Hanka could not sleep a wink that night, after such manifold and painful
experiences. She continually thought that she heard someone creeping
about the premises, along the road, or even close to the cabin. She
listened. All the inmates were sleeping sound. The night was still,
though the trees murmured; but not very dark, for the stars gave a dim
light.
It was stiflingly close within. The ducklings, put to rest under the
bed, smelt unpleasantly, but Hanka would not throw the window open. Her
bed and pillows were hot beneath her, burning hot; she tossed from side
to side, more and more agitated, full of multitudinous thoughts swarming
in her brain, and drenching her with streaming sweat. At last, her fears
growing uncontrollable, she started out of bed, and went out barefoot,
in her shift, and bearing a hatchet that she had snatched up at
random—out into the yard.
Everything stood wide open there. Pete lay sprawling outside the stable,
snoring hard. The horses were munching their provender and clinking
their halter-chains; the cows, that had not been tethered for the night,
either wandered about the yard or lay chewing the cud with moist
dripping muzzles, and lifting towards Hanka their ponderous horned heads
and the dark balls of their unfathomable eyes.
She went back to her bed and lay down open-eyed, listening attentively,
and at times quite sure that she could hear voices and distant steps.
“Peradventure the folk of some cabin hard by are awake and talking,” she
said, attempting to explain matters; but no sooner had the panes turned
grey from black than she rose and went out again, this time with Antek’s
sheepskin thrown over her.
In the porch, Vitek’s stork was standing asleep, with one leg drawn up
under him, and his head thrust beneath his wing; and their flock of
geese, huddled together in the enclosure, formed a dim white mass.
The fields beyond were flooded with low-lying greyish fogs, out of which
only the highest tree-tops surged, like pillars of thick black smoke.
The pond glistened in the darkness like a huge sightless eye, fringed
with lashes of alders that rustled around it, while all the
neighbourhood slept, wrapt in the fog’s opaque invisibility.
Hanka sat down close to the house, leant back against the wall, and fell
into a doze. When she again opened her eyes, she saw with astonishment
that the night had gone; the clouds were all burning red like a distant
conflagration.
“If he has but started early enough, he will be here directly,” she said
to herself, looking down the road. Her short spell of slumber had so
much refreshed her that, to while the time away till sunrise, she took
out the children’s clothes to wash in the pond, while the light grew
stronger and stronger.
The first cock crowed, quickly followed by others, making a loud noise
throughout the village. Some larks too were heard, but at rare
intervals, while the whitewashed walls and the empty dew-drenched roads
gradually became distinct.
Hanka was busy washing, when a sound of stealthy steps drew her
attention; and as she looked around curiously, a shadow passed out of
Balcerek’s enclosure and slung away among the trees.
“Yes—’tis a visitor to Mary! who can it be?” She could by no means make
sure, for the shadow had vanished directly. “Ah! So proud a girl! One so
vain of herself and her beauty—to let in a sweetheart by night!—Who
would have thought it?”
She was scandalized. On looking about her again, she perceived the
miller’s man, gliding by, at the other end of the village.
“He is coming home, no doubt, from the tavern where his Magda
lives!—Those men! like wolves prowling in the night!—What doings, alas!”
She sighed, but a restless feeling quickened her senses now and stirred
her blood. This, however, presently passed away as she went on washing
in the cool water; and in a voice which, though subdued, thrilled with
intense fervour, she began the hymn:
“Soon as dawn blushes in the sky,
To Thee, O God, my voice shall cry!”
And the chant rolled over the fallen dew, and made one with the
approaching daybreak.
It was time now to rise: opening windows, clattering clogs, and loud
cries showed that the villagers were awakening.
Hanka spread out upon the fence all the things she had washed, and ran
to wake her people. But they were so heavy with sleep that their heads
but just rose and fell back on the pillow.
To her intense indignation, Pete shouted at her:
“Mother of dogs!—’Tis too early! I’ll sleep till sunrise!” And he
refused to stir.
The babies were crying, and Yuzka whined:
“Yet a little, Hanka dear! I went to bed but a minute ago!”
She then lulled the little ones to rest, drove the poultry into the
yard, waited patiently for a few minutes more, and then—just before the
sun had risen, when the heights of heaven were one mass of flame, and
the mill-pond reddened in the dawn—she returned to the charge, and made
such a din and uproar that the sleepers could not but get out of bed.
And when Vitek came scratching himself drowsily, and rubbing his back
against the corner of the hut, she chastised him well with sharp words.
“You’ll wake up fast enough with a first-rate drubbing!—Aye, and why,
you young hound! why did you not fasten the kine to the mangers last
night? Would you have them gore each other’s bellies in the dark, hey?”
He answered her back, but whipped out of sight in time, for she made a
fierce rush at him. Then, looking again into the stable, she set upon
Pete:
“The horses are mumbling their empty racks!—And you! you are lying abed
even till sunrise! O you idle one!”
“Ye scream as a magpie ere it is to rain,” he growled back. “Why, all
the village can hear your noise!”
“Let them hear! Let them all know what a sluggard, what a lazy drone,
what a dawdler you are!—Oh, but the master will be back now, and he’ll
keep you in order, I promise you!”
“Yuzka!” she now shouted from the other end of the yard. “Spotted One’s
udders are swollen hard: milk her carefully, and let not half the milk
remain, as you did last time.—Vitek! take your breakfast and be off; and
if you let the sheep stray—as you did yesterday—I’ll know the reason
why!”... So she went about, giving orders, bustling everywhere, and all
the time hard at work herself: feeding the fowls, and the swine that
were standing close to the cabin; giving a pail of thin batter to drink
to the calf just weaned; throwing the ducklings boiled groats, and
driving them off to the mill-pond. Vitek received a slap on the back,
and his food in a wallet. Nor was the stork forgotten; she set a pipkin
before him, full of potatoes cooked the day before; and he
_klek-kleked_, plunged his beak in, and ate with a hearty appetite.
Hanka was everywhere, and seeing to everything, and managing all in the
best way.
As soon as Vitek had gone off with the cows and sheep, she went over to
Pete, whom she could not bear to see idling about.
“Take all the dung out of the byre!” she ordered; “it is bad for the
cows at night, and fouls them all over: they’re as filthy as swine.”
Just then the sun’s red burning eye peeped at them from afar, and the
_Komorniki_ arrived to pay with their work for the flax and
potato-fields they had rented.
She set Yuzka to peeling potatoes, gave suck to her babies, put her
apron on over her head, and said:
“Keep an eye on everything here! And should Antek come, let me know: I
shall be in the cabbage-field.—Come, good folk, while it is still cool
and dewy. We shall first earth up the cabbages, and set to yesterday’s
work again after breakfast.”
As they walked on down by the old disused peat-diggings, a few lapwings
circled over their heads and some storks were wading about the low
marshy ground, stepping carefully, and thrusting their heads forward. In
the air there was a marshy smell, mixed with that of the sweet flag and
the sedges, with clumps of which the old peat-diggings were overgrown.
Then they set to work, beginning their talk (of course with the
inexhaustible topic of the weather) while they earthed up the
cabbage-plants, that had grown well, but were greatly infested with
weeds—towering dandelions, rank duckweeds, and even forests of thistles.
“‘What man needs not nor sows, most abundantly grows,’” said one woman,
knocking the earth from the roots of a weed.
“And all evil things likewise,” said another; “sin is sown by none, yet
the world is full thereof.”
“Because its life is sturdy!” Yagustynka struck in, to air her peculiar
views. “My dear! so long as man lives, sin shall live. Do they not say:
‘If sin you destroy, you kill all our joy’? and again: ‘But for sin
dearly cherished, long ago man had perished.’—It must, then, be good for
something, just as this weed is: our Lord made them both!”
This theology was sternly rebuked by Hanka. “What!... Our Lord make
evil? It is only man that, like a swine, mars all things with his
rooting snout.” And they said no more.
The sun was up in the sky now, and the mists had all disappeared, when
troops of other women came along from the village.
Hanka laughed at them.
“Fine workers! Waiting till the dew shall dry, lest they wet their
feet!”
“Not all are so eager for work as you are.”
“And not all are forced to work so hard,” she answered with a sigh.
“Well, your goodman is coming back: then will ye rest.”
“I have vowed, if he returns, to go to Chenstohova for the day of Our
Lady of Angels. And the Voyt tells me he is coming to-day.”
“The folk at the Bureau must know: so the news will be true.—But what a
number of people are off to Chenstohova on foot this year! The
organist’s wife is to be a pilgrim too, they say; and she tells me that
the priest is to come with the pilgrimage.”
Yagustynka made fun of the idea. “Who will carry his guts for him? He
will never do so by himself.—Nay, ’tis only a promise, as usual with
him.”
“I have been there several times, with the others, and should long to go
every year,” sighed Filipka—she from over the water.
“Everyone longs for a spell of idleness.”
“Oh, heavens!” she went on, paying no attention to the jeer; “’tis all
delight: everything along the road is so pleasant, so sweet to look on!
And ye gaze out upon the world, and hear so much, and pray so much
besides!... And one thinks for a few weeks that one has got rid of all
woes and all cares. One feels as though born again!”
“True, and many have told me the same,” said Hanka. “One is specially
under the loving influence of God’s grace.”
A girl was hastening towards them, slipping along between the bulrushes
and the thick clumps of alder. Hanka shaded her eyes, looked, saw it was
Yuzka, and heard her from afar crying, as she waved her arms:
“Hanka, Hanka! Antek is home!”
She flung down her hoe, and sprang up as if about to fly away like a
bird; but she mastered her feeling, let down her skirt which she had
tucked up, and, in spite of her rapture and her throbbing heart that
made her almost unable to speak, said as quietly as if she had not heard
any news at all:
“You will go on working without me, and come round to the cabin for
breakfast.”
The women looked at one another.
“Her calm,” Yagustynka said, “is only outside, lest folk should laugh at
her for wanting her goodman so badly.—I could not have mastered myself
so!”
“Nor I!—But God grant that Antek do not go wrong any more!”
“As he will now no longer have Yagna at close quarters, it may be that
he will keep straight.”
“O my dear! when a man scents a petticoat, he’ll follow it all over the
world!”
“’Tis a truth. There’s no beast so greedy to its own hurt as some men
are.”
So they talked, letting the work flag and all but come to a standstill.
Hanka meanwhile went on, conversing both with Yuzka and everyone she
met, though she knew but little of what either she said to them or they
to her.
“Has Roch come with him?” she would ask again and again.
“How many a time have I told you yes?”
“And how is he looking?—How?”
“How can I tell you that?—In he came and asked at the very threshold:
‘Where’s Hanka?’ So I told him and ran to fetch you—and that’s all.”
“And he asked after me!—May the Lord...! May he....” She was incoherent,
beside herself with gladness.
From a distance she perceived him, sitting with Roch in the porch, and
as soon as he saw her, he went out to meet her in the enclosure.
She advanced more and more slowly, catching at the roadside fence not to
fall, for her legs were giving way under her. She felt choked with sobs,
and her brain whirled so, she could only utter these words:
“You here!—Here at last!”—And she could speak no more for the tears of
joy that choked her.
“Here at last, Hanka dear!” He clasped her to his breast in a mighty
hug, full of the deepest affection and love. She nestled to his side
with an uncontrollable impulse, while her happy tears went streaming
down her pale cheeks, and her lips trembled, and she surrendered herself
all to him with childlike simplicity.
It was long before she could speak at all; but, indeed, how could any
speech ever express what she felt? She would have knelt to him, kissed
the dust at his feet; and when a word or two burst from her lips, they
were but like flowers falling before him as an offering, fragrant with
happiness, bedewed with her heart’s blood; and these her faithful eyes,
brimming over with illimitable love, would lay down at his feet, with
the fidelity of a dog that lives only in his master’s will and favour.
“You do look poorly, dearest Hanka!” he said, stroking her face with the
tenderest affection.
“No wonder, having suffered so much and waited so long!”
“Poor woman!” Roch here observed; “she has been worked sadly beyond her
strength.”
“Ah! and ye too are here, Roch! How could I forget you so?” And she
welcomed him, and kissed his hands, while he said, with a smile:
“Very easily!—Well, I wished to bring you your goodman home; and now
here he is!”
“Aye, here he is!” she cried, standing up before Antek and eyeing him in
admiration. For he was so much whiter now—so much more refined in his
strength—so beautiful, so lordly—as if he were someone else! She looked
at him in bewilderment.
“Have I changed in aught, that your eyes examine me so?”
“No, not changed ... and yet somehow not the same at all!”
“Oh, when I set to field-work again, I shall soon be once more just as I
was!”
And now, making a dart into the hut, she came out, bearing her
youngest-born.
“You see him for the first time, Antek!” she cried, as she lifted up the
boy, roaring lustily. “Just look: he is as like you as two peas.”
“A fine youngster!” He wrapped him up in the skirt of his capote, and
rocked him to and fro.
“I have given him the name of Roch!—Here, Peter, go to Father,” and she
pushed forward the other boy, who clambered on to Antek’s knee,
prattling childishly the while. Antek caressed him as tenderly as the
other.
“Dear little things! darling mites!—How Peter has grown!—And he talks a
little already....”
“Oh, and he takes such notice, and he’s so clever! Can he but get hold
of a whip, he wants at once to crack it at the geese!” She came kneeling
down beside them. “Peter! Come! Try to say ‘Dad’!”
He indeed said something dimly resembling the word, and continued cooing
to himself, and pulling his father’s hair.
“Yuzka,” Antek said, “why do you eye me askant so? Come hither.”
“But I dare not,” she said.
“Come to me, silly one, come to me!” And he folded her in a kind
brotherly embrace.
“And now you will obey me in all things, even as you did once obey
Father. Fear not: I shall never be harsh to you, and from me you shall
suffer no wrong.”
The girl burst into a flood of tears, remembering her lost father and
her brother who was drowned.
“When the Voyt told me of his death,” Antek said, “I was quite stunned
with grief. How dear he was to me! I never dreamed.... And I had already
arranged how we should divide the land; I had even thought of a wife for
him!” he said, sorrowfully; when Roch, to turn away their thoughts from
so sad a subject, exclaimed, rising from his seat:
“Talking is all very well, but not when the stomach cries famine!”
“Dear, dear! I had forgotten all about that.—Yuzka, just catch me those
two yellow cockerels.... _Tsip, tsip, tsip!_ come along!... Will you not
begin with eggs? Or a bit of new bread, and butter made but
yesterday?—Yes, cut off their heads and scald them in boiling water!...
I shall have everything ready in a moment.... What a ninny I was to
forget!”
“Let be, Hanka; the cocks will come in later. I would have something
more homely just now; something of the country, I am so fed up with town
food: give me potatoes and _barszcz_ of all things!” And he laughed
merrily. “Only get something else for Roch!”
“Thanks heartily; but both you and I have the same tastes as to that.”
Hanka went off to get things ready. But the potatoes were on the boil by
now, and she had only to fetch from the larder a huge sausage for the
_barszcz_.
“This I was keeping on purpose for you, Antek. ’Tis from the pig ye sent
me word to kill for Easter.”
“And a splendid festoon it makes, too; though with the Lord’s help, we
shall get through it!—But where are the presents, Roch, say?”
The old man hauled forward a large bundle, out of which Antek took a
variety of articles.
“Here’s for you, Hanka, whenever you would fare anywhither.” And he
handed her a woollen shawl—just like the one the organist’s wife had!—a
black ground, with red and green chequers.
“For me! O Antek, how good of you not to forget!” she cried, overwhelmed
with gratitude.
“Roch reminded me,” he confessed, “or I should have forgotten. We went
together to make our choices and purchases.”
They had bought a great many things: he had shoes for her besides, and a
silk kerchief for a head-dress: azure-blue, with tiny yellow flowers.
Yuzka got another just like it, but green; also a frill and several
rows of beads, with a long ribbon to tie them. There were gingerbread
cakes for the children, and mouth-organs as well; and there was even
something that he set apart unopened, for the blacksmith’s wife. Nor had
he forgotten either Vitek or the farm-servant.
And how they all exclaimed with admiration at each new marvel as it came
forth, and looked it over, and measured its size! How the tears of joy
ran down Hanka’s cheeks! and how Yuzka caught her head in her hands with
bewildered amazement!
“Well have you deserved all these presents. Roch told me how perfectly
everything has been managed on the farm.—Be quiet now, I did not come to
be thanked!” he cried, for they were all crowding to embrace him in
their gratitude.
“I should never have dreamed of buying any such beautiful things,” Hanka
said, still in the melting mood, as she tried on her new shoes. “They
are a little tight for me, now I go barefoot; but in winter they will be
just the thing.”
Roch asked her about the doings in the village. She answered, but in a
desultory way, being very busy with the food. In a short time she had
set before them a large dish of boiled potatoes, plentifully seasoned
with fat bacon, and another one, not a whit smaller, of _barszcz_, in
which there swam a huge sausage, looking for all the world like a
floating wheel.
And they fell to with an excellent appetite.
“That’s the food I like,” he cried, merrily; “lots of garlic to give the
sausage a taste! After that, a man feels he has something inside him.
But there, in jail ... they fed me so—devil take them all!”
“Ah! poor dear! how famished you must have been!”
“Aye, aye! towards the end I had no taste for anything!”
“The boys told us only a starving dog could eat what they gave them: it
is so?”
“There’s some truth in that; but the worst was staying locked up. In the
cold weather it was still bearable; but when the sun shone warm, and I
smelt the smell of the land—oh, then, how I raged! I even tried to tear
out the window-bars; but they prevented me.”
“Is it true,” Hanka asked in a trembling voice, “that they beat folk
there?”
“No doubt. But then the place is full of such villains, ’twere but
justice to flog them daily.—Oh, no one ever dared to lay a finger on me!
If anyone had ... well, I’d have made short work of him.”
“Yea, in truth! Who on earth could overcome you, you mighty one?” she
said, with eyes gloating over him, and attentive to the least signal he
should give.
They had soon finished their meal, and went out to sleep in the barn,
where Hanka had already carried them beds and pillows.
“I declare,” Antek said, laughing, “we shall both melt away like
dripping in that place!”
She closed the great barn-door upon them, and then gave way to her
feelings: to hide them, she went and weeded the parsley-bed, every now
and then looking around her, while the tears welled up. They were tears
of joy, shed—why? Because the sun beat hot upon her shoulders; because
the green leaves were fluttering over her; because the birds sang, and
fragrance filled her senses; and she felt so happy, so serene, so
blissful within her soul!—As if she had just returned from
confession—perhaps happier still!
“Thou, O Lord Jesus, hast done all this,” she murmured, raising her
moist eyes to Heaven, her soul filled with the deepest and most
ineffable gratitude for the great boon she had received.
“And all things have changed so wonderfully!” she sighed in ecstasy.—All
the time they slept, she remained as in a sweet trance. She watched over
them, as a hen does over her chickens; took the children far out into
the orchard, lest they should awaken the sleepers; and drove all the
animals out of the farm-yard, heedless if the pigs should root up the
new potatoes, or the fowls go scratching over the sprouting
cucumber-plants.
The day was painfully long, but there was no help for that.
Breakfast-time, dinner-time passed: still they slept. She sent all the
people to work, caring little whether they should or should not be lazy,
with her not by, and stood continually on the watch, or continually
tripping between cabin and barn.
And many, many a time did she take out the things he had brought her,
and try them on, and cry out:
“Is there in all the world another man so kind and so thoughtful as he
is?”
At last, however, she sped away to the village; and every woman she saw
she accosted with:
“Do ye know, my goodman has come back! He is sleeping in the barn now!”
Her eyes and face were radiant with smiles; everything in her breathed
such joy and exhilaration that they were all astounded.
“What spell can that jail-bird have thrown over her? Why, she is beside
herself about the man.”
“She will grow proud and stuck-up in a very short time: you will see!”
“Oh, but let Antek go back to his old ways again, and she will be taken
down finely!” So they gossiped.
Of all they said, she heard not one word.—She was back home presently,
and preparing a first-class dinner. But hearing some geese scream in the
pond, she ran out to silence them with a volley of stones; which nearly
brought about a quarrel with the miller’s wife, their owner.
She had scarcely sent the field-labourers their afternoon meal, when the
two men came out of the barn. Dinner was spread for them in the cool
shadow in front of the house. Beer and vodka were not lacking there, nor
even a dessert—half a sieve full of ripe red cherries, brought from the
priest’s house.
“A noble dinner!” Roch said, smiling; “quite a wedding-feast!”
“And should the Master’s return be a second-rate festival?” she
answered, busily serving them, and eating very little herself.
Dinner was hardly over, when Roch went out into the village, promising
to look in again in the evening; and Hanka said to her husband:
“Will you look at the farm?”
“Certainly! My ‘holidays’ are over; I must buckle to work now.—God! how
little did I think I should inherit my father’s land so soon!”
He sighed, and followed her. She took him first to the stable, where
three horses and a colt were snorting and stamping; then to the empty
cow-byre, and the granary, full of new-mown hay. He looked into the
sties too, and into the shed where all the various implements and tools
were stored.
“That _britzka_ must be taken in to the threshing-floor: its paint is
peeling off with the heat here.”
“So I told Pete more than once; but the fellow does not mind me.”
She called the pigs and poultry round her, priding herself on their
numbers; and then she told him about the field-work; what had been sown,
and where, and how much of each crop. When she had finished, he said:
“I can hardly think that you have done all this by yourself.”
“For your sake, I could have done still more!” she whispered, overjoyed
at his praise; and the whisper came hot from her heart.
“You have backbone, Hanka ... and plenty of it too!—I did not expect it
of you.”
“I had to, and needs must when the devil drives.”
After looking about the orchard, with its half-ripe cherries, and the
plots of parsley and onions, and the young cabbage-plants, they came
back; and as they passed the side where his father had lived he peeped
in at the window.
“And where’s Yagna?” he asked, seeing with surprise that the room was
empty.
“At her mother’s. I turned her out,” she replied in a firm voice,
looking him full in the face.
He knit his brows, pondered awhile, then lit a cigarette, and said
quietly and with seeming indifference:
“Dominikova is a bad animal; she will not be ousted without a lawsuit.”
“I hear they both went to lodge a complaint yesterday.”
“Well, well, ‘between complaint and sentence, there is a good long
distance’; but we must consider things well, and not let her play us any
tricks.”
She told him how it had all come about—of course, omitting many a
detail. He heard her out, put no question, and only frowned heavily. But
when she handed him the paper, he gave a sarcastic laugh.
“With that paper ye may as well ... why, ’tis worth absolutely naught!”
“How so!—It is the very same paper your father gave her!”
“What’s the use of a broken stick?—Had she annulled the deed at the
notary’s, that would have been something. It was in mockery she flung it
to you!”
He gave a shrug, took little Peter on his arm, and made for the stile.
“I am going to look at the fields and come back,” he said over his
shoulder, and at the hint she stopped short, much as she had longed to
go with him. As he passed the stack, now repaired and filled with new
hay, he glanced at it from under heavy eyelids.
“It was repaired by Matthew!” she called out to him from the stile where
she stood. “The roof alone required some scores of straw trusses.”
“Good, good!” he grunted in reply, and strode away through the potatoes
along the pathway, uninterested in such trifles.
The fields on that side of the village nearly all bore autumn-sown crops
this year: so he met but few people, and those he met he saluted curtly,
and passed on. But soon he walked more slowly, for Peter was beginning
to feel heavy, and the hot still weather acted strangely upon him. He
stopped to examine almost every field in particular.
“Ha! that weed is simply choking the flax!” he cried, observing the
patches of flax, azure-blue with flowers, but thickly strewn with the
yellow blooms of some weed.
“She bought her linseed unsifted, and sowed it unsifted too!”
Then he stopped close to the barley, stunted, parched and scarce visible
for the thistles, and camomile plants, and sorrels which grew there.
“They have sown in too wet soil.—That swine! he has ruined the field!
The rascal ought to have his neck twisted for tilling the land so. And
how it has been harrowed! Dog-grass and couch-grass everywhere!” He was
much displeased.
But presently he came to a vast expanse of rye, waving in the sunshine,
with heavy billowy ears of corn, sounding and rustling. This was a
set-off: it had grown magnificently, the straw was thick in the stem,
and the ears were full.
“It grows like a forest of pines! Ah, that was Father’s sowing.... Even
the Manor could show naught better!”—He plucked an ear, and rubbed it in
his hands. The grain was full and fine, but soft as yet, liable to be
ruined by a hailstorm.
But where he stopped longest to admire and feast his eyes was over the
wheat. The growth was not quite regular—in clumps here, in hollows
there—but the ears were all glossy, darkish in hue, dense-growing, and
large in size.
“A first-rate crop! And, though on rising ground, it has suffered not at
all from the drought.... ’Tis a harvest of pure gold!”
On arriving at the boundary, he gazed back. Away by the churchyard they
were mowing the clover, and the scythes moved flashing over the meadows,
like gleams of lightning. On the fallows flocks of geese were feeding;
men swarmed about like ants; and higher and farther still he could
descry lonely houses, trees hunched up, gnarled and drooping over the
roads; and again more and more vast lands fading into the distance, as
into a flood of bluish trembling water.
All was hushed in profound silence; the sultry air vibrated; it was, as
it were, an atmosphere of white flame, through which a stork might be
seen walking up and down, or poising itself on dropping wings; or a crow
flying past, with beak wide open, gaping with the heat.
On high there was but the intense dark azure, with a few white clouds
straying across it. But below, the dry burning wind made sport: now
whirling and staggering about like a drunken man; now starting up with a
sudden loud whistle; or, again, lurking somewhere away out of sight, and
then bursting out unexpectedly in the corn, which it teased and dashed
to and fro, and drove hither and thither in lofty billows—to disappear
again as suddenly, no one knew where, while the cornfields murmured in
low voices, as if complaining of its rough behaviour.
Antek, having reached his fallow at the skirt of the forest, had another
burst of indignation.
“Not yet ploughed up or manured! Our horses stand idle, the dung is
wasted in heaps ... and what does it matter to him, the dirty scamp?—May
all....” he swore fiercely, drawing nigh to the cross by the poplar
road.
But here, tired, slightly dizzy, and with his throat full of dust, he
sat down in the shadow of the birch-trees by Boryna’s Cross. Little
Peter had gone to sleep: he laid him down on his capote; and then,
wiping away streams of sweat from his brow, he looked out upon the
landscape, and fell into a reverie.
The first afternoon shadows of the forest were hesitatingly creeping
down to the corn. The tree-tops, glowing in the sun, were conversing one
with another, while the thickets of hazel and aspen below shook like men
sick with an ague. Woodpeckers pecked on incessantly; magpies were
shrieking somewhere unseen. And at times a bee-eater would flash athwart
the old moss-grown oak-trees—a flying fragment of rainbow!
A cool breath was wafted from within the quiet woodland recesses, into
which the sun but rarely shot his keen darts; it came, redolent of
mushrooms, of resin, of pools simmering in the hot blaze.
Suddenly a hawk was seen above the forest, circled over the fields, and,
poising itself for an instant, swooped down into the corn.
Antek sprang forward to balk it, but too late: a stream of feathers was
floating down, and the robber fleeing through the air, while below
partridges piped plaintively, and a terrified hare fled at random, its
white scut bobbing up and down.
“’Twas most featly done! A bold thief!” Antek thought, returning to his
seat. “Well, hawks too must get their food somehow. Such is the law of
the world!” he reflected, as he covered little Peter with his capote;
for there were numberless black wild bees and bumble-bees buzzing around
them.
He recalled those days of the near past, when he was longing so
fiercely, with such insatiable thirst, to be back in his fields once
more.
“How they tormented me, the villains!” he said with a curse. Then he
became quite motionless.—Just in front of him, a few quails, calling to
each other, put their heads timorously out of the rye, but popped back
at once, on hearing a band of sparrows alight upon a birch-tree,
fluttering, bickering, fighting, and flying down into the sand beneath,
with a great racket and hubbub ... when suddenly they all were silent,
as if rooted to the spot.—The hawk flew past again, so near them that
its shadow glided over the field beneath!
“Little brawlers! he has struck you dumb pretty quickly!” Antek mused.
“’Tis just the same with men. How many need only a threat, and are
hushed at once!”
Some wagtails came out upon the road, hopping so near that with a sweep
of his hand he almost caught one of them.
“I but just missed getting one of the silly creatures for the boy.”
And now crows came, one after another, flocking out of the forest,
pecking at anything they could find. Scenting a man, they began,
cautiously and holding their heads awry, to peer about and go round him,
hopping ever nearer and nearer, and opening their gruesome beaks.
“Oh, no! I am not to be a feast for you,” he laughed, throwing a clod at
them; and they, like thieves found out, fled away in silence.
But after a time, while thus gazing out on the country-side, his whole
soul attentive to every one of its sounds and sights, all the creatures
about him began to draw near him boldly. Ants ran over his back,
butterflies again and again settled in his hair, lady-birds walked about
his face, and great green caterpillars of the wood explored his boots
with lively interest; squirrels too, peeping forth from the forest,
their brownish-red tails high in air, seemed deliberating whether they
should not approach him. He, however, noticed none of them, plunged as
he was in a sort of dreamy state, which the sight of the country had
caused in his mind, and that filled him with indescribable sweetness.
He felt as though he were himself the very waft of the wind through the
corn, the very gleam of the soft green fleece of the grass, the rolling
of the streamlets over the heated sands, athwart the meadows redolent of
new-mown hay; he felt himself one with the birds flying high above the
earth, and crying to the sun with the great incomprehensible clamour of
Life: as if he had become the murmur of the fields, the tossing of the
pine-forest, the rush and mighty impetus of all growing things; also the
mysterious potency of that hallowed Mother, the Earth, who brings forth
all in joy and gladness. And he knew himself, knowing that he was all
these things in one—both what he saw and what he felt, what he touched
and understood, and what he could not even seize but by the merest
glimmering—that which many a soul will only see clearly at the instant
of death—besides that which only looms vaguely within the human soul,
and gathers and lifts it up to the unknown region where it weeps tears
of ineffable sweetness, and yet is weighed down as with a stone by an
insatiable craving.
But all these thoughts passed through his mind like clouds: before he
could grasp one clearly, another had taken its place, as absorbing as
the former and yet harder to understand.
He was awake, and yet he had a drowsy sense as of sleep coming to his
eyes; he was led somehow into a land of ecstasy, where he felt as one
feels at the most holy moment of the Holy Mass: when the soul floats
away in adoration, towards some garden where angels dwell, some happy
land—Paradise, or Heaven!
Though his was a hard tough nature, by no means given to sentiment, he
was nevertheless, during those unearthly moments, ready to fall
prostrate on the earth, kiss her with burning kisses, and take her to
himself in the most loving embrace.
“What is it that has wrought upon me so? It must be the change of
air—nothing else,” he grunted to excuse his feelings, rubbing his eyes
and knitting his brows. But indeed an overwhelming Power had seized upon
him: it was by no means possible to crush down that jocund serenity
which now flooded all his being.
He knew himself back in the land—_his_ land—yea, the land of his father,
of his forefathers: was it strange that he should feel his soul glad,
and that every throb of his heart should cry out aloud and joyfully to
the whole world: “Here I am once more, and here do I remain!”?
He pulled himself together, bracing himself to take up this new life, to
walk in his father’s ways and those of his ancestors before him: like
them, he bowed his shoulders to the yoke of heavy toil, to be borne
bravely, unweariedly, until little Peter should step into his place.
“It is the order of things that the young should succeed the old and the
sons the fathers, one by one, continually, so long as it shall be Thy
will, O merciful Jesus,” he thought, in deep meditation.
He bent his head over his hands, bowing it low; for many and various
thoughts had now come into his mind, mournful recollections which the
accusing voice of conscience now brought before him—bitter painful
truths that humbled him in the dust, as he acknowledged his
multitudinous transgressions and sins.
It was a hard thing, this confession of his, and he found it no easy
matter to appease his conscience; but he fought down his stubbornness,
conquered his pride, and looked back on his past life with true
repentance, examining every act with the utmost severity and fairness of
judgment.
“I have been naught but an infamous fool!” he thought with deep sadness,
while a bitter smile writhed his lips. “All in the world must take place
in due order. Aye, my father spoke wisely: ‘When all carts go the same
way, woe to him that falls from one; he will be crushed under the
wheels.’—But every man has to realize this by himself, with his own
reason; and this may cost very dear indeed.”
Sounds of lowing now floated from the wood; the cattle were coming home
amid great volumes of dust; oxen, sheep with their attendant dogs,
careful to keep them away from the corn; squealing herds of pigs, driven
home with many a blow; calves plaintively seeking their lost mothers; a
few herdsmen on horseback, and the others on foot with the flocks,
striking, shouting, and keeping up a stream of noisy talk.
Antek had remained with Peter on one side to let them pass, when Vitek
saw him and came up to kiss his hand.
“I see you have grown pretty well in these last times.”
“I have in truth. The trousers I got in autumn now come but just beyond
my knees.”
“All will be well; be sure that Mistress will give you a new pair.—Is
there grass enough for the kine?”
“Alas! no, it is all sere and drying up. If mistress had not fodder for
them at home, they could give no milk at all.—Pray let me have Peter,
for a little ride,” he added pleadingly.
“But surely he will fall off the horse!”
“Why, no: how often and often have I taken him about on our filly!
Besides, I shall be there to hold him.—How he loves riding and crying
out at the horse!”—He took the boy and set him on an old jade that was
plodding along with drooping head. Peter clutched at her mane with his
tiny hands, smote her flanks with his bare heels, and screamed aloud
with pleasure.
“A fine little fellow! O you dear boy of mine!” Antek exclaimed
admiringly.
And he at once turned off from the road, taking a short cut that led
straight to his barn, as the descending sun painted the sky with gold
and pale emerald-green, and the wind went down, and the falling dew made
the ears of corn to droop.
He walked slow, with many memories at his heels: Yagna among them, as
vivid as in life. He rubbed his eyes to get rid of the vision; but in
vain. In spite of him, she walked on by his side, as she once had done;
and as then, she seemed to shed around her such a delightful glow that
it made the blood rush to his head.
“Peradventure ’twas well Hanka drove her away! She is to me as an ulcer
in the flesh—a rankling ulcer!—But the past will never be again,” he
said, a strange pain gnawing at his heart; and he added, with stern
reproof: “My wild oats are all sown!” as he entered the enclosure.
In the yard they were busy over their evening labours, Yuzka milking the
cows outside the byre and singing a shrill ditty, while Hanka made
_kluski_ in the porch.
As Antek went in to look over his father’s apartments, his wife followed
him.
“After we have set things in order here, we shall remove to this
side.—Is there any lime to be had?”
“Yes, I bought some at the fair, and shall call Staho in to-morrow: he
will whitewash the place.—Certainly, we shall be more comfortable here.”
He peered awhile into every corner, thinking.
“Were you in the fields?” she asked him timidly.
“I was. All is in good order. Hanka, I could not have done better
myself.”
She coloured deeply with the pleasure of hearing him praise her.
“Only,” he went on to say, “let that Pete go and feed swine, not till my
ground! The good-for-nothing oaf!”
“I know him well, and have even been looking out for another
farm-servant.”
“Well, I shall tackle him, and—should he not be obedient—send him
flying!”
Hearing the children cry, she ran to them. Antek went into the yard to
continue his inspection of everything. He was so severely masterful of
aspect, that—though he only threw out a word here and there—Pete felt
alarmed, and Vitek, afraid to come near him, slunk about at a respectful
distance.
Yuzka, was milking her third cow, and bawling ever louder and louder:
“Still, Pretty One, be still,
And let me fill
The pail!”
“Why,” he called out to her, “you screech as if flayed alive!”
She was dumb for an instant; but, bold and daring by nature, she soon
struck up again, though in a less high-pitched key this time:
“My mother begs of thee
This evening not to fail:
Still, Pretty One, be still!”
“Can you not be quiet? Master is present!” Hanka said, reprovingly,
carrying some water for the cow to drink.
Antek took the vessel from her hands, and set it before the cow, saying
with a laugh:
“Screech away, Yuzka, screech away; you’ll drive all the rats off the
premises in no time!”
“I shall do just as I please!” she answered back sulkily, in a mood to
quarrel. But as soon as they had gone by, she ceased her song, though
she still eyed her brother askance, with a resentful sniff.
Hanka, busy with the pigs, carried them so many heavy tubs of mash that
he was sorry for her.
“That is too hard work for you; let the lads carry them,” he said. “And
I shall get you a wench besides; Yagustynka is of no more use to you
than the whining of a dog!—Where is she now?”
“Gone to her children, to make it up with them!—A wench? Well, one would
be handy; but the expense!—I could manage things by myself. But let it
be as you will have it.” It was surprising (so grateful she felt) that
she did not kiss her husband’s hand. In great glee, she added: “And then
I should be able to breed yet more geese, and fatten yet another swine
for sale.”
After revolving the matter in his mind, he came to this conclusion:
“Now we have a farm of our own, we must behave as becomes our condition,
and as our fathers have always done!”
After supper, he went outside the hut, to receive his friends and
acquaintances, who had come to welcome him back with great joy.
“We were looking out for you,” Gregory said, “even as the kite looks out
for rain.”
“Ah, well, they kept me there, they kept me, that pack of wolves! and
there was no getting away from them!”
All sat down in the shadow of the hut. There were lights on every side,
and bright stars overhead; the mill-pond murmured, moaning now and then;
and all around it the people were enjoying the cool of the evening.
Roch interrupted some commonplace talk with: “Know ye that the head
official has decided there is to be an assembly here in a fortnight, to
vote for a school?”
“Is that our business?” young Ploshka cried. “Let our fathers see to
it.”
Gregory took him up sharply. “’Tis easy enough to lay all on our
fathers’ backs, and lie lazily on our own! The reason things go so ill
in the village is that none of us younger men will trouble about them.”
“Let them make over their lands to us, and we will!”
This was an opening for a dispute, when Antek suddenly interposed.
“We certainly do need a school here; but we ought not to vote half a
kopek for such a one as the head official would give us.”
Roch seconded him strongly, urging them all to resist.
“Ye will each vote a _zloty_, and have to pay a rouble.... What about
the vote for the Law-Court Building, eh? They have fattened finely on
your money; their bellies protrude with a vengeance!”
“I am decidedly against the vote,” said Gregory, and, taking up some
books, he went to study quietly by Roch’s side.
There was little further talk after that; even Matthew spoke but few
words, only keeping his eye upon Antek; and they were about to go home,
when the blacksmith appeared. He had but just come back from the Manor,
he said, and fell a-cursing both village and villagers.
“And what ails you now?” asked Hanka, peeping out of the window.
“What, indeed?—I shame to tell it: our peasants here are all louts and
boobies! They don’t know their own mind.—The Squire behaved to them as
to men and landholders; and they, they acted like mere gooseherds. The
agreement had been made: naught was required but to sign it. Then one of
them scratches me his head and grunts: ‘Shall I ... or shall I not?’
Another would fain still consult his goodwife anew; a third sets to
whining for a bit of meadow adjacent to his land, that he wants given
him.—What can be done with such fellows?—The Squire is raging—will not
hear of the agreement any more, nor let any of the cattle from Lipka
graze on his lands, and will make anyone smart that sends them there.”
This unforeseen calamity dismayed them all, and they had no words too
strong for the guilty. Matthew said with sorrow:
“All this comes from the people’s having no leader. We are like stray
sheep!”
“Has not Michael pointed this out to them clearly enough?”
“Oh, Michael! He goes where gain is to be had, and holds with the Manor:
none therefore will trust him. They listen; but as to following what he
says...!”
Here the smith swore he cared only for the public good, even to giving
time and trouble gratis, that the agreement might be made!
“And if ye should swear that in church,” Matthew growled, “they still
would not believe you.”
“Let someone else, then, try,” he retorted; “we shall see how he
succeeds.”
“Yes, someone else ought certainly to try.”
“And who? The priest? Or the miller perhaps?” several men asked
ironically.
“Who?—Why, Antek Boryna! If he cannot bring folk to their senses, we
must give them up as a bad job.”
“I?—I?” Antek faltered, in confusion. “Will anyone hearken to me?”
“All will! You are an able man, and the foremost amongst us.”
“True it is!—Aye, aye!—You and none other!—We’ll follow you!” were the
cries that arose—not much to the smith’s taste, seemingly. He twisted
about, scratched his moustache, and grinned maliciously when Antek said:
“Well, well, they say: ‘Pot-making is for others than saints.’—I can but
try; and we’ll talk the matter over another time.”
Several, as they went away, took him aside, urging him to accept, and
promising their support. Klemba said:
“We must have someone to lead us, who has wits and a strong hand, and
honesty into the bargain.”
“And,” Matthew added, laughing, “who can command, and use a cudgel if
needful.”
Antek now remained alone with the smith; Roch had gone aside to pray
earnestly in the porch.
They talked matters over very quietly and very long. Hanka meantime went
about the hut, shaking up the bedding, providing the pillows with clean
slips, and making her ablutions as for some great solemnity; combing her
hair by the window, and peeping out at the two men with growing
impatience. She listened attentively, too, to the smith, who dissuaded
Antek from taking up such a burden, since he never could manage the
peasants, and the Squire was against him.
“That’s false!” she called out to him through the window. “He offered to
stand bail for you in court.”
“If ye know so much more about it, then let’s drop the matter,” he
cried, surly as a dog.
Antek rose, yawning drowsily.
“But,” his visitor concluded, “I’ll just wind up with this: you are only
at liberty till your trial; and who knows how things will go with you
then? In such a position, how can you meddle with other folk’s affairs?”
Antek sat down again, and was lost in a brown study. The smith did not
wait for his answer, but went home.
Hanka more than once looked out at Antek, but he did not notice her. She
at last called him in a tone of timid pleading:
“Come, Antek, ’tis bedtime; you must be very weary.”
“Coming, Hanka, coming!” he said, rising heavily.
She began to say her evening prayers with tremulous lips, while she
undressed in haste.
But he went in, sorely troubled, and thinking: “What shall I do if I am
sent to Siberia?”