Fire in the Steppe (37 page)

Eva was as if dazed. When Azya showed his inclination to her the first time, she was almost a child; after that she did not see him for a number of years, and had ceased to think of him. There remained with her the remembrance of him as a passionate stripling, who was half comrade to her brother, and half serving-lad. But now she saw him again; he stood before her a handsome hero and fierce as a falcon, a famous warrior, and, besides, the son of a foreign, it is true, but princely, stock. Therefore young Azya seemed to her altogether different; therefore the sight of him stunned her, and at the time dazzled and charmed her. Memories of him appeared before her as in a dream. Her heart could not love the young man in one moment, but in one moment she felt in it an agreeable readiness to love him.

Basia, unable to question her to the end, took her, with Zosia Boski, to an alcove, and began again to insist, "Eva, tell me quickly, awfully quickly, do you love him?"

A flame beat into the face of Eva. She was a dark-haired and dark-eyed maiden, with hot blood; and that blood flew to her cheeks at any mention of love.

"Eva," repeated Basia, for the tenth time, "do you love him?"

"I do not know," answered Eva, after a moment's hesitation.

"But you don't deny? Oho! I know. Do not hesitate. I told Michael first that I loved him,—no harm! and it was well. You must have loved each other terribly this long time. Ha! I understand now. It is from yearning for you that he has always been so gloomy; he went around like a wolf. The poor soldier withered away almost. What passed between you? Tell me."

"He told me in the storehouse that he loved me," whispered Eva.

"In the storehouse! What then?"

"Then he caught me and began to kiss me," continued she, in a still lower voice.

"Maybe I don't know him, that Mellehovich! And what did you do?"

"I was afraid to scream."

"Afraid to scream! Zosia, do you hear that? When was your loving found out?"

"Father came in, and struck him on the spot with a hatchet; then he whipped me, and gave orders to flog him so severely that he was a fortnight in bed."

Here Eva began to cry, partly from sorrow, and partly from confusion. At sight of this, the dark-blue eyes of the sensitive Zosia filled with tears, then Basia began to comfort Eva, "All will be well, my head on that! And I will harness Michael into the work, and Pan Zagloba. I will persuade them, never fear. Against the wit of Pan Zagloba nothing can stand; you do not know him. Don't cry, Eva dear, it is time for supper."

Mellehovich was not at supper. He was sitting in his own room, warming at the fire gorailka and mead, which he poured into a smaller cup afterward and drank, eating at the same time dry biscuits. Pan Bogush came to him late in the evening to talk over news.

The Tartar seated him at once on a chair lined with sheepskin, and placing before him a pitcher of hot drink, inquired, "But does Pan Novoveski still wish to make me his slave?"

"There is no longer any talk of that," answered the under-stolnik of Novgrod, "Pan Nyenashinyets might claim you first; but he cares nothing for you, since his sister is already either dead, or does not wish any change in her fate. Pan Novoveski did not know who you were when he punished you for intimacy with his daughter. Now he is going around like one stunned, for though your father brought a world of evil on this country, he was a renowned warrior, and blood is always blood. As God lives, no one will raise a finger here while you serve the country faithfully, especially as you have friends on all sides."

"Why should I not serve faithfully?" answered Azya. "My father fought against you; but he was a Pagan, while I profess Christ."

"That's it,—that's it! You cannot return to the Crimea, unless with loss of faith, and that would be followed by loss of salvation; therefore no earthly wealth, dignity, or office could recompense you. In truth, you owe gratitude both to Pan Nyenashinyets and Pan Novoveski, for the first brought you from among Pagans, and the second reared you in the true faith."

"I know," said Azya, "that I owe them gratitude, and I will try to repay them. Your grace has remarked truly that I have found here a multitude of benefactors."

"You speak as if it were bitter in your mouth when you say that; but count yourself your well-wishers."

"His grace the hetman and you in the first rank,—that I will repeat until death. What others there are, I know not."

"But the commandant here? Do you think that he would yield you into any one's hands, even though you were not Tugai Bey's son? And Pani Volodyovski, I heard what she said about you during supper. Even before, when Novoveski recognized you, she took your part. Pan Volodyovski would do everything for her, for he does not see the world beyond her; a sister could not have more affection for a brother than she has for you. During the whole time of supper your name was on her lips."

The young Tartar bent his head suddenly, and began to blow into the cup of hot drink; when he put out his somewhat blue lips to blow, his face became so Tartar-like that Pan Bogush said,—

"As God is true, how entirely like Tugai Bey you were this moment passes imagination. I knew him perfectly. I saw him in the palace of the Khan and on the field; I went to his encampment it is small to say twenty times."

"May God bless the just, and the plague choke evildoers!" said Azya. "To the health of the hetman!"

Pan Bogush drank, and said, "Health and long years! It is true those of us who stand with him are a handful, but true soldiers. God grant that we shall not give up to those bread-skinners, who know only how to intrigue at petty diets, and accuse the hetman of treason to the king. The rascals! We stand night and day with our faces to the enemy, and they draw around kneading-troughs full of hashed meat and cabbage with millet, and are drumming on them with spoons,—that is their labor. The hetman sends envoy after envoy, implores reinforcements for Kamenyets. Cassandra-like, he predicts the destruction of Ilion and the people of Priam; but they have no thought in their heads, and are simply looking for an offender against the king."

"Of what is your grace speaking?"

"Nothing! I made a comparison of Kamenyets with Troy; but you, of course, have not heard of Troy. Wait a little; the hetman will obtain naturalization for you. The times are such that the occasion will not be wanting, if you wish really to cover yourself with glory."

"Either I shall cover myself with glory, or earth will cover me. You will hear of me, as God is in heaven!"

"But those men? What is Krychinski doing? Will they return, or not? What are they doing now?"

"They are in encampment,—some in Urzyisk, others farther on. It is hard to come to an agreement at present, for they are far from one another. They have an order to move in spring to Adrianople, and to take with them all the provisions they can carry."

"In God's name, that is important, for if there is to be a great gathering of forces in Adrianople, war with us is certain. It is necessary to inform the hetman of this at once. He thinks also that war will come, but this would be an infallible sign."

"Halim told me that it is said there among them that the Sultan himself is to be at Adrianople."

"Praised be the name of the Lord! And here with us hardly a handful of troops. Our whole hope in the rock of Kamenyets! Does Krychinski bring forward new conditions?"

"He presents complaints rather than conditions. A general amnesty, a return to the rights and privileges of nobles which they had formerly, commands for the captains,—is what they wish; but as the Sultan has offered them more, they are hesitating."

"What do you tell me? How could the Sultan give them more than the Commonwealth? In Turkey there is absolute rule, and all rights depend on the fancy of the Sultan alone. Even if he who is living and reigning at present were to keep all his promises, his successor might break them or trample on them at will; while with us privileges are sacred, and whoso becomes a noble, from him even the king can take nothing."

"They say that they were nobles, and still they were treated on a level with dragoons; that the starostas commanded them more than once to perform various duties, from which not only a noble is free, but even an attendant."

"But if the hetman promises them."

"No one doubts the high mind of the hetman, and all love him in their hearts secretly; but they think thus to themselves: 'The crowd of nobles will shout down the hetman as a traitor; at the king's court they hate him; a confederacy threatens him with impeachment. How can he do anything?'"

Pan Bogush began to stroke his forelock. "Well, what?"

"They know not themselves what to do."

"And will they remain with the Sultan?"

"No."

"But who will command them to return to the Commonwealth?"

"I."

"How is that?"

"I am the son of Tugai Bey."

"My Azya," said Pan Bogush, after a while, "I do not deny that they may be in love with your blood and the glory of Tugai Bey, though they are our Tartars, and Tugai Bey was our enemy. I understand such things, for even with us there are nobles who say with a certain pride that Hmelnitski was a noble, and descended, not from the Cossacks, but from our people,—from the Mazovians. Well, though such a rascal that in hell a worse is not to be found, they are glad to recognize him, because he was a renowned warrior. Such is the nature of man! But that your blood of Tugai Bey should give you the right to command all Tartars, for this I see no sufficient reason."

Azya was silent for a time; then he rested his palms on his thighs, and said, "Then I will tell you; Krychinski and other Tartars obey me. For besides this, that they are simple Tartars and I a prince, there are resources and power in me. But neither you know them, nor does the hetman himself know them."

"What resources, what power?"

"I do not know how to tell you," answered Azya, in Russian. "But why am I ready to do things that another would not dare? Why have I thought of that of which another would not have thought?"

"What do you say? Of what have you thought?"

"I have thought of this,—that if the hetman would give me the will and the right, I would bring back, not merely the captains, but would put half the horde in the service of the hetman. Is there little vacant land in the Ukraine and the Wilderness? Let the hetman only announce that if a Tartar comes to the Commonwealth he will be a noble, will not be oppressed in his faith, and will serve in a squadron of his own people, that all will have their own hetman, as the Cossacks have, and my head for it, the whole Ukraine will be swarming soon. The Lithuanian Tartars will come; they will come from the South; they will come from Dobrudja and Belgrod; they will come from the Crimea; they will drive their flocks, and bring their wives and children in wagons. Do not shake your head, your grace; they will come!—as those came long ago who served the Commonwealth faithfully for generations. In the Crimea and everywhere the Khan and the murzas oppress the people; but in the Ukraine they will have their sabres, and take the field under their own hetman. I swear to you that they will come, for they suffer from hunger there from time to time. Now, if it is announced among the villages that I, by the authority of the hetman, call them,—that Tugai Bey's son calls,—thousands will come here."

Pan Bogush seized his own head: "By the wounds of God, Azya, whence did such thoughts come to you? What would there be?"

"There would be in the Ukraine a Tartar nation, as there is a Cossack. You have granted privileges to the Cossacks, and a hetman. Why should you not grant them to us? You ask what there would be. There would not be what there is now,—a second Hmelnitski,—for we should have put foot at once on the throat of the Cossack; there would not be an uprising of peasants, slaughter and ruin; there would be no Doroshenko, for let him but rise, and I should be the first to bring him on a halter to the feet of the hetman. And should the Turkish power think to move against us, we would beat the Sultan; were the Khan to threaten raids, we would beat the Khan. Is it so long since the Lithuanian Tartars, and those of Podolia, did the like, though remaining in the Mohammedan faith? Why should we do otherwise? We are of the Commonwealth, we are noble. Now, calculate. The Ukraine in peace, the Cossacks in check, protection against Turkey, a number of tens of thousands of additional troops,—this is what I have been thinking; this is what came to my head; this is why Krychinski, Adurovich, Moravski, Tarasovski, obey me; this is why one half the Crimea will roll to those steppes when I raise the call."

Pan Bogush was as much astonished and weighed down by the words of Azya as if the walls of that room in which they were sitting had opened on a sudden, and new, unknown regions had appeared to his eyes. For a long time he could not utter a word, and merely gazed on the young Tartar; but Azya began to walk with great strides up and down in the room. At last he said,—

"Without me this cannot be done, for I am the son of Tugai Bey; and from the Dnieper to the Danube there is no greater name among the Tartars." After a while he added: "What are Krychinski, Tarasovski, and others to me? It is not a question of them alone, or of some thousands of Lithuanian or Podolian Tartars, but of the whole Commonwealth. They say that in spring a great war will rise with the power of the Sultan; but only give me permission, and I will cause such a seething among the Tartars that the Sultan himself will scald his hands."

"In God's name, who are you, Azya?" cried Pan Bogush.

The young man raised his head: "The coming hetman of the Tartars!"

A gleam of the fire fell at that moment on Azya, lighting his face, which was at once cruel and beautiful. And it seemed to Pan Bogush that some new man was standing before him, such was the greatness and pride beating from the person of the young Tartar. Pan Bogush felt also that Azya was speaking the truth. If such a proclamation of the hetman were published, all the Lithuanian and Podolian Tartars would return without fail, and very many of the wild Tartars would follow them. The old noble knew passing well the Crimea, in which he had been twice as a captive, and, ransomed by the hetman, had been afterward an envoy; he knew the court of Bagchesarai; he knew the hordes living from the Don to the Dobrudja; he knew that in winter many villages were depopulated by hunger; he knew that the despotism and rapacity of the Khan's baskaks were disgusting to the murzas; that in the Crimea itself it came often to rebellion; he understood at once, then, that rich lands and privileges would entice without fail all those for whom it was evil, narrow, or dangerous in their old homesteads. They would be enticed most surely if the son of Tugai Bey raised the call. He alone could do this,—no other. He, through the renown of his father, might rouse villages, involve one half of the Crimea against the other half, bring in the wild horde of Belgrod, and shake the whole power of the Khan,—nay, even that of the Sultan. Should the hetman desire to take advantage of the occasion, he might consider Tugai Bey's son as a man sent by Providence itself.