Pan Michael Part 50

"Who is Zosia Boski?" asked Pan Adam.

"She who with her mother is stopping here, whose father was carried off by the Tartars. If you see her yourself you will fall in love with her."

"Give us Zosia Boski!" cried the young officer.

The father and Eva laughed at such readiness.

"Love is like death," said Pan Adam: "it misses no one. I was still smooth-faced, and Pani Volodyovski was a young lady, when I fell terribly in love with her. Oi! dear G.o.d! how I loved that Basia! But what of it! 'I will tell her so,' thought I. I told her, and the answer was as if some one had given me a slap in the face. Shu, cat away from the milk! She was in love with Pan Volodyovski, it seems, already; but what is the use in talking?--she was right."

"Why?" asked old Pan Novoveski.

"Why? This is why: because I, without boasting, could meet every one else with the sabre; but he would not amuse himself with me while you could say 'Our Father' twice. And besides he is a partisan beyond compare, before whom Rushchyts himself would take off his cap. What, Pan Rushchyts? Even the Tartars love him. He is the greatest soldier in the Commonwealth."

"And how he and his wife love each other! Ai, ai! enough to make your eyes ache to look at them," put in Eva.

"Ai, your mouth waters! Your mouth waters, for your time has come too,"

exclaimed Pan Adam. And putting his hands on his hips he began to nod his head, as a horse does; but she answered modestly,--

"I have no thought of it."

"Well, there is no lack of officers and pleasant company here."

"But," said Eva, "I do not know whether father has told you that Azya is here."

"Azya Mellehovich, the Lithuanian Tartar? I know him; he is a good soldier."

"But you do not know," said old Pan Novoveski, "that he is not Mellehovich, but that Azya who grew up with you."

"In G.o.d's name, what do I hear? Just think! Sometimes that came to my head too; but they told me that his name was Mellehovich, therefore I thought, 'Well, he is not the man,' Azya with the Tartars is a universal name. I had not seen him for so many years that I was not certain. Our Azya was rather ugly and short, and this one is a beauty."

"He is ours, ours!" said old Novoveski, "or rather not ours, for do you know what has come out, whose son he is?"

"How should I know?"

"He is the son of the great Tugai Bey."

The young man struck his powerful palms on his knees till the sound was heard through the house.

"I cannot believe my ears! Of the great Tugai Bey? If that is true, he is a prince and a relative of the Khan. There is no higher blood in the Crimea than Tugai Bey's."

"It is the blood of an enemy!"

"It was that in the father, but the son serves us; I have seen him myself twenty times in action. Ha! I understand now whence comes that devilish daring in him. Pan Sobieski distinguished him before the whole army, and made him a captain. I am glad from my soul to greet him,--a strong soldier; from my whole heart I will greet him."

"But be not too familiar with him."

"Why? Is he my servant, or ours? I am a soldier, he is a soldier; I am an officer, he is an officer. If he were some fellow of the infantry who commands his regiment with a reed, I shouldn't have a word to say; but if he is the son of Tugai Bey, then no common blood flows in him.

He is a prince, and that is the end of it; the hetman himself will provide naturalization for him. How should I thrust my nose above him, when I am in brotherhood with Kulak Murza, with Bakchy Aga and Sukyman?

None of these would be ashamed to herd sheep for Tugai Bey."

Eva felt a sudden wish to kiss her brother again; then she sat so near him that she began to stroke his bushy forelock with her shapely hand.

The entrance of Pan Michael interrupted this tenderness.

Pan Adam sprang up to greet the commanding officer, and began at once to explain that he had not paid his respects first of all to the commandant, because he had not come on service, but as a private person. Pan Michael embraced him cordially and said,--

"And who would blame you, dear comrade, if after so many years of absence you fell at your father's knees first of all? It would be something different were it a question of service; but have you no commission from Pan Rushchyts?"

"Only obeisances. Pan Rushchyts went down to Yagorlik, for they informed him that there were mult.i.tudes of horse-tracks on the snow. My commandant received your letter and sent it to the horde to his relatives and brothers, instructing them to search and make inquiries there; but he will not write himself. 'My hand is too heavy,' he says, 'and I have no experience in that art.'"

"He does not like writing, I know," said Pan Michael. "The sabre with him is always the basis." Here the mustaches of the little knight quivered, and he added, not without a certain boastfulness, "And still you were chasing Azba Bey two months for nothing."

"But your grace gulped him as a pike does a whiting," cried Pan Adam, with enthusiasm. "Well, G.o.d must have disturbed his mind, that when he had escaped from Pan Rushchyts, he came under your hand. He caught it!"

These words tickled the little knight agreeably, and wishing to return politeness for politeness, he turned to Pan Novoveski and said,--

"The Lord Jesus has not given me a son so far; but if ever He does, I should wish him to be like this cavalier."

"There is nothing in him!" answered the old n.o.ble,--"nothing, and that is the end of it."

But in spite of these words he began to puff from delight.

"Here is another great treat for me!"

Meanwhile the little knight stroked Eva's face, and said to her: "You see that I am no stripling; but my Basia is almost of your age; therefore I am thinking that at times she should have some pleasant amus.e.m.e.nt, proper for youthful years. It is true that all here love her beyond description, and you, I trust, see some reason for it."

"Beloved G.o.d!" said Eva, "there is not in the world another such woman!

I have said that just now."

The little knight was rejoiced beyond measure, so that his face shone, and he asked, "Did you say that really?"

"As I live she did!" cried father and son together.

"Well, then, array yourself in the best, for, without Basia's knowledge, I have brought an orchestra from Kamenyets. I ordered the men to hide the instruments in straw, and I told her that they were Gypsies who had come to shoe horses. This evening I'll have tremendous dancing. She loves it, she loves it, though she likes to play the dignified matron."

When he had said this. Pan Michael began to rub his hands, and was greatly pleased with himself.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

The snow fell so thickly that it filled the stanitsa trench altogether, and settled on the stockade wall like a mound. Outside were night and a storm; but the chief room in Hreptyoff was blazing with light. There were two violins, a ba.s.s-viol, a flageolet, a French horn, and two bugles. The fiddlers worked away till they were turning in their seats.

The cheeks of the flageolet player and the buglers were puffed out, and their eyes were bloodshot. The oldest officers sat on benches at the wall, one near another,--as gray doves sit before their cotes in a roof,--and while drinking mead and wine looked at the dancers.

Basia opened the ball with Pan Mushalski, who, despite advanced years, was as great a dancer as a bowman. Basia wore a robe of silver brocade edged with ermine, and resembled a newly blown rose in fresh snow.

Young and old marvelled at her beauty, and the cry "Save us!" came involuntarily from the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of many; for though Panna Eva and Panna Zosia were somewhat younger, and beautiful beyond common measure, still Basia surpa.s.sed all. In her eyes delight and pleasure were flashing. As she swept past the little knight she thanked him for the entertainment with a smile; through her open rosy mouth gleamed white teeth, and she shone in her silver robe, glittering like a sun-ray or a star, and enchanted the eye and the heart with the beauty of a child, a woman, and a flower. The split sleeves of her robe fluttered after her like the wings of a great b.u.t.terfly; and when, raising her skirt, she made an obeisance before her partner, you would think that she was floating on the earth like a vision, or one of those sprites which on bright nights in summer skip along the edges of ravines.