The World's Greatest Books - Volume 7 Part 7

It was the evening after Bannockburn. The English hosts were in panic-stricken flight; Scotland at last was free. Robert Bruce, king and conquerer, entered the Abbey of Cambuskenneth with his betrothed, Isabella, and stood before the bier of Wallace.

Helen, wan and fragile, was borne on a litter from the adjoining nunnery. In her presence Bruce and Isabella were wedded; her trembling hands were held over them in blessing; then she threw herself prostrate on the coffin.

At the foot of Wallace's bier stood the iron box that the dead chieftain had so faithfully cherished. "Let this mysterious coffer be opened,"

said the Abbot of Inchaffray, "to reward the deliverer of Scotland according to its intent" Bruce unclasped the lock, and the regalia of Scotland was discovered!

"And thus Wallace crowns thee!" said the Bishop of Dunkeld, taking the diadem from its coffer and setting it on Brace's head.

But Helen lay motionless. They raised her, and looked upon a clay-cold face. Her soul had fled.

ALEXANDER SERGEYEVITCH PUSHKIN

The Captain's Daughter

Alexander Sergeyevitch Pushkin was born at Moscow on June 7, 1799. He came of an ancient family, a strange ancestor being a favourite negro enn.o.bled by Peter the Great, who bequeathed to him a ma.s.s of curly hair and a somewhat darker skin than usually falls to the lot of the ordinary Russian. Early in life a daring "Ode to Liberty" brought him the displeasure of the court, and the young poet narrowly escaped a journey to Siberia by accepting an official post at Kis.h.i.+neff, in Southern Russia. But on the accession of Tsar Nicholas in 182s, Pushkin was recalled and appointed imperial historiographer. His death, which occurred on February 10, 1837, was the result of a duel fought with his brother-in-law.

Pushkin's career was one of almost unparallelled brilliancy.

As a poet, he still remains the greatest Russia has produced; and although his prose works do not rise to the high standard of his verse, yet they are of no inconsiderable merit. "The Captain's Daughter, a Russian Romance," was written about 1831, and published under the _nom de plume_ of Ivan Byelkin.

It is a story of the times of Catherine II., and is not only told with interest and charm, but with great simplicity and reality, and with a due sense of drama. Others of his novels are "The Pistol Shot," "The Queen of Spades," and "The Undertaker," the last-named a grim story in a style that has been familiarised to English readers by Edgar Allan Poe.

_I.--I Join the Army_

My father, after serving in the army, had retired with the rank of senior major. Since that time he had always lived on his estate, where he married the eldest daughter of a poor gentleman in the neighbourhood.

All my brothers and sisters died young, and it was decided that I should enter the army.

When I was nearly seventeen, instead of being sent to join the guards'

regiment at Petersburg, my father told me I was going to Orenburg. "You will learn nothing at Petersburg but to spend money and commit follies,"

he said. "No, you shall smell powder and become a soldier, not an idler."

It seemed horrible to me to be doomed to the dullness of a savage and distant province, and to lose the gaiety I had been looking forward to; but there was nothing for it but to submit.

The morning arrived for my departure, the travelling carriage was at the door, and our old servant Savelutch was in attendance to accompany me.

Two days later, when we were nearing our destination, a snowstorm overtook us. We might have perished in the snow, for all traces of the road were lost, but for a stranger who guided us to a small and lonely inn, where we pa.s.sed the night. In the morning, to the sorrow of Savelutch, I insisted on giving our guide, who was but thinly clad, one of my cloaks--a hare-skin _touloup_.

"Thanks, your excellency," said the vagrant, "and may heaven reward you.

As long as I live I shall never forget your kindness."

I soon forgot the snowstorm, the guide, and my hare-skin _touloup_, and on arrival at Orenburg hasted to wait on the general, an old comrade-in-arms of my father's. The general received me kindly, examined my commission, told me there was nothing for me to do in Orenburg, and sent me on to Fort Belogorsk to serve under Commander Mironoff. Belogorsk lay about thirty miles beyond Orenburg, on the frontier of the Kirghiz Kaisak Steppes, and it was to this outlandish place I was banished.

I expected to see high bastions, a wall and a ditch, but there was nothing at Belogorsk but a little village, surrounded by a wooden palisade. An old iron cannon was near the gateway, the streets were narrow and crooked, and the commandant's house to which I had been driven was a wooden erection.

Va.s.silissa Ignorofna, the commandant's wife, received me with simple kindness, and treated me at once as one of the family. An old army pensioner and Palashka, the one servant, laid the cloth for dinner; while in the square, near the house, the commandant, a tall and hale old man, wearing a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, was busy drilling some twenty elderly men--all pensioners.

Chvabrine, an officer who had been dismissed from the guards for fighting a duel, and Marya, a young girl of sixteen, with a fresh, round face, the commandant's daughter, were also at dinner.

Mironoff pleaded in excuse for being late for dinner that he had been busy drilling his little soldiers, but his wife cut him short ruthlessly.

"Nonsense," she said, "you're only boasting; they are past service, and you don't remember much about the drill. Far better for you to stay at home and say your prayers." Va.s.silissa Ignorofna never seemed to stop talking, and overwhelmed me with questions.

In the course of a few weeks I found that she not only led her husband completely, but also directed all military affairs, and ruled the fort as completely as she did the household. This really suited Ivan Mironoff very well, for he was a good-hearted, uneducated man, staunch and true, who had been raised from the ranks, and was now grown lazy. Both husband and wife were excellent people, and I soon became attached to them, and to the daughter Marya, an affectionate and sensible girl.

As for Chvabrine, he at first professed great friends.h.i.+p for me; but being in love with Marya, who detested him, he began to hate me when he saw a growing friendliness between Marya and myself.

I was now an officer, but there was little work for me to do. There was no drill, no mounting guard, no reviewing of troops. Sometimes Captain Mironoff tried to drill his soldiers, but he never succeeded in making them know the right hand from the left.

All seemed peace, in spite of my quarrels with Chvabrine. Every day I was more and more in love with Marya, and the notion that we might be disturbed at Fort Belogorsk by any repet.i.tion of the riots and revolts which had taken place in the province of Orenburg the previous year was not entertained. Danger was nearer than we had imagined. The Cossacks and half-savage tribes of the frontier were again already in revolt.

_II.--The Rebel Chief_

One evening early in October, 1773, Captain Mironoff called Chvabrine and me to his house. He had received a letter from the general at Orenburg with information that a fugitive Cossack named Pugatchef had taken the name of the late Czar, Peter III., and, with an army of robbers, was rousing the country, destroying forts and committing murder and theft. The news spread quickly, and then came a disquieting report that a neighbouring fort some sixteen miles away had been taken by Pugatchef, and its officers hanged.

Neither Mironoff nor Va.s.silissa showed any fear, and the latter declined to leave Belogorsk, though willing that Marya should be sent to Orenburg for safety. An insolent proclamation from Pugatchef, inviting us to surrender on peril of death, and the treachery of our Cossacks and of Chvabrine, who went over at once to the rebels, only made the commandant and his wife more resolute.

"The scoundrel!" cried Va.s.silissa. "He has the impudence to invite us to lay our flag at his feet, and he doesn't know we have been forty years in the service!"

It was the same when Pugatchef was actually at our door, and the a.s.sault had actually begun. Old Ivan Mironoff blessed his daughter, and embraced his wife, and then faced death. There was no fight in the poor old pensioners who made up our garrison, and both Mironoff and myself were soon captured, bound with ropes, and led before Pugatchef.

The commandant indignantly refused to swear fidelity to the robber chief, and was hanged there and then in the market square; an old one-eyed lieutenant was soon swinging by his side. Then came my turn, and I gave the same answer as my captain had done. The rope was round my neck, when Pugatchef shouted out "Stop!" and ordered my release. A few minutes later, and poor old Va.s.silissa, who had come in search of her husband, was lying dead in the market square, cut down by a Cossack's sword. Pugatchef's arrival had prevented Marya's escape to Orenburg, and she was now lying too ill to be moved, in the house of Father Gara.s.sim, the parish priest.

Pugatchef gave me leave to depart in safety, but before Savelutch and I left the fort, the rebel bade me come and see him. He laughed aloud when I presented myself.

"Who would have thought," he said, "that the man who guided you to a lodging on that night of the snowstorm was the great tzar himself? But you shall see better things; I will load you with favours when I have recovered my empire."

Then he invited me again and again to enter his service, but I told him I had sworn fidelity to the crown; and finally he let me go, saying: "Either entirely punish or entirely pardon. Tell the officers at Orenburg they may expect me in a week."

It hurt me to leave Marya behind, especially as Pugatchef had made Chvabrine commandant of the fort, but there was no help for it. Father Gara.s.sim and his wife bade me good-bye. "Except you, poor Marya has no longer any protector or comforter," said the priest's wife.

At Orenburg I was in safety, but the town was soon besieged, and I could not persuade the general to sally out and attack the rebels. All through those dreary weeks of the siege I was wondering anxiously about Marya, and then one day when we had been driving off a party of cossacks, one of the rebels, whom I recognised a former soldier at Belogorsk, lingered to give me a letter. It was from Marya, and she told me that she was now in the house of Chvabrine, who threatened to kill her or hand her over to the robber camp if she did not marry him, and that she had but three days left before her fate would be sealed. Death would be easier, she said, than to be the wife of a man like Chvabrine.

I rushed off at once to the general, and implored him to give me a battalion of soldiers, and let me march on Belogorsk; but the general only shook his head, and said the expedition was unreasonable.

I decided to go alone and appeal to Pugatchef, but the faithful Savelutch insisted on accompanying me, and together we arrived at the rebel camp.

Pugatchef received me quite cordially, and I told him the truth, that I was in love with Marya, and that Chvabrine was persecuting her. He flared up indignantly at Chvabrine's presumption, and declared he would take me at once to Belogorsk, and attend my wedding. But on our arrival Chvabrine mentioned that Marya was the daughter of Mironoff, and immediately the countenance of the robber chief clouded over.