“The affair can drag itself out even when the proclamation of the division has been made. After that comes the appellation. That can last months and months, and even when that is finished there can be another delay in handing over the land to you. Say that you will take less. Perhaps it will expedite matters.”
The boy looked at me suspiciously. I knew how the peasants cling to every inch of ground.
“If you are so much in love with the girl—and if you know by taking less the settlement can be hastened—then do it.”
The boy looked down upon the ground for a long time as if he were estimating every bit of dirt, and replied: “Very good! I’ll do it then!”
That very day he went to the city.
But even now the affair was not hastened. Janko’s house-companions tried to slip out of the agreement, and when the engineer made the division they found a hundred mistakes. Poor Janko was miserable. He was in torture for fear he would lose Jagica, and on top of this the constant quarrels with the household and the delay over the division.
The autumn was drawing nearer and nearer. Jagica’s father said frankly he would not forgive Janko for giving up so much land.
Tono was a regular visitor at the house. Jagica wept and begged Janko to hurry with the land. Almost every day he went to the city, where every day he heard the same thing: it was necessary—first—to do this, to do that.
There are only four weeks now to St. Catherine’s day, which is the time when peasant weddings are celebrated, and he has heard nothing definite about the division. Then the report came to his ear that Tono and Jagica were to be married. And a proof of it seemed to be that he could not meet Jagica as of old. In vain, night after night, he stood by the apple tree and waited. He sang all his songs. With Tono he had frequently quarreled and come to blows. If they had not been forcibly separated, one or the other would have been killed.
“If I could only speak with her! I want to hear her say that she has been unfaithful to me. The gentlemen in the city are the cause of this.” The last days he did not go near the house. Without sleep, he ran about the highways, across the meadows, into the city, without any plan. His clothes were torn, his hair disheveled and uncombed.