Part 15

Life was pressing Babanchik hard. He was still without thought of defeat. But his enemies were bringing more stringent methods into the combat; he was now being constantly watched. Other troubles were even harder to bear. The government was consciously setting the hot-headed Georgians and Armenians at each other’s throats, that neither might have time to think of greater issues. And Babanchik could but stand by and watch the suffering of his people. Manya was in school, in the hands of narrow and incompetent teachers, teachers selected for their political views. Kolya’s turn would soon come. After that, so ran the letters, his children would have the choice between becoming power-seeking sycophants of the government, and going, as he had gone, into battle with it, knowing beforehand of their certain defeat. He could not take them away from it--yet. But he realized, he said, that each day, besides giving to him its measure of sorrow, brought a little nearer the fulfillment of his new dream. He was beginning to study English.

The years marched on. The square envelopes came less often, but they came, still full of their old-time warmth for us--full, too, of increasing enmity toward the country which we had left. Manya had gone to Petrograd to attend women’s 'courses.' Two years later Kolya followed her, and entered the University in the same city at the time I was enrolled in mine. And when, a care-free sophomore, I was working off surplus energy in basket-ball and dramatics, a new alarm crept into Babanchik’s letters. Manya and Kolya were becoming involved in the revolutionary movement.

It is hard, in these clean war days, to remember the murky chaos of the Russia of 1904-06. If a revolution could have come at all, it would have come in those years, and it would have been led by students. The younger minds were afire with visions of freedom,--irrepressible combinations of deep conviction and the ardor of youth,--visions which took no cognizance of the wide and weary space which lies between desire and accomplishment. Class-rooms were hotbeds of revolutionary plots,--mad, illogical, glorious plots,--for which their authors, usually still in their teens, paid so heavily. Too heavily, for the government, alarmed, was losing its head a bit.

The heart of Babanchik beat fearfully. 'I am proud of the trend of their convictions,' he wrote, 'but sometimes I am a little afraid. They can so easily be led into a spectacular prank, a bit of mischief for which the government might take it into its head to punish them too harshly. And though we have all become accustomed to that sort of thing, it would hurt me sorely to have them spend two or three months in prison.'

He conjectured mildly. There was news one day, in our American newspapers, of the attempted assassination of a Petrograd official. We passed it by--attempted assassinations were no rare events just then--until the next letter came from Babanchik, a letter of two brief paragraphs. Both Manya and Kolya were implicated in the crime. Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window which commanded a view of the official’s residence; Kolya had passed the signal to twenty fellow conspirators. All had been caught and all had confessed. The official was unhurt and there was hope of a light sentence. Still--the two or three months of prison lengthened into a prospective two or three years.

Once more he conjectured mildly. Manya was sentenced to be hanged. Kolya, because of extreme youth, was punished by life-imprisonment. We read the story of it, scarce believing, page after anguished page in a handwriting we did not recognize. We never knew--no one ever did know, save Babanchik himself--all that went after that. His letters no longer came regularly, and, when they did come, were so incoherent with rage and despair that we gathered little information from them. We learned, however, that by some superhuman means he had obtained a stay in the execution of the sentence, had taken a leave of absence from his office in Tiflis, had called in all the money which he had loaned, borrowed what additional money he could, and had gone to Petrograd. At the end of eighteen months there was a new trial, and we were left to guess of much that went between.

It was not difficult to guess, in part. His way to that new trial had lain along the ways of personal influence, and the men who possessed that influence were the officials whom all his life he had hated and who knew him only as one 'not to be depended upon.' Could he have abandoned to their fate the twenty whom he did not even know, and worked for his children alone, his task would have been less difficult; but then he would not have been Babanchik.

So for eighteen months he worked; seeking audience in the studies of his enemies, humbling himself before their insolent eyes, accepting from them what taunts they chose to give, holding in calm control the hot temper which was hourly made less manageable by the strain under which he lived, pleading where he longed to curse, smiling where he would kill--and knowing, with a knowledge which made all these things possible, that a careless word on his part would take forever from twenty-two youngsters the one hope to which they clung. And so he accomplished the inconceivable. Somehow the new trial was held, somehow the twenty-two sentences were made lighter, unbelievably lighter. For Manya was sent into a far province and given hard labor for life, and Kolya would be free in ten years. But what those eighteen months did to the loving big soul of Babanchik can best be told in the barely legible words of the letter which brought us the news.

'It has finished us at last, this country! It has strangled my children and torn my heart to shreds! I burn with shame at the thought of being its subject, and there is no wretchedness which I hold too great for it, no plague which I would not send upon it if I could! I long to take the first steamer away from it.'

But he had his lost fortune to recover before he could go. There were his debts, too; and the children needed money, even in prison. He went back to his work with redoubled energy. But as he fought for the money which would bring him to America, he found himself fighting against a new enemy. The splendid body had not been able to with-stand the ravages upon his mind; he remembered suddenly that he was nearly seventy. He spoke little of this,--perhaps he would not believe it, quite,--but there was dejection in every word he wrote. And we began to wonder whether we should ever see our Babanchik again.

Yet in the winter of 1913 he came to us, a tired and feeble old man. There was a burned-out look in his eyes, and his wrinkled pongee suit hung limp from stooping shoulders. The journey across Siberia had been hard, that across the Pacific still more trying; there had been an alarming wireless from the nurse who accompanied him. But he reached us, and as I remember the sound of his laugh on that first day twenty years ago, so shall I never forget the ineffable happiness in his face when he stood, a few days after his coming, and looked out over our sunlit valley.

'Peace,' he said, 'and joy. And the end of Russia forever. God has been good.'

He built for himself a tiny bungalow in a corner of our garden,--one that could be moved when Kolya should have come to him,--and was soon deeply engrossed in the simple tasks in which erstwhile busy men sometimes find such keen delight. All day long he spaded and raked and planted, wrote letters home, and went on ever-lengthening walks; but evening brought him to our living-room where, beside the humming samovar, we swung the conversation round to his wild Caucasian tales.

The stories he told were not new; we had heard them all many times before. Accounts of his own trips in pathless mountains, adventures of the danger-loving Georgians, legends of his own people, the Armenians--they had lost not a shade of their interest in the years which had gone since those other winter evenings, when the sea raged just beyond the pasture-bars and made us crowd close to the fireplace and to him. Often, too, he talked of his children, but always it was of their life before Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window. Only of Russia itself he would not speak, nor would he read our Russian newspapers.

'Let her be,' he once said, 'the vampire! I ask only to forget.'

And we thought that he did forget, for the months brought to him an ever-deepening contentment. His shoulders were squaring themselves into old accustomed lines, the illness which had menaced gave no sign. Spring found him searching for a plot of land which would be his own, for Kolya had but two more years to serve.

III

And then, in the summer, came the war.

We translated the news to Babanchik--he had never finished learning his English. A smile twisted his mouth.

'Retribution!' he said; and there was something very dreadful in his uplifted hand. 'I pray that Germany will destroy all Russia.'

We turned upon him in indignation. Under our accusing eyes his arm came down and hung limp by his side. He swung on his heel and left us, muttering as he went,--

'Nothing but German shells will ever break down her prisons.'

There followed the weeks and months of tense living. The Russian papers were filled with opportunities for the new work; names of old friends appeared in committee lists. As for us, we could but talk of it endlessly, and dream of it, wait for the morning paper, and talk again. We still saw Babanchik every day, but, every day, he mattered less. We could, and did, accept without comment his attitude toward the country which still held our affection, but, somehow, we had lost interest in his stories.

The war went on. The enemy was halted before Paris; the Russians swarmed over Prussia and were promptly driven back, far over their own boundary. Riga began to figure in the dispatches, and life seemed a solemn thing--so solemn that we had no time at all for noticing that something was very much amiss with Babanchik, until he said one evening, diffidently,--

'If you could ask your doctor to stop in--some day.'

We stared at him curiously. Why did he have that ghastly look about him? He was perfectly well only the day before--or was it last week--or was it a month ago? When was it that we had really looked at him? What had checked so suddenly the straightening of his shoulders? We could not say. But we were vaguely ashamed.

The doctor was terse and explicit.

'There is nothing wrong, chronically, save a general hardening of the arteries and a very high blood-pressure. He must have had bad news recently, a sorrow of some sort.'

'Nothing new,' I contradicted. 'He has been perfectly happy until now.'

'The war perhaps? or Russian reverses?'

'Oh,' I answered lightly, 'he cares nothing for the war, and Russian reverses would cause him no sorrow.'

The doctor left no medicine.

'Keep him amused,' he ordered, 'and don’t let him grow excited. That is the only remedy.'

Keep him amused! With no thought in our minds, no word on our tongues which did not deal with the war, the war of which he never spoke, with which he had no concern!

It was the youngest brother who broke through our quandary.

'I think we have all been blind--and stupid! Babanchik never asks for war news. But why does he always happen to be about when the paper comes in the morning? Why does he never change the subject as long as we talk of the battles? Haven’t you seen the embarrassed look on his face when Germany claims victory? And why didn’t he need the doctor until Warsaw was endangered?'

Thus did we chance upon the truth. Though even then we were not certain--not until a letter, six months delayed, came to him from Kolya. Babanchik’s hands shook when he laid it down.

'The little rat! What do you think he has done? He has sent a petition to the Tsar, the Tsar himself! To beg to be released from prison that he may join the army. He promises to go to the most dangerous position, to do the hardest work, if the Tsar will only set him free and let him fight. The blessed little rat!'

'Fight?' I asked, and looked Babanchik straight in the face, 'fight for Russia?'

The embarrassed look came into his eyes. But, even then, he did not at once capitulate.

'O my dear,' he replied, 'youth forgets so easily!'

After that it was not difficult to keep him amused. But to keep him from growing excited was not a task for human minds. Already he was fighting with Kolya. At night he lay awake, gleefully devising a thousand sly schemes whereby, single-handed, Kolya should take captive a hundred Germans; the days he spent in filling his letters to the boy with a detailed description of these schemes. Each morning we were introduced to marvels of unheard-of strategy, and called upon to translate from the newspaper every word of the long and conflicting dispatches. He was forgetting to eat, he had no time for exercise. An alarming shortness of breath followed, and we sent for the doctor again. The latter’s visit was short, his opinion no less so:--

'If he continues to live at this tension he will not last until winter. Keep him quiet.'

And he left some pills.

And then came another letter from Kolya. I stepped into Babanchik’s room a few minutes after he had read it and found him at his open window, staring out at the sky. He brushed his hands across his eyes before he turned and held out the letter to me.

'Read it, my dear.'

The uneven round handwriting was pathetically reminiscent of the letters which used to deal with ducks and puppies, and there was boyish heartbreak in every word of the curt, matter-of-fact sentences. Kolya’s petition had not been granted.

'And now, father,' the letter ran on, 'you will have to come back. We are the men of our family. And, since the Tsar has decided that I must not help, the honor of that family rests with you. For, if you fail, I also fail.'

I looked up over the page. What could he do, a sick old man, in a country which was calling forth the finest of its young strength? He answered my unspoken question, hastily.

'There is much for me. The wounded are coming home; I could read to them in the hospitals, and tell stories--you know how well I tell stories. And I can count cars--that is the logical work for one who had been so long with the road. Right in Tiflis I can count them,--supply-trains go out from there,--and release a younger man for the front. Will you get me a schedule of the sailings of Japanese steamers, my dear?'

So came his decision. At dinner-time he could not eat. Morning found him with a newspaper in his hand. Out of his meagre knowledge of English he was trying to decipher the flaming headlines. He waved away the suggestion of breakfast. Food interfered with his breathing, he said; but would we not bring in his trunks and suitcases? By afternoon he was shivering, and the tea I made for him failed to warm his hands. And once more we called the doctor.

He fought with all the strength which was left him, our gentle Babanchik, fought with tears of helpless fury coursing down his face, when we took him from the chaos of his packing and put him to bed. And a hard three months began for all of us.

It was a cold and cheerless autumn of early rains. The doctor came every day. And every day I sat at the bedside, translating to him Babanchik’s entreaties and commands. I had procured for him the schedule of Japanese steamers, and he had marked the dates of their sailing with red ink.

'Tell him,' he would say, his unsteady forefinger on the first of these, 'that I must be fit for travel by this date. Tell him to give me more medicine--I shall take two pills every half hour. Tell him I cannot wait.'

And again, two or three days later, his finger back on the page,--

'There is no use in trying to catch this boat now. But tell him that the next one goes two weeks later. Surely he can cure me in two weeks; tell him that that’s fourteen days.'

The weeks crept by and, one after another, the Japanese steamers sailed without him; but in his mind, which was slowly losing its clearness, a new hope dawned each day. I began to dread the hours beside his bed. It was hard to listen to the plans for his work which, under the stress of mounting fever, often trailed off to incoherent muttering, and to watch the thin profile of his face showing an ever sharper line against the pillow; hard to follow the doctor to his car and hear his passionless, hopeless words; harder still to go back and face the crazily bright eyes of Babanchik and, in response to his questions, lie cheerfully and so extravagantly that it seemed that only a madman could believe.

Yet he believed. For, one morning, I found him ruling a sheet of paper on a lapboard--he had fumed until the nurse had given him his pen. The vertical lines cut unsteadily across the page, and at the top of the columns he had written:--

'Date.'--'Car Number.'--'Destination.'--'Cargo.'

'You see, my dear,' he explained eagerly, 'there will be a great deal of purely mechanical work, such as this, to be done, and much of it I can do beforehand. For I shall be too busy, in Tiflis, and I cannot expect an assistant at this time.'

On that day I did not go back to his room. The doctor’s words had been fewer than usual, and there are times when one does not lie.

But, before bedtime, seeing his light burning, I tiptoed in. He stared dully.

'You have been talking long--I fell asleep waiting. And I wanted you to tell your doctor that I am losing all patience. If he cannot make me well enough to go at once, I shall find some other way to go--without his help. Keeping me in a warm room, the rain shut out, while my boys are lying in trenches! When I could be counting cars--' His breath failed him and he closed his eyes. Only when I looked back at him, with my hand on the door-knob, did he finish the sentence--'for Russia.'

When again I saw him he was neither old nor feeble nor ill. By some untold magic he had become the undauntable Babanchik of twenty years ago. Only, his pongee suit had been very carefully pressed, and this, together with his unsmiling mouth, made him look strange--strange and a little forbidding, as if the way for which he had been searching was one with which we could have no concern. And, presently, one of the Japanese steamers was taking him back to Russia.

ROSITA

ELLEN MACKUBIN

THERE are secrets which are never told, mysteries which are never revealed, and questions which are never answered, even nowadays, when the press and the police so vigorously supplement the public and private interest in everybody’s affairs. It is another evidence of the superior force of the natural human instincts to the mechanism of civilization, that in country villages or isolated garrisons, unpermeated by press or police, such phenomena are most rare. Yet even there they exist.

Fort Lawrence is a three-company post, possessing no neighbor, except a few scattered ranches, within a radius of several hundred miles. Thus thrown upon their own resources for amusement, the garrison’s knowledge of one another’s business is exhaustive, and events in these dull, peaceful days are picked as bare of detail as any bone acquired by some long-hungry dog. Yet at Lawrence occurred the following events, the inner relation of whose outward facts has never been fully understood.

A couple of years ago, Lawrence had been occupied for many months by three companies from the---- th Cavalry, though the chances of army promotion had recently brought it a commanding officer from another regiment. Major Pryor, a middle-aged man, who sheltered shyness behind a rampart of sternness, became immediately unpopular by tightening the reins of government, which his predecessor had held somewhat slackly. But the garrison and its feminine belongings were inclined to forgive him when they perceived that he had fallen seriously in love with Rosita. Now, nobody had ever considered Rosita seriously before; not even her father, old Lawless the post-trader, in regard to whom the suspicion that he was a rascal had been condoned by the certainty that he was the jolliest of companions.

Old Lawless maintained complete silence as to his past; and as Rosita’s mother formed part of that doubtful darkness when he, and his child, and his stock in trade installed themselves at Lawrence, he had never been heard to refer to her. That she had belonged to some mixed breed, part Spanish, part Indian, was, however, written on each feature of her daughter’s body and mind--if Rosita could be said to have a mind.

'Every woman, savage or civilized, will love some day to her own sorrow,' her father had declared, with a cynical laugh. 'But Rosita’s future is tolerably safe. Chocolate bonbons are her ruling passion, and as she has the digestion of an ostrich, many years will elapse before she is likely to suffer for her devotion!'

She was exceedingly pretty, with the beauty of bright eyes, lithe figure, and a complexion so transparent that the most enthusiastic admirer of fairness would not have wished her less dusky. Since she was fifteen she had held gay and undisputed sway among the younger officers; for Lawrence was so distant a post that feminine visitors were seldom seen there, and in those days the garrison families possessed only daughters in the nursery. The fame of her pretty looks and ways had become widespread among the frontier forts; yet it was noticeable that her admirers, while ransacking the realms of nature in eulogy of this gazelle, this kitten, this lark, never called her an angel, or even ascended high enough in the spiritual scale to compare her to a fairy, though there was nothing known of her at which the sternest army matron could take umbrage. She was as ignorant of evil as any of the wild creatures with whose names she had been rebaptized, and Lawless kept a keen though seemingly careless eye upon her amusements.

With this girl Duncan Pryor did not flirt. Plain, prosaic, and forty, he loved her; while Rosita, instinctively discerning the difference between his behavior and that of her other admirers, appeared rather repelled than gratified--an attitude which became more obvious the more her father encouraged this serious suitor, and was presently explained, to the increasing interest of the spectators of the little drama, by the discovery that Rosita had developed another love than that for chocolates, and one which she concealed as slightly.

Gerald Breton, or 'Jerry,' as he was familiarly known, had, upon his first coming to Lawrence, devoted to Rosita’s society every moment which he could spare from military duties that were not numerous; but in so doing he only fulfilled the manifest destiny of all his compeers at the post. He was a big, fair young fellow, with jovial Irish blood in his veins, and a smile which was perhaps more eloquent than he knew. Certainly, when he returned from a two months' 'leave,' he announced his engagement to the most adorable of women, met and won during his absence, with a frank assurance of congratulation which bespoke a conscience void of reproach.

Neither did Rosita reproach him. She preferred him to his brethren in a manner flattering to masculine vanity. And Jerry, having placed the colors of his _fiancée_ in his helmet, did not hesitate to enjoy such amusement as was provided for him in a post that would have been dull without Rosita. She was comrade as charmingly as coquette. She rode hurdle-races, and shot at targets, and smoked cigarettes, as keenly as Jerry himself, while she could sing a love-song to her guitar, or dance to her castanets, with a grace and a fervor that no music-hall star of a much-regretted civilization could surpass.