THE PEASANTS SUMMER

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

The Peasants has been translated from the original Polish by Michael H. Dziewicki, Reader of English Literature at the University of Cracow. I wish to make special acknowledgment to Dr. A. M. Nawench of Columbia University for his invaluable assistance in seeing the work through the press.

CHAPTER I

Thus did Matthias Boryna die.

With dreadful yelps and howls, and leaps against the door to be let in, Lapa awoke the sleepers in the cabin, who were enjoying their Sunday rest; and then he pulled them by their clothes, and ran out a little, looking back again to see if they followed him, till Hanka took notice.

“Go, Yuzka, and see what that dog would have us do.”

She ran out after him in good spirits, skipping along the road.

He led her to her father’s body.

On beholding it, she uttered such awful shrieks that they all came out at once, and found him cold, rigid, lying on his face just as when he had passed away, his arms stretched out crosswise in a last fervent prayer.

Still attempting to revive him, they bore the body to the hut.

All their endeavours were fruitless: what lay before them was a corpse, and nothing more.

A bitter lamentation rose up: Hanka rent the air with cries; Yuzka cried not less wildly, and dashed her head against the wall; Vitek and the little ones wailed aloud, and Lapa howled and barked outside. Pete alone, who had been coming and going about the yard, glanced at the sun, and went back to his bed in the stable.

Matthias now lay on his couch, stiff and stark, as lifeless as a sun-dried earth-clod or a felled trunk. He still held a little sand fast in his clenched fist. In his wide-open eyes, gazing afar into some heavenly region, there was a look of wondering rapture.

Nevertheless, there emanated from that body an effluence 4of mortality so sombre, so profoundly sad, that they had to cover it with a sheet.

His death was immediately known throughout the village; and barely had the sun appeared over its roofs, when visitors came pouring in one after another, raised the sheet, looked into his eyes, and knelt down to say a prayer for him. Others, stricken with awe at this example of God’s dominion over human life, stood wringing their hands in mournful silence.

Meanwhile the mourners’ lamentations continued resounding unceasingly.

And now Ambrose came, turned away the crowd outside, closed the cabin door, and, together with Yagustynka and Agata (the latter having crept in to pray beside the body), set about rendering the last services to the deceased, which he always did willingly, and in general with plenty of witticisms; but this time he felt somehow heavy at heart.

“So much for the happiness of any man!” he muttered, as he undressed the body. “Dame Crossbones, as often as she has a mind, will clutch you by the throat, slap you in the face; and ye, turning up your toes, are borne away to the ‘Priests’ Cow-byre’; and is there any able to resist her?”

Even Yagustynka was grieved, and said, in no merry mood: “Poor man! they neglected him so in this world that ’twas better for him to die!”

“Indeed? And who, then, did him any harm?”

“Nay, were they so very good to him?”

“And who on earth has all to his liking? Why, even a squire, even a king, must suffer trouble and pain.”

“He had not to bear either hunger or cold: we can say no more.”

“Ah, good Mother, what is hunger? The heart-ache gnaws far worse.”

“True. I have felt it. And Yagna cut him to the heart: nor did his own children spare him.”

“But,” Agata put in, interrupting the prayers she was saying, “he had children that were good, and did him no wrong.”

Yagustynka turned snappishly upon her. “Say your 5prayers, you! ye were best. What? will she drone dirges for the dead man, and listen all the time to the talk?”

“Well, but if his children were bad, would they mourn for him so? Only hark to them!”

“Had he but left you so much, ye would move heaven and earth with your lamentations!”

Here Ambrose interfered. “Be quiet,” he said; “here comes Yagna.”

She rushed in, but stood transfixed in the middle of the room, unable to speak.

They were then attiring the body in a clean shirt.

“What! ... gone?” she said at last, with eyes fixed on him. Fear was gripping at her throat and her heart; her blood ran cold and she could scarcely breathe.

“Did they not tell you?” Ambrose inquired.

“I was asleep at Mother’s: Vitek came to call me but now.—Is he dead truly and indeed?” she asked suddenly, approaching him.

“Surely ’tis for a coffin, not for a wedding, that I am attiring him.”

She could not make it out, and staggered up against the wall; she fancied herself in a deep sleep, the prey of some nightmare.

Several times she quitted the room, but always returned: to keep her eyes away from the body was impossible. Now and again she would start up to go out, and yet stayed on; at times she went out as far as the stile, and looked far across the fields with unseeing gaze; or she would seat herself outside, but close to the room and to Yuzka, who was weeping, tearing her hair, and for ever crying:

“Oh my father, my lost father! lost!”

There was great wailing and sobbing, not only in, but also around, the cabin. Of the mourners, Yagna alone, though quaking in every limb, and stirred to the inmost depths of her being, could not shed one tear, could not utter one cry. She only walked to and fro with eyes gloomily bright, with an expression of stern awe.

It was a good thing that Hanka presently recovered herself 6and, though tearful yet, was able to see to everything, and felt quite calm on the arrival of the blacksmith and his wife.

Magda wept; the smith asked for particulars, which Hanka gave him.

“’Tis well that the Lord Jesus has sent him so easy a death!”

“Poor man! Running out afield to flee Dame Crossbones’ embrace!”

“Yestereve I went to look at him; he was as quiet as usual.”

“And did he not speak? Not a word?” the smith asked, wiping tearless eyes.

“Not a word. So I pulled the down covering over him, gave him to drink, and came away.”

“What? and so he got up alone! Peradventure, then, he might not have died, had any been there to watch over him,” said Magda, between her sobs.

“Yagna was sleeping at her mother’s. She always does so, now the old dame is so very ill.”

“It was to be!—And it has been!” said the blacksmith. “These three months and over he has been a-dying. Whoso cannot be healed, better let him die quickly. Let us thank the Lord God that he suffers no longer.”

“Aye, and well ye know how much the physicians and medicines cost us in the first days ... and all to no purpose.”

“Ah!” Magda lamented; “how good a farmer he was! how able a man!”

“What grieves me is that Antek should not find him alive, when he comes back.”

“He is no child, nor likely to weep on that account.—Rather bethink yourself of the funeral.”

“True, true.—Oh, what a pity that Roch is away just now!”

“We can do without him. Be not troubled: I will see to all,” the smith replied.

He showed a sorrowful face, but was evidently masking 7some hidden thought as he set to help Ambrose to fold up the dead man’s clothes. For a long time he ferreted in the store-room amongst hanks of spun wool and odds and ends; then he went up the ladder—for the boots which hung there, he said. The fellow panted as loud as a pair of bellows, pattered prayers for the dead man louder than Agata, and was continually recalling the good actions of the deceased. But his eyes were meanwhile wandering about the room, and his hands gliding about under the pillows, or groping in the straw of the mattress.

At length Yagustynka said tartly: “Are ye looking for aught in particular?”

“One cannot find, unless one seeks!” he answered. And then he began to search quite openly; nor did the arrival of Michael from the organist’s, in hot haste for Ambrose, hinder him in the least.

“Come at once, Ambrose: four babies wait in church to be christened.”

“Let them wait; I must first of all get him neat and tidy.”

“Nay, ye had better go, Ambrose,” said the smith, who wanted to get rid of him.

“What I have offered to do, I will do. I shall not soon lay out such another as he. Take my place in church, Michael,” he added, turning to the lad, “and let the godfathers and godmothers go round the altar with lighted tapers: they will drop you kopeks in plenty.—What!” disparagingly; “ye are to be an organist, yet cannot serve at a simple christening?”

Hanka now brought in Matthew, to measure Boryna for his coffin.

“Do not grudge him room in this last dwelling of his,” said Ambrose, in a sad tone; “let the poor man have some comfort, at least after death!”

“Lord, Lord!” Yagustynka whispered; “when he lived, he had not enough with all his many acres; and now four boards will suffice him amply!”

Agata, interrupting her prayers, here faltered tearfully:

“He was a landowner, and shall be buried as such; but 8some poor creatures know not under which hedge they are to die.... May light perpetual shine upon you! May——” And here she broke down again.

Matthew said nothing, but nodded, and after taking the measure, said a prayer and went out. Though it was Sunday, he set to work directly. All the necessary tools were in the hut, and some seasoned oaken planks that had long been in readiness lay upstairs. He had presently set up his workshop in the orchard, and was hard at work—and making Pete, who had been told to assist him, work hard too.

The day had dawned long ago, and the sun was shining with jocund burning rays. It had been quite hot ever since breakfast-time; all the fields and orchards were being slowly plunged in a vapour-bath of whitish simmering air.

In some places, the languishing trees stirred their leaves, as birds overwhelmed by heat might flutter their wings. The lull of the day of rest had pervaded all the village; nothing moved but the swallows darting over the pond, and the carts bearing people to church from some neighbouring hamlet, with clouds of dust in their wake.... Every now and then one of them stopped in front of Boryna’s, where the disconsolate family were sitting, to greet them and sigh heavily, looking in through the open windows and door.

Ambrose made good speed, and hastened the preparations: soon the bed was out in the orchard, and the bedding spread on the hedge to air; and now he called upon Hanka to bring him juniper-berries to fumigate the mortuary chamber.

But just then she heard nothing. She had wiped the last tears from her eyes, and was looking down the road, in the hope that she might at any moment see her Antek.

But, as the hours passed, and he did not come, she wanted to send Pete to town for news of him.

“Nay,” objected Bylitsa, who had just come in from Veronka’s hut; “he will bring no news and only tire the horse.”

“But they must know something at the police bureau.”

9“No doubt; but it is closed on Sundays. Besides, they will tell you naught, if their palms be not greased.”

“Alas!” she complained to her sister, “I can bear this no longer.”

“Oh, he will yet be a thorn in your side,” hissed the blacksmith, darting a glance at Yagna, who was sitting under the eaves. And, his fruitless search for the money having stirred his bile, he added spitefully: “His legs must be stiff with the irons he wore; how, then, can he make haste home?”

She replied nothing, and went to look out upon the road again.

As the Mass-bells were ringing, Ambrose made for the church after ordering Vitek to grease the dead man’s boots well, for they had got so dry that they could not be put on him.

The smith, together with Matthew, went off to the village; and now there remained no one in the cabin but the women and Vitek, busily greasing the boots, softening them over the fire, and at times casting a look in the direction of Yuzka, whose sobs were growing fainter.

There was now no movement at all upon the road, the people being in church; nor was anything to be heard in Boryna’s cabin but the voice of Agata within, saying the litany for the dead. It rose up like the chirruping of a bird, along with the volumes of juniper smoke, with which Yagustynka was perfuming the hut and the passage.

They heard the service begin. Audible in the noonday hush, the chants wafted from the church, and the sound of the organ came to them in high-pitched undulations, pleasant and remote.

Hanka could find no rest within doors, so she went to the stile, to get through her prayers there.

“Dead, dead, dead!” she thought, as the beads slipped slow through her fingers—But she prayed with her lips only; her brain, her heart, were full of manifold puzzling thoughts, and not a few misgivings.

10“Thirty-two acres. Also pastures. And a bit of forest. And the outhouses, and the live stock!” She sighed and cast a look of affection on the broad acres before her.

“If we could but pay them off, and keep all the land together!—And be just what his father has been!”

Pride and ambition filled her heart; she gazed sunwards, smiled fearlessly, and went on telling her beads, her bosom swelling with agreeable hopes.

“No, I will not give up even half the land. Half the cabin is mine, too. Nor shall the others get a single one of my milch-kine!”

She went on very long in this way, saying her prayers, flinging tearful glances over those lands, clad with sunshine, as if it were a tissue of gold, where the rye, in its growing luxuriance, waved its rusty-red drooping ears; where the darker barley-patches stood shining in the light, glossy and shimmering; where the bright green oats, thickly sprinkled with yellow-flowering weeds, stirred and quivered in the parching heat; where over the blossoming clover that lay spread out on the hill-slope, like a blood-red kerchief, a great bird was hovering, balanced on its outstretched wings, and where the broad beans stood, with their thousands of snowy flowers, keeping watch and ward over the young potato-plants, and a few plots of flax in the hollows gleamed blue with delicate flowers—childlike eyes that seemed blinking in the glare.

All was so wondrously beautiful! The sun grew hotter and hotter meanwhile; and the warm breeze, laden with the scents of the blossoms that glowed in countless numbers, breathed from the fields with delicious life-giving might, dilating the souls of men.

“O native soil, O holy soil, most holy!” she said, bending down to kiss it.

She heard the church-bells tinkling, twittering in the air.

“O my dear Jesus! all’s for Thee—yea, all things in the world!” she murmured fervently, and again betook herself to prayer.

But close to her she heard a rustling noise, and looked 11around her cautiously. Beneath the cherry-trees, leaning against the trellised fence, Yagna stood, absorbed in unpleasant thought.

“What, never one moment of peace!” Hanka complained; for, at the sight of her, sharp memories arose—sharp as stinging nettles.

“Yes, there’s the donation made to her. ’Tis a fact! Aye, six whole acres! Oh, that thief!” She turned her back upon her, but could not take up her prayers again. Like hounds that not only barked but bit deep, the wrongs and outrages of former days came back and beset her.

Noon had passed; the shrunken shadows were beginning to creep out once more from under the trees and the houses. In the corn which bent slightly towards the sunbeams, the grasshoppers played their faint shrill music, a beetle hummed by at intervals, or a quail piped. And the weather was all the time growing more and more intolerably hot.

High Mass was now ended, and the women came out of church to take off their shoes by the pond, and there was no more solitude for Hanka; the roads swarmed so with men and wagons that she went home.

Boryna was at last lying in state.

In the middle of the room he lay, on a wide bench, with a cloth over it and burning tapers around. He had been washed, combed, and clean-shaved, but his cheek bore a deep gash from Ambrose’s razor, which a bit of paper concealed. He was arrayed in his very best clothes: the white capote that had been made for his wedding with Yagna, striped breeches, and all but quite new boots. In his overworked withered hands he held the image of Our Lady of Chenstohova.

A large barrel of water stood by to keep the air cool; and upon earthenware tiles there lay juniper-berries, smouldering and exhaling their aromatic smoke, that filled the whole cabin with a bluish haze, through which the awful majesty of death was mistily visible.

So lay, then, in silent state, the body of Matthias Boryna, an upright and an able man, a thorough Christian, a farmer 12and the son and descendant of farmers—the foremost man in Lipka.

He was in readiness, about to depart, to bid farewell to his kinsfolk and all that knew him, and set out on the Great Journey!

His soul had already passed before the Judgment-seat: it was but his worn-out body, the empty shell his soul had once inhabited, that lay there, feebly smiling, amongst lights and smoke-wreaths and unceasing prayers.

In came the people then, in an interminable procession, sighing, beating their breasts, musing profoundly, or weeping; and the sounds of their stifled sobs and faint whispers was like the pattering of autumnal rain. They came and went without end: all Lipka came, rich and poor, young and old, men and women.

In spite of the magnificent weather, his death made the whole village gloomy and wretched; everyone was in deep sadness, everyone greatly given to moralize over “the unhappy fate of mortal man.”

Many of the dead man’s friends lingered about the hut, and some of the goodwives remained to attempt consoling Hanka and Magda and Yuzka in words of homely comfort, condoling and weeping heartily along with them.

To Yagna nobody said one word. Though indeed she cared little for their pity, she felt nevertheless pained at being so pointedly left alone; so she went out into the garden, where she sat listening to Matthew at work hammering the coffin.

“That creature!” the Voyt’s wife hissed after her. “To dare show her face at all!”

“Oh, let her be!” said another; “it is no time now to think of her misdeeds.”

“Aye, leave them to the Lord Jesus, who will judge them hereafter,” Hanka added mercifully.

“And for the bitter things ye say, the Voyt will reward her abundantly,” the smith remarked, with a sneer, and went away, the miller having sent for him. Luckily; for 13the goodwife was swelling with rage like a turkey, and ready to fly out at him.

He broke into a croaking laugh, and hurried off. The others lingered on to talk, but the talk flagged, partly through their sorrow, partly on account of the intense heat. It was indeed so hot that all the flowers and plants were fading, and the walls shedding tears of resin.

Of a sudden a bellow, long-drawn and plaintive, was heard, and a peasant, driving a cow, passed by on the farther side of the pond.

He pulled her hard by the rope, while they looked on in dull silence.

“Taking her to the priest’s bull, I suppose,” Yagustynka said; but no one took any interest in her remark.

The bells rang for Vespers and they took leave of Hanka, who then sent Vitek to ask the smith to go with her and arrange with the priest for the funeral expenses. He presently returned, saying that the smith was in conference with the Squire and the miller, and taking afternoon tea together; his stallions were outside, pawing the ground in the shade.

“He with the Squire!—How strange!” But she could not wait, and accompanied by Magda, dressed in her best, she went to the priest’s house.

He was in the farm-yard, and sent them word he would see them there.