II
A good many people had gathered by this time in Boryna’s yard, which, surrounded on three sides by farm buildings, was separated from the road by an orchard on the fourth. Several women were offering advice and eyeing with amazement the very large red-and-white cow that lay wallowing on a heap of manure just before the byre.
An old dog, somewhat lame and with hairless patches along its sides, was now sniffing at her and barking, now running to the fence and driving back into the road such boys and girls as had climbed up and were gazing curiously into the yard, and now approaching a sow that lay near the hut, suckling four white little pigs and gently grunting.
Hanka ran straight to the cow on arriving, and at once began to stroke her face and head.
“Poor, poor dear Red-and-White!” she cried, with copious tears and many lamentations.
From time to time the women would recommend her a new remedy for the sick animal. Now they would pour brine down its throat, now milk into which wax from a consecrated taper had been dropped. One advised soap dissolved in whey, and another suggested bleeding. But the cow did not benefit from any of these nostrums. At times she would lift up her head, and, as though imploring for help, low till her beautiful large eyes, with pink-tinged whites, grew dim and misty. Then, quite exhausted with pain, she would bow her horned head and put forth her tongue to lick Hanka’s hand.
“May not Ambrose be able to do something?” was one woman’s suggestions.
“Yes, yes, he knows a good deal about sicknesses.”
“Run to him, Yuzka. He has just rung the Angelus, so is likely to be somewhere about the church. Good God! when Father comes home, how furious he will be! And yet,” Hanka sobbed, “ ’tis no fault of ours!”
She then sat down on the threshold of the cow-house and bared her full white bosom to the babe that was wailing for food, meanwhile watching the suffering animal with keen apprehension and, expecting Boryna’s arrival, casting uneasy glances past the fence.
In a few minutes Yuzka returned, announcing the arrival of Ambrose, who came almost as soon himself. He was close to a hundred years old, one-legged, and walked with the aid of a staff, but still as straight as an arrow. His face, dry and wrinkled as a potato in spring, was clean-shaven, but scarred; his hair as white as milk, with long wisps falling on his forehead and hanging down to his shoulders. He went straight to the cow and looked her over very carefully.
“Oho!” he said, “you will have fresh meat presently, I see.”
“Oh, but pray do something to make her well!” cried Jozia. “A cow worth over three hundred zloty … and just now with calf, besides! Do help us! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
Ambrose produced a lancet, whetted it on his boot, looked at the edge against the sky, and then cut a blood-vessel in Red-and-White’s belly. But no spurt of blood followed; only a few drops, black and foam-flecked, oozed out slowly.
All were standing about, their necks craned forward, breathless with attention.
“Too late!” he said mournfully. “Yes, the poor thing is near its last gasp. It must be cattle plague or something of the sort. You should have sent for me as soon as there was anything the matter. Those women! Peevish things they are, fit only to weep! When anything’s to be done, they only fall a-bleating. A lot of ewes!”
He spat contemptuously, looked once more at the cow’s eyes and tongue, wiped his gory hands on her sleek hide, and prepared to go.
“I shall not ring for her funeral; your pots will clink instead.”
“Here come Father and Antek!” exclaimed Yuzka, hastening to meet them as a rumbling sound came from the farther end of the pond and a long cart and horses appeared, looming dark against the red glow of dust blazing in the light of the setting sun.
“Father, Father! Red-and-White is dying!” she called out. He was just turning the pond. Antek had got down behind; the pine they had on the cart was a long one, and had to be held up.
“Don’t waste your breath talking nonsense,” he growled in reply, lashing the horses.
“Ambrose has bled it—in vain. Melted wax down her throat—in vain, too. Salt—no use. … ’Tis the cattle-plague, no doubt. Vitek says the forester drove them out of the grove, and all at once Red-and-White lay down and started to moan; and so he brought her back here.”
“Red-and-White, our best cow! You foul beasts! The devil take you for the care you took of her!”
He threw the reins to his son and ran forward, whip in hand.
The women drew away. Vitek, who had all the time been very calmly doing things about the house, ran off, faint with fear, into the garden. Even Hanka stood up on the threshold, bewildered and dismayed.
Old Boryna looked long at the cow and then cried out:
“Yes, she is gone, and because of them! The filthy sluts! Always ready to eat, but to watch—never! Such a splendid animal! One cannot stir from the house, but that some harm and evil must come of it.”
Hanka murmured in excuse: “But I have been out potato-digging all afternoon.”
He turned on her in a rage. “You! Do you ever see anything that goes wrong? Do you care one pin for the things that are mine? Such a cow as ’twould be hard to find—aye, even at a manor farm!”
He went on lamenting for some time, examined the cow, tried to make her stand up, and looked into her mouth. She was breathing heavily, with a rattle in her throat. Her blood had quite ceased to flow and formed hard, black clots like cinders.
“What’s to be done? She must be killed: I’ll save at least as much as that will bring us.”
Thus making up his mind, he went into the barn for a scythe. After sharpening it with a few turns of a grindstone that stood under the eaves of the cow-house, he pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirtsleeves, and set about his grim task.
Hanka and Yuzka began to weep as Red-and-White, as though feeling death close at hand, raised her heavy head and, moaning faintly, fell flat, with her throat cut. Her legs jerked convulsively once or twice.
The dog lapped the blood, which was already beginning to clot.
Antek, who had just arrived, angrily addressed his weeping wife:
“What have you to weep over, foolish one? Father’s cow is father’s loss, not ours!”
And he set to unharnessing the horses, which Vitek took to the stable.
“Is the potato crop good?” Boryna inquired as he was washing his hands by the well.
“Why shouldn’t it be good? Twenty sacks or thereabouts,” was the reply.
“They must be brought in this very day.”
“Bring them in yourself, then,” said Antek. “I am dead tired and ready to drop. The off-horse, too, is lame in one foreleg.”
“Yuzka, go and tell Kuba to stop digging. Let him put the young mare to instead of the off-horse, and bring the potatoes home today. It may rain.”
Boryna was boiling over with anger and mortification. Every now and then he went to gaze at the slaughtered cow and swore outrageously. Then he strode across the yard, looked into the byre, the barn, and all the sheds, being so confused by his loss that he did not know what he was doing.
“Vitek! Vitek!” he roared at length, unfastening the broad leather girdle round his waist. But Vitek did not answer his call.
All the neighbours had disappeared, feeling that such sorrow for so great a loss was likely to end in blows, and Boryna was at no time indisposed for a fight. Today, however, he did nothing but curse and swear.
Going toward the hut, he cried through the open window: “Hanka, give me something to eat!” and passed in to his own quarters.
The hut was the usual peasants’ cabin, divided into two parts by a very wide passageway. The back looked out upon the yard; the four front windows, upon the orchard and the road. Boryna and his daughter, Yuzka, occupied the side next the garden; Antek and his family lived on the other side; while the herdsman and the labourer slept in the stable.
The room was now getting dark, for but little light could filter through its tiny windows, the eaves that overshadowed them, and the trees of the orchard beyond. Only the sheen of the glass that covered the holy images hanging in dark rows from the whitewashed walls, could be seen. The room, though large, looked smaller on account of the low ceiling, with the great beams supporting it, and the amount of furniture which filled the whole place, leaving only a little free space about the big penthouse fireplace that stood close to the passage wall.
Boryna took off his boots there, then entered a dim alcove, and closed the door behind him. He removed a shutter from a small pane of glass, and the sundown at once flooded the closet with bloodred light.
It was a small lumber-room, crowded with household articles. Poles were fixed across it, from which hung many a striped cloth and sukmana; there were piles of grey spinning-yarn, and fleeces rolled into dingy bales, and sacks of feathers. He took a white sukmana and a scarlet girdle, and then for a long time fumbled in certain tubs full of grain; also in a corner, underneath a heap of odds and ends—leather and iron fumbled together. But, hearing Hanka in the next room, he quickly replaced the shutter, and again started groping in the tubs of corn.
His supper, an enormous pot of cabbage stewed with fat bacon, was now smoking on a bench just beneath the window. The odour of that mingled in the air with the smell of scrambled eggs in a big dish close by.
“Where did Vitek take the cattle this morning?” he asked, cutting off a mighty piece from a loaf of bread as large as the largest sieve.
“To the manor copse; and the forester drove them out.”
“The carrion! It is they who have killed Red-and-White!”
“Yes, she was so tired and overheated with running that something inside her got inflamed.”
“Those beggarly dogs! We have a right to graze our cattle there. It is down in black and white, in letters as large as an ox: yet they always drive us away, and say we have no right there.”
“They have done the same to others, too. They have beaten up Valek’s boy, too, most sorely.”
“Ah! I shall go to court, or else to the Commissioner. She was worth three hundred zloty, if she was worth a grosz!”
“Surely, surely,” assented Hanka, greatly relieved to see her father less angry with her.
“Tell Antek that as soon as they have brought the potatoes in, they must see to the cow—skin her and cut her up. I shall lend a hand when I get home from the Voyt’s. Hang the quarters from the rafters, out of the reach of dogs and vermin.”
Having finished his meal, he got up to dress for the visit, but felt so heavy and drowsy that he flung himself on the bed, just as he was, for just forty winks of sleep.
Hanka cleared the things away, going to the window every now and then to peep at Antek, who was taking his supper under the porch in front of the house. He sat at a civil distance from the platter, taking spoonful after spoonful with a hard but leisurely scrape against the sides of the vessel. At times he would cast a glance over the pond, whose waters gleamed with moving circles of purple and gold, iridescent in the sunset. Amongst these, like white clouds round a rainbow, swam a flock of geese, gabbling and spurting streams of bloodred jewels from their beaks.
The village was seething with life and crowds of people. On the road at either side of the pond, the dust flew and carts rattled; and lowing cattle stood knee-deep in the pond, drinking at leisure and lifting their ponderous heads, while from their jaws streams of water trickled down like strings of opals. Meanwhile, on the farther side, washerwomen were at work, and the bats they wielded clattered loudly on the linen they were beating.
“Antek, please split the firewood for me; I cannot manage it by myself,” said his wife timorously, for the man thought nothing of treating her to an oath—nay, even to a blow—on the slightest pretext.
He did not so much as reply, feigning not to have heard her. She dared not repeat her request, but went to hack off such splinters of firewood as she could, while he, moody and spent with a long day’s hard work, sat looking over to the other side of the pond, where a large cottage shone with whitewashed walls and windowpanes that reflected the sunset glow. A low stone fence, over which some clusters of dahlias nodded their heads, standing out vividly on the white background of cottage wall, ran round the garden; and in front of the house a tall figure was seen to pass from beneath the orchard trees, disappearing in the passage before it could be recognized.
From the porch where he sat, Antek heard his father’s snores and growled fiercely. “The Master sleeps; and you, toil on, labourer, toil on!”
He went out into the yard and eyed the cow again.
“She was father’s cow, but it is also a loss for us,” he remarked to his wife, who had left off hacking wood and gone to the cart which Kuba had now driven home.
“The pits are not yet ready for the potatoes; we must dump them upon the threshing-floor.”
“But father said you were to flay the cow and quarter it on the threshing-floor, with Kuba to help you.”
“There will be room enough for both cow and potatoes,” muttered Kuba, throwing the barn door wide open.
“I,” said Antek, “am no slaughterhouse workman, that I should flay carcasses!”
No more was said; the potatoes rattled noisily on the barn-floor.
The sun was down, but the dark blood and dead gold of the afterglow were still mistily reflected in the pond; and the quiet waters just trembled, shimmering ruddily with a drowsy murmur.
Presently the village was lost in shadows and plunged in the deep stillness of an autumnal night. The huts seemed smaller, as though sunk into the ground or melted into the trees that hung dreamily above them, or made one with the grey fences surrounding them. Antek and Kuba were carrying the potatoes. Hanka and Yuzka, busy with their household duties, were driving the geese home or feeding the swine that came grunting for food into the passage. Then the cows wanted milking. Vitek had just come home with them from the pasture-lands, and had put a little hay on the racks before them, that they might remain quiet while being milked.
Yuzka had just begun with the first cow, when Vitek asked her in a low trembling voice: “Yuzka, is master very angry?”
“Oh, Lord! that he is! He means to give you a thrashing!” she answered, turning her face to the light and putting out her hand, for the cow, tormented by flies, was whisking her tail, which struck the girl.
“But was it my fault if the forester drove us out? He would have given me a beating, too, but I got away. And she lay down and lowed and moaned, so I came back with her.”
He said no more, but she heard him sniffling and weeping quietly.
“Vitek! you are crying like a calf. Don’t! Is it the first time father has thrashed you?”
“No, indeed, but I can’t bear being thrashed; I am always afraid.”
“How silly! A great husky fellow, and afraid? But I’ll explain it all to Father.”
“Will you really, Yuzka?” he exclaimed joyfully.
“I will, Vitek; only fear no more!”
“If you will—then here’s a bird for you,” he whispered, much pleased, and took a marvellous toy out of his bosom. “Just look how it moves, all by itself!”
He placed it on the threshold and wound it up. The bird, lifting up its long legs and shaking its head, began to walk.
“Oh Lord! it’s a stork! and it moves as if alive!” she cried out in wonder and, setting her milk pail aside, crouched down and gazed on in rapture.
“Oh, how clever you are to have made it! and it moves by itself, does it?”
“By itself, Yuzka; only I wind it up with this wooden peg. And see! it is strutting about like a gentleman after dinner!” He turned it about. The bird, lifting up its long legs, with comical gravity, strutted on, moving its neck back and forth.
They both started to laugh, heartily amused by these movements; and from time to time Yuzka glanced admiringly at the boy.
Suddenly Boryna raised his voice, calling to Yuzka from outside the cabin.
“Here I am,” she answered.
“Come to me.”
“I can’t; I’m milking.”
“Well,” he said, “I am off to the Voyt,” and added, peeping into the dark shed: “That, that there bastard, isn’t he here?”
“Oh, Vitek do you mean? He is gone with Antek,” she replied hastily and with uneasiness, for Vitek, terrified, had come to crouch behind her.
“He has run off! … A rank beast he is … to let such a cow be lost!” he snarled, returning to the hut to put on his new white sukmana, and a high-crowned black hat. Then, buckling on a scarlet girdle, he set off in the direction of the mill.
“So much work still to do!” he said to himself as he walked on; “all the winter’s firewood to be brought in, some fields not yet sown, and the cabbages still out of doors! The potato-fields, too, must be ploughed; and so must the oat-fields. My God! a man’s work is never done; he is like an ox under the yoke. And that law business, besides! … A bad one she is, truly: I slept with her indeed! … May her tongue rot away, the vile creature!” He spat venomously, filled his pipe, and with some difficulty kindled a damp match by striking it on his trouser-leg.
Then he jogged along slowly, still brooding over his troubles and the death of the cow.
Now he was as lonely as a signpost. There was no one he could complain or tell things to. … He had to think of everything, and make up his mind, and care for everything all by himself—a dog’s life! … Never could he speak to anyone, nor get any advice or assistance … and the result was, loss upon loss!
The hamlet was now getting dark. Through the wide-open doors and windows (for the evening was warm) there came from the glowing hearths streaks of light, and the odour of cooked potatoes, and porridge with driblets of fried bacon. Many were supping in the passages, or even outside the cabins, and talking merrily to the clatter of spoons.
Boryna’s pace slackened; he was exhausted with the excitement he had gone through, and the thought of the wife he had buried that spring recurred to him and made him gulp down a sob.
“Oh, no! if she—how well I recollect her tonight!—if she had been here, Red-and-White would still be alive. Yes, she was a housewife, indeed, a rare housewife. It’s true, she had a sharp tongue, and never a good word for anyone: but she was a good wife and manager, for all that.” And then he breathed a prayer for her soul, very sore at heart in the remembrance of times gone by.
When he used to come home, all tired and weary, she would give him the best of everything; and time and again would she hand him, on the sly, savoury bits of sausage that she had secreted for him from the children. And, somehow, they throve very well then. Calves and goslings and suckling pigs multiplied; on fair days, there was always plenty to take to town; always cash at hand, and money put by for a rainy day.
And now?
Antek was continually pulling his own way, as was his son-in-law, the blacksmith—always trying to get something out of him. Yuzka?—A frail child, with bran instead of brains in her head; and no wonder, for she was still under ten. And Hanka? She fluttered about like a moth, was forever ailing, and did nothing but whine like a dog.
So everything was going to rack and ruin. Red-and-White had to be killed that day, a pig died at harvest-time; while the crows had carried off so many goslings that but half of them remained. Such losses! Such disasters! All he had was being frittered away, running out like water through a sieve!
“But I won’t give in!” he almost cried aloud: “as long as I can move these limbs of mine, not one acre shall be given up to anyone!”
“Praised be Jesus Christ!” someone greeted him as he passed.
“World without end!” was his instinctive reply as he turned off from the road into a long-fenced lane at the end of which, some distance back from the highway, stood the Voyt’s cottage.
The windows shone brightly. The dogs started to bark, as Boryna walked straight into the best room.
“Is the Voyt at home?” he asked of a stout woman kneeling close to a cradle and suckling a baby.
“No, but he will be presently. Sit down, Matthias; there’s someone else waiting for him, besides.” And the woman threw her chin forward in the direction of a beggar sitting by the fire—the blind old man we have met before, led by a dog. The chips that were burning on the hearth threw a hard reddish light on his large shaven face, his bald crown, and his wide-open eyes, drawn over with a white film and motionless under grey brows.
“Whence has the Lord led you hither?” asked Boryna, seating himself on the opposite side of the fire.
“From up and down the world, good man; and how were it otherwise with me?” was the answer given in a drawling, plaintive voice, while its owner, who listened attentively to each sound, pulled out a snuffbox.
“Pray take a pinch, good man.”
Matthias complied, and such a large pinch did he take that he sneezed three times and the water came to his eyes.
“Awfully strong stuff,” he said, and wiped the tears away with his elbow.
“Petersburg snuff, very good for the eyes. May it be so—for yours!”
“Come round to my cabin tomorrow, will you? I have killed a cow.”
“God reward you. Boryna, I believe?”
“Ah! you are good at guessing.”
“Knew you by your voice and speech.”
“Well, coming from up and down the world, what news have you?”
“Ah! what indeed? Some news is good, some bad, and some indifferent. The way of the world. They all complain and lament when it comes to giving a beggar something; and yet they have always money enough for vodka.”
“You speak truly; it is just as you say.”
“Ho, ho! I have been a wayfarer on this God’s earth long enough to know a thing or two.”
“What,” the Voyt’s wife then asked of him, “what has become of the foundling who came with you last year?”
“Ah! the vile creature! he ran away, filching a pretty good sum out of my wallet. Some good people had given me a little money, and I was taking it to Our Lady of Czestochowa to have mass said, when the wretch stole it and made off. … Be quiet, Burek! It’s the Voyt, I imagine.” And at a pull on the string that held it, the dog ceased barking.
He was right. The Voyt came in and, standing on the threshold, threw his whip into a corner and shouted:
“Wife! Supper! I’m starved. How are you, Matthias? And you, old man, what do you need?”
“I have come to ask about the affair I am to appear in tomorrow.”
“I can wait your pleasure, sir. Put me in the passage; it shall be well with me; or if, because I am old, you set me by the fire, there I shall sit. Give me to eat of your potatoes or a morsel of bread, and I shall pray for you just as much as if you gave me a kopek or more.”
“Sit down. You may sup here and spend the night, too, if you will.”
And the Voyt sat down to a steaming dish of newly-mashed potatoes, made savoury with abundant driblets of fried bacon; a platter of sour milk standing close by.
“Take a seat, Matthias, and share what we have,” said the Voyt’s wife cordially as she laid a third spoon on the table.
“No, thanks. When I got home from the forest I ate a generous supper.”
“Take a spoonful at least; the evenings are getting long.”
“ ‘Plenty of prayers, plenty of food,
Never does harm, always does good,’ ”
the beggar put in sententiously.
Boryna stood upon ceremony for a time, but at last the smell of the bacon in his nostrils got the better of him. So he sat down and began to eat, but slowly, daintily, and with great decorum.
The blind man’s dog now began to move about uneasily and to whine impatiently for food.
“Be quiet, Burek! The farmer folk are at supper now. You will get your share, don’t fear.” So spoke the blind man soothingly as he was warming his hands at the fire and inhaling the savoury odour.
When the first pangs of hunger had been appeased, the Voyt, turning to Matthias, said: “Eva has, it appears, lodged a complaint against you.”
“She! Oh, well, I declare! Not paid her, indeed? As there is a God, I have—aye, and beyond what she deserved. Yes, and when she had that baby I willingly sent the priest a sack of oats for her at the christening!”
“But she says it was you who—”
“Oh, but that’s preposterous! What, is she mad? Is she crazy?”
“Oho! Old as you are, you are still an able craftsman!” And the Voyt and his wife burst out laughing.
“To be old,” put in the blind man, “is to know; to know is to be able.”
“But she lies like a gipsy! I never touched her, the wench! She was homeless; an outcast who begged and prayed us to take her in—just for the food and a corner to sleep in, because winter was near. I was loath to do it, but my wife that’s dead thought we had better. She could do things in the house. Why should we hire a servant when one was ready at hand? I did not like this—another mouth to feed, and in winter, too, when there’s always less to be done. But my wife said: ‘Don’t worry; she knows how to weave cloth and canvas. I’ll see to it that she is not idle, and there will always be some work or other for her.’ Well, she stayed on with us and got strong; and presently she was with child. But the question is, who was the man?”
“You, according to her.”
“I’ll kill her for saying so! The miserable liar!”
“Anyway, you will have to appear in court.”
“I shall. God reward you for telling me this. I thought it was about her wages: but I have witnesses to prove that I have paid her. A plague on her! A scold, and a beggar into the bargain!—Dear me! one trouble after another! I shall never be able to stand all this. And the cow I have had to kill! And the fieldwork not yet done! And here I am, all alone, with no one in the world to lend a hand!”
“ ‘Who for a wife that’s gone must weep is like a wolf-encompassed sheep,’ ” the old man observed.
“I heard about the cow; they told me in the village.”
“As to that, I have a claim against the manor. The forester, I understand, drove the cows away. She was the best of all I have—worth three hundred zloty—was with calf—ran so fast and got so blown that I had to kill her. No, I shall not let that pass: I’ll bring suit.”
The Voyt, however, who was friendly to the manor, strove to calm Boryna: anger was always a bad counsellor, and he should beware of doing anything rash. Then, to change the subject, he said with a wink at his wife:
“Man, you ought to marry, so as to get someone who would take care of the house.”
“I say, is this a joke? Why, last Assumption Day I rounded my fifty-eighth year. What are you dreaming of? And she, too, scarcely cold in her grave yet!”
“You just take a wife, one fit for your age, and all will be well with you again, Matthias,” said the Voyt’s wife, preparing to clear the table.
“ ‘For, sure, a good and kindly wife is the crown of her husband’s life,’ ” added the blind man, groping for the dish which the woman had set before him.
Boryna sat wondering why the thought had not occurred to him before. Certainly some woman or other was to be found, and anyone would be better than none.
“Some,” continued the old man as he ate, “are silly and speechless, some are quarrelsome, some pull the lads’ hair, and others are always dancing or running after music in taverns; but, anyhow, a man is better off with one than without.”
“But what would people think of it?” objected Boryna.
“Think? Will they give you back your cow or help you in anything, whatever they think?” the Voyt’s wife retorted with much heat.
“Or warm your bed for you?” said the Voyt with a laugh. “There are so many lasses here that, when a man goes about the huts, he is as hot as coal in a fire.”
“Ah! the reprobate! look at him! Whom is he hankering after now?”
“Sophie, Gregory’s daughter, might do; a slim handsome girl and a good dowry, too.”
“What does Matthias, the richest farmer here, want with a dowry?”
“ ‘Of goods and lands and such, who ever has too much?’ ” queried the blind man.
“No,” the Voyt decided, “Gregory’s girl is not for him—too young, too immature.”
“Then Andrew’s daughter, Catharine,” was the next proposal made by the Voyt’s wife.
“Already taken. Roch’s son, Adam, sent proposers to her yesterday.”
“Well, there is Veronka, Stach’s daughter.”
“A babbler, a gadabout, and with one hip deformed.”
“But what about Thomas’s widow? She would do very well, I fancy.”
“Three children, four acres, two heads of cattle, and an old sheepskin that poor Tom left her.”
“Perhaps Ulisia, Adalbert’s daughter, who lives by the church?”
“She might do for a single young man. The boy she has is now big enough to tend cattle. But Matthias has his own cowherd, and needs none.”
“There are others yet to be married; only I seek someone suitable.”
“But, wife, you have overlooked one who would be just the girl for him.”
“Who is that?”
“Why, Yagna, daughter of Dominik.”
“To be sure; she had escaped my memory.”
“A bouncing wench and tall; no fence but would break under her weight.”
“Yagna!” repeated Boryna, who had been silently listening to this roll-call; “but they say she runs after men.”
“Who has seen her? who knows? Gossips will gossip for gossiping’s sake and for envy,” cried the Voyt’s wife, hot in her defence.
“Oh, I did not say she was that way, but it’s common talk. Well, now, I must be off.” He adjusted his girdle, put a live coal to his pipe, and pulled at it twice or three times.
“And for what hour is the summons?”
“For nine o’clock; so it stands in black and white in the District Court. You will have to rise early, if you are going there on foot.”
“I shall take the filly and drive slowly. God be with you, and thanks for your good cheer and neighbourly advice.”
“May God go with you, too. And think over what we have been telling you. Say but the word, and I will go to the old dame with vodka for you; and we shall have a wedding before Yuletide is out.”
Boryna answered not a word, but gave them a parting glance that might mean anything.
“When old with young to wedlock fly, the devil is glad, for he profits thereby,” was the blind beggar’s reflection as he finished the mashed potatoes. Boryna walked homeward with slow steps, seriously meditating on the advice given him. At the Voyt’s he had carefully kept from letting it be known by any sign whatever that the idea was extremely to his liking. How could he? He was not a young whippersnapper, who would at the bare mention of marriage be ready to dance and shout for joy, but a grave, elderly farmer.
Night had already enshrouded the earth. The stars glistened in the sky’s sombre depths like silver dewdrops, and all was still, save for an occasional bark of a dog or two. Faintly and far between, a few lights twinkled athwart the orchard trees, and now and then a breath of damp air blew up from the meadows, making the boughs wave slightly and their leaves whisper soft sounds.
Boryna was making for home by another way—direct and leading down over the bridge, under which the waters of the pond, rolling towards the mill, with a hollow bubbling sound, poured into the stream. He then crossed to the other side, skirting the pond, where the waters shone darkly and the trees along its shores cast gloomy shadows over its surface, framing it in ebony; though near the centre, where the shadows were lighter, the twinkling stars were reflected as in a mirror of steel.
Matthias himself could not have said why he did not now go straight home, instead of choosing a roundabout way. Did he want to pass in front of Yagna’s house? Possibly he meant only to collect his thoughts and revolve matters within his head.
“Really, it would not be a bad thing. And what they say of her is all very true. Yes, she is a strapping girl!”
A shiver ran through him. It was damp and cold near and about the pond and he came straight from the Voyt’s cosy fireside.
“Without a woman at home, I must either be ruined or make over the farm to my children,” he thought, and then: “And she’s a lusty wench, and as pretty as a picture. My best cow gone today! and who knows what else will go tomorrow? Perhaps I ought to look out for a second wife; my first one has left things to wear a plenty. But Dominik’s old widow … she is a wicked creature!—Three of them, and fifteen acres: about five for Yagna, besides her share of the cabin and the livestock. Five acres of fields—the very ones beyond my own potato-patch. Together with mine, they will make close to thirty-five acres. A nice bit of land!”
He rubbed his hands and set his girdle straight. “The miller would be the only man richer than I. Next year, I would manure and till the whole of my lands for wheat. I would have to purchase another horse. And a cow too, in place of poor Red-and-White.—Oh, but then she would bring a cow of her own. …”
So he went on musing, calculating, and dreaming farmers’ dreams, till the weight of his thoughts became, he felt, too big for his mind. For he was marshalling every detail, like the intelligent peasant that he was, and considering whether he had not possibly overlooked anything of importance.
“They would raise a hue over it, the rascals!” he said to himself, thinking of his children. But at the thought there rushed over him a wave of indomitable self-confidence, which immediately filled his soul and confirmed him in his purpose, wavering and undecided as he had been hitherto.
“The land is my own. Let anyone else dare claim my property! If they don’t like it, they may. …” Here he broke off, for he was then standing in front of the cabin where Yagna dwelt.
The lamps were not yet out, and a long streak of brightness from the open window, passing through the dahlia bushes and the hedge, illumined the road. Boryna, standing in the shadow, glanced into the room.
A big fire was evidently burning on the hearth, for the crackling of pinewood could be heard; and the great room, though dusky in the corners, was elsewhere filled with a reddish light. The old dame, crouching close to the fireplace, was reading something aloud; and Yagna, dressed only in her smock, her face turned to the window and her sleeves tucked up to the shoulders, was engaged in plucking a live goose.
“A comely wench!” he thought.
She would raise her head now and then, listen to the reading, and heave a deep sigh. Then she would again set to plucking the goose, but so roughly that the bird would gabble audibly with pain, and, escaping from her hands, flap about the room till the feathers were flying everywhere. But she would soon quiet it and hold it fast between her knees, the bird uttering only a few faint cries, to which other cries responded from the passage and the yard.
“A handsome girl, she,” he mused and walked away at a rapid pace, for the blood had gone to his head. Raising his hand to his brow, he drew tightened his girdle as he walked.
He was already within his own gates, and had passed the fence, when he looked round at Yagna’s dwelling, which stood opposite on the other side of the water. Someone was just then going out, for a quick flash from the opening door lit up the pond. Heavy footsteps were heard tramping along, and the splash of a bucket of water was audible; then at last, amid the darkness and the mists which had come up from the meadows, a voice sang to a slow tune:
“Betwixt us rolls the flood, O grief!
How can I send a kiss from here?
I’ll float it down upon a leaf
And waft my love to thee, my dear.”
He listened long, but the voice was heard no more; and after a while all the lights were put out.
The moon, now in her full, had risen above the forest-trees, silvering their tops, throwing its radiance through their boughs and upon the pond, and peeping down into the cottage windows. The dogs no longer barked. An unfathomable stillness had settled over the village and over all nature.
Boryna made the round of the yard, took a look at the horses that snorted as they munched their provender, and put his head into the cow-byre, the doors of which stood open because of the heat. The cows were lying and chewing the cud with the low murmurs peculiar to cattle.
He closed the granary doors and, taking off his hat, entered his cabin and said his evening prayers half aloud. All were sleeping. He undressed quietly and went at once to bed.
He could not sleep, however. The coverlet was so hot that he drew it from over his feet. His head, too, was teeming with many a troublesome and worrisome thought. Besides, he was not at his best physically.
“Sour milk,” he muttered, “as I always say, is not good to take of an evening.”
And then he thought about his children and pondered over what had been said of Yagna, till all this became muddled and confused in his brain. He knew not what to do, and was on the point (as once had been his wont) of calling for advice to the sleeper in the other bed:
“Mary! Am I to marry or not?”
But he remembered in time that his Mary had been lying in the churchyard ever since the spring. Yuzka was there, asleep and breathing heavily. And he was a poor desolate man, with no one on earth to advise him. So he gave a deep sigh, crossed himself, and said a few Ave Marias for the soul of his departed and for the souls of all the faithful in purgatory.