Генрик Сенкевич
Hania
At this point the mayor called the defendant to order, making a remark to her in the form of a question, —
"Thou plague, wilt thou shut that snout of thine?"
A moment of silence followed; the judges began to meditate over the sentence; and what a delicate feeling of the situation! They did not adjudge five zlotys to either side; but, to preserve their own dignity merely, and for a warning to every loving couple in all Barania-Glova, they condemned the two to sit twenty-four hours longer in prison, and to pay a ruble each to the chancery.
"From Vah Rehnio and Baska Jabianka, fifty copecks each for the chancery," noted down Pan Zolzik.
Then the sitting of the court was ended. Pan Zolzik rose; he drew his sand-colored trousers up, and his violet-colored vest down. The councillors, with the intention of separating, had already taken their caps and whips, when all at once the door, which had been closed after the invasion of the pigs, opened half-way, and in it appeared Repa, gloomy as night, and after him his wife, and the dog Kruchek.
The woman was as pale as linen; her comely, delicate features expressed grief and humility, and in her large eyes were tears which afterward flowed down her cheeks.
Repa was going in boldly, with head thrown back; but when he saw the whole court, he lost his attitude at once, and, in rather a low voice, said, —
"May He be praised!"
"For the ages of ages!" answered the councilmen, in a chorus.
"And what are ye here for?" asked the mayor, threateningly. The mayor was confused at first, but he recovered himself, "What business have ye? Have ye been fighting, or what?"
"Great, mighty court," began Repa. "But let the most serene – "
"Be quiet! be quiet!" interrupted the woman; "let me speak, and do thou sit quietly."
Then she wiped the tears and her nose with her apron, and began to tell the whole story, with a trembling voice. Ah! but to whom had she come? She had come with a complaint against the mayor and the secretary, to the mayor and the secretary.
"They took him," said she; "they promised him timber if he would write his name; then he wrote his name. They gave him fifty rubles; but he was drunk, and he didn't know that he was selling his life and mine and the little boy's. He was drunk, great, mighty court, as drunk as if he were not a creature of God," continued she, now in tears. "Of course a drunken man does not know what he is doing; so in the court, if any one writes anything when he is drunk, they spare him, for they say that he did not know what he was doing. In God's name, mercy! A sober man would not sell his life for fifty rubles! Have pity on me, and on him, and on the innocent child! What will become of me, the unfortunate, alone, and alone in the world, without him, without my poor fellow! God give you happiness for this, and reward you in the name of the unfortunate!"
Here sobbing interrupted her words. Repa cried, too, and from time to time wiped his nose with his finger. The faces of the councilmen grew long; they looked one at another, and then at the secretary and the mayor, without knowing what to do, until the woman recovered her voice, and began to speak again, —
"The man goes about as if poisoned. 'Thee I will kill,' says he. 'I will destroy the child; I will burn the house; but,' says he, 'I will not go, and I will not go.' How am I to blame, poor woman, or the little boy? He is no longer in the field, at the scythe, or the axe; but he sits in the house and sighs and sighs. But I wait for judgment; so do you men have God in your hearts, and do not let injustice be done. Jesus of Nazareth! O Chenstohova Mother of God! intercede for us, intercede!"
For a time nothing was audible but the sobbing of the woman; at last one old councilman muttered, —
"It is not well to make a man drunk, and then sell him."
"No; it is not well," answered others.
"May God and His Most Holy Mother bless you!" cried the woman, falling on her knees at the threshold.
The mayor was put to shame; no less troubled was the councilman Gomula; so both looked at the secretary, who was silent; but when Repa's wife had finished, he said to the grumbling councilmen, —
"Ye are fools!"
There was silence as when poppy-seed falls.
"It is written expressly," continued the secretary, "that if any one meddles in a voluntary contract he will be judged by a marine court. And do ye know, ye fools, what a marine court is? Ye do not, ye fools; a marine court is – " Here he took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose; then, with a cold and official voice, he continued his speech, "Whichever fool of you doesn't know what a marine court is, let him stick his nose into the dish, and he will know what a marine court is till his seventh skin smarts. When a volunteer is found for a man who is conscripted, let one and another of you be careful not to meddle with them. The contract is signed; there are witnesses; and that is the end of the matter! This is understood in jurisprudence; and if any one doesn't believe, let him look at procedure and precedents. And if they drink besides, what of that? But don't ye drink, ye fools, always and everywhere?"
If Justice herself, with scales in one hand, and a drawn sword in the other, had stepped out from behind the mayor's stove, and stood suddenly among the councilmen, she would not have frightened them more than that marine court, procedure, and precedents. For a while, there was deep silence; only after a time did Gomula speak in a low voice; all looked around at him, as if astonished at his boldness.
"That is true! A man sells a horse, he drinks; the same if he sells an ox, a pig too. That's the custom."
"That's it; we drink, but according to custom," put in the mayor.
Then the councilmen turned more boldly to Repa, —
"Well, if thou hast brewed beer, drink it."
"Or, art thou six years old, or knowest not what thou art doing?"
"Besides they will not take off thy head."
"And when thou goest to the army, thou canst hire a man; he will take thy place in the house, and with the woman."
Joyfulness began to possess the whole assembly.
All at once the secretary opened his mouth again; all was still.
"But ye do not know," said he, "where to interfere, and what ye shouldn't touch. That Repa threatened his wife and child, that he promised to burn his own house, with that ye can meddle, and not let such a thing go unpunished. Since the woman has come with a complaint, let her not go away from this court without justice."
"Not true, not true!" cried the woman, in despair. "I have never suffered any wrong from him. O Jesus! O dear wounds of the living God! – has the world come to an end?"
But the court acted, and the direct result was, that Repa and his wife not only effected nothing, but the court, in proper anxiety for the safety of the woman, decided to secure her by confining Repa in the pen for two days. And lest such thoughts should come to his head in future, it was decided also that he should pay two rubles and a half to the chancery.
Repa sprang up like a madman, and shouted that he would not go to the pen, and as to the chancery fine, he would give not two rubles, but the fifty rubles received from the mayor; and he threw them on the floor, crying, —
"Let the man take them who wishes!"
A terrible uproar began. The policeman ran in and fell to dragging Repa; Repa at him with his fist, he at Repa's hair. She screamed till one of the councilmen took her by the neck and pushed her through the doorway, giving her a fist in the back to help her out; others helped the policeman to drag Repa to the pen.
Meanwhile the secretary wrote down, "From Vavron Repa one ruble and twenty-five copecks for the chancery."
Repa's wife went to her empty house almost out of her senses. She saw nothing in front of her, and stumbled against every stone, wringing her hands above her head and crying, "Ooo! oo! oo!"
The mayor had a good heart, therefore, while going slowly with Gomula toward the inn, he said, —
"I am a little sorry for that woman. Shall I give them a quarter of peas, or something?"
CHAPTER VI
IMOGENE
HERE I hope that the reader has understood sufficiently and estimated the genial plan of my sympathetic hero. Pan Zolzik had, as has been said, checkmated Repa and his wife. To inscribe Repa on the list would have led to nothing. But to make him drunk, and bring it about that he should sign the agreement himself, and take the money, that involved the affair somewhat, and was a clever trick which showed that in a concourse of circumstances Pan Zolzik might play a famous rôle. The mayor, who was ready to ransom his son with eight hundred rubles, that was surely all his "copper," agreed to the plan with delight; all the more since Pan Zolzik was as moderate as he was genial, taking only twenty-five rubles for his part in the affair. But even this money he took without greed, just as he gave part of the chancery money also without greed to Burak. I have to confess that Pan Zolzik was always in debt to Srul, the tailor from Oslovitsi, who furnished the whole region about with "pure Parisian" garments.
And now, since I have come out into the road of confession, I will not conceal the reason why Pan Zolzik dressed so carefully. It flowed, no doubt, from æsthetic causes; but there was also another motive, the following: Pan Zolzik was in love. Do not think, however, that it was with Repa's wife. He had for the woman, as he expressed himself once, a "little appetite," and that was all. Besides this, Pan Zolzik was capable of a feeling which reached higher and was very complicated. My male, if not female, readers surely divine that the object of these feelings could be no other than Panna Yadviga Skorabevski. More than once when the silver moon had mounted the sky, Pan Zolzik took his harmonium, on which instrument he played with skill, sat on the bench before the house of four tenements, and, looking toward the mansion, sang with melancholy, and sometimes with sighing: —
"But from the very dawn,
Till late night, I shed tears;
In the night I breathe heavy sighs;
I have lost every hope."
The voice went toward the mansion, amid the poetic stillness of summer nights; and Pan Zolzik added, after a while, —
"O people, O people, people unfeeling,
Why have ye poisoned the life of the young man?"
If any man condemns Pan Zolzik for sentimentality, I will answer that he is mistaken. Too sober was the mind of this great official to be sentimental. In his dreams, Panna Yadviga took the place of Isabella of Spain, and he that of Serrano or Marfori. But as reality did not answer to his dreams, this iron personage betrayed himself once in his feelings; namely, when toward evening, he saw, near the woodshed, petticoats drying on a clothes-line; and by the letters Y. S., with a crown near the seam, he recognized that they belonged to Panna Yadviga.
Then tell us, benefactor, who could restrain himself? Pan Zolzik did not restrain himself; he approached and fell to kissing one of these petticoats fervently. Malgoska, the housemaid, seeing this, flew at once to the mansion with her tongue and news that, "The lord secretary was wiping his nose on the young lady's petticoat." Happily, however, no one believed this, and the feelings of the lord secretary were revealed to no person.
But had he hope? Do not take it ill, my benefactors, that he had. As often as he went to the mansion, a certain inner voice, weak it is true, but increasing, whispered in his ear, —
"Well now, Panna Yadviga will press thy foot under the table during dinner to-day." "Hm! never mind the polish," added he, with that grandeur of soul which is peculiar to persons in love.
The reading of books published by Pan Breslauer gave him faith in the possibility of various pressings. But Panna Yadviga not only did not press his foot – who can understand woman? – she looked on him as she would on a fence, or a cat, or a plate, or any such thing. How much he suffered, poor man, to turn her attention to himself! More than once when tying a cravat of unheard of colors, or while putting on some new trousers with fabulous stripes, he thought, "This time she will notice me!" Srul himself, when bringing him the new suit, said, "Well, in such trousers, one might go with proposals even to a countess!"
Of what use is all that to him? He is at the dinner; Panna Yadviga enters, haughty, spotless, serene as a sovereign; her robe rustles with its folds, big and little; she sits down, takes a spoon in her slender fingers, and does not look at him.
"Does she not understand that this is costly!" thought Zolzik, in despair.
Still he did not lose hope.
"If I could only become sub-inspector!" thought he. "A man need not put a foot out of doors. From sub-inspector to inspector is not far; a man would have then a yellow carriage, a pair of horses, and if even then she would press one's hand under the table – " Pan Zolzik permitted himself to go still further into immeasurably remote consequences of this pressure of the hand; but we will not betray his thoughts, since they were too secretly heartfelt.
What a rich nature, however, Pan Zolzik's was is shown by the ease with which, at the side of this ideal feeling for Panna Yadviga, which moreover answered to the aristocratic tendencies of the young man, a place was found in him for the equally important "little appetite," his feeling for Repa's wife. True, Repa's wife was what is called a handsome woman; still it is sure that this Don Juan of Barania-Glova would not have devoted so many steps to her had it not been for the wonderful stubbornness of the woman, which deserved punishment. Stubbornness in a simple woman, and against him, seemed to Pan Zolzik so insolent, so unheard of, that not only did the woman take at once in his eyes the charm of forbidden fruit, but he determined to teach her the lesson which she deserved. The affair with the dog, Kruchek, fixed him still more in his purpose. He knew that the victim would defend herself; hence he invented that voluntary contract of Repa's with the mayor, which gave, at least in appearance, to his mercy, or his enmity, Repa himself and his entire family.
But Repa's wife did not give up the affair as lost after the interview at the mayor's. The next day was Sunday, and she resolved to go as usual to Lipa, and take counsel at once with the priest. There were two priests in Lipa; one the parish priest, Canon Ulanovski, so old that his eyes stared like those of a fish, and his head moved continually, swaying from side to side; not to him did Marysia decide to go, but to the curate, Father Chyzik, who was a very holy man and wise; therefore he could give her good counsel and console her. She wished to go early and talk with him before mass; but she had to do her own work and her husband's also, for he was confined in the pen. Before she had swept the cottage, fed the horse, the pigs, the cow, cooked the breakfast, and carried it to Repa in the pen, the sun was high, and she saw that she could not talk to the priest before mass.
In fact, when she came services had begun. Women, dressed in green jackets, were sitting in the graveyard, and putting on hastily the shoes which they had brought in their hands. Marysia did the same, and went straight into the church.
Father Chyzik was preaching; the canon, wearing his cap, was sitting in an armchair at the side of the altar, his eyes staring and his head shaking as usual. The Gospel had been read. Father Chyzik was preaching, I know not for what reason, of the Albigensian heresy in the Middle Ages, and was explaining to his parishioners in what manner alone they were to consider that heresy, as well as the bull ex stercore which was issued against it. Then very eloquently, and with great impressiveness, he warned his flock, as simple people, lowly, like birds of the air, hence dear to God, not to listen to various false sages, and in general to people blinded with Satanic pride who sow tares instead of wheat, or they would gather tears and sin. Here, in passing, he mentioned Condillac, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Ohorovich, without making any distinction between them; and at last he came to a minute description of the various unpleasantnesses to which the damned would be exposed in the next world. And another spirit entered into Repa's wife; for though she did not understand what Father Chyzik was saying, she thought, "He must be speaking beautifully, since he shouts so that he is all in a sweat, and the people are sighing, as if the last breath were going out of them."
The sermon ended and mass continued. Ei! Repa's wife prayed; she prayed as never before in her life; she felt too that it was easier and lighter at her heart.
Finally the solemn moment came. The canon, white as a dove, brought out the most holy sacrament from the ciborium, then turned to the people and holding in his hand the monstrance, which was like the sun, holding it there, with trembling hands, near his face, he remained for a while with closed eyes and inclined head, as if collecting breath; at last he intoned, "Before so great a sacrament!"
The people in a hundred voices roared in response immediately, —
"We fall on our faces,
Let the old law with the testament
Give place to the new;
Faith will be the supplement
To that which agrees not with the senses."
The hymn thundered till the window-panes rattled; the organ groaned; the bells great and small rang; before the church a drum thundered; the censers gave out blue smoke; the sun entered in through the window and illuminated in rainbow tints those rolls of smoke. In the midst of this noise, incense, smoke, and sun-rays, the most holy sacrament glittered on high for an instant, then the priest lowered it, and again he raised it, and that white old man with the monstrance seemed like some heavenly vision, half concealed by the mist of incense, and radiant, from whom came grace and consolation which fell upon all hearts and all pious souls. That grace and that great peace took under the wings of God the suffering soul of Repa's wife also.
"O Jesus, concealed in the most holy sacrament! O Jesus!" cried the unhappy woman, "do not desert me, unfortunate!" And from her eyes flowed tears; they were not such tears as she had shed at the mayor's, but in some sort pleasant tears, though large as Calcutta pearls, yet sweet and peaceful.
The woman fell before the majesty of God, with her face to the floor, and then she knew not what happened. It seemed to her that angels raised her, like a slender leaf, from the earth and bore her to heaven, to eternal happiness, where she saw neither Pan Zolzik, nor the mayor, nor recruiting lists, nothing but brightness, and in that brightness the throne of God, around which was such glory that she had to close her eyes, and whole clouds of angels were there, like birds with white wings.
Repa's wife lay so long that when she rose mass was over; the church was deserted; the incense had risen to the roof; the last of the people were at the door; and at the altar an old man was quenching the candles, – so she rose up and went to the priest's house to speak to the curate.
Father Chyzik was just eating dinner; but he went out at once, when they told him that some weeping woman wished to see him. He was still a young man; his face was pale and serene; he had a white, lofty forehead, and a pleasant smile.
"What do you wish, my woman?" asked he, in a low, but clear voice.
She seized his feet, and then told him the whole story, crying meanwhile and kissing his hand; at last, raising to him humbly her black eyes, she said, —
"Oh, advice, benefactor! advice! I have come to seek advice of you."
"And you are not mistaken, my woman," answered Father Chyzik, mildly. "But I have only one advice, and it is this: Offer to God all your sufferings. God tries His faithful. He tries them as severely as Job, whose wounds were licked by his own dogs, or Azarias, on whom God sent blindness. But God knows what He does, and He will reward those who are faithful. Consider the misfortune which has happened to your husband as a punishment for his grievous sin of drunkenness, and thank God that punishing him during life He may pardon him after death."
The woman looked at the priest with her dark eyes, rose up and went out in silence, without saying one word. But along the road she felt as though something were choking her. She wanted to cry, but she could not.
