| 'What do
you want to say?'
asked the officer, without looking at him. Something suddenly came over
him.
'It was I,'
he said hoarsely.
The soldier
made his report.
'They gave
me food,' Yakob
said, 'and this muffler and breeches, and they beat me.'
'It was you
who showed them
the way?'
'It was.'
'You did
show them the way?'
He nodded.
'Did they
beat you in the
cottage?'
Yakob
hesitated. 'In the
cottage we were having supper.'
'They beat
you afterwards,
on the way?'
He again
hesitated, and looked
into the officer's eyes. They were clear, calm eyes. The guard came a
step
nearer.
The officer
looked down,
turned towards the window and asked more gently: 'You had supper
together
in the cottage. Then you went out with them. Did they beat you on the
way?'
He turned
suddenly and looked
at Yakob. The peasant stood, looked at the grey snowflakes outside the
window, and his face, partly black, partly pallid, was wrinkled in deep
folds.
'Well, what
have you got
to say?'
'It was
I...' This interrogation
made him alternately hot and cold.
'You who
beat them, and not
they who beat you?' laughed the officer.
'The meat
is still there
in the cottage, and here is what they gave me,' he said, holding up the
muffler and tobacco.
The officer
threw his cigarette
away and turned on his heel. Yakob's eyes became dull, his arm with the
muffler dropped.
The officer
wrote an order.
'Take him away.' They passed the schoolmaster and some women and
soldiers
in the passage.
'Well...well...'
they whispered,
leaning against the wall.
The guard
made a sign with
his hand. Yakob, behind him, looked dully into the startled faces of
the
bystanders.
'How
frightened he looks...how
they have beaten him...how frightened he looks!' they murmured.
He put the
muffler round
his neck again, for he felt cold.
'That's
him, that's him,'
growled the crowd outside.
The
manor-house was reached.
The light from the numerous windows fell upon horses and gun-carriages
drawn up in the yard.
'What do
you want?' cried
the sentry to the crowd, pushing them back.
He nodded
towards Yakob.
'Where is he to go?'
'That
sort...' murmured the
crowd. Yakob's guard delivered his order. They stopped in the porch.
The
pillars threw long shadows which lost themselves towards the fence and
across the waves of the stream beyond,
in the
darkness of the night.
The heat in
the waiting-room
was overpowering. This was the room where the bailiff had so often
given
him his pay. The office no longer existed. Soldiers were lying asleep
everywhere.
|
