XIII
Life was fast becoming impossible at Dominikova’s. Yagna was always straying about like someone distraught, heedless of everything in the world. Andrew did his work in a slovenly way, and his absences at Simon’s grew more frequent. The farm had fallen into complete neglect. Sometimes the cows were driven unmilked to the pastures, and the pigs were squealing for food all day long, and the horses gnawed at their empty racks. The old dame could not do all by herself, having to grope about with her stick, half blind and her eyes bandaged. No wonder if she almost went mad with trouble and mortification.
She hired a komornitsa for the work, and did all she could, both by herself and by her influence over her children. But Yagna seemed deaf to all entreaties and remonstrances; and Andrew, when threatened, would answer back insolently:
“Ye have driven Simon away: work ye by yourself. He wants you not, is in no trouble, has a hut, has money, has a wife, has a cow—and is an out-and-out good farmer!”—But, saying these words, he took good care to keep out of her reach.
“Aye, aye,” she answered, with a dreary sigh; “truly, that unnatural wretch has contrived to succeed in all things.”
“Yes, and he manages so well that even Nastka is astonished!”
“I must” (she spoke her thoughts aloud) “hire someone to work regularly, or take a farm-servant.”
Andrew scratched his head, and said with some hesitation:
“But why take a stranger, when Simon is there, if ye’ll but say the word?”
“Do not meddle when you’re not asked!” she snarled; but all the same, she felt—and it was a bitter pill to swallow—that she would sooner or later have to give way and come to terms with Simon.
But what made her most anxious was Yagna’s state. From her she could get no clue; and she went on piling surmises on surmises, unpleasant fancies on fancies not less unpleasant, till at last, one Saturday afternoon, she could bear it no longer, and—bearing a large duck with her as an offering—groped her way to the priest’s house.
She came back only at evening, in great agitation, crying and wailing like an autumn wind at night; but, until she was alone with Yagna after supper, she spoke no word.
Then, “Do you know,” she said, “what tales are afloat concerning you and Yanek?”
“I am no lover of gossip!” her daughter answered unwillingly, raising her eyes, that shone with a feverish glow.
“But you have to know this … and to learn, too, that there’s no hiding things from neighbours’ eyes.—‘What’s done in silence is spoken of aloud.’—They say most fearful things of you.”
Then she told her every particular that she had gleaned from the organist’s wife and from his Reverence.
“… That very night they held judgment upon him; his father gave him a beating; the priest added some blows from his long pipe-stem; and he has been sent to Chenstohova, to protect him from you!—Do you hear that? Oh, think what you have done!” she cried indignantly.
“Jesu Maria!—Yanek beaten!—Beaten!—O God, O God!” And she started up with a mad idea of doing something … but sat down again and hissed between her teeth:
“May their arms wither, may their hands rot off! And when the plague comes, may they not be spared!” She then wept bitterly, with the tears streaming from her swollen eyes, like blood from a freshly opened wound.
Careless of her agony, Dominikova still continued to lash her with her tongue; and each word was a blow. She reminded her of all her many sins and transgressions, omitting not a single one, and pouring out before her all the bitterness that she had endured in silence for ever so long.
“Can you not see that all this must come to an end? that you cannot live on any more in this wise?” she cried, more and more pitilessly, though she herself was weeping, and the tears fell under her bandage down her cheeks. “Shall you be held the lowest of the low? Shall all men point their fingers at you now?—Oh, what a shame for my old age, good Lord! Oh, what a shame!” she murmured despairingly.
“Ye too, I hear, were no whit better in your youth!”
This silenced Dominikova effectually.—Yagna set to ironing some frills for the next day. It was a windy evening, with whistling sounds in the trees. The moon was sailing athwart a sky flecked all over with cloudlets. Away in the village the lasses were singing, while someone scraped a jerky accompaniment on a fiddle.
They heard the Voyt’s wife talking as she passed by.
“He went to the Police Bureau yesterday; since then, no news of him.”
“Yesterday evening,” Matthew’s voice returned, “he went to the District Office; and the Soltys says the head official had sent both for him and for the scrivener.”
After they had passed on, the old woman spoke again, but less harshly this time.
“Wherefore did you drive Matthew away from us?”
“He was displeasing to me; why, therefore, should he sit here? I seek no man, nor do I need any!”
“But ’tis time—aye, high time—to provide yourself with a goodman! Folk would then no longer attack you so. Even Matthew—he’s not to be disdained; a clever fellow, and an honest.”
For some time, and very earnestly, she held forth on this theme, but Yagna, busy with her own work and full of her own sorrows, made no reply. So at last her mother gave over, and took up her rosary. It was late in the night. All was quiet, save for the tossing trees and clattering mill; the moon was now quite hid behind dense clouds, though their edges were silvery, and a few sheaves of light shot out between them.
“Yagna, you must go and confess tomorrow. You’ll feel more at ease, when rid of your sins.”
“To what purpose?—No, I’ll not go!”
“Not go to confession!” Her mother’s voice was stridulous with horror.
“No. Quick to punish, slow to help: that’s what the priest is.”
“Hush, lest the Lord God punish you for those wicked words!—And I say to you: Go to confession, do penance, beg God’s forgiveness; do so, and all may yet be well!”
“Penance indeed! Is mine slight? And for what wrong that I have done, pray? No doubt, because I love, and because I suffer, I am rewarded thus. For me, the worst that can be has already come to pass!” And she went on bewailing herself in her sullen mood of exasperation.
Alas, poor thing! she had no foreboding—no, not the slightest—of the chastisement which was about to overtake her: a chastisement far less foreseen, and far harsher still!
For on the next day, which was Sunday, a rumour spread round the village before High Mass—the incredible rumour that the Voyt had been arrested for a deficit in the village accounts!
At first no one would believe it, and though fresh and more dreadful particulars came in hourly, they were hardly taken in earnest by anyone.
The graver members of the community only said: “The idle love inventing stories and spreading them for a pastime.”
They believed, however, when the blacksmith, home from town, bore out every word, and Yankel told the whole village:
“ ’Tis all true! Five thousand roubles of the community’s money are wanting. His farm will be seized for the sum, and should it not suffice, Lipka will have to make up the rest!”
Thereupon a furious storm of protest arose. What! when they all were in such straits, and misery cried aloud everywhere; when there was nothing more to eat, and many had to borrow, that they might pull through till the harvest was over: was it now that they must pay money for a thief? That was beyond human patience; the whole place went mad with rage, and curses and threats and foul names flew about like hail.
“I was no partner of his: therefore will I not pay in his stead!”
“Neither will I! He had revelled and caroused and had his pleasure: must I suffer now, paying for the pranks he has played?” So said many a one, in sore trouble, and hardly able to keep back his tears.
“Long have I had mine eyes upon the man, and foretold all that has now come to pass. Ye would not hearken then; and now, here you are!” old Ploshka said, not without ulterior intentions; and his wife, like a worthy helpmeet, echoed his words about the place, repeating them to any that would listen.
The tidings were so overwhelming that but few went that day to church, but talked the matter over at home. As the grievance was common to all, so they all complained together in huts and orchards, but especially along the millpond banks. What puzzled them most was, where the man could have wasted so much money.
“He must have hidden it somewhere; he never can have spent such a sum!”
“Nay, he has trusted in the scrivener’s uprightness, and we know well how far that goes.”
“Poor man! he has wronged us all, but himself more than anyone,” some of the graver villagers remarked: when Ploshka’s wife thrust her portly figure amongst them, and came forward wiping dry eyes, and with assumed sympathy:
“And I say, poor wife!—she that was such a grand and haughty dame—what will she do now? Both land and house will be taken from her, and the poor wretch will have to go into lodgings and work for others! ’Tis not as if she had got some pleasure out of all that money spent!”
“Oh, but she has enjoyed herself very well as it is!” Kozlova bawled, attacking her like Ploshkova, but in a different fashion. “They have both lived like lords, the merry villains!—meat every day, and half a potful of sugar in her coffee! And they both of them drank their rum neat and in tumblers! I myself have seen them bring all sorts of good things from town—half a cartful! What else made them so big-bellied? Not fasting, at any rate!”
She was listened to in grave silence, in spite of the arrant nonsense of her closing words. But it was the organist’s wife who decided the attitude of the people. She happened (it seemed a hazard at least) to be passing among them; and, listening to their talk, she observed, with apparent indifference:
“Why, do ye not know on what the Voyt has spent so much?”
They closed round her, and insisted on her telling them.
“ ’Tis clear enough: on Yagna!”
This was a surprise, and they looked at one another in bewilderment.
“Since last springtime, all the parish has been talking of naught else.—I shall not say a word; but go ye, ask anyone, even down in Modlitsa … and ye shall hear the truth!”
Seemingly unwilling to say more, she made as to leave them; but they followed her and literally drove her into a corner. Then she told them, as a secret that was to go no farther, how the Voyt had bought Yagna rings of the purest gold, kerchiefs of the finest silk, and given her lots of coral necklaces and quantities of ready money into the bargain! All these were of course glaring fabrications, but they believed her implicitly. All but Yagustynka, who cried out in a passion:
“Great saints, Snuffle and Cant, pray for us!—Have you seen all this, madam?”
“Yes, I have! And I can swear, even in church, that it was for her he has stolen: aye, and very likely at her instigation too! Ah, but she is capable of any crime; naught on earth is sacred to her, that shameless, that conscienceless one! The lewd beast, forever prowling about Lipka, bringing shame and disgrace wherever she goes! … Why, she even attempted to seduce my own Yanek, that innocent lad, as pure as a child! But he escaped from her and, coming, told me all! Only think of it: the wanton will not even leave a priest alone!” She stopped, out of breath, for her bitter spite had made her speak at a great rate.
These words had the effect of a spark on gunpowder. All the former grudges against Yagna now sprang into life again—all the feelings of envy and rivalry and hatred; all present gave utterance to what they had to accuse her of, and the tumult became indescribable. Everyone tried to shout down everyone else, and with louder and louder shrieks.
“How can our Christian land support such a monster?”
“And who caused Boryna’s death? Have ye forgotten?”
“So she has even attempted to entice a priest! O merciful Jesus!”
“Ah, how much drunkenness and quarrelling and iniquity are all owing to her!”
“She is an ulcer that infects the whole village, and because of her, Lipka is despised by all!”
“So long as she’s amongst us, there will ever be sin and wickedness and lechery! Today the Voyt robs us for her sake; another may do the same tomorrow!”
“Drive her out! Out—like a leper—to the woods and the forests!”
“Drive her out!—There’s no help for it! Drive her out!” they yelled, infuriated, and now wrought up to any extremity. On the proposal of the organist’s wife, they all went in a body to the Voyt’s. They found his wife bathed in tears, and so wretched, so miserably dejected, that they embraced her and wept over her, and condoled with her with the utmost tenderness.
After a while, Yanek’s mother mentioned Yagna.
“Ah, ’tis God’s truth,” the other lamented in despair. “She is the cause of all. … Oh, may she, for the wrong she has done, die like a dog in a ditch, eaten of worms for this my shame, for this my misery!” And she fell back on a settle, torn with fierce agony, and wrestling with a fit of sobs.
They sorrowed and wept over her for a long time; but as the sun was going westward, they at last went home. Only the organist’s wife remained; and the two, shut up together, took counsel and talked over a certain measure to be taken. They then both went from cottage to cottage, canvassing the village, and preparing the secret enterprise on which they had entered.
They were joined by the Ploshka women and several others, who embraced their cause, and with whom they visited the priest. He, however, stretching out his open hands before him, said:
“With these doings I will have naught in common. I cannot prevent them; but I want to know nothing about the whole business, and shall be going to Zarnov tomorrow for the whole day.”
The evening was noisy with quarrels and contradictions and secret plottings: when night fell, all those in the plot repaired to the tavern, where the organist stood treat to them all. There they once more set about debating and deliberating: the foremost farmers and nearly all the married women in Lipka were there. They had been conferring together for some time, when Ploshka’s wife shouted:
“Antek Boryna, where is he? All are assembled here, and he is the foremost amongst us; no decision we took without him would be valid.”
“Yes, we will send for him; he must come!” they shouted; “we can do nothing till he is here.”
“What if he take her part?” said a voice.
“Would he dare to oppose us—us, the community? For we are determined—all, all, all!”
Antek was in bed, but the Soltys woke him up.
“Ye must go and speak your mind. If you will not, then they’ll say you are for her, and fly in the face of our assembly! And your trespasses in the past will never be forgiven by the women!—Come now; we must put an end to all this!”
He went indeed, for he could not choose but go; but with a heavy heart.
The tavern was full to bursting, and resonant with a loud droning sound. The organist then got up on a bench, and made a speech like a sermon.
“… Nothing else is to be done! The village is like unto a house, from which, if a thief shall take away one of the foundation beams, another will greedily seize upon the rafters, and a third a log from the walls; and presently the house itself must fall, and crush all the dwellers therein! See then: if amongst us everyone shall be free to rob and slay and do all manner of wrong, behaving lewdly, what will become of the village? I say to you that it will be a village no longer, but a shame and a disgrace to every honest man! that all men will shun it from afar, and cross themselves when it is named! Aye, and I say that sooner or later a judgment of God must fall on such a village, even as on Sodom and Gomorrah! Yea, it will fall, and on all of us; for we shall be guilty, both those that do evil themselves, and they that permit the evil to increase! For what says Holy Scripture? ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; if thine eye hath trespassed, pluck it out and throw it to the dogs.’—Moreover, I say to you, Yagna is worse than the plague, worse than any pestilence; for she sows seeds of scandal, sins against all God’s commandments, and draws down upon us the wrath and terrible vengeance of our Lord. Drive her out, then, while it is not yet too late! The measure of her iniquities is full; the day of reckoning has come at last!” he concluded, bellowing like a bull, with purple face and eyes starting out of their sockets.
“Yes, yes! It is time!—We, the people, have power both to punish and to reward!—Drive her from the village!” they all shouted, their excitement now waxing greater and greater.
Gregory and others spoke too, but were hardly listened to: the organist’s wife was telling of the affair with Yanek, the Voytova pouring her grievances into everyone’s ears; and, others joining in to swell the hubbub, the whole place was roaring with the noise.
Antek alone said not a word. He stood close to the bar, gloomy, his teeth set hard, pale with the torments he endured, and at times assailed with a wild craving to snatch up a bench, beat the whole shrieking mob to a jelly and trample them under his feet: so odious they were to him! But he kept himself in hand, though drinking glass after glass of liquor; only he spat on the ground, and swore under his breath.
Ploshka addressed him after a time, and said aloud, for all to hear: “We are at one to drive Yagna from the village: come, Antek, speak your mind on the matter.”
A great silence fell upon the multitude; every eye was fixed upon him: they felt sure he would be against them. He, however, drew a deep breath, threw back his shoulders, and answered in a ringing voice:
“I, living with the community, am of one mind with the community. Will ye expel her? Do. Will ye exalt her? Do.—To me ’tis all one.”
He pushed the crowd apart and left the place, without even a glance at anyone.
They continued the debate a long time, even till the morning light; but in the end it was quite decided that she should be expelled.
But few took her part; those who did were shouted down. Matthew alone fearlessly dealt curses around upon them all and, reviling the whole village in the utmost paroxysm of fury, left the place at last, and went to beg Antek to save Yagna.
“Do ye know what has been decided?” he asked him at dawn, pale as death and trembling from head to foot.
“I know. Law and custom are on their side,” he replied curtly, whilst washing his face at the well.
“To hell with such laws! It’s all the work of the organist and his wife. … Shall we put up with such injustice?—In what has she been to blame? All their accusations are mere lies! … Lord! are they to hunt her from our midst, like a mad dog?”
“Would you, then, resist the assembly of the people?”
“Ye talk as if ye were on their side!” Matthew cried, in a tone of sharp reproach.
“I am on no one’s side. She is no more to me than a stone.”
“O Antek, rescue her!—Do something, for God’s sake! I shall go mad—mad! Think of it: what can she do? where can she go? … Ah, those villains, those sons of dogs, those wolves! … I will swing my ax, and smite, and spare no one!”
“I will not help you in any wise. They have decided: what is one man against them all?—Nothing!”
“Aha!—You have a grudge against her!” Matthew suddenly flashed out.
“Grudge or no grudge, that concerns none but myself!” Antek replied sternly, and leaned back against the well-cover, looking into vacancy. His passion for Yagna, suppressed but not less active, was now raging within him, together with bitter jealousy: both tossing him to and fro, like a tree that groans in the blast.
He looked around him. Matthew was gone. The village seemed a strange place to him—loathsome and blatant exceedingly.
And in the very weather of that memorable day, too, there was something odd and abnormal. The huge swollen disk of the sun shone pallid in the sky; the heat was of a sultriness beyond all that had yet been; the sky was clouded with low-hanging hideous-looking vapours; the wind every now and then sprang up in fitful gusts, and the dust rose in thick whorls and spirals. A storm was at hand; far away, there were flashes along the wooded horizon.
Now had the fermentation amongst the people risen to the highest pitch. They ran about wildly; brawling was heard in almost every hut; women fought together on the millpond banks; the dogs were howling all the time. Scarcely anyone went to work in the fields. The cattle, left at home, lowed plaintively in the byres. Nor was there any Mass on that day, the priest having left the place at daybreak. And every minute the feeling of unrest increased in every mind.
Antek, seeing that the people were gathering on the organist’s premises, shouldered a scythe and went off to one of his fields that was close to the forest. The wind hampered his work, waving the corn to and fro, and blowing into his eyes; but he stood his ground firmly and reaped away, listening—now more calmly—to the distant sounds he heard.
“Perchance they are about it at this instant!” was the thought that flashed through his brain, making his heart beat like a hammer. A wave of rage swept over him: he drew himself up and was on the point of tossing his scythe away and running to the rescue of Yagna; he only mastered himself just in time.
“Whoso has done evil must suffer the penalty!—So be it! So be it!”
The rye bent in ripples round his knees, like the waves of a stormy lake; the gale blew his hair about, drying the sweat of agony on his face. He could barely see anything, for he was in spirit at Yagna’s side—all of him but his arms, with hard trained sinews working instinctively, wielding the scythe and laying the rye low, swath by swath!
Once, however, there came upon the wings of the wind a shriek, loud and long-drawn-out, that came from the village!
He flung the scythe on the ground and sat down in the corn that rose like a wall around him. He grovelled close to the earth, and clung to it with a mighty effort, and held himself down with an iron grasp. And he kept himself fast, and did not weaken, though his eyes wandered away to Lipka; though his heart cried out aloud in terror; though an awful fit of trembling shook him from head to foot.
“All things must take their course: they must! We plough to sow, we sow to reap; and if anything hinder, we pluck it out like an evil weed!”
Thus spoke within his soul an inexorable immemorial Voice.—Whose? … Was it not that of the earth and its inhabitants?
He still felt himself rebelling, but now listened to it with more willing obedience.
“Even so. Everyone has the right to defend himself against a wolf. … Everyone!”
A few last regrets, a few idle thoughts, came still like stinging gusts of wind, wrapping him in darkness, and urging him to rise and act.
But he started to his feet, whetted his scythe, crossed himself, spat on his hands—and set to work with a will, laying low swath after swath with such furious energy that his scythe-blade hissed through the air, and the walls of ripe grain around him resounded to his strokes.
In the village, meantime, the fearful hour of judgment and chastisement had arrived. What took place there can scarcely be related. All Lipka was as in the delirium of a high fever; the people seemed to have gone stark staring mad. Those of more sensible natures kept within doors, or fled to the fields. The others were gathered on the banks of the pond, and so drunk (if we may say so) with rancour that, before wreaking revenge on Yagna, they had begun to wreak their fury on one another, with spiteful words of hate. …
But in a minute the whole multitude had set out to Dominikova’s, like a foaming torrent in spate. The Voytova and Yanek’s mother led them on, and a howling infuriated rabble followed.
They burst into the cabin like a tempest. Dominikova blocked the way—she was trampled down in an instant. Andrew sprang forward to her aid, and was knocked down at once. Lastly, Matthew, standing in front of the inner door, strove to keep them back; but in spite of the club he wielded with all his strength, not half a minute elapsed before he was lying close to the wall, unconscious and with a broken head.
Yagna had locked and bolted herself up in the alcove. When they burst the door open, she appeared, standing with her back to the wall; but she neither made any defence nor uttered any cry. White as a corpse, with wide-staring eyes, she shook all over in expectation of death.
A hundred hands shot out to seize her in their greedy clutches, ravenous with hatred; she was whirled away like a bush torn up by the roots, and dragged out into the enclosure.
“Bind her, else she may give us the slip and escape!” the Voytova commanded.
By the roadside stood a cart prepared for her, filled to the very top with hogs’-dung, to which cart a couple of black cows had been yoked. Into the dung they tossed her, bound fast and unresisting; and then, in the midst of a deafening uproar—laughter, foul invectives, imprecations—each a stab of murderous intent—the procession set out.
It halted at the church, and Kozlova bawled:
“Let her be stripped here, and whipped in the porch!”
“Aye,” screamed another; “creatures of her kidney were always flogged outside the church.”
“Let her be whipped until the blood spurts out!”
But Ambrose had bolted the lich-gate, and stood close to the wicket, the priest’s gun in hand; and when they stopped, he bellowed at them:
“The first that breaks in here—as I hope for mercy, I’ll shoot him! … I’ll kill him like a dog!” And he looked so grim, so formidable, with his gun ready to fire, that they forbore, and turned aside to the poplar road.
They hurried on, for the storm might burst at any moment. The sky had grown still more gloomy; the tall poplars tossed to and fro in the gale; clouds of blinding dust flew up beneath their feet, and far-off thunder rumbled.
They cried: “Faster, Pete, faster!” They looked skywards ill at ease, less noisy now, and walking by the roadside, for the middle was deep sand; and only now and then did one or another of her bitterest enemies draw near the cart and shriek:
“You swine! You wanton! To the soldiers!—Go, you plague-spotted harlot!”
Pete, Boryna’s servant, was driving the cart, for no one else would do so. He walked beside and flogged the cows, and spoke a few words of pity to her, when he could speak them unnoticed.
“ ’Tis not far … your wrong shall be avenged: suffer now in patience!”
Thus did Yagna, bound, on a bed of dung, the blood oozing from her beaten limbs, disgraced for all her life, unutterably degraded, and supreme in wretchedness, lie neither hearing nor feeling anything around her; but the tears streamed down her bruised cheeks. At times, too, her bosom rose as if to utter a cry—but the cry never came. It stopped within her, petrified.
“Faster, Pete, faster!” they exclaimed, hurrying him along, and impatience partly calming their madness, they now came on at a quick trot, nearing the mounds which were the landmarks of Lipka.
Here they pulled out one side of the cart, made of loose boards, and shot her out, along with the dung, like loathsome offal. A loud thud was heard; she fell on her back, and remained motionless.
The Voytova came forward, and spurned at her with her foot, hissing: “Return to us again, and we’ll hunt you away with dogs!” and, lifting up a clod as hard as a stone, and striking her cruelly, she added: “This for the wrong you have done my children!”
Another struck her a second blow: “This for the shame you have brought on Lipka!”
“May you perish forever and evermore!”
“May you never lie in hallowed earth!”
“But die of hunger and of thirst!”
With these invectives, there rained upon her clods and stones and handfuls of earth; while she lay motionless, looking up into the trees that waved over her.
Then it grew dark, and a dense rain began to fall.
Pete delayed over “something to arrange about the cart,” so the people did not wait for him, but returned in bands, much depressed and subdued. About halfway back, they met Dominikova, covered with blood and with torn clothes, sobbing and groping her way with a stick. On finding out whom she was passing, she shrieked in a fearful voice:
“Murrain and plague and fire and flood—let them not pass you over!”
At the words, they hung their heads, and fled panic-stricken.
It was a great storm. The sky had grown liver-coloured, the dust flew in bellying clouds; the poplars, with sobbing soughing sounds, were bowed and shaken to their roots; the winds howled, wrestling with the corn, and rushed roaring away to the quivering and murmuring forests. Twisted masses of hail-cloud, slate and copper-hued, hung low in bulging piles and airy hummocks here and there, cloven by streaming thunderbolts of wonderful brightness; though indeed the hail fell only in scanty showers, beating down a few leaves and boughs.
This, with few intervals, lasted all day long and till evening set in, followed by a black, cool, refreshing night.
And the next day it was splendid weather again; a sky without a stain, and the land sparkling all over with dew.
Everything in Lipka was now on its former footing. As soon as the sun was well above the skyline, they all, as by common consent, sallied forth together to reap; the field pathways and roads were alive with rolling carts.
And as the Mass-bell tinkled from the church, each man stood up in the fields to listen to the sounds: those nearest could even catch the faint notes of the organ. Some knelt down to say their morning prayer, even aloud; some uttered a pious ejaculation, in which he found spirit and strength to work; everyone at least crossed himself … and then fell to work with the utmost energy.
Thus did it go on all day: a Divine Service of hard and ceaseless and most fruitful work. Scarcely anyone remained at home. All the doors of all the huts stood wide open; even the children went afield, the aged and the invalids; and even the dogs, breaking loose from the ropes that bound them, darted off to the harvest-making.
No one was indolent, no one stood eyeing his neighbours’ crops; they all, bowed over the furrows, and with untiring diligence, worked hard in the sweat of their brows.
Dominikova’s fields alone remained unreaped—forgotten, as it were. The corn dropped grain by grain to the ground, the ears withered up with drought: no one went there, and the passersby averted their heads not to see the desolation. More than one felt compassion, and cast wistful glances at his neighbours; but he would then fall to work again more diligently than before: it was no time for them to stand contemplating ruin and devastation.
For harvest was now in full swing: day succeeded day, full of the hardest toil, most joyfully supported.
And at last, the weather continuing magnificent, they bound the cut corn into sheaves, setting them up on the fields by clusters of eight, to be brought home to Lipka at their convenience. Now did the ponderous wagons roll along, on every field, through every lane, to every barn in the village. The gathered billows of golden corn flowed out along the ways and in the yards and on to the threshing-floors; a few stalks even floated in the pond, or dangled aloft from the roadside trees, with their yellow bearded stalks; and all the countryside was redolent of the reaped straw and the fresh ripe grain.
On not a few threshing-floors the flails were beating already, for the people were in a hurry to get their corn made into bread. Without, on the vast expanse of stubble, multitudes of geese were gleaning the remaining ears, and flocks of sheep and herds of oxen grazed there too. There, too, some fires had been kindled; and all day long the lasses sang and made a joyful noise, that mingled with calls and rumbling of carts, and made the merry sunburnt faces of the villagers shine still brighter.
The rye was not yet all cut down, before the oats on the uplands were more than ready for the sickle, and you could almost see how quick the barley ripened, and the wheat daily grew of an ever rustier gold. There was no time to rest, not even to eat at one’s leisure; they were all so tired, so worn out, that many would fall asleep over their meals; and yet, when they came home in the evening, Lipka thrilled to the merry din of talk and laughter, of music and songs.
Yes, the hard times that came before the harvest were over and gone; the barns were full, there was corn in abundance, and everyone, poor as he might be, held up his head proudly, and looked forward in confidence to the future and the happy times he had so long desired.
On one of these golden days of harvest, when they were bringing in the barley, the blind old dziad, led by his dog, passed through the village. The heat was intense, yet he would not rest anywhere, being in haste to get to Podlesie. This was hard work for him to do, dragging a heavy stomach upon twisted limbs; and he could but move slowly along, stretching out his neck, and listening attentively to each sound he heard. Stopping sometimes near the reapers, he would “praise God,” offer them snuff, and—if a coin dropped into his palm—mumble a few prayers, and ask, as it were indifferently, for news about Yagna and the affairs of the village.
He got little information on the first point, however; they answered him unwillingly, and told him no matter what came to their heads.
But at Podlesie, on getting to the crucifix, he happened to meet Matthew, who was not far off, putting the timber for the smith’s windmill into shape.
“Please take me to Simon’s hut,” the dziad asked him, swinging forward on his crutches.
“Ye’ll have but little comfort there, where is naught but weeping and sorrow!” Matthew replied.
“Is Yagna still ailing? They told me something in her brain had gone wrong.”
“Not at all.—But she is always in bed, and has well-nigh forgotten all things in the world. Her state would move a heart of stone. … Oh, what creatures men are!”
“Aye, to ruin thus the mind of a Christian! … But I hear her mother intends bringing an action against all Lipka.”
“She cannot win. The decision was taken by the whole assembly: they were within their rights.”
“Oh, the wrath of the multitude is a fearful thing!” The dziad shuddered as he spoke.
Matthew flared up hotly. “Fearful, yes; but senseless and spiteful and unjust exceedingly!”
He brought him close to the hut, and went in himself. Only for a minute, however, to come out again wiping a tear away.
Nastka was spinning under the eaves. The dziad sat down by her, and produced a blue flask.
“See, ye must sprinkle Yagna with this thrice a day, and also rub the crown of her head therewith; in a week, all trace of hurt will be gone. The nuns in Przyrov gave it me.”
“May God be your reward! Already a fortnight has gone by, and she continually lies there unconscious. Only, from time to time, she makes as though she would flee somewhither … and laments … and calls upon Yanek.”
“And Dominikova, how is it with her?”
“She too is like one dead, save that she is always sitting at her side. Ah, she’ll not last long!”
“So many ruined lives, O Lord!—And where’s Simon?”
“At present, always in Lipka. He has a great burden on his shoulders now, having to take care of two farms.”
She put a five-kopek piece in his hand, but he would not take it.
“ ’Twas for my own pleasure I brought her the flask … and will add a prayer for her besides at the altar of the Transfiguration!—She was ever most kindhearted, and cared for the poor as but few care!”
“Truly and indeed, her heart was very kind … else she might peradventure have had less to suffer.”
The sound of the Angelus rose up from Lipka, with the clatter of carts, the ringing of scythes on the whetstone, and some far-off snatches of song: while the dust, golden in the western air, now began to blur the outlines of cabins and fields and woods.
The dziad got on his crutches, drove the dogs away, set his wallet straight, and started off, saying:
“Dear folk, may God be with you evermore.”