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?”
In Rome, however, he ceased at first to think of these things; so many external impressions were gathered at once in his mind that there was no room for reflection. Moreover, he and Marynia came home in the evening so tired that he remembered almost with terror the words of Bukatski, who, at times, when serving them as cicerone for his own satisfaction, said, “Ye have not seen the thousandth part of what is worth seeing; but that is all one, for in general it is not worth while to come here, just as it is not worth while to stay at home.”
Bukatski was then in a fit of contradiction, overturning in one statement what he had seemed to affirm in the preceding one.
Professor Vaskovski came, too, from Perugia to greet them, which pleased Marynia so much that she met him as she would her nearest relative. But, after satisfying her first outbursts of delight, she observed in the professor’s eyes, as it were, a kind of melancholy.
“What is the matter?” inquired she. “Do you not feel well in Italy?”
“My child,” answered he, “it is pleasant in Perugia, and pleasant in Rome – oh, how pleasant! Know this, that here, while walking on the streets, one is treading on the dust of the world. This, as I repeat always, is the antechamber to another life – but – ”
“But what?”
“But people – you see, that is, not from a bad heart, for here, as well as everywhere, there are more good than bad people; but sometimes I am sad, for here, as well as at home, they look on me as a little mad.”
Bukatski, who was listening to the conversation, said, —
“Then the professor has more cause for sadness here than at home.”
“Yes,” answered Vaskovski; “I have so many friends there, like you, who love me – but here, no – and therefore I am homesick.”
Then he turned to Pan Stanislav: “The journals here have printed an account of my essay. Some scoff altogether. God be with them! Some agree that a new epoch would begin through the introduction of Christ and His spirit into history. One writer confessed that individuals treat one another in a Christian spirit, but that nations lead a pagan life yet. He even called the thought a great one; but he and all others, when I affirm this to be a mission which God has predestined to us, and other youngest of the Aryans, seize their sides from laughter. And this pains me. They give it to be understood also that I have a little here – ”
And poor Vaskovski tapped his forehead with his finger. After a while, however, he raised his head and said, —
“A man sows the seed in sadness and often in doubt; but the seed falls on the field, and God grant that it spring up!”
Then he began to inquire about Pani Emilia; at last he turned to them his eyes, which were as if wakened from sleep, and asked naïvely, —
“But it is pleasant for you to be with each other?”
Marynia, instead of answering, sprang to her husband, and, nestling her head up to his shoulder, said, —
“Oh, see, Professor, this is how we are together, – so!”
And Pan Stanislav stroked her dark head with his hand.
CHAPTER XXXIII
A week later Pan Stanislav took his wife to Svirski’s on Via Margutta. Svirski they saw almost daily. They had grown accustomed to the artist and liked him; now he was to paint Marynia’s portrait. At the studio they found the Osnovskis, with whom acquaintance was made the more easily since the ladies had met some years before at a party, and Pan Stanislav had been presented on a time to Pani Osnovski, at Ostend; he needed merely to remember her now. Pan Stanislav, it is true, did not recollect whether at that epoch, when, after looking at every young and presentable woman, he asked himself, “Is it this one?” he had asked this touching the present Pani Osnovski; he might have done so, however, for she had the reputation then of being a comely, though rather flighty young person. Now she was a woman of six or seven and twenty, very tall, a fresh, though dark brunette, with cherry lips, dishevelled forelock, and somewhat oblique violet eyes, which gave her face a resemblance to Chinese faces, and at the same time a certain expression of malice and wit. She had a strange way of bearing herself, which consisted in thrusting back her shoulders and pushing forward her body; in consequence of this, Bukatski said of her that she carried her bust
en offrande
.
Almost immediately she told Marynia that, as they were sitting in the same studio, they ought to consider each other as colleagues; and told Pan Stanislav that she remembered him, from the ball at Ostend, as a good dancer and
causeur
, and therefore that she would not delay in taking advantage of that knowledge now. To both she said that it was very agreeable to her, that she was delighted with Rome, that she was reading “Cosmopolis,” that she was in love with the Villa Doria, with the view from the Pincian, that she hoped to see the catacombs in company with them, and that she knew the works of Rossi, in Allard’s translations. Then, pressing Svirski’s hand, and smiling coquettishly at Pan Stanislav, she went out, declaring that she gave way to one worthier than herself, and left the impression of a whirlwind, a Chinese woman, and a flower. Pan Osnovski, a very young man, with a light blond face without significance, but kindly, followed her, and hardly had he been able to put in a word.
Svirski drew a deep breath.
“Oh, she is a storm!” said he; “I have a thousand difficulties in keeping her at rest two minutes.”
“But what an interesting face!” said Marynia. “Is it permitted to look at the portrait?”
“It lacks little of being finished; you may look at it.”
Marynia and Pan Stanislav approached the portrait, and could express admiration without excess of politeness. That head, painted in water-colors, had the strength and warmth of an oil painting, and at the same time the whole spiritual essence of Pani Osnovski was in it. Svirski listened to the praises calmly; it was clear that he was pleased with his work. He covered the picture, and carried it to a dark corner of the studio, seated Marynia in an armchair already in position, and began to study her.
His persistent gaze confused her somewhat, – her cheeks began to flush; but he smiled with pleasure, muttering, —
“Yes; this is another type, – earth and heaven!”
At moments he closed one eye, which confused Marynia still more; at moments he approached the cardboard, and again drew back, and again studied her; and again he said, as if to himself, —
“In the other case, one had to bring out the devil, but here womanliness.”
“As you have seen that immediately, I feel sure of a masterpiece,” said Pan Stanislav.
All at once Svirski stopped looking at the paper and at Marynia, and, turning to Pan Stanislav, smiled joyously, showing his sound teeth.
“Yes, womanliness! and her own womanliness, that is the main characteristic of the face.”
“And seize it, as you seized the devil in the other one.”
“Stas!” exclaimed Marynia.
“It is not I who invented that, but Pan Svirski.”
“If you wish, we will say imp, not devil, – a comely imp, but a dangerous one. While painting, I observe various things. That is a curious type, – Pani Osnovski.”
“Why?”
“Have you observed her husband?”
“Somehow I was so occupied with her that I had no time.”
“There it is: she hides him in such a degree that he is hardly visible; and, what is worse, she herself does not see him. At the same time he is one of the most worthy men in the world, uncommonly well-bred, considerate to others in an unheard-of degree, very rich, and not at all stupid. Moreover, he loves her to distraction.”
Here Svirski began to paint, and repeated, as if in forgetfulness, —
“Lo-ves her to dis-trac-tion. Be pleased to arrange your hair a little about the ear. If your husband is a talker, he will be in despair, for Bukatski declares that when I begin work my lips never close, and that I let no one have a word. She, do you see, may be thus far as pure as a tear, but she is a coquette. She has an icy heart with a fiery head. A dangerous species, – oh, dangerous! She devours books by whole dozens, – naturally French books. She learns psychology in them, learns of feminine temperaments, of the enigma of woman, seeks enigmas in herself, which do not exist at all in her, discovers aspirations of which yesterday she knew nothing. She is depraving herself mentally; this mental depravation she considers wisdom, and makes no account of her husband.”
“But you are a terrible man,” remarked Marynia.
“My wife will hide to-morrow from fear, when the hour for sitting comes,” said Pan Stanislav.
“Let her not hide; hers is a different type. Osnovski is not at all dull; but people, and especially, with your permission, women, are so unwise, that if a man’s cleverness does not hit them on the head, if a man lacks confidence in himself, if he does not scratch like a cat and cut like a knife, they do not value him. As God lives, I have seen this in life a hundred times.”
After a while he closed one eye again, gazed at Marynia, and continued, —
“In general, how foolish human society is! More than once have I put to myself this question: Why is honesty of character, heart, and such a thing as kindness, less valued than what is called mind? Why, in social life, are two categories pre-eminent, wise and foolish? It is not the custom, for example, to say, virtuous and unvirtuous; to such a degree is it not the custom, that the very expressions would seem ridiculous.”
“Because,” said Pan Stanislav, “mind is the lantern with which virtue and kindness and heart must light the way for themselves, otherwise they might break their noses, or, what is worse, break the noses of other people.”
Marynia did not utter, it is true, a single word; but in her face it was possible to read distinctly, “How wise this Stas is – terribly wise!”
“Wise Stas” added meanwhile, —
“I am not speaking of Osnovski now, for I do not know him.”
“Osnovski,” said Svirski, “loves his wife as his wife, as his child, and as his happiness; but she has her head turned, God knows with what, and does not repay him in kind. Women interest me, as an unmarried man, immensely; more than once have I talked whole days about women, especially with Bukatski, when they interested him more than they do now. Bukatski divides women into plebeian souls, by which he means poor and low spirits, and into patrician souls, – that is, natures ennobled, full of the higher aspirations, and resting on principles, not phrases. There is a certain justice in this, but I prefer my division, which is simply into grateful and ungrateful hearts.”
Here he withdrew from the sketch for a moment, half closed his eyes, then, taking a small mirror, placed it toward the picture, and began to look at the reflection.
“You ask what I mean by grateful and ungrateful hearts,” said he, turning to Marynia, though she had not asked about anything. “A grateful heart is one which feels when it is loved, and is moved by love; and in return for the loving, loves more and more, yields itself more and more, prizes the loving, and honors it. The ungrateful heart gets all it can from the love given; and the more certain it feels of this love, the less it esteems it, the more it disregards