The Deluge. Vol. 2

"I do not care for them!" answered Pan Andrei.

Now both horsemen approached to within some yards; then one of them with Soroka pushed forward on a gallop, arrived, and removing his panther-skin cap, uncovered a head red as fire.

"I see that I am standing before Pan Babinich!" said he; "I am glad that I have found you."

"With whom have I the honor to speak?" asked Kmita, impatiently.

"I am Vyershul, once captain of the Tartar squadron with Prince Yeremi Vishnyevetski. I come to my native place to make levies for a new war; and besides I bring you a letter from the grand hetman, Sapyeha."

"For a new war?" asked Kmita, frowning. "What do you say?"

"This letter will explain better than I," replied Vyershul, giving the letter of the hetman. Kmita opened the letter feverishly. It read as follows: —

My Very Dear Pan Babinich, – A new deluge is on the country. A league of Sweden with Rakotsy has been concluded, and a division of the Commonwealth agreed upon. Eighty thousand Hungarians, Transylvanians, Wallachians, and Cossacks may cross the southern boundary at any moment. And since in these last straits it is necessary for us to exert all our forces so as to leave even a glorious name after our people for coming ages, I send to your grace this order, according to which you are to turn straight to the south without losing a moment of time, and come to us by forced marches. You will find us in Brest, whence we will send you farther without delay. This time periculum in mora (there is danger in delay). Prince Boguslav is freed from captivity; but Pan Gosyevski is to have an eye on Prussia and Jmud. Enjoining haste on you once more, I trust that love for the perishing country will be your best spur.

When Kmita had finished reading, he dropped the letter to the earth, and began to pass his hands over his moistened face; at last he looked wanderingly on Vyershul, and inquired in a low, stifled voice, —

"Why is Pan Gosyevski to remain in Jmud, and why must I go to the south?"

Vyershul shrugged his shoulders: "Ask the hetman in Brest for his reason; I answer nothing."

All at once terrible anger seized Pan Andrei by the throat. His eyes flashed, his face was blue, and he cried with a shrieking voice: "I will not go from here! Do you understand?"

"Is that true?" asked Vyershul. "My office was to deliver the order; the rest is your affair. With the forehead, with the forehead! I wished to beg your company for a couple of hours, but after what I have heard I prefer to look for another."

Then he wheeled his horse and rode off. Pan Andrei sat again under the cross, and began to look around on the sky, as if wishing to take note of the weather. The attendant drew back some distance with the horses, and stillness set in all around.

The morning was clear, pale, half autumnal, half wintry. The wind was not blowing, but from the birch bushes growing at the foot of the crucifix the last leaves were dropping noiselessly, yellow and shrivelled from frost. Countless flocks of crows and jackdaws were flying over the forest; some were letting themselves down with mighty cawing right there near the crucifix, for the field and the road were covered with corpses of Swedes still unburied. Pan Andrei looked at those dark birds, blinking his eyes; you would say that he wanted to count them. Then he closed his lids and sat long without motion; at last he shuddered, frowned; presence of mind came back to his face, and he began to speak thus to himself, —

"It cannot be otherwise! I will go in two weeks, but not now. Let happen what may. It was not I who brought Rakotsy. I cannot! What is too much is too much! Have I hammered and pounded but little, passed sleepless nights in the saddle, shed my own blood and that of other men? What reward for this? If I had not received the first letter, I should have gone; but both have come in one hour, as if for the greater pain, the greater sorrow. Let the world perish, I will not go! The country will not be lost in two weeks; and besides the anger of God is evidently on it, and it is not in the might of man to oppose that. O God! the Hyperboreans [Northern Russians], the Swedes, the Prussians, the Hungarians, the Transylvanians, the Wallachians, the Cossacks, and all of them at once! Who can resist? O Lord, in what has this unfortunate land offended, in what this pious king, that Thou hast turned from them Thy face, and givest neither mercy nor rescue, and sendest new lashes? Is the bloodshed yet too little, the tears too few? People here have forgotten to rejoice, – so the wind does not blow here, it groans; so the rains do not fall, they weep, – and Thou art lashing and lashing! Mercy, O Lord! Salvation, O Father! We have sinned, but still repentance has come. We have yielded our fortunes, we have mounted our horses, we are fighting and fighting. We have abandoned violence, we have abjured private ends. Why not pardon us? Why not comfort us?"

Here conscience seized him by the hair suddenly, and shook him till he screamed; for at the same time it seemed to him that he heard some strange voice from the whole dome of heaven, saying, —

"Have you abandoned private ends? But, unfortunate, what are you doing at this moment? You are exalting your services; and when the first moment of trial comes, you rise like a wild horse, and shout, 'I will not go!' The mother is perishing; new swords are piercing her breast, and you turn away from her. You do not wish to support her with your arm; you are running after your own fortune, and crying, 'I will not go!' She is stretching forth bleeding hands; she is just falling, just fainting, just dying, and with her last voice cries, 'Rescue me, children!' But you answer, 'I will not go!' Woe to you! Woe to such people, woe to the Commonwealth!"

Here terror raised the hair on Pan Andrei's head, and his whole body began to tremble as if fever had seized it; and that moment he fell with his face to the earth, and began not to cry, but to scream in terror, —

"O Jesus, do not punish! Jesus, have mercy! Thy will be done! I will go, I will go!"

Then he lay some time without speaking, and sobbed; and when he rose at last, he had a face full of resignation and perfectly calm; and thus he prayed further, —

"Wonder not, O Lord, that I grieve, for I was on the eve of my happiness; but let it be as Thou hast ordained. I understand now that Thou didst wish to try me, and therefore didst place me as it were on the parting of the roads. Let Thy will be done. Once more I will not look behind. To Thee, O Lord, I offer this my terrible sorrow, this my yearning, this my grievous suffering. Let it all be accounted to me in punishment because I spared Prince Boguslav, at which the country wept. Thou seest now, O Lord, that that was my last work for self-interest. There will be no other. O merciful Father! But now I will kiss once more this beloved earth; yes, I will press Thy bleeding feet again, and I go, O Christ! I go – "

And he went.

In the heavenly register in which are written the evil and good deeds of men, his sins were at that moment all blotted out, for he was completely corrected.

CHAPTER LV

It is written in no book how many battles the armies, the nobles, and the people of the Commonwealth fought with the enemy. They fought in forests, in fields, in villages, in hamlets, in towns; they fought in Prussia, in Mazovia, in Great Poland, in Little Poland, in Russia, in Lithuania, in Jmud; they fought without resting, in the day or the night.

Every clod of earth was drenched in blood. The names of knights, their glorious deeds, their great devotion, perished from the memory; for the chronicler did not write them down, and the lute did not celebrate them. But under the force of these exertions the power of the enemy bent at last. And as when a lordly lion, pierced the moment before with missiles, rises suddenly, and shaking his kingly mane, roars mightily, pale terror pierces straightway the hunters, and their feet turn to flight; so that Commonwealth rose ever more terrible, filled with anger of Jove, ready to meet the whole world. Into the bones of the aggressors there entered weakness and fear; not of plunder were they thinking then, but of this only, – to bear away home from the jaws of the lion sound heads.

New leagues, new legions of Hungarians, Transylvanians, Wallachians, and Cossacks were of no avail. The storm passed once more, it is true, between Brest, Warsaw, and Cracow; but it was broken against Polish breasts, and soon was scattered like empty vapor.

The King of Sweden, being the first to despair of his cause, went home to the Danish war; the traitorous elector, humble before the strong, insolent to the weak, beat with his forehead before the Commonwealth, and fell upon the Swedes; the robber legions of Rakotsy's "slaughterers" fled with all power to their Transylvanian reed-fields, which Pan Lyubomirski ruined with fire and sword.

But it was easier for them to break into the Commonwealth than to escape without punishment; therefore when they were attacked at the passage, the Counts of Transylvania, kneeling before Pototski, Lyubomirski, and Charnyetski, begged for mercy in the dust.

"We will surrender our weapons, we will give millions!" cried they; "only let us go!"

And receiving the ransom, the hetmans took pity on that army of unfortunate men; but the horde trampled them under hoofs at the very thresholds of their homes.

Peace began to return gradually to the plains of Poland. The king was still taking Prussian fortresses; Charnyetski was to take the Polish sword to Denmark, for the Commonwealth did not wish to limit itself to driving out the enemy.

Villages and towns were rebuilt on burned ruins; the people returned from the forests; ploughs appeared in the fields.

In the autumn of 1657, immediately after the Hungarian war, it was quiet in the greater part of the provinces and districts; it was quiet especially in Jmud.

Those of the Lauda men who in their time had gone with Volodyovski, were still somewhere far off in the field; but their return was expected.

Meanwhile in Morezi, in Volmontovichi, in Drojeykani, Mozgi, Goshchuni, and Patsuneli, women, boys, and girls, with old men, were sowing the winter grain, building with joint efforts houses in those "neighborhoods" through which fire had passed, so that the warriors on their return might find at least roofs over their heads, and not be forced to die of hunger.

Olenka had been living for some time at Vodokty, with Anusia and the sword-bearer. Pan Tomash did not hasten to his Billeviche, – first, because it was burned, and second, because it was pleasanter for him with the maidens than alone. Meanwhile, with the aid of Olenka, he managed Vodokty.

The lady wished to manage Vodokty in the best manner, for it was to be with Mitruny her dowry for the cloister; in other words, it was to become the property of the Benedictine nuns, with whom on the very day of the coming New Year poor Olenka intended to begin her novitiate.

For after she had considered everything that had met her, – those changes of fortune, disappointments, and sufferings, – she came to the conviction that thus, and not otherwise, must be the will of God. It seemed to her that some all-powerful hand was urging her to the cell, that some voice was saying to her, —

"In that place is the best pacification, and the end of all earthly anxiety."

She had determined therefore to follow that voice. Feeling, however, in the depth of her conscience that her soul had not been able yet to tear itself from the earth with completeness, she desired first to prepare it with ardent piety, with good works and labor. Frequently also in those efforts echoes from the world hindered her.

For example, people began to buzz around that that famous Babinich was Kmita. Some contradicted excitedly; others repeated the statement with stubbornness.

Olenka believed not. All Kmita's deeds, Kmita and his service with Yanush Radzivill, were too vividly present in her memory to let her suppose for one instant that he was the crusher of Boguslav, and such a trusty worker for the king, such an ardent patriot. Still her peace was disturbed, and sorrow with pain rose up afresh in her bosom.

This might be remedied by a hurried entrance to the cloister; but the cloisters were scattered. The nuns who had not perished from the violence of soldiers during wartime were only beginning to assemble.

Universal misery reigned in the land, and whoso wished to take refuge behind the walls of a convent had not only to bring bread for personal use, but also to feed the whole convent.

Olenka wished to come with bread to the cloister, – to become not merely a sister, but a nourisher of nuns.

The sword-bearer, knowing that his labor was to go to the glory of God, labored earnestly.

He went around the fields and the buildings, carrying out the labors of the autumn which with the coming spring were to bear fruit. Sometimes he was accompanied by Anusia, who, unable to endure the affront which Babinich had put upon her, threatened also to enter the cloister, and said she was merely waiting for Volodyovski to bring back the Lauda men, for she wished to bid adieu to her old friend. But more frequently the sword-bearer went with Olenka only on these circuits, for land management was irksome to Anusia.

A certain time both rode out on ponies to Mitruny, where they were rebuilding barns and cow-houses burned in time of war.