Why?
I
In the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczéwski, at his family estate of Rozánka, received a visit from Joseph Migoúrski, the only son of a deceased friend.
Jaczéwski, a patriot of the days of the second partition of Poland, was a broad-browed, broad-shouldered, broad-chested man of sixty-five, with a long white moustache on his brick-red face. As a youth he had served with Migoúrski’s father under the banner of Kosciúszko; and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the “Apocalyptic Adulteress” (as he called Catherine II) and her abominable paramour, the traitor Poniatówski; and he believed in the reestablishment of the Polish State as firmly as he believed that tomorrow’s sun would rise. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he adored. Napoleon’s fall distressed him, but he did not despair of the reestablishment of the Polish kingdom, even though in a mutilated form. His hopes were reawakened when Alexander I opened the Diet in Warsaw; but the Holy Alliance, the general reaction in Europe, and the obstinacy of Constantine,312 deferred the realization of this cherished hope.
Since 1825 Jaczéwski had settled in the country and lived there, never leaving Rozánka, spending his time in farming, hunting, and reading the papers and letters, by means of which he still eagerly followed the political events of his native land. His second marriage, to a pretty but poor gentlewoman, was not happy. He did not love or respect her, considered her a burden, and treated her harshly and rudely, as if to revenge himself for the mistake he had made in remarrying. He had no children by this second wife. By his first wife he had two daughters: Wánda, the eldest, a stately beauty who knew the value of her good looks, and found country life tiresome; and a younger one, Albína, her father’s pet, a lively, bonny little girl, with fair curly hair, and large sparkling grey eyes set far apart like her father’s.
Albína was fifteen when Joseph Migoúrski came to stay with them. As a student he used to visit the Jaczéwskis in Vilna, where they wintered, and paid attentions to Wánda; but this was the first time that he, now a full-grown and independent man, had come to see them in the country. Everyone at Rozánka was pleased when young Migoúrski came. Jaczéwski was pleased because Josy reminded him of the companion of his youth, Migoúrski’s father, and because he spoke warmly and with the rosiest hopes of the revolutionary movement—not in Poland alone, but also abroad, whence he had just returned. Pani Jaczéwski, the lady of the house, was pleased because old Jaczéwski restrained himself in the presence of visitors, and did not scold her for everything as he usually did. Wánda was pleased, because she felt sure Migoúrski had come for her sake, and intended to propose to her. She was preparing to accept him, but (as she expressed it to herself) meant lui tenir la dragée haute!313 and Albína was pleased because everybody else was pleased. Wánda was not alone in thinking that Migoúrski had come intending to propose to her. All the household—from old Jaczéwski to Ludwíka, the old nurse—thought the same, although no one spoke of it.
And it was quite true. Migoúrski came with that intention; but after a week’s stay, confused and upset by something, he left without having proposed. Everyone was surprised by his strange and unexpected departure, and no one but Albína understood its cause. Albína knew that she herself was the cause.
During the whole of Migoúrski’s stay in Rozánka, she had noticed that he was especially animated and bright only when with her. He treated her as a child, joked with her and teased her; but her feminine instinct told her that his relation to her was not that of a grown-up person to a child, but that of a man to a woman. She could see this in the look of love and the tender smile with which he greeted her when she entered the room, and followed her when she went out. She did not clearly explain to herself what this meant; but these relations between them gladdened her, and she involuntarily tried to do what pleased him. And as everything she did pleased him, all her actions in his presence were done with especial elation. It pleased him to see her running races with a beautiful wolfhound that jumped up and licked her flushed and radiant face; it pleased him when, on the smallest provocation, she burst into infectiously ringing peals of laughter; it pleased him when, with her eyes still laughing, she assumed a serious expression during the priest’s dull sermons. It pleased him when, with extraordinary exactitude and drollery, she imitated—now her old nurse, now a tipsy neighbour, and now Migoúrski himself—passing instantaneously from one character to another. But what pleased him most of all was her happiness, her rapturous joy of life. It was as if she had only now fully discovered the delight of living, and hastened to make the most of it. This peculiar joy of life pleased him, and it was evoked and intensified by the very fact that she knew that her joy of life delighted him. So Albína alone knew why Migoúrski, having come to propose to Wánda, left without having done so. Though she would never have ventured to tell this to anyone, and did not even acknowledge it to herself, yet in the depth of her soul she knew that he had wished to fall in love with her sister, but had fallen in love with her—Albína. She was very much surprised at this, regarding herself as quite insignificant beside the clever, well-educated, beautiful Wánda; but she could not help knowing that it was true, and could not help being glad of it, for she herself loved Migoúrski with her whole soul: loved him as one can only love for the first time, and only once in a lifetime.
II
Towards the end of the summer the papers brought the news of the revolution in Paris. This was followed by news of preparations for an insurrection in Warsaw. Jaczéwski, with hope and fear, was expecting by every post news of the assassination of Constantine and of the commencement of a revolution. At last, in November, tidings came of the attack on the Belvedere and the flight of Constantine; and, later, news that the Diet had declared the Románof dynasty deposed from the throne of Poland; that Chlopícki had been proclaimed Dictator, and that Poland once more was free! The rebellion had not yet reached Rozánka, but all its inmates followed its progress, expecting it to come and preparing for it. Old Jaczéwski corresponded with a former acquaintance, one of the leaders of the rebellion; received mysterious Jewish agents on business relating, not to farming, but to the revolution; and was ready to join the rising when the time should come. Pani Jaczéwski concerned herself more than ever about her husband’s physical comforts, and thereby, as usual, irritated him more and more. Wánda sent her diamonds to a friend in Warsaw, that the money they fetched might go to the Revolutionary Committee. Albína was only interested in what Migoúrski was doing. She knew, through her father, that he had joined Dwerníczki’s forces. Migoúrski wrote twice: first, to say that he had joined the army; and later, in the middle of February, he sent an enthusiastic letter about the victory near Stóczek, where the Poles captured six Russian guns and some prisoners.
His letter ended with the words: “The Poles are victorious and the Russians are defeated! Hurrah!” Albína was in raptures. She examined the map, calculated where and when the Russians would be finally beaten, and grew pale and trembled when her father slowly opened the packets that arrived by post. One day her stepmother, happening to enter Albína’s room, found her standing before the looking-glass, dressed in a pair of trousers and a man’s hat. Albína was getting ready to run away from home in male attire to join the Polish army. Her stepmother told her father. He called his daughter to him, and (hiding his feeling of sympathy and even admiration) rebuked her sternly, demanding that she should give up her foolish idea of taking part in the war. “Women have other duties: to love and comfort those who sacrifice themselves for their country,” said he. Now he had need of her and she was his joy and solace; and the time would come when she would be needed by a husband. He knew how to influence her. He hinted at his loneliness and sorrows, and she pressed her face against him, hiding the tears which, for all that, wetted the sleeves of his dressing-gown; and she promised to undertake nothing without his consent.
III
Only those who experienced what the Poles endured after the partition of Poland and the subjugation of one part of it by the hated Germans, and of another part by the even more hated Russians, can understand the delight the Poles felt in 1830 and 1831 when, after their previous unfortunate attempts to regain independence, its attainment seemed again within reach. But these hopes did not last long. The forces were too unequal; and once more the revolution was crushed. Again tens of thousands of unreasoningly submissive Russians were driven into Poland. Under the leadership first of Diebitsch and then of Paskévitch—subject to the supreme command of Nicholas I—these Russians, without knowing why, saturated the ground with their own blood and with that of their brothers the Poles, whom they crushed and again placed under the power of weak, insignificant men who cared neither for the freedom nor the subjugation of Poland, but sought only to gratify their own avarice and childish vanity.
Warsaw was captured, and the separate Polish detachments were defeated. Hundreds and thousands of men were shot, flogged to death, or exiled. Among the latter was young Migoúrski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself sent as a common soldier in a line regiment, to Urálsk.
The Jaczéwskis spent the winter of 1832 in Vilna on account of the old man’s health; for after 1831 he began to suffer from heart disease. Here they received a letter from Migoúrski. He wrote from prison, saying that, hard as what he had gone through and had yet to undergo might be, he still was glad to have had an opportunity to suffer for his native land, and did not despair of the holy cause to which he had given part of his life, and for which he was prepared to give the remainder; and that if another chance occurred tomorrow, he would again act as he had done.
Reading the letter aloud, the old man broke down at this passage, sobbed, and was long unable to continue. In the latter part of the letter, which Wánda read out, Migoúrski wrote that whatever plans and dreams he might have had at the time of his last visit to them (which would ever remain the brightest spot in his life), he now neither could, nor would, speak of them.
Wánda and Albína each understood these words in her own way, and they spoke to no one of how they understood them. At the end of the letter Migoúrski sent messages to everyone, and among the rest—in the playful tone he had adopted towards Albína during his visit—he addressed her too, asking her whether she still ran as swiftly, outrunning the dogs? Did she still mimic everybody so well? He wished the old man good health; the mother, success in household matters; Wánda, a worthy husband; and Albína, the continuance of her joy of life.
IV
Old Jaczéwski’s health grew worse and worse, and in 1833 the whole family went abroad. In Baden, Wánda met a rich Polish emigrant, and married him. The old man’s illness progressed rapidly, and he died abroad early in 1833, in Albína’s arms. He would not let his wife nurse him, and to the last moment could not forgive her the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Jaczéwski returned to the country with Albína.
Albína’s chief interest in life was Migoúrski. In her eyes he was the greatest of heroes and martyrs, and to him she decided to devote her life. Even before going abroad she began to correspond with him, at first commissioned thereto by her father, and then on her own account. When she returned to Russia after her father’s death, she continued to correspond with him, and when she reached the age of eighteen she announced to her stepmother that she had decided to go to Migoúrski in Urálsk, and there to marry him.
Her stepmother began to blame Migoúrski for, as she said, selfishly wishing to improve his sad lot by inducing a wealthy girl, whose affections he had secured, to share his misfortunes. Albína thereupon became angry, and told her stepmother that no one but she could ascribe such low motives to a man who had sacrificed everything for his native land; that, on the contrary, Migoúrski had refused the help she had offered him; but that she had irrevocably decided to go to him and marry him, if only he would allow her that happiness. Albína was legally of age, and she had money: 300,000 zloty,314 a sum that an uncle had left to each of his two nieces; so no one could interfere.
In November, 1833, Albína bade farewell to the household (who saw her start for barbarous Russia as though she were going to her death), seated herself with her old and devoted nurse Ludwíka, whom she took with her, in her father’s old carriage—newly repaired for the great journey—and started on her long road.
V
Migoúrski did not live in barracks, but had a lodging of his own. Nicholas I decreed that the exiled Polish officers should not only bear all the hardships of rough army life, but should be made to suffer all the degradations to which common soldiers at that time were subjected. But the majority of the plain men with whom it lay to execute these orders, disobeyed them as far as they could. The half-educated commander of the battalion in which Migoúrski was placed (a man who had risen from the ranks) understood the position of the educated, formerly wealthy, young man who had lost everything; and, pitying and respecting him, made all sorts of concessions in his favour. Migoúrski could not help appreciating the good-nature of this Lieutenant-Colonel, with white whiskers on his puffy, military face; and to repay him, he agreed to teach mathematics and French to his sons, who were preparing to enter a military college.
Migoúrski’s life in Urálsk, which had now lasted nearly seven months, was not only monotonous, dull and wearisome, but was also hard. Except the commander of the battalion, from whom as much as possible he tried to keep at a distance, his only acquaintance was an exiled Pole, a sly, unpleasant man of little education, who traded in fish. But the chief hardship of Migoúrski’s life lay in the fact that he found it difficult to accustom himself to privation. After the confiscation of his property he had no means whatever left, and struggled on by selling what jewellery he still possessed.
The great and only joy of his life, after his deportation, was his correspondence with Albína. A sweet, poetic image of her had remained in his mind since his visit to Rozánka, and now, in his exile, grew more and more beautiful. In one of her first letters to him she asked, among other things, what he had meant in his former letter by the words, “Whatever plans and dreams I may have had.” He replied that he could now tell her that his dream had been to call her his wife. She wrote back saying that she loved him. He answered that she should not have written that, because it was terrible to think of what might have been, but was now impossible. She replied that it was not only possible, but would surely be! He wrote that he could not accept such a sacrifice, and that in his present circumstances it was impossible. Soon after this letter he received a money-order for 2,000 zloty.315 By the postmark on the envelope and by the writing he knew that it came from Albína, and he remembered how in one of his first letters he had jokingly described to her the pleasure he now experienced in earning all he required by giving lessons: money to buy tobacco, tea, and even books. Putting the money-order into a fresh envelope, he returned it with a letter in which he begged her not to spoil their sacred friendship with money. He wrote that he had all he required, and was perfectly happy in the knowledge that he had such a friend—and so their correspondence ended.
In November, Migoúrski was sitting at the Lieutenant-Colonel’s teaching the latter’s two boys, when he heard the approaching sound of the post-bell, and the snow creaked under the runners of a sledge, which stopped at the front-door. The children jumped up to see who had come. Migoúrski remained in the room, looking at the door, and expecting the children to return, when the Lieutenant-Colonel’s wife herself entered.
“Oh, Pan! Here are some ladies asking for you,” she said. “They must be from your parts … they seem to be Poles.”
Had anyone asked Migoúrski if he thought it possible that Albína might come to him, he would have said that it was quite out of the question; yet at the bottom of his heart he expected her. The blood rushed to his heart now, and he ran breathless into the hall. There a fat, pockmarked woman was unwrapping a shawl from her head. Another woman was entering the door of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s rooms. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned round. From under the hood, eyes, set far apart and full of the joy of life, beamed beneath their frozen lashes—the eyes of Albína.
He was stupefied, and did not know how to welcome her, or how to greet her.
“Josy!” she cried, giving him the name her father called him by, and by which she thought of him herself—and she threw her arms round his neck, pressing her cold, reddened face to his, and began to laugh and cry.
Having heard who Albína was, and why she had come, the Lieutenant-Colonel’s kindhearted wife received her into her house, and kept her there till the wedding.
VI
The good-natured Lieutenant-Colonel obtained the necessary permission from the authorities. A Polish priest was procured from Órenburg. The battalion-commander’s wife took the place of the bride’s mother, one of Migoúrski’s pupils carried the icon, and Brzozówski, the exiled Pole, acted as best man.
Strange as it may seem, Albína loved her husband passionately, but did not know him at all. She only now began to make his acquaintance. Of course, she found in the living man of flesh and blood much that was ordinary and prosaic, and had not existed in the image she had borne and nurtured in her mind. But, on the other hand, just because he was a man of flesh and blood, she found in him much that was simple and good, and had not existed in the abstract image. She had heard from friends and acquaintances of his courage in the war, and knew how bravely he had borne the loss of his property and freedom, and she had imagined him a hero always living an exalted and heroic life. In reality, with all his extraordinary physical strength and courage, he turned out to be as mild and gentle as a lamb, an artless fellow, making good-natured jokes; his sensuous lips, surrounded by a fair moustache and small beard, showed the same childlike smile that had attracted her at Rozánka, and he carried an ever-smoking pipe, specially unpleasant to her when she was pregnant.
Migoúrski, too, only now learnt to know Albína, and in her he first learnt to know women in general. From the women he had met before his marriage he could not have known women. And what he found in Albína as a type of women in general surprised him, and might have tended to disenchant him with them, had he not felt towards Albína, as Albína, a peculiarly tender and grateful feeling. Towards Albína as a woman he entertained a tender and rather ironical condescension; but towards Albína as Albína not only tender love, but rapture, and the sense of an irredeemable obligation for the sacrifice she had made, which had given him undeserved happiness.
The Migoúrskis were happy in their love. Directing all their power of love to one another, among strangers they felt like two people who, having lost their way in winter, are in danger of being frozen, and warm one another. The devotion of the old nurse, Ludwíka, good-naturedly grumbling, comical, always falling in love with every man she met, but slavishly and self-sacrificingly attached to her young mistress, contributed to the Migoúrskis’ happiness. They were also happy in their children. A year after their marriage, a boy was born; and eighteen months later, a girl. The boy was the very image of his mother: the same eyes, the same vivacity and grace. The girl was a healthy pretty little animal.
The Migoúrskis’ misfortune was their exile from home, and especially the unpleasant humiliation of their position. Albína, in particular, suffered from this degradation. He, her Josy, her hero—that ideal man—had to draw himself up erect before every officer he met, go through manual exercises, stand sentinel, and obey every order without demur.
Then, too, the letters they received from Poland were most depressing. Almost all their nearest friends and relations were either banished or had fled abroad after losing everything they possessed. For themselves, the Migoúrskis had no prospect of an improvement in their situation. All attempts to petition for pardon, or even for an amelioration of their lot, or for him to be made an officer, were vain. Nicholas I held reviews, parades and manoeuvres; went to masquerades and amused himself with the masks; rushed needlessly across Russia from Tchougoúef to Novorossíysk, to Petersburg and to Moscow, frightening people and using up horses; and when anyone was courageous enough to address him, begging for a mitigation of the fate of any exiled Decembrists,316 or of the Poles who were suffering for love of their native land (the very quality he himself extolled), he expanded his chest, fixed his leaden eyes on anything they happened to rest on, and said: “Too soon! Let them continue to serve …” as if he knew the right time, and when it would cease to be too soon. And all about him—Generals and Chamberlains and their wives, who got their living from him—went into raptures at the extraordinary penetration and wisdom of this great man.
On the whole, however, there was more joy than pain in the Migoúrskis’ lives.
They lived thus for five years. Suddenly they were overwhelmed by a terrible and unexpected sorrow. First, their little girl fell ill, and two days later their boy also. For three days he lay burning with fever, and on the fourth he died, without medical aid (no doctor was within reach). Two days later, the little girl died too.
If Albína did not drown herself in the Urál River, it was only because she could not think without terror of the state her husband would be in when he heard of her suicide. But it was hard for her to live. Formerly always active and busy, she now left all her duties to Ludwíka, and sat for hours listlessly and silently gazing at anything her eyes fell upon; or she would start up and run into her own little room, and there—regardless of her husband’s or Ludwíka’s condolences—would weep softly, only shaking her head and asking them to go away and leave her alone.
When summer came, she would go to her children’s grave and sit there, rending her heart with memories of what had been, and with thoughts of what might have been. She was specially tortured by the idea that the children might have remained alive had they lived in a town where they could have received medical aid. “Why? What for?” thought she. “Josy and I want nothing from anyone, except that he should be allowed to live the life he was born to, and which his grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived; and that I should be allowed to live with him and love him, and love my little ones, and bring them up. But they must needs come and torment him and banish him, and rob me of what is dearer to me than all the world. Why? What for?”
She put the question to men and to God, and could not imagine the possibility of any answer. And without an answer there was no life for her; and so her life came to a standstill. Their poor existence in exile, which she with her feminine taste and refinement had formerly known how to adorn, now became intolerable, not only to her but also to Migoúrski, who suffered on her account, and did not know how to help her.
VII
At this, the most unhappy time for the Migoúrskis, a Pole named Rosolówski arrived at Urálsk. He had been concerned in a widespread plot organized in Siberia by the exiled Polish priest Sirocínski, to raise an insurrection and escape from exile.
Rosolówski, who, like Migoúrski and thousands of others, was being punished with exile in Siberia for wishing to remain what he had been born—a Pole—had taken part in this plot and had been flogged for it; and he was now sent as a common soldier to serve in Migoúrski’s battalion. Rosolówski, who had been a teacher of mathematics, was a tall, thin, round-shouldered man, with hollow cheeks and wrinkled brows.
On the first evening after his arrival, as he sat at tea with the Migoúrskis, he naturally began to tell them, in his slow quiet bass voice, about the affair for which he had suffered so cruelly.
It was this: Sirocínski had organized a secret society all over Siberia, the aim of which was, by the aid of the Poles serving in the Cossack and line regiments, to incite the soldiers and convicts to mutiny, to get the exiles to rise, to seize the artillery at Omsk, and to liberate everybody.
“Would that have been possible?” asked Migoúrski.
“Certainly it would … everything was ready,” said Rosolówski, frowning gloomily. And slowly and calmly he explained the whole plan of liberation, and all the measures taken to secure success, or, in case of failure, to save the conspirators. If two scoundrels had not betrayed the plan, success was assured. According to Rosolówski, Sirocínski was a man of genius and great spiritual power. He died like a hero and a martyr. And Rosolówski, in his calm, steady deep voice, told them the details of the execution, which, by order of the Authorities, he and all who had been tried for this affair were compelled to witness.
“Two battalions of soldiers stood in two rows, forming a long passage. Every soldier held a flexible switch, of a thickness which, by regulations Imperially confirmed, allowed three of them to go into the muzzle of a musket. The first man to be led out was Doctor Szakálski. Two soldiers led him, and the men beat him with the switches on his bare back as he passed. I only saw this when he passed the place where I stood. At first I could hear only the beating of the drum, but when I heard the swishing of the sticks and the sound of the strokes on the flesh, I knew he was approaching. I saw how the soldiers dragged him along by the musket to which he was tied, and how he went shuddering and turning his head from side to side. And once, as they led him past us, I heard a Russian doctor say to the soldiers: ‘Don’t hit hard; have some pity!’ But they continued to beat him, and when he passed me the second time, he could no longer walk, but was simply being dragged along. It was dreadful to see his back; and I closed my eyes. He fell, and was carried away. Then another prisoner was brought out, then a third, and then a fourth. They all sank under it, and were all carried away, some dead, some just alive—and we had to stand by and witness it. It lasted six hours, from early morning till two in the afternoon. The last to be brought out was Sirocínski himself. I had not seen him for a long time, and should hardly have recognized him, he had aged so. His clean-shaven face was all wrinkled and livid. His bare body was thin and yellow, the ribs protruded above his shrunken stomach. He went, as they all did, shuddering at each stroke and jerking back his head, yet he did not groan, but loudly repeated the prayer, Miserere mei, Deus, secundam magnam misericordiam tuam.
“I heard it myself,” muttered Rosolówski quickly and hoarsely; and, shutting his mouth firmly, he sniffed.
Ludwíka, sitting at the window, sobbed, hiding her face in her handkerchief.
“Why do you describe it? Beasts—beasts that they are!” shouted Migoúrski; and, throwing down his pipe, he sprang from his chair and strode rapidly into his dark bedroom.
Albína sat as if petrified, her eyes fixed on a dark corner.
VIII
On returning home after drill next day, Migoúrski was surprised and delighted to notice a great change in his wife. She came to meet him with a light step and beaming face as of old, and led him into their bedroom.
“Now, Josy, listen! …”
“Yes; what is it?”
“I have been thinking all night of what Rosolówski told us, and I have made up my mind. I can’t live like this—I can’t live here, I can’t! I’ll die rather than remain here!”
“But what can we do?”
“Run away!”
“Run away? How?”
“I have thought it all out. Listen. …”
And she told him the plan she had devised during the night. It was this: Migoúrski was to go away one evening and leave his overcoat on the banks of the Urál, and with it a letter saying he was going to take his life. It would be supposed that he had drowned himself. He would be searched for, and then the fact would be notified. But in reality he would be hidden. She would hide him so that no one would find him. It would be possible to live like that for a month, say, and when all had blown over, they would escape.
At first Migoúrski thought her scheme impracticable; but towards evening, after her passionate and confident persuading, he began to agree with her. He was the more inclined to do so because the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt to desert—such punishment as Rosolówski had described—would fall on him; while success would set her free, and he knew how hard life there had become for her since the children died.
Rosolówski and Ludwíka were taken into their confidence; and after long discussions, alterations and improvements, a plan was finally adopted. Their first idea was that when Migoúrski’s death should have become an accepted fact, he should run away alone and on foot. Albína would follow in a vehicle, and meet him at some appointed place. Such was the first plan. But when Rosolówski told them of all the unsuccessful attempts that had been made to escape from Siberia during the last five years (during which time only one lucky fellow had managed to get away alive), Albína proposed another plan. This was that Josy should travel to Sarátof with her and Ludwíka, hidden in their vehicle. From Sarátof he was to go disguised along the bank of the Vólga, on foot, to an appointed place where he was to meet a boat Albína would hire at Sarátof. On this they would sail down the Vólga to Astrakhán, and cross the Caspian Sea to Persia. This plan was approved by all, including the expert, Rosolówski; but there was the difficulty of arranging, in a conveyance, a place which would not attract the attention of the officials and yet could conceal a man. When, after a visit to her children’s grave, Albína told Rosolówski how hard it was for her to leave their bodies in a strange land, he, after thinking awhile, said:
“Petition the Authorities to let you take the children’s coffins with you. They will allow it.”
“No, I don’t want to. … I can’t do that,” said Albína.
“You only ask, that’s all! We won’t really take the coffins, but will make a box big enough to hold them, and will put Joseph into it.”
At first Albína rejected this proposal, so unpleasant was it to her to connect deceit with the memory of her children; but when Migoúrski cheerfully approved the scheme, she agreed.
So the final plan was worked out as follows:
Migoúrski would do all that was necessary to convince the Authorities that he had drowned himself. After his death had been accepted as a fact, Albína would present a petition for leave to return home and to take her children’s bodies with her—her husband being dead. When she received this permission, the graves would be made to look as if they had been opened and the coffins exhumed; but they would be left where they were, and, instead of them, Migoúrski would get into the box. The box would be placed in a tarantass,317 and in this way they would travel to Sarátof. At Sarátof they would take a boat, and on the boat Josy would be released from the box, and they would sail down to the Caspian Sea, and thence to Persia or Turkey and to freedom.
IX
First of all, on the pretext of sending Ludwíka back to her native land, the Migoúrskis bought a tarantass. Then began the construction in the tarantass of a box, in which, without suffocation, a man could lie huddled up, and which he could easily enter and leave. The three of them—Albína, Rosolówski, and Migoúrski himself—planned and arranged this box, Rosolówski’s help being specially valuable, for he was a good carpenter.
The box was arranged to rest upon the poles behind the tarantass, and the side touching the vehicle (from which part of the back had been removed) was made to open, so that a man could lie partly in the box and partly on the bottom of the vehicle. Besides all this, air-holes were drilled in the box (which was to be covered with matting and corded round the top and sides). He could get in and out of the box through the tarantass, which was furnished with a seat hiding the connection.
When the tarantass and the box were ready, before her husband’s disappearance, Albína, to prepare the Authorities, went to the Colonel and announced that her husband was suffering from melancholia, and had attempted to commit suicide, and that she was anxious about him; and begged for leave of absence for him. Her dramatic talent came in useful here. Anxiety and fear for her husband were so naturally expressed that the Colonel was touched, and promised to do what he could. After that Migoúrski composed a letter, which was to be found in the cuff of his overcoat on the bank of the Urál; and on the appointed evening he went down to the river, waited till dark, left some clothing, with his overcoat and a letter, on the bank, and returned home secretly.
In the garret, which was fitted with a lock, a place had been prepared for him. In the night Albína sent Ludwíka to the Colonel to inform him that her husband had been absent from home for twenty hours, and had not yet returned. In the morning her husband’s letter was brought to her; and, her face bathed in tears, and with an appearance of utter despair, she took it to the Colonel.
A week later Albína presented a petition to be allowed to return to her home. The grief shown by Madame Migoúrski affected everyone who saw her. They all pitied the unfortunate, widowed mother. When she had received permission to leave, she presented another petition: to be allowed to disinter the bodies of her children and to take them with her.
The Authorities were surprised at this sentimentality, but gave this permission also.
The evening after she had received this second permission, Rosolówski, Albína, and Ludwíka, taking the box in which the coffins were to be placed, drove off in a hired cart. At the cemetery where the children were buried, Albína, falling on her knees by their grave, prayed awhile, but soon rose, dried her eyes, and saying to Rosolówski, “Do what is necessary … I can’t!” stepped aside.
Rosolówski and Ludwíka moved the gravestone and dug up the top of the grave with spades, so that it looked as if it had been opened. When this was done they called Albína; and returned home with the box full of earth.
The day fixed for their departure arrived. Rosolówski rejoiced at the success of the enterprise now so nearly accomplished. Ludwíka had baked pastry and cakes for the journey, and, repeating her usual asseveration, “By my mother!” declared her heart was bursting with fear and joy. Migoúrski was glad of his deliverance from the garret where he had spent more than a month, but yet gladder at Albína’s animation and joy of life. She seemed to have forgotten all former griefs and all danger, and came running to him in the garret, beaming with rapturous delight as in the days of her girlhood.
At three in the morning came a Cossack escort, and brought a driver with three horses. Albína and Ludwíka, with their little dog, got into the tarantass and sat down on cushions covered with a rug. The Cossack and the driver got onto the box; Migoúrski, dressed as a peasant, lay at the bottom of the vehicle.
They drove out of the town, and the three good horses drew the tarantass along the smooth road, hard as a stone, that ran through an endless uncultivated steppe covered with last year’s dry, silvery feather-grass.
X
Albína’s heart swelled with hope and elation. Wishing to impart her feelings to someone, she occasionally, smiling slightly, drew Ludwíka’s attention by a movement of her head—first to the Cossack’s broad back, and then to the bottom of the tarantass. Ludwíka sat looking before her fixedly, with a significant expression, and only slightly twitched her lips.
The day was bright. All around spread the boundless desert steppe, its silvery feather-grass glittering in the slanting rays of the morning sun. First on one and then on the other side of the hard road—on which the brisk unshod hoofs of the Bashkir horses resounded as on asphalt—appeared little mounds of earth thrown up by Siberian marmots, with one of the little creatures sitting up erect and keeping watch. At the approach of danger it would raise the alarm by a shrill whistle, and disappear down its burrow. They met but few travellers: only a Cossack train of carts laden with wheat, or a mounted Bashkir with whom their Cossack briskly bandied Tartar words. At each post-station they got fresh and well-fed horses, and the half-roubles Albína gave to the drivers made them gallop full speed all the way—“State-messenger style,” as they expressed it.
At the first station, when the first driver had gone away with the horses and his successor had not yet come with the fresh ones, and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albína bent down and asked her husband how he felt, and whether he needed anything.
“Splendid! … Quite comfortable! I want nothing; I can easily lie here for two days, if necessary.”
Towards evening they reached the large village of Dergátchi. That her husband might stretch his limbs and refresh himself, Albína did not put up at the post-station, but stopped in an inn-yard; and, giving some money to the Cossack, sent him at once to buy her some milk and eggs. The tarantass stood in a shed, and it was dark in the yard. Setting Ludwíka to watch the Cossack, Albína let her husband out and fed him; and before the Cossack returned he was again in his hiding-place. Albína’s spirits rose higher and higher, and she could not restrain her gaiety and delight. Having no one to talk to but Ludwíka, the Cossack, and her dog, Trezórka, she amused herself with them. Ludwíka, in spite of her plainness, suspected all the men she ever met of having amorous designs upon herself; and on this occasion she had the same suspicions of their escort, the sturdy, good-natured Urál Cossack, with unusually bright and kind blue eyes, whose simplicity and good-natured adroitness made him very agreeable to both the women.
Besides Trezórka (at whom Albína shook her finger, not allowing him to sniff under the seat), she now amused herself with Ludwíka’s comical coquetting with the Cossack; who, never suspecting the designs attributed to him, smiled at all that was said. Albína, excited by the danger, the success that was attending the accomplishment of her plan, and the air of the steppes, experienced a long-forgotten feeling of childlike joy and happiness. Migoúrski heard her talking merrily, and forgetting himself—in spite of the physical discomfort of his position, which he concealed from her (he was especially tormented by thirst and heat)—he rejoiced at her joy.
Towards the evening of the second day, something began to appear in the distance, through the mist. It was Sarátof and the Vólga. The Cossack, whose eyes were used to the steppes, could see the Vólga and a mast, and pointed them out to Ludwíka—who said she could see them too; but Albína could see nothing, and only repeated loudly, that her husband should hear, “Sarátof … Vólga …” as if she were talking to Trezórka; and so she informed her husband of all she saw.
XI
Not entering the town, Albína stopped on the left bank of the Vólga, in the Pokróvsky suburb, just opposite Sarátof itself. Here she hoped to be able to speak to her husband during the night, and even to let him out of his box. But the Cossack never left the tarantass during the whole of the short spring night, but sat near it in a cart that stood under the same shed. Ludwíka, by Albína’s orders, remained in the tarantass, and feeling sure it was because of her that the Cossack remained near it, she winked, laughed, and hid her pockmarked face in her kerchief. But Albína saw nothing amusing in this now, and became more and more anxious; wondering why the Cossack remained so persistently near the tarantass.
Several times during that short night, in which the evening twilight melted into the twilight of dawn, Albína left the inn, and, passing through a passage which smelt foully, came out into the back porch. The Cossack did not sleep, but sat in the empty cart beside the tarantass, with his legs hanging down. Only just before daybreak, when the cocks were already awake and crowing to one another from yard to yard, Albína went down and found time to speak to her husband. The Cossack, lying stretched out in the cart, was snoring. She came carefully up to the tarantass, and knocked at the box.
“Josy!”
No answer.
“Josy! Josy!” she said louder, quite frightened.
“What’s the matter?” asked Migoúrski, in a sleepy voice, inside the box.
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“I was asleep,” he said, and by the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling.
“Well, can I get out?” he asked.
“No! the Cossack is here;” and, saying this, she glanced at the Cossack sleeping in the cart.
And, strange to say, though the Cossack was snoring, his kind blue eyes were open. He looked at her, and only when their glances met did he shut his eyes again.
“Was it only my fancy, or was he really awake?” Albína asked herself. “It must have been my fancy,” she thought, and again turned to the box.
“Bear it a bit longer,” she said. “Do you want something to eat?”
“No; I want to smoke.”
Albína looked at the Cossack. He was asleep.
“Yes, I only fancied it,” she thought.
“Now I shall go and see the Governor.”
“Well, then, good luck to you!”
Albína took a dress from her portmanteau and went into the inn to change the one she was wearing.
Dressed in her best widow’s mourning, Albína crossed the Vólga. Hiring an isvóztchik318 on the quay, she drove to the Governor’s. The Governor received her. The pretty, smiling Polish widow, speaking excellent French, pleased the would-be-young old Governor very much. He granted all she asked, and bade her call again next day, to receive an order to the Mayor of Tsarítsin.
Pleased at the success of her application, and by the effect she noticed that her attractiveness produced on the Governor’s manners, Albína returned happy and hopeful. She descended the hill in a tarantass, driving along the unpaved street back to the landing. The sun had risen above the forest, and its slanting rays played on the rippling waters of the wide overflow of the river. Apple-trees, covered with sweet blossoms, appeared like white clouds to right and left. A forest of masts was seen along the banks, and white sails gleamed on the surface of the broad overflow, ruffled by a gentle breeze. At the landing, after some talk with her driver, Albína inquired whether she could hire a boat to take her to Astrakhán; and dozens of noisy, merry boatmen offered her their services and boats. She came to an agreement with a man she liked better than the rest, and went to look at his boat, that lay among a crowd of others near the landing. The boat had a small movable mast with a sail, and also oars for calm weather. Two healthy-looking bourlák rowers sat in the boat, sunning themselves. The merry, kindly boatman advised her not to leave her tarantass behind, but to take off the wheels and place it in the boat. “There will be just enough room, and it will be more comfortable for you to sit in it. If God gives us good weather, we’ll run down to Astrakhán in five days or so.”
Having come to terms with the boatman, Albína bade him come to Lóginof’s inn, in the Pokróvsky suburb, to see the tarantass and to receive hand-money. Everything was succeeding beyond her expectations. In a rapturously happy mood she crossed the Vólga, paid her driver, and went towards the inn-yard.
XII
The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, belonged to the Strelétsky Settlement, on the watershed of the Vólga and the Urál. He was thirty-four, and was completing the last month of the term of his army service. At home he had a grandfather, a man of ninety (who could remember Pougatchéf319); two brothers; a sister-in-law (the wife of an elder brother who had been sent to the mines for being an Old Believer); a wife; and two sons. His father had been killed in the war with the French. He was the head of the family. In his homestead they had sixteen horses and two yoke of oxen, and they had a good deal of land sown with wheat. Daniel had served in Órenburg and Kazán. He kept strictly to the Old Faith, did not smoke, would neither eat nor drink out of a vessel used by the Orthodox, and considered his oath sacred. In all his actions he was deliberately, firmly exact; and giving his whole attention to whatever his superiors set him to do, he never forgot it for a moment until he had done his duty as he understood it. Now he was ordered to escort two Polish women and two coffins to Sarátof, so that no evil should befall them on the way, and they were to travel quietly and not be up to any mischief; and at Sarátof he was to hand them over honourably to the Authorities.
And so he had brought them safely to Sarátof—little dog, coffins and all. The women, though Poles, were harmless agreeable women, and they did nothing wrong. But here in the Pokróvsky suburb, towards evening, passing by the tarantass, he noticed that the little dog jumped inside and whined and wagged its tail, and he thought he heard someone’s voice coming from under the seat of the tarantass. One of the Polish women—the old one—grew frightened on seeing the dog in the tarantass, and caught it and carried it away.
“There’s something wrong there,” thought the Cossack, and remained on the lookout. When the young Polish woman came out in the night to the tarantass, he pretended to be asleep, and distinctly heard a man’s voice coming from the box. Early in the morning he went to the police to let them know that the Polish women entrusted to his care were not travelling honestly, but were carrying, instead of coffins, a live man in their box.
When Albína—in her rapturously happy mood, sure that all was now finished, and that in a few days they would be free—came to the inn-yard, she was surprised to see an elegant pair of horses and two Cossacks at the gates. A crowd had collected round the gates, and were gazing into the yard.
So full of hope and energy was she, that it did not occur to her that the pair of horses and the crowd of people had any connection with her. She entered the yard, and glancing at once towards the shed where her tarantass stood, she saw that it was just there that the people were crowding, and at the same moment she heard Trezórka barking desperately.
The most terrible thing that could possibly have happened had actually come to pass! In front of the tarantass, in his clean uniform, with buttons, shoulder-straps and patent-leather boots glittering in the sunshine, stood an imposing-looking man, with black whiskers, speaking in a loud, hoarse, commanding voice. In front of him, between two soldiers, dressed as a peasant, and with bits of hay in his tangled hair, stood her Josy, raising and lowering his powerful shoulders as if perplexed by what was going on around him. Trezórka, his hair bristling, quite unconscious that he was the cause of all this misfortune, was barking angrily at the Police Master. When he saw Albína, Migoúrski gave a start and wished to approach her, but the soldiers prevented him.
“Never mind, Albína, never mind!” uttered Migoúrski, with his usual gentle smile.
“Ah! Here’s the little lady herself!” said the Police Master. “Come here, please. … The coffins of your infants, eh?” he added, winking towards Migoúrski. Albína did not answer, but clutching at her breast, stared open-mouthed and horror-stricken at her husband.
As happens at the moment of death, and in general at the decisive moments of life, a crowd of feelings and thoughts passed through her mind in a single instant, before she had yet realized or quite believed in her misfortune. The first feeling was one already long familiar to her—a feeling of offended pride at seeing her hero-husband humiliated by these coarse, savage people who now had him in their power. “How dare they hold him—the best of all men—in their power?” At the same time another feeling—the consciousness of misfortune—seized her. This consciousness of her misfortune awoke the memory of the greatest misfortune of her life—her children’s death. And at once the question arose: “Why—why were the children taken?” And this question suggested another: “Why is he now perishing and being tormented—he, my beloved, my husband, the best of men?” And then she remembered the shameful punishment awaiting him, and that it was all her doing.
“What is he to you? Is he your husband?” the Police Master repeated.
“Why? What for?” she cried; and bursting into hysterical laughter, she fell on the box, which had been removed from the tarantass and now stood on the ground beside it. Shaking with sobs, her face bathed in tears, Ludwíka approached her.
“Mistress … dear, darling mistress! … By God, nothing will come of it—nothing! …” she said, mechanically passing her hand over Albína.
Migoúrski was handcuffed and led out of the yard. Seeing this, Albína ran after him.
“Forgive me! Forgive me!” she said. “It is my fault—my fault alone!”
“They’ll soon find out whose fault it is! Your turn will come, too,” said the Police Master, and he pushed her aside with his arm.
Migoúrski was taken to the ferry, and Albína followed him without knowing why, paying no heed to Ludwíka’s dissuasions.
The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, stood all this while by the wheels of the tarantass, looking gloomily now at the Police Master, now at Albína, now at his own feet. After Migoúrski had been led away, Trezórka, who had got used to Lifánof on the journey, began wagging his tail and caressing him. The Cossack suddenly moved away from the tarantass, pulled off his cap, threw it violently on the ground, shoved Trezórka aside with his boot, and went into the inn. There he demanded vodka, and drank day and night till he had drunk all the money he had, and all his clothes as well. Only when he came to himself in a ditch, during the second night, did he stop thinking about the tormenting problem: Whether he had done well to report to the Authorities about the Polish woman’s husband inside the box?
Migoúrski was tried for attempting to escape, and was condemned to run the gauntlet through a line of 1,000 men. By the intercession of his relations and of Wánda (who had influential connections in Petersburg), his sentence was commuted to one of exile for life to Siberia. Albína followed him. As to Nicholas I, he rejoiced at having crushed the hydra of revolution—not only in Poland, but throughout Europe—and prided himself on having benefited the Russian people by keeping Poland under Russian rule. And men in gold-embroidered uniforms, wearing stars, so applauded him for this, that he sincerely believed himself to be a great man, and his life a great blessing to humanity—especially to the Russian people, to whose perversion and stupefaction he unconsciously directed all his powers.