Chapter 2

We went around back of the monastery to an open plateau overlooking the Dnieper. The river curved like a blue ribbon, and we could see the three pontoon bridges for "military reasons." On the low bank opposite were the soldiers' white tents laid out in regular squares. A ferry-boat was carrying some soldiers across the river. The sun flashed on the sentries' bayonets along the bank.

I heard the whine of a hand-organ. An armless beggar was turning the crank of an organ with his bare feet. The plateau was fairly alive with beggars, hopping about in the dust like fleas. Some were armless; others legless. They swung along at our heels on long, muscular arms, with leather on the palms of their hands, or dragged distorted, paralyzed bodies that tried to stand upright by our sides.

In the white, hot sunlight squatted an old man with a white, pointed beard so long that it lay out on the dust in front of him. In his arms he held a book done up in red cloth. He was blind. If you put a coin in a tin cup he wore round his neck, he would undo his book and open it, and by divine inspiration read the holy words of the page in front of him.

A row of seven blind women lined the exit. They began to whine as we approached, and stretched out their hands gropingly. The eyes of one woman had completely disappeared as though they had been knotted up and pulled back into her head. Another's bulged like a dead fish's, with that dull, bluish look in them. Another's lids were closed and crusted with sores, flies continuously creeping over them, but apparently she was indifferent. The seven blind women sat in rags and filth. Shall I ever forget them in the burning sunlight, with their terrible eyes and greedy fingers and the whine of their voices merging into the tune of the hand-organ?

When we left the monastery, a group of wounded soldiers were just entering. With them was a woman in a man's uniform. Her hair was curly and short, and her chin pointed. Her feet looked ridiculously small in the heavy, high, soldier's boots, and in spite of a strut her knees knocked together in an unmistakably feminine manner. But the men treated her quite as one of themselves. One soldier, who had had his leg cut off up to the thigh, supported himself by her shoulder. I have seen several women soldiers in Kiev, and they say there are many in the Russian army.

It is strange, seeing these things without Peter. I expect to go back to Bucharest with Marie and Janchu within a week. There Peter will meet us. I wish he were here now.

So much love, my dearests, every day and every night from

RUTH.

_July 20, 1915._

_Darlingest Mother and Dad:--_

Before dawn this morning I was wakened by a shuffling noise from the street. It was not soldiers marching. There was no rhythm to it. Marie and I went to the window and looked out.

Behind the dark points of the poplars, in the convent garden across the street, the sky was growing light. The birds were beginning to sing. The air was sweet and cool after the night. And down the hill was passing a stream of people, guarded on either side by soldiers with bayonets. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes to look more closely, for there was something ominous in the snail's pace of the procession.

They were Jews, waxen-faced, their thin bodies bent with fatigue. Some had taken their shoes off, and limped along barefooted over the cobble-stones. Others would have fallen if their comrades had not held them up. Once or twice a man lurched out of the procession as though he was drunk or had suddenly gone blind, and a soldier cuffed him back into line again. Some of the women carried babies wrapped in their shawls. There were older children dragging at the women's skirts. The men carried bundles knotted up in their clothes. They stumbled and pitched along, as if they had no control over their skinny bodies; as if after another step they would all suddenly collapse and fall down on their faces like a crowd of scarecrows with a strong wind behind them. Some had their eyes closed; others stared ahead with their faces like dirty gray masks, with huge bony noses and sunken eyes. The procession showed no sign of coming to an end. It crawled on and on, and a stench rose from it that poisoned the morning air. The sound of the shuffling feet seemed to fill the universe.

"Where are they going?"--I whispered to Marie.

"To the Detention Camp here. They come from Galicia, and Kiev is one of the stopping-places on their way to Siberia."

"Do they walk all the way here?"

"Usually. Let's shut the window and keep out the smell."

I went back to bed. I felt so safe, with Janchu sleeping in his crib in the corner. The creeping, submissive procession seemed a dream. It was incredible to think of only the wall of a house separating our security from those hundreds of fainting, persecuted Jews!

We are still here--waiting for our passports to be returned. Of course no mail from you has been forwarded to me here, as Peter is hourly expecting me back. I am cut off from all I love most in the world. The Russian frontier takes on a new significance once you're inside it. I hope you don't forget me. Sometimes you seem millions of miles away--and then I look in my heart and find you there. I love you.

RUTH.

_July 25, 1915._

The Tchedesky Pension is full of Poles--refugees from Poland and the wooded Russian provinces.

Pan Tchedesky himself was formerly an enormously wealthy landowner near Kiev. He loves to tell how he drove through town behind six white horses. Gambling ruined him, and to pay his debts he sold one acre after another to the Jews, who cut down the timber and ruined the land. Of course, where there are no trees the rainfall is scarce. The crops dried up, and finally Pan Tchedesky and his wife and children were forced into the city. There remained enough of his former property to start a _pension_. The rooms are full of the remains of his splendor--heavy gilt mirrors, thick, flowered carpets, a Louis XVI set in the drawing-room, upholstered in faded blue brocade.

Pan Tchedesky is a memorial of his own life; a relic suggesting an earlier opulence. He is big-framed, but his flesh is shrunken, as though the wind of conceit were oozing out of him day by day. His cheeks and stomach hang flabbily. His blond mustache is getting thin and discloses his full, sensual lips. His hands are thick and soft, always stained with nicotine. He lives in constant terror of his wife, and all the pockets of his coats are burned full of holes from his hiding his cigarettes in them when he thinks he hears his wife coming. I have never seen her, but she is the invisible force that keeps the _pension_ running, and controls her husband by her knowledge of his past failures.

"My wife is an executive woman--very executive," he says, shaking his head sorrowfully.

The bills are made out by her. Occasionally he intercepts the maid carrying her back the money, and extracts enough to pay a small per cent of his I O U's, which allows him to continue gambling with his guests. His moist, soft fingers tremble as he holds the cards, and he infuriates every one by his erratic bidding.

A guest slams his hand down on the table and calls Tchedesky a name.

Tchedesky's whitish, livid cheeks shake, and his lips open uncertainly. But he must be discreet. He does not dare offend his guests, for he wants to play with them again, and he must not let his wife know that he is gambling. So he begs pardon in a whisper.

There is a pretty maid in the _pension_ called Antosha. She has light, frowzy hair, and a round, full figure. The other maids are jealous of her. When she dresses up to wait on the table at dinner at three o'clock, she wears a cheap pink silk waist and long gilt earrings, and two or three little rings with blue and red stones. Her wages are fifteen roubles a month. One day I saw Tchedesky kissing her on the neck. Very white and shaken, he came to me afterwards and begged me to say nothing about it to any one.

He has terrible scenes with his wife, who is hysterical and grows rigid. He stays up with her all night and uses it as an excuse to get a morphine injection for his own nervousness next day. He is quite courteous and frankly loves women and food and money. I feel as though, if I poked my finger into him, he would burst like a rotten potato.

There is the Morowski family from near Cracow. Pan Morowski's brother is in the Austrian Chamber of Deputies, but he and his family are Russian subjects. They have been here in Kiev for some months now. For seven days he and his eldest daughter remained while the Russians and Austrians fought for their farm. The rest of the family had been sent into Kiev, but these two had hoped that by staying they might preserve their farm from being plundered and burned. The Austrians had sacked their neighbors' houses. The Austrian officers' wives had followed in the wake of the army and had taken the linen from the closets, and the ball-gowns, and the silver--even the pictures off the walls.

Lovely weather it was. The girl said you would hardly realize there was war, sometimes. The gardener would go out and straighten the trampled flowers. The carts of wounded would pass regularly, stopping occasionally for water or tea. They would say the fighting had passed on. And then, suddenly, the crack and boom would approach again, shaking the house walls--the little uncurling puffs of smoke against the blue sky--the gray-blue uniformed Austrians hurrying past in retreat. No carts of wounded any more. There was too much hurry to bother about the wounded.

Russians in possession again, and Russian instead of Austrian officers quartered at their house. How much more polite the Russians were--so much more gallant and kind-hearted! They didn't treat you as though you were a servant--"Do this. Do that." They brought some of their wounded to the farm, and Miss Morowski helped nurse them.

But at last the father and daughter had been obliged to leave with the Russians. How furious the Russians had been--so depressed and discouraged when the order came to retreat. There had been no fighting round there for several days, and suddenly the news came that the whole army was retreating. Why? They said there was no ammunition. So the father and daughter left their property in the care of the gardener and his wife, who were too old to move. How terrible it had been to abandon this ground that so many Russians had died to win! No ammunition. Waste--mismanagement--graft.

Those in Petrograd should think more of their country and less of their own pockets. The unquestioning courage of the simple Russian soldiers! Every one ready to die--and yet nothing to back them up. It was disheartening.

"The Russians gave us a place in a cart, and we left in utter confusion--soldiers, motor-cars, cattle, wounded, with the Austrian cannon rumbling behind us."

"Were you frightened?" I asked. We were speaking French together.

"Not so frightened as sad. I was leaving my home. All my life I had spent there excepting for a few weeks in the winter when mother used to take us to Cracow for the balls. I hated to leave my beautiful party dresses hanging up in the closets. I know some Austrian woman will wear them. And I can't bear to think of our house burned! We have had such jolly times there, hunting and riding and visiting the neighbors. You don't know life on a Polish estate, do you? I can tell you there is nothing so charming in the world."

Pan Morowski is a handsome, full-blooded man, and plays bridge all day either in the _pension_ drawing-room or at the club.

His wife is small and nervous, and you can see that her main object in life is to marry off her daughters well. She has three daughters, pretty, fresh girls, who are fond of reading, and perfectly willing to read only what their brothers permit them. Every day I run across one or two of them in the circulating library in the town, and always try to get them to take out a forbidden book. They are convinced that Bourget has sounded the depths of feminine psychology. "Isn't it mean!" they cry. "If only our brothers would let us read more of his wonderful books!"

Sometimes, in the evening, we sit out on the balcony, and the Morowski boys come in to talk to us.

"Aren't you ashamed to treat your sisters in this Oriental way?" I ask.

"The less they know till after they've married, the better for them. A young girl should be pure in every thought." And then they begin to make love to us.

There are two brothers who have taken refuge in the Tchedesky _pension_, with a collection of servants. Their house was burned under their eyes, and their property is now in the Austrians' hands. The eldest brother, Count S----, is very handsome and aristocratic, with a cherished gray mustache carefully twisted upward, and soft, brown eyes, which he uses with advantage. Evidently the Romantic poets influenced his youth, and he has found the melancholy Byronic traditions the most effective for his ends, since he continues the attitude.

"He is very sad," his brother whispers a dozen times a day. "Of course his experiences these past months have been frightful for one of his nature. I am not so sensitive. But _he_ has always been this way. Sometimes I'm afraid. Our other brother died insane."

Count S---- affects to believe that the Germans can do anything.

"They are devils! What can we do against them?" he cries at dinner, combing his mustache with the little tortoise-shell comb he carries in his vest.

He never forgets his soda tablets after eating.

His younger brother is round and red-faced, with twinkly blue eyes. He limps, and follows his elder brother round like a faithful dog. The slightest thing amuses him. Indeed, he laughs at nothing at all. He kept the books on his brother's estates and he brought them with him in his flight. They are his pride and joy. Sometimes he brings them into the drawing-room after supper, with photographs of the property. There are pictures of boar hunts, and huntsmen on horseback, with wolf-hounds in the snow, and the tenants merry-making and the house and different sections of the property, and the horses and dogs and cattle. I look at them night after night. They love to live over again their life in telling me about it.

Among the servants with the S---- brothers is an old woman, a kindly, slack one, who rarely goes out, but observes the passing life from her windows. She wears a short, loose wrapper and petticoat, and scuffs about in list slippers.

Then there is a young girl with shy eyes and quiet, womanlike actions. We often see her peeking through a crack in the door when Janchu is naughty.

And then there is Sigmund, a sly, goody-goody child of six or seven, whom the old woman treats like a son, and whom the eldest S---- brother has adopted as his heir. He plays with Janchu. The brothers adore him and take him to Koupietsky Park, and watch him when he plays in the _pension_ garden. We have heard that he is Count S----'s illegitimate child, and that the old woman is his mother. It seems quite probable when you think of the life on a big Polish estate--the loneliness, etc. These three people live together in one room. The samovar is always boiling and some one is always drinking tea there. The brothers share an adjoining room, but they are usually with those in there, who constitute all that remains of their former habits.

Pan A---- lives in the _pension_, too. I am told that he is typical of a certain kind of Pole. He is a turfman, with carefully brushed side-whiskers dyed coal-black, and hawk-like eyes. He wears check suits, and cravats with a little diamond horse-pin. His legs are bowed like a jockey's. He was the overseer of a big Polish estate and has made a fortune by cards and horses. His stable is famous. He has raced from Petrograd to London. Now, of course, his horses have been requisitioned, and he lives by his cards. Cards are a serious business to him. He will not play in a room where he is apt to be interrupted. Occasionally, his wife, a hard-faced woman with tight lips, comes to the _pension_, between the visits she makes to friends in the country. Pan A---- pays no attention to her except to treat her with an exaggerated politeness at table; and she, on her side, concentrates on the young men in the _pension_. After dinner he always hands her a cigarette first, out of his massive gold case, encrusted with arms and monograms and jewels.

"It's curious, is it not?" he says, handing me the case. "My friends have put on their arms and monograms and mounted the jewels as souvenirs."

Generally, he goes to the Café François with a tall blonde woman, the wife of an Austrian. Her husband and son are fighting in the Austrian army, but she came to Kiev with the Russian General who occupied her town. Now her protector is at the front, and she goes about with A----.

A---- is cynical. Women and horses and cards make up his life. In a conversation he feels his audience as if it were a new horse he is learning to ride. He goes as near the danger line as he dares. He has no breeding, and spends his money extravagantly.

K----, the last comer at the _pension_, is a journalist. He has no race or polish, and the rest rather despise him for having none of their landed traditions. He is lean and brown, with a razor-like jaw and a twisted, sardonic expression to his lips. His face is cruel. At Warsaw, where he was working, he was thrown into prison time after time on account of the radical, revolutionary character of his articles. He is well known for the strong, intellectual quality of his work. The reactionaries fear him. The slipshod Russian way of handling things gets on his nerves. His eyes get like steel when he talks about it. Russia's corruption and the German advance--ammunition willfully miscarried--guns sent to the front without ammunition, and ammunition sent that doesn't fit; and the soldiers obliged to fight with their naked fists!

He has sent me Chamberlin's "Genesis of the Fourteenth Century." We discuss it after dinner. It's interesting, though Chamberlin sets forth an idea he tries to prove at all costs. Read it, if you haven't already.

How terribly I miss you. Why do I write of Pan Tchedesky and the Morowskis when I only want to be telling you how I love you and miss you? But it is almost unbearable to write you a love-letter. So many miles are between us and so many months still separate us. Over a year more to be lived through. No. I must keep to decaying Polish gentlemen and exiled noblemen and trust you to know that every word in this letter is a love-word to you, telling you I hold you so close to me that you are one with me in everything I think or do.

_July 27, 1915._

_Darlingest Mother and Dad:--_

It is very hot, and food is unappetizing. The drinking-water must be boiled, and inevitably we drink it lukewarm. It never has time to cool. There is fruit sold on the street, but we are warned against it on account of cholera. There is already cholera and typhus reported in the city. So we thick vegetable soup with sour cream, fried bread with chopped meat inside, cheese noodles with sour cream, etc., all Polish cooking. And we drink _kvass_.

"What do you think of Bulgaria, now?" Count S---- asks me gloomily, after dinner.

"I still think she will go with Russia," I reply. "In every Bulgarian house I've ever been in there is the picture of the Czar liberator. A Bulgarian regards a Russian as of his own blood. Bulgaria gave Russia her alphabet, and the languages are much the same: only the Russian is richer in words and expressions. Why, there is a Bulgarian, General Dimitrief, holding a high command in the Russian army. When I left Bulgaria there was no talk of her going with Germany. 'We will never go with Germany,' I've heard over and over."

"But there is a strong German party?"

"Yes, and they're being paid well. If England and the Entente only took the trouble to understand the Balkans. Germany has sent her ablest men to Sofia with unlimited credit. The English representatives offend by their snobbery."

"Do you think they'll go in at all?" S---- persists.

"Probably they'll be forced in, in the end. But the people don't want to abandon their neutrality. They're making money. They're recouping after the Balkan wars. Bulgaria has had nothing but wars and crises for the last five years."

"They say there are already German officers in the Bulgarian army."

"I don't believe it's so. The Bulgarians are very independent. If they went in I think they would command their own army."

"But this war is not conducted along Balkan war lines," K---- said amusedly.

"No," I agreed. "You know more about the situation now than I do. I can't even read a newspaper. All I know is the spirit of Bulgaria when I left."

"Isn't Bulgaria's Government autocratic enough to declare war without consulting the people?" K---- continued.

"Perhaps--unfortunately. The Bulgarians say, 'We have a wonderful constitution, if the Czar would only use it.'"

"The papers to-day already speak of Bulgaria's treason and ingratitude," K---- observed.

I was angry. "In Bulgaria, some think Russia doesn't want them to go in on the Entente side. They think Russia wants to make a Russian lake out of the Black Sea, and a Russian province out of Bulgaria. They say Russia is the obstacle to their having joined the Entente months ago."

"She will go with Germany," Count S---- insisted fatalistically. "Everything is going Germany's way."

"No--no--no!" I cried.

"Of course she will go where she sees her advantage," said K----.

"All she wants is to fight for Macedonia before the close of the war. Certainly, it isn't too much to ask if she allows the English and Russians to cross her territory to get at Turkey. The war will be shortened by months if she goes in with the Entente, and Turkey in Europe will be finished."

I know you'll laugh, Dad, and think my pretentions to a political opinion presumptuous. My hope is that I'll know more when I'm older!

Love to you all. Think of me, won't you? Don't let _miles_ make any difference.

RUTH.

II

_July 30._

It is confirmed that Warsaw has fallen! Every one is very much depressed. What can stop the Germans? Some one speaks of the forts of Vilna and Grodno, which are supposed to be impregnable. But what about the forts on the Western front? What do forts amount to nowadays? The strongest walls are razed by the Germans' big guns!

"The Germans do just as they like--nothing can stop them. In the beginning the Kaiser said he would sleep at Warsaw," Count S---- says gloomily.

"And he said he would dine in Paris," some one else remarks.

It is funny how much pleasure Count S---- takes in every foot of land the Germans capture. When he talks about the war, he seems to take a perverse pleasure in accenting their inexhaustible munitions and men and the perfection of their whole military organization. "We have men, but we are children." At every German victory he shakes his head. "I told you so." "I've said from the first--" "There is no limit to what these _cochons_ can do." He seems glad to see his prophecies come true; probably, because he has seen his own security destroyed, he feels the safety of the whole world shaken. A hundred times he has said: "There isn't a foot of ground that belongs to me any more. For a man of my age it is a terrible thing to see your life-work wiped out all of a sudden." Only a world destruction could come up to his expectations now.