Children of the Soil

“Then you will halt on the road to Rome?”

“Yes. First, to give notice in the gallery of your coming, and to put a sofa on the stairs for you; second, I halt for black coffee, which is bad throughout Italy in general, but in Florence, at Giacosa’s, Via Tornabuoni, it is exceptionally excellent. That, however, is the one thing of value in Florence.”

“What pleasure is there for you in always saying something different from what you think?”

“But I am thinking seriously of engaging nice lodgings on Lung-Arno for you.”

“We shall stop at Verona.”

“For Romeo and Juliet? Of course; of course! Go now; later you would shrug your shoulders if you thought of them. In a month it would be too late for you to go, perhaps.”

Marynia started up at him like a cat; then, turning to her husband, said, —

“Stas, don’t let this gentleman annoy me so!”

“Well,” answered Pan Stanislav, “I will cut his head off, but after lunch.”

Bukatski began to declaim: —

“It is not yet near day:It was the nightingale, and not the lark,That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.”

Then, turning to Marynia, he inquired, “Has Pan Stanislav written a sonnet for you?”

“No.”

“Oh, that is a bad sign. You have a balcony on the street; has it never come once to his head to stand under your balcony with a guitar?”

“No.”

“Oh, very bad!”

“But there is no place to stand here, for there is water.”

“He might go in a gondola. With us it is different, you see; but here in Italy the air is such that if a man is in love really, he either writes sonnets, or stands under a balcony with a guitar. It is a thing perfectly certain, resulting from the geographical position, the currents of the sea, the chemical make-up of the air and the water: if a man does not write sonnets, or stand out of doors with a guitar, surely he is not in love. I can bring you very famous books on this subject.”

“It seems that I shall be driven to cut his head off before lunch,” said Pan Stanislav.

The execution, however, did not come, for the reason that it was just time for lunch. They sat down at a separate table, but in the same hall was a general one, which for Marynia, whom everything interested, was a source of pleasure, too, for she saw real English people. This made on her such an impression as if she had gone to some land of exotics; for since Kremen is Kremen, not one of its inhabitants had undertaken a similar journey. For Bukatski, and even Pan Stanislav, her delight was a source of endless jokes, but also of genuine pleasure. The first said that she reminded him of his youth; the second called his wife a “field daisy,” and said that one was not sorry to show the world to a woman like her. Bukatski noticed, however, that the “field daisy” had much feeling for art and much honesty. Many things were known to her from books or pictures; not knowing others, she acknowledged this openly, but in her expressions there was nothing artificial or affected. When a thing touched her heart, her delight had no bounds, so that her eyes became moist. At one time Bukatski jested with her unmercifully; at another he persuaded her that all the connoisseurs, so called, have a nail in the head, and that she, as a sensitive and refined nature, and so far unspoiled, was for him of the greatest importance in questions of art; she would be still more important if she were ten years of age.

At lunch they did not talk of art, because Pan Stanislav remembered his news from Warsaw, and said, —

“I had a letter from Mashko.”

“And I, too,” answered Bukatski.

“And thou? They must be hurried there; Mashko must be pressed in real earnest. Is the question known to thee?”

“He persuades me, or rather, he implores me, to buy – dost thou know what?”

Bukatski avoided Kremen, knowing well what trouble it had caused, and was silent through delicacy toward Marynia.

But Pan Stanislav, understanding his intention, said, —

“Oh, my God! Once we avoided that name as a sore spot, but now, before my wife, it is something different. It is hard to be tied up a whole lifetime.”

Bukatski looked at him quickly; Marynia blushed a little, and said, —

“Stas is perfectly right. Besides, I know that it is a question of Kremen.”

“Yes, it is of Kremen.”

“Well, and what?” asked Pan Stanislav.

“I should not buy it even because of this, – that the lady might have the impression that people are tossing it about like a ball.”

“If I do not think at all of Kremen?” said Marynia, blushing still more. She looked at her husband; and he nodded in sign of praise and satisfaction.

“That is a proof,” answered he, “that thou art a child of good judgment.”

“At the same time,” continued Marynia, “if Pan Mashko does not hold out, Kremen will either be divided, or go into usurers’ hands, and that to me would be disagreeable.”

“Ah, ha!” said Bukatski, “but if you do not think at all of Kremen?”

Marynia looked again at her husband, and this time with alarm; he began to laugh, however.

“Marynia is caught,” said he.

Then he turned to Bukatski. “Evidently Mashko looks on thee as the one plank of salvation.”

“But I am not a plank; look at me! I am a straw, rather. The man who wishes to save himself by such a straw will drown. Mashko has said himself more than once to me, ‘Thou hast blunted nerves.’ Perhaps I have; but I need strong impressions for that very reason. If I were to help Mashko, he would work himself free, stand on his feet, give himself out as a lord still further; his wife would personate a great lady, they would be terribly comme il faut, and I should have the stupid comedy, which I have seen already, and which I have yawned at. If, on the other hand, I do not help him, he will be ruined, he will perish, something interesting will happen, unexpected events will come to pass, something tragic may result, which will occupy me more. Now, think, both of you, I must pay for a wretched comedy, and dearly; the tragedy I can have for nothing. How is a man to hesitate in this case?”

“Fi! how can you say such things?” exclaimed Marynia.

“Not only can I say them, but I shall write them to Mashko; besides, he has deceived me in the most unworthy manner.”

“In what?”

“In what? In this, that I thought: ‘Oh, that is a regular snob! that is material for a dark personage; that is a man really without heart or scruples!’ Meanwhile, what comes out? That at bottom of his soul he has a certain honesty; that he wants to pay his creditors; that he is sorry for that puppet with red eyes; that he loves her; that for him separation from her would be a terrible catastrophe. He writes this to me himself most shamelessly. I give my word that in our society one can count on nothing. I will settle abroad, for I cannot endure this.”

Now Marynia was angry in earnest.

“If you say such things, I shall beg to break relations with you.”

But Pan Stanislav shrugged his shoulders, and added: “In fact, thy talk is ever on some conceit to amuse thyself and others, and never wilt thou think with judgment and in human fashion. Dost understand, I do not persuade thee to buy Kremen, and all the more because I might have a certain interest to do so; but there would be some occupation for thee there, something to do.”

Here Bukatski began to laugh, and said after a while, —

“I told thee once that I like, above all, to do what pleases me, and that it pleases me most to do nothing; hence it is that doing nothing I do what pleases me most. If thou art wise, prove that I have uttered nonsense. Take the second case: Suppose me a buckwheat sower; that, however, simply passes imagination. I, for whom rain or fine weather is merely the question of choosing a cane or an umbrella, would have, in my old age, to stand on one leg, like a stork, and look to see whether it pleases the sun to shine, or the clouds to drop rain. I should have to tremble as to whether my wheat is likely to grow, or my rape-seed shed, or rot fall on the potatoes; whether I shall be able to stake my peas, or furnish his Worship of Dogweevil as many bushels as I have promised; whether my plough-horses have the glanders, and my sheep the foot-rot. I should, in my old age, come to this, – that from blunting of faculties I would interject after every three words: ‘Pan Benefactor,’ or ‘What is it that I wanted to say?’ Voyons! pas si bête! I, a free man, should become a glebæ adscriptus, a ‘Neighbor,’ a ‘Brother Lata,’ a ‘Pan Matsyei,’ a ‘Lechit.’”5

Here, roused a little by the wine, he began to quote in an undertone the words of Slaz in “Lilla Weneda”: —

“Am I a Lechit? What does this mean? Are boorishness,Drunkenness, gluttony, gazing from my eyesWith the seven deadly sins, a passion for uproar,Pickled cucumbers, and escutcheons?”

“Argue with him,” said Pan Stanislav, “especially when at the root of the matter he is partly right.”

But Marynia, who as soon as Bukatski had begun to speak of work in the country, grew somewhat thoughtful, shook thoughtfulness now from her forehead, and said, —

“When papa was not well, – and never in Kremen has he been so well as recently, – I saved him a little in management, and later that work became for me a habit. Though God knows there was no lack of troubles, it gave me a pleasure that I cannot describe. But I did not understand the cause of this till Pan Yamish explained it. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is the real work on which the world stands, and every other is either the continuation of it, or something artificial.’ Later I understood even things which he did not explain. More than once, when I went out to the fields in spring, and saw that all things were growing, I felt that my heart, too, was growing with them. And now I know why that is: In all other relations that a man holds there may be deceit, but the land is truth. It is impossible to deceive the land; it either gives, or gives not, but it does not deceive. Therefore land is loved, as truth; and because one loves it, it teaches one to love. And the dew falls not only on grain, and on meadows, but on the soul, as it were; and a man becomes better, for he has to deal with truth, and he loves, – that is, he is nearer God. Therefore I loved my Kremen so much.”

Here Marynia became frightened at her own speech, and at this, what would “Stas” think; at the same time reminiscences had roused her. All this was reflected in her eyes as the dawn, and on her young face; and she was herself like the dawn.

Bukatski looked at her as he would at some unknown newly discovered master-piece of the Venetian school; then he closed his eyes, and hid half of his small face in his enormous fantastic cravat, and whispered, —

“Délicieuse!”

Then, thrusting forth his chin from his cravat, he said, —

“You are perfectly right.”

But the logical woman would not let herself be set aside by a compliment.

“If I am right, you are not.”

“That is another matter. You are right because it becomes you; a woman in that case is always right.”

“Stas!” said Marynia, turning to her husband. But there was so much charm in the woman at that moment, that he also looked on her with delight, his eyes smiled, his nostrils moved with a quick motion; for a moment he covered her hand with his, and said, —

“Oh, child, child!”

Then he inclined to her, and whispered, —

“If we were not in this hall, I would kiss those dear eyes and that mouth.”

And, speaking thus, Pan Stanislav made a great mistake, for at that moment it was not enough to feel the physical charm of Marynia, to be roused at the color of her face, her eyes, or her mouth, but it was necessary to feel the soul in her; to what an extent he did not feel it was shown by his fondling words, “O child, child!” She was for him at that moment only a charming child-woman, and he thought of nothing else.

Just then coffee was brought. To end the conversation, Pan Stanislav said, —

“So Mashko has come out a lover, and that after marriage.”

Bukatski swallowed a cup of boiling coffee, and answered, “In this is the stupidity, that Mashko is the man, not in this, – that the love was after marriage. I have not said anything sensible. If I have, I beg pardon most earnestly, and promise not to do so a second time. I have burned my tongue evidently with the hot coffee! I drink it so hot because they tell me that it is good for headache; and my head aches, aches.”

Here Bukatski placed his palm on his neck and the back of his head, and blinked, remaining motionless for a few seconds.

“I am talking and talking,” said he, then, “but my head aches. I should have gone to my lodgings, but Svirski, the artist, is to come to me here. We are going to Florence together; he is a famous painter in water-colors, really famous. No one has brought greater force out of water-colors. But see, he is just coming!”

In fact, Svirski, as if summoned by a spell, appeared in the hall, and began to look around for Bukatski. Espying him at last, he approached the table.

He was a robust, short man, with hair as black as if he were an Italian. He had an ordinary face, but a wise, deep glance, and also mild. While walking, he swayed a little because of his wide hips.

Bukatski presented him to Marynia in the following words, —

“I present to you Pan Svirski, a painter, of the genus genius, who not only received his talent, but had the most happy idea of not burying it, which he might have done as well, and with equal benefit to mankind, as any other man. But he preferred to fill the world with water-colors and with fame.”

Svirski smiled, showing two rows of teeth, wonderfully small, but white as ivory, and said, —

“I wish that were true.”

“And I will tell you why he did not bury his talent,” continued Bukatski; “his reasons were so parochial that it would be a shame for any decent artist to avow them. He loves Pognembin, which is somewhere in Poznan, or thereabouts, and he loves it because he was born there. If he had been born in Guadeloupe he would have loved Guadeloupe, and love for Guadeloupe would have saved him in life also. This man makes me indignant; and will the lady tell me if I am not right?”

To this Marynia answered, raising her blue eyes to Svirski, “Pan Bukatski is not so bad as he seems, for he has said everything that is good of you.”

“I shall die with my qualities known,” whispered Bukatski.

Svirski was looking meanwhile at Marynia, as only an artist can permit himself to look at a woman, and not offend. Interest was evident in his eyes, and at last he muttered, —

“To see such a head all at once, here in Venice, is a genuine surprise.”

“What?” asked Bukatski.

“I say, that the lady is of a wonderfully well-defined type. Oh, this, for example” (here he drew a line with his thumb along his nose, mouth, and chin). “And also what purity of outline!”

“Well, isn’t it true?” asked Pan Stanislav, with excitement. “I have always thought the same.”

“I will lay a wager that thou hast never thought of it,” retorted Bukatski.

But Pan Stanislav was glad and proud of that interest which Marynia roused in the famous artist; hence he said, —

“If it would give you any pleasure to paint her portrait, it would give me much more to have it.”

“From the soul of my heart,” answered Svirski, with simplicity; “but I am going to Rome to-day. There I have begun the portrait of Pani Osnovski.”

“And we shall be in Rome no later than ten days from now.”

“Then we are agreed.”

Marynia returned thanks, blushing to her ears. But Bukatski began to take farewell, and drew Svirski after him. When they had gone out, he said, —

“We have time yet. Come to Floriani’s for a glass of cognac.”

Bukatski did not know how to drink, and didn’t like spirits; but since he had begun to take morphine, he drank more than he could endure, because some one had told him that one neutralized the other.

“What a delightful couple those Polanyetskis are!” said Svirski.

“They are not long married.”

“It is evident that he loves her immensely. When I praised her, his eyes were smiling, and he rose as if on yeast.”

“She loves him a hundred times more.”

“What knowledge hast thou in such matters?”

Bukatski did not answer; he only raised his pointed nose, and said, as if to himself, —

“Oh, marriage and love have disgusted me; for it is always profit on one side, and sacrifice on the other. Polanyetski is a good man, but what of that? She has just as much sense, just as much character, but she loves more; therefore life will fix itself for them in this way, – he will be the sun, he will be gracious enough to shine, to warm, will consider her as his property, as a planet made to circle around him. All this is indicated to-day. She has entered his sphere. There is in him a certain self-confidence which angers me. He will have her with an income, but she will have him alone without an income. He will permit himself to love, considering his love as virtue, kindness, and favor; she will love, considering her love as a happiness and a duty. Look, if you please, at him, the divine, the resplendent! I want to go back and tell them this, in the hope that they will be less happy.”

Meanwhile the two men had taken seats in front of Floriani’s, and soon cognac was brought to them. Svirski thought some time over the Polanyetskis, and then inquired, —

“But if the position is pleasant for her?”

“I know that she has short sight; she might be pleased quite as well to wear glasses.”

“Go to the deuce! glasses on a face like hers – ”

“This makes thee indignant; but the other makes me – ”

“Yes, for thou hast a kind of coffee-mill in thy head, which grinds, and grinds everything till it grinds it into fine dust. What dost thou want of love in general?”

“I, of love? I want nothing of love! Let the devil take him who wants anything of love! I have sharp pains in my shoulder-blades from it. But if I were other than I am, if I had to describe what love ought to be, if I wanted anything of it, then I should wish – “

“What? hop! jump over!”

“That it were composed in equal parts of desire and reverence.”

Then he drank a glass of cognac, and added after a while, —

“It seems to me that I have said something which may be wise, if it is not foolish. But it is all one to me.”

“No! it is not foolish.”

“As God lives, it is all one to me.”

CHAPTER XXXII

After a stay of one week in Florence, Pan Stanislav received his first letter from Bigiel concerning the business of the house, and news so favorable that it almost surpassed his expectations. The law prohibiting export of grain because of the famine was proclaimed. But the firm had enormous supplies bought and exported previously; and because prices, especially at the first moment, had risen excessively abroad, Bigiel and Polanyetski began to do perfect business. Speculation, planned and carried through on a great scale, turned out so profitable that from well-to-do people, which they were before, they had become almost rich. For that matter Pan Stanislav had been sure of his business from the beginning, and entertained no fears; the news, however, pleased him both with reference to profit and his own self-love. Success intoxicates a man and strengthens his self-confidence. So, in talking with Marynia, he was not able to refrain from giving her to understand that he had an uncommon head, unquestionably higher than all those around him, like a tree the loftiest in the forest; that he is a man who always reaches the place at which he has aimed, – in a word, a kind of phnix in that society, abounding in men who know not how to help themselves. In the whole world he could not have found a listener more willing and ready to accept everything with the deepest faith.

“Thou art a woman,” said he, not without a shade of loftiness; “therefore why tell thee the affair from the beginning, and enter into details. To thee, as a woman, I can explain all best if I say thus: I was not in a condition yesterday to buy the medallion with a black pearl which I showed thee at Godoni’s; to-day I am, and will buy it.”

Marynia thanked him, and begged that he would not do so; but he insisted, and said that nothing would restrain him, that that was resolved on, and Marynia must consider herself the owner of the great black pearl, which, on such a white neck as hers, would be beautiful. Then he fell to kissing that neck; and when finally he had satisfied himself, but still felt the need of a listener of some sort, he began to walk in the room, smiling at his wife and at his own thoughts, saying, —

“I do not mention those who do nothing: Bukatski, for instance, who is known to be good for nothing, nor asses like Kopovski, who is known to have a cat’s head; but take even men who do something, – men of mind seemingly. Never would Bigiel seize a chance on the wing: he would set to thinking over it, and to putting it off; to-day he would decide, and to-morrow be afraid, and the time would be gone. What is the point in question? First, to have a head, and second, to sit down and calculate. And if one decides to act, then act. It is needful, too, to be cool, and not pose. Mashko is no fool, one might think; but see what he has worked out! I have not gone his way, and shall not follow him.”

Thus speaking, he continued to walk and to shake his thick, dark hair; and Marynia, who, in every case, would have listened to his words with faith, received them now as an infallible principle, all the more that they rested on tangible success.

He stopped before her at last, and said, —

“Knowest what I think? that coolness is judgment. It is possible to have an intelligent head, to take in knowledge as a sponge absorbs liquid, and still not to have sound, sober judgment. Bukatski is for me a proof of this. Do not think me vain; but if I, for instance, knew as much about art as he does, I should have a sounder judgment concerning it. He has read so much, and caught up so many opinions, that at last he has none of his own. Surely, from the materials which he has collected, I should have squeezed out something of my own.”

“Oh, that is sure,” said Marynia, with perfect confidence.

Pan Stanislav might have been right in a certain view. He was not a dull man by any means, and it may be that his intelligence was firmer and more compact than Bukatski’s; but it was less flexible and less comprehensive. This did not occur to him. He did not think, also, that in that moment, under the influence of boastfulness, he was saying things before Marynia which the fear of ridicule and criticism would have restrained him from saying before strangers, sceptical persons. But he did not restrain himself before Marynia; he judged that if he could permit himself such little boastfulness before any one, it was before his wife. Besides, as he himself said, “He had taken her, and all was over.” Moreover, she was his own.

In general, he had not felt so happy and satisfied at any time in life as then. He had experienced material success, and considered the future as guaranteed; he had married a woman, young, charming, and clever, for whom he had become a dogma, – and the position could not be otherwise, since her lips were not dry for whole days from his kisses, – and whose healthy and honest heart was filled with gratitude for his love. What could be lacking to him? What more could he wish? He was satisfied with himself, for he ascribed in great part to his own cleverness and merit, his success in so arranging life that everything promised, peace and prosperity. He saw that life was bitter for other men, but pleasant for him, and he interpreted the difference to his own advantage. He had thought once that a man wishing peace had to regulate his connection with himself, with mankind, with God. The first two he looked on as regulated. He had a wife, a calling, and a future; hence he had given and secured to himself all that he could give and secure. As to society, he permitted himself sometimes to criticise it, but he felt that in the bottom of his soul he loved it really; that even if he wished, he could not do otherwise; that if in a given case it were necessary to go into water or fire for society, he would go, – hence he considered everything settled on that side too. His relation with God remained. He felt that should that become clear and certain, he might consider all life’s problems settled, and say to himself definitely, “I know why I have lived, what I wanted, and why I must die.” While not a man of science, he had touched enough on science to know the vanity of seeking in philosophy so-called explanations or answers which are to be sought rather in intuition, and, above all, in feeling, in so far as the one and the other of these are simple, – otherwise they lead to extravagance. At the same time, since he was not devoid of imagination, he saw before him, as it were, the image of an honest, well-balanced man, a good husband, a good father, who labors and prays, who on Sunday takes his children to church, and lives a life wonderfully wholesome from a moral point of view. That picture smiled at him; and in life so much is done for pictures. He thought that a society which had a great number of such citizens would be stronger and healthier than a society which below was composed of boors, and above of sages, dilettanti, decadents, and all those forbidden figures with sprained intellects. One time, soon after his acquaintance with Marynia, he had promised himself and Bigiel that on finishing with his own person, and with people, he would set about this third relation seriously. Now the time had come, or at least was approaching. Pan Stanislav understood that this work needed more repose than is found on a bridal trip, and among the impressions of a new life and a new country, and that hurry of hotels and galleries in which he lived with Marynia. But, in spite of these conditions, in the rare moments when he was with his own thoughts, he turned at once to that problem, which for him was at that time the main one. He was subject meanwhile to various influences, which, small in themselves, exercised a certain action, even because he refrained purposely from opposing them. Of these was the influence of Marynia. Pan Stanislav was not conscious of it, and would not have owned to its existence; still the continual presence of that calm soul, sincerely and simply pious, extremely conscientious in relation to God, gave him an idea of the rest and peace to be found in religion. When he attended his wife to church, he remembered the words which she said to him in Warsaw, “Of course; it is the service of God.” And he was drawn into it, for at first he went to church with her always not to let her go alone, and later because it gave him also a certain internal pleasure, – such, for example, as the examination of phenomena gives a scientist specially interested in them. In this way, in spite of unfavorable conditions, in spite of journeys, and a line of thought interrupted by impressions of every sort, he advanced on the new road continually. His thoughts had at times great energy and decisiveness in this direction. “I feel God,” said he to himself. “I felt Him at Litka’s grave; I felt Him, though I did not acknowledge it, in the words of Vaskovski about death; I felt Him at marriage; I felt Him at home, in the plains, and in this country, in the mountains above the snow; and I only ask yet how I am to glorify Him, to honor and love Him? Is it as pleases me personally, or as my wife does, and as my mother taught me?”