Ah, how beautiful she was with that smile and that quiet joy in her eyes! Light from the lamp hanging over the table fell on her bright hair. She was dressed in a black robe with something thrown over her which was equally dark. This she held on her breast beneath her white neck with her hand; but in this apparel was evident a certain charming disorder, which arose from the haste with which she had dressed. The warmth of sleep issued from her. When at greeting I touched her hand, it was warm, soft, satin-like, and her touch pierced me with a delightful quiver. Hania had changed as well mentally as physically. When I went away she was a simple maiden, half servant; now she was a young lady, with a noble expression of face and elegant movements, betraying good breeding and the habit of select society. She was roused morally and mentally; a soul was looking out through her eyes. She had ceased to be a child in every respect; her undefined smile, and a kind of innocent coquetry with which she considered me declared this, and from which it was evident that she understood in how greatly changed relations we stood toward each other. I saw soon that she had a certain superiority over me; for I, though more trained in learning, in reference to life, in reference to understanding every position, every word, was still rather a simple boy. Hania was freer with me than I with her. My dignity of a guardian and lord’s son had also gone somewhere into a forest. On the road home I had been arranging with myself how to greet Hania, what to say to her, how to be kind and indulgent, but all these plans tumbled down utterly. The position somehow began to be defined that not I was good and kind to her, but rather that she seemed to be good and kind to me. I could not understand this clearly at first, but I felt the position more than I understood it. I had arranged with myself to ask her what she was studying, what she had learned, how she had passed the time, whether Pani d’Yves and Father Ludvik were satisfied with her; but it was she who always, with that smile in the corners of her mouth, asked me what I had been doing, what I had learned, and what I intended to do in the future. All had come out wonderfully different from what I had intended. Speaking briefly, our relations had changed in a sense directly inverse.
After an hour’s conversation we all betook ourselves to rest. I went to my room a little drowsy, a little astonished, a little deceived and downcast, but through various impressions. Love roused again began to push out, like a flame through the cracks of a burning building, and soon covered those impressions completely. Then simply Hania’s form, that maiden figure, rich, full of charms, such as I had seen her, alluring, surrounded with the warmth of sleep, with her white hand holding the disordered dress on her bosom, with her hanging tresses, roused my young imagination, and veiled with itself everything before me.
I fell asleep with her image under my eyelids.
CHAPTER VI.
I ROSE very early next day and ran out to the garden. The morning was beautiful, full of dew and the odor of flowers. I went quickly to the hornbeam picket, for my heart told me that I should find Hania there. But evidently my heart, too receptive of forebodings, had deceived itself. Hania was not there, no trace of her. Only after breakfast did I find myself alone with her. I asked if she would walk in the garden. She consented willingly and ran to her chamber; she returned soon with a large straw hat on her head, which shaded her forehead and eyes, and with a parasol in her hand. She smiled at me roguishly from under the hat, as if to say, “See how this becomes me.”
We went to the garden together. I turned toward the hornbeam picket, and on the road thought, how shall I begin conversation, and thought also that Hania, who certainly could begin better than I, had no wish to assist me, but rather amused herself with my perplexity. I walked along at her side in silence, cutting off with my whip flowers growing on the side of the path, till Hania laughed all on a sudden.
“Pan Henryk,” said she, catching at the whip, “what have the flowers done to you?”
“Hania, what are the flowers to me? But thou seest that I do not know how to begin talk with thee; thou hast changed much, Hania. Ah, how thou hast changed!”
“Let us suppose that to be true. Does it make you angry?”
“I do not say that it does,” answered I, half in sorrow; “but I cannot make myself used to it, for it seems to me that that other little Hania whom I knew before, and thou, are two different beings. That one had grown into my memory, into — my heart, like a sister, Hania, and therefore—”
“And therefore” (here she pointed to herself) “this one is a stranger, is she not?” asked she, in a low voice.
“Hania! Hania! how canst thou even imagine such a thing?”
“Still it is very natural, though perhaps sad,” answered she. “You are looking in your heart for the old brotherly feelings, and do not find them, that is all.”
“No, I do not look in my heart for the old Hania, for she is there always; but I look for her in thee, and as to my heart—”
“As to your heart,” interrupted she, joyously, “I can guess what has become of it. It has stayed somewhere in Warsaw with some other little heart. That is guessed easily!”
I looked deeply into her eyes. I did not know whether she was quizzing me a little or counting on the impression made on me yesterday, and which I was unable to hide, but she was playing with me somewhat cruelly. All at once a wish to resist was roused in me. I thought that I must have a supremely comical face, looking at her with the expression of a mortally wounded deer; so I mastered my feelings and said, —
“If that is true?”
A visible expression of astonishment, and, as it were, of dissatisfaction, came to her face.
“If that is true,” answered she, “it is you who have changed, not I.”
She frowned a little, and, looking at me from under her forehead, went on some time in silence. I endeavored to hide the glad emotion with which her words penetrated me. “She says,” thought I, “that if I love another, it is I who have changed; therefore it is not she who has changed, she—” And from delight I dared not finish this wise inference.
Notwithstanding all this, it was not I, not I, but she who had changed. That little maiden who six months before knew nothing of God’s world, to whose mind it had never occurred to mention feelings, and for whom such a conversation would have been as Chinese, carried it on to-day as freely and accurately as if she had been reciting a lesson. How had that child mind developed and become so flexible? But wonderful things take place in girls. More than one falls asleep in the evening a child and wakes up in the morning a woman, with another world of feelings and thoughts. For Hania, with a nature quick, capable, sensitive, the passage of her sixteenth year, another sphere of society, learning, books, read, perhaps, in secret, — all this was more than sufficient.
Meanwhile we walked on side by side in silence which Hania was the first to break.
“Then you are in love, Pan Henryk?”
“Perhaps,” answered I, with a smile.
“Then you will be sighing for Warsaw?”
“No, Hania; I should be glad were I never to leave here.”
Hania glanced at me quickly. Evidently she wished to say something, but was silent. After a while, however, she struck her skirts lightly with the parasol, and said, as if answering her own thoughts, —
“Ah, what a child I am!”
“Why dost thou say that, Hania?”
“Oh, so — Let us sit on this bench and talk of something else. Is not the view from here beautiful?” asked she, with that well-known smile on her lips.
She seated herself on the bench not far from the paling under an immense linden-tree. From that point the view was very beautiful indeed in the direction of the pond, the dam, and the forest beyond the pond. Hania pointed it out to me with her parasol; but I, though a lover of beautiful views, had not the least desire to look at it, — first, because I knew it perfectly; second, I had before me Hania, a hundred times more beautiful than anything which surrounded her; finally, I was thinking of something else.
“How clearly those trees are reflected
in the water!” said she.
“I see that thou art an artist,” I answered, not looking at the trees or the water.
“Father Ludvik is teaching me to sketch. Oh, I have learned much while you were gone. I wanted — but what is the matter? Are you angry with me?”
“No, Hania, I am not angry, for I could not be angry with thee; but I see that thou avoidest my questions, and this is the trouble, we are both playing at hide and seek, instead of speaking sincerely and with confidence, as in old times. Maybe thou dost not feel this, but for me it is disagreeable.”
These simple words had this effect only, that they brought us into great perplexity. Hania gave me both hands, it is true; I pressed those hands perhaps too vigorously, and, oh, terror! I bent over them quickly and kissed them not at all as befitted a guardian. Then we were confused to the utmost. She blushed to the neck, I also; and finally we were silent, not knowing in any way how to begin that conversation which should be sincere and full of confidence.
Then she looked at me, I at her, and again we hung out red flags on our faces. We sat side by side like two dolls; it seemed to me that I was listening to the hurried beating of my own heart. Our position was unendurable. At times I felt that some hand was seizing me by the collar to throw me at her feet, and another was holding me by the hair and would not let me do so. All at once Hania sprang up and said in a hurried, confused voice, —
“I must go. I have a lesson at this hour with Pani d’Yves. It is nearly eleven.”
We returned by the same road to the house, and went on as before in silence. I, as before, kept cutting the heads off the flowers with my whip, but this time she had no compassion for the flowers.
“Our former relations have returned beautifully; there is nothing to be said on that point. Jesus, Mary! what is taking place within me?” thought I, when Hania left me to myself. I was in love so that the hair was rising on my head.
Just then the priest came and took me to look at the management. On the way he told me many things touching our estate; these did not occupy me in the least, though I pretended to listen attentively.
My brother Kazio, who, enjoying his vacation, spent the whole day out of doors, in the stables, in the forest, at shooting, on horseback, or in a boat, was at that particular moment in the farm-yard riding a young horse from the stud. When he saw me and the priest, he galloped up to us on the chestnut, which reared as if mad, and asked us to admire the horse’s form, fire, and pace; then he dismounted and went with us. Together we visited the stables, the cow-houses, the barns, and were just going to the fields, when it was announced that my father had come, so we had to go home.
My father greeted me more warmly than ever. When he learned of the examinations, he took me in his arms and declared that thenceforward he would consider me full grown. Indeed, a great change had taken place in him with reference to me. He treated me with more confidence and affection. He began to talk with me at once about property interests; he confided to me his intention of buying one of the neighboring estates, and asked my opinion. I divined that he spoke of that purposely to show me how seriously he looked on my significance as a mature person and the first son in the family. At the same time I noticed how genuinely he was pleased with me and my advance in study. His pride of a parent was flattered immensely by the testimonial which I had brought from the professors. I noticed, meanwhile, that he was testing my character, my style of thought, my ideas touching honor, and that he put various questions purposely to test me with them. It was evident that the parental inspection proved favorable, for though my philosophic and social principles were utterly different from his, I did not bring them forward; in other ideas we could not differ. So my father’s severe, lion-like face became more radiant than ever I had seen it. He covered me with gifts that day; he gave me a brace of pistols, with which he had fought a duel not long before with Pan Zoll, and on which were marked a number of other duels which he had fought during youth, while serving in the army. Then I received a splendid horse of Eastern blood, and an ancient sabre handed down from my ancestors; the hilt was set with stones; on the broad Damascus blade was an image of the Mother of God, inlaid with gold in the steel, and the inscription, “Jesus, Mary!” That sabre had become one of our most precious family relics, and for years had been the object of sighs from me and Kazio, for it cut iron as if shavings. My father, when presenting the sabre, unsheathed and whirled it a couple of times so that the air whistled and there was a flash in the room; then he made a cross with it over my head, kissed the image of the Mother of God on the blade, and said, while delivering the weapon into my hands, —
“Into worthy hands! I brought no shame to it; bring thou none!” Then we threw ourselves into each other’s arms. Meanwhile Kazio seized the sabre with delight; and though only a lad of fifteen, but uncommonly strong, he began to give blows with an accuracy and with a quickness that would not have shamed any trained master of fencing. My father looked at him with satisfaction, and said, —
“He will be perfect; but thou wilt do what is needed, wilt thou not?”
“I will, father. I should be able to manage Kazio even. Of all the comrades whom I have tried in fencing, only one has surpassed me.”
“Who is he?”
“Selim.”
My father made a wry face.
“Selim! But thou must be stronger?”
“That is indifferent. What would make me try him? Selim and I will never fight.”
“Ai! various things happen,” answered my father.
After dinner that day we were all sitting on the broad, vine-covered porch; from this porch the view was on the immense front yard and in the distance on the shady road bordered by linden-trees. Pani d’Yves was working an altar-cloth for the chapel; my father and the priest were smoking pipes and drinking black coffee. Kazio was circling about in front of the porch, following the turns of swift swallows, at which he wanted to shoot balls; but my father would not let him do that. Hania and I were looking at drawings which I had brought home, and were thinking least of all of the drawings; for me they served only to conceal from others the glances which I cast at Hania.
“Well, and how hast thou found Hania? Does she seem ugly to thee, lord guardian?” asked my father, looking facetiously at the girl.
I began to examine a drawing very carefully, and answered from behind the paper, —
“I will not say, father, that she has grown ugly, but she has grown tall, and has changed.”
“Pan Henryk has reproached me already with these changes,” put in Hania, with freedom.
I wondered at her daring in presence of my father. I could not have mentioned those reproaches so freely.
“Oh, what matters it whether she has grown old or grown pretty!” said Father Ludvik; “but she learns quickly and well. Let Madame tell how quickly she has learned French.”
It should be known that the priest, though highly educated, did not know French and could not learn it, though he had spent a number of years under our roof with Pani d’Yves. The poor man, however, had a weakness for French, and considered a knowledge of it as an indispensable mark of superior education.
“I cannot deny that she learns easily and willingly,” answered Pani d’Yves, turning to me; “but still I must complain of her.”
“Oh, Pani! what new fault have I committed?” cried Hania, crossing her hands.
“What fault? You will explain here right away,” answered Pani d’Yves. “Just imagine, this young lady, when she finds a moment of time, takes up a novel immediately; and I have strong reasons for thinking that when she goes to bed, instead of quenching the candle and sleeping, she reads for whole hours.”
“She does a very bad thing; but I know from some source that she follows the example of her teacher,” said my father, who was fond of teasing Pani d’Yves when he was in good humor.
“I beg your pardon greatly; I am forty-five years of age,” answered the French woman.
“Why, just think, I neve
r should have said that,” answered my father.
“You are malicious.”
“I do not know that; but I know this, that if Hania gets novels from any place, it is not from the library, for Father Ludvik has the key to it. The blame therefore falls on the teacher.”
In truth, Pani d’Yves had read novels all her life, and, having a passion to relate them to every one, she must surely have related some to Hania; hence, in the words of my father, which were half in jest, a certain truth lay concealed, which he wished to emphasize purposely.
“Oh, see! Some one is coming!” cried Kazio, suddenly.
We all looked into the shady alley between the linden-trees, and at the other end of it, perhaps a verst away, we saw a cloud of dust, which approached us with uncommon rapidity.
“Who can that be? What speed!” said my father, rising up. “Such a dust one can distinguish nothing.”
In fact, the heat was great; no rain had fallen for more than two weeks, so that along the roads clouds of white dust rose at every step. We looked for a while, yet in vain, at the approaching cloud, which was not farther than a few tens of steps from the front yard, when out of the cloud emerged a horse’s head with distended, red nostrils, fiery eyes, and flowing mane. The white horse was going at the swiftest gallop; his feet barely touched the earth; and on his back, bent to the horse’s neck, in Tartar fashion, was no other than my friend Selim.
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 683
