Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  “The actual fact.”

  “Sapristi! But that is a nursery tale. Sapristi! You are joking.”

  “I give you my word it is so. She herself told that to Krzycki.”

  “I like that expression of astonishment on Dolhanski’s face,” exclaimed Swidwicki. “Man, come to yourself.”

  Dolhanski restrained himself, for he always proclaimed that a true gentleman never should be surprised.

  “I remember now,” he said, “that this is the Skibianka to whom Uncle Zarnowski bequeathed a few thousand roubles.”

  “The same.”

  “Therefore his daughter.”

  “Fancy to yourself otherwise. Skiba came from Galicia to Rzeslewo with a wife and a child a few years old.”

  “Therefore of pure peasant blood.”

  “A Piast’s, a Piast’s,” cried Swidwicki.

  “Absolutely pure,” answered Gronski.

  “And what does Laudie say?”

  “He swallowed the tidings and is trying to digest them,” again blurted out Swidwicki.

  “That substantially is the case. He found himself in a new situation and locked himself up. It dumfounded him a little, and he desires to come to himself.”

  “He was enamoured to the point of ludicrousness but now he will probably break off.”

  “I do not admit that, but I repeat, that, in view of the changed situation, he has fallen into a certain internal strife, which he must first quell.”

  “I candidly confess that I would break off all relations unconditionally.”

  “But if Kaska or Hanka had a hundred thousand pounds?” asked Swidwicki.

  “In such a case — I would have fallen into a strife,” answered Dolhanski, phlegmatically.

  After a while he continued:

  “For it seems that it is nothing, but in life it may appear to be something. Omitting the various cousins, ‘Mats’ and ‘Jacks,’ who undoubtedly will be found; there also will be found dissimilar instincts, dissimilar dispositions, and dissimilar tastes. Why, the deuce! I would not want a wife who suddenly might be ruled by an unexpected passion for amber rosaries, for shelling peas, for swingling flax, for picking fruit, or for gathering mushrooms, not to say berries and nuts, and walking barefooted.”

  Here he turned to Gronski.

  “Shrug your shoulders, but it is so.”

  “That would not shock me,” said Swidwicki, “only, if I were to marry Miss Anney, I would just stipulate that she at times should go about barefooted. When I am in the country, nothing affects me so much as the sight of the bare feet of girls. It is true that they often have erysipelas about the ankles, which comes from the prickle of the stubblefields. But I assume that Miss Anney has not got erysipelas.”

  “One cannot talk with you in a dignified manner.”

  “Why?” replied Swidwicki. “Let Krzycki now clip coupons from his dignity but not we. Did you say that he belongs to the National Democrats?”

  “No, not I. But what connection has that with Miss Anney?”

  “Oh, — oh, a nobleman — a National Democrat — has found out that his flame has peasant blood in her veins and nevertheless his belly on that account has begun to ache; nevertheless, he is stung by that deminutio capitis.”

  “Who told you that? Besides, it should be permutatio, not deminutio.”

  “Yes! The English wares take on the appearance of a domestic product and fall in value. Justly, justly.”

  “Do you know who could with perfect independence enter into a marriage under such conditions?” asked Dolhanski. “A truly great gentlemen.”

  “But not Polish,” exclaimed Swidwicki.

  “There you are already beginning! Why not Polish?”

  “Because a Polish gentleman has not sufficient faith in his own blood; he plainly has not sufficient pride to believe that he will elevate a woman to himself and not lower himself to her.”

  Gronski began to laugh:

  “I did not expect that charge from your lips,” he said.

  “Why? I am an individualist, and in so far as I do not regard myself as a specimen of the basest race, so far do I regard myself as a specimen of the best. According to me one belongs to the aristocracy only through lucky chance; that is, when one brings into the world a suitable profile and corresponding brain. But Dolhanski, for instance, in so far as he has not purchased portraits of ancestors at an auction — and our other gentlemen — judge that blood constitutes that appurtenance. Now granting these premises, I contend that our tories do not know how to be proud of their blood.”

  “At home,” said Gronski, “you vent your spleen upon the socialists, and here you wish to vent it upon the aristocracy.”

  “That does not diminish my merits. I have a few pretty remarks for the National Democracy.”

  “I know, I know. But how will you prove that which you said about the Polish tories?”

  “How will I prove it? By the Socratic method — with the aid of questions. Did you ever observe when a Polish gentleman abroad becomes acquainted with a Frenchman or Englishman? I, while I had money, passed winters in Nice or in Cairo and saw a number of them. Now, every time I propounded to myself the question which now I put to you: why the devil it is not the Frenchman or Englishman who tries to please the Pole, but the Pole them? Why is it that only the Pole fawns, only the Pole coquets? Because he is almost ashamed of his descent; and if by chance a Frenchman tells him that from his accent he took him for a Frenchman, or an Englishman takes him for an Englishman, then he melts with joy, like butter in a frying-pan! Ah, I have seen such coquettes by the score — and it is an old story. Such coquetry, for instance, Stanislaus Augustus possessed. At home, the Polish gentleman at times knows how to hold his nose high. Before a foreigner he is on both paws. Is not that a lack of pride in his own race, in his own blood, in his own traditions? If you have the slightest grain of a sense of justice, even though no larger than the grain of caviar, you must admit the justice of my remarks. As to myself, I have been ashamed sometimes that I am a Pole.”

  “That means that you committed the same sin with which you charge others,” replied Gronski. “If the tips of the wings of our eagle reached both seas, as at one time they did, perhaps Poles might be different. But at present — tell me — of what are they to be proud?”

  “You are twisting things. I am speaking of racial pride only, not political,” answered Swidwicki. “After all, may the devils take them. I prefer to drink.”

  “Say what you will,” asserted Dolhanski, “but I will merely tell you this: if internal affairs were exclusively in their hands, some fooleries might take place, but we would not be fried in the sauce in which we are fried to-day.”

  Swidwicki turned to him with eyes glistening already a little abnormally.

  “My dear sir,” he said, “in order to govern a country it is necessary to have one of three things: either the greatest number, which the canaille has behind it — I beg pardon, I should have said the Democracy — or the greatest sound sense, which nobody amongst us possesses, or the most money, which the Jews have. And as I have demonstrated that our great gentlemen do not even have any sentiment of traditions, therefore what have they?”

  “At least good manners, which you lack,” retorted Dolhanski with aversion.

  “No. I will tell you what they have — if not all of them, then the second or third one: but I will tell it to you in a whisper, so as not to shock Gronski’s virgin ears.”

  And leaning over to Dolhanski, he whispered a word to him, after which he snorted, maliciously:

  “I do not say that that is nothing, but it is not sufficient to govern the country with.”

  But Dolhanski frowned and said:

  “If that is so, then you surely belong to the highest aristocracy.”

  “Of course! certainly! I have a diploma certified a few years ago in Aix-la-chapelle, the place of the coronation!”

  Saying this, he again quaffed his wine and continued with a kind of feverish gayety:<
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  “Ah, permit me to rail, permit me to scoff at men and things! I always do that internally but at times I must expectorate the gall. Permit me! For after all, I am a Pole, and for a Pole there perhaps cannot be a greater pleasure than defacing, belittling, pecking at, calumniating, spitting on, and pulling down statues from the pedestals. Republican tradition, is it not? In addition Providence so happily arranged it that a Pole loves that the most, and when he himself is concerned, he feels it most acutely. A delightful society!”

  “You are mistaken,” replied Gronski, “for in that respect we have changed prodigiously and in proof of it, I will cite one instance: When the painter Limiatycki received for his ‘Golgotha’ a grand medal in Paris, all the local little brushes at once fumed at him. So meeting him, I asked him whether he intended to retaliate, and he replied to me with the greatest serenity: ‘I am serving my fatherland and art, but only stupidity cannot understand that, while only turpitude will not understand it.’ And he was right, for whoever has any kind of wings at his shoulders and can raise himself a little in the air, need not pay attention to the mud of the streets.”

  “Tut, tut; mud is a purely native product, the same as other symptoms of your national culture, namely: filth, scandals, envy, folly, indolence, big words and little deeds, cheap politics, brawling, a relish for mass-meetings, banditism, revolvers, and bombs; if I wanted to mention everything I would not finish until late at night.”

  “Then I will throw in for you a few more things,” said Gronski; “drunkenness, cynicism, a stupid pose of despair, thoughtless hypercriticism, scoffing at misfortune, fouling one’s own nest, spitting at blood and suffering, undermining faith in the future, and blasphemy against the nation. Have you yet enough?”

  “I have not enough of wine. Order some more, order some more!”

  “I will not order any more wine, but I will tell yet more, that you err in claiming that these are native products. They are brought by a certain wind which evidently has fanned you.”

  But Swidwicki, who this time had no desire to quarrel but did have a desire to drink, evidently wishing to change the subject of the conversation, unexpectedly exclaimed:

  “Apropos of winds, what a pity that such sensible people as the Prussians commit one gross blunder.”

  Gronski, who had already risen to bid him farewell, was overcome temporarily by curiosity.

  “What blunder?” he asked.

  “That they assume super-villeiny to be superhumanity.”

  “In this you are right.”

  “I feel a contempt for myself as often as I am right.”

  “Then we will leave you with your wine and your contempt.”

  Saying this, Gronski nodded to Dolhanski and they departed. Swidwicki’s last words, however, caused him to reflect; so after a while he said:

  “Now people’s minds are haunted by the Prussians and they are reminded of them by the slightest cause. After all, Swidwicki’s description of them was apposite.”

  “If you knew how little I am interested in Swidwicki’s descriptions.”

  “Nevertheless, you vie with him and talk in a similar strain,” answered Gronski.

  After which, pursuing further the train of his thoughts, he said:

  “Nietzsche also did not perceive that the susceptibility and appreciation of other people’s woes becomes manifest only upon the culmination of the creative ...”

  “Good, good, but at this moment I am more interested in what Krzycki is going to do about Miss Anney.”

  Dolhanski, who could not endure Swidwicki, would have been sorely afflicted, if he had suspected that the same question occurred to the latter’s mind.

  Remaining alone, Swidwicki recalled Gronski’s recital and began to laugh, as the thought of such unusual complications amused him immensely. He imagined to himself what excitement must have prevailed at Krzycki’s and at Pani Otocka’s, and how far the affair would agitate the circles of their relatives and acquaintances. And suddenly he began to soliloquize in the following manner:

  “And if I paid Miss Anney a visit? It even behooves me to leave her a card. That would be eminently proper. I may not find her in — that does not matter much, but if I should find her in, I will try to see whether her legs are not too bulky at the ankles. For culture, education, even polish may be acquired, but delicate ligaments of the legs and hands it is necessary to inherit through a whole series of generations. That furious Pauly, nevertheless, has a sufficiently thin ligature. The devil, however, knows who her father was, I will go. If I do not find one, I shall find the other.”

  And he went. He was admitted not by the man-servant but by Pauly; so he smiled at her in his most ingratiating manner and said:

  “Good-day, pretty fennel-flower! Is Panna Hanka Skibianka at home?”

  “What Hanka Skibianka?” she asked in surprise.

  “Then, the little lady does not know the great tidings?”

  “What great tidings? I do not know any.”

  “That the mistress of the little lady is not named Miss Anney?”

  “Do not upset our heads.”

  “I give the little lady my word of honor. Ask Pan Gronski, or Pan Krzycki, who is chewing off his fingers from mortification. I give you my word of honor. I also could tell you more, but if the little lady is not curious I will go. Here is my card for Panna Ski-bian-ka.”

  The eyes of the girl sparkled with curiosity. She took the card mechanically.

  “I do not say that you should go, but I do not believe,” she said hurriedly.

  “And I know yet more.”

  “What is it?”

  “I will whisper it in your ear.”

  It did not occur to Pauly that there was no necessity for Swidwicki speaking in a whisper. She leaned towards him with a palpitating heart and, though he flooded her with his breath, saturated with the odor of wine, she did not withdraw her head.

  “What is it?” she repeated.

  “That Panna Skibianka is a peasant woman from Zarnow!”

  “That is untrue!”

  “As I love God.”

  And, saying this, he suddenly smacked her ear with a broad kiss.

  IV

  Miss Anney’s letter bore the impress of extraordinary simplicity. At the beginning she said that from the moment when he proposed for her hand she was compelled to reveal her former name; while in the continuation it contained an equally simple account of herself and her family from the time of their departure from Rzeslewo. This sad course of events she related in the following words:

  “My father came from Galicia and had in America relatives of whom he heard that through labor they had amassed fortunes. Learning of this, he decided to settle there also and seek his fortune beyond the ocean. We left Rzeslewo at a time when you were in Warsaw. I knew how to write as I was taught that in the manor-house, and would have informed you about this if I had known your address. We went, not saying anything to anybody, to Hamburg, and at that place there occurred what often happens to peasant emigrants. The agent tricked us, defrauded us of our money, and placed us on a vessel bound not for America but for England. Thrown upon the pavements of London, we soon fell into dire want. For the passage to America there now was no means. My mother died of typhoid fever in a hospital and father, from despair and nostalgia, declined rapidly in health. Under these circumstances we were found by Mr. Anney, one of the best and noblest men in the world, a friend and patron of the Poles, who gave us employment. But the succor came too late, and my father died in the course of a year. I remained in the factory and worked in it until the accident which changed my status entirely. The Anney family had only one child, a daughter, whom they loved beyond everything in the world and surrounded with a solicitude all the greater because she was threatened by a pulmonary ailment. Once it happened that Miss Anney, while visiting the factory, was almost carried away by the driving-wheel of the machinery. I rushed to her assistance, imperilling a little my own life, and from that time the gratitude of the A
nney family for me had no bounds. They took me from the factory to themselves, and in this manner I became the companion and afterwards the bosom friend of their daughter. A Pole, an emigrant of the year ‘63, a friend of Mr. Anney and a man well educated, taught us both, and me, separately, in Polish. I endeavored to benefit, as much as lay in my power, from these lessons, and after two years was able to approach a little the intellectual plane of my friend and my environment. But Agnes — for such was the Christian name of Miss Anney — began to fail in her health. Then Mr. Anney sold his factory and we all, including our instructor, removed to Italy. There about three years were passed in a search for the best climate for our dearest patient. All efforts proved unavailing, however, as God took His angel unto Himself. After Agnes’ death, the Anneys, remembering that I loved with my whole soul our dead one, adopted me as their own child and gave me not only their family name, but desiring to overcome their despair, suffering, and sorrow, even the Christian name of the deceased. Nevertheless, the sorrow could not be overcome, and though I tried with my whole heart to be to them some sort of comfort in life, in the course of two years both followed their greatest love.

  “And this is the end of my history. And after that came those events which brought me nearer to you; therefore I desire to justify my conduct in your eyes. I have a right to the name which I bear, and my life from the time of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure. Conscience reproaches me with only one new error. This was that I did not confess to the Anneys that I already was unworthy of their care. But for such a confession I lacked strength. I loved too much my Agnes and feared that they would separate me from her. Later I did not want to add to their affliction. I did not have the strength. At times, also, I think that now when they look upon me from heaven and see everything, they forgive me for keeping that secret. Beyond this I once more repeat and swear that my life has been pure. But in my memory I have only coffins and coffins, and of my Rzeslewo days there remains to me only the recollection of you. I could not forget either my sin or my happiness. Often during the life of my adopted sister, while gazing into her chaste eyes, I struggled with remorse, and at the same time I wept from intense longing. After that, being left alone in the world, I had nothing to cherish in my heart, and I began to yearn yet more. When, after the death of the Anneys, I became acquainted and grew intimate with Zosia Otocka in Brussels, I accidentally learned from a conversation that she was your relative. Then I related to her my entire life, not concealing anything, and she not only did not spurn me, but loved me yet more. Emboldened by her goodness, I confessed to her my longing for the old days and Rzeslewo. Perhaps it may be a new fault on my part that I confided to Zosia my insurmountable desire of seeing yet once more in my life, Jastrzeb, Rzeslewo, and — why should I not state the whole truth? — and you. Then Zosia said to me: ‘I understand you; ride with me to Jastrzeb as Miss Anney, as you cannot do otherwise. Nobody will recognize you and you will take a reckoning with your own heart. Perhaps reality may extinguish the rainbow of recollections. If they are assuaged forever, so much the better for you; if he should fall in love with you, so much the worse for him; if your former echoes reawaken, then we will assume that this was predestination.’ Such was Zosia’s advice, and for that reason, when your mother invited her and Marynia, I also accompanied them to Jastrzeb. But I do not wish to pass for any better than I am. I confess that on the road I always had in mind Zosia’s words: ‘If he falls in love with you, so much the worse for him,’ and I wished that to happen. I was certain that you had entirely forgotten me, and I thought that if now you fell in love with me without any requital, that it would be a sort of condign punishment for your forgetfulness and a kind of triumph for myself and — if not such a womanly revenge as books tell of, — at least a great solace to my self-love. But it happened otherwise, for I forgot to take into account that I had a heart, not of foreign books, but of a Polish village — simple and faithful. When I saw Rzeslewo, Jastrzeb, and you, I wanted only to weep and weep, as I wept at Pan Zarnowski’s funeral, and I discovered within me that Hanka, who years before loved you with her first childish love and afterwards with such affection, did not love any one else. You know, sir, what happened further. If you do not return, I will not bear any resentment towards you, but do not harbor any ill-will against me. I, too, merely skirted along the rim of happiness.”