"The Kuban troop."
"And the other young lady by your mother?"
"Is English. She has been very good and kind in helping us through our
troubles. She has lost one brother in the war."
"And I three. I spit upon my life. And upon money. I want to fight
the Prussians and burn down a few of their towns before I am killed by
them, or the cholera. For that is almost as sure as their shells."
"Have you no family to keep?" asked the Countess.
"I have. But they have the farm and the wife can look after that when
the time comes for my old father to die. Then my two boys will do their
service, too, but I want them to go to good schools first."
"But you said you spat upon money."
"I mean for its own sake. There is enough on the farm to keep them at
school. We Cossacks are beginning to wake up and have our boys and
girls taught things besides fighting and horses. But Tsars have taken
away all our autonomy, little by little, and have never given us the
free use of all our land, like they promised. Many men in the troop
find it a great burden to supply their own horses, guns and uniforms."
He was silent after that and then began again with:
"You, on the other hand, must be a powerful man, for the peasants I used
to talk to when we were at Kosczielna spoke about Ruvno and its lord."
Ian told him they were mined, and had nothing but their jewels, half of
which they had left behind.
"But they must be worth many farms and horses," he argued. "People like
you don't bury treasure for a few roubles. As to what you left under
your horse-farm, it is quite safe. The earth is your best friend in
war; better than banks."
Ian said nothing. The others, too, listened in silence. There was
something attractive about his frank speech and simple outlook of life.
But Ian had always noticed that about the Russians. The Poles, with
their old civilization, had become as complex as the French.
"I am sorry those rascals have burned you down," he resumed. "The
castle was a fine thing. I often saw it from the distance. But I
should have liked most of all to see the horses you bred...."
Ian and he talked horses then, and got a little in front of the others,
till a muffled cry from the back recalled them. Father Constantine was
on the ground.
"He fell," said Vanda. "I am afraid he has fainted."
"No, I haven't," he retorted with a shadow of his old spirit. "I'll
be--well--in a moment."
The Countess was for giving him brandy, but Ostap intervened.
"Soak some into this," and he tore off a piece of his rye loaf, which
they gave him. It finished their stock of brandy, but revived the
priest, who was on his feet in another moment.
"I can walk now," he said bravely.
"No. I'm going to carry you," said Ian. Father Constantine made a step
forward, then fainted in earnest.
"Let me look," said Vanda. "I believe his wound has opened."
She bent over him and said:
"Yes. It ought to be bandaged. But how?
"Your handkerchiefs," said Ostap. But they remembered that they were
filthy after the digging operations and feared to use one till they
could rinse it out. Ian made up his mind that they must go back to the
road.
"Yes," said his mother, willing enough now. "We'll never get along on
these ghastly battle-fields."
So they started for the road, Ian carrying Father Constantine on his
shoulders, regaining the highway by a little shrine, with an image of
the Madonna. Many years before the Countess had put it there as a
thanksgiving offering, when Ian recovered from an attack of scarlet
fever. The peasants of the neighborhood used to say that it had
miraculous powers to heal all sick children. So it was very popular
with mothers of families.
"Who's there?" cried a familiar voice from the darkness.
"Your own people," answered they.
It was poor old Martin, who had been carried on in the general stampede;
but he had grown very tired, and seeing the others were not amongst the
mob, had the good sense to await them there, knowing they must pass the
shrine on their way to safety. He had fallen asleep to find, on waking,
that the moon was set and the night at its darkest.
"The others?" asked Ian. "Where are they?"
"Mother of God, they rushed on. They are mad with fear," he answered
sadly. "Some fell and did not get up again. Old Vatsek, and somebody's
child. The road is hard, being strewn with rubbish, what the other
fugitives and soldiers have left for lack of strength."
"Seen any horses, or carts?" asked Ostap.
"Dead ones, under the moon ... they lie as they dropped, in the shafts."
"Far?"
"A quarter of a verst."
Ostap and Ian, leaving Martin with the others, went off to look for a
cart. They wanted to get the side of one for Father Constantine. It
would be better for him than carrying him on their backs. They had to
grope about for some time, because it was the moment before dawn when
night is darkest, when neither moon nor the streaks of coming day help
you, when the air strikes chill to the very marrow and the heart has
least courage. They finally found what they wanted by the smell of
decomposing horseflesh, which guided them to a peasant's cart. They
broke off one side of it, and took, too, some straw they found at the
bottom. When they went back to the others the Father was talking.
"Go on," he argued. "Leave me.... I have God.... I shall not be
alone."
And he said this more than once before he reached the end of his
journey.
Ian managed to find a warm cover, too, and they made him as comfortable
as they could. Then they ate some bread and cheese, saving the tinned
meat for the morning. There was a spring near this spot, so they drank
water and bathed their faces. As well as they could in the dark they
washed out Ian's handkerchief--the largest--and bound up the sick man's
head. The cold, damp linen revived him.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Going to Warsaw."
"Where is my diary?"
They knew he used to keep one and did not like to tell him it was under
Ruvno's ruins. So they said nothing.
"Please give it me. I want it," he urged feebly.
"What does he want?" asked Ostap.
Ian told him.
"I remember," said the Cossack, "he did take two books out of his skirt
pocket, there under the moon when you were digging up the treasure. He
put them in his nose-bag." He slung it off his back, drew out the two
books and handed them to the sick man, who eagerly clutched at them.
"Ian," he said, "come here." When his patron obeyed he gave him the two
little books, bound in black oilcloth, such as children write their
copies in.
"Keep them," he said with an effort. "Have them published. People must
know what Poland endures."
"I will," said Ian, putting them in his knapsack.
"Have you them safe?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Now, give me the little Crucifix. It is in the nose-bag that Cossack
brought us."
They did so. He clasped it tight and pressed it to his lips. It seemed
to give him strength. "I'll keep it to the end--of my journey," he
said. "Countess, forgive me, all forgive me, for adding to your burden
with my infirmities."
All tried to reassure him, and he spoke no more for a long time. They
knew he suffered much. His head and hands burned with the fever that
was consuming him.
They started off again.
Ostap was right about the road being easier. But it was even more
horrible than the fields. In spite of debris, bits of soldiers'
accoutrements and stiff, silent noisome forms scattered in their path,
there was no comparison between it and barbed wire or trenches, so far
as walking went. They walked for another hour, Martin taking short
turns with one end of the stretcher whilst either Ostap or Ian rested
their arms. They trudged steadily on, knowing that every step took them
nearer Warsaw, further from the Prussians. Ostap and Ian, with the
litter, took the side of the road, for the middle, cut with a year's war
traffic, was no better than a plowed field. The three women walked
near, to do the little that was possible for the patient. Martin walked
by Ian, to tell him what he saw and heard with the fleeing villagers.
Ian told him how Ruvno ended. They spoke low because of the Father;
instinctively--but heavy guns would not have aroused him from his
delirious torpor.
As dawn came on, painting the sky with gray and purple and the breeze
grew less chill, Ian could see more and more plainly the desolation that
lay around. Not a living creature did they meet. But the dead were
many. The few surviving trees were bare as in a January frost; the
roadside and neighboring fields, strewn, not only with every kind of
garment, every simple article of a peasant's cottage, but with costly
things which must have been a soldier's loot, with the soldier's mortal
remains; and with their knapsacks, caps, ragged boots and bits of kit.
Dead horses were many, too; and dead peasants, of both sexes and every
age, were not a few. And he passed near by these things, flotsam and
jetsam of war, passed dead hamlets, where only ruins remained, and one
dead mother he saw, her new-born child near by, and dead, too. He hoped
the others had not noticed, for it was the most terrible sight of all.
And as the dawn spread he could see the distant fields with the burnt
corn, the trenches full of horrid sights and an army's rubbish, burnt
trees, wire twisted as by gigantic hands; ruined crops, ruined homes,
broken lives and perished hopes.... And this was all they had left of
Poland.
And when his weary eyes turned from the misery around and fell upon his
dear ones, he saw how fitted they were to travel the road of death and
despair.
The three women, dainty all their lives, were ragged, dirty, disheveled,
their thin frocks covered with horse-blankets which were stained with
blood. What did the future hold for those brave souls? He preferred not
to think of that, and turned to look at Ostap, black with dirt and tan,
coatless, his arms far too long for the Prussian's jersey, his feet bare
and bleeding, for the boots proved too tight and he had cast them aside,
his long hair wild and dusty, his nose swollen, a scar across his face;
he looked as ferocious a member of an army as you could ever fear to
meet. Martin had aged twenty years since he served supper the night
before; he limped along painfully, his house-boots worn through with the
rough tramp. Happily, the women were sensibly shod, having put on their
strongest boots for yesterday's field work.
Looking on Father Constantine's ashen face, Ian knew his hours were
numbered. The seal of death was on it. The thin hands which had
clasped the crucifix so eagerly a little while back were clutching at
the rags with which they had covered him....
The forlorn party took stock of each other furtively for some time.
Then their eyes met; and they smiled.
"It is war," said Ostap. And, noting their low spirits, he did the best
to cheer them with the humorous side of his year's campaign. It made
them forget how dirty they looked, helped them to grow accustomed to
their new selves, perhaps. Now that the light was good, Ian noticed
that the Cossack's dark eyes were intelligent and merry. He had that
contempt for death which enabled the retreating Russians to make
ramparts of their bodies when ammunition failed. He gave them
unwittingly a grim story of crippled men, muddled orders, peculation and
pilfering; with that childlike literalness which is wholly Russian and
the dash of fatality which stiffens courage, and makes men patient under
pain....
They made a wide detour before reaching Kosczielna, fearing to run into
the Prussians again, and none wished for that. No sounds came from its
ruins; but many gray forms showed how well that Russian sapper, in Ruvno
church did his signaling. The fugitives had planned to rest awhile near
the little town; but the place was so horrible that they hurried on,
quickening their pace, to leave the orgy of death behind, though death
went with them step by step.
At Vulki they made a halt. Here there were signs of life, the first
since they left home, though the village had been destroyed. But they
found that a dozen or so of Ruvno peasants had halted there, and were
cooking a few potatoes they dragged from its wreckage. Baranski, whom
they had chosen as leader, saw the little procession and hurried to meet
it.
"Oh--my Lady Countess," he cried, kissing her hand, "to think you have
come to this plight, and the young ladies, too, and you, my lord Count,
and the Father--oh, if I could only help you. But there is nothing
here. Some of ours have started back to Ruvno over the fields. They
hope to creep back into the village unseen by the Prussians and pretend
they never left. The sight of all this misery is too much for them.
They fear they will die like dogs if they go any further."
"And those people?" asked Ian, indicating the group round the fire.
"Most of them meant to stop here. The native peasants have fled. Those
are too tired, they say, to go back or go on."
"Have you a watch?"
"Yes." Baranski pulled out a silver timepiece. "It is ten past five."
Ian looked at his little group.
"We can't reach that camp before one. It's only ten versts from
Sohaczev."
"We had better rest," said his mother, and he saw she could not walk
much further without sleep.
"Baranski, do you wake us in two hours."
"Yes. And I'll look to the poor Father here," he said. He was a loyal
old peasant and heartbroken to think of the tribulation that had come
upon them all. He found a mattress in a ruined cottage for Father
Constantine, and searched vainly for some refreshment for them. They
all slept heavily, except the invalid, till he woke them, at seven
o'clock.
"And what are you going to do?" asked the Countess, when they told him
and the other peasants their own plans.
"Some of us go back. We have buried our grain where the Prussians won't
think to look for it," he explained to Ian in a confidential whisper, as
though von Senborn himself were within earshot. "I have no liking for
the road, or a tramp through Russia. They can't take my good earth away
and where shall I find soil to bear like Ruvno fields?"
Six went with Ian. They had sons fighting with the Russians and did not
want to be cut off from all communication with them. Ostap did not like
this addition to the party till one of them returned from the far end of
the village with a lean-looking but sound horse and found a cart for it.
He had grown very tired of carrying the litter. They placed Father
Constantine in the cart and started off, taking a sad farewell of those
who remained behind....
Sore-footed, sore-hearted, faint for the lack of food, they went slowly
on, through the same scenes of desolation and death, halting every
half-hour for a few minutes, scarcely daring to do so, but sure of
breaking down before reaching their goal unless they did. The road was
very bad now; Ian and the other men often had to clear the way of the
human and other wreckage which stopped the cart's passage. They spoke
little. Each wrapped in his own thoughts, listened to Father
Constantine's delirium. He, who had helped so many souls through the
Valley of Death, must pass it unshriven.
At midday they halted again; they had not reached the camp of which
Ostap spoke. The Father's frail body was making a desperate effort to
retain his fleeting soul. Vanda, who had watched so many die of late,
said the end was near. The peasants came up to the cart and joined in
their prayers. They wept, for all loved the kind, simple old man who
had taught them what they knew of God and letters.
He opened his eyes, making a feeble sign that he wanted to speak. Ian
bent over to catch his words.
"Go on--" he faltered. "I'm not alone...."
And thus he died. With tears they folded his hands over the little
malachite crucifix, the one relic of home. The Countess covered his
thin, withered face, so peaceful in its long sleep, with a peasant
woman's kerchief. Then they urged on the tired horse and their own
weary limbs, the women praying for his soul as they staggered on,
because retreating armies wait not and their one hope now lay in
escaping the Prussians. They had no food left; every scrap of the
bread, stained with the blood of those who held it in the Ruvno canteen,
had gone. And strength was fast failing them.