Hania

Hania
Генрик Сенкевич

Henryk Sienkiewicz

Hania

PROLOGUE

THE OLD SERVANT

BESIDES old managers, overseers, and foresters there is another type of man which is disappearing more and more from the face of the earth, – the old servant.

During my childhood, as I remember, my parents were served by one of those mammoths. After those mammoths there will soon be only bones in old cemeteries, in strata thickly covered with oblivion; from time to time investigators will dig them out. This old servant was called Mikolai Suhovolski; he was a noble from the noble village of Suha Vola, which he mentioned often in his stories. He came to my father from my grandfather of sacred memory, with whom he was an orderly in the time of the Napoleonic wars. He did not himself remember accurately when he began service with my grandfather; when he was asked for the date, he took snuff, and answered, —

"Yes, I was then without mustaches, and the colonel, God light his soul, was still very young."

In the house of my parents he fulfilled the most varied duties: he was butler; he was body-servant; in summer he went to the harvest fields in the rôle of overseer, in winter to the threshing; he kept the keys of the vodka room, the cellar, the granary; he wound up the clocks; but above all he kept the house in order.

I do not remember this man otherwise than scolding. He scolded my father, he scolded my mother; I feared him as fire, though I liked him. In the kitchen he worked off a whole breviary on the cook, he pulled the pantry boys by the ears through the house, and never was he content with anything. Whenever he got tipsy, which happened once a week, all avoided him, not because he permitted himself to have words with his master or mistress, but because whenever he fastened on any one, he followed that person all day, nagging and scolding without end.

During dinner, he stood behind my father's chair, and, though he did not serve, he watched the man who served, and poisoned life for him with a most particular passion.

"Take care, take care!" muttered he, "or I will take care of thee. Look at him! he cannot serve quickly, but drags his legs after him, like an old cow on the march. Take care again! He does not hear that his master is calling. Change her plate for the lady. Why art thou gaping? Why? Look at him! look at him!"

He interfered in conversation carried on at table, and opposed everything always. Frequently it happened that my father would turn during dinner and say to him, —

"Mikolai, tell Mateush after dinner to harness the horses; we will drive to such and such a place."

"Drive! why not drive? Oi yei! But are not horses for driving? Let the poor horses break their legs on such a road. If there is a visit to be made, it must be made. Of course their lordships are free; do I prevent them? I do not prevent. Why not visit? The accounts can wait, and the threshing can wait. The visit is more urgent."

"It is a torment with this Mikolai!" shouted my father sometimes, made impatient.

But Mikolai began again, —

"Do I say that I am not stupid? I know that I am stupid. The manager has gone to pay court to the priest's housekeeper in Nyevodov, and why shouldn't masters go on visits? Is a visit less important than paying court to a housekeeper? If 'tis permitted to the servant to go, it is permitted to the master."

And thus it went on in a circle without means of stopping the old grumbler.

We, that is, I and my younger brother, feared him, as I have said, almost more than our tutor Father Ludvik, and surely more than our parents. He was more polite toward my sisters. He said "Panienka" [1 - Lord's daughter, or young lady.] to each of them, though they were younger than we; but to us he said "thou" without ceremony. For me he had a special charm: he always carried gun caps in his pocket. It happened often that after lessons I would slip into the pantry, smile as nicely as I could, be as friendly as possible, and say timidly, —

"Mikolai! A good day to Mikolai. Will Mikolai clean pistols to-day?"

"What does Henryk want here? I'll get ready a dish-cloth, that is all."

Then he would mock me, saying, —

"'Mikolai! Mikolai!' When gun caps are wanted, Mikolai is good, and when not, let the wolves eat him. Thou wouldst do better to study; thou'lt never gain wit from shooting."

"I have finished my lessons," said I, half crying.

"Finished his lessons! Hum! finished. He is studying and studying, but his head is like an empty canister. I won't give caps, and that's the end of it." (While talking, he searched through his pockets.) "But if the cap goes into his eye, Mikolai will catch it. Who is to blame? Mikolai. Who let the boy shoot? Mikolai."

Scolding in this fashion, he went to my father's room, took down the pistols, blew the dust off them, declared a hundred times more that all this was not worth a deuce; then he lighted a candle, put a cap on the nipple of the pistol, and let me aim. Meanwhile I had often to bear heavy crosses.

"How the boy holds the pistol!" said he. "Hum! like a barber. How couldst thou quench a candle, unless as an old man quenches it in church? Thou shouldst be a priest to repeat Hail Marys, and not be a soldier."

In his own way he taught us his military art of other days. Often after dinner I and my brother learned to march under his eye, and with us marched Father Ludvik, who marched very ridiculously.

Then Mikolai looked at him with a frown, and, though he feared the priest more than any one, he could not restrain himself.

"Hei!" said he, "but his grace marches just like an old cow."

I, as the elder, was oftener under his command, so I suffered most. But when I was sent to school old Mikolai cried as if the greatest misfortune had happened. My father and mother said that he became more peevish, and annoyed them two weeks.

"They took the child and carried him away," said he. "And if he dies! Uu! u! But what does he want of schools? Isn't he the heir? Will he study Latin? They want to turn him into a Solomon. What folly! The child has gone off, gone off, and crawl, thou old man, into corners and look for what thou hast not lost. The deuce knows why 'tis done."

I remember when I came home for the first holidays. All in the house were sleeping yet. It was just dawning; the morning was cold and snowy. The squeaking of the well-sweep in the farm-yard and the barking of dogs interrupted the silence. The blinds of the house were closed, but the windows in the kitchen were gleaming with a bright light which gave a rosy color to the snow near the wall. I had come home tired and gloomy with fear in my soul, since the first rank which I had received was nothing in particular. This happened because I was helpless till I had found my place, till I had grown accustomed to routine and school discipline. I feared my father; I feared the severe, silent face of the priest, who had brought me from Warsaw. There was no consolation from any side. At last I saw the door of the kitchen open and old Mikolai, with his nose red from cold, wading through the snow with pots of steaming cream on a tray. When he saw me he cried, —

"Oh, golden Panich! my dearest!"

And then he put down the tray quickly, turned over both pots, caught me around the neck and began to press and kiss me. Thenceforward he always called me Panich.

For two entire weeks after that he could not forgive me that cream: "A man is carrying cream for himself quietly, and the boy comes along. He picked out his hour accurately," etc.

My father was going to flog me, or at least he promised to do so, because of the two moderate marks which I had brought, one for penmanship, the other for German; but my tears and promises of improvement on one hand, the intercession of my dear mother on the other, and finally, the troubles raised by Mikolai, prevented it. Mikolai did not know what kind of creature penmanship was, and to punish one for German – that he would not even listen to.

"Well," said he, "is the boy a Lutheran, or some Schwab? Did the lord colonel know how to speak German? or does the lord himself [here he turned to my father] know how to speak it? We met the Germans at – What is the name of the place? At Leipzig, and the devil knows wherever we attacked them we didn't talk German, but they showed us their backs right away."

Old Mikolai had one more peculiarity: he spoke rarely of his former expeditions, but when in moments of special good humor he did so, he lied as if possessed. He did not do this through bad faith; in his old head perhaps facts were mixed up, and grew to fantastic proportions. Whatever military exploits he had heard of during youth he appropriated to himself and my grandfather, his colonel. And he believed sacredly all that he said.

Sometimes in the barn, while overseeing peasants working out their dues in threshing wheat, he would begin to narrate; the men would stop work, and, resting on their flails, listen with lips open in wonderment. Then he would notice them and shout, —

"Why do ye turn mouths on me as big as cannon?"

And again was heard, —

"Lupu! Tsupu! Lupu! Tsupu!"

The sound of flails was heard for some time on the straw, but after a while Mikolai would begin again, —

"My son writes me that he has just been made general by the Queen of Palmyra. He has a good place there, high pay, but there are terrible frosts in that country – " etc.

I may mention that the old man had no success with his children. He had a son, it is true, but a great good-for-nothing, who, when he grew up, made Lord knows what trouble; finally he went into the world and disappeared without trace; and Mikolai's daughter, in her time a wonder of a girl, was giddy with all the officials, as many as there were in the village, and finally died, after giving the world a daughter. That daughter was called Hania. She was about my age, beautiful, but delicate. I remember that often we played soldier. Hania was the drummer, but a nettle to our enemies. She was good and mild as an angel. A grievous fate awaited her in the world, but those are memories which do not concern us at present.

I return to the old man's narratives. Once I heard him tell how on a time the horses of the Uhlans stampeded in Mariampol. Eighteen thousand of them rushed in through the gates of Warsaw. "How many people they trampled to death," said he, "what a day of judgment there was till they were caught, it is easy to imagine." Another time he told, not in the barn, however, but to us all in the mansion, the following, —

"Did we fight well? Why shouldn't we fight well? I remember once there was war with the Austrians; I was standing in the rank, in the rank, I say, and up to me rides the commander-in-chief, as if to give a message from the Austrians, that is, from the opposite side. 'Ei, thou Suhovolski,' said he, 'I know thee! If we could only catch thee we should finish the whole war.'"

"But didn't he say anything about the colonel?" asked my father.