Landolin Part 24

"March! How dare you speak to me so? Off with you, or----"

"Oho! So you want to murder another man. You can't finish me as quickly as you did Vetturi."

He put on his hat and clenched his fists.

Without speaking another word, Landolin went on, while the vagrant called after him with threats and insult.

The evening bells began ringing. Landolin nodded, as if greeting the sound, or as though he felt they were calling him. He took a roundabout way, so as not to pa.s.s through the church-yard where Vetturi's grave was.

The church stood open. Landolin took off his hat, ordered the dog to lie down and wait for him, and was just putting his foot on the threshold, when Cushion-Kate came out. She gave him a look that made him blench; then she caught the heavy church-door, and dashed it to with such force that it fairly groaned. And louder yet the terrible woman cried:

"For you the church is closed. Raise your hand! Here, at the church door, kill me! You are equal to anything. You are rejected by G.o.d, cast out by men. You----"

The dog had sprung up. His master quieted him, and the old woman went away.

Landolin opened the door and entered the church. All was silent within, save the pendulum's measured tick, far up in the tower. A bird had flown through the open window. It fluttered about, affrighted, until it found the opening again, and Landolin was alone in the vast edifice, where the ever-burning lamp alone shed its light. No prayer escaped his lips. Rather, in imagination he gathered in the whole congregation, men and women, one by one, to their places. In imagination he took hold of each one, looked him in the face, and shook him--but what good did that do? They still hated him. Cast out, as a dead body, by the stream! Cast out. All the empty benches repeated Cushion-Kate's words.

Hate of the G.o.d of whose compa.s.sion he had been taught in his childhood, grew within him. It is not true, and if it were, what good does it do for G.o.d to be pitiful, if he does not force men to be pitiful too?

A sudden terror seized him, as though the roof were falling, and he left the church and went home.

"Has no one been here?" he asked his wife when he reached home. She said, "No;" but he did not answer her question as to where he had been and with whom he had spoken. His wife's curiosity and idle questioning were disagreeable to him. She saw that he did not value her love and care, but she was patient. For she thought she was not wise and clever enough for him, and resolved to be very careful in everything she did or said. But in the goodness of her heart, the very next moment, she tried to talk to him and cheer him, and that annoyed him. For it showed that the past was still in her thoughts; and that he did not like. She took special pains with his supper, and said: "Eat heartily, now that you are at home again."

"It does no good to wish that," he replied, "if it doesn't taste good of itself."

He waited and waited for a kind word from Thoma, but her strict and cruel truthfulness forbade her to give him one. She was dissatisfied that her father, in his weariness, and the humility which he had gained by a violent effort, should be so indulgent with Peter. Day after day she saw him taking upon himself the sole control of affairs, and her father permitting it. Yes, he even worked like a servant, and seemed to take satisfaction in being tyrannized over by his son. Everything was transformed and changed.

CHAPTER XLIV.

The determined, steadfast Landolin had become a coward. He despised himself for it, but that did not mend matters. His lips were always tightly compressed, and their bitter expression became habitual. Often he would stop suddenly while walking along. He felt that he must draw his breath: he was almost smothered by the thoughts that lay so heavy upon him. Then he looked around beseechingly, and went on his way. How rich he had been before! He had had an outstanding capital of honor with every one; and now, when he wanted to draw upon it, it was no longer there. Strictly speaking, he had thought neither well nor ill of other people, he was indifferent to them; but now things had changed.

His power of thought had lain fallow; and now upon this fallow land all manner of weeds, whose seeds had lain unsuspected in the ground, made their appearance. He had lived and had had an acute mind, especially when an advantage for himself was to be gained. But now, it seemed as though he were half asleep. Stop! What are men to you? What do you care for this one and that one? What does one gain in life, after all?

Plowing, sowing, and reaping. The forest trees grow, long after the man who planted them has become a clod of earth. Is it for this that a man gives himself so much trouble and thought? Yes--gives thought. That is what is hard for a man who, until now, has not had it to do.

When the soul comes to a spot where harshness, and selfishness pa.s.s step by step before its eyes, then it is difficult for it to turn back and take another path. It seems as if irresistible forces drive it along the path of grief and bitterness, and yet all the while a longing to meet with friendship and responsive love grows stronger and warmer within it.

Landolin felt something of this emotion, although he probably could not have given it utterance. But in the soul there is much that is unutterable, even for a far more thoughtful and meditative nature than Landolin's.

The man who was formerly strong as iron, had become unnerved, and one could conceive of nothing which could happen to renew his strength.

Perhaps Thoma's love could have accomplished it. Perhaps! Certainly, he said to himself. There were even times when he not only mourned that this love was denied him, but was yet more deeply grieved to see his child, his proud, beautiful child, bent with sorrow, and her life left waste and bleak. He had nurtured a pride and severity in her, which now threatened her destruction. In his distress he groaned aloud, and submitted to Peter's dominion as if to a penance; indeed, though Peter's boldness was so serious an offense, it often extorted his admiration.

"He will some day be the man to trample the whole world under foot, and laugh as he does it. He will be more powerful than t.i.tus himself."

Landolin resolved to dissemble and play the hypocrite; to act as if he mistook people's malice for good will, and to retaliate secretly. But his pride was incompatible with success in hypocrisy. He was annoyed at his own lack of courage, he very candidly called it cowardice, but still that did not help him to regain the old fearlessness--the old pride. Yes, he had become over-sensitive.

His walk had now brought him to the forest, with its overhanging branches. In other times how little he had cared for the noxious insects of the woods. He had not grown up with gloved hands, but now he shuddered at the caterpillars that hung in the air by their slender threads, as though they were waiting to drop down upon him. These caterpillars can be shaken off, but the world's malicious thoughts, that like caterpillars hang everywhere by invisible threads, cannot.

Landolin was sitting on an old tree-stump, when the game-keeper approached, and addressed him in a friendly manner, expressing his sorrow that Landolin had had to undergo so much trouble. Landolin complained that in the short time, he had grown twenty years older, and suffered with a constant palpitation of the heart.

Suddenly he paused, for he became aware that he was begging for sympathy. And from whom? But the game-keeper responded,

"I know myself how a man feels the half hour that the jury are out, and he is waiting for the verdict of life or death."

"How do you know about it?"

"Have you forgotten my shooting the poacher? He had his piece leveled at me from behind a tree. Crack--crack. It is self-defense! There you lie," said the game-keeper, with a crafty smile.

Landolin went home fortified. "It was self-defense. The court has acknowledged that it was, and it was so. I must learn to keep that in mind. I must."

CHAPTER XLV.

The summer night was mild and clear. A Sat.u.r.day evening in harvest-time has a peculiar quiet, a premonition of the full day of rest after the six days' unceasing work.

At all the farm-houses, far and wide, the people sat on the out-door benches and talked of the harvest; of how much was already stored away, and of how much was still standing in the fields. Then they talked of their neighbors far and near, and of course of Landolin also. They spoke pityingly of his misfortune, but with a certain quiet self-congratulation that they themselves were free and happy. It was almost like breathing, upon the mountain, air purified and freshened by a thunder-storm in the valley.

Soon with weary steps they sought their beds; for in the morning young and old were going to the celebration in the city.

Landolin and his wife were sitting on the bench before his house. Thoma sat at one side on an old tree-stump, where the men often mended their scythes.

These three had so much to say, and yet spoke so little!

"So to-morrow is the fifteenth of July," said Landolin. Thoma looked around, but turned quickly away, and again seemed buried in her own thoughts.

The dedication of the flag was to take place the following day. One might imagine that years had already pa.s.sed since the day when Anton, with his two companions, came to ask Thoma to be maid of honor. Thoma was unselfish enough not to think first of the pleasure and distinction she would lose, but she sighed sadly when she thought how dreary and sorrowful the day would be for Anton.

"What do you think, Thoma," asked Landolin; "shall I go to the celebration, or not?"

"I have no opinion as to what you should do, or not do."

"Will you go with me?" said he, turning to his wife.

"I would like to, but I'm not well. I'm so chilly, I think I'll go right to bed."

Thoma wanted to go into the house too, but her mother refused, and insisted that she should remain with her father.

Her mother went in, and Thoma felt that she now ought to talk with her father; but she couldn't think of a word to say. Every pleasant word appeared to her to be a lie, and the bitterness of her fate lay in the fact that there was a lie to contend with. It distressed her to pa.s.s her father by, at home and in the field, in silence, or with only a cold greeting, and now to sit so speechless, and force him to think of their trouble; but she could not do otherwise.

Landolin said that her mother was more ill than she was willing to admit, and that it was evidently hard for her to keep up. Thoma tried to quiet his fears; but her words sounded as hard as stone, when he said, "But that is a matter where the doctor can help us."

"And I know something that no doctor can prescribe, which would make your mother strong and well again."