Meanwhile, Hanka, on her side of the house, was telling Roch what had taken place. He listened patiently to her tale; but it was so incoherent and broken with sobs that he could scarcely make out a word, and rebuked her very severely. Putting aside the food she had set before him, he reached out for his cap, in great indignation.
“I am going away, never to set eyes on Lipka again, since ye behave thus! Oh, how all this must rejoice the Evil One, aye, and those Jews who make a mock at us Christians, calling us brawling idiots! O merciful Jesus! was there too little of distress and sickness and starvation, that, to crown all, women must also fly at one another!”
He stood panting after this appeal; and Hanka, seized with contrition and dread lest he should leave them in anger, kissed his hand and earnestly begged for pardon.
“Ah!” she added, “if ye but knew how hard it is to dwell with her! She does everything to spite and injure me. … Her very being here is a wrong done to us all! … So many an acre of land made over to her! … And then—know ye not what manner of woman she is? and what she does with young men?” (No, it was beyond her power to bring in Antek’s name.) “And now,” she added with bated breath, “they say that she is sinning with the Voyt!—Therefore, when I behold her, all within me seethes with hatred, even to slaying!”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord! She too is human, and she feels it, if any do her wrong. And for her sins she must some day suffer heavy chastisement. I tell you, then, do no wrong to her.”
“What! have I wronged her in aught?”
She stood amazed, unable to conceive in what way Yagna could have suffered wrong at her hands.
Roch ate a morsel of bread, looking out into vacancy meanwhile, and thinking deeply. At last he departed, after having patted the heads of the little ones that came to his knees.
“One of these days, I shall look in again at eventide. But now I say to you only this: Let her alone, do your duty, and our Lord will see to all the rest.”
IV
Roch, grieving bitterly over all the evil in the village, walked slowly on along the shores of the pond. Yes, things were so bad in Lipka that they could not possibly be worse.
That diseases prevailed; that some died of starvation; that quarrels and fighting were rife amongst them; and that death was now taking a heavier toll than in preceding years: all that was not the very worst. To such things the people were accustomed, and bowed to them as to the inevitable. The worst of all was this: that the fields lay untilled, there being no one to till them.
The spring had come, with all her train of birds, now returning to their last year’s nests; the fields were drying on the uplands, the waters draining away everywhere; and the land simply cried out to be ploughed, and manured, and blessed with the sacred blessing which the sower gives.
But who could go afield? All had gone to prison. Only women remained, with neither vigour of arm nor of brain to do things aright.
Moreover, for some of them the time of childbirth had arrived, as is usual in spring; and cows were calving, fowls hatching, swine farrowing. Then it was the season to sow and plant the gardens. Potatoes awaited selection, dung had to be carted, water drawn off from the fields. Without men to help, they could never do all that, even should they wear their arms to stumps. And besides, feeding and watering cattle, cutting straw for fodder, chopping up fuel or bringing it in from the forest, and a thousand other duties (such, for instance, as caring for the innumerable children running about everywhere)—ah, well! it was wearing toil, O Lord! and in the evening one’s bones and loins ached grievously, and not half the work done!
And the land lay there, expectant. Warmed by the sun, dried by the breezes, drinking in the soft fertilizing rains and the sweet influence of those spring nights, it began to teem with green blades of thick grass, and wheat swiftly sprouting. Larks trilled over the plains, and storks wandered in the wet meadows, and many a flower in the marshes now raised its head towards the shining sky; that sky which daily, like a beautiful tent spread out above them, seemed to rise higher and farther from the earth. And now their longing eyes could distinguish far away the sharp outlines of woods and hamlets, never visible in the dusky days of winter; and the whole countryside, awaking as out of a death-trance, arrayed itself joyfully like a bride for her wedding-day.
Everywhere around Lipka, as far as the eye could see, men were hard at work. Whether in fair or in rainy weather, the air thrilled with merry songs, ploughs glittered athwart the fields, men were trudging, horses neighing, wagons rumbling blithely. Only the fields of Lipka lay waste and silent, like a vast mournful burial-ground.
Over and above all this, anxiety for the dear ones in prison tortured them.
Hardly a day passed by without several people trudging to town, bearing bundles of food on their backs for the captives, and vain requests that they, being innocent, should be set free.
In short, the state of the village was deplorable; and the men of the vicinity now began to see that the injury done to their neighbours was also done to the whole peasant class. “Only apes are foes to apes,” they said; “we, who are men, ought to stand up for our brethren, lest the same fate befall us likewise.”
So it
