With Fire And Sword Part 114

"Now, Kisel, don't be gloomy," said the hetman, "and don't take to heart what I say, for I've been drinking. Fortune-tellers inform me that there must be war, but I'll wait till next gra.s.s. Let there be a commission then; I will free the captives at that time. They tell me that you are ill, so let this be to your health!"

Again Hmelnitski dropped into momentary tenderness, and resting his hand on the shoulder of the voevoda brought his enormous red face to the pale, emaciated cheeks of Kisel.

After him came other colonels, and approaching the commissioners with familiarity shook their hands, clapped them on the shoulders, repeated after the hetman: "Till next gra.s.s." The commissioners were in torment.

The peasant breaths, filled with the odor of gorailka, came upon the faces of those n.o.bles of high birth, for whom the pressure of those sweating hands was as unendurable as an affront. Threatenings also were not lacking among the expressions of vulgar cordiality. Some cried to the voevoda: "We want to kill Poles, but you are our man!" Others said: "Well, in times past, you killed our people, now you ask favors!

Destruction to you!" "You white hands!" cried Ataman Vovk, formerly miller in Nestervar, "I slew my landlord. Prince Chertvertinski." "Give us Yeremi," said Yashevski, rolling along, "and we will let you off!"

It became stifling in the room and hot beyond endurance. The table covered with remnants of meat, fragments of bread, stained with vudka and mead, was disgusting. At last the fortune-tellers came in,--conjurers with whom the hetman usually drank till late at night, listening to their predictions,--strange forms, old, bent, yellow, or in the vigor of youth, soothsaying from wax, grains of wheat, fire, water, foam, from the bottom of a flask or from human fat. Among the colonels and the youngest of them there was frolicking and laughing.

Kisel came near fainting.

"We thank you, Hetman, for the feast, and we bid you good-by," said he, with a weak voice.

"Kisel, I will come to you to-morrow to dine," answered Hmelnitski, "and now return home. Donyets with his men will attend you, so that nothing may happen to you from the crowd."

The commissioners bowed and went out. Donyets with the Cossacks was waiting at the door.

"O G.o.d! O G.o.d! O G.o.d!" whispered Kisel, quietly, raising his hands to his face.

The party moved in silence to the quarters of the commissioners. But it appeared that they were not to stop near one another. Hmelnitski had a.s.signed them purposely quarters in different parts of the town, so that they could not meet and counsel easily.

Kisel, suffering, exhausted, barely able to stand, went to bed immediately, and permitted no one to see him till the following day; then before noon he ordered Pan Yan to be called.

"Have you acted wisely?" asked he. "What have you done? You might have exposed our lives and your own to destruction."

"Serene voevoda, mea culpa! but delirium carried me away, and I preferred to perish a hundred times rather than behold such things."

"Hmelnitski saw the slight put on him, and I was barely able to pacify the wild beast and explain your act. He will be with me to-day, and will undoubtedly ask for you. Then tell him that you had an order from me to lead away the soldiers."

"From to-day forth Bjozovski takes the command, for he is well."

"That is better; you are too stubborn for these times. It is difficult to blame you for anything in this act except lack of caution; but it is evident that you are young and cannot bear the pain that is in your breast."

"I am accustomed to pain, serene voevoda, but I cannot endure disgrace."

Kisel groaned quietly, just like an invalid when touched on the sore spot. Then he smiled with a gloomy resignation, and said,--

"Such words are daily bread for me, which for a long time I eat moistened with bitter tears; but now the tears have failed me."

Pity rose in Skshetuski's heart at the sight of this old man with his martyr's face, who was pa.s.sing the last days of his life in double suffering, for it was a suffering both of the mind and the body.

"Serene voevoda," said he, "G.o.d is my witness that I was thinking only of these fearful times when senators and dignitaries of the Crown are obliged to bow down before the rabble, for whom the empaling stake should be the only return for their deeds."

"G.o.d bless you, for you are young and honest. I know that you have no evil intention. But that which you say your prince says, and with him the army, the n.o.bles, the Diets, half the Commonwealth; and all that burden of scorn and hatred falls upon me."

"Each serves the country as he understands, and let G.o.d judge intentions. As to Prince Yeremi, he serves the country with his health and his property."

"Applause surrounds him, and he walks in it as in the sunlight,"

answered the voevoda. "And what comes to me? Oh, you have spoken justly! Let G.o.d judge intentions, and may he give even a quiet grave to those who in life suffer beyond measure."

Skshetuski was silent, and Kisel raised his eyes in mute prayer. After a while he began to speak,--

"I am a Russian, blood and bone. The tomb of the Princes Sviatoldovichi lies in this land; therefore I have loved it and that people of G.o.d whom it nourishes at its breast. I have witnessed injuries committed by both sides; I have seen the license of the wild Zaporojians, but also the unendurable insolence of those who tried to enslave that warlike people. What was I to do,--I, a Russian, and at the same time a true son and senator of this Commonwealth? I joined myself to those who said 'Pax vobisc.u.m!' because my blood and my heart so enjoined; and among the men whom I joined were our father, the late king, the chancellor, the primate, and many others. I saw that for both sides dissension was destruction; I desired all my life to my last breath to labor for concord; and when blood was already shed I thought to myself, 'I will be an angel of union.' I continued to labor, and I labor still, though in pain, torment, and disgrace, and in doubt almost more terrible than all. As G.o.d is dear to me, I know not now whether your prince came too early with his sword or I too late with the olive branch; but this I see, that my work is breaking, that strength is wanting, that in vain I knock my gray head against the wall, and going down to the grave I see only darkness before me, and destruction,--O G.o.d! destruction on every side."

"G.o.d will send salvation."

"May he send a ray of it before my death, that I die not in despair!--this in return for all my sufferings. I will thank him for the cross which I carry during life,--thank him because the mob cry for my head, because they call me a traitor at the Diets, because my property is plundered, and for the disgrace in which I live,--for all the bitter reward which I have received from both sides."

When he had finished speaking, the voevoda extended his dry hands toward heaven; and two great tears, perhaps the very last in his life, flowed out of his eyes.

Pan Yan could restrain himself no longer, but falling on his knees before the voevoda, seized his hand, and said in a voice broken by great emotion,--

"I am a soldier, and move on another path; but I give honor to merit and suffering." And the n.o.ble and knight from the regiment of Yeremi pressed to his lips the hand of that Russian who some months before he with others had called a traitor.

Kisel placed both hands on Skshetuski's head. "My son," said he in a low voice, "may G.o.d comfort, guide, and bless you, as I bless you."

The vicious circle of negotiations began from that very day. Hmelnitski came rather late to the voevoda's dinner, and in the worst temper. He declared immediately that what he had said yesterday about suspension of arms, a commission at Whitsuntide, and the liberation of prisoners he said while drunk, and that he now saw an intention to deceive him.

Kisel calmed him again, pacified him, gave reasons; but these speeches were, according to the words of the chamberlain of Lvoff, "surdo tyranno fabula dicta." The hetman began then with such rudeness that the commissioners were sorry not to have the Hmelnitski of yesterday.

He struck Pan Pozovski with his baton, only because he had appeared before him out of season, in spite of the fact that Pozovski was nearly dead already from serious illness.

Neither courtesy and good-will nor the persuasions of the voevoda were of use. When he had become somewhat excited by gorailka and the choice mead of Gushchi, he fell into better humor, but then he would not on any account let himself speak of public affairs, saying, "If we are to drink, let us drink,--to-morrow business and discussion,--if not, I'll be off with myself." About three o'clock in the morning he insisted on going to the sleeping-room of the voevoda, which the latter opposed under various pretexts; for he had shut in Skshetuski there on purpose, fearing that at the meeting of this stubborn soldier with Hmelnitski something disagreeable might happen which would be the destruction of the colonel. But Hmelnitski insisted and went, followed by Kisel. What was the astonishment of the voevoda when the hetman, seeing the knight, nodded to him, and cried,--

"Skshetuski, why were you not drinking with us?" And he stretched out his hand to him in a friendly manner.

"Because I am sick," replied the colonel, bowing.

"You went away yesterday. The pleasure was nothing to me without you."

"Such was the order he had," put in Kisel.

"Don't tell me that, Voevoda. I know him, and I know that he did not want to see you giving me honor. Oh, he is a bird! But what would not be forgiven another is forgiven him, for I like him, and he is my dear friend."

Kisel opened wide his eyes in astonishment. The hetman turned to Pan Yan. "Do you know why I like you?"

Skshetuski shook his head.

"You think it is because you cut the lariat at Omelnik when I was a man of small note and they hunted me like a wild beast. No, it is not that.

I gave you a ring then with dust from the grave of Christ. Horned soul!

you did not show me that ring when you were in my hands; but I set you at liberty anyhow, and we were even. That's not why I like you now. You rendered me another service, for which you are my dear friend, and for which I owe you thanks."

Pan Yan looked with astonishment at Hmelnitski.

"See how he wonders!" said the hetman, as if speaking to some fourth person. "Well, I will bring to your mind what they told me in Chigirin when I came there from Bazaluk with Tugai Bey. I inquired everywhere for my enemy, Chaplinski, whom I did not find; but they told me what you did to him after our first meeting,--that you grabbed him by the hair and trousers, beat the door open with him, drew blood from him as from a dog."

"I did in fact do that," said Skshetuski.

"You did splendidly, you acted well. But I'll reach him yet, or treaties and commissions are in vain,--I'll reach him yet, and play with him in my own fas.h.i.+on; but you gave him pepper."

The hetman now turned to Kisel, and began to tell how it was: "He caught him by the hair and trousers, lifted him like a fox, opened the door with him, and hurled him into the street." Here he laughed till the echo resounded in the side-room and reached the drawing-room.

"Voevoda, give orders to bring mead, for I must drink to the health of this knight, my friend."