Children of the Soil

“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 terribly comme 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 a glebæ adscriptus, a ‘Neighbor,’ a ‘Brother Lata,’ a ‘Pan Matsyei,’ a ‘Lechit.’”[5 - Polish noble.]

Here, roused a little by the wine, he began to quote in an undertone the words of Slaz in “Lilla Weneda”: —

“Am I a Lechit? What does this mean? Are boorishness,
Drunkenness, gluttony, gazing from my eyes
With the seven deadly sins, a passion for uproar,
Pickled cucumbers, and escutcheons?”

“Argue with him,” said Pan Stanislav, “especially when at the root of the matter he is partly right.”

But Marynia, who as soon as Bukatski had begun to speak of work in the country, grew somewhat thoughtful, shook thoughtfulness now from her forehead, and said, —

“When papa was not well, – and never in Kremen has he been so well as recently, – I saved him a little in management, and later that work became for me a habit. Though God knows there was no lack of troubles, it gave me a pleasure that I cannot describe. But I did not understand the cause of this till Pan Yamish explained it. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is the real work on which the world stands, and every other is either the continuation of it, or something artificial.’ Later I understood even things which he did not explain. More than once, when I went out to the fields in spring, and saw that all things were growing, I felt that my heart, too, was growing with them. And now I know why that is: In all other relations that a man holds there may be deceit, but the land is truth. It is impossible to deceive the land; it either gives, or gives not, but it does not deceive. Therefore land is loved, as truth; and because one loves it, it teaches one to love. And the dew falls not only on grain, and on meadows, but on the soul, as it were; and a man becomes better, for he has to deal with truth, and he loves, – that is, he is nearer God. Therefore I loved my Kremen so much.”

Here Marynia became frightened at her own speech, and at this, what would “Stas” think; at the same time reminiscences had roused her. All this was reflected in her eyes as the dawn, and on her young face; and she was herself like the dawn.

Bukatski looked at her as he would at some unknown newly discovered master-piece of the Venetian school; then he closed his eyes, and hid half of his small face in his enormous fantastic cravat, and whispered, —

“Délicieuse!”

Then, thrusting forth his chin from his cravat, he said, —

“You are perfectly right.”

But the logical woman would not let herself be set aside by a compliment.

“If I am right, you are not.”

“That is another matter. You are right because it becomes you; a woman in that case is always right.”

“Stas!” said Marynia, turning to her husband. But there was so much charm in the woman at that moment, that he also looked on her with delight, his eyes smiled, his nostrils moved with a quick motion; for a moment he covered her hand with his, and said, —

“Oh, child, child!”

Then he inclined to her, and whispered, —

“If we were not in this hall, I would kiss those dear eyes and that mouth.”

And, speaking thus, Pan Stanislav made a great mistake, for at that moment it was not enough to feel the physical charm of Marynia, to be roused at the color of her face, her eyes, or her mouth, but it was necessary to feel the soul in her; to what an extent he did not feel it was shown by his fondling words, “O child, child!” She was for him at that moment only a charming child-woman, and he thought of nothing else.

Just then coffee was brought. To end the conversation, Pan Stanislav said, —

“So Mashko has come out a lover, and that after marriage.”