Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/288

276 and is very weak. A kind word often does more good to women at that time than a whole bundle of blest herbs, may God forgive me for saying so; but it is true. Be kind to her."

"Yes; I shall be kind to her," he muttered bitterly — "as kind as she deserves."

Filip's idea of kindness, and his opinion of Magda's deserts, may be gathered from his behavior on re-entering the cottage.

He went up to the bed where Magda lay as white as the sheet spread over her, her eyes half closed, her dark hair in tumbled masses over the pillow. A small downy head of flaxen hair was nestling against her arm.

Filip gazed at mother and child for some time in silence; at last he said, —

"Magda, do you know that I should kill you?"

"Why?" she asked indifferently, raising her heavy eyes towards him. She was not fully conscious as yet — had not recovered her own identity, as it were — but was still hovering on the confines of that unknown country to which her spirit had so nearly taken flight.

"For bringing shame upon yourself and upon me — for bringing this fair-haired brat into my house."

He lifted up the child suddenly as he spoke, and held it against the light. Certainly the tiny morsel of humanity, with its pink crumpled face and golden fluffy head, presented no point of resemblance to the dark, hard-featured man who held it; but then, new-born babies rarely resemble anybody in particular, except in the imagination of doting relatives.

"Give me my child!" cried Magda, sitting up, and now roused to full consciousness. "Kill me if you like — I do not care — but do not touch my child." She spoke almost fiercely, and stretched out her arms with feverish energy. She was no longer pale; her cheeks were burning with a crimson flush, and her dark eyes shining with a delirious fire.

Filip laid down the infant as suddenly as he had taken it up, and scratched his head in deep thought. "No, I shall not kill her," he said to himself — "that would do no good, and would alter nothing; but — but I shall do something else." That night the moon shone out brightly over the landscape, turning all things to silver and crystal, and filling the stream and lake with argentine reflections. The blossoms shone white as snow on the fruit-trees, and the moonbeams rested likewise on the stiff white figure of the dead stork upon the roof.

At daybreak, when Filip rose to go to his work, Magda's bed was empty. No trace of her or of the infant was to be seen. Filip stood staring stupidly at the empty bed for full five minutes before he went in search of her. He could not at first collect his thoughts — it seemed to him as if the event of yesterday had been but a nightmare dream. But Magda was nowhere to be found — not in the shed, nor in the courtyard, nor in the garden. Then he gave the alarm to the neighbors, and the village was searched; but she was concealed nowhere, and no one had seen her pass.

The old women said that the devil must have taken her; and some of the men, seeing Filip's face so dark and stern, thought it probable that he had lent the Evil One a helping hand in the matter, and murdered both mother and child, but none dared speak this thought aloud. As for Filip himself, he felt an agonizing fear in his heart lest she should have destroyed herself in a fit of terror or despair. This thought it was which made him have the lake and the river searched all round the village; but this, too, had no result beyond disturbing the frogs and making them leap by hundreds into the water, and startling up an occasional wild duck. The sun was nearly setting when a shepherd lad came running from the forest with pale affrighted face, and as he ran he crossed himself often with the sign of the cross.

"There is a ghost up yonder in the forest," he gasped — "an evil spirit!"

No further information could be got out of him, and both promises and threats had to be put largely into use before he would consent to show them the place.

Accordingly, a reconnoitring party, consisting of Filip Buska, the sacristan, and the old baba, set out to the forest accompanied by their trembling guide. The sacristan had provided himself with a gigantic bottle of holy water for exorcising the spectre, but had likewise taken the precaution of carrying a good-sized pick-axe with him, for the contingency of the ghost not proving amenable to purely spiritual weapons.

When they came in sight of the great beech-tree which stood in the depth of the forest, they perceived something white shining through the foliage.

"Boze moje! (my God!) there it is again!" exclaimed the terrified cowherd; "all the holy saints preserve us!"