“You plague-spotted protector of hers, be still, or your girdle may come off!”
“But she’ll know how you’ve stood up for her … and reward you well!”
“Peradventure with a pair of breeches Matthias wears no more!”
They jeered and laughed till they nearly burst their sides.
“Since her goodman cannot speak for her, I who can will. Aye, I will, blood of a dog! … Let me but hear another word against her! O you loud-mouthed curs, how silent you’d have been had she been your sister or your wife!”
“Now then, hold your peace, you stable-boy!” Staho Ploshka thundered. “What right have you to meddle here? Meddle with your horses’ tails!”
“And beware,” Vahnik added, “lest you get more than this rebuke!”
“And leave farmers alone, you filthy matted-pate!” was the shout they sent up as they withdrew.
“O you scurvy bumpkins!—A stable-boy I am, yes; but never at least did I take a measure of corn in secret to the Jew! Ye know me not!” he called after the retiring group; and they, feeling somehow small and mean, answered nothing, but went home.
The weather was strange that evening: windy, but very bright. Long after sundown there yawned huge gulfs of bloodred fire far up in the depths of the sky. There prevailed a feeling of unrest; the gale howled aloud, but so high above that it only tore at the lofty treetops. Geese, no one knew why, would fall a-clamouring in the enclosures all together; dogs ran about nervously, even beyond their homes. No one remained in the house or sat on the doorsteps; all gathered at some distance from the dwelling, and talked with their neighbours in low voices.
Hanka had with her a few friends, who had come to condole, and learn something more about Yagna. But when they came to the subject, she answered them scornfully:
“ ’Tis a shame and a sin, but an affliction too!”
“Certainly; and the whole parish will know all tomorrow!”
“And will say we are the worst village of all.”
“And the shame will fall upon all the Lipka women.”
“Because they all are so good that, driven like Yagna, they all would do the same!” Yagustynka said, mocking.
“Be silent! ’tis not the time for jeering now!” snapped Hanka, with such stern rebuke that she uttered not another word.
Hanka was still half choked with shame; but the anger which at first surged up within her had now passed away. And when her friends had gone home, she looked in at the other side, ostensibly to see to Matthias. Perceiving Yagna lying asleep in her clothes, she bolted the door and undressed her carefully in the dark.
“May God have pity on such a fate as hers!” was the thought which came to her a little after, flooding her with immense compassion.
Yagustynka must have noted this change of attitude; for she said, though reluctantly:
“Yagna is not guiltless, but the Voyt is still more to blame.”
“True; and it is he—he!—that ought to be punished for everything,” Hanka returned, in such energetic agreement that Pete cast a look of gratitude towards her.
They had gauged the common feeling. Till late in the night Ploshka and the Koziols were going about the village, stirring people up against the Voyt. The former would enter the huts and say, as in jest:
“Well, well, we have got a splendid Voyt: the most strapping fellow in all the district!”
And, finding them slow to follow his drift, he would take them with him to the tavern, where some of the smaller farmers were gathered already; plied them assiduously with vodka, and returned to the attack when he saw them flushed.
“Our Voyt is great for doing things, hey?”
“And not for the first time either,” Kobus replied, cautiously.
“I know about him. … I know. … I know … what I’ll not tell,” growled Sikora, who was tipsy, and leaned heavily against the bar.
“And about you too, I know. … I know … what I’ll not tell,” he went on growling.
“The only thing,” said Ploshka, ordering glasses round again, “is to depose him. Whom we have made Voyt, we can unmake. What he has just done shames all the village; but he has done worse. He has always held with the Squire, to the hurt of our community. He would have had a school opened in Lipka;34 and ’twas he no doubt who recommended the Voyt to sell Podlesie to the Germans. He revels and drinks continually; he has built a barn and purchased a horse; weekly he eats flesh-meat; and he drinks tea!—At whose expense, pray? Not at his own, belike!”
“I know,” Sikora growled, interrupting, “that the Voyt is a swine, but also that in this trough you would fain put your snout too!”
“The man’s drunk and talking nonsense!”
“And likewise do I know that you shall never be Voyt!”
Thereupon they went apart from him, and took counsel far into the night.
On the morrow the Voyt’s adventure was talked about yet more loudly, for the priest had forbidden the altar which had been in former years erected before his cabin. Early in the morning, he had sent for Dominikova, who had not come home till midnight the day before; and he was so angry that he even chid the organist, and gave Ambrose a beating with his long pipe-stem!
Corpus Christi, like the former days, rose serene and splendid, but remarkably sultry and still. Ever since dawn, the sun had been blazing pitilessly; the air was so parched that all the leaves drooped; the corn bowed earthward, faint and limp; the sand burned the bare feet like hot embers, and great drops of resin came trickling out of the walls.
This heat was really a visitation, but the people troubled little about it, plunged as they were in their preparations for the service. The girls appointed to bear the feretories and shrines and pictures in the procession ran like mad
