The Argonauts Part 33

Miss Mary raised the little dog from a neighboring chair and gave him to her. Cara took him in her burning hands, but soon she pushed him away with the same kind of slow gesture with which she had thrown down the flowers, turned her face toward the wall, and then whispered:

"No."

Next morning the faces of the "wise ravens" were very gloomy.

Those who flew in from the neighborhood, and those who came from a distance took on more and more that mysterious solemnity which reminds one of death-bells.

But Darvid waited yet; he did not lay down his arms; he did not lose faith in the power of the good giantess. He waited for a new reinforcement. This was the greatest medical name in all Europe, that of a man who had the fame almost of one who worked miracles.

Here again was a mountain of gold, and of intellect piled up, the highest mountain among all of them.

In the blue drawing-room a suppressed, many-tongued murmur was heard. Servants bore about food and drink. Darvid gave cigars to his worthy guests, the most worthy of all, he who had just arrived; listened with close attention to the explanation of his colleagues touching the case before which he was to find himself.

At last, calm, and perfectly correct, with a pleasant smile on his lips, a smile almost of triumph, Darvid indicated with a gesture full of welcome the door of his daughter's chamber. The most famous of the famous entered first, and stopped some steps from the threshold; behind him stopped the others. On the parched lips of the sick girl appeared ruby-like drops of blood; her eyes were opened very widely; to her forehead, which was damp from perspiration, some slender locks of pale, yellow hair adhered.

Throughout the room sounded in an audible, hoa.r.s.e whisper:

"Ira! Ira!"

Irene approached quickly, and, bending over, removed, delicately, with a thin handkerchief, the liquid rubies from the lips of her sister.

"What do you want, little one; what do you wish?"

Cara fixed on her sister eyes in which something uncommon had begun to take place, for the dark pupils became larger every moment, and larger, more prominent, they seemed to grow and to swell, as if concentrating into one point all power of vision, until a gla.s.sy film began to come down over them, and at the same time her lips, sprinkled with blood, moved a number of times wis.h.i.+ng to p.r.o.nounce something and not being able. At last, fixing on her sister from behind the gla.s.sy film the sight of her swollen pupils, Cara, as if in sign that she understood, shook her head, and with a whisper which was heard through the room with a note of alarm and complaint, she said:

"Pain-ted pots!"

Then in her breast a great orchestra began to play: hoa.r.s.e, discordant, wheezing, and her head, grown suddenly heavy, fell into the pillow deeply. Prom the a.s.sembly of men standing there at the door, the most famous, the small sprightly, iron-gray Frenchman, with a face greatly thoughtful, advanced a few steps, stood at the bedside, and after some minutes, with his hands resting on the laboring bosom, cast into the deep silence which possessed the room these words:

"The agony!"

As if in answer to that word, at the very door, behind the cloud of black garments, was heard a loud hand-clap. That was Darvid, who, with a movement most unexpected for him, had in this manner wrung his hands, intertwining them with a strength which almost broke his fingers, and then raised them above his head.

So the giantess had sprung over all the mountains--and had come!

CHAPTER IX

From street to street, and from one alley of the public garden to another, pa.s.sed Arthur Kranitski, with the step and the mien of a person who is strolling through a city without great desire or object. In his s.h.i.+ning hat and well-fitting fur coat, on the costly collar of which traces of wear were observable, the man seemed notably older and poorer in some sort than he had been during a past which was still recent. In his erect form and springy step one might discover that disagreeable effort with which people guard themselves when they fear lest observers may penetrate their sad secret in some way. But despite every effort Kranitski's secret was manifest sometimes in his stooping shoulders, drooping head, pendant cheeks, and dimmed glances. All this was the more evident since Pan Arthur was advancing in the full gleam of the sun which flooded with light the sidewalks of the streets and the alleys of the great public garden. The end of the winter had been exceptionally mild and serene, the snow had almost melted away, and only, here and there, mingled its dull white with the azure of the sky and the golden hue of the atmospheres. While pa.s.sing mult.i.tudes of people, Kranitski raised his hand to his hat frequently, and at times, with a smile which was winning, nay, almost seductive, he made movements as if to approach, or even spring forward to those whom he greeted; but they, with a courteous though prompt inclination, moved past the man swiftly. These persons were stylish young gentlemen conversing with one another vivaciously, or young ladies hastening to some point. They returned bow after bow, but none took note of Kranitski's desire to draw near, or, at least, none had the wish to observe it. Each man or woman had some person at his side or hers with whom to converse, and was going, or even hastening, to some place. How recent and intimate had been his acquaintance with those persons!--lie had known them from early childhood. He knew everything touching them: the names and life-histories of their parents, the nicknames given them in jest or in tenderness, names given at an age when they were barely lisping. He knew every chamber, almost every corner of the houses in which they had been reared. He had raised many of them in his strong arms from the floor--he who at that time was the praised, the beloved, the sought for. He who had amused and entertained them, was he, indeed, to imagine a day when they would pa.s.s him at a distance and indifferently? How could he? He with rosy gla.s.ses on his eyes, those eyes famed at that period for beauty, had been given to tenderness and attachments; he had considered the feelings and relations of men as eternal. But from various causes a mult.i.tude of his relations with people had ended already--and now they were ending to the last one. He had the vivid sensation of hanging in a vacuum, and felt a growing need to grasp after something or someone lest he might tumble into a place which he knew not, but which he felt must be abyss-like. At the beginning of his walk he thought that in that bright hour of the day when throngs of gayly-dressed people were covering the sidewalks, and the middle of the street was filled with pa.s.sing carriages, some person would stop him, would invite him, would attend him somewhere, or take him to some place. What was he to do now? Whither was he to go? Baron Emil, whose mediaeval mansion had been in recent days almost his one refuge from weariness and lonely tedium, had gone to his estate to make trips in various directions and search in village cottages and under their roofs for remnants of art which were genuine or suitable. He was to return soon; but, meanwhile, Kranitski could not sit in the broad chair before Tristan, who was giving obeisance on the wall of the chamber to Isolde, nor sit at the table where, besides gastronomic tidbits, he found conversation to which he was accustomed, nor in presence of the Triumph of Death sweeping through the air on bat wings, or experience the tone of beyond-the-worldness. With the departure of the baron he lost the only ground on which he met Maryan--that dear child. The very thought now of Maryan, from whom after so many years of life in common he was separated, brought tears to Kranitski's eyelids.

He took a seat on a bench of the garden, and wis.h.i.+ng to light a cigarette drew the golden case from his pocket. He did not light the cigarette, however; for there, beyond the low paling near which he was sitting, pa.s.sed a splendid carriage drawn by two horses and bearing servants in livery. In that carriage sat a man of thirty years, at sight of whom Kranitski pushed forward as if to rush after him, as if to fly like the wind to him. This young man was the son of Count Alfred, of him whom Kranitski had nursed with endless devotion during illness under the sky of Italy. In those days the young man was a child, and remembered little of the hours in which Kranitski had occupied in his family the place of the best of friends, and somewhat that of the most faithful of servants. Afterward he forgot those hours completely, and put away by degrees "that excellent Kranitski," who was growing old; and though this Kranitski, on a time, had rendered some sort of service to the young man's father, he had been rewarded richly by resorting to the house for years, and, very likely, by loans of money given frequently and with no thought of payment. Very wealthy and a frequent traveller, Count Arthur's son had too many affairs on his head, and too many in it to cherish any desire of stuffing it further with old-fas.h.i.+oned trumpery. Kranitski soon observed this frame of mind in the young son of his former friend and protector, and he had long considered that house as lost and its master as a stranger. This did not sadden him at first over much, for he had a port, which he entered with, full sail at all times. But now the pa.s.sing sight of that young man struck his heart with something which cut and burned at the same instant.

Services are forgotten, ties are broken, the past is rejected; oh, the ingrat.i.tude of mankind! And still with what delight would he have ridden through the streets of the city on such a spring day in that carriage with rubber ties, bearing the persons within it on yielding cus.h.i.+ons, with the soft movement of a cradle. With a still greater feeling of delight would he have conversed while going with someone who possessed the same habits, tastes, and relations which he had; with what vivid satisfaction would he halt before one of the best restaurants of that city to have an exquisite lunch, between walls decorated with taste, and amid sounds of joyfulness. But all those things which on a time were as cheap as good-morning, are now as remote and unattainable as the blue sky above him.

In his closely drawn coat, and bent over so much that his shoulders took the form of a half-circle; in his hat, from beneath which black hair was visible and a row of furrows above his dark brows, he gazed at the street which stretched along outside the paling, and in his fingers, covered with Danish gloves, he twirled the golden toy from habit. The hat shone like satin above his head, and on tire cigarette-ease, which he twirled in his fingers, the sun-gleams were crossing one another.

The street beyond that paling lay before a square which was rather extensive; this square seemed dominated by two lofty buildings, before the ornamented fronts of which there was a great movement of people. Through the broad doors of these buildings a throng of men went in and came out, equipages stopped before them; on the steps which led up to them halted, advanced, decreased, and again increased a crowd of figures clad in black, noisy, gesticulating, occupied pa.s.sionately in some work. No wonder! These were the bank and the exchange, which stood with opposing fronts, and, with their mult.i.tude of windows, seemed to gaze eye to eye at each other. Kranitski looked neither at these piles nor the throng of men circulating about them. He had never had anything in common with activity in those buildings. But all at once he bent forward a second time and fixed his eyes on a carriage which pa.s.sed the paling, or rather he fixed them on the man sitting in it.

It was Aloysius Darvid who, on that sunny day, was in an open carriage drawn by a pair of large, costly horses, which, in light harness without mounting, stepped slowly, with grace and importance. On the box sat a coachman and footman, in high hats and immense fur collars; in the carriage, finished in sapphire damask, a man of not large stature, slender, with pale face, ruddy side-whiskers, and with the glitter of a golden spark in the gla.s.ses which covered his eyes. Slowly, with dignity, the carriage with m.u.f.fled sound of rubber-bound wheels halted before the bank entrance. The footman sprang from the box, stood at the door, and taking a card from his master's hand hurried into the building. Five minutes had not pa.s.sed when out came two serious persons who approached the carriage hastily, and began to converse with the man sitting in it. Surely officials, even dignitaries of the bank, whom he had summoned by two words outlined on the card. To go to them, to ascend the high steps, he had not time perhaps, so they ran down those steps to him. They did not walk down, they ran, and now, with the most courteous smiles in the world and with raising of hats above their important heads, these men seemed to counsel with him about something, to indicate some point, to promise. While he, ever unchanged, perfectly polite though cold, with a shade of sarcasm on his lean face, rather listened than spoke, and with a golden spark in his gla.s.ses, against a background of bright sapphire damask, had the seeming of a demi-G.o.d.

In five minutes' time the conversation was over. Darvid inclined with befitting profoundness; the officers bowed much lower their hats above their heads. With the m.u.f.fled sound of rubber tires, with the slow and important gait of the splendid horses, that carriage moved on, described a large circle and stopped at the long and broad steps leading up to the edifice opposite. Here the footman opened the carriage door; Darvid alighted and began to ascend the steps where a dense throng of men, dressed in black, opened before him as a wave opens to an oncoming vessel. That must be no common craft; for, along the wave of men, quivers pa.s.sed as they pa.s.s through one living organism at the touch of an electric current. The opening throng formed eddies, whispered, was silent; a number of hands were raised toward heads, and hats or caps hung in the air; a mult.i.tude of faces were turned toward that one face, and fixed their eyes on it. These movements had in them an expression of timid curiosity, an expression which seemed almost humble. The most confident stepped forth from the throng with bared heads, and with steps which were either too slow or too hurried, but never such steps as they made habitually. These men approached the newly arrived and spoke to him of something; they were doubtless inquiring, taking counsel, perhaps pet.i.tioning; for all those acts were expressed in their movements, and on their faces. Thus was formed something like that retinue of the elite who surround a demi-G.o.d, and between the two walls of people, along the splendid steps of the stairway they went up with him higher and higher to the entrance of the temple, and vanished there with him. The heads of the common crowd were covered with hats and caps now, but many eyes, unable to gaze on Phaeton himself, turned to his chariot, and were fixed for a long time yet on its sapphire-colored damask, which was warmed by the sunrays, and on those two splendid animals which, standing there in trained fixedness, seemed like bronze steeds of the sun before the gates of that money mart.

Kranitski, sitting on the garden bench, had grown rigid in the posture described above--his mouth awry, his eyes gleaming. So this is what has happened! In a few weeks after the death of the hapless Cara he is active and triumphant; he hurls his lariat on the golden calf and captures new millions. A demi-G.o.d! A t.i.tan!

The king of markets! He sweeps forward in seven-league boots over roads, at the crossing-points of which are Americans with milliards, they are millionnaires no longer, but masters of milliards. He is the man who, as Baron Emil said, knows how to will.

Still, how small he seemed and devoid of desire at the hour when he stood near the corpse of his daughter, joined with the silent smoke of the censer, which rose like light mist in the air. How petty he appeared at that juncture, crushed, as it were, by some giant hand--not a demi-G.o.d in any sense, or a t.i.tan, but rather an insect, pus.h.i.+ng into some narrow cranny to hide from a bird of prey. Kranitski had seen Darvid then, for, on hearing of the misfortune, no power on earth or in h.e.l.l could have stopped him from running, from flying to the house where it had happened.

That misfortune had pierced his heart. And straightaway he felt, also, those inward and other pains which for some time had attacked him without pity and more frequently; but, in spite of his pains, he ran on without a thought that he had been forbidden that house, or a thought of what might meet him within it. He entered, and by well-known ways went directly to the chambers of the lady. Happen what might, he must see, in such a terrible moment, that woman, that saint, that mild and n.o.ble being. She was surrounded by many; there was a throng of people about her, but he did not see who they were, nor did he think what they might say of him. Before his eyes was a mist which veiled all things in front of him, save the face of that woman so dreadfully changed and grown old recently; that woman who no longer had the bright aureole of pale, golden hair above her forehead, but on that forehead and across the whole width of it was the dark furrow of a deep wrinkle. Without seeing, or greeting a person, he walked up to her directly, and, dropping on his knees, pressed to his lips the hem of her mourning garment. He did this without the trace of a plan, without forethought; he did it through an impulse which threw him at the feet of the woman. That action came from his heart, and from his heart only. For never was anyone like her, he thought. Many a time he had had fortune with women. In life he had been loved, and had loved in various fas.h.i.+ons, but as he had loved her, never had he loved woman.

He did not remember; he was unconscious of what happened after that; but it seemed that Irene seized in her arms the loudly weeping lady; that Maryan was there also, and many other persons, who, going in and pa.s.sing out with silent tread and low words, produced a sound something like the rustle of leaves when they are falling. In some corner of the chamber he sat down, or stood up, he cannot tell which, he only remembers that he was surrounded by the odor of alder-blossoms which filled the chamber, till, finally, he felt that it was late, that he had to go out just as had others. He could not be with that beloved being in her suffering; of all pains that was the most unendurable. But life contains sometimes such cruelties. Life at times is atrocious! He went once again to look at the "little one," he saw her, and with her the demi-G.o.d, in such a position that he thought: Here, too, is a man who is ended! At this point of meditation Kranitski rested his elbow on the arm of the bench, shaded his eyes with his palm, and placed before his imagination that wonderful sight which seemed a fable, a dream to him.

What luxury, what originality of thought and taste! What a mountain of gold was poured out there! The plan and the taste were seemingly Maryan's. The grand drawing-room had been turned into a grotto, which, from floor to ceiling, was covered with soft folds of white c.r.a.pe and muslin, meeting above in a gigantic rosette resembling the mystic four-leafed roses painted on Gothic church-windows, save that this one at which the wavy drapery met and hid walls and ceiling was as white and soft as if formed by the fantastic play of cloud substance. But everything in that chamber, the walls, the arch, the rosette, seemed made up of clouds and of snow, on which had fallen an immense rain of white flowers, white only. In garlands, woven together, or cast about without order by the movement of hands, they clung to the walls and the vault, covered the floor, were scattered over everything, were visible everywhere, and seemed to have fallen out of every place. Aside from them and among them, there was nothing but abundance of light; stars, bunches, columns were formed of lights, burning in branch-holders and candlesticks. It is unknown where they were invented, so uncommon were these holders and candlesticks, so fantastic. They were so peculiar in style that it would seem as if they had been brought from the dream-world of an excited fancy to the world of existence. There was no color, no tinsel, no emblem of death, nothing in that sea of snowy whiteness save an avalanche of snow-covered flowers and the dazzling gleam of burning tapers, with the odor of lilies-of-the-valley, roses, alder-blossoms, hyacinths, to which was added incense of some kind, as peculiar as was everything in that chamber. This incense, burning it was unknown in what place, sent hither and thither through the air, from time to time, small grayish cloudlets of smoke amid the gleam of the lights and tinged by the gold of them. In that chamber were virginity, with an atmosphere of mysticism, inventiveness unwilling to recognize the impossible--a chapter of magic, a strophe of a poem, and in it, as a central point for all else, was the slender form of Cara on a lofty place, fallen asleep calmly, arrayed as in a bridal robe, with her delicate face, which, in the pale, golden hair, with a shade of whiteness barely discernible, emerged from the flood of snowy c.r.a.pe and flowers. In that flood of snowy white, in that gleaming brilliance of the tapers, in that richness of intoxicating odors, in that atmosphere of haze moving from the burning censer, Cara was sleeping calmly, with the smooth arches of her dark brows below the Grecian outline of her forehead; on her closed lips was a smile which was almost gladsome.

It must have been late at night when Kranitski rose from his knees and found himself alone in that chamber. Outside the words and prayers of watchers were heard murmuring beyond the doors and the walls, but there the sleep of death seemed to reign alone.

After a while, however, something rustled near one of the walls.

Kranitski looked around and saw a man who seemed at first to be an undefined patch on the snowy background. After a few seconds he recognized Darvid's features in ruddy side-whiskers, but he strained his eyes rather long inquiring whether he was not mistaken. Neither sorrow nor despair, commonly roused by death in the living, but something still greater and beyond that was depicted in the look and the posture of Darvid. His eyes, usually so clear, so positive, so like glittering steel, had in them now an abyss of thought at the bottom of which terror was secreted, while the form of the man seemed shrunk and crushed down. Neither irony, nor energy, nor bold certainty of self was in it now. He looked smaller than usual, and in the manner of bending his head forward there was something of the vanquished. The soft folds at which he stood surrounded him in such a way that he seemed flattened and recalled definitely, like an insect in flight which was trying to push through a narrow crack to escape before something immense which was swooping down suddenly. He turned his eyes toward Kranitski, recognized the man, and casting an indifferent glance at him, gazed again in another direction at the enormous something. He had no feeling of hatred, or contempt, or offence. Kranitski on his part had none of those feelings either. He thought that various tales and dramas represent mortal enemies who, in moments like that, reach their hands to one another and are reconciled. Pathos is not truthful! It has no sufficient reason. What are men's quarrels or agreements in presence of--this? He looked a little longer at the maiden sleeping under the shower of white blossoms, and whispered: "Death! yes, yes! death! eternal sleep!" then, with drooping head, he went forth from that grotto, which was snow-white and gleaming with lights. He was so broken that he dragged himself out of it rather than walked.

Now, on the bench of the garden, Kranitski raised his face from his palms and looked at the exchange. The porch with its broad steps was empty, but Darvid's carriage was there yet, showing a spot of gleaming sapphire in the sunny air, the horses stood in trained fixedness, like statues cast from bronze. Kranitski's lips were awry with distaste.

With a bitterness to which his mild nature came rarely, he whispered:

"Labor! iron labor!"

With lips full of gall, not thinking now of straightening his shoulders or giving his steps an appearance of elasticity, he dragged along from street to street, halting sometimes for a moment before the gates of the grandest houses. Each one of these reminded him of something, of some brilliant or happy moment, of some fragment of the past. This one he had entered while going to one of the smaller or greater "stars of his existence;" out of that one he had gone when taking the ailing Count Alfred to Italy; through this one he had hurried daily to do some kindness for Prince Zeno; that one brought to him the memory of a certain ball, so brilliant that it bordered upon fairy-land. Now all these gates and those mansions are for him like that hall which guests have deserted, in which the lights are extinguished, and through which a man finds his way with a night-lamp--remembering, as he pa.s.ses, a spot where had gleamed the naked shoulders of a beauty; or another, where the faces of joyous comrades had smiled at him; a third, where had risen the odor of flowers, or the odor of roast pheasants.

At last, late in the afternoon, Mother Clemens heard a ring in the antechamber, and ran along the floor in her clattering old overshoes, hastening to answer the door-bell. On her broad shoulders was a barred kerchief, in her hand was a needle with a thick thread, and above her eyes, now growing dim, a second pair of eyes, which were gla.s.s, in spectacles raised to the woman's wrinkled forehead.

"Hm!" commenced she immediately, "I thought that thou hadst fastened for the day in some pleasant company; but, Arabian adventure! thou hast returned before evening. This is well, for guests have been here, and they will come again shortly."

"Guests?" inquired Kranitski, and his face cleared somewhat, but briefly, because Clemens snorted.

"Yes, one of them was very important. Be pleased with the honor!

Berek Shyldman! He said that next week, as G.o.d is G.o.d, he would sell thy furniture."

Seeing, however, that Kranitski, after he had removed his coat, dragged his feet through the little drawing-room, and that red wrinkles came out above his brows, she grew mild and spoke in better humor:

"But thou mayst take delight in two other guests who came. Great dandies, and of thy company, though young enough to be thy sons."

"Who were they? who? who? Speak, mother!"

"How can I remember those Arabian names? But they left cards--wait, I'll bring them this minute--I put them in the kitchen."

She turned toward the kitchen, but right behind her, stepping almost on her heels went Kranitski, delighted and impatient, he almost s.n.a.t.c.hed from her hand two visiting cards, on which he read the names: Maryan Darvid and Baron Emil Blauendorf.

"Ah!" cried he, "those dear children! The baron has returned then! And his first thought after returning was of me! What a heart! I go; I run!"

And, indeed, he ran to the door of the antechamber, radiant, rejuvenated, but Mother Clemens stood in his way, squaring out her shoulders in the checkered kerchief.

"Whither art thou going? What for? Is it to meet them on the steps, or at the gate? They said that they would come again in an hour. To each other they said that they would go to see the Nazarene--"

"What Nazarene?" asked Kranitski, with astonishment. "What Nazarene?"

"But how should I know what Nazarene? It may be an image of the Lord Jesus of Nazareth. They only said that they would go to look at it, and come back here."