XI
It was early dawn, and all the country was covered over with a deep azure bloom of haze like a ripe plum, when Hanka drove up to the cabin, whose inmates were all asleep as yet. But with the sharp clatter of the wheels, Lapa fell to barking for joy, and leaping up in front of the horses.
“Why, where is Antek?” Yuzka exclaimed on the doorstep, putting on her skirt over her head.
“He is to be released in three days only,” was the tranquil reply, as Hanka kissed the little ones, and distributed pastry among them.
Vitek now came running out of the stable, and after him trotted the colt, whinnying and going straight to the mare, still in harness, while Pete was taking the parcels out of the cart.
“Have they begun to mow yet?” she asked, sitting down at once on the threshold to give suck to her baby.
“Yes, they began at noon yesterday: five of them. Philip, Raphael and Kobus to work out their debts to us; Adam Klemba and Matthew for hire.”
“What?—Matthew Golab?”
“I too thought it strange; but he would have it so. Said his carpentry work made him stoop too much, and he wanted to get straight again, scythe in hand.”
Yagna then opened her window and looked out.
“Is Father sleeping still?” she was asked.
“Aye, in the orchard. We left him out at night, so hot it is within doors.”
“And your mother, what of her?”
“As usual; perhaps somewhat better. Ambrose, who tends her, came yesterday with the shepherd of Vola, who fumigated her, rubbed her with ointment, and said that, provided she stays at home till the ninth Sunday from now, she will by then be healed.”
“ ’Tis the best remedy for a scald!” she said, and, passing her baby to the other breast, listened attentively to what had occurred in her absence. But not for long: it was now broad daylight, the sky flushing red with bright streaks athwart the air. Dewdrops fell from the trees; birds were garrulous in their nests; bleating and lowing resounded all through the village, and hammers, hammering scythe-blades, whose thin keen tinkling made a piercing din.
No sooner had Hanka undressed after her journey than she ran to Boryna, who was lying asleep under a bed of down, in a great basket beneath the trees.
“Hark!” she said, pulling him by the arm; “Antek will be home in three days. He had been taken to the Government prison. Roch followed him with money that must be paid. Both will come home together.”
On a sudden the old man sat up, rubbed his eyes, and seemed to listen; but he sank back at once, pulled the down covering over his head and fell asleep again.
There was no more talking with him; besides, the mowers were just then coming into the yard.
“Yesterday,” Philip told Hanka, “we mowed the meadow adjoining the cabbage-plot.”
“Today ye will go beyond the river, by the boundary-market; Yuzka will show you where.”
“ ’Tis in Duck’s Hollow; a big piece of land.”
“And the grass comes up to the waist, lush and rank: very different from yesterday’s meadow.”
“Was the grass so poor there?”
“Aye, all but dried up: it felt like cutting a brush.”
“Then it may be tossed this very day, since the dew will soon be quite dry.”
They started at once: Matthew, smoking a cigarette in Yagna’s room, was the last, and cast a rueful look behind him as he went, like a cat balked of its bowl of milk.
The rest of the village, too, soon poured forth its troops of mowers.
Scarcely had the sun risen, huge and ruddy, when the weather grew warm, and presently very hot indeed.
On the mowers marched, in Indian file, preceded by Yuzka, dragging a pole after her.
They passed the mill. The meadows were veiled in a low creeping haze, through which tufts of alders peered out like puffs of dark smoke; here and there the river peeped from under its greyish screen, glittering brightly; the dew-drenched grasses drooped their heads in the meadows, and the piping of lapwings came on the eastern breeze, scented with the bland fragrance of many blossoms.
Yuzka, having taken them as far as the landmarks, measured the extent of her father’s meadow-land, stuck the pole up at the border, and scampered away home.
Pulling off their spencers and tucking their breeches up, they formed into line, and thrust the scythe-handles into the ground, to sharpen the blades with their whetstones.
“The grass is as thick as the wool of a fleece; some of us will sweat soundly,” said Matthew, who stood first, testing the sweep of his scythe.
“Thick it is—and tall!” said his neighbour. “Well, there’ll be plenty of hay.”
“Yes, if the weather be fine,” said a third, glancing up at the sky.
“When you’re mowing a meadow, rain always is ready,” remarked the fourth, with a grin.
“The saying’s not true this year!—Come, begin, Matthew!”
They all crossed themselves. Matthew tightened his girdle, straddled forward, spat on his palms, took a deep breath, and launched his scythe far into the grass, plying it with swift strokes; the others following him one after another, in a slanting line, for fear of accidents. So they cut their way into the mist-covered meadow with a steady rhythmical advance, their cold blades glistening, with a swish at every stroke, and forming long swaths heavy with dewdrops.
The breeze rustled in the grass; overhead, the lapwings screamed more and more plaintively: and they, rocking their bodies from right to left, mowed on unweariedly, conquering the meadow foot by foot. Only now and again did one or another of them halt to whet his scythe or straighten his back, and then once more he mowed away with a will, leaving behind him ever more and more numerous swaths.
Before the sun had risen above the village, all the meadows echoed beneath the strokes of the mowers: the blue steel of the scythe-blades flashed everywhere; everywhere could be heard the stridulous clang of the whetstones; everywhere the strong perfume of mown grass was inhaled.
It was perfect weather for haymaking. An ancient adage says, indeed: “Begin to make hay: rain will fall the same day”; but this year it was quite the other way round. Instead of rainy weather, there was drought.
The days began, moist with dew, and yet parched, like a man in a fever; they ended in nights baked with heat. Some wells and rills had been dried up; the corn was turning yellow, the plants withered away. Countless insects assailed the trees, which began to cast their yet unripe fruit. Cows, returning hungry from the sere grass of the pastures, had ceased to give milk; and the Squire allowed none to graze their beasts on his clearings but those who paid him five roubles a head.
Very many had not so much cash to pay him.
But, setting aside these particular inflictions, the hard times usual before harvest were this year harder than ever.
They had reckoned on rain falling surely in June, and the field crops benefiting thereby: nay, money had even been offered for Masses to that intention. And now, some had really nothing to put in the pot!
But the worst of all was that not even the oldest inhabitant could remember a time when there had been so many law troubles: the great forest action not yet settled, and the Voyt’s affair still setting people by the ears, and Dominikova’s quarrel with her son, and the Germans, and many another matter of dispute between neighbours: so many, in fact, that what with such incessant brawls and wranglings, they almost forgot their more material afflictions.
Of course then, as soon as ever haymaking time had come round, all the people began to breathe more freely, the poorer among them hurrying off to seek work at the Manor farms, and the wealthier peasants, deaf to all other matters, setting at once to mow their grass.
They did not, however, quite forget the Germans, but got someone or other to go daily and see what they were about.
They still were there, but had given up digging wells and fetching stones to build; and, as the blacksmith announced one day, they had laid a complaint against the Squire for money matters, and against the men of Lipka for “threats and conspiracy.”
At this the peasants laughed very heartily.
It was just this topic which was discussed that day in the meadow at dinnertime.
An intensely hot noontide, with the sun overhead, the sky hanging above with a whitish glow, a blasting heat around as from an oven; no breath of wind; leaves shrivelling up; birds silent; short thin shadows that scarcely shaded at all; the strong aroma of the heated grasses; corn and orchards and huts standing as if wrapped in white flame; all things, as it were, melting away in the air that trembled like water simmering on the fire. Even the river ran more slowly, its stream shining like fused glass, so transparent that beneath the surface-currents every gudgeon, every stone at the sandy bottom, every crayfish scuffing about in the luminous shadows of the banks, showed forth clear and distinct. A deep calm, spinning its slumberous web, crept over the sunlit earth; and nothing was noisy save the buzzing flies.
The mowers sat down on the riverbank, beneath a clump of tall alders, eating their dinner out of the porringers brought, for Matthew by his sister Nastka, for the others by Hanka and Yagustynka. These seated themselves on the grass in the sun’s full glare, and, with their kerchiefs drawn over their heads, listened attentively to the talk.
“I,” said Matthew, scraping his emptied porringer, “have always held that the Germans would take themselves off one of these days.”
“The priest held so too,” Hanka remarked.
“And so they will, if the Squire wills it,” growled Kobus, always ready to argue, stretching himself out under a tree.
“What?” Yagustynka asked, sneeringly as usual; “did they not fear the noise ye made, and run?”
Her jeer was unnoticed, and someone observed:
“The smith said yesterday that the Squire would come to terms with us.”
“Strange that Michael is on our side now!”
“He has,” the old woman hissed, “found he would get more thereby.”
“The miller too, they say, has pleaded at the Manor-house for the village.”
“Those good souls! They are all on our side now!” said Matthew. “Why?—I’ll tell you. The Squire promised the smith a goodly reward for the reconciliation. The miller fears the Germans may set up a windmill on the high ground in Podlesie. And the tavern-keeper befriends the people out of fear for himself: he knows well that where a German settles, no Jew can get his bread.”
“The Squire wishes to be reconciled: does he fear us peasants, then?”
“Ye have hit the mark, Mother; of all of them, he is the most afraid.”
Here Matthew broke off; Vitek was coming from the village at full speed.
“Mistress, come at once!” he bawled from a distance.
“What, is the house on fire?” she faltered, terrified.
“ ’Tis Master, and he is crying out for something.”
She ran off instantly.
The fact was that, ever since morning, Matthias had been strange, plucking at his coverlet and seeming to look for something. Before setting out for the meadow, Hanka had charged Yuzka to take special care of him, and the latter had many a time gone to look; but he had lain quiet till about dinnertime, when he suddenly fell a-shouting very loud.
On Hanka’s arrival, he sat up, and called out:
“My boots—where are they? Give them to me, and quickly too!”
“I’ll get them from the storeroom in an instant!” she said, to pacify him; for he seemed quite sensible, and looked keenly about him.
“Mother of dogs! how I have overslept myself!” and he yawned wide and deep.
“It is broad day, and ye are sleeping, all of you!—Let Kuba get the harrow ready,” he commanded; “we shall go out and sow.”
They stood before him, hesitating, when he suddenly collapsed, falling helpless to the ground.
“Fear not, Hanka, I had a fit of dizziness. Is Antek afield, hey?—Afield?” he repeated, when they had replaced him on the bed.
“Aye,” she stammered. “Ever since daybreak.” For she feared to cross him.
He looked about him brightly and talked much; but one word out of ten was sense, and the rest drivel. He again wanted to get up and go out, called for his boots—and then put his hands to his head and moaned pitifully. Hanka knew that the end was at hand; so she ordered him to be borne within doors, and sent for the priest in the afternoon.
He came presently with the Holy Sacrament, but could only give him Extreme Unction.
“His state needs nothing more,” the priest said; “in a few hours he will be with his fathers.”
In the evening, many people visited the cabin, for he seemed on the point of death; and Hanka put the lighted taper of the dying in his hand. But presently he fell into a quiet sleep.
The next day there was no change. He recognized people, and spoke sensibly, but lay for hours together as still as a corpse.
The smith’s wife was at his bedside continually; also Yagustynka, who wanted to fumigate him!
“Let alone; ye may set the place on fire,” he burst out unexpectedly.
And at noon, when the smith came and looked into his half-closed eyes, he smiled strangely, and uttered these words:
“Do not trouble, Michael; I shall drop off soon enough—soon enough!”
So saying, he turned his face to the wall, and spoke no more. He was evidently going rapidly downhill, so they now watched him with care; especially Yagna, over whom an extraordinary change had come.
“I alone shall tend him! It is my right,” she had told Hanka and Magda so peremptorily that they had not opposed her.
She no longer left the cabin at all: a vague terror oppressed her.
All the village was out in the meadows: the haymaking had been going on since dawn; ever since the very first faint flush in the sky, they had started for the meadows. Rows of peasants in shirtsleeves, looking like grey storks, were now all over the lands, whetting their flashing scythes, and mowing amain all day long; all day the hammers rang upon the scythes, and the girls sang their merry impromptus as they raked up the cut grass.
All those verdurous glossy flats were swarming with people, noise and clamour; loud ditties and peals of laughter resounded to the accompaniment of the tinkling blades, and the work went on everywhere with energy and goodwill. Every day, too, when the bloodred sun was descending towards the woods, and the air full of the twittering of the birds, and grass and corn alike seemed quivering to the crickets’ merry notes, while the frogs in the marshes struck up their croaking serenade, and perfumes rose from the incense-breathing earth—then all along the roads were crawling great heavy wagons filled with hay; the mowers went home with songs, and on the meadows, now yellow and trampled, stood close crowds of haycocks and ricks, like so many fat gossiping dames, squatting down to have a quiet talk together. Amongst these the storks strutted, above them the lapwings wheeled, with their sad piping cry; and on towards them the white mists came driving up from the marshes.
Through Boryna’s window there came these voices of men and of the land—the glad sounds of life and toil, and the aromatic scents of corn and meadow and sunlight; but Yagna was deaf to them all.
The undergrowth round the cabin protected it from the glare and spread within it a greenish slumberous twilight. Flies buzzed; and now and then Lapa, watchful beside his master, would yawn, and then go and fawn upon Yagna, who sat for hours without motion or thought—as still as a statue.
Matthias spoke no longer, moaned no longer. He just lay still; but his eyes rolled unceasingly—those bright eyes of his, as shiny as glass globes, following her with cold persistency, piercing her through and through like knife-blades.
She turned her back on him, endeavouring to forget. It was in vain—in vain! They peered out at her from every sombre nook, floated in the air, glowing with fearful brilliancy, and a fascination so irresistible that she had to obey their call and stare back into them as into some unfathomable abyss.
At times, as though waking from a horrible dream, she would beseech his mercy: “Prithee, look not thus: ye are tearing my soul out of me: look not thus!”
No doubt he heard her: a quiver passed over him, his face twitched dumbly, as if to cry out, his eyes stared yet more gloomily, and big teardrops rolled down his livid cheeks.
Then, driven by sheer terror, she would rush from the hut.
Hidden in the shade of the trees, she would peep out at the meadows full of people and of tumultuous joy.
And the sight made her cry bitterly.
Then she fled to her mother’s. But hardly had she looked in and seen the darkened room and scented the rank pungency of the medicines, when she would hasten away once more.
And again she would weep.
Then she wandered abroad, and looked out upon the countryside with longing eyes. But thence sprung yet more bitter and dreary and agonizing tears; and she mourned grievously over her own sad lot, like a bird with broken wings, deserted by its mates.
Thus one day after another went by without any change. Hanka, along with the rest of the village, was absorbed in haymaking, and it was only on the third day that she stayed at home since morning.
“ ’Tis Saturday: Antek is sure to come!” she thought joyfully, setting the cabin in order to receive him.
Noon came and went, and he was not there yet. Hanka ran beyond the church to look up the poplar road.
They were carting the hay, hurrying it home, for the weather was about to change. The air was stiflingly sultry, cocks were crowing, hailstorm clouds hanging about in the sky, winds wheeling and whirling.
All expected a storm with a great downpour, but there only came down a short though plentiful rain, at once swallowed up by the thirsty soil, and only cooling the air a little.
The evening, somewhat less sultry, was redolent of hay and of the sprinkled earth. Mists rolled along the ways; the moon had not risen yet; the dark sky was but scantily studded with stars. Through the orchards, the light of the cabins glimmered like glowworms, reflected in the pond and multiplied to myriads. Everywhere the people took their supper out of doors. Hard by, the air trembled with the ripplings of a pipe; from the fields came floating the crickets’ feeble ditty, along with the voices of the land-rail and the quail.
At Boryna’s, too, they were all outside the hut: the hay being brought home, Hanka had invited them to a first-class supper; and the great dish clinked with the tapping of the spoons in a lively measure. Yagustynka’s rasping tones were often heard, accompanied with shouts of laughter. Every now and then, Hanka would fill the dish again from the pots, while anxiously watching all the time for any least sound on the road; and she frequently slipped out into the enclosure, looking for Antek.
There was not the least trace of him; and only once did the shape of Teresa, leaning against the hedge, no doubt waiting for somebody, meet her eyes.
Matthew, unable that day to get speech of Yagna, who was then sullen and unpleasant of mood, was beginning to wrangle with Pete out of sheer ill humour, when Andrew came to call his sister, whom her mother wanted to see.
The party broke up thereupon; but Matthew lagged behind for some time.
Hanka also went out a little after for another vain look into the darkness, when she heard his voice, gruff and cross, wafted from the millpond bank.
“Why dog me so? I shall not flee you. … Are we not enough on the lips of folk already?”—He added still more cruel words, to which there came in answer a storm of sobs and a flood of tears.
But there was nothing in that to interest Hanka, who was awaiting her husband: she cared little then for other folks’ doings. Yagustynka did the evening household work for her, whilst she herself dandled in her arms the baby, that was rather troublesome; carrying it out with her and rocking it, she went to see the patient.
“Antek may be here at any moment!” she cried from the doorstep.
Boryna was lying with eyes fixed on a lamp that smoked above the fireplace.
She whispered in Boryna’s ear: “He has been released today, Roch is awaiting him,” and her beaming eyes watched him to see if he had understood. It seemed not: he neither moved nor looked at her.
“He may be in the village by now. Belike it is so,” she thought, as she ran out every now and then to see.—So sure was she of his return, so agitated with her long wait, that she spoke to herself, walking unsteadily as one drunk. To the darkness she talked about her hopes, and confided in the cattle as she milked them, informing them all that their master was coming back.
She waited on.—But every minute was wearing out her strength and her patience.
Night was there, the village abed. Back from her mother’s, Yagna had gone to rest at once. All in the house were sleeping presently. Hanka still watched outside the hut, and far into the night; but at last, exhausted with weariness and crying, she too put out the light and lay down.
The whole land was now plunged in the deep stillness of repose.
The village lights had gone out one by one, like eyes that close in slumber.
The moon rolled up the soaring black-blue sky, sown with a twinkling dust of stars, and rose higher and higher, as a bird that wings its way athwart the void on silver pinions. The scattered clouds slept, huddled up into balls of soft white down; whilst on the earth all creatures lay quiet, wearied out and lost in sleep. Only a bird sang sweet exuberant lays from time to time; only the waters whispered drowsily; and the trees the moonlight bathed stirred now and again, as if they dreamed of day. Sometimes a dog growled, or the nightjar flapped its wings as it passed by; and low earth-clinging vapours now began to wrap the fields, but slowly, as a tired-out mother wraps her child.
The sounds of quiet breathing rose from the almost invisible orchards and buildings, about which the people lay in the open air, trusting to the mildness of the night.
In Boryna’s room as well, sleep and tranquillity prevailed, except for the cree-cree-cree of the cricket on the hearth, and Yagna’s breaths, fluttering like a butterfly’s wings. It must have been at some time in the small hours (the first cock was crowing already) that Boryna began to move, the moon at the same time shining through the windowpanes, and pouring on to his face its cold though seething torrents of silvery splendour.
Sitting up in bed, and clearing his throat, he attempted to call out, but could utter no other sound than a gurgle.
Thus he sat for a time, looking round with a vacant stare, and fumbling with his fingers in the light of his coverlet, as though he thought to grasp that luminous stream of moonbeams that struck his eyes.
“Day has come. … It is time,” he mumbled at last, standing erect upon the floor.
He looked out of the window, and, like a man awaking from a deep sleep, thought that it was day, that he had slept overmuch, and that some pressing work was awaiting him.
“I must get up, it is time,” he repeated, crossing himself again and again, and beginning his morning prayers. Then he glanced round for his clothes. Not finding them, he forgot them quite, and, passing his hands over himself, made a feeble attempt at dressing. His prayer broke off in the saying, and he could only mutter a few incoherent fragments in a soundless voice.
His brain was vexed with vague thoughts of things to do, remembrances of things done, and, as it were, the echoes of what had gone on around him when he was lying ill. In evanescent flashes there came to his mind dim recollections, activities that had been indistinct as the furrows on reaped land, and now started up clear and sharp; they took shape in his brain, struggling to come forth, and every instant formed some fresh phantasm which vanished away ere he could grasp it, like rotten tissues that crumbled into dust; so that his mind was as restless as a wandering flame that finds nothing to feed upon, and strays perforce.
And thus, whatever he now did, he did out of mere habit, like a horse that has for years walked round, turning the beam of a threshing-machine, and when set at liberty still goes round.
He opened the window and looked out; he gazed into the storeroom, poked the fireplace after much pondering—and then, just as he was, barefoot and in his shirt, walked out.
The door was ajar, the passage flooded with the rays of the moon. Curled up on the threshold, Lapa was sleeping. At the sound of a tread, he woke, growled, and, recognizing his master, followed him out.
Matthias halted outside the hut, scratched his ear, and strove hard to remember what that urgent piece of work that awaited him could be.
The dog was leaping up joyfully at his master, who patted him as of old, whilst staring bewilderedly about him.
It was bright, like day. The moon had now risen above the cabin, casting deep blue shadows on the white walls, and making the millpond waters shine like a mirror. Lipka was still as death, but a few birds were noisily fluttering in the thickets.
Something came to his mind on a sudden: he hurried to the yard. All the doors were wide open, and the men snoring in the shadow of the barn. He looked into the stables, patted the horses; they whinnied at his touch. Then he peered into the byre: the cows lay in a row, and only their rumps were visible in the light of the moon.
He then tried to drag a cart out of the shed; but a glittering plough hard by the sties drew off his attention, and he moved towards it … and ceased to think of it before he got there.
In the middle of the yard he stopped short and looked round on every side, for he thought someone had called him.
The well-sweep stood high in front of him, throwing a long shadow.
“What is it?” he asked, and paused for a reply.
The orchard, slashed with moonbeams, seemed to block his way; its silvered leaves were whispering to him.
“Who calls?” he asked, stumbling against a tree.
Lapa, following at his heels, uttered a whine. At the sound he stopped and drew a deep breath; then he said, gaily: “Quite right, good dog! Aye, it is seedtime!”
And this idea too passed from his mind in an instant: everything slipped out of his memory, as dry sand creeps through the fingers.
Continually fresh thoughts kept him moving, puzzled, bewildered, and like a spindle that is turned round by the thread that runs out, though it turns in the same place.
“Aye, aye, it is seedtime,” he repeated, and moved quickly to the part of the premises which adjoined the fields. There he saw before him that hayrick of bitter memory, burnt down last winter, and but just set up again.
He meant to pass by it, but started back on a sudden. In a flash he saw the past, which memory made present. He tore a stake from the fence; brandishing it in both hands like a pitchfork, he dashed forward with rage in his eyes, ready to smite and slay; but before his blow could be struck, the stake fell from his grasp, now weak and slack.
Beyond the rick, along the road that skirted the potato-field, there stretched a long strip of ploughed land. Here he stopped, and cast troubled glances round him.
The moon had gone through half her course, bathing the earth in misty beams; it lay covered with pearls of dew, and, as it were, silent in rapt attention.
Impenetrable depths of silence came down from the upper fields, and from where earth and sky met in the hazy distance; from the meadows rose up white vapours, crawling over the corn, enveloping it in its warm damp folds, as it rose.
The tall yellow-green rye-borders bent over the field-pathways, drooping under the weight of the ears, that hung down like the saffron-hued beaks of unfledged birds in their nests; the wheat stood upright boldly, as straight as so many pillars, lifting their glossy and dusky heads; the oats and barley, as yet in the blade, lay green as meadows, but silvered by the moonlight and blurred with dark veils of mist.
It was about the second cockcrow now, and the night far spent. The fields rested, lost in profound sleep, sometimes rustling quietly as it were with an echo of the day’s toil and troubles, and sighing as a mother may sigh when she lays herself down to rest with her little ones.
Boryna knelt down immediately, and set to gathering earth in a fold of his shirt, like seed-corn in a sower’s bag, and in such quantity that he could scarce rise. He made the sign of the cross, swept his arm round to try his reach, and began to sow.
Bent down beneath the burden, he went slowly, step by step, sowing the field with that semicircular sweep of his arm, like a priest’s benediction.
Lapa followed him; and when some frightened bird rose from before his feet, he would run after it awhile, and then go back to his master.
In this charmed world of night and spring, Boryna, gazing straight before him, walked on through the patches of corn, like a spirit blessing every clod of earth, every ear of corn; sowing on, sowing ever.
At the furrows he stumbled; at the hollows he staggered, sometimes even fell. But of this he was unconscious—aware of nothing but the dull irresistible craving to sow the land.
Thus he walked on to the end of the field. When there was no earth remaining for him to throw, he took up more and sowed on. When his way was barred by trees and brambles, he would turn back.
He had walked a good distance. The birds’ twitterings were no longer to be heard; the whole village had disappeared in the misty darkness, and the billowy sea of tawny cornfields surged all about him. There he stood, forlorn and lonely and lost—as a soul that is wandering away from this world.—And then, once more he came back towards the village, towards the ring within which the twittering of birds was again audible, and towards the circle of human activity, now stilled for a time: he, a waif thrown back to the shores of life and existence by those waves of the surging sea of corn!
So the time passed, and so he went on sowing indefatigably, stopping at times to rest his limbs a little. Then he would again take up his bootless toil and vain exertions.
Later, and near the close of the night, he worked more slowly, stopped oftener, forgot to gather the earth for his seed, and sowed empty-handed: as though he were now sowing his very being in those fields of his fathers—all the days he had lived, all that life he had received, and was now giving back (a sacred harvest) to the Everlasting Lord!
And in those last moments of his life there came to pass a very wonderful thing. The sky turned grey, like a shroud; the moon set; all light went out; the whole land was plunged in murky inextricable depths of sudden and utter darkness. And then a Something beyond all thought seemed to arise from … none knew where—and to walk in those shadows with footsteps so ponderous that they made the very earth to rock.
Then a long blast blew from the woods, with an ominous murmur.
The trees in the fields were shaking; the corn, the grass, waved shudderingly; from the trembling plots of land there came a low moan of dread:
“O Master! Master!”
The green ears of barley quivered convulsively, as if weeping, and bent to kiss his weary feet.
“O Master!” the rye-patches trilled, stopping his way, and shaking down a shower of dewy tears. Birds gave forth a melancholy cry. The wind sobbed over his head. The mist enveloped him in her dank dripping folds. And the voices sounded ever louder, ever more sadly, and always repeating:
“O Master! Master!”
At last he paid heed to them, and said, under his breath:
“Lo, here I am: what will ye, say?”
No answer came; but when he would have moved on farther, sowing with that tired empty hand, the earth cried out to him, in a mighty voice:
“Remain with us! Remain with us! Remain!”
And he stood in astonishment. All things seemed pressing forward against him. The grasses came crawling, the corn billowing towards him; the fields beset him round; the whole countryside rose up and fell upon him. Dismayed, he would have cried aloud; but his fast-closed throat let no voice pass. He tried to flee; his strength failed him quite. The ground caught his feet, the corn entangled them, the furrows tripped him up, the stubborn glebe balked his steps, the trees shook their boughs at him to stop his way. He was pricked by thistles, hurt by stones, chased by the angry wind, and led astray by the night and the many voices crying out from everywhere:
“Stay with us! Oh, stay!”
On a sudden he became motionless, and all things with him. His eyes, now growing dark in death, saw clear with a lightning flash. Heaven opened out before him—and there, seated on a throne of wheat-sheaves, the Everlasting Father stretched out His hands, and said to him mildly:
“Come unto Me, O human soul; O weary toiler, come thou unto Me!”
Boryna reeled at the words, and, stretching forth his hands (as at the Elevation):
“O Lord God, I thank Thee!” he cried, and fell prostrate on his face before that most holy Majesty.
So he fell, and so he died, in the hour of God’s loving-kindness.
Dawn was rising; and over him Lapa howled long and mournfully.