Selected Polish Tales Part 27

'Hoch!...Hoch!' shouted the workmen. Hamer bowed, took a second stake and carried it northwards, accompanied by the crowd. The women and children were headed by the schoolmaster in his little cart. He now lifted his cap high into the air, and at this sign the whole crowd started to sing Luther's hymn:

'A stronghold sure our G.o.d remains, A shield and hope unfailing, In need His help our freedom gains, O'er all our fear prevailing; Our old malignant foe Would fain work us woe; With craft and great might He doth against us fight, On earth is no one like him.'

At the first note Slimak had taken off his cap, his wife crossed herself, and Maciek stepped aside and knelt down. Stasiek, with wide-open eyes, began to tremble, and Jendrek started running down the hill, waded through the river, and headed at full speed for the camp.

While Hamer was driving the stake into the ground the procession, slowly coming up to him, continued:

'Our utmost might is all in vain, We straight had been rejected, But for us fights the perfect Man By G.o.d Himself elected; Ye ask: Who may He be?

The Lord Christ is He!

The G.o.d, by hosts ador'd, Our great Incarnate Lord, Who all His foes will vanquish.'

Never had the peasants heard a hymn like this, so solemn, yet so triumphant, they who only knew their plainsongs, which rose to heaven like a great groan: 'Lord, we lay our guilt before Thine eyes.'

A cry from Stasiek roused the parents from their reverie.

'Mother...mother...they are singing!' stammered the child; his lips became blue, and he fell to the ground.

The frightened parents lifted him up and carried him into the cottage, where he recovered when the singing ceased. They had always known that the singing at church affected him very deeply, but they had never seen him like this.

Jendrek, meanwhile, although wet through and cold, stood riveted by the spectacle he was watching. Why were these people walking and singing like this? Surely, they wanted to drive away some evil power from their future dwellings, and, not having incense or blessed chalk, they were using stakes. Well, after all, a club of oakwood was better against the devil than chalk! Or were they themselves bewitching the place?

He was struck with the difference in the behaviour of the Germans. The old men, women, and children were walking along solemnly, singing, but the young fellows and the workmen stood in groups, smoking and laughing. Once they made a noisy interruption when Wilhelm Hamer, who presided at the beer-barrel, lifted up his gla.s.s. The young men shouted 'Hoch! hurrah!' Old Hamer looked round disapprovingly, and the schoolmaster shook his fist.

As the procession drew near, Jendrek heard a woman's voice above the children's shrill trebles, Hamer's guttural ba.s.s and the old people's nasal tones; it was clear, full, and inexpressively moving. It made his heart tremble within him. The sounds shaped themselves in his imagination to the picture of a beautiful weeping-willow.

He knew that it must be the voice of the schoolmaster's daughter, whom he had seen before. At that time the dog had engaged his attention more than the girl, but now her voice took entire possession of the boy's soul, to the exclusion of everything else he heard or saw. He, too, wanted to sing, and began under his breath:

'The Lord is ris'n to-day.

The Lord Jesus Christ...'

It seemed to fit in with the melody which the Germans were just singing.

He was roused from this state by the young men's voices; he caught sight of the schoolmaster's daughter and unconsciously moved towards her. But the young man soon brought him to his senses. They pulled his hat over his ears, pushed him into the middle of the crowd, and, wet, smeared with sand, looking more like a scarecrow than a boy, he was pa.s.sed from hand to hand like a ball. Suddenly his eyes met those of the girl, and a wild spirit awoke in him. He kicked one young man over with his bare legs, tore the shirt off another one's back, b.u.t.ted old Hamer in the stomach, and then stood with clenched fists in the s.p.a.ce he had cleared, looking where he might break through. Most of the men laughed at him, but some were for handling him roughly. Fortunately old Hamer recognized him.

'Why, youngster, what are you up to?'

'They're bullying me,' he said, while the tears were rising in his throat.

'Don't you come from that cottage? What are you doing here?'

'I wanted to listen to your singing, but those scoundrels...'

He stopped suddenly when he saw the grey eyes of the schoolmaster's daughter fixed on him. She offered him the gla.s.s of beer she had been drinking from.

'You are wet through,' she said. 'Take a good pull.'

'I don't want it,' said the boy, and felt ashamed directly; it did not seem well-mannered to speak rudely to one so beautiful.

'I might get tipsy...' he cried, but drained the gla.s.s, looked at her again and blushed so deeply that the girl smiled sadly as she looked at him.

At that moment violins and cellos struck up; Wilhelm Hamer came heavily bounding along and took the girl away to dance. Her yearning eyes once more rested on Jendrek's face.

He felt that something strange was happening to him. A terrible anger and sorrow gripped him by the throat; he wanted to throw himself on Wilhelm and tear his flowered waistcoat off his back; at the same time he wanted to cry aloud. Suddenly he turned to go.

'Are you going?' asked the schoolmaster. 'Give my compliments to your father.'

'And you can tell him from me that I have rented the field by the river from Midsummer Day,' Hamer called after him.

'But dad rented it from the squire!' Hamer laughed...'The squire! We are the squires now, and the field is mine.'

As Jendrek neared the road he came upon a peasant, hidden behind a bush, who had been watching. It was Gryb.

'Be praised,' said Jendrek.

'Who's praised at your place?' growled the old man; 'it must be the devil and not the Lord, since you are taking up with the Germans.'

'Who's taking up with them?'

The peasant's eyes flashed and his dry skin quivered.

'You're taking up with them!' he cried, shaking his fist, 'or perhaps I didn't see you running off to them like a dog through the water to cadge for a gla.s.s of beer, nor your father and mother on the hill praying with the Swabians...praying to the devil! G.o.d has punished them already, for something has fallen on Stasiek. There will be more to come...you wait!'

Jendrek slowly walked home, puzzled and sad. When he returned to the cottage, he found Stasiek lying ill. He told his father what Gryb had said.

'He's an old fool,' replied Slimak. 'What! should a man stand like a beast when others are praying, even if they are Swabians?'

'But their praying has bewitched Stasiek.' Slimak looked gloomy.

'Why should it have been their prayers? Stasiek is easily upset. Let a woman but sing in the fields and he'll begin to shake all over.'

The matter ended there. Jendrek tried to busy himself about the cottage, but he felt stifled indoors. He roamed about in the ravines, stood on the hill and watched the Germans, or forced his way through brambles. Wherever he went, the image of the schoolmaster's daughter went with him; he saw her tanned face, grey eyes, and graceful movements. Sometimes her powerful, entrancing voice seemed to come to him as from a depth.

'Has she cast a spell over me?' he whispered, frightened, and continued to think of her.

CHAPTER VIII

Slimak had never been so well off as he was that spring; money was flowing into his chest while he took his leisure and looked around him at all the new things.

Formerly, after a heavy day, he had thrown himself on his bed and had scarcely fallen asleep like a stone when his wife would pull the cover off him, crying: 'Get up, Josef; it is morning.'

'How can it be morning?' he thought; 'I've only just lain down.' All the same he had to gather his bones together, when each one individually held to the bed; w.i.l.l.y-nilly he had to get up. So hard was the resolution sometimes, that he even thought with pleasure of the eternal sleep, when his wife would no longer stand over him and urge: 'Get up, wash...you'll be late; they'll take it off your wages.'

Then he would dress, and drag the equally tired horses out of the stable, so overcome with sleep that he would pause on the threshold and mutter, 'I shall stay at home!' But he was afraid of his wife, and he also knew very well that he could not make both ends meet at the gospodarstwo without his wages.

Now all that was different. He slept as long as he liked. Sometimes his wife pulled him by the leg from habit and said: 'Get up, Josef.' But, opening only one eye, lest sleep should run away from him, he would growl: 'Leave me alone!' and sleep, maybe, till the church bell rang for Ma.s.s at seven o'clock.