Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/327

 at sight of these trivial things she again found herself, and here she would in a little time have again given way to dancing and singing.

So then this world was to Staza strange, new, and yet extremely welcome. Although Frank used to go for her, and so ought to have been her guide, she took upon herself the role of cicerone and played her part famously. She led Frank from tree to tree, and every tree was like the resting-place of some pretty conceit. What she and Frank failed to find when roving through the fields, seemed to find a voice among these gnarled trees, as though it called aloud, “Then it is just so.”

Each of our two vagabonds went into the wood with a different object, and only when the mind of one went halves with the other in all that they found in the wood, could the mental picture of the woodland within them be said to be complete. Frank heard every bird, saw every bird, heard every murmur, saw the squirrel and the hare, heard the foot of the wild goat crunching the gravel, and confided to Staza all he perceived. He was like the visible ear of the wood, and in his head the wood was, as it were, depicted down to the very song of the birds and the sound of the wind among the boughs. His eye was constantly in the crowns of the trees, constantly on the watch, constantly following something. All this time Staza was continually exclaiming, “Look at that primrose! Look what a beautiful sweetbrier! Here I still smell close at hand the last violet of the spring! Look what a grey coat of lichen that pine-tree wears, and how silvery is yonder birch! And see here are wild strawberries. Here the whortleberry is in bloom. This place we must remember. And here is a plant which I have planted on maminka’s tomb; it is the tearlets of the Virgin Mary [the wild red pink]. Look how the wild nut-trees are covered with catkins”, and similar things she said.

It is evident that Staza’s mind was attracted to colour, to flowers, to variety. And if the birds skipped and hopped in Frank’s mind, in Staza’s blossomed a whole parterre, the loveliest colours mingled together, rivulets streamed off from blue forget-me-nots, and fringed themselves with blackberries.

And if the soul of Frank was full of sweet sounds, the soul of Staza was garlanded with flowers. And when they paced the woodland, one gave to the other; Staza gave to Frank flowers and colours, and Frank gave to Staza singing and melodious sounds.

But they also penetrated the rocky wilderness and ravines of the woodland, and lingered there a while. Only that Staza Rh