Whirlpools

III

Dolhanski, in fact, could not extract from the notary, anything but testy replies. Immediately after his reception at the rectory the old notary became very garrulous, but spoke with Ladislaus only about Marynia, for whom he had an unbounded admiration. At present he feared that Pani Krzycki might not consent to an evening musicale on the day of the funeral of a relative, and that fear did not cease to disturb him. Under this impression he began to demonstrate that music may as well be associated with death as with life; that impressive music always attends funerals, and that as mankind has not devised anything better than music, not even for the worship of God, therefore it may be taken for granted that music facilitates the flight of the soul to heaven, and even salvation. Ladislaus bit his mustache and, without qualification, concurred in this reasoning, knowing that the amiable old gentleman was wont to berate his opponents unmercifully. With this kind of talk, in which, to Dolhanski's great irritation, there was no mention of the will, they passed their time on the way to Jastrzeb. There they were served with tea. As the wind had subsided entirely before the setting sun and the evening was delightful, the ladies, with Gronski, were in the garden. When Ladislaus and his companions followed them, they found Pani Krzycki and Pani Otocka on the bank of the pond, while Miss Anney and Marynia were in a boat on the pond. A ruddy lustre permeated the whole air; the scent of elders, which grew near the water's edge, blended with the odor of the turf, duck-weed, and fish. The water was dark green on the border from alders and willows which hemmed it in, but in the centre, on the overflow, it was golden, with reflections of purple and peacock feathers. The boat floated towards the point, whose narrow girdle from the garden side served as a landing-place. Marynia sat in the middle of the boat, but Miss Anney, standing at the stern, manipulated it with a single oar, propelling and at the same time steering with uncommon skill. On the background of water and sky she loomed up from head to foot with strong and graceful form, her rounded bosom moving in unison with the movements of the oar. At moments she ceased to paddle and when the boat, gliding each moment more slowly, at last stood still upon the smooth water, there could be seen in the mirrored pellucidness another boat, another Marynia, and another Miss Anney. In this picture there was great pastoral calm. The lustre in the heavens grew ruddier as if the entire western world had been embraced in a conflagration. High above the pond, under the flaming cupola of heaven, strings of wild ducks appeared as if tied together by black crosses.

The trees stood motionless and the silence was broken only by the sounds of the windmill, coming from the direction of the dam.

After a while Miss Anney touched shore. Gronski, who was anxious that his "adoration" should not wet her feet, hastened to assist her out of the boat, while the Englishwoman leaped unassisted upon the sand and, approaching the company, said:

"How charming it is here in Jastrzeb!"

"Because the weather is fine," said Ladislaus, drawing nearer. "Yesterday it was cloudy, but to-night it is beautiful."

And having scanned the heavens, he, like a true husbandman, added:

"If it will continue thus, we will start mowing the hay."

And Miss Anney gazed at him, as if she discovered something unusual in the sounds of those words, and began to repeat them in the same fashion that one repeats words which he desires to firmly implant in the memory.

"The hay-the hay."

The party turned towards the house, which was being bleached, or rather rouged, amidst the lime-trees, conversing a little about the funeral and the late Zarnowski, but more about the village, the spring evening, and music. Pani Krzycki assured the newly-arrived ladies that in Jastrzeb before their arrival music was not wanting, as there were so many nightingales in the park that at times they would not let any one sleep. At this Gronski, who was a man of great erudition, began to discourse upon country life; that, in truth, it was, from time immemorial, considered the only real and normal life. He mentioned incidentally the Homeric Kings, "who rejoiced in their hearts, counting sheaves with the sceptre," and various Roman poets. In conclusion he announced, as his opinion, that socialism will shatter to pieces upon agriculture and the soil, because it considers them only as a value, while they are also an affection, or, in other words, not only is a price placed upon them, but they are also loved. Men know what cares are coupled with country life, but in truth it is the only life they prize, as if in it "even bird's milk was not lacking."1

To Pani Krzycki, who, next to her children, loved, above everything else in the world, Jastrzeb, the words of Gronski appealed very convincingly, but Dolhanski, recalling a village he once owned and squandered, replied, drawling his words as usual:

"Bird's milk may not be lacking, but money is lacking. Besides, it is amusing to hear these eulogies upon country life pronounced by a rich man who could buy for himself a tract of land and settle in the country, but whom it is necessary to pull out of the city with hooks." Then addressing Gronski:

"Apropos of your Homeric Kings, and with them your Virgils and Horaces, why, in their days there certainly were not such hotels on the Riviera and such clubs in Nice as at present."

But this observation was passed in silence, or rather it was interrupted by a musical passage intoned to Marynia in an old wooden voice by the notary who wanted in this manner to illustrate the junction of two phrases in Bruch's concerto. Afterwards various other phrases incessantly resounded until the party returned to the house. Gronski knew the mania of the old man and envied him for having found something in life which filled it out so completely for him. He was a highly educated dilettante, but had settled upon nothing permanently in life and did not consecrate all his spiritual powers to anything exclusively. This was partly due to his environment, and partly to his own fault. The profoundest essence of his soul was a sad scepticism. One of his friends, Kloczewski, called him "an ecclesiastic in a dress-suit." Somehow, the final result of Gronski's meditation upon the future and human life, individual as well as collective, was the conviction that the future and the human life may, with time, become different, but never better. So he thought that it might be worth while not to spare efforts to make them sometime better, but it would not be worth while that they should be different only. This thought protected him, however, from the bordering pessimism, as he understood that the measure of happiness and misfortune rested not on the external, but in the man himself, and that as long as otherwise did not mean better, then by the same reasoning it did not also mean worse. At bottom he was persuaded that the one and the other were only a mistake and a delusion, and that everything, not excluding life, was one great vanity. In this manner, he revered, across the sea of ages, the true Ecclesia.

But, being at the same time a man of sentiment, he fell in a continual clash with himself, his sentiment always craving for something, while his sad scepticism iterated that it was not worth while to desire anything. His feelings were preyed upon by the thought that his views were in conflict with life, while life was an imperative necessity. Therefore, whoever with doubts corroded its roots injured humanity, and Gronski did not desire to injure anybody, much less his own people. For this reason the ecclesiastic, contending that all was vanity, wrangled within him, with the patriot who said, for instance, that national suffering was not in vain. But this state of affairs bred within him such incessant discord that he envied men of action who journey through life without any whys or wherefores, as well as people who absolutely succumb to one great feeling.

For the old notary and Marynia, such a great feeling was music; so that as often as Gronski saw them together, so often did he have before his eyes a living example that things do exist with which one can fill out his life from dawn until the last moments, – if only one does not subject them to a too close analysis.

IV

At the supper the aged notary was occupied solely with music and Marynia. To the others, with the exception of the lady of the house, upon whom permission for the concert depended, he replied irascibly; especially to Dolhanski, who several times tried to elicit from him some information about the will. His angry and apoplectic face cleared up only after Pani Krzycki announced that she would have no objections to devoting the remainder of the evening to decorous music, and that she herself would be glad to listen to Marynia, whom she had not heard since the last charitable concert in Krynica.

Towards the close of the supper the old gentleman again began to get impatient, remarking that it was a pity to waste time in eating, and discussing even music, if light and frivolous, with profane individuals who had no conception of the real art. He became more interested after listening to the reasonings of Gronski, who began to talk about the origin of music and refute the Darwinian theory that songs and the sounds of the primitive string instruments arose in some misty era of the human race from the amorous declarations and calls of men and women in the forests. Gronski shared the opinion of those who against these views cited the fact that among the most savage tribes no traces of love-songs exist, but in their place are found war-songs and martial music. The theory of calling through the forests appeared to the ladies more poetical. Gronski placated them with the statement that this did not lessen the civilizing importance of music, that it, with the dance, was one of the first factors which promoted among the scattered tribes of men a certain organization.

"The Papuans," he said, "who gather together for the performance of a war or ceremonial dance in accordance with the rhythm of even their wildest music, by that act alone submit to something, introduce some kind of order, and form the first social ties."

"That means," observed Dolhanski, "that every nation owes its origin to some primitive 'high-diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle.'"

"Of course it is so," angrily answered the old notary.

Afterwards turning to Gronski, he said: "Please proceed. We can at least learn something."

"Yes, please proceed," repeated Marynia.

So Gronski began further to speak of the history of music; how through the entire course of ages it served war, ceremonies of state, as well as religious and secular, and how considerably later it outspread its own wings, on which it soars as at present, like an eagle, over the entire human race.

"A strange art," he concluded; "the most primitive; yet to-day resting more than any other upon science; the most precisely confined within certain technical requirements, as if bound by dams and dykes; yet the most illimitable, the most mystical; overflowing the borders of existence and life. Perhaps this gives it such incomprehensible power over the human soul; speaking the least expressive of tongues and at the same time the most idealistic. It is the most powerful spur to action. Yes, to the Polish regiments in the battle of Gravelotte the Prussian bands played 'Poland is not yet lost,' and everywhere you may behold the same. Play to the Frenchmen the 'Marseillaise,' the Germans 'Wacht am Rhein,' how their hands begin to quiver! Even the eyes of phlegmatic Englishmen and Americans sparkle when they hear 'Rule Britania' or 'Yankee Doodle.' Strange art! – the most cosmopolitan and at the same time the most national, – universal and individual."

"One thing you did not say and that is that of all arts it is the purest," added Pani Otocka.

"Attempts have been made to illegitimatize it," answered Gronski, "but licentiousness never can be rhythmical nor harmonical, and for that reason from these attempts there was born an antichrist of music."

But Ladislaus, who was a trifle bored and would have preferred to talk with the light-haired Miss Anney, spoke out with the evident desire to close the discussion.

"Yes, it is plain that not only every nation but every man has his own music. I, for instance, am always willing to hear a concert or an opera, but I admit, that when sometimes the boys and girls at work in the field sing until the pitchforks and harrows ring, that is the only music for me."

"Slavonian, Lechite, Piast-come to my arms," drawled Dolhanski.

Ladislaus blushed a little from fear that the young Englishwoman and his refined female relatives might judge him too rustical, but they glanced at him with a certain sympathy. Only the beard of the old classical notary drooped with his nose in a manner boding no good, and from his lips he mumbled a half-distinct grumble:

"To some folks it is sufficient, when anything jingles in their ears."

But recollecting that it would not be agreeable to Pani Krzycki if caustic remarks were directed against her son, he cast an uneasy look at her and became silent.

The supper was finished. The company went to the salon in which prevailed coolness and the slight scent of jasmine blown in from the garden by the light evening breezes before the windows were closed. In the glass doors appeared the big full moon, which but recently arose slowly in the heaven, still ruddy after a bath in the evening twilight. Pani Otocka sat at the piano; beside her the notary began to blow, as if with anger, into the flute; while behind them stood Marynia with a violin at her shoulder. Gronski with rapture gazed at her luxuriant dark hair; her peaceful, arched eyebrows under a forehead plainly immaculate; her small countenance; her slender, growing, childlike form, and thought that this sight alone would suffice for music, or at least that such a violinist might pass for its incarnation and symbol. Ladislaus, although he had previously enlisted in the ranks of the English faction, could not remove his eyes from her. After completing his university education, he had accompanied his mother on a journey to Italy. He visited various galleries and, though he lacked solid artistic culture, nevertheless the thought crossed his mind that this maiden with the bright and peaceful countenance, bending over the violin, might have served the old masters as a model for Saint Cecilia or for one of those angelic violin-players which he had seen in the paintings of Fra Angelico.