For the Right

by Karl Emil Franzos

The wife obeyed, but found little sleep, and her soul kept crying through the darkness of that night: "Oh, God, pity my husband--he, the priest, to lose faith in Thee!" Many a wiser prayer may rise to the ear of the Giver of all things; yet none, perhaps, ever was more touching.

When daylight returned she felt comforted, and drew courage from her husband's quiet face on his bidding her good-bye for early service. She, too, left the house, but not to go to church, for a duty no less sacred directed her steps to Anusia's house.

Poor Anusia, indeed! It was not without reason that her friends sorrowed for her, for she was doubly stricken. The last articulate sound that had crossed her lips had been her husband's name--that cry of despair wrung from her as he departed. Her grief since then had found vent in wild ravings only, night and day, day and night. Not a prayer, not a complaint had she uttered, and her eyes were tearless; but she would give a shriek and continue moaning with parched lips. Those that watched her believed her out of her mind, and no hope seemed left, save with Father Leo, who clung to it. "It will pass away," he said, well-nigh despairing himself; "hers is a more passionate nature than ours, and her grief is the wilder." Her ravings, indeed, appeared to lessen, the feverish agony grew calmer, and she began to take food; but to her friends the supervening apathy seemed worse than what had gone before. There she lay in a kind of living death, uttering not a sound, large-eyed and white-faced, wearing the expression of a helpless agony. But when her friends or the children attempted to rouse her, she waved them off, or cried huskily: "Leave me alone, I must think it over." And Father Leo would say: "No one can help her, she must battle through it; but the children must be seen to, having lost both father and mother." And he arranged with his wife that twice a day she should go over to the farm to see to the needs of the household; while outdoor matters found a willing helper in Hritzko Pomenko, the eldest of Simeon's lads. "If I work for Taras I shall perhaps bear it that he left me behind," said the honest youth.

That had been on the Thursday. Anusia appeared to take no notice that things were seen to by friends and neighbours, and she continued the whole of Good Friday in the same dull stupor. But when the popadja entered the sick-chamber early on the Saturday a happy change, evidently, had taken place. The bed was vacated, and a servant-girl came running in explaining: "The mistress is looking after the dairy, she is scolding poor Hritzko grievously because he brought over his father's new churn."

And, indeed, the startled popadja even now could hear the so-called scolding. "I know you meant kindly, Hritzko," Anusia was saying, in a voice both firm and clear; "but just take your things home with you, I can manage my own business." And the priest's lady herself presently received a similar greeting. "It is most kind of you"--Anusia made haste to address her friend as soon as she beheld her--"I am pleased to see you any time; but leave me now. And this kerchief must be yours, I think; I found my Tereska wearing it. But my children are no poor orphans, thank God, requiring friends to clothe them."

The good lady was only too willing to be reproved. "Say what you like," she cried, "I am happy to find you up again!"

"Yes," said Anusia, with perfect composure, "I know you all thought I had gone mad. But my mind was right enough; only, you see, I had to satisfy my own judgment that my husband had done well. I had always looked upon him as the most perfect man on earth, so that the need was great to find an answer to my questioning, and everything besides had to give way."

"Then you arrived at the conclusion that nothing else was left for him?" broke in Hritzko, vehemently.

"I have," she assented. "I saw it was his heart that laid it upon him to act as he has done, and he is a man that cannot go against the behest of his own heart. I know that, and it must be enough for me. As to whether he is otherwise in the right or not, I, a woman, am unable to decide. My mind says 'Yes,' but the heart keeps crying 'No.' I can but wait and see. If he is in the right the Almighty will own him and let him be a helper to many. But if he is on the path of wrong, God will turn from him, and his end will be the gallows. Be that as it may; he is lost to us, my children are fatherless, and henceforth I must be to them father and mother in one."

"And we all will help you!" cried the popadja, warmly.