# Halek's Stories and Evensongs/The Domestic Teacher

THE DOMESTIC TEACHER
​ALONG the Upper Moldau wended way among narrow streets a fair-haired youth. I only refer to the colour of his hair at present that, the reader may remember him by this characteristic until more marked ones occur. I am well aware that I shall be expected to add interesting and exact details of character; but certain it is that girls know the colour of hair, eyes, and face before they manage to express themselves about a single other substantial masculine characteristic. And my chief wish is to win the ear of girlhood.
This young man always walked along at a particular hour and at a somewhat rapid pace. In these streets there is a “benediction” of children, who having but little room in their stifling homes, play about the streets in considerable groups. These children well knew the hour when the fair-haired youth passed that way. If he did not come exactly at the stroke of the clock, they at once began to cast anxious glances in the direction from which he came and they cried out, “He is not yet coming!” They did not know either his name or his occupation, but as soon as ever one of them called out, “He has just come!” the others well knew that it was our hero who had come, and perhaps they would take up the challenge with a “He hasn’t come! . . .” But if a child caught sight of him before the others, it called out with all its might, “He is coming now!” and all the others exclaimed after the first, “Now he is coming! now he is coming!”
For these children he was nameless; they called him only by the words “him” or “he”. To them he was only “he who has come” or “who has not come”, who either is coming or will not come at all. When he came among them, they called out in a medley of voices, “Throw us a kreuzer, throw us a kreuzer!” The young man generally had a kreuzer in his hand ready to throw it among them, and then smiled and hurried on, frequently without even looking back at the animated knot of children who wrangled over their small prize with shouts and laughter. The shouts and laughter were still audible as the young man entered at the end of the street a house of better appearance than those which surrounded it.
Here he ran up the stairs to the first floor and stopped before a pair of lofty glazed doors, which led to a passage, touched the ​bell, and scarcely had its first tones trembled away on the air, when the patter of little feet could be heard trotting rather than running to the door. The door opened in a twinkling and at one side stood a little boy about six years of age, at the other a little girl about eight years old. These children clapped their hands and crying, “Pan Vojtech! Pan Vojtech!” took Pan Vojtech each by one hand and led him along the passage and through the kitchen to their lesson-room.
Here the little boy sat on his knee, the little girl on one side and they repeated some popular song or favourite popular ballad, then they read aloud one of the German fairy-tales, and repeated as much of it afterwards as they could remember. The children amused rather than tasked themselves, laughed more than seriously did lessons, played more than worked. When the hour was over, they were surprised to find it was so soon over, and it was certain that they were merrier as they led Pan Vojtech to the schoolroom than when they quitted him.
When their little feet trotted off, Vojtech still remained seated and fixed his eyes on the door. After a short time light steps, but not those of a child, approached the door, and any one who had watched Vojtech’s face as the first light rustling greeted him, would have noticed that he trembled slightly as he listened, that he grew pale, and that he had to put some constraint upon himself in order to appear indifferent and unperturbed. At the door entered a girl with a winning countenance. She must have been somewhat more than fourteen years of age, and was still more a child than a young lady, but in her gait, her face and figure there was more of womanly dignity than of childish playfulness.
They greeted one another almost in silence. The girl took a seat opposite Vojtech and Vojtech had to harangue her about history, geography, and so-called “belles-lettres”. He lectured. But it was wonderful how he began. His words resounded like the song of a desolate bird and often he could not connect them into intelligible sentences. The pallid countenance, the strange shivering before the girl entered, seemed now to have been transferred to his language; it was colourless, halting, vague.
His throat was husky, a word had often to make several efforts before it was pronounced. His tongue and lips seemed glued together and if we may speak of winged words in this place it was just as though a bird-catcher had limed his words and smeared their wings with glue. And yet he had to hand a plentiful supply that plied their wings in full chorus: he had only to stretch out ​his hands to them. He was in evident embarrassment and with difficulty controlled himself. As if to gain time he asked the girl a question; yet Vojtech continued to watch her lips after she ceased to speak. What reply she made, he did not know and as to whether the answer was right or wrong he had not the slightest notion. The girl looked fixedly at her book and was perhaps in greater embarrassment than Vojtech if that were possible.
The mother was generally present at these lectures and also entered the schoolroom to-day—after a long pause between the tutor and pupil. It was impossible to continue in silence and Vojtech began again possibly just where he had begun before the mother entered the room.
His delivery was still slow and painful; but he knew very well in her presence how exactingly she insisted, how imperiously she pointed out his duty. He suppressed the quavering of his voice; he governed his words that they might be more fluent, added a touch of boldness to them, let himself be carried on by the stream. In a short time his language flowed along as though it had been spoken by a first-rate orator. His address had warmth and fervour, he felt it. It carried him along with it, it carried along the girl and if the girl’s eyes flashed, his face regained its colour and his blood coursed through his veins with the vivacity of a child’s. He could have continued his discourse a long time without loosing the thread of it in his mind.
But it was wonderful what he lectured about. He soon turned aside from the history of our kings, after naming their doughty deeds which hardly deserve to be taken seriously. Now he ran off into trivial details. Now he held forth on some master, ran through his life, enumerated the creations of his mind and depicted how that master by those works of his had more glorified his era, more exulted mankind, more advanced the civilization of his contemporaries, than all the generals and Grand dukes of the period. Here he was master, here he was at home. Here passion almost inspired him, his words breathed energy, they were not merely warm, they were fiery. Then he spoke at length about this or that poet and when he had sketched the whole character of his genius, he added, “All that we must read together, some day.”
After this he made a bow, took up his hat and left. It is possible that my readers have already decided that Vojtech was a poor instructor. I do not wish to correct their opinion for it is possible that it is founded on truth. Vojtech had hitherto been a master in ​more houses than one but never for very long. From one family he received his dismissal because he played with their boy rather than taught him, and a boy has the whole day for playtime but study demands application. He left another house of his own accord because as he thought his pupil had no elasticity of mind and he could not impart it to her. From a third they gave him his dismissal on the understanding that their boy must cultivate practical science from the Vojtechian fantasies good Lord deliver him! And everywhere people said the same thing in different words.
Vojtech then had plenty of self-experience and might have regulated his life accordingly: but, alas! we have just seen that from all this experience he reaped but little benefit and that it was by no means impossible that the Horskas also would give him his dismissal. Horska was the name of the family whither we have conducted him. This possibility had occurred to Vojtech himself more than once and oppressed him like a hideous dream out of which he could not arouse himself. Everywhere hitherto it had ended thus. Was he not tending to the same goal at the Horskas’s? Was he teaching with any better success there than in any other houses? In Prague one family recommends its domestic teacher to other families. What family would receive him for the causes through which he had lost so many good positions? And if Vojtech counted these lost houses and the state of his finances, it must have been evident to him that it was a dreary wan reckoning which looked out of him with hungry eyes. It must have been clear to him that he had within himself an unfruitful year, which swallowed even the years of fertility.
Vojtech was, moreover, somewhat peculiar in character. He was unsuited for the so-called solid business of life, that he knew full well. And because he knew it, he did not search for such employment. He was perfectly cultivated, and was better versed in old-world lore and pagan history than his contemporaries. When he studied he did not make the sign of the cross under his reading-desk like others who ran the risk of losing all sympathy with the kingdom of mind when they left the schools and from whom one was doomed to hear, under smooth words and other appropriate forms, little save a voice which cried continually, “Bread, bread!” Vojtech felt that hitherto he had somehow only tasted life and he began to long to sate himself therewith.
Sometimes it shocked him like a blow from a mailed hand. ​If he met his schoolday comrades, he shuddered to see how he was still a John-a-Dreams and how practical these friends had grown. He heard scarcely anything save in mockery of what in days gone by they had fondly dreamt, of what they agreed to recognize as holy, sublime, and the highest good. “We were fools then,” said they, “now we have cooled down.”
They were so prompt and peremptory in their judgments that Vojtech had no time given him to answer them. Something shivered within him, he began to reflect about it and had not gone very far ere he took to flight before the grinning fangs of importunate reality and then he made up his mind to suspend judgment for the present as to his course of life.
He knew well enough that he might have managed like his companions, to flourish a long pen at some office, to turn over the paper in large sheets, to look out of the window, to prudently conform himself to trivial details, from hour to hour to toil at a desk, and by similar exemplary actions to establish his reputation. Only one thing he could not have managed: for the sake of his official chief to give his own opinions the lie, to say “yes” when his opinion said “no” and to acquiesce in anything merely because he was a subordinate. He knew this shortcoming of his own and therefore did not yearn to obtain for it official confirmation.
Yes, in Vojtech, there was in reality something which with feverish timidity struggled to preserve itself intact. If ever he should have to dissever himself from it he thought that he should fail to feel his own identity, that he should lose his self-respect and fall like a drop into that broad stream of indifference which the breeze drives before it withersoever it will. Those maxims which he had hitherto made his own, seemed to him still to form the only substantial portion of his life and he thought that to eradicate them would be to dig up the very roots of his own individuality. His own intuitions were the objects of his love and reverence so that at times he felt determined to preserve them even in misery and never to exchange them for others. Yes it almost allured him—that idea to be great in adversity. That fierce volcano of youthful aims and aspirations—to carry it through the frost of life unchilled—oh! that inspired, that excited him. To warm his shrunken hands in the warmth of his own soul, to pasture the fevered eye of poverty on the flowers of existence—that appeared to him to be a note of greatness. And as we have just seen he was on the high road to this transcendental poverty.
​But Vojtech had yet other shortcomings. He had profound feeling, and what he felt he thought was at least creditable. How he made his way in the world with these intuitions, the reader will learn later on, in the meantime one example will suffice. He was one of those foolish fellows, who, visiting the theatre, not because it is the fashion, but from the consciousness of an inward necessity, manage to pass a whole hour in the pit in akwardness and discomfort. They snatch from their mouths what they give for entrance tickets and when they return home have nothing with which to appease their craving maws, but betake themselves to a sleep of bespangled fantasies and sate themselves with the light froth of impassioned dreams. To Prague, then, came an actor who made his debut in classic characters and awoke a sensation. Vojtech at that time lectured the Horskas’s eldest daughter, Lidunka, about such characters and suggested in so many words that she should go with him to the theatre to see for herself. He said it also to her mother and on the mother’s objecting that really no one in the house had time to chaperon her daughter to the theatre, he offered himself as escort. The mother answered with a look of measured coldness that she must think it over. She did think it over, no doubt, for she never mentioned it again, but at the same time she was present at her daughter’s lessons from the beginning to the end so that no single pause or silence might occur.
I cannot say that Vojtech could have become truly happy as a domestic teacher. He felt at times but too well the passiveness of his position and his dependance on others from hour to hour and finally he felt that after all he was regarded as little better than one of the servants of the family. This truth he had read with special clearness in Pani Horska’s reply when she refused his invitation to the theatre. He repeated it to himself again and again, and even in his address and manner paraded his sense of it. He was always so measured in his discourse and so confined his movements within the merest routine that never by hint or word did he let it appear that he considered himself anything better than a servant. “I will fulfil my duty to them”, he thought, “besides that: I have no need to talk to them.” But, alas! the maxim was at fault and perhaps injured Vojtech more in their opinion of him than his invitation to the theatre. That measured manner of his, displayed on every occasion, indicated in him pride, self-conceit, and other similar characteristics. Vojtech was well aware, with what eyes they looked at him, but he determined, ​above all things never to step out from the passiveness of his position.
But for all this there were moments when Vojtech felt happy. He felt a constant need to unburden his mind. And as teaching was the only opportunity he had of communicating his ideas he felt happy when he taught. He had a full heart, he had a full soul. This fulness is a burden if a man carries it intact within himself and rocks are rent if a strong spring arises within them and can find no outlet. And such an outlet teaching was to Vojtech. When he saw that he had the mind of youth so completely in his power, when he felt how faithfully his words imprinted themselves on youthful memory, when he saw Lidunka’s eyes flash with the very fires in which his own words melted, when he saw her borne along on the same wings as those with which he himself soared aloft, then his consciousness lost the touch of bitterness which destiny had imparted to it, then he felt absolute lord, a creator, in whose hands he was only a kind of servant. And let the Horskas impute to him what faults they pleased, so much even Pani Horska was forced to confess that with him her children really loved their lessons.
I have already said once, that Vojtech at times trembled at the thought that perhaps it would end with him at the Horskas’s just as it had hitherto done everywhere else. Not only because the family was now the one thread on which hung his penurious existence—ah! no: it was something infinitely nobler which filled him with dread, lest it should so turn out. There was in the family of the Horskas a kind of mysterious repose in the presence of which it seemed to Vojtech as though he had entered the depths of a green wood. These children were so caressing, they were so thoroughly children in the true sense of the word, not reduced to mere puppets, not perverted by a frivolous etiquette which subjects the spiritual fibre of a man to superficial formality. In those children uncontaminated Nature yet survived and when he instructed them in popular songs and fairy stories they seemed to him like a fresh breeze across sweetly scented meadows. Even the relation of the children to their mother and of their mother to them was free from all constraint and Vojtech saw here the sentiment of child to mother in its purest form. Their mother was a law to them, though she did not command, and the children turned themselves around her like threads around a finger. Here were no brief periods meted out when the mother had to feel herself a mother and the children might be children. Those ​moments were just when they happened to occur, and the mother looked out through her children’s eyes, and the fondness of the children beamed in the mother’s. The mother did not approach them like some majestic being, once or twice a day, in order that she might estrange the hearts of her children rather than make them her own. Here the mother melted into her children and the children as long ago from her breast sucked the milk of devoted love. An unspeakable charm lay in all this for Vojtech, and if teaching supplied a want in his heart the momentary pauses at lesson time or before or after it was like the realization of a poet’s dream.
In our life at Prague we have no truly social family life. A young man comes to us for his course of study and stands isolated like a pear-tree on a prairie. Over and above all this Vojtech had experienced all the hardships of a youth of poverty and the memory of his cottage home lingered like a sweet dream out of which he was awakened for ever. In the houses in which he had taught long ago, he had few opportunities of observing closely the family life. The children lived apart from their parents. Master after master came to them in succession, and then the governess took them in hand, and Vojtech only met these parents when they received him the first day or gave him his dismissal. His own poor home offered him but scant luxuries: going thence to the Horskas’s and catching a glimpse from time to time of those gleams of domestic happiness he felt his strength renewed and was able to say, “Here is a resting-place on the toilsome road of life.”
He felt himself at home with them in a moment and confessed to himself more than once that it would be a cruel blow to him, if he and his lessons were to be banished from that house. Overlooking his own home, he felt as though all or most of his life was spent at the Horskas’s, and confessed to himself, without disguise, that he should feel like a banished outcast if those doors were to be closed to him. And yet he must have been well aware from previous experiences that all his steps tended in that and no other direction. At times this thought made him sick at heart, and for a moment he would fancy that on the morrow he should be alone in the world once more: particularly at the beginning of the month when Pani Horska paid his salary, he trembled each time with dread lest it should be coupled with an expression of gratitude for his past efforts and a desire that he should trouble himself no further on their behalf.
​Thus it was that Vojtech’s position at the Horskas’s had at times something of constraint about it. Sometimes, when he went there he felt as weak and gentle as a child. It seemed to him as though that day linked itself with all that had gone before and that on the morrow some one else would come and teach his children according to some current receipt and would be preferred before himself. Then he taught the little boy and girl and even Lidunka in haste as if he wished to compensate beforehand for his future absence, as though he gave them lessons for a lifetime. Moment flew after moment, hour after hour, and Pani Horska had to suggest to him that the hour had already long run out and that other occupations awaited her daughter. Vojtech concluded and at the same time felt ashamed lest he should have seemed to wish to ingratiate himself with the family and to strengthen his position in it. The idea vexed him. Even the next day when in the evening the street-children played together, they called to one another, “To-day he is not coming. To-day he has not come.” About an hour later they said to one another, “He won’t come to-day.”
Vojtech in fact did not go that day to the Horskas’s, wishing to efface from his mind the slightest feeling of having cringed to them.
The second day he went and offered no excuse. But he expected every moment that Pani Horska would in some way give him to understand that it was intolerable to have the children overworked one day and not employed at all the next. And he understood well enough that such a reproach would be at the same time a reason for him to announce his retirement.
Thus one side of his life at the Horskas’s wavered in perpetual uncertainty and it is impossible to contend that he in any way diminished that uncertainty by his manner or behaviour.
But I have not yet enumerated all the reasons why Vojtech felt himself so fondly touched at the Horskas’s and I think that Vojtech himself would hardly have succeeded in analysing them completely. But it seemed to him at times as though nothing unlovable could happen at the Horskas’s. It seemed inscribed on all the walls that here, at least for a moment, he might dream of happiness and that although his whole future existence were a waste, he might yet be able to testify that at least for some few hours he was blessed. A kind of sanctity, a kind of peace reigned here through all the dwelling. He did not reason about it but he felt it. It seemed to him as though life might yet be of some ​value and the sense of bitterness in all his perceptions was swept away as if at the touch of an unseen hand.
In the meantime the vacations drew near during which the children also got a holiday.
If Vojtech felt apprehensive at the beginning of each month lest his salary should be accompanied with dismissal, he felt so now to a far higher degree. He imagined himself so sure to be dismissed that he even sought to arm himself beforehand by a kind of cold determination, to hear the sentence from the lips of Pani Horska.
Pani Horska shook hands with him and said: “Pan Vojtech, your instruction of Lidunka does not satisfy me.”
Vojtech clutched a small table and, in spite of his determination, he felt as though the room spun round.
“I have thought about it in every way”, continued Pani Horska. “I must beg you now that Lidunka is growing a big girl to give her a few more hours every week.”
Vojtech’s head ceased to spin round. He rejoiced in heart.
After the holidays, then, Vojtech began to be occupied more frequently with Lidunka. Pani Horska confessed she was right to speak of the unsatisfactoriness of the lessons. He took the remark seriously to heart. He thought out a complete scheme during the holidays, noting down Lidunka’s weak points and where she needed pressingly to be corrected. He had hitherto taught Lidunka with pleasure, but now it seemed to him as though duty called him to apply all diligence toward the complete cultivation of the girl. It was as though in this lay a portion of the routine of his life.
Vojtech applied himself to this new duty with all the anxious care of a highly accomplished thinker. For the present this important matter filled his whole mind, so that he rested with all his thoughts intent upon it. It seemed to him as if after long rambling among wooded mountains he had reached at last a rich and beautiful region. A river bubbled, brambles stretched along its banks, birds flew out of their nests and pecked raspberries, the greensward smelt sweet, the trees stood wrapt in silent thoughts; the light filtered through a network of branches, the braes crept aloft to the heights, ferns down in the valley unfurled their broad fronds, and on the trunk of an uprooted tree sat he and felt it all. He little recked what awaited him after these pleasant scenes. Here it pleased him to abide and who knew whether ​yonder in the distance there was not something better still. He felt weariness, why should he not soothe himself with rest?
In the two months’ holiday during which he had not seen Lidunka, how she had changed! It was no longer a girl, it was a young lady. Her mother spoke the truth when she said that her daughter was growing up very fast.
Since they had not seen each other for so long their greeting might well be somewhat heartier than mere formality demanded, and even good breeding required that Vojtech should inquire what had been the occupations and amusements of Lidunka. And then he lingered in her presence and looked at her a long time to make acquaintance with her fuller and as it seemed to him almost metamorphosed figure. But yet even a second and a third day Vojtech came after the holidays and could not yet quite recall all the differences in her appearance. He greeted her as heretofore, questioned her and tried to reconcile his mind to her new appearance. By the time that her mother again began to be present at the lessons it seemed to him that they had greeted one another sufficiently often and yet perhaps he had not quite reconciled his memory with her new appearance.
How greatly Lidunka had developed during that short time Vojtech soon recognized from his own sensations. Whenever, before the holidays, he had addressed her directly, he called her simply Lidunka. Now he did not indeed call her anything else but he always hesitated so much before the word that he pronounced it indistinctly and thereupon looked into her eyes to see whether that simple appellation yet belonged to her.
Once lessons had ended under the following circumstances. All the tasks had been disposed of. Outside it was bad weather, it did nothing but pour from heavy clouds and they were forced to while away the time until the day improved.
A master of the French language waited in company with Vojtech, and this master the children had ironically nicknamed “godfather”. This “godfather” was very fond of talking and told them all about a great event in his life which happened during a shower at which the children laughed. He told them how frightened he once felt as he went home after dark, and how the wind blew his hat off at every corner and then he told them all about a certain young lady (he meant by this Lidunka), how when she was quite little she once lost her garter and cried a long time for it. Lidunka was angry with “godfather” for telling about these things and it seemed to Vojtech as though he must ​be angry with him also. “Godfather” tried to pacify “his young lady”, “his dear young lady”, by saying that he had known her since she was in her cradle and added that he must tell them about just one thing more—why she cried. But now Vojtech was really angry and told “godfather” that he was certain the young lady had never cried from fright like him. But he somehow said the words “young lady” so unadroitly that when the children burst out laughing, he did not know whether they laughed at the way he had said those words or at the repartee which he had made to “godfather”. But one thing was clear from this little scene that Lidunka must not be called Lidunka any more but young lady. Yes, Lidunka was already a young lady, in full measure a young lady, and it was not proper to call her anything else, and Vojtech later on would even so have called her, but the recollection of his first attempt to give her that title fixed itself so unpleasantly in his memory that being always quick at discovering the most difficult turns of expression, he always avoided the word young lady and called her neither Lidunka nor young lady. But besides this there was yet matter for reflection. There had already once before been such; and in the slight respect, with which his pupils treated their French master, he saw the destiny of all domestic teachers, he saw his own destiny. Thereupon he renewed his determination always so to regulate his behaviour that he might not give the shadow of an excuse for the notion that he considered himself anything more than a man temporarily hired by the family and with whose instructions the parents could dispense whenever they chose.
He, therefore, said no more and when the shower was somewhat abated, he at once prepared to depart. Lidunka offered him an umbrella and at the same time hinted that she was sorry she had not a similar one to offer “godfather”. But from this courtesy Vojtech only gathered that Lidunka wished to revenge herself on the French master for his plain-spokenness, by letting him see the slight respect she felt for him. And as Vojtech wished Lidunka fully to understand his own sentiments, he did not accept the umbrella and begged her to give it to his older companion.
It was the first offer Lidunka had made, and when she saw it refused, she looked down on the ground.
Vojtech carried out his determination very consistently. It was a part of his character for which he had gained the reputation of being proud and self-conceited. Vojtech in all this really sought by a kind of pride still to preserve himself from change and to ​measure his own worth by this constancy rather than according to what his rank and position warranted. He began to carry out his system so consistently that, save at lessons, he hardly exchanged words with Lidunka and was as chary of speech as a miser of pence; and yet Lidunka seemed to be supremely well satisfied with all this. She also never spoke a single superfluous word and on entering and leaving the room scarcely so much as looked at Vojtech.
Vojtech so clung to his determination that he sought to regulate his behaviour at the Horskas’s in Lidunka’s presence on a ready-made system. He frequently thought about the matter a whole hour, and when he lay down to rest at night, often had not disposed of this system of his. Before going to sleep he pictured Lidunka how she would answer his greeting coldly, he after that yet more coldly, how she cast down her eyes, after that he turned away, took his hat, and so—adieu. He had not fully disposed of this system and carried it with him into the kingdom of dreams. It seemed to him as though he managed to exhibit his coldness so well that at last it sickened even Lidunka. Then she turned to him and gave him to understand that she would forgive him if only he would exchange words with her. But after that Vojtech turned away from her altogether, until Lidunka broke forth into audible weeping. When Vojtech awoke after this his face was moist and he perceived that he himself had been weeping.
What could it all mean?
When Vojtech examined himself as to this dream he began to tremble as in a fever and confessed that his reason was at the end of its tether.
When he went to the Horskas’s on the following day the children in the streets cried after him in vain, “Throw us a kreuzer!” He did not hear them and did not throw anything. All the time he was engrossed with the dream. When he came to the Horskas’s he scarcely dared look at Lidunka. He almost felt ashamed in her presence and dreaded lest they should read last night’s dream on his face and worst of all that he had awoke from that dream in tears. All his life he had never given way to tears. Strange that a dream can so constrain our nature as to make us blush for ourselves.
Yet other things surprised and startled Vojtech. It seemed to him as though Lidunka was becoming less attentive at her lessons than she used to be.
​It was something new which he had hitherto never observed in her. But searching for the cause of this phenomenon he found to his surprise that he was himself the cause of it—or to speak more precisely that he was himself less attentive. It seemed to him that he also recognized a confirmation of this truth even in Pani Horska whose face he now saw overclouded with thoughts. He read reproach in those thoughts—but of whom? Did Pani Horska blame his own want of attention or did she wish to censure her daughter who forgot where she was sitting?
“This fault needed rectification. I am not satisfied with Lidunka’s education”, said Pani Horska, some time since: if she had said it now it would have been a hundred times worse and he recognized the truth of her remarks. He curtailed the time belonging to Lidunka’s poor little brother and his little sister, he made scarcely half an hour of it, and gave what was over to Lidunka. He compensated for his distracted attention by length of time and if that proved insufficient he determined to spare some of his own time for Lidunka’s lessons. The children noticed it. Between themselves they grumbled because Pan Vojtech now never read a fairy story which had so consoled them after their lessons.
If they repeated their songs better than usual he pretended not to be listening and seldom praised them. The little boy expressed the gist of the matter when he said, “Pan Vojtech is grumpy.”
Consequently when Vojtech came to the door and rang the bell, the children did not any longer hurry to meet him, but greeted him almost apprehensively, and only took him by the hand from force of habit. The little boy only sat on his knee when Vojtech expressly invited him, and repeated his songs with frequent stammering. Vojtech was oftener strict with them than heretofore; if everything did not go just as he wished, he scolded them and never played with them. He employed himself with them only to say that he had performed his task and taught them more for the name of the thing than in reality.
But with Lidunka he set to work most sedulously. He divided the time with her in such a way that he lectured for a few minutes and then read a long time with her. They read wonderful things. Poems, dramas, native and foreign, and it was a curious circumstance that the word love was repeated in them more frequently than any other word you chose to mention. What they read Vojtech explained, what they were to read was an affair which demanded Vojtech’s most solicitous attention and he gave to it ​both his waking and his sleeping thoughts. Yes, in sleep he had no rest. That tearful awaking out of sleep certainly did not occur again, but if he behaved stiffly at lessons, that stiffness vanished entirely in his dreams. There he took walks with her, there he ran races with her, led her by the hand and told her far more than in his lectures. Sometimes the dream was so strange, that when he awoke from it, he could not manage to say whether it really was a dream or whether it had so engrossed his thoughts, that it only appeared to him to be a dream. It sometimes happens that we are dreaming while we are awake.
Sometimes Lidunka read, sometimes Vojtech, but there were moments when no one read. They remained gazing upon one another as though one asked the other for explanation, or as though the explanation lay in the silent looks. That was when the mother was not present. Once they remained spell-bound even in the mother’s presence. They had been reading a beautiful poem of Firdusi called “Sal and Rudabe”. Lidunka came to the passage which runs thus:—
“When Rudabe heard the speech, her face Burned with fire like the pomegranate’s blossom; Within her love for Sal scourged her with fire, And peace and rest were banished from her soul; Reason was weak when passion triumphed.”
At the third line her mother entered the lesson-room. Lidunka stopped short, grew pale, the fingers with which she followed the lines began to tremble, her throat felt as though it were parched. Lidunka remained silent. The sudden collapse even confused Vojtech so that he was unable to prevail on Lidunka to continue her reading. Only he thanked his own presence of mind for prompting him to say, “It is no matter if you cannot remember”, and then he went on reading himself.
Once Lidunka came to her lesson in tears and Vojtech received no reply when he asked what ailed her. She would not answer any questions he might put to her. It was an embarrassing lesson that day. Vojtech felt his own words fall as dead as the ticking of a clock in a silent room. He felt constrained. He had to spin out a monologue for a whole hour, but a glance at Lidunka almost choked him. For that one day speaking was a burden to him and a ton load seemed to hang on every word. He laboured so that hot drops stood on his forehead. And when he came to the end he felt quite exhausted.
​The second day was a repetition of the first and all Vojtech’s questions were futile. Pani Horska was silent, when Vojtech looked to her for explanation.
Vojtech was uneasy, indeed almost irritated by this event. It seemed to him as though he had a right to feel affronted and then again as though he had affronted the Horskas. The third day Lidunka failed to appear at all and there was nothing for it but to ask Pani Horska the reason.
“A foolish girl!” answered Pani Horska coldly. “I meant to ask you not to prolong her hour, because a teacher of the pianoforte comes after you and is obliged to wait. I did not wish to have said it to you. Do not wait any longer to-day.”
Vojtech thought that he went quietly out of the room. But at the door he remembered that he had not his hat in his hand and returned for it. His thoughts fluttered like scared and frightened birds which know not where they may alight. He felt all at once as though he had nothing to think about, nothing to occupy him, or again as though he could not unravel the tangled skein of destiny.
He awaited the morrow with unspeakable disquietude. It was plain that he must once more add to the little children’s lesson the time he had hitherto robbed them of for Lidunka’s benefit. That time seemed to him interminable, and though the children once again read through a whole fairy story and Vojtech must have been very much astonished at the rate they read the hour was not yet at an end and they began a second fairy story. How would Lidunka present herself that morning?
She was sorrowful when she came, and Vojtech was so disgusted with the pianoforte master who was the cause of this sorrow that he could have drowned him in a spoonful of water. He made various malicious sallies against pianoforte masters in general, and to his surprise Lidunka smiled and hastily confessed that she very much disliked learning the piano.
“What is there peculiar in that?” she asked. “They will never make of me an accomplished artist and every one learns to strum a little.”
Vojtech was well pleased to find that he had an ally in his prejudice against pianoforte masters. And Lidunka yet further confessed to him that the particular master provoked her.
To-day they curtailed the hour as though they had cut it with a pair of scissors. Even the second and third day it was the same and Vojtech was again fain to hope that the storm had blown over. ​But the fourth day had not elapsed before Vojtech plunged into all his old faults more recklessly than ever. He quite forgot himself. He prolonged the hour even in face of Pani Horska’s hints and objections and carried himself as though no one had the right to measure out his time. He taught with vehemence, he lectured in an interesting manner, and seeing Lidunka contented, he set up her consentment as his only law.
But perhaps it was not altogether wise to act thus. Spring drew near and Pani Horska announced to Vojtech that in the summer Lidunka would abandon her lessons because they wished to spend their evenings outside the town. Lidunka did not again appear not even to thank Vojtech for his pains. Besides this Pani Horska begged Vojtech to teach the children in the forenoon. Vojtech collected all his eloquence and demonstrated to Pani Horska that Lidunka was doing excellently well and that it would be a shame to tear her from her lessons yet a while.
“She is diligent enough in the winter”, answered Pani Horska briefly to all his representations.
This event threw Vojtech into a feverish condition. He wondered whether he ought to leave the Horskas altogether, for what Lidunka’s mother gave as a reason was clearly only an excuse and the heart of the matter lay in this that Lidunka did not venture to take lessons with him. This was a brief summary of all his reflections: “For what have I made all these fine preparations?” he asked himself as he regarded the books which he had set in order for Lidunka’s reading.
That day he went again for the first time among his acquaintances to the hostinets. He did not yet comprehend his own condition thoroughly, and that his comrades might not divine it he talked much, made malicious sallies, drank more than usual, played at cards, and sang. If it had been any one’s lot to describe his state of mind, he would have said that Vojtech was in a very dissipated mood. In his language he was vehement, and feeling himself affronted he affronted every one.
He came home late at night, lighted a candle and went slowly to his room. A chill breath of night-air entered by the open window. He looked a long time out of the window, and then laid himself down to rest. When he thought over what happened all that night and whether he was asleep or awake he could not say himself for certain. If he had to point to any result of his reflections, he would not have known what name to give it. He only knew that on the following day he had to go to the Horskas’s ​children in the forenoon and he half repudiated the idea of going at all. Then he thought that it would be strange if he did not go and that perhaps he would go after all. As to the rest of his cogitations, they were all transformed into tinder: he only traced here and there a few wandering sparks. He was sorrowful and felt with anguish that he was alone. Then again he was glad that he was alone. It had always tended to this from the beginning, it was with him at the Horskas’s as it had hitherto been in all his other situations. But why did they behave towards him just as others had done elsewhere? That was the thought which weighed on Voytech’s mind when he betook himself to their home in the forenoon, and he felt humiliated because he was dismissed from his post as Lidunka’s instructor. But he mastered this sentiment and began to play with the children as he used to do in the old times, so that he seemed once more to the children to be their old Pan Vojtech, whom they could trot along the landing to meet. It was impossible to detect any change in him. He was at the Horskas’s house and felt himself in the circle of its enchantments. When he saw those children, his heart smote him, because he had cheated them out of their lesson-time, and he felt glad that he had a chance to make it up to them. After the hour the children let him out through the kitchen in the passage. He did not see Lidunka in the kitchen, and why did he so particularly look out for her? He might have known that he would not see her again and he determined for the future to spare himself the trouble of looking.
One thing here also annoyed him. While casting his eyes over the kitchen he noticed that the servants glanced at one another and smiled, but that was also another reason for not looking any more in their direction.
When it drew towards evening, Vojtech felt restless at home. He felt as though he could not stay in the house—and then what was there to do at home? Everything irritated him which he so much as took into his hands, or even looked at. He would have been well content to drink and play at cards, if it had been the right time of day, but it was still far too early—and how to dispose of two whole hours?
He mechanically took his hat in his hand, the doors flew open as of their own accord, streets there seemed to be none in town save those which led along the Upper Moldau, and before Vojtech had recollected himself he stood among a group of children, who cried out, “Now he is coming, now he is coming!” “Throw us a ​kreuzer!” This time Voytech did not go with hasty steps. He had time and to spare. He threw them a kreuzer, he was much amused. He remained standing among them and when the kreuzer was carried off in triumph, he threw them another. He laughed yet more, and Vojtech applied his hand to his pocket, until he had no more kreuzers left.
When he had come to the end of them all, he turned away. The children shouted after him, “Where are you going?”
He asked himself the question, “Where am I going?” and he did not know.
Then he knew that he was sitting at the hostinets and that it was a gala day with him.
The mother in reality did take Lidunka out walking in the evening. Either because long walks always have this effect or because the air of spring overpowered their strength, they came home thoroughly tired out, and Lidunka at once sought her bed. Even talking wearied her, she answered shortly, asked no questions herself and lay muffled upon her bed as though that was the only place where she felt at home. She could not expect to sleep, think some of my girlish readers. But her mother observed with apprehension that she continually turned from side to side; also that her forehead was hot to the touch, and sometimes it seemed as though her daughter murmured something in her sleep.
Once they returned home rather late not from a walk but after paying a visit.
Lidunka hesitated to lie down.
She looked at her mother and by a kind of silent glance gave her to understand that she wanted to say something.
The very words seemed to beat time in her bosom. So in clocks, before they strike, we hear a stronger ticking.
When her mother turned away from her, Lidunka waited till she turned towards her again, and when her mother turned towards her she thought that she was just about to speak, when her mother turned away again. Her mother, as it were, felt the ticking and did not venture to be the first to break silence.
The mother had already laid herself down to rest. Lidunka still hesitated.
“Why don’t you lie down, Lidunka?” asked her mother.
Lidunka’s embarrassment increased.
She went and knelt quietly beside her mother’s bed, took her mother by the hand and kissing it all over said, “I must say good night.”
​The mother stroked her head. Lidunka then buried her face in her mother’s palm and in this way concealed her eyes. From time to time she glanced up from this palm and looked into her mother’s eyes. This she did almost comically, and her mother laughed.
“Do go to sleep, Lidunka”, said her mother. “I mean to stay with you all night”, said Lidunka, almost laughing, but it was plain that those were not the very words which she wanted to say.
Her mother again stroked her head.
“Do you love me, little mother?” asked Lidunka in such an insinuating tone of voice, that her mother burst out laughing.
And again concealing her forehead in the palm of her mother’s hand Lidunka awaited a reply.
But it was not in the least what she wanted to say. Lidunka rose to her feet, bent over her mother, took her mother’s head between her own hands and kissing it only kept saying continually, “No, I will not leave you.”
Her lips were hot.
She sat on the counterpane and after a minute or two began again, “You shall not sleep, I will not let you.”
Nor was that what she wanted to say to her mother. She laid herself all hot and fevered beside her mother and made her mother’s head her pillow. Her mother felt warm tears trickling over her hands.
Lidunka pressed herself against her mother, nestled close to her, and kissing her face said, “No, I will not leave you.” But that was not at all what she wanted to say. The mother drew Lidunka to herself and stroking her laid her to rest beside herself. Lidunka said not a word more.
Had the mother guessed what Lidunka wanted to say?
Vojtech felt like a general who has been defeated. At the Horskas’s he had lost a battle and he understood his loss only too clearly. It seemed to him as though he had lost everything and among the wreckage he saw only his own passion. He laughed at himself, at other times he was terrified at himself. Passion can sometimes be beautiful. Picture rocky ravines, overgrown with hardy shrubs, above them the flickering waterfall, soft moss and stately fir-trees and you rest contented with the scene. Deprive ​it of the shrubs, that waterfall, the moss, and those fir-trees―and you have a dwelling-place for wolves.
To Vojtech it appeared that the Horskas were the cause of all his misfortune. Why had they awakened in him a passion for life? Why had they drawn him out of the depths into the light of day, only that he might then feel he was flung to the abyss? He hated them. Vojtech gloated over that word “hatred” and when that hatred had entered into his heart he wept. He saw all the flowers of life scattered and even their roots torn from the ground. In every root gaped a wound and Vojtech was glad that there was no one left to heal them. Blood flowed, and Vojtech observed with horrid tranquillity how as it flowed it congealed.
Any one who should have felt apprehensive from his previous career that he would abandon himself to drink and gambling, would have been mistaken. Even these amusements soon palled upon him and Vojtech remained locked within himself like a ark chamber into which only through the keyhole struggle a few poor rays of light. He who is alone within himself feels oppressed and Vojtech was alone. He began to live an uninquiring life, and what is life without the zest of inquiry?
He was well aware of all this. He felt how he had fallen. He was no longer fit for teaching, and yet to communicate his ideas was still a necessity to him. He felt the humiliation of his destiny and yet took no steps to raise himself. Why should he? Again to lose his foothold and to be humiliated afresh?
In lonely hours there sometimes flits across our mind something that seems to us as though it flapped against our forehead—when we turn our eyes to follow it, lo! it beckons to us with its finger. Vojtech’s eyes also seemed to follow some such finger and when he had looked upon it for a long time and saw a hand join itself to the finger, a breast to the hand, a neck, head, eyes-behold! it was Lidunka. In the midst of our dim presentiments there at times arises something like a clearly defined visage: we cannot express it in words but it seems to us as though something had breathed warm upon us, and that our life need not be a wasted one. We open and shut our eyes and the light dazzles us.
It was a maddening prelude thought Vojtech. Why should Lidunka beckon to him when he had been repudiated on her account? But the longer he looked at the vision, the softer grew his heart and when its eyes met his, he seemed to see tears falling from them. He shook the vision from his mind as we shake rime ​from the foliage or snow from our cloak and said to himself that it was not true.
When he went to the Horskas’s to teach his little pupils, he made it a rule never to look about him, not wishing to encounter the half-concealed smile of the servants. He completed his hour with the children, and as he came so he went away. No light step in the neighbouring rooms disturbed him. No opening of the door drove the colour from his cheeks, nothing disturbed him. The rest of the Horskas’s family had no existence for him. He saw nothing beyond the children.
Once as he was leaving the Horskas’s, at the door which led from their rooms to the kitchen, he turned round somewhat sharply, and there standing against the wall was Lidunka. The blood rushed through his veins as Lidunka looked at him. He saw that her eyes were really tear-stained. Vojtech lightly saluted her, Lidunka thanked him, and Vojtech was already in the passage. How pretty Lidunka was!
It all flashed around him, just as, when we travel by train, a tree flashes past us. If we wish to get another sight of it we cannot find it.
The second day Lidunka stood there again both when he came and when he left the house. His eyes found her at once and he saluted her just as he had done the day before. The following days he always saw Lidunka there somehow employed and she always looked about for him. Possibly she had been there all the time, though as he did not see her, he knew nothing of it. At the same time he noticed that her eyes did not seem so bedimmed, and when she thanked him, she showed signs of pleasure.
What did it all mean?
Was it all a mockery? When Vojtech now went to the Horskas’s he occupied himself all the way in wondering how Lidunka would look that day, and he pictured her so vividly that if she had once been absent he would inwardly, ay, perhaps audibly, have exclaimed, “Here Lidunka ought to be, why is she not here?”
After the summer was over Vojtech took frequent walks. He always inquired of his little pupils, in which direction Lidunka and her mother were going to take their walk, and when he had found this out, he always went in a different direction, not wishing to meet them. But his walks were very dull ones. He was so utterly lonely that he had not a single soul to talk to. Thus it once came into his head that he might take the Horskas’s little ​boy with him. He thereupon asked him the following day, whether he would like to go a walk with him, and when the little boy gleefully assented, Vojtech told him to ask his mother whether she would allow it. Vojtech himself did not wish to do so. He did not augur much success nor expect that the mother would give him leave, but he said to himself, “If the little boy is ready to the minute we will go together: if not, I shall go alone.”
Vojtech came at the exact hour to the Horskas’s and the little boy was ready—only there was yet something amiss with his little hat. Lidunka set it right and begged Vojtech to have a little patience. When it was put straight the master and his little pupil sallied forth.
They went beyond the ramparts. The grass smelt, sweetly, the fresh corn glistened, the lark quivered in the air. Everywhere there was so much life, so much joy, that it seemed as though the whole world frolicked and was playing farces.
The boy skipped about, here he picked up a beetle, here he plucked a flower, here he ran after a butterfly, until he was tired. Then they sat on a meadow. Vojtech cut a willow, made him fifes and whistled and the little boy fifed and whistled. Then he made him a cage, limed it in a neighbouring bush, and told him that the next time they came there would be a bird in it. The little boy could not be brought to believe that Vojtech could catch even a bird. Over the meadow they saw the shrew-mice running, in the stream darted little fishes, and before them on the bank strutted the water-wagtail. Vojtech allowed the boy the most complete liberty and he availed himself of it in full measure.
When they returned home in the evening Vojtech handed over the boy to Lidunka. That day he had seen her twice. Lidunka asked how her brother had behaved: of all this Vojtech only remembered the fact that he had seen Lidunka twice more.
When the next day Vojtech came to teach, the boy was quite metamorphosed. He at once sat on Vojtech’s knee and even after they had begun their lessons, asked him if the bird would soon be caught. Vojtech said that perhaps that very day it had been caught, and that they must go in the afternoon to see. The boy clapped his two hands and read as though post-haste and as if by reading quickly he would the sooner make it afternoon.
When Vojtech called for him in the afternoon he was dressed and ready. Lidunka led him by the hand and said that he could not wait a moment longer, that their mother had wished to take him a walk herself but that he had quite refused to go.
​When they came to the meadow to-day, there actually was a little bird caught in the cage; it was a little golden-crested wren, a bird not easily caught. This one blinked with its little eyes as though it begged for liberty. Vojtech withdrew the gold-crest from the cage and put it into the little boy’s hand. The boy all his life had never had a bird in his hand and was almost startled by the softness of its feathers, it was a wonder he did not let it go. But when the gold-crest began to peck at his own small fingers and to eye him wistfully, the little boy was quite beside himself with delight.
When he had looked his fill, Vojtech took the bird and set it at liberty. The gold-crest hopped from bough to bough, and the little boy’s eyes quite glistened as he watched it grow smaller and smaller in the distance.
Lidunka again received them at the house and her little brother told her shortly that now he would never go out walking with any one but Pan Vojtech.
So Vojtech took the little boy out walking almost every day and of it all that had any value in his mind was that he had seen Lidunka two or three times oftener than his wont.
She it was who regularly handed over to him her brother and received him again. Vojtech diversified their walks. Sometimes he and the little boy sat together and Vojtech gave him a lesson in telling tales. And the little fellow had to tell him everything he could about Lidunka. When he came to a standstill, Vojtech put a fresh question to him and the little boy continued his narrative. In this way, without knowing it, the boy raised a curtain which had hitherto veiled Lidunka from Vojtech and Vojtech learned more about her in one afternoon than he had done during the whole of his engagement at the Horskas’s. Vojtech praised the child for telling his tale so prettily, and the boy on his side was proud to think that he would have more to narrate next day. Vojtech knew when Lidunka went to bed, when she got up. How brother and sister dressed, how she employed her time, what she talked about, what she liked—and in general everything which a little boy could tell of his sister.
Once it rained, there was no prospect of a walk, and so for that day Vojtech put off his hour until the evening.
From the kitchen at the Horskas’s you entered a room and by this you passed to a second in which Vojtech generally taught. In the first room the Horskas received their visitors; it was the very same room through which Lidunka long ago used to come ​to her lessons when the rustling of her light step drove the colour from Vojtech’s cheeks.
When Vojtech entered this room to-day, he saw guests there. Besides Pani Horska sat her sisters, on her other side was Lidunka’s little sister and there were two young men whom Vojtech had known when they were at school, and he was aware that they had considerable means of their own. Finally there was Lidunka. She was dressed in a pink gown.
When Vojtech entered he bowed and the young men greeted him as an old acquaintance but in such a way as to make it apparent that in the greeting they had said everything they meant to say to him in that place. Immediately after this, the elder of the young men devoted himself to Lidunka and began a protracted and as it seemed lively and confidential conversation.
Lidunka’s cheeks were rosier than a freshly ripened raspberry.
Pani Horska hinted mechanically that Vojtech had chosen an unlucky hour for lessons and said she feared very little would be done that day.
Vojtech thereupon replied fugitively that they must do their best and led his young charges to the next apartment.
Pani Horska was right when she said that very few lessons would be done that day. The children began to frolic at his side—so long a pause occurred before Vojtech found the place in the book from which they read. Twice, thrice he turned over all the pages of the whole book, and when the little boy accidentally bounced against him and himself pointed out the place, Vojtech signed to him to begin reading.
It was a wonderful business that reading aloud and must, indeed, have penetrated to the neighbouring apartment and have somewhat disturbed the company there assembled. This, no doubt, Vojtech had never intended and, if I mistake not, wished to drown the sound of voices from the neighbouring apartment. Vojtech said “yes” to the children as they read, but of what they read he had no definite conception.
All that his imagination was capable of realizing during that period was the fact that Lidunka wore a pink dress, that her face beamed, her eyes sparkled, and that she was in lively conversation with a young man well known to him. But what he heard droning constantly in his ear was the beating of his own heart and a voice which seemed to keep repeating, “Lidunka’s afternoon walks”, so said the voice and added as if in answer, “She does not go very far.”
​And after that his mind began to weave various groups of figures. In all of them stood Lidunka in her pink gown with her beaming face and a playful pair of eyes. She smiled, let her hand be taken, let her hand be kissed, and with those eyes of hers told a tale of love so fond that no tongue was eloquent enough to speak it. She returned the pressure of her hand, close at her ear kept buzzing some half-whispered little word, as when a fly flits past, then all was hushed in silence, as when we faint at the discovery of some fond secret token.
Their eyes gleamed more boldly: in its rays was elevation, and their heart beat and leapt into their mouths—and after all it was only Lidunka and that young man well known to him.
But what, indeed, was there unnatural in all this? Nothing: nor could anything in it give a man cause for surprise. Lidunka was young, pretty, the youths were young, powerful, and wealthy.
What was there surprising in it?
All this seemed to repeat itself in so many words in Vojtech’s mind.
Then his imagination depicted them out a-walking. Lidunka led the way with those young men—her mother followed. They kept walking round a kind of flower-bed, and Lidunka said that she should like yonder flower. The young man ran off to gather it for her: Lidunka tarried for him until her mother came up, the young man gave her the flower, hung on her hand, and before her mother had joined them exchanged looks so fond, so profound, that each look linked itself with the last. Words were superfluous and only that they might make some general conversation in her mother’s presence. the young man said, “What a charming day it is.”
“Yes, quite charming”, replied Lidunka.
“It seems so”, rejoined her mother and thus the conversation lapsed. It had played its part.
Then again other groups began to take form in his imagination. First of all was Lidunka in her pink gown, then she seemed to rise from her chair—her gentle steps rustled over the carpet.
At this point Vojtech started. For, indeed, he really seemed to hear Lidunka’s light steps rustle in the neighbouring room, they seemed to approach the door. He began to tremble and to grow pale, and before he expected it the door opened and there stood Lidunka in her pink gown, with beaming face and sparkling eyes.
​Could it be possible? Or was it but an illusion of his own fantasy which had drawn her in such lively colours, or did she wish to share in those scenes which he had so presumptuously imagined?
Lidunka’s eye rested quietly on Vojtech and beamed yet more kindly than when he had seen her in the neighbouring room. But there was something in that eye which he had not seen before. With all its brightness there was expressed a kind of anxious deprecation, and if Vojtech could believe his own eyes he read in it, “You have been forming fallacious pictures to yourself.”
These words seemed so clearly traceable in her looks that Vojtech felt quite exasperated at them.
But Lidunka said, “I am come to you, Pan Vojtech, to thank you in the name of my mother for all the kindness and affectionate interest you have shown in my little brother. He cannot wait patiently for your coming and speaks of your kindness to him continually.”
Thereupon Vojtech attempted to say something but did not say anything.
And Lidunka continued, “If the day after to-morrow be promising, we intend to go to the Prokop valley, and mother invites you to come with us if you will.”
Lidunka said this almost constrainedly and with an effort, and awaited an answer.
Vojtech said something to the effect that the larger the company the merrier it was, and so forth.
“We shall be alone”, said Lidunka warmly, and with emphasis as though she wished to exhaust all further objections which Vojtech might make.
A sort of gleam of satisfaction must have illuminated Vojtech’s countenance for even Lidunka showed clear signs of pleasure. But what he said was but coldly pronounced: “I shall be delighted”, but he said it as though for that matter it was not really true that he would be delighted.
“I delight in going to St. Prokopius,” said Lidunka again with warmth—“darling mother goes there for my sake. Au revoir, Pan Vojtech!”
Thereupon she returned to the neighbouring room. Vojtech involuntarily heard here and there a few disconnected sentences—they talked about walks and expeditions; then he heard Lidunka say very loud that her little brother delighted to go out walking.
​This put an end to the lessons. The children with one voice expressed their delight in the Prokop valley and so Vojtech said to them, “I will let you off the rest.”
When Vojtech returned through the company, he no longer wore an injured look. He carried himself almost gaily, and when he reached home he laughed and could not say why.
Then these words stole into his mind: “Lidunka had visitors, she quitted them, and came to see me. It is a pity that I am no longer teaching her that I might requite her for it. Lidunka is a good child, a good child.”
Then he snapped his fingers and said almost out loud, “We shall go out walking together. She is a good, worthy child.”
That day it rained, the next day was beautiful, and the day after that the whole world smiled and sparkled.
Above Prague uprose the sun, lighting up its hundred towers which gleamed as fair as a maiden before her mirror. Crows and daws wheeled around the towers like her raven tresses around her head. The early life of morning babbled with a hundred voices, but not in its full might, for a good half of Prague was still in the land of dreams.
The Horska family with Pan Vojtech issued from the city at an early hour. The citizen feels the beauty of early morning in the country almost gratefully, and if I may so put it, like a greedy man, for he has to go in search for it. To-day it seemed to Vojtech as though early morning was more beautiful than ever. The grass sparkled with dew, and flashed in one’s eyes. Vojtech going with the little boy in advance, looked back at Pani Horska with whom Lidunka and her little sister were walking to see whether Nature smiled also on them. No doubt it did; they frequently paused, and here Lidunka tripped into the field, here over a meadow, and soon had in her hands a posy of wild flowers. Then she grew tired of them, threw them away and gathered fresh ones.
The corn land quivered with light and the sky-larks soared away higher and higher one after the other there to disperse themselves in a shower of song.
Vojtech began to frolic with the boy. They ran races, then they chased one another, then they waited until the female detachment overtook them. Even the little sister joined them, and all three ran races. Once the little sister cried out, “Oh! Lidunka, you come too and run races with us, we shall be there the sooner. And Lidunka only smiled and did not answer. Even that smile ​was a kind of challenge, at least it prompted our three young friends to yet greater activity.
Vojtech did not feel altogether a stranger, he felt half their guest and half their host.
Then Lidunka also ran among them, but only as she said to prevent her little brother from over-exerting himself. She took him by the hand and led him to their mother. But here he dodged under her wrist and ran off to the others calling back as he did so that he was happier with Pan Vojtech and that Lidunka might stay with their mother if she chose.
Then they reached the beautiful Prokop valley. The children climbed down the rocky sides like young kids until Pani Horska felt alarmed for their safety. Vojtech and Lidunka one at each side assisted her to descend.
Down below they took a light breakfast. Pani Horska ordered dinner, and then they walked about. Vojtech knew the valley well and led them to all the spots where young people invariably exclaim, “How charming it is!”
There was still plenty of time before dinner, and down in the meadow they took part in a round game. They played at “la grace”, and during the amusement it happened that every circlet which Vojtech sent was driven by the wind towards Lidunka. Vojtech was transported with delight. He felt like a child in its own home roving over a meadow; only everything seemed yet more charming. Once he threw the circlet in such a wonderful way, that it ran along Lidunka’s extended stick as far as her shoulder and also slipped over her head so that Lidunka was entangled like a quail in a noose.
The children burst into loud laughter and Vojtech ran to help her out of the circlet for she could not disentangle herself alone. But even both together were not very successful and as though it did it on purpose, the circlet always slid again over Lidunka’s neck. Vojtech had to touch Lidunka’s neck with his fingers and let them play over her face, but so gently that he stroked rather than touched it. The children skipped about laughing. Lidunka’s face burnt like fire but at the same time she did not seem to be deeply disconcerted by the mishap. At last the circlet was disentangled and Vojtech smoothed down her hair which had been all dishevelled by the circlet. Then he took Lidunka’s elbow in one hand and showed her how she ought to pose her shoulder in order to catch the circlet adroitly.
​But somehow he held that hand rather a long time, as if what he said to her was not easy of comprehension. He pressed her hand in order that she might the better remember it, and Lidunka pressed his. Their eyes sparkled like the drops of dew on the corn land in early morning. A kind of moisture fell upon them that was mutually attractive.
When they took their places again in the round game, a certain embarrassment was perceptible in them, as though now they had both the circlet round their necks. They made frequent blunders, and once it happened that Vojtech quite forgot to look at the circlet which flew towards him and remained gazing at Lidunka—at her eyes as though they were the real circlets. Then again it happened that his circlet flew a long way past Lidunka and alighted by the stream behind some bushes. Both ran to the spot, the children after them and now Lidunka protested that she alone must search for it since it was she who failed to catch it.
Vojtech made no objection to this but held her by the hand, while she with the other poked about for the circlet with the stick. Little by little it approached the water’s edge and when it was already at the very edge Vojtech felt convinced that Lidunka would fall into the stream. He caught her quickly in his arms and held her firmly lest she should fall into the water. And as they searched for the circlet together they were immeasurably happy.
Presently the children brought word that dinner was prepared. When they sat down Pani Horska said, “What fun you have had, my children.”
The children even before Pan Vojtech glanced slily at one another and the children laughed, for none of them had had half so much fun as Pan Vojtech, and Lidunka and mamma indeed had had least of all.
Lidunka would not permit that her mother should be an exception to the general merriment and kissed both her cheeks until they were as rosy as her own.
In the afternoon our little company were minded to carry out a plan which had been devised before dinner. First of all they went out to seek some pretty shady spot. They found a little lawn among bushes and settled there like birds in a nest. A nest formed of greensward and bushes and birds twittering with human voices.
While they were so seated, the air began to grew heavy. The sun’s rays fell to earth like arrows and under the spell of an un​visible oppression no leaf on the bushes nor any blade of grass stirred. A butterfly fluttered by, it flapped its weary wings as if it would beat itself to death without advancing. Birds uttered strange sounds, they cried to one another and gave each other secret call-notes. The whole neighbourhood closed its heavy eyelid and prepared itself for sleep. This oppression also fell on our little company and when they were silent it seemed to all of them that they heard in the distance something rattling through the air like a charge of musketry. This discharge was repeated, and above the horizon emerged grey clouds like the vanguard of an army which announces by its galloping that a sharp conflict is imminent.
“A storm”, cried they all as with one mouth and rose and hastened to the little hostinets where they had dined. To have taken at once the homeward road was quite out of the question for the storm was close upon them in an instant, and would have overtaken them while they were in the open country.
Scarcely had they run for shelter to the hostinets when the wind rushed along like a host of the landwehr, carrying with it leaves, dust, and branches until everything was obscured. The storm roared, the lightning paraded before the murky clouds like a general before the ranks of his army, and presently the rain descended in torrents.
Still our party was merry. Under that modest roof it seemed to Vojtech even as if they belonged more closely to one another, as if that slight mishap had united them more closely. While outside the thunder pealed, they nestled against one another as if in that way they gained strength and confidence. The lightning lit up a day that was more night than day, the thunder dispersed itself in the Prokop valley, like a long tarrying guest in his friend’s abode. Every corner was full of it and no one was able to make himself heard. But our party seemed with all that discord above them as though they must explode in mirth and jollity. They laughed, indeed, more than the storm could rage. All Vojtech’s absurd reserve was eradicated, all he said was brimful of mirth, and he laughed until he brought the tears into his eyes.
The room in the hostinets was anything but well-lighted, and the whole place close and confined, two or three cranky chairs, a table, and a bench along the wall were all the furniture of which the room could boast. It was not possible to pick and choose. Consequently Vojtech was seated on the bench behind ​the table; next to Vojtech came the little boy and on the two chairs sat Pani Horska and her little daughter and there was nothing for it but that Lidunka should sit behind the table and next to Vojtech.
It was a long time since Vojtech had sat beside Lidunka and he had never sat beside her as he did to-day. He could touch her hand with his fingers and perhaps it was a mere accident that their hands did touch, but it was not a mere accident that they remained with fingers interlaced, that they pressed one another.
If any one had told Vojtech that he forgot his place, he would have laughed him to scorn at that moment. Surely now and then he might cease to be the family instructor. Vojtech felt that he was somewhat bound up with it and that he had to claim his right to it for Lidunka put herself in harmony with him by a thousand trifling actions.
The mother rose from her chair and went to the window to see how the storm looked and whether there was any prospect of its abatement. Vojtech and Lidunka also looked at the storm without, however, rising from their places. But as they must watch it with one pair of eyes they pressed their foreheads together and looked at it together holding their breath. Then Vojtech whispered in Lidunka’s ear, “Would to Heaven the storm would last a week.”
Lidunka affected not to hear very well and pressed her ear against his lips. Vojtech did not repeat his observation, perhaps at that moment he did not know what he had said. When Pani Horska turned from the window, Vojtech and Lidunka ceased to look at the storm together. Their eyes showed traces of confusion: it was as though they had suddenly been withdrawn from a measureless abyss and did not know what to rest their gaze on and as though that abyss still filled all the chambers of the soul.
In the hostelry quiet reigned and outside you might hear how the heavy drops fell with a rush to the ground, how the water distilling from the rocky wall streamed in rivulets and how proudly the torrent flaunted beneath the window, and drank in the rich tribute of the rain.
“How ever shall we get home?” observed Pani Horska. But her words fell flat: the children did not care about the matter and the two grown-up members of the party found themselves very happy where they were.
The shower ceased, the storm receded, and the thunder died away like a distant discharge of musketry. A drizzling rain fell ​next and this lasted a long time. It was five o’clock when Vojtech went out before the building to look at the road, but he soon returned with the news that the road was broken up and that it was impossible to go just yet.
After a short time Pani Horska went out and returned with piteous tidings. A dilatory discussion next ensued as to whether they could not send to Prague for a carriage. That was certainly possible, but the carriage could not drive over the rocks and could it have done so it would not have arrived until after nightfall.
Then Pani Horska went again into the hall and there held a long consultation with the landlady. She asked her whether the party could pass the night at the hostinets: the ladies in the room which they now occupied and whether Vojtech and the little boy could not be housed somewhere or other. After a long discussion it was decided that these two should sleep in the hall. The landlady kept protesting that she had plenty of counterpanes and feather-beds and that they would sleep as comfortably as in their own home. Similar mishaps had occurred more than once before she said and she had to be prepared for them.
When Pani Horska returned to the room she said determinedly: “We must stop here for the night, we will return in the morning to Prague.”
It was wonderful with what delight this news was received. The children began to skip about and congratulated themselves on sleeping away from home for once in their lives. Vojtech and Lidunka smiled but did not say why they laughed. After this ensued a lovely evening. The air was fresh as after a bath, the turf smelt sweet, the trees sparkled with the rain, the swallows frolicked in the air, the cuckoos called to one another, and the thrushes piped as when they played at hide-and-seek.
Vojtech felt as though he had been at home here all his life: though once or twice the thought came into his head, “How ever did I get here?” Something fidgeted him and he felt as though he still ought to introduce himself by some pretty speech. But these ideas did not strike very deeply and vanished of their own accord.
In the evening Pani Horska said: “Our guests of the day before yesterday expected me to invite them to the expedition. To-day I am glad that I did not do so, we are more at home as it is.”
Vojtech understood that Pani Horska meant his two acquaintances whom he had seen with Lidunka when she wore a pink ​gown, and this frank announcement of Pani Horska took him by surprise: but not unfavourably. He thought to himself, “They expected to be invited and were not. I am here.”
He felt as though he ought to say something and at the very least express his thanks. But before he had prepared a reply, he perceived that it was already too late to make one. So he said, “What we shall dream here will be fulfilled.”
Pani Horska scarcely heard his observation for continuing her previous train of thought she said: “Some people are much too presuming, others who have more right to be so, are silent; when I see those two young people, the only thing I seem to hear in all they say is, ‘We have considerable means of our own!’ A man can be happy even in modest circumstances.”
Vojtech felt again as though he ought to thank her but he did not know what reply to make. The words were quite general and yet he felt that he could have kissed Pani Horska’s hand for them. But he pressed the hand of Lidunka instead.
When the landlady announced that she wished to get the bed ready, our party went out before the door, and there sat down on a bench. The moon lighted them and if all the stars in heaven found one another as the eyes of Lidunka and Vojtech found each other, then it is not difficult to understand why they linger so long side by side. Both shared in the general conversation: but if either of them had had to tell the truth, they would have said that the words they spoke were not their own particular conversation; under cover of that audible conversation flowed another without words. Its kingdom was everlasting and words were repugnant to it.
When they said good night Vojtech kissed Pani Horska’s hand as if he would have said, “This is a long standing debt.” And he first kissed the hand of Lidunka’s little sister—doubtless as an excuse for kissing Lidunka’s also.
Lidunka slipped on the threshold and Vojtech catching her in his arms almost carried her into the hall. When he said good night his whole soul quivered with emotion.
Having closed the door behind them and returned to the hall he tucked the little boy into the bed which they were to have together and himself went out before the threshold. He felt he could not sleep and sat down on the place which had been previously occupied by Lidunka.
How lovely that evening was! Vojtech thought that all his life long he had never seen such beauty. Everything looked so ​fondly on him and Vojtech understood it all. Here was that fair and beauteous kingdom which he sought. Here the streamlet babbled, the rocks sparkled, the grass was streaked with quivering moonlight as in a fairy vision—and beside him in the house slept Lidunka.
Vojtech experienced unspeakable delight in the thought that for the first time he slept under the same roof as Lidunka. This sentiment had in itself something so fond, so mysterious, that it did not let itself be analysed. But it was reflected on Vojtech’s face in smiles of conscious satisfaction. His whole being was engrossed by it and the mastery of its magic filled him with innocent pride. He felt a bliss so unspeakable that his soul seemed to melt away, withal he felt himself so strong that he said to himself involuntarily, “I shall yet be a worthy member of society.” How could life be indifferent to him?
Then these thoughts took shape in his mind: “Lidunka sleeps and the dreams which reach her pass over my head. I guard her threshold. I guard her dreams and only allow the most beautiful ones to pass.”
How long he sat there he did not know himself. The foot of time had no sound for him. Time itself was as it were subverted.
At last he rose to seek his couch. The moon shone into Lidunka’s window and Vojtech fancied that in the window he caught a glimpse of a head. Lidunka, not yet undressed, stood at the window and when Vojtech rose, she pressed her head close against a pane of glass. Vojtech approached and kissed the glass where Lidunka pressed her face. They spoke by gesture and sent one another kisses. Vojtech noticed that the window had a small pane which opened. The opening of the pane was undertaken together and accomplished in whispers. The pane was just large enough to admit a hand and they whispered so close that their lips touched.
“You must go to sleep now, Lidunka”, said Vojtech fearing lest the cold night-air should enter.
They closed the window together. Vojtech returned to the hall to rest and murmured, “Thrice blessed storm.”
Then he let himself down and heard how Lidunka’s skirts rustled as she undressed and closing his eyes he murmured as though lost in thought, “Now go to her, happy dreams.”
For Vojtech it was a day of enchantment that had just closed and his imagination having full play scattered through his dreams the fairiest pearls of Araby. His whole existence seemed to emerge ​from the bath. As if he had plunged into the waves of the Ganges and stepping out on the beach had felt himself in the company of lotus eyes. The breath of life breathed warm upon him, his soul won pinions, tearful thoughts froze to crystal and when he awoke something lingered on his lips which seemed to say, “I am not a lost member of society.”
When they had returned to Prague, Vojtech began once more to elaborate a system by which he might gain more frequent access to Lidunka. He chose her readings out of all sorts of books, brought them to her, and declared that he would willingly explain anything she did not understand. Perhaps Vojtech accidently picked out the readings which she understood the least or perhaps Lidunka purposely did not understand them, at any rate frequent and protracted explanations ensued.
An unfortunate event helped on the rest of Vojtech’s proceedings.
One night a ruddy glare illuminated the city of Prague. A fiery pillar of flame blazed to the firmament, mills burnt along the Upper Moldau.
People thronged to it and sparks flew in all directions. Close by the mills dwelt the Horskas. And when people ran to the conflagration, Vojtech hurried to the Horskas’s.
Their dwelling was in danger. In the house confusion reigned and the most needful articles were collected in case ill fate should drive the family to take flight. Vojtech helped them and stayed with them all night.
The next day passed without actual danger but it was as busy a day as the last, for everything had to be rearranged and replaced. But five days had not elapsed before the fire broke out again in neighbouring mills with as great a vehemence as before. A night of disquietude was again the lot of the Horskas. The furniture was piled together and they prepared each moment for flight. Vojtech was again on the spot the whole time and if he ran off now and then it was only that he might bring them word how the fire progressed and whether there was a greater or less danger.
Even the last fire passed without any mishap to the family which Vojtech aided. But indeed a panic now seized upon the whole neighbourhood as though in the course of a few days a third conflagration was fated to break forth. One row of mills was yet untouched and people said that threatening letters had ​been found in which the ruin of these mills was further predicted. And these mills were nearest to the Horskas’s house.
In the family gloom reigned. The horror of those few nights tinctured all their conversation and to this was added the uncertainty whether more was not yet to come.
Neither Vojtech nor Lidunka at this time exchanged many lovers’ conversations, the common danger overmastered them.
When Vojtech went away from the Horskas’s after the second fire Lidunka asked him with fear: “Are you soon coming back to us, oh Vojtech?”
“I hope I shall not be obliged to come again soon”, he responded.
“It is very dull at our house now”, sighed Lidunka.
“I can sympathize with you”, suggested Vojtech.
“I am bored to death when you are not here. Please come again soon to us.”
The children during this time did not learn lessons, but Vojtech very soon betook himself there. When he was there, Lidunka was almost without an anxious thought; it seemed to her as though nothing could happen, so long as Vojtech was with them. When he quitted them Lidunka fixed on him an imploring look begging him not to leave her for long. As if the future conflagrations all depended on Vojtech and that his presence at the Horskas’s had power to ward them off—so great was the faith Lidunka placed in him.
Vojtech for many a day after these events did in fact only leave them to take his meals; and in the evening to sleep. The remainder of his time he passed with Lidunka.
A week passed—two weeks passed and the predicted conflagration never broke out: the panic passed away, and people in these quarters went about their ordinary avocations. What had happened soon began to be forgotten and at the Horskas’s everything resumed its customary routine. But still it was no less true that Lidunka was wretched if Vojtech was not by her side. And Vojtech? As though there was still some danger to be averted he found his way there often, very often, and these young people met as though they had not seen each other for a whole summer.
Meantime an event occurred which caused a complete revolution in Vojtech. The city and the whole country prepared to celebrate the memory of one of its geniuses of art and in this celebration ​a series of aesthetic lectures was not considered out of place. For the delivery of these lectures the lot fell on Vojtech.
Vojtech accepted the responsibility and began to prepare himself for his first appearance in public with energy and earnestness. He collected as in a bouquet all his varied knowledge.
To glorify the champions of spirituality had been even in his boyish days his favourite intellectual exercise and in all his teaching he gave it the pre-eminence.
To familiarize himself with it he had renounced all the advantages of an official position. Rather than be led away from his ideal he had preferred poverty, and because he was faithful to that ideal, he met with contempt in all the houses where he had been a teacher. A career all at once opened before him and his spirit yearned for it with enthusiastic vehemence. All that had been censured in him as unpractical in a domestic teach now found fresh fuel and it seemed to him that at least in part were personified in him the noble aspirations of a whole nation. What seemed ridiculous to children, would not be so before an audience of men and women.
Let him present to the eye of the public the hidden warfare that surged around a great idea! Let him stand forth as the champion of the reality of spirit to which he was attached by his whole existence!
Good taste and feeling are the index of a man, and Vojtech had to be the guardian of that taste and feeling.
Vojtech felt happy in this new character. The effect which his lecture produced was great.
He succeeded completely in animating the public with his own ideas and Vojtech’s name was all at once in every one’s mouth.
“I shall not be a valueless factor in society”, he repeated to himself in full consciousness of the truth of what he said. He had found his own soul so to speak and began the task of training himself to be of value. He still felt the need of communicating his ideas to the world at large-an irrisistible attraction was here.
One day Vojtech came to the Horskas’s and found Lidunka absorbed in thought. On the road he had encountered one of Lidunka’s relations and conjectured the reason why Lidunka was lost in thought. Her relations did not approve of Vojtech because he did not pay court to them and as generally happens the young lady’s relations took note of the aspirant to her hand. The Liduncine relationship made it the business of its life to ferret out Vojtech’s antecedents and understood them so far as reason ​sufficed to explain them. What was discovered was faithfully reported to Pani Horska.
“You are sad, Lidunka”, said Vojtech.
“I am vexed because people busy themselves about us in the most unworthy manner.”
“She was here I know it.”
“She said you were a debauchee and that you drank and played at cards. I do not like such calumnies.”
Vojtech remained thoughtful a moment and then said: “It was true once, Lidunka. When I had no where to go in the evening I went where no one would drive me away.”
Lidunka’s eyes glistened—she knew to what he alluded.
“Our further fate belongs to no one but ourselves, Lidunka”, said Vojtech. “It will be a happy one if we so wish it.”
“We do wish it”, said Lidunka.
When Pani Horska came into the room she found Vojtech and Lidunka in a fond embrace. They paid slight heed to the mother’s entrance.
Pani Horska said: “I had to defend you just now, Pan Vojtech.”
Vojtech took Lidunka by the hand and leading her to her mother said: “Let me not receive warning if I ask for the future to be Lidunka’s pupil—I wish to be apprenticed to her for life.”
“Love one another”, said the mother. “I was constrained to separate my daughter from the teacher; from the son I cannot. Love one another now and henceforth.”
“From this day begin our walks together”, cried Vojtech and both kissed the mother’s hand with heart-felt sincerity.
In the streets along the Upper Moldau in Prague walked once more at evening a fair-haired man. He did not hurry and his face was blithe. The children were grown older and begged and formed yet more noisy gatherings. When the young man drew near his blithe appearance seemed a happy omen.
When he was still a long way off they cried, “Throw us a kreuzer!” But there was the difference: that when they caught sight of him they called out, “Now they are coming.” Vojtech in reality did not go alone, he led by the hand his wife. But in the plural number which the children made of him there was no doubt this advantage that two hands throw them kreuzers. And so they formed two parties. One party remained faithful to ​Vojtech, the other ranged itself on the side where the pennies fell from the hand of the young lady.
When the pair reached their house and rang the bell at the passage, there ran to meet them in a twinkling a little boy and a little girl—the girl took her sister by the hand, the little boy took Vojtech. Then they all sat down to lessons, but so that Vojtech had to be the story-teller, and he performed his task so well that they all listened with delight.
If some small portion of my young readers are inclined to inquire whether Vojtech ever received any fine appointment, the writer must confess himself in difficulties not having yet any precise information on the subject. But in his opinion it is of trifling consequence.