Page:The International - Volume 3.djvu/578

 playing, but the little one was getting blue with cold; in vain he tried to keep back the tears, and his voice was hoarse. His feet were purple, the poor little toes twisted one over the other. He stood first on one foot and then on the other, and the big tears rolled slowly down his pale cheeks, hiding somewhere within the folds of the flowered kerchief tied across his breast. Forgetting his delight over the beautiful snow, he thought only of its cruel coldness.

“What are you howling about?” asked one of the larger boys, who with considerable self denial for a moment stopped his play.

“I’m cold!” sobbed the child, thrusting his hands into the woolly cap as if trying to raise himself up by it from the cold ground.

At that moment there appeared upon the scene a man, tall and stalwart as a giant. He looked at the boys and then his eyes, that shone brightly from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, became fixed upon the poor child’s bare feet.

“Go home and let your mother put something on your feet!” he said. The other boys burst out laughing.

“She would have to put his father’s boot tops on his feet, Uncle Svejnoha,” replied one of the boys.

The old man frowned.

“Then go home quickly or they will freeze,” he said sharply.

In a trice the crowd of red cheeked boys were around the little sufferer, pushing him this way and that, evidently anxious to show “Uncle” Svejnoha their determination to convince the child that he would better be at home.

“Move on, you mole!” cried one. “Bawling won’t make you warm,” cried another, as he pinched the child’s nose to see if it were frozen. Another punched him between the shoulder blades with his hard fist, until finally the small caravan succeeded in moving its charge toward his home, a tumble down hut, the poorest in the whole village, that seemed to crouch beneath the trees whose slender branches were spread out over it as if in protection.

Svejnoha stood looking after the children. Beneath his shaggy eyebrows something was glistening When, finally, the good Samaritans had succeeded in getting the boy into the house, and shut the door behind him, Svejnoha turned and started home, deep in thought. He was sorry for the little fellow, yes more than sorry, for he was his daughter’s boy.

Vincenc Svejnoha was sixty years old, but as straight and tall as Hercules, with a back so broad that it took almost a minute to look across it. Just now he carried a pitchfork in his hand, with which he played as lightly as if it were a toy. He was born in Loukov, and had lived there all his life. In fact, Loukov without Svejnoha would no more have been Loukov than a saint without his nimbus could be a saint.

In his native village Svejnoha was in some respects even of more importance than the squire. Indeed that worthy himself was wont to acknowledge that he would have to live at least another century to have the wisdom of this householder of the third degree.

Svejnoha supplied all possible needs of his native village; wherever anything was lacking Svejnoha was sure to be called for, and he was always equal to the emergency. If a musician were needed in a procession, a mourner at a funeral, a manager at a wedding, a leader of the opposition in political matters, an attorney in case of a row, or a fighter in times of too dull peace, a preacher or exhorter, a justice, a historian, or a poet, any one of these offices was at once and without fear assumed by Svejnoha, whom nothing could daunt.

On one occasion he had even posed as bridegroom for the good of his community. Marka Rudlov, for some unknown cause, but most probably for lack of wooers, was on the point of becoming an old maid, which would have been a disgrace to the town, a vexation to herself, a loss to the parson, and a stumbling block to her younger sisters. Marka was not so bad looking, but she was lame, and that unlucky lameness had the power of acting negatively upon the young men, so that she