“Just invite me to your wedding; and I’ll sing you such a Hop-song16 as will bring about a christening in the house in nine months. …” So she began; but, seeing the old man scowl, she changed her tone.
“Matthias, you are doing just what you should do. Had I but sought out another husband when mine died, I should not now have to lodge in a house that is not my own. Oh, no! … But I was a simpleton, I trusted to my children: they were to board me. I made over all I had to them: and now?”
“But I,” he answered in a hard voice, “will give up not one single bit of ground.”
“Right.—I had to drag my cause from court to court: the few zloty that I had went all that way, yet they got me no justice. And here I am in my old age, degraded to a woman of all work!—Last Sunday I went to them, only just to see my old place once more, and the orchard I had planted myself; and my daughter-in-law beshrewed me, saying I had come to spy on her! To spy, good heavens! … I thought I should fall down dead.—I went to his Reverence, that he might rebuke them from the pulpit for those words; but he told me that our Lord would make me amends for the wrong they had done. Aye, aye! of course. For him that has nothing in the world, even God’s grace is worth having; but I would far rather have property here on earth, and sleep my fill in a warm room and a featherbed, and eat much butter and fat, and divert myself!”
She continued holding forth against everything in the world, and with such violence that Boryna left her, and sallied out to the Voyt’s: for twilight was at hand.
“Well, are you starting yet?”
“This very minute: Simon will be here at once.”
Simon appeared and all three went to the tavern, to toss off a dram and get a flask of rum for the proposal-offering. … Ambrose, who was there before them, joined them directly; but they could not drink long, for Matthias was urging them to make haste.
“I shall be waiting here for you. If they drink back, then bring them hither.—And speedily!” he added, calling after them as they went out.
They walked along the middle of the road, splashing through the mud. The twilight deepened, covering the land with its gossamer web of sober grey; and soon the village was no more, save for the cabin lights that began twinkling through the dusk, and the barking of the watchdogs in the farmyards.
“My fellow-messenger!” said the Voyt, after a time.
“Well?”
“Boryna’s wedding will, I fancy, be a grand one.”
“That’s as it may be,” the other returned, in surly fashion; he was a taciturn man.
“It will, I tell you—I, the Voyt, a man whom you may believe. We shall make such a match of it that. … Ha! ha!”
“The mare may prove restive, if so be the stallion prove not to her liking.”
“That does not concern us in any wise.”
“But his children—they will curse us, sure.”
“All shall be well: I the Voyt tell you so.”
And they walked into Dominikova’s hut.
The room was lighted, and carefully swept; they were expected.
The messengers “praised God”; then, greeting in turn everyone present, took seats close to the fireplace, and opened the conversation.
“The weather is cold; there seems to be a frost at hand.”
“Very likely; it is not springtime, nor near it!”
“Have you gathered in all the cabbages?”
“All but a few that we cannot get in just now,” the old dame replied indifferently, casting her eyes on Yagna, who was near the window, making up skeins of spun flax, and who looked so comely that the Voyt, a man still in the golden time of life, cast an eager glance at her, before he said:
“As the ways are foul and miry, and the night-air is dank, I and Simon the Soltys here thought we would enter your dwelling on our way. And seeing that you have received us with a kind and friendly welcome, perchance, Mother, we may even drive a bargain with you.”
“A bargain may be driven only when there is something about which to drive it.”
“Spoken truly, Mother, but that we have found already in your house: livestock, and of the best.”
“Well,” she cried, in good humour, “let us bargain, then.”
“We would fain, for instance, bargain for a heifer of yours.”
“Oho! that will be no small thing, and ye shall not lead her away with the first rope at hand!”
“As to that, we have for her a hallowed silver cord, and such that none can break it, he be strong as ten.—Well, how much, Mother?” And he pulled the flask of rum out of his pocket.
“How much?—Hard to say! She is young, will be nineteen in spring: good and hardworking. She might yet remain a year or two with her dam.”
“Years without offspring, Mother; barren years!”
“Ah,” Simon whispered, “were she other than she is, she might have offspring, even should she stay with her dam!”
The Voyt gave vent to a loud laugh. The old woman’s eyes flashed angrily, and she made answer on the spot:
“Seek another, then! Mine can wait.”
“She can; but we can find nowhere another so beautiful, or of so good a breed.”
“Then what do you say?”
“I who speak am the Voyt: so believe what I tell you.”—He took out a glass, wiped it on the skirt of his capote, filled it with rum, and said gravely: “Pay good heed, Dominikova, to what I say now. I am in office. A bird on the bough may chirp and twitter, and is gone: my word is not thus.—Simon too: all here know who he is; no man of straw, but a husbandman, the father of a family, and our Soltys! Mark well, then, who we are that come to you, and with what intention; mark this well.”
“I do so,
