Dolhanski, in fact, could not extract from the notary, anything but
testy replies. Immediately after his reception at the rectory the old
notary became very garrulous, but spoke with Ladislaus only about
Marynia, for whom he had an unbounded admiration. At present he feared
that Pani Krzycki might not consent to an evening musicale on the day
of the funeral of a relative, and that fear did not cease to disturb
him. Under this impression he began to demonstrate that music may as
well be associated with death as with life; that impressive music
always attends funerals, and that as mankind has not devised anything
better than music, not even for the worship of God, therefore it may be
taken for granted that music facilitates the flight of the soul to
heaven, and even salvation. Ladislaus bit his mustache and, without
qualification, concurred in this reasoning, knowing that the amiable
old gentleman was wont to berate his opponents unmercifully. With this
kind of talk, in which, to Dolhanski's great irritation, there was no
mention of the will, they passed their time on the way to Jastrzeb.
There they were served with tea. As the wind had subsided entirely
before the setting sun and the evening was delightful, the ladies, with
Gronski, were in the garden. When Ladislaus and his companions followed
them, they found Pani Krzycki and Pani Otocka on the bank of the pond,
while Miss Anney and Marynia were in a boat on the pond. A ruddy lustre
permeated the whole air; the scent of elders, which grew near the
water's edge, blended with the odor of the turf, duck-weed, and fish.
The water was dark green on the border from alders and willows which
hemmed it in, but in the centre, on the overflow, it was golden, with
reflections of purple and peacock feathers. The boat floated towards
the point, whose narrow girdle from the garden side served as a
landing-place. Marynia sat in the middle of the boat, but Miss Anney,
standing at the stern, manipulated it with a single oar, propelling and
at the same time steering with uncommon skill. On the background of
water and sky she loomed up from head to foot with strong and graceful
form, her rounded bosom moving in unison with the movements of the oar.
At moments she ceased to paddle and when the boat, gliding each moment
more slowly, at last stood still upon the smooth water, there could be
seen in the mirrored pellucidness another boat, another Marynia, and
another Miss Anney. In this picture there was great pastoral calm. The
lustre in the heavens grew ruddier as if the entire western world had
been embraced in a conflagration. High above the pond, under the
flaming cupola of heaven, strings of wild ducks appeared as if tied
together by black crosses.
The trees stood motionless and the silence was broken only by the
sounds of the windmill, coming from the direction of the dam.
After a while Miss Anney touched shore. Gronski, who was anxious that
his "adoration" should not wet her feet, hastened to assist her out of
the boat, while the Englishwoman leaped unassisted upon the sand and,
approaching the company, said:
"How charming it is here in Jastrzeb!"
"Because the weather is fine," said Ladislaus, drawing nearer.
"Yesterday it was cloudy, but to-night it is beautiful."
And having scanned the heavens, he, like a true husbandman, added:
"If it will continue thus, we will start mowing the hay."
And Miss Anney gazed at him, as if she discovered something unusual in
the sounds of those words, and began to repeat them in the same fashion
that one repeats words which he desires to firmly implant in the
memory.
"The hay--the hay."
The party turned towards the house, which was being bleached, or rather
rouged, amidst the lime-trees, conversing a little about the funeral
and the late Zarnowski, but more about the village, the spring evening,
and music. Pani Krzycki assured the newly-arrived ladies that in
Jastrzeb before their arrival music was not wanting, as there were so
many nightingales in the park that at times they would not let any one
sleep. At this Gronski, who was a man of great erudition, began to
discourse upon country life; that, in truth, it was, from time
immemorial, considered the only real and normal life. He mentioned
incidentally the Homeric Kings, "who rejoiced in their hearts, counting
sheaves with the sceptre," and various Roman poets. In conclusion he
announced, as his opinion, that socialism will shatter to pieces upon
agriculture and the soil, because it considers them only as a value,
while they are also an affection, or, in other words, not only is a
price placed upon them, but they are also loved. Men know what cares
are coupled with country life, but in truth it is the only life they
prize, as if in it "even bird's milk was not lacking."[1]
To Pani Krzycki, who, next to her children, loved, above everything
else in the world, Jastrzeb, the words of Gronski appealed very
convincingly, but Dolhanski, recalling a village he once owned and
squandered, replied, drawling his words as usual:
"Bird's milk may not be lacking, but money is lacking. Besides, it is
amusing to hear these eulogies upon country life pronounced by a rich
man who could buy for himself a tract of land and settle in the
country, but whom it is necessary to pull out of the city with hooks."
Then addressing Gronski:
"Apropos of your Homeric Kings, and with them your Virgils and Horaces,
why, in their days there certainly were not such hotels on the Riviera
and such clubs in Nice as at present."
But this observation was passed in silence, or rather it was
interrupted by a musical passage intoned to Marynia in an old wooden
voice by the notary who wanted in this manner to illustrate the
junction of two phrases in Bruch's concerto. Afterwards various other
phrases incessantly resounded until the party returned to the house.
Gronski knew the mania of the old man and envied him for having found
something in life which filled it out so completely for him. He was a
highly educated dilettante, but had settled upon nothing permanently in
life and did not consecrate all his spiritual powers to anything
exclusively. This was partly due to his environment, and partly to his
own fault. The profoundest essence of his soul was a sad scepticism.
One of his friends, Kloczewski, called him "an ecclesiastic in a
dress-suit." Somehow, the final result of Gronski's meditation upon the
future and human life, individual as well as collective, was the
conviction that the future and the human life may, with time, become
different, but never better. So he thought that it might be worth while
not to spare efforts to make them sometime better, but it would not be
worth while that they should be different only. This thought protected
him, however, from the bordering pessimism, as he understood that the
measure of happiness and misfortune rested not on the external, but in
the man himself, and that as long as otherwise did not mean _better_,
then by the same reasoning it did not also mean _worse_. At bottom he
was persuaded that the one and the other were only a mistake and a
delusion, and that everything, not excluding life, was one great
vanity. In this manner, he revered, across the sea of ages, the true
Ecclesia.
But, being at the same time a man of sentiment, he fell in a continual
clash with himself, his sentiment always craving for something, while
his sad scepticism iterated that it was not worth while to desire
anything. His feelings were preyed upon by the thought that his views
were in conflict with life, while life was an imperative necessity.
Therefore, whoever with doubts corroded its roots injured humanity, and
Gronski did not desire to injure anybody, much less his own people. For
this reason the ecclesiastic, contending that all was vanity, wrangled
within him, with the patriot who said, for instance, that national
suffering was not in vain. But this state of affairs bred within him
such incessant discord that he envied men of action who journey through
life without any whys or wherefores, as well as people who absolutely
succumb to one great feeling.
For the old notary and Marynia, such a great feeling was music; so that
as often as Gronski saw them together, so often did he have before his
eyes a living example that things do exist with which one can fill out
his life from dawn until the last moments,--if only one does not
subject them to a too close analysis.