Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/170

 “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

To Kubista it was the most joyous awakening out of prayer. He took grandfather by the hand, pressed it, and said, “Aye! we have committed many errors.”

Kubista knew not hatred, and it so touched him to see grandfather kneeling beside himself, that he forgave his friend frankly, and from the bottom of his heart.

They sat by Betuska’s grave, and Kubista asked grandfather what had led him thither.

“I came here to choose some place or other”, said grandfather. “Among the living I have one no longer, and I see that I am already a burden to them.”

“Things have not succeeded with us”, said Kubista, but without reproachfulness, only pronouncing the whole truth. “We ourselves have taught friends by our example to desert one another, and now we find ourselves deserted. John even now but seldom comes here, and so I must tend the grave alone. But I will never desert Betuska, and when I have no more power to walk, I will lay myself down beside her.”

Grandfather did in reality feel himself elevated, ennobled, and good—perhaps for the first time in his life. He wished he had still the strength of youth that he might set everything to rights just as he had reconciled himself with Kubista.

Kubista now stood his friend once more. He often visited him behind the barn under the lindens, and seated there on the grass they lightened each other’s sorrows.

The starlings in the trees had much to say to one another, but still they had exhausted themselves ere these neighbours of auld lang syne turned homewards again together.

Grandfather also little by little adapted himself to his fate. He hardly ever complained the least, but learnt to look upon his present circumstances as if they had been so all his life, and were not amenable to change.

He seldom went now to the living-room to see his daughter-in-law; nor did it ever occur to him that he might yet be reinstated there. Indeed, it would even have been a source of grief to him if he had been recalled thither. It had been a hard struggle to disaccustom himself to that room, but now it seemed to him that by being established there he would also put on all his long past frailties.