Part 17 (1/2)

”What do you wish?”

Yatsek's face was lighted with a smile of such pain that it was almost like that of a martyr.

”What I wish for myself will not come to me, though I were to give my own soul's salvation to get it,” said he, shaking his head; ”but for one thing I beg you: do not accuse me, cherish no offence against me, have some compa.s.sion, for I am not of wood nor of iron.”

”I have no word to say,” replied she, ”and there is no time for talking.”

”Ah! there is always some time to say a kind word to the man for whom this world is grievous.”

”Is it because you have wounded my rescuers?”

”The blame is not mine, as G.o.d stands by the innocent! The messenger who came for those gentlemen to Vyrambki should have declared what Father Voynovski told him to tell here; namely, that I did not challenge them. Did you know that they were the challengers?”

”I did. The attendant, being a simple man, did not repeat, it is true, every word which the priest sent; he merely cried out that 'the young lord of Vyrambki had slashed them to pieces;' then Pan Gideon, on returning from Vyrambki, ran in from the road and explained what had happened.”

Pan Gideon feared lest the news that Yatsek had been challenged might reach the young lady from other lips and weaken her anger, hence he wished above all to describe the affair in his own way, not delaying to add that Yatsek by venomous insults had forced them to challenge him.

He reckoned on this: that Panna Anulka, taking things woman fas.h.i.+on, would be on the side of the men who had suffered most.

Still, it seemed to Yatsek that the beloved eyes looked on him less severely, so he repeated the question,--

”Did you know this position?”

”I knew,” replied she, ”but I remember that which you should not have forgotten if you had even a trifling regard for me,--that I owe my life to those gentlemen. And I have learnt from my guardian that you forced them to challenge you.”

”I, not have regard for you? Let G.o.d, who looks into men's hearts, judge that statement.”

All on a sudden her eyes blinked time after time; then she shook her head till a tress fell to the opposite shoulder, and she said,--

”Is that true?”

”True, true!” continued he, in a panting and deeply sad voice. ”I should have let men cut me down, it seems, so as not to annoy you. The blood which was dearest to you would not have been shed then. But there is no help now for the omission. There is no help now for anything!

Your guardian told you that I forced those gentlemen to challenge me. I leave that too to G.o.d's judgment. But did your guardian tell you that he himself had insulted me beyond mercy and measure beneath my own roof tree? I have come now to you because I knew that I should not find him here. I have come to satisfy my unhappy eyes with the last look at you.

I know that this is all one to you, but I thought that even in that case--”

Here Yatsek halted, for tears stopped his utterance. Parma Anulka's mouth began also to quiver and to take on more and more the shape of a horseshoe, and only haughtiness joined to timidity, the timidity of a maiden, struggled in her with emotion. But perhaps she was restrained by this also: that she wished to get from Yatsek a still more complaining confession, and perhaps because she did not believe that he would go from her and never come back again. More than once there had been misunderstandings between them, more than once had Pan Gideon offended him greatly, and still, after brief exhibitions of anger, there had followed silent or spoken explanations and all had gone on again in the old way.

”So it will be this time also,” thought Panna Anulka.

For her it was sweet to listen to Yatsek and to see that great love which, though it dared not express itself in determinate utterance, was still beaming from him with a submission which was matched only by its mightiness. Hence she yearned to hear him speak with her the longest time possible with that wondrous voice, and to lay at her feet for the longest time possible that young, loving, pained heart of his.

But he, inexperienced in love matters and blind as are all who love really, could not take note of this, and did not know what was happening within her. He looked on her silence as hardened indifference, and bitterness was gradually drowning his spirit. The calmness with which he had spoken at first began now to desert him, his eyes took on another light, drops of cold sweat came out on his temples: something was tearing and breaking the soul in him. He was seized by despair of such kind that when a man lies in the grip of it he reckons with nothing, and is ready with his own hands to tear his own wounded heart open. He spoke yet as it were calmly, but his voice had a new sound, it was firmer, though hoa.r.s.er.

”Is this the case,” asked he, ”and is there not one word from thee?”

Panna Anulka shrugged her shoulders in silence.

”The priest told me the truth when he warned that here a still greater wrong was in store for me.”

”In what have I wronged thee?” asked she, bitterly, pained by the sudden change which she saw in him.