After a moment’s hesitation, he added,—
“I remember, for example, that more than once Mashko acknowledged, as it were, that he was going by a wrong and false road; but right away he sought reasons to justify himself: ‘With us it is necessary to do so;’ ‘That is the fault of our society;’ ‘I pay with the money that is current.’ How much of this have I heard! And that was all untrue, too. Meanwhile there is a certain bravery in declaring, It is my fault absolutely. And whoso has that bravery has something left yet.”
“Then do you judge that Pan Ignas would do well to return to her?”
“I do not judge at all, nor do I suppose that it could happen.”
But the living interest roused by news from Rome, together with anxiety for Pan Ignas and Panna Castelli, passed away soon, under the pressure of a more important anxiety, which was hanging over the house of the Polanyetskis.
Toward the end of November Marynia’s health began to fail evidently. It had been failing for some time, but she concealed this fact as long as possible. A painful palpitation of the heart came on her, and weakness so great that there were days when she could not move out of an armchair. Next came pains in her back and giddiness. In the course of a week she changed so much in the eyes, and grew thin to such a degree, that even the doctors, who up to that time had considered those symptoms as the ordinary forerunners of approaching labor, began to be alarmed at them. Her transparent face assumed at times a bluish tinge; and seemed, especially when the sick woman kept her eyes closed, like the face of a dead person. Even Pani Bigiel, the greatest optimist near Marynia, could not at last resist fears; the doctor declared to Pan Stanislav plainly that under such conditions the expected event might be dangerous, both in itself and in sequences. Marynia, though weaker every day and more exhausted, was indeed the only one who did not lose hope now.
But Pan Stanislav lost it. Such a grievous time came on him that all sufferings and misfortunes which hitherto in life he had gone through seemed to him nothing in comparison with his terrible dread, which often and often became utter despair. Formerly after his wedding, in his conceptions of marriage and his hopes of the future, a child was the main thing; now for the first time he felt that he would give not only one, but all the children that he could ever have, to save that one beloved Marynia. And his heart was cut when at times Marynia repeated with her weakened voice the question which before she had asked more than once, “Stas, but if it is a boy?” He would have been glad to fall at her feet, embrace them, and say, “Let the devil take it, boy or girl, if only thou art left;” but he had to smile at her, and assure her calmly that it was all one to him. His former terrors fell upon him again; and that hope, roused by Marynia’s words, that by God’s favor a wave of evil returns as remorse only, was dissipated without a trace. Now, at moments, he had again the feeling that Marynia’s sickness might be just that returning wave. How it might be that wave he could not tell, for in vain did reason say to him that between the offence of Pani Osnovski or of Panna Castelli, for example, and the punishment which met them, there is an immediate connection which there is not in his case. Fear answered him, that evil may filter through life by such secret channels that the reason of man cannot follow it. And at this thought a dread seized him that was simply mysterious. A man in misfortune loses power of accurate reasoning; he lives under the weight of terror, and under such a weight was Pan Stanislav living. He saw only the precipice, and his own helplessness. More than once, while looking at the haggard face of Marynia, he said to himself, “One must be mad to suppose that she may not die;” and he sought desperately on the faces of those surrounding her for even a shade of hope, and with every drop of his blood, with every atom of his brain, with his whole soul and heart, he rose up against her death. It seemed to him an inconceivable injustice that she will have to close her eyes forever before he can show her how he loves her beyond every estimate; before he rewards her for all his carelessness, harsh treatment, egotism, and faithlessness; before he tells her that she has become the soul of his soul, something not only loved above all in his life, but revered. He repeated to himself that if God would not do this for him He ought to do it for her, so that in going from the world she might leave it with a feeling at least of that happiness which she had deserved. From these insolent suggestions to God of how He ought to act, he passed again to compunction, to humility, and to prayer. But meanwhile Marynia was daily more and more dangerously ill, and he, between two despairs, one of which shouted, “This cannot be,” and the other, “It must be,”—he struggled as if in a vice.
Finally, from necessity, from the fear of taking hope from Marynia, he was forced to pretend in her presence that he paid little attention to her sickness. And the doctor and Pani Bigiel warned him daily not to alarm her; his own reason indicated the same to him. And here was a new torture, since it came to his mind that she might look on this as a lack of feeling, and die with the conviction that he had never loved her. Thus everything was changed in him utterly. Sleeplessness, torment, and alarm brought him to a kind of sickly exaltation, in which even the danger, which of itself was too evident, he saw in a still higher degree. It seemed to him that there was no hope, and at times he thought of Marynia as if already dead. For whole days he was thinking over every good point of her character,—her words, her kindness, her calmness. He remembered how all loved her, and he reproached himself desperately, saying that he had never been worthy of her, that he had not loved her sufficiently, that he had not valued her enough, and, to crown all, had broken faith with her; and therefore he must lose her, and lose her deservedly.
And in the feeling that a thing so terrible was also deserved, and that it was too late for any correction, was something simply heart-rending. Even persons who during life were always loved greatly, when they go from this world, leaving their friends in sorrow because they did not love the departed enough, leave behind, of all sorrows, that which is sorest.
At the beginning of December, Svirski and Pan Ignas returned, after two months’ journey, from Italy. Pan Stanislav had grown so thin and haggard in that interval that they hardly knew him; and he, quite sunk in misery, turned scarcely any attention to them, and listened as in a dream to words of hope and consolation from both, as well as narratives, with which the honest artist tried to divert his suffering mind. What did he care now for Pan Ignas, Pani Bronich, Panna Castelli, in face of the fact that Marynia might die any day? Svirski, who had immense friendship for him, wishing to find from some point a little hope, betook himself to Pani Bigiel; but even she had not much hope to offer. The doctors themselves did not know well what the trouble was, for to her condition were added various complications, which could not be defined even. It was only known that the heart of the sick woman acted irregularly; they feared above all that, as a result of defective circulation, some coagulation in the veins might result, which would cause sudden death. Besides, even in case of a happy delivery, they feared a number of things,—exhaustion, loss of strength, and all those results which come only later. Svirski convinced himself that Pani Bigiel did not deceive herself either when, at the end of the conversation, she fell into tears, and said,—