Soon, however, the clatter ceased, and melancholy reigned throughout the village.
Yes, melancholy! notwithstanding the bright sun on high, and that pond as of glass mingled with fire, and the trees all bathed in aromatic perfumes and brilliantly fresh green tints, and the quiet loveliness of spring now spreading over the world—the blue haze on the vast rolling plain, the larks that sang, the far-off villages tremulous under the blaze of day, and resounding with loud pistol-shots and merrymaking!
Lipka, Lipka alone, was sad, abandoned, forsaken; and the hours there crept drearily and wearily by.
Noon was at hand, when Roch went over to Boryna’s, to see after the sick man, and have a talk with the children, and sit in the sun. He read for a while, often lifting his eyes to the road, and presently saw the smith’s wife come in with her little ones. She sat down outside the hut, after having looked in at her father’s.
“Is your goodman at home?” Roch asked her after a pause.
“Oh, no! Gone to town with the Voyt.”
“All Lipka is there today.”
“Aye, and the poor sufferers will have some morsels of the Hallow-fare to comfort them.”
Yagna was just going out.
“What!” he exclaimed. “Have ye not gone to town with your mother?”
“And what business have I there?” she returned, stepping out of the enclosure, and looking wistfully along the road.
Magda sighed. “She has a new skirt on today!”
“ ’Twas Mother’s!” Yuzka told her sullenly. “Did ye not see that? All those coral and amber beads on her bosom were Mother’s as well. The kerchief on her head is her own—nothing else!”
“True. So many a thing have his dead wives left him! He never would let us touch any; and now all are hers, to strut about in!”
“Yet she railed at them the other day—told Nastka the garments were mouldy and noisome!”
“Oh, may they smell of devil’s dirt to her!”
“Let Father but be healed! … I shall tell him instantly about the corals. … Five strings of them there were, every one as long as a whip, and each bead as big as the largest pea!”—And Magda, having said her say, heaved a deep sigh, and spoke no more.—Yuzka slipped away; Vitek, outside the stable, was busily constructing a toy something like a cock; while the children played in the porch with the dogs, under the eyes of old Bylitsa, who watched over them as a hen over her chickens.
“Is the fieldwork here finished?” Roch inquired of him.
“Aye, as far as pea-sowing and potato-planting go: no more.”
“Few folk here can say as much.”
“All will be well, we are told: the men are to be set free on Low Sunday.”
“Who, then, knew so much … and said it?”
“ ’Twas a whisper that went about the congregation.—And Kozlova is to go and beseech the Squire!”
“The more fool she! Was it the Squire who cast them into prison?”
“His intercession might set them free.”
“Once he did speak, but naught came of it.”
“Had he but a little goodwill! But my goodman says he hates Lipka, and will do naught for us. …” Here Magda broke off abruptly, and became more interested in her children, and Roch listened in vain for any more information from her.
“And when,” he asked with interest, “when is Kozlova going to him?”
“At once, as soon as noon is past.”
“Well, then, all she will get of it will be a walk and some fresh air.”
She did not reply. Just then, the Squire’s brother, Mr. Yacek, commonly held to be somewhat feebleminded, came in from the road into the enclosure, with his long yellow beard and wandering eyes, bowed down, pipe in mouth and violin under his arm as usual. Roch went out to meet him. They surely must have been well acquainted; for they went and sat together on the stones by the shore of the millpond, and talked so long that it was well into the afternoon when they separated. But Roch came back to the porch, out of sorts and gloomy.
“That gentleman,” Bylitsa remarked, “has grown so thin, I scarcely knew him.”
“Did ye know him of old, then?” said Roch, dropping his voice as he glanced at the blacksmith’s wife.
“To be sure, I did. … He was a gay youngster once upon a time. … Aye, and a sad fellow with the wenches. … In Vola, they said, not one of them slipped through his fingers.—Ah, and I remember what splendid horses he used to ride—and what a rake he was.—Aye, aye, I remember well,” the old man said maunderingly.
“For that he is now doing a sore penance. A sore penance, I say.—Are ye not the oldest man in the village?”
“Nay, Ambrose must be older: I cannot remember him but as an old man.”
“He himself,” the smith’s wife put in, “says that Death has overlooked him.”
“No, Dame Crossbones never overlooks anyone; but she leaves him to the last, that he may repent. For he is greatly hardened.”
Bylitsa continued, after a long silence: “I remember the time when there were no more than fifteen peasants’ farms in Lipka.” He moved his hand hesitatingly towards Roch’s snuffbox, which the latter offered him at once, saying:
“And now there are a couple of score.”
“So the land must be divided again and again. Whether the harvest be rich or poor, the folk must always grow poorer. Ye cannot make the land to stretch. Yet a few more years, and there will be too little for us to live upon.”
“In truth, we are straitened enough as it is now,” the smith’s wife observed.
“Yes; and when our lads marry, there will be no more than one acre apiece for their children.”
“Therefore,” Roch said, “they will have to go abroad.”
“And what will they do there? Shall they clutch at the winds, and grasp them in their bare hands?”
“But,” he somewhat ruefully observed, “there are some German settlers who have purchased land of
