21. The Read Handkerchief

This handkerchief was so like the one she had once given to Méphodiévna, that she asked herself if it was not the same, and if again it was not intended to reach her.

Maroussia took the handkerchief and, reaching her forehead to her good friend, said: “All shall be done as you wish.”

Tchetchevik stooped down, not without effort, to embrace her. But on rising up she saw very plainly that he staggered, and but for Peter, who hastened to catch him, he would have fallen. Maroussia then saw blood on her sleeve.

“Your blood!” she said to him. “Where are you wounded? Is it in the arm? Let me bandage it? You know Méphodiévna taught me to be a good nurse.”

“Be reasonable, Maroussia,” said her good friend. “I have passed through everything until now, without being touched. It was not right. I have not had my share. This wound is nothing. A shot in the arm is not a great thing. We didn’t undertake this campaign expecting to eat strawberries.

Peter will arrange it. Go, then, my dear child, and hasten! We are talking too much. If you succeed in giving this handkerchief to him who is waiting for it, that will be a very good thing. But, now I think of it, arrange it on your head, they will see it sooner and at a greater distance, and it will look very well on your golden hair.”

“But you, are you going to stay here? We must be suspicious of everything in this forest.—Shall I find you here again?” While asking these questions, she was arranging, with trembling hands, the red handkerchief on her head.

“I will stay here,” answered her good friend, “or if I cannot, I will know where to rejoin you. Can anything separate us?”

This time a shot answered for the child, and then another. From ten places all at once the firing was heard, not very near, yet not very far.

“They have re-entered the forest, they return to the charge,” said Peter. “In five minutes they may be there.”

The Lion stood up. Peter put one of his pistols in the hand he was still able to use.

“You hear,” said Tchetchevik to Maroussia. “Go! Run! Fly, if you can! Forget everything else. It is for Ukraine and your good friend. The little handkerchief will speak to him of you—”

Maroussia started like an arrow. Nevertheless, when she had reached the path in the field of buckwheat, where she must leave the road, the little girl could not resist the desire to turn around and try once more to see him whom she had left with so much regret. No one was at the edge of the forest. The firing had not continued. The forest, grown silent again, was only a long mountain of shade.

Maroussia starts on, there is no more question of fatigue, her good friend wishes it, she has wings. Having passed through the buckwheat field, here is the little bridge, she places the two wreaths upon it. A dull noise strikes her ear. She listens. The noise approaches and becomes louder. It sounds like a horse coming at a gallop. Is the rider a friend or an enemy? He is not a Cossack. From a distance he looks like a Tartar. When she traveled with the old singer, they always avoided the Tartars. She retraces her steps and recrosses the bridge. Anyhow the wreaths are there, so much is done. Maroussia is satisfied. She tries to hide herself in the reeds. The horseman comes at full speed, has he seen her? She hopes not. But Maroussia has scarcely taken a few steps among the reeds, which are growing on the bank of the little brook, when a shot is fired. The red handkerchief and the pretty head fall down in the midst of the reeds. You might have thought it a partridge arrested in its flight.