"How much beauty is there even in this simple scene, when the soul of the shepherdess and the soul of the warrior, like a boat and a ship during a storm at sea, must at last be parted! In very truth nothing so kindles the feelings in the heart as when heart separates from heart. Time is like a blast of wind; it extinguishes only the little candle; a great flame it fans to an even mightier conflagration. And my heart also is capable of loving even more mightily at a distance. Pan Soplica, I regarded you as my rival; that mistake was one of the causes of our lamentable quarrel, which forced me to draw the sword against your household. I perceive my mistake, for you sighed to the little shepherdess, while I had given my heart to this fair nymph. Let our differences be drowned in the blood of our country"s enemies; we will no longer fight each other with the murderous steel! Let our amorous strife be settled otherwise; let us contend which shall surpa.s.s the other in the feeling of love! Let us both leave behind the dear objects of our hearts, let us both hasten against swords and spears; let us contend with each other in constancy, sorrow, and suffering, and pursue our country"s enemies with our manly arms!"
He spoke and glanced at Telimena, but she made no reply, being overcome with amazement.
"My dear Count," interrupted the Judge, "why do you insist on departing?
Believe me, you had best remain in security on your estate. The poor gentry may be skinned and scourged by the government, but you, Count, are sure of being left whole. You know what sort of government you have to deal with; you are fairly wealthy, and may ransom yourself from prison at the cost of only half your income for one year."
"That is not in concord with my character," said the Count. "Since I cannot be a lover, I will be a hero. Amid the cares of love I will call on glory as my comfortress; since I am a beggar of heart, I will be mighty of hand."
"Who hinders you from loving and being happy?" inquired Telimena.
"The power of my destiny," said the Count, "mysterious forebodings that with a secret impulse urge me to foreign lands and to unwonted deeds. I confess that to-day I wished in honour of Telimena to light the flame on the altars of Hymen, but this youth has given me too fair an example by tearing off his marriage wreath of his own free will and rushing to test his heart amid the hindrances of changeful fortune and amid the b.l.o.o.d.y chances of war. To-day for me, too, a new epoch is opened! Birbante-Rocca has resounded with the renown of my arms; may this renown spread far and wide in Poland also!"
He concluded, and proudly smote his sword hilt.
"It is hard to blame such a desire," said Robak. "Depart, but take money with you; you may equip a company of soldiers, like Wlodzimierz Potocki, who amazed the French by contributing a million to the treasury, or like Prince Dominik Radziwill, who abandoned his lands and goods and furnished two fresh regiments of cavalry. Go, go, but take money; across the Niemen we have hands enough, but money is scarce in the Grand Duchy; go, we bid you farewell!"
"Alas!" said Telimena with a mournful glance, "I see that nothing will restrain you! My knight, when you enter the lists of battle, turn a feeling gaze on the colours of your beloved." (Here she tore a ribbon from her dress, made a c.o.c.kade, and pinned it on the Count"s bosom.) "May these colours guide you against fiery cannon, against shining spears and sulphurous rains; and when you make yourself famous by warlike deeds, and when you shade with immortal laurels your blood-stained helmet and your casque, bold in victory, even then look once more on this c.o.c.kade!
Remember whose hand pinned upon you these colours!"
Here she offered him her hand. The Count knelt and kissed it; Telimena raised her handkerchief to one eye, but with the other eye she looked down on the Count, who was bidding her farewell with deep emotion. She sighed, but shrugged her shoulders.
But the Judge said: "Hurry up, my dear Count, for it is already late!" And the Monk Robak called out with a threatening mien: "Enough of this; hurry up!" Thus the orders of the Judge and the Monk separated the tender pair and drove them from the room.
Meanwhile Thaddeus had embraced his uncle with tears and was kissing Robak"s hand. Robak, pressing the lad"s brow to his breast and hying his palms crosswise on his head, gazed aloft and said: "My son, may G.o.d be with you!" Then he began to weep. But Thaddeus was already beyond the threshold.
"What, brother?" asked the Judge, "will you tell him nothing? not even now? Shall the poor lad still remain in ignorance, now that he is going to leave us!"
"No, nothing!" said the Monk, after a long interval of weeping, his face covered by his hands. "Why should the poor fellow know that he has a father who has hidden himself from the world as a scoundrel and a murderer? G.o.d sees how I longed to tell him, but of that consolation I will make an offering to G.o.d, to expiate my former sins."
"Then," said the Judge, "it is now time for you to think of yourself. Pray reflect that a man of your age, in your weak condition, would be unable to emigrate along with the others. You have said that you know a little house where you must hide; tell me where it is. We must hasten, the waggon is waiting, ready harnessed; would it not be better to go to the woods, to the forester"s hut?"
"Early to-morrow morning will be time enough," said Robak, nodding his head. "Now, my brother, send for the priest to come here as quickly as may be with the viatic.u.m; send off every one but the Warden, and shut the door."
The Judge carried out Robak"s instructions and sat down on the bed beside him; but Gerwazy remained standing, resting his elbow on the pommel of his sword, and leaning his bent brow on his hands.
Robak, before beginning to speak, riveted his gaze on the face of the Warden and remained mysteriously silent. But as a surgeon first lays a gentle hand on the body of a sick man before he makes a cut with the knife, so Robak softened the expression of his sharp eyes, which he allowed to hover for a long time over the eyes of Gerwazy; finally, as if he wished to strike a blind blow, he covered his eyes with his hand and said with a powerful voice:-
"I am Jacek Soplica."
At these words the Warden turned pale, bowed down, and, with half his body bent forward, remained fixed in this position, hung upon one foot, like a stone flying from on high but checked in its course. He raised his eyelids and opened wide his mouth with its threatening white teeth; his mustaches bristled; his sword dropped from his hands, but he caught it near the floor with his knees and held the pommel with his right hand, gripping it convulsively: the long black blade of the sword stretched out behind him and shook back and forth. And the Warden was like a wounded lynx, about to spring from a tree into the very face of a hunter: it puffs itself into a ball, growls, flashes fire from its b.l.o.o.d.y eyeb.a.l.l.s, twitches its whiskers and lashes its tail.
"Pan Rembajlo," said the Monk, "I am no longer alarmed by the wrath of men, for already I am under the hand of G.o.d. I adjure thee in the name of Him who saved the world, and on the cross blessed His murderers and accepted the prayer of the robber, that you relent, and hear in patience what I have to say. I have myself declared my name; to ease my conscience I must gain or at least beg forgiveness. Hear my confession; then you will do with me as you wish."
Here he joined his two hands as though in prayer; the Warden drew back amazed, smote his hand on his brow and shrugged his shoulders.
And the Monk began to tell of his former intimacy with the h.o.r.eszko and of the love between him and the Pantler"s daughter, and of the enmity between the two men that thence arose. But he spoke confusedly; often he mixed accusations and complaints in his confession, often he interrupted his speech as though he had ended, and then began anew.
The Warden, who was thoroughly familiar with the story of the h.o.r.eszkos, straightened out in his mind the whole tale, though it was sadly tangled, and could fill up the gaps in it; but the Judge entirely failed to understand many points. Both listened attentively, bending their heads forward; but Jacek spoke more and more slowly, and often interrupted himself.
"You already know, my dear Gerwazy, how often the Pantler used to invite me to banquets; he would propose my health, and many a time he cried, raising his beaker aloft, that he had no better friend than Jacek Soplica.
How he would embrace me! All who saw it thought that he shared his very soul with me. He a friend? He knew what then was pa.s.sing within my soul!
"Meanwhile the neighbourhood was already whispering; gossips would say to me: "Ah, Pan Soplica, your suit is vain; the threshold of a dignitary is too high for the feet of Jacek the Cup-Bearer"s son." I laughed, pretending that I mocked at magnates and their daughters, and that I cared nothing for aristocrats; that if I often visited them, I did it out of mere friendship, and that I would never marry outside my own station in life. And yet these jests p.r.i.c.ked my soul to the quick: I was young and daring, and the world was open to me in a land where, as you know, one born a simple gentleman may be chosen king just as freely as the most powerful lord. Once Tenczynski asked in marriage a daughter of a royal house, and the King gave her to him without shame.173 Are not the Soplicas of equal merit with the Tenczynskis, through their blood, through their ancient crest, and through their faithful service to the Commonwealth!
"How easily a man may ruin the happiness of others in a single instant; and in a long lifetime he cannot restore it! One word from the Pantler, and how happy we should have been! Who knows? Perhaps we should be living still; perhaps he too, with his beloved child-with his fair Eva-and with her grateful husband, would have grown old in peace! perhaps he would have rocked to sleep his grandchildren! But now? He has destroyed us both-and he himself-and that murder-and all the consequences of that crime, all my sufferings and transgressions! I have no right to accuse him, I am his slayer; I have no right to accuse him, I forgive him from my heart-but he too--
"If he had but once openly refused me-for he knew our feelings-if he had not received my visits, then who knows? Perhaps I should have gone away, have become enraged, have cursed him, and finally have left him in peace.
But he, the proud and cunning lord, formed a new plan; he pretended that it had never even entered his head that I could strive for such a union.
But he needed me, I had influence among the gentry and every one in the district liked me. So he feigned not to notice my love; he welcomed me as before and even insisted that I should come more often; but whenever we were alone together, seeing my eyes darkened with tears and my heart over-full and ready to burst forth, the sly old man would suddenly throw in some indifferent word about lawsuits, district diets, or hunting--
"Ah, often over the winecups, when he was in a melting mood, when he clasped me so closely and a.s.sured me of his friendship, since he needed my sabre or my vote at the diet, and when in return I was forced to clasp him in friendly wise, then anger would so boil up within me that I would turn the spittle within my lips and clasp my sword hilt with my hand, longing to spit upon this friendship and to draw the sword at once. But Eva, noticing my glance and my bearing, would guess, I know not how, what was pa.s.sing within me, and would gaze at me imploringly, and her face would turn pale; and she was so fair and meek a dove, and she had so gentle and serene a glance!-so angel-like that-I know not how-but I lacked the courage to anger or alarm her-and I held my peace. And I, a roistering champion famous through all Lithuania, before whom the greatest lords had been wont to tremble, who had not lived a day without a battle, who would not have allowed the Pantler, no, not the King himself, to do me wrong; I, who was driven to fury by the least disagreement-I, then, though angry and drunken, held my peace like a lamb!-as though I had suddenly beheld the consecrated Host!174
"How many times did I wish to open my heart and even to humble myself to implore him; but when I looked into his eyes and met his gaze cold as ice, I felt shame for my emotion; I hastened once more to discourse as coldly as I might of suits at law and of the district diets, and even to jest.
All this, to be sure, was from pride, in order not to debase the name of the Soplicas, in order not to lower myself before a magnate by a vain request and receive a refusal-for what gossip there would have been among the gentry, if they had known that I, Jacek--
"The h.o.r.eszkos refuse a wench to a Soplica! They serve me, Jacek, with black soup!
"Finally, not knowing myself what way to turn, I bethought me of gathering together a little company of gentry, and of leaving forever this district and my Fatherland; of going off somewhere or other, to Moscow or to the land of the Tatars, and beginning a war. I rode over to bid the Pantler farewell, in the hope that when he saw his faithful partisan, his former friend, a man almost of his own household, with whom he had caroused and made war for so many long years, now bidding him farewell and riding off to the ends of the earth-that the old man might be moved and show me at least a trace of a human soul, as a snail shows its horns!
"Ah! if one has at the bottom of his heart the faintest spark of feeling for a friend, that spark will break forth when he bids him farewell, like the last flame of life before a man expires! The coldest eye, when for the last time it touches the brow of a friend, will often shed a tear!
"The poor girl, hearing that I was about to leave the country, turned pale, and fell in a swoon, almost dead; she could not speak, but from her eyes there streamed a flood of tears-I learned how dear I was to her.
"I remember that for the first time in my life I shed tears, for joy and for despair; I forgot myself, I went mad; I was ready once more to fall at her father"s feet, to cling like a serpent about his knees, to cry out, "Dear father, take me for your son or slay me!" Then the Pantler, sullen, cold as a pillar of salt, polite and indifferent, began a discourse-of what? of what? Of his daughter"s wedding! At that moment? O Gerwazy, dear friend, consider; you have a human heart!
"The Pantler said: "Pan Soplica, a wooer has just come to me on behalf of the Castellan"s175 son; you are my friend, what do you say to that? You know, sir, that I have a daughter, fair and rich-and the Castellan of Witepsk! That is a low, parvenu seat in the Senate; what do you advise me, brother?" I have entirely forgotten what I said in reply to that, probably nothing at all-I mounted my horse and fled!"
"Jacek!" cried the Warden, "you are clever at finding excuses! Well? They do not lessen your guilt! For it has happened many a time ere now that a man has fallen in love with the daughter of a lord or king, and has tried to capture her by force; has planned to steal her away or to avenge himself openly-but so stealthily to kill him! a Polish lord, in Poland, and in league with the Muscovites!"