“O Lord! my mouth waters at the very smell!” sighed Vitek, sniffing greedily.
“Do not stand sniffing here, or I will know why!” cried Hanka. “Give the kine to drink, fill the mangers with hay, and put straw under them. ’Tis late already … when will you have done it all?”
“Pete is coming; I cannot do all by myself.”
“And whither has he gone?”
“What, know ye not? He is helping them to put things in order on the other side.”
“Oho!—Hey, you, Pete!” she cried, calling out into the passage. “See to the cattle for the night—at once!”
Her tone, as she gave that order, had been such that the man came out instantly into the yard.
“Let her stir herself and clean her own room at least! Look at her, that grand lady—will not soil her hands—must needs employ a manservant!” So said Hanka, in a towering passion, whilst pouring out a steaming potful of liver and chitterlings. The sound of a bell and a cart clattering by outside gave another turn to her thoughts.
It was the priest, carrying the Holy Viaticum to someone, as her father, old Bylitsa, who then came in, told her.
“But who can it be? No one was ill, so far as I know.”
“He has passed the Voyt’s cabin!” Vitek, out of breath, came shouting outside the window.
“To one of the komorniki? I think not.”
“Perhaps to your people, the Prycheks, Yagustynka; they live that way.”
“Ah, nothing ever was the matter with them, the miscreants; no evil ever comes nigh them!” she said, in a faltering voice: though constantly at odds with her children, she felt a quiver of anxiety.
“I’ll see how matters stand and return at once.” And she hurried out.
But the evening dragged on, and yet she was not back.—Ambrose, who had returned, said the priest had been called in to Agata, a kinswoman of the Klembas: she had come back from begging only the Saturday before.
“But how is that? Is she not at the Klembas’?”
“No; she has removed to die: either at Koziol’s or at the Prycheks’.”
There was no more talk then, for there was much work to get through, especially as both Yuzka and Hanka were often obliged to leave it for the byre or the stable.
It was dark outside, and irksome within.
A chilly rain was pelting, and the wind lashed the walls, whistled through the orchards, made the trees rustle and murmur, and sometimes blew down the chimneys, scattering firebrands about.
It was hard upon midnight when all the work was over—and Yagustynka had not yet returned.
“In such foul weather, she must have been loath to grope her way back!” Hanka thought, while she patrolled the premises before going to bed.
Truly, it had been a pity to turn a dog out of doors on such a night! The roof creaked with the wild blasts; all over the sky, brown masses of rain-clouds were pouring down their heavy burden of water; and nowhere on high was there the least twinkle of starlight. Everybody else had long ago gone to sleep; the wind danced and revelled in the fields, and swept great sheets of water from off the pond.
So they waited no longer for her, but went to bed.
She appeared the next morning, but as louring and sullen as the swampy miry day itself. She just warmed her hands at the cabin fire, and then made for the granary, to pick out seed-potatoes from the heap which had been dumped down on the threshing-floor.
She was mostly alone at that work, Yuzka having to go and scatter the dung which Pete had been carting since daybreak. Having been soundly rated by Hanka for sloth on the day before, he now, to make amends, stormed at Vitek, flogged the horses furiously, and made them splash through the mud at full speed.
“The rascal!” muttered the old woman. “To punish the horses because he himself was lazy!”
When Yuzka spoke to her, she gave her no answer, but sat gloomily, hiding her eyes red with tears under the apron she had thrown over her head.
Hanka looked in, but only once. She was waiting for Yagna to come out, that she might have an opportunity both to take the meat over to her own side, and to examine the corn-barrels. But, as if of set purpose, Yagna never left the hut.
Impatient, Hanka at last went in to see Boryna, and then—apparently seeking for something—she entered the larder.
“Whatever ye want I can find for you!” Yagna exclaimed, and, seeing her go in, followed before she had done more than plunge her hand into the corn.—Fruitlessly; but the money might be lying quite at the bottom. She left the place; and, certain that Yagna was on the watch, resolved to put off the attempt to a more convenient season.
“And now for the gifts we must make,” she thought, looking sorrowfully at the sausages that dangled in a row from a horizontal pole. Boryna and all the foremost husbandmen were in the habit, whenever they killed a pig, to send their next relations and best friends a sausage, or some other dainty bit.
“ ’Tis hard, in truth; but you can do no otherwise, or they would say you grudge them,” Bylitsa advised her, guessing aright what was in her thoughts.
In spite, then, of the temptation to shirk that duty, she put the intended presents on a number of plates and dishes, now substituting a larger for a smaller piece, now the reverse, now adding, now taking away a blood-pudding … and so on: until she had done, and, dejected and weary, called for Yuzka.
“Put on your best garments, and take these things round.”
“O Lord! what a quantity of meat is here!”
“What can I do? I must give it away. We have to live with folk.—‘Jack his flail can whisk alone, but not dance and frisk alone.’—This big piece take to Uncle’s wife. She hates and rates me; but there’s no help for it.—This to the Voyt:
