[Footnote 3: Strong, firm.]

Then the old lawyer tenderly pressed the youth into a chair and sighing deeply, thus continued: "You fell in love with the daughter of a great family and she with you. You got acquainted at a dance and the intimacy did not stop there. Every conceivable obstacle intervened between you, but love is artful and inventive and you found a way. The rich girl had a neglected brother whom his relations sent to the grammar school and the rascal frequently took refuge with me, the family attorney, when he was ill-treated at home, and here you came across him. You cared for him and explained to him the difficulties in his lessons which he was unable to do for himself. The boy grew very fond of you. He spoke to you of your beloved, and he spoke to her of you, and he was always praising each of you to the other. The grandfather, the uncle, the aunt, the governess, the domestics who never took their eyes off the girl for an instant, had no idea that she was already involved in a love affair. But amazing is the ingenuity of love and lovers! You knew that none of the older members of the family understood the classical language of the orators, and the girl loved so dearly that she did not consider it too great a labour to learn a dead tongue which could be of no further use to her in order to be able to say to her beloved: Ego te in aeternum amabo! One must admit that that was a great and noble sacrifice. Every day you corresponded with each other. Before school time the girl dictated his lessons to her young brother, beginning with the usual scholastic flowers of rhetoric but ending in the passionate voice of love, and after school was over, you, in your turn dictated a similar lesson for the lad to carry back with him. Naturally, this lesson book he never took to school with him; you kept the other here, the genuine one which he had to show to his masters. And this ingenious smuggling was carried on beneath the very eyes of the family without their perceiving it. Yet at last it was discovered. This very day, only an hour ago, the old head of the family placed these papers in my hands that I might read them, informing me at the same time that he had already read a translation of them. Terrible were the things I discovered in these papers. The appearance of a rich and noble suitor who, according to the notions of the world, was just made for the girl, frustrated all your plans of waiting patiently for better times. The family forced this union upon the girl. You, in your despair, racked your brain as to what you should do. At first you resolved upon an elopement, but the redoubled vigilance with which every step of the young girl was watched made this impossible. Then a black and terrible thought occurred to you both. You resolved to kill yourselves—it was your one remaining means of deliverance. Yes, you resolved to kill yourselves at once, on the self-same day, in the self-same manner. For many days you deliberated together as to the best way of accomplishing your design. Great caution was necessary. You had to pick your words lest the little brother who wrote them down from dictation should have guessed your intentions. The girl asked you, at last, to send her a book on natural science. You sent it to her. She, with the help of it tried to find out what sorts of poisons could be most easily procured. For two whole days you deliberated together as to the best way of obtaining matches, the phosphorus of which is the most efficacious of poisons. But in vain. In great houses only the domestics have charge of the matches, it was impossible to get any. At last the girl hit on an expedient. She discovered that if you put a copper coin in a glass dish and pour strong vinegar over it, verdegris will be formed and verdegris is poison. Your minds were at once made up. The girl prepared poison for herself and taught you to do the same. . . . Merciful Heaven! what notions children do get into their heads to be sure."



CHAPTER V

SHE IS NOT FOR YOU

Up to this moment the youth had listened to the lecture in silence, but now he arose and said in a calm clear voice: "'Tis all true; it is so!"

"I should say it was all very bad, very bad indeed!" said the lawyer vehemently, as if completing a broken sentence. "What! Children to meditate suicide because things in this world don't go exactly according to their liking! Have you never regarded the affair from its practical side? Did you imagine that the girl's relations would support you? And would you yourself endure to be their pensioner, their butt, the scorn of the very domestics, for a poor son-in-law is the standing jest of the very flunkeys—you ought to know that!"

Szilard's face burned like fire at these words, but the old man hastened to soothe him.

"No, you could never reconcile yourself to that, I am sure. But you thought, perhaps, that the girl might descend to your level and share your poverty. There are in the world many a poor lad and lass who endow one another with nothing but their ardent love and yet make happy couples enough. So, no doubt, you argued, and herein lies the fallacy that has deceived you. If you had been enamoured of a poor girl, I should have said: it is rather early to think of marriage, but if it be God's will, take her! Work and fight your way through the world where there is room enough for every one. The lass, too, is used to deprivation, and you are also. She will be content with little. She can sew, she will do your cooking for you, and, if need be, your washing likewise! She can make one penny go as far as two. When there is a lot to do she will sing to make the work lighter, and when your supper is slender, her good humour and her loving embraces will make it more. But my dear boy! how are you going to make a poor housewife out of a girl who has been rich? How can she ever feel at home in a wretched, out-of-the-way shanty, where she will not even have you always by her side, for you will have to be looking after your daily bread? She will say nothing, she will make no complaint, but you will perceive that she misses something. She will not ask you for a new dress, but you will see that the one she wears is shabby and it would break your heart to reflect that you have fettered the girl you love to your step-motherly destiny, and your manly pride would one day blush for the recklessness which led you to drag her down with you."

"My dear guardian," said Szilard, "to prove to you that I did think of all these things let me tell you that I have put by from my salary and commissions enough to enable us to live comfortably for at least a twelvemonth. For a whole year I have lived on two pence a day in order to save, and during all that time I am sure you have not heard from me one word of complaint."

Mr. Sipos was horrified. It was an even worse case than he had imagined. What! to live for a whole year on two pence a day in order to scrape together a small capital for one's beloved! It would be very difficult to cure a madness which took such a practical turn as this!

"But my dear boy!" he resumed, "what is the good of it all? What can you do now that your secrets are discovered? It would have served you right if the girl's parents had proceeded against you on a charge of murder, for you were an accomplice in this poisoning business; but I am pretty sure they will only threaten to do so in case she refuses the baron. And what, pray, can you do in case they thus compel her to become his wife?"

"Whoever the baron may be," rejoined Szilard, "I suppose he is at least a gentleman; and if a woman looks him straight in the face on the wedding day and says to him: 'I cannot love you because I love another and always will love another,'—I cannot think he will be so devoid of feeling as to make her his wife notwithstanding."

"And if she does not say this, but voluntarily gives him her hand in order to save you from the persecutions of her family, what then?"

"Hearken, my dear guardian! She may be compelled to write to me that she loves me no more and I must forget her, but I shall not believe it till she pronounces or writes down a word the meaning of which only we two understand and nobody else in the world can discover. So long as this one word does not get into the possession of a third person, I shall know that she has not broken with me and no power in this world shall tear her from my heart. She may be silent, because she is not free to speak; she may speak because she is commanded to speak; yet, for all that, this religiously guarded word tells me what she really feels—and what no other human intelligence can understand. If you like, my dear guardian, you may betray this confession of mine to Henrietta's relatives and they will torment the girl till they get her to pronounce the mysterious word which once pronounced will burst the bonds that unite us. She will be driven to say something. But oh! women who love are very crafty. The word they will report to me will not be the right one. It is possible, too, that they may take her far away from me. Let them guard her well I say, let those who watch over her never close an eye. And if they give her a husband, they had best pray for his life for they know not what a fated thing it is to give away in marriage a girl who bears about in her heart the secret of a third person."

"My dear young friend, I see that we shall not come to an understanding with each other. You are bent upon plunging into ruin a poor defenceless girl in the name of what you call love, and will not renounce, though you have not the slightest hope of winning her—that I do not understand. I, on the other hand, am the legal adviser of the young lady's family, and, in that capacity, I considered it my duty to protest very energetically against the match in question. But when they placed those precious papers in my hands, I said at once that they must marry her to this man in any case. Otherwise they would have fancied I was advocating your crazy hopes, that I was an interested party and simply opposed the family candidate in order to smuggle in a kinsman of my own in his stead. That idea I was determined to knock out of their heads, happen what would. But that of course you do not understand. And now you had better return to your room. Destiny will one day explain to all of us what we do not understand now."

* * * * *

At about the same hour the second act of this drama was proceeding in the torture-chamber of the Lapussa family.

Henrietta had returned home from her little tour laden with flowers, when old Demetrius sent word to her that he would like to see her in his room. He had taken the precaution of sending Madame Langai away shortly before and Mr. John was absent at the Corn Exchange.

"My little maid, Hetty, come nearer to me," said the old gentleman, turning sideways on his couch and ferreting out from beneath his pillows a concave snuff-box, "pray do not be angry with me for putting you to inconvenience. Bear with me for the little time I have still to live. But if you find living under the same roof with me unendurable, all the greater reason for you to seize the opportunity of releasing yourself as quickly as possible."

Henrietta was too much used to these choleric outbursts to think of replying to them.

"Pray, put your hand beneath my pillow. You will find a packet of papers there. Take them out and look at them."

Henrietta did with stolid indifference what the old man bade her and drew forth from this peculiar repository—which served as a sort of lair for snuff-boxes, pill-boxes and odd bits of pastry—a large bundle of manuscripts which she recognized at the first glance. The apprehended papers, which during her illness had prevented her from sleeping, which had made it impossible for her to get well, were now in the possession of him from whom she had been most anxious to conceal them. The criminal stood face to face with the witness whose damning evidence was to condemn her. There was no escape, no defence.

"My little maid," said the old man, exultantly stuffing his eagle nose full of that infernal heating material which goes by the name of snuff, "don't be angry with me for directing your attention to this scribble. I don't want to make any use of it. I know quite enough of it already, but be so good as to listen to me!"

Henrietta absolutely could not look away from her grandfather's blood-shot eyes; it seemed to her as if those eyes must gradually bore through to her very heart.

"You won't marry an eminent and wealthy man who bestows an honour upon your family by asking for your hand, and yet you would run away with a worthless fellow who does not even know why he was put into the world, and when your family steps in to prevent it, you would violently put yourself to death in order to die with him, to our eternal shame and dishonour. That was not nice of you. But sit down. I see you are all of a tremble. I would fetch you a chair myself if it was not for this infernal gout of mine."

Henrietta accepted the invitation and sat down, otherwise she must have collapsed.

"Now look ye, my dear little girl! if you had to deal with an unmerciful, austere old fellow, a veritable old tiger, in fact, as I have no doubt you fancy I am, he would make no bones about it but pack you straight off to a nunnery and so cut you off from the world for ever."

Henrietta sighed. Such a threat as that sounded to her like a consolation.

"In the second place, an old tyrant, such as I am imagining, would have sent that rip of a brother of yours, who is not ashamed to lend a hand in the seduction of his own sister, would have sent him, I say, to a reformatory. I may tell you there are several such institutions, celebrated for their rigour, whither it is usual to send precocious and incorrigible young scapegraces. And richly he would have deserved it, too."

"Poor Koloman!" thought the little sister. They were tenderly devoted to each other.

"In the third place, our old tiger would have prosecuted at law that reckless youth who had a share in this fine suicide project of yours. For death, my dear, is no plaything and jests with poison are strictly forbidden. He would certainly be condemned to hard labour for five or six years, which would be a very wholesome lesson for him."

"Grandfather!" screamed the tortured child. This last allusion dissolved her voice in tears. She fell down on her knees before him and shed innocent tears enough on his hand to wash out all the old specks and stains on it.

"I am glad to see those tears, my dear little girl, they show that you have confidence in me. I am not a tiger who eats little children, what I have said might happen but I don't say it necessarily must. I don't want to be cruel and vindictive. I don't want to recollect anything of the insults showered upon me in that scribble of yours, all I ask of you is that you will not stand in your own way. Get up and don't cry any more or you will be ill again. Go up into your own room and ponder deeply what you ought to do! In two hours' time I shall send for you again, and in the meantime make up your mind about it. You have the choice between accepting as your husband an honourable gentleman of becoming rank and at the same time renouncing and forgetting a fellow who will never be able to raise himself to your level, or of taking the veil and bidding good-bye to this world. In the latter case, however, your brother will be sent to a reformatory and an action will be commenced against your accomplice. It is for you to choose. You have two whole hours to turn the matter over in your mind. In the meantime I shall send for my lawyer and, according to your decision, I shall get him to draw up a marriage contract or a summons to the criminal court. It all depends upon you. And now put back those documents beneath my head. Remember that you will only receive them back from me as a bridal gift. Go now to your own room and reflect. For two hours nobody shall disturb you."

The girl mechanically complied with his commands. She put back the ominous documents in their receptacle and withdrew to her room. There she stood in front of a vase of flowers and regarded their green leaves for an hour without moving. In the vase was a fine specimen of one of those wondrous tropical plants whose leaves never fall off, one of those plants which the seasons leave unchanged and which, therefore, is such a beautiful emblem of constancy. This beautiful plant has a peculiar property. If one of its compact shining leaves be planted in the earth it takes root and grows into a shrub whose fragrant wax-like flowers diffuse an enchanting perfume. Three years before at a jurists' ball, when Henrietta and Szilard met for the first time, he had given her a bouquet, among the flowers of which was one of these green-gold leaves, and when she got home she had planted it in a jar and it had taken root, spread its shoots abroad and grown larger and larger every year. And Henrietta had called it Szilard and watched over its growth and cared for it as if it had been a living human creature. For a long time she stood before this flowering plant as if she would have spoken to it and taken counsel of it. At last she turned away and with her hands behind her head, she walked slowly up and down the room, and as often as she paused before the vase, she behaved like one whose heart is breaking. But time was hastening on, an hour is so short when one would have it stay. Alas! nowhere was there any help, any refuge. She was abandoned. She had nothing in the world but this one flowering plant which she called Szilard. And the moments swiftly galloping after one another called for a decision. There must be an end to it. Once more she approached her darling plant and kissed all the leaves of its beautiful flowers one by one. And now there came a knock at the door. Mr. Demetrius's messenger had come and a cold shudder ran through the girl's tender frame. "I am coming!" she cried. The next moment not a tear was to be seen on her face, nay, not a trace of sorrow, or fear, but only snow-white tranquillity.

All the members of the family were assembled together again in grandpapa's room. Mr. Sipos was also present, he had been told all about the business.

"Well my dear little grandchild," said Mr. Demetrius, motioning Henrietta to take her place at the table with the others, "have you made up your mind?"

"I have."

"Veil or myrtle wreath?"

"I will be married."

"To the baron?"

"Yes," replied the girl in a strangely calm and courageous tone, "but I also have my conditions to impose."

"Let us hear them."

"In the first place I must be sure that my brother Koloman will not be persecuted. I suppose you will not let him come with me?"

"No, that one thing cannot be allowed."

"But I cannot let him remain here. Send him to some other town. You are always talking of your rank and riches, give him an education to correspond."

The child in those two hours had grown older by ten years, she now spoke to the other members of the family with the air of a matron.

"Agreed!" cried Mr. Demetrius. "Besides it will be much better if we do not see him."

"My second request is that I may take the furniture I have been used to and my flowers along with me to the place where I have to go."

"Granted, a harmless feminine caprice. Be it so!"

"In the third place I should like the papers grandfather knows of to be given back to him whom it most concerns."

"Certainly," said Mr. Demetrius, "I promised, did I not, that it should form part of your marriage portion. Mr. Sipos, would you be so good as to place these documents in the hands—of the proper person?"

Mr. Sipos bowed and promised to carry out the mournful commission.

"And now, my girl, the marriage-contract is before you, the baron has already signed it and awaits your decision in the adjoining room. Show us what a nice hand you can write."

And Henrietta did show it. She signed her name there in such pretty little delicately rounded letters that it looked as if some fairy had breathed a spell upon the page.

"And just one thing more, my dear young lady," put in Mr. Sipos politely, "while the pen is still in your hand, would you be so good as to write down on the cover of the returned documents a particular word, that particular word, I mean, which is known only to yourself and one other person in the world, as a proof that your renunciation is genuine and irrevocable."

The girl fixed her mysterious black eyes for a long time on those of the lawyer. It was in her power to deceive him if she would and he knew it well. At last she gently stooped over the bundle of papers and pressing down the pen with unusual firmness she wrote that barbarously sounding name of a beautiful bright star: "Mesarthim" and then quietly laid down the pen. There was not the slightest sign of agitation in her face. Could it be the right word?

"And now the bridegroom can come in and the necessary pre-nuptial legal formalities can be carried out."

* * * * *

When Mr. Sipos got home he went straight up to the room of his young protege.

"My dear fellow," said he, "I have brought you some medicine. As you know, medicine is generally nasty and bitter, but perhaps none the worse on that account. As I said beforehand, the young lady reconsidered her position, chose the better way and consented to the marriage with the baron. The betrothal is an accomplished fact and they signed the marriage contract before my eyes."

"Doubtless," returned Szilard coldly.

"My friend, the girl did not make such a sour face over it as you are doing. She was strong-minded and decided. I was amazed at the composure with which she addressed her family, she was like the capitulating commandant of a fortress dictating the terms of surrender. Not a tear did she shed in their presence and yet I believe she suffered."

"Oh, she has lots of courage."

"I wish you had as much. Here is your absurd scribble, its surrender was one of the conditions imposed. I am glad these mischievous exercises are safely in our hands again. Don't bother your head about them any more! The girl is going away, you will remain here, in a year's time you will have forgotten each other."

Szilard smiled frostily.

"And that word which binds us together or tears us asunder?" said he.

"Yes, I thought of that, too. She looked me straight in the eyes for a long time when I asked for it and I told her I wanted the real, the genuine word. She has written it on the back of these papers, look!"

Szilard stretched forth a tremulous hand towards the papers, seized them, turned them round, and cast one look at the word written there and then fell at full length on the floor, striking his head against the corner of the table so that the blood flowed.

Mr. Sipos, cursing the whole stupid business and wishing the papers at the bottom of the sea, raised the young man tenderly and bathed his head with cold water. He did not call for assistance (why should the whole world be taken into his confidence?), but when the youth came to again, he soothed and consoled him with loving words. And Szilard, unable to contain himself any longer, hid his head in the good old man's bosom, pressed his lips to his hand and wept long and bitterly.

* * * * *

A fortnight later the marriage of Baron Hatszegi and Henrietta Lapussa was solemnized with great pomp and befitting splendour. The bride bore herself bravely throughout the ceremony, and they tell me that her lace and her diamonds were fully described in all the fashionable papers.



CHAPTER VI

BRINGING HOME THE BRIDE

In those days there were no railways in Hungary. It took a whole week to travel post from Pest to the depths of Transylvania, with relays of horses provided beforehand at every station. On the very day after the wedding the young bride set out on her journey. She had only stipulated that they should set off very early before anyone was up and stirring. They travelled in two carriages. In the first sat the bride and Clementina, who had begged and prayed so urgently to be allowed to accompany the young lady that to get rid of her they had at last consented. The poor thing fancied she would better her position thereby: it was not from pure love of Henrietta that she had been so importunate. In the second carriage sat the baron and Margari. Margari was just the sort of man the baron wanted. He was a scholar who could be converted into a domestic buffoon whenever one was required. Now-a-days it is difficult to catch such specimens, all our servants have become so stuck-up. Henrietta did not dare to ask how far they were going, or where they were to pass the night, she felt so strange amidst her new surroundings. Her husband was very obliging and polite towards her,—in fact he gave her no trouble at all.

Towards the evening they stopped at a village to water the horses and there Hatszegi got out of his carriage and, approaching his wife's, spoke to her through the window: "We shall rest in an hour," said he. "We shall put up for the night at the castle of an old friend of mine, Gerzson Satrakovich. He has been duly apprised of our coming and expects us."

But the promised hour turned out to be nearly two hours. The roads were very bad here and it was as much as the carriage wheels could do to force their way through the marshy sand. The monotonous Bucskak[4] which extended desolately, like a billowy sandy ocean, to the very horizon, were overgrown with dwarf firs that looked more like shrubs than trees. Not a village, not a hut was anywhere to be seen. From the roadside sedges, flocks of noisy wild-geese, from time to time, flew across the sky which the setting sun coloured yellow. At last a great clattering and rattling gave those sitting in the carriage to understand that they were passing into a courtyard and the carriage door was opened. Henrietta got out. The young wife looked around with the same sort of curiosity which a robber condemned to a long term of imprisonment and conveyed to a distant jail might feel on first surveying his new environment.

[Footnote 4: Sand hills.]

In the midst of a spacious courtyard, surrounded by stone walls, stood an old-fashioned mansion with a verandah in front of it, resting on quadrangular columns which one ascended by a staircase whose brick parapet served as a lounge both for the gentlemen guests and their heydukes whenever they wanted to take their ease,—though, of course, the gentlemen occupied one end of it and the heydukes the other. A couple of favourite dogs were also accommodated with a place there. But when the carriages stopped in front of the verandah, every one instantly quitted this favourite sun-lit resting place and rushed down to meet them—host, guests, heydukes, and dogs.

The first to reach the carriage door was a peculiar looking man, a more repulsively mutilated creature it was impossible to imagine. He might have been fifty, but it was difficult to read his age from his face. His features were scarred with ancient scars and a piece of his mouth was missing—and perhaps a tooth or two as well, if one could have seen through his thick grizzled moustache. An eye was missing on the same side, and half his face was tattooed with little black points as if from an exploded musket. His nose was bent sideways and quite flattened at the top, doubtless owing to a heavy fall. He had only three whole fingers on the right hand, the other two were fearfully mutilated. As for the left arm it was horribly distorted from its natural position, the elbow being twisted right round and the joint immovable. Add to this that one of his legs was shorter than the other. Yet, in spite of everything, this fraction of a man was so agile that he anticipated all the others and was the first to courteously kiss the hand of the descending lady, who shrank back horror-stricken at the contact of those crippled fingers.

"My wife—my friend Gerzson," said Hatszegi hastening to introduce them to each other. The master of the house professed himself delighted at his good fortune; pressed his friend's hand with his third remaining finger and presented his arm, the stiff one, to the lady who touched it as gingerly as if she was afraid of hurting it.

The master of the house laughed aloud at her misgivings.

"Lean on it hard your ladyship!" cried he, "it won't break, it is as strong as iron. Down Fecske, down sir!" (this to a dog who had expressed his joy at the sight of Henrietta by jumping on her shoulder.) "I rejoice that I have the felicity to welcome your ladyship. I have arranged a great fox hunt in your ladyship's honour for to-morrow. We are all fox hunters here. I hope your ladyship will take part in it?"

"I don't know how to ride," replied the child-wife simply.

"Oh! that's nothing, we will teach you. I have got a good nag who is as gentle as a lamb. We won't let your ladyship go till we have taught you."

When they reached the saloon a number of jackbooted, brass-buttoned, gentlemen of various ages were presented in turn to Henrietta who forgot all their names the moment after they were introduced and was quite delighted when she was conducted to her room and left alone with Clementina.

She had scarce time to change her travelling dress when supper was announced. The meal was laid on a large round table in the midst of a vast hall; there were more wine bottles than dishes; the handles of the knives and forks were made from the horns of elks and the antlers of stags,—the principal meats were cold venison, highly spiced and peppered stews and pickled galuska.[5]

[Footnote 5: A sort of large dumpling.]

"I am afraid this is only a hunter's repast, my lady!" opined Mr. Gerzson conducting Henrietta to the table, at which she and Clementina were the only ladies present. "Unfortunately this house has no mistress and an old bachelor like me must serve others as he himself is served."

"Then why don't you marry?" bantered Hatszegi.

"I wanted to once, but it all come to nothing. The bride was already chosen and the day for the bridal banquet was fixed. My lady bride was a fine handsome lassie. On the eve of my wedding day, in order that the business might not escape my memory, I told my heyduke to place by my bed in the morning my nice bright dress boots instead of my old hunting jacks. Very well! Early next morning while I was still on my back in bed, I heard a great barking and yelping in the garden below. 'What's the row?' I shouted. They told me the dogs had started a lynx out of the bushes. 'What! a lynx!' I cried, for a lynx, let me tell you, is a rare beast in these parts. I was out of bed in a twinkling, plunged into the nice dress boots, snatched my gun from the wall and was off into the thicket. I soon found the trail and after that lynx I went. The dogs led me further and further into the depths of the forest and the further I went the more fiery grew the pursuit. Once or twice I had a sort of feeling that I had forgotten something at home, and I felt myself all over, but no, powder horn, pipe case, tobacco pouch, flint, steel—everything was there. So on I went further and further. Again I felt bothered, but by this time the lynx quite carried me away with him and kept appearing and disappearing again in the most distracting fashion. Only towards evening did I hold its pelt in my hand and home with it I went straightway. And now, again, an oppressive feeling overcame me, just as if there was something wrong going on somewhere in the world which it was in my power to prevent. Only in the evening when I was pulling off my dress boots did it flash across me that I ought to have been present at my wedding that very day. And so matters remained as they were, for my bride was so angry with me for my forgetfulness that she went away and married a lawyer fellow. No doubt she got the right man, but since then I have had no desire for matrimony."

The company laughed heartily at this jest, and then attacked the patriarchal banquet with tremendous appetite, nor did they wait to be asked twice to fill their glasses. Henrietta, naturally, did not touch anything. Even at ordinary times she ate very little, but now there was nothing at all she fancied. Mr. Gerzson was in despair.

"My dear lady," said he, "you eat so little that if I were a day labourer I could easily support you on my wages."

The company laughed aloud at this. The idea of a day labourer with such hands and feet as that!

Then Gerzson proceeded to relate to them the exploits or misadventures in which his various limbs had more or less come to grief. "And now," concluded he, "I will tell your ladyship how I came by this scar on my forehead. A few years ago I was visiting our friend Leonard, your husband, my dear lady, at his castle at Hidvar, and whilst there we spent two weeks among the glaciers."

"Night and day?" enquired the astonished Henrietta.

"Well, at night we built ourselves huts out of the branches of fir trees. If, however, no rain fell we encamped in the open round our watch-fire snugly wrapped up in our bundas[6]. Splendid fun I can tell you! For two days, when our stores gave out, we lived on nothing but bilberries and broiled bear's flesh."

[Footnote 6: Sheepskins.]

"You were badly off then."

"No, on the contrary, the paws of a bear are great delicacies, only we had no salt to salt them with."

"Why did you not return home?"

"We could not, for four days together we had been on the track of a blood-bear. Do you know what a blood-bear is? A bear is a very mild, harmless sort of a beast in general, and is quite content with honey, berries, and roots; but let him once taste blood and he rages about like a lion, and more than that, he has a decided preference for human blood before all other kinds of blood. We had been pursuing one of these old malefactors four days running, as I have said; four times we got within range of him and four times he broke away. He carried a few bullets away with him beneath his hide, indeed, but a lot he cared about that! He gave one or two of our badly-aiming huntsmen a clout on the head which sent them flying, stripped the skin from the head of one of the beaters and then took refuge in the wilderness. Friend Leonard and the other gentlemen now wanted to abandon the chase, for they were frightfully hungry and the heavy rain and rock scrambling had pretty well torn our clothes from our bodies, yet I urged them to make another attempt on the morrow. I assured them that if they beat up the wood once more we should capture the bear. The whole lot of them were against me. Friend Leonard insisted that we should not catch him, as a bear never remains in the place where he has been wounded, but runs on and on night and day; by this time he would have got right across the border into Wallachia. 'Very well!' I said, 'What do you bet that he is not quite near and we shall come upon him to-morrow?' Leonard replied he would bet me two to one we shouldn't. 'All right!' said I. 'I'll pay you a hundred ducats if we don't find Bruin to-morrow.' 'And I'll pay you a thousand if we do,' said he. So the bet was clinched. Next morning in a thick mist we sent out the beaters while we ourselves stood on our guard. Leonard and I took up our post near a ravine waiting impatiently for the mist to disperse. Towards mid-day it began to clear. No end of stags and foxes ambled slowly past us, but we did not even aim at them; the bear was our watchword. The beaters had pretty nearly finished their work. We were standing only fifty paces or so apart, so we began to chat together. 'I begin to be sorry for your hundred ducats,' said Leonard. 'I am still sorrier for the lost bear's skin,' said I. 'It is in Wallachia by this time!' he replied. Behind my back, some ten yards off, was the opening of a narrow hole; there were hundreds such in the rocks all about. 'Come, now!' I cried, 'suppose my bear has stowed himself away in this hollow!'—and there and then, like a mischievous little boy, I poked the barrel of my gun into the hollow and fired off a couple of shots in quick succession. A frightful roar came from the depths of the cavern. The wild beast during all this noise, clamour and beating about the bush was actually behind my back holding his tongue,—and a splendid big beast he was, two heads taller than I and with tusks like a wild boar. In a moment he was upon me, and I had already discharged my two barrels. It is all over with me now, I thought! Why, it will be nothing at all to a magnificent beast like this to tear such a wretched creature as myself limb from limb! Erect on his hind legs he came straight at me, smashing my hunting-knife at a single blow, and, enfolding me in his terrible arms, he tried to mangle my features with his teeth. At the last moment I called to Leonard: 'Shoot between us, old chap! you will hit one of us anyhow!' I preferred being killed by a bullet to being torn to bits. The next instant a report sounded, and I was only just aware that the pair of us, still tightly embraced, were rolling backwards into the bottom of the ravine. There, however, the thick undergrowth held us up, and I perceived that my bear was quite done for. The bullet had gone clean through his ear. Yes, a masterly shot on Leonard's part it was, I must confess—at fifty paces at the very moment when the bear's head and mine were near enough for kissing. And I do think it was so nice of Leonard to risk a shot for me, when if he had simply allowed me to be torn to pieces he would have saved his thousand ducats, for he lost his bet, you see. Not only did he liberate me, but he paid a thousand ducats for doing so."

"He acted like a true gentleman!" they all cried. It was the general opinion.

"Your ladyship will see this splendid bear skin at Hidvar, it is a real treasure for a hunter, I can tell you. And in fact if I had had the choice I would much rather have had the bear skin than the thousand ducats, and the exchange would have been much better for me too in the long run, for I should have the skin to this day, whereas the thousand ducats were forcibly taken from me at Deva by that villain, Fatia Negra."[7]

[Footnote 7: Black face.]

"Who is that?" enquired Henrietta curiously.

"A famous robber-chieftain in these mountains whom they can never lay hands upon."

Henrietta cast anxious glances around her.

But here Hatszegi coolly interrupted him by striking his plate with his fork: "I won't have my wife frightened to death by your highwayman yarns," cried he, and changed the conversation. Shortly afterwards Henrietta went to her chamber, leaving her husband with Mr. Gerzson and his guests.

Such was Henrietta's first night after her marriage. She at least was so far fortunate as not to be obliged to see her husband. Towards morning she dozed off, and when she awoke again she found that the whole company had long ago set off fox-hunting, nor did they return till late in the evening, tired out, wet through, and dripping with sweat. Henrietta meanwhile had discovered the remains of a dilapidated library in an old disused huntsman's hut, had ferretted out of it a few Latin books, and had amused herself with them,—at least so far as she was able, for many of the leaves had been torn out and used as tinder.

It is notorious that tired sportsmen are about the dullest dogs on earth; so Henrietta felt that she would not lose much when her husband told her she had better go to rest early, as they must be up betimes next morning. And, indeed, next morning they were off so early that, except their old host, not one of the hunting party was there to bid them God speed! But he again conducted his lady-guest to her carriage on his crippled arm and arranged her cushions comfortably for her with his three-fingered hand.

It was a very fine day for a journey, and the windows of the two carriages were let down so that Henrietta was able to view the landscape stretching out before her. She had never been here before, it was all new to her. She discovered from Clementina's lamentations that they had still a three days' journey before they reached home, and that they would spend the coming night at the castle of Count Kengyelesy. The coachmen had told Margari so, and he passed the news on to Clementina. It also appeared that Count Kengyelesy was a very curious sort of man, who contradicted Baron Hatszegi in everything, yet for all that they were never angry with and always glad to see each other. The count was also said to have a young wife who did not love him. So ran the gossip of the servants. It was all one to Henrietta what they said about Count Kengyelesy and his consort.

Between five and six in the afternoon they reached the count's castle, which lay outside the village in the midst of rich tobacco and rapeseed fields, and enclosed on three sides by a splendid English garden; the place was arranged with taste and evidently well-cared for.

That the count expected the arrival of the Hatszegis was evident from the fact that dinner was awaiting them. Kengyelesy was a little puny bit of a man with very light bright hair, white eyelashes, and a pointed chin made still more pointed by a long goatish beard. It always pleased him very much when his friends confidentially assured him that he had a perfect satyr-like countenance.

His wife was a young, chubby, lively lady with smiling blue eyes unacquainted with sorrow, whom her husband on the occasion of a bal pare at Vienna had seen, fallen in love with, and carried off, although the girl's father, a retired Field-marshal, was quite ready to surrender her—they preferred, however, the romance of an elopement.

The countess received her lady-guest with the most effusive heartiness, called her by her Christian name on the spot, and invited her to do that same with her. She told Henrietta she was to feel quite at home, dragged her all over the castle, and showed her in rapid succession her rare flowers, her Parisian furniture, her Japanese curiosities; played something for her on the piano, made her parrot talk to her and incontinently popped on her finger a large and beautiful opal ring, which she told her she was to keep as an eternal souvenir.

Then the countess seized the hand of the child-wife and led her into her bed-chamber. On the wall hung a fine large battle-piece, a splendid oil painting by a Viennese master.

"A magnificent picture, is it not?" enquired the countess with a broad smile.

"Yes," replied Henrietta absently.

"How do you like the central figure? I mean the hero on horseback with the standard in his hand?"

"He is handsome, but it seems to me that, situated as he is, he smiles too much."

The countess laughed loudly at this remark.

"That," said she, "is the portrait of a young hussar officer who for a long time paid his court to me. I could not, of course, keep his portrait in my room, for there everyone would know all about it, so I had a battle-piece painted in all round, and nobody suspects anything. Oh! my friend, if women were not so inventive, they would often be very unhappy. But that, mind! is a secret; not a soul must know about it."

Henrietta grew pensive. She also had her secret, but she would tell it to nobody, not even on her death-bed. She also had a portrait written in ineffaceable characters in her heart, yet between him and her stand two infinite obstacles, the one a betrayed star whose name is Mesarthim, the other that unbetrayable thing, whose name is—woman's honour!

"Madame est servie!" cried the epauletted lacquey, and the countess drawing her arm through Henrietta's, led her into the dining-room, where the gentlemen already awaited them.

After dinner the humorous young countess entertained Henrietta for a long time with her amusing chatter. She told her, at the very outset, things that young wives, as a rule, only confide to their most intimate friends. She told her, for instance, how very jealous her little Squirrel was (she called her husband by this pet name) and how he would never take her to Vienna or Pest, because he suspected that she might find someone there to interest her. Anything like correspondence on her part was of course impossible; a wise woman will always have sense enough never to part with a line of writing. Everything else, she witnesses, treacherous servants, for instance—can always be disowned; but there is no defence against a letter which has fallen into the wrong hands. Oh no! she knew a trick worth two of that. Whenever the Squirrel went to Vienna, she gave him a list of articles required by her from a modiste in the town, on this list are set down hats, head-dresses, muffs, and other similar articles. Squirrel always reads this list over ten times at least, but finds nothing in it to excite his suspicions. But it regularly escapes his attention what day is indicated by the date at the head of the list, for he can never tell for the life of him on what day of the month such or such a day will fall. Now at the head of this list stands, instead of the date on which the goods are to be sent, the date up to which the Squirrel intends to divert himself at Vienna. This list the Squirrel in person conveys to the modiste, who communicates with the person whom it most concerns, and the Kengyelesy puszta[8] will not seem the end of the world to whomsoever has a magnet in his heart to draw him thither.

[Footnote 8: Heath. But also, as in this place, used to designate the uncut terated land forming part of a nobleman's estate.]

Henrietta was amazed and confounded by this new science, the very alphabet of which was unknown to her. Even when she lay in bed she ruminated for a long time how it was possible that certain things which break the hearts of some people are nevertheless regarded by other people as mere frolics all their lives.

The next morning everyone arose late. The gentlemen had been up till the small hours and were hard to wake. They all met together in the breakfast-room. Hatszegi and his host were preparing for the journey. The count asked the young wife what she had dreamt about, "for," added he, "whatever one dreams about the first night in a strange place is sure to come true."

Henrietta did not like to speak of her dreams; her waking thoughts were too often interwoven with them.

"And you, you great silly," said the countess to her husband in a bantering tone, "did you dream anything of me?"

"Yes, darling, I dreamt that we shall spend the coming winter in Vienna. Don't put so much sugar in my tea!"

"What! not for such a nice dream as that. Will it really come to pass?"

"Most certainly, pussy. We will go there together after the bathing season is over."

The countess possessed sufficient self-control to conceal her delight.

"By the bye," said Kengyelesy, turning to Henrietta, "how does your ladyship like the Kengyelesy puszta?"

"Very well."

"And the castle?"

"That is nice too."

"Don't you think it a good joke that yesterday your ladyship and your honoured husband were my guests, whilst to-day we are your ladyship's guests and that, too, without our having to move out of the house?"

"How?" enquired the astonished Henrietta.

"Why, we made an agreement this very morning whereby friend Leonard is going to take over the whole property and everything belonging to it—not you, my dear, of course," this to his wife, "I mean the nags and the cows—and henceforth this house belongs to you."

"Don't forget to invite the countess to Hidvar for the vintage festival," whispered Hatszegi to his wife.

Henrietta accordingly made the effort, and when they rose from the breakfast she timidly expressed the wish that the Kengyelesys would do them the honour to return their visit at Hidvar.

"Oh, we will be sure to come!" the fair countess hastened to reply, "Squirrel will bring me to you in the autumn and we will remain a whole month."

Kengyelesy also courteously accepted the invitation and then taking Henrietta's little hand between his own palms so that he could just manage to kiss the tips of her fingers, he said to her in a strange and piteous sort of voice: "But then you must promise to love our friend Leonard here a little better than you have done hitherto."

A shudder ran through Henrietta's body at these words. The very air of the room was all at once difficult to breathe, and she only felt better when she sat in the carriage again. But even there she was haunted by some unendurable, undefinable, torturing feeling which struck her still more unpleasantly when Clementina remarked: "Yes, there is nothing but good land on this puszta."

Why, what could it matter to the honest creature whether the land was good or not, it was surely all one to her?

"Two thousand acres in one lot, nothing but first-class land."

"How do you know that?" asked Henrietta.

"Margari told me he drew up the agreement and witnessed it, and yet no money was paid down."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Did not your ladyship then understand the allusion the count made just now when he asked you to love your husband a little more than hitherto?"

"What has such nonsense to do with me?"

"He meant by that that he who is unlucky in love is lucky at play; for last night my lord baron played cards with my lord count and won from him the whole Kengyelesy estate straight off."

Henrietta felt like one who is in the embrace of the boa-constrictor and unable to defend himself. She had not expected this.

But Clementina was only too delighted to have something to chatter about. "And do you know, your ladyship," she continued, "the baron and the count have been rivals for a long time, and each has always been trying his hardest to ruin the other—in a friendly way, of course. The chambermaid told Margari, and Margari told me. 'I will not be content, comrade,' my lord baron used to say to my lord count, 'till one of us is reduced to his last jacket, and as soon as one of us is absolutely beggared, the other will hold himself bound to maintain him, in a way befitting a gentleman till the day of his death.' Strange men these, madame, eh!"

Perceiving, however, from Henrietta's looks that there was something depressing to her young mistress in her narration, she tried to soften the effect of her words by intimating that the count had another property besides, although not such a nice castle, and also that it was open to him to buy back the former estate in thirty years' time if he could find the money.

"That will do, Clementina, my head aches badly!" said Henrietta. She wished to rid herself of this uncalled-for gabble, in order that she might devote herself to her own thoughts.

And what thoughts! She had had no idea that such things could be. How was it possible that two men who called themselves friends, could ruin one another thus in cold blood? How was it possible that a man could enter the house of an affectionate host as a welcome guest in the evening, and by next morning leave him not an inch of land on which to put his foot, or a roof to cover his head! "And one has to get accustomed to such things!" thought she.

All the day long their journey lay through that brain-wearying plain whose endless flatness oppressed soul and body with its monotony and soon drove her back to her own thoughts. Towards evening there were signs of rain. Clouds were rising and then, at least, there would be something new to point at in the eternal monotony of the sky. Unfortunately clouds have the bad habit of bringing tempests along with them, and tempests are evil travelling companions on the steppes of the Alfoeld.[9] The towers of the town they were trying to reach were still only dimly visible on the horizon. In ordinary weather it would not have mattered if they had arrived late, for they had reckoned upon the moonlight; but there could be no moon to-night, instead of her a storm full of angry lightnings was approaching. Already from afar they could hear it rumbling as it drove dust-clouds before it, could hear that peculiar, continuous, roar as of some giant hand playing uninterruptedly on the keys of some terrible organ. Whoever has been caught on the Alfoeld in a storm knows the meaning of that wind; it means that the tempest is bringing hail with it.

[Footnote 9: The great Hungarian plain.]

One thing was now certain: they must turn aside somewhere. All that Henrietta observed, however, was that her carriage stood still for a moment, and then Hatszegi's carriage went on in front, the baron himself seizing the horses' reins and shouting to the coachman behind him: "After me as hard as you can tear!" With that they left the road and plunged right across country through ditches and swamps and low, marshy ground till the water came up to the very axles of the wheels and Clementina shrieked that they were perishing. But there was no need to be afraid. Hatszegi was a skilful coachman, who could ever find his way even where there was no way at all. About a four hours' journey off, a pump now became visible, and beyond it a little hut loomed white and high, there they must seek a refuge from the tempest as it passed over them. And indeed they had only just reached the small courtyard when the first lumps of ice as big as nuts, began bombarding the windows of the carriages.

"Quick, quick, into the house!" cried Hatszegi. The baron himself helped his wife and Clementina to descend and hurried them in beneath the verandah, which was made of crooked branches and hung over the kitchen door like a shade over the forehead of a weak-sighted man.

On their approach the woman of the house emerged from the kitchen with her head tied up in a red handkerchief. She was no longer young, but ruddy, robust, bright-eyed, and bustling, and as full of sparkle as if she had just sprung out of the fire.

On perceiving her guests she clapped her hands together.

"Lord deliver us, if it isn't his lordship! And only just married now, eh!—after all these years! But which is the bride, your lordship? Surely not this one (pointing to Clementina) for she is an old dear!—and yet the other is but a child!"

The baron hastened to interrupt this uncalled-for outburst.

"Come, come, my good woman! No chatter now, please, for the hail will be upon us in a moment; but take these ladies into a room and see that it is clean and comfortable. Henrietta! pray get out of the rain."

The csarda[10] woman kissed Henrietta's hand with great familiarity and kept on saying in a quavering voice: "Oh, thou tender little creature! to think of giving them to husbands so early!" cried she. But Clementina, who was always nervous in strange places, called the baron's attention to the fact that loud masculine voices were proceeding from somewhere within the csarda.

[Footnote 10: Inn.]

"Have you anyone here now?" enquired the baron of the csarda woman.

"Yes, three or four lads and Ripa. The old fellow has just been released from the prison at Arad. I don't know whether he served his full time. Pray walk in!"

"They are not robbers, are they?" asked Clementina hesitating.

"No, dear heart alive, there are no robbers in these parts, but only poor vagabonds. You will not find robbers nearer than the Bakony forest. These poor fellows hurt nobody, least of all ladies. I don't count old Ripa at all, but only the other three. It would be another thing if Blackey were here, for he is a fine gentleman and likes to amuse himself with the ladies. But don't think, dear soul, that his features are black, oh, dear, no! I call him 'Blackey' because he always wears a mask of black velvet lest he should be recognized, only his eyes and mouth are ever visible."

And with such comforting assurances she escorted Henrietta and Clementina up the narrow staircase.

They had to pass through the long tap-room before they came to the inner parlour. At the guest table were sitting three hardy looking young fellows and an old pock-marked man, a foxey-eyed rascal who drank out of the others' glasses from time to time and kept the conversation going.

"Come! shut up, Ripa!" said the landlady to the old man. "This is no Jew-Madame, but the spouse of my lord, Baron Hatszegi. Show your manners if you have any and thank her for the honour."

The old rascal rose from his bench with cunning humility and twisting up both ends of his gray moustache, politely kissed Henrietta's hand, and would have paid the same compliment to Clementina if the landlady had not prevented him by shouting: "Leave her alone, she is only a sort of servant!"

With that she led the ladies into the inner room, where were two lofty bedsteads reaching to the beams above, covered with bright bedding and prettily painted over with tulips and roses. In the window screens were wide-spreading rosemary and musk plants. In front of one of the great chests stood a spinning wheel. From this the landlady, winter and summer, spun off that fine thread from which were woven those bright and gay handkerchiefs which could be seen bobbing about in the doorway of the inn from afar. One would never have expected to find such ease and comfort in a csarda of the puszta.

The landlady very politely divested Henrietta of her travelling clothes, made a soft resting place for her with cushions in an arm-chair, put a stool beneath her feet, and in less time than it took to draw a breath, totted up ten different kinds of dishes that she might choose from them the one she liked best. Perhaps she would like some leaf-cake? It was just cooking and would be served up immediately, and she began spreading the table with a nice horse-cloth. Clementina whispered Henrietta to beware of poison, whereupon Henrietta told the landlady that she would have a bit of that nice dish, and when it came she really enjoyed it, though she did not know what it was, at which the landlady was infinitely pleased.

Meanwhile Hatszegi came in after seeing that the carriages were put into a dry place. He took no notice of the poor vagabonds, but hastily demanded a change of clothes, as his own were soaking, and was amazed to see Henrietta handling her knife and fork so well; it was the first time on the whole journey that she had eaten with appetite. Henrietta said that this peasant roast suited her taste.

"And now, Dame Kardos, will you put the ladies up for the night?" said Hatszegi to the woman of the csarda.

"Certainly," returned the worthy woman, "I have feather mattresses enough and bedsteads enough for as many guests of quality as your lordship likes. This bed will be my lord baron's and this my lady's, and this the lady attendant's!"

"Not so quick, not so quick! I shall not lie here."

"Not lie here?" cried this child of the puszta. "Why, pray?"

"Oh! I'll find some place or other in the tap-room outside."

"It's a way great folks have, I suppose," murmured Dame Kardos, shrugging her shoulders, "but I never saw or heard the likes of it before."

"But, my lord," lisped Clementina, greatly agitated, "won't those wild vagabonds outside disturb you?"

"Me?" exclaimed Hatszegi, "how the devil can they disturb me?"

"They are such wicked men, surely?"

"I don't care what sort of men they are." And with that he went out with the utmost sang froid; nay, as Clementina herself noticed, he drew forth his pocket pistols and left them behind him on the table.

"His lordship has no need to fear such men," the landlady reassured the ladies, "for he can talk to them in their own lingo."

Henrietta did not understand. Did robbers then speak a dialect peculiar to themselves? She became quite curious to hear how Hatszegi would speak to the robbers in their own language.

But the landlady knew exactly what to do. She filled a kulacs[11] for the baron and placed it on the table before him. Hatszegi took a good pull at it, dried the mouth of the kulacs and passed it on to the old pockmarked vagabond who, after raising his cap, took a little drop himself and then passed it on to the others.

[Footnote 11: A wooden field-flask.]

"Well, old fellow, is the wine good?"

"Wine is always good."

"Have you had enough?"

"One can never have enough."

"Then God grant you plenty!—By the way, does the wind still blow through the crevices of the prison door at Arad?"

"It blows for him who lists to it. Let him who likes it not close his ears to it."

"Have many children been born to the governor of the jail lately?"[12]

[Footnote 12: Whenever a new convict arrives at the jail, the governor is said to have another son born to him.—Jokai.]

"Yes, lots have been born there—and christened too."[13]

[Footnote 13: i.e., with stripes.—Jokai.]

"Has the daughter of the cord[14] been married lately?"

[Footnote 14: A flowery expression for the gallows.—Jokai.]

"Only Marczi Csendes has been elevated lately. He was a fool. He took the crime of two comrades on his shoulders in order to let them go free. They were caught in the act, but he swore he did the deed. They were young bloods, you see, and he had nobody to care for him. And yet it was they who presented the empty pistol at the Jew's head. The Jew himself pointed them out, but Marczi steadfastly maintained that it was he who frightened the fellow."

"So they made him cold against the winter time?"

"Yes, but he didn't very much care. The hour before his execution he took an affectionate leave of his comrades, and to me he bequeathed his warm old sheepskin. When the priest asked him whether he had anything upon his conscience, he merely said the only thing that grieved him was the thought that he would never again be able in this life to eat his fill of well peppered gulyas[15] such as old Ripa knew how to cook. They humoured him, and I was sent into the kitchen to prepare it. My old friend ate with a good appetite and wanted me to take a bit too; but my throat felt as cramped as if they had already taken my measure round it with the gallows rope. He gave each of the two heydukes who accompanied him in the felon's car, one on his right, the other on his left, a silver coin apiece. The heydukes told us afterwards that when he got outside he rose up in the car and addressed the people. He was a tall, handsome fellow with red cheeks, long black hair and a fine sonorous voice like any chaplain's. His last words were: 'Well, I now look upon this fair world for the last time.'"

[Footnote 15: Hungarian pilau.]

"Did he leave behind him any new songs," enquired Hatszegi. "He was always a famous singer."

"Yes, one he made in jail, and a splendid song it was too, I can tell you. Bandi! pipe it to his lordship on your tilinka as I have taught you." At these words one of the youths drew forth from his sleeve one of those flutes made of elder-wood, which in Hungarian goes by the name of a tilinka, and which with its poor six holes is able to give forth as many variations as the throat of a lark; then, without any virtuoso airs he simply piped the plaintive melody.

The baron was immensely pleased. "Margari," cried he, "go to the carriage, look for my fiddle and bring it hither!"

At this command poor Margari had a veritable ague fit of terror. All this time he had remained ducking down in the carriage firmly persuaded that the robbers in this lonely place would cut down every mother's son of them at nightfall. In such a case he was prepared to swear that he had never belonged to the party at all, but would pretend he was only a poor tramp, and so escape that way. And now the baron had ruined his little plan by ordering him to come forth! The robbers would now absolutely believe that he also was a swell. Oh, it is a frightful situation when a poor devil has managed to get a 100 gulden into his purse for the first time in his life and is obliged the very next evening to put up at an inn full of robbers! What the devil did the baron want with the fiddle at all? And then what sort of a thing was a fiddle? When a man is terrified he easily mistakes one thing for another and Margari's first experiment was to carry in to the baron a long leaden box containing the territorial chart of the Kengyelesy estate—was that what his lordship wanted?

"Have you lost your wits, Margari? How could you possibly get a fiddle into that? Or has the fellow never cast eyes on a fiddle? Bandi, you go and look in the carriage for the fiddle!"

But this was not at all to Margari's liking. What, send that vagabond to the carriage to ferret about there! His lordship must have clean taken leave of his senses. Why, in the carriage was Margari's own brand-new mantle, for which he had paid nine and twenty gulden. The vagabond would be sure to lay his hands upon it. No, he would rather go to look for the fiddle himself. So he found the violin case at last somehow, and handing it to the baron through the csarda window (for he durst not trust himself inside), he retired again beneath the coach-house, although the rain was now splashing down upon it.

Baron Leonard took from its morocco case his splendid Straduarius, that relic of the greatest master of fiddle-making, for which he had paid a small fortune, and following the lead of the young vagabond's tilinka played the bitter-sweet melancholy air on the sonorous instrument, and at the third trial he enriched it with so many variations as to astonish everyone. Then Ripa became enthusiastic and chimed in with his hoarse old voice.

When the baron once had the violin in his hands, he was not content with playing a single song, one melody enticed another forth, and so, one after another, his fiddle-bow ran through all those rhapsodies of the last century, those compositions of the "Gipsy-Beethoven," Bihari, and other great popular masters, with the most classical variations. Princes listen not to such a concert as now resounded through that wretched, desolate csarda. Even Henrietta arose from her couch the better to enjoy these melancholy airs. If ever in her life, it was at this moment that she beheld her husband in an aureole of dazzling light which irresistibly attracted, overpowered, subdued.

One thing, however, struck her as strange, incredible—how could a fashionable man brought up in the atmosphere of elegant saloons, find any pleasure in playing bravoura pieces in the tap room of a miserable csarda to an audience of half-tipsy vagabonds? Was this an habitual diversion of these wealthy magnates, or was it only Hatszegi's bizarre humour?

However, when "the lads" began to chime in a little too vigourously, Hatszegi restored the violin to its case, took out his pocket-book, opened it before them all and nonchalantly displayed as he did so the bundles of thousand-gulden notes which it contained. Nay, he searched among them for stray ten-gulden notes and gave one to each of the four vagabonds "for the fine song they had taught him"—that was the way he put it—at the same time requesting them to quit the tap-room, as the ladies in the adjoining chamber wanted to sleep and must not be kept awake by any further noise. The vagabonds must seek a couch elsewhere.

The vagabonds, without the slightest objection, arose, drank up the dregs of the wine, pocketed the bank-notes without so much as a "thank you!" and settled down for the night on the roof of the coach-house—to the great terror of Margari, who was concealed in one of the coaches and did not have a wink of sleep all night, his teeth chattered so.

But Hatszegi, when the drinkers had withdrawn, spread out his hunting pelisse on the long table, laid down thereon and quietly fell asleep. He did not even shut the door, nor did he have his pistols by him.

In the adjoining chamber, meanwhile, the csarda-woman had brought out her spindle, set all its many wheels a-working and began to tell her ladyship a lot of those wondrous tales that have neither beginning nor end, puszta adventures, the atrocities of vagabonds and their fellows, the sad love stories of poor deserted maidens and such like. And all the while the wheels of the spindle whirr-whirr-whirred monotonously, and Henrietta felt like a little child whose nurse sits beside her bed and lulls her to sleep with fairy tales. For weeks she had not enjoyed so quiet and dreamless a slumber as she had that night beneath the roof of the csarda in the midst of the lonely puszta.

Next morning Clementina, after first making quite sure that nobody had had his or her throat cut during the night, was moved by curiosity to ask what sort of connection his lordship had with this csarda since he seemed to know everybody in it. And then she learnt that not only this csarda but the whole of the surrounding puszta also was the property of his lordship, for which the people who lived upon it paid very little rent, inasmuch as his lordship did not look upon it as a source of income but chiefly valued it on account of its numerous reedy lakes where he was wont every year to hunt water-fowl and beavers on a grand scale. Moreover, from this spot to his own house, a good two days' journey by foot, everything belonged to his lordship's estate. Nay, his lordship, if he liked, could traverse the whole kingdom from Deva to Pest, and be on his own property the whole time, it was only like moving from one of his houses to another.

The next day the Hungarian plain came to an end and the Transylvanian Alps drew nearer and nearer. In the evening they descended into a little mining town whose forges and furnaces were all illuminated in honour of the arriving guests. Henrietta then learnt that this mining town also belonged to her husband.

On the third day, quite early in the morning, they crossed the Transylvanian frontier. The whole of that splendid region seemed to smile, but the faces of its inhabitants are sad and mysterious. Henrietta had a peculiar sense of anxiety during her stay among these angry looking people who spoke a language she had never heard before. At intervals of a mile all along the road a roughly carved cross shot up, covered with clumsily carved letters, which did not in the least resemble those we are accustomed to. Clementina once asked the coachman what these crosses might mean and repented doing so immediately afterwards, for he informed her that they marked the places where unlucky travellers had come by an untimely death; the inscriptions were the records of the tragic romances through the scene of which they were passing.

The valleys grew narrower and narrower, the road wound upward among precipices, and the loquacious coachman attached horrible stories to every rock and ruin. Each valley seemed to have its own particular ghost.

Here and there by the roadside stood silent houses not one of which had an inviting appearance, it would never have occurred to a human soul to knock at any of them, even at midnight, to ask for a night's lodging. They were all of them sooty dilapidated shanties, which might easily have been taken for stables, consisting of a single room in which the whole family lived, livestock and all. The church often lay far away from the settlement as if it belonged to two villages equally.

Then the road rose again between bare and barren cliffs, where only here and there a solitary bush seemed to cling to the rocky wall. There was no trace of a garden, but here and there was a fenced in space in which the Roumanians are wont to unload their hay, with a long pole sticking up in the midst of the hay ricks to prevent the wind from carrying it away, or else the hay was piled up on the branch of a living tree like a bird's nest.

Down-pouring mountain streams traversed the path at intervals, over which never a bridge is built, all cars and coaches must cross by the fords. From the depths of the wooded mountain slopes was reflected the blood-red glare of iron works and foundries, and the droaning monotonous din of the machinery scares away the stillness till it loses itself in the loud murmuring of the mountain torrents.

At every fresh mile, Henrietta felt how lonely she was in this strange world, whose giant mountains shut her out from the very prospect of the familiar places from which she had come and from every possibility of returning; and whose inhabitants would not even be able to answer her if she were to ask them: "Which is the way back to my native place?"

They travelled onwards till late at night by the light of the moon. Hidvar was now close at hand. As the prospect opened out on both sides, at the turn of a narrow defile, suddenly, like a picture in a black frame, between two mountain slopes, thickly covered with dark beech-trees, the castle of Hidvar came full in view, standing lonely and isolated on the summit of a hill. The mountain torrent shot swiftly down beneath a shaky bridge. The round moon stood straight over the tower of the castle, as if it had been impaled on the point of it, and painted everything with its silvery light, the tower, the bastions, the brook and the valley—only one thing it brightened not, the heart of the young wife.



CHAPTER VII

THE CAVERN OF LUCSIA

Not so very long ago there was in Transylvania a wide-spreading society of coiners which, it is now notorious, had carried on its nefarious business undetected for more than half a century. The science was an inheritance descending from father to son, people married and were born into it. Careful parents trained their children to follow it, and a very lucrative profession it proved to be. That it should have remained undiscovered for so long a time, that it should have been plied successfully for more than fifty years under the very noses of the authorities—all this was capable of a very simple explanation, these men coined gold pieces.

Yes, genuine ducats, of full weight, out of real three-and-twenty carat gold, without any admixture of baser metal, so that they absolutely could not be distinguished from the royal ducats of the authorized minting towns, Koermoecz and Gyulafehervar. If they fell into the hands of a goldsmith, and he melted them, he found that they did not contain half a grain more silver than the genuine ones. Indeed the public lost nothing by their fabrication, though the state treasury suffered considerably.

The whole region, in fact, from Zalathna to Verespatak abounded in that precious metal which some fool or other has called "a mere chimera," and the gold mining was farmed out to private individuals, the yearly output from the shafts being twelve hundredweights. These private diggers are bound to deliver the gold they obtain to the minting towns at Abradbanya or Gyulafehervar and there receive coined money in exchange. Nevertheless, during some fifty years, only about six hundredweights were delivered annually at these places; the rest disappeared, though at first nobody could suspect it. The State pays to the diggers 441 guldens for every pound of gold dust, which quantity when coined is worth 720 guldens. But it occurred to the mountaineers that they also might profitably engage in coining and circulate the money so coined. So they provided themselves with all the necessary implements and machinery (there were skilled workmen among them) and issued false ducats to their very great advantage. Their existence was not even suspected except by the parties interested in the concern, and they had every motive in the world for preserving the secret.

* * * * *

Travelling from Abradbanya up towards Bucsum, one might have seen two riders toiling up the mountain along the stream overshadowed by dark alders; one of them was a grey-haired, gigantic Roumanian, the other a proud-looking young woman. The old man wore a lambskin mantle, on his head he carried a tall pointed cap, also of lambs' wool, drawn down over his eyebrows, his body was carelessly girdled with a golden girdle. His rich grey locks were plaited into two thick pig-tails which reached down to his broad shoulders, and his snow-white moustache hung down from his mouth like two seamew's wings. A coarse sack lay in front of him across his saddle, both ends of which appeared to be full of something heavy; across the sack lay his fowling-piece.

The fair cavalier was sitting on a small, wild, shaggy horse, which constantly evinced a praiseworthy endeavour to overtake the rider in front of him; his mistress with difficulty held him in. She was one of those famous Roumanian beauties. Her features, the cut of her lips, her full chin could have stood as a model beside any antique statue. And then those sparkling eyes, that vividly red complexion, those coal-black eyebrows—they made an ideal beauty of her. And the picturesque Roumanian costume enhanced her charms. Her black hair, twisted into a double plait, was bound round with a flaming-red scarf, and on her head she wore a round hat, trimmed with pearls and garnished in front with a row of gold pieces which reached down to her marble-white forehead. Moreover, her fine cambric shirt embellished with bright flowers and gold ornaments fitted so closely as to betray the outlines of her harmonious figure. Wound ten times round her neck she wore a necklace of gold coins extending down to her bosom. As she rode along (and she sat astride her saddle like a man), every now and then one could catch glimpses beneath her variegated girdle of her red morocco boots and of a Turkish dagger, with a massive silver handle, gleaming forth from their shafts. On each side of her holsters peeped forth a double-barrelled pistol with an ivory handle.

When the old man stopped to water his horse at the spring gushing forth from the black slate rock, he said to the girl: "Anicza, when did you speak last with Fatia Negra?"

"Just a month ago. It was at the time of the full moon, like it is now. He then said that he was going away on a long journey."

"And yet he has already been at home these two days. I saw his sign over against my window."

"Impossible. It cannot be," cried the girl passionately.

"What cannot be? Do you think I am dreaming or lying?"

"If he were at home, he would have come to see me ere this."

The old man shrugged his shoulders.

"And yet he did not come. But the day before yesterday, about midnight, I found the three owl-feathers there in the window."

"The wind carried them thither."

"The wind did not carry them thither for they were stuck fast in putty. And only we three know what that means. Fatia Negra would speak with us and we are going to meet him in the Lucsia cavern."

"It cannot, cannot be—three days at home and never to come to me—to me!"

"Who knows?" said the old man coolly, tightening his saddle girth, "a whole month is a long while, long enough for the moon herself to change four times. There are many pretty wenches on the other side of the mountain."

"O no! such a one as I am he will not find there," said the girl proudly, glancing into the tremulous water-mirror which threw back a distorted likeness of her defiant face—"and besides he knows very well that I should murder him were such a woman to mock me."

"Ah, ah!" mocked the old man, "so Fatia Negra is afraid of you, eh?"—and with that he swung himself back into his saddle with youth-like agility. "Black Face fears nobody, I tell you. He is not even afraid of the commandant of Gyulafehervar, nor of the lord-lieutenant of Krasna, and they have no end of soldiers and heydukes. Nay, he fears not the devil himself."

And with that he urged on his horse which ambled forward meditatively, whilst the girl's little nag whinnied in the rear.

"He may not fear the great gentlemen, he may not fear the devil, but I tell you that he would be afraid of the girl he made to love him, if he proved false to her."

"So you really think he loves you violently?" said the old man casting a backward glance at her.

"He swore he did."

"To whom? the priest?"

"Go along with you! No, to me!"

At this the old man chuckled—"little fool!" said he.

"And if he breaks his oath now, the devil shall have him. I'll murder him."

"Very well, I suppose you know him. Yet you have never seen his face. If he were to tear the black velvet mask from his face you would never recognize him."

"But that he cannot do as to that mask he owes all his power."

"Well, you are a comical wench—to be enamoured of a man whose face you have never seen!"

"I recognize him by his voice, by the beating of his heart."

"Well, if I were a girl and had a lover, I would insist on seeing his face. He should not come to me in a mask anyhow."

"He cannot put off his mask, I tell you. His oath forbids him to. The moment he removes his mask from his face his power is gone, and neither the devil nor the good angels will obey him any longer."

"That is true," returned the old man solemnly. "When he likes he can make himself invisible. I know it. He has always escaped pursuit even when the whole country was out after him, and when they thought they had him fast he always disappeared in the earth or in the air. Yet, for all that, if I were his love, see his face I would."

"He told me I should die of fright if I beheld it."

"Then I would die of fright—but I would see it."

"His eyes are very fine,—they glow like coals."

"Like coals? Perhaps he is the Dracu[16] himself. Have you ever tried to make him kiss the amulet on which is the image of St. George and the Dragon?"

[Footnote 16: Dracu-dragon, i.e., devil.]

"Yes he has kissed it and was none the worse."

"Have you tried to get him to lay his three fingers on a copper crucifix?"

"He laid his fingers thereon and yet they were not burnt."

"Can he say the prayer of condemnation without trembling?"

"He has said it hundreds of times."

"Nevertheless, I maintain he is no mortal man."

"If he should love another woman, I swear that he will very soon find out that he is mortal."

Talking thus the riders had descended into the depths of the valley, and when the mountain stream again crossed their path they quitted the usual footpath and followed the bed of the stream. And a very good road it is for such as do not wish to leave foot-marks behind them. The rapid current swiftly fills the traces of the horses' hoofs with leaves and pebbles.

The ravine grew ever deeper and narrower, and the stream at intervals formed small cataracts which the horses, who had been trained thereto, had to cross. Finally, at a sudden declivity, the water took an unexpected leap of four yards, and when the riders reined up at this very spot, it was plain that here a mill had been built into the hillside, whose wheel it was which drove the swiftly plunging water along.

If a stranger saw this mill he would certainly say: "What foolish man the miller must be who has built his mill here," (——) and that for three reasons. Firstly, because it was so concealed beneath the thick alders that even if one sees it one cannot get at it. Secondly, because it is built exactly under the water-fall which drives the wheel as rapidly as a spindle, so that the millstone must needs be red hot beneath it. Thirdly, because the way to this mill is so peculiar, passing right through the mountain torrent and then winding down to the door by way of a foot-path hewn in the naked rock, and inaccessible to horses. Well, such a miller will surely get but little grain to grind!

When the two riders reached this spot they sprang from their horses, led them into a little dry islet formed by the alders and tied them by their halters to the branches. Then the old man lifted the sack from the saddle.

"Give me a lift up, Anicza!" said he.

One would hardly have supposed that an old fellow of such a colossal build would have required any help at all in order to get this sack across his shoulders, nor would one have supposed from the size of the sack that it would have been so heavy to lift or that it would have weighed so heavily on the old man's shoulders that he had to plant his hand firmly on his hip in order to carry the load.

Then the girl drew both pistols forth from her holsters, stuck them into her girdle, threw the long fowling-piece across her shoulder and springing fearlessly across the stream from boulder to boulder followed behind the stooping old man along the narrow foot-path which led to the mill. In the doorway of the mill stood a youth clad in the usual coarse cloth "guba" and half concealed by the door post. In one hand he held a double-barrelled musket, an implement not absolutely necessary for a miller. The old man addressed him while still a good way off: