The Argonauts Part 12

You do not know of this, for we have no time to exchange ideas. I am of those women who need to feel guardianship, to have near them an ear which might listen to their hearts, and a mind which would direct their conscience. I am weak. I am full of dread. I fear that in view of your frequent, almost continual absence, I shall not be able to rear the children properly. I only know how to love them, I would give my life for them, but I am weak. I beg you not to leave me and them so frequently; that is, almost continuously--rather let this luxury decrease--I shall be glad, even, for the decrease will bring us nearer together. I beg you!"

She seized his hands, and it seemed as though she kissed them; but it was certain that the pale, golden wave of her dishevelled hair fell on them. Irene, though she was only ten years old then, felt pity for her mother, and waited with intense curiosity for her father's answer.

"What do you wish in particular?" asked he. "I listen, I listen, still I do not know exactly what the question is. Is it this, that I should stop work, which I love and which succeeds with me?

You must be in a waking dream. Those are ideas from another society, mere childish fancies."

Here Irene's thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of Cara.

"Ira, is mamma sick, since she did not come to luncheon?"

"Mamma has neuralgia often; you know that well." Cara turned to the door of her mother's bedroom, but Irene stopped her.

"Do not go; she may be sleeping." The girl approached her sister:

"It seems to me--" she whispered and stopped.

"What seems to you a second time?"

"That there is something going on in this house--"

Irene frowned.

"What an imagination you have! You are ever imagining something uncommon. Now all these uncommon things are painted pots, or illusions. Life rolls on always in a common, prosaic movement.

Stop making painted pots, and go out to walk with Puff and Miss Mary."

Cara listened attentively, but with an incredulous expression of eyes, which were fixed on her sister's face.

"Very well, I will go to walk, but what you have said is not true, Ira. It is not painted pots that mamma is suffering and sick, that father goes out to dine for a whole week, and does not come to her at all; even that--man, going out to-day, began to cry in the antechamber--I saw him by chance--he wanted to say something to me, but I ran away--"

Irene shrugged her shoulders.

"You will be a poetess, perhaps, you exaggerate everything so terribly. Mamma is not troubled, she only has neuralgia. Father does not dine with us because he has so many invitations, and Pan Kranitski struck his nose against something which you, in poetic imagination, took for crying. Men never cry, and sensible girls, instead of filling their heads with painted pots, go to walk while good weather lasts and the sun shines. The doctor tells you to walk every day, not in the evening, but about this hour."

"I am going, I am going! You drive me away!"

She went on a number of steps, and turned again toward her aster:

"Father is angry at Maryan--I see that very clearly. Everything in this house is, somehow, so strange."

She went out, but Irene clasped her hands, and for some seconds squeezed them with all her might, and thought:

"That child will soon look at life just as I have been looking at it for some time past. It is necessary to foresee, absolutely necessary!" She returned to her reminiscences. Her mother said to her father:

"Our fortune is now considerable."

"In that direction," answered her father, "it never can be too great, nor even sufficient."

Then, playing with her beautiful hair, he asked:

"But do you believe that I love you?"

After some hesitation she answered:

"No. I have lost that faith, I lost it some time ago."

Later there were many other words, some of which Irene remembered:

"The very best guardianship in this world," said her father, "is wealth. Whoso has that will never lack mind, even; since, in ease of need, he can buy mind from other men.

"In the training of our children you will expend all that is requisite. You will rear for me our daughters to be grand ladies; will you not? Educate them so that when mature they may feel as much at home in the highest social circles as in their own father's household. As to you, amuse yourself, make connections, dress, be brilliant. The more you elevate the name which you bear, by beauty, wit, knowledge of life, the more service will you render me in return for the services which I render you.

Besides, if you have any difficulty with the house, with teachers, with social relations, you have that honest Kranitski, who will serve you with great good will. I am very much pleased with that acquaintance. Just such a man did I need. He has extensive and very good connections; he is perfectly well-bred, obliging, polite. Foreseeing that he might be very useful to us, I became familiar with him. It is true that he has borrowed money a number of times of me, but he has rendered a number of services. Pay in return for value, that is the best method."

He walked up and down through the room repeatedly; on his forehead, in his look, in his movements, he had an expression of perfect confidence in himself, his rights, and his reason.

Suddenly, turning toward the door of remoter rooms, he cried with delight:

"Speak of the wolf, and he is before you! I greet you, dear sir."

With these words he extended his hand to the guest who was entering. This was Kranitski, at that time in his highest manly beauty; petted, and a favorite in the best social circles because of it, and for other reasons also.

He gave a hearty greeting of Darvid, who met him with delight, and then he stood before Malvina in such a posture, and with such an expression on his face, as if he desired only one thing on earth, to be able to drop on his knees before her.

That conversation and scene remained fixed in Irene's memory. She drew from it formerly, extensive conclusions, then she ceased altogether to recall it; now she thought again of it, forgetting her painted chrysanthemums, which, on the blue satin, seemed to gaze at her, having as subtle and enigmatical a look as she herself had.

A servant at the door announced: "Baron Emil Blauendorf!"

"Not at ho--" began she at once; but, halting, instructed the servant to ask him to wait. At her mother's desk she wrote on a narrow card of Bristol-board, in English:

"Mamma is ill with neuralgia; I am nursing her, and cannot see you to-day. I regret this, for the talk about dissonances began to be interesting. Bring me the continuation of it to-morrow!"

She gave this card, in an envelope addressed to the baron, to a servant, and sat down again to her chrysanthemums, this time with a smile both malicious and gladsome. With his appearance in that house, though unseen by her, Baron Emil had lent form in her head to a certain whimsical idea. She knew that it was whimsical, but just for that reason it pleased her, and must also please the baron. She began quickly, almost with enthusiasm, to paint dark outlines of imps among the flowers. She disposed them so that they seemed to separate the flowers and keep them apart from one another. Some imps were climbing up, others were slipping down; they peeped out from behind petals, climbed along stems, but all were malicious, distorted, capricious, and pushed the tops of the flowers apart in such fashion that they did not let the half-bending petals meet in kisses. Painting quickly, Irene laughed. She imagined Baron Emil saying at sight of this work: "C'est du nouveau! It is not a painted pot! it is an individual thought. There is a new quiver there. It bites."

The expressions "painted pots," "Arcadians," "it bites," "new quivers," "rheumatism of thought," and many more she had from him. And she was not the only one who borrowed. These expressions had spread in a rather largo circle of people who despised everything existing, and were seeking everything which was new and astonishing. Baron Emil was cultured, had read much. He read frequently Nietsche's "Zarathustra," and spoke of the coming "race," the super-humans. He spoke somewhat through his nose and through his teeth.

The superhuman is he who is able to will absolutely and unconditionally.

When Irene thought that perhaps she would soon become the baron's wife, and leave that house, her brows contracted and her jeering smile vanished. Oh, she would not let him escape her! She had an absolute condition to put before the baron; he would accept it most a.s.suredly, through deference to the amount of her dower.

Energy glittered in her blue eyes. She turned her face toward the door of her mother's room with so quick a movement that the metallic pin in her hair cast a gleam of sharp steel above her head.

"One must know how to will," whispered she.

CHAPTER IV

When Kranitski entered his own lodgings, after pa.s.sing 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."