III
“Pray, Hanka, may I go home?” Yuzka entreated, laying her head down upon the pew-seat.
“Aye, do: run about everywhere like a silly calf!” said Hanka, rebuking her, and looking up from her rosary.
“But I feel so faint, so weary!”
“Do not be so restless: it will be over soon.”
His Reverence was just ending a low Mass for Boryna’s soul, which the family had retained for the octave of his death.
All his nearest relations sat in the side-pews. Yagna and her mother alone were kneeling in front of the altar. Somewhere in the choir, Agata was pattering prayers aloud.
The church, cool and quiet, was dark, except for one streak of light that shot in through the open door, and lit up the place as far as the pulpit.
Michael, the organist’s pupil, served Mass, jingling the tiny bells very loud, as usual, and also as usual continually turning his head about after the swallows which were darting in and out of the place.
The priest having ended Mass, they all went out to the churchyard; but as they were going past the belfry, Ambrose called them.
“His Reverence wishes to speak to you.”
And he came up almost at once, with his breviary under his arm, and wiping his bald crown. Having welcomed them kindly, he said:
“My friends, I want to say how well you have acted in having a Mass said for the deceased: it will help his soul towards its eternal rest. It will, I assure you.”
He then took snuff, sneezed violently, and asked them if they intended dividing the property that day. And, on receiving the answer that this was the date after the funeral on which the division was usual, he continued:
“Then I may say a few words about it to you. In dividing the property, remember to do all things by common consent, and to act justly. Let me hear of no quarrels, no dissensions. If Boryna knew that you tore—as wolves tear a sheep—that estate to the prosperity of which he gave his whole life, he would turn in his grave. Moreover, God forbid that ye wrong any one of the orphans! Yuzka is but a simple child as yet; Gregory is far away. Let each have his own, even to the uttermost kopek!—Also, when making the division, have a care to respect his known will. His soul, peradventure, sees you at this very moment! … As I am always telling you in my sermons, concord is the great thing—it upholds all in the world: naught was ever done with discord—naught but sin and the transgression of God’s law.—Further, ye should not forget the church. He was always liberal, and neither for lights nor for Masses, nor for any other need, did he ever grudge his money. Wherefore did God bless the work of his hands.”
He continued for some time in this strain. They embraced his knees with grateful thanks. Yuzka, weeping loudly, fell on her knees to kiss his hand. He took her to his bosom, kissed her on the crown of her head, and said soothingly:
“To weep is foolish, little one: the orphan is God’s especial care.”
Hanka, deeply touched, whispered: “Her own father could not have been more loving.” He was very much moved himself, for he hastily brushed a tear away, offered snuff to the blacksmith, and changed the conversation.
“Well, are ye coming to terms with the Squire?”
“We are; five of us go to the Manor this very day.”
“God be praised! I will say a Mass to that intention on my own account.”
“I think the village ought to have a Votive Mass sung with the greatest solemnity. What! Does not each of us get a new farm—as it were for nothing?”
“You are right, Michael. And I have said a good word for you to the Squire.—Now, go your ways, and remember: Concord and justice!”
“And—hist, Michael!” he called after the smith, who was leaving; “come ye round later to see about my curricle: the right spring is bent and grazes the axletree.”
“Oh, the bulky priest of Laznov has weighed it down; ’tis very like.”
And so they all went to Boryna’s, Yagna the last, going with her mother, who could scarcely drag herself along.
It being a workday, there were but few people on the millpond road: only a few children playing about. Though early in the morning, the sun was hot, but agreeably tempered by the wind, which blew hard enough to make the orchards toss their branches about, laden with ripe red cherries, and the corn beat against the fences in boisterous waves.
The huts stood open, and their gates as well; the bedding lay spread upon the hedgerows, and everybody was out in the fields. Some were bringing in the last of the hay, which filled the nostrils with aromatic scent, and left long strips that waved like streaming Jews’ beards, from the trees the heaped-up wagons passed under.
They walked along, pondering the question of how the property should be divided.
A ditty rose, wafted on the wind—possibly from the fields where they were at work on the potatoes; from the mill came the beating of the waterwheels, mingling with the strokes of a washerwoman’s batlet hard by.
“The mill is continually grinding now,” Magda remarked.
“Aye, the days before harvest are the miller’s harvest.”
Hanka sighed. “Times are much harder this year than last. Everyone complains bitterly, and the komorniki are really starving.”
“And the Koziols,” the blacksmith added, “are prowling about to snap up anything they can lay hands on!”
“Say not that. The poor creatures keep themselves alive as best they can. Yesterday Kozlova sold her ducklings to the organist’s wife, and got some money thereby.”
“They will soon drink it all,” Magda returned. “I will say no word to their hurt; but ’tis strange that my boy found the feathers of the drake I lost during father’s funeral, behind their cow-byre.”
“And who was it,” Yuzka asked, “that made off with our bedding that very same day?”
“When is their suit against the Voyt to come off?”
“Not so soon. But Ploshka is for them, and they will make things hot for the Voyt and his wife.”
“Ploshka was ever a meddler with other folk’s matters.”
“Our friend, hoping to become Voyt, is currying favour everywhere.”
Here Yankel passed by, dragging and pulling at the mane of a hobbled horse, that lashed out and resisted with all its might and they laughed and made merry at his expense.
“Oh, ’tis well for you that ye can laugh! What trouble I have with the beast!”
“Stuff it with straw, fix a new tail on it, and take it to some fair: it will never do as a horse, but ye may sell it for a cow!” the smith bawled. Their laughter became a roar, for the horse had jerked himself free, leaped into the pond, and, in spite of threats and entreaties, lain down wallowing in the water.
“A remarkable brute. Bought of a gipsy, no doubt?”
“Set a pail of vodka before it: ye may then perhaps tempt it out!” joined in the organist’s wife, who sat by the pond, watching a flock of ducklings, as downy as yellow catkins, while a hen ran cackling along the bank in dismay.
“ ’Tis a fine lot.—From the Koziols, I suppose?”
“Yes. But they are always running away to the pond.” And she tried to call them back, flinging them handfuls of Turkish wheat into the water.
Seeing them, however, making for the other bank, she went after them in a hurry.
As soon as they had arrived, and Hanka was busy over the breakfast, the blacksmith set to prowl about every corner of the cabin and all the premises, even exploring the potato-pits. At last Hanka could not help observing:
“Think ye any potatoes are missing?”
“I never,” he answered, “buy a pig in a poke.”
“Ye know the place of everything better than I do myself,” she said, stiffly, pouring out the coffee. “Come, Dominikova! Come, Yagna! Come and join us!”
For those two had, on arriving, shut themselves up in the opposite room.
No one was at first willing to open the conversation. Hanka, extremely cautious and guarded, pressed them all to eat, and poured out coffee abundantly, but kept her eyes carefully all the time on the smith, who was prying about from his place, darting glances in every direction, and clearing his throat again and again. Yagna sat louring and mournful, her eyes glistening as if they had been quite recently full of tears. At her side, Dominikova talked in whispers. Yuzka was the only one to chatter freely, which she did just as usual, as she flew from one pot to another, full of boiling potatoes.
After a long tedious pause, the smith broached the subject.
“Well. How shall we divide the property?”
Hanka gave a start; but she at once recovered herself, and replied with calm and evidently after having thought it out well:
“How are we to divide it at all? I am here only to watch over my goodman’s estate, and have no power to decide aught. When Antek returns, he will see to the division.”
“But when will he come back? And things cannot drag on so.”
“They must! As they did during Father’s illness, so they shall until Antek’s return.”
“But he is not the only inheritor.”
“But, he being the eldest son, the land comes down to him from his father.”
“He has not more right to it than any of us.”
“Ye also may have your share of the land, if Antek prefers it so. I shall not quarrel over this with you: the decision is not mine.”
“Yagna!” her mother urged; “say a word about your claim.”
“Why should I? They know of it well enough.”
Hanka turned a deep red, and kicked Lapa, that had curled up beneath her feet. She hissed between her clenched teeth:
“Aye, the wrong done to us, we remember it well!”
“As you say. Wild words are of no account here, but the six acres are—those made over to Yagna by her late goodman.”
“If the deed of gift is in your hands, none can snatch it away,” Magda growled angrily. She had hitherto been sitting speechless and giving suck to her baby.
“True; and we have it duly signed and attested.”
“Well, all must wait, and Yagna with the rest.”
“Of course. But she may take away her personal belongings at once: her cow, her calf, her swine, her geese. …”
“No!” the smith interrupted in a hard voice. “All those things are common property, and to be shared equally by all.”
“By all? Is that your will? No one can take from her my wedding-present!” And, raising her voice, “Perchance,” she cried, “ye would likewise divide her petticoats amongst you—and her featherbed likewise … eh?”
“I did but jest; and ye fly out at me at once!”
“Because I know you to the bottom of your heart!”
“But now,” he went on, “to what purpose is all this prating? You are right, Hanka; we must needs wait till Antek comes back.—And I have presently to go in haste and meet the Squire: I am stayed for.” And he rose.
But, having caught sight of his father-in-law’s sheepskin, hanging in the corner, he offered to pull it down.
“This would be just the thing for me.”
“Touch it not: it is hanging there to dry,” Hanka said.
“Well, then, let me have those boots. Only the uppers are in good condition, and they too are patched,” he pleaded, trying to get them down.
“Not one thing is to be touched. Should you take aught, they will say that half of the household goods have been carried off. Let an inventory be made first, and officially. Till then, I will not allow one stake to come out of a hedge.”
“Ha!” said Magda; “but Father’s bedding is gone, and will not be down in the inventory.”
“I have told you what came to pass. Directly after his death, I spread it on the hedge to air; and one came by night and stole it. … I could not see to everything, all alone.”
“Strange that a thief should have been so ready at hand!”
“Do you mean by that I am lying now, and stole it then?”
“Be quiet, Magda, no quarreling. … He that stole it, let him have his winding-sheet cut out of it!”
“Why, the feathers alone weighed thirty pounds!”
“Hold your tongue, I say!” the blacksmith shouted at his wife, and asked Hanka to come out with him into the farmyard: he wished, he said, to look at the swine.
She went with him, but well on her guard.
“I would fain give you good advice.”
She listened attentive, wondering what it could be.
“Ye must, one of these evenings, and ere the inventory is made, drive two of the kine to my byre. We can entrust the sow to our cousin, and stow away all we can at our acquaintances’.—I will let you know with whom.—Ye will declare in the inventory that the corn has all been sold to Yankel: give him a couple of bushels, and he will bear witness to anything. The miller will take one colt, and it may feed in his paddock. Of the vessels and implements, some may be hidden among the potatoes, some in the rye-fields. … ’Tis friendly advice I am giving you! … They all do the same—all that are not fools. … You have been working to death: ’tis just ye should get a larger share. … To me you need only give a few crumbs. And fear nothing: I will help you through the whole business; aye, and make it my affair, too, that ye shall get all the land for your own! … Only hearken to me: none can give better advice than I.—Why, even the Squire takes mine gladly.—Well, what say you?”
She answered in slow tones, looking at the man steadfastly and with scorn:
“Thus much: even as I will give up naught that’s mine, so too am I not covetous of aught else!”
He staggered as if from a stunning blow—then glared at her in fury and hissed:
“Besides, I would not breathe a word to anyone of how ye despoiled the old man!”
“Breathe what ye choose to whom ye choose!—But I will tell Antek of your advice, and he shall speak to you on the matter!”
He scarcely could swallow down an imprecation. But he only spat on the ground, and walked off hurriedly, calling to his wife through the open window:
“Magda, have an eye to all things, lest there be yet more thefts here!”
But as he passed, with what disdain Hanka eyed him!
Maddened by her scorn, he made off, but meeting the Voyt’s wife, who just entered the enclosure, stopped to confer with her for some time, angrily and with clenched fists.
She came bringing an official document with her.
“ ’Tis for you, Hanka: the policeman has brought it in from the bureau.”
“About Antek, perchance!” she thought in great trepidation, taking the paper in her apron-covered hand.
“I think it concerns Gregory. My goodman is out—gone to the District office—and the policeman only said there was something about Gregory being dead, or. …”
“Jesu Maria!” Yuzka shrieked, and Magda started to her feet in horror.
Helplessly, seized with overwhelming fear, they turned the ominous paper about.
“You perhaps, Yagna, could understand it,” Hanka said beseechingly.
They stood round her, choking with suspense and dread; but Yagna, after a long try at spelling it out, gave up the attempt.
“I cannot read it: ’tis not written in our language.”
“Nor penned in her presence either!” the Voyt’s wife sneered. “Other things there are, however, in which she is more learned!”
“Go ye your ways,” Dominikova snarled, “and let quiet folks be.”
But the Voyt’s wife would not miss the opportunity to strike a blow at her.
“Ye are good at rebuking your neighbours. But ye had better have kept your daughter from lying in wait for other women’s husbands!”
“Peace, peace, good woman,” Hanka interfered, foreseeing what was coming; but the Voyt’s wife only grew more enraged.
“Oh, I will say my say now, if never again!—Her, who has poisoned my life so, I never will forgive till my dying day!”
“Well, then, say your say! A cur will bark louder than you can!” Dominikova growled. She took it coolly, but Yagna flushed red as a beetroot. Yet, though overwhelmed with shame, she nevertheless took refuge in reckless stubbornness; and as if to spite the other, she held her head up, and fastened her eyes upon her enemy with a taunting expression and a malicious smile.
The look, the smile, infuriated the other, and she denounced her lubricity in a torrent of invectives.
“Your words are frenzy, you are drunk with hate!” the old dame said, to draw her anger away; “your husband will answer grievously before God for my daughter’s misfortune.”
“Misfortune!—Aye, ’tis an innocent young maiden he has seduced! … Ha, such a maiden that with everyone and under every green bush. …”
“Hold your wicked tongue, or—blind as I am—my hands will surely find their way to your hair!” the old woman cried threateningly, her hand tightening its grasp on her stick.
“Oh, will you try?—Only touch me! Only dare!” she repeated, with a defiant scream.
“Ha! will she, who has waxed fat upon wrongs done to her neighbours, venture now to beset and pester them—as hard to shake off as a bur?”
“Say, you, in what thing have I ever done you wrong?”
“That you will know, when your husband shall be condemned to jail!”
The Voyt’s wife rushed at her with lifted fists; but Hanka caught her back, and said sternly to them both:
“Women, for God’s sake!—Would ye turn my cabin into a tavern?”
This instantly put a stop to their brawl. Both breathed hard and were panting. Tears came streaming from under the bandages that covered Dominikova’s eyes, but she was first to come back to her senses, and say, sitting down with hands clasped and a deep sigh:
“God be merciful to me a sinner!”
The Voyt’s wife had rushed out in a fury; but, returning, she put her head in at the window, crying out to Hanka:
“I tell you, drive that wanton from your house! And do so while there yet is time, lest you rue it sorely! Let her not stay one hour more beneath your roof, or that hell-born pest will make you go yourself! O Hanka, defend yourself—and for that, be merciless, be without pity for her. She is only lying in wait to entrap your Antek. … Don’t you see what a hell she now prepares for you?” She leant further into the room and, stretching her fist towards Yagna, shouted with the most intense hatred:
“Yet a little, yet a little, you devil from hell! I shall not die in peace, I shall not go to Holy Confession, until I have seen you driven with cudgels out of Lipka!—Oh, get you away to the soldiers, you drab, you swinish jade! Your place is with them!”
She was gone, and over the cabin there came a silence like that of the grave. Dominikova shook with a dumb passion of weeping; Magda rocked her little one; Hanka, plunged in torturing thought, looked into the fire; and Yagna, though she still had on her face the same hardened reckless expression, the same wicked smile, had turned as white as a sheet. Those last words had cut deep into her soul; she felt stabbed as though by a hundred knives, each stab streaming with her lifeblood: an inhuman torment that was impelling her to shriek out at the top of her voice, or even dash her brains out against the wall. But she controlled herself, pulled her mother by the sleeve, and said in an agonized whisper:
“Mother, come away. Let’s flee this place. And quickly!”
“Right; for I am broken and shattered. But you must return and watch over what is yours.”
“I will not stay here! I so loathe the place that to stay is beyond me.—Why did I ever darken these doors? Better have broken a limb than have ever come here!”
“Were you, then, so evilly dealt with?” Hanka asked quietly.
“Worse than a chained-up dog! Even in hell there must be less pain than I have suffered here!”
“Strange, then, that you could bear it so long: no one imprisoned you here. You were free as air to go!”
“So I will. And may the plague choke you, for being—what you are!”
“Curse not, or I may cast my own wrongs in your teeth!”
“Why are ye all—as many as dwell in Lipka—all of you against me?”
“Live rightly: none will say one word of bitterness to you!”
“Peace, Yagna, peace; Hanka bears you no malice!”
“Let her too howl with the rest. Aye, let her! As dogs, dirt to me is all their howling. And what have I done to them? Whom have I robbed or slain?”
“What have ye done? Have you the front to ask?” Hanka exclaimed, in stupefaction, standing up opposite her. “Do not drive me too far, or I may speak!”
“Speak, prithee! I dare you to speak! What do I care for you?” Yagna vociferated, now in a towering passion, that spread within her like a conflagration; and she was ready to do anything—even the very worst that offered.
The tears had instantly sprung to Hanka’s eyes at the remembrance of Antek’s infidelity, that rose up before her with a pang so acute that she could hardly stammer out:
“What have ye done with him—with my husband, say? Ye never would let him be, but followed him everywhere, like the rampant piece of lust ye are!” … Her breath failed her, and she broke into sobs.
Like a she-wolf set upon in her den, at bay, and ready to tear anything she meets with to pieces, Yagna sprang up. Burning with the most furious hate, and frenzied to the uttermost extreme of rage, she lashed her adversary with stinging words, that came each of them from her lips like the strokes of a whip.
“Indeed?—So ’twas I who pursued your man, was it? Yet there is none but knows how I always drove him from me! How, like a cur, he would whine outside my door, that he might have but the mere sight of a shoe of mine!—Yes, and he took hold of me by force, till I was bereft of sense, and let him do all his will, for my brains whirled.—And now will I tell you all the truth … but you will rue the telling! He loved me—loved me more than tongue can tell! And you he shrank from, even to loathing; his gorge, poor man! rose at the thought of your love; ’twas in his throat, as rancid reasty fat, ancient and musty and unbearable; and at the memory of you, he would spit with sheer disgust! Nay, not to see you any more, he willingly would have done himself a harm. … You sought the truth; you have it now!—And, moreover, I will tell you—and do not forget it—if I should but say the word, when you would kiss his feet, he’d spurn you from him, and go following me throughout the world!—So weigh my words, and never dare to think yourself my equal.—Have you understood?”
Towards the end, though loud and passionate in speech, she had become mistress of herself, fearless, and more beautiful than ever. Even her mother listened to her with astonishment, mingled with dread; for now another woman stood revealed before her, as terrible, as evil, and as dangerous as the dark cloud that bears the lightning within it.
Her words pierced Hanka, wounded her almost to death. They struck her without mercy, crushed and trampled her down. She felt strengthless, mindless, almost as unconscious as a tree that falls struck by the thunderbolt. She was scarcely able to breathe; her lips grew very white, and she sank back on a bench. Her anguish, it seemed to her, was rending her to pieces—nay, crushing her to grains of barren sand: even the tears had vanished from her face, grown ashy with the throes of that fierce ordeal, though her bosom still was shaken with deep dry sobs. She stared out into space as if in terror—into the abyss which had opened suddenly before her eyes; and she trembled as trembles an ear of corn, that the wind whirls on to destruction.
Yagna had long ago gone with her mother to the other side of the house; Yuzka was with the ducklings at the millpond; but Hanka still sat motionless in the same place, like a bird bereft of her fledgelings, unable to scream out, to defend itself, to flee anywhither, only now and then stirring its wings, and uttering a mournful cry.
But Heaven had pity on her and granted her a little relief. She came to herself again, knelt down before the holy pictures, and with abundant tears made a vow to go on pilgrimage to Chenstohova, if what she had heard should prove untrue.
She was not even angry with Yagna any more; she only dreaded her; and, hearing her voice now and then, crossed herself, as if to keep off a fiend.
Then she set to work. Her experienced hands worked almost as deftly as usual, little as her thoughts accompanied them; but she never remembered that she took the children out of doors and set the cabin in order that day.—At length, having prepared dinner and placed it in vessels for the field-labourers, she sent it to them by Yuzka.
And now, being quite alone, and no longer agitated, she sat down to reflect over every word said. Intelligent and kindhearted though she was, she could not put from her mind the blows dealt at her self-respect as a wife; more than once their memory made her burn with indignation, and her heart writhed under the torment it gave her; more than once the thought of some awful revenge filled her mind. But at last she came to this conclusion:
“Truly, as to good looks, there is no comparison between me and her. But I am his wedded wife; I am the mother of his children”; and her confidence returned at the thought.
“And should he even go astray after her, he will return again to me!—And at any rate,” she added to comfort herself, looking out of the window, “he can never marry her!”
Afternoon was melting into evening, when the thought of a step that must be taken flashed suddenly across Hanka’s mind. She considered for a minute or two, leaning against the wall; then, wiping her eyes, she strode out into the passage, flung open the door of Yagna’s room, and said, loud but calmly:
“Get out, out!—Out of this cabin instantly!”
Yagna, starting up from her settle, faced her for many seconds with a steady look. Then Hanka, taking a step or two back from the threshold, repeated in a hoarse voice:
“Take yourself away this instant, else will I have you thrown out by our farm-servant!—This instant!” she said once more, with stern emphasis.
Here the old dame would have interfered, eager to bring forward explanations and excuses; but Yagna merely shrugged her shoulders.
“Not a word to her—to that wretched wisp of straw! We know what she would have.”
She took a paper out of the bottom of a chest.
“ ’Tis the donation you’d have back, and the six acres therewith: take them, eat them, fill your belly with them!”
Flinging the paper in her face, she added scornfully:
“And choke yourself to death in the eating!”
Then, paying no heed to her mother’s remonstrances, she speedily set about packing up all her things and carrying them outside.
Hanka felt dizzy, as if she had received a blow between the eyes; but she picked up the paper, and said, threatening her:
“Quicker than that, or I will set the dogs on you!”
Meanwhile, she nevertheless felt overwhelmed with amazement. What! throw away six whole acres of land as one might cast away a broken pot?—How could she? The woman must be moonstruck, she thought, and eyed her over with astonishment.
Yagna, paying no more attention to her, was now taking down her own pictures, when Yuzka entered with a loud outcry.
“Give up the coral necklaces: they are mine from my mother—mine—mine—mine!”
Yagna was just unfastening them, but stopped.
“No,” she answered, “I will not. Matthias gave them to me: mine they are!”
Yuzka shrieked and stormed, until Hanka was forced to silence her. Then all became calm again; Yagna seemed to have become deaf and dumb. After having taken all her things out, she hurried away to get her brother’s help.
Dominikova made no further opposition, but replied to no word either from Hanka or from Yuzka. Only, when all her daughter’s things were on the cart, she rose and shook her fist, and said:
“May the worst of all possible fates not pass you by!”
Hanka winced under the curse, but took it quietly, and called after her: “When Vitek brings the cattle home, he’ll drive your cow to your hut. And send someone for all the rest in the evening, to drive them home to you.”
She gazed for a long time upon them as they departed in silence, wending their way round the pond. She had no leisure for reflection, for the hired labourers came in presently: so she stowed the deed away carefully in her chest, under lock and key. But she was subdued and depressed the whole evening, and it was with but small pleasure that she listened to Yagustynka’s praises of what she had done.
Then, after the men had returned once more to their work, she took Yuzka with her to weed the flax, which was in places quite yellow with wild flowers. She worked with great diligence to shake off old Dominikova’s menaces from her mind; but unsuccessfully; and she was especially uneasy about what Antek would say on his return.
“How he will knit his brows when I show him the deed!—Oh, the fool!—Six whole acres! ’tis all but a farm by itself.”
“Ah! Hanka,” Yuzka cried, “we have forgotten the letter about Gregory!”
“Aye, so we have.—Yuzka, leave off your work: I shall go to the priest and ask him to read it.”
The priest, however, was not within doors, and when she saw him at a distance among the fieldworkers, with his cassock taken off, she felt afraid he might rebuke her publicly for her act. “For no doubt,” she thought, “he must know about it by this time.” So she went to the miller, who was just then trying how the sawmill worked, along with Matthew.
“My wife told me just how ye have smoked out your stepmother. Ha, ha! Ye look like a wagtail, but have the claws of a hawk!” Laughing, he set to read the letter, but at the first glance at it, he cried out: “Oh, what awful news!—Your Gregory has been drowned.—’Twas as far back as Eastertide. … They write that ye can get his things by applying at the District Office.”
“Gregory dead!—So strong a man!—And so young!—He was not over twenty-six.—And was to have come back this harvest-time.—Drowned! O merciful Jesus!” she moaned, wringing her hands at the mournful news.
“Well,” Matthew remarked, with bitter animosity, “heritages seem to be coming your way. Ye have but now to turn Yuzka out upon the world, and the whole estate will be yours and the blacksmith’s!”
“Are ye already off with the old love of Teresa, and on with Yagna’s new love?” she interrupted him; and thereupon he was suddenly absorbed in the machinery, while the miller burst into a loud guffaw.
“Oh, what a good tit for tat!—And what a brave little woman!”
On her way home, she dropped in to tell Magda, who wept copiously, and uttered many an ejaculation of grief:
“ ’Tis the will of the Lord. … Ah! a man like an oak-tree. … Few his equals in all Lipka! … Oh, lot of man, oh, unhappy lot!—Here today, gone tomorrow! … Then his belongings go to his family: Michael will go to the office tomorrow and fetch them. … Poor fellow! And he so eager to be home again!”
“All is in God’s hands. … He was always unlucky with water. Remember how once he was near drowning in the pond, and was saved by Klemba. … Surely it was written that he should die no other death!”
They mourned together, and wept—and parted; for they both, and Hanka especially, had plenty of work to do.
The news spread about very fast. The men who came back from the fields were already talking about Gregory and Yagna: all heartily sorry for the one, but not all for the other: concerning her, opinions were divided. The women (the older ones in particular) were very decidedly on Hanka’s side, and violently hostile to Yagna; while the men, though hesitatingly, inclined to take the other’s part. This even gave rise to some disputes.
Matthew, on his way home from the sawmill, heard them talk. At first he merely spat in token of contempt, or let out a curse under his breath; but, hearing what they said outside Ploshka’s hut, he could not help crying out indignantly:
“Hanka had no right to expel her: she has property there of her own.”
Here Ploshka’s wife, red-faced and stout of figure, turned upon him.
“Nay,” she cried, “ ’tis well known that Hanka does not deny her right to the land. But she has other fears, for Antek may come home any day. Who can watch a thief living in the house? Was she to sit still and take no heed of their doings? Was she?”
“Fiddlesticks! all that has naught to do with the case. Your unbridled tongues are wagging, not for the sake of Justice, but from envy and spite!”
When you thrust a stick into a wasps’ nest, they all fly out at you: so did the women at him.
“Oh, indeed! what is there in her to envy, say? That she’s a light-o’-love and a wanton? That ye all run after her like dogs? That you long for her, every one of you? That she is a cause of sin and a shame to all the village? Shall we envy her those things?”
“Perchance ye do: ye are beyond man’s understanding. Worn-out old besoms ye are, who would hate the very light of the sun! Had she but been like that Magda, the tavern wench, and done the worst of things, you would have forgiven her; but simply because she is the fairest of all, you’d all like to drown her—aye, and in a spoonful of water too!”
This caused such a storm that he was glad to make his escape, crying as he went:
“Ye foul jades, may your tongues rot in your heads!”
Passing by Dominikova’s house, he looked in at the open window. The room was lit, but Yagna could not be seen, and he was unwilling to go in; so he regretfully passed on to his own hut, on his way to which he was met by Veronka.
“Ah, I was at your home just now.—Staho has dug the new foundations and made the trunks ready, so that you might cut them into shape now: when are ye coming?”
“On Tib’s eve perhaps. I am disgusted with this village, and may any day throw everything up—and go over the hills and far away!” he cried angrily, as he went past.
“Something,” she wondered, as she went her way to Boryna’s, “must have stung the man pretty sharply: what can it be?”
Supper was done, and Hanka told her all at leisure. Yagna’s expulsion interested her deeply; but on hearing of Gregory, she only observed:
“His death will make one the fewer to share the property.”
“It will.—I never thought of that.”
“And with what the Squire has to give for the forest, you will get hard upon seventeen acres apiece! … To think of it! Even other folk’s death is a gain to those already rich!” she sighed ruefully.
“What care I for wealth?” said Hanka. But when she went to bed, and thought the matter over, she felt a secret joy in her heart.
And afterwards, kneeling down for her evening prayer, she said resignedly:
“Since he has died, it is the will of our Lord.” And she prayed fervently for his eternal rest.
The next day, about noon, Ambrose came to her cabin.
“Where have ye been?” she inquired.
“At the Koziols’. A child there has been scalded to death. She called me in, but there is naught needed for it save a coffin and a few clods.”
“Which of them is it?”
“The younger of the two that she brought from Warsaw this spring. It fell into a tub of boiling water, and was all but boiled.”
“Those foundlings, as it seems, do not get on with her.”
“They do not.—But she is no loser: the funeral expenses are paid.—I came to you on another business, however.”
She looked at him uneasily.
“Dominikova, you must know, has gone to the law court with Yagna—to complain of your having turned her out, I suppose.”
“Let her. I do not care.”
“They went to confession this morning, and had later a long conference with the priest. I could not catch half they said against you, but what they said made him shake his fist with anger!”
“A priest—to poke his nose into other folk’s business!” she blurted out. All day long, however, the tidings stuck in her memory painfully; she was full of fears and evil surmises, and quite at a loss what to do.
At nightfall, a cart stopped in front of her cabin. She ran out, breathless and terrified; but it was only the Voyt, sitting there behind his horses.
“You know about Gregory already,” he began. “ ’Tis a calamity; but there’s nothing to be said.—Now I have also some good news for you. Today—or tomorrow at the latest—ye shall see Antek again.”
“Are ye not beguiling me?” she asked; the news was too good to believe.
“When the Voyt tells you so, ye may believe him. They informed me in the Bureau.”
“ ’Tis well he comes back; it was high time indeed,” she returned, coolly; it seemed, with no joy at all. And then the Voyt, after a moment’s reflection, began talking to her as a friend.
“That’s a bad business ye have made with Yagna! She has laid a complaint against you, and may make you smart for having used violence and taken the law into your own hands. Ye had no right to expel her from her own apartment.—A pretty thing it will be, when Antek comes back, and ye are thrown into jail for it, both of you!—Now take my sincere friendly advice: make matters up. I’ll do all I can to get the complaint withdrawn; but ye must yourself make amends for the injury done.”
Hanka stood erect before him, and told him her mind thus:
“Are you speaking as the defender of my victim, or of your mistress?”
His whip struck the horses so hard that they bounded away at a gallop.