“ ’Tis the best remedy for a scald!” she said, and, passing her baby to the other breast, listened attentively to what had occurred in her absence. But not for long: it was now broad daylight, the sky flushing red with bright streaks athwart the air. Dewdrops fell from the trees; birds were garrulous in their nests; bleating and lowing resounded all through the village, and hammers, hammering scythe-blades, whose thin keen tinkling made a piercing din.
No sooner had Hanka undressed after her journey than she ran to Boryna, who was lying asleep under a bed of down, in a great basket beneath the trees.
“Hark!” she said, pulling him by the arm; “Antek will be home in three days. He had been taken to the Government prison. Roch followed him with money that must be paid. Both will come home together.”
On a sudden the old man sat up, rubbed his eyes, and seemed to listen; but he sank back at once, pulled the down covering over his head and fell asleep again.
There was no more talking with him; besides, the mowers were just then coming into the yard.
“Yesterday,” Philip told Hanka, “we mowed the meadow adjoining the cabbage-plot.”
“Today ye will go beyond the river, by the boundary-market; Yuzka will show you where.”
“ ’Tis in Duck’s Hollow; a big piece of land.”
“And the grass comes up to the waist, lush and rank: very different from yesterday’s meadow.”
“Was the grass so poor there?”
“Aye, all but dried up: it felt like cutting a brush.”
“Then it may be tossed this very day, since the dew will soon be quite dry.”
They started at once: Matthew, smoking a cigarette in Yagna’s room, was the last, and cast a rueful look behind him as he went, like a cat balked of its bowl of milk.
The rest of the village, too, soon poured forth its troops of mowers.
Scarcely had the sun risen, huge and ruddy, when the weather grew warm, and presently very hot indeed.
On the mowers marched, in Indian file, preceded by Yuzka, dragging a pole after her.
They passed the mill. The meadows were veiled in a low creeping haze, through which tufts of alders peered out like puffs of dark smoke; here and there the river peeped from under its greyish screen, glittering brightly; the dew-drenched grasses drooped their heads in the meadows, and the piping of lapwings came on the eastern breeze, scented with the bland fragrance of many blossoms.
Yuzka, having taken them as far as the landmarks, measured the extent of her father’s meadow-land, stuck the pole up at the border, and scampered away home.
Pulling off their spencers and tucking their breeches up, they formed into line, and thrust the scythe-handles into the ground, to sharpen the blades with their whetstones.
“The grass is as thick as the wool of a fleece; some of us will sweat soundly,” said Matthew, who stood first, testing the sweep of his scythe.
“Thick it is—and tall!” said his neighbour. “Well, there’ll be plenty of hay.”
“Yes, if the weather be fine,” said a third, glancing up at the sky.
“When you’re mowing a meadow, rain always is ready,” remarked the fourth, with a grin.
“The saying’s not true this year!—Come, begin, Matthew!”
They all crossed themselves. Matthew tightened his girdle, straddled forward, spat on his palms, took a deep breath, and launched his scythe far into the grass, plying it with swift strokes; the others following him one after another, in a slanting line, for fear of accidents. So they cut their way into the mist-covered meadow with a steady rhythmical advance, their cold blades glistening, with a swish at every stroke, and forming long swaths heavy with dewdrops.
The breeze rustled in the grass; overhead, the lapwings screamed more and more plaintively: and they, rocking their bodies from right to left, mowed on unweariedly, conquering the meadow foot by foot. Only now and again did one or another of them halt to whet his scythe or straighten his back, and then once more he mowed away with a will, leaving behind him ever more and more numerous swaths.
Before the sun had risen above the village, all the meadows echoed beneath the strokes of the mowers: the blue steel of the scythe-blades flashed everywhere; everywhere could be heard the stridulous clang of the whetstones; everywhere the strong perfume of mown grass was inhaled.
It was perfect weather for haymaking. An ancient adage says, indeed: “Begin to make hay: rain will fall the same day”; but this year it was quite the other way round. Instead of rainy weather, there was drought.
The days began, moist with dew, and yet parched, like a man in a fever; they ended in nights baked with heat. Some wells and rills had been dried up; the corn was turning yellow, the plants withered away. Countless insects assailed the trees, which began to cast their yet unripe fruit. Cows, returning hungry from the sere grass of the pastures, had ceased to give milk; and the Squire allowed none to graze their beasts on his clearings but those who paid him five roubles a head.
Very many had not so much cash to pay him.
But, setting aside these particular inflictions, the hard times usual before harvest were this year harder than ever.
They had reckoned on rain falling surely in June, and the field crops benefiting thereby: nay, money had even been offered for Masses to that intention. And now, some had really nothing to put in the pot!
But the worst of all was that not even the oldest inhabitant could remember a time when there had been so many law troubles: the great forest action not yet settled, and the Voyt’s affair still setting people by the ears, and Dominikova’s quarrel with her son, and the Germans, and many another matter of dispute between neighbours: so many, in fact, that what with such incessant brawls and wranglings, they almost forgot their more material afflictions.
Of course
