Chapter V: Introduction (4)

It was her Sin that set her out upon the road. Through long months she had kept it secret, hidden quite from knowing eyes. She kept it secret, shutting out admission that the hour of its triumph would come. She had hoped to kill it, had encased it in prison bars, ruthless, holding herself impervious to the pain of the hurt that wrenched her with the hurting of the thing secret within her. She had tried to starve it, suffering in silence from the lack that she caused herself in withholding food from it. But her Sin lived. It was alive and strong. The day came when its strength moved terribly within her and that set her feet upon the road. While she walked, it was quiet, sleeping like a child carried in its mother’s arms. When she sat down to rest, it moved and urged her on, on down the narrow road winding through the forest around the side of the low mountain.

Many turnings and windings the road had. By and by it would come to a swift creek, with a bridge set across, and a mill beside it, and there would be human habitations, imitations of houses, rough hemlock shells, with people carrying on an imitation of living, going through motions that made time slip by. The woman knew all this well. The road had taught her as she came. At some such place her Sin would have its hour of triumph.

There must be an end soon. She stopped to drink at a little spring under a jutting bank. Her Sin grew angry, threatened her. She straightened up and went on rounding the turn. A heavy team dragging its load of deftly packed shingles came up the flank of the mountain, its driver walking slowly beside. The brawny blue-shirted lumberman did not speak but drew the horses aside to let good footing be for the woman and his eyes looked with friendly respect upon the neat young figure in the gray print dress.

The woman felt the look penetrating deep, into a place thin and clear, a place that existed long before her Sin came upon her. She bent her head and moved quickly past, down the long slope of the road toward the swift creek.

A rough shack set high on the bank above the big mill dam came into view. Would this be the place? Her Sin gave no sign. Now that she was in motion it lay quiescent, pacified. She stood still in the road. Her wide, gray eyes rested in appraisement on the house. A dirty old woman smoking a corn-cob pipe slouched around the corner from the back. On her wrinkled face greedy curiosity showed itself. She took her pipe out of her mouth and started to speak.

The woman of the road began walking again very fast. She went down across the bridge and past the mill from which came forth the rhythmical high hungry whine of the saw cutting virgin timber, the slap-thwack of boards thrown from one receiver to another.

The road was going up again past a house set high to the left, a large house with an air of well-being. Perhaps here? She went up the steps from the road, walked the single board path to the porch, knocked against the casing of the open door. From an inner room a woman came, in a blue wrapper, young and blowsy, with red eyes, holding a sleeping baby to her breast.

“Will you give me a drink?”

“Yes. It’s hot today, ain’t it? Come right in. You must be tuckered out walking in the sun.” Voluble, she led the way to the back porch. “There it is in the big tin pail. Wait a minute. I’ll git you a glass.” She fetched a heavy tumbler from the kitchen shelf. “It’s prob’ly warm. I can’t git water many times with this baby to look after. He cries every time I put him down. It’s all I kin do to git the men’s meals. They’s two from the mill besides my husband.”

There was no place here for her. The woman drank the water hastily. “I’m much obliged.” She turned back through the house. “I’ll be going on.” She was on the porch.

“Better set a minute. Needn’t be hurryin’ off so quick.” There was slight resentment in the tone.

The woman was on the walk. “I have to be going. I’m much obliged.” She went down the steep steps into the road.

She followed the road doggedly. A little house to the left, door and windows shut. She went up and peered in. It was empty. Here? She looked around fearful. Her Sin gave a great lurch within her. She shuddered. She could not be alone with it here.

She went out into the road again and toiled on up the curve, crossed the slide where the logs came shooting down, moved slowly up the straight, nearly level piece. More buildings came into view, to the right a large rough barn, to the left a watering trough and a long picket fence fronting a cleared space with a big hemlock house set in the middle and a spring-house a stone’s throw away. Farther ahead to the right a little shack squatted on the flat side of the road and near it a woman’s figure in bright blue was tying a bony horse to a stake.

The woman walked past the watering trough and approached the figure. She saw a stringy woman in a tight blue sateen dress, face the color of old leather, a great bang of hair falling down into faded blue, piglike eyes, a little knot of hair in the back twisting tightly away from the cordy neck. A frowsy child came out of the shack. “Ma, ma,” it cried like a little animal. A wailing arose from within the house, a sound of violent rocking. “Not here,” said the woman in a cold fear to herself.

“Will you give me a drink?” Automatically the words came.

“I sure will. We got the best drinkin’ water anywheres around. Liz!” she shouted into the house. An ungainly elder girl appeared in the dark hole of the doorway. “Git some fresh water from the spring!”

The girl stood sullen a moment, then disappeared. She came out with a small tin pail dangling against her dirty legs.

“Git a move on you. Seems like I can’t make her do a thing.”

Sullen, the girl moved across the road, swung open a gate, and took the path to the spring-house.

“Who lives there?” asked the woman. Hope burned low in her.

“That’s Bennet’s. He’s the lumber boss. He don’t take no boarders neither. They got too many children for that, five boys an’ two girls, an’ Mrs. Bennet’s pertickiler. I allays scrub the floors for her. See this dress? I saved the money she give me an’ got it last week come Sataday.”

A great despair came over the woman. She made a couple of steps forward.

“Where air you goin’? Air you all alone?”

Anything to put an end to questioning. She spoke at random, strangely in accord with the custom of the forest dwellers. “My husband’s coming along behind with our goods. We’re moving.”

“Oh, movin’? What’s your husband do? Gonno work in the mill or in the woods?”

“He’s going into the mill.”

“You ain’t gonno walk all the way to Goff’s, air you?”

The woman felt fright. “How far is it?” Her Sin was threatening her again.

“Must be a matter of five miles.”

“Is that the nearest mill?” She could never walk that far.

“By the road ’tis. If you cut through the woods you kin git to Fox’s mill down the path back of Bennet’s barn, but that mill’s shet down. You kin cut up back of their house an’ git to Sumner’s. That’s a mile or so an’ a good path. Mrs. Sumner, now, she comes over to see Mrs. Bennet an’ brings Gertrude. She ain’t tied down like the rest of us. She ain’t but the one, an’ a good little girl, too. Not like my good-fer-nothin’ Liz.”

Hope suddenly leaped high, a sense of surety crowned its leaping. “And the path to her place is back of the house over there?”

“Yes. Walk right past the spring an’ cut up over the hill, an’ there’s a path.” The woman started to go. “But I thought you was goin’ to Goff’s? An’ your husband?” Suspicion came into the lines of the leathery face.

“I must have misspoken myself.” The woman kept her head turned toward Bennet’s. Her voice was calm. She had a slight wonder at her calmness while her mind searched out through the forest back of Bennet’s. “I came the wrong way, I guess. It was Sumner’s I wanted.”

“But you said your husband--”

“He isn’t coming for a few days.” She spoke with decision. It was easy to say anything, anything that any one wanted her to say. “I came on first to kind of look around and it was Sumner’s I wanted but I forgot the name.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you found me. You’d been to Goff’s not knowin’ no better.” She laughed a hoarse chuckle.

The woman said, “Yes, I’m glad I found you. Now I know how to go.”

“But you ain’t had your drink. Liz!” the raucous voice screamed. “Fetch that water or I’ll tan your hide good!”

“Never mind, I’ll get a drink as I go past. I’m much obliged to you.” The woman crossed quickly over the road, took the path past the spring, not stopping to drink, cut up back of Bennet’s, and was swallowed up in the forest before the figure in blue had recovered from surprise.

She was surrounded by forest, by trees growing out of earth. She was full of pain. Her head was a ball of fire and her body a world of pain. Roots were twining in her trying to get a foothold, roots were sucking away at her vitals trying to extract nourishment. She was earth and she could not lie down, for she had a Sin that kept urging her on.

Blindly she followed the pathway. The pathway led to Sumner’s where there was a woman who had time to visit and a little girl who was good. If Sumner’s was not the place, there was only the forest. She was in forest now but she was on a path that divided forest. Forest on both sides of her, trees and earth in a great swelling together and the sky smiling through the network of branches and leaves. She went on. She went quickly. Roots caught at her feet. The smart of branches fell on her face. Her Sin clamored for its hour.

She ran, she could not see, her feet kept the path like a miracle. Suddenly the path gave out on a road. Across the road was a house. She felt that there was a house, she did not see it. She made her last effort against the Sin that was tearing her to pieces, taking at last its deep revenge. She fell toward the blur that she felt was the house. She gave way at last to the strength of her Sin....

The woman awoke. She was lying in bed in a ceiled room whose windows looked out on low branches of hemlock. There was a patchwork quilt on the bed. She felt light, light and drowsy. She slept. Again she awoke. She felt light, light and her head was clear. Her Sin? It had triumphed. She felt like laughing. Her Sin had triumphed, yet she felt light, light and quite clear. She stirred. A large, motherly form appeared, an anxious face bent over her. “I’ll lift it up and you can see it.”

The woman looked upon it. It was her Sin. She had lost her Sin. But here it was beside her still. Would it never leave her? She stared hard at it. Yes, it was her Sin. She closed her eyes to shut out its sight.

“I’ll put it right beside you where it’ll keep warm. It’s so tiny, we must take good care of it.”

The little bundle lay beside her. She could put her hand upon it, pick it up. Her Sin was outside of her now. Everyone could see it. A Sin should be hidden, kept secret, covered over....

She dozed. She was walking along a road. The road went on and on, hard, smooth, implacable, hard and hurting under her soft feet. The wall of the forest rose up on both sides and mocked her. The wall to the right bowed in derision. The trees leaned over and swept their branches on the road in front of her. The wall to the left bowed in derision and swept its branches before her. “Come this way,” one said. “Come this way,” said the other. They swept their branches in front of her making it difficult for her to walk.

She tried to placate them. She bowed first to the one wall and then to the other. As she bowed, the one wall said in a great voice as though all its trees were many-forked tongues demanding together, “Speak!” and as she bowed again, the other wall said in a great voice of many tongues, “Speak!” They settled their trunks stiffly across her way like dark crossed swords and waited for her to begin.

She saw now that they were full of eyes, terrible accusing eyes, an eye on every leaf, thousands of eyes. “If I could change their eyes to ears,” she thought, “then I could tell them.” She became clever. She shut her own eyes so that they could not see her. No sooner had she done so than she remembered that this was a game she had played with Him when she was a little girl. She stood in the corner with closed eyes and said, “Now you can’t see me.” He hunted from corner to corner until he stumbled upon her. Then she opened her eyes and he shouted, “Now I see you!” She knew all the time really that he saw her. So she knew now that the thousands of eyes saw her and there was no use trying to play a silly game with them.

“Perhaps he will be here now if I open my eyes,” she thought, “and he will tell them.” Dismay swept over her. “But how can he? I never told him. How could he know if I did not tell him?”

She opened her eyes and looked upon the walls of forest. They were waiting for her to speak, unsettling themselves uneasily. The eyes began to move back and forth and as they moved they read words out of her through her own voice: “His mother never would have forgiven me. She wouldn’t have believed he did it. She’d have thought I made him do it.”

The words seemed weak, thin, a flimsy covering for something that lay underneath. The trunks of the trees rubbed against one another, complaining at her words. The eyes glowered upon her, piercing into her. “They want to know everything,” she thought desperately, “everything, from the beginning.” She addressed them as though they had commanded her. “But that would take too long, all of it, the whole thing.”

The forest ruffled itself still more uneasily and murmured against her. The eyes became sinister. In fear, she spoke: “His mother took me in when I was little, from the city, nobody’s. She brought me up to be his sister. She called me daughter, gave me things.”

The forest began sweeping its branches in front of her. “It doesn’t believe me,” she thought in terror. “It won’t let me pass, ever.” She began to cry. “He might have hated me if I told him. He might have hated me.” The branches swept in front of her. She could not see the road. It was covered with sweeping branches....

She awoke. Her face was wet, quite wet, as though she had been in the water. Her hand lay on the bundle that held her Sin. She became wide awake, alert. She felt cunning arise within her. She stirred in bed. No one came. Sin should be covered. Her hand was on the patchwork quilt, grasped it, drew it up over the bundle of Sin, held it close. Her hand unclosed after a while, dragged the quilt back a little. She lay still. Her eyes slept....

Some one came in, over to the bed, leaned over, jerked the quilt away. The bundle was taken up. At last they were taking her Sin away. They had left it too long beside her. She felt herself looked steadily upon. She opened her eyes. “Did you--have you been awake since I left the room?” The motherly voice was stern, suspicious, reluctant, too.

“I was asleep.”

“I fixed the quilt carefully before I left. It was over the baby’s face when I came back.”

Why did they trouble her about a baby? It was her Sin she had covered up so that no one could see it. “The quilt,” she whispered painfully. “I pulled the quilt up. I was cold.” She settled down in bed.

A breeze, soft and full of the resinous breath of hemlock came through the slightly opened window and blew her eyelids down. Leaves began piling upon her in layers, soft and pressing, trying to smother her.

The dream began again. She was walking on a road through the forest. The road was narrow, oh, so narrow, she could hardly keep on it, narrow, and hard and smooth like glass. The wall of forest to the right kept bowing, the trees swept down, their branches lashed her. The wall of forest to the left kept bowing, its branches lashed her. The branches were full of eyes, eyes that burned when the branches lashed.

The eyes _knew_. “I must tell them the whole truth,” she said to herself, but she knew that she said it aloud and that the forest heard it. “Huah! Huah!” The wind swept through the branches. “The truth! The truth!” The wind blew the words through the branches. A tall strong tree with great bulging eyes swept down upon her. “I wanted him!” she screamed.

The trees stopped lashing. The eyes became ears. She knelt before them feeling their compassion. “I tried not to, at first--but when he touched me, I wanted him. He spoke words of poetry, words that he knew out of a book he brought back with him from his travel. ‘Your gray eyes are like pools. I lose myself in them.’ He took the pins from my hair. ‘Your hair is a mesh. I am caught in it. I cannot escape.’ He held me to him. ‘Your body is softer than this milkweed down. Shall I float away with it?’ He had never spoken that way before. His mother wouldn’t have believed that he talked that way.”

Now that the forest was compassionate, her mind unloosed itself all at once in a great rush of hurrying thoughts that went out like waves into the leafage, communicating her secret without the tedious use of words. “I had no right to him. His mother meant us always to be brother and sister--to keep us apart. She didn’t really think I was as good as he. She only took me because his father wanted me. She didn’t know what his father said, once, when he teased me: ‘I chose you because you were the prettiest of all the children. Your gray eyes asked me to take you, and so I had to. You were a little fairy without any father or mother.’ She would have given him up some day to some one else. But I wanted him. I needed him. She would never forgive me if she knew. I never told anyone, not even him. He would have married me. His father would have made him marry me. But I kept away from him, after I knew. And he--”

“And he, and he,” whistled the trees. The sky became dark, the wind came in a gale, the branches crashed together and began lashing her. Despair overwhelmed her. “Now I shall be destroyed. They were only trapping me.” She submitted herself to annihilation. The branches lashed her, lashed her clothes away, lashed into her flesh....

“Poor thing! She didn’t know what she was doing. I thought at first she had done it on purpose. She doesn’t seem to know she’s had a baby.” She lay and listened with closed eyes. She felt she was lying in a pool of water that softened her flesh, took life away from her. “It looks real pretty in that little dress of Gertrude’s. I always felt I’d have use for those baby clothes some day, but I didn’t think it would be like this.”

They brought it for her to see. She looked upon it dry-eyed. She knew that they wanted her to cry. Foolish people! Why should one cry for a Sin once it is dead?

She was sitting up.... She could walk a little.... She dressed herself and came out on the porch. They were kind. They never asked her anything. She knew they hoped she would tell them. The husband spoke clumsily to her. They were sorry--could they help her? She shook her head.

Early in the morning she awoke. She felt quite clear. She must be on the road. She dressed hastily, quietly, was out of the house. The road led her. She walked fast, following it through the forest. She did not know where she went. She simply went on. By and by she would come out of the forest and there would be a town and there she would step off the road.

She walked quickly, she felt so light. She was light for her Sin was gone. She walked quickly for a long time. She became tired. She sat down to rest. Nothing within her urged her on. There was a great emptiness within her, a consuming emptiness. She felt how heavy her breasts were and how great her emptiness was. She wanted to go up in the forest and lie down. She did not dare. The forest and earth seemed allied against her, trees and earth together, their oneness held her out.

She had a desire that the roots of the trees should take hold on her, disintegrate her, find a place for their support and nourishment. A great and horrible yearning took hold on her. She yearned that her emptiness should be filled, she yearned for her Sin, for the bundle that held her Sin, she yearned to nourish her Sin....

She threw herself in the dust of the road and sobbed. The forest repudiated her. The wall of the forest pushed her into the road. She was one with the road. Nothing grew out of her; she nourished nothing. She was a way, to be passed over, trampled upon....

She felt the throbbing ache of her breasts in the dust. She arose and stood quiet, looking sombrely at the dark, unrelenting wall of forest. Then she walked slowly along. Sadly, drearily, the life that lay behind her, the life that she had shut out from her when her feet first set out upon the road, began to filter back into her bruised mind. It came as something she had known long ago, so long that it seemed as though it must have been quite another life, and she another person, a young dreaming girl, moving about in the big white house set on the great planted space up against the forest, learning from a shadowy placid woman who called her daughter the ways of the little world of which she was a part, teased by a shadowy kindly man when the woman was not there to hear, captured by the shadowy grown-up figure of the little boy who had played games with her, come back from school and travel a mysterious young man....

How far away it was, how far and how long, long ago! Slowly, slowly, she walked along the road through the forest, carrying in her the dream fragments of her shattered world. Soon she would come out of the forest and there would be a town and there she would step off the road. She would leave the road that went on ceaselessly, in and out of forest, through towns, and again through forest.

[7] Copyright, 1922, by George H. Doran Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Edna Bryner.

NATALKA’S PORTION[8]

By ROSE GOLLUP COHEN

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

Sabinka lay buried in snow. The hills, the forest, the lake, all lay hard, white, glittering, and the air also glittered and stung and cut.

Looking toward the village, the two rows of huts looked small, insignificant, mere specks of time-grayed timber weighed down with snow. Over each speck a thread of smoke rose, going straight up into the still, glittering air. Within, doors and windows sealed, the peasants huddled for warmth, here and there, together with their animals, to keep them alive, or for the life that they could give. In the chimneyless huts even the smoke was kept in for the warmth it gave. It poured from the oven into the room and hung there from the ceiling. Beneath it the peasants went about, their bodies bent to the ground. When at last the smoke settled on ceiling and walls they still went about bent, from habit now, and peering with weakened eyes.

Then winter ended! Suddenly, as if it spent itself in its own cruelty, it ended. The sun came out warm. From the ragged straw roofs of the huts the snow slipped and melted and fell in a thick shower. Birds appeared. The peasants came out to look at their fields. Their faces were sallow and pinched, and the smoke soaked into the skin showed plainer in the strong light.

The snow blackened with every moment, and suddenly the earth lay bare. The men began to scatter over the fields. The women tended nearer home.

One afternoon, when the air was sweet with the warmth and the moisture of the earth, and in the pastures about the village Sabinka a tint of green showed faintly, Katherina came to her husband, Gavrelo, where he was mending the fence around the field to be planted with wheat.

“Gavrelo,” she said, “I have come to plead with you again about the marriage portion of our daughter Natalka.” She stood meekly, a clumsy little body in a red plaid shawl. Her face was steaming with heat and perspiration, and her worn birch-bark sandals were clogged with earth from the soggy fields.

Gavrelo had not looked up when she had been coming to him through the fields, and now it was as if she were not there. Near him lay a pile of poles, a heap of freshly cut twigs and a hatchet. He selected a long, pliant twig and began twisting it in and out between two poles as a bar-rest. His face was sullen. He was short and wide and brown; his thick hair and beard, and worn homespun clothes, and his weather-beaten skin, all were brown. He was like the powerful trees about him, and, like these deep-rooted trees, he looked as capable of being moved.

Katherina turned her eyes away from him. It crushed her to see him so. It had always crushed her--even so long ago when he used to come to court her at her father’s house--the way he would sit there of a Sunday, sullen, silent, never a kind word, never a smile, contrary, scowling at the whole world.

“Gavrelo,” she repeated her sentences in a way peculiar to the people of Sabinka, “I have come to plead with you about Natalka’s marriage portion.” Her voice was full of restrained passion.

“Look, Gavrelo, at your home.” She pointed to a hut across the great field. In one of the two dingy windows a young girl could be seen, though vaguely, at a spinning-board.

“There is your home. Moldy and rotten, it is sinking to the ground. You were supposed to have built twenty years ago, soon after we were married. All you have built are barns. There they stand, shaming your house. And there is your daughter, as pretty as the prettiest in Sabinka, in that rotting home. Yet, Gavrelo, have I ever pestered you about it? But now it is about Natalka that I beg you.” Her clumsy little body leaned toward him. But her voice became more patient, more restrained.

“Gavrelko!” She used the diminutive, and then stood dumbly looking down a moment. Yes, she could have cared for him if he had let her. “Gavrelko, you are not going to send Natalka away without a portion to her husband’s home, a strange home in a strange village! You are not going to do it!”

Dumb and silent, Gavrelo’s scowl never relaxed. It was always so, always--except--except when he stood looking at his fields--at his wheat. Then his furrowed face smoothed and the light in his eyes reflected the light in the fields.

Gavrelo now selected a long pole, sharpened it, and began driving it into the ground. “Hagh!” his breath echoed, and the pole sank deep into the earth.

“And you have so much, Gavrelo.” She glanced about. Their hut stood a good distance away from the village, and all surrounding it was Gavrelo’s.

“All that, all about us is yours, and your barns are stacked with wheat. You will not send Natalka away with empty hands.” Her own clasped in agony. “You won’t do it. I know, Gavrelo, how bitter it is to come with empty hands.” Her head drooped, her voice sank low.

“I know how it is. I came to your home, Gavrelo, without a portion. My people were very poor. You have never thrown it up to me, Gavrelo, but your mother cast it in my face every day as long as she lived. And I was never able to lift my head.”

Gavrelo’s face was turned from her, and he worked on steadily.

“And Natalka, too, is marrying into a large family. It is perhaps a disadvantage to marry into a large family. There are so many to find fault with your ways, a mother-in-law and sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law. All watching and criticizing you. And when you have come without a portion--Ach! Gavrelko! They will throw it up to her, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law--and--and even Simyonka--Simyonka is a fine fellow. And yet--in a quarrel--would he not remember?” She began to weep passionately. “You won’t do it, Gavrelo. And Natalka has really earned it. You know how she can spin and weave. Her cloth is straight and fine. And during the harvest she has been among the quickest hands. You won’t bring this shame upon her, Gavrelo!”

Gavrelo turned to her. At last she had touched him. His face was distorted with anger, and he stopped his work for a moment. “Why does she want to marry, the fool!” The words burst from him through his teeth, and he bent down to pick up his tools. He had finished the fence. Katherina stared at him.

“What--what else do you expect? Oh! It is a harvest hand you are thinking of!” Then realizing that he was going, she ran to him.

“Gavrelo!” she cried, “what do you say? What will you say when at the wedding Simyonka’s father will ask, ‘And what do you give Natalka as her portion?’ What will you say, Gavrelo?”

Gavrelo lifted a few poles to his shoulder and slipped the hatchet into his girdle. “I told you,” he said doggedly. “Simyonka has enough!” And he walked away with his long, even stride, his sandals making deep prints in the soft earth.

Katherina staggered to the newly mended fence and buried her face in her arms. “_Ach, Boshi Moi!_” she cried. With the habit of the lonely she talked to herself. Gavrelo did not tolerate neighbors. Indeed, he was hated because of his hardness and meanness.

“Life is bitter,” she wept. Her own had been a cruel fate.

“You have come like a beggar.” Her mother-in-law had cast it in her face. And now her own fate was to be Natalka’s fate! And why? Because Gavrelo was an unnatural father, because he was stingy and cared for nothing--but--his fields, his wheat, more and more wheat. His barns were stacked with wheat. He kept them under lock and key, and he sowed still more wheat. She raised her head and looked about. This field was to be all wheat, acres and acres. And Natalka was to go to her husband like a beggar. “They will throw it up to her, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law. And Natalka is young; she will never be able to lift her head!” Her own head sank into her arms again.

It was late when she started for the hut. The red sun hung on the very edge of the forest. She picked her way to a back road not far off which would be less soggy than the fields, though roundabout and longer. Trudging along, her eyes on the path, her sandals heavy with the mud, she at once upbraided and defended Gavrelo, and analyzed and schemed.

It would take so little to give Natalka a fine portion. There, for instance, was the little pig, only a year old, but so aggressive that he had to be fed with the old hogs. Parshuchuck would be an excellent gift. He could take care of himself anywhere. Even in a litter of strange pigs he could hold his own. Also there was Chulka, a heifer, for whom no fence was too high. She used her knobby little horns with such skill that often won a long stare of surprise from the old cows. Chulka, too, could take care of herself in a strange herd. These two would be an excellent gift. It would be pleasant for little Natalka to have something of her own that was alive, in a strange home, in a strange village. Parshuchuck and Chulka might even be an example to her, not to bend her head too low.

But what was the use in thinking about it? “Ach! The mean peasant! The unnatural father!” She stumbled, unable to see the path through her tears.

“Bah! They are fools, those wise men,” she shook her head disgustedly. “They are fools who say that it is better to have a relative rich, though a miser, than one who is poor and generous. Both are like death. Can you take from the miser? Nor can you take from the one who has nothing to give.”

Presently, on reaching a sudden turn in the road, she heard a merry voice babbling incoherent fits of song. That was Addom on his way home from the _kabock_. Addom was a drunkard. He drank like a fish. Addom, too, was often idle, she mused. Gavrelo never drank, though he liked a glass of vodka. But what would Gavrelo do in a _kabock_ where men talked as they drank? Gavrelo never talked to any one. He only worked. That was why her parents had made her marry him instead of Addom, who drank and who never kept his word, just as Gavrelo never broke his word. But Addom’s daughter Anulia, who was also to marry this spring, was to receive one of her father’s two cows as her wedding-gift. Anulia Addom also wore machine-made stockings which she bought from the Jewess Deborah--stockings and boots every Sunday! Natalka bound her ankles in cloths and wore birch-bark sandals to church. Katherina shook her head. A man who drank was perhaps better-natured, more generous.

Reaching the yard, she saw Natalka still in the window spinning.

Natalka was eighteen. She was small like her mother, but she was rosy and healthy. Her hair lay in two thick, brown braids on her back. Her faded red kerchief was tied with a coquettish knot, and her little round nose had a mischievous tilt. But just now she was neither coquettish nor mischievous. She was very earnest. Her wedding was to be the first in the village this spring, and she was hurrying to finish all her mother’s spinning before it came. Her hands twirled the spindle rapidly; her head scarcely moved except to moisten the thread with her lips, or to extricate a knot in the flax with her small white teeth.

Katherina watched her a moment. Should she tell her--that her father would send her away with empty hands? No! There was time enough. But as she stood watching she saw Natalka stop her work suddenly; her hands became still, her head drooped for a moment. In agony, Katherina wondered. Could she know, then? Perhaps she guessed! Katherina turned away from the window.

About the yard all the buildings stood facing in a semicircle, the hut, the barns, the pig-pen, the chicken-coop. Katherina went toward the coop. In the barn she heard Gavrelo. He rarely forgot the keys. “He rarely forgets them,” she muttered to herself. The corners of her mouth lifted firmly. “Well, Natalka shall have a fine trousseau, anyway. Her _kubial_, at any rate, shall not go off empty!”

Late that night the full moon rose, and Sabinka, with its two rows of huts, its hills and dales and lakes, lay transformed in silver light.

In the shadow of the fences a woman went stealing along. Climbing, here forcing a way through the bars, running a step where the shadow broke, and again lingering where it resumed, she reached a small hut standing in the full light. She rapped on the door and shook the latch impatiently.

“Open, Deborah!” she whispered. “It is I, Katherina.” A tall, thin woman with a white kerchief about her head came out on the threshold.

“So late, Katherina!”

“Yes, and I must hurry back. Here.” Katherina took a large ball of thread from her _swita_ pocket. “You are to knit a pair of stockings for my daughter Natalka’s wedding,” she whispered. “But mind, Jewess,” her voice rose suspiciously, “you are to return to me what is left of the thread.”

“We are not thieves!” came from Deborah in a tone hurt, yet patient.

“Well, perhaps not,” Katherina said, softening slightly. “Perhaps not. But all Jews are swindlers.”

“We are what we are forced to be.” Restraint and infinite patience were in Deborah’s voice. Hesitating an instant, she turned suddenly. “Look, Katherina, would you not much rather come along the road, in the light of day, to order stockings for Natalka, instead----”

“Do you mean to insinuate, Jewess?” Katherina flamed.

“No, no,” Deborah hastened to assure her. “I am not insulting you. I am not blaming you. I just want you to see, Katherina, how one may be forced to become what one does not want to be.”

“Well,” said Katherina, somewhat mollified, “I suppose so. I suppose Jews, like people, have their troubles.”

Carefully she put her hand into her bosom and counted slowly six eggs into the apron Deborah held out. “There,” she said, brushing her hands with an air as if the transaction was quite satisfactorily completed.

“My dear Katherina!” Deborah exclaimed, “you expect me to knit a pair of stockings for six eggs?”

“How much then?” Katherina’s voice was suspicious again and cross.

“Twelve, Katherina; at least twelve. This is not winter, you know.”

“In the next village----”

“I know,” Deborah broke in. “In the next village lives a Jewess who knits a pair of stockings for six eggs. Don’t believe it, Katherina. It’s a fairy-tale. Anyway, I cannot do it. We have to live, too. And little Miriam is growing up. There is no chance for a penniless girl here, a girl without a dowry.” Deborah’s voice came brooding.

Katherina put her hand into her _swita_ again. The trouble of a dowry she could easily understand.

“Here, Deborah,” she said sympathetically, “here are twelve eggs. But remember every inch of the thread you are to return. And don’t let your blind mother-in-law knit the stockings. She might drop a stitch!”

A whispered good night followed, and Katherina stole forth into the shadows again.

The village peeped through a mist of tender green buds. Warm sunshine, dazzling blue skies were continuous. Scattered over the fields far and near the peasants were. Mere specks between earth and sky, their bodies moved slowly, heavily, all day long. Nearer the homes the women labored, digging in the gardens, bleaching at the lake. At dawn and after dark they took the time to prepare for the weddings in the village.

When the mud in the road had dried a peddler came driving through the village with summer finery and pots to sell.

“Pots to sell! Earthen pots to sell!” the peddler cried in a ringing voice. And the dogs barked, and the children stared, and the women left their work and hurried to the wagon with their bundles of rags.

Katherina was digging a draining-canal between two long beds in the garden. When the peddler stopped at her gate she left her spade and looked around. Natalka was at the lake bleaching. And Gavrelo--she could see him in a far field, his arm swinging rhythmically back and forth. Hastening to the outhouse, she came out with two bundles, one of rags, and one small sackful of wheat. She carried it with difficulty and threw it over the fence into the road, where it lay hidden among some weeds.

“Did you see, little Jew?” she called to the peddler. “It is wheat!”

“I saw,” the peddler answered significantly. He was as accustomed to this kind of transaction among the peasants as they themselves were.

Katherina hurried out to the wagon and climbed onto the axle.

“Quick, little Jew, let me see what you have. And don’t think you can rob me. Wheat is dear now! Have you ribbons? And I want two red bandannas, but of different patterns. And show me beads. Have you got rings? Yes, show me that one with the red stone.”

And the peddler measured, using the length of his arm, and watched Katherina. And she picked and fussed and worried in indecision, her eyes never quite leaving the distant field where Gavrelo was working.

Her selections made finally, she gathered them into her apron jealously, and a haggling ensued between the two, not unlike the transaction some weeks earlier at Deborah’s hut.

“Now, peddler, how much? That sack of wheat is almost a bushel.”

“Almost!” he cried. “That should have been a full bushel for all you have taken.”

“Don’t shriek!” she paled. “There are those rags. What do you give for the rags?”

“The rags go to make up the full bushel of wheat.” His dark eyes snapped.

“Oh, very well,” she said. “Take it! Take it! You are a robber.” She climbed down and hurried away. The peddler threw his bundles into the wagon and touched his pony with the end of his whip, his dark eyes measuring the distance to the next hut.

Katherina breathed a sigh of relief as his wagon creaked away, and she slowly entered the deep interior of the outhouse which adjoined the living room. It was late afternoon, and the road was hot and dusty. But here it was cool and dark; the only light came from the door opening on the garden path.

In the dimmest corner Natalka’s _kubial_ stood, filled with her trousseau. Katherina reached it by a small step-ladder and dipped down into its tank-like body. She touched and patted the cool, smooth linens, heavily embroidered and plain pieces. She added the newly-purchased treasures. Yes, Natalka’s _kubial_ was filling--but of the portion there was no prospect. She sighed hopelessly. There was no prospect, and the day of the wedding was drawing nearer. Gavrelo had ordered vodka from the _kabock_, and told her she might have all the pork she wanted for the wedding-feast. But that was all. Natalka must enter into a strange family owning nothing, come with nothing belonging to her, nothing familiar. Everything she will look at will be strange, his! Nothing that she had brought, that she could feel pride in. “_Ach, Boshi Moi!_”

She finally climbed down the ladder. It had grown late. Outside the mellow sunset lay full on the path and the bit of road she could see before the gate. But in the outhouse the dimness was quite deep. And the living room, through its door, looked out at her, a dark hole with its sooty walls; the two tiny windows in it admitted but little light. Only one bright spot--the icon in vivid red and blue of the “Gracious Mother” looked out at her from the dimness.

“_Boshi Moi!_” Katherina’s eyes went out to it in a dumb appeal, “_Boshi Moi!_” Wearily she sat down after a moment on the lower step of the ladder. Voices came from the road. Presently she saw, from her seclusion, Natalka and Simyonka enter through the gate. Their young forms stood out clean, clear, in the soft light. This was Simyonka’s market day, she remembered. He had evidently met Natalka at the lake on his way from market. They were talking heatedly. The little chit Natalka was arguing, smiling, coquetting. The youth seemed to be entreating her, begging earnestly. Simyonka was not much older than Natalka. He was tall and lean and brown, clean-featured, clean-looking in his coarse, home-spun linen. Katherina watched, and her soul filled with gratitude that he was so beautiful, for Natalka.

They came a few steps nearer on the garden path and she caught their words.

“Just one! Just one, Natalka!” His face was lifted. His eyes were beseeching her. And Natalka, laughing, radiant, mischievous, turned and was backing away from him toward the house, her hand raised between them.

“_Lublue ya tibya._” (I love thee.)

With the palm of her hand against his mouth, she pressed him away. He was murmuring, “You are like a little flower, Natalka. You are like a little birch-tree, a little white birch growing in the field.”

Katherina’s own face was radiant. “_Ya tibya lublue._” He loves her! Yes, he loves her. She herself had never known such love. “Simyonka loves Natalka!” The words filled her with dizzy joy.

Then her face twisted with agony. But soon, very soon, he would look upon her with shame! At once! At her wedding! His father will ask Gavrelo, “What is your daughter’s portion?” And Gavrelo will say, “Nothing!” And the whole village will laugh and jeer. And little Natalka will bend her head with shame. And later, again, when he brings her home and the villagers and relatives gather about him, and he has nothing of hers that he could tell them she brought, that he could show--

She rose. Carried away by this thought, she no longer saw nor heard them outside, and she went staggering into the living room of the hut and fell upon her knees before the icon.

“Gracious Mother Maria!” Her clumsy little body crumpled to the hard-trodden earth.

“Blessed Mother Maria, can you hear me?” she pleaded in the crude way of Sabinka people. “Can you hear me? I have come to beg of you for Natalka. You know, Mother, I have never come to you for myself. But now I come for her. Mother,” her voice rose brokenly, “you know how hard my life has been. At home when I was young we were so poor. Often I was hungry for just bread. In marriage--Gavrelo is a strange person.” She fell silent a moment, her tears choking her.

“The children were all I had. And when little Zacharka died I felt as if my heart would break, Mother. He was so sweet to look at with his golden hair and blue eyes. He would have been fifteen years old now. Oh, Mother! It is hard; it has been hard to see other little lads in the village and not see Zacharka. In the spring, when the sky is blue, and the fields are covered with grass, I miss little Zacharka. I miss him when from each home in the village a little lad goes forth with his father’s herd. The mothers wait for them all day, and in the evening they meet them at the gate. I, too, wait all day, but it is a strange little lad that brings our cattle home.” She lay still, sobbing brokenly.

“It has been hard, Mother Maria. Yet, have I complained? But now I beg pity for Natalka.” Her hands clasped, her forehead pressed to the earth. “Pity, Mother, pity for Natalka!”

The trees were in full leaf. The meadows were dotted with the first flowers. The wheat in the great field stood a foot high. It was Saturday at dusk. The cattle had long passed, and the dust they had stirred was laid. Swarms of tiny insects danced in the open spaces of the road. Far out frogs croaked at regular intervals. The air was warm and sweet with the breath of the flowers and the dew. The village seemed quietly at rest. Yet there was a silent stir--preparation for the morrow, the first wedding in Sabinka this spring.

The fence enclosing Gavrelo’s hut was strung with branches of green foliage. High over the gate a wreath of orange-colored flowers hung to mark the bride’s dwelling. Inside the yard was swept clean and sprinkled with yellow sand, and long benches stood along the walls. On the doorstep of the outhouse Natalka sat with her two bridesmaids trimming her veil. Natalka herself was making the little rosettes of red or green ribbon, and the maids stitched them on all over the long strip of white muslin. The maids were talking and giggling, their heads bent over their work. Natalka was quiet and solemn.

In the deep interior of the outhouse Katherina was giving the last touches to the _kubial_. She lifted and replaced and folded and finally fitted the cover and slipped in the bar. It was done! Her hands fell at her sides. Katherina had grown thinner, paler, more pinched. Since she prayed before the icon she had spent the time from day to day, from hour to hour, waiting. But nothing--nothing had happened to save Natalka. Since that hour at dusk, she, Katherina, had spent morning and night kneeling before the icon. She had been to the cemetery many times, where her dead were laid, and hung their moldy wooden crosses with new little aprons of many colors. She had watched Gavrelo from day to day, hoping for a sign of relenting, of softening. But none had come. Sullen, stolid, he went about as usual, working early and late in the fields and at the barns, only coming in to eat his three meals of black bread and cabbage soup, and to sleep the few hours between the extreme dark and early dawn. Standing there, she could hear him now at the barns, still working--still working--while others were long at rest.

“Ach, Gavrelo!” she cried to him silently, “what is it all for? What are you doing it for, Gavrelo?” She lifted her coarse apron and wiped away stinging tears.

The shadow before the door had just fallen on the threshold. By clock time it would have been perhaps ten in the morning. A wagon lined with green leaves and buttercups, harnessed to four pair, stood at the gate in the road. The horses were snorting and beating the ground impatiently, and a sturdy youth sat holding the reins mightily. Within, the yard flashed with color--red, short, wide skirts, blue and green streamers, red bandannas, white shirts, patent-leather boots, sparkling black or green beads, shining brass buttons.

The guests sat primly on the benches along the walls, chanting solemnly. Katherina and Gavrelo sat among the elders of the village. Gavrelo looked browner in a well-bleached shirt, and he was the only man who wore birch sandals instead of boots. Katherina sat beside him, her head swathed in a white linen scarf decorated with little red crosses. Her head was bowed, her hands were folded in her lap, her face as white as her scarf. Simyonka, in patent leather boots and white shirt, looked solemn. Natalka was tearful. Natalka looked like some strange wild-flower, a poppy perhaps, with all the red and green, and her loose brown hair. Her scarf flashed with every possible color. Her skirt was red; her breast was covered with many strings of beads.

Suddenly the chanting stopped. A hush fell. Solemnly, between her two maids, the bride rose to ask a blessing of her parents before starting for church. She walked with studied and becoming dignity, her head bowed, her hands clasped in front of her. She reached her parents. And here she forgot her rôle. Overcome by emotion, she fell upon her knees rather clumsily, humanly, and a low cry, half song, half wail of the braid song, pierced the air.

“_Boshi Moi_----”

“My braids--my beautiful brown braids.”

Blindly and convulsed, Katherina rose and made the sign of the cross over her. Gavrelo did the same. Katherina watched, still watched and hoped for a sign of relenting. But his face looked more stubborn than ever. And Katherina now suddenly knew that she must not expect him to relent. When had Gavrelo ever relented that she should have expected it? Fool that she was! It had always been just the contrary even when it was to his own disadvantage. His word given became law. Fool that she was to have expected Gavrelo to change his word!