Recovering himself, he took his grandfather`s hunting whip from the wall, and was about to belabor Peter`s back with it, when Pidorka`s little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other, and grasping his father`s legs with his little hands, screamed out, “Daddy, Daddy! don`t beat Peter!” What was to be done? A father`s heart is not made of stone.
Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he led Peter quietly from the house. “If you ever show yourself in my cottage again, or even under the windows, look out, Peter, for, by heaven, your black mustache will disappear; and your black locks, though wound twice about your ears will take leave of your pate, or my name is not Terentiy Korzh.” So saying, he gave him such a taste of his fist in the nape of his neck, that all grew dark before Peter, and he flew headlong out of the place.
So there was an end of their kissing. Sorrow fell upon our turtle doves; and a rumor grew rife in the village that a certain Pole, all embroidered with gold, with mustaches, saber, spurs, and pockets jingling like the bells of the bag with which our sacristan Taras goes through the church every day, had begun to frequent Korzh`s house.
Pidorka burst into tears
Now, it is well known why a father has visitors when there is a black- browed daughter about. So, one day, Pidorka burst into tears, and caught the hand of her brother Ivas. “Ivas, my dear! Ivas, my love! fly to Peter, my child of gold, like an arrow from a bow. Tell him all: I would have loved his brown eyes, I would have kissed his fair face, but my fate decrees otherwise. More than one handkerchief have I wet with burning tears. I am sad and heavy at heart.
And my own father is my enemy. I will not marry the Pole, whom I do not love. Tell him they are making ready for a wedding, but there will be no music at our wedding: priests will sing instead of pipes and viols. I shall not dance with my bridegroom; they will carry me out. Dark, dark will be my dwelling of maple wood; and instead of chimneys, a cross will stand upon the roof.”
Peter stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent child lisped out Pidorka`s words to him. “And I, wretched man, had thought to go to the Crimea and Turkey, to win gold and return to thee, my beauty! But it may not be. We have been overlooked by the evil eye. I too shall have a wedding, dear one; but no ecclesiastics will be present at that wedding.
The black crow instead of the pope will caw over me; the bare plain will be my dwelling; the dark blue cloud my roof-tree. The eagle will claw out my brown eyes; the rain will wash my Cossack bones, and the whirlwinds will dry them. But what am I? Of what should I complain? `Tis clear God willed it so. If I am to be lost, then so be it!” and he went straight to the tavern.
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