The Argonauts
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Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa) >> The Argonauts
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"Mamma, I beg--"
"Come in, Ira!"
Covered with silken materials Malvina was like a glittering wave
on the bed. Irene entered with the bouillon and the rusks, then
slipped through the room quietly and let down the shades. A mild
half-gloom filled the chamber.
"This is better. Light when one has the headache is hurtful." She
went to the bed. "You cannot sleep in these tight boots, try as
you like, and without some hours of sleep the neuralgia will not
leave you."
Before these words were finished, her slender hands had changed
the tight boots for roomy and soft ones. She bent down, and with
a touch of her fingers unfastened a number of hooks at her
mother's breast.
"Now, it will be well!" Irene dropped her arms on her dress and
smiled a little. Despite her fashionable robe and fantastic
hairdressing there was in her at that moment something of the
sister of charity, she seemed painstaking and cautious.
"And now, mamma, be a little glutton," added she with a smile;
"you will drink the bouillon and eat the rusk; I will go to paint
my chrysanthemums."
She was at the door when she heard the call:
"Ira!"
"What, mamma?"
Two arms stretched toward her, and surrounded her neck; and lips,
so feverish that they burnt, covered her forehead and face with
kisses. Irene in return pressed her lips to her mother's forehead
and hand, but for a few seconds only, then she withdrew from the
embrace with a gentle movement, moved away somewhat, and said:
"Be not excited, for that may increase the neuralgia."
At the door she turned again:
"Should anything be needed, just whisper; you know what delicate
hearing I have; I shall hear. I shall be painting in your study.
Those chrysanthemums are beautiful, and I have a new idea about
them which interests me greatly."
In the tempered winter light from the window, in that study full
of gilding, artistic trifles, syringas, and hyacinths, Irene sat
at the table with painting utensils, sunk in thought and idle.
From beneath her brows, which had each the outline of a delicate
little flame, her fixed eyes turned toward the past. She had in
mind a time when she was ten years old, and was fitting a new
dress on her doll with immense interest. At first she did not
turn attention to her parents' conversation in the next chamber,
but afterward, when the dress was fitted to the doll as if melted
around it, she raised her head, and through the open door began
to look and listen. Her father, with a jesting smile, was sitting
in an armchair; her mother, in a white gown, was standing before
him, with such an expression in her eyes as if she were praying
for salvation.
"Aloysius!" said she, "have we not enough? Is there nothing in
the world except property and profits--this golden idol?"
"I beg you to consider that there is something else," interrupted
he, with a slight hiss of irony; "this luxury which surrounds you
and becomes you so well."
Then she seated herself opposite him, and, bending forward, spoke
somewhat quickly, disconnectedly:
"Do we live with each other? We do not by any means. We only see
each other. There is nothing in common between us. You are
swallowed up by business, I by society. I have taken a fancy, it
is true, for amusement, but in the depth of my heart I am often
very gloomy. I feel lonely. My early life, as you know, was
modest, poor, toilsome, and often it calls to me reproachfully.
You do not know of this, for we have no time to exchange ideas. I
am of those women who need to feel guardianship, to have near
them an ear which might listen to their hearts, and a mind which
would direct their conscience. I am weak. I am full of dread. I
fear that in view of your frequent, almost continual absence, I
shall not be able to rear the children properly. I only know how
to love them, I would give my life for them, but I am weak. I beg
you not to leave me and them so frequently; that is, almost
continuously--rather let this luxury decrease--I shall be glad,
even, for the decrease will bring us nearer together. I beg you!"
She seized his hands, and it seemed as though she kissed them;
but it was certain that the pale, golden wave of her dishevelled
hair fell on them. Irene, though she was only ten years old then,
felt pity for her mother, and waited with intense curiosity for
her father's answer.
"What do you wish in particular?" asked he. "I listen, I listen,
still I do not know exactly what the question is. Is it this,
that I should stop work, which I love and which succeeds with me?
You must be in a waking dream. Those are ideas from another
society, mere childish fancies."
Here Irene's thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Cara.
"Ira, is mamma sick, since she did not come to luncheon?"
"Mamma has neuralgia often; you know that well." Cara turned to
the door of her mother's bedroom, but Irene stopped her.
"Do not go; she may be sleeping." The girl approached her sister:
"It seems to me--" she whispered and stopped.
"What seems to you a second time?"
"That there is something going on in this house--"
Irene frowned.
"What an imagination you have! You are ever imagining something
uncommon. Now all these uncommon things are painted pots, or
illusions. Life rolls on always in a common, prosaic movement.
Stop making painted pots, and go out to walk with Puff and Miss
Mary."
Cara listened attentively, but with an incredulous expression of
eyes, which were fixed on her sister's face.
"Very well, I will go to walk, but what you have said is not
true, Ira. It is not painted pots that mamma is suffering and
sick, that father goes out to dine for a whole week, and does not
come to her at all; even that--man, going out to-day, began to
cry in the antechamber--I saw him by chance--he wanted to say
something to me, but I ran away--"
Irene shrugged her shoulders.
"You will be a poetess, perhaps, you exaggerate everything so
terribly. Mamma is not troubled, she only has neuralgia. Father
does not dine with us because he has so many invitations, and Pan
Kranitski struck his nose against something which you, in poetic
imagination, took for crying. Men never cry, and sensible girls,
instead of filling their heads with painted pots, go to walk
while good weather lasts and the sun shines. The doctor tells you
to walk every day, not in the evening, but about this hour."
"I am going, I am going! You drive me away!"
She went on a number of steps, and turned again toward her aster:
"Father is angry at Maryan--I see that very clearly. Everything
in this house is, somehow, so strange."
She went out, but Irene clasped her hands, and for some seconds
squeezed them with all her might, and thought:
"That child will soon look at life just as I have been looking at
it for some time past. It is necessary to foresee, absolutely
necessary!" She returned to her reminiscences. Her mother said to
her father:
"Our fortune is now considerable."
"In that direction," answered her father, "it never can be too
great, nor even sufficient."
Then, playing with her beautiful hair, he asked:
"But do you believe that I love you?"
After some hesitation she answered:
"No. I have lost that faith, I lost it some time ago."
Later there were many other words, some of which Irene
remembered:
"The very best guardianship in this world," said her father, "is
wealth. Whoso has that will never lack mind, even; since, in ease
of need, he can buy mind from other men.
"In the training of our children you will expend all that is
requisite. You will rear for me our daughters to be grand ladies;
will you not? Educate them so that when mature they may feel as
much at home in the highest social circles as in their own
father's household. As to you, amuse yourself, make connections,
dress, be brilliant. The more you elevate the name which you
bear, by beauty, wit, knowledge of life, the more service will
you render me in return for the services which I render you.
Besides, if you have any difficulty with the house, with
teachers, with social relations, you have that honest Kranitski,
who will serve you with great good will. I am very much pleased
with that acquaintance. Just such a man did I need. He has
extensive and very good connections; he is perfectly well-bred,
obliging, polite. Foreseeing that he might be very useful to us,
I became familiar with him. It is true that he has borrowed money
a number of times of me, but he has rendered a number of
services. Pay in return for value, that is the best method."
He walked up and down through the room repeatedly; on his
forehead, in his look, in his movements, he had an expression of
perfect confidence in himself, his rights, and his reason.
Suddenly, turning toward the door of remoter rooms, he cried with
delight:
"Speak of the wolf, and he is before you! I greet you, dear sir."
With these words he extended his hand to the guest who was
entering. This was Kranitski, at that time in his highest manly
beauty; petted, and a favorite in the best social circles because
of it, and for other reasons also.
He gave a hearty greeting of Darvid, who met him with delight,
and then he stood before Malvina in such a posture, and with such
an expression on his face, as if he desired only one thing on
earth, to be able to drop on his knees before her.
That conversation and scene remained fixed in Irene's memory. She
drew from it formerly, extensive conclusions, then she ceased
altogether to recall it; now she thought again of it, forgetting
her painted chrysanthemums, which, on the blue satin, seemed to
gaze at her, having as subtle and enigmatical a look as she
herself had.
A servant at the door announced: "Baron Emil Blauendorf!"
"Not at ho--" began she at once; but, halting, instructed the
servant to ask him to wait. At her mother's desk she wrote on a
narrow card of Bristol-board, in English:
"Mamma is ill with neuralgia; I am nursing her, and cannot see
you to-day. I regret this, for the talk about dissonances began
to be interesting. Bring me the continuation of it to-morrow!"
She gave this card, in an envelope addressed to the baron, to a
servant, and sat down again to her chrysanthemums, this time with
a smile both malicious and gladsome. With his appearance in that
house, though unseen by her, Baron Emil had lent form in her head
to a certain whimsical idea. She knew that it was whimsical, but
just for that reason it pleased her, and must also please the
baron. She began quickly, almost with enthusiasm, to paint dark
outlines of imps among the flowers. She disposed them so that
they seemed to separate the flowers and keep them apart from one
another. Some imps were climbing up, others were slipping down;
they peeped out from behind petals, climbed along stems, but all
were malicious, distorted, capricious, and pushed the tops of the
flowers apart in such fashion that they did not let the
half-bending petals meet in kisses. Painting quickly, Irene
laughed. She imagined Baron Emil saying at sight of this work:
"C'est du nouveau! It is not a painted pot! it is an individual
thought. There is a new quiver there. It bites."
The expressions "painted pots," "Arcadians," "it bites," "new
quivers," "rheumatism of thought," and many more she had from
him. And she was not the only one who borrowed. These expressions
had spread in a rather largo circle of people who despised
everything existing, and were seeking everything which was new
and astonishing. Baron Emil was cultured, had read much. He read
frequently Nietsche's "Zarathustra," and spoke of the coming
"race," the super-humans. He spoke somewhat through his nose and
through his teeth.
The superhuman is he who is able to will absolutely and
unconditionally.
When Irene thought that perhaps she would soon become the baron's
wife, and leave that house, her brows contracted and her jeering
smile vanished. Oh, she would not let him escape her! She had an
absolute condition to put before the baron; he would accept it
most assuredly, through deference to the amount of her dower.
Energy glittered in her blue eyes. She turned her face toward the
door of her mother's room with so quick a movement that the
metallic pin in her hair cast a gleam of sharp steel above her
head.
"One must know how to will," whispered she.
CHAPTER IV
When Kranitski entered his own lodgings, after passing the night
with Maryan, and after the long conversation with Malvina, old
widow Clemens looked at him from behind her great spectacles, and
dropped her hands:
"Are you sick, or what? Arabian adventure! Ah, what a look you
have! What has happened? Maybe those pains have come; you have
had them a number of times already. Why not take off your fur?
Wait! I will help you this minute. Oh, you will be sick in
addition to everything else."
She was a squatty woman, heavy, with a striped kerchief on her
shoulders, and wearing a short skirt, from under which appeared
flat feet in tattered overshoes. She was seventy years old, at
least; her large, sallow face was much withered. Bordered by gray
hair and a white cap that face was bright with the gleam of dark
eyes, still fiery, and quickly glancing from under a wrinkled,
high forehead. Her whole figure had in it something of the
fields, something primitive, which seemed not to have the least
relation to that little drawing-room and its owner. That room
contained everything which is found usually in such apartments,
therefore: a sofa, armchairs, a table, a mirror with a console, a
low and broad ottoman with cushions in Oriental fashion,
porcelain figures on the console, old-fashioned shelves with
books in nice bindings, a few oil paintings, small but neat, on
the walls, a number of photographs, tastefully grouped above the
ottoman, a large album on the table before the sofa. But all this
was a collection brought together at various seasons, and injured
by time. The covering of the cushions had faded, the gilding on
the mirror frame was worn here and there, the leather covering on
the furniture was worn and showed through cracks the stuffing
within, the album was torn, the porcelain base of the lamp was
broken. At the first cast of the eye the little drawing-room
seemed elegant, but after a while, through spots and rents mended
carefully, want was observed creeping forth. This want was hidden
chiefly by perfect and minute cleanliness, in which one could
recognize active, careful hands, industrious, untiring sweeping
out, rubbing out, sewing, mending--those were the lean, aged
hands, with broad palms and short fingers, which were now helping
Kranitski to remove his fur coat. Meanwhile, a scolding, harsh
voice, with tenderness at the base of it, continued:
"Again a night passed away from home. Surely off there with
cards, or with madams of some sort! Oi, an offense against God!
And this time you come home sick. I see that you are sick, your
whole face is covered with red spots, you are hardly able to
stand on your feet. Arabian adventure!"
"Give me rest!" answered Kranitski in a complaining voice. "I am
sick, the most wretched of men. Everything is past for me--I beg
you to look to the door, so that no one may enter; I am suffering
too much to let in impertinent people."
There were tears in his eyes, and his appearance was wretched. No
one was looking at him then, except his old servant, who was as
faithful as a dog, so he let the fetters of artificial youth and
elegance drop from him. His shoulders were bent, his cheeks
pendant, above his brows were red spots and thick wrinkles. He
vanished then beyond the half-closed door of his bedroom, and
widow Clemens went back to the work interrupted by his coming. In
the middle of the drawing-room, on an open card-table, lay,
spread out, a dressing gown of Turkish stuff. That gown,
beautiful on a time, was then faded; moreover, its lining was
torn. Widow Clemens while repairing that lining and patching it
had been interrupted by Kranitski's return; and now, wearing
great steel-rimmed glasses, and with a brass thimble on her
middle finger, she sat down again. She examined a rent through
which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite
of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather
talked on in a low and monotonous mutter:
"'Look to the door, let no one in!' As if anyone ever comes here.
Long ago, comrades and various protectors used to come; they came
often at first, afterward very seldom; but now it is perhaps two
years since even a dog has looked in here. He could not bear
impertinent people. Oh, yes! they come here, many of them,
princes, counts, various rich persons. Oh, yes! while he was a
novelty and brilliant they amused themselves with him as they
would with a shining button, but when the button was rubbed and
dull they threw it into a corner. The relations, the friends, the
companions! Arabian adventure! Oh, this society!"
She was silent a while, put a piece of carefully fitted material
on the rent, raised her hand a number of times with the long
thread, and again muttered:
"But is that society? It is sin, not society! Roll in sin, like
the devil in pitch, and then scream that it burns! Oi, Oi!"
Silence reigned in the room; only the clock, that unavoidable
dweller in all houses, that comrade of all people, ticked
monotonously on the shelf, beneath the mirror, among the
porcelain figures. Widow Clemens, while sewing, industriously,
muttered on. Her unbroken loneliness, the store of thoughts put
away in her old head, and the care in her heart had given her the
habit of soliloquy.
"And it will be worse yet. He has debts beyond calculation. He
will die on a litter of straw, or in a hospital. Oh, if his dead
mother could see this! Arabian adventure! Unless Stefanek and I
drag him out of this pit!"
She stopped sewing and raised her spectacles to her forehead,
their glass eyes gleamed above her gray brows, and she fell into
deep thought. She moved her lips from time to time, but did not
mutter. By this movement of the lips, and by her wrinkles, it
could be seen that she was forming some plan, that she was
imagining. Just then Kranitski's voice was heard from the
bedroom.
She sprang up with the liveliness of twenty years, and, with a
loud clattering of old overshoes, ran to the door.
"Give me the dressing-gown, mother; I am not well; I will not go
anywhere to-day."
"Here is the dressing-gown; but if the lining is torn?"
"Torn or not, give it here, and my slippers, too; for I am not
well."
"Here they are! Not well? I have said not well! O beloved God,
what will come of this?"
But, while helping him to put on the dressing-gown, she inquired,
with incredulity:
"Is it true, or a joke, that you will not leave the house
to-day?"
"A joke!" answered he in bitterness. "If you knew what a joke
this is! I will not leave the house to-day, or to-morrow, or
perhaps ever. I will lie here and grieve till I grieve to death.
Oh, that it might be very soon!"
"Arabian adventure! Never has it been like this! It is easy to
see that the pitch has burnt!" whispered widow Clemens to
herself. But aloud she said:
"Before you grieve to death we must get you some dinner. I will
run to the town for meat. I will lock the door outside, so that
impertinent counts, and various barons should not burst in,"
added she, ironically.
Kranitski, left alone, locked up in his lodgings, robed in his
dressing-gown, once costly, now faded, its sleeves tattered at
the wrists, lay on the long-chair in front of his collection of
pipes, arranged on the wall cunningly. In the society in which he
moved collecting was universal. They collected pictures,
miniatures, engravings, autographs, porcelain, old books, old
spoons, old stuffs. Kranitski collected pipes. Some he had
bought, but the greater number, by far, he had received on
anniversaries of his name's-day, in proof of friendly
recollection, and as keepsakes after a journey. During years many
were collected, about a hundred; among them some were valuable,
some poor but original, some even ridiculous, some immense in
size, some small, some bright colored, some almost black; they
were arranged on shelves at the wall with taste, and effectively.
Besides these pipes there were in the bed-room other objects of
value: a writing-desk of peculiar wood, a porcelain frame, with
Cupids at the top, surrounding an oval mirror, at which were
bottles, vials, toilet boxes, and a rather long cigarette-case of
pure gold, which Kranitski kept with him at all times, and which,
as he lay now in the long-chair, he turned in his fingers,
mechanically. This cigarette-case was a precious memento. He had
received it soon after his arrival in the city, twenty and some
years before, from Countess Eugenia, his mother's aunt. Prom
their first meeting the countess was simply wild about him.
Society even insisted, notwithstanding her more than ripe years,
that she was madly in love with that uncommonly beautiful and
blooming young man, who had been reared by his mother with
immense care, and trained to appear successfully in that society
to which she had been born. Kranitski's mother, through various
causes, had become the victim of a mesalliance; she grieved out,
and wept away secretly; her life, in a village corner, after
marrying a noble who was perfectly honorable, but neither a man
of the world, nor the owner of much property. She desired for her
only son a better fate than she herself had had, and prepared him
for it long beforehand. He spoke French with a Parisian accent,
and English quite well; he was versed in the literatures of
Western Europe; he was a famous dancer; he was obliging; he had
an inborn instinct of kindness toward people; he was popular,
sought after, petted; when the money with which his mother
furnished him proved insufficient he obtained a small office,
through the influence of wealthy relatives, which, besides
increasing his revenue, gave him a certain independent aspect. He
passed whole days in great and wealthy houses, where he read
books, aloud, to old princesses and countesses, and for young
princesses and countesses; he held skeins of silk on his opened
hands. He carried out commissions and various small affairs; at
balls he led dances; he amused himself; fell in love, was loved
in return; he passed evenings and nights in clubs, and in private
rooms at restaurants, at theatres, and behind the scenes in
theatres, where he paid homage to famous actresses of various
degrees and qualities. Those were times truly joyous and golden.
At that period he was served not by widow Clemens, but by a man;
he dined--if not with friends or relatives--at the best
restaurants. At that time, too, he did something magnanimous,
which brought reward in the form of great mental profit: He
passed a whole year in Italy with Count Alfred, his relative, who
was suffering from consumption; Kranitski nursed, amused, and
comforted his cousin with patience, attachment, and tenderness
which were perfectly sincere, and which came from a heart
inclined to warm, almost submissive feelings. In return that year
gave him skill in the use of Italian, and a wide acquaintance
with the achievements and the schools of art, of which he was an
enthusiastic worshipper. Soon after he went with Prince Zeno to
Paris, learned France and its capital well, and on his return
remained for some time as a reader with the prince, whose eyes
were affected. His power of beautiful reading in many languages
brought him a wide reputation; he was distinguished in
drawing-rooms by the ease of his speech and manners; to some he
became a valued assistant in entertaining guests, and a pleasant
companion in hours of loneliness; to others he was a master in
the domain of amusements, and elegance in the arts of politeness
and pleasure. At this period also he made the acquaintance of
Darvid, and met his wife, whom he had known from childhood, and
who had been his earliest ideal of womanhood. Thenceforth, his
relations with other houses were relaxed considerably, for he
gave himself to the Darvid house soul and body. Though Malvina's
children had many tutors, he taught one of her daughters Italian,
and the other English; he did this with devotion, with delight;
and, therefore, that house became, as it were, his own, and was
ever open to him. Moreover, during the last ten years great
changes had happened in that society of which he was the adopted
child, and so long the favorite.
Countess Eugenia had given her daughter in marriage to a French
count, and resided in Paris; Count Alfred was dead; dead, also,
was that dear, kindly Baroness Blauendorf from whom he had
received as a gift that mirror with porcelain frame and Cupids.
Others, too, were dead, or were living elsewhere. Only Prince
Zeno remained, but he had cooled toward his former reader,
notably because of the princess, who could not forgive Kranitski;
since, as was too well known by all, he was occupied with the
wife of that millionaire--the eternally absent.
There were still many acquaintances, and more recent relations,
but these had neither the charm nor the certainty of those which
time had in various ways broken, brought to an end, or relaxed.
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