How empty, how fearfully quiet the hut seemed on their return! Yuzka quite broke down. Hanka said:
“He was just like a corpse for so many a day, yet we felt there was a master amongst us!”
“But Antek will come,” Yagustynka assured her, “and there will then be another master!”
“Would it were soon!” she sighed.
But as in this rainy weather there was a great deal of work to do, she dashed her tears away. “Come, good people!” she cried. “Should the greatest man in the world die, he is like a stone in the depths of the sea—never to be fished up again; and the land will not wait, and we must toil and till it.”
Then she took them all to earth up the potato-plants, Yuzka alone staying at home to take care of the babies, and because the sorrow, which she had not yet got over, had made her ill. Lapa was constantly by her side, watching over her, and also Vitek’s stork, that stood on one leg in the porch, as if on guard.
When the downpour, heavy and warm as it was, had lasted for some time, the birds ceased from singing, and all the beasts listened in silence to the purl and gurgle and drumming of the torrential rain. Only the geese made a riotous noise, swimming merrily about in the frothy pools.
“Tomorrow we shall surely have fine weather,” people said, on coming back from the fields, seeing the sun shine bright at evening, and peer out with his fiery eye over the countryside.
“Would it might still rain tomorrow! it will be worth much gold to us!”
“Aye, our potatoes were all but destroyed.”
“And how dried up the oats were!”
“Things will look better now.”
“If it could but rain for three days running!”
And so on.
It had kept pouring steadily till nightfall, and the peasants had the pleasure of standing outside their huts to breathe the cool and deliciously fragrant air. Meanwhile the Gulbas lads were urging all the boys and girls to sally forth and kindle the “Sobotki”35 fires on a neighbouring eminence. But the weather was far from pleasant, and only a few bonfires gleamed that evening along the skirts of the forest.
Vitek wished very much for Yuzka to go with him to the Sobotki. But she said: “No, I will not. What care I for amusements now … or for anything in the world?”
Still he pressed her to go. “We will only light a bonfire, leap over it … and come home again.”
“No! And you too shall stay at home: else Hanka shall know of it,” she said, threatening him.
He went notwithstanding—and came back too late for supper, famished, and most shockingly bespattered with mud; for the rain had been falling all the time. Indeed, it only gave over the next day, at the time of the funeral service.
Even then the weather was cloudy and foggy, setting off still better the bright green of the fields, threaded with silver brooklets everywhere. It was fresh, cool, pleasant: the lands, all drenched and soaked, seemed fermenting with intense life.
A votive Requiem Mass was celebrated by the parish priest, who afterwards, in company with his Reverence of Slupia, and the organist, seated in pews on either side of the sanctuary, chanted the Officium Defunctorum in Latin. High on a catafalque lay Boryna, amid a grove of burning tapers. Around him the whole village knelt humbly, praying and giving ear to the long-drawn, melancholy dirge, that now sounded like a cry of terror, making their flesh creep and wringing their hearts; now gave out subdued murmuring syllables, low thrilling moans, that caused the tears to start unwilled; and now again would soar on high in unearthly rapture, like the hymns of angels in everlasting bliss; and the hearers would wipe away their tears, or burst into uncontrollable fits of weeping.
This lasted a full hour. At last Ambrose took the tapers out of their sockets to distribute them amongst the congregation; and the priest, having prayed before the body, gone round it, swinging his silver thurible until all the air around was blue with incense-smoke, and sprinkled it with holy water, walked forward to the door, the cross preceding him.
Then was there within the church a confused din of cries and wailing and sobbing, as several husbandmen of the highest standing, shouldering the coffin, bore it to the cart outside, the basketwork of which was crammed with straw. Yagustynka (furtively, lest the priests should see and prevent this superstitious act) thrust under it a big loaf, wrapped up in clean linen.
The dismal knell burst forth, the black banners were raised and the lights flared and flickered. Staho having lifted the cross, the two priests intoned:
“Miserere mei, Deus. …”
The dread strains, the chant of death—the dirge of infinite sorrow—began to sob forth, and they wended their way towards the burying-ground.
In front of the procession, the black flag bearing the skull and crossbones, fluttered like a bird of horror: following in its wake came the silver cross, a long line of taper-bearers, and the priests, arrayed in black copes.
Then appeared the coffin, high in view, and the loudly lamenting mourners, and all the village in the rear, walking in sad dreary silence. Even the sick and the crippled had come.
The grey clouds hung low in the sky, almost resting on the tops of the poplars, and motionless, as if intent on the chants that were sung. When a breeze arose, the trees shed their tears over the coffin, while the corn in the fields bent low as though to salute their master, leaving them forever.
Floating through the air with the voices of the groaning bells, the dirge rolled a stillness as of death on the hearts of the listeners; while the mourners wailed, and the banners flapped, and the cartwheels creaked—and the lark sang, far away in the fields.
And once again the Miserere resounded, with a magical effect on the feelings of those present.
Their
