Part 23 (1/2)
The baron halted; he thought awhile; his faded face took on that expression of roguery which the French call polissonnerie; joyousness seized him.
”We will shoot off!” cried he; and he made a movement with his foot like that which a street-sweeper makes to catch a bark shoe thrown up in the air.
Maryan rose, shook himself out of his lethargy, and said, almost with delight:
”It is an idea. To America!”
Then from the abyss of the immensely deep and broad cathedra Kranitski's voice was heard, orphan-like, timid:
”But will you take me with you, my dears? When you shoot off you will take me with you, will you not?”
There was no answer. The baron was sitting already before the organ and had begun to play some grand church composition; in the dignified sound of that music Tristan made a knightly bow to Isolde, and the ”Triumph of Death,” with its dark outline, was reflected on the background of Alberich's white habit, while the saints painted with golden haloes on the windows clasped their pale hands above their bright robes.
CHAPTER VII
Baron Emil said at times to Irene:
”You have the aristocracy of intellect. Your mind is original.
There is in you much delicate irony. You are not deceived with painted pots.”
These words caused her pleasure of the same sort as that which the praise of a mountaineer causes an inexperienced traveller when he tells him that he knows how to climb neck-breaking summits. Much irony had flowed into her mind from certain mysterious sides of her life. But she had become conscious of this now for the first time, under the guidance and influence of the baron. He awed her by the originality of his language and ideas, by the absolute sincerity of his disbelief, and his egotism. During childhood she had seen a mask which astounded her, and struck her in the very heart. Thenceforth everything seemed better to her and more agreeable than masks. Moreover, the baron was to her thinking a finished aesthete, an excellent judge in the whole realm of art, and in this regard she did not deceive herself greatly. The opinions on art and philosophy, which he proclaimed, interested her through their novelty, and the expressions which he used purposely, though sometimes brutal and verging on the gutter, roused her curiosity by their singularity and insolence. She imitated him in speech; in his presence she guarded her lips lest they might let something escape through which she would earn the t.i.tle of ”shepherdess.”
”You are very far from the Arcadian condition, in which I meet people here at every step. You are intricate; you are like an orchid, one stem of which has a flower in the form of a b.u.t.terfly, while the next seems like a death's head.”
She interrupted him with a brief laugh:
”A b.u.t.terfly is flat.”
Her laugh had a sharp sound, for the cold gleam of the baron's eyes fell on her boldly and persistently.
”No,” contradicted he, ”no; the combination of a death's head with a b.u.t.terfly makes a dissonance. That bites and sticks a new pin in the soul.”
”But the Greek harmony?” she inquired.
With a flattering smile, which conquered her, the baron answered:
”Never mention harmony. That is the milk with which babes were nourished. We subsist on something else. You like game, do you not? but only when it begins to decay. There is no good game, except that which is rank. Very well, we subsist on a world in decay. This is true, but you speak of that darned sock; namely, harmony--ha! ha! ha! You think sometimes one way and sometimes another. Your soul is full of bites! You are idyllic and also satirical. You jeer at idyls, and still, at odd times, you yearn for one somewhat. Have I touched the point accurately? Are my words true?”
”True,” answered Irene, dropping her eyelids.
She dropped her lids because she was ashamed of the discovery which the baron had made in her, and for this cause as well, that she felt his breath on her face, and caught the odor of certain strange perfumes which came from him. His eyes sought hers and strove to pour into them their cold gleam, which was also a burning one. He strove to take her hand, but she withdrew it, and he, with lowered, drawling, and somewhat nasal tones, said:
”You wish, and again you do not wish; you feel the cry of life in you and try to turn it into a lyric song.”
The cry of life! Over this phrase Irene halted later on, but briefly, touched as she had been by premature knowledge, its meaning became clear to her straightway. The baron, small, fragile, with a faded face and irregular, was a master in calling forth the ”cry of life” in women. His manner with them was exquisite, but also insolent. In his gray eyes, with the reddened edges of their lids, he had a look which was hypnotising in its persistence and cold fire. It resembled the glitter of steel--pale and penetrating. In the manner in which he held the hand of a woman and placed a kiss on it, in the glances with which he seemed to tear her away from her shelter, in the intonation given to certain words, was attained the primitiveness of desire and conquest under cover of polished refinement. Amid the tedium and dissatisfaction of ordinary and exercised lovemakers this method seemed cynical, but bold and honest. It might have been compared to the s.h.a.ggy head of a beast sticking out of a basket of heliotropes, which have ever the character of sameness as has their odor. The head is ugly, but smells of a cave and of troglodytes, which among common flowers of dull odor lend it the charm of power and originality.
Irene thought at once of ”great grandfatherliness;” when in presence of the baron her nerves quivered like chords when touched in a manner unknown up to that time. She asked herself: ”Am I in love?” But when he had gone this question called from her a brief, ironical smile. She a.n.a.lyzed and criticised the physical and moral personality of the baron with perfect coolness, and at moments with a shade of contempt even.
A vibrio! This expression contained the conception of physical and moral withering, almost the palpable picture of an existence which merely quivers in s.p.a.ce, and is barely capable of living.
In comparison with this picture she had a presentiment of some wholesome, n.o.ble, splendid strength. Disgust for the baron began to flow around her heart and rise to her lips with a taste that was repulsive, and to her brain with a thought that was bitter: Why is this world as it is? Why is it not different? But perhaps it was different somewhere else, but not for her? She had ceased to believe in an idyl. She had looked too long, and from too near a point, at the tragedy and irony of things to preserve faith in idyls. Maybe there were idyls somewhere, but not in the sphere where she lived--they were not for her! To yearn for that which perhaps did not exist at all, which most a.s.suredly did not exist for her! What a ”rheumatism of thought” that would be! Her head, with a j.a.panese knot of fiery hair on the top of it, bent down low, for the stream of lead from her heart was rising. With a movement usual to her she clasped her long hands, and, squeezing them violently, thought: