He was a peasant, and in spite of all changes remained a peasant to the very core. His son received a thorough education and now helped his father. Two years ago he had made the acquaintance of the station-master's daughter after her return from the academy at Kielce and had fallen violently in love with her. His father offered no opposition, but told him plainly to go ahead and marry if he wanted.
Andrew met the girl quite often, became ever more deeply enamored of her, but never dared to speak to her of his love. She liked him, but at the same time her attitude was so frank and straightforward that his intended words of endearment and confessions of love always froze upon his lips before he had half uttered them. He felt that she belonged to a higher breed of women, inaccessible to such a "churl" as he often frankly called himself; but precisely because of his lowly origin he loved her all the more intensely.
Finally, he decided to speak to her father about it.
Orlowski received him with open arms, and in his arbitrary way, without consulting his daughter, at once gave him his word that all would be well. Grzesikiewicz was therefore thinking that Janina would not refuse him, that she must have already spoken of the matter with her father.
"Why not!" he whispered to himself. He was young, wealthy, and well, he loved her so dearly. "In a month our marriage will take place," he added hurriedly and that thought filled him with such joy that he began to run swiftly through the woods, breaking branches off the trees, kicking the rotted stumps that were in his way, knocking off the heads of spring mushrooms, whistling and smiling. And he thought, too, how glad his mother would be to hear the news.
She was an old peasant woman, who with the exception of her dress had not changed in the least on account of her wealth. She thought of Janina as of a princess. Her one dream was to have for a daughter-in-law a real lady, an aristocrat whose beauty and high birth would dazzle her, for her husband and his money and the respect which the entire neighborhood showed him did not suffice her. She was always conscious of being a peasant and received all honors with a true peasant-like distrust.
"Andy!" she often said to her son. "Andy, I wish you would marry Miss Orlowska. That's what I call a real lady! When she looks at you, she makes you shudder with awe and wish to fall at her feet and beg some boon of her. . . . She must be very good for whenever she meets folks in the woods she greets them in God's name, chats with them, and pets the children . . . another would be incapable of that! Gentle birth will always out. I sent her a basket of mushrooms and when she met me she kissed my hand for it. And she is not lacking in wisdom. Ho! ho! she knows that I have a prize of a son. Andy, marry her. Hurry, and make hay while the sun shines!"
Andrew would usually laugh at his mother's prattle, kiss her hand, and promise her to settle at once everything according to her wishes.
"We will have a princess in our house and seat her in state in the parlor! Don't fear, Andy, I will not let her soil her hands with anything. I will wait upon her, serve her, hand her everything she needs; all she has to do is to read French books and play on the piano, for that is what a lady is for!" his mother would add.
And he was just as much of a peasant as she deep within himself; beneath the smooth veneer of the civilized and educated man seethed a primitive unbridled energy and the desire for a wife—a woman to rule him. This young Hercules, who, when he felt like it, could fling unaided into the wagon two-hundred pound sacks of wheat, and who often had to toil like a common laborer to quell with weariness the riotous tides that often rose in his healthy blood, unexhausted through dozens of generations dreamed of Janina and was vanquished by her beauty and sweetness.