The Playground of Satan

by Beatrice C. Baskerville

Joseph went away a few days later; thus the last link was snapped, he thought. And they heard no more of him for a long time, except that he finally managed to get a commission in a Cossack regiment, which went to the Carpathians. Vanda wrote to the Countess and the priest, content with messages for Ian; and he did the same in return. She was nursing in the Cadets' College, turned into a military hospital, and said she liked the work. But her aunt detected homesickness in her letters.

When he let a thought dwell on her at all, Ian felt thankful she was not in Ruvno. For in the middle of November they began to live in the cellars. They were in the danger zone for a fortnight. The Prussians took Kosczielna, a few versts off, so that their shells as well as the Russians' sometimes burst near the house. Ruvno became an inferno of din and the inmates often wondered that it did not crumble about their heads. In their underground retreat they had a certain amount of coal and coke, so that their quarters though dampish, were not so bad as they might have been. A neighboring village fared worse than they did; not a cottage remained. The villagers dug themselves into the earth and lived like rabbits, elected an elder, whom they obeyed, and who ruled the little community as some of his ancestors must have ruled over as primitive a settlement many hundreds of years before. No sooner had petty officials, in the pay of the Russian government, fled before the roar of German guns than they organized their village life underground in a thoroughly sensible way. Having eaten up the little food which was left after the Prussians looted them in passing, they subsisted chiefly on roots and the scanty game yet to be had, and the sparrows and crows. Ian sent them rations every week, but could not be too liberal because he had his own villages to think of. Their worst plight was that they could hope for neither summer wheat nor potatoes of their own; they had no sooner finished the winter sowings than the Russian soldiers came and dug trenches through their land. They had no seed left, and when Ian gave them some, the rain washed most of it away. So those at Ruvno felt they were not so desperately unlucky after all.

Yet they had their troubles. One night the two armies who have made Poland their battlefield, seemed to have gone mad. For twelve hours there was a ceaseless uproar of heavy artillery, and the earth beneath them shook as if troubled by an endless earthquake. They gathered in one end of the cellars, where Father Constantine had fitted up a rough chapel, and prayed together for their own salvation and the Russians' victory. Towards morning, when they were chanting a hymn, such a thunderous noise broke over their heads that what had gone before seemed like some childish pastime. The earth rocked as if to swallow them in her entrails. They stopped singing, and waited for death. A woman shrieked, but none could hear her; only the lines of her open mouth and the horror on her face told them what she was doing. Szmul, the Jewish factor, his lank hair disheveled, his arms spread out with distended hands and fingers, rushed in and threw himself on to the ground, rolling in terror and shrieking continually. They had but one lamp for economy's sake, so that their little chapel, like those the early Christians used in Rome, was full of shadows. The Countess and Ian, after one horrified, questioning gaze at the Cross on the little altar, returned to their prayers, like the stout hearts and good Christians they were. She told her beads. Minnie, who had been standing at the back, ran towards Father Constantine with moving lips, but who could hear words when pandemonium was let loose? The peasants hugged their weeping children the closer and prayed for mercy. The priest, for one, felt sure his last hour was come, that God had summoned them as He had summoned so many thousands during the past few months. And so he said the prayers for the passing of souls, holding up the Cross, that all might see this symbol of eternal life.

They did not know how long they stood thus because people lose count of time when on the brink of eternity. But gradually the earth ceased to quiver, the tempest of bursting shells died down to an occasional boom. And they knew that the Almighty had seen fit to spare them through another night. Ian was the first to speak.

"They have brought down the house," he said to his mother. She nodded, but said nothing.

"Oh, woe unto Israel! Woe is me," wailed Szmul, squatting on his hams and moaning as the hired mourners at a Jewish funeral. Father Constantine told him to control himself or leave the chapel; and the calmer ones managed to comfort the others. Many peasants who had not cellars large enough for shelter were living down there with them. Szmul, whose hovel had no cellar at all, brought his numerous family. On the whole, they behaved splendidly during this night of anxiety and fear, when it seemed as if every stone in Ruvno had been brought about their ears.

The bombardment went on for hours; there was nothing to do but wait till it died down; only then could they go up and see what had happened. In days of ordinary activity the shells fell heaviest between seven at night and eight in the morning; then came a quiet hour when they managed to get some air, clean the cellars and examine damage done to house and village during the night. Between nine and ten, the "orchestra," as they called it, began again and went on till noon, when both Prussians and Russians paused for a meal. If the household was careful to dodge chance shells they had another two hours of liberty; if the Russians meant to begin before their regular time they let them know by a signal, to which Ian held the secret. The Russians' dinner-hour was Ruvno's busy time. Those peasants who had nothing left to eat came for rations; Ian had every detail of the daily round in clock-work order. The management of a large property like Ruvno, with its twenty farms and sixty square versts of forest land, was good training for him. Each man and woman living in the cellars had an appointed task, and Ian, the Countess, Minnie and Father Constantine saw that it was done. Their great trouble was to keep the cellar refuge in a moderately sanitary condition, because the peasants, none too clean in their houses, had no idea of the danger they ran from infectious diseases. Here, Minnie was invaluable. They escaped fevers; one child died of bronchitis, which was very bad when they took her to the cellar, her parents' cottage and shop having been razed to the ground by a shell. Things were in a worse state down in the village, where Father Constantine and the two ladies had daily fights with filth and ignorance whilst the heavy guns were resting. They could not make the peasants see that they were packed so much closer together, and subject to greater privations, they had to be far more careful than in better days. By one o'clock the rooms and park became dangerous, though they could dodge the shells between the house and the village till dusk, if they remembered the dead angles. But night fell early, and the rule was for all to answer roll-call in the passage between the two main cellars at half-past two. Ian called the names unless busy outside, or in the house; and then the old priest replaced him.

After that the weariness began. Though the family did what they could to keep the fifty refugees--peasants, children and Jews--amused, time hung heavy on their hands. They took down all the furniture they could, and kept their feet warm with carpets. But they used straw for the peasants and Jews because they could burn it when dirty. Father Constantine always said Szmul and his family were the filthiest people he ever saw; it was a trial to have them; but they put up with it, and had to own that the Jew, with his wretched Polish and his funny stories, kept the others amused.

Ian could not give them work that needed a good light, because he had to be careful with oil and sit in semi-darkness most of the evening. But he and the Countess read to them and told them stories; they also sang hymns and Polish patriotic songs, of which they never tired. One or two, who escaped from the massacres at Kalisz, told their experiences, and the villagers never tired of listening to that, either. Like children, they loved to hear a story repeated over and over again.

Father Constantine managed to write up his diary, though candles were so precious. As they always kept one small lamp in the chapel he wrote there. It was colder than near the stove, but he had both his fur coats on, besides a pair of felt boots in which he used to hunt when younger. When his fingers got numbed he blew on them and rubbed them till the blood circulated. Many of the people went there to say their prayers and he would do what he could for them before they left again.