Hanka also went out a little after for another vain look into the darkness, when she heard his voice, gruff and cross, wafted from the millpond bank.
“Why dog me so? I shall not flee you. … Are we not enough on the lips of folk already?”—He added still more cruel words, to which there came in answer a storm of sobs and a flood of tears.
But there was nothing in that to interest Hanka, who was awaiting her husband: she cared little then for other folks’ doings. Yagustynka did the evening household work for her, whilst she herself dandled in her arms the baby, that was rather troublesome; carrying it out with her and rocking it, she went to see the patient.
“Antek may be here at any moment!” she cried from the doorstep.
Boryna was lying with eyes fixed on a lamp that smoked above the fireplace.
She whispered in Boryna’s ear: “He has been released today, Roch is awaiting him,” and her beaming eyes watched him to see if he had understood. It seemed not: he neither moved nor looked at her.
“He may be in the village by now. Belike it is so,” she thought, as she ran out every now and then to see.—So sure was she of his return, so agitated with her long wait, that she spoke to herself, walking unsteadily as one drunk. To the darkness she talked about her hopes, and confided in the cattle as she milked them, informing them all that their master was coming back.
She waited on.—But every minute was wearing out her strength and her patience.
Night was there, the village abed. Back from her mother’s, Yagna had gone to rest at once. All in the house were sleeping presently. Hanka still watched outside the hut, and far into the night; but at last, exhausted with weariness and crying, she too put out the light and lay down.
The whole land was now plunged in the deep stillness of repose.
The village lights had gone out one by one, like eyes that close in slumber.
The moon rolled up the soaring black-blue sky, sown with a twinkling dust of stars, and rose higher and higher, as a bird that wings its way athwart the void on silver pinions. The scattered clouds slept, huddled up into balls of soft white down; whilst on the earth all creatures lay quiet, wearied out and lost in sleep. Only a bird sang sweet exuberant lays from time to time; only the waters whispered drowsily; and the trees the moonlight bathed stirred now and again, as if they dreamed of day. Sometimes a dog growled, or the nightjar flapped its wings as it passed by; and low earth-clinging vapours now began to wrap the fields, but slowly, as a tired-out mother wraps her child.
The sounds of quiet breathing rose from the almost invisible orchards and buildings, about which the people lay in the open air, trusting to the mildness of the night.
In Boryna’s room as well, sleep and tranquillity prevailed, except for the cree-cree-cree of the cricket on the hearth, and Yagna’s breaths, fluttering like a butterfly’s wings. It must have been at some time in the small hours (the first cock was crowing already) that Boryna began to move, the moon at the same time shining through the windowpanes, and pouring on to his face its cold though seething torrents of silvery splendour.
Sitting up in bed, and clearing his throat, he attempted to call out, but could utter no other sound than a gurgle.
Thus he sat for a time, looking round with a vacant stare, and fumbling with his fingers in the light of his coverlet, as though he thought to grasp that luminous stream of moonbeams that struck his eyes.
“Day has come. … It is time,” he mumbled at last, standing erect upon the floor.
He looked out of the window, and, like a man awaking from a deep sleep, thought that it was day, that he had slept overmuch, and that some pressing work was awaiting him.
“I must get up, it is time,” he repeated, crossing himself again and again, and beginning his morning prayers. Then he glanced round for his clothes. Not finding them, he forgot them quite, and, passing his hands over himself, made a feeble attempt at dressing. His prayer broke off in the saying, and he could only mutter a few incoherent fragments in a soundless voice.
His brain was vexed with vague thoughts of things to do, remembrances of things done, and, as it were, the echoes of what had gone on around him when he was lying ill. In evanescent flashes there came to his mind dim recollections, activities that had been indistinct as the furrows on reaped land, and now started up clear and sharp; they took shape in his brain, struggling to come forth, and every instant formed some fresh phantasm which vanished away ere he could grasp it, like rotten tissues that crumbled into dust; so that his mind was as restless as a wandering flame that finds nothing to feed upon, and strays perforce.
And thus, whatever he now did, he did out of mere habit, like a horse that has for years walked round, turning the beam of a threshing-machine, and when set at liberty still goes round.
He opened the window and looked out; he gazed into the storeroom, poked the fireplace after much pondering—and then, just as he was, barefoot and in his shirt, walked out.
The door was ajar, the passage flooded with the rays of the moon. Curled up on the threshold, Lapa was sleeping. At the sound of a tread, he woke, growled, and, recognizing his master, followed him out.
Matthias halted outside the hut, scratched his ear, and strove hard to remember what that urgent piece of work that awaited him could be.
The dog was leaping up joyfully at his master, who patted him as of old, whilst staring bewilderedly about him.
It was bright, like day. The moon had now risen above the cabin, casting deep blue shadows
