Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/74

 tippled with them heart and soul, who made them merry with music and jesting, and who would not feel the dint of care till morning. Venik was again the centre of a group of lads in their prime; only that at this time mothers would no longer have invited him to their homes: rather, they would have slammed the door in his face lest he should entice their son to drunkenness and debauch.

But he only acted thus in unfamiliar villages where he was not known in the days when he walked with Krista. When he came to the villages he knew he was different, as though he fain would humble himself, and as though he did penance for his nights of revelry elsewhere. He was gloomy and melancholy. Here he seemed to be still treading in Krista’s footprints: and sometimes he fancied that he was tracing her and on the search for her. His familiar listeners perceived in his silent moods something sinister and had him in compassion.

And even here summer sped away. Sometimes the days were indeed as interminable as the sea, but summer whirled away with them as with all else: it engulphed them and there was never a trace of them. Three years floated by from that time when Krista took to flight from her couch in the hollow tree.

Then Venik went again to the same town in which he and Krista had been in a theatre for the first time, and where the people had lifted him and Krista on to the stage for him to play to them.