Kuba alone remained, so fast asleep in the ashes, that Yankel had to awaken him. He would not rise, though, but kicked out, and aimed blows in the air.
“Off, Jew!” he stammered. “I will sleep as I choose. A tiller of the land am I; and you—you are a scurvy rascal and a villain!”
A pail of water sobered him so much that he rose, and with astonishment and dismay, learned that, having drunk a whole rouble’s worth, he was in Yankel’s debt for that amount.
“What! a quarter of a litre, rum, one herring, tobacco, and another quarter besides: can they make up a rouble? How’s that?” His brain was swimming.
Yankel, however, at last convinced him, and they came to an understanding about the gun which the Jew was to supply; although Kuba was firm in refusing to give him the oats demanded.
“My father was not a thief; neither am I.”
“Now go away, Kuba; it is time, and I have still some prayers to say.”
“Hear the old hypocrite! Asking a man to steal, and saying his prayers on the top of that!” he muttered, as he walked homewards, trying to remember things and sift them clear: for somehow he could not believe he had drunk a whole rouble’s worth. But he was not yet sober, and the cold night air made him dizzy; so he reeled and staggered along, now falling against the hedges, now against the logs of timber piled up outside the huts. He swore.
“May the devil wring your necks for cumbering the road so, rascals! You must have been tipsy when you did it. Yes, drunken wretches! and his Reverence’s warnings have been all for naught. … His Reverence. …” Here reflection came to him; he realized the condition he was in, and felt overwhelmed with contrition. He stopped short, looking about him for some hard thing that might be handy. Then he forgot about that, and clutched at his shaggy mane, and beat his face with his fists.
“You drunken wretch, you plague-stricken swine! I will drag you before his Reverence, and he will rebuke you in presence of the whole congregation, and say you are a dog, and a miserable drunkard; you have drunk half a litre of vodka—a whole rouble’s worth—and are a beast, worse than a beast!”—A sudden wave of self-compassion then came over him; he sat down in the road and burst into tears.
The moon, large and splendid, was floating through the dark space; like silver nails in the firmament, a few stars shone, sparsely scattered about; a thin grey tissue of mist hung over the pond like a veil, and waved its folds above the village. The world had entered into that unfathomable quiet of the autumn night, save that the few who were going home sang as they went, and dogs were heard to bark now and then.
Also, upon the road in front of the tavern, Ambrose, still reeling from one side to the other, quavered forth his song:
“Tell, Marysia mine,
Tell, O best and truest,
Tell whose ale thou brewest,
Tell, Marysia mine!”
which he repeated with interminable reiteration, until such time as the effects of his potations should cease.
V
Autumn was growing ever more and more autumnal.
The pale days passed, dragging themselves over the empty soundless fields, and died away beyond the forest, always stiller, always paler, like the Sacred Host in the glimmer of a taper that is going out.
And every dawn the morning came more and more sluggishly, benumbed, as it were, by the cold of the hoarfrosts, and the sorrowful stillness and the life ebbing out of the land. The sun, dim, shorn of its beams, came blossoming forth from the depths; and crows and daws that had started up from somewhere in the East flew circling round its disk: they skimmed over the fields in long low flight, and croaked with dull mournful voices. Following them, the wind swept along, bitter and bleak, ruffling the stirred waters, burning up all that was left of greenery, and tearing away the last dead leaves from the poplars on the roads: these fell slowly, like trickling tears—tears of blood, shed by the summer as it lay dying.
And every dawn, the villages woke up somewhat later, the cattle went to graze with more slothful steps, the barn-doors swung open with less stridulous creaking; men’s voices seemed muffled as they sounded in the deathly void of the fields, and their very life beat now with fainter pulsations. From time to time, they appeared outside their cabins or out in the country, and, suddenly stopping, peered for a long time into the livid murky distance. Or mighty horned heads would be sometimes raised from the grass of the yellow pastures; and as they slowly chewed the cud, their eyes would likewise go staring far, far away, while at intervals a hollow lowing would resound through the desolate waste.
And every dawn, it grew colder, darker; the smoke floated lower above the bare orchard trees, and more birds came swarming into the village to take shelter near the granaries. Crows perched on the ridges of the roofs or on the bare boughs, or flitted along close to the ground, croaking hoarsely—singing, as it were, the dismal song of approaching winter.
Noontide was sunny as a rule: but so silent! The murmuring of the woods was heard afar as a faint whisper, and the rippling of the river sounded like sobs of pain. The stillness of that noontide had something of death in it; and on the unfrequented ways and in the leafless orchards there lurked a profound sadness, mingled with a sense of shrinking from what was to come.
The ploughing was nearly over, and some finished their work, ending the last furrow when it was already dark, and looking back at the fields
