III
Only those who have experienced what the Poles experienced after the Partition of Poland and the subjection of one part of the country to the power of the hated Germans and another part to the power of the still more hated Muscovites, can understand the rapture which the Poles felt in the years 1830 and 1831 when, after their earlier unsuccessful attempts to liberate themselves, their new hope of liberation seemed about to be fulfilled. But this hope did not last long. The forces involved were too disproportionate and the attempted revolution was once again crushed. Once again tens of thousands of dumbly obedient Russians were herded into Poland, and at the command first of Diebitsch, then of Paskevich, quite without knowing why they were doing it, proceeded to soak the earth with their own blood and that of their Polish brothers, to crush them, and once more to set in power weak and worthless men who desired neither the freedom of the Poles nor their suppression, but simply and solely the satisfaction of their own greed and their childish vanity.
Warsaw was taken and the independent Polish detachments utterly defeated. Hundreds, thousands of people were shot, beaten with rods, or sent into exile. Among those exiled was young Migurski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself assigned as a common soldier to a line battalion at Uralsk.
The Jaczewskis spent the winter of 1832 at Wilno for the sake of the old man’s health: since 1831 he had been suffering from a heart ailment. Here a letter reached him from Migurski, written in the fortress where he was serving. He wrote that however hard were the experiences he had already gone through and which still awaited him, he rejoiced that it had been his destiny to suffer for his native land, that he did not despair of the sacred cause to which he had devoted part of his life and was ready to devote that which remained, and that if a new opportunity were to present itself tomorrow, then he would act again in precisely the same way. Reading the letter aloud, the old man burst into sobs when he reached this passage and for some time could not go on. In the final section of the letter, which Wanda read out, Migurski wrote that whatever his hopes and longings might have been at the time of his last visit to them, which would ever remain the brightest point of his whole life, now he could not and would not speak further about them.
Wanda and Albina each understood these words in her own way, but neither confided to anyone else exactly how she understood them. Migurski concluded his letter with greetings to all of them: among these he addressed Albina in the same playful tone he had adopted with her at the time of his visit, asking her whether she was still rushing about as she used to, running races with the greyhounds, and mimicking everyone so beautifully. To old Jaczewski he wished good health, to the mother success in household affairs, to Wanda that she should find a husband worthy of her, and to Albina that she should keep her joie de vivre.
IV
Old Jaczewski’s health grew ever worse and in 1833 the whole family went abroad. In Baden Wanda met a wealthy Polish emigré and married him. The old man’s condition rapidly declined, and at the beginning of 1833, while they were still abroad, he died. His wife he had not permitted to follow him, and to the very last he was unable to forgive her for the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Jaczewska returned to the country with Albina. The chief interest in Albina’s life was Migurski. In her eyes he was the greatest of heroes and a martyr, to whose service she had resolved to dedicate her own life. Before going abroad she had already struck up a correspondence with him, at first on her father’s behalf, then on her own. After her father’s death she returned to Russia and went on writing to him; and once her eighteenth birthday was past she declared to her stepmother that she had decided to travel to Uralsk to join Migurski and there become his wife. Her stepmother at once began accusing Migurski of selfishly wanting to relieve his own difficult situation by captivating a rich young woman and compelling her to share his misfortune. Albina grew angry and informed her stepmother that no one but she could think of imputing such base thoughts to a man who had sacrificed everything for his own nation, that Migurski had on the contrary refused the help she had offered him, and that she had decided irrevocably to join him and become his wife, if only he was prepared to grant her that happiness. Albina was now of age and had some money – the thirty thousand zlotys which her late uncle had left to each of his two nieces. So that there was nothing to hold her back.
In November 1833 Albina, as if for the last time, said farewell to the family who were tearfully seeing her off on her journey to this distant, unknown realm of barbarous Muscovy, took her seat alongside her devoted old nurse Ludwika whom she was taking with her, in her father’s old covered sleigh, newly repaired for this long journey, and set off on the highroad.
V
Migurski was living not in the barracks, but in separate quarters of his own. Tsar Nicholas I required that Polish officers who had been reduced to the ranks should not only have to put up with the hardships of an austere military life, but also suffer all the humiliations to which private soldiers were subjected at that time. But the majority of the ordinary men whose duty it was to carry out his orders were fully aware of the harshness of treatment meted out to these demoted officers, and without regard to the danger involved in any failure to carry out the Tsar’s will, deliberately failed to carry it out whenever they could. The semi-literate commander of the battalion to which Migurski had been assigned, a man who had been promoted from the ranks, understood the situation of this once wealthy, well-educated young man who had now lost everything: he felt sorry for him, respected him, and made all kinds of concessions in his favour. And Migurski could not help appreciating the generous spirit of the lieutenant colonel with the white side-whiskers on his puffy military face, and to recompense him Migurski agreed to give lessons in mathematics and French to his sons, who were preparing for entry to the military academy.
Migurski’s life at Uralsk, which had now been dragging on for some six months, was not only monotonous, dreary and dull, but very hard into the bargain. Apart from the battalion commander, from whom he attempted as far as possible to distance himself, his sole acquaintance was an exiled Pole, an uneducated and disagreeable man of a thrusting disposition who worked in the fishing trade. The principal hardship for Migurski lay in the difficulty he experienced in getting used to a life of poverty. Following the confiscation of his estate he had been left quite without financial means, and he was making ends meet by selling off whatever gold objects still remained to him.
The single great joy of his life in exile was his correspondence with Albina, and the charming, poetic image he had formed of her during his visit to Rozanka remained in his soul and now in his banishment grew ever more beautiful to him. In one of her first letters to him she asked him, among other things, about the meaning of his words in the earlier letter: ‘whatever my dreams and longings might have been’. He replied that now he was able to confess to her that his dreams were connected with his desire to call her his wife. She wrote back that she loved him too. He responded that it would have been better if she had not written that, for it was dreadful for him to think about something which was now most likely an impossibility. She said in her reply that it was not only possible, but would most certainly come about. He wrote back that he could not accept her sacrifice, and that in his present circumstances it simply could not be. Shortly after writing this letter he received a package of money to the value of two thousand zlotys. By the postmark on the envelope and the handwriting he could see that it had been sent by Albina, and recalled having jokingly described in one of his earliest letters the satisfaction he felt now at being able by the lessons he gave to earn enough to pay for all the things he needed – tea, tobacco, even books. He transferred the money to another envelope and returned it to her with a letter begging her not to destroy the sacred nature of their relationship by bringing money into it. He had enough of everything he needed, he wrote, and he was completely happy in the knowledge that he possessed such a friend as she was. With that their correspondence came to a stop.