Children of the Soil
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“Oi! little one, little one,” said Pan Osnovski.
But she continued, “My husband will not believe that I am in love with Nemi; but I am. When I was there, it seemed to me that Christianity had not reached the place yet; that in the night certain priests come out and celebrate pagan rites on the lake. Silence and mystery! there you have Nemi. Will you believe that when I was there the wish came to me to be a hermit, and it has not left me to this moment? I would build a cell on the bank of the lake for myself, and wear a robe long and gray, like the habit of Saint Francis of Assisi, and go barefoot. What would I give to be a hermit! I see myself at the lake – ”
“Anetka,8 but what would become of me?” inquired Osnovski, half in jest, half in earnest.
“Oh, thou wouldst console thyself,” said she, curtly.
“Thou wouldst be a hermitess,” thought Pan Stanislav, “if on the other side of the lake there were a couple of dozen dandies gazing through glasses to see what the hermitess was doing, and how she looked.”
He was too well-bred to tell her this directly; but he told her something similar, and which could be understood.
“Naturally,” said she, laughing; “I should live by alms, and should have to see people sometimes; if you came to Nemi, I should come to you too and repeat in a very low voice, ‘Un soldo! un soldo!’”
Saying this, she stretched her small hands to him, and shook them, repeating humbly, —
“Un soldo per la povera! un soldo!”
And she looked into his eyes.
Pan Osnovski spoke meanwhile to Marynia.
“This is called Three Fountains,” said he, “for there are three springs here. Saint Paul’s head was cut off at this place; and there is a tradition that the head jumped three times, and that on those places springs burst forth. The place belongs now to the Trappists. Formerly people could not pass a night here, there was such fever; now there is less, for they have planted a whole forest of eucalyptuses on the hills. Oh, we can see it already.”
But Pani Osnovski, bending back somewhat, half closed her eyes for a moment, and said to Pan Stanislav, —
“This Roman air intoxicates me. I am as if beside myself. At home I cannot force from life more than it gives me; but here I am demoralized, I feel that something is wanting to me. Do I know what? Here one feels something, divines something, yearns for something. Maybe that is bad. Maybe it is not right for me to say this. But I say always what passes through my mind. At home, when a child, they called me Little Sincerity. I shall beg my husband to take me hence. It may be better to live in my own narrow shell, like a nut, or a snail.“
“It may be pleasant in shells for nuts or snails,” answered Pan Stanislav, with gravity, “but not for birds, and besides birds of paradise, of which there is a tradition that they have no legs and can never rest, but must fly and fly.”
“What a beautiful tradition!” exclaimed Pani Osnovski. And, raising her hands, she began to move them, imitating the motion of wings, and repeating, —
“This way, forever through the air.”
The comparison flattered her, though she was astonished that Pan Stanislav had uttered it with a serious voice, but with an inattentive and, as it were, ironical face. He began to interest her, for he seemed very intelligent, and more difficult to master than she had expected.
Meanwhile they arrived at Three Fountains. They visited the garden, the church, and the chapel, in the basement of which three springs were flowing. Pan Osnovski explained, in his kind, somewhat monotonous voice, what he had read previously. Marynia listened with interest; but Pan Stanislav thought, —
“Still to live three hundred and sixty-five days in a year with him, must be a little tiresome.”
That justified Pani Osnovski in his eyes for the moment; she, taking upon herself now the new role of bird of paradise, did not rest for a moment, not merely on the ground, but on any subject. First she drank eucalyptus liquor, which the cloister prepared as a means against fever; then she declared decisively that if she were a man she would be a Trappist. Later, however, she remembered that her sailing career would be agreeable “ever between sea and sky, as if living in endlessness;” at last the wish to become a great, a very great writer, gained the day against everything else, – a writer describing the minutest movements of the soul, half-conscious feelings, desires incompletely defined, all forms, all colors, all shades. The party learned also, as a secret, that she was writing her memoirs, which “that honest Yozio” considers a masterpiece; but she knows that that is nothing, she has not the least pretensions, and she ridicules Yozio and the memoirs.
“Yozio” looks at her with loving eyes, and with great affection on his pimpled face, and says with a protest, —
“As to the memoirs, I beg pardon greatly.”
They drove away about sundown. There were long shadows from the trees; the sun was large and red. The distant aqueducts and the Alban hills were gleaming in rose-color. They were halfway when the “Angelus” was sounded in the tower of St. Paul’s, and immediately after were heard a second, a third, a tenth. Each church gave the signal to the succeeding one; and such a mighty chorus was formed as if the whole air were ringing, as if the “Angelus” had been sounded not merely by the city, but the whole region, the plains, and the mountains.
Pan Stanislav looked on Marynia’s face, lighted by the golden gleams. There was great calm in it and attention. It was evident that she was repeating the “Angelus” now, as she had repeated it in Kremen, when it was sounded in Vantory. Always and everywhere the same. Pan Stanislav remembered again the “service of God.” It seemed to him more simple and pacifying than ever. But now, while approaching the city, he understood the permanence, the vitality, the immensity, of those beliefs. “All this,” thought he, “has endured thus for a thousand and a half of years; and the strength and certainty of this city is only in those towers, those bells, that permanence of the cross, which endures and endures.” Again Svirski’s words came to him: “Here a ruin, on the Palatine a ruin, in the Forum a ruin, but over the city crosses, crosses, crosses and crosses.” It seemed to him beyond a doubt that in that very permanence there is something superhuman. Meanwhile the bells sounded, and the heavens above the city were covered with twilight. Under the impression produced by the praying Marynia, and the bells, and that vesper feeling, which seemed to hover over the city and the whole land, the following thought began to take form in Pan Stanislav, who had much mental directness: “What an idiot and vain fool should I be, in view of the needs of faith and that feeling of God, were I to seek some special forms of love and reverence of my own, instead of accepting those which Marynia calls ‘service of God,’ and which still must be the best, since the world has lived nearly two thousand years in them!” Then the reasoning side of this thought struck him as a practical man, and he continued to himself, almost joyously: “On one side the traditions of a thousand years, the life of God knows how many generations and how many societies, for which there was and is delight in those forms, the authority for God knows how many persons who consider them as the only forms; on the other side, who? I, a partner in the commission house of Bigiel and Polanyetski; and I had the pretension to think out something better into which the Lord God would fit Himself more conveniently. For this it is needful at least to be a fool! I, besides, am a man sincere with myself; and I could not endure it if from time to time the thought came to me, – I am a fool. But my mother believed in this, and my wife believes; and I have never seen greater peace in any one than in them.”
Here he looked at Marynia once and a second time; she had finished evidently her “Angelus,” for she smiled at him in answer, and inquired, —
“Why so silent?”
“We are all silent,” he answered.
And so it was, but for various reasons. While Pan Stanislav was occupied with his thoughts, Pani Osnovski attacked him a number of times with her eyes and her words. He answered her words with something disconnected, and did not notice her glances in any way. He simply offended her: she might have forgiven him, she might have been pleased even, if to her statement that she wished to be a nun, he had answered with impudence concealed in polished words; but he wounded her mortally when he ceased to notice her, and in punishment she ceased also to notice him.
But as a person of good breeding she became all the politer to Marynia. She inquired touching her plans on the following day; and, learning that they were to be at the Vatican, she announced that she and her husband had tickets of admission, and would use the opportunity also.
“You know the dress?” inquired she. “A black robe, and black lace on the head. One looks a little old in them, but no matter.”
“I know; Pan Svirski forewarned me,” answered Marynia.
“Pan Svirski always talks of you to me when I am sitting to him. He has great regard for you.”
“And I for him.”
During this conversation they arrived at the hotel. Pan Stanislav received such a slight and cool pressure of the hand from the fair lady that, though his head was occupied with something else, he noticed it.
“Is that a new method,” thought he, “or have I said something that displeased her?”
“What dost thou think of Pani Osnovski?” asked he of Marynia in the evening.
“I think that Pan Svirski may be right in some measure.”
And Pan Stanislav answered: “She is writing at this moment ‘memoirs,’ which ‘Yozio’ considers a masterpiece.”
CHAPTER XXXV
Next morning when Marynia came out to her husband he hardly knew her. Dressed in black, and with a black lace veil on her head, she seemed taller, more slender, darker, and older. But he was pleased by a certain solemnity in her which recalled the ceremony of their marriage. Half an hour later they started. On the road Marynia confessed to fear, and a beating of the heart. He pacified her playfully, though he, too, was moved somewhat; and when, after a short drive, they entered the gigantic half-circle in front of St. Peter’s, he felt also that his pulse was not beating as every day, and, besides, he had a strange feeling of being smaller than usual. Near the steps, where stood a number of Swiss guards, arrayed in the splendid uniform invented by Michael Angelo, they found Svirski, who led them up with a throng of people, mostly Belgians. Marynia, who was somewhat dazed, did not know herself when she entered a very spacious hall, in which the throng was still denser, excepting on a space in the centre, where the Swiss guards were posted in lines, and kept a broad passage open. The crowd, among which the French and Flemish languages were to be heard, whispered in low voices, and turned their heads and eyes toward a passage, in which, from time to time, appeared, through the adjoining hall, forms in remarkable costumes, which reminded Pan Stanislav of galleries in Antwerp or Brussels. It seemed to him that the Middle Ages were rising from the dead: now it was some knight of those ages, in a helmet, different indeed from helmets on the ancient portraits, but with steel on his breast; now a herald in a short red dalmatica, and with a red cap on his head; at times through the open door appeared purple cardinals, or violet bishops, ostrich feathers, lace on black velvet, and heads immensely venerable, white hair and faces, as if from a sarcophagus. But it was evident that the glances of the throng were falling on those peculiar dresses and colors and faces, as if, in passing, that their eyes were waiting for something beyond, something higher, some other heart; it was clear that in people’s minds attention was fixed as was feeling in their souls, in waiting for a moment which comes once in a lifetime, and is memorable ever after. Pan Stanislav, holding Marynia by the hand, so as not to lose her in the throng, felt that hand tremble from emotion; as to him, in the midst of those silent crowds and beating hearts, before that historical dignity of former ages rising from the dead, as it were, in the midst of that attention and expectation, he felt a second time the wonderful impression of becoming smaller and smaller, till he was the smallest that he had ever been in life.
At that moment a low and rather panting voice whispered near them, —
“I have been looking for you, and found you with difficulty. The ceremony will begin at once, it seems.”
But it was not to begin at once. The monsignor acquaintance greeted Svirski meanwhile, and, speaking a few words to him, conducted the whole party politely to the adjoining hall, which was fitted in crimson damask. Pan Stanislav saw with astonishment that this hall, too, was full of people, with the exception of one end, which was reserved by a guard of honor, and in which was an armchair on an elevation, and before it a number of prelates and bishops conversing confidentially. Here expectation and attention were more expressly visible. It was evident that people were holding their breath; and all faces had a solemn, mysterious expression. The azure clearness of the day, mingled with the purple reflections of the tapestry, filled that hall with a kind of unusual light, in which the rays of the sun, breaking in here and there through the window-panes, appeared very ruddy and of a deeper red.
They waited some time yet; at last, in the first hall a murmur was heard, then a muttering, then a shout, and, finally, in the open side door appeared a white figure borne by the noble guard. Marynia’s hand pressed Pan Stanislav’s nervously; he returned the pressure; and swift impressions, merged in one general feeling of the exceptional and solemn import of the moment, flashed through their minds, as during the ceremony of their marriage.
One of the cardinals began to speak, but Pan Stanislav neither heard nor understood what he said. His eyes, his thoughts, his whole soul, were with the figure clothed in white. Nothing in it escaped his attention, – its unparalleled emaciation, its frailness, its thinness, and its face as pale, and at the same time as transparent, as faces of the dead are. There was in it something which had no physical strength, or in every case it seemed to him simply half body, half apparition, as it were, a light shining through alabaster; a spirit, fixed in some transparent matter; an intermediate link between two worlds; a link human yet, though already preterhuman, earthly so far, but also above earthly things. And through a marvellous antithesis the matter in it seemed to be something apparitional, and the spirit something material.
Afterward, when people began to approach it for a blessing; when Pan Stanislav saw his Marynia at its feet; when he felt that to those knees, already half empyrean, one might still incline as to those of a father, – an emotion surpassing everything seized him; his eyes were as if mist-covered; never in life had he felt himself such a small grain of sand, but at the same time he felt himself a grain of sand in which the grateful heart of a little child was throbbing.
After they had gone out, all were silent. Marynia had eyes as if roused from sleep; Vaskovski’s hands were trembling. Bukatski dragged himself in to lunch; but, being ill, he could not excite conversation in any one. Svirski, strange to say, talked little while Marynia was sitting, and returned continually to the same subject; from time to time he repeated, —
“Yes, yes; whoever has not seen that can have no conception of it. That will remain.”
In the evening Pan Stanislav and Marynia went to see the sunset from Trinità dei Monti. The day ended very beautifully. The whole city was buried in a kind of hazy golden gleam; under their feet, far down in the valley, on the Piazza di Spagna, darkness was beginning, but a darkness yet lighted, in the mild tones of which irises and white lilies were visible among the flowers set out on both sides of the Via Condotti. In the whole picture there was great and undisturbed repose, – a kind of soothing announcement of night and sleep. Then the Piazza di Spagna began to sink more and more in the shade, but the Trinità was shining continually in purple.
Pan Stanislav and Marynia felt this calmness reflected in themselves; they descended the giant stairs then with a wonderful feeling of peace in their souls. All the impressions of the day settled down in them in lines as great and calm as those twilight belts, which were still shining above them.
“Knowest thou,” said Pan Stanislav, “what I remember yet from childhood’s years? That with us at home they always said the evening rosary together.” And he looked with an inquiring glance into Marynia’s eyes.
“Oh, my Stas!” said she, with a voice trembling from emotion, “I did not dare to mention this – my best.”
“‘Service of God,’ – dost thou remember?”
But she had said that formerly with such simplicity, and as a thing so self-evident, that she remembered nothing whatever about it.
CHAPTER XXXVI
But Pan Stanislav was in permanent disfavor with Pani Osnovski. Meeting him at Svirski’s, between one sitting and another, she spoke to him only in so far as good breeding and politeness demanded. He saw this perfectly, and asked himself sometimes, “What does that woman want of me?” but troubled himself little. He would have troubled himself still less if “that woman,” instead of being eight and twenty, had been eight and fifty years of age; if she had been without those violet eyes and those cherry lips. And such is human nature that, in spite of the fact that he wanted nothing of her, and expected nothing, he could not refrain from thinking what might happen should he strive really for her favor, and how far would she be capable of going.
They had another trip of four to the catacombs of St. Calixtus, for Pan Stanislav wished to repay politeness with politeness, – that is, a carriage with a carriage. But this trip did not bring reconciliation; they only conversed so far as not to call attention to themselves. At last this began to anger Pan Stanislav. In fact, Pani Osnovski’s bearing developed a special relation between them, unpleasant in a way, but known only to them, hence something between them exclusively, – a kind of secret, to which no one else was admitted. Pan Stanislav considered that all this would end with the work on her portrait; but though the face had been finished some time, there remained many little details, for which the presence of the charming model was indispensable. Even for the simple reason that Svirski did not wish to lose time, it happened that when Pan Stanislav and his wife came, the Osnovskis were in the studio. Sometimes they stopped a little for greeting and a short talk touching yesterday’s impressions; sometimes Osnovski was sent by his wife on an errand, or for some news. In that event he went out first, leaving the carriage for her before the studio.
And it happened once that when Marynia had taken her place for a sitting, Pani Osnovski had not gone yet; after a while, learning that Marynia had been at the theatre the evening before, she, while putting on her hat and gloves before the mirror, inquired about singers and the opera, then, turning to Pan Stanislav, she said, —
“And now, I pray you, conduct me to the carriage.”
She threw on her wrap, and began to look for the ribbons sewn behind to the lining, so as to fasten it around her waist, but she stopped suddenly at the entrance, —
“I cannot find the ribbons because I have my gloves on; take pity on me.”
Pan Stanislav had to look for the ribbons, but in doing so he was forced to put his arm almost around her; after a moment the brewing of desire poured about him, all the more since she bent toward him, and the warmth of her face and body struck him.
“But why are you angry with me?” inquired she, in an undertone; “that is bad. I am in such need of friendly souls. What have I done to you?”
He found the ribbons, recovered himself, and with that somewhat coarse satisfaction of a rude man, who desires to use his triumph, and to signify that he has not yielded, answered simply, with an impertinence, —
“You have done nothing to me, and you can do nothing.”
But she repulsed the impoliteness, as if it were a ball at tennis.
“Because sometimes I notice persons so little that I hardly see them.”
They went in silence to the carriage.
“But is it that way?” thought Pan Stanislav, returning to the studio; “a man might advance there as far as he pleased;” and a quiver passed through him. “As far as he pleased,” repeated he.
Herewith he was not conscious that he had made such a mistake as is made daily by dozens of men who are lovers of hunting in other men’s grounds. Pani Osnovski was a coquette: she had a dry heart, and her thought was dishonorable already; but she was hundreds of miles yet from complete physical fall.
Meanwhile Pan Stanislav returned to the studio feeling that he had made an immense sacrifice for Marynia, and with a certain regret in his heart, first, because she would not know what had happened, and second, if she should know, she would consider his action as perfectly simple. This feeling angered him; and when he looked at her, at her clear eyes, her calm face, and her fair, honest beauty, a comparison of those two women urged itself into his mind in spite of him, and in his soul he said, —
“Ah, Marynia! such as she would rather sink through the earth; of her it is possible to be certain.”
And – singular thing – there was in this an undoubted recognition, but there was also a shade of regret, and as it were, of irritation, that that was a woman so greatly his own that he did not feel bound to a continual admiration of her worthiness.
And for the rest of the sitting he turned his thought to Pani Osnovski. He supposed that in future she would simply cease to give her hand to him, and it turned out that he was mistaken again. On the contrary, wishing to show that she attached no importance to him or to his words, she was more polite to him than hitherto. Pan Osnovski, however, had an offended look, and became more and more icy every day toward him. This was caused, undoubtedly, by conversations with “Anetka.”
A few days later, however, impressions of another sort effaced that adventure from Pan Stanislav’s mind. Bukatski had long been ill; he complained more and more of a pain in the back of his head, and a strange feeling of separating from his own muscles. His humor revived still at moments, but it shot up and went out like fireworks. He came to the table d’hôte more rarely. At last Pan Stanislav received his card one morning; on it these words were written with a very uncertain hand, —
My Dear, – After to-night it seems that I am about to get on horseback. If thou wish to see my departure, come, especially in lack of anything better to do.
Pan Stanislav hid the card from Marynia, but went straightway. He found Bukatski in bed, and a doctor with him, whom Bukatski sent away that moment.
“Thou hast frightened me terribly,” said Pan Stanislav. “What ails thee?”
“Nothing great, – a little paralysis of the lower part of the body.”
“Have the fear of God!”
“Thou speakest wisely, if there were time for it; but now I have no power in my left arm, in my left leg, and I cannot rise. Thus did I wake this morning. I thought that I had lost speech, too, and began to declaim to myself, ‘Per me si va;’ but, as thou seest, I have not lost speech. My tongue remained, and now I am trying to find calmness of thought.”
“But art thou sure that it is paralysis? It may be a temporary numbness.”
“What is life? – Ah, only a moment,” Bukatski began to declaim; “I cannot move, and that is the end, or, if thou prefer, the beginning.”
“That would be a terrible thing, but I do not believe it; any one may be benumbed for a time.”
“There are moments in life which are somewhat bitter, as the carp said when the cook was scraping his scales off with a knife. I confess that at first terror took hold of me. Hast thou ever felt the hair rising on thy head? It is not to be reckoned altogether among feelings of delight. But I have recovered my balance, and now, at the end of three hours, it seems to me that I have lived ten years with my paralysis. It is a question of habit! as the mushroom said when in the frying-pan. I am chatting much, for I haven’t much time. Dost thou know, my dear friend, that I shall die in a couple of days?”