But the accusation failed completely.
Boryna felt exceedingly relieved. Innocent as he was, he would have felt keenly both the scandal of a condemnation and the burden of an order to pay for the boy; and, as he thought, the law would often enough punish the innocent instead of the guilty: you never could tell. He knew many such cases.
He left the place directly, and, waiting till Dominikova joined him, began to consider the whole business again. He could not make out Eva’s motive in thus accusing him.
“No, it is not her doing; she has not the headpiece for that. Someone else has been egging her on.—Who can it be?”
He went with Dominikova and Simon to have a drink and a morsel to eat in a tavern; for it was past noon. Dominikova hinted that the whole business was the blacksmith his son-in-law’s work; but this he could not believe.
“What would he get by that?”
“The pleasure of worrying and mortifying you, and making you a laughingstock. That fellow would like to flay a man alive, just for the delight of the thing!”
“This spite of Eva’s—I cannot understand it. I never harmed her in any way; nay, I gave his Reverence a sack of oats at her bastard’s christening!”
“Why, she serves the miller; the miller is hand in glove with the blacksmith.—Don’t you see?”
“I see, but cannot account for it.—Have another drink?”
“Yes, please; but you first, Matthias.”
They had another drink, then a third, and finished off another pound of sausages, and half a loaf of bread; and Boryna bought a lot of rolls for Yuzka and prepared to depart.
“Come with me, Dominikova; we shall have a talk. It is tedious to be by oneself.”
“All right; but I must go to church first, and say some prayers.”
She was soon back, and off they started.
The sun was drawing westward by the time they reached the forest.
Now and then they said a few words to each other, but only out of courtesy: it would never do for them to sit moping together. But they only talked just enough not to doze, and to “keep their tongues wet,” as the saying goes.
Boryna whipped up the filly, which now, all in a lather, and tired and overheated, was going too slowly. He would whistle now and then, and again relapse into silence, ruminating and pondering over something in his mind, and calculating things: not infrequently stealing a look at the old woman, with that dried hard face, set and furrowed, and in hue like bleached wax. Her toothless jaws moved a little, as if she were praying silently. Sometimes she would draw the red apron she had tied round her neck, further over her brow; for the sun shone right into her face. She sat motionless, save for the gleaming of her grey-brown eyes.
“Have you dug all your potatoes?” he asked at length.
“We have. And a pretty good crop it is.”
“All the easier for you to keep a pig.”
“I am fattening one; it will come in handy during the carnival.”
“Surely, surely.—They say that Valek, Rafal’s son, has sent messengers to you with vodka.”
“Yes, and others have done the same; but they have lost their money. No, my Yagna is not for the likes of them.”
Raising her head, she looked him straight in the eyes, like a hawk. But Boryna, a man of mature years, was not confused as a youth might have been. He met her glance with calm and unfathomable serenity. For a considerable time neither spoke; each seemed vying in taciturnity with the other.
It was not fitting for Boryna to make the first advances. How could he—he, already past middle age, one of the first men in Lipka—blurt out to her that he had taken a fancy to her Yagna? Nevertheless, being of a hot temperament, he felt his choler rise within him, thus forced to parley and beat about the bush.
Dominikova saw he was annoyed, and knew why; but she would not help him out by so much as one word, and continued to eye him in silence. At last, however, in order to say something, she remarked:
“You look as hot as though it were harvest-time.”
“Because I am.”
And indeed it was very hot. The forest was all round them; its mighty barrier let no breath of air pass, and the sun burned so fiercely that the treetops, scorched with its rays, were drooping over the road, while a faint fungus-like odour, pungent in the nostrils, came up from the drying pools and the dry oak-leaves on the ground.
“Do you know,” said the old woman, “I, and others too, have often wondered why such a man as you, a man of such high repute amongst us, so wealthy and so much more able than most men—has no ambition to occupy some official position?”
“You are right to say I am without ambition. What would such a post profit me? I was Soltys here for three years: it cost me a pretty sum. I lost so much by it that my wife was angry with me.”
“She was quite right. To be an official always ought to mean both honour and profit.”
“Thank you! A great honour it is, surely, to have to bow to the constables, and lout low to every clerk and every underling at court. … And if taxes are unpaid, or a bridge is out of order, or if a dog hit by a cart-shaft goes mad, who is to blame? Why, the Soltys always! And the profit! How many a fowl and goose and score of eggs have I not had to send to the clerks and the district officials!”
“You
