The whole countryside looked like a boiling pan, brimming over with white liquid, bubbling and frothing and foaming and steaming; while, with the night, there came multitudinous voices, rising up from the ground, hissing loud overhead, thunderous afar off: sounds like the swishing and cracking of many whips—forest-music as the organ’s low rumbling drone at the Elevation—wild long howls that rent the air—cries as of birds, wandering and lost—horrible noises as of unearthly weeping and sobbing; and then silence again—and then the keen dry whistling of the wind in the poplars, that tossed to and fro in the turbid snow-charged air, like fearful phantoms, raising their arms to Heaven!
And Hanka dragged herself along, almost groping her way from poplar to poplar, often stopping to rest, and listening to those weird voices of the evening.
At the foot of one of those poplars, she saw a hare crouch, dark against the snow. At her approach it fled into the snowstorm, which seized it as with the talons of a bird of prey; and it squealed pitifully in its clutch. Hanka cast a glance of sorrowful compassion at the poor beast as it fled.—She could hardly move now, and with great difficulty lifted one foot after another through the snow. The burden weighed her down inexorably; and she often fancied she was bearing on her back the winter, the snow, the winds—everything, in a word; that she had everlastingly been thus walking on, with her sad, bleeding, weary soul, and would continue thus till Doomsday. The road seemed to be lengthening out endlessly, the weight she bore crushed her; she stopped to rest ever more frequently, and with ever longer halts, half insensible as she was. Her face was burning: she cooled it with snow, rubbed her eyes, braced herself up as well as she could, and went forward to plunge again into that shrieking, bellowing conflict of the elements. But she wept abundantly; the tears gushed forth from her heart, that deep hidden fountain of sorrow: from the very bottom of her heart thus torn asunder, there came the desperate outcry of a creature hopelessly lost. Yet from time to time she would pray, uttering her prayers in a mournful tone, and breathing them out in detached words and phrases. So will a bird, freezing to death, now and again flap its wings; and then, bereft of all strength, alight upon the ground, hop forward a little, chirp a little, and settle down once more in mortal drowsiness.
And so she again set to hurry on with her last remaining strength, stumbling into snowdrifts, sometimes sticking fast in them, but always going onwards, seized and scourged with a sudden fear and alarm, as she thought of her children.
And now the wind brought her a tinkling sound, and the noise of sledge-runners and men’s voices, but so brokenly that, though she stopped to listen, she could not make out one word. Someone, however, was certainly driving in her direction; and at last she saw the horses’ heads distinctly through the snow-mist.
“It is father-in-law!” she whispered; for she had made out the white spot on the filly’s forehead. Then she waited no longer, but turned round to go on.
She had not been mistaken. Boryna, along with Vitek and Ambrose, was on his way back from the district court. They drove slowly, it being difficult to get through the drifts: in some places they had been forced to alight and lead the horses. They seemed to have been drinking, for they were talking and laughing aloud, Ambrose now and then trolling out some snatches of songs.
Hanka got out of their way, and drew her kerchief down over her face, but could not prevent Boryna from recognizing her at once as he drove past, whipping his horses up to get along more quickly. They dashed on, but were stopped by another snowdrift. Then he looked round and pulled up. When she was again visible and abreast of his sledge, he called out to her:
“Throw your firewood in behind, and get up here: I’ll take you home.”
She had been so accustomed to do his bidding that now she did it instinctively.
“Bartek has given a lift to Bylitsa, who was sitting and weeping under a tree; they are close behind us.”
She answered nothing, but looked round gloomily at the raging chaos of night and snowstorm as she dropped into the front seat, as yet only half conscious. Boryna eyed her with careful scrutiny. She looked so wretched that now she was a painful sight, with her livid frostbitten face, and eyes swollen with tears, and her mouth set in firm resolve. Shivering with cold and weariness, she vainly tried to wrap herself up in her tattered shawl.
“Ye ought to beware: in such a condition, an illness might easily take you.”
“And who will work in my stead?”
“What! go to the forest in such weather as this?”
“We had no more fuel at all, and could not cook our meals.”
“Are your little ones well?”
“Little Peter was ill for a fortnight, but has quite recovered now, and could eat twice as much as I give him,” she answered, now at her ease and recovering from her state of prostration. Throwing her shawl back, she looked him calmly in the face, without any of the scared meekness of former times. The old man guessed that a transformation had taken place in her, and wondered at it
