On the Field of Glory Part 46

"And ye drove him up here?"

"As a strange beast, for we wished to console the young lady even a little, and show her our brotherly affection."

"Ye gave her a lovely consolation. When she saw him through the window, the fright nearly killed her."

"When she recovers she will think of us gratefully. Orphans always like to feel guardians.h.i.+p over them."

"Ye have done her more harm than service. Who knows if the Krepetskis will not take her away again?"

"How is that? By the dear G.o.d! will we let them?"

"But who will defend the girl when ye are in prison?"

When they heard this the brothers were greatly concerned, and looked with anxious eyes at one another. But Lukash at last struck his forehead. "We will not be imprisoned," said he, "for first we will go to the army; but if it comes to that, if there is a question of Panna Anulka's safety, help will be found."

"Found! Of course it will," cried out Marek.

"What help?" inquired Father Voynovski.

"We will challenge Martsian as soon as he recovers. He will not go alive out of our hands."

"But if he dies now?"

"Then G.o.d will help us."

"But ye will pay with your lives!"

"Before that we will sh.e.l.l out the Turks, and the Lord Jesus will reward us for that service. Only let your grace take our part with Pan Serafin; for if Stanislav had been here he would have been with us while giving this bath to that Martsian."

"But would not Yatsek give it?" inquired Mateush.

"Yatsek will give him a better bath!" cried the priest, as if unwittingly.

Further converse was stopped by the coming of Pan Serafin, who appeared with a ready and weighty decision.

"I have been thinking of what we should do," said he, very seriously.

"And does your grace know what I have decided? It is this, that we should all go to Cracow with Panna Anulka. I know not if we shall see our boys in that city, for no one knows where the regiments will be quartered, or what will be the order of their marching. But we should place the girl under protection of the king or the queen; or, if that is not done, secure her in some cloister for a season. I have also determined, as you know, to take the field in my old age and serve with my son, or, if such be G.o.d's will, to die with him. During our absence the girl would not be safe, even in Radom, under the protection of the prelate Tvorkovski. These gentlemen"--here he pointed to the Bukoyemskis "need to be under the hetman immediately. It is unknown what might happen should they stay here. I have acquaintances at court,--Pan Matchynski, Pan Gninski, Pan Grothus,--and shall get their influence for the orphan, as I think. That done I will find Zbierhovski's regiment, and go straight to my son where I shall see Yatsek also. What think you of this, my benefactor?"

"As G.o.d lives," cried Father Voynovski, "this is a splendid idea! And I will go with you--and I will go with you to Yatsek. And as to Panna Anulka, oh, all will be well! The Sobieskis owe a great debt to the Sieninskis. She will be out of danger in Cracow and nearer; for I am certain that Yatsek has not forgotten her. And when the war ends that will happen which G.o.d wishes. Give me a subst.i.tute here in my parish from Radom, and I will be with you!"

"All together!" roared the Bukoyemskis with rapture "to Cracow!"

"And the field of glory!" cried Father Voynovski.

CHAPTER XXI

Consultations now followed touching the expedition; for not only were there no voices against it, but Father Voynovski was searching for a vicar in Radom. This plan, however, was an old one, modified by adding to it the person of Panna Anulka, who would be taken to Cracow and secured from the Krepetskis through protection from the king or the cloister. Pan Serafin saw that the king, occupied as he was with the war, would have no time to talk about private questions; but there remained the queen, to whom access might be easy through notable dignitaries, related for the greater part to the Sieninskis and the Tachevskis.

There was fear also that the Krepetskis might attack Yedlinka when Pan Serafin and the Bukoyemskis had gone, and seize on rich property in furniture and silver. But Vilchopolski guaranteed that with the servants and the foresters he would defend the place and not let the Krepetskis touch anything. Pan Serafin, however, took the silver to Radom and left it in the Bernardine cloister, where he had placed money before that in large sums, not wis.h.i.+ng to keep it at home near the edge of great forests.

Meanwhile, he kept an attentive ear toward Belchantska for much depended on that place. If Martsian died the Bukoyemskis would have to give a grave answer; if he recovered hope existed that there would not be even a lawsuit, since it was difficult to admit that the Krepetskis would expose themselves willingly to ridicule. Pan Serafin considered it as more likely that the old man would not leave him at peace touching Panna Anulka but he thought that if the orphan were in the care of the king the kernel of a lawsuit would be lost to the Krepetskis.

He learned, through the butler, that the old man had gone to Radom and Lublin, and remained rather long in those places.

For the first week Martsian suffered grievously, and there was fear that the tar which he had swallowed might choke him, or stop his intestines. But the second week he grew better. He did not, it is true, leave the bed, for he had not strength to stand una.s.sisted, his bones pained him greatly, and he was mortally weary; but he began to curse the Bukoyemskis, and to take keen delight in projects of vengeance. In fact, after two weeks had pa.s.sed, his "revellers from Radom" began to visit him, various gallows-birds with sabres held up by hempen cords, men with holes in their boots, and gaunt stomachs, thirsty and hungry at all hours. Meanwhile he counselled with these, and was plotting not only against the Bukoyemskis and Pan Serafin, but against the young lady, of whom he could not think without gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth; and he developed such monstrous inventions against her, that his father forewarned him, that they were of criminal nature.

The echo of those plots and threats went to Yedlinka, and produced various impressions on different people. Pan Serafin, a man of much courage, but prudent, was somewhat alarmed by them, especially when he remembered that this enmity of wicked and dangerous people would strike his son also. Father Voynovski, who had hotter blood in his veins, was keenly indignant, and prophesied that the Krepetskis would meet a vile ending. At the same time, though entirely won over to Anulka, he turned from time to time to Pan Serafin, and then to the Bukoyemskis.

"Who caused the Trojan war? A woman! Who causes quarrels and battles at all times? A woman! And it is the same now! Innocent or guilty, a woman!"

But the Bukoyemskis cared little for the danger which threatened every one from Martsian, and even promised themselves various amus.e.m.e.nts because of it. They were warned, however, seriously from many sides.

The Sulgostovskis, the Silnitskis, the Kohanovskis, and others, all greatly indignant at Martsian, came, one after the other, with tidings to Yedlinka. They said that he was gathering a party, and even bandits of the forest. They offered a.s.sistance, but the brothers wished no a.s.sistance. Lukash, who spoke most frequently in the name of the other three replied thus to Rafal Silnitski, who implored them to be careful,--

"There is no harm in thinking before war of our arms, and also of methods in which, from disuse, we have grown somewhat rusty, straighten ourselves out, and have practice. Belchantska is no fortress, so let Martsian see to his own safety, for who knows what may strike him. But if he wishes to nourish us with ingrat.i.tude, let him try it!"

Pan Silnitski looked with astonishment at Lukash, and asked,--

"Nourish with ingrat.i.tude? But, as I think, he owes you no grat.i.tude."

Lukash was sincerely indignant.

"How not owe? Could we not have cut him to pieces? Who gave him life?

Pani Krepetski once, but a second time our moderation; if he is going to count on it always, tell him that he is mistaken."

"And tell him that he will see Panna Anulka as much as he will see his own ears," added Marek.

"Why should he not see her, then?" finished Yan. "It is not difficult for a man to see his own ears if they are cut from him."

The conversation then ended. The brothers repeated it to Panna Anulka to calm her, which was superfluous, for the lady was not timid by nature. Her fear, too, of the Krepetskis, and especially of Martsian, was measured by her conviction that no danger threatened her in Yedlinka. When, on the day after her arrival at Pan Serafin's, she saw through the window Martsian in feathers, looking like some filthy beast, urged on with whips by the Bukoyemskis, in the first moment of her dreadful surprise, which was mixed with amazement and even compa.s.sion, she conceived so much confidence in the power of the brothers, that she could not even imagine how any one could avoid fearing them. Martsian pa.s.sed for a terrible person and a fighter, and see what they did with him. It is true that Yatsek in his time had cut up all those brothers, but Yatsek in her eyes had grown now beyond common estimate altogether, and in general he appeared to her before the last parting from a side so mysterious that she did not know with what measure to esteem him. The remarks which were made about him by the Bukoyemskis themselves, and Pan Serafin, with the words of the priest, who spoke of him oftenest, confirmed in her only wonder for that friend of her childhood, who had been so near to her once, but was now so remote and so different. These accounts fixed in her that longing, and that still sweeter feeling toward Yatsek, which, confessed to the priest in a moment of excitement, she concealed again in the depth of her heart, as a pearl is concealed in a mussel sh.e.l.l.

With all this she had in her soul a conviction, unshaken by anything, that she must meet him, and that she would meet him even in the near future. She had torn herself from the house of the Krepetskis; she felt above her the powerful hands of well-wis.h.i.+ng people; hence that certainty became the joy and the root of her existence. It restored to her health with contentment, and she bloomed afresh, as a flower blooms in springtime. That Yedlinka mansion which had been hitherto so serious was now bright from her presence. She had taken possession of Pani Dzvonkovski, of Pan Serafin, and the Bukoyemskis. The whole house was filled with her, and wherever she showed her little confident nose and her young, gladsome eyes, delight and smiles followed. But she feared Father Voynovski a little, since it seemed to her that he held in his hand her fate and also Yatsek's. Hence she looked upon him with a certain submissiveness. But with his compa.s.sionate heart, which in general was as wax for all G.o.d's creation, he loved her sincerely, and besides, when he learned to know her more closely, he esteemed her pure spirit increasingly, though at times he called her a jaybird and a squirrel, because, as he said, she was this moment here and the next in another place.

After that first confession they spoke no further of Yatsek, just as if they had agreed not to do so; both felt it too delicate a matter. Pan Serafin made no mention of Yatsek to her in the presence of people, but when no one was with them he was not ceremonious on that point; and once, when she asked if he would meet his son quickly in Cracow, he answered with a question,--

"And would you not like to meet some one there also?"

He thought that she would wind out of it jestingly, but to her bright face came a shade of sadness, and she answered then seriously,--

"I should be glad to beg pardon, as soon as is possible, of any one whom I have injured."

He looked at her with some emotion, but after a while it was clear that another idea had come to him, for he stroked her bright face, and then added,--

"Ei! thou hast the wherewithal to reward so that the king himself could not reward better."

When she heard this she lowered her eyes in his presence, and was wonderful as she stood there and blushed like the dawn of the morning.