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The Playground of Satan

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Title: The Playground of Satan

Creator: Beatrice C. Baskerville


        
Release date: December 4, 2012 [eBook #41560]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41560

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLAYGROUND OF SATAN ***




Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




                                  THE
                         Playground _of_ Satan


                                   BY
                          BEATRICE BASKERVILLE

                               AUTHOR OF
            "Baldwin's Kingdom," "When Summer Comes Again,"
                  "Their Yesterday," "The Polish Jew,"
           English Translation Of Gogol's "Taras Bulba," Etc.



                                NEW YORK
                          W. J. WATT & COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                          Copyright, 1918, BY
                          W. J. WATT & COMPANY




                                   TO
                            Janina Korsakova
                               WITH LOVE

                              _Rome_, 1917




                        THE PLAYGROUND OF SATAN



                                   I


Ian went into his mother's sitting-room, carrying an open telegram.

"Roman Skarbek has wired for horses to meet the express from Posen," he
remarked.  "He says it's important business."

As Countess Natalie looked up from her letter--she wrote hundreds a
year--her hazel eyes twinkled with a mischievous thought.

"Roman and business, indeed!  He's after Vanda."

Ian's brows contracted over his clear gray eyes; they were of the kind
you find in outdoor men, used to gazing over long distances and watching
for wild fowl to come out of the rushes at the dawn of day.  Vanda was
his cousin, and an orphan; she had lived at Ruvno since her babyhood.

"Give me a cigarette," said his mother, leaving her letter.

He obeyed, offered one to Minnie, who refused, and lit another for
himself.  The two smoked on in silence for awhile.  Roman Skarbek was
his cousin, too, though not Vanda's.

"I don't think so," he said.

"Why?" asked his mother.

"He's been to Monte Carlo.  If he's had any luck he'll want some
horses."

"He never had any luck.  No.  It's Vanda.  _She's_ in love."

"Vanda in love?"  He laughed.  "Nonsense!"

"Why not?" put in Minnie, the English girl, from her seat in the window.

He did not answer.  His mother went on:

"Something has happened to Vanda lately.  I don't know what, yet.  When
she was stopping with Aunt Eugenie she must have seen Roman every day.
They rode together, too."

He walked over to the long window which opened into the rose garden.  On
the sward beneath it, thirty years ago, his father was shot in a famous
duel with the rakish Prince Mniszek, neighbor and quondam friend.

"What will you say to him, if it is?" he asked.

The Countess considered.  In her little world marriages were "arranged,"
thought out with the help of the Almanach de Gotha and a profound
knowledge of the young couple's incomes, debts, acres and ancestors.

"Roman," she said, "is generous and chivalrous.  I shouldn't mind
helping him with his debts, if he'd only stop gambling."

"Does a man ever stop?"

"Not when it's got into his blood," said Minnie.

"It's in his right enough," rejoined Ian.  He gambled, too, but with
circumspection, unhampered by passion.

"I wonder what he sees in Vanda," the Countess mused.

"She's a charming girl," remarked Minnie.

Ian went out, his setters following him.  An hour later he sought the
two women with another telegram, finding them in the rose garden.  The
Countess walked with a stick, though she was only sixty.  Her hair was
perfectly white and her face much lined.  Perhaps her youth, so full of
interests and emotions, had faded too soon.  But she looked the great
lady she was, queen of herself and fit to rule Ruvno, with its
traditions, its wealth and dignity.

"Here's Joseph now," he announced.  "Wants to be met at the afternoon
train from Warsaw."

"Which Joseph?" asked Minnie.  "You know a dozen."

"Roman's brother."

"What does he want?" asked the Countess.

"Vanda," he returned, a twinkle in his eye.

They walked down the garden together, Ian and Minnie sparring gently, as
often happened.  But his mother was thinking of Vanda again, for she
said at last:

"If I were her, I'd choose Roman.  Joe is cold."

"I'm sure they're coming to see us, that's all," said Ian.  "They're
coming from opposite directions.  I'll send a motor for Roman.  He's
always in such a hurry.  Joe can have horses."

And again he left them.

Until August, in the year of strife nineteen hundred and fourteen, you
could find no pleasanter country house than Ruvno, Poland.  It stood a
little way back from the high road between Warsaw and Kutno, slightly on
a hill, surrounded by pines and hardy hornbeams which guarded it, like
sentinels, from the gaze of passers by.  It had stood thus for
centuries, ever since another Ian, Lord of Ruvno, built him a great
house with the spoils of war against the Turk, laying the foundation of
a hard-fighting, hard-living race, good for anything on earth but trade,
always ready for a row, out of sheer love for adventure and broken
heads.  And of adventures they had full share, both in love and war.
All the hordes of Europe passed over their land during the centuries;
for Poland is Europe's eastern battlefield, as Belgium is her western.
And the plows were forever turning up human bones, which lay where they
fell; and human treasure, which lay where it was buried, either because
the owners failed to find it when peace came again or because they
happened to go where neither Turk nor Swede, Russian nor Prussian, could
trouble them more.

And so the domestic history of Ruvno, half fortress, half palace, filled
many parchment volumes.  I am not going to bore you with it; but quite
recently, as Ruvno counts time, Napoleon slept there when on his
luckless march to Moscow.  And he supped at the large oaken table which
was carved out of Ruvno oak long before the discovery of America brought
mahogany to Poland. And in his clumsy, violent way, he made love to the
reigning Countess of Ruvno, toasting her in that Hungarian wine which
looks like liquid sunshine and makes your feet like lead.  Some of the
same vintage still lingered in the cellars when one smaller than
Napoleon crossed the Polish borders a hundred years later.

Napoleon, remembering the good cheer, paused here again to take breath
on his homeward flight.  But this time there was neither toasting nor
courting.  The Countess, in solitude, wept for her gallant husband,
whose body lay at Beresina, his gay tongue frozen forever, his blue eyes
staring up at the stars in the fixed gaze of death.  So the great man
sat at the dead one's board, silent and sullen, surrounded by the weary,
ragged remnants of his staff.  Those who were in Ruvno that night said
that he paced his room, restless and sleepless, till daybreak.  Then he
went his way, no longer a conquerer, but a fugitive.

A century later, Ruvno belonged to another widow and her son Ian, ruddy
of face and broad in the shoulder.  They were both up to date.  They
spoke English and French, and followed the fashions of western Europe.
But their hearts and souls were with Poland, not only because they loved
her, but because, too, race is stronger than love and hatred and death
itself.

Ian spent most of his time on the Ruvno estate, and his mother's
patrimony in Lithuania; but Ruvno was his heart's beloved.  The
Lithuanian estate was let on a long lease.  He had a lively sense of his
responsibilities, knowing that two watchful neighbors, Russia and
Prussia, were ever working to denationalize the country and stamp out
his race.  His many acres were well cultivated, the peasants who worked
on them well cared for.  Though the Russian government forbade Polish
schools, he and his mother saw to it that the children on their land
learned to read and write their mother tongue.  The Agricultural Society
that had spread its branches all over Poland, despite opposition from
Russian bureaucracy, had no more energetic member than he.  Modern
machinery and methods were rapidly replacing the old throughout the
country, which was prosperous and enterprising.  Ian did his share of
this good work with intelligence and cheerfulness.

He thoroughly enjoyed his life; was a keen hunter; had no hankering
after urban pleasures; knew no debt, confined his distractions to
racing, in which he was moderate, and to a very occasional supper party
after the opera, in Warsaw, Paris or Vienna.

To his mother he felt bound by a degree of affection and sympathy which
rarely survive a son's early childhood.  Other women bored him.  His
name had not been linked with one, of good repute or bad.  Indeed, his
circumspection with the opposite sex had become a joke among his
friends, who teased him about it and searched for some well-hidden
passion.  But they did not find one, and contented themselves with
dubbing him a woman-hater; which he was not.  He knew he must marry some
day; for what would become of Ruvno without an heir?  But as the
pleasant years slipped by, he told himself there was still time.  And
far down in his heart he had always relied upon Vanda.

Did he love her?  The question rapped him as he left the rose garden for
the paddock.  He thought not. He liked to have her in the house, driving
with his mother, keeping her company, helping her to entertain visitors
during the shooting season, or going with her to Warsaw for shopping and
the play.  He knew she was fond of him; accepted her affection as he
accepted so many other things which were daily facts in his existence.
In the rare moments when he thought about marriage at all he comforted
himself with the reflection that she was there, ready for the asking
when the inevitable day came.  It never crossed his mind that she might
refuse.  It would be so comfortable, one day, to wed her.  Life would be
the same as before. His mother would go on living with them; Vanda would
wear the family jewels; the rooms that had been his own nurseries would
be reopened and refurnished.  And in due time little people would play
and sleep in them as he and Vanda had done.

He was shy of other girls; they bored him; he never knew what to talk
about.  And he would have had to woo anybody but Vanda; no girl with any
self-respect would marry him without preliminaries in which compliments
and attention played a large part.  Vanda did not ask to be wooed.  They
had met daily for years.  And she was so suitable; so comely and
well-bred, so thoroughly sound in her ideas of life, marriage and
society.  She would not want to drag him off to Monte Carlo and Paris
every year.  She loved the country, and Ruvno; knew his life and would
not expect him to change it.  Another bride might have all kinds of
ideas in her head, might not like the place, or his mother, from whom he
refused to be parted, whatever happened.  Therefore her remarks about
the Skarbeks worried him; if she noticed a difference in Vanda, then a
difference there must be.  He had not noticed it; but then he was
particularly interested in some alterations that he was making in the
Home Farm and had not paid much attention to her and to Minnie Burton,
the English girl who was staying with them.  He and Minnie "got on" very
well; she was a good horsewoman and a good comrade; rode about with him
and Vanda, quite content to talk of whatever work happened to be going
on at Ruvno, or not to talk at all.  He had been to England a good deal,
spent a couple of years at Oxford after leaving Theresarium and made
friends with Minnie's two brothers, who were coming to Ruvno for
shooting in a month's time.  She was to return home with them.

Thus the summer had been passing very pleasantly. Crops were promising,
the weather kept fine.  Life had never seemed fairer, he and the two
girls had agreed that very morning, on their way back to breakfast after
an early canter.

And now, the aspect was subtly changed.  He looked up at the sky; it was
still clear.  There would be no rain; his hay was safe.  What meant this
feeling of vague unrest?  Vanda?  The idea was absurd.  Both brothers
could not be coming after her.  Roman and Joseph were as different as
any two men of one class and race can be.  No; they were after horses,
or Roman wanted to buy an estate in the neighborhood. He had often
spoken of it; all he needed was the cash.  Perhaps he had won plenty at
Monte Carlo and was coming to spend it.  Joseph, with his business head,
was meeting him to see he did not spend foolishly.  That was the whole
thing in a nutshell. Anyway, they would be here before long.

Near the paddock he met Vanda.  He was glad; he wanted to watch her
face.

"Not so fast," he called out as she was running past with a nod.  "Where
are you going?"

"Aunt Natalie.  I promised to give her an address and forgot all about
it.  My filly is better.  I've just been there."

"You're very smart to-day," he remarked.

She looked down at her skirts.

"It's a hundred years old.  You've seen it dozens of times."

"And very bonny," he added.  And so she was. She had pretty brown hair
and soft brown eyes, carried herself well and bore the marks of the
healthy outdoor life they all led at Ruvno.  A sweet wholesome girl, he
thought, not for the first time, but with more interest than ever
before.  He did not guess that under her quiet manner lay a capacity for
a deep passion; and pride to quell it.

She blushed at his compliment; he rarely gave her one.

"The Skarbeks are coming," he said, watching her closely.  She was
frankly pleased, but he noticed she did not blush again.

"Oh, how nice.  It's years since they were here together.  We can have
some long rides."  And she left him.

He watched her closely at lunch; but failed to see signs of the change
which his mother professed to find in her.  And he felt relieved.
Nevertheless, he thought about her a good deal during the afternoon; the
vague uneasiness of the morning returned.  After all, she might find a
lover elsewhere, marry him and leave Ruvno forever.  He would have to do
something to avoid that; and without further delay.  He had waited too
long.  He never doubted that she would marry him.  True, he had not made
love to her; but they were such good friends, and he had always been
fond of her in a quiet, unquestioning way, without passionate
discomforts.  Yes, he must secure her before another man stole her
affections. He went to speak to his mother about it.

He came to this decision whilst riding back from some meadows; but the
Countess he found sitting under the chestnuts behind the garden with
Minnie and Father Constantine, the chaplain who had lived with them for
years and taught Ian his catechism and the Latin declensions.  A moment
later Vanda joined them.  So he put off again.  He would wait till the
evening, when he always had a quiet chat with his mother, in her
dressing-room.

The Skarbeks met in the Countess' sitting-room.

"You here?" was Roman's curt greeting.  Ian noted the tone and wondered
what they had quarreled about.

Joseph kissed his aunt's hand before replying.  They were both fine men,
alike in figure, unlike in feature and temperament; both on the right
side of thirty, straight, lissome and as thoroughbred as you please.
Roman was dark, generous, lithe; Joseph fair, blue-eyed and cold.
Matchmaking mothers were very civil to him; but their daughters liked
Roman better.

"I've come from Warsaw," remarked Joseph at his leisure.  He looked
round the room, presumably for Vanda; but he did not ask for her.  Ian
knew she was sitting in the garden with Minnie.  It was unnatural for
her to hold aloof thus; his uneasiness grew.

"I'd no idea you were coming," said Roman hotly. "I ought to have been
here sooner."  He turned to his aunt.  "It's no use mincing words; I've
come to ask for Vanda."

"For Vanda!" echoed Ian blankly.  Then he turned from them, to compose
his face.

"Joe has cone for her, too," pursued Roman.  "It's in his face.  It's
just as well to have it out at once. She must choose for herself."

"Yes," said Ian quietly.  "Vanda must make her own choice.  She is quite
free."  Privately, he determined to speak to her himself, as soon as he
could escape from the room with decency.

"You followed me," said Roman to his brother.

"No.  I thought you were still gambling."  Joseph spoke with a sneer.
How well Ian remembered it; it used to drive him to fury in their boyish
days, and many a fight had it caused between him and the superior
Joseph, who could use his fists all the same.

"If I win her I'll never touch a card again," cried Roman.

"You forget your debts," his brother retorted.

"Debts!" fairly shouted the other.  "Look here, all of you!"

Out of inner pockets, he drew bulky pocket-books, took banknote after
banknote and put them side by side on a table.  And when there was no
room for them to lie singly he set them three and four deep, till a
fortune lay there, in the evening sunlight.

"Look at them!  Count them!" he cried in triumph. "Where are my debts
now?"

They gazed at the money in silent wonder.  Never had they seen so big a
harvest from turf or green table.  The Countess smiled across at Ian; he
said something in a careless undertone.  He would not let even her see
what was on his mind.

"It's a haul," admitted Joseph.  "You must have broken the bank."

"Luck.  Six weeks of it.  And now I've done with gambling forever."

He crammed the notes away carelessly, as men treat money lightly won.
He paced the room, talking.

"I was afraid of it," he admitted.  "I wanted to win.  But it grew so
huge that it became a menace. Luck at play, no luck in love.  And
now..." he swung round to his brother: "I meet you here."

"It's unfortunate," remarked Joseph.

"Unfortunate?  It's Destiny!  Oh, you'll have the family on your side; I
don't blame 'em.  You're a deuced-good match, well off, sober,
economical.  I'm not.  I don't pretend to be."  He measured the room
with his long stride, and hurled at Joseph: "But I've something you
haven't!"

"You?"  This with a sneer.  Ian felt inclined to punch his head, as in
years gone by.

"Me.  It's love.  You don't know what it means. Men like you--" he
jerked his head at Ian--"and Ian there, can't love.  You want to keep up
the race, that's all.  What could you do to prove your love?"

Ian said nothing, though the challenge was for him as well.  Was Roman's
reproach true?  Was this new uneasiness, that fast became pain, love, or
but wounded pride?

"I'll ask her to marry me," Joseph was saying. "Offer my name, home,
protection and ... and affection."

"Ah ... affection!" and Roman laughed.

"What more can any man offer?" put in Ian.

Roman was at the door now.  He threw them a stream of hot words over his
shoulder, and left the room.  He was going to her.

There was silence after he left.  Ian tried to say something, but
failed.  The brothers were poaching on his preserves; yet he could not
find the words to tell them so.  And now Roman had gone to her, and
again he must wait.  What a fool he had been!  He was angry with them
and furious with himself for being angry.  The whole business was a
nuisance. But, after all, why should he mind?  Sitting on one of the
broad window-sills, he lighted a cigarette and tried to calm his
thoughts.  Some time passed.  He heard Joseph and his mother talking in
low tones at the far end of the room, and was glad they did not expect
him to talk.  What was Roman telling Vanda now?  He was the sort of man
girls always liked.  Words would never fail in his wooing.  A
spendthrift, a gambler, yes; but handsome, full of life, eloquent.
There was the rub.  He, Ian, had always to search for words when he
wanted to speak of things near his heart.  Roman, as a lover, surpassed
him by untold lengths.  He realized that now. And yet Roman, as a
husband, could hardly give happiness; but girls don't think of those
things till it is too late.  And he could not go and tell Vanda so,
either. He had had years in which to tell her many things; and he had
wasted them.  Now, when seconds were of importance, he could not even
get her alone.

He shook the ash off his cigarette, watching it fall on to the bed
outside; glanced at the other two, and determined to go to the stables.
He had only to slide his legs over the window-sill and be off.  They
would not notice his departure, and he would be alone, unwatched, free
to shake off this sudden malaise and regain his old composure.  He
wanted solitude; had new thoughts to worry out, vague awakenings which
he must stifle.  He wanted to be quite honest with himself, to examine
his heart, free it of this new burden and go back to the old, quiet life
of yesterday, of this morning even.

But he did not move.  He knew he would not till Roman came back.  Would
he come hand-in-hand with Vanda, or alone?  He would not come alone.
Vanda would take him and there would be a wedding.  That meant a lot of
fuss.  He had put off his own wedding year by year to avoid a pother,
and here it came, all the same.  And with the same bride, too: only the
bridegroom and best man had changed places.  Roman was right.  Destiny
played odd tricks.  He would see Vanda go off with another man; give her
away to an unconscious rival.  Was it going to hurt?

Suddenly the door opened.  Roman burst in.  He was alone; he addressed
Ian.

"Can I have a car, at once?" he asked.  His sunburnt face was drawn, his
eyes haggard.  No need to ask for Vanda's answer.  It was written all
over him. They rose; the Countess took his hand and said something to
him, Ian knew not what.  A load had fallen from his heart.  Vanda still
cared for him.  Sweet, loyal little Vanda!  He might have known it, and
saved himself all that worry.

"But you're not going yet?" he said.

"I am.  I'll be in Warsaw to-night; and, by God, I'll never go home
again.  Will you order the car, old man?"

"If you must go."  Ian walked towards the bell that lay on his mother's
writing-table.  Roman turned to Joseph.

"I put it to her, squarely," he said in hoarse tones. "You've won.
She's in the library."  And he strode from the room before any of them
could speak.

Ian rang the bell and stood by the table, his back to the others.  He
had heard every word that Roman said and it burnt his brain, if not his
heart.  So Joseph had won!  It was preposterous.  Roman as a rival he
could bear.  But that cold, selfish prig!  He could never give a woman
happiness.  Vanda must be saved from herself.  And he would do it.

Mastering his face, he turned round, ready with passionate words to save
Vanda from Joseph, to use his authority as head of the family.  But the
room was empty.




                                   II


Roman tumbled into the car the moment it was ready and insisted on
taking the wheel.  Ian gave in, though he knew his cousin for a wild
driver at the best of times.

They went off at breakneck speed.  The road was clear, for it happened
to be Friday night, when Jews are at rest, so that factors, omnibuses
and other vehicles which belong to the children of Israel east of the
Vistula did not get in the way.  On they rushed through the cool, dark
night, past fields of whispering corn, ready for cutting; skirting
forests of tall trees, racing through little villages where savage dogs,
let loose for the night, chased them, barking like the wolves with whom
they shared parentage, till lack of breath held them in; past flat
country, rich in soil well tilled, past rare towns where no lights shone
except for here and there a candle-decked table where Jews hailed the
Sabbath in squalid tenements; past a rare wagon of non-Jewish ownership,
with the driver fast asleep, his team in the middle of the highway, deaf
to hooting and shouting; past, in short, the various sights and sounds
of the Polish country-side, where life is simpler than in England and
men stick closer to mother earth.  Ian loved it all; even the Jews he
accepted as part of the picture, though his race was divided from theirs
by a deep gulf; he loved the chilly breeze, the stately pine forests,
the night birds' cry, the smell of rich earth, all the promise of
revolving seasons; the very monotony of the life was dear to him.

Near Sohaczev they dashed into a drove of cattle, on its way to the
capital.  There was much shouting; the drovers swore by all they could
think of that half their fortune was gone.  However, after being able to
check these statements by the help of lanterns, Ian decided that ten
roubles more than covered the damage. Roman's flow of language left the
others speechless; he had not opened his mouth since leaving Ruvno, and
certainly made up for it when he did.  They started off again.  The
swift, uneven motion over the ill-kept road soothed Ian.  He had come
partly out of sympathy for Roman, partly to avoid searching eyes at
home.  He must get accustomed to the new state of things, let the smart
of Vanda's engagement wear off, prepare himself to meet Joseph without
picking a quarrel with him.  Neither could he have faced the usual
evening confab with his mother without betraying himself; and he hated
the idea of confession, even to her.  He pondered about many things,
business, politics, crops and the chase; but he always came back to
Vanda.  His memory rediscovered charms he had long ceased to note--her
soft eyes, the dimples that came into her cheeks when she laughed, her
cheerfulness, her nice ways with his mother, her good heart for the
poor, her adaptability to _his_ house and _his_ ways.  What a good wife
Joseph had won!  Then he remembered she was portionless.  Her parents
had been ruined by a combination of adverse circumstances, so that she
had come to Ruvno with little more than the baby clothes she wore and a
box full of toys.

He burnt with the thought of Joseph's feelings of self-righteousness at
marrying a portionless maid.  But he should not get the chance to crow.
She should have an outfit to make her new neighbors open their eyes;
jewels, sables and linen fit for Ruvno.  He meant to insist on this,
foresaw mild objections from his mother, who knew all about Joseph's
investments.  But thank God he could afford to set the girl up in such a
way that her groom could not boast.  And the wedding should be in
keeping; the Archbishop of Warsaw, Metropolitan of Poland, must marry
them; Ruvno must entertain the guests royally.  More: Joseph should
never be able to say he had married a penniless girl.  Vanda should have
a generous dowry.  Here he foresaw more opposition from his mother.  But
he was not going to let Joe puff himself out over every check he wrote
for his bride.  For such was Joe's nature; he would do it with a certain
refinement; but would drive the truth home all the same.  Vanda did not
know this, or had forgotten it, being in love.  But she would suffer
from it later on; and he was determined she should bear as little pain
as possible.

Ian's landed property represented a rough sum of twenty million roubles;
he had another million invested in sugar refineries, and in a hardware
factory, recently started in Warsaw, which was already paying well. His
father's debts had been legion.  But he had a minority of twenty years
and good guardians, and found Ruvno almost clear when he took it over.
Now, there was not a rouble's worth of debt on the place. He never spent
his entire income.  Whenever the chance came, he used to buy up land
around Ruvno, adding to its acres and its efficiency.  Neighbors
wondered that the son was so different from the sire, and declared he
would be one of the wealthiest men in those parts before he reached
middle age.  Not that he cared especially for money.  His one aim was to
add to Ruvno and keep up its name for good farming and good horses, to
entertain generously without ostentation, to have prize cattle and
modern machinery. His tastes were simple; a certain fastidiousness saved
him from such "affaires" as were constantly getting Roman into trouble,
and from pleasures which had ruined his father.  Yes: he could afford to
give Vanda a handsome dowry, and the thought was like balsam.

Arriving in the capital, Roman drew up before the "_Oaza_" a place where
people drank champagne at exorbitant prices and listened to dubious
songs and patter, not bereft of wit, but suited for neither the young
nor the squeamish.  It stood at the corner of the Theatre Square, where
the Opera House is, and the Vierzbova, that narrow street which runs
thence from the Saxon Square.  Ian seldom went to the haunt; but Roman
knew every woman in it.  One, with little on but a feather boa and a
gigantic hat, was screaming a new song at the top of her voice.  The
audience was meager enough, for the races were over, the heat had set
in, and people of pleasure had gone to their country homes, or abroad to
drink the waters at Carlsbad and other places where those who live too
well hope to patch up battered constitutions for future pleasures.
There were a few Russian officers, who made a great deal of noise, a
couple of Polish squires, sunburnt and opulent, some of the inevitable
Children of Israel, of those who no longer keep the Sabbath nor believe
in anybody's God; and many sirens in marvelous hats and plentiful paint.

Roman ordered the supper and drank freely of champagne.  He took not the
least notice of the entertainment, which went on just above their table,
on a small raised platform.  Ian wondered why he insisted on being so
near it; but to-night he was prepared to give in about everything, as to
a spoilt child who has broken its favorite toy.  Roman drank, ate and
talked, smoking cigarettes all the time.

"What does she see in him?  Tell me what she sees in him?" he asked,
elbows on the table, cigarette between his lips, glaring with his dark
bright eyes at his cousin.  "Now--if it had been you..."

Ian became ruddier than ever and bent over his plate. He said nothing.

"I thought of _you_ as my rival," pursued the disappointed lover.  "A
dangerous one, too."

"You needn't have," mumbled Ian, his mouth full of lobster mayonnaise.

"I see that now.  But I feared it.  You've always been together.  It
seemed the obvious thing for you to make a match of it.  Why, there were
bets on you at the club here."

"The devil there were!" cried Ian indignantly.

"Well, we all do that sort of thing.  Their gossip worried me.  I can't
think how you managed not to fall in love with her.  I'd have been in
love with any woman under the circumstances, let alone her ... why,
she's an angel, an..."

He broke off and fumed in silence for some time. Ian finished his
lobster and attacked some cold meat. Roman looked as if he expected some
remark, so he gave it, huskily:

"The obvious never happens."

"But Joe never came into my head.  You could have knocked me down with a
feather when she owned it."

"Me, too," admitted Ian, with more sincerity than he had yet commanded.

"I don't wonder.  Of course, I'm a rip.  Not worse than most of my
fellows.  I don't count you.... Can't make you out.  You must be a
fish."  He cast a glance round the room, nodded to a couple of women,
signed that he did not want them at his table, ordered a bottle of
champagne to be taken over to them, shifted his chair so that his back
was towards them, and went on:

"Who isn't?  I've had my fling.  I was quite ready to settle down.  This
sort of game disgusts me.  I've had enough of it."

"I don't wonder."

"I suppose you people at Ruvno think Joe's a steady old horse," retorted
Roman vehemently.  "He enjoys life, too.  Only he's more careful of
appearance than I am."

"Prig!" said Ian savagely.

Roman laughed at the tone.  His dark eyes were very bright.  These, with
his fine head, broad shoulders and open hand, suggested other, less
prosaic days, when men gave fuller play to their emotions, and were not
ashamed of their feelings.  He produced a hundred-rouble note from one
of his fat pocket-books and sent it across to the little orchestra.

"Tell them to play my favorites," he told the waiter.

"Don't be a fool," admonished his more careful cousin.  "You'll be glad
enough of your money before you've done with the Jews."  He knew Roman's
reckless ways; and disapproved of them.  A man nearing thirty had no
right to lead the sort of life that concentrated at the _Oaza_ between
midnight and sunrise. The place was stuffy and gaudy and depressing.  He
began to feel sorry he had come.

"The devil take my debts," said Roman.  "The Jews can wait now."  Then
he went back to Vanda.

"Do you imagine that Joe's in love with her?" he exclaimed.  "Not a bit.
He wants to settle down, doesn't need money and thinks her _suitable_.
I loathe that word.  It sums up all the hypocrisy of our lives."  He
gulped champagne, wiped his mustache, threw the napkin on the table, and
pursued:

"He thinks she'll look well at the head of his table. And it saves
trouble to marry her because he's known her all his life.  He hasn't got
to waste time paying her attention and risk the publicity of a refusal.
You can't go near a girl at the races or a dance but everybody knows it.
That's not old Joe's plan.  He's too safe."

Ian bent over his plate again.  Roman had too much insight; he was
attributing to Joe the very thoughts that had passed through his own
mind that morning. But the words gave him comfort.  If Joe was not in
love with Vanda, neither was he.  Their symptoms were alike.  Men in
love talked like Roman, acted like him.  So he was saved.  His precious
armor of male vanity was intact.  Thank God, he could face himself and
his little world again.

"If I thought she'd be really happy, I'd not care so much," remarked
Roman after a short silence.

His cousin looked up in alarm.

"If I doubted it I'd never let him marry her," he muttered.

"What can you do?  She's set her heart on him.  I don't mean he's going
to ill-treat her.  He'll be so proud of her that he'll hang on to her
till she'll long to be left alone a bit.  But she'll find him a bore
after a time.  She's not used to bores.  God!  If I had to live with old
Joe I'd blow my brains out."

And he talked on; he had the philosophy of life at his tongue's tip; and
yet what a muddle he made of his own!  He reminded Ian of agricultural
experts he knew, drawn from the ranks of ruined landed proprietors, yet
ready to give advice to those who prosper on their acres.  Gradually, he
ceased to pay heed to the flow of words.  He was an early riser and his
bedtime hour had long passed.  And he followed his own train of thought,
nodding occasionally at his cousin's eloquence, and trying to get him
out of the place.

"The essence of real love," remarked the oracle, as they left for the
Hotel Europe at last, "is sacrifice.  A man who's not ready for that is
no lover."

And again Ian felt comforted.

He stopped two days in town, saw his lawyer anent Vanda's dowry, looked
at sables, bought her a diamond pendant, and prepared to leave his
cousin.  This last much against his will.  With his old impetuosity, he
was playing heavily at his club, where a few gamblers lingered, detained
for lack of funds to take them abroad.  They hailed Skarbek's coming
with joy, knew all about his fantastic winnings, and set about fleecing
him.

"You'd be far happier if you settled down," said Ian as they finished
lunch on the day of his departure. He could not understand any
full-grown man caring to live from day to day.  For him, happiness lay
in the even road, a steady income, regular employment and an entire
absence of excitement.

"Settle down?" echoed the other.  "On what?"

"You've that money you won at Monte Carlo.  Bank it and let me tackle
your Jews."

Roman laughed bitterly.

"Ten thousand roubles of that money is in other men's pockets," and he
named two who lived upon their earnings at the green table.  "They're
off to Ostend this evening."

"You're a damned fool," was his cousin's verdict.

"I know it.  But who would gain by my being wise?"

Ian looked him straight in the eyes.  Roman noticed how clear and honest
they were, with their tale of outdoor life, their gaze of the man who
has found himself and keeps his house in order.  Yet there was nothing
priggish about him.  He enjoyed life thoroughly.  It was not the life of
champagne suppers and high stakes; but he took his pint of Veuve
Clicquot and played his game, conformed to the customs of his class.
The difference was that such pleasures were incidents for him; for Roman
they had become necessities.

"You know perfectly well that your Prussian government and my Russian
one like to see us Poles squander our lives and money," retorted the
squire.

"They do," agreed the gambler.

Ian saw his chance and followed it up, speaking earnestly, his habitual
shyness undermost for the moment.

"They like to get us off the land because that is the rock bottom of
national existence," he said.  "Lots of people forget it.  England is
forgetting it.  Every time I go there I see it clearer.  But Prussia
hasn't forgotten it for a moment these last hundred years.  And she's
taught the Russians something about it, too."

"I never had any land," protested Roman.  "Joe got it, and has kept it.
I'll say that for him."

"You can buy land."

"Not under Prussian law."

"Become a Russian subject."

"Easier said than done."

"I'll help you," Ian said eagerly.  "Do you remember Kuklin?"

"That little place near Ruvno?"

"Yes.  It's for sale."  He did not add that the owner had ruined himself
in places like the _Oaza_. "The land's first class.  The house is a
hovel.  But it's only five versts from us and you can stop at Ruvno till
you've built something fit to live in.  I'll give you the materials and
help you with the labor.  The chief outbuildings are brick and in good
condition.  The squire is a good farmer when he remembers to stop at
home.  It's a bargain."

Roman was interested.

"I suppose the Jews will buy it."

"Not if I know it.  I was going to buy it myself. But you take it.  I'll
let you have the money.  Come, Roman, here's your chance."

"You mean you'd advance me the cash?  Without security?"

"I'll make you a present of Kuklin."

Roman's handsome face filled with astonishment. Though not a mean man,
Ian had the reputation of being exceedingly careful.  He gave freely to
causes which he thought furthered the prosperity of his country; but was
wary of giving for the sake of giving, or for the popularity that comes
to the open-handed.  Roman knew him well; he realized that this offer
meant more than cousinship; it meant affection and a firm belief that he
would settle down and "make good."  He was touched, and said so in his
ardent way.

"So you're willing?  That's right.  I'll go to Kuklin tomorrow and wire
when you can see it."  The other's face clouded, so he added hastily:
"You needn't come to Ruvno.  I'll meet you at the station, the owner
will give us something to eat and I'll motor you back here.  We'll have
to settle with the Jews before you actually buy, or you'll get no terms
from them.  I'll go to Posen with you."

"Old man, you're the best friend I ever had," cried Roman, wringing his
hand.  "I can't tell you how I feel about it.  But..."

"What 'but'?"

"I don't believe I could bury myself in the country--now. With Vanda it
would have been different.  Can't you understand?"

"No, I can't."  He was disappointed.  He had never felt lonely in his
life, never knew the yearning after hot, brightly lighted restaurants
filled with men and women on excitement bent.

"You won't want to come to Warsaw," he argued. "You don't know how land
draws you.  You'll have to drag yourself here when you've some special
business and hurry back as quick as can be."

Roman doubted it, but gave up the argument.  They parted on the
understanding that he should telegraph when he had made up his mind.

Though he found Joseph still at Ruvno Ian showed a cheerful face and
calm exterior.  He felt completely master of himself again and talked
freely of the coming marriage.  The Countess was full of it.

"I can't understand what Vanda sees in him," she remarked during their
evening chat "He's more selfish than ever.  He never does a thing she
wants unless he happens to want it, too.  I suppose that's why she is so
devoted."

Ian observed, and found that his mother was right. Not that he saw much
of the happy pair.  He only met them at meals, and delegated his mother
to sound Joseph about the marriage settlement.  He won his argument with
her about that, too.  But the thing had yet to be discussed and he put
it off, not wanting to see Joseph alone if he could help it.  There was
time for that.  Meanwhile, the estate kept him busy. But the marriage
date was settled for three months hence.  That was his work.  He would
have had it earlier, but the Countess thought it looked too hasty.

Joseph was quite satisfied to wait.  He wanted to do up his country
house, and furnishing took time.  He did not consult Vanda about the
furniture.  He had ideas of his own and meant to carry them out.  Yet he
seemed proud of the girl and pleased to have won her; the rest of the
family admitted that.  What annoyed them was his boundless
self-satisfaction.  She would be his in the same way as his beautiful
estate in Eastern Prussia, as his horses, or his sound investments.

"She is his chattel," was Ian's verdict one evening when alone with his
mother.  She gave him a sidelong look, but said nothing for the moment.
Later on she mooted matrimony to him.

"It is high time you settled down," she said.  "It is a great mistake
for people to put off marriage too long.  They lose courage as they grow
older."

"Give me another year of liberty," he pleaded, laughing. "I'm not
thirty-five yet.  By next year I'll have the new farm buildings finished
and the new forest planted.  Then you shall find me a wife."

"I've one for you already," she said, caressing his face with her fine
hazel eyes.

"What a matchmaker!  Tell me the worst.  Who is it."

She hesitated before saying: "Minnie Burton," and watched him closely.

"Minnie?"  This in surprise.  He had never thought of her.  Then: "But
she is a foreigner."

"But she is fond of Poland and of us.  She's well bred, well connected,
good-looking."

"A heretic."

"That might be changed."

He took alarm at this.  There was nothing more hateful to his thoughts,
just then, than marriage with anybody--but Vanda.  And she had deserted
him.

"I hope you've not been 'sounding' her, as you call it," he cried in
alarm.

"No.  Don't be afraid.  But bear her in mind.  She's a dear girl.
She'll come back to us next year.  I'd like to chaperon her to Nice in
the winter."

"I'm not going to lose my shooting," he said firmly.

"You could run over there for a week or so.  However, there's no hurry.
Let's get Vanda safely settled first."  And wisely, she dropped the
subject.  She knew all about his disappointment, and meant to tell him
so one day.  Meanwhile she would throw him and Minnie together as much
as possible.  But there was plenty of time.

The following evening they were finishing dinner when a servant handed
Joseph a telegram.  Thinking it one of many that had arrived since his
engagement, he opened it carelessly.

"Who is it this time?" asked Vanda.

He did not answer, but read the missive twice, his face changing.  She
took alarm.

"It's bad news?"

He took no notice.  She peered over his shoulder. Everybody was waiting
for him to speak.

"It's in German," she announced to the expectant table.  "Do tell us,
Joe."

She put out her hand for the telegram, but he gave it to Ian instead.
She sat down again, looking snubbed.

"Read that," he said.  Ian obeyed, aloud, for Vanda's sake, and in
English, for Minnie's.

"'The Head of this Military District orders your immediate return, that
you may report at headquarters.'"  He looked up, puzzled.  "It's signed
by your manager.  What does it mean?"

"Mobilization," answered the Countess promptly. They looked at her in
surprise.  She was the only member of the household who had read the
last batch of papers from Warsaw.

Frowning, Ian reread the telegram.  There was silence round the table.
Joseph, like Roman, was a German subject.  Eastern Prussia, where he
lived, belonged to Poland till Frederick the Great snatched it from the
Polish Republic, weakened by internal strife. And ever since that sad
day the Prussians have done all they know to hound the Poles off their
land.  But the owners stood firm from the first, helping one another to
keep every acre they possessed from the German colonists, who have their
government's backing in money and legislation.  It is considered a
disgrace for a Pole to sell his land in Prussia or the Grand Duchy of
Poland, because Prussian law forbids a Pole to buy it.  But a Polish
squire or peasant in financial difficulties can always get a more
fortunate compatriot to help him, so that he need not sell.

"I've got to go," remarked Joseph gloomily.

Ian's thoughts ran ahead.  Joseph would be away for some time; perhaps
for months.  The wedding would have to be postponed.  Meanwhile, he and
Vanda would be meeting hourly as in the old days, yet with the
difference that she was no longer free.  At this moment he did not
imagine that Prussia's mobilization could affect his life.  The thought
that tempted him was that he could undo Joseph's wooing, win her in his
absence.  Then honor's voice intervened and he put temptation from him.
Another thought came to his aid.  He would get his mother to send her to
England with Minnie Burton.  When Joseph was ready to wed, she could
come back.  Not till then.

He looked at her.  Her face was no longer bright, she gave her lover a
long, sad gaze.  Then he glanced at Joe over the broad table, handsome
with plate and flowers, covered with the remains of a well-served,
well-cooked meal.  There was nothing supercilious about him now.  He was
frankly downcast.

"It's for Roman, too," he observed.

"I'll tell him," said Ian.  The idea of Roman's going back to Prussia
annoyed him.  He would not be able to finish the Kuklin business.  And
he had set his heart on having his wayward, impulsive cousin near by.
They had always been great friends; but since the affair with Vanda he
found something very comforting in his company.

Everybody began to talk about the telegram and its probable import.
Newspapers were opened and consulted, only to be thrown aside in
disgust.  They said so little.  Father Constantine and the Countess
argued things out according to their ideas of the political situation,
whilst Joseph and Vanda had a final talk together.  Ian saw his duty was
to amuse Minnie Burton, and he did it with thoughts elsewhere.  Joseph
left the house at two in the morning to catch the night express from
Warsaw to Posen.  They all waited up with him; their farewells were
cheerful.  He would soon be back.  Meanwhile, he could set the workmen
at his house.  Ian watched Vanda as they parted.  She was sad, but held
herself bravely.  He liked that.  He noticed, too, that Joseph was
unusually demonstrative. He knew he ought to be glad of it, for her
sake.  But it angered him all the same.  In a group at the open door
they watched the car go down the straight avenue and turn into the road.
On the way Joseph would have to knock up a local petty official and get
his passport vised.  But he saw no difficulties; nobody dreamed of war
just then, not outside the German Empire. When he had gone they went to
bed, sleepy and unconcerned.

Ian motored to Warsaw for lunch.  The streets were as deserted as usual
at that time of year, except for a sprinkling of troops.  But everybody
was discussing the possibility of Russia's fighting to help Serbia.  How
could the big Slav brother leave the weak one to be strangled?  He found
Roman at the Europe, eating iced soup, and delivered his message.

"What did old Joe do?" he asked.  The other told him.

"Went off like a lamb?  I thought as much," and he laughed scornfully.

"And you?"

"I'm no friend of the Kaiser's."

"But he may win," and Ian lowered his voice, for a party of Russian
officers sat at the next table.  "He'll make it pretty awkward for
Polish deserters if he does."

At this stage Ian had no more dislike for the Kaiser's army than for the
Tsar's.  They were both the hereditary enemies of his race.  He was glad
to think that he, at any rate, could keep aloof from the quarrel. Russia
has enough men without taking only sons and had never called him to
serve.  He was no more obtuse that bright July day than thousands of men
in the British Empire, in France, or in Belgium.  Perhaps he had a
greater respect for Prussia's efficiency and fighting spirit; but this
vaguely, as of a fact that could not touch him.

Not so Roman Skarbek.  With that odd insight you sometimes find in men
who never get the practical hang of life he peered into the future as
few, alas, peered then.  Ian remembered his words long afterwards, in
the warm, humming room, his eyes dim and dreamy with thought.

"He won't win," he said.  "At least, not in the end. But he will at
first, and let Hell loose on Europe. He'll apply all the Prussian
methods of persecution on other nations that he and his cursed breed
have tried on us Poles for the past century.  That will send the world
against him.  _We_ know what Prussianism means; the world doesn't.  But
it will before he's beaten.  What he'll do to me for deserting won't
matter.  The only deuced thing that matters is to stop Prussianism from
spreading all over the world."

"You'll find it awkward here with a German passport, if Russia does go
to war."

"I've not haunted the _Oaza_ and the club for nothing. I expect I know
more influential Russians than you do."

"I wish you would become a Russian subject," said the other, thinking of
Kuklin.  "I'd help you."

"Thanks awfully.  I'll ask you to, if I can't manage it myself."

"Oh, the whole thing will blow over.  Why, there's always a scare about
this time.  The papers made it to have something to write about."  And
they talked of other things, and of Vanda.  Roman asked a dozen
questions about her; and he perforce must answer.

He took home the gossip of the town; they talked politics all the
evening.  Minnie, who had been in St. Petersburg with her elder brother
when he was Military Attache to the British Embassy, told them with
confidence born of little knowledge that _if_ the Germans were mad
enough to fight, the Russians would be in Berlin by Christmas.  Her
host, knowing Russian ways better than she, doubted her.  Hence came
animated talk.  Yet none of them seriously thought the storm was near.
Least of all Ian, who tried to cheer Vanda for the temporary loss of her
lover by planning a new paddock which must be ready before the wedding.
Never did he feel more secure in his quiet life and snug possession than
when, bound for bed, he crossed the large hall, with its vaulted roof
painted in Gothic blue with faded gilt stars, and its antler-covered
walls. True, there was still a vestige of that uneasy feeling which he
unwillingly put down to Vanda.  But he had plenty to occupy him till Joe
came back; then for a speedy marriage--and oblivion.




                                  III


After much discussion, Father Constantine decided to seek relief for his
rheumatism at Ciechocinek, a place which lies nearer the Prussian
frontier than Ruvno, on the main line between Warsaw and Berlin.  He
felt too old to take a long journey abroad, and hated the idea of some
fashionable place in Austria or Germany.  Ciechocinek was quiet, if
primitive, and near at hand.  He started off in state a couple of days
after Ian's flying visit to Warsaw, in one of Ian's motors, the family
at the front door to wish him a pleasant journey.  There was as much
bustle when the old chaplain went away--which rarely happened--as though
the whole household were leaving.  Everybody carried something to the
car for him; everybody heard over and over again what the two
canvas-covered portmanteaux held and knew their owner had packed and
unpacked them half-a-dozen times within the week, in the agony of
indecision and the search for some necessary garment that had been put
at the bottom.  Nothing would induce him to let a servant pack them.
Besides the portmanteaux he carried several loose packages; to wit,
three long loaves of home-made bread, because any other kind gave him
indigestion; a small collection of home-smoked ham, sausage and tongue
to take in the evening with his glass of weak tea (Ciechocinek sausages
were all very well, but Father Constantine would sooner have gone
without than have eaten them).  And, for his morning tea, the
housekeeper had packed up a large _baba_ or cake, whose very name makes
one's mouth water in days of dark flour and scarce eggs.  There was a
little basket containing his lunch, for he eschewed restaurant cars and
preferred cold chicken and fresh bread and butter to the best meal to be
had at railway stations. I had almost forgotten the parcel of butter
which he carried to his cure, too; it was firm and fresh and creamy,
food fit for the gods, for he would not eat the watery, saltish rubbish
which, so he declared, the hotel-keeper in Ciechocinek provided.  At the
last moment, when he was in the midst of his good-byes, a maid came
hurrying along with a heavy square parcel.  It contained linen sheets.
The baths at the cure place, so Father Constantine declared, were
frequented by many people whom he thought none too clean.  And he had no
faith in the attendant's scrubbing.  So he had a sheet spread in the
bath before it was filled with the muddy substance that drew out his
pains.  Then there were wraps and pillows and books for the journey,
till you would have thought the good old man was to travel for days,
instead of hours.  Only a generously proportioned Russian railway
carriage would have taken so many bundles on the racks.  For Father
Constantine never trusted his precious portmanteaux to the luggage van.
He was firmly convinced that highway robbers would have learned of his
coming, laid wait and robbed him of his baggage whilst he dozed.  He
invariably counted the sum total of his packets each time the train
stopped, when he awoke and glared suspiciously at new-comers.  But
everybody at Ruvno took his little ways with good humor; he had been
there so long that he was an institution.  They loved his bright eyes
and sharp tongue; they knew his heart was in the right place, and knew
all his anecdotes so well that they could think of other things whilst
he told them, and yet, by force of habit, make the right remark when he
had finished.  Ian was devoted to him; would never have thought of going
off, on his mid-morning round until he had departed.  He asked to be
allowed to go with him as far as the station; in fact, the priest
expected this offer from the sturdy squire whom he had spanked and
taught in by-gone years.  But he would never accept it.  He disliked
being seen off.  It looked as though he was no longer capable of buying
his own ticket or finding a porter.  But the little comedy had to be
enacted all the same.

"Father, I'm going to the station," Ian would say on these occasions,
when the last package was stowed away and the housekeeper had counted
them at least twice.

The priest held up his hands in mock horror.  He was small and rather
shrunken.  His nose was hooked and his scant hair white.  He had seen a
good deal of trouble in his day; was in Siberia for five years in his
youth for defending his church against a sotnia of Cossacks in 1864, and
owed his misshapen ears to frostbite which he got on the terrible
journey, made on foot in those days.  But these things were a memory,
and life was peaceful enough now.

"No, my child," he said.  "Think of the packages. By the way, where's
the _baba_?  Zosia! where did you put the _baba_?"

"It's under the seat," said the Countess from the steps.  "I saw her put
it there.  You'd better let Ianek go with you.  He'll enjoy it."

"No, no, Countess.  Thank you all the same.  He'd crush the bread or sit
on the butter when we begin to bump about on the bad part of the road.
I'll get on by myself.  The old horse isn't done yet.  Not by a long
way.  God bless you all.  Farewell!"

Making the sign of the cross, he wrapped the yellow dust-cloak round
him.  Ian gave the word to start and off he went.

The three women strolled over to the chestnuts, glad of the shade that
warm morning, and Ian went to where men were busy laying out his new
paddock. He gave some directions there, had gone over the stables and
was waiting for his horse to be saddled for a visit to some wheat
fields, reported damaged by a shower of early-morning hail, when the
familiar hoot of his motor made him look up in surprise.  He had given
the driver orders to wait for the papers from Warsaw, and knew he could
not have done it in so short a time.  But surprise grew when, as the car
drew nearer, he saw Father Constantine's dust-cloak. He waved to them to
drive to the stables instead of round by the avenue and the house.

"What has happened?" he asked as they pulled up. "You can't have lost
the train.  It's not due for an hour yet."

"There is no train," announced the priest.  "The Muscovites are
mobilizing troops.  We're cut off from everywhere.  I might have saved
myself the trouble of packing."

"But there's worse than that, my lord Count," put in Bartek, the young
chauffeur, who had been born on the land and had served first as
stove-tender, then as gun-cleaner before being trained as a mechanic.
"The tales they're telling at the station made my hair stand on end."

"What tales?" asked Ian.

"Jewish lies," snapped the priest.

Ian turned to the driver, who said:

"The Prussians have crossed the frontier and are in Kalisz."

"Don't you believe it, Ian," put in Father Constantine. "The Jews will
say anything to scare honest Christians."

"And please, my lord Count," pursued Bartek the driver, "they are
murdering men and women and children there.  First they took a lot of
money, gold, too, from the town, as a bribe to let the people alone.
Then when they'd got the money they went up on that hill that stands
over the town.  And when the people thought they were safe on account of
the gold they had given to the Prussian Colonel, that very officer came
down into the town again, shut the people in their houses and shot at
them through the windows, like rats in a trap."

"The Prussians so near us?" murmured Ian, looking from one to the other.
"It's incredible.  What are the Russians doing?  There were several
regiments in Kalisz."

"They retired before the Prussians came," answered Bartek, who had kept
his ears open at the station.

"Incredible!" echoed the priest.  "It's impossible. They wouldn't dare
to do it."

The boy produced a crumpled newspaper from one of his pockets and handed
it to Ian.

"The ticket man gave it to me," he explained.  "One of the recruits
brought it in a train from Warsaw. He says it tells what the Prussians
are doing in some foreign part, I forget what it's called, but it's
smaller than our country, and they've ravished the maids and murdered
the children and done such things that haven't been done in Poland since
the Turks were here.  And they say they'll do the same thing to us if
they get any further."

"You never told me you'd a paper," cried the priest. "What does it say,
Ianek."

And Ian read the first story of Belgium's martyrdom.

"It's some trick to sell the paper," was Father Constantine's remark,
when he had done.

"I hope so."  Ian glanced at the head of the paper. It was the _Kurjer
Warszawski_, which would hardly have printed such news without reason.
He reread the account, to himself this time, whilst the old priest sat
back in the car and piously called upon God to know if it were true.
Some minutes passed.  Ian read and reread the news, unbelievingly at
first, then with growing conviction.  In the late-news column was a
telegram from London, saying that England would probably declare war on
Germany.

"There must be something in it," he said.  "If England is going to war,
Belgium has been invaded."  He jumped into the car and they drove up to
the house.

His mother and the two girls he found in the Countess' sitting-room.
Zosia, the housekeeper, was standing there, sobbing bitterly and cursing
the Prussians through her tears.  In the large French window, which
stood open, was a ragged, dusty, fear-stricken Jew, of the poorest
description, one of the dark masses who live by running errands for
their wealthier brethren; the hewers of wood and drawers of water of
their own race; happy to lend a stray rouble in usury to some
agricultural laborer who has fallen on evil days.

From this miserable man's trembling lips he heard much the same story as
Bartek had learned at the station.  But in addition the Jew brought news
that Zosia's sister, who lived in Kalisz, married to a prosperous
cartwright, had been murdered by the Prussians.

Ian never forgot the impression this made upon him.  Later on, he grew
more callous, saw and heard so many horrors, proved the Kaiser's army
capable of anything.  But the thought that Zosia's sister, a girl who
had grown up at Ruvno and served his mother as maid before her marriage,
had been assassinated in cold blood made his own boil.  He was not a man
to use many words.  He made no effort to express the thoughts and
feelings that rose in him.  He did not speak for some time.  Then he
turned to his mother.

"You women must go to Moscow at once," he said. "God knows, they may
soon be here at the rate they are coming on."

He spoke in a tone of authority he rarely used with her.  She went to
the window and looked into her beloved rose garden, soon to be cut into
trenches and trampled by soldiers' feet.  But on that morning it was a
beautiful spot, fair with the work and art of many generations of
skilled gardeners and gentle mistresses.  A peacock spread his tail in
the sun; Ian's two favorite dogs whined to him to go out to them; the
air was very sweet with the odor of roses and pine needles.  A big red
butterfly floated past her into the room.  She could scarcely believe
that only a few miles away war raged; and yet, here was Zosia sobbing
her heart out, here stood the Jewish messenger, who had come to say that
the dead woman's husband and children were on their way to Ruvno as
refugees, leaving all they possessed behind them, traveling on foot,
with unspeakable bitterness and grief in their hearts.

She turned to her son, smiling a little.  They lived very near to one
another and she loved him better than anything in the world, better than
she had loved his father, for whom she suffered such pain.

"And you?" she asked.

"I shall volunteer," he answered simply.

He had not consciously thought about it before.  The words came without
his knowing exactly why.  He knew that Russia had plenty of men without
him; he bore that country no love, having had to suffer many
humiliations from her since his babyhood.  Every day he had to fight
Russian malevolence in some shape or form.  But he knew that the troops
now speeding to stop the Prussian advance were on the right side.  He
remembered Roman's words: "The only deuced thing that matters is to stop
Prussianism from spreading."

His mother gave him a frightened look, bit her lip, and said nothing.

"You're right, my child," said Father Constantine, who, dust-cloak and
all, was sitting in a chair several times too big for him.  In his hand
he held one of the many packets Zosia had prepared for his journey. He
had forgotten about them.  His old heart was filled with a terrible,
helpless anger against the human beasts who had brought such death into
the country.

The Countess put her hands on Ian's shoulder and kissed him, standing on
tip-toe to reach his honest, sunburnt face.

"And I," she said, "will stop here with our people."

He tried to dissuade her, reminding her of what was happening a few
miles away.  But she was firm.  I don't believe he thought she would
give in.  He did his duty in trying to make her move; but his own
instinct was to stick to Ruvno till it was burned over their heads.

"If we leave the place goodness knows what would happen," she went on.
"If we are shelled we can live in the cellars.  That's what they were
built for.  If Ruvno goes, I may as well go with it."

"It is the simplest way, and the simplest is generally the best way,"
said Vanda.  She had not spoken since Zosia burst into the room with her
terrible story.  Ian looked at her face, which had grown pale.  He had
forgotten her for the moment.  Now he remembered that the man she was to
marry had gone home and must fight on the other side, or be shot for a
deserter. Their eyes met: they understood each other; both had the same
thought.  And it flew round the room to the others, for they all looked
at her, wondering what she felt about it.  She covered her face with her
hands. Anxious to draw attention away from her, he turned to Minnie
Burton.

"And you," he said, "must come with me to Warsaw, at once.  I will see
your Consul and send you home the quickest way."

Minnie gave a little laugh.  She was a fair, fresh-colored girl, with
steady brown eyes and a frank manner.  She expected them to talk of
sending her home and had already made up her mind not to leave Ruvno
whilst they remained.  Three years ago, her soldier brother brought Ian
home for a week-end.  They were renting a little place in Leicestershire
for the winter, and he hunted with them.  She liked him at once.  He was
the first foreigner she had met who did not overwhelm her with silly
compliments.  He was more interesting than most of her brother's
friends, who developed their muscles, but neglected their minds.  And he
liked the things she liked, the country, violent exercise, horses;
appeared much pleased with English country life and arranged for her to
meet his mother and Vanda.  So the two families became very friendly.
Then old General Burton died, the home was broken up and Minnie left
more or less alone in the world, for both brothers were abroad, one, a
sailor, and the other with his regiment in India.  She had been
foolishly happy at Ruvno, she reflected, and allowed friendship with Ian
to ripen into one-sided love.  She was not one of those women who will
renounce a husband rather than marry a foreigner, and prefer to bear no
children rather than see them grow up to citizens of another state than
England.  She longed to "settle down," though she never admitted it and
gave acquaintances to understand that she thoroughly enjoyed her present
way of living.  Ian was free; he liked her.  She saw no reason why he
should not one day love her as she loved him.  Though the Countess had
not dropped a word about her own thoughts in the matter, Minnie felt
sure she would not object to her son's marrying a comely young
Englishwoman with a tidy fortune and good connections.  There was one
great barrier--the difference in their faith; but Minnie had not thought
about that seriously.  Her mind dwelt more on Ian the possible spouse
than on Ian the Roman Catholic.  In his company she had enjoyed many a
canter across country, many a chat and not a few friendly discussions.
And her heart had succumbed. True, there were times when she suspected
him of being a little cold by nature; a little prosaic, even for her,
who would have been annoyed with a lover of Roman Skarbek's type.  She
did not guess he felt so comfortable as a bachelor that he thought of
matrimony as an unpleasant plunge, to be taken as late as could be.  All
this seems calculating and unmaidenlike put on paper; but it was not
nearly so clear in her brain; till this fateful morning of bad news from
Kalisz her plans had been vague; her heart alone busy. She would have
been well content to live in Ruvno forever.  And here was sudden danger
of her leaving. Ian might marry another girl before they could meet
again.  Though no husband-angler and too proud to set her cap at any man
she felt that she must stop under his roof, or her romance would be
ruined.  Rapidly, she reviewed heart and conscience.  The first spoke
all too plainly; as to the second, she had no near family beyond her two
brothers, one on the high seas, the other, presumably, to fight in
Belgium.  Her only duties, if she went home all the way through Russia
or Roumania or Greece, would be to help refugees and do her unskilled
best with wounded.  But here were both to succor.  She was nearer that
kind of suffering than she could be at home.  And even though Ian joined
the army--she glanced at his sturdy figure and reflected on his
thirty-four summers with the comforting doubt as to whether Russia
wanted him--she would be in touch with him at Ruvno, and of use to his
mother, whom she liked sincerely.

She did not answer him, but turned to the Countess.

"I'll stop here with you," she said with flaming cheeks.

"But, my dear child, think of the risks," said her hostess, by no means
unwilling, but anxious to give her a fair chance of escaping from such a
dangerous place.

Here Father Constantine chimed in.  His bird-like eyes saw a great deal
and he shuddered at the thought of Ian's marrying a heretic.  He had
often wondered of late when those two brothers of hers were coming to
take her away.  And here was a good opportunity to get rid of her at
once.

"You cannot stay here, Mademoiselle."  He spoke French, not trusting his
halting English in so important a matter.  "The Germans will be
exceedingly cruel to the English.  I know how they hate you.  I have
been in Germany many times, for my rheumatism.  If they find you here in
Ruvno they will be capable of doing unspeakable things to you and bad
things to us, for having you here."  He turned to the Countess, nursing
his bundle of sausages, a shriveled, eager figure in his linen
dust-cloak and his air of the family confidant and confessor.  "Madame,
think of the responsibility.  Imagine your terrible remorse if anything
happened to Mademoiselle."

"The same things might just as well happen to me if I left this minute,"
protested Minnie, determined to fight for her cause.  "The steamer might
be captured by the Germans, England might be invaded.  Of course, I hope
it won't, but my brothers say the government have never bothered to
prepare for this.  I may not even be able to reach home.  Father
Constantine could not get to his cure at that place with the
unpronounceable name.  And it's lots nearer than England."

"That's true," agreed the Countess, who knew all about her chaplain's
dread of heretics.  Besides, she was loth to lose Minnie.  Apart from
her affection for the girl and her reluctance to send her off on a long
journey, dark with unknown perils, she thought of Ian.  Supposing they
were burned out of house and home, as seemed more than likely, it would
be a comfort to her to know that he could settle in England with Minnie
to look after him till, one vague day, the Germans were beaten.  She
told herself that she would never survive the ruin of her home.  It was
almost as great a part of her existence as Ian himself.  No: she did not
want to part with Minnie; Minnie would look after him when she was no
more.  She smiled across at Father Constantine.

"You see," she said, "we can always send her away when danger is really
near.  In the meantime, let us wait till the trains are running again."

Here Ian intervened.  He had been questioning the Jew about Kalisz,
without getting any clear statements from his poor, muddled brain.

"We can't let Minnie run such risks.  It's bad enough for us Poles, who
live in a country which is always a charnel house when war comes.  But
why should she get mixed up in it?"

Minnie's heart sank.  He was so very matter of fact. But she would not
give in.

"Why?  For lots of reasons.  I'd be all alone if I did reach home.  You
know the boys will be fighting."

"England hasn't declared war yet," said Father Constantine, handing his
sausages over to Zosia.  He had just remembered they were in his lap.
"She may remain neutral."

"She won't!" cried Minnie hotly.  "If that were possible I'd change my
nationality!"

Father Constantine made a hopeless little gesture and let Zosia help him
off with his execrable dust-cloak, watching the Countess furtively the
while.  He felt very much ashamed of having neglected to remove it in
the hall.  It was not only a breach of good manners, but a sign of his
extreme agitation.

"Take it away at once!" he whispered to poor Zosia. She went off with it
and the sausages, to weep on the ample bosom of old Barysia, Ian's
long-since-pensioned nurse.

Thinking she had settled the priest, Minnie turned to her host.

"If you go away to fight with the Russians I mean to look after the
Countess--and don't imagine I'm going to leave Poland and my Polish
friends just because you're all in trouble!"

This touched them all, even the priest.  The Countess was won over
before, but Ian still meant to get her away that evening.  Vanda would
stop with his mother.  The only feeling he had for Minnie just then was
fear her brothers would blame him for keeping her.

The matter was partially settled by a couple of young Russians, whom a
servant announced as waiting for Ian in the library.  He hurried out to
see them and did not return for some time.  The others eagerly asked his
news.

"It's true about Kalisz," he said.  "But the Russians are sending troops
up there as fast as they can. Incidentally, they are requisitioning all
the cars and most of my horses."

"Cars!  Then no Warsaw for me to-night," said Minnie.

Ian gave her an odd look.  She rather annoyed him that morning, he knew
not why.

"No," he retorted.  "And you don't seem to wonder how I'm going to get
in the crops if all my men are called to the colors and my cattle are
taken off."

"Oh, I didn't think of that," she said, repentant.

"Well, I must get back.  Mother, we'll have to have these two young
Russians to lunch.  They're not very presentable ... but it's war-time."

He hurried put, leaving Minnie in contrition.  She had ruffled him when
she wanted to please him above all things.  Father Constantine could not
believe his ears.  Social intercourse between Russians and Poles was
exceedingly restricted.  A few tufthunters and the descendants of those
men who had winked at Russia's share in Poland's three partitions kept
up a certain amount of relationship with the Russian Government; went to
the official receptions given by the Governor General of Warsaw, who was
also Commander of the troops stationed in Poland.  Whilst in office he
was lodged at the Royal Palace in Warsaw, once the winter home of
Poland's kings.  But these were the very few, as few were the members of
old Polish families who had charges at the Imperial Court of Russia.
The vast majority of Poles, rich and poor, aristocratic and humble,
lived their lives apart from the Russian Bureaucrats in their midst, who
fattened on the country, reaping a harvest in peculation, drawing extra
pay whilst there, on the lying legend that they carried their lives in
their hands and slept with revolvers under their pillows for fear Polish
insurgents should murder them in the night.  They knew perfectly well
that the Poles had long since ceased to dream of independence won by
rebellion; that they had learned the lessons of eighteen sixty-three and
four.  But they made alarming reports to St. Petersburg to enhance the
value of their own services.  The Poles knew that, at least for the time
being, their one way of resisting Russification was to develop the
agricultural and commercial resources of their country as much as
possible, despite their conqueror's efforts; to preserve their native
customs in spite of persecution; to teach their native language despite
restriction and to cling to their national faith despite persecution
from the Holy Synod and the indifference of Rome, who looked with dread
upon Russia and dared not protest.  But since the Russians in their
midst were there to suppress all signs of their national life, the Poles
shunned intercourse with them as much as possible; those who did not
were marked men.  Ruvno had never shown the least inclination to mix
with Russians.  Both Ian and his father before him declined a charge at
the Imperial Court; it was an unwritten law in the family, as in so many
others, that whilst the men had to learn a little Russian in order to
transact necessary business, the women must not know a word.  This rule
has done more to preserve the Polish language in humble homes and in
great than anything else.

So you can understand Father Constantine's surprise when he heard Ian
say that two Muscovites, as they are generally called in Poland, were to
sit at his patron's table.  Nobody had fought harder, in his modest way,
against the Russification of his country than the old priest.  He was
apt to see but Russian faults, just as the Russians had eyes only for
Polish shortcomings.  Had such a thing happened a week ago he would have
expressed his displeasure at the sudden crumbling up of Ruvno traditions
and excused himself from the meal.  But he thought things over for a
minute and remarked to the silent room:

"Well, the Russians are fighting on the right side _this_ time."

In his tone and the gesture of his thin hands were much eloquence, and a
hint that he had wiped his account against Russia off the slate; that
the sufferings of Siberian exile were to rankle no more.  From that day
forth they never heard him say a hard word against Russians, never
caught him speaking of them as Muscovites, a term of hatred and
contempt, but as Russians, children of the big land of Rus, fighting in
a big struggle for the good cause of humanity.

The Countess said nothing for a moment.  She had always avoided
Russians, knew nothing of their language, treated those whom evil chance
threw in her way with dignified civility, which was meant to make them
feel that they were barbarians and she of an old civilization.  But she
was ready to call Russia an acquaintance, a possible friend in the near
future, if they only kept their word to fight the Prussians who were
killing defenseless women and children in Kalisz and Belgium.  Ian had
described the two visitors as "not very presentable."  She knew what he
meant.  She had seen dozens of Russian officers who were not
presentable, in the streets of Warsaw and Plock; at the races, at
restaurants, in trains.  They were noisy and none too clean; they spoke
nothing but Russian and probably put their knives in their mouths.  They
would smell of pitch.  She never quite understood why Russians of this
type smelt of pitch, but the fact remained.  Ian said it was something
to do with the tanning of their shoe-leather.  Perhaps it was.  Anyway,
it was not quite the kind of smell she cared to have at her table or in
her sitting-room.  And yes, they would expect some of the strong, raw
vodka which peasants drink. However, she had always been ready to take a
sporting chance on the sudden events of life, and said cheerfully:

"I expect we shall have more of them before the war is over.  So the
sooner you and I pick up a few Russian words, Vanda, the better for us."

Vanda did not answer.  She was thinking of Joseph, who had gone to fight
with the race that had violated Belgium and slaughtered the children of
Kalisz.

Minnie only nodded.  Her thoughts were for Ian. She felt she had said
too much that morning and was regretting it.




                                   IV


No need to dwell upon Ian's efforts to enlist as a volunteer in the
Tsar's army.  Thousands and thousands of loyal Britons were being
snubbed by their own government in the same way just then. Briton's
rulers had even less excuse for their behavior than Russia, who at least
had a large standing army to draw upon.

Russia needed no men, he was told.  Perhaps, after many years, she would
call on men over thirty to help her.  But then, the war would be over in
a few months. After being refused by the officer in charge of the
military depot at Kutno, he went to Warsaw, hoping to find Roman, who
knew a few Russians and might help him.  But he learned at the Hotel
Europe that the impetuous young man had left for St. Petersburg several
days ago and omitted to say when he was coming back.  Ian soon found out
that his only chance of fighting would be with the Cossacks, to whom
they were sending volunteers for the cavalry.  To those whom he begged
for admission he pointed out that he could ride straight and shoot
straight, was sound as a nut and willing to do anything.  One grizzled
old Cossack colonel, reared on mare's milk, bred in the saddle, with not
a spare ounce of flesh on his bones, gave his ample figure a keen and
contemptuous glance.

"To the devil with riding gentlemen squires!" were his words, spoken in
that strange Russian of the Don; but his tone said: "To the devil with
all Poles!"  He repeated his glance and asked:

"Can you ride without your saddle now?"

"I can."

"And without your bridle?"

"Yes."

The gruff warrior sought his eyes, which firmly met the gaze and with
hostility, too; none have hated one another more bitterly for centuries
than Pole and Cossack.

"And spring on the mare's back when she's galloping?"

"I've not done that lately," admitted the squire.

"H'm.  I thought not from your belly.  You can shoot, you say.  Bears,
perhaps?"

"Bears, yes.  And quail on the wing.  And wild fowl at dawn.  And men,
too, when they insult me," retorted Ian, his temper fast slipping out of
control.

The Cossack grinned.  This sort of talk he liked. He had wondered
whether the Pole would give as good as he got.  His manner thawed
slightly, as he said:

"Well, you've the pigeon-colored eyes of men who shoot straight.  But
you're too fat for a Cossack, and too old."

"You're fifty if you're a day," said Ian.

"Wrong for you.  I'm only forty-five.  But I've had a hard life, which
I'm used to.  You, my gentleman, have always had a soft bed to sleep on
and rich food to feed on.  That's why your stomach is too big for your
years."

Ian suddenly felt very much ashamed of his spare flesh.  Over and over
again he had promised himself he would go to Marienbad and get rid of
it.  But that was out of the question now.  So he said eagerly:

"I'll get thin soon enough campaigning.  Look here, Colonel, you and I
bear no love to one another.  We've a good many old scores to pay off."

"You're right about that," admitted the other with a grin.  "And the
fault's not always been on the Cossack side, either."

"But just now we've got to beat the Prussians," argued Ian.  "And you'll
want all the men you can get to do it.  I've been in their country and
know it."

The Cossack gave a hoarse guffaw.

"Russia has enough sons to beat the world," he cried. "We'll be in
Berlin before the New Year and I'll promise you my men won't leave much
of their fine shops and their light beer.  And on my way I'll call in on
your house and give you some loot to prove it. Meanwhile, do you go home
and look after your lady mother and your peasants."

This, delivered in the various accents of the Holy Russian Empire, and
in varying tones, according to the state of culture of the particular
officer who gave it, was the answer which greeted Ian everywhere he
went. He was too old and too heavy.  Bitter thought, when he felt young,
strong, enthusiastic and capable as any Cossack of holding his own with
horse and gun.  There were, he was told, plenty of younger, fitter men
than he.  The Prussians would be utterly destroyed without his help.
His grain, his horses and his peasants were worth more than his blood.

This was the result of two days' begging, waiting in ante-rooms,
listening to more or less personal remarks, rubbing shoulders with men
who were his enemies of centuries and who were, he thought, childishly
optimistic about the war.  As he told the Cossack of the Don, he knew
Prussia.  And he dreaded to think of how many towns would be captured,
how many women and children butchered, before Berlin loot found its way
to Ruvno....

There was nothing to be done but go home and follow the old colonel's
advice.  No need to add that everybody in Ruvno, and the women
especially, welcomed him with fervor and relief.  He made preparations
for the war, laying in a large stock of grain, potatoes and other
provisions which would keep.  He feared a food shortage before long.
Ruvno had good cellars, vaulted and spacious.  They had been built in a
time when people quarreled with their neighbors even more violently than
they do nowadays, and laid siege to one another's houses.  They were
swept and aired under Zosia's and Martin's supervision.  Then Ian had
most of his stores bricked up in them, as his forbears did with their
good wines, entering the list in their cellar-book and only opening the
best vintage for weddings, christenings, funerals or the celebration of
some great victory, according to the period of history.  The Ruvno
cellar-book went back to 1539, and he was very proud of it.

He worked hard during these days of preparation, seeking to relieve the
smart of refusal.  Too old and too fat; what a thing to have on his
mind!  He confided his feelings to nobody, not even to the Countess, who
was busy housing refugees and improvising a hospital.  Minnie he had
forgotten; Vanda he avoided. Between them rose the figure of Joseph, in
his Prussian helmet and gray service coat.  _He_ was with their enemies.
Both felt the moment must come when they would open their passionate
thoughts to each other about him; and both tacitly postponed it.
Meanwhile, Vanda helped her aunt and Minnie to prepare wards and
nurseries for the wounded and homeless.

He kept several people busy for the next few days, getting in his
supplies from his various farms and entering them, not in the old
cellar-book, but on a piece of strong paper, showing exactly how the
household could reach various stores bricked up in different parts of
the cellars, which covered as much ground as the big rambling house
itself.

This done, he had to decide where to hide the list, so that, supposing
Muscovites or Prussians made search for food, they would not find it.
For he had little confidence in Russian troops either.  A hungry warrior
has no scruples as to whom he robs. Experience had taught him that, of
the two kinds of oppression against his race, the Prussian was worse
than the Russian; it had more method, persistency and callousness,
beating anything the Russian could do, because the Russian is not
orderly, nor has he a long memory.  Ian knew, too, what rumors were
afloat; that petty Russian bureaucrats were saying that the Poles would
side with the invaders and Polish recruits refuse to fight.  Such talk,
though a tissue of lies, might put Russian troops against Polish houses.
So he made up his mind to hide the food list and ... his family jewels.
He wanted to send the latter to Moscow with the plate and pictures; but
his mother refused to let them go.

"We may want them," she argued.  "I hope we sha'n't; but you never know.
They will enable us to live and to help others live for the rest of our
lives if we have to bolt."

Ian had never thought of the possibility of leaving Ruvno.  Privately,
he meant to stop there even if the Germans came.  Only thus would he be
able to save his property.  He had already heard enough tales of the
neighborhood to know that an empty house is soon a smoking ruin and an
abandoned farm appropriated by somebody else.  He would send his mother
and Vanda away and see things through alone.  Minnie he would get rid of
beforehand.  But there was no reason why he should not humor his mother
in this matter of the jewels.  Time enough to tell the truth when real
danger came.  So he said nothing.  Father Constantine suggested putting
them in the chapel, under a stone which they would take out of the floor
and replace so that nobody would be any the wiser.

"Prussians don't respect churches," said the Countess.

"And suppose the chapel should get burnt," remarked Vanda.

Father Constantine shuddered at the thought.  He loved the little chapel
better than any part of Poland, and this is saying a great deal.

"The only place is where everybody goes," said Vanda.

"The horse pond," suggested Ian jokingly.

"Yes," she rejoined seriously, "I vote for the horse pond."

"And ruin the jewels," protested her aunt.

"Vanda is right," said Ian.  "All the soldiers who come use the horse
pond.  They won't think of looking for loot there.  We should have to
dig on the side furthest from the paddock wall, as that may be
destroyed."

"Yes," said Vanda, "something like that."

"A brilliant idea," said Ian, "but it has a great drawback."

"Which is?"

"How are you going to dig it up if we want to bolt?  All the soldiers in
the place would see and there's an end to the jewels."

Nobody said anything for a moment; they were floored.  Father
Constantine spoke first.

"There is the high-road," he said in a detached way he had.

"Well?" said Ian.

"The troops won't make trenches in that, because it forms one of the
lines of communication between Warsaw and Prussia.  If we make a hole,
lined with cement and moss, put some sausages over the jewels, with hard
earth between, they ought to be safe.  For anybody who found the
sausages wouldn't go further down.  We mustn't choose a spot near trees,
for they will get felled and the ground torn up around them."

"There are two versts without trees, after you pass the windmills," said
Vanda.

"And no peasants about to pry on you," added Ian.

So the Ruvno jewels were taken out of their caskets and sewn into
waterproof bags.  The girls helped the Countess to make them, for none
of the servants, not even Martin, the old butler, knew anything of the
plan. He was to be trusted, but Ian and his mother agreed it was better
not to let him know; he could then quite truthfully spread the report
that the jewels had gone with the plate.  For so he and the upper
servants were told.  In the washleather bags they put very fine sawdust,
too.

Ian and the old priest dug the hole and lined it with cement, taking
advantage of the bright moon to do it.  Then the jewels were put in.
They had a discussion about putting pearls there, but could not ask an
expert, being cut off from Warsaw again.  Ian said the damp might spoil
them; his mother that she would rather the damp had them than think they
were round the fat neck of some German _frau_; so they made the bag as
thick as possible and put the most valuable pearls into a small thermos
flask which Ian found among his hunting tackle.  You must remember that
the nearest jeweler's shop was twenty versts from Ruvno and might have
been a thousand for all the good it was, since the Germans were there
and the Russian troops between it and them.  So they had to manage with
the primitive things they found at home. Besides, as Father Constantine
said, their object was to have the stones packed in as small a compass
as possible, because if they wanted them at all during the war it would
be to escape with.

Whilst preparing one hole they decided it would be better to divide the
treasure into two parts, so that if for some reason or other they could
not safely get to one they would have some chance with the other.  So
Ian and Father Constantine set to work on another hole, on the road to
the east of the house, whereas the first was on the west, for so goes
the road from Warsaw to Plovk, and thence follows the river Vistula into
Prussia.  They had to work quickly, for the moon was on the wane, and
they could not be seen digging by the wayside at night.  Even as it was,
they were often interrupted by troops and supplies passing.  One night,
just as they were about to cement the second hole, a _sotnia_ of
Cossacks took it into their heads to bivouac near the secret spot, so
they hastily covered it up and slunk home again, carrying the little
sack of cement on their backs. They looked back and saw two Cossacks
searching on the very spot where they had been working.  This showed how
careful they must be.  At last, however, the two holes were filled with
straw and moss, then the bags with the jewels, with earth beaten down,
potatoes, sausages and more loose rubbish.  The jewels were well at the
bottom and several layers away from the food.  This done, the women were
taken--after dark--to the spots until they knew exactly where to find
the treasure; and each learned by heart how many paces one hole was from
the ditch and the other from the bend in the road that came a few
hundred yards after you passed the windmill. _That_ has been shot down
long ago; but they had all passed the place and visited the spot so
often that they could find the treasure blindfolded.  The two men
covered up the tops so well that none could tell the ground had been
disturbed twenty-four hours after they had finished.

So much for the jewels.  They now had to find a place for the little
plan that would enable them to get food supplies.  There was not so much
secrecy about this, there could not be, for both the butler and
housekeeper had to know where to get things. By this time they had heard
quite enough about the soldiers to be sure that if they were hungry and
thought there was food about they would try to get it.  But the Grand
Duke Nicolai Nicolawitch had his troops well in hand; only the Prussians
ordered their men to loot as much as they pleased; and who could tell
how soon they might come?

Ian had ordered a good stock of foodstuffs to be left in the huge
storeroom, to satisfy any looters that that was all they had.  If that
went, they could fall back on bricked-up supplies; if it were let alone,
so much the better.  But the stores in the cellar had been bricked up in
six different parts; the place underneath the house was a labyrinth of
passages and small cellars.  Ian was for destroying the written list
when they had learnt the geography of the food, and knew the Prussians
were upon them.  Till then, it might be kept in the chapel; for they
knew that the Russians, even the most savage of the Cossacks, would
respect holy ground.  Vanda said nothing, but learnt the contents off by
heart, going down into the cellars with Zosia and Martin, plan in hand,
till they all three soon knew where everything was bricked up.  This set
Minnie to work, for Vanda, who seemed to her childish in far-off days of
peace, had developed nowadays.  Little by little she, too, learned the
mystery of the cellars; so another detail, and a most important one, as
things turned out, was mastered.  In the storeroom were lists of the
food put there, nailed inside the huge cupboards and headed: "Complete
List of Foodstuffs in Hand."  This little trick was an idea of Ian's.
Later on, when it seemed certain they could not escape a visit from
William's troops, he had the old Tokay unbricked and put in one of the
open cellars.  Minnie asked him why he was going to give them such good
wine.

"Because they know it is here," he answered.  "I don't want them to set
about looking for it.  Some old German professor called once with
introductions and asked if he might see the cellar-book.  Like an ass, I
let him.  His essay came out in some German review with extracts from my
cellar-book."

Meanwhile, all the able-bodied men, except only sons and supporters of
widows, had been called to the colors.  Before going off, the men
trooped into the hall, kissed the Countess' hand and had her blessing
and her promise that neither wife nor child should want so long as Ruvno
could help them.  And Father Constantine, who had taught them all their
catechism and their prayers, said a prayer.  And then they marched away,
singing hymns which have been heard on every battlefield in which Poles
took part since Christianity came into Poland, and swinging their sturdy
arms; for so the Russians teach their soldiers to march....

They went down the shady avenue and along the hot, dusty road to the
depot, five miles off.  And at their head rode Ian and Father
Constantine, to give them a send-off.  Long after they were out of sight
the three women could hear their voices, the men singing in unison, and
the wives or sweethearts, who could keep up with them by running
alongside, chiming in with their shrill tones; and Minnie thanked God
that Ian, if he was to die, would die with her in his beloved Ruvno....

And as she watched them disappear into the fields of death and glory a
great sadness came over her; for she knew that between yesterday and all
the days to come in her life lay a deep abyss; that life itself would
never be the same again; that a scale of pleasant illusions had fallen
from her eyes and she must now face hard, unwelcome facts and live a
fuller, sterner life than she had ever dreamed of; and the thought that
the old order had left them all, on this great battlefield, forever,
made her feel that she had lost somebody very very dear to her; and so
the tears came into her eyes, though she tried very hard to swallow
them.

As the voices died in the distance, they heard a long, dull roar.  She
looked at the Countess, who was fighting her tears, too.

"Heavy guns," she remarked.  "In the Kalisz direction."

Their new life had begun.




                                   V


Father Constantine had never much of an opinion about the Kaiser and his
eldest son.  A couple of years before the war he was obliged to take a
cure for his old bones in a little town on the Baltic, where the humble
folk are still Poles and Catholics.  He looked upon the Crown Prince's
face many times, for the Kaiser had banished him to the little town,
where he swaggered in his blue and silver uniform, leering at the pretty
women and sneering at the old ones.  And he noted that those eyes were
full of evil, though he little dreamed it was God's will to give his
wicked passions play in Belgium and France.  All the Prussians in that
town used to cringe to him; but Father Constantine took no notice, so
that at last a Prussian subaltern, in a gorgeous uniform like his
master's stopped him in the street and said he would be punished if he
continued to ignore the Crown Prince when he passed him.  But the old
man never did salute the Crown Prince, because he knew how he and his
father persecuted little Polish children, having them flogged for not
saying their prayers in German, and dragging them from the steps of the
altar at their first communion, to prison.  He told this to the gaudy
officer, whose Teutonic blue eyes blazed with rage.  He quite expected
to be arrested or at least taken back to the Russian frontier by a
couple of German policemen.  But nothing happened: they left him alone.
But Father Constantine thought they might meet again, for war brings
people together in a curious way; and if the Crown Prince should come to
Ruvno he was ready to tell him what he thought of his evil actions, even
if he were hanged for it.  Once in his life, at least, said Father
Constantine, he should hear the truth about himself, for he was always
surrounded by parasites and sycophants, who praised everything he did.

Father Constantine not only talked about these things but set them in
his diary; his old head could not keep its thoughts on one thing, even
on paper, and he found how hard it was to pick out the most important
things he had seen in two months' war, having learned the habit of
wandering on in his diary about all kinds of matters.  But he felt
lonely without it; and hoped, too, that one day he might be the humble
means of telling the world what happened in a country house in Poland
during the Great War.  Besides, he argued, when some foreigner realizes
what Poland bears, he, whether he were French, English or American,
would understand that Poland, having endured so much, must be saved,
because it is against the laws of God and man to tear a country into
three parts and put each under foreign domination, making father fight
against son, brother against brother.

Ever since Ian and he had left the Ruvno men at the Kutno depot, he had
heard the ceaseless roar of heavy guns day and night.  By night he saw
them flash around when walking out by the windmill for a little fresh
air after leaving the wards.  He saw the come and go of large armies and
small detachments, of baggage trains, artillery, field hospitals, of war
accessories whose very names he ignored but which he declared Beelzebub
alone could have conceived.  The Countess had given rest, shelter and
food to Cossacks of the Urals, who think horse flesh better than capon,
and to wild Siberians, who look as shaggy as their little horses and who
are infidels, but whom no hardships can dishearten.  They slept outside,
or in the farm stables.  And a pretty mess they made.  Poor Ian used
strong words when he saw what the first batch had done; but he grew used
to it.  In the house they had fops of the Imperial Bodyguard, who threw
away the soft life of Petrograd, a very wicked city, so the priest said,
to sleep in ditches and eat tinned meat. And they were quite cheerful
about it, for some came back wounded, and the old priest talked to them.
It shocked him to rub shoulders with all these Russians at first.  But
they were friendly and would vow with strange oaths that Poland must
regain her liberty after the war.  Sometimes he wondered if he would be
there to see that glorious day, or if Ruvno would be standing by then.
Even now, poor Ian was half ruined, after only two months of war.  His
forests, once the pride of Ruvno, had either been cut down for military
purposes or burned by shell fire.  So far, those near the house were
spared; but they were not of great value; it broke his heart to see the
stumps and scorched trunks for versts around, and the priest's, too.  He
had watched some of these forests being planted, years before Ian was
born or thought of.  They had been tended with great care and grew into
the best timber in that part of Poland.  Even the Tsar's forests, which
began near Ruvno's boundary, were no better.  One morning, an old Jewish
factor who used to do errands for the house when there was a town they
could send to, came up--God knows how these Jews got about--and told
them that the Prussians had cut down two hundred square versts of the
Tsar's forest land north of Plock and sent the lumber down the Vistula
into Prussia.  Ian expected they would do the same with his property
when they had the chance.

The autumn crops, especially potatoes, suffered terribly from the
movements of so many troops, though Ian had to own that the Grand Duke
saw that they were spared as much as possible.  But even he could not be
everywhere at once, nor think of an acre of sugar beet when he wanted to
drive back the Prussians. Father Constantine dreaded the Cossacks.  He
saw them at work in 1863, though he had no record of it in his diary,
because they burned down his home and all it contained in the spring of
1864. However, these were old doings, and many Russians who passed
through Ruvno told him they regretted what happened then as deeply as he
did.  Ian managed to gather in a good deal of the Ruvno grain, but the
peasants in most of the villages round had not enough potatoes to keep
body and soul together during the winter.

One afternoon late in September, the priest was in the home-forest
burying a Polish sapper who had died of wounds the night before.  He had
just planted the wooden Cross in the sapper's grave when he saw a big,
dirty Cossack coming towards him.  This man had a reddish beard, his
shaggy cap and high boots smelt of earth, pitch and a rough life.  He
had seen many like him and knew the look of a man who has been fighting
from that of one who is only going to fight. He could not define the
difference, but it was there, stamped in their faces.  Mud stuck to him,
though it was not the mud which said this Cossack had come from the
battle line.  What with dirt and sunburn he was as black as the pieces
of oak Ian had pulled from the river, where it lay for centuries, to
make house wainscot of.

"Good-day, priest," he began.  Father Constantine noted that he had the
good manners to speak Polish.

"Good-day, my son."  His merry eyes belied his savage-looking red beard.
There was something familiar about him, too.  "I've seen you before; but
where?"

"Ah--where?" he guffawed, and sat on the grave, thereby smoothing the
parts that lazy Vitold had left all knobbed.  Father Constantine felt
for his glasses, remembered that he had left them on the window-sill in
the sacristy, and peered at the new-comer helplessly. If any man had
told him three months earlier, that he would be quietly watching a
Cossack seated on a Catholic's grave and splitting his sides, Father
Constantine would have called that man a liar.  But war, as he admitted,
changes even an old man's point of view, especially if he happen to be
in the thick of it.

"If you have something to laugh at, tell it me," he said, tired of
seeing the stranger enjoy a joke he knew nothing of.

"Laugh!" he cried.  "Why, I could laugh for a week, just to see Ruvno
again.  And you not knowing me, after all the wallopings you've given
me, too."

This made Father Constantine think.  He did thrash a Cossack once, but
it was in 1863, and this man was young.

"Not in 1863?" he asked doubtfully.

"No--more like '93," and the Cossack laughed again.

"I've only walloped village boys lately.  And we'd no Cossacks in these
parts before the war."

"How about Ian?" he asked.

"Count Ian, you mean," said the Father with dignity.  He hated these
democratic ways the Russian soldiers had of saying "thee" and "thou" to
everybody.

"And Roman Skarbek," he went on, unabashed.

"Skarbek?"

"Don't you remember how you walloped us when we ate up all the cherries
Aunt Natalie's housekeeper had thrown out of the vodka bottle?  Lord,
how drunk we were!" and he grinned, being tired of laughing, I suppose.

Then the priest remembered the story and recognized him.  It was Roman
Skarbek himself, the young man who won a fortune at Monte Carlo but
could not win Vanda.

"What do you mean, coming here dressed like a savage?" he asked angrily,
for it annoyed him that the trick had succeeded, all through his having
left his glasses in the sacristy.  "Don't you know what's due to a Pole
and a Christian?"

"Aren't Cossacks Christians?" retorted Roman in that pleasant way which
always made the Father forgive his boyish deviltries sooner that he
ought.  "Come, Father, be just."

"Well," he admitted, "some of them are.  But why be a Cossack when you
can help it?"

"Can't help it.  Being a volunteer, they made me a Cossack."

"Before this war I detested the very sight of their tall caps and with
good reason," said the Father.  "But such is the power of Prussian
brutality that Poles now fight side by side with wild children of the
steppes to drive the soldier of the anti-Christ out of our country.
Where have you been?"

"In Masuria," and Roman told him some of his experiences, adding that he
had come to Ruvno with Rennenkampf, for a few hours.

"Well, I'm glad you've killed a few Germans.  But you had better cut off
that red beard before you go to the Countess."

As he got on his feet the priest was glad to see he had finished
Vitold's work with the sods.  He liked the graves to look neat.

"Aunt won't mind the beard.  Let's go to her."

He whistled to his horse, which was browsing near by, and walked towards
the house.  He asked about Vanda, whether she was anxious for Joseph,
how she looked, what she was doing.  The priest answered truthfully,
though it made him sorry to see the shadow come into Roman's face when
he realized that she thought still of Joseph with great love.

"And yet, she hates the Prussians, and he is fighting with them, I
suppose," he remarked, hotly.

The Father, almost as hotly, explained that, as he knew, several
thousands more Poles were with the Prussian armies, through no fault of
their own but because they had the bad fortune to be German and Austrian
subjects.  Roman agreed that many could not cut away from Germany, but
Joseph had gone back when ordered.

"Like one of the herd all Germans are," he added.

As they passed the windmill, that stood just before you turn into the
high road on the way to Ruvno from the forest, Szmul, a Jewish factor,
stopped them.  His cunning eyes shone with excitement.

"Oh, have you heard that great things are happening in Ruvno?" he cried,
spreading out his hands in the way Jews have and twisting his mouth
about.

"What things?" asked the priest.  "Have they driven the Prussians out of
Kalisz?"

"No, the Prussians are still at Kalisz.  But the great General
Rennenkampf has deigned to come to Ruvno."

"We know that."

He looked disappointed, because he took pride in carrying gossip from
one village to another.  And the Jews always knew the latest news and
spread it like wildfire.

"Anything more?" asked Roman.

Szmul made him a deep reverence.  You would have thought this
dirty-looking man in Cossack uniform was the Grand Duke at least; but
that was Szmul's way.

"Oh--yes, General," Szmul knew he was only a lieutenant.  "And I'm sure
neither of you know it."  He threw his arms about, so Father Constantine
told him they were in a hurry.

"Well, look over there."  He pointed westwards, where the blackened
stumps of a forest bordered one of Ian's fish-ponds.

"Well, there's nothing new there.  Be quick and tell your news if you
have any, for we're off to the house."

"Out there, by the fish-pond, they've caught a spy," he said
importantly.  "He refuses to say who he is. He was caught cutting wires,
and burning the toes of Jewish children."

"He may have been cutting wires but he wasn't burning Jewish children's
toes," said Father Constantine sternly.  "The Prussians have sins enough
on their heads without you inventing more.  You know as well as I do
that there are no children, Jew or Catholic, within two versts of those
fish-ponds."

"But," he protested, "they have caught a spy, and if he wasn't roasting
the toes of Jewish children it's only because he hadn't the chance.  I
saw him being taken into the big house, and they say His Excellency
General Rennenkampf is going to shoot him with his own hands to-morrow
morning.  He'd be shot now, only they hope to find out more about the
enemy if they keep him a bit."

"Rennenkampf won't shoot him, but I hope to," said Roman as they passed
on.

He and the priest parted outside the gates, one to vespers, the other to
seek the Countess and Ian.  Father Constantine excused himself from the
Countess' table that evening; he preferred to eat in his room when Great
Russians were in the house.  Besides, he had much to do and knew the
General liked to sit over his meals.  On his way to the Countess'
boudoir, which was used as an office in connection with the little
hospital, he met Roman again.

"That Jew was right, Father," he threw over his shoulder.  "The spy is
here, and my men are to have the shooting of him to-morrow at daybreak."

Father Constantine had a busy hour with Ian's agent, a surgeon and some
refugees who came in from a village ten versts off.  All these people
now walked in and out of the Countess' boudoir, once a sacred spot, as
if it were a mill.  He and the agent had disposed of the last fugitive
and he was going up to the wards when a Russian corporal blundered in.

"What do you want in here?" he asked sharply.  It annoyed him to see
these louts use his patroness' room as a passage.

He said something in Russian; Father Constantine had made a point, all
his life, not to speak that language, but he understood that an officer
upstairs had asked for a priest.

"Tell him I'll see him to-morrow."

The man saluted, grinned and said:

"He will be dead to-morrow."

Then the priest remembered the spy they had caught: it was he.  The
wards would have to wait.  He sent a message up to Vanda and told the
soldier to take him to the condemned man.

They made their way through the broad passages and landings which were
blocked with wounded waiting for treatment, and up a winding stair which
led to the turret.  It was silent as the tomb till they disturbed an owl
and some rats, and almost as dark. Father Constantine had not been up
there since Ian was a boy and kept pets which could not stop outside in
the winter.  He remembered one winter when Roman and Joseph kept a young
dog fox up there in the hopes of taming it.  But it was never even
friendly and when the first signs of spring came through the chinks of
its prison, it gnawed the staple from its chain and made off into the
fields.  He felt glad that this Prussian prisoner would not get away so
easily.

Two sentries stood at the top.  They unlocked the door at a sign from
the corporal and let him into the turret chamber.

It was small and dirty.  A straw mattress lay upon the unswept floor;
and some broken food.  An old packing-case served as table.  A candle,
thrust into the neck of an empty champagne bottle, gave a feeble light
and aft air of sordid debauchery, out of keeping with the place and
circumstances.  The prisoner sat on one end of the packing-case, his
back to the door. He was writing the last letter of his life, and so
intent that he took no notice of their entrance.

The priest dismissed his guide with a nod.  He saluted, went out, and
shut the door noisily after him: and still the man did not turn round.
This was all very well, but Father Constantine was wanted below, in the
wards, where others were under sentence of death, though not at the
hands of Rennenkampf.

"You asked for a priest," he began in his mother tongue, though he knew
German, too.

The prisoner rose and faced him.  As the old man looked upon him his
heart stood still in fear and his knees shook.

"Mother of God!  Joseph Skarbek!" he gasped.

And he must die as a spy!

And his own brother was to shoot him!

These thoughts rushed across his brain.  They stood looking at each
other, both speechless.  Joseph Skarbek, whom he had taught and scolded
and loved with Ian and Roman, who was to marry Vanda, had come to Ruvno,
not to claim his bride, but to spy.  When he found tongue it was for
reproach.

"How dare you come here like this?" he cried angrily, because great fear
always made him furious, and he was aghast at the tragedy which had thus
fallen upon his dear ones.  His next thought was that none of them,
neither Roman, the Countess, Ian nor Vanda must know this hideous
secret, up in the turret chamber.  He must find Rennenkampf, tell him
the tale, plead with him that this prisoner be shot, if die he must, by
another man's orders, and not Roman's. There was no time to be lost.

"Wait," he said.  "I'll be back soon."

Joseph grasped his arm as he made for the door, and he saw how haggard
his face was and how wild his eyes.  Calm, self-contained Joseph had
vanished; he was the incarnation of tragedy.

"For the love of God don't tell them," he muttered huskily.

"I'm not mad."

"Then where are you going?"

"To the chapel--for the Sacred Vessels."

He hastily prayed God to forgive him for using His Vessels to hide the
truth; but could not tell the boy the real reason for his sudden
departure.  Outside, he had to explain to the sentries, who said they
supposed it would be all right, only he must bring a permit if he wanted
to go into the room again.

It took him some time to find an officer, who said that Rennenkampf had
left Ruvno half an hour ago.

"But somebody must be in charge," he said, for the place swarmed with
troops.

"I am," he snapped.  He was a hard-faced, battered-looking man, hated
the Poles and believed every Catholic priest a Jesuit, bent on his
neighbor's destruction for the benefit of his Order.  Father Constantine
stated his case, after he had promised to respect the confidence.  He
yawned through most of the story; but when he heard that Roman Skarbek
had been ordered to shoot his own brother, his narrow eyes flashed with
rage.

"A Pole has no business to fight against us!" he cried.

"Colonel, there are several million Poles in Germany and Austria not
through any fault of..."

He stamped his feet.

"Don't argue, priest!  I won't have it.  This Polish Count could have
blown his brains out when they told him to fight us--and spy on us.
I'll make an example of him.  Eh, God, I will!"

"You gave me your word of honor to respect my secret," said the other,
looking into the depths of his narrow eyes till he had to drop them.  He
thought for a moment.

"True," he growled.  "I did give you my honorable word.  But I will not
cancel General Rennenkampf's order.  This young volunteer will take his
men out to shoot his traitor brother.  It will be a lesson to him, and
to all Poles."

And all eloquence was without avail, though Father Constantine pleaded
earnestly with him.  But war had turned this already hard man into
adamant.

"No and no, and yet once more no!" he said with a calm that was worse
than his rage.  He even grumbled at a request for a pass to show the two
guards; but gave it at last.

As the priest left he met the Countess and she kept him some time.  Then
he had to go to the chapel.  As he felt his way up the turret stairs,
determined to stop with Joseph till the end, he heard steps behind.
Somebody was coming up with an electric torch; he waited, rather than
bruise his shins in the dark.

"Who's there?"  His heart sank; it was Roman's voice.

"Go back!" he ordered.  "I forbid you to come up here."

But he came up, put his arm around the old man and helped him up the
stairs.  "I know all," he said.

"All about what?"--this hoping against hope that Roman meant something
else.

"About Joe, up in there."

"That narrow-eyed Muscovite told you.  I suppose he scrupled not to
break word to a priest."

The only thing left was to try and comfort these poor brothers.  Whilst
in the chapel, he had nursed hopes of saving Roman from the agony of
seeing Joseph die.  Now, all was lost; his brain was in a whirl and he
felt, for the hundredth time since August, that old age is a terrible
thing when you want to help the young and strong.

Roman went into the turret chamber first.  He did not rush to his
brother and weep; what he said was:

"You're writing to Her."

Joseph looked up at the familiar voice.

"Roman!" was all he said; but his haggard face flushed from ear to ear.

"Yes."  He touched his Cossack's clothes.  "I am on the other side."
And it seemed to the priest that this impulsive and turbulent young man
had put Poland's greatest sorrow into those few simple words--brother
fighting against brother, flesh against flesh, not of free will, but
because a wicked old cynic called Frederick and an ambitious German
wanton who usurped the Russian throne divided Poland between them more
than a century ago.

"On the other side," repeated Joseph bitterly.  He, too, was suffering.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked, showing them a square of dirty
white doth sewn on to the front of his tunic.

"No."

"The Prussian way of branding Polish conscripts. Easier to shoot us if
we try to desert."

"Such is the way of Prussians," said Father Constantine.  They stood
there looking at one another as though they were three strangers at a
loss for something to say.  Father Constantine put the Sacred Vessels on
the floor and waited.  Joseph, he reflected, had all night in which to
make his peace with God, Who understands these tribulations, and why
they are laid upon us.  As for himself, he felt very old and of small
account by the side of these stalwart boys, each worth ten of a worn-out
priest too infirm to fight, and fit only to watch the young and the
stalwart die before their time.  Joseph spoke first; his thoughts still
ran upon Vanda.

"You'll be able to marry her now," he remarked hoarsely.  "Make her
happy."

"I'll do my best," said Roman.

At the time Father Constantine knew not what he meant, for years dull
the mind as well as the eye.  He looked so peaceful despite the
overhanging sorrow, that he began to wonder if the boy thought the prize
of winning Vanda was worth all this.

Joseph took up his sheet of paper and tried to dry the ink at the candle
flame.  The priest noticed there was a fresh wound on his wrist.

"Let me see your hand," he said.

"It doesn't matter--now."  He smiled nervously. Then: "Do _they_ know
I'm here?"

"No," answered Roman.  "They must never know."

"Never."  Another pause: the candle scorched his raw wound, and he
muttered something.

"How did you know?" he asked Roman.

"Never mind how."  He went near his brother, much reproach in his voice.
"Oh, why did you do it, Joe?  What in the world induced you to put on
this?"  He tugged angrily at the Prussian uniform.

"Because there, in Germany, we were a herd ... and I little thought what
this war was going to be."  Then he turned to the priest, lowering his
voice.  "And I know, too, in the bottom of my heart, that I went with
the herd because it seemed better to die fighting than to be shot for
not going on.  Oh, the misery of it all!"

"My child, God is merciful."

"I have explained what I could, as clearly as I can, here," he went on,
more quietly.  "To Vanda."

"But explain it now, to me," his brother insisted.

Joseph sighed.  "It is too long and too late.  See that she gets this
without knowing I have been here."  He swallowed a lump in his throat
and went on: "I did what I thought best."  He looked round the little
room, and his voice broke.  "To spend my last night here, a prisoner, in
Ian's house, so near her and yet so..."  His voice refused to come.

Roman was pacing the floor in that impatient way he had.  Suddenly he
stopped, and said with decision:

"There's not a moment to lose!"

"I have the night before me," remarked Joseph, looking first at the
Sacred Vessels, then at the priest "We must wait till midnight, in any
case."

"I don't mean that," said Roman.  "You must escape."  He had lowered his
voice: they talked in whispers now.  Joseph's eyes were alight with
sudden hope.

"Yes, but how?" asked Father Constantine.

"We change clothes," answered Roman, and he began to undress.  "You and
the Father leave the room together, Joe dressed in my things.  In the
dark the men won't know it isn't me.  Go down to the chapel together."
He handed his high Russian boots to Joseph, who was taking off his own,
somewhat reluctantly.

"Well, but how about you?" he objected.

"Never mind me.  Father Constantine will hide you in the chapel."

"I know of a place where nobody will think to look for him," said the
priest.

"But what are you going to do?" asked Joseph, still at his first boot.

"Wait till the men outside have fallen asleep.  Then I take off that
Prussian uniform you've got on and sneak past them.  I know every corner
of this place, which they don't."

Joseph was not satisfied.  "You'll be locked in," he objected.  Roman
pulled out some nippers.

"I've got these.  The lock is old.  So hurry up, or we'll have the men
in, wondering why Father Constantine is still here.  I wouldn't plan
this if it wasn't safe."

Joseph obeyed.

"How long am I to keep him in the chapel?" asked the priest.

"Till the rest of the Russians leave.  We're off at dawn to-morrow.  Ian
can keep him quiet in one of the cellars for a day or two till the spy
affair blows over, then you must go and fight for us.  Promise?"

"I promise," answered Joseph.  Roman did not seem satisfied.

"Swear it," he insisted, holding up his fingers.

Joseph swore; then they embraced, in the Polish way.

"That's right," said Roman, smiling and happy again.  "I thought we'd
find some way out of this muddle."  He glanced at Father Constantine.
It took some time to persuade Joseph that Roman would get out all right.
Indeed, the priest, too, had fears about it; guards, he said, sleep with
their eyes open.  But Roman was so enthusiastic and hopeful, so
thoroughly master of the situation that he inspired the others with his
optimism.  Besides, the priest knew he was thinking of to-morrow
morning; and the power of the secret they shared overcame his
objections.

They changed clothes at last, Joseph putting the Cossack's cap well over
his eyes.  Then they embraced again.  Joseph began to talk of gratitude;
but Roman cut him short.

"I'll see you soon, I hope.  Meanwhile, marry Vanda and fight for us."

"I will.  Oh, Roman, you're heaping coals of fire on my head."

"Fiddlesticks!  Now, be off, and show a brazen face."

Roman had put on the Prussian clothes far quicker than Joseph had taken
them off, and before the others left, threw himself on the straw
mattress, his back to the door.  The brothers were much the same height
and build, and Roman had shaved his red beard before sitting down to
supper with the Countess and Rennenkampf that night.  His face was
darker than Joseph's, though he had washed; but the light was so bad and
the guards so indifferent and unsuspecting that Father Constantine felt
almost easy in his mind when a sentry looked in as he let them out.

"He's got his passport," he remarked, nodding towards the mattress.
"German swine."

He saluted Joseph, who strode downstairs, clanking his spurs and
carrying himself as straight as you please. In one of the corridors they
passed a cornet, who called out to him; but he strode on, muttering
something between his teeth.  Father Constantine noticed that the
subaltern was going up to the turret.  After his visit the sentries
would probably doze.  Roman knew what he was doing, anyway.

It was nearly three when, at last, the priest threw himself into a chair
in the sacristy.  He could not leave the chapel precincts while Joseph
lay hiding there.  Not that he hoped to be any good, supposing that the
Russians took it into their heads to look there for their quarry; but he
felt he would be in a fever of apprehension if he went to his rooms.
With some trouble and many precautions he had managed to hide Joseph
under the altar of a side chapel, dedicated to the Mother of God of
Czenstochova.  The altar was there temporarily, the Countess having
ordered a marble one last time she was in Rome; the war had stopped its
arrival, and only the other day she had said how sorry she was not to
get it sooner.  And now, it looked as if the wooden altar was to save
Joseph's life.  Its back was hollow, and there he hid.

The priest could not sleep, tired though he felt. His mind was full of
trouble.  Suddenly, he remembered that the narrow-eyed Muscovite knew
the story of Joseph's arrest and would suspect him when he heard of the
escape, would search the chapel.  But then he comforted himself with the
thought that even _he_ would not order his men to pull out an altar.  He
was not a Prussian.  After that, he began to worry about Roman.  How
could he get past those guards? The more he thought about it the clearer
it seemed that he had run his head into certain danger.  Not only would
he be caught, but all his dear ones would be dragged into the trouble;
that Muscovite would punish every inmate of Ruvno in his rage.  Such
were his thoughts as night gradually left the sacristy.

At last he fell into a troubled doze.  He was awakened by the sound of
musket shots coming through the open window.  With vague fears he
hurried into the garden.  A young subaltern was enjoying the last of the
Countess' roses; all was quiet.

"Reminds me of Monte Carlo," he remarked.

"What were those shots?"

He turned his head towards a tall pine, where smoke, blue in the air,
still lingered.

"Only a German."  He plucked a large red rose, heavy with dew, saluted
and walked off, whistling.

With shaking knees the old man staggered to the stretch of sward upon
which Prince Mniszek killed Ian's father, years ago.  Under the pine lay
a huddled form.  Somebody had thrown a blanket over it.  He drew it
aside and knelt before the body.  The film of death had covered his
eyes.  His wounds were horrible.  But it was Roman, dressed in the
Prussian uniform, the one white patch of cloth stained with blood....

Had he been caught?  Did he, when he sent Joseph down, know that this
was the only way to save him? Or did the thought of Vanda's happiness
urge his sacrifice?  The priest remembered his anxiety that Joseph
should promise to fight against Prussia, his insistence for a solemn
oath.  Did he think that, since one of them must die, better he, rather
than the man Vanda loved?  Who shall look into his heart, one of the
bravest and truest that ever beat?  Father Constantine puzzled his
brains many times, but found no answer. And he could not ask anybody to
help, because he alone knew that Roman Skarbek, and no Prussian spy, lay
under the pine tree in the rose garden.

He never even found that subaltern, who must have gone off while he was
weeping over Roman's remains. A couple of soldiers came up to take them
away.  He could not bear the thought of their burying him in a ditch,
wanted him to lie amongst the trees and the other soldiers, where he had
been the day before, laughing and joyous because he found Ruvno safe in
the midst of the storm.

"Leave him to me.  He was a Catholic," he pleaded. They looked at each
other.

"We've orders to bury him."

"Then take him over there," he pointed to the home forest.

"Too far," said one.  "We're off this minute."

As they dug a hasty grave for him he went for Holy Water, and gave him
Christian burial.  And much later, when he could control his face, he
told the Countess that the German who had been shot in the Garden was a
Catholic; so they put up one of the wooden Crosses such as you can see
by the thousand in Poland to-day.  And when there was nobody about he
used to pray for his soul.  And sometimes, in the very early morning, he
would take the portable altar out there, and say a Mass for Roman
Skarbek.

And because the burden of his secret was worse than his heart could
bear, he sat up all night when the household thought him asleep and set
it down in his diary.




                                   VI


Ian, on waking that morning, found that all the Cossacks had left.  He
went in to breakfast, feeling a little hurt with his cousin, Roman.  He
might at least have shouted a farewell through the window.

"Has anybody seen Roman this morning?" he asked the rest of the family
as they met for the morning meal.

"He came in last night for a moment, after supper," said the Countess.
"But I was going to the wards and we did not talk.  He said some officer
had sent for him."

"He was going to shoot a spy at daybreak," said Minnie.  Vanda was
silent.  She had not seen him at all, had kept away from the
supper-table, on purpose to avoid him.

At that moment Father Constantine came in.  His face was ashen gray and
distorted with emotion.

"What's the matter?" they all asked.

"Nothing.  That is..."  He could not speak.  Ian made him sit down and
went to a sideboard for brandy, which he waved aside.

"Joseph Skarbek is here," he stammered.

"Roman, you mean?" suggested Ian.

He shook his head and said with sudden vigor:

"No--not Roman.  He..."  Then, with another effort, painful to see, he
added: "Roman went away this morning."

They thought he was going to faint.  Ian loosened his neckband, the
Countess dipped her napkin in water and dabbed his wrinkled face; Vanda
made him drink something.  Minnie stood near, watching and listening.
He had enough people taking care of him; besides, it took all her time
to follow what was said. They talked Polish; a habit of theirs whenever
they got excited or related thrilling experiences, so that she had to
concentrate all her energies upon listening to them.  They were pained
and puzzled over Father Constantine, speculating as to what had happened
to upset him like this.

"He is overworked," was Vanda's verdict, "I'm sure he's not been to bed
last night.  Look how rumpled he is."

He lay back in the chair, his eyes closed, his thin hands, puckered with
age and none too clean, closing and unclosing on the chair arms.

"Worn out," said Ian, whilst his mother watched her faithful chaplain
with deep concern.  "I'll take him into my room.  It's quiet there."  He
proceeded to do this; but the patient suddenly sat upright and said
peremptorily:

"Leave me alone!"

"But you must rest," explained the Countess, soothingly.

"Nonsense....  I was never better in my life."  They exchanged glances;
the poor old man was out of his mind; never, in all the years he had
been at Ruvno, had he spoken to her like that.  Before they had
recovered from their astonishment he got up and walked across the room,
tottering a little, but more sure of his step every minute.  They
watched him in silence and Ian, at least, stood spellbound.  This little
old man, with his creased alpaca soutane, muddy shoes and unshaven chin,
dominated the room.

He reached the door, which was a long way off, just as one of the
servants came in with coffee.

"Give me that!  And go away!" he ordered, taking the tray from its
astounded bearer.

"Do as the Father says," said Ian, hurrying to take the heavy tray.

"Be off with you, quick!" repeated Father Constantine. The man obeyed,
filled with curiosity.  He locked the door, and turned to Vanda,
whispering angrily:

"I tell you, Joseph Skarbek is in the chapel."

"Yes, yes," she agreed soothingly.  Her tone only irritated him the
more.  He stamped his foot.

"Not yes, yes--but give me something to eat for him.  He's starving."

"But where is he?"

"In the chapel.  Behind the altar of the Mother of God of Czestochova."

"Hiding?"  She was white as a sheet

"Of course."  He drew them in a circle, and went on, very low: "Listen.
Yesterday, the Russians took him prisoner."

"And he escaped?" asked Vanda.

"Rennenkampf said he must be shot...."

"What for?" she faltered.

"Mother of God, how should I know?  Don't keep on interrupting."  He
looked apprehensively at the door, motioned to them to move further away
from it and the windows, and went on: now, he spoke French, not for
Minnie's benefit, but for secrecy.

"They were to shoot him this morning----"

Minnie, still watchful, saw Ian put his arm round Vanda, who looked
ready to faint; she felt a pang of resentment.  How dare he, seeing
Vanda was betrothed to Joseph!  He said something encouraging to her,
but Minnie could not make out what it was.

"Last night," continued the priest, "a soldier came for me to see a
prisoner.  He takes me up to the turret.  Imagine my horror, Countess,
when I saw it was Joseph."

"Oh--but he's safe?" sobbed Vanda.

"Yes.  He's safe."

"But how?" asked Minnie.

"Whilst I was talking to him in the turret, in comes Roman."

"Roman?" they echoed.

"Yes."  He eyed Vanda.  "Roman is the best man who ever lived.  He--he
helped Joseph escape."  He stopped, brushed away some tears with the
back of his hand, and sighed.

"But where is Roman now?" asked the Countess anxiously.

"With his Master."

"With the General?" Ian asked.

Father Constantine nodded, blew his nose with vigor, put his
handkerchief away and went on more calmly:

"Roman planned it all.  He changed clothes with Joseph, who passed the
door with me.  We reached the chapel without seeing anybody but a young
subaltern who ... who saluted him.  I put him behind the altar in the
chapel of the Mother of God of Czestochova.  Roman said he must stop
there till the General and all his soldiers leave Ruvno.  Then, Joseph
must volunteer for our side.  That is what Roman said."

"They've all left!" said Vanda, breaking from Ian and going over to the
sideboard, where she hastily piled food upon a plate, smiling and crying
in turns and taking no further interest in what the priest said. The
others were more interested in Roman.

"But how did Roman get out of the turret?" Ian asked.  "Where is he?"

"I told you.  With the General."

"You're sure?" insisted the Countess, anxiously.

"Quite.  He picked the lock when the guards went to sleep."  He turned
to Ian.  "You remember that lock, how weak it was?"

"But how did he get past the guards?" asked Ian, to whom Roman's
non-arrival of the evening before was explained.

"I don't know.  But he managed it.  He is not a child."  Father
Constantine spoke peevishly.

"You've seen him since?" asked the Countess.

"Yes, Countess, I've seen him since."

"After he was free?"

"As free as air."  He leaned against the paneled wall and put his hand
to his head.  "I am very tired ... had no sleep ... and no food....  I
am getting old."

"You must come and rest now."  Ian put his arm round the stooping
shoulders.  The old man made no further resistance.  He was dead-beat.

"But you must help me give him this," said Vanda, holding up her plate
of food.  Her face was radiant. Joseph was safe, above all he would
never fight with Prussia again.

"Let Father take a mouthful first," said her aunt reprovingly.  "Can't
you see his condition?"

Vanda's heart smote her; she blushed and took some food to the priest,
who, however, could eat but little.  All he needed was rest.

"The shock," he explained, seeing their anxious faces.  "Joseph Skarbek
... up there..."

They would not let him go back to the chapel, but Ian and Vanda, with
infinite precaution, took the food to Joseph.  Meanwhile, Minnie went to
see the turret chamber, which she knew only from the outside.  The dark
stairway was littered with rubbish left by the soldiers.  The chamber
door stood open, as if the guards had rushed out of it in vain pursuit
of their prisoner.  She went in.

There were some dirty plates, and a straw pallet. Her eyes searched the
door and the blood rushed to her face.  The lock was intact!  She
examined it. Far from being old and weak, it was quite strong; indeed,
it had been put on when Rennenkampf sent Joseph up to await his death.
Roman had not escaped that way: she was certain of it, the old priest
had hidden the truth.  She turned to the window, which was only a slit
in the wall, protected by a grating of iron bars.  They, too, were firm
and strong in the stone work.  She looked out and saw a sheer drop of
eighty feet, into the moat below.  There was nothing Roman could have
held, even supposing he had accomplished the impossible and squeezed
himself between those bars.

She thought it out rapidly.  The others, including Ian, would be curious
to see Joseph Skarbek's prison; he would probably come up here himself.
As she failed to see how Roman had escaped, since there was no other
exit, not even a chimney, she supposed that they, too, would be as
puzzled.  The priest, she felt sure, knew exactly what had happened; but
he was not going to tell.  Why should she betray his secret?

She went down to Martin, the old butler, and borrowed some tools he kept
in his pantry, then sneaked up again and took off the lock and bolt.
The bolt was rusty enough and looked as old as the room itself; but it
gave some trouble and she chipped her hands. No prisoner could have
taken them off the door without waking the guards, because the bolt was
on the outside.  She only realized this when she had half finished, for
her nerves were upset.  Then she put the bolt on again and threw the
lock on to the pallet.

On her way back she saw the Countess, Vanda and Ian on the large
staircase.  They said they were off to see how Roman had escaped, and
would she go, too.  The tools were under her white nursing apron, and
she was in no mood to discuss Joseph's adventure, so she muttered an
excuse and went to her room.

Why had she connived at keeping Father Constantine's secret? she asked
herself.  Did she want to spare all the family the pain of knowing that
the door had been opened from the outside, or only Ian? What had Vanda
to do with her impulsive action? During that morning, whilst working in
the wards, she searched her heart and found the answer.  She had been
jealous of Vanda for some time past.  She felt, without knowing why,
that Ian's coldness to herself was connected in some way with Vanda's
presence in the house.  He had never been the same since that day when
the Jew brought news of the Kalisz atrocities and she had refused to go
home. Where was Vanda to blame?  Ian apparently had no more to say to
his cousin than to his visitor; and yet, she did blame the girl.  The
sooner she married her precious Joseph and went away, the better.
Perhaps she would stop on at Ruvno, since Joseph, it appeared, was to
fight; but she would be married, and that would make a difference.

Thus she explained to herself the lock-picking of the morning; told
herself _she_ would have refused to have anything more to do with Joseph
under the circumstances.  First, he fights for Prussia: then he risks
his brother's life, gives his brother's life, to save his own skin.  And
now as Vanda did not know that Roman had given his life in exchange,
offered it for her happiness, she would marry Joseph.  And that is what
Minnie wanted her to do, with as little delay as possible.

Ian, too, examined the door, and the lock that Roman, so he thought, had
picked and put on the dirty pallet.  His mother asked what he made of
the business.

"Roman is worth a thousand Josephs," he answered hotly.  "Think of the
risk!  If the soldiers had shot the bolt, he would have been lost."

"But he saved Joseph so that he might fight for the right side," put in
Vanda.

Their eyes met.  He had his own thoughts on the matter, and his face was
stern.  Instead of speaking, he went out of the room.

He felt irritable.  Though work waited him below he made for the old
priest's room; he wanted to hear how Roman had persuaded his brother to
accept the exchange.  His contempt for Joseph grew at every step.  How
was he to know the trick would succeed? Yes: Joseph had left his brother
in a trap, from which he escaped by the skin of his teeth, because the
guards were too lazy to shoot the bolt.  And Roman had done it for
Vanda's sake.  He believed love meant sacrifice and lived up to his
belief.  How _could_ Vanda care for Joseph?  Ian was disappointed in
her, thought she had a juster sense of values.  How blind love made
women!

Father Constantine was asleep, and he had no opportunity that day of
talking about the adventure with him.  And later on, even, Father
Constantine was very reticent about the scene in the turret chamber.
When questioned about it, he would shut his bright, bird-like eyes, fold
his thin hands together and say, in a voice shaking with emotion:

"It was the most terrible evening of my life.  Let us not talk of it."

"Roman will tell me," said Ian, loth to disturb the old chaplain any
more.  "He may be here any day."

But it was some time before any Cossacks stopped at Ruvno, and when the
first contingent rested there for a few hours, they told Ian they knew
nothing of Roman's regiment, but thought it was fighting in Galicia.

But Joseph's escape caused changes in the family, all the same.




                                  VII


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.




                                  VIII


Ian had no morbid intention of brooding over his troubles, sentimental
or material.  He was going to fight the one as he was already fighting
the other, as he struggled against the starvation and disease which
threatened the neighborhood, or against the difficulties of plowing and
sowing within range of German guns.

He went into his mother's dressing-room that night with the firm
intention of forgetting the evening's events as soon as possible, and
her greeting helped him.

"What do you think?" she said.  "Vanda wants to go to Warsaw and nurse,
instead of stopping with us."

He looked at her with tired eyes.

"If she wants to, let her.  I expect she's right."

Then he told her the gist of his talk with Joseph. She listened with
disapproval.  She would never forgive Joseph's successful wooing.

"I think he ought to wait till after the war," was her verdict.  "What
is the use of their marrying when he has nowhere to live and nothing to
live on?  Let us hope they will both think better of it once they settle
down again."

And there the matter ended, so far as talk went. She had great hopes
that her boy would "take to" Minnie.  England would be a very good port
in the ever growing storm for him.  Of herself she did not think at all.
What was left for her if Ruvno went? She busied herself about getting
Vanda off, wrote to friends in Warsaw who found a vacancy for her in one
of the hospitals which Polish women had started for the Russian wounded.
She would be at least as safe there as in Ruvno and Ian would be all the
better when she was away.  Her own dreams had once been bent on a match
between them.  But things had changed since then and she wanted Ian to
forget that which he could not win.

So she hastened on the day when the girl was to leave the house for work
in Warsaw.  Ian must drive her to the station because he had nobody left
whom he could trust with one of the young, half-broken-in horses that
alone remained of his famous stables.  One afternoon in November the
_bryczka_ stood ready before the front door.  It was one he used to use
for going round the estate, simple and light, the body of basket-work
plaited close and flat, and varnished over.  The shafts were longer than
one sees in western Europe where roads are better than east of the
Vistula; but it went safely over ruts and holes which a closer-harnessed
cart would not have taken at all.  It was the only vehicle he had left
except a heavy closed carriage which needed at least four horses to
pull; stables and coach-house had been emptied of their best by several
relays of requisitioning commissions.

Vanda, a little pale, slim even in her fur coat, said good-bye to the
rest of the family at the front door. The Countess hugged her in
silence, not trusting her voice.  Who knew what might happen before they
met again!  Father Constantine gave her his blessing, after much advice
about the evils and pitfalls of Warsaw, though his patroness reminded
him that she was going to live with an old friend and would be quite
safe.  Minnie kissed her and wished her good luck, half sorry, half
relieved to see her rival leave the field.  Joseph was upstairs.  They
all agreed he had better not be seen by the servants.  When his hand was
well enough to hold a rein he would ride to Sohaczev at night and take
steps to join the Russian army.

Ian helped her to the high seat in front.  Martin put her baggage into
the space at the back.  Off they went, down the avenue and out into the
road, hardened with a sharp frost which had broken up the warm autumn
weather.

It would have been hard for them to talk had they felt in the mood for
it.  The young horse shied a good deal and demanded all Ian's attention.
He was glad of it.  He Had no wish for commonplaces and could not say
what was in his heart; so they went on in silence, bumping a good deal
over the road, never too good, now cut up with war traffic, Vanda
clinging to her seat to save herself from being pitched out when the
horse grew more restive than usual, or rattled over a particularly bad
stretch of road.

Their way lay through the country which war had so far spared.  The
heaviest losses lay to the north-west, where the Prussians were trying
to break through on their way to Warsaw.  A good many trenches had been
made here, too, ready for the Russian troops to fall back upon; but
there was not that stamp of utter desolation which already lay on the
land nearer Plock. They passed very few troops or supplies; the day had
been fine and transport correspondingly risky. Business on the road
began at night.  He had an odd fancy that they were going for one of
those jaunts he and she had taken many a time before in the same little
cart, when he wanted to try a young horse; that the space behind their
seat carried no baggage but a sporting gun and game bag, and she wore no
nurse's apron under her coat.  It seemed, as she sat by him, sometimes
to touch him as the cart jolted her, that recent barriers had never
been, that there was neither Joseph, nor war nor ruin, that only the old
free comradeship was there, mellowed into love.  And he felt that they
were boy and girl again, he home from school, she proud and glad to be
with him, that they were driving on forever, into eternity, into the
steel-blue horizon which stretched ahead of him on the straight, open
road, without care or strife, always to be together, forgetful of the
world, sufficient to each other, wanting nothing, asking nothing,
blended into one mind and one heart, clear and limpid as the afternoon
air of the northern autumn.

Never had those versts to the bare wooden station seemed so short.  As
they passed the slatternly town, then the long, poplar-lined avenue, he
wondered of what she was thinking, if she regretted the past, would be
content to put back the years and live without Joseph, only with him.
But he was far to shy to share his fancy.  What was the good?  He did
not even trust himself to search her face, lest he find there tears for
his hated rival, whom she might never see again.

As he pulled up and helped her out, giving the reins to a ragged Jew who
replaced the sturdy ostler of other days, he was relieved to see the
Canon, who lived in the town.  The good man was full of complaints, and
looked to the two young people for sympathy, if not redress.
Rennenkampf's men had looted his poultry yard, he said, stealing half a
dozen very fine capons as well.

"They stole them for _him_, Count," he whispered, as they made their way
through a crowd of soldiers to the waiting-room, two Jews following with
the luggage.  "They denied it till I threatened to excommunicate them
all, including my housekeeper, who ought to have looked after the fowls
better but is no good when she sees a soldier around.  I excommunicated
the General, too."

"What did he say?" asked Vanda.

"Well, Countess, I'm ashamed to say he roared with laughter," returned
the indignant ecclesiastic.  "But my housekeeper was so frightened that
she spoilt the dinner, which was one good thing, for Rennenkampf had to
eat it.  I'm going up to Warsaw and I'll complain about it.  I sha'n't
have a thing left if the men go on like this.  But you, Count, can help
me up there. You know your way about."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not going," he said.  "My cousin is.  I've come to
see her off."

The Canon then asked Vanda a dozen questions about her plans and kept
them both busy answering him till the tickets were bought and Ian had
found places in the crowded train for them, glad to give her into the
priest's care, for he noticed many admiring glances shot at her by a
varied collection of Russian officers in the waiting-room.

For one moment they were alone.  The Canon found a friend and began to
tell him about the capons; the little platform, shadowy even in peace
time, with its scanty lamps, was quite dark now except for feeble spots
of light that came from the railway carriages, from those candles stuck
into lanterns which the railway people thought good enough to travel by.
Ian took courage, and said as he kissed her hand:

"Ruvno is your home.  If you don't like Warsaw come back at once."

"Oh, Ianek," she faltered.  "Forgive me, for the other night.  I was
mad....  I didn't know what I was saying."

"There's nothing to forgive," he stammered.  Then, impulse flung
restraint to the winds; he caught her in his arms, kissed her face,
hair, lips, clasped her to him with all his strength, in a delirium of
love, longing and remorse.  He knew not what words poured forth from the
bottom of his soul, nor how long he held her thus: never remembered how
she got into the train, how he said good-bye to the Canon and got back
to his _bryczka_.  He only knew that it was dark as his horse sped
homewards, without a glance at things that had made him restive on the
way out; that he found calm and strength in the familiar ebon sky,
glimmering with silver stars, put this new-born madness from him,
checked each recurrent thought of her, fixed his mind savagely on
refugees, potatoes, corn and fuel, till the white heat of his passion
had cooled.

Joseph went away a few days later; thus the last link was snapped, he
thought.  And they heard no more of him for a long time, except that he
finally managed to get a commission in a Cossack regiment, which went to
the Carpathians.  Vanda wrote to the Countess and the priest, content
with messages for Ian; and he did the same in return.  She was nursing
in the Cadets' College, turned into a military hospital, and said she
liked the work.  But her aunt detected homesickness in her letters.

When he let a thought dwell on her at all, Ian felt thankful she was not
in Ruvno.  For in the middle of November they began to live in the
cellars.  They were in the danger zone for a fortnight.  The Prussians
took Kosczielna, a few versts off, so that their shells as well as the
Russians' sometimes burst near the house.  Ruvno became an inferno of
din and the inmates often wondered that it did not crumble about their
heads.  In their underground retreat they had a certain amount of coal
and coke, so that their quarters though dampish, were not so bad as they
might have been.  A neighboring village fared worse than they did; not a
cottage remained.  The villagers dug themselves into the earth and lived
like rabbits, elected an elder, whom they obeyed, and who ruled the
little community as some of his ancestors must have ruled over as
primitive a settlement many hundreds of years before.  No sooner had
petty officials, in the pay of the Russian government, fled before the
roar of German guns than they organized their village life underground
in a thoroughly sensible way.  Having eaten up the little food which was
left after the Prussians looted them in passing, they subsisted chiefly
on roots and the scanty game yet to be had, and the sparrows and crows.
Ian sent them rations every week, but could not be too liberal because
he had his own villages to think of.  Their worst plight was that they
could hope for neither summer wheat nor potatoes of their own; they had
no sooner finished the winter sowings than the Russian soldiers came and
dug trenches through their land.  They had no seed left, and when Ian
gave them some, the rain washed most of it away. So those at Ruvno felt
they were not so desperately unlucky after all.

Yet they had their troubles.  One night the two armies who have made
Poland their battlefield, seemed to have gone mad.  For twelve hours
there was a ceaseless uproar of heavy artillery, and the earth beneath
them shook as if troubled by an endless earthquake.  They gathered in
one end of the cellars, where Father Constantine had fitted up a rough
chapel, and prayed together for their own salvation and the Russians'
victory.  Towards morning, when they were chanting a hymn, such a
thunderous noise broke over their heads that what had gone before seemed
like some childish pastime.  The earth rocked as if to swallow them in
her entrails.  They stopped singing, and waited for death.  A woman
shrieked, but none could hear her; only the lines of her open mouth and
the horror on her face told them what she was doing. Szmul, the Jewish
factor, his lank hair disheveled, his arms spread out with distended
hands and fingers, rushed in and threw himself on to the ground, rolling
in terror and shrieking continually.  They had but one lamp for
economy's sake, so that their little chapel, like those the early
Christians used in Rome, was full of shadows.  The Countess and Ian,
after one horrified, questioning gaze at the Cross on the little altar,
returned to their prayers, like the stout hearts and good Christians
they were.  She told her beads.  Minnie, who had been standing at the
back, ran towards Father Constantine with moving lips, but who could
hear words when pandemonium was let loose?  The peasants hugged their
weeping children the closer and prayed for mercy.  The priest, for one,
felt sure his last hour was come, that God had summoned them as He had
summoned so many thousands during the past few months.  And so he said
the prayers for the passing of souls, holding up the Cross, that all
might see this symbol of eternal life.

They did not know how long they stood thus because people lose count of
time when on the brink of eternity.  But gradually the earth ceased to
quiver, the tempest of bursting shells died down to an occasional boom.
And they knew that the Almighty had seen fit to spare them through
another night.  Ian was the first to speak.

"They have brought down the house," he said to his mother.  She nodded,
but said nothing.

"Oh, woe unto Israel!  Woe is me," wailed Szmul, squatting on his hams
and moaning as the hired mourners at a Jewish funeral.  Father
Constantine told him to control himself or leave the chapel; and the
calmer ones managed to comfort the others.  Many peasants who had not
cellars large enough for shelter were living down there with them.
Szmul, whose hovel had no cellar at all, brought his numerous family. On
the whole, they behaved splendidly during this night of anxiety and
fear, when it seemed as if every stone in Ruvno had been brought about
their ears.

The bombardment went on for hours; there was nothing to do but wait till
it died down; only then could they go up and see what had happened.  In
days of ordinary activity the shells fell heaviest between seven at
night and eight in the morning; then came a quiet hour when they managed
to get some air, clean the cellars and examine damage done to house and
village during the night.  Between nine and ten, the "orchestra," as
they called it, began again and went on till noon, when both Prussians
and Russians paused for a meal.  If the household was careful to dodge
chance shells they had another two hours of liberty; if the Russians
meant to begin before their regular time they let them know by a signal,
to which Ian held the secret.  The Russians' dinner-hour was Ruvno's
busy time.  Those peasants who had nothing left to eat came for rations;
Ian had every detail of the daily round in clock-work order.  The
management of a large property like Ruvno, with its twenty farms and
sixty square versts of forest land, was good training for him.  Each man
and woman living in the cellars had an appointed task, and Ian, the
Countess, Minnie and Father Constantine saw that it was done.  Their
great trouble was to keep the cellar refuge in a moderately sanitary
condition, because the peasants, none too clean in their houses, had no
idea of the danger they ran from infectious diseases.  Here, Minnie was
invaluable.  They escaped fevers; one child died of bronchitis, which
was very bad when they took her to the cellar, her parents' cottage and
shop having been razed to the ground by a shell.  Things were in a worse
state down in the village, where Father Constantine and the two ladies
had daily fights with filth and ignorance whilst the heavy guns were
resting.  They could not make the peasants see that they were packed so
much closer together, and subject to greater privations, they had to be
far more careful than in better days.  By one o'clock the rooms and park
became dangerous, though they could dodge the shells between the house
and the village till dusk, if they remembered the dead angles.  But
night fell early, and the rule was for all to answer roll-call in the
passage between the two main cellars at half-past two.  Ian called the
names unless busy outside, or in the house; and then the old priest
replaced him.

After that the weariness began.  Though the family did what they could
to keep the fifty refugees--peasants, children and Jews--amused, time
hung heavy on their hands.  They took down all the furniture they could,
and kept their feet warm with carpets.  But they used straw for the
peasants and Jews because they could burn it when dirty.  Father
Constantine always said Szmul and his family were the filthiest people
he ever saw; it was a trial to have them; but they put up with it, and
had to own that the Jew, with his wretched Polish and his funny stories,
kept the others amused.

Ian could not give them work that needed a good light, because he had to
be careful with oil and sit in semi-darkness most of the evening.  But
he and the Countess read to them and told them stories; they also sang
hymns and Polish patriotic songs, of which they never tired.  One or
two, who escaped from the massacres at Kalisz, told their experiences,
and the villagers never tired of listening to that, either.  Like
children, they loved to hear a story repeated over and over again.

Father Constantine managed to write up his diary, though candles were so
precious.  As they always kept one small lamp in the chapel he wrote
there.  It was colder than near the stove, but he had both his fur coats
on, besides a pair of felt boots in which he used to hunt when younger.
When his fingers got numbed he blew on them and rubbed them till the
blood circulated.  Many of the people went there to say their prayers
and he would do what he could for them before they left again.

When the Russians and Prussians stopped for breakfast after that
dreadful night they all spent in the chapel, Ian called up as many men
as there were picks and shovels, took a pick himself and led the way up
to the house.  He demurred about Father Constantine's going; but he soon
settled that.  During the night they had decided that they must dig a
way into the air through the ruins of the house.

They left the Countess in great anxiety about Ruvno, which had grown
gray and mellow in sheltering brave men and beautiful women; and Father
Constantine, who was not born there, loved it so dearly that to lose it
meant to lose heart and courage.  He felt that, going up the steps.  And
the peasants who followed Ian up were heavy-hearted, too; he and his
forebears had always been good masters, generous in the days of serfdom,
fair and square with the soccage, and living on their land ten months a
year, unless they went to fight for their country.

They reached the stone entry which led from pantry to cellar and looked
round.  A wintry sun came through a hole in one wall, but the others
were unhurt.  With a shout of joy Ian threw down his pick and bolted
over the debris, through the hole, which had swallowed up the door as
well.  Father Constantine followed as fast as his joints allowed, helped
by Baranski, the village carpenter.  They were both beyond the climbing
age; so, by the time they reached the courtyard, the others had
disappeared.  So far, Ruvno looked as though it stood; but they noticed
several new holes.

"Where's the tower gone?" cried Ian, pointing westwards.  True enough,
the tower had vanished; from where they stood it looked clean cut off,
but on going nearer they saw that the front floor and part of the
stairway remained, a dejected ruin.  The falling masonry had struck the
west wing.  The cellar chapel was right underneath, which accounted for
the fearful noise they heard in the night.

"The tower can be rebuilt--but the west wing is done for," he said
ruefully.

When Father Constantine saw the tears gather in those clear eyes his own
grew dim.  The bombardment had destroyed the oldest part of the house,
built when the first lord of Ruvno came home from the Crusades; it, and
the moat, were all that the centuries had left of the original building.
The rest was added on at various times.  But the west wing was Ruvno's
pride.  Weakened by age, it could not stand the weight of the falling
tower, and now lay in hopeless ruins. It housed many relics, too heavy
to remove to Warsaw; and they had perished with it.

Everybody had come up from below, some vainly trying to rescue a few of
the relics from the ruins, when Szmul rushed up in great excitement.  He
had quite recovered from last night's experience, and boasted to all who
would listen that he had not turned a hair, but slept all night.

"The Grand Duke is coming--make way for the Grand Duke," and he took off
his cap, so as to be all ready for the important visitor.

The others looked up.  A motor car was coming up the drive.  It was easy
to recognize the tall, spare figure, which towered over the other
officers.  The Countess dried her eyes and walked towards the entry. Ian
left the pile of rubbish; Minnie followed him. Father Constantine stood
a little apart; it did not amuse him to talk to important people; he
preferred to watch, and listen.

"Bon jour, Comtesse," the Grand Duke said, and kissed her hand.  Then he
shook hands with Ian, saluted Minnie, and smiled at the priest.  "I have
good news for you at last.  We have retaken Kosczielna after a heavy
bombardment and a bayonet attack.  The Germans have fallen back on
Kutno."

Kosczielna practically belonged to the Countess, the little town being
part of her dowry and, though her husband did his best to give it away
to the Jews, she managed to save it.  She looked at her ruined west wing
and sighed.

"I would rather have lost the town," she remarked.

"I can believe you," he agreed.  "The town is full of Jews--and that was
the most beautiful part of your house.  Never mind, Countess, we will
drive them over the frontier one of these days and you can build up
again."

"Is the fight over?" asked Minnie.

"Yes.  In any case it has gone over there."  He pointed westwards.
"Ruvno is safe now."

"There," she said triumphantly, looking at the Countess.  "What did I
tell you?"

"I must be off," said the Grand Duke.  "I thought you would like to know
you can come above ground once more."  He turned to the little group of
peasants who had come up.  "And you, my children, can go back to the
village again."  Then, to Ian, in French: "I will let you know when
there is fresh danger."  And he went off as suddenly as he came.

The news cheered them all greatly.  For Father Constantine, there was a
little cloud on the horizon; he meant to talk it over with the Countess
and hear what she could advise.  So, when they had settled in the rooms
that were still without holes, he sought her out.  He knew they would be
able to talk undisturbed.  Ian was looking after some men he had told
off to fill up the gaps in an outer wall; and Minnie was looking after
Ian.

"Countess," he began, "don't you think it would be safer if that English
Miss went away?"

Though this was his first reference to the pursuit of Ian, she knew what
he meant.

"Yes; but she won't go."

"There is an American Relief man about," he said. "He is sure to hear
about the distress in the Vola, and he can't reach that without passing
here.  Naturally, seeing the damage done to the house, he would call."

Her hazel eyes, still beautiful in shade and expression, twinkled
merrily.

"But we don't want relief yet," she said.

"True, but when he sees the damage done and hears that there is an
English girl living here he will be willing to take her to Warsaw ... or
to England.  I think I would not mention Warsaw to him.  He probably has
never heard of it.  So he can take her further off."

"Minnie won't listen ... she is brave."

"Brave!  She stops here for Ian."

She was silent for a moment.  Father Constantine knew she had fallen
under the girl's charm.  He admitted the charm; but did not want a
foreigner to rule in Ruvno.

"She is a good girl ... and her people are of an old family.  Her
mother..."

"She is a heretic," he said firmly.  "Ruvno has never had such a thing."

"She might consent to enter the True Church."  The Countess was an
incurable optimist.

"And a foreigner."

She laughed.  "Why, Father, Minnie would love the sort of life we live
in times of peace ... she would not always be wanting to gad about to
Paris and Monte Carlo, like so many young women."

"Do you mean to say that you will encourage her?" he asked in horror.
"How about the little Princess whose father would be only too----"

"I don't mean to say anything, or encourage anybody," she replied.  "But
I can't turn Minnie out of doors now that the Grand Duke says Ruvno is
safe."

"The ruined tower looked such a good pretext," he said ruefully.

"And it failed."

"I would not consent to Ian's marrying a heretic," she went on.
"Besides, he would not want to."

"He would not.  I know him better than that..."  The Poles have suffered
so much for their faith that they put it side by side with their
country.  With them to say a man is Catholic means that he is neither
Russian nor Jew, but a Pole.

"I don't see that Ian is very keen about her anyway," she said after a
pause.

"In the cellar----"

"We have done with the cellar for the moment.  It is no good meeting
trouble half way.  Cellar or no cellar, I should only be drawing his
attention to her if I warned him.  Men are blind till you open their
eyes.  And then they are mules."

Father Constantine knew her tone; it was final.  So he took his leave,
and ordered all the Jews in the village to keep their ears open for news
of the American Relief man and report when he came to the neighborhood.




                                   IX


It was early in December.  For several days Ruvno had seen neither
soldiers nor officers and received news of no kind.  This had happened
before. Szmul and other Jews in the village circulated the little gossip
there was.  After the Russians retook Kosczielna Szmul went back to his
hovel, whence he had fled when the shells were whistling around, to find
food and shelter for himself and his brood under Ian's roof.  Then,
being frightened to death, he was loud in expression of gratitude,
vowing by all the vows Jews make, swearing by his progeny to the fifth
and sixth generation that he would never forget how the Count had given
hospitality to a poor Jewish factor.  If you know much about Hebraic
flowers of speech you can imagine what he said; if not, you miss
nothing.  Having settled himself in the village again, he picked up the
gossip of both armies encamped in the neighborhood, for a Jew will get
anywhere and talk to everybody, whether Teuton or Slav, man or maid.  He
knew that the Prussians were within a few versts of Ruvno before Ian or
the Countess suspected they had crossed the river in one place, thereby
cutting Ruvno off from the Russian lines and putting it at the mercy of
the barbarians.

On this particular afternoon, after the _Ave Maria_, Father Constantine
was locking up the chapel when Szmul hurried up.  The priest knew he had
tidings by the way he flapped his skinny arms.  As usual he smelt
horribly of herrings and garlic, and poked his dark thin face against
the old man's.

"What is it?" asked Father Constantine, backing away.

"The Prussians," he answered, grinning from ear to ear, showing four
yellow teeth which were all that the village barber had saved, for he
suffered much from toothache.

"Coming here?"

"Yes--on this side of the river.  They have crossed and fought their way
through.  Oh, such fine horses and such wonderful shining helmets!  Each
of their chargers cost a thousand roubles at least, some even..."

"Nonsense.  The army pays----"

"The Russian army pays miserably," retorted Szmul with scorn.  "The
Kaiser's with their wonderful----"

"Hold your tongue!  Now you think they are coming you pander to them and
lick the dust off their boots," cried the priest, angry, not only
because he knew that the Russian cavalry had then the best horses in the
world, but because this news of the Prussians being over the river made
him fear for the immediate future.  Szmul giggled.

"Think!  I _know_ they're coming.  Listen!"

Father Constantine heard the tramp of horses and a squadron of cavalry
swept round the bend in the avenue.  They were Prussians right enough.
Night was coming on apace, but the day had been fine and frosty; he
could see the spikes of their helmets and the hard, red faces of the
foremost men.

His heart sank; there were more than twenty of them.  For weeks Ruvno
had heard false alarms. Once they were so near that Ian could see their
helmets through his field-glasses.  But the Grand Duke beat them back
every time and the household had grown to trust that tall, gray-haired
Romanov to spare them a visit from their enemies.

"Who's the owner of this place?" shouted their young officer, pulling up
in front of the priest.  His face was arrogant and coarse, with choleric
eyes.

"I don't know."

He turned to Szmul, who was sweeping the ground with his greasy fur cap,
anxious to make a good impression.

"Jew!  Find the owner and bring him here!"

"At once, _Herr General_!  At once!"  He ran off to the house as fast as
his spindle legs would carry him.  Whilst he was gone the subaltern
hurled questions at the priest, in German.  How big was Ruvno? How many
inmates?  Their sex?  Ages?  He was answered laconically and in Polish.
Once or twice the Prussian looked ready to lay his whip about the bent
shoulders, but refrained.  Szmul was a long time gone.  When he came
back, he had invented a new title for the German cub.

"Excellency.  The Count is in the palace.  He begs your Excellency to do
him the honor and step inside."

It took him a long time to say this for he was out of breath with haste
and excitement.  Afterwards, Father Constantine asked Ian what message
he had sent; and it was: "If a _boche_ wants me he can come and find
me."  As you see, there was a difference; but Szmul did not stick at
exaggerations when he wanted to please a powerful man.

The Prussian grumbled something about wasting time and all Poles being
servants created to wait upon Teuton pleasure.  But he gave a curt order
to his troopers and made for the house, Szmul running by his stirrup.
Judging by the way he cringed, Father Constantine sadly assessed the
Prussian force around Ruvno at thirty thousand men.

The old man followed them, not that he could help Ian, but because he
had a fond notion that when his dear ones were in danger they would
suffer less if he kept near them.  He tried to check this idea, but in
vain.

Arrived at the large entry, the subaltern dismounted, clanked into the
hall and looked round with the air of expecting to see Ruvno's master.
But there was only Martin, the faithful butler who had nursed Ian on his
knee.  He led the way to his master's office.  Half way there, he
noticed Szmul.

"You're not wanted," he said.

"I--your old friend----"

The Teuton understood Polish right enough, for he wheeled round with:

"This man comes with me."

Szmul giggled in triumph, and Father Constantine grew suspicious.  These
two had met before.

They trooped into the office which stood at the end of a passage,
connecting it with the back of the house in such a way that people could
go in and out without passing the hall or the living-rooms.  Never in
his life had Szmul entered from the large hall; but his elation was not
due to that.  Four troopers escorted their officer and mounted guard
behind him, stiff and pompous as at a review.

Ian stood in the middle of the room, a large place, lined with shelves
and cupboards where accounts and reports were kept.  He looked very like
his mother, the priest thought, well bred, dignified, king of himself.
The four troopers clinked their heels and went through the contortions
common to saluting Prussians; even the surly subaltern put hand to
helmet. Szmul hugged the shadow of the door.  Father Constantine went
beside his old pupil, that fond notion of his uppermost.

Ian returned the visitor's greeting with a bow; then he saw Szmul.
"I'll send for you if I want you," he said in the dry tones he used when
giving orders.

"That Jew is with me," blurted the Prussian.

Ian's gray eyes met his with such cool determination that the other
shifted uneasily.

"He is my servant."  This in frozen tones; then, to Szmul: "You heard
me?"

Szmul looked appealingly at the officer, won no support by word or
glance and slunk out.  Ian's gaze returned to the Prussian.

"Your business?"

"You have food supplies stored here."  This angrily, in accusation.

"I have.  To feed my household and the starving peasants."

"I hear you have enough to gorge them till the end of the war.  Is that
so?"

"I don't know how long the war will last."

The Prussian, angry before, became infuriated at this.  He stamped his
foot and bellowed as if he were drilling recruits.

"You're bandying words, _Herr Graf_," he shouted. "I know you're
concealing supplies.  I'll have them of you, _mein Gott_, I will!"

"Your authority?"

Ian's eyes were ablaze with suppressed passion; but he controlled
himself.  His outward calm maddened the subaltern, who danced in his
rag

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