She came back only at evening, in great agitation, crying and wailing like an autumn wind at night; but, until she was alone with Yagna after supper, she spoke no word.
Then, “Do you know,” she said, “what tales are afloat concerning you and Yanek?”
“I am no lover of gossip!” her daughter answered unwillingly, raising her eyes, that shone with a feverish glow.
“But you have to know this … and to learn, too, that there’s no hiding things from neighbours’ eyes.—‘What’s done in silence is spoken of aloud.’—They say most fearful things of you.”
Then she told her every particular that she had gleaned from the organist’s wife and from his Reverence.
“… That very night they held judgment upon him; his father gave him a beating; the priest added some blows from his long pipe-stem; and he has been sent to Chenstohova, to protect him from you!—Do you hear that? Oh, think what you have done!” she cried indignantly.
“Jesu Maria!—Yanek beaten!—Beaten!—O God, O God!” And she started up with a mad idea of doing something … but sat down again and hissed between her teeth:
“May their arms wither, may their hands rot off! And when the plague comes, may they not be spared!” She then wept bitterly, with the tears streaming from her swollen eyes, like blood from a freshly opened wound.
Careless of her agony, Dominikova still continued to lash her with her tongue; and each word was a blow. She reminded her of all her many sins and transgressions, omitting not a single one, and pouring out before her all the bitterness that she had endured in silence for ever so long.
“Can you not see that all this must come to an end? that you cannot live on any more in this wise?” she cried, more and more pitilessly, though she herself was weeping, and the tears fell under her bandage down her cheeks. “Shall you be held the lowest of the low? Shall all men point their fingers at you now?—Oh, what a shame for my old age, good Lord! Oh, what a shame!” she murmured despairingly.
“Ye too, I hear, were no whit better in your youth!”
This silenced Dominikova effectually.—Yagna set to ironing some frills for the next day. It was a windy evening, with whistling sounds in the trees. The moon was sailing athwart a sky flecked all over with cloudlets. Away in the village the lasses were singing, while someone scraped a jerky accompaniment on a fiddle.
They heard the Voyt’s wife talking as she passed by.
“He went to the Police Bureau yesterday; since then, no news of him.”
“Yesterday evening,” Matthew’s voice returned, “he went to the District Office; and the Soltys says the head official had sent both for him and for the scrivener.”
After they had passed on, the old woman spoke again, but less harshly this time.
“Wherefore did you drive Matthew away from us?”
“He was displeasing to me; why, therefore, should he sit here? I seek no man, nor do I need any!”
“But ’tis time—aye, high time—to provide yourself with a goodman! Folk would then no longer attack you so. Even Matthew—he’s not to be disdained; a clever fellow, and an honest.”
For some time, and very earnestly, she held forth on this theme, but Yagna, busy with her own work and full of her own sorrows, made no reply. So at last her mother gave over, and took up her rosary. It was late in the night. All was quiet, save for the tossing trees and clattering mill; the moon was now quite hid behind dense clouds, though their edges were silvery, and a few sheaves of light shot out between them.
“Yagna, you must go and confess tomorrow. You’ll feel more at ease, when rid of your sins.”
“To what purpose?—No, I’ll not go!”
“Not go to confession!” Her mother’s voice was stridulous with horror.
“No. Quick to punish, slow to help: that’s what the priest is.”
“Hush, lest the Lord God punish you for those wicked words!—And I say to you: Go to confession, do penance, beg God’s forgiveness; do so, and all may yet be well!”
“Penance indeed! Is mine slight? And for what wrong that I have done, pray? No doubt, because I love, and because I suffer, I am rewarded thus. For me, the worst that can be has already come to pass!” And she went on bewailing herself in her sullen mood of exasperation.
Alas, poor thing! she had no foreboding—no, not the slightest—of the chastisement which was about to overtake her: a chastisement far less foreseen, and far harsher still!
For on the next day, which was Sunday, a rumour spread round the village before High Mass—the incredible rumour that the Voyt had been arrested for a deficit in the village accounts!
At first no one would believe it, and though fresh and more dreadful particulars came in hourly, they were hardly taken in earnest by anyone.
The graver members of the community only said: “The idle love inventing stories and spreading them for a pastime.”
They believed, however, when the blacksmith, home from town, bore out every word, and Yankel told the whole village:
“ ’Tis all true! Five thousand roubles of the community’s money are wanting. His farm will be seized for the sum, and should it not suffice, Lipka will have to make up the rest!”
Thereupon a furious storm of protest arose. What! when they all were in such straits, and misery cried aloud everywhere; when there was nothing more to eat, and many had to borrow, that they might pull through till the harvest was over: was it now that they must pay money for a thief? That was beyond human patience; the whole place went mad with rage, and curses and threats and foul names flew about like hail.
“I was no partner of his: therefore will
