XXII. The Old Patriot

CHAPTER XXII

THE OLD PATRIOT

IN the Prague office of the People’s Journal everyone was working at top speed. The telephone operator was yelling furiously into the telephone and quarrelling with the young lady at the Exchange. Scissors clicked and typewriters clattered, and Mr. Cyril Keval sat on the table and dangled his legs.

“I say, they’re holding a meeting at Vaclavak,” he said in a low voice. “Some Communist’s up there preaching voluntary poverty. He’s haranguing the people, telling them they ought to be like the lilies of the field. He’s got a beard right down to his waist. What a frightful lot of long-bearded chaps there are about nowadays! All looking like apostles.”

“Mhm,” answered old Rejzek, turning over the papers from the Czechoslovak Press Bureau.

“What makes their beards grow so long?” Mr. Keval ruminated. “I say, Rejzek, I do believe the Absolute has something to do with that as well. Golly, Rejzek, I’m afraid of something of the sort growing on me. Just imagine it, right down to the waist!”

“Mhm,” Mr. Rejzek said ponderously.

“The Free Thought Society is holding a service in Havliček Square to-day. Father Novaček is performing miracles in Tyl Square. There’s sure to be a row between them, you’ll see. Yesterday Novaček healed a man who had been lame from birth. Then they had a procession, and just think, the fellow who’d been lame gave a Jew an awful hiding. Broke three of his ribs or more. He was a Zionist, see.”

“Mhm,” remarked Mr. Rejzek, marking some items of news.

“There’s certain to be a dust-up to-day, Rejzek,” Keval expatiated. “The Progressives are holding a meeting in the Old Town Square. They’ve trotted out ‘Away from Rome’ again. And Father Novaček is organizing the Maccabeans; you know, a sort of Catholic armed guard. You wait, there will be a scrimmage. The Archbishop has forbidden Novaček to perform miracles, but his Reverence is like one possessed; he even goes and raises the dead.”

“Mhm,” said Mr. Rejzek, and went on marking copy.

“I had a letter from my mother,” Cyril Keval confided in subdued tones. “At home in Moravia, you know, near Hustopec and thereabouts, they’re simply raving mad with the Czechs—say they’re heathen and heretics and idolaters and want to set up new gods, and all that stuff. They’ve shot a gamekeeper there because he was a Czech. I tell you, Rejzek, things are fairly seething everywhere.”

“Mhm,” came Mr. Rejzek’s sign of acquiescence.