They seated themselves, some on benches, others on chests. Klemba’s sons, too, brought in tree-stumps from the yard for the boys to sit down upon, and there was room enough for all. The hut, though of no height, was very large, built in the old style, most likely by Klemba’s great-great-grandfather, and a hundred and fifty years old or more. It was already tottering with age, leaning slantwise like a stooping old man; in places, the thatched eaves almost touched the hedge beneath, and had to be propped up.
After a time, the talk grew louder and more general, while the spindles twirled and whirled and hummed on the floor, and a spinning-wheel buzzed here and there.
Klemba’s sons were four: tall slender striplings, with budding moustaches. They sat close to the door, engaged in twisting ropes of straw. The other young fellows were sitting in corners, smoking cigarettes, grinning and joking with the lasses, and making them giggle till the room rang again.
At last Roch, whom they had long expected, came in, followed by Matthew.
“Is it windy still?” someone asked.
“No wind at all; the weather will change.”
“It surely is going to thaw,” Klemba added; “we hear the forest moaning.”
Roch, who now taught a class at the Klembas’, and lodged and boarded there, sat down to eat at a separate table. Matthew greeted some of the company, but did not so much as glance at Yagna, whom he made out he had not seen, although she was straight in front of him. At that she smiled faintly, with her eyes fixed on the entrance door.
“Well, it has been blowing all day long, Heaven preserve us!” Sohova said. “Some women have crept back from the forest, half dead; and they say Hanka and her father, who were among them, are missing.”
“Ah, yes,” Kobusova grunted. “ ‘Wherever the poor man goes, the wind against him blows.’ ”
“Alas! Hanka has come down indeed. …” Ploshkova was beginning to say, but stopped and talked of something else on seeing how red Yagna had turned.
“Has not Yagustynka been here?” Roch inquired.
“She is not wanted: our company takes no pleasure in slandering and backbiting.”
“A wicked hag she is! This very day she set the Voyt and the Soltys’ wives so by the ears that they fell to railing and would have fought, had not the company prevented them.”
“That’s because they let her talk as she pleases.”
“And there’s no one to pay her out for her spiteful words and mischief-making.”
“Yet all know what she is: why listen to her snarls?”
“True: we never know when she is lying and when not.”
“They let her, because they all enjoy hearing her talk against someone else,” Ploshka’s wife concluded.
Teresa, a soldier’s wife, here called out: “Let her say one word against me! She would pay it dear!”
Whereupon Balcerek’s wife said to her, sarcastically:
“Why, is she not telling tales against you in the village all day long?”
“Repeat—repeat them, whatsoever ye have heard!” she shouted, flushing crimson: it was a matter of general knowledge that she was on exceedingly intimate terms with Matthew.
“I will, and to your face, when your goodman is back from the army.”
“Beware what ye say of me! What, will ye babble and gabble here?”
“Wherefore scream, when none accuses you!” Ploshka’s wife cried out in rebuke; but Teresa was not soon appeased, and she muttered to herself for a good while.
“Have they been here, with the ‘bear?’ ” Roch asked, to change the subject.
“They are at the organist’s now, and will be here at once.”
“Who are the performers?”
“Why, the sons of Gulbas and Filipka; who but they, the rogues!”
“Here they come!” the lasses cried. In front of the cabin, a long-drawn roar resounded; then various animals’ cries: cocks crowing, sheep bleating, horses whinnying: all this to the accompaniment of a fife. Finally, the door opened, and a young fellow came in, clad in a sheepskin coat, turned inside out, and a tall fur cap, with his face so blackened, he looked like a gipsy. He came pulling the “bear” in question after him by a rope, covered all over with shaggy brown pea-straw, save for a head of fur with paper ears that he could shake at will, and a tongue that hung out for more than a foot. To his arms were fastened staves with pea-straw twisted round them, so that he seemed to go on all fours. After him went the other bear-leader, wielding a straw lash in one hand, and in the other a club that bristled all over with sharp pegs, to which bits of fat bacon, loaves and bulky packets were stuck. In the rear walked Michael, the organist’s boy, playing the fife, and a number of youngsters with sticks, tapping on the floor and shouting vociferously.
The bear-leader “praised God,” crowed, bleated, neighed like a rampant stallion, and, lifting up his voice, spoke thus:
“We, bear-leaders, come from a foreign clime, beyond the ocean and the endless forests, where men walk upside down, use sausages for palings, and fire to cool themselves; where pots are set to boil in the sun, and where the sky rains vodka: thence have we brought this savage bear! It has been told us that there are in this village wealthy husbandmen, good-natured housewives—and fair maidens too. And therefore from that foreign clime have we come, beyond the Danube, to obtain kind treatment, have our needs supplied, and something given us for our pains!—Amen.”
“Show, then, what ye can do,” said Klemba; “peradventure there may be something for you in the larder.”
“Instantly.—Ho, play the fife there; and you, bear, dance!” the bear-leader cried. Then the fife poured forth one of its sweetest tunes, and the lads tapped the floor with their sticks, and shouted loudly in cadence, while the leader mimicked the voices of many a beast, and the “bear” jumped
