Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/320

 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