The Argonauts

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

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"In no case can my feelings, or our relations be subject to
change."

She rested her hand against the table more firmly, and bent her
head lower--through that head were still wandering certain
thoughts of a return to pure womanly honor through expiation,
through yielding obediently to the will of the offended.

Then she began in a very low voice:

"Can I aid thee in any way?"

After a moment of silence he answered:

"No."

"Can I be of use to thee in anything?"

He was silent a little longer, and said:

"No," a second time.

The profile which had been turned to her was looking now through
the window-pane to a ruddy cloud, which was moving on in darkness
above the roof opposite, that cloud reminded him of something.
She looked at him, and, after a moment, added:

"Our daughter will write to thee, Aloysius."

He interrupted her, hurriedly:

"Thy daughter!"

She began in astonishment:

"Irene--"

He knew now that that ruddy cloud moving over the darkening sky
reminded him of Cara. He turned his face toward the face of the
woman standing there.

"Irene is thy daughter," said he--"for what meaning have
blood-bonds when there are no others? I had a child who was my
own--"

At that moment desire for revenge boiled up in him; the desire to
crush, so he finished:

"And I lost her--through thee!"

"Through me?"

Her questioning cry was full of amazement.

"Thou knowest of nothing then? They have hidden it from thee? A
proper regard for the delicate nerves of a woman! But my rude
nerves of a man feel the need of sharing this knowledge with thy
nerves."

Slowly and emphatically he uttered his words; words which, from
moment to moment, were hissed through his pallid lips, and thus
he concluded:

"Once thy daughter had an interesting conversation with me; a
very interesting conversation about--everything which took place
in our family idyl. The little girl, hidden behind some
furniture, heard the conversation, and became mentally
disordered--oh! temporarily, of course, and this would have
passed, but under its influence she exposed herself to the cold
night air so as to die. Inflammation of the lungs was complicated
by mental disorder. Her death--was suicide."

The last words went out of his straitened throat in a suppressed
whisper, still they were so definite as to be heard in every part
of the great chamber. They were deadened, however, by the
overpowering shriek of the woman and the noise made as her body
fell to the floor. Pani Darvid's knees bent under her, and
dropping, with her face in her hands, her head struck the corner
of the table near which she had been standing. At that moment
Irene shot into the chamber; like a skylark, flying forward to
defend its little ones, she ran to her mother, and surrounding
her bent form with both arms, she raised to her father a face
covered with a flood of tears.

"A needless cruelty, father," cried she. "Ah, how I hid this from
her; how I tried to hide it! This is a needless cruelty! I
thought that a man as wise as thou would do nothing so uncalled
for. But thou hast committed a vileness!"

Darvid made an abrupt movement, but restrained himself, and with
his face toward the window he heard the retreating footsteps of
the two women. There was a second of time during which he turned
his head, and his lips moved as if some word, a name was to
escape from him. At that moment the two women, holding to each
other, moved slowly through the next drawing-room, advanced in
the increasing darkness, and vanished. He uttered no word. What
was his feeling when she shrieked and struck her head against the
edge of the table? Was it pity? Perhaps. Was it a quiver of
sorrow for that past which had left him forever, and for that
daughter who went out with the word "vileness" hanging on her
lips? Perhaps. But he said nothing; he uttered no name. He
remained alone. It was silent around him and empty. Emptiness
occupied that part of space beyond the window, for the rosy cloud
which had passed there a while before had vanished. The figure of
Darvid standing at the window became darker in that gloom, which,
growing denser, dimmed and then concealed the white, the blue,
and the gilding of the great drawing-room. By degrees the lines
of his face became invisible; his trembling hands and the quiver
of the skin on his cheeks were no longer to be distinguished, and
Darvid appeared on the gray background of the window as a narrow
and perfectly black line. He did not go away, for he was riveted
there, fixed in thought, filled with amazement. In this way, in
this manner then, all things on earth are ended. Those invisible
giants, Death, Insanity, Anguish, Rage, go about the world
trampling, crushing, rending, and no man has power to arrest
them! He had never thought about those giants. How could he? Was
he a philosopher? He had not had time to think. Now he was
thinking, and at the bottom of his stony meditation he beholds a
pale, dreadful visage. Something which recalls a Medusa-head,
which he had seen some time in a picture. It has struggled out of
raging waves, and is resting on them face upward; its hair is
torn; its gaze has endless depth; and on its blue lips is a
jeering smile. What is it jeering at? Perhaps at the grandeur of
the man who appears as a narrow line on the gray background of
that window, black, and alone as he is, in the gathering gloom
and the silence?

Now something soft and timid touches his feet, and he sees a
little dark point moving. He stoops and calls:

"Puffie!"

At the floor was heard thin barking. Puffie had always barked
that way to call the attention of his mistress.

Darvid bent low with his hand on the silky coat, and repeated:

"Puffie!"

Then he straightened himself, and, leaving the window, called
several times in succession:

"Puffie! Puffie!"

The black line moved on, in the gray darkness, through two
drawing-rooms, and behind it, on the floor, rolled the dark small
ball-like object, till a space of bright light gleamed before
them. This was the widely open door of his clearly lighted study.

In the door the footman pronounced loudly a name, at the sound of
which Darvid's step quickened. At last the man had returned--the
envoy, the agent, the hound had come hack! Beyond doubt he brings
favoring news, otherwise he would have no cause to come. Hence,
that colossal business; that immense arena of toil and struggle,
through which an enormous vein of gold runs, may belong to
Darvid. How timely this is! The business will freshen him; snatch
him out of the evil dreams into which he has fallen for some time
past. Indeed, all these exaltations, all these elements of
feeling, which have risen in him with such power, are an
unwholesome and nervous dream, out of which he must shake himself
and return to clear, sober, sound reality.

CHAPTER XI

A rather long series of days had passed when Darvid entered his
clear, brightly lighted study, after winning one of the very
greatest triumphs of his life. In the antechamber he had thrown
into the hands of a footman, not his fur, but a somewhat light
overcoat; for that day, which for him had been lucky, was
succeeded by a warm, spring evening. Whoever might have seen him
when he was leaving the lofty threshold of the highest dignitary
in that city must have said to himself: "Happy man!" Though he
had grown evidently thin during recent days; gladness and pride
were beaming from his smile; from his eyes; from his serene
forehead. He possessed now that for which he had striven long in
vain: he held in his hand the colossal enterprise; before him was
a broad arena for iron toil and a great vein, of gold. It is
true, that while making ready for that moment of triumph, he had
spent days and nights like a Benedictine over piles of books and
documents, calculating, combining, covering many folios of paper
with arguments and figures. He had toiled immensely, thinking of
nothing save the toil; and now, when he stood at his object as a
conqueror, all people said: he is happy! He had received a
multitude of congratulations already; in the eyes of men he had
read much admiration. He had just returned from a meeting where,
by accurate and fluent speech, he had convinced and won over a
numerous assembly of men of uncommon keenness and significance.
Thus had he passed the day; now, in the middle of the evening, he
returned to his house; and when he had given the servant in
attendance the brief command: "Receive no one!" he asked:

"Where is the little dog?"

After that he dropped into a deep armchair near the round table,
and had the face, for a while, of a man who is waking from sleep.
For a number of days he had been so buried in thought over this
weighty enterprise, and that day from early morning he had been
so absorbed by the feeling of that victory which he had won, that
he had had no time to think of any other thing; now, after a long
time, in the first moment of inactivity which had fallen to him,
he felt as if waking from sleep, and he was brought to thinking
by the question:

"Well? What is it for?"

Just this question was to him at that moment reality, while every
other thing was accomplished by the power of habit. He had
toiled, calculated, triumphed, just as a round body rolls over an
inclined plane by the force of acquired motion. Under this
surface-life, which had been the one which he had led so long
exclusively, was now another one which seized a continually
increasing area; this new life, a mystery to every other man, had
become for him more tangible than the entire visible universe.
Out of it was growing an irresistible, importunate riddle,
enclosed in the brief words: What for?

These two brief words kept returning to his mind during every
moment of rest, so that hours of noise and movement seemed to him
a dream, and only those two words--unceasingly recurrent--the one
true reality over which there was reason to be anxious.

Why had he taken on his head and hands this new burden of toil,
which was greater than all the others? Why, in general, this
climbing a sky-touching ladder with exertion of all his strength
of nerve and brain? To what kind of heaven could he climb upon
that ladder? New profits, ever-increasing wealth? But he had
ceased to desire these! Although that seemed marvellous to the
man himself, he had ceased really. Why? Did he own little? He was
the possessor of enormously much. He had never been of those who
make a golden chariot so as to sit in it with Bacchantes and with
Bacchus. But pride? He laughed. Yes, pride, but that was before
he had known, intimately, those giants who sit in various corners
of the earth. He knows them now; he knows what they can do; and
he knows his own power. Why toil? What for? But his worth; that
worth which people esteem so immensely that they almost cast
themselves at his feet, or do they cast themselves before his
golden chariot? For, if that chariot were to shoot away from
under him, would he retain the title of modern Cid, Titan,
superhuman? It was wonderful with what clearness he saw then
Maryan, sitting in that chair, and how distinctly he heard his
voice inquiring: "What is the object of your toil, father? The
object; the object? That decides everything. What was the object?
Of course, not this world's salvation!" He laughed again. What
cause was there for long thought here! His object had been to win
new profits continually; to gain ever-increasing wealth; and now,
since he had ceased to desire these, the question was--what for?
But the genius of that Maryan with his questions! He had gone
down so deeply into his father's being that those questions
remained there and continued their inquisitorial labor. A
beautiful and genial fellow! A young prince; almost a sage. But
what does that signify if--he lacks something? What is it that he
lacks, and so lacks that he is as if he had nothing? What is it
that he lacks?

With a slow movement, in which weariness was evident, Darvid
turned his head toward the desk, which was lighted abundantly
with tapers burning on lofty candlesticks. What did those
candlesticks bring to his mind? Ah, yes, he remembers! On a time
he gave one of them, in the inner drawing-room, to Cara, so that
the candle burning in it might light the way to her. He remembers
how her slender arm bent beneath its weight when her small hand
took it, and how beautifully the flame of the candle was
reflected in the dark pupils gazing at him with such--with such
what? With such exaltation! But how wonderful, how intense was
his happiness when that child lived and loved him as she did!
That was his only happiness! Then, holding the light in the heavy
candlestick straight on before her rosy face, she went on into
the darkness.

Again he looked around, not with a wearied movement as before,
but abruptly. He looked around at the door beyond which thick
darkness was hiding, impenetrably, a series of drawing-rooms.
This darkness was like a black wall outside the door. Along
Darvid's shoulders ran a movement of the skin, the same as a man
feels when something heavy from behind is placed upon his
shoulders, or rides onto him. That black wall, in which an
enchanted row of empty drawing-rooms stood silent, seemed to put
itself down on him. But again he looked toward the desk; there,
among a multitude of papers, lay a letter from Maryan, received
many days before. Darvid had not destroyed or put away this
letter, and not knowing himself the reason why, had left it on
the desk there. The letter, in that great study, appeared
definitely with its white color on the green of the malachite
writing utensils. Moreover, it was not a letter. A number of
lines merely. He had written that, wishing to spare his father
and himself a new personal interview; he gives notice, in
writing, of his trip to America. But as he is slow to write
letters he confines himself to a few words. Since an
incomprehensible lack of logic in directing his life had forced
him to become a laborer, he desired to choose the field and the
manner according to his own individuality. He had turned his
personal property into money; this had brought him a considerable
sum; he had borrowed another sum; he did not ask pardon for
acting thus, since this borrowing was the natural outcome of a
position of which he was not the cause, but on the contrary the
victim. He makes no reproaches, since he is ever of opinion that
all such things as offences and services, crimes and virtues, are
soup prepared from the bones of great-grandfathers, and served in
painted pots to Arcadians. All this was concluded with a
compliment which was smooth, rounded, exquisite as to style,
plan, and execution.

Lack of logic. Those three words had fixed themselves in Darvid's
memory, and after the words "what for?" appeared in it most
frequently. Could they really relate to him? Had he in fact
committed an error in logic? Yes, it seemed so. In that case his
clear, sober, logical reason had deceived him. He rose, and with
his profile toward the door, felt again, rather than saw, a black
wall of darkness beyond. Again a shiver ran along the skin of his
shoulders, which quivered and bent somewhat. He went to the desk,
from which he took another letter, thrown down a moment before,
and unread yet. Something in the room was moving; certain little
steps ran along the carpet quietly. Puffie had woke; had run to
the man, and begun to squirm at his feet.

"Puffie!" said Darvid, and he began to read the letter. It was an
invitation from Prince Zeno to a grand farewell ball. The prince
and his family were going abroad, and wished to take farewell of
their acquaintances in the first rank of them with the "modern
Cid." Prince Zeno had often given this title to Darvid. But
to-day the "modern Cid" read the letter of invitation while his
mouth was awry from disgust. It had not the famous smile
bristling with pin-points, but simply that disfigurement of the
lips which accompanies the swallowing of something which is
nauseating and repugnant. He placed before his mind the society
in which some time before he had passed a few days at the hunting
trip. This society would fill the prince's drawing-rooms on that
day, and not only did he note in himself an utter absence of
desire to be in that society, but a repulsion for it. Not that he
cherished hatred toward those people, but they were perfectly
indifferent to him. He did not reproach that society; but when he
thought of it he was conscious again of a boundless space and a
vacuum, which divided him from those who formed it. He imagined
to himself Prince Zeno's drawing-rooms filled with faces,
costumes, conversations, card-tables; and, it seemed to him, that
it all existed at an immense distance--on the other side of a
space that was infinite and empty--on one edge of this space was
he; on the other were they; between him and them lay a vacuum; no
bond between them; not even one as slender as a spider-web.

In the midst of the lofty chamber, above the round table, burned
the lamp with a great and calm light; on the desk, in massive
candlesticks, burned candles. In that abundant light Darvid stood
near the desk, with bent shoulders; a number of wrinkles between
his brows; his face inclined low toward the paper which he held
in his hand. At his feet, on the rug, like a tiny statue, sat the
motionless Puffie; with upraised head, and through silken hair,
the dog looked into the face of the man. But Darvid did not see
the little animal, and did not read the flattering phrases on the
paper; he only repeated the words which, on a time, he had heard
from his daughter:

"What do you want of so many people, father? Do you love them? Do
they love you? What comes of this? Pleasure or profit? What is it
all for?"

"I do not love them, little one, and they do not love me. Profit
comes to me from this--significance in society."

"But what is significance to you, father? What do you want of
significance? Does it give you happiness?"

This time there appeared on his lips the smile full of pinpoints,
which was famous in society.

"It has not given it, little one!"

His child had let down on her question his thought to the basis
of life, as if on threads. Now he looked around, and his smile
was bristling with pin-points of irony, increasing in sharpness.
He thought a long time before he said, aloud:

"What comes of this?"

And afterward, in an inquiring tone, he almost cried:

"An error?"

In the light of this thought that his life with its toils, its
conflicts, and its triumphs could be an error, he saw, again,
that Medusa-face, pale with terror.

Puffie, perhaps frightened by the cry which had been rent from
his master, fell to barking. Darvid turned from the desk, and his
glance met the black wall beyond the door.

"Was it an error?" he repeated.

The darkness was silent, and a face without eyes seemed to gaze
at him persistently, with attention. He moved forward a few steps
quickly, and pressed the bell-knob. To the incoming servant he
indicated the door, and said:

"Light up the drawing-rooms!"

After a few moments the series of drawing-rooms emerged from the
darkness, and stood in the light of blazing lamps and candles.
Globe-lamps, burning at the walls, cast a hazy half-light, in
which glittered, here and there, golden gleams, and appeared the
features of painted faces and landscapes.

From shady corners emerged, partially, the forms of slender and
swelling vases; portions of white garlands on the walls; the
delicate mists of dim colors on Gobelin tapestry; the bright
scarlet and blue of silk drapery. Farther on, in the small
drawing-room, burned, in two chandeliers, a bundle of tapers,
beneath which hung a crown of crystals, glittering like icicles,
or immense congealed tears. Farther on still, in the dining-room,
with its dark walls, gleamed a bright spot in the grand lamp of
pendant bronze above the table. This point seemed very distant
from Darvid's study; but on the whole expanse which divided him
from it there was neither voice nor sound--there was nothing
living. Notwithstanding the multitude of objects scattered, or
collected, this was a desert on which silence had imposed itself.

From the threshold of the study to that door, beyond which the
largest of the lamps was suspended as a shining object in its
bronze above the table, Darvid moved, stepping with inclined
face; at his lips the fire of a lighted cigarette; now, as it
were, extinguished; and, now, shining up again. Behind him, right
there near his feet, with the end of its snout almost touching
the floor, rolled along little Puffie, like a bundle of raw silk.

After a while, the step of the advancing man grew more hurried
and uneven; increasing disquiet was expressed in him; now the
light scattering along the unoccupied and silent space the extent
of that space, and he himself wandering along through it. What
did all this signify? Here and there, in the gildings and
polished surfaces, quivered flashes like playful gnomes; at other
points, on bluish backgrounds, pale faces looked from tapestry
thrown over furniture; still, farther, a great mirror reflects
two clusters of lights, beneath which hang crystal pendants, and,
increasing the perspective, made the space still greater, and the
light more peculiar; in another place, from behind bluish folds
depending from a door, appears a vase of Chinese porcelain; and,
at that moment, it assumes, in Darvid's eyes, a strange
appearance. Large, covered with blue decorations, it has a form
which is swollen in the middle, but slender above, with a long
neck, and not altogether visible; it seems to lean forward from
behind the curtains, gaze at the passing man, follow his steps,
and laugh at him. Yes, the Chinese vase is laughing--its body
seems to swell more and more from laughter, and in the blue
painting the white background has, here and there, a deceptive
similarity to grinning teeth. Darvid strives not to look at the
vase, and hastens on; behind him Puffie's shaggy feet tread the
floor more hurriedly, but as he returns, the porcelain monster
thrusts out its long neck again from behind the curtain, jeers,
bares its teeth, and seems ready to burst from laughter. At the
opposite side of that drawing-room, on a blue background, is the
pale face of an old man, and from above a gray beard the sad and
inquisitive eyes of the patriarch are settled on Darvid.

What does all this mean? Darvid halted in the centre of one of
the drawing-rooms, right there behind him the bundle of raw silk
halted also, and stood on its shaggy paws. What was he doing in
those empty drawing-rooms; why had he commanded to light them?
This act seems like madness. He called to mind recent acts of an
insane king, who, in a brilliantly lighted edifice, listened
alone to the rendering of an opera. Is he also becoming insane?
Why is he not at work? He has so much to do! Darvid advanced
quickly, and halted again. The Chinese vase inclined half way
from behind the curtain, it seemed bursting from laughter. Work?
What for? The object? The object? That decides everything! He
turned his glance from the gnashing teeth of the Chinese monster,
and it met the pale face of the patriarch, whose eyes, looking
out at him from the blue background, and from above a gray beard,
said with sadness, and inquiringly: "The wrong road!"

He had lost the road! Only the habit of restraining internal
impulses, and the expression of them, kept him from crying
"Help!" But he had the cry within him, and with a quick and
uneven tread he went toward the great lamp burning at the end of
the perspective, in the centre of the open space between the
walls of the dining-room. Behind him ran along Puffie, with all
the speed of his shaggy feet.

Meanwhile, in one of the drawing-rooms, the clock began to strike
eleven--one, two, three. Its deep sounds penetrated slowly the
empty space on which silence had imposed itself, until somewhere,
at the other end of the perspective, a second clock began to
strike, as if answering this one in a thinner voice and more
hurriedly. This seemed a voice, an echo, a conversation carried
on by things that were inanimate.

Darvid returned to his study, and pressing the knob of the bell
again, said to his servant:

"Put out the lights!"

He sat in one of the armchairs at the round table, and felt an
unspeakable weariness from the crown of his head to his feet.
Some light body sprang to his knee. He placed his hand on the
silky coat of the creature nestling up to him, and said:

"Puffie!"

He considered that he must renounce absolutely that colossal
affair to obtain which he had struggled so long, because
strength, and especially desire for such immense toil, seemed to
fail him. He was so tired. But if he abandons toil what will he
do; what is he to live for? What is the object of life? The
darkness was silent, and as a face without eyes seemed to gaze on
him with stubbornness and attention.

A few hours later, in a sleeping-room, furnished by the most
skilled of decorators in the capital, a night-lamp, placed on the
mantle, cast its light on a bed adorned with rich carving; a
hand, white and thin, stretched forth on the silken coverlet, and
a face, also thin, with ruddy side-whiskers, itself as if carved
out of ivory, and gleaming with a pair of blue, sleepless eyes,
which wandered through that spacious, half-lighted, chamber with
a tortured and heavy expression.

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