On returning to the hotel, Pan Stanislav and Marynia were surprised
somewhat to find the Osnovskis' cards; and their astonishment rose
from this, that, being newly married, it was their duty to make the
first visit. For this unusual politeness it was needful to answer with
equal politeness, hence they returned the visit on the following day.
Bukatski, who saw them before they made it, though he was very unwell,
and could barely drag his feet along, brought himself still to one of
his usual witticisms, and said to Pan Stanislav, when they were alone
for a moment,--
"She will play the coquette; but if thou suppose that she will fall in
love with thee, thou art mistaken. She is a little like a razor,--she
needs a strap to sharpen herself; in the best event, thou wilt be a
strap for her."
"First, I do not wish to be her strap," answered Pan Stanislav; "and
second, it is too early."
"Too early? That means that thou art reserving the future for thyself."
"No; it means that I am thinking of something else, and also that I
love my Marynia more and more. And when that ends, too early will be
too late, and that Pani Osnovski might dent, but not sharpen herself,
on me."
And Pan Stanislav, in saying this, was sincere: he had his thoughts
occupied really with something else; he was too honorable to betray his
wife at any time, but even if not, it was too early to begin.
He was so greatly sure of his strength that he felt a certain readiness
to expose himself to trial. In other words, it would have given the man
a kind of pleasure if Pani Osnovski had dented herself on him.
After lunch he went with Marynia to sit to Svirski; the sitting,
however, was short, since the artist was judge in some exhibition, and
had to hasten to a meeting. They returned home, and Pan Osnovski came
to them a quarter of an hour later.
Pan Stanislav, after his conversation with Svirski, had a kind of
compassion for Osnovski, but also a sort of small opinion. Marynia,
however, felt for him a living sympathy; she was won by what she had
heard of his kindness and delicacy, as well as his attachment to his
wife. It seemed to her now that all these qualities were as if written
on his face,--a face by no means ugly, though it had pimples here and
there.
After the greeting, Osnovski began to speak with the confident freedom
of a man accustomed to good society:
"I come at the instance of my wife with a proposal. Praise to God,
visiting ceremonies are ended between us, though abroad it is not worth
while to reckon too precisely in this matter. The affair is this: We
are going to St. Paul's to-day, and then to the Three Fountains. That
is outside the city; there is an interesting cloister in the place, and
a beautiful view. It would be very agreeable to us if you would consent
to make the trip in our company."
Marynia was always ready for every trip, especially in company, and
with pleasant conversation; in view of this she looked at her husband,
waiting for what he would say. Pan Stanislav saw that she wished to
go, and, besides, he thought in his soul, "If the other wants to dent
herself, let her do it." And he answered,--
"I would consent willingly, but this depends on my superior power."
His "superior power" was not sure yet whether the obedient subordinate
meant that really; but, seeing on his face a smile and good-humor, she
made bold to say at last,--
"With much thankfulness; but shall we not cause trouble?"
"Not trouble, but pleasure," answered Osnovski. "In that event the
matter is ended. We'll be here in a quarter of an hour."
In fact, they set out a quarter of an hour later. Pani Osnovski's
Chinese eyes were full of satisfaction and repose. Wearing an
iris-colored robe, in which she might pass for the eighth wonder of the
world, she looked really like a rusalka.[6] And before they had reached
St. Paul's, Pan Stanislav did not know how Pani Osnovski, who had not
spoken on this subject to him, had been able somehow to say to him,
or at least to give him to understand, more or less as follows: "Thy
wife is a pleasant little woman from the country; of my husband nothing
need be said. We two only are able to understand each other and share
impressions."
But he resolved to torment her. When they arrived at St. Paul's, which
Pani Osnovski did not mention otherwise than as "San Poolo fuori le
Mura,"[7] her husband wished to stop the carriage, but she said,--
"We will stop when returning, for we shall know then how much time is
left for this place; but now we'll go straight to the Three Fountains."
Turning to Pan Stanislav, she continued, "There are in this famous
place various things, about which I should like to ask you."
"Then you will do badly, for I know nothing at all of these matters."
It appeared soon, on passing various monuments, that of the whole party
Pan Osnovski knew most. The poor man had been studying the guide-books
from morning till evening, so that he might be a guide for his wife,
and also to please her with his knowledge. But she cared nothing for
explanations which her husband could give, precisely because they came
from him. The insolent self-assurance with which Pan Stanislav had
confessed that he had no idea of antiquities was more to her taste.
Beyond St. Paul's opened out a view on the Campagna with its aqueducts,
which seemed to run toward the city in haste, and on the Alban hills,
veiled, as they were, with the blue haze of distance,--a view at once
calm and bright. Pani Osnovski gazed for some time with a dreamy look,
and then inquired,--
"Have you been in Albani or Nemi?"
"No," answered Pan Stanislav; "sitting to Svirski breaks the day so for
us that we cannot make long excursions till the portrait is finished."
"We have been there; but when you are going, take me with you, take
me with you! Is it agreed? Will you permit?" added she, turning to
Marynia. "I shall be a fifth wheel to some extent, but never mind.
Besides, I shall sit quietly, very quietly, in a corner of the
carriage, and not give out one mru mru! Is it agreed?"
"Oi! little one, little one," said Pan Osnovski.
But she continued, "My husband will not believe that I am in love with
Nemi; but I am. When I was there, it seemed to me that Christianity had
not reached the place yet; that in the night certain priests come out
and celebrate pagan rites on the lake. Silence and mystery! there you
have Nemi. Will you believe that when I was there the wish came to me
to be a hermit, and it has not left me to this moment? I would build a
cell on the bank of the lake for myself, and wear a robe long and gray,
like the habit of Saint Francis of Assisi, and go barefoot. What would
I give to be a hermit! I see myself at the lake--"
"Anetka,[8] but what would become of me?" inquired Osnovski, half in
jest, half in earnest.
"Oh, thou wouldst console thyself," said she, curtly.
"Thou wouldst be a hermitess," thought Pan Stanislav, "if on the other
side of the lake there were a couple of dozen dandies gazing through
glasses to see what the hermitess was doing, and how she looked."
He was too well-bred to tell her this directly; but he told her
something similar, and which could be understood.
"Naturally," said she, laughing; "I should live by alms, and should
have to see people sometimes; if you came to Nemi, I should come to you
too and repeat in a very low voice, 'Un soldo! un soldo!'"
Saying this, she stretched her small hands to him, and shook them,
repeating humbly,--
"Un soldo per la povera! un soldo!"
And she looked into his eyes.
Pan Osnovski spoke meanwhile to Marynia.
"This is called Three Fountains," said he, "for there are three springs
here. Saint Paul's head was cut off at this place; and there is a
tradition that the head jumped three times, and that on those places
springs burst forth. The place belongs now to the Trappists. Formerly
people could not pass a night here, there was such fever; now there
is less, for they have planted a whole forest of eucalyptuses on the
hills. Oh, we can see it already."
But Pani Osnovski, bending back somewhat, half closed her eyes for a
moment, and said to Pan Stanislav,--
"This Roman air intoxicates me. I am as if beside myself. At home
I cannot force from life more than it gives me; but here I am
demoralized, I feel that something is wanting to me. Do I know what?
Here one feels something, divines something, yearns for something.
Maybe that is bad. Maybe it is not right for me to say this. But I say
always what passes through my mind. At home, when a child, they called
me Little Sincerity. I shall beg my husband to take me hence. It may be
better to live in my own narrow shell, like a nut, or a snail."
"It may be pleasant in shells for nuts or snails," answered Pan
Stanislav, with gravity, "but not for birds, and besides birds of
paradise, of which there is a tradition that they have no legs and can
never rest, but must fly and fly."
"What a beautiful tradition!" exclaimed Pani Osnovski. And, raising
her hands, she began to move them, imitating the motion of wings, and
repeating,--
"This way, forever through the air."
The comparison flattered her, though she was astonished that Pan
Stanislav had uttered it with a serious voice, but with an inattentive
and, as it were, ironical face. He began to interest her, for he seemed
very intelligent, and more difficult to master than she had expected.
Meanwhile they arrived at Three Fountains. They visited the garden,
the church, and the chapel, in the basement of which three springs
were flowing. Pan Osnovski explained, in his kind, somewhat monotonous
voice, what he had read previously. Marynia listened with interest; but
Pan Stanislav thought,--
"Still to live three hundred and sixty-five days in a year with him,
must be a little tiresome."
That justified Pani Osnovski in his eyes for the moment; she, taking
upon herself now the new role of bird of paradise, did not rest for
a moment, not merely on the ground, but on any subject. First she
drank eucalyptus liquor, which the cloister prepared as a means
against fever; then she declared decisively that if she were a man she
would be a Trappist. Later, however, she remembered that her sailing
career would be agreeable "ever between sea and sky, as if living
in endlessness;" at last the wish to become a great, a very great
writer, gained the day against everything else,--a writer describing
the minutest movements of the soul, half-conscious feelings, desires
incompletely defined, all forms, all colors, all shades. The party
learned also, as a secret, that she was writing her memoirs, which
"that honest Yozio" considers a masterpiece; but she knows that that is
nothing, she has not the least pretensions, and she ridicules Yozio and
the memoirs.
"Yozio" looks at her with loving eyes, and with great affection on his
pimpled face, and says with a protest,--
"As to the memoirs, I beg pardon greatly."
They drove away about sundown. There were long shadows from the trees;
the sun was large and red. The distant aqueducts and the Alban hills
were gleaming in rose-color. They were halfway when the "Angelus" was
sounded in the tower of St. Paul's, and immediately after were heard a
second, a third, a tenth. Each church gave the signal to the succeeding
one; and such a mighty chorus was formed as if the whole air were
ringing, as if the "Angelus" had been sounded not merely by the city,
but the whole region, the plains, and the mountains.
Pan Stanislav looked on Marynia's face, lighted by the golden gleams.
There was great calm in it and attention. It was evident that she
was repeating the "Angelus" now, as she had repeated it in Kremen,
when it was sounded in Vantory. Always and everywhere the same. Pan
Stanislav remembered again the "service of God." It seemed to him more
simple and pacifying than ever. But now, while approaching the city,
he understood the permanence, the vitality, the immensity, of those
beliefs. "All this," thought he, "has endured thus for a thousand and a
half of years; and the strength and certainty of this city is only in
those towers, those bells, that permanence of the cross, which endures
and endures." Again Svirski's words came to him: "Here a ruin, on
the Palatine a ruin, in the Forum a ruin, but over the city crosses,
crosses, crosses and crosses." It seemed to him beyond a doubt that in
that very permanence there is something superhuman. Meanwhile the bells
sounded, and the heavens above the city were covered with twilight.
Under the impression produced by the praying Marynia, and the bells,
and that vesper feeling, which seemed to hover over the city and the
whole land, the following thought began to take form in Pan Stanislav,
who had much mental directness: "What an idiot and vain fool should I
be, in view of the needs of faith and that feeling of God, were I to
seek some special forms of love and reverence of my own, instead of
accepting those which Marynia calls 'service of God,' and which still
must be the best, since the world has lived nearly two thousand years
in them!" Then the reasoning side of this thought struck him as a
practical man, and he continued to himself, almost joyously: "On one
side the traditions of a thousand years, the life of God knows how many
generations and how many societies, for which there was and is delight
in those forms, the authority for God knows how many persons who
consider them as the only forms; on the other side, who? I, a partner
in the commission house of Bigiel and Polanyetski; and I had the
pretension to think out something better into which the Lord God would
fit Himself more conveniently. For this it is needful at least to be a
fool! I, besides, am a man sincere with myself; and I could not endure
it if from time to time the thought came to me,--I am a fool. But my
mother believed in this, and my wife believes; and I have never seen
greater peace in any one than in them."
Here he looked at Marynia once and a second time; she had finished
evidently her "Angelus," for she smiled at him in answer, and
inquired,--
"Why so silent?"
"We are all silent," he answered.
And so it was, but for various reasons. While Pan Stanislav was
occupied with his thoughts, Pani Osnovski attacked him a number of
times with her eyes and her words. He answered her words with something
disconnected, and did not notice her glances in any way. He simply
offended her: she might have forgiven him, she might have been pleased
even, if to her statement that she wished to be a nun, he had answered
with impudence concealed in polished words; but he wounded her mortally
when he ceased to notice her, and in punishment she ceased also to
notice him.
But as a person of good breeding she became all the politer to Marynia.
She inquired touching her plans on the following day; and, learning
that they were to be at the Vatican, she announced that she and her
husband had tickets of admission, and would use the opportunity also.
"You know the dress?" inquired she. "A black robe, and black lace on
the head. One looks a little old in them, but no matter."
"I know; Pan Svirski forewarned me," answered Marynia.
"Pan Svirski always talks of you to me when I am sitting to him. He has
great regard for you."
"And I for him."
During this conversation they arrived at the hotel. Pan Stanislav
received such a slight and cool pressure of the hand from the fair lady
that, though his head was occupied with something else, he noticed it.
"Is that a new method," thought he, "or have I said something that
displeased her?"
"What dost thou think of Pani Osnovski?" asked he of Marynia in the
evening.
"I think that Pan Svirski may be right in some measure."
And Pan Stanislav answered: "She is writing at this moment 'memoirs,'
which 'Yozio' considers a masterpiece."
FOOTNOTES:
[6] River-maiden among the Slavs.
[7] Thus printed to show her style of Italian.
[8] A diminutive of Aneta.