Tales by Polish Authors Part 36

The doctor looked round the bare, whitewashed room. He noticed the windows which did not sufficiently keep out the draught, the girl's shoes, shrivelled with having been wet through constantly, the piles of books lying on the table, the sofa and everywhere.

"Oh, you mad girl, you foolish girl!" he whispered, wringing his hands. In distress and alarm he examined her, and took her temperature with trembling hands.

"Typhus!" he murmured, turning pale. He pressed his hand to his throat to stifle the tears which were choking him like little b.a.l.l.s of cotton.

He knew that he could do nothing for her--that, in fact, nothing could be done for her. Suddenly he gave a bitter laugh when he remembered that he would be obliged to send the twenty miles to Obrzydlwek for the quinine and antipyrin he wanted.

From time to time Stanislawa opened her gla.s.sy, delirious eyes, and looked without seeing from beneath her long, curling eyelashes. He called her by the most endearing names, he raised her head, which the neck seemed hardly able to support, but all in vain.

He sat down idly on a stool and stared into the flame of the lamp.

Truly misfortune, like a deadly enemy, had dealt him a blow unawares from a blunt weapon. He felt as if he were being dragged helplessly into a dark, bottomless pit.

"What is to be done?" he whispered tremblingly.

The cold blast penetrated through a crack in the window like a phantom of evil omen. The doctor felt as if someone had touched him, as if there were a third person in the room besides himself and the patient.

He went into the kitchen and told the servant to fetch the Soltys immediately.

The old woman instantly drew on a pair of large boots, threw a handkerchief over her head, and disappeared with a comical hobble.

Shortly afterwards the Soltys appeared.

"Listen! Can you find me a man to ride to Obrzydlwek?"

"Now, doctor?... Impossible!... There's a blizzard; he'd be riding to his death. One wouldn't turn a dog out to-night."

"I will pay--I will reward him well."

The Soltys went out. Dr. Pawel pressed his temples, which were throbbing as though they would burst. He sat down on a barrel and reflected on something which happened long ago.

Footsteps approached. The Soltys brought in a farmer's boy in a tattered sheepskin which did not reach to his knees, sack trousers, torn boots, and with a red scarf round his neck.

"This boy?" the doctor asked.

"He says he will go--rash youngster! I can give him a horse. But wherever at this time of----"

"Listen! If you come back in six hours, you will get twenty-five ...

thirty roubles from me ... you will get what you like.... Do you hear?"

The boy looked at the doctor as if he meant to say something, but he refrained. He wiped his nose with his fingers, shuffled awkwardly, and waited.

The doctor went back to the school-teacher's bedroom. His hands were shaking, and went up to his temples automatically. He thought of a prescription, wrote it, scratched through what he had written, tore it up, and wrote a letter to the chemist instead, begging him to despatch a horseman to the town at once, to ask the doctor to send him some quinine. He bent over the sick girl and examined her afresh; then he went into the kitchen and handed the letter to the boy.

"My dear boy," he said in a strange, unnatural voice, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder and slightly shaking him, "ride as fast as the horse will go--never mind him getting winded.... Do you hear, my boy?"

The lad bowed to the ground and went out with the Soltys.

"Is it long since the teacher settled here with you in the village?"

Dr. Pawel asked the old woman who was cowering by the stove.

"It's about three winters."

"Three winters! Did no one live here with her?"

"Who should there be but me? She took me into her service, poor wretch that I am. 'You'll not find a place anywhere else, granny,' she said, 'but there isn't much to do for me, only just a bit here and there.'

And now here we are; I'd promised myself that she would bury me....

G.o.d be merciful to us sinners!..."

She began unexpectedly to whisper a prayer, detaching one word from the other, and moving her lips from side to side like a camel. Her head shook and the tears flowed down the wrinkles into her toothless mouth.

"She was good----"

Granny began snivelling, and gesticulated wildly, as if she meant to drive the doctor away from her. He returned to the sick-room and began to walk up and down on tiptoe. Round after round he walked after his usual habit. Now and then he stopped beside the bed and muttered between his teeth with a rage that made his lips pale:

"What a fool you have been! It is not only impossible to live like that, but it is not even worth while. You can't make the whole of your life one single performance of duty. Those idiots will take it all without understanding; they will drag you to it by the rope round your neck, and if you let your foolish illusions run away with you, death will make you its victim; for you are too beautiful, too much beloved----"

As fire licks up dry wood, so a past and long-forgotten feeling took possession of him. It revived in him with the strength and the treacherous sweetness of former years. He persuaded himself that he had never forgotten her, that he had wors.h.i.+pped and remembered her up to that very moment. He gazed into the well-known face with an insatiable curiosity, and a dumb, piercing pain began to devour his heart as he thought that for three years she had been living here, near him, and he only heard of it when death was on the point of taking her away from him.

All that was befalling him this day seemed to be the consequence of his animal existence, which had led him nowhere except to burrow in the ground. Yet he felt as if suddenly a mysterious horizon opened out before him, an ocean spreading far away into the mist.

With all the effort of impatient despair he grasped at memories, seeking refuge in them from an intolerable reality; he plunged into them as into the rosy halo of a summer dawn. He felt he must be alone, if only for a moment, to think and think. He slipped into a third room which was filled with forms and tables. Here he sat down in the dark to collect his thoughts and contrive some way of saving his patient.

But he began to recall memories:

He was then a poor student in his last year. When he went to the hospital on winter mornings, he stepped carefully so that not everyone should notice how cleverly the holes in his boots had been mended with cardboard. His overcoat was as tight as a strait-jacket, and so threadbare that the old-clothes man would not even give a florin for it when he tried to sell it in the summer. Poverty made him pessimistic, and produced that state of sadness which is more than mere unpleasant depression, but less than actual suffering. To be roused from it, one need only eat a chop or drink a gla.s.s of tea; but he frequently had no tea to drink, to say nothing of a dinner to eat.

He used to run along the muddy Dlvga Street so as to enter the gate of the Saski Gardens by a quarter to nine.

Here he would meet a young girl and walk past her, looking at her long, heavy, ashen-blonde pigtails. She would not look up, but knitted her brows, which reminded one of the narrow, straight wings of a bird.

He used to meet her there daily in the same place. She always walked quickly to the suburb beyond, where she entered a tram going to Praga.

She was not more than seventeen, but looked like a little old maid in her handkerchief thrown carelessly over her fur cap, in her clumsy, old-fas.h.i.+oned cloak, and shoes a size too large for her small feet.

She always carried books, maps, and writing materials under her arm.

On one occasion, finding himself in possession of a few pence, which were to have paid for his dinner, he was resolved to discover what her daily destination was. He therefore set out in pursuit, and entered the same car, but after he had sat down all his courage had failed him. The unknown measured him with such a look of absolute disdain that he jumped out of the tram immediately, having lost his bowl of broth and achieved nothing.

Yet he felt no grudge towards her; on the contrary, this had only raised her in his estimation. He thought about her unconsciously and uninterruptedly; he strove through the course of whole hours to call to mind her hair, her eyes, her mouth, the colour of her lips. And yet he strained his memory in vain. For scarcely had she vanished from his sight than her features vanished from his memory. Instead there was left a vision like a white cloud without any distinct features; it seemed to hover over him. His thoughts pursued that cloud in longing and humble timidity, with a touch of unconscious regret, sadness, and sympathy, which dominated him altogether.

He used to go every morning to compare the living girl with his vision, and the reality seemed to him the more beautiful of the two; her eyes, thoughtful, and clear like a spring, filled him with a certain sense of awe.

At that time one of his fellow-students, nicknamed "Movement in s.p.a.ce," unexpectedly got married. He was a great "social reformer,"

continually writing endless prefaces to works he never finished for lack of the necessary books of reference. His wife was a feminist and as poor as a church mouse. Her dowry consisted in an old carpet, two stewing-pans, a plaster cast of Mickiewicz, and a pile of school prizes. The young couple lived on the fourth floor and promptly began to starve. They both gave private lessons so zealously that after separating in the morning they did not meet again till the evening.

Nevertheless their house began to be the centre towards which each "social reformer" wended his way in his dirty boots, in order to sit for a while on the "Movement's" soft sofa, smoke his cigars, argue till he was hoa.r.s.e, and in the end contribute a few pence towards the entertainment. The amiable hostess bought rolls and sausages, which she arranged artistically on a plate and handed round to her guests.

You were always sure to meet someone interesting here, to become acquainted with great people as yet unknown to their age, and possibly you might even have a chance of borrowing sixpence.

Obarecki had turned pale with joy when one evening, on entering the room, he had found his beloved among the circle of friends. He had talked to her and lost his head completely. While walking home with the others that evening, he had had a longing to be alone--neither to dream nor to think of her, but just to steep his soul in her presence, see her and hear the sound of her voice, think as she did, and let the pictures which rose in his imagination take possession of him. He now distinctly remembered her wonderful eyes, with their bewildering depth, severe yet sympathetic, gentle and mysterious. He had experienced a feeling of joy and repose; as if, after a hot, wearisome journey, he had lighted upon a cool spring, hidden in the shade of pines on a high hill.

They had surrounded her with respect, and seemed to attach special importance to her words. In introducing Obarecki, the "Movement" had said, with an air of importance, "Obarecki, a thinker, a dreamer, a great idler, yet the coming man--Panna Stanislawa, our Darwinist."

The "great idler" had not been able to ascertain much about the "Darwinist"; merely that she had left the High School, was giving lessons, and intended to go to Paris or Zurich to study medicine, but had not a penny to bless herself with.