Everything therefore made her angry that evening; she flew out on the slightest provocation, and finally sent everyone to bed earlier than usual. The morrow was Maundy Thursday, and they would have to begin preparations for Easter.
She too went to bed earlier than her wont, but it was long before she could sleep. Hearing the dogs bark furiously, she looked outside.
Yagna had not yet extinguished her lamp.
“It is late,” she called out crossly to her from the passage. “Ye waste oil: think ye it costs nothing?”
“Ye may burn oil the whole night long, for all I care!” was the retort; which put her into such a state that she had not yet fallen asleep when the first cock crew.
Early in the morning, Yuzka, though she was a great lie-abed, jumped out first, her mind full of her journey to town; she speedily woke the farm-lads, told them to get the horses ready, and went back in a temper to quarrel with Hanka, who had told Pete that the bay mare alone was to be put to.
“I will not go in the worst wagon of all, and drawn by a blind mare!” she cried, bursting into tears. “Am I a beggar, to travel in the dung-cart? They know me in the town for Boryna’s daughter!—Father would never have allowed me to go in such wise.”
By dint of wrangling she got her own way, and started off in the large britzka, with a couple of good horses, and the driver on the seat in front, after the fashion of a farmer’s goodwife.
“Get some gilt paper, some red, and of all the other colours!” Vitek screamed to her from within the garden, where he had been digging away ever since dawn, Hanka intending to plant cabbages there that very day. Time passed, however, and she did not come; so he ran out into the road, and went off with the other boys twirling rattles along the hedgerows. (No bells, as is the custom on Maundy Thursday, were to be heard any more.)
The weather was rather quieter, but less cheerful, than on the preceding day. The night had been cold; the morning was dewy, hazy and cool till late in the forenoon: the swallows twittered shivering under the eaves, and the geese, driven to the pond, uttered louder and harsher notes. But, notwithstanding, the whole village had been up and busy ere sunrise.
Long before breakfast-time, there had been the noisy hum of strenuous work; and the children, sent out of the cabins, where they would have been in the way, filled the lanes with the din of their whirring rattles.
At Mass, celebrated on that day without bells or organ, there were but few present.
No one had any time to go to church. All necessary preparations for the great feast had to be made now. Chief of these was the baking of loaves and cakes; and, in well-nigh every hut, both doors and windows were now fast closed, lest the dough might fail to rise. The fires burned bright, and the smoke of the chimneys went up to the cloudy sky.
This, too, was the reason why not infrequently the cattle lowed beside their empty mangers, and the swine rooted in the gardens, and the poultry wandered about the roads, and the children were left to do as they pleased—fight each other, or climb trees for birds’ nests. All the women were so absorbed in the kneading and rolling out of the dough for loaves and cakes, and all that pertained thereto, that they had forgotten nearly everything else besides.
And in every home this bustle and stir was the same: whether at the miller’s, the organist’s, or the priest’s; whether amongst the farmers or the komorniki. However poor, they had—were it by a loan or even by selling their last half-bushel of wheat—to prepare the banquet of the Hallow-fare, in order to get, at least once a year, meat and other dainties in abundance.
As there were not baking-ovens in every hut, makeshifts were built up in the orchards, and girls ran about, feeding them with dry faggots and logs. And from time to time there were seen women uncouthly attired and white with flour, carefully carrying dressers and kneading-troughs, full of cakes as yet unbaked and hidden from the air, as the statues of the saints are seen carried in a holy procession.
There was work, too, to be done in the church. The priest-man had fetched a number of young fir-trees from the woods; and the organist, together with Roch and Ambrose, were adorning Our Lord’s Sepulchre.
When Good Friday came, the work was still more absorbing, so that but few noticed the arrival of Yanek, the organist’s son, who had come over for the holidays, and was going about the village, now and then taking a peep into the cottage windows.
Entering anywhere was out of the question: the passages, nay, even the orchard paths were blocked up with presses and bedsteads and all sorts of furniture; for on that day they whitewashed the cabins in all haste, scrubbed the floors, and cleaned the holy images that had been taken outside.
A great hurry-scurry and confusion prevailed everywhere: people were running about, urging the others to make haste and thereby increasing the turmoil. Even the children were now employed to clear the premises of mud, and sprinkle yellow sand everywhere.
It being an ancient custom to eat nothing warm from Good Friday till Easter Sunday, the people chose to suffer a little hunger in our Lord’s honour, eating only dry bread and potatoes that had been roasted.
The hurry and bustle were just the same at Boryna’s, with the difference that there were more hands to work and less trouble about
