Part 14

They had finished and were sitting out in the ruins of the rose garden when the firing suddenly began again and so violently that Ian insisted upon the women taking to the cellar. Then he ran to the sacristy, calling to Father Constantine to keep under the broad archway leading from the chapel. He heard an answering voice, no more. He wanted to see what was happening with the Germans, so ran to the hillock, which seemed safe so far. Indeed, all the firing was on the other side, towards the village.

This new attack made fearful havoc amongst the Prussians who had taken up their quarters beyond the church. They had been making merry over the beer when it began, and though not a shell dropped within five hundred yards of the house the human target was hit so well that even to Ian's civilian eyes it was clear that the Russians knew exactly where to aim. The earth didn't shake; it rocked; beasts and men were belched up in an eruption of earth and smoke, to come down again in pieces. Those who could got away and began running towards the house; but they must have left three-fourths of their force behind, literally blown to bits.

Von Senborn, who happened to be near the house when the attack began, was saved. But Ian could not help admiring the way the surviving officers rallied their handful of men and brought them up from the village. Even as they made for the cover of trenches in the garden the shells had them. Then, either because their ammunition had run out or else because their mysterious signaler could not work in the dusk--for night was falling--there was sudden calm. Ian sighed to think what destruction the Russians could work if only they had enough guns and gun-fodder. Oh, the pity of it.

When things had quieted down, von Senborn turned to his men.

"We are going to blow up that church tower," he said, wiping the sweat from his face.

A haggard subaltern explained that they had already searched every nook and corner of tower and church several times.

"We'll blow it up," he repeated. Then he turned to Ian, every muscle of his face drawn with nervous tension, his voice hoarse as a crow's.

"Hark ye, Count. If I find that signaler I'll hold you responsible."

"As for those two Cossacks," he retorted. The Prussian muttered something inaudible and turned on his heel.

Ian followed them down to the church. It stood a little aloof from the village, nearest the house, yet almost half-way between the two. It had not suffered from the day's bombardment any more than the house. The scene of horror where the Russian shells had done their work was beyond description. Though by now fairly hardened to the abominations of war, the things Ian saw and heard through the twilight of that summer evening made him very sick. The surviving Germans were too busy looking for the signaler to worry about the wounded who howled, groaned and shouted with pain. It was a pandemonium of anguish. One man, mutilated beyond all semblance of God's image, implored him to end his misery ... as Ian stood there hesitating a trooper shot him.

"He was my good friend," he explained, and burst into tears. But he soon controlled himself and a few minutes later Ian saw him carrying out von Senborn's orders, apparently unmoved by his ordeal. Indeed, again he could not help admiring these brutes when it came to the pure fighting part of their work. It was in the intervals and with the unarmed that they were so cowardly, such bullies. Once it was a question of fight they bungled nothing and left nothing to chance. Perhaps their passion for perfection in detail made them doubly furious at the trick a handful of Russians who had found some ammunition played on them that evening. Von Senborn was determined to solve the mystery.

"We must not blow the tower to bits," Ian heard him say to the haggard subaltern. "We must do the work in such a way that we make a rift in the tower and can explore it ourselves." Then, aloud to his men: "Now, you are going to avenge your dead comrades."

They were willing enough, but found they must go to fetch some explosives which they had stored near the house. It took them some few minutes to get there. The time seemed very long to Ian, listening to and watching that human charnel house near by. He wanted to get home, away from it all. Yet some mysterious force kept him there. Later, he thanked God for it....

Once more, Russian wit was to forestall Teutonic thoroughness. Before the men told off to the stores got back a shell whizzed past, struck the tower at a tangent. Ian was thrown to the ground and half buried. It took him some time to get clear. Sore, dazed, yet alive and with, apparently, no bones broken, he managed to regain his feet. Then he sat down, for his legs were like cotton wool.

The moon was rising now and lit up a hundred details of the desolation around. He could see von Senborn, sitting down, holding his head and swearing. Several dead bodies were near that had not been there before. Other men were perched on what seemed a hillock, born out of nothing since that shell burst. They were very excited, and he languidly wondered what they found to be excited about, when he felt so indifferent. He heard them quite plainly, without wanting to.

"It's a captain," said one.

"And an engineer," put in another.

"No--a sapper. Look at his collar."

"Look at this," cried somebody else, and the tone of his voice made Ian look, too. He was holding up a Russian drinking bottle.

"And food--look--a loaf of black bread. _Gott in Himmel_, he was a tough one."

Von Senborn stopped swearing and asked Ian if he was alive.

"Yes," he answered.

"Then go and see what they've got there. I can't move till I've had something," he groaned loudly.

"Can't I help you?"

"Only that." And he lay back, yelling for the surgeon.

Ian went up to what he had supposed was a hillock and found it to be a heap of stones and debris--the remains of the church tower. Only the top part had fallen; the rest loomed up, jagged and broken.

Several of the Germans squatted round a body, so limp that every bone of it must have been smashed.

"A Russian, sir," said the man who held the water-bottle. "He fell with the tower."

They rifled the dead man's pockets, turning over his broken body with as scant care as if it had been a lump of beef. They contained little; an old man's photograph; one of a girl with a broad face and small eyes, and a slip of paper. Nothing more.

Von Senborn joined them, staggering but alert. He took the slip of paper and glanced at it by the light of an electric torch. Then he handed it to the haggard subaltern.

"Russian. Read it."

The boy took the slip and pored over it for some minutes, either because the torch burnt dull or because he had not much knowledge of the language. They had left the body, which lay in shadow. Ian looked at that young, tired face without recognizing in it any of the sappers who were in Ruvno during the Russian retreat. Later on, he heard from a peasant that the Russians, when last in Ruvno, kept everybody away from the church and that at night they made noises, as with picks and spades.

"Go on," urged von Senborn impatiently. "I thought you spoke Russian like a native."

"It is hastily written," explained the other. "And therefore indistinct. But I think I have the meaning now."

"Well, for Hell's sake let me have it, too."

"You cannot take me alive," he read in his hard North German. "I have chosen how I shall die. When I have written this I mean to signal to my friends to shell the tower, before your men come back to mine it. And we, too, shall return, driving you to the very streets of Berlin. And Europe's wrongs shall be avenged. We Russians are slow; but neither stupid nor discouraged, as you pretend." He stopped and looked up.

"That all?" asked von Senborn.

"All." He returned the paper to his superior.

"_Ja, ja,_" said a voice. "I see it now. He had himself bricked up in that tower, to signal and cover the retreat. He was no coward."

Nobody spoke. The incident had impressed them all. The man who gets himself bricked up with enough food to last till he is found out, is a hero. Von Senborn, having his head seen to by a surgeon, talked it over. Ian kept in the shadow, not wanting to be seen. Dazed though he felt from the last shell, he knew that this discovery would spring back upon him and his dear ones.

"How did he signal?" the surgeon asked.

"God knows."

"That Polish Count knew of this," murmured the haggard lieutenant, little thinking Ian was within earshot.

"Yes," said von Senborn savagely. "I'll swear to that. But I'll be even with him. Be quick, Surgeon, there's work to do yet."

"Serve him right to shoot him after all," put in the surgeon. Von Senborn laughed angrily.

"Shooting's too good." He lowered his voice. Strain his ears as he might, Ian only caught two words. But they were enough. He waited to hear no more.

He ran as fast as sore legs would carry him up to the house. Outside, not a soul. All the women and children, besides several men, were in the cellars.

"Get out at once," he shouted. "Run as hard as you can, along the Warsaw road."

"What is the matter?" asked the Countess.

"A Russian bricked up in the church tower. They are coming to blow us up, shutting you in first. Run as far from the house as possible."

When he saw them on their way he left them, then ran for an ax and made for the sacristy. There was no guard now, all the Germans being down by the church and village. He soon had the door in, to find Father Constantine walking up and down, saying his prayers. Ian hastily said what had happened and urged him to join the others on the Warsaw road. But the old man was in no hurry.

"They may not do it," he said. "I expect they'll go to sleep and wake up in a better mood."

"If you don't go I'll carry you," cried the squire angrily. "And that will prevent me warning the people hanging about."

Then he dragged his chaplain from the room. But the priest insisted on taking a little malachite crucifix which hung over the cupboard. It was the only thing they saved out of all Ruvno's beautiful things.

Then Ian warned as many of the peasants as he could find, though the shelling had already frightened most of them out of the village and on to the road. Baranski, whom he met, helped him.

Terrible was the confusion and alarm that followed, the calling of mothers to children, the cries of frightened babies, the curses of old men. Every second of that awful night was burnt in Ian's brain; he did not forget it whilst he lived. In quite a short time the Warsaw road was filled with panic-stricken peasants. Some of them had snatched up a table, a chair, a kettle or a pillow. Those who had any left panted along with a sack of potatoes or buckwheat. A few were fortunate enough to possess a horse. He tried to get a couple of his--farm horses were all he had left--but the Germans were around the yard before he could get back. So quick were they that he had not time to take a thing for the women. The peasants, being nearer the road, were more fortunate in this way. Even as Ian left the village he could see soldiers hovering round the house, evidently shutting the doors, lest their victims escape! A wounded Prussian cursed him and Baranski as they hustled some children on to the highway.

"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 God," he cried.

They took the road, destitute 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 God!" 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 God 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 pass 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 destitute 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 hoarse without avail, the stream passed 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 shell 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 mass 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 God, 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."

"Four hundred versts," he repeated. "I did not know. I don't see how we are to reach Warsaw before it is German." He turned to Ian. "Do you, sir, help me lay my little horse in its grave. Then we can decide."

Hastily they put it into a trench, and the Cossack kicked earth over it, telling his story, meanwhile, in odd, broken Polish, of which he was very proud. He had been captured by the Prussians not far from Ruvno, and taken to the Vistula, he was not clear where, to be sent by water into Germany. But their boat was shelled by the Russians and wrecked. Like all Cossacks he was an expert swimmer and he swam up against the tide, got ashore near a wood and struck the high road from Thorn to Warsaw. He had been riding since early morning and Sietch was already much tried when they were captured.

But for all his advocating the Grodno route, he seemed loathe to leave his new friends and strike out done when he saw that they were bent upon trying to get to Sohaczev. I think the knowledge, gathered from their talk amongst themselves, that Ian knew every by-way and short-cut to that town--for much of the way lay on his own land--impressed him.

"I am strange to this country," he explained. "I might not find the river, to strike across country into Lithuania, and four hundred versts is a long way."

"You will come up with your friends once you cross the river," said Ian. "The Russians still held the right bank of the Vistula, this evening."

"Have you no horses?" he asked.

Vanda told him that Ruvno and its contents lay under a wreckage of brick and stone. Ian turned to his mother.

"I am for pushing on to Warsaw," he said. "Neither of us can tramp four hundred versts within three weeks. We must trust to our luck to find the Grand Duke in Sohaczev. Von Senborn said this morning that he was there, waiting for the rest of his army to come up."