Hania

Before the windowed porch sat the old Mirza, drawing blue smoke from his pipe; he was looking with a joyful eye at the calm and industrious life moving on that charming landscape. When he saw his son he sprang up quickly, caught him in his arms, and pressed him long to his breast, for though he was stern to the boy he loved him beyond everything. He asked at once about his examination; then followed new embraces. All the numerous servants ran in then to meet the Panich, and the dogs sprang joyously around him. A tame she-wolf, a favorite of the old Mirza, jumped from the porch. "Zula! Zula!" called Selim, and she put her great paws on his shoulders, licked his face, and then ran around him as if mad, whining and showing her terrible teeth from delight.

Now we went to the dining-room. I looked at Horeli and everything in it, like a man thirsting for novelty. Nothing in it had been modified; the portraits of Selim's ancestors, captains, bannerets, hung on the walls. The terrible Mirza, Sobieski's colonel of light horse, looked on me as before with his ominous, slanting eyes; but his countenance, slashed with sabres, looked still uglier and very terrible. Selim's father had changed most. From being black, his forelock had grown iron gray, his thick mustache had become almost white, and the Tartar type appeared with increasing distinctness in his features. Ah, what a difference between the father and the son, between that bony face, stern, even harsh, and that face simply angelic, resembling a flower, fresh and sweet! But it is difficult for me to describe that love with which the old man looked upon Selim, and with which his eyes followed every movement of his son.

Not wishing to interrupt them, I remained at one side; but the old man, as hospitable as a genuine Polish noble, seized me at once, embraced me, and tried to detain me for the night. I would not pass the night there, for I was in a hurry to reach home, but I had to stay for supper.

I left Horeli late in the evening, and when I was near home the triangle had risen in the sky; that meant that it was midnight. Windows in the village were not lighted; fire in a tar-pit near the forest was visible from a distance. Dogs were barking at the cottages. In the alley of linden-trees, which extended to our house, it was dark; even strain out thine eyes thou couldst see nothing. A man passed at one side humming a song in low tones, but I did not see his face. I reached the porch; the windows were dark. Clearly all were asleep; but dogs, dashing out from all sides, began to bark round the brichka in gladness. I sprang down and knocked at the door; I could not make any one hear for a long time. At last this became disagreeable; I had thought that they would be waiting for me. Only after a time did a light begin to flit here and there past the window-panes, and then a drowsy voice, which I recognized as Franek's, inquired, —

"Who is there?"

I answered. Franek opened the door and fell to kissing my hands at once.

"Are all well?" I asked.

"Well," answered Franek; "but the old lord has gone to the city, and will return only to-morrow."

Thus speaking, he conducted me to the dining-room, lighted a hanging lamp over the table, and went to make tea. I was alone for a while with my thoughts, and with my heart beating quickly. But that while was of short duration, for Father Ludvik ran in, in a dressing-gown; the honest Pani d'Yves, dressed also in white, with her usual papers and in a cap; and Kazio, who had come from school for vacation a month earlier. The honest hearts greeted me with feeling, admired my growth; the priest insisted that I had grown manly, Pani d'Yves that I had grown comely.

Father Ludvik, poor man, inquired only after some time, and then timidly, about examination and my school diploma. When he heard of my successes he just wept, taking me in his arms and calling me his dear boy. And now from the chamber came the patter of small naked feet, and my two little sisters ran in, in their night-dresses and little caps, repeating, "Henlis has come! Henlis has come!" and they sprang on my knees. In vain did Pani d'Yves put them to shame, saying that it was an unheard of thing for two young ladies (one was eight, the other nine) to show themselves to people in such "dishabille." The two, without saying a word, put their little arms around my neck and pressed their mouths to my cheeks. After a while I asked timidly about Hania.

"Oh, she has grown!" answered Pani d'Yves. "She will come right away; she is dressing, I think."

In fact, I did not wait long, for five minutes later, perhaps, Hania entered the room. I looked at her; and, oh, what had become in half a year of that slender, thin orphan of sixteen? Before me stood an almost mature, or at least maturing young lady. Her form had grown full, rounded marvellously. She had a delicate but healthy complexion; on her cheeks was ruddiness, as it were, the reflection of the morning dawn. Health, youth, freshness, charm, were radiating from her, as from a rose at its opening. I noticed that she looked at me curiously with her large blue eyes; but I saw also that she must have understood my admiration and the impression which she made on me, for a kind of indescribable smile wandered in the corners of her mouth. In the curiosity with which we looked at each other was hidden the undefined bashfulness of a youth and a maiden. Oh, those simple heartfelt relations of a brother and sister, relations of childhood, had gone somewhere into a forest, to return nevermore.

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."