Part 7 (1/2)

There had been a time when this woman was beautiful. She had oval features, a dimpled chin, red cheeks, black eyebrows, sparkling eyes, and a lofty forehead, but her whole face was now full of wrinkles, and the furrows on her forehead looked like the stave lines in a music-book.

”Jesus, Mary, and St. Anna protect me!” cried the wagoner, with chattering teeth. ”If it is not Barbara Pirka in the fles.h.!.+”

The woman laughed aloud when she perceived the sledge.

”What! do even the clergy ride on besoms nowadays?” she cried, with rough pleasantry, while a couple of serving-men, whose s.h.i.+rt-sleeves were tucked up to their elbows, drew the bridge up again behind the in-gliding sledge and then shut the groaning door.

”A pleasant evening, Mother Pirka,” said Simplex, chucking the woman under the chin; ”'tis a long time since we two met together. Do you recognize me, eh?”

”Hah!” stammered the wagoner, ”you'll pay for chucking her chin like that. The old hag will twist your neck for you this very night. Mark my words!”

”Be off, you devil's student!” cried the woman; ”why can't you get out of my way? Where, pray, is the pastor of Great Leta?”

”He is lifting his wife out of the sledge yonder. Is the master at home?” The hangman was usually styled the master.

”Where should he be? He's in his workshop of course. But your beard has grown since last I saw you.”

”Since Mother Pirka regaled me with cheese soup, eh? Don't you recollect? I then promised to marry you as soon as I had grown up.

Come now, shall we have a marriage feast?”

”If you give her too much of your jaw she'll ride you, the hag,”

said the wagoner, tugging one of his horses by the mane; ”she'll put a bridle in your mouth at night, and ride you to the very top of the Krivan!”[2]

[Footnote 2: One of the highest peaks of the Karpathians.]

”You shall have all you want,” said Barbara to Simplex. ”Let the others eat first, and then come into the kitchen. You shall have a good supper.”

”I'll take good care not to eat any of it,” said the wagoner.

”She'll be sure to give me something to drink which will turn me into a swine.”

”You'll then at least have a finer burial than if you had remained a man,” jeered Simplex.

Nothing could induce the wagoner to stir a step from beside his horses, and he was quite content to sup upon the buckwheat b.a.l.l.s which he had brought with him in his knapsack. Simplex, on turning in himself about midnight, derisively a.s.sured his snoring companion that he neighed as if he were turned into a horse already.

Meanwhile the woman led the priest and his wife into the palisaded mansion.

It was a ma.s.sive structure, consisting of numerous rooms united together by long narrow pa.s.sages with heavy iron-clouted doors. She stopped at last in a hexagonal vaulted chamber, from the central arch of which hung a huge lamp. But a far brighter light came from the hearth, whereon enormous logs were sparkling and crackling.

Nothing in this chamber called to mind the dismal business of the master of the house. Old-fas.h.i.+oned presses were ranged around the walls, and in the midst of the chamber stood a round table with feet resembling tigers' claws, and leather-covered chairs all round it.

In a corner stood a dumb-waiter covered with glittering plate and pewter. Small pictures and cl.u.s.ters of weapons were visible on the walls. This chamber led into a small side-room, the door of which was so low that a person entering it had to duck his head.

”This will be your bedroom,” said the woman; ”it is a nice, quiet place, out of hearing of the howling dogs.”

Barbara Pirka no longer recognized Henry, though they had often torn each other's hair out in the good old times.

The woman remarked that Michal's clothing was wet through, and that her shoes had suffered from her wanderings through the mountains.