Children of the Soil

“I know that you esteem Panna Nitechka,” said Pan Ignas, with certain animation; “but still you do not think so much good of her as I do.”

“Ah, how I love you when you say things like that!” cried Pani Bronich, with delight. “My dear! But, if it is thus, then I will whisper still more in your ear: she loves passionately that gentlemen should wear black silk stockings; but remember that one look is enough for her to see what is silk and what is Scotch thread. My God! do not suppose that I wish to mix in everything. No one is able to keep away so well as I; but it is only a question of this, – that Nitechka should never think that you are not equal to others in any regard whatever. What’s to be done? You are marrying a real artist, who loves that everything around her should be beautiful. And, in truth, she will not be so poor as not to have a right to this. Will she?”

Pan Ignas took out his notebook, and said, —

“I will write down your orders, so as not to forget them.”

There was a shade of irony in what he said. Pani Bronich, with her excess of words, her manner of talking, and especially her evident infatuation for things of exceptional superfluity, had made him impatient very often. Pan Ignas was offended by a certain parvenu element in her nature. Since he did not see what palaces she was building with the property of old Zavilovski, he was unable to understand that a sensitive woman could be so unceremonious with him in demands for “Nitechka” when it was a question of the style of their future life. He had supposed previously that it would be just the opposite, and that those ladies would be even over-scrupulous and delicate; this was his first disillusion. On the other hand, he was pained by the bad taste with which Pani Bronich mentioned almost daily the great matches which “Nitechka” might have made, and also her self-denials for his sake; these self-denials had not taken place yet. Pan Ignas did not over-estimate himself, but also he did not carry his head lower than was needful; and with that which was in him he considered himself not a worse, but a better match than such men as Kopovski, and the various Colimaçaos, Kanafaropuloses, and similar operatic lay figures. He was indignant at the very thought that they dared to compare these men with him, especially to his disadvantage. Having poetry and love in his soul, he judged that he had that which even princes of this world cannot command always. What his every-day life with Lineta would be, of that he had not thought much hitherto, or had thought in a general way only; but feeling strong, and being ready to seize every fate by the forelock, he trusted that it would be agreeable. To chaffer with this future he had no intention; and when Pani Bronich expressed wishes like these, he had to restrain himself from telling her that they seemed to him vulgar.

Svirski, when stopping at Prytulov, gave out once the striking opinion that love was not blind altogether, but only suffering from daltonism. Pan Ignas thought that the painter had Osnovski in mind, and did not suspect that he himself was a perfect example of a man subject to the infirmity mentioned. He was blind, however, only in reference to Lineta; except her he saw and observed everything with greater readiness than others. And certain observations filled him with astonishment. Omitting his observations on Pani Aneta, her Yozio, and Kopovski, he noticed, for example, that his own relations with Pani Bronich began to change; and from the time that he had become near to her, and she had grown accustomed to him, and confidential, as with a future relative, and the future husband of “Nitechka,” she began to have less esteem for his person, his work, and his talent. To an ordinary eye this was invisible, perhaps, but to Pan Ignas it was clear, though he could not explain its origin. The future alone was to teach him that common natures, by contact with persons or things which are higher, lose esteem for them through this familiarity, as if showing involuntarily that whatever becomes near to them must thereby be infected with vulgarity and meanness, and cannot, for that very reason, continue lofty. Meanwhile Pani Bronich disenchanted him more and more. He was impatient at that convenient “Teodor,” whose rôle it was to shield with his dignity from beyond the tomb every act of hers; he was amazed at that bird-like mobility of her mind which seized on the wing everything from the region of the good and the beautiful, and turned it at once into empty and meaningless phrases.

Besides, her enormous ill-will for people astonished him. Pani Bronich, almost servile in presence of old Zavilovski, spoke of him with animosity in private; Panna Helena she simply disliked; of Pani Kraslavski and Pani Mashko she spoke with endless irony; of the Bigiels, with contempt; more specially salt in her eye was Marynia. She listened to the praises rendered Marynia by Svirski, Pan Ignas, and Osnovski with the same impatience as if they had been detractions from Lineta. Pan Ignas convinced himself that, in truth, Pani Bronich cared for no one on earth except “Nitechka.” But just this love made up in his mind for all her disagreeable peculiarities; he did not understand yet that such a feeling, when associated with hate and exclusiveness, instead of widening the heart, makes it narrow and dry, and is merely a two-headed selfishness, and that such selfishness may be as rude and harsh as if one-headed. Loving Lineta himself with his whole soul, and feeling better and kinder from the time that he had begun thus to love her, he considered that a person who loved really could not be evil at heart; and in the name of their common love, “Nitechka,” he forgave Pani Bronich all her shortcomings.

But with reference to Lineta, that quick observer could not see anything. The strongest men make in love so many unhappy mistakes for one reason, – that they array the beloved in all their own sunbeams, not accounting to themselves afterward that this glory with which they are blinded has been put by themselves there. So it was with, Pan Ignas. Lineta became accustomed more and more every day to him, and to her own rôle of betrothed. The thought that he had distinguished her, raised her above others, chosen her, loved her, from having been, as once, a continual living source of satisfaction to her vanity and pride, was beginning to lose the charm of novelty, and grow common. Everything which it was possible to win from it for her own personal glory had been won by the aid of Aunt Bronich. The admiration of people had been also “juggled out” of it, as Svirski said; and the statue was so near her eyes now that instead of taking in the whole, she began to discover defects in the marble. At moments yet, under the influence of the opinion or admiration of others, she regained the recollection and knowledge of its proportions; but she was seized by a kind of astonishment that that man in love with her, looking into her eyes, and obedient to every beck of hers, was that Zavilovski over whom even Svirski loses his head, and whom such a man as Osnovski esteems as some precious public treasure. She could send him at any moment for fresh strawberries, if she wished, or for yarn; the knowledge of this caused her a certain pleasure, hence he was needed. She admired her own power in him, and sometimes she detailed to him impressions of this kind quite sincerely.

Once, when they went out to damp fields, Pan Ignas returned for her overshoes. Kneeling by an alder-tree, he put them on her feet, which he kissed. Then she, looking at that head bent to her feet, said, —

“People think you a great man, but you put on my overshoes.”

Pan Ignas raised his eyes to her and, amused by the comparison, answered joyously, without rising from his knees, —

“Because I love immensely.”

“That is all right; but I am curious to know what people would say of it?”

And the last question seemed to occupy her most of all; but Pan Ignas quarrelled that moment with her because she said “you” to him, but he did not notice, however, that, in her “that is all right,” there was that peculiar indifference with which things too familiar or less important are slipped over. With a similar half-attention she heard what he said then, – that not being vain, he considers himself a man like his fellows, but that he respects his career, and counts a life the greatest happiness in which it is possible to serve loftily, and love simply. In the feeling of this happiness he embraced her with his arm, so as to have his simple love as near his breast as possible. But when his prominent chin pushed forward still more, as happened whenever he spoke with enthusiasm, Lineta begged him to leave off the habit, as it made him look stern, and she liked joyous faces around her. While her hand was in now, she reminded him also that yesterday, when they were sailing over the pond, and he was tired after rowing, he breathed very loudly. She did not like to tell him then how that “acted on her nerves.” Any little thing “acts on her nerves;” but nothing acts like some one who is tired, and breathes loudly near her.

Saying this, she took off her hat and began to fan her face. The breeze raised her bright hair; and in the green shade of the alder-trees, quivering in the sun, which shone in through the leaves, she looked like a vision. Pan Ignas delighted his eyes with her, and in her words admired, above all, the charm of a spoiled child. There was perhaps something more in them; but he neither sought nor found it, just because his love, with all its force, was simple.

Simplicity, however, does not exclude loftiness. Lineta had, in fact, clung like a spider-web to the wings of the bird, which, in spite of her, bore her to heights where one had to feel every movement with the heart, to divine all, to understand all, and where even the mind must exert itself to give expression to feeling. But Lineta was “so lazy,” – she had said so on a time to her soarer, who at present did not even suspect that those heights merely made her tired and dizzy, nothing more.

It happened to her now oftener and oftener to wake in the morning, and remember that she must meet her betrothed, that she must tune herself up to his high note; and this gave her the feeling that a child has, for whom a hard lesson is waiting. She had recited that lesson already; she had answered more or less everything which had been taught her; and she judged that her betrothed ought to give a vacation now. Finally, she had enough of all those uncommonnesses, both of herself and of others, those original sayings, those apt answers, with which she had campaigned in society so far. She felt, moreover, that the supply was exhausted, that the bottom of the well could be seen. There remained to her yet only certain artistic feelings, and that unendurable “Pan Ignas” might be satisfied, if from time to time she showed him now a broad field, now a bit of forest, now a strip of land with yellow grain, as if scattered in the light, and said, “Beautiful! beautiful!” That was easier. He, it is true, could not find words to express admiration of the artistic depth of soul hidden in such a single word as “beautiful;” but if that were true, what more did he want? and why, in conversation, in feelings, in method of loving, did he force her to those useless efforts? If he did not force her, if that came without his knowledge, so much the worse for him, that, being by nature so abrupt, he did not even know it. In such a case let him talk with Steftsia Ratkovski.

With “Koposio,” on the other hand, there was no need of effort; his society was real rest for Lineta. The mere sight of him made her gladsome, called out a smile on her face, inclined her to jesting. It is true that Pan Stanislav had once in his life been jealous of Kopovski; but to Pan Ignas, a man who lived a mental life far more exclusively, and therefore measured everything with a measure purely mental, it did not even occur that a maiden so spiritualized and so “wise” as “Nitechka,” could for a moment consider Kopovski as other than a subject for witticisms, which she permitted herself continually. Had not Pani Bronich, in spite of all her mental shallowness, grown indignant at the mere hint of giving Lineta to Kopovski? What Pan Ignas had seen between Kopovski and Pani Aneta was no lesson, for he considered his “Nitechka” as the opposite pole of Aneta. “Nitechka,” besides, had chosen him, and he was the antithesis of Kopovski; that alone set aside every doubt. “Nitechka” amused herself with “Koposio,” painted him, conversed with him, though Pan Ignas could not exhaust his astonishment at this, – how she could avoid falling asleep while he talked; she joked with him, she followed him with a look of amusement, but only because she was a child yet, needing moments of amusement, and even of vanity. But no one saw better than she his whole measureless stupidity, and no one spoke of it more frequently. How often had she ridiculed it to Pan Ignas!

Not all eyes, however, looked at this amusement of hers in that way, and, above all, Pani Aneta looked at it differently; from time to time she told her husband directly that Castelli was coquetting with Kopovski; to “Yozio” himself this seemed at times to be true, and he had the wish to send Kopovski away from Prytulov politely. This Pani Aneta would not permit: “Since he is paying attention to Steftsia, we have no right to hinder that poor girl’s fortune.” Osnovski was sorry to lose that dear Steftsia on Kopovski; but since, in fact, she had no property, and since Aneta wished the match, he would not oppose it.

But he was not able to control himself from astonishment and indignation at Castelka: “To have such a man as Ignas, and coquet with such a fool; to act so, a woman must be a soulless puppet surely.” At first he could not understand it. On the hypothesis, however, that Aneta must have been mistaken, he began to observe the young lady diligently; and since, aside from his personal relation to his wife, he was not by any means dull-witted, he saw a number of things which, in view of his friendship for Pan Ignas, disquieted him greatly. He did not admit, it is true, that anything might take place to change the position; but he asked himself what Ignas’s future would be with a woman who knew so little how to value him, and who was so slightly developed morally that she not only found pleasure in the society of such a brainless fop, but allowed herself to turn his head, and allure him.

“Anetka judges others by herself,” thought Osnovski, “and has really deceived herself, ascribing certain deep feelings to Castelka. Castelka is a puppet; and, if spirits like Anetka and Ignas do not come, nothing rouses her.” In this way that unfortunate man, affected with the daltonism of love, while discovering truth on one side, fell into greater and greater error on the other. On “Castelka,” therefore, he looked more justly every day, and needed no excessive effort to convince himself that in the relations of that “ideal” “Nitechka” with Kopovski there were jests, it is true, there was much contradiction, teasing, even ridicule; but there was also such an irresistible weakness, and such an attraction, as women with the souls of milliners have for nice and nicely dressed young men. The phenomenal stupidity of Kopovski seemed to increase in country air; but as a recompense the sun gilded his delicate complexion, through which his eyes became more expressive, his teeth whiter, while the beard on his face was lighter, and gleamed like silk. Indeed, brightness shone not only from his youth and beauty, but also from his linen, from his neckties, from his exquisite and simple costumes. In the morning, dressed for lawn-tennis, in English flannel, he had in him the freshness of morning and the dreaminess of sleep. His slender, finished form appeared as if fondlingly through the soft cloth; and how could that bony Pan Ignas, with his insolent Wagner jaw and his long legs, be compared, in the eyes of those ladies, with that “mignon” who called to mind at once the gods of Greece and the fashion sheets, the glyptotheks of Italy and the table d’hôtes of Biarritz or Ostend. One should be such an original as that still-water Steftsia to insist, unless from malice, that he was an insufferable puppet. Castelka, it is true, laughed when Svirski said that Kopovski, especially when some question was put to him on a sudden, had an expression in which were evident the sixteen “quarterings” of stupidity in his escutcheon, both on the male and female side. In truth, he had a somewhat absent look, and, in general, could not understand at first what people said to him. But he was so joyous, he seemed so good-natured, and, in spite of a way of thinking which was not over elevated, he was so well-bred, beautiful, and fresh that everything might be forgiven him.

Pan Ignas deceived himself in thinking that only Pani Bronich was pining for things of external richness, and that his betrothed did not even know of those requests with which her aunt comes. Castelka did know of them. Having lost hope that “Pan Ignas” could ever be equal to Kopovski, she wanted at least that he should approach him. For things of external richness she had an inborn leaning, and “aunt,” when begging Pan Ignas to buy this or that for himself, merely carried out Lineta’s wishes. For her, really, one glance was enough to distinguish silk from Scotch thread, and all her soul was rushing instinctively to silk; for her Kopovski was among men what silk is among textures. Had it not been for Pani Aneta, who restrained the young man, and for the various lofty feelings which she had talked into Lineta, Lineta, without fail, would have married Kopovski. Osnovski, knowing nothing of all this, was even astonished that that had not taken place; for he, in the end of his observations, had come to the conclusion that both for Lineta and Pan Ignas this would have been perhaps better.

One day he confided these thoughts to his wife, but she grew angry, and said, with great animation, —

“That did not happen, because it could not. No one is obliged to accommodate himself to Yozio’s plans. I, first of all, saw that Castelka was coquetting with Kopovski. Who could know that she was such a nature? To be betrothed and to coquet with other men, – that passes human understanding. But she does it through vanity, and through spite against Steftsia Ratkovski, and maybe to rouse jealousy in Pan Ignas. Who knows why? It is easy for Yozio to talk now, and to throw all the blame on me for having made this marriage; let Yozio remember better how many times he was enchanted with Castelka, how many times he said that hers was an uncommon nature, and that just such a one would make Pan Ignas happy. A pretty uncommon nature! Now she is coquetting with Kopovski, and if she were his betrothed she would coquet with Pan Ignas. Whoever is vain, will remain so forever. Yozio says that she was fitted for Kopovski; it was necessary to have that way of thinking at first, not at present, when she is the betrothed of Pan Ignas. But Yozio says this purposely to show me what a folly I committed in helping Pan Ignas.”

And the whole affair was so turned by Pani Aneta that Pan Ignas and Castelka descended to the second place, but in the first appeared the cruelty and malice of Yozio. Osnovski, however, began to justify himself, and, opening his arms, said, —

“Anetka! How canst thou even suppose that I wanted to do anything disagreeable to thee? I know, besides, how honest and cordial thy wishes were; but terror takes hold of me when I think of the future of Ignas, for I love him. I should wish from the soul of my heart that God had given him such a person as thou art. My dearest little bird, thou knowest that I would rather lose my tongue than say one bitter thing to thee. I came to thee so just to talk and take counsel, for I know that in that dear head of thine there is always some cure for everything.”

When he had said this, he began to kiss her hands and then her arms and face with great affection, and with increasing enthusiasm; but she turned her head aside, twisting away from his kisses, and saying, —

“Ah, how Yozio is sweating!”

He was, in fact, almost always in perspiration, for he played whole days at tennis, raced on horseback, rowed, wandered through fields and forests, to grow thin as far as was possible.

“Only tell me that thou art not angry,” said he, dropping her hand, and looking into her eyes tenderly.

“Well, I am not; but what help can I give? Let them go as quickly as possible to Scheveningen, and let Kopovski stay here with Steftsia.”

“See, thou hast found a plan. Let them go at the beginning of August. But hast thou noticed that somehow Steftsia is not very – somehow Kopovski has not pleased her heart so far?”

“Steftsia is secretive as few are. Yozio doesn’t know women.”

“Thou art right surely in that. But I even see that she doesn’t like Castelka. Maybe, also, she is angry in her heart with Kopovski, too.”

“What!” inquired Aneta, with animation, “has Yozio seen anything with reference to Castelka?

“Koposio laughs at her, for he has good teeth; but if I should see anything, he wouldn’t be in Prytulov. Maybe, too, Castelka is coquetting with him, because such is her nature – without knowing it. That itself is bad, but that it should go as far as looking at each other seriously, I don’t believe.

“But it is necessary to examine Koposio as to Steftsia. Knowest what, Yozio? I will go this very day with him on horseback to Lesnichovka, and I will talk with him rather seriously. Go thou in another direction!”

“Good, my child. But see, thy head is finding measures already!”

Going out, he stopped on the threshold, thought a while, and said, —

“But how wonderful all this is! and how it passes understanding! This Ignas catches everything on the wing; and at the same time he worships Castelka as if she were some divinity, and sees nothing and nothing.”

In the afternoon, when Kopovski and Pani Aneta were riding along the shady road to the forest cottage, Pan Ignas followed them with his eyes, and looked at her figure on horseback, outlined in the well-fitting riding-dress. “She is shaped like a slender pitcher,” thought he. “But how elegant and enticing she is! There is in this some irony of life, that that honest and kindly Osnovski divines nothing.”

And truly there was irony of life in that, but not in that only.

CHAPTER LIV

Since the day when Pani Aneta and Kopovski made the trip to Lesnichovka, something had changed in the social relations of the dwellers in Prytulov. Pan Ignas looked, it is true, as formerly, into the eyes of his affianced, and was enchanted with her beyond measure; but in her intercourse with him and with others there was a certain light shade of ill-humor. Kopovski felt as if bound; he looked at Lineta by stealth only. He approached her hurriedly, and only in the absence of Pani Aneta; but he sat oftener near Panna Ratkovski, to whom he spoke, as it were, with his mind in another place. Pani Aneta was, moreover, more determined than usual; and, to the great satisfaction of “Yozio,” she extended now such watchful care over every affair in Prytulov, that she took Kopovski aside twice for personal explanations. Lineta’s glance did not follow Kopovski with that former half-gladsome, half-ironical freedom; but the cloudy eyes of Panna Ratkovski turned to Pan Ignas with a certain sympathy, – in one, word, something had changed both in looks and relations.

But those were changes observable only to a very quick eye, and one accustomed to look at life of that kind, in which, for lack of greater objects and severe daily labor, the least shade of feelings and the most subtle movement of thoughts, and even dispositions, take on not only the form, of far-reaching events, but frequently conceal the actual germs of such events in themselves. Externally life remained just the same it had been; that is, a kind of daily festival, a May day, country idleness, interwoven with love, æsthetic impressions, more or less witty conversations, and, finally, amusements. The arrangement of a whole series of these amusements, to fill out the day, was the sole occupation which weighed on their thoughts; and even this, for the greater part, Pan Osnovski took on himself as master of the house.

But on a certain day the uniform calm of that life was broken by a thunderbolt, under the form of two black-bordered envelopes addressed to Osnovski and Pan Ignas. When they were brought in, the whole society was at after-dinner coffee; and the eyes of the ladies were turned with curiosity and alarm at the readers, who, taking cards from the unsealed envelopes, cried almost simultaneously, —

“Pan Zavilovski is dead!”

The news made a deep impression. Pani Bronich, as a person of the old school, and remembering those days when the coming of a courier in the country obliged the most sensitive ladies to faint, even before it was known what the courier had brought, fell into a kind of numbness, joined to loss of speech; Panna Ratkovski, who had spent some time at Pan Zavilovski’s, and cherished great friendship for him and his daughter, grew pale in real earnest; Panna Lineta, seizing Pani Bronich’s hand, tried to restore her to consciousness, whispering, “Voyons, chère, tu n’es pas raisonnable!” Pani Aneta, as if wishing to verify with her own eyes the substance of the announcement, took the card from her husband’s hands, and read, —

“The respected Pan Eustachius Zavilovski departed this life on the 25th day of July. His grief-stricken daughter invites relatives and friends to the funeral, at the parish church in Yasmen, on the 28th day of the current month.”

Then followed a moment of silence, which was broken by Pan Ignas.