The Argonauts Part 21

I--and the rabble. What is not I, and a handful like me--is the rabble. What is to be mine cannot be of the rabble; what is of the rabble must be not of mine. This pride was not of birth or money; it might be called nervous mental arrogance. Mental summits other than those of the rabble, and other requirements of the nerves; the highest bloom of human civilization--sickly, but the highest; the crash, but also the coronation of mankind. In all this there was a principle--one, but indestructible: the respect of individuality; the preservation of it from all limitations and changes which might come from outside; a respect reaching the height of wors.h.i.+p. Everything might be, according to time and place, a painted pot; but individuality (that is, the way in which a man's wishes, tastes, way of thinking were fas.h.i.+oned) was sacred--the only sacred thing. It was not permitted to give this into captivity to anyone or anything, or to submit it to criticisms, or corrections. I am what I am; and I will remain myself. I will and I am obliged to know how to will--something like the superhuman preached by Friedrich Nietsche. The baron's dwelling was not only original and fabulously expensive, but it had in itself besides, that which the Germans define by the word Stimmung. A number of young polyglots examined for a long time various languages of Europe to find a word which would answer best to the German Stimmung, till Maryan first, possessing the greatest linguistic capacity, came on the Polish expression nastroj (tone of mind). Yes, they agreed, universally, that the baron's dwelling produced a tone of mind; an impression not of what was in it, but of something of which it was the mysterious expression or symbol. It produced an impression which had its cause beyond this world. To believe in something beyond this world does not mean to profess a religion--as that of Buddha, Zoroaster, or Chrystos. No, of course not; that would be well for early ages and infantile people; ..old ones, too, run wild after fables, for the principle of the beautiful is in these fables; but they do not let fables lead them off by the nose. An impression from beyond the world is something entirely different; it is a s.h.i.+ver of delights which are unknown here, and only antic.i.p.ated, coming from a world inaccessible to the senses. That such a world exists is shown by the enormous poverty of this one, and the mad monotony of those sources of pleasure which are contained in the world accessible to human senses. A poet is so far a poet, an aesthete so far an aesthete, as he is able, by intuition and unheard-of delicacy of nerves, to burst into the world above the senses and to experience the taste, or rather the odor, which goes before it.

For it is an absolute condition that the feeling should be hazy, something in the nature of an odor; or, better still, the echo of an odor. No key of a musical instrument is to be touched; no definite features are to be drawn; the tone of mind alone is to be produced. The baron's dwelling gave the tone of mind for another world. He and his a.s.sociates believed in another world, beyond the earth and the grave; on the basis of the poverty and commonness of the world before the grave--that is, in despair of the case. For them it was not subject to doubt--that world, the slight odors of which flew to them in moments when they were in the tone of mind, was filled with perfect beauty, nothing but beauty; a beauty which, in this world, even by itself alone, raises men above the level of the rabble. If this beauty did not exist, we should be justified in accepting Hartmann's theory of the collective suicide of mankind, and in throwing a "b.l.o.o.d.y spittle of contempt" at life. A "b.l.o.o.d.y spittle," as is known from Arthur Rimbaud's sonnets on consonants, stands before the eyes of everyone who p.r.o.nounces the vowel i, just as the vowel a brings up the picture of "black, s.h.a.ggy flies, which buzz around terribly fetid objects."

"Ah, no, my friend! No, no! That pa.s.ses my power! In heaven's name I beg you not to say another word!"

With this exclamation Arthur Kranitski, like a pike out of water, struggled in the immensely deep cathedra; and, with his arms in the air kept calling out:

"Terribly fetid objects! b.l.o.o.d.y spittle! that is not poetry--it is not even decent! And those s.h.a.ggy flies whirling around--that--No! I feel a nausea, which mounts to my throat. No, my friends, I will never agree that that is poetry!"

His voice broke, so wounded was he in his aesthetic conceptions.

The young men laughed. That dear, honest Pan Kranitski is an innocent. In spite of his forty and some years clearly sounded, and his romantic experiences, his love for good eating and other nice things, the highest point of extravagance of all sorts for him were Boccaccio, Paul de k.o.c.k, Alfred Musset--simpletons, or babies.

Kranitski, after his first impression, had a feeling of shame.

"Pardon, my dears! An innocent! Not so much of an innocent as may seem to you. I am far from being an innocent; I understand everything and am able to experience everything. But, do you see, there is a difference in tastes. Clearness, simplicity, harmony, these are what I like, but yours--yours--"

Again he was carried away by aesthetic indignation, so, throwing himself back in the chair, with outspread arms, he finished:

"Your making poetry of spittle and foul odor is--do you know what? it is sprinkling a cloaca with holy water! That is what it is."

In the little drawing-room between the screens of stained gla.s.s and that part of the wall on which a knight of the Pound Table was bowing to Isolde stood a small organ, and before the organ, at the midday hour, sat Baron Emil playing one of the grandest fugues of Sebastian Bach. Small and fragile, in his morning dress of yellowish flannel, in stockings with colored stripes, and shoes of yellow leather with very sharp tips, he was resting his shoulder against the arm of the chair carved in a trefoil (fourteenth century); he stretched his arms stiffly and rested his long bony fingers on various keys of the piano. His delicate, sallow features had an expression of great solemnity; his small, blue eyes looked dreamily into s.p.a.ce, and from the gla.s.s shade, brightened by the sunlight falling in through the window, purple and blue rays fell on his faded forehead and ruddy, closely cut hair.

Besides the baron, who was playing, was present Kranitski, who had come an hour before and heard from the servant that the baron was sleeping yet. But that was not true, for a few minutes after Kranitski heard farther back in the building an outburst of female laughter, to which the nasal voice of the baron, who spoke rather long about something, gave answer. The guest smiled and whispered to the "Triumph of Death," at which he was looking, "Lili Kerth."

Then he sank into the cathedra so that in spite of his lofty stature he almost disappeared in it. Soon the baron appeared at the door, and, accustomed to seeing Kranitski at various times, he nodded to him with a brief "Bon jour!" and turned to the organ. Sitting at the organ he threw these words over his arm:

"We expect Maryan at lunch."

"But she?" inquired Kranitski from the depth of the long and high arms of the cathedra.

"She will finish her toilet and go."

Then he played the Bach fugue. He played, and Kranitski, sank in the chair, listened and grew sadder and sadder. During recent days he had grown evidently old; he had become thin; wrinkles had appeared on his forehead. His person had lost elasticity and self-confidence, lie looked like a man who had received a heavy blow, but he was, as always, dressed carefully, the odor of perfumes was around him, and a colored handkerchief appeared in his coat pocket. In presence of the baron's music he grew sad and then sadder. That music made the place more and more church-like.

The figures of saints on the shade under the golden haloes seemed to melt in profound adoration. The "Triumph of Death" spread its wings on the background of subdued colors in the chamber; in that atmosphere the organ and silence sang a majestic duet. Kranitski began to feel the tone of mind mightily. His shoulders bent forward mechanically; he took out of his pocket the gold cigarette case, and thought, while turning it in his fingers:

"Everything pa.s.ses! Everything is behind me--love and the rest!

The grave swallows all things. The days fly, like dust, fly into the past--into eternity! Eternity! the enigma."

All at once into the duet, sung by the organ and silence, broke the loud rattle of a door, then the rustle of silk skirts, till there had shot through the dining-room, and halted in the door of the drawing-room, a creature who was pretty, not large, excessively noisy, and active of body. She had a short skirt, small feet, a fur-lined cape of the latest style, and a gigantic hat which shaded a small, dark, thin, wilted face, with eyes burning like candles and hair gleaming like Venetian gold. The silk, the sable, the incredibly long ostrich feathers, the diamonds in her ears, and the loud burst of laughter cut through the music of Bach like a silver saw.

"Eh bien, ne veus-tu pas me dire bon jour, toi, grand beta?

Tiens, voila!" (Well, wilt thou not say good-day to me, thou great beast? Here it is!) With the expression voila! was heard a loud kiss, impressed on the check of the baron, then Lili Kerth, the gleaming of silk, diamonds, eyes, and hair turned toward the door of the antechamber and saw Kranitski.

"Oh, te voila aussi, vieux beau!" (Oh, here thou art too, old beau!) She sprang toward the cathedra, and, wringing her hands, exclaimed:

"What a funereal face!" And she spoke on, or rather babbled on in French: "Hast disappointments? That is bad! But one must not think of them. Do as I do. I have disappointments, but I mock at them. This is how I treat disappointments."

She made a stop so elastic that her little foot flew into the air, and she touched Kranitski's chin with the point of her shoe.

That was a model indication of the method with which one should treat disappointments.

"Now adieu to the company!" cried she, and rattling her bracelets she vanished.

In the chamber there was silence again, in the midst of which Tristan gave a knightly bow to Isolde, and the monk Alberich let himself down into the jaws of h.e.l.l; "Triumph of Death" spread her bat-wings, and the saints with their golden haloes crossed their pale hands on their bright robes.

The baron was sitting before the organ with his head dropped to his breast. Kranitski, buried in the cathedra, panted aloud for some seconds till he said, with a complaining voice:

"It is abominable! I do not wish a cocotte to throw her foot on my neck when I am thinking of eternity. What confounded tastes you have! Immediately after leaving Lili Kerth to play that divine Bach. Nonsense! mixture! I am not a monk, far from it--but such shaking up in one bottle of the profane and the sacred, no, that is vileness swaddled in art. Yes, yes, I beg forgiveness once more, but in the Holy Scriptures something is said about a gold ring in a pig's nose. Voila!"

The baron smiled under his ruddy mustache and said, after a while:

"That is subtle and not to be understood by everyone. Bach after Lili Kerth--that is the bite, that is the irony of things. Do you know Baudelaire's quatrain?"

He stood up, and, without declamation, even carelessly, through his nose and teeth, gave the quatrain:

"Quand chez le debauche l'aube blanche et vermeil,

Entre en societe de l'Ideal rongeur,

Par l'operation d'un mystere vengeur,

Dans la brute a.s.soupie un Ange se reveille."

With his hands in the pockets of his flannel sack he paced through the room.

Maryan had translated that quatrain quite beautifully. Without interrupting his pacing he repeated the translation.

The bell rang in the antechamber; Maryan entered the drawing-room. He was paler than usual and had dark lines under his eyes, which were very bright. Kranitski rushed from the cathedra, and, seizing the young man by both hands, looked into his face with tenderness:

"At last, at last! I have not seen you for almost a fortnight. I have not left the house. I had a little hope that you would visit me."

"All right, all right!" answered Maryan, and touching the hand of the baron, he sat down on the box on which was the anointing of Louis XI, he rested his shoulders on the bare foot of Alberich and became motionless.

Maryan continued to be so motionless that not only the limbs of his body, but the features of his face seemed benumbed. Had it not been for his eyes, which were gleaming brightly, he might have been mistaken at a distance for a stuffed and elegantly dressed manikin. Baron Emil and Kranitski knew what this meant.

According to Maryan that was a chill into which he fell always after disappointment or disenchantment. He was possessed at such times by a lack of will, which made all movements, even those which were physical, unendurable and difficult. At the same time he had such a contempt for all things on earth that it did not seem worth the while to him to move hand or lips for any cause.

Some French writer has called such a condition of desiccation of the heart's interior. Maryan found that definition quite appropriate. When he sat motionless, deaf and dumb, or walked like an automaton moved by springs, he felt exactly as if the interior of his heart were drying up.

The baron, too, pa.s.sed through similar states with some differences, however, for feeling contempt instead of lack of will, he felt a "red anger," or what the French call colere rouge. He was carried away then by the wish to shut his fist, heat and break, in fact he did beat the servants sometimes, and break costly articles. He considered the desiccation of his friend's heart in its interior portions with respect, even with sympathy. He, with hands thrust into his yellowish flannel pockets, walked up and down in the chamber and hissed through his teeth:

"We are all stunted. We are breaking down! bah! it is time. The world is old. Children of an aged father born with internal cancer."

Kranitski, hearing this, thought: "Why should a man break down and get a cancer when he is young and rich?" But he did not oppose. He pitied Maryan. He looked at him with an expression of eyes similar to that with which loving nurses look on sick or capricious children.

At lunch Maryan's handsome face was sallow and motionless as a wax mask; as a wax mask it stood out on the background of the high arms of the chair. He was as silent as a stone. He had no appet.i.te. He ate only a little caviar, and then fell to swallowing an endless number of small cups of black coffee, which the baron himself prepared, according to some special recipe, and poured out. The baron himself drank goblet after goblet of wine, and as to the rest he yawned a great deal more than he ate. But Kranitski's appet.i.te was a success. After some weeks of Widow Clemens' meagre kitchen he ate eggs, cutlets, cheese, till his eyes were gleaming. According to his old acquaintances gastronomy had always been his weak point--and women. But he drank little and did not play cards. In spite of hearty eating he did not forget the duties of a welcome guest. He kept up conversation with the master of the house, who told him carelessly of a rare and beautiful picture found at some collector's.

"A real, a genuine Overbeck. We were to examine it with Maryan, but since Maryan did not come--" He turned to young Darvid: "Why did you not come?"

There was no answer. The waxen mask, supported on the arm of the chair, remained motionless and gazed with gloomy eyes into s.p.a.ce.

"Overbeck!" began Kranitski, and added, "a pre-Raphaelite."