“You foul eyesore!” she gasped, catching hold of a rake. “You plague-spotted beast! you swineherd, you! Only dare to lay a finger on me again, and I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll teach you to make love, and a bloody lesson it will be!”
In a few minutes, however, she thought no more of him, got all her work done, and went into the cabin.
On the threshold she met Hanka. Out of eyes glazed over with weeping and sorrow, the two exchanged glances—and then passed each other by in a moment.
But the doors of both rooms stood open, and the lamps had been lit, so that they happened every now and then to look at each other.
Later, too, when getting supper ready together, they came closer perforce; though neither breathed a single word. Each well knew what the other had to endure, and they often flung mutual glances of deep rancour, and their dumb set mouths said with silent malice:
“It serves you right—right—right!”
Yet at certain other instants they felt a sort of compassion one for the other, and might have conversed kindly if either of the two had chosen to begin. They even lingered near each other with side-glances of expectation: their hates seemed lulled, and their common hard fate and loneliness were drawing them nearer. But it went no further. Something held them back—now a wail from the little one, now a sense of abasement, now the sharp memory of wrong suffered. And after a time they fell apart again, their resentment awake once more, and their souls sweltering spite afresh.
“It serves you right!—right!—right!” each of them hissed in thought, with flaming eyes, ready for a quarrel, aye, and even for a fight, whereby they might discharge their mutual detestation.
Luckily, it did not go so far; for Yagna went out to her mother’s directly after supper.
A warm dark night. In the sombre depths of the sky a few stars twinkled. Upon the marshes lay a thin white film of haze; and there the frogs set up their croaking, and the stray piping of affrighted lapwings sounded now and then. The slumbering trees stood out against the sky, the orchards loomed grey, as though lime-sprinkled, and wafted fragrance as from censers: cherry-blossoms, half-open lilac-buds, water, dew-drenched soil—all breathed perfumes; each particular flower gave out its own sweet scent, all mingling in a deliciously intoxicating aroma.
There were still a few sounds of talk within the village, on the doorsteps, about the dwellings now plunged in shade; and people swarmed in the roadways, overshadowed by the trees, and only traversed in places by streaks of light from the windows.
Yagna’s intention had been to call on her mother, but she turned aside towards the millpond, stopping very frequently; for at every step she met couples, arm about waist, conversing eagerly and in subdued tones.
There were her brother and Nastka, embraced and kissing passionately.
She also came unintentionally upon Mary Balcerek and Vavrek, standing close to a hedgerow, kissing tenderly and forgetful of everything in the world.
There were others whom she knew by their voices. From every shadow about the pond or the fences came whispers, words softly breathed, burning sighs, and sounds of rustling and struggling. The whole village seemed boiling over with tender passion; and even flappers and mere boys were playing at lovemaking down in the lanes.
A sudden feeling of disgust came over her, together with the resolve to go on at once to her mother’s. On the way she met Matthew face to face, but he took no more notice of her than of a tree-stump. He was walking with Teresa, in rapt conversation, both clinging close together; they passed her by, and she still heard their voices and smothered laughter.
Turning back brusquely, she took to her heels as if pursued by a whole pack of dogs, and ran for her cabin.
The evening meanwhile flowed on tranquilly, redolent of spring, instinct with the gladness of all these meetings and all the unearthly serenity of immense happiness.
Far away in the night, either among the sweet-smelling orchards or out in the fields, a flute was twittering a love-tune—the accompaniment, as it were, to all those murmurs and kisses and raptures.
And in the marshes the frogs had set up a grand croaking concert, interrupted at times, while others replied to them from the mist-covered pond with long slumberous snoring croaks, fainter by degrees; and the youngsters who played about the lanes caught up their song, vying with them with doggerel mimicry.
“The stork’s bad, bad, bad:
May he choke, choke, choke!
He shall croak, croak, croak,
And be glad, glad, glad!”
VIII
It was a delightful day, warm, yet bracing: a day on which the peasant, after a hearty sleep, jumps up as he wakes, and—his prayers first said—sets to work with scarce the shadow of a yawn.
A huge red globe was slowly ascending the sky, on whose immeasurable expanse, amongst a few thin filaments of haze, there floated cluster on cluster of woolly clouds.
The breeze bustled about, with the air of a farmer calling his household up at dawn; rousing the limp corn, blowing away and dispersing the mists, tossing about the overhanging branches, rushing round the orchards and dashing in and scattering the last cherry-blossoms like snow upon the ground.
Lipka too was waking and getting up swiftly. Many a dishevelled head peeped out upon the world with drowsy eyes: some were washing; not a few half-dressed women carried water to their houses. Here a man was splitting logs; there carts were being wheeled out into the roadway. Smoke rose in festoons from the chimneys, and lie-abeds were rated by shrill tongues.
Early it was. The eastern sun was not more than a man’s height in the sky, and shooting its ruddy rays aslant through the orchard-trees; yet everybody was already in lively motion.
The wind
