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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
