The place then became still as a tomb. Supper over, and the evening household duties performed, they all felt oppressed with sleep; but no one cared to leave the big room. Sitting by the fire, they looked into the dying embers, and gave a timorous ear to every sound they heard. It was quiet outside; only the wind whistled at times, and made the trees rustle, the fences creak, and a pane jingle now and again. Or Lapa would growl, his hair stiffening all down his back with terror; and then the dull interminable stillness would once more come over them.
There they sat, shivering with ever-increasing fear, and so scared that more than one crossed himself and said his prayers with chattering teeth. All felt sure that Something was moving about, walking in the loft above, making the rafters creak, fumbling at the door, peeping in at the windows as it passed, rattling at the latch, and going round the whole cabin with a heavy tread.
On a sudden, a neighing was heard in the stable. Lapa, barking violently, flung himself against the door, while Yuzka cried out in uncontrollable anguish: “ ’Tis Father! O God! ’tis Father!” in an outburst of affrighted tears.
Thereupon Yagustynka thrust her fingers forth three times, and said gravely:
“Do not weep. Weeping only keeps a soul longer upon this earth: you would prevent him from departing in peace. Open ye the door, and let the wanderer flee away to the fields of the Lord Jesus.—May he go, and peace be with him!”
They threw the door open, and presently all was as still as death. Only reddened eyes glanced about in fear, while Lapa smelt in every corner, with a whine from time to time, and a wag of his tail, as though fawning on someone … someone unseen. They felt now, more strongly than ever, that the dead man’s soul was straying somewhere about in their midst.
At last Hanka thought of the Evening Hymn, and intoned, in a trembling husky voice:
“All our actions, done this day,
At Thy feet, O Lord, we lay!” …
which the others took up heartily, and to their great relief.
II
It was an ideal summer’s day.
About ten in the morning: for the sun stood halfway between east and south, and ever with hotter fires. And all the bells in Lipka belfry had begun to peal with might and main.
The loudest was the one they named Peter. It boomed full-throated: as when a peasant, somewhat in his cups, goes swaying from side to side of the roadway, and his deep roar tells all the world how merry he is.
The second, a little smaller, that (according to Ambrose) had been christened Paul, took up the strain with livelier and more high-pitched tones, ringing long and clangorously, in ecstasies of joy, like a maiden in the glow of love on a spring day, who runs out afield and, darting through the rye, sings from a full bosom to the winds, to the lands, to the clear sky, and to her own joyful heart.
And the third, the sygnaturka, which announces that Mass begins, poured out its notes, like a bird, doing all that it could (though in vain) to outvie the other two with a hurried babbling tinkle.
All three, sounding together, formed a grand orchestra—a roaring bassoon, a warbling violin, and a jingling cymbal, with shrill quivering notes: their music was very solemn and very pleasant to the ear.
It was the day of the local Feast—Saint Peter and Paul—and it was for this that they called the people so joyfully.
In the bright dazzling sunshine and the burning heat, the dealers had ever since dawn been setting up their shady booths, and the tables and counters beneath them, on the large open space in front of the church.
And no sooner had the bells sent their merry peals over the countryside than all sorts of vehicles came rolling in through clouds of dust from as far as the eye could reach, with great crowds of people on foot. All the roads, lanes and field-paths were red with women’s dresses or white with men’s capotes.
Still from the brazen throats of those bells did the notes pour forth, and they rolled sunward their chants and their loud invocations:
“Kyrie!—Kyrie!—Kyrie eleison!”
“Madonna!—Madonna!—Most holy Madonna!”
“To Thee, O God!—To Thee I cry—I cry—I cry aloud!”
All the huts were decorated with greenery; and in the whole aspect of the village, on this noted day of high solemnity, there was an atmosphere that lifted up the heart and filled it with rapture.
Every thoroughfare was soon encumbered with foot-passengers, horses and wagons: the travellers within these gazing about them in wonder at the scenery, so beautifully adorned by nature for so great a festival.
All the landscape was given over to an inundation of wild flowers. Along every pathway there reigned a wonderful profusion of soft white and gold and violet hues. The larkspur and the convolvulus put their perfumed heads forth from their hiding-places in the cornfields: bluebells and cornflowers were seen in every patch, and the hollows where water had been now teemed with forget-me-nots, making the dells look like bits of blue, fallen from the sky. There were clumps of vetches without end, buttercups and dandelions innumerable, and the purple flowers of the thistle and clover, and daisies with camomiles—and countless others, of which only our Lord knows the names, since they were blooming for Him alone. And as sweet a perfume came up out of the fields as when his Reverence in church offers incense to the Holy Sacrament!
The newcomers smelt all those perfumes with intense pleasure, but nevertheless hurried on, not sparing the whip; for the heat was too great to bear, and simply overwhelming.
And shortly all Lipka was crowded, even to the skirts of the forest.
Whenever there was the slightest shadow, wagons were drawn up, horses unharnessed; and as to the space in front of the church, it was
