[Pg 274]

CHAPTER XIII

What had happened at Starydwor soon became known in Starawies. How could Marianna have kept silent about it?

She had told Jendrek with many sighs the very next evening behind the stable door, when he had rushed over for a quarter of an hour from the settlement, and her ap.r.o.n had been quite wet with tears. The dear, good master! Jendrek really ought to have seen how the poor man hung. Like that. And she turned up the whites of her eyes and let her red tongue hang loosely out of her mouth, so that the inquisitive man still shuddered when he thought of it.

Ugh! But how did Mr. Tiralla look now?

Oh, just as usual, you could not see that anything had been the matter with him. He crept about again as he had always done, yellow and thin.

But the strangest thing of all was that he did not know anything about it.

Did not know anything about it? Jendrek would not believe that. How can a man hang himself and afterwards know nothing about it?

That astounded everybody. People came running to see Mr. Tiralla and press his hand in mute condolence whilst they gazed at him with curious, disappointed eyes. There were so many visitors the next and following Sunday as Starydwor had not seen within its walls for many a day.

[Pg 275]

Mr. Jokisch and Mr. Schmielke came, as well as the forester and the gendarme and all their friends from Starawies and Gradewitz. Even the priest was there. The big room was quite full of visitors.

Refreshments were brought in, Tokay and beer, and Mrs. Tiralla herself smilingly handed everybody a gla.s.s of gin, which was very welcome in that cold, unhealthy weather. Mikolai offered cigars, and soon the room was dark with thick, blue clouds of smoke, through which every now and then a quick glance was cast at Mr. Tiralla, as though the men suddenly recollected why they had come to Starydwor. There was much laughing and talking.

Mr. Tiralla sat staring in front of him without saying a word, or taking any interest in what was going on. It was as though he were no longer one of them.

Yes, the man was in a bad state of health, they all saw that. What had the doctor said?

They had not had one so far, said Mrs. Tiralla, casting down her eyes.

Then she added softly, with trembling lips, that up to now she had only prayed and prayed.

The priest nodded. But when he soon afterwards left and she accompanied him to the front door, he took hold of her hand in the pa.s.sage and pointed out to her that it was her duty to send for a doctor. "My dear Mrs. Tiralla," he said, "invoking divine help is certainly--h'm"--he cleared his throat, those wide-open, staring eyes made him quite confused--"divine help is certainly the chief thing, but human help is not to be dispensed with. Your husband seems very ill, really dangerously ill, why won't you have a doctor? You must absolutely send for one."

She followed him with her eyes as he walked away and there was a peculiar smile on her face. So--so he [Pg 276] said that? Surely he did not believe that a doctor could change what had been decided upon in heaven? Very well, she could, of course, send for a doctor. But the man might prescribe whatever he liked, Mr. Tiralla would still be tottering to his grave with every step he took.

"A strong-minded woman," remarked the visitors, as they walked home across the fields. "Terrible," they said then, and shivered as though they felt cold.

The wind whirled round them, and a flock of ravens, startled at their approach, flew out of the furrows screeching and cawing just over their heads. What a horrible noise! The men stood still involuntarily. Look, look! they all flew back to Starydwor and settled on the roofs. Those birds of ill omen!

Psia brew, how awful it must be there at present, to be every day with that man. Why, he was quite idiotic. Mr. Tiralla had never been very bright, and he had always had a hankering after drink. Well, well, your sin is sure to find you out. Poor woman! She was the only one who deserved to be pitied. It was really admirable how she kept up her courage.

"H'm, it's taken a great deal out of her, nevertheless," remarked Mr.

Schmielke with a long--drawn whistle. He had suddenly grown very cool in his feelings towards her. "Sophia Tiralla's reign is over and done with. Did you notice the hollows in her cheeks? And then her eyes, how sunk they were. H'm, that lanky, red-haired girl, who dared not show herself at her mother's side a short time ago, is almost nicer-looking now. She's really not at all bad."

"You had better keep your fingers off her," said some one. "She's going into a convent."

[Pg 277]

"Tut, tut, don't talk nonsense. She--with _those_ eyes?"

But the gendarme knew it for a fact, for the priest had mentioned quite a short time ago that the Ladies of the Sacred Heart at the Wallischei had been told of Rosa Tiralla's coming.

"Very well then, I shan't," said Schmielke. He made no more of his frivolous remarks, but grew silent as the others had gradually done.

They all felt out of tune, thoroughly depressed. Starydwor seemed to be running behind them, now that they had left the place. In their mind's eye they continued to see the black birds on the gloomy-looking roofs, and the man who had hanged himself and was still alive, and the woman who had cut him down and who still smiled.

All at once they hastened their steps, and not another word was spoken until they reached the first house in Starawies.

Then they began to speak of the schoolmaster. That was another of them, he and Tiralla were a couple. Both of them were being ruined by drink.

But it was a great shame of Bohnke, for he ought to be a pattern to the children, as the priest very rightly had said. How could such a fellow teach children, a man who drank so much that he had been found in the ditch like a tramp, his clothes torn, and bleeding and dirty? It was a great disgrace.

The gendarme could tell a tale about that. He had many a time seen the schoolmaster coming home at dawn, and had watched him trying to poke his key into the lock; he had many a time had to help him to open the door. But when he had picked him out of the ditch on his way home from a round in the Przykop, looking no better than a drunken vagabond whom you [Pg 278] look up, he had felt obliged to speak about it. Father Szypulski would perhaps have preferred him to have hushed it up, but it surely would not do for the village schoolmaster to be found lying drunk and bruised in a ditch. It would have been found out sooner or later, and then n.o.body would have any respect for him. Of course, the man could not stop at Starawies, and who knows, perhaps he would have to give up being a schoolmaster altogether. The priest, who as a rule was so loquacious, had never said a word about it.

As they came past the house where Bohnke lived, they looked at it askance. What did the man feel like? He had not shown himself for days--had he already left? The priest had said "as soon as possible."

They all felt they had never liked the schoolmaster; he had always been so conceited, so proud of his learning. Here you could plainly see it, "Pride goeth before a fall."

They knocked at the door. The shutters in front of the schoolmaster's window were closed. Had he really left, or was it because he felt so ashamed of himself?

The schoolmaster had indeed left, so the old woman, his landlady, who lived on the other side of the house, told them. Oh, dear, she complained, now her lodger had gone, and she had not got another one.

"And what had he done?" she cried, clenching her fists in her fury.

"Let those be struck by lightning who have slandered him. Dear, dear, how he wept. When I said to him, 'Don't weep, Panje Bohnke, my husband, the _stas_, also drank himself to death,' he did nothing but repeat, 'Oh my mother, my mother!' and groaned so that he made my heart come into my mouth. His mother is said to be a schoolmaster's [Pg 279] widow and very poor. She won't be pleased when her son comes home like that.

G.o.d have mercy on us all. Oh, Mr. Bohnke, Mr. Bohnke, what a good lodger he was." And the old woman began to sigh and weep so for her former lodger that the men got away as speedily as possible.

How disagreeable everything was, and then the weather was so raw. The only thing for them to do would be to make themselves comfortable at the inn. And they did so.

Marianna carried the news to her mistress that the schoolmaster had been turned out of Starawies in disgrace, in a voice full of malice and scorn. Pan Bohnke had gone to the devil, what did the Pani say now, eh? She cast a covert glance at her--what would she look like, pale or red, happy or sorry?

But Mrs. Tiralla looked quite unconcerned. At any other time she might perhaps have rejoiced, but now it did not even surprise her. So the schoolmaster was no longer in her way? Good. She knew that her guardian angel was keeping his wings spread over her.

She felt so calm at present that she was often surprised at it herself.

Her heart no longer throbbed and ran riot as it had formerly done. She had been a fool and even a sinner, when she had caught hold of her guardian angel's arm, and had cut her husband down when he was dangling; but she felt that the saints had already forgiven her. She saw more plainly day by day--almost hour by hour--that Mr. Tiralla was drifting quickly, uninterruptedly to his end. She often longed to fold her hands in her exceeding [Pg 280] grat.i.tude; she went about the whole day with prayers of thankfulness on her lips.

Marianna was rather astonished to find that her mistress took the schoolmaster's departure so coolly. Had there never been anything between them? Neither formerly nor lately? Anyhow, she seemed very indifferent about it. Now Mr. Mikolai had a much softer heart, for he was very much cut up when he heard that the man had left. At first he had opened his eyes in surprise, but then he had pressed his hands to his head and groaned, "I would never have thought it; oh, dear, if I had only known it!" What a good fellow Mikolai was. He would in time be just what his father used to be. And Marianna was more attentive than ever to him.

Meanwhile Mikolai went about looking very troubled. He had certainly not wanted to do that, he had only wanted to give Bohnke a reminder when he thrashed him and threw him into the ditch. It also grieved him bitterly for his father's sake; the old man had been so fond of the schoolmaster, who used to spend hours with him like a friend. And now his little Bohnke would never come again. He felt so sorry for his father that he thought he must speak to him about it.

But Mr. Tiralla listened to his son's stammering excuses without understanding them. "Schoolmaster--schoolmaster?" He shook his head. "I don't know any schoolmaster. Friend--friend? Have--no--friend."

Mikolai shuddered when he looked at his father. There he sat with loose, hanging lip, and eyes the eyeb.a.l.l.s of which looked as rigid as though he could not move them any more. He was not like a human being any longer. Did he not remember anything? [Pg 281] He seized the old man by the shoulder and shook him, "Father!" Then Mr. Tiralla shrunk together in his corner like a hedgehog when you put the tip of your finger near it, and shot nervous glances at his son, glances in which there was malevolence as well as fear.

Mikolai felt desperate; the man only answered with a grunt now, it was impossible to explain anything to him. He felt as though something were choking him, he was obliged to run out of the stuffy room into the biting north-east wind that swept across the yard from the open fields and whirled the straw and chaff and feathers about that were lying around.

How terrible it was! The old man was spoiling both house and farm for him. He clenched his fists and a sigh of indignation was wrung from him; why, it would have been better if his stepmother had not cut him down!