“Look at it: how soft it is! and how dry!”
“ ’Tis beautiful wool. From the Manor sheep, belike.”
“Ah, and should you happen to need flour or groats or peas, pray let me know; you shall have all you want, and I will settle when I pay you.”
She then took her into a storeroom full of sacks and barrels of corn, and flitches of bacon hanging from the walls. The rafters bore long skeins of spun yarn in clusters, and on the floor thick rolls of linen cloth lay piled up. As to the strings of dried mushrooms, the cheeses, the jars crammed with various good things, the shelves groaning under huge round loaves, and the other articles of household consumption, who could tell them all?
“You shall have the smoothest yarn that hands can make,” said Hanka. “And thanks once more for all your kindness. But I fear I shall be unable to carry all that wool by myself.”
“It will be taken over to you.”
“That is well, for I have still to go about the village.”
She again thanked her, but now with something less of warmth and expansiveness: envy was gnawing at her heart.
“ ’Tis our people gives them all they have, carries it to them, and produces the same … and their storerooms overflow by our gifts! Besides, who knows how much money they have out at high interest? Ah, ‘Who has sheep to shear, he shall have good cheer.’ … It were harder work for them to produce all this.—Well, well!” So she thought on her exit from the house, whence Magda had now disappeared with all her things; and as it was getting late, Hanka quickened her pace.
Where—and of whom—could she inquire about work for Antek?
When on her father-in-law’s farm, she had found everybody friendly; people were constantly coming to visit her, either to get some service done or to exchange kind looks and words. And now there she was, standing out in the cold, and knowing not to whom she could go!
She stopped in front of Klemba’s, and of Simon’s too: but she was loath to enter, for now she recollected how Antek had told her not to make any calls. “People can do nothing, and will give no assistance—only pity; and that they would give just as well to a dead dog!” he had said.
“How true, oh, how true he spoke!” she said, remembering the organist and his wife.
Oh, had she but been a man! She would have set to work at once, and put everything to rights. She would not then have had to whine and lay bare her wounds that her neighbours might pity her!
She experienced in her soul a devouring, a ravenous craving for work, and such a concentration of force as stiffened her frame and gave firmness and speed to her steps. She also felt a longing to pass near her father-in-law’s cabin, were it but to look at the premises from without, and satisfy the desire of her eyes! But in front of the church door she turned away to follow a narrow path that led over the frozen pond to the mill; and she walked fast, not looking to right or left—careful only not to slip on the ice, determined to pass swiftly by and see nothing, lest her heart should be wounded again by the remembrance of the past. But she failed. Somehow, just opposite Boryna’s, she stopped suddenly, and could not take her eyes away from the lights that glimmered in the windows.
“It is ours—ours! … How can we possibly go from here? … The blacksmith would seize it instantly. No! I do not budge hence. Here shall I stay, like a watchdog, whether Antek stays or not! … His father is not immortal; and other changes too may come about. … I will not see my children despoiled, nor will I go from the village.” These thoughts passed through her mind, as she gazed upon that snow-covered orchard, and the faint outlines of buildings beyond: the silvered roofs, the dark-tinted walls, and—in the background, behind a shed—the sharp cone of a haystack.
The night was still, cold, black-hue, oversprinkled with a sand of stars, it seemed, and wrapping the snowy earth in silvery folds. The trees stood drooping under the weight of snow that bent them down, as if slumbering incomprehensibly in the stillness which flooded the world: white-sheeted phantoms, vapoury, yet rigid. Every voice had died away; only something—was it the breathing of those entranced inanimate trees? was it a murmur from the quivering stars?—something there was that trembled in the air. And there stood Hanka, forgetful of the minutes which went by, forgetful of the sharp intolerable cold, her eyes staring on that homestead, greedily drinking the sight of it, taking it all into her heart, absorbing it with all the strength of her insatiable dreams.
A sudden crackling in the snow woke her up: someone was coming by the same path across the pond, and in a little she looked upon Nastka.
“What, you, Hanka?”
“Why such amazement? Am I dead, and is it my ghost you see?”
“What fancy has taken hold of your I had not seen you for a long time, and was surprised.—Which way are you going?”
“To the mill.”
“My way too; I am taking Matthew his supper.”
“Is it a miller’s trade he is learning there now?”
“A miller’s? No, indeed! They are building a sawmill here in such great haste that they are now working at it even at night.”
They walked on together, Nastka prattling away, but careful to say no word about Boryna; and Hanka, though she would have been glad to hear, feeling that she could not possibly ask.
“Does the miller pay well?”
“Matthew gets five zloty fifteen groschen.”
“So much as that?”
“No great wonder, since he is at the head of everything.”
Hanka said no more till, passing in front of the smithy, whence a ruddy light flowed through the unpaned window, crimsoning the snow, she muttered:
“That Judas! Never in want of work to do!”
“He has engaged
