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         MORE TALES BY POLISH
               AUTHORS




     TALES BY POLISH AUTHORS.
     Translated by ELSE BENECKE.
     Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. net.

     "This is a book to be bought and read; it
     cannot fail to be remembered.... The whole
     book is full of passionate genius.... It is
     delightfully translated."--_The Contemporary
     Review._

     OXFORD
     B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.




           MORE TALES BY
           POLISH AUTHORS


           TRANSLATED BY
         ELSE C. M. BENECKE
                AND
            MARIE BUSCH


              OXFORD
    B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
               1916





NOTE


The translators' thanks are due to MM. Szymanski and Zeromski for
allowing their stories to appear in English; and to Mr. Nevill Forbes,
Reader in Russian in the University of Oxford, Mr. Retinger, and Mr.
Stefan Wolff, for granting permission on behalf of the three other
authors (or their representatives) whose works are included in this
volume; also to Miss Repszowa for much valuable help.




CONTENTS


                                             PAGE
    MACIEJ THE MAZUR. By Adam Szymanski         1
    TWO PRAYERS. By Adam Szymanski             52
    THE TRIAL. By W. St. Reymont               86
    THE STRONGER SEX. By Stefan Zeromski      112
    THE CHUKCHEE. By W. Sieroszewski          146
    THE RETURNING WAVE. By Boleslaw Prus      186




POLISH PRONUNCIATION


           cz = English _ch_.
           sz = English _sh_.
            l = English _w_.
            o = English _o_ in "who."
            a = French "on."
            e = French _in_ as in "vin."
     rz and z = French _j_ in "jour."
    (rz and z after _k_, _p_, _t_, _ch_ = English _sh_.)
           ch = Scotch _ch_ in "loch."
            c = _ts_.


        Pan   = Mr.
        Pani  = Mrs.
        Panna = Miss.




MACIEJ THE MAZUR

BY ADAM SZYMANSKI


After leaving Yakutsk I settled in X----, a miserable little town
farther up the Lena. The river is neither so cold nor so broad here,
but wilder and gloomier. Although the district is some thousands of
versts nearer the civilized world, it contains few colonies. The
country is rocky and mountainous, and the taiga[1] spreads over it in
all directions for hundreds and thousands of versts. It would
certainly be difficult to find a wilder or gloomier landscape in any
part of the world than the vast tract watered by the Lena in its upper
course, almost as far as Yakutsk itself. Taiga, gloomy, wild, and
inaccessible, taiga as dense as a wall, covers everything
here--mountains, ravines, plains, and caverns. Only here and there a
grey, rocky cliff, resembling the ruin of a huge monument, rises
against this dark background; now and then a vulture circles
majestically over the limitless wilderness, or its sole inhabitant, an
angry bear, is heard growling.

The few settlements to be found nestle along the rocky banks of the
Lena, which is the only highway in this as in all parts of the Yakutsk
district. Continual intercourse with Nature in her wildest moods has
made the people who live in these settlements so primitive that they
are known to the ploughmen in the broad valleys along the Upper Lena,
and to the Yakutsk shepherds, as "the Wolves."

The climate is very severe here, and, although the frosts are not as
sharp and continuous as in Yakutsk, this country, on account of being
the nearest to the Arctic regions, is exposed to the cruel Yakutsk
north wind. This is so violent that it even sweeps across to the
distant Ural Mountains.

At the influx of the great tributary of the Lena there is a large
basin; it was formed by the common agency of the two rivers, and
subsequently filled up with mud. This basin is surrounded on every
side by fairly high mountains, at times undulating, at times steep.
Its north-eastern outlet is enclosed by a very high and rocky range,
through which both rivers have made deep ravines. X----, the capital
of the district inhabited by the "Wolf-people," lies in this
north-eastern corner of the basin, partly on a small low rock now
separated from the main chain by the bed of the Lena, partly at the
foot of the rock between the two rivers. The high range of mountains
forming the opposite bank of the Lena rises into an enormous rocky
promontory almost facing the town. Flat at the top and overgrown by a
wood, the side towards the town stands up at a distance of several
hundred feet as a perpendicular wall planed smooth with ice, thus
narrowing the horizon still more. As though to increase the wildness
of the scenery presented by the mountains and rocks surrounding the
dark taiga, a fiendish kind of music is daily provided by the furious
gales--chiefly north--which prevail here continually, and bring the
early night frosts in summer, and ceaseless Yakutsk frosts and
snowstorms in winter. The gale, caught by the hills and resounding
from the rocks, repeats its varied echoes within the taiga, and fills
the whole place with such howling and moaning that it would be easy
for you to think you had come by mistake into the hunting-ground of
wolves or bears.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was somewhere about the middle of November, a month to Christmas.
The gale was howling in a variety of voices, as usual, driving forward
clouds of dry snow and whirling them round in its mad dance. No one
would have turned a dog into the street. The "Wolf-people" hid
themselves in their houses, drinking large quantities of hot tea in
which they soaked barley or rye bread, while the real wolves provided
the accompaniment to the truly wolfish howling of the gale. I waited
for an hour to see if it would abate; however, as this was not the
case, I set out from the house, though unwillingly.

I had promised Stanislaw Swiatelki some days beforehand that I would
go to him one day in the course of the week to write his home letters
for him--"very important letters," as he said. It was now Saturday, so
I could postpone it no longer. Stanislaw was lame, and, on account of
both his lameness and his calling, he rarely left the house. He came
from the district of Cracow--from Wislica, as far as I recollect--and
prided himself on belonging to one of the oldest burgher families of
the Old Town, a family which, as far as fathers' and grandfathers'
memories could reach, had applied itself to the noble art of
shoemaking. Stanislaw, therefore, was also a shoemaker, the last in
his family; for although the family did not become extinct in him,
nevertheless, as he himself expressed it, "Divine Providence had
ordained" that he should not hand down his trade to his son.

"God has brought him up, sir, and it seems to have been His will that
the shoemaker Swiatelkis should come to an end in me," Stanislaw used
to say. He had a habit of talking quickly, as if he were rattling peas
on to a wall. Only at very rare moments, when something gave him
courage and no strangers were present, he would add: "Though His
judgments are past finding out.... What does it matter? Why, my
grandson will be a shoemaker!" He would then grow pale from having
expressed his secret thought, turn round quickly, as though looking for
something, shift uneasily, and--as I noticed sometimes--unconsciously
spit and whisper to himself: "Not in an evil hour be it spoken, Lord!"
thereby driving away the spell from his dearest wish.

He was of middle height, fair, but nearly grey, and had lost all his
teeth. He wore a beard, and had a broad, shapeless nose and large,
hollow eyes; it was difficult to say what kind of person he was as
long as he sat silent. But only let him move--which, notwithstanding
the inseparable stick, he always did hastily, not to say
feverishly--only let him pour out his quick words with a tongue moving
like a spinning-wheel, and no one who had ever seen a burgher of pure
Polish blood could fail to recognize him as a chip of the old block.
Stanislaw had not long carried on his trade in X----. Having scraped
together some money as foreman, he had started a small shop; but he
was chiefly famous in the little town as the one maker of good Polish
sausages. He had a house next door to the shop, consisting of one room
and a tiny kitchen. He did not keep a servant; a big peasant, known as
Maciej, prepared his meals and gave him companionship and efficient
protection. Hitherto, however, I had known very little of this man.

I did not often visit Swiatelki, and as a rule only when I wanted to
buy something. So we had chatted in the shop, and I had only seen
Maciej in passing. But I had noticed him as something unusually large.
He was, indeed, huge; not only tall, but, as rarely happens, broad in
proportion. It was this which gave his whole figure its special
characteristics, and made it seem imposing rather than tall.

A house calculated for ordinary people he found narrow. Furniture
standing far enough apart to suit the average man hampered Maciej. He
could not take two steps in the house without knocking against
something. He trod cautiously and very slowly, continually looking
round; and he always had the ashamed air of a man who feels himself
out of place and is persuaded that his strongest efforts will not save
him from doing absurd things. I had seen Maciej a few times when, in
Swiatelki's absence, he had taken his place in the shop, where the
accommodation was fairly limited. An expression almost of suffering
was depicted on his broad face, and especially noticeable when, on
approaching the passage between the shelves and the counter, he stood
still a moment and measured the extent of the danger with an anxious
look. That it existed was undoubted, for the shelves were full of
glasses and jugs of all kinds, so that one push could do no little
harm. It was a real Scylla and Charybdis for him. He looked
indescribably comical, and was so much worried that after a few
minutes the drops of perspiration ran off his forehead. Once I found
him there in utter misery, waiting for someone to come. For he had
fancied, when going through this passage after settling with a
customer, that he had knocked against something behind him, and, not
being able to ascertain what it was, he stood and waited, afraid to
move until someone came.

"God be praised that you've come!" he exclaimed with delight. "I am
fixed here as sure as a Jew comes to a wedding. _He's_ gone away and
doesn't mean to come back! Good Lord! how little room there is here!
I've knocked against some teapot or other, and can't move either way.
The devil take all these shelves!" He continued his lamentations when
I had set him free. "It's always like this; it's a real misfortune,
this want of room. But what does it matter to him? He fits in here;
though he has to help himself with a stick, he can spin round like a
top."

"He" was, of course, the shoemaker, for Maciej's stupidity caused
frequent bickerings, which, however, never became serious between
them. Maciej's unwieldiness and awkwardness irritated the nervous,
agile shoemaker; while, on the other hand, Maciej could not understand
the shoemaker's quickness. But this was not their only cause of
contention. The shoemaker, a burgher, was to a certain extent a man
of position, with a deep sense of his higher rank; he wore a coat, and
had needs which Maciej regarded as entirely superfluous--in fact,
those of a gentleman. In addition, the shoemaker was the owner of the
house, and Maciej's employer.

Apart from all this, however, the antagonism revealed in their mutual
relations was not deep-seated, but in reality superficial. The
shoemaker grumbled at Maciej, and sometimes made fun of him; but he
always did it as if he were on equal terms with him, observing the
respect due to a peasant of some standing--that is, he always used the
form "you," and not "thou," in addressing him. Maciej usually received
the shoemaker's grumbling in silence, but sometimes answered his
taunts pretty sharply. Besides their common fate and present equality
in the eyes of the law, other weighty reasons had an influence in
making bearable the relations between people of different classes in
one small room.

In comparison with Maciej, the shoemaker possessed intelligence of
which the latter could never even have dreamt. The shoemaker could
read, and--what gave him a special charm, and no little authority in
Maciej's eyes--he could scrawl the eighteen letters of his Christian
and surname, although slowly, and always with considerable difficulty.
To Maciej's credit, on the other hand, besides his physical
strength--that brute force which impresses even those who are not
lame--stood the fact that he took service more from motives of
comradeship than of necessity. For he possessed capital of his own,
having made several hundred roubles, which were deposited at present
at the shoemaker's house. Moreover--the most important thing of
all--he was a conscientious and honest man. When, before knowing this,
I asked the shoemaker in conversation if he could trust Maciej
completely, since he lived alone with him and often left him in the
shop, he repeated my question with so much astonishment that I at once
realized its thorough inappropriateness. He repeated it, and, not
speaking quickly, as usual, but slowly and emphatically, he gave me
this answer: "Maciej, sir, is a man--of gold."

       *       *       *       *       *

Immediately on my arrival the shop was closed and we went into the
house. A small table with a chair on either side stood under the only
window of the little room. Close behind the chairs there was a bed
along one wall, and a small wooden sofa along the other. A narrow
opening opposite the table led to the kitchen where Maciej lived. We
sat down to consult what to write. Not only the shoemaker, but even
Maciej, was in an extremely serious mood; both evidently attached no
little importance to the writing of letters. The shoemaker fetched
from a trunk a large parcel tied up in a sheet of paper, and, having
taken out the last letters from his wife and son, handed them
carefully to me. Maciej squeezed himself into the kitchen, and did not
return to us. A moment later, however, his head with the large red
face--but his head only--showed like the moon against the dark
background of the opening.

"Why do you go so far away, Maciej?" I asked.

"Eh, you see, sir, it's not comfortable sitting in there. I've knocked
a bench together here that's a bit stronger."

The shoemaker mumbled something about breaking the chairs, but Maciej
busied himself with his pipe and did not hear, or pretended not to
hear.

We began to read the letters. The letter from his wife contained the
usual account of daily worries, interspersed with wishes for his
return and the hope of yet seeing him. The letter from his son, who
had finished his apprenticeship as journeyman joiner half a year ago,
was sufficiently frivolous. After telling his father that he was now
free, he wrote that, as he could not always get work, he was unable to
make the necessary amount of money to buy himself a watch, and he
begged his father to send him thirteen roubles or more for this
purpose. I finished reading this, and looked at the shoemaker, who was
carefully watching the impression the letter was making on me. I
tried to look quite indifferent; whether I succeeded to any extent I
do not know, for I did not look straight at him. But I was convinced
after a moment that my efforts had been vain, for I heard the anxious
question: "Well, and what else, sir?" It was clear that his son's
letter was very painful to him, even more so than I had supposed.

"Here am I, trying and working all I can, so that in case I return
there may be something to live upon and I mayn't have to beg in my old
age, and that fool----"

We both began to remonstrate with him that it was unnecessary to take
this to heart, and that his son was probably--in fact, certainly--a
very good lad, only perhaps a little spoilt, especially if he was the
only child.

"Of course he is the only one, for I have never even seen him."

"How--never?"

"Yes, really never; because--I remember it as if it were to-day--it
was five o'clock in the evening. I was doing something in the
backyard, when my neighbour, Kwiatkowski, called out to me from behind
the wooden fence: 'God help you, Stanislaw, for they are coming after
you!' I only had time to run up to the window and call out: 'Good-bye,
Basia; remember St. Stanislaw will be his patron!' That's all I said.
Basia was confined shortly after, but I didn't see her again. So it
was a good thing I said it, for now there'll always be something to
remember me by."

"God be praised that it's so! but if it hadn't been a son----"

Maciej did not finish his sentence, however, for the offended
shoemaker began to reprimand him sternly.

"You are talking nonsense, Maciej, and it is not for the first time!
Does not the Church also give the name of St. Stanislawa? Besides,
though I am a sinner as every man is, couldn't I guess that a word
spoken at a moment like that would carry weight with the Almighty?
Isn't everything in God's hand?"

Maciej looked down, and a deep sigh was the only testimony to the
shoemaker's eloquence.

Stanislaw's explanation of the circumstances lightened our task very
much, and when he had remembered that the mother never complained of
her son--on the contrary, was always satisfied with him--we succeeded
in calming his excessive anxiety concerning the fate of his only
child. In order to settle the matter thoroughly, it was decided to ask
some responsible and enlightened person to examine the lad as he
should think fit and to keep an eye on him in future, reporting the
result of the examination to the father. This was arranged because the
mother, being a simple and uneducated woman, was thought to be
possibly much too fond of her only son, and an over-indulgent and
blind judge. The only question was the choice of the individual--a
sufficiently difficult matter; this one had died, that one had grown
rich, the other had lately taken to drink. We meditated long, and
would have meditated still longer, if finally the shoemaker had not
said firmly, with the air of a man persuaded that he is speaking to
the point:

"We will write to the priest!" And when Maciej, glad that the
troublesome deliberation was over--possibly, also, in order to regain
his position after having just said a stupid thing--hastily supported
this with, "Yes, the priest will be best," I conceded to the majority.

Certain difficulties arose from the fact that the priest was not
personally known to Swiatelki, and that, as Maciej put it, "the priest
couldn't be approached just anyhow." These difficulties were overcome
by the business-like shoemaker, who began by ordering a solemn Requiem
Mass for the souls of his parents, for which he sent the priest ten
roubles, and in this way commended his son to the kind consideration
of his benefactor.

I began to write the letters, of which there were to be three: to his
wife, to his son, and to the priest. In the course of my stay in
Siberia I had written so many similar letters that I had gained no
little facility in this kind of composition. I therefore wrote
quickly, only asking for a few particulars. The shoemaker crept from
the bed, on which he had hitherto been sitting, to the chair standing
by the table, and bending over this followed the movement of my pen
attentively, ready to answer any questions. Maciej cleaned out his
pipe in silence. I finished the letters, and proceeded to read them.

Stanislaw sent his wife fifty roubles. As he retained a most
affectionate remembrance of his faithful Basia, loved her possibly
more now than twenty years ago, and could never speak of her without
deep emotion, the letter to her corresponded to the feelings of his
youth. He was paler than usual as he listened to it, and he tried to
say something, but his lips trembled and the words caught in his
throat. When the reading was finished, however, Stanislaw wriggled in
the way peculiar to him, and, after blowing his nose several times,
finally articulated: "Now I will sign." Having discovered his
spectacles in the table drawer and duly fixed them on his nose, the
shoemaker pointed to the place where the signature was to be put, and
began:

"Es, tee." He had already opened his mouth to pronounce the third
letter, when the incautious Maciej, who had behaved most properly
while I was writing, unexpectedly interrupted with:

"If you would also----"

He burst in with this, but of course did not finish. The shoemaker
laid down the pen, lifted his head high, so as to look through his
spectacles at Maciej--who without doubt was already regretting his
ill-timed remark--and said drily:

"Maciej, you are hindering me."

Maciej grew very red, and, naturally, did not utter another word. The
shoemaker finished writing his name without further interruption, and
took out the money. In order to avoid mistakes, he at once enclosed it
with the letter in an addressed envelope.

However much Stanislaw had wished during our consultation to "pull the
silly fellow's ears," the letter to his son was indulgent rather than
stern. It was easy to guess what that yet unseen son, the one hope of
the old burgher family, was to Swiatelki. He had worked perseveringly
and honestly for so many years, and had overcome all kinds of
difficulties; lonely and neglected, he had passed victoriously through
the temptations to enrich himself easily with which Siberia beguiles
the unsuspecting novice. Doubtless he owed all this in a certain
degree to the honest principles he had brought from his home and
country, as well as to his character, but, without any doubt, equally
to that son in whose very birth he saw the Hand of God. It was clear
that the poor fellow dreamt of standing before his beloved child as an
ascetic dreams of appearing at the Judgment-Seat. The thought that he
would be able to tell him--openly and fearlessly--"I have nothing to
bring you, my son, but a name unstained by a past full of the gravest
temptations," was the lodestar of his life. Taking this into
consideration, therefore, I did not scold the "silly fool," but
explained to him in an affectionate way what the money was the father
was sending to the family--money he had earned by working extremely
hard, and frequently by pinching himself. I told the lad what he ought
to be and might become, being strong and healthy, and that on this
account his wish for money to spend on trifles gave his father pain. I
wrote large and distinctly, adapting myself to the young joiner's
powers of comprehension, and at the end fervently blessed him in his
new walk in life.

The reading of this letter was carried on with constant interruptions,
as I stopped to ascertain if I had interpreted the father's feelings
and wishes rightly. From the beginning I was sure that this was the
case, and became all the more certain of it as I read on. Each time I
looked at him inquiringly, Stanislaw answered me hastily: "Yes, yes,
yes, that's just as I wanted it!" But the farther I read the shorter
and quicker became the "Yes, yes." In the middle of the letter, it is
true, he opened his lips once more, but I only saw that they were
moving, for they did not utter a sound. I looked up again: his chin
was resting on the table, and the tears were flowing down his pale
cheeks. He did not make the restless movements peculiar to him when
his feelings overflowed. He did not scrape his throat or blow his
nose. He merely rested his chin on the table, and, sitting near me by
the candle, with its light falling upon him, he quietly cried before
us. He did not quiver or sob, but the tears, which had certainly not
flowed from those hollow eyes for a long time, streamed from them now.
When he was calm he looked at me with his large, intelligent eyes, and
thanked me without raising his head. "May the Lord repay you--may the
Lord repay you!" But Maciej, having already expressed his satisfaction
by ejaculations and indistinct mumbling, now took courage at a longer
pause to make quite a speech.

"H'm--that's fine! I've listened to lots of letters, because in the
gold-mines different people wrote letters for me and others. And even
here, though Z---- no doubt writes very well, he writes so learnedly,
like a printed book, that you don't understand a word when you listen
to it. For he puts in so many words folks don't use, you can see in a
moment that he comes from a Jewish or a big family, and that he has
never had much to do with the people. Now, your letter goes straight
to one's heart, for it's human. Oh, poor fellow! He'll cry like an old
woman at a sermon when he reads it. If you would also--but I daren't
ask"--and his voice sounded really very shy--"if you would write a
short letter like that to my people too, oh how my old woman would
cry,--she would cry!"

While I read the letter to the priest, Maciej kept quiet, listening
and possibly also beginning to consider what I was to write to his
wife, if I answered to the hopes he had placed in me. But when I came
to the passage in which I asked the priest about the Mass for the
shoemaker's dead parents, there was a violent crash in the entrance to
the kitchen, and Maciej stood before us in all his impressiveness. His
appearance was so unexpected, and made with so much noise, that we
looked at him in astonishment. Maciej was strangely altered, and even
seemed to me to be trembling all over. He came out in silence, and
standing just in front of us, with his feet wide apart as usual, he
began to search for his pocket; but whether it was difficult to find
in the folds of his baggy trousers, or whether for some other reason,
he was a long time about it. Having found it, he drew out a small
purse, and, after a long process of untying, for which he also used
his teeth, he took out a crumpled three-rouble note. He stood a while
holding this. At last he laid it on the table with a shaking hand, and
began in an imploring, broken voice:

"If that's so--when he says the Mass, let him pray for us unhappy
folks too: write that, sir. Let him pray to Almighty God and to the
Holy Virgin--if it's only to bring our bones back there--and
perhaps--perhaps They'll have mercy."

"Perhaps They'll have mercy," the shoemaker repeated like an echo, as
he stood beside Maciej.

They stood before me--these two old men grown grey in adversity--as
small children stand before a stern father, feeling their
helplessness; the lame shoemaker with the hollow eyes, leaning on his
stick, and that huge peasant with his hands hanging down and head
bowed humbly, imploring this in a quiet whisper.

       *       *       *       *       *

We should certainly have sat there a long while in painful musing if
it had not been for the shoemaker. Stanislaw was the first to rouse
himself from the lethargy into which we had fallen.

"What the devil are we doing! Maciej, bestir yourself! The sausages
are burning in there,