(no subject)
Since no one here is familiar with any of Michael's books the typist has taken it upon herself to type portions of them up and post them for the edification of the public. This bit is from The Deluge, a scene where Michael goes courting a lady that he rescued. It doesn't go well...
Aleksandra didn’t recognize Pan Volodyovski when he rode to Vodokty and he had to introduce himself all over again. But once she heard his name she received him with the courtesy any wellborn caller might expect. If she was pale, withdrawn and somewhat distracted he took it for a natural consequence of her recent shock and thought no more about it. He was no courtier but neither was he a stranger to polite behavior so he put on a creditable performance as he bowed with a deep flourish, a hand on his heart, and launched into his speech.
“I came to ask after your ladyship’s health,” he began formally then added: “I should have come over sooner, perhaps the next day, but I didn’t want to make a nuisance of myself.”
She answered him in kind, as distant and polite as the usage of the time demanded from a young woman of her circumstances. “It’s kind of you, sir, that having rescued me from such a peril you’re still concerned about me. Sit down, won’t you? You’re always welcome here.”
“My dear lady!” Pan Michal said in turn. “If I forgot about you I’d be unworthy of that grace and mercy God sent my way by allowing me to come to your rescue.”
He thought it quite a graceful little speech and cocked his ears for some responding signal, but Aleksandra remained troubled and remote.
“No, it’s I who should be thanking God,” she answered politely. “And you too soon after.”
Pan Volodyovski hoped for a better opening but he would take whatever came his way. He thought that courting wasn’t all that different from that Chinese game of strategy called ‘chess’ which the Mongols and Persians had brought from the East a hundred years earlier; young officers often used chess boards to study the elements of tactics on which the classic Polish battlefield formations were based.
“Ah, if that’s so then let us both thank Him. Together, as it were. Because I ask for nothing better than to defend you from now on whenever you need me.”
Pleased with this bold gambit which moved the game right into the heart of the matter, Pan Volodyovski patted himself mentally on the back. She, in turn, sat in silence and in some confusion. A pale flush appeared on her cheeks and her lowered lashes threw a line of shadow.
‘Hmm… That’s a good sign,’ Pan Volodyovski thought, and clearing his throat in a manner he hoped might make him sound more dignified and profound, he advanced another cautious pawn. “You know, of course, my lady, that I was the commander of the Laudians after your grandfather?”
“Indeed I do,” she said quietly. “Grandfather was too ill to go on the last campaign but he was terribly pleased to hear whom the Prince-Palatine of Vilna entrusted with his regiment. He said that he knew you by your reputation as a famous soldier.”
“He did, did he? Hmm.”
“I heard him myself. He thought the world of you. And the Laudians said the same thing later on.”
Still young enough for flattery, no matter how sincerely spoken and well-earned, Pan Wolodyjowski liked praise as much as anyone. But he thought he had better steer the conversation into an area where he could tell Aleksandra more about his background.
“I’m just a soldier, he shrugged and said simply. “Not worth much more notice than most of my kind. But I’m glad that you’ve heard a little about me because now I won’t seem like some unknown guest that nobody ever heard of and whom the wind blew in from God knows where. It’s always good to know whom you’re dealing with, don’t you think? There are a lot of men wandering around these days who claim high birth and offices for themselves and some of them aren’t even gentry.”
“No one would think that of you,” Olenka said at once. “Because we have gentry of the same name here in Lithuania.”
This gave the little knight the opening he was looking for.
“It’s a different clan.”
He explained that his full family name was Kortchak-Wolodyjowski, that his ancestors came from Hungary, descended from one of Attila’s nobles who was obliged to run for his life and who took an oath that he’d become a Christian if the Holy Mother helped him to save himself.
“Which he did,” the little knight concluded. “After he put three rivers between himself and his enemies. And now you’ll find those three rivers on my coat-of-arms.”
“So you’re not from these parts by birth?” Olenka asked quietly.
“No, my lady. I’m from the Ruthenian Volodyovskis, from the Ukraine, and I own a little village there to this day even though it’s long taken over by the enemy. But I never paid much attention to it anyway, being less concerned about property than the dangers that threatened our country from its various neighbors, and serving as a soldier since I was a boy. I served first under our late-lamented Prince Yeremi, the Voyevode of Ruthenia, under whom I fought at Mahnovka and at Konstantinov and in the siege of Zabrajh in the Cossack Wars, and after the battle of Berestetcko His Majesty himself singled me out for praise. God is my witness that I didn’t just come here to boast or blow my own trumpet. I’m saying all this just so you’ll know that I’m not some fair-weather soldier who handles a soup spoon better than a saber, and that I’ve spent my whole life in honest service, ready to spill my blood whenever it was needed, and that I kept my name as clean as anyone.”
(Insert Michael starting to go on about the man he rescued her from, who is actually the man she loves.)
Olenka’s eyes, he noted, were resting on him once more with gratitude and respect.
“What a wonderfully decent man you are,” she murmured, as if unable to believe that honesty, sincerity and goodness were still possible in a world where selfishness and violence seemed to be the rule. “So decent that it’s rare…”
And Pan Wolodyjowski, pleased with himself and thinking that everything was going just as he hoped it would, started moving his mustache up and down again.
‘Hmm. I’ve struck the right chord somewhere,’ he mused, encouraged by the sudden warmth and gratitude in her eyes, and went on aloud: “I’ll say even more! Pan Kmita’s way of going about things has to be condemned, particularly where his violence against you is concerned, but it can’t be much of a surprise to anyone with one good eye in his head. Sheer desperation must have pushed him into going after you like that! But what else could he do when he thought he’d lost you?”
She was nodding then, her eyes fixed on him as if he was telling her exactly what she wanted to hear, and he told himself that he had better make his move, stick closer to the point, and bring the conversation to his proposal.
“Yes. Desperation. And it’ll probably push him in again because you are so beautiful that Venus herself could take lessons from you…”
He paused then because she made a pained, impatient gesture as if any mention of her beauty was offense to her after what had happened to her before, but once launched into his own declaration he couldn’t turn back.
“How can you stay safe unprotected, looking as you do?” he cried out. “There are more Kmitas in this world, you’ll awaken more passions of this kind, and they’re sure to be other attempts against you…
“God gave me the chance to save you once,” he said earnestly. “But the war horns are already sounding, and who’ll protect you after I’m gone? My dear lady, soldiers have a somewhat restless reputation in matters of the heart, I know, but that’s not quite fair… we aren’t all alike!”
And here the little knight threw himself suddenly on his knees before the astonished and frightened Olenka.
“My own heart isn’t made of a rock,” he pleaded. “I couldn’t stay indifferent to such a rare beauty any more than Kmita! I inherited your grandfather’s regiment, God rest his soul, let me inherit the right to protect you as well! Allow me to look after you, to taste the sweetness of mutual affection, and take me for your permanent defender! Do that and you’ll live safe and unmolested because even if I go to war my name will be enough to serve as your shield!”
But she had leapt to her feet and was staring at him as if he was a creature of a kind she had never seen before, and he went on, missing the effect of his impassioned words on the distressed and angered Aleksandra: “I don’t have much in the way of material things but I’m a noble and an honest man. And I can swear to you that you won’t find a single stain on either my coat of arms or my conscience.”
Out of breath and finally noticing that things weren’t going quite as he intended, he assumed that it was a matter of too much being thrown at her too quickly and he cast about for some way to put her more at ease.
“I realize that I may be a bit… ah… precipitous in my declaration but time is short you see. I’ll know you understand that duty must come first… and that I won’t turn a blind eye to our country’s call even for you… So tell me, won’t you, that I can at least have a little hope.
“You’re asking the impossible!” she cried out, pale as a ghost and trembling with such powerful emotions that the little knight stared up at her in sudden open-mouthed amazement of his own. “Dear God! That’s out of the question!”
“Out of the question?” he asked at last, feeling as if she had thrown a bucket of iced water over him, but still not quite able to believe her anger. “Why should it be out of the question? I’d think you could find an answer without a lot of trouble…”
“And that’s why I tell you straight off: No!”
“No?”
“No!”
But Pan Wolodyjowski got the point and rose slowly back to his feet.
“You don’t want me, eh?” he asked. “Is that it?”
“I can’t!”
“And that is your last word on the subject?”
“Last and irrevocable!” she cried.
“But maybe it’s only my hurry that’s not to your liking? Can’t you at least give me a little hope?”
“I can’t! I can’t, I tell you!”
“Hmm… Yes. I see,” the little soldier sounded bitter even to himself. “So I find no more luck or happiness here than
I’ve found elsewhere. So be it.”
Hurt pride and disappointment brushed his voice with a quick anger of his own.
“But don’t offer me payment for my services, my lady,” he snapped out. “That’s not what I came for. I didn’t ask for your hand to collect a debt but because I felt a great affection for you… Indeed, let me tell you, if you said you’d take me because you felt you had to I’d have to bow out…
“But,”-and here he shrugged, more in contempt for his own failure than her rejection-“if you won’t, you won’t, and that’s all there’s to it. This isn’t the first time I’ve had my nose put out of joint and it isn’t likely to be the last. It looks like that’s what’s written for me, always to ask and always to be refused. Well, that’s God’s will. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you again. If you don’t want me that’s fine with me too. I hope you find someone who’s more to your fancy, even if it’s that Kmita who came after you like a Tartar…”
And here a sudden thought appeared to Pan Michal and he cursed himself for failing to guess it before.
“Ah! Maybe that’s what makes you so annoyed? Eh? The fact that I pushed my saber between the two of you? Is that what it is?” Angry contempt edged his voice with cruelty and disdain. “But if you can think that his kind is better than mine then I really came to the wrong place!”
He went out, jumped on his horse without another word and rode away at once.