Selected Polish Tales Part 37

bowels,' said the Soltys, looking fierce.

It was about two o'clock when Maciek was ready to start. The Soltys hinted that the child had better be left behind, but his wife was so angry at the suggestion that he desisted. So Maciek tied her up again in the old bits of clothing and went his way.

He easily found Kasztan's tracks on the highroad and followed them for an hour, when he thought that he must be nearing the thieves' quarters, for the tracks had been covered up, and finally led into the ravines.

The frost was pinching harder and harder, but the breathless man scarcely noticed the cold. From time to time clouds flew over the sky and snow drifted along the ground in gusts; Maciek searched all the more eagerly, so as not to miss the track before it should be covered with fresh drifts. On and on he walked, never even noticing that darkness was coming on and the snow was falling faster.

Now and then he would sit down for a moment, too tired to go on, but he jumped up again, for he fancied he heard Kasztan neighing. Probably it was his aching head that produced these sounds, but at last they became so loud that he left the track and cut right across the hill in the direction from which they seemed to proceed. With his last remaining strength he struggled with the bushes, fell, scrambled to his feet, and continued. Then the neighing ceased and he found that he was in the ravines, knee-deep in snow, and night-was falling.

With difficulty he dragged himself on to a knoll to see where he was.

He could see nothing but snow--snow to the right and to the left, here and there intercepted by bushes, the last streak of light had faded from the sky.

He tried to descend; in one place the slope was too steep, in another there were too many bushes; at last he decided on an easier place and put his stick forward; it gave way, and he fell after it for several yards. It was fortunate that the snow lay waist-deep in this spot.

The frightened child began its low sobbing, it had always been too weak to cry heartily. Fear was knocking at Maciek's heart.

'Surely, I can't have lost my way?' he thought, 'these are our ravines that I know so well, yet I don't see my way out of them.'

He started walking again, alternately in low and deep snow, until he came upon a place that had been trodden down recently. He knelt down and felt the tracks with his hands. They were his own footprints.

'Dear me! I've been going round in a circle,' he muttered, and tried another corridor of ravines which presently led him to the place where he had slid down the hill. He fancied he heard murmurings overhead and looked up, but it was only the rustling of the bushes. The wind had sprung up on the hillside and was driving before it clouds of fine snow which stung his face and hands like gnats.

'Can it be that my hour has come?' he thought; 'No, no,' he whispered, 'not till I have found the horses, else they will take me for a thief.'

He wrapped the child more closely in the coverings; she had fallen asleep in spite of shaking and discomfort; he walked about aimlessly, so as to keep moving.

'I won't be a fool and sit down,' he muttered, 'if I sit down I shall be frozen, and the thieves will keep the horses.'

The hard snow fell faster and faster, whitening Maciek from head to foot; the wind swept along the top of the hills, and as he listened to it, the man was glad that he had not been caught in the open.

'It's quite warm here,' he said, 'but all the same I'm not going to sit down, I must keep on walking till the morning.'

But it was not yet midnight and Maciek's legs began to refuse obedience, he could no longer push away the snow with his feet; he stopped and stamped, but that was even more tiring; he leant against the sides of the little cavity. The spot was excellent; it was raised above the ravine, and the little hollow was just large enough to hold a man; bushes sheltered it against the snow on all sides. But the crowning advantage was a jutting piece of rock, about the size of a stool.

'No, I won't sit down,' he determined, 'I know I should get frozen.... It's true,' he added after a while, 'it would not do to go to sleep, but it can't hurt to sit down for a bit.'

He boldly sat down, drew his cap over his ears and the clothes round the sleeping child, and decided that he would alternately rest and stamp, and so await the morning.

'So long as I don't go to sleep,' he kept on reminding himself. He fancied the air was getting a little warmer and his feet were thawing.

Instead of the cold he felt ants creeping under the soles of his feet.

They crept in among his toes, swarmed over his injured leg, then over the other, and reached his knees. In a mysterious way one had suddenly settled on his nose; he wanted to flick it off, but a whole swarm was sitting on his arms. He decided not to drive them away, for in the first place they were keeping him awake, and then he rather liked them.

He smiled, as one reached his waist, and did not ask how they came to be there. It was not surprising that there should be ant-hills in the ravines, and he forgot that it was winter.

'So long as I don't go to sleep...so long as I don't go to sleep....'

But at last he asked himself 'Why am I not to go to sleep? It's night and I am in the stable? The thieves might be coming, that's it!'

He grasped his stick more firmly; whispers seemed to be stirring all round.

'Oho! they are opening the stable door, there is the snow, this time I will give it to them....'

The thieves must have found out that he was on the watch this time and made off. Maciek laughed; now he could go to sleep. He straightened his back, pressed the little girl close.

'Just a moment's sleep,' he reminded himself, 'I've something to do, but what is it? Ploughing? no, that's done. Water the horses.. the horses....'

After midnight the moon dispersed the clouds and the new moon peeped out and looked straight into the sleeper's face: but the man did not move. Fresh clouds came up and hid the moon, yet he did not move. He sat in the hollow of the hill, his head leaning against its side, the child clasped to his breast.

At last the sun rose, but even then he did not move. He seemed to be gazing in astonishment at the railway line, not more than twenty steps away from his resting place.

The sun was high when a signalman came along the permanent way. He caught sight of the sleeper and shouted, but there was no answer, and the man approached.

'Heh, father! have you been drinking?' he called out, as he went round the hollow at a distance. At last, hardly believing his eyes, he went up to the silent sitter and touched his hand.

Maciek's and the child's faces were hard, as if they had been cast in wax, h.o.a.rfrost lay on his lashes, and frozen moisture stood on the child's lips. The signalman's arms dropped in astonishment; he wanted to call for help, but remembered that no one would hear him. He turned and ran at full speed to the Soltys' office.

In the course of an hour or two a sledge with some men arrived to remove the bodies. But Maciek's was frozen so hard that it was impossible to open his arms or straighten his legs, so they put him in the sledge as he was. He went for his last drive with the child on his knees, his head resting against the rail, and his face turned upwards, as though he had done with human reckoning and was recounting his wrongs to his Creator.

When the mournful procession stopped, a small crowd of peasants, women, and Jews gathered in front of the Wojt's office. The Wojt, his clerk, and Grochowski were standing together. A shudder of remorse seized the latter, he guessed who the man and child were that had been found, frozen to death. He explained to the crowd what Maciek had told him.

When he had finished, the men turned away, the women groaned, the Jews spat on the ground; only Jasiek, the son of the rich peasant Gryb, lighted an expensive cigar and smiled. He put his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat, stuck out first one foot, then the other, to display his elegant top-boots that reached above his knees, sucked his cigar, and continued to smile. The men looked at him with aversion, but the women, although shocked, did not think him repulsive. Was he not a tall, broadshouldered, graceful lad, with a complexion like milk and blood, and eyes the colour of a bluebottle, and did he not trim his moustaches and beard like a n.o.bleman? It was a pity he was not a foreman with plenty of opportunities of ordering the girls about! The men, however, were whispering among themselves that he was a scoundrel who would come to a bad end.

'Certainly it was wrong of Slimak to send the poor wretch away in such weather,' said the Wojt.

'It was a shame,' murmured the women.

'It's only natural he should be angry when his horses had been stolen,'

said one of the men.

'Driving him away did not bring the horses back, and he will have the two poor souls on his conscience till he dies,' cried an old woman.

Grochowski was seized with shuddering again.

'It was not so much that Slimak drove him away, but that he himself was anxious to go,' he said quickly, 'he wanted to track the thieves;' here he gave a quick glance at Jasiek, who returned it insolently, and observed that horse-thieves were sharp, and more people might meet their death in tracking them.

'They may find that there is a limit to it,' said Grochowski.

The policeman now proceeded to examine the corpses, and the Wojt was standing by with a wry face, as if he had bitten on a peppercorn.

'We must drive them to the district police-court,' he said; 'Stojka,'

turning to the owner of the sledge, 'drive on, we will overtake you presently. This is the first time that any one in this parish has ever been frozen to death.'

Stojka demurred and scratched his head, but he took up the reins and lashed the horses; after all, it was only a few versts, and one need not look much at the pa.s.sengers. He walked by the side of the sledge and Grochowski and a man who was to make closer acquaintance with the police-court, for spoiling his neighbour's bucket, went with him.

It so happened that, just as the Wojt was dispatching the bodies to the police-court, the police officer was sending 'Silly Zoska' back to her native village. A few months after leaving her child in Maciek's care she had been arrested; the reason was unknown to her. As a matter of fact she had been accused of begging, vagrancy, and attempted arson.

After the discovery of each new crime, they had taken her from police- station to prison, from prison to infirmary, from infirmary to another prison, and so on for a whole year.

During her peregrinations Zoska had behaved with complete indifference; when she was taken to a new place she would worry at first whether she would find work. After that she became apathetic and slept the greater part of the time, on her plank bed, or waiting in corridors and prison-yards. It was all the same to her. At times she began to long for freedom and her child, and then she fell into accesses of fury. Now they were sending her back under escort of two peasants; one carried the papers relating to her case, and the other had come to keep him company. She had a boot on one foot and a sandal on the other, a sukmana in holes, and a handkerchief like a sieve on her head. She walked quickly in front of the men, as if she were in a hurry to get back, yet neither the familiar neighbourhood nor the hard frost seemed to make any impression on her. When the men called out: 'Heh! not so fast!' she stood as still as a post, and waited till they told her to go on.

'She's quite daft!' said one.

'She's always been like that,' said the other, who had known her a long time, 'yet she's not bad at rough work.'