Children of the Soil. Henryk Sienkiewicz
Stanislav,” said she, “if you do not think of spending the night here, ride with us. Marynia and I will take Litka between us, and there will be room enough.”
“Very well. I cannot pass the night here; and I am very thankful,” answered he; and, divining easily who the author of this plan was, he turned to Litka and said,—
“Thou, my best little kitten, thou.”
She, holding to her mother’s dress, raised to him her eyes, half sad, half delighted, asking quietly,—
“Is that good, Pan Stas?”
A few minutes later they started. After a fine day there came a night still finer, a little cool, but all bright and silvery from the moon. Pan Stanislav, for whom the day had passed grievously and in vain, breathed now with full breast, and felt almost happy, having before him two beings whom he loved very deeply, and one whom he loved beyond everything on earth. By the light of the moon he saw her face, and it seemed to him mild and peaceful. He thought that Marynia’s feelings must be like her face in that moment; that perhaps her dislike of him was softening amid that general quiet.
Litka dropped into the depth of the seat, and appeared to be sleeping. Pan Stanislav threw a shawl, taken from Pani Emilia, over her feet, and they rode on a while in silence.
Pani Emilia began to speak of Ploshovski, the news of whose death had impressed her deeply.
“There is hidden in all that some unusually sad drama,” said Pan Stanislav; “and Pani Kraslavski may be right in some small degree when she insists that these two deaths are connected.”
“There is in suicide,” said Marynia, “this ghastly thing, that one feels bound to condemn it; and while condemning there is an impression that there should be no sympathy for the misfortune.”
“Sympathy,” answered Pan Stanislav, “should be had for those who have feeling yet,—hence for the living.”
The conversation ceased, and they went on again for some time in silence. After a while Pan Stanislav pointed to the lights in the windows of a house standing in the depth of a forest park, and said,—
“That is Pani Kraslavski’s villa.”
“I cannot forgive her for what she said of that unfortunate Pani Krovitski,” said Pani Emilia.
“That is simply a cruel woman,” added Pan Stanislav; “but do you know why? It is because of her daughter. She looks on the whole world as a background which she would like to make as black as possible, so that Panna Terka might be reflected on it the more brightly. Perhaps the mother had designs sometime on Ploshovski; perhaps she considered Pani Krovitski a hindrance,—hence her hatred.”
“That is a nice young lady,” said Marynia.
“There are persons for whom behind the world of social forms begins another and far wider world; for her nothing begins there, or rather everything ends. She is simply an automaton, in whom the heart beats only when her mother winds it with a key. For that matter, there are in society very many such young ladies; and even those who give themselves out for something different are in reality just like her. It is the eternal history of Galatea. Would you believe, ladies, that a couple of years since an acquaintance of mine, a young doctor, fell in love to distraction with that puppet, that quenched candle. Twice he proposed, and twice he was rejected; for those ladies looked higher. He joined the Holland service afterwards, and died there somewhere, with the fever doubtless; for at first he wrote to me inquiring about his automaton, and later on those letters ceased to come.”
“Does she know of this?”
“She does; for as often as I see her, I speak of him. And what is characteristic is this,—that the memory of him does not ruffle her composure for an instant. She speaks of him as of any one else. If he expected from her even a posthumous sorrow, he was deceived in that also. I must show you, ladies, sometime, one of his letters. I strove to explain to him her feeling; he answered me, ‘I estimate her coolly, but I cannot tear my soul from her.’ He was a sceptic, a positive man, a child of the age; but it seems that feeling makes sport of all philosophies and tendencies. Everything passes; but feeling was, is, and will be. Besides, he said to me once, ‘I would rather be unhappy with her than happy with another.’ What is to be said in this case? The man looked at things soundly, but could not tear his soul away,—and that was the end of it.”
This conversation ended also. They came out now on to a road planted with chestnut-trees, the trunks of which seemed rosy in the light of the carriage lamps.
“But if any one has misfortune, he must endure it,” said Pan Stanislav, following evidently the course of his own thoughts.
Meanwhile Pani Emilia bent over Litka,—
“Art sleeping, child?” inquired she.
“No, mamma,” answered Litka.
CHAPTER XIV.
“I have never run after wealth,” said Plavitski; “but if Providence in its inscrutable decrees has directed that even a part of that great fortune should come to our hands, I shall not cross its path. Of this not much will come to me. Soon I shall need four planks and the silent tear of my child, for whom I have lived; but here it is a question of Marynia.”
“I would turn your attention to this,” said Mashko, coldly,—“that, first of all, those expectations are very uncertain.”
“But is it right not to take them into consideration?”
“Secondly, that Panna Ploshovski is living yet.”
“But sawdust is dropping out of the old woman. She is as shrivelled as a mushroom!”
“Thirdly, she may leave her property for public purposes.”
“But is it not possible to dispute such a will?”
“Fourthly, your relationship is immensely distant. In the same way all people in Poland are related to one another.”
“She has no nearer relatives.”
“But Polanyetski is your relative.”
“No. God knows he is not! He is a relative of my first wife, not mine.”
“And Bukatski?”
“Give me peace! Bukatski is a cousin of my brother-in-law’s wife.”
“Have you no other relatives?”
“The Gantovskis claim us, as you know. People say that which flatters them. But there is no need of reckoning with the Gantovskis.”
Mashko presented difficulties purposely, so as to show afterward a small margin of hope, therefore he said,—
“With us people are very greedy for inheritances; and let any inheritance be in sight, they fly together from all sides, as sparrows fly to wheat. Everything in such cases depends on this: who claims first, what he claims, and finally through whom he claims. Remember that an energetic man, acquainted with affairs, may make something out of nothing; while, on the other hand, a man without energy or acquaintance with business, even if he has a good basis of action, may effect nothing.”
“I know this from experience. All my life I have had business up to this.” Here Plavitski drew his hand across his throat.
“Besides, you may become the plaything of advocates,” added Mashko, “and be exploited without limit.”
“In such a case I could count on your personal friendship for us.”
“And you would not be deceived,” answered Mashko, with importance. “Both for you and Panna Marynia I have friendship as profound as if you belonged to my family.”