He stood alone in the silent courtyard; there was no light in the stables and sheds, the cattle made no sound. He felt oppressed. Did he dread the walk through the lonely fields? Oh, no, on the contrary he was able to breathe once more when he reached the open fields, and the howling wind threw a whole load of snow into his face and over his clothes. "Ah," he drew a long, trembling breath. But all at once he felt terrified. There came a long-drawn, shrill whistle from the Przykop, a quite peculiar whistle. No bird screamed like that, and no human being either. A shudder ran down his back; he was seized with a superstitious fear, which he could not shake off again in spite of his common sense and his education. That was the witch that whistled in the pitch-dark Przykop.
And he made the sign of the cross as the peasants do when they hear the witch whistling, and spat on the snow that gleamed in spite of the darkness. When that's done, the witch has lost her power and you need not follow her.
CHAPTER V
Rosa Tiralla had seen visions; but whether they were good or bad visions nobody knew. Marianna Śroka cried loudly when she brought the news to the village, and her lover, Jendrek, confirmed it with a nod. The Paninka had seen something, the Paninka was bewitched.
Mr. Tiralla was deeply grieved about his Röschen, as deeply grieved as he could possibly be about anything. He had already been looking out for a husband for his little daughter--she would be fourteen next autumn, and a wife cannot be too young-and now she seemed only fit for bed. The strong man had never suffered from nerves--didn't even know what they were--but all sorts of things happened nowadays to alarm him. Rosa was so irritable that she cried if anybody spoke crossly to her. The doctor advised them not to treat her harshly, for she cried so bitterly that she became quite hysterical. And after the attack was over she was so feeble that she could not move a limb, and looked exactly like somebody who was going to die; so that her father in his terror used to say, "yes," and "my angel," "everything you like, my angel."--nothing but "my angel."
And Röschen imagined that she was always surrounded by angels. She thought her father, Marianna, and Jendrek were angels, but especially she thought her mother one. Pan Böhnke was also an angel. He often came to see her, and then he and her dear mother would sit by her bedside and talk to each other, and their voices would sound so soft and low that her eyes would close, and she would fall into a sweet sleep.
Mrs. Tiralla had never imagined that she could feel so much love for her daughter. She was really fond of her now. Marianna would on no account sleep any longer in the same room as Rosa; she said that it was impossible to close an eye the whole night through, and if she worked so hard during the day she really must rest at night. The truth was that when Marianna stole out of bed in order to go to her lover, the child would sit up in bed and call out, "Where are you going, Marianna?" and there was such a strange note of reproach and admonition in her voice, that the girl shuddered and did not venture to go to Jendrek. How had the child found it out?
So Mrs. Tiralla had her bed brought up to her daughter's room. Her husband cursed and raged, for hitherto he had at least had his wife next to him on the same floor. But she insisted upon having her own way. She said that Röschen wanted care, and mustn't sleep alone. And he saw that she was right.
At night, when the house was so quiet that the ticking of the big clock sounded like peals of thunder and her husband's snores like a saw-mill hard at work, Mrs. Tiralla would sit by her child's bed. She would hold her hand--a small, narrow, delicate-looking hand with blue veins--and they would whisper together about the joys of Paradise. Whilst all around was joyless--the dark night, the lonely farm buried in deep snow, the solitude in which a soul so often gets lost--those two would whisper together about the joys of Paradise--about nothing else.
The heavenly world in which Mrs. Tiralla had also lived as a child had once more drawn near to her by means of Rosa. She could very well understand what occupied the child's thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. And that was right, for she was to be a saint. Was she not almost one now? There was a rapt expression in Rosa's eyes, when she used to tell her mother about what she had seen, about the Holy Mother and the Child Jesus, and about her beautiful, beautiful guardian angel who always sat at her bedside when she was asleep. A short time before, she had suddenly awaked in the night, but had been too tired to open her eyes properly, and she had found the angel bending over her--such a beautiful angel in a long white garment.