“Wait a little, Antek, wait a little; let us consider this in all its bearings.”
“Ye will see how well I shall do everything!” said Simon, speaking hurriedly. “Who was it ploughed Mother’s ground? Who reaped for her?—I alone! And was it work badly done? Am I a sluggard, tell me? Let the whole village answer—nay, let even Mother bear witness! … Oh, if I only have the land! … Help me to get that, O ye my dearest of brethren, and I shall thank you to the day of my death!” he cried, weeping and laughing by turns—intoxicated, as it were, with the joy of the hope which had come to him.
As soon as he was a little calmed, they set to deliberate and to talk over the idea and see what was to be done.
“Provided,” Nastka said, with a sigh of fear, “provided the Squire be willing to accept instalments.”
“I think he will, if Matthew and I guarantee their being paid.”
Nastka, for his kindness, was ready to kiss his hands.
“I myself have had sufferings, and know how they taste to other folk,” he said, rising to take leave; for it was dark upon the earth: only the sky was yet alight, and the evening glowed in the West.
Antek hesitated awhile in which direction to turn his steps, but at last bent them towards home.
He walked on very leisurely, and at length was close to his cabin. The windows were open and alight, the children wailing within, Hanka raising her voice and Yuzka retorting shrilly. He could not quite make up his mind, till Lapa came joyfully whining and leaping up. Then—following a sudden impulse of ill humour—he gave the dog a kick and walked back to the village, going down the lane that led to the priest’s orchard. He passed along the organist’s premises so silently that not even a dog gave tongue; and gliding on outside the priest’s garden, he was presently on the wide field-pathway which divided Klemba’s land from that of his Reverence.
He was completely hidden in the dark shadow of the trees.
The moon, a sharp thin sickle, already glittered in the shadowy sky. Stars peeped out in ever greater and greater numbers; and the evening, though hot, was shedding dew upon the earth. Quails flew out of the rye; droning beetles whizzed over the fields, and the scent and silence of the meadows made the brain whirl in a sort of stupor.
Yagna was not in sight.
Instead, about half a furlong away, the parish priest, clad in a white dust-coat, walked about saying his prayers, and apparently so intent upon them that he took scant notice how his horses, from grazing on his own miserable fallow land, had crossed to Klemba’s rich clover meadow, that rose high and dark, with lush growth and countless flowers, on the other side of the path.
The priest walked on, now whispering his prayers, now looking up to the stars, now stopping to listen intently. And whenever he heard any the faintest murmur in the direction of the village, he would turn round quickly, in seeming anger against his horses.
“You Grey One, whither have you wandered? Into Klemba’s good clover, hey? Fond of other folk’s property, are you not? What, shall I baste your flanks soundly, will you have me do it, hey!” And his voice sounded very stern.
But the priest’s horses were eating with so good an appetite that he could not find it in his heart to stop them, in spite of the harm they were doing: so, looking round him, he reasoned thus with himself:
“Let them take a little, each one of them, poor creatures! I shall put up some prayers for old Dame Klembova’s everlasting rest—or make the loss up in some other way!—Oh, the greedy beasts! how fond they are of that clover!”
And once more he paced back and forth, and said his prayers and kept watch, never dreaming that Antek was watching him, and listening, and ever awaiting Yagna more eagerly.
Some time passed thus. At last it occurred to Antek to go and confide his troubles to the priest.
“So learned a man must surely know some way out of them!” he thought, slipping away in the shadow of the barn, to appear thence boldly round the corner, and step out into the field-way, clearing his throat noisily.
The priest, hearing someone come near, called out to his horses:
“You mischievous creatures! You foul beasts! Cannot I take my eye off you for one instant, but ye must be at once on my neighbour’s land? O ye swine!—Off with you, Chestnut!” And plucking up his long skirts, he drove them away very speedily.
“Oh! Boryna!” he cried, when the man was near enough. “Well, how goes the world with you?”
“I came to speak with your Reverence, and had been at your house already.”
“Yes, I had strolled out to say my prayers and look after the horses: Valek has gone to the Manor house. But those misbegotten beasts of mine—Heaven save the mark!—I can do nothing with them.—Look how magnificently Klemba’s field of clover has grown. … Like a forest! And from the very same seed as my own. … And mine has been so frostbitten that there’s naught in my fields but camomile weeds and thistles.” He sighed heavily, seating himself on a stone.
“Sit down; we’ll talk together. What splendid weather we have!—In three weeks we shall hear the sickles clinking. I tell you we shall.”
Antek sat down and tried to unburden his mind, while the priest listened attentively, now shouting at the horses, now taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and sneezing with great violence.
“Whither! Whither!—’Tis not our land!—Behold what perverse swine they are!”
But Antek did not make any headway; he stammered and wandered a good deal in his explanations.
“I see you’re in evil case.—Now tell me—tell me all frankly: it will ease your heart! To whom can one speak openly, if not to a priest?”
He stroked his head, and offered him snuff; and Antek, encouraged,
