The schoolmaster hastily pulled out his notebook [Pg 131] with trembling hands. He felt somewhat embarra.s.sed and whispered uneasily, "Marvellous, very marvellous!" He would have given much to be away from it all, but he couldn't go, it was too wonderful. He would have to write it all down so as to repeat it to the priest. What would he say to having a clairvoyante among his congregation? Holy Mother, only not that!

A sudden terror gripped him. He felt cold and hot by turns, and his hands trembled as he held the book and pencil. If she really could see into the future? Pshaw, she was nothing but a sickly, romantic, delirious child. And still--he could not help shuddering in the semi-darkness of that lonely little room, near the woman he coveted--and still his excited fancy at once gave shape to what Rosa's dreamy babbling had stirred up within him. The child was enraptured with the dear Virgin who smiles at the innocent, but he adorned her with all the voluptuous charms which she--his eyes glittered as they hung on the woman he coveted--she possessed.

It was midnight before Mrs. Tiralla and the schoolmaster returned to the sitting-room. The favoured child was sleeping soundly, there were no more marvellous utterances to listen to. The trance was now over, which had filled them all with such delight and during which Marianna had buried her face in her hands and groaned:

"How beautiful, how beautiful! I don't understand it; but oh, how beautiful!"

But the man was still in a state of great excitement. What else was there for him to do, now that Mr. Tiralla had really gone away, but clasp this smiling woman, whose eyes shone like candles, to his breast?

He approached her full of fierce desire. Now that [Pg 132] the so ardently longed-for moment had arrived all the scruples which had hitherto deterred him had disappeared. Now, now!

He went up to her with outstretched arms, but she escaped from him as she so often had escaped from her husband, and ran behind the table.

This was now between him and her. Her husband had always tried to catch her on these occasions, and had run after her round the big table like a boy playing at tig, but the schoolmaster did not do that. He did not move; he had suddenly grown very pale and his outstretched arms had sunk down. So she didn't want him to? It was a very keen disappointment.

What on earth was the schoolmaster dreaming of? Mrs. Tiralla almost flew into a pa.s.sion. But then she noticed how dejected he looked, how his eyes avoided hers, and a sudden fear befell her. What if he were to be so angry with her now that he turned away from her, and she were to be as lonely as she had been before? Oh, only not that, she must have one helping hand. Wasn't he the helper, the friend whom the Holy Virgin had sent her? She daren't let him go away like that, she would have to grant him one favour, but only one. And she came from behind her bulwark; she had no fear, for she felt that she had this man entirely in her power. She went up to him, put her arms round his neck and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

"Go now," she whispered, "go! It's late--midnight--what will Marianna think? I shouldn't like people to talk about me. Go!"

She urged him to be gone and he obeyed her, for he had got a kiss, a kiss from her. He thirsted for another one, but wasn't this a beginning?

When Marianna lighted him to the road, he embraced [Pg 133] her with such force that she let the lantern fall, she was so startled.

The sober man was quite changed. He stumbled across the fields as though he were intoxicated, and everything seemed to swim before his eyes. Starydwor lay behind him, Starydwor lay in front of him, Starydwor lay to the right, Starydwor lay to the left. Starydwor was everywhere.

The schoolmaster seemed almost as intoxicated as Mr. Tiralla was, as he crossed the fields on his way home from the village some hours later.

But he did not see Starydwor everywhere, as the other man had done, for it was quite impossible for him to find his own farm. It was as though it had disappeared from the globe, or as though he had nothing more to do there.

It happened now and then that Mr. Tiralla indulged in too much drink--now and then on special occasions such as the Sokol's entertainment, or lately the Gradewitz ball--who wouldn't have done that? But as a rule Mr. Tiralla was what you might call a sober man.

The fact was that he could stand a great deal. But this evening he had drunk nothing but gin. He had felt so sad, oh, so sad; he didn't know himself why he had felt so sad. He had known for a long time that his Sophia was very irritable, so that couldn't have caused it; he had also known that his Rosa was a very pious child; really too pious, a remarkably pious child. But to-day there was something else, something that weighed him down to such a degree, that it had almost broken his heart. He had to drink in order to get rid of the weight that was oppressing him; drink until he was intoxicated. And he could only arrive at that state with the help of gin.

[Pg 134]

The acquaintances he had met at the inn had been very much surprised at his behaviour. Mr. Tiralla was so quiet; he didn't brag at all about his Sophia. It was as though he had been put to silence. The priest had said a few kind words to him about his daughter, when he came to the inn for a short time after his supper; she was an excellent child, a pure soul with whom G.o.d was well pleased. But Mr. Tiralla had only smiled feebly.

He had sat staring into his gla.s.s with both elbows on the table, and his red head buried in his hands, without saying a word. He had sat like that for hours.

One man after the other had said good night, first the priest, then the gendarme, then the forester, then Mr. Schmielke. Jokisch, as a good neighbour, had stopped the longest with Mr. Tiralla. He had plucked at his sleeve when the others had departed and had said in a confidential tone, "Listen, old fellow, I must tell you that the others are saying that Bohnke, the schoolmaster, comes too often to see you--I mean to see your wife."

"He's been to see her this evening," said Mr. Tiralla, in a calm voice.

And when the other man had stared at him in a disconcerted kind of way, he had continued in a voice that was still calmer, "You envious scoundrel, _psia krew!_ Don't you know my Sophia? Do you think it's that what's oppressing me? Not that, oh G.o.d, not that!"

And he had given a loud sigh, and burying his head once more in his hands had said no more. Then Jokisch had said good night. They could very well have gone home together--their roads only parted at the Boza meka[A] just before you come to the Przykop [Pg 135]--but Mr. Tiralla's company wasn't amusing enough. By Jove, the old man seemed quite stupid.

[Footnote A: The wayside image of a saint.]

Mr. Tiralla had remained sitting all alone. The landlord would have liked to extinguish the lights and go to bed; his wife, servant, and children had been asleep for a long time, everybody was asleep except Mr. Tiralla, who did not seem to think of going to bed. At last the landlord had fallen asleep behind the bar, and was only awakened by a dull sound. Mr. Tiralla had thrown the big, empty gin bottle at him, after helping himself to the very last drop.

Was Mr. Tiralla going home alone? How would Mr. Tiralla get home? The landlord was very anxious about him.

It was a night in early spring as Mr. Tiralla staggered home. A long time would elapse before the lilac-bushes near the dilapidated railings in the weed-grown herb garden would bloom; there was still no sign of buds on the trees, the plain was still bare and wintry-looking. But something was already moving deep down in the earth. The furrows, through which Mr. Tiralla tramped as he crossed the fields, were thawed, and lumps of soft earth clung to his boot-soles. He had lost his way; he could not get any further.

"_Psia krew!_" He stumbled, cursed, and scolded, and then he laughed.

He felt that he had drunk too much--oho, he would never be so drunk that he couldn't feel what he had been up to. But to be a little drunk was a very useful thing now and then. For then you didn't feel the oppression quite so much.

[Pg 136]

CHAPTER VII

The strawberries were ripening in the Przykop. The children from Starawies would go there to look for them, and when they had all been gathered it would be the time for mushrooms. But the village children did not like the gloom that reigned in the Przykop, they were accustomed to let the rays of the burning sun scorch their brown bodies a still darker brown amid the flat turnip fields and immense plains covered with corn, where there were no shadows to arrest its full force.

The big pines commenced just at the back of Starydwor, and beyond those were the alders and willows, extending as far as the low-lying marshes, where the frogs croaked at night, the white water-lilies opened their golden calices at midday, and where towards evening the game from the royal forest in the blue distance beat a path through the rustling reeds on their way to quench their thirst at the pools. A long, long time ago the whole of the Przykop was said to have been an enormous lake, ten times as big as now. Now nothing remained of it but the basin in the centre, that deep depression which, so to speak, formed a hollow amid the yellow and green carpet of this fruitful corn-land. But at night, when the will-o'-the-wisps wandered about the marshes and danced on the duckweed, in which a man could be swallowed up if he did not take care where he put his foot, the pious people [Pg 137] would make the sign of the cross when they were obliged to pa.s.s that way. For the will-o'-the-wisps were the souls of those who could not find peace in the grave.

Rosa Tiralla much preferred the Przykop to the bare fields. If she stood at the farm gate and looked across the fields she could see the whole way to Starawies, the path she took to school every day, the wooden church tower and the cottage roofs covered with moss, that almost disappeared from view behind the pale, waving corn when it stood high. But from her bedroom window at the back of the house, she could look into the Przykop, where the dark trees rustled so strangely.

The white-faced child felt the mystery of the mora.s.s just as much as the brown-skinned children from Starawies; but while it terrified them, it attracted her. How beautiful to be in the deep, cool shade when the sun was scorching outside. There was always a soft twilight under the trees, and when the light fell through the interlaced branches on the damp, green moss, it was no longer cruel, it was transfigured.

Even as a small child Rosa Tiralla had often been in the Przykop. Her nurse had always taken her there, for the wind, which swept across the plain endangering the life of the delicate child, was hardly felt there. The trees in the hollow were so well protected by the rising ground that only their tops rustled slightly in the wind. Rosa very often lifted the rusty latch of the gate that separated the mora.s.s from the little garden at the back of Starydwor. "How lovely the mountains and valleys of the Przykop were," thought the child of the plain. In her eyes the slight incline down which she used to glide was a deep, deep valley, and the hill she used to climb so [Pg 138] laboriously, holding fast to the luxuriant moss, ferns, and projecting tree-roots, a big, big mountain.

The deer would approach Rosa without fear, and look at her with their limpid eyes. But she was full of fear; not of the deer, however, but of the other creatures which surrounded her in the Przykop. The older she grew, the more fearful she became. Marianna had told her too many tales about them. The deep, deep silence, in which the woodp.e.c.k.e.r's hammering on the bark used to sound like peals of thunder, made her shudder. And still she would not have liked to give up that sweet emotion, nor give up lying in the thick moss, gazing up into the tree-tops to find a bit of sky. She was always within call, and that rea.s.sured her. But if a sound found its way to her--her father's deep, ba.s.s voice, or her mother's treble, or the maid's "_Psia krew_, where have you got to?"--she would give a start as though she had been roughly handled or had been caught doing something wrong, and turn scarlet and sigh as she smoothed her thick, tousled hair.

Rosa Tiralla was very busy looking for mushrooms in the Przykop this summer. It was the time of the damp, sultry dog-days, in which they sprang up in a night. But not many were eaten in Starawies or the neighbourhood, for the public had been warned against them. The schoolmaster had also warned the children in the school; they were neither to gather nor eat any they were not quite sure of. People grew alarmed.

"Many people have made themselves ill with eating mushrooms," said Marianna to her mistress, when the latter spoke of sending Rosa to fetch some.

Mrs. Tiralla laughed. "Nonsense, I know mushrooms very well."

[Pg 139]

"That makes no difference," exclaimed the maid, growing warm, "I won't eat them even if I do know them. Ugh!" she spat on the ground, "mushrooms are the devil's own vegetables."

"Why?" The woman looked at the maid with dull, wide-open eyes, in which a dawning light suddenly began to gleam. She turned red and pale by turns, blinked her eyes a little as though something were dazzling her, and then smiled. "What do you mean by 'the devil's own vegetables'? I don't understand you."

Marianna made the sign of the cross. "G.o.d bless it! But I don't know if even that always helps. Many a one has got his death from eating a dish of mushrooms. Who can say which are poisonous and which are not? Good and bad ones grow side by side; the devil pa.s.ses his finger over them during the night, and in the morning they all look alike, you can't see any difference. You gather, you cook, you eat--oh!" Marianna stretched out her fingers and rolled her eyes. "Holy Mother. I know how awfully you suffer. I won't eat mushrooms, I know that." She shuddered.

"Well, you needn't eat any, n.o.body has asked you to," said the woman, soothingly, to the girl, who grew more and more vehement. "You hadn't eaten mushrooms that time you fell ill. Oh, we know all about it," she said jestingly, shaking her finger at her. But it was no real jest, for all merriment was wanting, and there was something forced in her laugh as she added, "Jendrek has let it out; you had drunk too much, and that was why you were ill."

"Oh, the rogue, the scoundrel," cried Marianna furiously, clenching her fist. "How can he say so? The liar! I hadn't drunk too much; I had drunk nothing, I remember it well. It was the day after the [Pg 140]