Page:Poet Lore, volume 21, 1910.djvu/433

 in the house when you weren’t home after the Angelus.

Petr.—Talk about the Angelus! Why, it was perfectly dark when the Herstein forester found us in the woods and brought us home.

Kocianova.—And here am I listening to you and forgetting all about the lunch (Going out). Shall I bring it into the hall?

Matoush.—Yes, do, Marianka, do, it’s nice and cool there.

Kocianova.—I will get it ready at once (exit).

Matoush (after a while).—See, Petr, how the time flies. It isn’t such a long time ago since you came back on a vacation, and soon it will be after harvesting, and then you’ll have to get ready to go back to the seminary again.

Petr.—God willing, a year from to-day I will serve my first mass.

Matoush.—Yes, and next year after the harvest you will settle down some place as a pastor. Your mother would like to see it even now.

Petr.—Poor maminka.

Matoush.—My poor mother cried for me when I served my first mass, but not from joy. She wanted me to be a doctor. But there wasn’t enough money for that. And see, Petr, I have been consecrated for thirty-two years, and this is the twenty-sixth year that I have been in this lonely farm. Why, why, I am almost sixty (pause). Do you still remember, Petr, how we sat here, just as to-day, under this tree, at the time when you were about to enter the Seminary? How many times, my dear boy, have I thought of it since. Didn’t I myself, years ago, dislike to go where I was sending you? And I went voluntarily at that. When we sat down in the buggy at that time, and I took you to the railway station, I felt just as if I were leaving my home again to go to some place where I really did not want to go. But I had to go and see you; you, too, probably had to go. (After a while.) But, see here, Petr, I should not talk to you in this way. I am a priest and you too will become one soon; and perhaps I ought to pray for the constant and undisturbed peace of your soul. But we are men now; grown-up men, and they say that men are the masters of their fates. Tell me, my boy—are you content? And do you hope to be always content?

Petr (quietly).—Always, uncle.

Matoush.—God forbid that I should try to misguide you now when you stand at the threshold of a new career, which has been the lifelong wish and dream of your mother and which has become your own ambition also. But I am an old man, Petr, and to us old people