That evening Pan Serafin was sitting on a bench in the front of his
mansion, entertaining Father Voynovski, who had come after evening
prayers to see him, and the four Bukoyemskis, who were stopping then
permanently at Yedlinka. Before them on a table, with legs crossed like
the letter X, stood a pitcher of mead and some glasses. They, while
listening to the murmur of the forest, were drinking from time to time
and conversing of the war, raising their eyes to the heavens in which
the sickle of the moon was shining clearly.
"Thanks to your grace, our benefactor, we shall be ready soon for the
road," said Mateush Bukoyemski. "What has happened is passed. Even
saints have their failings; then how must it be with frail men, who
without the grace of God can do nothing? But when I look at that moon,
which forms the Turkish standard, my fist is stung as if mosquitoes
were biting. Well, God grant a man to gratify his hands at the
earliest."
The youngest Bukoyemski fell to thinking.
"Why is it, my reverend benefactor," asked he at last, "that Turks
cherish some kind of worship for the moon, and bear it on their
standards?"
"But have not dogs some devotion toward the moon also?" asked the
priest.
"Of course, but why should the Turks have it?"
"Just because they are dog-brothers."
"Well, as God is dear to me, that explains all," said the young man,
looking at the moon then in wonderment.
"But the moon is not to blame," said the host, "and it is delightful to
gaze at it when in the calm of night it paints all the trees with its
beams, as if some one had coated them with silver. I love greatly to
sit by myself on such a night, gaze at the sky, and marvel at the Lord
God's almightiness."
"Yes, at such times the soul flies on wings, as it were, to its
Creator," said Father Voynovski. "God in his mercy created the moon as
well as the sun, and what an immense benefaction. As to the sun, well,
everything is visible in the daytime, but if there were no moon people
would break their necks in the night if they travelled, not to mention
this, that in perfect darkness devilish wickedness would be greater by
far than it is at the present."
They were silent for a while and passed over the peaceful sky with
their eyes; the priest took a pinch of snuff then, and added,--
"Fix this in your memories, gentlemen, that a kind Providence thinks
not only of the needs, but the comfort of people."
The rattle of wheels, which in the night stillness reached their ears
very clearly, interrupted the conversation. Pan Serafin rose from his
seat.
"God is bringing some guest," said he, "for the whole household is
here. I am curious to know who it may be."
"Surely some one with news from our lads," added Father Voynovski.
All rose, and thereupon a wagon drawn by two horses entered in through
the gateway.
"Some woman is on the seat," called out Lukash.
"That is true."
The wagon passed through half the courtyard and stopped at the
entrance. Pan Serafin looked at the face of the woman, recognized it in
the wonderful moonlight, and cried,--
"Panna Anulka!"
And he almost lifted her in his arms from the wagon, then she bent at
once to his knees, and burst into weeping.
"An orphan!" cried she, "who begs for rescue and a refuge!"
Then she nestled up to his knees, embraced them with still greater
vigor, and sobbed more complainingly. Such great astonishment seized
every man there, that for a time no one uttered a syllable; at last Pan
Serafin raised the orphan and pressed her to his heart.
"While there is breath in my nostrils," cried he, "I will be to thee a
father. But tell me what has happened? Have they driven thee from
Belchantska?"
"Krepetski has beaten me, and threatened me with infamy," answered she,
in a voice barely audible.
Father Voynovski, who was there very near her, heard this answer.
"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews!" exclaimed he, seizing his white
hair with both hands.
The four Bukoyemskis gazed with open mouths, and eyes bursting from
their sockets, but understood nothing. Their hearts were moved at once,
it is true, by the weeping of the orphan, but they considered that
Panna Anulka had wrought foul injustice on Yatsek. They remembered also
the teaching of Father Voynovski, that woman is the cause of all evil.
So they looked at one another inquiringly, as if hoping that some clear
idea would come, if not to one, to another of them. At last words came
to Marek.
"Well, now, here is Krepetski for you. But in every case that Martsian
will get from us a----, or won't he?"
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 God 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 God'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.
But the voice broke in his breast, for tears were choking him also. He
was seized at the same instant by delight and immense compassion for
the girl, and astonishment that "a woman" in this case was not the
cause of all evil, but an innocent lamb on which so much suffering had
fallen God knew for what reason. He caught her in his arms, pressed her
to his heart. "My child! my child!" repeated he, time after time.
The Bukoyemskis, meanwhile, had betaken themselves, with the glasses
and pitcher, to the dining-room; had emptied the pitcher
conscientiously to the bottom, and were waiting for the priest and Pan
Serafin, in the hope that with their coming supper would be put on the
table.
They returned at last with moistened eyes and with emotion on their
faces. Pan Serafin breathed deeply once, and a second time, then he
said,--
"Pani Dzvonkovski is putting the poor thing to bed. Indeed, a
man is unwilling to believe his own ears. We too, are to blame; but
Krepetski,--what he has done is simply infamous and disgraceful. We may
not let him go without punishment."
"On the contrary," answered Marek, "we will talk about this with that
'stump.' Oh-ho!"
Then he turned to Father Voynovski,--
"I am very sorry for her, but still, I think that God punished her for
Yatsek. Is that not true?"
"Thou art a fool!" called out Father Voynovski.
"But how is that? Why?"
The old man, whose breast was full of pity, fell to talking quickly and
passionately of the innocence and suffering of the girl, as if wishing
in that way to make up for the injustice which he had permitted
regarding her; but after a time all discussion was interrupted by the
coming of Pani Dzvonkovski, who burst into the room like a bomb into a
fortress.
Her face was as flooded with tears as if it had been dipped in a full
bucket, and right on the threshold she fell to crying, with arms
stretched out before her,--
"People, whoso believes in God! Vengeance, justice! As God lives! her
dear shoulders are all in blue lumps, those shoulders once white as
wafers--hair torn out by the handful, golden hair! my dearest dove! my
innocent lamb! my precious little flower!"
On hearing this, Mateush Bukoyemski, already excited by the narrative
of Father Voynovski, bellowed out at one moment, the next he was
accompanied by Marek, Lukash, and Yan till the servants rushed into the
dining-hall and the dogs began to bark at the entrance. But
Vilchopolski, who a moment later returned from his night review of
haystacks, met now another humor of the brothers. Their hair was on
end, their eyes were staring with rage, their right hands were grasping
at their sabre hilts.
"Blood!" shouted Lukash.
"Give him hither, the son of a such a one!"
"Kill him!"
"On sabres with him!"
And they moved toward the door as one man; but Pan Serafin sprang to
the entrance and stopped them.
"Halt!" cried he. "Martsian deserves not the sabre, but the headsman!"