Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

about the victory near Stóczek, where the Poles captured six Russian guns and some prisoners.

His letter ended with the words: “The Poles are victorious and the Russians are defeated! Hurrah!” Albína was in raptures. She examined the map, calculated where and when the Russians would be finally beaten, and grew pale and trembled when her father slowly opened the packets that arrived by post. One day her stepmother, happening to enter Albína’s room, found her standing before the looking-glass, dressed in a pair of trousers and a man’s hat. Albína was getting ready to run away from home in male attire to join the Polish army. Her stepmother told her father. He called his daughter to him, and (hiding his feeling of sympathy and even admiration) rebuked her sternly, demanding that she should give up her foolish idea of taking part in the war. “Women have other duties: to love and comfort those who sacrifice themselves for their country,” said he. Now he had need of her and she was his joy and solace; and the time would come when she would be needed by a husband. He knew how to influence her. He hinted at his loneliness and sorrows, and she pressed her face against him, hiding the tears which, for all that, wetted the sleeves of his dressing-gown; and she promised to undertake nothing without his consent.

III

Only those who experienced what the Poles endured after the partition of Poland and the subjugation of one part of it by the hated Germans, and of another part by the even more hated Russians, can understand the delight the Poles felt in 1830 and 1831 when, after their previous unfortunate attempts to regain independence, its attainment seemed again within reach. But these hopes did not last long. The forces were too unequal; and once more the revolution was crushed. Again tens of thousands of unreasoningly submissive Russians were driven into Poland. Under the leadership first of Diebitsch and then of Paskévitch⁠—subject to the supreme command of Nicholas I⁠—these Russians, without knowing why, saturated the ground with their own blood and with that of their brothers the Poles, whom they crushed and again placed under the power of weak, insignificant men who cared neither for the freedom nor the subjugation of Poland, but sought only to gratify their own avarice and childish vanity.

Warsaw was captured, and the separate Polish detachments were defeated. Hundreds and thousands of men were shot, flogged to death, or exiled. Among the latter was young Migoúrski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself sent as a common soldier in a line regiment, to Urálsk.

The Jaczéwskis spent the winter of 1832 in Vilna on account of the old man’s health; for after 1831 he began to suffer from heart disease. Here they received a letter from Migoúrski. He wrote from prison, saying that, hard as what he had gone through and had yet to undergo might be, he still was glad to have had an opportunity to suffer for his native land, and did not despair of the holy cause to which he had given part of his life, and for which he was prepared to give the remainder; and that if another chance occurred tomorrow, he would again act as he had done.

Reading the letter aloud, the old man broke down at this passage, sobbed, and was long unable to continue. In the latter part of the letter, which Wánda read out, Migoúrski wrote that whatever plans and dreams he might have had at the time of his last visit to them (which would ever remain the brightest spot in his life), he now neither could, nor would, speak of them.

Wánda and Albína each understood these words in her own way, and they spoke to no one of how they understood them. At the end of the letter Migoúrski sent messages to everyone, and among the rest⁠—in the playful tone he had adopted towards Albína during his visit⁠—he addressed her too, asking her whether she still ran as swiftly, outrunning the dogs? Did she still mimic everybody so well? He wished the old man good health; the mother, success in household matters; Wánda, a worthy husband; and Albína, the continuance of her joy of life.

IV

Old Jaczéwski’s health grew worse and worse, and in 1833 the whole family went abroad. In Baden, Wánda met a rich Polish emigrant, and married him. The old man’s illness progressed rapidly, and he died abroad early in 1833, in Albína’s arms. He would not let his wife nurse him, and to the last moment could not forgive her the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Jaczéwski returned to the country with Albína.

Albína’s chief interest in life was Migoúrski. In her eyes he was the greatest of heroes and martyrs, and to him she decided to devote her life. Even before going abroad she began to correspond with him, at first commissioned thereto by her father, and then on her own account. When she returned to Russia after her father’s death, she continued to correspond with him, and when she reached the age of eighteen she announced to her stepmother that she had decided to go to Migoúrski in Urálsk, and there to marry him.

Her stepmother began to blame Migoúrski for, as she said, selfishly wishing to improve his sad lot by inducing a wealthy girl, whose affections he had secured, to share his misfortunes. Albína thereupon became angry, and told her stepmother that no one but she could ascribe such low motives to a man who had sacrificed everything for his native land; that, on the contrary, Migoúrski had refused the help she had offered him; but that she had irrevocably decided to go to him and marry him, if only he would allow her that happiness. Albína was legally of age, and she had money: 300,000 zloty,314 a sum that an uncle had left to each of his