The Destroyer: A Tale of International Intrigue

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

"Are you really in earnest?" she asked.

"Indeed I am," he answered quickly, colouring a little under her searching eyes. "Forgive me if I seemed not to be. And please begin in any way you think best."

"I will tell you something about Poland," she said, "and then you will understand a little what I and all like me feel for America. You know, I suppose, that there is no longer any such land as Poland?"

"I know that Russia and one or two other powers divided it, about a hundred years ago."

"Yes; but you cannot know what that division meant! The Poles were a brave and patriotic people; they loved their country as few peoples do; and all at once, great armies were flung upon them; they were overwhelmed, and their country was taken away. They lost more than their country: they lost their language, their history, their national life. But in spite of it all, they remained Poles.

"I was born in Russian Poland, not far from Warsaw. From the very first, I was taught that I was a Pole, not a Russian. But only at home, under my own roof, could I be a Pole. The teaching of Polish was forbidden in any school—every word spoken must be Russian. If children were overheard talking in Polish, they were arrested by the police and their parents summoned and fined. On every public building there was a painted notice: 'It is forbidden to speak Polish.' All trials were conducted in Russian, although none of the peasants understood Russian, and so had no idea of what was being said. No official was permitted to answer a question in Polish—I have known a tramcar conductor to be heavily fined for doing so.

"We were taught history in which the name of our fatherland was never mentioned, but where Russia was treated as the wisest, best, and most powerful of nations, with the Czar second only to God himself. We could not leave our native village without permission from the police. No Pole could fill any public office. No Pole was permitted to publish a book or a newspaper or even a handbill, until a Russian censor had passed upon it. If you ever visit Poland, you will notice, here and there, groups of tall wooden crosses. They mark graves. But if one of those crosses decays or falls down, it may not be replaced without permission from the government. One night, the cross over the grave of my father's mother was struck by lightning; and for two years it lay there, until permission to replace it had come from Petersburg. It was among such surroundings that my childhood was passed."

Kasia did not seem to realise that, instead of telling about Poland, she was telling about herself; and Dan was deeply moved. He had listened, in his day, to many stories, but never to one like this. It was as though the dead wrappings of history were stripped away, and its seething, desperate, tragic heart laid bare.

"Go on," he said thickly, and folded his arms tightly across his breast.

"My father had hoped to be a student of science," she went on; "but he was refused admission to the university because of some absurd suspicion, and after that he could study only secretly. When he married, he rented a little farm near Warsaw; and there he and mother toiled all day long, and the children too, as soon as they were old enough. There were four children—two boys and two girls. I was the youngest. Twice every year, my mother, my sister and I walked in to Warsaw, and spent a week there helping to clean the streets; this service was required of all families in the villages about Warsaw, and could be escaped only by paying a heavy tax. We had also to assist in keeping the roads in repair, and for this, too, the women and children were employed, since the men could not be spared from the work of the farm. At nightfall we were always exhausted, and would swallow our soup and black bread hastily, and then fling ourselves down, dressed as we were, on a heap of straw in one corner. We were very poor, and yet not so poor as we seemed; but to have added one little comfort to our home would have meant a visit from the tax-inquisitor, and perhaps a search. The only way to escape this was to live in miserable poverty.