“Try then, hound that you are! Just try, you ruffian, you bully!” And with those words she grasped the poker.
This brought the scene to an end. Matthew spat furiously on the ground and went out instantly, slamming the door. For how could he make a laughingstock of himself by coming to blows with a woman?
Thereupon the beldame turned to Yagna, to vent her fury on her. With what upbraidings did she fall upon the girl, and discharge her soul of the gall she was bursting with! At first Yagna sat dumbstruck and petrified with dismay; but soon her mother’s bitter words stung her to the quick. She hid her face in the bed she was sitting by, and burst into tears and lamentations. She was cut to the heart. … What wrong had she done? … She had not even asked him in: he had come by himself. … Mother had reminded her of last spring. … Well … he had met her at the stile. … How could she get away from so impetuous a firedrake, when a fit of faintness came over her so? … And after that … how could she keep him off? Impossible! … It was always the case with her: when a man looked deep into her eyes, or embraced her with a powerful hug … then all within her trembled, and her strength forsook her, and her inwards swooned away, and she knew nothing more. Was she in any wise to blame for this?
These complaints she uttered in a choking voice, between bursts of tears; and at last her mother, softening towards her, wiped her face and eyes with tender care, and stroked her tresses, and soothed her.
“Come, come, Yagna; be calm: do not weep. Why, your eyes will look like a rabbit’s: and how will you be able to go to Boryna’s then?”
“Is’t time to go now?” she asked after a while, a little comforted.
“It is.—Now dress and array yourself—.There will be many there, and even Boryna will notice you.”
Yagna instantly rose and prepared to deck herself out.
“Shall I boil some milk for you?”
“I have no mind at all to eat, Mother dear.”
“Simon! you hulking oaf! Warming yourself at the fire, indeed—and the kine gnawing at the empty mangers!” she cried, exhaling the last of her anger on the lad, who fled in bodily fear.
“ ’Tis my mind,” she remarked, helping Yagna dress, “that the blacksmith has been reconciled with Boryna: I met him leading a calf home from the old man’s farm.—A pity! ’twas worth fifteen roubles at least. And yet it may be as well that they agree together; for the smith has a dangerous tongue, and knows the law besides. …” She stepped back, and looked lovingly at her daughter. “Alas! they have let that thief Koziol out of jail already; and now we shall have to watch, and lock every door well.”
Yagna set off; but for some distance on her way she heard her mother inveighing against Andrew for leaving the swine out of their sties, and letting the fowls roost in the trees.
Many people were already at Boryna’s when she arrived.
The fire was leaping up the chimney, lighting the big room, making the glazed picture-frames glisten, and giving a semblance of motion to the many globes made of coloured wafers that dangled from the grimy, smoke-blackened rafters. In the middle there lay a heap of cabbages, round which, in a wide semicircle, with faces turned towards the hearth, a good many girls and some women of maturer age sat side by side, stripping the cabbages of their outer and withered leaves, and throwing them on to a great sheet that was spread out under the window.
Having warmed her hands at the fire, Yagna took her clogs off, and at once sat down to work at the end of the row, next to old Yagustynka.
The room soon grew noisier, more men and women coming in: some of the former, together with Kuba, helping to bring the cabbages in from the barn, but for the most part only smoking cigarettes and grinning at the lasses, or cracking jokes together.
Yuzka, though hardly in her teens as yet, presided over the work and the fun; for old Boryna had not come home, and Hanka was as usual flitting about everywhere like a moth.
“Why, the room glows like a field of red poppies!” exclaimed Antek, who, having rolled several barrels into the passage, had now set the cabbage-cutter by the fire, but a little on one side.
“Bah! they are dressed up as though for a wedding!” remarked an elderly woman.
“And Yagna looks as if she had been washed in milk,” Yagustynka said, in a spiteful tone.
“Let me be, will you?” the girl whispered, flushing deeply.
“Rejoice, O ye lasses,” the old woman continued; “for Matthew is back from his wanderings. And now will the time begin for music, and dancing, and trysts in the orchards!”
“He has been absent all the summer.”
“Yes; building a farmhouse at Vola.”
“A grand master-builder: could build a castle in the air,” said one of the farmhands.
“And achieve a bantling in less than nine months,” observed Yagustynka.
“Always speaking against somebody, you are!” one of the girls protested.
“Take heed lest I choose to speak of you!” was the retort.
“Have you heard them say the old wanderer has come to Lipka again?”
“He will be with us tonight,” Yuzka boasted.
“He was away for three years.”
“Yes, at the Holy Sepulchre.”
“Fiddlesticks! Who saw him there? He lies like a gipsy, and only fools believe him. Just like the smith, telling us what he has read in the papers about foreign parts.”
“Do not say that, Yagustynka. His Reverence himself told Mother that the man was there.”
“Ah, we all know that Dominikova’s other home is the priest’s house, and whenever his Reverence has a stomachache, she knows all about it.”
Yagna said not a word, but would have loved to knife the old hag, for her gibe was the signal of a burst of laughter. But just then Ulisia, Gregory’s wife, leaned over towards Klembova and
