Children of the Soil

After lunch he went with Marynia to sit to Svirski; the sitting, however, was short, since the artist was judge in some exhibition, and had to hasten to a meeting. They returned home, and Pan Osnovski came to them a quarter of an hour later.

Pan Stanislav, after his conversation with Svirski, had a kind of compassion for Osnovski, but also a sort of small opinion. Marynia, however, felt for him a living sympathy; she was won by what she had heard of his kindness and delicacy, as well as his attachment to his wife. It seemed to her now that all these qualities were as if written on his face, – a face by no means ugly, though it had pimples here and there.

After the greeting, Osnovski began to speak with the confident freedom of a man accustomed to good society:

“I come at the instance of my wife with a proposal. Praise to God, visiting ceremonies are ended between us, though abroad it is not worth while to reckon too precisely in this matter. The affair is this: We are going to St. Paul’s to-day, and then to the Three Fountains. That is outside the city; there is an interesting cloister in the place, and a beautiful view. It would be very agreeable to us if you would consent to make the trip in our company.”

Marynia was always ready for every trip, especially in company, and with pleasant conversation; in view of this she looked at her husband, waiting for what he would say. Pan Stanislav saw that she wished to go, and, besides, he thought in his soul, “If the other wants to dent herself, let her do it.” And he answered, —

“I would consent willingly, but this depends on my superior power.”

His “superior power” was not sure yet whether the obedient subordinate meant that really; but, seeing on his face a smile and good-humor, she made bold to say at last, —

“With much thankfulness; but shall we not cause trouble?”

“Not trouble, but pleasure,” answered Osnovski. “In that event the matter is ended. We’ll be here in a quarter of an hour.”

In fact, they set out a quarter of an hour later. Pani Osnovski’s Chinese eyes were full of satisfaction and repose. Wearing an iris-colored robe, in which she might pass for the eighth wonder of the world, she looked really like a rusalka.[6 - River-maiden among the Slavs.] And before they had reached St. Paul’s, Pan Stanislav did not know how Pani Osnovski, who had not spoken on this subject to him, had been able somehow to say to him, or at least to give him to understand, more or less as follows: “Thy wife is a pleasant little woman from the country; of my husband nothing need be said. We two only are able to understand each other and share impressions.“

But he resolved to torment her. When they arrived at St. Paul’s, which Pani Osnovski did not mention otherwise than as “San Poolo fuori le Mura,”[7 - Thus printed to show her style of Italian.] her husband wished to stop the carriage, but she said, —

“We will stop when returning, for we shall know then how much time is left for this place; but now we’ll go straight to the Three Fountains.”

ning to Pan Stanislav, she continued, “There are in this famous place various things, about which I should like to ask you.”

“Then you will do badly, for I know nothing at all of these matters.”

It appeared soon, on passing various monuments, that of the whole party Pan Osnovski knew most. The poor man had been studying the guide-books from morning till evening, so that he might be a guide for his wife, and also to please her with his knowledge. But she cared nothing for explanations which her husband could give, precisely because they came from him. The insolent self-assurance with which Pan Stanislav had confessed that he had no idea of antiquities was more to her taste.

Beyond St. Paul’s opened out a view on the Campagna with its aqueducts, which seemed to run toward the city in haste, and on the Alban hills, veiled, as they were, with the blue haze of distance, – a view at once calm and bright. Pani Osnovski gazed for some time with a dreamy look, and then inquired, —

“Have you been in Albani or Nemi?”

“No,” answered Pan Stanislav; “sitting to Svirski breaks the day so for us that we cannot make long excursions till the portrait is finished.”

“We have been there; but when you are going, take me with you, take me with you! Is it agreed? Will you permit?” added she, turning to Marynia. “I shall be a fifth wheel to some extent, but never mind. Besides, I shall sit quietly, very quietly, in a corner of the carriage, and not give out one mru mru! Is it agreed?”

“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 - A diminutive of Aneta.] 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.”