“Ah, you cunning trickster, you! with your sly games and your forbidden quests, sharing the forest hares with the Squire!—But, you see, this partnership will have cost you your leg!”
He examined it again, and looked sorely distressed.
“Too late, ever so much too late!”
Kuba was terrified. “Please do something for me,” he moaned.
Ambrose, without replying, turned up his sleeves, whipped out a very keen clasp-knife, grasped the leg firmly, and set about extracting the shots and expressing the matter.
Kuba roared like a beast at the slaughterhouse, till the other gagged his mouth with his sheepskin, and then he swooned with the agony of it. After dressing the wound, and applying some ointment and fresh bandages, Ambrose brought him to.
“You will have to go to the hospital,” he said in a low voice.
Kuba was still dazed. “To the hospital?” he asked, not knowing what was said.
“They would cut off your leg, and you might get well.”
“My leg?”
“Of course. It is good for nothing: black—decayed—rotten.”
“Cut it off?” he asked, still unable to understand.
“Yes. At the knee. Fear nothing: mine was cut off almost at the thigh; and I am alive yet.”
“Then I shall get well again, if the wounded limb is cut off?”
“Even as though one should take out the pain with the hand … but you must go to the hospital.”
“There … there they cut and carve living men’s bodies!—Cut it off, you: I’ll pay whatsoever you will, but cut it off!—To the hospital I will not go: I prefer dying here!”
“Then here you will die. None but a doctor can cut it off for you. I am off to the Voyt’s at once; he will send you to town in a cart tomorrow.”
“No use: I will not go,” he replied, stubbornly.
“Fool! do you think they will ask your leave?”
The old man went out, and Kuba said to himself: “When it is cut off, I shall be well.”
After the dressing, his leg had ceased to pain. But it was numb as far up as the groin, and he felt a tingling all along his side: this he did not notice, plunged in thought as he was.
“I should recover.—Yes, I surely should. Ambrose has nothing left him of his leg: all he walks on is wooden. And he said: ‘As though one should take the pain out with his hand. …’—But then, Boryna would turn me away. … Aye, a farmhand with but one leg—such a one cannot plough, nor do aught else.—what would become of me? I should have to tend cattle … or beg my bread! Wander about, or sit at some church-door.—O Lord, merciful Lord!” And on a sudden his position flashed clearly upon him; and under the horror that now assailed him, he even sat up. And then he uttered a deep cry of impotent agony, his mind rolling in an abyss from which he saw no issue. “O Jesus, Jesus!” he repeated in a fever of excitement, quaking in every limb.
Long did he shriek and struggle thus in his anguish; but in the midst of those tears and that despair, a certain resolve was slowly shaping itself, and he brooded more and more deeply. Little by little, he grew calmer, more at peace, thinking so profoundly that he heard nothing around him, though surrounded by the din of instruments and songs and clamour; just as if he had been in a deep sleep!
It was then that the bride and the wedding guests arrived at Boryna’s house.
They had led away a goodly cow, and sent Yagna’s box and featherbed, and various articles that she had received as wedding presents, before her in a cart.
And now, just a little after sundown, the procession left Dominikova’s cabin, as darkness was falling and the mists rising up.
Playing lustily, the band marched in front; then Yagna went on, still in her wedding dress, and conducted by her mother and friends: last of all, and without any order, came the ruck of guests, each in the place he had chosen.
Their way wound along by the pond, now darkened, its gleaming quenched in the ever-thickening folds of the fog; the silence and obscurity growing blacker and more dead, the tramping and music sounding muffled and, as it were, from underneath the water.
From time to time one of the younger folk broke out into song, or a matron took up a stave, or one of the peasant lads cried: “Da dana!” but it was only a short outburst.
They were as yet in no merry mood, and, besides, they were chilled to the marrow by the bleak damp air.
Only when they turned in to Boryna’s enclosure did the bridesmaids lift their voices in a sad farewell:
Wending her way to her wedding,
The maiden wept.
Then lit they tapers four,
And played upon the organ.—
Didst fancy, maiden,
That they would play forever?
—A little yesterday, today a little,
And after, thou shalt weep for all thy life!
Da dana! … All thy life!
Before the threshold, and under the porch, Boryna was waiting along with Yuzka and the young men.
Dominikova came forward first of all, carrying in a bundle a piece of bread, a pinch of salt, a little charcoal, some wax from a Candlemas taper, and a handful of ears of corn, blessed on Assumption Day. As Yagna passed the threshold, the matrons cast behind her threads plucked from cloth seams, and the peels of hempstalks, that the Evil One might find no entrance, but all things thrive with her!
They greeted, kissed, and pledged one another in cups of mead, with wishes of luck, health, and all good gifts and blessings; then they entered and filled the whole room, every bench and nook
