“Who’s been taken, and where to?”
“My husband … sent off to Krapívny.”
“Why? What for?”
“For a soldier, you know. But it’s wrong—because, you see, he’s the breadwinner! We can’t get on without him. … Be a father to us, sir!”
“But how is it? Is he the only man in the family?”
“Just so … the only man!”
“Then how is it they have taken him, if he’s the only man?”
“Who can tell why they’ve done it? … Here am I, left alone with the children! There’s nothing for me but to die. … Only I’m sorry for the children! My last hope is in your kindness, because, you see, it was not right!”
I wrote down the name of her village, and her name and surname, and told her I would see about it and let her know.
“Help me, if it’s only ever so little! … The children are hungry, and, God’s my witness, I haven’t so much as a crust. The baby is worst of all … there’s no milk in my breasts. If only the Lord would take him!”
“Haven’t you a cow?” I asked.
“A cow? Oh, no! … Why, we’re all starving!” said she, crying, and trembling all over in her tattered coat.
I let her go, and prepared for my customary walk. It turned out that the doctor, who lives with us, was going to visit a patient in the village the soldier’s wife had come from, and another patient in the village where the District Police Station is situated, so I joined him, and we drove off together.
I went into the Police Station, while the doctor attended to his business in that village.
The District Elder was not in, nor the clerk, but only the clerk’s assistant—a clever lad whom I knew. I asked him about the woman’s husband, and why, being the only man in the family, he had been taken as a conscript.
The clerk’s assistant looked up the particulars, and replied that the woman’s husband was not the only man in the family: he had a brother.
“Then why did she say he was the only one?”
“She lied! They always do,” replied he, with a smile.
I made some inquiries about other matters I had to attend to, and then the doctor returned from visiting his patient, and we drove towards the village in which the soldier’s wife lived. But before we were out of the first village, a girl of about twelve came quickly across the road towards us.
“I suppose you’re wanted?” I said to the doctor.
“No, it’s your Honour I want,” said the girl to me.
“What is it?”
“I’ve come to your Honour, as mother is dead, and we are left orphans—five of us. Help us! … Think of our needs!”
“Where do you come from?”
The girl pointed to a brick house, not badly built.
“From here … that is our house. Come and see for yourself!”
I got out of the sledge, and went towards the house. A woman came out and asked me in. She was the orphans’ aunt. I entered a large, clean room; all the children were there, four of them: besides the eldest girl—two boys, a girl, and another boy of about two. Their aunt told me all about the family’s circumstances. Two years ago the father had been killed in a mine. The widow tried to get compensation, but failed. She was left with four children; the fifth was born after her husband’s death. She struggled on alone as best she could, hiring a labourer at first to work her land. But without her husband things went worse and worse. First they had to sell their cow, then the horse, and at last only two sheep were left. Still they managed to live somehow; but two months ago the woman herself fell ill and died, leaving five children, the eldest twelve years old.
“They must get along as best they can. I try to help them, but can’t do much. I can’t think what’s to become of them! I wish they’d die! … If one could only get them into some orphanage—or at least some of them!”
The eldest girl evidently understood and took in the whole of my conversation with her aunt.
“If at least one could get little Nicky placed somewhere! It’s awful; one can’t leave him for a moment,” said she, pointing to the sturdy little two-year old urchin, who with his little sister was merrily laughing at something or other, and evidently did not at all share his aunt’s wish.
I promised to take steps to get one or more of the children into an orphanage. The eldest girl thanked me, and asked when she should come for an answer. The eyes of all the children, even of Nicky, were fixed on me, as on some fairy being capable of doing anything for them.
Before I had reached the sledge, after leaving the house, I met an old man. He bowed, and at once began speaking about these same orphans.
“What misery!” he said; “it’s pitiful to see them. And the eldest little girlie, how she looks after them—just like a mother! Wonderful how the Lord helps her! It’s a mercy the neighbours don’t forsake them, or they’d simply die of hunger, the dear little things! … They are the sort of people it does no harm to help,” he added, evidently advising me to do so.
I took leave of the old man, the aunt, and the little girl, and drove with the doctor to the woman who had been to see me that morning.
At the first house we came to, I inquired where she lived. It happened to be the house of a widow I know very well; she lives on the alms she begs, and she has a particularly importunate and pertinacious way of extorting them. As usual, she at once began to beg. She said she was just now in special need of help to enable her to rear a calf.
“She’s eating me and the old woman out of house and home. Come in and see her.”
“And how is the old woman?”
“What
