Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/622

 184 and on a sudden all was ended as if some one had cut it off with a sword-stroke, and naught was left but the knowledge that what he had done had been done in vain, that his toils had been useless,—that in truth they had passed, but with them a part of his life had gone; hope had gone, good had gone, loving had perished, and nothing was left to him. Every man lives in the morrow, every man plans somewhat and lays aside one or another thing for use in the future, but for Zbyshko to-morrow had become valueless; as to the future, he had the same kind of feeling that Yagenka had had, while riding out of Spyhov, when she said, "My happiness is behind, not before me." But, besides, in his soul that feeling of helplessness, emptiness, misfortune, and evil fate had risen on the ground of great pain and of ever-increasing grief for Danusia. That grief penetrated him, mastered him, and at the same time was ever stiffening in him. So at last there was no place in Zbyshko's heart for another feeling. Hence he thought of it only; he nursed it in himself and lived with it solely, insensible to everything else, shut up in himself, sunk, as it were, in a half dream, oblivious of all that was happening around him. All the powers of his soul and his body, his former activity and valor, dropped into quiescence. In his look and movements there appeared a kind of senile heaviness. Whole days and nights he sat, either in the vault with Danusia's coffin, or before the house, warming himself in sunlight during the hours after midday. At times he so forgot himself that he did not answer questions. Father Kaleb, who loved him, began to fear that pain might consume the man as rust consumes iron, and with sadness he thought that perhaps it would have been better to send him away, even to the Knights of the Cross, with a ransom.

"It is necessary," said he to the sexton, with whom in the absence of other men he spoke of his own troubles, "that some adventure should pull him, as a storm pulls a tree, otherwise he may perish utterly." And the sexton answered wisely by giving the comparison, that when a man is choking with a bone it is best to give him a good thump behind the shoulders.

No adventure came, but a few weeks later Pan de Lorche appeared unexpectedly. The sight of him roused Zbyshko, for it reminded him of the expedition among the Jmud men and the rescue of Danusia. De Lorche did not hesitate in the least to rouse these painful memories. On the contrary, when he learned of Zbyshko's loss he went at once to