III
It was not very early in the morning when the miller took Antek on as a workman, and, leaving him in the yard amongst great piles of logs, went to Matthew, who was just then getting some timber placed in the sawmill, and setting the saws in motion. After a few words with him, he called out to Antek:
“Then you are to work here, and obey Matthew in everything: he is my deputy.” So saying, he walked away, for a very bleak and piercing wind was just then blowing from the river.
“I suppose you have no ax?” Matthew inquired, after coming down and greeting him in a friendly way.
“I have brought a hatchet: I was not aware. …”
“You might as well use your teeth. The wood is frozen hard, and brittle as glass: a hatchet would not bite into it. For today, I’ll lend you an ax; but you will have to whet it. And to a flat edge, mind.—Bartek, get to work with Boryna and let this oak-log be ready presently: the other will have been sawn in no time.”
From behind an enormous log that lay in the snow, there rose up a tall and wiry but stooping figure of a man, wearing clogs and red-striped trousers with a pipe in his mouth, a grey sheepskin cap on his head, and a tawny leather furred jacket on his back. Resting himself on his ax, he whistled through his teeth, and exclaimed merrily:
“We are going to be wedded together. All right. We shall be a happy pair, and never fall out or fight!”
“A fine forest. The trees are as straight as tapers.”
“Aye, but full of knots all the same. ’Tis awful … as if the timber had been sown with flints. The days are few, when the ax is not notched by them. You mustn’t sharpen your ax quite smooth, but draw it along the grindstone, whetting it on one side only. That makes the edge stronger, you see. And deal with the iron as when you want to manage somebody—you find which way he is to be taken, and how; and then you lead him like a dog on a string.—The grindstone is in the mill, by the groat-bin.”
In a very short time indeed Antek was at work, cutting off the projecting spurs, and hewing the log to a rectangular shape along marks made with tar by Bartek. But he was taciturn and moody, and resentful of having—he, who was a Boryna!—to do the biddings of such a one as Matthew.
“Not bad, your work, not bad at all!” Bartek remarked.
And indeed his work was excellent: the art of fashioning logs was not unknown to him. But it was hard labour for one unaccustomed to it, and after a time he was out of breath, and perspiring to such an extent that he took his sheepskin off. But the frost was hard and held pitilessly; he had constantly to stand and work deep in the snow; his hands were so benumbed, they almost stuck to the ax-handle, and the time seemed so long to him, he could scarcely hold out till noon.
Yet he would take neither bite nor sup for dinner, only dry bread and river water; nor would he even enter the mill, for fear lest he should meet some acquaintance, come to bring corn and awaiting his turn. He stayed out in the frozen air, sitting close to the wall as he crunched his bread and gazed up at the sawmill shed, built over the river, one of its sides touching the main building, so that the stream from the four mill-wheels swept under it with a great rush of green water, making the shed above to vibrate.
But he had not yet rested properly, nor had a good breathing-space, when Matthew, who had dined with the miller, shouted as he came out:
“To work, men! To work!”
So, much against his will, and groaning over the shortness of his noonday rest, he was forced to pull himself together and once more take up what he had to do.
All were in lively movement and worked briskly; the frost was so intense, and Matthew urged them with so much zeal.
The mill clattered unceasingly; beneath its wheels, all overgrown with icicles like a long greenish mane, the stream went rushing noisily on. The saws rasped away with continuous crackling harshness, as the sound of one biting glass to bits, and they spat the yellow sawdust forth. Matthew was everywhere, active and indefatigable, always shouting and urging the toilers to hurry up. He filled the whole place, nimble as a goldfinch pecking at hempseed; his short red-striped spencer, his grey sheepskin cap, were seen flying about over the trodden snow covered with chips, where they were getting the logs ready—ordering, scolding, laughing, joking, whistling, and working as hard as any; but for the most part on the platform close to the saws. For this sawing-shed had no sidewalls, only a roof; so that its whole interior was visible from outside. It rose above the river on four stout piles, against which the current rushed with such force and fury that the roof, made of reeds and resting only on those piles, often trembled like a wisp of straw in a gale.
“A good craftsman he is, that fellow!” quoth Antek, with unwilling recognition.
“And well paid too!” Bartek growled in reply.
They beat their arms against their chests to keep off the increasing cold, and went on working silently.
Of workmen there were enough. Two were at the saws, rolling the sawn logs down to the yard and dragging up fresh ones; two more were cutting off the one end of each log that had been left untouched, and making the sawn planks into piles or carrying into a shed those too thin to bear the outside cold; and a couple of others were stripping the bark off oak and fir and pine logs. To these last, Bartek used often to shout in jest:
“Devil take you, how ye skin them! Ye’ll be pastmasters in dog-flaying, belike!”
But they objected to such jokes, for they never had anything to do with the dog-killer’s craft.
All these men Matthew kept so hard at work that they could only seldom and by stealth find means to run round to the mill, warm their freezing hands, and come back at a gallop, pressed hard by the work itself.
Twilight was nearly over when Antek crawled home, so weary and broken that every bone in him ached. After supper he went to bed at once and, falling asleep, slept as one dead.
Hanka had no heart to inquire about anything, but tried to make him as comfortable as she could, keeping the children quiet, asking her father to make no noise with his boots, and walking barefooted in the room herself; and when he prepared at daybreak to go to work, she boiled a pot of milk for him to take with potatoes for breakfast, that he might feed better and be warmed.
“Confound it!” he declared; “my bones ache so, I cannot move about.”
Bylitsa remarked that this was only because he was not yet accustomed to, and that it would soon pass off.
“Of course it will pass off: I know that.—Hanka, will you bring me my dinner?”
“I will, I will: why should you come hither so far?”
He then started at once, the work being due to begin with the day.
Many a day of hard and weary toil followed.
Whether the frost baked the ground at the height of its fierceness, or the gusts and snow-charged gales were blowing, or a thaw came, and they were forced to stand the livelong day in the melting slush, while the bleak damp cold entered their very marrow, or the snow fell so that Antek could hardly see his ax—they had to work all day long till every vein and sinew of the body ached with weariness: the four saws devoured the timber so fast that the men were hardly equal to supplying them; and Matthew was driving them on besides.
But what exasperated him was not the work; for, as wise men say, “Whatever you take to well, can give comfort even in hell.” No: what he could not bear was Matthew’s position of superiority, and his continual sneers.
The others had got used to these; but he could not help boiling with indignation each time; and more than once he uttered so fierce a snarl that the overseer’s eyes flamed. And then, of set purpose, he would begin to criticize everything about Antek: not openly to his face, but always animadverting on anything imperfect in his work, till the latter tingled all over and felt his fists clench of themselves. He nevertheless restrained himself, damped his fires, and simply put all these things by for future remembrance, being well aware that Matthew only awaited an opportunity to oust him from his place.
Now, though Antek cared little for his work in itself, he was resolved not to be put down and triumphed over by any man alive.
And the outcome of all this was that their mutual hatred grew deadlier every day: Yagna, like a festering wound, being at the bottom thereof. Ever since last spring, possibly since last Carnival, both had alternately followed her, each trying to get the better of the other, secretly indeed, yet well aware of the other’s attempts. Matthew, however, worked in the open, telling everyone of his love, while Antek was compelled to hide his feelings, and let a dull, yet burning jealousy devour his heart.
There never had been much love lost between them, and they had always looked somewhat askance at each other, and would boast great things in the presence of third parties, each holding himself to be the strongest fellow in the whole village. And now that this mutual hate had grown to such an extent in a few weeks, it had came to pass that neither would address the other; they passed by, glaring like angry wolves.
Matthew was not a bad fellow, nor even of churlish disposition. On the contrary, he had a good heart, and an open helping hand. His only defects were too much self-confidence, and a tendency to set himself above others, together with a belief in his irresistibility with the other sex. No girl, he thought, but must give way to him; and he said so, and bragged of it, and was the first of men in his own conceit. He now also enjoyed telling folk that Antek worked under his orders, and looked up to him humbly lest he should be expelled.
For those that knew the latter, it was surprising to mark how he kept himself calm, and stooped to behave so humbly as he did. But there were those who said there was something brewing under all this; that Antek had never yet overlooked an insult, and would one of these days take his revenge. These were even ready to bet that Matthew would soon find out that he was (as they say) biting at a very sour apple.
Antek, of course, who never looked in anywhere, was ignorant of all that was said. He used to pass by without speaking even to his acquaintances, always going straight home after working-hours. But he, too, felt that there was something about to happen, and he saw plainly through Matthew’s doings.
“But I’ll beat you into such a jelly, you carrion, that the very dogs will have none of you, and you’ll never brag any more!” Such was the cry that escaped him one day at work. Bartek heard and said:
“Take no thought of him; he is paid to drive us, and he does.” The old man had not caught the meaning of that cry.
“I cannot brook even a dog that barks without cause!”
“You take it all too much to heart; it heats your liver, and makes you, as I see, toil too feverishly.”
“No, I work like that on account of the cold,” he answered, wishing to make some reply or other.
“Let us do all things slowly, step by step. Slowly; for the Lord Jesus, who might have made the world in one day only, chose to do so in a whole week, with one day of rest. Why should you be so anxious to wear yourself out for the miller or anyone else’s sake? Who forces you?—Matthew is a watchdog, nothing more: why take his barking amiss?”
“I spoke as I felt,” Antek said; and then, to change the conversation, “Where were you last summer?” he asked. “I did not see you in the village.”
“I worked a little, saw something of this God’s world, looked about me, and filled my soul with spiritual food,” he answered deliberately, whilst hewing the other side of Antek’s log, now and then straightening himself, and stretching his limbs till the joints cracked: always pipe in mouth.
“I was working with Matthew at the new Manor; but he drove too hard, and it was springtime in the land, and the sunshine smelt sweet. So I left him. There were folk going that way down to Kalvarya; so I went with them to gain the indulgences and see a bit of the country.”
“Is it far to Kalvarya?”
“ ’Tis beyond Krakow.—But I did not get so far. In a village where we stopped to dine, there was a peasant building a hut, and he knew as much about building as a goat knows about pepper! He made me angry; I swore at the man, for he was wasting good timber—and in the end I stayed on with him. In a couple of months I had built him a house like a villa; and for that he would perforce have me wed his sister, a widow that had five acres of land hard by.”
“Old, I dare say.”
“Not young, ’tis true; but still comely enough. Rather bald, to be sure; lame, too, with a cast in her eye; and smooth of face to look upon, as a loaf nibbled by mice for a fortnight. But a pleasant woman, and a kind one; gave me lots of good things to eat—now scrambled eggs with bits of sausage, now vodka and lard, now other dainties. And she took to me so that I might have shared her cot any day, had I cared.”
“Why did you not? Five acres are always worth having.”
“Oh, I had no mind for any woman. Of petticoats I have long had more than enough. They are always crying out and screaming, like magpies in a hedge: you say one word, and they bang a score at your head, like a handful of peas. You have your reason to go by; they have only their tongues. You talk to them, thinking to be understood: and they neither understand nor heed you, but jabber foolishness only.—They say our Lord created woman with only half a soul. It must be so—and the devil has supplied them with the other half.”
“Perhaps,” Antek put in sadly, “some women may be intelligent.”
“Some crows may be white, but none has ever seen any.”
“Tell me: were you ever married?”
“I was! Oh, yes, I was!” He stopped short, straightened himself, and his grey eyes looked far, far away. He was an old man, dry as a wood-shaving, but sinewy: and straight too, save when at times he drooped, and the pipe wobbled about in his mouth, and his eyes, as now, blinked with quick flutterings.
“Time for the next log!” cried the man at the saws.
“Hurry now, Bartek! Don’t dawdle there! The saws are stopping!” shouted Matthew.
“He’s a fool—wants things done quicker than possible.
“ ‘There comes a rook to church;
“A priest am I!” he screeches,
And croaks from pulpit-perch,
And fondly thinks he preaches,’ ”
Bartek grumbled, as in anger; but some other emotion had taken hold of him, and his rests were more frequent, and he sighed at times, looking southward for noon.
Luckily it came then: the women were there, with the dinners in the pots they carried. Hanka appeared from behind the mill. The saws ceased their rasping, and they all went to eat in the building, Antek, who knew the miller’s man, going to his room. At present he did not avoid folk, nor turn away from them, but would look them in the face with eyes that made them turn their own away.
In a room too hot almost to breathe in, there sat several persons in sheepskins, talking joyously. These were people from villages at some distance, who had brought corn that was to be ground while they waited. They had crammed with peat the little stove that was already red-hot, and were smoking cigarettes and chatting, so that the whole room was as dim as it was hot.
Antek seated himself on a sack near the window and, with the pot between his knees, he fell to with great zest, first upon the dish of cabbage with peas, and then upon another, made of potatoes mashed with milk. Hanka, crouching on the floor by his side, looked tenderly on him. Hard work had made him thinner, and in places the skin had peeled off his face: yet to her he seemed the handsomest man on earth. Yes, just as he was: tall, straight-limbed, lithe; slender-waisted, broad-shouldered, supple; his face a long thin oval, his nose like a hawk’s beak, but only slightly curved; his eyes full, a greyish green, under eyebrows that seemed drawn with charcoal from temple to temple in one straight line, and were terrible to behold when he knit them in angry mood; his forehead lofty, but half covered with hair that fell over it, straight down, like a mane, dark almost to blackness; and that upper lip of his, clean-shaven after the peasants’ fashion, disclosing a row of white teeth within crimson borders, like a string of ivory beads! Oh, she was never tired of gazing upon him!
“Could not your father bring the dinner? You have to go so far every day!”
“He had to remove the dung from our heifer’s stall; and besides, I preferred to come myself.”
And she always managed to do so, for the mere sake of gazing at his comely form.
“Any news?” he asked, as his dinner came to an end.
“Nothing much. I have spun one sack of wool, and taken the yarn—five hanks of it—to the organist’s wife. She was very much pleased.—Our little Peter is not well: he won’t eat and is hot and feverish.”
“He has only overeaten himself.”
“Surely, surely.—Oh, and Yankel came to buy our geese.”
“Will you sell them?”
“A likely thing, indeed! To buy others when spring comes round?”
“Do as you choose. I leave all that to you.”
“And at the Vahniks’ there has been a fight again, and his Reverence has been sent for to reconcile them.—And they say that the calf at the Paches’ has choked itself with eating carrots.”
“That’s all one to me,” he growled impatiently.
“—And the organist came collecting sheaves,” she said after a while, with a tremble in her voice.
“What did you give?”
“Two handfuls of carded flax, and four eggs.—And he said that, if we wished, he would let us have a wagonful of oat-straw, and wait till summer for payment. But I did not accept: why should we take aught from him? And moreover, we have a right to your father’s pasturage. We had only two cartloads—far too few for so many acres. …”
“I will not remind him of it, and I forbid you to do so. For the spinning you do, take the oat-straw from the organist. If you will not, then sell all our livestock. So long as I live, never will I ask my father for anything whatsoever.—Do you understand?”
“I do, and shall apply to the organist.”
“Your work, together with mine, will perhaps suffice.—Hanka, no weeping here: they see us!”
“I am not weeping.—Antek, pray ask the miller for half a hectolitre of barley to grind: if we bought it ready ground, it would cost more.”
“Good. I will tell him today, and stay on here one of these evenings to see it ground.”
Hanka left him, and he remained, smoking cigarettes in silence. They were just then talking of the Squire of Vola, and of his brother.
“His name is Yacek: I knew him well!” Bartek exclaimed, coming into the room.
“Then of course you know he has returned from foreign parts.”
“No, indeed. I thought he had died long ago.”
“He is here; arrived a fortnight back.”
“Yes, he has come, but—so folk say—not quite in his right mind. He refuses to live at the Manor, and has gone to dwell in the pine-forest, where he does everything for himself—cooking, sewing, and all. Everyone wonders at him. In the evening he plays on his violin: they often and often meet him on the roads near certain graves, where he sits and plays tunes.”
“I was told he goes from hamlet to hamlet, asking people for news of one Kuba.”
“Kuba?—Many a dog is named Tray!”
“He gives no surname, but seeks the man Kuba, who carried him off a battlefield, it seems, and saved his life once.”
“There was a Kuba at our farm who went out with the nobles in the last insurrection; but he’s dead,” Antek observed, rising to his feet; for Matthew was already shouting outside:
“Come out, you: are ye to make dinner last till teatime?”
Antek, much ruffled, rushed out, and cried:
“Do not spend breath in vain, we all can hear you!”
“He is too full of meat, and eases his belly with shouting!” was Bartek’s remark; and someone added:
“The noise he makes is but to curry favour with the miller.”
Matthew went on grumbling: “They must dine and enjoy long chats at their ease—must they not?—these grand fellows, these big farmers, who haven’t one whole pair of breeches!”
“Take that, Antek; that’s for you!”
“Hold your peace, and let not your tongue clack so, or I’ll cut it out for you!” Antek had raised his voice, ready now for anything. “And never a word more about farmers!”
Matthew darted a murderous look at him, but replied nothing. For the whole day, he mutely watched Antek’s work with the most rigid scrutiny, but without finding anything against him. He worked so admirably well that the miller himself, who came round several times a day to look over the work done, could not find any fault with it, and at the first weekly payment raised his wages to three zloty.
At this Matthew, in a towering passion, had words with the miller, who answered: “I am satisfied both with him and with you, and with every man who works well.”
“You have raised his wages merely to spite me!”
“I have done so as in justice bound, and want all men to know I am just. Why, he is worth as much as Bartek, if not more.”
“Then,” Matthew threatened, “I throw the whole damned business up. You may do the work yourself!”
“Do so, if you choose. If my black bread is not to your taste, go seek rolls elsewhere. Young Boryna will take your place, and that at four zloty daily,” the miller said, with a laugh.
Matthew cooled down immediately, seeing that bullying was out of the question. He gave up his persecutions, put his dislike for Antek deep into his pocket (though there it burned like a live coal), and also became less exacting, less of a taskmaster for the men. This they were not slow to perceive, and Bartek presently remarked to the others:
“He’s like the dog that snapped at a man’s boot, got kicked on the muzzle, and fawned on him. Aye, he thought he was the favourite, and knows now he will have to go as soon as a better man is found.”
Both to the rise in wages, and to Matthew’s knuckling down, Antek was indifferent; he cared for all that as much as for the year gone by. It was not for the money’s sake, but to please Hanka, and for his own satisfaction, that he was working. Had he made up his mind to lie on his back all day long, he would have done so, no matter what came of it.
Thus day after day, week after week slipped by, till Yuletide, in hard incessant labour. Little by little, his mind grew calmer—frozen up, as it were: so far was he from resembling the man he had been. Folk marvelled at this, and judged him diversely. But the change in him was only external and for the eyes of men: within he remained as he was before. He worked now, and toiled hard, gave his wife every groschen he earned, stayed at home of evenings, was kinder than ever, silent, peaceful; played with his children, helped his wife at home, nor ever said a cross word to anyone. But all this did not avail to hoodwink Hanka. His transformation pleased her, indeed, and she fervently thanked God for it, watching over him, attentive to the looks in his eyes to find out what he desired—the most attached and thoughtful of servants. But she would often note a mournful gleam in his eye, and overhear a low sigh that escaped him. Then her arms dropped to her sides, and her heart died within her as she sought in her mind, thinking whence the evil that was to come would proceed. Well did she know that something terrible was fermenting within him—something that he repressed only by putting forth his whole strength—something that crouched secretly, sucking, sucking the lifeblood of his soul!
But whatever he felt, good or evil, he said nothing. After his work he returned straight home, choosing the longer way by the other side of the pond, that he might not pass near his father’s home, not meet with … someone.
Someone!
Therefore, too, he stayed at home on Sundays, although Hanka besought him to come to church with her. He feared a meeting with Yagna; he felt that he should not stand it, that he never could resist.
Besides, he had heard from Bartek, with whom he was not on unfriendly terms, how the village folk were always busied about him; how they watched and spied upon him at every step, as on a thief. And he had himself more than once seen eyes that peeped at him round corners, with swift peering glances—glances which would have loved to penetrate his very soul, to search all that was therein, and explore it through and through.
“The wretches! But they shall get nothing out of me, nothing!” he would say bitterly, all the more stubborn in his hate because he kept more aloof from everyone.
“I need no one; I am on such terms with myself that I can scarcely bear my own companionship,” he would reply to Klemba, when the latter reproached him for never coming to see them.
This was true, most true; he could hardly bear to live on thus, continually holding himself down with all his might, breaking his soul in as with an iron curb, and keeping it under the strictest control. But he felt himself giving way with sheer weariness of the struggle; ever more and more frequently there came over him the longing to throw everything up and yield to his fate—happy or miserable, it mattered little to him. He was disgusted with life, and devoured with sadness—infinite sadness, which, like a bird of prey, had sunk its talons deep into his mangled heart.
To bear the yoke thus was irksome beyond words: he choked and strained in bonds, as a horse tethered in a paddock, or as a chained-up dog might do.
He thought of himself as a fruit-tree, broken by the gales, condemned to die, withering slowly in the midst of a blossoming orchard full of lusty life.
And Lipka—Lipka went on as usual. There were christenings, as at the Vahniks’; betrothals, as at the Klembas’ (though now they had no music, they took as much enjoyment as was allowed in Advent); then in some families there was a death, as at that other Bartek’s, whom his son-in-law had beaten so fearfully that he pined away and lay moaning until at last refreshed in Abraham’s bosom. And Yagustynka had once again brought another action against her children for breach of contract. Many another thing was going on besides, something new in nearly every hut, and folk had plenty of matter for gossip, and for laughter and for sorrow. And throughout the long winter evenings, the women gathered together and spun in many a cabin. And, Lord! how they all did laugh and chatter and wrangle, till the noise of their jollity was heard far out on the road! Everywhere there was no end of squabbling, of striking up friendships, of wooings, of trysts outside the homesteads; of turmoils and fightings and sweet converse: as in an anthill or in a beehive, so the folk swarmed and buzzed within their cabins.
Yes, everyone lived as he pleased, as seemed best to him and was fitter both to himself and his neighbours, and according to the commandments of God.
And he, Antek, stood alone, outside of them all, cut off from humanity; like a strange bird, hungry, yet afraid, that will perhaps flap its wings outside the lighted windows, and long to draw nearer to the corn-filled stacks—and yet does not: only wheels around, listens, feeds on its hunger, gulps down its thirst, and never will draw nigh!
Unless—unless God should deign to work in him a change that might last forever, and make him a new creature!
Alas! of such a change he dreaded as yet even to think.
One morning, only a few days before Christmas, he met the blacksmith; who, though Antek would have passed him by, blocked the way and, stretching out his hand, said to him kindly and in a slightly sad tone:
“And I expected you’d come to me as to a brother. I could have talked with you and aided you, little as we have at home.”
“Why did you not come first?”
“What? intrude and be driven away like Yuzka?”
“You were right. ‘He that suffereth naught will for nothing take thought.’ ”
“ ‘Suffereth naught!’ Is not my grievance the very same as yours?”
“How dare you tell me such a barefaced lie? Am I a witling in your eyes?”
“As I love the Lord God, I have spoken naught but the truth.”
“ ‘The fox, it is a cunning beast:
’Twill run and sniff and turn and twist,
And with its tail
It sweeps its trail,
That none may nose the scent of it,’ ”
said Antek, with contempt.
“Your grievance is, I know, that I went to the wedding. It is true that I did not refuse. But how could I? The priest himself urged and pressed me not to offend God, making division between the children and their father.”
“Ah, ye went at the priest’s bidding, did ye? Tell that to him that will believe you, not to me.—Oh, but ye wring out of the old man all ye can wring, as the price of your friendship: he does not send you away empty-handed!”
“ ‘Who takes not what is offered him’s an ass,’ ” the blacksmith quoted. “But I’ll not argue that with you. All Lipka will tell you—why, you may ask Yagustynka, who is always with the old man—that I press him to make it up with you. It will come about … he will calm down … and we shall arrange matters.”
“Try to reconcile dogs, not him and me: do you hear? I never thought of quarrelling with you; but now, let me alone, you and your reconciliations!—Look at him! A fine friend indeed! Never would you reconcile us, unless to get the last coat off my back!—Once for all, I tell you: let me alone, and do not come in my way; for if I ever fall into a passion, I’ll tear your red hair off your scalp, and play the devil with your ribs: aye, and your good friends, the gendarmes, will not prevent me. Just remember that.”
He turned on his heel and went off, not even looking round at the smith, who stood with mouth wide open in the middle of the road.
“The rotten liar!—Hand in glove with the old man, to come and talk to me of friendship! He that would make beggars of both of us, if he could!”
It took him some time to cool down after this meeting; especially as everything that morning went wrong with him. He had scarcely begun chopping the logs, when a knot made a notch in his ax; then, just before noon, a piece of timber crashed upon his foot, and only failed to crush it by a rare good chance: he had to pull his boot off and cool his swollen foot with ice. Matthew was, moreover, in bad humour that day, finding fault with everybody: this was badly done, that done too slowly; and, as for Antek, he took every pretext to grumble at him.
Everything went wrong; even the barley that Franek was to have ground, and about which Hanka was always troubling, had not been done yet, the excuse being press of work.
At home, too, things were not quite right. Hanka was distressed and tearful, for little Peter lay sick of a burning fever, and she had been forced to call in Yagustynka to fumigate him.
She came just at suppertime, sat by the fire, looked furtively about her, and would have liked to gossip very much, but that they received her attempts very coldly; and so she presently set to trying her healing powers on the boy.
“I am off to the mill,” Antek said, taking his cap; “unless I see the barley ground myself, it never will be done.”
“Could not Father go in your stead?”
“I shall be far more likely to get it.”—He went off in a hurry, ill-humoured, out of sorts, tossed about like a solitary tree in a storm. Besides, everything at home enraged him—especially those prying ferret eyes of Yagustynka.
The evening was still and not frosty, with but few stars to be seen—only one or two, twinkling far away as through a veil. The wind blew from the woods, with a dull humming murmur, betokening a change of weather. Dogs barked dispersedly about the hamlet, smoke trailed along the road, and the air, though bleak, was damp.
Christmas being at hand, there were plenty of people at the mill. Those whose corn was being ground waited in the passage; the others stayed in the room of the miller’s man. These formed a circle round Matthew, who was telling them something very funny, at which they every now and then burst into laughter. Antek did not care to cross the threshold, and went out to look for Franek at the mill.
“He is on the dam,” they said, “squabbling with Magda—you know—the wench the organist turned out.”
“The miller,” another peasant told him, “has threatened to send him away, if he is ever again seen in the mill with Magda; for she used to spend her nights there. But, poor thing! where else has she to go?”
And someone else added, jestingly: “ ‘What in March we pursue, in November we rue!’ ”
Antek sat down to wait, close to the place where the finest flour was ground, and opposite to the half-open door of the waiting-room. There he could discern Matthew’s shoulders, and the heads of the others all turned towards him and intent on what he was telling them. But for the clatter of the wheels, he could have even made out what was said, though he had no curiosity that way.
He threw himself on to some sacks of corn, and presently, out of sheer dejection and weariness, began to doze.
The mill clattered away, flapping, throbbing, and in full activity in every one of its compartments; the wheels beat as if a hundred washerwomen were all using their bats with might and main; the water swirled past them with a bubbling hullabaloo and, churned up into boiling foam and snowy flakes, rushed on to the river.
For hard upon an hour, Antek stayed there, expectant, but at last made for the yard to go and seek Franek and also to rouse himself up somewhat, feeling overcome with slumber. The way out led through the waiting-room, which he was just going to enter, and his hand was upon the latch, when what he heard Matthew saying made him stop on a sudden.
“Yes, the old fellow boils the milk and tea, and takes it to her in bed! They say that he, along with Yagustynka, does all the kine want done for them, and will not let her soil her hands; nay, that he has bought something for her in town, lest she catch cold by going out behind the barn!”
Here followed a burst of loud laughter, and then a hailstorm of jests. Antek, by an instinctive movement, returned to where he had sat before and, flinging himself again upon the sacks, gazed vacantly at the streak of ruddy light that came from the door which stood ajar. Now he could hear no more, for the din made the talk inaudible; a grey mist of flour-dust rose and dimmed everything round him; the lamps, which hung by cords from the ceiling, twinkled through the white fog, and glowed athwart it, as yellow as cats’ eyes, and vibrated continually. But he was too restless to stay seated; again he rose, and quietly and on tiptoe approached the door, and bent his ear.
“… She explained everything!” Matthew said. “Dominikova assured him that the girl had been in a hurry, scrambling over a fence … it was a thing that very frequently happened … had occurred to herself when a maiden. A most convenient explanation! And he believed her, the old ram! Such a clever man! and he believed her.”
The laughter became a hurricane; they all were in paroxysms, and made the house ring again.
Nearer and nearer crept Antek, now almost on the very threshold, pale as a corpse, with fists clenched, crouching and gathered together for a spring.
When they had done, Matthew continued: “But as to what they say of Antek’s being on too friendly terms with Yagna, I happen to know that to be false. I myself heard him whining like a dog outside her bedroom door, till she drove him out with a besom! He stuck to her like a burr to a dog’s tail, but she got rid of him for all that.”
Someone here inquired: “Did you see that? In the village they talk otherwise.”
“Did I see?—Why, I was in there with her, and she herself complained how he teased her!”
“You lying cur!” Antek shrieked, as he darted past the threshold.
Matthew instantly sprang at him. But, swift as thought, Antek was upon him with the leap of a wolf. One hand clutching at his throat, stopping both breath and voice, the other grasping his belt, he whirled him up in the air like a bush you root out, burst open the door with a kick, and rushed with him beyond the sawmill to the river-fence, against which he hurled him with such fury that four rails broke like reeds, and Matthew fell into the stream like a log!
A great tumult and clamour ensued, for in that spot the river was deep and swift. They hastened to the rescue and got him out at once, but he was insensible. The miller came running in directly and sent for Ambrose, who came in at once. The people from the village assembled in crowds, till Matthew was conveyed into the miller’s house; he swooned again and again, and spat much blood. And as they feared he could not live through the night, the priest was sent for.
Antek, as soon as Matthew had been carried out, coolly took his place by the fireside, chatting with Franek, who had turned up; and when the folk were back in the room again, and things a little more quiet, Antek spoke out, so loud that all could hear him:
“If anyone shall a second time bait and mock me, I will do the like to him, yea, and more also!”
No one answered a word. They only gazed upon him in profound wonder and respect. How had it been possible to lay hold on such a man as Matthew, lift him up as easily as a bundle of straw, carry him out and hurl him into the river? So stupendous a feat had never yet been heard of. They might have fought together, wrestled, and one in the end have overcome the other, with breaking of bones even, or the crushing out of life: that was quite a usual thing. But no: he had taken the man, just as you take a puppy by the ears, and thrown him into the river! That the rails had broken his ribs, that was nothing; he might get well. But the shame of it, the shame, was what Matthew would never be able to bear: he was disgraced for all his life.
“Really, really, my dear fellow,” one man repeated to another, “never yet has such a thing been!”
Heedless of their talk, Antek got his meal ground and went home about midnight. He saw the lighted window of the room at the miller’s where they had taken Matthew.
“Foul dog!” he said as he glanced that way, and spat on the ground in hatred, “ye never will boast again of having been with Yagna in her bedchamber!”
Hanka had not yet gone to bed, and was spinning when he came in; but he told her nothing. In the morning he stopped away from work, feeling sure they had turned him away. But he had scarcely breakfasted when the miller came in.
“Come and work. Your quarrel with Matthew is your own business: I have naught to do with it. But the sawmill must go on working as before, till he is well.—You will now be overseer, and have four zloty a day and dinner.”
“I do not accept. Give me what you gave Matthew, then I will: and do his work as well as he.”
The miller flew in a rage, and wanted to bargain, but he was obliged to give in: what else could he do? He took him on at once, and walked away.
Hanka, who had been told nothing of what had occurred, was much puzzled at all this.