“Can screaming serve your turn? Be quiet!”
“Then go ye to the Voyt and lay the matter before him!” Kobusova the fiery suggested.
“Else we go thither—and our brooms with us!”
“Go I will; but only after you have dispersed. Now, pray, off with you: each has so much to do at home!—I shall lay the matter before him fitly.” He spoke very earnestly, fearing lest the gendarmes might return.
The noonday Angelus was sounding from the belfry. They slowly left the place to talk things over in eager excitement, standing in knots outside their cabins.
Roch went hurriedly to the Soltys, at whose house he was then dwelling, as he taught the children in the empty cabin of the Sikoras, down beyond the tavern, at the other end of the village. But the Soltys was not at home, having driven over to the district town with tax-payments.
Soha’s wife told him of all that had happened, but in a quiet subdued manner, and wound up by saying:
“God grant that no harm may come of these disturbances!”
“ ’Tis the Voyt’s fault. The gendarmes only do as they are bid. But he is well aware that there are, so to say, only women left in the village, and that they have no one to work on their own fields, let alone working for the government. I shall go and get him to arrange matters, so that no fines be imposed.”
“It looks very much like revenge taken for the forest business,” she remarked.
“Taken by whom?—by the Squire? My good dame, what has he to do with the Administration?”
“Gentlefolk always agree better with gentlefolk, and are hand in glove with each other. Besides, he said he would be even with the Lipka folk.”
“Good God! not a single day of peace—always some fresh affliction coming upon us!”
“May nothing worse than this befall us, I pray God!” she answered, clasping her hands in supplication.
“They were all screaming together like a flock of magpies, and, Lord protect us! how they gabbled!”
“He that itches will scratch!”
“But it can do no good, and may bring still greater harm!”
He was sorely agitated and apprehensive of some yet greater impending evil.
“Are ye,” she asked, “returning to the little ones?”
He had risen from his seat.
“I have sent them home. Easter holidays have come, and besides, they will be wanted in the house, where so much is to be done.”
“I went this morning to hire labourers in Vola, offering three zloty a day and their board, but could get no one. Everyone wants to plough his own fields first. They promised to come, but only in a week or two.”
“My God!” he said, heaving a sigh; “one man has only a couple of arms: what can he do?”
“Ah, but ye are of use to the folk, and of no little use. Were it not for your wise head and kind heart, I cannot tell what would become of us.”
“Could I do all I long to do, there would be an end of suffering on earth!”
He threw out his arms with a gesture of pained helplessness, and hastened away to the Voyt’s dwelling. But it was long before he got there; cottage after cottage attracted him.
The village had somewhat quieted down. Some of the more excitable women were still loud in talk outside their cabins, but the greater part had gone to cook the dinner. Only the wind howled along the roads and swept through the trees as heretofore.
But presently, dinner over, and the gale notwithstanding, the whole place was swarming with folk, and an increasing clatter of women’s tongues resounded about the gardens, in every part of the farmyards, before the huts, in the passages and in the rooms they led to. For only women and lasses were toiling there; of males, there were only little boys.
They were all the more feverishly earnest in their work because the day before had been a sort of half-holiday, with the confessions to the priests who had come; and the morning had been lost because of the gendarmes.
Easter was near, Holy Tuesday had come already, and so much still to be done! A spring cleaning was necessary, clothes had to be made for the children, and in some cases for the grownups too; and corn required to be ground, and the Hallow-fare to be got ready! In every cottage the goodwives’ brains were whirling to find out how all this was to be accomplished. Most carefully did they look through their storerooms for anything to be either sold to the tavern-keeper or taken over to town to get the needful funds. Several women even drove off at once after dinner, with saleables under the litter in their carts.
“I hope no tree may fall on you by the way!” Roch said warningly to Gulbas’ wife, who had such a wretched jade to her cart that it scarcely made any headway against the wind.
And with that he entered her farmyard, where the girls, who had been trying to plaster up the chinks, could reach no higher than the tops of the windows. In that work he helped them, made some slaked lime in a tub for the whitewash, and a sort of straw brush to lay it on.
Then he walked on to Vahnik’s, where the lasses were carting dung, but so clumsily that half of it fell out into the road, while they pulled the unruly horse along by the bridle. Up came Roch, shovelled the dung into the cart, set all to rights there, and whipped the horse into obedience.
Farther, at Balcerek’s, there was Mary, held to be (barring Yagna Borynova) the comeliest girl in the village, sowing peas in black and highly manured soil close to the hedgerow. But she wriggled about like a fly caught in resin, her kerchief twisted round her head, and her father’s capote put on over her petticoat to protect it, and trailing on the ground.
“No need to hasten so; you have plenty of time!” he said, smiling, as he drew near.
“Why,
