Autumn, in its last days, smiles on people at times with immense
sadness, but mildly, like a woman dying of decline. It was on such a
mild day that Litka's funeral took place. There is pain mingled with
a certain consolation in this,--that those left behind think of their
dead and feel the loss of them. Pan Stanislav, occupied with the
funeral, was penetrated by that calm and pensive day with still greater
sadness; but, transferring Litka's feelings to himself, he thought
that the child would have wished just such a day for her burial, and
he found in this thought a certain solace. Till that moment he had not
been able simply to measure his sorrow; such knowledge comes later,
and begins only when the loved one is left in the graveyard, and a man
returns by himself to his empty house. Besides, preparations for the
funeral had consumed Pan Stanislav's whole time. Life has surrounded
with artificial forms, and has complicated, such a simple act as death.
Pan Stanislav wished to show Litka that last service, which, moreover,
there was no one else to perform. All those springs of life through
which man thinks, resolves, and acts, were severed in Pani Emilia by
the death of her child. This time the wind seemed too keen for the
fleece of the lamb. Happily, however, excessive pain either destroys
itself, or benumbs the human heart. This happened with Pani Emilia. Pan
Stanislav noticed that the predominant expression of her face and eyes
was a measureless, rigid amazement. As in her eyes there were no tears,
so in her mouth there were no words,--merely a kind of whisper, at
once tragic and childish, showing that her thought did not take in the
misfortune, but hovered around the minutiæ accompanying it; she seized
at these, and attended to them with as much carefulness as if her child
were alive yet. In the room, now turned into a chamber of mourning,
Litka, reposing on a satin cushion amid flowers, could want nothing;
meanwhile the heart of the mother, grown childish from pain, turned
continually to this: what could be lacking to Litka? When they tried
to remove her from the body, she offered no resistance; she merely
lost the remnant of her consciousness, and began to groan, as if pained
beyond endurance.
Pan Stanislav and her husband's brother, Pan Hvastovski, who had come
just before the funeral, strove to lead her away at the moment Litka
was covered with the coffin-lid; but when Pani Emilia began to call the
little one by name, courage failed the two men.
The procession moved at last with numerous torches, and drew after
it a train of carriages, preceded by priests, chanting gloomily, and
surrounded by a crowd of the curious, who in modern cities feed their
eyes with the sorrow of others, as in ancient times they fed them in
the circus with the blood of people.
Pani Emilia, attended by her husband's brother, and having Marynia at
her side, walked also behind the caravan with dry and expressionless
face. Her eyes saw only one detail, and her mind was occupied with
that alone. It had happened that a lock of Litka's flaxen, immensely
abundant hair was outside the coffin. Pani Emilia did not take her eyes
from it the whole way, repeating again and again, "O God, O God! they
have nailed down the child's hair!"
In Pan Stanislav's sorrow, weariness, nervous disturbance, resulting
from sleeplessness, became a feeling of such unendurable oppression
that at moments he was seized by an invincible desire to turn back
when he had gone halfway,--return home, throw himself on a sofa, not
think of anything, not wish anything, not love any one, not feel
anything. At the same time this revulsion of self-love astounded him,
made him indignant at himself: he knew that he would not return; that
he would drain that cup to the bottom, that he would go to the end,
not only because it would happen so, but because sorrow for Litka, and
attachment to her, would be stronger than his selfishness. He felt,
too, at that moment, that all his other feelings were contracted and
withered, and that for the whole world he had in his heart merely
nothing, at least, at that moment. For that matter his thoughts and
feelings had fallen into perfect disorder, composed of external
impressions received very hastily, observations made, it was unknown
why, and mixed all together mechanically with a feeling of sorrow and
pain. At times he looked at the houses past which the procession was
moving, and he distinguished their colors. At times some shop sign
caught his eye; this he read, not knowing why he did so. Then again he
thought that the priests had ceased to sing, but would begin directly;
and he was waiting for that renewed continuance of sad voices, as
if in a kind of dread. At times he reasoned like a man who, waking
from sleep, wishes to give himself an account of reality: "Those are
houses," said he to himself; "those are signs; that is the odor of
pitch from the torches; and there on the bier lies Litka; and we are
going to the graveyard." And all at once there rose in him a wave of
sorrow for that sweet, beloved child, for that dear face which had
smiled so many times at him. He recalled her from remoter and from
recent days; remembered her in Reichenhall, where he carried her when
returning from Thumsee; and later at Bigiel's, in the country; and in
Pani Emilia's house, when she said that she wanted to be a birch-tree;
and finally, when, a few hours before her death, she entreated Marynia
to marry him. Pan Stanislav did not say directly to himself that Litka
loved him as a grown woman loves, and that, in betrothing him to
Marynia, she had performed an act of sacrifice, for the feelings of the
little girl were not known, and could not be defined with precision;
he felt perfectly, however, that there was something like that love in
her, and that the sacrifice took place, flowed, in fact, from that deep
and exceptional attachment which Litka had felt for him. Since the loss
of even those who are dearest is felt most of all through the personal
loss which we suffer, Pan Stanislav began to repeat to himself: "That
was the one soul that loved me truly; I have no one in the whole world
now." And, raising his eyes to the coffin, to that tress of blond hair
which was waving in the wind, he cried out in spirit to Litka with all
those tender expressions with which he had spoken to her while in life.
Finally, he felt that tears were choking him, because that was a call
without echo. There is something heart-rending in the indifference
of the dead. When the one who reflected every word and glance has
become indifferent, when the loving one is icy, the one who was near
in daily life, and next the heart, is full of solemnity, and far away,
it avails not to repeat to one's self: "Death, death!" In addition to
all pain connected with the loss, there is a harrowing deception, as
if an injustice to the heart had been wrought by that lifeless body,
which remains deaf to our pain and entreaty. Pan Stanislav had, in
this manner, at the bottom of his soul, a feeling that Litka, by
taking herself from him, and going to the region of death, had done an
injustice; and from being one who is near, she had become one remote;
from being a confidant, she had become formal, far away, lofty, sacred,
and also perfectly indifferent to the despair of her mother and the
deep loneliness of her nearest friend. There was much selfishness in
those feelings of Pan Stanislav; but were it not for that selfishness,
which, first of all, has its own loss and loneliness in mind, people,
especially those who believe in life beyond the grave and its
happiness, would feel no grief for the dead.
The procession passed out at last from the city to clearer and more
open spaces, and beyond the barrier advanced along the cemetery wall,
which was fronted with a garland of beggars, and with garlands of
immortelles and evergreens intended for grave mounds. The line of
priests in white surplices, the funeral procession with torches, the
hearse with the coffin, and the people walking behind it, halted
before the gate; there they removed Litka. Pan Stanislav, Bukatski,
Hvastovski, and Bigiel bore her to the grave of her father.
That silence, and the void which, after each funeral, is waiting for
people at home when they return from fresh graves, seemed this time to
begin even at the cemetery. The day was calm, pale, with here and there
the last yellowed leaves dropping from the trees without a rustle. The
funeral procession was belittled amid these wide, pale spaces, which,
studded with crosses, seemed endless,--as if, in truth, that cemetery
opened into infinity. The black, leafless trees with tops formed of
slender branches, as it were, vanishing in the light, gray and white
tombstones resembling apparitions, the withered leaves on the ground,
covering long and straight alleys,--all these produced at once a
genuine impression of Elysian fields of some sort, fields full of deep
rest, but full also of deep, dreamy melancholy, certain "cold and sad
places" of which the gloomy head of Cæsar dreamed, and to which now was
to come one more "animula vagula."
The coffin stopped at last above the open grave. The piercing "Requiem
æternam" was heard, and then "Anima ejus." Pan Stanislav, through the
chaos of his thoughts and impressions, and through the veil of his own
sorrow, saw, as in a dream, the stony face and glassy eyes of Pani
Emilia, the tears of Marynia, which irritated him at that moment, the
pale face of Bukatski, on whose features the expression was evident
that his philosophy of life, having no work to do at that graveyard,
had left him and Litka's coffin at the gate. When each threw a handful
of sand on the coffin-lid, he followed the example of others; when they
lowered the coffin on straps into the depth of the grave, and closed
the stone doors, something seized him anew by the throat, so that all
of which he had been thinking, and had learned hitherto, was changed
into one nothingness. He repeated in his soul the simple words: "Till
we meet, Litus!"--words which, when he recalled them afterwards, seemed
to have no relation to the torturing mental storm within him. This was
the end. The funeral procession began to decrease and melt away. After
a time Pan Stanislav was roused by the wind, which came from afar from
between the crosses. He saw now at the grave Pani Emilia with Marynia,
Pani Bigiel, Vaskovski, and Litka's uncle; he said to himself that he
would go out last, and waited, repeating in his soul, "Till we meet,
Litus!" He was thinking of death, and of this,--that he, too, would
come to this place of monuments, and that it is an ocean into which all
thoughts, feelings, and efforts are flowing. It seemed to him then as
if he and all who were there at the grave, or had returned home, were
on a ship sailing straight to the precipice. Of life beyond the grave
he had no thought at that moment.
Meanwhile the short autumn twilight came on; the crosses grew still
less distinct. The old professor and Pan Hvastovski conducted Pani
Emilia to the cemetery gate without resistance on her part. Pan
Stanislav repeated once more, "Till we meet, dear child!" and passed
out.
Beyond the gate he thought: "It is fortunate that the mother is
unconscious, for what a terrible thought to leave a child there alone.
The dead forsake us, but we too forsake them."
In fact, he saw from a distance the carriage in which Pani Emilia was
riding away, and it seemed to him that such an order of things in the
world has in it something revolting. Still when he had sat down alone
in his droshky, he felt a moment of selfish relief, flowing from the
feeling that a certain torturing and oppressive act had been ended,
after which would come rest. On returning to his own dwelling, it
appeared empty, without a ray of gladness, without consolation or
hope; but when at tea, he stretched himself on the sofa, an animal
delight in repose after labor took possession of him, with a feeling
of solace, and even as it were of satisfaction, that the funeral was
over and Litka was buried. He remembered then the opinion of a certain
thinker: "I know no criminals; I know only honest people, and they are
disgusting." Pan Stanislav seemed to himself repulsive at that moment.
In the evening he remembered that it was needful to inquire about Pani
Emilia, whom Marynia was to take for some weeks to her own house. While
going out, he saw a photograph of Litka on the table, and kissed it. A
quarter of an hour later he rang the bell at the Plavitskis'.
The servant told him that Plavitski had gone out, but that Professor
Vaskovski and Father Hylak were there beside Pani Emilia. Marynia
received him in the drawing-room; her hair was badly dressed, her eyes
red; she was almost ugly. But her former way of meeting him had changed
entirely, as if she had forgotten all offences in view of more unhappy
subjects.
"Emilia is with me," whispered she, "and is in a bad state; but it
seems that at least she understands what is said. Professor Vaskovski
is with her. He speaks with such feeling. Do you wish to see Emilia
absolutely?"
"No. I have come merely to inquire how she feels, and shall go away
directly."
"I do not know--she might like to see you. Wait a moment; I will go
and say that you are here. Litka loved you so; for that reason alone
perhaps it would be pleasant for Emilia to see you."
"Very well."
Marynia went to the next chamber; but evidently did not begin
conversation at once, for to Pan Stanislav there came from the
door, not her voice, but that of Vaskovski, full of accents of deep
conviction, and also, as it were, of effort, striving to break through
the armor of insensibility and suffering.
"It is as if your child had gone to another room after play," said
the old professor; "and as if she were to return at once. She will
not return, but you will go to her. My dear lady, look at death, not
from the side of this world, but from the side of God. The child
lives and is happy; for, being herself in eternity, she considers
this separation from you as lasting one twinkle of an eye. Litka is
living," continued he, with emphasis; "she is living and happy. She
sees that you are coming to her, and she stretches forth her hands to
you; she knows that in a moment you will come, for from God's point
of view life and pain are less than the twinkle of an eye,--and then
eternity with Litka. Think, dearest lady, with Litka in peace, in
joy,--without disease, without death. Worlds will pass away, and you
will be together."
"It would be well were that certain," thought Pan Stanislav, bitterly.
But after a while he thought, "If I felt that way, I should have some
cause to go in; otherwise not."
Still in spite of this thought he went in, not waiting even for
Marynia's return; for it seemed to him that if he had no cause, he had
a duty, and he was not free to be cowardly in presence of the suffering
of others. Selfishness is "cotton in the ears against human groans,"
and excuses itself in its own eyes by saying that nothing can be said
to great suffering to relieve it. Pan Stanislav understood that this
was the case, and was ashamed to withdraw comfortably instead of going
to meet the sorrow of a mother. When he entered, he saw Pani Emilia
sitting on the sofa; above the sofa was a lamp, and lower than the
lamp a palm, which cast a shadow on that unhappy head, as if gigantic
fingers were opened above it. Near Pani Emilia sat Vaskovski, who was
holding her hands and looking into her face. Pan Stanislav took those
hands from him, and, bending down, began to press them to his lips in
silence.
Pani Emilia blinked a while, like a person striving to rise out of
sleep; then she cried suddenly, with an unexpected outburst,--
"Remember how she--"
And she was borne away by a measureless weeping, during which her
hands were clasped, her lips could not catch breath, and her bosom
was bursting from sobs. At last strength failed her, and she fainted.
When she recovered, Marynia led her to her own chamber. Pan Stanislav
and Vaskovski went to the adjoining reception-room, where they were
detained by Plavitski, who had come in just that moment.
"Such a sad person in the house," said he,--"it spoils life terribly.
A little peace and freedom should be due to me; but what is to be
done, what is to be done? I must descend to the second place, and I am
ready."
At the end of half an hour Marynia came with the announcement that at
her request Pani Emilia had gone to bed, and was a little calmer. Pan
Stanislav and Vaskovski took leave, and went out.
They walked along in a dense fog, which rose from the earth after a
calm day, hiding the streets and forming parti-colored circles around
the lamps. Both were thinking of Litka, who was passing her first night
among the dead, and at a distance from her mother. To Pan Stanislav
this seemed simply terrible, not for Litka, but for Pani Emilia,
who had to think of it. He meditated also over the words spoken by
Vaskovski, and said at last,--
"I heard thy words. If they gave her solace, it is well; but if that
were true, we should make a feast now, and rejoice that Litka is dead."
"But whence dost thou know that we shall not be happy after death?"
"Wilt thou tell me whence thou hast the knowledge that we shall?"
"I do not know; I believe."
There was no answer to this; therefore Pan Stanislav said, as if to
himself, "Mercy, empyrean light, eternity, meeting; but what is there
in fact? The corpse of a child in the grave, and a mother who is
wailing from pain. Grant that death has produced thy faith at least;
yet it brings doubt, because thou art grieving for the child. I am
grieving still more; and this grief casts on me directly the question,
'Why did she die? Why such cruelty?' I know that this question is a
foolish one, and that milliards of people have put it to themselves;
but, if this knowledge is to be my solace, may thunderbolts split it!
I know, too, that I shall not find an answer, and for that very reason
I want to gnash my teeth and curse. I do not understand, and I rebel;
that is all. That is the whole result, which thou canst not recognize
as the one sought for."
Vaskovski answered also, as if speaking to himself, "Christ rose from
the dead, for He was God; but He rose as man, and He passed through
death. How can I, poor worm, do otherwise than magnify the Divine Will
and Wisdom in death?"
To this Pan Stanislav answered.--
"It is impossible to talk with thee!"
"It is slippery," answered Vaskovski; "give me thy arm." And, taking
Pan Stanislav by the arm, he leaned on him, and said, "My dear friend,
thou hast an honest and a loving heart; thou didst love that little
girl greatly, thou wert ready to do much for her. Do this one thing
now,--whether thou believest or not,--say for her, 'Eternal rest!' If
thou think that that will be no good to her, say to thyself, 'I can do
no more, but I will do that.'"
"Give me peace!" answered Pan Stanislav.
"That may not be needful to her, but thy remembrance of her will be
dear; she will be grateful, and will obtain the grace of God for thee."
Pan Stanislav remembered how Vaskovski, at news of Litka's last attack,
said that the life of the child could not be purposeless, and that
if she had to die she was predestined to do something before death;
and now he wished to attack Vaskovski on this point, when the thought
flashed on him that, before her death, Litka had united him with
Marynia; and it occurred to him that perhaps she had lived for this
very purpose. But at that moment he rebelled against the thought. Anger
at Marynia seized him; he was full of stubbornness, and almost contempt.
"I do not want Marynia at such a price!" thought he, gritting his
teeth; "I do not! I have suffered enough through her. I would give ten
such for one Litka."
Meanwhile Vaskovski, trotting near him, said,--
"Nothing is to be seen at a step's distance, and the stones are
slippery from fog. Without thee I should have fallen long ago."
Pan Stanislav recovered himself, and answered,--
"Whoso walks on the earth, professor, must look down, not up."
"Thou hast good legs, my dear friend."
"And eyes which see clearly, even in a fog like this which surrounds
us. And it is needful, for we all live in a fog, and deuce knows what
is beyond it. All that thou sayest makes on me such an impression
as the words of a man who would break dry twigs, throw them into a
torrent, and say, Flowers will come from these. Rottenness will come,
nothing more. From me, too, this torrent has torn away something from
which I am to think that a flower will rise? Folly! But here is thy
gate. Good-night!"
And they separated. Pan Stanislav returned to his own house barely
alive, he was so weary; and, when he had lain down in bed, he began
to torture himself with thoughts further continued, or rather with
visions. To begin with, before his eyes appeared the figure of Pani
Emilia, powerless from pain; she was sitting in Marynia's parlor,
under the palm-leaf, which was hanging over her head like an immense
ill-omened hand, with outspread, grasping fingers, and it cast a shadow
on her face. "I might philosophize over that till morning," muttered
he. "Everything out of which life is constructed is a hand like that,
from which a shadow falls,--nothing more. But if there were a little
mercy besides, the child would not have died; but with what Vaskovski
says, you couldn't keep life in a sparrow."
Here he remembered, however, that Vaskovski not only spoke of death,
but begged him also to say "eternal rest" for Litka. Pan Stanislav
began now to struggle with himself. His lips were closed through lack
of a deep faith that Litka might hear his "eternal rest," and that it
might be of good to her. He felt, besides, a kind of shame to speak
words which did not flow from the depth of his conviction, and felt
also the same kind of shame not to say the "eternal rest." "For,
finally, what do I know?" thought he. "Nothing. Around is fog and fog.
Likely nothing will come to her from that; but, let happen what may,
that is in truth the only thing that I can do now for my kitten,--for
that dear child,--who was mindful of me on the night that she died."
And he hesitated for a time yet; at last he knelt and said, "eternal
rest." It did not bring him, however, any solace, for it roused only
the more sorrow for Litka, and also anger at Vaskovski, because he
had pushed him into a position in which he had either to fall into
contradiction with himself or be, as it were, a traitor to Litka. He
felt, finally, that he had had enough of that kind of torment, and he
determined to go early in the morning to his office and occupy himself
with Bigiel on the first commercial affair that presented itself, if it
were only to tear away his thought from the painful, vicious circle in
which for some days he had been turning.
But in the morning Bigiel anticipated him, and came to his house;
maybe, too, with the intent to occupy him. Pan Stanislav threw himself
with a certain interest into the examination of current business; but
he and Bigiel were not long occupied, for an hour later Bukatski came
to say farewell to them.
"I am going to Italy to-day," said he, "and God knows when I shall
return. I wish to say to you both, Be in good health. The death of
that child touched me more than I thought it would."
"Art thou going far?"
"Oh, there would be much talk in the answer. With us, this is how it
happens: Be a Buddhist, or whatever may please thee, the kernel of the
question is this: one believes a little, trusts a little in some sort
of mercy, and thus lives. Meanwhile, what happens? Reality slaps us
daily in the face, and brings us into mental agony and anguish, into
moral straits. With us, one is always loving somebody, or is tormented
with somebody's misfortune; but I do not want this. It tortures me."
"How will the Italians help thee?"
"How will they help me? They will, for in Italy I have the sun, which
here I have not; I have art, which here I have not, and I feel for
it a weakness; I have chianti,[4] which does good to the catarrh of
my stomach; and finally, I have people for whom I care nothing and
nothing, and who may die for themselves in hundreds without causing me
any bitterness.
"I shall look at pictures, buy what I need, nurse my rheumatism, my
headache; and I shall be for myself a more or less elegant, a more or
less well nourished, a more or less healthy animal,--which, believe me,
is still the kind and condition of life most desired. Here I cannot be
that beast which, from my soul, I wish to be."
"Thou art right, Bukatski. We, as thou seest, are sitting with our
accounts, also somewhat for this,--to become more idiotic, and not
think of aught else. When we acquire such a fortune as thou hast, I
don't know how it is with Bigiel, but I will follow in thy steps."
"Then till we see each other again in time and space!" said Bukatski.
A while after his departure, Pan Stanislav said,--
"He is right. How happy I should be, for example, if I had not
become attached to that child and Pani Emilia! In this respect we
are incurable, and we spoil our lives voluntarily. He is right. In
this country one is always loving some person or something; it is an
inherited disease. Eternal romanticism, eternal sentimentalism,--and
eternally pins in the heart."
"Old Plavitski bows to thee," said Bigiel. "That man loves nobody but
himself."
"In reality, this is perhaps true; but he lacks the courage to tell
himself that that is permissible and necessary. Nay, what is more, he
is convinced that it is needful to act otherwise; and through this
he is in continual slavery. Here, though a man have a nature like
Plavitski's, he must feign even to himself that he loves some one or
something."
"But will you visit Pani Emilia to-day?" asked Bigiel.
"Of course! If I were to say, for example, 'I have the malaria,' I
should not cure myself by saying so."
And, in fact, not only was he at Pani Emilia's that day, but he was
there twice; for at his first visit he did not find the ladies at home.
To the question where his daughter was, Plavitski answered, with due
pathos and resignation, "I have no daughter now." Pan Stanislav, not
wishing to tell him fables, for which he felt a sudden desire, went
away, and returned only in the evening.
This time Marynia herself received him, and informed him that Pani
Emilia had slept for the first time since Litka's funeral. While saying
this, she left her hand a certain time in his. Pan Stanislav, in
spite of all the disorder in which his thoughts were, could not avoid
noticing this; and, when he looked at last with an inquiring glance
into her eyes, he discovered that the young lady's cheeks flushed
deeply. They sat down, and began to converse.
"We were at Povanzki," said Marynia, "and I promised Emilia to go there
with her every day."
"But is it well for her to remember the child so every day, and open
her wounds?"
"But are they healed?" answered Marynia, "or is it possible to say to
her, 'Do not go'? I thought myself that it would not be well, but grew
convinced of the contrary. At the graveyard she wept much, but was the
better for it. On the way home she remembered what Professor Vaskovski
had told her, and the thought is for her the only consolation,--the
only."
"Let her have even such a one," answered Pan Stanislav.
"You see, I did not dare to mention Litka at first, but she speaks of
her all the time. Do not fear to speak to her of the child, for it
gives her evident solace."
Here the young lady continued in a lower, and, as it were, an uncertain
voice, "She reproaches herself continually for having listened to the
assurances of the doctor the last night, and gone to sleep; she is
sorry for those last moments, which she might have passed with Litka,
and that thought tortures her. To-day, when we were returning from
the graveyard, she asked about the smallest details. She asked how
the child looked, how long she slept, whether she took medicine, what
she said, whether she spoke to us; then she implored me to remember
everything, and not omit a single word."
"And you did not omit anything?"
"No."
"How did she receive it?"
"She cried very, very much."
Both grew silent, and were silent rather long; then Marynia said,--
"I will go and see what is happening to her."
After a while she returned.
"She is sleeping," said the young lady. "Praise be to God!"
Indeed, Pan Stanislav did not see Pani Emilia that evening; she
had fallen into a kind of lethargic slumber. At parting, Marynia
pressed his hand again long and vigorously, and inquired almost with
submission,--
"You do not take it ill of me that I repeated to Pani Emilia Litka's
last wish?"
"At such moments," answered Pan Stanislav, "I cannot think of myself:
for me it is a question only of Pani Emilia; and if your words caused
her solace, I thank you for them."
"Till to-morrow, then?"
"Till to-morrow."
Pan Stanislav took farewell, and went out. While descending the steps,
he thought,--
"She considers herself my betrothed."
And he was not mistaken; Marynia looked on him as her betrothed. She
had never been indifferent to him; on the contrary, the greatness of
his offence had been for her the measure of that uncommon interest
which he had roused in her. And though, during Litka's illness
and funeral, he could discover in himself unfathomable stores of
selfishness, he seemed to her so good that she was simply unable to
compare him with any one. Litka's words did the rest. In real truth,
her heart desired love first of all; and now, since before Litka's
death she had made her a promise, since she had bound herself to love
and to marry, it seemed to her that even if she had not loved, it was
her duty to command herself, and that she was not free at present not
to love. Pan Stanislav had entered the sphere of her duty; she belonged
to those straightforward, womanly natures, not at all rare even now,
for whom life and duty mean one and the same thing, and who for this
reason bring good-will to the fulfilment of duty, and not only good,
but persistent will.
Such a will brings with it love, which lights like the sun, warms like
its heat, and cherishes like the blue, mild sky. In this way life does
not become a dry, thorny path, which pricks, but a flowery one, which
blooms and delights. This country maiden, straightforward in thought,
and at once simple and delicate in feelings, possessed that capacity
for life and happiness in the highest degree. So, when Pan Stanislav
had gone, she, in thinking about him, did not name him in her mind
otherwise than "Pan Stas," for he had indeed become her "Pan Stas."
Pan Stanislav, on his part, when lying down to sleep, repeated to
himself somewhat mechanically, "She considers herself my betrothed."
Litka's death, and the events of the last days, had pushed Marynia,
not only in his thoughts, but in his heart, to more remote, and even
very remote places. Now he began to think of her again, and at the
same time of his future. All at once he beheld, as it were, a cloud
of countless questions, to which, at that moment, at least, he had no
answer. But he felt fear in presence of them; he felt that he lacked
strength and willingness to undertake this labor. Again he began to
live with the former life; again to fall into that sentimental, vicious
circle; again to disquiet himself; again to make efforts, and struggle
over things which bring only bitterness,--to struggle with himself over
questions of feeling. Would it not be better to labor with Bigiel on
accounts,--make money,--so as to go sometime, like Bukatski, to Italy,
or some other place where there is sun, art, wine good for the stomach,
and, above all, people to whom one is indifferent, whose happiness
will not enliven the heart of a stranger, but in return whose death or
misfortune will not press a single tear from him.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] An Italian wine.