Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/42

 did in the cemetery, and Krista sang. Then Krista sang over the funeral hymns, and Venik accompanied her on his violin. They sang and played everything they knew; they sang funeral hymns for a burial of a child; then those for youth, and lastly those for adults. And they sang and played with so much earnestness and with so much warmth of feeling that they were both quite ill after it, and hiccuped with emotion. A more touching funeral never took place in reality than the imaginary one conducted by these children. If the spirit of Venik’s mother hovered above them, doubtless it rejoiced and wept with them.

Then the little grave-digger filled in the grave with earth, and his little mother was buried. They still had to sing over, “Oh! rest in peace”, and afterwards, “We bid adieu to this body, we bury it in peace.” Thereupon they quitted the tomb to the sound of the song and the violin. But once more they returned, not indeed to the grave exactly, but aside to the hollow tree, for Venik said that he would compose a requiem, and that there should be a full choral mass. And he played and Krista sang. They played and sang through all the solos, and the hollow tree was both church and gallery.

Even when late that evening they drove home the flock they were still sobbing and crying, and the next day Krista wouldn’t think of going to school, “for you know,” she said, “it is the vigil after the funeral.”

ROM that day forth these children felt that they were equals. From that day forth one was no more an orphan than the other. From that day forth the hill-side was their consecrated ground, it was also their home. In the house they had a father, even Krista had a father in old Riha; and on the hill-side they had a mother, even Krista had there a mother. Immediately after school she used to be with Venik, and when there was no school she was with him the whole day.

Such days were like saint’s days to both of them. Then she sang till her voice rang all through the woodland, and Venik would play on his violin, till people going past used to pause, and all the shepherds of the village would most gladly have pastured their flocks on the hill-side if they had had the right of pasturage there. When it rained the two crept into the hollow tree, and then it