Генрик Сенкевич
Hania
LUX IN TENEBRIS LUCET 13
SOMETIMES in the autumn, especially in November, such wet and gloomy days come that life becomes repulsive even to a healthy man. From the time that Kamionka had fallen ill and stopped work on his statue of "Compassion," bad weather had caused him more suffering than sickness itself. Every morning, when he had dragged his body out of bed, he rubbed the great sweating window of his studio and looked upward, in the hope that he would see some little strip of blue sky; but every morning disappointment awaited him. An oppressive lead-colored mist hung over the earth; rain was not falling, still the paving stones in the yard looked like sponges soaked in liquid; everything was wet, slippery, penetrated through and through with water, single drops of which falling from the eave-troughs sounded with a peculiar and desperate monotony, as if measuring that sluggish time of sadness.
The window of the studio looked out on a courtyard, which was bounded by a garden. The grass beyond the paling was green yet with a sort of sickly greenness, in which were death and decay; but the trees with their yellow leaves, and their branches black from dampness and also effaced by the mist somewhat, seemed dead altogether. From among those trees came every evening the cawing of crows, which had flown in from the forests and fields to the city for winter quarters, and which, with a great clattering of wings, settled down for the night on the branches.
The studio in days like this was as gloomy as the place for bones in a cemetery. Marble and plaster of Paris need azure. In that leaden light the whiteness had something sad in it; figures in dark terra-cotta lost all precision of lines and changed into indefinite forms almost terrible.
Dirt and disorder increased the gloom of the studio. On the floor was a thick layer of dust, formed from pieces of dry terra-cotta ground fine from trampling; to this was added mud from the street. The naked walls were merely ornamented here and there with models of hands and feet in plaster of Paris; near the window hung a small mirror, above it a horse skull, and a bouquet of artificial flowers quite black from dust.
In the corner was a bed covered with a quilt, old and rumpled; near the bed a commode; on this an iron candlestick.
Kamionka, through reasons of economy, kept no separate lodging-place; he slept in the studio. Usually the bed was concealed by a screen, but the screen had been removed to let the sick man look out more easily through the window near the foot of his bed, and see if the weather were clearing. Another and larger window placed in the ceiling of the studio was covered with dust on the outside to such a degree that even on bright days a gray and gloomy light passed in through it.
But the weather did not clear. After a number of days of darkness the clouds settled down thoroughly, the air was penetrated to the last degree with a watery, heavy mist, and became still darker. Kamionka, who so far had lain on the bed in his clothing, felt worse, so he undressed and lay down for good.
Speaking precisely, he was not so much sick with any definite disease as he was bowed down, dissatisfied, exhausted, and sad in general. His weakness cut the feet from beneath him. He had no wish to die; but neither did he feel strength to live.
The long hours of the dismal day seemed longer because he had no one for company. His wife had been dead twenty years; his relatives lived in another part of the country; and he did not live with his colleagues. In recent years every acquaintance had withdrawn from him because of his ever-increasing sorrow. At first, his disposition amused people; but later, when he grew stranger and stranger, when every jest roused a permanent feeling of offence in him, even those nearest the man broke off all relations with him.
People took it ill of him also that with age he had grown devout, and his sincerity was suspected. Malicious tongues said that he sat in church only to receive orders from churches through his relations with priests. This was not true. His piety did not flow from deep and calm faith, perhaps, but it was unselfish.
What, however, lent a show of truth to the critics, was the penuriousness which increased more and more in Kamionka. For a number of years he had lived in his studio to lessen expenses; he lived God knows on what food, and injured his health so much that at last his face was as yellow and transparent as if moulded from wax. He avoided people also for this, lest some one might ask of him sometime a favor.
In general, he was a man of broken character, embittered and uncommonly unhappy. Still his was not a common nature at bottom, for even his faults had artistic traits which were special to him. Those who judged that with his penuriousness he must have collected a considerable property were mistaken. In truth, Kamionka was poor; for all that he owned he had spent on engravings of which he had whole portfolios at the bottom of his bureau; these, from time to time, he counted with the greed and the care of a usurer counting his money. He concealed this taste the more carefully, perhaps, because it had grown on the basis of great misfortune and deep feeling.
On a time, a year more or less after the death of his wife, he saw in an antiquarian's collection an old engraving, representing Armida. In the face of this Armida he detected a likeness to the face of his dead one. He bought the engraving immediately, and from that time on he sought copperplates, those at first representing only Armida, then, as the fancy increased, every other.
Those who have lost persons much loved by them are forced to attach life to something, or they could not exist. As to Kamionka, no one would have thought that this rather aged original and egotist had ever loved his wife more than he loved his existence. It is likely, moreover, that had she not died, life would have flowed on for him more broadly, more calmly, and more in human fashion. Be that as it may, love in Kamionka survived his happy days, his youth, and even his talent.
His piety, which in the course of years turned into a custom resting on the preservation of external forms, flowed from this love of his also. Kamionka, without being a man of deep faith, began after the death of his wife to pray for the dead one, since this seemed to him the only thing he could do for her, and thus a kind of thread kept them together.
Natures apparently cold are often able to love with great power and persistently. After the death of his wife, Kamionka's whole life and all the thoughts that he had, entwined themselves around her memory, and drew food from it, just as plant parasites draw food from the tree on which they are growing. But from memories of that sort the human plant can gain nothing but poisonous juices made up of sorrow and enormous vexation, hence Kamionka too poisoned himself, grew distorted, went to nothing.
Had he not been an artist, he would not have survived, perhaps, but he was saved by his calling. After the death of his wife, he began to make a monument to her. It is useless for the living to say that it is all one to the dead in what graves they are lying. Kamionka wished that it should be beautiful there for his Zosia, and he worked with his heart no less than his hands. This was why he did not become insane the first half year, but grew inured to despair.
The man was out of joint and unhappy; but art saved the artist. From that moment, Kamionka existed by virtue of his calling. People who look at statues and images in galleries do not divine that artists may serve their art honestly or dishonestly. In this regard, Kamionka was without reproach. He had no wings at his shoulders, – he possessed only talent somewhat above the common, and perhaps, therefore, art could not fill out his life, or give him recompense for all losses; but he respected it deeply, and was ever sincere with regard to it. During the long years of his labor, he had never tempted it, and had never committed injustice regarding it, either in view of fame, profit, praise, or blame. He always did that which he felt. During his happy years, when he lived like other men, he was able to say things touching art which were quite uncommon, and after that, when people began to turn aside from him, he thought frequently of this art in his lonely studio, in a manner which was lofty and honest.
He felt greatly abandoned; but in this there was no cause for wonder. People's relations must have a certain medium measure in virtue of which the exceptionally unhappy are cut off from life. For that very reason, they are covered with as much strangeness and as many faults as a stone thrown up from a torrent is covered with moss, when it ceases to rub against others. Now when Kamionka was ill, no living soul looked into his studio, with the exception of a servant-woman, who came twice a day to make tea for him, and serve it. At every visit, her advice was to call in a doctor; but he, fearing the outlay, would not give his consent to this.
At last he became very weak; perhaps for the reason that he took nothing into his mouth except tea. But he had no desire then for anything, either for eating, or work, or life. His thoughts were as if withered like those leaves on which he looked through the window; and those thoughts of his answered perfectly to that autumn, to that drizzle, to that leaden darkness. There are no worse moments in life than those in which a man feels that he has accomplished what he had to accomplish, that he has outlived that which he had to outlive; and that nothing more in this world belongs to him. Kamionka had lived almost fifteen years in continual dread that his talent would exhaust itself; now he was sure that it had, and he thought with bitterness that even art was deserting him. He felt therewith weariness and exhaustion in every bone of his body. He did not expect a sudden death; but he did not believe in a return to health. In general, there was not one spark of hope in him.
If he wished for anything it was only that the weather would brighten, that the sun would shine into his studio. For he thought that in that case he might gain consolation. He had always been specially sensitive to slush and to darkness; such days had always deepened his sadness and depression, and what must it now be when that "hopeless time," as Kamionka called it, was joined to his sickness!
Every evening when the servant brought tea he inquired: "Is it not clearing on the edge of the sky somewhere?"
"There is such a mist," answered she, "that one man cannot see another."
Kamionka, hearing this answer, closed his eyes and lay motionless a long time.
In the yard it was always quiet save that drops of rain pattered evenly and monotonously in the gutters.
About three o'clock one afternoon it was so dark that Kamionka was forced to light a candle. And he was so weak that he did this with no little difficulty. Before he reached for a match he meditated a long time; then he extended his arm lazily; the thinness of this arm, evident through the shirt sleeve, filled him, as a sculptor, with repugnance and bitterness. When he had lighted the candle he rested again, without moving, till the evening arrival of the servant, listening with closed eyes to the drops sounding in the gutter.
His studio looked strange then. The flame of the candle lighted the bed with Kamionka lying on it, and came to a focus in a shining point on his forehead with its skin dry and yellow as if polished. The rest of the room was sunk in darkness, which grew denser each moment. But as it grew dark outside the statues became more rosy and acquired life. The flame of the candle now sank, now rose, and in that quivering light the statues too seemed to sink and rise exactly as if they were rising on tiptoe to gain a better look at the face of the sculptor, and be convinced that their creator was living.
And indeed there was a certain immobility of death in that countenance. But at times the blue lips of the sick man stirred with a slight movement, as if in prayer, or as if he were cursing his loneliness and those dreadful drops of moisture which measured with even monotony the hours of his sickness.
One evening the woman came a little drunk, therefore more talkative than usual.
"There is so much work on my head that I can barely look in twice a day," said she; "if you would call a religious, a sister of charity costs nothing, and she would be better for a sick man."
This advice pleased Kamionka, but he, like others who are afflicted, had the habit of always opposing whatever advice people gave him; so he would not agree.
But after the woman had gone he began to think thus: "A sister of charity costs nothing, but what aid she might give, and what comfort!" Kamionka, like every sick man left to himself, experienced much suffering and struggled with a thousand petty miseries, which annoyed him as much as they made him impatient. More than once he lay for whole hours with a crooked neck before he would move to arrange his own pillow. Often in the night he was cold and would have given God knows what for a cup of tea; but if it was difficult to light a candle, how was he to think of making tea? A sister of charity would do all this with the mild readiness usual to those sisters. Oh, how much easier to be sick if one had their assistance!
The poor man came at last to think of sickness under such conditions as something desirable and pleasant, and he wondered in his soul if the like happiness were accessible to him even.
It seemed, too, that if a sister were to come and bring with her a little joyousness and solace to the studio, perhaps the weather would clear up outside, and the sounding drops of water cease to pursue him.
He regretted at last that he had not accepted the advice of the woman immediately. Night was approaching, long and gloomy, and the woman was to look in at him only next morning. He understood now that that night would be for him more grievous than all the nights which had ever preceded it.
Then he thought what a Lazarus he was – and in distinction to his present wretchedness his former happy years stood before his eyes as if living. And as a moment before the thought of the sister of charity, so now the remembrance of those years joined itself in the same wonderful manner in his weakened brain, with the understanding of sun and light and fair weather.
He began to think of his dead one, and to speak with her, as he had the habit of doing when he was ill. At last he wearied himself, felt that he was growing weak, and fell asleep.
The candle was burning slowly. Its flame from being rosy was blue, then it gleamed brightly a number of times, and died. Deep darkness embraced the studio.
But meanwhile in the yard drops of rain fell as evenly and gloomily as if by means of them darkness and grief were distilled through all nature.
Kamionka slept long and lightly, but all at once he woke with a certain wonderful impression that something uncommon was happening in the studio. The morning dawn was in the world. The marbles and plasters of Paris began to grow white. The broad Venetian window opposite his bed was penetrated more and more with pale light.
In this light Kamionka saw a figure sitting at his bedside.
He opened his eyes widely and looked at the figure: it was that of a sister of charity.
She was sitting motionless, turned slightly toward the window, with her head inclined. Her hands were laid on her knees, – and she seemed to be praying. The sick man could not see her face, but he saw plainly her white head-dress and the dark outline of her rather frail shoulders.
His heart began to beat somewhat nervously, and these questions flew through his head, —
"When could the servant have brought in this sister of charity; and how did she enter?"
Next he thought that perhaps something seemed to him thus because he was weak, then he closed his eyes. But after a while he opened them again.
The sister of charity was sitting on the same spot, motionless as if sunk in prayer.
A wonderful feeling composed of fear and delight began to raise the hair on the head of the sick man. Something attracted his eyes with incomprehensible power to that figure. It seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere, but where and when he could not remember. An irresistible desire to see her face seized him, but the white head-dress concealed it. Kamionka, without knowing why, did not dare to speak or to move, or hardly to breathe. He felt only that the sensation of fear and delight was possessing him more and more powerfully, and he asked with astonishment, "What is this?"
Meanwhile there was perfect day. And what a marvellous morning that must be outside! Suddenly without any transition there came into the studio a light as powerful, bright, and joyous as if it were springtime and May.
Waves of golden glitter, rising like a flood, began to fill the room, to overflow it so mightily that the marbles were drowned and dissolved in that brightness; the walls were covered with it and then disappeared altogether. Kamionka found himself as it were in some bright space without boundary.
Then he noticed that the covering on the head of the sister began to lose its white stiffness, that it trembled at the edges, melted, dissolved like clear mist, and changed into light.
The sister turned her face slowly toward the sick man, and then the deserted sufferer saw in the bright aureole the well-known hundred times beloved features of his dead wife.
He sprang from the bed, and from his breast came a cry, in which all his years of sorrow, tears, suffering, and despair were united, —
"Zosia! Zosia!"
And seizing her, he drew her to him; she threw her arms around his neck.
More and more light came into the room.
"Thou didst not forget me," said she at last, "hence I have come. I obtained an easy death for thee."
Kamionka held her in his arms all the time, as if in fear that the blessed vision would vanish from him together with the light.
"I am ready to die," answered he, "if thou wilt stay with me."
She smiled at him with her angelic smile, and taking one arm from his neck she pointed downward, and said, —
"Thou art dead already. Look!"
He looked in the direction of her hand, and behold, under their feet, he saw through the window in the ceiling of his own gloomy and lonely studio, and there on the bed lay his own corpse, with widely opened mouth, which in the yellow face seemed a dark hole as it were.
And he looked on that emaciated body as something foreign. But after a while all began to vanish from his eyes, for that surrounding brightness, as if urged by a wind from beyond this world, went off somewhere into infinity.
ON THE BRIGHT SHORE
CHAPTER I
THE artist was sitting beside Pani Elzen in an open carriage; on the front seat were her sons the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. He was partly conversing with the lady, partly thinking of a question which required prompt decision, and partly looking at the sea. There was something to look at. They were driving from Nice toward Monte Carlo by the so-called Old Cornice; that is, by a road along impending cliffs, high above the water. On the left, the view was hidden by naked towering rocks, which were gray, with a rosy pearl tinge; on the right was the blue Mediterranean, which appeared to lie immensely low down, thus producing the effect of an abyss and of boundlessness. From the height on which they were moving, the small fishing boats seemed like white spots, so that frequently it was difficult to distinguish a distant sail from a seamew circling above the water.
Pani Elzen had placed her hand on Svirski's arm; her face was that of a woman delighted and forgetful of what she is doing; she gazed with dreamy eyes over the mirror of the sea.
Svirski felt the touch; a quiver of delight ran through him, and he thought that if at that moment Romulus and Remus had not been in front of them, he might have placed his arm around the young woman, perhaps, and pressed her to his bosom.
But straightway a certain fear seized him at the thought that hesitation would then have an end, and the question be settled.
"Stop the carriage, please," said Pani Elzen.
Svirski stopped the carriage, and they were silent a moment.
"How quiet it is here after the bustle of Monte Carlo!" said the young widow.
"I hear only music," answered the artist; "perhaps the bands are playing on the iron-clads in Villa Franca."
In fact, from below came at intervals muffled sounds of music, borne thither by the same breeze which brought the odor of orange-blossoms and heliotropes. Beneath them were visible the roofs of villas, dotting the shore, and almost hidden in groves of eucalyptus, while round about were large white spots formed by blossoming almond-trees, and rosy spots made by peach blossoms. Lower down was the dark-blue sunlit bay of Villa Franca, with crowds of great ships.
The life seething there presented a marvellous contrast to the deep deadness of the naked, barren mountains, above which extended the sky, cloudless and so transparent that it was monotonous and glassy. Everything was dimmed and belittled amid that calm greatness; the carriage with its occupants seemed, as it were, a kind of beetle, clinging to the cliffs along which it was climbing to the summit with insolence.
"Here life ends altogether," said Svirski, looking at the naked cliffs.
Pani Elzen leaned more heavily on his shoulder and answered with a drowsy, drawling voice, —
"But it seems to me that here life begins."
After a moment Svirski answered with a certain emotion, "Perhaps you are right."
And he looked with an inquiring glance at her. Pani Elzen raised her eyes to him in answer, but dropped them quickly, as if confused, and, though her two sons were sitting on the front seat of the carriage, she looked at that moment like a maiden whose eyes could not endure the first ray of love. After that, both were silent; while from below came snatches of music.
Meanwhile, far away at sea, at the very entrance to the bay, appeared a dark pillar of smoke, and the quiet of the company was broken by Remus, who sprang up, and cried, —
"Tiens! le 'Fohmidable'!"
Pani Elzen cast a glance of displeasure at her younger son. She knew the value of that moment, in which every next word might weigh in her fate decisively.
"Remus," said she, "will you be quiet?"
"But, mamma, it is the 'Fohmidable'!" 14
"What an unendurable boy!"
"Pouhquoi?"15
"He is a duhen16 [duren, a simpleton]; but this time he is right," called out Romulus, quickly; "yesterday we were at Villa Franca," – here he turned to Svirski. "You saw us go on velocipedes; they told us there that the whole squadron had arrived except the 'Fohmidable,' which was due to-day."
To this Remus answered with a strong accent on every last syllable, —
"Thou art a duhen,17 thyself!"
The boys fell to punching each other with their elbows. Pani Elzen, knowing how Svirski disliked her sons' style of speech, and generally the manner in which they were reared, commanded them to be silent.
"I have told you and Pan Kresovich," said she, "not to speak among yourselves in any language but Polish."
Kresovich was a student from Zürich, with incipient lung disease; Pani Elzen had found him on the Riviera, and engaged him as tutor for her sons, after her acquaintance with Svirski, and especially after a public declaration of the malicious and wealthy Pan Vyadrovski, that respectable houses had ceased to rear their sons as commercial travellers.
Meanwhile the unlucky "Formidable" had spoiled the temper of the sensitive artist. After a time, the carriage, gritting along the stones, moved on.
"You took their part, and I brought them," said Pani Elzen, with a sweet voice; "you are too kind to the boys. But one should be here during moonlight. Would you like to come to-night?"
"I like to come always; but to-night there will be no moon, and of course your dinner will end late."
"That is true; but let me know when the next full moon comes. It is a pity that I did not ask you alone to this dinner – With a full moon, it must be beautiful here, though on these heights I have always a throbbing of the heart. If you could see how it throbs at this moment; but look at my pulse, you can see it even through the glove."
She turned her palm, which was confined so tightly in the Danish glove as to be turned almost into a tube, and stretched it to Svirski. He took the hand in both of his, and looked at it.
"No," said he; "I cannot see the pulse clearly, but perhaps I can hear it."
And, inclining his head, he put his ear to the buttons of her glove; for a moment he pressed the glove firmly to his face, then touched it lightly with his lips, and said, —
"In years of childhood I was able sometimes to catch a bird, and its heart beat just this way. The beating here is just as in a captured bird!"
She laughed, almost with melancholy, and repeated, "'As in a captured bird.' But what did you do with the captured birds?"
"I grew attached to them, immensely. But they always flew away."
"Bad birds."
"And thus my life arranged itself," continued the artist, with emotion; "I have sought in vain for something which would consent to stay with me, till at last I have lost even hope."
"Do not lose that; have confidence," answered Pani Elzen.
Svirski thought then to himself, that, since the affair had begun so long before, there was need to end it, and let that come which God permits. He felt at the moment like a man who closes his eyes and ears with his fingers; but he felt also that it was needful to act thus, and that there was no time for hesitation.
"Perhaps it would be better for you to walk a little," said he. "The carriage will follow, and, besides, we shall be able to speak more in freedom."
"Very well," answered Pani Elzen, with a resigned voice.
Svirski punched the driver with his cane; the carriage halted; and they stepped out. Romulus and Remus ran forward at once, and only stopped, when some tens of yards ahead, to look from above at the houses in Eze, and roll stones into the olive-groves growing below. Svirski and Pani Elzen were left alone; but that day some fatality seemed to weigh on them, for before they could use the moment they saw that a horseman, coming from the direction of Monaco, had stopped near Romulus and Remus. Behind him was a groom dressed in the English manner.
"That is De Sinten," said Pani Elzen, with impatience.
"Yes, I recognize him."
In fact, they saw next moment before them a horse's head, and above it the equine face of young De Sinten. He hesitated whether or not to salute and go on, but considering evidently that if they had wanted to be alone they would not have brought the boys, he sprang from the horse, and, beckoning to the groom, began to greet them.
"Good-day," answered Pani Elzen, somewhat dryly. "Is this your hour?"
"It is. Mornings, I shoot at pigeons with Wilkis Bey, so I cannot ride lest I disturb my pulse. I am now seven pigeons ahead of him. Do you know that the 'Formidable' comes to Villa Franca to-day, and to-morrow the admiral will give a ball on deck?"
"We saw it arrive."
"I was just going to Villa Franca to see one of the officers whom I know, but it is late. If you permit, I will go with you to Monte Carlo."
Pani Elzen nodded, and they went on together. De Sinten, since he was a horseman by nature, began at once to speak of the "hunter," on which he had come.
"I bought him from Waxdorf," said he. "Waxdorf lost at trente et quarante, and needed money. He bet inverse, and hit on a lucky series, but afterward fortune changed." Here he turned to the horse. "He is of pure Irish blood, and I will give my neck that there is not a better hunter on the whole Cornice; but it is difficult to mount him."
"Is he vicious?" inquired Svirski.
"Once you are in the saddle, he is like a child. He is used to me; but you, for instance, could not mount him."
At this Svirski, who in matters of sport was childishly vain, asked at once, —
"How is that?"
"Do not try, especially here above the precipice!" cried Pani Elzen.
But Svirski had his hand on the horse's shoulder already, and a twinkle later was in the saddle, without the least resistance from the horse; perhaps the beast was not at all vicious, and understood, too, that on the edge of a cliff above a precipice it was better not to indulge in pranks.
The rider and the horse disappeared at a slow gallop along the turn of the road.
"He rides very well," said De Sinten; "but he will spoil my horse's feet. There is no road here for riding."
"The horse has turned out perfectly gentle," said Pani Elzen.
"I am greatly pleased at this, for here an accident happens easily – and I was a little afraid."
On his face, however, there was a certain concern; first, because what he had said about the horse's stubbornness at mounting seemed like untruth, and, second, because there existed a secret dislike between him and Svirski. De Sinten had not, it is true, at any time serious designs touching Pani Elzen; but he would have preferred that no one should oppose him in such designs as he had. Besides, some weeks before, he and Svirski had engaged in a rather lively talk. De Sinten, who was an irrepressible aristocrat, had declared, during a dinner at Pani Elzen's, that to his thinking man begins only at the baron. To this Svirski, in a moment of ill-humor, answered with an inquiry, —
"In what direction?" (up or down).
De Sinten took this reply so seriously that he sought advice of Vyadrovski and Councillor Kladzki as to how he ought to act, and learned, with genuine astonishment, that Svirski had a coronet on his shield. A knowledge of the artist's uncommon strength, and his skill in shooting, had a soothing effect, perhaps, on the baron's nerves; it suffices that the negotiation had no result, except to leave in the hearts of both men an indefinite dislike. From the time that Pani Elzen seemed to incline decidedly toward Svirski, the dislike had become quite Platonic.
