Boryna invites Hanka and the children back

Maciej Boryna’s invitation to Hanka Borynowa and the children turns a brief encounter on a storm-darkened road into a possible reversal of their expulsion. He acknowledges their hardship and offers them a place within his household; Hanka, in turn, begins to imagine returning to the farmstead and taking charge there. The reconciliation is not yet complete: she has only promised to visit, and Antek Boryna’s opposition remains a danger. But the offer gives her a prospect of shelter and security, and shifts her thoughts from resentment toward a determined bid to rebuild her position.

A meeting on the road

Maciej’s invitation comes as he brings Hanka home through a snowstorm. The village houses are obscured by darkness and blowing snow; when the sleigh stops before the path to her cottage, he helps her get down and settle her load on her back. Instead of leaving the encounter at a practical exchange, he asks her to visit him, even as soon as the following day. Speaking quietly, beyond the others’ hearing, he says he can see that things are going badly for her: Antek will drink away what they have, he warns, while Hanka and the children risk going hungry.

The offer carries particular force because Maciej had previously expelled the family. Hanka immediately reminds him of that history, asking how she could dare come after he threw them out. Maciej brushes aside her hesitation and insists that there is enough for her too. His tone, which she experiences as unexpectedly gentle, contrasts with the harshness associated with the earlier rupture. He calls after her to ask whether she will come; Hanka kisses his hand and, overcome, cannot answer at first. She eventually promises to visit because he has asked her to.

The encounter does not yet return Hanka and the children to the farm. Maciej drives on, turning before the inn, while Hanka hurries into the cottage without waiting for her father, Bylica, who is getting down from Bartek’s sleigh. The distinction between invitation and completed return matters: at this point, the possibility has opened, but Hanka must still decide whether to act on it and face the consequences.

From grievance to a changed judgment

Inside the cottage, Hanka finds the children asleep together beneath a quilt. The room is dark and bitterly cold; she tends to food and household work while turning over her meeting with Maciej. Her first reaction is resistance. She says she will not go to him and worries that Antek would punish her for doing so. Yet her anger does not settle into a single position. As she considers the family’s suffering, her judgment begins to move away from the simple account in which Maciej alone is responsible.

Hanka does not deny that Maciej signed land over to Jagna and drove her family out. Instead, she weighs that injury against the conflict that preceded it: Antek struck his father and repeatedly provoked him. She reasons that the land belonged to Maciej and his children, but that while Maciej lived, it was his to give or withhold. She also assigns blame for the family’s humiliation to Antek’s relationship with Jagna, rather than treating Maciej as the sole cause. The recollection of Maciej asking about her and the children, and speaking gently, helps her anger toward him recede.

This reconsideration is neither a denial of the expulsion nor a declaration that the household conflict is settled. It is a practical reassessment made under pressure. Hanka has children to feed and, as she recognizes, another child on the way. The invitation offers a possible way out of want, while her own reasoning makes it possible for her to accept help without pretending that the past did not happen.

Bylica’s counsel and Hanka’s choice

After supper, when the children have eaten and fallen asleep again, Hanka sits by the fire spinning wool for the organist’s wife. Bylica, still warming himself after the journey, urges her to make peace with Maciej and to think first of herself and the children. He argues that Antek is not the only person whose wishes she must consider. In his view, Maciej may soon send Jagna away and find himself unable to manage the farmstead alone; Józka, he says, cannot run it by herself. If Hanka has regained Maciej’s favour by then, she may be present when he needs help and perhaps be asked back.

Bylica’s advice frames reconciliation as both immediate relief and preparation for a future opening. He does not promise that Maciej will restore Hanka’s place, but urges her to stay close, listen to him, and treat him well. He also insists that she should not let anger determine her course, and believes Antek may eventually return to her. The counsel is shaped by their material circumstances: Hanka is enduring hardship, and she expects another child, so waiting for Antek to change cannot provide for the household now.

Hanka drops her spindle and weighs the advice. She keeps looking toward the window, hoping Antek will return, but the cottage remains quiet. Her inability to spin—the thread breaks, or the spindle slips from her fingers—registers how completely her attention has turned to the choice before her. She wonders whether a time may come when Maciej summons her. The prospect of peace, and of returning to the life they had before, grows gradually stronger.

The farmstead as a possible future

As Hanka imagines going back, her hope becomes more concrete than a wish for shelter. She pictures standing once more on the farm’s ground and holding fast to it with her whole being, so that no one could force her away again. In this vision she is not merely a dependent guest: she sees herself at the Boryna farmstead, responsible for its affairs and occupying the position of the woman of the house. The invitation therefore reopens a question of belonging and authority as well as one of food and warmth.

Bylica’s concern for the children, Maciej’s offer of support, and Hanka’s expectation of a fourth child converge in her decision. She temporarily sets Antek aside in her calculations, focusing on herself and the children because she does not know who else will help them—perhaps God, perhaps Maciej. By morning, she resolves, she will take the children and visit the old man, whatever Antek has forbidden. Even the possibility that he might beat her does not now outweigh the chance she sees in Maciej’s invitation.

The scene ends with resolve rather than reunion. Hanka has not yet returned to the farmstead, and Maciej has not made a formal promise to restore her there. What has changed is her sense of what can be attempted: she accepts the invitation, revises her view of the expulsion, and decides that securing a place for herself and the children may require acting without her husband’s permission. Against the storm’s earlier turmoil, the quiet night marks the beginning of a deliberate effort to turn an unexpected kindness into renewed security.