The game began, the attorney played below the ace, Conu Costache named the suit for the second time.
"Have you got a good road along there now?"
"Y--y--yes, Mrs. Raluca."
It was a wonder his handkerchief did not rub the skin off his forehead, he mopped it with such vigour. His partners and the onlookers shook with laughter; the attorney did not give way at all, he saw how furious he was; he bid with nothing in his hand, and passed just in time to make him "enter" a second time.
And at this moment Mrs. Raluca's questions fell one after the other as fast as the beads of a rosary. She did not hear the rustling of the cards nor the choking in Conu Costache's throat, she did not see his misery nor the amusement of the others.
"But they have cut down the lovely wood on the right, haven't they, Mr. Costache?"
"Th--th--they have cut it down, Mrs. Raluca," he answered, gazing at the ceiling and pressing his temples between his hands.
He bid and came in, said "Play"--and found two clubs in the talon which he did not want. Such a collection of cards you have never seen; it might have been done on purpose. If you had tried to arrange them so, you could not have done it. It was a regular "walk-over": one cut four honours, the other cut the spades, and out of the eight games won five.
All he cut was an ace, and a pair. He put forty-eight in the pool.
"But the little lake still lies on the left, doesn't it, Mr. Costache?"
"St--st--still, Mrs. Raluca."
With a small brush he violently effaced the whole row of his stakes chalked on the cloth and wrote down a total of ninety-four in huge figures.
"But I must ask you, the inn----"
Conu Costache turned his chair right round.
"Mrs. Raluca, to-morrow afternoon my wife and I are going to our country-house--we will come and pick you up. In this way you will see how they cut down the wood on the right; you will see how the storks walk by the lake on the left; you will see how they have repaired the bridges; you will see how they have renovated the inn at the cross-gates; you will see what a nice house Ionitza Andrescu from Ulmi has built; you will see what big reservoirs the Aurora factory have erected by the road...."
Mrs. Raluca understood and took her departure, telling her beads as she went, but even when she had passed into the third room Conu Costache still continued, while the others were convulsed with laughter:
"You will see how illegible the figures on the 76 milestone have become; you will see how the boys have broken the insulators on the telegraph posts by throwing stones at them; you will see how the geese hiss when the carriage passes by; you will see----"
Then, turning back to his partners, who laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks, he groaned:
"Terrible bird of ill omen!"
IRINEL
By B. DELAVRANCEA
When my parents died, both in the same year, I was quite small; I think I must have been about seven years old.
I wanted to cry over them both, for I loved them both, but when I approached their coffin I was not alone.
You must know that my father left a considerable fortune.
There were many people about him who could not endure him.
There was talk of a will.
There was one member of the family about whom my father said: "It is so long since he crossed our threshold that I do not understand why he is so offended with us."
It is unkind to tell you: it was his brother and my uncle, a very good man, with only one fault--he had lost his entire fortune at cards. I found among my father's papers a quantity of his I.O.U.'s, beautifully signed with flourishes, but unpaid.
I approached the coffin; I was sure that I should weep as no one had ever wept before.
My home without my parents!
Some one took me by the hand, and said to me as he kissed me on both cheeks:
"Iorgu, Iorgu, cry, Iorgu, for those who will never return!"
It was he! The uncle of the promissory notes!
Just when my eyes ought to have been full of tears, I caught sight of him, and when I looked round me and saw the other people, when I met so many pairs of eyes, then--I was ashamed and could not cry. Oh, it is a terrible thing to feel ashamed to cry when one is sorrowing!
Do you see how shy I am? Have you grasped it? It is difficult to understand. It is difficult, because you, readers, are different. Not one of you are the same as I am.
I was so good and timid that, when I completed my twenty-first year, I did not want to leave the guardianship of my eldest uncle, my mother's brother, a very gentle man like myself, and very shy like my mother.
It makes me laugh. Is it likely I shall tell you an untruth? Why should I? I don't ask you anything, you don't ask me anything. Why should I lie?
But it is true that I have not told you quite openly why I did not ask for an account of my minority, and why I stayed in that house, which was as white as milk--especially on moonlight nights--with its balcony, its oak staircase, its pillars with flowered capitals and wreaths round their centres.
Did I like the house? Yes.
Did I love my uncle who had managed my affairs? Yes. Was I ashamed, directly I came of age, to demand an account as though I doubted his honesty? Yes. Anything besides? Was there anything else that kept me in bondage?
If you had looked at me a little askance, I should have blushed and replied, "Yes." And if you were to look at me even now when I have already grown many white hairs, I should tell you like a guilty child: "No, it is not true that I loved so much the house in which I grew up, or the uncle with whom I lived. There was something else."
There was some one there besides a cousin of the same age as myself, besides my uncle--my aunt was dead--besides the house, and a long-haired dog. There was somebody else!
Ah! This sort of somebody has reformed many a ne'er-do-well, has dazzled many a shy man, has turned many business men into poets, has shaken many a professor to the depths of his being, blowing away his system like the threads of a spider's web.
No doubt it was a very fascinating "somebody" who made you stay in tutelage twenty-four hours after you had reached your twenty-first year and come into 15,000 lei.
I think you have guessed the secret which I have hidden till now.
Oh, women, women! What do they care for the timid or the philosopher?