Cad!”
This insult was hurled by the same bare-headed woman with naked arms as had just embraced Lieschtschenko.
This was the first time that Romashov had noticed her.
She was standing in a recess behind the stove, leaning forward with clenched hands tightly pressed against her hips, and pouring out an uninterrupted flow of “Billingsgate” with a rapidity and readiness which the vilest market-woman might have envied.
“Fool!
Cad!
Scum!
I am not afraid of you!
Fool! Fool! Fool!”
Biek-Agamalov lowered his sabre, and seemed, for a moment, to lose all power over himself.
Romashov saw how his face grew whiter and whiter, how his eyebrows puckered, and how the yellow pupils first darkened and then hurled a blinding flash of diabolical hatred and rage which no longer knew bounds. His knees gave way, and his head fell on his chest. At that moment, Biek-Agamalov was no longer a human being. He was transformed into a bloodthirsty wild beast straining every nerve for the fatal leap.
“Silence!” It sounded as if he had spat out the word. Speak he could not.
“Scoundrel, brute, beast, I shall not be silent!” shrieked the fury in the stove corner, her body trembling all over at every word she hurled.
Romashov felt himself getting whiter and whiter every moment.
He felt a sensation of void in his brain, a sensation of release from every oppressive act of thought or reflection.
A curious mixture of joy and terror arose in his soul, just as the bubbles of sparkling wine ascend to the edge of a goblet.
He saw Biek-Agamalov, whilst continually following the woman with his eyes, slowly raise his sabre above his head.
An irresistible flow of frantic jubilation, fear, inconsiderate boldness, carried Romashov away.
He rushed forward so rapidly that he did not even hear Biek-Agamalov hiss his last question—
“Will you be silent?
For the last time——”
Romashov, with a force he never thought he was capable of, gripped Agamalov’s wrist.
During the course of a few seconds and at a distance of a couple of inches between their faces, the two officers eyed one another without moving, stiff as if carved out of stone.
Romashov heard his comrade’s quick, panting breath; he saw his eyes glitter with hate and a thirst for revenge, and his lips foam with the spasmodic movements of his lower jaw; but he felt that the fire of wrath would, in a few minutes, be extinguished in this man who had never yet sought, of his own accord, to curb his passions.
But to Romashov this feeling of proud triumph in a game of life and death, from which he now knew he should come out the victor, was almost intolerable.
He knew that all those who were anxiously watching this scene from outside also realized in what deadly danger he stood.
Out in the yard and by the open windows there brooded such a hush and quiet that, all of a sudden, a nightingale a few paces off began to trill her joyous lay.
“Let me go,” came at last like a hoarse whisper from Biek-Agamalov’s bitten lips.
“Biek, you must never strike a woman,” replied Romashov calmly.
“You would blush for it as long as you lived.”
The last sparks of rage and madness now died out in Agamalov’s eyes.
Romashov drew a deep breath as if from a long swoon.
His heart beat irregularly and quick, and his head was again heavy and feverishly hot.
“Let me go!” shrieked Biek-Agamalov once more in a fierce tone, and tried to release himself.
Romashov felt he would no longer be able to keep his hold of him; but he had no further dread of his wrath. He said in a caressing brotherly tone, as he laid his hand on his comrade’s shoulder—
“Forgive me, Biek, but I know that a day will come when you will thank me for this.”
Biek-Agamalov with a loud snap stuck his sabre into its sheath.
“All right, confound you!” he screamed in an angry tone, in which, however, there was a note of shame and confusion.
“We’ll settle this matter afterwards.
But what right have you——?”
The valiant crowd in the yard now understood that all danger was over for the present.
With loud, but not quite natural, peals of laughter, the lot now rushed into the room.
But he now seemed extinguished, his strength exhausted, and there was something apathetic and ironically contemptuous about him.
Now Madame Schleyfer herself—a massive lady with a hard look, small dark pouches under her eyes, disappearing eyelashes, and great layers of fat on her neck and bosom—entered the room.
She attacked first one and then the other of the officers; took tight hold of one by a button, of another by a sleeve, and howled to each of them who could stand and listen her everlasting song—
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, who will make good all this? Who will pay for the mirror, the furniture, the bottles, the girls?”
All this meanwhile was settled to the satisfaction of the authorities by the same mysterious “benefactor” who had provided for everything else in the course of this memorable excursion.
The officers left the room in groups.
Every one of them inhaled with delight the mild, pure air of the May night. Romashov felt all his being thrilled with a certain joyous agitation.
It seemed to him as if all traces of the day’s orgies had vanished from his brain, as if a pair of innocent fresh lips had repurified and refreshed him by a soft kiss on his brow.