Suddenly a hawk was seen above the forest, circled over the fields, and, poising itself for an instant, swooped down into the corn.
Antek sprang forward to balk it, but too late: a stream of feathers was floating down, and the robber fleeing through the air, while below partridges piped plaintively, and a terrified hare fled at random, its white scut bobbing up and down.
“ ’Twas most featly done! A bold thief!” Antek thought, returning to his seat. “Well, hawks too must get their food somehow. Such is the law of the world!” he reflected, as he covered little Peter with his capote; for there were numberless black wild bees and bumblebees buzzing around them.
He recalled those days of the near past, when he was longing so fiercely, with such insatiable thirst, to be back in his fields once more.
“How they tormented me, the villains!” he said with a curse. Then he became quite motionless.—Just in front of him, a few quails, calling to each other, put their heads timorously out of the rye, but popped back at once, on hearing a band of sparrows alight upon a birch-tree, fluttering, bickering, fighting, and flying down into the sand beneath, with a great racket and hubbub … when suddenly they all were silent, as if rooted to the spot.—The hawk flew past again, so near them that its shadow glided over the field beneath!
“Little brawlers! he has struck you dumb pretty quickly!” Antek mused. “ ’Tis just the same with men. How many need only a threat, and are hushed at once!”
Some wagtails came out upon the road, hopping so near that with a sweep of his hand he almost caught one of them.
“I but just missed getting one of the silly creatures for the boy.”
And now crows came, one after another, flocking out of the forest, pecking at anything they could find. Scenting a man, they began, cautiously and holding their heads awry, to peer about and go round him, hopping ever nearer and nearer, and opening their gruesome beaks.
“Oh, no! I am not to be a feast for you,” he laughed, throwing a clod at them; and they, like thieves found out, fled away in silence.
But after a time, while thus gazing out on the countryside, his whole soul attentive to every one of its sounds and sights, all the creatures about him began to draw near him boldly. Ants ran over his back, butterflies again and again settled in his hair, ladybirds walked about his face, and great green caterpillars of the wood explored his boots with lively interest; squirrels too, peeping forth from the forest, their brownish-red tails high in air, seemed deliberating whether they should not approach him. He, however, noticed none of them, plunged as he was in a sort of dreamy state, which the sight of the country had caused in his mind, and that filled him with indescribable sweetness.
He felt as though he were himself the very waft of the wind through the corn, the very gleam of the soft green fleece of the grass, the rolling of the streamlets over the heated sands, athwart the meadows redolent of new-mown hay; he felt himself one with the birds flying high above the earth, and crying to the sun with the great incomprehensible clamour of Life: as if he had become the murmur of the fields, the tossing of the pine-forest, the rush and mighty impetus of all growing things; also the mysterious potency of that hallowed Mother, the Earth, who brings forth all in joy and gladness. And he knew himself, knowing that he was all these things in one—both what he saw and what he felt, what he touched and understood, and what he could not even seize but by the merest glimmering—that which many a soul will only see clearly at the instant of death—besides that which only looms vaguely within the human soul, and gathers and lifts it up to the unknown region where it weeps tears of ineffable sweetness, and yet is weighed down as with a stone by an insatiable craving.
But all these thoughts passed through his mind like clouds: before he could grasp one clearly, another had taken its place, as absorbing as the former and yet harder to understand.
He was awake, and yet he had a drowsy sense as of sleep coming to his eyes; he was led somehow into a land of ecstasy, where he felt as one feels at the most holy moment of the Holy Mass: when the soul floats away in adoration, towards some garden where angels dwell, some happy land—Paradise, or Heaven!
Though his was a hard tough nature, by no means given to sentiment, he was nevertheless, during those unearthly moments, ready to fall prostrate on the earth, kiss her with burning kisses, and take her to himself in the most loving embrace.
“What is it that has wrought upon me so? It must be the change of air—nothing else,” he grunted to excuse his feelings, rubbing his eyes and knitting his brows. But indeed an overwhelming Power had seized upon him: it was by no means possible to crush down that jocund serenity which now flooded all his being.
He knew himself back in the land—his land—yea, the land of his father, of his forefathers: was it strange that he should feel his soul glad, and that every throb of his heart should cry out aloud and joyfully to the whole world: “Here I am once more, and here do I remain!”?
He pulled himself together, bracing himself to take up this new life, to walk in his father’s ways and those of his ancestors before him: like them, he bowed his shoulders to the yoke of heavy toil, to be borne bravely, unweariedly, until little Peter should step into his place.
“It is the order of things that the young should succeed the old and the sons the
