Page:World Fiction 1922–1923.djvu/584

 gan. She opened all her flood-gates. But I know how to do a little talking, myself. She never in her life heard so much peppery truth as she listened to in that short space of time. I told her everything that was on my heart. She flew at me, wept, stamped her feet—in short we created such a disturbance that the assistants in the adjoining rooms began to open the doors, and the clerk looked anxiously in the direction of the judge. The judge nodded his head and smiled, but kept on writing. After I had eased my feelings and Mrs. Vrchcabova had become hoarse from shouting, he put his pen behind his ear, took a pinch of snuff and then turned to me.”

“Well, did you tell each other everything?” he asked. “I think it would be best now if you’d shake hands and go home. And it would be best if hereafter you’d live in harmony and neighborly love, and quit running here to us with every little matter. By this perpetual squabbling you don’t help either your honor or your pocketbooks.”

“That’s the way with those old men,” bitterly commented the attorney. “They like to transform the judge’s chair into a pulpit. Well, and how did the affair end? Did you do as instructed?”

“What was I to do?” answered Prochazka in a depressed voice. “The judge scolded us so thoroughly and yet in such a funny fashion that at last we couldn’t help shaking hands half in laughter.”

“So! Well, you messed things up beautifully! cried the attorney, striding violently back and forth in the room. “If that’s the way you follow my advice, why do you come back to ask it at all? Why do you lodge complaints? What was the use of all those expenditures? To be sure, I forgot that now you belong to each other. No doubt the Judge immediately performed the marriage ceremony, too?”

“Yes, more than halfway. When we offered our hands to each other, he suggested with a smile that we ought to clasp hands in a different place and in that way all the conflict over the fences and boundaries would be swept away forever. He insisted that we were just made for each other, anyway. After that each of us rode home by a different route. route. But the following Sunday I went to Mokrin to high mass and the priest talked so beautifully about friendly harmony and neighborly love; and all the time the sun shone so cheerily through the high windows, down on the golden pulpit, on the pictures and altar roses, on the schoolgirls at the railing and on the assembled parish that it all made my heart melt. And when later I made my way homeward through the field path, and looked around over God’s golden blessings, waving all about me, I couldn’t help thinking of the old judge’s advice. And the further I walked the more the thought kept pressing in upon me that by marrying Mrs. Vrchcabova I could best end the tiresome lawsuits and secure the blessed peace for which I’ve yearned so long. I realized that after all she wasn’t a bad looking woman, a good housekeeper, and that our lands adjoin. In this mood I walked as far as the inn on her place. I stopped there perspiring and tired, and looked at the inviting house with its walls covered with grapevines, and at her garden with its thicket of sunflowers and the yard filled with poultry. That’s the way my place used to look when my wife was alive. Just then I saw my neighbor right before me in the open window watering the flowers. When I caught sight of her so suddenly