A Terrible Vengeance

III

Danilo’s farm lay between two mountains in a narrow valley that ran down to the Dnieper. It was a low-pitched house like the hut of an ordinary Cossack, and there was only one large room in it; but he and his wife and their old maidservant and ten picked young Cossacks all had their places in it. There were oak shelves running around the walls at the top. Bowls and cooking pots were piled upon them. Among them were silver goblets and drinking cups mounted in gold, gifts or booty brought from the war. Lower down hung costly swords, guns, spears; willingly or unwillingly, they had come from the Tartars, the Turks, and the Poles, and many a dent there was in them. Looking at them, Danilo was reminded of his encounters. At the bottom of the wall were smooth-planed oak benches; beside them, in front of the stove, the cradle hung on cords from a ring fixed in the ceiling. The whole floor of the room was leveled and plastered with clay. On the benches slept Danilo and his wife; on the stove the old maidservant; the child played and was lulled to sleep in the cradle; and on the floor the young Cossacks slept in a row. But a Cossack likes best to sleep on the flat earth in the open air; he needs no feather bed or pillow; he piles fresh hay under his head and stretches at his ease upon the grass. It rejoices his heart to wake up in the night and look up at the lofty sky spangled with stars and to shiver at the chill of night which refreshes his Cossack bones; stretching and muttering through his sleep, he lights his pipe and wraps himself more closely in his sheepskin.

Burulbash did not wake early after the merrymaking of the day before; when he woke he sat on a bench in a corner and began sharpening a new Turkish saber, for which he had just bartered something; and Katerina set to work embroidering a silken towel with gold thread.

All at once Katerina’s father came in, angry and frowning, with an outlandish pipe in his teeth; he went up to his daughter and began questioning her sternly, asking what was the reason she had come home so late the night before.

“It is not her but me you should question about that, father-in-law! Not the wife but the husband is responsible. That’s our way here, don’t be disturbed about it,” said Danilo, going on with his work. “Perhaps in infidel lands it is not so—I don’t know.”

The color came into the father-in-law’s face; there was an ominous gleam in his eye. “Who, if not a father, should watch over his daughter!” he muttered to himself. “Well, I ask you: where were you roving so late at night?”

“Ah, that’s it at last, dear father-in-law! To that I will answer that I have left swaddling clothes behind me long ago. I can ride a horse, I can wield a sharp sword, and there are other things I can do… I can refuse to answer to anyone for what I do.”

“I know, I see, Danilo, you seek a quarrel! A man who is not frank has some evil in his mind.”

“You may think as you please,” said Danilo, “and I will think as I please. Thank God, I’ve had no part in any dishonorable deed so far; I have always stood for the Orthodox faith and my fatherland, not like some vagabonds who go tramping God knows where while good Christians are fighting to the death, and afterward come back to reap the harvest they have not sown. They are worse than the Uniats: they never go into the Church of God. It is such men that should be strictly questioned as to where they have been.”

“Ah, Cossack! Do you know… I am no great shot; my bullet only pierces the heart at seven hundred feet; I am nothing to boast of at swordplay either: I leave bits of my opponent behind, though in truth, the pieces are smaller than the grains you use for porridge.”

“I am ready,” said Danilo jauntily, making the sign of the cross in the air with the saber, as though he knew what he had sharpened it for.

“Danilo!” Katerina cried aloud, seizing him by the arm and hanging on it, “think what you are doing, madman, see against whom you are lifting your hand! Father, your hair is white as snow, but you have flown into a rage like a senseless boy!”

“Wife!” Danilo cried menacingly, “you know I will have no interference! You mind your woman’s business!”

There was a terrible clatter of swords; steel hacked steel and the Cossacks sent sparks flying like dust. Katerina went out weeping into another room, flung herself on the bed, and covered her ears that she might not hear the clash of the swords. But the Cossacks did not fight so faintheartedly that she could smother the sound of their blows. Her heart was ready to break; she seemed to hear all over her the clank of the swords. “No, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it…. Perhaps the red blood is already flowing out of his white body; maybe by now my dear one is helpless, and I am lying here!” And pale all over, scarcely breathing, she went back.

A terrible and even fight it was; neither of the Cossacks was winning the day. At one moment Katerina’s father attacked and Danilo seemed to give way; then Danilo attacked and the sullen father seemed to yield; and again they were equal. They boiled with rage, they swung their swords… Ough! The swords clashed… and with a clatter the blades flew out of the handles.

“Thank God!” said Katerina, but she screamed again when she saw that the Cossacks had picked up their muskets. They put in the flints and drew the triggers.

Danilo fired and missed. Her father took aim… He was old, he did not see so well as the younger man, but his hand did not tremble. A shot rang out… Danilo staggered; the red blood stained the left sleeve of his Cossack coat.

“No!” he cried, “I will not yield so easily. Not the left but the right hand is master. I have a Turkish pistol hanging on the wall: never yet has it failed me. Come down from the wall, old comrade! Do your friend a service!” Danilo stretched out his hand.

“Danilo!” cried Katerina in despair, clutching his hands and falling at his feet. “Not for myself I beseech you. There is but one end for me: unworthy is the wife who will outlive her husband; Dnieper, the cold Dnieper, will be my grave…. But look at your son, Danilo, look at your son! Who will cherish the poor child? Who will be kind to him? Who will teach him to race on the black stallion, to fight for faith and freedom, to drink and carouse like a Cossack? You must perish, my son, you must perish! Your father will not think of you! See how he turns away his head. Oh, I know you now! You are a wild beast and not a man! You have the heart of a wolf and the mind of a crafty reptile! I thought there was a drop of pity in you, that there was human feeling in your breast of stone. I have been terribly deceived! This will be a delight to you. Your bones will dance in the grave with joy when they hear the foul brutes of Poles throwing your son into the flames, when your son shrieks under the knife or the scalding water. Oh, I know you! You would be glad to rise up from the grave and fan the flames under him with your cap!”

“Stop, Katerina! Come, my precious Ivan, let me kiss you! No, my child, no one shall touch a hair of your head. You shall grow up to the glory of your fatherland; like a whirlwind you shall fly at the head of the Cossacks with a velvet cap on your head and a sharp sword in your hand. Give me your hand, Father! Let us forget what has been between us! For what wrong I have done you I ask pardon. Why do you not give me your hand?” said Danilo to Katerina’s father, who stood without moving, with no sign of anger nor of reconciliation on his face.

“Father!” cried Katerina, embracing and kissing him, “don’t be merciless, forgive Danilo: he will never offend you again!”

“For your sake only, my daughter, I forgive him!” he answered, kissing her with a strange glitter in his eyes.

Katerina shuddered faintly: the kiss and the strange glitter seemed uncanny to her. She leaned her elbows on the table, at which Danilo was bandaging his wounded hand, while he wondered if he had acted like a Cossack in asking pardon when he had done no wrong.