Absolution Part 6

Jendrek had to come to the rescue. They took the girl between them and dragged her into the house and up the stairs to bed.

When the man saw how kind his mistress was to Marianna, he stared at her in surprise. "What a good woman she must be," he thought to himself.

Whilst Mrs. Tiralla was rubbing the servant's icy-cold feet and hands she continued to repeat the same question, "You're better, aren't you?"

It touched Jendrek to see how anxious the good woman was. He thought that he would like to be ill as well; and he made up his mind that he would [Pg 52] groan like that next Monday and scream, "Poison, poison!"

and lie on the ground and roll about. It must be very nice to have your cheek and forehead stroked by the mistress's soft hands, as she was stroking Marianna's, and to see how she worried about you. And then she had run into the kitchen and brought her a cup full of good, warm tea, and had held it to her lips and said, "Drink, dear, drink."

But Marianna did not want to drink. She almost knocked the cup out of her mistress's hand. And when the latter tried to persuade her in her soft voice, "Do drink, it'll do you good," she answered pertly, "I'll take precious good care I don't. I shall not drink it," and turned her face to the wall.

Why on earth wouldn't she drink that good cup of tea? The man would very much have liked to know that.

But Mrs. Tiralla did not ask why. The cup rattled in her hand, and as she stepped back from the bed she trembled so that she had to sit down on the nearest chair. She closed her eyes for a moment. But when she opened them again and saw the man's questioning looks, she gave him a sweet, almost timid smile, and said, "I'm not very strong. Such things affect me so. Oh, what a fright it gave me."

As they were going down the steep, dark stairs, she felt for his arm.

"Lead me, Jendrek, I can't walk alone. Oh, poor Marianna!"

[Pg 53]

CHAPTER IV

The winter was long in Starydwor, and the winter was the season of the year which Mrs. Tiralla liked least, for her husband would spend almost the whole day at home. He grew more and more lazy; he would not even go out shooting. "Why should I shoot hares?" he would say. "I can buy them very cheaply; any 'komornik' will kill one for me. I would much rather stop at home with Sophia."

Beautiful Mrs. Tiralla had grown thin during the course of the winter, "as slender as a fairy," said Mr. Schmielke, the tax-collector. The gentry used to meet at the inn every evening and discuss the most important events of the day; and as nothing much happened in Starawies, Gradewitz, and neighbourhood, they would speak of Mrs.

Tiralla. This they did rather often, for the men considered her the most interesting topic of conversation in Starawies, Gradewitz, and the neighbourhood.

"By Jove, how beautiful that woman is!" some one would exclaim; and then another would add, "What a pity that that old fool has got her."

"There's nothing to be done," sighed the tax-collector, who had served in the guards at Potsdam, and had always been accustomed to carry everything before him on account of his smartness. "Absolutely nothing to be done, gentlemen. I've already had a try; but, to tell you the truth, she has sent me to [Pg 54] the right about. Ah, the fair Sophia!" He stroked his moustache and tilted his chair as far back as he could, in order to look into the tap-room and wink at the clumsy little country-girl who was helping the landlord behind the bar.

Mr. Bohnke, the schoolmaster, was very much put out. There was this Prussian, who had fallen from the clouds into their loyal Polish district, and at once imagined that he could win the most beautiful woman for himself. But such a rose was not meant for a fellow like him--a fellow with no education worth speaking of, for he had been nothing but a noncommissioned officer. "Pray don't speak so loudly.

Don't shout out the names like that!" he exclaimed, jumping up from his seat and closing the door into the tap-room.

It vexed him to think that his pale face had grown scarlet. This Schmielke was certainly held in high esteem by everybody, and of course it would not be wise to quarrel with a representative of the Prussian Government. Still, it was very impertinent of him even to think of Mrs.

Tiralla, of that educated woman, the daughter of a schoolmaster, extremely impertinent. Really, you couldn't help laughing at it. And he gave an angry laugh.

"You seem to be enjoying yourselves here," said a voice at that moment; and, looking round in surprise, the men caught sight of a head covered with a ma.s.s of white hair, that stood up like bristles round an angular forehead, and a pair of lovely brown eyes. It was the priest who had opened the door softly and had stuck his head in. "Let me see, who are you all? Mr. Bohnke, _dobri wieczor_." He nodded somewhat condescendingly to the schoolmaster who had jumped up from his chair, and then gave a very friendly nod [Pg 55] to Mr. Schmielke, the tax-collector, who was leaning back in his tilted chair with two fingers thrust into the front of his uniform.

"How do?" said the tax-collector.

Zientek, who was a good Catholic, felt very much annoyed at his heretical friend Schmielke's off-hand behaviour. Zientek was a clerk at the post office in Gradewitz; but he enjoyed himself better in Starawies, where he was not so well known, and often cycled over late in the evening. He had jumped up from his chair like the schoolmaster, although perhaps not quite so quickly, and had shaken hands with Father Szypulski, the priest.

Father Szypulski now stepped up to the table, for he saw that they were all good acquaintances, with whom he felt quite at home. He had been so lonely in his small study, where there was hardly room for so big and broad a man as he. He couldn't always be reading, and it was impossible to go to the neighbouring farmers for a game of cards, as the roads were at present in a frightful condition. He couldn't even get to his colleague in Gradewitz, which was only a few miles distant by the highroad. Besides, what would have been the good of it? They couldn't have gone to the hotel in the market-place, as there were always too many people about. Oh, there really were too many Germans amongst the settlers. And who would notice him going to the inn on such a snowy night if he took up his ca.s.sock? A few stupid peasants at the most, who would bend their heads so low when they greeted him as though their priest were a saint at least. And in the inn he would find human beings.

The priest no doubt felt that it was not quite the thing for him to sit in the inn, and that his superiors would have taken umbrage at it. But had he ever [Pg 56] taken more than he could stand? So far n.o.body had ever seen him the worse for drink. He reviewed one colleague after another in his mind; where was there one who had not behaved like other men? And why had they sent him to such a remote post? so rural, so primitive. His scruples were gradually being lulled to sleep in the snowy winter days, that were not even brightened by a faint gleam of light--he hardly ever caught a glimpse of a paper, besides papers were pernicious reading--in that monotonous silence, that was not even enlivened by the whistle of an engine, for the railway was on the other side of Gradewitz.

"What are you talking about, gentlemen?" inquired the priest in an interested voice; and he was soon in the midst of the conversation about Mrs. Tiralla. He was her father confessor. "A good little woman, an exceedingly nice little woman," he said in a laudatory tone.

"I had a fearful to-do with Tiralla the other day, your reverence,"

said Kranz of the _gendarmerie_, who was sitting at the end of the table stroking his fierce-looking, greyish moustache. "I felt quite sorry for the woman. I had to speak. I didn't think it could be possible, but I was told of it, and I found out for myself that it was true--Tiralla lets the day-labourers kill hares for him. It makes no difference to him whether they're on other people's property or not. I taxed him with it, and he didn't even deny it, he simply laughed. But his wife turned as red as fire, she felt so ashamed of him. 'It's a disgrace!' she cried, and looked at me with eyes full of tears. And then she gave him a real, good scolding. 'Haven't I told you again and again that if you want to eat hares, you're to shoot them yourself? If you don't [Pg 57] do so I'll throw them out of the kitchen next time you bring them, I swear I will.'"

"Bravo!" they all shouted. "Splendid!" There was only one more thing she ought to have done and that was soundly to box his ears, the scoundrel. They were so furious with him that they seemed entirely to forget that they lived in a country where hares are no man's property, so to speak, and are often killed by pa.s.sers-by as they gambol about fearlessly in the immense, lonely fields that extend for miles.

The younger men's eyes sparkled as they listened. The tax-collector, the clerk from the post office, and the schoolmaster were none of them thirty. The forester, who was sitting next to the clerk from the post office, and Jokisch, the inspector of the settlement near the lake, could also be reckoned amongst her admirers, although they were married men; and the gendarme was still a good-looking fellow, in spite of his greyish moustache and an almost grown-up daughter.

"I knew all about those hares," said Bilkowski, the forester, laughing.

"You knew it?" The gendarme opened his eyes wide.

"Oh, I say, don't look like that. If I were to publish everything that happens here," and the forester shrugged his shoulders, "I should never get any further."

"But a man ought to--it's his duty--I'm obliged," and the gendarme, who had only been transferred to this post the spring before, pulled out an enormous note-book from his pocket with a determined look, and took out the pencil. "I always write everything down. Things were bad enough in Upper Silesia, but they seem to be worse here."

[Pg 58]

"Oh, you'll get used to them," said the forester rea.s.suringly. "It's really very nice here. I shouldn't like to live anywhere else now. It was also rather difficult for me at first, and especially for my wife.

She made enough fuss about it. But now I never hear anything more, and"--he paused for a moment, then added with a smile that was half embarra.s.sed, half sly--"I only see what I want to see. What else is there for me to do? Am I to act in opposition to the n.o.bility, who would continue to do exactly what they liked all the same, or am I to let the peasants kill me when they commit outrages in the royal woods?

Of course I always go to the Przykop when I hear a shot; but if they don't shoot, if they only make use of their cudgels, what then?"

He was right. They all agreed that it was no easy matter to be a forester. Still the gendarme did not exactly approve of Mr. Bilkowski speaking so frankly. "But, my dear fellow," and Bilkowski patted him on the shoulder, "we're all in the same boat. Why shouldn't I speak frankly amongst friends?"

The priest cast a glance at the open door leading into the tap-room.

Then he whispered to the schoolmaster, "Close it."

Bohnke hastened to comply with the hint.

"Do you think that the Tirallas would come to our Gardewitz ball?"

asked the clerk from the post office, blus.h.i.+ng like a young girl. "I'm getting it up, and if the Tirallas were coming I would arrange a cotillon with flowers. If we were to order them at a big shop in Posen we could get real ferns and wired flowers at sixpence a bouquet. Why, it would even be worth while writing to Berlin for them. If you want to give such a ball you must be prepared to spend something on it."

"When do you intend having it?" This was a [Pg 59] matter that interested everybody, and the little man felt very important.

"On Shrove Tuesday, as usual. After that there's always such a long spell where there's nothing whatever to do. It'll be splendid, I can tell you, splendid! I hope Sophia Tiralla will come."

"Why shouldn't she, I should like to know?" Schmielke resolved at all events to secure her for the cotillon in good time, as that meant he would take her into supper as well.

They all had the same intention, and all had made up their minds to call on the Tirallas at the earliest opportunity. It was quite a different kind of thing to clasp a woman like that in your arms instead of Miss Stumpf, the baker's daughter, who was both clumsy and stout; or the stupid, snub-nosed Miss Musielak, the stationmaster's daughter; or even Miss Stanislawa, who was rather pretty, but whose father, Count JaG.o.dziuski, was the town clerk, and was always borrowing money from them all. Could even little Jadwiga Hahnel, with the freckles, the rich mill-owner's only unmarried daughter, or the fair Marianna Rozycki, the butcher's daughter, who, after the first gla.s.s of beer, always fell violently in love with her partner, could they be compared with Sophia Tiralla? All the young ladies of Gradewitz, Starawies, and neighbourhood were in turn reviewed, but the prize was unanimously bestowed on the fair Sophia.

"A pretty little woman, to be sure," said the priest.

"Have you noticed that as well, sir?" asked Schmielke pertly, with a sly wink.

The schoolmaster started angrily, another impertinence from that man.

Even Zientek gave an embarra.s.sed little cough; really, how could Fritz say such a thing?