Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/306

 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