# Halek's Stories and Evensongs/Pensioned Off

PENSIONED OFF
CHAPTER I
AT three o’clock in the afternoon, across the village green of Frishets went the sexton; he had in his hand a large key and directed his steps to the chapel.
Any of the villagers who were standing by the window and saw the sexton, at first only said to themselves, “Where, I wonder, is old Vanek going?” Afterwards they called to their wives, to the servants, or to any one who happened to be near at hand, “Look! look! Vanek is going to the chapel! Can there be a fire anywhere, or can any one be dead?”
“And where can there be a fire, and who can have died?” was the answer to these questions; but to every one it was apparent that one or other of these events must have taken place.
After this those who stood by the windows ran out in front of the gate, and cast a curious glance after Vanek to see whether he was not going into the chapel. At this moment his key rattled in the door, the door opened, and Vanek vanished within the chapel.
“What, I wonder, can Vanek want in the chapel?” thereupon inquired the neighbours one of another, on the village green; each took a few steps toward the middle of the green, and then replied to one another that no one could tell, because there was no fire in sight, and no one in the village had been seriously ill.
At that instant the funeral bell rang out. “The Lord God grant him heaven”, said the neighbours’ wives, crossed themselves and began to pray.
The men removed their pipes from their mouths, lifted their caps and crossed themselves from brow to breast. Every one was like a statue, only that his lips moved somewhat; in the village nothing stirred, the funeral bell swung to and fro and spoke to all, and yet no one knew for whom it was ringing.
All at once the funeral bell was silent and the neighbours and neighbours’ wives, just as they had at first trailed off from the windows on to the village green, so now they trailed over the village green toward the chapel, each one only saying, “The Lord God be with us! Who is it, I wonder?” Their impatience increased ​because old Vanek still lingered long in the chapel, doubtless, in order to tie again to the bell the rope, which owing to its rottenness so frequently snapped asunder.
And when Vanek issued from the chapel, and his huge rusty key again scraped in the door a cry arose as if from a single mouth, “Who is it for, prithee, who is it for?”
“The Lord grant him heaven—old Loyka”, answered the sexton, and drew the key out of the door. “Oh Lord! Lord! and is it really he?” repeated the neighbours in great astonishment.
At this moment approached the spot, with a basket in his hand, Vena, who acted as messenger in the parish, dwelt at Loyka’s house and, moreover, had the reputation of being a rascally impudent fellow. He also inquired, “Who is that for?”
“For your good old master, the pensioner”, answered the neighbours, sympathetically.
“For our—ho! ho! for our master, the pensioner—ho! ho!” sneered Vena, and burst out laughing. Although all held him for a fool, still it outraged their feelings when he laughed at such an occurrence.
“This is no laughing matter, Vena”, said they, reproachfully.
But something seemed to have tickled Vena’s fancy. “How, pray, isn’t it a laughing matter when it is? Sure enough, he sent me into the town early this morning, look you, with a basket, look you here; that I might bring punch and rosolek, look you here; they keep it at the brewer’s. He set me on the road as far as the gate, put some small change into my hands and said, ‘Buy there something for your own maw also, my Vena, that my flasks may not suffer by the way!’ and I am just coming from the town, I am bringing him punch and rosolek, look at it! And then he goes and dies, you say! Who is to drink it, pray? And then you say this is no laughing matter.” And again he laughed, until little by little his laughter infected the bystanders listening to it, who at last were fairly puzzled to know what it all meant, and turned inquiringly to the sexton.
The sexton, considering that Vena had dared to turn his official reputation into ridicule, strode up to the culprit as though he meant to take him by the collar. It was evident from the expression of his own eyes that he would most willingly have pulled Vena’s ears or his hair. When he stood about half a pace distant from the other, so that his nose touched Vena’s nose, and his two eyes glared into Vena’s two eyes, he exclaimed pretty sharply, “This is no time for drinking, I tell you. He for whom I have once ​tolled the bell is dead and done for, and when I toll the bell for thee thou wilt be dead and done for.”
This speech and the manner in which it was spoken, not only convinced the neighbours, but it convinced Vena himself. He stopped, almost let fall his basket on the ground, and burst into tears. So that again in a little time he infected all the neighbours’ wives at all events with sorrow; until they were fain to wipe their eyes, and the neighbours said to one another, “Tis a poor fool, but he hath a good heart!”
After a few moments, Vena lifted the basket, took out a flask of rosolek and gulping down his sorrow, said to the neighbours and neighbours’ wives, “What’s to be done with the rosolek now that he is dead, now that he is nothing at all? Ah, neighbours! Help and drink it to his health!” He himself took the first pull and then offered it to the bystanders.
“What are you to do with him when he is a fool?” said they again to one another, half laughing, and in the meantime began to call upon the sexton to explain how it came to pass that old Loyka had died so unexpectedly.
“He dropped off! He dropped off!” said the sexton. “It came upon him just like a yawn—like a hiccup.”
“The Lord God be with us!” cried some of the neighbours’ wives, for it appeared to them that the sexton spoke as learnedly as a doctor.
“Frank, his younger grandson, was with him,” continued the sexton, “you know they loved each other truly and dearly. ‘Frank,’ he said, ‘when I die my watch will be thine. Besides this, what is in yonder drawers and chests is also thine, it is that same silver which I have collected for thee.’ Frank said, ‘Oh! grandfather, who, pray, would talk about death, and you so hale and hearty?’ and he wept. ‘Do you mean it?’ said old Loyka, ‘but I am old, within a little of a hundred years.’”
“A hundred years!” reiterated the neighbours, “that is a great age.”
The sexton proceeded: “‘Ah! Frank,’ says Loyka again, after a pause, ‘I feel constantly as though I had a clod of earth upon me. Boy! clear off this clod of earth!’” ‘You have not, grandfather', said Frank to this, and again wept. ‘You think not? Well, then lead me out on the balcony', and although in the morning he still walked like a stag, and was as fresh as a fish, now he leant upon Frank as though he could scarcely take a step forward.
​“Frank collected his strength―you know he is thirteen years of age―led him out on to the balcony, and Loyka looked all over the court-yard and as though he bid farewell to everything, and after he had cast his eyes in this manner upon one thing after another―buildings, court-yard, granaries, implements―, he said, ‘Welladay, what is the use of crying about it!’ Then he made a sign to Frank to lead him back into the living-room. And when Frank had led him almost into the middle of the floor, Loyka hung yet heavier upon him, and said. ‘Come off! come off!’ just as if he wanted to tear something off with his hand, and at that moment he fell down dead on the ground beside his grandchild.”
“He dropped off! he dropped off!” reiterated the neighbours, and in their eyes trembled a tear of compassion, and at the same time a sort of astonishment and excitement at the thought that he had died so suddenly.
Hereupon all that stream of neighbours and neighbours’ wives just as they were by the chapel-gate, trailed off towards Loyka’s farmstead at the other end of the village.
“At such an age people do not die, they drop off to sleep”, said one of the neighbours, and at once cited a case where something similar had occurred; there was, also, some one somewhere almost a hundred years of age, and he had died at dinner. Then again, others knew that at such an age people knew the hour of their death beforehand, and confirmed the fact by instances. These instances, however, did not suit well old Loyka’s case, because he had sent, while it was yet early morning, into the town for punch and rosolek.
And now before his farmstead they began to recount to one another his life’s history.
“It is something to say, such a great age,” observed one―it was the mayor of Frishets―“and yet last summer at harvest, he cut his own pensioner’s share of the crop, and it was thus wise: he cut along the line of reapers a portion equal to his own height; when he had cut so much, he said, ‘What availeth it, I cannot ply my sickle nowadays?’ and he laid him down at full length in the space which he had cut.”
The neighbours smiled slightly, and said, “Ah! welladay! How could he ply his sickle at all at such an age, I wonder? A hundred years!”
“One time while he lay thus,” proceeded the Mayor, once more, “I go close by him with my sickle, and I say, ‘Oh! grandfather ​help us in God’s name.’ Loyka perceived that I was smiling and said, ‘Lazy body! lie no longer, up! up! and work thou also!’ Then he rose and set himself to cut the corn, I meanwhile sat beside him near the boundary-stone, and waited till he had once more finished cutting his own small portion. When he had finished it, he again lay down.”
“And why could not his son, the present proprietor, cut it for him?” inquired some, though, indeed, they knew why this was not done, because they had already asked the same question several times at least, both in the present and the past.
“He could and he could not,” answered the mayor again, “of course you understand―he was a pensioner of the son’s bounty. ’Tis seldom a son gives the father anything who is once pensioned off.”
As soon as this sentence was pronounced it was again evident that Vena was present. He stood by the farmstead, considering what to do with the rosolek, now that no one was willing to drink it. But as soon as he heard about the son and the pensioner on his bounty, he seemed all at once to be beside himself. “A murrain upon you every morning, ye peasant proprietors, who do not know what to do with your father when he is pensioned off. Only let me have power in my hands for half a day, I would drive you round the circle, I can tell you! Every one of you should be pensioned off at once for two years at least. A son cannot have a korets of land reaped for his father, because the father is pensioned off; blast all such sons, say I.”
“’Tis a poor fool, and yet he hath right on his side,” said some of his neighbours, “but he is touched here.” Others again said, “How, then, dare you say this, Vena, are you not a dependent on Loyka’s farm?” To this Vena replied very indignantly, “If I am on Loyka’s farm, I work for myself, I have no need of any one to work for me. Also I speak for myself, I have no need that any one should speak for me.”
Here the mayor again interposed: “Well! well! old people are sometimes rather laughable; in their time everything was quite different, you know. While Loyka lay on the rye which he had cut, he said: ‘Nowadays, my good gossip, there are not such winters as they used to be. In my young day, the sparrows fell from the eaves and partridges and hares were frozen like clods of earth. More than once we thought it was the cat serattling at the door, and lo! it was a hare. Did you ever hear the like of that?’ On this I say to him, ‘Oh! grandfather, one summer you ​had your well frozen hard.’ At this he sat upright in astonishment just where he had been lying, and said, ‘Lord ha’ mercy! the well hard frozen in summer-time! No! I cannot remember it ever to have been hard-frozen in summer-time in my young day. The Lord God be with us!’”
At this all the neighbours laughed simple-hartedly, and each one confirmed by some instance the statement that old people like to discriminate between their times and ours. And now the mayor beckoned to the bystanders that they should step quite close to him. And then he said not very loud, “On this, I said to old Loyka, ‘Oh! grandfather, I am surprised to find that you do not know that you had your well hard-frozen in summer-time.’ ‘My dear good little gossip,’ says he, ‘for many a long year now I have not ventured to draw water from my son’s well; his peasant wife does not allow it.’” At these words a thrill of consternation ran through the group of listeners.
Vena, it is true, had not wound himself into the selecter circle, but, none the less, he exclaimed as though he had heard all that was said: “Not allow him to draw water! The frog retires that the dog may lap, and a son shuts his well against his own father.”
“You see he knows how to give names to things, and yet ’tis but a poor fool”, said the neighbours, and they thought wonderingly about the peasant proprietor, Loyka, although they had already heard about this affair of the well, and in fact from Vena himself.
“While I sat that day by the boundary-stone,” the mayor began again, “I inquired of Loyka, ‘Oh! grandfather, you can call to mind many a Kaiser this day, I take it.’ ‘I can call to mind Kaiser and gentry', replied Loyka. ‘I call to mind the time when Kaiser Joseph ploughed, and then I call to mind the time when all the gentry did it after him, only that the Kaiser ploughed with horses and the gentry with us.’”
Here the neighbours again laughed, and said, “What of that! he knew how to muster his parts of speech, and to give a slap in the face to high and low, only that he preferred to give it to the high and mighty.”
“I call to mind yet more”, said Vena, insinuating himself into the conversation. “I call to mind how that we plough one with another, and how that each hospodar laments that he cannot plough the field with his own father who is pensioned off. Oh! ye sons, what wouldn’t you give to have your wretched ‘tatas’ tugging at the plough.”
​This remark appeared extremely personal, and they began to gesticulate against Vena; but some recognized that what he had said was at least true as regarded the Loykas.
Here one man said, “Only what surprised me is that old Loyka was so contented when he fared so ill as a pensioner.”
“Ah! well! well!” said the mayor, in elucidation of the mystery. “It is easy to be content when one has the wherewithal. He had good reason to be content. He had money enough for himself alone, about which he was wont to say, ‘While that exists, I need never beg anything of any one.’ And well that he had it, and not well that he had it. Well, because his son, the hospodar, frequently kept back his pensioner’s share of the crop, and the old man might have been reduced to real distress if he had been kept waiting for it; not well, because, on the other hand, old Loyka, when the law bore him out, forced his son to pay every quarter of grain due. From this money sprang their differences. And then all that he could spare was laid by, and now old Loyka’s Frank gets it all.”
“That boy will cut a figure in the world”, said some one. “He quite hung on his grandfather, and was at his house all day and all night long, until even his mother was angry with him for it. I maintain that he loved his grandfather more dearly than he loved either his father or his mother.”
“And where, pray, will you find children who do not love their grandfather and grandmother more dearly than they love their parents”, suggested others again. “You have at once his elder brother Joseph”, responded the former speaker.
“Faugh! he, indeed, why he never loved any one in his life.” The opinion thus pronounced apparently expressed the general sentiment, for no one contradicted it.
At this moment a heart-rending wail resounded from the farmyard, and attracted the attention of all the neighbours present. They peered through the half-opened gate and said to one another, “’Tis Frank; we might have known it.”
Frank ran out on to the village green, his hair dishevelled, his face wet with tears, his eyes still filled with tears, and sobbed forth amid sighs and gulpings, “We have lost grandfather, our people drive me from him-oh! unhappy that I am!” And he cried until he choked.
During this outburst of sorrow the neighbours were silent. Only Vena took upon himself the task of continuing the conversation. “Ah! we know why they have driven thee out. They want to grab! They are grab, grabbing!” and he began to represent ​in dumb show how they were scraping everything into their pockets. But all at once, while thus engaged, Vena paused, clapped his hand to his forehead and said, “Pantata, the mayor! how forgetful I have been! When I went to the town this morning old Loyka gave me this paper, and says he, ‘When you come back from the town give it to my good gossip, the mayor.’ And here am I forgetting all about the paper from sheer surprise!” He put his hand to his pocket, where he had an official document, drew out a roll of paper and handed it to the mayor.
The mayor broke the seal, ran his eyes over the contents, and said, “This is Loyka’s last will. He leaves everything to you, Frank, and everything is here mentioned down to the smallest details.”
Very likely Frank did not hear what the mayor said. He sat by the gate on the ground, leant his hand on the abutment of the wall, his head on his hand, and wept without cessation.
But extreme surprise and astonishment had got the better of the rest of the bystanders, as was evident from the following conversation.
“Show it us, good gossip, the mayor, show it us!”
“On my faith it is all true.”
“And as soon as Vena returned from the town, he was to hand it over to you.
“Well, and he has handed it over, to be sure.”
“And then, they say that old Loyka did not know when he was to die.”
“To a hair he knew that he was to die to-day.”
“You see, I told you that old people knew to a hair when they are to die. Every one who is a hundred years old knows it. And he bade bring that rosolek here, that they might have it ready against the funeral.”
The circumstances of the case so cohered together, that they only the more confirmed the general astonishment.
Then the mayor said, “The defunct has appointed me trustee, to look through his personal property in the presence of witnesses, and to take everything under my protection. Come, then, neighbours; if two of you are willing to offer yourselves to be witnesses we can go to the house of the defunct at once, and look over his personal effects.”
“Prithee, why not? prithee, why not?” answered the neighbours, and hurried into the court-yard of the Loykas, but instead of two, all pressed forward, just as they were. Each man thought ​to himself, “Who knows whether the mayor will not select me to be a witness, and if not, what matters it? I shall be a witness all the same.”
Even the neighbours’ wives hurried after the neighbours into the court-yard. Only that here in the court-yard the male element detached itself from the female; the neighbours following the mayor up the staircase into the pension house, the neighbours’ wives remaining below in the court-yard.
In the meantime, that is to say, while Frank ran out on to the village green and the neighbours betook themselves to the pension house, Loyka’s son and Loyka’s son’s wife laid out the corpse of the defunct on the bed, and the following conversation passed between them.
“Thirty years have we carried hither his pensioner’s share of the crop, and at last we ourselves are free to enjoy the pensioner’s portion”, said Loyka’s wife.
“We have wronged him grievously”, said Loyka, the hospodar, and clasped his hands.
“We him! he us much more! It is pretty late in the day to call black white now that he is dead, when it was allowed to be black during all his lifetime.”
“He hath his dismissal; who knows what awaits us?”
“A pleasing spectacle, truly! to see you begin now to condemn what you approved for thirty years. We lay down a burden with him in the tomb; do not prevaricate, you know it as well as I do.”
“I would far sooner that I did not know it.”
“Oh! you men, you men! ye fear not the living, and as soon as their eyes are closed in death you grow timorous. Why should not I feel light-hearted to-day? I never feared him while he was alive. I tell him even now that he is dead-I feel the lighter for his loss. I should like to know the farm where they would not breathe free again when the pensioner on their bounty was taken from them, and such a one, too.”
“He was my father.”
“And went to law with you about every measure of his pensioner’s share of the harvest. He never wanted for anything, he had already laid by so much for himself, and he kept back from us enough for ten people to have lived upon, and then he went to law with his son.”
“But I lived with him before in peace and happiness, even now I feel sorry for it all.”
​“Don’t speak such words, peasant. Where do people ever treat their pensioners differently? What is given to the pensioner [vyminkar] is a lost thing to the farm, particularly if he has no need of anything, just as, in fact, your father had not.”
“You always deafen my conscience, wife.”
“Yes, when conscience tells thee to reckon five for nine. And when it dubs me an ambitious worldling—is that conscience?”
Such and similar remarks were made by this woman beside the corpse of the venerable centenarian, her father-in-law. The grave which generally closes the lips of slander had no such effect upon her.
Then her eyes fell on a small table which contained, as she was aware, a considerable amount of her late father-in-law’s property. She reconnoitred the small table, found a key in the drawer, pointed it out to her husband, and said well delighted, “You see we have the key in our hands; it will be ours; ours, too, will be all these savings and not that nasty Frank’s. And you would have let the boy stay and take it all.”
Her husband understood this hint, and stepped close to the table in order to assist his wife in her investigation, and also to see with his own eyes how much his father’s savings might amount to.
They had just not opened the drawer when they heard steps—many steps on the staircase. They listened, the little key remained in their hands just tapping against the table. At that moment entered the living-room of the pension house—the mayor, and after him almost all the neighbours.
Frank also had taken this opportunity to insinuate himself into his grandfather’s apartment, knelt again beside the corpse, and only called out, “Oh! grandfather! oh! grandfather!”
The mayor saluted, “Neighbour Loyka, may God console you. Look here; just read through what is written on this paper and then give that key in my hands.”
At these words the peasant woman grew pale, and almost trembled. “You see here, neighbours, a key in my hand. I should like to know who dares to say, “That key is mine.’”
“Certainly you dare not say so, my good gossip”, said the mayor sleekly. “Just wait until your husband has read through what I have given him.”
When hospodar Loyka had read his father’s last will and testament to the end, he went to his wife, tore the key out of her hand, and said, “Take it, my good gossip, the mayor!”
​“Well, then, you may see about the funeral as well, good gossip, the mayor”, said the peasant woman, and burst into tears. They were tears of anger, of impotence, and of little-mindedness.
“I will see about it, my good gossip, I will see about it”, said the mayor; went to the corpse, took its measure, then took Frank by the hand, gave him his measure, and said, “Go, little son of mine, to the grave-digger, that he may delve a grave for thy grandfather according to this measure.”
Frank took the measure, and sped like the foam, and the mayor and his witnesses discharged their duties with respect to Loyka’s personalty.
CHAPTER II
IN Frishets they had a chapel, near which lay the old burial-ground, but they had long ceased to bury the dead in it. The burial-ground for the present defunct was distant about a quarter of an hour’s journey from the village, and almost in a deserted spot.
From Frishets to the west trended a low hill for a distance of two miles; it was tillage-land on both its slopes and divided into fields, while along the ridge of the hill itself ran a carriage road. Half-way along the hill and near the carriage-road was the burial-ground of the union—that is to say, Frishets and several other villages.
Four lofty walls, built in a quadrangle and whitewashed, proclaimed from a distance that they were the walls of a cemetery. High aloft and stretching to heaven in the centre of these four walls a ruddy-painted cross on which hung a white-metal figure of the Christus confirmed it, while several lesser crosses which only just managed to peer into the neighbouring district with their summits ranged along the wall, equally bore witness to the fact. If a dead man could have risen from the grave, he would only have needed to sit astride the cemetery wall and he would have seen his native village and the very house in which he was born, from whatever parish he had been brought hither. Contrariwise, the villagers of any parish could see at a glance the dwelling-place of their dead, and visit them in memory.
Moreover, in the cemetery were two modest buildings placed side by side. One with three grated windows; and in that dwelt the grave-digger. One with a single small window without any ​grating, and there dwelt the bones. It was quite proper that, on account of the lonesomeness of his dwelling the grave-digger should have his windows grated, in order that no ill-disposed person should break into his house; it would have been quite superfluous to put a grating to the charnel-house; for who would ever think of entering that single window? At one side were a few skulls piled in order and a few unburied shin-bones—that was a treasure about which a thief pays scanty heed.
By day mirth and gaiety reigned around the burial-ground. People worked afield, conversed, sang, whistled, shouted to one another from field to field, and answered one another from field to field and sound and speech are the source of all gaiety.
From field to field scudded the partridges, sometimes a hare ran along the road as far as the cemetery and browsed on the graves of human ancestors, to requite these for having dined off his own ancestors. Or a lark fluttered from the field into the blue air of heaven, and there poured forth melody for its own delight, and also for our enjoyment. The field grew green with varied tints of emerald, grew pink and white with clover, grew yellow with beet-root, grew crimson with hosts of poppies—and in the midst of it all glistened the burial-ground, in the midst of the burial-ground stretched to heaven the ruddy cross with the white-iron figure of the Christus.
Here at eventide and at nightfall it was not so gay. No one was working in the field, no one spoke, the lark was asleep, and the green tint of the field was bathed in the sombre colours of evening and of night. And then these crosses which peered forth over the cemetery wall were just like heads and those heads looked just as if they were leaning on their hands, and it all peered forth over the wall at the carriage-road, and at any one who might be passing along it. The tall ruddy cross in the centre raised on high its desolate arms, on which, in windy weather, thumped the white-iron figure of the Christus. From the burial-ground a bat flitted forth—after this there was nothing for it but that the wayfarer should cast a timid glance at the bone-house, to see whether something was not there also glowering from the window, and then lastly he must fain cast a glance at the dwelling of the grave-digger to see whether there was a light in the window or whether those windows also were lost in ghostly fantasies.
At eventide and at nightfall few of the villagers cared to take a walk hither, and any one whose road led along the ridge of the hill or on either side of it, preferred to diverge I know not how ​many miles through lanes and by-ways rather than allow himself to be surprised at night in the neighbourhood of the burial-ground. As to dwelling here day after day and night after night, for a whole year, for all one’s life—you might have built a golden palace on the spot and I know not whether you would have found in the whole country-side a man to inhabit it.
Logic sometimes makes strange skips. All will perceive that a place which every one shuns after dark is one of perfect security. A child might stand a siege there, and the puniest could put to flight the staunchest-hearted. And yet every grown-up person would have considered himself a poor creature if he had settled there as grave-digger. And yet, on the other hand, he thought to himself that the grave-digger ought to be a perfect Hercules to bear calmly all the horrors of the place—the glowering of the crosses over the wall, the thumping of the tinned figure of the Christus, the flittering of the bats, the desolateness of the bone-house, and similar things.
By a strange coincidence it happened that the grave-digger was the Hercules of the neighbourhood, Bartos, about whom whole books might be written. If Bartos had ever said, “I will give battle to a ghost”, every one would have wagered that Bartos would get the best of the encounter—such a man and no other was cut out to be a grave-digger in a lonely cemetery. So then, perhaps, it came to pass that the popular logic argued backwards, as thus: because the present grave-digger, Bartos, was the Hercules of the neighbourhood, it followed that only a Hercules was fit to be a grave-digger in that spot.
How many a story of his strength was recounted by credible eye-witnesses. Once on Sunday, when Bartos was on the spree, there drove into Frishets a drag full of soldiers on leave, and in their insolence they chevied the people hither and thither and struck at every one who approached their vehicle. Hereupon arose a panic in the village, people ran out of the ale-house and among them Bartos. Bartos seized hold of the horses, held them back, and held back even the vehicle. But, thereby, he effected but little, because he could not approach the carriage seeing that the soldiers struck out at every one. “Come and hold the horses! come and hold the horses!” shouted Bartos to his neighbours. And when the neighbours held the horses Bartos crept under the carriage, arched his back against it, lifted it off the ground and upset it, so that the soldiers fell out of it and then the citizens were quit of them. Never in their lives had the ​soldiers suffered such a reverse, even from an enemy, as on this occasion.
In these parishes it was a custom to test the strength by charging at one another face to face. Folks only tried it once with Bartos—never a second time; at the second fling, he sent every one spinning, his opponent staggered backward and it was a wonder if he did not fall.
Also, “the hook” was a frequent mode of exercise. Two men clasped the bight of a large hook with the fingers and thumb and then pulled against one another across a table. Come and try “the hook”; no one tried against Bartos more than once. He always gave way the first time, but at the second bout he dragged along his adversary together with the table, then his adversary for a couple of days had to nurse his thumb in cold water.
As he was strong so he had artifice. Once he went homewards by night in winter wrapt in his cloak. There fell upon him four footpads, and in order that he should not escape they muffled him in his own cloak. But Bartos tore away from beneath the chain which served for a clasp at the neck—glided out of the cloak like an eel, and soon put all his enemies to rout.
In order that no one should be surprised that highwaymen should fall on a grave-digger, I must say at once that he was well-known to carry money about his person. In those days strong boxes and savings banks were not yet invented. People, therefore, who were possessed of wealth lodged their money with Bartos, because he dwelt in a cemetery, and because he was strong. It became the custom of the neighbourhood to have their money buried in the ground by Bartos at his abode. Thus Bartos seldom or never went to or from a village without carrying silver in his pockets, sometimes a hundred pieces or more. Just as any one wanted money or was flush of it, Bartos brought it or carried it away. Hence we may see also that people built on his tried honesty as on a rock.
If he went to more distant villages at nightfall, and had to go by a wood, and he was apprehensive of danger, he laid himself somewhere behind the bushes, teamed the money into his boots, and so slept till morning. Or if it was cold he laid himself somewhere beside a dunghill, thrust his feet into it, and slept thus.
Once they almost had him. Hereupon he turned round, and cried out, “If you do not decamp, I will plunge this knife into your ​bodies.” The chaps took fright and fled, but Bartos had merely a splinter of wood in his hand in place of a knife.
Of his youthful experiences especially, many stories were told. He was once in an ale-house where music was playing, and the lads were disputing who should have the honour of dancing a solo.
When they could in no wise determine among themselves, Bartos stepped up to the table, behind which sat the musicians, clapped his fist down upon it, and shouted out, “Play me a solo.” The musicians tuned up, and Bartos had already begun to spin round in the waltz with some damsel or other. But his comrades would not leave him in peace. Like one man they clubbed together against him, and tried to hinder him from dancing. Bartos let go his partner, caught the foremost of the lads with one hand by the neck, with the other hand by the girdle, lifted him off his feet high in the air, began to chevy the others with him, to strike them blindly with him, and to press them towards the doorway until he pressed them through it; then he flung the one whom he had held by the neck and the girdle among them, and said, “Take him, it was he who worsted you.” Then he looked around for his partner, she was cowering under a bench in a corner of the room and trembled all over. Says Bartos, “Just come out of that”, and then to the musicians, “You have not finished playing us the solo.” Never in her life had the damsel danced as she did that day. The servants peeped in at the window to see how she and Bartos danced together, and he danced until he was out of breath. When he could not make another step, he called to those who stood outside, “Now you may come in, now I will let you have your turn.”
But Bartos was by no means a gross tyrannical sort of giant. Never in his life had he ever challenged any one, never in his life had he ever given the first blow, after that, if he gave one, it was scored in the popular memory. Nor was he the least at feud with the gentry in public offices, only that there again he had a tongue in its proper place and lammed into them with words. He had no fear of persons, be they gentle or humble; of the gentry still less than of the humble.
He carried money for his neighbours to the public offices and into the city; who, pray, could take it into the town more securely, who, pray, could do their business for them better than Bartos? But God preserve the official who dared to touch him even with a harsh look! Or just fancy if they had threatened him with the ​clerks in the office. Four clerks might have come, and neither singly nor altogether would they have dared to forge upon him—perhaps they would have been afraid to receive him even in the lock-up house.
Once the neighbours drove into Prague with wheat, and took Bartos with them as cashier. Bartos stopped at the tolbooth to pay the duty. How could the collector know that it was Bartos, the grave-digger! He paid no attention to him, and made as though he counted. “How much will it be?” cried Bartos with such vehemence that the paper fell out of the toll-collector’s hand. “Come, come, we will have no bullies here”, said the toll-collector. “A thousand curses! you are the bully”, said Bartos, and nothing more. The toll-collector also said nothing more, but his hand trembled with rage as he gave Bartos the change, and thus it happened that one “desetnik” fell on to the pavement outside his office. “There is a ‘desetnik’ missing”, says Bartos. “You have it on the ground”, says the tax-collector, and nudged himself into a certain amount of valiancy. “I pick up nothing from the ground”, says Bartos. The toll-collector must even shuffle out of his office, pick up the “desetnik”, and give it into Bartos’s hands. “There now I have all”, said Bartos, and as he quitted the tolbooth muttered loud enough for the toll-collector to hear, “I will teach people to throw money on the ground.”
Another time he went to an office for the purpose of drawing a sum of money and the cashier happened to be a new-comer, and thus did not know Bartos. This official said that he had the money at home in his house, that Bartos might go on in advance, and that he himself would follow him directly; Bartos went into the house. But the official did not come for a long time and Bartos began to grow impatient, and when the cashier did come he began to talk to his wife and did not notice Bartos. Bartos rose from his seat and began to open the windows in the room, he opened them all. The official begged to know what he was about. “If I have to wait,” said Bartos, “I must have fresh air; stinks are not for me.” Then the cashier’s wife began to interfere, and shrieked out, “Look at the red-hair’d ruffian!” “Yes, look at him,” retorted Bartos quickly, “and then look at Madame’s sweet double chin.”
This silenced the official’s chatter, and indeed his good lady’s, who hastily threw a handkerchief about her neck; after a few minutes Bartos had the money counted out to the last kreuzer.
​Once he came to a lawyer’s office, and there they wished to put him off with a paper scrawled over with pot-hooks, telling him to come another day. “And, pray, why should I come another day when I am here to-day”, answered Bartos testily. “What is that?” said the official. “That I will not stir hence until my business is transacted.” The official shouted to a clerk. Just as he had uttered the words Bartos stepped up to the table behind which sat the official, and said tartly, “A clerk on me! Here I am if you want me. Then he struck the official’s table such a blow with his stick that it set all the pens and pencils skipping, and shouted, “Am I then come to look for justice at some booby’s office!” Hereupon all the official staff rushed in pell-mell, but as soon as they saw Bartos they whispered something to their chief, whom the affair had compromised, and in five minutes Bartos’s business was transacted. It is to be understood that now none of the clerks were forthcoming, and if they had come it would have been just the same.
If some of my readers think these answers and sayings of Bartos somewhat rough and boorish, I cannot help it. But still I say that he only paid folks in their own coin, and that he only paid them out in this manner when they as good as braved him to do so. But if the brutalities and all the insulting expressions were noted down, which in previous times (every one knows how long ago I mean) the officials permitted themselves to use towards the people, a pretty large column might be compiled. Also it came to pass sometimes that the neighbours grumbled in the presence of Bartos about the brutal behaviour of the officials. “It is a curious thing,” said Bartos, “I have had no fault to find with them now for a long time.”
Once he came to an office and the official was smoking. Bartos also drew out a well-filled pipe and lighted it. “Do you think you are in the servants’ hall?” objected the official. “Yes,” answered Bartos, “here is smoke as if from a lot of stable-boys”, and they passed it over.
In other respects Bartos was, as we have said, intrinsically good-hearted, and even not without humour. About a hundred paces from the burial-ground stood several pear-trees which belonged to the neighbours of Frishets, but they allowed Bartos to take the fruit in requital for his various services, so that Bartos might say the pears were his. Once, on a Sunday afternoon, thinking that Bartos was not at home, two lads climbed into the pear-tree and shook off the fruit into bags. But, as it fell out, ​Bartos approached. The lad who saw him first jumped down and cried out to the other to make haste for Bartos was coming. But the other one dawdled. Just as he was about to spring down Bartos ran under him, caught him by the collar, so that the lad found himself treading the air with both feet. While continually threatening him with the whip, his captor only said, “I’ll teach thee to dawdle another time”, and then he let the lad go scot-free.
Just as people told stories about Bartos as the country Hercules so also they had to tell about him in his character of sexton. More than once they had seen him weep while he dug a grave, and more than once they heard him hold mysterious communication above an open grave. More than once they had seen him sitting on a grave as though he were holding intercourse with the dead. But not perhaps with this or that dead man, but with all whom he had known.
He used to visit them in succession or according as he missed them, and felt sorry for them. “I must go to Klimoff,” he would. say, “just now I feel so sorry for him.” And then he reminded Klimoff of all sorts of things—where he had walked with him, where they used to ramble together, when they had gone to hear the band play, and so forth. When this recapitulation was quite at an end, he would say, “And now it is your turn, Klimoff, to tell me how you get on down there.” After this he listened for a moment, and when no reply came, he made as though he had heard an answer, and said, “Ah! yes, that is just what I thought. How curious! Ah! ha! so it is like that down there. Ah! well! how different it must be when it is like that”, and so forth.
He had a very special set of reflections when after seven summers some one’s turn came to be exhumed. When he had delved down to the coffin, he rapped on the lid, and shouted, “Are you there, Vaclav!” After this he answered himself for the dead man, “I am.” “Come then, creep out”, he said again for himself; then with the greatest care he raised the lid of the coffin and, beholding the corpse which looked as if swathed in spider’s webs, he said, “And pretty dainties thou dost get down there! What a figure thou art! Thy own children would not recognize thee if ever they were to meet thee! And not to have a rag on! Shocking! Pray, when did you comb yourself? And what is the fashion your head-gear follows? Nowadays we never wear it thus. To think of combing it thus.” And so on. Then again he ran through the dead man’s past life with him, and ​here it pretty often came to pass that Bartos wept; just as if he had only then laid the corpse in the grave. Generally this exhumation concluded thus, “It is not well with thee down there; they have patched thee together but poorly. Alas! I fear thou wilt not hold together much longer.” After this he touched the corpse, which thereupon fell to pieces into bones and a few Iclods of earth.
This man, just as he was compassionate towards the dead, was yet a hundred times more so towards the living. There was no grief for which he did not feel compassion, there was no misfortune which ever failed to touch his heart. But it was not perhaps the spurious compassion which is assumed to win general admiration; rather was it the compassion which, if possible without parade and bustle, is succeeded by compassionate deeds.
Once they brought a coffin to the burial-ground slovenly nailed together. No one followed it to the grave save one little girl three years of age. In the coffin lay a kind of a servant-girl—they called her Katchka. She was an illegitimate child, and the little girl who followed her to the grave was also illegitimate. How could any honest soul come to such a funeral?
For the nonce, Bartos had to play the priest. He repeated a few prayers over the grave, and when the little one wept over the coffin, he said, “Sprinkle it, little one, sprinkle it: maminka will sleep the lighter; for the tears of a child are the fairest waters of purification.” When he wished to lower the coffin into the grave he saw that there was to help him only one servant who had driven the dead Katchka in an open-ribbed wagon. “Is there no one here but thee?” inquired Bartos angrily.
“And who, then, would come to the funeral of such a ——”, said the servant, and leered in a very saucy manner.
After this Bartos was silent, and filled in the grave over the corpse. When the grave was filled in, the little girl plaintively lamented that she had no one to go to, and that no one wanted her in the village.
“And why does no one want her”, asked Bartos of the servant.
“And who, then, would trouble his head about her, about such a——”, said the servant again, and once more leered in the same saucy way.
“What dost thou mean by ‘such a one', thou boor!” retorted Bartos on the servant. “Did any other than He who created thee, create her? Wilt thou make thyself her judge, because she came ​into the world thus and not otherwise? Thou knowest, forsooth, who is such a one, and who is not such a one.”
And then he gave the servant a trifle to salve his wounded pride. “Well, they all say it”, observed the servant apologetically. “All such boors as thou”, retorted Bartos. And then he turned toward the little girl, and inquired what they called her.
“Staza”, said the little damsel.
“You shall never go with him again, little Staza”, said Bartos, and took her by the hand. “You shall stay here with me and maminka. Would you like?”
“I should like.”
And from that day forth Bartos adopted little Staza as his own.
She had been with him six years and called him “tatinka”, and so she was nine years old when Loyka’s Frank brought the measure to Bartos, in order that by it Bartos might delve the grandfather’s grave.
CHAPTER III
IT was a dreary mission for Frank to carry to the cemetery the measure for his grandfather’s grave. Hitherto he had not in the least realized that it was a burial-ground. He had been there when somebody was being interred, when they sang hymns to him, prayed above his coffin, and wept for him. But what effect have all such ceremonies upon a mere child? Issuing from the burial-ground he sees the laughing green fields, the flowery hedgerows, he sees the weasels run along the hedgerows, and forthwith yon grim cemetery is forgotten, and is no longer the truth.
But now he was carrying thither the measure for his grandfather’s grave. So, then, after all it was the truth. And then he saw how the crosses glowered above the wall into the surrounding district, how in the centre rose the red cross into the air, and on it the white-iron figure of the Christus; he saw, too, where dwelt the grave-digger and where was the bone-house-so, then, all that world of greenery around him was no longer true, only the cemetery spoke to him. Its speech was like the speech of some direful ogre; Frank scarcely understood the words, and was filled with a kind of vague horror at which the heart within him died away and his throat was half-choked with sobs.
​The gate by which one entered the burial-ground was a wicket-gate, and painted the same colour as the great cross in the centre of the cemetery. When Frank had reached the gate he stopped outside it, and looked through the wicket into the cemetery. He looked upon it as upon that horrible Unknown, with which he must now make himself acquainted. He looked first at one grave and then at another, and then thought to himself, “Perhaps grandfather’s will look pretty much like that one.” Then he looked to see what state the graves were in. Some had half collapsed into the ground, some were covered with a fair green mound, on some were flowers, others were railed off, at the head of some stood a cross, at the head of others only a staff with a lath nailed across it to form a cross, at the head of a third was only a stave without any lath across it. In one corner of the burial-ground lay a few unburied bones.
Although it was a warm day at the beginning of June, and the air was clear and full of pleasant sounds, winter seemed to have entangled Frank in its icy folds. That icy winter breathed from the cemetery and from each and every grave within it. It seemed to Frank as though with the measure for his grandfather’s grave he had taken upon himself an unpropitious task, and as though he had undertaken a mission to an accursed place which it was impossible to carry out without contamination. He stood by the gate as if frozen to the spot, not knowing how to fulfil the task entrusted to him.
At that moment came out of the grave-digger’s dwelling the little Staza with a watering-pot in her hand. She came out into the cemetery and watered the graves, and all the while sang with a tiny treble, sweet and tuneful, the words, “Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits”]. The grass and the flowers were half withered on the graves: where she sprinkled them they began to smell sweet, and their odour was wafted to the gate where Frank was standing.
It was a very tender sentiment which now filled the mind of Frank. That little girl fluttered like a butterfly over the graves, watering with the dew of life, like a spring shower, Nature’s exhausted and withered offspring—and singing all the while “odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits”]. From the cemetery the blast of winter ceased to blow, a sportive presence seemed to linger there, something breathed ​warm along the sward, perhaps even the dead felt it. Then once more Staza tripped away and vanished through the door of the grave-digger’s abode, and the place was again untenanted. No song nor dance was there, only the jointed grasses raised aloft their jaded limbs. And now it seemed to Frank that after all the place was cold and gloomy.
But lo! there was Staza once again with fresh water and once again was like a butterfly and once again was buzzing like a bee and once again was watering the flowers everywhere, approaching even almost to the gate. Frank was apprehensive lest she should catch sight of him; if she caught sight of him all must be at an end; he stepped aside a little towards the wall and only just bent his head towards the gate and peeped. Staza was again singing “odpocinte v pokoji”, and now she mingled with it divers other tunes. She drew them forth from her inmost soul one after the other, just as we draw out from a wardrobe dress after dress in order that we may look through them and give them an airing. Even those melodies needed an airing from time to time lest they should be jumbled together in her bosom.
Frank, standing by the gate, felt himself every moment growing more at ease; as though some one had given him in that accursed place a silver clue, and he had caught hold of it. Again he emerged from his hiding-place and boldly posted himself in front of the gate, indifferent now as to whether Staza saw him there or no.
Staza saw him, she stopped, she ceased to sing, and looked towards the gate only just a moment to see whether the young visitor wished to enter or whether he wished to give some message.
When Frank did not speak she advanced several steps towards the gate, and then said, “And so it is at your house, Frank, is it? Wait and I will go and call tatinka.” And she ran into the grave-digger’s abode. Frank was lost in amazement to know how the girl could read in his face what was passing in his inmost soul. We, however, need no explanation of the mystery. They had heard the funeral bell, and Bartos had said to Staza, “Where is it, I wonder?” And he waited expecting some one to give orders about a grave. Staza now saw Frank and said, as if repeating her father’s question, “And so it is at your house!”
When Bartos sallied forth with Staza he had already a pick on his shoulder and Staza had in her hands a shovel, wherewith, ​apparently, to throw out of the grave the loosened clods of earth, Bartos went directly to the gate, and said in a peaceful manner, “My dear Frank, perhaps it is grandfather, eh?” “It is grandfather”, responded Frank in a voice still half drowned in tears. “Grandfather, grandfather”, repeated Bartos to himself while opening the gate. “Ah! welladay, none escape the bed I make them here. Some of us fight longer than others against being sleepy, but each sleeps once.”
Frank stepped into the burial-ground and handed over the measure. “The measure!” said Bartos, “your grandfather could just get under my chin, he was amongst the tallest men in the village, I know his measure. And where, pray, would you like the grave to be?” he inquired of Frank. “Take a look round, I will be with you almost immediately and set myself to delve the grave.”
Bartos departed into his house in quest of sundry other implements, and now Frank cast his eyes here and there in search of a suitable spot. But he saw none, because even a grown-up person when overtaken by some real and sudden sorrow, is as one entranced so soon as anything is given him on which to come to a decision.
Here Staza led him by the hand, and said, “Do you know what, Frank, the people from Frishets lie by yonder wall, which faces Frishets; take a peep, yonder in that corner is the highest spot of ground, you can see it from the gate, and if you were to stand upon the grave in that corner you could catch a glimpse of Frishets.”
It is hard to make out what internal connection these words had with one another; but they appeared to Frank to be so consecutive and reasonable that he agreed at once. “Well, then, there in the corner let the grave be”, he said.
“And if you put a cross there it will be visible as far as your house; and if you plant a sapling there it will soon grow big enough to be visible also as far as your house”, observed Staza, almost enthusiastically. And now, all at once, Frank discovered so many good reasons why the grave should be in that corner that nothing in the world would have induced him to permit of its being dug in any other spot.
“Yonder”, said Staza, when Bartos returned, and there they began to delve.
These few and briefly spoken words had already deprived the cemetery in Frank’s imagination of much of its horror. Bartos ​dug, Staza shovelled out the loose earth, and Frank was a silent spectator. Bartos from time to time sang over some popular song which was in keeping with his trade, Staza’s little voice accompanied him like a fiddle-string, and Frank formed the audience.
Bartos also occasionally muttered a few sentences which apparently had reference to the defunct, but which neither of the children at all understood; perhaps Bartos purposely spoke in such a way that Frank should not understand him, and should not have his sorrow awakened.
All at once Staza said, “Franky, when the grave is delved, we will lie in it together.”
At these words Frank recoiled several steps. Staza laughed, and Bartos remained pensive. Frank recoiled like a machine without volition; Staza laughed at this, and Bartos, after a moment’s pause, said, “We are digging close to your mother’s grave, we must take care not to come upon her coffin, it has only been in the ground six years.”
“Delve so that I may come quite close to maminka, then I shall sleep with her”, said Staza, as if she consoled herself with the idea, for any one who had looked for melancholy from this poor child, would have proven himself completely ignorant of the heart of childhood. Staza was but three years of age when her mother died; in such a little heart sorrow cannot obtain a foothold, and after six years a child does not know what it means to have lost a mother.
After these words Frank drew near the grave on the pretence that he wanted to see whether Bartos and Staza would delve so cleverly as not to disturb the neighbouring grave.
“Thou hast never yet slept in a grave, Franky”, said Staza not at all interrogatively, but just as though she were stating a certainty.
“In a grave?” inquired Frank in astonishment. Staza grew on graves as the grass and the floweret grew upon them. This cemetery was her playing-ground, her village green where she frolicked, where she delved and watered the plants and tended them; it was her school where with Bartos and on those graves she learnt little of literary lore, ’tis true, but more than all the patter of the class-room.
When she was yet quite young she had once asked Bartos, “What is my mamma doing in the grave?”
“She sleeps”, said Bartos.
​After this, the very next time Bartos delved a new grave, she laid herelf in it and slept there, as she said, “like maminka”. From that time she slept in every grave as soon as it was delved, if it was not winter-time and if it did not rain. When any one died she consoled herself with the idea that she and Bartos would dig a new grave, and then that she could once more sleep in one. On the whole a funeral was a considerable source of pleasure to her. She saw plenty of people, she saw the priests, then she heard them sing and weep and pray. These funeral prayers became her own morning and evening prayers, these hymns were her hymns, and from the people whom she saw there she formed her notions about human beings, and about the great world. And so she always looked forward to a new funeral, because it was something novel.
She looked forward to it also because she heard new hymn tunes, and when the burial-service was over she sang what she had heard until the next funeral, which perhaps brought her a fresh supply of hymns. However, as she heard at every funeral “Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [Rest in peace ye faithful spirits], this hymn became her favourite. She did not know what these “verne dusicky” [faithful spirits] were, but putting two and two together in her head she had a notion that they were those who slept in the graves. Whenever she laid herself down to sleep, she said to herself in her inmost heart that she would be a “verna dusicka”. And sometimes when she had slept there a long time she said to herself on awakening, “To-day I have been a long time a faithful spirit.”
So then when Frank received her question whether he had ever slept in a grave with so much astonishment, she said, “You have never yet slept like a faithful spirit.” And after a time she added, “Stop, and we will be faithful spirits together.”
Frank, however, of course, did not comprehend the connection between these expressions; however, they pleased him somehow. When he looked at Staza, he felt as though he had to say, “What thou sayest pleaseth me. Why should I not wish to be with thee a faithful spirit?”
After digging some time longer, Bartos inquired of Frank how his grandfather had died, whereupon Frank narrated about the clod of earth, about the balcony, and how after this his grandfather fell dead at his feet. This narrative was listened to by Staza with great interest so that for a while she even ceased to shovel out the loose earth, and looked upon Frank as a man ​of mature wisdom, for had he not had a grandfather who was very, very old, and did he not lead about this grandfather even unto his death?
“Good,” said Bartos after a while, “we have now come close beside thy mamma.” Thus was Frank’s grandfather’s grave all but delved, and because Frank saw that it now already fatigued Staza to shovel out the earth from such a depth, he took her shovel and said, “Give it me. I also wish to do something for grandfather.” He stepped into Staza’s place, and shovelled out the earth. Staza sat beside the grave, and looked to see whether he was an adept.
And now it seemed to Frank as though the grave was deprived of its horror with every shovelful of earth which he flung out. So when Bartos said, “Done!” Frank had already no wish to depart; he leant on his spade and said to Staza, “So, then, come to me, faithful spirit!”
Bartos shouldered his implements and paying no further heed to the children, betook himself home.
“Do you know what?” said Staza, “I will sow clover on your grandfather’s grave.”
“Why?” inquired Frank.
“But dost thou not know? And yet I know that thy grandfather loved bees—he had so many hives. Bees fly to clover, they will speed hither to grandfather’s grave, and grandfather will tell them the message he wishes them to give to thee.”
“Sow it!” said Frank; and now he longed for the clover to overgrow the grave, and that the bees might fly hither.
Then Staza sprang into the grave, seated herself in one corner, and Frank seated himself in the other.
“Thy mamma has also clover on her grave”, suggested Frank. On this Staza grubbed with her fingers in the direction where her mother lay, until she came to the coffin, then she tapped upon it with her finger and the mouldy wood gave out a droning sound.
“To-day I shall sleep beside mamma”, said Staza, and her eyes sparkled with delight. She had no very clear idea of what a mother meant, but she believed, that it was a fine thing to sleep beside mamma. And she had advised Frank to have the grave dug in this spot for no other reason than that she might get near her mother.
“Shall you sleep here all night?” asked Frank.
​“Why should I not? All night I shall sleep here and to-morrow also I shall sleep beside mamma.”
“Who was thy mama?” asked Frank.
“Who was she?” said Staza. “Why, who could she be, when she was my mamma?”
This reply satisfied Frank, at all events if he had tried all his life he himself could not have invented a wiser one.
The sun set and the shadows lay upon the cemetery. In the grave it was already dusk.
“Aren’t you frightened, Franky?” inquired Staza.
“Since it is in the grave in which my grandfather will have to be I am not frightened”, answered Frank, but he was frightened all the same.
“If you are frightened seat yourself beside me, we will sleep together or we can talk”, said Staza; and she at once made a place beside her where Frank esconced himself without further invitation.
And they sat beside each other like two birdies in a nest. “If thou art frightened, I will lead thee home”, said Staza. “I am not frightened.”
And now when Frank saw this little girl so completely without any fear, he said that he would not be frightened either, and that he would not go home. At that moment he felt so fond of his new companion that he could not bring himself to go home. He was happier seated by Staza’s side, and was with her in the grave.
After a while the moon rose, and the whole cemetery shone white like molten silver. The moonbeams penetrated even into the grave, all the interior of the grave looked as though it had been whitewashed, and when Frank looked at Staza she was white also. Frank involuntarily nestled closer to her, and Staza laid her sleepy head on his bosom.
Staza slept with “maminka” beside Frank, they were together “verne dusicky”.
Later in the night if they had not been asleep they would have heard the tramp of feet approach the cemetery, they would have heard a rapping at the grave-digger’s window, they would have heard the voice of the grave-digger, and afterwards all these feet and different voices approach the grave. But because they slept they heard nothing of it.
Loyka, the peasant, it must be understood, when the evening was already far advanced and no Frank appeared at home, fear​ing some mishap, went with Vena and a domestic in the direction of the cemetery to see if he could not meet with Frank somewhere or other. And when they failed to find him, they went as far as the grave-digger’s to make inquiries about him. “He was here until quite late this evening,” said Bartos, “whether he has departed I know not, but it is possible that he is lying in the grave.”
“In the grave?” inquired Loyka with surprise.
“In the grave”, replied Bartos with a peaceful face, and he led them to the grave. “Look how prettily they have fallen asleep together. If you choose awaken him, but I would not awaken him if I were you.”
They slept like two birdies, and knew nothing of what was going on around them.
“When he cannot sleep any longer with his grandfather, he spends the night in his grave,” said Vena, “do not awaken him, pantata.”
Loyka, however, was of a different opinion, and awoke Frank, and this caused Staza also to awake. The boy was drowsy, leapt to his feet, and looked about him. Over the burial-ground streamed the white light of the moon, the crosses stretched forth their giant arms, by the grave stood his father and bade him come home with him. Frank did not at once collect his ideas; only he knew that he was with Staza and that he was not at home.
“Let him be; children are children”, said Bartos.
“But I order him”, shouted Loyka vehemently, and wanted to jump into the grave.
“Softly, softly”, said Bartos quietly; and held Loyka with his hand so that the peasant could not stir a muscle.
“Here I am master—everything only by my consent”, and he did not allow Loyka to take a step forward.
“I am master of the boy”, said Loyka.
“So you are”, said Bartos. “These children consecrated with their breath the grave of your father, and did you wish to desecrate it? Are the wrongs that you have already done him during life, then, not enough?”
These words smote Loyka’s conscience. He ceased from insisting further and in order, perhaps, to escape from hearing the recital of his own past deeds over the open grave, departed from the spot without more words.
Now the children heard the steps and voices receding; but being still frightened they once more cuddled close to one another, and ​before very long were again asleep, Staza on the bosom of Frank and Frank having his hand entwined around her neck.
When they awoke in the morning, Staza said, “If only I had thee for a brother.”
Frank still held her head in his hands, and said, “Well, thou hast me for a brother, if thou wishest.”
Above the grave folks say that truth is spoken, these children were speaking in the grave itself, so what they said was certainly the truth.
After this Staza shared with Frank her bread at breakfast, shared her dinner and everything else, led him all over the cemetery, taught him the airs which she had learnt, and by evening they had more than once sung together in a duet. And because on the morrow his grandfather’s funeral was to be, Frank said that he would not go home at all that day, but would wait until they brought thither his grandfather, and for that once they would still be faithful spirits.
Staza told him to pay attention and notice what tunes were sung at his grandfather’s funeral, and she would learn them all by heart, then they would sing them over again by the grave-side until the earth had been raked over his grandfather’s coffin.
And when the funeral took place, that came to pass which no one the least expected. For while people thought that Frank would follow the corpse with tears and miserable lamentations, Frank never wept at all. And while they thought that Loyka’s wife, the peasant woman, would not shed a tear, she sobbed and wept as though she were broken-hearted, and looked as if she wished to tear her hair.
The peasant woman thus conducted herself, because she wished to efface the impression left by her previous behaviour. She deceived none, but she fancied that she deceived them.
Frank and Staza listened what sort of hymns were sung above the grave that they might learn them afterwards.
When the funeral was over, Frank said, “Now that we are like brother and sister, thou must come to us at Frishets that I may entertain thee at our house.”
Staza went with him; he led her by the hand and the neighbours pointed at Frank and said, “Just look at that boy: he went to dig his grandfather’s grave and out of that grave he is leading——Staza.”
The neighbours’ wives said, “Look! look! he is going about with Staza, with that——she will be just like her mother.”
​Frank said to Staza, “Staza, guess whom I love better than anybody else.”
“Whom?”
“Thee.”
Staza said, “I am so glad for thee to lead me about that I could walk by thy side for ever. I have never gone about with any one before.”
And they went about together before everybody.
CHAPTER IV
THE Loykas, man and wife, by the bedside of their defunct parent, perhaps, left the impression of being an avaricious couple. And cruelly should we wrong them if we held them up to scorn as avaricious. Avaricious they were only towards the pensioner on their bounty, and in this they had the common vice of perhaps a thousand of our families. To be pensioned off—that was to be the enemy of the property. That the pensioner and father were one and the same person, did not diminish the grave crime of being pensioned off by a tax upon the farm produce. The pensioner effaced the father, and the Loykas saw in their father only a pensioner on their bounty. And granted that the pensioner did them a good turn now and then—that was his duty as a father; but the Loykas did not dare ever to do him a good turn—he was pensioned off, and one’s pensioner must be thwarted everyway.
And yet the Loykas were not in this matter by a single hair worse than many others; I say it with a sigh, but you find Loykas certainly in every second or third village.
It was not, then, avariciousness; it was the relation between the peasant and the father who had pensioned himself off. For in other respects the Loykas had all the good qualities of the Czech peasant. They were honest, affectionate, and hospitable. From their farmstead no needy person ever departed without aid. If a beggar had gone through the village and departed empty-handed from every house, he went to the Loykas’s certain of being relieved. If strolling fiddlers or harpers came to the village they stopped at the Loykas’s as at their own home, there they got their victuals, passed several nights, and no one ever inquired when they meant to be off. Ay! the Loykas had two chambers specially set apart in the court-yard next to the coach-house, and these ​chambers were open all the year round; any one who had no roof of his own might take up his quarters in them. And they were occupied all the year round, strolling musicians roosted like birds of passage.
Tinklers tarried there till they had mended all the Loykas’s pots and pans and those of the whole of Frishets.
The kalounkar [tape-pedlar] who walked from Domazlik, and only occasionally went home for goods, dwelt in the Loykas’s chambers as though he were at home with all his family. Sometimes he was there several Sundays, got his victuals from Loyka’s kitchen, and had not even to say thank you for them. So it had been all his life long. The kalounkar’s grandfather and great-grandfather had received hospitality there from the Loykas—then, how could they refuse him a home there? Surely they would call down the wrath of heaven upon themselves should they venture to dismiss him. The kalounkar [tape-pedlar] was himself born there, his present young family was born there, the old Loykas were sponsors in baptism to the old kalounkar, the younger Loykas were sponsors to the wee kalounkars, so now there was a family connection. The Loykas would have felt ill at ease if at certain particular seasons they had been without kalounkar and without tinkers. Perhaps if their humble friends had not been at their house, the Loykas would have sent to search the district for them. At pilgrimage times, at festival times, or about the season of the village gala-they must needs be at the Loykas’s several Sundays before the great event, and several Sundays after it. So that, indeed, there were but few occasions in the year when they were absent.
Besides the kalounkar who sold ribbons, the cloth-pedlar walked the district, and he had even his stores at the Loykas’s. On Monday he drew forth from his chest various samples, beside cloth, all kinds of kerchiefs and stuffs for dresses, then he waited several days until Sunday drew nigh, or until the vigil of the village gala, and then he shouldered his pack and went. If it rained or if the weather was threatening, he did not sally forth, and all that time was an extra hand at table in common with the other servants.
And many an occasion occurred, moreover, when Loyka’s hospitality was reckoned upon or missed. People came to have their sieves mended or their knives ground, and also people drove or walked round by the Loykas’s with their implements from the field.
​Thither also came people from the village, and inquired, “Is not the sieve-maker here at your house? Is not the knife-grinder here? We wanted sieves; we wanted to have our knives sharpened.” Without fail the sieve-maker appeared regularly before harvest, and the knife-grinder as regularly before the village festival.
In those chambers beside the coach-house reigned life and jollity. There the conversation never flagged, and in the evening even Loyka, the peasant, and sometimes, finally, his wife would pay them a visit. Here all that occurred in the district of general interest was recapitulated. So that you might refer to the Loykas’s as to a well-informed gazette. The kalounkar [tape-pedlar] and the cloth-pedlar tramped the whole district and had free access into every family—who then could know more than the cloth-pedlar and the kalounkar?
And then when a fiddler and harper came, there was nothing for it but that he should play and sing over every song he knew of modern and of ancient date, every event consigned to verse, songs of comic character and sprightly pieces of music—then the evenings were gay indeed. Hither, too, from the village a few stray folk would come and form an audience. Hither also Frank led his young companion, with whom he ensconced himself somewhere in a corner and listened.
The narratives which specially pleased Frank and his parents, mostly dated from long winter evenings which include the whole circle of the marvellous, from fierce banditi to black dogs and white women, so that the young people were half dazed with fright if they had to find their way home across the court-yard or across the village green.
Such was the hospitality of the Loykas that they became proverbial. And these same Loykas treated their own father who was pensioned off upon a reserved share of the field produce, so badly that he did not even dare draw water from their well!
In these chambers was also a constant guest—Vena, the general messenger, the half crazed man. If the Loykas had told him that they did not wish to have him any longer about the place, he would not have believed that they spoke in earnest, so thoroughly was he domesticated at their house.
Those chambers by the coach-house would no longer have been themselves if Vena had not been there. With him every one who entered them must sharpen his wit, and from him every one must submit to receive some rebuff either spoken in jest or earnest. ​With his so-called folly Vena provoked much merriment, and by what he said in earnest he raised the merriment a degree higher; it is often the fate of truth that we receive it with laughter.
And thus so many mouths were fed on and off the estate that if Loyka, the peasant proprietor, had shewn all these guests the door, he might have given three shares of the produce as a pension to his father and still have had enough for himself. But, of course, such an idea had never even occurred to any one; thus it had ever been on Loyka’s farm so long as he could remember; it had been thus all through the life-time of his grandfather and even earlier. And yet we have heard that Loyka, the peasant, went to law about every quarter of wheat with his own father. What congruity was there in all this?
All whom we have mentioned: the tinkers, the family of the kalounkar, the cloth-pedlar, the sieve-maker, the knife-grinder, the fiddlers, and the harpers, assembled at the Loykas’s when Frank’s grandfather died, and they were there when Frank led Staza to the farmstead. They assembled at his grandfather’s death as if they had been summoned.
The fiddlers and the harpers considered it their duty to present themselves to see whether their services would be required. It was the custom in our districts to go by easy stages from the burial to music, from music to lively music, from lively music to a downright banquet, and from a banquet to a debauch. Just as if at the funeral they had been sad against their will, and required a lively banquet quickly to counterpoise their weight of woe. They took good care to keep sorrow at arm’s length, and must need have something to divert them from it. Or perhaps genuine sorrow is so rare and portentous a thing that it is necessary to give it a fillip with a flourish of light music whensoever it reveals itself. Or perhaps true sorrow is a superfluous thing, if we needs must lay our dead in the grave with sighs and tears through which all the time we catch the sound of instruments which are tuning for a dance. Or perhaps our sorrow is but as a game of play from which we shake ourselves free in a moment, and which with a dance is ended. But at any rate such is the fact: after a funeral there must be music, and music of a light and cheerful sort.
So then the musicians came confident of employment, and the Loykas conscientiously and sedulously completed all their preparations.
​Before the funeral procession issued forth from the door, Loyka’s wife had already arranged her kitchen; fat beasts slaughtered the day before were already in chops and quarters on the truncheons or were frying on the hobs. Then Loyka’s wife followed the corpse, in order to cry her prescribed modicum of tears to cry a good bottleful, and it was just as necessary and just as much belonged to her sphere as the sauces and the Sauerkraut.
After the funeral, then Loyka’s house wore all the appearance of a festival. The guests who were staying in the house and those who were invited for the day sat down to a richly furnished table, which in the form of a horseshoe occupied the whole of the principal apartment; the musicians seated themselves in the hall by the pantry, and after a few moments everything was as merry as at a wedding.
It was a custom in the Loykas’s family for the males to marry late in life. Thus our defunct centenarian had not married until wellnigh his fortieth year: Loyka, the peasant proprietor, not until after his thirtieth year, consequently he was now sixty and his wife fifty. Joseph, his eldest son, was now about four-and-twenty—we know the age of Frank. Loyka, the peasant, in contra-distinction to the vejminkar [pensioner] was called young Loyka. But after the death of the hundred-year-old grandfather, Loyka, the peasant, became all at once old Loyka, and his son Joseph was promoted to the dignity of young Loyka.
Joseph seemed fully alive to the importance of the day. He did not seat himself at the table, but with watchful eyes superintended and arranged the dishes and liquors as they issued from the kitchen and the cellar, and in the dining-room he attended to the wants of all.
This did not escape the observation of those present, and as soon as conversation became general some of the neighbours turned to Loyka, and remarked, “Your son makes an excellent hospodar.”
“Ay, ay, and doubtless his kind father will not leave him long to wait and why should you grudge yourself repose when you have so stout and goodly a successor.”
Loyka, the peasant proprietor, smiled self-consciously to himself at these words, as though he meant to say by that smile:—“Just wait a little, and you will soon hear what I have determined in my mind.”
​Then when Joseph came into the apartment looking like a bouquet, and threw a glance around him like a recognized commander, the neighbours again said:—
“So Joseph, my lad, you have but to look out for a sweetheart somewhere, your father yonder says he should like to have a daughter in his house, the sooner the better, and his wife agrees with him.”
“You are rather late with your counsels,” suggested another, “he hath pretty well selected already.” And at this the speaker winked at Barushka, who sat near the middle of the table and who, when these words were uttered, bowed her head over her plate that people might not see her face.
“Prithee, who’ll have me”, inquired Joseph airily, and at these words Barushka again raised her head from her plate; Joseph went out of the room.
After this some of the neighbours said almost in a breath, “Oh! Barushka, pray, what makes you so hot?”
“I am not hot”, said Barushka, and looked about her with determination into which she had partially nudged herself in order that, if possible, she might still conceal what had now no further need of concealment.
After this a burst of music was heard from the hall, and in the dining-room all laughed at what they had said, and continued to say more like it.
When the music was over in the hall, Loyka, the peasant proprietor, rose and posted himself with some solemnity by the table. He wished to address the assemblage. Just before he spoke he looked at his wife, and when she nodded assent, he cleared his throat and thus began:—
“Dear neighbours and neighbours’ wives! As to us old folk,” and here he pointed to himself, his wife, and his neighbour Kmoch, the father of Barushka, “we have quite come to an agreement. And so if Barushka has nothing to say against it, we will settle the day of the wedding, and you are all invited to it.”
Here Loyka lapsed into silence: he looked all over the assemblage to see what sort of effect his words had produced. They had produced an effect.
“I could have told you so just this minute.”
“Yes, God grant them happiness, they will make a nice couple.”
“Barushka is at ease now, she is not hot any longer.”
​“And where is Joseph?”
“Oh! not far off, I warrant. Perhaps he is listening somewhere.”
One of the neighbours rose in order that he might fetch Joseph; the others made a place beside Barushka, and when Joseph entered the apartment, he was greeted with a hearty volley of congratulations, and the neighbours who led him in pointed to the vacant place beside Barushka, and said, “There, that is your place.”
“We were surprised”, said the neighbours’ wives. “Hitherto we never had the least suspicion”, but they had had a pretty shrewd suspicion all the same, because they had already several times talked the whole matter over at home, on the way to and from chapel, on the road to and from market, on the village green and behind the barn.
Joseph seated himself beside Barushka, and when silence again prevailed, he said, “Oh! Barushka, prithee, why not? Since our parents wish us to wed why should we not be man and wife”, and after this he imprinted a smacking kiss on her lips, so audible, indeed, was it that every one yielded to an equally audible fit of laughter.
“And people say there was no understanding between them.”
“The deuce! they understood one another perfectly well. Such a smacking kiss is not given for the first time.” Glasses were now raised and were emptied to the health of the young couple.
When after this they again sat down, Loyka, the peasant, still remained standing; not having yet said everything he wished to say, he prepared himself for a further continuation of his speech in a solemn manner. As if at a secret signal a flourish of music resounded from the inner hall, and then there was complete silence throughout the apartment.
And Loyka, the peasant proprietor, began again. “And, verily, on the following terms: The farmstead will be adjudged to you young people, and I with my wife, look you here, will still be hospodar for six years in it. But again, if that is to say we grow tired of managing the estate as hospodari, we shall leave you the entire management, and you will give us for the term of those six years a quarter of all the produce of the farm. Only after the six years, shall we reserve to ourselves the pensioner’s [vejminkar’s] portion, but there is time enough to think about that.” ​Now a pause occurred, and Loyka waited for a reply. But no reply came; Joseph did not stir, Barushka looked at her father, then at Joseph, and the rest of the company looked at one another. Loyka again took up the thread of his discourse. “If you are not contented with the conditions I have proposed, good. I and my wife, look you here, have the right to manage the estate for six more years, and only when those years are over need we discuss the question of your marriage. If, then, we are willing to grant the farm and house to you young people now at once, reserving to ourselves the management for the six years, we do this for the sake of you young people, because we know how you love one another, and that you are already all in all to one another.”
Now Joseph rose to reply, and the answer was at the tip of his tongue. “What you settle, dear parent, must be held binding. How, then, could we venture to prescribe to you how long you are to be hospodar? Be hospodar as long as you like. Grant that the farm be adjudged to us, permit us to espouse one another, and all the rest will arrange itself in the fear of God.”
Then Barushka rose, went to Loyka’s wife, embraced her round the neck, kissed her hand, and said, “Pani mamma, if you should wish to manage the household until the day of your death, I will bear you on my arm, and will love you above everything. Only let me be Joseph’s wife and your daughter. I desire nothing more.”
These words tripped quite glibly from Barushka’s tongue, and no doubt came from her heart, and yet she spoke them with a kind of forced energy as though she was anxious that they should not miss their mark. Loyka’s aged wife pressed her to her own bosom and embraced her. Loyka wiped away his tears, and at the same instant the neighbours wiped both their eyes and noses, because in all public assemblages tears take this direct route to the ground.
“Oh! what a daughter that is,” said the neighbours’ wives to her father Kmoch, “how well she expresses herself, too; you must love her, indeed, you must. And how proud you must be to have such a daughter.”
“How could I fail to feel delight in her”, said Kmoch. “She takes after me: that is just as I should have spoken.”
Then Barushka also stepped up to Loyka, kissed his hand, and repeated in somewhat different words all that she had said a moment before to her future mother-in-law. Here again during ​these reciprocal endearments you might hear tears falling, only that this time they were still more audible, because just then a braying of instruments resounded from the inner hall whereby the solemnity of the moment gained a sort of official confirmation.
“Dear children,” said Loyka, “so long as we manage the estate, we shall also dwell here in the principal house, and you will be banished for the time to the pensioner’s [vejminkar’s] house, where dwelt your grandfather. When we cease to manage the estate we shall ourselves go into the pensioner’s house, and you will shift hither into the principal building.”
Barushka said, “Dear parent, say no more about it at present; what you settle, that same must be; and were you to settle that we should take up our abode for the six years even in the two chambers where lodge your humbler guests, I would still bear you on my arms.”
At these Barushkine periods Joseph only smiled and nodded as if to testify that he agreed with every thing that Barushka had said.
There are people who give way to genuine weeping as soon as they hear anything repeated in a solemn manner, even though the words repeated be wholly destitute of meaning to them. We hear parents weep to whom their children repeat the polite platitudes their instructor has taught them, and which are quite unintelligible both to the parents and to the children. We hear strangers and members of a family weep at a wedding as soon as a withered old parson begins to patter from a book divers reflections and pious admonitions; we hear strangers, too, weep at a funeral as soon as the priest begins to recite Latin words which nowadays certainly no one comprehends. And so how could all these good folk who were present have failed now to give way to audible weeping at the announcement of Loyka so solemnly pronounced, sanctioned by strains of music, further affirmed by the protestations of Barushka, reiterated with energy intelligently and eloquently expressed.
So infectious was the sobbing and gulping which occurred in the apartment, that there was not a single eye which remained undimmed with tears. Both Loyka and Loyka’s wife wept, only two people remained proof against this infection, and these were Joseph and Barushka herself. When what we have here described was all over, Loyka, the peasant proprietor, sat himself down by himself, and then looked greatly exhausted. Just as though he had toiled much and must ​rest himself awhile. He held the table with both his hands; his head sunk on his breast; his eyes stared vacantly at his hands; his breast heaved stertorously. In this posture he remained for a considerable space of time without change and, save his stertorous breathing, was like a statue.
From his strange reverie he was rudely disturbed by Joseph, who bade clear away the table, because the guests wished to have a dance. And so they were to disengage the table from Loyka’s hands as best they might, and after this Loyka rose from his seat and roused himself from these his thoughts.
In the inner hall resounded from harps and violins the merry music of the dance, and in a brief space of time, all who had any pretensions to youthfulness were spinning in the waltz. Even old Loyka took a turn, because Barushka came especially to him and requested the honour of a dance. And then all the rest of the company stepped out from the circle and allowed Loyka and Barushka to perform a solo, clapped with their hands, snapped their fingers, and laughed when they saw how frisky and active old Loyka was, and how he in no respect fell short of any of the young men there present.
And here old Loyka himself wistled like a young man, as if he were celebrating his own wedding, until all who were present were struck with astonishment, who although they laughed with pleasure at the sight of his youthfulness, still thought in their heart of hearts that it was not quite in keeping with Loyka’s age and character.
After a while the rest of the company were again in the circle, this time Joseph also who had received Barushka from the hands of his father, and now all tootled and whistled, young and old.
Who would have said, if he had entered at this moment, that these people were at a funeral in the forenoon, and were now continuing the funeral solemnities?
And yet there were two small souls who kept it still in mind—Frank and Staza, who, from the inner hall among the musicians, looked at all that was passing in the dining-room.
And so, during an interval, while there was a pause in the dance and only the sound of whistling was to be heard in the dining-room, a kind of consultation here took place between Frank and the musicians, and before any one expected what was toward, Frank and Staza struck up with the hymn “Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits”].
​The musicians, fiddlers and harpers, accompanied them. Staza’s little voice penetrated like silver, Frank’s voice faithfully seconded hers, and then the music accompanied it all—it was as though tears were falling.
If you are well-versed in tales of magic you will recollect how all at once everything in a castle was turned to stone. And thus at this song everything was turned to stone in the dining-room. Here some one stretched out his hand to his neighbour and the hand remained stretched out, here another had raised his hand to tootle with it and the hand remained raised above his head, and the tootling died away in his throat. Here another wanted to turn to his neighbour, he had not quite turned towards him, neither was he altogether turned away from him. And when Joseph wanted to drink with Barushka he proffered her his glass indeed, but the glass remained in his hand, and the polite speech remained unspoken.
Into the midst of all that whistling, tootling, and babbling of tongues a knife had worked its way, and smitten all with a sudden blow. Two childish little voices had taken upon themselves to hew down an ogre, and the ogre shivered and reeled to the ground. A morsel of genuine feeling claimed a hearing, and what was untrue and unnatural tumbled to pieces like a house of cards.
The grandfather still had the last word to-day. He spoke by the mouths of those children who constrained even the harpers and fiddlers to their cause, and all that gay company in the dining-room again knew that it was the day of his funeral. Not gladly certainly, but no one could say, I do not know it.
CHAPTER V
AFTER a brief of time the celebrated a wedding. The festivities passed off at Kmoch’s house—at the father’s of the bride; after the feasting Joseph conducted his wife to his homestead. And here the harpers and fiddlers who had still remained there since the day of the grandfather’s funeral played before the hall-doors as soon as the bride had entered the house, thus welcoming her with a burst of triumphant music. How could they do otherwise?
But they soon found out their mistake. “Just clear off the ​threshold, will you?” said the young mistress with such precision, that he whom it touched did not venture to reply.
Still, all the same, one of the musicians ventured to plead an excuse. “But our good old master ordered us to play here”, said he in exculpation of himself and his companions.
“You lie!” said Barushka. “Your good old master never orders anything which I do not like. Just be gone from here in double quick time.”
The musicians did not finish their performance nor did they finish what they had further wished to say; old Loyka stood as though a stream of hot water was running down his back, and Loyka’s aged wife, had it not been the very day of the wedding, would, perhaps have stoutly seconded her lord and master.
The musicians did not finish their performance, and trailed like draggled chickens across the court-yard toward the coach-house, and entered their two chambers.
“And that is a pretty welcome”, said they to one another.
“Truly, she begins wondrous well”, they murmured.
“This is something new on the estate”, they added.
Loyka’s aged wife still could not bring herself to believe that the new bride wished so ruthlessly to abolish on the very threshold of her new life what had been for so long a series of years a speciality of the family. “When you danced here at your grandfather’s funeral I did not think, Barushka, that you were an enemy to music”, said she with a certain asperity.
“I cannot stand things where they are out of place”, replied Barushka with yet greater asperity. “Music is in its place at an ale-house, not at such a farm as this. I could not endure to live under the same roof with a pack of strolling scamps, with whom one loses caste, because that class of menials deems itself our equal. And a dubious light is thrown on the management of an estate which fosters vagabonds.”
Here Loyka’s aged wife recognized to her surprise that a crisis had come [lit., the sickle had come to the grindstone] and that she must not easily yield.
“We hand over the estate to you in excellent order, and it would be well if there were never any worse things to complain of”, said she.
“Still, for my part, I could not bear to live in a building where everybody thought that he had the right of entrance, just as though it was an ale-house. Joseph will see to it that this rabble ​of vagabonds does not take up its quarters here a night longer”, added the young bride with the same asperity.
“Joseph?” said Loyka’s aged wife, and it was half an interrogation and half an asservation that Joseph would do no such thing. She pronounced it with a taunting smile as if she had said to Barushka, “You are quite mistaken in Joseph, I assure you.”
“Yes, Joseph”, said Barushka.
“Joseph see to it that the musicians be warned off the farm who have been here all their lives?” inquired the elder peasant woman in the same manner.
“What has been need not be always. There are things which after a time go out of fashion.”
On this Joseph rose, and said, “Pray, why should I not tell them? I will go and tell them at once.”
Barushka looked at her mother-in-law as though she would say, “Now, what have you got to say?” and she smiled tauntingly.
“And this is the girl who was willing to take me on her arms”, thought the peasant woman to herself, and all at once she seemed to stand on the edge of an abyss.
And Joseph, exactly as though he and Barushka had just finished a game of cards, quitted the apartment and betook himself to the musicians.
“Will you be so good as to clear off at once from here”, said he. “My wife does not wish to have people hanging about the place, and I do not wish it either.”
Here the musicians felt as if they had received a severe shock. “Well, the Lord God reward you”, said they, collecting their instruments in order that they might clear out, and they looked at Joseph as though they did not yet know whether it was jest or earnest. But it was earnest, for when they had gone out across the threshold he did not call them back nor when they crossed the court-yard, only the dogs whined a sad farewell to their old friends who went out by the gate on to the village green.
Joseph still remained by the gate until the musicians were fairly out of sight. And here the family of the kalounkar [tape-pedlar], the cloth-pedlar, and all who were still present, looked at him in a kind of uncertainty to see whether it affected them also.
But Joseph did not leave them long in suspense. He leered at their things, he leered at them, and said, “You must take it all away this evening.”
​And here the cloth-pedlar and the kalounkar looked at Joseph as though they would have said, “Art thou that Joseph who sat here beside us, and listened to our story-telling.”
And out loud the kalounkar said, “I must entreat you, dear Mister Joseph, to ask our good old master and mistress to come hither that we may thank them for all their kindness. We do not venture to present ourselves in their apartments, and yet how can we go away without bidding them adieu?”
“There is no need, I assure you, I will give them any message you may choose to leave.”
Here the old kalounkar said almost crying, “Then tell them that the old kalounkar salutes them a hundred times, and that he thanks them for this roof which they have condescended to lend him for so many years, and that he never supposed that he would have to leave on the very day when he thought that a feast would be toward.”
“I will tell him, I will not forget”, said Joseph, cutting short further explanations, turned, and went into the principal apartment.
And thus in a brief space of time were banished from the estate, after the musicians, the kalounkar, the cloth-pedlar, and the rest. At a moment which is the sweetest in human life, at a moment which every family scores in letters of gold on the page of its domestic history—at that moment in sorrow left this house several people who by right of dear custom considered that it was in part their home.
“Pray, where are the pedlar and the kalounkar being banished”, said old Loyka, seeing from the window how they were trailing across the court-yard with their wares.
“I have purged the chambers of them also”, said Joseph in elucidation. “They were no better than the musicians, they had no right to hang about the place. If we young people have to take up our abode in the pensioner’s house we shall want these chambers for ourselves, and not for all sorts of underlings. It would be quite a sin if we were to tolerate them any longer.”
There cannot be a severer blow for an old man than to hear his past life and actions condemned in a single word; and this happened when Joseph declared Loyka’s previous system of hospitality to be a sin. And if there was anything praiseworthy at the Loykas’s it was, perhaps, this, that their court-yard opened freely to shelter any who wished to enter.
​Here Loyka, as he sat, so he got up, burning with ill-repressed emotions, and said, “How, pray, dare you act thus when these chambers are mine.”
“If you are so sorry for your poor lodgers, call them back again”, said Joseph with a mocking smile.
“And so I will call them back! Let one of the servants go and call them back.”
“The servants will go when I send them, dear father”, said Joseph with the same mocking smile. “The estate is once for all adjudged to me, and I think that the servants belong to me also.”
“What is that!” shrieked old Loyka.
“Come, come, there is no need to explain what you know quite as well as I do; the servants belong to the estate, and the estate belongs to me.”
“How so? And can I not venture to dismiss a servant if I choose?” inquired old Loyka in just the same sharp tones as at first.
“You can, just as I can take him on again if I choose. If you send him away, perhaps I shall take him on again, if he suits me.”
“And how, pray, dare you act thus when I am to be hospodar here six years longer?” And for this question he mustered all his self-importance.
“On my estate?” inquired Joseph drily.
“On thy estate!” screamed old Loyka, and here already his voice quivered with the welling tears. “And so, perhaps, you will tell me after a while that I may drag myself off after yon musicians and kalounkari.”
“Prithee, father, reflect, I have never said any such thing, although I cannot conceive how it is that these harpers have managed to grow so dear to your heart.”
“May your tongue be turned to stone!” yelled old Loyka in wrath and anguish. At that moment he was scarcely to be recognized. He seated himself, and his tongue seemed turned to stone. He wished to speak and revolved in his mind this or that sentence, but all failed him, like a broken bough. His speech was thick as though he had been drinking, and as though he had to babble instead of speaking. Then he slouched, as we say, “a peasant’s ell” upon the table, leant his chin upon his hand, opened wide his eyes, half laughed and half wept at the same time, and said several times to himself, “So it has come to this! so it has come to this!”
​This altercation was sufficient for the first time. Motes seemed to flicker before Loyka’s old eyes, and after a considerable pause, he said, “Wife, lead me to bed.” He did not even trust himself to go alone.
And the young folks took up their abode in the dwelling which had been previously occupied by their grandfather, which was called on the farm “the pension house” [na vejminku: i. e. on condition], and to which we will give the same name; the old people dwelt in the house they had hitherto occupied, which was called the farmhouse [na statku], and which we also will so name.
In the farmhouse the Loykas were to be hospodar for six years.
When harvest time drew near the farmstead filled with harvesters and harvest women. It was gay in the court-yard below. Scythes and sickles clashed, rakes were being mended, everywhere there was a sound of hammering—just as if a clock was striking in the court-yard. Old Loyka, who had scarcely spoken five words since his son’s wedding-day, grew young again at the season of harvest. He was so accustomed to those two chambers by the coach-house, he used always to find there some wayfarer with whom he gladly conversed, and since his son’s wedding-day these chambers had been empty. And it oppressed him to have no one to converse with. But at harvest time the farmstead filled with people, moreover, harvestmen and harvestwomen filled the two chambers, and so Loyka felt as though he had come to himself again. Now once more people went to and fro, the court-yard was full of voices and the noise of preparations—so old Loyka was once again contented. Often at early morning he might be seen pacing to and fro the court-yard, pleased with the flavour of his pipe, and with a settled smile upon his face.
During the few Sundays which had elapsed since his son’s wedding-day several years seemed to have settled upon his head; to-day he felt as though in the flight of time those few years had been recalled. The harvesters and harvestwomen saluted him, smiled upon him, conversed with him, inquired of this and that, and old Loyka loved to converse. To-day he had been talking since early morning, he wished to compensate for the silence of several past weeks.
The harvesters were glad to go and seek employment at the Loykas’s; here they halted first when they came to the village—Loyka might choose the stoutest of them all. Also to-day he ​made this selection. Every harvester called him “pantata”, and that pleased him; it was evident, he thought within himself, that they still accounted him somebody on the estate, and that they maintained the same behaviour to him as in times gone by.
In times gone by the harvesters were proud to boast of their respect and reverence for the Loykas. Where in all the neighbourhood was the harvest home held so merrily as at the Loykas’s? The harvesters were proud of it, and used to pride themselves on account of it in comparison with other harvesters.
“Well, pantata, this summer we shall have a merry harvest”, said one harvester. “A new bride in the house—she will help it out.”
“Ay, ay, just so”, said old Loyka, and perhaps he did not exactly catch what the harvester had said, for the smile did not vanish from his face nor did he remove the pipe from his mouth.
“Since at harvest home we have to dance with the mistress of the house, this year we shall dance the summer out, having to tread a measure both with your good lady and the young gentleman’s also”, suggested another of the harvesters.
“Ay, ay, just so”, said Loyka, and went on smiling; for it flattered him to think that the harvester had not forgotten his old mistress in the dance. “But this summer we have no musicians here”, he added.
“And what of the musicians? They trail off like sparrows after grain”, suggested the former harvester again.
And again old Loyka felt flattered to think that the harvester was not aware of the mode in which the musicians had been banished from the farm. “Just so, just so”, continued old Loyka with a touch of self-satisfaction.
After this he gave his orders where and to what fields they were to go, and where they were to begin to reap. When he had delivered all his orders, lo! Joseph was at his side, and said, “You will go to-day and cut beyond the meadow.” And it was totally different from what his father wished them to do.
“How, pray, should they go beyond the meadows? The corn beyond the meadows can stand two days longer, but where I am sending them it cannot stand a day longer”, objected his father.
“And when, they have to go beyond the meadows”, said Joseph, as if he had not the least heard what his father had said. Here the harvesters stood uncertain in which direction they had to quit the court-yard.
​“Well, then, go beyond the meadow”, said Joseph’s father with forced humility, not wishing that they should observe how impotent his commands had already become in presence of his son.
And so the harvesters went away to work in accordance with the young hospodar’s orders. After this old Loyka said to the servants, “You will stay at home and make straw-bands.”
“There is time enough for making straw-bands”, said Joseph. “Just go after the harvesters and help them in the field.”
Here again the servants did not know whether they had to stop in the court-yard or go off to the field. They looked from Joseph to old Loyka. And Joseph, perceiving their indecision, said, “Why do you hesitate? He that does not go to the field, let him look out for his place.”
After this the servants departed.
“And who will make straw-bands?” asked old Loyka.
“Seeing that there is no great hurry,” said Joseph, “I think that you alone might manage to make them.”
“Be it so, be it so”, said old Loyka with a laugh. “And I have to make straw-bands? I have to be like a day-labourer?”
“Like a day-labourer? Surely you know that we all buckle to at harvest time?” said Joseph.
“Just so. But how, pray? Am not I then still hospodar? Don’t you know, my dear son, that I never did such menial offices?”
“If you are not willing to work, good. It is easy to see that you are but a half-hearted hospodar when you shirk in this manner.”
“It is the duty of a hospodar to act as overseer; others can do manual work”, explained old Loyka.
“As for being overseer, that am I”, said Joseph.
“And I am like the fifth wheel on a carriage”, exclaimed Loyka angrily. But Joseph, just as if no words had passed between them, had already departed and left his father with a swarm of thoughts, so that he seemed to have his head full of drones and wasps. After this the father looked to heaven, and cried aloud in an explosion of bitterness, “Lord God! grant me some inspiration that I may make this cruel son aware that I am his father.”
“Drop a little ratsbane into his well”, murmured the voice of the irrepressible Vena. “Unless you do so, he will soon close it against you as you closed it against your father, and then you will never have another chance of poisoning it for him, pantata.”
​Loyka scrutinized Vena, and seemed half as though he had heard, half as though he had not heard him. “Oh! Vena,” he said, “prithee, tell me how gall diffuses itself through the body.” And he took him and looked into his eyes as though he expected from him a serious answer.
“Let me fool you only just once”, sneered Vena.
“Prithee, boy, fool on,” entreated Loyka in a voice of humiliation that was almost pitiable.
“And why, pray, should I mix myself up in the concern?” sneered Vena. “Of course, your son will do the business for you. How, pray, could he fail to do it for you when you are, after all, but a pensioner on his bounty? You managed to fool your own father, why then should your son not manage to do the same by you? But what surprises me is that in your son it begins so precious soon. You put the foolscap on your father later. But who can change the course of Nature? Nowadays youth develops faster. Joseph, methinks, will have done with you sooner than you had done with your defunct father.”
“Don’t you know anything more to tell me than that?” inquired old Loyka.
“I do know”, said Vena. “But there is nothing in all that. You to talk about happiness, indeed! You, verily! You will be hospodar six years longer, you will dwell in the farmhouse, you are still master there. Oh! oh! things will grow worse and worse until they crack, and until you are mast-headed on yonder balcony whence your father looked at the farmhouse, because he did not dare to cross the court-yard.”
As Vena said these words Barushka came out bearing a message, “from Joseph, you know, papa dear”, to the effect that during harvest time the old people could take up their abode with her mother in the pension house, and that the young folk would shift into the farmhouse. “We have so much to do, and it is so tiring to run to the pension house and then back again to the farm”, she remarked. After this she marched off as though she had already gained her father-in-law’s consent to this arrangement.
“Look, look, yonder, pantata, the maids are already heaving you out of the nest”, said Vena. And forth from the farmhouse the maid-servants were already carrying Loyka’s furniture.
“So! you are to be shelved instanter”, said Vena. “See! see! I did think that they would have waited a little longer. You did ​bear with your father in the house a certain time. But youth develops faster nowadays. See! see!”
Old Loyka turned his eyes to the entrance-hall. “Dear Vena”, he said, and took him by the hand. “Come and help me, and let us make mincemeat of it all.”
“That will be of small avail now; once you are fairly out of the house, it will be hard to get back again. You will have to go to law with your son. Before judgment is given in your case, the six years are out, and meantime you can be thankful for the pension house. But, of course, you know how long a lawsuit takes, for you were still at law with your father while he was being buried. The one thing you must pray for is that your son may have a son again, and that this son may one day pay his father out for your wrongs. But you understand all about it.”
“But come and help me!” He took Vena by the hand as though nothing would move him from his determination.
“Come along! come along! pantata”, said Vena, holding himself in readiness. “I will catch hold of your chests and cupboards lest they take flight, and you shall lam into them.”
And old Loyka went into the entrance-hall and began to turn everything upside down, then he took a chair in his hands and shouted into the inner rooms, “I will break his head who takes anything of mine out of the house.”
At these words they ceased to carry his things out of the house. Perhaps the sight of old Loyka somewhat softened them, and perhaps they deemed it prudent to desist when old Loyka so passionately set himself in opposition.
Here Vena also took a chair, seated himself upon it, and invited Loyka to sit down on the one which he held in his hand, and said, “Let us seat ourselves at your house, pantata.”
His master needed no second invitation, he seated himself on the chair which he held in his hands, and was once more silent.
“You see, pantata, you would not even have known that you could sit down in your own house if I had not told you so. When you do not know where to dwell come to me and I will tell you”, said Vena. After a pause he added, as though well-pleased with the thought to which he gave utterance, “Indeed, I am glad that we can sit at your house. But do you know what? You would not the least dare to go with me into the inner apartments.”
“What is that you say?” and Loyka rose from his chair.
“That you dare not go with me into the inner room.”
​“We’ll see about that”, answered Loyka with great vehemence. And he had already taken Vena by the hand and said, “Come, Vena, with me into the farmhouse, thou art my guest there.”
And they entered the farmhouse.
“Look, mamma, I am bringing you a visitor”, said Loyka to his wife, without noticing Barushka, who was present. “He is helping us to ballast the furniture which the sweet Barushka finds so much in her way, that she allowed it to float out of the house.”
Barushka paid not the slightest heed to her father-in-law, and let fly straight at Vena, “Clear out of the house, thou impudent rogue! It were indeed a disgrace, if fellows like thee should be admitted even into our best drawing-room.”
Loyka laughed. “Meseems, Vena, she doth not appreciate thee. But seat thyself, boy, here by me. You shall see, I will not let them bundle thee out just as they are bundling out yonder packing-cases. Just seat thyself, thou art at my house. The dear young folk have already made a clean sweep of a good many things both from the farmhouse and from the two chambers, but none shall dare to brush thee off, no one, you understand, no one.”
At this Barushka, turning to her father-in-law, remarked, “For my part I thought that we had enough to do with one fool in the house; but you, pantata, must e’en bring in another one.”
“So! I am a fool! possibly, young lady, possibly”, said old Loyka with a curse, took the chair on which he was sitting in his hands and would, perhaps, have hurried after Barushka and, perhaps, have struck her a heavy blow. But at that moment he stopped short, and said, “No, just because we are at home and she is our guest, I do not dare forget myself.”
For that time, at any rate, the old Loykas were left in peace in their farmhouse.
CHAPTER VI
NOW occurred in the farmhouse a trying period which is a painful task to have to chronicle. And it is the more painful, because in the Loykas’s farm may be seen a picture of a hundred other farms in which similar scenes are enacted, only slightly differing in their details.
It is, perhaps, the most painful thing for a writer when in his pursuit of truth he has to delineate nauseous realities.
​Among all social questions there is, perhaps, no single one which can elicit in men so profound a sentiment of indignation as the question of the vejminkar [pensioner].
We need not go beyond the confines of Europe if we wish to discover slaves and slavemasters. We have them at home, each of us in his own village, and what is more disgusting is that the son is the slavemaster, the father is the slave; and what is still more disgusting, the law sanctions this relation, approves it, ay, inscribes it on the public rolls like a commercial treaty. The greatest popular immorality is carried on before our very eyes; Nature, debauched and trampled under foot, is distorted into what is unnatural and monstrous. The law allows that sons should take upon themselves the part of criminals, and the sons wittingly, ay, hanging their heads in shame the while, hasten to adapt themselves to the criminal’s vocation: custom and habit consecrate the deed, and baffled Nature loses here even her power of speech.
But to our tale. The harvest home at the Loykas’s passed as gloomily as Ash-Wednesday. In the farmhouse there was not a cheerful face, the old folks shunned the young, the young couple avoided the old ones. They never looked at one another if they could help it, nor, if they could avoid it did they speak to one another. And if they did look at one another or spoke to one another they neither returned the look nor listened with the least satisfaction.
Just as in years gone by the harvesters used to gather eagerly to the Loykas’s, so this summer every moment they spent here was a torment to them. And they heartily thanked the Lord God when it was all over, and they might go thence. “I do not come here again”, they said to one another. “Not if I have to look for work I know not in what village.”
It is true, puncheons of ale were rolled into the court-yard for their behoof, and they were given a glass or two of rosolek, but not a single face displayed any affability either in looks or words. They had said to their good old master, out of politeness, that this summer they would have two mistresses to dance with, and lo! they had not one. The harvesters and harvestwomen were glad when they could disperse to their different homes.
And then when the harvest was over the relation between the young and old people became further strained, until it could be strained no further, and the only question was when it would be altogether sundered.
​When after harvest the fields had to be put in furrow, and old Loyka ordered the servants to go to such and such a field, Joseph came, cancelled his orders, and told them not to go where his father bade them, but to go somewhere else.
When old Loyka bade them sow rye in this or that field, Joseph bade them take the rye into a different field, and sow wheat in the other.
If old Loyka told them to reap beyond the meadow, Joseph vowed there was time enough for the crops beyond the meadow, and so they were to work in the field.
Thus things went on until at last the servants paid no heed at all to old Loyka’s bidding, but at once questioned their young hospodar to see whether he approved of their old master’s orders or whether he would wish to cancel them. Only what the young hospodar ordered was a valid order. And thus it came to pass in the course of a very short time that, although according to contract and the letter of the law, old Loyka had reserved the right of still managing the estate for six years, already at the beginning of the first year his right of management was snatched out of his hands, and Joseph virtually became sole lord and master of the estate.
And what took place between the male portion of the family, had its counterpart also in the relations subsisting between Loyka’s aged wife and Barushka. No maid-servant whom Barushka did not wish to have in the house was permitted to stay there, nor would she have been had Loyka’s aged wife moved heaven and earth to retain her. And there was not a maid-servant on the place who did not consider Barushka as her mistress.
And so, then, the hospodarship was completely monopolized by the young folk. Some points old Loyka yielded for the sake of “divine peace”, some because yield he must, others because they were taken from him—until, at last, no one troubled themselves about his whims and wishes. And so not six months of the reserved six years had elapsed and old Loyka was deprived of all his rights of hospodarship save the right to dwell in the farmhouse; and how secure his tenure of the farmhouse had become we already know.
Old Loyka must have gone to law with his son at every step if he had wished to maintain his position. When he wished to sell rye to the corn-factor, he became aware that Joseph had already sold it underhand; when he thought that some samples might be ​left over the winter the merchant’s agents came and began to fill their carts with it, because Joseph had sold it also. And so now i’ faith I know not what still remained to old Loyka to testify that he was still master.
Such were the conditions amid which Frank grew up, and thus he began to feel ill at ease at home. Everything there was altered and in confusion. After his grandfather’s funeral he had led Staza about the court-yard and showed her where his grandfather had once dwelt, and which was the abode of the kalounkar [tape-pedlar] and strolling fiddlers—but now all must be rechristened.
Into those chambers he had conducted Staza when he had invited her to the farm, and they had still remained almost untouched since the banishment of their previous occupants, here he and Staza could still feel at home, just as when they seated themselves in a grave at the cemetery. Here they could tell over to one another all the stories they knew, and thus story-telling was still not wholly banished from the farm. It had dwindled to the youngest member of the family; and to a most modest audience.
Sometimes Staza was the teller of the story and Frank formed the audience, at other times Frank was the narrator und Staza the listener.
The growing difference between father and son had one advantage for Frank, if we can call it an advantage, viz., that Frank was pretty well overlooked by both of them, and being left to himself might draw profit from this freedom. That is to say he might so far profit himself, that he need not be a witness of all that took place in the farm, might wander at will through the fields, might go to the cemetery for Staza, and lead her wherever he choose.
We are not among those who think that home is always the best place for children. On the contrary, it is frequently the greatest blessing for a child if he be freed from the fetters of home and be left to mother Nature and her relation-chance, that they may develop what home cannot impart, and what, indeed, it often thoroughly perverts.
These children, at all events, found together away from home what at home they had lacked. Nature and chance lovingly made good to them the deficiencies of home life. We mean by Nature the apparition of the heavens, and we mean by chance Heaven’s ​divine providence, and we have two instructors with which few homes can be compared.
Staza took him with her to the cemetery, and there they beheld face to face the serious side of life. Frank took Staza into the fields and to the open wold, and they recognized the smiles of the green turf on the earth, the azure blue of the firmament of heaven, the laverock which fluttered like a singing messenger from one to the other.
Staza led Frank to the cemetery whenever a new grave was delved. There they heard from the lips of Bartos the life-history of the defunct, there they squatted together, slept side by side, and were “faithful little spirits”. Frank again reconducted Staza to the field when he found a new bird’s-nest, when he had discovered any young quails, or when he wished to show her how the partridges sit. Here again he narrated to her the whole life-history of these creatures, so far as he knew it, and when they sat by the hedgerow during the narration, it seemed to them like fairy-land.
Staza came for Frank whenever the bees winged their way to the clover which bloomed on his grandfather’s grave, in order, as she said, that Frank might see whether they were the bees from his grandfather’s hives. And then Frank sat beside his grandfather’s grave and Staza beside the grave of her mother, and they were at home.
Then again Frank led Staza to the farmstead, to those hives which were now his own, and they observed in which direction the bees flew away and whether they went to his grandfather’s grave. Then the two children settled themselves in the chambers by the coach-house, and burst into story-telling just as musicians bust forth into song and melody.
And to tell the truth, these two chambers at the Loykas’s farm seemed steeped in fairy-lore and ballad-history. He who stepped into them involuntarily remembered things which he had here heard from the musicians and from the kalounkar, and scarcely had he seated himself before it all seemed to come upon him so that he was compelled to relate it all again. Something of this kind Frank and Staza experienced when they went into the burial-ground and when they seated themselves in a fresh-dug grave. Even there on that little hillock into which the grave heaped some one seemed to sit with a harp and to softly sweep the strings.
​And somehow Staza so aptly interpreted it all, that it seemed to Frank that never in his life had he heard such sweet and reasonable discourse.
After that they consecrated with their visits every hedgerow in the fields. And that spot where either of them had narrated some particularly pretty story was, in a manner, the source of that story. The circumstance that had been related was dear to them, and so also was the spot on which it had been related. Whenever they came to that spot a tender feeling was awakened in their minds, so often as this feeling was awakened within them, the place became still dearer, until it was to them like a consecrated shrine, without masonry, however, and without pictures. Many such shrines had they, carefully chosen resting-places and trysting-places, fringed with green turf, and above each bent a heaven aglow with the sun’s rays and saturated with its smiles.
Sometimes they sat upon the graves like two living monuments—cheerful monuments, however, and in their young memory and on their young souls were inscribed even solemn matters. And Frank was flattered when Bartos, the grave-digger, made him the auditor of his narrations; it seemed to the boy just though the dead grandfather continued to play his part in Bartos, it was, too, a certain mark of distinction to be made the confidant of a man so sedate and, moreover, the greatest athlete of the country.
Sometimes again the two children sat by the hedgerow among the rye like two quails, only that they broke in upon the clicking music of the cricket with human voices, and upon the buzzing of flies and bees. And this specially delighted Staza, who felt just as though she were at a concert, and as though she must laugh and whistle and press Frank’s hand. It was dull, though only at times, for a mind so very young to be always yonder among the graves, and Staza’s feet grew tired of wandering about the prim and sombre walks of the cemetery. But here where everything made holiday, look withersoever she would, she likewise made holiday, just as when the lenten season has passed the young sleeper awakens with a glad hurrah.
At first Frank did not at all comprehend why as soon as ever Staza entered the fields she grew so full of mirth and rapture. Her little eyes flashed playfully, she tripped along and skipped about as though she were on wires, her face joy itself, her words like songs. But it could not be otherwise—man was not created to be exclusively sad and serious—gaiety is just as necessary as ​the sunlight; the young heart of little Staza was a proof of this: unconsciously she wished to compensate herself for all from which, equally unconsciously, she had been hitherto excluded.
But later Frank ceased to wonder at her gaiety; he also was himself saturated with it. When he went to the cemetery for Staza all the way thither he rejoiced beforehand at the thought of her enjoyment, and looked forward to her skips of delight and cries of pleasure, sometimes he half skipped about himself when he thought how she would skip about, sometimes he half began to carol when he thought how she would sing and carol.
And so Frank began to acquire in the parish the reputation of a vagabond who could scarcely be tethered to his home, and we cannot gainsay the correctness of this opinion, he was a vagabond, and became more and more of one every day, so that already he found very little pleasure in his home, and was glad if only he could sneak away out of sight somewhere behind the barn. Sometimes when he went with Staza and they could not ensconce themselves in the two chambers by the coach-house he turned away with her at his side, and they explored some choice nook outside the village. If any one had inquired of Frank what his home looked like, he would only have described those two chambers in the court-yard—nothing else belonged to his conception of home, and no one was associated with these chambers—neither father nor mother nor brother. All that appertained to them was that they were empty, and that he was in them and that Staza was in them with him.
Later his parents wished to attach him to his home, but it was already too late. They set him work to do afield, and there he went willingly enough. But if he had to work in the court-yard. he soon sought the easiest means of escape into the country; and when once he was out of doors and in the country outside, any one might be sure of finding him on the road to the burial-ground, unless he were hiding by the hedgerow or in some newly delved grave.
And now even Joseph began to chaff him for his vagabond ways, and his parents could not deny that their elder son had some foundation for his sarcasms. But we know very well that Joseph was always the spoilt child of the house, and that Frank was the fifth wheel of the coach; and therefore Joseph’s oracular sentences carried no great weight with them. And when Joseph told his father and mother quite seriously that they were teach​ing Frank to be a tramp, Loyka strictly enjoined upon his younger son to stay at home and not to leave it any more.
But even these injunctions soon ceased to be taken seriously. Frank obeyed for a day or two, and after a day or two was already far away from home without his parents paying any heed to him.
Old Loyka, indeed, already began to grow rather blind to everything novel that originated around him, and Frank’s vagabond habits were something novel. Moreover he himself was too much afflicted by the relation subsisting between himself and Joseph, and was too full of it, with the best intentions in the world, to have much room left in his heart for Frank.
And here we must say, once for all, that old Loyka’s power of resistance which had in some respects so stoutly confronted Joseph’s encroachment upon its rights, now began in everything to slacken at all points. He felt himself crushed and broken, he already found but few sources of support within himself, and thus he willed and acted only by halves. Each new motive entered into him only as it were by one ear, to vanish again immediately by the other. And so it was that he ordered Frank not to quit the house, as to whether his son obeyed his orders or not, the father had already ceased to trouble himself.
And then one day in the presence of Frank was enacted between the old folks and the young one of those scenes which were already of as frequent occurrence at the farm as the Lord’s prayer in the church service. For, one day, the kalounkar came to the Loykas’s, not to be received there as a guest, but only that he might look once more for old acquaintance’s sake upon his old friend. And on this occasion Frank saw that old Loyka wept and that the kalounkar also wept. Then old Loyka invited the kalounkar to stay with him in the two chambers at least for the night. The kalounkar excused himself, till at last Loyka drew him almost by force across the court-yard. But when he wished to open the door there was no key, and when he asked for the key he was told that the young hospodar had it and, so they said, had locked the two chambers in order that Frank should not introduce into them any of the servants who had once been dismissed from the house.
On this old Loyka commanded that the key should be brought, but no one could find it. And after he had thus waited a long time and had joked freely in order that the kalounkar might not perceive that he was no longer master on his estate, and when ​still no one brought the key, Loyka turned, caught up a cleaver from somewhere in the yard, and battered in the doors of the two chambers. When they cracked, it seemed as if the whole building would tumble down, and when at last the doors gave way and the two chambers were free of access and Loyka stood like a conqueror at the threshold leaning upon his cleaver, and shouted that he was still master in his own house and so let his friends make themselves at home—then, to his astonishment, he became aware that he was addressing people who were no longer there. For the kalounkar was already far away from the court-yard, and Frank had vanished with him. After this a discordant din of voices reached his ears from the balcony above—the voices of the young folks, to whom Loyka replied throughout the whole dialogue from the court-yard, frequently threatening them with the cleaver which he held in his hand.
And this time Frank vanished from the farm for good. When several days elapsed and he did not reappear, the Loykas thought that it was one of his usual rambles, and that they need only send to Bartos at the cemetery to inquire for him, and they would get Frank home again. And when he still did not come after several days they sent a message to Bartos just to say that Frank had still not returned. After this old Loyka went himself to the cemetery, but when he saw the grandfather’s grave, he knelt beside it and prayed a thousand times for forgiveness. He almost forgot exactly why he had gone there. And it was Bartos who first reminded him. “You are looking for Frank, I dare say? Certainly he is not at his home, for it is now a week since he has been at our house.”
It was exactly a week since Frank had quitted his home.
“But I heard say that he had gone with the kalounkar [tape-pedlar], and that he was walking the world with him”, said Bartos to the astonished parent.
“With the kalounkar? Going all over the world with him?” said Loyka, repeating the words of the grave-digger.
When he returned home he told his wife what he had heard, and they dispatched Vena to look for the kalounkar and bring Frank home from him.
Vena departed and came back after several weeks with the news that Frank had tramped it with the kalounkar, but then, so it was said, he had met with a harper, had quitted the kalounkar, and gone with the harper.
​“Dolt! idiot!” said Loyka, “then you ought to have discovered the harper and brought back Frank. And so begin the search again—the sooner, the better and without Frank do not venture near my house.”
Vena departed and found the harper, but Frank, so it was said, had gone with a fiddler and now, doubtless, was once more with the kalounkar. “Pantata,” exclaimed Vena, “I should never have ventured home again as long as I lived, for no one will find Frank again till the Day of Judgment. He goes off with the people he meets, and we should have to run the circuit for ever of all the wayfarers who ever passed the night here, for it is with these he roves the world.”
Although it might have seemed that such news would have not a little ruffled Loyka, such was not the case. Hearing with whom Frank roved the world, he in a sort of way reconciled himself to the young renegade: “They dare not come to us, so he has gone to them”, reasoned Loyka; this appeared to be so certainly true that this truth even, in some sort, gave him satisfaction; at all events Frank published to the world the fact that these humble dependants were no longer domesticated at the Loykas’s, at all events he, in some sort, incriminated Joseph of having so ruthlessly stripped their home of its previous mirth and jollity.
“He is not in bad hands”, thought Loyka to himself, and out loud he said, “The roving young scamp, but I suppose he knows what a flogging he will get when he comes home again.”
But Frank knew nothing about a flogging and returned home no more. Then more messengers besides Vena were dispatched from the farm, and all returned with the news that where he last was heard of, he was no longer to be found, and that they could not track him further.
CHAPTER VII
IT drew nigh to Easter Day when old Loyka said to his wife, “For my part I no longer wish to be hospodar, but would fain retire altogether to the pension house.”
On this Loyka’s wife said, “And are almost five years of our hospodarship to be so completely cancelled. That would be just as though we were to take flight from the farmhouse.”
“And what are we in the farmhouse? Dost think that we are still hospodar here?” inquired Loyka with a kind of angry fervour. ​And on this he began to explain how Joseph began to take everything upon himself. “And pray what value is set upon you as mistress, I wish to know,” he added. And when he had said all he meant to say, he spat. After this he added, “Thou hast taught thy son these manners, that spoilt pet of thine.”
Loyka’s wife felt the bitterness of his reproach; she was silent and furtively wiped away a tear, and for a long time sought in vain for a reply. “At all events it was not I who taught the young bride, and she has corrupted Joseph”, said Loyka’s wife at last.
“That is as much as to say, ‘It was I who chose the young bride, and therefore I am to blame for it all'", said Loyka in an access of fury.
On this Loyka’s wife was again silent, and secretly wiped away a second salt tear.
Then Loyka paced twice up and down the apartment. His head was bowed, his two eyes measured his steps, his hands were lodged behind his back, and the fingers of one hand tapped on the fingers of the other. Then he halted in front of his wife, drew himself up, and said, “And do you know what is the best of this pretty business? That we both richly deserve to be treated thus. But thou more than I, because I only obeyed thee when thou didst hound me on against my father. But now things are reversed, fate has singled me out for punishment, you are not worthy its attention.”
Here Loyka’s wife no longer stretched out her hand to wipe away a tear, but said to Loyka, flinging her words into his very face, “If thou thinkest that it has come upon us in consequence of our ill-dealing toward thy father-good, let us bear it; for my part I will not say thee nay, and I do not wish to shirk my share of the blame, nor would I ever shuffle it off myself on to thee.”
“Well said, wife”, responded Loyka, paced once to and fro the apartment, and as he did so, muttered, “Let us bear it, let us bear it, if thou so wishest, let us bear it, and let us begin from this very day. I, in sooth, have already borne it for a long time, but since thou so wishest, let us begin from this very day in earnest. But this I say to thee: whatsoever comes to pass, pity me thou must not, neither will I pity thee, that I think thou desirest not at my hands.”
On this he looked out of the window, and seeing Joseph going across the court-yard, summoned him, and forthwith again re​turned to the apartment. “And so it is beginning already”, said he, just as if it was the eve of a kind of battle.
After a brief moment Joseph came, and here old Loyka was already seated by the table with some solemnity, because such an act could not be completed without a certain amount of ceremony.
“I have summoned thee,” began Loyka, “or more properly speaking I have begged thee to come, since I have already no more power to command, and I know not whether thou wouldst obey. But I and thy mother, look you, desire to place the hospodarship in thy hands and Barushka’s. And thou art aware that in the agreement we have reserved to ourselves in case of such a contingency, to wit, that we should quit the hospodarship within the course of six years: to be rendered to us by thee a quarter of all the produce of the farm. So, then, I ask thee in the presence of the Lord God, wilt thou conscientiously fulfil thy part of the contract?”
Joseph, at these words, merely smiled like a man whose object is accomplished—an object which he had long had in view. For I think the reader will agree with us so far as this—that all the wrongs which Joseph heaped upon his father only aimed at making the hospodarship a burden to him, so that he might voluntarily surrender it of himself. And now his father surrendered it, voluntarily surrendered it, be it understood, because surrender it he must.
“Why should I not fulfil my portion of the contract, and give you what belongs to you”, said Joseph. “It is understood, of course, that you will also contribute a fourth part of all the outlay on the farm. And if the produce is scanty, your share will be scanty, too, and if the outlay be greater, then you will have to contribute more. All just as the Lord God blesses our undertakings.” Joseph said all this smilingly, and as he pronounced the last sentence his lip almost curled, as though he said only in different words, “I have you in a trap, dear father; I shall give you just as much as I choose.”
Old Loyka certainly perfectly well understood that his son led him thus to a kind of chasm, and now said to him, “Leap!” He felt it but too well, even some motes danced before his eyes, even his head went round a little. But sometimes a man, in presence of very important events stands as it were blindfold, if not actually blind: he knows that he is standing above an abyss, but still he says, “I leap!” and he leaps.
​“Why should we discuss the matter further,” said old Loyka, “it is all made out and signed in the lawyer’s books, and that is the agreement. What is there written is valid.”
“Undoubtedly”, said Joseph, and again his lip curled.
“I had further reserved the right to us old folk”, continued Loyka, “of dwelling in the farmhouse during the remainder of the six years and during that time Frank was to mess with you young people.”
“That is hard lines for the estate”, said Joseph again, just as if he wished to show that he was but trifling with his father, and that he had long ago preconcerted everything in his own mind. “No, no, that will not do at all. To manage the estate from the pension house in which we can scarce turn round will not do at all, and I am sure that as hospodar you will recognize as much yourself. As to Frank it will be time enough to settle who is to feed and lodge him when we have him at home again. For I certainly am not going to carry his victuals after him when I have no notion where he is.”
And thus old Loyka was practically chuzzled out of both his conditions, and felt little inclination to impose others. “And so you think we must be banished to the pension house”, he said, but only in order to make a remark. “Well, if you think so we will be banished to the pension house”, he added. “Dost hear, aged wife of my bosom, we are banished—ousted.” And he said it in a tone of voice which implied, “Misfortune begins from this moment.”
Loyka’s wife had turned away, and did not answer.
On this Loyka stepped close to his son’s side and began to speak again somewhat ceremoniously, as if to mark the importance of the present step of which, however, he was no longer master. “Thou seest, Joseph, thy mother: look at her. Her hair is already streaked with grey, just as my hair is streaked with grey. Thou wilt be hospodar here now, and if thou thinkest that thou canst safely wrong me, thy father, the Lord God forgive thee. But look that thou dost not wrong thy mother. She has suffered much for thy sake, she has loved thee all too dearly, and therefore wrong her not.”
At these words Loyka’s wife wiped her eyes (if it is possible to say so) out loud; that is to say she sobbed all the while as if she wished to demonstrate that her son had already frequently done her wrong, Loyka was meek and mild, and Joseph did not answer.
​Only after a pause Joseph inquired: “Then, when would you like to shift your things?”
“Well, what thinkest thou, aged wife of my bosom, when are we to be banished?” inquired old Loyka.
“Well, if it has to be, perhaps the sooner it is done the better”, said Joseph’s mother, thinking at the same time that her son would say that there was no need of shifting just yet.
“As you will”, said Joseph. “I will send the servants at once to help you to remove your things.” He turned the matter in this way, so that he might still appear in the light of a dutiful son.
“Send them, Joseph, send them”, said old Loyka, and on this Joseph departed.
But old Loyka did not tarry for the servants. He at once began to drag from the wall chests and drawers, and to remove the chairs from their places by the table, and all in as much haste as though an enemy was approaching and everything had to be cleared out of the way within an hour.
Then came the servants into the apartment to assist; but old Loyka thanked them with a kind of mock reverence for their zeal, and requested them to send Vena to him who would help him best, and would also season his work with some wise saws and maxims.
So, then, Vena came, and scarcely had he appeared in the doorway before he exclaimed: “See, see, pantata, might you not just as well have let yourself be ousted that day when your son had got you half turned out of doors? What work we had to set all straight again—and all in vain. But if it must be so, then the Lord God help you.”
Old Loyka paused beside a chest, and said, “Prithee, how sayest thou? It seems to me that thou dost completely pity me?”
“Pantata,” answered Vena, “I do pity you. I pity every one as soon a he is pensioned off. I ever jeered at you when you evilly entreated the pensioner on your bounty, and I pitied him, your own father, while it went on. If I could have remembered how your father played the hospodar, I should have pitied the pensioner on his bounty, and if I live to see Joseph pensioned off, I shall begin to pity him, and I shall give it his successor—perhaps his son. Oh! ye peasant proprietors! how ill you regulate your affairs. Come, move out of the way, old tea-chest”, he said, turning abruptly towards Loyka, as though he meant him by this expression.
​“Pray, what do you mean by that”, said Loyka, and nudged himself into a certain amount of good humour and tried to smile.
“I mean by that, that you are the principal piece of furniture which hampers Joseph here, and that if you would walk off to the lumber-room all the rest might be permitted to remain”, sneered Vena.
“Listen, aged wife of my bosom, listen to this sapient Solomon. So long we have had him in the house and never knew his worth. We have to be banished the farm in order to duly appreciate his wisdom. Without our banishment this well of wisdom would have been for ever sealed. Ha! ha! and so I am the principal piece of furniture”, laughed old Loyka. “And, pray, what have you got to say of my aged wife yonder?”
“She requites you for your young days of courtship. Then you were always following after her, now she follows after you. But do you know what is a sad thing?”
“Well, what?” inquired old Loyka.
“That it is only grey-headed eld which tramps it to that dog-kennel which you call a pension house. It were better to begin more timely when a man is yet stout enough to bear his ills. But for an old man to take up his wallet and go a-begging—fie!”
“How am I going a-begging?” retorted Loyka, and here he felt as though he were dying of impatience to hear a little more. “You? God protect you! In your family begging and being pensioned off are one and the same thing. And in order that I may prove to you that even without begging you can steal a march upon your son, intercede with him in my behoof that I may not be expelled from those two chambers by the coach-house. For, if not, you will not have a single living soul in whom to confide your sorrows.”
“So, then, you think, Vena, I shall want some one in whom to confide my sorrows?”
“That you will, pantata, that you will. I know it from your own poor father. When he suffered most at your hands, and got a sight of me it was just as though he had bitten honey. Oh! you have no idea at all how I sweetened his life for him. I was more than sauce and seasoning”, said Vena proudly.
“Listen, aged wife of my bosom, this affects your credit in the kitchen”, laughed old Loyka.
“It affects you both, pantata”, said Vena, quickly correcting him. “But, of course, you will soon understand it all yourselves. When your dinner is brought to you up aloft yonder without salt ​or sauce or seasoning, neither your son nor your son’s wife will salt or sauce it for you; then you just call down the backstairs, ‘Oh, Vena, come and be our sauce and seasoning!’ And I shall understand all that you have need of. Only, prithee, guarantee me those two chambers, or verily it will go hard with you.”
“The two chambers? If I had to take thee with me aloft into the pension house, thou should’st never quit the estate, Vena”, answered Loyka sententiously.
“I have your word, at all events”, said Vena, thanking him. “So now we may proceed with your banishment. I thought it important to insist upon the matter of my two chambers, because it is possible that to-day you will march across yon court-yard for the last time in your life.”
“And, prithee, how may that be I should like to know, thou sapient Solomon?” asked Loyka.
“As thus. If you have not in your written agreement reserved to yourself the right of walking across your son’s court-yard, who knows whether he will permit it. You will have to creep along the roof like grimalkin when she goes to the witches frolic”, and Vena laughed.
“It is not necessary to put such things into a written agreement”, said Loyka, with a kind of angry fervour.
“Oh! of course not, of course not, seeing that what stands in the written agreement is never carried out, the less there the better. Your own father never dared draw water from your well, and I think his right to do so was reserved in the written agreement.”
“It wasn’t”, cut in Loyka.
“Oh! it wasn’t; then see here. No doubt of it you have it in your agreement that you may draw water, but have forgot in the same agreement to reserve to yourself the right of walking across the court-yard to fetch the water. But do you know what, pantata, if it comes to that, I will carry you across the court-yard on my back, for then no one will be able to prove that you walked across the court-yard, and as for me I have still the right to carry on my back what I please.”
“Thou art all salt and sauce, boy, sauciness and seasoning”, said Loyka to cut short the conversation, and for a moment his breast heaved as though he was on the point of weeping. But after all nothing came of it except laughter, only that behind this laughter that weeping was quite apparent: tears and weeping ​looked through a curtain of laughter, and whoever saw it felt little disposed to laugh.
And so they were banished from the farmhouse. Loyka and Loyka’s wife cast a last lingering look over that apartment where from their youth until now they had tasted all the sweets and sorrows of life, and which they were perhaps leaving for ever. On some estates a beggar has easier access to the farmhouse than the vejminkar [pensioner]. And if he goes there once in a way, even his step, even his look seems to sicken every one—without careful fostering, his inclination to repeat the visit soon languishes.
“There is only one thing I am sorry for”, said Vena, when the greater part of the furniture had been already carried out before the threshold. “And that is that there are no longer any musicians at the farm—how they would have beguiled our transit to the pension house! Those were the times! When at a touch of those strings everything was tootling and jigging on the farm, and even sorrow put on a smart frock!”
“Dost think those musicians remember me?” inquired Loyka, who to-day, as he had been for some time, was as it were held a prey to a sort of childish meekness.
“Do I think they remember you? They put you into popular songs. The song of the vejminkar [pensioner] will be given at every market in the district, and then they will point to Frank as a living witness of the truth of the ballad. And the kalounkar and the rest of them will equally testify to its truth. And so, then, the Lord help us on our way without music, since there is none to be gotten. Welladay, I should have been glad to have seen one thing. That is I should have liked to see you either laugh or cry, for in heaven, ’tis said, tears and laughter are worth just as much as music. But there is no laughter in you, and crying is not worth while.”
Thus the Loykas were banished from the farmhouse in sorrow, which they sought to screen with laughter, but did not much succeed.
In the meantime, the young folks were shifting their quarters in a very different frame of mind. Yonder from the pension house the servants were dragging down furniture of all sorts, and laughter—genuine laughter—accompanied every step. Joseph looked as though he had been polished for the occasion. Barushka was just as if it were her wedding-day. Their every step, their every word betrayed that they were the victors, that the old ​people were vanquished and subjugated. Learn it ye aged! ye are vanquished and subjugated! Here every shadow of tenderer feeling was out of place, Barushka and Joseph had won a preconcerted game, and the player who has won is always the only one who laughs.
Even Kmoch, Barushka’s father, had already received intelligence that they were shifting into the farmhouse, and already betook himself thither and helped the young folks to laugh. He went to old Loyka and with a sleek smile expatiated on the wisdom his friend had shown in this step. “You know,” says Kmoch, “the hospodarship should always belong to the young folk who have energy and versatility; but old people, you know, ought to rest, they deserve a brief breathing-space before they go hence——” and more to the same effect.
Old Loyka at this speech collected a few words as we collect out of our pockets a few spare kreuzers where with to rid ourselves of a beggar. “I had already firmly decided upon this,” said he, “and, what is more, I never alter my mind.”
“I trust not, indeed,” said Kmoch, “for what end will it serve to change your mind yet again?”
“He thinks, I beg his pardon, pantata Kmoch thinks that only from to-day you have grown wise enough to know from its beak where the chaffinch is sitting and how to sprinkle salt on the hare’s tail”, put in Vena. “It is dearly bought praise, pantata, when you must deprive yourself of a farmhouse to get the reputation of being a wise man. As soon as the sacrifice is made, then all goes well, then all men praise you who haven’t a notion after all why all the fine estates are in the market.”
“What do you mean?” said Kmoch, turning angrily to Vena; “a pretty notion: a fine estate in the market. I must say, pantata, you have harboured a very impudent gang of servants here, and glad I am that the young folk have made a clean sweep of them.” “As for thee,” said he, turning again to Vena, “thou art not hammered on to the house with a nail nor glued there with mortar so as to be irremovable! A pretty notion! His fine estates in the market!”
“For all that you will not oust me just yet”, said Vena proudly. “I and your good gossip Loyka have made a compact, and I am not to venture to leave the house, and if it comes to that he goes and I stay here. Isn’t that true?” said he, appealing to Loyka.
Nothing was left for Kmoch but to disdain to carry on the conversation further, which, indeed, he did: only he still hinted ​almost involuntarily that Loyka ought not to lower himself with such a man.
This provoked Vena. “Not lower himself! If no one had picked you out of the mire, you would never have passed for so much. Only do not imagine that I do not see through you. I know you by heart, carry it off how you will. Look you! you have got your daughter on to a farm just as if a servant had made his daughter a queen, and now to-day my lord has a hundred tastes to sit on the throne himself also. Not lower oneself, indeed!” and similar things said Vena, though now Kmoch no longer heard them. He again departed to the young folk where they looked on the world with a different pair of eyes.
It seemed as though only to-day the new mistress celebrated her entry into the farmhouse. As it fell out, so it fell out. Hogsheads of beer were rolled into the court-yard; rosolek was produced, the servants were invited to it, drank, whistled, laughed, and sang, so that even people from the village collected about the court-yard, placed themselves in the gateway, and some even posted themselves in the court-yard, just as on the day when the news of the death of Frank’s grandfather lured them hither, and they had talked to one another about the life of the deceased.
They came just as if to-day there was another corpse at the farmstead, and it was old Loyka who was being buried in the pension house; perhaps he was not much unlike, not much better off than a corpse.
To-day it seemed as though the farmstead of the Loykas had regained its old appearance. For a good year or more the neighbours had disaccustomed themselves to come to the farm as they used to come in times gone by. To-day, just as though the word had been passed round, they were all here, in order to be witnesses of Loyka’s banishment from the farmhouse. Did they come to soothe or to pity him?
And by something more than accident the musicians had also gathered here in order to celebrate the memory of the day. But you may be sure that they did not place themselves on the side of the noisy, laughing youth, but beside the two silent old folk, and endeavoured to open their hearts by strains of melody and cheerful songs. They posted themselves beside that time-worn furniture, beside which sat the time-worn Loyka and his time-worn wife. Here they played and sang, as if conscious that they did so for the last time, as if to-day they would fain pay off a debt long due, and would show their gratitude once more.
​And thus the personality of old Loyka was, as it were, completed. On one side stood Vena, in whom, as it were, were embodied his bitter moods. On the other side stood the musicians in whom, as it were, were embodied all the gentleness and gaiety of his mind. Each formed, as it were, a single wing, and on these wings Loyka felt himself for the moment resigned to rest.
“It comforts me, lads, to think that you do not quite forget old Loyka, it does indeed comfort me”, said Loyka to express to them his gratitude. “Truly, it does indeed comfort me. Only that now I have no place for you as formerly, and my heart is but poor accommodation. But come, lads, let us be merry, let us celebrate this one little day, that it may never drop out of our recollection.”
And old Loyka showed his old self once more. All his old hospitality emerged in him in its full vigour and in full self-consciousness, and thus his old friends could still recognize face to face the image of his former self, pure and uncorrupted.
And when people standing by the gate and in the court saw him thus, their old courage came back to them, the young lads insinuated themselves thither where the music sounded, where the cheery songs were hummed and chanted, and thus old Loyka for this one day had still the consolation of seeing that every one was on his side, and that the young folk had not a single living soul except the servants to take their part.
This aspect of affairs pleased him; just as if the blood of his young days circulated through his veins, just as if it all depended on him how long the merriment should last, just as if he was not the least aware that Joseph by a single nod could make an end of all.
But we must add that Joseph did not by any such nod make an end of all. He pretended to see nothing of it at all, and was for all the world like a gamester who, having won, also throws a few kreuzers under the table for luck’s sake. Moreover, with all his faults, Joseph was not so foolish as not to perceive that he would give general offence if he was to-day to thwart old Loyka. On the contrary, it was his cue to make the whole village believe that after all the new vejminkar [pensioner] was really not so badly off, and that evil was the tongue which asserted anything else. It was his cue to let the whole village see what peace and comfort were reserved even for a drivelling father, to let them see how true was the announcement of that father’s dotage which had been made publicly and privately, and to make them feel how much he had suffered from it.
​And so, then, to-day on the farm were two sorts of gaiety: one like the fire flickering in the embers, and that was the gaiety of the old folk; the other like a fire just emerging from the faggots, and that was the gaiety of the young folk, and the one sort of gaiety—the gaiety of the old folks was extinguished that very day. When evening spread itself above the patriarchal acres and above the farmstead, and the musicians were departed thence and the old folk crept into their isolated hall, to their pension house, it seemed to them as though around them and within their heart yawned a mighty void which could not be filled by any sounds of earth. No expansiveness of heart was possible, and every hearty expression died away upon their lips. And when they glanced fearfully around, it seemed to them as though the spirit of the aged grandfather entered into them, and said, “I am freed at last from these torture-chambers, ye have entered into them.”
The other gaiety, the gaiety of the young folk, lasted long into the night, and when they stepped into the hall of their farmhouse they seemed to hear even the walls re-echoing with mirth and jollity, and they had but to lightly hint their will and all was full of merriment. And they did hint their will: and it was as though the tutelary deity of the place threw wide the doors, and said, “Ye enter here omnipotent; so, then, tarry not, but enter.”
CHAPTER VIII
WHEN Frank learnt that his parents dwelt in the pension house, he began to yearn for home. To his shame, be it said, not for the sake of his parents, to whom he had already become disaccustomed owing to his fondness for his grandfather, but for his own sake, because he longed to see once more a spot where he had fashioned for himself in company with his grandfather so special a mode of existence that he fancied on the whole estate there was nothing to be compared with it.
As we know, Frank at present tramped the world, and, indeed, in the true sense of tramping. But it is much stranger that his parents should have permitted him to tramp abroad, aye, that later they wholly ceased to search for him in order to forbid it. From the beginning old Loyka had learnt that he walked about with the kalounkar, the fiddler, or the sieve-maker—let him walk with them, thought Loyka to himself, to be sure, even at home ​he was constantly with them when he was not with his grandfather, and it did him no harm. He was rather pleased to think that the kalounkar, the musicians, and the others still preserved a kind of predilection for the farm, paying back to the son the hospitality they had enjoyed from the father. Then again he heard about his son that he was with a certain gamekeeper, and that he was happy in the woods and ravines, and when the gamekeeper sent word that Frank behaved well with him, Frank was suffered to remain. Then a forester saw Frank at the gamekeeper’s house, and hearing that he was a son from Loyka’s estate, said, “So you must come and stay with me as well”, and then Frank advanced just like a vagabond, having been a vagabond at the gamekeeper’s, in course of time he became a vagabond at the forester’s.
And here in these woods it seemed as though he had found once more all that he missed at home. When he found himself in some rocky haunt overshadowed by pine-trees, all the fairy stories stood before him, just as if he were seated at home in one of those chambers by the coach-house, until he even felt himself involved in horror, until even a panic seized him in that chilly dusk of the woodland, just as at home when at even they narrated about white women, about black hounds, and about accursed personages.
When a panic seized him, he laid foot to shoulder, sped out of the wood across the fields and to the cemetery, shouted to Staza, and then led her away that she might hear with him what he had heard before alone. On the way he had already prepared her for what she was to expect, that, as he said, she might not be too much startled. And on the way through the fields they visited various hedgerows and their trysting-places, and here they had already lost half their fear and on their way through the wood there was no need to penetrate to its rocky haunts, not at all, they took the path by the outskirts of the wood, or perhaps amused themselves at the keeper’s house, and so lost the other half of their fears.
And this expedition into the wood was for Staza something unutterably charming and wonderful. From Bartos, the gravedigger, she heard how robbers fell upon him in the woods and how he defended himself. From Frank she heard how a panic seized a man when he retired to its rocky wilderness. And when she came thither with Frank, she saw trees like giants, she heard the murmur as of a mighty river, she felt the breath of flowers, ​she felt the chill of the woodland, her little soul opened and something of the great Unknown entered into it. It was not so smiling nor clear as the white light of day which she saw from the cemetery, but it was just as majestic and inaccessible, so that she sat beside Frank silent and, as it were, full of reverent awe.
Neither the one nor the other knew how to express it all, but they knew so much as this—that in their inmost soul was a sort of language which explained it all. Once Staza said that they would sing; and they began to sing, “Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits”], but scarcely had they pronounced the words before Staza burst into tears, and when she was quieted it seemed to her as though she heard organ-tones above her; then she said that never in her life, nor for the whole world would she dare to sing in this place again. And it seemed to the two as though she had expressed herself as follows: In the fields there is a presence which inviteth to the dance and singing, but here in the woodland there is a presence which inviteth to silence and attentiveness, because it would fain tell its own story.
That no doubt was the difference for Staza expressed in the most general terms. But otherwise she here entered into a new world, and still it appeared to her as though it was a world akin to the one she knew before. True, when she and Frank came out of the graves or from the graves themselves into the fields, gaiety, potent even to excess, and delight seized upon her spirits, her soul soared aloft with the very sky-larks, and fluttered into the blue of heaven and the clear transparent ether. But when she came hither into the wood she partially felt as though she were in the cemetery among the tombs and at home. Just as though she was actually seated in a spot which might be called a cemetery, a grave. But with all its closeness, it was so magnificent and so beautiful, with all its dusky twilight it was so open and so free, that her soul, although it had them not, yet felt on itself a kind of pinions, so that it fluttered and was carried aloft and even took Frank’s spirit with it, so that both fluttered together.
Again it was otherwise, when they ceased to listen to the murmur of the woodlands, when they ceased to look at all that grandeur, when before their soul the ha-haing of that organ was mute, and trivial things emerged—things easily comprehensible. Here was the call-note of the cuckoo, here a butterfly, a beetle, a fly. Here Staza again found speech, here words came to her, ​at sight of these trivial things she again found herself, and here she would in a little time have again given way to dancing and singing.
So then this world was to Staza strange, new, and yet extremely welcome. Although Frank used to go for her, and so ought to have been her guide, she took upon herself the role of cicerone and played her part famously. She led Frank from tree to tree, and every tree was like the resting-place of some pretty conceit. What she and Frank failed to find when roving through the fields, seemed to find a voice among these gnarled trees, as though it called aloud, “Then it is just so.”
Each of our two vagabonds went into the wood with a different object, and only when the mind of one went halves with the other in all that they found in the wood, could the mental picture of the woodland within them be said to be complete. Frank heard every bird, saw every bird, heard every murmur, saw the squirrel and the hare, heard the foot of the wild goat crunching the gravel, and confided to Staza all he perceived. He was like the visible ear of the wood, and in his head the wood was, as it were, depicted down to the very song of the birds and the sound of the wind among the boughs. His eye was constantly in the crowns of the trees, constantly on the watch, constantly following something. All this time Staza was continually exclaiming, “Look at that primrose! Look what a beautiful sweetbrier! Here I still smell close at hand the last violet of the spring! Look what a grey coat of lichen that pine-tree wears, and how silvery is yonder birch! And see here are wild strawberries. Here the whortleberry is in bloom. This place we must remember. And here is a plant which I have planted on maminka’s tomb; it is the tearlets of the Virgin Mary [the wild red pink]. Look how the wild nut-trees are covered with catkins”, and similar things she said.
It is evident that Staza’s mind was attracted to colour, to flowers, to variety. And if the birds skipped and hopped in Frank’s mind, in Staza’s blossomed a whole parterre, the loveliest colours mingled together, rivulets streamed off from blue forget-me-nots, and fringed themselves with blackberries.
And if the soul of Frank was full of sweet sounds, the soul of Staza was garlanded with flowers. And when they paced the woodland, one gave to the other; Staza gave to Frank flowers and colours, and Frank gave to Staza singing and melodious sounds.
But they also penetrated the rocky wilderness and ravines of the woodland, and lingered there a while. Only that Staza ​especially thought that it would be too much to sit there every day, that it would oppress her too heavily. Because in that ravine there was not any sound to be heard, everything was, as it were, embedded in silence, and if a step rustled it startled you. The rocky walls stood narrowly opposed to one another: if they had had hands they could have stretched them out and shaken them. And these rocky walls rose high into the air: high aloft the merest vestige of blue sky bent above them in a tiny narrow strip; all the rest of the sky was banished from the view. Moreover sometimes a large bird appeared high above it all with a strange whistling note which startled you as much as when a footstep rustled.
What was it at home in the cemetery, compared with this huge grave! If she had ever felt oppressed in a grave (but she never did feel oppressed) she had only to sit upright or stand and she saw in a moment all the surrounding world: all the other graves, the ruddy-painted cross with the white-iron figure of the Christus, the whole sky, and her cheerfulness was at once restored. But here, if you felt oppressed, standing upright was of slight service to you. You must go quite away, and yourself cause a kind of rustling with your own footsteps, a kind of crunching of the gravel, which here was the source of so much trepidation.
And then a little pebble sometimes rolled over the rocky wall, and you could hear above measure distinctly its every tap against the rocky angles of the stone. Or sometimes a lizard, sunning itself, let fall a morsel of earth, and this, crumbling and rolling down, rustled in a quite mysterious manner. Sometimes a puff of wind carried a leaflet hither from the beech-trees which grew yonder above the ravine, and this leaflet quivered and fluttered in the air as if it trembled and dreaded to take the final plunge. Here every feeble whisper became a voice.
Sometimes when they were seated here they had not the least wish to utter a word. A word here was re-echoed from the walls of the ravine, the walls themselves spoke their own language, and it was in a manner cheery enough—but you could not bear it long. Here they generally uttered their thoughts to one another only in whispers, seated side by side, in order that they might not infuriate those walls. But more than once it happened that even those walls themselves began to whisper. For the pellet of earth falling over them and fraying to pieces was also a whispering, and the leaflet falling from above and trembling was also a whispering, and such unexpected whisperings made the children ​pause abashed, and so many a time they broke off in the middle of their conversation, only listening, looking at one another, and holding one another by the hand.
They oftest trusted themselves to converse aloud when the woodland above them yonder also carried on its own conversation, when the wind unloosed its mouth, and when those organ-pipes which Staza had first heard in the woodland had their bellows full distended. Then a word was easily spoken, even the walls no longer seemed to spy upon them, having too much to occupy them in the hurly-burly of the woods above them, even the pebble ceased to whisper, nor could you hear the rustling of the lizard or the dropping of the morsels of soil. Then only articulate sounds uttered out loud could withstand the din, and thus also Frank and Staza conversed aloud.
Here and there the brambles trailed over the rocky walls in every kind of amicable embrace. In places the mullein’s tall stem shot upwards as if with some definite aim. “I have got so far at all events”, it seemed to say. At one of the corners of the rocky wall clung a single unlucky brier bush—clung in such a way that it could neither ascend or deseend, but hung clinging in mid-air above a perpetual abyss. More fortunately fared a single birch above it which grew symmetrically upwards, and striking its roots into several crevices of the rocky wall maintained itself on its giddy platform.
But one sound was here, which never languished but continually sated the ear with its gentle music. From one end of the rocky glen bubbled to the surface a spring of water pure as silver, and our ravine offered to it its own lowest parts, in which the spring might arrange its watercourses, and here it arranged them most tranquilly, like a good housewife. Where it suited best it had fishes eyes [a plant], where you least at all expected it, it had strawberries stowed away, and where only that was possible it had some bush, in order that it might be a mirror to the bush.
And this streamlet greatly tranquillized the savage wildness of the ravine. This streamlet seemed to make a charming chamber of that rock-bound tomb, a chamber which especially entertained and welcomed Staza. And so when Frank said, “Let us go to the ravine”, Staza at first remembered only its blank walls of rock with their scanty blackberry bushes, the wild sweetbrier, and the long lank birch-tree, and then she felt as though she must try very hard to be brave enough to go. But soon after this she remembered the water sporting with itself and babbling in its ​channel far below, and how here it lingered by a stone, here frolicked with a bush, and here streamed off from a whole colony of forget-me-nots-and then she needed not to be invited a second time, and after this Frank heard at once the words, “Well, then, let us go to the ravine.”
And this ravine was like another church to these children. As we know, they had their own little chapels first in the fields, by the hedgerows, not far from the nest of the quail. Here in this ravine they had a new church, substantially different from yon other, and yet in many respects not at all dissimilar. The difference was perhaps this that yonder by the hedgerows and in the fields the mind expanded and soared aloft, but here gathered itself into its own depths. The similarity then lay in this, that both there and here the soul gained strength and courage and other qualities of the like nature.
So now the life of these two young souls began to bestir itself. It began in the grave, it leapt forth among the fields, and here in the woodland it paused and listened. There were life ends their life began, there were life unfolds in germinating ears of corn beneath warm summer rays of light their life carolled gaily, and here in the ravine and woodland where life has a couch of quiet dreams their pilgrimage was reminded that it must return again to the graves.
Once Staza said to Frank, “Now that you lead me into the fields and woodlands, I sing but seldom among the graves at home. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I am thinking how I may be with thee. Often and often I have begun to sing, but then it has occurred to me that I would far sooner be with thee, and that it would be better than singing. Once I wished to sing at maminka’s grave, and just then I heard thy call at the wicket-gate, and I went just as though thou hadst been maminka.” Then said Frank, “And do you know why I so continually run from place to place?”
“I do not know.”
“I am seeking at all times where thou wouldst like to be, and when I have found a place I show it thee, and then I cease to rove abroad. But I know that thou wouldst not be happy at our house, and therefore I do not lead thee thither.”
“And where hitherto hast thou been happiest?” inquired Staza.
“With you in the cemetery.”
“Then I shall be happy there also”, said Staza.
​“And also I like to be at our house, but in the pension house where grandfather lived”, said Frank. “And so my parents stay there now.”
“I should like to be there also,” said Staza. “only that thy brother ought not to live there.”
“My brother is there no longer,” said Frank, “he is at the farmhouse, and my parents are at the pension house; they are there just as my grandfather used to be, and I should like to see the place again.”
It was true that Frank began to yearn for home, nevermore to quit it, for he thought that nothing could compare with the delight of dwelling where his grandfather had once been, that is to say, in the pension house or at the cemetery.
And so they went home, and the sun had already set when they came to Frishets. When they set foot upon the village green a large number of people stood there, and all were talking and pointing in the direction of the Loykas’s house. Here Frank involuntarily called to mind the people who came to the farmstead on the day when the funeral bell was tolled for his grandfather, and they were almost all the same people, and Vena was among them.
Frank and Staza halted, concealed themselves behind the trunk of a large linden, and listened. Something said the mayor, something said the sexton Vanek, something said Vena, and the rest of the people filled up the gaps with questions.
“They have driven him out, they have worried him out of the pension house”, said Vena. “Truly they did well: was he not old? Had he not given everything to the young folks? Had he not stinted himself for them? Had he not passed sleepless nights for them? and for them toiled at his estate—and this is his reward!”
“And how could they drive him out of the pension house?” inquired a neighbour.
“How could they drive him out? Thus, look you, they could drive him out. They said to him, ‘Leave the pension house’, and it was so. When do you peasant proprietors say anything else to your vejminkar [pensioner]", sneered Vena.
And now the mayor began to elucidate matters. Sundry relations came to the young Loykas’s to spend the day, then for two days, but after that they did not wish to leave the farm at all. And in order that the young folk need not have them constantly on their hands, Joseph Loyka’s young wife went herself to the old ​folk and asked them whether they would object to being removed into the two chambers by the coach-house, and allow her relations to occupy the pension house. On this old Loyka asked if she had anything more at heart? and whether she knew what it was to be banished to those two chambers—and by what sort of people they had previously been occupied. On this Barushka said that she did know, and that since the musicians whom he was so fond of had previously dwelt there well enough, perhaps he also would do there well enough, and that if he felt lonely and out of spirits he might invite the musicians to share the rooms with him. On this old Loyka went to his son and asked him whether he knew what the young mistress of the house had just been saying. “I do know”, replied his son, and repeated to his father everything which the father had heard from Barushka, because the young people had agreed between themselves what Barushka should say to the old man.
“Well, and what dost thou think of it all, my son?” inquired old Loyka.
“I think the rooms would suit you admirably”, said the young hospodar. “You see, of course, that I could not put my wife’s relations there.”
“And so I am to dwell there with Vena”, laughed old Loyka.
“As you please. But for my part I think that it would be an excellent opportunity of ridding the house of Vena altogether.”
Just as the neighbours had reached this point, they heard a banging of doors at the Loykas’s house, and from the gate ran old Loyka with dishevelled hair. The moon shone over the village green with its first rays; Loyka ran direct to the neighbours there assembled.
“Neighbours, for the love of Heaven, I implore you, lend me a match”, he shouted. “In all the house I cannot find one little match wherewith to kindle the roof above the head of this son of mine!” shouted old Loyka, and kept constantly feeling in his pockets to see if there was anything like a match in them.
It was quite an awful spectacle to look upon the poor old man, and yet more awful to listen to him.
None of the neighbours answered him.
“What, then, will none of you lend me one little match?” shouted Loyka. “Oh! fie! the shame of it. I lent to each one of you whoever came to me at any time; whithout usury I lent to all. Who of you can say I ever refused to lend him what he wanted? If any one needed stock I lent him live stock. If any one needed ​a team I lent him a team; if any wanted harvesters I lent him harvesters; and now I want a match from you and ye will not lend it me.” And on this he cursed all his previous neighbourliness.
It was evident to every one without further demonstration that old Loyka’s mind was unstrung. Some in their compassion took one another by the hand, some began to show their pity by shedding tears. The mayor stepped up to him, and said, “Pantata, perhaps if you were to lie down you would get over it in sleep.”
But old Loyka replied instantly, “I thank you for your good counsel, excellent man. Do you think that I could lay me down in the chambers by the coach-house? I might. Why should I not? When the musicians and the tinkers and the kalounkar lay there, why should not I lie there also? But I know why I cannot lie there—because it would break my heart.” And at these words he struck his old breast with his fists as though he would break it in pieces.
Again the mayor seized his opportunity, and said, “You need not sleep there, pantata. Give me your hand; I will lead you to our house, and you can choose for yourself the bed which you like best.”
“True, that might be”, said Loyka, as if he came to himself a little. But immediately after this he added with a bitter laugh, “But think you sleep would visit me, there, either? If Loyka passed a night in the village outside his own estate, could he also sleep? He could not sleep? I thank you respectfully, kind neighbour. But hence I will not stir. If no one is willing to lend me a match, the devil is in it if I do not tarry here until the Lord God sends a fiery brand from heaven upon the farmstead of my son!”
And he raised his hands to heaven and cried, “O Lord God! a little of Thy fiery brimstone and Thy name shall be exalted for ever and ever.” He cried aloud like one of the prophets of the Old Testament, until horror encompassed every one who listened to him.
Then again he spoke, turning his face to his neighbours, “The Lord God heareth not, and that because I equally inflicted wrong upon my own father—only that I never drove him to the dog-kennel. Only when my own father has forgiven me and prayed for me, will the Lord God send down brimstone.” And he sobbed aloud.
​Again said the mayor, “Take it not so to heart, pantata; perhaps your son will grow wiser, and all will yet be well.”
“Not take it to heart! Already it is late, dear neighbour, already it is quite pitch-dark in those chambers, ay, it is dark there in broad daylight.” And here it seemed again as though he once more came to himself a little.
And not long after this he said, “I know what would do me good for this one day, and where I could sleep. If some one would lead me to the burial-ground to the grave of my father. But where is there any to be found to lead me thither? There is not one.”
“If you wish it, pantata, we will go at once”, said Vena. “I will conduct you thither; I will stay with you there as long as you please.”
“So be it, so be it”, said Loyka, and laughed, and looked from one to another, and in fact allowed himself to be conducted by Vena in the direction of the cemetery. Almost all that group of neighbours followed him at a few paces distance, and accompanied him to the outskirts of the village.
And Loyka went with Vena to the burial-ground.
But close behind them, even to the burial-ground itself, went two small souls in great sorrow and tribulation: they were Frank and Staza.
CHAPTER IX
AGAIN the moon shone out, when they came to the cemetery, just as long ago when Frank and Staza first passed the night in his grandfather’s grave. And because the cemetery stood on an eminence there at times stole over it a warm breeze in whose breath the white-iron figure of the Christus rattled upon the ruddy cross, several of the lesser crosses clattered with their arms, and sometimes creaked on its hinges a rusty little door, behind which lay concealed the inscription above some dead man’s bones.
This clattering of the arms of the crosses, the rattling of the Christus, and the creaking of the rusty doorlets was the only unrest which the dead gave to view—how little was it all compared with that with which they had so tormented one another in life!
Besides this, however, a breeze also ran above the graves and stirred the tall grasses and here and there a flower; but this unrest ​was scarce strong enough to be perceived, ay, rather it resembled the faint breathing of a child or the mere echo of a sigh.
As we know from the beginning of our story that tinsel music in which the Christus indulged was not over-attractive towards nightfall, and people took to flight before it as if an enemy were in full pursuit behind them. But of those who came hither this evening none paid any attention to it; perhaps they did not even hear it, because in their inmost hearts resounded an unrest far more fierce, more discordant, harsh, so that they fled from it into this strange harbour of refuge.
And hereupon old Loyka, as soon as they had set foot in the cemetery, embraced with one hand that ruddy wood of the cross, and raising the other on high and fixing his eyes upon the white-iron figure of the Christus, began to lament his fate, to call aloud, to curse, to pray, and to prostrate himself at the same time. “Thou martyred Head,” he cried, “Thou hast suffered much, but Thou hadst not a son to cut out Thy heart piece by piece—I suffer more. Thou hadst no home, but because Thou never hadst a home, Thou knowest not what it is to be forced to leave a home, a home which I proffered to every one who needed it, and now I have not even so much as I proffered once to others—I suffer more. Thou wert young and vigorous when Thou didst suffer, but Thou hadst not hair streaked with grey and wrinkles on Thy face, Thou hast not suffered when the feet long to faint and flag, and must tramp on—I suffer more! But Thou didst voluntarily undergo Thy torments, mine are the punishment of my sins—yonder in that grave sleeps the witness of my words and of my evil deeds—I suffer more! And I but now entreated Thy Father about some fire that He would send it as He sent it upon Gomorrah, and He heard me not—what is there still left for me to suffer?”
After these words, pronounced with immeasurable anguish, a silence fell on everything in the cemetery, as though it would accentuate Loyka’s bitterness—the white-iron figure of the Christus clanged upon the cross from time to time—perhaps it did not wish without reserve to adapt itself to this train, of thoughts.
On this Vena said, “If you would have allowed yourself, pantata, to be nailed to a cross like the Lord Christ, look you there, you never need have been banished from your home, and for my part I believe that Joseph would have helped you up if you had requested him.”
​Loyka having bewailed and lamented his fate, now felt relieved, at least those thick clouds broke and dispersed in which till now his thoughts had been enveloped. But it was only for a moment. And in that moment he sank down by the cross, embraced the foot of it, and perhaps he wept. But this did not last long. He looked up to the heavens, ran his eyes through the myriad stars, and seeing the moon in the full splendour of its rays, suddenly laughed aloud, laughed without words, and so continued to laugh.
Vena, gazing in the same direction as Loyka, said, “Pantata, that tiresome little moon tickles me, too, under the nose with its rays; for my part, I can hold out no longer, but laugh I must.” And he laughed, too.
“Nay, ’tis not that, lad”, said Loyka. “But I am so glad that I have found a comrade. Look at him, he hath no home either, and never in all my life had I observed it until to-day. To-day a holy spirit has quite illumined me; to-day I know it, just as if I had walked the sky with him. Look! look! every night he must hie up yonder through agues and nipping blights, and that pleases me. Only I should like to know whether he also had an estate, whether he gave it to some Joseph, and so now is pensioned off! Look at him! look at him! It pleases me to think that we are two, I here on earth, and he yonder in the sky—and as it seems to me they are no better off yonder in the sky than we here on earth.”
And he laughed on. Then he stood up, and looking towards the pilgrim moon, said, “Stop and let us take note how fast he gets over the ground, to see if he is good on his feet.” And here he looked up at the moon, just as though he were reckoning its footsteps, and laughed aloud. From this laughter went forth a greater horror than from the clanging Christus or from the clattering branches of those crosses which spread around.
As we know, Frank and Staza followed Loyka at a distance hither to the cemetery. Even now in the cemetery they kept several paces apart, so that Loyka had no notion of their presence. When Frank first heard his father on the village green, he was half bewildered, and knew not what was happening, and understood nothing of it all. When he here heard him pray that strange prayer by the cross his flesh crept and he shivered, for so much he understood of it all as to perceive that his brother Joseph was the cause. But when he heard his father laugh so wildly, he could bear it no longer, but gave way to an uncon​trollable flood of tears. He had never so wept since the death of his grandfather.
This time Staza was beside him, and, feeling ill at ease, might also have given way to tears, because crying is infectious among children. But Staza had hitherto never associated with children, Frank was her single companion, and so what would have equally constrained another child in her place to cry, had on her a different effect. She saw and heard weeping in plenty at the cemetery, but at the same time she saw and heard how the rest of the people mingled singing with the weeping. And thus this sequence of ideas formed itself in her little soul. Old Loyka beside the cross appeared to her like the corpse which Vena had brought to its burial. Frank appeared to her like those who wept over the corpse consequently she must be one of those who song above it. And, indeed, no sooner had Frank begun to cry than she began to sing,
“Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky Kralovstvi nebeskeho dedicky.” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits of the dead; Ye are inheritors of the heavenly kingdom.”]
Both Staza’s singing and Frank’s weeping were one and the other, as it were, in tears. But in both was interwoven something which it is impossible to express in words. Any one who had seen and heard it would have shuddered, and been cut to the heart. In the cemetery waved the warm night wind, in the heavens hung the moon, by the clattering cross stood a despairing father, and at a little distance by another trembling cross knelt Frank who wept aloud, and Staza who wept in singing the words of which exhorted all to peace.
Old Loyka, somewhat roused by this from his own sombre fancies, turned and listened. He seemed as though he were on the watch, as though he sought out for himself some new pathway, and now was deliberating whether he should take it.
“Dost hear, Vena? Dost hear?” said he to Vena. “I once heard that melody in the hall of our house; but there were harps with it.”
The reader will recollect that it was during the dance after the funeral of Frank’s grandfather that Frank and Staza suddenly sang the song from the hall to the sound of harps and violins.
“Dost hear, dost hear it?” he again repeated after a pause. “For my part, I had no notion the song was so merry a one when there ​were harps with it. And it would seem that to-night there are no harps with it.”
There were no harps with it, to be sure, but all the same it was accompanied by the audible weeping of his own son.
“And it pleases me to find that they know it here in the cemetery. Prithee, lead me to those musicians, and let them play on. And if they do not wish to play, tell them that you are from Loyka’s farm and then, of course, they will play, for they will remember Loyka although he rules his home no more.”
And he went with Vena several steps in the direction of the singing and crying, where Frank knelt sobbing and Staza knelt singing. When he came to them, Frank embraced his knees, and eried “Papa! Papa!” Staza was silent.
“Papa!” said Loyka. “I might have known that they would recognize me here. Where they are skilled in singing and playing, there they know old Loyka. So hallo! and play something lively that I may have a dance here.” And this poor old man here in the grave-yard struck an attitude as though he would caper about, and as though he were ready for a fling.
And here Frank, falling upon his knees, continually embraced his father’s feet, and, sobbing piteously, exclaimed, “Papa! Papa!”
“Why dost thou clog my feet like a moist clod of earth when I wish to dance a measure?” said Loyka to Frank, whom he did not recognize. “It is a disgusting habit, and looks as though thou hadst come to me for alms.”
“Papa! Papa!” cried Frank.
“Ah! I know thee now. I recognize thee now. Thou art the ghost of my son Frank, and walkest here in the cemetery. But thou art not Frank. He tramps it with the musicians, whom they chevied from my house—and that pleases me.”
“Papa, it is I”, cried Frank.
“Thou art not he, because thou hast no harp with thee. Look you, there is no harp here, so you will not persuade me. But if thou wert a worthy ghost thou wouldst lead me to my Frank; I would gladly see him and those musicians with whom he tramps the world, and I would tramp it, too.”
“I will lead you home, papa”, cried Frank.
“Thou shalt not lead me thither; for me, I want no home. But I want to leave home far behind, like my son Frank. I want to tramp it with the musicians, that they may compose a song about it, and may point to me on the market-places and say that I am he, I am that old Loyka, who dares no more have music in his ​house, because his son has banished it hence, and so I must follow the musicians even to the market-place, because I have not where to entertain them at my house. Will you lead me to them?”
“I will lead you to them”, said Frank at random, without knowing what he said or why he said it.
“That pleases me,” said Loyka, “and inasmuch as the way will be a long one, we must rest ourselves here yet a little space.”
And they seated themselves on the graves, as if by accident old Loyka and Frank on the grandfather’s grave, Staza on her mother’s grave; Vena stood.
But at this point another character appeared on the scene, and when he had posted himself near them said, “Pray, who at this late hour here disturbs my lodgers? I have guaranteed them rest, and will not have them molested.” He said it heartily, and with a certain humour. It was the grave-digger, Bartos.
“Good man,” said Loyka, “we seek a lodging for the night, and if you will let us be here, you can seat yourself beside us.”
Before Bartos had stepped up to the group he had heard who they were, he recognized Loyka and the children by their voices, and by listening a few moments had soon understood what brought them thither. He therefore wanted no explanation, and at once adapted himself to the situation.
“If that is all your trouble,” said he in the same voice, “you can remain here as long as you please; but it will not please you very long, I fancy.” And he seated himself beside them.
“So, so, so, so”, muttered Loyka, as was his custom when some process in his ideas had to be emphasized.
“What thinkest thou, old friend, who has suffered most, I or Jesus of Nazareth?”
“You, pantata, and because none of us know what you have yet to suffer, although you have already suffered much.”
At these words Loyka started, because it was just as though they had been chosen out of his own soul, and he had rather expected contradiction.
“But I do not want to suffer any more, lad, and, if you know, pray, tell me what I am to do.”
“I know one thing you might do”, said Bartos. “If you were to lie down to rest in these chambers,” and here he pointed to the graves, “all would be over; but you have no right to them yet, nor dare I enclose you in them. However, I will tell you what you should do. You want nothing but to divert yourself a little.”
​“Exactly what I thought myself”, said Loyka. “You speak like a true doctor, and if I should listen to you yet a while, I know not whether good might not come of it.”
“And we will manage it thus. To-morrow I lead you into a neighbouring village to the house where Frank is living. There are the fiddlers and the harpers, and we can fling up our heels in a hornpipe.”
Even this idea was one which seemed to have been borrowed from Loyka’s own mind, and Bartos did indeed borrow it from Loyka; because, as we know, a moment before Loyka had expressed his desire to have a dance before this unseen witness.
“The further I listen to thee, the more convinced I am that thou art a mighty sage”, said Loyka with evident satisfaction. And it was plain that the grave-digger had struck exactly the right chord.
“But inasmuch as we shall have a debauch there, we must rest ourselves before we set out on our journey. We must sleep, for we have not slept at all for several nights”, continued the gravedigger.
“Thou mightest stand and preach in the pulpit, good man”, said Loyka, highly delighted at what the grave-digger had said.
By this vague discourse the grave-digger had in reality probed Loyka to the quick. And Loyka hearing that repeated from another’s mouth which a moment before he had been the only one to long for, and thus having the object of his own wishes freshly paraded before his mind, felt relieved. His words and expression were deprived of that sickeningly painful cast which a short time before had driven Frank to weeping and Staza to song.
The two children now nestled close together, and looked on like birdies from a nest at what was passing before them. They did not understand, but it had not any longer so much horror for them.
“If thou thinkest that we ought to sleep,” said Loyka, as though he were still replying to the recommendation of the grave-digger, “it will be best to lay us down and sleep”, and hereupon he immediately made as though he would lie down.
“When you were married, pantata, I was at your wedding”, said the grave-digger. “And when the deceased, your father, quitted you for the pension house, he said, ‘If at any time you are too much harassed to sleep at home, come to me, you will sleep beside your father.’ And to-day, you have come to him, pantata, and will sheep soundly.”
​His father had in reality said this on that long-passed wedding-day, and now the son came for the first time to sleep beside him. A son already grey-headed, to sleep beside a father who was no more among the living.
“Only go on, go on, and tell me about it”, entreated old Loyka, and fitful dreams were already weighing down his eyelids. Yet a few words he pronounced as if in assent, for Bartos began to narrate to him the story of his own young days, and how he had performed such and such feats, but after a while the grave-digger observed that he was speaking to Loyka, who already had fallen asleep.
Vena remained beside the sleeping Loyka. Bartos took Frank with him into his house, and told him to speed early next morning to the village about which he had spoken correctly enough, then he himself, like a night-watcher, went out from time to time into the cemetery to see how Loyka fared.
The next day they followed Frank to the abode of the musicians. We must here say without concealment that Bartos had devised a kind of popular remedy for Loyka’s sick spirit. Whether it was destined to succeed or not we cannot, however, state at present.
In the village they found Frank already arrived. There also they found the musicians whose loss Loyka had so much deplored. The whole party collected at the ale-house, and the musicians played and sang, Bartos taking special care that everything should be gay and lively. A rumour of what had occurred at the farmstead had already outrun them, and consequently every one knew it was the afflicted Loyka who in this manner compensated himself for the loss of his home.
It was a piteous spectacle to look on the old man, and to see how his mind, restless enough without this soothing medicine, gloated over the well-known strains of the harps and violins. He sat and listened. The expression of his face was serious as if he were lost in thought, and not a word escaped his lips. The whole time he did not move a muscle, his eyelids never winked, his lips appeared as though they could not open. One would have thought that the music of his old friends would have stimulated him to mirth or tumultuous grief. But it was not so. Excitement seemed to hold the spiritual part of him in equipoise—and he was completely tranquil through it all.
Frank stood the whole time by the side of his father, who was seated. Old Loyka held him round the waist with one hand, and ​with the other stroked his face and head. And this he did the whole time without speaking or making any other movement. Only Bartos had straitly charged the musicians in no way to recall his thoughts to his home.
When it seemed to Loyka that they had played long enough, he rose and said to the musicians very gravely, “I thank you, comrades, and as far as in me lies, I will requite you. But go not to our son’s farmstead, there I will never dwell again. I have determined to make a home just as the whim seizes me. Here I can invite you to me at any time. Here the people are good and honest, and no one says, ‘No! act differently.’ I have been too long at home, you know—on the farm, ’tis seldom I have quitted it, and so this has come to me that I must quit it; I must look about me and go a little into the world to learn how the world wags elsewhere.”
And more he said to the same effect. On this he departed from the village with Frank, the musicians following after him and playing through the village and even when the village was left behind And then they went into other villages, and there much the same occurred. Only that Loyka marched into those other villages at the head of a band of musicians, so that the village was immediately in an uproar, topsy-turvy, and with its feet in the air. People ran out of their houses on to the village green, gathered round him in a group, and said to one another, “It is Loyka from Frishets: he is pensioned off, and so, see! he has gone mad.”
Soon a rumour spread all through the countryside about Loyka, how that he walked from village to village with an escort of musicians, and scarcely had they finished saying so, when lo! Loyka announced himself by well-known strains of music. And when the people ran together on the village green and collected round him, he paused, and said, “Hearken to what I will preach unto you.”
On this he delivered a kind of sermon, showing forth how he had passed the night in sufferings, how he wandered with the moon, how that the moon wandered in the sky and he wandered in the world, and how he arose with the first dawn, and how the foxes had holes and he had not where to lay his head like the Son of Man.
He even walked about the market-places and spoke to people and implored them only not to send him home, and he would repay ​them for everything. Doubtless some laughed, some who knew him well pitied him. And many only pretended to pity him.
Then again he also walked with the musicians, and when he came into some village and stood on the green, he inquired whether they had any vejminkar there that he might have a look at him; or said he, “Let the vejminkar be brought to me on the green, and we will come to an understanding about everything.” And more to the same effect. Soon old Loyka belonged to the roving figures of the neighbourhood about whom people talk or do not talk, whom we half-laugh at and do not laugh at, who add a peculiar feature to those districts much as the eagle adds a character to the woodland above which it wanders lonely, and above which it utters from time to time a cry which pierces to the bones.
And so Frank led his father to all the places with which he had previously become acquainted through his own vagabond’s mode of life.
In some places, too, the respectable portion of the citizens came out to meet them, inviting old Loyka for friendship’s sake into their houses, for, in truth, Loyka had been the best-known and most highly respected man of the neighbourhood. But Loyka never accepted such invitations, though modestly thanking his friends for all their kind intentions. “I never go on to any farmstead”, he would say. “I thank you, neighbours, most respectfully. Leave me any place where there is no farmstead, and I have enough for my poor wants.”
If there was a cross anywhere on the village green, Loyka posted himself beside it, and when the people began to flock around him, he pointed to the Christus, and said, “Here ye behold Him”, and then he pointed to himself, and said, “and here ye behold me. He yonder bore His cross only once to Calvary, but I bear mine continually. But the hangman’s servants martyred Him, me my own son martyred because I gave him my estate.”
At other times again he cried, “Wherefore do ye wonder that I go from village to village? Here ye behold a man crucified upon a cross! He also wandered about in the world and no one hindered Him. Why do ye hinder me?”
Also Frank led his father away into the woodland, and once a fiddler whom they happened to meet at the outskirts of the wood accompanied them to the well-known ravines. Never in its life, perhaps, had that rocky glen entertained such a fantastic group as ​it did that day, and, perhaps, never in their lives did such tones reverberate from its rocky walls as did that day.
Even old Loyka felt as though he were seated in the chambers by the coach-house at his home, and listened to the old, old stories. Only that on this occasion it was Frank who narrated his youthful experiences in that ravine, in which he pointed out where the wind-hover was wont to hang suspended in the air, where the brambles trailed, where hung the clinging sweetbrier, and where the streamlet bubbled in which those blue flowers flourished. And the fiddler played; and it was all so strange to those rocky walls that one after the other they repeated it all, as if they gloried in their ready memory, and as if they wondered what it was all about.
And then at last there fell upon the place, after the playing and the story-telling, a silence like the grave. When the birch-tree, safely anchored by its roots above them, stirred, even old Loyka heard it, and looked to see what it was. When the lizard, sunning itself by the bushes in the warm sunlight, let fall over the rock a fragment of pebble or a crumb of earth, Loyka looked to see what had happened there above his head. And when in the centre of the ravine a leaflet was whirled along tremulous and fluttered like thought itself, Loyka glanced upward, and wondered, “Whence art thou? Where, I wonder, did they treat thee like myself?”
And then it came to pass that his eyelids drooped wearily, and he fell asleep. When he awoke he would no more hear of going into the villages, he would no more hear of the musicians, and said he fain would come hither oftener. He could come here as often as he chose, because the woodman at whose house Frank had been staying for some time now welcomed Frank’s father also as an old and well-known acquaintance. And Frank led him into this ravine every day, here every day he slept most comfortably, and when he awoke he seemed always as though he found a portion of himself which he had lost.
It almost seemed as though Bartos’s device was destined to succeed, at all events it partially succeeded. But it still failed of its full effect, because Loyka would not ear of returning to his home. But at the same time he would not hear of strolling through the villages any more.
People had already ceased to say in telling his story that he was wandering through the villages. Now they said he wandered in the woods.
CHAPTER X
OLD LOYKA continued to be a constant figure of the district surrounding Frishets. If any one from the neighbourhood or from abroad had come there and inquired what novel or peculiar event had happened there, he would have learnt that they had there a vejminkar [pensioner] belonging to a large estate and with a large pension, but who would not dwell on his estate, and roved about even in the woods and dwelt in the cemetery with the grave-digger Bartos.
“You have here a strange and ludicrous thing”, he would hear said: for people frequently regard what is strange as also ludicrous. “Perhaps he wood sooner allow himself to be nailed to a cross than to return to the farm in which his son is hospodar. Some years ago he was just a little touched in the head and walked with a band of musicians from village to village—what a peasant it is! Now he is a little more reasonable; only no one can persuade him to go home-the fool!”
“And has he been long thus?” the stranger would perhaps inquire.
“Already a good many years. His wife dwells in the farmhouse, and about her Loyka says, ‘Let her stop there, she merits it.’ ’Tis a strange and ludicrous affair.” So would run the discourse of the native of the place.
And so we see that even over his sufferings several years have flown and, before he had expected it, we are several years older, and with us Loyka and Frank and Staza and all the rest. During this time, it is true, Joseph importuned his father to return home. He dispatched servants after him with the assurance that he never dreamed his father would make such a fuss about the two chambers by the coach-house and take the matter so seriously, and that if only he would return he might dwell in the pension house unmolested. But the servants who were sent with these messages never succeeded much, because on these occasions old Loyka behaved as though they wished to hale him to the butcher’s, stuffed his fingers in his ears, and took to flight. Moreover, at times, he sent strange messages to his son, though it is hard to say whether the servants delivered them just as he gave them.
But old Loyka took so violent an aversion, even to the servants. from the farm, that if he came to a village his first question was whether any one from Frishets was on the watch for him. And ​if he tarried several days in a village he posted guards here and there, that he might timely take to flight if the servants ventured to approach.
And it happened on one occasion that the servants from the farm entered several villages close upon his heels, because the young hospodar had charged them with a message in which he declared that he would no longer be held up to the eyes of the world as a villain, and have his name bandied about from mouth to mouth as that of a God-forsaken reprobate.
Here old Loyka fumed furiously. “Only let him come himself and I’ll show him how I hold him up to the world as a villain”, said he, and from that time forth he avoided the villages and dwelt most willingly with Bartos at the cemetery.
I know not how it came about, whether Joseph took the message to mean that he was to come personally to his father, but so it was that he came to the cemetery, and all the servants with him who had ever been dispatched after his father with any message. No sooner did old Loyka become aware of their approach than he was almost beside himself, and locked himself into the charnel-house among the shin-bones and skulls, only that he might see no one and need not have to speak to any one.
Then Joseph called in a loud voice in the cemetery to his father, bidding him come forth and return home; ay, he swore that he himself would not return home without him, that he would no longer endure to become the byword for a God-forsaken reprobate among the populace, and that if his father refused he should be dragged home forcibly.
“And how do you mean to accomplish it?” inquired Bartos, who had appeared during this scene on the threshold of his dwelling.
“I shall have the doors forced”, responded Joseph.
“How so?” inquired Bartos calmly.
“Oh, you know all about it”, said Joseph to Bartos. “It is you who are the cause of all this, and I will suffer it no longer. It is you who purposely retain my father in your house to make capital out of him. It is you who are purposely coupling my brother with that young vagabond——”
Further Joseph did not proceed in his harangue.
“What is it you called Staza”, Bartos asked Joseph, and at the same time uttered a yell so menacing that the servants who were with Joseph recoiled several paces. But scarcely had Bartos pronounced the words before he had already gripped Joseph under ​the armpits, swung him into the air, and balancing him like a racket ball, continued, “I’ll pound every one to a jelly who dares once say such a thing.”
And from the way in which Joseph turned deadly pale in Bartos’s hands and impotently shook and shivered, it was evident that he believed the grave-digger to be in earnest and about to fulfil his threats to a tittle.
But Joseph, in his own impotence, began to pluck up a bolder spirit when he contemplated his servants, and no sooner had Bartos once more dropped him on to the ground than he shouted to them to force the doors of the charnel-house without further hesitation and to drag out the aged Loyka.
“And, prithee, why not? Prithee, why not?” observed Bartos in a voice again perfectly calm, as if a moment before he had not threatened to make a jelly of a human body. And he posted himself before the doors of the charnel-house.
“Cleave the doors asunder!” commanded Joseph, seeing that his servants did not wish to have anything to do with the business. “A souterkin of beer to the man who cleaves them open.”
And when the servants made a rush in right earnest to get at the doors Bartos, as though he had heard nothing of what Joseph had said, merely stretched out his two hands and said, “Cave!” and already two of the servants lay on the ground blubbering, as though they had come to order their own graves to be delved. The rest of the servants wavered in their charge, and then suddenly turned and fled at full speed by the shortest road out of the cemetery.
Joseph began to jeer and threaten them.
“Everything is not to be had for a souterkin of beer”, said Bartos, and laughed, or rather smiled, tauntingly.
“But it will be had all the cheaper,” said Joseph, “when I bring half the village against you, you will pipe in another strain.”
“Do not bring them”, said Bartos, and continued to smile tauntingly.
“When I report matters at the bureaux——”
“Report it not, report nothing, unless you would report your own precious doings”, said Bartos. “But, of course, if you think it right, bring them, report it all, only, you just sleep upon it and I will sleep upon it, too.”
“But I tell you it is notorious how you encourage his vagabondage, how you cause disunion in the family——”
​“Ay, ay, peasant, you have it well off by heart; but let me tell you, that if half your village comes with all its bureaux they will retire hence just as your own servants retired a moment since. And so it is I who cause disunion in families? Behold yonder doors before the charnel-house, and think whom they conceal. So it is I who cause disunion between him and thee. I, forsooth, was that notable son who lowered his father beneath the meanest of his servants, who shortly after commanded him to dwell in a stable, who baited him until he had baited him out of house and home, who deprived him of head and of reason, oh! I pray you, just bring hither your village and the whole squad of officials. I will enlighten them in your presence as to what a notable peasant thou art, who, in place of a heart, hast planted in thy bosom the gross peasant’s corruption and art a wicked son because thy father is a pensioner on thy bounty!”
Such and more to the like effect said Bartos, and hereupon pressed Joseph, with his body, out of the cemetery. There was little need to use pressure; Bartos was only making sport of him, but it was all the worse for Joseph, because he felt what a ridiculous figure he cut before the servants and before Bartos, and his humiliation appeared to be intolerable. But there was no escape from it. He must e’en quit the cemetery with his message undelivered and must see to it that he did not fairly take to flight, which would have been more ridiculous than this measured retreat, during which Bartos, at least, allowed him so much apparent liberty that he appeared to be retiring of his own free will, and so Joseph had nothing for it but to recoil with threats.
And being now in a towering passion be resolved to fulfil these threats. When he had returned to Frishets he collected his neighbours and others and summoned them to go with him for his father, whom Bartos was detaining in the charnel-house, and whom he refused to let out.
Certainly this announcement wore little the appearance of truthfulness, because they knew Bartos too well to believe him capable of doing anything of the kind. Nevertheless Joseph contrived to persuade them to go with him, partly out of curiosity, to see what would happen, partly because they thought that the father and son might yet be reconciled, now that the son made such a point of it; and an affair of such importance was worth the trouble of a man’s being a witness to it.
And so they trailed out of Frishets, and Joseph at their head, towards the cemetery, so that they had the appearance of a pro​cession of people carrying some one to the grave, whereas they went for a man in order to bring him from the grave and back to his own home.
When they reached the cemetery the neighbours remained in the rear. Joseph advanced to the dwelling of the grave-digger and shouted, “Bartos, now we are here, so let out my father.”
Bartos issued from his house, which had also a door into the fields, halted in front of the threshold, and seeing in reality half the village at Joseph’s back inquired jestingly, “Are you come to pay me a visit, neighbours? I am delighted, I am delighted, but you must only come one by one, because men do not enter these precincts all at once.”
“We are come for my father”, said Joseph. “I’ll teach thee, thou son of a spade, that I know how to keep my word.”
“For your father? You have him there”, said Bartos, and pointed vaguely all over the cemetery.
“Open the charnel-house, grave-digger,” said Joseph imperiously.
“It will not be necessary,” answered the grave-digger. “Yonder is thy father”, and he pointed to the great ruddy cross by which stood old Loyka with dishevelled hair, holding in his hand a human shin-bone which he had picked out for himself in the charnel-house, and looking from one to the other of those who had approached the cemetery, as much as to say, “If any one comes near me I will break his head for him with this shin-bone.”
All started back who saw it, even Joseph started. That grey-haired sire among the tombs, holding his left hand around the great cross on which hung the old white-iron figure of the Christus, and in his right hand a human bone, seemed standing there the defender of the dead against whom the living had come in battle-array.
“What went ye out for to see?” began old Loyka in the words of Scripture. “A notable son who promised in presence of you all to bear me on his arms, and then waved me to those chambers which I had reserved for beggars, and bade me dwell there. Behold him, yonder, he is among you. Or came ye out for to see a father bereft of sense and reason who long ago invited you to the feast, danced with you and made you merry? Behold me here, I stand beneath the crucified Jesus, but I have no more to spend on feasts, nothing remains to me save this bone, and none of you have much appetite for that. Surely, you do not believe that old Loyka has ceased to be hospitable? Oh, I could ​feast you freely, but you would spurn my dainties, saving such of you as are like me, pensioned off on a son’s bounty, and his son and his son’s wife have meted out to him for his portion two chambers which were reserved for tinkers and pedlars—but you know it all.”
Among the neighbours who had come thither was also the mayor, and he said, “Pantata, you would not have to dwell in those chambers. Joseph promises you that he will not meddle with you in the pension house.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Loyka, “and so you believe him, do you? This man who went against me like an enemy until he had stripped me of everything! Of my rights of hospodarship, of my respect with the servants, of the love of my children, and of this last span of earth on which I had laid my head. If he were to stretch out his hand to this cross, and lay it here in the side of the martyred Jesus, I would say to him, ‘Thou liest’.”
On this no one spoke more. The neighbours saw that it would be in vain, and Joseph perhaps said nothing, because he saw that every further step he took only the more incensed his father. Only here and there among themselves the neighbours exchanged a few desultory remarks.
And after a while Loyka began to speak again almost meekly, as though he were fit to cry. “What injury have I done you, my neighbours, that ye have leagued yourselves against me with yonder fellow? I always avoid you all, I do not get in any one’s way, I do not beg anything at your hands, I creep away like the field-mouse beneath the hedgerow, for many years ye have not heard my voice, I suffer and am mute; what do ye find so sickening in me that you come to the cemetery against me as against a savage beast?”
This speech excited the neighbours’ compassion, they felt that they ought not to have yielded so easily to Joseph’s summons, and that old Loyka deserved more consideration at their hands than that they should have allowed themselves to bustle off as to a spectacle: just as when we wish to see something which is not to be seen every day. Even Joseph felt too well that he had invited them to play an ungracious part, and therefore used his best endeavours to turn their attention from his father and himself, and to concentrate it upon the grave-digger: on whom he thought it high time to be revenged; and he began to talk as though it was Bartos alone who hindered his father from returning home, and here he began to threaten his neighbours with the ​anger of the bureaux if they did not aid him in rescuing his father from the power of Bartos.
On this occasion Bartos rid himself of Joseph by a sarcasm, and this sarcasm was more properly a very serious blow. “I had not thought,” he said to Joseph, “that you would offer yourself as village messenger to the bureaux so long as we had Vena for the purpose. But it is all of a piece with the rest of your hospodarship. You bow the messenger out of your house and turn messenger yourself—before I die I still expect to see you turn kalounkar [tape-pedlar].”
Bartos, as we know, had never far to go for an answer, and generally had the laugh on his side. Thus it came to pass that every one lost who measured his strength with him even before he was ready himself with a suitable retort. Having heard Bartos say his say, people did not wait to hear how his adversary would defend himself: they were convinced that every one who began a dispute with Bartos would be worsted either by fisticuffs or some smart repartee.
And so the neighbours gave way even here to quite audible laughter, looked at one another, turned right-about face, took their way to Frishets, and on the way smilingly observed that Joseph wanted to be a village messenger or a kalounkar [tape-pedlar].
Joseph then was far from being successful on this occasion, he not only became hateful to his neighbours for the want of respect which he had shown towards his father, but he became still more an object of ridicule, and that was a thing he dreaded very much indeed.
But yet he did not despair.
And now as soon as ever his pair of heels had crossed his own doorstep the children on the village green began to play at being messengers and kalounkari [tape-pedlars]; when people met each other their discourse was of messengers and kalounkari. He even heard it amongst his servants. Even when he stood up in chapel, all at once a bee seemed to buzz past his ear and he heard a whisper about the kalounkar [tape-pedlar] and messenger. He heard it even when no one was saying anything about it, but that was seldom. When he went into the ale-house he imagined people there had just ceased to speak about kalounkari, and when he desired to return home he hesitated, because he felt sure that as soon as his back was turned they would begin to talk at once (though they had ceased in his presence) about the kalounkar.
​Bartos’s witticism flew from Frishets all over the neighbourhood. Joseph heard it afield from the labourers, he heard it on the high road, from the road-mender, who all of a sudden exclaimed with a sigh, “Ah! heavens, when will the kalounkar [tape-pedlar] come this way again; I should like to buy of him a bit of ribbon, mine is quite worn out.” And the road-mender, at these words, laid down his hammer and ceased to break stones and looked at Joseph. Perhaps, even in any case, he would have looked at him as he passed, but at any other time Joseph would have scarcely heeded him; under present circumstances the man’s look galled him.
And thus he saw and heard mockery everywhere, wherever he showed himself. Moreover, his evil destiny contrived that a kalounkar should come about this time to Frishets, who, not daring to put up at the Loykas’s, spread out his wares on the village green. Hereupon, when most of the people had formed a circle round him came Vena and said, “How dare you venture with your tapes and ribbons on to our village green when we have our own kalounkar in the village?”
Those who stood in the circle greeted these words with boisterous merriment, indeed, with acclamations; the children ran about the green squeaking “kalounkar” in shrill trebles, and the boldest of them went before the Loykas’s farmhouse and yelled, “The kalounkar is here, we ourselves are playing at kalounkar”, and every brat wanted to be a kalounkar.
This affair, apparently so trivial, reached such a head that Joseph no longer cared to leave his house, and, in fact, never left it. Vena, standing on the village green, cried to all new-comers who went past Loyka’s farmstead, “None are allowed to enter there, and the peasant proprietor daren’t venture out—just come here here are nice ribbons for you.”
This affair, apparently so trivial, infuriated Joseph to such a degree that he never spoke with any one in the village. He felt that he could not speak with them. Loyka’s farm became the butt of every saucy ribald witling, even a kind of comic song circulated under the name of the “Kalounkarska”, or “Lay of the Kalounkar”, and when any of the musicians straggled into Frishets and began to show off his skill on the village green, all the full-grown lads flocked round him and wanted him to play the “Kalounkarska”. A little later every melody became the “Kalounkarska” if Joseph were within earshot. And they all ​began to play the “Kalounkarska”, one after the other, although they had been singing quite different songs till then.
And so it came to pass that one day Joseph went to his wife and said, “Barushka, it is impossible for us to hold out any longer in Frishets, I shall sell the farm and we will emigrate elsewhere.” There was no sign of hesitation, he meant it in earnest, nor did Barushka by any means endeavour to divert him from his purpose. So, then, let him find a purchaser and Joseph Loyka would decamp from Frishets.
Not long after this the good folk of Frishets whispered to one another that the kalounkar wanted to decamp. Vena one day delivered on the village green a complete disquisition: How, even this kalounkar, who showed the door to every real kalounkar, was now every day peeping out of that very door, how he had already all his wares in his pack, and how they would soon have to drum him out of the village to his own tune.
At that time, it so fell out, that Bartos, the grave-digger, came into Frishets to pay a visit, and went direct to the house of the mayor.
“I have friends with us just now. Do you come to take their measure—eh?” said the mayor.
“Not exactly that,” said Bartos, “but I could wish to take my spade in hand to clear a certain something out of the way.”
“Well, seat yourself”, said the mayor.
And Bartos began:—
“You are Frank’s guardian, my dear mayor?”
“I am, I am”, admitted the mayor.
“And the money which Frank inherited through his grandfather you gave to me to stow away?”
“I did, I did. You do not, perhaps, want me to take charge of it again? That would be a pretty business. What could I do with it, pray, at my time of life? And, pray, where could it be better stowed away than at your house?”
“I do, indeed, wish you to take charge of it again. It is well stowed away at my house; but it is dead, like everything else that lies there; and this money must not lie dead.”
“And how do you mean to bring it to life, my dear Bartos?”
“Well, thus. I have heard that Joseph desires to sell the farm.”
“And you are the cause of that, my dear Bartos.”
“I am, and I am not. Only tell me this: Does Joseph wish to sell?”
“And did you wish to buy?”
​“Not I, but you, mayor, are to be the purchaser.”
“Oh! so I am to buy Loyka’s farm?”
“Yes, as Frank’s guardian, with Frank’s money, and for Frank. If there is not sufficient, you can advance the money, or a debt might remain on the estate. Frank is young and can economize. Besides this, he has his younger-son’s portion on the estate. That would accrue.”
The mayor began to reflect. “Hum! It would accrue: perhaps it might be done.”
“If only he wishes to sell?”
“That I could find out from him. I could, indeed, invite him to our house; but now, no one can entice him out of his own at any price of which you are the cause. I could go to him myself.”
„No, no, mayor! No, no! He must send for you. We must so contrive, not that we should seem bent on buying the farm, but that Joseph should seem bent on selling it.”
“Not in vain do they call you a ‘sapient grave-digger’”, said the mayor flatteringly. “But, frankly, my dear Bartos, I do not as yet see your drift.”
Bartos was glad that he had hit upon something which no one else had hit upon before, and that the mayor had said in so many words that his [Bartos’s] more elaborate design eluded his penetration.
“It is as follows”, explained Bartos. “Old Loyka will not return to his estate. Of that you are convinced?”
“Of that I am convinced”, repeated the mayor.
“That is to say, so long as Joseph is on the farm”, continued Bartos.
“So long as Joseph is there?” said the mayor, interrogatively, as though he again failed to grasp the scheme of the grave-digger.
“Then my idea is this. Might not old Loyka return to his farmstead if Joseph was there no more?”
“If he was not there? That pleases me. That might be.”
“And if everything else there was rearranged just as it was wont to be in times gone by—Loyka to command the servants; in the chambers by the coach-house mirth to reign as in the days of old; Loyka to dwell in the farmhouse and be hospodar, both in name and reality; Frank, voluntarily, to be subservient to his wishes, whereby we should make a good hospodar of Frank. Do you not think that in this manner old Loyka might yet recover his health?”
​This proposal pleased the mayor.
“If he did not recover, what help? We should have done what we could. At all events, Frank would gain a constant occupation and all pretexts would be removed from old Loyka for tormenting himself further.”
“Grave-digger, the more I reflect about it, the more I like it. And for my part, I am almost convinced that Loyka will recover.”
And the mayor rubbed his hands and said to Bartos, “You would be the cause of this also.” They so contrived it that Joseph Loyka sent that same day for the mayor, and came to terms with him about the price of the farm, which the mayor bought in his own name. A few days after the terms of the agreement were made out in writing, and soon after the grave-digger brought Frank’s money, which in great part defrayed the cost of the farm.
And here the mayor desired that Bartos should also sign his name as a witness to the agreement. But Bartos absolutely refused his signature, fearing lest Joseph might hear that he was the cause of it all and might yet revoke the agreement at the last moment—a notion which was not altogether devoid of foundation.
And so it came to pass that Joseph decamped from Frishets, not being able to support the ridicule which assailed him on an estate where he could support no one near himself—not even his own father. He sneaked off without giving his neighbours one farewell embrace, as though he had never in his life been on intimate terms with them. He sneaked off in the early hours of the morning, when he thought that every one was still asleep, and he could consequently most easily elude the mockery and taunts of the village—the last taunts and mockery.
CHAPTER XI
IN the cemetery at Bartos’s house, consequently with Staza and the grave-digger, were Frank and old Loyka. They conducted together their modest household, Frank busying himself about the management of all outside the house, and Staza devoting herself to domestic duties.
Frank and Staza had reached an age when life wishes to burst forth in the song of the sky-lark. Where such an eye directs its gaze, the bud unfolds, the rose blossoms. The sky is draped in a garment of transparent blue, every star has its own language, every ray of moonlight brings a message down to earth. The earth is draped in a garment of green, and this green is full of hope, the birds sing songs about it, the leaves of the wood murmur about it. The garish light of day trenches far upon the depths of night, and night, with its own golden speech of dawn, trenches far upon the day itself. The young heart reels between waking and dreaming; presentiment and uncertainty contend about it, the presentiment of joy above which there is none; uncertainty which is half a certainty because the world is so fair.
Once Staza sat upon the grave of her mother: she did not sing “Oh, rest in peace”, either to her mother or to the other dead. But she felt weary and oppressed, she knew not why, and then she interpreted the oppression to be sorrow for never having known her mother. And she would most gladly have delved a fresh grave beside her mother’s grave and laid herself in it, not by any means as a corpse, but that she might again tap at her mother’s coffin and tell her something which she had not yet breathed even to herself.
At this moment came Frank to her, and when he stood beside her, he was for the first time at a loss for a word. Everything that he had said to her hitherto seemed insufficient. He wished to say much more, and therefore said nothing.
The dawn of life shot its crimson streamers before him, he had his soul full of spring, full of sap and beauty, and when he wished to express it all he cast his eyes down to the ground and his tongue seemed parched with a long drought. He had his soul full of sunlight, and when he wished to reveal it in its full brightness he had tears in his eyes.
And when he had stood thus a long time and could not find anything to say, and yet wished to say something—he found ​nothing else but the inquiry, “Oh! Staza, and thou dost not sing any more.”
Staza quivered at these words, glanced up at him, and then looked on the ground: glanced up at him with a gleam in her eyes which he had never seen there before, with fervour so that her bosom was expanded and was penetrated by it. And when she glanced down to the ground she did not raise her eyes any more, but from the heaving of her own bosom it was evident that this gleam of light and fervour had elevated her whole existence.
Frank was melancholy; what he had said did not satisfy him, and he could not think of anything else. Even Staza was melancholy, because she could not find anything to say at all: but after a brief pause she threw herself at full length on the grass, a deep sigh escaped from her bosom, and then she quickly rose to her feet and, without casting one glance at Frank, ran lightly away.
Perhaps she at last told her mother what she wanted to say.
Frank scarcely ventured to glance at her as she ran away, and still less ventured to ask himself the question why she ran away. And he sat down exactly on the place where she had been seated a moment before, only that he looked toward the wicket-gate and then called to mind how he had come to the cemetery the first time with the measure for his grandfather’s grave. And then he called to mind how he had slept in his grandfather’s grave, and how he and Staza had nestled together. And all at once he started as though something had stung him in his heart.
And now Staza and Frank avoided one another, or, more properly, they sought one another, but when they ought to have found one another they did not find one another, and when they found one another they were melancholy and sought one another once more. They who had grown side by side like two flower-stems, only now became conscious that they were side by side, and began to separate from one another in order that they might yearn for one another’s presence.
When at even Staza worked in the living-room, certainly Frank was not there, and wandered somewhere under the window or outside the burial-ground, in the fields, perhaps even in the woods, God knows where. And if Frank was in the living-room, Staza would rather have laid her down beside the charnel-house than have been at the same time in the same room with him; and again she glanced into his eyes, which were so clear and fervent.
And yet again, sometimes, when by accident they met one another, it seemed to them as though there could not be in the ​world a greater happiness than such meetings, so that they measured time by them, although they dwelt under the same roof.
When Bartos, the grave-digger, observed what I here relate, he said to Frank, “You will not sleep another night at our house, Frank, you will go to the farm; the farm is your own, and requires a hospodar without delay.”
And now it seemed to Frank as though Bartos had announced to him some dire misfortune. Frank begged not to be dismissed to the farm until the morrow. But Bartos said, “You go there at once, just as you are, without saying a word to any one.”
“Not even to Staza?” asked Frank.
“Not even to Staza”, said Bartos.
And so Frank departed that same day without saying a word to any one.
When several days had elapsed, old Loyka said, “I wonder where Frank is roving; ’tis several days since he has been at home.”
“I have not seen him now for several days”, said Bartos. “I know not where he is roving.”
I know not whether this answer contented Loyka, but certainly it did not content Staza, who was now constantly on the watch to see whether Loyka or Bartos would begin to mention Frank.
She would gladly have inquired a hundred times in the hour what had become of him, and yet she never summoned courage to ask even once.
“I wonder why Frank doesn’t come”, said old Loyka after several days.
“I wonder he does not come”, said Bartos.
And it was the only thing she heard of him for several days, and yet she always watched with immeasurable anxiety for the occasion when Loyka should inquire for his son. Once Loyka asked Staza herself whether she knew where Frank was. “I do not know”, said Staza; and after this she once more seated herself on her mother’s grave, buried her hot face in the clover, and doubtless told her mother to the very end what that other time she had only begun to speak about.
In the meantime Bartos went to the mayor, and both together went to the Loykas’s farm and advised Frank how to manage his estate; instructed him, worked with him, and were always ready with friendly counsel.
​Once Bartos came home and said to Loyka, “I know at last where Frank is.”
At these words Staza grew red and white several times in the same minute, just as though some one had announced to her that she must from that minute suffer some dire adversity.
“Frank is at home with his mother, who is sick unto death and longs for you to come and visit her”, exclaimed Bartos.
“I go to the farm!” began Loyka vehemently. “To your wife, who is sick unto death”, put in Bartos. And here old Loyka was, for that day, completely metamorphosed. He did not speak a word, leant his head on his hands, turned over in his mind various plans, and looked another man.
“So you think, Bartos, that I have to go to the farm?” he asked, as if on the brink of some final determination which he specially dreaded.
“I think that you ought to go. If you wish it, I will conduct you”, said Bartos. And here the matter was half decided.
What a wholly different effect it had upon Staza! How gladly, without any hesitation, would she have run to the bedside of the invalid, how gladly would she have watched there, how gladly would she have tended her. How instantly would she have left everything that she might be present where there was most need of her. No one invited her, and she would have sped like the wind. The grave-digger invited Loyka, and Loyka prepared himself to go, as though he was preparing himself for his own death.
“How many years is it since I have been on the estate?” asked old Loyka, still undecided.
“Oh, many a long year”, said Bartos. “In the meantime your son has grown up and is like a nosegay—’tis a pleasure to look at him.”
At these words Staza let fall everything which she held in her hands, and for a long time was at cross purposes in all she did. She poured water from the ewer into the basin until it overflowed. When she observed this, she wished to wipe it up with something, and emptied the salt-cellar into the water imagining it was something she had forgotten to salt.
That evening, Loyka and Bartos wended their way to the farm, at Frishets, which Loyka still supposed to be in the possession of Joseph. It must have been a very crushing pilgrimage for him, for let Bartos begin any topic of conversation, Loyka did not listen to him, but remained shut up in his own sombre reflections, ​and at intervals he heaved a heavy sigh and said in a constrained voice, “Well, then, this is my last journey.” Bartos did not tease him to converse. Moreover, they had to rest at every boundary-stone, and the walk, which, under ordinary circumstances, was easily accomplished in half an hour, was prolonged to a full hour. And then each time they sat down Loyka said, “My Lord and Master, I go to the Mount of Calvary.”
But with this great oppression which overpowered Loyka, all traces of that tempestuous spirit which had oftentimes shaken his whole inner man seemed to have disappeared. He went as though the road was one which it was impossible to avoid—he went exhausted and oppressed, but still he did not turn aside.
When they reached the Loykas’s farm it was almost dark. Loyka seated himself exhausted by the abutment, beside which long ago Frank had wept for the death of his grandfather. And as he sat by this abutment, he spoke in a voice of forced meekness, “Bend, proud knees, and entreat my son to permit me to cross his court-yard. Hands, clasp yourselves in prayer and entreat my son to open that gate for so many years barred against me. Enter his doors, ye words, and entreat and implore. For surely it is not possible that I must stifle even my words. Then forth, oh! stubborn thoughts, and learn humbleness! My son Joseph!” said he, raising his voice, “lo! Thy father stands at thy threshold, only, prithee, promise me one thing, by word of mouth and before witnesses, that thou wilt not set that dog upon me which long ago fawned upon me and which I fed with my bounty.” And more to the same effect.
At times it was like praying, at times like weeping, at times like affected humility, at times like reproach.
While he sat thus and Bartos stood beside him, the sound of harps and violins issued from the court-yard and several vocal melodies were wafted to their ears. Old Loyka was silent, raised his head and looked round about him. He listened. He looked round about him to see where he was sitting, and he listened to find out whence the music came. He saw that he was seated by the gates of Joseph’s farm, and that the music resounded therefrom.
“Whither have you led me, Bartos?” inquired Loyka, and rose to his feet, for he could not trust what he had heard and seen.
“And you said that my wife was sick unto death?” he further inquired.
“So I said.”
​“Why are they playing music where some one is sick unto death?” inquired Loyka.
“If music can play after a funeral, why should it not be played before the funeral? Did not the music play the whole day when they brought out your father for me to bury?”
Loyka mused a while and was silent. After this, Loyka said of his own accord, “Let us enter.”
He opened the gate, remained standing in the gateway and listened. The music played on.
Here Loyka said, “They have not yet loosed the dog upon me and I cannot hear one barking.” The music played on.
Then they stepped into the court-yard, and old Loyka said in a much milder tone than before at the abutment, “Look in wonder on me all you who here in days gone by craved a hospitable shelter. Did any of you come here so humbly as I come this day? Had any of you to stoop to such servile entreaties as I have stooped to? Oh, how could I come more humbly than I come this day?” And the music played on. Loyka listened and said, “I have not yet heard the baying of the hound.”
And when he had said this he perceived that the music and the singing were in the chambers beside the coach-house, and now there was the chattering of many voices. He saw and heard feet approaching, and, not looking up to see who it was, he bowed his body to the ground and cried, “If thou art my son Joseph, oh! I pray thee only do not drive me away for this one day. For the sake of my aged wife, I implore thee, for the sake of thy mother who bore thee, and whose only fault was that she loved thee all too well, and now is sick unto death. I promise that I will depart again as soon as she is dead if I survive her death.”
And more to the same effect. It was Vena who approached him and said, “I welcome you, pantata, to your own farmstead.”
Old Loyka drew himself up, looked round about him and listened. Afterwards his eyes rested on Vena. “Thou art Vena,” he said, “I know thee. What has brought thee here? Thou went wandering from here.”
“Now I am here again, pantata, and we are expecting you”, said Vena.
“Expecting me? And who are those yonder playing?”
“The harpers, fiddlers, and singers. Of course, you know them all”, said Vena.
“And what do they want here?”
“They are expecting you.”
​“Expecting me! Well, well, well, well.”
Then he took Vena by the hand and said, “Thou wise man, do not trot me out to make a fool of me, and tell me, is it safe to cross the court-yard?”
“I am sent for you, pantata, and I have to conduct you wherever you please—to the pension house or the farmhouse; but our good old mistress is in the farmhouse, and, therefore, I might perhaps have conducted you to the farmhouse.”
“Ha! then, lead me to the farmhouse”, said Loyka, and he said it just as though he had by this confirmed his own death-warrant, which it was impossible now to avoid. And, even as the wretch condemned to die, just before his death, dares to implore some favour for himself, so old Loyka implored, “You hear, Vena, I am going into the farmhouse; but first, lead me yonder, to the chambers by the coach-house, that I may gaze upon those spirits who there await my spirit.”
And he hung on Vena’s arm, and Vena led him to the spot. When they caught sight of him a flourish of trumpets rang forth. Then the family of the kalounkar came out upon the door-step, the cloth-pedlar, several tinkers, and, in a word, all whoever just then were lodging under that roof, and all said, “We welcome you, pantata; we have already been expecting you.” And when old Loyka hardly recognized those figures by the scanty light of a candle, his head went round, so that he scarcely attended to what they were saying.
“Vena, let me not stay here any longer. Good lad, now I have seen it, now lead me to the farmhouse.”
When he departed, a flourish of music again rang forth, and Loyka, staggering, and leaning upon Vena, reeled towards his house. And when he was already not far from the threshold, he said, “Only bend thyself, proud tongue, and pray. Harsh words, swaddle yourselves in silk, be soft and meek, be very meek and soft, ay, as soft as the droppings of birds!” And here already some one stood on the door-step and said, “I welcome you, tatinka; we have been expecting you.”
He who pronounced these words was not Joseph; it was Frank.
And here motes seemed to flicker before Loyka’s eyes, and after a minute or two, Bartos, Vena, and Frank carried him into the farmhouse.
They laid him on his bed, for the strain upon his nerves had been too great, and he had fainted. He breathed. He opened ​his eyes for a moment and closed them again immediately. He fell asleep.
After so many years he again slept under his own roof, and slept in the farmhouse.
It was already pretty late on the following day when he awoke; and when he awoke, he looked fixedly at the ceiling as if he was trying to call to mind how it used to look. Very much that had occurred seemed to him like a dream. As yet, he could hardly manage to assure himself that he was not still asleep.
And when his eyes ranged from the ceiling and sought the objects that were nearest to him, here stood, here sat in the apartment, his wife, Frank, and Bartos. Loyka greeted them with a prolonged stare, but did not utter a word. He only gazed at them.
And when his eyes wandered to the door he saw several of the servants standing there, one of whom said, “We await your order, pantata, where we are to go and plough.”
Old Loyka again turned his eyes towards his wife, his son, and Bartos, and said, “Tell me nothing: if it is a dream, let me dream on.” And to the servants he said, “Go and plough beyond the meadow; I will come and see how much you have worked.”
When the servants had gone, he again looked towards his son and said, “And Joseph allows you to be here? Does he allow me to be here also?”
“You are at home, papa,” said Frank, “and we will never leave it again.”
“At home? Prithee, tell me nothing whatever until afterwards”, and he rubbed his forehead. After a while he said to his wife, “They told me you were sick unto death.”
“Now she is well again”, said Bartos.
When Loyka got upon his feet he inquired, “May I venture to walk about the room?”
“About the room, the court-yard, in the fields, where you please”, answered Frank.
Loyka smiled and walked about the room, and said as he did so, “It is all a very well concocted plan, but I am already old. Why should I not allow myself to take a few steps in a room which was once my own?”
“It is yours, so long as you are pleased to stay in it”, said Bartos.
“Good lad, I must trust you, although I do not know yet ​whether you speak the truth.” And Loyka looked out of the window at the court-yard.
“I wonder who that is standing in the court-yard?” he said. “If I am not mistaken, it is the old harvester.”
“He has been already waiting two days to see you and to have a talk with you”, they said.
“Well, let him come and say his say”, responded Loyka. “I always gladly talk with him.”
They called to the harvester and he came. “I am come to you, pantata, to inquire whether you will require the services of the old harvester this summer? Because they are ready to engage us in Časlavsko, and I said that we would go if our old pantata Loyka did not require our services.”
“Have you spoken to the young folk?” inquired Loyka.
“They told me that everything depended on you”, answered the harvester.
“Well, if they said that to you, come all of you to our harvesting. To be sure, where else would you go, when we need your services here?”
“We will be here on call early to prepare ourselves”, said the reaper and took his leave.
Old Loyka turned to his friends and said, “I know very well that Joseph will not be pleased, but why should I not exasperate him a little? Just let them come. Of course, I shall still employ them.”
After this he said, “Still, Joseph does not come hither to drive me away?”
“He is not coming”, said Frank.
“Then if he is not coming, let me go into the court-yard”, and they led him into toe court-yard.
In the court-yard the servants of old Loyka saluted him, called him “pantata” and, in general, behaved towards him very respectfully. Old Loyka inspected the field implements, inspected the house, and was evidently well pleased.
He went to the chambers by the coach-house, there all was just as it had been in his time. The family of the kalounkar, only a few inches taller and perhaps with one or two additions to its numbers; the cloth-pedlar, a little shrunken, and the harpers and fiddlers with the same instruments, only that, perhaps, they too were already a little shrunken. All welcomed old Loyka with smiles and pretty speeches, and one of them said that now all was once more just as it used to be in the old days.
​Then they begged old Loyka to come and sit down with them. After this they began to relate about things past and present, and what changes there had been, and old Loyka felt as though some one was planting a new heart in his breast, and in his head the song of the laverock once more resounded.
Then the old kalounkar said, “I think, pantata, if you would be so good as to suffer us to stay here some time under this roof, that the Lord God would reward you for it on the other side.”
Old Loyka said, “When I see you here I can believe that I am here—just as if you had been my roots and I could again anchor myself here by you.”
They were in very truth his roots, and old Loyka anchored himself here by them.
After this his neighbours from the village came and welcomed old Loyka. They declared that they were interested about the construction of some public gardens, and that they only waited for his advice before beginning to lay them out.
In a word, every one treated old Loyka just as though there had never been a period when he was a fugitive from his home, just as though this day was a continuation of the brighter, happier days of old. Not, perhaps, that Loyka should no more remember what had been. By no means. He very well remembered that but yesterday he was a wanderer in the world, but at the same time there emerged in him to-day a fresh consciousness that, perhaps, there might be an end of this wandering.
And so Bartos’s plan succeeded. Those spiders’ webs which had obscured old Loyka’s mind, dissipated themselves of their own accord, and he every day visibly convalesced. Once more he took his walk every evening to the chambers by the coach-house, and himself invited the inmates to converse and sing. “Be merry, lads, be merry”, he used to say.
And the old life began again at the Loykas’s. That farm was now once more just as people had known it all their lives. Old Loyka so far convalesced that he threw off several years as though they had been a few heavy sheaves of corn; so that at last his friends ventured to tell him the whole truth, both about what had happened to Joseph, how he had sold out of the farm, and how the farm was bought for Frank, and how being still young, Frank begged that he, Loyka, should manage it for him. Ay, he so far convalesced that sometimes he would say, when he paid a visit to the chambers, “So, my lads, tell me the story of old Loyka when he was a wanderer in the world.”
​“Ah! well, he was always very merry through it all”, so they began the story, and that was the only part where they did not tell him the whole truth, because they knew how greatly pleased he was that people should think he had been merry in the height of his misfortune.
They even told him that the illness of his wife was a mere pretext in order to coax him home again, and that it had succeeded.
“Ah! well,” said old Loyka about his wife, “she suffered quite enough, poor thing, when she was here by herself.”
And thus old Loyka got himself home once more.
CHAPTER XII
WHAT more have I to relate?
Frank again began to rove away from the farm and, of course, they knew to a hair whither he went. But it was not true exactly as they thought it: that is to say, when he went to the cemetery he went with a heavy heart as in the old days when he carried hither the measure for his grandfather’s grave. And now he carried thither a kind of measure, the measure of his own heart-was it that he would order a grave for it? By no means. In order that he might lay it in a heart softer than any dust and sweeter than any flower.
And yet, indeed, the path was as toilsome as if he were going to bury his heart in the grave. Enchantment seemed to murmur around him and shot about his path in the mist and the clear weather: his heart beat with a presentiment of rapture, and his hand vacillated—so it will be to the end of the world.
When he came to the cemetery he posted himself by the wicket-gate, as on that day long past, and gazed eagerly. And he saw the great ruddy cross and on it the white-iron figure of the Christus, then lesser crosses, then graves without crosses, some green, some flowery, some half sunk in the ground.
And there was in that cemetery something vast and incomprehensible, something that we can never analyse, something vast as a sea, chilling as winter’s ice and snow. But to-day the breath of winter did not issue from its gates, rather a portion of the spring seemed to hover over that dwelling-place of the dead.
​When he stood by the wicket-gate, he waited and everything for which he waited could emerge from the grave-digger’s humble abode in the person of Staza.
Staza tripped forth just as on that day long past, but how different. It was not a child who hopped even over the graves like a small bird, or a butterfly. It was a pensive, blooming maiden, a rose, which blossoms on a single bush, there to glisten and then fade. She walked with her head bowed and seemed as though she would fain water those graves with her tears. And she was infinitely charming.
Frank had opened the wicket-gate a hundred times, and to-day it seemed as though he knew not how he could ever enter by it. When he thought that Staza might observe him, he retreated and only peeped furtively through the bars. And he saw Staza, who was the selfsame Staza whom he had led about the whole neighbourhood, and who yet was not the same. At least it seemed to him as though he saw her to-day for the first time, and as though he had to speak to her for the first time.
Staza seated herself on her mother’s grave, and her eyes rested on the white-iron figure of the Christus on the ruddy cross. After a moment or two she whispered rather than sang, “Odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky” [“Rest in peace ye faithful spirits”].
But she did not finish her song. Something seemed to snap it asunder half-way, the second half remained unuttered.
And here Frank felt constrained: just as if he ought to finish in tears what Staza had left incomplete in her song, just as if he wronged her by his silence.
He posted himself before the wicket-gate in order that she might see him.
“Oh! Staza,” he said.
Staza rose from the ground, and half joyously, half pensively approached the wicket-gate.
“I welcome thee, Frank”, said she.
“Oh! Staza, will you open it for me”, said Frank.
Here Staza said archly, “Have you so soon forgotten how to open it?”
“I have not forgotten,” responded Frank, “but I have no longer the right unless you allow me.”
“You have it open!” said Staza.
“Oh! Staza, I am come to ask your hand in marriage”, said Frank, after a short silence.
“You have it here!” said Staza, and gave her hand to him.
​What need of more? What need of elaborate circumlocutions in order that the heart should speak truth?
The heart of those children knew of no such circumlocutions, it spoke thus, and therefore spoke sublimely, nobly, and solemnly, because it spoke the truth.
“I wished to have thee for my wife, and I did not know whether thou wert willing to be my wife, and that fretted me”, said Frank.
“If you had not come for me, I should have had to think where Bartos should delve a grave. And I had already chosen a spot. Where else than yonder”, and she pointed towards her mother’s grave.
And both their hearts heaved with feelings different than a moment before: the sentiment of unexpected bliss exhausted them, and bliss is burdensome before we are accustomed to it.
They took one another by the hand and went into the little house to tell Bartos what they had just told one another.
“I wish to have Staza for my wife and am come to speak about it”, said Frank by way of salutation when they entered.
Bartos measured Frank from head to heal and said, “Good, Staza, go away.”
When Staza was gone, Bartos said, “You know, I suppose, Frank, that Staza is a child not born in wedlock.”
“But all the same, a child”, responded Frank.
“That she does not know, neither do I know, nor perhaps does anybody know, who was her father.”
“Is there any need to know it?” inquired Frank.
“That people will talk about this and will say, ‘Look! there goes Frank Loyka arm in arm with his wife’, and they will laugh at her origin.
“Why should a man trouble himself about an origin?”
“Every one thinks his or her origin the important thing and acts accordingly.”
“And do they mend matters thereby?”
“They do not. But it goes against them when it comes about as in her case.”
“And was she created against the will of the Creator?”
“That I do not know; but if you wish to have her for your wife you ought to be told about it.”
“I see no difference between her and others, and what I see is that she is dearer to me than all the world, let her origin be what it may.”
“Good! call her!”
​And Bartos himself called Staza. “You have led one another by the hand”, he said; “lead one another by the hand for all your life.” And this strong man who had not his equal, at these words wellnigh gave way.
After this he said, “I found thee, dear Staza, long have I had thee with me, and now Frank has claimed thee. What have we to do? He has a greater right to thee than I have. He is young and loves thee.”
At these words Staza threw herself on Bartos’s breast, and there sobbed out her great happiness, wept there also her thanks to him for being a father to her and her sorrow at leaving him.
“One thing more, oh! Bartos”, said Frank.
“What, pray?”
“You know that my parents dwell in the farmhouse and will dwell there with me for many a long year, let us hope; the pension house is therefore empty; will you not settle there and be our neighbour—mine and Stazas?”
At these words Bartos again measured Frank from head to heels and said: “I pensioned off! No, dear boy. Here I am lord and master, and am little skilled in accepting pensions or returning thanks for them. It is possible that you would like to have me there. But we cannot tell, and I should never manage to pry into your eyes every day to see whether you still liked to have me there. Do you think I shall be low-spirited here alone? I have a large family, as yet I have never felt oppressed or low-spirited among them. Who knows? Perhaps, I shall be needed here. The next time some father flies from his son’s harsh bounty and knoweth not whither to turn, he will come to Bartos. And what would he do if he did not find me here?”
Frank was silent. It was evident he deemed that Bartos judged him harshly.
“Do not be angry, boy”, said Bartos. “Possibly I shall come and visit you from time to time, to see how you treat your father. Do your best to show yourself at once a good hospodar and a good son—of that I must be first assured. Promise nothing. Even your brother promised and would have deprived your father of reason. I do not trust you little sons, because your fathers make themselves dependent upon you. But promise me one thing, invite me to your wedding.”
All was so unanswerably true which Bartos had said, that Frank did not utter a word in reply.
​“Do not be anxious about me,” he added, “now, Staza must be the dearest object of your care.” On this he kissed Staza and kissed Frank, and so the betrothal ended.
What they wished to say to one another, and what they had said to one another, how simple it was! How entirely the outcome of souls already united, and yet, before they had reached the goal of speech they had to undergo all the pleasing lapses, doubts, and problems of lovers—true passion follows no other course.
And now they both enjoyed the most charming rambles together. They led one another by the hand and went to visit those hedgerows, those bushes, all the haunts where their childish hearts had beat beside the quails. They visited their little chapels, in which as children they worshipped their Creator with the laverock. Everything was the same, and yet it was all different. On every hedge was more green and more glitter; the air seemed more alive with singing; every laverock piped a more fervid lay; every whisper of Nature was more touching.
And so everything was different, but it seemed as though only now all Nature manifested itself in its true essence, which none understand who have not looked upon the world with an eye enlightened by true love. Even Staza was different; even Frank was different. When they looked at one another they seemed to catch a glimpse of each other’s souls, of something inexhaustible and eternal. They seemed to catch a glimpse of each other’s soul and in their eyes gleamed the light of eternal blessedness, beautiful as the glory of a Saint; in their eyes gleamed the truth of eternal rapture made more beautiful by tears. Each of them was different, each seemed endued with angels’ wings, to flutter round the other; each of them was more exalted, and their thoughts were like prayers.
Staza’s love was not the least appreciably less fervent, less genuine, less holy because she was a child not born in wedlock. The divine breath hath not such narrow instincts as we poor humans. Only let the heart be right and the divine breath does not inquire what was its origin. The Son of God was a child not born in wedlock, and the divine love did not grow cold on that account, the divine love accepted him for its own Son. It is only we poor humans who, in out littleness, grow cold and shamefaced at the thought of a base origin, and yet the origin of us all is from no other source than from that eternal love from which every grain of wheat germinates, who threw that grain of wheat, for ​whose delight it germinates into maturity—wherefore should we trouble ourselves about that?
What more have I to relate?
About three o’clock one afternoon, the sexton, Vanek, strode across the village green of Frishets with the great key in his hand in the direction of the chapel.
Those who stood at the window and saw him did not ask one another whether there was a fire or whether some one was dead. They knew why he went to the chapel just at that hour, and only said to one another, “So it will be at once.”
And here they walked out in front of their farmhouses, and seeing neighbours lounging about the other farms, took a few steps towards the centre of the green, and saluted each other just as they had spoken at home, “So it will be at once.”
All were dressed in holiday attire, even their faces were in holiday attire, the whole village was in holiday attire. Down the middle of the village green were posted branches of May with pennons streaming, the whole forming an arcade which stretched from the Loykas’s farm to the chapel. Even the Loykas’s house itself was smothered in pine-branches and looked as spick-and-span as on a high festival.
On this occasion Vena again marched with a basket in his hand; he had rosolek in the basket, and poured out and gave to drink to any one who desired. On this occasion he was in good humour as though he was going to be wedded himself. He poured out the liquor very briskly and continually invited the good folk to drink, “Now to their health, neighbours!”
“How, then, do you greet your new mistress, Vena?” they inquired.
“I greet her well,” said Vena, “and verily I say as thus, look you, “The Lord God grant you as many little dears for me to carry across the green as there are flasks here! That’s how I greet her!”
“And how many may that be?” said the neighbours, laughing.
“How can I tell until you have drunk out the lot”, said Vena, and constantly invited them to imbibe.
To look at him you would have said it was Vena’s own bridal day that was being celebrated. And nothing would have embittered his gay humour, only one question from neighbour Kmoch, Barushka’s father, vexed him. “How many wagons are required to bring home Staza’s marriage portion?” he inquired with a very saucy leer.
​On this Vena vented his brimming choler in these words, “You have not wagons enough to carry home a single one of her good qualities. So you want to be sarcastic, do you? What do you know, ye peasant proprietors, of the essentials of a happy marriage? You barter your daughters on the market-place to the man who makes the highest bid. ‘A crown! two crowns! ten crowns! twelve crowns!’—those are your daughters. And so you would sneer, would you? He who throws down most of the dross is the heaven-sent husband. And then you shrink into your pension house when you have accomplished this feat of wondrous wisdom, and how many wagons are wanted to carry your pensioner’s portion? I would undertake to wheel you away, portion and all, on a handbarrow.”
Here Vena had worked himself into a frenzy, so that he did not know when he ought to conclude his declamation, although we must add in conclusion that all the neighbours condemned Kmoch’s ill-timed question.
“She will not be such a one,” continued Vena, “that her father must wander through the market-places like a beggar, because they tormented him under his own roof. There will be no need that the vejminkar should make his last will before she sets foot in his house, because afterwards he will be worried out of his five senses. And with such good qualities as she possesses Staza will need many wagons to carry all easily.”
Perhaps Vena would have declaimed at yet greater length had not the march of events deadened the effect of Kmoch’s insolent remark.
From the cemetery, whither Frank had driven to claim his bride, his best man rode at a gallop, and said that the happy pair would be at the village in a trice, that old Bartos had joined their hands by the graves of Staza’s mother and Frank’s grandfather and said, “Your love grew out of the grave; may it last beyond all graves.”
At this moment Vanek began to ring the bell in the chapel, and outside the village resounded the fiddles of well-known fiddlers, who were assisted by musicians from the whole surrounding district.
The neighbours on the village green flocked into the green arcade which formed an alley as far as the chapel, and awaited the young bride and bridegroom, only Kmoch turned away in another direction.
​Here I must touch off a good side in the neighbours of Frishets, namely that they awaited the young couple in perfect good faith. Frank, by his behaviour towards his father, had so firmly installed himself in their esteem that nothing could shake him in it. We cannot indeed disguise the fact that with all of them it somewhat ran counter to their ideas of what should be when he chose for his wife an illegitimate orphan, for in these matters no one was better or worse than his neighbours, and every one said secretly to himself, “For my part, I could not have done it.” But as it was Frank who did it they made their peace with him, and as it was Staza who was the object of his choice they made their peace with her as well.
And so the happy pair were escorted by such a goodly company as never was seen before in Frishets, and a festival was celebrated the like of which few a short time before ever expected to see again originate from Loyka’s farm. People collected on foot and in carriages from all parts of the neighbourhood—not only in honour of Frank’s bridal day, but also in honour of old Loyka’s recovery, who had for so many years wandered among them without health and without mind.
What more have I to relate?
Beside the coach-house in the two chambers the legends and ballads of old times, which had been banished for so many years, took root once more. And Loyka’s court-yard beamed like the face of a happy listener.
If we wish to take a peep for a moment, we can do so. The farm is again free of access to every one: the cloth-pedlar and the tinkers come for a night’s lodging, musicians often turn aside thither, and listeners, male and female, come from the village to hear them play.
Again Frank listened to the song or the story in these chambers, and led Staza thither—how well-known and beloved wherever they are seen!
And, if we wish, we can take a peep at Loyka sometimes in the morning when the servants are preparing themselves for their work afield.
Old Loyka with his pipe in his mouth promenades about the court, inspects the implements, and the servants salute him with, “The Lord God give you good morrow, pantata.”
Old Loyka thanks them. “As God wills, my children”, says he.
“Are we to go to-day to work in the meadow, pantata?”
“Have you asked your young master? Go where he tells you.”
​“He said we were to ask you.”
“Well, well, then go to the meadow. But always ask your young master.”
“Look, here he comes.”
And here Frank comes forward. “What do you think? Must they go to the meadow?”
And Frank knows so many reasons why they must go to the meadow and nowhere else, that old Loyka is all smiles, to think that he is still competent to manage the estate.
“Well, well,” he adds, “then go to the meadows to be sure.”
Then Stazicka [little Staza], as all on the farm call her, comes and says that they must go to breakfast. Old Loyka chucks her under the chin, and looks into her sparkling eyes. “Good child, good child”, says he. Then he lets go her chin, and takes her by the hand. “This very day come a year you will not come for me alone, little Staza.”
“Why should I not come for you, papa.”
“Tut: come, of course, you will, but with my grandchild in your arms.”
On this little Staza blushes, and thinks to herself, full of fond anticipation, “This very day come a year.”
Or suppose we pay them a visit, come a year, at harvest. The harvesters once more make the farm their first halting-place when they go a-harvesting, and old Loyka promenades among them with pipe in mouth.
“I come from the young pantata,” says the spokesman of the harvesters, “in order that you should select us yourself, pantata, because you know us now as he says; and I also think it is best.”
“Well, well,” says old Loyka, “how could we fail to know one another after so many years.”
And after this he chooses according to his taste, and as seems best.
“This summer we shall have a merry harvest”, says the harvester.
“This summer! so I believe you. And when Staza leads off the dance for you! Such a mistress has not been seen on the farm as Stazicka.”
“She is a worthy mistress, pantata. Once Annette came here with us—you know, pantata, mnuh! her only fault is she does not know how she came into the world. And women being but women, they would not endure her among them. ‘How, then, is ​it her fault?’ said your little Staza. ‘We do not drive away an animal when it nestles against us; in what is Annette worse than an animal?’ And as you know, pantata, she took her as nurse to your pretty grandchild.”
“Just so, just so”, smiled old Loyka.
But the whole farm was quite on foot when there for a time came on a visit the grave-digger Bartos. “I begin to be aweary among the dead,” said he, “and since the living like me, I gladly come a while among them. Well, and you like to have me with you?”
And it was a wonder they did not carry him on their shoulders, that is to say, if they could have born his weight. And as they could not do this, they hung upon him. Frank and Staza and the little fellow which Staza took from Annette that she might proudly exhibit it.
“Why am I made so strong, I wonder,” Bartos would say, “if I may not fling you off.” And he prepared jestingly to drive them before him that he might free himself from them. But it was worst of all when he prepared to depart. Here even old Loyka fastened on him, and all held him, that he should still remain with them. And here Bartos, the grave-digger, for a time feigned to chevy them away, just as though he would shake them off. And we must say what then happened seldom happened—it being the only occasion when the Herculean Bartos succumbed. Frank, Staza, Loyka, and the little boy overpowered him, and sometimes the little boy alone prevailed.
“Well, well”, laughed old Loyka, and then when at even the musicians came there was in the farm a most charming idyll.
Long had they sought this idyll, long had they wandered in search of it, but they found it at last. And this idyll ends as it began:—
Odpocinte v pokoji. . . . . .