tN 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OHIVERSITY OF CALIFORJffld 
 DAVIS 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS 
 AND COMPANY 
 
 EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS 
 AND COMPANY 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 Author of " The Immigrant Tide," "On the Trail of the 
 Immigrant," " Against the Current," etc., etc. 
 
 NEW >taJr YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF CALIFOBSOEB 
 PAVIS 
 

 COPYRIGH 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA 
 
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 DEDICATED TO 
 
 A. A. HYDE 
 
 WHO IN THE MOUNTAINS 
 
 AND ON THE PLAINS 
 IN BUSINESS AND PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 WALKS WITH 
 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 

CONTENTS 
 
 tAPTER 
 
 I ON THE ESPLANADE 
 
 II YANEK ARRIVES 
 
 III ROSEMARY AND FEATHER BEDS 
 
 IV THE PAN'S DOMAIN 
 V PLUM BRANDY 
 
 VI LOVE ONE! .... 
 
 VII THE SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 VIII THE BEETERS .... 
 
 IX THE FIRST " SCHKANDAL " . 
 
 X THE TRIAL .... 
 
 XI VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 
 
 XII SUSANKA 
 
 XIII WHEN THE CAT SNEEZED 
 
 XIV THE CIRCUMCISION 
 XV SWEET STRYCHNINE 
 
 XVI THE RIOT 
 
 XVII MATER DOLOROSA . 
 
 XVIII THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES . 
 
 XIX WHEN THE SAW SINGS . 
 
 XX THE MAGIC SENTENCE . 
 
 XXI THE GREAT CATASTROPHE . 
 
 XXII SPIRITUS MORTUUS 
 
 XXIII SANCTI EXITI .... 
 
 XXIV THE HARVEST HOME . 
 XXV THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 
 
 vii 
 
 PAGE 
 II 
 
 21 
 30 
 
 39 
 55 
 64 
 70 
 80 
 96 
 106 
 
 H5 
 124 
 
 137 
 
 144 
 
 152 
 161 
 
 173 
 181 
 191 
 200 
 
 2IO 
 221 
 
 227 
 
 238 
 249 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XXVI PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 
 
 XXVII STEVE BURLY 
 
 XXVIII IDOLS OF CLAY .... 
 
 XXIX THE HATERS 
 
 XXX SONYA GOES HOME .... 
 
 XXXI THE ARMISTICE .... 
 
 XXXII SANCTUS SPITITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 PAGE 
 26l 
 272 
 283 
 289 
 297 
 304 
 313 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND 
 COMPANY 
 
 CHAPTER ONE: ON THE ESPLANADE 
 
 "OH ALL two men walk together unless they be 
 1^ agreed?" But, oh wise prophet of Israel, how 
 about three men who, at a certain hour each day have 
 walked together along the Esplanade, unless they were 
 in the Bashanyitza pretending to shoot pheasants, or in 
 Poestyan taking their exercise after the baths, or were 
 sitting in the Casino playing Clabriash; and who never 
 agreed upon anything, except that their rheumatism 
 wasn't better, and that the times were growing worse 
 matters upon which most men agree when they are 
 past middle age, and are walking toward the sunset. 
 
 The Esplanade where they walked, had little in com 
 mon with the shaded avenues in the great cities of the 
 old world, with their brilliant shops on either side, elegant 
 equipages, beautiful ladies and flirting cavaliers. Unlike 
 those wonderful boulevards which led from nowhere to 
 nowhere and back again, the Esplanade where our three 
 men walked, boasted only four rows of stunted acacia 
 trees, two on each side of the dusty, rutty roadway, and 
 a few wooden benches, upon which the lovers of many 
 generations had carved their entwined initials, while 
 Cupid was carving with his dart. 
 
 On one side were three plots of ground, separated 
 from each other by high, spiked, iron fences. There, 
 Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews buried their 
 
 11 
 
12 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 dead, when living and loving and esplanading were over 
 and done. On the other side, a low chain of the 
 Carpathian mountains rose above a faded, dusty picture 
 which scarcely any one ever saw; for it had been there 
 always; that was the Esplanade. 
 
 It could not have been either Saturday or Sunday 
 when the three men walked together there; for on 
 Saturday, Moritz Redlich, the distiller of the famous 
 Hungarian slivovitz went to the synagogue, and on Sun 
 day, the Reverend Father Anton Kalman stood before 
 the altar where he had officiated since the tonsure had 
 been applied to his head. On the same day Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky went to his church and stood up before the 
 Lord in the full consciousness of the Divine sovereignty 
 and of his own; for he was a Calvinist, and subscribed 
 to the Helvetian confession of faith. 
 
 As I have said, the three men did not agree upon 
 anything except their rheumatism and the degenerate 
 times, but these subjects are big, and were especially so 
 to those three, as they were indeed the survivors of a 
 good time when in that corner of the wide world, Jew 
 and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, Slav, German and 
 Magyar had lived together amicably, undisturbed by the 
 religious and nationalistic struggles which were convuls 
 ing the people of that unfortunate, Austro-Hungarian 
 monarchy of which their village was a part. They were 
 the survivors of a time when educated men talked Latin 
 together, because they could not agree upon any one of 
 the current tongues. Indeed when the three met each 
 other it was with fc Servus, Amice " that they sealed their 
 handshake, and not with the Magyar "Ala Szolgayo" 
 then becoming current and almost mandatory. 
 
 So they had met on a certain Wednesday at five o'clock 
 in the afternoon, in time to walk out to the railroad 
 to see the two trains come in and have a glimpse of the 
 
ON THE ESPLANADE 13 
 
 Bashanyitsa; to complain because the trains were fright 
 ening the birds away and carrying the peasants to 
 America, thus making wages high and morals low. They 
 argued about sugar beets versus potatoes, Magyars versus 
 Slovaks, Gendarmes versus Pandures, and sulphur baths 
 versus Hunyadi water for rheumatism. 
 
 The Reverend Father Anton Kalman, tall, thin and 
 not too saintly to be human, was as near an ascetic as 
 one could be in a country where wine was good, women 
 handsome, and meat plentiful. Robed in his satin sutan, 
 he frequently drew out of its folds his snuff tobacco 
 box. Its lid bore a picture of the Christ with the bleed 
 ing heart, and he never offered that box to Moritz 
 Redlich, the gnarled, almost humpbacked, bronchial old 
 Jew, whom he had known since they were boys together, 
 and loved as if he were his own brother. For him he 
 had another box, adorned with the picture of a beautiful 
 young woman, of that mythological period when dress 
 was not used to suggest what it affected to conceal. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky did not use snuff; he smoked a 
 long stemmed, porcelain pipe, known as a Dresdenska, 
 imported from Germany. It was the apple of his eye 
 and of his nose too, for it was an article of his religious 
 faith that his pipe must be as sweet and clean as he knew 
 his life was. He wore leather breeches which, together 
 with the satin sutan of His Reverence, and the persistent 
 cough of the Jew, made their walk so audible that even 
 in the dark, their fellow promenaders in the Esplanade 
 would say : " There go Sanctus Spiritus and Company," 
 as they were known collectively, in this town of Hraszova 
 in the district of Nyitra in the country of Hungary, way 
 up in the north, where the Slovaks were in the majority, 
 where the Magyars were the governing minority, and 
 where the Jews were supposed to rule by virtue of their 
 superior wits and their wealth. 
 
14 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Sanctus Spiritus and Company had good reason that 
 Wednesday to agree that the times were growing worse, 
 although for each of them in a different way. Father 
 Kalman had just lost his Helenka. How should a priest, 
 and an old priest at that, know when Helenkas be 
 came Helens? She had always been Helenka, ever since 
 his sister's death, and he would not let the little thing 
 be taken to an orphan asylum. So she stayed at the 
 parsonage with an old crabbed housekeeper to scold her; 
 but he made up for it by cuddling and spoiling her. 
 " Anyway, it was better for her than being with a dozen 
 hooded and starched Sisters/' he said and he was right 
 about it. He could be as good a father as the Sisters 
 could be mothers. Suddenly he realized that his niece 
 was no more Helenka and that was one reason the world 
 was growing worse. Of course it was through the 
 young curate that it dawned upon him that Helenka had 
 become Helen, and he had just returned from Trnava, 
 where he had left her with the Sisters. The curate 
 was of the new school, with more faith in Hungary 
 and love for the Hungarians than for the souls of men 
 and the Kingdom of God. His first article of faith was, 
 that the Magyar language must be spoken wherever the 
 Hungarian flag waved, and that all other current tongues 
 must be silenced, and silenced forever. He hated the 
 Slovaks, sniffed disgustedly when one of the sheepskin- 
 coated peasants came near him, and used more incense 
 in one day than the priest ever had used in a month. He 
 not only said mass in a foreign tongue, which of course 
 was proper; he also preached in Magyar, and not more 
 than a dozen people could understand what he said, which 
 was just as well, for he said little or nothing about the 
 way to Heaven, and much about Magyar Orszag, the 
 kingdom of Hungary, and the sin of calling their King 
 the Emperor; for the Emperor was an Austrian and the 
 
ON THE ESPLANADE 15 
 
 King was an Hungarian, though they were one person, a 
 duality as difficult to explain to the lay mind as the 
 mystery of the Holy Trinity. The only other sin he 
 condemned as eloquently was the sin of unchastity. He 
 had his good points, the new curate, the Reverend Imre 
 Baczko; he was a forceful preacher, and having been 
 born a Slovak and become Magyarized, he was a more 
 than zealous patriot. The young Magyar officials with 
 their wives and sweethearts began coming to church, a 
 duty they had neglected under the somewhat prosaic but 
 faithful ministry of their old priest. 
 
 The curate was good-looking, which was not always 
 an asset in his holy calling, and some of the knowing 
 ones wondered how he could escape the snare of the 
 devil in that place, where the mixture of Slav and 
 Magyar, German, Jewish and Gypsy blood, had created 
 a ravishingly beautiful feminine type, and among both, 
 men and women, a disregard for one of the ten com 
 mandments upon whose trespass The Church has laid 
 severest punishment. It was well for him that his 
 superior had not only kept his vows inviolate, but at 
 the same time knew the temptations of the flesh so well, 
 that his judgment was always charitable and his correc 
 tions tempered by grace and mercy. 
 
 It was the shrewd Jew who, when he heard how 
 violently the new curate was preaching against the sin 
 of unchastity, suggested that the holy man might need 
 watching. " Anton," he said, for he called the priest 
 by his first name inside the circle of Sanctus Spiritus 
 and Company, " a man always preaches hardest against 
 his own besetting sin until the sin overtakes him; then 
 he puts on the soft pedal," and alas! the time came 
 when the curate touched upon that particular sin very 
 lightly. 
 
 Moritz Redlich, who was the Spiritus of the rare group 
 
16 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 walking along the Esplanade, had earned his nickname 
 because he was the distiller of excellent plum brandy. 
 However, he deserved the title for other reasons. In 
 deed, that little, gnarled, bronchial Jew was more Spiritus 
 than Corpus. He inherited from his race a keen, spirit 
 ual discernment, which never degenerated into mere 
 Jewish shrewdness, and, being able to see what most 
 people did not or could not, he began bearing the burdens 
 of others while he was yet a mere boy. Family burdens 
 first; for he was the oldest of five children, and just past 
 his thirteenth birthday and received into the full member 
 ship of the synagogue when his father died. As soon 
 as the week of mourning was over and he had risen from 
 the earthen floor and shaken off the sackcloth and ashes, 
 he went out into the villages and bought plums as his 
 father had bought them, and made just as good slivovitz, 
 and left it just as unadulterated, and sold it in the same 
 earthen jugs and made the same modest profit. The 
 four younger children, three boys and one girl, never 
 missed their father, except as they were held less strictly 
 to the daily religious observances, which did not make 
 them sad. In fact Moritz began spoiling them, by indulg 
 ing " the poor orphans." He never came home from his 
 frequent journeys without some present which he had 
 bought by denying himself necessities. 
 
 The mother, a very sweet and pious woman, he adored 
 as he would have a saint, had he been a Roman Catholic ; 
 and she rested herself upon him as if he were a man, 
 not realizing that his burdens were too heavy for his 
 years. He helped her through her widowhood so that 
 she scarcely missed the strong arm of her husband, and 
 she died, leaning upon him, content to know that the 
 business was safe, as were the children. The boys had 
 to be educated and the girl married, after a good dowry 
 was provided. 
 
ON THE ESPLANADE IT 
 
 As the mother had learned to depend upon Moritz, 
 so had her children, and so had the poor Jews of 
 Hraszova. When the poor Christians discovered his 
 capacity for burden bearing they did the same thing, 
 and when the president of the synagogue died, the honor 
 and burden became his; when the boys developed into 
 " ne'er-do-weels " and were expelled one by one from 
 the Gymnasium in Nyitra, he sent them to America, and 
 set them up in business; and when they failed, they 
 quite naturally expected him to reestablish them. But 
 he had married and had burdens of his own. 
 
 He was early besieged by marriage brokers, for he 
 was a desirable match, the most desirable in the whole 
 district, was rated as being worth a dowry of some ten 
 thousand florins, and might have commanded twice 
 as much, had he been merely a shrewd Jew; but he chose 
 to marry a girl from a pious family, whose only asset 
 was her father's Talmudic learning and spotless reputa 
 tion. Three children were born to them, and then his 
 wife faded away, her life blighted by consumption, a 
 by-product of her father's sedentary habits and his piety. 
 Moritz' friends urged him to marry again on account of 
 the children. He considered the matter carefully, and 
 decided to take their advice, and that was one of the 
 many reasons for his agreeing with the other members 
 of Sanctus Spiritus and Company, that the times were 
 growing worse, as they walked along the Esplanade 
 toward the railroad station. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky, strong, upstanding Calvinist, 
 owner of a thousand acres of land, a widower, father of 
 two beautiful daughters, had only one grievance against 
 the times, and the root of it was beets, sugar beets, which 
 made of agriculture a business and not a gentleman's 
 pastime, causing the peasants to sell their small holdings 
 to the Sugar Trust, go to America, and come back from 
 
18 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 there with strange notions of eating meat three times a 
 day instead of twice a month, getting drunk quicker, 
 staying drunk longer, making wages high and morals low. 
 These were the only reasons that the world was growing 
 worse for Pan Yan Szenitzky. 
 
 He had good cause to agree with his confreres upon 
 the sad state of the times, for as they were walking along, 
 his leather breeches saying swash, the priest's satin sutan 
 saying swish, and Moritz Redlich coughing at every step 
 they heard above the noise they were making, the 
 marching of men and women, and turning, saw a cloud 
 of dust filling the Esplanade, while out of it rose a 
 plaintive chorus, the women leading and the men a note 
 or so behind, a sad undertone to the shrill feminine 
 voices. 
 
 What were they singing about, these marching men 
 and women? They sang of the bleak mountains which 
 hemmed in their valley, of cornflowers and poppy seeds, 
 of passionate love and deep sorrow; verse after verse, 
 and song after song. The Slovak songs, always plaintive, 
 had in them a new pathos as if the singers knew that 
 while they were marching away to a land where they 
 would have more and better bread, meat three times a 
 day, drinks without stint, and good clothes yet a land 
 in which they would not sing at their labor. 
 
 So they sang as they marched, until they overtook 
 Sanctus Spiritus and Company. Then they stopped, and 
 the elder of the village from which they came fell upon 
 his knees before the Reverend Father Anton Kalman, 
 kissed his hand and the cross which hung from the satin 
 sutan, then craved the priest's blessing for his people. 
 
 They helped him up on to one of the four benches 
 which graced the Esplanade, and he looked into a sea 
 of faces; young men's faces, young women's faces; and 
 he lifted his hand and blessed them, saying nothing 
 
ON THE ESPLANADE 19 
 
 besides, nor was there anything necessary to be said. 
 They understood, though the blessing was in a foreign 
 tongue. The quality of his voice, the tenderness of 
 heart it betrayed, interpreted its meaning. So they all 
 stood for a moment reverently, in perfect silence, and 
 the women began to weep, and the men held back the 
 tears. Then as if to drive away the sorrow, they sang 
 again as they began to march, and this time they sang 
 loudly, lustily, of red wine and beautiful maidens with 
 black eyes, until they reached the railroad station. 
 
 Sanctus Spiritus and Company were following, un 
 consciously keeping step with the marchers and their 
 merry tune. 
 
 The signal bells at the station were ringing incessantly, 
 the station master was scurrying about, worried and 
 worrying everybody; in the far distance the penetrating 
 whistle and the slow chug of a train were heard. 
 
 The marchers had stopped their singing; for they 
 were being crowded into the small third class waiting 
 room, built at a time when no one dreamed that a hundred 
 or more passengers would ever board the train at one 
 time. Their bundles and feather beds, their jugs of 
 slivovitz, and their tickets so engaged their attention, that 
 without their being aware of it the train had slipped into 
 the station and the gates were opened. When they en 
 tered the car they began to sing again. 
 
 " The times are growing worse," said Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky, and he thought of sugar beets and high wages 
 and low morals coming from America. The Reverend 
 Anton Kalman was thinking of Helenka and the curate, 
 and Moritz Redlich echoed : " The times are growing 
 
 worse." 
 
 Then another whistle was heard; it was the train 
 coming from the other direction, and if Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky could have had as much vision as Moritz 
 
20 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Redlich, and could have seen and foreseen what indeed 
 he could not foresee, he would have said again and 
 again : " The times are growing worse " ; but he would 
 not have been thinking of sugar beets and high wages 
 and lower morals, but of something entirely different. 
 
CHAPTER TWO: YANEK ARRIVES 
 
 "YT 7HAT flows in must flow out again," Thomas 
 V V Czerveny the worst of the town drunkards used 
 to say, when the fiery palenka served him by the Jewish 
 tavern keeper did not flow freely enough out of the 
 narrow necked bottle. That was also true of the flow 
 of population to the United States. The immigrants 
 came out of America again, but greatly diminished and 
 altered, and changing everything around them slowly 
 but surely, for better, for worse, according to how one 
 looked at things and from what vantage ground. The 
 landed gentry, among them Pan Yan Szenitzky, said 
 they were a pack of rascals, socialists, anarchists and 
 good for nothings, unsettling everything. So also said 
 the Reverend Imre Baczko, and all the Magyar officials; 
 not because they made wages high and worked when and 
 as they pleased, but because they came back conscious of 
 nationality and of the age-old wrongs practiced against 
 them by their half Asiatic conquerors. 
 
 They brought home Slovak books and newspapers, and 
 read them to their unlettered neighbors. Revolutionary 
 songs were heard at the inn, there was less "kowtow 
 ing " before the nobility, much kicking against the goads, 
 and the Magyar gendarmes justified their existence by 
 using the butts of their guns and sometimes the points 
 of their bayonets. 
 
 The crowd which had watched the departure of the 
 emigrants waited to see who was coming back from 
 America, and at the edge of it stood Sanctus Spiritus 
 and Company, no less curious than the rabble. Lindner's 
 omnibus and his rival's fiacre, a more pretentious looking 
 
 21 
 
22 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 vehicle, sure of profitable fares, had jockeyed for posi 
 tion nearest the exit, and their owners were quarreling 
 and calling down the curses of Heaven upon one another. 
 
 Two coaches had drawn up and waited at the gate 
 reserved for first and second class passengers. Their 
 drivers did not quarrel or speak to each other, or deign 
 even to look about, and if their immobile faces reflected 
 anything, it was contempt. Contempt for the third class 
 crowd, the shabby looking omnibus, the pretentious fiacre, 
 and for each other's master and horses. 
 
 What could there be in common between those two? 
 Andrew Feher, Magyar horseman, cradled by the winds 
 of the puszta, nourished upon huge portions of gulyash, 
 serving his time in the sixth Hussar regiment, and at 
 tired in a gorgeous livery of so much braid and brass 
 and silver buttons, that the red cloth of his wide sleeved 
 coat and tightly fitting trousers scarcely showed. 
 
 What could there be in common between him and the 
 Slovak, Stephan Hruby, driver of the heavy, arklike, 
 drab looking coach, swinging upon huge old fashioned 
 springs, and drawn by sedate looking roan mares, which 
 at any time might be hitched to a plow or a hay wagon, 
 and not feel insulted. Stephan Hruby, nearly sixty 
 years of age, was born in a room adjoining Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky's stable, brought up in that same room, curried 
 the Pan's horses while yet a little boy, and drove them 
 when he was not more than fifteen years old. He mar 
 ried the delicate, blond, strangely sweet looking house 
 maid Elzabetha, began housekeeping in those same 
 rooms, begat children and shared all Pan Yan Szenitzky's 
 prejudices, cursing at sugar beets and emigration, and 
 standing up before the Lord on Sunday in the pride of 
 the same Genevan faith. 
 
 His children played with the Pan's children, and his 
 little Yanek, the apple of his eye, " smart as a whip and 
 
YANEK ARRIVES 23 
 
 good as gold," his Yanek was coming back to-day from 
 America, and coming back, not as a coal miner, eaten 
 up by gases, parched by the hot furnaces, cursing in a 
 foreign tongue, drinking like a fish and eating like a 
 glutton; he was coming back a gentleman, and more than 
 a gentleman; a scholar, and more than a scholar; and 
 he whispered it with a holy awe : he was coming back a 
 minister of the Gospel ! No wonder the old man looked 
 proudly contemptuous. 
 
 Yes, Yanek went away like the others, a little younger 
 than most, fifteen years of age; he went where the others 
 went, to Pennsylvania, to Braddock. 
 
 For a long time it was the same story they read in 
 his letters, the story of hard labor and strange ways, of 
 big buildings, swift trains and strikes. Then the letters 
 had a new content. Yanek was going to a normal school, 
 and he wrote of American friends who were paying his 
 expenses, of the school building and the women teachers 
 who befriended him; of the new world which was opened 
 to him in books. Then came a letter of eight pages 
 upon which, he did not put enough postage and which 
 cost ever so much money to get from the postman, in 
 which he talked about nothing but religion. It was 
 strange reading even for so religious a man as Stephan 
 Hruby, who had accepted his salvation as a matter of 
 Divine decree, and looked up much to God as his 
 sovereign; but never looked much into his own soul, 
 and hardly even thought about his sins or his need of any 
 kind of religious experience. 
 
 Yanek had "got religion." " As if he had not always 
 had religion ! " his mother cried. He had repented of 
 all his sins, and as he had asked God's forgiveness 
 he asked his parents' pardon. He recalled the trifling 
 sins of his youth, the breaking of a window and not 
 telling about it when he was playing pleshka; "as if his 
 
24 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 father had not known and forgiven long ago ! " Then 
 most foolish of all things, he asked his father to see 
 Christina, Pan Yan Szenitzky's older daughter, and ask 
 her forgiveness for telling her one time that the cherries 
 she was eating were wormy, and, when she threw them 
 away, he had picked them up and eaten them himself. It 
 was a big lie, the cherries were not wormy. 
 
 Christina laughed when she read that part of the 
 letter and said : " the foolish boy ! " When he added that 
 there was another sin for which she must pardon him, 
 that it happened when they were up in the pigeon loft 
 looking at the nests, she blushed and felt that it was on 
 the very place where he had kissed her cheek. " Children 
 will be children," said Stephan Hruby smilingly; "but 
 alas, they do not remain children." 
 
 What was there indeed, in common between him and 
 the Magyar, Andrew Feher, a rascally old bachelor who 
 ate raw bacon with paprika an inch thick, and was always 
 drinking and always in trouble with women; and whom 
 he was serving? Moritz Redlich a Jew! The Jew was 
 well enough, the best of the tribe; he never drove in that 
 carriage anyway. It was his wife's, a buxom Oriental 
 beauty. Stephan despised Madam Amalie Redlich, who 
 aped everything the aristocratic Gentiles did, who 
 powdered and painted her face, and flirted with the 
 young bloods. She was the occupant of the carriage, 
 with her husband's daughter Sophie, who had come to 
 see the trains arrive and depart. 
 
 Moritz Redlich coughed more than usual, a sharper, 
 more nervous cough, and while he said nothing, the 
 priest knew that it was his way of saying: "Ah, yes, 
 the world is growing worse." He was thinking of 
 Gittele, his first wife, with her hair modestly covered, 
 as befits a virtuous Jewish woman, her black silk Sab 
 bath dress setting off her beautiful pale face, which sug- 
 
YANEK ARRIVES 25 
 
 gested nothing but devotion to him and her children, 
 and her austere and far away God. 
 
 He glanced bitterly at this woman, dressing only to 
 show her form and conceal her age, flirting with the 
 young officials who had gathered around her carriage, 
 kissing her hand and paying her compliments ; and after 
 wards making jokes at her expense, and mocking her 
 speech. Worst of all, she used his Sophie, the youngest 
 of Gittele's children as a sort of foil, taking her with 
 her " God knows where." 
 
 Kukulish, the pock-marked postmaster, was holding 
 his wife's hand, which, when she heard her husband's 
 nervous cough, she guiltily withdrew. 
 
 Father Anton Kalman was using more snuff than 
 usual; his curate had joined the gay cavaliers, and for 
 a man who was preaching so earnestly against a certain 
 sin, he seemed dangerously frivolous. When Father 
 Kalman took snuff, he generally tapped the box three 
 times, a form of benediction in the name of the Holy 
 Trinity. Now he tapped only once, which was his way 
 of being profane, and somewhere in his inner con 
 sciousness he was saying : " In the devil's name why 
 does that curate of mine look that way at this Jewish 
 woman ? " Then he sneezed. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky had just cleaned his Dresdenska 
 and refilled it. In trying to light it he spoiled an unusual 
 number of matches on his leather breeches, for he was 
 wondering why his carriage was at the station. It was 
 rarely seen there unless a member of the family was 
 leaving home or guests were expected. 
 
 " No, Pane Velcomoshm" Stephan replied to his ques 
 tion, " no one is coming, no one but my own Yanek, 
 coming back from America, and the young ladies told 
 me I might bring him home in your honor's carriage. Of 
 course you know, Pane Velcomoshni, he is a minister and 
 
26 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 we couldn't let a minister walk. The old woman is here 
 too, she is there by the gate packed in like the old sardine 
 she is. She will sit here with me on the box and not 
 with His Reverence in the carriage." 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky finally succeeded in lighting his 
 pipe. Inwardly he was displeased at the thought of his 
 coachman's son sitting in his carriage; the little, bare 
 footed, linen trousered, towheaded, Slovak boy who had 
 played with his children. Of course, now he was a 
 minister, and mustn't walk, and certainly must not sit in 
 the driver's seat. 
 
 The signal bells continued their nervous ringing, the 
 station master scolded the crowd for one thing and 
 another. "Haven't these stupid Slovaks sense enough 
 not to go so near to the tracks? Don't they know any 
 better than to encroach so seriously upon the space re 
 served for their superiors? They are getting too forward 
 since their kin have begun coming back with money, from 
 America." 
 
 At last the train pulled into the station, the compart 
 ment doors were thrown open and the passengers alighted. 
 The third class passengers were not crowded like cattle 
 into the rear coach as/ of old, and did not wear badly 
 smelling sheepskin coats, or carry huge bundles, or walk 
 as if the world were made for their betters, and they 
 permitted to live in it only by grace of the Hungarian 
 Government. They jumped out of the cars in nervous 
 haste. The men wore the sober garb of modern civiliza 
 tion, the women were overdressed, and the children were 
 noisy and forward. They looked with contempt at the 
 tiny engine, the toy cars and the officious station master. 
 There was much hugging and kissing when they had 
 passed through the gate, but in a shy and reserved way 
 by the returned travelers, and while their friends who 
 met them cried for joy, they who had come from America 
 
YANEK ARRIVES 27 
 
 shed no tears; neither did they sing as they did when 
 from this same station they went away, " God knows 
 how many years ago." 
 
 It was not easy to recognize one another. The world 
 moves, people grow older, and alas! America changes 
 them, makes them something else, something entirely 
 different from the docile, simple folk who followed her 
 beckoning and lived with her these many years. 
 
 At last all found their friends, and Lindner's omnibus 
 and his rival's fiacre were loaded with passengers and 
 their heavy leather suitcases and brassbound trunks; 
 yet an old, wrinkled, Slovak woman stood upon the 
 platform waiting for her Yanek. She had looked into 
 every face, and in none did she see her boy. How could 
 she imagine that this was her Yanek, her little boy, this 
 young gentleman in a dark gray suit and a soft black 
 hat, this broad shouldered, deep chested, young man with 
 the kindly face and the laughing brown eyes ? Naturally 
 she was not expecting her little towsle headed boy of 
 fifteen. She knew how many long and bitter years had 
 passed since he had left her, how 1 many nights almost; 
 for when she went to bed her last thought was of him, 
 and when she woke, and she woke so many times, his face 
 was the first to emerge from her dreams. Of course he 
 had sent them his picture, the last time was when he 
 graduated from college, but it did not seem like her boy, 
 this spectacled, scholarly looking youth. Yes, the nose 
 looked familiar, and the shape of the lips; all else seemed 
 changed, and when she thought of her Yanek, she never 
 thought of him as that somewhat stiff looking, earnest, 
 almost austere young man, but as her fifteen year old 
 boy, whom she had kissed good-by on that same platform 
 so many years ago. 
 
 He expected to see the mother of about forty years, 
 whom he had left, with her oval face still fresh, and 
 
28 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 framed by her beautiful lace cap. There would be a 
 few wrinkles, they age so quickly these hard working, 
 Slovak women; but this could not be his mother, this 
 old, bent woman, her wrinkled, parchment like face, turn 
 ing anxiously in every direction. Yet they recognized 
 each other, though he did not wear a round collar as 
 she expected, and though he did carry his heavy suitcase, 
 which he should not have carried, being a gentleman and 
 a minister. " Muy Sinek!" she cried as he clasped her 
 to his heart. 
 
 " Moya Mamushkaf" he said a dozen times, as he 
 stroked her face and tried to wipe away her tears. Then 
 he heard the snapping of a whip, loud, like the crack 
 of a pistol, and there sat his father on the coachman's 
 box, wearing the same livery and the same little, greasy, 
 round hat with a peacock's feather. The same ticket 
 puncher stood at the gate, and the same station master, 
 older and more crabbed, bustled about. He pushed by 
 them without a greeting in his haste to be with his father, 
 and mounting the box, gave him a hug that left the old 
 man breathless. It seemed as if the horses knew that 
 their driver was supremely happy, for they whinnied 
 and kicked up their heels as they had not for a long time. 
 
 ({ Mamushka, I will sit by father and you sit in the 
 carriage." 
 
 " No, no, of course not; who ever heard of a minister 
 riding with the coachman, and a poor old woman sitting 
 in the carriage ? " 
 
 But he lifted her in and sat her down, then climbed 
 up on to the box, looked eagerly about, and seeing the 
 familiar church towers in the distance, the four rows 
 of acacia trees on the Esplanade, and the faded Carpa 
 thians, knew that he was home again ; although the towers 
 looked smaller and the Esplanade meaner, and the 
 Carpathians not nearly so lofty. What assured him that 
 
YANEK ARRIVES 29 
 
 it was not a dream, was the sound of a familiar, nervous 
 cough accompanied by the swish of a satin sutan and the 
 swash of leather breeches, and when he saw the well 
 remembered group he said to his father; " Sanctus 
 Spiritus and Company are still walking together." 
 " Yes/' was the reply, " they are still walking together, 
 but it can't last very much longer." 
 
 As they drove off, they passed Madam Redlich's car 
 riage, and Andrew Feher the coachman looked con 
 temptuously at the Pan's carriage and at its driver; 
 but one end of his waxed mustache was lifted in a 
 supercilious smile, as he saw the old Slovak woman 
 seated inside, and he muttered, " Tot Ember Nem 
 Ember," the Slovak is not a human being (a very 
 familiar by-word among his kind) " even if his son 
 does come back from America dressed in citizen's 
 clothes." But the Madam looked smilingly into the face 
 of this new type of gentleman, seated on the coachman's 
 box. He lifted his hat and couldn't believe that it was 
 the Madam, she had remained so young. When his 
 father told him that the young lady with her was the 
 little Sophie, his mind leaped back to the day when a 
 black-eyed little Jewess came to school with her eyes 
 swollen from weeping, for it was the day after her 
 mother's funeral. Gathering all his courage he had 
 walked up to the girl's side, to the very front of the 
 classroom, and given her his new pen to comfort her. 
 She smiled at him in gratitude, and he had never for 
 gotten the smile; but strange to say, Christina, the Pan's 
 daughter, wouldn't speak to him for a week after that 
 episode, and now he began wondering why. 
 
CHAPTER THREE: ROSEMARY AND FEATHER 
 BEDS 
 
 "TT isn't the three thousand miles you have traveled," 
 the schoolmaster wrote to Yanek shortly after he 
 had entered college; " it is the way you are living over 
 there in America, which will carry you millions of leagues 
 away from your people." 
 
 He was thinking about it as he lay there in the same 
 stuffy isba in which he was born, on the same feather 
 bed on which his mother bore him in unrelieved pain. 
 He had hardly drawn a full breath the whole night, for 
 the windows were tightly closed. He was kept awake 
 by his father's harsh breathing, by the odor of the huge, 
 round, sour loaves of rye bread which were stacked 
 between the rafters of the low room, by the horses tug 
 ging at the halters in the stable adjoining, and by the 
 angry barking of Sultan the watchdog, a playful puppy, 
 when he left home. 
 
 Many and many a time he had cried himself to sleep 
 over in America, longing to be again in this same room 
 with its bedstead in the center, piled high with huge 
 feather beds and unwieldy pillows, the pride of his 
 mother's heart; the bake oven in the corner, the childrens' 
 playground and their bed. To-night it was occupied by 
 his parents, for his mother insisted that her minister 
 son must not sleep there. How often had he visualized 
 the gayly decorated earthen ware, the huge soup bowl, 
 the red pots and wooden spoons on the crudely carved 
 shelf. The smoky rafters which used to seem so high 
 above him, now were so near that he knocked his head 
 
 30 
 
ROSEMARY AND FEATHER BEDS 31 
 
 against them as he tossed about, wishing himself back 
 in the college dormitory, with its fresh air blowing 
 through the open windows, and the nodding elms with 
 their smooth, strong and graceful branches, whispering 
 to him the hopes and aspirations of those brave, far 
 seeing Puritans who had planted them, and who now 
 seemed to him nearer than his own flesh and blood, from 
 whom indeed he had traveled " millions of leagues." 
 
 " Sinku mny " his mother asked him, singing the 
 words more than speaking them, making three syllables 
 out of the word for son, though it had only two; " why 
 don't you sleep ? " Her heart was heavy from the same 
 thoughts as his. 
 
 " For gladness/' he replied, and leaving his bed he 
 climbed up on the bake oven to her side, but while he 
 held her in his arms, he knew he had not told her the 
 truth; for he had traveled far even from her, the mother 
 who was everything to him. He knew it by his recoil 
 at the touch of her coarse flax shirt, and the hard crooked 
 fingers which held his as in a vise; by his shrinking from 
 contact with the parchment like, wrinkled cheeks he 
 kissed, and the very breath of her lips as they sought his. 
 
 If he had traveled far from her, how much farther 
 he had gone from his father who was tossing and groan 
 ing in his alcoholic sleep, gnashing his teeth, and mut 
 tering curses against Andrew Feher and the whole miser 
 able crew which had taunted him about his proud son 
 who would not go with him to the inn. 
 
 His mother with her far seeing eyes had divined it all 
 before he came home. She knew it as soon as those 
 letters came from the college, the letters which Mlada 
 Panka Christina read to her and insisted upon keeping. 
 She tried to lessen the distance by borrowing fine linen 
 sheets from Mlada Panka Christina, who put rosemary 
 between the feather beds " because rosemary smells of 
 
32 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 home." And did she not herself buy new cotton ticking 
 to covef the feather beds, finely striped ticking such as 
 the nobility used? And did she not scrub the house 
 from the rafters to the floor, and take the old sheepskin 
 coats which smelled so badly, and put them into the 
 woodshed ? 
 
 She was chiding herself because she had not thought 
 to buy Yanek a plate of white china; for she noticed 
 at supper how embarrassed he was when he dipped his 
 spoon into the common bowl, and how he spilled most 
 of the food on the way to his only half opened lips. He 
 scarcely touched the veal Petchenka she had prepared 
 with so much care, and which his father crunched with 
 such audible delight. She asked him then, why he did 
 not eat, and he had said the same thing; " for gladness, 
 Mamushka." Of course, her husband should not have 
 asked him to go to the inn with him to celebrate his 
 return. 
 
 How angry the old man was when he declined to go. 
 He felt himself cheated out of the great joy of showing 
 off his son before Andrew Feher, the Magyar coachman, 
 who always taunted the returned immigrants and told 
 them they were good for nothing but to do the Americans' 
 hard and dirty work. Stephan wanted to show him what 
 his son had become over in America, and he was going 
 to take him into the extra room, where the town digni 
 taries sat, and drink sweet wine though it was not a 
 holy day. He would show those proud, fat bellied 
 merchants, who never permitted a sheepskin coated 
 Slovak to enter that extra room, that a peasant's son could 
 become a gentleman if he had a chance. 
 
 Of course he did not understand what his son was 
 talking about, when he said he did not drink alcohol 
 because it took away a man's health and reason, and that 
 it was alcohol which had made the Jewish tavern keepers 
 
ROSEMARY AND FEATHER BEDS 33 
 
 rich, and had kept the Slovaks poor, and the patient 
 subjects of their Magyar over lords. 
 
 " Listen to little Yanek. He needn't try to teach his 
 father, even though he is a minister. Palenka ye sila," 
 whisky is strength, Stephan retorted. " Could he not 
 lift a three bushel bag of wheat as he always had done? 
 Let his son try it, his reverend son, who did not drink 
 palenka." Then he banged the door and went off alone 
 to the inn, to celebrate h : s son's return as every father 
 had a right to, when his boy came back from over the 
 seas. 
 
 It wasn't so much of a success, this one sided celebra 
 tion. Of course, they refused to serve him in the extra 
 room, though he ordered wine as if it were the first 
 day of Easter, and when he came out and sat down with 
 the common herd, Andrew Feher was there to taunt 
 him. There he was, fiercely mustached Magyar, eating 
 raw bacon with paprika an inch thick, and washing it 
 down with fine, sweet wine. When he had wiped his 
 long- mustaches and twirled them back into a needle 
 point, he began to ask whether Stephan's old horses were 
 not yet ready for the horse meat market in Budapest, 
 and where his reverend son was. " No wonder he did 
 not want to go to the inn with his Slovak father." 
 
 Yanek's mother was as restless that night as he was. 
 She realized how far her little boy had traveled away 
 from her when she saw him looking for a corner, where 
 unobserved he might prepare for bed. He went behind 
 the bake oven, where many a time as a boy he had 
 hidden himself, and from her corner she watched him un 
 dress. Not even the Pan himself, no not even the Foe 
 Ispan whose clothes she once washed when he was a 
 guest at the Pan's house, had such underwear of fine 
 wool, so closely fitting that it needed no strings to hold 
 it to his body. He put on a soft, silky suit, such as 
 
34 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 she had never seen, and then he took from his suitcase, 
 white handled brushes and delicate instruments of steel, 
 such as she had seen the watchmaker use, and when he 
 had washed himself he cleaned his finger nails as if he 
 were going to a ball given by the nobility. 
 
 She felt ashamed to undress herself before him, and 
 went out into the dark kitchen, where she gargled her 
 mouth so loudly that her son must hear her. She took 
 down her hair as if it were Sunday, and put on a clean 
 flax shirt, the best she had. When her husband came 
 home drunk, she felt humiliated and was offended at the 
 foulness of his breath. She did not respond to his 
 coarse caresses, and put her hand over his mouth when 
 he swore at her, and asked whether his reverend son 
 had weaned his wife from him. 
 
 She knew that Yanek was not sleeping; she could hear 
 him toss about, and again she asked : " Sinku muy, why 
 don't you sleep ? " And he made believe he was asleep, 
 and did not answer her. 
 
 " Yanetchku, my golden boy, do you know that our 
 Katchka has had another baby?" Still there was no 
 answer. 
 
 " Yanetchku muy, is it true that in America the 
 women do not work, but sit all day long in their rocking 
 chairs and eat candy ? " 
 
 Then he betrayed himself. " No, motherkin, who told 
 you such nonsense?" 
 
 ' The new Fraulein who has been in America, and 
 teaches all the Mlada Pankas how to sing. Such funny 
 sinking, sonny ; she makes their voices climb up and then 
 down again, and it sounds as if they were in pain. Old 
 Sultan does n^t like the Fraulein. He begins to howl 
 when he sees her coming, and when she sings he howls 
 the more and she grows very angry." 
 
 Again there was a long silence. 
 
ROSEMARY AND FEATHER BEDS 35 
 
 " I don't like the new Fraulein either," his mother be 
 gan again. " She says the American men have no man 
 ners, that they chew tobacco and spit it around as if they 
 were in a pig sty." 
 
 "Oh, motherkin, that isn't so either; now go to 
 sleep, dearest." 
 
 " Sinku muy, is it true that the American women do 
 not know how to cook? The Fraulein says that they 
 do all their housekeeping with a frying pan and a teapot. 
 You will never marry an Americanska, will you, sonny ? " 
 
 " No, motherkin, there is no danger," he replied, and 
 then turned over and breathed as deeply as he could to 
 make her think he was asleep. 
 
 " Sinetchku muy" came again from the bake oven. 
 
 " Motherkin, do go to sleep; you will need to be rested 
 to-morrow; " but she did not heed his protest. 
 
 "Sinku muy, do you know that the schoolmaster has 
 the consumption?" 
 
 Then he sat up in his bed with a start. " No, mother- 
 kin, it can't be true ! " 
 
 " Yes, it is, and he drinks malt and chocolate and 
 eats raw eggs, yet he coughs all the time and has to stay 
 in bed. He isn't for long." 
 
 His schoolmaster ill, his best friend, the man to whom 
 he owed his first glimpses into the larger world, and who 
 encouraged his going away ! " Oh, mother, it can't be 
 true! How did it happen?" 
 
 " You know, Yanetchku, that they sent him to Nyitra 
 to prison, because he would not teach the children the 
 Magyar language. He took cold from the dampness there 
 and he has been coughing ever since he came back." 
 
 Yanek buried his head in the pillow, as he began to 
 feel the pain of belonging to his own people from whom 
 the blessed America had almost weaned him. He had 
 heard about the forcible Magyarization of the Slovaks, 
 
36 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 but it was all so far away, so blessedly far; and now 
 it had touched him so closely that it could not come much 
 closer. 
 
 " Such things do not happen in America, my son, do 
 they?" 
 
 " No, motherkin, they do not. No one molests you 
 over there, no matter what language you speak." Then 
 he embraced his pillow and held it close, as if it were the 
 America which did not ask him about his race or speech; 
 just gave herself and all she had to give to him, to help 
 him be what he had become : A Slovak, yet an American, 
 and something more than an American, a human being, 
 unbranded, a child of God. Yes, the first thing he must 
 do in the morning must be to go and see the schoolmaster. 
 There was a moment of silence. Then his father groaned 
 in his sleep and again muttered curses on Andrew Feher 
 and all the Magyar crew which had taunted him about 
 his proud son. Yet in spite of everything Yanek felt 
 himself coming nearer, nearer home. Something drew 
 him back, away from America with its many alluring 
 comforts, its delicate, clean ways, and he began to be 
 ashamed of himself, and called himself an ingrate and 
 a cad. 
 
 His father's breathing became easier, and he himself 
 seemed to find the heavy, odorous air less disagreeable. 
 Reaching up, he felt the loaves of rye bread and with his 
 fingers traced in their hard crust the shape of a rooster, 
 his mother's mark, which each loaf bore so that it could 
 not be mistaken for the bread of her neighbors, who 
 took it to the same bake oven. The taste of fresh rye- 
 bread came to his lips, and he recalled that he used 
 to like the crust when it was crisp, and that his mother 
 always left him hers; then he was a little boy again, 
 running about in loose, flax trousers and a shirt of the 
 same material, hard and harsh and scratchy in shape, 
 
ROSEMARY AND FEATHER BEDS 37 
 
 but not in texture, something like his pajamas. Life 
 after all is the same everywhere, the difference is only in 
 the feel of it, he thought. 
 
 " My golden son," his mother said again, after a 
 while, "you are not sleeping." 
 
 " No, motherkin, how can I ? " And he left his bed 
 once more, and climbed again to the bake oven, and this 
 time he held his mother closer and kissed her full upon 
 the lips, which he had not done before, and her rough 
 shirt did not hurt him though he held her very close. 
 
 She told him about Dr. Makutchky who had been to 
 Russia and had come back with a strange religion, which 
 he had got from a man whose name she could not re 
 member. " And they say the doctor is crazy, for now 
 he will not take any money from the poor, for giving 
 medicine, and he does not go to church; but some of 
 the people come to his house for a meeting, and the 
 gendarmes have forbidden it. Nevertheless, they meet 
 somewhere, sometimes out in the vineyards, another time 
 in the Bashanyitza, and they say he will also be sent to 
 prison like the schoolmaster, and get the coughing sick 
 ness." 
 
 She told him how dear everything had become, the 
 coffee and the flour and the meat, more than twice as 
 dear as when he was at home. " The Pan says it is 
 due to the fact that the peasants go to America, but Dr. 
 Makutchky says it is due to the men's having to be 
 soldiers, and the government's building battleships, one 
 of which costs more than a peasant could earn, even if 
 he lived to be as old as Methuselah." 
 
 Then she told him more about their Katchka and the 
 grandchildren, and that young Baron Smertzing had 
 seduced certain girls with whom he had gone to school, 
 and that there was trouble in the Redlich household, due 
 to the German chemist, and that they were afraid Mlada 
 
38 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Panka Sophie also had the consumption like her mother. 
 
 She talked herself out in his arms and cried a little, 
 and wanted to be sure that he was not angry at his father, 
 and whether he would preach in the church ; and when he 
 thought her asleep, he slipped back into his bed; but 
 hardly had he covered himself with the feather bed which 
 had fallen to the floor, than his mother's voice was 
 heard again. 
 
 " Sinetchku, do you know that Mlada Panka Christina 
 is writing for the papers about us poor Slovaks ? " 
 
 No, he had not known that. 
 
 " And they say she will be arrested and sent to Nyitra 
 to prison and get the coughing sickness." 
 
 At that his heart began to beat heavily and he did 
 not say anything in reply. For the last time, in a very 
 sleepy voice his mother asked, " Are you asleep, my 
 golden son? " And when he replied that he was not, she 
 said:) 
 
 ;t The Mlada Panka Christina lent me the sheets for 
 your bed and she put sprigs of rosemary between them." 
 
 Then strange to say, the air in the room grew much 
 sweeter, and he felt guiltily for the fragrant twigs, and 
 when he held them in his hand, America seemed farther 
 away and his home ever so much nearer than when the 
 train had brought him only a few hours before. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR: THE PAN'S DOMAIN 
 
 WHEN Yanek woke from his short but refreshing 
 sleep, he seemed to be still on board ship, for he 
 saw the floor swaying; but as the bed was so much 
 larger, he began gradually to realize that he was on land, 
 but where ? Yes, it was clear to him now. There to the 
 right was the door leading into the dormitory hall, 
 straight ahead of him the sitting room which he shared 
 with his chum, and through the windows he could see the 
 waving elms. The windows however seemed smaller, 
 the ceiling lower, and the trees were shrinking before his 
 very eyes! What stunted, ugly things they had become 
 overnight ! 
 
 Evidently he was dreaming or waking from a dream 
 for he heard a voice, a dear, familiar voice, chanting 
 " Varila, Mishitschka Kashitshku" the Slovak version 
 of "This little pig went to market/' and accompanying 
 the song, the vigorous movement of a brush. 
 
 He sat up in his bed with a start, and there in the 
 next room was his mother. The first thing he noticed 
 was that she was barefoot and that she wore a gayly 
 colored, short skirt which showed her muscular calves 
 nearly to the knees. She was alternately petting and 
 brushing his shoe, and chanting to it as she used to chant 
 to him when she wakened him by playing with his toes. 
 
 He saw her looking curiously at the broad, strangely 
 shaped sole, at the yellow thread with which it was 
 stitched, but she kept on brushing and fondling it until 
 his strong arms held her and he took up the simple chant : 
 " A little mouse cooked some porridge and she gave some 
 to this one," and he kissed her on one cheek, " and some 
 
 39 
 
40 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 to that one," and he kissed her on the other cheek, " and 
 to this one she gave nothing," and with that he snatched 
 the shoe from her hand, saying that in America the 
 ladies did not blacken the gentlemen's shoes. 
 
 So this was not the ship on which he had spent nine 
 rather miserable days, or his dormitory where he had 
 been so happy. What had seemed to him the door into 
 the hall, was the bake oven, and the sitting room was the 
 kitchen, and the shrunken elm trees were brutally trimmed 
 acacia trees. Of course, there was no shower bath, 
 and no hot water, for this was not America, but a remote 
 corner of Slovakland, from which he had gone away 
 as the Pan's stable boy and had returned a Bachelor of 
 Arts and Divinity and an ordained Protestant minister, 
 fledged at a time when Evangelical clergymen were dis 
 carding their Prince Albert coats and getting rid of 
 the appearance, if not of the odor of sanctity, and finally 
 of the last symbol of their holy calling, the white string 
 tie. 
 
 He returned to his home more Anglo-Saxon than 
 Slav, more human than either, bearing in his face the 
 marks of the new environment, and of a deep, consuming 
 passion. 
 
 The two years he spent on the breakers of a coal mine 
 in Pennsylvania might have been responsible for the fact 
 that he had not grown so tall as those who knew him, 
 expected, but there were desirable changes in his face. 
 The heavy Slavic features bore a finer mold, and were 
 enlivened by a pair of lustrous brown eyes which had 
 lost the look of suspicion so common among his kind; 
 there was something of the mystic around his thin nose 
 and sensitive lips, but America had set his jaw rather 
 firmly, and strengthened his chin. 
 
 He was a mystic, one who had learned to find his way 
 not only to God, but also to the hearts of men. He looked 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 41 
 
 like a man who could govern by his affections rather than 
 by his will, and indeed children and dogs went to him 
 instinctively. When a baby remained unresponsive to 
 his caresses or a dog kept on barking at him, he searched 
 his soul for uncleanness or selfishness. 
 
 For more than four years he had stood expectantly at 
 the rim of the universe waiting for the coming of the 
 Kingdom of God for which he had been taught to work 
 and pray, and which he saw in the near distance, as a 
 sort of glorified United States of America, while the 
 "bride adorned for her bridegroom descending from 
 Heaven " was a deified Columbia. From this elevated 
 vantage ground, in danger of being spoiled by being 
 petted as a splendid example of the converted foreigner, 
 and equipped to be a messenger of light to his people, 
 he had stepped suddenly into the Tohu Vavohu of the 
 Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, created by a decadent 
 dynasty and by the clashing national ambitions and ideals 
 of her unassimilated peoples. 
 
 It was dark when he had arrived in Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky's domain the night before, and he was eager 
 to see again his little world which he had left ten years 
 before. The houses or rather a succession of houses lean 
 ing against one another, straggling along irregularly from 
 the street down to the river, were all alike, tinted in the 
 same yellowish color which was regularly renewed before 
 Easter. Facing the street was the Pan's residence two 
 stories high, the upper story being reached from the 
 garden by a rather imposing flight of stone steps which 
 he had so often ascended for the pleasure of sliding down 
 the smooth balustrade. 
 
 Adjoining the Pan's house were the servants' quarters, 
 then came the stables, the coachman's and gardner's 
 houses, and the hospice, as it was called, where super 
 annuated servants were sheltered, with such human 
 
42 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 wreckage as could not be cared for by the town. It may 
 have been the sight of these helpless people and the living 
 so near them in his youth which had given him the keen 
 sociological sense which he possessed. 
 
 All the way from the Pan's kitchen down to the river 
 ran a shallow ditch, and no remembrance of the time 
 when he waded in it as a boy could make it smell sweet 
 this morning as he stepped out into the Pan's domain. 
 On the steps of the hospice sat a little girl who rose at 
 his approach, lifting her long arms as if she were going 
 to fly through space, and then dropping them suddenly. 
 Over her face flashed a gleam of light, as if it were strug 
 gling against the darkness which held her mind in thrall ; 
 but in an instant it was gone, leaving her face ashen gray 
 and dull. She tried to speak but only inarticulate sounds 
 escaped her lips. 
 
 Leaning against one of the acach trees, Yanek saw 
 Pepo, the idiot, looking as if he had never moved from 
 his favorite lounging place. He had been left on the 
 town, an illegitimate child, and the town not knowing 
 what to do with him, nor caring much, let him drift 
 about until very naturally he came into the Pan's hospice. 
 Seeing Pepo and the imbecile child, Yanek remembered 
 what had happened; for they talked about such things 
 rather freely in Hraszova. 
 
 There was a young housemaid of the Pan's, an igno 
 rant, very homely, coarse girl, Marisha by name. The 
 boys always passed her by; none of them came to her 
 window at night, and she was never asked to dance, 
 although she stood for hours expectant, at the inn. 
 Yet some one must have desired her, and when they asked 
 her who was the father of the expected child, she lied 
 to them; but when the boys she accused, indignantly 
 denied, and threatened her, she named Pepo, and the 
 town fairly shook from laughter. 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 43 
 
 So this wretched little girl was Pepo's and Marisha's! 
 He tried to caress her but she spat at him, hissing like a 
 snake. 
 
 Pepo turned around and smiled in his bland way, and 
 to Yanek's greeting he replied : " Pepo is waiting for 
 breakfast. First prayers, then breakfast. Wish it were 
 breakfast first; " and he laughed a loud, hollow laugh. 
 Pepo, besides being an idiot was naturally thievish, like 
 a starling or a mountain rat, and wherever anything was 
 missing, Pepo was caught and beaten, whether he was the 
 culprit or not. 
 
 Just then Marisha came out of the stable, the only 
 object Yanek had thus far seen which seemed not to 
 have diminished. Robust as a man, and grown coarser 
 with the years, an evil tongue in her head always, she 
 dropped the milk pails at seeing him, put her arms akimbo 
 and scrutinized the stranger. She replied to his pious 
 greeting, after calling upon the devil once or twice, then 
 wondered whether this could be the coachman's son 
 whose face she had slapped many a time because he had 
 walked with his muddy boots over the clean kitchen floor. 
 When he admitted laughingly that he was the identical 
 boy, she asked what kind of minister he was anyway, 
 walking about in such ordinary clothes. " No doubt you 
 are a Salvesh." Everything which was not of the con 
 ventional, religious type and which came from America 
 was supposed to belong to the Salvation Army. "Did 
 you bring me anything from America?" she demanded, 
 and when nothing in the way of a present was forthcom 
 ing, with an air of contempt, she strode into the kitchen. 
 
 In Slovakland servants were hired by the year, from 
 All Souls' day till that solemn day came around again; 
 but at the Pan's they stayed till they were married, and 
 many of them till they became a part of the vast throng 
 which, on that holy day, revisited the earth. 
 
44 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Yanek stepped into the stable and there he was 
 greeted by a friendly " Yak sa mayu." There stood 
 Martzin Stefechek, his boyhood's friend, grooming the 
 horses as his father, one-eyed Stefechek, had groomed 
 them before him. The meeting was spoiled, however, by 
 Martzin' s reference to their predatory habits when they 
 were boys, out there in the Pan's garden. " How won 
 derful is the Divine Providence which can make out of a 
 little apple thief a minister!" Worst of all he recalled 
 to Yanek's mind one of the sins which he had forgotten : 
 How, on a fair day, they had gone together to the honey- 
 cake seller's booth and being tempted by the highly col 
 ored sweets had stolen a honeycake heart and eaten it. 
 The fact that Martzin did the actual pilfering and had 
 given Yanek the smaller half of the stolen heart, did not 
 make him feel any more comfortable, though he recalled 
 those mitigating circumstances. 
 
 : * You know," Martzin continued, " I have been at it 
 ever since, only now I steal girls' hearts," and he began 
 telling how many Marishas and Katyushkas had fallen a 
 prey to his lust, when most fortunately Stephan ap 
 peared, and overhearing the conversation, told Martzin 
 to keep his foul mouth shut, or he would send him to the 
 devil before his appointed time. 
 
 Father and son shook hands, and in the lingering 
 clasp there were both asking and granting forgiveness. 
 He warned his son not to go too far away, for after 
 prayers at the Pan's there would be breakfast, and the 
 old woman was cooking coffee as if it were Sunday, and 
 the baker's boy was to bring white rolls; yes, indeed, 
 they were going to live high in his honor. 
 
 As Yanek passed the Pan's house he involuntarily 
 looked up to the second story, and as quickly looked 
 away, for he thought he saw the shutters moved by a 
 woman's hand, and he caught a glimpse of a bit of lace 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 45 
 
 hanging from a shapely arm, which he saw in a purely 
 subconscious way, for he was thinking deeply. 
 
 Confused as he often had been by his teachers, who 
 had made his small simple world so complex and so 
 incomprehensively large, his knowledge of the laws which 
 shackle the Universe caused him to doubt special in 
 terventions of Providence, yet in common with most 
 mortals, upon whom good fortune has smiled, he believed 
 in a guiding Providence as far as he personally was con 
 cerned. How could he doubt that, after his conversation 
 with Martzin? Might not he have been just a stable 
 hand, and his moral outlook as tainted and drear? Why, 
 among all the boys he recalled, should he have been 
 saved from that deadening toil in the mines, and led 
 where he did not know a way existed? Who else but 
 God was leading him, what else but the Divine Provi 
 dence ? 
 
 He was thinking thus as he looked up and down the 
 street, at the row of straw thatched isbas, their adobe 
 walls leaning in or out, alone, breaking the monotonous 
 line. Besides the Pan's, there were just two houses of 
 two stories: Baron Smertzing's cast ell, and the Redlich 
 house, to which the second story had been added only 
 recently. 
 
 Had he been in the United States he would have said 
 that the town was booming; for there were several new 
 houses, and a strip of cement walk had been wedged in 
 between the cobble stones on which he had so often 
 stubbed his toes and skinned his ankles. There was the 
 tall chimney of the sugar refinery, and a whole cluster 
 of buildings where Moritz Redlich's distillery, a very 
 modest structure, stood, when he last looked down this 
 same street. 
 
 Huge carts, drawn by white oxen, came past him, 
 going out to the beet fields, the patient, big horned beasts 
 
46 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 needing no goad to make them keep their leisurely pace. 
 The carts were full of the " beeters," strangers to him, 
 Kopany it chary, or mountaineers, the poorest of the 
 Slovaks. Driven by their Asiatic conquerors into the 
 unfertile mountain regions, they were now the benefici 
 aries of the movement to America. They took the places 
 of those whom the mines and steel furnaces had lured 
 away by the high wages paid. These had no land to 
 sell to the Sugar Trust, no money to pay the price of the 
 ticket to America, and perhaps no enterprise to venture 
 across the sea. 
 
 Behind the carts came boys and girls recruited for the 
 task. They were singing as they marched though they 
 would work till sunset and had not much else than cab 
 bage soup and hard rye bread in their dinner pails. 
 
 At the end of the day's work they would sleep in the 
 barracks built for them, all of them together in those 
 low, unlighted, unaired barracks. Yet they were sing 
 ing their solemn tunes, weird records of bygone, almost 
 forgotten, national struggles, and keeping step to their 
 music. It was their song which made Yanek realize how 
 related he was to these people, and something in him 
 began to sing though he did not open his lips, and he kept 
 stejf with them though his feet did not move. 
 
 He greeted the workers with the pious Slovak saluta 
 tion: " Pomohiy warn Pan Boch," may God help you; 
 to which they replied in unison, interrupting their song, 
 " May God grant it." Thus they marched on, and the 
 cloud of dust rising beneath their feet, turned to pure 
 gold in the young sunlight. 
 
 The marching beeters and the rattling carts were wak 
 ing the town. Curling smoke rose above the thatched 
 roofs, half awake apprentices began removing the shut 
 ters from the shop windows, whose heavy bars and strong 
 locks did not indicate danger from burglars; for the 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 47 
 
 Slovaks are too honest and not sufficiently daring for that 
 form of thieving; but these precautions are an index to 
 the pervading feeling of suspicion characteristic of this 
 part of Europe. To the man just back from America it 
 seemed in such striking contrast to that country, where 
 there was more danger but infinitely less precaution. 
 
 Peasant women were coming from the neighboring 
 villages bringing their surplus stores to market, the cut 
 of their waistcoats and the flowered pattern of their 
 calico skirts marking them as from this village or that, 
 from the mountains or the plains; while the style of their 
 headcovering not only placed them geographically, but 
 distinguished the married women from the maidens. He 
 could greet them as if they were old acquaintances. 
 " Yak sa mate, babushka Hlubutelka." How are you, 
 Grandmotherkin from Hluba ? " So, so, thank God, 
 Mlady Panka." 
 
 He began to realize as they passed him with their 
 friendly greeting that while his people might be less 
 democratic than the Americans, they were, after all, more 
 fraternal. In spite of the rumble of the now distant 
 carts and the clatter of the women's boots with their iron 
 heels beating time to their rhythmic, swaying walk, he 
 heard a familiar cough, and there was Moritz Redlich, 
 going to the distillery, early as always, to unlock the 
 office, talking to himself and gesticulating as usual. 
 
 No doubt he had much to say to himself, for indeed 
 the world for him was growing worse every day, with 
 this building of a brewery which his sons had begun 
 against his wish, the organization of a stock company 
 in which he had no faith, and the use of beet tops instead 
 of plums in the making of brandy; and what made his 
 world worse than all these, his domestic unhappiness. 
 He had nearly passed by the Pan's gate and had returned 
 Yanek's greeting mechanically when, struck by the un- 
 
48 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 familiarity of the voice, he turned involuntarily and 
 looked into the smiling face of Yanek Hruby. 
 
 " Perhaps it is a fine morning," he replied dubiously, 
 "but how are things in America, fine? Of course they 
 are fine," and with that he walked close to the young 
 man and took him by the lapel of his coat. " See here, 
 Yanek, I want you to tell me if there is anything in 
 America which is not fine. Every time I have a letter 
 from my brothers they say it is fine, even though they 
 ask me to lend them money. When a man comes back 
 from over there smelling of carbolic acid like the cholera, 
 with his face dried up like a prune and you say * How are 
 you?' he will say 'Fine/ I suppose over there when 
 they hang a man, and ask him how he feels, he will say 
 ' Fine/ Here we all groan like those carts and pull our 
 load as reluctantly as those dumb oxen pull theirs." 
 
 He did not wait for an answer, for indeed every mo 
 ment was precious, but removing his hand from Yanek's 
 coat and laying it on his shoulder, he continued, " When 
 you were a boy, you were kind to Sophie. She told me 
 about it last night. Come to see us," and with that he 
 renewed his conversation with himself, as he walked, ges 
 ticulating, toward the distillery. 
 
 Yanek's professor of Old Testament Literature had 
 glorified for him the Hebrew race, and as he saw it now 
 in the light of the heroic figures of the prophets of 
 Israel, old man Redlich as he passed on seemed to him 
 not unlike Jeremiah, whose tears almost quenched the 
 Divine fire burning within him. 
 
 He was about to return home, remembering his father's 
 admonition, or perhaps for another reason more or less 
 connected with prayers at the Pan's house, when he 
 caught a familiar odor, a mixture of sulphur matches 
 and Turkish tobacco. Without turning he knew who was 
 near; for had he not always gone to the " Tabac Traffic 3 ' 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 49 
 
 to buy that same Turkish tobacco for the Pan? It cost 
 twenty-three heller a package, and sometimes, not often, 
 the Pan gave him twenty-four, the extra one being for 
 candy. It was indeed the Pan approaching, smoking 
 his freshly lighted Dresdenska. Yanek greeted him as 
 deferentially as he used to; for he was naturally polite 
 and had never acquired the brusque manner which cer 
 tain Americans affected. That pleased the Pan im 
 mensely, for " all those Slovaks come back boors," he 
 used to say. He also had questions to ask. " Wasn't 
 America so full of people now that the peasants could 
 stay at home ? And did Yanek not think that emigration 
 was bad for them, that it spoiled them, and wasn't it 
 sugar beets which caused them to leave home, and wasn't 
 the world growing worse?" He fired the questions at 
 him in rapid succession, like pistol shots, not even in 
 quiring after his health, or replying to his greeting. 
 
 When to each query he received a polite and negative 
 reply, he emptied his pipe nervously, knocking the pre 
 cious Dresdenska carefully against his boot heel to empty 
 it, then filled it again. 
 
 When Yanek, eager to change the conversation, told 
 the Pan that he was delighted to see him looking so 
 hale and hearty in spite of his years, and using the same 
 tobacco he used to fetch for him, he replied curtly that 
 he was not hale and hearty, that he had the rheumatism, 
 and that the tobacco was not the same; it was poorer in 
 quality; everything was becoming poorer and dearer. 
 That damned emigration and the sugar beets did it, and 
 the tobacco had a new name, a Magyar name, everything 
 was Magyarized, even the tobacco, things were going 
 that way. Yes indeed, the world was growing worse ! " 
 Then he puffed away silently at his relighted pipe. 
 
 He was thinking of a letter he had received from the 
 Minister of the Interior, in which that dignitary made 
 
50 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 him the tempting offer of a baronetcy. In consideration 
 of his contribution to the well being of the Magyar 
 Orszag, the Hungarian Government wished to bestow 
 upon him the title of Baron. His name was to be slightly 
 changed; the last syllable was to be dropped, and he 
 would henceforth be Baron Schenitch. 
 
 Hm ! he thought; he did not care for a title, he felt 
 himself as noble as any Baron; but then, there were the 
 daughters to be considered. For their sake he should like 
 to accept the offer. But that last syllable ! Why, by the 
 throne of the Almighty, did they want to mutilate his 
 name? Anyway it was time for prayers, and Christina 
 had sent him to fetch Yanek to join the household in its 
 morning devotions. 
 
 As he walked beside the Pan, up the stone steps, past 
 the servants, past Martzin the stable boy, all of whom 
 stood respectfully aside for their superiors, he saw him 
 self in his coarse linen suit, smelling of the stable, stand 
 ing where the others now stood, and his mind took up the 
 thought which had filled it that morning. Perhaps it was 
 the still uncontrolled pride in his heart which impelled 
 him in all humility to stretch out his hand to the servants 
 he had not yet greeted. Involuntarily, he took the hand 
 of the little idiotic child who now seemed friendly and 
 led her along, through the hallway and past the kitchen 
 with its savory odors. Then the door of the big room 
 opened and Christina came to greet him. As he clasped 
 her hand and felt its warm pressure, and as he looked 
 into her face, matured not only by years but by a strong 
 faith, and the burdens that faith had brought upon her; 
 and as the sight of her stirred no base passion within 
 him but fanned to flame some holy aspiration in his soul, 
 the thought of the Divine leading again took possession 
 of him. 
 
 Nothing was changed in that familiar room, the se- 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 51 
 
 verity of its furnishing lightened by colorful Slovak 
 embroidery. In one corner stood the old fashioned piano, 
 and beside the large walnut table in the center of the 
 room, the Pan's big chair. The wooden bench for the 
 servants was by the tall clock with its brass weights, 
 which were where they always were at this time of day, 
 and on the wall opposite hung a lithograph picture of 
 Calvin. The only modern object in the room was a life 
 sized portrait of Madam Szenitzky, not as he knew her, 
 but as she was when she came, a bride, to the Pan's 
 domain. 
 
 Yanek did not dare look at Christina because opposite 
 him sat her younger sister, Sonya, her face showing her 
 to be the same old mischief. " She should have been 
 a boy," the Pan always said with a sigh. When she met 
 the young minister that morning she tried to kiss his 
 hand in mock reverence, and when he would not let her, 
 she kissed him on the cheek. " For ministers have to be 
 kissed," she said with a roguish smile, in answer to her 
 father's stern rebuke. 
 
 Yanek looked at the portrait on the wall. The fine, 
 high forehead was like Christina's, who wore her hair 
 the same way; the eyes were rather farther apart than 
 Christina's, but hers seemed a little larger, the nose and 
 
 mouth He was interrupted in his observations by 
 
 the Pan's voice announcing the morning hymn, a quaint, 
 slow, solemn measure. Yanek sang it with them, for he 
 loved to sing, and had a remarkably good tenor voice. 
 The first verse, however, was nearly spoiled for them, for 
 he sang the tenor part, and the servants, accustomed to 
 singing the melody, tried to follow him rather than 
 Sonya, who always led them in a rather subdued soprano. 
 She began to laugh as she always did on the slightest 
 provocation, and the maids began to giggle; until the 
 Pan knocked on the table with his Dresdenska, which 
 
52 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 brought them to order. When the hymn was sung, the 
 Pan took the heavy Bible from the table and handed it 
 to Yanek without a word. 
 
 This then was to be the beginning of his ministry. He 
 bowed his head for a moment before opening the huge 
 brass clasps of The Book, not knowing what to read ; but 
 as it opened, his eyes fell upon the sixteenth chapter of 
 Matthew. The Pan seemed not to be pleased by his read 
 ing, although he read with feeling and insight into the 
 meaning of the words. The Bible, he felt, should be read 
 like the Holy Book it was. 
 
 Marisha nudged her neighbor and whispered " He is a 
 Salvesh," and the maid whispered it with a nudge to 
 the next one, and the Pan knocked on the table again; 
 but not before the word had been passed around. 
 
 However, he began to be interested as the reading 
 proceeded and even the servants looked subdued and 
 awed, when Yanek read about Jesus turning to the 
 tempting Peter and saying " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 Marisha said afterwards that she thought the devil was 
 in the very same room, where they were sitting. How 
 commandingly and yet enticingly Yanek read : " If any 
 man would come after me let him deny himself, and take 
 up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save 
 his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for 
 my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he 
 shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? or what 
 shall a man give in exchange for his soul? " 
 
 They all stood to pray, and later Sonya reported to 
 Christina that their father was all the while turning his 
 Dresdenska up and down, as if he were undecided what 
 to do next, and that Marisha was wiping her eyes as if 
 she had been peeling onions. Of course she was scolded 
 by her sister for looking around during prayers, and re 
 plied that she " couldn't help it, His Reverence was so 
 
THE PAN'S DOMAIN 53 
 
 good to look at, though evidently he did not know how 
 to kiss a girl." 
 
 What pleased Yanek most, as they left the room, was 
 not that the Pan told him he would ask the minister to 
 invite him to preach some Sunday, not that Marisha 
 looked at him more kindly, or that his father's and 
 mother's faces glowed with pride; not even that Chris 
 tina thanked him for the prayer. What pleased him most 
 was, that the idiotic child took hold of his hand and 
 passed out with him and clung to him until they reached 
 the kitchen, where her breakfast awaited her. 
 
 After prayers the Pan restlessly paced the floor still 
 turning his Dresdenska up and down; finally he went to 
 his desk and wrote a letter. He wrote it on one of the 
 large, official looking sheets of paper which he always 
 used when the letter was of importance. This is what 
 he wrote : 
 
 " Your Excellency, 
 
 I have received your gracious letter offering me a 
 Baronetcy in consideration of the services I am supposed 
 to have rendered the State. I have noticed that when you 
 made that same offer to rich Jews, they were asked to con 
 tribute to the royal treasury a part of their wealth. Had 
 you asked me a similar price I might have been tempted 
 to accept your offer ; for I am a vain and sinful man. But 
 you are asking me for something which seems to you very 
 trivial, the dropping of a Slavic suffix from my name, and 
 a change in its spelling ; in short you are asking me to for 
 feit my historic inheritance, to sell my " birthright for a 
 mess of pottage," to cut myself loose from my people who, 
 though poor and ignorant, are my people nevertheless. 
 Permit me to request your excellency to open the Holy 
 Bible at the sixteenth chapter of Matthew and the twenty- 
 sixth verse where you will find my answer. 
 
 Yours most sincerely, and as long as I live, 
 
 Szenitzky." 
 
54 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 The last syllable was underscored. 
 
 When he showed the letter to his children, Sonya told 
 him he was a " horrid old bear," but she would forgive 
 him for she intended to get married anyway, and she 
 would surely marry a Baron, unless and she smiled mis 
 chievously at her sister unless she married a minister. 
 Christina kissed her father on both cheeks and said: 
 " The Lord has led you." When she told Yanek what 
 had happened, it further confirmed him in his faith in 
 the Divine Providence. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE: PLUM BRANDY 
 
 THUS far the Redlich sons had spared the old dis 
 tillery, but all around it new buildings had risen, 
 in quick succession. First the brewery, followed by the 
 malt house, a yeast factory and a big engine room. Men 
 acingly tall, they looked down upon the original, small 
 gray structure, and it seemed to shrink daily as their 
 walls towered above it. 
 
 Moritz Redlich shrank with it, for the little place was 
 part of him, and when they pulled out the old wooden 
 vats, they were tearing at his very heart. Just at this 
 time the vats would have been filled with the rich, blue 
 plums, which the peasants would shovel in, laughing and 
 singing while at their task. They never watched Moritz 
 Redlich weigh the fruit, and when he said : " Bratre, you 
 have one hundred killo of plums/' they knew that it was 
 a hundred and no more. 
 
 When they came into the office for their pay he would 
 treat them to his oldest and finest brandy, and they 
 would always say : " Na Zdrcev " and drink to his health ; 
 and when they had wiped their mouths on the backs of 
 their hands they would smack their lips and declare that 
 his slivovitz was getting better every year. 
 
 Now alas! the yard was crowded by foreign work 
 men. Italians for the stone work, Bohemian bricklayers, 
 German machinists, and Slovaks from a distant comitat 
 who went about their work sullenly and did not drink to 
 his health when, midway between each working period, 
 the brandy was passed. 
 
 Just this morning one of those Americanized Slovaks 
 was haranguing them while they were at their work. He 
 called them stupid fools, who worked as underlings in a 
 
 56 
 
56 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 land where they ought to be masters. " Over in America 
 it is fine," and he opened his cloth coat and showed them 
 his gold watch and chain, and his fountain pen, and he 
 jingled the silver dollars in his pocket. " In America 
 when the boss would not pay me three dollars a day I 
 told him to go to Hell and I walked off to another job. 
 
 "You are a pack of fools! Who do you think will 
 pay for this brewery but you, who will pay for those 
 copper stills and for that big smokestack, you poor 
 fools ? " He threw away a generous cigar stump which 
 a dozen hands were ready to pick up, and walked off. 
 
 Moritz Redlich listened and shook his head and talked 
 to himself; not because he had anything to say to himself 
 but because he was trying to drive away the thoughts 
 which trooped through his brain like wild horses, and 
 which he could not control. 
 
 :t Yes, it is fine in America," he was saying. " Look 
 at my fine watch, look at my fine clothes, look at my 
 fountain pen! " His lips kept repeating the words me 
 chanically, while through his brain ran the last quarrels 
 with his sons. 
 
 " Money," he had said, " of course you must have 
 money ! But whose money are you getting? The money 
 of widows and orphans, and all they get in return is 
 pieces of colored paper which you call stock; and sup 
 pose you can't compete with the Bohemian breweries, 
 and suppose your yeast doesn't keep, and suppose the 
 brandy is rank, and the peasants will not drink it, as they 
 ought not; how will you pay the money back? " 
 
 Of course they told him he was an old fogy and 
 that all modern business is done on credit. And did not 
 they get the best possible man as chemist and manager, 
 and did they not import a brewer from Bohemia, and 
 were they not as sure as any one could be, that they 
 would make piles of money? 
 
PLUM BRANDY 57 
 
 "And what of it, if you do make the money?" and 
 the reply repeated itself a dozen times in his mind. 
 " Have I not always made enough, and did I not always 
 make it honestly? Have you ever wanted for anything, 
 did I not send you to school and did I not support my 
 sister's children, and did I not help my brothers in 
 America?" Then he began talking to himself again 
 about how fine everything was in America. 
 
 Yet another thought came and persisted, and he 
 repeated it again and again: " I wish to God I had never 
 laid eyes on that chemist. It is he who has put this grand 
 idea into their heads, it is he who is making them 
 dishonest, and who is I shouldn't say it I know I 
 shouldn't say it it is he who is breaking up my home! 
 Are you blind, my boys, are you blind? " 
 
 Yes, indeed they were blind; blind to their father's 
 grief. What they saw was the fact that they wanted 
 capital, not because they wanted money, but because 
 capital would raise them into a new class of privileged 
 citizens. A million crowns of capital and they would 
 be manufacturers on a grand scale, and that would in 
 crease their vote threefold. 
 
 " Just think, father, what that will mean, when it 
 comes to the election of the district judge, or of a mem 
 ber of parliament. Think of the prestige, the prestige! 
 Some day, who knows, you might receive a title, and 
 how wonderful that would be ! " 
 
 Into what a rage he flew, as he shrieked : " Title ! Title ! 
 A title, because you have borrowed poor people's money ! 
 
 A title because " He tried to divert his thoughts: 
 
 " In America it is fine," he said to himself again, and he 
 buttoned and unbuttoned his coat as he saw the man 
 doing, who harangued the workers. But his thoughts 
 persisted in coming back and drowning his prattle. 
 
 " Title ! Title ! Title ! Haven't I given you a good 
 
58 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 name? Is there any Jew around here who has a better 
 name than mine? Am I not respected because I am 
 Moritz Redlich and have made plum brandy in an honest 
 fashion, and have dealt honestly with my customers, and 
 have been charitable toward the poor? 
 
 "What do you say? That they call you Jews and 
 won't take you into their Casino and won't let you dance 
 with their women? Do you think you would be any 
 thing else to them than Jews if you were called Herr 
 von Redlich? A title won't change the shape of your 
 noses! A title won't take the crook out of your backs, 
 put there by your honest ancestors who had to bear the 
 heavy burdens of the exile! Title! Title! Title! " he 
 repeated and he flew into a rage and beat his desk so 
 that the dust from it rose in thick clouds, and he bit his 
 lips till he could taste the sweet, warm blood. When the 
 paroxysm of wrath had spent itself he began prattling 
 again about America. " Look at my fine watch, and at 
 my fine fountain pen! Yes, in America it is all fine, 
 fine!" 
 
 He always coughed harder when he became excited, 
 but this time it was worse than ever, and long after the 
 irritation in his throat had ceased, he was still cough 
 ing, for Herr Walter Ritter, the chemist and manager, 
 had entered the office. The old man did not want to 
 see him, and did not want to talk to him. " God knows," 
 he soliloquized, "I never hated a single human being; 
 but I hate that man. I hate the very sight of him." 
 
 " Is the Herr Sandor in? " Herr Ritter asked. 
 
 " No, he is not. What do you want? " 
 
 " The new sign has come from Budapest and I want 
 to consult with the Herr Sandor about putting it up." 
 
 " A new sign, who has ordered a new sign ? I did not 
 want a new sign, the old one is good enough," and he 
 began to cough again. 
 
PLUM BRANDY 59 
 
 Yes, that was one of the things they had quarreled 
 about, he and his sons. The old firm was no more, and 
 now they had ordered a sign to go the whole length of 
 the building. In huge gold letters it was to be proclaimed 
 to the world that the old firm of Moritz Redlich was no 
 more, and that the Hungarian National Distilling and 
 Brewing Company had taken its place ; and the sign was 
 to be in the Magyar language of course. 
 
 " Aber, Herr Redlich, don't get excited! " Herr Ritter 
 exclaimed. " I shall wait till the Herr Sandor comes 
 back." 
 
 How glad Moritz Redlich was that he went away, for 
 he hated him. He hated his broad head, his florid face, 
 his keen, greenish gray, bespectacled eyes, his Berlineze 
 German, the way he rolled his r's in his throat, the sub 
 missive way in which he talked to his sons, his flatteries 
 of his wife; and now that man came talking to him 
 about a new sign I 
 
 At last the Herr Sandor came, the president of the 
 new company. If one had met him with other Hunga 
 rians he would not have singled him out as a Jew; for 
 he shared with his race that peculiar ability to adjust 
 himself to his environment. His nose was not obtru 
 sively Semitic, and his eyes though dark had none of 
 the dreamy look of his race; nor were they shrewd; the 
 fire in them was of the love of life, awakened by his 
 Magyar associates. He had lived and loved as they had, 
 he had served a year as officer volunteer in the army, and 
 walked erect although he was naturally stoop shouldered. 
 His mustaches were carefully trained, and he dressed 
 faultlessly. 
 
 He had married a wealthy Jewess, from a home in 
 which Judaism was only a memory and not a pleasant 
 one, and they agreed that their home was to be free from 
 the yoke of the ritual, and that should they have children 
 
60 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they should be shielded from the stigma of Judaism. 
 They never went to the synagogue, not even on the great 
 holy days. The net result was, that they were socially 
 isolated; for while the Gentile men associated with him 
 and occasionally visited him, especially when there was 
 a prospect of something good to eat, the women never 
 called on his wife or invited her to their homes. 
 
 When he entered the office the old man was walking 
 up and down, coughing nervously and gesticulating. 
 Sandor was late, very late ; but he had good news for his 
 father. He and Rosa were very happy over the birth of 
 a boy, that morning. The old man embraced his son, 
 and congratulated him. His cough subsided. Of course 
 it was better at such news. A new Redlich, his first 
 grandson ! " May God grant it will not be the last ! " 
 
 " Let me see," he said, " a week from to-day will be the 
 circumcision, and all the relatives must be invited. I 
 am thankful to God that I have lived to see this day. I 
 have had many troubles, but an old man must have them, 
 that is inevitable; but now I shall be happy in the hap 
 piness of my son. Even here in Hungary things are 
 'fine* when a grandson is born! Think of it, a grand 
 son ! " and he rubbed his hands, and something like a 
 smile flitted across his face. " It's fine ! " he repeated 
 over and over again. 
 
 His son did not reply to his suggestion about the cir 
 cumcision, for he had something on his mind which he 
 feared might hurt his father; so he would not tell him till 
 he must. He went to his desk, and opened his letters 
 while his father continued rubbing his hands and say 
 ing how " fine " it was that he had a grandson. He did 
 not disturb his son for a while, then he began to cough. 
 " Sandor," he said at last, " I have been thinking that 
 I should go to see the Rabbi and tell him about it, and I 
 want to send for your Uncle David to come and preside 
 
PLUM BRANDY 61 
 
 at the circumcision. It will please the old man for you 
 know to a pious man that is one of the steps to Heaven 
 to make a Jew out of a little child. 
 
 "And you know whom I am going to invite? Pan 
 Yan Szenitzky and the priest. They were present at the 
 feast of circumcision when you were a baby." He 
 laughed. " And when they heard you squeal, Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky laughed and said : * He has got a grand voice ; ' 
 but Father Kalman didn't laugh at all. He said : * It 
 hurts to be a Jew, and it hurts from the beginning to the 
 end,' and then he shook his head. You see I will have to 
 invite them. I know Rosa won't object and neither will 
 you. You like the Goyim." 
 
 Sandor had dropped the letters, and in a voice which 
 was both tender and tense he said : " Father dear, that boy 
 of mine is going to escape the pain that Father Kalman 
 spoke of, and the whole of it, if I can manage it. I ws 
 going to tell you that our boy is not going to be circum 
 cised." 
 
 If the distillery had fallen in at that moment or the 
 new smokestack tumbled down upon the old man, the 
 weight that struck him could not have been heavier. He 
 could not get his breath at first, his face grew purple, he 
 tried to speak, but he was not saying anything, although 
 his tongue involuntarily moistened his dry lips. At last 
 words came out of his contracted throat. " You say that 
 you will not have my grandson circumcised ? the grand 
 son of Moritz Redlich? The son of a Jew not circum 
 cised, the grandson of Moritz Redlich? " He could but 
 repeat it over and over again. 
 
 " I would like to have spared you this pain, father," 
 his son said, coming to him and putting his arm around 
 his neck; " but Rosa and I have agreed that we shall try 
 to save our children from the stigma of being Jews. We 
 are not Jews in our hearts, and what is the use of going 
 
62 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 through that cruel form which hurts the child, and can do 
 it no earthly good ? We thought that as you are so broad 
 
 minded Don't, father dear, don't carry on so ! One 
 
 would think that a great calamity had come upon us, 
 the way you act!" 
 
 Moritz Redlich was wringing his hands, sobbing, and 
 coughing. " I know, I know it is my fault ! I haven't 
 been strict enough in your bringing up! I deserve it 
 all ! " he wailed between his sobs. " I am not thinking 
 of myself, I am thinking of the dead, I am thinking of 
 your pious mother, of Gittele, my selig wife, my golden 
 wife! I shall soon go over the bridge to meet her, and 
 what will she say to me? Gittele, my golden wife, this 
 would not have happened if you had lived! " and he col 
 lapsed in his chair. 
 
 Recovering himself after a while he wiped his eyes 
 and blew his nose repeatedly. Then, as calmly as he 
 could, he asked : " And what are you going to make out 
 of that little Yehude, what kind of Christian? Are you 
 going to take him to the big church on the market place, 
 carry your child out through the streets to have him 
 baptized? And what of the child after that? 
 
 " Do you believe that sparing him the pain of circum 
 cision will save him from being called a Jew? Will he 
 look less like a Jew, act less like one, because you have 
 spared his foreskin? What about his kin, his own flesh 
 and blood ? I suppose when the boys tell him : ' There 
 goes Moritz Redlich, your grandfather,' he will deny me, 
 he will run away from me as if I had the plague. 
 
 "If you or Rosa had in your hearts the religion of 
 Father Kalman, or of Pan Yan Szenitzky, and you could 
 make of him a real, honest, pious Christian, I would say, 
 though it broke my heart, go ahead, do it. But you have 
 no God in your heart or in your home. All you are 
 thinking about is the big plant and where to get money 
 
PLUM BRANDY 63 
 
 to build it bigger, so that some day you may get a title. 
 Aha, I see now, I see now," and he laughed, though it 
 was more like a cry of anguish. " You want that title. 
 You think that the Herr Minister will say : * There is 
 Sandor Redlich, he is not only rich and the president of 
 a great corporation; but he is bringing up his son in the 
 Christian faith; we will give him a title/ It's the title! 
 The title!" 
 
 "You are mistaken, father. We are not going to 
 have him baptized, not yet. However, we are going to 
 have a feast to celebrate his birth, but, father dear, there 
 will be no circumcision/' 
 
 Moritz Redlich left the office gasping for air. He must 
 go out and away; but where could he go ? He was suffo 
 cating, and the walls of the room seemed to come nearer 
 and nearer, to crush him. He thought he might get 
 some comfort by going out into the distillery and looking 
 at the old still, at the barrels with his name burned into 
 them. He fondled them with a trembling hand ; there it 
 still was : Moritz Redlich, Slivovitz, Hraszova, Hungary, 
 that was his at any rate part of him. 
 
 But they were hammering against the stone walls of 
 that very building. " They are tearing it to pieces, the 
 fiends! They must not! Halt!" he cried. "Halt! 
 Halt! " What were those vandals doing? He ran out 
 through the big gate to the front of the building. They 
 were doing it! They had done it! They were taking 
 down the old sign! They were lifting it from the hooks 
 he had driven in there forty years ago or more ! There 
 stood Herr Ritter and the workmen, putting a rope 
 around it and pulling it down! It was dangling in the 
 air, it was hanging by a rope, a part of himself ! Moritz 
 Redlich hanging by a rope ! 
 

 CHAPTER SIX: LOVE ONE! 
 
 "TT^VERY place is good but home is the best." 
 
 iij " Yes, Mamushka, it is so," he replied when she 
 repeated the old Slovak proverb, watching him as he ate 
 his frugal breakfast, which consisted of coffee and white 
 rolls, "as if it were Sunday." 
 
 " When you were a little boy, Yanetchku, you would 
 put those horns on your head and you would run at me 
 and say, ' Mu, mu,' and try to frighten me." 
 
 "Yes, Mamushka," he replied, thinking her very 
 thoughts. Everything brought back the memories of 
 his youth, even the taste of the weak brew of chickory 
 which went by the name of coffee, and the rolls of which 
 there were three kinds, Semle, Veklc and Rohitchky. It 
 was the Rohitchky, the little horns he liked the best, and 
 that kind his mother had got for him. 
 
 "And then," she continued, "you would always un 
 wind the crust until it looked like a long golden curl, and 
 you used to say, ' That looks like Christina's curl/ and 
 you would eat it this way." And she showed him just 
 how he did when he was a little boy. Yes, he was 
 thinking about that too, only strange to say the curls he 
 saw to-day were not golden but black. 
 
 " Her heart is as golden as her curls," his mother 
 prattled on, sipping her coffee, yet looking over the cup 
 at her son. " It is Mlada Panka Christina here, and 
 Mlada Panka Christina there. She is like her mother, 
 God rest her soul. What a saint she was ! Tak, tak! we 
 all must go, but God takes the best first; the hard, sour 
 apples stay longest on the tree." 
 
 " No, Mamushka, that isn't so. He has left you, and 
 
 64 
 
LOVE ONE! 65 
 
 you are not a hard, sour apple;" and then he gave her a 
 big kiss. You are as sweet, Mamushka, as the big, yel 
 low, golden apples Babushka used to give me when I an 
 swered her questions out of the catechism. Tell me, 
 dearest, after whom does Sonya take?" 
 
 " God knows, my son, perhaps after her father who, 
 and the Pan will forgive me, was the very devil when 
 he was a young man. When he came into the kitchen, all 
 the maids ran either from him or to him." 
 
 " Mamushka, dear, where did you run?" he asked 
 laughing at his little joke; and she slapped his mouth 
 playfully and pretended to be hurt, but she did not an 
 swer his question. 
 
 After breakfast he was going to see the schoolmaster; 
 but his married sister came from a neighboring village 
 bringing her whole family, and there was much embrac 
 ing and kissing, and they all insisted on kissing him right 
 square on his lips, which he did not relish in the least, 
 especially as his brother-in-law had taken his morning 
 Palenka, and besides that, there was garlic on his breath. 
 Yanek having been educated in a hygienically unemo 
 tional atmosphere, and having taken part in a debate in 
 which they discussed individual communion cups versus 
 the common cup, tried to avoid the osculatory demon 
 strations. His relatives took his caution for pride, and 
 the first meeting with them was not very auspicious. 
 
 This was the time to unpack the presents. He had a 
 fountain pen for his older nephew, who told him frankly 
 that he had hoped he would bring him a revolver, and 
 the picture book he gave the younger one was equally 
 unwelcome, as he had expected a watch. Fortunately, 
 little Theresa was highly pleased with her ring, which of 
 course she must run out and show to all the children, 
 and which she promptly lost on the way. Then there 
 was heavy punishment meted out, and much weeping and 
 
66 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 wailing and confusion, in trying to find the lost trinket. 
 When quiet was restored, he had to listen to his sister's 
 complaints about her husband. He was too rough with 
 the children, and he drank too much, and who knew but 
 what they too would have to sell their land and go to 
 America ? " But Chlava Bohu," praise God, " the chil 
 dren are well and so smart, and maybe, if God wills, I 
 need not bear a child this year." 
 
 His brother-in-law wanted to know if it was true that 
 in some places in America one couldn't buy any liquor, 
 and whether people really could be healthy drinking 
 only water, and whether they didn't catch cold in their 
 stomachs. 
 
 Then his Uncle Petrushko came, greatly aged, crippled 
 by rheumatism and hobbling on a cane; ignorant of 
 letters but wise with the wisdom of the humble. Yanek 
 used to go to him on Sunday afternoons to read to him 
 out of his first schoolbooks, and he tried to explain 
 what he did not quite understand himself: how if the 
 earth was round, the people beneath us, over there in 
 America, could walk on their heads. Uncle Petrushko 
 inquired after the condition of his countrymen over there 
 " Za More" across the sea. He had heard wonderful 
 things. How they were permitted to form a big Na 
 tional Society, and how those Slovaks printed news 
 papers and books and were planning to liberate their 
 oppressed countrymen from the Magyar yoke. Would 
 Yanek not come to his isba and read to him as he used 
 to, and tell him all about it? His neighbors who had 
 come back from America seemed only to know that you 
 could say "damn it" to anybody you pleased,. and how 
 cheap the meat was, and how they bought their beer by 
 the barrel and that if you wanted to get a drink on Sun 
 day, you had to go to the back door, and that when you 
 drank too much you were likely to be arrested. 
 
LOVE ONE! 67 
 
 Yanek was heartily glad to see Babushka Theresa who 
 came in, after dinner, driving in her queer yellow cart. 
 She was everybody's Babushka, although she was re 
 lated to no one except the Pan, and that distantly. She 
 had never emancipated herself from her picturesque 
 Slovak clothes, and she preferred to be called Babushka 
 rather than Panyi Velcomoshna, to which she was entitled 
 by virtue of her wealth. It was she who gave Yanek 
 the sweet, golden apple for knowing his catechism, and 
 he told her he remembered that once when he had the 
 measles, she brought him an orange, the first he had ever 
 eaten. In America he thought of her every time he ate 
 one, which was very often; for he had one for breakfast 
 nearly every morning. 
 
 It was the Babushka who used to talk to him about the 
 Lord Jesus, not as the minister talked, as if He were far 
 away, over in Palestine or in Heaven on the right hand 
 of the Father; but as if He were right there in the room 
 with them. The very way in which she spoke His name, 
 "Pan Jeshzitshek" was endearing and winning; while 
 when the minister, in his pompous way and with his 
 pulpit drawl, talked of the " Pan Jesu Christus " he could 
 think of nothing but the awful Day of Judgment! 
 
 Yes, indeed the Babushka was on intimate terms with 
 the Lord, and one day she looked straight into his face 
 and asked: " Do you love the Pan Jeshzitshek? " And 
 then she laid her hand on his head and said : " If you 
 will love Him and follow Him you will be one of His 
 disciples, and a great blessing to the people." 
 
 Now she had only one tooth left, her head shook from 
 palsy, and her face was all wrinkled, but it was illumined 
 by a holy light. 
 
 " I have prayed for you every day," she said, " and 
 I have asked two things for you. One of them has been 
 granted, the other I know will be." 
 
68 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 He had remembered Babushka's sweet apples and the 
 orange she brought him when he had the measles, but 
 he had forgotten her ardent faith ; and did not know that 
 his people were supremely religious, that they were 
 drinking from the same spiritual fountain from which 
 he had been drinking, and that it was not discovered in 
 America. 
 
 The Hussites had come from Bohemia into the Car 
 pathian mountains, fleeing from their persecutors and had 
 found safe shelter among their racial kinsmen; the faith 
 of Luther and Calvin spread there with greater rapidity 
 than in Germany, and in this very place men had died 
 as martyrs for their faith. Roman Catholics never be 
 came narrow and bigoted, and Protestant and Catho 
 lics had learned to live side by side without the bitter 
 ness and rancor seldom absent, even in his free America. 
 When the faith of the Fathers grew sterile there were 
 always seekers after God, such as Babushka, who met 
 together for prayer and for a free expression of their 
 religious ideas. Yanek was astonished to find that Ba 
 bushka had read the sermons of Spurgeon and Moody, 
 and that she kept herself in touch with the evangelistic 
 movements of England and Germany. Yanek was listen 
 ing to her in a half hearted way for which he reproached 
 himself. He was impatient to see his beloved school 
 master. 
 
 At last the relatives took their departure, and Babushka, 
 under protest, permitted him to help her into the yellow 
 cart, and he could slip away. Even then, however, his 
 progress was not easy; for he was stopped by Sonya 
 calling to him from her window. She wanted to ask him 
 a number of questions. 
 
 " Was it true that the American girls proposed to the 
 men, and did one ever propose to him? The Fraulein 
 said they did. so of course it must be true; and were the 
 
LOVE ONE! 69 
 
 American girls as pretty as the Slovak girls, and were 
 the stores really so big that one could get lost in them, 
 and above all, could he play tennis and would he play 
 with her? Tennis was all the rage, and she had learned 
 how to keep tally. Was it not beautiful the way they 
 counted? Lofe feefteen, lofe tirty, lofe forty? " 
 
 Why was it impossible for him to look into her face 
 when he answered her questions ? Was it a sense of guilt, 
 was it the stirring of passion within him? Was it the 
 thought of Christina to whom he made love in the pigeon 
 loft when he was fourteen years of age? 
 
 Certainly he could play tennis, and he would play with 
 her if she wanted him to, he replied, and summoning all 
 his courage, he looked boldly into her eyes. 
 
 " But remember," she said, shaking her finger at him, 
 " you have to play well, else I can't introduce you at the 
 Club." 
 
 He did not quite catch the full meaning of that until 
 she had closed the window. Then he regretted having 
 promised to play, for he realized that it was only as the 
 good tennis player that he could be introduced at the 
 Athletic Club, and not as Yanek Hruby, the son of a 
 coachman. He was, after all, just a man, stirred by the 
 sight of black eyes and flattered by a pretty girl's invita 
 tion to play tennis, and he did not hold his head quite so 
 high as he walked up the street toward the schoolmaster's 
 lodgings. 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE SCHOOLMASTER 
 
 THERE were two of nearly everything in Hraszova. 
 Two apothecaries, two inns, two casinos, two mid- 
 wives and two doctors. When a Slovak did not surren 
 der to the Magyars, change the spelling of his name or 
 announce his wares in the language of his rulers, he had 
 competition. It was not a matter of cheaper or dearer, 
 of better or worse; it was a matter of patriotism or 
 policy (and so often the two are identical), to buy your 
 drugs or drink your wine, or play your cards or be ush 
 ered into the world, or kept from an untimely death, in 
 the socially and officially sanctioned way. 
 
 It did not matter much to the Magyars that a purveyor 
 of goods or a guardian of health or what not, was a Jew, 
 so long as he had changed Cohn into Kohany, or Weiss 
 into Feher, or Klein into Kish. The right spelling of a 
 name covered a multitude of sins, and in so many cases 
 there were multitudes to cover. Nationalism encouraged 
 hypocrisy on a grander scale than perhaps religion ever 
 had. To pretend to be religious was no longer profitable; 
 to shout " Ely en a Magyar " was more effective than to 
 repeat a thousand " Hail Mary's " and not so repug 
 nant. As a consequence, the rich Jews waxed their mus 
 taches a la Magyar, drank their wine out of glasses dec 
 orated in red, white and green, danced Czardas and hired 
 the Gypsies to serenade their sweethearts and friends on 
 their birthdays. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky was the physician of the Slovaks and 
 the poorer Jews, and everybody else who was seriously 
 ill. When the Judge or the Baron had a headache after 
 a too lengthy session at the inn, and needed something 
 
 70 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER 71 
 
 to stir their sluggish livers, they sent for Dr. Lonyai, 
 whose ancestors once ministered to Jehovah and answered 
 to the name of Cohn. When Dr. Lonyai's pills did not 
 have the desired effect and his patients were threatened 
 or thought they were threatened by apoplexy, it was Dr. 
 Makutchky who was summoned, and he usually gave 
 them emetics and purgatives enough to make them for 
 swear wine, the flesh and the devil in all their seductive 
 forms, for at least a fortnight. 
 
 Dr. Lonyai was a cadaverous, suave, smiling, insignifi 
 cant individual. The number of Egyptian cigarettes he 
 consumed may have given him his mumified appearance; 
 for he was always either smoking or rolling one. He 
 was the self-appointed, official tattler of the town, which 
 made him a favorite among certain women. He told the 
 rich Jewesses how the Baroness discovered that her chil 
 dren's governess was her husband's mistress, and he told 
 it with all the fine nuances of a connoisseur in scandals. 
 In Magyar circles he made sport of the shortcomings of 
 his Jewish patients, wherever such stories were appre 
 ciated. He was neither trusted nor loved; yet wel 
 comed, and called for minor ailments and ennui, and 
 he relieved both. He had been in Hraszova only .a few 
 years, haying come there directly from the University, 
 had prospered because his name was not Cohn, and was 
 now looking for a wife with a generous dowry. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky was a typical Slovak. Ethnolo 
 gists will object to this statement because they say there 
 is never a typical anything, that type is something we im 
 agine; but exceptions prove the rule. If we imagine the 
 typical Slav to have a broad skull measuring eighty-two 
 centimeters in width, in proportion to an imaginary one 
 hundred in length, and small deeply set brown eyes, far 
 apart; if his face is rather broad, with the cheek bones 
 slightly protruding, and if he has such a luxurious 
 
72 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 growth of beard that his small nose has to struggle hard 
 to be seen then he is a typical Slav, ethnologists or 
 no ethnologists. 
 
 As has been said there were two of nearly everything 
 in Hraszova except schoolmasters, and of these there 
 were three ; t for Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish 
 children learned their alphabets and their multiplication 
 tables under the strict supervision of their respective 
 churches. When Yanek Hruby began going to school, 
 the Protestant teacher was noted for the redness of his 
 bandana handkerchief, the thickness of his Spanish grape 
 switch, and the ugliness of his temper. Fortunately for 
 that whole generation of school children, during Yanek's 
 first year, the handkerchief, the grape switch and the 
 teacher's temper combined in bringing about an apoplectic 
 stroke, which ended his career and brought the new 
 schoolmaster. 
 
 Yanek Hruby could not be trusted to tell of the share 
 he had in precipitating this benevolent catastrophe, for 
 he was afflicted by a sensitive conscience, which made him 
 magnify his own guilt. The truth was, that the ban 
 dana, into which the teacher blew those terrific blasts 
 which signified the rising of his temper, was loaded with 
 red pepper on that particular morning. Yanek had noth 
 ing to do with placing the paprika. His guilt consisted 
 in soaking the grape switch in vinegar which, according 
 to schoolroom traditions, would make it so brittle that 
 at the first stroke it would break. The switch broke. 
 Whether because of the vinegar or because of the ex 
 cessive vigor with which it was wielded will not be 
 revealed till the Day of Judgment, but till that day, 
 Yanek will accuse himself of having had a share, if not 
 the chief share in the death of the tyrant. However, he 
 with the other children enjoyed their holiday on the day 
 of the funeral, and the minister delivered an eloquent 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER 73 
 
 eulogy in which there was one outstanding truth, namely, 
 that " the teacher died in the exercise of his duty." When 
 his successor came, it marked the beginning of a new era. 
 
 The schoolmaster was in bed when Yanek called, and 
 the doctor was there, walking up and down the room, 
 talking in his quick, explosive, Slovak way, in that lan 
 guage which has retained those elemental sounds with 
 which our remote ancestors began to imitate the lan 
 guage of nature. A succession of consonants and harsh 
 gutturals, with here and there a vowel, usually long" 
 sustained, as if the speaker wished to make the most of 
 it, not knowing when he would have a chance at another 
 one. If it is true that the Slavs are great linguists, it 
 may be due to the fact that their language calls into play 
 every organ which can create sound, so that the linguistic 
 apparatus is well trained. 
 
 ' You lie still and keep your mouth shut, or I will 
 give you this glass cigarette to suck until your visitor is 
 gone," said the doctor, shaking the thermometer before 
 his patient's face and at the same time gently pulling the 
 coverlet over his emaciated hands. 
 
 " Don't mind the old grizzly bear Yanek, my boy," 
 said the schoolmaster in a whisper. " I am glad to see 
 you," and he attempted to shake his hand, without 
 drawing his own from under the covers. "He is trying 
 to make me believe that I am a sick man, when I have 
 only a bad cold." 
 
 "Bad cold!" the doctor ejaculated, "bad cold! I 
 wish the Chief Justice had just such a cold as you have. 
 We would have a vacancy on the bench in six weeks if 
 he were where you are. I will give you only four weeks 
 unless I can get you out of this beastly hole, and you 
 behave better." He resumed his walking up and down 
 the room and finally, stopping in front of one of the two 
 small windows, he shook his fist at it, crying : " Look at 
 
74 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 it! I couldn't stick my head through it! It is just big 
 enough to let you know that it is daylight ! " 
 
 " He couldn't stick his head through a barn door/' 
 said the teacher in a stage whisper, ducking under the 
 covers. When the doctor turned angrily around he 
 pointed at Yanek as the guilty one. 
 
 " This is no joke/' the doctor said tartly. " Your 
 prison couldn't have been worse/' 
 
 Yanek suggested timidly, that in America they cured 
 this disease by putting the patient into a tent. 
 
 "Tents!" the doctor ejaculated. "I know all about 
 them. Tents indeed! If I should suggest that to my 
 learned patient, who, by the way, is a great ignoramus 
 in some things, he would say: 'and what about the 
 night air?' Ugh! What about the night air! His 
 ancestors saw spooks at night, so he is afraid of the 
 night air. Keep the spooks out and swallow germs by 
 the bushel ! " Turning to the window again, he gave 
 vent to his indignation. " The State, Magyar Orszag, 
 a civilized State pouncing on a helpless individual ! Not 
 satisfied by putting him into a filthy prison, when he is 
 released, they bar him from his home and put him into 
 this vile hole ! They want to murder him, because " 
 and he laughed grimly "because he taught little 
 Slovak children that two times two are four, in Slovak. 
 The National State, that abomination of abominations, 
 enforcing culture with the butt of the gun ! " 
 
 " The Magyars " 
 
 "Of course, you say the Magyars!" He turned 
 fiercely on the schoolmaster who had uttered the word. 
 "The Germans are no better; if anything they are the 
 masters in building that structure, that combination of 
 gallows and university, the Kultur of the Strcng Ver- 
 1}0 ten. 
 
 " We Slavs are no better, and we are clumsier at it. 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER 75 
 
 Your Mother Russia, as )&eu call it," and with that he 
 carried out his threat and put the thermometer into the 
 schoolmaster's mouth, although he himself was doing the 
 talking. He held his big fingers on the throbbing pulse 
 of his patient, and continued : " Your Mother Russia, 
 is she any better? See what she has done to the Poles, 
 and the Poles, are they any better ? They sit tight on the 
 Ruthenians. It's the same thing all through, it's the 
 National State that is the curse of it, and you are its 
 victim." He took the thermometer, examined it, shook 
 it with an angry gesture and dropped it into a glass of 
 water, as if it were the guilty National State he was 
 drowning. 
 
 " I am going to get you out of this stinking hole the 
 very first thing," he continued, " so that you may get well 
 and sacrifice yourself again upon the altar of your 
 country; but remember, you will destroy one monster 
 only to create another. Remember that." 
 
 As if to discourage a reply he started toward the door, 
 pushing his hand through his upstanding, rebellious hair. 
 " Your visitor," he flung back, " may stay till Christina 
 comes, and when she comes he may stay as long as he 
 wants to, for then he will be harmless. By the way," 
 he turned to Yanek, " have you a revolver ? I see you 
 have a fountain pen, like all the Americans. Shoot him 
 if he talks," and shaking his fist at the offending window, 
 he edged his way through the low, narrow door, and 
 left them. 
 
 When he was gone the schoolmaster's hand stole from 
 under the cover. Yanek grasped it and so, clinging to 
 each other, they sat silently, while a ray of the afternoon 
 sun stealing in through the tiny window lighted the 
 little room, and circled around the head of the sick man, 
 like a halo. 
 
 If Dr. Makutchky was a typical Slav, Pan Martin 
 
76 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Miklos, the teacher, was not a Slav at all. His was the 
 head of a Lombard, such as Leonardo da Vinci might 
 have used for his model when he painted the disciple 
 John in the " Last Supper." The wasting disease made 
 his head appear longer, and the pallor of his face gave 
 added brilliancy to the eyes, which Yanek thought were 
 like the glass disk of a furnace, revealing the glow 
 within. 
 
 At length the schoolmaster broke the silence. " Don't 
 mind the doctor," he said, "he is one of God's wild 
 men. Yes, I know I mustn't talk, but you won't shoot 
 me, will you ? " 
 
 Yanek had taken from the table a large bound volume 
 of illustrated magazines, and he soon discovered that 
 it was one of his old friends, one of the volumes he had 
 devoured in his book hungry days. Every picture was 
 familiar, he even remembered the stories, the novels 
 which had stirred his imagination, the familiar heroines 
 with whom he had fallen in love. He found the picture 
 which had always reminded him of Christina. At least 
 so Christina would look when he claimed her as his 
 own. 
 
 The schoolmaster watched him looking through the 
 volume. " Do you remember what you always read first 
 when I lent you those magazines?" and not waiting for 
 an answer : " the funny page. All the children did that, 
 and later you would look for the novels. Fun first, then 
 romance, and tragedy next. Tragedy next, my boy; 
 that comes last, and the last is the best. 
 
 "No, no, this won't hurt me. That crazy doctor 
 doesn't know anything about it. The tragedy isn't so 
 bad when you suffer innocently. Christina talks to me 
 about her Jesus. She talks to me just as Babushka does 
 about the dear Jeshzitshek; but no one knows Him till 
 one has suffered innocently. Yes, I have been there." 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER 77 
 
 He continued in brief snatches, fighting back the inevi 
 table cough. 
 
 " The jail, the beggars and the thieves, you are with 
 them, but not one of them it helps to know you are 
 not one of them, the court and the prosecutor you 
 grow bigger and bigger when they accuse you and call 
 the right the wrong and the wrong the right you are 
 not one of them and it helps 
 
 " The Judge who folds his fat hands and crosses his 
 legs and who pronounces you guilty when )he knows 
 you are innocent you rise above him, infinitely above 
 
 him, and it helps, it all helps The crowd which 
 
 gaps at you and the friends who said they were friends 
 and are ashamed to look at you for fear of incriminating 
 themselves you are not one of them, and then the 
 poor fellows who lead you away, the jailers, thank God, 
 you are not one of them. Don't try to stop me I will 
 talk. 
 
 "Babushka and Christina talk about being with the 
 Lord and talking to Him; they don't know, the poor dear 
 women. I know. I know. I have walked through the 
 streets, a condemned man. I have seen them pointing 
 their fingers at me, and I was lifted into the very center 
 
 of the universe above them, far above them Yes, 
 
 I cried like a child, but the tears washed all the suffer 
 ing out of me. I knew what Jesus meant when He said : 
 ' And the third day I shall rise again ' I know, I 
 know " 
 
 He drew Yanek down to him and whispered : " Listen, 
 Yanek. Christina says that it is sacrilege. You may 
 crucify the truth, but it will rise again, and on the Day 
 of Judgment we will all rise and sing e Hey Slovane.' ' 
 
 Yanek begged his friend not to speak again, and for 
 more than one reason he was glad that just then Christina 
 entered the room. She came daily at that hour to make 
 
78 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 order out of the chaos which the doctor always left. She 
 prepared a cooling drink for the patient and bathed his 
 forehead. 
 
 Yes, Yanek might get the fresh water if he wished. 
 
 "Mater Dolorosa," that is what the schoolmaster al 
 ways called her; "do you know the last time you sent 
 him to fetch water for me ? " 
 
 She stopped for a moment and pretended to think; 
 though the incident flashed into her mind instantly. It 
 was in the tree school, as the nursery was called, where 
 the schoolmaster performed those miracles of grafting 
 and planting. Where he made fine Royal pears grow 
 on the trees which formerly bore a fruit appropriately 
 called " Nyihlitchky" Little Rotters, because they were 
 so hard that they were eatable only when they were 
 partially decayed. 
 
 Yes, she remembered, and now Royal pears and big 
 apples and sweet cherries were blessing the valley; but 
 after all the real miracle he worked was with boys and 
 girls. 
 
 "Look at Yanek,'* and then her face flushed and the 
 schoolmaster didn't like that a bit, for there was a great 
 passion in his heart, growing daily a holy passion, he 
 said to himself; for was he not twelve years her senior 
 and just out of prison, with a broken body, and was she 
 not his Mater Dolorosa? 
 
 " Yanek is all right," he said, Christina having en 
 couraged him to express his opinion ; " but no longer a 
 Slovak at heart. They have starched him over there 
 until he is stiff, like the glossy collar he wears, and he is 
 religious, yet I fear his religion is weak and yielding. 
 He took a verbal beating from the doctor without resist 
 ing. I fear he is like Babushka and you, and that he will 
 talk to me about the dear Jeshzitshek and will want to 
 convert me." 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER 79 
 
 Christina had finished her womanly little touches 
 about the room, and going to his side she took both his 
 hands in hers, and, looking full into his eyes, while he 
 looked steadily into hers : " Schoolmaster," she said, 
 " would to God you were converted. You need the peace 
 of God in your heart." 
 
 "Yes," he thought, "if this is the peace of God I 
 need it; and if this is conversion, this yielding myself to 
 your touch, then I want to be converted. Do with me 
 what you will." 
 
 Yanek entered at that moment, carrying the water, 
 and as he saw them thus, hand in hand, a thought flashed 
 through his mind, a thought which became a conviction 
 as he saw how tenderly Christina bathed the teacher's 
 brow and with what a supreme content he accepted her 
 ministrations. Both men felt her to be something more 
 than mere woman, and both knew they loved her with a 
 passion which received its glow from her own radiance. 
 
 The nurse came to stay through the night, and Yanek 
 said he would walk home with Christina. The school 
 master told them that he was feeling better; how could 
 he help it? And he was also feeling worse, though of 
 course he did not say so, and how could he help that? 
 He sighed deeply; for the room looked strangely dark 
 as they passed out. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE BEETERS 
 
 IT was a crisp autumn morning, just the kind of morn 
 ing to go hunting. So thought Sanctus Spiritus and 
 Company, individually and collectively. Father Anton 
 Kalman thought so when he got up, remembering a 
 stormy session he had with his curate the night before. 
 The curate came in late, later than usual, his step not 
 any too steady, and he was singing a tune which was not 
 in the Hymnal of the church. One word led to another 
 and finally the younger man threatened to report his 
 superior to the bishop for discouraging patriotic utter 
 ances in the pulpit. 
 
 Through storm and stress of many years Father Kal 
 man had kept his church a place where man could meet 
 his God through the Holy Sacraments. " Our priest does 
 not preach," his people used to say, " he just talks to us 
 like a father to his children, and sometimes he talks to 
 us as if we were naughty children." 
 
 Now this new display of eloquence, this making the 
 pulpit rather than the altar the center of the service, he 
 didn't like. 
 
 His curate accused him of jealousy, and perhaps justly. 
 Father Anton Kalman was, after all, human, and it takes 
 a great deal of grace to be put aside and not feel it; 
 but the dear Lord was helping him even as He helped 
 Samuel when the people looked upon Saul as their king. 
 He thought he must pray the more, and he did. 
 
 He slept little that night after the scene with the 
 curate, and he was not much comforted in his prayer. 
 He had said early mass, the curate being indisposed, and 
 
 80 
 
THE BEETERS 81 
 
 now he thought it would do him good to spend the day 
 in the Bashanyitza. 
 
 Strange to say Moritz Redlich thought the same thing, 
 for he too had passed a sleepless night. if What does 
 Anton know about trouble? " he soliloquized. " He is a 
 Holy Father and I am a real father. * Children are as 
 arrows. Happy is the man who hath his quiver full 
 of them/ King David was right, they are as arrows, 
 but how can one be happy if the arrows fly into his own 
 heart ? Oy, oy ! " he lamented. " Children are arrows 
 indeed! There is Sandor, and that poor, ailing baby. 
 Hm! Hm! What does the Holy Father know about 
 children?" 
 
 Sophie was not any too well, and his home had become 
 bedlam. In the morning Hannak the music teacher 
 comes, usually the worse for liquor, and then there is 
 such a beating of the piano that it is no wonder the child 
 is nervous. Then the Fraulein comes and she is worse 
 than Hannak; he is at least honest; poor, drunken fool. 
 But the Fraulein, with her small, shifty eyes which seem 
 to be everywhere at once, he cannot tolerate. She stays 
 till noon, and when she is not retailing all the scandal of 
 two continents, or is not slandering somebody, she is 
 singing. God deliver him from such singing. 
 
 And then his wife, sitting in her imported rocking 
 chair, manicuring her finger nails or reading novels. 
 Always some man with her, more often two. Now it 
 is Kukulish and Herr Ritter, rivals for her smiles. There 
 was not much choice between them he thought, except 
 that he despised the one and hated the other. Kukulish 
 follows her like a dog, and she follows Ritter like a dog. 
 
 Would to God they had never brought that fellow 
 into his life! He was to blame for the big project and 
 the new sign. That new sign had haunted him all night. 
 Moritz Redlich hanging by a rope! He was afraid he 
 
82 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 was going crazy, and the only way he seemed to be able 
 to save himself was to act like that foolish American 
 who buttoned and unbuttoned his coat, and kept saying 
 that everything was fine in America. He was saying 
 that this morning, just as he felt the gloomy mood com 
 ing upon him. " It is fine in America ! " Then it flashed 
 into his mind, it is a fine day to go hunting. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky also was not any too happy that 
 morning. The Judge called on him the night before, 
 and showed him a formidable document which had come 
 from Budapest. The Pan had insulted His Excellency 
 by telling him to go to the devil with his offer of a 
 Baronetcy. 
 
 "I was merely quoting Scripture, " replied the Pan; 
 to which the Judge retorted that he would quote to him 
 paragraphs 10 and 20 from statute 347, and what is 
 Scripture against such authority? He had insulted a 
 cabinet member and unless he apologized he would have 
 to take the consequences. 
 
 That was not the only thing which had gone wrong. 
 Sonya had introduced Yanek at the Athletic Club without 
 asking his leave, and he had beaten the young Baron 
 Smertzing at tennis. It was the Baron who had intro 
 duced the game, and had taught everybody. He was the 
 patron saint of the sport, and now he had been beaten 
 by a coachman's son, and how ingloriously beaten. He 
 lost his temper and insulted Yanek, and when Christina 
 heard of it she took her sister to task. 
 
 Sonya laughed at her for taking the matter so seriously, 
 and told her she had no sense of humor. It was de 
 lightful to see Yanek beat the Baron and take the con 
 ceit out of the fop. If only when the cad insulted him, 
 he had obliterated some of the boundary marks of the 
 tennis court with the fellow instead of going away, she 
 would have kissed him then and there. 
 
THE BEETERS 83 
 
 Christina lost her temper and wouldn't come to prayers 
 after supper, and the evening was doubly spoiled for the 
 Pan. 
 
 This morning when he woke he was still perplexed as 
 to what he should do about His Excellency. Hoping to 
 clarify his thought in the open country, he too said: 
 " it is a fine day for hunting/' and so it was that Sanctus 
 Spiritus and Company met on the corner where they 
 always met. With their guns over their shoulders and 
 their luncheon in their leather pouches, they marched 
 through the Esplanade, then across the field by the ruins 
 of the little Hussite chapel to the pine woods, called the 
 Bashanyitza. 
 
 " It drives the cobwebs out of one's brains," Father 
 Kalman said, and by cobwebs he meant the curate. 
 
 Moritz Redlich did not cough nearly so much, and 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky smoked one pipeful to its very end, 
 after having lighted it with only one match. 
 
 It was a glorious morning. On every ribboned field 
 they saw the workers, pulling cabbages, or plowing for 
 the winter crops, chatting or singing. The men doffed 
 their caps as the trio passed, and replied to the ff Pomohiy 
 Pan Bock" with the friendly "Pan Boch Deiy." Yes, 
 indeed, they had God's help. How else could they be so 
 happy? They were working with God. Charring and 
 singing and working, without worry. 
 
 " It is a wonderful world/' Father Kalman said, as 
 he looked over the fields toward the mountains, their 
 heads peeping above the mist as if they too were eager to 
 forget their troubles. Nevertheless, the priest thought, 
 it would be more wonderful without that curate to 
 bother him; that was still like the mist around his heart. 
 
 Moritz Redlich echoed his words as he looked at the 
 roads lined by heavy laden, blue plum trees, the ripe 
 fruit covering the ground as if the very sky had fallen. 
 
84 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 How much lovelier it would be, though, if ah, there 
 were so many ifs, and the chief if was, if he could still 
 make plum brandy and never have to bother with stocks, 
 and if the Herr Ritter were back in Germany, and 
 Gittele were still alive. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky, ever the non-conformist, thought 
 it a rather pleasant day, and inwardly he said, how much 
 pleasanter it would be if the devil would take His Excel 
 lency, and if Yanek had stayed over in America, and so 
 would not have beaten the Baron at tennis, and if it were 
 not for sugar beets. 
 
 Nothing is perfect in this world, not even that rare 
 day, when the three old men might have agreed upon at 
 least one thing; that it was a perfect day. They did not 
 shoot anything, they did not expect to. It was com 
 monly rumored that they never took any ammunition, 
 and that the pheasants, knowing it, would run under 
 their feet like chickens; so that did not spoil the day. 
 
 In the heart of the woods they ate their luncheon. 
 Moritz Redlich had brought the usual roast goose. He 
 always brought ample portions, because his confreres 
 could eat what he brought, though he could not eat their 
 food. Father Anton Kalman was fond of the drum 
 stick, so fond of it that he used to say he wished every 
 goose had four of them. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky liked goose liver. He always said, 
 when he spread it thick upon a piece of rye bread, " Moses 
 made it easy for you Jews to forego pork. No pig 
 can beat a goose for liver." 
 
 They could drink wine together, fortunately, and that 
 Father Kalman supplied ; for there was a deep, cool cellar 
 under the parsonage, and his predecessors were like 
 Joseph. They had foreseen the lean years and had 
 provided bountifully for them. 
 
 The afternoon was as pleasant as the morning, though 
 
THE BEETERS 85 
 
 it was growing cool as the sun began to touch the moun 
 tains. They had not had much conversation, so no 
 serious disagreements developed; although the Pan 
 insisted that Hunyadi water was a fraud, and that it 
 was just plain water with Glauber sUts. Father Anton 
 defended Hunyadi, and Moritz Redlich believed in the 
 hot baths, and hoped he would live at least another 
 season, so that he could get to Poestyan and have the 
 rheumatism boiled out of him. Nevertheless even that 
 perfect day was not to end happily for three men who 
 faced so many ifs, as the sun went down. 
 
 The Reverend Yanek Hruby also thought this a fine 
 day as had some other people who helped spoil it for 
 Sanctus Spiritus and Company. He too had had a bad 
 night of it. Of course he went to play tennis with Sonya 
 though he had determined not to go. He was sure he 
 would not that evening when he walked home with 
 Christina from the schoolmaster's. They stopped under 
 the acacia tree and recalled the many spring times when 
 they sucked honey from the locust blossoms which he 
 had brought down with such well aimed stones. When 
 they passed the swimming hole they spoke of the first 
 tragedy they had witnessed, the drowning of a shoe 
 maker's apprentice. It was Yanek who pulled him out 
 of the water, and together they tried to resuscitate him, 
 kneeling beside the wet little body. Christina was 
 severely punished for coming home with her summer 
 frock all spoiled by the wet mud, and she was 
 ashamed to tell where she had been and what she had 
 done. 
 
 They walked together over the narrow bridge, so close, 
 that he was thrilled by her nearness to him. The haze 
 over the river wrapt the willows in fantastic draperies 
 and they talked of the witch stories they had heard the 
 peasants tell, and the whistles Yanek made for her from 
 
86 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 those very trees. He experienced that mysticism for 
 which he had vainly longed in his devotion to God, and 
 his body, mind and soul blended with hers. 
 
 He confessed to her his irresolution. Face to face as 
 he was with his life's task, he felt that he had no mes 
 sage for his people who had been thrown into the welter 
 of nationalism. Then she became his Mater Dolorosa, 
 the mother of this boy who understood everything about 
 himself except that he was just as irresolute about an 
 other, all absorbing passion. He needed her help, a 
 word from her, a warmer touch of her hand, a different 
 look in her eyes. He did not know that she was as 
 undecided as he, and as ready to yield herself to him 
 had he been more determined. 
 
 So they walked side by side, yet far apart, talking of 
 the great aspirations which filled their souls but not their 
 hearts. There seemed to be another opportunity for 
 self -revelation when they came to the river gate of the 
 Pan's garden. There, childhood memories crowded upon 
 them both. Many and many a time he had climbed over 
 the wall just at that point to fetch the ball with which 
 they were playing and which had escaped them. 
 
 " Christina, I am going to fetch your ball ! " he cried, 
 and before she knew it, he was on top of the glass 
 sprinkled, adobe wall. As chance or fate would have it, 
 on the other side of the wall was Sonya, her hair blown 
 by the wind, her bare arms upraised, for she was playing 
 tennis with one of her many admirers. She leveled her 
 racket at the intruder crying: " Halt, apple thief! Sur 
 render or I shoot ! " And though he did not jump into 
 the garden, but opened the gate for Christina, and let 
 her in, and though they walked toward the house to 
 gether, and though when they passed the pigeon loft his 
 heart beat faster, he wondered if he had surrendered to 
 Sonya. 
 
THE BEETERS 87 
 
 The next day she was to introduce him at the Athletic 
 Club. His mother pressed his white trousers for him, 
 and when he had put on his flannel shirt, tilted his collar, 
 college boy fashion, and tied a handkerchief over his 
 forehead, he looked at himself in the mirror and was 
 satisfied that even the Baron could look no better. His 
 mother enthusiastically admired him and when he met 
 Sonya, she told him he looked like a Greek god. He car 
 ried her racket, and they created an undeniable sensation 
 when they appeared at the Athletic Club. 
 
 The Baroness was there, and she put up her lorgnette 
 and, after scrutinizing him, pronounced him chic. 
 Madam Czerny the apothecary's wife leveled her kodak 
 at him, and the men knew they had a rival. 
 
 They had played a set of doubles, he and Sonya being 
 partners; and though she played poorly and he did not 
 exert himself, they won by a close margin. Baron 
 Ferencz Smertzing appeared while the game was in 
 progress. He was told who the guest was, and made no 
 effort to conceal his displeasure. It was Sonya who 
 insisted that the two men play single, and she was sup 
 ported by the other ladies who enjoyed seeing the agile 
 movements of the bronzed, muscular young American. 
 
 " He looks like an Indian chief," the Baroness kept 
 saying, and she was right, though she had not the slight 
 est idea what an Indian chief looked like. 
 
 Baron Smertzing knew how to play tennis. He had 
 learned that and many other things in England. How 
 ever, he was no match for this young athlete, who not 
 only knew the game, but whose body was unweakened by 
 excesses. Like a stone from a sling, the balls came flying 
 over the net, and it was always a love game when 
 Yanek served. The spectators had crowded close, and 
 while the Baron succeeded in making points, he knew 
 he was ingloriously doomed to defeat. He heard the 
 
88 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 ladies' ejaculations. Sonya was dancing in glee, and then 
 he lost his temper. 
 
 Having failed to strike, at the first bound, a ball which 
 he was returning to the server, Yanek was about to hit 
 it at the second bound when the Baron clucked his tongue, 
 and called out : " Git up, horsey! Hit, Ho ! " 
 
 Then it was all over. Yanek dropped his racket. His 
 face grew pale, he compressed his lips and bit his tongue 
 to restrain himself, then wheeled around and walked 
 away. That is the way it happened that the next morn 
 ing he thought it was a fine day to go walking in the 
 woods. 
 
 At the edge of the Bashanyitza he saw the Redlich 
 carriage and Andrew Feher smoking his short pipe while 
 trying to hold his restless horses. Yanek entered the 
 woods for healing and forgetfulness, and he emerged 
 from them more disturbed than before; for he had seen 
 the Madam and Herr Ritter there together. Evidently 
 they had also thought that it was a fine day to go to the 
 woods. 
 
 The obtrusion of sex into Yanek's own life, the prob 
 lem of keeping dominant the spiritual motive, his inability 
 to marshal those forces which he needed to save himself, 
 made him strangely lenient in his judgment of the guilty 
 pair. Had he been what he thought he was, he might 
 have stepped between them accusingly, like an angel of 
 justice. Now he stole away and was glad that he had 
 not disturbed them in their amorous embrace. 
 
 As he stepped out of the woods he saw the far stretch 
 ing beet fields of the Sugar Trust and he breathed more 
 easily, watching the beeters at their task. All of them 
 were bending to Mother Earth, garnering her fruits. 
 The young- women were pulling the beets, the older ones 
 and the children sat around in huge circles, cutting off 
 the tops and tossing them into great heaps, and the men 
 
THE BEETERS 89 
 
 shoveled them into the carts. The white, long horned 
 cattle chewing their cud, perfected this picture of peace. 
 Yanek began playing with the children, and when he 
 took one of the unruly infants in his arms and quieted 
 it with a well remembered lullaby, the women smiled at 
 him and told him he was evidently well prepared to take 
 care of his own. " May the Pan Boch grant him a great 
 many of them." 
 
 " Yes, the Slovak women have a hard life," the mother 
 of the baby said to him. " What with bearing a child 
 every year, working out in the field and cooking the 
 meals, no wonder they grow old soon ; but the Pan Boch 
 helps." Yes, the Pan Boch! thought Yanek. What 
 would they do without the consolation of the Lord's 
 presence? And if the Lord is everywhere, why should 
 He not be here in this beet field with these humble peo 
 ple? There were some coarse jests at his expense, which 
 made him blush, the young women cast sheepish glances 
 at him, and they did many things which were indelicate, 
 to say the least ; but they were working, honestly working, 
 and when he heard the drivers coaxing their oxen with 
 " hit " and " hoe," he thought of yesterday, and was 
 doubly ashamed of himself for having grown angry at 
 the Baron's taunt. 
 
 After all, this was where he belonged, among his own 
 people, and he pulled off his coat, relieved himself of his 
 stiff collar and began shoveling beets. He had learned 
 something besides playing tennis in America, he had 
 learned how to handle a shovel scientifically. He gave it 
 a shove and a twist, such as the miners use in loading 
 coal; he hurled the beets through the air and never one 
 fell on the ground. 
 
 He held^ the shovel differently from the way the 
 peasants held theirs, and the beets just tumbled into it. 
 He crouched for a moment, then straightened his body, 
 
90 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 and lifted the shovel to the level of the wagon at the 
 same time, and before they knew it, the shovel was on 
 the ground again ready for another toss. 
 
 The old men shook their heads and said : " Tak, takf " 
 The young men were bathed in perspiration trying to 
 keep up with him, and Kuby Fish, the Jewish overseer, 
 stood, fascinated by the magic of his performance, saying 
 over and over: "The Americans are so praktisch!" 
 
 The women did not compare him to Greek gods or 
 Indian chiefs, but they said : "On roby yak maschina" 
 He works like a machine. They shared their frugal 
 meal with him. " This is our music," one of the peasants 
 said, as he cut huge slices from their loaves of rye bread, 
 the knife scraping its way through the hard crust. 
 
 " This is food for the stomach, perfume for the nose, 
 and something good for the eye, too," another one said 
 laughingly, as he cut an onion and ate it with a relish. 
 What would the poor of the world do without their 
 onions ? The Slavs have even built their church steeples 
 a la Zwibula, and some day a poet of the people will im 
 mortalize it. 
 
 " This is our strength," and they drank the Palenka, 
 the one thing the Sugar Trust provided. Not too much, 
 to make them drunk; just enough to make them stupidly 
 contented. When Yanek suggested to Kuby Fish that 
 these workers deserved better treatment, he replied, 
 " They are only pigs." He looked at them as they sat 
 around waiting for the signal to return to their work. 
 The majority of them looked stupid; the higher life in 
 them was unawakened and never would come to being. 
 The boys and girls were handsome; but in thought, 
 speech and gesture, unclean. It was sex which dominated 
 their lives, crushing and crowding out better things. 
 After all, the curse of poverty was not the inequality of 
 it, but the iniquity; that they were indeed made into pigs, 
 
THE BEETERS 91 
 
 and had no chance to be anything else ; yet, he reflected, 
 are the rich, the very rich, any better than pigs? And 
 he thought of his experience in the woods. What were 
 Madam Redlich and the Herr Ritter but pigs ? They ate 
 from cleaner troughs, and were a little more discreet in 
 their immorality; still they were pigs. 
 
 He saw a group of beeters gathered around one of the 
 men who was reading to them. He had noticed them 
 before and wondered what made them seem different. 
 They were from the same region, for they wore the 
 same picturesque clothes and spoke the same Slovak 
 dialect. The foreman did not offer them any Palenka 
 and he asked him the reason. Kuby Fish touched his 
 forehead to indicate that they were insane. 
 
 " They have got a new religion. They drink no 
 Palenka, eat no meat and say they will not kill, and their 
 women have no children till they are married," he added 
 with a coarse laugh. 
 
 Yanek joined them and found that it was their elder 
 who was reading to them. He listened to the man, who 
 was slowly and painfully reading from the fifth chapter 
 of Matthew. 
 
 No, not even Kuby Fish could call these people pigs, 
 though he might call them insane. In them stupidity had 
 become single mindedness, and their lives were turned 
 toward a holy aspiration. What made the difference? 
 A very simple and yet a very profound thing. They had 
 a rule of life, the wise would call it a philosophy. 
 
 "Yes brother/' the Starosta answered; "We drink 
 no alcohol, take no oath, we will not fight, we live in 
 chastity, and we are waiting for the coming of our 
 Lord." 
 
 Yanek knew exactly what his professor of Exegesis 
 would have said to the man. He would have told him 
 that he was a literalist, which of course the old man could 
 
92 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 not have understood, and that the Lord is always coming, 
 which he also could not have understood. What the 
 professor could not have denied, was, that these people 
 were just such simple folk as followed the Lord when 
 He was upon the Earth, and that they stood out from 
 their group like men aflame from God, which could not 
 be said of himself, or of the people in that church in 
 America, who were so eager to send him to convert his 
 countrymen. 
 
 Where did they get their faith ? 
 
 " That is a long story/' the old man replied ; but he 
 could tell him so much, that a man came back from 
 America, and gathered them together. They were 
 all addicted to alcohol, they beat their wives, they lived 
 in unchastity, and they were unlettered. He read to 
 them out of the book where Jesus speaks, and then he 
 talked to them. He talked to them as no minister ever 
 had spoken to them. He spoke with tongues as he was 
 moved by the Holy Spirit, and some of them felt His 
 presence so that they too began to speak, though they 
 had never spoken of holy things before. " Upon me 
 too, the Holy Spirit descended." 
 
 Yanek rememebered the rules of Homiletics, all his 
 firstlies and lastlies; all the fine balancing, of truth upon 
 the needle point of a text, the hours and hours which 
 he spent in determining who wrote this or that part of 
 the book of Isaiah, and now after it all, his confusion of 
 mind, his lack of purpose, his inner discord. And here 
 he heard of a man who had come from this same 
 America, with nothing but a living faith, a real program 
 and a hope, and he had wrought this great miracle. For 
 it was a miracle, though he might go to his William James 
 "Varieties of Religious Experience," and have the whole 
 thing explained by him to a T. 
 
 It would have been a " fine " day indeed, if this thing 
 
THE BEETERS 93 
 
 had not happened, and if still other things were not to 
 happen both to him and to Sanctus Spiritus and Com 
 pany who were just emerging from the Bashdnyitza, 
 Moritz Redlich was coughing harder than usual, and why 
 shouldn't he? It was such a " fine " day, till by sheer 
 chance they saw the Herr Ritter coming from the woods, 
 mounting his horse which was tied at the edge of the 
 forest. Then they heard the trampling of horses 
 and the Redlich carriage with the Madam rolled past 
 them. 
 
 The three old men were walking slowly back toward 
 town, and when they came to the beet field they found 
 the workers in a riot. 
 
 Lindner's omnibus had driven by, full of Americans 
 who had been celebrating their return to the homeland by 
 imbibing so freely, that they had reached the happy mood 
 in which they felt generous toward the whole world and 
 wanted everybody to be as happy as they were. They 
 had brought out flasks of Palenka to the beeters, and 
 had no difficulty in luring them from their work. Kuby 
 Fish strenuously objected and threatened them with the 
 gendarmes. 
 
 Did he know who they were ? They were Americans, 
 free Americans, and he and his gendarmes could go to 
 the devil if they wanted to. All the beeters must stop 
 work and drink, and all of them did, except the " Sal- 
 vesh," the crazy men who had a religion which forbade 
 them to drink Palenka. They were led to the omnibus, 
 and did not resist until the " Americans " tried to pour 
 the Palenka down their throats. Was it fortunate or un 
 fortunate that Yanek was not a literalist, and that he 
 had been taught not to take the Sermon on the Mount too 
 seriously ? 
 
 He jumped between the men and their tormentors, his 
 shovel lifted above the heads of the drunken Americans, 
 
94 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 and threatened to brain them if they would not let the 
 beeters go. 
 
 It wasn't the sight of the shovel which cowed them, but 
 the fact that he spoke English to them, that Greek had 
 met Greek, or rather that American had met American. 
 They meant no harm, but as American Slovaks they did 
 not want their fellow countrymen to fare like pigs, and 
 they had come out to treat them. 
 
 The fellow who was the spokesman of the group, and 
 who used very lurid English, learned at the mouth of the 
 minepit, then turned and began to harangue his country 
 men as he had harangued the workmen at the brewery a 
 few days before, and it was at that moment that Sanctus 
 Spiritus and Company passed the field. 
 
 " In America it is fine ! " the man shouted. " You 
 can get six times the wages, and have whisky by the 
 barrel and beer by the hogshead; and here you are work 
 ing for a pittance, and for whom? For Jews and Mag 
 yars who eat roast goose and drink wine while you eat 
 the peelings of potatoes, and praise God if you get a 
 swig of Palenka once a day." He showed them his " fine 
 suit." " Look at it," he said, " and compare it with your 
 coarse trousers and your shirt. You haven't even the 
 comfort of knowing when a flea bites you, for it is 
 scratch, scratch, from morning till evening. 
 
 " Look at my fine watch, and you have only the sun 
 as your clock, and at night you can't see it. Look at 
 my fountain pen, it's full of ink, and the point is of 
 gold, and at the tip there is a diamond, and you can't even 
 scratch your names with a slate pencil. Look at the fine 
 gold in my teeth; it cost me over a hundred dollars to 
 have it hammered in, and you men of my age are chewing 
 your food if you have any, on your gums. 
 
 " In America when the boss does not give us enough 
 money we go to his office and say : * Give us more money 
 
THE BEETERS 95 
 
 or we will strike/ and if the money does not come, we 
 strike, and throw stones, and break up the machinery till 
 the boss gives us what we want. 
 
 " You are just like the oxen, only not so well off for 
 they have their cud to chew, and you have nothing ; they 
 have a nice warm stable, and you will sleep to-night out 
 in the miserable lousy barracks. In America we would 
 set fire to the rat hole." 
 
 The combination of Palenka, the display of fine clothes 
 and gold filled teeth, the eloquence of the tipsy man were 
 too much for their peaceful Slovak blood, and the beeters 
 broke their wooden shovels, loosened the oxen and 
 marched into town, carrying Yanek and the " Salvesh " 
 with them. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky's matches would not light and his 
 Dresdenska would not draw, though he puffed away at it 
 as if he had the asthma. How could they function when 
 the world was growing worse and worse, with sugar 
 beets and immigration all tangled up, and Yanek, Hruby's 
 Yanek, among the beeters who had left their work before 
 the sun was down ? 
 

 CHAPTER NINE: THE FIRST "SCHKANDAL" 
 
 HE FRAULEIN" had come to give Sophie her 
 singing lesson but Sophie was not as well as 
 usual, and excused herself from the ordeal. Madam had 
 the migraine. She was sitting in her flowered easy chair, 
 her hair disheveled. There were black circles around 
 her eyes, the wrinkles which she had so artfully con 
 cealed seemed to have been carved into her face over 
 night, and she was nervously manicuring her finger nails, 
 though she never glanced at them. Both she and Sophie 
 would have been glad if the Fraulein had not removed 
 her hat and, sitting down, asked whether they had heard 
 about the big schkandal. Scandals were the Fraulein's 
 specialty, and when no scandal happened, she invented 
 one. The small ones she embellished, and the big ones 
 she nourished with a mother's tender care; and she told 
 them all with the same gusto with which she ate paprika 
 chicken which was her favorite dish. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky called her the Austro-Hungarian 
 Monarchy, and he had rightly named her, for she was a 
 racial compound in which Slav, Roumanian, German 
 and Magyar blood strains had remained as unassimilated 
 and as constantly at war with one another, as in that 
 political body. 
 
 In a country where there was talent " to burn " and no 
 character to spare, where, though people were kind 
 hearted, one's word and one's bond were equally worth 
 less; where they kissed each other's hands at the least 
 provocation and vigorously kicked when one's back was 
 turned; where it was bad form to forget your friend's 
 name's day or birthday, and where bills were sent by 
 
THE FIRST " SCHKANDAL " 97 
 
 registered mail lest their arrival be denied in such a 
 country Fraulein Ilonka Lomatch, or just " the Frau- 
 lein " as she was always called, was true to the type; ex 
 cept that she was what did not always happen, a good 
 deal better in some things and infinitely worse in others. 
 
 Her family had sacrificed itself upon the altar of her 
 musical education, and her zenith was reached when a 
 musical critic (for a consideration) mentioned her name 
 with that of the great Materna. She came to the United 
 States on the strength of that press notice, and " would 
 have been engaged to sing at the Metropolitan Opera 
 House, had not the conductor, who was in love with the 
 leading soprano, purposely thrown her off the key, and 
 so ruined her prospects/' 
 
 She then went on a concert tour and sang only once, 
 because (she said) her impressario "made indecent de 
 mands "of her, and she promptly resigned. After that 
 she gave no account of her life, until turning her back 
 upon the New World she returned to her native country 
 neither sadder nor wiser, not even richer, with a smat 
 tering of English and the glory of having sung in the 
 Metropolitan Opera. 
 
 Yes, " meine Gnaedige," she had settled herself at her 
 favorite occupation. " Such a schkandal! It was ter 
 rible! About this Meester Hruby. Fraulein Christina 
 is broken hearted ! To think of it ! Such a schkandal! 
 And for him to get mixed up with these Kopanyitchary. 
 I told you meine Gnaedige that he had it thick behind 
 the ears. 
 
 " They came marching back from the field and he had 
 a wench clinging to each arm! Yes, this pious Meester 
 Hruby, and they went to the sugar factory and there they 
 began breaking the windqws and when the gendarmes 
 came they threw stones at them, and now they got what's 
 coming to them. The Meester Hruby is in jail. The 
 
98 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Herr Baron says he is an anarchist and he will see to it 
 that the country is delivered from this American 
 pest." 
 
 The Gnaedige Madam Redlich was greatly relieved; 
 for the Fraulein seemed to know nothing of the schkandal 
 in which she was involved. In that she was mistaken. 
 The Fraulein knew all about it and some things which the 
 Gnaedige herself did not know. 
 
 " Did the Frau Gnaedige know that there was a 
 schkandal in the Casino? Yes, indeed there was. The 
 Herr Ritter was playing billiards and the postmaster 
 came up and called him names, and the Herr Ritter 
 merely told him to get out of his way, the nice, kind Herr 
 Ritter! " The Fraulein was watching the Gnaedige with 
 her swift, shifting glance which one could feel but not 
 see. 
 
 "And then," she continued, now fixing her eyes on the 
 Gnaedige, " the postmaster wrested the billiard cue from 
 the Herr Ritter' s hand and broke it over his head, and 
 now there is to be an American duel." 
 
 Madam Redlich had risen from her chair and the 
 manicure set with which she had been busily engaged 
 dropped from her lap. Her face had grown pale and her 
 lip was quivering. 
 
 " Aber, Gnaedige, don't get excited. An American duel 
 is not so bad. Both the men can not get hurt. The one 
 who draws the black ball, he dies, it is very simple." It 
 was simple enough for the Fraulein to contemplate, just 
 another schkandal in the making; but it was not so simple 
 for Madam Redlich. Never had her flirtations had such 
 dramatic consequences. 
 
 Her husband had indulged her from the first. He was 
 an old man and she was full of life. She craved excite 
 ment, and this snaring of men and letting them go, was 
 the only way in which she could satisfy her desire. There 
 
THE FIRST " SCHKANDAL " 99 
 
 was a long succession of them and nothing serious had 
 happened till the Herr Ritter came. 
 
 Her husband did not like him from the first, and she 
 thought it her duty to be kind to him. Such a man 
 buried here in Hraszova ! What a pity ! So there were 
 afternoon coffees, and he played the piano divinely, and 
 read poetry to her, which stimulated her romantic mood; 
 and her husband's opposition made her only the more 
 attentive to the poor Herr Ritter. 
 
 Of course, there was Kukulish. Kukulish was the only 
 one of all her admirers who had a strain of sincerity 
 in him. He had clung to her, had brought her flowers 
 and talked to her in his stupid way, and never demanded 
 anything but to sit in the parlor and smoke his Cttbana 
 and look at her. She had no dog and he answered the 
 purpose; though like a dog he followed the scent, and 
 over and over again when Herr Ritter least expected it, 
 the postmaster appeared and broke the magic spell he had 
 woven around the Madam. 
 
 This one time he had come too late. In his silent, 
 sullen way, he looked at them in the Bashanyitza; then 
 he spat into the Herr Ritter's face and walked away. 
 
 " Yes, it was all very simple for the Fraulein, but not 
 for the Madam. If her husband only would have scolded 
 her or driven her from the house, she could have stood 
 all that; but that night he did not go to bed; just walked 
 up and down in the chilly room, coughing and moaning, 
 and every once in a while he would come to her bed and 
 glare at her, and his face would grow red and he would 
 shake his fist at her. She wanted to say to him, " Strike 
 me, strike me hard, that is what I deserve ! " But she 
 feared he had lost his mind, for he would break out into 
 laughter and button and unbutton his coat and say : " Yes, 
 in America it is fine ! Look at my fine watch, look at the 
 gold in my teeth, yes, it is fine ! " And then he would 
 
100 SANCTUS SPIRlTlJS AND COMPANY 
 
 walk up and down again, and swing his arms and mut 
 ter to himself. At last he threw himself upon the bed 
 and began to cry like a child. The bed shook under his 
 agony of grief, and she drew him to her and put her arms 
 around him and wept with him. Moritz had a golden 
 heart, a golden, Jewish heart. 
 
 As he lay there in her arms still sobbing, he felt that 
 he was the kinsman of the Prophet Hosea, who dis 
 covered the love in the heart of Jehovah, by his 
 anguished love for Corner the daughter of Giblain, who 
 turned harlot and could not be weaned from her harlotry. 
 If he was like Hosea, she was like Corner, and her re 
 pentance did not last; for her " goodness was as a morn 
 ing cloud and as the dew that goeth early away." 
 
 No, it was not so simple as the Fraulein said it was, 
 this great schkandal in the Casino. Stripped of its ex 
 aggeration there was still enough truth left in the nar 
 rative to make Madam Redlich feel that life was a very 
 complex matter. 
 
 To Yanek Hruby life seemed exceedingly perplexing 
 when that morning he stood before the Judge, accused 
 of inciting to riot Not that he believed less in the 
 Divine leading; it was the direction of which he was not 
 quite so sure. It had been easy enough for his teachers 
 to say : " Here we have snatched a brand from the burn 
 ing, a promising young foreigner. We have converted 
 him, have given him a college education, and then made 
 him a minister of the Gospel by teaching him the alphabet 
 of sacred tongues, taking him through semi-arid stretches 
 of theology, acquainting him with the millinery of the 
 bride of Christ, the church, and now he is to go out and 
 preach the simple Gospel to his people." 
 
 It is only fair to Yanek to say that he had glimpses 
 of the huge problem in that " simple " program of saving 
 a part of the world; but it was like the entertainment 
 
THE FIRST "SCHKANDAL" 101 y 
 
 provided by one of his professors, who took the visiting 
 student on a journey through the world, with a stereo 
 scope. In a soft easy chair, in a comfortable if not 
 luxurious parlor, he viewed mountains he would never 
 climb, rivers he would never cross, and sailed over oceans 
 whose storms would never hinder his ship. 
 
 He had been swept along with the striking peasants, 
 and he was neither courageous nor cowardly enough to 
 leave them. He hoped that the good Lord, looking down 
 upon him, believed it to be all courage. 
 
 The loosened oxen shook themselves as if they thought 
 it too good to be true that their yokes had been taken 
 from them before sundown; then they promptly attacked 
 the sugar beets which they had helped to produce and 
 had never enjoyed. In this course of action they proved 
 themselves thoroughly converted to the revolutionary 
 doctrine preached by the Americans. 
 
 Kuby Fish, however, faithful servant of capitalism, 
 succeeded in driving them off, but in so doing stampeded 
 them. They had quite forgotten that they could run, but 
 when they realized that there was no heavy load behind 
 them, they swung down the road at a moderate trot 
 which increased in momentum as they went down hill. 
 By the time they reached the Esplanade, they were an 
 irresistible mass, putting the promenaders to flight. 
 
 Fortunately, when the animals reached the market 
 place wrapped in a cloud of dust, only their white horns 
 rising above it, some wise master of stupid oxen 
 shouted; "Whoa!" The maddening rush ceased, and 
 they wended their way peacefully to the sugar factory as 
 though nothing unusual had happened. Long before 
 sundown they were locked into their stalls, gratefully 
 pulling hay from the swinging mangers. 
 
 Behind the oxen came the marching beeters. They did 
 not sing, or keep step. They did not know where or why 
 
102 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they were marching, but they knew that they were free. 
 The drunken Americans had driven away in Lindner's 
 omnibus, and the " Salvesh," the " crazy " fellows who 
 refused to drink Palenka were scattered through the 
 marching mass but had no steadying influence. 
 
 Before the beeters reached the Esplanade, Yanek no 
 ticed, to his dismay, that the men were picking up rocks. 
 Then for the first time, something heroic in him broke 
 through his timid indecision. 
 
 He stepped out of the gray, forward moving cloud and 
 began to appeal to the men to drop the rocks; but they 
 kept on, not hearing or heeding him. As he saw the 
 stronger men moving to the front and the women and 
 older men dropping to the rear, it flashed through his 
 mind how, on the athletic field, he had seen order brought 
 out of chaos. 
 
 He ran ahead, jumped on to one of the benches and 
 began swinging his arms and at the same time he sang 
 one of the workers' chants, which fortunately he had not 
 forgotten. To his 
 
 " Hey zippy zippy zip 
 Hey peasant zippy zip 
 Foamy beer and wheaten cakes 
 Hey zippy zippy zip " 
 
 the formless mass began to march in step. When it 
 was in full swing he called a peremptory " Halt! " The 
 marchers responded like a runaway wagon to the sudden 
 brake. 
 
 " Drop your stones ! " he called out, and one by one 
 the tense fists were opened. 
 
 Swinging his arms again, like the much envied yell 
 master during a football game, he soon had them sing 
 ing and marching toward the sugar factory. 
 
THE FIRST " SCHKANDAL " 103 
 
 News of the strike had come to the authorities long 
 before the beeters reached town, and they walked into 
 the factory yard between rows of gendarmes. Like the 
 oxen before them they were driven into their barracks 
 and the heavy doors were locked after them; but there 
 were no hayracks to quiet them, and pandemonium broke 
 loose. 
 
 It wasn't freedom they wanted, but " Chleb " bread. 
 It seemed to Yanek that the whole town must hear 
 their piercing screams, but no one appeared. 
 
 The women began to cry, frightened now as well as 
 hungry. The men turned on Yanek " Why did he tell 
 them to drop the stones? What business was it of his 
 anyway ? " 
 
 He would have suffered violence had not the leader of 
 the " Salvesh " the gentle, wrinkled, Starychek pushed 
 him into a dark corner. His adherents surrounded 
 Yanek, and the old man began pleading with the angry 
 beeters not to hurt the man who had saved them all from 
 a worse fate. 
 
 It was dark before the keys were turned again, and 
 through the opened door Kuby Fish appeared. Cursing 
 them, he told them that in spite of their disobedience, 
 the usual soup and bread would be served them. 
 
 As long as Yanek lived he remembered with horror 
 that night, the longest night he ever lived, the worst and 
 the best. The food had quieted the peasants, and one 
 by one they stretched out on the floor, removing only 
 their boots; men and women, young and old, together. 
 
 The old men were soon asleep but the young men! 
 Yes, indeed, they were just pigs. Kuby Fish was right; 
 but woe unto those who made them what they were! 
 All the feelings to which Yanek had been more than a 
 stranger surged through him. Indeed the men were 
 right. What business was it of his to quiet their tumult ? 
 
104 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Why should they not throw stones? What else but brute 
 force would avail? He prayed for some supernatural 
 power, some miracle working gift by which he could 
 change the wisps of straw on which he lay, into cold 
 steel, or the piece of heavy, soggy bread, which he could 
 not eat, into a bomb. 
 
 Of what avail was their pious talk in the seminary, 
 about the conquering love of God ? How weak, and im 
 potent, and bloodless the Christ now seemed to him 
 the Christ they had urged upon him and whose leader 
 ship he had accepted. What idle babbling it was this 
 turning of the "other cheek." 
 
 Out of the dark a hand came groping toward him a 
 large, coarse hand, yet the hand of a woman, hungry for 
 a caress, and he was in the mood to respond to it. Nearer 
 and nearer she drew, and then was it God's leading 
 was it that vast, world filling force stooping to him again? 
 How could he ever doubt it, when again and again it 
 directed, almost forced him out of the way in which he 
 was determined to go? It may have been chance, pure 
 blind chance, that just then the Starychek lighted a tallow 
 candle, and as Yanek looked into the face of the woman 
 beside him, as he saw by the gleam of the candle, the evil 
 light in her eyes, the feeling of revulsion came. 
 
 God had saved him! Yet it was a terrible night, an 
 unforgettable night. It was the first time in his life that 
 he was cursed by a woman. 
 
 He moved over to the huddled groups of the " Sal- 
 vesh." The Starychek had put the candle on the floor 
 and began to read again, slowly and falter ingly, from the 
 Gospels. Jesus was speaking against the law, against 
 tradition and customs. Jesus in His authoritative, dry, 
 cold, heartsearching way, putting- His finder on the 
 source of evil and revealing the Holy of Holies within 
 each man. " Ye have heard that it was said by them of 
 
THE FIRST SCHKANDAL " 105 
 
 old time " (and it did not matter to Him who said it) 
 " but / say unto you, that every one who is angry with 
 his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the 
 judgment." 
 
 Yanek had heard that before, he had read it himself, 
 out of big, dignified pulpit Bibles, and out of little, 
 smugly bound, limp leather, rice paper Testaments. He 
 had heard sermons preached on those texts, properly di 
 luted, skillfully dissected. He had never heard them from 
 lips which believed it all and which accepted the uncom 
 promising " But 7 say unto you " as the law of conduct. 
 The Starychek had closed the book and began to speak 
 to them. 
 
 " The Christ has conquered the world and has served 
 it, because He suffered and did not complain. He suf 
 fered with love and joy. 
 
 " We have sinned in our hearts to-day because we have 
 given room to anger. We must repent of our sins. We 
 must do our hard work with love, and suffer without 
 complaint. Work is necessary. We must do that which 
 is good and abstain from that which is evil. We must 
 speak kindly words and overcome evil with good. 
 
 " We are doing only small things, but from the mus 
 tard seed grows the big tree the Dig tree of love whose 
 branches will shade the world. May God aid us in being 
 faithful to Him in moments of temptation, when we face 
 our enemies or our friends, when we are full or when we 
 are empty. Then it will be well for us, and it will be well 
 for everybody. Now let us pray in our hearts." 
 
 No doubt some of them prayed Yanek prayed, he was 
 sure of that. For the first time in his life he had the 
 feeling that some Holy Presence filled him, and though 
 his lips did not move, he knew he was praying. 
 
CHAPTER TEN: THE TRIAL 
 
 THE morning came none too soon and he greeted 
 eagerly every sign of its coming, for the air in the 
 barracks was stifling. When the dawn stole in through 
 the narrow windows and the sleepers awoke, those who 
 did not look angrily at him and curse him, made coarse 
 jests at his expense, coupling his name with that of the 
 woman who had spent the night close to him. 
 
 In the adjoining barns the oxen were being fed and 
 yoked again, and then to every one's relief the doors of 
 the barracks were opened. Cauldrons of hot soup and 
 loaves of bread were brought in, and these together with 
 the Palenka which was served in unusually generous 
 quantities, made them forget the ills of yesterday. Some 
 one was calling the roll, and soon he heard the beeters 
 marching away to their work, following the patient oxen, 
 and singing as usual. 
 
 When Yanek's name was called, he inwardly resented 
 the fact that no prefix was put to it, but after all he was 
 one of them now, and could not expect anything else. 
 When he reached the door, he faced two gendarmes with 
 a warrant for his arrest. He had half expected that; 
 nevertheless it came to him with a shock; he had to 
 taste the first draught from the martyr's cup, and that 
 draught is always the bitterest. It grows sweeter the 
 more deeply one drinks. He was marched through the 
 streets just the same as any other criminal; the law 
 never takes any chances, and treated him with firmness 
 and determination, as if he had been a dangerous high 
 wayman. A prisoner is a prisoner, and neither the 
 
 106 
 
THE TRIAL 107 
 
 gendarmes nor the gaping populace made any fine dis 
 tinctions. 
 
 He could stand the jests and slurs cast upon his 
 profession, but he was deeply hurt when the little children 
 shrank from him, seeming more afraid of him than of 
 the gendarmes with their fixed bayonets. The worst of 
 the seemingly interminable journey was the fact that he 
 had to pass the Pan's house. From a distance he saw his 
 mother, and as he came nearer he noticed how shrunken 
 and old she looked. Marisha was standing there, and 
 Pepo and the derelict old men and women of the hospice 
 and the little idiotic girl. 
 
 Marisha made a face at him and called him a " Sal- 
 vesh." Pepo laughed at that, his hollow, loud laugh 
 which seemed to echo in his brainless head. Yanek was 
 grateful that none of the Pan's people were watching for 
 him; in fact the windows were closed and the curtains 
 drawn. His mother threw herself into his arms un 
 afraid and unashamed, and when the gendarmes tried to 
 separate them, she turned upon them with an animal 
 fierceness which was as much a surprise to him as it was 
 to the guardians of the law. 
 
 His father was not so affectionate. He saw his pres 
 tige vanished. No chance now that he would hear his 
 son preach, and no matter whether he was guilty of this 
 thing or not, whatever it was, Andrew Feher, always his 
 foe, would have a new and sharper taunt at his disposal. 
 He did not follow his son. He had been commanded by 
 the Pan to harness the horses, come up to the courthouse 
 and wait for orders. He went back to the stable shaking 
 his head, mourning the passing of his reflected glory, 
 and when Martzin the groom told him, that was all one 
 could expect from a boy who stole honeycakes at the 
 fair, he threw a pitchfork at him, narrowly missing his 
 head. The little idiotic child ran after the dreary pro- 
 
108 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 cession, hopping like a bird, with her arms extended as if 
 she were flying, making inarticulate sounds which perhaps 
 the birds understood. It was a long and cruel walk up the 
 dusty street. When they passed the Redlich mansion, 
 Mortiz Redlich was just going to the distillery, and he 
 stopped for a moment to ask Yanek whether he was still 
 feeling " fine." His mother quickly enlightened the old 
 man as to the cause of her son's arrest (which he knew), 
 and he began to cough nervously; then instead of going 
 to the office, he turned and walked toward the Catholic 
 Church, disappearing through the door of the par 
 sonage. 
 
 The few hours Yanek spent in the jail were made bear 
 able by the fact that it was not a worse place than the 
 barracks, and that Dr. Makutchky appeared, bringing 
 with him an attorney, Dr. Finor. He was one of the few 
 educated Slovaks who had not succumbed to the pressure 
 of the Magyars, and was known as a fearless and just 
 advocate ; indeed he was the only legal adviser whom the 
 Slovaks could trust. His clients being poor, he was 
 content with small fees or none, and as Yanek looked 
 into his finely modeled face with its clear and kindly eyes, 
 he knew his cause was in good hands. It was too good 
 an occasion for Dr. Makutchky to let pass without ex 
 pressing his views about the State, and he did so in his 
 usual vigorous way. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky had urgent business that morning 
 at the parsonage, Father Anton Kalman having sum 
 moned him, and on the way there he seemed very much 
 agitated and wasted an unusual number of matches in 
 lighting his pipe. 
 
 Yanek had never come in contact with the majesty of 
 the law, and had never been in a court room ; so when he 
 was ushered in, it affected him in the same way as when 
 one time he had been in an operating room in the hospital, 
 
THE TRIAL 109 
 
 with one of his friends. The room revolved around him. 
 He saw the Judge, a yellow skinned, pudgy, fiercely 
 mustached man, his small eyes and square face betraying 
 the Asiatic blood which had been nearly bred out of his 
 race by its intermixture with other peoples. But to 
 Yanek he seemed to expand, and he looked like one of 
 those figures distorted by a concave mirror. Yanek 
 thought he heard the swash of the Pan's leather breeches, 
 the nervous cough of Moritz Redlich, and before the 
 court was formally opened, the third member of Sanctus 
 Spiritus and Company was tapping his snuff tobacco box, 
 once, and the tap was followed by a vigorous sneeze. At 
 that moment, had it not been for Dr. Makutchky, the 
 prisoner would have fallen to the ground. Some one 
 brought him a glass of water; he thought it was Chris 
 tina, but it was his mother's hand he touched. 
 
 The majesty of the law ! No wonder it needs a pomp 
 ous setting ! How much red tape, how many preambles, 
 what vain repetitions before it is ready to operate; and 
 how many paragraphs this and paragraphs that, have to 
 be read; how it looks back to view the past, and how it 
 closes its eyes to the future ! 
 
 Yanek felt none of the exaltation which the school 
 master experienced when he was in a similar predicament. 
 He did not feel above these people, but one of them, 
 with no pride, and a profound pity for all who thought 
 it necessary to pervert the truth and invent lies in order 
 to convict him. One might have thought that the very 
 foundations of the State would tremble and fall unless 
 the defendant were found guilty. 
 
 This then was human nature, this venomous, poison 
 ous thing, which he had idealized and believed to be a 
 part of the Divine. A woman appeared on the witness 
 stand and testified that it was he who had given Palenka 
 to the beeters, and told them that they were working for 
 
110 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Magyar pigs, and that at night, in the barracks, he had 
 attacked her. 
 
 Then something seemed to break within him, and no 
 longer able to control himself, he shouted : " She lies ! " 
 His mother rushed at the woman and only the stern com 
 mand of the Judge to restrain herself kept her from do 
 ing the witness bodily injury. The spectators loudly 
 voiced their opinions and the room was in such an 
 uproar that it was with difficulty the court restored order. 
 In the meantime the witnesses for the defense were being 
 brought back from the beet field. 
 
 Never before had Stephan Hruby so urged his horses 
 as on that day. When he passed the Redlich home he 
 saw Andrew Feher looking after him, wondering 
 whether the old Slovak had gone mad. The horses 
 themselves must have been reminded of their young 
 days when they needed no urging to keep up such a pace. 
 
 The first witness for the defense was the Starychek, 
 and he was the only man who took the stand without 
 fear. He held his head erect, and when the court asked 
 him to take the oath he refused. " The Gospel says : 
 ' Thou shalt not forswear thyself/ " 
 
 The Judge reminded him that he was face to face with 
 a representative of the Hungarian Government to which 
 he courteously replied that he was also face to face with 
 the Divine Government, and that he " preferred to dis 
 obey the court rather than the Almighty." 
 
 "Had he ever before refused to obey the court?" 
 He had, upon this same question. Then he had been sent 
 to prison and he was ready to go again. He would take 
 no oath but he would say " Yea, yea, and Nay, nay/' 
 
 There was a long wrangle between the Judge and 
 Dr. Finor but the court did not permit the Starychek to 
 testify. 
 
 The next witness had no objection to taking an oath. 
 
THE TRIAL 111 
 
 Oaths were natural to him; but he was badly frightened 
 by the court, and remembered little or nothing. He was 
 more or less under the influence of liquor and contra 
 dicted himself a number of times. The only thing he 
 knew was that a woman cursed the defendant that night, 
 and that they all laughed and joked about it in the 
 morning. 
 
 The next witness had a little clearer idea in his head; 
 but he was guarding his own hide; for when he was 
 asked whether he picked up stones without being told to, 
 he replied that he was told to by some one, but he did not 
 quite know who it was. It might have been the defend 
 ant. 
 
 Matters were not looking especially favorable for 
 Yanek; the court was frankly prejudiced against him. 
 Baron Smertzing as Crown Notary was present, and he 
 passed written slips of paper to His Honor which that 
 worthy frequently consulted as he asked questions. 
 There was a moment of silence after the last witness had 
 been examined, and then there was a sound as of some 
 one knocking on the floor. It was Pan Yan Szenitzky 
 emptying his Dresdenska. This was followed by the 
 usual cough proceeding from the direction where Moritz 
 Redlich sat, and then the Reverend Father Anton Kalman 
 solemnly tapped his snuff tobacco box three times; but 
 he did not sneeze. His Reverence had risen and asked 
 the court for the privilege of testifying. He too had no 
 compunctions about oaths on such occasions, and then 
 he tapped his snuff tobacco box but once, and a vigorous 
 sneeze followed. The court was polite enough to wish 
 His Reverence good health, and the permission to testify 
 was granted. As it happened, His Reverence began, he 
 and his two well known friends were out shooting pheas 
 ants; that is, they were out hunting, to be perfectly cor 
 rect. As they emerged from the Bashanyitza beyond the 
 
112 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Hussite chapel, they saw the beeters crowding around 
 Lindner's omnibus, and Lindner himself was here to cor 
 roborate his statement. In the omnibus were some men; 
 they were recently returned immigrants and had been 
 celebrating their return in the usual fashion, and had 
 brought with them a large number of bottles of Palenka. 
 Lindner could tell the court how many. He and his 
 friends had heard these men haranguing the beeters, and 
 it was at the solicitation of the immigrants that they 
 threw down their tools, loosened the oxen and marched 
 into town. 
 
 He and his honored confreres marched after them, 
 fearing trouble. Just as they came to the Esplanade the 
 men stopped to pick up rocks, and were swinging them 
 with menacing gestures. It was the defendant whom 
 they saw step on to one of the benches and plead with 
 the men to drop the stones ; but they would not. At that 
 point, His Reverence said, he cut across the cemetery to 
 reach town quickly, because he was afraid they would 
 cause serious trouble when they reached there, and it was 
 he who notified the gendarmes. If the court so desired, 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky who was also present, would con 
 tinue the testimony. 
 
 There were further ceremonials of taking the oath and 
 of the Pan's knocking his pipe on the nearest hard sur 
 face, which happened to be the desk of the court itself, 
 and His Honor snorted at the Pan as if it had been his 
 head which was being assaulted. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky continued the narrative, that is, 
 he would have continued it, but the court knows no short 
 cuts, and he had to begin at the beginning, which gave 
 him an opportunity to say a few uncomplimentary things 
 about emigration in general and about those immigrants 
 in particular, and also a few words about the demoraliz 
 ing effects of sugar beets. However, his testimony 
 
THE TRIAL 113 
 
 added little to that of Father Kalrnan, for when the 
 orderly procession reached the Pan's house he had not 
 gone further, for reasons best known to himself and to 
 his family. Moritz Redlich was at the court's disposal 
 and he could tell the rest of the story. 
 
 Moritz Redlich being a Jew, the court paraphernalia 
 had to be changed before he took his oath. The crucifix 
 was veiled, the Holy, much kissed and complete Bible 
 was removed, and the Old Testament in Hebrew script 
 took its place. Moritz Redlich was not so eloquent as his 
 friends and he was coughing harder than usual; but he 
 could convey this fact to the knowledge of the court: 
 1 That at the very least, the Sugar Trust owes the de 
 fendant an apology; for if it had not been for him, the 
 glazier would be a few hundred Crowns richer, and it, 
 correspondingly poorer." When Moritz Redlich resumed 
 his seat, the defendant was asked to testify in his own 
 behalf, and he had not spoken half a dozen sentences 
 before the court room was as quiet as a church. 
 
 He had no grievance against those who bore false 
 witness; they had been lied to all their lives and lived in 
 a polluted atmosphere. He did quiet the mob and he did 
 deplore violence, but he wanted the court to know how 
 these people were treated, and if he had wronged the 
 woman who accused him he would not have been the 
 only man who wronged her that night. The barracks 
 were a disgrace and a menace to society. The people 
 were living in a pernicious atmosphere and the court 
 ought to take cognizance of it. Then he indicted the 
 Sugar Trust for treating its workers like animals ; in 
 fact, he said, the oxen were treated in a more humane 
 manner that the beeters. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky knocked his Dresdenska so hard 
 on his boot heel that it nearly broke, and he whispered 
 something to Moritz Redlich. Father Anton Kalman 
 
114 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 again took snuff, tapping the box gracefully three times. 
 The crowd began to applaud, and for the second time the 
 court called to order. 
 
 To Yanek there came a feeling of exaltation after he 
 had expressed his moral indignation. He looked around 
 the court room, and although there were sullen looks 
 enough, Sanctus Spiritus and Company smiled upon him 
 and he was content. Yet he could not help wishing that 
 Christina might have heard his plea for justice to the 
 beeters. 
 
 The court again consulted paragraph this and statute 
 that, looked at various formidable documents, and finally 
 the Judge declared that the defendant was not guilty: 
 "but inasmuch as his home has been searched and some 
 printed matter found, which may be incriminating, the 
 said defendant must be put under police surveillance, 
 and not permitted to leave the town, till a decision is 
 received from Budapest." 
 
 The first person to reach the defendant to offer con 
 gratulations was the Pan, and the fact that he lighted his 
 pipe with one match, showed the high sprits he was in; 
 for sugar beets had received their first public indictment, 
 and the world was surely growing better. 
 
 Moritz Redlich shook Yanek' s hand and said " In 
 Hungary it is fine too, isn't it? " as a smile passed over 
 his sad and wrinkled face. His Reverence came also, 
 and opening the snuff tobacco box in his most impressive 
 manner, offered it to Yanek. Of course he could not 
 refuse. 
 
 " To your health, your Reverence," he said, as all too 
 vigorously he inhaled the pungent stuff, and when his 
 mother at last had a chance to throw herself into his 
 arms, he was in no condition to be kissed, and it was not 
 the first time in her life that she offered her son her 
 handkerchief. 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN: VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 
 
 BACK of Vavra's butcher shop, Pan Vavra sold wine 
 of native vintage, and a scraggly pine bough badly 
 battered by many winds and hanging from a staff, an 
 nounced that fact. However, the wine of Hraszova, 
 made from grapes growing on the foot-hills of the Car 
 pathian mountains, was a thin, puckery fluid ; " brittle/' 
 the connoisseurs called it, quite like the Slovaks who had 
 grown up in the same environment, and only the Slovaks 
 found it palatable. The peasants craved something 
 stronger than Vavra's shop offered, something which bit 
 and stung and burned all the way down, and the few pen 
 nies they could spare for drink passed across the counter 
 of the Jewish tavern keeper. 
 
 The Magyar aristocrats had their Casino, "the Jews 
 who were not admitted to it, organized one of their own, 
 and the Slovaks, who represented various occupations, 
 and whose clothes marked them as burghers and not as 
 peasants, went to Vavra's. 
 
 There were bootmakers, who made the heavy, horse 
 hide, shapeless boots of the peasants. Their business 
 was all but ruined because the immigrants brought back 
 shapely, American shoes which were infinitely more com 
 fortable, and, strange to say, more lasting. 
 
 There were weavers of blue cloth, a thick, tough, un 
 yielding stuff, from which the Sunday breeches of the 
 peasants were made, the cloth being warranted to last 
 through many generations of Sundays. That was be 
 fore dyes and acids were imported from Germany, and 
 
 115 
 
116 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they were all produced at home with infinite labor, ac 
 companied by unspeakable odors. 
 
 The H alii nary also patronized Vavra's. They made 
 nothing but white cloth coats, so badly shaped that the 
 sleeves were practically useless, unless one needed a strait- 
 jacket. The coat was therefore worn as sort of a mantle 
 over the sheepskin coat, which was made by the Koshu- 
 chary, and they, being Jews, never came to Vavra's. 
 
 Besides these, there were several shopkeepers, a few 
 landowners whose holdings were large enough to require 
 hired help, and one baker, whose rolls were taboo among 
 the Jews, because he put lard into them. Every once in 
 a while some of the Magyarized Slovaks would slip in 
 under cover of the night, to eat Panyi Vavra's Petchenka 
 and take a drink or two of wine ; for the stomach remains 
 strangely unaffected by a transfer of one's political 
 loyalty. 
 
 On the whole it was a safe place for the leaders of 
 Slovakdom to gather and talk about their wrongs, of 
 which there were many. The right of political assembly 
 was denied them; suffrage was so skillfully hedged about 
 as to give the ruling minority the offices, without the 
 necessity of counting the votes; in the primary schools, 
 the Magyar language had to be taught, to the neglect of 
 the mother tongue, and Slovak secondary schools did 
 not exist. So there was much to talk about eVery evening 
 in that plainly furnished room back of Vavra's butcher 
 shop, and, on a particular evening when Yanek was the 
 guest of honor, they discussed among other things, the 
 coming parliamentary election. 
 
 Since his arrest and trial, his indecision had van 
 ished, except when he faced Christina. Her mental 
 poise, coupled with her preoccupation, kept him as re 
 served as she was. " She has the mind of a man and the 
 heart of a mother," Dr. Makutchky used to say, and he 
 
VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 117 
 
 was a keen diagnostician. " She will marry either a very 
 unfortunate man who needs her to take care of him, or 
 one who is in every way her superior, and the latter kind 
 is exceedingly rare," he added, suspecting Yanek's 
 problem. 
 
 Christina was not satisfied to let Yanek's public protest 
 against the treatment of the beeters pass unnoticed after 
 it was uttered. She immediately began to create public 
 opinion, and wrote a graphic article which appeared in 
 one of the Budapest newspapers having the largest cir 
 culation among thinking people. She followed this by a 
 signed protest directed to the Minister of Labor, and in 
 it she cleverly intimated that anti-Magyar propaganda 
 throve on such mistreatment. In an incredibly short time 
 an order came from that source, abolishing the barracks. 
 
 Christina had definite plans for organizing co-operative 
 societies, not only to eliminate the middleman, but 
 also to develop the spirit of solidarity, and strengthen the 
 rather weak sense of initiative among her people. With 
 all this intellectual force, there was a tender, mystic piety 
 about her, which kept her all woman, her weakness be 
 coming strength in her conscious communion with God. 
 
 Nowhere in her scheme did Yanek see any room for 
 himself, and at Babushka's meeting which he attended, 
 he realized that there, he had nothing to give. They all 
 had a childlike faith; his was shot through by a little 
 learning. His Christ was an influence, theirs was a 
 power ; he knew a great deal about the Logos; they knew 
 The Word which was from the beginning, though they 
 hadn't the slightest idea just why John wrote the pro 
 logue to the Gospel which bears his name. He could pray 
 eloquently, they talked to God; for He was with them 
 in the very room in which they were meeting; his God 
 was imminent, though he was never clear just what that 
 meant. 
 
118 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 In Christina, this world and the other world met; 
 while in him, they were far apart. There was a certain 
 kind of intellectual dishonesty in his thinking, of which 
 he always became painfully conscious when he talked to 
 her. The leaven of hypocrisy had touched him though 
 he had another and more scientific name for it. She was 
 a Slav, her mind had no hiding places ; he was a Slav con 
 verted into an Anglo-Saxon, and he had been made to 
 believe that he was a Christian. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky's revulsion against Nationalism he did 
 not share; for he had drunk too deeply from a still un 
 polluted spring over there in the United States, where it 
 was welding and shaping a nation out of many peoples. 
 Too often, with inner gratitude and sincere loyalty, he 
 had sung " My country 'tis of thee," and he had not 
 yet sensed the " fatal European disease," as the doctor 
 called it, which was leading the nations to the great 
 abyss. 
 
 The schoolmaster was still the schoolmaster, by whose 
 bedside he felt the strengthening and ennobling influence 
 of an unselfish and holy purpose, and as he became con 
 scious of the wrongs of his people, there came to him 
 the call to leadership. When he was honest with himself, 
 and that was not infrequently, he realized that his motive 
 was not altogether unselfish, that he had tasted the glory 
 of suffering for a cause, and that he was hungry for more 
 of it. So it happened that he was at Vavra's wine shop, 
 talking politics, and it was no small sop to his vanity to 
 find that he was being consulted by his elders, about the 
 coming campaign. 
 
 What silent men these square faced Slovaks were; 
 how distrustful of themselves and of each other, how 
 honestly conscious of their own faults and with it what 
 lack of confidence in their virtues. There was only one 
 firebrand in Vavra's wine shop, and he was the 
 
VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 119 
 
 Bohemian candymaker, Wenzel Motichka; but one was 
 enough. 
 
 The Slovaks and the Czechs are cousins, but they are 
 more like grandfather and grandson, the Slovak easily 
 being the older, the sadder, the more disillusioned, the 
 less progressive. 
 
 Just what made the difference, climate? There isn't 
 much choice between the rigor of the Carpathians and 
 that of the Bohemian hills. 
 
 History ? Perhaps ; but history means more than who 
 was the first or last king, or what battles were fought 
 here or there. It means, primarily, who were the enemies 
 they faced when they battled, and who it was that con 
 quered them. 
 
 To be invaded by the Germans and not by the Turks 
 and Magyars; to bear a yoke scientifically fitted, rather 
 than drag at a heavy, wearing chain ; to have masters who 
 know something more than their alphabet, or to have 
 those who have none; that may account for the differ 
 ence. Yet it may be true that the mythical Czech, the 
 forerunner of the one race, was naturally a fighter, a 
 rebel; and that Mech or Lech, who were his brothers 
 and the supposed ancestors of the other Slavs, were the 
 gentle, yielding, patient plowmen which all their descend 
 ants are. 
 
 Whatever the cause, and there is no cause, there are 
 causes, the fact is that the Czech is the one dominant 
 figure in Slavdom. He carries a " chip on his shoulder," 
 and he is like an Irishman, fiddle, fight, drink and sing; 
 but there the resemblance ceases, for he lacks the Irish 
 man's sense of humor and his prodigality. 
 
 Wenzel Motichka, the candymaker was a Czech, an 
 intensified Czech, who knew the history of Bohemia for 
 ward and backward and who had taken it upon himself 
 to educate the Slovaks of Hraszova. He was accused by 
 
120 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 his enemies of being there to make propaganda, but 
 that was not the truth. He made propaganda because he 
 was there, just as every Bohemian makes it, wherever 
 he is placed in this universe. 
 
 He was not gentle with them, that is not the way of 
 the Bohemian. He called them names; rightly or 
 wrongly, he called them fools and asses, and the pathetic 
 thing was, that nobody at Vavra's resented it. Even if 
 they felt the insult, who among them had courage enough 
 to face the wrath of Wenzel? 
 
 He had been holding forth for a long time that night, 
 and the burden of his speech was that now was the time 
 to strike. The monarchy was on its last legs. The Em 
 peror-King, a sad, fascinating figure, was in his dotage, 
 and Francis Ferdinand, the heir apparent, was follow 
 ing Germany in arming the nation and creating a fleet; 
 all, to make German dominance permanent. Bosnia and 
 Herzegovina had been annexed by the signatory powers 
 without the consent of the inhabitants. The army \vas all 
 but mobilized and its maneuvers were near the Serbian 
 front. 
 
 The Southern Slavs were awakening, and there was 
 active propaganda everywhere. They must become the 
 lords of their own land, and if the Slavs did not stand 
 together, who should ? They must stand for their rights 
 and cling to their language. 
 
 Wenzel was eloquent, and his eloquence was as acrid 
 and intoxicating as Pan Vavra's wine. " Language," he 
 cried, with upraised glass; "the Slav language! Long 
 may it live ! " And the toast was drunk amid an uproar 
 of applause. 
 
 People have fought for dominion, for wealth, for 
 religion; but none have fought for language as have the 
 Bohemians, and the more wine Wenzel drank, the more 
 it became his theme. " The German language is only a 
 
VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 121 
 
 re-hash of the Bohemian, and when I say Bohemian of 
 course I mean Slovak." This to allay any possible hurt. 
 
 " Take the word Okno, window, it is as old as the 
 ark of Noah, and the Germans got their word Auge from 
 our Okno. 
 
 " Take the word for plow, which is Pluck. The 
 Bohemians, and beg your pardon, the Slovaks also, 
 plowed their fields when the Germans knew nothing 
 about agriculture; and from whom have they the word 
 PHug, but from the Bohemians? beg your pardon, I 
 mean Slovaks too. 
 
 " Take another word, home, Dom. When the Germans 
 lived in caves and had no such word, the Bohemians, and 
 beg your pardon, the Slovaks, had a doni; and now the 
 Germans, when they talk of the House of God, a real 
 respectable House of God, speak of the Dom." 
 
 His etymology was faulty, but his appeal to Slav pride 
 of precedence was effective, and more sour wine was 
 consumed, and the silent Slovaks shook their heads and 
 said : " Tak, tak! " though they had heard this particular 
 preachment more than once. 
 
 Of course he could not finish his talk without propos 
 ing that they sing " Hey Slovane," the Slav revolutionary 
 hymn, and it was only when Panyi Vavra came running 
 in and warned them that the gendarmes patrol was pass 
 ing, that he was silenced. 
 
 There was a great deal of blind, futile talk, as there 
 always is on such occasions, and then Pan Brunovsky, 
 the wealthiest of the shopkeepers, suggested that they 
 hear from their honored guest from America. It was 
 after all, to America they had to look for their salvation. 
 America was waking them up, from America the immi 
 grants brought not only money but also the feeling of 
 power. In America was the big propaganda for their 
 national independence. Many of their countrymen had 
 
122 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 returned, but none of them as illustrious as their guest 
 to-night, and now they would drink to the health of the 
 Reverend Pan Hruby, and of course he must make a 
 speech and tell them all about their countrymen in 
 America. 
 
 During the last week Yanek had traveled swiftly back 
 to his countrymen. It wasn't a " million leagues or so," 
 as the schoolmaster had said, that he had been away from 
 his people ; a few steps, imperceptibly taken, had brought 
 him back, and though he had, until now, resisted the 
 constant temptation to drink, he could not refuse when 
 the men proposed his health. So he clinked his glass 
 with theirs, going all around, and said " Na zdrav " and 
 drank with them, and the result was that he talked elo 
 quently as always, that he said more than he believed 
 and that he drank more than was good for him. 
 
 When he finished speaking they believed that he knew 
 a thing or two, and more about politics than he really 
 did know; for outside the fact that he had heard a few 
 political speeches and knew something about govern 
 ment, having had a course in Political Science, and that 
 he had had a share in rather innocent college politics, he 
 had as little experience as they themselves. 
 
 The Slovak party would put up a candidate at the 
 coming election though there was little hope of electing 
 him, the ballot box being always manipulated in favor of 
 the national candidate; but they would try again if only 
 as a matter of protest. A man had been proposed, they 
 said, who resided in one of the northern counties ; but no 
 one knew anything about him. Then Yanek had an 
 inspiration. It was the American idea of having a man 
 nominated who knew the district because he resided in 
 it, and he named, as the best man in the whole kingdom, 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky. Indeed, why had no one thought 
 of that grand old man before? Honest, a Slovak every 
 
VAVRA'S BUTCHER SHOP 123 
 
 inch of him, even refusing a Baronetcy to save his Slovak 
 name. So it was resolved to push his candidacy, pro 
 vided he would accept. That could with perfect safety 
 be left to Yanek, that and a number of other things. 
 
 A house to house canvass of the whole district was to 
 be begun at once, flags and posters must be in evidence, 
 watchers for the polls secured, and above all else, a 
 definite declaration on the part of both candidates as to 
 their views regarding the rights of the Slovaks. Just 
 who would do all this and how it should be done, was not 
 quite clear to Yanek, but he knew it would be done, for 
 every time he spoke, he gained more courage, the num 
 ber of times he had to drink some one's health having 
 perhaps something to do with it. 
 
 The night watchman blew the latest hour of the night 
 when the Slovak dignitaries closed their session at 
 Vavra's wine shop, and Yanek walked home arm in arm 
 with Pan Brunovsky, who called him the savior of 
 Slovakdom and praised his eloquence and the keenness 
 of his mind. As Yanek passed the Pan's house, he 
 thought he saw a dim light in the very window which, 
 on the morning after his return home, he had seen a 
 beautiful arm encircled by a bit of lace. Then he had 
 looked away; now he threw a kiss at Sonya's window. 
 
 His father was sound asleep when he reached home, 
 but his mother was anxious about her son, and wide 
 awake. She wondered just why he was in such a happy 
 mood. When he was in bed and still thinking of the 
 events of the evening, she, not wanting him to know 
 that she had been awake, called to him, " Sinku muy, 
 why don't you sleep ? " And he replied : " For gladness, 
 Mamushka" Then he climbed up to the bake oven to 
 kiss her, but she pushed him back, horror stricken, cry 
 ing: " Oh, but Sinku muy, where have you been? " 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE: SUSANKA 
 
 , Susanka, you must smile, you must look 
 happy," Frau Sandor Redlich reiterated day 
 after day to her wet nurse; but she didn't look happy 
 and she couldn't smile, and the Redlich baby grew more 
 puny and pallid, for it could not receive the proper nour 
 ishment from Susanka's joyless breast. 
 
 " Sandor dear/' wailed the young mother, " can't you 
 make her look happy? She ought to be compelled to be 
 liappy when we are paying her such good wages and giv 
 ing her just the same food that we eat; yet she sighs and 
 grieves for her own baby till you would think that she is 
 a married mother/' 
 
 " Sandor dear," however, could not make the nurse 
 happy, though he promised her a golden ducat for every 
 smile, and went so far as to threaten to send for the gen 
 darmes to arrest her, if she did not. The day of the 
 feast at which the little stranger was to be introduced 
 to Hraszova society was drawing very near, and both 
 parents wished him to look well. 
 
 Dr. Lonyai, who presided at the birth of the baby, 
 had recommended this particular Susanka and when she 
 would not properly function, he had an interview with 
 her which evidently did not improve the situation ; for 
 she came out of his office weeping, and that night the 
 baby fretted and cried more than ever. 
 
 As usual when there was something really the matter, 
 they called in Dr. Makutchky. "Well, Madam," he 
 asked Frau Sandor Redlich, when she had stated the 
 trouble and had shown him the ill nourished baby and 
 the tearful nurse; " how happy would you be if you had 
 
 124 
 
SUSANKA 125 
 
 to farm out your baby and then go and nurse another 
 woman's baby, just because you were poor? 
 
 " How would you feel if you knew that your baby was 
 in charge of some old Baba, who put a gag into its mouth 
 or fed it on poppy seed oil to keep it quiet? 
 
 " No, no, I did not mean to insinuate anything. Of 
 course it couldn't have happened to you, and it does hap 
 pen to these peasant girls ; but, Madam, Susanka is just as 
 much woman as you are, though her maternity is a little 
 irregular; but though that cow of yours hasn't had a 
 legalized wedding, if you take away her new born calf 
 she will call for her own, even if another calf pulls her 
 udder. 
 
 " Your Susanka happens to be a particularly decent 
 girl, and perhaps that is the reason her grief is greater 
 than that of the usual peasant girl. Perhaps you don't 
 know that her baby has a very respectable father. Yes, 
 of course she ought to have known better, but if these 
 girls did know better, where would your kind get wet 
 nurses? It would be a calamity of course, if our 
 ef Panyi Velconwshny " should have to nurse their own 
 babies, and spoil their lovely forms. Medicine won't 
 help," he answered, for the third and fourth time, in his 
 curt, dry way. " Make that man promise Susanka that 
 he will marry her, or get another wet nurse." 
 
 Frau Redlich was quite willing to go and talk to the 
 man if she knew him, or get another wet nurse; but the 
 supply of wet nurses was running short. The men were 
 coming back from America and marrying the girls, and 
 there were no more scandalous interludes which produced 
 wet nurses. Dr. Lonyai had taken a great deal of trouble 
 in finding this one for them. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky had no professional jealousy, neither 
 was he vindictive ; but he was very human, and so, being 
 momentarily off his guard, he said in his iciest manner: 
 
126 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 "Madam, I have never produced a wet nurse; perhaps 
 Dr. Lonyai can, if he goes to some more trouble," and 
 with that he reached for his hat and left the house. 
 
 When Sandor Redlich came home, his wife told him 
 tearfully that Dr. Makutchky was horrible as usual, and 
 that one ought never to consult him, and that he was no 
 gentleman for he insinuated that she might have been a 
 wet nurse. 
 
 Sandor Redlich hardly listened, for he had other trou 
 bles besides quieting his almost hysterical wife. Things 
 were not going well at the brewery. There was constant 
 friction between Herr Ritter and the Slovak workmen, 
 and the head brewer, a Bohemian, threatened to leave. 
 Money was being spent freely but thus far no products 
 had been shipped, and no money was coming in; then 
 his father was constantly complaining and worrying, 
 his younger brother Henry was gambling at the Casino 
 and drawing heavily on the resources of the firm, and 
 now this trouble about Susanka and the baby! He 
 scarcely trusted himself to glance at the little, suffering 
 thing. It looked for all the world like a grasshopper; 
 nothing but skin and bones. 
 
 In spite of Susanka's visible wretchedness, the feast 
 in the baby's honor was now to take place, after 
 having been often postponed, and the house had been 
 turned upside down in preparation. Turkeys, so rare 
 in that country that they are called " Indians," were 
 slaughtered, geese which had been fattened till they 
 could not breathe were put out of their misery, cakes 
 and tortes were baked and the choicest pears and 
 grapes were brought from Budapest. Numerous bottles 
 of champagne were carefully nursed by Henry Redlich, 
 who knew just how they should be handled. The firm 
 of Redlich would spare nothing at such a time as this, 
 and the number of invitations which had been sent out 
 
SUSANKA 127 
 
 was as liberal as the provision made for the entertain 
 ment of expected guests was generous. 
 
 However, just whom to invite was not as easily 
 decided as planning the menu. The relationship was 
 carefully scanned and the orthodox and poorer relatives, 
 and the two were almost synonymous, were eliminated. 
 There was no use sending an invitation to the Rabbi; 
 he would regard it as an insult, when the child had not 
 been circumcised. They had greatest difficulty with the 
 list of Redlich relatives. Moritz Redlich was a great 
 stickler for family. According to him, cousins far re 
 moved were still in the family, and the poorer they were 
 the more were they in need of attention and of a good 
 meal once in a while ; and naturally the more pious and the 
 poorer they were, the less presentable, on an occasion of 
 this kind, when many of their guests were to be Gentiles, 
 the elite of Hraszova. At least the elite men were to be 
 there; the women who always make finer social distinc 
 tions, had no dealings with the Redlichs, though they had 
 money and served the greatest delicacies at their table. 
 
 Of course Sanctus Spiritus and Company were to sit 
 at the center of the table, one has to humor old men; then 
 Madam Redlich, and her daughter Sophie, with Dr. 
 Lonyai next to her. The world might as well know now 
 as any other time that the two are destined for each 
 other; although when one talked to Sophie about him, 
 the tears came into her eyes and she would shake as if 
 she had chills. 
 
 " That is to be expected," said Frau Sandor. " I felt 
 the same way when they mentioned my perfect dear, as a 
 possible husband." 
 
 The great day had come, the preliminaries had been 
 arranged successfully, and Herr and Frau Redlich 
 awaited their guests. Susanka was sitting in the nursery 
 in festal attire, with her multitude of starched skirts and 
 
128 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 a brand new apron, all embroidery and lace, a gift from 
 the Madam, to evoke a smile, which it didn't. She wore 
 a rich prutzlik, not too tightly laced of course, and around 
 her neck a silver chain and locket, a gift from Frau Red- 
 lich's parents, also designed to make her happy, in which 
 it too failed. 
 
 In her arms, wrapped tightly in a damask covered 
 pillow tied about with the most gorgeous ribbon, was 
 the little baby, looking for all the world with its screwed 
 up, wrinkled face, like Moritz Redlich, its unhappy 
 grandfather. 
 
 " Oh ! Susanka," urged the anxious parents, " do smile. 
 You must smile when you come in to present the baby! 
 You know each guest will give you a present." 
 
 How many prospective gold pieces were held out to 
 her, just to smile. Every one urged her to smile. The 
 caterer and the dishwasher, the midwife, who could 
 understand other things besides the birth of babies. 
 "What luck!" she told Susanka, "to have had a baby 
 just in time to be a wet nurse in the Redlich family." 
 The nurse evidently did not appreciate her privilege; she 
 had a faraway look in her eyes and scarcely seemed to 
 know that she had a baby in her arms. 
 
 In the parlor there was a hubbub of effusive greetings 
 and laughter. The Magyar gentlemen clicked their heels 
 and kissed the hand of the young mother, who looked 
 so delicately interesting. Many of the guests presented 
 flowers with their congratulations. Father Anton Kal- 
 man, wearing his best satin sutan, was received like an 
 old friend of the family. " What a comfort you are 
 to father and how good of you to come," said Sandor 
 Redlich. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky had not made any change in his 
 attire. He and Yanek came together. There had been 
 some question whether to invite Yanek or not, but finally 
 
SUSANKA 129 
 
 it was decided that it would look very well in the news 
 paper account of the affair to say, that the Reverend 
 Yanek Hruby, recently from America, was one of the 
 guests. Of course they had to be careful not to seat him 
 anywhere near the Baron or the Judge, but when there 
 were so many that could be managed. It was a bitter 
 pill for Andrew Feher, who acted as butler on this occa 
 sion, to open the door for a Slovak, the son of his enemy 
 to boot. 
 
 Herr Ritter came, wearing the uniform of his corps, 
 with the many colored ribbons across his breast, and it 
 was noticeable that Pan Kukulish, the postmaster, did 
 not appear, and that for the simple reason that he was 
 not invited. After the scandal he had been dropped from 
 membership in the Casino, and so of course, was no more 
 among the elite. 
 
 Kuby Fish, one of the few Jews who could be reck 
 oned among the elect, came, immersed in an atmosphere 
 of various perfumes, and some one suggested that he 
 needed something strong to take the odor of oxen out of 
 him. " You can't imagine, Madam, how hard it was for 
 me to come, with so much to do and the sugar season 
 at its height; but who could withstand such an invita 
 tion?" he said, his eyes on the heavy laden tables; fof 
 they were passing into the dining room. 
 
 As for the ladies of Hraszova, they had put on their 
 best to go to the Redlich's on this occasion, and the 
 best was very good. A little too shimmering and glitter 
 ing, perhaps, a little too much or too little, considering 
 the hour of the day and the tendency of the ladies to 
 corpulency, a little too much Orient; but that of course 
 was natural, even to ladies who couldn't trace their an 
 cestry so directly from King Solomon. 
 
 The Gypsies' playing added to the tumult as course 
 followed course. The roasted fowl succeeded the frag- 
 
130 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 rant soup, and Kuby Fish, balancing a piece of white 
 meat of the turkey on his fork, looked at it with the air 
 of a connoisseur, for once before at a wedding he had 
 eaten " Indian/' although it was not as good as this. 
 
 Dr. Lonyai was very attentive to Sophie, but she was 
 talking to Yanek who sat opposite her, and recalling to 
 his mind the pen he had given her when she was mourn 
 ing for her mother. She upbraided him for not coming 
 to see them. If he would come she would play and sing 
 for him the latest American songs which the Fraulein 
 had taught her. 
 
 Unfortunately the Fraulein was placed next to Yanek, 
 the hostess thinking that two Americans would be happy 
 in each other's society, but they had lived in different 
 worlds. In the New World, hers was bounded by the 
 cabarets, the big department stores, the board walk in 
 Atlantic City, and the movies ; while his ! How far away 
 that world seemed to him just now, that sheltered 
 America of his, that straight and narrow America, on 
 the border between the Old and New Testaments, the 
 America of his college, where cards were played on the 
 sly, where calling on the co-eds on Sunday was a severe 
 breach of traditions; and smoking cigarettes was among 
 the " Thou Shalt Nots " of the Decalogue. 
 
 The worst of it was that the Fraulein thought her 
 pleasure loving, reckless, ostentatious, frankly wicked 
 America, was the whole of it, with a few fanatics whom 
 she called " Muckers/' to mar the pleasure ; and he 
 thought it was all like his America, oscillating between 
 The Presbyterian Review and the Saturday Evening 
 Post, and when it was very wicked, straying as far as 
 the Sunday Newspaper. The two had as much in com 
 mon as Lillian Russell and the President of the Moody 
 Institute in Chicago would have, if fate or bad manage 
 ment should bring them together on a social occasion. 
 
SUSANKA 131 
 
 Fraulein called Yanek " Meester " Hruby, and she 
 rolled her r's in the back of her throat as if she were 
 using a gargle. She had a way of shaking her finger at 
 him when she narrated some of the " American schkan- 
 dals," of which he assured her he knew nothing. 
 
 " Oh, you naughty Meester Hruby, you have it thick 
 behind the ears ! " And when she found that he really 
 knew nothing and cared nothing for her unsavory Ameri 
 can experiences, she began running down Hraszova, and 
 pitied herself for having to live in such "a bum place." 
 
 Henry Redlich having left the table, reappeared with 
 the bottles of champagne, and the ladies held their hands 
 to their ears for a few anxious minutes before he suc 
 ceeded in uncorking the first bottle. A certain number 
 of guests, among them the Judge and Herr Ritter, were 
 seen to brace themselves for the ordeal of answering to a 
 toast, and the Gypsies scraped their fiddles violently, 
 reaching a climax called a " Tusch" which was a more 
 or less musical way of calling the guests to order. It 
 took more than a f( Tusch " to quiet the diners and 
 winers. Through the subsiding clamor there were still 
 heard feminine voices approvingly reproving some indeli 
 cate verbal delicacy, the guffas of those who did not know 
 the subtle but swift influence of sparkling wine, and the 
 murmured regrets of others, that the rich tortes were not 
 to be passed at least once more. 
 
 Sandor Redlich had risen, and the noisiest among 
 the guests were crying " Silentium! " and were knock 
 ing on the table with their forks. Kuby Fish rescued a 
 huge pear, which was being taken from the table without 
 hearing the toasts, and put it in his pocket, and the Frau 
 lein who had noticed it, for she noticed everything, said 
 to "Meester" Hruby, "What a schkandal ! " 
 
 At last all was silent except for Moritz Redlich's cough 
 and the audible breathing of the Judge, who had eaten 
 
132 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 beyond discretion. Then the host spoke words of wel 
 come in behalf of himself and his wife and his family to 
 be, and the honor, the lasting honor, of having these illus 
 trious guests at his table. He hoped that the meager fare 
 they had provided (and he mentally scanned the 
 enormous bills to be paid), would express to them in 
 some measure the happiness which was theirs on this 
 day, when their son, and then Kuby Fish interrupted 
 with " And may there be at least six of them! " but was 
 called down by another chorus of " Silentium! " " And 
 now," continued Sandor, " our son, the pride of our 
 lives, will be introduced to you." 
 
 Susanka entered, carrying the damask bolster with the 
 tiny, wrinkled, unhappy looking face of the baby pro 
 truding at the top. Behind her marched the midwife 
 urging her on, for her feet were very reluctant. The 
 guests rose and drank to baby Istvan's health amid loud 
 Elyens. Susanka, who should have gone smilingly 
 through the ceremony of presenting the baby to each 
 guest, was being pushed along by the midwife, and there 
 was much shaking of heads as they looked at the baby 
 and then at her. The midwife had to collect the presents, 
 for Susanka' s hands were clenched as tightly as her pale 
 lips were closed. 
 
 When she came to the baby's grandfather, he began to 
 lament about the Yiddish child which was not to be Y id- 
 dished; but his wife pulled him by the coat and told him 
 not to forget where he was. Then he bit his lips, and 
 to the amazement of every one he said : " Yes, baby, in 
 America it is fine," and he buttoned and unbuttoned his 
 coat, and the young people began to titter and the older 
 ones whispered to one another, " too bad the old man is 
 losing his mind." 
 
 When Susanka came to Dr. Lonyai, he pretended not 
 to see her. He was talking to Sophie, his arm on the 
 
SUSANKA 133 
 
 table and his face turned full upon her, and she was 
 trembling all over as usual, when he was near her. She 
 could not bear the look in his eyes, and she told her 
 father that the way he looked at her made her feel as if 
 she were standing naked before him. 
 
 Susanka had not moved, for the midwife had not 
 pushed her, and she stood perfectly motionless before Dr. 
 Lonyai. Then Sophie, who was trying to avoid looking 
 at him, noticed that the nurse was swaying, and that she 
 had stretched out her hand toward Dr. Lonyai. The 
 next moment he felt the touch of her hand heavy upon 
 his shoulder, and as he pushed her roughly aside without 
 looking at her, Susanka collapsed and fell at his feet. 
 
 Of course there was a commotion. Some one called 
 for camphor, and another for cold water, and still an 
 other was beating the nurse on the back as if that would 
 bring her to consciousness. 
 
 The Gypsies had the good sense to begin playing, 
 Susanka staggered to her feet and was led from the 
 room by the midwife, who had rescued the baby. 
 
 The Fraulein whispered to Yanek "What a Schkan- 
 dal" and looked knowingly at Dr. Lonyai, who tried 
 to appear unconcerned. Sandor Redlich again arose amid 
 cries of " Silentium" and apologized for the incident. 
 The times were growing worse he said, peasants did not 
 know their places, and wet nurses were not the happy, 
 smiling creatures they used to be. He would now call 
 on Herr Ritter to respond to the toast " The Ladies." 
 
 The usual " Tusch " was scraped by the violins, and 
 amid Elyens and repeated Elyens, Herr Ritter arose. 
 Moritz Redlich's cough was nearly choking him, and he 
 left the room without apologizing. 
 
 The Herr Ritter charmed the ladies by his speech 
 which was seasoned by wit, and embroidered with quo 
 tations from the German poets, and while his eyes wan- 
 
134 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 dered from one lady to the other, they always evaded 
 those of Madam Redlich. When he finished there was 
 the usual applause, in which, however, a number of the 
 gentlemen failed to join. The host then introduced 
 the honorable Judge who would propose the toast to the 
 nation, Magyar Orssag. 
 
 " The yellow leather bag," as Fraulein called him 
 whispering to Yanek, arose, and launched into a tedious 
 recital of Hungarian history from the time of Stephan 
 the First, to that day. In his peroration he saw Magyar 
 Orszag safely established between the Carpathians and 
 the Iron Gate. As he pictured the country with all its 
 enemies subdued and no language but Hungarian spoken, 
 he called upon all loyal Magyars to rise and drink the 
 health of Hungary. The Magyars rose with alacrity, 
 clicked their heels and lifted their glasses. Kuby Fish 
 was not quite so quick; he did not dare rise because his 
 bulging pockets betrayed his frequent pilfering. Pan 
 Yan Szenitzky did not move from his seat, and Yanek 
 followed his example. 
 
 The Judge grew so angry, that he quite forgot him 
 self and cried " treason " ! The Slovaks declared them 
 selves insulted and demanded an immediate apology. 
 The ladies were frightened and appealed to Kuby Fish 
 to tell a funny story to divert the attention of the men; 
 but the frequent toasts had put him past the ability to 
 tell anything coherent, and the quarrel began. 
 
 Father Anton Kalman had eaten and drunken gener 
 ously, and was tapping his snuff tobacco box more than 
 once. After having stowed away a generous pinch of 
 snuff he rose, and stretched his hands over the excited 
 guests as if in benediction; then sat down again. 
 
 The Pan attempted to light his Dresdcnska and failing 
 in the attempt, rose, and made the longest speech he had 
 ever made in public. First he knocked his pipe on the 
 
SUSANKA 135 
 
 table, then he said : " Gentlemen, this is not Hungary, 
 but Slovakland, and if the Magyars who are here to 
 oppress the Slovaks do not like it in Hraszova, they are 
 welcome to leave." 
 
 A surging mass of excited men swayed toward the 
 Pan's seat, and in the midst of the excitement he suc 
 ceeded in lighting his pipe. Yanek threw himself be 
 tween the men and the threatened Pan. There was loud 
 knocking on the table and calls of " Silentium "; and the 
 host begged them all to remember that this was not a 
 tavern, and to respect the peace and the good name of his 
 home. The ladies were almost hysterical and clung to 
 the men, begging them to be quiet and go home. 
 
 The Gypsies began to play, fearing that in the quarrel 
 their tips would be forgotten, and with the strains of 
 the Rakoczy march, they lured many a crown out of the 
 pockets of the guests. Under the spell of the music, 
 passions momentarily cooled, adieus were said and apolo 
 gies offered and accepted. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky and Yanek left together, and the 
 Judge fired after them a parting shot. " We will get 
 you yet, you dumb Slovaks." " Unless we get you first," 
 Yanek replied, and that the Judge remembered, though 
 he had to be carried to his carriage, with Magyar Orszag 
 and the rest of the world revolving violently around him. 
 
 Kuby Fish alone remained seated. When all had 
 gone, he picked up the last bunch of grapes and while 
 he was eating it, said : " Magyar Orszag or no Magyar 
 Orszag, such fine grapes must not be wasted." 
 
 The Pan had taken more than one glass of champagne, 
 and it was rousing his Slovak blood to an unwonted heat. 
 Never before in all his life, had he talked so much about 
 showing the Magyars who were the masters of Slovak- 
 land, and Yanek thought : " This is the psychological 
 moment." Quite casually he said: "There is only one 
 
136 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 man in the district of Hraszova who can show them who 
 are the masters." 
 
 "Who in the devil's name can it be?" thought the 
 Pan. Before they reached the big gate, he knew and 
 was quite convinced that it was his duty to run for 
 Parliament ; but it wasn't because he had drunk too much 
 champagne, or because he had quarreled with the Judge, 
 or because Yanek declared him to be the greatest and 
 truest Slovak in the district. No, indeed. The Pan was 
 sober, and not as vain as Yanek thought him, and the 
 psychological moment didn't have much to do with it. 
 
 The Pan said to himself : " If I get into Parliament, I 
 will smash the Sugar Trust and I will prohibit emigra 
 tion and they will not plant sugar beets." There was 
 just one lingering doubt in his mind, as he saw himself 
 transplanted to Budapest. How could he get along with 
 out his cronies, the other members of Sanctus Spiritus 
 and Company ? 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: WHEN THE CAT 
 SNEEZED 
 
 cr V7"OU will see, something terrible will happen!" 
 Yanek's mother said to him that evening when 
 he had reached home and told her just what they had 
 to eat at the Redlich's, who was there, how handsomely 
 the ladies were dressed, and had answered her other 
 numerous questions; for his account was too brief, as it 
 always is for a woman, when a man is giving an account 
 of a social occasion. He had not told her about the 
 quarrel with the Judge, for she had been very much 
 worried about him since his arrest; and about Susanka, 
 he told her only after repeated questions as to how the 
 baby and the nurse looked, and whether she had re 
 ceived many presents from the guests. 
 
 " Mamushka you are a pessimist," he told her at the 
 dire prophecy she made, and when he explained to her 
 what a pessimist is, she told him she was nothing of the 
 kind; but that the cat had sneezed, and when the cat 
 sneezes something terrible is going to happen. " The big 
 yellow and white torn cat, the Mlada Panka Christina's 
 cat sneezed the day you were arrested. Educated people 
 can read the newspapers after the things happen, but a 
 cat knows them before they happen, and may the Pan 
 Boch preserve us when the cat sneezes." 
 
 Indeed may the Pan Boch preserve us; for Sultan 
 barked and growled and tugged at his chain, the horses 
 were restless and so was Yanek's father, who did "not 
 know what had got into the beasts." He went out into 
 the stables and petted his favorites. He scolded the dog, 
 and when he returned he told Yanek that while he had 
 
 137 
 
138 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 no confidence in sneezing cats and talking women, it was 
 different with dogs and horses, and it would not surprise 
 him if indeed something were going to happen. Yanek 
 shared in the prevailing depression. He felt disappointed 
 with himself; the straight and narrow path upon which 
 he had entered, showed devious windings, and had 
 widened until it had become trackless. 
 
 Those oldest and most persistent enemies of man 
 kind, pride and lust, which he thought he had overcome, 
 were merely unawakened, and now at their first stirring, 
 he had all but capitulated to them. His sensitive con 
 science helped him to repent but not to conquer. Like 
 Adam " he knew that he was naked," but was not sure 
 that he would not eat another apple should Eve offer him 
 one. He had conscience but not will; the burglar alarm 
 sounded, but only after the doors were broken open. So 
 absorbed was he in his painful reflections that his mother 
 had to remind him more than once that they had not 
 had their prayers. He wished she had forgotten, for 
 prayer, whatever else it may or may not do, searches 
 one's heart, that is, when one really prays and does not 
 merely chew the cud of one's soul. 
 
 Evidently the cat was not worried about the dread 
 ful things her sneezing portended, for she was curled 
 up in the corner purring contentedly. Sultan had ceased 
 his growling and there was silence in the adjoining stable; 
 but all nature grew suddenly restless. There was a 
 roar of sullen, booming thunder, the dimly lighted room 
 became brightened by sharp flashings of lightning, the 
 wind surged through the yard, lashing the eaves, and as 
 the timbers in the roof began to creak, heavy drops of 
 rain pelted the thatch. Then in a sudden, ominous 
 silence they heard the cry of a bird, like that of a hawk 
 rising from the ground, the flaring light became steady 
 for a moment, increased in brilliancy and a mighty crash 
 
WHEN THE CAT SNEEZED 139 
 
 followed, shaking the house. Stephan Hruby and his 
 wife were on their knees, praying that the Pan Boch 
 might spare their miserable lives. The rain descended in 
 torrents and Elzabetha insisted that Yanek should put 
 the Bible into the window as a safeguard against the 
 storm, and though he opened it at the forty-sixth Psalm, 
 she and his father sought added refuge and strength 
 under the big feather bed. 
 
 The gutter in front of the house had overflowed, and 
 the whole yard was a raging stream. The roar of the 
 swollen river, the crashing thunder, the beating rain 
 and the tearing wind made it impossible to leave the 
 isba, although Yanek knew that something indeed terrible 
 had happened. In the lull of the storm he heard pathetic 
 cries, and in spite of his mother's entreaties he rushed 
 out and made his way to the dimly lighted hospice, from 
 which came the wailing of the women and the hollow 
 laugh of Pepo. 
 
 The frightened women were on their knees. Pepo 
 was babbling and laughing. When Yanek finally suc 
 ceeded in getting the women to talk, they told him that 
 Pepo's girl had flown away; that the devil came in, 
 riding on the forked end of a streak of lightning, and 
 that he took Pepo's child and flew away with her. They 
 saw her spread her arms out and she was lifted up and 
 taken through the roof. They swore that the door was 
 not opened. 
 
 He quieted the women and returning to the isba per 
 suaded his father to go out with him to look for the 
 child. Martzin who had slept through the storm was 
 wakened. Reluctantly he lighted a lantern and they 
 started in the direction of the storm, toward the river, 
 making their way cautiously from one acacia tree to an 
 other. When they came to the garden gate they found it 
 blocked by debris, and in clearing it away to get through, 
 
140 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Martzin suddenly called on the devil to take him if he 
 hadn't struck something warm. 
 
 They extricated Pepo's child and carried her into the 
 isba. The entire household which had been aroused 
 by the storm, crowded into the small room. Marisha, 
 who had never taken her motherhood seriously, was 
 suddenly seized by maternal anguish ; everybody wanted 
 to do something and no one did anything. Christina 
 as usual brought order into the chaos. While the child 
 was being undressed, she ordered hot water, and sent 
 one of the men for the doctor; but before he came the 
 heart beats had grown fainter and the poor mortal, con 
 ceived in passion and confusion, had passed into im 
 mortality on the last fluttering wings of the storm. 
 
 Marisha having lamented enough to satisfy propriety, 
 permitted herself to be led out of the room, though she 
 showed no signs of faintness. Stephan and Elzabetha 
 crawled on top of the bake oven to try to sleep and 
 Yanek and Christina remained to watch by the dead, 
 whose face for the first time seemed illumined by a dim 
 spark of spirit. One must be silent with the dead; so 
 they watched till the gray of the morning, and while 
 their lips scarcely moved, their hearts were speaking 
 loudly. His was crying out to her : " I have always 
 worshiped you. You have seen it in my eyes, for I 
 looked up to you as to a goddess. When I prayed, I 
 prayed to you, and when my soul aspired after the good, 
 it was merely reaching out after you. When I crossed 
 the sea I went to make myself worthy of you, and when 
 I confessed the Christ and promised to follow Him, 
 the goal was you, and the reward sought was in you. 
 I am slipping away from you ! Hold me to yourself, hold 
 me to your God ! " In the great agony of his spirit, he 
 involuntarily stretched out his hands across the dead body 
 of the child, and they sought hers. 
 
WHEN THE CAT SNEEZED 
 
 Her hands were outstretched to his; for she too had 
 been speaking, though he did not hear. "You were 
 always mine, Muy Yanetchek!" She repeated it over 
 and over again as she looked at him, while he avoided 
 her searching, pitying gaze. " Mine, as the broken toys 
 were always mine. Mine, as the lame chickens and the 
 motherless lambs were always mine. Mine, when I shared 
 with you my bread and butter, pitying you because you 
 had none. I held you in my heart when I prayed, ' Dear 
 Jeshzitshck, keep him for me ; ' I prayed that a thousand 
 times, and I knew my prayer was answered when God 
 sought you and found you for me. 
 
 " I waited for your coming home as Babushka has 
 taught me to wait for the coming of the Lord, and when 
 I looked into your face and saw your clear eyes, I 
 thought I could see into your pure soul, and I knew 
 that you were mine. I believed you to be strong of 
 purpose and with a God directed will. You are still 
 mine, mine more than ever, because I know you are 
 weak, and carried along by the current of passion like 
 that which moves other men. But, oh! my boy/' and 
 then their hands met, for she was reaching out after 
 him; " I am as weak as you are, and my heart too cries 
 out after the flesh; but it is crying out after him whose 
 brow my hands have laved, whom my heart has pitied, 
 who is weak and helpless in body, but whose soul is un 
 conquerable. Forgive me, Muy Yanetchek! " 
 
 There was an answer in her eyes to his prayer, but 
 none to his passion. She looked weary and worn and 
 old. "Mater Dolorosa" he said to himself, as he went 
 out to fetch the brass candlesticks from the Pan's house; 
 for the little body was to lie in state, and nothing was to 
 be missing. As he stepped out into the gray of the 
 morning, the mist was hovering over the rain soaked 
 earth, the swallows under the eaves were chirping, though 
 
142 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 their nests were utterly ruined; the pigeons were cooing, 
 and Martzin was cursing as he curried the horses, for 
 he had not had enough sleep. 
 
 In the Pan's house they were all awake and the servants 
 were busy in the kitchen. Marisha went after the candle 
 sticks, but she did not bring them. " The Mlada Panka 
 Sonya will fetch them herself." Then she began to 
 weep, and bemoaning her sad lot, went back to her 
 morning's tasks. 
 
 The chill of the dawn crept into Yanek's bones as he 
 paced up and down, waiting for Sonya. He half wished 
 she would not come, for the very mention of her name 
 roused in him that which he bitterly resented, but which 
 was filling him with an intense and secret joy. He 
 heard her light step and conjured up the image of Chris 
 tina, as he prayed that she would save him. It was all 
 in vain. He dared not look up though he knew Sonya 
 was standing before him. He stretched out his hands 
 for the candlesticks, but when he felt the soft, yielding 
 touch of her hands, the storm of the night seemed to 
 surge through him, and forgetting everything, he drew 
 her close and closer to him and kissed her. 
 
 Sonya's silence, and the sound of iron heels scraping 
 over the cobble stone pavement brought Yanek rudely 
 back to earth. He tore the candlesticks out of her hands 
 and fairly ran to the door. There stood the baker's 
 boy : " May the Panka Marie and Saint Joseph save us ! 
 What a dreadful night it was! Does the Pan Velco- 
 moshnl know that the Redlich baby was found dead in 
 its crib, and the nurse is gone and they have searched 
 for her everywhere and she cannot be found, and they 
 say that the Jews have killed her ? What terrible things 
 have happened ! " 
 
 When Yanek reached the isba, he was so shaken that 
 he could hardly hold the candlesticks. With his face 
 
WHEN THE CAT SNEEZED 143 
 
 averted he told them the terrible news he had just heard, 
 and his mother said : " I told you when the cat sneezes it 
 is always a sign that something terrible will happen." 
 
 Ah me, Mother Elzabetha ! She did not know what a 
 terrible thing had happened to her son. 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE CIRCUMCISION 
 
 A'M willing to be forgiven," nature seemed to say 
 JL the morning after the storm, and she said it smil 
 ingly with no trace of regret. " The sun shall shine to 
 day and the air will be soft, and stir but gently, and the 
 mist rising from the valley will disappear and the birds 
 sing as usual, and it shall be just such a well behaved 
 day as you might expect in the fall of the year, when 
 just such days might be expected." 
 
 But the sunshine and the birds could not silence the 
 roar of the river, which came dashing down from the 
 mountains, devouring adobe huts, and then swirling the 
 timber and the straw-thatched roofs in its eddies, like a 
 lion playing with the bones of its victims, cracking them 
 at its leisure to aid digestion. Men were cursing the 
 river and each other, women were praying and weeping, 
 and a mob was gathering around Sandor Redlich's house. 
 Like the evil spirits driven from their habitations, seek 
 ing new ones, so the spent storm had entered into the 
 hearts of men. 
 
 The odors of cooking and frying, mingled with the 
 fumes of wine and stale tobacco smoke, clung to the 
 musty air of the stricken home. Rosa was lying on a 
 couch in the parlor, beating the pillows and giving vent to 
 her grief in short, dry sobs of agony, her strength hav 
 ing been all but spent in her greater lamentations. Her 
 parents sat on the floor, the father swaying back and 
 forth as all his Fathers before him had swayed when 
 they approached the great mystery. In their heart break 
 ing grief they sought Israel's God and found him; for 
 he has always dwelt in the cloud. 
 
 144 
 
THE CIRCUMCISION 145 
 
 Madam Redlich was sitting in the bent wood rocking 
 chair, her hair still in puffs and curls, and the rouge not 
 washed from her face except as tears had made inroads 
 upon it. Occasionally she looked at her polished finger 
 nails, and between flashes of the great sorrow which had 
 descended upon them all, she was wishing for her mani 
 cure set and looking apprehensively out of the window, 
 watching the gathering crowd. 
 
 In the adjoining room lay the poor, strangled baby, 
 and Moritz Redlich was walking up and down, talking 
 to it; for there was much to say just at this time whon 
 the storm had left wreck and ruin behind it. Every 
 thing was bent or torn by it. The Burial Society had 
 refused to grant a Jewish burial to the child, or even a 
 place in the cemetery; the Christians were enraged over 
 the disappearance of the nurse, Sandor and his wife 
 were paralyzed by grief and fear. As for his own wife, 
 the storm had but stirred the dregs of her shallow soul, 
 while it had lifted him up, and to him they all came and 
 on him they all leaned, as always. 
 
 " Nu nu babykin," he said, as he stopped in front of the 
 little crib, and looked into the drawn face of the child. 
 'You got there before your grandfather! A quick 
 trip, little baby, a quick trip! What have you missed? 
 Nothing, nothing! Seventy-four years my next birth 
 day, and I shall go out as thin, and wrinkled, and starved 
 as you." For a moment everything looked red before 
 him as he saw the marks of the strangling on its neck. 
 He shook himself violently, as if to get rid of something 
 that had gripped him, and vainly tried to turn his mind 
 from the pursuing thought which seemed to lead him 
 right to the sign dangling from the walls of the old dis 
 tillery while the Herr Ritter pulled the rope. 
 
 " It is fine in America, it is fine, it is fine ! " Dozens 
 of times he repeated it, yet always the same image re- 
 
146 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 mained in his mind, always something in him urging 
 him to end it all, promising a great silence, if only the 
 silence of the grave. 
 
 There was a knock at the door, and Christina and 
 Yanek entered. They had made their way through the 
 mob and had partially quieted it by saying that they 
 were searching for the nurse, and that they knew she 
 had not been harmed by the Jews. The sight of Yanek 
 seemed to relieve the tension of the old man. He threw 
 himself at him, grasped him by the lapel of his coat, and 
 cried: "It is fine in America, isn't it, isn't it?" Then 
 fiercely, " tell me that it is fine in America ! " 
 
 Yanek told him that indeed it was fine, but that it 
 was still better with God. One of the things he had 
 always dreaded was to utter phrases which had no mean 
 ing to himself, which he had not tested; but this he 
 knew, that there is peace with God, though he had not 
 entered into it, and just now needed that assurance 
 himself. 
 
 From Christina's lips the words of comfort came more 
 naturally. She dwelt with God, and when she spoke, her 
 words came with the authority of one who had pene 
 trated into the Holy Presence. She put her arms around 
 the old man and soothed him until the sobs of grief 
 grew less and he raised his bowed head, again to face 
 his great and crushing problems. 
 
 The next thing to do was to find the nurse and avert 
 a calamity which would fall upon all the Jews of 
 Hraszova. No doubt she had fled to her baby, but the 
 bridges were washed away and the mob could not be 
 checked very long. Then came the other problem, the 
 burial of the baby. He had called the members of the 
 Burial Society together, but they were deaf to his en 
 treaties. Of course they had nothing against him, but 
 for an uncircumcised child, deliberately left without cir- 
 
THE CIRCUMCISION 147 
 
 cumcision by its parents, there was no grave, though he 
 owned the lot upon which it was to be buried. 
 
 The mob outside was bad, as bad and unreasoning 
 as all mobs are, for it was animated by ages of hatred; 
 but that his own people should be so unreasonable, Moritz 
 Redlich could not understand. He appealed to the Rabbi, 
 who consulted the law and sought for a precedent which 
 he did not find, and which he was not eager to find. 
 The distracted grandfather offered money, but money 
 was of no avail; he pleaded his own faithfulness, and his 
 own service to the Jewish community, he entreated, he 
 wept; all in vain. The child's parents had definitely 
 withdrawn themselves from their people and they must 
 take the consequences. The poor man went away to 
 make one last appeal to the Rabbi, and Christina and 
 Yanek were alone with the body of the child, the second 
 time face to face with death in less than a day. 
 
 The problem of death was simple enough, Christina 
 said; but how complicated life was, what a mess human 
 beings made of their existence, what needless and yet 
 everlasting strife. To her it was all clear enough, it 
 was God's way of leading mankind upward through the 
 turmoil and confusion into the everlasting peace. 
 
 " It is easy enough for Christina," Yanek thought as 
 he watched her sweet face which spread such contagious 
 calm. " The strife is all without her and not within. 
 Would she be as sure that it is God's way if this were 
 her personal sorrow? To carry the burdens of others 
 is after all, easy." 
 
 " Christina," he said, after a long silence, and he was 
 astonished at himself after he asked the question, " would 
 you say all that if this were your own baby? Would 
 you say it is God's will ? " She looked at him for a 
 moment, and a flitting shadow passed over her face as 
 if she were visualizing such a scene as part of her life. 
 
148 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 " I have asked myself that question many a time," 
 she replied, "and I have not been bold enough to say 
 yes, but I have hoped and prayed that if it should come 
 to me I would face it just this way. 
 
 " I know what you mean. This is after all the burden 
 of another woman, of another home, even of another 
 world; every grief is one's own, and no matter how hard 
 we try to enter, we are left on the outside of the door. 
 We leave our cards of condolence or we say the cus 
 tomary platitudes which every one says at such a time; 
 but fortunately for the sufferer she is left alone with the 
 heavenly visitor. But, Yanek, if our faith means any 
 thing at all it means something for us at a time like this. 
 I think I would suffer the way Rosa suffers. I hope I 
 would, but I should have a Comforter Whom she has 
 not. 
 
 " It is easier to bear the burdens of others, and yet 
 in a way it is harder, that is, if you really carry one end 
 of the load. You see one has to walk over such strange 
 paths. Here we are in Sandor Redlich's home, where we 
 came just to say that we are sorry for him, and now," 
 she said with a smile, " we have the Rabbi and the Burial 
 Society on our hands, and the poor little baby" and 
 her voice grew deep and quivered like the tones of a 
 'cello, as she looked into the crib. 
 
 Naturally, he was more worn than she; for men are 
 the weaker sex face to face with great calamities. He 
 threw himself down before her, and buried his head 
 in her hands and sobbed as if his heart would break. 
 He longed to tell her all about it; the confusion in his 
 own heart, the temptations which assailed him, the doubts 
 as to his own integrity, his jealousy of the schoolmaster 
 and his forfeited right to harbor such thoughts; but it 
 all turned into a prayer which, though it was addressed 
 
THE CIRCUMCISION 149 
 
 to God, was meant for her; so while he cried: "Oh 
 God help me ! " he was thinking only of her. 
 
 " Yes, God help us ! " she echoed, and thought of the 
 heartbroken mother in the next room, of the old man 
 battling for the right to bury his grandchild, of the poor 
 girl who had taken the life of this baby to be free to go 
 to her own; and she thought of this boy for whom her 
 prayers had so often been offered, but she thought most 
 of the schoolmaster whose brave struggle for life grew 
 daily more hopeless. 
 
 In the living room they heard the penetrating voice of 
 Dr. Makutchky, ordering Rosa to bed and forbidding any 
 one to enter her room. Madam Moritz Redlich he sent 
 home, and she was not sorry to go. They heard him 
 walking up and down the room, which had grown very 
 still. Suddenly he entered the room where they were. 
 Yanek had risen, and turning away his flushed face, 
 hardly replied to the doctor's greeting, given in his usual 
 brusque manner, after which he said : " Christina, you 
 will have to go home," and without waiting for her to 
 reply he took her coat and began helping her on with 
 it. " I don't want you for my patient, but if you keep 
 on at this pace I shall have to leave the schoolmaster to 
 the tender mercies of your Marisha, and she is in no state 
 of mind to help anybody. 
 
 "You stay," he said just as determinedly to Yanek 
 who was making ready to accompany her. " You on the 
 whole, are not as valuable as she is. Don't be offended," 
 he added, seeing Yanek's confusion; "this whole town 
 isn't of as much value as she, but just now I need you." 
 
 Christina called him an old grizzly bear and a cannibal, 
 and a flatterer at that; but she went, leaving the two 
 men alone. 
 
 Doctor Makutchky sent Yanek out into the kitchen to 
 
150 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 get a towel and a basin of hot water, and when he re 
 turned he noticed that the doctor had unpacked his 
 surgical instruments. 
 
 Without stopping his preparations he said: "You see 
 we doctors have to do something more than try to keep 
 people from dying. I have just now solved a problem 
 which has puzzled the Rabbis of many generations. I 
 passed the Rabbi's house and heard what I thought was 
 a riot, and poor old Moritz weeping like a child. I went 
 in to see what they were doing to the old man. I thought 
 they would stop when I came in, but they were all so red 
 in the face and their eyes so swollen by rage that they 
 did not see me. They were like a lot of crows pecking 
 at the old man's bleeding heart. It was the Burial 
 Society torturing the dear old soul. 
 
 " 'Let him take the body to his old friend the priest/ 
 one of them suggested. 
 
 " ' To the Reverend Herr Sanctus/ another one chimed 
 in. I felt like throwing my cane at them. 
 
 " ' No uncircumcised child can be buried in our ceme 
 tery,' the Rabbi finally declared, and h evidently had 
 said it more than once. The old crows were laughing 
 in their sleeves, though they were too cowardly to laugh 
 outright. Then I spoke up. ' Rabbi/ I said, ' I know a 
 little something about the Old Testament and a little 
 less about the Mishna and the other things you are talk 
 ing about, but I think I know a whole lot about God 
 Almighty. I don't believe that He would deal with the 
 vilest man, as you have dealt with this saint.' 
 
 " ' What has this to do with God Almighty, hallowed 
 be His name/ one of the crows croaked at me. 'This 
 is something between the Burial Society and the parents 
 of this child, which was deliberately separated from his 
 people. What business is it of yours anyway to come in 
 here?' 
 
THE CIRCUMCISION 151 
 
 "'Hm!' I told him that I was not talking to the 
 Burial Society, but to the Rabbi who was supposed to 
 interpret the Spirit of God. f Rabbi/ I said, * may any 
 body, a Jew or a Gentile, circumcise a Jewish child ? ' 
 
 " The Rabbi put on his glasses. You know he needs 
 his glasses to think. 
 
 " ' Yes, in an emergency, anybody may do it,' he re 
 plied. 
 
 " ' What happens if the child dies just before the 
 circumcision?' There I had the old man cornered, and 
 he did need his glasses. He took down one volume after 
 the other, he went backwards and forwards and shook 
 his head. Then he said that a certain Rabbi, I have for 
 gotten his name, and anyway it doesn't matter, said that 
 it might be done after the death of the child. That was 
 all I wanted to know, and now we are going to do it. 
 
 " Yes, that's right, turn your head away. You good 
 people, who want to save the world just by talking to it, 
 are so sensitive! You must turn your heads away and 
 shut your eyes." Yanek's hand shook as he held the 
 basin for the doctor, and he wished he had shut his 
 eyes, for he grew faint and sick, and when it was all 
 over he collapsed and sank to the floor. 
 
 A dash of cold water over his face, and then he felt 
 the doctor's hand reaching for his heart, and he was 
 back again in the center of an age-old problem which he 
 thought he could solve by merely saying: "Thus saith 
 the Lord." 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: SWEET STRYCHNINE 
 
 F I ^HE church bells seemed to have reawakened the 
 A poppies and tulips, whose root, stalk and leaf had 
 long ago withered, but whose colors ran riot on the 
 Sunday garb of the Slovak peasants, who were being 
 called to worship. Not the colors of the flowers only, 
 but also their graceful forms were embroidered on skirts 
 and waistcoats, on the caps of the married women and 
 on the sheepskin coats of the men; while even their 
 clumsy boots bore traces of the favorite flowers. 
 
 The schoolmaster was watching the streams of color 
 from the front room of Pan Finor's house, to which 
 he had been removed, and the torture of living was 
 lightened for him by the fact that he could look out upon 
 the market place, where the coming and going, the buy 
 ing and selling, the drinking and fighting of Hraszova 
 could be seen. The treacherous disease had made too 
 great progress to yield to the brave fight made against it 
 by Dr. Makutchky, whose gospel of fresh air and 
 sunshine he more than half doubted; or to Christina's 
 tender care and the faith and self-sacrifice which she 
 brought into the struggle. She had just left him and he 
 was not sorry to see her go, for she came accompanied 
 by Yanek who was to preach that morning, and when 
 he saw them together, which seemed to him was always 
 the case, the struggle to live did not seem worth while, 
 especially to-day. They had been together with the 
 dead and the suffering, and he envied them every drear 
 moment of the time. He was retelling himself the stories 
 they had told him, about Pepo's child being carried away 
 in the storm, the finding of the body, and then the terrible 
 
 152 
 
SWEET STRYCHNINE 153 
 
 story of the strangled baby in the Redlich home. They 
 were together, which was all that mattered to him; and 
 so some day soon, he thought, they will stand by this bed 
 and look down upon my empty body, and their hands will 
 touch as they minister to me for the last time. " Jealous ! 
 Jealous!" he almost shouted, and he struck his aching 
 breast as if to punish himself for his unworthy 
 thoughts. 
 
 Yes, how colorful life was this Sunday morning; and 
 he tried to give his thoughts another direction as he 
 watched the procession of church goers, the stream divid 
 ing at the market place where Protestants and Catholics 
 sought their own places of worship. There was food 
 for reflection, for each new combination of color spelled 
 geography, creed, position in society, married or single 
 life. To-day the stream seemed especially dense; only 
 at Easter time, and then only on the first day, had he 
 ever seen so many people going to church. He noticed 
 an unusually large number of peasants from the mountain 
 regions, men who were known more for their combat- 
 iveness than for their piety, and he surmised that the 
 impending trouble had reached their isolated villages and 
 that they had come to church to have a share in wreaking 
 vengeance and hate, rather than to express love and devo 
 tion. There wasn't half enough room for them all on 
 the cobblestone sidewalk and they overflowed onto the 
 highway, so that the clouds of dust their clumsy boots 
 had stirred, softened the gay colors but did not blot 
 them out. 
 
 Plain, simple folk they were, patient and indus 
 trious, not asking much of life, or putting much in, 
 except, and how much that was, that they reproduced 
 their kind, and that with sublime courage they greeted 
 the sunlight with labor, and were still working when it 
 faded from the valley. 
 
154 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 This was their weekly reward, the putting on of their 
 gay clothes, spun and woven and adorned by the women 
 for this solemn hour of worship, and after that a little 
 more and better food; then drink and music, dancing, 
 wooing, and mating. That was the round of the Slovak 
 peasant's life, and how gladly the schoolmaster would 
 have exchanged his Latin and Greek poets, his knowl 
 edge of history, his skill with trees and flowers, for just 
 one strong, clean breath of air, and then his fevered 
 cheeks flushed the more, for one swift and sweet em 
 brace of Christina. 
 
 He paid dearly for his exciting thoughts, for he 
 coughed until he would have been glad to cease breathing 
 altogether, if that would have brought release. Some 
 one had come into the room and handed him a glass of 
 water. He thought it was his nurse, whose habit of gos 
 siping in Dr. Finor's kitchen so frequently interfered 
 with her duties. When he opened his eyes he saw Sonya 
 bending over him. " More sunshine," he whispered. 
 
 '' You are mistaken," she said in assumed severity, " I 
 am a storm cloud," and she brushed aside the rebellious 
 black locks, which had escaped from underneath her 
 broad brimmed hat. " First of all, I am going to scold 
 that nurse of yours for leaving you alone, and then I am 
 going to punish you for your indiscretions, by staying 
 with you this morning; for I am not going to church; " 
 and she proceeded to take off her hat and coat. 
 
 The air in the room took on a different quality; it 
 seemed more alive, and the depression vanished from 
 the schoolmaster's mind. Christina brought quiet and 
 peace, and he was resigned to everything when she was 
 with him; but Sonya brought life, the Pagan joy of life, 
 and he began to be rebellious and to chafe against cruel 
 circumstance. His hand stole from under the coverlet 
 and he touched her hair, but quickly withdrew it, for he 
 
SWEET STRYCHNINE 155 
 
 felt the quiver of an electric spark, and he thought he 
 heard a crackling sound. 
 
 " Thunder and lightning," laughed Sonya, " I told you 
 I was a storm cloud. I am like my black cat when you 
 rub his fur the wrong way." 
 
 " I like that kind of storm/' and he touched her hair 
 again. "It's gone," he said, "the storm is over!" and 
 his weary hand dropped. 
 
 " Schoolmaster, if you like electricity, I will swal 
 low an electric battery the next time I come. I like to be 
 petted ; but don't rub me the wrong way, for I am angry 
 clear through, furious at everybody except you." 
 
 She was angry with everybody, chiefly with Yanek, for 
 he had noticeably avoided her; and when she met him 
 that Sunday morning (and the meeting was of her plan 
 ning), he had apologized for what he had done a few 
 mornings ago. He was tired and excited, he said, and 
 he called himself a cad and a fool and a brute, and vowed 
 never again to so forget himself. He begged her not to 
 go to church, and this was just the morning she was 
 going, for he was to preach. She could not under 
 stand why he did not want her there, and how could she 
 understand? But when he looked into her face and she 
 met his confused and pleading glance, she reluctantly 
 promised. Of course Christina had to come upon them 
 just then; they were going to church together, stopping 
 on the way to see the schoolmaster. 
 
 Sonya was angry with both of them. She wanted to 
 tell Christina that she was a meddling hypocrite, which 
 she knew she was not, and she fairly ached to tell Yanek 
 that she agreed with him. He was a fool ; for why didn't 
 he kiss her again, when she loved him as no one ever 
 loved him before, or as she had never loved any one be 
 fore, which latter might have been nearer the truth. 
 And why did he object to her going to church to hear him 
 
156 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 preach, and not object to having Christina there? Of 
 course Christina was a saint, but saints did not need 
 being preached to, while she was a sinner, a very respect 
 able sort of sinner, of course, who needed being preached 
 to and then she knew how perfectly lovely he would 
 look in a Geneva gown, and she adored Geneva gowns, 
 and hoped that he would always wear one. 
 
 She also might have told him what of course she would 
 not, that he was not only a fool, but a very adorable liar ; 
 for she knew, and she knew that he knew, that he would 
 embrace her and kiss her again and again. She saw it in 
 his brown eyes, which had turned almost black as he 
 pleaded with her, and she felt it in his vibrant voice. 
 These were the thoughts which chased each other through 
 her busy brain as she swiftly and deftly carried out the 
 instructions which the doctor had left. Her life was 
 not pitched to the Slovak minor key, she had absorbed the 
 more vital and joyous Magyar strain. She loved to 
 speak their sonorous, stilted, stately language, and she 
 danced the Czardas with absolute abandonment to its 
 weird and sensuous rhythm. Wherever the Slovak danced 
 the Czardas to Gypsy music, there the Magyar triumphed, 
 more than by passing repressive laws. Among Sony a' s 
 own class the progress of Magyarization was stayed in 
 part by the pietism which was an historic and tempera 
 mental inheritance, but she was immune to its influence. 
 Her father called her a Gypsy. She had the ingratiating 
 manner, the carelessness of the things of yesterday or 
 to-morrow, and like all Gypsies she had the reputation of 
 being a thief, and, needing nothing but love, she stole 
 men's hearts. Unlike the Gypsy, she returned them to 
 their respective owners at more or less regular periods. 
 She began her depredations early, and she stole from rich 
 and poor alike. The heart of the Baron she did not pur 
 loin, he tried to force it upon her, and being a Baron and 
 
SWEET STRYCHNINE 157 
 
 the son of his father, his record was worse than hers and 
 the effect more disastrous to some of his victims. They 
 had both reached the point of satisfaction at the same 
 time, and he loved her as he thought he had never loved 
 a woman before; while she felt the same way toward 
 Yanek. 
 
 " Now what shall I do for you ? " she asked after she 
 had in her sketchy way done everything that Christina 
 did so carefully. " Shall I read the Bible to you? " He 
 shook his head negatively, at the same time that she an 
 swered her own question with an emphatic : " No, that's 
 Christina's job I know; and then I don't like the Bible 
 anyway. Every decent person in it, except the queen of 
 Sheba, is a Jew, and I hate the Jews." The schoolmaster 
 looked reprovingly at her. 
 
 "Yes, of course, I know it is a sin to talk that way; 
 that's what Christina says; but I can't help it, they 
 are a grasping lot, they monopolize everything, even the 
 Bible. Let me read to you from Yokai," and her eyes 
 wandered over the books, but in vain; for the school 
 master had cleared his shelves of Magyar authors. 
 " I hate Yokai/ 5 he said, " because his stories are full of 
 Magyars, just as you hate the Bible because it is full of 
 Jews. Talk to me ! " He put his fingers to his lips, for it 
 hurt him to speak. The church bells were almost drown 
 ing her voice by their din. 
 
 " They are eternally quarreling ! " Sonya said petul 
 antly. " The Catholic bells say 'D-i-n-g-! d-o-n-g! Take 
 your time, there is no hurry, the church is open all the 
 day, all the day, all the day.' And then they come down 
 with a bang ! * Be sure you come to this church ! Be 
 sure you come to this church! for if you don't you will 
 be damned ! damned ! damned ! ' 
 
 " Our bells are in an awful hurry. They say : ' Ding, 
 dong; ding, dong; ding, dong! Church is open once a 
 
158 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 week, once a week ! ' And then, they sort of die down 
 as if to say: ' Come if you please, come if you please, 
 come if you please/ And I should like to go but I 
 can't, I mustn't 
 
 She did not tell the schoolmaster why she mustn't. She 
 rattled on: "You are afraid of Christina, aren't you, 
 schoolmaster? Everybody loves her and is afraid of 
 her." The feverish cheek of the schoolmaster grew pale 
 and he closed his eyes and fancied he saw Christina bend 
 ing over him, listening to the words of love he dared not 
 speak. Her sister prattled on. 
 
 " They went to church together to-day, and he is going 
 to preach/' He nodded his head; he knew, and it hurt 
 him, because he knew that Sonya knew it hurt him. 
 
 "You are jealous of him, aren't you?" she asked, 
 smiling at him and stroking his hot forehead. " Don't be 
 jealous." She whispered it to him, at the same time 
 hiding her head. " And don't you say anything to any 
 body about it; you know there is nothing to tell just 
 now," she added after a short pause. " But there will be 
 a whole lot to tell some day, only don't be jealous. Chris 
 tina loves everybody, and you, schoolmaster, more than 
 anybody else." 
 
 She patted his cheek. " I don't blame her, for you 
 are dear, and sweet, and good. But I don't love every 
 body. I hate the Jews and the peasants, and sometimes 
 I hate Christina, and I love well, I won't tell you, you 
 naughty man, whom I love." Then she drew the cover 
 tightly about his neck and kissed him on the forehead. 
 " I would love you too, schoolmaster, but your heart is 
 mortgaged, there isn't anything left to love." Just then 
 the massive head of Dr. Makutchky was thrust in at the 
 door. " I am not disturbing, am I ? " he growled. 
 
 " I am just about to go," Sonya replied, " and I am 
 kissing the schoolmaster good-by." She put on her 
 
SWEET STRYCHNINE 159 
 
 hat, and then finding she had her arm in the wrong 
 sleeve of her coat: " You are a horrid man! Why don't 
 you be gallant and help a lady?" 
 
 " Because you don't intend to go, and I don't want 
 you to go," replied the doctor, his gruffness modified a 
 good many degrees. " You are as good as a dose of 
 strychnine for my patient." 
 
 " Thank you for the compliment, doctor," she said, 
 trailing her coat on the floor as she came close to him; 
 " please paste a label with crossbones and skull on me, 
 so that everybody will be properly warned." 
 
 " She is a honey jar, you old bear," the schoolmaster 
 whispered ; " and bears like honey," Sonya added, lift 
 ing her face temptingly to the doctor; "that is, decent 
 bears do. Old, crabbed bears like you, like " 
 
 " Strychnine, Sonya dear, strychnine ; and I do like 
 you. That is," he added cautiously, " I like to see you 
 here with the schoolmaster. Christina lifts him up to 
 Heaven when she comes, and our job is to keep him on 
 Earth; so, Sonya dear, take off your hat. But why 
 aren't you in church ? " he asked rather sharply, going 
 about his usual tasks. 
 
 " Why aren't you in church ? " she replied tartly. 
 
 "What would become of my patients?" 
 
 " You ought to be in church praying for them." 
 
 " My patients don't need praying for, except this one, 
 and Christina is doing that. It's the people who are in 
 church who need it," he added, looking out upon the 
 street where the shops were being closed hurriedly, and 
 huddled, anxious Jews were running toward the syna 
 gogue. 
 
 " They ought to be used to it by this time," the school 
 master remarked, after the doctor conveyed to them his 
 fears of a riot. 
 
 " As we are used to the coming of cholera or of war," 
 
160 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 was the reply. Sonya wanted to know whether he be 
 lieved that the Jews had killed Susanka. He turned upon 
 her fiercely and called her a stupid goose; for no sensible 
 person would believe such old wives' fables. If she was 
 a stupid goose, then there must be a lot of stupid gan 
 ders; for she had heard it from the men, she retorted in 
 her iciest manner. 
 
 Dr. Makutchky looked critically at the thermometer he 
 had just taken from the lips of his patient, then put his 
 hand to his lips, cautioning Sonya. Three solemn strokes 
 floating in from the Catholic church announced the ele 
 vation of the Host, and within a few minutes crowds 
 were hurrying from the sacred portals and the crash of 
 broken glass was heard; while Father Anton Kalman 
 with trembling lips was saying, " Pax vobiscum." 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE RIOT 
 
 STEPHAN HRUBY and his wife were sitting in their 
 stiff backed pew, the next to the last, as behooved 
 serving people; for while the Lord is no respecter of 
 persons or of purses, the church accepts the world's 
 judgment as to who shall be the first or the last. 
 
 However, the pews were all alike, uncomfortable, the 
 only yielding thing about them being the varnish, the 
 delight of the children, whose fingers and toes had 
 scratched upon it the various symbols of their passing 
 stages, while the minister had left them unimpressed by 
 his " firstlies " and " lastlies." The markings ranged all 
 the way from a pig, done in straight lines, to a heart, ex 
 ceedingly lean on one side and bulging on the other, into 
 which the perpetrator had cut a sharply pointed dart. 
 
 The children who had left their marks were all gone, 
 and Elzabetha Hruby viewed them with melancholy in 
 terest, and a smile curved her sad lips as she remembered 
 that the boy who had so often been slapped for attempt 
 ing to deepen the lines with his penknife, when his finger 
 nails had done the tracing, was now sitting in the pulpit, 
 his head buried in his hands to shut out the world, with 
 which he had become one, and to invoke the Divine 
 power, which he had found elusive and not easily sum 
 moned for special occasions. In the midst of her joy at 
 seeing her son in the pulpit, Elzabetha suffered, as all 
 mothers before her have, whose children by growing up 
 have grown away. She suffered a little more keenly ; for 
 the joy she felt at seeing her son at his goal, lacked much 
 of being full and unmixed. 
 
 161 
 
162 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 She sang the long meter praises sorrowfully, depend 
 ing upon her husband's reading of the words, and they 
 both dragged the tune, holding on to each note for safety, 
 many beats behind the organ and the patient precentor. 
 
 Her husband suffered from the same cause as she, but 
 not in the same way or in the same place, for fathers are 
 not so closely related to their sons, and vanity is not of 
 the heart. After all, having his son back from America 
 was not what Stephan had anticipated. The first day's 
 pride, when every one who saw him (and of course 
 every one had seen him) said: "Who is that elegant 
 looking stranger ? It certainly can't be Stephan Hruby's 
 son! " was lost in the disgrace of his arrest, and the fact 
 that it took the special intervention of the Pan to have 
 him invited to preach. He was much too worldly, this 
 reverend son of his, mixing in all sorts of things, arous 
 ing the anger of the Baron for beating him at tennis; and 
 what business did he have playing anyway ? Now he was 
 deep in this Jew affair. " How can a man be a good 
 Christian," he said to his reverend son, " if he does not 
 hate the Jews?" 
 
 These things were bad enough; but here was his arch 
 enemy, Andrew Feher, whom he had invariably beaten 
 at his boasts, by telling of his son in America who was 
 studying to be a minister. He had reminded Stephan 
 that his son was after all only a " Salvesh," and that by 
 being in jail he had rubbed off the little bit of sanctity 
 which might have clung to him. " Any old woman can 
 be a Salvesh preacher," Andrew Feher had said to him, 
 while he chewed his peppered Slanina and washed it 
 down with red wine. It did not relieve Stephan's chagrin 
 when he spat in his enemy's face and had told him that 
 even a " Salvesh " was better than being coachman in a 
 Jew house ; for Andrew replied that his reverend son was 
 not too proud to eat at the Jew's table, and that he was 
 
THE RIOT 163 
 
 running after Jewish women. There was his son now, 
 in the pulpit, and no thrill of pride was running up and 
 down his spine, as he expected; only a sort of fear lest 
 by preaching poorly, Yanek might make a bad matter 
 worse. 
 
 The Reverend Geza Kretchmar had reluctantly invited 
 Yanek to occupy his pulpit; for, as he had told the Pan, 
 he was not quite sure that he was properly ordained, and 
 he still had his misgivings. " These Americans/' he said, 
 " bring back all sorts of bastard religions. There are 
 Methodists who shout, and Holy Rollers who dance, and 
 Baptists who immerse, and the Salvesh who preach and 
 pray everywhere, and who never mention the true faith, 
 but tell people to be good and abstain from strong drink 
 and from fighting and from licentiousness ! As if people 
 could be saved by anything but faith." 
 
 " Religions must grow like weeds in America," he said 
 to Yanek as he was helping him into his gown. "At 
 least they grow," he replied, " which is a sign of good 
 soil." 
 
 " But they are weeds which choke the pure word of 
 God," rejoined the pastor. Yanek wanted to tell him 
 that even bastard faiths are better than sterile creeds, 
 that the soul of America is young, and alive, and im 
 provable; but he said nothing, for he wanted to enter the 
 sanctuary in peace, and there was enough tumult in his 
 soul. 
 
 To him, as to his parents, the moment he had so long 
 anticipated brought no such elation as he expected. No 
 burning coal from a fiery altar had touched his lips. He 
 had struggled with a dozen alluring texts which might 
 give wings to his thoughts, but they hung like lead upon 
 his brain, and there was no Divine heat to melt them into 
 a living stream, and no voice from Heaven commanded 
 him to " cry and spare not." Instead, he was thinking 
 
164 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 of what would please Christina most, or what impression 
 he would make upon his parents, of how the brass would 
 sound, or the cymbal tinkle, so that the good people of 
 Hraszova might say : " What a fine preacher Yanek 
 Hruby is ! Who would have thought it ? " 
 
 Yet he had one mastering desire. He wanted to allay 
 the aroused anger of the people. He wanted to borrow 
 strength from Him who cried " Peace " to the storm, 
 and whose words could quiet the tumult of the world. 
 In all the waverings of his young faith he clung close to 
 the divinest of the teachings of Jesus; he saw the sum 
 mit of the mountain though he lost the foot-hills. 
 
 Many a time he had fore-visioned this scene. Row 
 upon row of sheepskin-coated peasants; the red coats 
 with white trimmings, and white coats with red trim 
 mings ; the red was deeper than he had seen it in his pic 
 ture, and the white was yellow like straw, like wild pop 
 pies in a field of wheat, and there were blue skirts and 
 bluer trousers, like the cornflowers which bordered the 
 fields. The Reverend Geza Kretchmar had spoiled the 
 picture for him by insisting upon putting some Eau de 
 Cologne on his gown ; " for our peasants have no art 
 sense in their noses/' and so he became conscious of the 
 odor of old leather, and of the acrid taste of wool which 
 assailed his palate, and the stifling scent of garlic, of 
 which a little is such a sure sign of culinary culture, and 
 too much is merely garlic. 
 
 Now he sat in the pulpit. Hanging precariously above 
 the heads of the congregation was the organ loft, where 
 his beloved schoolmaster used to sit, playing the organ 
 while he pumped the bellows, and between the hymns 
 and during the long sermon he would look at the pictures 
 in the magazines the schoolmaster was reading. Later 
 he read them himself, and was not able to wait from 
 one Sabbath to the other to finish the story which at its 
 
THE RIOT 165 
 
 most thrilling moment was broken into by the demand 
 for " wind." The hymns were interminable and the 
 organ had the consumption long before the schoolmaster 
 contracted it in prison. 
 
 Everything was as he had pictured it, except that the 
 church looked smaller and the bell rope which hung in 
 the vestibule was thinner, and the young had grown old 
 beyond his recognition, and the old people had as many 
 wrinkles as there were new cracks on the whitewashed 
 ceiling. There were children who looked more or less 
 like their parents, as if God could bring forth nothing 
 new out of this human race, which once He had made in 
 His own image; and after all, how could God improve 
 upon Himself? 
 
 He felt Christina's presence, though he did not see her, 
 the Pan's and the Baron's pews being right under the 
 shadow of the pulpit. That was well, for after all, she 
 had looked deeper into his divided life than he himself 
 had seen; she had no illusions about him, she knew that 
 he was neither Prophet nor Apostle, only a disciple fol 
 lowing " afar off," and she was not quite sure that he 
 would follow far. 
 
 His father watched him critically. He did not think 
 that he stepped with sufficiently measured reverence 
 toward the pulpit, and when he opened the Bible to 
 announce his text, and then did not fold his hands over 
 his stomach, as the pastor always did, he was sure that 
 Andrew Feher was right when he said that his son was a 
 " Salvesh." 
 
 In his mother's face Yanek saw absolute confidence, 
 undisturbed by the missteps she had seen him take. Her 
 heart was aglow from an anxious anticipation, and when 
 she heard his deep, mellow voice, her lips moved and she 
 was saying to herself, " My golden boy, my golden 
 Yanek!" 
 
166 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 The Babushka had come in her yellow cart. It was a 
 rare thing to see her in church these days, and her lips 
 were moving and her eyes were fixed upon the preacher 
 as if to say to him, " I am praying for you; just lean hard 
 on God." Her lips were moving in prayer, while he was 
 loosening the knots he had tied around the simple but 
 profound text : " Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest 
 of these is Love." 
 
 Young preachers have always chosen the most beau 
 tiful and difficult texts, and it is well so, for their congre 
 gations were sure to hear one wise saying often repeated. 
 Yanek saw his mother weeping, when he reminded all the 
 mothers of their love for their children, even when faith 
 in them wavered, and hope had grown dim. Love and 
 love alone kept the fires of the heart warm. " Love," he 
 said, " travels through all space, even over to America, 
 after the boys and girls who may have forgotten their 
 parents." The men looked sober as he reminded them 
 that their love had failed them, but then they were like 
 the Prodigal Son, who was not himself, it was just his 
 lower self running away from home, drawn by his desire 
 for a good time, and his love was confused with passion. 
 He intended to say much upon this point, for it was here 
 that both the men and women had failed most, and the 
 whole trouble that they were facing about the Redlich 
 nurse was due to their not knowing the one from the 
 other. He was preaching to himself most of all, and his 
 voice trembled, and he was glad that he could not see 
 Christina, and that Sonya was not in the church. 
 
 His father was most displeased when the preacher told 
 his congregation that love was the greatest thing, even 
 in dealing with animals, and that a good coachman could 
 do more with his horses by kindness than with a curse 
 and the whip. " What's the use reminding his congrega 
 tion that he is a coachman's son? Doesn't he have any 
 
THE RIOT 167 
 
 pride, and what has that to do with religion anyway?" 
 Stephan whispered to Elzabetha. 
 
 The men began stiffening their backs so that one could 
 hear the pews creak as they braced themselves against 
 them, when Yanek pleaded with them to meet the prob 
 lem of Susanka's disappearance with patience; that the 
 Jews were after all God's children and not guilty of such 
 a crime as they imagined, in the name of religion. It 
 was the one moment when he really preached, and did 
 not merely thresh homiletical straw. Here he knew he 
 could speak in God's name; but the more he pleaded, the 
 more restless his congregation grew, and then he became 
 conscious of failure. The one thread to which he held 
 so bravely broke, and like a drowning man who breathed 
 water, so his words came back upon his mind and 
 choked it. 
 
 The pastor offered a long, cold, clammy, formal prayer 
 which fell upon the ears of the people like the thin stream 
 of the Hraszova fire hose upon a burning isba, doing just 
 as little good; and before the last hymn was sung, half 
 the congregation was at the door, Yanek's own father 
 leading the rabble. 
 
 In the Roman Catholic church the congregation was 
 larger. There were fewer worshipers in sheepskin coats, 
 while the court dignitaries and the Captain of Gendarmes 
 gave to the religious atmosphere the official sanction 
 which Father Imre Baczko needed for the nationalistic 
 note in his preaching. Father Kalman was unusually 
 restless under the ordeal, and dissented so visibly that the 
 congregation noticed it, and there was much whispering 
 and questioning as to the cause. 
 
 ' The old man is beside himself," some of the younger 
 people remarked, " and what a good thing it is that we 
 have this robust, wholesome curate." Once Father Kal 
 man rose from his seat, as if to interrupt the preacher; 
 
168 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 but after taking a step, he sat down again. What saved 
 him from committing such an indiscretion was his snuff 
 tobacco box, which was his ever present help in time of 
 trouble. He took a small pinch of snuff to steady his 
 nerves. 
 
 " The Jews are a sore spot in the national body! " the 
 preacher cried, pounding the pulpit for emphasis. " Un- 
 assimilated, they maintain their Little Jerusalem in Hun 
 gary ! " And he called upon St. Stephan and St. Eliza 
 beth, and the other national saints and heroes, to rise 
 from their graves, and save the nation trom becoming 
 Slavonized or Judaized. He threw in occasional morsels 
 of the Gospel, as if it were holy water with which he 
 sprinkled a corpse. 
 
 " Why, in Heaven's holy name," Father Kalman said 
 to himself, when he had taken his third dose of snuff and 
 had painfully suppressed the natural consequences, 
 " doesn't he talk about chastity ? What is there in most 
 cases like Susanka's but just plain lust? Aren't our 
 Slovak women giving themselves to lustful Jews or to 
 the Magyars or to any one else, because they are prom 
 ised broader laces for their caps, and rustling satins for 
 their skirts, when cotton would become them better? 
 Aren't they all going to the devil as fast as they can? " 
 Then he crossed himself, a pinch of snuff grasped be 
 tween his badly stained thumb and forefinger. So ex 
 cited was he that he took the snuff right there in plain 
 sight of the congregation, and sneezed so loud and often 
 that the curate stopped in his harangue and looked 
 reprovingly at his superior. 
 
 ' You didn't like my sermon, Father," the preacher 
 said haughtily when they met at the door of the sacristy, 
 and his tone indicated that he did not care whether the 
 priest liked it or not. Father Kalman had other things 
 on his mind. He had seen the crowd jostling itself out 
 
THE RIOT 169 
 
 of church, and heard the sound of breaking glass, the 
 usual beginning of a " Jew baiting." He was thinking of 
 his dear friend Moritz Redlich, and was eager to go to 
 him. " You know I am a patriot," the curate called after 
 the priest as he swung the door open, not even waiting to 
 take off his vestments. " And / am trying to be a Chris 
 tian/' he said to himself, making straight for the house 
 of his friend. 
 
 The Slovak is the best natured among the Slavs, if 
 not among all the Europeans. Too simple minded to be 
 shrewd, too kindly to be a consistent hater, his blood runs 
 too slowly through his veins to impel him to fight, unless 
 urged by strong drink or the worse intoxication induced 
 by the mob. " Live and let live " isn't one of his mottoes. 
 He is perfectly willing to let live, he does not even ask for 
 a living, and as a consequence he has always been badly 
 exploited by the shrewder Jew and the more masterful 
 Magyar. On this particular Sunday, however, he was a 
 fighter, for his blood had been stirred by religious and 
 national fanaticism; but he was not out to kill. He broke 
 windows, drank the Jew's Palenka, purloined from the 
 dramshops, and pulled the beards of those Jews who were 
 not quick enough to seek the shelter of the syagogue. 
 In front of Sandor Redlich's house the crowd was densest 
 and yelled itself hoarse, demanding the body of Susanka, 
 while calling the Jews the worst name they knew : " Christ 
 killers." 
 
 Inside the house the family surrounded Rosa's bed 
 side. The bereaved young mother lay dying, and the 
 groaning relatives stood helplessly by, watching Moritz 
 Redlich, the only one among them who had retained his 
 senses. He had recovered his strength miraculously, his 
 cough seemed to have vanished and he was, as usual, the 
 prop upon which they all leaned. His wife was pros 
 trate on a couch, whimpering and calling upon God to 
 
170 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 stay His vengeance, confessing every one's sins but her 
 own. 
 
 Father Kalman was making his way through the crowd 
 outside, pleading, unheard and unheeded, as he slowly 
 advanced, holding up his crucifix, the passport of his 
 self -sacrificing soul. Reaching the barred door he stood, 
 with cross uplifted, facing the mob which slowly yielded 
 to the mute appeal, and made its way to the synagogue 
 behind whose sacred walls the Jews were calling upon 
 Jehovah to be their shelter in this time of storm. 
 
 Yanek and Christina were at the edge of the crowd 
 among the few who wanted to do something to help, but 
 did not know what. " Look ! " cried Yanek, pointing 
 to the old Starychek whom he had learned to know in 
 his first encounter with the law. He was standing on 
 top of the synagogue wall, seemingly oblivious to the 
 clods of earth thrown at him, and holding up a wet 
 garment which he waved frantically. Yanek caught his 
 meaning and called for silence; the name of Susanka was 
 heard, and then Dr. Makutchky sprang upon the wall, 
 and reluctantly the peasants grew quiet. The doctor 
 told them that the body of Susanka had been found by 
 the Starychek. At that, the howling began again and 
 the mob rushed upon him. 
 
 The doctor shouted : " She was found drowned in the 
 river, and there was no mark of violence upon her! " 
 
 " How much money did the Jews pay you to say 
 that?" some one shouted at him. He evidently was a 
 stranger, for no one who knew the doctor would accuse 
 him of ever having done anything either good or evil, 
 for money. 
 
 The people listened as he pleaded with them to dis 
 perse and go home. The force of the mob being broken 
 at the edges, it began to loosen, then the center gave 
 way, and though there was much muttering about the 
 
THE RIOT 171 
 
 " Salvesh " who spoiled a perfectly good " Jew baiting," 
 and a few more stones were thrown into the already 
 broken Avindows, order was soon restored. 
 
 That Sunday evening was the quietest in a great many 
 years; for there was no dance, the inns remained closed, 
 and now that everything was over, the gendarmes pa 
 trolled the streets. 
 
 About midnight Rosa Redlich followed her baby into 
 the great beyond. Closest to her was Father Anton 
 Kalman, who laid his hands upon her forehead, which 
 seemed to soothe her. In the next room was Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky, silent before the great mystery, but holding 
 his sobbing, broken hearted comrade in his arms. 
 
 Stephan Hruby went to his hard bed after a quarrel 
 with his wife, whom he accused of having spoiled her 
 son. "If he were not a minister, though a mighty poor 
 one he is, I would slap his face for that " Salvesh " 
 sermon. Any old Baba could talk such mushy stuff! 
 What is the use of his having studied so many years if 
 all he could talk about is how to take care of horses and 
 how mothers love their children? There wasn't a word 
 of sound doctrine in the whole sermon." 
 
 Elzabetha knew that the best thing to do at such a time 
 was to say nothing; so the old man went to sleep, while 
 Yanek walked up and down in front of the isba waiting 
 till his parents were asleep, for he did not care to meet 
 them after his dismal failure of the morning. He was 
 hungry, yet he did not touch the food his mother had 
 left on the kitchen table. He undressed in the dark and 
 climbed into his bed. He could not rest, for he kept 
 preaching his sermon over and over, try as he might 
 to drive it from his brain. 
 
 Suddenly his mother called : " Sinyitchku muy, why 
 don't you sleep?" He did not reply. Then he heard 
 her bare feet upon the floor, and she crept into his bed. 
 
172 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Putting her arms around him, she pressed him close and 
 said again and again, " You are right my son ! You 
 preached a golden sermon. The greatest of these is love." 
 He kissed her and said : " Yes, mother, ' Love never 
 faileth.' " 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: MATER DOLOROSA 
 
 IN Hraszova news wasn't news if it was not bad 
 news; unless some one won the first prize in the 
 lottery, or a young swain married one of the servant 
 girls he had seduced, or the train from Trnava came 
 in on time; things which never happened and were not 
 likely to happen in Hraszova. There had been news 
 enough lately to break the monotony of the shortening 
 days; news which made the old women weep, and the 
 old men shake their heads, and the young people run un 
 necessary errands, so that they might be able to say: 
 "And did you hear the news?" But the news of this 
 day was really news, bad news, the very worst, though 
 it had been long expected; and on that cold, raw October 
 day there were sorrowful groups of people standing at the 
 broad gateway of Attorney Finor's house, looking up 
 to the schoolmaster's windows, not saying anything, for 
 in that anxious pause between life and death, even the 
 loose tongues of Hraszova's news-hungry population 
 were still. 
 
 Every one who passed stopped, until the crowd grew 
 so great that the protector of the law, the Captain of 
 Gendarmes, sent an officer to investigate as to whether 
 t the assembling of so many people was not against para 
 graph this or that. He found that they were absolutely 
 silent, which made him the more suspicious; so he 
 ascended the steps and knocked at the door. Dr. 
 Makutchky opened it and told him to tell the Captain that 
 the people were " waiting till the Hungarian Govern 
 ment had finished executing the schoolmaster/' and he 
 
 173 
 
174 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 closed the door so quickly that the officer hardly had 
 time to withdraw his waxed mustachios. 
 
 Very soon two gendarmes with their bayonets fixed 
 to their guns, began walking up and down in front of 
 the house, driving the crowd from the sidewalk, under 
 the pretext that traffic was interfered with. " Traffic 
 indeed! Who cared to go anywhere, anyway, a day 
 like this ? " the crowd seemed to say. " We have come 
 to watch a great soul take its flight, and what is buying 
 and selling, or getting bread from the bake oven, or even 
 chopping wood for the winter, which is at the door?" 
 
 The peasants stopped their ox teams, and the fiacre 
 and omnibus which were going to meet the ten o'clock 
 train stayed until the drivers heard the whistles echoing 
 in the Bashanyitea, and then they drove reluctantly 
 away, saying a mute good-by, as they looked at the 
 tightly closed windows, upon which all eyes were fixed. 
 
 Up there, was a deeper silence still. Nothing was 
 heard but the spasmodic breathing of the dying school 
 master. His eyes were half closed, and seemed to look 
 within, as if he were watching his dying, and his 
 awakening in the other world. 
 
 Yanek who was sitting at the foot of the bed, was 
 reminded of the flickering candle which he used to watch 
 burning to the end; the wavering wick swimming in the 
 melted tallow, almost drowned by it, then righting itself, 
 flaring up for a moment, and again swimming toward 
 the darkness. 
 
 Christina, looking more than ever like the Mater 
 Dolorosa, was close to the schoolmaster, his head sup 
 ported by her arm, his hand clasped in hers. She was 
 suffering, but there was a smile upon her face; for if he 
 recognized her, she wanted him to see that she still had 
 faith and confidence in that Pilot who meant so much 
 to her, and whom she had vainly urged on him for his 
 
MATER DOLOROSA 175 
 
 guidance. Perhaps God would grant him one more 
 moment of grace, and at every quiver of his eyelids she 
 looked longingly at him, waiting for recognition. At 
 last it came, like the sun breaking through a hopeless 
 storm cloud. His body trembled from the surge of new 
 life, the tense muscles relaxed and he smiled with in 
 finite content. He thought he had been dreaming, he 
 whispered, and now he knew his dream was true. They 
 were really married, and he pressed his face close against 
 her arm to feel its warmth, and his look grew radiant, 
 as if he had achieved his heart' s desire. She put her 
 arms around him and kissed his forehead, and he drew 
 her to him, while a little color stole into his cheek, as 
 if he were half ashamed of this first embrace. 
 
 Then he saw Yanek and the doctor and the bowl of 
 ice beside his bed, and a great fear crept into his face, 
 and he cried : ff Mater Dolorosa! " His body grew tense, 
 he fell back like an arrow shot into the air, and the short, 
 sweet dream was over. A few moments later when 
 Yanek had taken Christina from the room, the doctor 
 opened the window and called down to the waiting people 
 that the schoolmaster was no more, and there was a 
 sigh as if breathed by one person, and the silence was 
 broken. 
 
 "He was my best friend," one of the weeping crowd 
 said, and then another and another repeated the same 
 thing; for he was every one's best friend, and could the 
 trees have spoken they would have added their testimony, 
 for to them as well as to humanity he had brought the 
 finer strains of life. Not all the men or all the trees 
 had responded to his treatment and there were enough 
 wild trees left and enough coarse, crude human nature 
 still to be improved; but he was one of the few men who 
 had passed away, leaving his small world a little better, 
 and the sum of good a little larger. 
 
176 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 All day long and through the night, the gendarmes 
 passed up and down the street, on guard; for the good 
 and the great are more perilous to the brutal State dead, 
 than living. 
 
 The news of the schoolmaster's death had traveled 
 quickly, and when it became known that delegations of 
 Slovak societies were preparing to come to the funeral, 
 a public funeral was forbidden. Wenzel Motichka, the 
 Bohemian candymaker, who was going from house to 
 house under cover of darkness, urging the Slovaks to 
 make a demonstration against the government by appear 
 ing at the funeral, had not gone very far till he was ar 
 rested; but others took up the work, and Hraszova was 
 seething from rebellion. All sorts of plans were made 
 to outwit the powers, and the more people were arrested, 
 the more determined grew the opposition. 
 
 Yanek and Attorney Finor were watching beside the 
 dead, Dr. Makutchky having joined them at midnight. 
 They were drinking coffee and discussing the Slovak's 
 chances of political freedom. " You will get it very 
 soon,'* the doctor said; " for God has denied govern 
 ments the gift of wisdom, in spite of Solomon's prayer 
 for it. The one means of governments for achieving 
 their ends is force, and that begets force. When you 
 Slovaks have your own government you will put your 
 sons into uniforms and make them carry guns and op 
 press other people. 
 
 " Of course your soldiers will have uniforms of a dif 
 ferent color," he continued, not heeding Attorney Finor's 
 interruption; "but they will shoot with the same kind 
 of guns. The guns of all governments are the same. 
 Some may shoot a little quicker but all of them shoot 
 straight. You will put other men who oppose you into 
 prison and the men whom the people call patriots, you 
 will call traitors. 
 
MATER DOLOROSA 177 
 
 " Our schoolmaster was a great man, not because he 
 was a good Slovak, but because he was a broad minded 
 human being." 
 
 " But what would you have us do ? " Dr. Finor asked 
 impatiently. " Would you have us bend our backs be 
 fore our masters when they smite us? " 
 
 " Well," he replied, looking at the shrouded body of 
 the schoolmaster; " I would, after all, rather be the 
 smitten than the smiter. You can afford to wait God's 
 time ; for He works very methodically. 
 
 "The master class stops breeding its own kind; it 
 leaves that to the inferior people. Slovaks have three 
 children to the Magyar's one. I have had five cases of 
 apoplexy in two years among young, virile Magyars who 
 gorged themselves with meat and wine and hardened 
 their arteries by excesses. If the schoolmaster had stuck 
 to the children and to the trees and had let politics alone 
 he would be living to-day, and there would really have 
 been a wedding, and children and such children ! " 
 
 He was walking up and down the room in his nervous 
 way, shooting his sentences at them as if they were 
 bullets, which they were, and he was aiming them es 
 pecially at Yanek, who knew that they were aimed at him. 
 
 " Parliamentary election and Pan Yan Szenitzky," the 
 doctor replied with a mild sneer, when Yanek offered 
 his excuse for meddling in politics; "what will come 
 of it, say that you elect him, what will come of it? There 
 will be a torchlight procession and much fine talk, and 
 the old man will go to Budapestf and sit there and 
 listen to long speeches, and he will vote as others persuade 
 him to vote. At best you will have another law or two on 
 the statute book, and more work for the lawyers. I beg 
 your pardon, Mr. Attorney," he said to Dr. Finor, " but 
 for Heaven's sake, let this poor man rest in peace, and 
 don't drag a dead man into your politics." 
 
178 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 " You are a hopeless idealist," Dr. Finor replied, and 
 he said it rather cynically. 
 
 " No," retorted the doctor, " I am a very commonplace 
 realist, a doctor can't be anything else; but I am a very 
 hopeful Christian. You'll have your Slovak kingdom 
 in a few years, or a republic or something else; but I 
 know that some day there will be only one Kingdom upon 
 the Earth. I am so sure of it, that I am willing to let 
 you do your squabbling and fighting about language and 
 boundaries, while I will do my fighting with dirt and 
 drink, and evil living and ignorance of the laws of 
 God." 
 
 "Can't we do both?" Yanek asked, his opposition 
 aroused by the doctor's dogmatic attitude. " Can't we 
 give to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God that 
 which is God's?" 
 
 " That's a very good text for my sermon, Mr. 
 Theologue; but not for yours. Give to the Romans 
 all that's theirs; pay taxes, obey their laws where they 
 do not come in conflict with the law of God, and give 
 to Caesar that which is Caesar's; but you are about to 
 give to Caesar that which is God's." 
 
 " Doctor, you don't want me not to be a patriot be 
 cause I am a minister ? " Yanek cried, louder than he 
 should have, in that room. 
 
 " Pst, young man ! Don't get excited, and let's not 
 quarrel here," the doctor said, looking at the body of 
 their friend. " I don't say that you should not love the 
 place in which you were born, or the people of whose 
 blood you are, or the country in which you live. Do 
 you hear them out there? That's the Roman guard 
 changing the watch. It is two thousand years since they 
 began doing that; they were afraid then of the dead 
 whom they had crucified, and they are still afraid. 
 
 " Fear, envy and hate kept the soldiers marching up 
 
MATER DOLOROSA 179 
 
 and down by the tomb of Jesus. They did not watch be 
 cause they loved. Those who loved, came with spices 
 and ointments, and not with bullets and bayonets." 
 
 " He is a crazy Tolstoyan ! " Attorney Finor said 
 after the doctor had left them. " He is doing a lot of 
 good and a lot of harm, but that kind of doctrine is not 
 very catching." 
 
 " It isn't a cheap doctrine," Yanek replied, looking 
 abstractedly into the empty cup before him. "It isn't 
 a cheap doctrine." He repeated it as if he had not heard 
 himself saying it the first time. He had toyed with 
 that same doctrine; nearly all Christians have, who find 
 Jesus in the Gospels and not in the Old Testament, and 
 the kingdoms of this world have remained the king 
 doms of this world because it is not a cheap doctrine. 
 
 There was to be no funeral procession for the school 
 master, by order of the Captain of Gendarmes. No 
 crape was to hang on any door, not even on the school- 
 house door, and it was not to be worn by any one not 
 entitled to wear it. That was hard on the drygoods 
 dealers and harder on the oaktrees, for they were stripped 
 of their sear foliage which was worn by every Slovak 
 man, woman and child. There was no funeral sermon; 
 that too was forbidden. Just the services for the dead, 
 chanted in a dull monotone, by the Lutheran minister. 
 
 Three women followed closest to the casket; Christina, 
 Sonya and Yanek's mother, and there were three old 
 men; Sanctus Spiritus and Company and that was the 
 last time the people of Hraszova saw them walking to 
 gether. It happened strangely that all the oxteams of 
 the entire region seemed to be coming from the beet 
 fields at the time of the burial. They were loaded to the 
 top and covered with tarpaulins, because it threatened 
 rain, and sugar beets must not get wet. The wagons 
 stopped at the cemetery, just as the sad little procession 
 
180 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 reached the gate, and then (of course it just happened 
 so), and then "Yes, Pan Capitan," one of the gen 
 darmes reported to his superior ; " then the tarpaulins 
 were thrown back, and there were all the delegations from 
 all around, and half the male population of Hraszova, 
 carrying banners draped with oak leaves, and they stood 
 up and sang the national Slovak anthem. " What should 
 one do in such a case, Pan Capitan? " Yes, indeed, whai, 
 should one do? 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE GOVERNMENT 
 STRIKES 
 
 A prophet is a man who sees things too soon. His 
 picture is true in outline, but false in focus. The 
 mental atmosphere in which he lives, is so rarified, that 
 he does not realize how far away the mountains are, and 
 he expects humanity to climb them while it is yet on the 
 plains. 
 
 They who foretold the golden day of Internationalism 
 mistook a bright star for the dawn, and they did not 
 see the thick darkness between. There will be dawn and 
 a golden morrow, but at the time of the Hraszova elec 
 tion, in that faraway corner of the earth, nationalism 
 was rampant, and men were spilling blood over the 
 colors of their bunting, and taking the lives of those who 
 would not pronounce their shibboleth. 
 
 "Hey there, take down that flag!" A mob was 
 shouting in front of a straw-thatched isba, from which 
 waved the flag of a nation yet to be born. Mobs are 
 impatient and as the " red rooster " climbed slowly over 
 the weather stained thatch, his feathers changed from 
 red to gold, a suffocating smoke rose from his beak, 
 and he spewed flames all over the peaceful dwelling. 
 The bells from the church steeple rang the alarm, and 
 the fire engine came and threw its thin, ineffective stream 
 over the abode of an innocent family; while the mob 
 gleefully cried: "The rooster is swimming!" 
 
 Feather beds, the treasure of the Slovak household, were 
 carried gently out, crockery was hurled from the window, 
 and frightened women and children ran hither and 
 thither, as the patriots went to another isba, where their 
 
 181 
 
182 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 demand did not have to be repeated ; for the offending 
 flag had been withdrawn, and the hoisting of the loyal 
 colors, saved that isba from the attack of the " red 
 rooster." Another mob, a Slovak mob, changed the 
 colors over night, and beat the offending householder 
 because he was not loyal to the cause. 
 
 It is the day before the election. The Gypsies play 
 lively tunes. Palenka is served the crowd in glasses 
 decorated in the colors of Hungary, charming ladies pin 
 red, white and green cockades onto the hats of the men, 
 and tie ribbons of the same colors on the arms of the 
 children. An orator has climbed the railing which fences 
 in the benign patron saint of the town, and loudly 
 proclaims the virtues of the Magyar candidate. " Vote 
 for the government's candidate! A vote for Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky is a vote for the Russians, who are only wait 
 ing on the border to make you all subjects of the Czar. 
 Your land, your Christian faith, your liberty are at 
 stake! Elyen! Elyen! Long live Hungary!" and 
 everybody shouts "Elyen!" For the more Ely ens, the 
 more drinks. 
 
 If the voters of Hraszova had been individually asked 
 what they wanted their deputy to Parliament to accom 
 plish, they would have replied : " We want cheap meat 
 and bread, fewer taxes and good schools, and to the 
 devil with your fear of the Pan-Slavs! " 
 
 But, notwithstanding the doctrine of economic deter 
 minism, the mass of men cannot be inflamed by matters 
 which concern the stomach; they must have something 
 to hate, or to love, that alone welds them and makes 
 them either the tool of demagogues or the instruments 
 of the saviors of a country. 
 
 Back of Pan Vavra's butcher shop there was much 
 drinking of puckery wine and fanning the flames of pa 
 triotism while plans were made to outwit the govern- 
 
THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES 183 
 
 ment party. Most likely the bridges to the north would 
 be burned, so they found the safe places to ford, and 
 notified their constituents. The whole proceeding was 
 much too mild for the Czech firebrand, Wenzel Motichka. 
 He wanted the Magyars called by their right names: 
 " Asiatic hordes, decadent descendants of the Huns, rob 
 bers of Slovak cradles and betrayers of Slovak virgins." 
 There was a lively tilt between him and Yanek, who still 
 had faith in truth, and hated exaggerations. He wanted 
 the campaign so conducted that their enemies could not 
 accuse them on the pretext of having interfered with 
 their sacred paragraphs. " He is an American, he 
 knows," Pan Bruno vsky said, and the magic word Amer 
 ica silenced Wenzel's vitriolic opposition. 
 
 The Slovak platform was very moderate. It demanded 
 manhood suffrage, freedom of the press and a Slovak 
 secondary school. If governments had wisdom, which 
 Dr. Makutchky doubted, the Slovak's demands would 
 have been granted, and they would have asked for 
 nothing more ; but as no miracles happen in government 
 circles, they were strenuously opposed and labelled 
 " Pan-Slavistic Propaganda." Had they asked for an 
 other town pump or a new fire engine the request would 
 have been labelled the same way. 
 
 Yanek had traveled from village to village, eluding 
 the gendarmes and outwitting the spies, by going about 
 dressed in peasant clothes, sleeping in isbas and working 
 by the side of the peasants in the woods as they were 
 chopping their winter's wood. 
 
 What simple and kindly people they were, not know 
 ing much besides reading and writing, and often they 
 had forgotten the little they had learned in the schools. 
 They were wretchedly poor because they were paying for 
 the pageantry of the courts, whose pomp they had never 
 seen, and they were suffering from past wars, in which 
 
184 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 victory or defeat brought them nothing but more 
 taxes. 
 
 " Yes, yes," was their invariable reply ; " but every 
 thing is growing dearer, even our Palenka is taxed till 
 it has become a luxury to most of us. Will Pan Yan 
 Szenitzky, when he gets to Budapest, reduce the taxes? " 
 
 Yanek won more votes than Attorney Finor and all 
 the other eloquent firebrands put together, because he 
 was from America; for in every isba he found those 
 who had been there or who had kinsmen over the seas. 
 What a bond of fellowship that was ! It seemed as if a 
 new world order could be created out of the experience 
 of humanity in the New World, and perhaps it will serve 
 that purpose when the day dawns which will make a 
 new order possible. 
 
 " You talk like an American/' they all said, and by 
 that they meant that he did not lose his temper when he 
 talked about the Magyars, that he had tried to be fair, and 
 how could he help that, after having lived in America 
 where he had seen only the best of the New World ? 
 
 Indeed he was a Slovak, but not such a one as Dr. 
 Finor, or those patriots who gathered back of Pan 
 Vavra's butcher shop. Something in his love was dif 
 ferent, because by loving America he had stepped over 
 the narrow fringe of nationalism. 
 
 After all, the most valuable thing that America gave 
 him was the sense of a larger communion with mankind. 
 He realized this, in his electioneering tour. He could 
 not curse the Magyars or the Germans as the real patriots 
 did, and his election speeches lacked the spice of hate. 
 He could persuade, but the cursing he had to leave to 
 others. Sometimes, especially when he was sharing an 
 isba with grown ups and children through the night, or 
 when he had to spoon the soup out of a common bowl, 
 he realized how divided his life was, in his tastes, his 
 
THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES 185 
 
 loyalty, even in his love. He loved Christina as he loved 
 America, with a spiritual passion, quite free from the 
 taint of the flesh. His love for Sonya was like his love 
 for his native land, " bone of his bone and flesh of his 
 flesh." 
 
 He had spoken but little to Christina since the school 
 master's funeral ; to try to comfort her would have been 
 sacrilegious, to talk of commonplaces would have been 
 no less so. She took no interest in her father's candidacy, 
 and once or twice when he consulted her she gave him 
 an evasive answer. 
 
 Sonya was sobered by the schoolmaster's death, and 
 pouted because the approaching election put her in a 
 different position, socially. Her father became the buga 
 boo of Pan-Slavism among her Magyar associates, and 
 when she appeared at any social gathering, there was a 
 quick shifting in the conversation, which became the 
 more apparent the more skillfully it was done. National 
 ism divides more than race or religion, and for the first 
 time she knew what it meant to be regarded as something 
 foreign, something she ought not to be; yet could not 
 help being. 
 
 She was born of Slovak parents, and how could she 
 help that? She spoke Magyar like a native, she could 
 out-dance them all in the Czardas, but that was of no 
 avail now. Her name ended in sky, and that separated 
 her from the sheep. " Very well then," she said, " have 
 it your way, I am a goat. I am a Slovak till the elec 
 tion is over;" so day after day she rode on horseback 
 from village to village bearing the Slovak colors, talking 
 to the peasants by the wayside, cuddling their children, 
 going after the richer landowners and persuading them 
 that it was their duty to vote for her father. She had 
 an exciting race one day with the young Baron who was 
 riding by her side, talking sweet nothings to her and 
 
186 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 trying to persuade her that she was jeopardizing her 
 social future by her public activities for the Slovak cause. 
 " Of course, I know you want to go to Budapest to live; 
 very well, marry me and you shall live in Budapest." 
 " Joan of Arc was not married," she replied, with a 
 laugh, " and I am going to save Slovakland, as she saved 
 France," and with that she gave her horse the reins. It 
 leaped forward, and a merry chase it was as far as the 
 village of Szotina. There her horse passed the tollgate 
 ahead of the Baron, and the stupid tollkeeper let down the 
 bars just in time to give the full impact to his galloping 
 horse, with the result that the tollgate was in splinters, 
 and from the hilltop Sonya waved the colors of Slovak- 
 land at him as he limped after his maimed horse. When 
 she told Yanek of the incident, she said: "Of course, I 
 am Joan of Arc only till after my father is elected; " and 
 she looked at him again in that strangely challenging way, 
 and again his brown eyes grew black as coals, and his 
 hand trembled as he took hers to kiss it; which was not 
 just what Sonya had expected. 
 
 The Magyars had the music and the drink, the orators 
 and the gendarmes to aid them in winning the parlia 
 mentary seat for their candidate. The Slovaks had only 
 one thing, a righteous cause. Had they been left alone 
 and the sky in their names been unchallenged ; had they 
 been permitted to speak their Slovak dialect without its 
 being considered a crime, and had the names of their 
 towns not been Magyarized, they would have remained 
 the same patient, docile, industrious people who had 
 always paid their taxes without complaint, and who 
 might have been proud to be part of a nation which 
 sought the good of its people, regardless of their race or 
 speech. 
 
 As it was, they had a cause, and the cause was made 
 for them by a government which lacked wisdom. No 
 
THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES 187 
 
 people have ever been assimilated by force, and when the 
 pressure began, the peasants said to each other, " What is 
 this? We must not teach the Slovak language in our 
 schools ? Well, language must be something worth hav 
 ing if they want to take it away from us; but we won't 
 let them." 
 
 So they came to this election with a cause to champion. 
 They knew that their way would be obstructed; in fact, 
 the bridges were burned, but they forded the river and 
 the creeks and were in Hraszova before daybreak. Long 
 before they arrived, however, a regiment of infantry had 
 marched into town, had encircled the square, and divided 
 it into two parts by a wall of soldiers. The right half 
 of the square was for all those who were to vote for the 
 government candidate, and the other was for the opposi 
 tion. It so happened that the inn and the town pump 
 were on the side used for the government ; the other side 
 was dry and was meant to remain so. Before the vil 
 lagers entered into their respective sides, they were 
 harangued and threatened and bribed, and quite naturally 
 the right side grew at the expense of the left. At noon 
 the town's people of Hraszova came to the square and the 
 majority entered the dry, left side, carrying liquid and 
 solid refreshments for the faithful. 
 
 Emissaries from the right were allowed to enter the 
 camp of the opposition, and they kidnapped many a voter, 
 not, however, without fights which the soldiers tried to 
 quell, thus increasing the tense feeling which made the 
 usually quiet market square resemble a battlefield. On 
 the right side the Gypsies played patriotic airs; while on 
 the left, the peasants tried to drown them with Slovak 
 songs. 
 
 The election had divided households and even churches, 
 and Father Anton Kalman entered the Slovak camp; 
 while the curate, Father Imre Baczko, was one of the chief 
 
188 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 orators for the government. " Pan-Slavism," he shouted 
 across the guarded line, so that his senior could hear it, 
 " is anti-Christian, and every Catholic who votes for Pan 
 Yan Szenitzky not only votes for a Protestant, but he 
 votes for the heathenish Russian faith; for the Pan- 
 Slavists are paid emissaries of Russia/' Pan-Slavism 
 was a good label with which to libel a cause. It is an 
 old trick, to make a good cause odious. Father Anton 
 Kalman made no speeches. He waited his time and 
 voted, and would have gone his way, but for the fact that 
 no one was permitted to leave till the votes were counted. 
 
 In the Redlich household there was also division. 
 Moritz Redlich being a manufacturer and landowner had 
 two votes, and his sons besought him not to vote for the 
 opposition; the government had to be supported. Their 
 father replied that if Pan Yan Szenitzky were opposing 
 the Almighty, he would vote for him, not to say anything 
 of his opposing the Hungarian Government party, of 
 which he did not have too good an opinion anyway, 
 Moritz Redlich's example acted contagiously on a num 
 ber of the Jews, and they walked into the left half of the 
 square, in spite of the fact that the government always 
 counted on them. "We stand between you and the 
 mob, we give you certain privileges and you have to sup 
 port us ; " and they usually did. 
 
 As the afternoon was passing the vote stood fairly 
 even; at about four o'clock a belated delegation came 
 from the mountain district. The men had to come in 
 afoot, for the narrow road was blocked at one point by 
 a small landslide, which the Divine Providence or some 
 other power had arranged, to insure Count Arranyi's 
 election. When the peasants came marching across the 
 market place the command was given by the district judge 
 not to let them enter the square, or at least to detain them 
 till the closing of the polls. The judge should have 
 
THE GOVERNMENT STRIKES 189 
 
 known better; for the Kopanyitchary are born fighters, 
 and when they were told that they could not enter, they 
 attempted to force the line. Yanek and Dr. Finor tried 
 to dissuade them, but they faced the pointed bayonets as 
 if they were the thorn trees which had no terror for their 
 tough skins. " Let us through ! " they shouted and 
 hurled themselves against the line, only to be driven back, 
 again and again. The minutes were precious. There 
 was anxious consultation between the leaders. Father 
 Anton Kalman was seen hurrying toward his church, 
 which bounded one side of that part of the square allotted 
 to the opposition. The Kopanyitchary retreated, and in 
 a few minutes were seen emerging from the door of the 
 church, having been admitted in the rear. Seeing this, 
 Father Baczko rushed across the dividing line toward 
 the church, the soldiers following him, but they arrived 
 just as the Kopanyitchary entered the booth and cast their 
 ballots. 
 
 A shout of victory arose from the Slovaks, the Gypsies 
 were leaving the inn, for it would be unprofitable to 
 remain with the losers. Enthusiastic partisans lifted Pan 
 Yan Szenitzky on their shoulders and carried him to his 
 home, the crowd surging after them. Sonya in her joy 
 danced about like the Gypsy she was. The servants 
 rushed in to kiss their master's hand, and he scattered 
 small coin to the paupers and beggars who had gathered 
 around the house. 
 
 His face was flushed, the blood raced in triumph 
 through his veins, as he saw himself ascending the 
 speaker's place in the Parliament and heard himself 
 thundering against sugar beets and emigration. Just 
 then they noticed Yanek running breathlessly. " We 
 have lost ! " he shouted. " The vote of the Kopan 
 yitchary was thrown out! We have lost!" A groan 
 rose from the crowd, then changed into an angry scream, 
 
190 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 and they saw the old man, the pride and hope of Slovak- 
 dom, rise and lift his hand as if to restrain them. Then 
 the world seemed to stop moving; for his hand still 
 raised, he fell back, unconscious. 
 
 " It is a stroke," Dr. Makutchky said, when they 
 had undressed him and put him to bed ; " it is a stroke, 
 and he can never strike back." 
 
 "But / will!" Sonya almost shrieked. Then she 
 threw herself down beside her father and cried as if her 
 heart would break. 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN: WHEN THE SAW SINGS 
 
 THE Slovaks lost the election ; but their cause gained 
 a new impetus, for the most indifferent felt the 
 hurt of it, the dull eyed and visionless saw a new gleam, 
 and in Pan Vavra's wine shop, over sour wine, they 
 pledged their life's blood to a redeemed Slovakland. 
 Dead men do speak, and it was the schoolmaster who in 
 spired them, and the stricken Pan struck back, though his 
 body was paralyzed and his tongue was dumb. 
 
 Prime Ministers have never been cooks, else they would 
 know that holding the lid over a boiling pot does not 
 keep it from boiling over, and the Captain of Gendarmes, 
 the sergeants, corporals and armed men who never asked 
 for reasons, continued to hold down the lid; while the 
 broth of their own brewing was boiling and bubbling, 
 singing a dangerous tune. Instead of putting out the 
 fire, they added fuel to the flame. Funerals and wed 
 dings, baptisms and names' day festivities were watched 
 for signs of disloyalty, and the innocent joys of life were 
 made sinister by spying and searchings, by warrants and 
 jailing. 
 
 The government did not know what to do with Yanek. 
 The easiest thing would have been to deport him to 
 America; but he was not a citizen of the United States. 
 When he heard of the suggestion which was made by the 
 Judge, to send him back, he thought that after all it 
 would be the best thing, for he was lost in the current. 
 His chart which had such straight lines when he arrived 
 at home was full of crooked byways, and his compass 
 acted like an alarm clock going off, pointing everywhere 
 and nowhere ; until between the " lo here and lo there," 
 he knew not the way. 
 
 191 
 
192 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 " Chart and Compass come from Thee/' he heard him 
 self singing in the college chapel; but was Jesus a pilot 
 in a storm which swept a nation ? How did He act when 
 His country was held in such a thrall as this, by the 
 Romans? Did He lift the fallen Maccabean banner and 
 bid men fight for the liberation of their country? Or, 
 knowing that a worse foe than the Romans held them, did 
 he not hurl his condemnation against the Pharisees, and 
 fight them with the only weapon which could overcome 
 them? 
 
 " The truth shall make you free." Of course the 
 Starychek and his followers, and the dear Babushka loved 
 when everybody hated, and " blessed those who cursed 
 them"; they knew the chart, and their compass was 
 steadily pointing Christward. What did they care who 
 ruled in Slovakland, when Jesus was so soon to return 
 to earth in glory? 
 
 But they were reading their chart literally, and he had 
 been taught to take into account historic currents and the 
 beliefs of the times. He sometimes feared that he had 
 neither chart nor compass; but merely a beautiful ideal 
 for which men should strive, though hopeless of attain 
 ing it. 
 
 Nevertheless, the " Salvesh " loved to hear him preach, 
 perhaps because his message was tender and sweet, and 
 he used many pretty illustrations, garnered without labor 
 from the sermons of American evangelists, whose 
 thoughts he repeated in a more or less conscious plagiar 
 ism, of which they themselves were perhaps not guiltless. 
 In fact the " Salvesh " were the only congregation he 
 had, and when his permanent appointment as a mission 
 ary came from the Board, and with it numerous lean and 
 empty blanks, hungry for statistics, he hesitated in accept 
 ing it, and returned the check for his first quarter's salary. 
 He vibrated unhappily between Vavra's wine shop and 
 
WHEN THE SAW SINGS 193 
 
 the " Salvesh" meetings, between patriotism and religion, 
 and between his adoration of Christina and his passion 
 for Sonya. 
 
 If the compass ever became steady it pointed west 
 ward, and there arose a longing in his heart to go back 
 to the United States; for while he was less than "a 
 million leagues " away from his people, he was still far 
 enough away not to feel at home in the place where he 
 was born. A man's true Fatherland, after all, is where 
 his spirit had its new birth, and he felt the pull of it 
 tugging at his heart. The motives for his wishing to go 
 back were much more mixed than he was willing to 
 admit, but America's vast spaces and hospitable ways, 
 her broad sympathies, the freedom of being just what one 
 was, the generous friends who smoothed his way so un 
 selfishly, were powerful factors which lured him back. 
 Then, too, he missed access to good books and fine music 
 which the college and the seminary had afforded him, and 
 although he blushed to own it, even to himself, he longed 
 for the easy chairs and porcelain bathtubs, and all those 
 other comforts which were lacking in this small and pov 
 erty stricken corner of the world. 
 
 Thus the winter passed, and on the evening of a reluc 
 tant spring day he was sitting with his mother after his 
 father had gone to the inn. He was not sorry to see him 
 go, for he had grown very petulant, and very critical of 
 his son. There were many unholy quarrels between them, 
 in which Yanek was not altogether blameless, and they 
 were drifting farther and farther apart. 
 
 Yanek was reading to his mother one of Christina's 
 simple stories. " Mamushka, do you like this story?" 
 he asked, after he had finished the little volume. " Cer 
 tainly I like it," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes; 
 " it is so real. 
 
 " Mlada Panka Christina's books are like our isba. A 
 
194 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 man comes to see us and he opens the door, and there he 
 sees us just as we are; the bake oven and the dishes and 
 the bed ; and he knows right away whether we are thrifty 
 or shiftless or whether we love the Lord or not. 
 
 " The other books you have been reading to me are like 
 going to the Pan's house. You have to ring the door 
 bell, and the maid comes and says : ' Who are you? ' and 
 you tell her; ' and whom do you want to see? ' And then 
 you tell her that too. Then she lets you stand for a long 
 time in the hall and then she comes and tells you that the 
 Pan will see you. Then you step into another room, and 
 you have to wait, and you look at the fine furniture and 
 the books and the pictures, and finally the Pan comes, and 
 he says : ' Oh yes, I think I can tell you all about it, come 
 with me into the parlor.' Then he begins to talk to you, 
 and even then you don't know just what kind of man the 
 Pan is, and only when you go out and shut the door you 
 say to yourself : ' Well, I think the Pan is a pretty nice 
 man/ That's the way it is with your fine books; but in 
 Christina's stories, on the first page, you say, * I have 
 seen that man before, and I like him/ or you say, ' What 
 a terrible creature he is ! ' 
 
 Wouldn't his professor of literature delight in that 
 criticism, and could he have done any better? Yanek 
 thought, caressing his mother and calling her pet names. 
 
 The critics in Budapest had said practically the same 
 thing about Christina's stories, only in a less simple way. 
 They objected to them because they were too religious, 
 and because all her drunkards and wife-beaters and athe 
 ists were converted. The publishers refused to print 
 them; but a Tract Society took them, and colporteurs 
 and missionaries carried them and their message of eter 
 nal faith in the power of God and the redeemableness of 
 man, to the humblest isba. 
 
 " Read me another story," Elzabetha begged, but he 
 
WHEN THE SAW SINGS 195 
 
 had not gone very far when he stopped ; for it was about 
 a boy who had gone to America, and the lure of the New 
 World, described by her, was as if written out of his own 
 experience. " Mamushka," he said, " what would you 
 say if I went back to America ? " 
 
 " May Heaven forbid ! " she replied, rising from her 
 chair. Then she sank slowly back, and began to cry, and 
 told him how she had dreamed about his coming back, and 
 how her old age became golden with the hope of their 
 living together till she went to her grave; but that she 
 thought it might after all be better for him to go back. 
 He knew it would be best, but he did not want her to say 
 it, and it hurt him. 
 
 " Have you talked it over with the Mlada Panka 
 Christina? " she asked, hoping that he would say he had 
 not; for she wanted to be first in the confidence of her 
 son. He told her that she was the first person to whom 
 he had said anything about it, though the thought had 
 been long in his heart; but he would go over and see 
 Christina at once. 
 
 It seemed but yesterday since he had gone to her on the 
 same kind of errand, only then he was fifteen and wore a 
 sheepskin coat. Marisha had come to the door at his 
 knock and told him that he ought to know better than 
 to disturb his betters at that time of night, and she made 
 him scrape his boots when he had already scraped them 
 as hard as his impatience to see Christina permitted. He 
 stood first on one leg and then on the other and he stam 
 mered when he asked her whether she would be sorry to 
 see him go to America. 
 
 Sorry, of course she would be sorry to see him go; 
 and then his young heart nearly melted within him, and 
 she cried, and he held back his tears because he had no 
 handkerchief, and when the tears came in spite of him, 
 she lent him hers. A dainty, sweet smelling handkerchief 
 
196 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 it was, full of tiny holes along the edges, and he twisted 
 it around his fingers and the tears ran down unchecked. 
 
 That peasant boy with his first, warm, tender love was 
 very different from the young man who went to her this 
 evening, confused and perplexed. He was ushered into 
 her presence by the same Marisha who would not have 
 dared tell him to scrape his boots, though they had needed 
 it. He had put on his best American clothes, and was as 
 different from the little Yanushek of fifteen years ago as 
 this sedate looking young woman, bending over her desk 
 and scarcely looking up when he entered, was, from the 
 little Christina who cried as if her heart would break 
 when she saw him weeping, and had untwisted her hand 
 kerchief from his fingers, that she might wipe her tears. 
 
 When Yanek was announced, Christina was writing. 
 Yanek thought her looking more than ever like the Mater 
 Dolorosa. Her fair hair, and the pallor of her sad face 
 were accentuated by contrast with the mourning which 
 she wore for the schoolmaster. She withdrew herself 
 with difficulty from the world in which she felt like a 
 God; creating, destroying and saving a joy given only 
 to the real artist. When Yanek told her of his desire to 
 go back to America and asked her advice, her answer was 
 a question. 
 
 " Have you asked Sonya? " She was sorry after she 
 had spoken, for there was a trace of bitterness in the 
 words. 
 
 :< You are hurting your eyes," he remarked as he saw 
 her bending over her manuscript. That was not what he 
 meant to say, and he was not thinking of her eyes when 
 he said it. 
 
 " When you come back again from America I shall be 
 wearing thick spectacles," she said with a smile, though 
 there was no smile in her heart ; " and you will call me 
 Babushka/' and she tried to take her thoughts away from 
 
WHEN THE SAW SINGS 197 
 
 Yanek and his destiny, back to the story she was writing, 
 about a lonely old Jew, whom she had named Simon 
 Klempner, who was being cared for by a devout Christian 
 lad who came, no one knew just from where. He was 
 regarded as not having all his wits, because he never 
 drank Palenka, nor swore, and always turned the smitten 
 cheek. The old Jew thought that it was an angel who 
 made his fire for him in the cold, winter mornings, and 
 sawed the wood for him. Who else but an angel would 
 doit? 
 
 Seeing her eyes on her manuscript, " Do your stories 
 always end as you want them to ? " he asked, still think 
 ing of other things. 
 
 "Yes," she replied very deliberately. "It is in the 
 middle that I have the greatest difficulty. There, my 
 characters go their own way, and no matter how hard I 
 try, they do what they want. Isn't it that way in life/' 
 she added ; " after all, the story ends as God wills." 
 
 " How do we know when we are doing God's will or 
 our own? " he asked. She urged him to sit down, for she 
 wanted to read him something she had written which 
 might be an answer to his question. It seemed strange, 
 she said, that he should have asked her that question, just 
 when she was writing that story, and she read : " Simon, 
 the youth said to the old Jew, who looked at him in 
 astonishment, seeing him sawing a heavy log in his wood 
 shed; for it was, after all, not an angel who came from 
 Heaven, but a goy, a common goy. Simon, I am doing 
 God's will." 
 
 " How do you know you are doing God's will ? " the 
 Jew asked, in a singsong way, as if he were asking a 
 learned Rabbi to solve one of the pious riddles of the 
 law. 
 
 " How does your horse know when it does your will ? 
 You pull it hit, and then ho !, and when the horse doesn't 
 
198 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 feel you pulling it, when the bit doesn't hurt, then it is 
 going just where you want it to go." The Jew smacked 
 his lips over this wise saying, and the youth continued. 
 
 " Do you hear the saw ? It is singing. This morning 
 I was in a hurry and I began to push the saw without 
 thinking. After a while the pulling became harder and 
 harder, and the saw kept saying : * It is hard work, it is 
 hard work, I can't go further.' Then I pulled it out and 
 I saw that I had started it crooked. I put my thumb on 
 the log for a mark, and I laid the saw straight up against 
 it. I didn't push the saw hard, I just said to myself, 
 ' keep on straight, just perfectly straight,' and very soon 
 the saw began to sing, for it was sawing straight. That's 
 the way you know when you are doing God's will, when 
 the bit doesn't hurt, and when your heart sings ; and my 
 heart has been singing within me every time I did this 
 little chore for you/' 
 
 " Does your heart sing, Yanek? " Christina asked, put 
 ting the pages back on her desk. He did not know what 
 to answer; he felt the reins pulling first hit, and then ho, 
 as if the driver himself did not know just where he 
 wanted his horse to go. Thanking Christina he left her 
 to see the Pan, and Sonya, who was reading to him. 
 When the old man saw Yanek enter he scowled and 
 growled as if he meant to say: " You young jackanapes, 
 why under Heaven didn't you stay over in America? 
 Then none of this trouble would have come upon me." 
 
 Sonya had no such thoughts. There was warm wel 
 come in her outstretched hands, which he kissed fer 
 vently, more so than necessary, the old man was saying 
 to himself, and mentally he was striking half a dozen 
 matches on his leather breeches. The two young people 
 had gone to the side of the room where he could not see 
 them. His eyes fell on his Dresdenska, and as he real 
 ized that he could never light it again he kept on growl- 
 
WHEN THE SAW SINGS 199 
 
 ing, saying to himself : " Why does an old, half alive 
 carcass like mine cumber the ground ? " And his eyes 
 still lingered on his beloved Dresdenska. Then he 
 stopped growling, for he heard Yanek say : " Sonya, what 
 would you say if I were going back to America? " He 
 didn't hear her reply, for she did not answer him in 
 words, but Yanek knew very well what she meant to say. 
 The silence continued so long that the Pan began to 
 growl again, and Yanek bade him good night. 
 
 When he reached home his father was asleep, but his 
 mother was waiting for him as usual. He saw the ques 
 tion in her eyes, and said joyfully, " Mamushka, I am 
 not going back to America yet, and when I go I shall 
 not go alone." Then his mother fell upon his neck cry 
 ing : " As God wills, my golden boy, as God wills ! " 
 

 CHAPTER TWENTY: THE MAGIC SENTENCE 
 
 EVERY day except Saturdays and Sundays, rain or 
 shine, Sanctus and Spiritus walked to the Pan's 
 house. There they stayed till Christina came in with 
 Marisha, bringing them their galoshes. Marisha helped 
 them on with them, and then the two old men walked 
 home again. This afternoon, as every other, the Pan 
 came in leaning on his two daughters, who seated him in 
 the stuffed chair between his cronies. His pipe was 
 out of commission and hung over his desk, with other 
 momentos of happier days, a sad reminder of pleasure no 
 more to be tasted. 
 
 As always, the talk was of the Bashanyitza and the 
 pheasants, the rabbits and the rheumatism; and they 
 agreed upon everything,^ for with them it took three to 
 make a quarrel, and the Pan's quarreling days were 
 over. Only one side of his face could smile, and his 
 tongue was completely paralyzed. Half his body was 
 dead though his mind was alive. If only he could have 
 spoken ! But a thick gurgling sound when he was angry, 
 and a smile of pleasure or approval, were his only means 
 of expression. 
 
 " It is no fun, getting old/' Moritz Redlich said with 
 a sigh, thinking himself back to the time when they were 
 young boys and waded together in the creek and cut 
 willows for whistles. 
 
 ' Youth is the time," Father Anton said meditatively, 
 looking at the pathetic figure of their crony; and then 
 furtively gazing at the picture of Madam Szenitzky, 
 he thought of the days when a young girl's face thrilled 
 him. Mentally he crossed himself and murmured, 
 
 200 
 
THE MAGIC SENTENCE 201 
 
 "Holy Mary, intercede for me!" He could smell vio 
 lets, for they had gathered violets together, he and she, 
 whose picture hung on the wall, and every time he saw 
 it he smelled violets. She found ten to his one, for he 
 was not thinking of flowers, but of her delicate hands. 
 "O Lord, have mercy on a poor sinner!" And when 
 she put them into his buttonhole he trembled from head 
 to foot. Then he went where there was incense but no 
 violets, and he had been an old man ever since; an old 
 man with just a crabbed old housekeeper to take care of 
 him, and, since his niece, the only young part of him, 
 had gone away to the convent to school, he had nothing 
 but a snuff tobacco box to comfort him, and a curate! 
 " May the devil take the curate ! " 
 
 " They are talking about youth, those two old rascals," 
 the Pan was saying to himself. " What do they know 
 about youth? " And he thought of the cherry lips from 
 which he had snatched kisses, and the wooing of many 
 maidens and then a bit of clear, pure Heaven. Yes, he 
 had been an old man for a long time, with two daughters 
 on his hands, and the coming of the Sugar Trust and 
 emigration to worry him. " But oh, you fortunate ones! 
 You have your old carcasses intact, while half of me is 
 watching the other half die. What do you know about 
 old age? You have your limbs and your tongues, and 
 I am like a bass viol without strings ! " But he could 
 still growl, and that was the way he quarreled with 
 them. 
 
 Father Kalman was growing forgetful. He did not 
 know in which pocket he had the snuff tobacco box with 
 the Greek goddess, and he handed Moritz the one with 
 the bleeding heart of the Christ. Then he apologized pro 
 fusely. 
 
 " Never mind, Anton," his friend replied, taking a 
 bigger dose than usual; " it is all right," and he sneezed 
 
202 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 so hard that the tears came into his eyes. However, the 
 tears came from the bleeding heart more than from the 
 snuff. 
 
 ' The trouble with your Jesus," he said, looking at the 
 picture of the calm, sad man, " is that He did not grow 
 old. What did He know about shrinking day after day 
 into a bundle of skin and bones, with His memory failing, 
 and His heart getting heavier and heavier? God the 
 Father is an Old Man and He has children. He under 
 stands us better/' 
 
 Father Kalman put the snuff box into his pocket, mak 
 ing a mental note that it was the right side into which 
 he put it; for he was vexed with himself for having made 
 the mistake. He rarely discussed religion with his friend, 
 but he could not let his Jesus suffer in comparison with 
 God the Father, and he told the Jew how Jesus loved little 
 children and took them into His arms to bless them. 
 
 ' Yes, yes, I know that's in your Bible and it is very 
 pretty, but they were little children. It is no trick to love 
 little children. I wouldn't think much of any man who 
 did not love little children. But, Anton, if they had been 
 His children, and had grown old enough to steal from 
 Him, and lie to Him and come home vile from the touch 
 of harlots, would He still have blessed them?" Then 
 Father Kalman told him the story of the prodigal son to 
 show how He felt toward the wayward. 
 
 " Of course, Anton, you know just how Jesus felt, for 
 you two are in the same boat, but neither of you knows 
 anything about it. All the children of Hraszova are 
 yours. They call you Father, and they come to your con 
 fessional and tell you, ' I have lied, Father Anton, I have 
 stolen, I have walked with wicked women,' and you say 
 to them, ' In the name of the Father and the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost your sins are forgiven.' But my own boys 
 don't come confessing. I catch them stealing and lying 
 
THE MAGIC SENTENCE 203 
 
 and doing worse things, and then I smite my own breast 
 and I cry out to God to forgive me, for I have sinned. 
 That is what hurts, and of that, neither you nor your 
 Jesus knows anything." 
 
 " You are mistaken, Moritz," Father Anton replied 
 with deep grief in his voice. " I suffer in the same way. 
 I smite my breast and cry out mea culpa, and when I 
 pray that God may forgive their sins, I am praying for 
 myself as well as for them, for they are a part of me, 
 if not of my body yet of my heart." 
 
 " Yes, it may be so. I think I understand, for the 
 Jew has always suffered for the sins of others ; but there 
 is a sweetness in that kind of suffering, a long, lasting 
 sweetness ; it is different." 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky was growing restless; there they 
 were, his cronies, having a start for a good quarrel and 
 he could not have a share in it. " Suffering, what do 
 they know about suffering ? As long as you have a safety 
 valve and can talk about your pain, and there is some one 
 to listen to you, it is all right," he was saying to them, 
 though they heard only a loud, long growl. " Here I am, 
 my thoughts working in me like gas in a barrel, all bunged 
 and sealed, and all you can hear is my growling." He 
 growled so loud, that Christina heard him in the adjoin 
 ing room, so she came in with Marisha who carried the 
 galoshes, a gentle reminder that it was time for them 
 to go. 
 
 Father Anton rose slowly, a sharp pain shot up his 
 back, and he straightened himself with a jerk. " You old 
 rascal, you can smile at my rheumatism ! Well, I am glad 
 something amuses you," he said to Pan Yan Szenitzky, 
 in mock anger. 
 
 " Moritz is getting more hunchbacked every day," the 
 Pan said to himself, watching how the old man, when he 
 rose from the chair, was not much taller than when he 
 
204 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 was sitting. " I guess he has a heavy enough pack to 
 carry." 
 
 Indeed his pack was becoming heavier every day. His 
 daughter had been ill and in bed, ever since the school 
 master died. Dr. Lonyai said it was only a cold, but as 
 she grew worse and worse, her father sent for Dr. 
 Makutchky. He shook his head, and when Dr. Makutchky 
 shook his head every one knew that the matter was seri 
 ous. He threw the medicine out of the window, which 
 he had opened wide, and began fighting incipient tuber 
 culosis. 
 
 The two friends missed the music of the leather 
 breeches as they walked home together, and the people 
 they met on the streets did not say any more, with a 
 sort of good natured smile, " There go Sanctus Spiritus 
 and Company," but : " Why, under the sun, does Father 
 Kalman walk with that old Jew, the Christ killer? " He 
 felt that nr?re than any of his sorrows. Ever since 
 Susanka's death they hated him and he knew it, and 
 shrank from their angry looks. Even the Jews, many of 
 them, did not bow to him and say to each other, " There 
 goes our good old Moritz." 
 
 "Who knows what they are saying?" Sensitive as 
 he was, he imagined worse things than they did say. 
 
 " Anton, I can't bear this much longer ! My troubles 
 rush to my head and beat against my brain and tell me 
 to end it all, and I choke till I can feel my breath leaving 
 my body." 
 
 "Holy Mary! Jesus! and Joseph!" the Father mur 
 mured, when he should have said : " God of Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob ! " The two walked up and down the 
 slushy street comforting one another, for Father Anton's 
 troubles were increasing. He had received a letter from 
 his bishop, inclosing a complaint from the Minister of 
 Worship, censuring him for taking active part against 
 
THE MAGIC SENTENCE 205 
 
 the government at the election, and who knew where that 
 might lead? And then Kelena, his darling Helena, 
 wanted to come home to her uncle and there was no home 
 
 to come to. " The curate, the curate, may the devil 
 
 Oh Lord! forgive me," he murmured. The watchman 
 was calling the hour of eight when Father Kalman re 
 membered that he would be scolded by his housekeeper 
 for letting his supper grow cold, and all for talking to 
 an old Jew. 
 
 When Moritz Redlich reached home he found the 
 Fraulein and the Herr Ritter in the parlor. It was good 
 of them to come to sing to Sophie, but he hated the very 
 sight of them and hardly spoke as he passed into Sophie's 
 bedroom. 
 
 This was his evening's diversion, sitting beside his 
 daughter's bed and talking to her. She was his child, 
 the child of his heart; she was so much like Gittele that 
 even the agony of seeing her suffer had the consolation 
 of his seeming to be again with his wife. 
 
 " Daddykin, how is Pan Yan Szenitzky, and tell me, 
 what did Sonya wear, and do you think she will marry 
 Yanek ? " These were her usual questions. To-night 
 she startled him by a new one. " Daddykin, what 
 will happen to you when I die ? " 
 
 '' You mustn't talk that way, silly girl ; you will get 
 well and be married, for otherwise what would happen 
 to the fine linen which your dear mother began saving 
 for you ? Look ! " and he drew the dower chest from 
 the corner, and took out the embroidered linen sheets and 
 pillow cases and the dozens of damask towels and nap 
 kins. " Not even a princess has finer linen ! " And he 
 spread it out, all over her bed, then folded the things 
 again, so careful to leave them in the original 
 creases. 
 
 Sophie watched him with a faraway look, and then 
 
206 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 said : " Father dear, tell me, where do the Jews go when 
 they die?" 
 
 " Ah," he said impatiently, " that is in God's hands. 
 Why don't you ask where do the Jewish brides go on 
 their honeymoon ? You will go to Vienna and live at the 
 Hotel Royal and you will go with your husband to the 
 opera and then you will go shopping on the Kacrtner 
 Strasse. Silly girl, you mustn't talk that way. Look 
 at me. I have been coughing for forty years and here 
 I am yet, and I will live to see your children playing in 
 your home. The first one will be a girl and you will 
 name her Gittele after your dear mother, and the next 
 one will be a boy and you will name him for my father, 
 and the third one you can name after me, for then I 
 shall be gone." 
 
 " Do you know, father, whom I should like to marry ? " 
 she asked wistfully. " I know you won't like it. I should 
 like to marry Yanek. No, no, fatherkin, don't get ex 
 cited. I know I can't. He wouldn't marry a Jewess, 
 but ever since we were children together I have loved 
 him." 
 
 " A nice minister's wife you would make! " her father 
 said laughing. " A Jewish girl a minister's wife, who 
 ever heard of it? " 
 
 " Father dear," and she took hold of his hand and he 
 felt her trembling all over, " promise me that if I do get 
 well, you won't make me marry Dr. Lonyai." 
 
 " Not as long as I am alive," he said and cuddled her 
 in his arms and kissed her. Then he said to himself : 
 "Yes, it hurts, this thing of being a father, and yet I 
 wouldn't be such a father as Anton, who has no children 
 of his own." He paced up and down the room looking 
 at his child, his sick child, a part of himself, the best part 
 of him and of Gittele. 
 
 " Do you know why the Fraulein comes here every 
 
THE MAGIC SENTENCE 207 
 
 evening? " she asked him just as he had steadied his heart 
 with the joy of having his child. " I suppose she comes 
 to sing to you." 
 
 " No, no, fatherkin, you are mistaken. She comes here 
 because she likes to be with the Herr Ritter. I have 
 watched them when they thought my eyes were closed, 
 and I saw them kissing each other." 
 
 " Ah yes, the Herr Ritter ! " He had almost forgotten 
 that the Herr Ritter and the Fraulein were in the next 
 room. 
 
 " The Herr Ritter/' he repeated. He was beginning to 
 cough again, for he was thinking not only of his wife 
 who was so little his that he had ceased to care about 
 Herr Ritter's devotion to her; he was thinking of the 
 brewery and the stock company and the worried looks of 
 his son, and his evasive answers when he asked him how 
 business was going. He still went to the distillery every 
 morning, but it was like visiting his own grave. There 
 was nothing left of the old, peaceful place. Workmen 
 were rushing hither and thither, and barrels were being 
 piled mountain high, as if all the beer of Hungary was 
 to be brewed there. The new granaries were overflowing 
 from barley, and carloads of hops came from Bohemia. 
 Wagons were being made and painted red, white and 
 green, and huge presses and copper vats were installed. 
 The worst of it was, that the people came from all 
 around and insisted upon investing their savings in stock. 
 The curling smoke which rose from the tall chimneys 
 drew the money out of their pockets, and his sons took 
 it and did not look far into the future. 
 
 The Herr Ritter was at the bottom of it, for when 
 he asked his sons just why this was so or that was not so, 
 the invariable reply was : " What do you understand of 
 big business? The times are changing. Herr Ritter 
 knows better than you do." The Herr Ritter owned 
 
208 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 everything, his wife, his sons and the brewery; but who 
 owned his good name, the name of Moritz Redlich? 
 
 That very day, Mina Barkeles, the glazier's widow, 
 came and brought two hundred and fifty crowns and 
 insisted upon buying stock. " Herr Redlich," she said, 
 weeping as she held out the money, " it is all I have left. 
 Thirty years my sainted husband went from village to 
 village with his box of glass. The rheumatism he had, 
 and a back round, like a loaf of rye bread. Now he is 
 dead and this is all I have left. Put it in the brewery 
 for me/' 
 
 Moritz refused to take it, and she grew abusive; for 
 she had a sharp tongue. ; 'You won't take my money, 
 my honest money? You alone want to get rich! May 
 you choke on your money ! Why can't you give a poor 
 widow a chance? They tell me that you shovel in your 
 money by the bagful every night. What are you going 
 to do with it when you die? You want to take it with 
 you? And your wife, she will marry the goy who is 
 running after her and they will spend your money, they 
 won't even buy you a decent stone for your grave, you 
 hard hearted man!" He had to drive her out of his 
 office, and when she reached the street, she was still 
 abusing him. 
 
 The Bohemian brewer came in immediately after and 
 told him that he had something disagreeable to tell him, 
 he hated to do it but the Pan Sandor wouldn't listen to 
 him and he felt that he had to tell some one. " The beer 
 will not keep the way it is being made, I know it. If 
 we could sell it now it would be all right, but Herr Ritter 
 does not understand the difference in the climate, and the 
 nature of the water." The Bohemian continued, that 
 when he told all this to the Herr Ritter, he replied that it 
 was nothing but the Bohemian's desire to discredit him 
 and that he was a Pan-Slav. 
 
THE MAGIC SENTENCE 209 
 
 Poor Moritz Redlich was thinking of all this as he 
 walked nervously up and down. The beating in his head 
 began and he felt the choking hand on his throat. Just 
 then the Fraulein in the next room played a soft strange 
 tune, and she sang so tenderly and in a voice so full of 
 pathos, that he could not believe that it was she. It was 
 an American song he was sure, and it sounded as if there 
 was joy in its sadness, as if flowers were blooming in 
 the winter time. " Over there in America it is fine, every 
 thing is fine," muttered the old man as he kissed Sophie 
 good night. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE GREAT 
 CATASTROPHE 
 
 THE peasants had plowed their fields and now rib 
 bons of gentle green turned thicker and darker, the 
 beet fields were thinned, and men and women, looking 
 like four footed animals, were bent between the far 
 stretching rows, weeding them and stirring the earth. 
 The promenaders on the Esplanade were saying to each 
 other : " How fine the rye looks, and how high the wheat 
 has grown, and how well the sugar beets show ! Chvala, 
 Bohu! " God be praised. They did not know whether 
 it would be a good harvest or not, there was destruction 
 in the clouds, when the hail came clattering down, like 
 wild horses trampling out the hope of harvest. But 
 after all, they knew that when they sowed wheat they 
 would reap the same, when they planted beets they should 
 not pull horse radish, and that from the seed of corn they 
 garnered corn, more or less, " Chvala Bohu*?' 
 
 " It is so different with this life of ours," the wise 
 people of Hraszova were saying, shaking their heads and 
 thinking of Moritz Redlich, what he sowed and what he 
 reaped, and how " the Good Book, the Lord forgive us, 
 is mistaken ; for he sowed good wheat and reaped cockle 
 burrs and wild peas, and hemp, and may the Lord grant 
 peace to his troubled soul ! " 
 
 At the big brewery it was as silent as over there by 
 the Esplanade, where the dead slept, partitioned off be 
 hind those iron fences. The tall new chimney was but 
 slightly discolored by smoke, like a young beard on the 
 face of a boy; beneath it the boilers were cold, the fires 
 were dead, and the new engines of glistening steel and 
 
 210 
 
THE GREAT CATASTROPHE 211 
 
 shining brass looked like paralyzed giants. A sour, foul 
 smell hung over the place, and in the gutters ran a colored 
 fluid, causing the peasants to shake their heads over such 
 waste. 
 
 Standing empty in the deserted yard were the brightly 
 painted carts, red and white and green, which were to 
 carry in triumph the Hungarian beer, so superior to that 
 brewed in Bohemia, while the sparrows' quarreling over 
 scattered grains of barley seemed like an echo of the strife 
 among men. The doors of the brewery were sealed and 
 the windows barred ; the last scene of the last act had been 
 played and the spiders were already weaving the curtain. 
 
 A few days ago an automobile came honking into 
 Hraszova. The oxen under their heavy yokes reared as 
 if struck by a goad, then resumed their peaceful plod 
 ding; the drivers jumped to the sidewalk as if a cannon 
 ball were flying past them, then scratched their heads 
 and watched the blinding cloud of dust, vocal, as if 
 thunder were rising from the earth, and wondered 
 whether the end of the world had really come, as the 
 " Salvesh " predicted. 
 
 The car stopped at the brewery, causing no small com 
 motion, and became the center of the curious. Excited 
 voices were heard in the office. The Bohemian brewer 
 was summoned, and Herr Ritter came soon after. " Pan- 
 Slav! " and " German pig! " and other well worn epithets 
 were being hurled into the quarrel. The men who came 
 in the automobile walked across the yard, then into the 
 cellars, from which they retreated in haste. They ran up 
 and down the stairs of the malt house, looked into the 
 yeast presses, and when they returned to the office, they 
 locked themselves in and examined the books. Then this 
 coroner's jury, sent by the banks from Budapest, de 
 clared : " The Hungarian National Distilling and Brew 
 ing Company, dead. Cause, criminal carelessness." 
 
212 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Criminal patriotism would have been nearer the truth, 
 but who would have dared say it and who would have 
 known what it meant? 
 
 " Bankrupt ! " The word sped through the brewery in 
 an incredibly short time, the pistons of the engines 
 stopped midway, the great wheel revolved a few times, 
 carried by its own momentum, the whistle blew mourn 
 fully, for the last time, and the workmen came running 
 to the office, clamoring for their pay. 
 
 The idlers who had gathered round the automobile 
 caught the fatal word, and carried it through the town, 
 where the news fell from their lips like frost upon tender 
 stalks. Doors were opened and no one thought of shut 
 ting them; there was a clatter of boots and the patter of 
 bare feet as men and women ran breathlessly to the brew 
 ery as if they were running to a fire, eager to save some 
 thing from destruction. Armed gendarmes met them at 
 the closed gates, and then their feeling became vocal 
 as they called for Moritz Redlich, then for his sons and 
 Herr Ritter; but no one responded. The mob increased 
 and pressed against the unyielding gendarmes. Finding 
 itself balked, it turned, as a snake turns, and moved with 
 incredible swiftness to Moritz Redlich's house. 
 
 Mina Barkeles, the glazier's widow, was the head of 
 the serpent, and her lying tongue led in accusation against 
 the old man. " Robber of widows and orphans, may the 
 apoplexy strike you half dead, and leave the other half 
 to live in torment, to see the ruin you have brought on us ! 
 My precious money, my husband's hard earnings give 
 me back my money which you lured from me ! " She did 
 not say that Moritz Redlich had refused to take her 
 money and that she carried it to the office and gave it to 
 his son, who gave her in return a piece of colored paper 
 which she had taken home, shaking her fist at the old man 
 who " refused to share his profits with a poor widow." 
 
THE GREAT CATASTROPHE 213 
 
 Old, toothless men took up the curses and the shrill 
 voices of children joined in the lament. In the midst of 
 the clamor a window was opened and Moritz Redlich 
 appeared, his face gray as if mourners' ashes had been 
 scattered over it. He tried to speak and his voice was 
 drowned by the storm, the storm which was sweeping 
 away his good name. 
 
 A madness seized him and he began emptying his 
 pockets and throwing the contents into the maw of the 
 serpent; he tore the watch and chain from his vest, and 
 the serpent squirmed, and curled, and twisted, and almost 
 devoured itself. Again and again he came to the window. 
 He had torn the curtains from the doorways with his 
 aching teeth, till his gums were bleeding, and he flung 
 the rich hangings down upon the street; he pulled costly 
 pictures from the walls, and hurled them into the crowd. 
 A big, bentwood rocking chair, his wife's throne of 
 vanity, followed; yet the people shrieked and cursed, 
 unsatisfied. 
 
 He turned from the window and the screaming voice 
 of his wife was heard, but the mob had no pity, and he 
 faced it again and cried : " Take this, and this ! Take it 
 all ! " And he flung down his wife's diamond necklace 
 which he had torn from her jewel-box, and the rings 
 he had wrenched from her fingers. For a moment he 
 stood there, facing the serpent, and still it squirmed and 
 hissed. Then he dragged a chest to the window, Sophie's 
 dower chest, and he threw out the damask napkins and 
 the fine linen sheets and all the dainty embroideries which 
 were destined for her bridal; Gittele's treasures for her 
 child. His heart grew sick as he saw them trampled and 
 crumpled under the dirty feet of the people as they 
 snatched them from one another, still cursing his good 
 name, the good name of Moritz Redlich. 
 
 " What more do you want ? " he yelled at them, and 
 
214 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they did not heed or answer. " Do you want my life? 
 Take it, but give me back my good name ! " 
 
 What did they care, and why should they care for his 
 good name, with all their savings gone and the spoiled 
 beer running in the gutters, and the bank officials sealing 
 the doors of the brewery? He looked for pity and there 
 was none. No one remembered Moritz Redlich, the staff 
 and stay of the poor, the comforter of the mourners, the 
 benefactor of widows and orphans. They kept on cursing 
 his good name. 
 
 "Take it then! "he cried hoarsely, his voice unheard 
 by the frenzied creatures and sounding to him like the 
 voice of another man whom he would save but could not, 
 and there, before the rabble, he began to choke himself, 
 till his face grew red and his eyes stood out in their 
 sockets. 
 
 Delicate hands were trying to unloose his grip upon his 
 throat. Sophie had risen from her bed, and flushed by 
 fever, was struggling before them all, with her desperate 
 father. At the sight the serpent did not hiss, for it be 
 came human again, and Mina Barkeles, the glazier's 
 widow, began wiping her eyes and saying : " Poor 
 Moritz ! poor Moritz ! " and she beat her breast, for she 
 knew she had sinned against him. The men and women 
 dropped the booty they had snatched, and walked home, 
 weeping and lamenting for their lost money, but no longer 
 cursing the good name of Moritz Redlich. 
 
 All day he lay on his bed like a dead man, the nervous 
 twitching of his body being the only sign of life. Dr. 
 Makutchky was there and other friends gathered round 
 his bed, but he did not know them. Father Anton Kal- 
 man held the cold hand of his comrade and tried to pray, 
 but he could only repeat over and over again : " Poor 
 Moritz ! Poor friend ! Poor Moritz ! " 
 
 Christina came with offers of financial aid from her 
 
THE GREAT CATASTROPHE 215 
 
 father, but Attorney Finor said it was useless, the firm 
 was dead. 
 
 Yanek and Sonya sat by Sophie's bedside, and when 
 Christina came there and saw them she quickly left the 
 room.. Her heart ached, not only because it was the first 
 time her place at the side of the suffering had been 
 usurped ; she was thinking of the last time she and Yanek 
 shared together the woe of another. The memory of the 
 dying moments of her beloved, the martyred school 
 master, brought such anguish that she almost cried out 
 in her agony, and dared not enter Madam Redlich's room 
 as she had intended, but hurried back to the Pan. 
 
 The Madam lay upon her bed and beside her stood Dr. 
 Makutchky. She was deathly sick, she told him, and 
 complained bitterly, saying that this disgrace would kill 
 her yet the doctor noticed that she wore a very elaborate 
 negligee and had given coquettish touches to her hair, 
 things of which those who are " deathly sick " scarcely 
 think. " What a calamity ! " she wailed. " My dear 
 Moritz ! I must see my dear Moritz ! " Wouldn't the 
 doctor carry her to see him, for she was unable to walk. 
 
 " Madam," he said to her in his dry, hard way, " there 
 are two sick people in this house and not three and if you 
 want to see your husband you will have to walk to him/' 
 He was tempted to tell her of the irreparable wrong she 
 had done to the good name of Moritz Redlich, but he 
 might as well have reproached a muddy pond for drown 
 ing a man. Finding herself unable to move the doctor, 
 she rose from her bed and simulating pain, walked to her 
 husband's room, and throwing herself upon his bed, em 
 braced him and begged his forgiveness for all her sins. 
 He stirred uneasily, then his eyes opened and she was 
 held by his look as if fascinated, until with a cry of real 
 anguish she slipped to the floor, and snatching his unre 
 sponsive hand kissed it and called him all the sweet 
 
216 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 names she had wasted on other men. The sons had come 
 in and were glad that their father was asleep. Guiltily 
 they hurried out again, fearful that he might waken. 
 
 The servants walked about on tiptoe, callers came and 
 went, doors creaked, the Madam sobbed hysterically and 
 still the old man slept. Dr. Makutchky had left powders 
 to be given him if he should wake, and he emphasized 
 the need of keeping a close watch upon him. 
 
 Madam Redlich stayed, crouched on the floor, till mid 
 night. Once or twice she thought her husband's eyes had 
 opened and she rose and offered him the powders, but he 
 lay almost motionless, except for his groaning and the 
 twitching of his body. Her maid came in and urged her 
 to go to bed, offering to watch the rest of the night, but 
 the Madam insisted upon staying, and the servant lay 
 down upon the couch, to be near her mistress in case of 
 need. In the outer room Andrew Feher was sitting 
 smoking, an additional guard for the night. 
 
 Madam Redlich's head was throbbing painfully, for 
 indeed it had been a dreadful day. She looked at herself 
 in the mirror, and was frightened at her own face, for 
 an old woman stared at her, a wrecked, old woman. The 
 maid heard her mistress moving about and began to talk 
 to her of the events of the day, perhaps for the pleasure 
 of causing more pain. 
 
 " Did the Madam know that her sons had been in 
 dicted? Strashno, strashno! terrible, terrible. The Bo 
 hemian brewer has been arrested." " It served him 
 right," thought the Madam, for wasn't he really the cause 
 of all the trouble ? It was all Pan-Slav propaganda, this 
 wrecking of an Hungarian brewery; that is what the 
 Herr Ritter always said to her, that everything was due 
 to Pan-Slav propaganda, and her thoughts wandered 
 away from her husband and her troubles, to the Herr 
 Ritter, and the shame of it all was a sort of comfort to 
 
THE GREAT CATASTROPHE 217 
 
 her. Now that everything was going, perhaps the Herr 
 Ritter 
 
 " Does the Madam know that the Herr Ritter left town 
 this afternoon in Lindner's omnibus ? " Then her heart 
 stood still and she almost cried out, but stifled the cry be 
 fore it left her lips. " And," the servant continued, " the 
 Fraulein went with him. What a Schkandal!" the girl 
 repeated to herself, mimicking the Fraulein. 
 
 The servant had fallen asleep, and the Madam was ly 
 ing across the bed at her husband's feet. Her head was 
 aching as if a thousand hammers were beating against it. 
 Sophie called from the other room and she answered and 
 reassured her about her father. Then everything grew 
 quiet again, even her head ceased aching. There was just 
 a humming and buzzing in her ears. She was awake she 
 told herself, of course she was awake. How could she 
 sleep a night like this? 
 
 Moritz Redlich had watched them with the cunning of 
 the demented. He slid noiselessly to the floor, and in his 
 night clothes, ran out, past the snoring Andrew Feher, 
 into the street. The watchman was calling the fourth 
 hour, and daylight had crept into the sky. Gentle and 
 sweet and rosy it looked, as on those days when he had 
 to drive to the market in Trnava, with his wagon full of 
 plum brandy. The earth smelled just as fresh as then, 
 and the pale stars twinkled as they used to twinkle at the 
 young boy who had taken an old man's burden upon him, 
 and had never laid it down. 
 
 Yes, he must go to the distillery now and load up. 
 Strange that the men were not yet there, and the horses 
 had to be fed. Those lazy drivers! But what did they 
 care for the scolding of a young boy, though he was 
 their master ? 
 
 " That's the Pan's house, I know it by the rosemary. 
 I wonder if the young Pan, when he comes back from the 
 
218 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Gymnasium, will still remember his Jewish playmate. 
 They do seem so proud, when they come back from 
 school." 
 
 There was the distillery, a heavy burden for a young 
 boy ; but look ! There were huge creatures on each side 
 of it and one of them had a long neck and a small head. 
 " Get off ! " he yelled. " Don't crush my father's dis 
 tillery! Don't you know that it is full of plum brandy, 
 and that I have to take it to the market, to Trnava? " 
 
 But the beasts did not move, and the huge neck of the 
 one seemed to lengthen in defiance, and its little bearded 
 face smiled at him sarcastically. 
 
 " Get away from my little distillery ! " he cried again, 
 and was about to hurl a rock at it, when a finger was 
 stretched out from the Sun; a long, thin, shining finger, 
 and it moved over the buildings and stopped, pointing at 
 the big sign which he began spelling out. The Hungarian 
 National Distilling and Brewing Company. The rock 
 dropped from his hand and he knew what day it was 
 which was dawning. 
 
 Good God! What a day he had lived to see! And 
 the gentle gold of the dawn grew suddenly red, like blood, 
 and he saw nothing but the Herr Ritter letting down the 
 plain, little sign, Moritz Redlich, Distiller. There it was, 
 hanging by a rope ! Moritz Redlich hanging by a rope ! 
 He would tear down the big Magyar sign they had put 
 up there, the big glittering sign, in an alien tongue. 
 Where could he find a ladder ? There by the barns out 
 side the brewery he found one and dragged it across the 
 silent street, and lifted it with superhuman strength. He 
 tied a stout rope around the sign and began pulling and 
 tearing at it but it would not yield ; it was all done, fixed, 
 forever and ever! He stood up there beating his head 
 with his hands, for the madness was filling it, and the 
 familiar voice was calling to him to end it all, but he 
 
THE GREAT CATASTROPHE 219 
 
 must live! " God, righteous God! " he cried, "how can 
 I leave my Sophie in this misery? " But the hands kept 
 clutching at his throat, and the voice repeated its 
 demand. 
 
 There was a word that had saved him many a time, 
 what was it? " Oh God, the word! the word! What is 
 it? " He knew it had something to do with buttoning and 
 unbuttoning his coat ; but when he unbuttoned his night 
 shirt he felt cold and shivered. If he could only think of 
 the word ! 
 
 In the yard of the brewery from which he was locked 
 out, he heard footsteps. Iron heels were striking the 
 cobblestones. There were two men, and they were talk 
 ing to each other. They were the night watchmen finish 
 ing their rounds and making ready to go home. They 
 were talking about him, and cursing the " Jewish money 
 grabbers," who brought so much ruin to the town so that 
 their good job was gone. 
 
 " I don't care," he heard one of them say as he stood 
 listening. " I planned to go to America anyway. They 
 all say that in America it is fine." 
 
 Thank God ! Thank God ! He had the word. " In 
 America it is fine," and he began to repeat it " In 
 America " he had not finished the magic sentence when 
 the other man said : " You are a big fool if you go. In 
 America it is not fine, it is bad. I have been there, and 
 I am thankful that I brought home my carcass. My 
 lungs were eaten out by dust and my skin was parched 
 by the heat, and my back is bent by hard labor. It is 
 not fine in America, it is bad, bad ! " He began to cough 
 and spat upon the ground and muttered a curse as they 
 passed on toward the big gate. 
 
 Poor Moritz Redlich ! He had the magic word but it 
 did not work its charm. The voice urged him, the mad 
 ness conquered him, the unseen hands were upon his 
 
220 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 throat, and he sank into the great abyss and into the 
 saving silence. 
 
 A few minutes later, from the big gate of the brewery, 
 the two men saw something which looked like a long 
 pendulum swinging from the golden sign. " Damn my 
 soul ! " said the one who had been in America. " That 
 looks like a man! " The other one crossed himself and 
 whispered, awestruck: "Jesus! Marie and Joseph! If it 
 isn't the old Jew ! " 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: SPIRITUS MORTUUS 
 
 THE death of Moritz Redlich dulled the despair 
 which had gripped the people of Hraszova. The 
 curses died cm their lips and in their pity of themselves 
 they could now include the old man, whose suffering was 
 over. As his naked body lay on the floor in his darkened 
 bedroom, the pious men of the Burial Society who had 
 come to prepare it for the grave disputed as to whether 
 they should cover him with the shroud which every pious 
 Jew wears at his wedding and on the great holy days 
 to remind him that in " the midst of life we are in death." 
 After some argument they yielded their scruples and the 
 flowing white garment was wrapped around him. 
 Stitched as it had been by Gittele's hands and embroid 
 ered in gold by her fingers, it brought him comfort, if 
 comfort from human hands could reach him. 
 
 There were neither candles nor flowers to lighten the 
 gloom, nor signs nor symbols to dull the sting of death 
 and defy the victory of the grave. Father Anton Kalman 
 sent a wreath of cornflowers and poppies, and when it 
 was brought in there was much shaking of heads and 
 discussion of custom and proprieties. When it was de 
 cided that it might be accepted, but not placed upon the 
 bier, Sophie laid it on the piano. The wise men shook 
 their heads the more when they read the words painted 
 on the ribbons : " I am distressed for thee, my brother. 
 Thou hast been very pleasant to me. Thy love was won 
 derful, passing the love of women." As it was written 
 in Hebrew, there was mild approval mingled with the 
 doubts of the most orthodox. 
 
 When the pall-bearers lifted the bier upon their shoul- 
 
 221 
 
222 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 ders, Madam Redlich threw herself in their way, and 
 filled the air with her lament. Those who restrained her 
 were saying to themselves and to each other : " Had she 
 smiled upon him more while he was living, she would 
 have less need to weep now." Gently they pushed her 
 aside, and passing through the crowd which had gathered 
 around the door, they headed the procession. The sons 
 who had been released on bail, followed the body, not 
 daring to lift their heads. When the beadle came and 
 with his knife cut the lapels of their coats, symbolizing 
 the rending of their garments, they bowed themselves 
 low, more in shame than in sorrow. 
 
 In disorder and confusion the crowd followed, joining 
 in a chant which combined the despair of Job and the 
 hope of David, but which was without measure or rhythm. 
 No women were there. They remained at the Redlich 
 home to add to the confusion and lamentation, or stood 
 in huddled groups by their doorways, thinking the deep 
 solemn thoughts which death invokes. 
 
 Sophie, weakened by her long illness, and exhausted by 
 grief, had been persuaded to return to her bed, by Chris 
 tina, who sat beside her, thinking anxiously of her father, 
 whom she had left very reluctantly. Sonya realizing her 
 own limitations as never before and feeling that she could 
 not take Christina's place, had begged her to come. 
 Sophie loved Christina, whose mere presence so soothed 
 her that in spite of the wailing of the women below, she 
 fell asleep soon after her beloved father had been taken 
 to his last resting-place. Then Christina stole quietly out 
 and ran home. 
 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky had watched from his window the 
 stir caused by the failure of the Redlich brewery, and 
 growled until they told him what had happened; then 
 tears trickled down his cheeks and they could not move 
 him from the window till the street grew quiet. He 
 
SPIRITUS MORTUUS 223 
 
 spent a sleepless night, and in the morning as his daugh 
 ters were leading him to prayers Marisha burst into the 
 room screaming : " May the Pan Boch have mercy on us, 
 the old Jew has hung himself ! " The Pan gave her an 
 uncomprehending look, then the awful truth seemed to 
 force itself into his brain, and he threw up his one living 
 hand as if to invoke help from on high. Even as he 
 lifted it they saw it stiffen, his whole body grew rigid, 
 and they knew, and he knew, that he would soon follow 
 his friend. At the time of the funeral, as Yanek and 
 Sonya sat by his couch, they read his unuttered wish in 
 his appealing eyes; so they placed him by the window 
 when the procession passed. He looked the pain which 
 he could not express, and there were tears which no one 
 could see, and a loving eulogy which no one could hear. 
 
 As the pall-bearers approached the parsonage the bell 
 of the Catholic church began to toll, and Father Anton 
 Kalman stepped out. As themen made way for him, the 
 bell suddenly stopped ringing, the last stroke was broken 
 and vibrated unfinished through the air. Father Kalman 
 looked perplexedly up to the church steeple, then joined 
 the dolorous procession. He walked close to the pall 
 bearers, closer than Moritz Redlich's sons, and as it is 
 the custom of the Jews to permit all those who wish it to 
 share in the blessing which comes from carrying the dead 
 to their last resting-place, they let Father Kalman in be 
 neath the bier, where the burden was lightest, and even 
 then they tried not to let it rest too heavily on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Drear and dismal was the God's acre to which they car 
 ried the body of Moritz Redlich. No trees shaded the 
 sun-baked slope, and weeds grew unchecked, hiding the 
 sunken headstones which leaned at all angles, as if weary 
 of their long vigil. The rusty gate hung slack upon its 
 hinges and had long ago ceased to swing wide for those 
 
224 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 who entered. They had dug his grave close to the wall, 
 where those sleep, who have not bided God's time, and in 
 the memory of that generation, this was the first body to 
 lie thus dishonored; for the Jew is tenacious of life, and 
 fears his offended Maker. 
 
 Up there upon the hillside Moritz Redlich had helped 
 to lay away Gittele's body, over eighteen years before, 
 and he had bought the lot that he might lie beside her. 
 This was a privilege denied him, and from his faraway 
 and sunken corner there was not even a glimpse of the 
 shining stone of marble which he had placed there in her 
 memory. 
 
 Yet nature, which man considers stern and unrelent 
 ing, was more forgiving than he and gave a gracious 
 touch to the desolate spot. A plum tree growing on the 
 other side of the wall reached its branches across, prom 
 ising to shade and shelter the grave. In the autumn the 
 rich blue plums would fall upon it, and what was more 
 beautiful than blue plums to Moritz Redlich? 
 
 Clumsily they lowered his body into the grave, and 
 when the ropes were withdrawn the sexton descended into 
 the grave to perform the last solemn rite. 
 
 Reb Aaron Mandl was the sexton and the almoner of 
 the Jews of Hraszova, an Israelite in whom there was 
 " no guile." The professional schnorrers feared him, but 
 the poor loved and trusted him. He never asked anything 
 for himself, but he could beg for others as if he were 
 asking for his own life. While the righteous are never 
 forsaken, God often keeps them on close rations, and 
 Reb Aaron Mandl lived on the edge of nothing, as con 
 tentedly as if he were in the midst of plenty. He knew 
 the holy books by heart and the wisdom of the ancients 
 was upon his lips. That which kept him from being a 
 Rabbi was that he stammered. Had he been born with 
 a free tongue he would have exalted his position, for he 
 
SPIRITUS MORTUUS 225 
 
 was in the direct succession of the men who spoke as God 
 gave them utterance. He prayed that this infirmity might 
 be removed : but no miracle happened, and he was con 
 tent to be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord, and 
 the official slaughterer of the fowl and cattle. 
 
 As he always performed the last sad rites at the grave 
 of the dead, the kindred of the departed frequently went 
 to his house before the funeral, and many a crown was 
 pressed into his hands that he might speak flattering, if 
 not lying words ; but the words he spoke were addressed 
 to the spirit of the departed which was supposed to hover 
 over the grave; they must be true and as just as the 
 fallible judgment of man could make them. 
 
 He put the bag of sacred earth under the head of 
 Moritz Redlich and placed in his hands the forked twigs 
 as a symbolic aid in the resurrection; then, he spoke to 
 the dead as was his custom. His voice rose from the 
 grave in a sharp staccato, like the rattle of a drum, inter 
 rupted by long stammering pauses. 
 
 " Moritz Redlich, may your head rest on the sacred soil 
 of Palestine till the day of the Great Judgment ; may the 
 angel of God not miss your grave when he comes to raise 
 the dead. 
 
 "You have been the staff and stay of Israel for a 
 generation, unto you we gave heed, and your speech fell 
 upon our ears like rain. You smiled upon us when we 
 had no confidence, you pointed the way when we were 
 bewildered; you delivered the poor when they cried, the 
 fatherless also when they had none to help them. 
 
 :< You were eyes to the blind and feet to the lame and a 
 father to the needy. Your lips never uttered unrighteous 
 ness and you spoke no deceit. When God afflicted you, 
 you never turned away from Him, and when we fenced 
 you about with derision you did not break through in 
 anger. Your kinsfolk have failed you, and those whom 
 
226 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 you have loved have turned against you, and the hand of 
 God has touched you." There was a pause, for the old 
 man was weeping and stammering, then he continued his 
 weird lamentation. 
 
 " May God the Almighty Ruler of the Universe bless 
 thy friends, who through good report and evil report re 
 mained loyal to thee, cleaving closer to thee than those 
 who are flesh of thy flesh and bone of thy bone, and may 
 He have mercy upon us as we need mercy, for we have 
 sinned against thee. We have sinned against thee, 
 Moritz, our friend, we have sinned against thee as we 
 have sinned against God and we turned from thee when 
 thou didst need a helper." And he began smiting his 
 breast and the sons bowed themselves to the ground and 
 wept, and all the men took up the lamentation, beating 
 their breasts and tearing their garments. 
 
 " May God have mercy on your wife, on your sons 
 and your daughter and on us miserable sinners ! " And 
 they repeated it after him. " May God have mercy on 
 us miserable sinners ! " 
 
 " May the earth be light upon your broken body," and 
 he stepped out of the grave and the earth began falling 
 into it. There was a blessing in casting earth upon the 
 dead and they all shared in it, including Father Kalman, 
 who remained by the grave until they had gone. 
 
 When he walked home alone through the Esplanade, 
 the swish of his sutan was accompanied by his sobs and 
 in his hand he tenderly held the snuff tobacco box which 
 he had kept for his friend, the box with the Greek god 
 dess on the lid. He turned it between his thumb and 
 finger as if undecided what to do. Then he slipped it into 
 his pocket and took snuff from the one having the picture 
 of Christ with the bleeding heart. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: SANCTI EXITI 
 
 THE cornflowers had faded and the poppies stood 
 stiff and dry with ripening pods. The little boys 
 were breaking and shaking them and were munching the 
 creamy seeds, not however before they had pronounced 
 an incantation, for it is bad form to open a poppy seed 
 pod without repeating this chant, whose meaning only 
 the fairies know. 
 
 Poppy pod, poppy pod, 
 Sleep and nod, sleep and nod, 
 Shake you up, wake you up, 
 Bite your head, break your cup. 
 
 The sheen of gold and silver had crept into the grain 
 and the beets were growing undisturbed, drawing their 
 sweetness from the sun and air ; the cabbages sealed their 
 heads more solidly against worms and pests and all other 
 pernicious influences, intent upon being good cabbages. 
 Indeed it promised to be an abundant harvest " Chvala 
 Bohu " ; but the workers unlike the cabbages were not 
 content to be just peasants, and their heads were open 
 to all sorts of strange notions. Stephan Hruby com 
 plained that they were not singing as they used to sing, 
 and that it was due to sugar beets and emigration. After 
 the Pan's death, which came soon after the tragic end of 
 Moritz Redlich, Yanek's father had taken charge of the 
 farm, and with it inherited the Pan's leather breeches 
 and his pet aversions. 
 
 Assuming that Stephan Hruby was exaggerating after 
 the manner of men who have great responsibilities thrust 
 
 227 
 
228 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 upon them, something had come into the atmosphere of 
 Hraszova which had robbed it of its buoyancy, and the 
 very air seemed laden by a brooding fate. The cheerful 
 peasants who asked so little of life, who walked as docily 
 as the oxen beneath their yokes, and worked from sun 
 rise to sunset, began to question whether all the daylight 
 were for labor, and whether the small share of the 
 harvest which they received was a just reward for their 
 toil. 
 
 " Yes, it is those Americans/' the young Baron said, 
 " if we could only ship them back from where they came 
 . . ." and he was thinking chiefly of Yanek Hruby. 
 " Since that upstart came home," he was saying to Father 
 Imre Baczko, with whom he was playing cards one eve 
 ning at the Casino, " we haven't had a peaceful day in 
 Hraszova. 
 
 ' The workmen are spoiled for us, and as for the 
 women! One can't have them and use them and then 
 throw them aside any more, but some clout of a peasant 
 lad picks them up baby and all and tries to call one to 
 account." Yes, indeed, the good times for the spoilers 
 were gone. The curate agreed with him perfectly and 
 was reminded of an episode he would rather not recall. 
 An American had come into the parsonage a few days 
 before and told him that if he had him over in America 
 he would put a bullet through him, " Holy Father or no 
 Holy Father," and when the curate tried to silence him 
 by offering him some banknotes, he threw them at him 
 and swore a bloody curse right in his face. 
 
 The Reverend Imre Baczko wished that the Baron's 
 talk had not revived unpleasant memories and so spoiled 
 his perfectly good hand ; he tried to concentrate upon the 
 few cards left, pulling heavily upon his long Virginia 
 cigar, but he was losing the game, for he could not keep 
 his mind off the incident, especially as Father Kalman 
 
SANCTI EXITI 229 
 
 was a witness of the disagreeable interview with the 
 American. The worst of it was that the old man did not 
 say anything to his curate just walked up and down the 
 room opening and shutting his snuff tobacco box and 
 muttering and crossing himself. 
 
 " Yanek Hruby," thought the curate, " he could leave 
 to the Baron, but Father Kalman " well he had taken 
 the matter up with the Bishop. There was the last elec 
 tion when he used the church to let in the voters, and then 
 tolling the church's bell at a Jew's funeral, and a suicide 
 at that! Fortunately he stopped that sacrilege. Any 
 way the old man was failing and ought to make room for 
 a younger man. 
 
 " In the devil's name," cried the Baron, " are you play 
 ing cards or are you dreaming? " 
 
 " Neither," answered Father Baczko curtly, as he threw 
 down the cards and left the Casino. 
 
 It was not only the peasants who were changed or 
 changing, singing less and thinking more; back of 
 Vavra's butcher shop there was a brooding silence and 
 the puckery wine and the greasy Petchenkas could not 
 bring back the good old times. Wenzel Motichka, the 
 firebrand, after being in jail, had been sent back to Bo 
 hemia, to the joy of the gendarmes but to the regret of 
 the small boys, for Wenzel made good candy. 
 
 The bootmakers and the Hallinary now carried their 
 goods to the markets in vain, for the women wanted high 
 heeled shoes with patent leather tips, and stylish clothes 
 of soft, clinging stuffs; and the men were as bad as the 
 women, so that one couldn't tell a peasant from a trades 
 man by his clothes or by watching him eat and drink. 
 
 The customers at Vavra's wine shop grew fewer and 
 fewer. " What's the good of staying in Hraszova," they 
 said as they were leaving for America, " when the 
 Stephans and Pavels and the Martzins (meaning the 
 
230 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Toms, Dicks and Harrys of Slovakdom) come back from 
 over there and walk about like lords, and have money 
 enough to drink sweet, heavy wine at the inn and don't 
 think Pan Vavra's wine shop good enough for them, and 
 won't wear heavy cowhide boots, or white, stiff Haliny 
 (which shed hair like a white mangy dog), but wear 
 clothes as good as the Baron's?" It was growing so 
 quiet back of Vavra's butcher shop that the gendarmes 
 passed it by without looking or listening, now that 
 Wenzel Motichka was gone and the Slovak spirit had 
 been so crushed that no one dared sing "Hey Slovane." 
 
 The Magyar officials walked about proudly, clicking 
 their boot heels and twirling their waxed mustaches, sure 
 of their overlordship and thanking God that at last the 
 government was in strong hands, unyielding and effi 
 cient, that the nonsense about manhood suffrage had 
 been knocked into smithereens and that emigration was 
 going to be checked. Everything was as God intended it 
 to be in the realm of St. Stephan except that the Slovaks 
 still preferred to remain Slovaks and that in the army the 
 German language was the language of command. So in 
 the Parliament they debated day and night and hurled 
 hot Magyar oaths and inkwells at each other and fought 
 duels, to the end that the Slovaks should say " Ala 
 Szolgayo " when they met each other instead of " Yak se 
 mash " and that the soldiers should count their steps 
 Egy, Ketoe, Harom instead of eins, zivei, drci. 
 
 The Judge also thought that everything was as it 
 should be in the corner of Magyar Orszag, except his 
 asthma and the gout, and the Americans who had gone 
 away like sheep and had come back like rams. As for 
 that pesky Yanek Hruby ... in Budapest they would 
 find a way to deal with him, just wait ! And his triple 
 chin shook with satisfaction, like calf's foot jelly just 
 turned out of the mold. Of course there was Father 
 
SANCTI EXITI 231 
 
 Anton Kalman; well, he was an old man and one could 
 leave him to the curate ; that curate is no fool, even if he 
 is a Holy Father. He has cut his eye teeth. 
 
 Father Kalman was sitting at breakfast on one of those 
 late summer days. He had said early mass as an act of 
 special devotion, for he needed to be assured of the 
 Divine Presence ; yet he must have been thinking wicked 
 thoughts for he was saying to himself, " God forgive 
 me!" and was mentally crossing himself. Indeed for 
 Father Kalman things were not as they ought to have 
 been. Hraszova was no more Hraszova, now that Moritz 
 Redlich and the Pan were gone. " The curate, the 
 curate ! " That was the reason he was asking Divine 
 pardon and crossing himself, while he was drinking his 
 coffee and dipping the crusty roll into the cup. 
 
 " I can't look at that curate any longer," he was think 
 ing, as Father Imre Baczko came in and sat opposite him. 
 " He grows flabbier every day and he seems to ooze un- 
 cleanness. Oh, good Lord, judge me not as I am judg 
 ing! " He stifled his thoughts of the curate and began 
 thinking of loneliness since the death of his friends, 
 and of Helena and how homesick she was and how im 
 possible it was to have her with him even for a short 
 visit, and lo, there it was again the curate. 
 
 " The Lord be praised ! Things are getting along 
 nicely in Hraszova," Father Imre Baczko was saying to 
 himself, and he felt no need to make the holy sign, while 
 there was a look of triumph in his eyes. Two letters lay 
 on the table, one at each place, and the assurance of de 
 liverance came through them for they were formidable 
 looking and the Episcopal seal was upon them. 
 
 After Father Kalman had carefully scraped the sugar 
 from the bottom of his cup and had taken the first pinch 
 of snuff for the day, both as deliberately as always, he 
 carefully cut the envelope of his letter with the edge of 
 
232 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 the large bread knife, and slowly unfolded the parch- 
 mentlike sheet. The curate tore open the one addressed 
 to him and had read and reread his letter while Father 
 Kalman still held his in his trembling hand. 
 
 Father Baczko was clearing his throat waiting for his 
 vis-a-vis to say something, but he sat silent, a faraway 
 look in his eyes; thinking that perhaps after all it was 
 God's judgment for his unchristian thoughts about his 
 curate. But what should he have thought ? One cannot 
 make an unclean vessel clean by thinking it so. No, it 
 was not just what he was thinking about the curate, 
 but what he had seen and heard. No, he had not trusted 
 to scandal mongers. 
 
 " God forgive me, perhaps I was jealous because they 
 liked his preaching better. Yes, yes, an old man gets to 
 be childish." And had he not been tempted, and how 
 near he often was to yielding, and how often and how 
 long he had been plagued by unclean thoughts, which 
 held his will as in a vice. Yet he had overcome tempta 
 tion. 
 
 But there was the apothecary's cook for whose down 
 fall the curate was responsible. The women lifted their 
 eyebrows when they met her. Then she had gone away 
 to Trnava for a time and had come back looking as 
 well as ever, only she was very pale. " Oh Lord, for 
 give me! " He said it audibly and crossed himself, and 
 took an extra heavy dose of snuff and wiped his eyes to 
 hide the tears of which the snuff alone was not the cause. 
 
 ' You have bad news ? " the curate asked, his malice 
 finely concealed. 
 
 " Oh no, very good news, thank you, very good news," 
 was the reply, and of course it was not a lie, for, after 
 all, he would be rid of the curate. 
 
 ' You have been transferred ? " and the malice was 
 evident. 
 
SANCTI EXITI 233 
 
 " No, I have been elevated." Oh good Lord, that was 
 not a lie, for the little parish of Boor to which the Bishop 
 had transferred him was a thousand feet up in the 
 mountains, on a cold and windswept plateau. 
 
 " A Bishopric perhaps ? " There was irony in the 
 curate's voice. 
 
 " Better than that for the martyrs shall be first," 
 Father Kalman thought, " and may the Lord forgive the 
 pride of it." 
 
 " The saints are always rewarded," sneered the 
 curate. 
 
 " But not by their Bishops," retorted Father Kalman, 
 and a swift glance of triumph escaped his eyes. Then 
 he reproached himself; yet he knew that Father Baczko's 
 promotion to his own place was not due to the younger 
 man's saintliness. 
 
 "You should not have meddled in politics, Father 
 Anton." 
 
 " I did not meddle on the right side, that is what you 
 mean, is it not? " 
 
 " The government is always on the right side," the 
 curate replied tartly. 
 
 " Have it your way, have it your way, Father Baczko. 
 Pilate was right and Jesus was wrong, Festus was right 
 and Paul was wrong, the martyrs were wrong and Rome 
 was right. You are right, have it your way." 
 
 " That isn't a fair argument, Father Anton. Rome 
 was heathen and Hungary is Christian, the country of 
 St. Stephan and St. Elizabeth." 
 
 "The government of Hungary is Christian? Yes, 
 theoretically. There are Bishops and Archbishops in the 
 House of Lords, and the king is crowned by the priest 
 and the cross surmounts the crown ; but practically it is 
 as heathen as Rome was. Ah well, let us not argue." 
 And Father Kalman sighed deeply. " I may be all 
 
234 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 wrong, I shall soon know better," and there was a far 
 away look in his eyes. 
 
 " I shall leave here next week. The Bishop says that 
 in consideration of my health he is sending me up into 
 the mountains; so I must go to the health resort of Boor 
 as soon as I can. I shall not have much time to recuper 
 ate. It may interest you to know that the Bishop is not 
 only solicitous about my health, but about my conduct 
 also; he hopes that I will not openly associate with the 
 Jews and Protestants. The Bishop was well informed 
 was he not? " 
 
 " It was an open scandal the way you behaved," the 
 curate replied half apologetically. " I did not have to 
 tell the Bishop very much. Remember that you went to 
 the funeral of Moritz Redlich, and that you ordered the 
 bell tolled for him, a Jew, a suicide, a man who had 
 cheated men and women out of their money." 
 
 The blood rose in the pale cheeks of Father Anton 
 Kalman. " I must beg you not to speak of that Jew. 
 You are not fit to mention his name." His voice grew 
 husky. "If it is scandal to associate with Protestant 
 and Jewish men you have certainly avoided scandals. Of 
 course you play cards with the Baron but he is hardly a 
 man, and what about the women? Oh well, may the 
 saints intercede for me. Oh Virgin Mary, intercede 
 forme!" 
 
 Father Baczko had risen angrily. " You don't mean 
 to insinuate that I am not keeping my vows of chastity? " 
 He had struck the table with the palm of his hand and 
 his voice was pitched high. 
 
 " No, no, I insinuate nothing, nothing only I didn't 
 know that it was a sin to love men of other faiths and 
 blood. Moritz Redlich was so much like John the beloved 
 disciple, he was no Judas. Don't besmirch his name, his 
 good name," and he opened his breviary and sought 
 
SANCTI EXITI 235 
 
 refuge from his perplexities in the calm of the Divine 
 Presence. 
 
 " Yes, indeed, we know it is on account of Father 
 Kalman's poor health that he is to be transferred to 
 Boor," the faithful ones were saying and they shook their 
 heads dubiously. " But who ever heard of Boor being 
 a health resort? The old men have the rheumatism, 
 the women have goiters, and the children are half 
 witted, and if you want to find your stolen pig, go up to 
 Boor. A nice reward this, for a man's devotion to the 
 church, and a fine health resort to send him to in his old 
 age!" 
 
 Pan Finor wrote a protest to the Bishop and the more 
 daring ones signed it. There was a polite reply to the 
 effect that Bishops know better than laymen what is right 
 and what is wrong. Moreover, no officials or landlords 
 had signed the protest, and while Father Imre Baczko 
 might have been guilty of some slight indiscretions, the 
 Bishop would personally look after him. 
 
 " Patriotism covers a multitude of sins," said Dr. 
 Makutchky when Pan Finor showed him the letter, and 
 then he added, " It is a crime to send the old man to Boor 
 and a greater crime to put Father Baczko in his place." 
 Pan Finor put his finger on his lips, warning the doctor. 
 " Walls have ears," he whispered. " Yes, walls have ears 
 but men have no conscience! " And the doctor spoke a 
 little louder than usual. 
 
 " They will get you yet, my fine doctor. It is a wonder 
 they haven't sent you to Nyitra long ago," Pan Finor said 
 smiling ironically. 
 
 " They can have me whenever they want me, but they 
 don't want me yet; for governments are stupid. If I 
 were Pan-Slav they would have put me in irons long ago, 
 but as I am only Pan-Christian they don't think me dan 
 gerous. They are mistaken, aren't they? " 
 
236 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 " Yes, they are mistaken. You, my dear doctor, and 
 all the rest of the suspected ones are as harmless as flies, 
 but, come to think of it, flies are not harmless. You 
 are as harmless as sheep. I am the only real rebel, and 
 the Salvesh, although they, thank God, don't know it." 
 
 The Bishop's orders were the Bishop's orders and 
 Father Kalman was going to Boor. He was celebrating 
 high mass, his last mass, and the voices of the singers 
 quivered and the responses were only half audible, for 
 when he unveiled the great mystery and uplifted the 
 Host, his friends were reminded of another Gethsemane 
 and another Calvary. Even his enemies did not escape 
 the wave of emotion which filled the church, and Father 
 Imre Baczko was seen to wipe his eyes. 
 
 Early on Monday morning before the reapers went to 
 the fields and the mountains seemed so near that he 
 could almost touch them, Father Kalman left Hraszova. 
 
 " Thank God the mountains are still blue and not red, 
 white and green," he thought as he crossed the Esplanade, 
 and in imagination he was again walking with his 
 cronies and heard the swash of the Pan's leather breeches 
 and the cough of Moritz Redlich. The birds were sing 
 ing as they always sang, and again he thanked God that 
 they had not changed their tunes to please the Magyars 
 and confound the Slavs. Their world was still God's 
 world. 
 
 He walked to the edge of the Jewish cemetery and 
 stood for a moment at the grave of Moritz Redlich in 
 its dishonored corner. He smiled sadly as he saw the 
 overhanging branches of the plum tree weighted down by 
 the ripening fruit, which soon would would fall and cover 
 the grave of his dear friend. 
 
 Then he went in to the next inclosure, and knelt beside 
 the flower covered grave of the Pan. He noticed that 
 violets had been planted there. They would be fragrant 
 
SANCTI EXITI 237 
 
 next spring. He stood long before the grave of the 
 Pan's wife, and he could smell violets as if it were al 
 ready spring. They had gathered violets together he 
 and she, and she had put them into his buttonhole ; then 
 there were no more violets but incense. When he visited 
 the Pan after she was dead he looked at her picture, he 
 never dared look at her, while she was living, for fear he 
 would smell violets. It did not matter that he smelled 
 them when he looked at her portrait after she was gone. 
 
 Turning abruptly away he went to the Catholic ceme 
 tery and made the stations of the cross on his knees, 
 though the grass was wet from the heavy dew. Before 
 the huge crucifix he prostrated himself and prayed fer 
 vently, and when he looked up he thought he saw an 
 encouraging smile on the paindrawn face of the Christ, 
 as if He were saying : " Brother, do not fear, Boor is a 
 high place and better than a Bishopric for such as you 
 and I." 
 
 When Father Kalman had gone down the hill he 
 thought he heard the Man on the cross say : 
 
 " Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you and 
 shall say all manner of evil against you for my sake." 
 And he doubted his ears. But as he passed the Bashany- 
 itza the voice repeated : " Yes, that is what I said. 
 Blessed are ye." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE HARVEST 
 HOME 
 
 ONE of the reasons for the Pan's dislike of sugar 
 beets was, that harvesting them was like " pulling 
 rats out of their holes." He used to say to Moritz Red- 
 lich, " I grant you that somebody has to raise sugar 
 beets, but can you imagine them woven into a harvest 
 wreath? " 
 
 Moritz Redlich was not a poet, and he never danced 
 when the harvesters carrying the Vyenetz, brought home 
 the last load of grain. He objected to beets on more 
 prosaic grounds, because beet tops instead of plums were 
 used in making brandy; so he agreed with the Pan that 
 a harvest wreath of sugar beets would not be a thing of 
 beauty, yet he insisted that a sheaf of wheat was not half 
 as beautiful as a basket full of blue plums. Therefore 
 wheat versus plums was one subject of those debates 
 now forever ended, or perhaps resumed in another world, 
 unless, for the sake of eternal peace, debates are pn> 
 hibited there. 
 
 Christina did not wish the harvest home or Vyenetz 
 as the peasants called it, to be celebrated this year. She 
 had always frowned upon it, having her doubts as to 
 the dances, the drinking, the loving and fighting which 
 followed, and now that the Pan was gone she thought it 
 a good time to stop. 
 
 The harvesters however did not share her opinion. 
 " What would the Pan up there in Heaven think about us 
 if we did not celebrate a harvest like this? Only twice in 
 the memory of our generation was there such a harvest. 
 
THE HARVEST HOME 239 
 
 And then if the Mlada Panka remembered," the foreman 
 said, " the Pan gave us two barrels of wine, and Marisha 
 baked cakes the whole week and there were not too many, 
 and the Gypsies played till morning, and the Pan, God 
 rest his soul, danced every turn and drank a little, just a 
 little," the old peasant said with a twinkle in his eye, 
 "until Panyi Velcomoshna had to have him carried to 
 bed. 
 
 " Verily, Mlada Panka Christina, if there is no Vyenetz 
 after such a harvest as this, the Pan will turn over in 
 his grave. The Pan was a great man for festivals; he 
 thought that wine was made for drinking and women for 
 embracing, and with all that he was a God fearing man 
 as everybody knows, now wasn't he, Mlada Panka? " 
 he asked ingratiatingly. 
 
 The harvesters male and female agreed with their fore 
 man, and Sonya agreed also, and, what was worse, the 
 Mlady Pan Hruby, as they now called Yanek, was in 
 perfect accord with them. Indeed the Mlady Pan had 
 grown to be an important personage since the death of 
 Pan Yan Szenitzky. Slowly and reluctantly he accepted 
 the place made for him by Fate or Sonya, and the two 
 seemed one, and it was his yea and nay which governed 
 things, and governed even his father, although Christina 
 said that Sonya could wind both of them around her 
 little finger, and the thought was very bitter. 
 
 It was no secret that Yanek and Sonya were going to 
 be married, and how could it be a secret, for Sonya's 
 love was not of the secret kind. It was a great joy to 
 Stephan Hruby who had forgiven his son's fiasco as a 
 preacher in the light of this event, but there were two 
 women who were not very happy over the prospect. One 
 of them was Yanek's mother who could not understand 
 how God could make such a mistake, when she had been 
 praying that it might be Christina. The other woman did 
 
240 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 not know why she was unhappy about it, and would not 
 have confessed the fact even to herself. 
 
 Yes, there was going to be a Vyenetz after all, and the 
 memory of it was to linger for many years, not because it 
 was merrier than those which preceded it, in fact it 
 wasn't, for the times were out of joint, and the 
 Pan was not there to lead the dancers and serve the 
 first cup, and pinch the red cheeks of the young women, 
 and feed cake to the youngsters till they nearly burst. 
 There were other reasons which made this Vyenetz 
 memorable. 
 
 They had worked hard the day before, and all the 
 wheat was in but one load which was made up of the 
 choicest grain, the most golden and the fattest bundles. 
 The Sun rose as usual that day but the workers did not 
 stir. They slept till the feather beds grew too warm for 
 them, and after breakfast there was much primping, and 
 lacing of the most picturesque prutsliks, the putting on of 
 innumerable plaited skirts, the tying of gorgeous aprons 
 and riotously colored neckerchiefs. The men lingered as 
 long as the women, for to put on the tight blue Sunday 
 breeches took time, ribbons had to be tied exactly alike on 
 both legs, and the brass buttons had to shine, the em 
 broidered shirt sleeves must hang in the right folds, the 
 boots had to be polished and each jaunty little hat was 
 decorated in grasses, flowers and feathers. 
 
 The tallest among the reapers was chosen as the bearer 
 of the Vyenetz. The women plaited it after they had 
 adorned themselves, and a king's crown was never as 
 magnificent, nor a bishop's miter never so high, and 
 neither of them as heavy. It was twice as high as Pavel 
 Shimko's head, bigger than the big church bell, and it 
 was made of wheat, rye and barley, the heads of the ripe 
 grain overlapping in alternate rows. Autumn flowers 
 of many hues and gaudy ribbons were plaited in, and fell 
 
THE HARVEST HOME 241 
 
 over the shoulders of the proud youth, his face almost hid 
 by them. 
 
 Thus they went out to get the last load of grain and 
 David with his warriors and the Levites did not go after 
 the Ark with more unction, and if they were half as 
 resplendent the Old Testament has failed to mention it. 
 The huge cart had been driven into the creek and washed 
 and scrubbed, the high wheels with their dusty spokes and 
 glistening ribs were polished, and the iron parts rubbed 
 free from rust. Then the peasants wound flowers and 
 grain around the wagon, in and out among the spokes and 
 all along the far stretching tongue. The horses, the best 
 horses, were hitched to it, and they too knew it was the 
 Vyenetz; for Martzin Stefechek and his assistant had 
 curried them as they were curried but once a year. The 
 harness had been greased and the metal disks had been 
 burned, till each shone like a star, and the brasses tinkled 
 against each other like bells. 
 
 So they marched to the fields, singing as they always 
 sang, only when they passed the cemetery they grew sud 
 denly silent, the song died upon their lips and they walked 
 solemnly all the length of the iron railing of the Prot 
 estant cemetery, where the Pan slept underneath the 
 acacia tree. When the last marcher had passed beyond 
 its boundaries they began to sing again, and the lads told 
 the lassies now that the Pan could not pinch their cheeks 
 they must do it, for pretty cheeks must be pinched, and 
 there was much laughter and bantering and jests which 
 the Mlada Panka Christina would not have liked to hear, 
 " for she is awfully religious." 
 
 When they came to the stubble field where the last load 
 was waiting to be taken home, they ate their midday meal 
 before their solemn task began. The red and yellow pots 
 were emptied of their bean soup, bacon and sausage. The 
 big chunks of rye bread were brought out and the younger 
 
242 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 ones were warned not to eat too much, for the big feast 
 would come at sundown and they must leave room, lots 
 of room. 
 
 " They were never stingy at the Pan's house, and, 
 Chvala Bohu, the Mlada Panka Sonya is bossing the job, 
 and she gives with both hands. Not that the Mlada 
 Panka Christina is stingy, no, she is a good friend to the 
 poor. If you are in trouble you can always count on 
 her, but not when you want to be gay. 
 
 " As for drink she would just as soon give you poison 
 as Palenka. She is too awfully religious! It isn't good 
 to be too religious, but Mlada Panka Sonya is just right," 
 the young women were saying. 
 
 When they had eaten and the old men and women had 
 taken a nap and the young women had gathered fresh 
 flowers for their corselets and the young men had pinned 
 some on their waistcoats and had done other things which 
 Christina would not approve, causing the young women 
 to rub their cheeks in feigned indignation, the ceremony 
 of loading the grain began. The foreman laid the first 
 bundle, and one by one they followed in proper rank, 
 and when it was all loaded the towering cart looked as if 
 each bundle were mitered to the other, and was as straight 
 on all sides as if a level had guided the eye. 
 
 The crowned youth walked ahead, straight and stiff as 
 a drum major, the young women followed, and on top of 
 the horses sat the drivers, Martzin Stefechek and his 
 underling, who did not sit quite straight enough or guide 
 his horse right, and was in for a continuous scolding, for 
 Martzin Stefechek was master of the horses now that 
 Stephan Hruby had been promoted. The foreman sat on 
 top of the load and acted as master of ceremonies. 
 
 At the edge of the town the band met them, a sorry 
 enough musical aggregation, for the Gypsies, the real 
 musicians, were between two fires since the Pan-Slav agi- 
 
THE HARVEST HOME 243 
 
 tation. If they played for the Slovaks the Magyars 
 would boycott them and vice versa. However as the 
 Magyars had much more money and spent it freely the 
 Gypsies were loyal to them and the Slovaks had to recruit 
 a band from among themselves. A clarionet, a trom 
 bone, a horn and a violin were the musical instruments, 
 but there was not much music in them and fortunately 
 not much was needed ; just enough to dance by and to sing 
 with and what the band lacked in sweetness and har 
 mony the singers supplied ; for it was ever so much easier 
 to sing than to play, especially as the players had stif 
 fened their fingers swinging the heavy scythe and had 
 never before played together. 
 
 Sonya, Yanek and Stephan Hruby and his wife met 
 the reapers at the entrance to the Pan's domain, and the 
 foreman uncovered and made a long speech. He had a 
 hard time beginning, although it was the same speech he 
 had used every year, yet it was always addressed to the 
 Pan and was full of reference to his nobility of char 
 acter, his pet hobbies and his generosity. Now the fore 
 man stumbled, addressing Sonya first and when the 
 gender became inconvenient he addressed Yanek, and 
 the women began to titter. When at last he finished and 
 presented the Vyenetz to the Mlada Panka Sonya, she 
 asked Yanek to receive it, for it was much too heavy for 
 her. There were many cheers and sly allusions as to what 
 would happen next year, and then Yanek put the Vyenetz 
 upon his head and wore it awhile, after which he opened 
 the dance with one of the young women as his partner. 
 
 Sonya shared in the festivities only as hostess, and 
 Marisha reported to the other servants that there had 
 been something like a quarrel between the two sisters, 
 and that Sonya had insisted that Christina should do the 
 honors, and the latter had refused, and had called her 
 sister heartless, and Sonya had called her bigoted, and 
 
244 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they had not spoken to each other since, and the Mlada 
 Panka Christina had gone about with swollen eyes, and 
 was now on a visit at Babushka's house so that she would 
 not have to hear the music and the singing. 
 
 Yes, indeed, it was a merry day, pretty nearly as gay 
 as when the last rich harvest was gathered. The young 
 men sang to the musicians who tried to catch the tune 
 and play it to the dancers, and it was round upon round, 
 and the wine was passed between the short pauses, and 
 the health of Mlada Panka Sony a and Yanek Hruby was 
 drunk so often and so many long years wished them, 
 that they were assured of living to thrice the age of 
 Methuselah. 
 
 The old men and women walked about solemnly and 
 thought of the altered times, and sighed when they spoke 
 of the Pan; but they too lost their solemnity when the 
 wine had made a few rounds, and the whirling dancers 
 came to a stop only when Marisha appeared with a huge 
 wooden spoon in her hand, announcing that supper was 
 ready. 
 
 None are such tyrants as those who serve, and Marisha 
 used her huge spoon as a czar uses his scepter, and she 
 paid many old scores by giving mostly skin and bones to 
 those who were under her displeasure, while she amply 
 rewarded those who were her favorites, and no one 
 escaped her sharp tongue. After the supper the dancing 
 began again and the servants from other houses came and 
 many a burgher's son and court clerk joined the merry 
 throng, upon which a rich harvest moon shone approv 
 ingly. Perhaps the moon himself was under the spell of 
 the season, for he looked well fed and merry and there 
 was a twinkle in his eye as if to say : " Just go to it, have 
 as much fun as you can for the times are changing and 
 who knows whether we will see another Vyenetz cele 
 brated in Hraszova? " 
 
THE HARVEST HOME 245 
 
 The moon was in a gracious mood and the young 
 maidens said that he was to blame for the magic touch 
 which permeated everything and none escaped it. 
 
 There was magic in the golden dust which rose from 
 the barn floor which the dancers' feet relentlessly 
 pounded, it was in the sharp, panting breath of men and 
 maidens, and was enhanced by the candles which flickered 
 in the lanterns, whose feeble light became one with the 
 golden gleam. There was magic on the bridge which 
 spanned the river, and it danced upon the wavelets raised 
 by the current and the gentle wind. Yes, it was magic, 
 magic as old as the garden of Eden, and the young 
 people forsook the dancing floor and sought each other 
 under the trees, here and there. By twos and twos they 
 wandered about aimlessly, it seemed to the lookers on, 
 but they sought a way, a golden way. Some of them 
 found it, others lost it; some of them came back with 
 their faces shining, and others with tears in their eyes. 
 
 Yanek and Sonya did not escape the magic of the 
 moon, and they were drawn away by it, away from the 
 dancers and on with the dreamers. Together they lis 
 tened to the slow murmur of the river and breathed in 
 the rich odors of ripening fruit, and the moon said to 
 them, " the world is made for lovers " and they took the 
 moon at his word. Close together they walked, across 
 the orchard and along the river's bank and they heard 
 the harvesters singing as they went home, the work of 
 the year and the joy of the day ended. 
 
 Sonya's kisses were on Yanek's lips and forgetful of 
 all else he yielded himself to the joy of the moment; then 
 something whispered to him and tried to waken him to 
 earth. " You are accepting a prize without labor and 
 without striving," that something was saying, and 
 strangely, the reproof came from across the sea. " It 
 isn't just fair. What would your fellow students say and 
 
246 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 your old teachers? What of your professions and what 
 of your dreams of the Kingdom and your helping bring 
 it to Earth?" 
 
 Instinctively Sonya divined his thought, and told him 
 of the work which needed to be done, and how much 
 more he could do, being the Pan and having direction of 
 the men, and there was still their beloved Slovakland to 
 be redeemed from the oppressors. She threw herself 
 into his arms and said she was his Sonya, and how could 
 she live without him? He kissed her again and again 
 and tried to silence the voice within him, by saying to 
 himself, " It is God's will." 
 
 Yet he knew it was not God's will, and he heard Chris 
 tina asking him whether the bit hurt and whether his 
 heart sang, and he felt the bit pulling at his mouth, and 
 the song in his heart had in it a discordant strain ; yet he 
 was saying to himself, " it is God's will, it is God's will. 
 He knew he loved Sonya as a man ought to love a 
 woman, as no man ever loved a woman before; still he 
 thought he had reached the goal too soon, and it was 
 not the goal for which he had striven, or the one marked 
 out for those runners who are running for their king. 
 
 They had turned by the Baron's house and were walk 
 ing along the deserted street. The little isbas looked 
 large under the moon, and the church steeple touched the 
 stars; only the big smokestack of the deserted brewery 
 cast a shadow over them in their walk to Paradise. They 
 came to the Pan's house and Yanek pointed out the 
 window where he had seen her hand opening the shutter 
 the morning after his arrival from America, and he con 
 fessed to having thrown a kiss to her window the night 
 he came home from Vavra's; and she told him how she 
 had loved him from the first and how sweet was the kiss 
 he had given her the morning after the terrible storm. 
 
 With his arm around her they passed through the gate 
 
THE HARVEST HOME 247 
 
 and toward the house to which he had come not two years 
 before with a different dream and a different hope. 
 Sonya was joyously prattling, planning for the days so 
 soon ahead of them, the wonderful days! They still 
 heard the reapers singing but their songs were faint and 
 distant upon the still and golden night. Then suddenly 
 their dream was shattered and the moon lost its magic. 
 Sonya called out, "Who is there?" She had heard 
 footsteps and she trembled, and Yanek drew her closer 
 to him. 
 
 " Don't be frightened, Mlada Panka, it is only I," and 
 a man stepped out from the shadow of the wall. " It is I, 
 Mlada Panka, Ferencz, don't you know. Ferencz, the 
 Judge's clerk? I have news for you, bad news," he 
 whispered, " no one must know that I have been here. 
 
 " No, I must not go into the house, I must tell you 
 here. A warrant for the Mlady Pan Hruby came from 
 Budapest this evening. I opened the mail. The Judge, 
 thank God, has an attack of the asthma and was not in 
 the office." He told them that the charge was treason and 
 that he would advise an immediate flight to America. 
 He could hold back the warrant for twenty-four hours, 
 perhaps a little longer if the Judge's asthma should be a 
 little worse than usual. " Treasonable activities," was 
 the charge. 
 
 Sonya was as one paralyzed. She held Yanek in 
 her arms and wanted to defy the Judge and the De 
 partment of Justice in Budapest, but she began to 
 realize the hopelessness and the selfishness of her desire, 
 and together they went to Yanek's home and wakened 
 his parents. No candle was lighted and in the dark they 
 packed his bag. The horses were harnessed by Stephan 
 Hruby, and a little after midnight he and Yanek started. 
 Sonya clung to him and she and his mother drove with 
 them as far as the village of Szotina. The two women 
 
248 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 walked home together under the fading moon and mother 
 Elzabetha was comforting Sonya. " My daughter, you 
 will go to him, but I shall stay here." Then the younger 
 one threw herself upon the other's breast and they both 
 wept, and the moon, the cheerful, happy, careless, magic 
 harvest moon slipped away into the dark, while Yanek 
 was leaving home but no, Yanek was going home. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE REVEREND 
 JOHN HRUBY 
 
 "TT7HEN may I go to my desk, Annenka?" the 
 VV Reverend John Hruby somewhat timidly asked 
 his housekeeper, who ruled him with dust cloth and 
 scrubbing brush and was never ready to relinquish them, 
 once she had gained a foothold. She was down upon her 
 knees, sprawling over the already spotless floor, and con 
 tinued her vigorous exercise, unheeding his appeal. 
 
 " Do you think you will ever finish cleaning this 
 house?" he asked impatiently. She rose slowly to her 
 feet, carrying her implements of warfare with her, and 
 opening the window, shook her dust cloth at the offend 
 ing smokestacks, as she said in her most acid tone, " I 
 will finish cleaning when the mills stop blowing soot and 
 cinders into the house." She closed the window with a 
 bang and locked it with a vicious jerk. " I throw out a 
 pint of dirt and the mill spits in a bushel." If steel 
 mills were sensitive, this particular one would have felt 
 hurt the way Annenka glared at it when she made that 
 remark. Annenka hated the mills more than she hated 
 the devil, which is saying a great deal, for she was a 
 very pious woman and in her church they had never 
 ceased to believe in his Satanic Majesty. 
 
 Availing himself of the opportunity afforded by 
 Annenka's shaking the dust cloth at the open window, the 
 Reverend John Hruby took possession of his desk, 
 planted his feet firmly on the floor and began writing his 
 sermon. The ruler of his little universe was about to 
 leave the study, when he sent after her a parting shot. 
 
 249 
 
250 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 " What will you do when you get to Heaven, 
 Annenka? " 
 
 " I will find plenty to do," she replied, viewing the floor 
 with her bird like eyes, which magnified every speck of 
 dust to the size of a mountain, " if you should get there 
 first, for you are a very untidy person. Just look at the 
 dirt you brought in on your shoes! " She fell upon her 
 knees again and began scrubbing around his chair, and 
 if he had not delivered his ultimatum in no uncertain tone, 
 she would have lifted his feet and scrubbed under them. 
 
 Annenka having found her " second wind " as it were, 
 the minister knew that it was hopeless to try to dissuade 
 her from stopping, short of complete victory. Anyway, 
 writing sermons was very difficult when he was com 
 pletely wrapped up in things which concerned himself; so 
 holding the position he had gained at his desk, he en 
 gaged her in conversation. 
 
 In spite of the diminutive to her name there was noth 
 ing delicate or dainty about her person, and she was 
 neither young nor pretty. She had been called a 
 " lemon " by one of the most Americanized of John 
 Hruby's congregation, who had come to consult with 
 him about performing a marriage ceremony. He had 
 not cleaned his boots to her satisfaction (no one could) 
 and she had unmercifully scolded him. He retorted by 
 calling her a " lemon," and never before was American 
 slang more justified, for the one word contained all that 
 could be said about Annenka. 
 
 Of course, lemons have their virtues, and she was not 
 without them, indeed the Reverend John Hruby did not 
 know how he could get along without her, yet he was 
 beginning to wonder how he could get along with her, for 
 the parsonage was being fitted up for Mrs. Hruby, and 
 that was the reason he engaged Annenka in conversation 
 instead of writing his sermon. 
 
THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 251 
 
 "Annenka, the paper hangers are coming this after 
 noon." 
 
 " Boshe Muy!" she cried in dismay, "what a waste! 
 The paper is just as nice and clean as it can be, and the 
 men will drag in all the dirt in town, and they will spatter 
 paste over everything, and I am just done houseclean- 
 ing! Boshe Muy! Your Reverence, you have no mercy 
 on an old woman ! " 
 
 " Annenka," he replied jestingly, " you know you are 
 never done housecleaning and you don't think I will bring 
 my bride into the front room with that hideous paper on 
 the wall." 
 
 A sad look crept over her hard and inexpressive face, 
 and she glanced at the photograph standing on his desk. 
 He was looking at it too, only he seemed to be wrapped 
 up in it and his lips were shaped for speech, as if he were 
 bidding his love welcome to the parsonage. 
 
 "What kind of paper have you chosen?" Annenka 
 broke in sharply upon his dreams. 
 
 " Oh now, Annenka, you wouldn't expect me to pick 
 out the paper without you," he replied diplomatically. 
 " The men are coming this afternoon to pull off the old 
 paper, then I want them to paint the ceiling. You and I 
 are going this afternoon to select the paper." 
 
 " I don't know that it is any concern of mine what 
 paper you put on the wall," she said. " But I think, lots 
 of tulips would suit me best, great, big, red tulips, such 
 as grow in Slovakland, or roses climbing all over on 
 trellises." Her voice grew soft and as sweet as it was 
 capable of being. " Those little red roses such as cov 
 ered the walls of our isba" 
 
 " We will see about the paper, Annenka, and you know 
 we have to buy furniture. What do you think she will 
 like? " She knew exactly what the Panyi Velcomoshna 
 would like, but she did not know whether His Reverence 
 
252 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 could afford it. She wanted golden oak furniture, cov 
 ered with plush, and a little marble topped table and a 
 big sofa, and a bed of shining brass. 
 
 " And, Your Reverence, you must have feather beds ; 
 I know she will want feather beds and big bolsters. 
 These hard American mattresses are no good." 
 
 There w r ere ever so many things which were no good in 
 America, according to Annenka, and when she began 
 telling of the shortcomings of the country in which she 
 was living, she continued indefinitely. The air was no 
 good, the water was no good, and the American children 
 and the bread and the meat were in the same class. 
 John Hruby had ceased to argue with her, for like all 
 Slovak women, she had seen only the darker side of 
 American life. 
 
 She had come over with her husband from the little 
 village of Szotina, near Hraszova, to Coalton. They ex 
 changed their isba and ten acres of land for a frame 
 shanty and a miner's " patch." To go from the peace of 
 the land to the strife, the struggle and the hubbub of 
 American industrial life was indeed new and strange, and 
 though the newness wore off soon, the strangeness re 
 mained. Beyond their " patch " was another one just 
 as drear and colorless, and that was inhabited by Italians. 
 Annenka knew all about them, for her father had gone 
 to war in Italy, and he said : " You can't trust the Ital 
 ians ; they will stick you with a dagger every chance they 
 get," and from that time on when she saw an Italian she 
 saw an enemy who wanted to stab her with a knife. 
 
 Beyond the Italians there was another " patch," and 
 another, and another, and all sorts of people lived in 
 them, of whom she had never heard. She knew of Ital 
 ians and Germans, Poles and Russians, but there were 
 Greeks, Welsh and the Irish, who were the strongest and 
 the most terrible. 
 
THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 253 
 
 " Dear me," she used to say, " how can our good Lord 
 make so many strange and bad people? " 
 
 Beyond the " patch " was Main Street with its stores 
 and saloons, and these too she learned to know; but be 
 yond the stores were churches of strange faiths, and fine 
 streets with houses set in gardens, each one of them as 
 fine as the Pan's house in Hraszova and perhaps finer, 
 and there were schoolhouses which were grander than 
 the churches. The people who lived in the houses and 
 worshiped in those churches and whose children went to 
 the schools were all strangers, greater strangers than the 
 Italians and the Greeks and the rest. Those people 
 worked in the mine and the big mill, and while they ate 
 macaroni and outlandish looking stews and had queer 
 loaves of bread, they were working people, her own kind, 
 and there was a certain bond of fellowship between them. 
 
 But these other people, the Americans they were the 
 master class, they were somewhat like the Magyars who 
 ruled them over in Slovakland, only the Americans were 
 much farther removed. She had quarreled with the 
 Magyars and had called them bad names but she liked 
 some of them. Though she did not hate Americans as 
 she did the Magyars she did not like them, for she did not 
 know them and thought them unknowable. 
 
 Her husband worked in the mine. " He was a very 
 good husband," she had told John Hruby. " He never 
 beat me, not even when he was drunk, but here in Amer 
 ica it was different. After pay day he was like a crazy 
 man. It was in the drink, it just made the men crazy. 
 He was arrested a good many times and it took a lot of 
 money to get him out. 
 
 " Yes, these Americans were very strict with the 
 Slovaks; there were drunken Irish and Welsh and Ger 
 mans but they were allowed to stagger home. The 
 Slovaks have no vote and they seem so good naturedly 
 
254 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 stupid, and they could be scared to death and they paid 
 their fines, and never asked ' is it just and right ' ? 
 
 [< Then there was a strike and my man sat around the 
 house for weeks and the little we had saved had to be 
 taken out of the bank. I was scared to death when he 
 left the house for he was swallowed up by a crowd, and 
 I heard pistol shots, and brickbats were flying, and then 
 they brought him home with a hole in his head, and he 
 laid there like dead and I was all alone with him, for 
 every one was afraid, and then he died." 
 
 She had been alone with him in the shanty three days 
 and no one had come near her. No wonder her cheeks 
 had grown thin, with the color gone out of them, and her 
 spirits drooped, and her tongue grew sharp, and they 
 called her a " lemon/' 
 
 When the Reverend John Hruby had asked her shortly 
 after she had taken charge of him how she liked Amer 
 ica, he was shocked to hear her say that she hated it. 
 " All the women hate it," she said. Yes, he was shocked, 
 for from the moment he had come back to America he 
 felt that it was his home, for Sonya as well as himself, 
 and everything he saw and heard and tasted he asked him 
 self, "Will Sonya like it?" and he always answered his 
 question in the affirmative. He realized as he had not 
 before his return to Slovakland that he belonged body 
 and soul to America, and he awaited with great impa 
 tience the time, now not far distant, when he could be 
 come a citizen, in fact, as he was already in spirit. 
 
 Naturally Coalton had changed since Annenka came to 
 it some ten years before. From a small mid-western town 
 it had grown so large that the mine shafts were crowded 
 by the smokestacks of the mill, Main Street stretched 
 farther out into the country, the big stores absorbed the 
 little stores and encroached upon the residence section. 
 The lines between the different "patches" were obliterated 
 
THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 255 
 
 and as a final proof of its progress the town of Coalton 
 moved westward, until it embraced the little village of 
 Milburn, the highly respectable village of Milburn, clus 
 tering around its college and living with it and on it and 
 for it. Every year it turned out a goodly number of 
 A.B.-s and latterly a few more B.S.-s and several D.D.-s. 
 The D.D.-s encouraged fervent prayers for the " beloved 
 institution of learning " and they were the kind of prayers 
 that were frequently answered in a very substantial way. 
 
 The town of Milburn did not like to see itself become a 
 part of the soot and dirt of Coalton. The great elm trees 
 resented it and began dying from the top, and the retired 
 farmers and returned missionaries and superannuated 
 ministers resented it, but Coalton was growing and cared 
 nothing for elm trees. It despised retired farmers and 
 had little use for returned missionaries and super 
 annuated preachers, but strange to say it liked the college 
 and helped so generously with the endowment fund that a 
 new gymnasium was built and also a stadium, and there 
 were Roman holidays for the busy men of Coalton who 
 " boosted " everything from coal and tin to football, and 
 incidentally or accidentally the college. 
 
 John Hruby was forced to admit that Coalton was 
 bleak and dirty and vulgar in spots, but it was a part of 
 America, his America, and he accepted it as it had ac 
 cepted him, without asking many questions. 
 
 He had been in Coalton over two years as pastor of a 
 Slovak church which existed by the grace of the Mission 
 Board. A tiny church, too plain to be called ugly, and 
 too small to be offensive. It was wedged in between a 
 towering Roman Catholic church which was really ugly, 
 and a smaller Lutheran church which was a great deal 
 uglier ; fronting it was the big tin mill, with its twenty or 
 more smokestacks blowing black smoke and white poison 
 ous fumes into the face of all the churches. 
 
256 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 He found a timid flock of some fifty souls, who either 
 did not like the Lutheran minister, who was too auto 
 cratic for them, or who were God seekers by birth or the 
 new birth, spiritual kinsmen of the despised " Salvesh " ; 
 Puritans in conduct and Christian in more than name. 
 When the new minister came to them and preached a 
 sermon which lasted only thirty minutes, the schedule 
 time of sermons in America, they told him it was a nice 
 little talk, but that a sermon is not a sermon unless it 
 lasts an hour and a half. The midweek prayer meeting 
 lasted two hours and then there was not time for 
 all who wished to pray and testify to the goodness of 
 God. 
 
 Among his parishioners was Annenka, who after her 
 husband's death became his housekeeper, and she had 
 scrubbed and dusted the little parsonage ever since. 
 When she was not scrubbing or dusting she was in her 
 spotless kitchen, where she " lived and moved and had 
 her being." She tolerated the minister in his study, he 
 entered the parlor by her grace but the kitchen was as 
 unapproachable as Mount Sinai. 
 
 He was sure that Sonya would like Coalton, for he 
 liked it. The merchants were kind to him and called him 
 " Reverend Rooby," and the American Protestant min 
 isters had invited him to their ministers' meeting, where 
 every Monday morning they were very human and 
 naively self -revealing, where they were vain and envious 
 and humble and brotherly, where they tried to save the 
 world by passing resolutions, and endeavored to stem the 
 tide which had swept by them twenty-five years before. 
 They had their doubts as to John Hruby's Evangelicalism 
 because when a brother read a paper on the " Menace of 
 the Roman Catholic Church," and made the usual refer 
 ences to guns stacked in parochial schools and the danger 
 of the confessional, he criticized the paper severely and 
 
THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 257 
 
 plead for tolerance and truth, which made the reverend 
 gentleman who had read the paper very angry. 
 
 On the whole, however, he was greatly liked, for 
 although he was a foreigner he was so thoroughly an 
 American, and it flattered them to think that here in 
 America a man who had once mined coal could rise to 
 be a minister. When they talked to their congregations 
 of their duty to evangelize and Americanize the foreigner, 
 they used him as an illustrious example. 
 
 His real friends however were outside the clerical 
 profession. One of the professors in the college at Mil- 
 burn had taken a fancy to him, and though Professor 
 Carl Niederstadt was born in Germany and John Hruby 
 was a Slovak, the old national feud between Teutons and 
 Slavs counted for nothing in this " melting pot " of the 
 nations, where, according to Professor Niederstadt, a 
 super-nation was being shaped out of the broken frag 
 ments of humanity. He taught German and French, 
 Latin and Greek, and he could have taught Italian and 
 Spanish, had those languages been in vogue. 
 
 At a pinch he could have lectured on philosophy, his 
 tory and English literature, but his specialty was the 
 devil, whose pedigree he had traced and whose activities 
 he had tabulated from the time he fell from Heaven, till 
 he appeared so seductively in German literature, where 
 he grew into the repellent tailed, cloven hoofed and sul 
 phurous Satan of the modern world, which has almost 
 ruled him out of the pulpit and completely left him out of 
 science ; yet who is so desperately and wickedly alive. 
 
 Professor Niederstadt knew all the poetry about the 
 devil by heart and there were folios of it! While 
 humorous and serious stories on his favorite theme bub 
 bled out of him spontaneously, the seeming levity with 
 which he talked about Satan brought him in conflict with 
 the church authorities under whose auspices the college 
 
258 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 operated, for without a real devil there could be no sin, 
 and without sin there could be no atonement. However, 
 he was a brilliant teacher and beloved by the alumni, in 
 fact everybody liked him and the devil himself must have 
 kept a cool spot in his burning Hell for his rotund and 
 not too saintly biographer. 
 
 Professor Niederstadt had married a woman of New 
 England parentage, training and conscience. She be 
 longed to that brilliant group of American women who, 
 freed from household drudgery by the army of immi 
 grant servants, had thrown her energy into acquiring an 
 education. She was one of the first graduates of an 
 eastern college for women, which boasted of being the 
 female Harvard ; she had traveled abroad and while read 
 ing Hyperion under the shadow of the walls of Heidel 
 berg University had fallen in love with her teacher who 
 had already lost his heart to his pupil, and thus she 
 returned to her New England relatives with this German 
 husband. 
 
 She was as practical as he was idealistic and that alone 
 kept them out of the poor house, for Professor Nieder 
 stadt knew about as much of the value of money as a 
 two year old baby. He was too methodical to be a 
 brilliant writer, and not having the energy or desire to 
 push his interests, the result was that he remained in 
 Milburn college while his students, knowing infinitely 
 less than he, were called to university positions where 
 they made quite a stir in their somewhat limited world. 
 
 John Hruby knew that Sonya would like the Nieder- 
 stadts because and he had no other reason than because 
 he did. 
 
 One other man very close to him was a newspaper 
 man, a little younger than he, who could write brilliantly 
 about anything from the description of a boxing match 
 in the Opera House to a report of the erratic and popular 
 
THE REVEREND JOHN HRUBY 259 
 
 Methodist minister's sermon; he could fill the funny page 
 with side splitting jokes or turn a sonnet faintly reminis 
 cent of Shelley. 
 
 He was baptized Wayne and did not know why, except 
 that Wayne rhymed with MacBlane, which was his 
 family name, indicating that he had inherited from his 
 sensitive mother the poetic temperament, as well as a 
 frail constitution, for which he had little regard, sitting 
 up till the early hours of the morning pounding his type 
 writer and filling yellow copy sheets. 
 
 He drank black coffee and stronger things almost any 
 time and all the time, and he smoked incessantly, in which 
 latter habit he was encouraged by Professor Niederstadt 
 and the Reverend John Hruby, who himself, smoked, 
 causing much shaking of heads among the officers of his 
 church to whom smoking was a cardinal sin. 
 
 The two and a half years since he left Hraszova seemed 
 ten times as long. Many letters went back and forth, 
 and the postman of Hraszova shook his head at the heavy 
 letters he had to carry to the Mlada Pcmka Sonya up in 
 the Pan's house. 
 
 Of course she was coming, she wrote John Hruby, but 
 one thing and another detained her and she did not know 
 when she could get away. The farm had to be looked 
 after and laborers were growing scarce; Babushka was 
 taken ill and had no one to take care of her, so she had 
 to be moved to the Pan's house, and Christina was nurs 
 ing her. There were sly allusions to other suitors, which 
 occasioned frightful pangs of jealousy on this side the 
 ocean, which Sonya evidently enjoyed; at last a letter 
 saying that she was coming. She would have come 
 sooner or later, probably later; but a pistol shot fired 
 in Serajevo, changed the current of history, and many 
 things happened sooner, which need not have happened 
 
260 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 at all. The war cloud which had hung so long over the 
 Balkans broke, and the storm swept on. 
 
 The Seventieth Regiment of Infantry, Sonya wrote, 
 went to Serbia, and only the cripples came back : There 
 was another draft and another, and all Europe was being 
 slowly drawn into the vortex. With the future so un 
 certain, she was ready to come at once, and that was why 
 the Reverend John Hruby and Annenka, were going that 
 afternoon to choose the wall paper for Sonya's room. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: PRONOUNCING 
 PRZEMYSL 
 
 IF John Hruby could have scoured the streets of New 
 York City with soap and water that May morning 
 before Sony a stepped upon them, and clothed every 
 ragamuffin in splendor; if he could have gilded the ele 
 vated and subdued the subways, and arched the skyline 
 with a burnished halo; if he could have made the customs 
 inspectors more gentle; above all, if he could have 
 hastened the process of docking the ship which brought 
 Sonya, he would have done so. 
 
 To do one of these things was as impossible as to do 
 all of them, and none of them was necessary; for Sonya 
 looked at everything in a dazed delight, which she ex 
 pressed fluently in adjectives of three languages, and very 
 timidly and haltingly in a fourth; for she had studied 
 English to surprise her lover who gave her small chance 
 to speak in any language, much to the amusement of her 
 fellow passengers whose friends and lovers were not so 
 demonstrative. 
 
 Ardent as he was in receiving her he was no less so in 
 introducing his beloved country, and only the saints who 
 meet earth's pilgrims in Heaven and show it off, know 
 what a pleasure it was and what a joyous task. He had 
 an excuse for every jolt, for every marring incident, 
 even for the garbage cans which lined the curbing in 
 front of the crowded, drab tenements on the East Side. 
 There, in a Settlement in which one of his classmates 
 was scattering grains of salt to " leaven the lump," they 
 were to taste American hospitality, and there the bliss 
 of being wedded awaited them. 
 
 In the tangle of human beings, seeming an inextricable 
 
 261 
 
262 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 mass without beginning or end, John Hruby pointed out 
 to Sonya, purpose and plan; and in the roar of the two 
 elevated railroads which flanked the Settlement, in the 
 rattle of carts, the thunder of trucks and the shrill voices 
 of children he heard rhythm and melody; for only greed 
 and hate are blind and deaf ; love never is. 
 
 So, standing at the window of the room where their 
 plighted troth had brought them, they looked above the 
 tenements which sheltered the broken fragments of races 
 and nations blown together by the storms which swepr 
 the Old World, and saw a great rainbow. Though it 
 was cast in steel they saw it in all the prismal colors, and 
 though it groaned beneath the strain of traffic, they heard 
 through it the promise of God against another world 
 drenching flood. 
 
 Tier upon tier of houses faced them, one rising above 
 the other, then a vast curve of the elevated, around which 
 the wheels ground and the cars screeched, and beyond, 
 three giant peaks, wonderful towers, bathed in the purple 
 of the setting Sun, as if guarding the wealth treasured 
 beneath them and behind them. With full hearts they 
 prayed, saying : " God is Good," and not " Gold is God " ; 
 for they were lovers, not traders and hoarders. 
 
 The children were in a wild tumult upon the street 
 below, skipping the rope or sprawling upon the asphalt, 
 dancing in merry tattered groups and singing, their 
 shrill voices penetrating and almost drowning the noise 
 of the busy city. 
 
 A company of soldiers marched past, with a flag at 
 the head of the company. " The Star Spangled Ban 
 ner ! " John Hruby said and he stood erect saluting it, 
 the flag of their new country. A surging crowd followed 
 and then a different flag appeared, and as Sonya rec 
 ognized it, her face clouded; for it was the flag of Italy 
 and then the voices of the newsboys told the story : " Italy 
 
PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 263 
 
 enters the war! Extry! Extry!" and they waved their 
 papers in the faces of the throng, and there were more 
 flags, and more and more marching men, the reservists 
 of Italy answering the call of their country, and the sun 
 set grew redder and redder and deepened into blood. 
 Love was not strong enough to keep back Sonya's tears, 
 for she had seen the marching men go out with banners 
 and Huzzahs and Ely ens, and she had been one of the 
 throng bidding them good-by, her face flushed by the 
 contagious enthusiasm. 
 
 " It will be a short war," they said, " we must teach 
 those Serbian murderers a lesson." Later she saw them 
 coming back in sorry straggling groups, lame and halt 
 and blind. Then more men marched away and still they 
 shouted and women strewed flowers on their way, and 
 this time they marched toward the east, for the Russians 
 were coming. 
 
 " We must save the Fatherland ! " The leaders shouted, 
 and though there was no Fatherland to save, and though 
 the men they were to fight were of their own blood and 
 speech, they went out and did as they were bid, and 
 none of them came back for they were trampled down 
 by the Russians, swallowed by an encircling army, car 
 ried into a long captivity, and then an awful black silence. 
 
 More and more men went and there was news of vic 
 tory, and flags were waved again, and Elyens were 
 shouted on the streets, and again more men marched out 
 and were eaten up by the great monster. 
 
 John Hruby spoke soothing words, trying to calm his 
 wife. He kissed away the tears from her cheeks and 
 silenced her accusations against herself for leaving them 
 over there in their great misery; and he comforted her 
 until the room grew golden again, although the sunlight 
 had long ago faded and they had shut out the white 
 glare of the street lights. 
 
264 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 The young husband's love could not make Coalton look 
 like Hraszova, though it made every effort to look like 
 New York, with its abridged White Way, and the two 
 electric signs which nightly performed their antics; and 
 the movies only a month or two behind Broadway, and 
 the styles about a season's distance from Fifth Avenue. 
 No, Coalton was not like Hraszova but infinitely better 
 with its electric lights and telephones, its waterworks and 
 paved streets; yet with its face hard set against the 
 stranger, in spite of the sign on the automobile high 
 way : " Welcome to greater Coalton. Coalton grows, and 
 Milburn knows." That was the prize slogan of Greater 
 Coalton after it had annexed Milburn and its college. 
 That slogan cost the Commercial Club one hundred dol 
 lars and it was worth the money. Of course you were 
 welcome to Coalton, to work in its mills and mines and 
 to patronize its merchants, but Greater Coalton did not 
 care much how you lived as long as you worked and 
 traded there. 
 
 Like most American towns Coalton's most unsavory 
 quarters were near the railroad station ; so its back yards 
 and alleys stared at Sonya in their slovenly, unwelcom 
 ing way, and when the hack driver, upon hearing the 
 address of his passengers, removed his cigar from his 
 mouth and spat upon the ground, not too careful of aim 
 and distance, she shrank visibly. The heat and dust on 
 the way, the dense pall of smoke from the mills nearly 
 choked her. When the hack stopped before the diminu 
 tive parsonage in the unkempt street, her heart sank, and 
 when the door was opened by grim faced Annenka who 
 did not kiss her hand and looked so stern and hard, her 
 eyes fillea, and John Hruby knew that Sonya and her 
 new environment were not well matched, and a great 
 doubt rose in his mind. No, it was not like Hraszova, 
 and Sonya tried bravely to conceal her disappointment 
 
PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 265 
 
 Ivhich changed to chagrin when she saw the highly 
 polished yellow oak furniture and staring wall paper. 
 
 When her trunks came she regained her accustomed 
 gayety, for she had brought many old Slovak embroider 
 ies and curtains, and although Annenka loudly protested, 
 she removed the purple plush portieres from the door 
 ways and covered everything that was drapable with the 
 bright and beautiful coarse linens softened to ivory yel 
 low by age. Under her direction John put up shelves 
 and screwed in hooks and soon pretty earthen ware jugs 
 and plates adorned the walls. Sonya very diplomatically 
 appealed to Annenka for advice as to the disposition of 
 certain objects ; so although that cheerful person acted as 
 if every nail were driven into her bosom, she said with 
 a contented sigh, when all was arranged to Sonya's sat 
 isfaction: " It is like in the old country; but we do not 
 have enough feather beds and bolsters." When Sonya's 
 numerous feather beds and bolsters at last arrived and 
 towered one above the other till the brass bed -was not 
 visible, the gulf between the two women was almost 
 bridged. 
 
 The Panyi Fararka which was Sonya's official title 
 as the wife of the Pan Farar, fitted into the little church 
 as poorly as she fitted into Coalton. The unregenerate 
 women of the congregation, those who belonged to the 
 church because they did not like the Lutheran pastor, 
 said that she was " stuck-up." They met her at the 
 Sewing Society a few days after her arrival. They were 
 lavishly and loudly dressed, and in her hearing, Mrs. 
 Szobka said to Mrs. Chlopka " In America it does not 
 matter whether you are a Pan's daughter or a peasant's ; 
 it's the clothes you wear," and they looked somewhat 
 disdainfully at Sonya's dress which was so simple, and 
 told her she must " hurry up and not look so much like 
 a greenhorn." 
 
266 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 The saints of the congregation were not so severe; al 
 though they believed that she was still unregenerate and 
 made her the subject of long and urgent petitions, both 
 public and private. There were a hundred more people 
 than usual in church the Sunday after the bride's arrival. 
 The service was less like Hraszova than any of the many 
 strange things she had encountered. The little reed 
 organ and the choir, a very ill assorted group, facing the 
 congregation; the simple desk and the three orthodox, 
 plush covered chairs upon one of which sat her Yanek in 
 his black coat and no Geneva gown. It all looked so 
 crude, from the strip of green carpet across the platform, 
 to the minister's shoes which he had shined himself that 
 morning and which seemed so obtrusive without the soft 
 folds of a Geneva gown above them. She noticed too 
 for the first time that the hair was thinning on his tem 
 ples. 
 
 The benches creaked every time a new worshiper 
 entered and sat down, and the entire congregation looked 
 around to see who it was; the choir sang an American 
 desiccated anthem done in Slovak, and the congregational 
 singing was of the militant Gospel Hymn variety. 
 
 " God has strange and varied tastes," thought Sonya 
 as she recalled the church in Hraszova, the massive pul 
 pit and altar, the solemn Psalm tunes, the reverberating 
 tones of the new organ and the begowned minister fold 
 ing his hands over his ample stomach. A disquieting 
 thought began to haunt her from which she never quite 
 freed herself that Christina would have fitted herself 
 into this environment much better than she ever could. 
 Strange to say, John Hruby had the same thought as he 
 looked from the pulpit at her, sitting there so stiffly, and 
 apart from the congregation, like an orchid among sun 
 flowers. 
 
 On Thursday evening she attended prayer meeting in 
 
PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 267 
 
 the small room which served many purposes and which 
 was crowded to suffocation by men and women from the 
 mines and mills. She resented their familiarity with 
 the Almighty less than the prayer which Annenka of 
 fered in her behalf; for it included a fervent petition to 
 make her meek and humble, and in her heart Sonya dared 
 the Heavenly Power to answer that insolent prayer. 
 Needless to say she did not attend the next meeting or 
 the next, and she remained unregenerate, and a little 
 more aloof and sinfully proud. 
 
 As little as she belonged to her husband's flock so little 
 did she belong to the town of Coalton. Professor and 
 Mrs. Niederstadt called with Mr. MacBlane, but no 
 other Americans found their way to the parsonage; and 
 while Mrs. Niederstadt was kind and came as often as 
 possible, for most of the time Sonya was left alone with 
 Annenka and her small daily tasks and her homesickness 
 which increased daily ; for suddenly all news from Hun 
 gary ceased coming and Hraszova was as if swallowed 
 up by an earthquake. She clung the more to her hus 
 band, and the evenings when no church work took him 
 from home were happy times for both of them. 
 
 As the winter advanced there was good reason for 
 Sonya's non-attendance upon the church services, and 
 John Hruby looked worried, and though his prayers 
 were ardent, his sermons were short and without spirit. 
 The women were telling one another that the Panyi 
 Fararka had expectations, and in the spring, baby Chris 
 tina was born. 
 
 Sonya was very ill, and only a slender thread held her 
 to life. A mist hung over her spirit, and when she 
 saw the baby she did not fondle it, but held it far away 
 from her and called it Christina and said it looked like 
 Christina and was Christina's baby. 
 
 Its father wished to call it Sonya, but she insisted 
 
268 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 that it must be named Christina, and she had her way. 
 Annenka, who loved babies but to whom motherhood had 
 been denied, cared for the baby and loved it, and began 
 spoiling it by rarely leaving it out of her arms when 
 she could take time from her other duties. 
 
 Gradually the cloud lifted from Sonya's mind but the 
 old buoyancy never returned and the baby was still half 
 strange to her. 
 
 Another spring came and the twenty-third of May, 
 their second anniversary, and another summer and win 
 ter, and still Coalton did not know, and would not have 
 cared had it known, that there was an alien woman in 
 the "patch" suffering from lack of the companionship 
 of gentle women and the refined surroundings to which 
 she was accustomed, and also from the horrors of war 
 which were more real to her than to any one else in 
 Coalton. 
 
 She had read in the papers of invading armies, of 
 new victories, and new defeats on this front and that 
 front, of atrocities and of starving communities. Her 
 bread was heavy before Mr. Hoover ordered it mixed 
 with corn meal, and her coffee was bitter before sugar 
 was rationed. 
 
 However, Coalton gradually became conscious of its 
 alien population. America had declared war upon Ger 
 many. The European disease crept across the Atlantic 
 and the war fever rose higher and higher. Coalton be 
 came conscious of belonging to a nation at war. Coalton 
 became conscious of herself in a larger and nobler way. 
 
 The spring of 1917 brought a new color to the land 
 scape, a color which at first turned the hearts of men 
 and women sick, and yet as it deepened and grew more 
 pronounced, it became the color of a new pulsing joy; 
 the nation was thinking and feeling in khaki. Uncle 
 Sam speeded the mines and mills, thrice as much smoke 
 
PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 269 
 
 came belching out of the smokestacks, and there was 
 neither day nor night, neither Sabbath nor feast day for 
 the workers. Thrice as much coal needed to be dug 
 from the mines, for the mills, the ships and the homes. 
 The national arm had to be strengthened, the national 
 will needed to prevail. 
 
 " Patriotism and not profit," was the new slogan in 
 Coalton. It was the new slogan for America, the Amer 
 ica derided as the land of the dollar chasers; and the 
 alien workers dug as they had never dug before and 
 stirred the fires and kept them burning day and night. 
 The nation needed men and money, and the aliens, the 
 " Hunkies " and the " Guinies " and the " Roundheads " 
 were appealed to in the name of a common country and 
 a common cause. So it came to pass that Coalton dis 
 covered its alien population and discovered the little 
 church and its pastor, and the ladies of Coalton dis 
 covered Sonya, and this is the way it happened. 
 
 It was the time of the second Liberty Loan Drive. 
 Like the men, the ladies of Coalton had responded to 
 their country's call. They sacrificed their meaningless 
 leisure, and began to knit, and there were meetings and 
 organizations, and divisions and sub-divisions, and each 
 of the society leaders was given a foreign district wherein 
 to obtain subscriptions. 
 
 Mrs. Springer, the banker's wife, was the chairman of 
 the Southwest Division which included the Slovak 
 " patch." Mrs. Springer and her aids knew of the 
 " patch," they had seen it from a distance, they had 
 heard of drinking and fighting and strange wedding cus 
 toms there, but none of the ladies of Coalton had seen 
 it at close range. Now they were going from house to 
 house, and finding out that women are, after all, women, 
 and that in spite of the smoke and soot the struggle for 
 cleanliness was heroic and unremittent in the " patch," 
 
270 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 and that in the wretched houses for which their husbands 
 were responsible and from which they drew revenue, 
 there were wonderful little nests built by home loving 
 mothers; and that in spite of health defying congestion, 
 there were ruddy children and young women who main 
 tained their virtue, and boys who were growing into 
 good, if not great men. Without their knowing it or 
 wanting it or caring, America had crept into the " patch," 
 and there the nation's call found ready response. 
 
 It was Mrs. Springer herself who came to the parson 
 age door which was opened by Annenka who showed her 
 into the parlor, where Sonya greeted her in very correct 
 English, but with a decided accent. 
 
 Mrs. Springer stated her errand, and while she was 
 talking about the Liberty Loan her mind was very busy 
 with something else. " How sweet and clean this little 
 house is," she was saying to herself while she was me 
 chanically telling the needs of the government. " And 
 what wonderful embroideries these are and what cun 
 ning, odd looking pitchers and plates ! " 
 
 While she was telling what a safe investment the 
 Liberty Bonds were she was thinking : " What a refined 
 looking woman she is, and what cute English she speaks, 
 and how does it happen that the women of Coalton have 
 never heard of this perfect dear of a woman? " 
 
 There came a very savory odor from the kitchen and 
 Mrs. Springer rose to go saying : " it must be nearly 
 noon." Sonya invited her to break bread with them, and 
 called her husband from his study and they sat down 
 to a delicious luncheon of Paprika Chicken and Noodles 
 and fragrant coffee. Then Annenka brought in baby 
 Christina, and Mrs. Springer raved over her daintily 
 embroidered garments; and, when Sonya subscribed for 
 an incredibly large number of Bonds, Mrs. Springer em 
 braced and kissed her. 
 
PRONOUNCING PRZEMYSL 271 
 
 Suddenly she remembered that it was her turn to lead 
 in the current events discussion, at the next meeting of 
 the Literary Club, and she asked Mrs. Hruby whether 
 she knew something of the Czecho-Slovaks (which she 
 pronounced abominably), and when Sonya told her she 
 was one herself, light began to dawn upon the darkened 
 mind of Mrs. Springer, and she realized that Czecho 
 slovaks are really human beings, and not merely legs and 
 arms for digging coal and melting ore and working in 
 kitchens. 
 
 She was still talking about this thing and that thing 
 but she was thinking how the ladies of the Literary 
 Club of Coalton would open their eyes when she told 
 them so many things about Czecho-Slovaks which were 
 not found in newspapers and magazines. 
 
 " Mrs. Rooby," she said, " I have had a lovely time, 
 and won't you come to our Red Cross meeting? And by 
 the way, Mrs. Rooby," and her hand was on the door 
 knob, " perhaps you can tell me how to pronounce 
 Przemysl." And Mrs. Springer went away as if she had 
 been lifted into the seventh Heaven; for she had been 
 told how to pronounce Przemysl. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: STEVE BURLY 
 
 fTT^HE ladies of Coalton and the women from its 
 frayed edges and " patches " had discovered each 
 other. The ladies of Coalton reluctantly acknowledged 
 that much fine womanhood was concealed by shawls and 
 un fashionably wide skirts, and the women of the 
 " patches " were saying " who would have thought that 
 these 'Americansky ' ladies could be so human." Yet 
 when Mrs. Springer declared at one of the Red Cross 
 meetings that they were all " sisters," speaking in an 
 emotional tremolo which brought tears to the eyes of the 
 ladies of the Red Cross Society, she had in mind a 
 sisterhood with limited liabilities. 
 
 Mrs. Hruby was taken, in toto. " Dear Mrs. Rooby " 
 who could pronounce all those foreign names perfectly, 
 and gave them receipts for new and savory dishes, and 
 knew so many fancy stitches, and was a Czecho-Slovak ! 
 " Imagine having a real Czecho-Slovak lady in Coalton ! 
 Those wonderful Czecho-Slovaks who are fighting over 
 there in Russia to make the world a decent place to live 
 in," quoth the ladies of Coalton's " four hundred." It 
 was a little different to be sure with Mrs. Trnka and 
 Mrs. Blinka; they were sisters in a very limited sense 
 indeed. 
 
 Long before the war Mrs. Trnka had given up a son 
 and Mrs. Blinka her husband in one of those under 
 ground trenches whose heroic happenings never reach the 
 top crust of the world, which they helped make a com 
 fortable if not a " decent place to live in." The fore 
 man of the mine knew about it ; there was an explosion 
 in one of the mine chambers, endangering the lives of 
 
 272 
 
STEVE BURLY 273 
 
 sixty men, and he asked for volunteers to rescue them, 
 and John Trnka and Martin Blinka did not count their 
 lives of value, and did not hesitate long because there 
 were a Mrs. Trnka and a Mrs. Blinka, and little Trnkas 
 and Blinkas. They descended into the jaws of death and 
 never ascended to earth. The good people of Coalton, 
 reading the list of those killed, thanked God that there 
 were no Americans among the dead. 
 
 Mrs. Trnka and Mrs. Blinka wept, and said it was 
 God's will, and took in boarders, and washed and 
 scrubbed and brought up their little ones, and when the 
 war broke out and the government took the men, their 
 sons went without a murmur; for the Trnkas and the 
 Blinkas were used to bearing children in pain, and rear 
 ing them in poverty, and then giving them to kings and 
 masters, and they never received the recompense of a 
 patriotic halo, crowning their sorrowful faces. 
 
 Sonya herself had not realized what wonderful women 
 these were until, at a Red Cross meeting, she saw how 
 the American ladies edged away from them. Then her 
 heart went out to them, and she asked Mrs. Trnka to 
 sit on one side of her and Mrs. Blinka on the other. It 
 was " love me, love my dog," and as the women of Coal- 
 ton had learned to love her they loved her dog, in a very 
 limited sense of course. 
 
 That night Mr. and Mrs. Hruby were going to a 
 meeting in the Opera House. It was the first big war 
 meeting to be held in Coalton, and every patriot was 
 urged to be present. It was an invitation with a " big 
 stick " ; for it read : " If you are a patriot you will attend 
 this meeting. By order of the National Council of De 
 fense." The pastors of the foreign speaking churches 
 were ordered to invite their people, and sections of the 
 Opera Houi>e were reserved for them, so the one hun 
 dred and more Slovaks gathered at the church and 
 
274 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 marched there, the Stars and Stripes heading the proces 
 sion. Perhaps the fear of war, and not the love of it, 
 had crept into the blood of the peace loving Slavs, for 
 they had always been the victims of races which had 
 boasted of their civilization, and with fire and sword en 
 larged their dominion. 
 
 John Hruby had reluctantly yielded himself to the 
 war spirit, for ever since he could remember he had 
 heard men tell of war's horrors as they sat around their 
 Palenka, or chatted as they rested from their labor. 
 
 When the sky was red or a comet flared across the 
 night, the old Baba who lived at the edge of the town 
 under the drooping, ghastly willows, used to prophecy: 
 " Bude Voyna; 3 " there will be war." 
 
 The very word sent a shiver down his spine, for it 
 meant invading Russians who raped the women and 
 sacked the houses; or advancing Hungarians, who tram 
 pled the harvest under their feet; or the coming of the 
 Prussians, the rigorous Prussians, who were the last to 
 invade Slovakland. Then too he was trying to be a 
 Christian, and to him that meant living " at peace with 
 all men," loving and forgiving, and the practice of all 
 those gentle virtues which were so strongly emphasized 
 by his professor of theology, and which he had echoed 
 in his sermons. He was a pacifist by nature and convic 
 tion, and he ceased to be one when the United States 
 declared war on Germany. " If I lose my own soul/* 
 he said to himself, " I will lose it, America is worth even 
 the damning of my soul." And he silenced his doubts 
 and quieted his fears. He often wondered if the men 
 who so lightly bandied that phrase about " making the 
 world safe for democracy" knew what it meant; but to 
 him it was a holy war on the part of the United States 
 a war for the whole human race, including his own 
 people in Slovakland. 
 
STEVE BURLY 275 
 
 " Yes, the last and the least of the people will be free 
 if the will of the Allies prevails," he told Sonya who 
 shared his feelings; and probably no truer patriot at 
 tended that meeting. Sonya however was no pacifist, 
 and the chance to strike back at the enemies of her coun 
 try gave her more enthusiasm than the larger hope of a 
 world delivered from autocracy. 
 
 John Hruby's people were more consistently opposed 
 to war than he was. Their convictions did not yield so 
 readily to fine phrases, and the simple " thou shalt " and 
 " thou shalt not " were graven for them by the finger 
 of God. Yet they, too, realized in a dim sort of way, 
 that this war was not like those other wars, of which 
 they had been the victims. There were two appeals which 
 their pastor used with telling effect. First, they were 
 safely sheltered by the country to which they had come, 
 and where they enjoyed peace and bread and meat while 
 the rest of the world was in the throes of war and starv 
 ing; and second, that this country was different from 
 other countries, it was going to war so that at last the 
 world might be forever delivered from the old curse of 
 war. It was a stolid if not a stupid devotion they ren 
 dered, but when once given it was unyielding and im 
 movable, and they marched behind the Star Spangled 
 Banner proudly, and with a new sense of belonging to 
 this country which, for the first time, had taken cog 
 nizance of them. 
 
 The Italians came too with their banners and their 
 band, and the assembling crowd cheered them, as all the 
 people of the " patches " blended for once with the good 
 people of Coalton, who were not thinking of Coalton, or 
 of the State, but of the country and of the world. The 
 bands were playing and under the muscular direction of 
 the leader the crowd sang the new and old patriotic airs, 
 
276 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 and the people of foreign speech and blood were finding 
 their oneness in the stirring melodies. 
 
 In one part of the Opera House sat a dejected group, 
 the German-Americans. They sang with heavy hearts, 
 and showed that they were conscious of the critical 
 looks sent in their direction. They were the first to 
 rise and the last to sit down when the Star Spangled 
 Banner was sung though they felt more like being 
 silent in their great grief, and had it been a time when 
 men dared be honest, they would have wept aloud, 
 which would have been better for them and better for 
 the cause. Had this war been one of weapons only, they 
 would have helped to fight and win it without much 
 murmur or complaint. They had been immune to the 
 Kultur propaganda of the Fatherland it was above their 
 heads, but their hearts could be touched by its songs 
 for they belonged to the sentimental Germany of years 
 ago, the Germany which had no foes, and but few rivals, 
 in its rule over the emotions of music loving humanity. 
 
 None of them ever dreamed that they would have to 
 make the cruel choice between the land of their birth 
 and the land of their adoption. The suddenness as much 
 as the bitterness of the struggle made it difficult for 
 them to accomplish the inner adjustment which was so 
 necessary to create that unity which was so dire a sur 
 prise to America's enemies and so happy a surprise to its 
 Allies. These Germans were regarded as among Coal- 
 ton's most substantial citizens. A few of the Germans 
 of Coalton, and they were men who had come to Amer 
 ica since the Franco-Prussian war, were caught in the 
 meshes of the mighty and proud Fatherland, and carried 
 their heads high; while in their hearts there was bitter 
 ness if not treason. They had influenced the life of 
 Coalton but little, except that they consistently stood for 
 "personal liberty," meaning a sort of license of the 
 
STEVE BURLY 277 
 
 stomach; the older people talked German, into which 
 they had injected some colloquial English, and had 
 strongly flavored the culinary calendar of the American 
 kitchen with Sauerkraut and Limburger cheese, which 
 under the stress of the war changed their names but not 
 their nature. 
 
 Professor Niederstadt sat on the platform with some 
 of the members of the Milburn College faculty. He had 
 hesitated about attending the meeting for he felt keenly 
 the hostile attitude of some of the townspeople; but his 
 wife urged him to go; for the eyes of the County Chair 
 man of the National Council of Defense were keen and 
 his absence would be noted and misconstrued. His at 
 titude toward the war was not different from that of a 
 large number of cultured Germans, who had found a 
 place in our educational institutions. He was a Saxon 
 by birth, and had that friendly, generous temperament 
 which differentiated the people of Dresden from the peo 
 ple of Berlin. He had left Germany at a time when 
 Militarism had not as yet laid its heavy hand upon the 
 Spirit of the Fatherland and manacled its soul and 
 buckled the sword to its loins. Commercialism had not 
 then been wedded to Militarism, neither had the banks 
 and barracks embraced each other or had the king and the 
 " Captains of Industry " kissed each other. 
 
 The professor knew of the changes taking place, 
 for he kept in close touch with German literature which 
 was corrupted in spots by the new spirit; but he did 
 not realize the complete metamorphosis till he returned 
 to the Fatherland a few years before the war. The 
 very things which American visitors lauded, which our 
 lecturers held up for emulation, and magazine writers 
 exploited, marred the pleasure of the returned idealist, 
 and he confessed that he wept when he saw the new Ger 
 many. 
 
278 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 When he returned to the United States he felt that 
 he had completely broken with the Old Country and he 
 became a genuine, if somewhat unpractical American. 
 However, the war revived much of the old feeling for 
 the Fatherland, dead things came to life again and the 
 tragic struggle of his soul was as genuine as it was 
 pathetic. 
 
 The meeting was called to order by the chairman who 
 asked the eloquent Reverend Arthur Ramsey, to invoke 
 the Divine blessing, upon which that gentleman addressed 
 a very lengthy prayer to the audience, in which he gave a 
 brief history of the war, paid fitting tribute to the Allied 
 Armies, told the purpose of the National Council of 
 Defense, justified the war by copious quotations from 
 the Old Testament, mentioned the German atrocities, 
 foretold the second coming of Christ, catalogued the 
 great resources of the United States, asked a blessing 
 upon the speaker of the evening, and explained to the 
 patient Lord his wonderful qualifications for the task, 
 after which he " asked all these things " and he had 
 really not asked anything " in the name of Him who died 
 for love of country." 
 
 Indeed God is a forgiving God ; He forgives even such 
 prayers John Hruby was thinking as the chairman in 
 troduced the speaker " The Honorable Steve Burly, our 
 distinguished fellow-citizen and our most prominent 
 editor." 
 
 Steve Burly was a natural born orator as the chair 
 man parenthetically remarked: that is, he had learned 
 nothing since he was born and the tricks he used were 
 natural and the outgrowth of his character. 
 
 He was a journalist and a politician, a dangerous com 
 bination, for he used his newspaper to further his political 
 schemes and his political power to obtain public patron 
 age for his newspaper. 
 
STEVE BURLY 279 
 
 Steve Burly was always fighting and the public en 
 joyed it, especially when he flayed the rival newspaper of 
 which Wayne MacBlane was the editor. Let no one 
 imagine that he was not a patriot. Steve Burly loved 
 his country as the caveman loved his clan, despising 
 every other caveman whose totem was not like his, or 
 whose tattoo marks were different, while the hate in him 
 was not modified since that day; for his ancestors were 
 all clansmen who were loyal to the few and who hated 
 the many. 
 
 He called himself a Christian, was a member of a 
 Protestant church and taught a Sunday School class. 
 In his religious thought he had traveled with the chil 
 dren of Israel as far as Mount Sinai, where he was 
 caught in the fire and smoke, which he never escaped, and 
 he thoroughly enjoyed singing the imprecatory Psalms 
 to long meter tunes. 
 
 He was, as the chairman said, " a natural born orator," 
 and knew that a crowd is never rational, and that the 
 greater the mob the cheaper the message can be. He 
 began his speech with the usual flatteries and rattling 
 good stories and a glorification of " Old Glory." After 
 having exhausted all the oratorical ammunition that has 
 accumulated since our war for Independence, he came 
 to new phrases coined in the pressure of a world agony 
 which from his lips fell like empty echoes out of an 
 empty cave. As sedulously as some speakers discourage 
 applause, Steve Burly invited it by frequent pauses, as 
 he worked himself toward the climax. 
 
 After nearly an hour of " spouting hot air " to quote 
 Wayne MacBlane, he braced himself for his peroration. 
 As he shot it forth he straightened himself to his full 
 length, rising on his tiptoes, the foreshadowing pan 
 tomime of his thought. 
 
 " There are snakes in the grass/' he hissed, " and 
 
280 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 they are right here in Coalton! The Kaiser's spies, 
 whom we have nourished in our bosom, paid agents of 
 the German government, who are doing their devilish 
 work in our midst! They have crept into our college 
 and they are in our pulpits! They have corrupted the 
 press!" And he pointed his finger toward the rear of 
 the platform where the faculty sat, and his glance swept 
 over groups of foreign born, and finally rested upon 
 Wayne MacBlane who was sitting directly in front of 
 the platform. 
 
 For a moment there was a hush, as something like 
 fear crept over the audience. Then he warned against 
 the propaganda in German hymn books, and declared 
 that a law ought to be passed to prohibit preaching in 
 foreign languages. His final shot which lifted the 
 audience to the desired frenzy came when shaking his 
 fist at the assembled foreigners, he shouted " Speak Eng 
 lish or get out of this country." 
 
 The crowd hooted and yelled, and called " Good boy, 
 Steve, give it to them." And no one seemed to remember 
 that it was Steve Burly who had gone to picnics with the 
 Germans and had drunk their beer with many a " Hock! " 
 who had toasted the " great German people " and had 
 complimented them upon maintaining the German lan 
 guage in the parochial schools, and worked hard to 
 nominate a German- American for the office of sheriff, 
 so that the German-Americans of the county should have 
 due recognition and incidentally poll a big vote for him 
 when running for senator. Yes, it was the same Steve 
 Burly, the same " Old Boy " ; but the times had changed 
 while he had not, and he knew the signs of the times. 
 
 The German-Americans sat as if beaten over their 
 heads, the members of the faculty in full view of the 
 audience tried to look unperturbed, and succeeded, all 
 but Professor Niederstadt. He had shrunk into his 
 
STEVE BURLY 281 
 
 seat, and with bowed head was so engulfed in his agony 
 that he did not hear the chairman's orders to " all rise 
 and sing the Star Spangled Banner." He heard noth 
 ing; saw nothing; he only knew that his heart was 
 breaking. 
 
 The people poured out of the Opera House but they 
 were different from those who entered it. Coalton now 
 had a hate built trench running through it, and the 
 poisoned gas had rilled its soul. 
 
 The Slovaks did not understand much of the speech 
 and that was fortunate. " Why did he bellow so loud ? " 
 one of the men asked Sonya, and she did not reply; but 
 a man who was sitting in the next seat and overheard 
 the question, said : " He wants us stop talking Slovak 
 and talk Anglitzky" " Is that what the war is about? " 
 the simple Slovak asked. 
 
 John Hruby's people went home to their patch in de 
 pressed groups. They were instinctively afraid, and he 
 tried to reassure them. After all, he told them that man 
 was not a representative American and they had nothing 
 to fear. 
 
 Sonya clung close to him and he felt an unusual tender 
 ness in the pressure of her hand on his arm. When they 
 entered the street in which the parsonage was located, 
 weirdly illumined by the flames from the mills, she im 
 pulsively kissed him, and he put his arm protectingly 
 around her. Annenka did not try to conceal her amaze 
 ment when her mistress inquired for the baby more 
 solicitously than ever before. 
 
 For a long time she had not been so demonstrative as 
 she was that night and John Hruby was overjoyed. She 
 called him her " Yanetchek," and began talking of 
 Hraszova, what Mother Elzabetha might be doing, and 
 whether Christina was not working herself to death, 
 and wondering who was alive and who was dead. 
 
282 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 "You are not homesick, dearest, are you?" And he 
 kissed her again and again, feeling his answer on her lips, 
 and seeing it in the tears which filled her eyes. 
 
 "Yes," she said, " Yanetchku muy I am homesick; 
 that man made me think of Hraszova and the Jew bait 
 ing; I couldn't have believed it of America, it is worse 
 than in Hraszova." 
 
 He called her his " foolish little foreigner." She 
 curled herself up in his arms and looked deep into his 
 eyes, then buried her head on his breast. " Promise me, 
 Yanetchku Muy," she said, " that after this war is over 
 we will go home to Slovakland." He did not reply, for 
 he had been fighting the same thought. 
 
 " You know," she continued, " it will be a free Slovak- 
 land," and he nodded his head; " and there will be four 
 of us going home. No, no," she replied to his question; 
 "not Annenka. You and I and little Christina and 
 she paused, " and a little Yanek if God wills." 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: IDOLS OF CLAY 
 
 WHEN one's idols turn out to be clay, the heart turns 
 to stone, and as John Hruby stared at the front 
 page of the Evening Tribune, the huge type of the curt 
 headlines danced before his eyes, like the caricatures in 
 the movies, and when they finally settled into their proper 
 sequence he cried, so loud that it startled Sonya : " It 
 isn't true ! It isn't true ! " And he said it with a note 
 of despair. They had lynched a German, a perfectly in 
 nocent German miner, because he was supposed to be 
 Pro-German. 
 
 John Hruby crumpled the paper in his hands, then 
 straightened it out and read it again, to make sure. His 
 idol had turned to clay and his heart to stone. " They 
 sang ' My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty/ 
 while they pulled the rope! " and he laughed hysterically. 
 " ' Sweet land of liberty! ' and they lynch a man, mur 
 der an innocent man in the name of Liberty! " 
 
 If Sonya had turned harlot, it would have broken his 
 heart, and he might have lost faith in women ; but Amer 
 ica! America! He didn't want to lose faith in America! 
 " What was there left to humanity, if America was to be 
 defeated by her Steve Burlys?" 
 
 He went down town and realized at once that Coalton 
 had changed. There were averted faces and reluctant 
 greetings; for although the lynching had taken place 
 in a neighboring mining town, the foulness of it had 
 crept into Coalton, as it had into every town and city, 
 making America less than it had been to every foreign 
 born soul who trusted in her sense of fair play and who 
 believed in her wide flung idealistic phrases. 
 
 283 
 
284 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 He went to see Wayne MacBlane. Wayne was 
 pounding his typewriter, but stopped when John Hruby 
 entered, and savagely bit off the end of another cigar. 
 After properly moistening it he began to smoke, waiting 
 for his friend to open the conversation. John Hruby 
 was walking up and down the untidy room kicking the 
 fallen newspapers out of his way, until at last he stopped, 
 and facing Wayne MacBlane, he said, with a short com 
 manding jerk in his voice, " Wayne, tell me that this isn't 
 true ! " and he held the crumpled paper in his outstretched 
 hand. 
 
 " True, why, of course it's true, true as Moses," and 
 he adjusted his yellow sheet, prior to the attack upon it. 
 
 " But it can't be true ! What will the world think 
 about America ? " 
 
 " The world, my dear fellow," Wayne MacBlane re 
 plied, this time taking his cigar out of his mouth, " the 
 world ! ' To Hell with the world/ as Steve Burly would 
 say. What has that to do with the world ? " 
 
 " Haven't we gone to war to make the world ' Safe 
 for Democracy ? ' 
 
 " We have gone to war to lick the Germans and make 
 the world safe for hypocrisy," Wayne MacBlane re 
 plied tartly. " Yes, I know it hurts you to hear that ; 
 but it's the stark naked truth I am telling you. Most 
 of the fellows who are yelling their heads off so loud 
 about democracy, wouldn't recognize it in broad day 
 light. 
 
 " No, I don't think President Wilson is a hypocrite. 
 I think he meant what he said ; but he knows our weak 
 ness for slogans. You know that you and I and ten 
 million fools like ourselves fall for ' Uwanta Doughnut ' 
 whether we want it or not, and we chew Malted Air- 
 flakes because some chap, who isn't half as clever as he 
 thinks he is, has plastered the country with a half million 
 
IDOLS OF CLAY 285 
 
 dollars worth of printers' ink telling us, * There is Ozone 
 in Airflakes/ Now it is ' Make the world a decent 
 place to live in ' and nine out of ten of us don t believe 
 it; yet we mouth it and shout it as if it were gospel truth. 
 
 " You are right," he replied to John Hruby's assertion 
 that " You Americans have high ideals/' " but we are 
 deucedly poor in cashing them in. You don't remember 
 our ' Simple Living ' slogan. We went wild over it, and 
 we stuffed out parlors full of mission furniture, and 
 we had mission barber shops and mission saloons, until 
 ' Simple Living ' went into the discard, and Democracy 
 and all our eloquent bunk will go the same way after the 
 war. I told Steve Burly yesterday that he will get a 
 darned sight more democracy out of this war, than he 
 will know what to do with/' and Wayne MacBlane 
 began eating up space with his typewriter, as if John 
 Hruby were over in Slovakland where he really belonged. 
 
 That unhappy man fingered the exchanges which over 
 flowed the table and fell on to the floor like rotten fruit 
 from a tree, and his broad horizon shrank more and 
 more, and he went toward the door creeping more than 
 walking; for he had suffered his great disillusionment 
 and had suddenly grown old. 
 
 " I want to give you a piece of advice, dominie/' 
 Wayne MacBlane called after him. " Don't let this 
 thing sour you, and keep your mouth "shut. If you have 
 any influence with Niederstadt tell him to do the same 
 thing; for the Vigilance Corps will get you, if you don't 
 watch out. These are deucedly unhealthy days for for 
 eigners, especially for him. If my name were Nieder 
 stadt I would go into a cyclone cellar and stay there until 
 this thing blows over. Lynchings like all troubles don't 
 come singly. 
 
 " Fortunately my name is MacBlane and I am Scotch- 
 Irish and then I like a fight. I had a letter to-day telling 
 
286 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 me not to show my Pro-German face down town again; 
 so I will parade Main Street when I get done here and 
 then go to the movies/' 
 
 John Hruby, however, did not keep his mouth shut 
 as Wayne MacBlane advised him. On Monday at the 
 ministers' meeting he talked and talked freely, for he 
 thought he could unburden himself there. It was a 
 solemn, sober company which gathered that Monday 
 morning in the study of the Presbyterian minister. Most 
 of the men had mentioned the lynching in their pulpits, 
 but they had to be careful and they were. The war fever 
 had crept into their blood and though some of them 
 yielded themselves reluctantly, they prudently shelved 
 their Gospel of Good will and Peace on Earth and though 
 they counseled law and order they also stirred the fires 
 to help on the war morale. 
 
 The most honest among them declared a moratorium 
 on the Gospel for the duration of the war; so they read 
 their Scripture lessons from the Old Testament and 
 avoided the hymns of love and forgiveness. 
 
 Others, and they were in the majority, committed 
 gross atrocities on the body of Jesus, by harnessing him 
 to the war chariot and thus winning the approval of 
 their congregations, they enjoyed the new sensation of 
 having their sermons applauded when they said, " To 
 Hell with the Kaiser ! " And denounced the higher 
 criticism, socialism and atheism as the products of Ger 
 man Kultur. 
 
 The Reverend Arthur Ramsey was put on the County 
 Council of National Defense and his congregation in 
 creased in the ratio of his vehemence. It was he who 
 declared John Hruby's remarks at the minister's meeting 
 Pro-German and started the discussion which led to 
 all his trouble. 
 
 '' You might as well call me an atheist or an anarchist 
 
IDOLS OF CLAY 287 
 
 as to call me Pro-German," he said hotly. " Evidently 
 you don't know that I am in this country because I 
 struggled to free my people from the Magyars and Ger 
 mans. I am not Pro-anything but Pro-human." 
 
 It did seem like a boast; for after all his struggles in 
 Slovakland had been ineffective and feeble; for he was 
 no fighter. 
 
 " Pro-human nothing ! " the Reverend Arthur Ramsey 
 retorted with more heat than elegance, " The man who 
 isn't for us is against us; anyway we don't want any of 
 you foreigners to tell us how to conduct our affairs." 
 
 The shot went home. " After all," John Hruby said 
 to himself, " I am only a foreigner," and he was silent. 
 But the Reverend Arthur Ramsey was no more just the 
 Reverend Arthur Ramsey. He was a member of the 
 National Council of Defense, and as such he felt his 
 importance, and that it was his business to go to the 
 bottom of this thing and he did. 
 
 " I insist that our brother make a full statement of his 
 attitude toward the war," he cried out almost hysterically. 
 
 John Hruby did not move, he felt the insult too keenly 
 and his intention was to leave the room, but he remained 
 as if sealed to his chair. At last he rose and in a voice 
 full of suppressed emotions said : " I have lived among 
 you brethren for four years or more and I have preached 
 to my people what I thought was the Gospel. I must 
 confess that I have not always been faithful to my mes 
 sage, for I have often preached more about America than 
 the Kingdom of God, and sometimes I have declared the 
 two identical. I love America, if not better than you can, 
 because I have come to it out of great tribulation. 
 
 " I am willing to give my last cent that America should 
 be victorious in this war for I hate militarism and autoc 
 racy worse I fear than Hell and the devil. I am willing 
 to die for this country. I have offered myself to the 
 
288 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 government and it has refused my offer because I was 
 born in central Europe. The fact is, I should like to die 
 for America as a sort of proof not only of my own 
 loyalty, but of the loyalty of my people. 
 
 " I cannot, however, give to my country my soul. I 
 can give to Caesar that which is Caesar's, but I will not 
 give to Caesar that which is God's. I cannot hate, for the 
 Good Book says : ' He that hateth his brother is a mur 
 derer,' and I believe The Book/' 
 
 " The good brother doesn't know that we have to de 
 scend to the level of the beasts in this war, even as Christ 
 descended into Hell," the Reverend Arthur Ramsey re 
 plied, meeting Scripture with Scripture. 
 
 The blood rose to John Hruby's brain at the blasphemy, 
 and for a moment he tried to hold back the indignation 
 which pressed for utterance. "If the Reverend Arthur 
 Ramsey," he said, ignoring that gentleman and speaking 
 to the other ministers, " can descend to the level of the 
 beasts he is to be congratulated upon the achievement ; I 
 cannot. I probably am not a better or worse man than 
 he is, but I simply cannot do that, it is morally impossible 
 for me. And if I knew that when ' Christ descended into 
 Hell ' he became like the devil, I would renounce Jesus as 
 I have renounced the devil." Having said this John 
 Hruby took his hat and left the room, two of his fellow 
 ministers going out with him and shaking his hand but 
 saying nothing. 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: THE HATERS 
 
 THE winter of 1917-18 will long be remembered by 
 the " oldest inhabitant," and the record of its rigor 
 and fierce biting blasts will be recalled whenever the sur 
 vivors of that period tell the story of the bitterness and 
 rancor which filled human hearts, for they were as cruel 
 as the weather. Those who lived through that time will 
 speak less harshly of the Middle Ages. They will under 
 stand how, under the stress of great passion, men may 
 torture their fellow beings to exact conformity to their 
 own views and burn them to death if they remain 
 obdurate. 
 
 While men may forget the coldest winter in their 
 memory, the biting of the frost of hate will ever remain 
 as a sad reminder of the days when many fine fruits of 
 the human spirit were blighted, possibly to make room 
 for better things ; we can only surmise. 
 
 The winter in Coalton was as unbearable as every 
 where else. Trains were blockaded by huge drifts which 
 made their own defenses, blasting winds cut their trenches 
 and the blizzards whirled blinding barrages into the land 
 scape, while the hate and strife, the breaking of human 
 relations, the base suspicions and the blasting of careers 
 were a little worse there than elsewhere, for all of which 
 Steve Burly was to blame. 
 
 As has been said he was a patriot, always destructive, 
 never constructive. He hated more than he loved his 
 kind, and was prolific in breeding patriots like himself; 
 for it is easy to hate. His editorial columns were full of 
 invectives and accusations against this or that man promi 
 nent in his own or neighboring communities, and the 
 
290 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 smaller newspapers in the adjacent counties, his satel 
 lites, echoed his slanders until Coalton and the entire 
 State were as full of hate as the air was of snowflakes. 
 
 The German Lutheran preacher had been dragged 
 through the streets by a rope and escaped death only 
 because his wife, after piteously pleading with his perse 
 cutors, fell into a swoon. 
 
 Professor Niederstadt was taken to the courthouse 
 square and there before the Goddess of Justice who 
 crowned the rotunda he was made to kiss the American 
 flag; most of the citizens of foreign birth were brought 
 before the Vigilance Corps which passed upon their 
 loyalty. 
 
 John Hruby was not to be spared. Sonya had begged 
 him to leave Coalton ; but he had fled once, and ever since 
 had regarded himself more or less as a coward, so he 
 determined to face whatever might come. 
 
 He was not Scotch-Irish, as he told Wayne MacBlane, 
 only a pigeon blooded Slav ; yet while he had no courage 
 to spare, he felt something within him that was like moral 
 courage, so he determined to test himself, and he awaited 
 developments. 
 
 It was the night before Christmas and Sonya had 
 retired. Annenka had busied herself all day at her clean 
 ing and she was still rubbing and scrubbing when the 
 door bell rang and she answered it. Two men entered 
 and inquired for the " Reverend Rooby." He thought he 
 knew all the men active in Coalton affairs, but he did not 
 recognize these. They evidently were not prominent in 
 the community, but had come to summon him before the 
 Vigilance Corps. 
 
 So now it had come to him, this thing which he had 
 anticinated and dreaded. He was not angry, he was too 
 keenly hurt for that, and something like a deep shame 
 crept into his heart, like the feeling he had, when, an 
 
THE HATERS 291 
 
 innocent man, he was marched through the streets of 
 Hraszova, the gendarmes flanking him; and these two 
 men seemed to him just like those stupid minions of the 
 law who took pride in being temporarily the masters of 
 others. 
 
 He whispered to Annenka not to tell her mistress, if she 
 should awaken and inquire for him, that he had gone with 
 these men, but that he was called away and would return 
 soon. It was about nine o'clock and the streets were 
 almost impassable. A freezing cutting wind was blowing 
 and the driven snow danced in whirls around the street 
 lights. Annenka, with doglike instinct, scented danger 
 and followed her master as far as possible. He was taken 
 down Main Street, up the steps of an office building, and 
 into an anteroom that smelled of stale tobacco. A loud 
 murmur reached him from the other room where another 
 victim was being morally and spiritually dissected. He 
 could catch occasional snatches of the conversation, con 
 cerning the buying of more Liberty Bonds, or fixing the 
 proper amount of the victim's voluntary subscription to 
 the Red Cross Society. 
 
 John Hruby was guiltless in these and other respects, 
 for he had subscribed and given with equal liberality and 
 counted it neither a virtue nor a duty, but a privilege. 
 
 The victim was finally, released and he was ushered into 
 the presence of the Vigilance Corps, a self-appointed body 
 without legal or moral authority, which met in the office 
 of one of its members. 
 
 He was greeted politely and as he looked around he 
 recognized a number of persons, some of whom looked 
 shamefacedly in another direction, while others smiled at 
 him in an encouraging way, as if to say: "Take your 
 medicine, young man, it won't be half as bad as you 
 think; " others merely scowled at him. 
 
 The chairman was the same person who had presided 
 
292 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 at the meeting when Steve Burly delivered his contribu 
 tion toward making " the world a decent place to live in." 
 He assumed a judical air, looking as wise as his limi 
 tations permitted, asked John Hruby his name and stated 
 that there was a charge against him for disloyalty. He 
 was then asked to rise and state his case. Slowly he 
 rose to his feet and spoke. He told them where he was 
 born, under what circumstances, and how he had come to 
 America ; about his work in the mines, his release from 
 that labor and of his going to college. He told of the 
 great spiritual changes in his life and his return to Hun 
 gary, drawn there by a desire for service. He pictured 
 the conditions over there, the pressure of the stronger 
 race upon the weaker, of the wrong his people had suf 
 fered, and his activities in their behalf which finally led 
 him into conflict with the authorities, and then his return 
 to America. 
 
 His life in Coalton they knew. He had taken out his 
 first papers and was anxiously waiting for the time when 
 he could become a citizen. He also frankly told them his 
 opposition to war. His people had been the victims of 
 it for centuries, and though they owned rich lands they 
 were impoverished because they had to pay the taxes of 
 successive wars. He described the poverty of his people 
 who had to labor without eating the fruit of their 
 endeavor. 
 
 Moreover he was a minister of the Gospel of Jesus, 
 and he believed that the teachings of Jesus were opposed 
 to war. However, when the United States declared war 
 on Germany he made such an adjustment as his con 
 science would allow, and he had urged his people to work 
 and to suffer and if need be to die for this country, which 
 had entered the war, not for territory or indemnities or 
 from the lust of battle, but for the freedom of the world, 
 which included making his country free. 
 
THE HATERS 293 
 
 He also read to his tormentors the names of the Slovak 
 boys who had volunteered before the draft and of the 
 others who had gone without trying to claim exemption, 
 as well they might for they were by law alien enemies. 
 He told of the bravery of the boys in battle who had to 
 face their brothers at the front, and the sacrifices which 
 his people were making that the arm of the United States 
 might be strengthened. He spoke slowly and impress 
 ively, he tried to reflect the state of his mind and heart, 
 and he withheld nothing. 
 
 Some of the men seemed impressed and he would soon 
 have been dismissed if the chairman had not regarded so 
 seriously his own importance in the case. He drew from 
 his pocket a number of documents, adjusted his eye 
 glasses and began to question him. 
 
 " Did you write this letter of protest to the Evening 
 Tribune? " He handed him the letter and John Hruby 
 looked at it, then passed it back, saying : " I am proud to 
 say that I did." 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you wrote that if this is 
 going to be a war against the German people in America, 
 who are not responsible for the war, you are not in favor 
 of the war? " This the witness emphatically affirmed. 
 
 The chairman cleared his throat and looked at the 
 members of the Vigilance Corps with an " I told you so " 
 sort of air. 
 
 " Did you say that war is an atrocity in itself? " 
 
 " I did." 
 
 The eyeglasses of the chairman needed readjustment; 
 when that was accomplished he read again, " Did you 
 say in one of your sermons that lynching innocent Ger 
 mans was not any better than the German atrocities in 
 Belgium? " Again there was no denial of the charge. 
 
 The chairman's throat once more needed clearing and 
 he cleared it impressively. " Did you say at another 
 
294 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 time," and his voice grew still more reproachful, " that 
 those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword? " 
 
 " I did, Mr. Chairman ; but that was not original with 
 me." 
 
 The chairman looked puzzled and wanted to know 
 where he had heard it, and when John Hruby informed 
 him that it was in the Bible there was a suppressed titter 
 among the more intelligent of the men. 
 
 " You have also stated that you couldn't hate anybody 
 and that it is wrong to hate. Don't you know that we 
 are sending our boys over to France to send those damned 
 Dutchmen to Hell?" 
 
 " I don't know where you are sending those Germans 
 who are killed." 
 
 " You couldn't say : ' To Hell with the Germans ? ' 
 
 " No," was the curt reply, " though they have been very 
 cruel to my people I have neither the desire nor the 
 power to send sixty million people to Hell." 
 
 " Well, I think we can make you say that." 
 
 " No, you cannot." 
 
 " Well, we'll fix that. Have any other members of the 
 Vigilance Corps any questions to ask?" 
 
 If Wayne MacBlane had been there he would have 
 said : " Then Hell broke loose." 
 
 Had John Hruby not been sent over here by the Ger 
 man Government as a spy? 
 
 Had he not helped to colonize these foreigners so that 
 they might overthrow the United States Government?" 
 
 Perhaps he did not have a sufficient sense of humor to 
 laugh at these questions, yet it did not seem possible to 
 him that sane men could ask them ; but question followed 
 question as dart follows dart, and each of them had a 
 poisoned tip. 
 
 Outwardly he was still calm, but inwardly he felt the 
 blood beating against his temples and he pressed back 
 
THE HATERS 295 
 
 the swollen veins; for he wanted to remain master of 
 himself. One question, however, robbed him of his 
 poise. 
 
 " Did you not refuse at one of the ministers* meetings 
 to declare your loyalty to the United States? " 
 
 It wasn't the lie, vile though it was, which loosed his 
 suppressed emotions. But that the lie came from such 
 a quarter ! That seemed to break his heart, and a great 
 cry of anguish broke from his lips. 
 
 " It is a lie ! It is a lie ! " he cried. " It is a lie ! It is 
 a damnable lie!" Men jumped to their feet and sur 
 rounded him. He did not know whether they meant 
 to do him violence or not, and he did not care; they 
 had already killed something within him, something more 
 precious than life the only thing worth while, his faith 
 in America, his faith in good men, and now they might 
 have his life! He was not thinking of Sonya or of 
 little Christina or of their child yet unborn; but of his 
 faith in America, shattered and almost killed by these 
 creatures. 
 
 If they had killed him, it would have been called mur 
 der; perhaps a patriotic jury would have called it justifi 
 able murder; but for this thing they had done to him 
 there was no name ; for language never believed it would 
 have to name it. 
 
 As his agonizing cries, mingled with the excited voices 
 of the men, filled the room, the door was burst open and 
 Sonya dashed in among them like a fury. " What are 
 you doing to him, you wretches ? Let him go ! " she 
 shrieked, as she put her arms around him. 
 
 " All of you are not worth his little finger ! " she said 
 in her broken English. " A thousand of you are not 
 worth one of him.'* 
 
 " Don't be excited, Mrs. Rooby," said the chairman. 
 " We are all his friends." 
 
296 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 "If you are his friends, then may Heaven protect 
 him from his enemies! " retorted Sonya. 
 
 " Yanek, my Yanek ! Let us go home, away from these 
 bad men!" And she led him out, and all through the 
 cold silent streets he told her between his sobs that there 
 is a better America, only they had not found it, and 
 begged her not to lose faith in America. 
 
 "Don't speak to me of America or the Americans! 
 I hate them all! Why did you tell me that here all is 
 right and just, that every man may think for himself 
 and not be molested? Take me home to Hungary, it 
 may be bad there, but it is worse here ! " 
 
 Yanek tried to soothe her and so the terrible strain 
 was partially lifted from his own over-wrought feelings. 
 
 When they reached home Annenka received them with 
 an unwonted gentleness. It was long before they could 
 think of slumber, but in trying to speak words of com 
 fort to one another they at last fell asleep. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY: SONYA GOES HOME 
 
 HE did not think that he had slept at all when Sonya's 
 groaning reached him in the peaceful valley of 
 forgetfulness, and when he looked into her eyes he read 
 in them both alarm and joy, but the agony which crept 
 into her face hid the joy; for the baby to whose arrival 
 they had looked forward so happily, was coming before 
 its time. The exposure and excitement of the night 
 were too much for Sonya in her condition, and she needs 
 must suffer for the deeds of wicked men. 
 
 Annenka was awakened and the doctor summoned. 
 Then began that awful time when the hours seemed to 
 lengthen into years; for the spasms of pain did not reach 
 their climax until late that night. 
 
 It is at such a time as this that true men feel ashamed 
 that the curse of bearing children in pain falls so com 
 pletely upon the woman, and they strive in vain to balance 
 the account by their mental anguish, knowing all the time 
 that they are the debtors. Most men pray then even if 
 they have never prayed before, and John Hruby clutched 
 the hem of God's garment and reached despairingly to 
 ward the great Father Heart. 
 
 God seemed to be striving and struggling, as if half 
 impotent to amend man's cruel bungling ; yet he believed 
 that God was hearing him and that he was not only pity 
 ing him in his misery but pitying Himself for having 
 left His last and best creation, made in His own image, 
 so unlike Himself; so powerful and yet so weak; so kind 
 and yet so cruel. 
 
 John Hruby looked out into the glare of the Sun, re- 
 
 297 
 
298 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 fleeted upon the fine blown snow, all its sharp ridges ac 
 centuated, and its hollows deepened. Men were passing 
 and he wanted to call out to them to come in and see 
 how much they had added to a woman's pain, and what 
 their malignant hate had brought into the sublimest mo 
 ment of a woman's love. 
 
 " Good God ! Save me from hating them ! " His heart 
 cried out. " There is hate enough and to spare ! " He 
 tried to think kindly of them and smile upon them as they 
 passed; but they were intent upon keeping out the cruel 
 cold, and had they seen him they might have turned 
 away from him as they had done again and again during 
 the last few months. To them he was an outcast, be 
 fouled by their lies, declared disloyal by men who were 
 disloyal to the holiest of all earthly things personality, 
 and who had tried to drag a human soul to their foul 
 level. 
 
 He was just himself now, John Hruby ; an alien whom 
 they had torn from the womb of the country in which he 
 was having his rebirth, even as the doctor was struggling 
 to bring that holy thing out of the womb of its mother. 
 They had succeeded, and he still felt the hurt of it; the 
 strain, the bruises, the grip of their forceps, and the 
 slimy touch of their fingers. 
 
 Yet he knew he must not hate them ; for the striving 
 God within was telling him that they were blinded by 
 their hate, and he was weeping more for them than for 
 himself. They thought they were dragging him through 
 the muck of their low passion ; but instead, they had taken 
 him through the fire, the purifying fire of suffering " for 
 righteousness* sake." So much dross had been burned 
 away, and it dropped from his soul leaving it the purer, 
 while they were defiled; just as the men in the mills 
 while they purified the ore and toughened it into steel, 
 came away besmirched and weakened by their toil. 
 
SONYA GOES HOME 299 
 
 Sonya called to him and he went to her bedside. He 
 wished he might lift himself and soar to her, so that 
 the floor might not creak, or cause the bed upon which 
 she lay, to shake. She was too weak to speak. The 
 pain had been assuaged for a time but had left her ex 
 hausted, and the doctor cautioned silence. Her husband 
 grasped her hot limp hand and held it, and tried to let 
 his love flow into her heart and his strength into her 
 weakened body. "Oh God!" he cried, "Help her! 
 Bless her! Heal her!" 
 
 He saw the struggle in her eyes and on her pain drawn 
 face. She tried to speak to him, her cheeks flushed sud 
 denly as she felt the agony surging back, and she knew 
 that she could not survive. " You will take the children 
 home to Hraszova to Christina," she whispered breath 
 lessly. " Tell her to forgive me. My little Christina ! " 
 and she pointed toward the door, and he knew that she 
 wanted her child. Annenka brought the poor frightened 
 little girl, who began to cry; for they were all weeping. 
 They soon led her out, for her mother scarcely had 
 strength to kiss her. 
 
 The day and evening passed in agonizing alternations 
 of fear and hope, while Sonya's strength ebbed slowly 
 away. About midnight the pain racked her for the 
 last ordeal and she cried : " Don't let them come ! They 
 are coming for me ! The Americans are coming to take 
 me away! Don't let them come to my burial." There 
 was a momentary lull in her pain. " I want nothing from 
 them nothing ! " she cried and awaited the inevitable. 
 
 A poor tiny being born out of due time came into 
 the world with no assurance of a lease upon life; and 
 in the white, ghastly face of its mother there was not 
 even a welcoming smile. John Hruby never really knew 
 how long she hovered between life and death, for time 
 was blotted out and he lived only by torturing heart beats. 
 
300 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 Once the doctor gave him a straw of hope for his des 
 pairing soul to clutch. "God! God! Let her live! Let 
 her live ! She must get well ! " he pleaded. 
 
 He knelt beside her and told her that as soon as she 
 was able to travel he would take her back to Hraszova, 
 and knowing that it gave him pleasure, she smiled and 
 tried to listen to his plans. They brought the little baby, 
 and she summoned all her fast failing energies and called 
 it her " little Yanetchek " ; but it looked as old and 
 wrinkled as if it had already lived a hundred years, or 
 as if it had drunk deep from the cup of woe which 
 humanity was filling to the brim. 
 
 It had not strength enough to cry, and Annenka took it 
 again, and there were tears in her eyes, and in her parch 
 ment like cheeks there came a glow. She was a mother, 
 and she pressed it close to her breasts and prayed for a 
 miracle to fill them that she might nourish the little 
 creature. John Hruby's spirits rose and fell like a boat 
 on a stormy sea. Now Sonya had almost gone from 
 him; then she came back again, as if the Captain were 
 taking this ship to its harbor, not sure that he would 
 make the sheltering breakwater. Sonya knew that she 
 was going home, but that her harbor was on the other, 
 safer side. She talked about Hraszova, and the small 
 happy incidents which loom so large at such a time 
 faded pictures becoming stronger and brighter the fur 
 ther they receded ; for the dying become f arsighted. 
 
 " You will plant tulips," she whispered and spoke of 
 Mother Elzabetha who always planted " tulipany " in the 
 autumn, and brought to the Pan's table the first glorious 
 cups out of which spring drank the health of the year. 
 "And rosemary." She drew in her breath as if the 
 pungent herb were near her. Then she took her hus 
 band's hands with a strength which deceived him, and 
 kissed them. " Rosemary," she whispered again and 
 
SONYA GOES HOME 301 
 
 again, as he held her close. " What a beautiful wreath 
 you have on your head, my darling," she said as her 
 mind wandered. 
 
 " Vyenetz'' she whispered, " Vyenetz, but there are no 
 tulips in your Vyenetz, only yellow grain and wild asters, 
 and I want tulips and rosemary. 
 
 " Let us go into the garden, Yanek," and her face 
 flushed from the secret joy of it. " Let us gather tulips 
 and smell the rosemary." 
 
 Then her hands began moving over the coverlid as if 
 she were searching for something. 
 
 " They are gone! Only wild asters and yellow grain, 
 and it is cold, cold ! " 
 
 Her body shook in the chill of death, and though her 
 husband piteously begged her to live for him, her spirit 
 took its flight, all was still and Sonya had gone to the 
 eternal spring, where the angels drink out of tulips and 
 wind sweet wreaths of rosemary; but she left behind 
 her a desolate winter, and a more desolate heart. 
 
 " Hayishku, Hayishku! " Annenka had walked up and 
 down all night singing to the baby every lullaby she 
 knew, huddling it and cuddling it; so for a long time as 
 she walked up and down, still crooning and still singing, 
 she did not know that the baby was dead in her arms. 
 When she discovered it she wept so violently that the 
 watchers, sitting below at Sonya' s casket, ran upstairs to 
 see what had happened to Annenka. Had she borne the 
 child herself, she could not have been more reluctant to 
 give it up. She dressed it in all the hand stitched finery 
 which awaited it, and they put it into the arms of Sonya, 
 from whose womb it had been forced to come too soon. 
 
 The news of her death and her baby's swept through 
 town, and the telephone bell rang often, inquiries were 
 made and help proffered. Annenka, who guarded the 
 
302 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 'phone, answered every one with a sharp and decisive 
 no, and told all who asked, that the funeral would be 
 private. 
 
 As she guarded the telephone, so she guarded the door, 
 and when the florists came with wreaths and flowers from 
 American donors she refused to accept them ; as she knew 
 she was doing what her mistress would wish. 
 
 Wayne MacBlane and Professor Niederstadt were con 
 stantly with John Hruby and they were wise enough not 
 to say anything at a time when mere words are worse 
 than powerless, and the best of them meaningless. 
 
 They and Mrs. Niederstadt were the only Americans 
 who were at the funeral service, which was held in the 
 little church. 
 
 The Slovak women came in their picturesque garb, for 
 Annenka had told them that their Pcmyi Fararka would 
 like the tulips on their dresses better than any flowers 
 which they might buy; so they wore whatever bit of 
 Old World finery they had brought to America. There 
 were many incongruous combinations of Slovak necker 
 chiefs and shirtwaists which originated on Broadway; 
 short, broad flowing skirts and high heeled American 
 shoes; the men took out of the depths of their trunks 
 their sheepskin coats, which they wore over their creased 
 trousers, and stiff collars and American shirts. One 
 young man who had saved his little round rimmed hat, 
 wore it with its big peacock feather, and a sprig of 
 dried rosemary clinging to the colored cord. When John 
 Hruby saw that, Sonya's last words came so vividly to 
 him, that all his self-control was broken down and he 
 sobbed like a child. 
 
 The stolid Slovak men and women wept all through 
 the service, and while they wept for Sonya and the baby, 
 they were weeping also for that which was perishing in 
 their own hearts, which was conceived in a holy passion, 
 
SONYA GOES HOME 303 
 
 of which they became conscious through making common 
 cause with those among whom they had lived heretofore 
 as strangers. Yet these, among whom they lived and 
 labored, had bruised and hurt them by their suspicions 
 and the demand that this something be born before its 
 time. 
 
 " It is the same as in Hungary," they said as they 
 passed through Main Street toward the cemetery, carry 
 ing the bodies of the mother and child, the unfeeling 
 crowd staring at them half menacingly because they wore 
 " outlandish clothes " in honor of their Panenka Fararka 
 who loved tulips and rosemary, and had not been weaned 
 from the soil on which they grew more beautifully and 
 fragrantly than elsewhere. 
 
 Into the frozen ground they laid Sonya's body, and as 
 the heavy unyielding clods fell upon the casket, they also 
 fell upon that which had died in the simple hearts of the 
 Slovaks, who buried something besides the body of their 
 Panenka Fararka and her child, born out of due time. 
 
 Steve Burly had an editorial the next day, taking the 
 funeral as an illustration of " the un- Americanized for 
 eigners, who flaunted their Old World fineries before 
 the faces of loyal Americans and carried their dead to 
 the cemetery, instead of having them conveyed in an 
 American hearse." 
 
 He demanded immediate Americanization, " with a 
 club if necessary," and all the petty newspapers of the 
 State, taking their cue from Steve Burly, as usual, en 
 larged upon the subject, and warned America against the 
 stranger within her gates. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: THE ARMISTICE 
 
 GRIEF almost ceased to be personal in such a year as 
 the one in which Sonya went home. Those who 
 were sorest stricken had the comfort that theirs was the 
 common lot ; for sorrow like the night had flung her dark 
 mantle over the whole earth, and in many portions of it 
 there had been no hopeful sunrise for four long, bitter 
 ^ears. 
 
 It was his peoples' unrelieved agony which kept John 
 Hruby at his post, though Coalton had become unbear 
 able to him. He avoided Main Street as if its air were 
 pestilential, and Annenka grew more and more domineer 
 ing as he put upon her the small, down town duties 
 which he had usually performed so gladly, because they 
 brought him in contact with the Americans. What he 
 lacked in capacity to hate she made up in double measure, 
 and when she passed Steve Burly's newspaper office she 
 spat in that direction; for she hated him more than she 
 hated her arch enemies, dirt and the devil. 
 
 No news from the homeland had crossed the trenches, 
 and the Slovak " patch " added daily its quota of service 
 stars, whose blue brightened into gold with every setting 
 of the sun. The women dropped their shawled heads 
 into their toil worn hands, their eyes heavy from tears, 
 and their pastor spoke words of comfort to them like one 
 who himself was "a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief." 
 
 The men who remained in mill and mine, grumbled 
 often and went reluctantly to their task, for the feeling 
 against them increased, and he had to cheer their hearts 
 and steady their faltering hands. 
 
 304 
 
THE ARMISTICE 305 
 
 " War makes people blind/' he said to them, " but some 
 day the Americans will recognize the part you have 
 played in making this nation move as with one will, and 
 strike as with one arm." 
 
 He dared not say anything openly in praise of his 
 people, for Steve Burly had struck the nativistic note so 
 effectively that everything was treason which did not 
 increase suspicion against the foreign born, and did not 
 add fuel to the flame of hate. 
 
 In Coalton and a thousand other places like it, the 
 people did not wish to be reminded of the loyalty and 
 bravery of the aliens; though each day as they read with 
 solemn fear the casualty lists, they stumbled over un 
 pronounceable names. 
 
 Wayne MacBlane, one of the few Americans who had 
 remained true to the type, and who had preached un 
 falteringly the gospel of fair play, printed a com 
 posite picture of four of Coalton's soldiers who had died 
 at the front after having been cited for special bravery, 
 and he named the immortal hero, " Giovanni Mac Brown- 
 sky/' 
 
 John Hruby carried more than his share of anxiety in 
 those dark days of the spring of 1918, when the German 
 arms prevailed against the Allies, and the English army 
 fought with its back against the wall. To him their 
 defeat meant not only the defeat of the Allies, but that 
 the condition of his people in Hungary would become 
 unbearable, and their enslavement complete. 
 
 There was a rift in the clouds, however, and it came 
 when Professor Masaryk visited this country and stopped 
 at Coalton to address the Czecho-Slovaks, who acclaimed 
 him: "President of the New Republic." Even Steve 
 Burly, when he looked into that strong and noble face, 
 had to admit that " there are some foreigners who are 
 as good as the Americans " and that the Czecho-Slovaks 
 
306 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 were doing their share in making the arms of the Allies 
 prevail. 
 
 Of all the days through which this generation has lived, 
 one of them will ever remain the day of days, the one 
 whose joy will not abate and whose glory will never 
 fade. 
 
 The tension broke when the rumor of the signing of the 
 armistice reached this country. The delirium of joy was 
 suspended when the rumor proved premature, and broke 
 out anew in the early hours of the eleventh day of 
 November. 
 
 No dawn was ever greeted as was this one, which was 
 to herald a new era in the history of mankind. On 
 wireless waves the angel's message was carried, as it was 
 two thousand years ago; but the slumbering shepherds 
 had no sirens or church bells with which to waken the 
 rest of mankind to their unutterable joy. 
 
 Annenka was wakened by the tumult of the mills 
 which, with their giant lungs, blew the glad alarm; the 
 mines answered in short, sharp, asthmatic blasts; the 
 electric light plant and the waterworks used their power 
 to announce the new illuminant and the new refreshment 
 for humanity, and grim Annenka, hastily clad, ran out 
 and gave the church bells their first chance under the 
 new order to glorify God in the highest. 
 
 When the other bells faltered and the whistles grew 
 faint she kept on tugging the bell rope like one possessed 
 by madness; and when duty finally demanded that she 
 return to her kitchen, she ran out again after she had 
 made the coffee, to let Coalton know how the Slovaks felt 
 about it; and, for once, she was not angry when on 
 returning she found that the milk had boiled over and 
 dimmed the luster of her highly polished stove. 
 
 Frantic noises reached the little parsonage from Main 
 Street, the band was playing one mad tune after another, 
 
THE ARMISTICE 307 
 
 people were moving about heedless of their direction, 
 and embraced one another for the sheer mad joy 
 of it. 
 
 John Hruby had gone to Wayne MacBlane's office, and 
 there that vehicle of human joys and sorrows sat un 
 perturbed at his typewriter filling the yellow sheets as if 
 he were a copperwire chosen to convey the mighty energy 
 because least influenced by it. 
 
 The mill men had left their boiling, bubbling furnaces. 
 What did they care for ingots and tubes and cauldrons 
 when the sword of the mighty was broken, and the War 
 King had been hurled from his throne ? 
 
 The miners crawled out of the womb of the earth and 
 the next shift did not return to help change the night 
 into day, now that the new day had dawned; the clerks 
 and stenographers and all the little cogs in the man made 
 machine stopped, feeling too ennobled to do their meas 
 uring and weighing of small wares and writing letters 
 for " Yours Truly." 
 
 School-teachers and their pupils forsook their geogra 
 phies and histories now that they were made obsolete by 
 the power of arms; every one was too drunk from joy 
 to labor every one but the newspaper men, who had to 
 sit at their typewriters, like Wayne MacBlane, as if this 
 were only another fleeting day with its empty columns of 
 white paper hungry to be filled. 
 
 He had already interviewed many of the prominent 
 men of Greater Coalton as to what they thought of the 
 armistice and its effect upon the world, especially on 
 Greater Coalton; for Coalton was slipping back out of 
 the embrasure of the world to the consideration of its 
 own commercial future. .He knew well enough that it 
 did not matter what the great men of Greater Coalton 
 thought about the armistice; but it was a feature, and 
 that evening when the hysteria of joy had spent itself, 
 
308 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 the bankers and merchants and ministers would congratu 
 late themselves upon seeing their names in the paper 
 under a few inches of the expression of their vision and 
 wisdom. Wayne MacBlane chuckled as he transcribed 
 these "gems of thought," and he read some of 'them to 
 his welcome visitor. 
 
 The president of the Iron and Fuel Company said : 
 " Now that the world has been made ' a decent place to 
 live in,' it means a better relationship between Capital and 
 Labor." 
 
 " I bet you a box of cigars," Wayne MacBlane said, as 
 he threw down the sheet of paper, " that while he was 
 saying that he was planning how to reduce wages and 
 break up the Unions." 
 
 The banker thought " it meant greater thrift and there 
 fore more prosperity." 
 
 " The Reverend Arthur Ramsey declaimed to me in 
 his best pulpit style that * it was a victory of truth over 
 error and of the principles of the Gospel of Jesus over 
 materialism and that we must now guard against an easy 
 peace for the Huns.' ' 
 
 " Now I shall interview you. What do you say, Rev 
 erend Rooby?" and he turned to his typewriter ready 
 for the answer. 
 
 In his slow measured way John Hruby replied : " I 
 thank God for the armistice, for now we shall again be 
 able to tell the truth." 
 
 Wayne MacBlane whirled round in his swivel chair and 
 replied, " Not yet, my dear fellow, not for a long time 
 yet. You forget that there are the Bolsheviki." He 
 was right. One dark cloud had passed but another was 
 on the horizon ready to obscure vision and seal the lips 
 of truth. 
 
 Steve Burly's leading editorial that day had the new 
 venom. He declared Wayne MacBlane a Bolshevik. The 
 
THE ARMISTICE 309 
 
 armistice came too soon to spend all the stock of hate, 
 and now " Pro-German," which was the pet title applied 
 to every one who differed from him, had a worthy suc 
 cessor : " Bolshevik." A new label with which to libel 
 his enemies. 
 
 The Reverend Arthur Ramsey and all the other 
 preachers who had supplied verbal ammunition to help 
 win the war, and who talked about the new world to be 
 born out of the agony of mankind, woke to the fact that 
 there was no new world, no joyous, new born world, but 
 an older, more wrinkled, disillusioned planet, and that 
 they had to go back to their former and often futile en 
 deavor to preach the " Kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness." However, they could still use their old 
 invectives and hurl them against the Bolsheviki who, 
 in their imagination, lurked around every corner and 
 needed to be dealt with summarily. 
 
 If the lot of John Hruby's people was hard during the 
 war, it grew harder after the victory was assured ; for the 
 supposed menace to America increased in ratio to his 
 people's ignorance of English; and the patriotic knitters 
 and four minute men and vigilant saviors of their coun 
 try threw themselves with vigor upon the enemy within 
 their gates who were ignorant of the Constitution, did 
 not know the names of their congressman and had never 
 heard of the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 " Teach the foreigner English and you cure the evil of 
 Bolshevism!" was Steve Burly's prescription. "If he 
 can't learn the American language send him back." 
 Every foreigner was an embryo Bolshevik, and vision 
 became more obscured and truth was still hidden in 
 propaganda ; while the foreigner, who was once declared 
 unfit for America because he lowered the standard of 
 living, was now declared undesirable because he joined the 
 Unions and claimed that the Slovak " patch " was a part 
 
310 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 of the world and should also be made " a decent place to 
 live in." 
 
 "America ne Dobra" (not good), the Slovaks com 
 plained, and it took all John Hruby's faith to make them 
 believe that America is good, even if it is not always 
 " fine," and that sanity would return with the final dec 
 laration of peace. His own faith had wavered, but he 
 had not lost it; he still believed that America would be 
 the salvation of the world, though he doubted its im- 
 mediateness and his own share in the deliverance. 
 
 Now that the grief of the universe was slowly being 
 assuaged, he came back more often to his own sorrow 
 and his mind leaped daily over the still closed barriers 
 to Hraszova, to his mother and father, and often, too 
 often, to Christina. 
 
 He knew that, though the patch of earth which he loved 
 was a part of the New Republic, he could not go back 
 there to live ; he was too much an American. He realized 
 that, soon after he returned there with his diploma, hop 
 ing to save Hraszova by his preaching. He was a 
 changed man, " for better, for worse " an American, and 
 the seven years of living here sharing in the national life 
 at its intensest point during the war had made that change 
 permanent and complete in spite of the persecutions to 
 which he had been subjected. 
 
 There was something in his heart which he did not 
 want to admit to himself for he was ashamed of it for 
 Sonya's sake. The thought of it blurred the memory of 
 the few happy years he had lived with her. He still loved 
 Christina, and while it was a love grown purer, it was 
 the more insistent. Perhaps he was but lonely he said 
 to himself when the spell of Christina was upon him; 
 perhaps it was the almost intolerable dominance of 
 Annenka, who had not sweetened with the year of her 
 restored authority over his household, or it may have 
 
THE ARMISTICE 311 
 
 been the thought of little Christina growing up without 
 a mother; perhaps, and then his heart would not follow 
 his mind, and he covered his eyes as if ashamed to see 
 himself a man who yearned for a mate. 
 
 He had written a letter to mail to Christina as soon 
 as the broken world was knitted together again. He had 
 rewritten it every day and he was only waiting for Hras- 
 zova to come within the zone of the restored world that 
 he might send it. 
 
 One afternoon his friends Wayne MacBlane and Pro 
 fessor Niederstadt were in his study. They were trying 
 as usual to settle the affairs of the unsettled universe and 
 talked about the League of Nations and disrupted 
 Europe's need of it; of the peace terms, which they 
 agreed were just but not generous, or calculated to de 
 crease the world's stock of hate, and, last but not least, of 
 the Bolsheviki, and of what the new experiment would 
 mean to the world. 
 
 Wayne MacBlane was a radical by nature and to him 
 every change meant progress. Like many young Ameri 
 cans he despaired of his country. " America has made no 
 progress in democracy," he declared, " since the war of 
 the revolution. Europe had its 1848 while the United 
 States had its'49, when the chance to chase for gold was 
 still equivalent to freedom, although even that chance had 
 been reduced to a minimum." 
 
 Professor Niederstadt was anti-Bolshevik, and though 
 he sympathized with the revolutionists, their program was 
 to him impossible and the means of carrying it out im 
 moral. 
 
 John Hruby, who knew the Slavs, believed in the 
 religiousness of the Russian spirit and rested his faith 
 upon the peasants of Russia who are natively Christian 
 and might evolve a new world order. 
 
 It was a long debate and they were happy because they 
 
312 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 could talk to each other freely and unburden their hearts, 
 and the circle, in which one could do that, had not wid 
 ened perceptibly. 
 
 In the midst of their discussion Annenka appeared with 
 a very thick letter, and her hand trembled as she held it, 
 for she had seen by the foreign stamps that it was from 
 the Old Country, and to her it was like the olive branch to 
 Noah, a sign that the flood had abated and that there was 
 dry land. 
 
 To John Hruby it meant more, for he recognized the 
 writing, and he tore open the envelope in haste, excusing 
 himself while he read. Page after page fell from his 
 hand, his eyes grew moist and once he rested his head on 
 the table and sighed deeply. The two friends made ready 
 to go that he might be alone with his grief or joy or 
 whatever it was which had broken through the years of 
 silence. He asked them if they would object to his read 
 ing the letter to them, and they were as eager as he had 
 been to hear the first tidings from the unlocked doors of 
 central Europe. Professor Niederstadt picked up the 
 fallen sheets and put them into their proper order, Wayne 
 MacBlane lighted another cigar, and then John Hruby 
 translated to them Christina's letter. 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: SANCTUS SPIRITUS 
 AND COMPANY 
 
 " Hraszova, Hungary, 
 
 " December 24, 1918. 
 Y dearly beloved Sister and Brother, 
 
 " I am writing this letter not knowing when or 
 where or how it will reach you, for while the war is over, 
 there is as yet no order, and I shall send it by Attorney 
 Finor, who goes to Prague as a member of the new gov 
 ernment. From there may it find its way to you as 
 God wills. 
 
 " I have been giving daily thanks that you are both 
 safely away in America where the world's sorrow may 
 have reached you as the waves of the stormy ocean sweep 
 against the safe shore. We have been in the midst of 
 the tempest and it is as if by a miracle that we survived 
 it, although there are many who have gone down whom 
 we have envied, as they went to their peaceful home. 
 Death has no terror for any one, but for the children who 
 do not know that the day's life, as God had ordered it, 
 was meant to be full of joy and not filled with an agony 
 which would break their little hearts if they knew the 
 difference. 
 
 " Even, as it is, the children play, but like old men and 
 women, for they have no such energy as we had when 
 we were young. Many of them do not know that they 
 are entitled to two parents, and they believe, as never be 
 fore, that the stork brought them and that he brought 
 them by the dozen to orphan asylums or to lone women 
 like myself; for I am now the mother of eighteen little 
 
 313 
 
314 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 ones whose fathers were killed or have been lost in the 
 great desert which the war has made out of our beauti 
 ful and verdant world, and whose mothers have perished 
 of hunger, or the anguish of childbirth, in so uselessly 
 renewing life. 
 
 " Dearest Sonya, what a happy mother you must be, 
 for you surely have children, and how thankful you ought 
 to be that your children were born in America. Our eyes 
 have been turned toward your happy country all these 
 years and we have expected from there our deliverance 
 from the war and from the famine which is now worse 
 than the war. 
 
 " How proud you must be of your President whose 
 name is upon our lips daily, as we pray to God to bring 
 this unhappy time to an end. Do you remember, Yanek, 
 how you talked about America when you were here ? It 
 seems now as if it were a hundred years ago. I scarcely 
 believed you when you said its people were so generous 
 and so unselfishly kind, but now that we have heard the 
 voice of America speaking to us, I know that you were 
 right in saying that it is the Promised Land, and that the 
 Kingdom of God came there before it reached the rest 
 of the world. 
 
 " Poor Babushka does not have to wait, she has gone 
 to her reward and sees her dear Jeshzitshek face to face. 
 She shared all she had with the poor, and she had a pain 
 less death! She just faded away from weakness and she 
 had no complaint upon her lips, and in her eyes was a 
 heavenly light. 
 
 The blessed old Starychek died in prison. He preached 
 against the war and they put him away. However, they 
 did not silence him. He converted his jailer and the old 
 soldiers who guarded the prison, and ' though he is dead 
 he yet speaketh.' 
 
 " Thank God, Dr. Makutchky is still alive, though how 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 315 
 
 he survived I do not know, for he worked day and night 
 with a self forgetful devotion, for which God will re 
 ward him. He did the work of ten men, having charge 
 of the hospital which was made out of the brewery. I 
 wish dear old Moritz Redlich might have been alive to 
 see that place put to such good use. 
 
 " I gave our house for the orphanage and I am living 
 with Mother Elzabetha. I should have told you about 
 your parents the first thing, dear brother, but my heart 
 is so full and I am writing hardly knowing where to 
 begin. Your dear mother is well and a great comfort to 
 me. We are sleeping together on the bake oven and we 
 often talk about you. She says, ' My Yanek would not 
 complain now of too many feather beds,' for she gave 
 them all to the hospital, and the dear soul misses nothing 
 so much as her feather beds. Now, dear Yanek, I have 
 some very sad news to tell you and what could you 
 expect but sad news ? Your dear father died an honor 
 able death. He volunteered for the transportation corps 
 and was driving our horses when a piece of shrapnel 
 struck him, killing him instantly. He was well prepared 
 for death for he trusted in the mercy of God, and is there 
 anything else in which we can put our trust ? 
 
 :< Your sister Katchka's husband is among the miss 
 ing, but we hope he may return from Russia where so 
 many of our boys are languishing. I ought to stop this 
 letter right here, for all the news I have to tell you is 
 bad news. There is not a house in Hraszova in which 
 there is anything but sorrow, and not one of us has been 
 spared from war, famine and pestilence. 
 
 " However, we had worse things than these to contend 
 with. In the beginning of the war, as you know, dear 
 Sonya, the officials flattered us and told our boys that the 
 king relied upon their bravery to save his kingdom, and 
 there were speeches and wreaths of flowers and the men 
 
316 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 received food when we had little or none. But when our 
 soldiers came back from Serbia and were sent to the Rus 
 sian front, they heard from their Czech brothers that they 
 were fighting to make the Germans and the Magyars 
 masters of the whole world, and that they were shedding 
 the blood of their own kin; so they laid down their arms 
 and were taken prisoners, though many of them died 
 heroically in battle. 
 
 " Afterwards \vhen the news came back to Hraszova 
 we were met everywhere with derision and were called 
 traitors and the food rations became smaller and our 
 cellars and granaries were raided and all the food taken 
 to Budapest, so that we were in danger of starvation. 
 
 " I went to the capital and made a remonstrance. I 
 was a lone weak woman, but God gave me strength and 
 the stony heart of Pharaoh was softened, and I was ap 
 pointed local food commissioner. I felt like Joseph in 
 Egypt, and God gave me the grace to save my people. 
 You ought to be on your knees daily, dear brother and 
 sister, that you are living in a country where you are not 
 persecuted because of your race or speech. Sometimes, 
 when I was very weak, I envied you. May God forgive 
 me! It was not often, for I rejoice that you are safe in 
 each other's love and safe in that blessed America. 
 
 "Of course you know that we no longer belong to 
 Hungary and that we are rid of our masters. I have no 
 Shadenfreude as the Germans call it, but it was like the 
 day of judgment when the Czechs came into Hraszova 
 and the Magyar officials were sent beyond the new border. 
 Many of them denied their nationality and begged to 
 remain, for the conditions there are worse than here. At 
 least we have some order, over there they have anarchy, 
 and no one feels safe, even of his life. 
 
 " I went out to the cemetery and told my dear school- 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 317 
 
 master all about it, though I think he knows. I wonder 
 if our beloved dead can be happy over anything? 
 
 " Dr. Makutchky is not elated over the situation. He 
 thinks we have only changed masters, although thus far 
 the Czechs have been kind to us. They have nothing to 
 give us but good will, but even that is a godsend at a 
 time like this. 
 
 " However, the joy of being a free people was short 
 lived, for the famine is worse than ever, and I have a hard 
 time making the little we have go all around. Human 
 nature is a frail and sometimes a brutal thing and honest 
 people have turned into thieves, and there are more 
 murders in a month than we knew of in our whole lives. 
 No one knows the truth, no one trusts another, and I have 
 been called cruel. Twice I have been stoned because I 
 tried to be fair and deal out to all alike the little we have. 
 It seems strange that those who were poor and whom 
 we called wicked have been the most honest, and the good 
 people have been the worst. I think I can understand it, 
 they were good because they were prosperous. Don't 
 think that I have lost my faith in goodness and truth and 
 love, though there is but little left of all the good things 
 for which the human race has striven so long ; yet I have 
 been richly blessed and I must not complain. 
 
 " I am waiting for news from you every day. How 
 long it seems, dearest Sonya, since you left us, and 
 Yanek, too, we miss; but you will surely come to us 
 when the world has stopped reeling and we know the 
 straight road again. 
 
 ' Tell me all about your dear selves and about the 
 children. How old are they and what have you named 
 them? Mother Elzabetha says you must have two chil 
 dren, a boy and a girl. We believe what we want, do we 
 not? How happy she would be to see you and your 
 
318 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 children. She wants me to tell you that she has not 
 ceased praying for you and is daily sending her good 
 wishes across the sea. The dear, sweet soul ! She is a 
 saint, and God will reward her. 
 
 " I ought to close this letter, but I know there are more 
 things you want to know about us, just as we want to 
 know about every detail of your lives. 
 
 Father Anton Kalman passed away only a few months 
 ago. He came down from Boor and took charge of his 
 own beloved flock when Father Baczko went to the war. 
 He came back to Hraszova this year, but the people drove 
 him out, they hated him so and spared his life only be 
 cause Father Kalman protected him and sent him away 
 in the night. 
 
 " Helena, his niece, who kept house for him in Boor, 
 came back with him and she has been a very angel to the 
 people. All Father Kalman's goodness seems to have 
 come to her, and while she can not be a Father of The 
 Church she has been both father and mother to the people. 
 I don't know what I should have done without her. She 
 is a very beautiful woman, and people kiss her hand when 
 they pass her as if she were really a priest or a holy nun. 
 
 " Sophie Redlich inquired after you both whenever she 
 thought we might have heard about you or from you. She 
 has completely recovered and bears her burden and the 
 burdens of others as her father used to. Her stepmother 
 is living and is a great cross to her. She is dissolute and 
 has taken to drinking, and is the most pitiable sight I have 
 ever seen. It takes grace to bear with her and Sophie has 
 that grace, though she is not a Christian. 
 
 " She has worked day and night, for she has charge of 
 the Jewish hospital, and besides that she has had to pro 
 tect the Jews as best she could, for they have suffered 
 more than we. God must have some special mission for 
 them for they are tried as if by fire, and the fire burns 
 
SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 319 
 
 hottest for them in this terrible time when hatreds are ten 
 times as strong as in times of peace. We are often to 
 gether, Helena, Sophie and I, and we talk about the days 
 when our dear old men lived together like brothers. 
 
 " The past seems to unite us three old maids. The 
 people laugh when they see us together, and now they 
 call us Sanctus Spiritus and Company, and we hope we 
 may be worthy of that holy name. 
 
 " This is a very long letter, my dear ones, and I must 
 stop for it is time for me to put my little orphans to bed. 
 Let me hear from you as often as possible. Do not think 
 I am unhappy in my own life. My work is very absorb 
 ing, and I thank God I can be of use in the world. 
 
 " God bless you both, is my prayer. 
 
 " Lovingly your sister, 
 
 " CHRISTINA/' 
 
 John Hruby had to stop many times, for he was over 
 come by his emotions, and his friends begged him not to 
 go on if it gave him pain, but he read nearly to the end, 
 omitting only the very last of the letter. 
 
 When he finished reading he looked up with a happy 
 smile and said : " Thank God ! Sanctus Spiritus and 
 Company have risen from the dead." 
 
 Wayne MacBlane wanted to know just who or what 
 Sanctus Spiritus and Company were, and Professor 
 Niederstadt looked at him eager for an explanation. 
 Then he told them the story of the three old men. Of 
 Father Anton Kalman, Pan Yan Szenitzky and Moritz 
 Redlich, who were the survivors of the good old time 
 when men of different races and faiths could live to 
 gether like brothers, and how one by one they went down 
 under the new nationalism, which claimed not only them 
 as a sacrifice, but drew nearly ten million more men into 
 the abyss, and almost wrecked the world. 
 
320 SANCTUS SPIRITUS AND COMPANY 
 
 They listened to the long, strange story and, as they 
 separated, they knew that the New World, for which 
 mankind was waiting, could not come, unless everywhere 
 men of good will walked with Sanctus Spiritus and 
 Company. 
 
 THE END 
 
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 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 SEP 2 3 1991 
 
 JUN Q 3 1998 
 
N9 766263 
 
 PS3537 
 Steiner, E.A. 
 
 Sanctus Spiritus 83 
 and company. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS