# Halek's Stories and Evensongs/In Lordly Halls

IN LORDLY HALLS
​THE HURKAS were young married people and all that was known about them was that they had a fine establishment. They lived in the finest street in Prague, their rooms occupied a whole story and were full of everything which, according to current notions, is indispensable to comfort. As to Pan Hurka it was thought that he was a millionaire. His name headed all public subscriptions with a considerable sum: he took part in every new scheme both in word and deed, he was a railway shareholder, he set afloat a coal-mining company and among his nobler passions must be reckoned a fondness for gambling at cards in which pursuit he showed himself a model gentleman.
About his particular business but little was known. Some said he lived on his capital, others as broker and money-lender, and people in general agreed that he was the owner of mines, and a farm somewhere or other, and took it for granted that he had plenty of everything. Company enough was invited by the Hurkas, not indeed very select as to taste or education but such as makes pretentions to luxurious evening entertainments, and the guests of the Hurkas always went away thoroughly contented. People there were indeed who calculated the money squandered at these festivities, but above these, as water above a stone, always closed the plausible truism that one cannot live like that without the wherewithal.
There were, however, people independent of the Hurkas and with long memories, among whom it was pretty generally admitted that Pan Hurka was a crafty charlatan and that those games and mines existed more in his imagination and in his wishes than in reality and that he was in truth so stretching the last thread that he might pick up a wealthy bride, but these murmurers were silenced one and all when the rich bride appeared and not long after her marriage came in for a large property, for both her parents died and she was an only daughter and sole heiress. After this occurrence everything was ascribed to Pan Hurka with perfect certainty of which he had given himself out to be possessor, public opinion endowed him with mines and farms and added also everything beforehand of which, perhaps, at a later date it would have been glad to find him possessed.
​With these general sentiments Pan Hurka was very content, and as we have seen, did everything in his power to cause it to strike deep root in the grounds of faith. Every one found a warm welcome at his home, he borrowed money, he lent it out at interest, Christians and Jews gave the hand of friendship to one another under his roof, and what matters if there were more Jews than Christians?
Pani Hurka, whom her husband called Caroline or, more shortly, Karla had not chosen Hurka as her husband for love’s sake. She had had in her youth a romance with a young brewer, a citizen son of Prague whom she had adored with all the warmth of a girlish heart. Brewer Havel loved her with genuine affection and it must be admitted that they were made for another. People even said that they would form a pair to realize the dream of an artist. But Havel did not suit Karla’s parents because he was a brewer and, “you know, my dear, anything but refined”, so when Pan Hurka knocked at their door and began to give an account of his far-reaching plans and bold speculations they soon bowed Havel out of the house and became partisans of Pan Hurka. It caused Karla many a sleepless night and many a salt tear but the daughter was finally overruled by her parents’ persistency and when, not long after, Havel, out of pique as it was said, married some one else, Karla almost mechanically gave her hand to Hurka. Havel had tasted the honey and Hurka had only got wife and money.
We cannot say that Karla would have made her first lover an exemplary wife. In Hurka’s home she had not hitherto given a thought to her special calling, or if she gave it a thought it was more in connection with Havel’s home than her own. Complete indifference ruled in her own establishment and she was mistress only so far as Hurka was master. For the rest he might undertake what he chose, he might look about for anything to please her, he might prepare her any sort of pleasant surprise—she shared in his amusements with as much spiritual warmth as a third person might have done to whom he had given an account of them.
She received visitors because it was the custom, she was in society not because she felt a need of diversion but because she could not excuse herself and she conversed with people not because her heart prompted her but because she had ears and could not help herself. Pan Hurka was well aware of his wife’s state of mind and nothing leads me to suppose that he took much ​pains to cure her of it. He was complete master at home, no one stood in his way, he might even speculate with her fortune, according to his inclination, he might play at cards all night, he might be at home or not as he pleased. Even the servants did not grumble at their mistress. She never scolded them, she did not tire them with many orders nor was she too particular about their work. Everything appeared as it really went on, there were no subterfuges; no one had to complain of the mistress nor did any one really love her, and the lady bore with them all.
It was a condition of married life such as we see frequently. Tenderness was not yet developed in Karla. She did not live with her husband in any sort of intimacy, and if her husband was at home, it seemed as natural to her as that day should follow night, if he went away she was as little apprehensive about him as about the coming of night.
Formality ruled her world: she felt no pressing wants and the warmth of her conjugal affection was no greater than her appetite for the fifth course at table. She enjoyed it but she did not need it.
Karla’s intelligence was moreover such as we frequently find. She was cultivated because it is necessary to be so and people expect something of the sort. Neither Karla’s parents nor her instructors nor herself understood what is the true substance of a cultivated mind. Her instructors developed in her a series of merely mechanical accomplishments, spiritual warmth and earnestness slept like the combustible matter in a piece of wood, when it is taken out of the fire. She learnt to read and read—but only because there were books in the world: if there had not been any she would not have yearned for them. She took a walk in her books so to speak—like an indifferent man in a fine country. If you ask him what he has seen in it, he will tell you that there are trees in it and also grass.
A rose is a rose to him because it is not called a nettle, a butterfly is a butterfly to him because it flutters over the wild flowers in a manner different from a bird.
In the most beautiful gallery he sees only frames, painted canvass. He pauses before a picture because people are talking about it and many are standing before it. He who has not soul sees soul nowhere and where the mind has no innate loftiness, neither Tiziano nor Michelangelo can win a hearing. Karla’s cultivation was like that of many a girl and woman. They know more or less, but no one cares to talk about it with them. Their ​cultivation is like the playing of an indifferent actor. If you catch a few words you will soon know all the rest down to the last full stop. The actor himself does not know why he is made to talk as he does, his soul has no share in it all and his tones. are bristling with disgust: in place of soul memory plays the part.
Even Karla knew more or less, but just as a sleeping person hears a lively conversation—he hears the words but he does not understand their meaning. To know much is not happiness: but how we know something, how we ourselves add to it—in this lies the true test of knowledge. Karla visited the theatre, like others; she clapped, when she heard others clap. And when she went out of the theatre she was as little purified and exalted as when she entered.
That holy instinct which opens its thousand doors of inward life to a woman’s heart, the spring tide of feeling and of all sweet scents, with which the zephyrs of a gentle mind disport themselves: she had indeed some conception of it once, when the passion for Havel inspired her with the full breath of a warm spring. But this spiritual insight did not last long, the lamp was extinguished and if memory sometimes melted in the light of that dawning, it only vaguely smote her with a dim desire for the truth.
Even Havel was enshrined more in her memory than her soul and when she saw that fate had for ever separated him from her, she preserved him indeed in memory but was not constrained to tears.
With all her indifference, however, she felt extremely lonely and would have been unhappy had she been capable of feeling unhappiness. She was not herself alone to blame, the age in which she was brought up was at fault. If they had taught her less and striven rather to awaken her sleeping soul she would have even acquired more knowledge. She would also have acquired the power of self-analysis, and that is a priceless treasure in adversity. He is not happy who is merely incapable of feeling his unhappiness. Those who are incapable of great suffering are incapable of great pleasure. We delight in tragedies because they render us capable of the highest pleasure. Only the stunted generation of Karla’s contemporaries and with it Karla herself objected to seeing tragedy because everything turned out dolefully.
Karla’s spiritual inheritance was to her what alms are to a beggar. Do not blame her, she had many like her. They were ​a whole generation who vainly warmed themselves in the sunshine of art. At the moment certainly, they felt themselves touched by something agreeable, but when they turned away it was winter in their hearts again. They were a whole generation who considered artists a mere beggarly caste. How poor would have been that generation, if art had not unrolled before them its treasures! Karla belonged to that beggarly age though she never begged for alms. Her education had taught her certain movements that she might not be unattractive, it had taught her certain rules that she might know when she was to blush, but instruction never so came home to her that she could be her own instructor. They taught her even to sketch a little that she might have patterns for embroidery. They taught her a little music, because the piano when properly handled gives out a pleasant sound.
But with it all Karla never once caught the fire of enthusiasm, with it all her spirit continued poor and narrow, without parents, without roof, without home, without clothing, and without warmth. She even learnt something of rhetoric, but as many others learn, the phrases were indeed in her as in grammarians, she got them by rote with the printer’s errors and no fire of enthusiasm breathed upon them to kindle them into life. Her very thoughts moved only in a set circle of phrases and in that grass-grown bed no single flower expanded into beauty or originality.
The fashionable maxims of that generation had but little profundity, and it is to be understood that Karla did not rise above her generation. The maxims of utility ruled supreme, and therefore people were advised only to read books from which it was possible to draw some definitive advantage. Girls might only find amusement in books with which they could conclude a holy alliance. Patriotism entered into their programme that they might feel themselves somebodies and cut a pretty figure in the world: female virtue was preserved because without it there was some difficulty in procuring a husband. The spiritual ties uniting society were weighed in the balance and measured by the ell: if nobleness did not come under the shopkeepers’ measure it was assumed to be of little general utility with mercenary minds; people went to church and paraded themselves triumphantly before the world because they had been to church. They felt the brotherhood of race, but only as people of one castle, against all others they fortified and barricaded themselves.
​Karla differed from her compeers only in this that she played her part unconsciously and indifferently while the others knew what they were about. Karla only knew that life to her was barren: it little mattered under what form this was brought home to her, now that she had failed to win him whom she had desired.
The indifference, whether she were definitely conscious about it or not, was no secret to her husband. She did not take the trouble to deceive him by devotion. She had not married him on any understanding of the sort, and Hurka was too dissipated to have any feeling that could be outraged. Indeed if she passed Havel’s home with her husband, Pan Hurka permitted her to look longingly towards it, even to breath forth sighs, and never suggested by word or look that she ought to put some restraint upon her reminiscences.
Hurka was occasionally tender, at least he seemed to be so, and that would be enough for many women to make them forget their loneliness. But his tenderness had no effect upon Karla. It was natural to her—was he not her husband?—and if his affection seemed to slacken—was he not harassed by business? Karla cradled her little daughter, a child like a small bud, and what would have raised any other woman to be a madonna only touched her so far that she knew she had a few more agreeable cares to attend to. If it had been Havel who approached the cradle and kissed their little daughter with half the love that Hurka showed I dare say she would have spent the whole day in looking into its blue eyes. Laid by Hurka’s side she sometimes failed to hear its childish wail at night.
We cannot say that in wedlock such as this any day is likely to become sacred. To both of them the wedding-day was only a day of change of life and from that time nothing occurred which could have exalted their sentiments. Even the birth of a child did not make the day sacred and after that I know not of anything that could have surprised them out of their indifference. Pan Hurka might perhaps have succeeded in some of his speculations, but Karla would certainly have maintained her attitude of indifference.
It is often said that passion becomes vulgarized after marriage: to vulgar commonplace people everything becomes vulgar and commonplace. The inhabitants of a pretty country are for ever wondering why people flock to see what they themselves see every day. But between Hurka and Karla no affection had ever sprung up; as they were the first day so they had remained ever ​since; we cannot speak about cooling towards one another when there was never any warmth.
But latterly indeed it had occurred to Karla that Hurka showed himself unusually gentle and caressing, occasionally, indeed, he appeared distrait, but not enough to injure their relations to one another.
He called her his dear soul, his dearest friend, and declared it would kill him if fate ever were to separate them for any length of time. Her goodness to him was unbounded he said, and though he had frequently deserved reproaches he had never been troubled by a single one.
Karla reasoned very little about these pretty speeches, indeed scarcely at all. More especially in regard to their separation she conjectured that her husband meant her to understand that he had to undertake some unavoidable journey and not wishing to give her full particulars, he put her off with specious formulas. But she was soon enlightened as to her husbands designs.
Hurka now invited to his home more company than ever and entertained them with reckless extravagance. Karla more than once complained of having so often to play the part of hostess, and several times it happened that she spent the evening in her own room or retired early on the ground that she must attend to her child. Hurka had indeed latterly opened wide his purse-strings to play the gentleman and was oftener seen at cards than at any other occupation. And very much surprised was Karla one day when preparing for another grand entertainment she put her hand into their money-box and found it empty. She asked Hurka for money, but he told her smilingly that the chest would be full again by the morrow and she made no further inquiries.
On the day of the dinner-party Hurka appeared more beaming than ever. His face shone with satisfaction, he rubbed his hands as if he wished to announce to every one the news of his good fortune, his eyes glowed with fire, and if the inner man corresponded with the outer there was not a happier person that day than Hurka.
Ideas and words played above the surface like the pearl-bubbles of champagne wine, he amused every one or was pleased to think he was irresistible. A psychologist might have detected, however, in all this display something spasmodic and feverish and ​in his playful humour more than one trace of despair. Possibly among his guests there was such a psychologist, if so he must have confessed that the actor played his part to perfection. The cup went merrily round and Pan Hurka did all in his power to inoculate his guests with the same good humour as that which beamed on his own countenance. Karla was not present on this occasion but no one had observed her absence. It does not appear either that Pan Hurka missed her particularly. He was so devoted to every one, so polite to all, so entirely subservient to their wishes, that at least just then there was no room for Karla in his thoughts. It was already midnight and the good humour of the company blossomed like flowers in a garden. Pan Hurka all at once began to converse about a certain new speculation of his the advantages of which he depicted in glowing colours, and he thought doubtless that he had already proved to all present what profits were to be made by a subscribed capital. At the same time half jestingly he brought a roll of paper, inscribed the names of all present and turning quickly to his guests asked whether he might put down their names and distribute the shares.
But contrary to his expectation the day’s festivities were soon at an end. The guests present looked inquiringly at one another and excused themselves to Pan Hurka on the ground that they must think over and coolly weigh the matter at home: and they said that they would let him hear from them on the morrow. And they began to file off home one after another for really it was getting so late they said. Pan Hurka at this occurrence grew pale and had it not been for his presence of mind which prompted him to let fall a pen and search long for it, his pallor could not fail to have been noticed by all his guests.
He felt that drops of sweat stood on his brow and when he gave his hand to his guests at the door it trembled not a little and was as cool as his forehead. However, he whispered to let him know for certain on the morrow what they decided upon at home about his projected scheme. When Pan Hurka was alone and the lamps illuminated in the empty chamber the relics of that day’s feasting the expression of his countenance was terrible. He sat down on one of the chairs and crushing spasmodically the paper with the names inscribed he opened his eyes so wide that any one who had seen him would have shuddered.
For a long time he walked up and down the dining-room, and when he turned to his bedroom and saw Karla sleeping by herself without a suspicion in her dreams of what her husband had done ​he kissed her lips, perhaps for the first time, fervently, and with anguish bent over his little baby daughter and could not refrain from tears. He lay on his bed dressed as he had been at the dinner-party, but never slept the whole night and when he got up early in the morning and Karla raised her head from the couch he begged her almost with childish tenderness to forgive him—he had to leave her for a long time.
Karla looked at him with indifference, and when he had gone, seeing her child still asleep she also went to sleep again.
Karla had no suspicion of the blow that awaited her. Both Hurka’s property and her own had been lost at that evenings feast. Hurka had staked everything that by this new speculation he might gain everything or lose all hope. Fortune had not favoured him. Hurka lost everything. He did indeed spend the next day in going from one to another of his evening guests to collect their answers in person, but if these guests had already felt suspicion about him in the evening they trusted him less than ever next day reading sufficient warning in his restless impatience.
Pan Hurka only learned with precision what he already knew in the evening when he walked up and down his empty dining-room. The news of his failure spread like the wild-fire and before evening arrived Pan Hurka was known to be a defaulter and liable to justice for the crime of forgery.
When he came to the last of his night’s guests, this friend kept him in his house on various pretexts, and when the servant announced that “those gentlemen” were already there, he hinted to Hurka that he had better go to prison with a good grace, for all resistance would be futile, and he pointed to the half-opened door.
Karla did not feel this blow very acutely when they broke it to her. She did not understand all it implied. It never occurred to her that her fate was involved in that of her husband. She thought that her life would change only so far that she would live just as she had done hitherto, only without a husband. This did not cause her great tribulation, and to be without the means of existence was an idea she literally could not understand because all her life such a conception had never occurred to her. She looked on with surprise, however, while the commissioners put all the furniture under an official seal and when nobody paid any attention to her orders but obeyed everything which was ordered by the gentlemen in spectacles. She thought that in the evening ​everything would be unsealed just as it had been sealed up: but when they gave her the child into her arms and told her that they had to seal up all the dwelling, and she all at once found herself with her infant outside her own home on the threshold, then she grew still as a stone statue and in her mind the waves began to rise so high that she was almost deafened by their roar.
Whither was she to turn? Karla sat on her doorstep and was unable to realize in her mind the true state of her fortune. He who finds himself in a desert and hits upon a little path follows it and though every hope should close before and behind him, yet trusts that this little path will somehow lead him to safety. And he concentrates his whole attention on it lest he should lose sight of what measures space in the infinity. But when a desert in all its infinity stretches out before a man, he loses at first even his very consciousness. He has no standard of measurement, his very being loses itself like a grain of sand in a sand-hill, he is a mariner without reckoning or compass.
Ought she to cry out? ought she to fly for succour? Aid no doubt would be easily obtained. He who has always had abundance of everything believes also in the superfluity of others. It was not possible that all these people should not care whether the seal should be torn off her doors as soon as may be; so that she might again enter her rooms and there put her little one to bed. It was not possible that people should dwell hard by in ease and comfort seeing how Karla had neither one nor the other.
Such thoughts forced themselves upon her, and she put faith in them because they were natural. She did not know or she did not choose to know that one can drown within a stone’s throw of the bank. Karla trusted in the security of those banks: surely some boat would put out from them to save her: always hitherto she had seen them. The trees blossomed above them, people walked along them and conversed, birds twittered, grass put on fresh tints of green, and children frolicked upon them. The inexperienced sailor cannot believe that his vessel may split upon a rock and that when he stretches forth his hands for succour, it will be flung off with a heart of stone. Wealth appeared to Karla to be a natural necessity: hitherto she had never met any one without it. How, then, could it be possible that she was forbidden to step across the threshold of her own home and dwell there according to her own pleasure?
Karla had not yet risen in order to test whether the latch pressed would permit her to enter her own dwelling. She felt quite ​confident it would do so and thought there was still plenty of time to get up to make the trial.
It had already grown dark and Karla sat on the doorstep. The doorkeeper [domovnica] came and pitied her very much. She called her her good mistress and invited her at least for that night to her own room saying that she would arrange that she and her child slept comfortably, for out of doors they could not remain. Karla thanked her and replied curtly that there was no necessity. Karla fully believed that there was no necessity and that it would be foolish to quarter herself upon the housekeeper when she had herself plenty of comfort behind her closed doors. The housekeeper without doubt interpreted this differently and as she went up the staircase muttered loud enough to be heard that pride would soon have a fall.
It was night. The moon shone in a clear sky and the stars twinkled like living eyes. Through the house complete quiet reigned: in the window the lights were extinguished and everything rested in the calm peace of sleep. It horrified Karla to see darkness in her own dwelling and when she had not extinguished the lights herself.
She determined to light them again, she took hold of the latch, as she believed, but the locked doors were harder than her weak hand. She fell back on the doorstep covering her little daughter with everything she had, rested her head against the door, hoping that would yield next morning which at present opposed her.
She slept sufficiently peacefully. She had not yet a suspicion of the truth that she was a beggar.
Early the next day the housekeeper hurried to her with a message from the master of the house to say that she must be off and be gone from the doorstep. What more she added on her account Karla did not listen to. But it seemed to her as if the whole affair was a mere mockery. She turned from the housekeeper in disdain and never answered her a word.
But when day had fairly dawned there did seem to dawn in her mind also some consciousness of the terrible change in her fortunes.
Already at the first glimmer of light she started from her sleep; she thought for a moment that she still slept in a room and that the cradle stood just in the same place where it had hitherto stood. But when her little daughter began to wail in her arms, the cradle vanished from her memory and in place of a soft couch she ​pillowed herself on stone and wood. The cold racked her, whether because she was unaccustomed to pass the night in the open air or that now reality yawned upon her in full certainty. People passed from home to their daily callings, stopped by her partly from pity to her, partly from curiosity. Popular curiosity is always distasteful, but if one is in misfortune it pains more than the misfortune itself.
And it stung Karla. When several children trooped after the domovnica, to see how Pani Hurka was bereft of everything save what she had on her back and what she carried in her arms, she was so exasperated that she drove them away with nasty words.
But children have not strength enough either to comprehend anguish or to enter into the state of mind of the miserable. Children thus as gaily disport themselves with grey-haired eld over which hangs the shadow of death as with the floweret cup, which has just expanded on the meadow. The children burst out laughing at Karla’s. Her indignation amused them. It was to them but a momentary plaything like the dolls which they had received more than once from her hands.
Against these light thoughts which weigh the cradle and the grave in one balance, Karla had no weapon. But their meaning flashed upon her at a single gleam which with awful strength illuminated a whole abyss—an abyss which had no end, and beginning from her own threshold, had no resting-place or turning-point. No more need now for the housekeeper to come and repeat the message which the master of the house had sent her.
The children’s eyes burnt Karla like living coals, the earth seemed to reel under her feet as she arose, and hurried down the steps. She felt as if she had just arisen from a burning fever. It was all one to her whither she turned.
The world which unrolled itself before her was a wide one and if she had no aim and object it was all one which way she chose. She was above all things anxious to lose sight of the people who knew her and to reach some place where their pitying or curious looks would no longer haunt her.
The world has leered at the apparition of misery so long that it spares the wretch with whom it is unacquainted.
With these thoughts she at once hurried out of the main street to a smaller one hard by. The further she went, the emptier grew the street and more rare the glances which where directed towards her. It had not yet occurred to her that she was dressed in fine ​clothes and bearing an infant in her arms. Her misery had not yet imprinted on her face that writing which is legible to every one.
Karla felt more at ease. The narrow street to which she had come was flanked by a few cottages rather than houses and in front of them all stretched a long wall. Behind the wall were gardens and the little houses were almost invariably closed, because the people who inhabited them were employed during the day in other parts of the city. From the observation of people Karla was for the present free and that was all she just now demanded. Every place is not equally pleasing to us, the young look out for streamlets, woods, and meadows, old people yearn for the domestic circle, the fond beloved moon, stars, and the breath of evening-poverty is most at home amidst squalor and desolation. It is not always from insufficient conception of cleanliness that poverty associates more readily with dirt than with purity, poverty takes shelter in indifference so that it may not too vividly realize its wretchedness: clothe a beggar in rich garments and he either laughs at himself or weeps for himself. In rags he does not feel his humiliation, in splendour he is crushed beneath its weight.
To Karla at all events it seemed as though this deserted street nodded to her with a look of home. Not only because nothing in it outraged her feelings, but also because when she reflected on her previous home she said to herself with a flash of conviction that the old home was but borrowed but this was genuine. There was something of the humour which springs from anguish in all this, but without some ideal trappings her anguish of mind would have been intolerable. Another in Karla’s place would perhaps have committed suicide. But Karla’s feelings were not sufficiently developed to hurry her on with fatal exaltation to so dreadful a deed. She had not yet been driven to genuine tears, for if a few fell on the face of her baby daughter, they were more the tears of childhood than those of despairing misfortune.
Karla had not tasted a mouthful of food since the previous day, and her attention had not yet been drawn to this fact. That near threatening tension of nerves, that feverish frenzy of the mind had not as yet suffered the mere craving for nourishment to assert itself. Hence also it was that she had not hitherto shrunk from her misery because she did not know the whole of it. But when she was somewhat reconciled to her new existence in the deserted street and that tension of the nerves permitted it, hunger began ​to press upon her in all the forms of its unappeasable cravings. He who knows not what hunger is has never yet wrestled in his soul about the dignity of man. Hunger has its awful tragedies as soon as it steps out of the mean where it rather tends to comedy. If a man feels even the merest necessities of existence are failing him, he too often ceases to believe that he is a man. Hunger has a roar so cruel that it deafens all else within us, love, nobility, self-sacrifice, magnanimity, even disdain of the populace. Ay, even the dignity of man shrinks into nothingness. When growing plants have neither soil nor moisture, it is hard to expect flowers from them. Do not, then, condemn as debased creatures those, who have thrown away their dignity through the pression of hunger, do not condemn women who from the same cause have prostituted their bodies. So long as society closes its doors to their cries, it has no right to pass judgment on such people, and it judges harshly if it condemns them.
Where had Karla now to turn when hunger began to oppress her? Should she beg?
The thought horrified her like a sudden vision of death, and perhaps at the moment she would sooner have died than have allowed herself to beg. Must she again go among people, when only a moment ago she had felt relieved to lose sight of them? Must she learn the prayer of poverty and disclose her wounds to the world that it might laugh at her without offering her relief? Must she go among strangers and force herself upon their generosity with phrases which nowadays every one can get by rote? She did not falter but determined that she would rather bear hunger than have any dealings with her fellow-creatures.
But one thought seized upon her with such force that she could not repress it and for some time she cherished it with a certain feeling of satisfaction. Havel occurred to her: all the eager words of youth, in which a little year ago he had depicted his passion for her, came back to her mind. She believed in the genuineness of his passion for her and felt herself near to him although marriage and fate had separated her from him.
She felt his warm breath and his bright eyes upon her as though he himself had come to meet her and she had called out to him. Her image dominated his fancy perhaps in a manner a thousand time more powerful than when she still thought about him with perfect frankness. Besides his personal charms she adorned him with generosity and seemed to see his arms thrown open into which she had only to throw herself. If she went to him, he ​would understand her difficulties without the need of long speeches, he would aid her without entreaties for aid.
Karla in her strength grew young again at these thoughts. She cast a longing look after them, just as a child after the bubbles which it has formed, as in glittering colours they hovered before her and when one burst she quickly formed a second and a third. Suddenly her visions gave place to the thought: If Havel had encountered a similar fate, she would not have tarried longer than was needed to pass from thought to action. She would have sought him out and offered him her assistance. Havel without doubt already knew of her distress; he would undoubtedly have sought her out if he had been disposed to help her. She quickly determined that it would be easier to beg than to be an incubus upon Havel. With his love and means, she would have sought him out, she would never hang about his door with prayers for help.
In this decision Karla felt her mind strengthened and elevated. She felt herself free as a bird which left its lowly nest and wings its way aloft. It looks on well-known objects from a height: it is not subject to them, it is above them, it can leave them, it can return to them. She did not dispute his love for her, but she felt that she must be free.
Evening approached, night came, and the moon arose to greet it like as a virgin lights herself to her secret bed-chamber. Karla had a hard couch and felt with anguish that now it was too late to seek assistance. The child cried for hunger and Karla discovered to her surprise that she was already too weak to afford it its wanted nourishment. She started up, and like as the kid searches the parched rocks to find some green root that it may satisfy its bleating young, so Karla looked about by the light of the moon for the sustenance she so sorely needed. She went along the wall, her whole attention concentrated on a search for food. She looked on the road as if food might have been placed there purposely. She dragged herself along with difficulty and paced the lane several times without finding a morsel of food. All at once her eyes fell on the wall. Behind it were gardens: it was August and the ripe fruit hung, so that she needed only to stretch out her hand to gather it. Karla shook some plums into her lap. According to law she committed a theft; according to instinct she preserved herself and child. For that day she was saved, for the morrow poverty takes no thought. It has no to-morrow.
​The wall had in it a recess where long ago stood the statue of a saint. Here Karla sank exhausted and benumbed, muffled her child in her wraps to the last fold to guard it against the bitter air and slept from very faintness.
The second day was raining and autumnally chilly. The niche did not afford sufficient shelter to ward off the rain. Damp and shivering she recognized with horrible forebodings that she must again seek out her fellow-creatures. She retreated to a small house where the door stood ajar and there sat behind the door. The rain no longer fell on her but her clothes were soaked and the cold racked her limbs. Something warm would have been a godsend to her: but the house was deserted. There was nothing for it but to seek aid once more and she braced herself to take this step with a heavy heart.
She no longer feared inquisitive looks owing to the inclemency of the weather: few people were astir in the streets. The want of home sickened Karla to-day, just as hunger had done the day before, and hunger returned again like an unpaid creditor. She went into the more populous thoroughfares where she thought that scarcely any one would recognize her. The rain poured in torrents, Karla was drenched and stopped in the entrance of a large house. She did not remain standing, but fled up the staircase that she might not be seen of passers-by.
She stopped in a hall on the first floor. Her eyes fell on an open kitchen through which was the entrance to the living-rooms. The odour of the dishes which were being prepared beguiled the senses of Karla. If a man is in want of everything, the instincts become all powerful. The warm and pleasing smell of victuals issuing from the kitchen drew Karla towards it like a magnet.
But still she never begged for anything. They let out the warm air because they had plenty of it and the warm air going out sufficed and comforted the starving Karla. Her feet mechanically moved step by step toward the threshold. And she sat on the steps leading to the second landing and warmed herself in the hot air.
In the kitchen several children frolicked and played at helping to cook the dinner. Here one dainty was tasted and approved, there another, and when one child after another complained that his brother took all the sweetmeats, the mother pretended to scold them all. But when, on that, the children burst out laughing she gave each of them some of the sweetmeats that they might have no cause to reproach her.
​At this scene hot tears for the first time filled Karla’s eyes. She was only now affected by domestic bliss when deprived of all means of winning it for herself. Now for the first time she understood the meaning of domestic happiness, and in watching those frolicking children she seemed to eye a paradise from which she was for ever debarred. In this penetrating warmth she completely forgot the inclement weather she had endured, and gazed so long and fondly at those beaming merry childish faces that she could have kissed them as though she were their own mother.
What had hitherto never spoken to her heart now made itself felt when she was bereft of everything. As if at the touch of an enchanter’s wand the scales fell from her eyes and what all her instructors failed to awaken in her, now began to speak with a hundred tongues.
The name of family had hitherto struck her ear, as only an empty formula, now she seemed to hear a fountain which bubbled from the ground.
From the kitchen they did not observe Karla. They were too much occupied with one another, too full of what we call happiness: the mother at the sight of her children, the children in the consciousness of having their mother with them. That look sated Karla like the scent of fruit and flowers, she felt there was spring in the world only that she had never been touched by its warmth. The icy crust which had hitherto surrounded her life melted at the sight: she felt how greatly impoverished she had been hitherto as to all the sentiments of bliss, she comprehended what bliss is, but that bliss was no more her own but others.
The smell of the dishes awakened the child in her arms and it began to wail. The children exclaimed that some woman was outside and their mother closed the door.
This sickened Karla. What had she done to them that they grudged her even a sight of themselves? Were they the poorer because some one looked at them and envied their happiness? And she had never begged for anything; the door had been opened because the heat oppressed them and Karla appropriated no more of that heat than the wall by the door would have absorbed. Did the looks she cast on them outrage them and did it disturb their tranquillity by resting with pleasure on the picture of their domestic happiness? Might her glances have penetrated as far as the door, and were they forbidden to cross the threshold? As a moment before felt touched and softened she now saw clearly the full extent of her misery.
​The streets lay open before her, she might drag herself along them as far as the threshold; what was behind the threshold even her looks outraged and yet what was to forbid her from knocking at the doors and beseeching for relief in her necessity?
She descended the staircase and determined that she would not go to a house again. But whither was she to turn? The rain lashed her face and her clothes scarcely somewhat dried began to be wetted afresh.
Opposite the house, which she had just left, stood a church. From it she heard the sound of the organ and singing. She used often to go to church because it was the fashion. She went in the same spirit as she took a drive, to look at people or to show her clothes. Nothing drew her to church and her religion was only a pretext. But as she now looked at the open doors, it seemed as though a new world was drawing her to itself. She saw at least some aim in life, some shelter which the street and rain denied her.
She entered the church. By the doorway stood a group of beggar women, brawling their paternosters, and as Karla went past them they involuntarily stretched out their hands, Karla knelt close by the doorway. She did not pray in words for her soul was overflowing like a stream of fire. Karla rejoiced that doors were not closed against her here also, and though she comprehended not the peace which reigned within them, she did at least comprehend that she had found some shelter from the wind and rain. When she knelt she did not see people nor did she hear what they sung: but yet it seemed to her as though the organ spoke for them even from their very soul. Its tones rolled along in as full a stream as the song from their hearts. Both were without definite words but they filled her whole existence with new courage.
When the service was over, people jostled out of the church and as Karla was close to the door, she was also obliged to follow the stream. She came to the porch and because outside the rain did not greatly tempt her, she involuntarily ranged herself among the beggars. These paid little heed to her, for their eyes were directed and their hands stretched out to the people who were leaving the church.
The beggar women prayed their paternosters in chorus and when they came to the passage “Give us this day our daily bread”, Karla shivered all over, the tears streamed down her face and she ​sobbed aloud. Who understood those words of misery better than Karla?
Several young ladies went past them, and the voices of the beggar women became more plaintive than ever. One young lady gave something to every one of them and before Karla expected it she had in her palm a silver coin-her first alms. She had not yet recovered herself and though it grieved her to the heart she still felt that to receive alms was after all easier than she had imagined. She did not know the hand which had proffered it to her but was soon recalled to herself when on the exit of every one from church, the beggar women flung themselves upon her and declared that she cheated them of their rights without having asked for admission to their gang. But they were silent when Karla showed them her child and said: “I have nothing in the world save this.”
The beggars settled themselves in their several corners and Karla found herself once more in church. The idea that Karla was yet a novice in the trade, tickled the fancy of one of the beggar women. “She must place herself in our hands a bit,” said the woman, “for after, she will not greatly curtail our gains.”
Day elapsed: the shades of evening fell and the church-warden closed the doors. Karla saw that she could only take up her abode there till the evening. So she again went among the beggar women and when they had all collected outside the door she asked one of them: “Where are you going for the night?”
The beggar woman burst out laughing.
“We for the night? Look at her; look at the young innocent. Perhaps you had better try if you are so anxious to learn. We for the night? My little daughter, anywhere. We cover ourselves now with leaves, now with grass, sometimes with nothing at all. One sleeps best, my little dear, after drinking a good pint-pot of home-brewed that warms one and makes one think of good bags full of alms. Ach! truly I forgot, to-day it rains. If you will treat us once all round, we will take you somewhere for the night and we shan’t be in the dumps I tell you: we shall have story-telling and drinks and victuals, because you have honoured us with your company. Come just a drop of drink-money and you shall be one of us. So if you like come along.”
Karla was dead-tired from the effect of the day and would perhaps have followed these women to the pit of destruction at the mere mention of drink and victuals. Benumbed with want she heard only a voice crying out for food.
​They led her to a by-street. There they entered a low house and groping in the dark through a narrow court, reached at length a door by which they entered. Karla found herself in a chamber blackened with soot and rendered yet more gloomy by the faint glimmer of an oil-lamp. The lamp stood on a barrel-organ which squeaked an accompaniment to the song of an old man and a young boy. Some beggars who had already collected here repeated in chorus the whole stanza after the two singers.
The atmosphere was oppressive, a large fire burnt in the fireplace, and on the range food of various kinds was cooking. Beggars male and female kept pouring in and though the chamber was sufficiently spacious the benches were already crowded, and those who could not find seats sat or stretched themselves on the ground. Tables in the chamber there were none. Each new-comer threw his little bag with the alms he had collected into a corner, where to use their own words they made their “charity muck-heap”—they had lugged it about enough for that day, they said.
The new-comers all removed their disguises. The blind unbound the bandages from their eyes, the dumb found their tongues, the cripples divested themselves of their splints, compresses were torn from wounds and crutches thrown aside. Among beggars truth is of small account—a lie is to them, they said, what orders are in the breast of the great—a symbol of merit among a long suffering people.
Soon their dissipated natures displayed themselves. Old or young gathered into a circle, curses and the laughter of despair issued from every mouth. Words of double meaning were heard on all sides. Misery here celebrated its orgies and gorged itself with food and drink, here drunkenness and debauchery showed themselves undisguised.
There is something tragical in the revelry of misery. Only in this utterly unbridled licence is it possible for us to see whether society has not sinned in all its grades, by shutting itself completely against them and by making the result of its struggles inaccessible to them. What has the world for the beggar that, while he is in it, he should preserve and develop the human part of himself? Law does not defend him and all that you glory in has value only when he is excepted. He alone sinks to the level of a beast, you wed him to his vileness and, therefore, when he thinks of his fate the beast in him triumphs over the man. It is possible that he is aware of his degradation: but out of these dungeons ​is there no road to the sunshine? Might not civilization empty these dungeons and might not all stand in the light?
But society chases the beggar to the dens; it monopolizes the light for itself and leaves only rags, filth, and squalor.
Karla shuddered all over at the spectacle. Something impelled her to hurry away, but the wonder which overruled her was so powerful that she had not the strength to rise. She felt greater unhappiness than all these present, for she had not yet reached a point at which she could with a debauched conscience lose herself in the ravishing creed which swallows both feelings and consciousness. And yet she could not judge them. Society had always cruelly rid itself of them: they stood within their rights then when they turned to ridicule everything that society holds dear and sacred.
One of the male beggars observed that Karla looked as though she did not enjoy her company. He stepped up to her and with a look of cruel candour began to address her:—
“Ah, ha! What has brought thee among us? Thou art young and yet thou wouldst not chum with our quality. Thou art pretty, and yet knowest of nothing better to do with thy beauty than to beg. I ask it of all you—shall we put up with beauty and youth? And what do I see—thou art dressed as thou wouldst hail us to a feast. I ask it of all of you: are we to put up with dresses that make it appear as though the world went well with us so that even these last doors shall be closed against us? Are we to put up with dress such as this which will drive us from house and comfort and shut us out from victuals, from warmth, from everything?”
This beggar threw himself on Karla and at a jerk tore her dress from top to bottom. Then he turned triumphantly to his comrades who gloated with coarse and brutal laughter over the stripped and humiliated Karla.
All the wrath and indignation which slumbered within her took fire at this insult. Was, then, the sentiment of respect for women no longer theirs?
Karla arose and ran out of the house into the streets in all the uncertainty of the weather and in the darkness of night. She did not measure her steps, nor had she the least idea whither she betook herself. It seemed to her as though she was rescuing her very life from the knife of the executioner. The ground lost its steadiness under her, the houses changed into haunts of brigands and those who rested in comfort seemed to pour on her a hissing stream of darts and poison. Even that pink darling in her arms ​was deprived of its last shelter. What had shielded it from cold and rain, was rent in twain as by a gust of infuriated wind.
Where she wandered all that night it is hard to say. Drenched to the skin she ran later into a house which still remained half-open. The house was empty, she found there a small corner, dusky and empty, where she felt assured that no one would disturb her.
The next day when she awoke in the morning she saw that her little daughter was dead: at the same time she recognized that she was in the house of Havel.
Summer past and Karla grew accustomed to misery as though it had been her native element. She grew accustomed to it as the eyes to darkness. She grew accustomed to the bread of charity, she grew accustomed to imploring pitiously on the threshold and at the door, she grew accustomed to a quiet nod of assent, and to seeing the door rudely closed in her face.
A gentle word seemed to her like the dawn of a saint’s day, a hard word was common enough, she had plenty of such words every day. She grew accustomed to hunger and cold, she grew accustomed to the dress of poverty and a hard couch and her home was everywhere and yet nowhere. She was like a tender shrub which clings to a rock where there is little soil. It clings with its small roots where it can: it is exposed to wind and scorching sun, the earth beneath is continually burning and its spare foliage excites more pity than delight.
About her husband she only learnt that he was imprisoned. She did not inquire further and as he had never grown dear to her heart, he easily fell out of her recollection. She did not curse him for having prepared this fate for her; she felt somehow as though things could not have been different from what they were. Her young life seemed to her utterly valueless. She was so poor, so very poor that the brief gleam that had first enveloped her, seemed like a fair vase in which grew poverty. The vase split, poverty fell out of it and the world called her a beggar. She felt it now too well; but if she were to speak the full truth she felt richer now than when they called her Pani Hurka.
She gained feeling, when she recognized how contention weakens, she gained knowledge, when she recognized how sympathy endears; having nothing to call her own, she felt none the less that inward warmth which multiplies our existence so that in ourselves we feel strength after many sufferings and manage to ​bear all that fate designs. She felt that in her burned a portion of that light, which drives the sage into the wilderness, that there it may kindle a torch for the discovery of uncounted treasures and of a new world.
Having at times a few alms to spare, she gave them to those who were more destitute than herself. Only one thing she was sorry for that with the warmth she could not endow those who enjoying indeed all the luxuries of life, were yet with all this as poor as she had remained while she had abundance of everything.
Her nightly resting-place was always the little niche at Havel’s house. That place was always empty, and no one guessed that it could possibly be occupied. She always came unobserved and unobserved withdrew. At first she had betaken herself there unwittingly. Later she came there wittingly and felt that little corner to be her home. Havel knew nothing about it and Karla narrowly guarded every occasion that might have betrayed her. She felt that in his heart there was no corner left to her to compare with this one, but she felt happy to know that no one hitherto had forbidden her to rest in this despised retreat.
In this small room she forgot all her sufferings, she forgot that she was a beggar, and in her fancy Havel lived like an infant swaddled in silk. She never dwelt on the season of his love for her, but occupied her thoughts about him in his present condition. If she had ever been made aware that he could not sleep at night, she herself would not have closed an eye, and if she learnt that things went well with him and that he felt happy, she felt herself blessed on the same account. Once returning in the evening to her little chamber she found the door locked and had to pass the night outside. It had happened by accident, but that night Karla spent in bitter weeping for she fancied that they had discovered her lurking-place and wished to deprive her of it. Next evening she approached it with infinite apprehension; but finding the door opened and her little chamber untouched she felt such bliss in her heart that the whole house did not contain that night so happy a soul as Karla.
She still received a few sparks of happiness to increase her inward warmth. Havel had a little daughter four years of age, an engaging little floweret as like her father as if she had dripped from his eye. From the neighbouring house it was possible to overlook Havel’s balcony where the little daughter played with a doll, dressing and undressing it and tucking it into its little bed. Karla often looked privily for a whole hour at the child as ​we look at smooth water in a streamlet. Once the doll was disobedient and the child set it for punishment on the rail of the balcony and the doll fell down below. The little girl cried, but before it expected it, Karla had run out of the neighbouring house, lifted the doll up to the balcony and giving it to the little girl changed her weeping into smiles.
The child remembered it well, but Karla was vexed because the doll in its fall had spoilt its face and hair. Karla scarcely slept for several days. She saved kreuzer after kreuzer from her alms, and after one or two Sundays had bought so pretty a doll that she almost fell in love with it herself. This puppet slept with her several nights until the little girl once more showed herself on the balcony. The little girl seemed to notice her and Karla observed her descend the stairs. She went quickly to the child and placed in its hands a beautiful doll which sparkled up to its blue eyes. The old doll was thrown aside and Karla was filled with delight to see that the little girl only played with this new gift.
Once Karla was again in the neighbouring house and the little girl played on the balcony with its new toy. She was now accustomed to look out for Karla and observed her. Quickly running into the room to father she called out, “There”, and pointed with her baby finger toward the neighbouring court-yard. The father did not understand his child’s excitement and did not at once pay attention to her. And before he turned to look in Karla’s direction she had vanished. Tears of pleasure fell on her hands at the thought that the little girl valued her present and to see how happy Havel was in his family.
Here was a floweret in her deserted hours, which filled her with delight. Any one accustomed to promenade in gardens would not have paid any attention to it but Karla at sight of it not only forgot that her path lay through a desert but even dreamt she was in a rich and pleasant garden. These moments were such a precious possession that nothing in her previous life could at all compare with them. She felt in them the bliss of the fond father and mother. She felt the child’s bliss, and being a mother deprived, alas! of her own infant, she still exalted herself so high that her heart united itself with theirs in the purest sentiment of love.
Karla under her present circumstance soon lost the freshness of personal charms, but her soul regained its elasticity and her eye was endued with that kindling light which is the sign of a ​charming spirit. I am certain that Karla need have had no apprehension that Havel would recognize her at that time even if they had met in full daylight. If he yet retained her in his thought, it was certainly not in the likeness of her present existence—she who in the rags of penury at eventide sought for shelter in Havel's little outhouse. Nor did her eye when inflamed by passion burn with half the brilliance which now adorned it—now when within her the spark of knowledge was enkindled and she knew that what she felt was the very truth. Karla on her stony path reached at length those heights where one learns to forgive much because one has received much. She was already contented with her destiny. It appeared to her part of the course of Nature, to repine would have been as reasonable as to look for pomegranate fruit on willow-trees.
It was a March day in spring, when it is almost possible to see in the heart of Nature the yearning for active life. The green leaflet does not yet sprout, but every breath shows how it feels within itself the power of youthful germination. The first sun of spring smiles upon the earth and the earth to prove that it has understood smiles with the first spring violets. Beyond the city and in the city you encounter the poor who meet you with bundles of these blue-eyed offsprings of renovated earth.
Karla also went to gather violets, not that she might offer them for sale in the streets but lo leave them as presents with those families who by their gifts had hidden her poverty from the world. Each spring she paid her thanks in this way and to-day she had just completed her round of visits and held the last posy in her hands. This was destined for Havel's little daughter and was perhaps more beautiful than any of those she had given away. Karla already congratulated herself on the delight which she would afford the little girl when she placed it in her little hand and looked once again into the little eyes which were as deep a blue as the violets themselves.
A gentleman met Karla and pressed her to sell him the flower, offering her some silver money. And much surprised was he, when Karla said it was her last but to-morrow he might have any one he chose, this one, however, she refused to sell.
Karla was rewarded for her heroism: the offer he made for that little present was tempting, and poverty finds it a hard matter not to stretch forth its hand for money, but yet she would not at that moment at any cost have forgone the pleasure which she promised herself when she made a present of it to the child.
​The rattling of chains startled her from these reflections. A melancholy procession approached her, a file of men in grey coats and trousers and their feet shackled together with heavy irons. Karla felt a sudden pang of surprise and she stopped still and looked at the faces of the criminals, who were returning from their day’s labour. Her eye rested on the last of the row. It was hard to distinguish between the faces of the men: they were most of them unshaven and a look of discontent and oppression gave them a common expression. But that face in the rear drew her observation upon itself as though there were something in it she had to discover, something she understood but which was nevertheless unexpected. Yes, Karla was not mistaken. She recognized her husband, fallen, degraded as he was. They were alike only that he was more unfortunate than herself. Hurka regarded her, recognized her, and his eyes filled with tears of dismay, he trembled with remorse, on his face was depicted the question, “Who can forgive me for all the suffering I have brought upon you.” If he had dared to fall out of the line, he would have sunk at her feet and have watered with his tears her shrunken hands. Karla read all that was written in his face. She felt that her forgiveness if he knew of it would be a strength to him and a blessing in his present terrible condition.
She felt in a moment the whole weight of his misfortune. She felt herself great in comparison and that the look which pleaded for forgiveness was the expression of a soul so truthful that she would have been unworthy of the sentiment he felt for her if she had not responded to it. In an instant she tore away a small bunch of violets and going to Hurka’s side pressed it into his fettered hands, saying in a voice above measure gentle, “May God comfort thee!”
“And our little one?” asked Hurka.
“It is cared for above”, Karla answered.
Hurka went his way after the other criminals and Karla stood as if turned to stone and followed him with her eyes as the criminals wheeled round the corner. Hurka looked once again at her, pressed the violets to his lips and she saw him no more.
It was a melancholy meeting. Karla did not love Hurka, but his horrible fate evoked in a moment all her sympathy and wakened in her the consciousness that she was the wife of an unfortunate man whose fate was linked with horror. The figure of Hurka impressed itself so strongly on her imagination that even when she lay down to rest in her little chamber at Havel’s house, it ​continually stood before her and appeared in her dreams and yet it would not permit her to approach it. If she had thus encountered Hurka the first time they met, it is possible he would have won her affection, it is possible they would have been still entirely his own.
She could not sleep. When she had rearranged the violets which yet remained for Havel’s little daughter she looked at Havel’s window, which still illuminated threw a dusky shadow on the balcony and court-yard. As she smelt the violets her heart trembled with a strange sensation. That portion of the bouquet which she had given to Havel was laid to rest in a living tomb: all the remnant of it which she wished to give his little daughter seemed to awaken out of its tomb.
It occurred to Karla that in the silence of night she might unobserved crawl to Havel’s lighted window and through it look at his domestic happiness. This idea had never before occurred to her. Perhaps it was a crazy whim, but it possessed her like the fixed idea of a crazy brain. What would result from acting thus? Might she not by one unguarded look destroy the happiness she had enjoyed in her quiet corner?
Karla arose, and like a marten when it steals upon its prey, crawled over the staircase. Her heart beat with a strange unrest. If she carried away a picture of his tranquillity perhaps it would pain her more than if she had never seen it. But the strange influence which had prompted her to leave her hard couch hurried her forward and if at that moment she had been about to commit a crime, she could not have turned aside. Perhaps some objections did occur to her mind but her heart felt a need of what she did even if she had at the next moment to atone for it by death.
She drew near to the window and her first look fell on Havel’s little daughter, who slept in a little bed by the window and had put Karla’s doll to rest beside her. An air of calm repose breathed throughout the chamber. A little bird in a a cage suspended by the window dreamt of its image reflected in the opposite mirror. Havel slept by the other window: by his bed on a small table a candle still burnt and beside it lay a half-opened book which he had been reading. She recognized the book. It was one from which Havel used to read aloud to her and she used to listen listlessly enough. If she had had a single leaf out of that book now, it would have been sacred to her, it would have been her most highly prized possession. A soft carpet covered ​the floor, on the walls hung various pictures, and among them she recognized her own.
Havel had not forgotten her, but that picture cut her to the heart. She was represented with a rose in her hands, she was dressed in a white dress, her features bloomed, on them were youth and smiles and in her figure fullness and health. Karla stood by the window and seeing the image of the little song-bird in the opposite mirror, she unexpectedly caught her own reflection and saw what changes sorrow had wrought. That cowering posture, those wrinkled features, the dress of poverty, the shrunken body—and in her hands violets. She was transfixed by the contrast and retreated from herself as if before some awful spectre. What had dared her to this comparison? She turned again to the other window beside which slept the little daughter. How pleased she would have been to give it those violets in bed, only once to kiss it as doubtless Havel kissed it every day, and then never show herself again! The violets in her hand seemed to burn her. She tried the window to see if it was bolted and found that the pane which opened was ajar. In the window stood a large vase with water. Karla carefully opened the window-pane, placed her violets in the vase with water and closed the window with as much care as she had opened it.
The act was unobserved. The picture affected Karla more than she had expected. She did not feel strength in herself to bear her whole burden of sorrow. Her steps strayed again towards the house and she stopped by Havel’s window. Only once again she wished to look closely at his face and then never again to torment either his sleeping or his waking hours. Only once again she wished to cast her eyes over that peaceful chamber and then to go away for ever, lost among the measureless sufferings of life.
She stood by the window like a child which looks for the first time at an elegantly appointed salon, feasting upon it with delighted eyes, and fearful of disarranging its beautiful furniture. How that window made all the difference! Within was a world of comfort kept safe like a tree in a garden, outside it was a world of misery, despised like the wild brier on which are only thorns. Once they had gone hand in hand together, now there was no bridge to unite their severed lives.
Yet one moment more and Karla meant to turn away, she looked a last look at Havel’s face and it seemed to her as though he smiled, he evidently struggled with something in his sleep, ​threw his hand beside him and overturned the candle which was burning itself out beside him.
Karla held her breath. Should she go away or should she raise the alarm? The candle fell on the book whose leaves began to burn and Karla by its light caught sight of a small wreath of Italian lilac, which she herself had placed in it. The leaves smouldered one after another, the wreath was already half devoured. Karla felt herself rooted to the ground so that she could not advance a step, her breast heaved and yet she could not utter a syllable.
The book was already half consumed, of her wreath nothing remained but a cinder which glowed for a moment and then fell in fragments in which no one could recognize its original form.
Karla only now observed that above the fire hung a curtain which would certainly catch fire as soon as the flames leapt higher and that might happen at any moment.
Karla fell a choking in her throat, a voice broke forth in a terrible shriek. She threw herself like a tigress on the window, wrenched it till the very house shook, with a piercing voice exclaimed: “It burns!”
Havel started out of sleep as though he had roused himself by a violent effort. Sleepy though he was, he yet recognized the danger his house was in, quickly sought for water and in his haste seized the vase in the window by his little daughter’s bed, quickly drenched the curtain and the burning book. He trembled all over and stood as if turned to stone. In the room it was quite dark.
Then he lit another candle to see what the fire had consumed. The book was almost wholly a cinder. Karla’s souvenir was destroyed and Havel held in his hands a bunch of violets. He knew not whence they came nor what had saved his life.
At the entrance to the Volskansky cemetery, just as at this day, stood a group of beggars male and female. They lived by appealing for alms at the dwelling-place of death. People bringing forth their relations for burial in that place where all must pause at last were more easily inclined to offer some small tribute to those living bones, who stand out in testimony against the vaunted progress of our age in which spiritual excellence must perish that the body may survive.
By them sat an aged woman whom they called “garland grandmother”. She only differed from the rest in this that she did not ​beg for alms, but offered garlands for sale. She had settled herself here beside a single tomb which belonged ’twas said to a certain brewer. From that time she found in the spot a veritable home and never left it.
She conducted a small sale of nosegays, but every beggar woman declared that she was a bad manager. She need not have lived in want—they said—if she had been more chary of her earnings. Of the garlands which she bought from time to time, she laid one on the tomb of the brewer, another on that of her husband, and a third on the tomb of her child. But as to her child she did not know exactly where it was laid—so they said—because it was buried in the common pauper’s grave. But in order not to miss the spot she each day placed the garland on a different part of the common grave, and thus she was certain not to pass over her child. Besides there was this advantage in so doing she said that other children also got a garland who otherwise would have been forgotten by every one.
From time to time a widow with a grown-up daughter came to visit the brewer’s tomb. They were not unmindful of the tomb it is true; but said the beggars what was all that worth compared with “garland grandmother”. She never separated herself from the tomb. And if ever she found a pretty flower, she planted it there. Havel’s tomb was in reality a very pretty flower-bed and the garlands on it were always the freshest.
Karla, this “garland grandmother”, haunted Havel’s tomb even when the moon flung a network of mysterious rays among the crosses, the tomb-stones, and trees of the cemetery. Many a star tired in the heaven and fell below the horizon. Many a drop of dew collected and dried upon the flowers; but the heart of Karla beat without weariness on that tomb. Not even the firmament of heaven was so constant a guardian of Havel’s tomb as she. The birds wheeled and fluttered around the tomb, and winter scared them all away; but in the heart of Karla sprang feelings like the first-sown corn of spring.
Whether the dead arise from the tomb it were hard to say; but that Karla was worthy that Havel should embrace her a thousand times is true enough. Those flowerets which she planted on the tomb struck their rootlets only a few inches into the soil; but the heart of Karla penetrated all the ground to the coffin. She understood those flowers, many a word she confided to them. Many an answer she feigned from them. Karla felt blessed in the thought that Havel had not known about her. If ever he had gained ​knowledge of her, where indeed could she have found home and shelter?
But Karla here rested in calm content. Beneath the rays of the moon one night she lay down and her heart ceased to beat. She had no one to close her eyes and the last thought which gleaned in her was that though they were fated not to live together no one had hindered them from dying close beside each other.
Who among the living could compare with her or say that he had raised himself so high? She drooped in rags, but in those she raised herself as high as the lark when from full throat it trills its carol of the spring.