The head made no reply, and seemed plunged in thought, only nodding his head at times, and rubbing his eyes. Encouraged by these gestures, the Voyt spoke strongly in favour of the school, and those of his party likewise, the miller distinguishing himself amongst them, and scorning the interruptions of Gregory’s partisans, until the latter grew angry and shouted: “We are pouring empty vessels into the void!” and availed himself of an opportunity to step forward and ask boldly:
“We would know what kind of school this new one is to be.”
“Like all the others!” he said, opening his eyes very wide.
“That is the very sort we do not want. We’d vote even half a rouble an acre for a Polish school, but not a stiver for any other.”
“Those schools are good for nothing!” cried one. “My children learned there for three years, and do not know their A.B.C.”
“Be still, good folk, be still!” growled the head.
The sheep were getting lively, and the wolf was biding his time.
“Those infernal talkers! they will talk the people to its ruin!”
And now every man was striving to speak louder than his neighbours, and the din became deafening, each one maintaining his own view. They had broken up into small groups, disputing with one another, and getting ever more and more excited, Gregory’s party especially standing up most stubbornly against the school. It was to no purpose that the Voyt, the miller, and the others of that side went about explaining, beseeching, even threatening awful things that might come to pass: the greater part of the assembly had got quite out of hand, excited to exasperation, and talking themselves hoarse.
The District Official, who sat seemingly indifferent to the hubbub, conferred in whispers with the scrivener, and let them talk their fill; and when he judged they had enough of that senseless noise, he told the Voyt to ring the bell.
“Silence there!” thundered the Soltyses of each village. “Silence! and lend your ears.”
Then, before all was quite still, rose the voice of command:
“The school, look ye! has to be built. Obey, then, and do as ye are bidden.”
His tone was as hard and stern as could be; but they were no longer afraid, and Klemba answered him back on the spot.
“We force no one to walk on his head: let others likewise allow us to speak in our tongue, as God has given it us!”
“Hold your tongue!” shrieked the Voyt, ringing the bell to no purpose. “Peace, you son of a dog!”
“What I have said, I repeat: in our schools our language must be taught!”
“Karpenko! Ivanoff!” the Voyt cried to the gendarmes who stood in the centre of the throng; but the peasants pressed round them directly, and they heard a whisper: “Let but one of you touch one of us—we are three hundred—ye shall see!”
Then their ranks opened slowly to let them pass, and closed after them, surging round the head official, with the dull angry hum of a furious mob; catching their breaths, cursing low, and one or other of them every now and then uttering such words as these:
“Every creature has its own voice; we alone are forbidden our own!”
“Always commands, and naught except commands! Obey, and pay, and sweep the ground with your hat, you peasant!”
“They’ll make us soon ask leave … to go behind the barn!”
“So mighty a man, let him command swine to sing as nightingales!” Antek cried. They laughed, and he went on, greatly excited:
“Or bid geese to low like cows! When they do, we’ll vote the school!”
“They tax us, we pay; they recruit us, we go; but beware of. …”
“Hold your peace, Klemba!—His Majesty the Czar himself has decreed in the clearest words that our schools and law courts are to use Polish! Yes, the Czar himself has decreed it: him shall we obey!” Antek vociferated.
“Who are you?” the head official said to him, with eyes intently fixed upon his face.
“Who am I?—It stands there in black and white,” Antek replied boldly, pointing to the papers on the table, though he felt his heart throb as he did so. “I am no magpie’s dropping!” he added with bravado.
The head spoke to the scrivener, who after a while proclaimed the fact that Antek Boryna, not being yet cleared of a criminal charge, had no right to take any part in the Assembly of the Commune.
Antek flushed angrily, but, before he could utter a word, the District Official cried out to him: “Get him out!” indicating him to the gendarmes with a significant look.
“Boys, never vote this school! Right is on our side: have no fear!” Antek shouted indomitably.
And with slow steps he went out of the village, looking back at the gendarmes following him yet more slowly still, as a wolf might glare at a couple of curs.
But the incident had brought disorder into the meeting again. Each man seemed possessed of a devil—screaming, cursing, quarrelling, threatening—no one knew why or wherefore!
Their invectives bore, not only on the school and Antek, but on indifferent and wholly irrelevant matters—just as if a sudden madness had seized upon them. Gregory and others of his party strove to calm them, but unavailingly: they were blind and deaf to everything, gobbling one at another furiously, like irritated turkeys in a poultry-yard.
At last, one of the Soltyses, seeing an empty barrel that stood under the eaves of the house, had the idea of beating upon it with his stick so frantically, so madly, and with such loud and hollow bombilation, that it partly brought them to their senses again.
Thereupon the head official, who was beside himself with rage, exclaimed: “Enough of this prating! Silence! Silence, when I speak!—Obey me.—Vote the school.”
All were in a moment struck dumb with fear: a cold thrill went through them. They looked at one another, without dreaming of defying the man who
