Part 12

Although it was autumn, people were in no hurry to buy sandals, and only a few of the master-tanners, who did business here on Sundays, were walking about and moving their strips of leather according to the position of the sun so as to ensure them being in the shade.

Sandu stood still by the cross in the market-place, and it seemed as if a knife went through his heart; when he saw the empty booths he felt as though his last atom of will had been destroyed. He felt as though he must turn back, as though he could not ask. It seemed to him as though he had not the strength to bear hearing one of the tanners tell him he had no place for him; it would be such a catastrophe that he would sink into the earth.

Not knowing what he did he moved forward; but when he approached the first booth he lost confidence, and had not the courage to greet the master.

He passed on. He walked round the booths two or three times, but could not summon up courage to ask whether one of the tanners had a situation open or not.

"Now I will go," he said very firmly to himself, to give himself strength, but when he moved he saw a peasant go up to the booth. "I will let him make his purchase and then I will go."

But he did not stir, he was afraid, especially when the master, not being able to come to terms with the peasant, undid the box, and flung the sandals violently into it. He did nothing; it seemed terrible to him to have to go up to the booth. He did not know why. He felt angry with himself that it should be so. And as he asked himself why he was like this, he recalled to mind various acquaintances who were so very bold and fearless. If only he could be like that! But he could not be so, his nature did not allow it.

"Now you good-for-nothing, you are wandering about here like a sheep in a pen," a tanner, small of stature, with brown eyes and a harsh voice, said roughly to him.

"I?" stammered Sandu. "I am not a good-for-nothing."

"No? Then why do you keep coming round? Haven't I seen you? You walk a bit, you stand still, you have been round us several times, and now you are standing still again; it is as though you had some evil intention!"

"Master, I am not----"

"Go, whatever you are or are not, else you will see I will get rid of you."

Sandu could hardly stand, a sort of mist darkened his eyes, and his heart was bursting. He would have cried, but he was ashamed for a grown man to be walking across the market-place with tears in his eyes. He suffered and would gladly have told how deeply the words he had listened to had hurt him, but he had no one to whom he could open his heart.

He returned to the innkeeper with whom he was lodging. Tired and spent he threw himself on the bench.

"What is it?" asked the innkeeper.

Sandu looked vaguely at him, then, as if afraid to hear the sound of his own voice, he said:

"Nothing."

The innkeeper felt sorry for him.

"Have you found a situation?"

"I did not ask for one."

"Then how can you hope to get one?"

Sandu remained silent. The innkeeper looked strangely at him, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and went to attend to his duties.

With his elbows on the table, and his head resting in his hands, Sandu gazed in front of him, and who knows where his thoughts would have led him if the innkeeper had not said to him:

"Listen, Dinu Talpoane sent to ask whether there was any workman in need of work. Go with the apprentice and he may perhaps engage you. He is a respectable man and does a big trade."

Without a word Sandu got up. It seemed to him he must be dreaming. But when he saw the apprentice with an apron stained yellow and with big boots covered with stale sap, his eyes shone, and he could have kissed the innkeeper's hands for very joy.

Outside he began to talk to the apprentice, who told him that the master was a splendid man, but his wife was harsh and heaven defend you from her tongue; that the workshop was large and the work considerable, especially in the autumn; and that the master sometimes engaged workmen by the day in order to get a set of hides ready more quickly; and many other things he told him. But Sandu was no longer listening.

When the apprentice saw that he asked no further questions, he hesitated to say more, and they walked along together in silence.

Sandu knew where he had to go, but he did not know what to say, or what terms to make--by the year, the month, the week; he could not think what would be best to do. What he knew of the workshop of the master-tanner with whom he had learnt his trade, and all he had heard from the hands working there with him, seemed to be buzzing in his brain until he grew so bewildered that he could not have told how many days there are in a week, or how much money he would earn if he worked for a whole month.

"Here we are," said the apprentice, stopping in front of a doorway with gates.

Sandu felt a cold shiver go through him. For a second he stood still. Three years as apprentice and four years as workman he had worked for one master only, and he would have remained there all his life if he had not been taken to be a soldier, and if the master had not died he would have gone back to him the day he left the army. He felt quite nervous, and if the apprentice had not opened the gate he would not have gone in.

"They are eating," said the apprentice, seeing the big yard was empty, and he crossed to the bottom of it where a small house stood built against the old workshop.

They were close to the window when they heard people talking in the house, and the clatter of knives.

"Look here," said Sandu, "you go on and say I have come but that I am waiting till they have finished dinner."

The apprentice went in and told the master that a workman was outside, but would not come in till the master had got up from the table.

"Tell him to come into the house."

But his wife interrupted him with:

"Leave him out there. Who knows what sort of a creature he is if he does not venture to show his face inside! Let me have my dinner in peace."

The husband, a well-built man, with a round, red face and kind blue eyes, felt if he said any more his wife would snap his head off, so he let the apprentice go.

The apprentice, who knew that one word from the mistress was worth a hundred orders from the master, withdrew to the hearth in the outer room, and waited till he should be called to dinner.

"But what's the matter, Ghitza, you are not eating?" he heard his mistress saying. "Or are you waiting to be invited? Dear, dear, perhaps I ought to beg the gentleman to come to table!"

The apprentice, accustomed to the mistress's ways, took a chair. But he had not swallowed three mouthfuls before the mistress bade him call in "that ne'er-do-well out there."

Sandu shyly wished them good day, but of all those sitting round the table he only saw the master, and by his side the mistress, whose eyes seemed to scorch him and make him lose his presence of mind.

"What is your name?" the master asked him.

"I am called Sandu Boldurean."

And in a low voice he told where he was born, with whom he had learnt the trade, and how long he had worked, but during the questioning he scarcely raised his eyelids. He grew confused at once when the mistress screamed at him:

"But you'll ruin your hat turning it round like that in your hands. Put it down somewhere and speak up so that a man can understand what you are saying."

Sandu felt the blood go to his head, and hardly knowing what he was doing he hung his hat on a bolt on the door.

"And you worked only with one master?"

"Only one. See, here is my work-book," and with some haste he drew out the handkerchief, unknotted it, and held out his "work-book" to the master.

"Let me see too," said the mistress, snatching the book from her husband's hand. "After all, it's no wonder this idiot stayed in the same place; and who knows what kind of a master it was?" she whispered to her husband.

He would have replied that it was a very good thing for a workman to have stayed so long with one master, for most tanners worked in the same way, and only here and there were the hides dressed differently; but he was ashamed to say so before the workman, and so he busied himself by looking through the book.

Sandu broke into a sweat; when he held out the book he felt his soul was full of joy at having got so far, but little by little, especially when the mistress took the book and whispered to her husband, his heart seemed turned to ice.

What would he say to him? Supposing he found something bad? Supposing he did not give him work? These were the questions which passed through his mind and which he could not answer, although he knew his book only spoke well of him, and that the master required a workman because it was autumn when business is in full swing.

A great burden seemed lifted from him at the master's words:

"Good, I will engage you. How much did you get from your late master?"

"I worked for him for four years and had a salary."

"What a lot of talk! We will give you one and a half florins per week without washing, and you can stay, though probably in the army you have forgotten all you knew about work," the mistress broke into the conversation, as she rose from the table.

It was the signal for the two workmen and the apprentice to return to their work.

Sandu stood transfixed. Only the master and a child of six or seven years of age remained in the house, as the girl and the mistress went into the passage to see to the dinner things.

"Well, do you agree? Will you stay or not?" scolded the mistress as she appeared in the doorway.

"I will stay," replied Sandu, scarcely knowing what he said.

The master looked at her, and turned to Sandu.

"Have you had your dinner?"

"Did he come for you to feed him," his wife interrupted him.

"Woman, you----"

The mistress threw him a look full of meaning, and disappeared into the yard.

"You can start work to-morrow."

Sandu turned and went out after the master; they walked side by side. When they reached the yard gate they stopped. The master would have liked to say something about the pay. One and a half florins a week seemed so very little to him, but Sandu was simple and glad to get work, and he did not ask for much.

"Master, I will go now. Good luck to you!"

"Good luck to you!" replied the master, and he seemed as though he would like to call him back and say another word to him.

In rather over a month Sandu had had time to get back into his old ways, and to work hopefully at his trade, but during this time he had, little by little, come to see that in his master's house the cock by no means ruled the roost. Sharp-tongued and ill-tempered, Mistress Veta was often dissatisfied with the work. Now it was because the skins had not come out of the vat yellow enough, and had not enough creases; now it was because a range of skins needed mending as the workmen had not been sufficiently careful; and so on and so on, always hard words for the workmen who worked eagerly and with all their might that the skins might be well tanned, and the mistress have no chance to grumble.

At first Sandu found these abusive words hard to bear, and all day long the thought worried him that the mistress only spoke so to him, and that it was with him only that she was dissatisfied. At one time even he was seized with the desire to go away so that he might hear her no longer, and the other men might not be worried on his account, for he said to himself that only since he entered the workshop had the work gone so badly, and the mistress's tongue chided so unceasingly.

But, all unperceived by himself, he grew somewhat accustomed to the ways of the house, and when a workman told him that the mistress had always been just the same, and that no matter how well the hides were dressed she always found some fault, he took heart and dismissed the idea of quitting the workshop of Talpoane, the master-tanner.

He was up almost before daylight, and never let his work out of his hand till it was dinner-time. He washed his hands clean, and took his usual place at his employers' table--for from olden times it had been the custom for the masters not to keep aloof from the workmen or to dine apart.

Silent at his work, he was, also, silent at meals. Only when he was spoken to did Sandu reply, gently and with dignity. The other men talked and laughed, and when they realized that it pleased the mistress to make fun of Sandu they began to crack every kind of joke at his expense.

At first Sandu opened his eyes wide. He looked at them and could not understand them, but when he took it in he, too, laughed with them, a laugh full of kindness and friendliness. He lived on good terms with the workmen; only one of them, Iotza, embittered the days. He only had to say: "You have made the solution too weak," for Sandu, although he knew it was not true, to be unhappy all the week, and often his heart was full of fear that the skins would not come out yellow enough or creased enough to please the mistress.

But he felt comforted when he noticed that, when he came into the workshop, Master Dinu asked only him how many hides were being worked, and when they would be ready, for at such and such a fair he would need so many, because a customer was trying to get in touch with him.

"They'll be ready when they are wanted; don't worry," Sandu would reply.

And away Master Dinu would go, quite content, and quite sure that the hides would be ready when they were wanted for the fair, or had to be despatched to some customer.

He saw that everything went very well since Sandu entered the workshop. The skins were kept in the pits just long enough for the hair to come off easily and not burn in the lime; the solution was boiled enough, not too hot and not too strong; the poles were in their places; the stretching-pegs were in a neat pile, and the workshop was cleaner than it had ever been before.

And Master Dinu knew the value of a good workman in a place where there were many workers, and where work was plentiful.

"There is only one thing he lacks," he said to himself, "he would be a man in a thousand, but he is too diffident."

But, even in spite of his diffidence, he thought so highly of him that had he asked for four florins a week he would gladly have given it sooner than let him go away.

So he said to himself, but Sandu did not dream of asking for much more than he had. All his life he had worked for the same wage.

It is true that had he done as the others did, and drawn out money every Sunday, he might, perhaps, have felt it was hard to see Master Dinu paying out a great deal more to the others than to him, but he did not ask for his money. On one occasion only did he draw two florins from his pay, and that was because, on a certain Tuesday, his mother had sent greetings to him and had asked him if possible to send her a little help.

Sandu ran off at once to the market-place to find Master Dinu to ask for all the money he was entitled to for his work, that he might send it to his mother. Master Dinu, not knowing what he wanted it for, nor how much he needed, asked whether two florins would be enough.

"Yes," he said, and with the coins in his hand he went to the man from his village. He wrapped up the money and begged him to lose no time in giving it to his mother and in telling her how much he longed for her, and that, perhaps, she might come to him, for he was working for a good master, and up to now he had not been idle for a single day.

A fortnight passed and he received no tidings of his mother. But on Tuesday, the day of the weekly fair, while he was spreading out the skins, the man came to tell him he had given the money and had brought a letter written by "Peter the Chinaman."

Sandu took the letter and would have liked to open it, but he caught the mistress's eye and involuntarily thrust it into his breast.

"Look at him," she cried, "we are longing to finish the work quickly, and he thinks only of reading lines from his sweetheart."

"I have no sweetheart," replied Sandu gently.

"Who writes to you then?"

"My mother."

"Your mother? She can't know how to use a pen. Did you ever hear such a lie----"

"I do not lie."

"Not lie? Hold your tongue! As if your mother knows how to write----" And she looked rather sulkily at Sandu, who moved on to the other pile of stretching-pegs.

At this moment one of the workmen told her that the letter really was from his mother, but that it was written by a Chinaman in the village.

"Then why didn't he tell me?" she cried. "Am I supposed to know everything?" Sandu turned round. "But can you read?"

"Yes, mistress, I can."

"It's a good thing you can."

The mistress went away and the men were busy with their work till dinner-time.

Sandu lingered over his letter. When he went indoors the mistress could not resist having one or two hits at him. But Sandu scarcely understood her; his mother thanked him with all her heart, and he was so full of joy that even had the mistress struck him he would have felt nothing of it. He ate of the food, but he could not have told if he were satisfied or hungry when he got up from the table, and he worked like a nigger till the evening.

In bed, with his hands beneath his head, many thoughts crossed his mind. Three years had passed since last he saw his mother. He had often longed for her when he was in the army, but only from time to time had he received news of her. He had left her old and poor.

"And longing for me will have aged her a great deal more," he said to himself, and his heart was heavy when he thought he could not go to see her. "How good it would be if I could go and see her at Christmas! In the meantime I must send more money to give her pleasure and console her."

And he fancied how she would cry with joy when she got the money, and how she would pray God to lengthen his life and give him success and happiness.

And he seemed to feel himself close to her, and he seemed to hear the whisper of sweet comforting words.

Wrapped in such thoughts as these he fell asleep.

The next day God sent glorious weather, and Sandu beat the skins carefully and often that they might dry quickly.

But no matter what trouble he and the other men took, the skins would not dry, and Master Dinu could not begin the cutting out till next day; the cutting out and trimming goes quickly when one has everything close at hand, and some one to help one, and Master Dinu began to cut out and to trim. But the damping, oiling, thickening and sewing of the sandals and straps was difficult and tedious.

There being great need of haste, Master Dinu told his wife to call Ana, their daughter, that she might help to damp the sandals.

The mistress, who was holding the skins to make it easier for Dinu to cut out the straps, and trim them after cutting out, put her hands on her hips and looked at her husband.

"What, my Ana damp the sandals?"

At his wife's words Master Dinu stayed the knife in the middle of the skin.

"She is not a smart lady, is she, and you are not going to marry her to some grandee? There is no disgrace to her in coming to give a little help."

His wife lost her temper. Her daughter damp sandals! Her daughter associate with the men! Her daughter, who had gone to school to the nuns for so many years! Her daughter, who knew how to sew so beautifully! Her daughter, who was friends with the niece of one important person, and the inseparable companion of the daughters of another! Her daughter to handle the sandals and make her fingers smell of bark!

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she said, hoarse with anger, "even if you do not know how to behave properly, you need not insult your daughter."

"Insult?" questioned Master Dinu.

But his wife rushed from the room.

He looked long after her, then glanced at the workmen, took up the knife with a nervous movement, and began quickly to cut out the sandals.

The workmen, who had heard the words exchanged, and seen the abrupt departure of the mistress, kept complete silence and busied themselves with their work.

Master Dinu finished cutting the skins.

"You might hurry yourselves a little when you know the work ought to be ready," he said to the men, and departed, hanging his head.

"Very unhappy is Master Dinu," said Iotza, looking after him.

"Why?" one of them asked him.

"Why? Because those are the sharpest words I have ever heard coming from his mouth."

Dinner was unusually quiet, only the little boy whined and asked for first one thing and then another. His mother gave him one or two raps over the knuckles to make him sit still and be silent, but the child began to cry, and she angrily sent him into the next room.

Master Dinu said never a word and his daughter, Ana, looked round her in a frightened manner, and would like to have asked what had happened to-day to make them all so downcast.

Sandu had seen her many times, but he had never seen her well. He knew she was the master's daughter. He greeted her when she came to the table, but speak to her or look her really in the face, that, up till to-day, he had never done.

But when he saw her looking sadly, now at her father, now at her mother, and then at the others seated round the table, he wanted to say something to her to cheer her and make her laugh. But he had nothing to tell her, he could not find a word, and when their eyes met he felt as though he were being swept away by a storm, and carried he knew not whither.

Ana was so beautiful and so graceful. With her white hands and her fair face one would never have believed her to be the daughter of an artisan. Her big blue eyes, so full of kindness, were shaded by black eyelashes, and when she laughed one's heart glowed in the joyous sound, and one wished one could often hear her laughing.

Iotza--he had been workman with Dinu for a long time--when the mistress was out of the house, had more than once asked her to mend something for him, and not infrequently she had brought him drink from the cellar when the frost was sharp and he had complained that he could not stand the cold. And with all his prudence Iotza had let drop a word in the workshop in praise of Ana's kindness.

And so it came about that they all waited for the mistress to go out that they might speak to Ana and ask her one thing or another.

Only Sandu had never been to her. And that was why he especially wanted now to divert her thoughts and make her smile.

Her eyes troubled him, and he felt happier when he found himself back in the workshop.

One day, according to the allotment of the work, it was his duty to turn the skins in the vats full of birch bark solution. He was alone in the workshop, he could work in peace, but he often let the stick fall from his hand, for, unlike other days, that day the fumes made him perspire, and he did not notice whether the skins were thoroughly turned. There was one vat more to turn when the door opened gently.

"Good luck, Sandu."

Sandu raised his head as though he were in a dream, wiped away the sweat, and looked at Ana as one looks at a person one does not the least expect to see. He wanted to say something to her, but a lump rose in his throat. Ana came nearer to him.

"Sandu, I came to tell you to put the sandals in the box after you have turned the skins."

"Good," replied Sandu.

"Don't forget what Father said," and away she went.

Outside she met Iotza, and passed him in such a hurry that she did not hear his greeting.

"Well, Sandu, what did Ana want in the workshop?" he asked as he threw his apron behind a vat.

"Nothing," replied Sandu, who was disappointed at not talking longer with Ana.

"Nothing? Well, well! Listen, have you turned the skins?"

"I have."

"Have you filled the boiler with water?"

"Yes, I have."

"How much have you put? You have not filled it! Bring two more bucketfuls."

"How can you pour two more bucketfuls in when it does not hold more than one?"