King Stakh's Wild Hunt

Chapter The Ninth

This night gave me a clue to the solution of a question that interested me, a question that turned out to be an entirely uninteresting one, save perhaps only in that I once again became convinced of the fact that stupid people, otherwise generally kind-hearted souls, can be contemptible.

On hearing steps again in the night, I went out and saw the housekeeper with a candle in her hand. I followed her as she went into the room with the closet, but this time I decided not to retreat. The room was again empty, the closet also, but I tried all the boards of the back wall (the closet stood in a niche), then I tried to raise them and became convinced that they were removable. The old woman was probably deaf, otherwise she would have heard me. With great difficulty I managed to push myself through the cracks I had made, and I saw a vaulted passage that led sharply downstairs. The steps worn by time were slippery and the passage so narrow that my shoulders rubbed against the walls. I went down the steps and saw a small room also vaulted. There were two closets there, and along the walls of the room stood trunks bound with iron. Everything was open and everywhere paper and leaves of parchment were lying thrown about. A table stood in the middle, beside it a stool roughly knocked together, and sitting on it the housekeeper was examinig a sheet quite yellowed with time. The greedy expression on her face was shocking.

When I entered she screamed with fright, made an attempt to hide the sheet. I managed to grab her hand.

“Miss housekeeper, give that to me. And be kind enough to tell me why you come here every night to this secret archive, what you are doing here, why you frighten people with your footsteps.”

“Ugh! My God! How fast you are!” she exclaimed, collecting herself quickly. “He's got to know everything…”

And, evidently, because she was on the first floor and did not consider it necessary to stand on ceremony with me, she began to speak with that expressive intonation of the common folk. “And teal and poppy you don't want? Just see what he needs! And he has hidden the paper. May your children grab your bread from you in your old age as you have grabbed this paper from me. Perhaps I have more right to be here than you. But he, just look, sits there, asking, asking. Damn him!”

This had become boring, and I said: “What is it you want? Prison? Why are you here? Or perhaps it's from here you send signals to the Wild Hunt?”

The housekeeper was offended. Wrinkles gathered on her face.

“Sinful, sir!” she quietly muttered. “I'm an honest woman, I've come here to get what's mine. There it is, in your hand. It belongs to me.” I looked at the piece of paper. It was an extract from a resolution passed by a smallholder claims committee:

“And although the above-mentioned Zakreŭski declares to this very day that he and not Haraburda is heir to the Janoŭskis, this case which has lasted over a period of 20 years, is now closed, as not having been proven, and Mr. Isidore Zarkevsky is deprived of his rights to aristocratic rank for the lack of proof.”

“So what?” I asked.

“This is what, my dear fellow,” the housekeeper came back bitingly, “I am Zakreŭskaja, that's what. And it was my father who went to court with the great and the powerful. I didn't know about it, but my thanks to some good people. They told me what to do. The district judge took ten little red ones, but he gave me good advice. Give me that paper.”

“It won't help you,” I said. “It isn't really a document. Here the court refuses your father his request, even his right to the gentry is not established. I know about this examination of the petty gentry very well. If your father had had papers to prove his right for substitution after the Janoŭskis — that would be another matter. But he did not hand in any papers — and that means that he did not have them.”

The housekeeper's face reflected a piteous attempt to understand these complicated things.

Then, not believing me, she asked:

“But perhaps the Janoŭskis bribed them? These people who raise trifling objections, just you give them some money! I know. They took the papers away from my father and hid them here.”

“And can you sue them 20 years running?” I asked. “Twenty more years?”

“My dear fellow, by that time I'll have gone to wash God's portals for him.”

“Well, so you see. And you have no papers. You have searched everything here, haven't you?”

“Everything, young man, everything. But it's a shame to lose what's mine.”

“But they are all only vague rumours.”

“But the money — those red ones and the blue ones — mine.”

“And it is very bad to rummage nights among papers not belonging to you.”

“My dear fellow, the money is mine,” she drawled dully.

“The court will not grant you it, even if there were any papers to prove it. This entailed estate has belonged to the Janoŭskis over a period of 300 years or even longer.”

“But it's mine, my dear fellow,” almost in tears, and the greed on her face was loathsome to see. “I would have stuffed them, the dear ones, here, right here in my stockings. I would have eaten money, slept on money.”

“There aren't any papers,” losing all patience. “There is a lawful heir.”

And at this moment something awful occurred. The old woman stretched her neck, — it became a long-long one — and with her face close to mine, hissed:

“So perhaps… perhaps… she will die soon.”

Her face even brightened at this hope.

“She will die, and that's all. She's weak, sleeps badly, almost no blood in her veins, coughs. It won't cost her anything to die. The curse will be fulfilled. Why must Haraburda get this castle when I could live in it? It won't make any difference to her, her sufferings will be over — and off with her to the holy spirits. While I here would…”

The expression on my face probably changed, for I was furious. She suddenly pulled her head into her shoulders.

“You crow! Come flying to carrion? But it's not carrion here, it's a living person. And such a person who is worth dozens of you, who has a greater right than you to live on this earth, you foolish, empty thing.”

“My dear fellow…” she whined.

“Shut up, you witch! And you wish to send her to her grave? You are all alike here, vipers! You are all ready to murder a person for the sake of money. All of you — spiders. For the sake of those blue little papers. And do you know what life is, that it is so easy for you to speak of another person's death? I wouldn't scatter pearls at your feet, but listen to me, you want her to exchange the sunlight, joy, good people, the long life awaiting her, for the worms in the earth? Is that what you want? So that you can sleep on money? The money that the Wild Hunt is seeking here? Maybe it's you who lets the Lady-in-Blue in? Why did you open the window in the corridor yesterday?”

“Oh, my God! I didn't open it! It was so cold then. I was even surprised at its being open.” She was almost wailing.

Her face expressed such fear that I could no longer keep silent. I lost all prudence.

“You want her death! You evil dog, you crow! Get out! She's a noble lady, your mistress. Perhaps she'll not drive you out, but I promise you, that if you do not leave this house that your stinking breath has polluted, I'll have all of you put in prison.”

She went over to the staircase crying bitterly. I followed after her. We went upstairs to the room where that closet was, and I stopped in surprise. Janoŭskaja in a white dress with a candle in her hand was standing before us. Her face was sad, and she looked at the housekeeper with disgust.

“Mr. Biełarecki, I heard your talk accidentally, heard it from the very beginning. I had followed in your footsteps. At last I've learned the meaning of low-down actions and the depth of one's conscience. And you…” she turned to Zakreŭskaja, standing aside with head lowered, “you can remain here. I forgive you. With difficulty, but I forgive you. And you, Biełarecki, forgive her. Stupid people should sometimes be forgiven. Because… Where will she go from here? Nobody needs her, a foolish old woman.”

A tear rolled down from her eyelashes. She turned round and left. I went after her. Janoŭskaja stopped at the end of the corridor and said quietly:

“For the sake of these papers people cripple their souls. If my ancestors hadn't forbidden it, how gladly I should have given this mouldy old house to somebody. This house, and also my name, are a torture for me. If only I could die soon. Then I'd leave it to this woman with a heart of stone and a stupid head. Let her be happy if she is able to creep on her belly for the sake of this junk.”

In silence we went down into the room on the lower floor and over to the fireplace. We stood there looking at the fire, and its crimson reflections fell on Janoŭskaja's face. In the last few days she had changed noticeably, perhaps she had grown up, perhaps she was simply coming into womanhood. I hope no one besides myself had noticed this. I was the only one to see that life was warming up as yet unotice-ably in this pale sprout growing underground. Her look had become more meaningful and inquisitive, although a chronic fear lay on her face like a mask as formerly. She had become a little livelier. For some reason the pale sprout had come to life.

“It's good to stand like this, Miss Nadzieja,” I said pensively. “A fire burning…”

“A fire… It's good when it is made, when it burns. It is good when people don't lie.”

A wild cry, an inhuman cry, reached us from the yard — it seemed that a demon screamed and sobbed, not a human being. And immediately following this cry, we heard a steady, mighty thundering of hoofs near the porch. And the voice sobbed and screamed so terrifyingly that it could not have come from out of the breast of a human being.

“Raman of the last generation — come out! It's revenge! The last revenge!”

And something else screamed, something nameless. I could have run out onto the porch, could have shot at these dirty, wild swine and laid down on the spot at least one of them, but in my arms lay Nadzieja, and I felt the beating of her frightened litte heart through her dress, felt how it was gradually dying out, beating perceptibly less and less often. Frightened for her life, I began to stroke her hair timidly. Slowly she regained consciousness and her eyelashes imperceptibly began to quiver at the touch of my hand on her head. In such a way a frightened puppy accepts the caress of a person who pats it for the first time: its eyebrows quiver, expecting a blow each time the hand is raised.

The thunder was already retreating and my entire being was ready to jump out on the porch together with her, shoot at those bats, and fall down on the steps together with her and die, feeling her at my side, all of her here at my side. In any case, to go on living like this was impossible.

And the voice was sobbing already from far away in the distance:

“Raman! Raman! Come out! Under the horses' hoofs with you! Not now, not yet! Afterwards! Tomorrow! Afterwards! But come we will! We'll come!”

And silence. She lay in my arms. It seemed as if quiet music had begun playing somewhere, perhaps in my own soul. Quietly, so quietly, far, far away, gently: about sunshine, about raspberry-coloured meadows under glistening dew, about nightingales' merry songs in the tree-tops of far-away lindens. Her face was calm, like that of a sleeping child. Here a sigh broke out, her eyes opened, she looked around in surprise, became severe.

“I beg your pardon, I'll leave.”

And she made her way to the staircase leading to the second floor — a white little figure.

It was only now, trembling with excitement, that I understood how courageous, how strong was her soul, if after such nerve-wracking experiences she had gone out to meet me and twice opened the doors: once when I, a stranger, arrived here, and once when I ran up to her doors, alarmed by the thundering hoofs of the Wild Hunt under her very windows. Most likely it was the Hunt and the dark autumn nights that had impelled her to do that, as does a trustful feeling compel a hare hunted down by dogs, to press itself against the feet of an accidental passerby. This girl had very good nerves if she had endured this life here for two years.

I sat down at the fireplace and began looking at the flames. Yes, the danger was a terrible one. Three persons against all those dark forces, against the unknown. But enough of sentimentality! It was near the Giant's Gap that they came into the park. Tomorrow I would be lying in wait for them there. My hands were shaking: my nerves were strung to the utmost. And in general my state was worse than a dog's.

“Perhaps I should leave this place?” — stirred a belated thought, an echo of that night of mine, that “night of frights”, and it died under the pressure of despair, under an iron determination and the desire to fight.

Enough! Victory or the Giant's Gap — it's all the same.

Leave? Certainly not! I could not leave this loathsome, cold house, because she lived here, she whom I had fallen in love with. Yes, fallen in love with. Nor was I ashamed of it. Up till now, in my relations with women, there were equality and comradeship, sometimes there was an admixture of some incomprehensible aversion, as is the case with any man, morally uncorrupted, lacking excessive sensuality. That's how it is with many men, probably until the real thing comes. It had come. Go away? Here I was at her side, big and strong (my inner hesitation did not concern her), she depended on me, she was sleeping peacefully now, probably for the first time.

This time when I held her in my arms, was a decisive one. It decided everything for me that had been accumulating in my heart ever since the time when she rose in defence of the poor, there on the upper floor, at the fireplace. With what joy would I take her away from here, take her somewhere far away, kiss these eyes which were red with weeping, these little hands, take her under my warm, dependable wing, forgive the world its lack of shelter.

But what am I to her? No matter how bitter the thought, but she will never be mine. I have nothing to my name. She is also poor, but she belongs to one of the oldest families, is blue-blooded, backed by that “proud glory of endless generations”. “Proud glory?” I knew it now, this proud glory that had come to a wild end, but that did not make things any the easier for me. I am a plebian. Yes, I'll keep silent about this. Nobody shall ever reproach me, nor ever say that I had for the sake of money married into an ancient family, for whom perhaps some antecedant of mine had died somewhere on the battle-field. Nor shall anybody say that I married her taking advantage of her helplessness. The only thing that I can do for her sake is to lie down in the grave, give up my soul for her sake and somehow, to some extent, repay for the radiance of the untold happiness that has brightened my soul this gloomy evening at this large, unfriendly fireplace. I shall help her to escape — that's all.

I shall be true, forever be true, to this joy mixed with pain, to the bitter beauty of her eyes, and shall repay her with kindness for her thinking well of me. And then — end all. I shall leave this place forever, and the roads of my country shall lie before me in an endless chain, and the sun shall rise in iridescent circles made by the tears quivering on her eyelashes.