“Are the potatoes sufficient?” She seated herself on the crossbar of the stile.
“Quite; but cut into too few parts, I think.”
“Nay, they are halved; and at the miller’s, all the smaller potatoes are planted whole. Roch tells me that this gives twice as good crops.”
“That must be a German fashion,” Gulbasova cried peevishly. “Ever since Lipka has been Lipka, we have always made as many bits as there were eyes.”
“My good woman, folk are not more stupid now than they were of old.”
“No, indeed! the egg would fain teach the hens, and rule the poultry-yard.”
“Ye say true. But ’tis also a truth that years do not bring wisdom to some,” Hanka said, as she left the stile.
Kozlova looked askance after her, and growled:
“Cocksure, as if she were really mistress at Boryna’s!”
“Say no word against her!” cried Yagustynka. “She’s no everyday woman, but a heart of pure gold. I do not know anyone better and brighter than her. I am with Hanka night and day; I have eyes to see, and am no fool. Oh, what that woman has had to endure!”
“Aye, and she will have to endure still more. … Is not Yagna in the same cabin with her? Trouble and distress will begin once more, when Antek comes back.”
“I heard,” Filipka bleated, “of Yagna having taken up with the Voyt: is that true?” But they laughed at her asking what the very sparrows twittered among themselves.
“Let not your tongues wag!” said Yagustynka reprovingly; “the wind may hear your words and carry them where it should not.”
They set again to work, with hoes flashing, and at times clinking on a stone; but they talked on as they worked, sparing no one in the village.
As she walked away to take a look at the farmyard, Hanka stooped, passing under the cherry-trees; for the wet boughs, laden with buds and white blossoms and sprouting leaves, were catching at her head and sprinkling it with dew.
She had scarce been out at all since Easter, having suffered a relapse after her “churching.” Today’s tidings had brought her out of bed, and set her on her legs; and though she still felt very shaky, she peered everywhere, and with growing vexation.
The cows had been ill cared for, and their flanks were clotted with dung; the sucking-pigs were in poor condition; even the geese seemed unnaturally silent, as if they had been badly fed.
“Why,” she cried out angrily to Pete, who was driving off to cart the manure, “why have you not rubbed down the horse?” But he only went past, muttering something between his teeth.
A fresh motive for exasperation. In the granary, Yagna’s pig was devouring the seed-potatoes heaped on the threshing-floor, while the fowls were pecking at a quantity of inferior corn that ought long since to have been taken up to the loft. For this she rated Yuzka soundly, and pulled Vitek’s curly hair till the boy wriggled himself loose and made off, while Yuzka slunk away, weeping and querulous.
“I am always at work, yet ye scold me continually: Yagna never does aught, and you let her be!”
“Now, now, be still, silly one! You see but too well all that goes on here!”
“But how am I to do everything? How can I?”
“Be still, I say.—Now carry them the potatoes, or they will have to stop work.”
It was no use scolding, she saw. “True, the girl cannot suffice for all; and as to the hirelings—mercy on us! even ere noon, they are looking forward to sunset! As well engage a wolf to tend sheep, as think to get profit out of a hireling. They have no conscience!”
Revolving these bitter thoughts in her mind, she discharged her fury on the pig, that ran off squealing, with Lapa savagely hanging on to its ear.
Looking into the stable, she saw, with yet greater annoyance, that the mare was biting at the empty manger, and the colt, in a most filthy state, eating straw out of its litter.
“To see this would have broken Kuba’s heart!” she said, putting hay in the racks for both, and patting their soft warm nostrils.
But here she broke down. A sense of depression took hold of her, and she felt she must cry; so, sitting down by Pete’s truckle-bed, she gave way, and wept aloud. … She knew not why.
All her energy had collapsed, her heart felt heavy as a stone. Her fate was too much for her, and not to be struggled against. Completely alone in the world and forsaken, her life was as a tree growing in a windy place, exposed to every evil blast! No one even to complain to; and no end of her ill fortune in sight: only eternal mortification and sorrow; only endless trouble, and looking forward to worse things still!
The colt licked her face; and letting her head drop upon its neck, she burst out crying afresh.
Successful farming—respect paid her by all—what did it signify, if she had not one instant of internal happiness?
She went back to the hut. The baby was once more screaming for her breast. Having satisfied it, she looked out vacantly through the window, dingy with a sweat of trickling drops.
But the baby still whimpered and wailed uneasily.
“Hush you, little one!—Father’s coming, my boy, and will bring you a toy, and you’ll ride on his knee, because he’s set free, and how happy we’ll be!” She walked to and fro in the room, singing and rocking him in her arms.
“Perhaps he is really coming!” she repeated to herself, and stopped on a sudden.
She flushed, straightened her stooping shoulders, and thought to go to the storeroom and cut him a piece of ham, and then to the tavern for vodka. … But the smith’s words echoed within her bleeding heart, and swooped down, tearing it as with the sharp talons of a hawk. She stopped dead, looking round her as for help: unable to tell what to do, what to think even!
“O Lord! what if he should never come back?” she moaned, raising her hands to
