Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/359

 Once Bartos came home and said to Loyka, “I know at last where Frank is.”

At these words Staza grew red and white several times in the same minute, just as though some one had announced to her that she must from that minute suffer some dire adversity.

“Frank is at home with his mother, who is sick unto death and longs for you to come and visit her”, exclaimed Bartos.

“I go to the farm!” began Loyka vehemently. “To your wife, who is sick unto death”, put in Bartos. And here old Loyka was, for that day, completely metamorphosed. He did not speak a word, leant his head on his hands, turned over in his mind various plans, and looked another man.

“So you think, Bartos, that I have to go to the farm?” he asked, as if on the brink of some final determination which he specially dreaded.

“I think that you ought to go. If you wish it, I will conduct you”, said Bartos. And here the matter was half decided.

What a wholly different effect it had upon Staza! How gladly, without any hesitation, would she have run to the bedside of the invalid, how gladly would she have watched there, how gladly would she have tended her. How instantly would she have left everything that she might be present where there was most need of her. No one invited her, and she would have sped like the wind. The grave-digger invited Loyka, and Loyka prepared himself to go, as though he was preparing himself for his own death.

“How many years is it since I have been on the estate?” asked old Loyka, still undecided.

“Oh, many a long year”, said Bartos. “In the meantime your son has grown up and is like a nosegay—’tis a pleasure to look at him.”

At these words Staza let fall everything which she held in her hands, and for a long time was at cross purposes in all she did. She poured water from the ewer into the basin until it overflowed. When she observed this, she wished to wipe it up with something, and emptied the salt-cellar into the water imagining it was something she had forgotten to salt.

That evening, Loyka and Bartos wended their way to the farm, at Frishets, which Loyka still supposed to be in the possession of Joseph. It must have been a very crushing pilgrimage for him, for let Bartos begin any topic of conversation, Loyka did not listen to him, but remained shut up in his own sombre reflections, Rh