“After the wedding Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples. Is that well?”
“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 animmense 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 whopretend. 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.
“What I say in the daytime does not count. Now it is night; let us drink wine, and a moment of more sincerity comes. Dost wish more wine, or coffee? I like this odor; one should mix Mocha and Ceylon in equal parts. Now comes a time of more sincerity! Knowest thou what I think at bottom? I have no clear idea of what happiness fame may give, for I do not possess it; and since the Ephesian temple is fired, there is no opening to fame before me. I admit, however, so, to myself, that the amount of it might be eaten by a mouse, not merely on an empty stomach, but after a good meal in a pantry. But I know what property is for I have a little of it; I know what travelling is, for I have wandered; I know what freedom is, for I am free; I know what women are—oi, devil take it!—too well, and I know what books are. Besides, in this chamber, I have a few pictures, a few drawings, a little porcelain. Now listen to what I will say to thee: All this is nothing; all is vanity, folly, dust, in comparison with one heart which loves. This is the result of my observations; only I have come to it at the end, while normal men reach it at the beginning.”
Here he began to stir the coffee feverishly with a spoon; and Pan Stanislav, who was very lively, sprang up and said,—
“And thou, O beast! what didst thou say some months since,—that thou wert going to Italy because there no one loved thee, and thou didst love no one? Dost remember? Thou’lt deny, perhaps.”
“But what did I say this afternoon to thy betrothed? That thou and she had gone mad; and now I say that thou art doing well. Dost wish logic of me? To talk and to say something are two different things. But now I am more sincere, for I have drunk half a bottle of wine.”
Pan Stanislav began to walk through the room and repeat: “But, as God lives, it is fabulous! See what the root of the matter is, and what they all say when cornered.”
“To love is good, but there is something still better,—that is, to be loved. There is nothing above that! As to me, I would give for it all these; but it is not worth while to talk of me. Life is a comedy badly written, and without talent: even that which pains terribly is sometimes like a poor melodrama; but in life, if there be anything good, it is to be loved. Imagine to thyself, I have not known that, and thou hast found it without seeking.”
“Do not say so, for thou knowest not how it came to me.”
“I know; Vaskovski told me. That, however, is all one. The question is this,—thou hast known how to value it.”
“Well, what dost thou wish? I understand that I am loved a little; hence I marry, and that is the end of the matter.”
Thereupon Bukatski put his hand on Pan Stanislav’s shoulder.
“No, Polanyetski; I am a fool in respect to myself, but not a bad observer of what is passing around me. That is not the end, but the beginning. Most men say, as thou hast, ‘I marry,—that is the end;’ and most men deceive themselves.”
“That philosophy I do not understand.”
“But thou seest what the question is? It is not enough to take a woman; a man should give himself to her also, and should feel that he does so. Dost understand?”
“Not greatly.”
“Well, thou art feigning simplicity. She should not only feel herself owned, but an owner. A soul for a soul! otherwise a life may be lost. Marriages are good or bad. Mashko’s will be bad for twenty reasons, and among others for this, of which I wish to speak.”
“He is of another opinion. But, as God lives, it is a pity that thou art not married, since thou hast such a sound understanding of how married life should be.”
“If to understand and to act according to that understanding were the same, there would not be the various, very various events, from which the bones ache in all of us. For that matter, imagine me marrying.”
Here Bukatski began to laugh with his thin little voice. Joyfulness returned to him on a sudden, and with it the vision of things on the comic side.
“Thou wilt be ridiculous; but what should I be? Something to split one’s sides at. What a moment that is! Thou wilt see in two weeks. For instance, how thou wilt dress for church. Here, love, beating of the heart, solemn thoughts, a new epoch in life; there, the gardener, with flowers, a dress-coat, lost studs, the tying of a cravat, the drawing on of patent-leather boots,—all at one time, one chaos, one confusion. Deliver me, angels of paradise! I have compassion on thee, my dear friend; and do thou, I beg, not take seriously what I say. There is a new moonnow, and I have a mania for uttering commonplace sentiment at the new moon. All folly!—the new moon, nothing more! I have grown as soft-hearted as a ewe who has lost her first lamb; and may the cough split me, if I haven’t uttered commonplace!”
But Pan Stanislav attacked him: “I have seen many vain things; but knowest thou what seems to me vainest in thee and those like thee? Thou and they, who absolve yourselves from everything, recognize nothing above you, and fear like fire every honest truth, for the one reason that some one might sometime declare it. How bad this is words cannot tell. As to thee, my dear friend, thou wert sincerer a while since than now. Again, thou’rt a poodle, dancing on two legs; but I tell thee that ten like thee could not show me that I have not won a great prize in the lottery.”
He took farewell of Bukatski with a certain anger; on the road home, however, he grew pacified and repeated continually: “See where the truth is; see what Mashko, and even Bukatski, says, when ready to be sincere; but I have won simply a great prize, and I will not waste what I have won.”
When he entered his lodgings and saw Litka’s photograph, he exclaimed, “My dearest kitten!” Up to the moment of sleeping he thought of Marynia with pleasure, and with the calmness of a man who feels that some great problem of life has been settled decisively, and settled well. For, in spite of Bukatski’s words, he was convinced that, since he was going to marry, all would be decided and ended by that one act.
The “catastrophe,” as Bukatski called it, came at last. Pan Stanislav learned by experience that if in life there are many days in which a man cannot seize his own thoughts, to such belong above all the day of his marriage. At times a number of these thoughts circled in his brain at one moment, and were so indefinite, that, speaking accurately, they were rather unconscious impressions than thoughts. He felt that a new epoch in life was beginning, that he was assuming great obligations which he ought to fulfil conscientiously and seriously; and at the same time, but exactly at the same time, he wondered that the carriage wasn’t coming yet, and expressed his astonishment in the form of a threat: “If those scoundrels are late, I’ll break their necks for them.” At moments a solemn, and, as it were, noble fear of that future for which he had assumed responsibility was mastering him; he felt within him a certain elevation, and in this feeling of elevation he began to lather his beard, and he thought whether on such an exceptional day it would not be exceptionally worth while to bring in a barber to his somewhat dishevelled hair. Marynia at the same time was at the basis of all his impressions. He saw her, as if present. He thought: “At this moment, she too is dressing, she is standing in her chamber in front of the mirror, she is talking to her maid, her soul is flying toward me, and her heart beats unquietly.” That instant tenderness seized him and he said to himself, “But have no fear, honest soul, for, as God lives, I will not wrong thee;” and he saw himself in the future, kind, considerate, so that he began to look with a certain emotion at the patent-leather boots standing near the armchair, on which his wedding-suit was lying. He repeated from time to time too, “If to marry, then marry!” He said to himself that he was stupid to hesitate, for another such Marynia there was not on earth; he felt that he loved her, and thought at the same time that the weather was not bad, but that perhaps rain might fall; that it might be cold in the Church of the Visitation; that in an hour he would be kneeling by Marynia, that a white necktie is safer knotted than pinned; that marriage is indeed the most important ceremony in life; that there is in it something sacred, and that one must not lose one’s head anyhow, for in an hour it will be over; to-morrow they will depart, and then the normal quiet life of husband and wife will begin.
These thoughts, however, flew away at moments like a flock of sparrows, into which some one has fired from behind a hedge suddenly, and it grew empty in Pan Stanislav’s head. Then phrases of this kind came to his lips mechanically: “The eighth of April—to-morrow will be Wednesday! to-morrow will be Wednesday! my watch! to-morrow will be Wednesday!” Later he roused himself, repeated, “One must be an idiot!” and the scattered birds flew back again in a whole flock to his head, and began to whirl around in it.
Meanwhile Abdulski, the agent of the house of Polanyetski, Bigiel, and Company came in. He was to be the second groomsman, with Bukatski as first. Being a Tartar by origin and a man of dark complexion, though good-looking, he seemed so handsome in the dress-coat and white cravat that Pan Stanislav expressed the hope that surely he would marry soon. Abdulski answered,—
“The soul would to paradise;” then he commenced a pantomime, intended to represent the counting of money, and began to speak of the Bigiels. All their children wanted to be at the marriage. The Bigiels decided to take only the two elder ones; from this arose disagreements and difference of opinion, expressed on Pani Bigiel’s side by means of slaps. Pan Stanislav, who was a great children’s man, was exceedingly indignant at this, and said,—
“I’ll play a trick on the Bigiels. Have they gone already?”
“They were just going.”
“That is well; I will run in there on the way to Plavitski’s, take all the children, and pour them out before Pani Bigiel and my affianced.”
Abdulski expressed the conviction that Pan Stanislav would not do so; but he merely confirmed him thereby in his plan all the more. In fact, when he entered the carriage, they drove for the children directly. The governess, knowing Pan Stanislav’s relations with the family, dared not oppose him; and half an hour later, Pan Stanislav, to the great consternation of Pani Bigiel, entered Plavitski’slodgings at the head of a whole flock of little Bigiels, in their every-day clothing, with collars awry, hair disarranged for the greater part, and faces half happy, half frightened, and, hurrying up to Marynia, he said, kissing her hands already enclosed in white gloves,—
“They wanted to wrong the children. Say that I did well.”
This proof of his kind heart entertained and pleased Marynia; hence she was glad from her whole soul to see the children, and even glad of this,—that the assembled guests considered her future husband an original,—and glad because Pani Bigiel, straightening the crooked collars hurriedly, said in her worry,—
“What’s to be done with such a madman?”
Somewhat of this opinion too was old Plavitski. But Pan Stanislav and Marynia were occupied for the moment with each other so exclusively that everything else vanished from their eyes. The hearts of both beat a little unquietly. He looked at her with a certain admiration. All in white, from her slippers to her gloves, with a green wreath on her head, and a long veil, she seemed to him other than usual. There was in her something uncommonly solemn, as in the dead Litka. Pan Stanislav did not make, it is true, that comparison; but he felt that this white Marynia, if not more remote from him, made him hesitate more than she of yesterday, arrayed in her ordinary costume. Withal she seemed less comely than usual, for the wedding wreath is becoming to women only exceptionally, and, besides, disquiet and emotion reddened her face; which, with the white robe, seemed still redder than it was in reality. But a wonderful thing! Just this circumstance moved Pan Stanislav. In his heart, rather kind by its nature, there rose a certain feeling resembling compassion or tenderness. He understood that Marynia’s heart must be panting then like a captive bird, and he began to calm her; to speak to her with such good and kind words that he was astonished himself where he could find them in such numbers, and how they came to him so easily. But they came to him easily just because of Marynia. It was to be seen that she gave herself to him with a panting of the heart, but also with confidence; that she gave him her heart, her soul, and her whole being, her whole life, and that not only for good, but for every moment of her life—and to the end of it. In this regard no shadow rose in Pan Stanislav’s mind, andthat certainty made him better at that moment, more sensitive and eloquent, than he was ordinarily. At last they held each the other’s hand and looked into each other’s eyes, not only with love, but with the greatest friendship and confidence. Both felt the double reality. Yet a few moments, and that future will begin. But now the thoughts of both began to grow clear; and that internal disquiet, from which they had not been free, yielded more and more and turned into a solemn concentration of thought, as the religious ceremony drew near. Pan Stanislav’s thoughts did not fly apart like sparrows; there remained to him only a certain astonishment, as it were, that he with all his scepticism had such a feeling even of the religious significance of the act which was about to be accomplished. At heart he was not a sceptic. In his soul there was hidden even a certain yearning for religious sensations; and if he had not returned to them it was only through a loss of habit and through spiritual negligence. Scepticism, at most, had shaken the surface of his thoughts, just as wind roughens the surface of water; the depths of which are still calm. He had lost, too, familiarity with forms; but to regain it was a work for the future and Marynia. Meanwhile this ceremony to which he must yield seemed to him so important, so full of solemnity and sacredness, that he was ready to proceed to it with bowed head.
But first he had another ceremony, which, equally solemn in itself, was disagreeable enough to Pan Stanislav; namely, to kneel before Pan Plavitski, whom he considered a fool, receive his blessing and hear an exhortation, which, as was known, Plavitski would not omit. Pan Stanislav had said in his mind, however, “Since I am to marry, I must pass through all which precedes it, and with a good face; little do I care what expression that monkey, Bukatski, will have at such moments.” Therefore he knelt with all readiness at Marynia’s side before her father, and listened to his blessing with an exhortation, which, by the way, was not long. Plavitski himself was moved really; his voice and his hands trembled; he was barely able to pronounce something in the nature of an adjuration to Pan Stanislav, not to prevent Marynia from coming even occasionally to pray at his grave before it was grown over completely with grass.
Finally, the solemnity of the moment affected Yozio Bigiel. Seeing Pan Plavitski’s tears, seeing Marynia and Pan Stanislav on their knees (kneeling at Bigiel’s housewas not only a punishment, but frequently the beginning of more vigorous instruction), Yozio gave expression to his sympathy and fear by closing his eyes, opening his mouth, and breaking into as piercing a wail as he could utter. When the rest of the little Bigiels followed his example in great part, and all began to move, for the time to pass to the church had arrived, the grave of Pan Plavitski grown over with grass could not call forth an impression sufficiently elegiac.
Sitting in the carriage between Abdulski and Bukatski, Pan Stanislav hardly answered their questions in half words; he took no part in the conversation, but kept up a monologue with himself. He thought that in a couple of minutes that would come to pass of which he had been dreaming whole months; and which till the death of Litka he had desired with the greatest earnestness of his life. Here for the last time he was roused by a feeling of the difference between that past which not long since had vanished, and the present moment; but there was a difference. Formerly he strove and desired; to-day he only wished and consented. That thought pierced him like a shudder, for it shot through his head that perhaps there was lacking in his own personality that basis on which one may build. But he was a man able to keep his alarms in close bonds, and to scatter them to the four winds at a given moment. He said to himself, therefore: “First, there is no time to think of this; and second, reality does not answer always to imaginings; this is a simple thing.” Then what Bukatski had said pushed again into his memory: “It is not enough to take, a man must give;” but he thought this a fabric of such fine threads that it had no existence whatever, and that life should be taken more simply, that there is no obligation to come to terms with preconceived theories. Here he repeated what he had said to himself frequently, “I marry, and that is the end.” Then reality embraced him, or rather the present moment; he had nothing in his head but Marynia, the church, and the ceremony.
She on the way meanwhile implored God in silence to help her to make her husband happy; for herself she begged also a little happiness, being certain, moreover, that her dead mother would obtain that for her.
Then they went arm in arm between the lines of invited and curious people, seeing somewhat as through a mist lights gleaming in the distance on the altar, and at the sidesfaces known and unknown. Both saw more distinctly the face of Pani Emilia, who wore the white veil of a Sister of Charity, her eyes at once smiling and filled with tears. Litka came to the minds of both; and it occurred to them that it was precisely she who was conducting them to the altar. After a while they knelt down; before them was the priest, higher up the gleaming of the candles, the glitter of gold, and the holy face of the principal image. The ceremony commenced. They repeated after the priest the usual phrases of the marriage vow; and Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia’s hand, was seized suddenly by emotion such as he had not expected, and such as he had not felt since his mother had brought him to first communion. He felt that that was not a mere every-day legal act, in virtue of which a man receives the right to a woman; but in that binding of hands, in that vow, there is present a certain mysterious power from beyond this world,—that it is simply God before whom the soul inclines and the heart trembles. The ears of both were struck then in the midst of silence by the solemn words, “Quod Deus junxit, homo non disjungat;” but Pan Stanislav felt that that Marynia whom he had taken becomes his body and blood, and a part of his soul, and that for her too he must be the same. That moment a chorus of voices in the choir burst out with “Veni Creator,” and a few moments after the Polanyetskis went forth from the church. On the way out, the arms of Pani Emilia embraced Marynia once again: “May God bless you!” and when they drove to the wedding reception, she went to the cemetery to tell Litka the news, that Pan Stas was married that day to Marynia.
Two weeks later, in Venice, the doorkeeper of the Hotel Bauer gave Pan Stanislav a letter with the postmark of Warsaw. It was at the moment when he and his wife were entering a gondola to go to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, where on that day, the anniversary of her death, a Mass was to be offered for the soul of Marynia’s mother. Pan Stanislav, who expected nothing important from Warsaw, put the letter in his pocket, and asked his wife,—
“But is it not a little too early for Mass?”
“It is; a whole half hour.”
“Then perhaps it would please thee to go first to the Rialto?”
Marynia was always ready to go. Never having been abroad before, she simply lived in continual rapture, and it seemed to her that all which surrounded her was a dream. More than once, in the excess of her delight, she threw herself on her husband’s neck, as if he had built Venice, as if she ought to thank him alone for its beauty. More than once she repeated,—
“I look and I see, but cannot believe that this is real.”
So they went to the Rialto. There was little movement yet, because of the early hour; the water was as if sleeping, the day calm, clear, but not very bright,—one of those days in which the Grand Canal with all its beauty has the repose of a cemetery; the palaces seem deserted and forgotten, and in their motionless reflection in the water is that peculiar deep sadness of dead things. One looks at them then in silence, and as if in fear, lest by words the general repose may be broken.
Thus did Marynia look. But Pan Stanislav, less sensitive, remembered that he had a letter in his pocket, hence he drew it forth, and began to read. After a time he exclaimed,—
“Ah! Mashko is married; their wedding was three days after ours.”
But Marynia, as if roused from a dream, inquired, while blinking, “What dost thou say?”
“I say, dreaming head, that Mashko’s wedding is over.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, and, looking into his eyes, inquired,—
“What is Mashko to me? I have my Stas.”
Pan Stanislav smiled like a man who kindly permits himself to be loved, but does not wonder that he is loved; then he kissed his wife on the forehead, with a certain distraction, for the letter had begun to occupy him, and read on. All at once he sprang up, as if something had pricked him, and cried,—
“Oh, that is a real catastrophe!”
“What has happened?”
“Panna Kraslavski has a life annuity of nine thousand rubles, which her uncle left her; beyond that, not a copper.”
“But that is a good deal.”
“A good deal? Hear what Mashko writes:—
“‘In view of this, my bankruptcy is an accomplished fact, and the declaration of my insolvency a question of time.’
“‘In view of this, my bankruptcy is an accomplished fact, and the declaration of my insolvency a question of time.’
“They deceived each other; dost understand? He counted on her property, and she on his.”
“At least they have something to live on.”
“They have something to live on; but Mashko has nothing with which to pay his debts, and that concerns us a little,—me, thee, and thy father. All may be lost.”
Here Marynia was alarmed in earnest. “My Stas,” said she, “perhaps thy presence is needed there; let us return, then. What a blow this will be to papa!”
“I will write Bigiel immediately to take my place, and save what is possible. Do not take this business to heart too much, my child. I have enough to buy a bit of bread for us both, and for thy father.”
Marynia put her arms around his neck. “Thou, my good— With such a man one may be at rest.”
“Besides, something will be saved. If Mashko finds credit, he will pay us; he may find a purchaser, too, for Kremen. He writes me to ask Bukatski to buy Kremen, and to persuade him to do so. Bukatski is going to Rome this evening, and I have invited him to lunch. I will ask him. He has a considerable fortune, and would have something to do. I am curious to know how Mashko’s life will develop. He writes at the end of the letter:
“‘I discovered the condition of affairs to my wife; she bore herself passively, but her mother is wild with indignation.’
“‘I discovered the condition of affairs to my wife; she bore herself passively, but her mother is wild with indignation.’
“Finally he adds that at last he has fallen in love with his wife, and that if they should separate, it would be the greatest unhappiness in life for him. That lyric tale gives me little concern; but I am curious as to how all this will end.”
“She will not desert him,” said Marynia.
“I do not know; I thought myself once that she would not, but I like to contradict. Wilt thou bet?”
“No; for I do not wish to win. Thou ugly man, thou hast no knowledge of women.”
“On the contrary, I know them; and I know them because all are not like this little one who is sailing now in a gondola.”
“In a gondola in Venice, with her Stas,” answered Marynia.
They were now at the church. When they went from Mass to the hotel, they found Bukatski, dressed for the road, in a cross-barred gray suit,—which, on his frail body, seemed too large,—in yellow shoes and a fantastic cravat, tied as fancifully as carelessly.
“I am going to-day,” said he, after he had greeted Marynia. “Do you command me to prepare a dwelling in Florence for you? I can engage some palace.”
“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.”
“It is not yet near day:It was the nightingale, and not the lark,That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.”
“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 sawrealEnglish 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 eyesbecame 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 terriblycomme 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 aglebæ 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”:—