Part 21 (2/2)

”It is all over,” he said; ”all my happiness is over. I no longer have my darling, my treasure, my Radionek. He is now a rich and powerful lord at Malyczki; but at my house there is no child, and there will never again be one there.”

Then he began to break up his pitchers and porringers and his working implements, and threw them out of the door.

”What good will all this be to me? I want to return to my former life, to forget that the child was mine, that I had a son. I know what they will do with him; they will spoil him and turn his head. Radionek will be lost to me. The sweet child will never more speak to me and give me loving smiles as he used to do; he will always sigh for their handsome house, their plastered house. He will be cold in my hut; the fresh water and hard bread will not seem good to him; Iermola will be to him only a garrulous, insupportable old grumbler. Oh, I have been weak and mean-spirited! I have been crazy. I should have run away,--run far away with him to some place where they would not have been able to find us, and where they could not have taken him from me.”

The cossack's widow listened and shrugged her shoulders; from time to time she tried to say a kind word to him, but she knew that it is necessary always to allow a great grief to vent and exhaust itself, so she let Iermola cry and groan. At every step the old man came upon something to remind him of the child, in the room which was still so full of mementos of him. Here was his drugget cloak; there a little painted pitcher which he had made himself, the first vase, glazed and ornamented with flowers, which he had so lovingly made, his square cap with a red border, of the Polesian fas.h.i.+on, and in a corner, the little bench upon which he loved to sit, the porringer from which he ate his meals, the goat he played with, and which was bleating because it did not see him.

”Oh, I must end it all by bursting my head against the wall!” cried Iermola. ”How can I live without him? I feel as if my child were dead.”

The widow, who now began to be frightened because she thought that Iermola's grief was not of the kind which would soon subside, sent Huluk to beg Chwedko to come immediately to the old inn. Chwedko, being warned of what was going on, and considering brandy as the greatest possible comforter, took care to take with him a bottle full of it. He began by talking pleasantly and even congratulating his old friend, then he compared in a melancholy way the old man's attachment for Radionek to that he bore his gray mare; then having exhausted all his eloquence, and not knowing what else to do, he drew the bottle from his pouch and set it on the table.

At the sight of it Iermola's eyes sparkled; he seized the bottle and emptied it at one draught. But man has moments of internal upheaval, so deep and so intense that the effect of things with which he comes in contact is no longer manifested according to the general laws of nature. The human being who has reached such a state of excessive excitement and agony no longer feels either hunger or cold, and will even be proof against poison; as, for instance, in the heat of battle, a soldier will take, without becoming intoxicated, an enormous quant.i.ty of liquor, which ordinarily would certainly have laid him on the ground. Just so it was with Iermola, who wished to get drunk and could not succeed, for he felt no inconvenience or stupefaction, in spite of the large quant.i.ty of brandy he had swallowed.

”What a head he must have to stand a pint of strong gin!” murmured Chwedko, with a sort of respect.

”It is not his head which is strong; it is his grief,” said the widow, in a low voice. ”Give him a bucketful of it now, and you would not make him tipsy; grief keeps him awake.”

As the evening came on, they made every effort to induce him to spend the night at the widow's cottage, but they could not persuade him to do so. The old man seated himself again on the door-sill, and began to muse and sigh with his eyes fixed on the oaks. The two neighbours were compelled by urgent business to return home, Chwedko remembering that it was time to water his mare, and the widow having to prepare her supper and milk her cow. They were both obliged to leave him; and Huluk, the poor orphan, was left alone with him, weeping.

The evening advanced; night came on, and still Iermola did not move from the spot. He slept there a few moments, for sorrow had overcome him. Then he wakened suddenly and remained so, still motionless. Huluk, suffering for the want of sleep, watched over him and kept up a low wailing.

It was about the first c.o.c.k-crowing when a shadow of some one moving fell suddenly upon the threshold of the cabin. Huluk, who had the eyes of a lynx, immediately recognized Radionek, who was running along the road leading from Malyczki. The old man had not seen him, but he had felt his coming; he trembled, looked around, and cried, ”Radionek!”

”Yes, it is I, my father.”

”It is you, my good child; ah, the Lord be praised! I was dying without you, do you see, and you have come to bring me back to life. But how did you come? On foot?”

”On foot, father. Did I not know the road? And why should I be afraid to walk at night?”

”Did you come alone?”

”With my stick.”

”And did they give you permission to come?”

”Bah! I did not ask it. They put me to bed, but I was so troubled I could not close my eyes. I cannot tell you how anxious I was; I felt obliged to come back to you. And when the morning comes and they do not find me, they will know well enough where to look for me.”

Iermola, as he embraced him, felt his strength and presence of mind return, and he quickly revived.

”Huluk,” he cried in a glad, strong voice, ”the poor child is doubtless cold; he is hungry too. Surely they could not have given him anything to eat. Light the fire. Is there anything to eat? I also feel as if my stomach was empty.”

”How astonis.h.i.+ng!” murmured the boy; ”yesterday neither of them ate one mouthful.”

”Ah, that is true, upon my word.”

”I will light the fire myself, father, and get your breakfast ready,”

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