The Argonauts Part 19

"Enough of this mockery of reasoning and argument, and of all this empty twaddle. If it was your intention to pa.s.s an examination before me, I give you five with plus. You have fluent speech, and quite a rich vocabulary of words. But I have no time for those things and proceed to facts and figures. The life which you are leading is impossible, and you must change. You must begin another life."

He put emphasis on the word must. Maryan looked at his father with an amazement which seemed to take away his speech.

"You have not ended your twenty-third year yet, and the history of your romances has acquired broad notoriety in the world a number of times--"

Maryan recovered from his amazement slowly.

"Affairs so completely personal--" began he with a hesitating voice.

Darvid, paying no attention to the interruption, continued:

"The sum which you lost in betting at the last races was, even for my fortune, considerable--thirty thousand."

Maryan had now almost recovered his balance.

"If this shrift is indispensable I will correct the figures--thirty-six thousand."

"The suppers which you give to friends, male and female, have the fame of Lucullus feasts."

Maryan, with sparks of hidden irritation in his eyes, laughed.

"An exaggeration! Our poor Borel has no idea of Lucullus, but that he plunders us, unmercifully, is true."

"He knows how to will!" threw in Darvid.

Maryan raised his eyes to him, and said:

"He is making a fortune."

This time, in his turn, astonishment was depicted on the face of Darvid, indignant to that degree that a slight flush appeared on cheeks generally pale.

"Folly!" hissed he, and immediately restrained himself.

"You are incurring enormous debts; on what security?"

Maryan, at least apparently, had regained perfect confidence in himself. With eyes slightly blinking he seemed to look at a picture on the wall.

"That is the affair of my creditors," said he. "They must have this in view, that I am your son."

"But if I should wish not to pay your debts?"

Maryan smiled with incredulity.

"I doubt that. Such a smash-up, as refusal to pay my debts, would injure you also, my father. Besides, the sums are not fabulous."

"How much?"

"I cannot tell the exact figure, but approximately they are--"

He mentioned figures. Darvid repeated them indifferently.

"About a quarter of a million. Very good. I shall be far from ruin this time, but in future--I make no reproaches; for to do so would be to lose time. What has dropped into the past is lost.

But the future must be different."

On the word must he laid emphasis again. With a quick movement he put his gla.s.ses on his nose, and taking a cigarette from a beautiful box, he put the end of it at the flame of one of the candles burning on the desk. He seemed perfectly calm; but behind his eyegla.s.ses steel sparks flew, and the cigarette did not ignite, held by fingers which trembled somewhat. Turning from the desk to the table, he said:

"I will pay your debts at once; and the pension which, three years ago, I appointed to you--that is six thousand yearly--I leave at your disposal. But you will leave the city two weeks from now, and go to--"

He named a place very remote, situated in the heart of the Empire.

"In that place is an iron mill, and also gla.s.s-works; in these two establishments I am one of the chief shareholders. You will take the office designated by the director, who is a shareholder, and a friend of mine; under his guidance and indications you will begin a life of labor."

In Maryan's eyes again appeared amazement without limit; but on his lips quivered a smile somewhat incredulous, somewhat jeering.

"What is this to be?" asked he. "Penance for sins? Punishment?"

"No," answered Darvid; "only a school. Not a school for reasoning, for you have too much of that already; but for character. You must learn three things: economy, modesty, and labor."

Quenching in the ash-pan the fifth or sixth cigarette, Maryan inquired:

"But if--perchance--I should not agree to enter that school?"

Darvid answered immediately:

"In that case you will remain here, but without means of independent existence. You will be free to live under my roof, and appear at the parental table; but you will not receive a personal income of any kind. At the same time, I will publish in the newspapers that I shall not pay your debts hereafter. What I have said, I will do. Take your choice."

That he would do what he had said any man who saw him then might feel certain.

The bloom on Maryan's cheeks took on a brick color; his eyes filled with steel sparks.

"The system of taking fortresses through famine," said he, in an undertone; and, then with head inclined somewhat, and eyes fixed on the carpet, he said:

"I am astonished. I thought, father, that in spite of my seeing you rarely, I knew you well; now I find that I did not know you at all. I admired in you that power of thought which was able to strike from you the bonds of every prejudice; now, I have convinced myself that your ideas are not only patriarchal, but despotic. This is a deception which pains. I wonder myself, even, that this affects me so powerfully; but in falling from heights one must always hurt, even the point of the nose. This is one lesson more not to climb heights. I have in me a cursed imagination which leads me astray. One more mirage has vanished; one more painted pot has lost its colors. What is to be done?"

He said this in a low voice, biting his lower lip at times; he was pained in reality, and deeply. After a while he continued:

"What is to be done? I must be resigned to the disappointment which has met me; but as to disposing of my person so absolutely, I protest. Had it been your intention, my father, to make a mill-hand of me, you should have begun that work earlier. My individuality is now developed, and cannot be pounded in through the gate of a given cemetery. To rear me as a great lord and permit--even demand--during a rather long period that I should use all the good things of society, and be distinguished most brilliantly for your sake, and then thrust into a school of economy, modesty, and labor is--pardon me if I call the thing by its name--illogical and devoid of sequence. I might even add, that it lacks justice; but I do not wish to defend myself with arguments taken from painted pots. One thing is certain--namely this: that I shall not be the victim of patriarchal despotism."

He rose, took his hat from the carpet, and calmly, elegantly, but with a brick-colored flush on his cheeks, and a blue, swollen vein on his forehead, he added:

"I know not what I shall do. It may happen me to be the creator of my own destiny. I know how to be this; and I shall decide more readily to be a workman at my own will than at the will of another. I shall surely leave this place. Expatriation has come to my mind more than once, but not in the direction in which you have seen fit to indicate. Besides, I do not know yet, for this has fallen suddenly. I shall look into myself; I shall look around me. Meanwhile, I must go; for I have promised one of my friends to be at a certain collector's place at a given hour, to examine a very curious picture. It is an original; an authentic Overbeck. A rare thing; a real find--I take farewell of you, my father."

He made a low bow and went out. Exquisite elegance did not desert him for an instant; still, in the expression of his face, and especially his excited complexion, and his voice, too, indignation and distress were evident in a degree which bordered on suffering.

The door of the antechamber opened and closed. Darvid was as if petrified. What was this? What had happened? Was it possible that this should be the end of the conversation, and that such a conversation should end in Overbeck, and a perfectly elegant bow?

Wonderful man! Yes, for that was no petulant child, with childish requests, evasions, outbursts; but a premature man, almost an old man. A reasoner; a pessimist; a sceptic. A genial head! What elegance! What command of self. A princely exterior. Marvellous man! What could he do with him? If he had asked for forgiveness; had promised, in part, even to accommodate himself to his father's wishes; even to change his life a little. But this iron persistence and unshaken confidence in himself, joined with perfect politeness, and with reason which would not yield a step!

What was to be done with him? Fortresses are taken sometimes through famine; but, suppose it is resolved on everything except yielding. Well, he would try; he would keep his word; he would see.