“Keep the soil to the very last! that is what I have been advocating all my life.”
“That is certain!” confirmed Gantovski.
But in his soul he thought, “If it were not for those dog blood troubles!”
And at that very time, in the nursery, Rozulka was singing little Stas to sleep with the sad village song,—
“Those ill-fated chambers.
Oi, thou my Yasenku!”
After dinner, the guests were making ready to separate; but Plavitski kept them for a “little party,” so that they went away only when the sun was near setting. Then the Polanyetskis, having amused themselves first with little Stas, went out on the porch, and further, to the garden, for the evening was calm and clear. Everything reminded them of that first Sunday which they had spent there together; it seemed to them like some wonderful and pleasant dream, and reminiscences of that kind were there without number at every step. The sun was going down in the same way, large and shining; the trees stood motionless in the stillness of evening, reddening at the tops from the evening light; on the other side of the house the storks were chattering in the same way on their nests; there was the same mood of all things around them, cherishing and vesperal. They began to walk about, to pass through all the alleys, go to the fences, look at the fields, which lost themselves in the distance, at the narrow strips of woods barring the horizon, and to say quiet things to each other, and also as quietly as that evening was quiet. All this which surrounded them was to be their world. Both felt that that village was taking them into itself; that some relation was beginning to weave itself between them and it; that henceforth their life must flow there, not elsewhere,—laborers, devoted to the “service of God” in the field.
When the sun had gone down, they returned to the porch; but, as on that first occasion, so now they remained on it, waiting for perfect darkness. But formerly Marynia had kept at a distance from Pan Stanislav; now she nestled up to his side, and said, after some silence,—
“It will be pleasant for us here with each other, Stas, will it not?”
And he embraced her firmly, so as to feel her at his very heart, and said,—