Then a long blast blew from the woods, with an ominous murmur.
The trees in the fields were shaking; the corn, the grass, waved shudderingly; from the trembling plots of land there came a low moan of dread:
“O Master! Master!”
The green ears of barley quivered convulsively, as if weeping, and bent to kiss his weary feet.
“O Master!” the rye-patches trilled, stopping his way, and shaking down a shower of dewy tears. Birds gave forth a melancholy cry. The wind sobbed over his head. The mist enveloped him in her dank dripping folds. And the voices sounded ever louder, ever more sadly, and always repeating:
“O Master! Master!”
At last he paid heed to them, and said, under his breath:
“Lo, here I am: what will ye, say?”
No answer came; but when he would have moved on farther, sowing with that tired empty hand, the earth cried out to him, in a mighty voice:
“Remain with us! Remain with us! Remain!”
And he stood in astonishment. All things seemed pressing forward against him. The grasses came crawling, the corn billowing towards him; the fields beset him round; the whole countryside rose up and fell upon him. Dismayed, he would have cried aloud; but his fast-closed throat let no voice pass. He tried to flee; his strength failed him quite. The ground caught his feet, the corn entangled them, the furrows tripped him up, the stubborn glebe balked his steps, the trees shook their boughs at him to stop his way. He was pricked by thistles, hurt by stones, chased by the angry wind, and led astray by the night and the many voices crying out from everywhere:
“Stay with us! Oh, stay!”
On a sudden he became motionless, and all things with him. His eyes, now growing dark in death, saw clear with a lightning flash. Heaven opened out before him—and there, seated on a throne of wheat-sheaves, the Everlasting Father stretched out His hands, and said to him mildly:
“Come unto Me, O human soul; O weary toiler, come thou unto Me!”
Boryna reeled at the words, and, stretching forth his hands (as at the Elevation):
“O Lord God, I thank Thee!” he cried, and fell prostrate on his face before that most holy Majesty.
So he fell, and so he died, in the hour of God’s loving-kindness.
Dawn was rising; and over him Lapa howled long and mournfully.
Summer
I
Thus did Matthias Boryna die.
With dreadful yelps and howls, and leaps against the door to be let in, Lapa awoke the sleepers in the cabin, who were enjoying their Sunday rest; and then he pulled them by their clothes, and ran out a little, looking back again to see if they followed him, till Hanka took notice.
“Go, Yuzka, and see what that dog would have us do.”
She ran out after him in good spirits, skipping along the road.
He led her to her father’s body.
On beholding it, she uttered such awful shrieks that they all came out at once, and found him cold, rigid, lying on his face just as when he had passed away, his arms stretched out crosswise in a last fervent prayer.
Still attempting to revive him, they bore the body to the hut.
All their endeavours were fruitless: what lay before them was a corpse, and nothing more.
A bitter lamentation rose up: Hanka rent the air with cries; Yuzka cried not less wildly, and dashed her head against the wall; Vitek and the little ones wailed aloud, and Lapa howled and barked outside. Pete alone, who had been coming and going about the yard, glanced at the sun, and went back to his bed in the stable.
Matthias now lay on his couch, stiff and stark, as lifeless as a sun-dried earth-clod or a felled trunk. He still held a little sand fast in his clenched fist. In his wide-open eyes, gazing afar into some heavenly region, there was a look of wondering rapture.
Nevertheless, there emanated from that body an effluence of mortality so sombre, so profoundly sad, that they had to cover it with a sheet.
His death was immediately known throughout the village; and barely had the sun appeared over its roofs, when visitors came pouring in one after another, raised the sheet, looked into his eyes, and knelt down to say a prayer for him. Others, stricken with awe at this example of God’s dominion over human life, stood wringing their hands in mournful silence.
Meanwhile the mourners’ lamentations continued resounding unceasingly.
And now Ambrose came, turned away the crowd outside, closed the cabin door, and, together with Yagustynka and Agata (the latter having crept in to pray beside the body), set about rendering the last services to the deceased, which he always did willingly, and in general with plenty of witticisms; but this time he felt somehow heavy at heart.
“So much for the happiness of any man!” he muttered, as he undressed the body. “Dame Crossbones, as often as she has a mind, will clutch you by the throat, slap you in the face; and ye, turning up your toes, are borne away to the ‘Priests’ Cow-byre’; and is there any able to resist her?”
Even Yagustynka was grieved, and said, in no merry mood: “Poor man! they neglected him so in this world that ’twas better for him to die!”
“Indeed? And who, then, did him any harm?”
“Nay, were they so very good to him?”
“And who on earth has all to his liking? Why, even a squire, even a king, must suffer trouble and pain.”
“He had not to bear either hunger or cold: we can say no more.”
“Ah, good Mother, what is hunger? The heartache gnaws far worse.”
“True. I have
