I head a low, heartfelt cry, and saw Anne beside me, her fair face ashen white, her eyes dilated with horror and compassion, as she stared at her friend’s corpse.
“Go back!” I said roughly. “You can do nothing for her. And we will see to the rest; go back, I say. There may be more trouble.”
“My duty is here,” she said quietly, and passed on to bend over a woman who was kneeling and screaming beside a small body,—that of a lad about eight or nine years old,—which lay very still.
It was, as I well knew, useless to argue with Anne; so I went on with my ambulance work in grim silence, keeping near her, and letting the others go to and fro, helping the wounded into shelter and carrying away the dead. Natalya had run out also and joined her mistress. Yossof was not at hand; it was he whom we expected to bring the news we were awaiting so eagerly. He had come with us to Warsaw, and though he lived in the Ghetto among his Jewish kindred, was constantly back and forth. He was invaluable as a messenger,—a spy some might call him,—although he knew no language but Yiddish and Polack, and the queer Russian lingo that was a mingling of all three. But of course he learned a great deal from his fellow Jews. Hunted, persecuted, wretched as they are, the Polish and Russian Jews always have, or can command, money, and the way they get hold of news is nothing short of marvellous,—in the Warsaw Ghetto, anyhow!
There was quite a crowd around us soon, as the people who had fled before the Cossacks came back again,—weeping, gesticulating, shouting imprecations on the Tzar, the Government, the soldiers,—as they always did when they were excited; but, as usual, doing very little to help.
All at once there was a bigger tumult near at hand, and a mob came pouring along the street, a disorderly procession of men and women and little children, flaunting banners, waving red handkerchiefs, laughing, crying, shouting, and singing, as if they were more than half delirious with joy and excitement. And what was more remarkable, there were neither police nor soldiers in sight, nor any sign of Loris or his men. Many such processions occurred in Warsaw that day, when the great news came,—news that was soon to be so horribly discounted and annulled; and that, for me, was rendered insignificant, even in that first hour, by the great tragedy that followed hard upon its coming,—the tragedy that will overshadow all my life. Even after the lapse of years I can scarcely bring myself to write of it, though every incident is stamped indelibly on my brain. Clear before my eyes now rises Anne’s face, as, with her arm about the poor mother—who was half fainting—she turned and looked at the joyous rabble.
“What is it?” she cried, and at the same instant Yossof hurried up, and spoke breathlessly to her.
She listened to his message with parted lips, her eyes starry with the light of ecstatic joy.
“What is it?” I asked in my turn, for I couldn’t catch what Yossof said.
“It’s true,—it’s true; oh, thank God for all His mercies! The end is in sight, Maurice; the new era is beginning—has begun. The Tzar has yielded; he has issued the manifesto, granting all demands—”