Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/311

 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