As they brought this work to an end, several neighbours came in with dishes and baskets containing their own Easter victuals, which they put near the table on a side-bench. There was not time enough for the priest to go round to all the cabins, so he had told them to bring their Easter feast to a few of the largest cottages.
Lipka being his own dwelling-place, he used to give the blessing there last of all, and very often only near nightfall. The people, consequently, prepared everything early, that they might be in church in time for the “blessing of the fire and of the water,” having previously extinguished their own fires at home, which were subsequently to be again lighted at the newly consecrated flame.
Yuzka ran to church for that purpose; but she had to wait very long, and it was nearly midday when she returned, carefully protecting the light of a taper just kindled in church. Along with the fire, she brought a bottle of holy water. Hanka immediately lit the firewood set ready for kindling, and first of all drank a gulp of holy water, piously believed to preserve folk from ailments of the throat; she then gave some to each of the others in turn, and lastly sprinkled with it the live stock and the fruit-trees of the orchard, that the cattle might bring forth their young without trouble, and the trees abound with fruit.
Later, seeing that neither Yagna nor the smith’s wife had taken any care at all of Boryna, she washed his body with tepid water, combed his matted hair, and changed his linen and bedding; he meanwhile lying as usual with blankly staring eyes.
After noontide, it was a sort of half-holiday. Although some people had still a little of the more tiresome work to finish, the most part were getting themselves ready for the coming feast, combing and washing and scrubbing the children, till many a hut resounded to their cries and screams.
It was only just before nightfall that the priest came in from the outlying villages. He wore his surplice; Michael, the organist’s pupil, went after him, bearing a holy-water pot and sprinkling-brush. Hanka came to meet him at the gate.
He came in quickly, being in a hurry, said the prayers, sprinkled “God’s gifts,” and cast a glance on Boryna’s livid hairy face.
“No change? eh?”
“None. The wound is all but healed, yet he is no better.”
“The boy who sold me the stork—where is he?”
Vitek turned very red, and Yuzka pushed him forward.
“Ye have trained it well: it keeps the fowls out of the garden, and none dare venture in.—Here are five kopeks for you.—Are any of you going to see your husbands tomorrow?”
“Half the village at least.”
“Good; but behave yourselves, and do not brawl.—And come to the Resurrection Service now: it is at ten.—At ten, mind! And,” he added sharply, as he went out, “should anyone fall asleep, Ambrose has orders to put him out of the church.”
Several people followed him as far as the miller’s.
But Vitek, showing the copper coin to Yuzka, said crossly:
“My stork will not drive his fowls out for long. Oh, no!”
The darkness fell slowly. Dusk came down over the earth, drowning cottages, orchards and fields in a bluish semitransparent murk. The low cabin-walls alone were here and there dimly visible. Athwart the orchards flashed a few flickering lights, and a pale half-moon gleamed in the sky.
It was the calm of Easter eve that enveloped the village; through the darkness, the church-windows, high above the cottages, were seen shedding floods of light afar, and out of the great wide-open door poured streams of splendour.
Then the first carts came rumbling in, stopping in front of the churchyard; and the people arrived on foot from the farthest hamlets. Many also came from the cottages of Lipka; not infrequently the doors would open and a streak of light flash forth, plunging into the jet-black pond; and the patter of footsteps and half-hushed murmurs came multitudinous through the warm and misty air. Greeting one another on the way, the crowd, like a river that rises slowly but unceasingly, pressed onwards to the “Resurrection Service.”
In Boryna’s cabin and the surrounding outhouses, no one remained on guard but the dogs, old Bylitsa and Vitek, who was hard at work with Maciek, Klemba’s son, making a cock that was to perform wonderful feats a few days later.
Hanka first sent Yuzka to church, along with the little ones and Pete; she herself, she said, would follow presently.
Yet, when dressed, she lingered on, awaiting something, it seemed; for she continually went out and watched the road from the passage. When she had seen Yagna set out with Magda, and heard the smith in talk with the Voyt on their way to church, she returned to the hut, and showed
