Children of the Soil. Генрик Сенкевич

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      CHAPTER XVIII

      Pan Stanislav hurried to Pani Emilia’s, fearing that he would not find Litka living; for the servant told him on the way that the little lady was in convulsions, and dying. But when he arrived, Pani Emilia ran to meet him, and from the depth of her breast threw out in one breath the words, “Better! better!”

      “Is the doctor here?”

      “He is.”

      “But the little one?”

      “Is sleeping.”

      On the face of Pani Emilia the remnants of fear were struggling with hope and joy. Pan Stanislav noticed that her lips were almost white, her eyes dry and red, her face in blotches; she was mortally wearied, for she had not slept for twenty-four hours. But the doctor, a young man, and energetic, looked on the danger as passed for the time. Pani Emilia was strengthened by what he told her in presence of Pan Stanislav, especially this: “We should not let it come to a second attack, and we will not.”

      There was real consolation in these words, for evidently the doctor considered that they were able to ward off another attack; still there was a warning that another attack might be fatal. But Pani Emilia grasped at every hope, as a man falling over a precipice grasps at the branches of trees growing out on the edge of it.

      “We will not; we will not!” repeated she, pressing the doctor’s hand feverishly.

      Pan Stanislav looked into his eyes unobserved, wishing to read in them whether he said this to pacify the mother, or on the basis of medical conviction, and asked as a test, —

      “You will not leave her to-day?”

      “I do not see the least need of staying,” answered he. “The child is exhausted, and is like to sleep long and soundly. I will come to-morrow, but to-day I can go with perfect safety.” Then he turned to Pani Emilia, —

      “You must rest, too. All danger has passed; the patient should not see on your face any suffering or alarm, for she might be disturbed, and she is too weak to endure that.”

      “I could not fall asleep,” said Pani Emilia.

      The doctor turned his pale blue eyes to her, and, gazing into her face with a certain intensity, said slowly, —

      “In an hour you will lie down, and will fall asleep directly; you will sleep unbrokenly for six or eight hours, – let us say eight. To-morrow you will be strong and refreshed. And now good-night.”

      “But drops to the little one, if she wakes?” asked Pani Emilia.

      “Another will give the drops; you will sleep. Good-night.” And he took farewell.

      Pan Stanislav wished to follow him to inquire alone about Litka, but he thought that a longer talk of that kind might alarm Pani Emilia; hence he preferred to omit it, promising himself that in the morning he would go to the doctor’s house and talk there with him. After a while, when he was alone with Pani Emilia, he said, —

      “Do as the doctor directed; you need rest. I promise to go to Litka’s room now, and I will not leave her the whole night.”

      But Pani Emilia’s thoughts were all with the little girl; so, instead of an answer, she said to him directly, —

      “Do you know, after the attack, she asked several times for you before she fell asleep. And for Marynia too. She fell asleep with the question, ‘Where is Pan Stas?’”

      “My poor beloved child, I should have come anyhow right after dinner. I flew here barely alive. When did the attack begin?”

      “In the forenoon. From the morning she was gloomy, as if foreboding something. You know that in my presence she says always that she is well; but she must have felt ill, for before the attack she sat near me and begged me to hold her hand. Yesterday, I forgot to tell you that she put such strange questions to me: ‘Is it true,’ inquired she, ‘that if a sick child asks for a thing it is never refused?’ I answered that it is not refused unless the child asks for something impossible. Some idea was passing through her head evidently, for in the evening, when Marynia ran in for a moment, she put like questions to us. She went to sleep in good humor, but this morning early she complained of stifling. It is lucky that I sent for the doctor before the attack, and that he came promptly.”

      “It is the greatest luck that he went away with such certainty that the attack would not be repeated. I am perfectly sure that that is his conviction,” answered Pan Stanislav.

      Pani Emilia raised her eyes: “The Lord God is so merciful, so good, that – ”

      In spite of all her efforts, she began to sob, for repressed alarm and despair were changed to joy in her, and she found relief in tears. In that noble and spiritualized nature, innate exaltation disturbed calm thought; by reason of this, Pani Emilia never gave an account to herself of the real state of affairs; now, for example, she had not the least doubt that Litka’s illness had ended once for all with this recent attack, and that thenceforth a time of perfect health would begin for the child.

      Pan Stanislav had neither the wish nor the heart to show her a middle road between delight and despair; his heart rose with great pity for her, and there came to him one of those moments in which he felt more clearly than usually how deeply, though disinterestedly, he was attached to that enthusiastic and idealistic woman. If she had been his sister, he would have embraced her and pressed her to his bosom; as it was, he kissed her delicate, thin hands, and said, —

      “Praise be to God; praise be to God! Let the dear lady think now of herself, and I will go to the little one and not stir till she wakes.” And he went.

      In Litka’s chamber there was darkness, for the window-blinds were closed, and the sun was going down. Only through the slats did some reddish rays force their way; these lighted the chamber imperfectly and vanished soon, for the sky began to grow cloudy. Litka was sleeping soundly. Pan Stanislav, sitting near her, looked on her sleeping face, and at the first moment his heart was oppressed painfully. She was lying with her face toward the ceiling; her thin little hands were placed on the coverlid; her eyes were closed, and under them was a deep shadow from the lashes. Her pallor, which seemed waxen in that reddish half-gloom, and her open mouth, finally, the deep sleep, – gave, her face the seeming of such rest as the faces of the dead have. But the movement of the ruffles on her nightdress showed that she was living and breathing. Her respiration was even calm and very regular. Pan Stanislav looked for a long time at that sick face, and felt again, with full force, what he had felt often, when he thought of himself, – namely, that nature had made him to be a father; that, besides the woman of his choice, children might be the immense love of his life, the chief object and reason of his existence. He understood this, through the pity and love which he felt at that moment for Litka, who, a stranger to him by birth, was as dear to him then as would have been his own child.

      “If she had been given to me,” thought he; “if she lacked a mother, – I would take her forever, and consider that I had something to live for.”

      And he felt also that were it possible to make a bargain with death, he would have given himself without hesitation to redeem that little “kitten,” over whom death seemed then to be floating like a bird of prey over a dove. Such tenderness seized him as he had not felt till that hour; and that man, of a character rather quick and harsh, was ready to kiss the hands and head of that child, with a tenderness of which not even every woman’s heart is capable.

      Meanwhile it had СКАЧАТЬ