“Oh, what a neck! what a back! what a splendid chest! what a dewlap!” he cried, breathless with enthusiasm. “Why, ’tis no bull, ’tis a bison!”
“Indeed, I never saw so fine a one.”
“No, ye never did. It is a thoroughbred Hollander. Cost me three hundred roubles.”
“So great a sum as that?” they exclaimed in amazement.
“Not one kopek less. Valek, let him go … but cautiously now; the cow is but a puny thing.—She will be mated in an instant. … Aye, the bull is exceeding dear. But then the Lipka folk—if they want to have a breed of first-rate kine, will have to pay not less than one rouble, and ten kopeks for my man besides!—The miller is wroth, but I was disgusted with the miserable beasts his bull is accountable for.—Now then, run away!” he said, noticing that the women averted their faces with shame. As they went, he called after them: “Tomorrow we bring the body to the church!” and set to helping the peasant, who had much ado to hold his cow.
“You’ll very soon thank me for a calf such as you did never yet see in your life.—Valek, take him away to rest awhile. Though indeed he can scarcely be in need of any rest at all. … Such a trifle!” he boasted.
The women had repaired to the organist’s, because they had to make a separate agreement with him. And as they had to take coffee there, and talk for some time afterwards, the cattle were coming home when they returned to their huts.
Mr. Yacek puffed at his pipe, standing in the porch with Matthew, whom he tried to engage to build Staho’s hut, but who seemed hardly pleased at the offer, and would say nothing definitive.
“As to cutting up the timber, that’s no great affair; but as to building the hut. … Do I know? I have enough of the country and may be going somewhere far away.—No, I cannot say for sure.” As he spoke thus, he glanced at Yagna, who was milking her cow outside the byre.
“Well, well, I shall finish the coffin tomorrow morning, and then we may talk the matter over,” he concluded, and hurried away.
Mr. Yacek, entering the room where Boryna lay, prayed for him long and fervently, wiping away many a tear. He said to Hanka afterwards: “May his sons but resemble him! He was a good man, a true Pole; was with us in the insurrection; came of his own accord, and did not spare his blows: I have seen him in action. Alas! it is through us he has perished! … There’s a curse upon us,” he added, as if speaking to himself. Though Hanka could not make out well all he said, yet his words were so full of kindness that she fell at his feet and embraced them out of gratitude.
“Never do that!” he exclaimed angrily. “What am I more than one amongst you?”
Once more he cast a look at Boryna, lit his pipe at the taper, and left the place, without answering the salutations of the blacksmith, just then entering the passage.
“What, so proud today?” the smith cried; but as he was in good spirits this vexed him but little. Seating himself by his wife’s side, he talked to her very low:
“You must know, Magda, that the Squire is seeking to come to terms with our village—and looks for me to help him. Of course I shall make a good thing of it. But mum! not a whisper of this, wife of mine: ’tis a big affair.”
And he went off to the tavern, inviting men to come there and confer with him.
Along the western horizon the sky looked like a sheet of rusted iron, but a few clouds still glowed above in golden light.
When all the evening duties had been done, the people assembled around the dead body. More and more tapers were lit about Boryna’s head; Ambrose snuffed the wicks again and again, and chanted out of a book; and all present joined in the responses, weeping and lamenting one after another.
The neighbours came too, but, as it was very close within, stayed outside, droning out the long sorrowful notes of the Litany as they knelt.
This continued till late at night, when they retired, leaving only Ambrose and Agata to watch the body till morning.
This they did, at first chanting in a loud voice. But when all noise and movement around had ceased, they felt drowsy, and even Lapa, coming in and licking the grease off his master’s boots, failed to wake them up.
About midnight, all became extremely dark, not a single star shone. Withal, there was a deep dead stillness, unbroken save by the faint whispering of a tree, or some eerie far-off sound—neither a shout, nor a crash, nor a call—remote and fading away in the distance.
No house in Lipka had any light at all now, save Boryna’s, with the pallid illumination of the tapers, and the dead body just visible in the yellow flames, only blurred by the smoke of the perfumes, and seen as in a cloud of bluish fog. But Ambrose and Agata, with their heads pressed against the body, were both sound asleep and snoring loud.
The short summer night was soon over, as if hurrying to depart before the first cockcrow. One after another, all the tapers went out except the largest, which still sent up its long waving flame, like a blade of gold.
At last the grey mist-clad dawn looked into the room and into Boryna’s face, who seemed somehow to have awaked from his heavy sleep, and to be listening to the first twitterings of the nestling birds, and through discoloured lids eyeing the still remote daybreak.
Now the millpond sighed, with drowsy undulations; now the forest began to loom out darkly, looking like a range of black earth-hugging clouds, as the fading night grew phosphorescent, and
