Suddenly a spasm of horrible unearthly dread clutches at my heart.
“Good God! Look there!” I cry.
“What—what of it?”
I raise my hand to my eyes, and shudder all over with fear, and press close to him.
“There—just beneath us, far, horribly far down—there is water!”
“Well, what of that? There is nothing to be frightened at. I know the garden; it is only a brook which feeds the pond.”
“Let us go away—away at once. I saw it glitter through the leaves in the dark: it was so strange! And so deep down: an abyss where I never dreamed the ground sloped at all.”
“But we could not fall in: there is a stone barrier.”
“No matter,” I whisper, half-frantic with dread. “Let us go!”
We make the best of our way back. Janusz is silent, but I feel, as I am holding to his arm, that he too is trembling. He might have quieted me with the words: “Fear nothing by my side!” For but a minute ago, I had boundless confidence in him. Now I know that he can be frightened.
We hear the sounds of the harp and the violin, and a row of lit windows shines on the pitch-black trees.
Janusz breaks the silence. “I have no fear in a forest at night; I fear neither robbers nor wild beasts: but things one cannot explain are not to my liking.”
Yes, I quite understand, and share the same dislike: but somehow I had a fancy that. …
We dance merrily till morning; my painful impression has quite faded.
As we return, we change places; Martha goes with her grandfather, and I am with Janusz. Daybreak shows us a lovely landscape: hills covered with dark woods, fields white with stubble. The sky grows rosy, and we catch ever new glimpses of dim heights, of solitary pear-trees scattered in the fields, of tall sombre poplars in rows, marking the highways in the plain.
We travel long by a road full of deep holes; we climb the heights, we go down into the valleys. All the country round is enchantingly beautiful.
Up comes the sun, casting upon the road distinct mobile shadows, lengthened out monstrously, of our two equipages and of our own figures.
I feel stupefied after this sleepless night; my face is hot, my lips are burning. Yet, and in spite of my plaid and the rugs, I shiver with cold, I close my eyes and lean my head against the back of the carriage, listening to the screaking wheels, to the trot of the snorting horses, and to the timid chirruping of the birds, just roused by daylight. Though awake, I am dreaming.
Janusz bends over me, and touches my lips with his in a gentle kiss, as if he meant not to wake me.
I do not move at all, and pretend to sleep on, though well aware that Janusz knows I am awake.
And now my golden morning—here it is!
On one of the last warm summer days, Martha and I go and bathe together outside the park. When undressed, she is very pleasant to look upon. She pretends to object, but puts on her bathing-dress so deliberately that I can gaze quite at my ease. After having bathed in the clear cool water, we return and lie down on the lush grass in the park. We are surrounded by tall trunks, bare to a great height; far above us their branches form a canopy of bright green verdure under the blue sky.
“I wonder,” say I to her, “how plain people feel about themselves. With us, comeliness is such a matter of course! … If I were to lose my good looks, or even my knowledge that I am good-looking, I really think I could not bear life. … It is that alone which gives me strength in presence of others. I go out in the full glare of day without a sunshade; in company, I sit with my face turned straight to the lamplight; I walk in the crowd, with head erect, fearing no one, abashed by no one—simply because I know that the sight of me must cause pleasure. … If I am good-natured, it is because of my good looks. I hate nobody, envy nobody, and am filled with a sort of Pagan, sunshiny, royal love for all.”
“And which of us two do you think is prettier?” asks Martha.
“I don’t know. … In reality, each of us thinks herself prettier; but we are both too cultured ever to have tried conclusions on that subject.”
Strictly speaking, I am not so fair as she: but then, she is less graceful than I. Besides, my eyes have a golden tint, such as no other girls have, so far as I know.
I often walk a few versts with Martha, as far as the “Kirkut,” or Jewish cemetery.
There they stand, the hewn gravestones, in long parallel upright rows. Upon them you may see cabalistic signs and symbols; a lion, a broken taper, or a shelf of books; and certain embellishments that might almost be styled “decadent.” The graves, overgrown with moss, heather, and wild thyme, are nearly level with the rest of the ground. The wooden enclosure, over which we always have to climb, is lost in the woods among the pine-trunks; and those long regular rows of stones raise their heads in a forest elsewhere untouched by man. Here, I feel as though I had gone far back into the dim immemorial Past.
I love that burial-ground; I love to contemplate Life trampling upon Death; and as I gaze, I cease to fear Death any more. Death makes away with the individual only, with the accidental manifestations of Life: Life itself remains. I see myself
