The pine-forest was quiet, dried up, aromatically scented, and, as it were, dying in the sun’s fierce outpour. Only a very little verdure was to be seen, and out of its depths there blew a breeze laden with resinous fragrance, and carrying on its wings the warbling of birds.
Antek, stretched out on the grass, lit a cigarette and, looking into the distance, saw, as through a thickening fog, the Squire on horseback, leaping across the Podlesie fields; and some men with him, bearing poles for land-measuring.
Huge pines, with trunks as of red copper, rose above him, flinging down wavy and slumberous shadows. He would presently have fallen fast asleep, had it not been for the quick clatter of a wagon—the organist’s servant, carting trunks to the sawmill—and then the sound of the familiar greeting: “Praised be Jesus Christ!”
One by one, the komorniki were coming home from the forest, each with a load of firewood on her shoulders. At the very end of the file, Yagustynka dragged herself along, bowed almost to the ground beneath her burden.
“Rest ye here.—Why, your eyes are almost starting from their sockets.”
She seated herself opposite him, leaning her load against a tree, and scarce able to breathe.
“Such labour is not for you,” he told her with compassion.
“Yes: I feel quite crushed now,” she replied.
“Lay those heaps closer, closer!” he cried to his farm-servant Pete, and went on: “Why does not someone take your place?”
She answered only with a surly look, and turned away her red eyes full of anguish.
“Ye are now so changed!—Ye give way so. … Quite another woman.”
“ ‘Even a flint will break under the hammer,’ ” she moaned, hanging her head. “And: ‘Suffering consumes man faster than rust eats iron.’ ”
“The present season is hard even for well-to-do farmers.”
“Hard! Let none talk of times being hard, so long as he has wild marjoram to eat, cooked with bran.”
“Good heavens! come round this evening: we shall find two or three bushels of potatoes for you still. When harvest comes, ye can work the price out.”
She broke down in a fit of crying, and could hardly speak to thank him.
“Perchance, too,” he added kindly, “Hanka may have something else for you besides.”
“Had it not been for her, we should have died of starvation!” she declared, sobbing. “Yes, I’ll work for you whenever you may want me. May God reward you! I am not speaking for myself; I am accustomed to hunger. But my dear little mites are crying out: ‘Grandam, give us to eat!’—and there is naught for them! I tell you: to feed them, I would cut off my own arms, or steal things from the altar, and sell them to the Jew.”
“Then do ye live once more with your children?”
“Am I not their mother? Can I leave them in such misery? Every misfortune seems to have fallen on them this year. Their cow has died; all their potatoes have rotted (they even had to buy seed-potatoes); the gale blew their barn down; and, to crown all, my daughter-in-law has been ailing ever since her last child was born. They are all left to God’s mercy.”
“Aye, but why? Because your Voytek always reeks of brandy and only cares for the tavern.”
“If at times he has taken too much, ’twas misery drove him that way,” she said, eager in defence of her son. “Never, while he had work to do, did he even look in at the Jew’s. But to a poor man, every glass is reckoned as a crime.—Alas! the Lord has dealt with them bitterly, very bitterly.—Is it right He should thus dog the steps of a poor foolish lout? And for what? What harm has he done?” she muttered, raising to Heaven her eyes, full of indignant challenge.
“But what! have ye not laid your curse on them?” Antek said, with strong significance. “Often and often ye have!”
“Ah, was it possible that our Lord should ever have listened to my senseless outcries?” But she added, in a tone of secret uneasiness: “Even when a mother curses her children, her heart never really wishes them evil.—‘Wrath and woe make tongues go!’ Aye, indeed. …”
“Has your Voytek farmed out his meadow yet?”
“The miller offered a thousand zloty for it, but I would not allow it. What that wolf has once got in his grip, not the devil himself could wrest out of it!—And perhaps someone else might be found with the cash?”
“It is surely a lovely meadow—can be mown twice a year. Had I only ready money just now!” He sighed, licking his lips with strong desire.
“Matthias would have been glad to get it: it lies so close to Yagna’s land.”
The name uttered gave him a start. He paused, however, and then inquired, with an indifferent look, his eyes wandering over the countryside:
“How are they getting on at Dominikova’s?”
But she guessed what was in his mind, and smiled with thin lips, drawing closer:
“The place is a hell for them all! All there have funeral faces: they are chilled to the marrow with the gloom which fills it. They cry their eyes out, and live on, waiting upon God’s Providence. Yagna especially—”
And she set to weave him a story about Yagna’s sufferings and miseries and lonely life—adding all kinds of flattering things besides, to draw him out. But he remained mute, though such a raging desire for Yagna had sprung up within him that he was quivering all over.
Luckily Yuzka, coming back from the forest, made a diversion. She poured out into his hat the berries she had plucked, took up the empty vessels, and scampered away home. And Yagustynka, without waiting for any confidences, rose to go away, moaning with pain.
“Pete!” he ordered curtly. “Take her back with you in the cart!”
Once more he grasped the plough-handles and set patiently to cleave the baked and stubborn clay, bending forward like an ox under the yoke, and putting his whole soul into the work, but unable
