A month passed.
The evening was fair, autumnal; the sun was quenching slowly on the
towers of Kieff and on the distant grave-mounds of the steppe. Its light
was still visible on the roof above Yosef and Gustav. Both were bent
over their work and, sitting in silence, used the last rays of evening
with eagerness. Gustav had returned from the city not long before; he
was suffering and pale, he panted more than usual. On his face a certain
uneasiness was manifest, vexation, even pain; this he strove to conceal,
but still it was evident from the fever of his eyes. Both men were
silent. It was clear, however, that Gustav wished to break the silence,
for he turned to Yosef frequently; but since it seemed as though the
first word could be spoken only with difficulty, he sank back to his
book again. At last evident impatience was expressed on his face; he
seized his cap from the table, and rose.
"What o'clock is it now?" asked he.
"Six."
"Why art thou not going to the widow's? Thou goest every day to visit
her."
Yosef turned toward Gustav,--
"It was at her request that I went with thee to her lodgings the first
time. Let us not mention the subject. I do not care to speak of that
which would be disagreeable to both of us; for that matter, we
understand each other perfectly. I will not see the widow to-day, or
to-morrow, or any day. Thou hast my word and hand on that."
They stood then in silence, Yosef with extended hand. Gustav, hesitating
and disturbed by the awkward position, finally pressed the palm of his
comrade.
Evidently words came to both with difficulty; one did not wish to use
heartfelt expressions, the other heartfelt thanks. After a while they
parted.
Men's feelings are strange sometimes, and the opposite of those which
would seem the reward of noble deeds. Yosef promised Gustav not to see
Pani Helena, the widow. Whether he loved her or not, that was a
sacrifice on his part, for in his toilsome and monotonous existence she
was the only bright point around which his thought loved to circle.
Though thinking about her was only the occupation of moments snatched
from hard labor and devoted to rest and mental freedom, to renounce such
moments was to deprive rest of its charm, it was to remove a motive from
life at a place where feeling might bud out and blossom.
Yosef, after thinking a little, did this without hesitation. He made a
sacrifice.
Still, when Gustav had gone from the room, there was on Yosef's face an
expression of distaste, even anger. Was that regret for the past, or for
the deed done a moment before?
No.
When he extended his hand to Gustav, the latter hesitated in taking it.
Not to accept a sacrifice given by an energetic soul is to cover the
deed of sacrifice itself with a shadow of ridicule; and this in the mind
of him who makes the sacrifice is to be ungrateful, and to cast a grain
of deep hatred into the rich field of vanity.
But to accept a rival's sacrifice is for a soul rich in pride to place
one's own "I" under the feet of some other man morally; it is to receive
small coppers of alms thrust hastily into a hand which had not been
stretched forth for anything.
Pride prefers to be a creditor rather than a debtor.
Therefore Gustav when on the street twisted his mouth in bitter irony,
and muttered through his pressed lips.
Better and better. Favor, favor! Bow down now to Pan Yosef daily, and
thank him. A pleasant life for thee, Gustav!
And he fell into bitter, deep meditation. He ceased even to think of
himself, he was merely dreaming painfully. He felt a kind of gloomy echo
in his soul, while striving to summon up the remembrance of even one
happy moment. That echo sounded in him like a broken chord. The mind and
soul in the man were divided. One tortured half cried hurriedly for
rest; the other half, energetic and gloomy, strove toward life yet. One
half of his mind saw light and an object; the other turned moodily
toward night and nothingness. To finish all, there was something besides
in this sorrowing man which made sport of its own suffering; something
like a malicious demon which with one hand indicated his own figure to
him, pale, ugly, bent, and pointed out with the other, as it were in the
clouds in the brightness of morning, Helena Potkanski, in marble repose,
in splendid beauty.
Torn apart with the tumult of this internal battle, he went forward
alone, almost without knowing whither. Suddenly he heard behind a
well-known voice singing in bass the glad song:--
"Hop! hop! hop! hop!
And the horseshoe firmly fastened."
He looked around--it was Vasilkevich and Augustinovich.
"Whither art thou hastening, Gustav?" asked the first.
"I? Ha! whither--" He looked at his watch. "It is too early to visit
Pani Helena. I am going at present to the club."
"Well, go straight to the widow."
"What? Why?"
"Woe!" exclaimed Augustinovich, raising his hand toward heaven; and
without noticing passers-by, he fell to declaiming loudly:--
"The castle where joyousness sounded
Is shrouded in mourning to-day;
On its wall the wild weeds are growing,
At its gate the faithful dog howls."
"Thou hast no reason to visit the club," added Vasilkevich.
"What has happened?"
"Gloom is there now incubating a tempest," replied Augustinovich.
"But say what has happened."
"Misfortune."
"Of what sort?"
"Ghastly!"
"Vasilkevich, speak in human fashion!"
"The University government has closed our club. Some one declared that
students assemble there."
"When did this happen?"
"Two hours since."
"We must go there and learn on the spot."
"I do not advise thee to do so. They will put thee in prison."
"They will bind thy white palms with a rope--"
"Augustinovich, be quiet! Why did they not do this in the evening? They
might have caught us all like fish in a net."
"Well, they cared more for closing the club than for seizing us; but
were a man to go now, beyond doubt they would seize him."
"But whither are ye going?"
"We are going with a watchword of alarm; the clans send a fiery cross--"
"Speak low, I beg thee!"
"Yes, valiant Roderic."
"True, true," interrupted Vasilkevich; "we are on the way to warn
others, so farewell, or go with us."
"I cannot."
"Where wilt thou go?"
"To Pani Helena's."
"Farewell."
"Till we meet again!"
When he was alone, Gustav rubbed his hands, a smile of satisfaction
lighted up his gloomy face for a moment. He was pleased with the closing
of the club, for he ceased to fear that Helena, on learning of Yosef's
decision, might wish to visit the club to see him there. His fears were
well founded. Gustav remembered that despite prayers and arguments he
had barely, by the promise of bringing Yosef to her lodgings, been able
to restrain her from this improper step. Now he had no cause for fear.
After a while he pulled the bell at the widow's dwelling.
"How is thy mistress?" asked he of the servant girl.
"She is well, but walking in the room and talking to herself."
Gustav entered.
Pani Helena's dwelling was composed of two narrow chambers, with
windows looking out on a garden; the first chamber was a small
drawing-room, the second she used as a bed-chamber, which Gustav now
entered. The upper part of the window in the bed-chamber was divided by
a narrow strip of wood from the lower part, and had colored panes
arranged in the form of a flower, blue and red alternately. In one
corner stood a small mahogany table covered with a soft velvet spread.
On the table stood two portraits; one in an inlaid wooden frame
represented a young man with a high forehead, blond hair, and handsome
aristocratic features,--that was Potkanski; the other was Pani Helena.
On her knees was her little daughter dressed in white. Before the
portraits lay a garland of immortelles entwined with crape and with a
sprig of dry myrtle.
At the opposite end of the room, between two beds divided by a narrow
space, was a small cradle, now empty, once filled with the twittering
and noise of an infant. Its cover, colored green by the light of the
panes, seemed to move slightly. One might have thought that a little
hand would be thrust out any moment, and a joyous head look at its
mother.
Silent sadness was in the atmosphere of the place. The leaves of the
acacia which looked in through the window were outlined darkly on the
floor, and, moved by the wind, yielded to the quivering light and
returned again. Near the door was a small statuette, representing the
angel of baptism with hands extended as if to bless; at its feet was a
holy-water pot.
At the moment of which we are speaking the head of the angel was bright
in colored gleams, as if with a mild glory of sweetness, of repose and
innocence. There was, moreover, great silence in the chamber. The sorrow
of that day equalled former gladness. What delight and prattling when
Potkanski, returning in the evening tired with toil, embraced his wife
with one arm, and putting back her golden hair, kissed her forehead,
which at that time was calm and serene. How much quiet, deep joy when
they stood in silence breast to breast and eye to eye, like statues of
Love! Afterward they ran to the cradle where the little one, twittering
with itself in various ways, and raising its tiny feet, laughed at the
happy parents.
Now the cradle was empty. Marvellously affecting was that cradle. It
seemed that the child was there.
More than once, in the first period of her misfortune, the widow, when
she woke in the night, put her hand carefully into the cradle with the
conviction that God must have pitied her, and, removing the child from
the coffin, placed it back in the cradle.
In a word, those walls had seen much joy, lulled by the happiness of
serene love, then tears as large as pearls, then despair, which was
silent, deathlike, and finally stubborn, mad.
Such was the sleeping-room of that widow, and such were the thoughts
which were roused at sight of the apartment. The little drawing-room,
like all of its kind, had a sort of slight elegance and much emptiness.
In that chamber, too, the echoes of past moments seemed to wander. It
was well lighted, clean, but common; the room of the servant adjoined
it,--a small dark closet with an entrance on the stairway and a wooden
partition.
Such was the former residence of Potkanski. After his death it was
difficult to understand whence the means came to keep up such lodgings;
this, however, pertained to Gustav, he knew what he was doing. There
were no claims on the part of the owner; how this was managed we shall
explain somewhat later.
As often as Gustav entered that dwelling he trembled.
In a place which was full of her presence, where everything that was
not she was for her, he felt always a kind of weight on his breast, as
if some hand were pressing his heart down more deeply. But that pressure
was for him delightful. It was a contraction of his breast as if to
inhale more air. To be pressed down by a feeling of happiness is almost
to be happy, except that beyond it lies an immense shoreless space of
desires. It inundates the whole man then, enters into his blood,
manifests itself in the trembling of his words, in the glitter of his
eyes. That desire itself does not know what it wants. Between too little
and too much there is no boundary in the present case. This is the
bashful desire of everything. A man is more daring externally than
internally; his own words frighten him; it seems to him that some one
else is saying something, he guards his own glances, he wants to laugh
spasmodically or to burst out sobbing. He loves, he honors, he makes an
angel of a woman, and then desires that same angel as a woman.
Gustav experienced this when he entered the widow's apartments. Every
kind of desire which spirit and blood joined together can summon, flew
to him from all sides, like flocks of winged creatures.
She stood before him. She was pale; on her lips appeared a slight trace
of ruddiness. Her delicate profile was outlined on the background of the
window like a silhouette. She held a comb in her hand, and, standing
before the small silver-framed mirror, was combing her hair. Luxuriant
tresses wound like waves around her pale forehead. That golden mass
flowed down over her shoulders and breast, and seemed to drop like
amber.
Seeing Gustav, she greeted him with her hand and with a barely
perceptible smile.
The widow had emerged from her former lethargy. That sudden and violent
shock which the sight of Yosef at the restaurant had called forth roused
her, enlivened her. She began to think. One thing alone was she unable
at first to explain. Yosef's form was so confounded in her mind with
that of Potkanski that she did not know herself which was her former
husband. That was the remnant of her insanity. But soon a ray of light
returned to that beclouded mind. She begged Gustav to let her see Yosef.
Gustav, though unwilling, agreed to this. With yearning did she wait for
the evening when she was to look at that reminder of her former
happiness. Not Yosef was she seeking, but the reminder; hence he was for
her an absolute necessity.
Then gradually and quite imperceptibly the past changed into the
present, the dream into a reality. Yosef, noting this, had promised
Gustav not to visit her; to prepare Helena and announce this news to her
pertained to Gustav.
It was easy to foresee the impression which this would make. She clasped
her hands and threw back her head. A torrent of hair covered her
shoulders with a rustle.
"Where shall I see him?" asked she, insistently.
Gustav was silent.
"I must see him here or elsewhere. He is so like Kazimir--My God, I live
entirely by that memory, Pan Gustav."
Gustav was silent. He was made almost indignant by that blind egotism
of Pani Helena. The drama began to play in him again. She begged him to
do everything to undermine his own happiness. No! to act thus he would
have to be a fool. But on the other hand--it was Helena who made the
prayer. He bit his lips till the blood came, and was silent. Moreover,
something belongs to him even from life. Everything that in him made up
the man opposed her prayers with desperate energy. Meanwhile she
continued to urge,--
"Pan Gustav, you will arrange so that I shall see him? I wish to see
him. Why do you do me such an injustice?"
Cold sweat covered Gustav's forehead; he stretched his hands to his
face, and in a gloomy voice answered,--
"I do you no injustice, but"--here his voice quivered, he made an effort
not to fall at her feet and cry out, "But I love thee, do not torture
me!"--"he does not wish to come here," concluded he, almost inaudibly.
He would have given much to avoid this moment. Helena covered her face
with her hands and dropped into the armchair. Silence continued for a
while, and the rustling of leaves was heard outside the window; inside
the soul of a man was writhing in a conflict with itself. To bring
Yosef, to take Helena from him, was for Gustav to unbridle misfortune.
The struggle was brief; he knelt before Helena, and putting his lips to
her hand, said in a broken voice,--
"I shall do what I can. He will come here. What am I to any one? He will
come, but I cannot tell when--I will bring him myself."
Soon after, in leaving the widow's lodgings, he muttered through his set
teeth,--
"Yes, he will come; but it is not I who will bring him--he will come in
a month--in two months--perhaps I shall be at rest."
An attack of coughing interrupted further meditation. Gustav wandered
through the streets for a long time; when he returned home, it struck
two in the church belfry.
Yosef was sleeping; he was breathing uniformly, quietly; the light of
the lamp fell on his high forehead and open breast. Gustav looked
feverishly at that breast. His eyes gleamed with hatred. He sat thus
about an hour. All at once he trembled, he came to himself. A sensation
was roused in him entirely opposite to any which he had felt up to that
moment, a sensation of hunger; he went to the book-shelves, and taking a
piece of brown bread, fell to eating it hastily.