“Aye; he says it is true; has even shown us the paper.”
“Then—then all must be right!—Glory to Thee, O Lord! the poor men will come back … our farmers will return to us!” she said fervently, clasping her hands.
From the dim eyes there dropped tear after tear: which made Hanka wonder not a little.
“Why, I expected ye would be angry about this, as about everything else: and behold, ye are weeping. Oh, wonderful!”
“What would ye? Can anyone be wroth at such a time? True, now and again, out of sheer bitterness, I let my tongue wag; but there is something else at the bottom of my heart that makes me, willy-nilly, rejoice or grieve with other folk. Nay, one cannot live quite separated from all. …”
Now they were nearing the smithy, where hammers were clinking in cadence, flames of a peach-red hue flying out of the forge, and the blacksmith, trundling a red-hot tire, made it shrink in cooling upon a wheel that lay close to the wall. At the sight of Hanka, the smith stopped, drew himself up, and fixed his eyes on her face.
“Well, has Lipka cause for rejoicing at last? I hear that some are returning.”
“Some? nay, but all!” Yagustynka corrected him. “Did not the Voyt read it so?”
“All? but he never meant felons. No: crimes must be punished.”
Hanka’s brain whirled at those cruel words. She crawled on, struck to the heart, but said as she passed:
“May your wicked tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth!”
His laugh tore her like the fangs of a wolf, and she hurried forward to escape from the sound.
She only felt quite recovered at the door of her cabin.
“ ’Tis wet today,” said Yagustynka; “we shall find the ground difficult to plough.”
She made light of it.
“ ‘Wet morning weather, and an old dame’s dance, last not long’!”
“Meanwhile we must be planting our seed-potatoes with the hoe.”
“I am expecting the women.—These tidings have delayed them, but they will come. I sent round to them last night, and they all promised they would not forget.”
In the cabin the hearth blazed; it was warmer and brighter than out of doors. Yuzka was peeling potatoes, and the baby screaming for food: Hanka, kneeling down by the cradle, gave it suck.
“Now, Yuzka, Pete has to cart the dung from Florka’s shed to the field we have, by Paches’ rye-plots. He can get several cartloads there before the rain is over.”
“Ye are no friend of the slothful here!”
“Nor am I a sluggard myself!” she returned, as she covered her breast.
“Oh, I had quite forgotten. It is a half-holiday: St. Mark’s Procession, that was postponed till the octave!”
“Why, the processions are to be only on Rogation Days!”
“He announced one for today: we shall go as far as the roadside ‘figures,’ and bless the village boundaries without any Rogation procession.”
“Ha!” cried Yuzka to Vitek, who entered just then; “and you boys will be thrashed at the boundaries to make you remember them.”33
“Here are the women; run ye, and see to them. I stay inside, to make order and get breakfast ready, while Yuzka and Vitek take the potatoes to the fields.”
So Hanka gave her orders, looking out at the komorniki who in their smocks and aprons, with baskets and hoes in hand, ranged themselves along the cabin-wall, beating their clogs against it to clean them.
Presently they were at work in the fields, two and two, two couples to each strip, each turned towards her companion, digging hollows in the ground, throwing in a potato, and covering it with earth again; and so on across the patch.
Old Yagustynka acted as overseer to prevent idling.
The work went slowly, all the same. Their hands were stiff with cold, their clogs full of water from the soaked ground; and though the drizzle was not cold, still it was continuous and drenched them.
Soon, however, the weather changed; the sky became dappled and mottled with blue; swallows, pioneers of sunshine, began to dart about; and the crows, leaving the housetops, came flapping low over the land.
The women, bent down and stooping, delved on, looking for all the world like heaps of sodden tatters. They did their work leisurely, with long rests, and talking among themselves. After a time, Yagustynka, who was sowing haricot beans between the rows of potatoes, called out, as she gazed around:
“Today there are but few goodwives to be seen out of doors!”
“Ah, no! their men are coming; ’tis not work they are thinking of!”
“No, indeed: only cooking fat dishes and warming featherbeds!”
“Oh, ye laugh!” said Kozlova; “yet ye are yourselves all of a twitter because of them!”
“Lipka, without the boys, is no place to live in: that’s sure.—Old as I am, I tell you plainly—rascals and betrayers and bullies though they are—let but the ugliest lout amongst them all show himself, the world at once grows merrier and lighter to bear. And whoso says No to this, is a liar!”
“Yes,” one of them sighed, “we women have been pining for our men, as the kite is pining for a rainy day!”
“Ah, more than one will pay dear for her pining; and the lasses most of all!”
“Before next spring, the priest will have no end of christenings!”
“Old woman, ye are talking nonsense. What did our Lord create women for? Is it a sin to bear a child?” Thus spoke the wife of Gregory the Wrymouth, who always contradicted.
“Ever the same, you! What? standing up for bastards!”
“Surely, and till my dying day I’ll tell anyone this to his face: bastards or no bastards, the little ones are of our own blood, and have as much right to live as any. And the Lord Jesus will judge them all justly and only according to the good or the evil they do!”
They shouted her down, and jeered at her; but she only smote her hands together, and nodded her head.
“God speed your work!” Hanka cried to them from the stile. “How goes it?”
“Thanks: well, but somewhat
