“My dear child,” the woman laid her work by for the moment, “this is always your home here. Come here when there is anything to trouble you. . . . The little bed is always yours. . . . We, too, are greatly troubled as well, as perhaps you know. Pan Andrew has not been the same since that accursed night. . . . Yet if one had but sense, we have here all that should make man happy: children, love, bread, and a house—why must men be always sighing and striving for that which they have not?”
“We were so happy before,” continued Elzbietka. “It seems to me that the student Tring has some charm over my uncle which he cannot resist.”
“Heaven help us,” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. “And have you any idea what is going on in the loft above you?”
“None.” The girl shuddered. “It is some terrible thing. To-night both men spoke in such a peculiar way that I was frightened when they first came together. And ever since that they have been speaking more wildly, I think, than ever before. My uncle keeps saying, ‘This will drive me mad,’ and Tring says to him again, ‘There is nothing of harm in it. Try once more.’ Then again there is silence and my uncle speaks shortly, mad things—and I was frightened and came here.”
“My poor child.”
“Just before I came downstairs Tring was speaking to my uncle as if he were just a common servant. And my uncle instead of being angry seemed to be trying to please the student. At last Tring said: ‘This, now, you must do. You must learn the secret which will change brass into gold. Once you have gold, then you have the power to do all that man can do. You can go about over the earth and see all that there is to see, you can study with the most famous masters and buy all that you please.’ He repeated over and over again the word ‘gold,’ and it seemed to me that while he was speaking my uncle was working at something, for he never answered a word.”
The woman shook her head. “I have known of those who sought to make gold out of baser metal. But no good ever befell them. . . .” Then thinking that she needed to draw the girl’s thoughts away from herself and her troubles, she said, “I am often lonely these nights when Joseph and his father are away. Yet I often listen for the sound of the trumpet in the church tower and I know that everything is well with them.”
“And I. Joseph begins at the second hour. We have a secret, he and I, and I always listen for him to play.”
“Bless your heart. Do you mean to say that you lie awake until the second hour?”
“I do when he is playing. For he is my best friend, and one should be loyal unto friends.”