Absolution Part 4

The maid raised her head. "Then Pani must be very pleased." Then she sighed and lowered her head again. "Poor master!"

"Why, what do you mean? 'Poor master!' Why do you say that?" Mrs.

Tiralla trembled more and more.

"Well, isn't it 'poor master' to have to drive out in such awful weather? Who knows when poor master will be back again?" Marianna smiled.

Was it a malicious or a harmless smile? Mrs. Tiralla racked her brains to find out. Oh, she was quite harmless.

Still, she could not rid herself of the fear which had taken possession of her. She would have to take care how she behaved to the maid. Even if her flightiness were ever so objectionable to her, she would have to keep on good terms with her. So whilst the maid stood stirring something on the fire, in deep silence, Mrs. Tiralla went into her bedroom and brought out a gay-coloured Scotch shawl, which she had been fond of throwing over her own shoulders. "There," she said, putting it on the girl, who was still standing in the same place near the fire, "it's cold, and I see you've nothing to warm you."

"_Padam da nog!_" Marianna turned round as quick as lightning, and, stooping down, kissed her mistress's knee. "Oh, what a fine shawl, _what_ a fine shawl! May the saints reward Pani for it. May they bless her to the end of her days." Then, kissing the shawl, she danced round the kitchen with it. "How it suits me! Oh, and it's so nice and so warm! Oh, and so gay!" She laid her finger on the gay colours and was as happy as a child.

"Oh, no, she had nothing to fear from her!" All at once Mrs. Tiralla recovered her spirits. She was [Pg 35] still young enough to understand the poor girl's delight at her gay shawl, and she laughed to see her joy.

'Mid laughing and joking the two women prepared the dinner.

When Rosa came home from school late, and very tired and worn out with wading through the snow, her mother, who was in a good humour, gave the hungry child a treat--a golden coloured omelette with raspberry jam.

Then the two women made a strong cup of coffee for themselves and put one aside for Mr. Tiralla as well, and warmed his bed with hot bricks.

He was to have a warm bed after his long drive. [Pg 36]

CHAPTER III

Roschen--she had been christened Rosa, but he always called her Roschen--was her father's favourite child, and his exact image, as Mrs.

Tiralla used to say in a peculiar tone of voice. Yes, the girl had the same blue eyes as her father, although they were not so pale and watery as his, and the same coloured hair, for his must also have had a reddish tinge before it became grey. And that was why Mrs. Tiralla so often turned away when the child had wanted to get on her lap and, with clumsy little fingers, stroke her cheek.

However, Mrs. Tiralla was in a more affectionate mood to-night. The little girl looked up in astonishment when she felt a soft hand on her head; but then she clung to her mother, and her dull eyes gleamed with joy and grat.i.tude.

Mr. Tiralla had come back from Gnesen, and it seemed to the woman as if a star were now standing over the house, showing her distinctly the way she was to go. She felt happier than she had been for a long time.

Her husband had handed her the packet from the chemist's as if it had been a box of sweets he sometimes brought her from town. It was nicely done up in striped tissue paper with a piece of red string round it.

But, on taking off the string, she had caught sight of a grinning death's head and cross-bones on the lid, [Pg 37] and had read the word "Poison." She had screamed and let the box fall on the table.

"There, you see, now you're afraid of it as well," said Mr. Tiralla.

How little he knew her. She and fear?

"How am I to prepare it? How am I to prepare it?" she cried in an eager voice.

He showed her how. He felt very important, for the chemist had warned him to be exceedingly careful. He would not have given such a thing to anybody else but the well-known Mr. Tiralla, the man had said, not even if they had brought a paper from the doctor. She was to strew some of the white powder, which looked as harmless as sifted sugar, on a small piece of raw meat; and put it in the corners. There would be no rats left in the cellar then. Or she could strew some of the wheat which was in the paper bag, and which you could hardly distinguish from ordinary wheat, as it only looked a little redder.

"But I implore you to be careful, my dove. Swear that you'll be very careful, Sophia." Mr. Tiralla was seized with a sudden fear, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He felt burning, although the cold snow still clung to his fur collar and cap. He took oft his top-coat and stretched his limbs as though he felt oppressed, whilst she stood motionless at the table and stared at the packet with gleaming eyes.

"Which is the most efficacious?" she asked in a dreamy voice, "the powder or the wheat?"

"They're both equally efficacious," he a.s.sured her uneasily. "The wheat is bad enough, but you've only to swallow a little of that white stuff--oh, you needn't even swallow it, hardly touch it with the tip of your tongue, and you're done for. It's a deadly poison--strychnine." He shuddered. "Oh, how could [Pg 38] I bring such a thing home with me? I am possessed by the devil. Give me it!" He s.n.a.t.c.hed the packet out of her hands and ran to the stove, in which big logs of wood were crackling and spluttering.

"Are you mad?" She saw what he was going to do--he intended burning it.

She was at his side in one bound, and, tearing the packet out of his hand, she hid it in her pocket.

"Give me it, give me it!" he cried.

She laughed at him and pressed her hand tightly against her pocket.

Then he began to wail and lament. Alas, alas, what had he done? How could he ever have been so foolish as to bring such a thing into the house? He would never have another peaceful hour, he would always be thinking that an accident might happen.

"But why," she asked in a calm voice, looking at him fixedly with her black eyes, "should an accident happen?"

"Alas, alas!" he moaned, and buried his head in his hands.

She had to comfort him. Her words calmed him; he was like a child. Then he asked her to stroke him; she did that also. At last he wanted to be helped to bed; he must have been drinking, although he denied it. The maid had to come as well; and whilst she took off his riding-boots he put his heavy head on his wife's shoulder, and she had to hold him in her arms.

When they had got him to bed they both looked very hot and flushed, for he had been pinching them in fun and had pretended to be quite helpless.

Then he sent for Roschen, whom he had not seen the whole day, for she was already on her way to school when he was still snoring in bed, and when he drove to Gnesen she had not yet returned. And now [Pg 39] he longed for some one to fondle him. And the little girl knew very well what her father wanted; so she climbed up on his bed and laid her thin little arms round his neck and pressed her cool cheek to his. Then he talked to her in whispers and called her by an the pet names he could think of. She was his little red-haired girlie, his star, his song-bird, the apple of his eye, his sun, his balm of Gilead, his guardian angel, the key which was to open the door of heaven for him.

And the child smiled and stroked him with her soft hands. She loved him so. He gave her everything her mother would not give her.

Still, she loved her mother in secret. Didn't everybody call her "the beautiful Mrs. Tiralla"? Didn't the schoolmaster, who was always so harsh, often send a message to her mother, and even pardon her faults and favour her just because she was the daughter of the beautiful Mrs.

Tiralla? Rosa knew that she was not pretty; at least, she did not consider herself so when she plaited her curly, reddish hair before the looking-gla.s.s. Her mother's hair was as black as ebony and as smooth as silk, and her yellowish complexion and the tinge of red in her cheeks seemed twice as beautiful as her own freckles.

The growing child longed to be beautiful, although she did not exactly know why; and it disheartened and depressed her that she did not grow better-looking, in spite of all her fervent prayers. She used to kneel down at her bedside every evening in the little room she shared with Marianna and raise her hands in earnest supplication. She did not even know herself what all the things were which she prayed for.

Marianna was also a devout Christian, and, when they both lay in their beds, she would tell the listening child all about signs and wonders, about spells and [Pg 40] miraculous cures, and about the strange things that happened in the neighbourhood.

Hadn't farmer Kiebel heard the sound of a horn behind him in the wood not far from the new Jewish cemetery when he was driving back from Wronke to Obersitzko after the last fair! "Toot, toot, toot!" He had got down and had drawn lots of crosses in the snow with his whip in front of the trembling horses and all around the cart; and then the black huntsman had rushed past him with horns blowing, dogs barking, and making a fearful noise. His cloak had flapped so much that it had almost blown Pan Kiebel down from his cart; but the crosses in the snow had protected the pious man, and the black huntsman had had to ride on.

And there was a mountain at Ossowiec, where the witches had met last June, and where they would soon meet again in December, in order to deliberate where they should go in the shape of dust and wind. But if you painted "C.M.B.," the initials of the three Kings of the East, on all the doors and walls, no witch would be able to get in and throw something into your plate. Or you need only say to yourself, "G.o.d bless it," before you began to eat or drink, and then no witchcraft could harm your food, for the saints would hold their hands stretched out over the plate.

Those who regularly prayed to the Holy Mother or to the saints had no need to fear the devil, who, four weeks ago, had come to miller Kierski at midnight--the man who lived at Latalice, north of Gradewitz, and was always swearing and drinking--and had almost wrung his neck off. He had been left on the dunghill behind his barn, where he lay quite stiff and blue in the face; and if St. Peter's c.o.c.k had not flown on to the roof of the mill and crowed three times, [Pg 41] so that the devil thought it was the miller's c.o.c.k crowing in the early morning, the miller would have been found as dead as a door-nail, with his face turned round to his back; and his soul would already have been in h.e.l.l.

Marianna firmly believed that ghosts were screaming in the pines outside, and that witches were dancing in the wind that howled round the farm; but above all she believed that the devil was running about on the Przykop like a will-o'-the-wisp, and was longing to get into the house, in order to fetch a soul to h.e.l.l.

But even if she had not so firmly believed it, it would have amused her to whisper all kinds of strange stories to the trembling child, who had long ago crept into her bed and was clinging to her. Her stories became more and more marvellous, more and more weird. The night time, the moaning of the wind, the plaintive cry of the screech-owls perched in the old pines in the mora.s.s; above all, the darkness of the room, the deep silence, the loneliness, gave wings to the maid's fancy.

Everything became instinct with life: a creature sighed in every tree, a voice spoke from every stone, something gasped for air under every clod of earth, something lurked in every pool. The branches that tapped against the window-panes were the fingers of the dead, the stars that shot across the heavens were wandering souls, and the clouds and winds were full of prophecies.

Once when she was a child, Marianna told Rosa, she had run in amongst some corn in order to pluck some ears and make herself a wreath of the red poppies. And there she had been seized by the "Zagak," a big man with a cudgel in his hand and a hat full of holes on his head, and with shoes through which all his toes were peeping. If a cart with creaking wheels had not [Pg 42] happened to drive past at that moment, in which a farmer was sitting, singing a hymn, the "Zagak" would not have let her go. But she got off that time with a fright and a torn skirt. She still shook when she thought of the "Zagak"--ugh! How fortunate it was that he could not get at her here in her warm bed. The woman shuddered voluptuously, and she and the child clung still more closely to each other.

Then Roschen's little fingers clutched hold of Marianna's coa.r.s.e ones, and both began to pray with all their might. What else could they do in the solitude and darkness of the night, surrounded by evil spirits that crept out of every corner, even out of the human breast? Prayer alone saved. And they prayed and prayed.

Big drops of perspiration and tears rolled down Roschen's delicate little face and her limbs trembled.

Oh, if only the Holy Virgin would come and take her under her blue mantle. She was so terrified and in such pain. Her head ached; her back and her chest as well; her throat was so swollen that she could hardly swallow; her eyes burned as if with fever.

"Holy Mother!" The child could hardly look over the feather-bed, as she tried to pierce the darkness with her terrified eyes, so high had it been drawn up. "All good spirits praise G.o.d! Dear Holy Mother, hail, Mary!" Oh, there she was, there she stood in the darkness and nodded to her.

The darkness was no longer dark, the tapping of the fingers against the window-panes and the soughing of the wind round the house had all at once lost their terror. Oh, how sweet the Holy Mother looked, how mild, and so beautiful. She took the terrified child under her protection and smiled at her, until her burning [Pg 43] eyes dosed, until a glorious dream came to her in her slumbers and filled her soul with a sweet terror.