CHAPTER IV

"OPEN, DOOR"


All Souls' Day came. It was dull and foggy, and the children stood among
a crowd of people assembled in the churchyard. Crappy Zachy had led
Damie there by the hand, but Amrei had come alone, without Black
Marianne; many were angry at the hard-hearted woman, while a few hit a
part of the truth when they said that Marianne did not like to visit
graves, because she did not know where her husband's grave was. Amrei
was quiet and did not shed a tear, while Damie wept bitterly at the
pitying remarks of the bystanders, more especially because Crappy Zachy
had given him several sly pinches and pokes. For a time Amrei, in a
dreamy, forgetful way, stood gazing at the lights on the heads of the
graves, watching the flame consume the wax and the wick grow blacker,
and blacker, until at last the light was quite burnt out.

In the crowd a man, wearing handsome, town-made clothes and with a
ribbon in his button-hole, was moving about here and there. It was the
High Commissioner of Public Works, Severin, who, on a trip of
inspection, had come to visit the graves of his parents, Brosi and Moni.
His brothers and sisters and other relatives were constantly crowding
around him with a kind of deferential respect; in fact, the usual
reverence of the occasion was almost entirely diverted, nearly all the
attention being fixed upon this stranger. Amrei also looked at him, and
asked Crappy Zachy: