The trees stood motionless, lost, as it were, in the contemplation of heaven; only at rare intervals did they let a few beams slip through, like golden gossamer threads, on to the banks of moss, and the wild strawberries, sprinkled about, and red as clotted blood, amongst the pallid grasses.
Antek was so charmed with the cool and profound tranquillity of the wood that he sat down under a tree, and fell unawares into a doze, from which he only awoke at the sound of a galloping snorting horse. It was the Squire, out for a ride, and he went forward to accost him.
They greeted one another as usual, and in neighbourly fashion.
“Fearfully hot, eh?” said the horseman, soothing his restless mare.
“So it is.—In a week’s time, we shall have to go reaping.”
“In Modlitsa they are already cutting down the rye.”
“The soil is sandy there; but this year they will everywhere be reaping earlier.”
The Squire asked him about the meeting at the District Office, and stared to hear what had taken place.
“Did ye actually demand a Polish school?—and so openly, and so firmly?”
“I have said: my tongue tells no false tales.”
“But what daring! To demand such a thing in the head official’s very presence!—Well, well!”
“It is so written down in the laws, as clear can be; I had the right to demand it.”
“But how did the idea come into your head to ask for a Polish school?”
“How? Because I am a Pole—not a German, nor of any other nation.”
“But who gave you the idea?” he asked, lowering his voice, and approaching.
“Untaught, children may learn to think aright,” he answered evasively.
“Ah,” he went on in the same tone, “I see that Roch’s work amongst you has borne fruit. …”
“Who, together with your Honour’s kinsman, teaches our folk as he can.”
Antek had interrupted the Squire, and, laying stress on the word “kinsman,” looked keenly on him. The Squire, ill at ease, tried to turn the conversation; but Antek returned to the subject of set purpose, speaking of the peasants’ many grievances, and their benighted and friendless condition.
“That’s because they will hearken to no one. I know well how the clergy work for their good, and how they urge industry upon them … and how it is all lost labour.”
“Sermons are no more good for that purpose than a thurible of incense for a dead man!”
“Then what is good, pray?—You have, I see, learned not a few things in prison,” he retorted. The taunt made Antek’s eyes blaze and his face flush; but he answered with calm:
“So I have. And, especially, that the nobility is to blame for the evils we suffer!”
“Foolish prating! What harm did they ever do to you?”
“Harm?—When Poland was free, they cared no whit for the people, only to drive them to work with a whip, and oppress them, while they themselves made merry, and danced the country to ruin: so that we now must build it all over, from the very foundations.”
The Squire was a hotheaded man, so he lost his temper:
“You insolent peasant! Let alone the nobles and their doings—care rather to pitchfork your dung—you had better! And keep your tongue between your teeth, and well inside, or there be those that will cut it out for you!”
And, slashing his mare, he went off down the road at a swift gallop.
Antek was not less offended and indignant.
“That race of hounds!” he muttered angrily. “Great gentlemen, forsooth! Blood of a dog! So long as he stood in need of the peasants, he was hail-fellow-well-met with them all! The vermin—himself not worth a roast louse!” Infuriated, he strode along, crushing the toadstools on his path in his rage.
On leaving the wood for the poplar road, he heard a couple of voices that seemed familiar to him, and, peering forward, perceived a britzka covered with dust in the shade of some birches at the edge of the wood, and Yanek, the organist’s son, standing with Yagna a few paces off.
He rubbed his eyes, quite sure they must be in fault. They were not. The couple, not twenty paces from him, stood gazing one at the other, with faces wonderfully radiant.
Much surprised, he strained his ears to catch what they were saying; but he could only just hear that they spoke aloud.
She had come out of the forest, and met him driving to the village: a chance meeting, he thought at first. But at that moment he was swept by a wave of suspicion, and a rankling sense of bitterness got hold of him.
“No! It cannot be but they have met by agreement.”
Yet once more, scanning the innocent features of the young man, and seeing the saintly serenity that lighted up his face, Antek grew calmer, though he was still unable to explain why Yagna had dressed so carefully to go to the forest, why her azure eyes flashed so brightly, why her crimson lips trembled so, or why she was so visibly flooded with joy. He took note of her, his eyes gleaming like a hungry wolf’s, as she, with swelling bosom, bent forward to offer Yanek a small basket of bark, out of which he took strawberries, eating some, and putting some in her mouth.
“… He is almost a priest, and he wants to play like a baby!”
He whispered the words in a tone of pity, and slipped away quickly home, for the sun told him the afternoon meal was due.
“That ulcer of mine” (he was alluding to Yagna) “hurts me, but only when I happen to touch it! … Oh, how greedily her eyes were fixed on the lad! As if she would have devoured him!—Well, let her! Let her!”
But, do what he would, his “ulcer” gave him excruciating pain.
“She flees me as the plague! … This fellow’s new sieve for her peg.—Fortunately, she will lose her trouble with Yanek.—Ah!” he said, now more and more wrought up; “some women are of such nature that they will run after any man who only whistles to
