“If he has but started early enough, he will be here directly,” she said to herself, looking down the road. Her short spell of slumber had so much refreshed her that, to while the time away till sunrise, she took out the children’s clothes to wash in the pond, while the light grew stronger and stronger.
The first cock crowed, quickly followed by others, making a loud noise throughout the village. Some larks too were heard, but at rare intervals, while the whitewashed walls and the empty dew-drenched roads gradually became distinct.
Hanka was busy washing, when a sound of stealthy steps drew her attention; and as she looked around curiously, a shadow passed out of Balcerek’s enclosure and slung away among the trees.
“Yes—’tis a visitor to Mary! who can it be?” She could by no means make sure, for the shadow had vanished directly. “Ah! So proud a girl! One so vain of herself and her beauty—to let in a sweetheart by night!—Who would have thought it?”
She was scandalized. On looking about her again, she perceived the miller’s man, gliding by, at the other end of the village.
“He is coming home, no doubt, from the tavern where his Magda lives!—Those men! like wolves prowling in the night!—What doings, alas!” She sighed, but a restless feeling quickened her senses now and stirred her blood. This, however, presently passed away as she went on washing in the cool water; and in a voice which, though subdued, thrilled with intense fervour, she began the hymn:
“Soon as dawn blushes in the sky,
To Thee, O God, my voice shall cry!”
And the chant rolled over the fallen dew, and made one with the approaching daybreak.
It was time now to rise: opening windows, clattering clogs, and loud cries showed that the villagers were awakening.
Hanka spread out upon the fence all the things she had washed, and ran to wake her people. But they were so heavy with sleep that their heads but just rose and fell back on the pillow.
To her intense indignation, Pete shouted at her:
“Mother of dogs!—’Tis too early! I’ll sleep till sunrise!” And he refused to stir.
The babies were crying, and Yuzka whined:
“Yet a little, Hanka dear! I went to bed but a minute ago!”
She then lulled the little ones to rest, drove the poultry into the yard, waited patiently for a few minutes more, and then—just before the sun had risen, when the heights of heaven were one mass of flame, and the millpond reddened in the dawn—she returned to the charge, and made such a din and uproar that the sleepers could not but get out of bed. And when Vitek came scratching himself drowsily, and rubbing his back against the corner of the hut, she chastised him well with sharp words.
“You’ll wake up fast enough with a first-rate drubbing!—Aye, and why, you young hound! why did you not fasten the kine to the mangers last night? Would you have them gore each other’s bellies in the dark, hey?”
He answered her back, but whipped out of sight in time, for she made a fierce rush at him. Then, looking again into the stable, she set upon Pete:
“The horses are mumbling their empty racks!—And you! you are lying abed even till sunrise! O you idle one!”
“Ye scream as a magpie ere it is to rain,” he growled back. “Why, all the village can hear your noise!”
“Let them hear! Let them all know what a sluggard, what a lazy drone, what a dawdler you are!—Oh, but the master will be back now, and he’ll keep you in order, I promise you!”
“Yuzka!” she now shouted from the other end of the yard. “Spotted One’s udders are swollen hard: milk her carefully, and let not half the milk remain, as you did last time.—Vitek! take your breakfast and be off; and if you let the sheep stray—as you did yesterday—I’ll know the reason why!” … So she went about, giving orders, bustling everywhere, and all the time hard at work herself: feeding the fowls, and the swine that were standing close to the cabin; giving a pail of thin batter to drink to the calf just weaned; throwing the ducklings boiled groats, and driving them off to the millpond. Vitek received a slap on the back, and his food in a wallet. Nor was the stork forgotten; she set a pipkin before him, full of potatoes cooked the day before; and he klek-kleked, plunged his beak in, and ate with a hearty appetite. Hanka was everywhere, and seeing to everything, and managing all in the best way.
As soon as Vitek had gone off with the cows and sheep, she went over to Pete, whom she could not bear to see idling about.
“Take all the dung out of the byre!” she ordered; “it is bad for the cows at night, and fouls them all over: they’re as filthy as swine.”
Just then the sun’s red burning eye peeped at them from afar, and the komorniki arrived to pay with their work for the flax and potato-fields they had rented.
She set Yuzka to peeling potatoes, gave suck to her babies, put her apron on over her head, and said:
“Keep an eye on everything here! And should Antek come, let me know: I shall be in the cabbage-field.—Come, good folk, while it is still cool and dewy. We shall first earth up the cabbages, and set to yesterday’s work again after breakfast.”
As they walked on down by the old disused peat-diggings, a few lapwings circled over their heads and some storks were wading about the low marshy ground, stepping carefully, and thrusting their heads forward. In the air there was a marshy smell, mixed with that of the sweet flag and the sedges, with clumps of which the old peat-diggings were overgrown.
Then they set to work, beginning their talk (of course with the inexhaustible topic of the weather) while they
