The rain had now begun to come down in earnest.
Ever since the fair, all things had been drowned in a grey turbid
shimmer, through which only the dim outlines of the forest or the hamlet
loomed, embroidered, as it were, on a ground of wet canvas.
The autumn downpours swooped down, icily cold, piercingly sharp, and
never-ending.
The rain, like scourges of ashen-grey hue, unceasingly beat upon the
earth, soaking every tree to its very centre, and making every blade of
grass quiver, as in dire pain.
From underneath those thick clouds and that ghastly grey rain there
would appear, now and again, strips of fields, blackened, flat, and
sodden; or there would gleam forth streaks of foam-flecked water,
flowing down the furrows; or the trees along the pathways would stand
forth, dark and stark, as their dripping branches, wet to the inmost
pith, shaking off the last rags of leaves, seemed struggling
desperately, like hounds straining at a leash.
The deserted roads were now transformed into interminable quagmires of
filth.
The short, sad, sunless days crawled by; bleak and dull, with ceaseless
sounds of monotonous plashing, fell the nights.
Mute were the fields, dumb the hamlets, silent the woods. The houses
dusky and colourless, seemed melting into and making one with the earth,
the fences, and the stripped orchards, tossing their boughs with feeble
moans.
A livid whirling downpour had covered the land, taken all colour out of
it, quenched its tints, and plunged the world into twilight. All seemed
confused, and as in a dream. A sadness rose up from the mouldering
fields, from the palsy-stricken woods, from the dead wilderness; thence
it floated like a heavy cloud, lingering about the melancholy crossways,
under the crucifixes which stretched forth their mournful arms and on
the waste roads, where the trees would suddenly quake as with dread, and
sob as if in anguish; it looked with vacant stare into each deserted
nest, and on each fallen cabin; it crept about the burial-places around
the graves of the forgotten dead, and the decaying crosses; it spread
over all the country.
And the drizzle was never-ceasing: but when the heavy rain swooped down,
it wrapped all Lipka in its folds, so that the dark thatches, the dank
stones of the enclosures, the dingy tangles of smoke which twirled above
the chimneys and wandered over the orchards, were visible only at rare
intervals.
The village was noiseless, except for some barns, where men were
threshing. But these were few: the people were all out in the cabbage
plantations. The miry roads lay waste; and waste, too, were the
cabin-surroundings. If now and then anyone appeared, a ghost in the fog,
he vanished at once, and only the sound of his wooden clogs was audible,
as he trudged through the mud. Or from time to time a cart laden with
cabbages would roll slowly away from the peat bogs, and scatter the
geese wading about to snap up such leaves as it let fall.
The pond struggled within the narrow shores which confined it. It was
continually rising; and ere it flooded the lower parts of the road on
Boryna’s side, it came up to the enclosures, and splashed and foamed
before the very cabin-walls.
But the whole village was out, busy cutting the cabbages, and conveying
them home. They were housed everywhere, on threshing-floors, in
passages, in dwelling-rooms, and in some cases, even under the
eaves—bluish-green cabbage-heads were to be seen by hundreds.
They made haste, for it was continually raining, and the ways were all
fast becoming sloughs of mire, and impassable.
That day, they were cutting Dominikova’s plantation.
Yagna, along with Simon, had been there since morning, for Andrew had
stayed at home to mend the roof.
Evening was at hand, and the old housewife again and again came out,
looking towards the mill, and listening for the sound of their coming.
But the work was still going on busily in the low-lying plantation
beyond the mill. Over the meadows stretched a dense fog; only in places,
wide ditches gleamed, full of grey turbid water; and long bands on the
higher ground where the cabbages grew, here of a pallid green, there of
a rusty red. About these flitted dimly the crimson petticoats of women,
piling up heaps of newly cut cabbages.
In the misty distance, close to the river that ran frothing among
thickets of brushwood, there rose many a heap of dull brown peat. Here
the carts were stationed; they could come no nearer, because of the
quaggy nature of the soil, and every sheetful of cabbages had to be
taken to them as a bundle carried on the back.
In some fields cutting was over already, and the people were going home;
from patch to patch, ever louder and louder, their voices sounded
through the fog.
Yagna had only just got through with the work. She was tired out, very
sharp-set, and completely drenched to boot. Even her clogs were
streaming with wet, for they sank more than ankle-deep into the
dun-coloured peaty soil, and she often had to take them off and pour the
water out.
“Simon! be quick now! I can feel my limbs no more!” she called out
wearily; but, seeing that the young man was unable to lift his burden,
she impatiently seized the great bundle, raised it on to her back, and
carried it off to the wagon.
“A big fellow like you—yet with the loins of a woman after childbed!”
She spoke scornfully, as she poured the cabbages out into the straw at
the bottom of the cart.
Simon, much abashed, muttered, growled, scratched his head, and put the
horse to.
“Hurry now, Simon!” she cried, swiftly bearing one huge bundle after
another to the cart.
But night fell, the shades grew blacker, the rain fell heavier, pouring
upon the pulpy ground and into the ditches with a sound as of dropping
corn.
“Yuzka! have you done for to-day?” she cried to Boryna’s daughter, who
had been cutting along with Hanka and Kuba.
“Yes, we have. Time to go home: the weather is frightful, and I am wet
through. Are you going too?”
“Aye. It would soon be so dark that we could not find our way. The rest
must stand over till to-morrow.—Oh, your cabbages are splendid!” she
exclaimed, leaning over towards them, and getting a glimpse of the heaps
that loomed through the mist.
“Yours are very good too, and your turnips far larger than ours.”
“Ah, they were planted from a new kind of seed, brought from Warsaw by
his Reverence.”
“Yagna!”—it was Yuzka’s voice, calling again to her out of the fog—“do
you know, Valek, Joseph’s son, is sending people to-morrow to propose to
Mary Pociotek?”
“What, that little girl? Is she not too young? Only last year she was
herding kine, I think.”
“Yes, she is old enough. Besides, she has so many acres that the lads
are in haste to marry her.”
“You, too, Yuzka, they will be in haste to marry by and by.”
“Unless your father takes another wife,” shouted Yagustynka from the
third field.
“What do you mean?” said Hanka, in a tone of alarm. “He buried her
mother only last spring.”
“What does that matter to a man? Every one is even as a swine; however
full, always ready to thrust his snout into a fresh trough. Ho, ho! one
is not quite cold, nay, not yet dead, and the goodman is after
another.—They are dogs, all of them. What about Sikora? He took a second
wife only three weeks after burying his first.”
“True: but then he was left with five little ones.”
“As you say. But only a fool can believe he married for their sake. For
his own!—He was fain to share his blanket with someone.”
“But,” put in Yuzka, with great energy, “that we would not let Father
do. Never!”
“Silly baby that you are! The land is your father’s own; and so is his
will.”
“Yet his children too ought to be considered; they have their rights,”
Hanka rejoined.
“Better to leap into the deep than cumber another man’s wagon,”
Yagustynka muttered.
Yagna, who had taken no part in this talk, smiled to herself as she
carried the cabbages. She was reminded of what had happened at the fair.
As soon as the wagon was full, Simon made for the road.
“May God be with you!” Yagna then cried to her neighbours.
“And with you! We are coming directly.... Yagna, you’ll come to us to
pluck off the leaves, won’t you?”
“Tell me when, and I’ll be there.”
“The boys have arranged for music at the Klembas’ next Sunday: do you
know?”
“I know, Yuzka, I know.”
“If you meet Antek,” Hanka asked, “pray tell him to hurry. We are
waiting.”
“All right.”
She ran fast to catch the cart, for Simon had started, and could be
heard swearing at the horse. The cart had stuck in the mire of the soft
peaty ground, and was over the axles in mud; so they both had to work
and help the horse past the worst sloughs.
Neither spoke to the other. Simon led the horse, taking care not to let
the cart upset, for the way was everywhere full of deep holes. Yagna put
her shoulder to the cart behind, considering all the while how she
should dress when she went for the leaf-plucking to the Borynas.
It was so dark that the horse was all but invisible. The rain had abated
a little, but the fog hung heavy and damp, and the wind blew and
whistled above them, lashing the trees on the embankment which they were
now going up.
It was a hard ascent, the ground being both steep and slippery.
“The cart is too full for one horse!” exclaimed a voice on the
embankment.
“Is that you, Antek?”
“Surely.”
“Then be quick; Hanka is expecting you.—But give us a helping hand now.”
“Wait awhile: I must get down first.—It is so dark that you can’t see
anything.”
They were up the embankment in no time, for the helping hand had pushed
so powerfully that the horse scrambled up at once, and only came to a
halt at the top.
“Thanks most heartily,” she said; “but, good God! you _are_ strong!”
And she stretched out her hand to shake his.
They were mute. The cart went on before them, while they walked on, side
by side, unable to find words, and both of them strangely agitated.
“Are you going back?” she asked in a low whisper.
“I shall only go with you as far as the mill, Yagna; the water has made
a nasty hole there.”
“Very dark, isn’t it?” she said.
“Are you afraid, Yagna?” he murmured, drawing closer.
“Why should I be?”
They were mute again, walking on shoulder to shoulder, side touching
side.
“How bright your eyes shine!... Like a wolf’s.”
“Will you come to the Klembas’ on Sunday for the music?”
“Will Mother allow me?”
“Do come, Yagna, do come!” he entreated her, in a strangled husky voice.
“Is it your wish?” she asked him softly, looking into his eyes.
“Why, Lord! ’twas I ordered the fiddler from Vola, only for you; and
only for you did I beg Klemba to let us have his cabin.” He spoke in a
low tone; his face was so close to hers, and his breath came so quick,
that she drew back a little, quivering all over with emotion.
“Go now—they are waiting for you—someone may see us.—Go!”
“Will you come?”
“I will—I will,” she repeated, turning to look at him as he went away:
but the fog had swallowed him up, and she only heard his feet, as they
squashed away through the thick slush.
Then an irrepressible shiver seized her; and yet it was a fiery blast
that went through her heart and brain. She knew not what it was that had
come upon her: her eyes were full of flames; her breath failed her; she
could not still the passionate throbbing of her heart. Instinctively she
stretched forth her arms as for an embrace: then stiffened herself,
taken with so wild a fit of sudden shuddering that she could have cried
out aloud. But she reached the wagon and, catching hold, gave it a
forward push with great though needless violence. The cart creaked and
lurched over, so that several cabbages fell out into the mud. But still
she saw before her that face, and ah! those eyes, so bright, so full of
ardent craving!
“He is not a man, he’s a whirlwind,” she mused blankly. “Can there be
such another in the whole world?”
She came back to her senses with the noise of the mill they were
passing, and with the roar of the water pouring over the wheel and under
the sluices; for those, owing to the high level of the water, had been
thrown open; with a noisy rush the stream rolled down, breaking up into
volumes of yeast-like foam that formed long white streaks on the broad
expanse of the river.
At the miller’s house, just by the roadside, a lamp had been lit and
placed on a table, whence it could be seen through the curtained
windows.
“They really have a lamp, just as at his Reverence’s or at some
manor-house!”
“For are they not rich folk?” said Simon. “They have more land than
Boryna himself; they put their money out at interest; and how they cheat
us when they grind our wheat!”
“They live like big landowners.... It is well for such as they.... They
strut about the rooms, they loll upon the sofas, and eat dainty food,
and make others work for them.” So thought his sister, but without
envious feelings, nor paying any heed to what Simon went on saying; who,
usually taciturn, now held forth on this subject at interminable length.
At last they arrived. In their bright warm cabin, a fire was blazing
merrily on the hearth. Andrew was peeling potatoes, and their mother
preparing supper.
Close to the fire sat a hoary-headed old man.
“Is all the work over, Yagna?”
“Only about three sheets full are still to be cut.”
She went into the inner room to change, and was back again at once,
getting things ready for the meal, all the time keenly and curiously
observant of the old man, who sat profoundly silent, looking into the
fire, while his lips moved and his rosary passed through his fingers,
bead by bead. When they sat down to the meal, the old dame placed a
spoon for him, and asked him to eat with them.
“Remain ye with God: I go,” he answered. “But I shall look in here
again, and perchance make a longer stay at Lipka.”
Kneeling down in the centre of the room, he bent before the holy images,
crossed himself, and walked out.
“Who is that?” Yagna asked.
“A saintly pilgrim. He comes from the Sepulchre of Jesus. This many a
year have I known him. He has been here more than once, and brought me
holy things from afar.... About three years since....”
She was interrupted by the entrance of Ambrose, who, after the usual
greetings, took a seat by the fire.
“It is so cold and wet that even my wooden leg feels numb!”
“Why wander so, in such weather, and in the night too?” Dominikova
grumbled. “You had far better have stayed at home and said your
prayers.”
“At home I was a-weary; so, coming out to see a girl or two, I came
first of all to you, Yagna!”
“Death is the name of the only girl for you.”
“Oh, _she_! she has forgotten me quite; she prefers dancing with the
young.”
“What do you mean?” Dominikova asked.
“That his Reverence has just carried the Holy Viaticum to Bartek over
the water.”
“Why, he was quite well when I saw him but now at the fair!”
“He has been so savagely cudgelled by his son-in-law that his liver was
ruptured.”
“When? and on what account?”
“On account of the land, of course. They have been at odds these six
months, and to-day at noon they settled the matter.”
“Why,” Yagna cried, “is there no judgment of the Lord upon such
murderers?”
“It will come,” her mother replied sternly, raising her eyes to the holy
images.
“Yes, but it will not bring the dead to life,” Ambrose muttered.
“Sit down, and share our board.”
“I have naught against that. I still can get through a dish—if only
large enough.”
“You think of nothing but jesting and drollery.”
“I have nought else in the wide world: why should I care!”
They seated themselves round the bench on which the two dishes—potatoes
and sour milk—had been put, and set to eating with the usual
deliberation and taciturnity, while Andrew saw to the pots’ being
abundantly supplied. Only Ambrose now and again said something funny, at
which he himself was the first to laugh.
“Is his Reverence at home?” Dominikova asked towards the end of the
meal.
“Where else, in such weather? Yes, at home, poring over books like a
Jew.”
“A learned, a most learned man!”
“And so good! The best man in the world,” Yagna chimed in.
“Ah, yes. No harm in him.... Takes care of himself, and hurts nobody.”
“That’s not the way to speak, Ambrose!”
They had done. Yagna had gone with her mother to where the distaffs were
fixed in front of the fire-place, while her brothers, as was their
custom, cleared away and washed and set things in order. Dominikova had
always ruled her sons with iron sway, and brought them up to do the
duties of girls, that Yagna’s beautiful hands might not grow coarse.
Ambrose lit his pipe, puffed up the chimney, and poked the embers, while
adding some faggots, with furtive glances at the womanfolk. He was
pondering over something and settling how to begin.
“I fancy you must have had a proposal or two.”
“More.”
“Naturally. Yagna is as pretty as a picture. His Reverence says there is
none so pretty in the whole village.”
Yagna blushed scarlet with delight.
“Did he say so?” quoth the old dame. “May the Lord grant him health! I
have long, long been getting money together for a votive mass: I will
have one sung directly.”
“There’s somebody that would like to send you a proposal; but he is
somewhat shy.”
“A farm-hand?” Dominikova inquired, turning the spindle swiftly, till it
fluttered about the floor.
“A man with a household under him. Comes of a good stock, but is a
widower.”
“What, nurse another’s children? Not I.”
“Fear nothing, Yagna; they are all well out of leading-strings.”
“Young as she is, why should she accept an old man? Let her wait for a
young one, if any such should come.”
“Oh, there are plenty. No lack of young men, no! Lads as straight as
arrows, smoking cigarettes, dancing in the tavern, swallowing drams of
vodka, and with a keen eye for any girl that has a few acres and a bit
of money. Wretched husbandmen, though, who rise at noonday, and in the
afternoon carry dung in a wheelbarrow, and till the land with a hoe!”
“I will not let my Yagna stoop to any such!”
“They say you are the wisest of us all; and they say true.”
“On the other hand—small delight can an old man give a young girl.”
“She may find young ones to delight her—not a few.”
She eyed him severely. “So reverend in years, yet so careless in talk!”
A pause ensued.
“He’s an honourable elder, and not greedy of other folk’s money.”
“No, no! naught but sin can come of it!”
“Well, but he might make a marriage settlement,” he continued, now quite
serious, and knocking the ashes out of his pipe.
The reply, when it came, was given with hesitation.
“Yagna has enough of her own.”
“He would give more than what he received; certainly more.”
“What’s that you say?”
“What I know. Neither the wind nor my fancy has taught it me: I come
here in another’s name.”
Silence again. The old housewife took a long time to straighten the
tangled flax on the distaff; then, wetting her left thumb and finger,
she drew out the long fibres, while her right set the spindle whirling,
flapping and whirring along the floor like a top.
“Well then, shall he send her his friends with vodka?”
“He? Who?”
“Know you not? He that dwells over there!” And Ambrose pointed to the
lights in Boryna’s hut, twinkling across the pond.
“His family are grown up: they will oppose it. Besides, they have a
right to their portions.”
“But he can always make a settlement with what is his own! He is a good
man, and no indifferent farmer; religious into the bargain. And hale!
Lord, I have seen the man heave more than two bushels of rye in a sack
on to his shoulders. Let your Yagna wish for anything in the world
except pigeon’s milk, and she will get it. And then, the lad Andrew is
next year to be a conscript. Now, Boryna knows all about official
matters, and whom to apply to, and may be of great use.”
“But how do you, Yagna, look upon this?”
“Indifferently.—If you say: ‘Marry him’ I will. It is for you, not for
me, to decide.” She spoke very low, her forehead touching her distaff,
while, looking vacantly into the fire, she listened as the faggots
crackled merrily.
“Well?” Ambrose queried, rising from his seat.
“Let his friends come”; the words dropped one by one from the old dame’s
lips. “A betrothal is not a wedding yet.”
Ambrose crossed himself and went out, making straight for Boryna’s
cabin.
Yagna was sitting dumb and motionless.
“Yagna dearest, what do you say to this?”
“Naught whatever; it is all the same to me. If you like, I marry Boryna;
if not, I stay with you.... By your side, I am very well off.”
Her mother spoke in subdued tones as she went on spinning:
“I would fain do all for the best, my dear. True, he is old, but strong
and hearty still. And, besides, he will treat you courteously, not as
other peasants might do. You will be the mistress and the head of his
house. Also, when he makes the settlement, I shall arrange matters so
that the land he will leave to us will touch ours.... And then, were the
amount only six acres—think of it, Yagna! six acres more!—And then
remember: you must marry, you _must_! Why should the tongues of all the
village gossips wag to defame you?... We should have to kill the
pig....” Here she broke off, and went on to settle other matters within
herself; for Yagna was spinning mechanically, as if she had heard
nothing said.
Was she, she mused, unhappy at her mother’s? She did what she liked; no
one ever said a cross word to her. Acres, settlement, possessions, nay,
even a husband—what did she care for them all? Were the lads who sought
her few in number? Had she a mind, she could bring them all to propose
to her the same evening.... Her mind was little by little being made up,
as was the flaxen thread she span; and as that thread turned in one
direction only, so she determined on one thing—to marry Boryna, if her
mother cared for the marriage—Yes; she liked him better than the rest:
had he not bought her a ribbon and a kerchief?—True; yet Antek, and
others as well, if they owned Boryna’s money, would do as much for
her.—No, no: let her mother choose, whose head was good at such things:
her own was not.
She looked towards the window, where the withered and blackened dahlia
bushes were tapping, lashed by the gale. By and by she forgot them,
forgot everything, forgot her very self, and fell into a state of
beatific inertness like that which now held the earth around her in
those deathly quiet nights of autumn. For Yagna’s soul was even as that
earth; as that earth, it had its abysses, dreamy, chaotic, known to
none. Vast it was, but unconscious of its own vastness; mighty, yet
without either will or desire or longing—inanimate, yet immortal; like
that earth, too, swept by every blast that took hold of her, and seized
upon her, and did with her whatsoever it listed.... And likewise, in the
springtime, the warm sun would awake her, and flood her with life, and
fill her with the quivering flame of desire and love; and like the
earth, her soul would conceive—it could do naught else; would live and
sing, rule, create, and annihilate its creations—it could do naught
else; it would exist—it could not but exist! Such was that hallowed
earth; such was the soul of Yagna, like unto that same earth.
Long did she sit thus, mute: only those eyes of hers were glittering as
still waters at noon in spring, or as gleam the stars.
Suddenly she awoke from her reverie: someone had opened the front door.
It was Yuzka, who rushed breathless into the room.
Shaking the water out of her clogs, she said: “Yagna, we have the
leaf-plucking to-morrow: will you come?”
“Of course.”
“We shall do the work in the big room. Ambrose is sitting there now with
father, so I made shift to slip out and let you know. There will be
Ulisia, and Mary, and Vitka, and all the other Pociotek girls. Lads will
be there too. Peter has promised to come and bring his fiddle.”
“Peter? Who is that?”
“The son of Michael who dwells beyond the Voyt’s house. He that returned
from the army when potato-digging began, and talks so queerly now, one
can scarce understand what he says.”[17]
-----
Footnote 17:
Four years in the Russian army, often in the very depths of
Russia, were wont to make havoc with a Polish peasant’s
mother-tongue.—_Translator’s Note._
After chattering on in this way, she ran off home.
Again the room was plunged in silence.
The raindrops pattered on the window-panes, like handfuls of sand thrown
upon them. The wind roared and played about the garden, or blew down the
chimney, till the brands on the hearthstone were scattered about, and
whiffs of smoke came into the room. But the spindles never ceased from
whirring about the floor.
Thus the long evening dragged on tediously, until Yagna’s mother began
to sing in a faint, quavering voice:
“May all that we this day have done...”;
Yagna and her brothers taking up the hymn in so high-pitched a key that
the fowls roosting in the passage clucked and cackled in chorus.