“A plague on her, the pampered minx!”
“And the old dame, too: always in church, and praying out of her prayerbook, and going wherever there’s an indulgence!”3
“She’s a witch, all the same. Who was it that made Vavrek’s cows dry up, pray? And, ah! when Yashek’s little boy stole plums from her orchard, and she muttered evil words against him, did he not get the koltun4 at once, and shrivel up with crooked limbs?”
“Oh, how can God’s blessings descend upon a place where such creatures dwell?”
“In former days,” Yagustynka observed, “when I was still tending father’s cattle, they used to drive such people out of our midst. … Aye, and it does them no harm, for they are not without protectors.” Then, lowering her voice, and casting a side-glance at Hanka then busily digging in the foremost row, Yagustynka whispered to her neighbours: “The first to defend her would be Hanka’s goodman; he follows Yagna everywhere like a dog.”
“For God’s sake! Pray, hold your tongue. What awful things you are telling us! Why, that’s an offence against God, a sin!” the gossips whispered to her, as they went on digging with bowed shoulders.
“Is he, then, the only one? Why, all the lads are after her, like cats after their kind.”
“Indeed, she is good-looking: plump as a well-fed heifer, with a face as white as cream, and eyes even as the flax-flower. Strong, besides; many a man no stronger.”
“For what does she do but eat and sleep? No wonder she is comely.”
A long silence ensued while they emptied their baskets on to the heap. Afterwards the talk ran on other subjects, till Yuzka, Boryna’s daughter, was seen coming at a run across the cornfields, from the village, and they stopped. She came, panting and all out of breath, shouting from a distance:
“Hanka, come home: there’s something wrong with the cow!”
“Mercy on us! which cow?”
“White-and-Red.”
Hanka heaved a sigh of relief. “Good God! how you frightened me! I thought it was mine.”
“Vitek brought her in but now; the keeper had driven them out of the wood. She ran too fast—she is so very fat—and fell just outside the byre. She neither eats nor drinks; only rolls about and bellows. Mercy on us!”
“Is father home yet?”
“No, he is not. Oh, good Lord! Such a cow, too! She gave more than a gallon at each milking. Oh, do come, quick!”
“Yes, yes, quick as thought—instantly!”
She at once took her child out of the cloth in which it hung hammock-like, and came away so alarmed at the news that she forgot to let down the apron with which she had tucked her dress up to the knees for work. And, as she followed Yuzka, her white legs twinkled across the fields.
The potato-diggers, working with their hoes between their feet, went on more slowly, having no one to hurry or to chide them any more.
The sun, now quite in the West, glowing red as if heated by its rapid course, hung like a huge crimson globe above the high, black woods. Twilight was deepening and spreading over the landscape; filling furrows, hiding in ditches, gathering under thickets, and slowly pouring over the land; deadening, blotting out and wiping away all colours, until the treetops and the church-roof and steeple alone glowed with gorgeous hues. Many labourers were already plodding homewards.
Shouts and neighings, and bellowings and the rattling of carts, growing ever louder and louder, filled the quiet evening air. But presently a tinkling from the belfry announced the Angelus; and at the bell’s sonorous vibrations, these noises were all hushed, and only whispered prayers, like the faint sound of falling leaves, were audible.
And now the cattle, driven home with merry cries and songs in a confused multitude, came along the roads stirring up such a volume of dust that only now and then were their mighty, thickly-horned heads seen to emerge from it.
Sheep, too, bleated here and there, and flocks of geese, flying off the pasture lands, were lost in the Western glow, so that only their shrill, creaking cries betrayed the fact that they were on the wing.
“A pity that White-and-Red was with calf.”
“It is a good thing that Boryna is not poor.”
“A pity, all the same, to lose so fine an animal.”
“Boryna has no wife, everything he has goes as through a sieve.”
“Because Hanka is no sort of housekeeper, you know.”
“Oh, but she is—for herself. They lodge with her father as if they were farm-labourers; each of them is on the lookout for what can be got out of him. As to Boryna’s property, let the dog watch over it!”
“Yuzka is a child, and knows nothing. What can she do?”
“Well, Boryna might as well give up his land to Antek, might he not?”
“Yes, indeed, and live on the portion they will allow him?” Yagustynka returned hotly. “You are old, Vavrek, but a great fool for all that. Ho, ho! Boryna is still hale: he may marry again. If he gave all he had to his children, he would be an ass.”
“Hale he is, but over sixty.”
“Never fear, Vavrek; any girl would have him, if he only asked her.”
“He has buried two wives already.”
“May he bury a third, then, and, God help him! Never while he lives let him give his children the least bit of ground;—no, not so much as a foot of it. The carrion! They would give him a fine portion, they would! Force him to work on the farm, or starve, or go far off to beg! Yes, turn over what you have to your children; they will give you just enough, to buy a rope to hang yourself or to tie a stone round your neck with!”
“Well, it’s getting dark; time to go home.”
“Yes, it is time; the sun is going down.”
So they quickly shouldered their hoes and, taking their baskets and dinner pails in hand, went off in single file along the path, old Yagustynka always passionately holding forth against her own and everybody
