But there were other days, too, totally unlike these.
Sunless, foggy, of a livid grey, with bellying clouds low down in an air so dense that it turned the head like strong drink; and the trees tossed and rocked, and all things swelled with indistinct cravings towards they knew not what: men only longed to shout, to yawn, to roll about the wet meadows of lush grass, like the silly dogs around them!
Then there were days of rain, that commenced with dawn, with a hempen funeral pall over everything, making the roads invisible, as were the cabins too, buried in their drenched orchards. And steadily it fell, in regular tremulous grey threads that seemed unwound from an unseen spindle between sky and earth; while everything bent patiently beneath the streaming downpour, and hearkened to the many-voiced bubbling of the rills, white with foam, that ran down the dark-hued fields.
But this was a customary thing, to which no one paid heed, all going forth to work at peep of day, and coming home late in the dusk, having had scarce time enough to swallow a morsel and breathe awhile.
For whole days, then, Lipka stood abandoned, with only a few old people to guard it. Sometimes a dziad would drag his aged limbs along the way, or a cart jog on to the mill; then all was deserted once more, and Lipka stood plunged in the ever-thickening greenery of its orchards.
So the days crawled by, full of hard toil, not always warm, sometimes even snowy. Small wonder if there was no noise or quarrelling in the place: they had no time for that, and every neck was bent beneath the heavy yoke of labour.
As soon, then, as morning opened its heavy eyes, and the first lark piped up, the whole village sprang to its feet with noise and din and cries of children and screams of driven geese; horses were brought out and harnessed to the plough, potatoes carted away to the fields in sacks—and lo! all was silent anew! Even Holy Mass had but a scanty attendance, and often the organ, played in an empty church, was heard only by those in the neighbouring fields, and men knelt down there to say their morning prayers when the tinkling bell announced the beginning of the service.
All worked hard: yet the land seemed as untouched as when they were not there. Only a close observer could have descried here and there a plough, with horses straining forwards along the furrows—a cart moving on the field-paths—or women, like red caterpillars, digging away in the vast plain under the bright vault of sky.
Around them, in all the hamlets visible above the orchard-tops—white walls on a blue-grey background—the air vibrated with roars and shouts and songs of toilers. To the very hills at the skyline, the eye could see hosts of peasants, sowing or guiding the plough, and folk busy planting potatoes, and pillars of dust rising up on sandy soil wherever the harrow passed.
The Lipka lands alone, smitten as it were with the scourge of barrenness, made a mournful exception. There they lay, alas! all but fallow; for ten women, were they to strive and sweat from daybreak till night, could not do so much as one single man.
By themselves, for what were they fit? Only for delving or hoeing, to plant potatoes or flax. Over the rest of the lands the partridges piped undisturbed, ever bolder and bolder; or a hare would be seen running, but so deliberately that you could count the white flashes of its scut; or flocks of crows would fly flapping over slope and hummock.
What though the days were marvellously fine, rising like golden monstrances dipped in silver light? What though, luxuriant in verdure, they brimmed over with warm fragrance, and were made melodious by the voices of many birds, where every ditch was all full of the gold of the dandelions; where every field-path was transformed into a green ribbon embroidered with daisies, and the vast plain sprinkled all over as with a rosy dust of flowers? What though each tree was oozing and dripping with the most lovely verdure, and the whole world simmered, bubbling over with the great seething of the spring!
For round Lipka the lands lay untilled, unsown, unmanured, like lusty young swains basking lazy in the sunshine: and on their rich fruitful surface, instead of corn, wild marjorams began to peep forth, thistles grew apace, rusty sorrel plants rose up; the charlock spread amongst the autumn-ploughed fields, and mulleins and burdocks swarmed in the stubble. All those parasites of the farmers’ crops, taking courage, were now creeping on far and wide, and where they had hitherto skulked about in fear and trembling, they came up boldly and grew fast, invading and conquering the ground, furrow by furrow.
It was depressing to look upon, that waste and lonely land!
It seemed as though the forests, bending down from the hills they crowned; and the brooklets that wound timidly through those deserted plots and patches; and the blackthorn thickets already swelling with their white flower-buds; and the wild pear-trees, scattered along the field-paths; and the birds of passage; and the solitary wanderer from foreign parts; and even the crosses and statues of saints that watched by the roadsides—as though they were all looking on astounded, and inquiring of the sunny days and the plots running to waste:
“Whither have the peasants gone? Those songs, those bursts of merriment, where are they? What has come over Lipka?”
The women’s wailing alone told them all.
So things went on, with no change for the better, rather for the worse; because the women, unable to get even with the homework, came more
