The Argonauts
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Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa) >> The Argonauts
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His mother, the foundress of his destiny, had ceased to live some
time before that.
"Pauvre maman! pauvre maman!"
How tenderly and unboundedly he had loved her. How long he had
hesitated and fought with himself before he left at her
persuasion, the house in which she had given birth to him. He
regretted immensely the village, the freedom, and that
bright-haired maiden in the neighborhood. But the wide world and
the great city took on, in his mother's narrative, the outlines
of paradise, and his worthy relatives, the forms of demi-gods.
When at last, after long hesitation and struggles, he resolved to
go away, how many were the kisses and embraces of his mother! how
many were her maxims and advices; how many her predictions of
happiness. He began to look at his own form in the mirrors, and
to feel in his own person the movement of desires, hopes,
ambitions. Once he caught himself bowing and making gestures,
almost involuntarily, before the mirrors. He laughed aloud, his
mother laughed also, for she had caught him in the act
red-handed.
"Pauvre maman! pauvre, chere maman!"
And on the background of that domestic gladness, of those
wonderful hopes, only one person by her conduct had raised a
cloud on that heaven, beaming serenely. That was widow Clemens,
an old servant of the house, and once his nurse, not young even
at that time, and a childless widow.
She was morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said
nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the
youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till
at last she spoke when alone with the petted stripling. It was
the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the
yard in Lipovka, and the linden grove, in a black line, cut
through the evening ruddiness glowing in the western heavens.
Widow Clemens, with her eyes fixed on the grove and the red of
evening, said:
"Oi! Tulek, Tulek! how will this be? You will go away; you will
take up and go away; but the sun will rise and set; the grove
will rustle; the wheat will ripen; and the snow will fall when
you are gone."
He sat on the bench of the piazza, and said nothing. But in the
distant fields, in the growing darkness, a shepherd's whistle
gave out clear tones, simple, monotonous, they flew along the
field like the weeping of space.
"Why go; do you know why--God alone knows. What are you throwing
away? The beauties of God. What will you bring back? Perhaps the
mud people cast at you."
A cow bellowed in the stable; a belated working-woman muttered a
song somewhere behind in the garden. The evening red was
quenched; and above the roof the crescent of the moon came out,
thin and like silver.
Widow Clemens whispered:
"Ill-fated! ill-fated boy!"
He was immensely far from considering himself ill fated, but
something in his heart felt pain at leaving that village where he
was born, at leaving Malvina, and it seemed to him that he ought
to stay.
But he went. The Argonaut, of twenty and some years of age, went
out into the world, slender, adroit, with eyes dark and fiery as
youth, with cheeks shapely and fresh as peaches, with a forehead
as white and pure as the petal of a lily; he went for a wife with
a fortune, for the pleasures of the world--for the golden fleece.
Now he wrapped himself closely in the skirt of his faded
dressing-gown, and let his head droop so low that the bald spot
seemed white on the top of it; his lower lip dropped; the red
spots came out over his dark brows on his wrinkled forehead. In
his hand he held the cigarette-case presented by Countess
Eugenia, now living in Paris, and at times he turned it in his
fingers, with an unconscious movement, and that glittering object
cast on the tattered sleeve of his dressing-gown, on his
suffering face, on his long, thin fingers, its bright, golden
reflection.
Meanwhile widow Clemens had returned to the kitchen, and there,
not without a loud clattering of overshoes, had begun to cook the
dinner. But Kranitski neither heard nor saw anything. From time
to time the head, with its great cap, looked in through the
kitchen door, gazed on him unquietly and pushed back to look in
again soon.
"Will you have dinner now?" inquired she at last. "It is ready."
In a low voice he asked for dinner, but he ate almost nothing;
the woman had never yet seen him so broken, still she made no
inquiry. When the moment came he would tell all himself. He was
not of those who bear secrets to the grave with them. She waited
on the man, gave him food, brought tea, cleared the table in
silence. Once she fell into trouble: Passing hurriedly through
the room she lost one of the overshoes which she had on her feet:
"Ah! may thou be!--they fall off every moment!" grumbled she, and
for some minutes she struggled with that overshoe, which,
dropping from her foot, slipped along the floor noisily.
Kranitski raised his head:
"What is that?" inquired he.
She made no answer, but when she was near the kitchen door, he
cried:
"What have you on your feet that clatter so? It is irritating!"
She stopped at the door:
"What have I on my feet? Well, your old overshoes! Am I to wear
out shoes every day, and then buy new ones? 'Irritating!' Arabian
adventure! God grant that you never have worse irritation than
overshoes clattering on the floor!"
And she grumbled on in the kitchen while going with an empty
glass to the samovar:
"You wouldn't have a pinch of tea in the house if I went around
in new shoes all my time!"
Darkness came down. Kranitski smoked cigarettes one after
another, and was so sunk in thought that he trembled throughout
his body. When widow Clemens brought in a lamp, with a
milk-colored globe, which filled the room with a white, mild
light, Kranitski looked at the head of the old woman in the white
lamp-light, and, for the first time in a number of hours, he
spoke:
"Come, mother, come nearer!" said he.
When she came he seized her rude fist in both his hands and shook
it vigorously.
"What could I do; what would happen to me now, if you were not
with me? No living soul of my own here! Alone, alone, as in a
desert."
The onrush of tenderness burst through all obstructions.
Confidences flowed on. He had loved for the last time in life, le
dernier amour, and all had ended. She had forbidden him to see
her. That decision of hers had been ripening for a long time.
Reproaches of conscience, shame, despair as to her children. One
daughter knew everything; the other might know it any day. She
had let out of her hands the rudder of those hearts and
consciences, for when she was talking with them her own fault
closed her lips, like a red-hot seal. She thought herself the
most pitiful of creatures. She did not wish to make further use
of her husband's wealth, or the position which it give her in
society. She wished to go away, to settle down in some silent
corner, vanish from the eyes of people.
Kranitski was so excited that he almost sobbed; here his speech
was interrupted by a rough, sarcastic voice:
"It is well that she came to her senses at last--"
"What senses? What are you weaving, mother? You know nothing.
Love is never an offense. Ils ont peche, mais le ceil est un
don."
"You are mad, Tulek! Am I some madam that you must speak French
to me?" Still he finished:
"Ils ont souffert, c'est le sceau du pardon. I will translate
this for thee: They have sinned, but heaven is a gift-----They
have suffered; suffering is the seal of pardon."
"Tulek, let heaven alone! To mix up such things with
heaven--Arabian adventure!"
"Are you a priest, mother? I tell you of my own suffering and the
suffering of that noble, sweet being--" In the antechamber, the
door of which widow Clemens, in returning from the city, had not
locked, was heard stamping, and the youthful voice of a man
called:
"Is your master at home?"
"Arabian adventure!" muttered widow Clemens.
"Maryan!" exclaimed Kranitski with delight, and he answered
aloud:
"I am at home, at home!"
"An event worthy of record in universal history," answered the
voice of a man speaking somewhat through his nose and teeth.
"And the baron!" cried Kranitski; then he whispered:
"Close the drawing-room door, mother; I must freshen up a
little," and from behind the closed door he spoke to those who
were in the drawing-room:
"In a moment, my dears, in a moment I shall be at your service."
In the light of the lamp, placed by widow Clemens in the
drawing-room, he appeared, indeed, after a few minutes, dressed,
his hair arranged, perfumed, elegant with springy movements and
an unconstrained smile on his lips. Only his lids were reddened,
and on his forehead were many wrinkles which would not be
smoothed away.
"A comedian! There is a comedian!" grumbled widow Clemens,
returning to the kitchen, with a terrible clatter of overshoes.
The two young men pressed his hand in friendship. It was clear
that they liked him.
"Why did you avoid us all day?" inquired Baron Emil. "We waited
for you at Borel's--he gave us an excellent dinner. But maybe you
are fasting?"
"Let him alone, he has his suffering," put in Maryan. "I am so
sorry, mon bon vieux (my good old man), that I have persuaded the
baron to join me in taking you out. I cannot, of course, leave
you a victim to melancholy."
Kranitski was moved; gratitude and tenderness were gazing out of
his eyes.
"Thanks, thanks! You touch me."
He pressed the hands of both in turn, holding Maryan's hand
longer than the baron's, with the words:
"My dear-dear--dear."
The young man smiled.
"Do not grow so tender," said he, "for that injures the interior.
You are, however, a son of that generation which possesses an
antidote for melancholy."
"What is it?"
"Well, faith, hope, charity, with resignation and--other painted
pots. We haven't them, so we go to Tron-tron's, where Lili Kerth
sings. We are to give her a supper tonight at Borel's. Borel has
promised me everything which the five parts of the world can
give."
"As to the problematic nature of that Lili," remarked the baron,
"there are moments in which she takes on the superhuman ideal."
"What an idea, dear baron!" burst out Kranitski. "Lili and
superhumanity, the ideal! Why, she is a little beast that sings
abject things marvellously."
"That is it, that is it!" said the baron, defending his position,
"a little beast in the guise of an angel--the singing of
chansonettes with such a devil in the body--and at the same time
a complexion, a look, a smile, which scatters a kind of mystic,
lily perfume. This is precisely that dissonance, that snap, that
mystery with which she has conquered Europe. This rouses
curiosity; it excites; it is opposed to rules, to harmony--do you
understand?"
"Stop, Emil!" cried Maryan, laughing. "You are speaking to the
guardian of tombs. He worships harmony yet."
Kranitski seemed humiliated somewhat. He passed his palm over his
hair, and began timidly:
"But that is true, my dears; I see myself that I am becoming
old-fashioned. Men of my time, and I, called a cat a cat, a rogue
a rogue. If a Lili like yours put on the airs of an angel we
said: 'Oh, she is a rogue!' And we knew what to think of the
matter. But this confounding of profane with sacred, of the
rudest carnalism with a mystic tendency--"
The baron and Maryan laughed.
"For you this is all Greek, and will remain Greek. You wore born
in the age of harmony, you will remain on the side of harmony.
But a truce to talk. Let us go. Come, you will hear Lili Kerth;
we shall sup together."
"Come, we have a place in the carriage for you," said the baron,
supporting young Darvid's invitation.
Kranitski grew as radiant as if a sun-ray had fallen on his face.
"Very well, my dears, very well, I will go with you; it will
distract me, freshen me. A little while only; will you permit?"
"Of course. Willingly. We will wait." He hurried to his bedroom,
and closed the door behind him. In his head whirled pictures and
expressions: the theatre, songs, amusement, supper, conversation,
the bright light--everything, in a word, to which he had grown
accustomed, and with which he had lived for many years. The
foretaste of delight penetrated through his grievous sorrows.
After the bitter mixture he felt the taste of caramels in his
mouth. He ran toward his dressing-table, but in the middle of the
room he stood as if fixed to the floor. His eye met a beautiful
heliotype, standing on the bureau in the light of the lamp; from
the middle of the room, in a motionless posture, Kranitski gazed
at the face of the woman, which was enclosed in an ornamented
frame.
"Poor, dear soul! Noble creature!" whispered he, and his lips
quivered, and on his forehead appeared the red spots. Maryan
called from beyond the door:
"Hurry, old man! We shall be late!"
A few minutes afterward Kranitski entered the drawing-room. His
shoulders were bent; his lids redder than before.
"I cannot--as I love you, I cannot go with you! I feel ill."
"Indeed, he must be ill!" cried Maryan. "See, Emil, how our old
man looks! He is changed, is he not?"
"But a moment ago you looked well!" blurted out Emil, and added:
"Do not become wearisome, do not get sick. Sick people are
fertilizers on the field of death--and sickness is annoying!"
"Splendidly said!" exclaimed Maryan.
"No, no," answered Kranitski, "this is not important, it is an
old trouble of the liver. Returned only to-day--you must go
without me."
He straightened himself, smiled, tried to move without
constraint, but unconquerable suffering was evident on his
features and in the expression of his eyes.
"May we send the doctor?" asked Maryan.
"No, no," protested Kranitski, and the baron took him by the arm
and turned him toward the bedroom. Though Kranitski's shoulders
were bent at that moment, his form was shapely and imposing; the
baron, holding his arm, seemed small and frail; he made one think
of a fly. In the bedroom he said, with a low voice:
"It is reported in the city that papa Darvid is opposed to my
plans concerning Panna Irene. Do you know of this?"
For some months the baron had spoken frequently with Kranitski
about his plans, taking counsel with him even at times, and
begging for indications. Was he not the most intimate friend of
that house, and surely an adviser of the family? Kranitski did
not think, or even speak, of Baron Emil otherwise than:
"Ce brave garcon has the best heart in the world; he is very
highly developed and intelligent; yes, very intelligent; and his
mother, that dear, angelic baroness, was one of the most
beautiful stars among those which have lighted my life."
So through the man's innate inclination to an optimistic view of
mankind, and his grateful memory of "one of the most beautiful
stars," he was always very friendly to the baron and favorable to
his plan touching Irene; all the more since he noted in her an
inclination toward the baron. So, usually, he gave the young man
counsel and answers willingly and exhaustively. This time,
however, an expression of constraint and of suffering fell on his
face.
"I know not, dear baron; indeed, I can do nothing, for to
tell--for I--" A number of drops of perspiration came out on his
forehead, and he added, with difficulty:
"It seems that Panna Irene--"
"Panna Irene," interrupted the baron, without noticing
Kranitski's emotion, "is a sonnet from Baudelaire's Les fleurs du
mal (The flowers of evil). There is in her something undefined,
something contradictory--"
Kranitski made a quick movement.
"My baron--"
"But do you not understand me, dear Pan Arthur? I have no
intention of speaking ill of Panna Irene. In my mouth the
epithets which I have used are the highest praise. Panna Irene is
interesting precisely for this reason, that she is indefinite and
complicated. She is a disenchanted woman. She possesses that
universal irony which is the stamp of higher natures. Oh, Panna
Irene is not a violet unless from the hot-house of Baudelaire!
But, just for that reason she rouses curiosity, irritates, une
desabusee--une vierge desabusee. Do you understand? There is in
this the odor of mystery--a new quiver. But with natures of this
sort nothing can ever be certain--"
"Hers is a noble nature!" cried Kranitski, with enthusiasm.
"You divide natures into noble and not noble," said the baron,
with a smile; "but I, into annoying and interesting."
Beyond the door the loud voice of Maryan was heard:
"Emil, I will leave you and go to Tron-tron's. I will tell Lili
Kerth that you remained for the night to nurse a sick friend."
These words seemed to them so amusing that they laughed, from
both sides of the closed door, simultaneously.
"Good!" cried the baron. "You will create for me the fame of a
good Christian. As the Brandenburger fears only God, I fear only
the ridiculous, and go."
A few minutes later the two friends were no longer in the
dwelling of Kranitski, who was sitting on his long chair again,
with drooping head, turning in his fingers the golden
cigarette-case. The street outside the window was lonely enough,
so the rumble of the departing carriage was audible. Kranitski
followed it with his ear, and when it was silent he regretted
passionately for a moment that he had not gone to where people
were singing and jesting, and eating, and drinking in bright
light, in waves of laughter. But, straightway, he felt an
invincible distaste for all that. He was so sad, crushed, sick.
Why had not those two young friends of his remained longer? He
had rendered them the most varied services frequently, he had
simply been at their service always, and had loved them;
especially Maryan, the dear child--and many others. How many
times had he nursed them, also, in sickness, consoled them,
rescued them, amused them. Now, when he cannot run after them, as
a dog after its mistress, his only comrades are darkness and
silence.
Darkness reigned in the little drawing-room, silence of the grave
in the whole dwelling. A clatter of overshoes broke this silence;
widow Clemens stood in the kitchen door. On her high forehead,
above her gray eyebrows, shone the glass eyes of her spectacles;
her left hand was covered with a man's sock which she was
darning. She stood in the door and looked at Kranitski, bent,
grown old, buried in gloomy silence, and shook her head. Then, as
quietly as ever was possible for her, she approached the
long-chair, sat on a stool which was near it, and asked:
"Well, why are you silent, and chewing sorrow alone? Talk with
me, you will feel easier."
As he gazed at her silently, she asked in a still lower tone:
"Well, the woman? Did she love you greatly? Was her love real?
How did you and she come to your senses?"
After a few minutes' hesitation, or thought, Kranitski, with his
elbows on the edge of the chair, and his forehead on his palms,
said:
"I can tell all, mother, for you are not of our society, and you
are noble, faithful; the only one on earth who remains with me."
Throughout the silent chamber was heard, as it were, the sound of
a trumpet: that sound was made by widow Clemens, who had drawn
from her pocket a coarse handkerchief and held it to her nose.
Her eyes were moist. Kranitski quivered and squirmed, but
continued:
"When we met the first time after parting, the spring season was
around us. You know that we parted only because I had too little
fortune to marry a portionless maiden, and my mother would not
hear of my marrying a governess. Soon after, that rich man
married her. Fiu! fiu! what became of that governess, that girl
more timid than a violet? She became a society lady, full of
life, elegance, style--but springtime breathed around us,
memories of the village, of the flowers, of the fields, of our
earliest, heartfelt emotions. Did she love her husband? Poor,
dear, soul! It seems that at first she was attached to him, but
he left her, neglected her, grasped after millions throughout the
whole world. He was strong, unbending--she was ever alone. Alone
in society! Alone in the house--for the children were small yet,
and she so sensitive and weak, needing friendship and the
fondling of a devoted heart. I fell on my knees in spirit before
her--she felt that. He, when going away, left me near her as an
adviser, a guardian for the time, even a protector, yes, a
pro-tec-tor--the parvenu! the idiot! So wise, yet so stupid--ha!
ha! ha!"
Sneering, vengeful laughter contorted Kranitski's face, the red
spots spread over his brows and covered half of his forehead,
which was drawn now into thick wrinkles.
"Do not vex yourself, Tulek, do not vex yourself, you will be
ill," urged widow Clemens; but once his confessions were begun he
went on with them.
"For a year or more there was nothing between us. We were
friends, but she held me at a distance; she struggled. You,
mother, know if I had success with women--"
"You had, to your eternal ruin, you had!" blurted out widow
Clemens.
"From youth I had the gift of reading; I owe much to it."
"Ei! you owe much to it! What do you owe to it? Your sin against
God, and the waste of your life!" said the widow, ready for a
dispute, but he went on without noting that.
"Once she was weak after a violent attack of neuralgia; it was
late in the evening, the great house was empty and dark, the
children were sleeping--I gave her the attention that a brother
or a mother would give; I was careful; I hid what was happening
within me; I acted as though I were watching over a sick child
which was dear to me. I entertained her with conversation; I
spoke in a low voice; I gave her medicine and confectionery.
Afterward I began to read. More than once she had said that my
reading was music. I was reading Musset. You do not know, mother,
who Musset is. He is the poet of love--of that love exactly which
the world calls forbidden. She wanted something from the
neighboring chamber; I went for it. When I returned our eyes met,
and--well, I read no more that evening."
He was barely able to utter the last words; he covered his face
with his handkerchief, rested his head on the arm of the
long-chair, was motionless; wept, perhaps. Widow Clemens bent
down, the corner of her coarse handkerchief came from her pocket,
and through the chamber that sound of a trumpet was heard for the
second time. Then she drew her bench up still nearer, and, with
her hand in the stocking-foot, touched Kranitski's arm, and
whispered:
"Say no more, Tulek; despair not! Let God up there judge her and
you. He is a strict judge, but merciful! I am sorry for you, but
also for her, poor thing! What is to be done? The heart is not
stone, man is not an angel! Only drive off despair! Everything
passes-, and your sorrow also will pass. You may be better off in
the world than you now are. You may yet enjoy pleasant quiet in
Lipovka, in your own cottage. Stefanek and I may think out
something, so that you will escape from the mud of this city."
Kranitski made no answer; the woman spoke on:
"I have had another letter from Stefanek."
"What does that honest man write?" asked Kranitski.
The widow flushed up in anger:
"It is true that he is honest, and there is no need to call him
that--as if through favor, or sneering. Arabian adventure! He is
only my godson, but better than men of high birth. He writes that
management in Lipovka goes well; that again he has set out a
hundred fruit-trees in the garden; that in four weeks he will
come and bring a little money."
"Money!" whispered Kranitski; "but that is well!"
"It is surely well, for that Jew would have taken your furniture
if I had not pushed him down the steps, and a second time begged
him to wait." She laughed. "To push him down was easier than to
beg, for I am strong, and he is as small as a fly. Well I almost
kissed his hands, and he promised to wait. 'For widow Clemens I
will do this,' said he, 'because she is a servant who is like a
mother.' Indeed, I am like a mother! I have no children, I have
no one of my own in the world--I have only you."
Kranitski looked at her and began to shake his head with a slow
movement. She, too, fixing her fiery and gloomy eyes on his eyes,
shook slowly her head, which was covered with a great cap.
The lamp burning on the bureau threw its white light on those two
heads, which, discoursing sadly, continued their melancholy
converse without words; it shone also on the varied collection of
pipes at the wall, and cast passing gleams on the golden
cigarette-case which Kranitski turned in his hand.
CHAPTER V
Darvid was in splendid humor--he had bought at auction a house
and broad grounds very reasonably. He cared little for the
house--it was a rubbishy old pile which he would remove very
soon--but the grounds, covered then with an extensive garden,
represented an uncommonly profitable transaction. Situated near
one of the railroad stations, he would, of course, receive a high
price for it, because of the need to put there a great public
edifice.
Darvid would sell the ground to those who needed it, and then
make proposals to build the edifice. This was the third
undertaking which had fallen to him since his return, a few
months before. What of that, when the most important, for which
he would have given the other three willingly, had not fallen yet
to him, and he did not know well what had been done concerning
it? This affair did not let him sleep sometimes, still it did not
disincline him from working at that which he had begun already.
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