.
"Think of it," said Ian, almost in a whisper. "And on Ruvno soil."
Quivering in every nerve, she sprang to her feet, her face transformed
by passion, indignation, a desire to defend her absent lover.
"It is false!" she whispered hoarsely. "I swear it is false! He never
came to spy! He came because they were near; he wanted to see me. His
regiment was ordered to France. He could not bear to leave without
seeing me, without explaining. He meant to wait by the lake till
nightfall, then creep nearer. But some Jews saw him and told a company
of sappers, who caught him. How could he tell why he was there, how
could he get us in ill report with Rennenkampf? Oh! it is so plain I
wonder you haven't all guessed it long ago. And if you don't believe me
go and ask him."
"I believe you believe that," he admitted. "But others won't."
She turned to her aunt, asking for championship. The Countess caressed
her, but her hazel eyes were firm as Ian's.
"Joseph must clear himself," she said.
"But he has!"
"To you ... but not to those who know he went back to fight for
Germany."
Vanda urged no more, but sat down again, her elbows on the white cloth,
the picture of dejection. In England, grown-up sons and daughters do
much as they please. But here, things were different. Even Minnie knew
that Vanda would not marry against Ian's will, because he was the head
of her family and the family has an overwhelming moral power in Poland.
Each family, whether that of a prince or a peasant, is a little
community in itself, with laws and traditions which no member can break
without incurring the opposition and anger of the whole. This spirit of
family discipline, which has largely disappeared in politically free
countries, is, if anything, stronger amongst the Poles since they lost
their political freedom, more than a century ago. The reason is simple.
Each family is a little unit of social and political resistance, which
for generations has been fighting for religion, language and national
customs ... and in unity is strength.
Minnie sat quiet as a mouse. They had forgotten her. A servant came to
clear the table, handed tea, and disappeared.
Ian sat down again, between Vanda and his mother. Minnie had moved to a
shadowy end of the long table. None of them gave her a thought from the
moment she mooted Vanda's marriage till the end of their discussion.
She had started it; but there her part ended. They were all three under
the big lamp, and every line, every change of expression showed clearly.
She kept eyes and ears open.
Ian lighted another cigarette. He was nervous; drank some tea and began
playing with his spoon, squeezing the slice of lemon left at the bottom
of the cup.
As he glanced up at the clock there was a pained look in his face.
Honor told Minnie she ought to leave the room. But curiosity held her.
This love affair of another woman was partly hers as well.
"I want to see him before he goes to sleep," Vanda said. "Have you
anything to say?"
He pulled himself together and began:
"When Joseph obeyed that call to go home I approved. I even warned
Roman against the possible consequences of disobedience."
"Well?"
"That was before I knew what this war meant, before Kalisz, Liege,
Louvain."
"Joseph loathes all those atrocities as much as any of us..." she broke
in.
"Yes. That is a double reason why he ought never to have gone on
wearing a Prussian uniform."
"The German soldiers don't know what really happens----" she began, then
stopped, knowing the argument would not hold. Joseph was no ignorant
peasant.
"I understand his confusion of mind in the beginning," pursued Ian. "We
all had it. But afterwards----"
"He would have been shot," she cried. "It's all very well to talk like
that when we're in Ruvno. But when your superior officer gives an
order, and you disobey, what happens? We're not all heroes, ready to
die for an idea in cold blood. Battle is different."
"But we must all try to be honest--with ourselves," he said, and with
sincerity; for he found honesty hard that night.
Her bright eyes challenged him and she opened her lips to speak; but he
silenced her with a gesture.
"He disapproved the Prussians. Yet he stopped with them."
"He has left them," she retorted.
"Yes. But before he can be honest with himself, or with the family, he
must work out the promise he made when Roman helped him to escape."
"The Russians have not been any too good to us in the past," she
objected.
"You know it is not a question of Russian, but of right. He can go to
France. But I'll have nobody in my family who ends his fighting record
in a Prussian uniform."
Vanda sprang up and faced him.
"You talk a lot about honesty to-night," she cried scornfully. "And now
I'll begin. I would not say one word against this decision if I thought
you were honest, too. I hated to think of Joseph with the Prussians as
much as anybody. But that is not the honest reason why you won't let
Father Constantine marry us to-morrow, here in Ruvno. _That_ is only a
pretext."
"Vanda!" protested the Countess.
"A pretext," she repeated firmly. "Look at him! Look how nervous and
insincere he has been all the evening! Do you know why, Aunt Natalie?
I will tell you. Because he is the dog in the manger."
"Vanda!" repeated her horrified aunt.
None of them had thought the girl capable of such words. For a moment
she looked the incarnation of passion.
"Let him deny it!" she retorted.
He looked up, his face flushed; but he was less nervous than a few
minutes earlier.
She turned to her aunt.
"You see," she said. "He says nothing. He can't deny it."
"I don't wish to," he said quietly.
Minnie knew she ought to have tiptoed from the room. But the scene held
her. It was not the novelty of seeing Vanda in a rage, nor the novelty
of hearing Ian's avowal of love. It was because she felt her own
sentence lay in their hot words.
"I don't understand," said the Countess, much troubled. "Surely you can
deny your lack of honesty?"
"Yes, I can deny that."
There was a pause. Then he went on: "Just now I asked myself if I was
being entirely honest"--he looked at Vanda--"with you. All day I have
been asking myself, I was afraid I could not be. But after searching
myself I think that, whatever my feelings about you--you personally----"
He stopped. There was no mistaking the nature of his feelings towards
her. They were written on his face, shone from his eyes.
"I--I have been honest in this," he concluded.
"We are seldom honest with ourselves," she put in.
"I have tried to be. I believe I have succeeded. And Vanda, on my
honor, I believe that, even if I--even had I never given you more than a
cousinly thought since--since it was too late, I'd be against your
marrying Joseph till he has redeemed his promise to fight on the right
side."
She leaned towards him, forgetful even of her aunt now, full of thoughts
for Joseph, of him alone.
"Do you know," she said in low, passionate tones, "that there were
years, yes, long years, when I loved you, would have died for you; would
have followed you barefooted to Siberia rather than be parted from you?
And you took no more account of me than of this table. What was I? The
little orphan cousin. A bit of furniture in your house. Nothing more."
"Vanda! How unjust!" cried his mother.
She took no notice; I don't think she heard.
"You talk about honesty," she went on. "Take it; bare, ugly truth that
few people can tell one another with impunity. Whilst I was giving you
every thought, you guessed my devotion, accepted it, put it on a mental
shelf to leave or to take down and use, according to how life worked out
for you...."
"Oh--what injustice!" said his mother again. This time she heard the
reproach; all she said was:
"Let me speak, Auntie." Then, to him: "Yes, as things suited you ...
you looked on my devotion, my foolish, dumb devotion, as something to
fall back upon, if, when the time came for you to marry, you found
nobody you liked better. Oh--I knew you so well.... And through you, I
know men. I have not watched your face all these years, day by day,
meal by meal across this table, in vain. Here, in Ruvno, buried in the
country, I have studied life, in your face, through your words, through
the change which has come over you when you knew that both Joseph and
Roman wanted me."
"But why bring----" began his mother. Vanda silenced her.
"Because we are out for honesty." Then to him: "Why do you come to me
now, when I have learned to forget you, to look at you with
indifference, killed the love I had for you after many silent struggles?
Why do you try to make Joseph so honest to himself when I want him more
than anything else in the world? Why do you step in now?"
Her voice broke; she stopped. As for Ian, the scales had at length
fallen from his eyes; he saw his past folly clearly enough; and it was
too late. In her "now" lay much meaning.
"You're unjust. I'm not so mean as you think ... or so selfish," he
said gently.
She wiped her eyes, damp with unshed tears, but said no more. It seemed
that her passion had worn itself out in those burning words she flung at
him a moment before. Once again she was the quiet, unobtrusive Vanda,
who did many things for other people's comfort and did not always get
appreciation.
He took up an illustrated paper, turned over its pages without seeing
them, furtively glanced at his mother, who gave him a look of deep
sympathy, then left the room.
He did not blame her for this outburst; bore her no bitterness. The
indictment belonged to him and he admitted it. But in a way it soothed
him to think that she had cared for him once. And it had taken him all
this time, all the events of the past few weeks, to teach him what love
meant, that passion he had almost dreaded, never cultivated, because he
liked a quiet even life, free from emotion. When her hot words fell on
his ears they opened up visions to which he had been blind so long.
Yes; he cared no longer to deceive himself. He did love her; not as
Roman loved women, but in his own way, shyly, hesitatingly, with
affection of slow growth that had taken deep root. At last he was
honest with himself, admitted the fullness of his folly. It maddened
him to think that all the time, whilst he let things drift because he
was too comfortable to plunge into the depths of emotion yet untasted;
whilst he, in his blindness, let chances drift by, enjoying to the full
that pleasant, uneventful life which had been swept away in war's
hurricane forever, whilst he could have given her all the comforts and
joys of his wealth; whilst he, ignorant of his own heart, not heartless
as she said, but selfish, procrastinating, basked in the sunshine of
peace and security--all that time her proud bruised heart had fought
against the love he held of no account but longed for now with an
intensity which left him sore, wondering, almost indignant at his new
capacity for passion.
Pacing his office, he remembered that he could not even give her the
generous dowry he had planned a few weeks ago. For the moment he had
forgotten his financial troubles. Hastily he opened the big safe which
stood in the room, took out account books and deed boxes, made rough
calculations. He could give her the paltry sum of twenty thousand
roubles, unless the Prussians advanced more rapidly than he expected and
seized the remainder of his invested wealth. It was a fifth of what he
had planned for her when he took that rapid ride to Warsaw, with Roman
at the wheel.
He put back his papers, locked the safe and sought the blue guest-room.
He found Joseph sitting by a round table on which a lamp burned. Martin
had put away the Cossack uniform and given him one of Ian's
dressing-gowns. His hand was bandaged; but except for that he bore no
trace of having passed through the experience of war since he last used
that room. Yet Ian's feelings towards him had greatly changed. Before,
he deemed him rather a prig, but a successful man, a distant relative
who would never give him any trouble but in whom he felt no particular
interest; not one he would have chosen for friend; but a man he
tolerated as a cousin, with whom he had played, quarreled, learnt, and
taken punishment in the long years of childhood.
But now, he hated him; hated him for Vanda's sake, for Roman's, for his
coming to Ruvno in Prussian uniform, for his letting Roman risk life to
save him from a death which, after all, was the consequence of his own
conduct. But he determined to master his feelings and get over the
meeting without an open quarrel.
Joseph welcomed him with unusual warmth, and this, too, he resented, as
he resented his handsome nose and white, even teeth.
"I was hoping you would come," he said. "Tell me all that's happened
since this awful war started."
"I won't sit. I've work downstairs."
Joseph gave him a keen look; the tone was ominous.
"You want to know what I was doing on Ruvno soil yesterday."
"Vanda told me your explanation."
"Explanation! It was the truth."
Ian's gray eyes were bright with hostility as he said:
"She has just told me you want to get married at once. I don't
approve."
"Indeed!" this sarcastically. "Why?"
Ian paused for a moment. It was getting harder and harder for him to
say what he wanted without saying too much, without betraying himself.
He took up the open book that lay on the table, glanced at its title,
laid it down again. Joseph made no attempt to help him out. The air
was full of tension. The least unguarded word would start a quarrel.
And neither of them wanted that.
"For one reason," he began at length, "I don't like her to leave home
without a rag to her back." He remembered the sables and fine linen he
had seen at Warsaw for her, and Joseph wondered why he frowned.
"The date was fixed for the end of this month," the bridegroom reminded
him.
"I know. If not for the war, mother would have had the things ready for
her. But you know what sort of life we've been leading since you were
here last."
Joseph nodded. He noticed for the first time that his cousin had aged
in those few weeks; there were lines on his face and gray hairs round
the temples that ought not to have been there.
"And then there's her dowry," he went on. "Mother talked it over with
you, before."
"She said something about it. I said I wanted nothing. She gave me to
understand that you insisted."
"I did. I had planned for sixty thousand roubles ... _then_. I haven't
got it, now."
He took up a paper-knife, inspected it, balanced it on the palm of his
hand, put it down again, and sought his words. It had been so easy and
so comforting to talk to Roman last night, to tell details of his
losses, discuss possibilities, hopes and fears for the future. And to
Roman's brother he could scarcely open his lips for bare business. Not
only did his animosity grow with every thought; but all the while he was
cursing his folly, and Vanda's words of an hour ago, her: "Why do you
step in _now_?" rang in his ears. He was burning to mar this marriage,
had one pretext, at least, on his side. Yet, he must be fair, honest
with himself and with them. Joseph noticed his embarrassment and
misinterpreted it. He thought: "He was always a bit close-fisted, now
he's mad with the grief of losing his forest and crops." Joseph, too,
had his troubles. Last night, when death had been near, he promised to
fight against Prussia with a light heart. He did not regret it. He was
prepared to do his duty, to atone for blind obedience to the Kaiser's
call of two months back. He had been miserable ever since the scales
fell from his eyes, showing him the real issues of the war. But this
step meant beggary. Everything he possessed was invested within the
limits of the German Empire. Prussia would very soon hear of him, would
set a price upon his head, seize his estates and his money. After the
war, he would perhaps get them back. That depended on how things went,
on which side won. During the evening, thinking over his position, he
remembered his aunt's talk of Vanda's dowry with relief. At the time,
he had pooh-poohed the idea of taking anything from Ruvno. It had
pleased his vanity to marry a portionless maid and give her all. But
things were different now. He had counted on Vanda having enough to
live upon until the war ended. He knew broadly what Ruvno was worth in
peace time, and Ian's news shocked him.
"My dear Ian, I'd no idea you'd suffered so heavily. From the little I
saw of Ruvno yesterday things looked pretty bad, especially the forests.
But I comforted myself that you could fall back on your investments," he
said warmly.
"The Vulcan Sugar Refinery, where I was heavily involved, went the first
week of the war," Ian explained stiffly. He wanted none of this man's
sympathy. "It was in the Kalisz Province, and you know what happened
there. I've a certain amount in a hardware factory in Warsaw, now
making field kitchens for the Russian Government. It's paying fifteen
per cent. I can't sell out or make over all that stock, much as I'd
like to for Vanda's sake. There's Mother to think of, if we have to
bolt, and food to buy if we don't. I've a lot of starving peasants on
my hands."
"Of course, of course," Joseph rejoined, "I shouldn't think of letting
you do any such thing."
"I can manage fifteen thousand roubles. It would have seemed nothing,
for Vanda, two months back. It means two thousand, seven hundred and
fifty roubles a year. But it would keep the wolf from the door if--if
anything happened to either of us. But if the Prussians get to Warsaw,
that goes, too."
"Sell out in time."
"I'd lose half the capital--and where to invest the remainder? The
rouble is dropping, foreign investments are out of the question."
Joseph was silent. Ian went on:
"But nowadays we've got to take chances. And Vanda will never want for
what I--I mean Mother and I can share with her. But there's the other
reason against your marriage, now."
"What's that?" His handsome face grew cold again. Ian did not answer
at once; the old struggle between honesty and hatred was going on within
his heart. He decided to let his foe decide.
"Put yourself in my place," he began huskily. "You come here, a
prisoner, in a German uniform. You're all but shot as a spy. Let's not
go into the whys and wherefores. But would you, in my place, let Vanda
marry Roman, if the things happened that have happened to you, till he
had redeemed his promise to fight on the right side?"
Joseph got up and faced his cousin.
"You're the head of the family, I'll not go against your decision," he
said quietly.
"I don't want to decide."
"But why?"
"I'd rather not say."
Joseph gave a little laugh. "We may as well be frank with each other
and have it out."
Ian made a gesture of dissent.
"Frankness is brutal," he said hastily. "It leaves rancor ... and I
want to be fair."
"I suppose you despise me for letting Roman take my place, last night,"
said Joseph bitterly.
Ian was silent. The other watched his face, but could read little
there; his own had flushed.
"It's easy to talk here." He glanced round the comfortable room. "But
it was infernally hard to die, like that, and so easy for Roman to get
past. He had brought tools with him."
"Yes," said Ian. "He unpicked the lock.... But there was..."
"There was what?"
"Oh, nothing." A sudden wave of passion was coming over him. He could
trust himself no longer. He felt that, unless he escaped from the room
he would hurl all the bitterness of his soul against Joseph, expose his
deep wound to that cold gaze. He made for the door.
"Stop!" said the other peremptorily. He looked back, his hand on the
door.
"Sleep on it," he muttered and would have passed out, but Joseph was
beside him, his sound hand grasping his shoulder.
"I have made up my mind."
"Ah--and what----?"
"You're right. After the war--if I'm alive."
"No need for that. In six months."
"Then in six months we'll get married. I'll tell Vanda." He put out
his hand. Ian wrung it and left the room without another word.