The night was now a whitish obscurity, a glimmering, pearly, immaculate dawn, like the finest bleached wool on earth; this glimmering from out of the infinite abyss—as it were, the frozen shimmer of the light of all stars, condensed and ground to dust in its downward flight from heaven—now besprinkled the whole country; and soon the pinewoods were shrouded, the meadows disappeared, the highways vanished, and all the village was lost in the silvery haze and blinding dust, and nothing more was to be seen but streams of sifted snow, wafted down as still and smooth and soft as cherry-blossoms in a moonlit night!
At three paces’ distance, there was no making out either huts or trees or fences, or any human face; human voices alone, like butterflies on wearied wings, flitted about in the nebulous whiteness.
This went on for two whole days and nights. In the end, the cabins were all snowed up, and rose, each like a snow-covered hill, with a long tress of smoke waving from its top. Roads and fields had become one vast plain: the orchards were all filled with snow, even above the tops of the enclosures; the pond had become quite invisible beneath the avalanche and, in place of the ground, there was but a pale, flat, impassable, miraculous plain of down.
The snow fell still, though now more dry and scantier. At night the stars would twinkle athwart its curtain: by day, at times, the blue sky would show beyond the whirl of floating specks and flitters; voices sounded more sonorous and came no longer muffled through the veil. The village seemed to wake up a little, and folk began to stir themselves. Some even attempted to drive out in sledges, but soon returned, finding the ways impracticable. Here and there, they dug paths through the snow from cabin to cabin; every heart rejoiced. Especially the children were beside themselves with delight; and dogs rushed about everywhere, barking, licking the snow, and scampering with the urchins, who swarmed on to the roadways, clamoured in the enclosures, shouted, pelted one another with snowballs, built horrible monsters, and dragged each other about on toboggans; their joyful cries and merry sports filled all the place with din. Roch had to give up teaching that day, for keeping them in the house over their primers was impossible.
About the third day, the snow ceased as twilight fell; and though there were still a few flakes, they were like the shakings out of an empty sack of flour—nothing to speak of. But the sky was overcast, crows flapped their wings about the houses and alighted on the roads; the night came down starless and leaden, its obscurity diminished only by the whiteness of the frosty snow—and as still as one shorn of strength to the uttermost.
“Let but the slightest wind spring up, and we shall have a snowstorm,” muttered old Bylitsa the next morning, as he peeped out at the window.
Hanka lit the fire on the hearth, and looked into the passage. It was early yet: all over the hamlet, the cocks were crowing. The twilight was still dusky, as if lime and soot had been mingled and spread over the world; but in the east there glowed a heap, as it were, of ash-covered embers.
The cold in the room was so keen, so damp and bitterly piercing, that Hanka had to put on her clogs in the house over her bare feet. On the hearth, there was scarce any fire at all; the green juniper brushwood only crackled and smoked. Hanka hacked a few chips off a board, poked some straw under them, and at last got the fire to blaze.
“Enough snow has fallen for a whole winter,” the old man said again, blowing on the window, crusted over with a thick coating of greenish ice.
The eldest boy, now entering on his fourth year, began crying in bed; and from Staho’s lodgings on the other side of the hut, angry voices, the weeping of children, and the slamming of doors were heard.
“Oh, Veronka is already at her morning prayers!” Antek remarked satirically, as he wound round his legs the bands he had previously warmed at the fire.
“Ah, well,” the old man mumbled, “she has learned to talk—and she talks. A little too much perhaps, but she means no harm.”
“Means no harm! And does she mean no harm when she beats her children? Does she mean no harm when she leads poor Staho a dog’s life, with never a good word for him?” Thus Hanka made reply, as she knelt down by the cradle to suckle her little baby, which was crying and kicking its legs about.
“Since we came, three Sundays have gone by: not one day has passed without a quarrel and fighting and curses. She a woman? No, she’s a brute. … But Staho too is a mollycoddle, who lets her swinge and cuff him at will. He works like a horse, and she treats him worse than a dog.”
The old man cast a deprecating look at Hanka, and was about to say a word in Veronka’s behalf, when the door opened and Staho himself, flail on shoulder, peeped in.
“Antek, will you come and thresh? The organist told me to get someone for his barley, which is dry and good, and comes splendidly out of the husk. … Philip begged me to take him; but if you will, here’s work for you.”
“Thanks kindly,” was Antek’s reply; “but I am not going to work at the organist’s. Philip will do very well.”
“Please yourself. Good day.”
At her husband’s refusal, Hanka had started up; but she at once bent down, her head over the cradle, to hide the tears that gushed forth.
“What! in this fearful winter, so poor that we
