The miller had not gone more than a hundred yards when he heard a
rustling and fluttering that sounded like two large birds taking flight
from behind the hedge. But it was not a pair of birds; it was only a
lad and a lass, startled by the miller’s sudden appearance out of the
darkness. The lad, it seemed, was not to be frightened. Creeping into
the shadows so that the two white figures were barely visible under the
cherry trees, he put his arm firmly around the girl, and continued his
low-toned discourse. A few yards farther on the miller heard something
that halted him with annoyance.
“Hey, you there! I don’t know what your name is----” he cried. “But you
might wait until I had gone by to do your kissing. Your smacks can be
heard all over the village.”
And he walked right up to the hedge.
“You cur you, what do you mean by poking your nose into other people’s
affairs?” a lad answered out of the darkness. “Wait a minute, I’ll
kiss you on the nose with my fist! I’ll teach you to interfere with
people!”
“Come, come, never mind!” said the miller, stepping back. “One would
think you were doing something important! You’re a bad lad, you are,
to smack a girl like that; you make a man envious. Oh, what are people
coming to!”
He stood still for a moment, thought a bit, scratched his head, and
finally turned aside, threw his leg over the hedge, and crossed a field
to a widow’s cottage that stood a little way back from the road in the
shade of a tall poplar tree.
The khata was a tiny, lop-sided affair, crumbling and falling to
pieces. Its one little window was so minute that it would have been
almost invisible had the night been at all dark. But now the whole
cottage was glowing in the moonlight; its straw roof was shining like
gold, its walls seemed to be made of silver, and the little window was
blinking like a dark eye.
No light shone behind it. Probably the old woman and her daughter had
no fuel and nothing to cook for supper.
The miller paused a moment, then knocked twice at the window and went a
few steps aside.
He had not long to wait before two plump girlish arms were wound
tightly around his neck, and something glowed among his whiskers that
felt very much like two lips pressed to his mouth. Hey ho, what more
is there to tell! If you have ever been kissed like that you know
yourself how it feels. If you haven’t, it’s no use trying to tell you.
“Oh, Philipko, my darling for whom I have longed!” crooned the girl.
“You have come, you have come! And I have been waiting so wearily for
you. I thought I should parch up with longing, like grass without
water.”
“Eh hey, she hasn’t parched up, though, thank God!” thought the miller,
as he pressed the girl’s not emaciated form to his breast. “Thank God,
she is all right yet!”
“And when shall we have the wedding, Philip?” asked the girl with her
hands still lying on Philip’s shoulders, while she devoured him with
burning eyes as dark as an autumn night. “Saint Philip’s day will soon
be here.”
This speech was less to the miller’s liking than the girl’s kisses.
“So that’s what she’s driving at!” thought he. “Ah, Philip, Philip, now
you’re going to catch it!”
But he summoned all the courage he had, and, turning his eyes away,
answered:
“What a hurry you’re in, Galya, I declare! Thinking about the wedding
already, are you? How can we get married when I am a miller and may
soon be the richest man in the village, and you are only a poor widow’s
daughter?”
The girl staggered back at these words as if a snake had bitten her.
She jumped away from Philip and laid her hand on her heart.
“But I thought--oh, my poor head--then why did you knock at the window,
you wicked man?”
“Eh hey!” answered the miller. “You ask why I knocked. Why shouldn’t
I knock when your mother owes me money? And then you come jumping out
and begin to kiss me. What can I do? I know how to kiss as well as any
man----”
And he stretched out his hand toward her again, but the moment he
touched the girl’s body she started as if an insect had stung her.
“Get away!” she screamed, so angrily that the miller fell back a step.
“I’m not a rouble bill that you can lay your hands on as if I belonged
to you. If you come back again I’ll warm you up so that you’ll forget
how to make love for three years.”
The miller was taken aback.
“What a little firebrand it is! Do you think I’m a Jew that you howl at
me so hatefully?”
“If you’re not a Jew, then what are you? You charge half a rouble for
every rouble you lend, and then you come to me for interest besides!
Get away, I tell you, you horrid brute!”
“Well, my girl!” said the miller, nervously covering his face with his
hand as if she had really hit him with her fist. “I see it’s no use for
a sensible man to talk to you. Go and send your mother to me.”
But the old woman had already come out of the hut, and was making a low
curtsey to the miller. Philip enjoyed this more than he had the words
of the girl. He stuck his arms akimbo, and the head of his black shadow
rubbed so hard against the wall that he wondered his hat didn’t come
off.
“Do you know what I’ve come for, old woman?” he asked.
“Oh, how should I not know, poor wretch that I am! You have come for my
money.”
“Ha, ha, not _your_ money, old woman!” the miller laughed. “I’m not a
robber; I don’t come at night and take money that isn’t mine.”
“Yes, you _have_ come for money that isn’t yours!” retorted Galya,
angrily falling upon the miller. “You _have_ come for it!”
“Crazy girl!” exclaimed the miller, stepping back. “Upon my word there
isn’t another girl in the whole village as crazy as you are. And not in
the village alone, in the whole District. Just think a minute what you
have said! If it weren’t for your mother, who probably wouldn’t testify
against you, I’d have you up in court before Christmas for cheating me.
Come, think a little what you’re doing, girl!”
“Why need I think when I’m doing right?”
“How can it be right for the old woman to borrow money from me and not
pay?”
“You lie! You lie like a dog! You came courting me when you were still
a workman at the mill; you came to our khata and never said a word
about wanting anything in return. And then, when your uncle died and
you came to be a miller yourself, you collected the whole debt, and now
even that won’t satisfy you!”
“And the flour?”
“Well, what about the flour? How much do you ask for it?”
“Sixty copecks a pood, not less! No one would let you have it cheaper
than that, no, not if you threw your precious self in with it into the
bargain.”
“And how much have you already collected from us?”
“Tut, tut, how she does talk! You’ve a tongue in your head as bad as
Kharko’s, girl. I’ll answer that by asking you for the interest. Have
you paid it?”
But Galya was silent. It is often that way with girls. They talk and
talk and rattle along like a mill with all its stones grinding, and
then they suddenly stop dead. You’d think they had run short of water.
That’s how Galya did. She burst into a flood of bitter tears, and went
away wiping her eyes on the wide sleeve of her blouse.
“There now!” said the miller, a little confused but satisfied in his
heart. “That’s what comes of attacking people. If you hadn’t begun
shouting at me there wouldn’t have been anything to cry for.”
“Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue, you foul creature!”
“Hold your own tongue, if that’s what you think!”
“Be quiet, be quiet, my honey!” the mother joined in, heaving a deep
sigh. The old woman was evidently afraid of irritating the miller; it
was clear she could not pay him now that her time was up.
“I won’t be quiet, mother, I won’t, I won’t!” answered the girl, as if
all the wheels in her mill had begun turning again. “I won’t be quiet;
and if you want to know, I’m going to scratch out his eyes so that he
won’t dare to get me gossiped about for nothing, and come knocking at
my window and kissing me! Tell me what you meant by knocking, or I’ll
catch you by the top-knot without stopping to ask if you are a miller
and a rich man or not. You never used to be proud like that; you came
courting me yourself and pouring out tender words. But now you hold
your nose so high that your hat won’t stay on your head!”
“Oi, honey, honey, do be quiet, my poor dear little orphan!” begged the
old woman with another grievous sigh. “And you, Mr. Miller, don’t think
ill of the poor silly girl. Young hearts and young wisdom are mates;
they are like new beer in a ferment. They boil and foam, but if you
will let them stand awhile they will grow sweet to a man’s taste.”
“What do I care?” answered the miller. “I don’t ask for either bitter
or sweet from her, because you are not my equals, either of you. Give
me the money, old woman, and I’ll never come near your khata again.”
“Okh, but we have no money! Wait a little; we will work for some, my
daughter and I, and then we will pay you. Oh, misery me, Philipko,
dearie, what a time I do have with you and with her! You know yourself
I have loved you like a son; I never thought, I never guessed, you
would cast my debts in my teeth and with the interest, too! Oh, if I
could only get my daughter married! A good husband would be easy to
find, but she won’t have any one. Ever since you have come courting the
girl you seem to have cast a spell over her. ‘I’d rather be buried in
the cold ground than marry any one else,’ she says. I was foolish ever
to let you stay here until dawn. Oi, misery me!”
“But what can I do?” asked the miller. “You don’t understand these
things, old woman. A rich man has many calls on his money. I pay the
Jew what I owe him; now you must pay me.”
“Wait just one month!”
The miller rubbed his head and reflected. He felt a little sorry for
the old woman, and Galya’s embroidered blouse was gleaming in the
distance.
“Very well, then, only I’ll have to add thirty copecks to the debt for
interest. You’d better pay at once.”
“What can I do? It’s my fate not to pay, I can see that.”
“All right, I’ll leave it at that. I’m not a Jew. I’m a decent sort of
a fellow. Any one else would have charged you forty copecks at least, I
know that for certain, and I’m only asking you twenty, and shall wait
till St. Philip’s day for the money. But then you will have to look
out. If you don’t pay, I’ll complain about you to the police.”
With these words he turned, bowed, and walked away across the pasture,
without so much as a glance at the hut at whose door there shone for a
long time a white embroidered blouse. It shone against the dark shade
of the cherry trees like a little white star, and the miller could not
see the black eyes weeping, the white arms stretched out toward him,
the young breast sighing for his sake.
“Don’t cry, my honey; don’t cry, my sugar-plum!” the old woman soothed
her child. “Don’t cry, it’s God’s will, my darling.”
“Okh, mother, mother, if only you had let me scratch out his eyes,
perhaps I should feel better!”