Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/34

 have told him all, The sign of death was visibly scored upon the house. That heavy wing had swooped down upon it, and the expression of everything was one of gloom and sorrow.

Krista knelt by the bedside on which Riha had just expired, Venik knelt beside Krista, and in broken syllables—for in such the deepest anguish is wont to speak if it finds words at all—thus addressed her, “Now I also am a poor orphan”; now he had sacrificed his father also; now Krista was at last in no sort poorer than himself. Ay, it seemed to him that he was the most wretched of all.” Then both felt as if in presence of an apparition; they could not grasp the truth, and it seemed to them as though this truth was somehow not quite true; and then again it appeared beyond all suspicion to be the truth. And the truth was yet more irresistible when people brought a coffin to the house. Then Venik went to meet this coffin, and felt as though he himself must be lodged therein; he embraced it and cried out “So this is now papa’s only chamber.”

After this anguish silenced him; perhaps it deafened and stifled him. Venik found no more words; he neither wept again nor lamented. Not even when they bore away his father in that new, narrow chamber to the cemetery, to lay him beside Venik’s mother, who perhaps after all was already buried there. Venik took his violin, to conduct his father to that last resting place, and when the singing