"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.