Selected Polish Tales Part 26

'In Eternity. We are all right.'

The sergeant looked round.

'Is your husband at home?'

'Where else should he be? Fetch your father, Jendrek.'

'Beautiful barley; is it your own?'

'Of course it is.'

'You might give me a sackful. I'll pay you next time I come.'

'I'll get the bag at once, sir.'

'Perhaps you can sell me a chicken as well?'

'We can.'

'Mind it's tender, and put it under the box.'

Slimak came in. 'Have you heard, gospodarz, who it was that tried to steal the horses?'

'How should I know?'

'They say in the village that it was Sukiennik and Rogacz.'

'I don't know about that. I have heard they cannot find work here, because they have been in prison.'

'Have you got any vodka? The dust makes one's throat dry.'

Vodka and bread and cheese were brought.

'You'd better be careful,' he said, when he departed, 'for they will either rob you or suspect you.'

'By G.o.d's grace no one has ever robbed me, and it will never happen.'

The sergeant went to Josel, who received him enthusiastically. He invited him into the parlour and a.s.sured him that all his licences were in order.

'There is no signboard at the gate.'

'I'll put one up at once of whatever kind you like,' said the innkeeper obsequiously, and ordered a bottle of porter.

The sergeant now opened the question of the night-attack.

'What night-attack?' jeered Josel. 'The Germans shot at one another and then got frightened and made out that there was a gang of robbers about. Such things don't happen here.'

The sergeant wiped his moustache. 'All the same Sukiennik and Rogacz have been after the horses.'

Josel made a wry face. 'How could they, when they were in my house that night.'

'In your house?'

'To be sure,' Josel answered carelessly. 'Gryb and Orzchewski both saw them...dead drunk they were. What are they to do? they can't get regular work, and what a man perchance earns in a day he likes to drink away at night.'

'They might have got out.'

'They might, but the stable was locked and the key with the foreman.'

The conversation pa.s.sed on to other topics.

'Look after Sukiennik and Rogacz,' the sergeant said, on his departure, when he and his mare had been sufficiently rested.

'Am I their father, or are they in my service?'

'They might rob you.'

'Oh! I'll see to that all right!'

The sergeant returned home, half asleep, half awake. Sukiennik and Rogacz kept pa.s.sing before his vision; they had their hands full of locks and were surrounded by horses. Josel's smiling face was hovering over them and now and then old Gryb and his son Jasiek jeered from behind a cloud. He sat up...startled. But there was nothing near him except the white hen under the box and the trees by the wayside. He spat.

'Bah...dreams!' he muttered.

The peasants were relieved when day after day pa.s.sed and there was no sign of building in the camp. They jumped to the conclusion that either the Germans had not been able to come to terms with Hirschgold, or had quarrelled with the Hamers, or that they had lost heart because of the horse-thieves.

'Why, they haven't so much as measured out the ground!' cried Orzchewski, and washed down the remark with a huge gla.s.s of beer.

He had, however, not yet wiped his mouth when a cart pulled up at the inn and the surveyor alighted. They knew him directly by his moustaches, which were trimmed to the resemblance of eels, and by his s...o...b..rry-coloured nose.

While Gryb and Orzchewski sorrowfully conducted each other home, they comforted themselves with the thought that the surveyor might only be spending the night in the village on his way elsewhere.

'G.o.d grant it, I want to see that young scamp of a Jasiek settled and married, and if I let him out of my sight he goes to the dogs directly.'

'My Paulinka is a match for him; she'll look after him!'

'You don't know what you're talking of, neighbour; it will take the three of us to look after him. Lately he hasn't spent a single night at home, and sometimes I don't see him for a week.'

The surveyor started work in the manor-fields the next morning, and for several days was seen walking about with a crowd of Germans in attendance on all his orders, carrying his poles, putting up a portable table, providing him with an umbrella or a place in the shade where he could take long pulls out of his wicker flask. The peasants stood silently watching them.

'I could measure as well as that if I drank as much as he does,' said one of them.

'Ah, but that is why he is a surveyor,' said another, 'because he has a strong head.'

No sooner had he departed than the Germans drove off and returned with heavy cartloads of building materials. One fine day a small troop of masons and carpenters appeared with their implements. A party of colonists went out to meet them, followed by a large crowd of women and children. They met at an appointed place, where refreshments and a barrel of beer had been provided.

Old Hamer, in a faded drill-jacket, Fritz in a black coat, and Wilhelm, adorned with a scarlet waistcoat with red flowers, were busy welcoming the guests; Wilhelm had charge of the barrel of beer.

Maciek had noticed these preparations and gave the alarm, and all the inhabitants of the gospodarstwo watched the proceedings with the keenest interest. They saw old Hamer taking up a stake and driving it into the ground with a wooden hammer.