The day before, when they came for their Easter confession, they had inquired diligently about the prisoners, and their faces had set fiercely, while they heard; and they broke out into curses on the injustice done, and pitied the people that had suffered so much.
Roch was thinking of this event, and pondering over a certain important step to take, frequently stopping to shelter himself against the wind, with a far-off look in his eyes.
It was brighter and warmer now, but the wind increased steadily, and roared all over the country. It made some of the slenderer saplings bow deeply, sighing and lashing the pond with their whip-like boughs; it tore off fragments of thatch from the roofs, snapped the brittle boughs, and swept overhead with such violence that everything seemed in motion and tossing about: orchards, palings, cabins, solitary trees—all, as it were, moved along with it; nay, even the pallid sun itself, emerging now and then from the scudding clouds, appeared fleeing precipitately through the sky. And over the church a flock of wild birds, with outspread wings, sailed down the wind, unable to make head against its might.
Yet, notwithstanding the harm it did, it did also great service in drying the lands, which ever since morning were taking a lighter tinge, while it swept the roads clear of water.
Roch was roused from the thoughts which absorbed him so deeply, by the sound of quarrelling voices. He hastily drew near.
One quick glance showed him a large crowd of women, in red petticoats, surrounding a group of men on the farther side of the pond, in front of the hut where the Soltys lived and in all the enclosures thereabouts.
He went forward quickly, eager to know what was the matter; but, recognizing the men for a company of gendarmes along with the Voyt, he turned off into the nearest enclosures, whence he drew nigh the throng, creeping cautiously from orchard to orchard; for somehow he objected to meeting the eyes of the police.
The tumult increased. Women were in the majority; children, too, had flocked there from every side, edging in amongst their elders, pushing and elbowing one another, overflowing the enclosures and pouring out into the roads, with little heed either of the deep mud or of the lashing boughs. All were babbling together; sometimes one voice rose above another, but there was no making out what was said; the gale was too high. Looking through the trees, Roch could perceive only that Ploshkova headed them all: a big fat crimson-faced woman, who cried out louder than anyone else and, shaking her fist furiously under the Voyt’s very nose, made him shrink back, while the others screamed their approval, like a flock of offended turkeys. The wife of Kobus also was there, on the skirts of the crowd, vainly striving to get at the gendarmes, against whom many a fist was shaken, and here and there a stick or dirty broom.
The Voyt, sorely embarrassed, was trying to appease them and scratching his head, while drawing the women’s onslaught on to himself, so that the gendarmes cunningly managed to extricate themselves from the throng, and retired in the direction of the mill. The Voyt, following in the rear, continued to answer them back and threaten the boys who had begun to pelt him with mud.
“What do they want?” Roch asked of the assembled women.
“They would have our village supply them with twenty wagons, horses and men, for road-mending in the forest!” Ploshkova told him.
“Some big official is to pass this way, and they want to get the holes in the road filled up.”
“Neither wagons nor horses nor men! we have said.”
“Who is here that can drive?”
“Let them set our lads free first: then we shall think about the roads!”
“The Squire! let them put him to a wagon!”
“Or set to work themselves, and keep their snouts out of our cabins.”
“Ah! the hounds, the carrions, the scurvy knaves!” many voices shouted at once, in a rising chorus.
“All the morning they have been with the Voyt, laying their heads together in the tavern.”
“Aye, aye, drinking vodka, and then going round to every hut for labourers!”
“But the Voyt knows the state of affairs perfectly well,” said Roch, vainly attempting to make himself heard in the tumult. “He ought to have explained matters at the Bureau.”
“He! He is the best friend of our enemies!”
“He only cares to get money!” they all shouted again.
“Yes, he advised us to give them a score of eggs, or a fowl per hut: then they would let us alone, and press men to work from the other villages.”
“A score of stones for him rather!”
“Peace, good woman; ye might smart for contempt of an official.”
“I don’t care. Let them take me to jail. I’ll stand up to the very biggest official and tell him what injustice we have to bear.”
“Afraid of the Voyt? What, I?” Ploshkova cried. “The tainted wretch! I fear a scarecrow as much as him! He forgets that ’tis we that have made him Voyt, and what we have made we can unmake.”
“He would punish us, would he? Do we not pay taxes, send our boys to the army, do whatever they tell us? Is it too little for them that they have taken our men from our midst?”
“Whenever they show their faces, some evil attends them.”
“They shot my dog in the fields last harvest-time!”
“They had me before the court, because my chimney took fire!”
“And what a flogging they gave young Gulbas for flinging a stone at them!”
All were crowding around Roch
