After a time he unconsciously set his face homewards. As he went, a pitiful cry, a voice of lamentation, reached him from near the church. Someone just beneath the statue which stood in front of the lich-gate lay on the snow, with arms outstretched as one crucified; but in the shade which fell from the churchyard wall, he could not discern who it was. He stooped down, thinking it was some homeless wanderer, perhaps overtaken by drink. And there, imploring the mercy of God, lay Hanka!
“Come home … the cold is fearful … come, Hanka!” He spoke with entreaty, his soul melting strangely within him. She answered nothing. Then he lifted her up and took her home.
All the way, they were mute. But Hanka wept grievously.
VIII
After that Twelfth Night, Boryna’s house became like a tomb. No weeping, no clamour, no invectives: but a sinister silence dwelt there, telling of rancour and suppressed resentment.
Everybody in the house was now taciturn, veiled in gloom, living in the continual expectation of some awful thing about to take place, as under a roof that one knows may at any time crash down upon one’s head.
Neither on his return to the hut, nor even the next day, did Boryna say a single sharp word to Yagna. Nor did he complain to Dominikova: he kept silence about all that had happened.
But the paroxysm of anger he had felt made him ill: he was unable to rise from his bed, had continual qualms, a stitch in his side, and fits of fever now and then.
“ ’Tis nothing much; only the liver is inflamed, or perhaps the womb has changed position,” was Dominikova’s diagnosis, as she rubbed his side with hot oil. He replied nothing, but groaned heavily, staring at the rafters above.
“It was not Yagna’s fault, indeed it was not!” she said, speaking low, lest they should hear her from the other room. She felt extreme uneasiness at his saying no word to her about the happenings of the night before.
“Whose then?” he muttered.
“What evil has she done? Ye left her, and went away to drink in the private room; the band played, and all the folk danced in the other. What then? Ought she to have sat alone in a corner? She is a young healthy woman, and needs to be amused. Well, he was urgent, and she danced with him. Could she help it? In the tavern, everyone has the right to choose his dancer. He—that wretch! choose her, and would not leave her alone … all out of spite against you!”
“ ’Tis good ye rub me to set me on my legs again; but I will take no lessons from you. I know the truth of the matter quite well.”
“Are ye so wise? Then should ye know that a young woman in good health needs some pleasure. She is not a log of wood, neither is she an old dame: she married a man, and a man she must have. Not a decrepit veteran, with whom she can only tell her beads! No, no!”
“Yet ye gave her to me in marriage: wherefore, then?” he asked, with a sneer.
“Wherefore? And who was it came whining like a dog? Was it I who implored you to take her? Did I entice you … or did she? Why, she might have wedded anyone, aye, and of the first in Lipka: so many were after her!”
“After her, yes; to wed her, no.”
“Yelping cur! May your tongue rot off!”
“Ah! the truth is a stinging nettle to you!”
“ ’Tis no truth, but a wicked lie!”
He drew up the blanket over his chest, turned his face to the wall, and answered not one word more to all her heated arguments; only, when she at last burst into tears, he whispered mockingly:
“ ‘If a woman’s tongue fail, she thinks tears will prevail.’ ”
On the point in discussion, he had come to a strong conviction. Whilst he was laid up, the things he had heard of old against Yagna had all come back to him: he had pondered them well in his mind, gathered them together, and thought them over.—And now such bitter exasperation took hold of him for his inability to quit his bed, that he would toss upon it all day with silent angry curses, following, with the fierce eyes of a falcon, every step that Yagna took. She, pale and drooping, would go about the house like a sleepwalker, looking at him with the wistful eyes of an ill-treated child, and sighing so deeply that he could not but feel some compassion for her—though her sighs inflamed his jealousy still more.
And so things dragged on in the hut till Sunday. She, who by nature was extremely sensitive, could hardly bear it any more, and, like a delicate flower that feels the first touch of frost, began to pine and waste away. Daily she looked worse and worse, could sleep no more, was unable to sit still, and spoiled all she did, her work slipping through her fingers. She lived in perpetual dread besides. The old man still kept his bed, moaning, saying never one word of kindness to her, but fixing his gloomy hostile eyes upon her constantly, until she could no longer support it. Life was a burden. And also she was deeply distressed and anxious at getting no more news from Antek. Since Twelfth Night he had never come, though more than once, in spite of the mortal fear she was prey to, she had repaired to the hayrick.
Of course she durst ask no one for news of him. And by this time she loathed her cabin so heartily that she would several times in the day run out to see her mother. But Dominikova was mostly either visiting patients or in church, and, when at home, had only sour looks and bitter reproaches for her. The
