The Argonauts Part 13

She was a squatty woman, heavy, with a striped kerchief on her shoulders, and wearing a short skirt, from under which appeared flat feet in tattered overshoes. She was seventy years old, at least; her large, sallow face was much withered. Bordered by gray hair and a white cap that face was bright with the gleam of dark eyes, still fiery, and quickly glancing from under a wrinkled, high forehead. Her whole figure had in it something of the fields, something primitive, which seemed not to have the least relation to that little drawing-room and its owner. That room contained everything which is found usually in such apartments, therefore: a sofa, armchairs, a table, a mirror with a console, a low and broad ottoman with cus.h.i.+ons in Oriental fas.h.i.+on, porcelain figures on the console, old-fas.h.i.+oned shelves with books in nice bindings, a few oil paintings, small but neat, on the walls, a number of photographs, tastefully grouped above the ottoman, a large alb.u.m on the table before the sofa. But all this was a collection brought together at various seasons, and injured by time. The covering of the cus.h.i.+ons had faded, the gilding on the mirror frame was worn here and there, the leather covering on the furniture was worn and showed through cracks the stuffing within, the alb.u.m was torn, the porcelain base of the lamp was broken. At the first cast of the eye the little drawing-room seemed elegant, but after a while, through spots and rents mended carefully, want was observed creeping forth. This want was hidden chiefly by perfect and minute cleanliness, in which one could recognize active, careful hands, industrious, untiring sweeping out, rubbing out, sewing, mending--those were the lean, aged hands, with broad palms and short fingers, which were now helping Kranitski to remove his fur coat. Meanwhile, a scolding, harsh voice, with tenderness at the base of it, continued:

"Again a night pa.s.sed away from home. Surely off there with cards, or with madams of some sort! Oi, an offense against G.o.d!

And this time you come home sick. I see that you are sick, your whole face is covered with red spots, you are hardly able to stand on your feet. Arabian adventure!"

"Give me rest!" answered Kranitski in a complaining voice. "I am sick, the most wretched of men. Everything is past for me--I beg you to look to the door, so that no one may enter; I am suffering too much to let in impertinent people."

There were tears in his eyes, and his appearance was wretched. No one was looking at him then, except his old servant, who was as faithful as a dog, so he let the fetters of artificial youth and elegance drop from him. His shoulders were bent, his cheeks pendant, above his brows were red spots and thick wrinkles. He vanished then beyond the half-closed door of his bedroom, and widow Clemens went back to the work interrupted by his coming. In the middle of the drawing-room, on an open card-table, lay, spread out, a dressing gown of Turkish stuff. That gown, beautiful on a time, was then faded; moreover, its lining was torn. Widow Clemens while repairing that lining and patching it had been interrupted by Kranitski's return; and now, wearing great steel-rimmed gla.s.ses, and with a bra.s.s thimble on her middle finger, she sat down again. She examined a rent through which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather talked on in a low and monotonous mutter:

"'Look to the door, let no one in!' As if anyone ever comes here.

Long ago, comrades and various protectors used to come; they came often at first, afterward very seldom; but now it is perhaps two years since even a dog has looked in here. He could not bear impertinent people. Oh, yes! they come here, many of them, princes, counts, various rich persons. Oh, yes! while he was a novelty and brilliant they amused themselves with him as they would with a s.h.i.+ning b.u.t.ton, but when the b.u.t.ton was rubbed and dull they threw it into a corner. The relations, the friends, the companions! Arabian adventure! Oh, this society!"

She was silent a while, put a piece of carefully fitted material on the rent, raised her hand a number of times with the long thread, and again muttered:

"But is that society? It is sin, not society! Roll in sin, like the devil in pitch, and then scream that it burns! Oi, Oi!"

Silence reigned in the room; only the clock, that unavoidable dweller in all houses, that comrade of all people, ticked monotonously on the shelf, beneath the mirror, among the porcelain figures. Widow Clemens, while sewing, industriously, muttered on. Her unbroken loneliness, the store of thoughts put away in her old head, and the care in her heart had given her the habit of soliloquy.

"And it will be worse yet. He has debts beyond calculation. He will die on a litter of straw, or in a hospital. Oh, if his dead mother could see this! Arabian adventure! Unless Stefanek and I drag him out of this pit!"

She stopped sewing and raised her spectacles to her forehead, their gla.s.s eyes gleamed above her gray brows, and she fell into deep thought. She moved her lips from time to time, but did not mutter. By this movement of the lips, and by her wrinkles, it could be seen that she was forming some plan, that she was imagining. Just then Kranitski's voice was heard from the bedroom.

She sprang up with the liveliness of twenty years, and, with a loud clattering of old overshoes, ran to the door.

"Give me the dressing-gown, mother; I am not well; I will not go anywhere to-day."

"Here is the dressing-gown; but if the lining is torn?"

"Torn or not, give it here, and my slippers, too; for I am not well."

"Here they are! Not well? I have said not well! O beloved G.o.d, what will come of this?"

But, while helping him to put on the dressing-gown, she inquired, with incredulity:

"Is it true, or a joke, that you will not leave the house to-day?"

"A joke!" answered he in bitterness. "If you knew what a joke this is! I will not leave the house to-day, or to-morrow, or perhaps ever. I will lie here and grieve till I grieve to death.

Oh, that it might be very soon!"

"Arabian adventure! Never has it been like this! It is easy to see that the pitch has burnt!" whispered widow Clemens to herself. But aloud she said:

"Before you grieve to death we must get you some dinner. I will run to the town for meat. I will lock the door outside, so that impertinent counts, and various barons should not burst in,"

added she, ironically.

Kranitski, left alone, locked up in his lodgings, robed in his dressing-gown, once costly, now faded, its sleeves tattered at the wrists, lay on the long-chair in front of his collection of pipes, arranged on the wall cunningly. In the society in which he moved collecting was universal. They collected pictures, miniatures, engravings, autographs, porcelain, old books, old spoons, old stuffs. Kranitski collected pipes. Some he had bought, but the greater number, by far, he had received on anniversaries of his name's-day, in proof of friendly recollection, and as keepsakes after a journey. During years many were collected, about a hundred; among them some were valuable, some poor but original, some even ridiculous, some immense in size, some small, some bright colored, some almost black; they were arranged on shelves at the wall with taste, and effectively.

Besides these pipes there were in the bed-room other objects of value: a writing-desk of peculiar wood, a porcelain frame, with Cupids at the top, surrounding an oval mirror, at which were bottles, vials, toilet boxes, and a rather long cigarette-case of pure gold, which Kranitski kept with him at all times, and which, as he lay now in the long-chair, he turned in his fingers, mechanically. This cigarette-case was a precious memento. He had received it soon after his arrival in the city, twenty and some years before, from Countess Eugenia, his mother's aunt. Prom their first meeting the countess was simply wild about him.

Society even insisted, notwithstanding her more than ripe years, that she was madly in love with that uncommonly beautiful and blooming young man, who had been reared by his mother with immense care, and trained to appear successfully in that society to which she had been born. Kranitski's mother, through various causes, had become the victim of a mesalliance; she grieved out, and wept away secretly; her life, in a village corner, after marrying a n.o.ble who was perfectly honorable, but neither a man of the world, nor the owner of much property. She desired for her only son a better fate than she herself had had, and prepared him for it long beforehand. He spoke French with a Parisian accent, and English quite well; he was versed in the literatures of Western Europe; he was a famous dancer; he was obliging; he had an inborn instinct of kindness toward people; he was popular, sought after, petted; when the money with which his mother furnished him proved insufficient he obtained a small office, through the influence of wealthy relatives, which, besides increasing his revenue, gave him a certain independent aspect. He pa.s.sed whole days in great and wealthy houses, where he read books, aloud, to old princesses and countesses, and for young princesses and countesses; he held skeins of silk on his opened hands. He carried out commissions and various small affairs; at b.a.l.l.s he led dances; he amused himself; fell in love, was loved in return; he pa.s.sed evenings and nights in clubs, and in private rooms at restaurants, at theatres, and behind the scenes in theatres, where he paid homage to famous actresses of various degrees and qualities. Those were times truly joyous and golden.

At that period he was served not by widow Clemens, but by a man; he dined--if not with friends or relatives--at the best restaurants. At that time, too, he did something magnanimous, which brought reward in the form of great mental profit: He pa.s.sed a whole year in Italy with Count Alfred, his relative, who was suffering from consumption; Kranitski nursed, amused, and comforted his cousin with patience, attachment, and tenderness which were perfectly sincere, and which came from a heart inclined to warm, almost submissive feelings. In return that year gave him skill in the use of Italian, and a wide acquaintance with the achievements and the schools of art, of which he was an enthusiastic wors.h.i.+pper. Soon after he went with Prince Zeno to Paris, learned France and its capital well, and on his return remained for some time as a reader with the prince, whose eyes were affected. His power of beautiful reading in many languages brought him a wide reputation; he was distinguished in drawing-rooms by the ease of his speech and manners; to some he became a valued a.s.sistant in entertaining guests, and a pleasant companion in hours of loneliness; to others he was a master in the domain of amus.e.m.e.nts, and elegance in the arts of politeness and pleasure. At this period also he made the acquaintance of Darvid, and met his wife, whom he had known from childhood, and who had been his earliest ideal of womanhood. Thenceforth, his relations with other houses were relaxed considerably, for he gave himself to the Darvid house soul and body. Though Malvina's children had many tutors, he taught one of her daughters Italian, and the other English; he did this with devotion, with delight; and, therefore, that house became, as it were, his own, and was ever open to him. Moreover, during the last ten years great changes had happened in that society of which he was the adopted child, and so long the favorite.

Countess Eugenia had given her daughter in marriage to a French count, and resided in Paris; Count Alfred was dead; dead, also, was that dear, kindly Baroness Blauendorf from whom he had received as a gift that mirror with porcelain frame and Cupids.

Others, too, were dead, or were living elsewhere. Only Prince Zeno remained, but he had cooled toward his former reader, notably because of the princess, who could not forgive Kranitski; since, as was too well known by all, he was occupied with the wife of that millionaire--the eternally absent.

There were still many acquaintances, and more recent relations, but these had neither the charm nor the certainty of those which time had in various ways broken, brought to an end, or relaxed.

His mother, the foundress of his destiny, had ceased to live some time before that.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre maman!"

How tenderly and unboundedly he had loved her. How long he had hesitated and fought with himself before he left at her persuasion, the house in which she had given birth to him. He regretted immensely the village, the freedom, and that bright-haired maiden in the neighborhood. But the wide world and the great city took on, in his mother's narrative, the outlines of paradise, and his worthy relatives, the forms of demi-G.o.ds.

When at last, after long hesitation and struggles, he resolved to go away, how many were the kisses and embraces of his mother! how many were her maxims and advices; how many her predictions of happiness. He began to look at his own form in the mirrors, and to feel in his own person the movement of desires, hopes, ambitions. Once he caught himself bowing and making gestures, almost involuntarily, before the mirrors. He laughed aloud, his mother laughed also, for she had caught him in the act red-handed.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre, chere maman!"

And on the background of that domestic gladness, of those wonderful hopes, only one person by her conduct had raised a cloud on that heaven, beaming serenely. That was widow Clemens, an old servant of the house, and once his nurse, not young even at that time, and a childless widow.

She was morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till at last she spoke when alone with the petted stripling. It was the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the yard in Lipovka, and the linden grove, in a black line, cut through the evening ruddiness glowing in the western heavens.

Widow Clemens, with her eyes fixed on the grove and the red of evening, said:

"Oi! Tulek, Tulek! how will this be? You will go away; you will take up and go away; but the sun will rise and set; the grove will rustle; the wheat will ripen; and the snow will fall when you are gone."

He sat on the bench of the piazza, and said nothing. But in the distant fields, in the growing darkness, a shepherd's whistle gave out clear tones, simple, monotonous, they flew along the field like the weeping of s.p.a.ce.

"Why go; do you know why--G.o.d alone knows. What are you throwing away? The beauties of G.o.d. What will you bring back? Perhaps the mud people cast at you."

A cow bellowed in the stable; a belated working-woman muttered a song somewhere behind in the garden. The evening red was quenched; and above the roof the crescent of the moon came out, thin and like silver.

Widow Clemens whispered:

"Ill-fated! ill-fated boy!"

He was immensely far from considering himself ill fated, but something in his heart felt pain at leaving that village where he was born, at leaving Malvina, and it seemed to him that he ought to stay.

But he went. The Argonaut, of twenty and some years of age, went out into the world, slender, adroit, with eyes dark and fiery as youth, with cheeks shapely and fresh as peaches, with a forehead as white and pure as the petal of a lily; he went for a wife with a fortune, for the pleasures of the world--for the golden fleece.

Now he wrapped himself closely in the skirt of his faded dressing-gown, and let his head droop so low that the bald spot seemed white on the top of it; his lower lip dropped; the red spots came out over his dark brows on his wrinkled forehead. In his hand he held the cigarette-case presented by Countess Eugenia, now living in Paris, and at times he turned it in his fingers, with an unconscious movement, and that glittering object cast on the tattered sleeve of his dressing-gown, on his suffering face, on his long, thin fingers, its bright, golden reflection.

Meanwhile widow Clemens had returned to the kitchen, and there, not without a loud clattering of overshoes, had begun to cook the dinner. But Kranitski neither heard nor saw anything. From time to time the head, with its great cap, looked in through the kitchen door, gazed on him unquietly and pushed back to look in again soon.

"Will you have dinner now?" inquired she at last. "It is ready."

In a low voice he asked for dinner, but he ate almost nothing; the woman had never yet seen him so broken, still she made no inquiry. When the moment came he would tell all himself. He was not of those who bear secrets to the grave with them. She waited on the man, gave him food, brought tea, cleared the table in silence. Once she fell into trouble: Pa.s.sing hurriedly through the room she lost one of the overshoes which she had on her feet:

"Ah! may thou be!--they fall off every moment!" grumbled she, and for some minutes she struggled with that overshoe, which, dropping from her foot, slipped along the floor noisily.

Kranitski raised his head:

"What is that?" inquired he.

She made no answer, but when she was near the kitchen door, he cried: