The Playground of Satan Part 8

"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 G.o.d's will to give his wicked pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 sh.e.l.l 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--G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 k.n.o.bbed. Father Constantine felt for his gla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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.