He shook his head peevishly. "Don't want her."
A happy thought struck her. Laying her trembling hand on his, she said in a low, persuasive voice, "It's I, Röschen, your little star, your red-haired girl, your wee birdie, your----" the tears welled into her eyes; she gulped them down bravely, but her voice choked.
Then he continued, "My sun, the key which is to open heaven's door for me--ah!"--he smirked as though he remembered something, and then added as tenderly as he could in his husky, faltering voice, "my consolation." He looked at her, felt her hair as he had done before, and passed his hands over her as she stood before him tall and slender, for she had jumped up from her knees in her bitter, painful emotion. "Too big--too big--you're not my wee one, not my little daughter--Röschen--my sun--my consolation." And he looked down at the floor and smiled, as if a tiny little girl were standing there, who was not yet big enough to reach up to the table.
"But I am Röschen," said the girl quickly, as she seized hold of his hands with her feeble ones, and pressed and shook them as if she wanted to bring him to his senses in that way.
He continued, however, to speak to an imaginary little child on the floor, as though he were mad or intoxicated. "Are you coming to daddy? Poor daddy is always alone, quite alone since little Böhnke has gone." Then he added in a mysterious, almost unintelligible whisper, "Sophia is going to kill him--they'll all help to kill him--poor Mr. Tiralla." He shook his head miserably.
"Father, I--I'm with you--I'll stop with you," cried Rosa, shaken by his plaint. What awful things he imagined, poor, unhappy man. "I'll help you. And the Lord will help you, and His most Holy Mother Mary," she added solemnly, and made the sign of the cross on his forehead and breast as well as on her own. "May the Lord help you and us." And then she said resolutely and courageously--what was the good of hesitating? Had she not promised Mikolai to do it and also prayed about it?--"What you've been saying is not true, daddy. Nobody is going to do you any harm, neither mother nor anybody eke. You're not kind to mother. You're talking nonsense. Look, here is your Röschen, feel my hands." She put her dry, burning hands round his wrists. "As true as I stand here, I swear that you've nothing to fear, we all lov----"--no, she must not lie, so she quickly corrected herself--"we all mean you well. Daddy, oh, my daddy!"
She let go of his wrists and impulsively pressed her hands to his cheeks, as she had so often done when she was small and her fingers had seemed no bigger than the legs of a fly that played about on his fat cheeks. "Oh, my dear daddy, if only you would stop drinking. Everything, everything would be better then. Then mother would no longer"--she suddenly stopped and the colour mounted to her brow; she did not mention her mother again. But her voice sounded so honest and convincing as she continued, "Then you would never have cause to fear any more. You would see then that nobody wishes you ill. And how happy Mikolai would be if you were to go into the stables and fields again, and talk to him about the work on the farm. Poor Mikolai, his friend is going away and he'll be so lonely. And you would feel much better yourself. You wouldn't cough so much--Marianna says you spit blood--you would be happy again; you wouldn't sit alone in this room any more, and you would see the wheat and the oats and the red clover that smells so sweet. Just think of it, daddy!"
She grew quite hot in her eagerness; at that moment she forgot all about her convent and that she would not be at Starydwór to see the improvement. And then as the last and best promise she said, "And you would still be saved, daddy; God in heaven would forgive your sins." Her eyes shone as she looked at him, as though she wanted to infect him with some of her own radiant happiness.
But his eyes did not shine. He was looking down in a dull-witted way and merely muttered, "Yes, you're Rosa."
Ah! now he knew her. The saints be praised, that was a big step forward. Putting her sweet face close to his, and without shrinking back from the poisonous breath that almost suffocated her, she whispered, "And Rosa will love you again, daddy; love you so dearly if you'll only leave off drinking." She pointed to a full bottle standing on the table next to an empty one, and some of the holy fury of the converters who used to fell oaks and shatter idols came over her. Raising her voice till it sounded almost triumphant she cried, "Throw it away, so that it breaks on the floor like the other bottle! Then the horrid gin will run between the boards down into the earth, down into hell, where it belongs. The evil thing will have gone, and we, father, we'll pray and give thanks."