In Vain. Генрик Сенкевич

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      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.

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