Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/361

 “Why are they playing music where some one is sick unto death?” inquired Loyka.

“If music can play after a funeral, why should it not be played before the funeral? Did not the music play the whole day when they brought out your father for me to bury?”

Loyka mused a while and was silent. After this, Loyka said of his own accord, “Let us enter.”

He opened the gate, remained standing in the gateway and listened. The music played on.

Here Loyka said, “They have not yet loosed the dog upon me and I cannot hear one barking.” The music played on.

Then they stepped into the court-yard, and old Loyka said in a much milder tone than before at the abutment, “Look in wonder on me all you who here in days gone by craved a hospitable shelter. Did any of you come here so humbly as I come this day? Had any of you to stoop to such servile entreaties as I have stooped to? Oh, how could I come more humbly than I come this day?” And the music played on. Loyka listened and said, “I have not yet heard the baying of the hound.”

And when he had said this he perceived that the music and the singing were in the chambers beside the coach-house, and now there was the chattering of many voices. He saw and heard feet approaching, and, not looking up to see who it was, he bowed his body to the ground and cried, “If thou art my son Joseph, oh! I pray thee only do not drive me away for this one day. For the sake of my aged wife, I implore thee, for the sake of thy mother who bore thee, and whose only fault was that she loved thee all too well, and now is sick unto death. I promise that I will depart again as soon as she is dead if I survive her death.”

And more to the same effect. It was Vena who approached him and said, “I welcome you, pantata, to your own farmstead.”

Old Loyka drew himself up, looked round about him and listened. Afterwards his eyes rested on Vena. “Thou art Vena,” he said, “I know thee. What has brought thee here? Thou went wandering from here.”

“Now I am here again, pantata, and we are expecting you”, said Vena.

“Expecting me? And who are those yonder playing?”

“The harpers, fiddlers, and singers. Of course, you know them all”, said Vena.

“And what do they want here?”

“They are expecting you.”