“What’s to be done? She must be killed: I’ll save at least as much as that will bring us.”
Thus making up his mind, he went into the barn for a scythe. After sharpening it with a few turns of a grindstone that stood under the eaves of the cow-house, he pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirtsleeves, and set about his grim task.
Hanka and Yuzka began to weep as Red-and-White, as though feeling death close at hand, raised her heavy head and, moaning faintly, fell flat, with her throat cut. Her legs jerked convulsively once or twice.
The dog lapped the blood, which was already beginning to clot.
Antek, who had just arrived, angrily addressed his weeping wife:
“What have you to weep over, foolish one? Father’s cow is father’s loss, not ours!”
And he set to unharnessing the horses, which Vitek took to the stable.
“Is the potato crop good?” Boryna inquired as he was washing his hands by the well.
“Why shouldn’t it be good? Twenty sacks or thereabouts,” was the reply.
“They must be brought in this very day.”
“Bring them in yourself, then,” said Antek. “I am dead tired and ready to drop. The off-horse, too, is lame in one foreleg.”
“Yuzka, go and tell Kuba to stop digging. Let him put the young mare to instead of the off-horse, and bring the potatoes home today. It may rain.”
Boryna was boiling over with anger and mortification. Every now and then he went to gaze at the slaughtered cow and swore outrageously. Then he strode across the yard, looked into the byre, the barn, and all the sheds, being so confused by his loss that he did not know what he was doing.
“Vitek! Vitek!” he roared at length, unfastening the broad leather girdle round his waist. But Vitek did not answer his call.
All the neighbours had disappeared, feeling that such sorrow for so great a loss was likely to end in blows, and Boryna was at no time indisposed for a fight. Today, however, he did nothing but curse and swear.
Going toward the hut, he cried through the open window: “Hanka, give me something to eat!” and passed in to his own quarters.
The hut was the usual peasants’ cabin, divided into two parts by a very wide passageway. The back looked out upon the yard; the four front windows, upon the orchard and the road. Boryna and his daughter, Yuzka, occupied the side next the garden; Antek and his family lived on the other side; while the herdsman and the labourer slept in the stable.
The room was now getting dark, for but little light could filter through its tiny windows, the eaves that overshadowed them, and the trees of the orchard beyond. Only the sheen of the glass that covered the holy images hanging in dark rows from the whitewashed walls, could be seen. The room, though large, looked smaller on account of the low ceiling, with the great beams supporting it, and the amount of furniture which filled the whole place, leaving only a little free space about the big penthouse fireplace that stood close to the passage wall.
Boryna took off his boots there, then entered a dim alcove, and closed the door behind him. He removed a shutter from a small pane of glass, and the sundown at once flooded the closet with bloodred light.
It was a small lumber-room, crowded with household articles. Poles were fixed across it, from which hung many a striped cloth and sukmana;6 there were piles of grey spinning-yarn, and fleeces rolled into dingy bales, and sacks of feathers. He took a white sukmana and a scarlet girdle, and then for a long time fumbled in certain tubs full of grain; also in a corner, underneath a heap of odds and ends—leather and iron fumbled together. But, hearing Hanka in the next room, he quickly replaced the shutter, and again started groping in the tubs of corn.
His supper, an enormous pot of cabbage stewed with fat bacon, was now smoking on a bench just beneath the window. The odour of that mingled in the air with the smell of scrambled eggs in a big dish close by.
“Where did Vitek take the cattle this morning?” he asked, cutting off a mighty piece from a loaf of bread as large as the largest sieve.
“To the manor copse; and the forester drove them out.”
“The carrion! It is they who have killed Red-and-White!”
“Yes, she was so tired and overheated with running that something inside her got inflamed.”
“Those beggarly dogs! We have a right to graze our cattle there. It is down in black and white, in letters as large as an ox: yet they always drive us away, and say we have no right there.”
“They have done the same to others, too. They have beaten up Valek’s boy, too, most sorely.”
“Ah! I shall go to court, or else to the Commissioner. She was worth three hundred zloty, if she was worth a grosz!”
“Surely, surely,” assented Hanka, greatly relieved to see her father less angry with her.
“Tell Antek that as soon as they have brought the potatoes in, they must see to the cow—skin her and cut her up. I shall lend a hand when I get home from the Voyt’s. Hang the quarters from the rafters, out of the reach of dogs and vermin.”
Having finished his meal, he got up to dress for the visit, but felt so heavy and drowsy that he flung himself on the bed, just as he was, for just forty winks of sleep.
Hanka cleared the things away, going to the window every now and then to peep at Antek, who was taking his supper under the porch in front of the house. He sat at a civil distance from the platter, taking spoonful after spoonful with a hard but leisurely scrape against the sides of the vessel. At times
