“ ‘What man needs not nor sows, most abundantly grows,’ ” said one woman, knocking the earth from the roots of a weed.
“And all evil things likewise,” said another; “sin is sown by none, yet the world is full thereof.”
“Because its life is sturdy!” Yagustynka struck in, to air her peculiar views. “My dear! so long as man lives, sin shall live. Do they not say: ‘If sin you destroy, you kill all our joy’? and again: ‘But for sin dearly cherished, long ago man had perished.’—It must, then, be good for something, just as this weed is: our Lord made them both!”
This theology was sternly rebuked by Hanka. “What! … Our Lord make evil? It is only man that, like a swine, mars all things with his rooting snout.” And they said no more.
The sun was up in the sky now, and the mists had all disappeared, when troops of other women came along from the village.
Hanka laughed at them.
“Fine workers! Waiting till the dew shall dry, lest they wet their feet!”
“Not all are so eager for work as you are.”
“And not all are forced to work so hard,” she answered with a sigh.
“Well, your goodman is coming back: then will ye rest.”
“I have vowed, if he returns, to go to Chenstohova for the day of Our Lady of Angels. And the Voyt tells me he is coming today.”
“The folk at the Bureau must know: so the news will be true.—But what a number of people are off to Chenstohova on foot this year! The organist’s wife is to be a pilgrim too, they say; and she tells me that the priest is to come with the pilgrimage.”
Yagustynka made fun of the idea. “Who will carry his guts for him? He will never do so by himself.—Nay, ’tis only a promise, as usual with him.”
“I have been there several times, with the others, and should long to go every year,” sighed Filipka—she from over the water.
“Everyone longs for a spell of idleness.”
“Oh, heavens!” she went on, paying no attention to the jeer; “ ’tis all delight: everything along the road is so pleasant, so sweet to look on! And ye gaze out upon the world, and hear so much, and pray so much besides! … And one thinks for a few weeks that one has got rid of all woes and all cares. One feels as though born again!”
“True, and many have told me the same,” said Hanka. “One is specially under the loving influence of God’s grace.”
A girl was hastening towards them, slipping along between the bulrushes and the thick clumps of alder. Hanka shaded her eyes, looked, saw it was Yuzka, and heard her from afar crying, as she waved her arms:
“Hanka, Hanka! Antek is home!”
She flung down her hoe, and sprang up as if about to fly away like a bird; but she mastered her feeling, let down her skirt which she had tucked up, and, in spite of her rapture and her throbbing heart that made her almost unable to speak, said as quietly as if she had not heard any news at all:
“You will go on working without me, and come round to the cabin for breakfast.”
The women looked at one another.
“Her calm,” Yagustynka said, “is only outside, lest folk should laugh at her for wanting her goodman so badly.—I could not have mastered myself so!”
“Nor I!—But God grant that Antek do not go wrong any more!”
“As he will now no longer have Yagna at close quarters, it may be that he will keep straight.”
“O my dear! when a man scents a petticoat, he’ll follow it all over the world!”
“ ’Tis a truth. There’s no beast so greedy to its own hurt as some men are.”
So they talked, letting the work flag and all but come to a standstill. Hanka meanwhile went on, conversing both with Yuzka and everyone she met, though she knew but little of what either she said to them or they to her.
“Has Roch come with him?” she would ask again and again.
“How many a time have I told you yes?”
“And how is he looking?—How?”
“How can I tell you that?—In he came and asked at the very threshold: ‘Where’s Hanka?’ So I told him and ran to fetch you—and that’s all.”
“And he asked after me!—May the Lord … ! May he. …” She was incoherent, beside herself with gladness.
From a distance she perceived him, sitting with Roch in the porch, and as soon as he saw her, he went out to meet her in the enclosure.
She advanced more and more slowly, catching at the roadside fence not to fall, for her legs were giving way under her. She felt choked with sobs, and her brain whirled so, she could only utter these words:
“You here!—Here at last!”—And she could speak no more for the tears of joy that choked her.
“Here at last, Hanka dear!” He clasped her to his breast in a mighty hug, full of the deepest affection and love. She nestled to his side with an uncontrollable impulse, while her happy tears went streaming down her pale cheeks, and her lips trembled, and she surrendered herself all to him with childlike simplicity.
It was long before she could speak at all; but, indeed, how could any speech ever express what she felt? She would have knelt to him, kissed the dust at his feet; and when a word or two burst from her lips, they were but like flowers falling before him as an offering, fragrant with happiness, bedewed with her heart’s blood; and these her faithful eyes, brimming over with illimitable love, would lay down at his feet, with the fidelity of a dog that lives only in his master’s will and favour.
“You do look poorly, dearest Hanka!” he said, stroking her face with the tenderest affection.
“No wonder, having suffered so much and waited so long!”
“Poor woman!” Roch here observed; “she has been worked sadly beyond her
