The Argonauts

E >> Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa) >> The Argonauts

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"Naturally, before the exhibition, so as to begin action before
it is over. In the question of capital--"

"I will sell my personal property, which has some value, and
incur another debt," said Maryan, carelessly.

The baron halted; he thought awhile; his faded face took on that
expression of roguery which the French call polissonnerie;
joyousness seized him.

"We will shoot off!" cried he; and he made a movement with his
foot like that which a street-sweeper makes to catch a bark shoe
thrown up in the air.

Maryan rose, shook himself out of his lethargy, and said, almost
with delight:

"It is an idea. To America!"

Then from the abyss of the immensely deep and broad cathedra
Kranitski's voice was heard, orphan-like, timid:

"But will you take me with you, my dears? When you shoot off you
will take me with you, will you not?"

There was no answer. The baron was sitting already before the
organ and had begun to play some grand church composition; in the
dignified sound of that music Tristan made a knightly bow to
Isolde, and the "Triumph of Death," with its dark outline, was
reflected on the background of Alberich's white habit, while the
saints painted with golden haloes on the windows clasped their
pale hands above their bright robes.

CHAPTER VII

Baron Emil said at times to Irene:

"You have the aristocracy of intellect. Your mind is original.
There is in you much delicate irony. You are not deceived with
painted pots."

These words caused her pleasure of the same sort as that which
the praise of a mountaineer causes an inexperienced traveller
when he tells him that he knows how to climb neck-breaking
summits. Much irony had flowed into her mind from certain
mysterious sides of her life. But she had become conscious of
this now for the first time, under the guidance and influence of
the baron. He awed her by the originality of his language and
ideas, by the absolute sincerity of his disbelief, and his
egotism. During childhood she had seen a mask which astounded
her, and struck her in the very heart. Thenceforth everything
seemed better to her and more agreeable than masks. Moreover, the
baron was to her thinking a finished aesthete, an excellent judge
in the whole realm of art, and in this regard she did not deceive
herself greatly. The opinions on art and philosophy, which he
proclaimed, interested her through their novelty, and the
expressions which he used purposely, though sometimes brutal and
verging on the gutter, roused her curiosity by their singularity
and insolence. She imitated him in speech; in his presence she
guarded her lips lest they might let something escape through
which she would earn the title of "shepherdess."

"You are very far from the Arcadian condition, in which I meet
people here at every step. You are intricate; you are like an
orchid, one stem of which has a flower in the form of a
butterfly, while the next seems like a death's head."

She interrupted him with a brief laugh:

"A butterfly is flat."

Her laugh had a sharp sound, for the cold gleam of the baron's
eyes fell on her boldly and persistently.

"No," contradicted he, "no; the combination of a death's head
with a butterfly makes a dissonance. That bites and sticks a new
pin in the soul."

"But the Greek harmony?" she inquired.

With a flattering smile, which conquered her, the baron answered:

"Never mention harmony. That is the milk with which babes were
nourished. We subsist on something else. You like game, do you
not? but only when it begins to decay. There is no good game,
except that which is rank. Very well, we subsist on a world in
decay. This is true, but you speak of that darned sock; namely,
harmony--ha! ha! ha! You think sometimes one way and sometimes
another. Your soul is full of bites! You are idyllic and also
satirical. You jeer at idyls, and still, at odd times, you yearn
for one somewhat. Have I touched the point accurately? Are my
words true?"

"True," answered Irene, dropping her eyelids.

She dropped her lids because she was ashamed of the discovery
which the baron had made in her, and for this cause as well, that
she felt his breath on her face, and caught the odor of certain
strange perfumes which came from him. His eyes sought hers and
strove to pour into them their cold gleam, which was also a
burning one. He strove to take her hand, but she withdrew it, and
he, with lowered, drawling, and somewhat nasal tones, said:

"You wish, and again you do not wish; you feel the cry of life in
you and try to turn it into a lyric song."

The cry of life! Over this phrase Irene halted later on, but
briefly, touched as she had been by premature knowledge, its
meaning became clear to her straightway. The baron, small,
fragile, with a faded face and irregular, was a master in calling
forth the "cry of life" in women. His manner with them was
exquisite, but also insolent. In his gray eyes, with the reddened
edges of their lids, he had a look which was hypnotising in its
persistence and cold fire. It resembled the glitter of
steel--pale and penetrating. In the manner in which he held the
hand of a woman and placed a kiss on it, in the glances with
which he seemed to tear her away from her shelter, in the
intonation given to certain words, was attained the primitiveness
of desire and conquest under cover of polished refinement. Amid
the tedium and dissatisfaction of ordinary and exercised
lovemakers this method seemed cynical, but bold and honest. It
might have been compared to the shaggy head of a beast sticking
out of a basket of heliotropes, which have ever the character of
sameness as has their odor. The head is ugly, but smells of a
cave and of troglodytes, which among common flowers of dull odor
lend it the charm of power and originality.

Irene thought at once of "great grandfatherliness;" when in
presence of the baron her nerves quivered like chords when
touched in a manner unknown up to that time. She asked herself:
"Am I in love?" But when he had gone this question called from
her a brief, ironical smile. She analyzed and criticised the
physical and moral personality of the baron with perfect
coolness, and at moments with a shade of contempt even.

A vibrio! This expression contained the conception of physical
and moral withering, almost the palpable picture of an existence
which merely quivers in space, and is barely capable of living.
In comparison with this picture she had a presentiment of some
wholesome, noble, splendid strength. Disgust for the baron began
to flow around her heart and rise to her lips with a taste that
was repulsive, and to her brain with a thought that was bitter:
Why is this world as it is? Why is it not different? But perhaps
it was different somewhere else, but not for her? She had ceased
to believe in an idyl. She had looked too long, and from too near
a point, at the tragedy and irony of things to preserve faith in
idyls. Maybe there were idyls somewhere, but not in the sphere
where she lived--they were not for her! To yearn for that which
perhaps did not exist at all, which most assuredly did not exist
for her! What a "rheumatism of thought" that would be! Her head,
with a Japanese knot of fiery hair on the top of it, bent down
low, for the stream of lead from her heart was rising. With a
movement usual to her she clasped her long hands, and, squeezing
them violently, thought:

"Well, what of it? I must in every case create some future, and
why should any other be better than this one? Here at least is
sincerity on both sides, and a just view of things."

As time passed she said to herself that what she felt for the
baron was love of a certain kind, and that at the foundation of
things there is no other love, and if there is any other kind it
does not signify much, for each kind passes quickly. She began in
general to attach less and less weight to that side of life, and
also life itself had for her a charm which was continually
decreasing. In the gloom of weariness, and the apathy into which
she was falling, that which connected her with the baron was like
a red electric lantern shining on a throng in the street and in
the darkness. It was not the bright sun, nor the silvery moon; it
was just that red lantern which, shining on a throng in the
street, enabled one to see many curious or brilliant objects.

She knew of Lili Kerth, and the role which she played as to the
world in general and the baron in particular. The baron in that
case, as in others, wore no mask; sometimes he accompanied Lili
Kerth to public promenades, and sometimes even showed himself
with her in a box at the theatre. That was in contradiction with
morals, especially in view of his relation with Irene; but
subjection to morals, would not that be standing guard over
graves, or the "darned sock?"

In this case Maryan, without knowing why, did not applaud his
friend.

"C'est crane, mais trop cochon," judged he, and he pouted a
little at the baron, but looked with curiosity at his sister,
also present in the theatre. Irene sat in her box as usual, calm
and full of distinction, a little formal, never charmed with
anything, or laughing at anything. As usual she conversed with
the baron between acts, till Maryan, looking at her, sneered, and
asked:

"How did your vis-a-vis please you?"

"Qui cette fille?" asked Irene, carelessly. "The color of her
hair is superb. Pure Venetian gold."

No feeling of offence, or modesty.

"Bravo!" said Maryan. And with comical solemnity in his voice he
added: "Dear sister, you have a new mentality altogether. You
have surpassed my expectations, and now I shall call you my true
sister."

Why? Was she to be naive in a theatre? She knew well that such
things were done everywhere, and they must exist in the life of
the baron. And, if they must exist, then let them be open, for
mysteries--Oh! she preferred anything to masks and mysteries.
Besides the question was mainly in this, that that history of the
baron and the famous singer of chansonettes did not concern her
in any way.

One evening outside the windows of the house began the twilight,
which was rather pale from snow. In the drawing-room sat Irene
amid the cold whiteness of sculpture, which adorned the walls,
and the reflection on polished furniture of blue watered-silk.
The young lady was seated at one of the windows on a high stool.
On the background of the window-pane, filled with the whitish
twilight, her figure seemed tall, with narrow shoulders, and her
profile somewhat too prolonged. Over this profile rose a knot of
fiery hair, and the whole figure reminded one of a statue of a
priestess, erect and smiling enigmatically. Her eyelids were
drooping, her long hands were clasped on her robe; but the smiles
wandering over her lips and ever changing, were not those of
satisfaction. She remembered that in recent days she had met the
baron offener than before. He strove more and more to see her--to
meet her. He simply pursued her--found her frequently in shops
which she visited with her mother, or alone. When he came he did
not shield himself with the excuse of chance, but said with his
usual sincerity:

"I willed to-day to see you, and I see you. I know how to will!"

This day she had barely entered the shop of a celebrated tailor
when he entered also, and immediately, with unusual animation,
began to tell her of his great project of going to America and
settling there for a long time, perhaps permanently. He was
roused by that idea; he was almost enthusiastic; the hope of new
scenes and impressions, perhaps great profits, had fired his
imagination. Of these last he spoke also to Irene.

"One must move, rouse courage, bring the nerves into action,
otherwise they may wither. One must conquer and win. He who does
not gain victories deserves the grave. Money is an object worthy
of conquest, for it opens the gates of life. William Morris is a
famous poet and artist, but he became a manufacturer. He
understood that contempt for industry is like many other things,
a painted pot. Men made this pot and poets painted it in
beautiful colors, then the poets died of hunger. America holds in
reserve new horizons."

He spoke long, and was astonished himself at his own enthusiasm.

"I thought," said he, "that I should never know enthusiasm, and I
supposed even that it was a rheumatism of thought. Meanwhile I
feel enthusiasm, yes, enthusiasm! And it pervades me with a
delightful shiver. Do you not share it? Are you not attracted, as
well as I, by distant perspectives, new horizons, 'the divine
vibrations of blue seas, the silences traversed by worlds, by
angels '--And plagiarizing he repeated the addition made by
Maryan: 'And by millions'?"

Yes, she was attracted. Not by the millions; she was too familiar
with them, but the distant perspectives, the new horizons, the
shoreless expanses of oceans, and the endless quiet of spaces
which in the twinkle of an eye were unfolded before her
imagination. The dull pain, and the gloomy disgust which tortured
her not long before, cried out: "Yes! yes! go, fly far, as far as
possible under new skies, among people of another nationality!
Go, fly, seek."

With a slight flush on her cheeks, which were delicate to the
highest degree, she told all this to the baron, whose crumpled,
faded face was gleaming with delight.

"You make me happy, really happy!" whispered he, and added:
"Command me to bow down before you; I will obey and bow down."

Meanwhile a door-bell was heard every moment in the great shop,
and a wave of people passing by reminded Irene of the reason why
she was there. She turned to an elegant apartment, in which a
flood of materials disposed on the furniture was waiting for her.
The baron had a knowledge of the wearing apparel of ladies; he
liked to speak of it; and more than once, with the accuracy of a
tailor, and the pleasure of an artist, he told of the original
and peculiar toilets seen in capitals. On this occasion, in the
tailor's apartment between great mirrors, in the flood of
unfolded materials, he said:

"I beg you not to dress according to pattern; I beg you not to
spoil my delight by forcing me to see on you any of the
ridiculous styles of this city. I meet no ladies here of subtle
taste. There is wealth, frequently there is even taste, but
common, according to pattern. For you it is necessary to think
out something new--something symbolic, or rather something which
symbolizes. A woman's dress should be a symbol of her
individuality. For you it is necessary to think out a dress which
would symbolize aristocracy of soul and body."

And he fell to thinking out; and they both fell to thinking out.
They selected among colors and kinds of materials; they examined
specimens, drawings, the baron corrected them, completed them
with details taken from his own fancy. After a certain time they
agreed to one thing: her dress should be flame color. With
Irene's delicate complexion and her fiery hair this would, as the
baron thought, form a whole which would be irritating.

"In this robe you will be novel and irritating."

The proprietor of the shop, elegant and important, came in and
went out, inquired, advised, and again left them to their own
thoughts and decisions. They, on their part, amused themselves
better and better, surrounded by a light cloud of perfumes which
rose from their clothing, and by the rustle of silks which fell
to their feet, like cascades of many colors. The flame-colored
material was selected, still they went on selecting. The baron,
with a flush appearing on his cheeks, exclaimed:

"We are passing the time most delightfully, are we not? And who
could have expected it? At a tailor's! But you and I know how to
experience sensations which no one else can experience. For that
it is necessary to have a sixth sense. You and I have the sixth
sense."

Irene began to lose her usual formality and air of distinction;
she spoke quickly and much; she laughed aloud, and, a number of
times, the movement of her bosom and arms became irregular, too
lively at moments, but they were full of a half dreamy
gracefulness. The baron grew silent and looked at her for a
while, then, with rapturous eyes, he began:

"How you are changed at this moment. How charmingly you are
changed! Such surprises interest one--they irritate. You have the
rare gift of causing surprises."

With gleaming eyes he begged her insistently to tell him whether
the change which had taken place, the humor into which she had
fallen, was spontaneous or artificial, the result of feeling, or
of coquetry.

"You are without doubt the product of high training, so it is
difficult to know in you that which is nature and that which is
art. And such a person in that changed form is problematical--I
beg you, I beg you to tell me whether in you this is nature, or
art?"

Listening to these words, in which a very insolent idea was
contained, she laughed and turned her eyes away. But bending
toward her with a smile which might remind one of a satyr, and
with a request in his voice, he asked:

"Is this nature? is it art?"

With a sudden resolve she answered:

"It is nature!"

And she wished to equal the boldness of her answer with the
boldness of her look, but a flaming blush shot over her face, and
the lids covered her eyes, into which shame had gushed forth.
Though maiden modesty was a painted pot, this new change, to
which Irene had yielded, exercised on the baron a new irritating
influence. In the midst of the rustling materials he seized both
her hands, his eyes flashed magnetic rays into her flushed face;
he drew her delicate form toward him. She tried to twist her
hands away, and with a violent effort strove to throw her bust
backward, but the fragile baron was very strong at that instant;
he pressed her hands in his as in a vice, and whispered into her
very face:

"Do not fight against that cry of life which is heard within
you--I am a despot--I know how to will--"

With the last word he pressed his lips to hers. But that moment
she, too, gained unexpected strength, and in a flash she was some
steps away from him, very pale now and trembling throughout her
whole body.

"This is too much of nature!" cried she.

Her head was erect, and from her eyes came flashing sparks, which
soon melted, however, into cold irony. Shrugging her shoulders,
with a smile she exclaimed:

"Dieu! que c'etait vulgaire!"

Then holding her skirt with both hands, as if she wished not to
take one atom of dust from that room with her, she went out into
the shop; the baron saw her talk to the tailor for a moment with
her usual coolness, and then turn to go with the ordinary words
of brief leave-taking.

But now Irene sitting there on that tall stool at the window,
surrounded by the fading gleam of the blue watered-silk, and
against the background of the pane which was covered with a
whitish gloom, seemed a statue with a delicate bust, and a
somewhat prolonged profile settled in stony fixedness. The "cry
of life" possessed as words the charm of novelty and daring, but
when changed into an act it roused in her every feeling of
offence and maiden modesty. The shaggy beast had ventured out too
far from behind the heliotropes, and had given forth too rank a
smell of the den and the troglodytes. "It is vulgar!" cried she
to the baron, but she understood immediately that what had taken
place was neither new, nor a rare thing, but as old as the human
race and as vulgar as the street is. The tailor's shop full of
people, the ceaseless ringing at the door-bell, the noise of
selling and buying, the passage beyond the window--is the street.
A kiss received on the street. Street adventure! A quiver shot
downward through her shoulders. Before her imagination passed the
wretched forms of women trailing in the dusk of evening along the
sidewalks. On her inclined face a blush came out; that painted
pot called maiden, modesty, under the form of inherited instinct
and woman's pride, was laboring in her untiringly and painfully.
After a while its place was taken by disgust beyond expression.

The baron, whose single charm was in his subtlety, appeared now
as a vulgar figure. That kind of mutual love, which she had
thought they felt for each other, when closely analyzed, reminded
her of pictures in which Fauns with goats' beards were chasing
through the forest after Nymphs. On Irene's lips a jeering,
almost angry smile, now fixed itself. What did he say: "a sixth
sense." Why a sixth sense in this case? Empty words! The baron
jeers at painted pots, but he makes them himself, and paints them
in the ancient colors. An idyl is an old thing, and a den is old
also, but the idyl would be better than the den if only it
existed. But where is it? Her eyes had never seen an idyl, but
they had seen, ah, they had seen what happens and takes place
with loves of men and women, 'and with bonds which bear the name
of sacred! Well, what is to be done with the baron--and America?
Such contempt for everything, such disbelief in all things, such
a contemptuous despising of everything, and of her own self as
well, embraced her and possessed her, that at the end of the
meditation she said to herself: "It is all one!" She crossed her
hands and pressed them firmly across her breast, bent her head
somewhat, and thought: "It is all, all, all one!"

A few tears, one after another, fell on her tightly clasped
fingers. "All one! If only the sooner!"

What sooner? Why sooner? With a slow movement she turned her face
toward her mother's apartments; her lips which quivered, and the
glistening tear which had fallen on them had the same kind of
expression that a child has when crying in silence. With brows
raised somewhat, she whispered:

"Mamma!"

After a while, under those brows which were like delicate little
flames, her eyes began to grow mild, to lose their tears and
their irony, until they took on an expression of such delight, as
if they were looking at an idyl.

Meanwhile the air, modified by the gray twilight, was cut by a
bright moving line. This was Cara going from her father's study
with Puff tugging at her skirt. She hummed a song as she went
forward. When she saw her sister she ceased humming, and called
out from the end of the drawing-room:

"Do you know, Ira, father will dine with us to-day?"

In her voice a note of triumph was heard. After many weeks her
father would sit for the first time with them at the family
table, and then everything would go on as it should go. What it
was that went ill, and why it went so, she knew not. But she had
been observing, was astonished, and had fears. With that real
sixth sense, which persons of keen sensitiveness possess, she
felt something. She felt in the air a certain oppression, a
certain trouble, and, not knowing what these signified, nor
whence they were coming, she suffered. In the very same way,
organisms with supersensitive nerves feel the approach of
atmospheric storms. Now she advanced with a short step, erect and
slender, with Puff at her skirt, while she hummed joyously.

When Irene entered her mother's study soon after, she saw, by the
lamplight, a group composed of three persons. Sitting on the
sofa, with glitters of black jet in her light hair, was Malvina
Darvid; nearby, in a low armchair, inclining toward her, was
Maryan, elegant as usual, and before him, with elbows resting on
her mother's knees, knelt Cara, a bright, blue strip lying across
the black silk robe of her mother.

"A picture deserving the eyes of Sarah and Rebecca!" suggested
Irene, going straight to the mirror before which she began, with
raised arms, to arrange and modify the knot of hair on her head.
Maryan, in good humor, was imploring his mother to let him have
her portrait painted by one of the most noted artists in the
city.

"His brush is famous! I cannot understand how, amid the
effeteness of this city, a talent can rise which is so fresh and
individual. In his landscapes there is a magnificent pleinair,
and as a portrait painter he knows how to seize the soul. My
mother, let me have your soul enchanted into a portrait--have you
noticed that the eyes of some portraits look on us from beyond
this world? There is an enchanted soul in them. Let me have your
portrait painted by an artist from whose canvas comes a breath
from beyond this world."

He inclined his cherub head and kissed his mother's hand, which
was resting on Cara's shoulder.

"And kiss me, too!" cried Cara.

"Sentiment!" said Maryan, straightening himself, "beware of
sentiment, little one. I, thy great-grandfather, say this to
thee."

"Splendidly expressed!" exclaimed Irene from the mirror. "Cara's
soul is so primitive, yours--"

"So decadent," put in Maryan.

"That you have a right to be called her great-grandfather."

"I greet you great-grandmother!" laughed he at Irene.

"I say this, mother, for, as you see, I understand my elder
sister perfectly, but not the little one yet; however, that will
come some time--surely soon. Mais revenons a nos moutons: How
about the portrait?"

Malvina laughed. Her face, greatly troubled an hour before, had
grown young again. A certain sunray had pierced the thick cloud
at that moment. She warded off the idea of the portrait.

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