Children of the Soil

“They are wondering there, because you have not called for a long time,” said she, when they had gone to the garden.

“What did Pani Osnovski say?” inquired Zavilovski.

“I will tell you only one thing, though I am not sure that I ought to repeat it. Pani Aneta told me – that – but no! First, I must learn why you have not called there this long time.”

“I was not well, and I had a disappointment. I made no visits; I could not! You have stopped talking.”

“Yes, for I wished to know if you were not angry at those ladies for some cause. Pani Aneta told me that Lineta supposed you were, and that she saw tears in her eyes a number of times, for that reason.”

Zavilovski blushed; on his young and impressionable face real tenderness was reflected.

“Ah, my God!” answered he; “I angry, and at a lady like Panna Lineta? Could she offend any one?”

“I repeat what was said to me, though Pani Aneta is so impulsive that I dare not guarantee all she says to be accurate. I know that she is not lying; but, as you understand, very impulsive people see things sometimes as if through a magnifying-glass. Satisfy yourself. Lineta seems to me agreeable, very uncommon, and very kind – but judge for yourself; you have such power of observation.”

“That she is kind and uncommon is undoubted. You remember how I said that they produced the impression of foreign women; that is not true altogether. Pani Osnovski may, but not Panna Lineta.”

“You must look yourself, and look again,” said Marynia. “You understand that I persuade you to nothing. I should have a little fear, even of Stas, who does not like those ladies. But I say sincerely that when I heard of Lineta’s tears, my heart was touched. The poor girl!”

“I cannot even tell you how the very thought of that stirs me,” replied Zavilovski.

Further conversation was interrupted by the coming of Pan Stanislav, who said, —

“Well? always matchmakers! But these women are incurable. Knowest thou, Marynia, what I will tell thee? I should be most happy wert thou to refrain from such matters.”

Marynia began to explain; but he turned to Zavilovski, and said, —

“I enter into nothing in this case, and know only this, – that I have not the least faith in those ladies.”

Zavilovski went home full of dreams. All the strings of his imagination had been stirred and sounded, so that the wished-for sleep fled from him. He did not light a lamp, so that nothing might prevent him from playing on those quivering strings; he sat in the moonlight and mused, or rather, created. He was not in love yet; but a great tenderness had possessed him at thought of Lineta, and he arranged images as if he loved already. He saw her as distinctly as though she were before him; he saw her dreamy eyes, and her golden head, bending, like a cut flower, till it reached his breast. And now it seems to him that he is placing his fingers on her temples, and that he is feeling the satin touch of her hair, and, bending her head back a little, he looks to see if the fondling has not dried her tears; and her eyes laugh at him, like the sky still wet from rain, but sunny. Imagination moves his senses. He thinks that he is confessing his love to her; that he presses her to his bosom, and feels her heart beating; that he kneels with his head on her knees, from which comes warmth through the silk garment to his face. And he began in reality to shiver. Hitherto she had been for him an image; now he feels her for the first time as a woman. There is not in him even one thought which is not on her; and he so forgets himself in her that he loses consciousness of where he is, and what is happening within him.

Some kind of hoarse singing on the street roused him; then he lighted a lamp, and began to think more soberly. A kind of alarm seized him now, because one thing seemed undoubted, – if he did not cease to visit Pani Bronich and the Osnovskis altogether, he would fall in love with that maiden past memory.

“I must choose, then,” said he to himself.

And next day he went to see her, for he had begun to yearn; and that same night he tried to write a poem with the title of “Spider-web.”

He dared not go to Pani Bronich herself, so he waited till the hour when he could find all at tea, in the common drawing-room. Pani Aneta received him with uncommon cordiality, and outbursts of joyous laughter; but he, after greeting her, began to look at Lineta’s face, and his heart beat with more force when he saw in her a great and deep joy.

“Do you know what?” cried Pani Aneta, with her usual vivacity. “Our ‘Poplar’ likes beards so much that I thought this of you: ‘he is letting his beard grow, and does not show himself.’”

“No, no!” said the “Poplar,” “stay as you were when I made your acquaintance.”

But Pan Osnovski put his arm around Zavilovski, and said, in that pleasant tone of a man of good breeding, who knows how to bring people at once to more intimate and cordial relations, —

“Did Pan Ignas hide himself from us? Well, I have means to compel him. Let Lineta begin his portrait, then he must come to us daily.”

Pani Aneta clapped her hands.

“How clever that Yozio is, wonderfully clever!”

His face was radiant because he had said a thing pleasing to his wife, and he repeated, —

“Of course, my Anetka, of course.”

“I have promised already to paint it,” said Lineta, with a soft voice, “but I was afraid to be urgent.”

“Whenever you command,” answered Pan Ignas.

“The days are so long now that about four, after Pan Kopovski; for that matter, I shall finish soon with that insufferable Kopovski.”

“Do you know what she said about Pan Kopovski?” began Pani Aneta.

But Lineta would not permit her to say this for anything; she was prevented, moreover, by Pan Plavitski, who came in at that moment, and broke up the conversation. Pan Plavitski, on making the acquaintance of Pani Aneta at Marynia’s, lost his head for her, and acknowledged this openly; on her part, she coquetted with him unsparingly, to the great delight of herself and of others.

“Let papa sit near me here,” said she; “we will be happy side by side, won’t we?”

“As in heaven! as in heaven!” replied Plavitski, stroking his knees with his palms time after time, and thrusting out the tip of his tongue from enjoyment.

Zavilovski drew up to Lineta and said, —

“I am so happy to be able to come every day. But shall I not occupy your time, really?”

“Of course you will occupy it,” answered she, looking him in the eyes; “but you will occupy it as no one else can. I was really too timid to urge, because I am afraid of you.”

Then he looked into the depth of her eyes, and answered with emphasis, —

“Be not afraid.”

Lineta dropped her eyelids, and a moment of rather awkward suspense followed; then the lady inquired, in a voice somewhat lowered, —

“Why did you not come for such a long time?”

He had it on his tongue to say, “I was afraid,” but he had not the daring to push matters that far; hence he answered, —

“I was writing.”

“A poem?”

“Yes, called ‘Spider-web;’ I will bring it to-morrow. You remember that when I made your acquaintance, you said that you would like to be a spider-web. I remembered that; and since then I see continually such a snowy thread sporting in the air.”

“It sports, but not with its own power,” answered Lineta, “and cannot soar unless – ”

“What? Why do you not finish?”

“Unless it winds around the wing of a Soarer.”

When she had said this, she rose quickly and went to help Osnovski, who was opening the window.

Zavilovski remained alone with mist in his eyes. It seemed to him that he heard the throbbing of his temples. The honeyed voice of Pani Bronich first brought him to his senses, —

“A couple of days ago old Pan Zavilovski told me that you and he are related; but that you are not willing to visit him, and that he cannot visit you, since he has the gout. Why not visit him? He is a man of such distinction, and so pleasant. Go to him; it is even a disappointment to him that you do not go. Go to visit him.”

“Very well; I can go,” answered Zavilovski, who was ready that moment to agree to anything.

“How kind and good you must be! You will see your cousin, Panna Helena. But don’t fall in love with her, for she too is very distinguished.”

“No, there is no danger,” said Zavilovski, laughing.

“They say besides that she was in love with Ploshovski, who shot himself, and that she wears eternal mourning in her heart for him. But when will you go?”

“To-morrow, or the day after. When you like.”

“You see, they are going away. The summer is at our girdles! Where will you be in the summer?”

“I do not know. And you?”

Lineta, who during this time had returned and sat down not far away, stopped her conversation with Kopovski, and, hearing Pan Ignas’s question, replied, —

“We have no plan yet.”

“We were going to Scheveningen,” said Pani Bronich, “but it is difficult with Lineta.” And after a while she added in a lower voice: “She is always so surrounded by people; she has such success in society that you would not believe it. Though why should you not? It is enough to look at her. My late husband foretold this when she was twelve years of age. ‘Look,’ said he, ‘what trouble there will be when she grows up.’ And there is trouble, there is! My husband foresaw many things. But have I told you that he was the last of the Rur – Ah, yes! I have told you. We had no children of our own, for the first one didn’t come to birth, and my husband was fourteen years older than I; later on he was to me more, – a father.”

“How can that concern me?” thought Pan Ignas. But Pani Bronich continued, —

“My late husband always grieved over this, that he had no son. That is, there was a son, but he came halfway too early” (here tears quivered in the voice of Pani Bronich). “We kept him some time in spirits. And, if you will believe it, when there was fair weather he rose, and when there was rain he sank down. Ah, what a gloomy remembrance! How much my husband suffered because he was to die, – the last of the Rur – . But a truce to this; ’t is enough that at last he was as attached to Lineta as to a relative, – and surely she was his nearest relative, – and what remains after us will be hers. Maybe for that reason people surround her so. Though – no! I do not wonder at them. If you knew what a torment that is to her, and to me. Two years ago, in Nice, a Portuguese, Count Jao Colimaçao, a relative of the Alcantaras, so lost his head as to rouse people’s laughter. Or that Greek of last year, in Ostend! – the son of a banker, from Marseilles, a millionnaire. What was his name? Lineta, what was the name of that Greek millionnaire, that one who, thou knowest?”

“Aunt!” said Lineta, with evident displeasure.

But the aunt was in full career already, like a train with full steam.

“Ah, ha! I recollect,” said she, – “Kanafaropulos, Secretary of the French Embassy in Brussels.”

Lineta rose and went to Pani Aneta, who was talking at the principal table with Plavitski. The aunt, following her with her eyes, said, —

“The child is angry. She hates tremendously to have any one speak of her successes; but I cannot resist. Do you understand me? See how tall she is! How splendidly she has grown! Anetka calls her sometimes the column, and sometimes the poplar; and really, she is a poplar. What wonder that people’s eyes gaze at her! I haven’t mentioned yet Pan Ufinski. That’s our great friend. My late husband loved him immensely. But you must have heard of Pan Ufinski? That man who cuts silhouettes out of paper. The whole world knows him. I don’t know at how many courts he has cut silhouettes; the last time he cut out the Prince of Wales. There was also a Hungarian.”

Osnovski, who sat near by amusing himself with a pencil at his watch-chain, now drawing it out, now pushing it back, grew impatient at last, and said, —

“A couple of more such, dear aunt, and there would be a masquerade ball.”

“Precisely, precisely!” answered Pani Bronich. “If I mention them, it is because Lineta doesn’t wish to hear of any one. She is such a chauviniste! You have no idea what a chauviniste that child is.”

“God give her health!” said Pan Ignas.

Then he rose to take farewell. At parting, he held for some time the hand of Lineta, who answered also with an equally prolonged pressure.

“Till to-morrow,” said he, looking into her eyes.

“Till to-morrow – after Pan Kopovski. And do not forget ‘Spider-web.’”

“No, I will not forget – ever,” answered Zavilovski, with a voice somewhat moved.

He went out with Plavitski; but they had scarcely found themselves on the street, when the old man, tapped him lightly on the arm, and stopping, said, —

“Young man, do you know that I shall soon be a grandfather?”

“I know.”

“Yes, yes!” repeated Plavitski with a smile of delight, “and in addition to that, I will tell you only this much: there is nothing to surpass young married women!”

And, laughing, he began to clap Pan Ignas time after time on the shoulder; then he put the ends of his fingers to his lips, took farewell, and walked off.

But his voice, slightly quivering, came to Pan Ignas from a distance, —

“There is nothing to surpass young married women.” Noise on the street drowned the rest.