And over and above this, as if to spite all men, he continued his relations with Yagna. Was it love that attracted him? or what was it? God knows: but they met in Dominikova’s barn: without her knowledge, indeed, but willingly abetted by Simon, who hoped that Antek would help him to get Nastka for his wife.
Those meetings were unwillingly consented to by Yagna. With the wales of her husband’s castigation still fresh upon her, she had no mind for lovemaking; but she feared Antek, who had sent her word that, unless she came at every call of his, he would go to her hut, and in broad daylight and in public administer a chastisement yet more severe than Boryna’s had been!
As the saying is: “For the authors of their fall, sinners have no love at all”: but she feared his threat, and was forced to go.
This state of things, however, did not last long. The second day of Lent, Simon came in haste to the tavern and, taking Antek aside, told him that Yagna had just been reconciled to her goodman and returned to his cabin.
If a club had crashed down on his skull, it would not have stunned him more than this news. She had met him the very day before, and had said no word of this.
“So! she left me in the dark!” he thought, and hurried away to Boryna’s as soon as evening had fallen.
He prowled for a long time about his father’s premises, looking for her and waiting by the stile; but she was not to be seen. This irritated him so violently that he boldly pulled up a stake and entered the enclosure, ready to proceed to any extremity—even to go into the hut; in fact, he was in the passage, with his hand on the latch … when an unknown feeling of dread drove him from the door! His father’s face had come before him with such sudden vividness that he started back in terror from that mental image.
What it was that had come over him, and why he had quailed now again, just as on that former night beside the pond, he was all his life unable to understand.
On the following days too, he got no sight of her, although he watched by the stile, and lurked about there for whole evenings together, like a wolf.
Sunday come round, and he waited for a long while in front of the church: but she did not appear.
The thought struck him that he might perhaps meet her at Vespers, and get speech with her somehow. So he went.
He was rather late. Evensong had already begun. The church was full, and so dark that the daylight, now dying, only lit the topmost vaults. A few tiny rushlights had been kindled here and there, to read by; in front of the high altar, brilliantly illuminated, the people were thronging close. He elbowed his way as far as the sanctuary railings, and looked furtively round for Yagna; but she was nowhere in sight. Instead, he caught many a look of curiosity directed towards himself.
They were chanting the “Bitter Lamentations,” for it was the first Sunday in Lent. The priest was sitting, surpliced and book in hand, beside the altar, and more than once cast a stern look in his direction.
The organ was pealing forth soul-stirring music, and the whole congregation lifted up their voices in unison. Now and then the chant was interrupted, the music stopped playing, and from high above in the organ-loft a broken voice was heard, reading out a meditation on the Passion of our Lord.
But Antek heard nothing now. Little by little, he had forgotten where he was and why he had come; the chants had sunk into his soul, and unstrung him strangely. A sense of numbness overpowered him, together with a feeling of deep quiet, as though he had escaped and flown somewhere very far away—into some region full of light. And whenever he came to himself and opened his eyes, he met the eyes of the priest, always fixed on him; and that look was so piercing that Antek turned away his heavy drowsy head, and began to fall once more into his torpor. Suddenly he woke up at the sound of a well-known chant:
“Behold! the Lord of heaven hangs crucified:
Weep for thy sins, O man! for them He died!”
As if issuing from one single colossal throat, the chant—an immense wave of sound—came bursting forth with such vehement lamentation, so clamorous a wail, that the very walls vibrated to that cry!
Long did they sing thus and the walls echoed with dolorous reverberations, and sighs, and earnest sobbing prayers.
Antek no longer felt drowsy, but a heavy resistless sense of sorrow surged over his soul with such potency that it was all he could do to restrain the tears which started to his eyes; and he was about to leave the church, when the organ again ceased playing, and the priest, standing in front of the altar, began to speak.
The people were pressing forward in so densely packed a crowd that it was now impossible to get away, and Antek was pushed up against the railing. A great hush fell upon all; every word the priest said was distinctly audible. He spoke first of our Lord’s Passion, and then passed on to inveigh against sin, waving his arms with threatening gestures, from time to time looking hard at Antek, who stood right in front of him, though somewhat lower, spellbound by the priest’s burning glances, and unable to take his eyes off him.
In the audience there was presently a noise of weeping and sighing, the holy Name of Jesus was invoked, and even groans were heard. Meanwhile the priest spoke ever louder and
