but there was nothing else to be done. He asked him how long he had
been in his workshop, what money he had drawn, and made the calculation
as to how much he had still to receive.
Sandu felt as if the house were falling about his ears--he could not
keep him any longer? The blow was a heavy one.
"You have twenty-seven florins to come to you," said Master Dinu, and
he did not seem to have the courage to look Sandu in the face. "Here
are thirty, so that you do not lose your daily pay up to the beginning
of next week. May God give you good fortune, you are a good man,
and an honest, but I--I can no longer keep you. I am sorry, but I
cannot help it. God be with you."
And so saying, Master Dinu went away.
Lost in thought Sandu stood gazing in front of him, seeing
nothing. After a while he sighed heavily, picked up his money, and with
a heart that seemed turned to ice he went off to collect all he had,
poor man, in the way of clothes and linen, before he took the road.
He collected all his possessions, but he could not make up his mind to
take leave of the men with whom he had worked so long. Even Iotza was
sorry, for Sandu had been kind, and never spoken a rude word to him.
"I am sorry to leave you," said Sandu, and he felt as if his heart
was breaking.
"God be with you," replied they, and holding out their hands they
accompanied him outside.
Iotza went a little way with him.
"Sandu, listen; I cannot bear not to tell you, but I know the mistress
and you, and I know you want to go and say good-bye to her. Don't go,
listen to me: it was not the master, it was she who said you were to
be dismissed. Don't go, it is better not to go."
Sandu made no reply.
They went a few steps farther together and parted. The nearer he drew
to Master Dinu's house, the more he longed to enter. He felt as though
some one were urging him to go in.
When he was quite near the door Master Dinu came out into the
street. When he saw Sandu he stopped.
"You are going?"
"I am going, master, but I wanted to take leave of the mistress."
"As the mistress is not at home let me tell her."
Sandu bent his head.
"Good luck to you, master."
"May God be with you!"
With slow and heavy step Sandu took the road to the market-place. At
the corner he stopped. He turned his head and looked back along the
street towards Master Dinu's house.
He had crossed the square and was on the bridge when he met Nitza
Burencea.
"What's up, Sandu, have you left? Where are you going?"
Sandu, like a person awakened out of a trance, with his eyes fastened
dreamily upon the distant horizon, answered in a troubled voice:
"I go out into the world!"
THE BIRD OF ILL OMEN
By I. AL. BRATESCU-VOINESHTI
Conu Costache had one of the pleasantest faces in the town.
Men of the same age as himself said he was nearly seventy years old;
but a life free from care, a comfortable fortune, a wife as loving
as a sister, two children who were getting on well, and, above all,
his own kindly nature, had kept him so healthy, quick of movement
and clear of mind, that one would not have given him fifty years.
He told stories with a charm and humour that gathered an audience round
him whenever he opened his mouth; and as he had travelled much abroad,
and was also a sportsman, he knew every kind of amusing anecdote.
This man, who was as good as new bread, always smiling, whose person
seemed to radiate joy, became acrimonious and impatient every time his
game of Preference went badly; it was the one and only, but the daily
game of cards he played. He did not get angry out of stinginess--he was
not a miser; on the contrary, he was open-handed, that was his nature.
If it happened that he "entered" twice in succession, or if he got
irritated with his partners, he grew furious. Everything seemed wrong
to him; the jam was sour, the coffee too sweet, the water too cold,
the lamp too dim, the chalk was not sharp enough; he shouted at the
boy who served him; he changed his chair because it squeaked; he
hammered upon the table with his fists until the candlesticks jumped;
he looked daggers over his spectacles at anyone who made a joke--I
assure you, he was in a vile temper, as vile a temper as a man could
be in, when he had no other place in which to give vent to it.
His partners knew him, and were aware that five minutes after the
game was over he would become once more kind, amiable, and amusing
Conu Costache.
If you were sitting near him when he was playing Preference, you should
get up the first time he "entered"; shouldn't wait for him to say to
you: "Can't you get away, my good fellow; you spoil my luck!" One day,
after two "entries," he said to a person with whom he had only just
become acquainted and who would not move away from his side:
"Excuse me, sir, but I believe in birds of ill omen. This game is a
question of faces. I can scarcely compose my own face; I certainly
cannot compose yours. Kindly move a little farther off! Thank
you. Don't be offended."
Ever since that day, the onlookers at the game have been given
the name of birds of ill omen, and they swarmed in the room where
Conu Costache played; if the game went well he was affable and they
listened to him with pleasure--if the game went badly, they moved
away from him and made fun of his ill humour.
One evening the Prefect gave a party. The young people danced in
the drawing-room; their elders assembled in the other rooms; Conu
Costache sat at a table playing Preference with three other people;
among them was the attorney, a cunning player with a special talent
for making him lose his temper; a large audience had gathered round.
Conu Costache was losing: he was angry, but controlled himself--he
could not give vent to his annoyance, for there were ladies
present. Conu and his friends were playing in the middle of the room;
he had barely scored six, and had entered the pool with thirteen.
At this moment an old lady approached. She was a Moldavian, the mother
of Dr. Ionashcu. She took a chair, seated herself by Conu Costache
with the calm serenity of the aged, who neither see nor hear well.
There she remained.
From time to time she gently put a question to Conu Costache; it had
the same effect upon his agitation as does oil upon a fire of coals.
"How beautiful it must be at your country-house now, Mr. Costache!"
"Beautiful, Mrs. Raluca," he replied, forcing himself to smile--and
chalking himself another eighteen in the pool.
"I expect you often go there, as it is so close."
"I went to-day, Mrs. Raluca."
No words can describe the contrast between the placidity with which
Mrs. Raluca told her beads, and the fury with which Conu Costache
shuffled his cards.
"Is it a good harvest, Mr. Costache?"
"G--g--good, Mrs. Raluca," he replied, thrusting both hands inside
the neck of his shirt to loosen the collar.
The game began, the attorney played below the ace, Conu Costache
named the suit for the second time.
"Have you got a good road along there now?"
"Y--y--yes, Mrs. Raluca."
It was a wonder his handkerchief did not rub the skin off his forehead,
he mopped it with such vigour. His partners and the onlookers shook
with laughter; the attorney did not give way at all, he saw how
furious he was; he bid with nothing in his hand, and passed just in
time to make him "enter" a second time.
And at this moment Mrs. Raluca's questions fell one after the other
as fast as the beads of a rosary. She did not hear the rustling of
the cards nor the choking in Conu Costache's throat, she did not see
his misery nor the amusement of the others.
"But they have cut down the lovely wood on the right, haven't they,
Mr. Costache?"
"Th--th--they have cut it down, Mrs. Raluca," he answered, gazing at
the ceiling and pressing his temples between his hands.
He bid and came in, said "Play"--and found two clubs in the talon which
he did not want. Such a collection of cards you have never seen; it
might have been done on purpose. If you had tried to arrange them so,
you could not have done it. It was a regular "walk-over": one cut four
honours, the other cut the spades, and out of the eight games won five.
All he cut was an ace, and a pair. He put forty-eight in the pool.
"But the little lake still lies on the left, doesn't it, Mr. Costache?"
"St--st--still, Mrs. Raluca."
With a small brush he violently effaced the whole row of his stakes
chalked on the cloth and wrote down a total of ninety-four in huge
figures.
"But I must ask you, the inn----"
Conu Costache turned his chair right round.
"Mrs. Raluca, to-morrow afternoon my wife and I are going to our
country-house--we will come and pick you up. In this way you will see
how they cut down the wood on the right; you will see how the storks
walk by the lake on the left; you will see how they have repaired
the bridges; you will see how they have renovated the inn at the
cross-gates; you will see what a nice house Ionitza Andrescu from
Ulmi has built; you will see what big reservoirs the Aurora factory
have erected by the road...."
Mrs. Raluca understood and took her departure, telling her beads as she
went, but even when she had passed into the third room Conu Costache
still continued, while the others were convulsed with laughter:
"You will see how illegible the figures on the 76 milestone have
become; you will see how the boys have broken the insulators on the
telegraph posts by throwing stones at them; you will see how the
geese hiss when the carriage passes by; you will see----"
Then, turning back to his partners, who laughed till the tears ran
down their cheeks, he groaned:
"Terrible bird of ill omen!"
IRINEL
By B. DELAVRANCEA
When my parents died, both in the same year, I was quite small;
I think I must have been about seven years old.
I wanted to cry over them both, for I loved them both, but when I
approached their coffin I was not alone.
You must know that my father left a considerable fortune.
There were many people about him who could not endure him.
There was talk of a will.
There was one member of the family about whom my father said: "It is
so long since he crossed our threshold that I do not understand why
he is so offended with us."
It is unkind to tell you: it was his brother and my uncle, a very
good man, with only one fault--he had lost his entire fortune at
cards. I found among my father's papers a quantity of his I.O.U.'s,
beautifully signed with flourishes, but unpaid.
I approached the coffin; I was sure that I should weep as no one had
ever wept before.
My home without my parents!
Some one took me by the hand, and said to me as he kissed me on
both cheeks:
"Iorgu, Iorgu, cry, Iorgu, for those who will never return!"
It was he! The uncle of the promissory notes!
Just when my eyes ought to have been full of tears, I caught sight
of him, and when I looked round me and saw the other people, when I
met so many pairs of eyes, then--I was ashamed and could not cry. Oh,
it is a terrible thing to feel ashamed to cry when one is sorrowing!
Do you see how shy I am? Have you grasped it? It is difficult to
understand. It is difficult, because you, readers, are different. Not
one of you are the same as I am.
I was so good and timid that, when I completed my twenty-first year, I
did not want to leave the guardianship of my eldest uncle, my mother's
brother, a very gentle man like myself, and very shy like my mother.
It makes me laugh. Is it likely I shall tell you an untruth? Why
should I? I don't ask you anything, you don't ask me anything. Why
should I lie?
But it is true that I have not told you quite openly why I did not
ask for an account of my minority, and why I stayed in that house,
which was as white as milk--especially on moonlight nights--with its
balcony, its oak staircase, its pillars with flowered capitals and
wreaths round their centres.
Did I like the house? Yes.
Did I love my uncle who had managed my affairs? Yes. Was I ashamed,
directly I came of age, to demand an account as though I doubted his
honesty? Yes. Anything besides? Was there anything else that kept me
in bondage?
If you had looked at me a little askance, I should have blushed and
replied, "Yes." And if you were to look at me even now when I have
already grown many white hairs, I should tell you like a guilty child:
"No, it is not true that I loved so much the house in which I grew up,
or the uncle with whom I lived. There was something else."
There was some one there besides a cousin of the same age as myself,
besides my uncle--my aunt was dead--besides the house, and a
long-haired dog. There was somebody else!
Ah! This sort of somebody has reformed many a ne'er-do-well, has
dazzled many a shy man, has turned many business men into poets,
has shaken many a professor to the depths of his being, blowing away
his system like the threads of a spider's web.
No doubt it was a very fascinating "somebody" who made you stay in
tutelage twenty-four hours after you had reached your twenty-first
year and come into 15,000 lei.
I think you have guessed the secret which I have hidden till now.
Oh, women, women! What do they care for the timid or the philosopher?
Neither innocence nor philosophy can resist a light step and a pair
of eyes which sparkle and glow and pierce through the coldest, most
selfish, most impenetrable heart.
Was it not the same Irinel, with whom I once played childish games? Was
she not the same wild tomboy with her frocks down to her knees only,
and her white stockings that became green by the evening? Was she
not the same little demon who threw her books into the veranda on
her return from school, and put both arms round my neck to make me
give her a ride on my back?
The child turned into the woman, and instead of the gentle eyes with
their extreme innocence in which I lost myself as in a boundless
expanse, there shone two devilish fires in whose light I saw an
explanation of life with all its sea of pleasures and emotions.
And now Irinel used to take me by the hand. She was fifteen years old;
for some time her hand had felt different--warmer, softer, more I don't
know what, when I took it in mine. Her gaiety was no longer even and
continual as of old; she no longer talked quickly and incessantly.
And if I said to her: "Irinel, do you think it will rain to-day?" or
"Irinel, there are only two weeks before the long vacation begins,
shall you be pleased, as you used to be, when we go to Slanic?" Irinel
remained silent, looking straight in front of her, and I am sure that
at that moment she saw nothing--trees, houses, and sky disappeared
as though in a thick mist.
This silence surprised and disquieted me, and I said to her in a low
voice, almost as though I were guilty of something wrong:
"Irinel, you are scarcely back from school and you are bored already?"
An exaggerated gaiety was her immediate reply; she laughed, and
talked, and told little anecdotes which she began and left unfinished,
especially about life at school.
"You don't know," she said to me in a quick, loud voice, "what a
letter one of my friends showed me. Only I read it, and another girl
and her sister, and it seems to me she showed it to some others. I
nearly died of laughter."
And Irinel began to laugh, and laughed and laughed until the tears
ran down her rosy cheeks. Then sighing and laughing she began:
"He wrote to her, trembling, of stars, two only, which burnt and
spoke to him. How can the stars he talks about burn? Are they bits of
coal? How can stars speak? I don't understand. After that came ice,
thawing, marble, a bed of fire, a monastery, suicide--Ah! pauvre
Marie! Indeed, I was sorry for her, poor girl! Many a time we put our
arms round each other's necks and kissed each other. We kissed each
other and began to cry. You must know, Iorgu, that we kept nothing
from each other. Every Monday she read me a letter on which could
be seen traces of big tears, and I, after I had controlled myself
sufficiently not to burst out laughing over those 'two twin stars
which burn and speak,' had to prepare to cry, and, believe me,
I cried with all my heart. Pauvre cherie!"
Irinel was ready to cry after laughing with such enjoyment, but, when
she noticed that I kept my eyes cast down and listened in silence as
though I were offended, she asked me with malicious irony:
"Iorgu, do you think it will rain to-day?"
Such scenes took place early in the morning: Sunday was a day
of torture for me. All day Irinel said "If you please" to me. She
embroidered or played the piano instead of our walking about the yard
and garden. All day I felt the terrible anger of a very shy person with
"those two stars which speak."
For three years I lived this life of daring dreams during the week,
of fear and misery on Sunday, of wonderful plans put off from day
to day, and concealed with an hypocrisy possessed only by the timid
and innocent.
During the last year, after a vacation passed at Slanic, I made up
my mind.
The day she went back to school we hardly dared kiss each other. What
cold kisses! We neither of us looked at the other. I remember I looked
at the sofa, and it seemed to me as though my lips had touched the
hard yellow material instead of those firm, rosy cheeks which were
to me a fearful joy.
I made up my mind, and I am sure that no one could have come to a
more heroic decision.
To give myself courage, during the first night I thought out the
scene which should take place the following Sunday without fail. I
did not sleep all night; in the intense darkness I saw the garden,
I saw Irinel, I heard myself, I heard her.
The cocks crew. I was lying at full length, my face uppermost,
my eyes shut. I was perspiring from the boldness which I had shown
during the scene which was running in my mind.
"Irinel, will you come and walk in the garden?"
"No, merci!"
"That will not do, we must go for a walk."
She understood that I had decided to say something important to
her. Such courage impressed and compelled.
The cocks crew. It was midnight. It was pouring; flashes of lightning,
like serpents of light, shone for a second through my curtains.
"Irinel, you must come with me. Don't you see what a beautiful day
it is? I have discovered a bunch of ripe grapes which I have kept
for you all the week."
"No, merci!"
"It is impossible for you not to come. I have made up my mind to tell
you something----"
"What?" replied Irinel, and turned her eyes upon me.
Who could bear such a bright light? I looked down, but revolted by
such cowardice I felt the courage of a hero, and lifting my head I
replied to her:
"You must come!"
In all my life I had never commanded anyone. I was ordering her!
It was pitch dark; it was raining outside. I turned towards the
wall. I closed my eyes. It was light. It was a beautiful Sunday. And
still full of that courage I said to her once more:
"You must come!"
And I took her by the hand. From now on my heart almost ceased to
beat. I told her all I had wanted to say to her for two years.
"Irinel, Irinel, I love you! Do you love me? Why are you silent? Why do
you look down? Tell me, shall I leave the house where I have watched
you growing up under my eyes, or----"
"Stay!"
We embraced each other; we kissed each other. It was over.
Lord! How brave men are when they are in love!
I grew cold all over when I reflected that this scene had not yet
taken place, but was still to come. I sank down under my quilt afraid
of such courage.
It began to grow light. I went off to sleep gradually, rehearsing
this heroic scene:
"Irinel, will you come for a walk?"
"No, merci!"
"This cannot be, you must----"
The next day I woke up about ten o'clock. My uncle asked me in his
kind, calm voice:
"Iorgu, are you not well that you got up so late to-day?"
I, feeling myself in fault, replied, embarrassed:
"No--a book--I went to sleep late."
My ears were burning as though I had held them against a hot stove.
The veranda seemed to be giving way under me. Do you know, at that
moment a thought crossed my mind that overwhelmed me? Irinel was only
Irinel, but, with my uncle, what courage I should need! How would he,
an old man of pious habits, regard in his old age a marriage within
the prohibited degree among members of his own family?
Why did he stand in front of me? Why did he look at me like that? He
understood me and was appraising me! His look spoke, though his lips
most certainly did not move. I heard the words passing through his
mind as distinctly as though some one had whispered in my ear:
"I never could have believed, nephew, that you would have turned my
child's head! What would your mother say were she alive to see this?"
Why did not my uncle turn away from me? Was he looking at me or
elsewhere? What else was there to see? I do not know if the fault
was great, but the judge was cruel. And my judge grew bigger, like
a Titan, like a wall between me and Irinel. In my ears there rang
what I am convinced was the sentence he had secretly passed on me:
"What a depraved youth! The old are passing away, and with them
disappear the old moral ideas!"
I was ready to sink under my chair. My uncle said to me:
"Iorgu, you have not had any coffee. It seems to me you are not well,
are you?"
What irony! Were his words more gentle than before? Useless thought! I
understood him. God defend you from a good man who disapproves
of you. It's bad enough to feel oneself guilty before a good and
upright man.
Why was punishment for mankind invented? Punishment is the reward of
sin. I could have wished that my uncle would pronounce his sentence
of punishment. But no, he has taken me prisoner, he has judged me and,
instead of punishing me, he stoops to give me coffee and two rolls. In
all my life I had never experienced a greater agony.
No doubt he had seen us walking silently together, not gaily as we
used to do. He understood why Irinel stayed in the house on one or two
Sundays. Of course he knew why I did not go to sleep till early dawn,
and who knows, he might have heard me calling in my dreams:
"Irinel, Irinel, I love you! Do you love me?"
What would my uncle think of his daughter married to his sister's
son? It would mean asking for a dispensation. Would it not be turning
such a religious man into an object of derision in his old age? And
for what reason? Just through the caprice of a boy whom he had brought
up and cared for.
Irinel and I had grown up together more like brother and sister than
cousins! If there had only been a question of the civil right! But
the laws of the Church! How could one trample them underfoot?
Throughout the week, early in the morning, at night and through the
day, at meals and during school hours, this thought occupied my mind!
"It is impossible! It is impossible! I wonder that I did not see
that sooner."
About six o'clock on Saturday our old carriage turned into the
courtyard; inside was my uncle and by him sat Irinel. From the
oak steps of the veranda I watched the white hair and the golden
curls and, scarcely able to control my tears, I said to myself:
"It is impossible."
Irinel sprang from the carriage and came up to me. She was happy. We
kissed each other, but, believe me, she seemed to kiss in the air.
"What's the matter, Iorgu? You are very pale. You are thinner, or
does it only seem so to me?"
Before I could answer her my uncle hastened, hastened to say:
"I don't know what's the matter with Iorgu. It seems to me he is ill,
but he will not say so."
Oh! Oh! You don't know what is the matter with me, uncle? You don't
know what is the matter? It seems to you I am ill? I do not want to
tell you? Do you say what is the matter with you? You are a good man,
but what a hypocrite----
He thinks I do not understand him.
To Irinel I say gently:
"There is nothing the matter, Irinel. But you, are you well?"
And so it went on--nearly a whole year of depression.
Why should I tell you that I grew thinner and paler, that I often
shivered, and with secret pleasure, exaggerated a little cough when
I walked in the garden with Irinel? You have seen so many thin and
pale men, and you have read so many novels in which consumptive lovers
either shoot themselves or throw themselves into the sea, so that if
I told you that I grew thinner, that I took to playing billiards,
that I began to drink, and that once I drank three half bottles in
succession, you would only yawn.
There is nothing remarkable in the love and depression of a nervous
person. Who would remain, even for an instant, with a man who suffers
in silence? And I kept silence from St. Mary's day to St. Peter's.
"What is the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
"Are you ill?"
"No, uncle; no, dear Irinel."
At last the momentous day arrived! Irinel finished the last year of
her education. On the 20th of June she left school for good.
That very day she asked my uncle abruptly to what watering-place we
were going, and on hearing came into my room.