“Pay up, you!” shouted Yankel, blocking the way out. “Pay up! I give you naught on trust.”
“Out of my way, you dog’s-blood Jew, or I kill you!” Antek shrieked, with such furious violence that Yankel changed colour and shrank away to let him pass.
He banged the door and rushed out.
II
Towards noon it had cleared up a little, but only as if a rushlight had been kindled and whisked about among the shadows; what brightness there was vanished soon, and it grew dark again, and looked as if the snow were gathering and about to fall once more.
In Antek’s hut it was extremely murky and cold and cheerless. The children played upon the bed, and prattled in whispers to each other. Hanka was so uneasy, she knew not what to do. She went fidgeting about the place, or stood outside with burning eyes, gazing over the snow. But neither on the road nor in the fields did any living creature meet her sight; only a few sledges were just visible, crawling away from the tavern to vanish both from the eye and the ear, lost in the abyss of limitless white.
She sighed. If there were but a beggar passing by, that she might have someone to speak to!
She set to calling together the fowls that had dispersed, seeking to roost on the cherry-trees, and made them return to their usual roosting-place; but, on going in, had some words with Veronka. What did it mean? The woman had set down in the passage a pail of hogwash for her swine, which the dirty beasts had splashed about, and there was a large pool right in front of Hanka’s door!
Without going in, she cried through the closed door: “You who hold yourself such a good housewife, see to your pigs, or tell your children to do so. I will not dirty myself with mud for your sake!”
“Oh, she has sold her cow, and so she is going to raise her voice here, is she? She cannot bear mud now, the grand lady! Yet her dwelling is a pigsty!”
“Never you mind about my lodgings or my cow!”
“Then never you mind about my pigs; do you hear?”
Hanka slammed the door: what could she reply to such a fury? One word said to her was sure to bring more than twenty in return.—She bolted the door, took out the money, and began to make up her accounts with infinite trouble, blundering again and again. She was still upset; full of resentment against Veronka, of disquietude about Antek. Often, too, she fancied she could hear Krasula lowing; and then at times memories of her girlhood at home came back to her.
“True it is, though, too true, that our dwelling is like a pigsty!” she muttered, looking about the room.—But there! … There they had a floor, and the walls were whitewashed, and all was warm and clean, and everything was in abundance. … And the work there, was it much? … Yuzka washed the things after dinner; Yagna spun, or looked out of the bright frostless windows. … What did she need, that she had not? … All the corals of Boryna’s deceased wives were hers now; and petticoats, and kerchiefs, and linen in plenty. She had not to trouble, not to earn anything, and could eat her fill of fat things! And Staho had said, moreover, that Yagustynka did all the work for her; that she lay in bed till broad daylight, and had tea for breakfast, because, forsooth, “potatoes did not agree with her!” … And the old man did nothing but make love and fondle that woman as if she were a little child. …
The thought roused a storm of rage in her; she started up from the chest she sat on and shook her fist.
“Oh, the spoiler, the harpy, the wanton, the trull!” She screamed so loud that old Bylitsa, dozing close to the fireplace, started up in alarm.
She was calm in an instant. “Father, pray cover the potatoes with straw, and then heap the mound with snow: there is going to be a hard frost,” she said, and returned to her accounts.
But somehow the old man’s work did not get on. There was much snow, and he had little strength—And then, he felt uneasy: he had held the rope, and two zloty were for him: should he have them? They had been lying there on the table, glittering and almost new, as he well remembered.
“Perhaps they will give them to me,” he thought. “To whom else do they belong? My arms are stiff with holding the rope, Krasula pulled so hard; I held on nevertheless. … And how I praised her to the cattle-dealers! Oh, I made them hear me! … Peter, the eldest boy—I should buy him a mouth-organ at the very first local feast. … And the younger one too should get something. … And Veronka’s little ones too, naughty troublesome brats though they are. … And for myself, some snuff—strong—such as stirs one’s inwards! Staho’s snuff is good for little, does not even make me sneeze.”
But these musings affected his work so much that when Hanka came round in an hour’s time, the straw was only just covered with snow.
“Why, you eat enough for a man, and work less than a child!” she said.
“Ah, Hanka, I am working hard, but I just stopped a moment to breathe: I shall finish instantly—instantly!” he stammered, greatly abashed.
“The twilight is coming down from the forest, the frost is growing harder, and the pit looks as if swine had been rooting there. Go ye into the hut and tend the babes.”
She herself set to work, and with such energy that the pit was very soon covered up and splendidly heaped over with snow.
But when she had done, it was
