A very few minutes after this the soul of Doonya passed peacefully away, and poor Pavel was a widower. In his anguish of mind during that saddest hour, he had no thought for the tiny bundle of sickly humanity lying neglected upon its bed of rags and sacking. No neighbours were at hand. All were at work in the fields. For none had known of poor Doonya's sudden and immediate need of their services. When at length Pavel remembered to look at the child, therefore, it was cold and dead, and might have been so for an hour for all he knew. Pavel was not so ignorant as to be unaware that the fate of a child dying unbaptized is most melancholy. He knew, as every Slavonic peasant knows, that the unbaptized soul, whether of child or grown person, is doomed to wander over earth and sea and air for seven long years, seeking for some one sufficiently pure of spirit to hear its spirit-voice appealing to be baptized. If such an one should hear it and pronounce the orthodox formula, all would be well with the soul, and it might depart in peace into those blessed realms where waiting souls, as Christians believe, rest until the great day of their resurrection. If, however, none should hear the wanderer (and, alas! how few are those qualified to catch the tone of a spirit-voice!), and the seven years should expire, then that poor unbaptized soul must lose its soulship, and descend among the mortal rusalki, or water nymphs, to be a rusalka for the remainder of her life, cut off for ever from the blessed privileges of Christianity. Then Pavel was overcome with sudden remorse, and, in the hope that the soul of little Liuba (for so the parents had agreed to call her) was still within hearing, he pronounced aloud the words, "Liuba, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." But, alas! it was too late. The little neglected soul had fled away in its distress and despair, and was already far from the place of its birth, wandering over sea and land, and crying aloud to every human being whom it saw: "Have pity, Christian brother (or sister). Hear my cry and baptize me, or my soulship is lost, lost!"
When the spirit of little Liuba first left the tiny body in which it had commenced its career, and fled away, it knew not whither to direct its flight. One central idea was all the consciousness it possessed as yet, and this was the knowledge—half hope and half despair—which is given to each infant unbaptized soul for its heritage, namely, that it has been deprived by misfortune of something which should have been its dearest possession, the sweet privilege of Christian baptism, and that it must wander and weep and entreat until such time as it shall find a baptized Christian into whose own pure soul the cry of the wandering spirit may enter; from him it may then receive the precious gift which is its own by right, but of which it had been unfortunately deprived.
So Liuba's infant soul fled wailing over valley and hill and sea, and was far away when her widowed father pronounced the baptismal formula over the poor little wasted body which had once been her earthly tenement. Liuba knew nothing of the fate predestinated for those whose seven years expire and find them still without the pale of blessedness; all this she should learn in good time; at present she only knew that she must wander and chant her monotonous sorrowful prayer that she might be heard and baptized.
Red-shirted peasants were busy at work in the fields, together with gaily-clad women and a few children. It was the time of the cutting of the corn, and there was much laughter and merriness, while each peasant did as much work as he felt was good for him, which was not much; the women worked harder than the men and sang in a light-hearted manner as they laboured. The men were glad to allow the women to work as hard as they were willing to; it saved them much trouble.
"Brothers and sisters—Christian people," wailed the child-spirit, "baptize me and save my soul alive!" But not one of all the chattering, toiling throng could hear the spirit-voice, for the sounds of the world were loud in their ears and no other voice could reach them by reason of the noises which deafened them. So Liuba left them and fled away over hill and dale, wailing and weeping, for she had experienced her first taste of failure and disappointment; and by-and-by she came to the banks of a large river, and here she rested herself upon the shore, strange and lost and lonely. It was a beautiful sunny morning in August, and little Liuba could not resist the charm of the sunshine and the sparkle of the clear water about her; she saw it with delight, and the rustle of the leaves and the songs and twittering of the happy birds amid the leaflets overhead filled her with wondrous joy and content. "How beautiful it all is," she cried; "if only it were to be always like this I should not so much mind my misfortune."
To Liuba's surprise, at the sound of her voice a very beautiful form suddenly appeared rising out of the water. The shape was that of a human girl, but indistinct, and with wavy outlines that quivered and shifted, instead of the fixed lines of a human body. Masses of golden flowing hair fell over bosom and shoulders and lay floating upon the ripples of the water, of which it seemed to form a part; and though it had proceeded from the stream and still lay upon the surface of the river, yet the hair was not wet and draggled but wavy and dry and lovely to look upon. Liuba looked at the new-comer with admiration and joy. "How beautiful you are!" she cried, "and you have heard my voice and will baptize me!"
The beautiful creature laughed aloud, and the sound of her voice was like the flowing of shallow waters over the rapids.
"Oh, no!" she cried, "I cannot baptize you, and I would not if I could! You must be very young or you would know that I am a river-spirit, a rusalka, such as you yourself will be one day, unless you find some one to baptize you, which is very unlikely. I can hear your voice for I am a spirit, but mortal men cannot distinguish your speech, and if they hear anything they say, 'Listen to the whispering of the wind in the tree-top!' or, 'Do you hear how the breeze sighs this evening among the reeds in the stream?' Do you not know that you have but seven years in which to perform your hopeless task, and that after that you are at liberty to come down among us here in the cool waters? It were far better to save yourself these years of disappointment and toiling and to become one of us at once."
But the soul of Liuba thirsted for baptism as the new-born plant longs for the touch of the sun-god, and she was not satisfied with the words of the rusalka.