"I have not the strength for it. I am very sorry; but in me is not stuff to make the hero of a Christian romance. Thou hast perfect freedom of movement; Krynichna belongs to thy daughter.

Thou mayst vanish with her in that 'lonely corner,' in which I cannot wish pleasant lives to you, or remain and live here as. .h.i.therto, which I could understand better; but in no case--"

He stopped suddenly, and was silent.

While speaking with that woman he had felt beneath his throat a coil of snakes stifling him, but in his brain certain memories were sounding, as it were voices, the echo of something distant.

This echo issued from that woman's features, changed and faded, though the same in which on a time he had fixed his eyes with rapture, from the sound of her voice, which, at all times, had possessed for him a charm beyond description. His head, as if pressed by something above him and invisible, dropped with an almost indiscernible movement. Shall he forgive? And what would the result be? An idyl? Harmony? A return to family happiness?

Folly!

That can never be. Only one thing in this world is undoubted and indestructible: a fact. A fact has taken place, and there is no power in existence to cause that fact not to be. All views except this are exaltation! After a moment of silence he finished coldly and with deliberation:

"In no case can my feelings, or our relations be subject to change."

She rested her hand against the table more firmly, and bent her head lower--through that head were still wandering certain thoughts of a return to pure womanly honor through expiation, through yielding obediently to the will of the offended.

Then she began in a very low voice:

"Can I aid thee in any way?"

After a moment of silence he answered:

"No."

"Can I be of use to thee in anything?"

He was silent a little longer, and said:

"No," a second time.

The profile which had been turned to her was looking now through the window-pane to a ruddy cloud, which was moving on in darkness above the roof opposite, that cloud reminded him of something.

She looked at him, and, after a moment, added:

"Our daughter will write to thee, Aloysius."

He interrupted her, hurriedly:

"Thy daughter!"

She began in astonishment:

"Irene--"

He knew now that that ruddy cloud moving over the darkening sky reminded him of Cara. He turned his face toward the face of the woman standing there.

"Irene is thy daughter," said he--"for what meaning have blood-bonds when there are no others? I had a child who was my own--"

At that moment desire for revenge boiled up in him; the desire to crush, so he finished:

"And I lost her--through thee!"

"Through me?"

Her questioning cry was full of amazement.

"Thou knowest of nothing then? They have hidden it from thee? A proper regard for the delicate nerves of a woman! But my rude nerves of a man feel the need of sharing this knowledge with thy nerves."

Slowly and emphatically he uttered his words; words which, from moment to moment, were hissed through his pallid lips, and thus he concluded:

"Once thy daughter had an interesting conversation with me; a very interesting conversation about--everything which took place in our family idyl. The little girl, hidden behind some furniture, heard the conversation, and became mentally disordered--oh! temporarily, of course, and this would have pa.s.sed, but under its influence she exposed herself to the cold night air so as to die. Inflammation of the lungs was complicated by mental disorder. Her death--was suicide."

The last words went out of his straitened throat in a suppressed whisper, still they were so definite as to be heard in every part of the great chamber. They were deadened, however, by the overpowering shriek of the woman and the noise made as her body fell to the floor. Pani Darvid's knees bent under her, and dropping, with her face in her hands, her head struck the corner of the table near which she had been standing. At that moment Irene shot into the chamber; like a skylark, flying forward to defend its little ones, she ran to her mother, and surrounding her bent form with both arms, she raised to her father a face covered with a flood of tears.

"A needless cruelty, father," cried she. "Ah, how I hid this from her; how I tried to hide it! This is a needless cruelty! I thought that a man as wise as thou would do nothing so uncalled for. But thou hast committed a vileness!"

Darvid made an abrupt movement, but restrained himself, and with his face toward the window he heard the retreating footsteps of the two women. There was a second of time during which he turned his head, and his lips moved as if some word, a name was to escape from him. At that moment the two women, holding to each other, moved slowly through the next drawing-room, advanced in the increasing darkness, and vanished. He uttered no word. What was his feeling when she shrieked and struck her head against the edge of the table? Was it pity? Perhaps. Was it a quiver of sorrow for that past which had left him forever, and for that daughter who went out with the word "vileness" hanging on her lips? Perhaps. But he said nothing; he uttered no name. He remained alone. It was silent around him and empty. Emptiness occupied that part of s.p.a.ce beyond the window, for the rosy cloud which had pa.s.sed there a while before had vanished. The figure of Darvid standing at the window became darker in that gloom, which, growing denser, dimmed and then concealed the white, the blue, and the gilding of the great drawing-room. By degrees the lines of his face became invisible; his trembling hands and the quiver of the skin on his cheeks were no longer to be distinguished, and Darvid appeared on the gray background of the window as a narrow and perfectly black line. He did not go away, for he was riveted there, fixed in thought, filled with amazement. In this way, in this manner then, all things on earth are ended. Those invisible giants, Death, Insanity, Anguish, Rage, go about the world trampling, crushing, rending, and no man has power to arrest them! He had never thought about those giants. How could he? Was he a philosopher? He had not had time to think. Now he was thinking, and at the bottom of his stony meditation he beholds a pale, dreadful visage. Something which recalls a Medusa-head, which he had seen some time in a picture. It has struggled out of raging waves, and is resting on them face upward; its hair is torn; its gaze has endless depth; and on its blue lips is a jeering smile. What is it jeering at? Perhaps at the grandeur of the man who appears as a narrow line on the gray background of that window, black, and alone as he is, in the gathering gloom and the silence?

Now something soft and timid touches his feet, and he sees a little dark point moving. He stoops and calls:

"Puffie!"

At the floor was heard thin barking. Puffie had always barked that way to call the attention of his mistress.

Darvid bent low with his hand on the silky coat, and repeated:

"Puffie!"

Then he straightened himself, and, leaving the window, called several times in succession:

"Puffie! Puffie!"

The black line moved on, in the gray darkness, through two drawing-rooms, and behind it, on the floor, rolled the dark small ball-like object, till a s.p.a.ce of bright light gleamed before them. This was the widely open door of his clearly lighted study.

In the door the footman p.r.o.nounced loudly a name, at the sound of which Darvid's step quickened. At last the man had returned--the envoy, the agent, the hound had come hack! Beyond doubt he brings favoring news, otherwise he would have no cause to come. Hence, that colossal business; that immense arena of toil and struggle, through which an enormous vein of gold runs, may belong to Darvid. How timely this is! The business will freshen him; s.n.a.t.c.h him out of the evil dreams into which he has fallen for some time past. Indeed, all these exaltations, all these elements of feeling, which have risen in him with such power, are an unwholesome and nervous dream, out of which he must shake himself and return to clear, sober, sound reality.

CHAPTER XI

A rather long series of days had pa.s.sed when Darvid entered his clear, brightly lighted study, after winning one of the very greatest triumphs of his life. In the antechamber he had thrown into the hands of a footman, not his fur, but a somewhat light overcoat; for that day, which for him had been lucky, was succeeded by a warm, spring evening. Whoever might have seen him when he was leaving the lofty threshold of the highest dignitary in that city must have said to himself: "Happy man!" Though he had grown evidently thin during recent days; gladness and pride were beaming from his smile; from his eyes; from his serene forehead. He possessed now that for which he had striven long in vain: he held in his hand the colossal enterprise; before him was a broad arena for iron toil and a great vein, of gold. It is true, that while making ready for that moment of triumph, he had spent days and nights like a Benedictine over piles of books and doc.u.ments, calculating, combining, covering many folios of paper with arguments and figures. He had toiled immensely, thinking of nothing save the toil; and now, when he stood at his object as a conqueror, all people said: he is happy! He had received a mult.i.tude of congratulations already; in the eyes of men he had read much admiration. He had just returned from a meeting where, by accurate and fluent speech, he had convinced and won over a numerous a.s.sembly of men of uncommon keenness and significance.

Thus had he pa.s.sed the day; now, in the middle of the evening, he returned to his house; and when he had given the servant in attendance the brief command: "Receive no one!" he asked:

"Where is the little dog?"

After that he dropped into a deep armchair near the round table, and had the face, for a while, of a man who is waking from sleep.

For a number of days he had been so buried in thought over this weighty enterprise, and that day from early morning he had been so absorbed by the feeling of that victory which he had won, that he had had no time to think of any other thing; now, after a long time, in the first moment of inactivity which had fallen to him, he felt as if waking from sleep, and he was brought to thinking by the question:

"Well? What is it for?"

Just this question was to him at that moment reality, while every other thing was accomplished by the power of habit. He had toiled, calculated, triumphed, just as a round body rolls over an inclined plane by the force of acquired motion. Under this surface-life, which had been the one which he had led so long exclusively, was now another one which seized a continually increasing area; this new life, a mystery to every other man, had become for him more tangible than the entire visible universe.

Out of it was growing an irresistible, importunate riddle, enclosed in the brief words: What for?