Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 162.djvu/293

Rh had been peeping over the paling. "He has bought a new cow; I saw him lead it into the shed."

"What color is the cow?" was asked in great excitement. "I do not know; I think it is black."

"There is a woman in the cart," was the next piece of news. "A woman!" This was even more surprising intelligence than the cow.

"What sort of woman?"

"I cannot see very well. Now she has gone into the house. I think it is an old woman — perhaps Filip's grandmother; and she is carrying a bundle."

"Shall I go over and look?" asked an enterprising maiden — "just to see what the woman and the cow are like?"

"No, no," decided the other. "It might anger Filip Buska; he likes not to be pried upon. To-morrow will be time enough to see a black cow and an old woman. Let us go to bed; it is late."

Nevertheless the black cow and the old woman, combined with the fact that Filip had brought back his two children, disturbed many minds that night at Rudniki.

CHAPTER XIV. CONCLUSION. Kein Mansch hat ganz Unrecht, und Keiner ganz Recht." Night is a notorious impostor, who loves to mislead us, and to indulge in bewildering masquerade. Not content with effacing all color and gilding, she further delights in confusing outlines and exchanging forms, so that we ask ourselves in vain which is youth and which is age? where is beauty, and where ugliness?

We cannot guess at the answer to those riddles as long as everything is veiled in a uniform black domino. But the counter enchanter day is at hand, and with the first wave of his golden wand he dispels all illusion, tears off the black domino, and the masquerade is at an end. Everything resumes its primitive color and shape; beauty and ugliness, age and youth, are once more as distinct from each other as goat from sheep.

When, therefore, as usual, the sun rose next morning at Rudniki, changing black, weird ghosts back into gnarled oak-trees, bands of spectre warriors into peaceful haycocks, crouching dragons into rotten tree-stumps, the inhabitants of the village became likewise aware that their eyes had deceived them singularly the night before, in showing them a black cow, and an old woman with a bundle.

The cow was not black — it was speckled; and the woman was not old — she was young and beautiful, and in place of a bundle she carried a baby in her arms. In other words, it was Magda herself who, with her baby and her speckled cow, had returned to her husband's house, henceforward to leave it no more.

The neighbors wondered and stared for a day or two; but wondering and staring are never of long duration, and people soon forgot the little episode of Magda's visit to her brother's house and her sensational return. Most people said that Filip had done a wise thing in taking back his wife, and others added that it would have been wiser yet if he had never sent her away; he would have spared himself a useless journey and a burnt roof.

What had passed between husband and wife was never exactly known, nor what had been the reason which had determined Filip to take back Magda and agree to forgive and forget the past. Perhaps the burnt roof and Kuba's misdemeanors had something to do with the matter; or perhaps the speckled cow, which had once weighed so heavily in the matrimonial balance, had still further displayed her matchmaking propensities in bringing the couple once more together. Or was it not perhaps a better and nobler motive than all these? — the godlike spirit of charity, which teaches us to forgive the wrongs of others, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven?

Probably the motives were so complex,that not even Filip himself could have analyzed them.

Some weeks after Magda's return, she found her husband standing in the shed gazing intently at a small piece of charred wood which he held in his hand. This was all that remained of those luckless gates, which once had been so near completion, but which now would never adorn the village church.

"Seventy florins!" he said mournfully. "It would have brought me in seventy florins. And now it is too late; I cannot begin again, and the curé will order the gates elsewhere. I shall never have such a chance again. Seventy florins gone!"

"Let them go!"cried Magda impetuously; "there are other things, better things, than money. Those gates have led to nothing but misery; let them remain closed forever!"

Filip gazed intently at his wife; then he extended his hand to her and echoed her words, "Let them go!" and he stifled