Never had he once looked upon her: he had eyes only for his father, for Hanka, for the children—and for the dog!
It was that, possibly, which had quenched all her love for him. And so, when he was taken away in irons, he had appeared to her as someone else—as a stranger. She could not find it in her heart to grieve for him; and she eyed with grim pleasure Hanka, tearing her hair, beating her head against the wall, and howling like a dog when her puppies are drowned.
She spitefully enjoyed her agonies, while turning away in disgust from the dreadful madness in Antek’s face.
The man he was now she could not so much as remember distinctly, any more than the face of some person she had seen but once: so great was the estrangement between them!
But she recollected all the more clearly the Antek of old—of those loving days—days of trysts and embraces, of kisses and raptures—him for whom her whole being yearned again and again when she woke at night, and her heart, bursting with passionate grief, cried out aloud to him, wildly moaning and longing.
To him of those past days of bliss did her soul cry out; though, indeed, was he anywhere now in the wide world?
Just then he was present—living in her mind—a most sweet vision, when suddenly Hanka’s shrill voice drove him from her.
“That woman makes a din like a dog flayed alive!” was her mental comment as the vision faded.
The sun’s rays were peeping in obliquely, reddening the murky room; birds warbled; and as the warmth increased, the night’s white frost fell in crystal drops from the roof, while she could hear the geese screaming and splashing in the pond.
She set the room in order, for it was Sunday, and she would presently have to get ready for church, and prepare the palm-boughs for the ceremony. She had the red osier shoots, cut the day before, and covered with silvery buds, standing there in a water-jug; and she was about to bind and adorn them carefully, when Vitek shouted through the door:
“Mistress says your cow is lowing for want of food, and you are to feed her.”
“Tell her my cow is no business of hers!” she returned, at the top of her voice, and listened to what the other would scream in reply.
“Oh,” she thought, “you may yell till you’re hoarse: ye will not put me out of humour today!”
And thereupon she began to choose at leisure the dress she was to wear to church. But a sudden dreary thought came to cloud her bright sky and make the whole world sombre for her.—Why should she attire herself at all?—for whom?
For those hateful women, whose eyes would count the cost of every ribbon, whose tongues would cover her with foul aspersions?
This painful reflection made her turn away from her dresses, and she set about combing her abundant locks, as she gazed mournfully out of the window at the village, bathed in sunshine and agleam with dew; at the white cabins, visible behind their orchards, with plumes of blue smoke crowning their roofs; at the red wavy shadows of many a woman’s petticoat, glancing through the green of the trees on the shore, both reflected in the waters; at the geese, which seemed to swim in long lines athwart the azure image of the sky and form dark semicircles, uncoiling themselves like snakes; and at the white-bellied gleaming swallows, sweeping down and up again along and above its surface.
Then she looked away from all these, and up to the dark-blue sky, wherein the clouds moved like a flock of woolly sheep on a pasture-ground; and, far above, birds were flying unseen, so high that only their long plaintive thrilling cry was to be heard—a sound that filled her heart with such sadness that her eyes grew dim, as she cast them down and gazed on the world around her, on the rolling water and the waving trees. Only she now saw nothing in them but the echo of her own dejection, that caused the tears to start on her pale cheeks, dropping down one after another, like the beads of a broken rosary, that fell out of the innermost core of her heart!
What was it that now came over her?—She had no idea herself.
Something, she felt, was seizing her, lifting her up, carrying her away—an invincible longing; and whithersoever it should take her, thither she would go without fail. So she wept on involuntarily and almost painlessly: thus a tree, laden with blossoms, warmed by the sun and waving in the breezes of a springtide morning, drips with abundant dew, draws life-giving sap from the soil, and lifts its boughs and blossoming sprays.
“Vitek!” the shrill voice of Hanka was crying again. “Ask the lady there if she will kindly come round to breakfast.”
Yagna woke up from her trance, wiped her tears, finished combing her hair, and hastened in.
They were all sitting at breakfast in Hanka’s room. The potatoes smoked in a huge dish, over which Yuzka had just poured a quantity of cream, fried and seasoned with onions; they had set to lustily, and all the spoons were hard at work.
Hanka had taken the first place, in the middle; Pete sat at one end, Vitek squatting on the floor beside him; and Yuzka took her meal standing and seeing to the service. The children were enjoying a well-filled platter by the fire, and at the same time using their spoons to keep off Lapa, that wanted to eat from their dish.
Yagna’s place was near the door, opposite to Pete.
The meal was a dull one, taken with downcast eyes most of the time.
Yuzka tried in vain to rattle away after her fashion; Pete came in now and then with a word, and
