Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/141

Rh 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;