Children of the Soil

After a short conversation there was silence between them, interrupted only by the breathing of the sick child and the slight, but mournful, sounds of the window-panes, on which fine rain was striking. Outside, the night had grown wet; it was autumnal, bringing with it oppression, gloom, pessimism, and discontent. Equally gloomy seemed that chamber, in whose dark corners death appeared to be lurking. Hour followed hour more slowly. All at once forebodings seized Pan Stanislav. He looked at Litka on a sudden, and it seemed to him madness to suppose that she could recover. Vain was watching! vain were hopes and illusions! That child must die! she must all the more surely, the dearer she was. Pani Emilia will follow her; and then there will be a desert really hopeless. What a life! See, he, Polanyetski, has those two, the only beings in the world who love him, – beings for whom he is something; therefore it is clear that he must lose them. With them there would be something in life to which he could adhere; without them there will be only nothingness and a certain kind of future, blind, deaf, unreasoning, with the face of an idiot.

The most energetic man needs some one to love him. Otherwise he feels death within, and his energy turns against life. A moment like that had come now to Pan Stanislav. “I do not know absolutely why I should not fire into my forehead,” thought he, “not from despair at losing them, but because of the nothing without them. If life must be senseless, there is no reason to permit this senselessness, unless through curiosity to learn how far it can go.” But this thought did not appear in him as a plan; it was rather the effort of a man writhing at the chain of misfortune, a burst of anger in a man seeking some one against whom to turn. In Pan Stanislav this anger turned suddenly on Marynia. He did not know himself why; but it seemed to him at once that all the evil which had happened, had happened through her. She had brought into their circle a dislike not there before, suffering not there before, and had thrown, as it were, some stone into their smooth water; and now the wave, which was spreading more and more widely, covered not only him, but Pani Emilia and Litka. As a man governing himself by judgment, not by nerves, he understood how vain were reproaches of this sort; still he could not put down the remembrance that before Marynia came it was better in every way, and so much better even, that he might consider that as a happy period of his life. He loved then only Litka, with that untroubled, fatherly feeling, which did not and could not bring bitterness for a moment. Who knows, besides, if in time he might not have been able to love Pani Emilia? She, it is true, had not for him other feelings than those of friendship, but perhaps only because he did not desire other feelings. High-minded women frequently refuse themselves feelings which go beyond the boundary of friendship, so as not to render difficult and involved the life of some one who might, but does not wish to become dear. Meanwhile in the depth of the soul lies a calm secret melancholy; they find sweetness and consolation in the tenderness permitted by friendship.

Pan Stanislav, by becoming acquainted with Marynia, gave her at once the best part of his feelings. Why? for what purpose? Only to give himself suffering. Now, to complete the misfortune, that Litka, the one ray of his life, had died, or might die any moment. Pan Stanislav looked again at her, and said in his soul, —

“Remain even, thou dear child; thou knowst not how needful thou art to me and to thy mother. God guard thee; what a life there will be without thee!”

Suddenly he saw that the eyes of the child were looking at him. For a while he thought himself mistaken, and did not dare to stir; but the little maiden smiled, and finally she whispered, —

“Pan Stas.”

“It is I, Litus. How dost thou feel?”

“Well; but where is mamma?”

“She will come right away. We had a great struggle to make her go to bed to sleep, and we hardly persuaded her.”

Litka turned her head, and, seeing Marynia, said, —

“Ah! is that Aunt Marynia?”

For some time she had called her aunt.

Marynia rose, and, taking the vial which stood on the shelf, poured drop after drop into a spoon; then she gave them to Litka, who, when she had finished drinking, pressed her lips to Marynia’s forehead.

A moment of silence followed; then the child said, as if to herself, —

“There is no need of waking mamma.”

“No; no one will wake her,” answered Pan Stanislav. “All will be as Litus wishes.”

And he began to stroke her hand, which was lying on the coverlid. She looked at him, repeating, as was her wont, —

“Pan Stas, Pan Stas!”

For a while it seemed that she would fall asleep; but evidently the child was thinking of something with great effort, for her brows rose. At last, opening widely her eyes, she looked now at Pan Stanislav, and now at Marynia. In the room nothing was heard save the sound of rain on the windows.

“What is the matter with the child?” asked Marynia.

But she, clasping her hands, whispered in a voice barely audible, “I have a great, great prayer to Aunt Marynia, but – I am afraid to say it.”

Marynia bent her mild face toward the little girl.

“Speak, my love; I will do everything for thee.”

Then the little girl, seizing her hand, and pressing it to her lips, whispered, —

“I want Aunt Marynia to love Pan Stas.”

In the silence which followed after these words was to be heard only the somewhat increased breathing of the little girl. At last the calm voice of Marynia was heard, —

“Very well, my love.”

A spasm of weeping seized Pan Stanislav suddenly by the throat; everything, not excluding Marynia, vanished from his eyes before that child, who, at such a moment, sick, powerless, and in the face of death, thought only of him.

Litka asked further, —

“And will aunt marry Pan Stas?”

In the light of the blue lamp Marynia’s face seemed very pale; her lips quivered, but she answered without hesitation, —

“I will, Litus.”

The little girl raised Marynia’s hand to her lips a second time; her head fell on the pillow, and she lay for a while with closed lids; after some time, however, two tears flowed down her cheeks. Then followed a longer silence; the rain was beating against the window-panes. Pan Stanislav and Marynia were sitting motionless without looking at each other; both felt, however, that their fates had been decided that night, but they were as if dazed by what had happened. In the chaos of thought and feelings neither of them knew how to note or indicate what was passing within them. In that silence, which was kept instinctively, lest perchance they might look each other in the eyes, hour followed hour. The clock struck midnight, then one; about two Pani Emilia slipped in like a shadow.

“Is she sleeping?” inquired she.

“No, mamma,” answered Litka.

“Art thou well?”

“Well, mamma.”

And when Pani Emilia sat near her bed, the little one embraced her neck; and, nestling her yellow head at her breast, she said, —

“I know now, mamma, that when a sick child begs for anything, people never refuse.”

And she nestled up to her mother some time yet; then, drawing out each word as sleepy children do, or very tired ones, she said, —

“Pan Stas will not be sad any more; and I will tell mamma why – ”

But here her head became heavy on her mother’s breast, and Pani Emilia felt the cold sweat coming on the hands of the child, as well as on her temples.

“Litus!” exclaimed she, with a suppressed, frightened voice.

And the child began, —

“I feel so strange, so weak – ”

Her thoughts grew dim; and after a while she continued, —

“Oh, the sea is rolling – such a big sea! – and we are all sailing on it. Mamma! mamma!”

And a new attack came, dreadful, pitiless. The little girl’s body was drawn in convulsions, and her eyesight turned toward the back of her head. There was no chance of illusion this time; death was at hand, and visible in the pale light of the lamp, in the dark corner of the room, in the sound of the window-panes, stricken by the rain, and in the noise of the wind, full of terrified voices and cries.

Pan Stanislav sprang up and ran for the doctor. In a quarter of an hour both appeared before the closed doors of the room, uncertain whether the child was living yet, and they disappeared through it immediately, – first Pan Stanislav, then the doctor, who, from the moment that they had pulled him out of bed, kept repeating one phrase, “Is it fear or emotion?”

Some of the servants, with sleepy and anxious faces, were gathered at the door, listening; and in the whole house followed a silence, long continued, which weighed down like lead.