Part 43 (1/2)

”But if he will wriggle out?” inquired Marek. ”His father is an old trickster, who has won more than one lawsuit.”

”If he wriggles out, Yatsek on returning will whisper a word in his ear.”

”Ye do not know Yatsek yet! He has the eyes of a maiden, but it is safer to take her young cubs from a she-bear than to pain him unjustly.”

Hereupon Vilchopolski till then only listening spoke in gloomy accents,--

”Pan Krepetski has written his own sentence, whether he awaits the return of Pan Tachevski or not-- But there is another point; he will try, with armed hand, to get back the young lady, and then--”

”Then we shall see!” interrupted Pan Serafin. ”But let him only try!

That is something quite different!”

And he shook his sabre, threateningly, while the Bukoyemskis began to grit their teeth straightway.

”Let him try! let him try!” said they.

”But, gentlemen,” said Vilchopolski, ”you are going to the war.”

”We will arrange then in another way,” replied Father Voynovski.

Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the butler. He had brought trunks filled with the wardrobe of Panna Sieninski which, as he said, he did only with difficulty. The Krepetski sisters tried to prevent him, and even wished to wake Martsian, and keep the trunks in the mansion, but they could not wake him; and the butler persuaded them that they should not act thus, both in view of their own good and that of their brother, otherwise an action would be brought against them for robbery, and they would be summoned for damages before a tribunal. As women who do not know law they were frightened and yielded. The butler thought that Martsian would try surely to get back the young lady, but he did not think that the man would use violence immediately.

”He will be restrained from that,” said the butler, ”by his father, who understands well the significance of _raptus puellae_. He knows nothing yet of what has happened, but from here I will go to him directly and explain the whole matter, for two reasons. First, so that he may restrain Martsian, and second, because I do not wish to be in Belchantska to-morrow when Martsian wakes and learns that I have helped the young lady in fleeing. He would rush on me surely, and then to one of us something ugly might happen.”

Pan Serafin and Father Voynovski praised the man's prudence and, finding that he was a well-wis.h.i.+ng person, and experienced, a man who had eaten bread from more than one oven, and to whom law itself was no novelty, begged him to aid in examining the question. There were two councils then, one of these being formed of the four Bukoyemskis.

Pan Serafin, knowing how to restrain them most easily from murderous intentions, and detain them at home, sent a large demijohn of good mead to the brothers; this they were glad to besiege at the moment, and began to drink one to another. Their hearts were moved, and they remembered involuntarily the night when Panna Anulka crossed for the first time the threshold of that house there in Yedlinka. They recalled how they had fallen in love with her straightway, how through her they had quarrelled, and then in one voice adjudged her to Stanislav, and thus made an offering of their pa.s.sion to friends.h.i.+p.

At last Mateush drank his mead, put his head on his palm, sighed, and continued,--

”Yatsek was sitting that night on a tree like a squirrel. Who could have thought then that he was just the man to whom the Lord G.o.d had given her?”

”And commanded us to continue in our orphanhood,” added Marek.

”Do ye remember,” asked Lukash, ”how the rooms were all bright from her presence? They would not have been brighter from a hundred burning candles. And she at one time stood up, at another sat down, and a third time she laughed. And when she looked at a man it was as warm in his bosom as if he had drunk heated wine that same instant. Let us take a gla.s.s now on our terrible sadness.”

They drank again; then Mateush struck a blow with his fist on the table, and shouted,--

”Ei! if she had not loved that Yatsek so!”

”Then what?” asked Yan, angrily, ”dost think that she would fall in love with thee right away? Look at him--my dandy!”

”Well thou art no beauty!” retorted Mateush.

And they looked at each other with ill-feeling. But Lukash, though given greatly to quarrels, began now to pacify his brothers.

”Not for thee, not for thee, not for any of us,” said he. ”Another will get her and take her to the altar.”

”For us there is nothing but sorrow and weeping,” blurted out Marek.