The Czar: A Tale of the Time of the First Napoleon/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
SERF AND BOYAR.
"Vengeance, deep brooding o'er the slain,
Had locked the source of softer woe;
And burning pride and high disdain
Forbade the rising tear to flow."
IT was evening. Ivan Pojarsky sat alone in the saloon of the Wertsch family mansion. The costly furniture with which it was strewn had that indescribable air of neglect and forlornness which household goods assume when death, or sorrow deep as death, broods over their owners. There was disorder too: chairs had been dragged carelessly about, and their rich and delicate coverings soiled and crumpled; while a beautiful climbing plant, laden with rare flowers, lay unheeded on the floor beside the broken shaft that had been its support. A costly buhl table near Ivan's chair had the remains of his last meal upon it.
Within the apartment all was still,—Ivan sat motionless and silent, his head resting on his hands,—but without there was a hoarse, continuous, never-ending murmur, made up of many sounds. There was the tramp of armed men, heavy and monotonous. There was the roll and rumble of ten thousand wheels—wheels of every sort and description, from those of the ponderous waggon laden with the goods of an entire household to those of the light telega, from which every now and then a scout was imparting to the breathless crowd his tidings that the standards of Napoleon had been seen at such or such a point of the Smolensko road. Mingling with and following the stately rhythmic march of the disciplined hosts was the tread of innumerable footsteps—footsteps of women and little children, of boys and aged men, who were leaving with breaking hearts the only home they had ever known. And if the weeping and wailing, the sighs and groans and cries, which filled the clear September air did not rise above all other sounds, it was only because the things most deep and real are ofttimes the last to meet the eye or reach the ear—except, indeed, the ever-present eye and the ever-listening ear of Him who notes "the sob in the dark and the falling of tears."
Suddenly Ivan raised his head and looked around him. The last few weeks had changed him wonderfully. He appeared several years older—no longer a stripling, but a man, with a man's responsibilities, thoughts, and duties. There was in his young face a look of sternness, as of one who had to do hard things and to bid others do them; there was the high, courageous, half-defiant air of one who dares death cheerfully, even joyfully, and also an expression of proud though mournful satisfaction. For had not he, a youth scarcely twenty, been intrusted with a terrible secret, been charged with a desperate but honourable mission?
"Beg pardon, gospodin," said a servant, entering. Ivan was now virtually the master of the household, for both the Wertsches were with the army—Adrian serving as a volunteer, Leon as a lieutenant of hussars. "Here is a mujik," continued the servant, "who wishes to speak with your excellency."
"Send him in," said Ivan quickly. "And—stay a moment, Joseph. What does your wife say of her mistress?"
"The countess, gospodin, will not hear reason from my wife, though she has been waiting upon her these twenty years, any more than from your excellency. 'The French,' says my lady, 'will never enter holy Moscow. They dare not.' I must own, Lord Ivan, that Maria thinks this very hard; because if our lady the countess will not be persuaded to go away, as all other folk are doing who have brains in their heads, she—my wife I mean—must stay, too, of course, and be murdered by the Nyemtzi."
"Murdered by the Nyemtzi shall our women never be, Joseph," said Ivan, with a flash in his eyes. "At the worst, we know what to do. Tell thy wife the countess must be induced to quit this house before to-morrow night. If she will not leave the city, like a sensible woman, at least she must go to the Devitshei Convent, and Maria must go with her. I suppose even the infidel French will scarcely outrage that asylum. Meanwhile, send in this mujik; perhaps he brings tidings."
A tall figure entered, with a bandaged arm, and wearing a rough, soiled caftan, and heavy Russia leather boots that left their traces on the inlaid floor.
Ivan looked up, started, hesitated, then exclaimed in great surprise, "Michael Ivanovitch! One-eared Michael!"
"One-handed Michael now, at your service, Ivan Barrinka; and well if that were the only loss I had to tell of."
"Have you come from Nicolofsky?" asked Ivan.
"Yes, I come from Nicolofsky. Barrinka, the Nyemtzi have been there."
"Ah!" cried Ivan. "Curse them!"
"I have done with cursing them, Ivan Barrinka—I cannot find words—so I leave them to God. He knows what wages they have earned, and he will pay them one day. But as for me, my heart is hot and dry, and unless I can go and fight and kill some of them I shall die."
"What has happened, Michael? what have they done to you?"
"At Christmas I was to be married to Anna Popovna. You remember her, Ivan Barrinka?"
"Remember her!" cried Ivan angrily. "Of what are you dreaming, Michael? Do you not know that I—I—"
"Oh, I forgot—it seems a thousand years ago," said Michael, in a sad, dreamy voice. "Besides, it was never anything but child's play with you. Ivan Barrinka, we quarrelled in the old days, you and I. She used to like you better than me, because you were handsome and a boyar. But that is all over now. We shall quarrel no more, for Anna Popovna is with the saints. The Nyemtzi have killed her."
Ivan's agitation was extreme. He still fancied he loved the village girl, no real passion having as yet taken possession of his heart to "put the old cheap joy in the scorned dust." In wild excitement he strode up and down the room, uttering incoherent lamentations and cursing the French; but at last he stopped before Michael and asked briefly, in a choking voice, "How?"
Michael's grief had been his companion for weary days and nights—he was used to it now, so he answered very quietly, "One evening we saw the blue-coats coming, and some of us went out to show fight and keep them off a little, while the rest convoyed our women safely into the wood. But the scoundrels saw them, and fired. The distance was long, and they did not take good aim. Only two shots told: one of them wounded the lad we used to call little Peter rather badly in the shoulder; the other—killed her—"
"At once!"
"She lived some hours. She did not suffer much. She died in peace." Michael spoke with difficulty, and in a low voice. There was a pause; then he resumed, taking a picture from beneath his caftan and showing it to Ivan, "Her last look was fixed on this. Her father gave it to me, because I brought it to her from his house, where the Nyemtzi were."
"Did the French stay there for the night?"
Michael nodded.
"Then what were you about, Michael Ivanovitch," cried Ivan with sudden energy—"what were you about that you did not set the village on fire and burn it over their heads?"
Michael's remaining hand fell by his side with a gesture of mingled admiration and regret. "Great St. Nicholas!" he exclaimed.
"Well?" said Ivan.
"We never thought of it," cried Michael. "Would to God we had! What a sight it would have been!"
"You may yet see a greater, Michael Ivanovitch."
There was silence, and the tumult outside became audible once more to both.
At last Michael resumed. "I am forgetting what I came for. Since that night my head is confused. I live those last hours over and over again. I hear nothing, I see nothing except that bed of leaves in the forest, and the torches nickering upon those sad faces all around, and that one sweet white face—except when I sleep and dream of killing Frenchmen. Ay, killing Frenchmen, that is it! Ivan Barrinka, I come here to beg of you—if you like it, on my bended knees—to speak one word for me to our lord the Czar,—only one word."
"My good friend—for my friend you are, in the love we both have for the dead—I would speak a hundred if I could; but the Czar is in St. Petersburg, and I am here. I scarce hope ever to see again the face that is to us all as the sun in the heavens."
"Then give me a written word for him. You are a boyar, and can do it."
"Nay, I should not presume so far. He does not even know of my existence—yet." The last word was spoken proudly, with an evident under-current of meaning. "But what is it you want, Michael?"
"See, I have lost my left hand."
"Another French outrage?"
"Yes, and no. When I went to fetch that picture, they caught me, and put their Emperor's mark on my hand. Was I to carry that with me all my life, and after my life in the resurrection, before the judgment-seat of God? I had a good hand still, and a good axe in it, and with these I struck off what they had defiled. Now there is not an inch of me that does not belong to the Czar."
"Nobly done, brother!" cried Ivan, embracing him. "I am proud of my old Nicolofsky playfellow. Michael, will you cast in your lot with me, and let us serve the Czar together?"
"Ay, Barrinka; but there is the difficulty. No use in my offering myself for a recruit. No officer would take me, because I want my hand. That is why I pray you to ask the Czar to let me fight for him in spite of that loss. You could tell him I would serve him so faithfully."
"I can show you, even now, a way to render him signal and splendid service; but it is hazardous, very. It is scarce likely we shall live to go through with it; but, Michael, if we do, I think the Czar will have cause to thank us."
"And shall we kill plenty of Nyemtzi?" Michael asked eagerly.
"We shall deal their Emperor a blow he will never forget." Ivan sat down before him, looked at him in silence for some moments, and then, apparently changing the subject, he asked, "Are you not surprised at the condition in which you find the city?"
"What condition?—Oh yes; I saw crowds of people going away." Then, looking up—"But is it true, is it really true, Barrinka, that holy Moscow is to be given up to the infidel Nyemtzi?"
"Too true. A great battle was fought a few days ago at Borodino. The French say they won, and we say we won; but, however that may be, the result is for us as bad as a defeat. Marshal Kutusov says it is now hopeless to think of defending the city. All day our soldiers, with breaking hearts, have been marching through on their way to Vladimir."
"And without fighting? Ivan Barrinka, it is too bad! So those accursed Nyemtzi will have it all—the glorious, beautiful city of the Czar; the tombs, the treasures of his fathers; the forty times forty churches, the holy pictures of the saints! Woe, woe! Why have we lived to see such days?"
"Listen, Michael," said Ivan, arresting the hand with which he was tearing his beard. "Listen to me. The Nyemtzi shall not have it."
"What do you mean, Barrinka?"
"This. We will do for holy Moscow—our beautiful, our beloved—what a father would do for an only daughter, a husband for a wife, a brother for a sister, if there were no other way to save them from those accursed Nyemtzi—our own hands will deal the death-blow."
"How?"
"What should you have done with Nicolofsky while the French were in it?"
"Holy saints! Then you mean to burn the city?"
"These hands of mine will fling the brand into this house, which has been my home ever since I left your village. Nay, more, I am one of the directors of the secret band commissioned to spread the conflagration."
Michael stared at him in amazement, but did not speak.
Ivan resumed: "Perhaps you will think me dreaming—at least you will wonder by what authority I tell you these strange and awful things. I was a boy when last we met, Michael; indeed, until six weeks ago I was little more. Then the war broke out, and the Czar came here. I saw him; not for the first time, Michael Ivanovitch, for it was he—he and no other—whom I saw in my childhood's days ministering to poor unconscious Stefen on the bank of the Oka. My heart went forth to him at once, laid itself at his feet, vowed to serve him until death."
"So? Then you fight for love, Ivan Barrinka. I fight for hate."
"I too, after what you have told me to-night," said Ivan, with flashing eyes. He continued more calmly: "Then I went to the governor, Count Rostopchine, and told him my story. I said that, though my name was of the noblest, I had not, like other boyars, lands, or serfs, or gold to give to the Czar; I had only a strong heart, full of devotion. He answered me, for he saw I was in earnest, 'Such hearts are what we want now.' Then he told me what to do. At first, Michael, I was horror-stricken. I had rather have been burned at the stake myself. But he assures me there is no other way of saving holy Russia and the Czar. Moreover, most of the nobles, and all the merchants except seven, have resolved upon the sacrifice of their property. Loss of life we will try to prevent."
"I suppose all good Russians, save those who, like you, have work to do, are leaving the city?"
"Almost all; except the 'black people,' who think they have nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by the confusion. A few others are remaining on various pretexts; for instance, Countess Wertsch, the owner of this house, obstinately insists upon staying, positively refusing to believe that the French will enter the city—a great embarrassment to me, since I cannot burn the house over her head. I must get her away somehow. For this and other matters I need advice from my good old friend Petrovitch, and I mean to go to him at daybreak. You shall come with me; I should like to tell him what you have done, Michael."
"Anywhere with you. There will be plenty of work for us, and plenty of danger too. All the better for me. But you will be sorry to part with life, Ivan Barrinka."
For a moment Ivan's face assumed a grave and thoughtful expression; then it gradually lighted up, until it absolutely glowed with enthusiasm. "If I fall," he said, "Count Rostopchine has promised to name me to the Czar."