At length, however, Klemba cleared his throat, expectorated, and said with a dignified mien:
“How long shall we hang back and beat about the bush? We come to know if ye are on our side or not.”
“Without you we cannot decide aught.”
“For ye are the first man amongst us all.”
“And wisdom has been given you by our Lord.”
“And though ye have no office, yet are ye the leader of us all.”
“Also our common interests are at stake.”
Each man had his say, and everyone was so complimentary to Boryna that he turned red, held up his hands in deprecation, and exclaimed:
“Kind friends, I do not even know as yet what brings you hither!”
“Our forest! After Twelfth Night, they intend to cut it down.”
“I know they even now saw timber at the mill.”
“But that belongs to Jews in Rudka, as we thought ye knew.”
“I did not: I have little time to go about and question folk.”
“Yet ye were first to make complaint against the Squire?”
“Because I thought that he had sold the timber of our clearing.”
“Why, whose else? say whose!” Caban interrupted.
“That on the land he bought himself; his own.”
“Aye, but he also has sold the timber of Vilche Doly, and they are now to cut it down!”
“That he can only do if we agree!”
“And yet the trees are marked already; they have measured out the land, and will begin to fell the timber after Twelfth Night.”
“If ’tis thus”—Boryna paused to reflect—“if so, then we shall enter a complaint before the commissary.”
“ ‘From seedtime to harvest, complainant, thou starvest!’ ” Caban muttered; and Valenty “the Wry-mouthed” chimed in:
“ ‘In dying condition, folk need no physician.’ ”
“A complaint will do this much: ere the official prohibition is issued, there will not remain a single stump of the wood—our wood.—Remember what they did at Debitsa!”
“ ‘The wolf that tastes a single lamb, with the whole flock its maw will cram.’ The manor folk are like the wolf.”
“This,” Boryna said, “must be prevented.”
“Matthias, these are words of wisdom. Tomorrow, when mass is over, the farmers are to meet at my cabin and see what we should do; and they have sent to ask you to come over with good advice.”
“Shall they all be there?”
“Yes, and just after mass.”
“Tomorrow?—What can I do?—You see, I must be tomorrow at Vola without fail. Kinsmen of mine are dividing land there, quarrelling and bringing actions one against another. I have promised to arbitrate there, so that the orphans shall suffer no wrong. So I must go; but I agree to stand by the meeting’s decision.”
They left the hut somewhat dissatisfied. He had approved them and agreed with all they said; but they had the impression he was not sincerely holding with them.
“You will decide as you choose,” he was thinking; “I shall be clear of it. Neither the Voyt, nor the miller, nor any of the foremost men here follow you. … The Squire, if he knows I am not hostile to him, will compensate me more willingly for the cow; and he may come to an understanding with each of us separately.—They are foolish: it were better to let him cut the very last sapling down—and then go to law—lodge a complaint—get an injunction—and so wring out of him far more than he would have given by any agreement.”
Long after everyone else was in bed, Matthias still sat up, poring over a board on which he had made calculations with chalk, and revolving many things in his mind.
The next day, immediately after breakfast, he ordered the sledge to be got ready.
“As I said last night, I am off to Vola. Yagna, take good care of the house; if anyone should ask after me, say I was obliged to go.—And do not forget to look in at the Voyt’s.”
“Will ye come home late?” she asked, concealing the joy she felt.
“About suppertime: perhaps later.”
He put on his best suit, which she brought him from the storeroom. Instead of a button, she passed a ribbon through his shirt buttonholes and tied it; she helped him to dress, and hurried Pete on, with feverish impatience to get the horses harnessed in a trice. She was all the time in rapid movement, and her heart cried out for gladness: her goodman would be absent for the whole day, and was to return late … perhaps only near midnight! While she would remain alone!—And at dusk—at dusk—she could go out—out behind the haystack! Aha! … She exulted in her soul; her eyes beamed with laughter, she stretched and drew herself up; shocks as of tingling and burning electric fluid went through her with most exquisitely sweet torment. … And then, all at once and unexpectedly, a strange feeling of dread took hold of her, and a dead hush came over her soul, and she looked on, as one dazed, at Boryna, as he put on his cap and gave his orders to Vitek.
“Oh, pray, pray, take me with you!” she whispered low.
“But—but,” Boryna stammered in astonishment, “who will take your place at home?”
“Yet take me.—It is St. Stephen’s feast today, and there is little to do. Take me; I feel so dejected here!” And she begged so hard that—much as he wondered at her whim—he made no further difficulties. A few minutes later, she was ready, and off they set from the hut, the sledge swaying and sweeping round with all the might of straining hocks and beating hoofs.
VI
“I thought,” he muttered sourly, “you’d been lost in some snowdrift!”
“In such a storm as this, how could I go faster? I had to grope my way along, for the snow blew in my eyes so, I
