Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/96

 Karla differed from her compeers only in this that she played her part unconsciously and indifferently while the others knew what they were about. Karla only knew that life to her was barren: it little mattered under what form this was brought home to her, now that she had failed to win him whom she had desired.

The indifference, whether she were definitely conscious about it or not, was no secret to her husband. She did not take the trouble to deceive him by devotion. She had not married him on any understanding of the sort, and Hurka was too dissipated to have any feeling that could be outraged. Indeed if she passed Havel’s home with her husband, Pan Hurka permitted her to look longingly towards it, even to breath forth sighs, and never suggested by word or look that she ought to put some restraint upon her reminiscences.

Hurka was occasionally tender, at least he seemed to be so, and that would be enough for many women to make them forget their loneliness. But his tenderness had no effect upon Karla. It was natural to her—was he not her husband?—and if his affection seemed to slacken—was he not harassed by business? Karla cradled her little daughter, a child like a small bud, and what would have raised any other woman to be a madonna only touched her so far that she knew she had a few more agreeable cares to attend to. If it had been Havel who approached the cradle and kissed their little daughter with half the love that Hurka showed I dare say she would have spent the whole day in looking into its blue eyes. Laid by Hurka’s side she sometimes failed to hear its childish wail at night.

We cannot say that in wedlock such as this any day is likely to become sacred. To both of them the wedding-day was only a day of change of life and from that time nothing occurred which could have exalted their sentiments. Even the birth of a child did not make the day sacred and after that I know not of anything that could have surprised them out of their indifference. Pan Hurka might perhaps have succeeded in some of his speculations, but Karla would certainly have maintained her attitude of indifference.

It is often said that passion becomes vulgarized after marriage: to vulgar commonplace people everything becomes vulgar and commonplace. The inhabitants of a pretty country are for ever wondering why people flock to see what they themselves see every day. But between Hurka and Karla no affection had ever sprung up; as they were the first day so they had remained ever