Once more my father sighed heavily. I was no longer looking at him. I
only heard his sighs, long, deep, and convulsive, and I know not to
this day whether he himself overcame the frenzy that possessed him or
whether it failed to find an outlet owing to an unexpected occurrence.
I only know that at that critical moment Tiburtsi suddenly shouted
under the open window in his harsh voice:
“Hi, there, my poor little friend!”
“Tiburtsi is here!” flashed through my mind, but his coming made no
other impression on me. I was all beside myself with suspense, and did
not even heed the trembling of my father’s hand upon my shoulder, or
realise that Tiburtsi’s appearance or any other external circumstance
could come between my father and myself, or could avert that which I
believed to be inevitable, and which I was awaiting with such a flood
of passionate anger.
Meanwhile Tiburtsi had quickly opened the door of the room, and now
stood on the threshold embracing us both with his piercing, lynx-like
glance. I can remember to this day the smallest details of the scene.
For a moment a flash of cold, malevolent mockery gleamed in the
greenish eyes and passed over the wide, uncouth face of this gutter
orator, but it was only a flash. Then he shook his head, and there was
more of sorrow than of his accustomed irony in his voice as he said:
“Oho, I see that my young friend is in an awkward situation.”
My father received him with a gloomy, threatening look, but Tiburtsi
endured it calmly. He had grown serious now, and his mockery had
ceased. There was a striking look of sadness in his eyes.
“My Lord Judge,” he said gently. “You are a just man; let the child go!
The boy has been ‘in bad company,’ but God knows he has done no bad
deeds, and if his little heart is drawn toward my unfortunate people,
I swear to the Queen of Heaven that you may hang me if you wish, but I
will not allow the boy to suffer for that. Here is your doll, my lad.”
He untied a little bundle, and took out the doll.
The hands that had been gripping my shoulder relaxed. My father looked
surprised.
“What does this mean?” he asked at last.
“Let the boy go!” Tiburtsi repeated, stroking my bowed head lovingly
with his broad palm. “You will get nothing out of him with your
threats, and besides, I will gladly tell you everything you want to
know. Come, Your Honour, let us go into another room.”
My father consented, with his eyes fixed in surprise on Tiburtsi’s
face. They went out together, and I stayed rooted to the spot,
overwhelmed with the emotions with which my heart was bursting. At
that moment I was unconscious of what was going on around me, and if,
in calling to mind the details of this scene, I remember that sparrows
were twittering outside the window and that the rhythmic splash of
the water-wheel came to me from the river, why that is only the
mechanical action of my memory. Nothing external existed for me then;
there existed only a little boy in whose breast two separate emotions
were seething: anger and love; seething so fiercely that my heart was
troubled as a glass of water is dimmed when two different liquids
are poured into it at the same time. Such a little boy existed, and
that boy was I; I was even sorry, in a way, for myself. There existed
also two voices, that came to me from the next room in a confused but
animated conversation.
I was still standing on the same spot when the study door opened, and
both talkers came into the room. Once more I felt a hand on my head,
and trembled.
It was my father’s, and he was tenderly stroking my hair.
Tiburtsi took my hands, and set me upon his knees right in my father’s
presence.
“Come and see us,” he said. “Your father will let you come and say
good-bye to my little girl. She--she is dead.”
Tiburtsi’s voice trembled, and he winked his eyes queerly, but he at
once rose quickly to his feet, set me down on the floor, pulled himself
together, and left the room.
I raised my eyes inquiringly to my father’s face. Another man was
standing before me now, and there was something lovable about him
which I had sought in vain before. He was looking at me with his usual
pensive gaze, but there was a shade of surprise in his eyes, and what
might have been a question. The storm which had just passed over our
heads seemed to have dispelled the heavy mist that had lain on my
father’s soul and frozen the gentle, kind expression on his face. He
now seemed to recognise in me the familiar features of his own son.