Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/73

 his property, that it was a rare stroke of fortune for his uncle and aunt, the Riha’s, when he went a-roving in the world, and that he might even now enter the chamber where they sat and demand of them an account of their stewardship over his farm and rights. He might settle here, leave his vagabond life far behind him, and become a well ordered man. A well ordered man!

Hereupon Venik turned from the windows and from the cottage, and went once more toward the hillside.

To be a well ordered man. What was that? Venik laughed sarcastically. When he had fled into the world with Krista he was a well ordered man. When she departed from him—an end to orderliness! even though he should be the master of a farm. Perhaps Krista was well ordered, and now he could be so too. Fie upon it all. Where was the good of perfunctorily saying, “I will be a well ordered man,”—and then to have in one’s bosom everything in disorder. A cottage and a settled life do not create orderliness. And yet something still drew him back toward the cottage.

Then Venik struck off again from the hillside, bent his steps into the world once more and hurled himself upon it like a drop of the mountain torrent which blindly hurls itself into the river that it may reach the sea at last.

He was again the wild Venik who made merry all night long with a merry gay brotherhood; who