For the Right

by Karl Emil Franzos

About a week passed quietly. Taras repeatedly went to commune with Hilarion, and the old man in his turn visited him in his little camp in the Dembronia Forest. But their people had no intercourse with each other. No news arrived from the lowlands, and no prayer for redress. The peasants believed the band to have dispersed, and the avenger to be either dead or somehow silenced.

But there was a poor mother far away in a village of the Bukowina who refused to believe that the man was dead, or no longer to be found, of whom alone she could hope that he would be the saviour of her unhappy child. Her neighbours laughed at her for setting out to seek him in the mountains; but she went and found him after a five days' anxious search. And the story she had to tell was so heartrending, that both Taras and Hilarion decided on the spot that her prayer must be granted, although the undertaking was fraught with more than usual danger, and even the bravest of the brave might well shrink back.

The victim in this case was a Ruthen maiden of rarest beauty, Tatiana Bodenko by name, who, in the district gaol of Czernowitz, was awaiting the Emperor's decision concerning the sentence of death which had been passed on her, following upon the verdict found by the local jury in fulfilment of their duty. That fair-haired, gentle creature, with the eyes of a fawn, had indeed committed murder; but it was one of those pitiful cases which the law must condemn, while the heart's sympathy will plead for the culprit.

Tatiana, who had only just reached her eighteenth year, was the eldest daughter of a poor gamekeeper, and had grown up amid all the hardships of poverty. The mother often was ailing, and the father absent on duty, so that at an early age the responsibility of rearing the younger children upon the humblest of means devolved on her. It was indeed a wonder that the flower of her beauty unfolded in spite of such nipping cares; but she fought hunger bravely and kept out the cold. There is a saying among her people that if God sees reason to punish a mother He gives beauty to the daughter, and that lightning loves to descend on the tallest trees. Poor Tatiana also had to learn that a girl's beauty may be her ruin. She was modest and sweet as a violet, but she could not help being seen; and all eyes that beheld her seemed spell-bound. But silent worship not being a virtue much known in those parts, she had much ado in keeping at a distance her rude admirers, and would often sigh at the thought that, with all her other burdens, she should have the special trouble of such beauty as well. But the day also was given her when she found that it was not altogether amiss to be lovely; she had made the acquaintance of a young peasant at a neighbouring village, and came to be grateful for her sweet face, since thereby she had gained his love. The young man was honest and fairly well off, her parents gave their blessing gladly, and that saying need never have come true as far as Tatiana was concerned had not an evil hour brought Mr. Eugene de Kotinski, the owner of the forest, to her father's cottage.

He was not a fast man of the worst type, and his morals hitherto had escaped the world's censure, but no sooner had he seen the girl than he was seized with a frenzied passion for her. Day after day he returned, like a moth to the candle, trying to win her with the most dazzling promises, and these failing, with cruel threats. Her prayers and tears availed not, and she withdrew into the silence of contempt. Suddenly his visits ceased; he had left the neighbourhood, hoping to master his folly. But the promptings of his nature, perhaps of his heart even, were too strong for such honest intentions; he returned to ask the keeper for the hand of his daughter. It was an unheard-of resolve for a man of his standing, making the gossips gape with wonder for miles around; but still more startling was the further news that Tatiana had rejected her noble suitor. She did not care to be his wife, and neither her mother's entreaty nor her father's abuse could move her; she remained true to her humble lover. But passion fed on rebuff, and the maddened nobleman now sought to gain his end by a baseness which many another of his kind, no doubt, would have had recourse to much sooner. He exerted his influence, and the young peasant was levied as a recruit and carried off into a distant province. But this villainous trick brought him not a step further, the girl repulsing him more firmly still, whereupon he played his last card, discharging the keeper and evicting him and his family from their humble cottage, though it was in the depth of winter and the poor wife sick and suffering.

But if Tatiana was the cause of all this trouble, she also was the unconscious means of help. A forest ranger in the neighbourhood, pitying the poor girl, took her father into his service, appointing him even to a better post than the one he had quitted. This man was a German of the name of Huber, of known respectability, and a widower beyond the heyday of life. But he succumbed nevertheless, offering the girl his honest love, and was more fortunate than the nobleman had been. Tatiana agreed to wean her heart from the young peasant, separated from her by cruel interference, and to secure a home and bread for her family by marrying the kind-hearted ranger. Her father's sudden illness only strengthened her resolve; he could die in peace, for the widow and orphans would thus be cared for. The wedding was postponed for the usual time of mourning, and this delay left room for evil slander. The ranger was informed that his wife that was to be had allowed herself to be visited secretly by Kotinski's valet. Of such baseness had that man's revenge been capable! And he must have paid his servant handsomely, for the wretch added oath upon oath when Huber interrogated him concerning the truth of the report. Calumny carried the day. He broke with the girl, and once more Tatiana, with her mother and the little ones, were homeless. Again pity held out a helping hand, a well-to-do widow in their own village receiving them into her house. But even here they were not safe from Kotinski's low-minded vengeance. That charitable widow was fined for giving shelter to a girl of bad character. When Tatiana heard this she took hold of the one possession they had left, her father's musket, and waylaying Kotinski as he rode about his property, she killed him by a shot through the heart; and going to the nearest magistrate she gave herself up on the spot.

The case against her was so plain that sentence could be passed almost immediately; according to the law, she had forfeited her young life and must atone for her deed on the gallows. When asked whether she had anything to say for herself, she made answer quietly: "You will not deny, sirs, that he deserved to die; and since my father is dead, and my eldest brother but nine years old, I had to do it myself." But in spite of this open confession, the jury unanimously agreed that the verdict should be accompanied by a strong recommendation to mercy. She was told of it, but all she said was: "Mere life is nothing to me. I suppose the Emperor would not let me go back to work for my mother and the children; so I do not care whether I die now, or some years hence in prison." And her whole bearing showed that she spoke as she felt. She returned to her cell, awaiting the imperial decision without a shade of disquietude. She considered she had done her duty--an evil duty, to be sure--and must take the consequences. Her fortitude was not the outcome of heroism, but simply that submissive yielding to the inevitable which is so strong a characteristic of Slavonic races; but in a case like this, and surrounded with the halo of so tragic a fate, it reflects the lustre of the higher virtue.

But while the girl thus awaited her fate calmly, Taras was coming to avert it. The hill country between the rivers Czeremosz, Pruth, and Sereth was almost bare of troops, and he knew the neighbourhood sufficiently; nevertheless this enterprise was the most daring of his ventures. There was the General with his concentrated forces not far to the left of him, and he was moving towards a city of some ten thousand inhabitants--not to mention its garrison, the strength of which he had not been able to learn. True, he had sent on Nashko and the Royal Eagle to procure information and to reconnoitre the situation of the prison; but these spies of his could scarcely rejoin him before he, at the head of his band, would have arrived in the vicinity of the town; and the least suspicion of their approach would bring almost certain failure, for the General could effectively cut off their retreat. No precaution, therefore, was omitted to avert discovery. They carried food for themselves and provender for their horses, in order to obviate intercourse with the peasantry. They rode by night only, and in small detachments, taking their rest and hiding in lonely places from the early dawn till late in the evening. They avoided villages--and solitary homesteads even--choosing the rocky woodland paths as much as possible, where the horses' hoofs left no traces behind them. Still, a hundred horsemen could not traverse the country as quietly as mice; and, apart from all this, everything depended on whether the attack could be carried out successfully within the space of an hour: if there were anything like a fight, the band was lost. Most of Taras's feats hitherto had been ventures for life or death; but the chances of utter failure never seemed more certain than this time. The Huzuls hardly realised it, or if they did, their great temerity despised the danger; but all the deeper was Taras's sense of responsibility.

With the first streak of dawn on the fourth day they reached that uninhabited forest region, rent with numberless ravines, between the village of Dracinetz and the Swabian settlement of Rosch, which forms the western suburb of Czernowitz. In the midst of this wild waste rises broadly and grandly the Cecina mountain, the brow of which, in times gone by, bore the ramparts and bastions of a considerable stronghold. In one of the hollows on the western slope, between rocks and brushwood, the band was halting; to this spot the spies had been ordered to return. They arrived in the course of the day, but their news was even less hopeful than Taras had anticipated. The prison itself was favourably situated in the outskirts of the city, but within a stone's throw of barracks containing some five hundred soldiers.

But Taras nevertheless resolved to venture, and the attack was not only successful, but was achieved without the loss even of a single life. The enterprise, which bordered on the impossible, was carried victoriously through by a series of happy chances.