Atlantic Narratives Part 32

And then, in the summer, came the war.

We translated the news to Babanchik--he had never finished learning his English. A smile twisted his mouth.

'Retribution!' he said; and there was something very dreadful in his uplifted hand. 'I pray that Germany will destroy all Russia.'

We turned upon him in indignation. Under our accusing eyes his arm came down and hung limp by his side. He swung on his heel and left us, muttering as he went,--

'Nothing but German sh.e.l.ls will ever break down her prisons.'

There followed the weeks and months of tense living. The Russian papers were filled with opportunities for the new work; names of old friends appeared in committee lists. As for us, we could but talk of it endlessly, and dream of it, wait for the morning paper, and talk again.

We still saw Babanchik every day, but, every day, he mattered less. We could, and did, accept without comment his att.i.tude toward the country which still held our affection, but, somehow, we had lost interest in his stories.

The war went on. The enemy was halted before Paris; the Russians swarmed over Prussia and were promptly driven back, far over their own boundary.

Riga began to figure in the dispatches, and life seemed a solemn thing--so solemn that we had no time at all for noticing that something was very much amiss with Babanchik, until he said one evening, diffidently,--

'If you could ask your doctor to stop in--some day.'

We stared at him curiously. Why did he have that ghastly look about him?

He was perfectly well only the day before--or was it last week--or was it a month ago? When was it that we had really looked at him? What had checked so suddenly the straightening of his shoulders? We could not say. But we were vaguely ashamed.

The doctor was terse and explicit.

'There is nothing wrong, chronically, save a general hardening of the arteries and a very high blood-pressure. He must have had bad news recently, a sorrow of some sort.'

'Nothing new,' I contradicted. 'He has been perfectly happy until now.'

'The war perhaps? or Russian reverses?'

'Oh,' I answered lightly, 'he cares nothing for the war, and Russian reverses would cause him no sorrow.'

The doctor left no medicine.

'Keep him amused,' he ordered, 'and don't let him grow excited. That is the only remedy.'

Keep him amused! With no thought in our minds, no word on our tongues which did not deal with the war, the war of which he never spoke, with which he had no concern!

It was the youngest brother who broke through our quandary.

'I think we have all been blind--and stupid! Babanchik never asks for war news. But why does he always happen to be about when the paper comes in the morning? Why does he never change the subject as long as we talk of the battles? Haven't you seen the embarra.s.sed look on his face when Germany claims victory? And why didn't he need the doctor until Warsaw was endangered?'

Thus did we chance upon the truth. Though even then we were not certain--not until a letter, six months delayed, came to him from Kolya.

Babanchik's hands shook when he laid it down.

'The little rat! What do you think he has done? He has sent a pet.i.tion to the Tsar, the Tsar himself! To beg to be released from prison that he may join the army. He promises to go to the most dangerous position, to do the hardest work, if the Tsar will only set him free and let him fight. The blessed little rat!'

'Fight?' I asked, and looked Babanchik straight in the face, 'fight for Russia?'

The embarra.s.sed look came into his eyes. But, even then, he did not at once capitulate.

'O my dear,' he replied, 'youth forgets so easily!'

After that it was not difficult to keep him amused. But to keep him from growing excited was not a task for human minds. Already he was fighting with Kolya. At night he lay awake, gleefully devising a thousand sly schemes whereby, single-handed, Kolya should take captive a hundred Germans; the days he spent in filling his letters to the boy with a detailed description of these schemes. Each morning we were introduced to marvels of unheard-of strategy, and called upon to translate from the newspaper every word of the long and conflicting dispatches. He was forgetting to eat, he had no time for exercise. An alarming shortness of breath followed, and we sent for the doctor again. The latter's visit was short, his opinion no less so:--

'If he continues to live at this tension he will not last until winter.

Keep him quiet.'

And he left some pills.

And then came another letter from Kolya. I stepped into Babanchik's room a few minutes after he had read it and found him at his open window, staring out at the sky. He brushed his hands across his eyes before he turned and held out the letter to me.

'Read it, my dear.'

The uneven round handwriting was pathetically reminiscent of the letters which used to deal with ducks and puppies, and there was boyish heartbreak in every word of the curt, matter-of-fact sentences. Kolya's pet.i.tion had not been granted.

'And now, father,' the letter ran on, 'you will have to come back. We are the men of our family. And, since the Tsar has decided that I must not help, the honor of that family rests with you. For, if you fail, I also fail.'

I looked up over the page. What could he do, a sick old man, in a country which was calling forth the finest of its young strength? He answered my unspoken question, hastily.

'There is much for me. The wounded are coming home; I could read to them in the hospitals, and tell stories--you know how well I tell stories.

And I can count cars--that is the logical work for one who had been so long with the road. Right in Tiflis I can count them,--supply-trains go out from there,--and release a younger man for the front. Will you get me a schedule of the sailings of j.a.panese steamers, my dear?'

So came his decision. At dinner-time he could not eat. Morning found him with a newspaper in his hand. Out of his meagre knowledge of English he was trying to decipher the flaming headlines. He waved away the suggestion of breakfast. Food interfered with his breathing, he said; but would we not bring in his trunks and suitcases? By afternoon he was shivering, and the tea I made for him failed to warm his hands. And once more we called the doctor.

He fought with all the strength which was left him, our gentle Babanchik, fought with tears of helpless fury coursing down his face, when we took him from the chaos of his packing and put him to bed. And a hard three months began for all of us.

It was a cold and cheerless autumn of early rains. The doctor came every day. And every day I sat at the bedside, translating to him Babanchik's entreaties and commands. I had procured for him the schedule of j.a.panese steamers, and he had marked the dates of their sailing with red ink.

'Tell him,' he would say, his unsteady forefinger on the first of these, 'that I must be fit for travel by this date. Tell him to give me more medicine--I shall take two pills every half hour. Tell him I cannot wait.'

And again, two or three days later, his finger back on the page,--

'There is no use in trying to catch this boat now. But tell him that the next one goes two weeks later. Surely he can cure me in two weeks; tell him that that's fourteen days.'

The weeks crept by and, one after another, the j.a.panese steamers sailed without him; but in his mind, which was slowly losing its clearness, a new hope dawned each day. I began to dread the hours beside his bed. It was hard to listen to the plans for his work which, under the stress of mounting fever, often trailed off to incoherent muttering, and to watch the thin profile of his face showing an ever sharper line against the pillow; hard to follow the doctor to his car and hear his pa.s.sionless, hopeless words; harder still to go back and face the crazily bright eyes of Babanchik and, in response to his questions, lie cheerfully and so extravagantly that it seemed that only a madman could believe.

Yet he believed. For, one morning, I found him ruling a sheet of paper on a lapboard--he had fumed until the nurse had given him his pen. The vertical lines cut unsteadily across the page, and at the top of the columns he had written:--

'Date.'--'Car Number.'--'Destination.'--'Cargo.'

'You see, my dear,' he explained eagerly, 'there will be a great deal of purely mechanical work, such as this, to be done, and much of it I can do beforehand. For I shall be too busy, in Tiflis, and I cannot expect an a.s.sistant at this time.'

On that day I did not go back to his room. The doctor's words had been fewer than usual, and there are times when one does not lie.

But, before bedtime, seeing his light burning, I tiptoed in. He stared dully.

'You have been talking long--I fell asleep waiting. And I wanted you to tell your doctor that I am losing all patience. If he cannot make me well enough to go at once, I shall find some other way to go--without his help. Keeping me in a warm room, the rain shut out, while my boys are lying in trenches! When I could be counting cars--' His breath failed him and he closed his eyes. Only when I looked back at him, with my hand on the door-k.n.o.b, did he finish the sentence--'for Russia.'

When again I saw him he was neither old nor feeble nor ill. By some untold magic he had become the undauntable Babanchik of twenty years ago. Only, his pongee suit had been very carefully pressed, and this, together with his unsmiling mouth, made him look strange--strange and a little forbidding, as if the way for which he had been searching was one with which we could have no concern. And, presently, one of the j.a.panese steamers was taking him back to Russia.