The Song of the Blood-Red Flower Part 37

He reached the top of a rise from which the road sloped down to the valley. And here he stopped, as if set to go no farther.

Before him spread the landscape of the valley; green woods encircled it on every hand, like a protecting fence about a pleasure-garden.

Within the area enclosed were mounds and hilly fields, stretches of meadow, farmsteads, rows of corn-sheaves and haystacks, patches of stubble, a tiny stream with a bridge and a fall, and mills on either bank.

A thrill of emotion seized the wanderer at sight of it all; one glance let loose a flood of memories and thoughts of things long since forgotten.

All seemed as before. He looked at the stream, and followed the line of its course with his eye. The mills stared at one another from bank to bank, as they had always done since the beginning of time. But the mills themselves had changed. The old wooden structures were gone, and in place of them stood modern stone-walled buildings.

A lightning thought came into his mind: was there _anything_ that was unchanged, though the setting seemed as it had been? What might not have happened in the little place during those years?

The wanderer felt uneasy at the thought. Here he was--but who could say what he would find here, now he had come?

Slowly, with heavy steps, he took his way down towards the village.

And ever as he neared it, his uneasiness increased.

He came to a turn in the way. From just beyond came the tinkle of a bell, and, as he rounded the bend, he saw a flock of sheep grazing, and a fair-haired lad watching the flock.

The sight gladdened his heart--the sheep and the shepherd lad at least were as he had hoped to find them.

"Good-day!" he said heartily. "And whose lad are you, little man?"

"Just Stina's boy," answered the young herdsman easily, from his seat by the wayside.

"Ho, are you? ... yes." The wanderer stepped across the ditch, sat down by the wayside, and lit his pipe.

"And what's the news in the place? I've been here before, d'ye see, and used to know it well. But 'tis long since I heard anything from these parts."

"News?... H'm." The lad felt a pleasant sense of importance at being thus asked, and stepped down from his seat. "Well, you've heard, maybe, 'twas Mattila's Tytto won the first prize at the cattle show?"

"You don't say so? Mattila's Tytto?" echoed the stranger, with a laugh. "And what else?"

"Why, there's no more that I know of--let me see...." The wise little eyes grew thoughtful. "Oh, I forgot. Yes, Maya, she's married, and they're building a bit of a place over by the clearing there.

Shoemaker, he was, and a good match, they say."

"I see. That'll be the place. Looks as good as could be."

"'Tis a fine place. Going to have a real stove, with a baking oven and all.... Then there's been another wedding besides, at Niemi--Annikki's it was. Only just married--though there's been plenty that asked her these years past, and rich men some of them too."

"Yes...." The wanderer felt as if something had struck him in the breast. Impatiently he went on:

"And how's things at Koskela?"

"Koskela--well, old man there he died last spring, and they say...."

"Died?" A heavier stroke this; it seemed to paralyse him.

"Yes--and two horses to the funeral, with white covers and all. And silver stars all over the coffin--like the sky it was."

The wanderer felt himself gazing helplessly into a darkness where hosts of silver stars danced before his eyes.

"You knew him, maybe?" asked the lad, watching the man's face.

"Ay, I knew him," came the answer in a stifled voice.

"And his wife's like to follow him soon," went on the boy. "She's at the last gasp now, they say."

The wanderer felt as if something were tightening about his heart.

"So there's neither man nor wife, so to speak, at Koskela now."

The wanderer would have risen, but his limbs seemed numbed.

"There was a son, they say, was to have taken over the place, but he went away somewhere long ago, and never came back."

The wanderer rose to his feet. "Thanks, little man." And he strode off.

The lad stared wonderingly at the retreating figure, whose heavy steps sounded like sighs of pain from the breast of the trodden road.

THE CUPBOARD

"Come in," said the key invitingly.

But the weary man stood motionless, paralysed by the thought that had come to him as he reached the door.

"Come in--you've waited long enough in coming."

And the weary man grasped the key, but stood holding it helplessly, like a child without strength to turn it.

It rattled in the lock under his trembling fingers. The noise roused him; he opened the door and went in.

It was like entering a church. A solemn, expectant silence hung over the place--it was just as it had been when, as a child, he had first been taken to church.

And now, as then, his glance sought first of all the farthest background of the place. What he saw was like and yet unlike what he had seen there. Then, it had been the figure of a young man, holding out his arms over a group of children; now, it was the figure of an old woman, worn with sickness--but with the same great gentleness in her face.

The woman's eyes lit up, as though she had seen a miracle; her glance grew keen, as if wishing to be sure, and softened again, in the certainty that the miracle had come.

The trembling head was lifted, the frail body rose up like a bent bow, her mouth opened, and her lips began to move, but no sound came--she could but reach out one thin, trembling hand to the figure by the door.

He moved, and walked over to the bed. And the old woman and the weary man took each other's hands and pressed them, looked into each other's eyes and trembled with emotion, unable to speak a word.

Tears rose to the old woman's eyes, a gleam as of sunset over autumn woods lit her wrinkled face; the thin lips quivered between smiling and weeping.