Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/305

 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.