At last the holidays were at hand. The horses from Zalesin were waiting two days for us, and Pani Marya’s letter, which came with them, stated that all were expecting us there with impatience. “I have heard,” concluded Pani Marya, “that it goes hard with you, Mihas; I do not look for high marks; I wish only that the teachers should think with me that you have done what you could, and that with good conduct you have tried to atone for deficient progress.”
But the teachers thought differently in every respect; therefore, his rank deceived even that expectation. The last public admonition touched the boy’s conduct directly, — that conduct concerning which Pani Marya had such a high opinion. In the judgment of the German professors only that boy conducted himself well who repaid with laughter their jests at the “backwardness of the Poles,” at their language and traditions. As a result of these ethical ideas Mihas, as not giving hopes of hearing their explanations in future with profit, and as occupying the place of another for nothing, was expelled from the school.
He brought the sentence in the evening. It had grown dark in the house, for very heavy snow was falling outside; hence I could not see the child’s face. I saw only that he went to the window, stood in it, and looked without thought, in silence, on the snowflakes whirling in the wind. I did not envy the poor little fellow the thoughts which must have been whirling in his head like the snowflakes outside; but I preferred not to speak to him touching his rank and the sentence. In that way a quarter of an hour passed in bitter silence; but meanwhile it grew dark almost completely. I betook myself to packing the trunk; but seeing that Mihas was standing yet at the window, I said at last, —
“What are you doing there, Mihas?”
“Is it true,” answered he, in a voice which quivered and hesitated at every syllable, “that mamma is sitting now with Lola in the green room before the fire, and thinking of me?”
“Perhaps she is. Why does your voice tremble so, — are you sick?”
“Nothing is the matter with me, Pan Vavrykevich; only I am very cold.”
I undressed him, and put him straightway to bed; while undressing him, I looked with compassion on his emaciated knees, and his arms as thin as reed-stalks. I ordered him to drink tea, and covered him with what was possible.
“Are you warmer now?”
“Oh, yes! but my head aches a little.”
Poor head! It had reason to ache. The suffering child fell asleep soon, and breathed laboriously in his sleep with his narrow breast. I finished packing his and my own things; then, since I did not feel well, I lay down at once. I blew out the light, and fell asleep almost that moment.
About three o’clock in the morning the lamp and the monotonous well-known muttering waked me. I opened my eyes, and my heart beat unquietly. On the table was the lighted lamp, and at the table sat Mihas over a book. He was in his shirt only; his cheeks were burning, his eyes partly closed as if for better exertion of his memory; his head was thrown back a little, and his sleepy voice repeated, —
“Subjunctive: Amem, ames, amet, amemus, ametis—”
“Mihas!”
“Subjunctive: Amem, ames—”
I shook him by the shoulder.
He woke up, and began to blink from astonishment, looking at me as if he did not know me.
“What are you doing? What is the matter, child?”
“Pan Vavrykevich,” said he, smiling, “I am repeating everything from the beginning; I must get a perfect mark to-morrow.”
I took him in my arms, and carried him to bed; his body burned me like fire. Happily the doctor lived in the same house; I brought him at once. He had no need to think long. He held the boy’s pulse a moment, then put his hand on his forehead. Mihas had inflammation of the brain.
Ah, there were many things evidently which could not find place in his head!
His sickness acquired alarming proportions immediately. I sent a despatch to Pani Marya, and on the next day a violent pull at the hell in the antechamber announced her arrival. In fact, when I opened the door, I saw through the black veil her face, pale as linen. Her fingers rested on my shoulder with uncommon force, and her whole soul rushed out through her eyes, which were fixed on me, when she asked briefly, —
“Is he alive?”
“He is. The doctor says that he is better.”
She threw aside the veil, on which hoar frost had settled from her breath, and hurried to the boy’s chamber. I had lied. Mihas was alive, it is true; but he was not better. He did not even know his mother when she sat near him, and took his hand. Only when I had placed fresh ice on his head did he begin to blink, and look with effort at the face bent above him. His mind made an evident effort, struggling with fever and delirium; his lips quivered, he smiled once and a second time, and whispered at last, —
“Mamma!”
She seized both his hands, and sat in that way at his side a number of hours, not casting aside even her travelling costume. Only when I turned her attention to this, did she say, —
“True. I forgot to remove my hat.”
When she took it off, my heart was oppressed with a wonderful feeling: among the blond hair adorning that young and beautiful head, silver threads were gleaming thickly. Three days ago, perhaps, there were none there.
She changed compresses for the boy herself, and gave him the medicine. Mihas followed her with his eyes wherever she moved, but again he did not recognize her. In the evening the fever increased; he declaimed in his raving the ballad about “Jolkevski from Nyemtsevich;” at times he spoke in the language of teaching; again he conjugated various Latin verbs. I left the room repeatedly, for I could not listen to this. While in good health, he had been learning in secret to serve at Mass, wishing to give his mother a surprise when he came home; and now a shiver passed through me when in the stillness of the evening I heard that boy of eleven years repeating before his death with a monotonous and expiring voice: “Dens meus, quare me repulisti, et quare tristis iucedo dum affligit me inimicus [My God, why hast Thou rejected me, and why am I walking in grief while my enemy afflicts me]?”
I cannot tell what a tragic impression these words produced. It was Christmas eve. From the street came the hum of people and the tinkling of sleigh-bells. The town had taken on a holiday and joyful exterior. When it had grown dark completely, through the windows on the other side of the street was to be seen an evergreen-tree gleaming with lights, and hung with glittering gold and silver nuts, and around it the heads of children bright and dark, with locks flowing in the air, jumping as if on springs. The windows were gleaming, and the whole interior resounded with cries of delight and wonder. Among the voices coming from the street there were none except joyous ones, gladness had become universal; our boy alone repeated, as if with great sorrow: “Dens meus, Deus meus, quare me repulisti?” At the gate, boys halted with a little booth, and soon the song reached us: “He is lying in the manger, who will run to greet the little stranger?” Christmas night was approaching, and we trembled lest it should be a night of death.
After awhile it seemed to us, however, that the boy had become conscious, for he began to call Lola and his mother; but that was of short duration. His quick breathing stopped at times altogether. There was no cause for self-deception; that little soul was already only half with us. His mind had flown away, and now he was going himself into some dark distance and endlessness; already he saw no one, and felt nothing, — not even the head of his mother, which was lying as if dead at his feet. He had grown indifferent, and looked no longer at us. Every breath of his bosom removed him, and as it were pushed him out into the darkness. Disease was quenching spark after spark of his life. The hands of the child lying on the coverlet were outlined on it with heavy helplessness, the mark of death; his nose became sharp, and his face took on a certain cold seriousness. His breath became quicker, and at last was like the ticking of a watch. A moment more, another sigh, and the last grain of sand was to fall from the hourglass; the end was inevitable.
Ab
out midnight it seemed to us decisively that he was dying, for he began to rattle and groan like a man into whose mouth water is flowing, and then he was silent suddenly. But the glass which the doctor placed at his lips was covered yet with the mist of respiration. An hour later the fever decreased all at once; we thought that he was saved. The doctor himself had some hope. Poor Pani Marya grew faint.
In the course of two hours he was better and better. Toward morning, since that was the fourth night which I had spent near the boy without sleeping, and since a cough was stifling me with growing violence, I went to the anteroom, lay on a straw bed, and fell asleep. The voice of Pani Marya roused me. I thought that she was calling me, but in the stillness of night I heard clearly, “Mihas! Mihas!” The hair stood on my head, for I understood the terrible accent with which she cried to the child; before I sprang up, however, she ran in herself, holding the light in her hand, and whispered with quivering lips, —
“Mihas — is dead!” —
I ran in a breath to the boy’s bed. So it was. The head fallen back on the pillow, the mouth open, the eyes fixed without motion on one point, and the rigidity of every feature, left not the least doubt: Mihas was dead.
I covered him with the quilt, which his mother, in springing away from the bed, had pulled from his emaciated body. I closed his eyes, and then I had to rub Pani Mary a long time.
The first day of the Christmas season passed in preparations for the funeral, preparations which for me were terrible, since Pani Marya would not leave the corpse, and fainted continually. She fainted when men came to take the dimensions of the coffin, again when they began to prepare the body, finally when the catafalque was put up. Her despair was in continual clash with the indifference of the undertaker’s assistants, accustomed as they were to similar sights, and passed almost into raving. She herself put shavings in the coffin under the satin, repeating, as if in a fever, that the child’s head would be too low. And Mihas was lying meanwhile on his bed, in his new uniform and white gloves, rigid, indifferent, and calm. We placed the body at last in the coffin, put that on the catafalque, and set two rows of candles around it. The room in which the poor child had conjugated so many Latin verbs and worked out so many lessons had changed as it were into a chapel, for the closed windows did not admit sunshine, and the yellow, flickering light of the candles gave the walls a certain church-like and solemn appearance. Never since Mihas had received his last high mark had I seen his face so full of contentment. His delicate profile turned to the ceiling was smiling, as if in that eternal reaction of death the boy had pleased himself and felt happy. The flickering of the candles gave to his face and to that smile an appearance of life and sleep.
By degrees those of his schoolmates who had not gone home for the holidays began to assemble. The eyes of the children grew wide with wonder at sight of the candles, the catafalque, and the coffin. Perhaps the dignity and importance of their comrade astonished the little scholars. Not long since he was among them, bending like them under the weight of a satchel overladen with German books; he received bad marks, was scolded and admonished publicly; each might pull his hair or his ears. But now he lay there above them, dignified, calm, surrounded with light; all approached him with respect and a certain awe, — and even Ovitski, though the first scholar, did not mean much before him. The boys, pushing each other with their elbows, whispered that now he cared for nothing; that even if the “Herr Inspector” had come, he would not spring up nor be frightened, but would continue to smile quietly as before. “He can do just as he likes,” said they; “he can shout as he likes, and talk to little angels with wings on their shoulders.”
Thus they approached the rows of candles, and asked eternal rest for Mihas.
The next day the coffin was covered with the lid, fastened with nails, and taken to the cemetery, where lumps of sand mixed with snow soon concealed it from my eyes forever. To-day, as I write, almost a year has passed from that time; but I remember thee, and I mourn for thee, my little Mihas, my flower withered untimely. I know not where thou art, or if thou dost hear me; I know only that thy old teacher’s cough is increasing, that the world seems more oppressive to him, that he is more lonely, and may go soon to the place whither thou hast gone.
A COMEDY OF ERRORS.
FIVE or six years since it happened that oil springs were discovered in a certain place in Mariposa County, California. The enormous profits which such springs yield in Nevada and other States, induced a number of men to form a company for the purpose of working the newly-discovered springs. They brought in various machines, — pumps, engines, ladders, barrels, kegs, drills, and kettles; they built houses for laborers, and called the place Struck Oil. After a certain time a desert and uninhabited neighborhood, which a year before was inhabited only by coyotes, became a settlement composed of a number of tens of houses occupied by several hundred laborers.
Two years later, Struck Oil was called Struck Oil City. In fact it was a “city” in the full meaning of that term. I beg the reader to note that there were living in the city a shoemaker, a tailor, a carpenter, a blacksmith, a butcher, and a doctor, — a Frenchman, who in his time had shaved beards in France, but for the rest a “learned man,” and harmless, which in an American doctor means a great deal.
The doctor, as happens very often in small American towns, kept also a drug store and a post-office; therefore he had a triple practice. He was as harmless an apothecary as he was a doctor, for it was possible to buy only two kinds of medicine in his drug store, — sugar sirup and leroa. This quiet and mild old man said usually to his patients, —
“You need not fear my prescriptions, for when I give medicine to a patient I always take the same dose myself; I understand that if it will not hurt me while in health it will not harm a sick man. Isn’t that true?”
“True,” answered the reassured citizen, to whom somehow it did not occur that it was not only the duty of a doctor to avoid injuring a sick man, but to help him.
Monsieur Dasonville, such was the doctor’s name, believed especially in the miraculous effects of leroa. More than once at meetings he removed the hat from his head, and turning to the public said, —
“Ladies and gentlemen, convince yourselves concerning leroa. I am eighty-four years of age and use leroa every day. Look at me, I have not one gray hair on my head.”
The ladies and gentlemen might discover that the doctor had not one gray hair; but then he had no hair at all, for his head was as bald as a lamp globe. But since discoveries of that kind contributed in no way to the growth of Struck Oil City, no one made them.
Meanwhile Struck Oil City grew and grew. At the expiration of two years a branch railroad was built to it. The city had its elective officers also. The doctor, whom everybody loved, was chosen judge, as a representative of the intelligence; the shoemaker, a Polish Jew, Mr. Davis (David was his real name) was chosen sheriff, that is, chief of the police, which was composed of the sheriff and no one else; they built a schoolhouse, for the management of which a “schoolma’am” was imported on purpose, — a maiden born before man reckoned time, and who had an eternal toothache; finally, the first hotel rose, and was named United States Hotel.
“Business” was lively beyond measure. The export of oil brought good profit. It was noticed that Mr. Davis had put out before his shop a glass showcase, like those which adorn the shoeshops in San Francisco. At the following meeting the inhabitants thanked Mr. Davis publicly for this “new ornament to the city.” Mr. Davis answered with the modesty of a great citizen, “Thank you! thank you!”
Where there is a judge and a sheriff there are lawsuits. These require writing and paper. Therefore, on the corner of First and Coyote streets there arose a “stationery,” that is a paper shop, in which were sold also political daily papers and caricatures, one of which represented President Grant in the form of a man milking a cow, which in her turn represented the United States. The duties of the sheriff did not enjoin on him at all to forbid the sale of such pict
ures, for that does not pertain to the police.
But this was not the end yet. An American city cannot exist without a newspaper. At the end of the second year, therefore, a paper appeared called the “Saturday Weekly Review,” which had as many subscribers as there were inhabitants in Struck Oil City. The editor of that paper was its publisher, printer, business manager, and carrier. The last duty came to him the more easily, since in addition to his business he kept cows, and had to deliver milk every morning at the houses of citizens. But this did not prevent him in any way from beginning his leading political articles with the words: “If our miserable President of the United States had followed the advice which we gave him in the last number,” etc.
As we see, nothing was wanting in blessed Struck Oil City. Besides, since men who work at getting oil are not distinguished either by the violence or rude manners which mark gold-diggers, it was peaceful in the city. No man had a fight with another; there was not a word spoken of “lynching;” life flowed on calmly. One day was as much like another as one drop of water is like another. In the morning every man occupied himself with “business;” in the evening the inhabitants burned sweepings on the street; and, if there was no meeting, they went to bed, knowing that on the following evening they would burn sweepings again.
But the sheriff was annoyed by one thing, — he could not break the citizens from firing at wild geese which flew over the place in the evening. The laws of the city prohibited shooting on the streets. “If this were some mangy little village,” said the sheriff, “I wouldn’t say anything; but in such a great city to have pif! paf! pif! paf! is very unbecoming.”
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 658