Plavitski remarked, meanwhile, that it was time for Mass, and he began to take farewell of Marynia in such fashion as if he were going on a journey of some months; then he made the sign of the cross on her head, and took his hat. The young lady pressed Pan Stanislavs hand with more life than at the morning greeting; he, when sitting in the little equipage, repeated in his mind, Oh, she is very nice, very sympathetic.
Beyond the alley, by which Pan Stanislav had come the night before, the equipage rolled over a road which was beset here and there with old and decayed birches standing at unequal distances from one another. On one side stretched a potato-field, on the other an enormous plain of wheat, with heavy bent heads, which seemed to sleep in the still air and in the full light of the sun. Before the carriage, magpies and hoopoes flew among the birches. Moving along paths through the yellow sea of wheat, and hidden in it to their shoulders, went village maidens with red kerchiefs on their heads, which resembled blooming poppies.
Good wheat, said Pan Stanislav.
Not bad. What is in mans power is done, and what God gives He gives. Thou art young, my dear, so I give thee a precept, which in future will be of service to thee more than once, Do always that which pertains to thee, and leave the rest to the Lord God. He knows best what we need. The harvest will be good this year; I know that beforehand, for when God is going to touch me with anything, He sends a sign.
What is it? asked Pan Stanislav, with astonishment.
Behind my pipe-table I do not know whether thou hast noted where it stands a mouse shows himself to me a number of days in succession when any evil is coming.
There must be a hole in the floor.
There is no hole, said Plavitski, closing his eyes, and shaking his head mysteriously.
One might bring in a cat.
I will not bring in a cat, for if it is the will of God that that mouse should be a sign to me, or forewarning, I shall not go against that will. Nothing has appeared to me this year. I mentioned this to Marynia; maybe God desires in some way to show that He is watching over our family. Listen, my dear; people will say, I know, that we are ruined, or at least in a very bad state. Here it is; judge for thyself: Kremen and Skoki, Magyerovka and Suhotsin, contain about two hundred and fifty vlokas of land; on that there is a debt of thirty thousand rubles to the society, not more, and about a hundred thousand mortgage, including thy sum. Therefore we have about a hundred and thirty thousand. Let us estimate only three thousand rubles a vloka; that will make seven hundred and fifty thousand, altogether eight hundred and eighty thousand
How is that? asked Pan Stanislav, with astonishment; uncle is including the debt with the property.
If the property were worth nothing, no one would give me a copper for it, so I add the debt to the value of the property.
Pan Stanislav thought, He is a lunatic, with whom it is useless to talk; and he listened further in silence.
I intend to parcel out Magyerovka. The mill I will sell; but in Skoki and Suhotsin I have marl, and knowest thou at how much I have estimated it? At two million rubles.
Has uncle a purchaser?
Two years ago a certain Shaum came and looked at the fields. He went away, it is true, without speaking of the business; but I am sure that he will come again, otherwise the mouse would have appeared behind the pipe-table.
Ha! let him come again.
Knowest thou another thing that comes to my head? Since thou art an affairist, take up this business. Find thyself partners, that is all.
The business is too large for me.
Then find me a purchaser; I will give ten per cent of the proceeds.
What does Panna Marynia think of this marl?
Marynia, how Marynia? She is a golden child, but still a child! She believes that Providence watches over our family.
I heard that from her yesterday.
Meanwhile they had drawn near Vantory and the church, on a hill among linden-trees. Under the hill stood at number of peasant-wagons with ladder-like boxes, some brichkas and carriages. Pan Plavitski made the sign of the cross, and said, This is our little church, which thou must remember. All the Plavitskis lie here, and I, too, shall be lying here soon. I never pray better than in this place.
There will be many people, I see, said Pan Stanislav.
Gantovskis brichka, Zazimskis coach, Yamishs carriage, and a number of others are there. Thou must remember the Yamishes. She is an uncommon woman; he pretends to be a great agriculturist and a councillor, but he is an old dotard, who never did understand her.
At that moment the bell began to sound in the church tower.
They have seen us, and are ringing the bell, said Plavitski; Mass will begin this moment. I will take thee, after Mass, to the grave of my first wife; pray for her, since she was thy aunt. She was an honest woman; the Lord light her.
Here Plavitski raised his finger again to rub his right eye. Pan Stanislav therefore asked, wishing to change the conversation,
But was not Pani Yamish once very beautiful? or is this the same one?
Plavitskis face gleamed suddenly. He thrust out for one moment the end of his tongue from his blackened little mustaches, and patting Pan Stanislav on the thigh, said,
She is worth a sin yet, she is, she is.
Meanwhile they drove in, and after walking around the church, entered the sacristy at the side; not wishing to push through the crowd, they sat on side seats near the altar. Plavitski occupied the collators place, in which were also the Yamishes. Yamish was a man very old in appearance, with an intelligent face, but weighed down; she was a woman well toward sixty, dressed almost like Panna Marynia, that is, in a muslin robe and a straw hat. The bows, full of politeness, which Pan Plavitski made to her, and the kind smiles with which she returned them, showed that between those two reigned intimate relations founded on mutual adoration. After a while the lady, raising her glasses to her eyes, began to observe Pan Stanislav, not understanding apparently who could have come with Pan Plavitski. In the seat behind them one of the neighbors, taking advantage of the fact that Mass had not begun yet, was finishing some narrative about hunting, and repeated a number of times to another neighbor, My dogs, well then both stopped their conversation, and began to speak to Plavitski and Pani Yamish so audibly that every word reached the ears of Pan Stanislav. The priest came out to the altar then.
At sight of the Mass and that little church, Pan Stanislavs memory went back to the years of his childhood, when he was there with his mother. Wonder rose in him involuntarily when he thought how little anything changes in the country, except people. Some are placed away in consecrated earth; others are born. But the new life puts itself into the old forms; and to him who comes from afar, after a long absence, all that he saw long ago seems of yesterday. The church was the same; the nave was filled, as of old, with flaxen-colored heads of peasants, gray coats, red and yellow kerchiefs with flowers on the heads of the maidens; it had precisely the same kind of odor of incense, of sweet flag, and the exhalations of people. Outside one of the windows grew the same birch-tree, whose slender branches, thrown against the panes by the wind as it rose, cast shade which gave a green tinge to light in the church. But the people were not the same: some of the former ones were crumbling quietly into dust, or had made their way from beneath the earth in the form of grass; those who were left yet were somehow bent, as if going under ground gradually. Pan Stanislav, who plumed himself on avoiding all generalizing theories, but who in reality had a Slav head, which, as it were, had not emerged yet from universal existence, occupied himself with them involuntarily; and all the time he was thinking that there is still a terrible precipice between that passion for life innate in people and the absoluteness of death. He thought, also, that perhaps for this reason all systems of philosophy vanish, like shadows; but Mass is celebrated, as of old, because it alone promises further and unbroken continuity.