Генрик Сенкевич - In Vain

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.

Autumn was approaching. It was cold in the rooms of the poorer students. Wrapped in their blankets and wearing caps, they warmed themselves with study. The rooms of those who had something with which to heat their stoves were swarming with comrades. No one visited the club any longer. At first there were efforts to select some other place for a club, but it ended in nothing, because Gustav on the one hand, and on the other Yosef, who had acquired considerable influence among students, resisted together; more especially Yosef, who held that clubs consumed too much time and were of small utility. He desired to introduce reform in this regard, and at last he succeeded. In spite of all opposing opinions he combated for that idea in the University, and especially at Vasilkevich's rooms, where students met with more willingness than elsewhere.

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