Chapter XXII…

Chapter XXII

Mashko returned in two weeks from St. Petersburg, well pleased with his arrangements for credit, and bringing important news, which had come to him, as he stated, in a way purely confidential,--news not known yet to any man. The preceding harvest had been very poor throughout the whole empire; here and there hunger had begun to appear. It was easy to divine, therefore, that, before spring, supplies would be gone in whole neighborhoods, and that the catastrophe of hunger might become universal. In view of this, people of the inner circle began to whisper about the chance of stopping the grain export; and this kind of echo Mashko brought back, with the assurance that it came to his ears through people extremely well versed in affairs. This news struck Pan Stanislav so vividly that he shut himself in for some days, pencil in hand; then he hurried to Bigiel with the proposition that the ready money at command of the house, as well as its credit, should be turned to prompt purchases of grain. Bigiel was afraid, but he began by being afraid of every new enterprise. Pan Stanislav did not conceal from him that this would be a large operation, on the success or failure of which their fate might depend. Complete failure, however, was little likely, and success might make them really rich at one sweep. It was to be foreseen that, in view of the lack of grain, prices would rise in every event. It was also to be foreseen that the law would limit the possibility of making new contracts with foreign merchants, but would respect contracts made before its promulgation; but even if it failed in this regard, the rise of prices in the country itself was a thing almost certain. Pan Stanislav had foreseen and calculated everything, in so far as man could; and Bigiel, who, in spite of his caution, was a person of judgment, was forced to confess that the chances of success were really considerable, and that it would be a pity to miss the opportunity.

In fact, after a number of new consultations, during which Bigiel's opposition grew weaker and weaker, they decided on that which Pan Stanislav wished; and after a certain time their chief agent, Abdulski, went out with power to make contracts in the name of the house, as well for grain on hand as for grain not threshed yet.

After Abdulski's departure, Bigiel went to Prussia. Pan Stanislav remained alone at the head of the house, toiled from morning till evening, and made scarcely a visit. But time did not drag, for he was roused by hope of great profit and a future of fuller activity.

Pan Stanislav, in throwing himself into that speculation, and drawing in Bigiel, did so, first of all, because he thought it good; but he had another thought, too,--the mercantile house with all its affairs was too narrow a field for his special training, abilities, and energies, and Pan Stanislav felt this. Finally, what was the question in affairs handled by the house? To buy cheap, sell dear, and put the profit in a safe; that was its one object. Purchases direct, or through another,--nothing more. Pan Stanislav felt confined in those limits. "I should like to dig up something, or make something," said he to Bigiel, in moments of dissatisfaction and distaste; "at the root of the matter we are simply trying to direct to our own pockets some current from that stream of money which is flowing in the business of men, but we produce nothing."

And that was true. Pan Stanislav wished to advance to property, to acquire capital, and then undertake some very large work, giving a wider field for labor and creativeness.

The opportunity had come, as it seemed to him; hence he grasped with both hands at it. "I will think of other things afterward," thought he.

By "other things," he meant his affairs of mind and heart,--that is, his relations to religion, people, country, woman. He understood that to be at rest in life one must explain these relations, and stand on firm feet. There are men who all their lives do not know their position with reference to these principles, and whom every wind turns toward a new point. Pan Stanislav felt that a man should not live thus. In his state of mind, as it then was, he saw that these questions might be decided in a manner direct to dryness, as well as positive to materialism, and in general negatively; but he understood that they must be decided.

"I wish to know clearly whether I am bound to something or not," thought he.

Meanwhile he labored, and saw people little; he could not withdraw from them altogether. He convinced himself, also, that questions most intimately personal cannot be decided otherwise than internally, otherwise than by one's own brain or heart, within the four walls of the body; but that most frequently certain external influences, certain people, near or distant, hasten the end of meditation, and the decisions flowing from it. This happened at his farewell with Pani Emilia, who was now shortening daily, and almost feverishly, the time before her entrance on her novitiate with the Sisters of Charity.

Amid all his occupations, Pan Stanislav did not cease to visit her; but a number of times he failed to find her at home. Once he met Pani Bigiel at her house, and also Pani and Panna Kraslavski, whose presence constrained him in a high degree. Afterward, when Marynia informed him that Pani Emilia would begin her novitiate in a few days, he went to take farewell of her.

He found her calm and almost joyous, but his heart was pained when he looked at her. Her face was transparent in places, as if formed of pearl; the blue veins appeared through the skin on her temples.

She was very beautiful, in a style almost unearthly, but Pan Stanislav thought: "I will take the last leave of her, for she will not hold out even a month; from one more attachment, one more grief and unhappiness."

She spoke to him of her decision as of a thing the most usual, to be understood of itself,--the natural outcome of what had happened, the natural refuge from a life deprived of every basis. Pan Stanislav understood that for him to dissuade her would be purely conscienceless, and an act devoid of sense.

"Will you remain in Warsaw?" asked he.

"I will, for I wish to be near Litka; and the mother superior promised that I should be in the house first, and afterward, when I learn something, in one of the hospitals. Unless unusual events come to pass, while I am in the house I shall be free to visit Litka every Sunday."

Pan Stanislav set his teeth, and was silent; he looked only at the delicate hands of Pani Emilia, thinking in his soul,--

"She wishes to nurse the sick with those hands."

But at the same time he divined that she wanted, beyond all, something else. He felt that under her calmness and resignation there was immense pain, strong as death, and calling for death with all the powers of her heart and soul; but she wished death to come without her fault, not through her sin, but her service,--her reward for that service was to be her union with Litka.

And now, for the first time, Pan Stanislav understood the difference between pain and pain, between sorrow and sorrow. He, too, loved Litka; but in him, besides sorrow for her, and remembrance of her, there was something else,--a certain interest in life, a certain curiosity touching the future, certain desires, thoughts, tendencies. To Pani Emilia there remained nothing,--it was as if she had died with Litka; and if anything in the world occupied her yet, if she loved those who were near her, it was only for Litka, through Litka, and in so far as they were connected with Litka.

These visits and that farewell were oppressive to Pan Stanislav. He had been deeply attached to Pani Emilia, but now he had the feeling that the cord binding them had snapped once and forever, that their roads parted at that moment, for he was going farther by the way of life; she, however, wished her life to burn out as quickly as possible, and had chosen labor,--blessed, it is true,--but beyond her strength, so as to make death come more quickly.

This thought closed his lips. In the last moments, however, the attachment which he had felt for her from of old overcame him; and he spoke with genuine emotion while kissing her hand.

"Dear, very dear lady, may God guard and comfort you!"

Here words failed him; but she said, without dropping his hand,--

"Till I die, I shall not forget you, since you loved Litka so much. I know, from Marynia, that Litka united you and her; and for that reason I know that you will be happy, otherwise God would not have inspired her. As often as I see you in life, I shall think that Litka made you happy. Let her wish be accomplished at the earliest, and God bless you both!"

Pan Stanislav said nothing; but, when returning home, he thought,--

"Litka's will! She does not even admit that Litka's will can remain unaccomplished; and how was I to tell her that the other is not for me now what she once was?"

Still Pan Stanislav felt with increasing distinctness that it was not right to remain as he was any longer, and that those bonds connecting him with Marynia ought soon to be tightened, or broken, so as to end the strange condition, and the misunderstandings and sorrows which might rise from it. He felt the need of doing this quickly, so as to act with honor; and new alarm seized him, for it seemed that, no matter how he acted, his action would not bring him happiness.

When he reached home, he found a letter from Mashko, which read as follows,--

"I have called on thee twice to-day. Some lunatic has insulted me before my subordinates on account of the oak which I sold thee. His name is Gantovski. I need to speak with thee, and shall come again before evening."

In fact, he ran in before the expiration of an hour, and asked, without removing his overcoat,--

"Dost thou know that Gantovski?"

"I know him; he is a neighbor and relative of the Plavitskis. What has happened, and how has it happened?"

Mashko removed his overcoat, and said,--

"I do not understand how news of the sale could get out, for I have not spoken of it to any one; and it was important for me that it should not become known."

"Our agent, Abdulski, went to Kremen to look at the oak. Gantovski must have heard of the sale from him."

"Listen; this is the event. To-day Gantovski's card is brought into my office; not knowing who he is, I receive the man. A rough fellow enters, and asks if 't is true that I sold the oak, and if I wish to depopulate a part of Kremen. Evidently I reply by asking how that may concern him. He answers that I have bound myself to pay old Plavitski a yearly annuity from Kremen; and that, if I ruin the place by a plundering management, there will be nothing through which to compel me. In answer, as thou canst understand, I advise him to take his cap, button up closely, in view of the frost, and go to the place whence he came. Hereupon he falls to making an uproar, calling me a cheat and a swindler. At last he says that he lives in the Hotel Saxe, and goes out. Hast thou the key to this? Canst thou tell me its meaning?"

"Of course. First, this Gantovski is of limited mind, by nature he is rude; second, for whole years he has been in love with Panna Plavitski, and has wished to be her knight."

"Thou knowest that I have rather cool blood; but, in truth, it seems at times a dream. That a man should permit himself to insult me because I sell my own property, simply passes human understanding."

"What dost thou think of doing? Old Plavitski will be the first to warm Gantovski's ears, and force him to beg thy pardon."

Mashko's face took on such a cold and determined expression of wrath that Pan Stanislav thought,--

"Well, 'the bear' has brewed beer of a kind that he did not expect; now he must drink it."

"No one has ever offended me without being punished, and no one ever will. This man not only has insulted me, but has done me a wrong beyond estimation."

"He is a fool, simply irresponsible."

"A mad dog, too, is irresponsible, but people shoot him in the head. I talk, as thou seest, coolly; listen, then, to what I say: a catastrophe has come to me, from which I shall not rise."

"Thou art speaking coolly; but anger is stifling thee, and thou art ready to exaggerate."

"Not in the least; be patient, and hear me to the end. The position is this: If my marriage is stopped, or even put off, a few months, the devils will take me, with my position, my credit, my Kremen, and all that I have. I tell thee that I am travelling with the last of my steam, and I must stop. Panna Kraslavski does not marry me for love, but because she is twenty-nine years of age, and I seem to her, if not the match she dreamed of, at least a satisfactory one. If it shall seem that I am not what she thinks, she will break with me. If those ladies should discover to-day that I sold the oak in Kremen from necessity, I should receive a refusal to-morrow. Now think: the scandal was public, for it was in presence of my subordinates. The matter will not be kept secret. I might explain to those ladies the sale of the oak, but yet I shall be an insulted man. If I do not challenge Gantovski, they may break with me, as a fellow without honor; if I challenge him,--remember that they are devotees, and, besides, women who keep up appearances as no others that I know,--they will break with me then as a man of adventures. If I shoot Gantovski, they will break with me as a murderer; if he hits me, they will break with me as an imbecile, who lets himself be insulted and beaten. In a hundred chances there are ninety that they will act in this way. Is it clear to thee now why I said that the devils will take me, my credit, my position, and Kremen in addition?"

Pan Stanislav waved his hand with all the easy egotism to which a man can bring himself in reference to another, who, at the bottom of things, is of little account to him.

"Bah!" said he; "maybe I will buy Kremen of thee. But the position is difficult. What dost thou think, then, of doing with Gantovski?"

To this Mashko answered: "So far I pay my debts. Thou dost not wish to be my groomsman; wilt thou be my second?"

"That is not refused," answered Pan Stanislav.

"I thank thee. Gantovksi lives in the Hotel Saxe."

"I will be with him to-morrow."

Immediately after Mashko's departure, Pan Stanislav went to spend the evening at Plavitski's; on the road he thought,--

"There are no jokes with Mashko, and the affair will not finish in common fashion; but what is that to me? What are they all to me, or I to them? Still, how devilishly alone a man is in the world!"

And all at once he felt that the only person on earth who cared for him, and who thought of him, not as a thing, was Marynia.

And, in fact, when he came, he knew from the very pressure of her hand that this was true. She said to him, in greeting, with her mild and calm voice,--

"I had a presentiment that you would come. See, here is a cup waiting for you."

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Chapter XXIII

When Pan Stanislav came to the Plavitskis' he found there Gantovski. The young men greeted each other at once with evident coldness and aversion. There was not in the whole world that day an unhappier man than Gantovski. Old Plavitski bantered him as usual, and even more than usual, being in excellent humor because of his relative, the old lady from whom he expected a considerable inheritance. Gantovski's presence was awkward for Marynia; and she strove in vain to hide this annoyance by kindness and a cordial reception. At last Pan Stanislav almost feigned not to see him. It was evident, too, that Gantovski had not confessed anything before old Plavitski, and that he was trembling lest Pan Stanislav might refer to his adventure with Mashko, or tell it outright.

Pan Stanislav understood this at once, as well as the advantage over "the bear" which was given him by his silence; wishing to use it in the interest of Mashko, he was silent for a time, but could not forego the pleasure of punishing Gantovski in another way. He occupied himself the whole evening with Marynia, as he had not done since Litka's death. This filled Marynia with evident delight. Leaving Gantovski to her father, she walked with Pan Stanislav through the room and talked confidentially; then they sat under the palm, where Pan Stanislav had seen Pani Emilia after the funeral, and talked about her approaching admission to the order of Sisters of Charity. To Gantovski it seemed at times that only people who were betrothed could speak in that way; and he felt then what must be felt by a soul not in purgatory, for in purgatory a soul has hope yet before it, but what is felt by a soul when entering the gate with the inscription "Lasciate ogni speranza" (Leave every hope). Seeing them together in this way, he thought, too, that perhaps Polanyetski had bought the oak with the land so as to obtain for Marynia even a part of Kremen, and therefore with her will and knowledge. And this being the case, the hair rose on his head at the mere thought of how he had blundered in raising a scandal with Mashko. Plavitski, on his part, hearing his half conscious, but altogether inappropriate answers, amused himself still more at the expense of the "rustic," who on the city pavement had lost what remained of his wit. Plavitski considered himself now as the model of a man of the "capital."

The moment came, however, when the young men were left alone, for Marynia was occupied with tea in the next room, and Plavitski had gone for cigars to his study; Pan Stanislav turned then to Gantovski,--

"Let us go together after tea," said he; "I wish to speak with you touching your collision with Pan Mashko."

"Of course," answered Gantovski, gloomily, understanding that Polanyetski was Mashko's second.

Meanwhile they had to remain for tea, and sit long enough after that, for Plavitski did not like to go to bed early, and summoned Gantovski to a game of chess. During the play, Marynia and Pan Stanislav sat apart and conversed with animation, to the heartfelt torment of "the bear."

"The arrival of Gantovski must be pleasing to you," said Pan Stanislav, all at once, "for it brings Kremen to your mind."

Astonishment flashed over Marynia's face that he was the first to mention Kremen. She had supposed that, in virtue of a tacit agreement, he would cover that question with silence.

"I think no more now of Kremen," answered she, after a pause.

This statement was not true, for in her heart's depth she was sorry for the place in which she had been reared,--the place of her labor for years, and of her shattered hopes; but she thought herself forced to speak thus by duty, and by the feeling for Pan Stanislav, which was increasing continually.

"Kremen," added she, with a voice of some emotion, "was the cause of our earliest quarrel; and I wish now for concord, concord forever."

While saying this, she looked into Pan Stanislav's eyes with a coquetry full of sweetness, which a bad woman is able to put on at any time, but an honest woman only when she is beginning to love.

"She is wonderfully kind," thought he. Straightway he added aloud, "You might have a fabulous weapon against me, for you might lead me to perdition with kindness."

"I do not wish to lead you to that," replied she.

And in sign that she did not, she began to shake her dark, shapely head laughingly; and Pan Stanislav looked at her smiling face, and her mouth a trifle too large, and said mentally,--

"Whether I love her, or love her not, no one attracts me as she does."

In fact, she had never occupied him and never pleased him more, even when he felt no shade of doubt that he loved her, and when he was struggling with that feeling. But at last he took farewell of her, for it had grown late; and after a while he and Gantovski found themselves on the street.

Pan Stanislav who never had been able to guard himself from impulsiveness, stopped the unfortunate "bear," and asked almost angrily,--

"Did you know that it was I who bought the oak at Kremen?"

"I did," answered Gantovski; "for your agent, that man who says that he is descended from Tartars--I forget what his name is--was at my house in Yalbrykov, and told me that it was you."

"Why, then, did you make the scandal with Pan Mashko, not with me?"

"Do not push me to the wall so," answered Gantovski, "for I do not like it. I raised the scandal with him, not with you, because the Plavitskis have nothing to do with you; but that man is obliged to pay them yearly from Kremen the amount he has engaged to pay, and if he ruins Kremen, he will have nothing to pay from. If you wished to know why I attacked him, you know now."

Pan Stanislav had to confess in his soul that there was a certain justice in Gantovski's answer; hence he began the conversation at once from another side,--

"Pan Mashko has begged me to be his second, that's why I interfere in this question. I shall call on you to-morrow as a second; but as a private man, and a relative, though a distant one, of Pan Plavitski, I can tell you to-day only this,--that you have rendered the poorest service to Pan Plavitski, and if he and his daughter are left without a morsel of bread, they will have you to thank for it. This is the truth!"

Gantovski's eyes became perfectly round.

"Without a morsel of bread? They will thank me for it?"

"That is the position," repeated Pan Stanislav. "But listen carefully. Without reference to the result of the scandal, the circumstances are such that it may have the most fatal results. I say this to you, on my word: you have, perhaps, ruined Pan Plavitski, and taken from him and his daughter the way, or rather the means, of living."

If Gantovski really did not like to be pressed to the wall, it was time for him then to show his dislike; but Gantovski had lost his head utterly, and stood in amazement, with open mouth, unable to find an answer; and only after a time did he begin,--

"What? How? In what way? Be sure that it will not come to that, even if I have to give them Yalbrykov."

"Pan Gantovski," interrupted Pan Stanislav, "it is a pity to lose words. I have known your neighborhood from the time I was a little boy. What is Yalbrykov, and what have you in Yalbrykov?"

It was true, Yalbrykov was a poor little village, with nine vlokas of land; and, besides, Gantovski had, as is usual, inherited debts higher than his ears; so his hands dropped at his sides. It occurred to him, however, that perhaps matters did not stand as Pan Stanislav represented them; and he grasped at this thought as at a plank of salvation.

"I do not understand what you say," said he. "God is my witness that I would choose my own ruin rather than injure the Plavitskis; and know this, that I would be glad to twist the neck of Pan Mashko; but, if it is necessary,--if it is a question of the Plavitskis,--then let the devils take me first!

"Immediately after the scandal, I went to Pan Yamish, who is here at the session, and told him all. He said that I had committed a folly, and scolded me, it is true. If it were a question of my skin, it would be nothing,--I would not move a finger; but, since it touches something else, I will do what Pan Yamish tells me, even should a thunderbolt split me next moment. Pan Yamish lives at the Hotel Saxe, and so do I."

They parted on this; and Gantovski went to his hotel, cursing Mashko, himself, and Polanyetski. He felt that it must be as Polanyetski had said,--that some incurable misfortune had happened,--and that he had wrought grievous injustice against that same Panna Marynia for whom he would have given his last drop of blood; he felt that if there had been for him any hope, he had destroyed it completely. Plavitski would close his door on him. Panna Marynia would marry Polanyetski, unless he didn't want her. But who would not want her? And, at the same time, Pan Gantovski saw clearly that among those who might ask her hand, he was the last man she would marry. "What have I? Nothing," said he to himself; "that measly Yalbrykov, nothing more,--neither good name nor money. Every man knows something; I alone know nothing. Every one means something; I alone mean nothing. That Polanyetski has learning and money; but that I love her better,--the devils to me for that, and as much to her, if I am such an idiot that through loving I harm instead of helping her."

Pan Stanislav, on his way home, thought of Gantovski in the same way, and in general had not for him even one spark of sympathy. At home he found Mashko, who had been waiting an hour, and who said, as greeting,--

"Kresovski will be the other second."

Pan Stanislav made somewhat of a wry face, and answered,--

"I have seen Gantovski."

"And what?"

"He is a fool."

"He is that, first of all. Hast thou spoken to him in my name?"

"Not in thy name. As a relative of Pan Plavitski, I told him that he had given Pan Plavitski the worst service in the world."

"You gave no explanations?"

"None. Hear me, Mashko: it is a question for thee of complete satisfaction; it is no point for me that ye should shoot each other. In virtue of what I have told Gantovski, he is ready to agree to all thy conditions. Happily, he has committed himself to Yamish. Yamish is a mild, prudent man, who understands also that Gantovski has acted like an idiot, and will be glad to give him a lesson."

"Very well," said Mashko. "Give me a pen and piece of paper."

"Thou hast them at the desk."

Mashko sat down and wrote. When he had finished, he gave the written sheet to Pan Stanislav, who read as follows:--

"I testify this day that I attacked Pan Mashko while I was drunk, in a state of unconsciousness, and without giving myself account of what I was saying. To-day, having become sober, in presence of my seconds, the seconds of Pan Mashko, and the persons who were present at the scene, I acknowledge my act as rude and senseless, and turn with the greatest sorrow and contrition to the good sense and kindness of Pan Mashko, begging him for forgiveness, and acknowledging publicly that his conduct was and is in everything above the judgment of men like me."

"Gantovski is to declaim this, and then subscribe it," said Mashko.

"This is devilishly unmerciful; no one will agree to it," said Pan Stanislav.

"Dost thou acknowledge that this fool has permitted to himself something unheard of with reference to me?"

"I do."

"And remember what result this adventure may have for me?"

"It is impossible to know that."

"Well, I know; but I will tell thee only this much,--those ladies will regret from their souls that they are bound to me, and will use every pretext which will excuse them before society. That is certain; I am ruined almost beyond rescue."

"The devil!"

"Thou canst understand now that what is troubling me must be ground out on some one, and that Gantovski must pay me for the injustice in one form or another."

"Neither have I any tenderness for him. Let it be so," said Pan Stanislav, shrugging his shoulders.

"Kresovski will come for thee to-morrow morning at nine."

"Very well."

"Then, till we meet again. By the way, should you see Plavitski to-morrow, tell him that his relative, Panna Ploshovski, from whom he expected an inheritance, has died in Rome. Her will was here with her manager, Podvoyni, and is to be opened to-morrow."

"Plavitski knows of that already, for she died five days ago."

Pan Stanislav was left alone. For a certain time he thought of his money without being able to foresee a method by which he might receive it from the bankrupt Mashko, and the thought disturbed him. He remembered, however, that the debt could not be removed from the mortgage on Kremen until it was paid in full; that in this last case he would continue as he had been previously,--a creditor of Kremen. Kremen, it is true, was not a much better debtor than Mashko, hence this was no great consolation; but for the time he was forced to be satisfied with it. Later on, something else also came to his head. He remembered Litka, Pani Emilia, Marynia, and he was struck by this,--how the world of women, a world of feelings purely, a world whose great interest lies in living in the happiness of those near us, differs from the world of men, a world full of rivalry, struggles, duels, encounters, angers, torments, and efforts for acquiring property. He recognized at that moment what he had not felt before,--that if there be solace, repose, and happiness on earth, they are to be sought from a loving woman. This feeling was directly opposed to his philosophy of the last few days, hence it disturbed him. But, in comparing further those two worlds, he could not withhold the acknowledgment that that feminine and loving world has its foundation and reason of existence.

If Pan Stanislav had been more intimate with the Holy Scriptures, beyond doubt the words, "Mary has chosen the better part," would have occurred to him.

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Chapter XXIV

Kresovski was almost an hour late on the following morning. He was, according to a noted description among us, one of the administrators of fresh air in the city,--that is, one of the men who do nothing. He had a name sufficiently famous, and had squandered rather a large fortune. On these two foundations he lived, he went everywhere, and was recognized universally as a man of good breeding. How the above titles can provide a man everything is the secret of great cities; it is enough that not only Kresovski's position was recognized and certain, but he was considered a person to whom it was possible to apply with safety in delicate questions. In courts of honor he was employed as an arbiter; in duels, as a second. High financial circles were glad to invite him to dinners, weddings, christenings, and solemnities of that sort, since he had a patrician baldness, and a countenance extremely Polish; hence he ornamented a table perfectly.

He was a man in the essence of things greatly disenchanted with people, a little consumptive, and very satirical. He possessed, however, a certain share of humor, which permitted him to see the laughable side of things, especially of very small things; in this he resembled Bukatski somewhat, and made sport of his own fault-finding. He permitted others to make sport of it also, but within measure. When the measure was passed, he straightened himself suddenly, and squeezed people to excess; in view of this he was looked on as dangerous. It was said of him that in a number of cases he had found courage where many would have lacked it, and that, in general, he could "carry his nose high." He did not respect any one nor anything, except his own really very noble physiognomy; time, especially, he did not respect, for he was late always and everywhere. Coming in to Pan Stanislav's on this occasion, he began at once, after the greeting, to explain his tardiness,--

"Have you not noticed," asked he, "that if a man is in a real hurry, and very anxious to hasten, the things he needs most vanish purposely? The servant seeks his hat,--it is gone; looks for his overshoes,--they are not there; hunts for his pocket-book,--it is not to be had. I will wager that this is so always."

"It happens thus," said Pan Stanislav.

"I have, in fact, invented a cure. When something has gone from me as if it had fallen into water, I sit down, smile, and say aloud: 'I love to lose a thing in this way, I do passionately;' my man looks for it, becomes lively, stirs about, passes the time,--that is very wholesome and agreeable. And what will you say? Right away the lost article is found."

"A patent might be taken for such an invention," answered Pan Stanislav; "but let us speak of Mashko's affair."

"We must go to Yamish. Mashko has sent me a paper which he has written for Gantovski. He is unwilling to change a word; but it is an impossible statement, too harsh,--it cannot be accepted. I understand that a duel is waiting for us, nothing else; I see no other outcome."

"Gantovski has intrusted himself to Pan Yamish in everything, and he will do all that Yamish commands. But Yamish, to begin with, is also indignant at Gantovski; secondly, he is a sick man, mild, calm, so that who knows that he may not accept such conditions."

"Pan Yamish is an old dotard," said Kresovski; "but let us go, for it is late."

They went out. After a while the sleigh halted before the hotel. Pan Yamish was waiting for them, but he received them in his dressing-gown, for he was really in poor health. Kresovski, looking at his intelligent, but careworn and swollen face, thought,--

"He is really ready to agree to everything."

"Sit down, gentlemen," said Pan Yamish; "I came only three days ago, and though I do not feel well, I am glad, for perhaps the affair may be settled. Believe me that I was the first to rub the ears of my water-burner."

Here he shrugged his shoulders, and, turning to Pan Stanislav, inquired,--

"What are the Plavitskis doing? I have not visited them yet, though I long to see my golden Marynia."

"Panna Marynia is well," answered Pan Stanislav.

"But the old man?"

"A few days ago a distant relative of his died,--a very wealthy woman; he is counting, therefore, on an inheritance. He told me so yesterday; but I hear that she has left all her property for benevolent purposes. The will is to be opened to-day or to-morrow."

"May God have inspired her to leave something to Marynia! But let us come to our affair. I need not tell you, gentlemen, that it is our duty to finish it amicably, if we can."

Kresovski bowed. Introductions like this, which he had heard in his life God knows how often, annoyed him.

"We are profoundly convinced of this duty."

"So I had hoped," answered Yamish, benevolently. "I confess myself that Pan Gantovski had not the least right to act as he did. I recognize even as just that he should be punished for it; hence I shall persuade him to all, even very considerable, concessions, fitted to assure proper satisfaction to Pan Mashko."

Kresovski took from his pocket the folded paper, and gave it, with a smile, to Pan Yamish, saying,--

"Pan Mashko demands nothing more than that Pan Gantovski should read this little document, to begin with, in presence of his own and Pan Mashko's seconds, as well as in presence of Pan Mashko's subordinates, who were present at the scene, and then write under it his own respected name."

Pan Yamish, finding his spectacles among his papers, put them on his nose, and began to read. But as he read, his face grew red, then pale; after that he began to pant. Pan Stanislav and Kresovski could scarcely believe their eyes that that was the same Pan Yamish who a moment before was ready for every concession.

"Gentlemen," said he, with a broken voice, "Pan Gantovski has acted like a water-burner, like a thoughtless man; but Pan Gantovski is a noble, and this is what I answer in his name to Pan Mashko."

When he said this, he tore the paper in four pieces, and threw them on the floor.

The thing had not been foreseen. Kresovski began to meditate whether Yamish had not offended his dignity of a second by this act, and in one moment his face began to grow icy, and contract like that of an angry dog; but Pan Stanislav, who loved Pan Yamish, was pleased at his indignation.

"Pan Mashko is injured in such an unusual degree that he cannot ask for less; but Pan Kresovski and I foresaw your answer, and it only increases the respect which we have for you."

Pan Yamish sat down, and, being somewhat asthmatic, breathed rather heavily for a time; then he grew quiet, and said,--

"I might offer you an apology on the part of Pan Gantovski, but in other expressions altogether; I see, however, that we should be losing time merely. Let us talk at once of satisfaction, weapon in hand. Pan Vilkovski, Pan Gantovski's other second, will be here soon; and if you can wait, we will fix the conditions immediately."

"That is called going straight to the object," said Kresovski, who quite agreed with Pan Yamish.

"But from necessity,--and sad necessity," replied Yamish.

"I must be in my office at eleven," said Pan Stanislav, looking at his watch; "but, if you permit, I will run in here about one o'clock, to look over the conditions and sign them."

"That will do. We cannot draw up conditions that will rouse people's laughter, that I understand and inform you; but I count on this,--that you, gentlemen, will not make them too stringent."

"I have no thought, I assure you, of quarrelling to risk another man's life." So saying, Pan Stanislav started for his office, where, in fact, a number of affairs of considerable importance were awaiting him, and which, in Bigiel's absence, he had to settle alone. In the afternoon he signed the conditions of the duel, which were serious, but not too stringent. He went then to dinner, for he hoped to find Mashko in the restaurant. Mashko had gone to Pani Kraslavski's; and the first person whom Pan Stanislav saw was Plavitski, dressed, as usual, with care, shaven, buttoned, fresh-looking, but gloomy as night.

"What is my respected uncle doing here?" asked Pan Stanislav.

"When I have trouble, I do not dine at home usually, and this to avoid afflicting Marynia," answered Plavitski. "I go somewhere; and as thou seest, the wing of a chicken, a spoonful of preserve, is all that I need. Take a seat with me, if thou hast no pleasanter company."

"What has happened?"

"Old traditions are perishing; that has happened."

"Bah! this is not a misfortune personal to uncle."

Plavitski glanced at him gloomily and solemnly. "To-day," said he, "a will has been opened."

"Well, and what?"

"And what? People are saying now throughout Warsaw: 'She remembered her most distant relatives!' Nicely did she remember them! Marynia has an inheritance, has she? Knowest thou how much? Four hundred rubles a year for life. And the woman was a millionnaire! An inheritance like that may be left to a servant, not to a relative."

"But to uncle?"

"Nothing to me. She left fifteen thousand rubles to her manager, but mentioned no syllable about me."

"What is to be done?"

"Old traditions are perishing. How many people gained estates formerly through wills, and why was it? Because love and solidarity existed in families."

"Even to-day I know people on whose heads thousands have fallen from wills."

"True, there are such,--there are many of them; but I am not of the number."

Plavitski rested his head on his hand, and from his mouth issued something in the style of a monologue.

"Yes, always somewhere somebody leaves something to somebody." Here he sighed, and after a while added, "But to me no one leaves anything, anywhere, at any time."

Suddenly an idea equally cruel and empty occurred to Pan Stanislav on a sudden to cheer up Plavitski; therefore he said,--

"Ai! she died in Rome; but the will here was written long ago, and before that one there was another altogether different, as people tell me. Who knows that in Rome a little codicil may not be found, and that my dear uncle will not wake up a millionnaire some day?"

"That day will not come," answered Plavitski. Still the words had moved him; he began to gaze at Polanyetski, to squirm as if the chair on which he was sitting were a bed of torture, and said, at last, "And you think that possible?"

"I see in it nothing impossible," answered Pan Stanislav, with real roguish seriousness.

"If the wish of Providence."

"And that may be."

Plavitski looked around the hall; they were alone. He pushed back his chair on a sudden, and, pointing to his shirt-bosom, said,--

"Come here, my boy!"

Pan Stanislav inclined his head, which Plavitski kissed twice, saying at the same time, with emotion,--

"Thou host consoled me; thou hast strengthened me. Let it be as God wills, but thou hast strengthened me. I confess to thee now that I wrote to Panna Ploshovski only to remind her that we were living. I asked her when the rent term of one of her estates would end; I had not, as thou knowest, the intention to take that place, but the excuse was a good one. May God reward thee for strengthening me! The present will may have been made before my letter. She went to Rome later; on the way she must have thought of my letter, and therefore of us; and, to my thinking, that is possible. God reward thee!"

After a while his face cleared up completely; all at once he laid his hand on Pan Stanislav's knee, and, clicking with his tongue, cried,--

"Knowest what, my boy? Perhaps in a happy hour thou hast spoken; and might we not drink a small bottle of Mouton-Rothschild on account of this codicil?"

"God knows that I cannot," said Pan Stanislav, who had begun to be a little ashamed of what he had said to the old man. "I cannot, and I will not."

"Thou must."

"'Pon my word, I cannot. I have my hands full of work, and I will not befog my head for anything in the world."

"A stubborn goat,--a regular goat! Then I will drink half a bottle to the happy hour."

So he ordered it, and asked,--

"What hast thou to do?"

"Various things. Immediately after dinner I must be with Professor Vaskovski."

"What kind of a figure is that Vaskovski?"

"In fact," said Pan Stanislav, "an inheritance has fallen to him from his brother, who was a miner,--an inheritance, and a considerable one. But he gives all to the poor."

"He gives to the poor, but goes to a good restaurant. I like such philanthropists. If I had anything to give the poor, I would deny myself everything."

"He was ailing a long time, and the doctor ordered him to eat plentifully. But even in that case he eats only what is cheap. He lives in a poor chamber, and rears birds. Next door he has two large rooms; and knowest, uncle, who passes the night in them? Children whom he picks up on the street."

"It seemed to me right away that he had something here," said Plavitski, tapping his forehead with his finger.

Pan Stanislav did not find Vaskovski at home; hence after an interview with Mashko he dropped in to see Marynia about five in the afternoon. His conscience was gnawing him for the nonsense he had spoken to Plavitski. "The old man," said he to himself, "will drink costly wines on account of that codicil; while to my thinking they are living beyond their means already. The joke should not last too long."

He found Marynia with her hat on. She was going to the Bigiels', but received him, and since he had not come for a long time, he remained.

"I congratulate you on the inheritance," said he.

"I am glad myself," replied she; "it is something sure, and in our position that is important. For that matter, I should like to be as rich as possible."

"Why so?"

"You remember what you said once, that you would like to have enough to establish a manufactory, and not carry on a mercantile house. I remember that; and since every one has personal wishes, I should like to have much, much money."

Then, thinking that she might have said too much, and said it too definitely, she began to straighten the fold of her dress, so as to incline her head.

"I came, for another thing, to beg your pardon," said Pan Stanislav. "To-day at dinner I told a pack of nonsense to Pan Plavitski, saying that Panna Ploshovski had changed her will, perhaps, and left him a whole estate. Beyond my expectation he took it seriously. I should not wish to have him deceive himself; and if you will permit me, I will go at once to him and explain the matter somehow."

"I have explained it to him already," said Marynia, smiling; "he scolded me, and that greatly. You see how you have involved matters. You have cause indeed to beg pardon."

"Therefore I beg."

And, seizing her hand, he began to cover it with kisses; and she left it with him completely, repeating as if in sarcasm, but with emotion,--

"Ah, the wicked Pan Stas, the wicked Pan Stas!"

That day Pan Stanislav felt on his lips till he fell asleep the warmth of Marynia's hand; and he thought neither of Mashko nor Gantovski, but repeated to himself with great persistence,--

"It is time to decide this."

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Chapter XXV

Kresovski, with a doctor and a case containing pistols, entered one carriage, Pan Stanislav with Mashko another, and the two moved toward Bielany. The day was clear and frosty, full of rosy haze near the ground. The wheels turned with a whining on the frozen snow; the horses were steaming, and covered with frost; on the trees abundant snow was resting.

"Frost that is frost," said Mashko. "Our fingers will freeze to the triggers. And the delight of removing one's furs!"

"Then be reconciled; make no delay. My dear man, tell Kresovski to begin the work straightway."

Here Mashko wiped his damp eye-glass, and added, "Before we reach the place, the sun will be high, and there will be a great glitter from the snow."

"Finish quickly, then," answered Pan Stanislav. "Since Kresovski is in time, there will be no waiting for the others; they are used to early rising."

"Dost know what makes me anxious at this moment?" asked Mashko. "This, that there is in the world one factor with which no one reckons in his plans and actions, and through which everything may be shattered, involved, and ruined,--human stupidity. Imagine me with ten times the mind that I have, and unoccupied with the interests of Pan Mashko. Imagine me, for example, some great statesman, some Bismark or Cavour, who needs to gain property to carry out his plans, and who calculates every step, every word,--what then? A beast like this comes along, stupid beyond human reckoning, and carries all away on his horns. That is something fabulous! Whether this fellow will shoot me or not, is the least account now; but the brute has spoiled my life-work."

"Who can calculate such a thing?" said Pan Stanislav. "It is as if a roof were to fall on thy head."

"For that very reason rage seizes me."

"But as to his shooting thee, don't think of that."

Mashko recovered, wiped his glass again, and began,--

"My dear, I see that from the moment of our starting thou hast been observing me a little, and now 'tis thy wish to add to my courage. That is natural. On my part, I must calm thee; and on my word I give assurance that I will not shame thee. I feel a little disquiet,--that is simple; but knowest why? That which constitutes danger of life, the firing at one, is nothing. Let weapons be given me and him; let us into the woods. God knows that I should fire away at that idiot half a day, and meet his shots half a day. I have had a duel already, and know what it is. It is the comedy that disconcerts one, the preparations, the seconds, the idea that men will look at thee, and the fear touching how thou wilt appear, how thou wilt acquit thyself. It is simply a public exhibition, and a question of self-love,--nothing more. For nervous natures a genuine trial. But I am not over nervous. I understand, also, that in this regard I am superior to my opponent, for I am more accustomed to men. 'Tis true such an ass has less imagination, and is not able to think; for example, how he would look as a corpse; how he would begin to decay, and so on. Still I shall be able to command myself better. Besides, I will tell thee another thing: Philosophy is philosophy; but in matters like this the decisive elements are temperament and passion. This duel will not bring me to anything, will not save me in any regard; on the contrary, it may bring me to trouble. But still I cannot deny it to myself, so much indignation has collected in my soul, I so hate that idiot, and would like so to crush and trample him,--that I cease to reason. Thou mayest be certain of one thing,--that as soon as I see the face of the blockhead I shall forget disquiet, forget the comedy, and see only him."

"I understand that well enough," said Pan Stanislav.

And the spots on Mashko's face increased and became blue from the frost, wherewith he had a look as stubborn as it was ugly.

Meanwhile they arrived. Almost simultaneously squeaked the carriage bringing Gantovski, with Yamish and Vilkovski. When they alighted, these gentlemen saluted their opponents; then the seven, counting the doctor, withdrew to the depth of the forest to a place selected on the preceding day by Kresovski.

The drivers, looking at the seven overcoats outlined strangely on the snow, began to mutter to themselves.

"Do you know what is going to happen?" asked one.

"Is it my first time?" answered the other.

"Let the world grow polite; let fools go to fight!"

Meanwhile the seven, clattering on in their heavy overshoes, and blowing lines of white steam from their nostrils, went toward the other end of the forest. On the way, Yamish, somewhat against the rules binding in such cases, approached Pan Stanislav, and began,--

"I wished sincerely that my man should beg pardon of Pan Mashko, but under the conditions it is not possible."

"I proposed to Mashko, too, to tone down that note, but he would not."

"Then there is no escape. All this is immensely foolish, but there is no escape!"

Pan Stanislav did not answer, and they walked on in silence. Pan Yamish began to speak again,--

"But I hear that Marynia Plavitski has received some inheritance?"

"She has, but a small one."

"And the old man?"

"He is angry that the whole property is not left to him."

Yamish tapped his forehead with his glove. "He has a little something here, that Plavitski;" then, looking around, he said, "Somehow we are going far."

"We shall be on the ground in a moment."

And they went on. The sun had risen above the undergrowth; from the trees there fell bluish shadows on the snow; but more and more light was coming into the forest every instant. The crows and daws, hidden somewhere among the tree-tops, shook the snow, dry as down, and it fell without noise to the ground, forming under the trees little pointed piles. Everywhere there was immense silence and rest. Men alone were disturbing it to shoot at each other.

They halted at last on the edge of the forest where it was clean. Then Yamish's short discourse concerning the superiority of peace over war was listened to by Mashko and Gantovski with ears hidden by fur collars. When Kresovski loaded the pistols, each made his choice; and the two, throwing their furs aside, stood opposite each other with the barrels of their weapons turned upward.

Gantovski breathed hurriedly; his face was red, and his mustaches were in icicles. From his whole posture and face it was clear that the affair disconcerted him greatly; that through shame and force of will he controlled himself; and that, had he followed the natural bent of his feelings, he would have sprung at his opponent and smashed him with the butt of his pistol, or even with his fist. Mashko, who previously had feigned not to see his opponent, looked at him now with a face full of hatred, stubbornness, and contempt. His cheeks were all in spots. He mastered himself more, however, than Gantovski; and, dressed in a long frock-coat, with a high hat on his head, with his long side-whiskers, he seemed too stiff, too much like an actor playing the rôle of a duelling gentleman.

"He will shoot 'the bear' like a dog," thought Pan Stanislav.

The words of command were heard, and two shots shook the forest stillness. Mashko turned then to Kresovski, and said coolly,--

"I beg to load the pistols."

But at the same moment at his feet appeared a spot of blood on the snow.

"You are wounded," said the doctor, approaching quickly.

"Perhaps; load the pistols, I beg."

At that moment he staggered, for he was wounded really. The ball had carried away the very point of his kneepan. The duel was interrupted; but Gantovski remained some time yet on the spot with staring eyes, astonished at what had happened.

After the first examination of the wound he approached, however, pushed forward by Yamish, and said as awkwardly as sincerely,--

"Now I confess that I was not right in attacking you. I recall everything that I said, and I beg your pardon. You are wounded, but I did not wish to wound you." After a moment, when he was going away with Yamish and Vilkovski, he was heard to say, "As I love God most sincerely, it was a pure accident; I intended to fire over his head."

Mashko did not open his mouth that day. To the question of the doctor if the wound caused much pain, he merely shook his head in sign that it did not.

Bigiel, who had just returned from Prussia with his pockets full of contracts, when he heard all that had happened, said to Pan Stanislav,--

"Mashko seems an intelligent man, but, as God lives, every one of us has some whim in his head. He, for example, has credit; he has many splendid business cases; he might have a considerable income, and make a fortune. But no, he wants to force matters, strain his credit to the utmost, buy estates, give himself out as a great proprietor, a lord,--be God knows what, only not what he is. All this is wonderful, and the more so that it is so common. More than once I think that life in itself is not bad, but that all ruin it through want of mental balance, and certain devilish whims,--through a kind of wasp, which every one has behind his collar. I understand that a man wants to have more than he has, and to mean more than he means; but why strive for it in fantastic fashion? I am first to recognize energy and cleverness in Mashko; but, taking everything into consideration, he has something here, as God is true, he has."

Bigiel now tapped his forehead with his finger a number of times.

Meanwhile Mashko, with set teeth, was suffering, since his wound, though not threatening life, was uncommonly painful. In the evening he fainted twice in presence of Pan Stanislav. Afterward, weakness supervened, during which that boldness of spirit which had upheld the young advocate through the day gave way completely. When the doctor departed, after dressing the wound, Mashko lay quietly for a time, and then began,--

"But I am in luck!"

"Do not think of that," answered Pan Stanislav; "thou wilt get more fever."

But Mashko continued, however, "Insulted, ruined, wounded,--all at one blow."

"I repeat to thee that this is no time to think of that."

Mashko rested his elbow on the pillow, hissed from pain, and said,--

"Never mind; this is the last time that I shall converse with a decent man. One week or two from now I shall be of those whom people avoid. What do I care for this fever? There is something so unendurable in ruin so complete, in a wreck of fate so utter, that the first idiot, the first goose that comes along will say: 'I knew that long ago; I foresaw that.' So it is: all of them foresee everything after the event; and of him whom the thunderbolt has struck, they make in addition a fool, or a madman."

Pan Stanislav recalled Bigiel's words at that moment. But Mashko, by a marvellous coincidence, spoke on in such fashion as if wishing to answer those words.

"And dost think that I did not give account to myself that I was going too sharply; that I was hurrying with too much force; that I wanted to be something greater than I was; that I carried my nose too high? No one will render me that justice; but knowest thou that I said it to myself? But I said to myself, too: 'It is needful to do this; this is the one way to rise to distinction. Maybe things are wrong, maybe life, in general, goes backward; but had it not been for that adventure unforeseen, and of unfathomable stupidity, I should have succeeded just because I was such as I was. If I had been a modest man, I should not have got Panna Kraslavski. With us it is necessary always to pretend something; and if the devils take me, it is not through my pride, but that blockhead."

"But how the deuce art thou to know surely that thy marriage will fail?"

"My dear man, thou hast no knowledge of those women. They agreed on Pan Mashko through lack of something better, for Pan Mashko had good success. But if any shadow falls on my property, my position, my station, they will throw me aside without mercy, and then roll mountains on to me to shield themselves before the world of society. What knowledge hast thou of them? Panna Kraslavski is not Panna Plavitski."

A moment of silence followed, then Mashko spoke further, with a weakening voice: "She could have rescued me. For her I should have gone on another road,--a far quieter one. In such conditions Kremen would have been saved; the debt on it would have fallen away, as well as Plavitski's annuity. I should have waded out. Dost thou know that, besides, I fell in love with her in student fashion? It came so, unknown whence. But she chose rather to be angry with thee than love me. Now I understand; there is no help for it."

Pan Stanislav, who did not relish this conversation, interrupted it, and spoke with a shadow of impatience,--

"It astonishes me that a man of thy energy thinks everything lost, while it is not. Panna Plavitski is a past on which thou hast made a cross, by proposing to Panna Kraslavski. As to the present, thou wert attacked, it is true; but thou hast fought, thou wert wounded, but in such a way that in a week thou wilt be well; and finally, those ladies have not announced that they break with thee. Till thou hast that, black on white, thou hast no right to talk thus. Thou art sick, and that is why thou art reading funeral services over thyself prematurely. But I will tell thee another thing. It is for thee to let those ladies know what has happened. Dost wish, I will go to them to-morrow, then they will act as they please; but let them be informed by thy second, not by city gossips."

Mashko thought a while, and said: "I wished to write in every case to my betrothed; but if thou go, it will be better. I have no hope that she will hold to me, but it is needful to do what is proper. I thank thee. Thou wilt be able to present the affair from the best side,--only not a word touching troubles of any kind. Thou must lessen the sale of the oak to zero, to a politeness which I wished to show thee. I thank thee sincerely. Say that Gantovski apologized."

"Hast thou some one to sit with thee?"

"My servant and his wife. The doctor will come again, and bring a surgeon. This pains me devilishly, but I am not ill."

"Then, till we meet again."

"Be well. I thank thee--thou art--"

"Sleep soundly."

Pan Stanislav went out. Along the way he meditated on Mashko's course, and meditated with a species of anger:

"He is not of the romantic school; still he is inclined to pretend something of that sort. Panna Plavitski! he loved her--he would have gone by another road--she might have saved him!--this is merely a tribute to sentimentality, and, besides, in false coin, since a month later he proposed to that puppet--for money's sake! Maybe I am duller-witted; I do not understand this, and do not believe in disappointments cured so easily. Had I loved one woman, and been disappointed, I do not think that I should marry another in a month. Devil take me if I should! He is right, however, that Marynia is of a different kind from Kraslavski. There is no need whatever to discuss that; she is different altogether! different altogether!"

And that thought was immensely agreeable to Pan Stanislav. When he reached home, he found a letter from Bukatski, who was in Italy, and a card from Marynia, full of anxiety and questions concerning the duel. There was a request to send news early in the morning of what had happened, especially to inform her if everything was really over, and if no new encounter was threatened. Pan Stanislav, under the influence of the idea that she was different from Panna Kraslavski, answered cordially, more cordially even than he wished, and commanded his servant to deliver the note at nine the next morning. Then he set about reading Bukatski's letter, shrugging his shoulders from the very beginning. Bukatski wrote as follows:--

May Sakya Muni obtain for thee blessed Nirvana! Besides this, tell Kaplaner not to forward my three thousand rubles to Florence, but to keep them at my order. These days I have resolved to entertain the design of forming the plan of becoming a vegetarian. Dost note how decisive this is? If the thought does not annoy me, if this plan becomes a determination, and the determination is not beyond my power, I shall cease to be a flesh-eating animal; and life will cost me less money. That is the whole question. As to thee, I beg thee to be satisfied with everything, for life is not worth fatigue.

I have discovered why the Slavs prefer synthesis to analysis. It is because they are idlers, and analysis is laborious. A man can synthesize while smoking a cigar after dinner. For that matter, they are right in being idlers. It is comfortably warm in Florence, especially on Lung-Arno. I walk along for myself and make a synthesis of the Florentine school. I have made the acquaintance here of an able artist in water-colors,--a Slav, too, who lives by art; but he proves that art is swinishness, which has grown up from a mercantile need of luxury, and from over-much money, which some pile up at the expense of others. In one word, art is, to his thinking, meanness and injustice. He fell upon me as upon a dog, and asserted that to be a Buddhist and to be occupied with art is the summit of inconsistency; but I attacked him still more savagely, and answered, that to consider consistency as something better than inconsistency was the height of miserable obscurantism, prejudices, and meanness. The man was astonished, and lost speech. I am persuading him to hang himself, but he doesn't want to. Tell me, art thou sure that the earth turns around the sun, or isn't this all a joke? For that matter, it is all one to me! In Warsaw I was sorry for that child who died, and here too I think of her frequently. How stupid that was! What is Pani Emilia doing? People have their rôle in the world fixed beforehand, and her rôle came to her with wings and suffering. Why was she good? She would have been happier otherwise. As to thee, O man, show me one kindness. I beg thee, by all things, marry not. Remember that if thou marry, if thou have a son, if thou toil to leave him property, thou wilt do so only for this that that son may be what I am, irreparably so. Farewell burning energy, farewell mercantile house, commission firm, O transitory form, vicious toil, effort for money, future father of a family, rearer of children and trouble. Embrace for me Vaskovski. He, too, is a man of synthesis. May Sakya Muni open thy eyes to know that it is warm in the sun and cool in the shade, and to lie down is better than to stand! Thy BUKATSKI.

"Hash!" thought Pan Stanislav. "All this is artificial, all self-deception through a kind of exaggeration. But if a man accustoms himself to this, it will become in time a second nature to him, and, meanwhile, the devils take his reason; his energy and soul decay like a corpse. A man may throw himself headlong into such a hole as Mashko has, or into such a one as Bukatski. In both cases he will go under the ice. What the devil does it mean? Still there must be some healthy and normal life; only it is needful to have a little common sense in the head. But for a man like Bigiel, it is not bad in the world. He has a wife whom he loves, children whom he loves; he works like an ox. At the same time he has a great attachment for people, loves music and his violoncello, on which he plays in the moonlight, with his face raised toward the ceiling. It cannot be said that he is a materialist. No; in him one thing agrees with another somehow, and he is happy."

Pan Stanislav began to walk through the room, and look from time to time at Litka's face, smiling from between the birches. The need of balancing accounts with his own self seized hold of him with increasing force. Like a merchant, he set about examining his debit and credit, which, for that matter, was not difficult. On the credit side of his life, his feeling for Litka once occupied the chief place; she was so dear to him in her time that if a year before it had been said, "Take her as your own child," he would have taken her, and considered that he had something to live for. But now this relation was only a remembrance, and from the rubric of happiness it had passed over to the rubric of misfortune. What was left? First of all, life itself; second, that mental dilettantism, which in every case is a luxury; further, the future, which rouses curiosity; further, the use of material things; and finally, his commercial house. All this had its value; but Pan Stanislav saw that there was a lack of object in it. As to the commercial house, he was pleased with the successes which he experienced, but not with the kind of work which the house demanded; on the contrary, that kind of work was not enough for him,--it was too narrow, too poor, and angered him. On the other hand, dilettantism, books, the world of mind,--all had significance as an ornament of life, but could not become its basis. "Bukatski," said Pan Stanislav to himself, "has sunk in this up to his ears; he wished to live with it, and has become weak, incompetent, barren. Flowers are good; but whoso wishes to breathe the odor of them exclusively will poison himself." In truth, Pan Stanislav did not need to be a great sage to see around him a multitude of people who were out of joint, whose health of soul mental dilettantism had undermined,--just as morphine undermines one's health of body.

This dilettantism had wrought much harm to him, too, if only in this,--that it had made him a skeptic. He had been saved from grievous disease only by a sound organism, which felt the absolute need of expending its superfluous energy. But what will come later? Can he continue in that way? To this Pan Stanislav answered now with a decisive No! Since the business of his house could not fill out his life, and since it was simply perilous to fill it out with dilettantism, it was necessary to fill it out with something else,--to create new worlds, new duties, to open up new horizons; and to do this, he had to do one thing,--to marry.

On a time when he said this to himself, he saw before him a certain undefined form, uniting all the moral and physical requisites, but without a body and without a name. Now it was a real figure; it had calm blue eyes, dark hair, a mouth a trifle too large, and was called Marynia Plavitski. Of any one else there could not be even mention; and Pan Stanislav placed her before himself with such vividness that the veins throbbed in his temples with more life. He was perfectly conscious, however, that something was lacking then in his feeling for Marynia,--namely, that around which the imagination lingers, which dares not ask anything, but hopes everything; which fears, trembles, kneels; which says to the loved woman, "At thy feet;" the love in which desire is at the same time worship, homage,--a feeling which adds a kind of mystic coloring to the relations of a man to a woman; which makes of the man, not merely a lover, but a follower. That had gone. Pan Stanislav, in thinking now of Marynia, thought soberly, almost insolently. He felt that he could go and take her, and have her; and if he did so, it would be for two reasons: first, because Marynia was for him a woman more attractive than all others; and second, reason commanded him to marry, and to marry her.

"She is wonderfully reliable," thought he; "there is nothing in her fruitless or dried up. Egotism has not destroyed the heart in her; and it is undoubted that such a one will not think merely of what belongs to her. She is honesty incarnate, duty incarnate; and in life the only need will be to prevent her from thinking too little of herself. If reason commands me to marry, I should commit a folly, were I to look for another."

Then he asked whether, if he abandoned Marynia, he would not act dishonorably. Litka had united them. Something in his heart revolted at the very thought of opposing the will and sacrifice of that child. If he wished, however, to act against that will, should he have borne himself as he had? No. In such an event he ought not to have shown himself at the Plavitskis' since Litka's death, nor have seen Marynia, nor kissed her hand, nor let himself be borne away by the current which had borne him,--by the power of events, perhaps,--but borne him so far that to-day he would disappoint Marynia, and fall in her eyes to the wretched position of a man who knows not himself what he wishes. For he would have to be blind not to see that Marynia considers herself his betrothed; and that, if she were not disquieted by his silence so far, it was simply because she ascribed it to the mourning which both had in their hearts for Litka.

"Looking, then," said Pan Stanislav, "from the side of reason and conservative instinct, from the side of sense and honor, I ought to marry her. Therefore what? Therefore I should be an imbecile if I hesitated, and did not consider the question as settled. It is settled."

Then he drew breath, and began to walk through the room. Under the lamp lay Bukatski's letter. Pan Stanislav took it, and read from the place where his eyes fell by chance.

"I beg thee, by all things, marry not. Remember that if thou marry, if thou have a son, if thou toil to leave him property, thou wilt do so only for this: that that son may be what I am."

"Here is a nice quandary for thee," said Pan Stanislav, with a certain stubbornness. "I will marry. I will marry Marynia Plavitski; dost hear? I will gain property; and if I have a son, I will not make of him a decadent; dost understand?"

And he was pleased with himself. A little later he looked at Litka, and felt that a sudden emotion seized him. A current of sorrow for her, and of feeling, rose with a new power in his heart. He began to converse with the child, as in important moments of life people speak usually with beloved dead,--

"Thou art pleased, kitten? Is it not true?" asked he. And she smiled at him from among the birches painted by Marynia; she seemed to blink at him, and to answer,--

"True, Pan Stas; true."

That evening, before going to bed, he took back from the servant the note which was to be given to Marynia in the morning, and wrote another still more affectionate, and in the following words,--

DEAR LADY,--Gantovski made a scene with Mashko--rather an awkward one--from which a duel came. Mashko is slightly wounded. His opponent begged his pardon on the spot. There will be no further results, save this: that I am still more convinced of how kind you are, and thoughtful and excellent; and to-morrow, if you permit, I will come with thanks to kiss your beloved and dear hands. I will come in the afternoon; for, in the morning, after visiting my office, I must go to Pani Kraslavski's, and then say farewell to Professor Vaskovski, though, were it possible, I should prefer to begin the day not with them.

POLANYETSKI.

After writing these words, he looked at the clock, and, though it was eleven already, he gave command to deliver the letter, not in the morning, but straightway.

"Thou wilt go in through the kitchen," said he to the servant; "and, if the young lady is asleep, thou wilt leave it."

When alone, he said the following words to the lady,--

"Thou art a very poor diviner, unless thou divine why I am coming to-morrow!"

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Chapter XXVI

Pani Kraslavski received Pan Stanislav with great astonishment, because of the early hour; but still she received him, thinking that he had come for some uncommon reason. He, on his part, without long introductions, told her what had happened, disguising at the same time only what was necessary for shielding Mashko from suspicion of bankruptcy or unfavorable business.

He noticed that the old lady, while he was talking, kept her green eyes--made, as it were, of stone, and devoid of glitter--fixed on him, and that no muscle of her face moved. Only when he had ended did she say,--

"There is one thing in all this which I do not understand. Why did Pan Mashko sell the oak? That is no small ornament to any residence."

"Those oaks stand far from the house," answered Pan Stanislav, "and injure the land,--for nothing will grow in the shade of them; and Pan Mashko is a practical man. Besides, to tell the truth, we are old friends, and he did that through friendship for me. I am a merchant; I needed the oak, and Pan Mashko let me have all he could spare."

"In such an event, I do not understand why that young man--"

"If you are acquainted with Pan Yamish," interrupted Pan Stanislav, "he, because he lives near both Kremen and Yalbrykov, will explain to you that that young man is not of perfect mind, and is known as such in the whole neighborhood."

"In that case Pan Mashko was not obliged to fight a duel with him."

"In such matters," answered Pan Stanislav, with a shade of impatience, "we have different ideas from ladies."

"You will permit me to say a couple of words to my daughter."

Pan Stanislav thought it time to rise and take farewell; but since he had come, as it were, on a reconnaissance, and wished to take some information to Mashko, he said,--

"If the ladies have any message to Pan Mashko, I am going to him directly."

"In a moment," answered Pani Kraslavski.

Pan Stanislav remained alone and waited rather long, so long indeed that he began to be impatient. At last both ladies appeared. Though her hair had not been dressed with sufficient care, the young lady, in a white chemisette and a sailor's tie, seemed to Pan Stanislav quite beautiful, in spite of a slight inflammation of the eyes, and a few pimples on her forehead, which were powdered. There was about her a certain attractive languor, from which, having risen very late apparently, she had not been able yet to rouse herself, and a certain equally charming morning carelessness. For the rest, there was no emotion on her bloodless face.

After salutations were exchanged with Pan Stanislav, she said, with a cool, calm voice,--

"Be so kind as to tell Pan Mashko that I was greatly pained and alarmed. Is the wound really slight?"

"Beyond a doubt."

"I have begged mamma to visit Pan Mashko; I will take her, and wait in the carriage for news. Then I will go again for mamma, and so every day till Pan Mashko has recovered. Mamma is so kind that she consents to this."

Here a slight, barely evident blush passed over her pale face. To Pan Stanislav, for whom her words were an utter surprise, and whom they pierced with astonishment, she seemed then perfectly comely; and a moment later, when going to Mashko, he said to himself,--

"Well, the women are better than they seem. But they are two decanters of chilled water; still the daughter has some heart. Mashko did not know her, and he will have an agreeable surprise. The old woman will go to him, will see all those bishops and castellans with crooked noses over which Bukatski amused himself so much; but she will believe in Mashko's greatness."

Meditating in this way, he found himself in Mashko's house, and had to wait, for he came at the moment of dressing the wound. But barely had the doctor gone, when Mashko gave command to ask him to enter, and, without even a greeting, inquired,--

"Well, hast thou been there?"

"How art thou; how hast thou slept?"

"Well. But never mind--hast thou been there?"

"I have. I will tell thee briefly. In a quarter of an hour Pani Kraslavski will be here. The young lady told me to say that she would bring her mother, and would wait to hear how thou art; and to tell thee that she is greatly alarmed, that she is very unhappy, but thanks God that there is nothing worse. Thou seest, Mashko! I add, besides, that she is good-looking, and has attracted me. Now I am going, for I have no time to wait."

"Have mercy; wait a moment. Wait, my dear; I have not a fever, and if thou speak through fear--"

"Thou art annoying," said Pan Stanislav; "I give thee my word that I tell the truth, and that thou hast spoken ill of thy betrothed prematurely."

Mashko dropped his head on the pillow, and was silent for a time; then he said, as if to himself,--

"I shall be ready to fall in love with her really."

"That is well. Be in health; I am going to take farewell of Vaskovski."

But instead of going to Vaskovski, he went to the Plavitskis', whom he did not find at home, however. Plavitski was never at home, and of Marynia they said that she had gone out an hour before. Usually when a man is going to a woman who rouses vivid interest in him, and makes up his mind on the way what to say to her, he has rather a stupid face if he finds that she is not at home. Pan Stanislav felt this, and was vexed. He went to a greenhouse, however, bought a multitude of flowers, and had them sent to Marynia. When he thought of the delight with which she would receive them, and with what a beating heart she would wait for evening, he was so pleased that after dinner he dropped into Vaskovski's in the very best humor.

"I have come to take farewell, Professor; when dost thou start on the journey?"

"How art thou, my dear?" answered Vaskovski. "I had to delay for a couple of days; for, as thou seest, I am wintering various small boys here."

"Young Aryans, I suppose, who in hours of freedom draw purses out of pockets?"

"No, they are good souls; but I cannot leave them without care. I must seek out a successor who will live in my place."

"But who would roast himself here? How dost thou live in such heat?"

"Because I sit without a coat; and wilt thou permit me not to put it on? It is a little warm here; but perspiration is wholesome, and these little feathered creatures crave heat."

Pan Stanislav looked around. In the room there were at least a dozen and a half of buntings, titmice, finches. Sparrows, accustomed evidently to be fed, looked in in flocks through the window. The professor kept in his room only birds purchased of dealers; sparrows he did not admit, saying that if he did there would be no end to their numbers, and that it would be unjust to receive some and reject others. The chamber birds had cages fastened to the walls and the inner sash of the window, but went into them only at night; during daylight they flew through the chamber freely, filling it with twitter, and leaving traces on books and manuscripts, with which all the corners and the tables were filled.

Some of the birds which had become very tame sat on Vaskovski's head even. On the floor husks of hemp-seed cracked under one's feet. Pan Stanislav, who knew that chamber thoroughly, still shrugged his shoulders, and said,--

"All this is very good, but that the professor lets them light and sing on his head; that, God knows, is too much. Besides, it is stifling here."

"That is the fault of Saint Francis of Assisi," answered Vaskovski, "for I learned from him to love these little birds. I have even a pair of doves, but they are home-stayers."

"Thou wilt see Bukatski, of course; I received a letter from him,--here it is."

"May I read it?"

"I give it to thee for that very purpose."

Vaskovski read the letter, and said when he had finished, "I have always liked this Bukatski; he is a good soul, but--he has a little something here!" Vaskovski began, to tap his forehead with his fingers.

"This is beginning to amuse me," exclaimed Pan Stanislav. "Imagine to thyself, Professor, for a certain number of days some one taps himself on the forehead and says of some one of our acquaintance, 'He has something here!' A charming society!"

"If it is a little so, it is a little so!" answered Vaskovski, with a smile. "And knowest thou what this is? It is the usual Aryan trouble of soul; and in us, as Slavs, there is more of that than in the west, for we are the youngest Aryans, and therefore neither reason nor heart have settled yet into a balance. We are the youngest Aryans: we feel with more vividness; we take everything to heart more feverishly; and we arrange ourselves to the practice of life with more passion. I have seen much; I have noticed this for a long time. What wonderful natures! Just look, for example, the German students can carouse,--that doesn't hinder them from either working or fashioning themselves into practical people; but let a Slav take this habit, and he is lost, he will do himself to death! And so with everything. A German will become a pessimist and write volumes on this,--that life is despair; but he will drink beer meanwhile, rear children, make money, cultivate his garden, and sleep under a feather tick. A Slav will hang himself, or ruin himself with mad life, with excess, smother himself in a swamp into which he will wade purposely. My dear, I remember men who Byronized themselves to death. I have seen much; I have seen men who, for example, took a fancy to peasants, and ended with drinking vodka in peasant dramshops. There is no measure with us, and there cannot be, for in us, to the excessive acceptance of every idea, are joined frivolousness and knowest what vanity. O my God, how vain we are! how we wish to push ourselves forward always, so that we may be admired and gazed at! Take this Bukatski: he has sunk in scepticism up to his ears in fact; in pessimism, Buddhism, decadency, and in what else besides--do I know?--and in these too there is a chaos at present. He has sunk so deeply that those miasmas are really poisoning him; but dost thou think that with this he is not posing? What wonderful natures! those who are most sincere, who have the most vivid feelings, taking all things to heart most powerfully,--are at the same time comedians. When a man thinks of this, he loves them, but he wants to laugh and to weep."

Pan Stanislav recalled how during his first visit to Kremen he had told Marynia of his Belgian times, when, living with some young Belgians, occupying himself with pessimism, he noticed finally that he took all these theories far more to heart than the Belgians, and that, through this, these theories spoiled his life more. Hence he said now,--

"Professor, thy speech is truthful. I have seen such things too, and the devils will take us all."

Vaskovski fixed his mystic eyes on the frosty window-panes, and said,--

"No; some one else will take us all. That hotness of blood, that capacity for accepting an idea, are the great basis of the mission which Christ has designed for the Slavs." Here Vaskovski pointed to a manuscript stained by the birds, and said mysteriously,--

"I am going with that; that is the labor of my life. Dost wish I will read from it?"

"As God lives, I haven't time; it is late already."

"True. It is growing dark. Then I will tell thee in brief words. Not only do I think, but I believe most profoundly, that the Slavs have a great mission."

Here Vaskovski halted, began to rub his forehead, and said,--

"What a wonderful number,--'three.' There is some mystery in it."

"Thou wert going to speak of a mission," said Pan Stanislav, disquieted.

"Never fear; the one has connection with the other. There are three worlds in Europe: the Roman, the German, and the Slav. The first and second accomplished what they had to do. The future is for that third."

"And what has that third to do?"

"Social conditions, justice, the relations of man to man, the life of individuals, and that which is called private life, are founded on Christian science, no matter what comes. The incoherence of men has deformed this science, but still everything stands on it. Only the first half of the problem is solved,--the first epoch. There are people who think that Christianity is nearing its end. No; the second epoch is about to begin. Christ is in the life of individuals, but not in history. Dost understand? To bring Him into history, to found on Him the relations of peoples, to create the love of our neighbor in the historical sense,--that is the mission which the Slav world has to accomplish. But the Slavs are deficient in knowledge yet; and the need is to open their eyes to this mission."

Pan Stanislav was silent, for he had nothing to answer.

Vaskovski continued: "This is what I have been pondering over a lifetime, and have explained in this work." Here he pointed to a manuscript. "This is the labor of my life. Here this mission is outlined."

"On which meanwhile the buntings are--" thought Pan Stanislav. "And surely it will be that way a long time." But aloud he said, "And it is thy hope, Professor, that when such a work is printed--"

"No; I hope nothing. I have a little love, but I am a man too insignificant, too weak in mind. This will vanish, as if some one had thrown a stone into water; but there will be a circle. Let some chosen one come later on; for I know that what is predestined will not fail. He will not refuse the mission even if he wishes. There is no use in bending men from their predestination, nor in changing them by force. What is good in a different place may be bad in this, for God made us for another use. The labor is vain. Vainly too wilt thou persuade thyself that thy only wish is to gain money; thou, like others, must follow the voice of predestination and nature."

"I am following it indeed, for I am going to marry; that is, if I be accepted."

Vaskovski embraced him.

"I wish thee happiness! This is perfect! May God bless thee! I know that the little maid indicated it to thee. But remember how I told thee that she had something to do, and that she would not die till she had done it. May God give her light, and a blessing to both of you! Besides, Marynia is golden."

"And to thee, beloved Professor, a happy journey and a successful mission!"

"And to thee, thy wish for thyself."

"What do I wish?" asked Pan Stanislav, joyfully. "Well, so, half a dozen little missionaries."

"Ah rogue! thou wert always a rogue!" answered Vaskovski. "But fly off, fly off; I will visit thee once more."

Pan Stanislav flew out, sat on a droshky, and gave command to take him to the Plavitskis'. On the road he was arranging what to say to Marynia; and he prepared a little speech, partly sentimental, and partly sober, as befits a positive man who has found really that which he was seeking, but who also is marrying through reason. Evidently Marynia looked for him much later; for there was no light in the chamber, though the last gleam of twilight was quenched. Pan Stanislav, for a greeting, began to kiss both her hands, and, forgetting completely his wise introduction, asked in a voice somewhat uncertain and excited,--

"Have you received the flowers and the letter?"

"I have."

"And did you guess why I sent them?"

Marynia's heart beat with such force that she could not answer.

Pan Stanislav inquired further, with a still more broken voice,--

"Do you agree to Litka's wish,--do you want me?"

"I do," answered Marynia.

Then he, in the feeling that it was proper to thank her, sought words in vain; but he pressed her hands more firmly to his lips, and, holding them both, drew her gently nearer and nearer. Suddenly a flame seized him; he put his arms around her, and began to seek her lips with his own. But Marynia turned away her head so that he could kiss only the hair on her temples. For a while only their hurried breathing was heard in the darkness; at last Marynia wrested herself from his arms.

A few moments later the servant brought a light. Pan Stanislav, recovering himself, was alarmed at his own boldness, and looked into Marynia's eyes with disquiet. He was sure that he had offended her, and was ready to beg her forgiveness. But he saw with wonder that there were no traces of anger in her face. Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks flushed, her hair disarranged somewhat; it was evident that she was disturbed and, as it were, dazed, but withal only penetrated with the perfect sweetness of that fear which comes to a woman who is loved, and who, in passing over the new threshold, feels that she must yield something there, but who passes over and yields because she wishes. She loves, and she is obliged to yield in view of the rights which she accords to the man.

But a vivid feeling of gratitude passed through Pan Stanislav at sight of her. It seemed to him then that he loved her as he had loved of old, before Litka's death. He felt also that in that moment he could not be too delicate nor too magnanimous; hence, taking her hand again, he raised it to his lips with great respect, and said,--

"I know that I am not worthy of you; there is no discussion on that point. God knows that I shall always do for you what is in my power."

Marynia looked at him with moist eyes and said, "If only you are happy."

"Is it possible not to be happy with you? I saw that from the first moment at Kremen. But afterward, you know, everything was spoiled. I thought you would marry Mashko, and how I worried--"

"I was angry, and I beg forgiveness--my dear--Pan Stas."

"This very day the professor said, 'Marynia is gold,'" exclaimed Pan Stanislav, with great ardor. "This is true! all say the same--not only gold, but a treasure--a very precious one."

Her kindly eyes began to smile at him: "Maybe a heavy one."

"Let not your head ache over that. I have strength enough; I shall be able to bear it. Now at least I have something to live for."

"And I," answered Marynia.

"Do you know that I have been here already to-day? I sent chrysanthemums later. After yesterday's letter to you, I said to myself, 'That is simply an angel, and I should lack, not only heart, but common-sense to delay any longer.'"

"I was so alarmed about that duel, and so unhappy. But is it all over now?"

"I give you my word, most thoroughly."

Marynia wanted to make further inquiries, but at that moment Plavitski came. They heard him cough a little, put away his cane, and remove his overcoat; he opened the door then, and, seeing them alone, said,--

"So you are sitting all by yourselves?"

But Marynia ran up to him, and placing her hands on his shoulders, and putting forth her forehead for a kiss, said,--

"As betrothed, papa."

Plavitski stepped back a little and inquired, "What dost thou say?"

"I say," answered she, looking quietly into his eyes, "that Pan Stanislav wishes to take me, and that I am very happy."

Pan Stanislav approached, embraced Plavitski heartily, and said, "I do with uncle's consent and permission."

But Plavitski exclaimed, "Oh, my child!" and, advancing with tottering step to a sofa, he sat on it heavily. "Wait a moment," said he, with emotion. "It will pass--do not mind me--my children! If that is needed, I bless you with my whole heart."

And he blessed them; wherewith still greater emotion mastered him, for, after all, he loved Marynia really. The voice stuck in his throat repeatedly; and the two young people heard only such broken expressions as, for example, "Some corner near you--for the old man, who worked all his life--an only child--an orphan."

They pacified him together, and pacified him so well that half an hour later Plavitski struck Pan Stanislav on the shoulder suddenly, and said,--

"Oh robber! Thou wert thinking of Marynia, and I was thinking thee a little--" He finished the rest in Pan Stanislav's ear, who grew red with indignation, and answered,--

"How could uncle suppose such a thing? If any one else had dared to say that?"

"Well, well, well!" answered Plavitski, smiling; "there is no smoke without fire."

That evening Marynia, taking farewell of Pan Stanislav, asked,--

"You will not refuse me one thing?"

"Nothing that you command."

"I have said long to myself that if a moment like the present should come, we would go to Litka together."

"Ah, my dear lady," answered Pan Stanislav; and she continued,--

"I know not what people will say; but what do we care for the world--what indeed?"

"Nothing. I am thankful to you from my heart and soul for the thought--My dear lady--my Marynia!"

"I believe that she looks at us and prays for us."

"Then she is our little patroness."

"Good-night."

"Good-night."

"Till to-morrow."

"Till to-morrow," said he, kissing her hands,--"till after to-morrow, daily;" and here he added in a low voice, "Until our marriage."

"Yes," answered Marynia.

Pan Stanislav went out. In his head and in his heart he felt a great whirl of feelings, thoughts, impressions, above which towered one great feeling,--that something unheard of in its decisiveness had happened; that his fate had been settled; that the time of reckoning, of wavering and changing, had passed; that he must begin a new life. And that feeling was not unpleasant to him,--nay, it verged on a kind of delight, especially when he remembered how he had kissed Marynia's hair and temples. That which was lacking in his feelings shrank and vanished almost utterly in this remembrance; and it seemed to Pan Stanislav that he had found everything requisite to perfect happiness. "I shall never grow sated with this," thought he; and it seemed to him simply impossible that he should. He remembered then the goodness of Marynia, and how reliable she was; how on such a heart and character he might build; how in living with her nothing could ever threaten him; how she would not trample on any quality of his, nor make it of no avail; how she would receive as gold that which in him was gold; how she would live for him, not for herself. And, meditating in this way, he asked what better could he find? and he wondered indeed at his recent hesitation. Still he felt that what was coming was a change so gigantic, so immensely decisive, that somewhere at the bottom, in the deepest corner of his soul, there was roused a kind of alarm before this unknown happiness. But he did not hesitate. "I am neither a coward nor an imbecile," thought he. "It is necessary to go ahead, and I will go."

Returning home, he looked at Litka; and immediately there opened before him, as it were, a new, clear horizon. He thought that he might have children, have such a bright dear head as this--and with Marynia. At the very thought his heart began to beat with greater life, and to the impulse of thoughts was joined such a solace of life as he had not known previously. He felt almost perfectly happy. Looking by chance at Bukatski's letter, which he took from his pocket before undressing, he laughed so heartily that the servant looked in with astonishment. Pan Stanislav wished to tell him that he was going to marry. He fell asleep only toward morning, but rose sprightly and fresh; after dressing, he flew to his office to announce the news to Bigiel at the earliest.

Bigiel embraced him, then, with his usual deliberation, proceeded to consider the affair, and said finally,--

"Reasoning the matter over, this is the wisest thing that thou hast done in life;" then, pointing to a box of papers, he added, "Those contracts ought to be profitable, but thine is still better."

"Isn't it?" exclaimed Pan Stanislav, boastfully.

"I will fly to tell my wife," said Bigiel, "for I cannot contain myself; but go thou home, and go for good. I will take thy place till the wedding, and during the honeymoon."

"Very well; I will hurry to see Mashko, and then Marynia and I will go to Litka."

"That is due from you both to her."

Pan Stanislav bought more flowers on the way, added a note to them that he would come soon, and dropped in to see Mashko. Mashko was notably better, under the care of Pani Kraslavski, and was looking for her arrival every moment. When he had heard the news, he pressed Pan Stanislav's hand with emotion, and said,--

"I will tell thee only one thing,--I do not know whether she will be happy with thee, but certainly thou wilt be happy with her."

"Because women are better than men," answered Pan Stanislav. "After what has happened to thee, I hope that thou art of this opinion."

"I confess that to this moment I cannot recover from astonishment. They are both better, and more mysterious. Imagine to thyself--" Here Mashko halted, as if hesitating whether to continue.

"What?" inquired Pan Stanislav.

"Well, thou art a discreet man, and hast given me, besides, such proofs of friendship that there may not be secrets between us. Imagine, then, that yesterday, after thy departure, I received an anonymous letter. Here, as thou art aware, the noble custom of writing such letters prevails. In the letter were tidings that Papa Kraslavski exists, is alive, and in good health."

"Which, again, may be gossip."

"But also may not be. He lives, probably, in America. I received the letter while Pani Kraslavski was here. I said nothing; but after a time, when she had examined those portraits, and began to inquire of my more distant family relations, I asked her, in turn, how long she had been a widow. She answered,--

"'My daughter and I have been alone in the world nine years; and those are sad events, of which I do not wish to speak to-day.'

"Observe that she did not say directly when her husband died."

"And what dost thou think?"

"I think that if papa is alive, he must be that kind of figure of which people do not speak, and that in truth those may be 'sad events.'"

"The secret would have come out long ago."

"Those ladies lived abroad some years. Who knows? That, however, will not change my plans in any way. If Pan Kraslavski is living in America, and does not return, he must have reasons; it is as if he were not in the world, then. In fact, I am gaining the hope now that my marriage will come to pass, for I understand that when people have something to hide, they exact less."

"Pardon my curiosity," said Pan Stanislav, taking his hat; "but with me it is a question of my money, and now touching the Kraslavskis. Dost thou know surely that these ladies have money?"

"It seems that they have much; still, I am playing against a card somewhat hidden. It is likely that they have much ready money. The mother told me repeatedly that her daughter would not need to look to her husband's property. I saw their safe; they keep a big house. I know nearly all the money-lenders--Jews and non-Jews--in Warsaw, and I know surely that these ladies are not in debt a copper to any one; as thou knowest thyself, they have a nice villa not far from the Bigiels. They do not live on their capital, for they are too prudent."

"Thou hast no positive figures, however?"

"I tried to get them, but in roundabout fashion. Not being too certain of my connection with the ladies, I could not insist overmuch. It was given me to understand that there would be two hundred thousand rubles, and perhaps more."

Pan Stanislav took leave, and on the way to the Plavitskis' thought, "All this is a kind of mystery, a kind of darkness, a kind of risk. I prefer Marynia."

Half an hour later he was driving with Marynia to the cemetery, to Litka. The day was warm, as in spring, but gray; the city seemed sullen and dirty. In the cemetery the melting snow had slipped in patches to the ground from the graves, and covered the yellow, half-decayed grass. From the arms of crosses and leafless tree-branches large drops were falling, which, borne from time to time by gusts of warm wind, struck the faces of Pan Stanislav and Marynia. These gusts pulled Marynia's dress, so that she had to hold it. They stopped at last before Litka's grave.

And here all was wet, sloppy, gloomy, half-stripped of the melting snow. The thought that that child, once so cared for, so loved, and so petted, was lying in that damp dungeon darkness, could hardly find a place in Pan Stanislav's head.

"All this may be natural," thought he; "but it is not possible to be reconciled with death." And, in truth, whenever he visited Litka, he returned from the cemetery in a kind of irrepressible rebellion, with a species of passionate protest in his soul. These thoughts began to rend him in that moment also. It seemed to him simply terrible to love Litka, and to reconcile his love with the knowledge that a few steps lower down she is lying there, black and decaying. "I ought not to come," said he to himself, "for I grow mad, lose my head here, and lose every basis of life." But, above all, he suffered, for, if it is impossible not to think of death, it is equally impossible to explain it; hence everything touching it, which comes to the head, is, in so far as a man does not stretch forth his hand toward simple faith, at once despairing and shallow, trivial and common. "For me there is a greater question here than that of existence itself, but I am only able to answer with a commonplace. A perfectly vicious circle!"

And it was true; for if he considered, for example, that at the first thought of death everything becomes smoke, and he felt that unfortunately it does, he felt at the same time that thousands of people had come to that thought before he had, and that no one had found in it either solace or even such satisfaction as the discovery of a truth gives. Everything that he could say to himself was at once terrifying and petty. It was easy for him to understand that the whole life of man, general history, all philosophies, are at bottom merely a struggle with incessant death,--a struggle despairing, a struggle utterly senseless, and at the same time infinitely foolish and devoid of object, for it is lost in advance. But such reasoning could not bring him any comfort, since it was merely the confirmation of a new vicious circle.

For if the one object of all human efforts is life, and the only result death, the nonsense passes measure, and simply could not be accepted, were it not for that loathsome and pitiless reality, which turns beings beloved and living into rotten matter.

Pan Stanislav, during every visit to the cemetery, poisoned himself with such thoughts. To-day, while going, he thought that the presence of Marynia would liberate him from them; meanwhile, rather the opposite happened. Litka's death, which had broken in him trust in the sense and moral object of life, undermined in him also that first, former love for Marynia, which was so naïve and free of doubt; now, when with Marynia, he was standing at Litka's grave, when that death, which had begun to be only a memory, had become again a thing almost tangible, its poisoning effect was increasing anew. Again it seemed to him that all life, consequently love, too, is merely an error, and the processes of life utterly useless and vain. If above life there is neither reason nor mercy, why toil, why love and marry? Is it to have children, become attached to them with every drop of one's blood, and then look on helplessly, while that blind, stupid, insulting, brutal force chokes them, as a wolf chokes a lamb, and come to their graves, and think that they are mouldering in damp and darkness? See, Litka is down there.

A day wonderfully gloomy only strengthened the bitterness of these feelings. At times, during his previous visits, the cemetery had seemed to Pan Stanislav a kind of great void in which life was dissolving, but in which every misfortune, too, was dissolving,--something enormously dreamy, soothing. To-day there was no rest in it. Pieces of snow fell from the trees and gravestones; ravens pushed about among the wet trees with their croaking. Sudden and strong blasts of wind hurled drops of moisture from the branches, and, driving them about, produced a certain desperate struggle around the stone crosses, which stood firm and indifferent.

Just then Marynia ceased praying, and said, with that slightly suppressed voice with which people speak in cemeteries,--

"Now her soul must be near us."

Pan Stanislav made no answer; but he thought first that he and Marynia were beings as if from two distinct worlds, and then that if there were even a particle of truth in what she said, all his mental struggles would be less important than that melting snow. "In such case," said he to himself, "there is dying and there are cemeteries, but there is simply no death."

Marynia began to place on the grave immortelles, which she had bought at the gate, and he to think hurriedly, rather by the aid of his impressions than his ideas, "In my world there is no answer to anything; there are only vicious circles, which lead to the precipice."

And this struck him,--that if such ideas of death as Marynia had, did not come from faith, or if they had been unknown altogether, and if all at once some philosopher had formulated them as a hypothesis, the hypothesis would be recognized as the most genial of the genial, because it explains everything, gives an answer to questions, gives light, not only to life, but to death, which is darkness. Mankind would kneel with admiration before such a philosopher and such a scientific theory.

On the other hand, he felt that still something of Litka was there with them. She herself was falling into dust, but something had survived her; there remained, as it were, currents of her thought, of her will, of her feeling. This,--that she had brought him to Marynia; that they were betrothed; that they were then standing at her grave; that they were to be united; that their lives would go on together; that they would have children, who in their turn would live and love and increase,--what was that, if not such a current, which, coming forth from that child, might go on and on through eternity, renewing itself in an endless chain of phenomena? How then understand that from a mortal being should issue an immortal and ceaseless energy? Marynia, in the simplicity of her faith, had found an answer; Pan Stanislav had not.

And still Marynia was right. Litka was with them. Through Pan Stanislav's head there flew at that moment a certain hypothesis, dim, and not fixed in close thought yet,--a hypothesis, that, perhaps, all which man thinks during life, all that he wishes, all that he loves, is a hundred times more intangible, a hundred times more subtile, than ether, from which rises an astral existence, conscious of itself, either eternal or successively born into beings more and more perfect, more subtile, on to infinity. And it seemed to him that atoms of thought and feeling might collect into a separate individuality, specially because they came forth from one brain or one heart; that they are related,--hence tend to one another with the same mysterious principle by which physical elements combine to form physical individualities.

At present he had not time to meditate over this, but it seemed to him that he had caught something, that in the veil before his eyes, he saw, as it were, an opening that might turn out to be a deception; but at the moment, when he felt that still Litka was with them, he thought that her presence could be understood only in that manner.

Just then some funeral came, for, in the tower, which stood in the middle of the cemetery, the bell began to sound. Pan Stanislav gave Marynia his arm, and they went towards the gate. On the way Marynia, thinking evidently more about Litka, said,--

"Now I am certain that we shall be happy."

And she leaned more on Pan Stanislav's arm, for the gusts of wind had become so violent that it was difficult for her to resist them. One of these carried her veil around his neck. Reality began to call to him. He pressed the arm of the living woman to his side, and felt that loving, if it cannot ward away death, can at least harmonize life.

When they were seated in the carriage, he took Marynia's hand, and did not let it go during the whole way. At moments solace returned to him almost perfectly, for he thought that that maiden, true and kind to the core of her nature, would be able to make good what was lacking in his feeling, and revivify in him that which was palsied. "My wife! my wife!" repeated he, in mind, looking at her; and her honest, clear eyes answered, "Thine."

When they arrived at the house, Plavitski had not returned from his walk before dinner; they were all by themselves then. Pan Stanislav sat down by her side, and under the influence of those thoughts which had passed through his head on the way, he said,--

"You declared that Litka was with us; that is true. I have always returned from the cemetery as if cut down; but it is well that we were there."

"It is; for we went as if for a blessing," said Marynia.

"I have that same impression; and, besides, it seems to me as if we were united already, or, at least, were nearer than before."

"True; and this will be both a sad and a pleasant remembrance."

He took her hand again, and said,--

"If you believe that we shall be happy, why defer happiness? My kind, my best, I, too, trust that it will be well with us; let us not defer the day. We have to begin a new life; let us begin it promptly."

"Make the decision. I am yours with all my soul."

Then he drew her toward him, as he had the day before, and began to seek her lips with his lips; and she, whether under the influence of the thought that his rights were greater on that day, or under the influence of awakening thoughts, did not turn her head away any more, but, half closing her eyes, she herself gave him her lips, as if they had been thirsty a long time.

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Chapter XXVII

For Pan Stanislav began now the period of ante-nuptial cares and preparations. He had, it is true, a dwelling furnished for more than a year,--that is, from a period before he knew Marynia. At that time he made no denial when Bukatski laughed at the lodgings, seeing in them a proof of how anxious his friend was to marry. "Yes," said he; "I have property enough to permit this. I think, too, that I am doing something toward it, and that my plans are growing real."

Bukatski said this was prevision worthy of praise, and wondered that a man of such foresight did not engage also a nurse and a midwife. At times conversation of this kind ended in a quarrel, for Pan Stanislav could not let any one deny him sound judgment in worldly matters. Bukatski affirmed that it was bird romance, worthy of a bunting, to start with building a poetic nest. One friend contended that there could be no wiser method than to build a cage, if you want a bird; the other retorted that if the bird were not found yet, and the chase was uncertain, the cage was a joke on one's appetite. It ended with allusions to the slim legs of Bukatski, which, for him, made the chase after birds of all kinds impossible, even though they were wingless. Bukatski, on such occasions, fell into excellent humor.

Now, however, when the cage was ready, and the bird not only caught, but willing, there remained so much to be done that Pan Stanislav was seized more than once by surprise that an act so simple by nature as marriage, should be so complex in civilized societies. It seemed to him that if no one has the right to look into the moral side of the connection, since it is the outcome of genuine free-will, the formal side should be looked at still less.

But he thought so because he was not a law-giver, and was an impulsive man made impatient by the need of getting "papers." Once he had resolved on marriage, he ceased to think or to analyze, and hastened, as a man of action, to execute.

He was even filled more than once with pride, on comparing himself with such a man, for instance, as Ploshovski, whose history had been circling from mouth to mouth in society, before people had begun to learn it from his diary. "But I am of different metal," thought Pan Stanislav, with a certain satisfaction. At moments, again, when he recalled Ploshovski's figure, his noble, delicate, and also firmly defined profile, his refinement, subtlety, and mental suppleness, his rare gift of winning people, especially women, it occurred to him that he, Polanyetski, is a less refined type, less noble, and, in general, a man cut from ruder materials. But to this he answered that evidently, in the face of conditions in life and the resistance required by it, too much refinement is simply fatal to mind as well as body. In himself he saw also far more ability for living. "Finally," said he, "I can be of some service, while he would have been good only on social shelves with curiosities. I am able to win bread; he was able only to make pellets out of bread when baked. I know how, and I know well how, to color cotton; he only knew how to color women's cheeks. But what a difference between us with reference to women! That man over-analyzed his life and the life of the woman whom he loved; he destroyed her and himself by not being able to escape from the doubt whether he loved her sufficiently. I, too, have doubts whether my love is perfect; but I take my little woman, and should be an imbecile, not a man, to fear the future, and fail to squeeze from it in simple fashion what good and happiness it will let me squeeze."

Here Pan Stanislav, though he had forsworn analysis, began to analyze, not himself, it is true, but Marynia. He permitted this, however, only because he foresaw certainly favorable conclusions; he understood that, in calculating the future of two people, good-will on one side is not sufficient, and becomes nothing, if good-will fails on the other. But he was convinced that in taking Marynia he was not taking a dead heart. Marynia had brought to the world not only an honest nature, but from years of childhood she had been in contact with work and with conditions in which she was forced to forget herself, so as to think of others. Besides, there was above her the memory of a mother, a kind of endless blessing from beyond the grave,--a mother whose calmness, candor, and uprightness, whose life, full of trials, were remembered to the present with the utmost respect, throughout the whole region of Kremen. Pan Stanislav knew this, and was persuaded that, building on the heart and character of Marynia, he was building on a foundation well-nigh immovable. More than once he recalled the words of a woman, an acquaintance and friend of his mother's, who, when some one asked her whether she was more anxious about the future of her sons than her daughters, answered, "I think only of my sons; for my daughters, in the worst case, can be only unhappy."

So it is! School and the world rear sons, and both may make them scoundrels; daughters, in whom the home ingrafts honorableness, can, in the worst case, be only unhappy. Pan Stanislav understood that this was true with regard to Marynia. So that if he analyzed her, his analysis was rather the examination of a jeweller and his admiration for his gems, than a scientific method intended to reach results unknown and unexpected.

Still he quarrelled once with Marynia very seriously, because of a letter from Vaskovski, which Pan Stanislav received from Rome a few weeks after the professor's departure, and which he read in its integrity to Marynia. This letter was as follows:--

MY DEAR,--I am lodging at Via Tritone, Pension Française. Visit my Warsaw lodgings; see if Snopchinski looks after my little boys properly, and if the birds of Saint Francis have seeds and water in plenty. When spring comes, it will be needful to open the windows and cages; whichever bird wishes to stay, let it stay, and whichever one wishes to go, let it fly. The boys of the genus homo sapiens should have good food, since I left money therefor, and besides little moralizing, but much love. Snopchinski is a worthy man, but a hypochondriac. He says this comes from snows. When he is attacked by what he calls "chandra," he looks for whole weeks on his boots, and is silent; but one must talk with little boys, to give them confidence. This is all that touches Warsaw.

I am printing here in French, in the typography of the journal "L'Italie," that work of mine which I discussed with thee. They laugh at my French a little, and at me, but I am used to that. Bukatski came here. He is a good, beloved fellow! he has grown strange to the last degree, and says that he drags his feet after him, though I have not noticed it. He loves both Marynia and thee, and indeed every one, though he denies it. But when he begins to talk, one's ears wither. May the Lord God bless thee, dear boy, and thy honest Marynia! I should like to be at thy wedding, but I know not whether I shall finish my work before Easter; listen, therefore, now to what I tell thee, and know that I write this letter to that end. Do not think that the old man is talking just to talk. Thou knowest, besides, that I have been a teacher; that the inheritance from my brother freed me from that occupation; that I have had experience and have seen things. If ye have children, do not torture them with knowledge; let them grow up as God wills. I might stop here; but thou art fond of figures, hence I will give thee figures. A little child has as many hours of labor as a grown man in office, with this difference, that the man talks during office hours with his colleagues, or smokes cigarettes; the child must strain its attention continually, or lose the clew of lessons, and cease to understand what is said to it. The man goes home when his work is done; the child must prepare for the following day, which takes four hours from a capable child, from one less capable six. Add to this, that poorer pupils give lessons frequently, the rich take them, which, added, gives twelve hours. Twelve hours' labor for a child! Dost understand that, my dear? Canst thou realize what sickly natures must grow up in such conditions,--natures out of joint, inclined to the wildest manias, crooked, wilful? Dost thou understand how we are filling cemeteries with our children, and why the most monstrous ideas find supporters? Ah, at present they are limiting the hours of labor in factories even for grown people, but touching children at school philanthropy is silent. Oh, but that is a field! that is a service to be rendered; that is a coming glory and sainthood. Do not torture thy children with learning, I beg thee--and I beg Marynia; promise me both of you. I do not speak just to speak, as Bukatski says sometimes, but I speak from the heart; and this is the greatest reform for which future ages are waiting, the greatest after the introduction of Christ into history. Something wonderful happened to me in Perugia a few days since, but of that I will tell thee sometime, and now I embrace both of you.

Marynia listened to this letter, looking at the tips of her shoes, like that Snopchinski of whom the Professor wrote. But Pan Stanislav laughed, and said,--

"Have you ever heard anything like this? It is long before our marriage; but he is lamenting over our children, and takes the field on their behalf. This is somewhat the history of my nest."

After a while he added, "To tell the truth, the fault is mine; for I made him various promises." And, inclining so that he could see Marynia's eyes, he asked, "But what do you say to this letter?"

Pan Stanislav, inquiring thus, had chanced on that unhappy moment when a man is not himself, and acts not in accordance with his own nature. He was rather a harsh person generally, but not brutal, and at times was even capable of delicate acts, really womanlike. But now, in his look and in the question directed to a young lady so mimosa-like as Marynia, there was something simply brutal. She knew as well as others that after marriage come children; but this seemed to her something indefinite, not to be mentioned, or if mentioned, mentioned in allusions as delicate as lace, or in a moment of emotion, with beating heart, with loving lips at the ear, with solemnity,--as touching what is most sacred in a mutual future. Hence Pan Stanislav's careless tone outraged and pained her. She thought, "Why does he not understand this?" and she in turn acted not in accordance with her nature; for, as happens frequently with timid persons in moments of bitterness and confusion, they exhibit greater anger than they feel.

"You should not treat me in this way!" cried she, indignantly. "You should not speak to me in this way!"

Pan Stanislav laughed again with feigned gayety.

"Why are you angry?" inquired he.

"You do not act with me as is proper."

"I do not understand the question."

"So much the worse."

The smile vanished from his lips; his face grew dark, and he spoke quickly, like a man who has ceased to reckon with his words.

"Perhaps I am stupid; but I know what is right and what is not. In this way life becomes impossible. Whoever makes great things out of nothing must not blame others. But, since my presence is disagreeable, I go!"

And, seizing his hat, he bowed, and went out. Marynia did not try to detain him. For a while offence and anger stifled in her all other sensations; then there remained to her only an impression, as if from the blow of a club. Her thoughts scattered like a flock of birds. Above them towered only one dim idea: "All is over! he will not return!" Thus fell the structure which had begun to unite in such beautiful lines. Emptiness, nothingness, a torturing, because objectless life, and a chilled heart,--that is what remained to her. And happiness had been so near! But that which had taken place so suddenly was something so strange that she could not explain immediately. She went to the writing-desk, and began mechanically to arrange papers in it, with a certain objectless haste, as if there could be any reason at that moment for arranging them. Then she looked at Litka's photograph, and sat down quickly with her hands on her eyes and temples. After a time it occurred to her that Litka's will must be stronger than the will of them both, and a ray of hope shone in on her suddenly. She began to walk in the room, and to think on what had passed; she recalled Pan Stanislav, not only as he had been just then, but earlier,--two, three days, a week before. Her regret became greater than her feeling of offence, and it increased with her affection for Pan Stanislav. After a time she said in her soul that she was not free to forget herself; that it was her duty to accept and love Pan Stanislav as he was, and not strive to fix him to her ideas. "That is, he is a living man, not a puppet," repeated she, a number of times. And a growing feeling of fault seized her, and after that compunction. A heart submissive by nature, and greatly capable of loving, struggled against sound sense, which she possessed undoubtedly, and which now told her in vain that reason was not on Pan Stanislav's side, and that, moreover, she had said nothing which needed pardon. She said to herself, "If he has a good heart, even to a small extent, he will return;" but she was seized also with fear in view of the self-love of men in general, and of Pan Stanislav in particular,--she was too intelligent not to note that he cared greatly to pass for an unbending person. But considerations of that kind, which an unfriendly heart would have turned to his disadvantage, had made her tender only on his behalf.

Half an hour later she was convinced to the depth of her soul that the fault lay only on her side; that "she had tormented him so much already" that she ought to yield now,--that is, to be the first to extend a hand in conciliation. That meant in her mind to write a few peace-making words. He had suffered so much from that affair of Kremen that this was due to him. And she was ready even to weep over his fate. She hoped, withal, that he, the bad, ugly man, would estimate what it cost her to write to him, and would come that same evening.

It had seemed to her that nothing was easier than to write a few cordial phrases, which go directly from one heart to another. But how difficult! A letter has no eyes, which fill with tears; no face, which smiles both sadly and sweetly; no voice, which trembles; no hands to stretch forth. You may read and understand a letter as you like; it is merely black letters on paper as impassive as death.

Marynia had just torn the third sheet, when the face of Pan Plavitski, as wrinkled as a roast apple, and with mustaches freshly dyed, showed itself at the door partly open.

"Is Polanyetski not here?" inquired he.

"He is not, papa."

"But will he come this evening?"

"I do not know," answered she, with a sigh.

"If he comes, my child, tell him that I will return not later than an hour from now; and that I wish to speak with him."

"And I too wish to speak with him," thought Marynia.

And when she had torn the third sheet she took the fourth and was thinking whether to turn the whole quarrel into a jest, or simply to beg his pardon. The jest might not please him; in the pardon there was something warmer, but how difficult it was! If he had not fled, it would have sufficed to extend her hand; but he flew out as if shot from a sling, the irritable man, though so much loved.

And, raising her eyes, she began to work intently with her dark head, when on a sudden the bell sounded in the entrance. Marynia's heart was beating like a hammer; and through her head flew these questions, like lightning,--

"Is it he? Is it not he?"

The door opened; it was he.

He came in with the look of a wolf, his head down, his face gloomy. Evidently he was very uncertain how she would receive him; but she sprang up, her heart beating like a bird's heart; her eyes radiant, happy, touched greatly by his return; and, running to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders.

"But how good! how nice! And do you know, I wanted to write to you."

Pan Stanislav, pressing her hands to his lips, was silent for some time; at last he said,--

"You ought to give the order to throw me downstairs." In a rapture of thankfulness he drew her up to him, kissed her lips, eyes, temples, and hair, which became unbound in the pressure. In such moments it seemed to him always that he would find everything that goes to make great and perfect love. At last he released her and continued,--

"You are too good. Though that is better, it subdues me. I came to beg your forgiveness, nothing more. I regained my senses at once. I reproached myself for my last words, and I cannot tell you how sorry I was. I walked along the street, thinking to see you in the window, perhaps, and note from your face whether I might come in. After that I could not restrain myself, and returned."

"I beg pardon; it was my fault. You see the torn paper; I wrote and wrote."

He devoured with his eyes her hair, which she had arranged hastily. With blushing face, from which joy was beaming, with eyes laughing from happiness, she seemed to him more beautiful than ever, and desired as never before.

Marynia noticed, too, that he was looking at her hair; and confusion struggled with pure womanly coquetry. She had fastened it awkwardly by design, so that the tresses were falling more and more on her shoulders; while she said,--

"Do not look, or I'll go to my room."

"But that is my wealth," said Pan Stanislav; "and in my life I have never seen anything like it."

He stretched his hands to her again, but she evaded.

"Not permitted, not permitted," said she; "as it is; I am ashamed. I ought to have left you."

Her hair, however, came gradually to order; then both sat down and conversed quietly, though looking into each other's eyes.

"And you wished really to write?" asked Pan Stanislav.

"You see the torn paper."

"I say that, in truth, you are too good."

She raised her eyes, and, looking at the shelf above the bureau, said,--

"Because the fault was mine. Yes; only mine."

And, judging that she could not be too magnanimous, she added after a moment, blushing to her ears and dropping her eyes,--

"For, after all, the professor is correct in what he writes about learning."

Pan Stanislav wanted to kneel down and kiss her feet. Her charm and goodness not only disarmed him, but conquered him thoroughly.

"That I am annihilated is true," cried he, as if finishing some unexpressed thought with words. "You conquer me utterly."

She began to shake her head joyously. "Ei! I don't know; I am such a coward."

"You a coward? I will tell you an anecdote: In Belgium I knew two young ladies named Wauters, who had a pet cat, a mild creature, mild enough, it would seem, to be put to a wound. Afterward one of the young ladies received a tame hare as a gift. What do you think? The cat was so afraid that from terror he jumped on to every shelf and stove. One day the ladies went to walk; all at once they remembered that the cat was alone with the hare. 'But will not Matou hurt the hare?' 'Matou? Matou is so terrified that he is ready to go out of his skin!' And they walked on quietly. They came home an hour later. And guess what had happened? They found only the ears of the hare. That is precisely the relation of young ladies to us. They are afraid seemingly; but afterward nothing is left of us but ears."

And Pan Stanislav began to laugh, and Marynia with him; after a while he added,--

"I know that of me only ears will be left."

He did not tell the truth, however; for he felt that it would be otherwise. Marynia too, after thinking a while, said,--

"No; I have not such a character."

"That is better too; for I will tell you sincerely what conclusions I have drawn from my life observations: the greater egotism always conquers the less."

"Or the greater love yields to the less," answered Marynia.

"That comes out the same. As to me, I confess that I should like to hold some Herod, see, this way, in my hand" (here Pan Stanislav opened his fingers and then closed them into a fist); "but with such a dove as you, it is quite different. With you I think we shall have to fight to restrain you from too much self-abnegation, too much personal sacrifice. Such is your nature, and I know whom I take. For that matter all say so, and even Mashko, who is no Solomon, said: 'She may be unhappy with thee; thou with her, never.' And he is right. But I am curious to know how Mashko will be for his wife. He has a firm hand."

"But is he loved much?"

"Not so much as awhile ago, when a certain young lady coquetted with him."

"Yes; for he wasn't so wicked as a certain 'Pan Stas.'"

"That will be a wonderful marriage. She is not ill-looking, though she is pale, and has red eyes. But Mashko marries for property. He admits that she doesn't love him; and when that adventure with Gantovski took place (he is brave, too), he was certain that those ladies would choose the opportunity to break with him. Meanwhile it turned out just the opposite; and imagine, Mashko is now alarmed again, because everything moves as if on oil. It seems to him suspicious. There are certain strange things there; there exists also, as it seems, a Pan Kraslavski--God knows what there is not. The whole affair is stupid. There will be no happiness in it,--at least, not such as I picture to myself."

"And what do you picture to yourself?"

"Happiness in this,--to marry a reliable woman, like you, and see the future clearly."

"But I think it is in this,--to be loved; but that is not enough yet."

"What more?"

"To be worthy of that love, and to--"

Here Marynia was unable for a time to find words, but at last she said,--

"And to believe in a husband, and work with him."

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Chapter XXVIII

Pan Stanislav was not mistaken. Everything went so favorably for Mashko, Pani and Panna Kraslavski acted so admirably, that he was more and more alarmed. At moments he laughed at this; and since he had had no secret from Pan Stanislav for some time, he said one day, with complete cynicism,--

"My dear, those are simply angels; but my hair stands on end, for something is hidden in this."

"Better thank the Lord God."

"They are too ideal; they are faultless; they are even without vanity. Yesterday, for example, I gave them to understand that I am an advocate only because to my thinking sons of the best families should undertake something in these times, be something. Guess what they answered? That that is as good a position as any other; that every employment is worthy in their eyes, provided it is work; and that only poor and empty natures could be ashamed of work. They shot out so many packages of commonplace that I wanted to answer with a sentence from copy-books, such as 'Honor is a steep cliff,' or something of that sort. Polanyetski, I tell thee there is something concealed there. I thought that it was papa, but it is not papa. I have news of him: he lives in Bordeaux; he calls himself De Langlais; and he has his own domestic hearth, not so much legally, as numerously, surrounded, which he maintains with a pension received from Pani Kraslavski."

"What harm is that to thee?"

"None whatever."

"If it is that way, they are unhappy women,--that is all."

"True; but if their income answers to the misfortune? Remember that I have burdens. Besides, seest thou, if they are such women as they pretend, and if, also, they are rich, I am ready to fall in love really, and that would be stupid; if it appears that they have nothing, or little, I am ready, also, to fall in love, and that would be still more stupid. She has charms for me."

"No; that would be the one wise thing in every case. But think of thyself, Mashko, a little of me and the Plavitskis. It is known to thee that I have not the habit of being mild in those matters, and the dates of payment are approaching."

"I'll fire up the boiler once more with credit. For that matter, thou and they have a mortgage on Kremen. In a couple of days there will be a betrothal party at Pani Kraslavski's, after which I hope to learn something reliable."

Here Mashko began a monologue,--

"But that a positive man, such as I am, should go into a forest in this way, passes belief. On the other hand, there is not a man, even among those who know best how every one stands, who would let himself doubt of Pani Kraslavski's property. And they are so noble!"

"Thy fears are probably baseless," interrupted Pan Stanislav, with certain impatience. "But thou, my dear fellow, art not positive in any sense, for thou hast been always pretending, and art pretending still, instead of looking to that which gives thee bread."

A few days later the betrothal party took place in fact. Marynia was there; for Pani Kraslavski, who liked Plavitski, whose relatives were known to her, did not avoid association with him as she did with the Bigiels. Mashko brought such of his acquaintances as had well-known names. They had monocles on their eyes, and their hair parted in the middle; for the greater part very young, and mainly not very quick-witted. Among them were the five brothers Vyj, who were called Mizio, Kizio, Bizio, Brelochek, and Tatus. They were nicknamed the five sleeping brothers, since they felt the impulses of life in their legs exclusively, and were active only in the carnival, but became perfectly torpid, at least in a mental sense, during Lent. Bukatski loved them, and amused himself with them. Baron Kot was there, who, because he had heard something from some one of a certain ancient Kot of Dembna, added always, when he was presented, "of Dembna," and who always answered everything that was said to him with: "Quelle drôle d'histoire!" Mashko was on the footing of thou with all these, though he treated them with a certain species of disregard, as well as Kopovski,--a young man with a splendid ideal head, and also splendid eyes without thought. Pan Stanislav and Kresovski represented the category of Mashko's more clever friends. Pani Kraslavski had invited a number of ladies with daughters, among whom the five brothers circled carelessly and coolly, and whose maiden hearts fluttered at the approach of Kopovski, caring less for his mental resemblance to Hamlet, resting on this,--that if not he, his brain might be put into "a nutshell." A number of dignified bald heads completed the company.

Panna Kraslavski was dressed in white; in spite of her red eyes, she looked alluring. There was in her, indeed, a certain womanly charm, resting on a wonderful, almost dreamy repose. She recalled somewhat the figures of Perugini. At times she grew bright, like an alabaster lamp, in which a flame flashes up on a sudden; after a while she paled again, but paled not without charm. Dressed in a thin white robe, she seemed more shapely than usual. Pan Stanislav, looking at her, thought that she might have a heart which was dry enough, and a dry enough head, but she could be a genteel wife, especially for Mashko, who valued social gentility above everything else. Their manner toward each other seemed like a cool and pale day, in which the sun does not burn, but in which also a storm is not threatening. They were sitting at the end of the drawing-room, not too near, but also not too far, from the rest of the company; they occupied themselves with each other no more and no less than was proper. In his conversation with her as much feeling was evident as was required, but, above all, the wish to appear a "correct" betrothed; she paid him on her part in the same coin. They smiled at each other in a friendly way. He, as the future leader and head of the house, spoke more than she; sometimes they looked into each other's eyes,--in a word, they formed the most correct and exemplary couple of betrothed people that could be imagined, in the society sense of the term. "I should not have held out," said Pan Stanislav to himself. Suddenly he remembered that while she was sitting there in conventional repose, white, smiling, the poor little doctor, who could not "tear his soul from her," was in equal repose somewhere between the tropics turning to dust, under the ground, forgotten, as if he had never existed; and anger bore him away. Not only did he feel contempt for the heart of Mashko's betrothed, but that repose of hers seemed now bad taste to him,--a species of spiritual deadness, which once had been fashionable, and which, since they saw in it something demonic, the poets had struck with their thunderbolts, and which, in time, had grown vulgar, and dropped to be moral nonentity and folly. "First of all, she is a goose, and, moreover, a goose with no heart," thought Pan Stanislav. At that moment Mashko's alarm at the noble conduct of those ladies grew clear to him to such a degree that Mashko rose in his esteem as a man of acuteness.

Then he fell to comparing his own betrothed with Panna Kraslavski, and said to himself with great satisfaction, "Marynia is a different species altogether." He felt that he was resting mentally while looking at her. In so much as the other seemed, as it were, an artificial plant, reared, not in broad fresh currents of air, but under glass, in that much did there issue from this one life and warmth, and still the comparison came out to the advantage of Marynia, even in respect to society. Pan Stanislav did not overlook altogether "distinction," so-called, understanding that, if not always, it frequently answers to a certain mental finish, especially in women. Looking now at one, now at the other, he came to the conviction that that finish which Panna Kraslavski had was something acquired and enslaving, with Marynia it was innate. In the one it was a garment thrown on outside; in the other, the soul,--a kind of natural trait in a species ennobled through long ages of culture. Taking from Bukatski's views as many as he needed,--that is, as many as were to the point,--Pan Stanislav remembered that he had said frequently that women, without reference to their origin, are divided into patricians, who have culture, principles, and spiritual needs, which have entered the blood, and parvenues, who dress in them, as in mantillas, to go visiting. At present, while looking at the noble profile of Marynia, Pan Stanislav thought, with the vanity of a little townsman who is marrying a princess, that he was taking a patrician in the high sense of the word; and, besides, a very beautiful patrician.

Frequently women need only some field, and a little luck, to bloom forth. Marynia, who seemed almost ugly to Pan Stanislav when he was returning from the burial of Litka, astonished him now, at times, with her beauty. Near her Panna Kraslavski seemed like a faded robe near a new one; and if the fortune of Panna Plavitski had been on a level with her looks, she would have passed, beyond doubt, for a beauty. As it was, the five brothers, putting their glasses on their equine noses, looked at her with a certain admiration; and Baron Kot, of Dembna, declared confidentially that her betrothal was real luck, for had it not taken place, who knows but he might have rushed in.

Pan Stanislav could note also that evening one trait of his own character which he had not suspected,--jealousy. Since he was convinced that Marynia was a perfectly reliable woman, who might be trusted blindly, that jealousy was simply illogical. In his time he had been jealous of Mashko, and that could be understood; but now he could not explain why Kopovski, for example, with his head of an archangel and his brains of a bird, could annoy him, just because he sat next to Marynia, and doubtless was asking her more or less pertinent questions, to which she was answering more or less agreeably. At first he reproached himself. "Still, it would be difficult to ask her not to speak to him!" Afterward he found that Marynia turned to Kopovski too frequently, and answered too agreeably. At supper, while sitting next her, he was silent and irritated; and when she asked the reason, he answered most inappropriately,--

"I have no wish to spoil the impression which Pan Kopovski produced on you."

But she was pleased that he was jealous; contracting the corners of her mouth to suppress laughter, and looking at him sedately, she answered,--

"Do you find, too, that there is something uncommon in Pan Kopovski?"

"Of course, of course! When he walks the streets even, it seems that he is carrying his head into fresh air, lest the moths might devour it."

The corners of Marynia's mouth bore the test, but her eyes laughed evidently; at last, unable to endure, she said, in a low voice,--

"Outrageously jealous!"

"I? Not the least!"

"Well, I will give you an extract from our conversation. You know that yesterday there was a case of catalepsy during the concert; to-day they were talking of that near us; then, among other things, I asked Pan Kopovski if he had seen the cataleptic person. Do you know what he answered? 'Each of us may have different convictions.' Well, now, isn't he uncommon?"

Pan Stanislav was pacified, and began to laugh.

"But I tell you that he simply doesn't understand what is said to him, and answers anything."

They passed the rest of the evening with each other in good agreement. At the time of parting, when the Plavitskis, having a carriage with seats for only two persons, were unable to take Pan Stanislav, Marynia turned to him and inquired,--

"Will the cross, whimsical man come to-morrow to dine with us?"

"He will, for he loves," answered Pan Stanislav, covering her feet with the robe.

She whispered into his ear, as it were great news, "And I too."

And although he at the moment of speaking was perfectly sincere, she spoke more truth. Mashko conducted Pan Stanislav home. On the road they talked of the reception. Mashko said that before the arrival of guests he had tried to speak to Pani Kraslavski of business, but had not succeeded.

"There was a moment," said he, "when I thought to put the question plainly, dressing it of course in the most delicate form. But I was afraid. Finally, why have I doubts of the dower of my betrothed? Only because those ladies treat me with more consideration than I expected. As a humor, that is very good; but I fear to push matters too far, for suppose that my fears turn out vain, suppose they have money really, and are incensed because my curiosity is too selfish. It is necessary to count with this also, for I may be wrecked at the harbor."

"Well, then," answered Pan Stanislav, "admit this, and for that matter it is likely that they have; but if it should turn out that they have not, what then? Hast a plan ready? Wilt thou break with Panna Kraslavski, or wilt thou marry her?"

"I will not break with her in any case, for I should not gain by it. If my marriage does not take place, I shall be a bankrupt. But if it does, I will state my financial position precisely, and suppose that Panna Kraslavski will break with me."

"But if she does not, and has no money?"

"I shall love her, and come to terms with my creditors. I shall cease to 'pretend,' as thy phrase is, and try to win bread for us both; I am not a bad advocate, as thou knowest."

"That is fairly good," answered Pan Stanislav, "but that does not pacify me touching the Plavitskis and myself."

"Thou and they are in a better position than others, for ye have a lien on Kremen. In a given case thou wilt take everything in thy firm grasp, and squeeze out something. It is worse for those who have trusted my word; and I tell thee to thy eyes that I am concerned more for them. I had, and I have great credit even now. That is my tender point. But if they give me time, I will come out somehow. If I had a little happiness at home, and a motive there for labor--"

They came now to Pan Stanislav's house, so Mashko did not finish his thought. At the moment of parting, however, he said suddenly,--

"Listen to me. In thy eyes I am somewhat crooked; I am much less so than seems to thee. I have pretended, as thou sayst, it is true! I had to wriggle out, like an eel, and in those wrigglings I slipped sometimes from the beaten road. But I am tired, and tell thee plainly that I wish a little happiness, for I have not had it. Therefore I wanted to marry thy betrothed, though she is without property. As to Panna Kraslavski, dost thou know that there are moments when I should prefer that she had nothing, but, to make up, that she would not drop me when she knows that I too have nothing. I say this sincerely--and now good-night."

"Well," said Pan Stanislav to himself, "this is something new in Mashko." And he entered the gate. Standing at the door, he was astonished to hear the piano in his apartments. The servant said that Bigiel had been waiting two hours for him.

Pan Stanislav was alarmed, but thought that if something unfavorable had caused his presence, he would not play on the piano. In fact, it turned out that Bigiel was in haste merely to get Pan Stanislav's signature for an affair which had to be finished early next morning.

"Thou mightest have left the paper, and gone to bed," said Pan Stanislav.

"I slept awhile on thy sofa, then sat at the piano. Once I played on the piano as well as on the violin, but now my fingers are clumsy. Thy Marynia plays probably; such music in the house is a nice thing."

Pan Stanislav laughed with a sincere, well-wishing laugh.

"My Marynia? My Marynia possesses the evangelical talent: her left hand does not know what her right hand is doing. Poor dear woman! She has no pretensions; and she plays only when I beg her to do so."

"Thou art as it were laughing at her," said Bigiel; "but only those who are in love laugh in that way."

"Because I am in love most completely. At least it seems so now to me; and in general I must say that it seems so to me oftener and oftener. Wilt thou have tea?"

"Yes. Thou hast come from Pani Kraslavski's?"

"I have."

"How is Mashko? Will he struggle to shore?"

"I parted with him a moment ago. He came with me to the gate. He says things at times that I should not expect from him."

Pan Stanislav, glad to have some one to talk with, and feeling the need of intimate converse, began to tell what he had heard from Mashko; and how much he was astonished at finding a man of romantic nature under the skin of a person of his kind.

"Mashko is not a bad man," said Bigiel. "He is only on the road to various evasions; and the cause of that is his vanity and respect for appearances. But, on the other hand, that respect for appearances saves him from final fall. As to the man of romance, which thou hast found in him--"

Here Bigiel cut off the end of a cigar, lighted it with great deliberation, wrinkling his brows at the same time, and, sitting down comfortably, continued,--

"Bukatski would have given on that subject ten ironical paradoxes about our society. Now something stuck in my head that he told me, when he attacked us because always we love some one or something. It seems to him that this is foolish and purposeless; but I see in this a great trait. It is necessary to become something in the world; and what have we? Money we have not; intellect, so-so; the gift of making our way in a position, not greatly; management, little. We have in truth this yet--that almost involuntarily, through some general disposition, we love something or somebody; and if we do not love, we feel the need of love. Thou knowest that I am a man of deliberation and a merchant, hence I speak soberly. I call attention to this because of Bukatski. Mashko, for instance, in some other country, would be a rogue from under a dark star; and I know many such. But here even beneath the trickster thou canst scratch to the man; and that is simple, for, in the last instance, while a man has some spark in his breast yet, he is not a beast utterly; and with us he has the spark, precisely for this reason, that he loves something."

"Thou bringest Vaskovski to my mind. What thou art saying is not far from his views concerning the mission of the youngest of the Aryans."

"What is Vaskovski to me? I say what I think. I know one thing: take that from us, and we should fly apart, like a barrel without hoops."

"Well, listen to what I will tell thee. This is a thing decided in my mind rather long since. To love, or not to love some one, is a personal question; but I understand that it is needful to love something in life. I too have meditated over this. After the death of that child, I felt that the devil had taken certain sides of me; sometimes I feel that yet. Not to-day; but there are times--how can I tell thee?--times of ebb, exhaustion, doubts. And if, in spite of this, I marry, it is because I understand that it is necessary to have a living and strong foundation under a more general love."

"For that, and not for that," answered Bigiel the inexorable in judgment, "for thou are marrying not at all from purely mental reasons. Thou art taking a comely and honest young woman, to whom thou art attracted; and do not persuade thyself that it is otherwise, or thou wilt begin to pretend. My dear friend, every man has these doubts before marrying. I, as thou seest, am no philosopher; but ten times a day I asked myself before marriage, if I loved my future wife well enough, if I loved her as was necessary, had I not too little soul in the matter, and too many doubts? God knows what! Afterward I married a good woman, and it was well for us. It will be well for you too, if ye take things simply; but that endless searching in the mind and looking for certain secrets of the heart is folly, God knows."

"Maybe it is folly. I too have no great love for lying on my back and analyzing from morn in till night; but I cannot help seeing facts."

"What facts?"

"Such facts, for example, as this, that my feeling is not what it was at first. I think that it will be; I acknowledge that it is going to that. I marry in spite of these observations, as if they did not exist; but I make them."

"Thou art free to do so."

"And see what I think besides: still it is necessary that the windows of a house should look out on the sun; otherwise it will be cold in the dwelling."

"Thou hast said well," answered Bigiel.

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Chapter XXIX

Meanwhile winter began to break; the end of Lent was approaching, and with it the time of marriage for Pan Stanislav, as well as Mashko. Bukatski, invited as a groomsman to the former, wrote to him among other things as follows,--

"To thrust forth the all-creative energy from its universal condition,--that is, from a condition of perfect repose,--and force it by means of marriages concluded on earth to incarnate itself in more or less squalling particulars which require cradles and which amuse themselves by holding the great toe in the mouth, is a crime. Still I will come, because stoves are better with you than in this place."

In fact, he came a week before the holidays, and brought as a gift to Pan Stanislav a sheet of parchment ornamented splendidly with something in the style of a grave hour-glass, on which was the inscription, "Stanislav Polanyetski, after a long and grievous bachelorhood."

Pan Stanislav, whom the parchment pleased, took it next day about noon to Marynia. He forgot, however, that it was Sunday, and felt, as it were, disappointed, at finding Marynia with her hat on.

"Are you going out?" inquired he.

"Yes. To church. To-day is Sunday."

"Ah, Sunday! True. But I thought that we should sit here together. It would be so agreeable."

She raised her calm blue eyes to him, and said with simplicity, "But the service of God?"

Pan Stanislav received these words at once as he would have received any other, not foreseeing that, in the spiritual process which he was to pass through later on, they would play a certain rôle by reason of their directness, and said as if repeating mechanically,--

"You say the service of God. Very well! I have time; let us go together."

Marynia received this offer with great satisfaction.

"I am the happier," said she, on the way, "the more I love God."

"That, too, is the mark of a good nature; some persons think of God only as a terror."

And in the church that came again to his mind of which he had thought during his first visit to Kremen, when he was at the church in Vantory, with old Plavitski: "Destruction takes all philosophies and systems, one after another; but Mass is celebrated as of old." It seemed to him that in that there was something which passed comprehension. He who, because of Litka, had come in contact with death in a manner most painful, returned to those dark problems whenever he happened to be in a cemetery, or a church at Mass, or in any circumstances whatever in which something took place which had no connection with the current business of life, but was shrouded in that future beyond the grave. He was struck by this thought,--how much is done in this life for that future; and how, in spite of all philosophizing and doubt, people live as if that future were entirely beyond question; how much of petty personal egotisms are sacrificed for it; how many philanthropic deeds are performed; how asylums, hospitals, retreats, churches are built, and all on an account payable beyond the grave only.

He was struck still more by another thought,--that to be reconciled with life really, it is necessary to be reconciled with death first; and that without faith in something beyond the grave this reconciliation is simply impossible. But if you have faith the question drops away, as if it had never existed. "Let the devils take mourning; let us rejoice;" for if this is true, what more can be desired? Is there before one merely the view of some new existence, in the poorest case, wonderfully curious,--even that certainty amounts to peace and quiet. Pan Stanislav had an example of that, then, in Marynia. Because she was somewhat short-sighted, she held her head bent over the book; but when at moments she raised it, he saw a face so calm, so full of something like that repose which a flower has, and so serene, that it was simply angelic. "That is a happy woman, and she will be happy always," said he to himself. "And, besides, she has sense, for if, on the opposite side, there were at least certainty, there would be also that satisfaction which truth gives; but to torture one's self for the sake of various marks of interrogation is pure folly."

On the way home, Pan Stanislav, thinking continually of this expression of Marynia's, said,--

"In the church you looked like some profile of Fra Angelico; you had a face which was indeed happy."

"For I am happy at present. And do you know why? Because I am better than I was. I felt at one time offended in heart, and I was dissatisfied; I had no hope before me, and all these put together formed such suffering that it was terrible. It is said that misfortune ennobles chosen souls, but I am not a chosen soul. For that matter, misfortune may ennoble, but suffering, offence, ill-will, destroy. They are like poison."

"Did you hate me much then?"

Marynia looked at him and answered, "I hated you so much that for whole days I thought of you only."

"Mashko has wit; he described this once thus to me: 'She would rather hate you than love me.'"

"Oi! that I would rather, is true."

Thus conversing, they reached the house. Pan Stanislav had time then to unroll his parchment hour-glass and show it to Marynia; but the idea did not please her. She looked on marriage not only from the point of view of the heart, but of religion. "With such things there is no jesting," said she; and after a while she confessed to Pan Stanislav that she was offended with Bukatski.

After dinner Bukatski came. During those few months of his stay in Italy he had become still thinner, which was a proof against the efficacy of "chianti" for catarrh of the stomach. His nose, with its thinness, reminded one of a knife-edge; his humorous face, smiling with irony, had become, as it were, porcelain, and was no larger than the fist of a grown man. He was related both to Pan Stanislav and Marynia; hence he said what he pleased in their presence. From the threshold almost, he declared to them that, in view of the increasing number of mental deviations in the world at present, he could only regret, but did not wonder, that they were affianced. He had come, it is true, in the hope that he would be able to save them, but he saw now that he was late, and that nothing was left but resignation. Marynia was indignant on hearing this; but Pan Stanislav, who loved him, said,--

"Preserve thy conceit for the wedding speech, for thou must make one; and now tell us how our professor is."

"He has grown disturbed in mind seriously," replied Bukatski.

"Do not jest in that way," said Marynia.

"And so much without cause," added Pan Stanislav.

But Bukatski continued, with equal seriousness: "Professor Vaskovski is disturbed in mind, and here are my proofs for you: First, he walks through Rome without a cap, or rather, he walked, for he is in Perugia at present; second, he attacked a refined young English lady, and proved to her that the English are Christians in private life only,--that the relations of England to Ireland are not Christian; third, he is printing a pamphlet, in which he shows that the mission of reviving and renewing history with the spirit of Christ is committed to the youngest of the Aryans. Confess that these are proofs."

"We knew these ways before his departure; if nothing more threatens the professor, we hope to see him in good health."

"He does not think of returning."

Pan Stanislav took out his note-book, wrote some words with a pencil, and, giving them to Marynia, said,--

"Read, and tell me if that is good."

"If thou write in my presence, I withdraw," said Bukatski.

"No, no! this is no secret."

Marynia became as red as a cherry from delight, and, as if not wishing to believe her eyes, asked,--

"Is that true? It is not."

"That depends on you," answered Pan Stanislav.

"Ah, Pan Stas! I did not even dream of that. I must tell papa. I must."

And she ran out of the room.

"If I were a poet, I would hang myself," said Bukatski.

"Why?"

"For if a couple of words, jotted down by the hand of a partner in the house of Bigiel and Company, can produce more impression than the most beautiful sonnet, it is better, to be a miller boy than a poet."

But Marynia, in the rapture of her joy, forgot the notebook, so Pan Stanislav showed it to Bukatski, saying, "Read."

Bukatski read:--

"After the wedding Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples. Is that well?"

"Then it's a journey to Italy?"

"Yes. Imagine, she has not been abroad in her life; and Italy has always seemed to her an enchanted land, which she has not even dreamed of seeing. That is an immense delight for her; and what the deuce wonder is there, if I think out a little pleasure for her?"

"Love and Italy! O God, how many times Thou hast looked on that! All that love is as old as the world."

"Not true! Fall in love, and see if thou'lt find something new in it."

"My beloved friend, the question is not in this, that I do not love yet, but in this,--that I love no longer. Years ago I dug that sphinx out of the sand, and it is no longer a riddle to me."

"Bukatski, get married."

"I cannot. My sight is too faint, and my stomach too weak."

"What hindrance in that?"

"Oh, seest thou, a woman is like a sheet of paper. An angel writes on one side, a devil on the other; the paper is cut through, the words blend, and such a hash is made that I can neither read nor digest it."

"To live all thy life on conceits!"

"I shall die, as well as thou, who art marrying. It seems to us that we think of death, but it thinks more of us."

At that moment Marynia came in with her father, who embraced Pan Stanislav, and said,--

"Marynia tells me that 't is thy wish to go to Italy after the wedding."

"If my future lady will consent."

"Thy future lady will not only consent," answered Marynia, "but she has lost her head from delight, and wants to jump through the room, as if she were ten years of age."

To which Plavitski answered, "If the cross of a solitary old man can be of use in your distant journey, I will bless you."

And he raised his eyes and his hand toward heaven, to the unspeakable delight of Bukatski; but Marynia drew down the raised hand, and, kissing it, said with laughter,--

"There will be time for that, papa; we are going away only after the wedding."

"And, speaking plainly," added Bukatski, "then there will be a buying of tickets, and giving baggage to be weighed, and starting,--nothing more."

To this Plavitski turned to the cynic, and said, with a certain unction,--

"Have you come to this,--that you look on the blessing of a lonely old man and a father as superfluous?"

Bukatski, instead of an answer, embraced Plavitski, kissed him near the waistcoat, and said,--

"But would the 'lonely old man' not play piquet, so as to let those two mad heads talk themselves out?"

"But with a rubicon?" asked Plavitski.

"With anything you like." Then he turned to the young couple: "Hire me as a guide to Italy."

"I do not think of it," answered Pan Stanislav. "I have been in Belgium and France, no farther. Italy I know not; but I want to see what will interest us, not what may interest thee. I have seen men such as thou art, and I know that through over-refinement they go so far that they love not art, but their own knowledge of it."

Here Pan Stanislav continued the talk with Marynia.

"Yes, they go so far that they lose the feeling of great, simple art, and seek something to occupy their sated taste, and exhibit their critical knowledge. They do not see trees; they search simply for knots. The greatest things which we are going to admire do not concern them, but some of the smallest things, of which no one has heard; they dig names out of obscurity, occupy themselves in one way or another, persuade themselves and others that things inferior and of less use surpass in interest the better and more perfect. Under his guidance we might not see whole churches, but we might see various things which would have to be looked at through cracks. I call all this surfeit, abuse, over-refinement, and we are simply people."

Marynia looked at him with pride, as if she would say, "Oh, that is what is called speaking!" Her pride increased when Bukatski said,--

"Thou art quite right."

But she was indignant when he added,--

"And if thou wert not right, I could not win before the tribunal."

"I beg pardon," said Marynia; "I am not blinded in any way."

"But I am not an art critic at all."

"On the contrary, you are."

"If I am, then, I declare that knowledge embraces a greater number of details, but does not prevent a love of great art; and believe not Pan Stanislav, but me."

"No; I prefer to believe him."

"That was to be foreseen."

Marynia looked now at one, now at the other, with a somewhat anxious face. Meanwhile Plavitski came with cards. The betrothed walked through the rooms hand in hand; Bukatski began to be wearied, and grew more and more so. Toward the end of the evening the humor which animated him died out; his small face became still smaller, his nose sharper, and he looked like a dried leaf. When he went out with Pan Stanislav, the latter inquired,--

"Somehow thou wert not so vivacious?"

"I am like a machine: while I have fuel within, I move; but in the evening, when the morning supply is exhausted, I stop."

Pan Stanislav looked at him carefully. "What is thy fuel?"

"There are various kinds of coal. Come to me: I will give thee a cup of good coffee; that will enliven us."

"Listen! this is a delicate question, but some one told me that thou hast been taking morphine this long time."

"For a very short time," answered Bukatski; "if thou could only know what horizons it opens."

"And it kills--Fear God!"

"And kills! Tell me sincerely, has this ever occurred to thee, that it is possible to have a yearning for death?"

"No; I understand just the opposite."

"But I will give thee neither morphine nor opium," said Bukatski, at length; "only good coffee and a bottle of honest Bordeaux. That will be an innocent orgy."

After some time they arrived at Bukatski's. It was the dwelling of a man of real wealth, seemingly, somewhat uninhabited, but full of small things connected with art and pictures and drawings. Lamps were burning in a number of rooms, for Bukatski could not endure darkness, even in time of sleep.

The "Bordeaux" was found promptly, and under the machine for coffee a blue flame was soon burning. Bukatski stretched himself on the sofa, and said, all at once,--

"Perhaps thou wilt not admit, since thou seest me such a filigree, that I have no fear of death."

"This one thing I have at times admitted, that thou art jesting and jesting, deceiving thyself and others, while really the joke is not in thee, and this is all artificial."

"The folly of people amuses me somewhat."

"But if thou think thyself wise, why arrange life so vainly?" Here Pan Stanislav looked around on bric-à-brac, on pictures, and added, "In all this surrounding thou art still living vainly."

"Vainly enough."

"Thou art of those who pretend. What a disease in this society! Thou art posing, and that is the whole question."

"Sometimes. But, for that matter, it becomes natural."

Under the influence of "Bordeaux" Bukatski grew animated gradually, and became more talkative, though cheerfulness did not return to him.

"Seest thou," said he, "one thing,--I do not pretend. All which I myself could tell, or which another could tell me, I have thought out, and said long since to my soul. I lead the most stupid and the vainest life possible. Around me is immense nothingness, which I fear, and which I fence out with this lumber which thou seest in this room; I do this so as to fear less. Not to fear death is another thing, for after death there are neither feelings nor thoughts. I shall become, then, a part also of nothingness; but to feel it, while one is alive, to know of it, to give account to one's self of it, as God lives, there can be nothing more abject. Moreover, the condition of my health is really bad, and takes from me every energy. I have no fuel in myself, therefore I add it. There is less in this of posing and pretending than thou wilt admit. When I have given myself fuel, I take life in its humorous aspect; I follow the example of the sick man, who lies on the side on which he lies with most comfort. For me there is most comfort thus. That the position is artificial, I admit; every other, however, would be more painful. And see, the subject is exhausted."

"If thou would undertake some work."

"Give me peace. To begin with, I know a multitude of things, but I don't understand anything; second, I am sick; third, tell a paralytic to walk a good deal when he cannot use his legs. The subject is exhausted! Drink that wine there, and let us talk about thee. That is a good lady, Panna Plavitski; and thou art doing well to marry her. What I said to thee there in the daytime does not count. She is a good lady, and loves thee."

Here Bukatski, enlivened and roused evidently by the wine, began to speak hurriedly.

"What I say in the daytime does not count. Now it is night; let us drink wine, and a moment of more sincerity comes. Dost wish more wine, or coffee? I like this odor; one should mix Mocha and Ceylon in equal parts. Now comes a time of more sincerity! Knowest thou what I think at bottom? I have no clear idea of what happiness fame may give, for I do not possess it; and since the Ephesian temple is fired, there is no opening to fame before me. I admit, however, so, to myself, that the amount of it might be eaten by a mouse, not merely on an empty stomach, but after a good meal in a pantry. But I know what property is for I have a little of it; I know what travelling is, for I have wandered; I know what freedom is, for I am free; I know what women are--oi, devil take it!--too well, and I know what books are. Besides, in this chamber, I have a few pictures, a few drawings, a little porcelain. Now listen to what I will say to thee: All this is nothing; all is vanity, folly, dust, in comparison with one heart which loves. This is the result of my observations; only I have come to it at the end, while normal men reach it at the beginning."

Here he began to stir the coffee feverishly with a spoon; and Pan Stanislav, who was very lively, sprang up and said,--

"And thou, O beast! what didst thou say some months since,--that thou wert going to Italy because there no one loved thee, and thou didst love no one? Dost remember? Thou'lt deny, perhaps."

"But what did I say this afternoon to thy betrothed? That thou and she had gone mad; and now I say that thou art doing well. Dost wish logic of me? To talk and to say something are two different things. But now I am more sincere, for I have drunk half a bottle of wine."

Pan Stanislav began to walk through the room and repeat: "But, as God lives, it is fabulous! See what the root of the matter is, and what they all say when cornered."

"To love is good, but there is something still better,--that is, to be loved. There is nothing above that! As to me, I would give for it all these; but it is not worth while to talk of me. Life is a comedy badly written, and without talent: even that which pains terribly is sometimes like a poor melodrama; but in life, if there be anything good, it is to be loved. Imagine to thyself, I have not known that, and thou hast found it without seeking."

"Do not say so, for thou knowest not how it came to me."

"I know; Vaskovski told me. That, however, is all one. The question is this,--thou hast known how to value it."

"Well, what dost thou wish? I understand that I am loved a little; hence I marry, and that is the end of the matter."

Thereupon Bukatski put his hand on Pan Stanislav's shoulder.

"No, Polanyetski; I am a fool in respect to myself, but not a bad observer of what is passing around me. That is not the end, but the beginning. Most men say, as thou hast, 'I marry,--that is the end;' and most men deceive themselves."

"That philosophy I do not understand."

"But thou seest what the question is? It is not enough to take a woman; a man should give himself to her also, and should feel that he does so. Dost understand?"

"Not greatly."

"Well, thou art feigning simplicity. She should not only feel herself owned, but an owner. A soul for a soul! otherwise a life may be lost. Marriages are good or bad. Mashko's will be bad for twenty reasons, and among others for this, of which I wish to speak."

"He is of another opinion. But, as God lives, it is a pity that thou art not married, since thou hast such a sound understanding of how married life should be."

"If to understand and to act according to that understanding were the same, there would not be the various, very various events, from which the bones ache in all of us. For that matter, imagine me marrying."

Here Bukatski began to laugh with his thin little voice. Joyfulness returned to him on a sudden, and with it the vision of things on the comic side.

"Thou wilt be ridiculous; but what should I be? Something to split one's sides at. What a moment that is! Thou wilt see in two weeks. For instance, how thou wilt dress for church. Here, love, beating of the heart, solemn thoughts, a new epoch in life; there, the gardener, with flowers, a dress-coat, lost studs, the tying of a cravat, the drawing on of patent-leather boots,--all at one time, one chaos, one confusion. Deliver me, angels of paradise! I have compassion on thee, my dear friend; and do thou, I beg, not take seriously what I say. There is a new moon now, and I have a mania for uttering commonplace sentiment at the new moon. All folly!--the new moon, nothing more! I have grown as soft-hearted as a ewe who has lost her first lamb; and may the cough split me, if I haven't uttered commonplace!"

But Pan Stanislav attacked him: "I have seen many vain things; but knowest thou what seems to me vainest in thee and those like thee? Thou and they, who absolve yourselves from everything, recognize nothing above you, and fear like fire every honest truth, for the one reason that some one might sometime declare it. How bad this is words cannot tell. As to thee, my dear friend, thou wert sincerer a while since than now. Again, thou'rt a poodle, dancing on two legs; but I tell thee that ten like thee could not show me that I have not won a great prize in the lottery."

He took farewell of Bukatski with a certain anger; on the road home, however, he grew pacified and repeated continually: "See where the truth is; see what Mashko, and even Bukatski, says, when ready to be sincere; but I have won simply a great prize, and I will not waste what I have won."

When he entered his lodgings and saw Litka's photograph, he exclaimed, "My dearest kitten!" Up to the moment of sleeping he thought of Marynia with pleasure, and with the calmness of a man who feels that some great problem of life has been settled decisively, and settled well. For, in spite of Bukatski's words, he was convinced that, since he was going to marry, all would be decided and ended by that one act.

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Chapter XXX

The "catastrophe," as Bukatski called it, came at last. Pan Stanislav learned by experience that if in life there are many days in which a man cannot seize his own thoughts, to such belong above all the day of his marriage. At times a number of these thoughts circled in his brain at one moment, and were so indefinite, that, speaking accurately, they were rather unconscious impressions than thoughts. He felt that a new epoch in life was beginning, that he was assuming great obligations which he ought to fulfil conscientiously and seriously; and at the same time, but exactly at the same time, he wondered that the carriage wasn't coming yet, and expressed his astonishment in the form of a threat: "If those scoundrels are late, I'll break their necks for them." At moments a solemn, and, as it were, noble fear of that future for which he had assumed responsibility was mastering him; he felt within him a certain elevation, and in this feeling of elevation he began to lather his beard, and he thought whether on such an exceptional day it would not be exceptionally worth while to bring in a barber to his somewhat dishevelled hair. Marynia at the same time was at the basis of all his impressions. He saw her, as if present. He thought: "At this moment, she too is dressing, she is standing in her chamber in front of the mirror, she is talking to her maid, her soul is flying toward me, and her heart beats unquietly." That instant tenderness seized him and he said to himself, "But have no fear, honest soul, for, as God lives, I will not wrong thee;" and he saw himself in the future, kind, considerate, so that he began to look with a certain emotion at the patent-leather boots standing near the armchair, on which his wedding-suit was lying. He repeated from time to time too, "If to marry, then marry!" He said to himself that he was stupid to hesitate, for another such Marynia there was not on earth; he felt that he loved her, and thought at the same time that the weather was not bad, but that perhaps rain might fall; that it might be cold in the Church of the Visitation; that in an hour he would be kneeling by Marynia, that a white necktie is safer knotted than pinned; that marriage is indeed the most important ceremony in life; that there is in it something sacred, and that one must not lose one's head anyhow, for in an hour it will be over; to-morrow they will depart, and then the normal quiet life of husband and wife will begin.

These thoughts, however, flew away at moments like a flock of sparrows, into which some one has fired from behind a hedge suddenly, and it grew empty in Pan Stanislav's head. Then phrases of this kind came to his lips mechanically: "The eighth of April--to-morrow will be Wednesday! to-morrow will be Wednesday! my watch! to-morrow will be Wednesday!" Later he roused himself, repeated, "One must be an idiot!" and the scattered birds flew back again in a whole flock to his head, and began to whirl around in it.

Meanwhile Abdulski, the agent of the house of Polanyetski, Bigiel, and Company came in. He was to be the second groomsman, with Bukatski as first. Being a Tartar by origin and a man of dark complexion, though good-looking, he seemed so handsome in the dress-coat and white cravat that Pan Stanislav expressed the hope that surely he would marry soon. Abdulski answered,--

"The soul would to paradise;" then he commenced a pantomime, intended to represent the counting of money, and began to speak of the Bigiels. All their children wanted to be at the marriage. The Bigiels decided to take only the two elder ones; from this arose disagreements and difference of opinion, expressed on Pani Bigiel's side by means of slaps. Pan Stanislav, who was a great children's man, was exceedingly indignant at this, and said,--

"I'll play a trick on the Bigiels. Have they gone already?"

"They were just going."

"That is well; I will run in there on the way to Plavitski's, take all the children, and pour them out before Pani Bigiel and my affianced."

Abdulski expressed the conviction that Pan Stanislav would not do so; but he merely confirmed him thereby in his plan all the more. In fact, when he entered the carriage, they drove for the children directly. The governess, knowing Pan Stanislav's relations with the family, dared not oppose him; and half an hour later, Pan Stanislav, to the great consternation of Pani Bigiel, entered Plavitski's lodgings at the head of a whole flock of little Bigiels, in their every-day clothing, with collars awry, hair disarranged for the greater part, and faces half happy, half frightened, and, hurrying up to Marynia, he said, kissing her hands already enclosed in white gloves,--

"They wanted to wrong the children. Say that I did well."

This proof of his kind heart entertained and pleased Marynia; hence she was glad from her whole soul to see the children, and even glad of this,--that the assembled guests considered her future husband an original,--and glad because Pani Bigiel, straightening the crooked collars hurriedly, said in her worry,--

"What's to be done with such a madman?"

Somewhat of this opinion too was old Plavitski. But Pan Stanislav and Marynia were occupied for the moment with each other so exclusively that everything else vanished from their eyes. The hearts of both beat a little unquietly. He looked at her with a certain admiration. All in white, from her slippers to her gloves, with a green wreath on her head, and a long veil, she seemed to him other than usual. There was in her something uncommonly solemn, as in the dead Litka. Pan Stanislav did not make, it is true, that comparison; but he felt that this white Marynia, if not more remote from him, made him hesitate more than she of yesterday, arrayed in her ordinary costume. Withal she seemed less comely than usual, for the wedding wreath is becoming to women only exceptionally, and, besides, disquiet and emotion reddened her face; which, with the white robe, seemed still redder than it was in reality. But a wonderful thing! Just this circumstance moved Pan Stanislav. In his heart, rather kind by its nature, there rose a certain feeling resembling compassion or tenderness. He understood that Marynia's heart must be panting then like a captive bird, and he began to calm her; to speak to her with such good and kind words that he was astonished himself where he could find them in such numbers, and how they came to him so easily. But they came to him easily just because of Marynia. It was to be seen that she gave herself to him with a panting of the heart, but also with confidence; that she gave him her heart, her soul, and her whole being, her whole life, and that not only for good, but for every moment of her life--and to the end of it. In this regard no shadow rose in Pan Stanislav's mind, and that certainty made him better at that moment, more sensitive and eloquent, than he was ordinarily. At last they held each the other's hand and looked into each other's eyes, not only with love, but with the greatest friendship and confidence. Both felt the double reality. Yet a few moments, and that future will begin. But now the thoughts of both began to grow clear; and that internal disquiet, from which they had not been free, yielded more and more and turned into a solemn concentration of thought, as the religious ceremony drew near. Pan Stanislav's thoughts did not fly apart like sparrows; there remained to him only a certain astonishment, as it were, that he with all his scepticism had such a feeling even of the religious significance of the act which was about to be accomplished. At heart he was not a sceptic. In his soul there was hidden even a certain yearning for religious sensations; and if he had not returned to them it was only through a loss of habit and through spiritual negligence. Scepticism, at most, had shaken the surface of his thoughts, just as wind roughens the surface of water; the depths of which are still calm. He had lost, too, familiarity with forms; but to regain it was a work for the future and Marynia. Meanwhile this ceremony to which he must yield seemed to him so important, so full of solemnity and sacredness, that he was ready to proceed to it with bowed head.

But first he had another ceremony, which, equally solemn in itself, was disagreeable enough to Pan Stanislav; namely, to kneel before Pan Plavitski, whom he considered a fool, receive his blessing and hear an exhortation, which, as was known, Plavitski would not omit. Pan Stanislav had said in his mind, however, "Since I am to marry, I must pass through all which precedes it, and with a good face; little do I care what expression that monkey, Bukatski, will have at such moments." Therefore he knelt with all readiness at Marynia's side before her father, and listened to his blessing with an exhortation, which, by the way, was not long. Plavitski himself was moved really; his voice and his hands trembled; he was barely able to pronounce something in the nature of an adjuration to Pan Stanislav, not to prevent Marynia from coming even occasionally to pray at his grave before it was grown over completely with grass.

Finally, the solemnity of the moment affected Yozio Bigiel. Seeing Pan Plavitski's tears, seeing Marynia and Pan Stanislav on their knees (kneeling at Bigiel's house was not only a punishment, but frequently the beginning of more vigorous instruction), Yozio gave expression to his sympathy and fear by closing his eyes, opening his mouth, and breaking into as piercing a wail as he could utter. When the rest of the little Bigiels followed his example in great part, and all began to move, for the time to pass to the church had arrived, the grave of Pan Plavitski grown over with grass could not call forth an impression sufficiently elegiac.

Sitting in the carriage between Abdulski and Bukatski, Pan Stanislav hardly answered their questions in half words; he took no part in the conversation, but kept up a monologue with himself. He thought that in a couple of minutes that would come to pass of which he had been dreaming whole months; and which till the death of Litka he had desired with the greatest earnestness of his life. Here for the last time he was roused by a feeling of the difference between that past which not long since had vanished, and the present moment; but there was a difference. Formerly he strove and desired; to-day he only wished and consented. That thought pierced him like a shudder, for it shot through his head that perhaps there was lacking in his own personality that basis on which one may build. But he was a man able to keep his alarms in close bonds, and to scatter them to the four winds at a given moment. He said to himself, therefore: "First, there is no time to think of this; and second, reality does not answer always to imaginings; this is a simple thing." Then what Bukatski had said pushed again into his memory: "It is not enough to take, a man must give;" but he thought this a fabric of such fine threads that it had no existence whatever, and that life should be taken more simply, that there is no obligation to come to terms with preconceived theories. Here he repeated what he had said to himself frequently, "I marry, and that is the end." Then reality embraced him, or rather the present moment; he had nothing in his head but Marynia, the church, and the ceremony.

She on the way meanwhile implored God in silence to help her to make her husband happy; for herself she begged also a little happiness, being certain, moreover, that her dead mother would obtain that for her.

Then they went arm in arm between the lines of invited and curious people, seeing somewhat as through a mist lights gleaming in the distance on the altar, and at the sides faces known and unknown. Both saw more distinctly the face of Pani Emilia, who wore the white veil of a Sister of Charity, her eyes at once smiling and filled with tears. Litka came to the minds of both; and it occurred to them that it was precisely she who was conducting them to the altar. After a while they knelt down; before them was the priest, higher up the gleaming of the candles, the glitter of gold, and the holy face of the principal image. The ceremony commenced. They repeated after the priest the usual phrases of the marriage vow; and Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia's hand, was seized suddenly by emotion such as he had not expected, and such as he had not felt since his mother had brought him to first communion. He felt that that was not a mere every-day legal act, in virtue of which a man receives the right to a woman; but in that binding of hands, in that vow, there is present a certain mysterious power from beyond this world,--that it is simply God before whom the soul inclines and the heart trembles. The ears of both were struck then in the midst of silence by the solemn words, "Quod Deus junxit, homo non disjungat;" but Pan Stanislav felt that that Marynia whom he had taken becomes his body and blood, and a part of his soul, and that for her too he must be the same. That moment a chorus of voices in the choir burst out with "Veni Creator," and a few moments after the Polanyetskis went forth from the church. On the way out, the arms of Pani Emilia embraced Marynia once again: "May God bless you!" and when they drove to the wedding reception, she went to the cemetery to tell Litka the news, that Pan Stas was married that day to Marynia.

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Chapter XXXI

Two weeks later, in Venice, the doorkeeper of the Hotel Bauer gave Pan Stanislav a letter with the postmark of Warsaw. It was at the moment when he and his wife were entering a gondola to go to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, where on that day, the anniversary of her death, a Mass was to be offered for the soul of Marynia's mother. Pan Stanislav, who expected nothing important from Warsaw, put the letter in his pocket, and asked his wife,--

"But is it not a little too early for Mass?"

"It is; a whole half hour."

"Then perhaps it would please thee to go first to the Rialto?"

Marynia was always ready to go. Never having been abroad before, she simply lived in continual rapture, and it seemed to her that all which surrounded her was a dream. More than once, in the excess of her delight, she threw herself on her husband's neck, as if he had built Venice, as if she ought to thank him alone for its beauty. More than once she repeated,--

"I look and I see, but cannot believe that this is real."

So they went to the Rialto. There was little movement yet, because of the early hour; the water was as if sleeping, the day calm, clear, but not very bright,--one of those days in which the Grand Canal with all its beauty has the repose of a cemetery; the palaces seem deserted and forgotten, and in their motionless reflection in the water is that peculiar deep sadness of dead things. One looks at them then in silence, and as if in fear, lest by words the general repose may be broken.

Thus did Marynia look. But Pan Stanislav, less sensitive, remembered that he had a letter in his pocket, hence he drew it forth, and began to read. After a time he exclaimed,--

"Ah! Mashko is married; their wedding was three days after ours."

But Marynia, as if roused from a dream, inquired, while blinking, "What dost thou say?"

"I say, dreaming head, that Mashko's wedding is over."

She rested her head on his shoulder, and, looking into his eyes, inquired,--

"What is Mashko to me? I have my Stas."

Pan Stanislav smiled like a man who kindly permits himself to be loved, but does not wonder that he is loved; then he kissed his wife on the forehead, with a certain distraction, for the letter had begun to occupy him, and read on. All at once he sprang up, as if something had pricked him, and cried,--

"Oh, that is a real catastrophe!"

"What has happened?"

"Panna Kraslavski has a life annuity of nine thousand rubles, which her uncle left her; beyond that, not a copper."

"But that is a good deal."

"A good deal? Hear what Mashko writes:--

"'In view of this, my bankruptcy is an accomplished fact, and the declaration of my insolvency a question of time.'

"They deceived each other; dost understand? He counted on her property, and she on his."

"At least they have something to live on."

"They have something to live on; but Mashko has nothing with which to pay his debts, and that concerns us a little,--me, thee, and thy father. All may be lost."

Here Marynia was alarmed in earnest. "My Stas," said she, "perhaps thy presence is needed there; let us return, then. What a blow this will be to papa!"

"I will write Bigiel immediately to take my place, and save what is possible. Do not take this business to heart too much, my child. I have enough to buy a bit of bread for us both, and for thy father."

Marynia put her arms around his neck. "Thou, my good--With such a man one may be at rest."

"Besides, something will be saved. If Mashko finds credit, he will pay us; he may find a purchaser, too, for Kremen. He writes me to ask Bukatski to buy Kremen, and to persuade him to do so. Bukatski is going to Rome this evening, and I have invited him to lunch. I will ask him. He has a considerable fortune, and would have something to do. I am curious to know how Mashko's life will develop. He writes at the end of the letter:

"'I discovered the condition of affairs to my wife; she bore herself passively, but her mother is wild with indignation.' #/

"Finally he adds that at last he has fallen in love with his wife, and that if they should separate, it would be the greatest unhappiness in life for him. That lyric tale gives me little concern; but I am curious as to how all this will end."

"She will not desert him," said Marynia.

"I do not know; I thought myself once that she would not, but I like to contradict. Wilt thou bet?"

"No; for I do not wish to win. Thou ugly man, thou hast no knowledge of women."

"On the contrary, I know them; and I know them because all are not like this little one who is sailing now in a gondola."

"In a gondola in Venice, with her Stas," answered Marynia.

They were now at the church. When they went from Mass to the hotel, they found Bukatski, dressed for the road, in a cross-barred gray suit,--which, on his frail body, seemed too large,--in yellow shoes and a fantastic cravat, tied as fancifully as carelessly.

"I am going to-day," said he, after he had greeted Marynia. "Do you command me to prepare a dwelling in Florence for you? I can engage some palace."

"Then you will halt on the road to Rome?"

"Yes. First, to give notice in the gallery of your coming, and to put a sofa on the stairs for you; second, I halt for black coffee, which is bad throughout Italy in general, but in Florence, at Giacosa's, Via Tornabuoni, it is exceptionally excellent. That, however, is the one thing of value in Florence."

"What pleasure is there for you in always saying something different from what you think?"

"But I am thinking seriously of engaging nice lodgings on Lung-Arno for you."

"We shall stop at Verona."

"For Romeo and Juliet? Of course; of course! Go now; later you would shrug your shoulders if you thought of them. In a month it would be too late for you to go, perhaps."

Marynia started up at him like a cat; then, turning to her husband, said,--

"Stas, don't let this gentleman annoy me so!"

"Well," answered Pan Stanislav, "I will cut his head off, but after lunch."

Bukatski began to declaim:--

"It is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierc'd the fearful hollow of thine ear."

Then, turning to Marynia, he inquired, "Has Pan Stanislav written a sonnet for you?"

"No."

"Oh, that is a bad sign. You have a balcony on the street; has it never come once to his head to stand under your balcony with a guitar?"

"No."

"Oh, very bad!"

"But there is no place to stand here, for there is water."

"He might go in a gondola. With us it is different, you see; but here in Italy the air is such that if a man is in love really, he either writes sonnets, or stands under a balcony with a guitar. It is a thing perfectly certain, resulting from the geographical position, the currents of the sea, the chemical make-up of the air and the water: if a man does not write sonnets, or stand out of doors with a guitar, surely he is not in love. I can bring you very famous books on this subject."

"It seems that I shall be driven to cut his head off before lunch," said Pan Stanislav.

The execution, however, did not come, for the reason that it was just time for lunch. They sat down at a separate table, but in the same hall was a general one, which for Marynia, whom everything interested, was a source of pleasure, too, for she saw real English people. This made on her such an impression as if she had gone to some land of exotics; for since Kremen is Kremen, not one of its inhabitants had undertaken a similar journey. For Bukatski, and even Pan Stanislav, her delight was a source of endless jokes, but also of genuine pleasure. The first said that she reminded him of his youth; the second called his wife a "field daisy," and said that one was not sorry to show the world to a woman like her. Bukatski noticed, however, that the "field daisy" had much feeling for art and much honesty. Many things were known to her from books or pictures; not knowing others, she acknowledged this openly, but in her expressions there was nothing artificial or affected. When a thing touched her heart, her delight had no bounds, so that her eyes became moist. At one time Bukatski jested with her unmercifully; at another he persuaded her that all the connoisseurs, so called, have a nail in the head, and that she, as a sensitive and refined nature, and so far unspoiled, was for him of the greatest importance in questions of art; she would be still more important if she were ten years of age.

At lunch they did not talk of art, because Pan Stanislav remembered his news from Warsaw, and said,--

"I had a letter from Mashko."

"And I, too," answered Bukatski.

"And thou? They must be hurried there; Mashko must be pressed in real earnest. Is the question known to thee?"

"He persuades me, or rather, he implores me, to buy--dost thou know what?"

Bukatski avoided Kremen, knowing well what trouble it had caused, and was silent through delicacy toward Marynia.

But Pan Stanislav, understanding his intention, said,--

"Oh, my God! Once we avoided that name as a sore spot, but now, before my wife, it is something different. It is hard to be tied up a whole lifetime."

Bukatski looked at him quickly; Marynia blushed a little, and said,--

"Stas is perfectly right. Besides, I know that it is a question of Kremen."

"Yes, it is of Kremen."

"Well, and what?" asked Pan Stanislav.

"I should not buy it even because of this,--that the lady might have the impression that people are tossing it about like a ball."

"If I do not think at all of Kremen?" said Marynia, blushing still more. She looked at her husband; and he nodded in sign of praise and satisfaction.

"That is a proof," answered he, "that thou art a child of good judgment."

"At the same time," continued Marynia, "if Pan Mashko does not hold out, Kremen will either be divided, or go into usurers' hands, and that to me would be disagreeable."

"Ah, ha!" said Bukatski, "but if you do not think at all of Kremen?"

Marynia looked again at her husband, and this time with alarm; he began to laugh, however.

"Marynia is caught," said he.

Then he turned to Bukatski. "Evidently Mashko looks on thee as the one plank of salvation."

"But I am not a plank; look at me! I am a straw, rather. The man who wishes to save himself by such a straw will drown. Mashko has said himself more than once to me, 'Thou hast blunted nerves.' Perhaps I have; but I need strong impressions for that very reason. If I were to help Mashko, he would work himself free, stand on his feet, give himself out as a lord still further; his wife would personate a great lady, they would be terribly comme il faut, and I should have the stupid comedy, which I have seen already, and which I have yawned at. If, on the other hand, I do not help him, he will be ruined, he will perish, something interesting will happen, unexpected events will come to pass, something tragic may result, which will occupy me more. Now, think, both of you, I must pay for a wretched comedy, and dearly; the tragedy I can have for nothing. How is a man to hesitate in this case?"

"Fi! how can you say such things?" exclaimed Marynia.

"Not only can I say them, but I shall write them to Mashko; besides, he has deceived me in the most unworthy manner."

"In what?"

"In what? In this, that I thought: 'Oh, that is a regular snob! that is material for a dark personage; that is a man really without heart or scruples!' Meanwhile, what comes out? That at bottom of his soul he has a certain honesty; that he wants to pay his creditors; that he is sorry for that puppet with red eyes; that he loves her; that for him separation from her would be a terrible catastrophe. He writes this to me himself most shamelessly. I give my word that in our society one can count on nothing. I will settle abroad, for I cannot endure this."

Now Marynia was angry in earnest.

"If you say such things, I shall beg to break relations with you."

But Pan Stanislav shrugged his shoulders, and added: "In fact, thy talk is ever on some conceit to amuse thyself and others, and never wilt thou think with judgment and in human fashion. Dost understand, I do not persuade thee to buy Kremen, and all the more because I might have a certain interest to do so; but there would be some occupation for thee there, something to do."

Here Bukatski began to laugh, and said after a while,--

"I told thee once that I like, above all, to do what pleases me, and that it pleases me most to do nothing; hence it is that doing nothing I do what pleases me most. If thou art wise, prove that I have uttered nonsense. Take the second case: Suppose me a buckwheat sower; that, however, simply passes imagination. I, for whom rain or fine weather is merely the question of choosing a cane or an umbrella, would have, in my old age, to stand on one leg, like a stork, and look to see whether it pleases the sun to shine, or the clouds to drop rain. I should have to tremble as to whether my wheat is likely to grow, or my rape-seed shed, or rot fall on the potatoes; whether I shall be able to stake my peas, or furnish his Worship of Dogweevil as many bushels as I have promised; whether my plough-horses have the glanders, and my sheep the foot-rot. I should, in my old age, come to this,--that from blunting of faculties I would interject after every three words: 'Pan Benefactor,' or 'What is it that I wanted to say?' Voyons! pas si bête! I, a free man, should become a glebæ adscriptus, a 'Neighbor,' a 'Brother Lata,' a 'Pan Matsyei,' a 'Lechit.'"[5]

Here, roused a little by the wine, he began to quote in an undertone the words of Slaz in "Lilla Weneda":--

"Am I a Lechit? What does this mean? Are boorishness, Drunkenness, gluttony, gazing from my eyes With the seven deadly sins, a passion for uproar, Pickled cucumbers, and escutcheons?"

"Argue with him," said Pan Stanislav, "especially when at the root of the matter he is partly right."

But Marynia, who as soon as Bukatski had begun to speak of work in the country, grew somewhat thoughtful, shook thoughtfulness now from her forehead, and said,--

"When papa was not well,--and never in Kremen has he been so well as recently,--I saved him a little in management, and later that work became for me a habit. Though God knows there was no lack of troubles, it gave me a pleasure that I cannot describe. But I did not understand the cause of this till Pan Yamish explained it. 'That,' said he, 'is the real work on which the world stands, and every other is either the continuation of it, or something artificial.' Later I understood even things which he did not explain. More than once, when I went out to the fields in spring, and saw that all things were growing, I felt that my heart, too, was growing with them. And now I know why that is: In all other relations that a man holds there may be deceit, but the land is truth. It is impossible to deceive the land; it either gives, or gives not, but it does not deceive. Therefore land is loved, as truth; and because one loves it, it teaches one to love. And the dew falls not only on grain, and on meadows, but on the soul, as it were; and a man becomes better, for he has to deal with truth, and he loves,--that is, he is nearer God. Therefore I loved my Kremen so much."

Here Marynia became frightened at her own speech, and at this, what would "Stas" think; at the same time reminiscences had roused her. All this was reflected in her eyes as the dawn, and on her young face; and she was herself like the dawn.

Bukatski looked at her as he would at some unknown newly discovered master-piece of the Venetian school; then he closed his eyes, and hid half of his small face in his enormous fantastic cravat, and whispered,--

"Délicieuse!"

Then, thrusting forth his chin from his cravat, he said,--

"You are perfectly right."

But the logical woman would not let herself be set aside by a compliment.

"If I am right, you are not."

"That is another matter. You are right because it becomes you; a woman in that case is always right."

"Stas!" said Marynia, turning to her husband. But there was so much charm in the woman at that moment, that he also looked on her with delight, his eyes smiled, his nostrils moved with a quick motion; for a moment he covered her hand with his, and said,--

"Oh, child, child!"

Then he inclined to her, and whispered,--

"If we were not in this hall, I would kiss those dear eyes and that mouth."

And, speaking thus, Pan Stanislav made a great mistake, for at that moment it was not enough to feel the physical charm of Marynia, to be roused at the color of her face, her eyes, or her mouth, but it was necessary to feel the soul in her; to what an extent he did not feel it was shown by his fondling words, "O child, child!" She was for him at that moment only a charming child-woman, and he thought of nothing else.

Just then coffee was brought. To end the conversation, Pan Stanislav said,--

"So Mashko has come out a lover, and that after marriage."

Bukatski swallowed a cup of boiling coffee, and answered, "In this is the stupidity, that Mashko is the man, not in this,--that the love was after marriage. I have not said anything sensible. If I have, I beg pardon most earnestly, and promise not to do so a second time. I have burned my tongue evidently with the hot coffee! I drink it so hot because they tell me that it is good for headache; and my head aches, aches."

Here Bukatski placed his palm on his neck and the back of his head, and blinked, remaining motionless for a few seconds.

"I am talking and talking," said he, then, "but my head aches. I should have gone to my lodgings, but Svirski, the artist, is to come to me here. We are going to Florence together; he is a famous painter in water-colors, really famous. No one has brought greater force out of water-colors. But see, he is just coming!"

In fact, Svirski, as if summoned by a spell, appeared in the hall, and began to look around for Bukatski. Espying him at last, he approached the table.

He was a robust, short man, with hair as black as if he were an Italian. He had an ordinary face, but a wise, deep glance, and also mild. While walking, he swayed a little because of his wide hips.

Bukatski presented him to Marynia in the following words,--

"I present to you Pan Svirski, a painter, of the genus genius, who not only received his talent, but had the most happy idea of not burying it, which he might have done as well, and with equal benefit to mankind, as any other man. But he preferred to fill the world with water-colors and with fame."

Svirski smiled, showing two rows of teeth, wonderfully small, but white as ivory, and said,--

"I wish that were true."

"And I will tell you why he did not bury his talent," continued Bukatski; "his reasons were so parochial that it would be a shame for any decent artist to avow them. He loves Pognembin, which is somewhere in Poznan, or thereabouts, and he loves it because he was born there. If he had been born in Guadeloupe he would have loved Guadeloupe, and love for Guadeloupe would have saved him in life also. This man makes me indignant; and will the lady tell me if I am not right?"

To this Marynia answered, raising her blue eyes to Svirski, "Pan Bukatski is not so bad as he seems, for he has said everything that is good of you."

"I shall die with my qualities known," whispered Bukatski.

Svirski was looking meanwhile at Marynia, as only an artist can permit himself to look at a woman, and not offend. Interest was evident in his eyes, and at last he muttered,--

"To see such a head all at once, here in Venice, is a genuine surprise."

"What?" asked Bukatski.

"I say, that the lady is of a wonderfully well-defined type. Oh, this, for example" (here he drew a line with his thumb along his nose, mouth, and chin). "And also what purity of outline!"

"Well, isn't it true?" asked Pan Stanislav, with excitement. "I have always thought the same."

"I will lay a wager that thou hast never thought of it," retorted Bukatski.

But Pan Stanislav was glad and proud of that interest which Marynia roused in the famous artist; hence he said,--

"If it would give you any pleasure to paint her portrait, it would give me much more to have it."

"From the soul of my heart," answered Svirski, with simplicity; "but I am going to Rome to-day. There I have begun the portrait of Pani Osnovski."

"And we shall be in Rome no later than ten days from now."

"Then we are agreed."

Marynia returned thanks, blushing to her ears. But Bukatski began to take farewell, and drew Svirski after him. When they had gone out, he said,--

"We have time yet. Come to Floriani's for a glass of cognac."

Bukatski did not know how to drink, and didn't like spirits; but since he had begun to take morphine, he drank more than he could endure, because some one had told him that one neutralized the other.

"What a delightful couple those Polanyetskis are!" said Svirski.

"They are not long married."

"It is evident that he loves her immensely. When I praised her, his eyes were smiling, and he rose as if on yeast."

"She loves him a hundred times more."

"What knowledge hast thou in such matters?"

Bukatski did not answer; he only raised his pointed nose, and said, as if to himself,--

"Oh, marriage and love have disgusted me; for it is always profit on one side, and sacrifice on the other. Polanyetski is a good man, but what of that? She has just as much sense, just as much character, but she loves more; therefore life will fix itself for them in this way,--he will be the sun, he will be gracious enough to shine, to warm, will consider her as his property, as a planet made to circle around him. All this is indicated to-day. She has entered his sphere. There is in him a certain self-confidence which angers me. He will have her with an income, but she will have him alone without an income. He will permit himself to love, considering his love as virtue, kindness, and favor; she will love, considering her love as a happiness and a duty. Look, if you please, at him, the divine, the resplendent! I want to go back and tell them this, in the hope that they will be less happy."

Meanwhile the two men had taken seats in front of Floriani's, and soon cognac was brought to them. Svirski thought some time over the Polanyetskis, and then inquired,--

"But if the position is pleasant for her?"

"I know that she has short sight; she might be pleased quite as well to wear glasses."

"Go to the deuce! glasses on a face like hers--"

"This makes thee indignant; but the other makes me--"

"Yes, for thou hast a kind of coffee-mill in thy head, which grinds, and grinds everything till it grinds it into fine dust. What dost thou want of love in general?"

"I, of love? I want nothing of love! Let the devil take him who wants anything of love! I have sharp pains in my shoulder-blades from it. But if I were other than I am, if I had to describe what love ought to be, if I wanted anything of it, then I should wish--"

"What? hop! jump over!"

"That it were composed in equal parts of desire and reverence."

Then he drank a glass of cognac, and added after a while,--

"It seems to me that I have said something which may be wise, if it is not foolish. But it is all one to me."

"No! it is not foolish."

"As God lives, it is all one to me."

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Polish noble.

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