Halek's Stories and Evensongs/Under the Hollow Tree

by Vítězslav Hálek

For other English-language translations of this work, see Under the Hollow Tree.

UNDER
THE HOLLOW TREE

CHAPTER I

WHEN Venik was twelve years old his father Riha took him from school. “You must help us now”, he said. “You will be our little shepherd, and will drive off the sheep to the hill-side; then in the afternoon I will bring you your dinner there, and you will come home yourself for the evening meal.”

Venik spun round with delight on his right heel. His teeth flashed out from his gums, and his father added, “Take your violin with you to the pasturage.” After this, Venik was like one possessed; he skipped about the apartment, till he had skipped up to his violin, taken it down from its nail, stretched several of the strings, and played and skipped about at the same time.

Venik, it must be understood, learnt the violin at school, and on Sunday used to play primo in the gallery so well that the schoolmaster composed a solo in the gloria expressly for him; and when Venik played, people at church turned their eyes to the gallery instead of looking at the altar. But no one could see him from below, he was still so small that he scarcely touched the rail of the gallery with his head. Then year after year the head emerged just over the rail, but the violin was yet invisible from below.

So then pretty early next morning Venik drove off the sheep to the hill-side below the wood, and took with him his violin. Below the hill-side murmured a river, on the hill-side began to murmur the oak-wood. Venik skirted the wood, and at the edge of it he noticed a single old tree whose trunk was hollow, so that four people could comfortably seat themselves inside. This tree looked as though it had stepped out from the wood. It had a sort of door and threshold; on the threshold, beside the entrance, squatted Venik, that he might look after the sheep, and he said to himself, “Here I like to be: beside this tree I shall remain.”

When he had sat thus a short time and saw how the river fled away below him, and how the sheep kept creeping over the hill-side, and how the wood behind him kept murmuring so softly, something stirred within him like the river, and something murmured softly like the woodland.

But when birds began to call to one another from the wood, Venik thought that he ought to answer them. He took his violin to make them some response. He played a whole mass in their behoof and his own, just as he had played it last in chapel. He thought that in that way he should soonest make friends with them by showing them what he knew.

He played: and when he came to the gloria, where he had the solo in chapel, he thought he ought to do his very best. He did his best, and played till his face shone. If those birds had understood anything about playing they must have been well contented with him. When he had finished playing you might have heard an answer, but it was not the birds who answered, it was the little Krista who, when Venik had finished playing, began to sing over her solo for last Sunday’s mass. Unseen she had crept behind the tree, and now betrayed herself by her singing.

Venik was the violinist of the gallery, and Krista was its chief songstress; she had a voice like a little angel, and when she sang people said it was like stringing pearls on a silken thread. Venik and Krista made music in the gallery side by side; and when one accompanied the other people said the chapel was like paradise; they were not brother and sister, but people called them “those children”, because they always learnt together, together walked home from school, and from home to school, and stood together in the gallery. The village folk talked about “those children” on their way to the chapel; “those children” were like a miracle to them when they heard them in chapel, and they talked about “those children” again all the way from chapel.

Krista was an orphan; she was now nine years old, and had no recollection of her parents. She was attached to the home of Venik’s father like the swallow’s nest which hung from the eaves, and which no one thought of pulling down. Venik’s father, perhaps, did not the least know why he had her at his house. It may have been because she was an orphan; or, perhaps, it may have been because of her sweet little voice. She was like that swallow’s nest under the cornice: no one pulled down that nest.

Venik’s father was sometimes known as the cottager, because there was another Riha in the village—a peasant proprietor—the brother of Riha the cottager. They also talked of Riha as Riha the widower, because Venik had already lost his mother.

When Krista began to sing behind the tree, Venik put down his violin, turned in the direction where sat the little songstress, beat time to her, nodded with his head, and was well satisfied. But when she had quite ended he roughly accosted her: “Krista, why are you not at school”, he said.

“Why are you not there, too”, said Krista.

“I, indeed! I am twelve years old and belong to school no longer, but you are only nine.”

“I don’t belong there either now,” retorted Krista, “and I won’t go!”

“How dare you? If papa knew of it he would drive you there”, retorted Venik angrily.

“I am come to feed the sheep with you, and you want to drive me away”, pleaded Krista.

On this Venik stood up, took her by the hand, and said imperiously, “Go at once, or I will drive you hence. Hie away to school!”

“I won’t go, and you know it”, retorted Krista.

And when she wouldn’t stir an inch, Venik took her round the waist and dragged her as far as his strength sufficed. Krista staggered back, sank to the ground, burst into tears, and cried plaintively, “Ah! I am only a poor orphan girl.”

These words touched Venik. He forgot all at once that he had to send her to school, and only saw that Krista was in plaintive mood, and that he was the cause of it. He stood as if fixed to the ground, and did not know in which direction to move, whether towards Krista or towards the tree; then he went to the tree and sat himself there. He wished to play but it wouldn’t come. No mass, no song even occurred to him. Then he looked round at Krista and could have cried with her, could have gone to her, I could have soothed her, could have asked her pardon and have excused her school, but he did not know how he could do that.

He felt even worse when Krista ceased to cry, when she raised her head and in silent sort reiterated what she had said before in words. When having her hands clasped and herself sunk to earth, and when having her eyes full of salt tears and fixed on the vague distance, like an actor in his part, she confirmed even by the expression of her countenance the signature over which was written, “Ah! I am but a poor orphan girl.”

As she sat thus plunged in her childish grief, Venik silently approached her, squatted himself beside her, and after a few moments said, “Krista, how does it feel to be an orphan?”

He said it with all the sympathy of which, at his age, he was capable. He said it as if he would have told her, “Tell me how it feels and I will share it with you.”

“How does it feel?” said Krista, in reply to his question. “When I have only you, and you drive me from you, how can I be anything but an orphan?” and her eyes still moist with weeping turned from the vague distance to him, and were full of mute reproach.

“Nay, I do not drive you from me, but I want you to go to school, and to school you must go, for you are not twelve years old like me”, said Venik.

“I don’t want to go to school any more,” retorted Krista, “I like to be here on the hill-side, and stay here I will.”

“And where will you learn to sing?” asked Venik as a last resource.

“With you”, said Krista, and this quite beat Venik what to say next.

However, he answered, “You might go to school, and after school come here on the hill-side. Lord! how we should get on if you learnt at school and here as well!”

At these words Krista fell a-thinking, then she looked at Venik, took him by the hand and said, “You are right, I will do so. I will go to school, and after school I will come to you on the hill-side.”

Thus did these two young diplomatists come to a mutual understanding. And when both were satisfied, Venik said, “Are you still a poor orphan girl, Krista?”

“You know that I am an orphan, I have neither papa nor mamma”, she said, and Venik felt again so sorry, that he thought he must still try to do something for Krista to make her less an orphan.

And he said, “I have no mother either.” He said it as if he gloried in it, and as if he made Krista a sort of present, and as if that present was the mother whom he had lost.

Venik thought then that he had effected in Krista what he wanted to effect in her. Renouncing his own mother, he laid that renunciation in the balance, and Krista seemed by so much nearer to him. He glorie in his own orphanhood that Krista might bear to be an orphan more easily. He discarded his own mother as though he would discard even life itself for Krista’s sake.

Krista’s case was indeed different. She had never seen Venik’s mother; she had not known her, and so she thought that at the Rihas’s there had never been a Mrs. Riha, and that Venik all his life had never had a mother. But now when Venik announced his loss, Krista perceived that what he did not possess he had really lost. “Did they bury your mamma?” asked Krista, as if all at once his misfortune presented itself to her imagination.

“They did not bury her,” said Venik, “because I was still quite little and it was winter, but in the cemetery she lies for all that.”

Venik’s mind was haunted by a notion that when his mother’s death took place people had said that they were not going to bury ber; and he had clung to this idea ever since, just as it happens still oftener that a chance word which we have heard in childhood, and which we have clothed with a wholly incorrect meaning, hampers us with that incorrect meaning years after our reason has learnt the right one. So Venik till now would have it that his mother was not buried, that thus she was perhaps not entirely a corpse, and that consequently he was exaggerating a little when he said that he had not a mother either.

“Stay, if she is not buried let us bury her here on the hill-side,” said Krista, “and then you will always be near her; you shall dig the grave and I will bring her here.”

Very little of all this certainly did Venik understand, either of what Krista wanted to do or what she had got in her mind. But children quickly adapt themselves to everything. They pretend a tile to be a basin, a fragment of crumbling earth to be a cake, a pebble is a house, a bit of wood is a shopkeeper, the trestle of a table is a school, a scrap of rag is a shop full of dresses, a scrap of paper is a book. The fancies of children are omnipotent, and if a child says, “Our apartments with papa and mamma are better than the whole world”, it is true from the moment that the child says it.

So when Krista got up to bring Venik’s mamma, Venik got up also and began to make his mamma’s grave beside the hollow tree. He grubbed in the earth with his pocket-knife. And when he had done with the grave Krista brought his mamma. She had her lapful of her, and had collected her all over the wood and over the hill-side.

And now they began to lay her in the tomb. First Krista strewed the grave with moss that mamma might feel it soft beneath her. Then she took a brier in full bloom and said, “Look, that is her heart”, and she laid the brier in the middle of the grave. Then she took two willow-wands and said, “Look, those are her hands”, and laid them next the heart. Then two other wands were for two feet, and finally she took from her lap sweet marjoram, and said, “Look, that is her head”, and laid it on the top. Nothing more was wanted in her opinion to make a woman. So the corpse was done with and Venik’s little mother lay in the grave.

After this began the funeral in the due form. Krista began to weep, and Venik wept with her. And they wept in earnest. Then Venik took his violin and played a miserere, just as he usually did in the cemetery, and Krista sang. Then Krista sang over the funeral hymns, and Venik accompanied her on his violin. They sang and played everything they knew; they sang funeral hymns for a burial of a child; then those for youth, and lastly those for adults. And they sang and played with so much earnestness and with so much warmth of feeling that they were both quite ill after it, and hiccuped with emotion. A more touching funeral never took place in reality than the imaginary one conducted by these children. If the spirit of Venik’s mother hovered above them, doubtless it rejoiced and wept with them.

Then the little grave-digger filled in the grave with earth, and his little mother was buried. They still had to sing over, “Oh! rest in peace”, and afterwards, “We bid adieu to this body, we bury it in peace.” Thereupon they quitted the tomb to the sound of the song and the violin. But once more they returned, not indeed to the grave exactly, but aside to the hollow tree, for Venik said that he would compose a requiem, and that there should be a full choral mass. And he played and Krista sang. They played and sang through all the solos, and the hollow tree was both church and gallery.

Even when late that evening they drove home the flock they were still sobbing and crying, and the next day Krista wouldn’t think of going to school, “for you know,” she said, “it is the vigil after the funeral.”

 

CHAPTER II

FROM that day forth these children felt that they were equals. From that day forth one was no more an orphan than the other. From that day forth the hill-side was their consecrated ground, it was also their home. In the house they had a father, even Krista had a father in old Riha; and on the hill-side they had a mother, even Krista had there a mother. Immediately after school she used to be with Venik, and when there was no school she was with him the whole day.

Such days were like saint’s days to both of them. Then she sang till her voice rang all through the woodland, and Venik would play on his violin, till people going past used to pause, and all the shepherds of the village would most gladly have pastured their flocks on the hill-side if they had had the right of pasturage there. When it rained the two crept into the hollow tree, and then it seemed as if the tree was resonant with string and song, as if in its old age it grew young again in heart and mouth, and as if itself played and sang.

The raindrops fell splashing among the leaves of the old tree, and from its hollow, from its extinct portion, issued songs as though the tree had a young heart and a young mouth. When the san shone the children seated themselves before the tree in the cool shade; and while all around the faded grass drooped and died, in the cool shade of that hollow it grew rich and strong as if it had been watered by the dew.

After a time Venik learnt also to imitate the birds on his violin, and when he had a mind could arouse such a concert that Krista herself sat beside him in astonishment, and as if in the presence of a revelation.

In the meantime Krista learnt to sing at school, and learnt also with Venik; at school with more ardour than formerly, in order to give pleasure to Venik, and when with Venik with more ardour still, in order to give pleasure to him and herself too. And so over the hill-side these two young artists fluttered like two birds with happy notes. They reanimated it, for all its life the like of these had never there been heard. They were like the living heart of that hill-side; they were its language and its speech, and could well have been a consolation to any who chose to listen to their conversation.

They were developed beyond their years; the girl’s little throat was as consonant to Venik’s strings as the two children were to one another, one was the complement of the other, so that I might have called the tones of her voice and the tones of violin comrades, if there had been as many likings and dislikings in the kingdom of tones as there are among men.

And they grew. When Venik was fifteen and Krista twelve, Krista also quitted school; and proud she was, as Venik had been before, to think that she was now twelve years old. But what delighted her most was that now she could linger on the hill-side all day long; and then at that time Krista desired nothing more than this; she had everything; twelve years of age, the hill-side, and on the hill-side singing and, besides singing, Venik and his violin. A loftier ideal of happiness she had not. Her little heart panted for no other bliss, but was filled to the brim with that of the present hour. Nay, it was even overflowing. She even felt that the world had a superfluity of joy and brightness, the sky a superfluity of blue transparent ether, the world a superfluity of song and all sweet scents. It never oppressed her now—the thought that she was an orphan. She felt no special want to be supplied, and if she could have managed to give full expression to her feelings, she must have said that she rejoiced to live in the world.

But all at once Venik was again a solitary on the hill-side. Riha, his father, began to fail in health, he took to his bed and Krista had to stop at home with him. From that moment Venik ceased to take his violin with him: the song and the playing were silenced; death, like the shadow of a heavy pinion, hovered over Riha’s cottage, and our children all at once ceased to be children. The world all at once took on a different colour; it suddenly lost for him its brilliance, and his breast was overflowing with anxiety. When Venik from the hill-side saw his cottage-home it looked to him as though it could be singled out from all the other buildings by particular signs, and to Krista sitting in complete silence in the sick-room with the ticking of the old clock and the groans of the failing Riha, it seemed as though an invisible finger had wiped off from the world all mirth and all sweet singing. All who came into the sick-room were gloomy and grave; those who went away from it seemed to be without hope, and Krista, who sat continually in the sick-room, felt as if all that gloom and hopelessness had concentrated itself on her; and time elapsed. *** Krista flung herself on the bed sobbing, and out of doors the death-knell was sounding far and wide. When its deep vibration thrilled over the hill-side Venik started to his feet like a wounded hart. With weeping and lamentations he collected his sheep, and with weeping and lamentations drove them home. He had no need to ask for whom the death-knell was tolling, he knew it in an instant, and if he had not known it, a single glance at the sick-room would have told him all. The sign of death was visibly scored upon the house. That heavy wing had swooped down upon it, and the expression of everything was one of gloom and sorrow.

Krista knelt by the bedside on which Riha had just expired, Venik knelt beside Krista, and in broken syllables—for in such the deepest anguish is wont to speak if it finds words at all—thus addressed her, “Now I also am a poor orphan”; now he had sacrificed his father also; now Krista was at last in no sort poorer than himself. Ay, it seemed to him that he was the most wretched of all. Then both felt as if in presence of an apparition; they could not grasp the truth, and it seemed to them as though this truth was somehow not quite true; and then again it appeared beyond all suspicion to be the truth. And the truth was yet more irresistible when people brought a coffin to the house. Then Venik went to meet this coffin, and felt as though he himself must be lodged therein; he embraced it and cried out, “So this is now papa’s only chamber.”

After this anguish silenced him; perhaps it deafened and stifled him. Venik found no more words; he neither wept again nor lamented. Not even when they bore away his father in that new, narrow chamber to the cemetery, to lay him beside Venik’s mother, who perhaps after all was already buried there. Venik took his violin, to conduct his father to that last resting-place, and when the singing and the weeping above the grave were ended, Venik began to weep above it. He wept on his violin; he wept so that all the people burst forth into tears afresh. He played “The Orphan Child”. It was a language which every one understood better than words—it was the language of the heart already inaccessible to words, those tones opened for themselves every fastening, and pierced and saturated all. People had never heard speech so moving, and Venik hitherto had never spoken in such moving language.

Every one was astonished at him, and Krista stood as though changed to a statue. Those tones were not the outcome of mere memory; they were the offspring of anguish, and Krista again found force to weep. They were the tones of orphanhood, and where in the world are there tones more touching?

This time Venik for long would not detach himself from his violin, and long was the burial-speech he spoke upon it.

Only now for the first time he saw exactly how people are laid in the grave, because he whom they laid there was his father.

When all was over Riha’s cottage had a new owner. Instead of Riha the cottager came Riha the peasant, brother of the defunct, and now Venik’s guardian. He was already at the cottage with his wife when Venik and Krista returned from the funeral, and he at once began to order this and order that.

Venik and Krista did not understand what all these orders meant. They were still in fancy by the father’s grave, and when they came home they heard many words. All they understood was that from that moment everything would be different.

All that had been heretobefore began to crumble beneath the children’s feet: with their father perished even their home. It was unloving words which they now heard, and loveless home is no home at all. They listened like frightened birds, and longed to flee away to the hill-side.

“You Venik,” said Riha, “can’t you leave that precious violin to be a violin? A great boy like you and nearly grown up to go mooning about the hill-side; what a pretty affair it is! Thy father was too good-natured to thee, and when he saw thee and thy violin together, he thought—God knows what he thought. But what will become of the house and farm, I wonder, if you treat it like that? Until harvest you shall still pasture the sheep. When harvest comes I will take a turn with thee in the field myself, and after harvest I will find some one to put you in the way of things.”

“And thou,” said Riha’s wife, turning to Krista, “don’t let me see thee running out of the house any more after Venik. A girl like thee, who could already be in service, to go prowling and howling in the woods! Once I miss thee from the house and I make short work of all thy caterwauling! Just remember that thou hast but a slippery foothold in this house and that we can manage to do without thee. Thy howlings won’t make the cottage bloom, and we cannot have thee here to be muffled in cotton-wool for the sake of thy singing. Mercy on us! I suppose thou thinkest thyself a cut above all our peasant girls.”

It is possible that many of these words were true, but they were all ill-timed. At that moment it was cruel to scourge hearts already in any case bowed with grief. I have already said that Venik and Krista did not fully understand all they heard; only so much as this, they felt that every word inflicted a wound upon them, and that each wound smarted.

That day, at even, maybe by accident, Venik and Krista met at the hollow tree on the hill-side. Krista was already there, and Venik came somewhat later.

“I am come to say good-bye”, said Krista, and flung herself on the little grave which three years before they had dug for his mother.

“And I came to say farewell to the hill-side and my violin”, said Venik plaintively.

“And I to say adieu to thee, dear Venik”, added Krista. “Ah, heavens! I mustn’t dare to be beside thee any more. I mustn’t dare to sing with thee, they have taken my all. Oh, now I am a poor orphan girl”, and she fell a-weeping.

“Come when you like, Krista”, said Venik with sudden determination. “Who ever heard of such a thing! You not to sing! I not to play! This very night I will bring away my violin and hang it on the tree, and play I will whene’er I have a mind to, and you shall come here when you choose—upon my word you shall.”

“I shall not dare”, said Krista, plaintively, though Venik’s determination revived her considerably. “I am already but a cipher at the cottage. I have nothing more in the world. Why did they not bury me in the grave!”

At mention of the grave, Venik again gave way; but after a pause he said, “Meet here we will, you shall see, and if they pursue us we will away to the woods.”

And after this they went home as if from a second funeral. That same evening Venik took down his violin, even tore the nail out of the wall, and went with both to the hill-side, hammered the nail into the hollow tree and hung the violin upon it. But he soon took down the violin and played upon it its own farewell and its own lament. Possibly the Rihas heard him—and how could they fail to hear him when the village was close to the hill-side? However, they said nothing when he came home. But Krista was the worse off of the two. Already she had no hill-side to fly to. Already she had no breathing-time to look forward to as a consolation. Already she had only a hard couch on which to weep herself to sleep at night.

The home which but yesterday was like a warm nest now breathed upon them like a winter’s gust. Venik now encountered no loving looks responsive to his own, and heard no loving words. And if Krista was still attached to the house like the swallow’s nest to the cornice—now the cornice itself began to totter—there were already people to be found who would pull down the nest.

One day, just before harvest, Venik, seated on the hill-side, began to reckon how long the hollow tree and the hill-side would be still a portion of his world. The wheat already pricked to maturity, it was but a short time to harvest.

Krista was at work in the house when her peasant mistress stepped up to her, tore her work out of her hands, trampled it on the ground, and screamed, “Why, hast thou no hands, thou awkward slut?”

Krista stood before her in amazement; and the peasant woman continued, “Perhaps you expect me to pick it up from the ground for you.”

To this Krista replied, “Kind mistress, I cannot do it any better, and if you will not show me how to do it, I shall not be able to work for you.”

“Then be so good as to be off to-day better than to-morrow. Come, come, none of thy threats to me. Tie up your rags at once, and don’t let me see you here by nightfall.”

After this Krista began to implore forgiveness, for she felt that perhaps she had been hasty. But the peasant woman would not hear a word. “Don’t let me see you in the house a moment longer”, she roared, and Krista did not venture to address her again.

She collected her clothes, tied them in a bundle, and with the bundle tramped off to Venik on the hill-side.

“Now I am going, now it is all over”, she said when she came there. “Now I dare not venture into the cottage.” She said it with a smile, for her grief assumed the guise of smiles, which were indeed a kind of determination. And then she said what had happened.

“Where shall you go?” said Venik, as if beside himself, for indeed he had never before had to face so horrible a calamity.

“I know not,” said Krista, “I only know that I must say good-bye to you in earnest.” And again she laughed a short constrained laugh, so that Venik began to be embarrassed to know whether it was all jest or earnest.

But it was all so perfectly true, that Venik for a long time lost the power of speech. When he found words to speak the first he uttered were, “You shall not go alone; I will go with you.”

“Where would you go,” said Krista with surprise and terror.

“Do you think I shall stop here without you? We will go and be in service together”, spoke out Venik. Then Krista could have fallen on Venik’s neck and have kissed him all over. To have only him and he not to cast her off—he to wish to entwine his fate with her’s—was not that enough to make her feel at that instant twice a woman? was not that enough to bring all at once into her heart springtime, fair weather, flowers, and all sweet songs?

“We will find a place where we shall be allowed to play and sing together”, said Venik warmly, and as if in proof thereof, he forthwith loosed his violin from its nail and began to play as if he wished to say good-bye to all the birds in the wood, and as if he gave them to understand that he was going to search for himself a hill-side, a wood, and a hollow tree—everything in another corner of the world. Krista sang to his accompaniment, and it seemed quite impossible for these two beings ever to be separated, for that playing and that singing to isolated from one another. They were so closely united that it was impossible to think of them as two.

“Do you know what,” cried Venik of a sudden, with as much delight as if he had found a treasure, “we will not go out to service anywhere. We will go into the world, I with my violin, and you shall sing to it.”

They knew what the world was like which they would have entered on as farm-servants behind the barn, and wished to enter it. But they might quit their home for other scenes, and that would be also to go into the world. They had been willing to take service with people; now they would go and make people merry with singing and music—would that be worse than service?

All that Venik now thought about was how he could get his clothes quietly into their wallet as Krista had done, and then they would be off. And they arranged between them that Krista should pass the night in the hollow tree, and keep watch over Venik’s violin, lest haply they should lose it just at the very time when they had most need of it. Then he was to bring his clothes there at night and they were to be off before the break of day.

The seed which is no longer sheltered by the husk is easily carried away by the wind: these children had lost the sheltering husk of home, and the wind carried them away. They quickly came to an understanding about a plan and the means of carrying it out.

When that day at even Venik drove his flock homeward, he drove them quickly, as he did on the day when he heard the funeral bell toll out the news of his father’s death. But he drove them with different feelings. For indeed the circumstances were different. Venik was in high spirits. To-day he longed for something to occur which should bring down upon him the wrath of the peasant Riha, his uncle; such wrath that he would have to fly his home, and then he and Krista would be just in the same plight. This he did not succeed in bringing about, but it was not for want of trying.

Riha’s wife greeting him with these words, “Haven’t you said farewell to that precious bride of yours?” she said. “At last we have got rid of her, the bread-wasting vagabond—that little pet of thine. We shan’t have to scrape together cotton gowns for her any longer, nor take care lest her soft hands get callosities upon them.”

To that Venik replied, “For all you say I know why you have driven her forth. It is because my dead father loved us dearer than the cottage. You would gladly be rid of me, too, because all you care about is the cottage. But you won’t succeed in that, I tell you.”

These words enraged Riha’s wife because they were true, and because she saw that Venik began to have an inkling of her own bad intentions. And when at supper she told her goodman what Venik had said, the Day of Judgment was rehearsed in that building. Riha hunted for Venik to teach him how to speak to his aunt in future, and when Venik was not to be found, he said that it should stand over till morning, and that he would give it him with his breakfast.

But he never gave him anything more at breakfast. Venik had already migrated, wallet and all, to the hollow tree; and when Riha brought him his breakfast next day, where then were Venik and Krista?

In the house an alarm was raised. No one knew aught about Venik; none of the servants had an idea what had become of him. And in the village people laughed at Riha and told him that now he would have to pasture the sheep alone.

And so Venik and Krista threw themselves upon the world. Very early, when above the tops of the old oak-wood crept the first rays of dawning, he and she stood prepared for the journey. They stood before the hollow tree as by their sanctuary, as if it were their true home. Thither from the cottage they had fled with light hearts: now that they had to flee from it they felt a load upon their hearts. Here was their church in which they had been both angels and pious listeners. Perhaps that tree had roots even in their hearts. And certainly even the flowerets which grew upon the hill-side had in their hearts both soil and sustenance. Now they felt a load upon their breasts. And they knelt beside that little tomb in which, many a long day since, they had buried the sweetbrier, the willow-wands, and the sweet marjoram, and of which they had made Venik’s mother.

“Venik, thou weepest”, said Krista, and wept also.

“Krista,” said Venik, “if in the world we ever fall sick, we will come here to get well.”

And it felt very hard to take the first step. Then yet once again Venik took Krista by the hand, held it firmly, and said, “Krista, if thou art lost to me in the world, I shall come here to seek thee—remember the way.”

And both felt heavily oppressed, as though some one was taking their heart out of their breast piece by piece.

The first step was so hard to make that they scarcely managed to take the second. Then their steps soon became lighter, and when village, river, hill-side, and wood were lost to view, they were already as light as two birds. Youth alone easily adapts itself to all, and quickly forgets both weal and woe.

 

CHAPTER III

THAT day they tramped many a long mile, and passed many a village. As yet hunger had not importuned them, and they had tramped along easily enough, but when hunger began to hint its presence, they had to reflect how to rid themselves of that unwelcome guest. So far they had marched through villages only for the fun of the thing, and had not wished to post themselves by the door and explain by their music that they were in want of food. But when reality was more powerful than their weak thought, they were fain to discuss what decided step should now be taken. It was already afternoon when they reached a new village, and their feet began to ache. They sat themselves down near the village under some willow-trees, and Venik said, “Now we must try our fortune, and now we must arrange what we are going to play and sing.” And they began to compose and arrange. At this very time a large group of children wended their way to the village school. Hearing young musicians, a youth and a girl, who might well have been going to school with them, they paused to listen; and as the musicians and their listeners were both equally juvenile, they quickly came to understand one another. The young public paid what it could, and Venik promised to accompany them with his music to school.

And he accompanied them. Krista paced beside him, and Venik played all he could think of to made them dance and laugh and whistle. After him trotted the youthful group of scholars, and a procession so gay debouched into the village that the like of it the villagers had never seen before. To school advanced so cheery a procession of children that even the school had never seen anything like it. In a moment school was deserted, and round Venik and Krista gathered an audience which was composed of all the children in the village. Then Krista began to sing, Venik accompanying her on his violin, and the school-children were almost beside themselves. When it was rumoured among them that the musicians were orphans, gifts rained upon them from all sides. Kreuzers, all kinds of sweetmeats and sugar-plums which the children had with them for school. Venik soon had his hand full of kreuzers, and eatables and dainties filled Krista’s apron.

This happy beginning filled them with hope and courage. As the children were now obliged to go into school, they made a compact with Venik and Krista to meet them again as soon as school was over. And who would have thought it? these young rascals marched out of school to the sound of music, as proud as the gay fellows who swagger home from the ale-house on festival or gala days, to the accompaniment of fife and tabor.

Venik and Krista went thus from house to house everywhere playing and singing some piece. Everywhere the school-children trooped after them, and they seemed to have brought back spring with them into the village, and surprising it was to see how many gifts they collected at the various homesteads.

Then they also played and sang pathetic songs. Krista sang “The Orphaned Child”, Venik accompanied the song on his violin, and when the village children again mentioned to their parents that the musicians themselves were orphans, tears started from every eye—young and old wept aloud, just as though some one had been dead—such were the laments they made. We have already seen how Venik played this piece at his father’s funeral; now to his playing was superadded Krista’s singing, and she in no wise lagged behind her companion. Those around who listened were not orphans; and yet no single heart was unimpressed. The children of the village felt as though they had lost a mother; the mothers felt as though they were already laid in the grave, and their children were covering them with pine-needles.

The effect which the piece produced was almost terrible. The people knew the song, but never in all their lives had they heard it sound as it did then. They seemed to be hearing it for the first time; they seemed to hear in it tones completely new; no one had a suspicion that it contained a fund of pathos such as no one could resist. In the tones of our musicians that song was heard in all its grandeur, aye, in majesty, and every heart was rent.

After that piece, if they had implored any one of the masters and mistresses of the several homesteads to be their father and mother, not one of them would have reflected a moment but would have led them away and treated them as their own children. They might have asked what they chose, and they would not have appealed in vain.

They had already no need to feel any anxiety about victuals. They were at once taken to a house, and on the morrow some ane else asked them out, and on the following day some one else; and so they could be a whole week here just as at home. Every ne felt that they were not mere strolling musicians; Venik and Krista were just like their own children to them, and were treated royally.

Early on the morrow they again accompanied the young people of the village to school; after school, they accompanied them home, and in the village this seemed to be accepted as the natural order of things. Never in their lives before had the young people gathered so willingly to school, and never in their lives had they marched so merrily from school.

On the Sunday our young musicians asked to be allowed to play and sing in chapel, and Lord! how completely people forgot to look at the altar and fixed their eyes upon the gallery.

When in days gone by they had sung and played thus in the chapel of their native village, people, when they talked about “these children”, were quite accustomed to them. Here people heard them for the first time, and also heard such playing and singing for the first time. That Sunday they might have selected whichever farm they pleased to sup at; plates were laid for them at every house.

It was fortunate for these young souls, at this period of their lives, that strangers treated them as if they were of their own family and at home.

Possibly, if things had fallen out otherwise, they would have lost their way and ended in filth and obscurity, out of which there is no means of extrication. But as it was, they never stumbled on to the false track to ruin; their path led them otherwither.

The fame of the young musicians spread rapidly. The young people of neighbouring parishes also desired to be accompanied to and from school with music; an invitation was sent, and when Venik and Krista departed from the place where they had begun their musical pilgrimage, young and old escorted them a good piece of the way, as if the two wanderers had been their own children.

Just before bidding adieu, Venik and Krista struck up the “Orphan Child”, and the procession was drowned in tears. Then Venik struck up a lively tune, and the parting was a merry one. Their kind friends embraced them, and promised them whenever they chose to revisit the village, to receive them with open arms.

So they separated. In the next village the young people were all expectancy, and Venik and Krista were welcomed as brother and sister.

All marched together to the accompaniment of music to and from school, then to the different houses in the village; and on the way there was a repetition of what took place in the first parish the two children had entered. The whole village went into raptures, and when the “Orphaned Child” was played people were drowned in tears.

This song had everywhere the power of enchantment. People were quite beside themselves, and yet they could have listened to it till nightfall and beyond. They scrutinized Venik and the strings of his violin, to see whether the instrument really was the source of what they heard issue from it. But the music must have been there evolved, although to them it appeared exactly as though the music came from Venik himself. As to Krista it was easier to satisfy oneself, she obviously spoke with a real mouth, and so it was easier to believe in her heart.

On Sunday afternoon, young and old disported themselves on the village green, and there, too, Venik performed and Krista sang. All the youth of the village were soon in a ring round them, and behind the young people came the old, and then I really do not know who remained at home. Then might wicked people have gone from house to house and walked off with everything. No one would have prevented them, for no one was left at home to prevent them. But those wicked people who had slipped out to pilfer, hearing Venik and Krista, would have left off thieving, and would have gone and listened like the rest. Then Venik and Krista made a grand display of their stock of songs, playing what they just remembered and what they knew; they even sang and played masses, and people said that they never before felt so festive even on a Sunday.

Their fame increased. Scarcely had they begun to feel somewhat at home here, before invitations came from two—from five villages all at once, begging them to come and delight the inhabitants. The whole district spoke of them, and if they had spent all their lives in going from village to village in the district, taking them in succession, our musicians would never have stood in need of their daily bread.

They even visited the town on market-days, and when they posted themselves in the square, people ceased their bargaining and came to listen. The shopkeepers went so far as to be angry with them, and jealous of them for hindering business, but as soon as they heard them, they gave them gifts like the rest. They were looked upon, however, with still less favour by some other singers who had posted a large booth in the market-place, and notified on a painted board what they were going to perform. These latter had not a living soul on their side, and soon had to clear off, and lamentably bewailed the state of trade. But they dared not grumble too loudly, for our child musicians had so completely won over the listeners to their side that they had as many champions as they had listeners. Besides, in all their audiences, they found old acquaintances—people who listened to them here en market-days, and heard them long before in their own native village, and introduced themselves to the children as friends or, perhaps, even as relations of their family.

It is needless, therefore, to add that Venik and Krista prospered in their tramping mode of life. They were dressed very becomingly. Venik wore his shepherd’s costume, only that everything was brand-new, and fitted him like his own skin, in fact, the boy himself was like a bouquet. Krista was dressed in peasant’s costume, but in gala trim. On her head was a short silken handkerchief tied in a hood, a string of ducats on her neck, a neat corselet showed off her trim figure, and a short skirt let one catch a glimpse of a pretty foot in white stockings and low shoes.

They were like a picture. Everywhere they were taken for brother and sister, and to all intents and purposes were as brother and sister.

A year floated by like a day, and three years like three days. Venik was now eighteen years of age, and Krista fifteen. The boy was like an ash-sapling. As for the girl it was a pleasure to look at her. And, of course, people did look at her. Venik himself sometimes stole a furtive glance into her eyes as he used to look into the fresh mountain spring. It happened that once again they came to the town, but it was not market-day; there was a performance at the town theatre, and the villagers of the various parishes putting on their best suits for the play, and happening to talk about the theatre, invited Venik and Krista also to accompany them thither. Krista looked at Venik, and Venik went with her.

All the way there they scarcely spoke a word. Krista was wondering what it would be like in the theatre, and Venik’s mind was perhaps similarly engaged. They were about to look upon an unknown world, and their eyes were downcast.

They had never yet been at the theatre, and when they had taken their places in it they felt as though a ton weight had fallen upon them. They saw a number of people before the curtain, and behind the curtain—who could tell what there might be? Then the curtain was drawn up and they saw a wood, and here both bethought them of that wood which stretched behind their hill-side; they bethought them of the hollow tree and of that river which ran below the hill-side; they were half inclined to weep, and again they were half inclined to rapture. But all was different in that wood behind the curtain. There people walked and conversed and acted together, and our two spectators felt even that wood behind the curtain grew dear to them. Their whole attention was fixed upon it, and everything happened quite naturally in it, and like real life. Now they were constrained to laugh, and the next moment they were fain to cry.

The play was over, and in the body of the hall twilight reigned. When they listened they seemed to hear their own names called, and that by many voices. It really was their names, and before they could recover from their surprise they felt themselves touched by hands, many hands, and again before they could recover from their surprise, they were gently lifted off their feet, and pushed behind the curtain into the wood, and a hundred throats clamoured for Venik to play and Krista to sing.

It was like a revelation. They did not know how it all happened, but they sang and played. It half seemed to them as though they were standing on their own hill-side, and yet somehow it was quite different. When they had concluded the theatre was all agape with excitement, and like one mouth, and they were obliged to play and sing afresh, and when even this was concluded Venik saw that a body of fine gentlemen had gathered round Krista and were conversing with her about the stage, and about matters which he himself did not understand, and which she, perhaps, also did not understand. And then again they talked to her about matters which pained him, and which he did not wish to hear. Then he felt quite fit to cry, and so he took Krista by the hand and led her out of the theatre and out of the town.

Then Venik felt as though he had a different pair of eyes, and as though Krista had become changed from what she had been hitherto. Lovelier, a hundred, a thousand times lovelier than she had been hitherto, and than they told her she was in the theatre. Venik thought that he must tell her so; but when he sought words to express himself he could not find them, and when he had found them they stuck in his throat. And then he felt as though he had a different heart. What was that strange resonance in his bosom which he had never felt before, but the beating of that poor heart? It seemed to beat more audibly: it was full to overflowing; and when he asked himself what that was within it, he was fain to answer that it was Krista. He wished to tell her so, but his heart throbbed worse than ever. And while he hesitated, he grew pale as a wall, and was fain to fetch a sigh from the very depths of his soul.

He could not the least recollect how long Krista had now been linked with him. So far as memory carried him she had always been at his side. With him in school, in church, on the hill-side, on the road—everywhere she had been with him, and it could not be otherwise. But now he felt as though the Krista who walked with him was a different Krista from her with whom he used to walk. She was no longer like a deserted orphan whose brother he was, now she was a girl—Krista, and when he thought about her he trembled.

Until that hour they had shared the same couch, and when they had laid them down were like two birds of a single nest. To-day when they came to the farmhouse in which they were to pass the night, Krista lay down alone on the couch—for the first time alone, and Venik went out in front of the building and cried. He was alone at night for the first time in his life, and kept awake all night long.

The next day he scarcely dared to raise his eyes to Krista. He felt as though she were much above him, and as though he ought to beg her to allow him to remain by her side. He was gloomy and sorrowful, and when Krista looked upon him she, too, was gloomy and sorrowful, and her eyes were downcast. And yet they had not wronged one another in anything, they had done nothing to one another to merit blame, no single too familiar word had ever passed between them.

That day the violin was left hanging on its nail, and Venik was wellnigh heartbroken. He longed continually to meet with Krista, and when he had met her he longed to be away again, as though he had committed a crime. Then he fancied that Krista was ailing, and longed to inquire about her health; but when he saw her he saw, too, that she was as pink and fresh as a rose, and as beautiful as a day in spring; only her lips quivered for a moment as though they wished to whisper something, but they closed and did not whisper it. She was sadder and more gloomy than Venik himself, and conversed even less than he did.

Yet several days floated by, and they were more estranged. Venik did not play, Krista did not sing, they did not converse, they did not laugh together, they had no sweet confidences; and yet it seemed to Venik that he was happier then than he had ever been before. Until one morning Venik said, “Krista, I think that I am going to be ill.”

Krista looked at him apprehensively and said, “Why shouldst thou be ill?”

“I feel so oppressed, Krista. Let us go to the hill-side to the old oak-wood. If I am to get well again I shall get well there: if not, I had rather die there.”

“Why should you die?” said Krista. “You are so young”, she added, and felt as though she had said too much, and as though in saying those words she had already sinned. She turned away from him, and after a long pause said, “If you feel so oppressed let us go. It is now three years since we were there.”

And they went. They went to the spot where they had first met one another, where together they had played and sung, where they had been like two angels, with the hollow tree for their sanctuary, and whence they had first gone forth together into the world.

The return journey was a dreary pilgrimage to both. Venik loitered wearily the nearer he approached the hill-side; and once when he looked at Krista he said, “Krista, we are going each as it were alone.” They went, each as it were alone, immersed in his own private thoughts. At this Krista took him by the hand, and their hands were moist and like fire. In speech and manner they were equally embarrassed. Their mouths were parched, their steps tottered, and after this they again unclasped hands, and again went each as it were alone.

When they were exhausted by their walk they sat down under some willows, by a streamlet which fled away to the river, that they might rest themselves. Their feet rested, indeed, but in their soul they seemed to fret more and more.

In a neighbouring wood a cuckoo cuckooed. Krista looked at Venik, then yielded to tears, laid her head on Venik’s bosom and sobbed aloud. Venik stroked her hair, stroked her face, and was like one distraught. After this Krista ceased to weep, rose, went to the streamlet, gathered at it “fishes eyes”, and entwined them with her hair, and when Venik saw her it seemed to him that he could go mad with love of her—so dear she was to him.

Then they rose, went forward, and conversed. Venik felt that the previous burden had fallen from him, that his words were once more unfettered, and that he could breathe freely.

Only he still could not say the particular thing he wanted to say; and several times as he thought about it his words again became more constrained. But on the whole they felt freer. Already they could not say that they were going each by himself. Already they almost tripped along together.

So the next time they sat themselves down, under pretence of resting a little, Krista did not again fling herself weeping on to Venik’s bosom, but none the less did Venik take her head in his hands, none the less did he lay her on his bosom, stroke her hair and face, and wipe her eyes, although they were no longer bedimmed with tears.

It drew towards evening as they approached the hill-side. The sun had set, and left but a faint blush in the western heavens; the day was over and had left but a shadow of itself; evening stole upon the world, and with it came faint odours and the song of birds.

When they reached the hill-side and saw the hollow tree at the outskirts of the wood, Venik was like a child once more, and when he had seated himself at the threshold with Krista beside him he said: “Krista, now I feel ill no longer.”

And here it seemed to Venik that never in all his life had he felt his breast so full as it was just then, and that never in all his life he had felt what he then felt. If he had had to explain it all, he would not have succeeded, but when he looked at Krista he thought his looks alone explained it. He was half inclined to weep, but much more to rejoice. The river and the village far below them already veiled themselves in filmy mists; that cuckoo which had cuckooed to them as they sat beside the streamlet under the willows, seemed to have accompanied them even hither; here it cuckooed from the wood.

And it seemed to them, as if they had departed thence but yesterday. Village, river, field, wood, hollow tree—everything was the same: even the nail on which Venik had hung his violin still stuck in the hollow tree. Only when he looked at Krista all seemed different. And he looked at her very much, and then everything was very different. Krista’s eye was inflamed and moist with tears, and when he touched her hand it was again as hot as fire.

When the moon rose, Krista said to Venik that he never was to think of her again, and Venik to this replied, “Prithee, why shouldst thou unlink thyself from me.”

But, as her only reply, Krista again laid her head on his bosom, and wept and sobbed as if she would unlink herself from him for ever. She kissed his face, his eyes, his forehead, his mouth—it was the first time that she had kissed him.

Then Venik said, “Krista, be mine.”

On this Krista nestled yet closer to his side—but then of a sudden she rose and ran away to the wood.

Venik sat a long time alone, and it seemed to him as though he had seen happiness flutter round him, and as if he had actually caught hold of it. He held it in his hands, he looked for and did not know what had become of it. After this he shouted, “Krista! Krista!” and when Krista responded not he went into the wood, gathered leaves and moss with both hands, carried them in his arms to the tree, and in its hollow trunk strewed a couch. Then he sat on the threshold, and was like a sentinel on guard.

There were no signs of Krista, but still it seemed to Venik as though she was there, and as if he saw her at every glance, and at every glance she seemed more fair. Then she was there, she stood behind him like a shadow, she never stirred, her head drooped upon her bosom, and her hands clasped together.

“Krista, I have but now prepared thy couch in the tree”, said Venik, and his voice trembled so that it was not in him to say anything more. Krista without a word went and laid herself down in the tree on the leaves and moss.

Venik retired a few paces toward the wood, and laid himself down beside it.

But he did not sleep. It seemed to him as though he must make certain whether Krista slept or not. He rose, stole silently to the tree, looked in a brief moment, and in that moment Krista raised her head.

Venik as though with a knife in his heart retired to his previous resting-place, and laid himself down once more.

Then he fell asleep, and all his dreams ran on Krista. And he fancied that she laid her head on his hand; he fancied that he awoke, and that as he held it so his eyelids opened upon the happiest moment of his life. He fancied that he was completely happy, that nothing more was wanting to him, and in the consciousness of that happiness he again fell asleep.

And again he seemed to see upon her face a fire and a hot enthusiasm, and in presence of that fire and that hot enthusiasm all girlish modesty was effaced, so that she had it neither in her looks nor her words. He dreamt so vividly that he fancied it could not be a dream. And even when he awoke in the morning he did not know how far waking realities differed from a dream, for that past night was to him both reality and a dream. And he dreaded lest it was reality, and he dreaded yet more lest it was a dream.

Krista had not yet awoke, she had not yet risen. He went to rouse her, and went to the tree along with the rays of the rising sun, which aimed its level beams into the hollow trunk. And when he had reached the spot along with them, at first he looked in furtively and then more boldly—the couch was vacant. Krista was not on it.

Venik felt as though only now he was immersed in dreams, as if only now he was laid in bed. He looked again and again into the tree, he looked again and again around him, leant his head on his hand to collect his thoughts—but he was not dreaming. He was awake. He tossed about the moss and leaves as though Krista might be under them, but she was not there.

And all at once it seemed to Venik as though the whole heaven had crumbled at his feet, as though the stars had fallen from the sky, and the last day had already come upon him. He grew as livid as a corpse, he longed to hurry away and bury himself in the grave, that he might the sooner rise from the dead; and his eyes were suffused with blood, so that they looked like bleeding suns.

And then he thrust his fingers through his hair, ran along the hill-side and past the wood, and shouted “Krista! Krista!” But there was no reply, then he ran into the wood, searched it cross by cross, and shouted, “Krista! Krista!” But there was no reply anywhere.

Then it seemed to Venik as though he had roved that wood for several days, as though he had grown old, as though he had lost the power of speech, as though he was exhausted, and his feet refused to stir. On this he staggered towards the hollow tree, and rested in weariness, and was still.

He waited.

He waited for Krista to come—for her return. But even if she had returned, it seemed to him that now the world would be the world no longer, that the heaven would be the heaven no longer, since once the sun had stooped from the sky and had lost its pathway in the heavens. And Krista returned not.

Venik waited that day and that night: he waited the next day and the next night. At night he slept on that couch of leaves and moss from which Krista had vanished. He only felt that he was alone, and the hollow of the tree resounded with his sighs. And once again he went out like a sportsman to the wood, and as though he was bent on sport, and shouted, “Krista! Krista!” But he was an unlucky sportsman, and then he felt as though a wound had been made in his side by some one, and as though blood trickled over that side of his body.

Krista had made that wound, she had deserted him, and now for the first time he was an orphan.

 

CHAPTER IV

IT seems to me that then for the first time was Venik without a public, without listeners, when seated again on the hill-side, he took once more his violin in his hands and played “The Orphaned Child”.

He was that orphaned child. Long ago, when Krista had accompanied him with her voice for the first time in the gloria, she had burst into tears because she was an orphan; and Venik convinced her that she was not an orphan. Then his father died: Krista was driven from the house, and when she had to begin her wandering in the world he had taken her by the hand, and wandered with her, and pointed out the way; again she was not an orphan. And when it was all finished, she voluntarily departed from him, at the moment when he had hoped with her to enter paradise. That paradise closed upon him—where was it now?

Venik’s thoughts had no beginning and no end, they were like an unbroken wilderness, where the eye tires itself. There was nothing for it to rest upon, nothing to look upon with pleasure. He had desired so little for himself; and when he lost even that little, it seemed to him that he had lost the whole world. He also had cherished her; and when he looked and saw how she had torn herself, root and all, from his very heart, he saw that where those roots had been was a bleeding heart.

He had moments when it still appeared to him that what had befallen him could not really have happened. Surely he was befooled, surely Krista would return to him all at once. And then he seemed to hear her step, and the rustling of her dress: for a moment he saw her dancing eyes, her heavenly look, and heard her glorious voice. He turned his eyes in the direction whence that step and that rustling seemed to come, and when he perceived that it was but a mere delusion he cursed his fate.

If some one had asked him how long he had already sat thus, he would have said, “A whole eternity”, and he would have spoken the truth. And if he had been further asked how long he had walked with Krista in the world, he would have answered, “Two or three days”, and would equally have spoken the truth.

Then Venik arose and went again into the world. Sometimes he played and sometimes he did not play, as the fancy took him. Sometimes it seemed to him as though he wandered in the world in search of Krista; and again it seemed to him that if he found her he should cast her from him that he might have her no more with him.

First he came to the parishes in which he had dwelt long since with Krista; and when his old comrades saw him desolate, they asked him, where he had left Krista. Then he sometimes answered with a word, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tear, just as was consonant with the answer. But through it all it was apparent that each of these modes of reply tormented him; he felt it, too, himself, and, therefore, made up his mind not to go to villages where he was known, but only to go among strangers.

In villages where he was not known, indeed, no one inquired for Krista, because no one had known her. But even that was not a clear gain to him, for he observed that he himself also on that very account made fewer inquiries about her. Already he had not inquired about her for many a long day.

Sometimes the whole business of strolling through the villages and of playing to people also wearied him; he was sick of it all; and then if he could find any gay young fellows anywhere he would attach himself to them as long as they wished to listen. By his playing he lured them to the dance, and he played so that any one who had wished to tarry always beside him would perhaps have been led to destruction. And then although at the beginning he was but sombre and melancholy, the further his merry companions prolonged their orgies, the gayer he became. His gaiety waxed in proportion as his youthful followers slackened and grew weary.

If people from the villages in which he had been so dear, when he and Krista were still their young musicians, had seen him at such orgies, verily they would have shrugged their shoulders at him, and the mothers would have cried, “What a pity it is, poor boy, so young and bonny as he is, and once so good and honest.” Now people began to nickname him “Wild Venik”.

Then again it would happen that he had nothing to say to any one. He shunned the villages, or at most seated himself or laid him down somewhere behind the barn under the willows, as long ago he had done with Krista. And here, just as he who praying with a rosary takes and pushes one bead after another, so Venik dwelt in memory on Krista, and word by word repeated everything he had ever said with her, everything he had ever felt for her, each single recollection was like a single bead of the rosary, and the whole remembrance was like a single prayer. Sometimes these prayers soothed him, but yet it was so only apparently. Then again it seemed to him either that he felt surfeited, or that he had not begun to be satisfied at all.

Sometimes wishing neither to go to villages where he was known, nor to those where he was unknown, he prowled around so purposely and futilely, that when he tried to recall that wandering to mind, all he knew was that he sat on the hill-side at the outskirts of the wood beside the hollow tree. It was passing strange to him. Like a heavy dream rested upon him all that had taken place beyond that spot of ground, and that had ended there. He peered into the tree, and there yet lay Krista’s couch of leaves and moss as though he had strewed it there that very day. And here he flung himself on this couch and embraced the whole of it in a wild frenzy of passion. Then he laid himself down on it and lay awake or dreamt. He reflected how constant were those fallen leaves and that shrunken moss in comparison with man. Deprived of the sunlight and the sun’s warm beams, it had not proved unfaithful to its post. In the hollow, worm-eaten tree, he had laid that moss and foliage, and he found it there whensoever he returned.

Here it seemed to him that after all it was impossible that he was so deserted as he held himself to be. He got up, ranged the wood once more, and shouted “Krista! Krista!” but there was no reply; there was not even her footprint, there was not even he shadow. And when he turned back without success, he did not wish to go again to the tree, or to the couch within it.

Then he cast his eyes over his own native district, and felt as though here he was in his own home once again. He longed to go back once more to the Rihas’s to offer to tend his flock, and even to leave behind him that violin which he knew not whether he ought to curse or bless. Once, indeed, under cover of evening he approached the village and wended his way to his own parental roof, and debated long with himself as to whether he should enter the house or not. He passed the court-yard and stood behind the hall-door, next to which was the kitchen. In the kitchen on the hearth burnt a fire, beside the hearth stood Riha’s wife preparing the evening meal. The fire flashed into her face, that face had the colour of the fire, and it was a strict face. But still it seemed to him like an honest face, and one that he could trust. Always it had never promised him anything, always it had only threatened him; and just because it realized its own threats, it was honest. Krista had never threatened him; there was no strictness in her words or face, and yet how had she sinned against him in comparison with yon poor old beldam.

Perhaps he would have entered, perhaps he would have offered to drudge at anything, and nothing would have been too burdensome for him. But at that moment Riha’s wife carried away the supper from the hearth, she returned no more, and Venik departed. He paused awhile at the window, and looked into the lighted room. And here it flashed across him that the cottage with its bit of land was his property, that it was a rare stroke of fortune for his uncle and aunt, the Rihas, 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 hill-side.

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 hill-side, 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 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.

And when he saw the theatre, he reconnoitred it and pryed about it, and felt he hated it so bitterly that he would not have hesitated to throw a burning brand upon it: if any one else had done so, he would have looked on with delight, while the tongues of flame devoured and reduced to nothing a place whence began his hardest turn of destiny. He would have helped the flames yet further to devour and annihilate it, till there remained no trace of it, just as no trace of Krista had survived.

This hatred of the building, be it understood, did not hinder him from entering the theatre. He was now already of riper years than on the memorable day when he was first here, and he looked on things with different eyes. What he saw on the stage amused him: it amused him to see others the sport of adverse fate, it provoked him when they succumbed to their fate, and although it provoked him, yet it tempted him thither, and he seemed to read there a fragment of his own life and to be thereby consoled.

And now he frequented the theatre every day, and when he saw that there was but a spare supply of musicians in the orchestra, he offered himself with his violin, and was accepted. Then he looked from this orchestra on to that theatre as it were at first hand, he drank from it, as it were, the first draught, and when the curtain fell, he concluded all with his playing. And sometimes he was glad of this, and sometimes he laughed at it. It pleased him well to have his mind diverted and employed. But it did not please him when he saw how those theatrical princesses to-day proffered love to this man, and to-morrow to that; to see them kiss and embrace one man to-day, and to-morrow another. This ran so counter to his ideas that sometimes he would not have grudged his words, if he could have told them what place they had in his esteem.

Sometimes also on the stage was the wood which he had seen here for the first time with Krista, and which reminded him of the hill-side and wood, with the hollow tree at the outskirts of the wood.

Sometimes also he was asked to play a tune in that wood; and he played till he made people weep or whistle; for from his strings spoke both weeping and laughter.

Then they held Venik in respect and honour: they led him to a music master, with whom he studied and played all day long. They also taught him many things which he played to their admiration finely and touchingly. But still he only rose far above the rest, when he played those songs of his own just as he had taught them to himself on the hill-side. Then, indeed, it was just as though the whole hill-side breathed out of him, as though all the wood resounded in his strings, as if even the birds were full of voice, as if even the river played which gurgled far below. Of these songs people could not have enough, and called for them again and again. But, indeed, when he played his “Orphaned Child”, the public was enthralled by the magic of his art. Now it was as though every full-grown man were again an orphan, and as though they were gathered together to one common grave to weep their fill.

At length rumours reached the town about other theatres, about theatres in the capital town of Prague. The newspapers wrote about them, and in the town they talked about them, in the theatre, everywhere they talked about them. And with these rumours came one certain piece of news, about a sort of prima donna who carried away the palm, both by her voice and execution, so that hitherto she had not her equal. When she stepped on to the boards, the wonder was that the garlands and bouquets did not smother her; and when she had finished her performance and prepared to drive home, people unyoked the horses from her carriage and with torches and hurrahings conducted her to her house. Rumour further said that she was young and beautiful, that she had been a strolling musician, until some one interested himself in her and had her carefully instructed, and that now she was a perfect miracle.

When Venik heard these and other things, a pang shot through him and he could not rest a moment. He left the orchestra, took his violin and as though everything was on fire behind him and around him, he hastened onward toward Prague. And in Prague he soon learnt all about the matter. Here, whatever place he entered, people spoke about her. In the beerhouses, hostinets, and cafés they were preparing for the theatre, all the afternoon, and evening was spent in conjecturing how many garlands she would get and who would throw them to her.

Venik listened and held his breath, and he had no need to begin the conversation anywhere. In every hole and corner he heard about her.

Was it possible that it was Krista?

 

CHAPTER V

TWO hours before the beginning of the play he had already reconnoitred the theatre in the hopes of gleaning some certainty without the need of asking questions. The moment the ticket-office was opened, in spite of the jostling crowd, he was already to the front, and when he felt the ticket in his hands, it seemed to him to give him admission to the kingdom of heaven. But, indeed, who knows whether it were the kingdom of heaven to which it gave admission: possibly that ticket led quite otherwither. At any rate he would not have parted with it for all the world, and when he looked at it as it lay in his hand, he seemed to be looking upon a portion of his own existence.

He had been seated in the theatre a long time before the beginning of the opera. He saw how they lit the lights one by one, he saw how the public sauntered in, he saw how the orchestra filled with musicians, and he saw below the curtain a swarm of pretty feet already upon the stage. Who could say whom they might belong to?

Everything seemed to spin round him, and he hardly seemed to be in the world. And again all around him roared with the din of a thousand voices, as when the wind crashes through the woodland and a tree is mere stubble in its path. The words spoken merged into one constant hum, and he seemed to be a tiny portion of that humming.

Then they began to play in the orchestra, and then the curtain was furled up. The stage represented a wood. Then she stept forth whom all awaited with breathless expectation; and when she stept forth, garlands and bouquets fell thick at her feet; it was a rain of flowers, and the people made the tempest. Through this rain and through this tempest it was impossible to distinguish anything clearly, and yet Venik fancied that he had distinguished something. Then the tempest subsided and the singing began. She sung.

It was Krista in every movement and in every tone. Full well he knew her every movement; full well he knew her every tone. And when she began to sing Venik felt a choking in his throat, and as though no heart beat any longer within him; as though he was no longer alive; as though it could not be the least true which yet was true; as though everything around him was enchantment, and he alone was in that enchantment. Would to Heaven it were only enchantment!

At the first touch, when he saw, heard, and recognized Krista, he felt only unembittered delight. Delight—to see her so beautiful, and to hear her so touchingly powerful, that she seemed like a superior being. As though she had got wings and flown to the stars. It was Krista, but a heaven-descended Krista. It was a different Krista from the one he had known, but it had grown out of the old Krista.

He smiled and the tears stood in his eyes. So near he was to her, so far away he was from her. From the hollow tree hither the road was one which had taken three years to traverse, and he had reached the goal at last. Through a whole world, through an eternity he had to go, through nights of waking and debauchery, through a whole river of tears, and through many sighs that path had led—and now he had reached the goal at last. And now he seemed on a bed of roses, and to hear the song of the nightingale. And it was all Krista.

His heart now beat so audibly that he fancied every one heard it, that even Krista heard it. But no one heard it, all eyes were turned to her, and Krista never heard it: at least she never thought of running to his side.

When her song was at an end they clapped and shouted; Venik did not clap nor applaud, but he was greatly delighted. If he had clapped, perhaps he would have called attention to himself; if he had shouted, perhaps he would have shouted Krista. He felt delight—unembittered delight.

Then the delight began to be embittered. A singer stepped forward, and here Krista was already not alone upon the stage. This singer pledged his love to her, and she pledged her love to him. Then they embraced and kissed each other. Already Venik was pretty well awakened from his dreaming and wellnigh stricken to the ground. Here already he was not on a bed of roses, here he began to feel only its thorns. Here his heart began to beat differently, but his face grew pale and wan. Then they sang together, the singer and Krista, and they sang about their love, continually about their love; when people after this again clapped and shouted, Venik neither clapped nor shouted, then if he had wished to shout he would have called out “a theatrical princess”. And after that he would have burst into a mocking laugh.

It was Krista. And now began to drum in his head the words, “It is not Krista, that being yonder was, it is she no more.” The path to her had taken three years to traverse, it went through sorrow, tears, and sighs, and now that he had reached the goal at last, he said to himself, “I have found her and it is not she.”

It was Krista and it was not.

When the opera was concluded, he heard voices round him saying, “They drag her home again.” He ran out of the theatre and looked for the carriage in which they were going to drag her home. He saw a carriage, it was chock-full of the garlands which were flung to her in the theatre, and young men were detaching the horses, and yoking themselves to the carriage in place of them. It appeared to him past all conception loathsome—but it was a lucky chance for him. He also harnessed himself to the carriage. When the road to her had taken three years to traverse, surely he might have one close look at her when they were in the same town together; and he awaited by the shafts.

Krista stepped into the carriage and seated herself in the midst of the garlands and bouquets. All the young men took off their hats and yelled. Venik also tossed up his hat and yelled. Krista smiled blandly in all directions and bowed in all directions; she smiled on all alike, and she bowed to all alike. A portion of these smiles also fell to Venik’s lot, and a portion of those bows, just as much as to the rest; he might go shares with them, and he went shares with them.

While they drew her along with yells and shouts Venik went almost close beside her, he could have touched her. When they approached a street-lamp, and it cast a stream of light into the carriage, Venik cast a glance there likewise, but only for an instant, that he might not meet her eyes. But indeed he need have been under no apprehension on that score—she had no time to meet his eyes—she had to smile blandly in all directions, and to bow in all directions. Then he took a long look at her, for he observed that they all took a long look at her. He took a long look and their eyes never met; then it appeared to him, that their eyes did meet, but it was dark, and a man easily becomes the sport of fancy when the lights are out.

Also a man in a multitude sees less and is less of a man, just as among many voices our own voice is lost, so also each particular individual is lost in a multitude of individuals. When a multitude is unwise—and it always is unwise—we are infected by the multitude and by its wisdom. A single person would not have drawn Krista in her barouche: he would have said, “Horses are for that purpose.” But the multitude yoked itself without reflection, said to itself, “I am a horse”—and horse it was. In that multitude Venik tore along and yelled with the rest of them. He ceased to be Venik. He was at that moment only one of those who dragged and yelled and tossed up their hats.

Then they halted before a house, and Krista stepped out of the carriage. The crowd and the carriage stood before her dwelling, and those young gentlemen assisted her out of the carriage and conducted her up the staircase, others took the garlands out of the carriage and carried them after her. Venik also took one and earried it after the rest. He wished to see what sort of life she led, but he went more from mere instinct and merely because he was a portion of that multitude which carried garlands.

He saw but little of her abode, but enough to see that it was rich and costly. In the front hall the young men laid down the garlands and then went away: Venik did so, too—laid his garland down and departed.

When he reached the street, a procession approached with torches and halted before the mansion. Singers sang and Krista came out into the open air on to the balcony, and thanked them all quite composedly and quite impartially: she paid him his due also and he accepted it. He heard her speak and when she opened her lips he seemed as though only now he saw and heard her, for in the theatre she merely sang.

Then all the pageant began to disperse in different directions, and Venik was in the street before Krista’s house alone. And when he was alone he ceased to be a member of that multitude, became again a man, and was Venik.

He posted himself opposite the house, and his glance ranged over the illuminated windows. But, of course, he well knew which windows were hers, for he had a few moments previously laid a garland in the first floor.

And now he stood there, and looked and watched, to see whether he could hear any voice, and he heard many. There was a subdued hum of voices, perhaps there was a dinner-party or some sort of entertainment, and numerous pleasure seekers with her. He heard conversation and laughter, he saw lights, he heard the singing of divers voices, then he heard Krista also sing, and here he began to parley with himself. He would have gladly posted himself at the very window, if need be, in order to gain a clear view of everything; but it was impossible. So he drew on his imagination for what he could not see.

A gas-lamp was glaring near the window, and when the lamp-lighter came with a ladder to put out the lamp, he longed to ask to be allowed to mount the ladder himself. He could then have peered into the interior of the house and have seen whom she conversed with, and with whom she sang and laughed. But he felt himself frozen to the spot where he stood and could not stir.

Then he asked himself what he wanted there exactly, and whether he was in his right place there. It is hard to say, it is hard to answer. Rather let us philosophize on the very substance of spirit: we shall more easily answer the question what man is, than I can say whether Venik was here in his right place or not. He was, and he was not. Instinct prompted him to fly hence, and yet held him here so that he could not stir.

When he heard Krista’s song above, everything pressed him to reply. She sang a song from the hill-side, she sang what she had once sung with him in the villages. Had he had his violin with him, he would have answered—he would have announced his presence. For a minute or two he thought he must run and fetch his violin, and that he must announce his presence. But he never went. Then he ruminated. If he had gone for his violin, and had played under the windows, it would have been peculiar: Krista would have heard him, and what then? Would she have started? or would she have continued to sing and jest? Would the song and jest have deserted her? Granted that it did desert her, then everything would have cleared away from her and Venik have been left in the street alone, and she would have been alone in yonder house. If he were to play below her window, she would be left desolate, her guests would disperse, and what he saw and heard would be all over. So in his ruminations he came to this conclusion, that it lay in him to say how long they had for the jest and for the song. If he should say, “Hold! enough!” it would be enough. He granted them that feast; he prolonged it for them; and which of them had the least idea that so it was?

Verily Venik smiled to himself to think what a puissant lord he was, until he began to feel an arrogant conviction that everything which happened on that first floor was under his control.

But he did nothing, and yet he waited until everything was at an end. Gentry and ladies dispersed from Krista’s house, and throughout the first floor silence began to reign. In the street where he stood not a living soul was to be heard.

The lights in Krista’s window were extinguished and then a single window opened. It was a warm summer night and the window could remain open all night long.

The moon shone just in the direction of Krista’s window, and Venik stood in the shadow of the opposite houses.

From Krista’s window a head peeped out, and perhaps it was her head. Venik at that time stood facing her and was alone. Even she was alone at last. Then the head vanished and did not appear again.

If he had wished to address her, he could have done so before, but now it was too late. And what was there to say? Where to begin and where to end? His speech might need to be a very long once or it might be a single word. And what was the word? Where was it to be found?

If at that period when he sought her three years ago he had been ten times further away from her, he would have spoken to her, now he was but a few paces from her and yet he did not open his lips. Now he was simultaneously moved to anger, to weeping, and to laughter, and he neither wept nor laughed nor stormed. Where then was he to find a word that should express both anger and weeping and laughter? And yet he found it. When the head had vanished from the window and all was silent for a long time, Venik called aloud from his hiding-place “Krista!” and in that word was both anger and weeping and laughter.

He had not long to wait before the head again appeared at the window and looked up and down the street in great surprise. It looked up and down and in all directions, but because Venik was in shadow it did not see him. And Venik did not stir any more. The head after a few moments again vanished from the window. Doubtless it thought that there was some trick in it all and that it was a voice without reality. After this complete silence reigned in the first floor, perhaps Krista was dozing, perhaps she had already gone to sleep.

Venik after this crept from his lair under cover of the shadow and only determined further that he would come pretty often to trick her with his voice unless he thought better of it.

And then he wandered about the streets of Prague and wandered in his own consciousness. He wandered even in his thoughts—he wandered even in his imagination. Yet unceasingly he heard voices, laughter, songs: he saw torches and a glowing face and in the midst of it all he himself seemed to shout out “Krista!” and when he had thus shouted all was over for ever.

Then it appeared to him that he again stood before Krista’s house, and there he stood. No living soul was stirring anywhere, the house and the street were plunged in sleep—not a voice was to be heard anywhere as though that day had never been at all.

All that to-day had been, already now spoke only in Venik, it was already only an echo, though this echo was very distinct indeed and sometimes wellnigh found a voice. The torches seemed to be aflame in his bosom and a cry seemed perforce to be wrung from it as if he had to shout for the whole troop.

The next time when Krista once more sang he was again first in the theatre. This time when the curtain was furled up, the wood was not on the stage: there was a garden and in it was a hum of voices. One might suppose a fête represented in this garden, and Krista sang at it while the guests amused themselves. The action on the stage was concluded by the first violin playing a solo melody which the public clapped: but Krista on the stage had to feign herself conscience-stricken by the melody and finally to fall fainting on the ground whereupon the curtain fell.

When Krista fell fainting on the ground, Venik could scarcely refrain from calling out to her. But then the public kept on clapping, the curtain rose, Krista stepped before it, as if she had never in her life fallen on the ground in a fainting fit, thanked them, smiled blandly, and as often as the curtain furled up was ready with more smiles and with more thanks. When Venik saw all this thanking, he was no longer disposed to call out to her, disdain again played around his mouth and half to the neighbour who sat beside him he audibly exclaimed, “A theatrical princess!”

His neighbour took these words for eulogy and to heighten their force, said, “Yes, a perfect queen of the theatre!” and asseverated it to himself, which was also a kind asseveration to Venik.

“Yes, a perfect queen of the theatre!” repeated Venik after him, as if he himself could heighten the force of his neighbour’s criticism by repeating it.

What then happened after this in the theatre Venik scarcely saw or heard. All that was stereotyped in his mind was that solo of the first violin from the orchestra, then how Krista sank in a fainting fit, how the curtain fell, how the curtain was raised, and how Krista had her fainting fit over in a twinkling, and was able to thank them all and to smile blandly.

When the theatre was over there was no watchword given to-night that they were to take out the horses from Krista’s carriage and drag her home.

But still Venik again posted himself by the exit from the theatre, and just where Krista had the other night stepped into her carriage: and there he waited.

There was the carriage again ready prepared, but Krista did not step into it, she told the coachman that she would go afoot, and the coach only drove home her wardrobe. She went afoot, and she did not go alone. There walked by her side a very stately young man. Krista hung on his arm and they conversed together very amicably. After them at a respectful distance followed more young men, doubtless some of those who the other day had drawn her carriage in place of horses: to-day they only followed as a kind of escort or body-guard.

Along with these young fellows followed Venik and learned from their conversation both the name and rank of the person who accompanied Krista: but he did not much care about his name or his rank. Then he learnt that he escorted her almost always; that the barouche in which Krista drove was his and she drove in his barouche, even in the day-time, whenever and wherever she chose.

Now this was not a matter of indifference to Venik: when he heard it the red blood rushed to his face. But then, yet again, he affected indifference and said, half to himself half to his neighbour, “Ah! well; I knew it from the first.”

His neighbour doubtless paid scant attention to these words or to him who spoke them.

As soon as they had reached the house in which Krista dwelt, her cavalier bade her good night very heartily, kissed her hand, and made many polite bows. After this he departed, Krista entered the house and the rest dispersed to their several homes. Only Venik again was left standing just on the spot where he stood the other day.

He was again overshadowed by the shadow of the opposite houses, while the moon’s radiance fell in full lustre on Krista’s house and upon her window.

This time there was no din of voices in that house. Krista was seemingly alone. Now he could have spoken to her. But what was there to say?

While he looked thus at those windows of hers, behind which floated rich curtains, he felt as though he fain must again cry out “Krista!” Then perhaps the window would be opened and she would appear at it. But he did not call out to her, and yet the window was opened and Krista appeared at it. She looked into the sky and to a star. Then she went away from the window and Venik heard her hum to herself snatches of song, and amongst them he recognized many from the hill-side, and from the hollow tree. At this his flesh crept. Then she came to the window again, again for a moment looked toward the sky, and toward the star, and then Venik heard her humming to herself half aloud “The Orphaned Child”.

And here Venik shivered as if the cold of winter had come upon him. Was she yet orphaned, was she yet in sorrow? Did she remember? Did the gorgeous life which she now led fail to satisfy her? Could he have spoken to her, could he have questioned her, could he have announced his presence, he would have learnt all and perhaps they would have found one another.

They might have found one another, they had all but found one another, and here Venik again said to himself, that he wanted her not. And once more his mind ran upon the solo of the first violin, her fainting, the curtain, her smiles, her bows, her thanks, then her escort home, their confidential conversation, the barouche, and at the end of it all, her humming melodies and the “Orphaned Child”—and out of the chaos again emerged the title “a theatrical princess”. If he had then wished to know and call her by name neatly and elegantly, he would not have shouted “Krista,” but “Oh! Theatrical Princess”, and there was humiliation to him in the expression.

So when Krista’s head once more vanished from the window and when the song and that day’s excitement was hushed for him, Venik hurried away from the spot not, however, stealthily to-day nor did he wander on the way. To-day he went direct to his temporary dwelling and on the road only “The Orphaned Child” kept buzzing in his head just as he had heard Krista hum it.

Next day he inquired for the manager of the orchestra, went to him and announced himself as a violinist and begged to be received into the orchestra. The manager gave Venik something to play over and was fully satisfied with him, and told him that he would take down his name and use his influence to have him accepted. On this Venik further begged that he might be allowed on the next performance, as if to approve himself to the public, to play that violin solo in the orchestra. The conductor gave Venik the solo to play through then and there to test him. As Venik played the conductor smiled and told him that he was satisfied with it.

And Venik also was quite satisfied.

 

CHAPTER VI

WHEN the appointed day arrived, the theatre did not differ from its ordinary appearance except perhaps that the public interest was somewhat less than heretofore. The public knew the opera, and it knew Krista’s song in it and was already accustomed to it as we accustom ourselves at last to all. Even popular enthusiasm in the end smoothes out its waves. Krista was an apparition above all dear to them but they were already habituated to it. To-day they went to the theatre pretty much from habit, not from any inward necessity, not because something drew them to it with irresistible force. Nothing that they could see and hear to-day could be any more either novel or striking. They saw and heard it already in their recollection, to-day those recollections had only to be sprinkled with a few drops of dew and then they would be tolerably revived, and ever recollection is but pale and wan beside the full-blown roses of novelty.

The theatre then had a more ordinary appearance. Among the public there was no expectation—only certainty, comfortable certainty. Just as, when we travel through a country for the second or third time we know where we ought to look out of the window and where we may spare ourselves the pains.

True, one new violinist sat yonder in the orchestra, but does that change the aspect of a theatre? Is the aspect of a country changed because there is one tree there more or one tree there less? In the orchestra! The orchestra is not the stage. On the stage we mark at once every change—but in the orchestra! Who gives so much as a passing look to that? If a young drummer is seated by the drum instead of the old one whom they buried yesterday—what of that? If a bald pate stands by the bass-fiddle who a few years before had not yet grown bald—what of that? Not a single person paid the slightest attention to his head while it was hairy, why should he pay attention to it any more, now that it is smooth and polished?

A new violinist! Plenty of them are seated in the orchestra; whether there is one more or one less concerns only the members of the orchestra, and among these perhaps only the violinists, it does not change the aspect of the theatre. True there were in the orchestra artists as good as those on the stage, but it is the fashion with the public to look only at the stage—let us piously adhere then to the fashion.

And now the curtain was furled up. When the violin solo came, Venik settled himself to his violin and played. In this solo the violinist was allowed some liberty and was not obliged to confine himself rigidly to the written score, he might improvise and he did improvise.

When Venik began to play, something thrilled the audience and caused it to cast a languid look at the orchestra and it was observed that some one different was performing to-day. Even those tones were different. And scarcely had people listened a moment longer when they held their breath.

That violin was all at once in tears and lamentation. The hill-side and the woodland sobbed out in it, and man bewailed. And he bewailed with anguish and with wrath.

The theatre was thrilled anew, it was thrilled again and again. Its aspect was completely changed by the mere swaying of a hand. Venik had brought the public to their senses, and now he played “The Orphaned Child”.

It was a horrible outpouring of grief, and beneath it all lay a hidden tempest of emotion. People wiped away their tears, and their flesh crept.

And that violin seemed to wish to speak as follows: “Like two flower-cups, we grew together on one stalk, and thou, rapacious hand of society, hast torn away the one and I, the other, am orphaned.”

And that violin seemed to say, “Like two birds we fluttered together over the hill-side when they take counsel together of what they shall weave their nest; and thou, insatiable maw of society, didst devise a cunning springe. Thou need’st must catch my mate and I am orphaned.”

And further it seemed to say, “Two hearts we grew together side by side, and one struck root in the other, ’twas I who cherished those hearts till they were like as one, but ye have rent away the one, the roots which ye have torn out with it have left but wounds, and those which ye have not torn out anguish yet more—ye have that heart and I—I am orphaned of it.”

And then it said, “We were that sportive, laughter-loving Nature which maketh music in itself: but ye had a craving for mere craftmanship; ye outraged Nature, and Nature thus outraged has found her way hither, and calls aloud in me because I am orphaned.”

And yet again it said, “Faith have ye expunged out of my life, and what exotics have ye planted there instead? Who of you dares still to submit his prayers to Heaven, when ye have plucked the heart out of my breast for life? But I indeed have a right to tears and bitter accusations and wrath and cursing, and I fling my curse upon you—I hate you and I curse you—I, only an orphaned child.”

And much more in the like strain did that violin say to them, and the public heard it and understood it, trembled, and wept salt tears. It was like a trumpet-call to judgment; an invisible hand wrote the words of fate, and the words were comprehensible to all. The audience half rose from their places, to see who it was that could thus speak with his strings, and their hearts heaved with one common emotion. He who but a little moment before was last in the theatre was now first. He singly had changed the whole aspect of the theatre—changed, nay, revolutionized it. They were but simple tones, but they crashed and sawed. The public swayed the head in one common movement, it seethed in one common turmoil of feeling, but it was silent. That silence was ominous.

And how passed it on the stage? On the stage was a garden and in it a gay company.

When Krista heard that melody, she left her gay companions, ran across the stage even to the footlights, ran even to the orchestra, and staggered back amongst her gay company. But it was not given her to rest there. She sprang to her feet once more, wrung both her hands, raised them clasped to heaven, then pressed them to her heart, then tore over the stage like one distraught, then seemed to shrink cowering into herself, then again raised herself to her feet with an effort as if she wished to retain her self-command, but in that over-tension of the nerves her strength seemed shattered at a single blow, she uttered a shriek which cleft every heart in twain and sank on the ground all at once, crushed and broken—sunk in a last and deadly faint.

If it was the mimic art, it was past all conception perfect; if it was the mimic art it seemed as though her every gesture had been fashioned by the Creator of the world himself.

So she remained lying and Venik still played on, and the public was carried away by the perfect acting of Krista, and was wrought almost beside itself by the perfect playing of Venik.

Thus they played together once again. The curtain remained for a moment still lifted, and when Venik concluded, it fell. And here arose such a clamour in the theatre, such a tempest of excitement, as was never before seen or heard in any theatre.

The public was by a single touch driven beside itself.

The curtain rose but Krista lay there still, she did not thank them, she did not smile upon them.

The curtain fell, but the public stormed on. And, hereupon, those in the orchestra told Venik that the applause belonged to him, and that he ought to turn toward the public and express his thanks. Venik turned, thanked them and smiled, thanked them and smiled also in the name of Krista.

Still the public wished to see Krista again, and here those in the orchestra told Venik that he must hie on to the stage that he and Krista might express their thanks together. They lifted him quite on to the stage, and when the curtain rose, the public could perceive that Venik knelt beside Krista, he cried “Krista! Krista!” but that was inaudible to the public because of its own tremendous clamour.

Then the curtain fell and all at once it seemed as though a knife had stabbed the public, and as though each man felt that knife in his own breast.

Then some one stepped forward before the curtain and announced that Krista had fallen in an actual fainting fit, and in the public silence succeeded to the storm.

Then no one stepped forward again before the curtain, but something like a flash of lightning ran through the public and with that lightning a hoarse thunder-peal: “Krista is dead!”

After this lightning-stroke the public was stupefied.

Meanwhile on the stage Venik had started back from Krista and now wandered over the stage just as Krista had done a little while before. Then he again knelt beside her and thus remained kneeling. They brought Krista round, physicians hastened to her and vaguely stated that there might yet be hope of her recovery. Krista raised her eyes, seemed to whisper something, seemed to seek some one’s hand and no one understood it all.

Venik cried out “Krista! Krista!” and Krista seemed to collect her ebbing strength into one ray of light, fixed both her eyes on Venik, fixed them on him with a smile and said, “We have found each other at last!”

Venik knelt as if in a dreadful ecstasy and said, “Krista! Krista! we have found each other.”

Then they carried her away from the stage, out into the open air, to the carriage, and Venik accompanied her. He was seated in the carriage before they placed her in it, and when they laid her there he took her in his arms, and he held her softly and warmly so that she might have been upon a bed of roses; he held her to his heart, his breath mingled itself with hers, his eyes intercepted the rays of light which fell from hers, and at intervals as if from the very depths of his soul, re-echoed the words, “Krista, we have found one another.” But now it was as though Krista could speak no more in words, her spirit spoke only by a glance and by a smile, and in that glance was a smile.

And yet once again she forced herself to speak, “I knew that thou wouldst come but I did not expect thee thus.”

The carriage drove along at a slow pace. It was in solemn pomp that Krista drove home to-day and yet she smiled. Her smile this time belonged to one alone, it was genuine and came from the heart, it was the reflection of her whole being, of her whole life, but of a life which already flickered in the socket. Krista knew it. Venik guessed it too well, and cried out, “Krista, Krista, we shall yet tell one another all.”

“Salute the hollow tree,” said Krista, “I wished to have found thee there, thou hast been beforehand with me—’tis better thus.” The carriage stopped before Krista’s door, Venik lifted her in his arms, bore her to her chamber, there laid her on her bed and Krista still sought his face with her hand. And her own face was smiling, though now her eyes grew cold, and fixed; her whole being already ceased to speak, and she moved no more. Venik again knelt by her side, but she was already speechless.

The public dispersed from the theatre, many walked up and down before Krista’s dwelling and spoke about her and about the violin-player, and over Prague the news flew like wild-fire that Krista was dead.

The storm now emptied itself out of the theatre into the town and as it enlarged its area, diminished somewhat of its tragic force and vehemence.

“It was a stroke”, some whispered. “She fell unfortunately”, said others. But it never occurred to any one that there was any connection between Krista’s death and Venik’s playing, or indeed between Krista and Venik. When they asked him Venik assented, “It was an unfortunate fall”, he said.

Then Venik was alone in the chamber of death. At Krista’s head the waxen tapers were burning, and they and Venik were the only watchers. And here Venik looked musingly at those well-loved features. Ah! how like they were to their living self—how fair they were and the lips scarce cold, as though they might yet move in speech. It was not like the sleep of death, it was not like sleep at all. But just as though she had closed her eyes in sportive jest and pursued her lips together to simulate an easy slumber, and could throw away the mask and thaw the wells of speech whenever she choose.

Venik seemed to see her once again on her couch of leaves and moss within the hollow tree. His hand had strewn the couch of leaves and moss in the old days—the couch from which she fled so faithlessly. And his hand also had strewn the couch on which she lay to-day, but she was not truant now.

Then Venik questioned the shade of her—the lost one. “Krista, why didst thou desert me in the old days?” But Krista’s lips were mute and her shadow answered not, and on her face she smiled the same cold smile. And Venik’s tongue faltered his reproaches—“Only once in the old days thou didst desert me.” But the dead Krista treated both his questions and his repinings with the same icy calm and smiled the same cold smile which froze the life-blood within him.

And he gazed at the fair corpse again and sighed and wondered. “Was it to sleep in fruitless beauty on a gilded couch and silken cushions that thou didst leave so recklessly my couch of moss and leaves?”

And then Venik whispered to himself that he would carry her away by stealth and lay her on the couch of moss and leaves and then perhaps she would awaken—perhaps she would rise once more. And then he thought that it would be easier to go to the hollow tree, bring away the leaves and moss, and strew it here, and then perhaps she might awaken. But, however he planned and plotted, Krista treated all his day-dreams with the same icy calm and smiled the same cold smile as though she wished to say, “I am contented with everything thou dost”, or again just as though she said, “Fool, fool, all is over, I am well-cared-for now.”

Then Krista in that calm unnatural repose was such a riddle to him that he turned away and vowed that he would strive to unriddle it no more. He turned away and taking his violin in his hand examined it all over inch by inch to see where lay that secret source whence had issued words so shrewdly tempered that they had smitten Krista to the death, and then as if to solve the secret his fingers closed idly round the bow and he swept it gently across the strings. But only as though he coaxed and stroked them lest they should utter their words of death anew, only just as Krista had done that night when stepping to the window and gazing at the evening star, she had sung half whispering, half aloud “The Orphaned Child”.

And Venik, too, stepped to that open window and looked toward the heaven, looked wellnigh in the same direction as did Krista ere death had robbed her of the light for ever. And his strings sighed out in whispers “The Orphaned Child”. Did Krista listen as she used to listen in the old days? He turned to look at her once more and she smiled as smoothly as before and seemed to say, “I know all, but what of that?” She took all his questionings and all his musings so lightly that his questions died away upon his lips.

Then he stroked her hair just as in the old days he had stroked it by the streamlet under the willows when the cuckoo cuckooed to them, and Krista smiled placidly even at this and seemed to say, “How soft your hand is.” And he kissed her eyeballs but now no salt tears oozed from under the heavy eyelids, and he kissed her on the mouth but now, alas! it chilled all kissing that fell upon it. And do what he would Krista repulsed him not, at everything she only smiled, to everything she made but one response, “I am contented with everything thou dost.”

She smiled the same cold smile whatever Venik did or thought. Be it subtle questioning, be it doubting, be it the outpouring of affliction—for it all she had but one cold smile.

Then he took his violin into his hands again and turning towards Krista with it he said, “A little while ago these strings breathed life, now only the icy wind of death streams from them. Oh! Krista, a little while ago they charmed thee to my side, now they have murdered thee and driven thee away for ever.” And Krista ever smiled the same cold smile.

And she still smiled when they brought her coffin and when they laid her to rest in it on a bed of flowers. And when the singers came with whom in times gone by she had wrought her audience to a frenzy of delight, and when above her pealed the funeral dirge its last farewell she smiled the same cold smile. And she smiled when priests came and above her coffin pattered prayers which sounded already like the rattling of the clods of earth upon its lid. And still she smiled when the lid was laid upon the coffin, even when that lid had all but closed upon her, even when in one last lingering gleam the light of this world died away into eternal darkness. The lid concealed her face and concealed her smile. And Venik in spirit saw her still smile on, even in the coffin, even in the carriage in which they laid her.

Now when he saw the horses gird to and move away with her he would gladly have unyoked them and himself drawn Krista to her burial. Now it seemed a shameful thing to leave it to horses to draw her to her last resting-place, just as in her hour of triumph it had seemed a shameful thing that the people should yoke themselves to her car. The people paced behind her coffin. There was a countless multitude and Venik was but one of them, and felt the oppressive presence of that crowd. Oh! that he could have carried Krista far away with no one by—carried her away wherever he chose, free from the curious gaze of the inquisitive and where he might vent the anguish of his soul alone.

But in all that multitude sorrow was but a forced unnatural plant. It was but the mere semblance of sorrow and struck no deep root.

That was soon apparent. By the time the procession reached the barriers of the city all but a very few of the mourners had slunk away and ere the earth was wellnigh shovelled over the coffin all were gone but he and two or three grave-diggers. Then even the grave-diggers departed and Venik remained alone. And here beside the grave it seemed as if he talked once more with Krista, as if the bonds of sorrow were loosened and as if even in the midst of bitter anguish he was himself once more.

He stayed long beside the grave and paid his sad court there several days—its living monument. And at evening he went to Krista’s previous dwelling and looked long and wistfully at the yet open casement. But from that casement no one now looked forth either into the street or toward the sky or toward the star.

Then it seemed to Venik as though the book of fate was closed and all was accomplished, he quitted Prague, aimed straight for home, and came one evening to the hill-side, beneath which flowed the river and on which stood the hollow tree at the outskirts of the old oak-wood.

 

CHAPTER VII

IN the old oak-tree was yet strewed the couch of moss and leaves. He laid himself down to rest upon it and was utterly alone. And now even his thoughts had no basis in reality. He began to smile vacantly at everything just as Krista had.

And a strange numbness stole upon him, and though it was a warm summer’s evening, winter seemed to close in around him.

And the birds sang now no more their carol of the spring, the tuneful stream was stayed, the full-voiced choir was hushed, only from time to time they piped a dreary call-note as if to tell the world they still were there. And then when Venik took into his hand his violin it seemed as though, like the song of those birds, the melody had vanished from its strings. The tale he had to tell upon them was already told, his joy had throbbed itself out upon them, his grief had sobbed itself to rest upon them, and now he scarcely knew what had come over them. Already they held but empty tones, already their melody had ceased to speak.

The river hummed its old perpetual song and above the neighbouring village, his home and birth-place, the sleep of dreams descended. And fitful slumber seemed to flap about the hollow tree and to mock and gibe at Venik.

But perhaps only that aged tree understood the deep delight of slumber. Venik crept out of it and then he began again to muse and speculate and question within himself, whether all must be that had been, and whether there was not some power in Nature to efface and roll back the past. And his own soul answered him that all must be as it was and that he and Krista had understood one another at last. Krista had always smiled and smiled, and still she smiled even in the earth.

Then it seemed strange to him that he and Krista, who had grown up together like folded leaves upon a single bough, should have diverged so far from one another, that one could neither see nor touch the other; or they were like two mountains set side by side—for half their height they were like one single growth, for the other half their summits grew wider and wider apart, and nevermore encountered, or only when the snow-wreath and the tempest swept over them, and one summit sent its message to the other on the wings of the lightning. Thus he had sent his message to Krista on the wings of the lightning, and it had stricken her to death.

And he began to feel oppressed within that hollow tree, or perhaps it oppressed him to be on that couch of leaves and moss, which now so vainly began to be a couch. He laid himself down before the tree just on the spot where in the old days he and Krista had buried his mother, that is to say, the sweetbrier and the willow-wands and the sweet marjoram, and out of it had made his mother. And here on that little tomb he felt more at peace.

And it was just as if he saw and heard around him everything that he saw and heard here in yonder distant past, when here he shepherded the sheep.

There stood the little Krista, whose piping treble sang the gloria to his violin, and who wept because he chased her from him, and because she was a poor orphaned girl! And he began anew to smile vacantly at everything, just, ah! just as he had seen the dead Krista coldly smile.

And then a cuckoo cuckooed and its note rang lonely through that lonely wood, where now but few birds sang, rang out as if in witness of a desolate world, and as if it tolled a dirge of endless woe. “Ah! ha! thou hast scarce any one to whom to cuckoo now”, said Venik, and smiled to himself thereat.

Then a bat flew out and fluttered round the tree, just as if it sought something.

And Venik smiled tauntingly and said, “Brother mine, seek.” Then he perceived that there were two bats and that they had found one another, and in the tree a piping from a nest of young bats made itself heard. And after this Venik said, “Ha! ha! how fares it with the young vampires, how fares it with the young vampires?” And again he added, “I also am but a hollow tree.”

Then he began to look to the horizon and saw the river glittering dead white below him, and above him a wan firmament and wan stars. And again his eyes looked deep into those star-depths, and far away in that direction whither Krista’s eyes had strayed, and he began to murmur fitful snatches of melody.

The hill-side and his life upon it began to skip about in his memory, like the ignes fatui of the night. And thus, too, wildly rose and fell his snatches of wild melody.

Then he said to himself, “What is it all worth? When chill autumn comes, the birds must hie away, away home!”

And he felt the chill winter round him once again. And once again he peered into the tree, at the couch of moss and leaves and said, “What shall I do with thee?”

And he arose and gathered up about half the leaves and moss. “Thou shalt smile too”, he said, and made a fire of it. All was winter in his heart, and he warmed himself and smiled inanely and said to himself, “It was a merry bout to warm himself at Krista’s couch.” Then he patted down the leaves and moss and added more fuel until he made a roaring bonfire of it, and it burnt higher and higher and crackled and smiled as he said. And he smiled, too. And there was yet merrier sport to come: for the old hollow tree took fire from the bonfire and burnt like a gigantic fiery column, scattering sparks in all directions. The whole horizon was aflame, the smoke stretched ruddy to the firmament, and Venik thought the sport grew merrier and merrier, so that now everything smiled upon him, even the whole world.

Then he took his violin once again for the last time, and played just as if he had gathered all the dust of life into a single pinch and would scatter it to the winds by the vibrations of his instrument.

The hollow tree was a gorgeous theatre. It shone and crackled and Venik played by its fitful glare. He played and imitated all the birds which had already fled in terror. In sooth he played feelingly and finely, just as Krista had done, when she fell in a fainting fit, and Venik smiled madly at it all.

Then in the village a bell rang out from the very chapel in which he and Krista once played and sang together. The bell rang out an alarm, and when the people from the village streamed on to the hill-side, Venik was still playing underneath the tree so that it looked and all fell out just as in the old song where the linden-tree burns and its sparks fall upon the girl lying beneath it, only that there an oak-tree burnt and under it was Venik.

And just as the people began to throng the hill-side the hollow tree collapsed with a horrible crackling and in its embers the song of Venik was silenced. The people saw exactly how it buried him, and a shriek ran along the whole hill-side as if from a single throat.

The family of the bats fluttered round. Then all burnt out, all was extinguished, all was silenced, the music of two human lives was hushed and on the face of death the smile was turned to stone.

The hollow tree, Krista’s couch, Venik, the violin—all was one cinder.