Hania

He sat down, played again, again the vanishing voice of the hautboy was heard in the silence of night, and over the snow. But Klen's eyelids stuck together more and more, and the notes of the "Green Pitcher," growing weaker, and gradually growing silent, were silent altogether at last. Still he struggled against sleep; he was conscious yet; he was thinking still of Olka; but at the same time he felt himself in a greater desert, more and more alone, as if forgotten; and wonderment seized him that she was not there with him in that loneliness and that night.

He murmured, "Olka! where art thou?"

And once more he spoke as if calling her, —

"Olka!"

The hautboy dropped from his stiffened hands.

Next morning the dawn shone on his sitting figure, with the hautboy near his long legs, and his face was blue, astonished as it were, and at the same time fixed in listening to the last note of the song, "My Green Pitcher."

LUX IN TENEBRIS LUCET[13 - Light shineth in the darkness.]

SOMETIMES in the autumn, especially in November, such wet and gloomy days come that life becomes repulsive even to a healthy man. From the time that Kamionka had fallen ill and stopped work on his statue of "Compassion," bad weather had caused him more suffering than sickness itself. Every morning, when he had dragged his body out of bed, he rubbed the great sweating window of his studio and looked upward, in the hope that he would see some little strip of blue sky; but every morning disappointment awaited him. An oppressive lead-colored mist hung over the earth; rain was not falling, still the paving stones in the yard looked like sponges soaked in liquid; everything was wet, slippery, penetrated through and through with water, single drops of which falling from the eave-troughs sounded with a peculiar and desperate monotony, as if measuring that sluggish time of sadness.

The window of the studio looked out on a courtyard, which was bounded by a garden. The grass beyond the paling was green yet with a sort of sickly greenness, in which were death and decay; but the trees with their yellow leaves, and their branches black from dampness and also effaced by the mist somewhat, seemed dead altogether. From among those trees came every evening the cawing of crows, which had flown in from the forests and fields to the city for winter quarters, and which, with a great clattering of wings, settled down for the night on the branches.

The studio in days like this was as gloomy as the place for bones in a cemetery. Marble and plaster of Paris need azure. In that leaden light the whiteness had something sad in it; figures in dark terra-cotta lost all precision of lines and changed into indefinite forms almost terrible.

Dirt and disorder increased the gloom of the studio. On the floor was a thick layer of dust, formed from pieces of dry terra-cotta ground fine from trampling; to this was added mud from the street. The naked walls were merely ornamented here and there with models of hands and feet in plaster of Paris; near the window hung a small mirror, above it a horse skull, and a bouquet of artificial flowers quite black from dust.

In the corner was a bed covered with a quilt, old and rumpled; near the bed a commode; on this an iron candlestick.

Kamionka, through reasons of economy, kept no separate lodging-place; he slept in the studio. Usually the bed was concealed by a screen, but the screen had been removed to let the sick man look out more easily through the window near the foot of his bed, and see if the weather were clearing. Another and larger window placed in the ceiling of the studio was covered with dust on the outside to such a degree that even on bright days a gray and gloomy light passed in through it.

But the weather did not clear. After a number of days of darkness the clouds settled down thoroughly, the air was penetrated to the last degree with a watery, heavy mist, and became still darker. Kamionka, who so far had lain on the bed in his clothing, felt worse, so he undressed and lay down for good.

Speaking precisely, he was not so much sick with any definite disease as he was bowed down, dissatisfied, exhausted, and sad in general. His weakness cut the feet from beneath him. He had no wish to die; but neither did he feel strength to live.

The long hours of the dismal day seemed longer because he had no one for company. His wife had been dead twenty years; his relatives lived in another part of the country; and he did not live with his colleagues. In recent years every acquaintance had withdrawn from him because of his ever-increasing sorrow. At first, his disposition amused people; but later, when he grew stranger and stranger, when every jest roused a permanent feeling of offence in him, even those nearest the man broke off all relations with him.

People took it ill of him also that with age he had grown devout, and his sincerity was suspected. Malicious tongues said that he sat in church only to receive orders from churches through his relations with priests. This was not true. His piety did not flow from deep and calm faith, perhaps, but it was unselfish.

What, however, lent a show of truth to the critics, was the penuriousness which increased more and more in Kamionka. For a number of years he had lived in his studio to lessen expenses; he lived God knows on what food, and injured his health so much that at last his face was as yellow and transparent as if moulded from wax. He avoided people also for this, lest some one might ask of him sometime a favor.

In general, he was a man of broken character, embittered and uncommonly unhappy. Still his was not a common nature at bottom, for even his faults had artistic traits which were special to him. Those who judged that with his penuriousness he must have collected a considerable property were mistaken. In truth, Kamionka was poor; for all that he owned he had spent on engravings of which he had whole portfolios at the bottom of his bureau; these, from time to time, he counted with the greed and the care of a usurer counting his money. He concealed this taste the more carefully, perhaps, because it had grown on the basis of great misfortune and deep feeling.

On a time, a year more or less after the death of his wife, he saw in an antiquarian's collection an old engraving, representing Armida. In the face of this Armida he detected a likeness to the face of his dead one. He bought the engraving immediately, and from that time on he sought copperplates, those at first representing only Armida, then, as the fancy increased, every other.

Those who have lost persons much loved by them are forced to attach life to something, or they could not exist. As to Kamionka, no one would have thought that this rather aged original and egotist had ever loved his wife more than he loved his existence. It is likely, moreover, that had she not died, life would have flowed on for him more broadly, more calmly, and more in human fashion. Be that as it may, love in Kamionka survived his happy days, his youth, and even his talent.

His piety, which in the course of years turned into a custom resting on the preservation of external forms, flowed from this love of his also. Kamionka, without being a man of deep faith, began after the death of his wife to pray for the dead one, since this seemed to him the only thing he could do for her, and thus a kind of thread kept them together.

Natures apparently cold are often able to love with great power and persistently. After the death of his wife, Kamionka's whole life and all the thoughts that he had, entwined themselves around her memory, and drew food from it, just as plant parasites draw food from the tree on which they are growing. But from memories of that sort the human plant can gain nothing but poisonous juices made up of sorrow and enormous vexation, hence Kamionka too poisoned himself, grew distorted, went to nothing.

Had he not been an artist, he would not have survived, perhaps, but he was saved by his calling. After the death of his wife, he began to make a monument to her. It is useless for the living to say that it is all one to the dead in what graves they are lying. Kamionka wished that it should be beautiful there for his Zosia, and he worked with his heart no less than his hands. This was why he did not become insane the first half year, but grew inured to despair.

The man was out of joint and unhappy; but art saved the artist. From that moment, Kamionka existed by virtue of his calling. People who look at statues and images in galleries do not divine that artists may serve their art honestly or dishonestly. In this regard, Kamionka was without reproach. He had no wings at his shoulders, – he possessed only talent somewhat above the common, and perhaps, therefore, art could not fill out his life, or give him recompense for all losses; but he respected it deeply, and was ever sincere with regard to it. During the long years of his labor, he had never tempted it, and had never committed injustice regarding it, either in view of fame, profit, praise, or blame. He always did that which he felt. During his happy years, when he lived like other men, he was able to say things touching art which were quite uncommon, and after that, when people began to turn aside from him, he thought frequently of this art in his lonely studio, in a manner which was lofty and honest.

He felt greatly abandoned; but in this there was no cause for wonder. People's relations must have a certain medium measure in virtue of which the exceptionally unhappy are cut off from life. For that very reason, they are covered with as much strangeness and as many faults as a stone thrown up from a torrent is covered with moss, when it ceases to rub against others. Now when Kamionka was ill, no living soul looked into his studio, with the exception of a servant-woman, who came twice a day to make tea for him, and serve it. At every visit, her advice was to call in a doctor; but he, fearing the outlay, would not give his consent to this.

At last he became very weak; perhaps for the reason that he took nothing into his mouth except tea. But he had no desire then for anything, either for eating, or work, or life. His thoughts were as if withered like those leaves on which he looked through the window; and those thoughts of his answered perfectly to that autumn, to that drizzle, to that leaden darkness. There are no worse moments in life than those in which a man feels that he has accomplished what he had to accomplish, that he has outlived that which he had to outlive; and that nothing more in this world belongs to him. Kamionka had lived almost fifteen years in continual dread that his talent would exhaust itself; now he was sure that it had, and he thought with bitterness that even art was deserting him. He felt therewith weariness and exhaustion in every bone of his body. He did not expect a sudden death; but he did not believe in a return to health. In general, there was not one spark of hope in him.

If he wished for anything it was only that the weather would brighten, that the sun would shine into his studio. For he thought that in that case he might gain consolation. He had always been specially sensitive to slush and to darkness; such days had always deepened his sadness and depression, and what must it now be when that "hopeless time," as Kamionka called it, was joined to his sickness!

Every evening when the servant brought tea he inquired: "Is it not clearing on the edge of the sky somewhere?"

"There is such a mist," answered she, "that one man cannot see another."

Kamionka, hearing this answer, closed his eyes and lay motionless a long time.

In the yard it was always quiet save that drops of rain pattered evenly and monotonously in the gutters.

About three o'clock one afternoon it was so dark that Kamionka was forced to light a candle. And he was so weak that he did this with no little difficulty. Before he reached for a match he meditated a long time; then he extended his arm lazily; the thinness of this arm, evident through the shirt sleeve, filled him, as a sculptor, with repugnance and bitterness. When he had lighted the candle he rested again, without moving, till the evening arrival of the servant, listening with closed eyes to the drops sounding in the gutter.

His studio looked strange then. The flame of the candle lighted the bed with Kamionka lying on it, and came to a focus in a shining point on his forehead with its skin dry and yellow as if polished. The rest of the room was sunk in darkness, which grew denser each moment. But as it grew dark outside the statues became more rosy and acquired life. The flame of the candle now sank, now rose, and in that quivering light the statues too seemed to sink and rise exactly as if they were rising on tiptoe to gain a better look at the face of the sculptor, and be convinced that their creator was living.

And indeed there was a certain immobility of death in that countenance. But at times the blue lips of the sick man stirred with a slight movement, as if in prayer, or as if he were cursing his loneliness and those dreadful drops of moisture which measured with even monotony the hours of his sickness.

One evening the woman came a little drunk, therefore more talkative than usual.

"There is so much work on my head that I can barely look in twice a day," said she; "if you would call a religious, a sister of charity costs nothing, and she would be better for a sick man."

This advice pleased Kamionka, but he, like others who are afflicted, had the habit of always opposing whatever advice people gave him; so he would not agree.

But after the woman had gone he began to think thus: "A sister of charity costs nothing, but what aid she might give, and what comfort!" Kamionka, like every sick man left to himself, experienced much suffering and struggled with a thousand petty miseries, which annoyed him as much as they made him impatient. More than once he lay for whole hours with a crooked neck before he would move to arrange his own pillow. Often in the night he was cold and would have given God knows what for a cup of tea; but if it was difficult to light a candle, how was he to think of making tea? A sister of charity would do all this with the mild readiness usual to those sisters. Oh, how much easier to be sick if one had their assistance!

The poor man came at last to think of sickness under such conditions as something desirable and pleasant, and he wondered in his soul if the like happiness were accessible to him even.

It seemed, too, that if a sister were to come and bring with her a little joyousness and solace to the studio, perhaps the weather would clear up outside, and the sounding drops of water cease to pursue him.

He regretted at last that he had not accepted the advice of the woman immediately. Night was approaching, long and gloomy, and the woman was to look in at him only next morning. He understood now that that night would be for him more grievous than all the nights which had ever preceded it.

Then he thought what a Lazarus he was – and in distinction to his present wretchedness his former happy years stood before his eyes as if living. And as a moment before the thought of the sister of charity, so now the remembrance of those years joined itself in the same wonderful manner in his weakened brain, with the understanding of sun and light and fair weather.

He began to think of his dead one, and to speak with her, as he had the habit of doing when he was ill. At last he wearied himself, felt that he was growing weak, and fell asleep.

The candle was burning slowly. Its flame from being rosy was blue, then it gleamed brightly a number of times, and died. Deep darkness embraced the studio.

But meanwhile in the yard drops of rain fell as evenly and gloomily as if by means of them darkness and grief were distilled through all nature.

Kamionka slept long and lightly, but all at once he woke with a certain wonderful impression that something uncommon was happening in the studio. The morning dawn was in the world. The marbles and plasters of Paris began to grow white. The broad Venetian window opposite his bed was penetrated more and more with pale light.

In this light Kamionka saw a figure sitting at his bedside.

He opened his eyes widely and looked at the figure: it was that of a sister of charity.

She was sitting motionless, turned slightly toward the window, with her head inclined. Her hands were laid on her knees, – and she seemed to be praying. The sick man could not see her face, but he saw plainly her white head-dress and the dark outline of her rather frail shoulders.