“Yes; but when he is Voyt no longer, what will he do?”
“Then you think that. …”
“Oh, I have my eyes open, and can see a thing or two.”
“He is most conceited, and at sixes and sevens with the priest.”
“And if he gets on at all, it is his wife’s doing: she is the real Voyt, and holds all the cards in her hands.”
There was silence again for the space of a long pater noster.
“Tell me,” she said at last, very deliberately, “are you not going to send anyone messengers with vodka?”
“Ah, the desire of women is no longer with me: I am an old man.”
“Do not speak vain words. A man is old when he can go about no more, nor lift a spoon to his mouth by himself, nor sit elsewhere but by the stove. Why, I have seen you shouldering a sackful of rye!”
“Granted that I am yet hale: but who would care to have me?”
“That you cannot know until you have tried.”
“Besides, my children are grown up, and I cannot take the first lass that comes.”
“Make a deed of gift, and the very best of them will not hold back.”
“A deed of gift! To get an acre of land, a girl would take a beggar from the church porch.”
“What of men? They wouldn’t take a girl with a dowry, would they?”
He made no reply, but whipped the filly to a gallop.
Another silence ensued, broken only when they were out of the forest and upon the poplar-lined road; when Boryna suddenly exclaimed:
“To the devil with the world as it goes on now! For everything, nay, even for a good word, you must pay! It is so bad that worse cannot be. Even children rise up against their parents; there is nowhere any obedience, and everyone would devour everyone else! The dogs!”
“They are fools, not remembering that we shall all lie one day together in consecrated ground.”
“One has scarce begun to be a man, when he flies in his father’s face, loudly demanding a portion of his land; and the young only scoff at the old. Scoundrels, for whom their own village is a hole, who despise all ancient rules, and who—some of them—are even ashamed of their peasant’s dress!”
“All because they have not the fear of God.”
“Because or not because of that, things are wrong.”
“And will surely not mend.”
“They must! But who can compel men to do right?”
“God’s judgments! For behold, That Day will come, and He will punish them!”
“Yes, but before That Day, how many shall be lost!”
“Times are so bad, that a plague were better.”
“Times are bad, but men are so, too. What of the blacksmith? And of the Voyt? They quarrel with our priest, they make people rebel; they seduce them and are believed by the purblind. That blacksmith, though my son-in-law, is yet as poison to me.”
They continued to complain in chorus of the world’s wickedness, as they looked through the poplars towards the village they were nearing.
In the distance, there could be seen, outside the churchyard, a row of women bending down, indistinctly visible through a thin haze round them, and the dull monotonous thudding sound of cluttering swingles came to them, borne on the breeze from the low-lying meadows.
“Just the weather for scutching flax. I shall get down to speak to them, for Yagna is there too.”
“I’ll drive you to her; it will make no difference to me.”
“How very kind you are today, Matthias!” she said with a sly smile.
They turned off from the poplar road to the byway that led over the fields to the churchyard. There, outside the low wall of grey stone which surrounded it, in the shadow of some birches and maples, and of a few crosses, too, which leaned over the wall, hard on twenty women were very busily scutching and beating the dry flax: a mist of threads hung over them in the air, and a few filaments had caught on to the yellow birch-leaves, or hung suspended from the dark-hued arms of the crosses. Further down, fires had been kindled in pits, over and across which poles were laid, and upon them damp flax was drying.
The swingles were hard at work, and all the womenfolk bent and rose with quick short jerks up and down: now and then one or another stood up, beat a wisp of flax free from remnants of woody matter, and, rolling it up, tossed it on to a piece of linen spread out in front of her.
The sun, being at present over the forest, shone directly in their faces, but they did not mind: work and laughter and merry talk never ceased for an instant.
“God bless your work!” cried Boryna to Yagna, who was swingling the flax with all her might. She had nothing on but her white smock, a red petticoat, and an apron tied over her head against the dust.
“Bless you for the wish!” she returned blithely, raising her dark-blue eyes to his, while a smile lit up her handsome sunburnt face.
“Is it quite dry, dear?” her mother asked, fingering the scutched flax.
“Dry as a peppercorn; quite brittle.”
And again she eyed the old man with a smile that made him tingle all over. He smacked his whip and drove away, looking back at her again and again, though she was not to be seen any more; for his mind’s eye saw her still.
“A girl as graceful as a hind!” he muttered. “Aye, even so!”
IV
Sunday had come round: a bright September Sunday, with plenty of gossamers and sunshine in the air.
All Boryna’s livestock was feeding in the stubble beyond the barn; and Kuba, watching heedfully over them in the shadow of a tall and dome-like cornstack, was at the same time teaching Vitek his prayers.
“Now attend to what I am telling you,” he said solemnly; “these are holy words.”
“I’m attending, Kuba, I’m attending.”
“Then why
