CHAPTER XVII
Malinka tried frequently to learn of Augustinovich the real cause of Yosef's absence.
"Why bind her hands?" asked she, speaking of Lula.
Augustinovich assured her that he did not wish to bind Lula’s hands, but afterward he was silent or lied.
On the other hand Yosef was convinced that the countess knew everything.
"I told her everything," said Augustinovich.
"But she? Do not hide from me!"
"Yosef?"
"What?"
"What is that to thee?"
Yosef gritted his teeth, but inquired no further. He was ashamed. He confessed to himself that those questions were an indulgence granted to weakness and to a former feeling. With consternation almost he saw that time had brought no relief. Oh, there were moments when he wished to cast away Helena and duty and conscience and go and sell even honor, even the remnant of self-respect, for one moment in which he could rest his head against the countess' shoulder. And he could not help meditating about her. So far he had conquered, but now he remembered that formerly he had been different from what he was then.
Formerly his character had that calm depth which concealed everything; to-day he boiled up. From passionate outbursts he passed frequently to melancholy and indifferent sentimentalism; he remembered how once he used to ridicule this in others, how he sneered without pity, how he despised even sentimentalism. Augustinovich knew this best of all.
A certain time (about a month after the breaking with Lula) Augustinovich, waking up late in the night, saw Yosef dressed yet and sitting with a book. The clock in the silent night told the fleeting moments untiringly. A lamp burnt with a clear, bright flame, and by its light the ruddy side whiskers and pale face of Yosef were outlined clearly on the black cover of the chair. He was sitting with head bent back and closed eyes, but he was not sleeping, his raised brows and the color of his face testified to this. His face had an expression of unspeakable bliss; some kind of dream, like a golden butterfly, was sitting on his brain and melting into misty mildness the sharp lines of his features.
Augustinovich looked at him carefully, then rose in the bed silently with a face full of indignation and anger. "What is he doing?" thought he. "Thou art tempting thyself! May I be hanged if I don't throw a pillow at thy head. Thou booby! Yes, I will throw the pillow! break the lamp—Hei!"
He had finished in a moment these warlike preparations, and was making ready to give the terrible blow, when he pushed under the blanket quickly; Yosef opened his eyes.
"I am curious to know what will happen now," muttered Augustinovich, pretending to sleep like a dead man. Meanwhile his astonishment grew in earnest.
Yosef looked at him suspiciously, then looked around like a criminal; finally he pulled out a drawer of the table and searched in it for some object.
"Ei! if he only does not want to shoot himself in the head, or poison himself," thought Augustinovich, terrified.
But Yosef had no thought of shooting or poisoning himself. The object which he drew forth was a glove. One small yellow wrinkled glove. Ei! a poor little memorial, a historical gift with which one says remember me. Addio! addio! caro mio! Remember me. Yosef, like that Emrod of old, would have gone for the glove "among two leopards and a tiger for it," but the question remained as to whether he went away after that and never returned. In point of stupidity the centuries agree oftener than in sound judgment.
Yosef raised the glove to his lips.
"Be ashamed, old man!" roared Augustinovich.
In truth, there was something humiliating in this, and afterward Yosef was greatly ashamed of his act. Next morning he went out before daylight to avoid Augustinovich, who was seriously angry and indignant. It seemed to him that he had been deceived in Yosef.
"That dunce," said he, "is like others." This idea roused that distaste in him which we feel usually on beginning to lose regard for a man whom we have thus far respected.
More important still was it that after that event Augustinovich grew convinced that Yosef would return to Lula. "Let the other die or go mad," said he of the widow. "They will take each other, let her die Ei, let her die (Augustinovich always tried to persuade himself that he did not like women), "there will be one less of them. Yosef will go back to Lula, he will."
He meditated then whether to tell Lula that Yosef was to marry, or not; in the end he resolved to be silent.
"But Helena is nothing to me. He will return to Lula; if I tell her everything it will be too late—it will be too late! Oh, ho, ho! But Helena too will lose, for again it will be too late. Yes, yes, I should not be able to correct the one, and should spoil the other. I shall say nothing, I will be silent—I will be silent."
He preferred Helena to Lula, a hundred times, and from his soul he preferred that Yosef should marry Helena; but he cared more for Yosef than for both women, therefore he wished Lula to be free "in every case." Besides, he considered that come what might, Lula would take Pelski. "Then," thought he, "I will tell the old man. 'Dost see,' I will say to him, 'I said nothing about Helena, she knew nothing about thy not loving her; still she married Pelski.'"
Finally, he concealed carefully the news of Yosef's intended marriage, in case that Lula, laughing and happy in view of Yosef's hypothetical return, should give her hand to Pelski. "Yosef will wish happiness to the lady, I will say 'Crescite et multiplicamini! He,' I shall say, pointing to Yosef, 'has been betrothed this long time; he loves and is loved immensely.'"