Autumn was drawing near. In the fields the harvest was being reaped;
the leaves were turning yellow in the woods. With the approach of
autumn Marusia’s health began to fail.
It was not that she complained of any pain, but she grew thinner every
day; her face grew paler, her eyes grew larger and darker, and it was
with difficulty that she could raise her drooping eyelids.
I could climb the hill now without caring whether the “bad company”
was there or not. I had grown thoroughly accustomed to them, and felt
absolutely at home in their abode.
“You’re a fine youngster, and you’ll be a great man some day,” Tiburtsi
predicted.
The younger “suspicious persons” made me a bow and arrow out of elm
wood; the tall, red-nosed Grenadier twirled me in the air like a leaf
as he gave me gymnastic lessons. Only the Professor and Lavrovski
always seemed to remain unconscious of my presence. The Professor was
forever in the midst of some deep dream, while Lavrovski, when he was
sober, by nature avoided all human intercourse, and preferred to crouch
in a corner by himself.
All these people lived apart from Tiburtsi who, with his “family,”
occupied the crypt I have already spoken of. They inhabited a crypt
which was similar to ours but larger, and which was divided from it
by two narrow halls. Here was less light and more dampness and gloom.
In places along the walls stood wooden benches and the blocks which
served as chairs. The benches were littered with heaps of rags, which
had converted them into beds. In the middle of the crypt, under a ray
of light, stood a joiner’s bench at which Tiburtsi and the others
sometimes worked. The “bad company” included a cobbler and a basket
maker, but all, with the exception of Tiburtsi, were either starvelings
or triflers; men, I noticed, whose hands trembled too much for them to
do any work successfully. The floor of this crypt was always strewn
with chips and shavings and dirt, and disorder reigned supreme, even
though Tiburtsi scolded the inmates furiously at times, and made one
of them sweep the floor and put the gloomy abode in order if ever so
little. I did not often visit them because I could not accustom myself
to the foul air, and because, too, the sombre Lavrovski dwelt there
when he was sober. He was generally either sitting on a bench with
his head in his hands, his long hair streaming, or pacing up and down
from corner to corner with swift strides. His whole person breathed an
atmosphere of such depression and gloom that my nerves could not endure
it. His fellow-unfortunates, however, had long since grown accustomed
to his eccentric ways. “General Turkevich” would sometimes set him to
work making fair copies of petitions and of quips and quirks which
he himself had written for the townsfolk, or else he would make him
write out the lampoons which he afterwards nailed to the lamp posts of
the city. Lavrovski would then quietly take his seat at a table in
Tiburtsi’s room, and for hours at a time would sit forming, one after
another, the beautiful, even letters of his exquisite handwriting.
Twice I chanced to see him carried down stupefied with drink from above
ground into the crypt. The unhappy man’s head was dangling and banging
from side to side, his legs were trundling helplessly after him and
bumping down the stone steps, his face wore a look of misery, and tears
were trickling down his cheeks. Marusia and I, clinging tightly to one
another, watched these scenes from a distant corner, but Valek mixed
quite nonchalantly with the men, supporting now a hand, now a foot, now
the head of the helpless Lavrovski.
Everything about these people that had amused and interested me like
a Punch and Judy show when I saw it in the streets was revealed to me
here, behind the scenes, in all its ugly nakedness, and the sight of it
weighed heavily upon my childish spirits.
Here Tiburtsi held undisputed sway. It was he who had discovered the
crypts, he who had taken possession of them, and all his band obeyed
him implicitly. That is probably the reason why I do not remember one
single occasion on which any one of those creatures, who had certainly
lost all the semblance of human beings, ever came to me with an evil
suggestion.
Having gained in knowledge from a prosaic experience of life, I know
now that there must have been a certain amount of depravity, petty
vice, and rottenness among them, but to-day, when those people and
scenes rise in my memory wrapped in the mists of the past, I see before
me only tragedy, poverty, and the profoundest sadness.
Oh, Childhood and Youth, what great fountainheads of idealism you are!
And now Autumn began to come into its own. The sky was more frequently
overcast, the surrounding country sank into a misty crepuscule,
torrents of rain swept noisily across the earth, and their thunder
resounded monotonously and mournfully in the crypt.
I found it very hard to steal away from home in this weather, for my
one desire was to get away unnoticed. When I came back drenched to
the skin, I would hang up my clothes before the fire myself, and slip
quietly into bed, there to endure philosophically the torrents of
scolding that would invariably flow from the lips of the servants and
my nurse.
Every time I visited my friends I noticed that Marusia’s health was
failing more and more. She never went out into the fresh air now,
and the grey stone--that unseen, silent monster of the crypt--did
its dreadful work without interruption, sucking the life out of her
little body. The child spent most of her time in bed, and Valek and I
exhausted every means in our power to amuse and interest her and to
awaken the soft peals of her frail laughter.
Now that I had really become one of the “bad company” the child’s sad
smile had grown almost as dear to me as my sister’s, but with Marusia
I was not constantly reminded of my wickedness; here was no scolding
nurse; on the contrary, I knew that each time I came my arrival
would call the colour into Marusia’s cheeks. Valek embraced me like
a brother, and even Tiburtsi would sometimes watch us three with a
strange expression on his face and something very like tears glistening
in his eyes.
Then one day the sky grew clear again. The last clouds blew away, and
the sun shone out upon the earth for the last time before winter’s
coming. We carried Marusia up into the sunlight, and there she seemed
to revive. She gazed about her with wide eyes, and the colour came into
her cheeks. It seemed as if the wind that was blowing over her with its
cool, fresh breath were returning to her part of the life-blood stolen
by the grey stones of the crypt. But alas! this did not last long.
And in the meanwhile clouds were beginning to gather over my head as
well.
One morning as I was running down the garden path as usual I caught
sight of my father and old Yanush of the castle. The old man was
cringing and bowing and saying something to my father, and the latter
was standing before him, gloomy and stern, with a frown of impatient
anger between his eyes. At last my father stretched out his hand as if
to push Yanush aside, and said:
“Go away! You are nothing but an old gossip!”
The old man blinked and, holding his hat in his hand, ran forward again
and stood in my father’s path. My father’s eyes flashed with anger.
Yanush was speaking in a low voice, and I could not hear what he was
saying, but my father’s broken sentences fell upon my ears with the
utmost distinctness, like the blows of a whip.
“I don’t believe a word of it--What do you want to persecute those
people for?--I won’t listen to verbal accusations, and a written one
you would be obliged to prove--Silence! that is my business--I won’t
listen to you, I tell you.”
He finally pushed Yanush away so firmly that the latter did not dare to
intrude upon him any longer. My father turned aside into another path,
and I ran out through the gate.
I very much disliked this old owl of the castle, and I trembled now
with a premonition of evil. I realised that the conversation I had
overheard related to my friends and perhaps, also, to me.
When I told Tiburtsi what had happened he made a dreadful face.
“Whew, young one, what bad news that is! Oh, that accursed old fox!”
“My father drove him away,” I answered to console him.
“Your father, young man, is the best judge there has been since the
days of Solomon, but do you know what _curriculum vitæ_ means? Of
course you don’t. But you know what the Record of Service is, don’t
you? Well, _curriculum vitæ_ is the Record of Service of a man who
is not employed in the County Court, and if that old screech-owl has
been able to ferret out anything and can show your father my record
why--well, I swear to the Queen of Heaven I wouldn’t care to fall into
the Judge’s clutches!”
“He’s not a cruel man, is he?” I asked, remembering what Valek had told
me.
“No, no, my boy, God forbid that you should think that of your father!
Your father has a good heart. Perhaps he already knows everything
that Yanush has been able to tell him, and still holds his tongue. He
doesn’t think it is necessary to pursue a toothless old lion into his
last lair. But how can I explain it to you, my boy? Your father works
for a gentleman whose name is Law. He has eyes and a heart only as long
as Law is nicely tucked up in bed, but when that gentleman gets up and
comes to your father and says: ‘Come on, Judge, sha’n’t we get on the
trail of Tiburtsi Drab or whatever his name is?’ from that moment the
Judge must lock up his heart, and his claws will become so sharp that
the earth will turn upside down before Tiburtsi will escape out of
his clutches. Do you understand, my boy? And that’s why I, why we all,
respect your father as we do, because he is a faithful servant of his
master, and such men are rare. If all Law’s servants were like him,
Law could sleep quietly in his bed and never wake up at all. My whole
trouble is that I had a quarrel with Law a long time ago--ah yes, my
boy, a very violent quarrel!”
As he said this Tiburtsi got up, took Marusia’s hand, and, leading her
into a distant corner, began kissing her and pressing his rough head
to her tiny breast. I stood motionless where I was under the spell
of the impression created by the strange words of this strange man.
In spite of the fantastic and unintelligible twists and turns of his
speech I understood perfectly the substance of what Tiburtsi had said,
and my father’s image loomed more imposing than ever in my imagination,
invested with a halo of stern but lovable strength amounting almost to
grandeur. But at the same time another and a bitterer feeling which I
bore in my breast had increased in intensity. “That’s what he’s like!”
I thought. “And he doesn’t love me!”