Božena Němcová

“ When Bára frowned her face resembled the sky covered with black clouds, from which only a bit of blue shone forth. But she seldom wore a frown, except when the youngsters called her names, saying she had bull's eyes. Then her eyes flashed with anger and often she would burst into tears. But Jacob would always say: “You foolish girl, why do you mind them? I, too, have big eyes. And even if they are ‘bull’s eyes,’ that’s nothing bad. Why, the dumb animals can look at a man far more kindly than those human beings there!” At this he would always point with his stick towards the village. ”

“ High above the heads of the girls the lark soared, singing, and above the summit of the green forests the sun was rising, pouring its golden glow over the emerald valley. Jacob came out in front of the cottage and the sound of the shepherd’s horn reminded the girls it was time to go home.
“Along the way we can tell each other,” said Bára, leading Elška by the hand from the bridge to the meadow path.
“But how did you guess it about me?” questioned Elška.
“Dear Lord, that’s easy to know. You are often absorbed in thought, sometimes you’re sad and then again your face fairly glows. ”

“ And there were so many people on the streets as if there were a procession, some of them dressed in holiday costume even on the week days, carriages driving by constantly, turmoil and noise so that a person doesn’t know who is with them. Just wait. Next year you and I will go there together to a church pilgrimage,” added Elška.
“What would I do there! People would laugh at me!” said Bára.
“Don’t believe it, dear. There, on the streets one person doesn’t notice another, one doesn’t even greet another in passing.”
“I wouldn’t like that. That must be a strange world,” Bára wondered. ”

“ The village herdsman was called Jacob and, lived with his daughter, Bára, in the last cottage. Jacob was in his sixties and Bára was his first-born and only child. To be sure he had wished for a son to inherit his name, but when Bára grew older he did not regret that she was a girl. She was dearer to him than a son and many times he thought to himself: “Even though she is a girl, she is my own. I shall die like a man and I have, as a father, a stepping-stone to heaven.” ”

“ After dinner, when the priest was napping and Miss Pepinka was also dozing a little, Elška stole out from the room and ran down to Bára. Her eyes were red with weeping and she was shaking with fear. Violently she threw her arms around Bára’s neck and fell to sobbing anew.
“There, there, be quiet!” Bára consoled her. “Don’t worry! Just let’s be content if that cricket doesn’t come courting you again, and he’d have to be a man without any sense of honor at all if he’d dare come another time. The rest will right itself!” ”

“ Elška related almost tearfully.
“Why, is he displeasing?”
“Oh, Bára!” sighed the girl. “A man as handsome as he is cannot be found in the whole countryside!”
“Perhaps he isn't rich?”
“Rich? That I don’t know. But what of it? What do riches amount to?”
“That’s true, but your auntie will want you to marry a wealthy man who will provide well for you.”
“No, no, Bára. I won’t marry anyone else. I’d rather die!”
“Well, it won’t be as bad as that. And even if he isn’t rich, Miss Pepinka and your uncle will listen to reason when you tell them—that you love him.” ”

“ The parsonage was her Prague
There were some voices in the village which said: “One must give the girl all honor as having skill and strength which no girl and very few men can equal. What girl can carry two buckets full of water and yet walk as if she were toying with them? And who can look after a herd as she can? A horse or bull, a cow or sheep, all obey her, she controls all of them. Such a girl is a real blessing in a household.” ”

“ I sent her a mirror so that she might first look at her own beauty before she found fault with others’ looks.”
“You did just the right thing,” laughed Elška. “But why does she hate you so?”
“Oh, she’s a hard one. She stings everyone with her basilisk eye, not only me. Perhaps she dislikes me because I am in better standing with your people than is Josífek and because Josífek likes me. The poor fellow gets a beating every time his mother learns that he has been to see me. ”

“ I knew that you would find a man who would truly love you. You must love her deeply—for she deserves it most fully,” the good girl said, turning to the huntsman and extending her hand, which he clasped earnestly.
The huntsman wished very much to take Bára with him at once, but things did not move as rapidly as that, as Miss Pepinka would not consent to let Bára go before the formal wedding. Better to have all three publications of the banns of marriage at once when the bridegroom is impatient. Jacob, too, could not at once tear himself from the herdsman’s cottage. ”

“ You are well educated and I am a simple, stupid girl—and I am to think of a husband, and you not?”
“Auntie has always told me that it all depends on taste. To one a carnation is most becoming, to another a rose, to a third a violet. Every flower finds its own admirer, each has its own kind of beauty. Do not underrate yourself nor overvalue me; we are equals. Aren’t you truly going to think of any of the boys, or haven’t you thought of any as yet?”
“No, no,” Bára shook her head, smilingly. “I don’t think of any of them, and when they come a-courting I make short work of them. ”

“ Three years had passed since Elška had gone away to Prague. At first neither Miss Pepinka nor the priest could become accustomed to her absence and were very lonely for her. When, however, the sexton reminded them why they had sent Elška from home, Miss Pepinka always said, very sententiously: “My dear Vlček, man must not live for today, we must think for the future. We God—granting—will get through life somehow, but Elška is young and that we must keep in mind. To save money—how in the name of the dear God can we do it—when we have none! ”

“ Elška was eager to go at once to Bára, but was not permitted to do so.
Jacob, knowing nothing of his daughter’s secret doings, as usual took his horn the next morning and went out to call together his herd. But, to his amazement, nowhere were the gates opened—just as if during the night all the cattle had perished or as if the servants had overslept. He went up to the very houses and sounded his horn—loudly enough to call the dead from their graves. The cows bellowed, to be sure, but no one went to let them out. The maid-servants came out and said: “You are not to drive out our cows any more. ”

“ Elška, with clasped hands on the railing of the bridge, gazed with flaming eye and cheek after the wreath now carried by a strong current. Bára, leaning against the rail, also looked silently after it.
“And your wreath was caught here. See, you will marry someone right here!” exclaimed Elška turning to Bára.
“According to that, it looks as if we weren’t to be together, after all. I am to stay here and you are to go far away from us. But I don’t believe in it. Man plans but God decrees.” ”

“ Don’t bring that girl into our family. No man can say how things will turn out with her. She is the wild sort—bewitched!”
And so none of the boys were permitted to court her seriously, and to attempt it in sport no one of them dared. Bára would not let herself be ruled nor would she be blinded by flattering words. The sexton’s wife hated her most of all, although Bára never laid so much as a straw across her path. Indeed, on the contrary, she did good by protecting Josífek from the revenge of the boys. ”

“ The priest gave long-drawn-out admonitions to Bára and then sent her to the servants’ hall to await judgment. He took consultation with the mayor, aldermen and the schoolmaster, and they decided that since Bára had caused such a general scandal and had been so audacious she must be publicly chastised. As a punishment they condemned her to remain shut up for one whole night in the vault at the cemetery. It seemed to all a terrible punishment, but since she had been so bold and unabashed, let her learn, they said, what real terror is by a night spent among dead men’s bones. ”

“ Jacob related all briefly. The huntsman uttered an oath, and then jerking the gun from his shoulder, hung it on a tree and nimbly scaled the cemetery wall. With a swing of his powerful right arm he forced open the door of the charnel-house and stood before Bára, whom the noise had awakened. Seeing the huntsman before her, she was under the impression that she was still dreaming, but hearing his voice, she wondered how he had come there and could not in her embarrassment even thank him for his greeting. ”

“ The night watchman also took his oath that it was a ghost and that it came out of the parish wood. People began to dig up past history, if perhaps someone had not hanged himself there, but when they could not think up any such incident they said that once upon a time someone buried a treasure somewhere and that his spirit had no peace and was seeking someone to free it. All sorts of conjectures were made and the talk was only of the specter.
“I don’t believe it,” said Bára to Elška when she came to her that same evening to the meadow near the wood where Jacob was pasturing the herd. ”

“ The only good quality which no one could deny him was his wealth. Yes, indeed, the manager, Kilián Sláma, was a rich man, and that was the quality in him which appealed to Miss Pepinka. For that matter, she did not mean that his figure was unhandsome—for she never did like tall, spare people. Besides, she was flattered because the steward always kissed her hand. She thought that in time he would find favor in Elška’s eyes also, that she would get accustomed to him. ”

“ The sexton’s wife also emerged to her threshold, and when Elika passed, invited her in. She liked Elška, though she thoroughly disliked Miss Pepinka. She asked Elška how she had liked it in Prague and how the altar of St. John looked at the castle and if it is true that the bridge is paved with gold. When Elška answered all these questions she examined her from head to foot, not even a thread escaping those venomous eyes. Elška asked about Josífek.
“Oh, he is getting along well in his studies. He is the best student in school and is growing like a reed out of the water. ”

“ Vlček told me he had grown remarkably.”
“Yes, as high as Lišaj’s garters,” smiled Bára. But at once she added compassionately, “How can he grow when his mother gives him more thumps on the back than she puts biscuits in his stomach?”
“And what does Vlček say to all that? It’s his son, too!”
“Vlček and Mrs. Vlček are of one stripe. They are angry because Josífek does not want to become a priest. In the name of the Lord, how can he help it that he doesn’t like it any more? Unwilling service surely could not be pleasing to God.”
“Truly, it could not be,” Elška confirmed. ”

“ The priest always preaches that God is only good and is love wholly. How could it be that He is so often angry at us? I love God and so I’m not afraid of His messenger.”
Jacob disliked long speeches and so he left Bára to her own thinking. The neighbors, however, seeing the girl’s fearlessness and that nothing evil occurred to her, were all the more convinced that she was a child protected by some supernatural power.
Besides her father, Elška and Josífek, who were of her own age, were the only ones who loved her. Josífek was the son of the sexton, Elška was the niece of the parish priest. ”

“ He will never think of me, let alone wishing to marry me. Those are all vain dreams and speeches. Forget it all! Ho! Ho! Plavka, where are you going? Lišaj, where are you? Don’t you see Plavka getting after Březina?” Bára interjected, leaping up from the soft green turf to turn aside the cow, meanwhile.
Whenever later Elška wanted to turn the conversation to the subject of the huntsman Bára always evaded her by beginning about Hynek. By that magic word she knew she could turn Elška from any subject.
A few days later the steward was again at the parish. Nothing had frightened him off. ”

“ But the most furious were the sexton and the steward, both going almost mad with rage. The hostler was the only one who laughed.
“I’d sooner have guessed it was real Death stalking around as a ghost than Bára. She is a devilish woman!”
Miss Pepinka just then burst into the company. The noise and confusion had attracted her from her room where she had already betaken herself to bed. She was wrapped in a shawl, on her head a yellow quilted nightcap. She always had to have something yellow on. She came with a lamp in one hand and an immense bundle of keys in the other. ”

“ Father can’t live without his flocks and herds, for he’s been used to them all his life. He will die! Arrange it somehow, reverend sir!”
Everyone marvelled at Bára’s unsubdued spirit and refused to believe otherwise than that, after all, it was some sort of supernatural power that made Bára different from other people.
“Never mind, her crest will fall by night,” many of them thought. But they were mistaken. Bára was dejected only until she learned that the peasants had returned to Jacob his work as public herdsman, which the priest had arranged for by giving him his own herd to pasture. ”

“ When the young people went out into the forest to gather strawberries or juniper berries and came upon a snake there was always a great scurrying. If the snake lifted its head and showed its fangs they all ran to the water, believing if they could reach it first the snake would be deprived of all power.
Bára never ran away. She was not afraid of a wicked bull, and therefore much less of a snake or a scorpion. If it lay in her path, she drove it away. If it refused to move and defended itself, she killed it. ”

“ Hynek—that’s his name—it’s a pretty name, isn’t it?”
“Strange, I’ve never before heard such a name,” said Bára; and Elška continued:
“Hynek offered to write letters for her to me. She wouldn’t write oftener than once a year, but he urges her to always send some message. Uncle has been much surprised that Auntie writes so often.”
“And how about it, when your uncle reads the letters?”
“Oh, my dear, we have that part all planned out. We write in such a way that no one can understand excepting we alone.”
“After all, it’s a fine thing when a person is accomplished. ”

“ A little while longer the girls talked, and then Bára accompanied Elška home. From that time they visited each other regularly as before, although they no longer played with dolls in the space over the oven.
But the friendship of the two girls did not suit the neighbor women. They began to gossip that it was odd that Elška should associate with the shepherd’s daughter, that it was not fitting for her, that she should rather seek the society of the daughters of the mayor, the justice and others. Purposely, they said these things openly so that they would be carried to Miss Pepinka’s ears. ”