Chapter XI (2)

But after the third verse the singing suddenly ceased and a voice called out gloomily:

'Doggy, go and bark at the Almighty!'

At first I did not know what this peculiar command meant, but after a short pause I heard the thin bark of a dog, and as the gate of the enclosure was open I drew nearer and saw in the wide open door of the yurta a small black dog, tiny and light, repeatedly raising itself on its hindlegs and barking up at the blue sky while it jumped and turned about.

Of course I went away and put off my visit to a more suitable occasion.

At last I saw him. He was of middle stature, quite greyheaded, and he looked very neglected. The ashen complexion common to all exiles distinguished him in a high degree, so that it gave me pain to look into his face with the black shadows.

If he had not been talking, and moving about, it would have been hard to guess that one was looking at a living being. And yet, glances like lightning would sometimes dart from the large eyes surrounded by broad, dark circles, and they showed that death had not yet numbed the inner life of this moving corpse, but that he was still capable of emotion.

As long as he was sitting I could bear the sight of his suffering face, but when he got up I had to turn away my eyes, for then his clump-feet seemed to cause him the greatest agony.

He spoke Polish correctly and with a pure accent. He carefully avoided any direct or indirect allusion to his past, and shrank equally from information about his native country. He talked exclusively about the present, principally about his dog, with whom he held long conversations. Only once in the course of the few weeks during which I visited him did he get animated: that was when I mentioned Plotsk; his eyes shone as with a hidden fire while he asked: 'Do you know that part?'

I answered that I had lived there for a year, and he said, half to himself:

'I suppose it is all quite changed, so many years have passed. You probably were not born at the time when I came to Siberia. In what part of the province did you stay?'

'Not far from Raciaz.'

He opened his mouth, but he felt he had said too much, or that I was listening with curiosity; enough--he only uttered a long-drawn 'Oh...' and was silent again.

This was the only allusion Kowalski ever made to his past. I felt inclined to draw him out, but he knew how to parry these attempts in a delicate way by calling his dog and saying to him while he caressed him: 'Go, bark at the Almighty!' And the obedient creature would continue for a long time to bark at the sky.

As soon as Kowalski gave this order, it was a sure sign that he would not open his mouth except for conversation about his dog, of which he never tired.

Although this dog was quite ordinary, he was in several ways distinguished from his Yakut brothers. For one thing he had no name and was simply addressed as 'Doggy', though he was his master's pet and was attached to the house and enclosure.

'Why didn't you give your dog a name?' I asked casually.

'What's the good of a name? If people had not invented so many names and called each other simply "Man", they would perhaps remember better that we are all men together.'

So the dog remained nameless. He was of a graceful and delicate build and fast, quite unlike the heavier, thickset, thick-coated native dogs; his hair was short, soft, and silky. His appearance had condemned him to an isolated and lonely life. Attempts at participation in the canine social life had failed deplorably; he had returned from these expeditions lame and bleeding all over, and after some vain repetitions he had given up the hope of satisfying his social instincts and did not leave the enclosure any more. He was surprisingly sedate for his delicate organism and thin, mobile little frame, but this was not the calm sedateness of the strong, shaggy Yakut dogs, against whom he obviously harboured a certain hatred and bitterness, because these big, powerful creatures would not recognize the rights of the weak. Except for his master, he showed no affection for anyone and accepted no favours--perhaps he had no belief in them, and only responded to a caress with a low growl.

Some weeks passed and Kowalski was no better, on the contrary he seemed to get worse with every day, and we were all convinced that this illness was his last. God knows whether he was equally convinced, but he certainly had a foreboding of his death, for he hardly ever talked now. For a few days longer he obstinately struggled against the weakness which was overpowering him, and walked about his yurta, even tinkered at some brushes which he had begun; at last he gave it up and took to his bed. One morning, when I had just sat down to my breakfast, the locksmith Wladyslaw Piotrowski, Kowalski's nearest friend, came to my window and asked me to accompany him to our patient.

'It might ease his last hour when he sees that he is not quite forsaken,' said the kind man. 'Perhaps you would like to take a book with you,' he added. I took the New Testament and went with him.

'Is he so very bad?' I asked on the way.

'I should think so; he looks quite black and says himself that he is sure he will die to-day.'

We soon arrived at Kowalski's yurta. There was no trace of the usual sick-room smell of medicines, for Kowalski believed neither in doctors nor in medicines. But an air of sadness and desolation pervaded the room. The little dog lay curled up under the bed, from which, notwithstanding the open window, an unpleasant smell reminded one that the sick man was no longer able to get up.

He looked so unlike a living being that we concluded, on entering and seeing him lying there with his eyes closed, that he was dead. The locksmith went up to the bed, put his hand under the bedclothes and touched his feet; they were cold. But Kowalski called out loudly and emphatically as I had never heard him before:

'I am alive! I am glad that you have come, for I should like to speak to you of death.'

The haste and anxiety with which these words were uttered bore out our premonition that we had only just come in time; we looked at each other; Kowalski caught this look and understood it.

'I know,' he said, 'that I shall die soon, it would be vain to hide from myself what I can see quite clearly. That is why I want to speak to you. I was afraid no one would come... I was afraid no one would hear what I have got to say and that he whom you call the Merciful God would take away my power of speech... I thank you for your thought. May you not be lonely either when your hour of death calls you from an unhappy life.'

Kowalski stopped; only his brow, which was alternately contracted and smoothed, showed that the dying man was trying with his last remnant of strength to collect his thoughts and to retain the last spark of life.

It was early morning, and the sun threw two great sheaves of golden rays through the window on to the wall where the bed stood. From the wide expanse of fields and the archipelago of islands in the river, redolent with luxurious vegetation, life and the echoes of life and movement emanated like a melodious song, a great hymn of thanksgiving in the bright sunshine; it penetrated to the bed of the dying man and formed an indescribable contrast to what was passing inside the yurta.

This brightness, this noise as of a great song of life, was like an irony, like scorn levelled at the deathbed of this living corpse....

Meanwhile Kowalski had begun to speak.

'Long ago,' he said--'it must be about forty years--I was exiled to the steppes of Orenburg. I was young and strong, I trusted in God and had confidence in men and in myself. I may have been right or I may have been wrong, but I thought it was my duty not to leave my energy to the chance of fate, but to try and find a wider field of activity than was open to me in this country. Homesickness too urged me on, and after two years I escaped....

'I was punished by being sent to Tomsk, but this did not daunt me. I started my life afresh with renewed energy, lived on bread and water until I had saved enough for what I needed, and escaped again....

'For this second flight I was punished as an obstinate backslider, and it took several years before I could make another attempt, but that time I got farther away than before. It was an unusually hard winter, I had no money and only insufficient clothing. My feet were frostbitten, and I lost my toes. That was a hard blow, especially as they sent me beyond the Yenessi this time.

'My situation was difficult; the country was dreary and desolate, it was hard to earn a living. But although I had no toes I managed to learn a trade or two, and one or the other used to bring me in a little income, small but sure.

'This time I waited six years, then, without regard for the state of my feet, I started off again....

'You see, I had no more confidence in my strength. I was ill and broken, it was not the same goal as before that drew me westwards.... I wanted to die there... to die there....

'I dreamt of dying on my mother's grave as of a great happiness.

'My life had been such that no one except my mother had ever been good to me; I had had no sweetheart, no wife, no children....

'And now, feeling weak and forsaken, I longed for the grave of this one being who had loved me.

'In sleepless nights I felt her hand touching my head, her kiss and the hot tears with which she took her last leave of me, conscious perhaps that our separation would be eternal. I do not know even now whether the longing for my mother or for my native land was the stronger. But it was a hard pilgrimage this time. I could not walk fast because of the wounds on my feet which kept breaking open. I often had to hide for days in the woods like a wild animal.

'Vultures and crows[1]--ill omens of the end--circled over my head, scenting their prey. Worn out with hunger I broke down from time to time, and...fool that I was, I always prayed. I implored the Almighty God, the merciful God, the just God, the God of the poor, the God of the forsaken:

[Footnote 1: Siberian fugitives look upon them with superstition.]

'"Help me, have mercy on me! Gracious Father! send me death, I ask for no other mercy than death! I will give it to myself, but only there...."

'Two years passed before I reached the province of Perm. I had never before got so far. My heart began to beat joyously, in my head there was only one thought: "I shall see my beloved native soil, and I shall die at my beloved mother's grave." When I left the Ural behind me I definitely believed in my salvation, I threw myself down upon the ground, and for a long, long time I lay there, sobbing and thanking God for His grace and His mercy. But He, the Merciful, was only preparing His last blow, and that same day.... Then they took me as far as Yakutsk!...

'Why did I live on so long in this misery?

'Why did I wait here for such an end as this?

'Because I wanted to see what God intended to do to me. 'Now see what He has made of a human being who trusted Him like a child, who has never known what happiness in this world meant, nor demanded it, who has never received love from anyone but his mother and, although maimed and crippled, has worked hard until the end, never stretched out his hands for alms, never stolen or coveted his neighbours' possessions, who has ever given away the half of what he had... see what He has made of me!...

'That is why I hate Him, no longer trust in Him....I don't believe in His Saints or His Judgment or His Justice; hear me, brothers, I call you to witness in the hour of my death, so that you should know it and can testify to it before Him when you die.'

He raised himself with an effort, stretched out his hands towards the sun and called with a loud voice:

'I, a dying worm, truly acknowledge Thee to be the God of the satiated, the God of the wicked, the God of the impure, and that Thou hast ruined me, a guiltless man!...'

The sun had risen higher and was now gilding the bed of pain of this living skeleton--terrible to behold in his loose skin.

When he sank back exhausted, we were shocked, for we thought that he would give up the ghost before we had time to comfort him and ease his last hour.

'Let us pray for him,' whispered the locksmith. We knelt down; with trembling hands I pulled out the book; it opened of itself where a bookmarker had been placed at the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John.

Raising my voice I began to read:

'I am the true Vine and My Father is the Husbandman.'

The dying man's chest heaved violently, his eyes were closed. He was now quite covered by the golden rays; it seemed as if the sun meant to reward him at the last moment for his hard life, so closely did the rays hug him, warming his stiff limbs, calming him, kissing him as a mother kisses and caresses her drowsy child and wraps it round with her own warmth.

Kowalski was still alive.

I continued to read the words of Christ, so full of power and faith and deep, blessed hope:

'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you...'

The inspiring words of the Comforter of sufferers and the caress of the vivifying light eased the dying man's pain. He opened his eyes and two great tears welled forth--the last tears which this man had to spare.

The rays of the sun kissed the tears on his ashen countenance and made them shine with divine light; it seemed as if they endeavoured to present to their Creator in pure colours the burning fire which had consumed this man and was concentrated in his tears.

I read on:

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy...'

The dying man tried to lift his hands, they fell back powerless, but he murmured in a low, distinct voice: 'Lord, by Thy pain forgive me!'

I could not read further. In silence we knelt, and the dog stood between us, puzzled and looking at his master. Once more the dying man's eyes turned towards us, he opened his mouth, and we heard him say yet more slowly and weakly: 'Doggy, do not bark at the Almighty.'

The faithful creature threw himself whining upon his master's limp hand, from which the life had already fled.

Kowalski's eyes closed, a short, dull rattle came from his throat, his chest sank back, he stretched himself a little: the life of suffering was ended.

When we recovered ourselves we heard the violent barking of the dog, who, without understanding his master's last wish, was faithfully carrying out the sole duty of his life. He barked and growled incessantly, and came back from time to time to the bed and his master's limply hanging hand in expectation of the usual caress.

But his master lay immovable, the cold hand hung stiffly; exhausted and hoarse the dog ran out again into the enclosure.

We left; but at a long distance from the yurta we could still hear the barking of the senseless creature.

FOREBODINGS

TWO SKETCHES BY

STEFAN ZEROMSKI[1]

[Footnote 1: The accent on the Z softens the sound approximately to that of the French g in _gele_.]

I had spent an hour at the railway station, waiting for the train to come in. I had stared indifferently at several ladies in turn who were yawning in the corners of the waiting-room. Then I had tried the effect of making eyes at a fair-haired young girl with a small white nose, rosy cheeks, and eyes like forget-me-nots; she had stuck out her tongue (red as a field-poppy) at me, and I was now at a loss to know what to do next to kill time.

Fortunately for me two young students entered the waiting-room. They looked dirty from head to foot, mud-bespattered, untidy, and exhausted with travelling. One of them, a fair boy with a charming profile, seemed absent-minded or depressed. He sat down in a corner, took off his cap, and hid his face in his hands. His companion bought his ticket for him, sat down beside him, and grasped his hand from time to time.

'Why should you despair? All may yet be well. Listen, Anton.'

'No, it's no good, he is dying, I know it.... I know... perhaps he is dead already.'

'Don't believe it! Has your father ever had this kind of attack before?'

'He has; he has suffered from his heart for three years. He used to drink at times. Think of it, there are eight of us, some are young children, and my mother is delicate. In another six months his pension would have been due. Terribly hard luck!'

'You are meeting trouble half-way, Anton.'

The bell sounded, and the waiting-room became a scene of confusion. People seized their luggage and trampled on each other's toes; the porter who stood at the entrance-door was stormed with questions. There was bustle and noise everywhere. I entered the third-class carriage in which the fair-haired student was sitting. His friend had put him into it, settling him in the corner-seat beside the window, as if he were an invalid, and urging him to take comfort. It did not come easy to him, the words seemed to stick in his throat. The fair-haired boy's face twitched convulsively, and his eyelids closed over his moist eyes.

'Anton, my dear fellow,' the other said, 'well, you understand what I mean; God knows. You may be sure... confound it all!'

The second bell sounded, and then the third. The sympathizing friend stepped out of the carriage, and, as the train started, he waved an odd kind of farewell greeting, as if he were threatening him with his fists.

In the carriage were a number of poor people, Jews, women with enormously wide cloaks, who had elbowed their way to their seats, and sat chattering or smoking.

The student stood up and looked out of the window without seeing. Lines of sparks like living fire passed by the grimy window-pane, and balls of vapour and smoke, resembling large tufts of wool, were dashed to pieces and hurried to the ground by the wind. The smoke curled round the small shrubs growing close to the ground, moistened by the rain in the valley. The dusk of the autumn day spread a dim light over the landscape, and produced an effect of indescribable melancholy. Poor boy! Poor boy!

The loneliness of boundless sorrow was expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, while his vacant eyes followed the balls of smoke. As the train travelled along, I knew that he was miserable, tired out, that he would have liked to cry quietly. The thread of hope wound itself round his heart: Who could tell? perhaps his father was recovering, perhaps all would be well?

Suddenly (I knew it would come), the blood rushed from his face, his lips went pale and tightened; he was gazing into the far distance with wide-open eyes. It was as if a threatening hand, piercing the grief, loneliness and dread that weighed on him, was pointing at him, as if the wind were rousing him with the cry: 'Beware!' His thread of hope was strained to breaking-point, and the naked truth, which he had not quite faced till that minute, struck him through the heart like a sword.

Had I approached him at that instant, and told him I was an omniscient spirit and knew his village well, and that his father was not lying dead, he would have fallen at my feet and believed, and I should have done him an infinite kindness.

But I did not speak to him, and I did not take his hand. All I wished to do was merely to watch him with the interest and insatiable curiosity which the human heart ever arouses in me.

'Let my fate go whither it listeth.' (_Oedipus Tyrannus_.)

In the darkest corner of the ward, in the bed marked number twenty-four, a farm labourer of about thirty years of age had been lying for several months. A black wooden tablet, bearing the words 'Caries tuberculosa', hung at the head of the bed, and shook at each movement of the patient. The poor fellow's leg had had to be amputated above the knee, the result of a tubercular decay of the bone. He was a peasant, a potato-grower, and his forefathers had grown potatoes before him. He was now on his own, after having been in two situations; had been married for three years and had a baby son with a tuft of flaxen hair. Then suddenly, from no cause that he could tell, his knee had pained him, and small ulcers had formed. He had afforded himself a carriage to the town, and there he had been handed over to the hospital at the expense of the parish.

He remembered distinctly how on that autumn afternoon he had driven in the splendid, cushioned carriage with his young wife, how they had both wept with fright and grief, and when they had finished crying had eaten hard-boiled eggs: but what had happened after that had all become blurred--indescribably misty. Yet only partially so.

Of the days in the hospital with their routine and monotony, creating an incomprehensible break in his life, his memory retained nothing; but the unchanging grief, weighing like a slab of stone on a grave, was ever present in his soul with inexorable and brutal force during these many months. He only half recalled the strange wonders that had been worked on him: bathing, feeding, probing into the wound, and later on the operation. He had been carried into a room full of gentlemen wearing aprons spotted with blood; he was conscious also of the mysterious, intrepid courage which, like a merciful hand, had supported him from that hour.

After having gazed at the awe-inspiring phenomena which surrounded him in the semicircle of the hospital theatre, he had slept during the operation. His simple heart had not worked out the lesson which sleep, the greatest mistress on earth, teaches. After the operation everything had been veiled by mortal lassitude. This had continued, but in the afternoon and at night they had mixed something heavy, like a stone ball, into his drinking-cup, and waves of warmth had flowed to the toes of his healthy foot from the cup. Thoughts chased one another swiftly, like tiny quicksilver balls through some corner of his brain, and while he lay bathed in perspiration, and his eyelids closed of their own accord, not in sleep but in unconsciousness, he had been pursued by strange, half-waking visions.

Everything real seemed to disappear, only dimly lighted, vacant space remained, pervaded by the smell of chloroform. He seemed to be in the interior of a huge cone, stretching along the ground like a tunnel. Far away in the distance, where it narrowed towards the opening, there was a sparkling, white spot; if he could get there, he might escape. He seemed to be travelling day and night towards that chink along unending spiral lines running within the surface of the tunnel; he travelled under compulsion and with great effort, slowly, like a snail, although within him something leapt up like a rabbit caught in a snare, or as if wings were fluttering in his soul. He knew what was beyond that chink. Only a few steps would lead him to the ridge under the wood... to his own four strips of potato-field! And whenever he roused himself mechanically from his apathy he had a vision of the potato-harvest. The transparent autumn-haze in the fields was bringing objects that were far off into relief, and making them appear perfectly distinct. He saw himself together with his young wife, digging beautiful potatoes, large as their fists.

On the hillock, amid the stubble, the herdsmen were assembled in groups, their wallets slung round them; they were crouching on their heels, had collected dry juniper and lighted a fire; with bits of sticks they were scraping out the baked potatoes from the ashes. The rising smoke scented the air fragrantly with juniper.

At times, when he was better and more himself, when the fever tormented him less, he sank into the state of timidity and apprehension known only to those harassed almost beyond human endurance and to the dying. Fear oppressed him till his whole being shrank into something less than the smallest grain; he was hurled by fearful sounds and overawing obsessions into a bottomless abyss.

At last the wound on his foot began to heal, and the fever to abate. His mind returned from that other world to the familiar one, and to reflecting on what was taking place before his eyes. But the nature of these reflections had changed. Formerly he had felt self-pity arising from terror; now it was the wild hatred of the wounded man, his overpowering desire for revenge; his rage turned as fiercely even upon the unfortunate ones lying beside him as upon those who had maimed him. But another idea had taken even more powerfully possession of his mind; his thoughts darted forward like a pack of hounds on the trail, in frantic pursuit of the power which had thus passed sentence on him.

This condition of lonely self-torment lasted a long while, and increased his exasperation.

And then, one day, he noticed that his healthy foot was growing stiff and the ankle swelling. When the head-surgeon came on his daily rounds, the patient confided his fear to him. The doctor examined the emaciated limb, unobserved lanced the abscess, perceived that the probe reached to the bone, rubbed his hands together and looked into the peasant's face with a sad, doubtful look.

'This is a bad job, my good fellow. It may mean the other foot; was that what you were thinking of? And you are a bad subject. But we will do it for you here; you will be better off than in your cottage, we will give you plenty to eat.' And he passed on, accompanied by his assistant. At the door he turned back, bent over the sick man, and furtively, so that no one should see, passed his hand kindly over his head.

The peasant's mind became a blank; it was as if someone had unawares dealt him a blow in the dark with a club. He closed his eyes and lay still for a long time... until an unknown feeling of calm came over him.

There is an enchanted, hidden spot in the human soul, fastened with seven locks, which no one and nothing but that picklock, bitter adversity, can open.

Through the lips of the self-blinded Oedipus, Sophocles makes mention of this secret place. Within it are hidden marvellous joy, sweet necessity, the highest wisdom.

As the poor fellow lay silently on his bed, the special conception that arose in his mind was that of Christ walking on the waves of the raging sea, quelling the storm.

Henceforward through long nights and wretched days he was looking at everything from an immeasurable distance, from a safe place, where all was calm and wholly well, whence everything seemed small, slightly ludicrous and foolish, and yet lovable.

'And may the Lord Jesus...may He give His peace to all people,' he whispered to himself. 'Never mind, this will do as well for me!'

A POLISH SCENE

BY

WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT[1]

[Footnote 1: The stroke softens the l approximately to the sound of w.]

[The place is a solitary inn in Russian Poland, near the Prussian frontier, kept by a Jew named Herszlik, part of whose occupation is to smuggle emigrants for America by night across the border. Besides emigrants and Herszlik are present an old beggar man and his wife or 'doxy', a couple of peasants drinking together, and Jan (or, in diminutive form, Jasiek), a youth who has just escaped from a prison to which he had been sentenced for an attack, under great provocation, on a steward, and now creeps into the inn out of the surrounding forest.]

It was a night of March, a night of rain, cold, and tempest.

The forest, cramped, stiff, soaked to its marrow, and agitated now and then by an icy shiver, threw out its boughs in a sort of feverish panic as if to shake the water from them, and roared the wild note of a creature in torture. At times a damp snow stilled all to helpless silence, broken by a passing groan or the cry of some frozen bird or rattle of some body falling on the boughs. Then once more the wind flung itself with fury on the woods, dug into their depths with its teeth, tore off boughs, and with a roar of triumph whistled along the glades and swept the forest as with a besom; or from out of the depths of space huge mud-coloured clouds, like piles of rotting hay, strangled the trees in their embrace, or dissolved in a cold unceasing drizzle that might have penetrated a stone. The roads were deserted, flooded with a mixture of mud and foul snow; the villages seemed dead, the fields shrivelled, the rivers ice-fettered; man and life were to be seen nowhere; night ruled alone.

Only in the single inn of Przylecki shone a small light; it stood in the middle of the forest at cross roads; a few cottages were visible on the side of a hill: the rest was the mighty forest.

Jasiek Winciorek pushed forward cautiously from the wood to the road, and at sight of the blinking light walked stealthily to the window, peeped in, then in timid perplexity drew back a few steps till a fresh blast of wind froze him so that the poor boy turned back once more, crossed himself, and entered.

The inn was large, with a floor of clay, and a black ceiling resting on walls out of the perpendicular; these had lost their whitewash, and were pierced by two small windows half-choked up with straw. Directly opposite the latter, behind a wooden railing, stood a cask resting on other barrels, above which smoked the red glare of a naphtha lamp. Over the room lay a dense darkness, only lightened now and then with flashes from an expiring fire in a large old-world fire-place, before which sat a pair of beggars. In a corner might be seen a number of persons huddled together whispering mysteriously. By the cask were two peasants, one clasping a bottle, the other holding out a glass; they often drank healths to one another and nodded sleepily. A fat red damsel was snoring behind the railing. Over all there spread a smell compounded of whisky, sodden clay, and soaked rags.

At times such a stillness fell on the room that one could hear the sounds of the forest, the tinkle of the rain on the window-panes, the crackling of the pine boughs in the fireplace. And then a low door behind the railing opened with a creak, and there appeared the old grey head of a Jew, dressed in his praying gown, and singing in a low voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells and a quiet monotonous dreary sound of singing. Jasiek drank a few glasses one after the other, gnawed half-consciously some mouldy rolls as tough as leather, which he seasoned with a herring, and looked now at the door, now at the window, or listened to the murmur of the voices.

'Marry, no, curse it, I won't marry!' suddenly shouted one of the two peasants, knocking his bottle on the cask and spitting as far as the shoulder of the beggar man at the fire.

'But you must,' whispered the other, 'or repay the money.'

'God! that's nothing! Jevka!'--this to the girl--'half a pint of whisky! I pay!'

'Money is a big thing, though a woman is a bigger.'

'No, curse it, I won't marry! I'll sell myself, borrow, pay back the money, rather than marry that harridan.'

'Just take a drop to my health, Antek: I have something to say to you.'

'You won't get round me. I have said no, and that is no. Why, if I must, I will run away to Brazil or the end of the world with those folk yonder!'

'Silly! just take a drop to my health, Antek: I have something to say to you.'

They drank healths to one another several times, then began kissing, then fell silent, for a child was crying in a corner, and a movement began among the quiet timid crowd.

A tall dried-up peasant appeared out of the darkness and walked out of the inn.

Jasiek moved up to the fire, for the cold was in his bones, and putting his herring on a stick began to toast it over the coals. 'Move up a bit,' he whispered to the beggar man, who had his feet on his wallet, and though quite blind, was drying at the fire the soaked strips he wore round his legs, and talking endlessly in a low voice to the woman by him; she was cooking something and arranging boughs under a tripod on which stood a pot.

Jasiek got warmer, and steam as from a bucket of boiling water went up from his long coat.

'You are badly soaked,' whispered the beggar, sniffing.

'I am,' said Jasiek in a whisper, shivering. The door creaked, but it was only the thin peasant returning.

'Who is that?' whispered Jasiek, tapping the beggar on the arm.

'Those? I don't know him; but those are silly fools going to Brazil.' He spat.

Jasiek said not a word, but went on drying himself and moving his eyes about the room, where the people, apparently grown uneasy, now talked with increasing loudness, now fell suddenly silent, while every moment one of them went out of the inn, and returned immediately.

From the inner room the monotonous chant still reached them. A hungry dog crept out from nowhere to the fire and began to growl at the beggars, but getting a blow from a stick he howled with pain, settled himself in the middle of the room, and with a piteous look gazed at the steam rising from the pot.

Jasiek was getting warmer; he had eaten his herring and rolls, but still felt more sharply than ever that he wanted something. He minutely searched his pockets, but not finding even a farthing there, doubled himself together and gazed idly at the pot and the beams of the fire.

'You want to eat--eh?' asked the beggar woman presently.

'I have... a small rumbling in my belly.'

'Who is it?' the beggar man softly inquired of the woman.

'Don't be afraid,' she growled with malice: 'he won't give you a threepenny bit, not so much as a farthing.'

'A farmer?'

'Yes, a farmer, like you: one who goes about the world'--and she took the pot off the tripod.

'And there are good people in the world--and wild beasts--and pigs out of sties.... Hey?' said the beggar man, poking Jasiek with his stick.

'Yes, yes,' answered the boy, not knowing what he said.

'You have something on your mind, I see,' whispered the beggar.

'I have.'

'The Lord Jesus always said: "If you are hungry, eat; if you are thirsty, drink; but if you are in trouble, don't chatter."'

'Eat a little,' the woman begged the boy; 'it is beggars' food, but it will do you good,' and she poured out a liberal portion on a plate. From the bag she drew out a piece of brown bread and put it in the soup unnoticed; then as he moved up to eat and she saw his worn grey face, mere skin and bone, pity so moved her that she took out a piece of sausage and laid it on the bread.

Jasiek could not resist but ate greedily, from time to time throwing a bone to the dog, who had crept up with entreating eyes.

The beggar man listened a long time; then, when the woman put the pot into his hands, he raised his spoon and said solemnly:

'Eat, man. The Lord Jesus said, give a beggar a farthing and another shall repay thee ten. God be with you!'

They ate in silence, till in an interval the beggar rubbed his mouth with his cuff and said:

'Three things are needful for food to do you good--spirit, salt, bread. Give us spirit, woman!'

All three drank together and then went on eating.

Jasiek had almost forgotten his danger and threw no more timid looks around. He just ate, sated himself with warmth, sated slowly the four-days' hunger that gnawed him, and felt peaceful in the quietness.

The two peasants had left the cask, but the crowd in the corner on benches or with their bags under their heads on the wet floor were still quietly dreaming; and still came, but in ever sleepier tones, the sound of singing from the inner room. And the rain was still falling and penetrating the roof in some places; it dripped from the ceiling and formed shining sticky circles of mud on the clay floor. And still at times the wind shook the inn or howled in the fire-place, scattered the burning boughs and drove smoke into the room.

'There is something for you too, vagabond!' whispered the woman, giving the rest of the food to the dog, who flitted about them with beseeching eyes.

Then the beggar spoke. 'With food in his belly a man is not badly off, even in hell,' he said, setting down the empty pot.

'God repay you for feeding me!' said Jasiek, and squeezed the beggar's hand; the other did not at once let him go, but felt his hand carefully.

'For a few years you have not worked with your hands,' he murmured; but Jan tore his hand away in a fright.

'Sit down,' continued the beggar, 'don't be afraid. The Lord Jesus said: "All are just men who fear God and help the poor orphan." Fearnot, man. I am no Judas nor Jew, but an honest Christian and a poor orphan myself.'

He thought for a moment, then in a quiet voice said:

'Attend to three things: love the Lord Jesus, never be hungry, and give to a man more unfortunate than yourself. All the rest is just nothing, rotten fancies. A wise man should never vex himself uselessly. Ho! we know a dozen things. Eh, what do you say?'

He pricked up his ears and waited, but Jasiek remained stubbornly silent, fearing to betray himself; then the beggar brought out his bark snuffbox, tapped it with his finger, took snuff, sneezed, and handed it to the boy. Then, bending his huge blind face over the fire, he began to talk in low monotonous tones.

'There is no justice in the world; all men are Pharisees and rogues; one man pushes another in front of him out of the way; each tries to be the first to cheat the other, to eat him up. That wasn't the will of the Lord Jesus. Ho! go into a squire's house, take off your cap, and sing, though your throat is bursting, about Jesus and Mary and all the Saints; then wait--nothing comes. Put in a few prayers about the Lord's Transfiguration; then wait. Nothing again. No, only the small dogs whine about your wallet and the maids bustle behind the hedges. Add a litany--perhaps they give you two farthings or a mouldy bit of bread. Curse you! I wish you were dirty, half-blind, and had to ask even beggars for help! Why, after all that praying the whisky to wash my throat with costs me more than they give!' He spat with disgust.

'But are others better off, eh?' he continued, after a sniff. 'Jantek Kulik--I dare say you know him--took a little pig of a squire's. And what enjoyment did he have of it? Precious little. It was a miserable creature, like a small yard dog; you could drown the whole body of him in a quart of whisky. Well, for that he was arrested and put in prison for half a year--and for what? for a miserable pig! as if a pig weren't one of God's creatures too, and some were meant to die of hunger, and some to have more than they can stuff into their throats. And yet the Lord Jesus said: "What a poor man takes, that is as if you had given it for My sake." Amen. Won't you take a drink?'

'God repay you, but it has already turned my head a bit!'

'Silly! the Lord Jesus himself drank at feasts. Drinking is no sin; it is a sin, sure enough, to swill like a pig or to sit without talking when good folk are gossiping, but not to drink the gift of God to the bottom. You just drink my health,' he whispered resolutely.

He drank himself from the bottle with a long gurgle in his throat; then handing it to Jasiek, said merrily:

'Drink, orphan. Observe only three things--to work the whole week, to say your Paternoster, and on Sunday to give to the unfortunate, and then you shall have redemption for your soul. Man, if you can't drink a gallon, drink a quart!'

Thereupon all fell silent. The woman was sleeping with her head drooping by the extinct flame, the man had opened wide his cataract-covered eyes at the glowing coals, and once and again nodded vigorously. In the corner the whispers were silent; only the wind struck the panes more violently than ever and shook the door, and from the inner room burst forth the voices in an ecstasy, it seemed, of pity or despair.

Jasiek, overcome by the warmth of the whisky, felt sleepy, stretched his legs out towards the fire, and felt an irresistible desire to lie down. He fought against it with energetic movements, but every now and then became utterly stiff and remembered nothing. A pleasant warm mist compounded out of the beams of the fire, kindly words, and stillness, wrapped him in darkness and a deep sense of freedom and security. At times he woke suddenly, he could not have said why, glanced over the room, or listened for a moment to the beggar, who was asleep but still muttered: 'For all souls in Purgatory--Ave Maria, gratia plena,' and then, 'Man, I tell you that a good beggar should have a stick with a point, a deep wallet, and a long Paternoster.' Here he woke up, and feeling Jasiek's eyes on him, recovered his wits and began to speak:

'Hear what an old man says. Take a drop to my health, and listen. Man, I tell you, be prudent, but don't force it into any one's eyes. Note everything, and yet be blind to everything. If you live with a fool, be a greater fool; with a lame man, have no legs at all; with a sick man, die for him. If men give you a farthing, thank them as if it were a bit of silver; if they set dogs on you, take it as your offering to the Lord Jesus; if they beat you with a stick, say your Paternoster.

'Man, I tell you, do as I advise and you shall have your wallet full, your belly like a mountain, and you shall lead the whole world in a string like silly cattle.... Eh, eh, I am a man not born to-day but one that knows a dozen things. He that can observe the way of the world, no trouble shall come to him. At the squire's house take your revenge on the peasants; that is a sure farthing and perhaps a morsel from the dinner; at the priest's abuse the peasants and the squires; that is two farthings sure, and absolution too; and when you are in the cottages, abuse everything, and you will eat millet and bacon, and drink whisky mixed with fat.'

Here he began to drowse, still murmuring incoherently, 'Man, I tell you... for the soul of Julina... Ave Maria...', and rocked on the bench.

'Gratia plena... help a poor cripple!' This was the woman babbling in her sleep, as she raised her head from the fire-place; but the man woke up suddenly and cried, 'Be quiet, silly!' for the entrance door was thrown loudly open, and there pushed in among them a tall yellow-haired Jew.

'On to the road,' he called in a deep voice, 'it's time'; and at once the whole crowd of sleepers sprang to their feet, began to put their loads on their backs, to get ready, to push forward into the middle of the room and again for no reason to retire. A low tumult of sound--abuse or complaint--burst from all: there were hot passages of words, cries, curses, gesticulations, or the beginnings of muttered prayers, noise, and crying children--but all kept under restraint, and yet filling the gloomy blackened room with a sense of alarm.

Jasiek awoke completely, and with his shoulders pressed to the now cooling fireplace, looked round curiously at the people as far as he could make them out.

'Where are they going?' he asked the beggar.

'To Brazil.'

'Is it far?'

'Ho! ho! it's the end of the world, beyond the tenth sea.'

'And why?'

'First because they are fools, and second because they are unfortunate.'

'And do they know the way?' Jasiek asked again, hugely astonished.

But the beggar was no longer answering him; pushing on the woman with a stick, he came forward into the middle of the room, fell on his knees, and began in a sort of plaintive chant:

'You are going beyond the seas, the mountains, the forests--to the end of the world. The Lord Jesus bless you, orphans! The Virgin of Czenstochowa keep you, and all the saints help you in return for the farthing that you give to this poor cripple...To the Lord's Transfiguration! Ave Maria....'

'Gratia plena: the Lord be with you,' murmured the woman, kneeling at his side.

'Blessed art thou among women,' answered the crowd and pressed forward.

All knelt; a subdued sobbing arose; heads were bowed; trusting and resigned hearts breathed their emotions in prayer. A warm glow of trust kindled the dull eyes and pinched faces, straightened the bent shoulders, and gave them such force that they rose from their prayer heartened and unconquerable.

'Herszlik, Herszlik!' they called to the Jew, who had disappeared into the inner room. They were eager now to go into that unknown world, so terrible and yet so alluring for its very strangeness; eager to take on their shoulders their new fate and to escape from the old.

Herszlik came out armed with a dark lantern, counted the people, made them range themselves in pairs, opened the door: they began to move like some phantom army of misery, a column of ragged shadows, and disappeared at once in the darkness and rain. For a moment there shone in the gloom and amid the tossing trees the solitary light of their guide, for a moment one could hear amid wailing a tremulous hymn, 'He who casts himself on the care of the Lord....' Then the storm broke out again in what seemed like the groan of dying masses.

'Poor creatures! orphans!' whispered Jasiek; a wild grief filled his heart.

Then he returned to the inn, now dumb and dark, for the girl had extinguished the light and gone to sleep, and the singing had ceased in the inner room: only the beggar remained awake; he and the woman were counting the people's alms.

'A poor parish! two threepenny bits and five and twenty farthings--the whole show! Ha! May the Lord Jesus never remember them or help them!'

He went on babbling, but Jasiek no longer listened. Crouched in the fire-place he hid himself as best he could in his still wet cloak and fell into a stony sleep.

A good while after midnight he was awakened by a sharp tug; a light shone straight into his eyes.

'Hey, brother, get up! Who are you? Have you your passport?'

He came to his senses at once: two policemen stood over him.

'Have you your passport?' the policeman asked again, shaking him like a bundle of straw.

But for answer Jasiek jumped to his feet and struck the man with his fist between the eyes, so that he dropped his lantern and fell backwards, while Jasiek darted to the door and ran out. The other policeman chased him, and being unable to catch him, fired.

Jasiek tottered a moment, shrieked, and fell in the mud, then jumped up at once and was lost in the darkness of the forest.

DEATH

BY

WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT

'Father, eh, father, get up, do you hear?--Eh, get a move on!'

'Oh God, oh Blessed Virgin! Aoh!' groaned the old man, who was being violently shaken. His face peeped out from under his sheepskin, a sunken, battered, and deeply-lined face, of the same colour as the earth he had tilled for so many years; with a shock of hair, grey as the furrows of ploughed fields in autumn. His eyes were closed; breathing heavily he dropped his tongue from his half-open bluish mouth with cracked lips.

'Get up! hi!' shouted his daughter.

'Grandad!' whimpered a little girl who stood in her chemise and a cotton apron tied across her chest, and raised herself on tiptoe to look at the old man's face.

'Grandad!' There were tears in her blue eyes and sorrow in her grimy little face. 'Grandad!' she called out once more, and plucked at the pillow.

'Shut up!' screamed her mother, took her by the nape of the neck and thrust her against the stove.

'Out with you, damned dog!' she roared, when she stumbled over the old half-blind bitch who was sniffing the bed. 'Out you go! will you...you carrion!' and she kicked the animal so violently with her clog that it tumbled over, and, whining, crept towards the closed door. The little girl stood sobbing near the stove, and rubbed her nose and eyes with her small fists.

'Father, get up while I am still in a good humour!'

The sick man was silent, his head had fallen on one side, his breathing became more and more laboured. He had not much longer to live.

'Get up. What's the idea? Do you think you are going to do your dying here? Not if I know it! Go to Julina, you old dog! You've given the property to Julina, let her look after you...come now...while I'm yet asking you!'

'Oh blessed Child Jesus! oh Mary....'

A sudden spasm contracted his face, wet with anxiety and sweat. With a jerk his daughter tore away the feather-bed, and, taking the old man round the middle, she pulled him furiously half out of the bed, so that only his head and shoulders were resting on it; he lay motionless like a piece of wood, and, like a piece of wood, stiff and dried up.

'Priest.... His Reverence...' he murmured under his heavy breathing.

'I'll give you your priest! You shall kick your bucket in the pigsty, you sinner...like a dog!' She seized him under the armpits, but dropped him again directly, and covered him entirely with the feather-bed, for she had noticed a shadow flitting past the window. Some one was coming up to the house.

She scarcely had time to push the old man's feet back into the bed. Blue in the face, she furiously banged the feather-bed and pushed the bedding about.

The wife of the peasant Dyziak came into the room.

'Christ be praised.'

'In Eternity...' growled the other, and glanced suspiciously at her out of the corners of her eyes.

'How do you do? Are you well?'