VI
Andríi could hardly move in the dark and narrow earthen corridor, as he followed the Tatár, dragging after him his sacks of bread. "It will soon be light," said his guide: "we are nearing the spot where I placed a candle." And, in fact, the dark earthen walls began to be gradually illuminated. They reached a little widening where, apparently, there had once been a chapel; at least, a small table was set against the wall, like an altar-table, and above it was visible the faded, almost entirely obliterated picture of a Catholic Madonna. A small silver lamp hanging before it barely illuminated it. The Tatár stooped, and picked up from the earth a brass candlestick with a tall, slender foot, and snuffers, pin, and extinguisher hanging from it on chains, which she had left there. She lighted it at the silver lamp. The light grew stronger, and as they went on, now illumined by it, and again enveloped in pitchy shadow, they suggested a picture by Gerard Douw.
The knight's handsome, rosy countenance, overflowing with health and youth, presented a strong contrast to the pale, emaciated face of his companion. The passage grew a little more roomy, so that Andríi was able to straighten himself up. He gazed with curiosity at the earthen walls. Here, as in the catacombs at Kiev, were visible niches in the walls; and here and there stood coffins. In some places they came across human bones which had become softened with the dampness, and were crumbling into dust. It was evident that here, also, pious people had taken refuge from the storms, sorrows and seductions of the world. It was extremely damp in some places; under their feet it was all water at times. Andríi was forced to halt frequently, in order to allow his companion to rest, for her fatigue constantly increased. The small piece of bread she had swallowed only caused a pain in her stomach, which had grown unused to food; and she often stood motionless for several minutes at a time in one spot.
At last a small iron door appeared before them. "Now, glory be to God, we have arrived!" said the Tatár in a faint voice, and tried to raise her hand to knock; but she had not the strength. Andríi knocked loudly at the door in her stead. The echo which followed showed that there was a large space beyond the door. Then the echo changed, as though encountering lofty arches. In a couple of minutes a rattling of keys became audible, and some one could be heard, apparently descending a staircase. At last the door opened: a monk, standing on a narrow staircase, with the key and a candle in his hands, admitted them. Andríi involuntarily stopped short at the sight of a Catholic monk,—one of those who had aroused such hatred and disdain among the kazáks, who had treated them even more ruthlessly than they had treated the Jews.
The monk, on his side, started back at the sight of a Zaporozhian kazák; but an inaudible word uttered by the Tatár reassured him. He lighted them, locked the door behind them, and led them up the stairs; and they found themselves beneath the dark and lofty arches of the monastery church. Before one of the altars, adorned with tall candlesticks and candles, knelt a priest absorbed in silent prayer. Near him, on each side, knelt two young choristers in lilac cassocks, with white lace surplices, and censers in their hands. He was praying that heaven would send down miraculous intervention, that the city might be saved; that their drooping spirits might be strengthened; that patience might be given them; that the tempter, whispering complaint and weak-spirited grief over earthly misfortunes, might be banished. A few women, resembling shadows, knelt supporting themselves against the backs of the chairs and dark wooden benches in front of them, and drooping their exhausted heads upon them. A few men knelt sadly, leaning against the pillars which supported the side arches. The stained-glass window above the altar glowed with the rosy light of dawn; and from it, on the floor, fell circles of azure, yellow and other colours, suddenly illuminating the dim church. The entire altar, even to its furthest recesses, suddenly shone forth in a radiant halo; the smoke of the censers hung like an illuminated, rainbow-hued cloud in the air. Andríi gazed from his dark corner, not without surprise, at the wonders wrought by the light. At that moment the magnificent swell of the organ suddenly filled the whole church; it grew deeper and deeper, increased in volume, passed into heavy bursts of thunder; and then, all at once, turning into heavenly music, its singing tones floated high among the arches, suggesting the voices of young maidens, and again descended into a deep roar and thunder, and then ceased. And the thunderous pulsations echoed long and tremulously among the arches; and Andríi, with mouth agape, was amazed by the wondrous music.
At that moment he felt some one pluck the skirt of his kaftan. "'Tis time to be going," said the Tatár. They traversed the church unperceived and emerged upon the square in front. The quadrangular square was entirely deserted; in the middle of it stood wooden pillars, showing that only a week before, perhaps, a provision market had existed there. The streets, which were then unpaved, were simply a mass of dried mud. The square was surrounded by a row of small, one-storied houses of stone or mud, on whose walls were visible wooden stakes and posts to their full height, obliquely crossed by carved wooden beams, as was the manner of building in those days, examples of which style of construction are still to be seen in some parts of Lithuania and Poland. They were covered with enormously high roofs, with a multitude of dormer-windows and ventilating orifices. On one side, quite close to the church, and taller than the others, rose a building entirely detached from the rest; probably the Town Hall or some government office. It was two stories high, and above it, in two arches, was built a belvedere, where stood a watchman; a huge clock-face was inserted in the roof.
The square seemed dead, but Andríi thought he heard a feeble groan. Glancing about him, he perceived, on the further side, a group of two or three men lying almost motionless on the ground. He fastened his eyes more intently upon them, to see whether they were asleep or dead; and, at the same moment, he stumbled over something which lay at his feet. It was the dead body of a woman, evidently a Jewess. She appeared to have been young, though this was not discernible in her distorted and emaciated features. Upon her head was a red silk kerchief; two rows of pearls, or pearl beads adorned the ear-pieces of her head-dress; from beneath it two or three long curls in curl-papers hung down upon her withered neck, with its tightly-drawn sinews. Beside her lay a baby, clutching convulsively at her withered breast, and squeezing it with its fingers in involuntary wrath, at finding no milk there. He neither wept nor screamed, and only the gentle rise and fall of his body would lead one to think that he was not dead, or at least on the point of breathing his last.
They turned into a street, and were suddenly stopped by a madman who, catching sight of Andríi's precious burden, sprang upon him like a tiger, and clutched him, yelling, "Bread!" But his strength was not equal to his madness. Andríi repulsed him: he fell to the ground. Moved with pity, Andríi tossed him a loaf, upon which he flung himself like a mad dog, gnawing and biting it; and immediately, there in the street, he expired in horrible convulsions, from long disuse of eating. The terrible victims of hunger startled them at almost every step. Many, apparently unable to endure their torments in their own houses, seemed to have run into the streets to see whether some nourishing power might, possibly, descend from the air. At the gate of one house sat an old woman, and it was impossible to say whether she was asleep, dead, or only unconscious; at all events, she no longer saw or heard anything, and sat motionless in one spot, her head drooping on her breast. From the roof of another house hung a strained and withered body in a rope noose. The poor fellow had not been able to endure the tortures of hunger to the end, and had preferred to hasten his death by voluntary suicide. At the sight of such terrible proofs of famine, Andríi could not refrain from asking the Tatár, "Have they really been unable to find anything with which to sustain life? If a man is driven to extremities, then there is no help for it; he must nourish him- self on that which he has hitherto despised; he may sustain himself with creatures which are forbidden by the law. Anything may be eaten under such circumstances."
"They have eaten everything," said the Tatár,—" all the animals. Not a horse or a dog, nor even a mouse, can be found in the whole city. We never had any store of provisions in the town: they were all brought in from the villages."
"But how can you, while dying such a fearful death, still dream of defending the city?"
"Possibly the Voevod might have surrendered; but yesterday the Colonel in Buzhana sent a hawk into the city with a note, saying that it was not to be given up: that he was coming to its rescue with his regiment, and was only waiting for another colonel, that they might march together. And now they are expected at any moment.—But we have reached the house."
Andríi had already seen, from afar, the house which was unlike the others, and had been built, apparently, by an Italian architect: it was constructed of thin red bricks, and had two stories. The windows of the lower story were sheltered under lofty projecting granite cornices; the upper story consisted entirely of small arches, which formed a gallery; between them, gratings with coats-of-arms could be seen: on the corners of the houses were more coats-of-arms. The broad external staircase, of tinted bricks, abutted on the square. At the foot of the staircase sat sentries, one on each side, who with one hand held the halberd standing beside him in a picturesque and symmetrical manner, and with the other supported his drooping head, and in this attitude more resembled statues than living beings. They were neither asleep nor dozing, but seemed perfectly insensible to everything; they even paid no attention when any one ascended the stairs. At the head of the stairs they found a richly-dressed warrior, clad in armour from head to foot, holding a prayer-book in his hand. He was turning his dim eyes upon them when the Tatár spoke a word to him, and he dropped them again upon the open pages of his book. They entered the first chamber, rather a large one, serving as a reception-room, or simply as an ante-room; it was completely filled with soldiers, servants, huntsmen, cup-bearers, and other servitors indispensable to the maintenance of a Polish magnate's state, all seated along the walls, in various attitudes. The reek of extinguished candles was perceptible; two, in huge candlesticks, nearly as tall as a man, which stood in the middle of the room, were still burning, although morning had long since peeped through the wide, grated window. Andríi was about to proceed straight to a large oaken door, adorned with a coat-of-arms and a profusion of carved ornaments; but the Tatár pulled his sleeve, and pointed to a small door in the side wall. Through this they entered a corridor, and then a room, which he began to examine attentively. The light which sifted through a crack in the shutters fell upon some objects,—a crimson curtain, a gilded cornice, a painting on the wall. The Tatár motioned to Andríi to wait here, and opened the door into another room, from which gleamed the light of a fire. Through the open door he beheld, rapidly flitting past, a tall female figure, with a splendid braid of hair falling over her uplifted arm. The Tatár returned and bade him enter.
He was never able to remember how he entered, and how the door was shut behind him. Two candles burned in the room, and a shrine-lamp glowed before a holy picture: beneath it stood a small but lofty table, with steps to kneel upon during prayer, after the Roman Catholic fashion. He turned in the other direction, and perceived a woman, who seemed to have congealed and turned to stone in the midst of some rapid movement. It seemed as though her whole form had been trying to spring towards him, and had suddenly paused. And, amazed, he stood in like manner before her. Not thus had he pictured to himself that he would see her: this was not the person whom he had formerly known; nothing about her resembled that person: but she was twice as beautiful, twice as wonderful now as she had formerly been. Then there had been something unfinished, incomplete about her: now it was a production to which the artist had given the finishing stroke of his brush. That other one had been a charming, giddy girl: this was a beauty, a woman in the full development of her charms. Complete feeling, not scraps and hints of feeling, but all feeling, was expressed in her eyes as she raised them. The tears were not yet dry in them, and framed them in a shining dew, which pierced the very soul. Her bosom, neck and arms were moulded in proportions which indicated fully developed loveliness. Her hair which, in former days, had waved in airy ringlets about her face, had become a heavy, luxuriant mass, part of which was fastened up, while part in long, slender, beautifully curling locks spread over her breast. It seemed as though her every feature were changed. In vain did he seek to discover in them a single one of those which were engraved on his memory,—there was not one. Even her extreme pallor did not lessen her wonderful beauty: on the contrary, it seemed to impart to it an irresistibly conquering charm. And Andríi felt in all his soul a reverent timidity, and stood motionless before her. She, too, seemed surprised at the appearance of the kazák, as he stood before her in all his beauty, and the might of his young manhood, and in the very immovability of his limbs personified the utmost freedom of movement. His eyes beamed with clear decision; his velvet brows bent in a bold arch; his sunburnt cheeks glowed with all the ardour of virginal fire; and his youthful black moustache shone like silk.
"No, I have no power to thank you, magnanimous knight," she said, her silvery voice all in a tremble. "God alone can reward you, not I, a weak woman." She dropped her eyes; her lids fell over them in beautiful, snowy crescents, guarded by lashes long as arrows; all her wondrous face bowed forward, and a delicate flush overspread it from below. Andríi knew not what reply to make to this; he wanted to express everything; he had it in his soul to express it with all the ardour he felt, and could not. He felt that something was obstructing his mouth, and words were deprived of sound; he felt that it was not for him, reared in the seminary, and in a warlike, nomadic life, to reply fitly to such language, and was wroth at his kazák nature.
At that moment the Tatár entered the room. She had cut the bread which the knight had brought in slices, and now brought it on a golden plate, and placed it before her young mistress. The beauty glanced at her, at the bread, at her again, then turned her eyes on Andríi; and there was a great deal in those eyes. That gentle glance, expressive of her weakness and her inability to give utterance to the feelings which overpowered her, was far more comprehensible to Andríi than any words. His soul suddenly grew light: all within him seemed to have been released. The emotions of his soul, which, up to that moment, some one seemed to have been restraining with a heavy curb, now felt themselves set free, at liberty, and eager to pour themselves out in a resistless torrent of words. Suddenly the beauty turned to the Tatár, and inquired anxiously:
"But my mother? You took her some?"
"She is asleep."
"And my father?"
"I carried him some, also: he said that he would come and thank the knight in person."
She took the bread, and raised it to her mouth. With inexpressible delight Andríi watched her break it with her shining fingers; and, all at once, he recalled the man, mad with hunger, who had expired before his very eyes, on swallowing a morsel of bread. He turned pale and, seizing her hand, cried: "Enough! Eat no more! you have not eaten for so long that bread will be poison to you now." And she immediately dropped her hand; she laid the bread on the plate, and gazed into his eyes like a submissive child. And if any words could express—but neither chisel, nor brush, nor all-powerful speech is capable of expressing what is sometimes to be seen in the glances of maidens, nor the tender feeling which takes possession of him who sees such maiden glances.
"Tzaritza!" exclaimed Andríi, filled, heart and soul, with emotion, and with overflowing feelings of every sort, "what do you need? what do you wish? Command me! Impose on me the most impossible task in all the world: I will fly to perform it, even though I perish. I will perish, I will! And I swear by the holy Cross, that death for your sake is so sweet—but no, it is impossible to say how sweet it is! I have three farms; half my father's drove of horses is mine; all that my mother brought my father in dowry, and still conceals even from him,—all this is mine! Not one of the kazáks now possesses such weapons as I do: for the hilt of my sword alone they would give their best drove of horses and three thousand sheep. And all this will I renounce, discard, throw aside,—I will burn it, drown it if you will but say the word, or even move your delicate black brows! But I know that I am probably talking wide of the mark; that all this is not fitting here; that it is not for me, who have passed my life in the seminary and in Zaporozhe, to speak as they are wont who speak among Kings, Princes and all the rest of the noble knights. I perceive that you are a different sort of God's creature from the rest of us, and far above all other nobles' wives and their maiden daughters."
With glowing amazement did the maiden listen, all ear, losing no single word, to this frank, sincere language, in which, as in a mirror, the strong, young spirit was reflected; and each simple word of this speech, uttered in a voice which winged its way straight to the depths of the heart, was clothed with power. And she bent forward her beautiful face, pushed back her troublesome hair, opened her mouth, and gazed long, with parted lips. Then she tried to say something, but suddenly paused, remembering that the knight came in a different class, that his father, brethren, country stood behind him as grim avengers; that the Zaporozhtzi who were besieging the city were terrible men, and a cruel death awaited all who were in the place… And her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She caught up a handkerchief embroidered in silks, and threw it over her face, and in a moment it was all wet; she sat long with her beautiful head thrown back, her snowy teeth set on her lovely under-lip, as though she had suddenly felt the sting of a poisonous serpent, and without removing the handkerchief from her face, lest he should see her broken with grief.
"Speak one word to me!" entreated Andríi, taking her satin hand. A sparkling fire coursed through his veins at the touch, and he pressed the hand which lay apathetically in his own.
But she maintained silence, never taking the kerchief from her face, and remained motionless.
"Why are you so sad? Tell me, why are you so sad?"
She cast aside the handkerchief, pushed back her long hair which fell over her eyes, and poured out her heart in mournful speech, in a quiet voice like the breeze which, arising on a beautiful evening, suddenly blows through a dense growth of reeds beside the stream; they rustle, murmur, and suddenly begin to emit delicately-sad sounds, and the wayfarer, pausing, in inexplicable melancholy, catches them and heeds neither the fading light nor the gay songs of the people which float past as they stray homeward from their labours in meadow and stubble-field, nor the distant rumble of a passing cart.
"Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the mother who brought me into the world unhappy? Is it not a bitter fate which has fallen to my share? Art not thou a cruel executioner, my grim Fate? Thou hast brought all to my feet,—the highest nobles in the land, the wealthiest gentlemen. Counts and foreign Barons, and all the flower of our knighthood. All these were free to love me, and any one of them would have accounted my love a great blessing. I had but to wave my hand, and the best of them, the handsomest, the very first in beauty and birth, would have become my husband. And to none of them didst thou incline my heart, O my bitter Fate! thou didst turn my heart against the noblest heroes of our land, and towards a stranger, towards our enemy? Why, O most holy Mother of God! for what sins dost thou so pitilessly, so mercilessly persecute me? In abundance and superfluity of luxury my days have been passed; the richest dishes, the sweetest wines have been my food. And to what end was it all? What was it all for? In order that I might, at the last, die a cruel death, such as is not the lot of even the meanest beggar in the kingdom? And was it not enough that I was condemned to so horrible a fate; not enough that, before my own end I should behold my father and mother perish in intolerable torment, when I would willingly have given my own life twenty times over to save them? All this was not enough: before my own death I must see and hear words and love such as I had never known before. It needs must be that he should break my heart in pieces with his utterances; that my bitter lot should be rendered still more bitter; that my young life should be made yet more sad! that my death should seem even more terrible; and that, dying, I should reproach thee still more, O cruel Fate! and thee—forgive my sin—O holy Mother of God!"
And when she ceased in despair, a feeling of hopelessness was expressed in her face; every feature spoke of gnawing sorrow; and all, from the sadly bowed brow and downcast eyes, to the tears trickling down and drying on her softly-flushed cheeks, seemed to say: "There is no happiness in this face."
"Such a thing was never heard of since the world began. It cannot be, it shall not be!" said Andríi, "that the best and most beautiful of women should suffer so bitter a fate, when she was born that all the best there is in the world should bow before her as before a Saint. No, you shall not die! I swear it by my birth, and by all I hold dear in the world, you shall not die. But if it must indeed be so; if nothing, neither strength, nor prayer, nor heroism will avail to avert that cruel fate,—then we will die together, and I will die first. I will die before you, at your beauteous knees, and even in death they shall not part us."
"Deceive not yourself and me, knight," she said, gently shaking her beautiful head; "I know, and to my great sorrow I know only too well, that it is impossible for you to love me. I know what your duty is, and what your Faith. Your father, your comrades, your fatherland call you,—and we are your enemies."
"And what are my father, my comrades, my fatherland to me?" said Andríi, shaking his head with a quick movement, and straightening up his young figure like a poplar beside the river. "Be that as it may, I have no one, no one, no one!" he repeated with the same voice and movement of the hand wherewith the buoyant, irrepressible kazák expresses his determination to do some unheard-of deed, impossible to any other man. "Who has said that my fatherland is the Ukraina? Who gave it to me for my country? Our fatherland is the one our spirit longs for, the one which is dearest of all to it. My country is—you! That is my fatherland, and that land I bear in my heart. I shall bear it there all my life long, and I will see whether any of the kazáks can tear it thence. And I will renounce everything, barter everything, I will lose myself for that country!"
Petrified for an instant, she gazed into his eyes like a beautiful statue, and suddenly burst out sobbing; and with that wonderful feminine impetuosity, of which only grand-souled, uncalculating women, created for fine impulses are capable, she threw herself upon his neck, encircling it with her wondrous, snowy arms, and fell to weeping. At that moment indistinct shouts rang out in the streets, accompanied by the sound of trumpets and kettle-drums; but he heard them not. He was conscious of nothing save the lovely mouth which was bathing him in its warm, sweet breath, of the tears streaming down his face, and her long unbound, perfumed hair which veiled him completely in its dark, shining silk.
At that moment the Tatár ran in with a cry of joy. "Saved, saved!" she cried, beside herself. "Our troops have arrived in the city. They have brought corn, millet, flour and Zaporozhtzi in chains." But neither of them heard that our troops had arrived in the city, nor what they had brought with them, nor how they had bound the Zaporozhtzi. Filled with feelings untasted elsewhere on earth, Andríi kissed the sweet mouth which pressed his cheek, and the sweet mouth did not remain unresponsive. In this union of kisses they experienced that which it is given to a man to feel but once in his lifetime.
And the kazák was lost! He was lost to Kazák chivalry. Never again will he behold Zaporozhe, nor his father's house, nor the church of God. The Ukraina will never more behold the bravest of her sons, who have undertaken to defend her. Old Taras will tear a grey tuft from his scalp-lock, and curse the day and the hour in which such a son was born to dishonour him.