They were both asleep in an instant.
From the stable close by, Kuba called to him in a voice weakened by illness. He called for a long time; but Vitek was sleeping like a dormouse.
After a time, however, Lapa recognized his voice, and fell to barking furiously and pulling the boy’s coat.
“What’s the matter?” Vitek asked sleepily.
“Water! The fever is pulling me to pieces. … Water!”
Vitek, peevish and drowsy though he was, brought him a pailful, and held it to his lips.
“I am so ill, I can hardly breathe! … What’s growling round here?”
“Why, Lapa!”
“Lapa is it?” Kuba groped to touch the dog’s head in the dark; and Lapa leaped about, frisked, and tried to get on to the bed.
“Vitek, give the horses their hay; they have been gnawing the empty mangers a long time; and I cannot move. … Are they still dancing?” he asked a little later, when the lad was filling the racks with hay.
“They are not like to have done till noon; and some are so drunk, they are lying by the roadside.”
“Ah, they are enjoying themselves, the masters are!” And he sighed deeply.
“Was the miller there?”
“Aye, but he left rather early.”
“Many people?”
“Beyond counting. Why, the cabin was overflowing with them.”
“Plenty for all?”
“Like manor guests! They brought them meat in such huge dishes! And vodka and beer and mead were poured out in floods! Of sausages alone, there were piles enough to fill three troughs.”
“When is the bride coming?”
“This afternoon.”
“They are rejoicing and feasting still. My God! I thought I’d gnaw a bone at least, and eat my fill once in my life! … And here I am, lying, sighing, and hearing about other people’s good cheer!”
Vitek returned to his bed.
“If I could but feast my eyes on those good things!”
He said no more, feeling weary, sad, and tormented by a sort of faint timid querulousness that gnawed at his heart now. At last, however, he spoke, patting the dog’s head.
“Well, well! may they all be the better for it! Let them at least get some pleasure out of this life!”
The fever, increasing, began to confuse his thoughts; to drive it away, he applied himself to prayer, offering himself to the mercy of the Lord Jesus; but he could not remember what he was saying; he was dazed with sleep coming over him, and only a string of ejaculations that were prayers mingled with tears, trickled from his consciousness—the told beads of a crimson rosary!
Now and then he roused himself, but only to look around him blankly, recognizing nothing, and fall back into deathly and corpse-like unconsciousness.
Again he woke, now to groan so loud that the horses pulled at their bonds and snorted to hear him.
“O God! that I may but hold out till day!” he moaned in terror; and his eyes wandered through the window, staring out at the world and the approaching dawn, seeking the sun in that sky yet grey and lifeless and studded with paling stars.
But the day was a long distance away still.
In the stable, plunged in turbid mistiness, the horses’ outlines were growing dimly visible; and the racks beneath the window slits showed like ribs in the pale glimmer.
Fall asleep again he could not: the pains were torturing him anew; they felt like sharp gnarled sticks thrust into his legs, piercing, boring, stabbing in and in; and the agony became so unbearable that he started up, screaming with all his might, till Vitek woke and came round.
“I am dying! … Oh, how it pains! … How the pain swells! how it crushes me! Vitek, run for Ambrose. … O Lord! … Or else call Yagustynka. … Perhaps she can help. … I am not able—my last hour is here. …” He burst out weeping terribly.
Vitek, all sleepy as he was, ran to the wedding feast.
The dancing was yet at its height; but Ambrose, being completely tipsy by now, had taken his station on the road opposite the cabin, where he kept reeling and singing between the road and the edge of the pond.
Vitek implored him to come, and tugged him by the sleeve, but to no purpose; the old man heard nothing, understood nothing around him, singing the same song over again with obstinate repetition.
Vitek then applied to Yagustynka, who was not ignorant of healing. But she was in the private room, sipping krupnik,20 talking and chattering with her good friends so intently that she would listen to no one else. And as the boy was importunate, begging her with tears to come at once, she in the end drove him from the room. So he went back crying to the stable, having accomplished nothing.
When he returned, Kuba was asleep again; and he too, burrowing deep in the straw and covering his head with a clout, went off to sleep.
It was long after breakfast-time when he was waked by the noise of the hungry unmilked cows, and by the fierce scoldings of Yagustynka, who, having overslept herself just like the others, now made up in clamour against them for what she had neglected herself.
It was only after she had got the work somewhat in swing that she went to see Kuba.
He said in a feeble voice: “Pray help me and do something.”
“Just you marry a young wench, and you’ll be well in a trice,” she began cheerily; but, seeing his livid swollen face, grew serious at once. “You need a priest more than a physician. … What on earth can I do for you? … So far as I can see, you are sick unto death, aye, even unto death!”
“Must I die?”
“All’s in God’s hand: but you’ll not escape Crossbones’ clutches, I’m thinking.”
“I’m to die, say you?”
“Tell me: shall I send for his Reverence?”
“For his Reverence?” Kuba cried, in amazement.
