The Playground of Satan Part 33

"You'll starve and die on the way," he shouted. "Decent Germans, not Polish swine, will have this place."

His words ended in a yell. Ian did not look round, but Baranski silenced him with a stick.

"He won't people Ruvno, thank G.o.d," he cried.

They took the road, dest.i.tute as any of those hordes they had pitied and tried to succor during the terrible days of the Russian retreat.

Near where the windmill used to be Ian found his mother, Vanda, Minnie, the Father and all those who had been in the cellar. Here he rallied his people, giving the backward ones time to get up. But many laggards were yet to come when the earth rocked under them; there was a dull rumbling in its bowels.

"Mother of G.o.d!" shrieked somebody. They all looked towards the house....

Ruvno, their home for centuries, where every stone was a friend, rose towards the moonlit sky in a volcano of smoke, flame and rubbish.

Courage failed Ian. He fell down in the road and sobbed like a child.

XVI

When Ian broke down--there by the road--the Countess was thankful to G.o.d for it. Only the need of helping him recover courage took her through that night and the days which followed. For next to him she loved Ruvno.

The peasants were rushing past wildly; the sight of the old House, so stable for centuries and the pivot round which their lives had always worked, dismayed them more than the memory of those helpless fugitives they had seen pa.s.s lately. So they made a stampede up the road, towards distant Warsaw.

"Father Constantine!" cried the Countess. "He's being carried with them."

Ian was up in an instant, and off with the crowd. He knew enough of war by now to fear that if once the old man got away from them they would never see him again, dead or alive. When fugitives block the road, and especially at night, progress is slow, confusion great; thousands of children had been separated from their parents during that hasty retreat at the beginning of the war, in December and, presumably, now. Ian did his best to rally his peasants, shouting that they were safe in the road and would probably be able to return to the village in the morning. But they, poor things, were heedless of him as of the wind. Panic filled their hearts and made them deaf, blind, fiercely obstinate. Their one thought was to put as many versts as possible between themselves and Ruvno's downfall. But he found the priest, very tired with the hustling; indeed, only his indomitable spirit kept him from sinking to the ground. Together they returned to where he had left the women.

"We must talk things over," he said. He was master of himself again, but harder, more bitter than he ever felt before; and some of the acrimony that sank into his soul that night remained with him always.

"We can't go back," said the Countess. "Not even to find shelter amongst the wreckage. Von Senborn would kill you. Where shall we go?"

She looked around at the desolation lighted by the moon and choked a sob. She must bear up for her boy's sake.

"We must find the jewels," said Vanda.

"We're dest.i.tute without them," returned Ian.

"Think of it!" cried his mother. "And a year ago people envied us."

Ian hated to leave what had been his home. Only his fears for the others prevented him from proposing to them to creep back and live in the open rather than desert it. He knew they would need no persuasion; but dared not risk it for them.

For the moment, he vainly tried to calm the peasants. At least, when he had shouted himself hoa.r.s.e without avail, the stream pa.s.sed onwards.

Even old Martin disappeared, and they were left alone, whilst the cries and shouts of the fugitives died away in the darkness. They were near the bend of the road, where stood the old windmill before a sh.e.l.l set it on fire. Just beyond it they could, in happier days, catch a glimpse of the House. He always looked forward to seeing it when he came home after being in Warsaw or abroad. He and Vanda, as children, shouted for joy when they came to it. And now, when there was no home to go back to, they turned their steps towards that bend....

I can't tell you what it looked like. The moon was still high enough to light up its devastation. A dark ma.s.s showed where home had been. The House was absolutely leveled to the ground; here and there, higher mounds of wreckage stood above the general ruin. The Countess lost her self-control when she realized that all had gone; for loud as was the noise when von Senborn's men blew it up, she still harbored a faint hope that a wing or story might be saved. But there was nothing, nothing, nothing. Ian bit his lips and the tears ran down his cheeks; but he was silent. They still wept for this ruin when they heard another explosion, or rather series of explosions, not so terrific as the first but powerful enough to be appalling. This time the Germans had destroyed the home-farm and outbuildings, then the stud. The little group stood rooted to the spot, though Ian, at least, would fain have hidden his eyes from this horrid sight. The thought that those barbarians, in less than an hour, wrecked all which it took his race centuries to build and improve maddened him. He thought of all the care and time and money he and his mother alone had spent on the place, to say nothing of those who went before and loved Ruvno even as he loved it. It was his life, the care of that which lay in wreckage. How would he shake down into a new existence, amongst strangers, an exile, a ruined man at thirty-five through no fault of his own? In a modest way he knew what a good administrator he was; how he had improved the estate, and how he took its welfare to heart he realized fully but now.

And his mother? What could she do with the rest of her days? Oh, it is hard to be uprooted in after years; the old tree cannot bear transplanting, even if you put care to it; the trunk is too stiff, the branches wither, the tree dies in new soil. And she had been torn up roughly, by the strongest and deepest root, cast into a ditch, to die of a broken heart, in a foreign land. He had yet to learn that the thought of him would give her courage to live; but she knew he still wanted her and she could help him to endure.

And so they watched and wept and shook impotent fists at those barbarians, whose dark figures still moved amongst the ruins of home, their teeth chattering with the chill, huddled together like the waifs they were for a little warmth and comfort, with not a blanket nor a crust between them. Fires had broken out in the ruins and Ian thought of the library, of those old books and parchments which could not be replaced. They never knew how long they sat thus; but the Prussians ceased to move about. Ian felt as if nothing could make him close his eyes again. When the flames had given place to columns of smoke Father Constantine struggled to his feet. They had ceased to weep, even to curse their foes; the silence of despair was upon them.

"Children," he said quietly, "let us say a prayer together."

He held up the old malachite Crucifix he had taken from the sacristy.

Afterwards the Countess was wont to say that the prayers saved her reason, though they did bring back the tears, and in floods. But supplication drew the poison of despair from all their hearts; they let G.o.d, Whom they had reproached aloud just before, back into their souls; and he gave them strength to endure. Ian, too, was all the better for it; his first outburst over, he had had another and another, not of grief but of rage, whenever he heard a fresh explosion and saw flames consume yet one more building of Ruvno. Vanda and Minnie, too, were the quieter afterwards. The Father reminded them, in his simple intimate way, in the tones they had heard over the supper-table, as well as in the little chapel, that this was not the first time that their dear Poland had been laid waste by fierce enemies; that the Lord Jesus watches over the weak and heavily stricken; that the Prussians, though they destroy homes and even bodies, cannot kill souls! He used such simple words of consolation, of faith and Christian courage, that they all felt new strength in them to drink the bitter cup--to the dregs, if need be.

They were still on their knees by the roadside and Father Constantine was giving the Benediction when they heard the clatter of horses' hoofs coming down from the direction of Kutno. The Countess' first thought was to crouch in the ditch, for she had grown suspicious of all travelers; but the horseman, riding low and fast on his horse's neck, had a drawn revolver and with it covered Ian, who appeared to be nearest.

"A step and I shoot you!"

He spoke the German of the Russians who learn a few words on the battlefield and in the trenches.

Probably they would have heard and seen nothing more of him, but his horse, with a neigh of pain and yet of affection, dropped.

"Dead," he muttered, this time in Russian. Slipping off the poor beast's back, he began to caress it, using those endearing words even the wildest Cossacks have for their horses, whom they love, calling him his beloved Sietch, his little dove, his only friend, his brother. And there were tears in his voice which moved the spectators, now so well acquainted with grief.

He took no notice of them; said they two must part, but he would not leave his good friend by the road, like a dog, but would put him into a ditch or trench, and cover him with earth, lest the vultures picked his tired, faithful body. He looked about, evidently for a grave, and saw the desolate little group.

"Russian?" he asked.

"Polish," answered Ian.

"Running away, too?"

Ian told him, shortly, what they had run away from.

"Am I near Kosczielna?"

"Ten versts."

"Ah--do we hold it?"

"You do not. But you've killed nearly all the Prussians who held it last night."

"Warsaw is still ours?"

"So far. But Prussians hold this road as far as the river--perhaps farther."

He was thoughtful for a moment. He looked the wildest figure, capless, bootless, his long dark hair blowing in the night breeze.

"To get to Warsaw is useless," he muttered at last.

"Then how can we escape ... where can we go?" put in the Countess.

He pulled his long Cossack forelock and gave an awkward bow.

"Madam, we must strike the Vistula and make for Grodno, or Vilno."

"What? Tramp four hundred versts?" She was horrified. "We haven't as much as a horse, let alone a cart."