CHAPTER XIII.
SERF AND BOYAR.
“Vengeance, deep brooding o’er the slain,
Had locked the source of softer woe;
And burning pride and high disdain
Forbade the rising tear to flow.”
It was evening. Ivan Pojarsky sat alone in the saloon of the Wertsch family mansion. The costly furniture with which it was strewn had that indescribable air of neglect and forlornness which household goods assume when death, or sorrow deep as death, broods over their owners. There was disorder too: chairs had been dragged carelessly about, and their rich and delicate coverings soiled and crumpled; while a beautiful climbing plant, laden with rare flowers, lay unheeded on the floor beside the broken shaft that had been its support. A costly buhl table near Ivan’s chair had the remains of his last meal upon it.
Within the apartment all was still,—Ivan sat motionless and silent, his head resting on his hands,—but without there was a hoarse, continuous, never-ending murmur, made up of many sounds. There was the tramp of armed men, heavy and monotonous. There was the roll and rumble of ten thousand wheels—wheels of every sort and description, from those of the ponderous waggon laden with the goods of an entire household to those of the light telega, from which every now and then a scout was imparting to the breathless crowd his tidings that the standards of Napoleon had been seen at such or such a point of the Smolensko road. Mingling with and following the stately rhythmic march of the disciplined hosts was the tread of innumerable footsteps—footsteps of women and little children, of boys and aged men, who were leaving with breaking hearts the only home they had ever known. And if the weeping and wailing, the sighs and groans and cries, which filled the clear September air did not rise above all other sounds, it was only because the things most deep and real are ofttimes the last to meet the eye or reach the ear—except, indeed, the ever-present eye and the ever-listening ear of Him who notes “the sob in the dark and the falling of tears.”
Suddenly Ivan raised his head and looked around him. The last few weeks had changed him wonderfully. He appeared several years older—no longer a stripling, but a man, with a man’s responsibilities, thoughts, and duties. There was in his young face a look of sternness, as of one who had to do hard things and to bid others do them; there was the high, courageous, half-defiant air of one who dares death cheerfully, even joyfully, and also an expression of proud though mournful satisfaction. For had not he, a youth scarcely twenty, been intrusted with a terrible secret, been charged with a desperate but honourable mission?
“Beg pardon, gospodin,” said a servant, entering. Ivan was now virtually the master of the household, for both the Wertsches were with the army—Adrian serving as a volunteer, Leon as a lieutenant of hussars. “Here is a mujik,” continued the servant, “who wishes to speak with your excellency.”
“Send him in,” said Ivan quickly. “And—stay a moment, Joseph. What does your wife say of her mistress?”
“The countess, gospodin, will not hear reason from my wife, though she has been waiting upon her these twenty years, any more than from your excellency. ‘The French,’ says my lady, ‘will never enter holy Moscow. They dare not.’ I must own, Lord Ivan, that Maria thinks this very hard; because if our lady the countess will not be persuaded to go away, as all other folk are doing who have brains in their heads, she—my wife I mean—must stay, too, of course, and be murdered by the Nyemtzi.”