“I would fain do all for the best, my dear. True, he is old, but strong and hearty still. And, besides, he will treat you courteously, not as other peasants might do. You will be the mistress and the head of his house. Also, when he makes the settlement, I shall arrange matters so that the land he will leave to us will touch ours. … And then, were the amount only six acres—think of it, Yagna! six acres more!—And then remember: you must marry, you must! Why should the tongues of all the village gossips wag to defame you? … We should have to kill the pig. …” Here she broke off, and went on to settle other matters within herself; for Yagna was spinning mechanically, as if she had heard nothing said.
Was she, she mused, unhappy at her mother’s? She did what she liked; no one ever said a cross word to her. Acres, settlement, possessions, nay, even a husband—what did she care for them all? Were the lads who sought her few in number? Had she a mind, she could bring them all to propose to her the same evening. … Her mind was little by little being made up, as was the flaxen thread she span; and as that thread turned in one direction only, so she determined on one thing—to marry Boryna, if her mother cared for the marriage—Yes; she liked him better than the rest: had he not bought her a ribbon and a kerchief?—True; yet Antek, and others as well, if they owned Boryna’s money, would do as much for her.—No, no: let her mother choose, whose head was good at such things: her own was not.
She looked towards the window, where the withered and blackened dahlia bushes were tapping, lashed by the gale. By and by she forgot them, forgot everything, forgot her very self, and fell into a state of beatific inertness like that which now held the earth around her in those deathly quiet nights of autumn. For Yagna’s soul was even as that earth; as that earth, it had its abysses, dreamy, chaotic, known to none. Vast it was, but unconscious of its own vastness; mighty, yet without either will or desire or longing—inanimate, yet immortal; like that earth, too, swept by every blast that took hold of her, and seized upon her, and did with her whatsoever it listed. … And likewise, in the springtime, the warm sun would awake her, and flood her with life, and fill her with the quivering flame of desire and love; and like the earth, her soul would conceive—it could do naught else; would live and sing, rule, create, and annihilate its creations—it could do naught else; it would exist—it could not but exist! Such was that hallowed earth; such was the soul of Yagna, like unto that same earth.
Long did she sit thus, mute: only those eyes of hers were glittering as still waters at noon in spring, or as gleam the stars.
Suddenly she awoke from her reverie: someone had opened the front door. It was Yuzka, who rushed breathless into the room.
Shaking the water out of her clogs, she said: “Yagna, we have the leaf-plucking tomorrow: will you come?”
“Of course.”
“We shall do the work in the big room. Ambrose is sitting there now with father, so I made shift to slip out and let you know. There will be Ulisia, and Mary, and Vitka, and all the other Pociotek girls. Lads will be there too. Peter has promised to come and bring his fiddle.”
“Peter? Who is that?”
“The son of Michael who dwells beyond the Voyt’s house. He that returned from the army when potato-digging began, and talks so queerly now, one can scarce understand what he says.”15
After chattering on in this way, she ran off home.
Again the room was plunged in silence.
The raindrops pattered on the windowpanes, like handfuls of sand thrown upon them. The wind roared and played about the garden, or blew down the chimney, till the brands on the hearthstone were scattered about, and whiffs of smoke came into the room. But the spindles never ceased from whirring about the floor.
Thus the long evening dragged on tediously, until Yagna’s mother began to sing in a faint, quavering voice:
“May all that we this day have done …”;
Yagna and her brothers taking up the hymn in so high-pitched a key that the fowls roosting in the passage clucked and cackled in chorus.
VII
The next day was as rainy and dreary as the one before.
Every now and then, someone would cone out of a hut to peer anxiously into a mist-blurred world, and see if it was clearing up a little. And nothing met the eye but the slate-coloured clouds, so low that they touched the very treetops. And the rain rained on.
The folk were cooped up in the cabins, and getting out of sorts. One or two went out through the mud and rain to a neighbour’s, lamenting that So-and-so had left his cattle-litter in the forest, not having been able to remove it; that another had not yet brought in his firewood; that many, almost all, had cabbages in the ground still, and could not now go to cut them, because the pond had risen so much during the night that the sluices had been perforce opened, and the water let out into the river; which consequently had swollen very greatly and the meadows were flooded, and all the cabbage plantations like sombre islands amid the drab and foaming swirl.
Nor had Dominikova been able to get home the cabbages she had afield.
Ever since morning, Yagna was feeling greatly upset, heaving sighs of vexation as she went from corner to corner, and looked out of the window at the dahlia bushes, now beaten to the ground by the flood, and at the whole dripping landscape.
“Good Lord, how weary I am!” she said, impatiently awaiting the close of day and the start
