On the Field of Glory Part 51

"But was there no one with him?"

"There was another, a lean, thin, young man."

"Not they," said Pan Serafin to the priest in a whisper.

"But they may have been Martsian's company."

Then he said aloud to the man,--

"What did they tell you to do?"

"This: 'Do what ye like with the people,' said they; 'the wagons and plunder are yours; but in the company there is a young lady whom ye are to take and bring by roundabout ways between Radom and Zvolenie to Polichna. Beyond Polichna a party will attack you and take the lady. Ye will pretend to defend her, but not so as to harm our men. Ye will get a thaler apiece for this, besides what ye find in the wagons.'"

"That is as if on one's palm," said the priest.

"Then did only those two talk with Kos and thee?"

"Later, a third person came in the night with them; he gave us a ducat apiece to bind the agreement. Though the place was as dark as in a cellar, one of our men who had been a serf of his recognized that third person as Pan Krepetski."

"Ha! that is he!" cried Pan Serafin.

"And is that man here, or has he fallen?" inquired Father Voynovski.

"I am here!" called out a voice from some distance.

"Come nearer. Didst thou recognize Pan Krepetski? But how, since it was so dark, that thou couldst hit a man on the snout without knowing it?"

"Because I know him from childhood. I knew him by his bow-legs and his head, which sits, as it were, in a hole between his shoulders, and by his voice."

"Did he speak to you?"

"He spoke with us, and afterward I heard him speak to those who came with him."

"What did he say to them?"

"He said this: 'If I could have trusted money with you, I should not have come, even if the night were still darker.'"

"And wilt thou testify to this before the mayor in the town, or the starosta?"

"I will."

"When he heard this, Pan Zbierhovski turned to his attendants and said,--

"Guard this man with special care, for me."

CHAPTER XXV

They began now to counsel. The advice of the Bukoyemskis was to disguise some peasant woman in the dress of a lady, put her on horseback, give her attendants and soldiers dressed up as bandits, and go to the place designated by Martsian, and, when he made the attack as agreed upon, surround him immediately, and either wreak vengeance there, or take him to Cracow and deliver him to justice. They offered to go themselves, with great willingness, to carry out the plan, and swore that they would throw Martsian in fetters at the feet of Panna Anulka.

This proposal pleased all at the first moment, but when they examined it more carefully the execution seemed needless and difficult. Pan Zbierhovski might rescue from danger people whom he met on his march, but he had not the right to send soldiers on private expeditions, and he had no wish either to do so. On the other hand, since there was a bandit who knew and was ready to indicate to the courts the chief author of the ambush, it was possible to bring that same author to account any moment, and to have issued against him a sentence of infamy. For this reason both Pan Serafin and Father Voynovski grew convinced that there would be time for that after the war, since there was no fear that the Krepetskis, who owned large estates, would flee and abandon them. This did not please the Bukoyemskis, however, for they desired keenly to finish the question. They even declared that since that was the decision, they would go themselves with their attendants for Martsian. But Pan Serafin would not permit this, and they were stopped finally by Yatsek, who implored them by all that was sacred to leave Krepetski to him, and him only.

"I," said he, "will not act through courts against Martsian, but after all that I have heard from you here, if I do not fall in the war, as G.o.d is in heaven, I will find the man, and it will be shown whether infamy would not be pleasanter and easier also than that which will meet him."

And his "maiden" eyes glittered so fiercely that though the Bukoyemskis were unterrified warriors a s.h.i.+ver went through them. They knew in what a strange manner pa.s.sion and mildness were intertwined in the spirit of Yatsek, together with an ominous remembrance of injustice.

He said then repeatedly: "Woe to him!--Woe to him!" and again he grew pale from his blood loss. Day had come already, and the morning light had tinted the world in green and rose colors; that light sparkled in the dewdrops, on the gra.s.s and the reeds, and the tree leaves and the needles of dwarf pines here and there on the edge of the quagmire. Pan Zbierhovski had commanded to bury the bodies of the fallen bandits, which was done very quickly, for the turf opened under spades easily, and when no trace of battle was left on that roadway, the march was continued toward Shydlovets.

Pan Serafin advised the young lady to sit again in the carriage, where she might have a good sleep before they reached the next halting place, but she declared so decisively that she would not desert Yatsek that even Father Voynovski did not try to remove her. So they went together, only two besides the driver, for sleep was so torturing Pani Dzvonkovski, that after a while they transferred her to the carriage.

Yatsek was lying face upward on bundles of hay arranged lengthwise in one side of the wagon, while she sat on the other, bending every little while toward his wounded shoulder, and watching to see if blood might not come through the bandages. At times she put a leather bottle of old wine to the mouth of the wounded man. This wine acted well to all seeming, for after a while he was wearied of lying, and had the driver draw out the bundle on which his feet were then resting.

"I prefer to ride sitting," said he, "since I feel all my strength now."

"But the wound, will that not pain you more if you are sitting?"

Yatsek turned his eyes to her rosy face, and said in a sad and low voice, "I will give the same answer as that knight long ago when King Lokietek saw him pierced with spears by the Knights of the Cross, on a battlefield. 'Is thy pain great?' asked the king. The knight showed his wounds then. 'These pain least of all,' said he in answer."

Panna Sieninski dropped her eyes. "But what pains you more?" inquired she in a whisper.

"A yearning heart, and separation, and the memory of wrongs inflicted."

For a while silence continued, but the hearts began to throb in both with power which increased every moment, for they knew that the time had come then in which they could and should confess everything which each had against the other.

"It is true," said she, "I did you an injustice, when, after the duel, I received you with angry face, and inhumanly. But that was the only time, and, though G.o.d alone knows how much I regretted that afterward, still I say it is my fault! and from my whole soul I implore you."

Yatsek put his sound hand to his forehead.

"Not that," answered he, "was the thorn, not that the great anguis.h.!.+"

"I know it was not that, but the letter from Pan Gideon. How could you suspect me of knowing the contents of the letter, or having suggested them?"

And she began to tell, with a broken voice, how it happened: how she had implored Pan Gideon to make a step toward being reconciled: how he had promised to write a heartfelt and fatherly letter, but he wrote entirely the opposite. Of this she learned only later from Father Voynovski, and from this it was shown that Pan Gideon having other plans, simply wanted to separate them from each other forever.

At the same time, since her words were a confession, and also a renewal of painful and bitter memories, her eyes were dimmed with tears, and from constraint and shame a deep blush came out on her cheeks from one instant to another.

"Did Father Voynovski," asked she at last, "not write to you that I knew nothing, and that I could not even understand why I received for my sincere feelings a recompense of that kind?"

"Father Voynovski," answered Yatsek, "only wrote me that you were going to marry Pan Gideon."

"But did he not write that I consented to do so only through orphanhood and pain and desertion, and out of grat.i.tude to my guardian? For I knew not then how he had treated you; I only knew that I was despised and forgotten."

When he heard this Yatsek closed his eyes and began to speak with great sadness.

"Forgotten? Is that G.o.d's truth? I was in Warsaw, I was at the king's court, I went through the country with my regiment, but whatever I did, and wherever I travelled, not for one moment didst thou go from my heart and my memory. Thou didst follow me as his shadow a man. And during nights without sleep, in suffering and in pain, which came simply from torture, many a time have I called to thee: 'Take pity, have mercy! grant to forget thee!' But thou didst not leave me at any time, either in the day, or the night, or in the field, or under a house roof, until at last I understood that only then could I tear thee from my heart when I had torn the heart itself from my bosom."

Here he stopped, for his voice was choked from emotion; but after a time he continued,--