XVIIAlthough it was easy to see that the Countess and the chaplain were tired, Ian listened to his mother's entreaties to set out without any rest; for who could sleep within sight of their ruined home? Besides, time was precious, unless they were prepared to remain under the Prussian rule; and they decided that exile, beggary, anything would be better than living in some town to see them every day and every hour of the day.... Their way lay through what had been the home forest, by paths and fields that run south of Kosczielna, thence south-west to Sohaczev. It was already the last day of July and the Prussians at Ruvno had been boasting that they would be in Warsaw for the third of August; and the Kaiser's second son crowned King of Poland, in the old palace, within a month. They were a couple of days late in getting into Warsaw, and Poland's crown is not yet on a Hohenzollern's head.The fear that the Grand Duke might no longer be in Sohaczev haunted them all. Even as the crow flies, Ruvno was twenty versts from there. By the road, which ran fairly straight, it was thirty. By cutting across country, by the ways which Ian and Vanda knew well, he thought they could save five versts, thus leaving twenty-five to cover. He and Ostap, walking a little ahead, to warn the others of barbed wire and trenches, soon saw what the short cut meant."I'm for getting back to the road," said the Cossack."But it is much further." Ian explained the distances."Eh, God, but we can't do more than a verst an hour if this kind of ground goes on, and I know this part. It's cut up like Hell. We shall be clambering in and out of trenches and dodging wire and dead bodies all the way. We might do three versts an hour by the road. None of you are walkers. Nor I. We Cossacks are more at home on horses' backs than our feet. You walk as if every step hurt you.""There's something inside me that grates about as I move," admitted Ian."Broken ribs. I had them several times. If you tie them up it's all right, but a bit nasty if you let them jog into your flesh."They stumbled on a bit and avoided some more wire, making a long detour to do it. Ian noticed that, whereas his mother and the two girls kept up better than he thought they could, the Father showed signs of exhaustion, though he did his bravest to hide it."The priest," whispered Ostap. "We shall be carrying him soon. Another reason for going to the road."Ian said nothing, knowing he was right. In fact, he soon doubted if any of them could keep up this kind of exercise very long. The ground was intersected with trenches, and full of pitfalls in the way of tree-stumps. They had all been working since daybreak, even the Father, who was fit only for bed. Ostap was a worse walker than Ian himself, bruised and shaken by the shell which buried him near the church and led to their worst troubles. Ostap said he had no sleep for two nights, being afraid to doze on Sietch's back for fear of getting entrapped. Father Constantine almost fought to keep his knapsack; but they managed to get that from him."Even if we do three versts an hour, it will take ten hours to Sohaczev," remarked Ostap, when they had struggled thus for some time without much progress. "... Walking all the time. That's an impossibility. What hour is it now?"Ian took out his watch. It had stopped. The glass was smashed, too. Ostap studied the summer sky with some attention."It is one o'clock," he said after a moment. "In two hours or so it will be the dawn. We can perhaps cover six versts by then, by the road. Then we must rest for an hour, or we shall be dead.""This will be hard on the Father," Ian whispered."Yes. And listen. By three we may cover six versts on the road. That leaves twenty-four. We start again at four, a good hour to walk, for it is fresh. We go on till six. That leaves us twenty-two versts, for we shall be going slower than three an hour, say two ... where was I?"Twenty-two versts from Sohaczev.""We rest an hour, walk three versts more. That makes eight o'clock ... we are yet nineteen versts from our goal.""There's a village nineteen versts from Sohaczev," Ian put in. "Vulki, it's called.""We rest a bit. Then we make a great effort, and if we are lucky, by noon we are ten versts from Sohaczev.""We'll never catch the Grand Duke," said Vanda, who was with the two men."Who knows? But at ten versts from Sohaczev there is a large camp. Or there was. If we are lucky we shall find some of the men there, or a place in a train, for there is the railway, unless we have already destroyed it. But we shouldn't do that till the last minute, for we are retreating with as little loss to ourselves as can be. Then we are safe for either headquarters at Sohaczev, or Warsaw. And Warsaw leads to anywhere in Russia. I shall join my troop, and you can rest till the war is over. It must be over sometime, even the Prussians can't help that. And then your mother, who is a brave woman, and a really great lady, can come back and rebuild your house. And you can marry your sisters in the meantime.""They are not my sisters.""Then the young lady is your bespoken wife.""My husband is a volunteer in the Cossack army," said Vanda.Ostap gave a little shout of pleasure. "Oh--good! Which troop?""The Kuban troop.""And the other young lady by your mother?""Is English. She has been very good and kind in helping us through our troubles. She has lost one brother in the war.""And I three. I spit upon my life. And upon money. I want to fight the Prussians and burn down a few of their towns before I am killed by them, or the cholera. For that is almost as sure as their shells.""Have you no family to keep?" asked the Countess."I have. But they have the farm and the wife can look after that when the time comes for my old father to die. Then my two boys will do their service, too, but I want them to go to good schools first.""But you said you spat upon money.""I mean for its own sake. There is enough on the farm to keep them at school. We Cossacks are beginning to wake up and have our boys and girls taught things besides fighting and horses. But Tsars have taken away all our autonomy, little by little, and have never given us the free use of all our land, like they promised. Many men in the troop find it a great burden to supply their own horses, guns and uniforms."He was silent after that and then began again with:"You, on the other hand, must be a powerful man, for the peasants I used to talk to when we were at Kosczielna spoke about Ruvno and its lord."Ian told him they were mined, and had nothing but their jewels, half of which they had left behind."But they must be worth many farms and horses," he argued. "People like you don't bury treasure for a few roubles. As to what you left under your horse-farm, it is quite safe. The earth is your best friend in war; better than banks."Ian said nothing. The others, too, listened in silence. There was something attractive about his frank speech and simple outlook of life. But Ian had always noticed that about the Russians. The Poles, with their old civilization, had become as complex as the French."I am sorry those rascals have burned you down," he resumed. "The castle was a fine thing. I often saw it from the distance. But I should have liked most of all to see the horses you bred...."Ian and he talked horses then, and got a little in front of the others, till a muffled cry from the back recalled them. Father Constantine was on the ground."He fell," said Vanda. "I am afraid he has fainted.""No, I haven't," he retorted with a shadow of his old spirit. "I'll be--well--in a moment."The Countess was for giving him brandy, but Ostap intervened."Soak some into this," and he tore off a piece of his rye loaf, which they gave him. It finished their stock of brandy, but revived the priest, who was on his feet in another moment."I can walk now," he said bravely."No. I'm going to carry you," said Ian. Father Constantine made a step forward, then fainted in earnest."Let me look," said Vanda. "I believe his wound has opened."She bent over him and said:"Yes. It ought to be bandaged. But how?"Your handkerchiefs," said Ostap. But they remembered that they were filthy after the digging operations and feared to use one till they could rinse it out. Ian made up his mind that they must go back to the road."Yes," said his mother, willing enough now. "We'll never get along on these ghastly battle-fields."So they started for the road, Ian carrying Father Constantine on his shoulders, regaining the highway by a little shrine, with an image of the Madonna. Many years before the Countess had put it there as a thanksgiving offering, when Ian recovered from an attack of scarlet fever. The peasants of the neighborhood used to say that it had miraculous powers to heal all sick children. So it was very popular with mothers of families."Who's there?" cried a familiar voice from the darkness."Your own people," answered they.It was poor old Martin, who had been carried on in the general stampede; but he had grown very tired, and seeing the others were not amongst the mob, had the good sense to await them there, knowing they must pass the shrine on their way to safety. He had fallen asleep to find, on waking, that the moon was set and the night at its darkest."The others?" asked Ian. "Where are they?""Mother of God, they rushed on. They are mad with fear," he answered sadly. "Some fell and did not get up again. Old Vatsek, and somebody's child. The road is hard, being strewn with rubbish, what the other fugitives and soldiers have left for lack of strength.""Seen any horses, or carts?" asked Ostap."Dead ones, under the moon ... they lie as they dropped, in the shafts.""Far?""A quarter of a verst."Ostap and Ian, leaving Martin with the others, went off to look for a cart. They wanted to get the side of one for Father Constantine. It would be better for him than carrying him on their backs. They had to grope about for some time, because it was the moment before dawn when night is darkest, when neither moon nor the streaks of coming day help you, when the air strikes chill to the very marrow and the heart has least courage. They finally found what they wanted by the smell of decomposing horseflesh, which guided them to a peasant's cart. They broke off one side of it, and took, too, some straw they found at the bottom. When they went back to the others the Father was talking."Go on," he argued. "Leave me.... I have God.... I shall not be alone."And he said this more than once before he reached the end of his journey.Ian managed to find a warm cover, too, and they made him as comfortable as they could. Then they ate some bread and cheese, saving the tinned meat for the morning. There was a spring near this spot, so they drank water and bathed their faces. As well as they could in the dark they washed out Ian's handkerchief--the largest--and bound up the sick man's head. The cold, damp linen revived him."Where am I?" he asked."Going to Warsaw.""Where is my diary?"They knew he used to keep one and did not like to tell him it was under Ruvno's ruins. So they said nothing."Please give it me. I want it," he urged feebly."What does he want?" asked Ostap.Ian told him."I remember," said the Cossack, "he did take two books out of his skirt pocket, there under the moon when you were digging up the treasure. He put them in his nose-bag." He slung it off his back, drew out the two books and handed them to the sick man, who eagerly clutched at them."Ian," he said, "come here." When his patron obeyed he gave him the two little books, bound in black oilcloth, such as children write their copies in."Keep them," he said with an effort. "Have them published. People must know what Poland endures.""I will," said Ian, putting them in his knapsack."Have you them safe?" he asked."Yes.""Now, give me the little Crucifix. It is in the nose-bag that Cossack brought us."They did so. He clasped it tight and pressed it to his lips. It seemed to give him strength. "I'll keep it to the end--of my journey," he said. "Countess, forgive me, all forgive me, for adding to your burden with my infirmities."All tried to reassure him, and he spoke no more for a long time. They knew he suffered much. His head and hands burned with the fever that was consuming him.They started off again.Ostap was right about the road being easier. But it was even more horrible than the fields. In spite of debris, bits of soldiers' accoutrements and stiff, silent noisome forms scattered in their path, there was no comparison between it and barbed wire or trenches, so far as walking went. They walked for another hour, Martin taking short turns with one end of the stretcher whilst either Ostap or Ian rested their arms. They trudged steadily on, knowing that every step took them nearer Warsaw, further from the Prussians. Ostap and Ian, with the litter, took the side of the road, for the middle, cut with a year's war traffic, was no better than a plowed field. The three women walked near, to do the little that was possible for the patient. Martin walked by Ian, to tell him what he saw and heard with the fleeing villagers. Ian told him how Ruvno ended. They spoke low because of the Father; instinctively--but heavy guns would not have aroused him from his delirious torpor.As dawn came on, painting the sky with gray and purple and the breeze grew less chill, Ian could see more and more plainly the desolation that lay around. Not a living creature did they meet. But the dead were many. The few surviving trees were bare as in a January frost; the roadside and neighboring fields, strewn, not only with every kind of garment, every simple article of a peasant's cottage, but with costly things which must have been a soldier's loot, with the soldier's mortal remains; and with their knapsacks, caps, ragged boots and bits of kit. Dead horses were many, too; and dead peasants, of both sexes and every age, were not a few. And he passed near by these things, flotsam and jetsam of war, passed dead hamlets, where only ruins remained, and one dead mother he saw, her new-born child near by, and dead, too. He hoped the others had not noticed, for it was the most terrible sight of all. And as the dawn spread he could see the distant fields with the burnt corn, the trenches full of horrid sights and an army's rubbish, burnt trees, wire twisted as by gigantic hands; ruined crops, ruined homes, broken lives and perished hopes.... And this was all they had left of Poland.And when his weary eyes turned from the misery around and fell upon his dear ones, he saw how fitted they were to travel the road of death and despair.The three women, dainty all their lives, were ragged, dirty, disheveled, their thin frocks covered with horse-blankets which were stained with blood. What did the future hold for those brave souls? He preferred not to think of that, and turned to look at Ostap, black with dirt and tan, coatless, his arms far too long for the Prussian's jersey, his feet bare and bleeding, for the boots proved too tight and he had cast them aside, his long hair wild and dusty, his nose swollen, a scar across his face; he looked as ferocious a member of an army as you could ever fear to meet. Martin had aged twenty years since he served supper the night before; he limped along painfully, his house-boots worn through with the rough tramp. Happily, the women were sensibly shod, having put on their strongest boots for yesterday's field work.Looking on Father Constantine's ashen face, Ian knew his hours were numbered. The seal of death was on it. The thin hands which had clasped the crucifix so eagerly a little while back were clutching at the rags with which they had covered him....The forlorn party took stock of each other furtively for some time. Then their eyes met; and they smiled."It is war," said Ostap. And, noting their low spirits, he did the best to cheer them with the humorous side of his year's campaign. It made them forget how dirty they looked, helped them to grow accustomed to their new selves, perhaps. Now that the light was good, Ian noticed that the Cossack's dark eyes were intelligent and merry. He had that contempt for death which enabled the retreating Russians to make ramparts of their bodies when ammunition failed. He gave them unwittingly a grim story of crippled men, muddled orders, peculation and pilfering; with that childlike literalness which is wholly Russian and the dash of fatality which stiffens courage, and makes men patient under pain....They made a wide detour before reaching Kosczielna, fearing to run into the Prussians again, and none wished for that. No sounds came from its ruins; but many gray forms showed how well that Russian sapper, in Ruvno church did his signaling. The fugitives had planned to rest awhile near the little town; but the place was so horrible that they hurried on, quickening their pace, to leave the orgy of death behind, though death went with them step by step.At Vulki they made a halt. Here there were signs of life, the first since they left home, though the village had been destroyed. But they found that a dozen or so of Ruvno peasants had halted there, and were cooking a few potatoes they dragged from its wreckage. Baranski, whom they had chosen as leader, saw the little procession and hurried to meet it."Oh--my Lady Countess," he cried, kissing her hand, "to think you have come to this plight, and the young ladies, too, and you, my lord Count, and the Father--oh, if I could only help you. But there is nothing here. Some of ours have started back to Ruvno over the fields. They hope to creep back into the village unseen by the Prussians and pretend they never left. The sight of all this misery is too much for them. They fear they will die like dogs if they go any further.""And those people?" asked Ian, indicating the group round the fire."Most of them meant to stop here. The native peasants have fled. Those are too tired, they say, to go back or go on.""Have you a watch?""Yes." Baranski pulled out a silver timepiece. "It is ten past five."Ian looked at his little group."We can't reach that camp before one. It's only ten versts from Sohaczev.""We had better rest," said his mother, and he saw she could not walk much further without sleep."Baranski, do you wake us in two hours.""Yes. And I'll look to the poor Father here," he said. He was a loyal old peasant and heartbroken to think of the tribulation that had come upon them all. He found a mattress in a ruined cottage for Father Constantine, and searched vainly for some refreshment for them. They all slept heavily, except the invalid, till he woke them, at seven o'clock."And what are you going to do?" asked the Countess, when they told him and the other peasants their own plans."Some of us go back. We have buried our grain where the Prussians won't think to look for it," he explained to Ian in a confidential whisper, as though von Senborn himself were within earshot. "I have no liking for the road, or a tramp through Russia. They can't take my good earth away and where shall I find soil to bear like Ruvno fields?"Six went with Ian. They had sons fighting with the Russians and did not want to be cut off from all communication with them. Ostap did not like this addition to the party till one of them returned from the far end of the village with a lean-looking but sound horse and found a cart for it. He had grown very tired of carrying the litter. They placed Father Constantine in the cart and started off, taking a sad farewell of those who remained behind....Sore-footed, sore-hearted, faint for the lack of food, they went slowly on, through the same scenes of desolation and death, halting every half-hour for a few minutes, scarcely daring to do so, but sure of breaking down before reaching their goal unless they did. The road was very bad now; Ian and the other men often had to clear the way of the human and other wreckage which stopped the cart's passage. They spoke little. Each wrapped in his own thoughts, listened to Father Constantine's delirium. He, who had helped so many souls through the Valley of Death, must pass it unshriven.At midday they halted again; they had not reached the camp of which Ostap spoke. The Father's frail body was making a desperate effort to retain his fleeting soul. Vanda, who had watched so many die of late, said the end was near. The peasants came up to the cart and joined in their prayers. They wept, for all loved the kind, simple old man who had taught them what they knew of God and letters.He opened his eyes, making a feeble sign that he wanted to speak. Ian bent over to catch his words."Go on--" he faltered. "I'm not alone...."And thus he died. With tears they folded his hands over the little malachite crucifix, the one relic of home. The Countess covered his thin, withered face, so peaceful in its long sleep, with a peasant woman's kerchief. Then they urged on the tired horse and their own weary limbs, the women praying for his soul as they staggered on, because retreating armies wait not and their one hope now lay in escaping the Prussians. They had no food left; every scrap of the bread, stained with the blood of those who held it in the Ruvno canteen, had gone. And strength was fast failing them.XVIIIAt last, however, they saw signs of life. A train whistle told them they were near a railroad and they passed a group of soldiers who were firing two large hay stacks."The camp, thank God!" cried Ostap, and they all quickened their steps.The place had been made by the war and for the war. There were no peasants' cottages, no farm buildings. There were rows and rows of wooden huts where troops in repose had passed their time; there was a wooden church with the onion-shaped dome which pertains to Russian temples; there were gardens in which the men had grown cabbages for their soup and a few flowers, especially sunflowers, for they liked to eat the seeds. There were tents and hospitals, magazines, guns and aeroplanes. Above all, there was great confusion. Most of the troops had left and ambulances, carts, trains, motor-lorries, anything upon wheels the Russians could find, were being packed with the sick and wounded.Leaving the others at the upper end of the camp, Ostap and Ian set forth to seek the commanding officer. It took them some time because nobody knew anything about him, and nobody cared whether they were refugees in distress or what they were. The whole mental force of the place was concentrated upon getting away as many sick and wounded as possible before the Prussians came in and seized them. After half an hour's search, however, Ian found his man. He was standing by a large hospital tent, ticking off entries from a notebook. Judging from his looks, he had neither slept nor washed for some days. At any other time Ian would have refrained from interrupting a man with that stamp of haggard determination on his face. But his own plight was desperate. He told his story as briefly as possible and asked for help to get his women to Warsaw before the Russians left there.When the man heard the word "help" he looked up in irate surprise."Do you know how many wounded I've got on my hands here?" he asked."I can't say----""Three thousand of ours--a thousand Germans. I've had four thousand to get off since the night before last. The Grand Duke with his staff leaves Warsaw this evening. You know what that means?"Two men brought a stretcher from a tent. Its occupant's face was black; he fought desperately for breath. The officer asked the bearers curt questions, made notes, signed to them to pass on. Then he turned to Ian."Gas. That man's regiment has lost three thousand by it, to my knowledge. That gives you an idea of our work here. Help! How can I help?""I'm sorry," said Ian quietly, but with that air of authority he had learned in ruling Ruvno. "But I've a right to your help. My home has been blown to bits because you left a signaler bricked up in my church-tower. I know the Grand Duke will approve of anything you can do for me. If you've German wounded you can surely let some of them wait here for their friends and send my womenfolk to Warsaw in their places.""I've no orders to help refugees," he returned sullenly."I'm a personal friend of the Grand Duke's.""He has so many friends."He was ticking off names from his list and asking the bearers questions during this conversation, which took some time."My time is precious, too," argued Ian. "I'll bury my chaplain and come back to you then. In the meantime you can perhaps think of some way to help me."The officer pointed to a motor-lorry which was passing them on its way out of the camp. It was packed full of ghastly-looking men."There's your answer. How can I help with this Hell going on day and night?" he exclaimed irritably."Give me two horses and a peasant's cart.""There are none.""Then a pass for a train ... room on the roof will do."His face softened now. He thought he was to get rid of this importunate civilian."A capital idea. But I can't give you the pass. It's not my job. The officer who can is over there."He pointed towards the station. "Go to him. Say I sent you. Nicolai Petrovich Ketov is my name. Good luck!" and he hurried into the tent.On his way to the station Ian met Ostap."The devil take this hole!" he cried by way of greeting. "Not a horse to be found. Nor a cart. Nothing but bad temper and confusion." Then, when he heard the other's experience:"Ketov. Don't know the name ... a Little Russian, I expect. But you can see all these officers are too busy to bother with us. I'll try humbler folk. Never mind. Do you go bury your priest. Meanwhile, give me your card, if you have one about you and write down the number of your followers and your quest upon it. Have you any money? That is always useful.""Yes." Lately, he had been in the habit of carrying about all the ready money he possessed in case of an emergency like this. But he did not tell the Cossack he had enough to keep his little family for a few weeks, till he could sell the family jewels. In silence he pulled out a couple of hundred roubles, produced a card, and a note which he had had from the Grand Duke a week before."I'll not take the money, because we don't pay for any conveyance we may get till we're all in it. But I'll take that note. It may help us to get the conveyance," said Ostap.He went off, whistling, and Ian sought the others. He found they had been more fortunate, for they had made friends with old Princess Orsov, better known in Petrograd and Moscow as Vera Petrovna. And she had heard of the Countess, first from hearsay; then, more fully, from the Grand Duke, for she was a personal friend of the imperial family.She listened in silence to the Countess' story, her bright, Tatar eyes taking in every detail of that tired, well-bred face and the torn clothes, never made for tramping over battlefields. She took a fancy to the Polish woman at once, admired her courage and her determination. When the tale was told she made the three women go into a little pinewood hut which stood by the roadside, and managed to get them some hot coffee in a remarkably short time, considering the confusion."You shall have a dinner when it is ready," she said, speaking the purest French. "I'll help you to get off by hook or crook. But we are hard pressed here to find room for your wounded. Wait a moment I'll go and talk to my head nurse." And she hurried out, leaning on her stick."How clean this is!" sighed Vanda, looking round the cell-like place. "I wonder if she'll give us some soap and water, as well as a dinner. I seem to want it more than food.""She'll give us everything," said Minnie cheerfully. "She is the good fairy who always turns up, even in real life, when things look blackest. No, Countess?"The Countess did not hear. She was thinking of the life they had left behind and wondered what the future held in store. And she thought of her faithful old friend, the chaplain, now lying in peace after his long journey and envied him, till she remembered that her boy wanted her and this thought gave comfort.In a few minutes the Princess came back."We're so packed that you couldn't put a bayonet between the men," she said in her brisk way. "But I can take you three ladies on my hospital train if you don't mind wearing white aprons and veils.""I am most grateful to you," said the Countess. "If you will take these two girls for me, it will be a great load off my mind.""But you?""I'll do what my son does. I've known so many cases of families being separated and not finding each other for months together. And I don't think I could bear the anxiety of that."Vera Petrovna laughed."That is when people have to tramp the roads by night," she argued. "Your son can get on a troop train, by hook or by crook. On the roof, or with the stoker. It's nothing for a man.""But the train he gets on might not go to Warsaw," objected the Countess. "And where should I find him with all the telegraphic communication stopped?""I sha'n't leave you," said Vanda."Nor I," added Minnie.The old Russian was rather puzzled at this. But Ian came to the rescue. He looked on the matter in a far more practical light."It's the greatest piece of luck you could have," he said. "I can't tell you, Princess, how grateful I am. I've not been able ever to get anybody to listen to my request for a seat on the roof of a train, even. But I can tramp it. And I'll do it all the better when I know you're all safe.""You can't help going to Warsaw," said the Princess. "You can arrange that whoever gets there first waits for the rest of the party."I wonder what the chances of getting from Warsaw to Petrograd or even Kiev are?" Ian asked her. This had been worrying him a good deal. He did not want to be left in Warsaw, unable to realize his valuables.The Princess blinked her narrow eyes at him and tapped her stick on the floor. It was the same ebony stick whose knob was an enormous emerald set in pearls which she used in peace days. It was her one vanity. But in order to preserve the stones from scratches and dirt she had a lot of little washleather caps made for the knob which were changed and washed as soon as they showed the need for it. For many months now this wonderful old woman, remnant of a type which the revolution has probably swept away forever, whose friends of youth had passed away, who stood alone in her memories, had been living between her hospital-train and her Petrograd palace, turned into a hospital, too. With that independence characteristic of her House she refused to have anything to do with the Russian Red Cross, supplied her own train, nurses, surgeons and requisities, her own engine-drivers, her own locomotives, and wood from her own forests to heat the train and make it go. The food came from her own estates, the civilian aid from her own circle of friends and acquaintances. In fact, she supplied everything but the patients and they never lacked, for Vera Petrovna's train and hospital soon won for themselves renown for comfort and good nursing that the wounded clamored to be taken there. Ian watched her as she stood, near his mother's chair, evidently revolving some plan in her shrewd old head. He, too, had heard of her, of her wealth and imperiousness, her kind heart and open hand. He reflected, little bitterly, that her fortune was safe, because her immense forests in Central Asia and her hunting grounds in Siberia, wherein you could have put Ruvno and lost it, where trappers caught sables and marten for the world's women, lay well beyond the invaders' grasp. He could not foresee her terrible end, which she met with fortitude; little guessed that her palace in Petrograd would be broken into by Lenine's mob, looted and burnt; that her old body would be thrown into the nearest canal after the life had been strangled out of it. All he saw now was a very energetic and prosperous member of the Russian aristocracy, a woman who could afford to laugh at the German advance because her native land was intact."Count," she said, addressing him because she had all her life preferred to deal with men.... "I have a proposal.""Yes?""Will you allow me to take these ladies in my train to Petrograd? We go straight through.""Straight through? But the difference in the gauge of the rails?"She gave him a wink."That's a Russian bureaucratic legend," she returned. "I have a contrivance they put on the wheels, and all gauges are alike. The Germans have it, too, you may be sure, all ready to run their trains right up to Vilna. But to business. It's far better for you, Countess, and you, young ladies, to come straight up to safety with me than to risk being left in Warsaw. Who knows if you will get seats in a train or motor-car now?""It's very kind of you," said Ian, glancing at his mother, "But----""No buts," retorted Vera Petrovna. "You're going to say we were complete strangers a few minutes ago. That's true. But in times like these one makes friends or enemies very fast. Oh, I've heard of all you've done for wounded Russians at Ruvno," she went on, giving the Countess one of her shrewd looks. "And it would be a great honor for me to show you that we Russians are not like our government, that we wish to be Poland's friend and help her brave sons and daughters, who have borne the brunt of this awful war.""Oh, how nice to hear you say that," exclaimed Vanda."I mean it. But let us arrange this. You, Count, can join your little family at my house in Petrograd. If you've never been there, all you have to do is to ask for the Orsov Palace. Every street-urchin knows it. Now, I must leave you for a moment. So much to do! Do you wait here till a bath and dinner are ready."Then the others held a family council and persuaded the Countess to accept Vera Petrovna's offer. Later on, if they decided to stop in Petrograd they might find a furnished apartment, but it would be a great thing, Ian argued, for him to know they were in safe hands till he joined them. He gave his mother half his store of money and many promises to use every means to join her as soon as he could. He meant to stop in Warsaw and see what had become of the hardware factory which had been making field-kitchens for the army. But he kept this to himself, knowing his womenfolk would only worry about him the more, lest he fell into the Germans' hands. They all had lively recollections of that Prussian cavalryman who was so interested in the family emeralds, and whom he told a lie to. The Countess still had scruples about letting him go off alone."I shouldn't mind if I felt sure you wouldn't have to tramp all the way to Russia," she said, as she reluctantly took the money."But I sha'n't tramp, even to Sohaczev," he said confidently. "I'm sure to get on some kind of a train. And it will be like getting rid of a millstone round my neck to know you're all going in safety and comparative comfort." He lowered his voice. "Vera Petrovna's friendship will be a most valuable thing for us in Petrograd. And she's just as charming an old woman as everybody said she was."There came a loud rap at the door."Bath!" exclaimed Vanda. "Come in!"To their surprise, it was Major Healy, as large as ever and now very sunburnt into the bargain. He looked at them for a moment, took in the situation in his rather slow, very sympathetic way and said:"Well, I'm glad to see you safe. I've been horribly worried about you these days. I was going off to Ruvno." He glanced at Minnie, who flushed, partly with pleasure at seeing him, partly with annoyance at her unkempt appearance.They told him their story. He listened gravely, putting in a nod or a slow, heavy gesture now and again."I feared it," he remarked, when they had done. "When the Princess told me Lipniki had been bombarded I knew what that must mean for Ruvno. I was going to push on there this afternoon and get your news. As you're here, I'm back to Warsaw. I've distributed all my relief. There's room in my side-car for one. Which of you is coming?""Oh!" said the Countess, and looked at her boy."I've some peasant women," said he.Healy laughed and shook his head."I can only take one, and a light one. I'm a heavy-weight and the road is awful.""They can draw lots," said Ian. "The others will have to shift with us men."He saw Healy was not over eager to take peasants, and determined he should. They were still discussing it when Vera Petrovna sent word by a nurse that the bathroom in the train was ready for them and that there would be a hasty dinner in half an hour.The women hurried out. Healy offered Ian a cigarette and lighted one for himself. Then, in his pondering way, he began."Count, we've not seen each other as much as I'd like, but I believe we're friends.""We are," agreed Ian heartily. "And you've been a good friend to my country, too.""Well, I've only done my duty and not half as much as I'd like," said the American giant, sitting on the camp bed, which creaked plaintively under his weight. "But for the moment I want to talk to you about my private affairs." He looked round the log hut and through the little window to the hospital beyond. "It seems an unsuitable time and place for me to worry you, when you've been torn up, root and stock. I appreciate your troubles, but I've no choice but to worry you a moment with my own affairs.""By all means. We part soon, and you never know how long it'll be before----""Exactly. You've hit the spot, Count, I may as well say, without any more beating about the bush, that I'm interested in Miss Minnie Burton.""Ah!""Deeply interested. I suppose she told you that we saw quite a little of each other when she was in Warsaw during that December advance.""Oh, yes," said Ian, putting politeness before veracity."My interest has grown, deepened, since then. She's a real fine girl, is Miss Minnie Burton, and comes of a fine old stock. I want to marry her." Here his honest eyes met his friend's and his honest, broad face became redder than ever. "And I want to shoot her out of this danger in my trailer.""As to marrying her, I'm not her guardian," said Ian. "Her brother----""On the high seas. And can't give opinions, one way or the other right here.""I doubt if you'd find a parson to marry you just now," said Ian, who had exaggerated ideas of American impatience."Good God! I wasn't thinking of marrying her this minute. Nor in this Hell of a place. I guess there'll be time enough for the ceremony in Petrograd. I'd like the wedding to be from Princess Orsov's palace.""Oh, does she know of your--your----""No. But she will. And she's just as cordial to yours truly as she can be. What I want is your countenance to my taking Miss Burton on my side-car. There are a few points I want to fix up with her. I guess we'll have plenty of time to talk on the way to Warsaw.""But Warsaw isn't Petrograd," objected Ian. "I think she'll be far safer in Vera Petrovna's train. I'm responsible for her, you know, till you--till you get the family's consent to the match."Healy laughed. The idea of family consent appeared to Ian to amuse him greatly."She's of age. And family consent be darned if she's willing, which I'm nearly sure she is. As to responsibility, I'd not like to have her get into any unpleasantness with that brother of hers. But she needn't worry. I'll get her safe to Petrograd as soon as the Princess could. And sooner, maybe. I know how they shunt those trains into sidings. We've got a fine touring car waiting in Warsaw and enough petrol to take us to Vladivostock. In fact, I'd be glad to give you a seat in it if you can get there in time for us to start fair of the Germans.""Thanks very much.""And then you'd do the chaperon, and that brother couldn't say anything. Now, then, can I take her on my trailer?""Yes. If she likes to go. But you'd better arrange with the Princess about taking a peasant woman in her place. I'm getting so many favors from her as it is, I can't ask for any more.""That I will."Ian got up."I'll leave you to do it. I've some things to see about." And he sought Ostap, to arrange with him about Father Constantine's funeral immediately after a hasty meal.He was glad that Healy and Minnie were going to marry. It relieved him of any further responsibility and would certainly put an end to maternal hints about the advisability of settling down with her as wife. He did not want to settle down. He meant to go and fight as soon as he had put his mother in some secure corner and provided her with enough money to live upon.They buried Father Constantine just as he died, in his dusty alpaca soutane, his hands folded over die malachite Crucifix. They laid him in the cemetery behind a group of tents which formed the camp hospital, amongst Russian soldiers, digging his grave with a spade Ostap managed to pick up somewhere. Several other hasty funerals were going on and nobody paid the least attention to him. They could find no wood to make a rough cross; but there was some ivy near and Vanda twisted that into one, putting it over the newly-turned sods. They could not even write his name--so left him, unrecorded, and in peace. They had not gone far towards the station when a messenger met them to say that the hospital-train was ready to start. Ostap ran up, too. He had good news."It's nearly settled for you and your peasants," he said to Ian. "The transport officer asks for you."Ian hurried off, leaving the Countess and Vanda to go to the train under Ostap's guidance and found the officer in question checking figures on a bit of paper. He was as weary and worried as the first one had been. But he seemed to want men."Five hundred unwounded Germans leave at once," he said hurriedly. "You and your peasants take charge of some trucks. The first train to leave. We are short.""I accept with pleasure.""Good. Go with your peasants; for you'll be wanted in a moment.""My peasants are here. I'll just go and say good-bye to my womenfolk."He ran up to the Orsov train which stood at one end of the primitive station, ready to start. Ropes had been tied over the roof and down the sides of the coaches; to these clung men with bandaged heads and feet. The Princess met him."They are down here," she said. Then, seeing him look at the crowded roof. "You are wondering how all these men are going to hold on till we reach Petrograd. But you know what happens. We shall be shunted into sidings for hours and then they can rest. Some will be back in their regiments before a month. The bad cases are all inside."She led the way through a crowd of soldiers, prisoners and stretcher-bearers towards the head of her train. His mother and Vanda stood there, with Minnie and the American. Ian noticed two of his peasant women on the steps of a coach as they passed."Why, have you taken them, too?" he asked. "You're simply wonderful.""A nurse is ill--typhoid, I fear. So a peasant goes to do her work. Your mother tells me she has had some experience. The other goes in the English girl's place." Her narrow eyes twinkled. "She's off with Healy. These Americans make me laugh. They do things nobody in Russia would do and with impunity, too.""Yes. But he's a good fellow.""Excellent. But you'll see he'll make me have the wedding in my house, busy as I am.""I shouldn't wonder," returned Ian.He said his good-byes, with many injunctions to his dear ones not to leave the Orsov palace till he fetched them. Vanda's soft eyes rested on his and their look was an embrace."God bless you," he said, kissing her hand."And you," she returned in low tones. "Listen. There is a man here who is in Joseph's regiment.""Have you spoken to him?""No. But the Princess says he told her the name of his captain. He has gone on to Warsaw. The regiment, he says, must be there by now. Will you?----""Yes, I'll find out. And tell him you are safe."Then he thanked the Princess who returned his hand-kiss in true Russian fashion, with a salute on his forehead."God with you," she said in her native tongue. "It's more hearty in Russian than in French." She knew the Polish dislike for the language of the bureaucrats and government who had oppressed them for generations. "Your little family is safe with me." Then in French: "I'm your friend, Count, and sha'n't forget you."A moment later he had helped her into the train, which left. He had to hurry back to his own. Healy and Minnie had disappeared.The Germans were packed into cattle-trucks without roofs or benches. Over each truck were two sentry boxes, at either end, facing one another. Each of the guards had a rifle, taken from the Germans. But there was no ammunition. A weary-looking subaltern came up as they were getting settled and told them to use bayonet and butt if their charges gave any trouble.Ian's peasants were distributed amongst the Russian sentries. He was with Ostap opposite him, Germans packed like cattle in between. Martin formed the subject of heated talk with the subaltern."He has no more strength than a cat," grumbled the Russian. "You can't take him on this train.""Very well," retorted Ian, furious. "If you send him off the train we all go. I'll tramp to Warsaw, but I won't leave him.""He's neither so old nor weak as he looks," put in Ostap. "I'll answer for him to do his work here.""You won't answer for prisoners getting loose," retorted the subaltern. However, Martin was finally put with the engine-driver. He sat on the floor by the wood-chest and slept for ten hours, without feeling or hearing anything, though people came and went and he found somebody's dog fast asleep on his chest when he awoke.It seemed as though they would never start. Several times the word was given, only to be rescinded. Many human odds and ends of a military camp arrived, apparently from nowhere, and demanded to be allowed standing-room amongst the prisoners. The weary subaltern protested and swore but all applicants seemed to find places. Before they left two empty trains came up from Warsaw to take wounded. Ian noticed they were roped like the Orsov train. In a remarkably short time they were packed, inside and out, with sick and wounded whom Nicolai Petrovitch Ketov was striving to get off before the Germans came. He was an amiable lawyer in private life, with a passion for music and a speculative mind. Ian had the satisfaction of hearing later on that he left neither man, woman nor child behind at the camp, that he saw everything was burnt that the troops could not carry away and that he even made the grain uneatable by pouring petrol over it.The delay fretted Ian, for he was in a good deal of pain from his broken ribs and feverish as well, suffering agonies of thirst. He had a hasty visit from Minnie and Healy, who came up as near as they could to shout him good-bye."We're off," said she. "I wish you were looking more comfortable.""Oh, I'm all right. I forgot to get some water, that's all."Healy went off and brought a bottle full. And he insisted on Ian's taking a packet of cigarettes."I'll reach Warsaw before you," he urged. "So do take them all. I'll keep the car there as long as I dare. Look me up at the American Consulate. You know where it is?""No. But I can find out.""Good. Mind, your seat will be kept till we start.""When is that?""When the Grand Duke leaves. They say here he leaves to-night. But I don't believe it. And I'm not going to forget Poland. When I've got more stores I'm coming back again."He watched them go off in a cloud of dust. They had luck with love, he reflected. They would get on very well together. He knew Healy was well off, and Minnie had a little fortune of her own. And they would spend it wisely, helping those poorer than themselves. He had no hope of marrying Vanda. Joseph was well and safe. He ought to have been glad of it, he knew. But he hated his cousin bitterly, all the more bitterly as ruin closed around him and years of exile filled his tired vision. Very likely he would get killed before his rival.Ostap was very cheerful. After telling the prisoners what they were to expect if they tried any nonsense he shared his last cigarette with one of them. Ian seemed to hear his voice all the time. It broke into his sorrowful meditations and sometimes got mixed up with them, for the fever made him rather muddle-headed."We haven't ammunition," Ostap said. "But we use the knife instead. There were hundreds of you in that camp wounded with our bayonets. All ours are wounded with shells and shrapnel because you are afraid to come too close.""We have enough ammunition to beat the world," put in a thick German voice; it belonged to one who had been a clerk in Moscow."Perhaps," agreed Ostap. "But we have more men and don't care if we die or not. That will beat the people who beat the world, in the end."Thus the talk went on. Ian dozed on his perch, wondering at last who was beating the world and where the ammunition came from. And just before sunset they arrived at Sohaczev.
XVII
Although it was easy to see that the Countess and the chaplain were tired, Ian listened to his mother's entreaties to set out without any rest; for who could sleep within sight of their ruined home? Besides, time was precious, unless they were prepared to remain under the Prussian rule; and they decided that exile, beggary, anything would be better than living in some town to see them every day and every hour of the day.... Their way lay through what had been the home forest, by paths and fields that run south of Kosczielna, thence south-west to Sohaczev. It was already the last day of July and the Prussians at Ruvno had been boasting that they would be in Warsaw for the third of August; and the Kaiser's second son crowned King of Poland, in the old palace, within a month. They were a couple of days late in getting into Warsaw, and Poland's crown is not yet on a Hohenzollern's head.
The fear that the Grand Duke might no longer be in Sohaczev haunted them all. Even as the crow flies, Ruvno was twenty versts from there. By the road, which ran fairly straight, it was thirty. By cutting across country, by the ways which Ian and Vanda knew well, he thought they could save five versts, thus leaving twenty-five to cover. He and Ostap, walking a little ahead, to warn the others of barbed wire and trenches, soon saw what the short cut meant.
"I'm for getting back to the road," said the Cossack.
"But it is much further." Ian explained the distances.
"Eh, God, but we can't do more than a verst an hour if this kind of ground goes on, and I know this part. It's cut up like Hell. We shall be clambering in and out of trenches and dodging wire and dead bodies all the way. We might do three versts an hour by the road. None of you are walkers. Nor I. We Cossacks are more at home on horses' backs than our feet. You walk as if every step hurt you."
"There's something inside me that grates about as I move," admitted Ian.
"Broken ribs. I had them several times. If you tie them up it's all right, but a bit nasty if you let them jog into your flesh."
They stumbled on a bit and avoided some more wire, making a long detour to do it. Ian noticed that, whereas his mother and the two girls kept up better than he thought they could, the Father showed signs of exhaustion, though he did his bravest to hide it.
"The priest," whispered Ostap. "We shall be carrying him soon. Another reason for going to the road."
Ian said nothing, knowing he was right. In fact, he soon doubted if any of them could keep up this kind of exercise very long. The ground was intersected with trenches, and full of pitfalls in the way of tree-stumps. They had all been working since daybreak, even the Father, who was fit only for bed. Ostap was a worse walker than Ian himself, bruised and shaken by the shell which buried him near the church and led to their worst troubles. Ostap said he had no sleep for two nights, being afraid to doze on Sietch's back for fear of getting entrapped. Father Constantine almost fought to keep his knapsack; but they managed to get that from him.
"Even if we do three versts an hour, it will take ten hours to Sohaczev," remarked Ostap, when they had struggled thus for some time without much progress. "... Walking all the time. That's an impossibility. What hour is it now?"
Ian took out his watch. It had stopped. The glass was smashed, too. Ostap studied the summer sky with some attention.
"It is one o'clock," he said after a moment. "In two hours or so it will be the dawn. We can perhaps cover six versts by then, by the road. Then we must rest for an hour, or we shall be dead."
"This will be hard on the Father," Ian whispered.
"Yes. And listen. By three we may cover six versts on the road. That leaves twenty-four. We start again at four, a good hour to walk, for it is fresh. We go on till six. That leaves us twenty-two versts, for we shall be going slower than three an hour, say two ... where was I?
"Twenty-two versts from Sohaczev."
"We rest an hour, walk three versts more. That makes eight o'clock ... we are yet nineteen versts from our goal."
"There's a village nineteen versts from Sohaczev," Ian put in. "Vulki, it's called."
"We rest a bit. Then we make a great effort, and if we are lucky, by noon we are ten versts from Sohaczev."
"We'll never catch the Grand Duke," said Vanda, who was with the two men.
"Who knows? But at ten versts from Sohaczev there is a large camp. Or there was. If we are lucky we shall find some of the men there, or a place in a train, for there is the railway, unless we have already destroyed it. But we shouldn't do that till the last minute, for we are retreating with as little loss to ourselves as can be. Then we are safe for either headquarters at Sohaczev, or Warsaw. And Warsaw leads to anywhere in Russia. I shall join my troop, and you can rest till the war is over. It must be over sometime, even the Prussians can't help that. And then your mother, who is a brave woman, and a really great lady, can come back and rebuild your house. And you can marry your sisters in the meantime."
"They are not my sisters."
"Then the young lady is your bespoken wife."
"My husband is a volunteer in the Cossack army," said Vanda.
Ostap gave a little shout of pleasure. "Oh--good! Which troop?"
"The Kuban troop."
"And the other young lady by your mother?"
"Is English. She has been very good and kind in helping us through our troubles. She has lost one brother in the war."
"And I three. I spit upon my life. And upon money. I want to fight the Prussians and burn down a few of their towns before I am killed by them, or the cholera. For that is almost as sure as their shells."
"Have you no family to keep?" asked the Countess.
"I have. But they have the farm and the wife can look after that when the time comes for my old father to die. Then my two boys will do their service, too, but I want them to go to good schools first."
"But you said you spat upon money."
"I mean for its own sake. There is enough on the farm to keep them at school. We Cossacks are beginning to wake up and have our boys and girls taught things besides fighting and horses. But Tsars have taken away all our autonomy, little by little, and have never given us the free use of all our land, like they promised. Many men in the troop find it a great burden to supply their own horses, guns and uniforms."
He was silent after that and then began again with:
"You, on the other hand, must be a powerful man, for the peasants I used to talk to when we were at Kosczielna spoke about Ruvno and its lord."
Ian told him they were mined, and had nothing but their jewels, half of which they had left behind.
"But they must be worth many farms and horses," he argued. "People like you don't bury treasure for a few roubles. As to what you left under your horse-farm, it is quite safe. The earth is your best friend in war; better than banks."
Ian said nothing. The others, too, listened in silence. There was something attractive about his frank speech and simple outlook of life. But Ian had always noticed that about the Russians. The Poles, with their old civilization, had become as complex as the French.
"I am sorry those rascals have burned you down," he resumed. "The castle was a fine thing. I often saw it from the distance. But I should have liked most of all to see the horses you bred...."
Ian and he talked horses then, and got a little in front of the others, till a muffled cry from the back recalled them. Father Constantine was on the ground.
"He fell," said Vanda. "I am afraid he has fainted."
"No, I haven't," he retorted with a shadow of his old spirit. "I'll be--well--in a moment."
The Countess was for giving him brandy, but Ostap intervened.
"Soak some into this," and he tore off a piece of his rye loaf, which they gave him. It finished their stock of brandy, but revived the priest, who was on his feet in another moment.
"I can walk now," he said bravely.
"No. I'm going to carry you," said Ian. Father Constantine made a step forward, then fainted in earnest.
"Let me look," said Vanda. "I believe his wound has opened."
She bent over him and said:
"Yes. It ought to be bandaged. But how?
"Your handkerchiefs," said Ostap. But they remembered that they were filthy after the digging operations and feared to use one till they could rinse it out. Ian made up his mind that they must go back to the road.
"Yes," said his mother, willing enough now. "We'll never get along on these ghastly battle-fields."
So they started for the road, Ian carrying Father Constantine on his shoulders, regaining the highway by a little shrine, with an image of the Madonna. Many years before the Countess had put it there as a thanksgiving offering, when Ian recovered from an attack of scarlet fever. The peasants of the neighborhood used to say that it had miraculous powers to heal all sick children. So it was very popular with mothers of families.
"Who's there?" cried a familiar voice from the darkness.
"Your own people," answered they.
It was poor old Martin, who had been carried on in the general stampede; but he had grown very tired, and seeing the others were not amongst the mob, had the good sense to await them there, knowing they must pass the shrine on their way to safety. He had fallen asleep to find, on waking, that the moon was set and the night at its darkest.
"The others?" asked Ian. "Where are they?"
"Mother of God, they rushed on. They are mad with fear," he answered sadly. "Some fell and did not get up again. Old Vatsek, and somebody's child. The road is hard, being strewn with rubbish, what the other fugitives and soldiers have left for lack of strength."
"Seen any horses, or carts?" asked Ostap.
"Dead ones, under the moon ... they lie as they dropped, in the shafts."
"Far?"
"A quarter of a verst."
Ostap and Ian, leaving Martin with the others, went off to look for a cart. They wanted to get the side of one for Father Constantine. It would be better for him than carrying him on their backs. They had to grope about for some time, because it was the moment before dawn when night is darkest, when neither moon nor the streaks of coming day help you, when the air strikes chill to the very marrow and the heart has least courage. They finally found what they wanted by the smell of decomposing horseflesh, which guided them to a peasant's cart. They broke off one side of it, and took, too, some straw they found at the bottom. When they went back to the others the Father was talking.
"Go on," he argued. "Leave me.... I have God.... I shall not be alone."
And he said this more than once before he reached the end of his journey.
Ian managed to find a warm cover, too, and they made him as comfortable as they could. Then they ate some bread and cheese, saving the tinned meat for the morning. There was a spring near this spot, so they drank water and bathed their faces. As well as they could in the dark they washed out Ian's handkerchief--the largest--and bound up the sick man's head. The cold, damp linen revived him.
"Where am I?" he asked.
"Going to Warsaw."
"Where is my diary?"
They knew he used to keep one and did not like to tell him it was under Ruvno's ruins. So they said nothing.
"Please give it me. I want it," he urged feebly.
"What does he want?" asked Ostap.
Ian told him.
"I remember," said the Cossack, "he did take two books out of his skirt pocket, there under the moon when you were digging up the treasure. He put them in his nose-bag." He slung it off his back, drew out the two books and handed them to the sick man, who eagerly clutched at them.
"Ian," he said, "come here." When his patron obeyed he gave him the two little books, bound in black oilcloth, such as children write their copies in.
"Keep them," he said with an effort. "Have them published. People must know what Poland endures."
"I will," said Ian, putting them in his knapsack.
"Have you them safe?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Now, give me the little Crucifix. It is in the nose-bag that Cossack brought us."
They did so. He clasped it tight and pressed it to his lips. It seemed to give him strength. "I'll keep it to the end--of my journey," he said. "Countess, forgive me, all forgive me, for adding to your burden with my infirmities."
All tried to reassure him, and he spoke no more for a long time. They knew he suffered much. His head and hands burned with the fever that was consuming him.
They started off again.
Ostap was right about the road being easier. But it was even more horrible than the fields. In spite of debris, bits of soldiers' accoutrements and stiff, silent noisome forms scattered in their path, there was no comparison between it and barbed wire or trenches, so far as walking went. They walked for another hour, Martin taking short turns with one end of the stretcher whilst either Ostap or Ian rested their arms. They trudged steadily on, knowing that every step took them nearer Warsaw, further from the Prussians. Ostap and Ian, with the litter, took the side of the road, for the middle, cut with a year's war traffic, was no better than a plowed field. The three women walked near, to do the little that was possible for the patient. Martin walked by Ian, to tell him what he saw and heard with the fleeing villagers. Ian told him how Ruvno ended. They spoke low because of the Father; instinctively--but heavy guns would not have aroused him from his delirious torpor.
As dawn came on, painting the sky with gray and purple and the breeze grew less chill, Ian could see more and more plainly the desolation that lay around. Not a living creature did they meet. But the dead were many. The few surviving trees were bare as in a January frost; the roadside and neighboring fields, strewn, not only with every kind of garment, every simple article of a peasant's cottage, but with costly things which must have been a soldier's loot, with the soldier's mortal remains; and with their knapsacks, caps, ragged boots and bits of kit. Dead horses were many, too; and dead peasants, of both sexes and every age, were not a few. And he passed near by these things, flotsam and jetsam of war, passed dead hamlets, where only ruins remained, and one dead mother he saw, her new-born child near by, and dead, too. He hoped the others had not noticed, for it was the most terrible sight of all. And as the dawn spread he could see the distant fields with the burnt corn, the trenches full of horrid sights and an army's rubbish, burnt trees, wire twisted as by gigantic hands; ruined crops, ruined homes, broken lives and perished hopes.... And this was all they had left of Poland.
And when his weary eyes turned from the misery around and fell upon his dear ones, he saw how fitted they were to travel the road of death and despair.
The three women, dainty all their lives, were ragged, dirty, disheveled, their thin frocks covered with horse-blankets which were stained with blood. What did the future hold for those brave souls? He preferred not to think of that, and turned to look at Ostap, black with dirt and tan, coatless, his arms far too long for the Prussian's jersey, his feet bare and bleeding, for the boots proved too tight and he had cast them aside, his long hair wild and dusty, his nose swollen, a scar across his face; he looked as ferocious a member of an army as you could ever fear to meet. Martin had aged twenty years since he served supper the night before; he limped along painfully, his house-boots worn through with the rough tramp. Happily, the women were sensibly shod, having put on their strongest boots for yesterday's field work.
Looking on Father Constantine's ashen face, Ian knew his hours were numbered. The seal of death was on it. The thin hands which had clasped the crucifix so eagerly a little while back were clutching at the rags with which they had covered him....
The forlorn party took stock of each other furtively for some time. Then their eyes met; and they smiled.
"It is war," said Ostap. And, noting their low spirits, he did the best to cheer them with the humorous side of his year's campaign. It made them forget how dirty they looked, helped them to grow accustomed to their new selves, perhaps. Now that the light was good, Ian noticed that the Cossack's dark eyes were intelligent and merry. He had that contempt for death which enabled the retreating Russians to make ramparts of their bodies when ammunition failed. He gave them unwittingly a grim story of crippled men, muddled orders, peculation and pilfering; with that childlike literalness which is wholly Russian and the dash of fatality which stiffens courage, and makes men patient under pain....
They made a wide detour before reaching Kosczielna, fearing to run into the Prussians again, and none wished for that. No sounds came from its ruins; but many gray forms showed how well that Russian sapper, in Ruvno church did his signaling. The fugitives had planned to rest awhile near the little town; but the place was so horrible that they hurried on, quickening their pace, to leave the orgy of death behind, though death went with them step by step.
At Vulki they made a halt. Here there were signs of life, the first since they left home, though the village had been destroyed. But they found that a dozen or so of Ruvno peasants had halted there, and were cooking a few potatoes they dragged from its wreckage. Baranski, whom they had chosen as leader, saw the little procession and hurried to meet it.
"Oh--my Lady Countess," he cried, kissing her hand, "to think you have come to this plight, and the young ladies, too, and you, my lord Count, and the Father--oh, if I could only help you. But there is nothing here. Some of ours have started back to Ruvno over the fields. They hope to creep back into the village unseen by the Prussians and pretend they never left. The sight of all this misery is too much for them. They fear they will die like dogs if they go any further."
"And those people?" asked Ian, indicating the group round the fire.
"Most of them meant to stop here. The native peasants have fled. Those are too tired, they say, to go back or go on."
"Have you a watch?"
"Yes." Baranski pulled out a silver timepiece. "It is ten past five."
Ian looked at his little group.
"We can't reach that camp before one. It's only ten versts from Sohaczev."
"We had better rest," said his mother, and he saw she could not walk much further without sleep.
"Baranski, do you wake us in two hours."
"Yes. And I'll look to the poor Father here," he said. He was a loyal old peasant and heartbroken to think of the tribulation that had come upon them all. He found a mattress in a ruined cottage for Father Constantine, and searched vainly for some refreshment for them. They all slept heavily, except the invalid, till he woke them, at seven o'clock.
"And what are you going to do?" asked the Countess, when they told him and the other peasants their own plans.
"Some of us go back. We have buried our grain where the Prussians won't think to look for it," he explained to Ian in a confidential whisper, as though von Senborn himself were within earshot. "I have no liking for the road, or a tramp through Russia. They can't take my good earth away and where shall I find soil to bear like Ruvno fields?"
Six went with Ian. They had sons fighting with the Russians and did not want to be cut off from all communication with them. Ostap did not like this addition to the party till one of them returned from the far end of the village with a lean-looking but sound horse and found a cart for it. He had grown very tired of carrying the litter. They placed Father Constantine in the cart and started off, taking a sad farewell of those who remained behind....
Sore-footed, sore-hearted, faint for the lack of food, they went slowly on, through the same scenes of desolation and death, halting every half-hour for a few minutes, scarcely daring to do so, but sure of breaking down before reaching their goal unless they did. The road was very bad now; Ian and the other men often had to clear the way of the human and other wreckage which stopped the cart's passage. They spoke little. Each wrapped in his own thoughts, listened to Father Constantine's delirium. He, who had helped so many souls through the Valley of Death, must pass it unshriven.
At midday they halted again; they had not reached the camp of which Ostap spoke. The Father's frail body was making a desperate effort to retain his fleeting soul. Vanda, who had watched so many die of late, said the end was near. The peasants came up to the cart and joined in their prayers. They wept, for all loved the kind, simple old man who had taught them what they knew of God and letters.
He opened his eyes, making a feeble sign that he wanted to speak. Ian bent over to catch his words.
"Go on--" he faltered. "I'm not alone...."
And thus he died. With tears they folded his hands over the little malachite crucifix, the one relic of home. The Countess covered his thin, withered face, so peaceful in its long sleep, with a peasant woman's kerchief. Then they urged on the tired horse and their own weary limbs, the women praying for his soul as they staggered on, because retreating armies wait not and their one hope now lay in escaping the Prussians. They had no food left; every scrap of the bread, stained with the blood of those who held it in the Ruvno canteen, had gone. And strength was fast failing them.
XVIII
At last, however, they saw signs of life. A train whistle told them they were near a railroad and they passed a group of soldiers who were firing two large hay stacks.
"The camp, thank God!" cried Ostap, and they all quickened their steps.
The place had been made by the war and for the war. There were no peasants' cottages, no farm buildings. There were rows and rows of wooden huts where troops in repose had passed their time; there was a wooden church with the onion-shaped dome which pertains to Russian temples; there were gardens in which the men had grown cabbages for their soup and a few flowers, especially sunflowers, for they liked to eat the seeds. There were tents and hospitals, magazines, guns and aeroplanes. Above all, there was great confusion. Most of the troops had left and ambulances, carts, trains, motor-lorries, anything upon wheels the Russians could find, were being packed with the sick and wounded.
Leaving the others at the upper end of the camp, Ostap and Ian set forth to seek the commanding officer. It took them some time because nobody knew anything about him, and nobody cared whether they were refugees in distress or what they were. The whole mental force of the place was concentrated upon getting away as many sick and wounded as possible before the Prussians came in and seized them. After half an hour's search, however, Ian found his man. He was standing by a large hospital tent, ticking off entries from a notebook. Judging from his looks, he had neither slept nor washed for some days. At any other time Ian would have refrained from interrupting a man with that stamp of haggard determination on his face. But his own plight was desperate. He told his story as briefly as possible and asked for help to get his women to Warsaw before the Russians left there.
When the man heard the word "help" he looked up in irate surprise.
"Do you know how many wounded I've got on my hands here?" he asked.
"I can't say----"
"Three thousand of ours--a thousand Germans. I've had four thousand to get off since the night before last. The Grand Duke with his staff leaves Warsaw this evening. You know what that means?"
Two men brought a stretcher from a tent. Its occupant's face was black; he fought desperately for breath. The officer asked the bearers curt questions, made notes, signed to them to pass on. Then he turned to Ian.
"Gas. That man's regiment has lost three thousand by it, to my knowledge. That gives you an idea of our work here. Help! How can I help?"
"I'm sorry," said Ian quietly, but with that air of authority he had learned in ruling Ruvno. "But I've a right to your help. My home has been blown to bits because you left a signaler bricked up in my church-tower. I know the Grand Duke will approve of anything you can do for me. If you've German wounded you can surely let some of them wait here for their friends and send my womenfolk to Warsaw in their places."
"I've no orders to help refugees," he returned sullenly.
"I'm a personal friend of the Grand Duke's."
"He has so many friends."
He was ticking off names from his list and asking the bearers questions during this conversation, which took some time.
"My time is precious, too," argued Ian. "I'll bury my chaplain and come back to you then. In the meantime you can perhaps think of some way to help me."
The officer pointed to a motor-lorry which was passing them on its way out of the camp. It was packed full of ghastly-looking men.
"There's your answer. How can I help with this Hell going on day and night?" he exclaimed irritably.
"Give me two horses and a peasant's cart."
"There are none."
"Then a pass for a train ... room on the roof will do."
His face softened now. He thought he was to get rid of this importunate civilian.
"A capital idea. But I can't give you the pass. It's not my job. The officer who can is over there."
He pointed towards the station. "Go to him. Say I sent you. Nicolai Petrovich Ketov is my name. Good luck!" and he hurried into the tent.
On his way to the station Ian met Ostap.
"The devil take this hole!" he cried by way of greeting. "Not a horse to be found. Nor a cart. Nothing but bad temper and confusion." Then, when he heard the other's experience:
"Ketov. Don't know the name ... a Little Russian, I expect. But you can see all these officers are too busy to bother with us. I'll try humbler folk. Never mind. Do you go bury your priest. Meanwhile, give me your card, if you have one about you and write down the number of your followers and your quest upon it. Have you any money? That is always useful."
"Yes." Lately, he had been in the habit of carrying about all the ready money he possessed in case of an emergency like this. But he did not tell the Cossack he had enough to keep his little family for a few weeks, till he could sell the family jewels. In silence he pulled out a couple of hundred roubles, produced a card, and a note which he had had from the Grand Duke a week before.
"I'll not take the money, because we don't pay for any conveyance we may get till we're all in it. But I'll take that note. It may help us to get the conveyance," said Ostap.
He went off, whistling, and Ian sought the others. He found they had been more fortunate, for they had made friends with old Princess Orsov, better known in Petrograd and Moscow as Vera Petrovna. And she had heard of the Countess, first from hearsay; then, more fully, from the Grand Duke, for she was a personal friend of the imperial family.
She listened in silence to the Countess' story, her bright, Tatar eyes taking in every detail of that tired, well-bred face and the torn clothes, never made for tramping over battlefields. She took a fancy to the Polish woman at once, admired her courage and her determination. When the tale was told she made the three women go into a little pinewood hut which stood by the roadside, and managed to get them some hot coffee in a remarkably short time, considering the confusion.
"You shall have a dinner when it is ready," she said, speaking the purest French. "I'll help you to get off by hook or crook. But we are hard pressed here to find room for your wounded. Wait a moment I'll go and talk to my head nurse." And she hurried out, leaning on her stick.
"How clean this is!" sighed Vanda, looking round the cell-like place. "I wonder if she'll give us some soap and water, as well as a dinner. I seem to want it more than food."
"She'll give us everything," said Minnie cheerfully. "She is the good fairy who always turns up, even in real life, when things look blackest. No, Countess?"
The Countess did not hear. She was thinking of the life they had left behind and wondered what the future held in store. And she thought of her faithful old friend, the chaplain, now lying in peace after his long journey and envied him, till she remembered that her boy wanted her and this thought gave comfort.
In a few minutes the Princess came back.
"We're so packed that you couldn't put a bayonet between the men," she said in her brisk way. "But I can take you three ladies on my hospital train if you don't mind wearing white aprons and veils."
"I am most grateful to you," said the Countess. "If you will take these two girls for me, it will be a great load off my mind."
"But you?"
"I'll do what my son does. I've known so many cases of families being separated and not finding each other for months together. And I don't think I could bear the anxiety of that."
Vera Petrovna laughed.
"That is when people have to tramp the roads by night," she argued. "Your son can get on a troop train, by hook or by crook. On the roof, or with the stoker. It's nothing for a man."
"But the train he gets on might not go to Warsaw," objected the Countess. "And where should I find him with all the telegraphic communication stopped?"
"I sha'n't leave you," said Vanda.
"Nor I," added Minnie.
The old Russian was rather puzzled at this. But Ian came to the rescue. He looked on the matter in a far more practical light.
"It's the greatest piece of luck you could have," he said. "I can't tell you, Princess, how grateful I am. I've not been able ever to get anybody to listen to my request for a seat on the roof of a train, even. But I can tramp it. And I'll do it all the better when I know you're all safe."
"You can't help going to Warsaw," said the Princess. "You can arrange that whoever gets there first waits for the rest of the party.
"I wonder what the chances of getting from Warsaw to Petrograd or even Kiev are?" Ian asked her. This had been worrying him a good deal. He did not want to be left in Warsaw, unable to realize his valuables.
The Princess blinked her narrow eyes at him and tapped her stick on the floor. It was the same ebony stick whose knob was an enormous emerald set in pearls which she used in peace days. It was her one vanity. But in order to preserve the stones from scratches and dirt she had a lot of little washleather caps made for the knob which were changed and washed as soon as they showed the need for it. For many months now this wonderful old woman, remnant of a type which the revolution has probably swept away forever, whose friends of youth had passed away, who stood alone in her memories, had been living between her hospital-train and her Petrograd palace, turned into a hospital, too. With that independence characteristic of her House she refused to have anything to do with the Russian Red Cross, supplied her own train, nurses, surgeons and requisities, her own engine-drivers, her own locomotives, and wood from her own forests to heat the train and make it go. The food came from her own estates, the civilian aid from her own circle of friends and acquaintances. In fact, she supplied everything but the patients and they never lacked, for Vera Petrovna's train and hospital soon won for themselves renown for comfort and good nursing that the wounded clamored to be taken there. Ian watched her as she stood, near his mother's chair, evidently revolving some plan in her shrewd old head. He, too, had heard of her, of her wealth and imperiousness, her kind heart and open hand. He reflected, little bitterly, that her fortune was safe, because her immense forests in Central Asia and her hunting grounds in Siberia, wherein you could have put Ruvno and lost it, where trappers caught sables and marten for the world's women, lay well beyond the invaders' grasp. He could not foresee her terrible end, which she met with fortitude; little guessed that her palace in Petrograd would be broken into by Lenine's mob, looted and burnt; that her old body would be thrown into the nearest canal after the life had been strangled out of it. All he saw now was a very energetic and prosperous member of the Russian aristocracy, a woman who could afford to laugh at the German advance because her native land was intact.
"Count," she said, addressing him because she had all her life preferred to deal with men.... "I have a proposal."
"Yes?"
"Will you allow me to take these ladies in my train to Petrograd? We go straight through."
"Straight through? But the difference in the gauge of the rails?"
She gave him a wink.
"That's a Russian bureaucratic legend," she returned. "I have a contrivance they put on the wheels, and all gauges are alike. The Germans have it, too, you may be sure, all ready to run their trains right up to Vilna. But to business. It's far better for you, Countess, and you, young ladies, to come straight up to safety with me than to risk being left in Warsaw. Who knows if you will get seats in a train or motor-car now?"
"It's very kind of you," said Ian, glancing at his mother, "But----"
"No buts," retorted Vera Petrovna. "You're going to say we were complete strangers a few minutes ago. That's true. But in times like these one makes friends or enemies very fast. Oh, I've heard of all you've done for wounded Russians at Ruvno," she went on, giving the Countess one of her shrewd looks. "And it would be a great honor for me to show you that we Russians are not like our government, that we wish to be Poland's friend and help her brave sons and daughters, who have borne the brunt of this awful war."
"Oh, how nice to hear you say that," exclaimed Vanda.
"I mean it. But let us arrange this. You, Count, can join your little family at my house in Petrograd. If you've never been there, all you have to do is to ask for the Orsov Palace. Every street-urchin knows it. Now, I must leave you for a moment. So much to do! Do you wait here till a bath and dinner are ready."
Then the others held a family council and persuaded the Countess to accept Vera Petrovna's offer. Later on, if they decided to stop in Petrograd they might find a furnished apartment, but it would be a great thing, Ian argued, for him to know they were in safe hands till he joined them. He gave his mother half his store of money and many promises to use every means to join her as soon as he could. He meant to stop in Warsaw and see what had become of the hardware factory which had been making field-kitchens for the army. But he kept this to himself, knowing his womenfolk would only worry about him the more, lest he fell into the Germans' hands. They all had lively recollections of that Prussian cavalryman who was so interested in the family emeralds, and whom he told a lie to. The Countess still had scruples about letting him go off alone.
"I shouldn't mind if I felt sure you wouldn't have to tramp all the way to Russia," she said, as she reluctantly took the money.
"But I sha'n't tramp, even to Sohaczev," he said confidently. "I'm sure to get on some kind of a train. And it will be like getting rid of a millstone round my neck to know you're all going in safety and comparative comfort." He lowered his voice. "Vera Petrovna's friendship will be a most valuable thing for us in Petrograd. And she's just as charming an old woman as everybody said she was."
There came a loud rap at the door.
"Bath!" exclaimed Vanda. "Come in!"
To their surprise, it was Major Healy, as large as ever and now very sunburnt into the bargain. He looked at them for a moment, took in the situation in his rather slow, very sympathetic way and said:
"Well, I'm glad to see you safe. I've been horribly worried about you these days. I was going off to Ruvno." He glanced at Minnie, who flushed, partly with pleasure at seeing him, partly with annoyance at her unkempt appearance.
They told him their story. He listened gravely, putting in a nod or a slow, heavy gesture now and again.
"I feared it," he remarked, when they had done. "When the Princess told me Lipniki had been bombarded I knew what that must mean for Ruvno. I was going to push on there this afternoon and get your news. As you're here, I'm back to Warsaw. I've distributed all my relief. There's room in my side-car for one. Which of you is coming?"
"Oh!" said the Countess, and looked at her boy.
"I've some peasant women," said he.
Healy laughed and shook his head.
"I can only take one, and a light one. I'm a heavy-weight and the road is awful."
"They can draw lots," said Ian. "The others will have to shift with us men."
He saw Healy was not over eager to take peasants, and determined he should. They were still discussing it when Vera Petrovna sent word by a nurse that the bathroom in the train was ready for them and that there would be a hasty dinner in half an hour.
The women hurried out. Healy offered Ian a cigarette and lighted one for himself. Then, in his pondering way, he began.
"Count, we've not seen each other as much as I'd like, but I believe we're friends."
"We are," agreed Ian heartily. "And you've been a good friend to my country, too."
"Well, I've only done my duty and not half as much as I'd like," said the American giant, sitting on the camp bed, which creaked plaintively under his weight. "But for the moment I want to talk to you about my private affairs." He looked round the log hut and through the little window to the hospital beyond. "It seems an unsuitable time and place for me to worry you, when you've been torn up, root and stock. I appreciate your troubles, but I've no choice but to worry you a moment with my own affairs."
"By all means. We part soon, and you never know how long it'll be before----"
"Exactly. You've hit the spot, Count, I may as well say, without any more beating about the bush, that I'm interested in Miss Minnie Burton."
"Ah!"
"Deeply interested. I suppose she told you that we saw quite a little of each other when she was in Warsaw during that December advance."
"Oh, yes," said Ian, putting politeness before veracity.
"My interest has grown, deepened, since then. She's a real fine girl, is Miss Minnie Burton, and comes of a fine old stock. I want to marry her." Here his honest eyes met his friend's and his honest, broad face became redder than ever. "And I want to shoot her out of this danger in my trailer."
"As to marrying her, I'm not her guardian," said Ian. "Her brother----"
"On the high seas. And can't give opinions, one way or the other right here."
"I doubt if you'd find a parson to marry you just now," said Ian, who had exaggerated ideas of American impatience.
"Good God! I wasn't thinking of marrying her this minute. Nor in this Hell of a place. I guess there'll be time enough for the ceremony in Petrograd. I'd like the wedding to be from Princess Orsov's palace."
"Oh, does she know of your--your----"
"No. But she will. And she's just as cordial to yours truly as she can be. What I want is your countenance to my taking Miss Burton on my side-car. There are a few points I want to fix up with her. I guess we'll have plenty of time to talk on the way to Warsaw."
"But Warsaw isn't Petrograd," objected Ian. "I think she'll be far safer in Vera Petrovna's train. I'm responsible for her, you know, till you--till you get the family's consent to the match."
Healy laughed. The idea of family consent appeared to Ian to amuse him greatly.
"She's of age. And family consent be darned if she's willing, which I'm nearly sure she is. As to responsibility, I'd not like to have her get into any unpleasantness with that brother of hers. But she needn't worry. I'll get her safe to Petrograd as soon as the Princess could. And sooner, maybe. I know how they shunt those trains into sidings. We've got a fine touring car waiting in Warsaw and enough petrol to take us to Vladivostock. In fact, I'd be glad to give you a seat in it if you can get there in time for us to start fair of the Germans."
"Thanks very much."
"And then you'd do the chaperon, and that brother couldn't say anything. Now, then, can I take her on my trailer?"
"Yes. If she likes to go. But you'd better arrange with the Princess about taking a peasant woman in her place. I'm getting so many favors from her as it is, I can't ask for any more."
"That I will."
Ian got up.
"I'll leave you to do it. I've some things to see about." And he sought Ostap, to arrange with him about Father Constantine's funeral immediately after a hasty meal.
He was glad that Healy and Minnie were going to marry. It relieved him of any further responsibility and would certainly put an end to maternal hints about the advisability of settling down with her as wife. He did not want to settle down. He meant to go and fight as soon as he had put his mother in some secure corner and provided her with enough money to live upon.
They buried Father Constantine just as he died, in his dusty alpaca soutane, his hands folded over die malachite Crucifix. They laid him in the cemetery behind a group of tents which formed the camp hospital, amongst Russian soldiers, digging his grave with a spade Ostap managed to pick up somewhere. Several other hasty funerals were going on and nobody paid the least attention to him. They could find no wood to make a rough cross; but there was some ivy near and Vanda twisted that into one, putting it over the newly-turned sods. They could not even write his name--so left him, unrecorded, and in peace. They had not gone far towards the station when a messenger met them to say that the hospital-train was ready to start. Ostap ran up, too. He had good news.
"It's nearly settled for you and your peasants," he said to Ian. "The transport officer asks for you."
Ian hurried off, leaving the Countess and Vanda to go to the train under Ostap's guidance and found the officer in question checking figures on a bit of paper. He was as weary and worried as the first one had been. But he seemed to want men.
"Five hundred unwounded Germans leave at once," he said hurriedly. "You and your peasants take charge of some trucks. The first train to leave. We are short."
"I accept with pleasure."
"Good. Go with your peasants; for you'll be wanted in a moment."
"My peasants are here. I'll just go and say good-bye to my womenfolk."
He ran up to the Orsov train which stood at one end of the primitive station, ready to start. Ropes had been tied over the roof and down the sides of the coaches; to these clung men with bandaged heads and feet. The Princess met him.
"They are down here," she said. Then, seeing him look at the crowded roof. "You are wondering how all these men are going to hold on till we reach Petrograd. But you know what happens. We shall be shunted into sidings for hours and then they can rest. Some will be back in their regiments before a month. The bad cases are all inside."
She led the way through a crowd of soldiers, prisoners and stretcher-bearers towards the head of her train. His mother and Vanda stood there, with Minnie and the American. Ian noticed two of his peasant women on the steps of a coach as they passed.
"Why, have you taken them, too?" he asked. "You're simply wonderful."
"A nurse is ill--typhoid, I fear. So a peasant goes to do her work. Your mother tells me she has had some experience. The other goes in the English girl's place." Her narrow eyes twinkled. "She's off with Healy. These Americans make me laugh. They do things nobody in Russia would do and with impunity, too."
"Yes. But he's a good fellow."
"Excellent. But you'll see he'll make me have the wedding in my house, busy as I am."
"I shouldn't wonder," returned Ian.
He said his good-byes, with many injunctions to his dear ones not to leave the Orsov palace till he fetched them. Vanda's soft eyes rested on his and their look was an embrace.
"God bless you," he said, kissing her hand.
"And you," she returned in low tones. "Listen. There is a man here who is in Joseph's regiment."
"Have you spoken to him?"
"No. But the Princess says he told her the name of his captain. He has gone on to Warsaw. The regiment, he says, must be there by now. Will you?----"
"Yes, I'll find out. And tell him you are safe."
Then he thanked the Princess who returned his hand-kiss in true Russian fashion, with a salute on his forehead.
"God with you," she said in her native tongue. "It's more hearty in Russian than in French." She knew the Polish dislike for the language of the bureaucrats and government who had oppressed them for generations. "Your little family is safe with me." Then in French: "I'm your friend, Count, and sha'n't forget you."
A moment later he had helped her into the train, which left. He had to hurry back to his own. Healy and Minnie had disappeared.
The Germans were packed into cattle-trucks without roofs or benches. Over each truck were two sentry boxes, at either end, facing one another. Each of the guards had a rifle, taken from the Germans. But there was no ammunition. A weary-looking subaltern came up as they were getting settled and told them to use bayonet and butt if their charges gave any trouble.
Ian's peasants were distributed amongst the Russian sentries. He was with Ostap opposite him, Germans packed like cattle in between. Martin formed the subject of heated talk with the subaltern.
"He has no more strength than a cat," grumbled the Russian. "You can't take him on this train."
"Very well," retorted Ian, furious. "If you send him off the train we all go. I'll tramp to Warsaw, but I won't leave him."
"He's neither so old nor weak as he looks," put in Ostap. "I'll answer for him to do his work here."
"You won't answer for prisoners getting loose," retorted the subaltern. However, Martin was finally put with the engine-driver. He sat on the floor by the wood-chest and slept for ten hours, without feeling or hearing anything, though people came and went and he found somebody's dog fast asleep on his chest when he awoke.
It seemed as though they would never start. Several times the word was given, only to be rescinded. Many human odds and ends of a military camp arrived, apparently from nowhere, and demanded to be allowed standing-room amongst the prisoners. The weary subaltern protested and swore but all applicants seemed to find places. Before they left two empty trains came up from Warsaw to take wounded. Ian noticed they were roped like the Orsov train. In a remarkably short time they were packed, inside and out, with sick and wounded whom Nicolai Petrovitch Ketov was striving to get off before the Germans came. He was an amiable lawyer in private life, with a passion for music and a speculative mind. Ian had the satisfaction of hearing later on that he left neither man, woman nor child behind at the camp, that he saw everything was burnt that the troops could not carry away and that he even made the grain uneatable by pouring petrol over it.
The delay fretted Ian, for he was in a good deal of pain from his broken ribs and feverish as well, suffering agonies of thirst. He had a hasty visit from Minnie and Healy, who came up as near as they could to shout him good-bye.
"We're off," said she. "I wish you were looking more comfortable."
"Oh, I'm all right. I forgot to get some water, that's all."
Healy went off and brought a bottle full. And he insisted on Ian's taking a packet of cigarettes.
"I'll reach Warsaw before you," he urged. "So do take them all. I'll keep the car there as long as I dare. Look me up at the American Consulate. You know where it is?"
"No. But I can find out."
"Good. Mind, your seat will be kept till we start."
"When is that?"
"When the Grand Duke leaves. They say here he leaves to-night. But I don't believe it. And I'm not going to forget Poland. When I've got more stores I'm coming back again."
He watched them go off in a cloud of dust. They had luck with love, he reflected. They would get on very well together. He knew Healy was well off, and Minnie had a little fortune of her own. And they would spend it wisely, helping those poorer than themselves. He had no hope of marrying Vanda. Joseph was well and safe. He ought to have been glad of it, he knew. But he hated his cousin bitterly, all the more bitterly as ruin closed around him and years of exile filled his tired vision. Very likely he would get killed before his rival.
Ostap was very cheerful. After telling the prisoners what they were to expect if they tried any nonsense he shared his last cigarette with one of them. Ian seemed to hear his voice all the time. It broke into his sorrowful meditations and sometimes got mixed up with them, for the fever made him rather muddle-headed.
"We haven't ammunition," Ostap said. "But we use the knife instead. There were hundreds of you in that camp wounded with our bayonets. All ours are wounded with shells and shrapnel because you are afraid to come too close."
"We have enough ammunition to beat the world," put in a thick German voice; it belonged to one who had been a clerk in Moscow.
"Perhaps," agreed Ostap. "But we have more men and don't care if we die or not. That will beat the people who beat the world, in the end."
Thus the talk went on. Ian dozed on his perch, wondering at last who was beating the world and where the ammunition came from. And just before sunset they arrived at Sohaczev.