They lit the tapers only on passing the mill: the priest donned his biretta, made the sign of the cross, and intoned Psalm 91: “He that dwelleth. …”
The whole procession took it up with fervour, and on they went by the riverside, through the meadows where there was still many a pool, and they had more than once to go ankle-deep in mud. Shading the tapers with their hands, they wound on by the narrow footpath, the women’s skirts forming a long red line like the beads of a rosary.
Shimmering in the sunbeams, the river purled and meandered through the verdurous meadows, spangled with white and yellow flowers.
Overhead the banners waved, as birds flapping wings of red and gold. In front, the cross lumbered along, and through the still transparent air rose the slow voices of the singers.
On the riverbanks, thickly studded with marsh-marigolds, the waters splashed on as a gentle echo of the psalms, rolling towards the distant skyline on which every eye was fixed, and towards the hamlets seen on the far-off heights; now scarcely visible through the bluish haze, amid the whitely blooming orchards in which they nestled.
Walking with his assistants immediately behind the cross, the priest sang with the others.
“What a multitude of wild ducks!” he whispered, glancing to his right.
“They are widgeons,” the miller answered, looking down to the riverside, overgrown with last year’s withered reeds and alders, out of which flocks of wild ducks flew out at times on heavy wings.
“There are also more storks than last year.”
“They find plenty to eat in my meadows: so they come here from all parts.”
“Ah! mine is gone: it left me about Eastertide.”
“Gone off, belike, with a flock of others flying by.”
“What have you there, on those muddy stretches?”
“I have had an acre of land sown with maize: the soil is rather damp, but they say the summer will be dry; so I may make something by it.”
“May it not be like my last year’s maize! the crop was not worth gathering.”
“Except by the partridges. It fed many a covey,” said the miller, with a chuckle.
“Aye, the partridges were for the Squire’s table, and my poor beasts had nothing to eat.”
“If mine succeeds, I’ll send your Reverence a cartload.”
“Many thanks: my last year’s clover was but a poor crop, and, should we have a drought, things will go ill for me!” He sighed, and continued the psalm.
They had just come to the first landmark, a mound so overgrown with flowering blackthorns that it rose up clad in beauty, arrayed in white blossoms and sonorous with swarms of bees.
They surrounded it with a circle of flickering lights; the cross towered aloft; the banners dipped and unfurled themselves; the people knelt around, as before an altar whereon the hallowed majesty of spring stood revealed amid flowers and the hum of bees.
The priest then read a prayer that no hail might fall, and sprinkled holy water to the four cardinal points, over the trees, the earth, the water, and the heads of the humble worshippers.
The people then struck up another chant, and went forward.
This time, turning somewhat to the left, they crossed the meadows up a gentle slope. But the children stayed behind a little; and the sons of Gulbas, aided by Vitek, and according to the immemorial custom, here thrashed several boys so soundly that there was a great uproar, and the priest was obliged to intervene and quiet them.
Farther on, they came to a wide place of pasturage at the parish boundaries, dotted over with little thickets of juniper, growing at the border. This pasture land wound hither and thither, like a green river, with waves of grass, and so full of flowers that even the old cart-ruts abounded in daisies and dandelions. In places, too, there were large trees, so fenced about with brambles that there was no approaching them; and then came wild pear-trees, all in bloom, sung to by myriads of bees, and towering aloft, most beautiful and godlike of shape; one felt ready to fall down and kiss the ground which had brought them forth!
And then, the birch-trees! How they arched their lovely trunks, attired in silvery bark, quite over-canopied with green braids and tresses, and reminding you of a young maiden, intensely quivering with pure emotion, who goes to her first Communion!
Little by little, they trended uphill, circling Lipka from the north, and along the miller’s fields, lush with rye: first the cross, then the priest, afterwards the girls and younger women, then the old folk straggling by twos and threes abreast, and, last of all, Agata, hobbling and coughing.
When they were out on the plain, the hush deepened. The wind had fallen; the banners hung limply down, and the procession lengthened out to the extent of a furlong, the women’s bright dresses set off by the surrounding greenery, and the taper-flames trembling and fluttering like golden butterflies.
And, high above, the sky was quite blue, except for a few woolly clouds, white sheep on the immensity of those azure fields, through which the huge hot sun rolled on, bathing the world in heat and splendour.
The chants now grew louder, resounding from full throats and hearts with such deafening clamour that the birds flew frightened out of the trees that stood near; and sometimes a partridge rose in alarm from under their very feet, or a leveret went bounding away.
“The autumn-sown lands are getting on well,” the priest whispered.
“I have seen corn already in the ear there,” said the miller.
“Whose is that field, so badly tilled? The furrows are half full of dung!”
“Some poor komornik’s potato-patch: it looks as if ploughed with a cow!”
“Probably his Reverence’s farmhand has ploughed it, then,” the blacksmith put in with quiet malice.
His Reverence turned angrily upon him, but said no word, and set once more to singing along with the people; now and then casting his eyes over the vast expanse of
