Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/47

 dare to sing with thee, they have taken my all. Oh, now I am a poor orphan girl”, and she fell a-weeping.

“Come when you like, Krista”, said Venik with sudden determination. “Who ever heard of such a thing! You not to sing! I not to play! This very night I will bring away my violin and hang it on the tree, and play I will whene’er I have a mind to, and you shall come here when you choose—upon my word you shall.”

“I shall not dare”, said Krista, plaintively, though Venik’s determination revived her considerably. “I am already but a cipher at the cottage. I have nothing more in the world. Why did they not bury me in the grave!”

At mention of the grave, Venik again gave way; but after a pause he said, “Meet here we will, you shall see, and if they pursue us we will away to the woods.”

And after this they went home as if from a second funeral. That same evening Venik took down his violin, even tore the nail out of the wall, and went with both to the hill-side, hammered the nail into the hollow tree and hung the violin upon it. But he soon took down the violin and played upon it its own farewell and its own lament. Possibly the Rihas heard him—and how could they fail to hear him when the village was close to the hill-side? However, they said nothing when he came home. But Krista was the worse off of the two. Already she had no hill-side to fly to. Already she had no breathing-time to look forward to as a consolation. Already she had only a hard couch on which to weep herself to sleep at night.

The home which but yesterday was like a warm nest now breathed upon them like a winter’s gust. Venik now encountered no loving looks responsive to his own, and heard no loving words. And if Krista was still attached to the house like the swallow’s nest to the cornice—now the cornice itself began to totter—there were already people to be found who would pull down the nest.

One day, just before harvest, Venik, seated on the hill-side, began to reckon how long the hollow tree and the hill-side would be still a portion of his world. The wheat already pricked to maturity, it was but a short time to harvest.

Krista was at work in the house when her peasant mistress stepped up to her, tore her work out of her hands, trampled it on the ground, and screamed, “Why, hast thou no hands, thou awkward slut?”