The Playground of Satan Part 37

So they started for the road, Ian carrying Father Constantine on his shoulders, regaining the highway by a little shrine, with an image of the Madonna. Many years before the Countess had put it there as a thanksgiving offering, when Ian recovered from an attack of scarlet fever. The peasants of the neighborhood used to say that it had miraculous powers to heal all sick children. So it was very popular with mothers of families.

"Who's there?" cried a familiar voice from the darkness.

"Your own people," answered they.

It was poor old Martin, who had been carried on in the general stampede; but he had grown very tired, and seeing the others were not amongst the mob, had the good sense to await them there, knowing they must pa.s.s the shrine on their way to safety. He had fallen asleep to find, on waking, that the moon was set and the night at its darkest.

"The others?" asked Ian. "Where are they?"

"Mother of G.o.d, they rushed on. They are mad with fear," he answered sadly. "Some fell and did not get up again. Old Vatsek, and somebody's child. The road is hard, being strewn with rubbish, what the other fugitives and soldiers have left for lack of strength."

"Seen any horses, or carts?" asked Ostap.

"Dead ones, under the moon ... they lie as they dropped, in the shafts."

"Far?"

"A quarter of a verst."

Ostap and Ian, leaving Martin with the others, went off to look for a cart. They wanted to get the side of one for Father Constantine. It would be better for him than carrying him on their backs. They had to grope about for some time, because it was the moment before dawn when night is darkest, when neither moon nor the streaks of coming day help you, when the air strikes chill to the very marrow and the heart has least courage. They finally found what they wanted by the smell of decomposing horseflesh, which guided them to a peasant's cart. They broke off one side of it, and took, too, some straw they found at the bottom. When they went back to the others the Father was talking.

"Go on," he argued. "Leave me.... I have G.o.d.... I shall not be alone."

And he said this more than once before he reached the end of his journey.

Ian managed to find a warm cover, too, and they made him as comfortable as they could. Then they ate some bread and cheese, saving the tinned meat for the morning. There was a spring near this spot, so they drank water and bathed their faces. As well as they could in the dark they washed out Ian's handkerchief--the largest--and bound up the sick man's head. The cold, damp linen revived him.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"Going to Warsaw."

"Where is my diary?"

They knew he used to keep one and did not like to tell him it was under Ruvno's ruins. So they said nothing.

"Please give it me. I want it," he urged feebly.

"What does he want?" asked Ostap.

Ian told him.

"I remember," said the Cossack, "he did take two books out of his skirt pocket, there under the moon when you were digging up the treasure. He put them in his nose-bag." He slung it off his back, drew out the two books and handed them to the sick man, who eagerly clutched at them.

"Ian," he said, "come here." When his patron obeyed he gave him the two little books, bound in black oilcloth, such as children write their copies in.

"Keep them," he said with an effort. "Have them published. People must know what Poland endures."

"I will," said Ian, putting them in his knapsack.

"Have you them safe?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Now, give me the little Crucifix. It is in the nose-bag that Cossack brought us."

They did so. He clasped it tight and pressed it to his lips. It seemed to give him strength. "I'll keep it to the end--of my journey," he said. "Countess, forgive me, all forgive me, for adding to your burden with my infirmities."

All tried to rea.s.sure him, and he spoke no more for a long time. They knew he suffered much. His head and hands burned with the fever that was consuming him.

They started off again.

Ostap was right about the road being easier. But it was even more horrible than the fields. In spite of debris, bits of soldiers'

accoutrements and stiff, silent noisome forms scattered in their path, there was no comparison between it and barbed wire or trenches, so far as walking went. They walked for another hour, Martin taking short turns with one end of the stretcher whilst either Ostap or Ian rested their arms. They trudged steadily on, knowing that every step took them nearer Warsaw, further from the Prussians. Ostap and Ian, with the litter, took the side of the road, for the middle, cut with a year's war traffic, was no better than a plowed field. The three women walked near, to do the little that was possible for the patient. Martin walked by Ian, to tell him what he saw and heard with the fleeing villagers.

Ian told him how Ruvno ended. They spoke low because of the Father; instinctively--but heavy guns would not have aroused him from his delirious torpor.

As dawn came on, painting the sky with gray and purple and the breeze grew less chill, Ian could see more and more plainly the desolation that lay around. Not a living creature did they meet. But the dead were many. The few surviving trees were bare as in a January frost; the roadside and neighboring fields, strewn, not only with every kind of garment, every simple article of a peasant's cottage, but with costly things which must have been a soldier's loot, with the soldier's mortal remains; and with their knapsacks, caps, ragged boots and bits of kit.

Dead horses were many, too; and dead peasants, of both s.e.xes and every age, were not a few. And he pa.s.sed near by these things, flotsam and jetsam of war, pa.s.sed dead hamlets, where only ruins remained, and one dead mother he saw, her new-born child near by, and dead, too. He hoped the others had not noticed, for it was the most terrible sight of all.

And as the dawn spread he could see the distant fields with the burnt corn, the trenches full of horrid sights and an army's rubbish, burnt trees, wire twisted as by gigantic hands; ruined crops, ruined homes, broken lives and perished hopes.... And this was all they had left of Poland.

And when his weary eyes turned from the misery around and fell upon his dear ones, he saw how fitted they were to travel the road of death and despair.

The three women, dainty all their lives, were ragged, dirty, disheveled, their thin frocks covered with horse-blankets which were stained with blood. What did the future hold for those brave souls? He preferred not to think of that, and turned to look at Ostap, black with dirt and tan, coatless, his arms far too long for the Prussian's jersey, his feet bare and bleeding, for the boots proved too tight and he had cast them aside, his long hair wild and dusty, his nose swollen, a scar across his face; he looked as ferocious a member of an army as you could ever fear to meet. Martin had aged twenty years since he served supper the night before; he limped along painfully, his house-boots worn through with the rough tramp. Happily, the women were sensibly shod, having put on their strongest boots for yesterday's field work.

Looking on Father Constantine's ashen face, Ian knew his hours were numbered. The seal of death was on it. The thin hands which had clasped the crucifix so eagerly a little while back were clutching at the rags with which they had covered him....

The forlorn party took stock of each other furtively for some time.

Then their eyes met; and they smiled.

"It is war," said Ostap. And, noting their low spirits, he did the best to cheer them with the humorous side of his year's campaign. It made them forget how dirty they looked, helped them to grow accustomed to their new selves, perhaps. Now that the light was good, Ian noticed that the Cossack's dark eyes were intelligent and merry. He had that contempt for death which enabled the retreating Russians to make ramparts of their bodies when ammunition failed. He gave them unwittingly a grim story of crippled men, muddled orders, peculation and pilfering; with that childlike literalness which is wholly Russian and the dash of fatality which stiffens courage, and makes men patient under pain....

They made a wide detour before reaching Kosczielna, fearing to run into the Prussians again, and none wished for that. No sounds came from its ruins; but many gray forms showed how well that Russian sapper, in Ruvno church did his signaling. The fugitives had planned to rest awhile near the little town; but the place was so horrible that they hurried on, quickening their pace, to leave the orgy of death behind, though death went with them step by step.

At Vulki they made a halt. Here there were signs of life, the first since they left home, though the village had been destroyed. But they found that a dozen or so of Ruvno peasants had halted there, and were cooking a few potatoes they dragged from its wreckage. Baranski, whom they had chosen as leader, saw the little procession and hurried to meet it.

"Oh--my Lady Countess," he cried, kissing her hand, "to think you have come to this plight, and the young ladies, too, and you, my lord Count, and the Father--oh, if I could only help you. But there is nothing here. Some of ours have started back to Ruvno over the fields. They hope to creep back into the village unseen by the Prussians and pretend they never left. The sight of all this misery is too much for them.

They fear they will die like dogs if they go any further."

"And those people?" asked Ian, indicating the group round the fire.

"Most of them meant to stop here. The native peasants have fled. Those are too tired, they say, to go back or go on."

"Have you a watch?"

"Yes." Baranski pulled out a silver timepiece. "It is ten past five."

Ian looked at his little group.

"We can't reach that camp before one. It's only ten versts from Sohaczev."