I had almost reached Perebrod when a sudden whirlwind rose, driving columns of dust before it on the road. The first heavy, scattered drops of rain began to fall.
Manuilikha was not mistaken. The storm which had been gathering all through the insufferable heat of the day burst with extraordinary force over Perebrod. The lightning flashed almost without intermission, and the window panes of my room trembled and rang with the roll of the thunder. At about eight o’clock in the evening the storm abated for some minutes, but only to begin again with new exasperation. Suddenly something poured down on to the roof with a deafening crash, and on to the walls of the old house. I rushed to the window. Huge hailstones, as big as a walnut, were falling furiously on to the earth and bouncing high in the air again. I glanced at the mulberry bush which grew against the house. It stood quite bare; every leaf had been beaten off by the blows of the awful hail. Beneath the window appeared Yarmola’s figure, hardly visible in the darkness. He had covered his head in his sheepskin and run out of the kitchen to close the shutters. But he was too late. A huge piece of ice suddenly struck one of the windows with such246 force that it was smashed, and the tinkling splinters of glass were scattered over the floor of the room.
A fatigue came over me, and I lay down on the bed in my clothes. I thought I would never be able to sleep at all that night, but would toss from side to side in impotent anguish until the morning. So I decided it would be better not to undress; later I might be able to tire myself if only a little by walking up and down the room, over and over again. But a strange thing happened to me. It seemed to me that I had shut my eyes only a second; but when I opened them, long, bright sunbeams were already stretching through the chinks of the shutters, and innumerable motes of golden dust were turning round and round within them.
Yarmola was standing over my bed. On his face was written stern anxiety and impatient expectation. Probably he had been waiting long for me to wake.
‘Sir,’ he said in a dull voice, in which one could distinguish his uneasiness. ‘You’d better go away from here, sir.’
I put my feet out of bed and looked at Yarmola with amazement. ‘Better go away? Where to? Why? You’re mad, surely.’
‘No, I’m not mad,’ Yarmola snarled. ‘You didn’t hear what happened through yesterday’s hail? Half the corn of the village is like as though it had been trodden underfoot—cripple Maxim’s, the Goat’s, old Addlepate’s, the brothers Prokopchuk’s, Gordi Olefir’s.... She247 put the mischief on us, the devilish witch.... May she rot in hell!’
In an instant I remember what had happened yesterday, the threat Olyessia had made by the church, and her apprehensions.
‘And all the village is in a riot now,’ Yarmola continued. ‘They got drunk first thing in the morning, and now they’re fighting.... They’ve got something bad to say of you, too, sir.... You know what our people are like?... If they do something to the witches, that won’t matter, it’ll serve ’em to rights; but you, sir—I’ll just say this one word of warning, you get out of here as quick as you can.’
So Olyessia’s fears had come true. I must let her know at once of the danger that threatened her and Manuilikha. I got up hurriedly, rinsed my face without ever standing still, and in half an hour I was riding full gallop towards the Devil’s Corner.
The nearer I came to the chicken-legged hut the stronger grew the vague melancholy anxiety within me. I said to myself that in a moment a new, unexpected misfortune would certainly befall me.
I almost galloped over the narrow footpath that wound up the sandy hill. The windows of the hut were open, the door wide.
‘My God, what has happened?’ I whispered, and my heart sank as I entered the passage.
The hut was empty. Over it all reigned the sad, dirty disorder that always remains after a hurried departure. Heaps of dust and rags lay248 about the floor, and the wooden frame of a bed stood in the corner.
My heart was utterly sad, overflowing with tears; I wanted to get out of the hut already, when my eye was caught by something bright, hung, as if on purpose, in a corner of the window-frame. It was a string of the cheap red beads which they call ‘corals’ in Polyessie—the only thing that remained to me in memory of Olyessia and her tender, great-hearted love.
The End