“Why won't she tell?” the old woman suddenly smiled almost quite sensibly. “I will tell. I'm not mad, it's simply more convenient this way and safer. It was Haraburda who asked that poor Nadzieja should be invited. And his niece was in my house then. You are such a knight, Mr. Fieldmarshal, that I shall tell you everything. Yes, yes, it was Haraburda who advised us then to take the child. Our people are all very kind. Mr. Dubatoŭk had our promissory notes — he didn't begin proceedings against us for their recovery. That's so to speak, a guarantee that you will come to visit me more often and drink wine. Now I can force you to drink even vodka.' Yes, everybody invited Nadzieja. Haraburda, and Fieldmarshal Kamienski, and Dubatoŭk, and Raman, and King Stach, this one here. But your poor little head, Nadzieja, and your golden braids, lie together with your father's bones!”
These lamentations for a living person were distasteful to me and made me wince.
“You see, you've learned something,” Ryhor said gloomily.
When we left, the old woman's wailing quieted down.
“Well then,” Ryhor said, “all right, let's look for them together. I want to see this suprising marvel. I'll try to find out something among the common people, while you'll look among papers and ask the gentry. And maybe we'll learn something…”
His eyes suddenly became bitter, the corners of his eyebrows meeting at the bridge of his
nose.
“Girls were invented by the devil. All of them should be strangled to death, and the boys fighting among themselves for the few remaining ones, will kill themselves out. But nothing can be done…” Unexpectedly he ended up with: “Take me, for instance. Although my forest freedom is dear to me, still I sometimes think about Zosia, who also lives here. Maybe I'll live alone all my life in the forest. That's why I believed you, because I sometimes begin to go mad for those devilish female eyes…” (I didn't think so at all, but didn't consider it necessary to convince this bear that he was wrong.) “But, my friend, remember this well. If you have come to stir me up and then to betray me — there are many who have a grudge against me here — so know this — your stay will not be long on this earth. Ryhor is not afraid of anybody. Quite the opposite, everybody is afraid of Ryhor. And Ryhor has friends. It's impossible to live here otherwise. And his hand shoots accurately. In a word, you must know this, I'll kill!”
I looked at him reproachfully, and he, glancing at my eyes, burst out laughing loudly, and his tone, as he ended up, was quite a different one:
“And anyway, I've been waiting for you a long time. For some reason or other it seemed to me that you wouldn't leave things alone, and if you took to clearing them up, you wouldn't pass me by. So well then, why not help each other?”
We parted at the edge of the forest near the Giant's Gap, arranging to meet in the future. I went home straight through the park.
When I returned to Marsh Firs, twilight had already descended on the park, the woman and her child were sleeping in one of the rooms on the first floor, but the mistress was not in the house. I waited about an hour, and when it was quite dark, I could not bear it any longer and went out in search of her. I hadn't walked far along the dark lane when I saw a white figure moving towards me in fright.
“Miss Nadzieja!”
“Oh! Oh, it's you? Thank God! I was so worried! You came straight here?”
Bashfully she looked down at the ground. When we came up to the castle, I said to her quietly:
“Miss Nadzieja, never leave this house in the evening. Promise me that.”
She promised, but only reluctantly.
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.
