Meanwhile he was as busy as a fly in a pot, between Buchynek and the city, and even made new acquaintances. One of these was Professor Vaskovski; who had returned from his pilgrimage among the “youngest of the Aryans.” He had visited the shores of the Adriatic, and the entire Balkan peninsula; but the state of his health was so pitiful that Pan Stanislav took him for good to Buchynek, to save the poor man from being cheated, and to give him needful care, which in his loneliness he could not have found in another place. Pan Ignas, himself a person of lofty soul, and ready to grasp every broad idea, though it might seem absurd to common-sense fools, conceived from the first day a love for the old man, with his theory of a historical mission predestined to the youngest of the Aryans. Of this theory he had heard already more than once from Svirski and Polanyetski, and considered it a splendid dream. But it struck him and Svirski and the Polanyetskis that the professor, on returning from his journey, answered only that “No one could escape the service which Christ had preordained to him;” then he gazed forward with his mystic eyes, as if seeking something, or looking for something in infinity, and his old face took on an expression of such deep sorrow, and even of such pain, that no one had the heart to touch that particular question. The doctor called in by Polanyetski declared that the greasy kitchen of the youngest of the Aryans had given the old man a serious catarrh of the stomach, to which was added marasmus senilis. The professor had, in fact, a serious catarrh of the stomach; but Pan Ignas divined in him something else,—namely, a desperate struggle between doubt and that in which he believed, and to which, as a real maniac-idealist, he had devoted a lifetime. Pan Ignas alone understood the whole tragedy of such a final ergo erravi; and he was doubly moved,—first, as a man with a heart, second, as a poet, who at once saw a theme for a poem: the old man before the house, in the sun, sitting on the ruin of his life and beliefs, with the words, “vanity, vanity,” on his lips, and waiting for death, whose steps he hears now in the distance.
But with the professor it was not so bad, perhaps, as Pan Ignas had imagined. “The youngest of the Aryans” might, indeed, have disappointed him; but there remained the faith that Christianity had not uttered its last word yet, and that the coming epoch in the life of humanity would not be anything else than a spreading of the spirit of Christ, and a transfer of it from relations between individuals to general human relations. “Christ in history” did not cease to be for him a vision of the future. He believed even always that the mission of introducing love into history was predestined to the youngest of the Aryans; but from the time of his journey a deep sadness had seized him, for he understood that, before that could be realized, not only he, but whole generations, must die of catarrh of the stomach, caused by the indigestible kitchen of principalities on the Danube.
Meanwhile he shut himself up in himself, and in silence which had more the appearance of life-sorrow than it was in reality. Of his “idea,” he hardly ever spoke directly, but the idea was evident. Just as the hand of a clock, stopped at a certain hour, never indicates any hour but that, so the indicator of his thought did not desert that idea; for to various questions he answered with words which were rather connected with it than the thing touching which he was questioned. Whenever they wished to call him back to reality, it was needful to rouse him. In dress he neglected himself utterly, and seemed every day to forget more and more that buttons on a vest, for example, are there to be buttoned. With his eternal absence of mind; with his eyes both short-sighted and child-like, reflecting in some mechanical way external impressions; with a face of concern, on which pimples had become still more evident because of defective digestion; finally, with a neglect of dress, and his wonderful trousers, which, it is unknown for what reason, were twice as wide as the trousers of other men,—he roused mirth in strangers, and became frequently the object of jokes more or less malicious. It seems that he roused such feelings first of all in the “youngest of the Aryans.” In general, they considered him as a man in whose head the staves lacked a hoop; but some showed him compassion. The word “harmless” struck his ears frequently, but he feigned not to hear it. He felt, however, that at Pan Stanislav’s he was comfortable; that no one laughed at him, no one showed him the compassion shown idiots.
Finally, neither the too greasy kitchen of the “youngest of the Aryans,” nor the catarrh of the stomach, had taken away his boundless forbearance, and his kindness to people. He was always that dear old professor who fell into revery, but who recovered his senses when it was a question of others. He loved, as of old, Marynia, Pan Stanislav, Pani Emilia, Svirski, the Bigiels, even Mashko,—in a word, all those with whom life had brought him in contact. In general, he had a certain strange understanding of people; namely, that all, whether willing or unwilling, were serving some purpose, and were like pawns which the hand of God is moving for reasons which He Himself knows. Artists, like Svirski, he esteemed as envoys who “reconcile.”
He looked in the same way on Pan Ignas, whose poetry he had read before. On becoming acquainted with the author, he looked at him as curiously as at some peculiar object; but in the morning, when the poet had gone to the city, and they began to talk about him during tea, the old man raised his finger, and, turning to Marynia, said, with a look of mystery,—
“Oh, he is God’s bird! He does not know what God wrote on his head nor to what He designed him.”
Marynia told him of Pan Ignas’s approaching marriage, of his feeling for Panna Lineta, and of her, praising her goodness and beauty.
“Yes,” said the professor, when he had heard all, “you see she too has her mission, and she too is ‘chosen.’ God commanded her to watch over that flame; and since she is chosen, she should be honored for having been chosen. Do you see? Favor is upon her.” Then he grew thoughtful and added, “All this is precious for humanity in the future.”
Pan Stanislav looked at his wife, as if wishing to say that the professor was dreaming disconnectedly; but the latter blinked somewhat, and, looking before him, continued,—
“There is in the sky a Milky Way; and when God wishes, He takes dust from it and makes new worlds. And you see, I think there is likewise a spiritual Milky Way, made up of all that people have ever thought and felt. Everything is in it,—what genius has accomplished, what talent has wrought; in it are the efforts of men’s minds, the honesty of women’s hearts, human goodness, and people’s pains. Nothing perishes, though everything turns to dust, for out of that dust, by the will of God, new spiritual worlds are created for people.”