“Ah! poor dear! how famished you must have been!”
“Aye, aye! towards the end I had no taste for anything!”
“The boys told us only a starving dog could eat what they gave them: it is so?”
“There’s some truth in that; but the worst was staying locked up. In the cold weather it was still bearable; but when the sun shone warm, and I smelt the smell of the land—oh, then, how I raged! I even tried to tear out the window-bars; but they prevented me.”
“Is it true,” Hanka asked in a trembling voice, “that they beat folk there?”
“No doubt. But then the place is full of such villains, ’twere but justice to flog them daily.—Oh, no one ever dared to lay a finger on me! If anyone had … well, I’d have made short work of him.”
“Yea, in truth! Who on earth could overcome you, you mighty one?” she said, with eyes gloating over him, and attentive to the least signal he should give.
They had soon finished their meal, and went out to sleep in the barn, where Hanka had already carried them beds and pillows.
“I declare,” Antek said, laughing, “we shall both melt away like dripping in that place!”
She closed the great barn-door upon them, and then gave way to her feelings: to hide them, she went and weeded the parsley-bed, every now and then looking around her, while the tears welled up. They were tears of joy, shed—why? Because the sun beat hot upon her shoulders; because the green leaves were fluttering over her; because the birds sang, and fragrance filled her senses; and she felt so happy, so serene, so blissful within her soul!—As if she had just returned from confession—perhaps happier still!
“Thou, O Lord Jesus, hast done all this,” she murmured, raising her moist eyes to Heaven, her soul filled with the deepest and most ineffable gratitude for the great boon she had received.
“And all things have changed so wonderfully!” she sighed in ecstasy.—All the time they slept, she remained as in a sweet trance. She watched over them, as a hen does over her chickens; took the children far out into the orchard, lest they should awaken the sleepers; and drove all the animals out of the farmyard, heedless if the pigs should root up the new potatoes, or the fowls go scratching over the sprouting cucumber-plants.
The day was painfully long, but there was no help for that. Breakfast-time, dinnertime passed: still they slept. She sent all the people to work, caring little whether they should or should not be lazy, with her not by, and stood continually on the watch, or continually tripping between cabin and barn.
And many, many a time did she take out the things he had brought her, and try them on, and cry out:
“Is there in all the world another man so kind and so thoughtful as he is?”
At last, however, she sped away to the village; and every woman she saw she accosted with:
“Do ye know, my goodman has come back! He is sleeping in the barn now!”
Her eyes and face were radiant with smiles; everything in her breathed such joy and exhilaration that they were all astounded.
“What spell can that jailbird have thrown over her? Why, she is beside herself about the man.”
“She will grow proud and stuck-up in a very short time: you will see!”
“Oh, but let Antek go back to his old ways again, and she will be taken down finely!” So they gossiped.
Of all they said, she heard not one word.—She was back home presently, and preparing a first-class dinner. But hearing some geese scream in the pond, she ran out to silence them with a volley of stones; which nearly brought about a quarrel with the miller’s wife, their owner.
She had scarcely sent the field-labourers their afternoon meal, when the two men came out of the barn. Dinner was spread for them in the cool shadow in front of the house. Beer and vodka were not lacking there, nor even a dessert—half a sieve full of ripe red cherries, brought from the priest’s house.
“A noble dinner!” Roch said, smiling; “quite a wedding-feast!”
“And should the Master’s return be a second-rate festival?” she answered, busily serving them, and eating very little herself.
Dinner was hardly over, when Roch went out into the village, promising to look in again in the evening; and Hanka said to her husband:
“Will you look at the farm?”
“Certainly! My ‘holidays’ are over; I must buckle to work now.—God! how little did I think I should inherit my father’s land so soon!”
He sighed, and followed her. She took him first to the stable, where three horses and a colt were snorting and stamping; then to the empty cow-byre, and the granary, full of new-mown hay. He looked into the sties too, and into the shed where all the various implements and tools were stored.
“That britzka must be taken in to the threshing-floor: its paint is peeling off with the heat here.”
“So I told Pete more than once; but the fellow does not mind me.”
She called the pigs and poultry round her, priding herself on their numbers; and then she told him about the fieldwork; what had been sown, and where, and how much of each crop. When she had finished, he said:
“I can hardly think that you have done all this by yourself.”
“For your sake, I could have done still more!” she whispered, overjoyed at his praise; and the whisper came hot from her heart.
“You have backbone, Hanka … and plenty of it too!—I did not expect it of you.”
“I had to, and needs must when the devil drives.”
After looking about the orchard, with its half-ripe cherries, and the plots of parsley and onions, and the young cabbage-plants, they came back; and as they passed the side where his father had lived he peeped in at
