Hanka paid such attention and had such an eye to all their needs that, during the plentiful supper she had had prepared and laid out over a clean white cloth on the table, her folk were continually dancing attendance on them. As to Yagna, who had made a first-class toilet for the occasion, she was in the seventh heaven, her eyes simply glued on the younger of the two men.
But when Yagustynka whispered: “He has only his own ladies to think of; a barefoot lass is of no account to him!” she turned very red, and hurried out to her own room.
It was then that Roch came in to take a look at the table.
“How amazed our men will be,” he said, “to learn that the Rzepki folk have come to help them!”
“If we fought you in the wood, it was no private concern of ours: therefore do we bear no grudge,” the elder of the two replied.
“Whenever two men come to blows, a third is sure to gain thereby!”
“Roch, ye say true. And if these twain make friends, may not that third have to smart for it?”
“He may. Sir, you speak most wisely.”
“What Lipka must bear today, may be Rzepki’s burden tomorrow.”
“Every village must be a prey to the foe, my good sir, if they wrangle amongst themselves, instead of uniting. Wise friendly neighbours are as sure a defence as walls and palings: no swine can pass to root in their fields.”
“We, Roch, know that; but our young men do not as yet, and there’s the pity of it.”
“Ah, but the time is coming, honoured sir: they become wiser!”
And thereupon they went out into the porch, where Pete was playing on his fiddle for the girls who had gathered to hear him.
The night was quiet, with but little wind; white mists were hovering over the lands, the lapwing piped in the morass, and the cluttering of the mill-wheels went on as ever. But Lipka was noisy for a long while, with laughter and merry whispers, and walks and talks by the millpond, men and girls together; while their elders, sitting in front of their cabins, chatted with the older guests, and enjoyed the rest and the cool air.
Everybody was afoot the next day, almost ere the sky had begun to redden in the East.
The day was clear, and, as the night had been frosty, made the landscape gleam like silver out of the cold shadows of the chilly morning. Birds were screaming, trees murmuring, waters gurgling; and the gale that shook the thickets carried away with it rattling, bawling, roaring sounds, and the songs of the lasses as they went to work.
For some time, the fields lay frosted under the dawn, lost in sound sleep, pregnant with swelling life; but the workers soon pressed in on every side upon those slumberous strips of land, now drowned in sun-soaked dust-clouds, and silently attacked every patch. And now, from the soil, and the trees, and the grey-blue distances; from the glittering reaches of the brooks, and the red-hot disk in the skyey vault—from all these spring was pouring itself forth with such intoxicating might that one held one’s breath for very joy, and a blessed feeling came and made the tears to start, the knees to bend, the bosom to heave, in the presence of that holy miracle of Life, visible in the meanest blade that tossed in the spring breeze.
Therefore did the people gaze around with long looks of awe, and cross themselves, and, having said their morning prayers, set to work in silence, so that the Mass-bell had not yet rung when everyone was at his post.
The mists soon dissolved, and all the fields shone in sunlight. As far as the eye could reach over the village lands, divided by long green strips of autumn-sown corn, they were swarming with red skirts, flashing with ploughs, broken up with harrows (pulled by farm-girls), and hoed by ranks of potato-planting women. Often, too, along the narrow stretches of dark soil there would pass a peasant, with a great piece of canvas round his loins; who, slightly bending forward, would with a reverent motion of his opening hand fling the corn down upon the expectant soil.
All toiled zealously, scarcely noticing his Reverence, who appeared directly after Mass beside his farm-servant, ploughing close to the road; and their amazement was extreme when they saw him coming round to the corn-plots, hailing his parishioners jovially, offering them snuff, and, after some friendly words, patting the children’s heads, joking with the younger women, seizing a bough to drive a flight of sparrows from the barley, blessing the first handful of seed to be sown, or even sowing a handful himself: all the while urging the work on so energetically that no overseer could have done better!
He visited them again, too, immediately after dinner; for though (as he told the women) it was St. Mark’s day, the procession was not to take place till the octave, on the 3rd of May.
“We must not interrupt our work, for our helpers will no longer be here tomorrow.”
He stayed on in the open till the very end, with cassock tucked up, and leaning on a stick, as he was a corpulent man; yet going about unweariedly, and only now and then sitting down to wipe the perspiration from his bald forehead.
They were most pleased to see him; and somehow the work seemed to go on faster and easier under his eye: moreover, the peasants felt vastly pleased at his Reverence’s kindness in coming to superintend the work.
The red sun was rolling forestwards, and they were already finishing the more urgent work in haste, because they were anxious to be home ere dusk.
Several of them would not even stay to sup, but departed after swallowing a mouthful of food; others quickly stowed away the contents of the dishes offered them; for their horses were harnessed and waited in front of the cabins.
The priest went round again with Roch, thanking every
