Генрик Сенкевич
Hania
"There is nothing after all which drops into such splendid folds as flannel," said Svirski.
"Oh, you artist!" exclaimed the young widow. And there was irony in her voice, for she felt a little angered that Svirski at that moment was thinking not of her, but of the folds into which various kinds of cloth fall.
"Let us go."
A few minutes later they were under the roof of the shooting gallery. Of acquaintances they found only De Sinten, who was shooting on a bet with a Hungarian count. The two men were dressed in reddish English costume with caps of the same material buttoned down on the visor, and barred stockings, both very distinguished, both with witless faces. But, as Pani Elzen had foreseen, De Sinten was so occupied with shooting that he did not notice the widow and the artist at first, and only after a time did he come and greet them.
"How are you succeeding?" inquired the lady.
"I am victorious! I am almost sure of a great winning." Here he turned to Svirski. "But do you shoot?"
"Of course; but not to-day."
"And I," continued De Sinten, looking significantly at Pani Elzen, "am to-day lucky in play."
They called him just then to the shooting.
"He wanted to say that he is unlucky in love," said Svirski.
"Imbecile! Could it be otherwise?"
But in spite of these words of blame, it was evident by the face of the beautiful lady that she was not angry that testimony was given in presence of Svirski of how enchanting she was, and how much desired by all, – and that was not to be the last testimony of the day.
"I wanted to ask you about something," said the artist, after a moment of silence; "but I could not ask during lunch in presence of the boys and Kresovich. Kresovich told me on the way that he was leaving you, or, at least, that he is the tutor of the boys for the last day. Is this true, and why is it?"
"It is true. First of all, I am not sure of his health. A few days since I sent him to the doctor. The doctor declared again that he is not threatened with consumption, otherwise I should not have kept him an hour; but in every case he looks worse and worse; he is peculiar, excitable, often he is unendurable. That is the first reason. And, then, do you know his opinions? They will not be accepted by Romulus and Remus. The boys are reared in such fashion that those opinions cannot take root in them. Besides, I do not wish them in childhood to know of such things, to meet with such an erratic spirit, with such ill-will toward that sphere of society to which my sons belong. You wished them to speak with some one in their own language; that was sufficient for me; that was for me a command. This is the kind of person that I am, and such shall I remain. I understood, too, that they ought to know their own language somewhat. At present great attention is given to this subject, and I confess that people are right. But even in this regard Kresovich is too erratic."
"I am sorry for him. There are certain wrinkles in the corners of his eyes which show him to be a fanatic. His face is a strange one, and really he is a curious man."
"Again art is speaking through you," said Pani Elzen, smiling. But after a moment she grew serious, and on her face even anxiety appeared.
"I have another reason," said she. "It is difficult for one to speak of it; but still I will tell you, for with whom am I to be outspoken if not with my great man? – such a loved one, and so honest, who is able to understand everything. You see I have noticed that Kresovich has lost his head, and fallen in love with me to madness; under these conditions he could not remain near – "
"How is that, and he too?"
"Yes," answered she, with downcast eyes.
And she struggled to pretend that the confession caused her pain; but just as a moment before after the words of De Sinten, there flew across her mouth a smile of flattered self-love and feminine vanity. Svirski took note of that smile, and a bitter, angry feeling straitened his heart.
"I have succumbed to the epidemic," said he.
She looked at him a moment, and asked in a low voice, —
"Was that said by a jealous man, or by an ungrateful one?"
"You are right," answered he, evasively. "If that be the position, Kresovich should go."
"I will settle with him to-day, and that will be the end."
They ceased talking; nothing was heard save the shots of De Sinten and the Hungarian. Svirski, however, could not forgive her that smile which he had caught on the wing. He said to himself, it is true, that Pani Elzen was obliged to act with Kresovich as she had acted, that there was nothing over which to be angry – still he felt rising vexation in his soul. On a time, at the beginning of his acquaintance with Pani Elzen, he saw her riding; she was some yards ahead; after her hurried De Sinten, young Kladzki, Prince Valerian, Wilkis Bey, and Waxford. On Svirski, the group produced the fatal impression at the moment, that it was a kind of chase after a woman. At present the picture stood in memory before him so vividly and with such sharpness that his artistic nature suffered really.
"It is absolutely true," said he to himself, "that all are running after her, and if I had been thrown in clearing some obstacle, the next man behind would have caught her."
But further meditation was stopped by Pani Elzen, who declared that she was growing cold in the shade, and wished to warm herself a trifle in the sun.
"Let us go to your rooms, and do you get a wrap," said Svirski, rising.
They set out for the upper terrace, but halfway on the steps she stopped all at once and said, —
"You are dissatisfied with me. In what have I offended; have I not done what was proper?"
Svirski, whose discontent had calmed somewhat on the way, and who was touched by her alarm, said, —
"Pardon an old original; I beg you to do so."
Pani Elzen wanted absolutely to find out what had made him gloomy, but in no way could she get an answer. Then, half jesting, half sad, she fell to complaining of artists. How unendurable, how strange they are, men whom any little thing offends, any little thing pains; they shut themselves up at once in themselves and then run to their lonely studios! To-day, for instance, she had noted three times, she said, how the artist was in him. That was bad! Let this wicked artist as punishment stay for dinner, then stay till evening.
But Svirski declared that he must return to his studio; then he confided to her his anxieties of an artist, his trouble in finding a model for "Sleep and Death," and finally the hope which he connected with that picture.
"I see from all this," answered the young widow, smiling, "that I shall have one terrible, permanent rival, art."
"That is not a rival," answered Svirski; "it is a divinity which you will serve in my company."
At this the symmetrical brows of the beautiful lady frowned for an instant; but meanwhile they reached the hotel. That day Svirski became convinced that Paradise would open to him only by marriage. And on the train he was thankful to Pani Elzen for that conviction.
CHAPTER IV
PANI Elzen, before beginning her toilet for dinner, summoned Kresovich so as to pay him. She summoned him with a certain curiosity in her soul as to what their parting would be. During life, she had seen so many people fashioned, as it were, by a single cutter on one common pattern, that this young original had held her attention for some time; and now, when he was to leave in a little while, and take a broken heart with him, he occupied her still more. She felt sure that his passion would betray itself in some way, and she had even a slightly concealed wish that it should betray itself, promising, not altogether sincerely, that she would restrain it by one look or one word, should it dream of surpassing a certain measure.
Kresovich, however, came in cool, with a face rather ominous than loving. Pani Elzen, when she looked at him, thought that Svirski, as an artist, could not help noting that head, for there was in it something quite exceptional. Those features were as if of iron, – features in which will surpassed intelligence, giving them an expression which to a certain degree was dull, but also implacable. Svirski had divined long before that Kresovich was one of those men who, once seized by a given idea, have a faith which no breath of doubt can ever dim. Doubt never undermines the capacity for action in men like him, for the reason that a persistent and powerful character is joined to a certain narrowness of thought. Fanaticism flourishes on this soil alone. Pani Elzen, in spite of her society understanding, was too frivolous to grasp this. Kresovich would have attracted her attention only had he been an exceptionally handsome fellow; but since he was not, she met the man the first time she saw him as she would a thing; and it was only Svirski's unconscious teaching which brought her to turn attention to the student. At present she received him politely, and, after paying what she owed, in a voice cold, it is true, and indifferent as usual, but with words which were very polite, expressed sorrow that her intended departure from Monte Carlo, soon to take place, was a hindrance to further relations between them. Kresovich, putting the money into his pocket mechanically, answered, —
"I informed you yesterday that I could teach Romulus and Remus no longer."
"It is just that which pleases me," answered she, raising her head.
Evidently she wished, at least at first, to keep the conversation in a ceremonial tone, and impose that tone on Kresovich. But it was enough to look at him to see that he had the unbending determination to say all that he had resolved in his mind to say.
"You have paid me in genuine money," said he; "do not then give me counterfeit coin for the road."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean this," said he, with emphasis; "that you do not part with me because of your journey, nor have I thanked you for the service. There is another cause, and what that is you know as well as I do."
"If I know, perhaps I do not wish to hear of it, nor to mention it," answered Pani Elzen, haughtily.
He approached one step toward her, putting his hands behind him, and rearing his head almost threateningly.
"But it is unavoidable," said he: "first, because in a moment I shall go away, and, second, for other reasons too, of which you will know to-morrow."
Pani Elzen rose with frowning brow and somewhat with the theatrical posture of an offended queen.
"What does this mean?"
He drew still nearer, so that his mouth was barely a few inches from her face, and began to speak with concentrated energy.
"This means that I ought to have hated you and all your circle; but I have fallen in love with you. This means that for your sake I have degraded myself in my own conscience; for this cause I shall mete out my own punishment to myself. But precisely for this reason I have nothing to lose, and you must pay me for my iniquity, otherwise there will be a catastrophe!"
Pani Elzen was not frightened, for in general she had no fear of men. She did not fear Kresovich's consumption either, since the local physician had quieted her perfectly on that point. Her astonishment alone was real; anger and fear were merely apparent. Amazement sprang up in her heart at once, "But he is a bird of prey, ready to tear me to pieces." For her nature, wrapped up as it was in corruption and fond of novelty, every adventure, especially when it flattered her female vanity, had an unspeakable charm. For this cause her moral sense was astonished at nothing. If Kresovich had implored her for one moment of delight, for the right to kiss the hem of her garment with humility, and on his knees, she would have given command to throw him out of doors. But this man, terrible, almost wild, this representative of a sect of whose tremendous energy fabulous tales were related in her social circle, seemed demonic, so different from all men whom she had seen up to that time that she was seized with ecstasy. Her nerves were greedy of novelty. She thought, too, that in case of resistance, the adventure might take on proportions altogether unforeseen, and turn into a scandal; for that lunatic was really ready for anything.
But Kresovich continued, covering her face with his burning breath, —
"I love, and I have nothing to lose. I have lost health, I have destroyed my future, and have demeaned myself! – I have nothing to lose! Do you understand? To me it is all one whether at your call ten men run in here or a hundred; for you it is not all one! Afterward I shall go; and the secret will be lost – I swear!"
Pani Elzen cared only for preserving appearances, which the hypocritical woman always tries to preserve and to deceive herself.
Turning her eyes, filled with feigned terror, to his face, which was really like the face of a madman, she asked, —
"Do you want to kill me?"
"I want pay – not in money!" answered he, in a stifled voice. Then growing paler yet, he seized her in his arms; and she began to defend herself. But she did so like a fainting woman whom terror deprives of strength and consciousness.
CHAPTER V
SVIRSKI, on arriving at Villa Franca, got out and went to the harbor; for it occurred to him that he might return to Nice by boat. He found, just at the edge of the harbor, a fisherman, an old acquaintance, who, pleased at the sight of a liberal customer, undertook with usual Ligurian boastfulness to take him "even to Corsica though the Sirocco were to turn the sea bottom upward."
But the question was only of a short trip, all the easier because there was not the slightest breeze. Svirski took his place at the stern, and they moved over the smooth sea. After a time, when they had passed the luxurious private yachts, they approached ironclads, whose calm, black immensities were outlined firmly and distinctly in the afternoon sunlight. The deck of the "Formidable" was garlanded already with lamps of various colors, for the ball of the following evening, to which Svirski was to receive an invitation. At the bulwarks were sailors, who, seen from below, looked like pygmies when compared with the ship. The iron walls of the vessel, the smoke-stacks, the masts, the rigging, were reflected in the transparent water as in a mirror. From time to time among the ironclads pushed a boat, which from a distance seemed a black beetle, moving its row of legs symmetrically. Beyond the vessels began empty space, in which the sea surface, as is usual when anything leaves the harbor, rose and fell, though there was no wind, now raising, now letting down Svirski's boat, with a movement at once broad and agreeable. Soon they were approaching lofty cliffs, on the right side of the harbor, along which extended a gray, dusty road; lower down was a parade-ground, where soldiers were practising on trumpets. At last, when they had turned the promontory, against which waves were rolling, they sailed into deep water.
Beyond the harbor there is always some breeze, therefore the fisherman hoisted his sails. Svirski, instead of steering toward Nice, turned to the open sea.
They went straight ahead, rocked by the swell. The sun was lowering toward evening. The rocky cliffs and the sea had grown purple; everything round about was calm, quiet, and so immense that, in spite of himself, Svirski thought how contemptible and petty life was in view of those elements which surrounded him at that moment. Suddenly he felt as if his own affairs, and those of other men, had gone somewhere very far off. Pani Elzen, Romulus, Remus, and all his acquaintances along the shore, all that swarm of people filled with fever, unrest, paltry ambitions, and wretched desires, were belittled in his eyes. As a man accustomed to analyze what happens within him, he was frightened at that impression; for he considered that if he loved Pani Elzen really, her portrait would not be covered by anything, would not be dimmed, would not be decreased, would not disappear. Such had been the case with him formerly. Svirski remembered that when a woman whom he loved got married, he went on a journey. At that time he learned first to know Italy, Rome, Sicily, and the sea, and the coast of Africa; and no impression dimmed in his mind the memory of the beloved woman. In the galleries of Florence and Rome, on the sea and in the desert, she was with him; through her he received every impression, and everywhere he said to her, as if present, "Look at this!" The difference between those distant years and to-day filled him with sadness.
But the calm of the sea acted on him in a manner that was healing. They had sailed out so far that the shores began to be concealed. Then the sun went down; one star twinkled, and then another. The dolphins, which in the evening twilight passed before the boat with the motion of waves, disturbing the calm surface with their sharp backs, sank in the depth, and from no point came an echo. The surface of the water had grown so smooth that at moments the sails became limp. Finally, the moon rose from beyond the mountains, pouring a greenish light over the sea and illuminating it far off to the limit of the horizon.
A southern night began, as mild as it was silent. Svirski sheltered himself in the coat lent him by the fisherman, and meditated: "All that surrounds me is not only beauty, but truth as well. The life of man, if it is to be normal, should be ingrafted on the trunk of nature, grow out of it, as a branch grows out of a tree, and exist in virtue of those same laws. Then it will be truthful and besides moral, for morality is at bottom nothing else than the agreement of life with the universal law of nature. For instance, simplicity and calm surrounds me; I understand this, and I feel it is as an artist; but I haven't it in myself as a man, for my life, and the life of these people among whom I live, has departed from nature, it has ceased to fit itself to that law, to be its result, and has made itself a lie. Everything in us is artificial, even the feeling of natural laws has perished in us. Our relations are founded on falsehood. Our senses are crooked; our souls and our impulses sick. We deceive one another and even ourselves, till at last no man is sure that he wishes really that toward which he is striving, or that he will strive toward that which he wishes."
And there, in presence of that night, of that infinity of the sea, of the stars, of all nature, of its calmness, its simplicity, its immensity, he was seized by a feeling of the gigantic falsehood of the relations between men. False seemed to him his love for Pani Elzen; false her relation to him, to her children, to other men, to society; false the life on that bright shore; false their present and false their future. "I am encircled, as if by a net," thought he; "and I know not how to tear myself out of it." And indeed that was true. For if all life is a falsehood, what is to be done in face of that fact? Return to nature? Begin some sort of life half savage, half peasant? Break with people and become a reformer right away? Svirski felt too old for this, and too sceptical. For such a course one needs to have the dogmatism of Kresovich, and to feel evil as a spur to battle and reform, not as a mere impression which may grow faint to-morrow! But another thought came to Svirski's mind as a recompense. The man who does not feel in himself power to reform the world, may flee from it, for a time, at least, and draw breath. For instance, he could go to Marseilles the next day, and a couple of days later somewhere else, out on the open ocean, hundreds of miles from the shore, from sickly life, from lies and deceptions. In this way all would be settled immediately, or rather cut off as if with a knife.
And in one moment he was seized by such a desire to turn that idea into action that he gave command to return to Nice.
"The wild beast, which feels itself in a net," thought he, "tries first of all to get out. That is its first right – and just that is in accord with nature, hence it is moral. The net around me is not Pani Elzen alone, but all things taken together. I feel perfectly that in marrying her I shall marry a life of lies. That might happen even without her fault, and through the necessity of things – from such a complication one is always free to escape."
And now he pictured other scenes to himself, – scenes which he might see in his flight: broad deserts with water and with sand, unknown lands and people, the sincerity and truth of their primitive life, and finally the variety of events, and all the difference between days to come and the present.
"I ought to have done this long since," said he to himself.
Then a thought entered his mind which could come only to an artist, that if he should leave his betrothed suddenly and go to Paris, for example, the act would belong to "vile literature;" but should he shoot off beyond the equator, to the land where pepper grows, the fact of leaving her would be diminished in view of the distance, the affair would make another impression, would appear more original, and, for that very reason, in better taste.
"But I," thought he, "will go devilish far!"
Meanwhile from a distance Nice rose before him in the form of a bundle of lights. In the middle of that bundle was the building called "Jetée Promenade," which gleamed in the form of a gigantic lighthouse. As the boat, urged by a strong breeze, approached the harbor, every one of those lights changed, as it were, into a pillar of fire, which quivered on the moving water near the shore. The sight of these gleams sobered Svirski.
"The city! – and life!" thought he.
And at once his former plans began to fall apart like dream-visions born of night and emptiness. That which a moment earlier he thought justifiable, necessary, and easy of accomplishment, seemed a whim devoid of the essence of reality, and in part dishonest. "With life, whatever it be, one must reckon. Whoso has lived under its laws the years that I have, must feel responsible to it. It is no great thing to say to one's self: I used them as long as they were pleasant, but the moment they were painful I went back to nature."
Then he fell to thinking more connectedly, not of general theories, but of Pani Elzen.
"By what right could I leave her? If her life has been artificial and false, if her past is not clear, I, who knew that, might have refrained from proposing. At present I could have the right to break with her only in case I discovered in her evil which she concealed, or if she committed some fault touching me. But she has committed no fault of that sort. She has been honest and sincere with me. Besides, there is something in her which attracts me; if not, I should not have proposed. At moments I feel that I love her; and because doubt comes at times on me, must she be the sufferer? My flight would in every case be an injustice to the woman, and who knows that it would not be a blow."
He understood now, that to think of flight and permit it are, for a decent man, two opposite poles. He could only think of it. He could appear before the eyes of Pani Elzen more easily, and ask her to return his word to him; but to flee from danger was a thing directly opposed to his personal nature and the character of his stock, which was thoroughly civilized. Besides, at the very thought of doing injustice to a woman, the heart quivered in him; and Pani Elzen grew nearer and dearer to him.
They had sailed almost into the harbor; and a moment later the boat arrived. Svirski paid, and taking a seat in a carriage, gave directions to drive to his studio. On the street, amid the glare of lamps, the noise and the movement, he was carried away again by a yearning for that quiet, that endless spread of water, that calmness, that boundless truth of God, from which he had parted a moment before. At last, when he was near the studio, the following idea came to his head: "It is a marvellous thing that I, who feared women so much, and was so distrustful of them, have in the end of ends chosen one capable of rousing more fear than all the others."
There was in that a certain fatality, as it were; and Svirski would have found beyond doubt in that concourse of things material for meditation during a whole evening, had it not been that as he entered the servant gave him two letters. In one, was an invitation to the ball of the following day on board the "Formidable," the other was from Pani Lageat, the owner of the house.
She informed him of her departure in a couple of days for Marseilles, and at the same time told him that she had found a model who ought to satisfy his most extravagant taste, and who would come the next morning.
