“Something,” she wondered, as she went her way to Boryna’s, “must have stung the man pretty sharply: what can it be?”
Supper was done, and Hanka told her all at leisure. Yagna’s expulsion interested her deeply; but on hearing of Gregory, she only observed:
“His death will make one the fewer to share the property.”
“It will.—I never thought of that.”
“And with what the Squire has to give for the forest, you will get hard upon seventeen acres apiece! … To think of it! Even other folk’s death is a gain to those already rich!” she sighed ruefully.
“What care I for wealth?” said Hanka. But when she went to bed, and thought the matter over, she felt a secret joy in her heart.
And afterwards, kneeling down for her evening prayer, she said resignedly:
“Since he has died, it is the will of our Lord.” And she prayed fervently for his eternal rest.
The next day, about noon, Ambrose came to her cabin.
“Where have ye been?” she inquired.
“At the Koziols’. A child there has been scalded to death. She called me in, but there is naught needed for it save a coffin and a few clods.”
“Which of them is it?”
“The younger of the two that she brought from Warsaw this spring. It fell into a tub of boiling water, and was all but boiled.”
“Those foundlings, as it seems, do not get on with her.”
“They do not.—But she is no loser: the funeral expenses are paid.—I came to you on another business, however.”
She looked at him uneasily.
“Dominikova, you must know, has gone to the law court with Yagna—to complain of your having turned her out, I suppose.”
“Let her. I do not care.”
“They went to confession this morning, and had later a long conference with the priest. I could not catch half they said against you, but what they said made him shake his fist with anger!”
“A priest—to poke his nose into other folk’s business!” she blurted out. All day long, however, the tidings stuck in her memory painfully; she was full of fears and evil surmises, and quite at a loss what to do.
At nightfall, a cart stopped in front of her cabin. She ran out, breathless and terrified; but it was only the Voyt, sitting there behind his horses.
“You know about Gregory already,” he began. “ ’Tis a calamity; but there’s nothing to be said.—Now I have also some good news for you. Today—or tomorrow at the latest—ye shall see Antek again.”
“Are ye not beguiling me?” she asked; the news was too good to believe.
“When the Voyt tells you so, ye may believe him. They informed me in the Bureau.”
“Tis well he comes back; it was high time indeed,” she returned, coolly; it seemed, with no joy at all. And then the Voyt, after a moment’s reflection, began talking to her as a friend.
“That’s a bad business ye have made with Yagna! She has laid a complaint against you, and may make you smart for having used violence and taken the law into your own hands. Ye had no right to expel her from her own apartment.—A pretty thing it will be, when Antek comes back, and ye are thrown into jail for it, both of you!—Now take my sincere friendly advice: make matters up. I’ll do all I can to get the complaint withdrawn; but ye must yourself make amends for the injury done.”
Hanka stood erect before him, and told him her mind thus:
“Are you speaking as the defender of my victim, or of your mistress?”
His whip struck the horses so hard that they bounded away at a gallop.
IV
Hanka could not sleep a wink that night, after such manifold and painful experiences. She continually thought that she heard someone creeping about the premises, along the road, or even close to the cabin. She listened. All the inmates were sleeping sound. The night was still, though the trees murmured; but not very dark, for the stars gave a dim light.
It was stiflingly close within. The ducklings, put to rest under the bed, smelt unpleasantly, but Hanka would not throw the window open. Her bed and pillows were hot beneath her, burning hot; she tossed from side to side, more and more agitated, full of multitudinous thoughts swarming in her brain, and drenching her with streaming sweat. At last, her fears growing uncontrollable, she started out of bed, and went out barefoot, in her shift, and bearing a hatchet that she had snatched up at random—out into the yard.
Everything stood wide open there. Pete lay sprawling outside the stable, snoring hard. The horses were munching their provender and clinking their halter-chains; the cows, that had not been tethered for the night, either wandered about the yard or lay chewing the cud with moist dripping muzzles, and lifting towards Hanka their ponderous horned heads and the dark balls of their unfathomable eyes.
She went back to her bed and lay down open-eyed, listening attentively, and at times quite sure that she could hear voices and distant steps.
“Peradventure the folk of some cabin hard by are awake and talking,” she said, attempting to explain matters; but no sooner had the panes turned grey from black than she rose and went out again, this time with Antek’s sheepskin thrown over her.
In the porch, Vitek’s stork was standing asleep, with one leg drawn up under him, and his head thrust beneath his wing; and their flock of geese, huddled together in the enclosure, formed a dim white mass.
The fields beyond were flooded with low-lying greyish fogs, out of which only the highest treetops surged, like pillars of thick black smoke.
The pond glistened in the darkness like a huge sightless eye, fringed with lashes of alders that rustled around it, while all the neighbourhood slept, wrapt in the fog’s opaque invisibility.
Hanka sat down close to the house, leant back against the wall, and fell into a doze. When she again opened her
