Children of the Soil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Thou hast come from Pani Kraslavski’s?”

“I have.”

“How is Mashko? Will he struggle to shore?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What facts?”

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

“Thou art free to do so.”

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

“Thou hast said well,” answered Bigiel.

CHAPTER XXIX

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

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

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

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

“Are you going out?” inquired he.

“Yes. To church. To-day is Sunday.”

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

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

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

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

Marynia received this offer with great satisfaction.

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

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

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

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

On the way home, Pan Stanislav, thinking continually of this expression of Marynia’s, said, —

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

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

“Did you hate me much then?”

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

“Mashko has wit; he described this once thus to me: ‘She would rather hate you than love me.’”

“Oi! that I would rather, is true.”

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

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

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

“He has grown disturbed in mind seriously,” replied Bukatski.

“Do not jest in that way,” said Marynia.

“And so much without cause,” added Pan Stanislav.

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

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

“He does not think of returning.”

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

“Read, and tell me if that is good.”

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

“No, no! this is no secret.”

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

“Is that true? It is not.”

“That depends on you,” answered Pan Stanislav.

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

And she ran out of the room.

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

“Why?”

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

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

Bukatski read: —

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

“Then it’s a journey to Italy?”

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

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

“Not true! Fall in love, and see if thou’lt find something new in it.”

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

“Bukatski, get married.”

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

“What hindrance in that?”

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

“To live all thy life on conceits!”

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

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

“Marynia tells me that ’t is thy wish to go to Italy after the wedding.”

“If my future lady will consent.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But would the ‘lonely old man’ not play piquet, so as to let those two mad heads talk themselves out?”

“But with a rubicon?” asked Plavitski.

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

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

Here Pan Stanislav continued the talk with Marynia.

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

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

“Thou art quite right.”

But she was indignant when he added, —

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

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

“But I am not an art critic at all.”

“On the contrary, you are.”

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

“No; I prefer to believe him.”

“That was to be foreseen.”

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

“Somehow thou wert not so vivacious?”

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

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

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

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

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

“And it kills – Fear God!”

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

“No; I understand just the opposite.”

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

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

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

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

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

“The folly of people amuses me somewhat.”

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

“Vainly enough.”

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

“Sometimes. But, for that matter, it becomes natural.”

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

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

“If thou would undertake some work.”

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

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