The Argonauts Part 22

Over Maryan's fixed features ran a quiver caused by better thoughts. Without the least movement of features or posture he grumbled:

"Nazarene."

Kranitski corrected himself hurriedly and with a shamed face.

"Yes, pardon! A Nazarene."

"But, naturally, a Nazarene pure blood," said the baron, growing animated, "the uninitiated confound Nazarenes with pre-Raphaelites quite erroneously. They form a separate school.

This Overbeck is a find. I will say more, it is a discovery. If it were dragged out of that den and taken abroad one might do a splendid business with it."

Warmed by a considerable quant.i.ty of wine, his complexion made somewhat rosy, the baron fell to giving Kranitski an idea which had circled long in his brain: "There is in Poland a number of ancient families who are failing financially, and who possess many remnants of former wealth. There are frequently things of high value not only objects of pure art, but the most various products of former wealth and taste; as, for instance, hangings, tapestry belts, china, tapestry, furniture, and jewellery. The owners, pushed to the wall by evil circ.u.mstances, would sell willingly, and for a trifle, articles which have great value now in both hemispheres. One must search for them, it is true, almost as the humanists once sought for Greek and Latin ma.n.u.scripts, but whoever could find, purchase, and sell these would open a real mine of great profits. In Europe, England is the country most favorable for commercial operations of this kind, but the richest field is America. To buy here for a trifle and sell in the United States for gold weighed out to you. But, before beginning business, one should go to America, examine the field, form connections, take initial steps. Above all approach the undertaking with considerable capital and great knowledge."

While explaining his idea and the plan of operations which had come to his head long before, and drawing from the gla.s.s excellent liquid, the baron became animated, grew young, his little eyes under their ruddy brows gleamed sharply. And even Maryan said all at once in grumbling tones:

"It is an idea!"

"Is it not?" laughed the baron.

Kranitski listened in silence, with curiosity. Then, halting a little, he said, with some indecision:

"If your project becomes a fact then you will take me as your agent. I know a little of those things; I know where to look for them, and I offer you my earnest services--very earnest."

In spite of the jesting tone one could note in his imploring look, and in his smile full of timid, uncertain quivers, that he felt keenly the need of fixing himself to someone or something and escaping from the great void yawning under him.

All three lighted cigars and went to the drawing-room where Maryan sat again on the Louis XI box, Kranitski sank into a cathedra, and the baron opened at the window one sheet of an English paper, which s.h.i.+elded him before the light from his knees to the crown of his head. He was silent rather long, then from behind the paper curtain was heard his nasal voice:

"Crus.h.i.+ng!"

"What?" inquired Kranitski.

"The fair at Chicago."

And he read aloud an account of the preparations for the colossal exhibition which was to be in that American city.

He accompanied the reading with judgments which contained comparisons: The old part of the world--the old civilizations, the old common methods and proceedings.

Besides narrow s.p.a.ces, familiar horizons--too familiar. But America was something not worn to rags yet. By a wonderful chance the baron had not been there, but when he thought of America Rimbaud's verses occurred to him. He rose, and, walking through the chamber, gave the following:

"Divine vibration of green seas,

The peace of fields spotted with animals;

Silences traversed by worlds, by angels."

"And by millions!" called Maryan from the foot of the white monk Alberich.

He took his shoulders from the monk's robe, and added:

"Nowhere are there such colossal fortunes, and such powerful means of getting them, as on those fields spotted with animals."

And all at once, as it were, the desiccating interior of his heart became animated, he rose and began to walk quickly through the chamber, pa.s.sed the slowly walking baron, and said:

"It is an idea! One must dwell on it. I must go there, or somewhere else--do something with myself. I am driven from this place by one of the greatest disappointments which I have ever known. I reached the bottom of disenchantments yesterday. That is why I did not come to look at the Overbeck. I was buried. My last painted pot burst. I was disappointed in a man for whom I had felt something like honor."

He spoke English. The baron asked him in English also:

"What has happened?"

And Kranitski, with a little worse accent in the same language, repeated the question a number of times.

Maryan, continuing to walk through the chamber, narrated the conversation with his father and the ultimatum given him. The baron laughed noiselessly, and inquired; Kranitski gave out cries of indignation. Maryan, with a fiery face and feverish movement, added:

"I had thought that man worthy of my admiration. Logical, consequent, unconquerable, formed of one piece. A magnificent monolith. No sentiments, no prejudices. Permitting no one to disturb the development of his individuality. I understood that his method of rearing me, and then pus.h.i.+ng me to the highest spheres of life, pointed to this, that I was to live for his honor. I was to be one of the columns of that temple which he had raised to his own glory. But just that absoluteness with which he used everything for his own purposes roused in me homage. The power of producing was in him equal to his power of egotism. So must it be with every individuality fas.h.i.+oned by nature not on a model, but originally. I did not know him much, and desired a nearer acquaintance. I was certain that we should understand each other perfectly; that I should behold from nearby a magnificent monolith. Meanwhile it was stuck over with labels of various kinds of trash, and covered with half a hundred stains of the past--"

"He remembered the school of training and labor in time," laughed Kranitski.

"Peste!" hissed the baron. "What a rheumatism of thought!"

"Moral principles!" added Kranitski, "he himself practises them beautifully. Let him give even half of his millions to that poverty which is ashamed to beg. Oh, he will not! He will not do that! By the help of moral principles it is easy to put sacred burdens on other men's shoulders."

"That is it," added Maryan, "on other men's shoulders you have hit the point, my old man. Yes! So many years he cared for nothing; he considered nothing; now on a sudden he has thrown down the edifice which he himself built. I know not as to others; but, as for me, I shall stick to my rights. I cannot permit myself to fall a victim to this sad accident, that my father is a mental rheumatic."

He stopped, meditated a moment, then added:

"That is even more than rheumatism of thought; it is the exudation of a decaying past, filling the brain with the corruption--of a corpse."

"Corruption of a corpse! very apt this expression!" exclaimed the baron.

Kranitski made a wry face in the cathedra, and muttered:

"No, no. What horror! I will never agree to that phrase."

But no one heard this quiet protest. Now the baron in his turn, walking more and more quickly through the room, spoke on.

Maryan remained sitting on the Louis XI box while the baron walked and complained of the narrowness of relations and the low level of civilization in the city:

"This is the real fatherland of darned socks. Everything here has the mustiness of locked up store-houses. There is a lack of room and ventilation. In England William Morris, a great poet, establishes a factory for objects pertaining to art, and makes millions. I beg you to show anything similar in this place.

Darvid has made a colossal fortune only because he was not blind, and did not hold on to his father's fence. Nationality and fa-ther-land, each is a darned sock--one of those labels which men with parti-colored clothes paste on a gate before which diggers are standing. One must escape from this position. One must know how to will."

The baron said, that as soon as he could bring certain plans of his to completion and regulate certain property interests, and even before regulating them, he would occupy himself with completing his new plan. He turned to Maryan:

"Will you be my partner? It would be difficult for me to get on without you. You have an excellent feeling for art--you are subtle--"

"Why not," answered Maryan. "But one should go first of all and examine the field; one should go to America before the exhibition."

"Naturally, before the exhibition, so as to begin action before it is over. In the question of capital--"

"I will sell my personal property, which has some value, and incur another debt," said Maryan, carelessly.