V
“Pete, bring firewood in!” Hanka called out from the cabin-door. She was covered with flour and very untidy with bread-making.
A big fire roared in the baking-oven. She raked the coals to spread them out, and hastened to roll the dough and shape it into loaves, which she carried out into the passage upon a board that she set in the sunshine, for them to rise more quickly. She bustled about in a great hurry, for the dough was almost overbrimming the big kneading-trough, covered with bedding for warmth.
“Yuzka! more wood on the fire; one end of the oven is almost black!”
But no Yuzka was at hand, and Pete did not hasten to obey. He was loading dung on a cart, heaping and pressing it down, keeping up meanwhile a conversation with the blind dziad, who was occupied in making ropes of straw outside the barn.
The afternoon sun was so hot that the walls exuded liquid resin, and the wind blew like the blast from an oven, making every movement wearisome. The flies, too, hummed in myriads over the cart, and the horses, assailed, and maddened by them, came near breaking their halters, and perhaps their legs, in pulling and straining to avoid their bites.
The yard was so flooded with the heat, together with the pungent effluvium of the dung, that even the birds in the orchard close by could sing no longer; the hens had lain down half dead under the hedge, and the pigs wallowed squealing in the mud by the well. All at once the dziad fell a-sneezing furiously: a whiff yet more noisomely offensive had reached him from the cow-byre.
“God bless you, dziad!”
“That’s no incense-smoke, I wot; and used though I am to the smell, it is stronger than snuff in my nostrils.”
“But use makes all things pleasant.”
“Fool! don’t you think I ever smell aught but dung?”
“I was but repeating what my old grandsire told me when my drill-sergeant gave me slaps in the face.”
“Ha, ha, ha!—Did you get used to that, pray?”
“I soon had enough of such drilling, and meeting the ruffian one day in a quiet corner alone, I made his face swell like a pumpkin … and he never slapped mine any more!”
“Did you serve long?”
“The whole of my five years! I could not purchase my discharge; so I had to—shoulder arms.—At first, ere I knew a thing or two, anyone who would could ill-treat me, and I had to suffer want … till my comrades taught me to snap up anything I needed … or get some maidservant to give it me, whom I promised to marry. And what nicknames those Russian soldiers gave me! and how they laughed at my speech and at my manner of prayer!”
“Did they dare laugh at that, the plague-spotted heathen?”
“Aye, till I punched their ribs for them, one after another, and made them leave off!”
“You must be a strong fighter!”
“Not especially,” he answered with a boastful smile; “but I could drub any three of them at a time!”
“Have you seen warfare?”
“Of course. Against the Turks. We thrashed them soundly, we did!”
“Pete!” Hanka called out to him; “where’s the wood?”
“Where it was,” he muttered inaudibly.
“Your mistress is calling you,” the dziad said.
“Let her call! What, am I to wash up the pots for her?”
“Are you deaf?” she shouted, running out of the house towards him.
“I shall not feed the fire; ’tis no duty of mine!” he shouted back.
She began thereupon to rail at him to the best of her ability.
He, on his side, railed back at her, nothing loath, and when she presently gave him a harder home-thrust, he planted his pitchfork in the dunk and cried angrily:
“Ye have not to do with Yagna now: your screaming will not scare me away.”
“But what I will do, you shall see … and remember!”
She went on scolding the insolent fellow, while she carried the loaves of dough into the porch, or flung the logs into the oven, or looked after the children. But the labour and the intense heat were wearing her out terribly; for it was stiflingly hot within and in the passage on account of the fire in the oven. The flies, too, that swarmed on every wall, were so insupportable that she almost wept with rage as she beat them off with a branch, all streaming with perspiration, exasperated, and ever more impatient and slower at her work.
She was just patting the last loaf into shape for the oven, when Pete prepared to drive out of the yard.
“Wait a moment and take your afternoon meal!”
“Whoa!—Yes, I may as well: my stomach is empty enough after dinner.”
“Had you too little to eat?”
“The food is so wretched, it goes through the bowels as through a sieve.”
“There’s insolence for you! What, you must have meat? And am I munching sausages in corners, say? No other farmers can at this season give their men what you get. Look at the komorniki, how they feed!”
She set down in the porch a pot of sour milk and a loaf, and he began to cram himself gluttonously, now and again flinging a morsel of bread to the stork, that had hurried in from the orchard, and stood now, like a dog, watching him eat.
“Poor stuff.—As thin as buttermilk,” he grumbled, when pretty well filled.
“Naught less than cream would do for you, belike? Wait till you get some!”
When he could eat no more and had taken the reins to start, she said to him sarcastically: “Take service with Yagna; she will fatten you!”
“Surely. When she ruled here, no one starved in the hut!” And he gave the horse a stroke with the whip, and the cart a push with his shoulder, to set it in motion.
He had wounded her to the quick, but was off before she could find words to answer him.
The swallows were twittering under the thatch, and a flock of pigeons alighted cooing in the porch. She drove them away; and then, hearing a grunt, rushed out, fearing her pigs were at the onion-bed. Fortunately, it was but the neighbour’s sow, rooting beneath the fence.
“Just put your snout inside our enclosure, and I shall dispose of you in a fine way!”
But no sooner was she returning to work than the stork hopped on to the porch, lurked about there for a moment, cocked first his right eye at the loaves, then his left … and set to dig into the dough, swallowing it by large morsels!
Uttering a loud cry, she rushed at him.
He fled away with wide-open beak, making frantic efforts to get the dough down; but when she caught up with him to give him a beating, he flew up and alighted on the top of the barn, where he remained for a long time, rapping out his klek-klek and wiping the dough from his beak on the thatch.
“O you thief! let me but catch you, and I’ll shatter you to bits!” she threatened, filling up the hollows the stork’s beak had made.
Yuzka came in then, and all Hanka’s anger was poured forth on her.
“Where have you been, you gadabout?—Always running hither and thither, like a cat with a bladder tied to its tail!—I’ll tell Antek what a worker you are!—But get the embers out now, and quickly!”
“I was only at the Ploshkas’ with their Kate. All are afield, and the poor girl has no one to fetch her water even!”
“What ails her, then?”
“The smallpox, I think; she is flushed and burning hot.”
“And if you have caught it from her, I will take you off to the hospital.”
“Is it likely? I have sat by a sickbed already, nor ever got any hurt. Have ye no mind how I tended you, when you were lying in?” And so she went on after her fashion, prattling away in her absurdly thoughtless fashion, driving the flies off meantime and preparing to take the embers out of the oven.
Hanka interrupted her as she worked: “Ah! you must take the food to the people in the field.”
“Instantly, instantly!—Shall I fry some eggs for Antek?”
“Do; but take heed not to put in too much fat!”
“Oh, do ye grudge it him?”
“How could I? But it might not agree with him.”
Yuzka loved a run; so she did her work quick, and was off, before Hanka had closed the oven, with three vessels of sour milk, and bread done up in her apron.
Hanka cried to her from the window: “See whether the linen spread to bleach is dry, and wet it on your return: it is sure to be dry before sunset.”
But the little chit was over the stile by then; the song she was singing floated back, and her hemp-coloured hair was seen bobbing along through the rye.
On the arable land, by the forest, the komorniki were scattering the dung brought previously by Pete, while Antek was ploughing it in. The stiff clay soil, though it had been harrowed not long ago, was hard as stone and baked in the sun; the horses had to pull with such mighty efforts as to strain their harness to breaking-point.
Antek, seemingly glued to his plough-handles, drove his way on with dogged pertinacity, his mind concentrated on his work: now and then clacking the whip on the horses’ hind quarters, but mostly encouraging them with a smack of his lips; for the work was really very wearisome. With a firm steady hand he directed the plough, cutting furrow after furrow, in long straight strips, such as it is the custom to make for wheat-land.
Crows hopped along by the furrows, picking up earthworms; and the bay colt, that had been out to graze on the field pathway, again and again pressed to its mother’s side, eager to suck her milk.
“Milk at its age! What can have come over the greedy thing!” Antek growled, striking at its legs with his whip. It ran off, tail in the air, while he went on ploughing patiently, only at times breaking the silence with a word or two to the women. He was cross and tired out, and, when Pete arrived, gave vent to his feelings.
“These women,” he cried, “have been fain to stop working because of you; and you come on now slow as a ragpicker!—Wherefore have ye stopped so long at the edge of the forest? I saw you!”
“The ‘wherefore’ is there still; ye can see it; it will wait.”
“A curse on your saucy tongue!—Vee-o, old fellow, Vee-o!”
But now the horses went slower, foam-flecked and worn out. He himself, stripped to his shirt and drawers, was perspiring profusely, and his hands too were feeling the stress of the work. So that, on perceiving Yuzka, he cried out very heartily:
“Good now, ’twas high time ye came; we are all famishing!”
He finished the furrow up to the pinewood, took the horses from the plough and turned them loose to graze on the verdant road by the forest: then, flinging himself down at the border of the wood, ate like a ravenous wolf, Yuzka all the time chattering away until he had enough of it.
“Let me be.—I care naught for your tittle-tattle,” he said peevishly, and she, answering as peevishly back, ran off to pluck berries in the wood.
The pine-forest was quiet, dried up, aromatically scented, and, as it were, dying in the sun’s fierce outpour. Only a very little verdure was to be seen, and out of its depths there blew a breeze laden with resinous fragrance, and carrying on its wings the warbling of birds.
Antek, stretched out on the grass, lit a cigarette and, looking into the distance, saw, as through a thickening fog, the Squire on horseback, leaping across the Podlesie fields; and some men with him, bearing poles for land-measuring.
Huge pines, with trunks as of red copper, rose above him, flinging down wavy and slumberous shadows. He would presently have fallen fast asleep, had it not been for the quick clatter of a wagon—the organist’s servant, carting trunks to the sawmill—and then the sound of the familiar greeting: “Praised be Jesus Christ!”
One by one, the komorniki were coming home from the forest, each with a load of firewood on her shoulders. At the very end of the file, Yagustynka dragged herself along, bowed almost to the ground beneath her burden.
“Rest ye here.—Why, your eyes are almost starting from their sockets.”
She seated herself opposite him, leaning her load against a tree, and scarce able to breathe.
“Such labour is not for you,” he told her with compassion.
“Yes: I feel quite crushed now,” she replied.
“Lay those heaps closer, closer!” he cried to his farm-servant Pete, and went on: “Why does not someone take your place?”
She answered only with a surly look, and turned away her red eyes full of anguish.
“Ye are now so changed!—Ye give way so. … Quite another woman.”
“ ‘Even a flint will break under the hammer,’ ” she moaned, hanging her head. “And: ‘Suffering consumes man faster than rust eats iron.’ ”
“The present season is hard even for well-to-do farmers.”
“Hard! Let none talk of times being hard, so long as he has wild marjoram to eat, cooked with bran.”
“Good heavens! come round this evening: we shall find two or three bushels of potatoes for you still. When harvest comes, ye can work the price out.”
She broke down in a fit of crying, and could hardly speak to thank him.
“Perchance, too,” he added kindly, “Hanka may have something else for you besides.”
“Had it not been for her, we should have died of starvation!” she declared, sobbing. “Yes, I’ll work for you whenever you may want me. May God reward you! I am not speaking for myself; I am accustomed to hunger. But my dear little mites are crying out: ‘Grandam, give us to eat!’—and there is naught for them! I tell you: to feed them, I would cut off my own arms, or steal things from the altar, and sell them to the Jew.”
“Then do ye live once more with your children?”
“Am I not their mother? Can I leave them in such misery? Every misfortune seems to have fallen on them this year. Their cow has died; all their potatoes have rotted (they even had to buy seed-potatoes); the gale blew their barn down; and, to crown all, my daughter-in-law has been ailing ever since her last child was born. They are all left to God’s mercy.”
“Aye, but why? Because your Voytek always reeks of brandy and only cares for the tavern.”
“If at times he has taken too much, ’twas misery drove him that way,” she said, eager in defence of her son. “Never, while he had work to do, did he even look in at the Jew’s. But to a poor man, every glass is reckoned as a crime.—Alas! the Lord has dealt with them bitterly, very bitterly.—Is it right He should thus dog the steps of a poor foolish lout? And for what? What harm has he done?” she muttered, raising to Heaven her eyes, full of indignant challenge.
“But what! have ye not laid your curse on them?” Antek said, with strong significance. “Often and often ye have!”
“Ah, was it possible that our Lord should ever have listened to my senseless outcries?” But she added, in a tone of secret uneasiness: “Even when a mother curses her children, her heart never really wishes them evil.—‘Wrath and woe make tongues go!’ Aye, indeed. …”
“Has your Voytek farmed out his meadow yet?”
“The miller offered a thousand zloty for it, but I would not allow it. What that wolf has once got in his grip, not the devil himself could wrest out of it!—And perhaps someone else might be found with the cash?”
“It is surely a lovely meadow—can be mown twice a year. Had I only ready money just now!” He sighed, licking his lips with strong desire.
“Matthias would have been glad to get it: it lies so close to Yagna’s land.”
The name uttered gave him a start. He paused, however, and then inquired, with an indifferent look, his eyes wandering over the countryside:
“How are they getting on at Dominikova’s?”
But she guessed what was in his mind, and smiled with thin lips, drawing closer:
“The place is a hell for them all! All there have funeral faces: they are chilled to the marrow with the gloom which fills it. They cry their eyes out, and live on, waiting upon God’s Providence. Yagna especially—”
And she set to weave him a story about Yagna’s sufferings and miseries and lonely life—adding all kinds of flattering things besides, to draw him out. But he remained mute, though such a raging desire for Yagna had sprung up within him that he was quivering all over.
Luckily Yuzka, coming back from the forest, made a diversion. She poured out into his hat the berries she had plucked, took up the empty vessels, and scampered away home. And Yagustynka, without waiting for any confidences, rose to go away, moaning with pain.
“Pete!” he ordered curtly. “Take her back with you in the cart!”
Once more he grasped the plough-handles and set patiently to cleave the baked and stubborn clay, bending forward like an ox under the yoke, and putting his whole soul into the work, but unable to stifle the desire that surged up.
The day seemed very long to him. Many a time he looked to see the sun’s height, and measure the length of the fields, of which much still remained to be ploughed. His trouble of mind increased, and he beat the horses, and cried furiously to the women to work faster. His agitation, too, was getting beyond bearing; and his brain swarmed so now with countless thoughts that his hands could no longer drive the plough steadily, and it would deflect against the stones. Hard by the forest, it went so deep under a root that the coulter was wrenched off.
To do any more work was out of the question. He took the plough away on a light sledge, to which he put one of the horses, and made for home.
The cabin was empty, and everything there untidy and soiled with flour: Hanka, in the orchard, quarrelled with a neighbour.
“The woman! She has always time enough for brawling!” he growled, on entering the farmyard. There he grew still more angry: the other plough, which he took out of the shed, was quite out of gear. He worked at it a long time, losing his patience as he heard the quarrel going on, and Hanka raising her voice to a scream.
“If ye pay for the damage done, I’ll give you back your sow: if not, I’ll bring an action! Pay for the linen she tore in spring on the bleaching-ground; pay for my potatoes she has eaten now! I have witnesses to prove what has been done.—Oh, a clever woman this is!—Thinks to fatten her sow at my expense, does she? But I will not give up my rights!”
So she went on, and the neighbour giving her as violent language in return, the quarrel was waxing venomous, both of them stretching out their fists over the hedge.
“Hanka!” shouted Antek, heaving the plough on to his shoulders.
She at once ran to him, out of breath, and ruffled like an angry hen.
“Why, what a din you do make! All the village can hear you.”
“I’m standing up for my rights!” she cried out. “What, shall I suffer another man’s swine to root in my garden? So much harm done—and am I to say no word?” But he stopped her short, with a sharp sentence.
“Dress yourself, and try to look like a creature of God.”
“What now? Must I dress up for work as for church?”
He eyed her with disdain, for she looked as though someone had swept the cabin floor with her. Then he walked away.
The smith was busy at work; his hammers were heard from a distance, loudly and tunefully clinking; and the forge, hot as hell, was uproarious with the tempestuous streams from the bellows that puffed in cadence.
Michael himself was working with his assistant, forging long bars of iron; and his face looked like a blackamoor’s, and he beat on the anvil, as it were, out of sheer spite against it, smiting unweariedly.
“And for whom are those thick axletrees?”
“For Ploshka’s wagon. He is to cart timber for the sawmill.”
Antek rolled a cigarette and sat down by the doorstep. The hammers went on with pertinacious fury, smiting rhythmically again and again on the red-hot iron, slowly changing its shape beneath their strokes, as they bent it to the will of those who wielded them; and the smithy vibrated.
“Would ye not like to cart timber as well?” asked Michael, thrusting the bar deep into the flame, and working the bellows.
“I suppose the miller would not be willing. I hear he is the organist’s partner, and hand in hand with the Jews.”
“But you have horses,” he said with bland friendliness; “horses and all that is needful. And your Pete does naught but lounge about your farmyard.—And they pay pretty well.”
“No doubt a little money before the harvest would be a good thing; but then, am I to go and beg the miller to do me a service?”
“No: arrange matters direct with the dealers.”
“Whom I do not know!—If you would speak for me. …”
“Since you ask me, I am willing—and shall go to them this very day.”
Antek went out hurriedly; for now the hammers were playing, and a deluge of sparks of fire flew on every side.
“I shall be back this instant, and am only going to look what kind of timber they are bringing in.”
At the sawmill, likewise, the workers were lively; the logs were being hewn into shape one after another; the saws rasped harshly through the great trunks, while the water, pouring out of the wheels into the river, boiled and bubbled and foamed, swirling along the narrow mill-tail banks. Rough pine-logs, with their boughs scarcely lopped off, thundered down out of the carts, till the earth shook; while half a dozen workmen were busy with their axes, squaring them for the mill; and others were carrying the sawn boards out into the sunshine. Matthew was foreman there, and Antek could see him busily engaged, both working himself and directing the work of the others.
They met with hearty good-fellowship.
“Why, what’s become of Bartek?” Antek asked, looking round him.
“He had enough of Lipka, and is gone from us.”
“Some folk must needs be always on the move!—Ye seem to have work for a long time in advance, with so much timber here!”
“For a year, perchance, or yet longer. If the Squire come to terms with all of us, he is going to cut down and sell the half of his woods.”
“Ah! I saw them measuring the land out again on the Podlesie farm.”
“Yes: someone comes to terms every day.—The silly sheep! They would not make an agreement one and all together, because they hoped the Squire would offer more. And now they make it apart and in secret from the others, each one striving to be first!”
“Some men are like donkeys, which, if you would have them go forward, you have to pull their tails. Yes, indeed, they are silly sheep.—And of course the Squire makes a good profit out of this state of things.”
“Have ye taken possession of your property as yet?”
“No, it is too soon after Father’s death, and we may not divide the land; but I have already overhauled the whole property carefully.”
A face just then appeared amongst the alders on the farther bank of the river. Antek fancied it might be Yagna. The thought made him restless, and though the talk continued, his eyes wandered a good deal towards the bank of the stream.
“Now,” he said presently, “I must go and bathe: the heat is unbearable”; and with that he went away downstream, making as if in search of a convenient place. But as soon as he was out of sight, he mended his pace to a run.
Yes, it was she herself, with a hoe on her shoulder, going out to work on her cabbage-plot.
He soon reached and greeted her.
She looked round cautiously and, recognizing him as he bent forward amongst the parted sedges, stopped short, alarmed, bewildered, and uncertain what to do.
“What! don’t you know me?” he whispered eagerly, trying at the same time, though unsuccessfully, to pass the river.
“Was it possible not to know you?” she answered low, looking apprehensively behind her towards the cabbage-plot, on which several women made red splashes afar.
“Where are you in hiding? I cannot find you anywhere.”
“Where? Your woman drove me from the cabin: I am staying with Mother.”
“Concerning that matter, I desire speech with you. Come, Yagna, and meet me by the churchyard this evening. I have something to say to you. Do come!” And he begged her very earnestly.
“Yes?—And what if someone should see me with you once more?—Of what has been I have enough already!” she answered. But he begged and entreated so hard that she felt her heart melting, and was sorry for the man.
“What new thing can you say? and wherefore do you call me?”
“Am I, Yagna, so altogether a stranger to you now?”
“No stranger; but yet not mine! I think no more of such things.”
“But come only, and you’ll not rue it!—Do you fear the burying-ground? Then come to the priest’s orchard. … Have you forgotten where, Yagna? Have you forgotten?”
Yagna averted her head, for her face was suffused with crimson.
“Talk not foolishly; you shame me!” She was exceedingly confused.
“Come—come—come! I shall be waiting till midnight!”
“Wait, then!” And she turned away and fled to the cabbage-field.
He gazed after her greedily, full of such craving, and burning with such fire in every vein, that he longed to pursue and seize her in the presence of all—and could barely hold back from doing so.
“ ’Tis naught—only the great heat has inflamed me mightily,” he thought, and undressed quickly to take a bath.
The cool water calmed him down; its chill brought him to his senses, and he began to reflect.
“How miserably weak I am, for a trifle to upset me so!”
He felt humiliated and looked round, fearing lest someone might have seen him with her; and then he carefully passed in review all he had heard said against Yagna.
“A pretty creature you are, indeed!” he thought, in contempt not unmingled with sorrow. But suddenly, as he stopped beneath a tree, a vision of her came before his eyes, in all her dazzling and marvellous beauty. And he cried:
“There’s not another like her in the whole wide world!”
This he said to himself with a groan, yearning terribly to see her but once again, to gather her in his arms, to press her to his breast, and take his full of those red lips of hers, and suck her sweet honey to the very last drop!
“Only, O Yagna! for this one last time! this once, this once only!” he cried aloud to her as if she had been present. For some time afterwards he rubbed his eyes, and gazed upon the trees around him, before he could muster sufficient strength to go back to the forge. Michael was alone, working at Antek’s plough.
“Will your cart,” he asked him, “be able to bear such a great weight of timber?”
“Let there be but the timber for it to bear!”
“I have promised: ’tis just as if you had it on your cart already.”
Antek set to ciphering on the door with a bit of chalk.
“I find,” he said with much pleasure, “that I may earn about three hundred zloty ere harvest-time.”
“It will,” the smith remarked casually, “come in handy for that affair of yours.”
Antek’s face clouded over at once, and his eyes looked gloomy.
“Say that nightmare of mine! When I but think of it, I feel all broken, and care no more even for my life.”
“That I can well understand; but not your having failed as yet to seek some means to preserve yourself.”
“But what can I do?”
“Something must be done. What, man! the calf gives its throat to the butcher: will you do so too?”
“None can butt through a stone wall with his head,” Antek returned, sighing bitterly.
Michael went on working with great energy; Antek sat plunged in disquieting and fearful thoughts, which made his face dark with changing expressions, till he started up and looked out in dismay. His brother-in-law let him suffer so for a considerable time, watching him with eyes full of cunning; but he finally said in a low voice:
“Casimir of Modlitsa found a way.”
“He that fled to ‘Hamerica’?”
“The same. A clever dog!—Aye, and a resolute one: who knew what he had to do, and did it!”
“Did they ever prove that he slew the gendarme?”
“He did not wait so long. No fool he, to submit to rot in prison!”
“He could flee: he was single.”
“A man saves himself as he can. See, I do not advise you in any wise: I only say what others have done. But Voytek Gayda of Volitsa came back from penal servitude only last Eastertide.—Ten years. Well, ’tis not a whole lifetime, and one can survive it.”
“Ten years! O Lord God!” Antek murmured, clutching at his hair.
“Yes; it was hard labour for that space of time.”
“I could bear anything but that! God! I was there but for a few months, and came near losing my wits.”
“Whereas ye could be beyond the seas in three weeks: ask Yankel.”
“But it is so horribly far! How can I go—throw up everything—leave home, children, land, my village, and flee so awfully far—and forever?”
He was absolutely panic-stricken.
“But yet so many have gone there of their own accord; and none of these ever dreamed of returning to this Paradise of ours.”
“And I cannot bear even to think of it!”
“True. But take a look at Voytek, and hear what he tells about his penal servitude: ye will find it still more unbearable to think of. Why, the man is not forty yet, but quite hoary, and bent, and tottering: he spits blood, and can hardly move, and all can see he is bound for the ‘priest’s byre’ soon.—But I need say no more: ye have your reason, and must decide.”
And for the time he was silent; having sown trouble in the man’s mind, he could safely leave it to grow up in time, and bring forth the harvest he expected. So, having repaired the plough, he said lightly:
“And now I am off to the dealers. Have your cart ready to carry the timber.—As for that other business, do not trouble. What is to be—is to be; and God is merciful.—I shall see you tomorrow evening.”
Antek, however, could not forget his words. He had swallowed the bait of friendship, and it stuck in his throat, just as a hook sticks in the poor fish that has taken it and chokes. What pangs he felt—what sufferings he had to bear!
“Ten years! Ten years! Oh, how can I ever bear ten years!” The very thought palsied and benumbed him.
Arriving at his home, he trundled the cart into the barn, to have it in readiness for the next morning; but feeling a deep sense of weariness come over him—of the utter inutility of all his efforts—he only called to Pete, who was watering the horses at the well.
“Grease the cart’s axletrees, and have it in readiness for tomorrow. Tomorrow you’ll have to bring timber from the forest to the sawmill here.”
Pete, who cared but little for such hard work, swore violently when he heard the order.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, and do as I tell you.—Hanka, give the horses three measures of oats for provender tomorrow, and you, Pete, get them fresh clover from the meadow: they must have plenty to eat.”
To Hanka’s questionings he gave only a mumbled answer, and presently went round to Matthew, with whom he was now on a very friendly footing.
The latter, who had but just come home from his work, was supping a dish of sour milk outside his cabin, to cool him after the heat of the day.
Antek could hear, somewhere near, a sort of trickling sound—a querulous heartbroken wailing.
“Who is making that noise?”
“Who but my sister Nastka? I have enough of her love affair!—Her banns are all published now, her wedding is to take place next Sunday—and lo! Dominikova has sent word to us through the Soltys that the holding had been left to her alone; that she will not let Simon have a single strip of land, nor even enter her cabin! And the old woman will keep to what she says: I know her well, that creature!”
“And Simon? What has he to say to that?”
“What should he say? Ever since the morning, he has been sitting in the orchard as dumb as a post, and says not one word even to Nastka. I am afraid his mind must have given way!”
“Simon!” he cried out into the orchard. “Come this way. Boryna is here to see us; perchance he can give some good advice.”
After a minute, he came and sat down, without any word of greeting to either of them. He looked very much broken down, and as thin as a plank of aspen wood. Only his eyes burned; and on his thin face there was a look of desperate resolve, from which nothing on earth could turn him away.
“Well,” Matthew asked him in a kindly tone, “what have you made up your mind to do?”
“To take an ax and kill her like a dog!”
“Fool! keep such wild talk for the tavern!”
“As there’s a God in heaven, I will kill her. What—what else remains for me to do? She drives me off my father’s land, turns me out of my hut, gives me no money whatever—what am I to do? I am an orphan, cast destitute on the world; and whither shall I go—whither? My own mother has wronged me so awfully!” he groaned, brushing away a tear with his sleeve. Then, suddenly starting up: “No!” he cried out; “in the name of all mothers of dogs, I will not forgive this, I will not—not if I should rot in jail for it!”
They quieted him. He sat still, but sombre, and in such a state of dumb fury that he would not so much as answer Nastka’s sobbing whispers. The others conferred together, thinking how they could be of use to him; but they found no means, because Dominikova, with her hopeless obstinacy, blocked the way. But at last Nastka took her brother aside, and pointed out a plan to him.
“She has hit on an excellent thing!” he exclaimed in great joy, on returning. “She says: Let him purchase six acres of the Podlesie farm from the Squire, to be paid by instalments.—Is’t not a good thought?”
“As good as any, indeed—But … whence shall the money come?”
“In any case, for the outset, and as an earnest, Nastka has her thousand zloty of ready money.”
“True; but whence will the live stock come, and the cabin, the implements and the seed to sow?”
“Whence?—From these!” Simon cried suddenly, springing up and waving both his arms.
“ ’Tis good talk, that; but can you accomplish it?” Antek asked, in doubt.
“Let me but have it—the land to work on … and ye shall see!” he exclaimed with great energy.
“Then we have but to talk with the Squire and buy the land.”
“Wait a little, Antek, wait a little; let us consider this in all its bearings.”
“Ye will see how well I shall do everything!” said Simon, speaking hurriedly. “Who was it ploughed Mother’s ground? Who reaped for her?—I alone! And was it work badly done? Am I a sluggard, tell me? Let the whole village answer—nay, let even Mother bear witness! … Oh, if I only have the land! … Help me to get that, O ye my dearest of brethren, and I shall thank you to the day of my death!” he cried, weeping and laughing by turns—intoxicated, as it were, with the joy of the hope which had come to him.
As soon as he was a little calmed, they set to deliberate and to talk over the idea and see what was to be done.
“Provided,” Nastka said, with a sigh of fear, “provided the Squire be willing to accept instalments.”
“I think he will, if Matthew and I guarantee their being paid.”
Nastka, for his kindness, was ready to kiss his hands.
“I myself have had sufferings, and know how they taste to other folk,” he said, rising to take leave; for it was dark upon the earth: only the sky was yet alight, and the evening glowed in the West.
Antek hesitated awhile in which direction to turn his steps, but at last bent them towards home.
He walked on very leisurely, and at length was close to his cabin. The windows were open and alight, the children wailing within, Hanka raising her voice and Yuzka retorting shrilly. He could not quite make up his mind, till Lapa came joyfully whining and leaping up. Then—following a sudden impulse of ill humour—he gave the dog a kick and walked back to the village, going down the lane that led to the priest’s orchard. He passed along the organist’s premises so silently that not even a dog gave tongue; and gliding on outside the priest’s garden, he was presently on the wide field-pathway which divided Klemba’s land from that of his Reverence.
He was completely hidden in the dark shadow of the trees.
The moon, a sharp thin sickle, already glittered in the shadowy sky. Stars peeped out in ever greater and greater numbers; and the evening, though hot, was shedding dew upon the earth. Quails flew out of the rye; droning beetles whizzed over the fields, and the scent and silence of the meadows made the brain whirl in a sort of stupor.
Yagna was not in sight.
Instead, about half a furlong away, the parish priest, clad in a white dust-coat, walked about saying his prayers, and apparently so intent upon them that he took scant notice how his horses, from grazing on his own miserable fallow land, had crossed to Klemba’s rich clover meadow, that rose high and dark, with lush growth and countless flowers, on the other side of the path.
The priest walked on, now whispering his prayers, now looking up to the stars, now stopping to listen intently. And whenever he heard any the faintest murmur in the direction of the village, he would turn round quickly, in seeming anger against his horses.
“You Grey One, whither have you wandered? Into Klemba’s good clover, hey? Fond of other folk’s property, are you not? What, shall I baste your flanks soundly, will you have me do it, hey!” And his voice sounded very stern.
But the priest’s horses were eating with so good an appetite that he could not find it in his heart to stop them, in spite of the harm they were doing: so, looking round him, he reasoned thus with himself:
“Let them take a little, each one of them, poor creatures! I shall put up some prayers for old Dame Klembova’s everlasting rest—or make the loss up in some other way!—Oh, the greedy beasts! how fond they are of that clover!”
And once more he paced back and forth, and said his prayers and kept watch, never dreaming that Antek was watching him, and listening, and ever awaiting Yagna more eagerly.
Some time passed thus. At last it occurred to Antek to go and confide his troubles to the priest.
“So learned a man must surely know some way out of them!” he thought, slipping away in the shadow of the barn, to appear thence boldly round the corner, and step out into the field-way, clearing his throat noisily.
The priest, hearing someone come near, called out to his horses:
“You mischievous creatures! You foul beasts! Cannot I take my eye off you for one instant, but ye must be at once on my neighbour’s land? O ye swine!—Off with you, Chestnut!” And plucking up his long skirts, he drove them away very speedily.
“Oh! Boryna!” he cried, when the man was near enough. “Well, how goes the world with you?”
“I came to speak with your Reverence, and had been at your house already.”
“Yes, I had strolled out to say my prayers and look after the horses: Valek has gone to the Manor house. But those misbegotten beasts of mine—Heaven save the mark!—I can do nothing with them.—Look how magnificently Klemba’s field of clover has grown. … Like a forest! And from the very same seed as my own. … And mine has been so frostbitten that there’s naught in my fields but camomile weeds and thistles.” He sighed heavily, seating himself on a stone.
“Sit down; we’ll talk together. What splendid weather we have!—In three weeks we shall hear the sickles clinking. I tell you we shall.”
Antek sat down and tried to unburden his mind, while the priest listened attentively, now shouting at the horses, now taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and sneezing with great violence.
“Whither! Whither!—’Tis not our land!—Behold what perverse swine they are!”
But Antek did not make any headway; he stammered and wandered a good deal in his explanations.
“I see you’re in evil case.—Now tell me—tell me all frankly: it will ease your heart! To whom can one speak openly, if not to a priest?”
He stroked his head, and offered him snuff; and Antek, encouraged, at last made a clean breast of it.
The priest heard him out, and then said with a deep sigh:
“For the slaying of the forester, I should have given you only a canonical penance. You were fighting to save your father; and, moreover, the man—a libertine and an unbeliever—is no very great loss. But the courts will not let you off so. Ye will get at least four years of hard labour! As to escaping. … True, men can live in America. And they get out of jail likewise.—But, between the two evils, the choice is a hard one!”
And now he was for Antek’s escaping instantly; now he advised him to stay and work his time out; and said in conclusion: “One thing is undoubtedly to be done: have trust in God’s Providence and wait upon His mercy.”
“But they will put me in irons and drive me to Siberia!”
“Well, men come back thence: I myself have seen some.”
“Aye, but in what state shall I find my farm—after so many a year? How will my wife be able to keep things going?—All will go to rack and ruin!”
“With all my heart I wish I could do something for you; but what can be done?—Wait a little: I shall say Mass for you at the altar of the Transfiguration here!—Pray drive me these horses into the stable; it is high time—yes, yes, it is high time to go to bed.”
Antek was so greatly upset that he had forgotten all about Yagna, whom he did not remember till he left the priest’s yard, and hastened to find her.
She was awaiting him, crouched in the shadow of the granary.
“Oh, the time has been long—how long!”
Her voice was changed and hoarse … perhaps with the falling dew.
“How could I slip away from his Reverence?” he asked, with an attempt to embrace her; but she thrust him away.
“I am in no mood now for that sort of thing!”
“You are so changed, I know you no longer!” Her behaviour hurt him.
“As ye left me, so I am!”
“Were you another, you could not be more different!” He pressed closer to her.
“Can you marvel, after such long neglect?”
“Never did I neglect you; but could I fly to you out of prison?”
“I was alone—alone with my remorse and with a living corpse!” And she shuddered with cold.
“And did you never think to come and visit me? Oh, no, your head was full of other thoughts!”
“O Antek; Antek!” she exclaimed incredulously; “did you ever expect my coming?”
“Can I say how much?—Like an idiot, I was hanging at the bars every day, looking out for you.” He stopped, shaken with sudden anguish.
“My God!—And your curses on me—there, beyond the haystack? And your rancour of old days? And when they took you away, did you speak to me—look at me even? Ye had a kind word for all, even for the dog—I marked it well—but none for me!”
“Yagna, I bore you no grudge whatsoever. But a man whose soul is tortured forgets both himself and the whole world.” They were speechless awhile, standing shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the moon shining straight into their faces. Both breathed heavily; both were torn with memories that seared them, and their eyes brimmed with unshed tears of agony.
“Not so did ye receive me, once upon a time,” he said gloomily.
All at once she fell a-weeping with abundant tears, like a little child.
“And how shall I receive you, pray? Have you blasted my life and wronged me too little as yet, now that all men look upon me as on a dog?”
“I blasted your life?—Was’t through me?” He was hot with anger.
“Yea, through you! On your account did that harridan—that offal—drive me from your door! And on your account have I become the laughingstock of all Lipka!”
“Oh, and do ye no longer meet the Voyt? and the others besides? Ha?” he broke out grimly.
“All that—all!—came about because of you!” she hissed, pierced by his words to her inmost heart. “Wherefore did you force your will on me as on a dog? Had you no wife of your own? I was senseless; you had so befooled me that I saw no one in the world but you. And why did you leave me then, a prey to all men?”
But he, in a frenzy of bitterness, muttered between his set teeth:
“Did I constrain you, forsooth, to become my stepmother? And did I force you to be afterwards the prize of any that cared?”
“Ah! why did you not lift a finger to prevent me? Had you loved me, you would never have left me to myself, but saved me … as others would have done!” Her regret was so clear, so sincere and unfathomably deep, that he found no word to defend himself. All his former acrimony vanished from his soul, and he again felt love stirring there.
“Hush, my Yagna, hush, my little one!” he whispered tenderly.
“And this wrong besides have I suffered, that you—you, of all men!—should rise up against me with the others!” she sobbed, her head against the barn.
He led her away to the field-path, gathered her to his bosom, fondled her, caressed her silky locks, and wiped her wet cheeks, and kissed her trembling lips, and her eyes, welling with briny tears—those dear sorrowful eyes of hers! He showered every endearment on her, and presently her weeping grew fainter; she leaned her drooping head upon his breast, and put her arm round his neck with childlike trust.
But Antek’s blood was by now all on fire; his kisses grew fierce and stormy, his embraces tightened to a crushing hug.
She at first did not realize what was coming on, nor what was passing in herself. It was only when she felt completely helpless, and knew again the power of his hot kisses, that she attempted to break loose, begging him in terror, almost with tears:
“Let me go! Antek, for God’s sake, let me go!—I shall cry out!”
But escape was impossible: his wild impetuosity crushed all resistance down, and prevailed utterly.
“For the last—the very last, last time!” he ejaculated, in a hoarse breathless voice.
And the world turned round them both, and they both went down headlong into the boiling whirlpool. Both loved passionately, as they once had loved before—fainting, swooning, near to death.
As once—as of old—as in the past!
They forgot all—all save the tempest of fire that was carrying them away—all save their own insatiable desire. As the thunderbolt unites with the tree which quenches its fire and is itself consumed, so they each destroyed the other’s passion in the tempest of their own. And for that one short minute of a rapture soon to expire forever, after this last exuberant outburst, their former love had revived.
A moment afterwards, they were again seated side by side, feeling their souls very dark within them. Each glanced at the other by stealth, and as if in terror: each shunned meeting the other’s eyes that spoke of shame and regret.
Once more, with lips eager for kisses, he sought her lips, but without success: she turned away from him with aversion.
In vain he whispered in her ear the sweet names of endearment he had once given her. She looked up at the moon, and replied not a word. In him, this bearing of hers aroused resentment, cooled passion down, and brought petulance and ill humour in its stead.
They sat together, unable to speak, each impatient of the other’s presence, each waiting for the other to rise and go.
Yagna’s flame was out to the last spark; nothing was there but ashes now; and she spoke first, with barely concealed animosity.
“In truth, ye did take me like a robber—by sheer might and main.”
“Well, Yagna, and are you not mine—mine?” He would have embraced her again, but she pushed him violently from her.
“Neither yours nor anyone’s!—Understand that!—No, nor anyone’s!”
She fell a-crying once more, but this time he neither fondled nor soothed her. After some time, however, he asked her very seriously:
“Yagna, will you flee with me?”
“And whither?” she returned, her wet eyes looking him full in the face.
“Why not to ‘Hamerica’? Would you go, Yagna?”
“But what would ye do with your wife?”
He started as though stung.
“Tell me true: will you give her poison?”
He caught her round the waist, showered kisses over all her face, and begged and entreated her to run away with him—somewhere—and be with him forevermore. He spoke a long while of his plans and hopes; he had suddenly caught hold of that idea—flight with her—as a drunken man catches at a fence to steady himself. He talked, too, like a drunken man, for he was carried away by his feverish excitement. She heard him out, and then said, with frigid scorn:
“Because ye have forced sin upon me, do ye think me such a fool as to believe this nonsense?”
And though he swore he was but telling her the truth, and swore it by all holy things, she would not even listen, but shook herself free of him, and said:
“Not even do I dream of going. Why should I? Am I so ill off, though alone?” Throwing her apron over her head, she looked cautiously round. “ ’Tis late; I must hurry away.”
“Wherefore in such haste? Will anyone come from your home for you?”
“But for you ’tis time: Hanka has made the bed, and yearns sorely!”
The words made him snarl like a dog.
“Of him that is waiting for you down there at the tavern,” he said venomously, “I do not remind you.”
“Know, then,” she said, with biting emphasis, “that more than one is waiting: aye, and are ready to wait even till morning! You would have it you are the only one, forsooth! You are too saucy!”
“Then off with you—go! Go, even to that old Jew!” he almost spat the words at her.
But she stood there still. They were both together, panting heavily, staring one at the other out of eyes full of hate, each seeking what words might wound the other most deeply.
“Ye had something to say to me: say it now, for never will I meet you again.”
“Fear not: never will I ask you!”
“I would not, were you to come whining at my feet!”
“Without doubt; you are too busy, having to meet so many every night.”
At that, crying: “May you die the death of a dog!” she leaped over the stile and into the field.
He did not follow, nor call after her, but looked on as she ran through the fields and disappeared like a shadow among the orchards; rubbed his eyes, as if only just waking, and grumbled in sullen ill humour:
“My wits are clean gone from me! Lord! how far astray a man can be led by a woman!”
On his return to the hut, he somehow felt extremely ashamed. He could not pardon himself for what he had done: it obsessed and haunted him cruelly.
His bed—made in the orchard, the heat and flies within doors being intolerable—was awaiting him.
But he could not sleep. He lay looking up at the stars that twinkled overhead, and listening to the quiet footsteps of the night … and … making up his mind about Yagna.
“Neither with nor without her can I live!” He cursed her under his breath, and sighed in pain, turning from side to side, throwing off his covering, and wetting his feet to cool them in the long dewy grass. But no sleep came, and his thoughts persecuted him as before.
In the hut, one of the children set up a wail, and Hanka murmured some words. He lifted his head; but soon all was still again. And then his mind began to swarm with thoughts; the memories of past joys came floating about him, like fragrant spring breezes. But he was not now to be their slave any more; now he could resist their charms, and contemplate them with calm deliberation, and in their very presence take a firm resolve, as solemn as if he were at Holy Confession.
“This must cease—and forever!—’Tis a foul offence against God!—Would I have folk speak about me anew?—Am I not a landed man, a father?—Aye, I must—I must—end all this now.”
He felt the resolve to be unutterably painful to keep; but he took it nevertheless.
And a bitter but deep reflection occurred to him: “Let a man but once go wrong, he may come to cling so to iniquity that even death itself will not part them!”
It was dawn now, and the sky seemed covered with a mantle of grey cloth, but Antek was yet waking: and as soon as the daylight had come, Hanka appeared at his side. He looked at her with eyes full of sadness, but wonderfully gentle; and when she told him what the smith had called to let her know late the evening before, he passed his hand kindly over her unkempt hair.
“If the carting pays, I’ll buy you something at the fair.”
Such gracious behaviour on his part made her radiant with joy, and she pressed him hard to get her a glazed sideboard, “such as the organist possessed.”
“And soon ye’ll be thinking of a sofa like those at the Manor!” he said, laughing; but, promising her all she wanted, he rose early, to put his neck under the yoke again, and take up the work which waited for him at all times.
He had a further talk with the blacksmith, and directly after breakfast sent Pete to cart dung afield, while he himself went to the wood with a couple of horses.
In the clearing, the work was going on with great alacrity. Many men were busy shaping the wood cut down in wintertime; the ceaseless strokes of the axes and rasping of the saws put one in mind of woodpeckers, tapping everlastingly. In the long grass of the glades, the horses of Lipka were grazing, and the smoke of their fires curled upward.
He recalled the scene which had taken place there, and, seeing the men of Lipka now working together in amity with the “nobles” of Rzepki and the others, he nodded his head.
“Misery has taught them its lesson: a needful one, was it not?” he said to Philip, Yagustynka’s son, who was squaring a pine-log.
“But who was at fault save the Squire and the farmers?” the man growled sullenly, continuing to lop off the boughs.
“Rather, much rather, foolish spite and bad blood!” said Antek.
He stopped at the place where he had killed the forester, and swore softly to himself; for he felt the passion of yore stirring within him anew.
“The wretch! it is he that has brought me to this!—If I could, I would serve him worse still!”—He spat angrily, and set to work.
All day long he went on carting timber to the sawmill, working as if for dear life: yet he could neither drive from his mind the remembrance of Yagna nor of his impending trial.
A few days after, he heard from Matthew that the Squire was willing not only to accept instalments, but to let them have other wood in addition to the big timber; and so Nastka’s wedding had been put off until such time as Simon should be settled on his own land.
But other folk’s affairs interested him little now; and the blacksmith, who visited him almost every day, was constantly terrifying him, speaking about his unhappy position, and promising him pecuniary help to escape, should he be in sore straits.
Antek was at such moments quite ready to throw everything up and flee; but again, looking round him at the countryside, and reflecting that flight would mean leaving all that forever, he was panic-stricken, and would have preferred even the worst of prisons.
Yet the thought of a prison, too, filled him with despair.
All these inward struggles weighed him down, made him grow haggard and bitter, and harsh and fierce with those at home. What had come over him? Hanka did her very utmost, but to no purpose, to find this out. She had instantly suspected him of renewing relations with Yagna. But her own close scrutiny, and that of Yagustynka (whose fidelity was well paid) and others besides, assured her that the two were quite apart now, and never met: so she was at ease on that score. And yet, no matter how faithful a servant she proved herself, giving him the best food with the most exact punctuality, making the cottage a pattern of neatness and cleanliness, and the farm stock the very perfection of success—all would not do. He was always sullen, morose, ready to upbraid her for the slightest cause, and more than miserly of kind words. And it was worse still when he went about speechless, dreary, sad as an autumn night—not angry, not ill-tempered—only sighing deeply; often spending his whole evening with his acquaintances in the tavern.
She durst not question him openly; and Roch vowed that he was aware of nothing wrong. It might well be the truth. The old man was now seen at their cottage only at night. The whole day he was going about with his books, teaching the peasants to pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—a devotion which the Russian Government had severely forbidden in church.
One evening, all being together at supper, the dogs set to barking furiously along the millpond. Roch laid his spoon down and listened attentively.
“Some stranger.—I’ll go and see who it is.”
He returned in a minute, very pale, and saying:
“Sabres are flashing along the road.—If I should be asked after, I am in the village.”
And he slipped away amongst the orchard-trees.
Antek, white as a corpse, started to his feet. Dogs barked outside the fence; and men, heavily tramping, were heard in the porch.
“Have they come to fetch me?” he faltered, terror-struck.
They were all petrified: the gendarmes appeared on the threshold.
Motionless, Antek glanced at the open doors and windows. Luckily, Hanka had presence of mind enough to offer them settles and beg them to be seated.
They answered with civility enough, and at once threw out hints about supper, so that she had to prepare some scrambled eggs for them.
“Where are ye going so late?” Antek at length made bold to ask them.
“On duty! We have much to do,” their leader returned, with a glance round him.
“After thieves, no doubt!” he continued, with more assurance, bringing a bottle out of the storeroom.
“After thieves—and others. … Drink to us, goodman.”
He did so. And then they set to upon the scrambled eggs, till their spoons scraped together the empty dish.
The inmates sat silent, like terror-stricken rabbits.
After cleaning the platter, they took another glass of vodka; and their leader, wiping his moustaches, said impressively:
“Is it long since ye were let out of prison, say?”
“Surely your Honour can answer that best.”
He stirred impatiently; then, on a sudden:
“Where is Roch?” he asked.
“Which Roch?” was Antek’s reply, who had understood on the spot, and felt much more at his ease.
“A certain Roch, I am told, is living with you.”
“Can your Honour be speaking of that beggar who haunts our village?—’Tis true, his name is Roch.”
The gendarme fidgeted again, and said with a threatening look:
“Play me no tricks, he is known to dwell with you!”
“Surely, he had his abode here at times, but elsewhere likewise. Where he happens to find himself, there he spends the night: ’tis his way. Now in the cabin, now in the byre, and oft beneath the hedges.—Is your Honour in any wise interested in the man?”
“I? In no wise: I ask to be informed.”
“A good honest man he is,” Hanka put in here; “nowhere does he trouble the waters.”
“We know, we know well what manner of man he is!” he grumbled emphatically, and continued to seek for information about him by various arts—even going the length of offering them snuff. But they all answered so that he was just as wise as before; and in the end, finding himself no farther on the trail, he got up in a rage, crying:
“And I declare that the man dwells in your cabin!”
Here Antek blurted out: “Think ye I have him in my pocket?”
“Boryna!” the gendarme returned fiercely; “I am here on duty: understand that!”—But he took leave in more friendly fashion, carrying with him as a present a dozen eggs and a very large pat of fresh butter.
Vitek followed them on their way step by step, and said afterwards how they had been at the Soltys’s and the priest’s, and had also tried to look in at several windows yet alight; only they could make no discoveries for the barking of the dogs, and had gone away as they came.
Now this incident had upset Antek to such a degree that, no sooner was he alone with his wife, than he told her his trouble.
She did not interrupt him by one single word, until at last he told her there remained nothing for him to do but to sell everything and go abroad—even to “Hamerica.”
Then she stood up before him, pallid, ashen-white.
“I will not go!” she cried, with a dark frown. “No, nor let my children go either, to destruction! Not I! And if you think to force me, I’ll cleave their skulls with an ax and leap down the well myself. And I am speaking the truth, so help me, O Lord God!” she screamed, kneeling down before the holy images, as one does to take a solemn vow.
“Hush, hush, dear!” Antek said. “I never meant it!”
She caught her breath, and continued, with difficulty restraining her tears:
“You will work out your time and come back. Fear nothing: I will manage all, and not lose one strip of land. Ye know me not as yet!—No, I will keep a firm grip on everything. And our Lord will help me to pull through with this affliction too.” Then she wept silently.
He too was mute for a long while. At last he said:
“God’s will be done! I must await my trial here.”
And thus did all the blacksmith’s scheming and treachery prove a dead failure.