The Argonauts

by Eliza Orzeszkowa

Much gold had been poured out in bringing those voices, the chorus of which raised a hymn of prayer and sorrow above his dead daughter. But previously the door was opened, and the white chamber was half filled with the highest of the most brilliant society in that city, showing signs of profound respect and sympathy. Prince Zeno escorted Malvina Darvid, who was all in tears and black crape. Maryan brought in the princess. Irene entered, leaning on the arm of a young prince, celebrated for beauty; next came stars of these three powers: birth, money, and reputation. They were not many, since summits are always few in number; slight sounds were heard of bringing, giving, and moving chairs; there were whispers and the rustle of silk garments.

Black silks, laces, and crape; the black dress of men mixed with glittering white; hands folded sadly on knees, or crossed on breasts, with seriousness; faces sunk in thought—solemn stillness. Meanwhile, out of silence in the adjoining chamber, to the accompaniment of instrumental music, rose a grand funeral hymn, given by a chorus of the most famous artists in the city. The solemnity of the mourning, with its character of high life and unusualness, roused admiration for the man who had given such magnificent homage to his departed daughter. From out the mountain of gold gushed a fountain of enchanting music, on which that child sailed away beyond the boundaries of earthly existence.

Darvid did not greet those who entered; and, for the first time in life, perhaps, failed to meet the demands of society; they also, respecting a frame of mind which they divined in him, troubled the man in no way. He remained resting against the wall, and, from a distance, resembled a silhouette outlined on it darkly, as on a background. He looked on the brilliant assembly, from which he was separated by half the chamber, and felt that he was divided from those people by a space as great as if they were at one end of the world and he at the other end. Those shadows there whose names he knew, but who were nothing to him, and he nothing to them. They might exist, or not; that was all one to Darvid. Why had they come? Why were they there? Never mind, he knew only this, that they did not exist for him, as he did not for them. He was struck by the feeling of an immense vacuum, which divided him from men. This vacuum was something like a space which the eye could not take in, a space with two edges, on one of which he was found, and they on the other. They were by themselves, he was by himself.

The singing of the chorus rose in power, in thunders, then became like nightingale voices heard in space, with notes clear and resonant. Invisible movements of air passed along the crapes, and the immense number of tapers, causing the flames on them to quiver.

Darvid had not paid attention to music; he had never had time to learn and to love it; but he felt that those tones were passing into his vitals, moving the secret strata of his being, and bringing them into movements unknown to him till that moment. He looked at Cara's face, rising up among the white blossoms, and he thought, or rather felt that, while those others seemed removed by boundless space, she alone was very near to him. "Mine!" he whispered. She alone. He did not know precisely how that could happen, but mentally he placed that little head with golden hair upon his shoulders, and said to it:

"Let us flee, little one! Thou didst ask me once what those people were to me. Now I will tell thee that they are nothing. I do not need them; they are strangers to me; with me they have no relations whatever; thou alone art needful to me; thou alone, such a sunray as I once saw on a journey and forgot, bright and warm. Thou alone art mine! Let us go; let us flee together from all and from everyone, for everything and all people are nothing to you and me; they are strange, and distant."

Here he remembered that never and nowhere would he be able to go with her, or to flee with her. He was joint possessor of a number of railroads; he had the power to employ for himself alone a number of trains passing over those roads; in the East, on a gigantic river, his own vessels were sailing, in clouds of steam; in one capital and another, and in this great city, swarms of people inhabited his houses—still he could not take that sleeping girl by land or by water, to any city, or to any house. To his eyes, which were raised toward her, a biting moisture began to come, and gathered into drops, a number of which flowed down his cheeks, and were shaken in every direction by quiverings of the skin.

But at that moment appeared on his lips the smile, which, as people said, was bristling with pin-points.

"What is this? Is it exaltation?"

He discovered exaltation in himself. A few days before, nay, down to that very night, he would have laughed at the supposition that in him it could darken judgment and clear vision. He thought, however, that a man is at times to himself the most marvellous of all surprises. Under various influences forces spring up in him, the presence of which he is farthest from suspecting. Darvid discovered, now in himself, the thing most unexpected: exaltation. The habit of a life-time; that which he had always considered as an unshaken conviction, rose now with loud laughter at itself. Will he begin now as a poet to write a threnody over his dead daughter, or like a monk yield himself to thoughts about death? Misery! Earlier, that word had occurred more than once to him, but only now does it career through his head freely. Still, he will not let exaltation master him. He must stand erect and look at things soberly.