The Count returned home, but he kept checking his horse, turning back his head, and gazing at the garden; and once it seemed to him that a mysterious, snow-white gown again flashed from the window; and that again something light fell from on high, and flitting across the garden in the twinkling of an eye, glittered among the green cucumbers, like a sunbeam that steals out from a cloud and falls on a slab of flint in a ploughed field, or on a small sheet of water in a green meadow.
The Count dismounted and sent his servants to the house, but himself set out secretly for the garden; soon he reached the fence, found an opening in it, and slunk in quietly, as a wolf into a sheepfold; unluckily he jostled some dry gooseberry bushes. The little gardener glanced around as though frightened by the rustling, but perceived nothing; however, she ran to the other side of the garden. But along the edge, among the great sorrel plants and amid the leaves of burdock, the Count, leaping like a frog over the grass, quietly crawled near on his hands and knees; he put out his head, and beheld a marvellous sight.
[pg 63]
In that part of the garden grew scattered cherry trees; among them grain and vegetables, purposely of mixed varieties: wheat, maize, beans, bearded barley, millet, peas, and even bushes and flowers. The housekeeper had devised such a garden for the poultry; she was famous for her skill—her name was Mrs. Hennibiddy, born Miss Turkee. Her invention made an epoch in poultry-raising: to-day it is universally known, but in those times it was still passed about as a novelty and received under the seal of secrecy by only a few persons, until at last the almanac published it under the heading, A cure for hawks and kites, or a new method of raising poultry—that meant this garden patch.
As soon as the cock that keeps watch stands still, and, throwing back and holding motionless his bill, and inclining to one side his head with its red comb, that he may the more easily aim at the heavens with his eye, perceives a hawk hanging beneath the clouds, he calls the alarm: at once the hens take refuge in this garden—even the geese and peacocks, and the doves in their sudden fright, if they have not time to hide beneath the roof.
Now no enemy was to be seen in the sky, but the summer sun was burning fiercely; from it the birds had taken refuge in the grove of grain: some were lying on the turf, others bathing in the sand.
Amid the birds' heads rose little human heads, uncovered, with short hair, white as flax, their necks bare to the shoulders; in their midst was a girl, a head higher than they, with longer hair. Just behind the children sat a peacock, and spread out wide the circle of its tail into a many-coloured rainbow, against the deep blue of which the little white heads were relieved [pg 64]as on the background of a picture; they gathered radiance, being surrounded by the gleaming eyes of the tail as by a wreath of stars, and they shone amid the grain as in the transparent ether, between the golden stalks of the maize, the English grass with its silvery stripes, the coral mercury, and the green mallow, the forms and colours of which were mingled together like a lattice plaited of silver and gold, and waving in the air like a light veil.
Above the mass of many-coloured ears and stalks hung like a canopy a bright cloud of butterflies,50 whose four-parted wings were light as a spider's web and transparent as glass; when they hover in the air they are hardly visible, and, though they hum, you fancy that they are motionless.
The girl waved in her uplifted hand a grey tassel, like a bunch of ostrich plumes, and seemed to be protecting with it the heads of the children from the golden rain of the butterflies—in her other hand shone something horn-like and gilded, apparently an instrument for feeding children, for she approached it to each child in turn; it was formed like the golden horn of Amalthea.
Even though thus engaged she turned her head towards the gooseberry bushes, mindful of the rustling she had heard among them, and not knowing that her assailant had already drawn near from the opposite direction, crawling like a serpent over the borders. Suddenly he jumped out from the burdock; she looked—he was standing near at hand, four beds away from her, and was bowing low. She had already turned away her head and lifted her arms, and was hurrying to fly away like a frightened lark, and already her light steps [pg 65]were brushing over the leaves, when the children, frightened by the entrance of the stranger, and the flight of the girl, began to wail piteously. She heard them, and felt that it was unseemly to desert little children in their fright; she went back, hesitating, but she must needs go back, like an unwilling spirit, summoned by the incantations of a diviner. She ran up to divert the child that was shrieking the loudest, sat down by him on the ground, and clasped him to her bosom; the others she soothed with her hand and with tender words until they became calm, hugging her knees with their little arms and snuggling their heads, like chickens beneath their mother's wing. “Is it nice to cry so?” she said, “is it polite? This gentleman will be afraid of you; he did not come to frighten you, he is not an ugly old beggar; he is a guest, a kind gentleman, just see how pretty he is.”
She looked herself; the Count smiled pleasantly, and was evidently grateful to her for so many praises. She noticed this, and stopped, lowered her eyes, and blushed all over like a rosebud.
He was really a handsome gentleman; of tall stature, with an oval face, fair and with rosy cheeks; he had mild blue eyes and long blonde hair. The leaves and tufts of grass in the Count's hair, which he had torn off in crawling over the borders, showed green like a disordered wreath.
“O thou!” he said, “by whatever name I must honour thee, whether thou art a goddess or a nymph, a spirit or a phantom, speak! Doth thine own will call thee to earth, or doth another's power bind thee in this vale? Ah! I comprehend—surely some disdained lover, some powerful lord or envious guardian imprisons [pg 66]thee in this castle park as if under enchantment! Thou art worthy that knights should fight for thee in arms, and that thou shouldst be the heroine of mournful ballads! Unfold to me, fair one, the secret of thy dreadful fate! Thou shalt find a deliverer—henceforth, as thou rulest my heart by thy nod, so rule my arm.”
He stretched forth his arms.—She listened to him with a maiden's blush, but with a face once more cheerful. As a child likes to look at gay pictures and finds amusement in glittering counters before he learns their true worth, so her ears were soothed by the sounding words of which she did not understand the meaning. Finally she asked:“Where do you come from, sir, and what are you looking for here in the garden?”
The Count opened his eyes, confused and amazed, and did not reply. Finally, lowering the tone of his discourse, he said:—
“Pardon me, my little lady; I see that I have spoiled your fun! O pardon me, I was just hurrying to breakfast; it is late and I wanted to get there on time. You know that by the road one has to make a circuit; through the garden it seems to me there is a short cut to the house.”
“There is your way, sir,” said the girl; “only you must not spoil the vegetable beds; there is the path between the strips of grass.”
“To the left?” asked the Count, “or to the right?”
The little gardener, filled with curiosity, raised her blue eyes and seemed to scrutinise him, for a thousand steps away the house was in plain sight, and the Count was asking the way! But the Count needs must say something to her, and was seeking an excuse for conversation.
[pg 67]
“Do you live here? near the garden? or in the village? How happens it that I have not seen you at the mansion? Have you come recently? Perhaps you are a visitor?”
The girl shook her head.
“Pardon me, my little lady, but is not that your room, where we see the window?”
“If she is not a heroine of romance,” he was thinking to himself, “she is a young and fresh and very pretty girl. Very often a great soul, a great thought, hidden in solitude, blooms like the rose in the midst of the forest; it will be sufficient to bring it forth to the light, and put it before the sun, to have it amaze by a thousand bright colours those who gaze upon it!”
The little gardener meanwhile remained silent. She merely lifted up one child, who was hanging on her arm, took another by the hand, and, driving several of them before her like geese, moved on through the garden.
“Can you not,” she said turning around, “drive my stray birds back into the grain?”
“I drive birds!” cried the Count in amazement.
Meanwhile she had vanished behind the shade of the trees. Only for a moment there shone from behind the hedgerow, through the dense greenery, something like two blue eyes.
The deserted Count long remained standing in the garden; his soul, like the earth after sunset, gradually grew cool, and took on dark colours. He began to muse, but he had very unpleasant dreams; he awoke, not knowing himself with whom he was angry. Alas, he had found little, and had had too great expectations! For, when he was crawling over the field towards that [pg 68]shepherdess, his head had burned and his heart leapt high; so many charms had he seen in the mysterious nymph, so wondrously had he decked her out, so many conjectures had he made! He had found everything quite different; to be sure, she had a pretty face, and a slender figure—but how lacking in elegance! And that tender face and lively blush, which painted excessive, vulgar happiness! Evidently her mind was still slumbering and her heart inactive. And those replies, so village-like, so common!
“Why should I deceive myself?” he exclaimed; “I guess the secret, too late! My mysterious nymph is simply feeding geese!”
With the disappearance of the nymph, all the magic glory had suffered a change; those bright bands, that charming network of gold and silver, alas! was that all merely straw?
The Count, wringing his hands, gazed on a bunch of cornflowers tied round with grasses, which he had taken for a tuft of ostrich plumes in the maiden's hand. He did not forget the instrument: that gilded vessel, that horn of Amalthea, was a carrot! He had seen it being greedily consumed in the mouth of one of the children. So good-bye to the spell, the enchantment, the marvel!
So a boy, when he sees chickory flowers enticing the hand with soft, light, blue petals, wishes to stroke them and draws near—he blows—and with the puff the whole flower flies away like down on the wind, and in his hands the too curious inquirer sees only a naked stalk of grey-green grass.
The Count pulled his hat over his eyes and returned whence he came, but shortened the way by striding [pg 69]over the vegetables, the flowers, and the gooseberry bushes, until, vaulting the fence, he at last breathed freely! He remembered that he had spoken to the girl of breakfast: so perhaps everybody was already informed of his meeting with her in the garden, near the house; perhaps they would send to look for him. Had they noticed his flight? Who knows what they would think? So he had to go back. Bending down near the fence, along the boundary strip, and through the weeds, after a thousand turns he was glad to come out finally on the highway, which led straight to the yard of the mansion. He walked along the fence and turned away his head from the garden as a thief from a corn house, in order to give no sign that he thought of visiting it, or had already done so. Thus careful was the Count, though no one was following him; he looked in the opposite direction from the garden, to the right.
Here was an open grove, with a floor of turf; over this green carpet, among the white trunks of the birches, under the canopy of luxuriant drooping boughs, roamed a multitude of forms, whose strange dance-like motions and strange costumes made one think them ghosts, wandering by the light of the moon. Some were in tight black garments, others in long, flowing robes, bright as snow; one wore a hat broad as a hoop, another was bare-headed; some, as if they had been wrapt in a cloud, in walking spread out on the breeze veils that trailed behind their heads as the tail behind a comet. Each had a different posture: one had grown into the earth, and only turned about his downcast eyes; another, looking straight before him, as if in a dream, seemed to be walking along a line, turning neither to the right nor to the left. But all continually bent down to the ground in [pg 70]various directions, as if making deep bows. If they approached one another, or met, they did not speak or exchange greetings, being in deep meditation, absorbed in themselves. In them the Count saw an image of the shades in the Elysian Fields, who, not subject to disease or care, wander calm and quiet, but gloomy.
Who would have guessed that these people, so far from lively and so silent, were our friends, the Judge's comrades? From the noisy breakfast they had gone out to the solemn ceremony of mushroom-gathering; being discreet people, they knew how to moderate their speech and their movements, in order under all circumstances to adapt them to the place and time. Therefore, before they followed the Judge to the wood, they had assumed a different bearing, and put on different attire, linen dusters suitable for a stroll, with which they covered and protected their kontuszes; and on their heads they wore straw hats, so that they looked white as spirits in Purgatory. The young people had also changed their clothes, except Telimena and a few who wore French attire.—This scene the Count had not understood, being unfamiliar with village customs; hence, amazed beyond measure, he ran full speed to the wood.
Of mushrooms51 there were plenty: the lads gathered the fair-cheeked fox-mushrooms, so famous in the Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood, for the worms do not eat them, and, marvellous to say, no insect alights on them; the young ladies hunted for the slender pine-lover, which the song calls the colonel of the mushrooms.52 All were eager for the orange-agaric; this, though of more modest stature and less famous in song, is still the most delicious, whether fresh or salted, [pg 71]whether in autumn or in winter. But the Seneschal gathered the toadstool fly-bane.
The remainder of the mushroom family are despised because they are injurious or of poor flavour, but they are not useless; they give food to beasts and shelter to insects, and are an ornament to the groves. On the green cloth of the meadows they rise up like lines of table dishes: here are the leaf-mushrooms with their rounded borders, silver, yellow, and red, like little glasses filled with various sorts of wine; the kozlak, like the bulging bottom of an upturned cup; the funnels, like slender champagne glasses; the round, white, broad, flat whities, like china coffee-cups filled with milk; and the round puff-ball, filled with a blackish dust, like a pepper-shaker. The names of the others are known only in the language of hares or wolves; by men they have not been christened, but they are innumerable. No one deigns to touch the wolf or hare varieties; but whenever a person bends down to them, he straightway perceives his mistake, grows angry and breaks the mushroom or kicks it with his foot: in thus defiling the grass he acts with great indiscretion.
Telimena gathered neither the mushrooms of wolves nor those of humankind; distracted and bored, she gazed around with her head high in air. So the Notary angrily said of her that she was looking for mushrooms on the trees; the Assessor more maliciously compared her to a female looking about for a nesting-place.
She seemed in search of quiet and solitude; slowly she withdrew from her companions and went through the wood to a gently sloping hillock, well shaded by the trees that grew thickly upon it. In the midst of it was a grey rock; from under the rock a stream gurgled and [pg 72]spouted, and at once, as if it sought the shade, took refuge amid the tall, thick greenery, which, watered by it, grew luxuriantly on all sides. There that swift rogue, swaddled in grasses and bedded upon leaves, motionless and noiseless, whispered unseen and almost inaudibly, like a tired child laid in a cradle, when its mother ties above it the bright green curtains, and sprinkles poppy leaves beneath its head. It was a lovely and quiet spot; here Telimena often took refuge, calling it the Temple of Meditation.
Standing above the stream, she threw on the greensward, from her shoulders, her waving shawl, red as carnelian; and, like a swimmer who bends down to the wintry bath before she ventures to plunge in, she knelt and slowly inclined on her side; finally, as if drawn down by the stream of coral, she fell upon it and stretched out at full length: she rested her elbow on the grass, her temple on her palm, with her head bent down; beneath her head glittered the vellum paper of a French book; over the alabaster pages of the book there wound her black ringlets and pink ribbons.
Amid the emerald of the luxuriant grass, on the carnelian shawl, in her long gown, as though in a wrapper of coral, against which her hair was relieved at one end and her black shoes at the other, while along the sides glittered her snowy stockings, her handkerchief, and the whiteness of her hands and face, she showed from afar like a many-coloured caterpillar, crawling upon a green maple leaf.
Alas! all the charms and graces of this picture vainly awaited experts to appreciate them; no one heeded them, so deeply were all engrossed in the gathering of mushrooms. But Thaddeus heeded them and kept [pg 73]glancing sideways; and, not daring to go straight on, edged along obliquely. As a huntsman, when, seated between two wheels beneath a moving canopy of boughs, he advances on bustards; or, when approaching plover, he hides himself behind his horse, putting his gun on the saddle or beneath the horse's neck, as if he were dragging a harrow or riding along a boundary strip, but continually draws near to the place where the birds are standing: even so did Thaddeus steal forward.
The Judge foiled his plan; and, cutting him off, hurried to the spring. In the wind fluttered the white skirts of his dressing-gown and a large handkerchief, of which the end was fastened in his girdle; his straw hat, tied beneath his chin, flapped in the wind from his swift motion like a burdock leaf, falling now on his shoulders and now again over his eyes; in his hand was an immense staff: thus strode on the Judge. Bending down and washing his hands in the stream, he sat down on the great rock in front of Telimena, and, leaning with both hands on the ivory knob of his enormous cane, he thus began his discourse:—
“You see, my dear, that ever since our Thaddeus has been our guest, I have been not a little disquieted. I am childless and old; this good lad, who is really my only comfort in the world, is the future heir of my fortune. By the grace of heaven I shall leave him no bad portion of gentleman's bread; it is time too that we think over his future and his settlement. But now, my dear, pray observe my distress! You know that Jacek, my brother, Thaddeus's father, is a strange man, whose intentions are hard to penetrate. He refuses to return home; God knows where he is hiding; he will not even let us inform his son that he is alive, and yet he continually gives us [pg 74]directions in regard to him. At first he wanted to send him to the legions; I was fearfully distressed. Later, however, he agreed that he might remain at home and marry. He would easily find a wife; I have a match in mind for him. None of our citizens compares in name or connections with the Chamberlain; his elder daughter Anna is of marriageable age, a fair and well-dowered young lady. I wanted to begin negotiations.”
At this Telimena grew pale, closed her book, rose a bit, and sat up.
“As I love my mother,” she said, “is there any sense in this, my dear brother? Are you a God-fearing man? So you think that you will really be doing a good turn to Thaddeus if you make a sower of buckwheat out of the young man! You will close the world to him! Believe me, some time he will curse you! To think of burying such talent in the woods and the garden! Believe me, judging from my knowledge of him, he is a capable boy, worthy of acquiring polish in the great world. You will do well, brother, if you send him to the capital, for instance, to Warsaw; or, if you wish to know my real opinion, to St. Petersburg. I shall surely be going there this winter on business; we will consider together what to do with Thaddeus. I know many people there and have influence; that is the best means of making a man. Through my aid he will gain access to the leading houses, and when he is known to important people he will get an office and a decoration; then let him abandon the service if he wishes and return home, being by that time of some importance and well known in society. What do you think about that, brother?”
“In his early years,” said the Judge, “it is not bad for a young man to gain social experience, to see the [pg 75]world, and acquire polish among men. I myself, when young, covered no small ground; I have been in Piotrkow and in Dubno, now following the court as a lawyer, now attending to my own affairs; I have even visited Warsaw. Not a little did I profit by this. I should like to send out my nephew also among men, simply as a traveller, as an apprentice who is finishing his term, in order that he might acquire some little knowledge of the world. Not for the sake of office-holding or decorations! I beg your most humble pardon; a rank in the Muscovite hierarchy, a decoration, what sort of distinction are they? What man among our ancient notables—nay, even among those of this present day—what man of any prominence among the district gentry cares for such trifles? And yet these men are esteemed among us, for we respect in them their family, their good name, or their office—but a local office, conferred by the votes of their fellow-citizens, and not by the influence of any one set in authority.”
“If that is your opinion, brother,” interrupted Telimena, “so much the better; send him out as a traveller.”
“You see, sister,” said the Judge, mournfully scratching his head, “I should like to do so very much, but what if I have new perplexities! Brother Jacek has not abandoned the oversight of his son, and has just sent down upon me that Bernardine Robak, who has arrived from across the Vistula, a friend of my brother, who knows all his plans. And so the fates have already uttered their decree as to Thaddeus, and will have him marry, but marry Zosia,53 your ward; the young couple will receive, besides my own fortune, a dowry in ready money by the generosity of Jacek. You know that he is [pg 76]rich, and that through his favour I possess almost all my own estate; thus he has the right to give directions. Pray think this over, in order that it may be accomplished with the least possible trouble; we must make them acquainted. To be sure, they are very young, especially little Zosia, but that is no matter; it is time at last to release Zosia from confinement, for at all events she is growing up and is no longer a child.”
Telimena, amazed and almost panic-stricken, raised herself gradually and knelt on the shawl; at first she listened with attention, then with a gesture she opposed him, waving her hand vigorously over her ear, as if she were driving off the unpleasant words like gnats, back into the mouth of the speaker.
“Ha! ha! that is a new idea! Whether that is good or bad for Thaddeus,” she said angrily, “you may judge for yourself, my dear sir. I don't care anything about Thaddeus, plan for him yourselves; make him a steward, or put him in a tavern; let him be a bar-tender, or bring game for your table from the woods; do with him whatever you wish! But as for Zosia! What have you men to do with Zosia? I control her hand; I alone. That Jacek provided money for Zosia's education, and that he has assigned her a small yearly allowance, and has deigned to promise more, does not mean that he has bought her. Besides you both know, and it is pretty generally known too, that your generosity for us is not without its reasons; the Soplicas owe something to the family of the Horeszkos.”
To this part of her speech the Judge listened with indescribable confusion and grief and with evident repugnance. As though fearing what she might say [pg 77]further, he bowed his head, made a gesture of assent, and flushed deeply.
Telimena concluded by saying:—
“I have had the care of her; I am of her kin, Zosia's only guardian. No one but me shall ever plan her happiness!”
“But what if she finds happiness in this marriage?” said the Judge, raising his eyes; “what if she likes young Thaddeus?”
“What if she likes him? That's a pear on a willow tree! Like him or not—much I care for that! To be sure Zosia will not be a wealthy match, but yet she is not a common village girl, a simple gentleman's daughter; her ancestors were called, ‘Your Grace’; she is the child of a wojewoda; her mother was a Horeszko: she will get a husband! I have taken such pains with her education—if only she has not degenerated into savagery here!”
The Judge listened with attention, looking her in the eye; he was apparently mollified, for he said cheerfully enough:—
“Well, what's to be done? God knows that I have sincerely wished to do the right thing. Only do not be angry, sister; if you do not agree, sister, you are quite within your rights. It is a sad business, but there is no use being angry. I gave the advice, for my brother bade me; no one here is using compulsion. If you refuse Thaddeus, sister, I will reply to Jacek that through no fault of mine the betrothal of Thaddeus and Zosia cannot come to pass. Now I will take my own counsel; perhaps I can open negotiations with the Chamberlain and arrange the whole matter.”
In the meantime Telimena's wrath had cooled down:—
[pg 78]
“I do not refuse him, my dear brother; not at all! You said yourself that it is rather early, that they are too young. Let us think it over and wait; that will do no harm. Let us make the young people acquainted; we will observe them—we must not thus expose to chance the happiness of others. Only I caution you betimes, brother, do not prompt Thaddeus, and do not urge him to fall in love with Zosia, for the heart is not a servant, and acknowledges no master, and will not let itself be forcibly put in chains.”54
Thereat the Judge, arising, walked away in deep thought. Thaddeus approached from the opposite side, pretending that the search for mushrooms had enticed him there; the Count slowly moved on in the same direction.
During the dispute between the Judge and Telimena the Count had been standing behind the trees, mightily affected by the scene. He took from his pocket paper and pencil, implements that he had always with him, and, leaning on a stump and spreading out the sheet before him, he was evidently drawing a picture, and saying to himself: “They might have been grouped thus intentionally, he on the rock, she on the grass, a picturesque group! What characteristic heads! and what contrasting faces!”
He approached, checked himself, wiped his lorgnette, brushed his eyes with his handkerchief, and continued to gaze:—
“Is this marvellous, this charming prospect destined to perish or to be transformed when I approach near it? Will that velvet grass prove only poppies and beets? In that nymph shall I discover only a mere housekeeper?”
Although before this the Count had often seen [pg 79]Telimena at the Judge's house, where he had been a frequent visitor, he had paid little heed to her; he was now amazed to find her the model of his picture. The beauty of the spot, the charm of her posture, and the taste of her attire had so changed her that she was hardly recognisable. Her eyes shone with her recent anger, which was not yet extinct; her face, animated by the fresh breath of the breeze, by her dispute with the Judge, and by the sudden arrival of the young men, had assumed a deep flush, of unwonted liveliness.
“Madam,” said the Count, “deign to pardon my boldness; I come both to crave forgiveness and to express my gratitude. To crave forgiveness, since I have stealthily followed your steps; and to express gratitude, since I have been the witness of your meditations. Much have I injured you, and much do I owe to you! I have interrupted a moment of meditation; to you I owe moments of inspiration! blessed moments! Condemn the man; but the artist awaits your forgiveness. Much have I dared, and more will I dare! Judge!”
Here he knelt and offered her his landscape.
Telimena passed judgment on his sketch with the tone of a courteous lady, but of one conversant with art; of praise she was chary, but she did not spare encouragement.
“Bravo, I congratulate you,” she said, “you have no small talent. Only do not neglect it; above all you need to search out a beautiful environment! O happy skies of the Italian lands! rose gardens of the Caesars! ye classic cascades of Tibur, and dread craggy paths of Posilipo! That, Count, is the land of painters! On us may God have pity! A child of the Muses, put out to nurse in Soplicowo, would surely die. My dear Count, [pg 80]I will have this framed, or I will put it in my album, in my collection of drawings, which I have gathered from every source: I have numbers of them in my desk.”
So they began to converse of the blue of the skies, of the murmur of waves and of fragrant breezes, and of the summits of crags, mingling here and there, after the fashion of travellers, laughter and mockery at the land of their fathers. And yet around them stretched the forests of Lithuania, so majestic and so full of beauty! The black currant, intertwined with a wreath of wild hop; the service tree, with the fresh blush of a shepherdess; the hazel, like a mænad, with green thyrsuses, decked with the pearls of its nuts as with clusters of grapes; and beneath them the children of the forest, the hawthorn in the embrace of the elder, the blackberry pressing its black lips upon the raspberry. The trees and bushes joined hands with their leaves, like young men and maidens standing ready for a dance around a married pair. In the midst of the company stood the pair, distinguished from all the rest of the forest throng by gracefulness of form and charm of colour; the white birch, the beloved, with her husband the hornbeam. But farther off, like grave elders sitting in silence and gazing on their children and grandchildren, stood on this side hoary beeches, and on that matronly poplars; and an oak, bearded with moss, and bearing on its humped back the weight of five centuries, supported itself—as on the broken pillars of sepulchres—on the petrified corpses of other oaks, its ancestors.
Thaddeus writhed, being not a little wearied by the long conversation in which he could not take part. But when they began to glorify the forests of foreign [pg 81]lands, and to enumerate in turn every variety of their trees—oranges, cypresses, olive trees, almonds, cactuses, aloes, mahogany, sandalwood, lemons, ivy, walnuts, even fig trees—praising extravagantly their forms, flowers, and bark, then Thaddeus constantly sniffed and grimaced, and finally could no longer restrain his wrath.
He was a simple lad, but he could feel the charm of nature, and, gazing on his ancestral forest, he said full of inspiration:—
“In the botanical garden at Wilno I have seen those vaunted trees that grow in the east and the south, in that fair Italian land—which of them can be compared to our trees? The aloe with its long stalk like a lightning rod? Or the dwarfish lemon tree with its golden balls and lacquered leaves, short and dumpy, like a woman who is small and ugly, but rich? Or the much-praised cypress, long, thin, and lean, which seems the tree, not of grief, but of boredom? They say that it looks very sad upon a grave; but it is like a German flunkey in court mourning, who does not dare to lift his arms or turn his head, for fear that he may somehow offend against etiquette.
“Is not our honest birch tree fairer, which is like a village woman weeping for her son, or a widow for her husband, who wrings her hands and lets fall over her shoulders to the ground the stream of her loose tresses? Mute with grief, how eloquently she sobs with her form! Count, if you are in love with painting, why do you not paint our own trees, among which you are sitting? Really, the neighbours will laugh at you, since, though you live in the fertile plain of Lithuania, you paint only crags and deserts.”
[pg 82]
“Friend,” said the Count, “beautiful nature is the form, the ground, the material, but the soul is inspiration, which rises on the wings of imagination, is polished by taste, and is supported by rules. Nature is not enough, enthusiasm is not enough; the artist must fly away into the spheres of the ideal! Not everything that is beautiful can be painted! You will learn all this from books in the course of time. As for painting: for a picture one requires viewpoints, grouping, ensemble—and sky, the Italian sky! Hence in landscape art Italy was, is, and will be the country of painters. Hence also, except for Breughel—not Van der Helle, but the landscapist, for there are two Breughels55—and except for Ruysdael, in the whole north where has there been a landscape artist of the first rank? The sky, the sky is necessary.”
“Our painter Orlowski,”56 interrupted Telimena, “had a Soplica's taste. (You must know that this is the malady of the Soplicas, not to like anything except their own country.) Orlowski, who spent his life in St. Petersburg, a famous painter (I have some of his sketches in my desk), dwelt close by the Emperor, in his court, as in paradise; and, Count, you cannot believe how homesick he was, he loved constantly to call to mind the days of his youth; he glorified everything in Poland, land, sky, forests.”
“And he was right,” cried Thaddeus warmly; “that Italian sky of yours, so far as I have heard of it, is blue and clear, but yet is like frozen water: are not wind and storm a hundred times more beautiful? In our land, if you merely raise your head, how many sights meet your eye! how many scenes and pictures from the very play of the clouds! For each cloud is different; for [pg 83]instance, in spring they crawl like lazy tortoises, heavy with showers, and send down from the sky to the earth long streamers like loose tresses: those are the streams of rain. The hail cloud flies swiftly on the wind like a balloon; it is round and dark-blue, with a glint of yellow in the centre; around it may be heard a mighty uproar. Even these white cloudlets of every day, just see how rapidly they change! At first they are like a flock of wild geese or swans; and from behind, the wind, like a falcon, drives them into a dense throng; they crowd together, grow and increase; new marvels! They gain curved necks, send forth manes, shoot out rows of legs, and over the vault of the skies they fly like a herd of chargers across the steppe. All are white as silver; they have fallen into confusion; suddenly masts grow from their necks, and from their manes broad sails; the herd changes into a ship, and majestically floats slowly and quietly across the blue plain of the skies!”
The Count and Telimena looked up; Thaddeus with one hand pointed out a cloud to them, while with the other he squeezed Telimena's dainty fingers. The quiet scene lasted for several minutes; the Count spread a sheet of paper on his hat and took out his pencil; then, unwelcome to their ears, the house bell resounded, and straightway the quiet wood was full of cries and uproar.
The Count, nodding his head, said in an impressive tone:—
“Thus fate is wont to end all in this world by the sound of a bell. The calculations of mighty minds, the plans of imagination, the sports of innocence, the joys of friendship, the outpourings of feeling hearts! when [pg 84]the bronze roars from afar all is confused, shattered, perturbed—and vanishes!”
Then, turning a feeling glance on Telimena, he added, “What remains?” and she said to him, “Remembrance”; and, desiring somewhat to relieve the Count's sadness, she gave him a forget-me-not that she had plucked. The Count kissed it and pinned it on his bosom. Thaddeus on the other side separated the branches of a shrub, seeing that through the greenery something white was stealing towards him. This was a little hand white as a lily; he seized it, kissed it, and silently buried his lips in it as a bee in the cup of a lily. On his lips he felt something cold; he found a key and a bit of white paper curled up in the hole of it; this was a little note. He seized it and hid it in his pocket; he did not know what the key meant, but that little white note would explain.
The bell still pealed, and, as an echo, from the depths of the quiet woods there resounded a thousand cries and shouts; this was the uproar of people searching for one another and calling, the signal that the mushroom-gathering was over for the day: the uproar was not at all gloomy or funereal, as it had seemed to the Count, but a dinner uproar.57 Every noon this bell, calling from the gable, invited the guests and servants home to dinner; such had been the custom on many old estates, and in the Judge's house it had been preserved. So from the wood there came a throng carrying boxes, and baskets, and handkerchiefs with their ends tied up—all full of mushrooms; each young lady carried in one hand, like a folded fan, a large pine-lover; in the other tree-fungi tied together in a bunch, like field flowers, and leaf-mushrooms of various colours. The Seneschal [pg 85]had his fly-bane. With empty hands came Telimena, and after her the young gentlemen.
The guests entered in order and stood about the table. The Chamberlain took his place at the head; this honour befitted him from his age and his office; advancing to it he bowed to the ladies, the old men, and the young men. By him the Monk took his station, and next the Bernardine was the Judge. The Bernardine pronounced a short grace in Latin, brandy was passed around; thereupon all sat down, and in silence and with relish they ate the cold Lithuanian salad of beet leaves.
The dinner was more quiet than usual; no one talked, despite the host's entreaties. The factions involved in the mighty strife over the dogs were thinking of the morrow's contest and the wager; great thought is wont to constrain the lips to silence. Telimena, though she talked constantly with Thaddeus, was forced to turn now and then to the Count, and even now and then to glance at the Assessor; thus a hunter gazes at the same time at the net into which he is coaxing goldfinches, and at the snare for sparrows. Thaddeus and the Count were both content with themselves, both happy, both full of hopes, and therefore not inclined to chatter. The Count would cast a proud look at the flower, and Thaddeus would stealthily gaze into his pocket, to see whether that little key had not run away; he would even reach in his hand and finger the note which he had not yet read. The Judge, pouring out Hungarian wine and champagne for the Chamberlain, served him diligently, and often pressed his knees; but he had no zest for conversation with him, and it was evident that he felt certain secret cares.
They changed the plates and the viands in silence; [pg 86]at last the tiresome routine of the dinner was interrupted by an unexpected guest. A forester, rushing in, did not even observe that it was dinner time, but ran up to his master; from his bearing and his expression it was clear that he was the bringer of important and unwonted tidings. On him the whole company turned their gaze; recovering his breath somewhat, he said: “A bear, sir!” All guessed the rest, that the beast had come out from the jungle,58that it was slipping through to the wilderness beyond the Niemen; all immediately recognised that it must be pursued at once, although they had not consulted together or thought the matter over. The common thought was evident from the clipped words, the lively gestures, the various orders that were issued, which, though they came tumultuously and at one time from so many lips, still all tended to a like aim.
“To the village!” shouted the Judge, “on horseback, for the headman of the peasants! To-morrow at daybreak let the beaters be ready, but volunteers! Whoever comes with a pike I will release from two days' work on the roads and five days' field-service for myself.”
“Hurry,” cried the Chamberlain, “saddle my grey, and gallop full speed to my house; get quickly my two bulldogs,59 which are famous all over the district; the male is named Sprawnik, and the bitch Strapczyna.60 Gag them, tie them in a sack, and to save time bring them here on horseback.”
“Vanka,” cried the Assessor in Russian to his boy, “draw my Sanguszko hunting knife over the whetstone; you know, the knife that the prince presented to me; and look to my belt, to see whether there is a bullet in every cartridge.”
[pg 87]
“Get the guns ready!” shouted everybody.
The Assessor kept calling: “Lead, lead! I have a bullet mould in my game bag.”
“Tell the parish priest,” added the Judge, “to serve mass early to-morrow in the forest chapel; a very short offertory for hunters, the usual mass of St. Hubert.”
After the orders had been given a silence followed. All were deep in thought and cast their eyes around as if looking for some one; slowly the Seneschal's venerable face attracted and united all eyes. This was a sign that they were seeking a leader for their future expedition and that they offered the staff of office to the Seneschal. The Seneschal rose, understood the will of his comrades, and, rapping impressively on the table, he drew from his bosom a golden chain, on which hung a watch large as a pear.
“To-morrow,” he said, “at half past four, the gentlemen hunters and the beaters will present themselves at the forest chapel.”
He spoke, and moved from the table; after him went the Forester. These two had to plan and arrange the chase.
Even so act generals, when they ordain a battle for the morrow—the soldiers throughout the camp clean their arms and eat, or sleep on cloaks or saddles, free from care, but the generals consult within the quiet tent.
Dinner was interrupted, the day passed in the shoeing of horses, the feeding of dogs, the gathering and cleaning of arms; at supper hardly any one came to the table. Even the faction of Bobtail ceased to be agitated by its long and weighty quarrel with the party of Falcon; the Notary and the Assessor went arm in arm to look for [pg 88]lead. The rest, wearied with toil, went early to sleep, in order to rise in good season.
[To-day Thaddeus had been given a room in an out-building. Going in, he closed the door and hid the candle in the fireplace, pretending that he had already gone to sleep—but he did not close his eyes. He evidently awaited the night, and to him the time seemed long. He stood by the window and through the opening cut in the shutter observed the doings of the watchman, who was continually walking about the yard. When he saw him far away, at one bound he leapt out, closed the window, and bending to the ground crept along like a pointer. His further steps the autumn night shrouded in thick darkness.61]
