Noon had passed; the shrunken shadows were beginning to creep out once more from under the trees and the houses. In the corn which bent slightly towards the sunbeams, the grasshoppers played their faint shrill music, a beetle hummed by at intervals, or a quail piped. And the weather was all the time growing more and more intolerably hot.
High Mass was now ended, and the women came out of church to take off their shoes by the pond, and there was no more solitude for Hanka; the roads swarmed so with men and wagons that she went home.
Boryna was at last lying in state.
In the middle of the room he lay, on a wide bench, with a cloth over it and burning tapers around. He had been washed, combed, and clean-shaved, but his cheek bore a deep gash from Ambrose’s razor, which a bit of paper concealed. He was arrayed in his very best clothes: the white capote that had been made for his wedding with Yagna, striped breeches, and all but quite new boots. In his overworked withered hands he held the image of Our Lady of Chenstohova.
A large barrel of water stood by to keep the air cool; and upon earthenware tiles there lay juniper-berries, smouldering and exhaling their aromatic smoke, that filled the whole cabin with a bluish haze, through which the awful majesty of death was mistily visible.
So lay, then, in silent state, the body of Matthias Boryna, an upright and an able man, a thorough Christian, a farmer and the son and descendant of farmers—the foremost man in Lipka.
He was in readiness, about to depart, to bid farewell to his kinsfolk and all that knew him, and set out on the Great Journey!
His soul had already passed before the Judgment-seat: it was but his worn-out body, the empty shell his soul had once inhabited, that lay there, feebly smiling, amongst lights and smoke-wreaths and unceasing prayers.
In came the people then, in an interminable procession, sighing, beating their breasts, musing profoundly, or weeping; and the sounds of their stifled sobs and faint whispers was like the pattering of autumnal rain. They came and went without end: all Lipka came, rich and poor, young and old, men and women.
In spite of the magnificent weather, his death made the whole village gloomy and wretched; everyone was in deep sadness, everyone greatly given to moralize over “the unhappy fate of mortal man.”
Many of the dead man’s friends lingered about the hut, and some of the goodwives remained to attempt consoling Hanka and Magda and Yuzka in words of homely comfort, condoling and weeping heartily along with them.
To Yagna nobody said one word. Though indeed she cared little for their pity, she felt nevertheless pained at being so pointedly left alone; so she went out into the garden, where she sat listening to Matthew at work hammering the coffin.
“That creature!” the Voyt’s wife hissed after her. “To dare show her face at all!”
“Oh, let her be!” said another; “it is no time now to think of her misdeeds.”
“Aye, leave them to the Lord Jesus, who will judge them hereafter,” Hanka added mercifully.
“And for the bitter things ye say, the Voyt will reward her abundantly,” the smith remarked, with a sneer, and went away, the miller having sent for him. Luckily; for the goodwife was swelling with rage like a turkey, and ready to fly out at him.
He broke into a croaking laugh, and hurried off. The others lingered on to talk, but the talk flagged, partly through their sorrow, partly on account of the intense heat. It was indeed so hot that all the flowers and plants were fading, and the walls shedding tears of resin.
Of a sudden a bellow, long-drawn and plaintive, was heard, and a peasant, driving a cow, passed by on the farther side of the pond.
He pulled her hard by the rope, while they looked on in dull silence.
“Taking her to the priest’s bull, I suppose,” Yagustynka said; but no one took any interest in her remark.
The bells rang for Vespers and they took leave of Hanka, who then sent Vitek to ask the smith to go with her and arrange with the priest for the funeral expenses. He presently returned, saying that the smith was in conference with the Squire and the miller, and taking afternoon tea together; his stallions were outside, pawing the ground in the shade.
“He with the Squire!—How strange!” But she could not wait, and accompanied by Magda, dressed in her best, she went to the priest’s house.
He was in the farmyard, and sent them word he would see them there.
He sat in the shade, close to the fence. In the middle of the yard, not far from a rather fine cow that a peasant held fast with a rope, a powerful dappled bull was turning round and round her, kept back with difficulty by the priest’s farm-servant, pulling at the end of his chain.
“Valek! Just wait a little: he is not ready yet,” the priest called out. Then, mopping his bald head, he called the women to him, and asked about Boryna’s death, and consoled and comforted them with the greatest kindness. But when they inquired about the funeral fees, he stopped them short, saying impatiently:
“Of those things later. I am no extortioner. Matthias was the biggest farmer in the village; he cannot have a mean funeral. No, I tell you, he cannot,” he repeated fiercely, as was his way.
They embraced his feet, not venturing to insist.
“Ah!” he cried suddenly. “You little blackguards! I’ll give it you! Look at them, those bad boys!” He was addressing the organist’s sons, peeping surreptitiously over the hedge.—“Well, and what think ye of my bull, hey?”
“A splendid beast!” Hanka replied. “Finer than the miller’s.”
“The two differ as much as a bull differs from a wagon!
