St. Peter's Umbrella Part 3

At the other end of the village the old man had asked the miller's servant-girl which was the way to Lehota, and Erzsi had told him, upon which he had started on the footpath up the mountains. Erzsi said she was sure, now she came to think of it, that he had a glory round his head.

Why, of course it must have been St. Peter! Why should it not have been?

There was a time when he walked about on earth, and there are many stories told still as to all he had done then. And what had happened once could happen again. The wonderful news spread from house to house, that G.o.d had sent down from Heaven a sort of red-linen tent, to keep the rain off the priest's little sister, and had chosen St. Peter himself for the mission. Thereupon followed a good time for the child, she became quite the fashion in the village. The old women began to make cakes for her, also milk puddings, and various other delicacies. His reverence had nothing to do but answer the door all day, and receive from his visitors plates, dishes, or basins wrapped up in clean cloths.

The poor young priest could not make out what was going on in his new parish.

"Oh, your reverence, please, I heard your little sister had come, so I've brought her a trifle for her dinner; of course it might be better, but it is the best such poor folks as we can give. Our hearts are good, your reverence, but our flour might be better than it is, for that good-for-nothing miller burned it a bit the last time--at least, that part of it which he did not keep for his own use. May I look at the little angel? They say she's a little beauty."

Of course his reverence allowed them all to look at her in turn, to pat her and smooth her hair; some of them even kissed her tiny feet.

The priest was obliged to turn away now and then to hide the tears of grat.i.tude. He reproached himself, too, for his hard thoughts of the good villagers. "How I have misjudged them!" he thought to himself. "There are no better people in the world. And how they love the child!"

At tea-time Widow Adamecz appeared on the scene; until now she had not troubled much about the new priest. She considered herself ent.i.tled to a word in the management of the ecclesiastical affairs of the village, and based her rights on the fact of her father having grown a beard in his grave, which, of course, gave him a place among the saints at once.

"Your reverence," she began, "you will want some one to look after the child."

"Yes, of course, I ought to have some one," he replied, "but the parish is poor, and ..."

"n.o.body is poor but the devil," burst out Widow Adamecz, "and he's poor because he has no soul. But we have souls. And after all, your reverence won't know how to dress and undress a child, nor how to wash it and plait its hair. And then she will often be hungry, and you can't take her across to the schoolmaster's each time. You must have some one to cook at home, your reverence. The sacristan is all very well for sweeping and tidying up a bit, but what does he know about children?"

"True, true; but where am I to ..."

"Where? And am _I_ not here? The Lord created me for a priest's cook, I'm sure."

"Yes, I daresay. But how am I to pay your wages?"

Widow Adamecz put her hands on her hips, and planted herself in front of Father Janos.

"Never mind about that, your honor. Leave it to G.o.d and to me. He will pay me. I shall enter your service this evening, and shall bring all my saucepans and things with me."

The priest was more and more surprised, but even more astonished was his friend Urszinyi when he came over toward evening and the priest related the events of the day, and told him of Widow Adamecz's offer.

"What!" he exclaimed, "Widow Adamecz? That old witch? And without payment? Why, Janos, a greater miracle never yet happened. An inhabitant of Glogova working for payment from Heaven! You seem to have bewitched the people."

The priest only smiled, but his heart was full of grat.i.tude. He also felt that a miracle had taken place; it was all so strange, so incomprehensible. But he guessed at the cause of the change. The prayer he had said at the entrance to the church had been heard, and this was the answer. Yes, it really was a miracle! He had not heard all the stories that were spread abroad about the red umbrella, and he only smiled at those that had come to his ears. It is true he did not understand himself how the umbrella came to be where he had found it; he was surprised at first, but had not thought any more about it, and had hung it on a nail in his room, so that if the owner asked for it he could have it at once, though it was not really worth sixpence.

But the day's events were not yet done. Toward evening the news spread that the wife of the miller, the village nabob, had been drowned in the Bjela Voda, which was very swollen from the amount of rain that had fallen. The unfortunate woman had crossed the stepping-stones in order to bring back her geese, which had strayed to the other side. She had brought back two of them, one under each arm, but as she was re-crossing to fetch the third, her foot slipped, and she fell into the stream. In the morning there had been so little water there, that a goat could have drank it all in half a minute, and by midday it was swollen to such an extent that the poor woman was drowned in it. They looked for her the whole afternoon in the cellar, in the loft, everywhere they could think of, until in the evening her body was taken out of the water near Lehota. There some people recognized her, and a man was sent over on horseback to tell Mihaly Gongoly of the accident. All this caused great excitement in the village, and the people stood about in groups, talking of the event.

"Yes, G.o.d takes the rich ones too," they said.

Gyorgy Klincsok came running in to the priest.

"There will be a grand funeral the day after to-morrow," he exclaimed.

The sacristan appeared at the schoolmaster's in the hope of a gla.s.s of brandy to celebrate the event.

"Collect your thoughts," he exclaimed, "there will be a grand funeral, and they will expect some grand verses."

Two days later the funeral took place, and it was a long time since anything so splendid had been seen in Glogova. Mr. Gongoly had sent for the priest from Lehota too, for, as he said, why should not his wife have two priests to read the burial service over her. He sent all the way to Besztercebanya for the coffin, and they took the wooden cross that was to be put at the head of the grave to Kopanyik to have it painted black, with the name and the date of her death in white letters.

There were crowds of people at the funeral in spite of the bad weather, and just as the priest was starting in full canonicals, with all the little choir-boys in their clean surplices, it began to pour again; so Father Janos turned to Kvapka, the sacristan, and said:

"Run back as fast as you can and fetch the umbrella out of my room."

Kvapka turned and stared; how was he to know what an umbrella was?

"Well," said Father Janos, "if you like it better, fetch the large, round piece of red linen I found two days ago spread over my little sister."

"Ah, now I understand!"

The priest took shelter in a cottage until the fleet-footed Kvapka returned with the umbrella, which his reverence, to the great admiration of the crowd, with one sweeping movement of his hand spread out in such a fashion that it looked like a series of bats' wings fastened together. Then, taking hold of the handle, he raised it so as to cover his head, and walked on with stately step, without getting wet a bit; for the drops fell angrily on the strange tent spread over him, and, not being able to touch his reverence, fell splashing on to the ground. The umbrella was the great attraction for all the peasants at the funeral, and they exchanged many whispered remarks about the (to them) strange thing.

"That's what St. Peter brought," they said.

Only the beautiful verses the schoolmaster had composed for the occasion distracted their attention for a while, and sobs broke forth as the various relations heard their names mentioned in the lines in which the dead woman was supposed to be taking leave of them:

"Good-by, good-by, my dearest friends; Pal Lajko my brother, Gyorgy Klincsok my cousin," etc.

The whole of Pal Lajko's household began to weep bitterly, and Mrs.

Klincsok exclaimed rapturously:

"How on earth does he manage to compose such beautiful lines!"

Which exclamation inspired the schoolmaster with fresh courage, and, raising his voice, he continued haranguing the a.s.sembled friends in the dead woman's name, not forgetting a single one, and there was not a dry eye among them.

For some time after they had buried Mrs. Gongoly the grand doings at the funeral were still the talk of the place, and even at the funeral the old women had picked out pretty Anna Tyurek as the successor of Mrs.

Gongoly, and felt sure it would not be long before her noted "mentyek"

had an owner. (Every well-to-do Slovak peasant buys a long cloak of sheepskin for his wife; it is embroidered outside in bright colors, and inside is the long silky hair of the Hungarian sheep. It is only worn on Sundays and holidays, and is pa.s.sed on from one generation to another.)

The mourners had hardly recovered from the large quant.i.ties of brandy they had imbibed in order to drown their sorrow, when they had to dig a new grave; for Janos Sranko had followed Mrs. Gongoly. In olden times they had been good friends, before Mrs. Gongoly was engaged; and now it seemed as though they had arranged their departure from this world to take place at the same time.

They found Sranko dead in his bed, the morning after the funeral; he had died of an apoplectic fit. Sranko was a well-to-do man, in fact a "magna." (The fifteen richest peasants in a Slovak village are called "magnas" or "magnates.") He had three hundred sheep grazing in his meadows and several acres of ploughed land, so he ought to have a grand funeral too. And Mrs. Sranko was not idle, for she went herself to the schoolmaster, and then to the priest, and said she wished everything to be as it had been at Mrs. Gongoly's funeral. Let it cost what it might, but the Srankos were not less than the Gongolys. She wished two priests to read the funeral service, and four choir-boys to attend in their best black ca.s.socks, the bell was to toll all the time, and so on, and so on.

Father Janos nodded his head.

"Very well, all shall be as you wish," he said, and then proceeded to reckon out what it would cost.

"That's all right," said Mrs. Sranko, "but please, your reverence, put the red thing in too, and let us see how much more it will cost."

"What red thing?"

"Why, what you held over your head at Mrs. Gongoly's funeral. Oh, it _was_ lovely!"

The young priest could not help smiling.

"But that is impossible," he said.

Mrs. Sranko jumped up, and planted herself before him, with her arms crossed.

"And why is it impossible I should like to know? My money is as good as the Gongolys', isn't it?"