Part 89 (2/2)
”Don't kill it! Don't make it squeal while I am listening,” exclaimed Borcsa in a terrified pa.s.sion: then she ran back into the kitchen, and stopped her ears lest she should hear them killing her favorite pig.
She came out again as soon as the squeals of her _protege_ had ceased, and with uncontrollable fury took up a position before Sarvolgyi. The gypsy woman smilingly pointed to the murdered innocent.
Mistress Borcsa then said in a panting rage to Sarvolgyi:
”Miser who gives one day, and takes back--a curse upon such as you!”
”Zounds! good-for-nothing!” bawled the righteous fellow. ”How dare you say such a thing to me?”
”From to-day I am no longer your servant,” said the old woman, trembling with pa.s.sion. ”Here is the cooking-spoon, here the pan: cook your own dinner, for your wife knows less about it than you do. My husband lives in the neighboring village: I left him in his young days because he beat me twice a day; now I shall go back to the honest fellow, even if he beat me thrice a day.”
Mistress Borcsa was in reality not jesting, and to prove it she at once gathered up her bed, brought out her trunks, piled all her possessions onto a barrow, and wheeled them out without saying so much as ”good bye.”
Sarvolgyi tried to prevent this wholesale rebellion forcibly by seizing Mistress Borcsa's arm to hold her back.
”You shall remain here: you cannot go away. You are engaged for a whole year. You will not get a kreutzer if you go away.”
But Mistress Borcsa proved that she was in earnest, as she forcibly tore her arm from Sarvolgyi's grasp.
”I don't want your money,” she said, wheeling her barrow further. ”What you wish to keep back from my salary may remain for the master's--coffin-nails.”
”What, you cursed witch!” exclaimed Sarvolgyi. ”What did you dare to say to me?”
Mistress Borcsa was already outside the gate. She thrust her head in again, and said:
”I made a mistake. I ought to have said that the money you keep from me may remain--to buy a rope.”
Sarvolgyi, enraged, ran to his room to fetch a stick, but before he came out with it, Mistress Borcsa was already wheeling her vehicle far away on the other side of the street, and it would not have been fitting for a gentleman to scamper after her before the eyes of the whole village, and to commence a combat of doubtful issue in the middle of the street with the irritated Amazon.
The nearest village was not far from Lankadomb; yet before she reached it, Mistress Borcsa's soul was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with wrath.
Every man would consider it beneath his dignity to submit tamely to such a dishonor.
As she reached the village of her birth, she made straight for the courtyard of her former husband's house.
Old Kolya recognized his wife as she came up trundling the squeaking barrow, and wondering thrust his head out at the kitchen door.
”Is that you, Boris?”
”It is: you might see, if you had eyes.”
”You've come back?”
Instead of replying Mistress Boris bawled to her husband.
”Take one end of this trunk and help me to drag it in. Take hold now. Do you think I came here to admire your finely curled moustache?”
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