The priest’s pace became more and more leisurely: now he would stop to take breath, now to look at his two grey horses, now to glance at a few boys who were throwing stones into a large pear-tree. They came running to him in a body, and, holding their hands behind them, all kissed the sleeve of his soutane.
He stroked their flaxen heads, but added a word of warning: “Have a care not to break the branches, or you will get no pears at all next year.”
“We were not throwing stones at the pears,” answered one boy, bolder than the rest; “there’s a chough’s nest up in the tree.”
The priest passed on with a friendly smile and was presently among the potato-diggers.
“God speed your work!”
“May God reward you!” they replied in a chorus, and all came up to kiss their beloved pastor’s hands.
“Our Lord has given us plenty of potatoes this year, I think,” he said, offering his open snuffbox to the men, who respectfully accepted; refraining, however, from taking snuff in his presence.
“Aye, potatoes are as big as a cat’s head, and plenty to each plant.”
“Ah, then pigs will rise in price; you will all want to have some to fatten.”
“They are dear enough as it is. There was a swine plague last summer, and we have to buy them even in Prussia.”
“So there was, so there was. And whose potatoes are you digging here?”
“Why Boryna’s, of course.”
“I don’t see him with you, so I wasn’t sure.”
“Father is only at the forest with my goodman.”
“Oh, there you are, Hanka? How goes it?” he said, turning to a handsome young woman who wore a red kerchief round her head. She came forward, and, her hands being soiled, threw her apron over them as she took the priest’s hand to kiss.
“Well, and how is your little boy whom I christened in harvest time?”
“God bless your Reverence, he is well and lively.”
“The Lord be with you all!”
“And with your Reverence!”
He walked away to the right, where the burying-ground, near a road planted with poplars, lay on that side of the village. They gazed after him in silence for some time, and it was only when his thin and slightly bent figure had passed the low stone enclosure and entered the mortuary chapel, overshadowed with the yellowish and reddish foliage of birches and maples, that they found their tongues again.
“There is no better man in the whole world,” said one of the women.
“Yes, indeed,” chimed in Hanka, emptying her basketful on to a yellow heap conspicuous on the freshly furrowed soil and dry stalks. “They would have taken him away from us to town, but father went with the Voyt1 to entreat the Bishop, and so they did not get him. But dig away, you, dig away: the day and the field are both drawing to a close.”
They set again to work in silence. Only the crunching sound of the hoes in the hard ground, with now and then the sharp clink of steel upon stone, was to be heard.
Less than a score of workers were there, most of them old women and farm-labourers. At some distance were fixed two couples of crossed poles from which, swathed in cloths, a couple of babies were swinging as in hammocks, and wailing now and then.
“Well, and so the old woman has gone off a-wandering,” Yagustynka said after some time.
“The old woman? Who?” asked Anna, straightening herself.
“Why, old Agatha.”
“What, a-begging?”
“Of course a-begging! No, not for the pleasure of the thing. She has been working hard for her kinsfolk, serving them all summer long; and now they let her go—to get some fresh air! Next spring she will return, with baskets full of sugar and tea, and some money, besides. Oh, they will be fond enough of her then, and cover her up snugly in bed, and tell her that she must not work, but just rest up. Oh, yes! and they will call her ‘Aunt,’ till they have got the last bit of money out of her. But when autumn comes round again, there will again be no room for her—not even in the passageway, not even in the pigsty. Oh, those bloodsucking kinsfolk! Those inhuman beasts!”
Yagustynka put such passion into her outburst that her face turned livid as she spoke.
An old farm-labourer—a wry-faced worn-out man—remarked: “Here you see how true is the saying: ‘The wind is always blowing in the face of the poor.’ ”
“Now, good people, please dig away,” interrupted Hanka hastily; she did not like the turn the conversation was taking. But Yagustynka, who could not hold her tongue, soon looked up and said:
“Those Pacheses—they are getting on in years; the hair is thin upon their heads.”
“And yet,” another woman put in, “they still remain unmarried men.”
“And there are so many girls growing old here, too, or forced to take service elsewhere!”
“Yet, they have a score of acres and more, besides a meadow beyond the mill.”
“Aye, but will their mothers let them marry, do you think, or let them have anything if they do?”
“Yes, who would then milk the cows, or do the washing, or tend to the farm and the pigs?”
“They have to keep house for their mother and for Yagna. Else how could Yagna be the grand lady that she is? Quite a gentlewoman, always dressing up, and washing herself, and peering into her glass, and forever braiding her hair!”
“And looking for someone to share her bed—any able-bodied young man will do,” added Yagustynka with a malicious sneer.
“Joseph Bandech sent ‘proposers’2 to her with a gift of vodka, but she would not
