Part 42 (1/2)

And he seized at his left side, and, following his example, the other three brothers began to feel for the hilts of their sabres.

Meanwhile, Pan Serafin had led in the young lady and committed her to Pani Dzvonkovski, his housekeeper, a woman of sensitive heart and irrepressible eloquence, and explained to her that she was to concern herself with this the most notable guest that had come to them. He said that the housekeeper was to yield up her own bedroom to the lady, light the house, make a fire in the kitchen, find calming medicines and plasters for the blue spots, prepare heated wine and various dainties.

He advised the young lady herself to lie down in bed until all was given her, and to rest, deferring detailed discourse till the morrow.

But she desired to open her heart straightway to those gentlemen with whom she had sought rescue. She wanted to cast out immediately from her soul all that anguish which had been collecting so long in it, and that misfortune, shame, humiliation, and torture in which she had been living at Belchantska. So, shutting herself up with Father Voynovski and Pan Serafin, she spoke as if to a confessor and a father. She told them everything, both her sorrow for Yatsek, and that she had consented to marry her guardian only because she thought Yatsek had contemned her, and because she had heard from the Bukoyemskis that Yatsek was to marry Parma Zbierhovski. Finally, she explained what her life had been in Belchantska,--or rather, what her sufferings had been there; she explained the torturing malice of the two sisters, the ghastly advances of Martsian, and the happenings of that day which were the cause of her flight from the mansion.

And they seized their own heads while they listened. The hand of Father Voynovski, an old soldier, went to his left side involuntarily, in the manner of the Bukoyemskis, though for many a day he had not carried a weapon; but the worthy Pan Serafin put his palms on the temples of the maiden, and said to her,--

”Let him try to take thee. I had an only son, but now G.o.d has given me a daughter.”

Father Voynovski, who had been struck most by what she had said touching Yatsek, remembering all that had happened, could not take in the position immediately. Hence he thought and thought, smoothed with his palm the whole length of his crown which was milk-white, and then he asked finally,--

”Didst thou know of that letter which Pan Gideon wrote to Yatsek?”

”I begged him to write it.”

”Then I understand nothing. Why didst thou do so?”

”Because I wanted Yatsek to return to us.”

”How return?” cried the priest, with real anger. ”The letter was such that just because of it Yatsek went away to the ends of the earth broken-hearted, to forget, and cast out of him that love which thou, my young lady, didst trample.”

Her eyes blinked from amazement, and she put her hands together, as if praying.

”My guardian told me that he had written the letter of a father. O Holy Mother! What was there in it?”

”Insults, contempt, a trampling upon the man's poverty and his honor.

Dost understand?”

Then from the gill's breast was rent a shriek of such pain and sincerity that the honest heart of the priest quivered in him. He approached her, removed the hands with which she had covered her face, and asked,--

”Then didst thou not know of this?”

”I did not--I did not!”

”And thou didst wish Yatsek to return to thee?

”I did!”

”In G.o.d's name! Why was that?”

Tears as large as pearls began again to drop from her closed lashes in abundance, and quickly; her face was red from maiden shame, she caught for air with her open lips, the heart was throbbing in her as in a captured bird, and at last after great effort, she whispered,--

”Because--I love him!”

”My child, is that possible!” cried out Father Voynovski.