On the Field of Glory Part 17

"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.

But he waded on farther in blindness.

"Had I not seen how thou didst treat this Pan Stanislav, I should think that thou hadst no heart in thy bosom. Thou hast a heart, but for him, not for me. He glanced at thee, and that was sufficient."

Then Yatsek grasped the hair of his head with both hands on a sudden.

"Would to G.o.d that I had cut him to pieces!"

A flame flashed, as it were, through Panna Anulka; her cheeks crimsoned, anger blazed in her eyes as well at herself as at Yatsek; because a moment before she had been ready for weeping, her heart was seized now by indignation, deep and sudden.

"You, sir, have lost your senses!" cried she, raising her head and shaking back the tress from her shoulder.

She was on the point of rus.h.i.+ng away, but that brought Yatsek to utter desperation; he seized her hands and detained her.

"Not thou art to go. I am the person to go," said he, with set teeth.

"And before going I say this to thee: though for years I have loved thee more than health, more than life, and more than my own soul, I will never come back to thee. I will gnaw my own hands off in torture, but, so help me, G.o.d, I will never come back to thee!"

Then, forgetting his worn Hungarian cap on the floor there, he sprang to the doorway, and in an instant she saw him through the window, hurrying away along the garden by which the road to Vyrambki was shorter,--and he vanished.

Panna Anulka stood for a time as if a thunderbolt had struck her. Her thoughts had scattered like a flock of birds in every direction; she knew not what had happened. But when thoughts returned to her all feeling of offence was extinguished, and in her ears were sounding only the words: "I loved thee more than health, more than life, more than my own soul, but I will never come back to thee!" She felt now that in truth he would never come back, just because he had loved her so tremendously. Why had she not given him even one kind word for which, before anger had swept the man off, he had begged as if for alms, or a morsel of bread to give strength on a journey? And now endless grief and fear seized her. He had rushed off in pain and in madness. He may fall on the road somewhere. He may in despair work on himself something evil, and one heartfelt word might have healed and cured everything.

Let him hear her voice even. He must go, beyond the garden, through the meadow to the river. He will hear her there yet before he vanishes.

And rus.h.i.+ng from the house she ran to the garden. Deep snow lay on the middle path, but his tracks there were evident. She ran in them. She sank at times to her knees, and on the road lost her rosary, her handkerchief, and her workbag with thread in it, and, panting, she reached the garden gate finally.

"Pan Yatsek! Pan Yatsek!" cried she.

But the field beyond the garden was empty. Besides, that same wind which had blown the morning haze off, made a great sound among the branches of apple and pear trees; her weak voice was lost in that sound altogether. Then, not regarding the cold nor her light, indoor clothing, she sat on a bench near the gate and fell to crying. Tears as large as pearls dropped down her cheeks and she, having nothing else now with which to remove them, brushed those tears away with that tress on her shoulder.

"He will not come back."

Meanwhile the wind sounded louder and louder, shaking wet snow from the dark branches.

When Yatsek rushed into his house like a whirlwind, without cap and with dishevelled hair, the priest divined clearly enough what had happened.

"I foretold this," said he. "G.o.d give thee aid, O my Yatsek; but I ask nothing till thou hast come to thy mind and art quiet."

"Ended! All is ended!" said Yatsek.

And he walked up and down in the chamber, like a wild beast in confinement.

The priest said no word, interrupted him in nothing, and only after long waiting did he rise, put his arms around Yatsek's shoulders, kiss his head, and lead him by the hand to an alcove.

The old man knelt before a small crucifix which was hanging over the bed there, and when the sufferer had knelt at his side the priest prayed as follows:

"O Lord, Thou knowest what pain is, for Thou didst endure it on the cross for the offences of mankind.

"Hence I bring my bleeding heart to Thee, and at Thy feet which are pierced I implore Thee for mercy.