Children of the Soil. Henryk Sienkiewicz
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what happens? Each, accustomed to his father’s mode of living, wishes to live like the father; the end is foreseen easily. Another case: A noble has four sons; the more capable choose various careers; you may wager that the least capable remains on the land. A third case: what a whole series of generations have acquired, have toiled for, one light head ruins. Fourth, we are not bad agriculturists, but bad administrators. Good administration means more than good cultivation of land; what is the inference, then? The land will remain; but we, who represent it at present under the form of large ownership, must leave it most likely. Then, do you see, when we have gone, we may return in time.”
“How is that?”
“To begin with, you say that nothing attracts you to land; that is a deception. Land attracts, and attracts with such force that each man, after he has come to certain years, to a certain well-being, is unable to resist the desire of possessing even a small piece of land. That will come to you too, and it is natural. Finally, every kind of wealth may be considered as fictitious, except land. Everything comes out of land; everything exists for it. As a banknote is a receipt for metallic money in the State Bank, so industry and commerce and whatever else you please is land turned into another form; and as to you personally, who have come from it, you must return to it.”
“I at least do not think so.”
“How do you know? To-day you are making property; but how will you succeed? And that, too, is a question of the future. The Polanyetskis were agriculturists; now one of them has chosen another career. The majority of sons of agriculturists must choose other careers also, even because they cannot do otherwise. Some of them will fail; some will succeed and return—but return, not only with capital, but with new energy, and with that knowledge of exact administration which is developed by special careers. They will return because of the attraction which land exercises, and finally through a feeling of duty, which I need not explain to you.”
“What you say has this good side, that then my such-an-uncle-not-an-uncle Plavitski will belong to a type that has perished.”
Pan Yamish thought a while and said,—
“A thread stretches and stretches till it breaks, but at last it must break. To my thinking, they cannot hold out in Kremen, even though they parcel Magyerovka. But do you see whom I pity?—Marynia. She is an uncommonly honest girl. For you do not know that the old man wanted to sell Kremen two years ago; and that that did not take place partly through the prayers of Marynia. Whether this was done out of regard to the memory of her mother, who lies buried there, or because so much is said and written about the duty of holding to the soil, it is sufficient that the girl did what she could to prevent the sale. She imagined, poor thing, that if she would betake herself with all power to work, she could do everything. She abandoned the whole world for Kremen. For her it will be a blow when the thread breaks at last, and break it must. A pity for the years of the girl!”
“You are a kind person, councillor!” cried Pan Stanislav, with his accustomed vivacity.
The old man smiled. “I love that girl: besides, she is my pupil in agriculture; of a truth it will be sad when she is gone from us.”
Pan Stanislav fell to biting his mustaches, and said at last, “Let her marry some man in the neighborhood, and remain.”
“Marry, marry! As if that were easy for a girl without property. Who is there among us? Gantovski. He would take her. He is a good man, and not at all so limited as they say. But she has no feeling for him, and she will not marry without feeling. Yalbrykov is a small estate. Besides, it seems to the old man that the Gantovskis are something inferior to the Plavitskis, and Gantovski too believes this. With us, as you know, that man passes for a person of great family who is pleased to boast himself such. Though people laugh at Plavitski, they have grown used to his claim. Moreover, one man raises his nose because he is making property, another because he is losing it, and nothing else remains to him. But let that pass. I know one thing, whoever gets Marynia will get a pearl.“
Pan Stanislav had in his mind at that moment the same conviction and feeling. Sinking, therefore, into meditation, he began again to muse about Marynia, or, rather, to call her to mind and depict her to himself. All at once it even seemed to him that he would be sad without her; but he remembered that similar things had seemed so to him more than once, and that time had swept away the illusion. Still he thought of her, even when they were approaching the city; and when he got out at Warsaw, he muttered through his teeth,—
“How stupidly it happened! how stupidly!”
CHAPTER IV.
On his return to Warsaw, Pan Stanislav passed the first evening at the house of his partner, Bigiel, with whom, as a former schoolmate, he was connected by personal intimacy.
Bigiel, a Cheh by descent, but of a family settled in the country for a number of generations, had managed a small commercial bank before his partnership with Pan Stanislav, and had won the reputation of a man not over-enterprising, it is true, but honorable and uncommonly reliable in business. When Pan Stanislav entered into company with him, the house extended its activity, and became an important firm. The partners complemented each other perfectly. Pan Stanislav was incomparably more clever and enterprising; he had more ideas and took in a whole affair with greater ease; but Bigiel watched its execution more carefully. When there was need of energy, or of pushing any one to the wall, Pan Stanislav was the man; but when it was a question of careful thought, of examining interests from ten sides, and of patience, Bigiel’s rôle began. Their temperaments were directly opposite; and for that reason, perhaps, they had sincere friendship for each other. Preponderance was relatively on the side of Pan Stanislav. Bigiel believed in his partner’s uncommon capacity; and a number of ideas really happy for the house, which Pan Stanislav had given, confirmed this belief. The dream of both was to acquire in time capital sufficient to build cotton-mills, which Bigiel would manage, and Pan Stanislav direct. But, though both might count themselves among men almost wealthy, the mills were in a remote future. Less patient, and having many relatives, Pan Stanislav tried, it is true, immediately after his return from abroad, to direct to this object local, so-called “our own,” capital; he was met, however, with a general want of confidence. He noticed at the same time a wonderful thing: his name opened all doors to him, but rather injured than helped him in business. It might be that those people who invited him to their houses could not get it into their heads that one of themselves, hence a man of good family and with a name ending in ski, could conduct any business successfully. This angered Polanyetski to such a degree that the clever Bigiel had to quench his outburst by stating that such want of confidence was in fact caused by years of experience. Knowing well the history of different industrial undertakings, he cited to Pan Stanislav a whole series of cases, beginning with Tyzenhaus, the treasurer, and ending with various provincial and land banks, which had nothing of the country about them except their names,—in other words, they were devoid of every home basis.
“The time has not come yet,” said Bigiel; “but it will come, or, rather, it is in sight. Hitherto there have been only amateurs and dilettanti; now for the first time are appearing here and there trained specialists.”
Pan Stanislav who, in spite of his temperament, had powers of observation rather well developed, began to make strange discoveries in those spheres to which his relatives gave him access. He was met by a general recognition for having done something. This recognition was offered with emphasis even; but in it there was something like condescension. Each man let it be known too readily that he approved Polanyetski’s activity, that he considered it necessary; but no one bore himself as if he considered the fact that Polanyetski was working at some occupation as a thing perfectly common and natural. “They all protect me,” said he; and that was true. He came also to the conclusion that if, for example, he aspired to the hand of any of the young ladies of so-called “society,” his commercial house and his title of “affairist” would, notwithstanding the above recognition, have injured more than helped him. They would rather give him any of those maidens if, instead