The Argonauts

by Eliza Orzeszkowa

CHAPTER IV

When Kranitski entered his own lodgings, after passing the night with Maryan, and after the long conversation with Malvina, old widow Clemens looked at him from behind her great spectacles, and dropped her hands:

"Are you sick, or what? Arabian adventure! Ah, what a look you have! What has happened? Maybe those pains have come; you have had them a number of times already. Why not take off your fur? Wait! I will help you this minute. Oh, you will be sick in addition to everything else."

She was a squatty woman, heavy, with a striped kerchief on her shoulders, and wearing a short skirt, from under which appeared flat feet in tattered overshoes. She was seventy years old, at least; her large, sallow face was much withered. Bordered by gray hair and a white cap that face was bright with the gleam of dark eyes, still fiery, and quickly glancing from under a wrinkled, high forehead. Her whole figure had in it something of the fields, something primitive, which seemed not to have the least relation to that little drawing-room and its owner. That room contained everything which is found usually in such apartments, therefore: a sofa, armchairs, a table, a mirror with a console, a low and broad ottoman with cushions in Oriental fashion, porcelain figures on the console, old-fashioned shelves with books in nice bindings, a few oil paintings, small but neat, on the walls, a number of photographs, tastefully grouped above the ottoman, a large album on the table before the sofa. But all this was a collection brought together at various seasons, and injured by time. The covering of the cushions had faded, the gilding on the mirror frame was worn here and there, the leather covering on the furniture was worn and showed through cracks the stuffing within, the album was torn, the porcelain base of the lamp was broken. At the first cast of the eye the little drawing-room seemed elegant, but after a while, through spots and rents mended carefully, want was observed creeping forth. This want was hidden chiefly by perfect and minute cleanliness, in which one could recognize active, careful hands, industrious, untiring sweeping out, rubbing out, sewing, mending—those were the lean, aged hands, with broad palms and short fingers, which were now helping Kranitski to remove his fur coat. Meanwhile, a scolding, harsh voice, with tenderness at the base of it, continued:

"Again a night passed away from home. Surely off there with cards, or with madams of some sort! Oi, an offense against God! And this time you come home sick. I see that you are sick, your whole face is covered with red spots, you are hardly able to stand on your feet. Arabian adventure!"

"Give me rest!" answered Kranitski in a complaining voice. "I am sick, the most wretched of men. Everything is past for me—I beg you to look to the door, so that no one may enter; I am suffering too much to let in impertinent people."

There were tears in his eyes, and his appearance was wretched. No one was looking at him then, except his old servant, who was as faithful as a dog, so he let the fetters of artificial youth and elegance drop from him. His shoulders were bent, his cheeks pendant, above his brows were red spots and thick wrinkles. He vanished then beyond the half-closed door of his bedroom, and widow Clemens went back to the work interrupted by his coming. In the middle of the drawing-room, on an open card-table, lay, spread out, a dressing gown of Turkish stuff. That gown, beautiful on a time, was then faded; moreover, its lining was torn. Widow Clemens while repairing that lining and patching it had been interrupted by Kranitski's return; and now, wearing great steel-rimmed glasses, and with a brass thimble on her middle finger, she sat down again. She examined a rent through which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather talked on in a low and monotonous mutter:

"'Look to the door, let no one in!' As if anyone ever comes here. Long ago, comrades and various protectors used to come; they came often at first, afterward very seldom; but now it is perhaps two years since even a dog has looked in here. He could not bear impertinent people. Oh, yes! they come here, many of them, princes, counts, various rich persons. Oh, yes! while he was a novelty and brilliant they amused themselves with him as they would with a shining button, but when the button was rubbed and dull they threw it into a corner. The relations, the friends, the companions! Arabian adventure! Oh, this society!"

She was silent a while, put a piece of carefully fitted material on the rent, raised her hand a number of times with the long thread, and again muttered:

"But is that society? It is sin, not society! Roll in sin, like the devil in pitch, and then scream that it burns! Oi, Oi!"

Silence reigned in the room; only the clock, that unavoidable dweller in all houses, that comrade of all people, ticked monotonously on the shelf, beneath the mirror, among the porcelain figures. Widow Clemens, while sewing, industriously, muttered on. Her unbroken loneliness, the store of thoughts put away in her old head, and the care in her heart had given her the habit of soliloquy.

"And it will be worse yet. He has debts beyond calculation. He will die on a litter of straw, or in a hospital. Oh, if his dead mother could see this! Arabian adventure! Unless Stefanek and I drag him out of this pit!"

She stopped sewing and raised her spectacles to her forehead, their glass eyes gleamed above her gray brows, and she fell into deep thought. She moved her lips from time to time, but did not mutter. By this movement of the lips, and by her wrinkles, it could be seen that she was forming some plan, that she was imagining. Just then Kranitski's voice was heard from the bedroom.

She sprang up with the liveliness of twenty years, and, with a loud clattering of old overshoes, ran to the door.

"Give me the dressing-gown, mother; I am not well; I will not go anywhere to-day."

"Here is the dressing-gown; but if the lining is torn?"

"Torn or not, give it here, and my slippers, too; for I am not well."

"Here they are! Not well? I have said not well! O beloved God, what will come of this?"

But, while helping him to put on the dressing-gown, she inquired, with incredulity:

"Is it true, or a joke, that you will not leave the house to-day?"

"A joke!" answered he in bitterness. "If you knew what a joke this is! I will not leave the house to-day, or to-morrow, or perhaps ever. I will lie here and grieve till I grieve to death. Oh, that it might be very soon!"

"Arabian adventure! Never has it been like this! It is easy to see that the pitch has burnt!" whispered widow Clemens to herself. But aloud she said:

"Before you grieve to death we must get you some dinner. I will run to the town for meat. I will lock the door outside, so that impertinent counts, and various barons should not burst in," added she, ironically.

Kranitski, left alone, locked up in his lodgings, robed in his dressing-gown, once costly, now faded, its sleeves tattered at the wrists, lay on the long-chair in front of his collection of pipes, arranged on the wall cunningly. In the society in which he moved collecting was universal. They collected pictures, miniatures, engravings, autographs, porcelain, old books, old spoons, old stuffs. Kranitski collected pipes. Some he had bought, but the greater number, by far, he had received on anniversaries of his name's-day, in proof of friendly recollection, and as keepsakes after a journey. During years many were collected, about a hundred; among them some were valuable, some poor but original, some even ridiculous, some immense in size, some small, some bright colored, some almost black; they were arranged on shelves at the wall with taste, and effectively.

Besides these pipes there were in the bed-room other objects of value: a writing-desk of peculiar wood, a porcelain frame, with Cupids at the top, surrounding an oval mirror, at which were bottles, vials, toilet boxes, and a rather long cigarette-case of pure gold, which Kranitski kept with him at all times, and which, as he lay now in the long-chair, he turned in his fingers, mechanically. This cigarette-case was a precious memento. He had received it soon after his arrival in the city, twenty and some years before, from Countess Eugenia, his mother's aunt. Prom their first meeting the countess was simply wild about him. Society even insisted, notwithstanding her more than ripe years, that she was madly in love with that uncommonly beautiful and blooming young man, who had been reared by his mother with immense care, and trained to appear successfully in that society to which she had been born. Kranitski's mother, through various causes, had become the victim of a mesalliance; she grieved out, and wept away secretly; her life, in a village corner, after marrying a noble who was perfectly honorable, but neither a man of the world, nor the owner of much property. She desired for her only son a better fate than she herself had had, and prepared him for it long beforehand. He spoke French with a Parisian accent, and English quite well; he was versed in the literatures of Western Europe; he was a famous dancer; he was obliging; he had an inborn instinct of kindness toward people; he was popular, sought after, petted; when the money with which his mother furnished him proved insufficient he obtained a small office, through the influence of wealthy relatives, which, besides increasing his revenue, gave him a certain independent aspect. He passed whole days in great and wealthy houses, where he read books, aloud, to old princesses and countesses, and for young princesses and countesses; he held skeins of silk on his opened hands. He carried out commissions and various small affairs; at balls he led dances; he amused himself; fell in love, was loved in return; he passed evenings and nights in clubs, and in private rooms at restaurants, at theatres, and behind the scenes in theatres, where he paid homage to famous actresses of various degrees and qualities. Those were times truly joyous and golden. At that period he was served not by widow Clemens, but by a man; he dined—if not with friends or relatives—at the best restaurants. At that time, too, he did something magnanimous, which brought reward in the form of great mental profit: He passed a whole year in Italy with Count Alfred, his relative, who was suffering from consumption; Kranitski nursed, amused, and comforted his cousin with patience, attachment, and tenderness which were perfectly sincere, and which came from a heart inclined to warm, almost submissive feelings. In return that year gave him skill in the use of Italian, and a wide acquaintance with the achievements and the schools of art, of which he was an enthusiastic worshipper. Soon after he went with Prince Zeno to Paris, learned France and its capital well, and on his return remained for some time as a reader with the prince, whose eyes were affected. His power of beautiful reading in many languages brought him a wide reputation; he was distinguished in drawing-rooms by the ease of his speech and manners; to some he became a valued assistant in entertaining guests, and a pleasant companion in hours of loneliness; to others he was a master in the domain of amusements, and elegance in the arts of politeness and pleasure. At this period also he made the acquaintance of Darvid, and met his wife, whom he had known from childhood, and who had been his earliest ideal of womanhood. Thenceforth, his relations with other houses were relaxed considerably, for he gave himself to the Darvid house soul and body. Though Malvina's children had many tutors, he taught one of her daughters Italian, and the other English; he did this with devotion, with delight; and, therefore, that house became, as it were, his own, and was ever open to him. Moreover, during the last ten years great changes had happened in that society of which he was the adopted child, and so long the favorite.

Countess Eugenia had given her daughter in marriage to a French count, and resided in Paris; Count Alfred was dead; dead, also, was that dear, kindly Baroness Blauendorf from whom he had received as a gift that mirror with porcelain frame and Cupids. Others, too, were dead, or were living elsewhere. Only Prince Zeno remained, but he had cooled toward his former reader, notably because of the princess, who could not forgive Kranitski; since, as was too well known by all, he was occupied with the wife of that millionaire—the eternally absent.

There were still many acquaintances, and more recent relations, but these had neither the charm nor the certainty of those which time had in various ways broken, brought to an end, or relaxed.

His mother, the foundress of his destiny, had ceased to live some time before that.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre maman!"

How tenderly and unboundedly he had loved her. How long he had hesitated and fought with himself before he left at her persuasion, the house in which she had given birth to him. He regretted immensely the village, the freedom, and that bright-haired maiden in the neighborhood. But the wide world and the great city took on, in his mother's narrative, the outlines of paradise, and his worthy relatives, the forms of demi-gods.

When at last, after long hesitation and struggles, he resolved to go away, how many were the kisses and embraces of his mother! how many were her maxims and advices; how many her predictions of happiness. He began to look at his own form in the mirrors, and to feel in his own person the movement of desires, hopes, ambitions. Once he caught himself bowing and making gestures, almost involuntarily, before the mirrors. He laughed aloud, his mother laughed also, for she had caught him in the act red-handed.

"Pauvre maman! pauvre, chere maman!"

And on the background of that domestic gladness, of those wonderful hopes, only one person by her conduct had raised a cloud on that heaven, beaming serenely. That was widow Clemens, an old servant of the house, and once his nurse, not young even at that time, and a childless widow.

She was morose, grumbling, peevish, but for a long time she said nothing; she did not hinder the thin, gray-haired mother, nor the youth, beautiful as a dream, from rejoicing and imagining; till at last she spoke when alone with the petted stripling. It was the end of an autumn day, twilight had begun to come down on the yard in Lipovka, and the linden grove, in a black line, cut through the evening ruddiness glowing in the western heavens. Widow Clemens, with her eyes fixed on the grove and the red of evening, said:

"Oi! Tulek, Tulek! how will this be? You will go away; you will take up and go away; but the sun will rise and set; the grove will rustle; the wheat will ripen; and the snow will fall when you are gone."

He sat on the bench of the piazza, and said nothing. But in the distant fields, in the growing darkness, a shepherd's whistle gave out clear tones, simple, monotonous, they flew along the field like the weeping of space.

"Why go; do you know why—God alone knows. What are you throwing away? The beauties of God. What will you bring back? Perhaps the mud people cast at you."

A cow bellowed in the stable; a belated working-woman muttered a song somewhere behind in the garden. The evening red was quenched; and above the roof the crescent of the moon came out, thin and like silver.

Widow Clemens whispered:

"Ill-fated! ill-fated boy!"

He was immensely far from considering himself ill fated, but something in his heart felt pain at leaving that village where he was born, at leaving Malvina, and it seemed to him that he ought to stay.

But he went. The Argonaut, of twenty and some years of age, went out into the world, slender, adroit, with eyes dark and fiery as youth, with cheeks shapely and fresh as peaches, with a forehead as white and pure as the petal of a lily; he went for a wife with a fortune, for the pleasures of the world—for the golden fleece.

Now he wrapped himself closely in the skirt of his faded dressing-gown, and let his head droop so low that the bald spot seemed white on the top of it; his lower lip dropped; the red spots came out over his dark brows on his wrinkled forehead. In his hand he held the cigarette-case presented by Countess Eugenia, now living in Paris, and at times he turned it in his fingers, with an unconscious movement, and that glittering object cast on the tattered sleeve of his dressing-gown, on his suffering face, on his long, thin fingers, its bright, golden reflection.

Meanwhile widow Clemens had returned to the kitchen, and there, not without a loud clattering of overshoes, had begun to cook the dinner. But Kranitski neither heard nor saw anything. From time to time the head, with its great cap, looked in through the kitchen door, gazed on him unquietly and pushed back to look in again soon.

"Will you have dinner now?" inquired she at last. "It is ready."

In a low voice he asked for dinner, but he ate almost nothing; the woman had never yet seen him so broken, still she made no inquiry. When the moment came he would tell all himself. He was not of those who bear secrets to the grave with them. She waited on the man, gave him food, brought tea, cleared the table in silence. Once she fell into trouble: Passing hurriedly through the room she lost one of the overshoes which she had on her feet:

"Ah! may thou be!—they fall off every moment!" grumbled she, and for some minutes she struggled with that overshoe, which, dropping from her foot, slipped along the floor noisily. Kranitski raised his head:

"What is that?" inquired he.

She made no answer, but when she was near the kitchen door, he cried:

"What have you on your feet that clatter so? It is irritating!"

She stopped at the door:

"What have I on my feet? Well, your old overshoes! Am I to wear out shoes every day, and then buy new ones? 'Irritating!' Arabian adventure! God grant that you never have worse irritation than overshoes clattering on the floor!"

And she grumbled on in the kitchen while going with an empty glass to the samovar:

"You wouldn't have a pinch of tea in the house if I went around in new shoes all my time!"

Darkness came down. Kranitski smoked cigarettes one after another, and was so sunk in thought that he trembled throughout his body. When widow Clemens brought in a lamp, with a milk-colored globe, which filled the room with a white, mild light, Kranitski looked at the head of the old woman in the white lamp-light, and, for the first time in a number of hours, he spoke:

"Come, mother, come nearer!" said he.

When she came he seized her rude fist in both his hands and shook it vigorously.

"What could I do; what would happen to me now, if you were not with me? No living soul of my own here! Alone, alone, as in a desert."

The onrush of tenderness burst through all obstructions. Confidences flowed on. He had loved for the last time in life, le dernier amour, and all had ended. She had forbidden him to see her. That decision of hers had been ripening for a long time. Reproaches of conscience, shame, despair as to her children. One daughter knew everything; the other might know it any day. She had let out of her hands the rudder of those hearts and consciences, for when she was talking with them her own fault closed her lips, like a red-hot seal. She thought herself the most pitiful of creatures. She did not wish to make further use of her husband's wealth, or the position which it give her in society. She wished to go away, to settle down in some silent corner, vanish from the eyes of people.

Kranitski was so excited that he almost sobbed; here his speech was interrupted by a rough, sarcastic voice:

"It is well that she came to her senses at last—"

"What senses? What are you weaving, mother? You know nothing. Love is never an offense. Ils ont peche, mais le ceil est un don."

"You are mad, Tulek! Am I some madam that you must speak French to me?" Still he finished:

"Ils ont souffert, c'est le sceau du pardon. I will translate this for thee: They have sinned, but heaven is a gift——-They have suffered; suffering is the seal of pardon."

"Tulek, let heaven alone! To mix up such things with heaven—Arabian adventure!"

"Are you a priest, mother? I tell you of my own suffering and the suffering of that noble, sweet being—" In the antechamber, the door of which widow Clemens, in returning from the city, had not locked, was heard stamping, and the youthful voice of a man called:

"Is your master at home?"

"Arabian adventure!" muttered widow Clemens.

"Maryan!" exclaimed Kranitski with delight, and he answered aloud:

"I am at home, at home!"

"An event worthy of record in universal history," answered the voice of a man speaking somewhat through his nose and teeth.

"And the baron!" cried Kranitski; then he whispered:

"Close the drawing-room door, mother; I must freshen up a little," and from behind the closed door he spoke to those who were in the drawing-room:

"In a moment, my dears, in a moment I shall be at your service."

In the light of the lamp, placed by widow Clemens in the drawing-room, he appeared, indeed, after a few minutes, dressed, his hair arranged, perfumed, elegant with springy movements and an unconstrained smile on his lips. Only his lids were reddened, and on his forehead were many wrinkles which would not be smoothed away.

"A comedian! There is a comedian!" grumbled widow Clemens, returning to the kitchen, with a terrible clatter of overshoes.

The two young men pressed his hand in friendship. It was clear that they liked him.

"Why did you avoid us all day?" inquired Baron Emil. "We waited for you at Borel's—he gave us an excellent dinner. But maybe you are fasting?"

"Let him alone, he has his suffering," put in Maryan. "I am so sorry, mon bon vieux (my good old man), that I have persuaded the baron to join me in taking you out. I cannot, of course, leave you a victim to melancholy."

Kranitski was moved; gratitude and tenderness were gazing out of his eyes.

"Thanks, thanks! You touch me."

He pressed the hands of both in turn, holding Maryan's hand longer than the baron's, with the words:

"My dear-dear—dear."

The young man smiled.

"Do not grow so tender," said he, "for that injures the interior. You are, however, a son of that generation which possesses an antidote for melancholy."

"What is it?"

"Well, faith, hope, charity, with resignation and—other painted pots. We haven't them, so we go to Tron-tron's, where Lili Kerth sings. We are to give her a supper tonight at Borel's. Borel has promised me everything which the five parts of the world can give."

"As to the problematic nature of that Lili," remarked the baron, "there are moments in which she takes on the superhuman ideal."

"What an idea, dear baron!" burst out Kranitski. "Lili and superhumanity, the ideal! Why, she is a little beast that sings abject things marvellously."

"That is it, that is it!" said the baron, defending his position, "a little beast in the guise of an angel—the singing of chansonettes with such a devil in the body—and at the same time a complexion, a look, a smile, which scatters a kind of mystic, lily perfume. This is precisely that dissonance, that snap, that mystery with which she has conquered Europe. This rouses curiosity; it excites; it is opposed to rules, to harmony—do you understand?"

"Stop, Emil!" cried Maryan, laughing. "You are speaking to the guardian of tombs. He worships harmony yet."

Kranitski seemed humiliated somewhat. He passed his palm over his hair, and began timidly:

"But that is true, my dears; I see myself that I am becoming old-fashioned. Men of my time, and I, called a cat a cat, a rogue a rogue. If a Lili like yours put on the airs of an angel we said: 'Oh, she is a rogue!' And we knew what to think of the matter. But this confounding of profane with sacred, of the rudest carnalism with a mystic tendency—"

The baron and Maryan laughed.

"For you this is all Greek, and will remain Greek. You wore born in the age of harmony, you will remain on the side of harmony. But a truce to talk. Let us go. Come, you will hear Lili Kerth; we shall sup together."

"Come, we have a place in the carriage for you," said the baron, supporting young Darvid's invitation.

Kranitski grew as radiant as if a sun-ray had fallen on his face.

"Very well, my dears, very well, I will go with you; it will distract me, freshen me. A little while only; will you permit?"

"Of course. Willingly. We will wait." He hurried to his bedroom, and closed the door behind him. In his head whirled pictures and expressions: the theatre, songs, amusement, supper, conversation, the bright light—everything, in a word, to which he had grown accustomed, and with which he had lived for many years. The foretaste of delight penetrated through his grievous sorrows. After the bitter mixture he felt the taste of caramels in his mouth. He ran toward his dressing-table, but in the middle of the room he stood as if fixed to the floor. His eye met a beautiful heliotype, standing on the bureau in the light of the lamp; from the middle of the room, in a motionless posture, Kranitski gazed at the face of the woman, which was enclosed in an ornamented frame.

"Poor, dear soul! Noble creature!" whispered he, and his lips quivered, and on his forehead appeared the red spots. Maryan called from beyond the door:

"Hurry, old man! We shall be late!"

A few minutes afterward Kranitski entered the drawing-room. His shoulders were bent; his lids redder than before.

"I cannot—as I love you, I cannot go with you! I feel ill."

"Indeed, he must be ill!" cried Maryan. "See, Emil, how our old man looks! He is changed, is he not?"

"But a moment ago you looked well!" blurted out Emil, and added: "Do not become wearisome, do not get sick. Sick people are fertilizers on the field of death—and sickness is annoying!"

"Splendidly said!" exclaimed Maryan.

"No, no," answered Kranitski, "this is not important, it is an old trouble of the liver. Returned only to-day—you must go without me."

He straightened himself, smiled, tried to move without constraint, but unconquerable suffering was evident on his features and in the expression of his eyes.

"May we send the doctor?" asked Maryan.

"No, no," protested Kranitski, and the baron took him by the arm and turned him toward the bedroom. Though Kranitski's shoulders were bent at that moment, his form was shapely and imposing; the baron, holding his arm, seemed small and frail; he made one think of a fly. In the bedroom he said, with a low voice:

"It is reported in the city that papa Darvid is opposed to my plans concerning Panna Irene. Do you know of this?"

For some months the baron had spoken frequently with Kranitski about his plans, taking counsel with him even at times, and begging for indications. Was he not the most intimate friend of that house, and surely an adviser of the family? Kranitski did not think, or even speak, of Baron Emil otherwise than:

"Ce brave garcon has the best heart in the world; he is very highly developed and intelligent; yes, very intelligent; and his mother, that dear, angelic baroness, was one of the most beautiful stars among those which have lighted my life."

So through the man's innate inclination to an optimistic view of mankind, and his grateful memory of "one of the most beautiful stars," he was always very friendly to the baron and favorable to his plan touching Irene; all the more since he noted in her an inclination toward the baron. So, usually, he gave the young man counsel and answers willingly and exhaustively. This time, however, an expression of constraint and of suffering fell on his face.

"I know not, dear baron; indeed, I can do nothing, for to tell—for I—" A number of drops of perspiration came out on his forehead, and he added, with difficulty:

"It seems that Panna Irene—"

"Panna Irene," interrupted the baron, without noticing Kranitski's emotion, "is a sonnet from Baudelaire's Les fleurs du mal (The flowers of evil). There is in her something undefined, something contradictory—"

Kranitski made a quick movement.

"My baron—"

"But do you not understand me, dear Pan Arthur? I have no intention of speaking ill of Panna Irene. In my mouth the epithets which I have used are the highest praise. Panna Irene is interesting precisely for this reason, that she is indefinite and complicated. She is a disenchanted woman. She possesses that universal irony which is the stamp of higher natures. Oh, Panna Irene is not a violet unless from the hot-house of Baudelaire! But, just for that reason she rouses curiosity, irritates, une desabusee—une vierge desabusee. Do you understand? There is in this the odor of mystery—a new quiver. But with natures of this sort nothing can ever be certain—"

"Hers is a noble nature!" cried Kranitski, with enthusiasm.

"You divide natures into noble and not noble," said the baron, with a smile; "but I, into annoying and interesting."

Beyond the door the loud voice of Maryan was heard:

"Emil, I will leave you and go to Tron-tron's. I will tell Lili
Kerth that you remained for the night to nurse a sick friend."

These words seemed to them so amusing that they laughed, from both sides of the closed door, simultaneously.

"Good!" cried the baron. "You will create for me the fame of a good Christian. As the Brandenburger fears only God, I fear only the ridiculous, and go."

A few minutes later the two friends were no longer in the dwelling of Kranitski, who was sitting on his long chair again, with drooping head, turning in his fingers the golden cigarette-case. The street outside the window was lonely enough, so the rumble of the departing carriage was audible. Kranitski followed it with his ear, and when it was silent he regretted passionately for a moment that he had not gone to where people were singing and jesting, and eating, and drinking in bright light, in waves of laughter. But, straightway, he felt an invincible distaste for all that. He was so sad, crushed, sick. Why had not those two young friends of his remained longer? He had rendered them the most varied services frequently, he had simply been at their service always, and had loved them; especially Maryan, the dear child—and many others. How many times had he nursed them, also, in sickness, consoled them, rescued them, amused them. Now, when he cannot run after them, as a dog after its mistress, his only comrades are darkness and silence.

Darkness reigned in the little drawing-room, silence of the grave in the whole dwelling. A clatter of overshoes broke this silence; widow Clemens stood in the kitchen door. On her high forehead, above her gray eyebrows, shone the glass eyes of her spectacles; her left hand was covered with a man's sock which she was darning. She stood in the door and looked at Kranitski, bent, grown old, buried in gloomy silence, and shook her head. Then, as quietly as ever was possible for her, she approached the long-chair, sat on a stool which was near it, and asked:

"Well, why are you silent, and chewing sorrow alone? Talk with me, you will feel easier."

As he gazed at her silently, she asked in a still lower tone:

"Well, the woman? Did she love you greatly? Was her love real?
How did you and she come to your senses?"

After a few minutes' hesitation, or thought, Kranitski, with his elbows on the edge of the chair, and his forehead on his palms, said:

"I can tell all, mother, for you are not of our society, and you are noble, faithful; the only one on earth who remains with me."

Throughout the silent chamber was heard, as it were, the sound of a trumpet: that sound was made by widow Clemens, who had drawn from her pocket a coarse handkerchief and held it to her nose. Her eyes were moist. Kranitski quivered and squirmed, but continued:

"When we met the first time after parting, the spring season was around us. You know that we parted only because I had too little fortune to marry a portionless maiden, and my mother would not hear of my marrying a governess. Soon after, that rich man married her. Fiu! fiu! what became of that governess, that girl more timid than a violet? She became a society lady, full of life, elegance, style—but springtime breathed around us, memories of the village, of the flowers, of the fields, of our earliest, heartfelt emotions. Did she love her husband? Poor, dear, soul! It seems that at first she was attached to him, but he left her, neglected her, grasped after millions throughout the whole world. He was strong, unbending—she was ever alone. Alone in society! Alone in the house—for the children were small yet, and she so sensitive and weak, needing friendship and the fondling of a devoted heart. I fell on my knees in spirit before her—she felt that. He, when going away, left me near her as an adviser, a guardian for the time, even a protector, yes, a pro-tec-tor—the parvenu! the idiot! So wise, yet so stupid—ha! ha! ha!"

Sneering, vengeful laughter contorted Kranitski's face, the red spots spread over his brows and covered half of his forehead, which was drawn now into thick wrinkles.

"Do not vex yourself, Tulek, do not vex yourself, you will be ill," urged widow Clemens; but once his confessions were begun he went on with them.

"For a year or more there was nothing between us. We were friends, but she held me at a distance; she struggled. You, mother, know if I had success with women—"

"You had, to your eternal ruin, you had!" blurted out widow
Clemens.

"From youth I had the gift of reading; I owe much to it."

"Ei! you owe much to it! What do you owe to it? Your sin against God, and the waste of your life!" said the widow, ready for a dispute, but he went on without noting that.

"Once she was weak after a violent attack of neuralgia; it was late in the evening, the great house was empty and dark, the children were sleeping—I gave her the attention that a brother or a mother would give; I was careful; I hid what was happening within me; I acted as though I were watching over a sick child which was dear to me. I entertained her with conversation; I spoke in a low voice; I gave her medicine and confectionery. Afterward I began to read. More than once she had said that my reading was music. I was reading Musset. You do not know, mother, who Musset is. He is the poet of love—of that love exactly which the world calls forbidden. She wanted something from the neighboring chamber; I went for it. When I returned our eyes met, and—well, I read no more that evening."

He was barely able to utter the last words; he covered his face with his handkerchief, rested his head on the arm of the long-chair, was motionless; wept, perhaps. Widow Clemens bent down, the corner of her coarse handkerchief came from her pocket, and through the chamber that sound of a trumpet was heard for the second time. Then she drew her bench up still nearer, and, with her hand in the stocking-foot, touched Kranitski's arm, and whispered:

"Say no more, Tulek; despair not! Let God up there judge her and you. He is a strict judge, but merciful! I am sorry for you, but also for her, poor thing! What is to be done? The heart is not stone, man is not an angel! Only drive off despair! Everything passes-, and your sorrow also will pass. You may be better off in the world than you now are. You may yet enjoy pleasant quiet in Lipovka, in your own cottage. Stefanek and I may think out something, so that you will escape from the mud of this city."

Kranitski made no answer; the woman spoke on:

"I have had another letter from Stefanek."

"What does that honest man write?" asked Kranitski.

The widow flushed up in anger:

"It is true that he is honest, and there is no need to call him that—as if through favor, or sneering. Arabian adventure! He is only my godson, but better than men of high birth. He writes that management in Lipovka goes well; that again he has set out a hundred fruit-trees in the garden; that in four weeks he will come and bring a little money."

"Money!" whispered Kranitski; "but that is well!"

"It is surely well, for that Jew would have taken your furniture if I had not pushed him down the steps, and a second time begged him to wait." She laughed. "To push him down was easier than to beg, for I am strong, and he is as small as a fly. Well I almost kissed his hands, and he promised to wait. 'For widow Clemens I will do this,' said he, 'because she is a servant who is like a mother.' Indeed, I am like a mother! I have no children, I have no one of my own in the world—I have only you."

Kranitski looked at her and began to shake his head with a slow movement. She, too, fixing her fiery and gloomy eyes on his eyes, shook slowly her head, which was covered with a great cap.

The lamp burning on the bureau threw its white light on those two heads, which, discoursing sadly, continued their melancholy converse without words; it shone also on the varied collection of pipes at the wall, and cast passing gleams on the golden cigarette-case which Kranitski turned in his hand.