“I’ll be hanged if I know why we quarrelled … some silly word dropped, belike. So I am first to come to you and shake hands.”
Antek shook hands indeed, but grunted, with a look of mistrust:
“Yes, some hasty words passed between us; but I felt no grudge against you. That Voyt made me frantic. … Let him mind his own business, and keep himself to himself, or. …”
“So I told him, when he wanted to follow you out. …”
“To fight me?—I would have given him such a dressing as I gave his cousin, who has been smashed up ever since harvest-time!”
“Of that, too, did I remind him,” the smith observed, with a demure look and a sly leer.
“But I will settle with him yet … with that great man, that Jack in office! He will remember me!”
“He is not worth your notice: let him be.—I have had an idea, and have come now to tell you about it. This is what we have to do. … This afternoon my wife will come here. You will go with her to old Boryna, and talk the matter over thoroughly. … Of what use is complaining in holes and corners? Speak your mind out to him face to face. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps not; but at all events we shall have threshed the matter out.”
“But what is to be done, now the settlement has been made?”
“You see, by wrangling we shall get nothing at all. Yes, he has made it. But, so long as he lives, he has the power to revoke it. Do you understand? That is the reason why we must not irritate him. He wants to marry: well, let him. And to enjoy himself: why not?”
At the mention of marriage, Antek turned white, and shook so that he paused in his work.
“Do not oppose him openly. Approve him. Say he was right to make the settlement, since he chose to do so: only ask him to promise us the rest—that is, to you and me, and in presence of witnesses,” he added, with a sly afterthought.
“Yes, but what of Yuzka, what of Gregory?” Antek inquired reluctantly.
“They shall get money instead. Gregory has been receiving not a little every month, ever since he has been in the army.—But just listen, and do as I tell you; you will not regret it. My management of things will make all the land ours in the end, my life on it.”
“ ‘To sew the sheep’s skin do not strive, furrier, while the sheep’s alive.’ ”
“Listen—Let him but make a promise in presence of witnesses: we shall then have something to lay hold on. We can still fall back on the courts of justice. And there is another point besides: the land he got as your mother’s dowry.”
“A great thing, forsooth: four acres for me and your sister … four whole acres!”
“But these he has not given to either; and for so many years he has sown therein and garnered therefrom! For these he must pay you well, aye, and with percentage too! … I tell you once more: oppose the old man in nothing. Go to the wedding; do not grudge him fair words. We shall manage him, you will see. And if he is after all unwilling to give the promise, the law may then come in and force him. You are on very familiar terms with Yagna, and she may be very useful to you: only speak of this to her. No one could better succeed in bringing the old man round.—Well, is it agreed? For I must be stirring.”
“Agreed!—That you get out quick, or I will smite you in the face and drive you out of doors!” Antek hissed through his clenched teeth.
“What … what has come over you?” the blacksmith stammered, appalled by the looks of the other, who dropped the straw-cutter and came on, with eyes terribly gleaming and face as pale as a sheet.
“Thief! carrion! traitor!” He spat the words out, his mouth was foaming with hate as he advanced, and the smith fairly ran for it.
“Has the man lost his wits?” he said, as soon as he was out in the road. “I was giving him good counsel … and he—Oh, that’s your game, is it? You would have struck me, driven me out, because I wanted to share the land with you, and came to you as to a friend and a brother! Is that your game … to have all to yourself? Ha! you will not live to see the day, my man! Though you wormed my thoughts out of me so cleverly, I will give you such a shaking, the worst ague will be nothing beside it!” He grew angrier and still more angry, as he reflected that Antek had taken him in so, and would inform old Boryna of all this intrigue.—The very thing he feared most of all!
“But that must at once be prevented!” He swiftly came to a decision, and though in bodily fear of Antek, went back to Boryna’s.
“Is your master at home?” he asked Vitek, who was opposite the house, throwing pebbles at the geese in the pond to make them land.
“Over there at the miller’s: gone to invite their people to his wedding.”
“I shall go that way: perhaps we may meet,” he thought, and made for the miller’s; but he went home first, and told his wife to dress her best, take the children with her, and go round to Antek’s at the first stroke of the noonday Angelus.
“He will tell you what to do. … Do nothing by yourself, for you are not clever; only fall a-crying at the right time, embrace your father’s knees and beseech him, and all that. But give good heed to what Antek shall say and your father reply.” And so he went on instructing her for some time.
“Now I shall look in at the mill: perhaps our meal is ground.” He was too uneasy to stay any longer in the house and, going out, walked on
