THE SPIDER IN THE CORNER
That day about noon the old gypsy woman who told Czipra her fortune had
shuffled into Sarvoelgyi's courtyard, and finding the master out on the
terrace, thanked him that he did not set his dogs upon her--did not tear
her to pieces.
"I wish you a very good day, sir, and every blessing that is on earth or
in Heaven."
Mistress Borcsa looked out from the kitchen.
"Well, it's just lucky you didn't wish what is in hell! And what is in
the water! Gypsy, don't leave us a blessing without fish to go with it,
for fish is wanted here twice a week."
"Don't listen to Mistress Boris' jokes."
"Good day, my daughter," said the master gently.
"Well he actually calls the ragged gypsy woman 'my daughter,'" grumbled
the old housekeeper. "Blood is thicker than water."
"Well, what have you brought, Marcsa?"
"Csicsa sent to say he will come with his twelve musicians this evening:
he begs you to pay him in advance as the musicians must hire a
conveyance--then," she continued, dropping her voice to a tone of
jesting flattery,--"a little suckling pig for supper, if possible."
"Very well, Marcsa," said Sarvoelgyi, with polite gentility. "Everything
shall be in order. Come here towards evening. You shall get payment and
sucking pig too."
Yet this overflowing magnanimity was not at all in conformity with the
well-established habits of the devotee. Close-fisted niggardliness
displayed itself in his every feature and warred against this unnatural
outbreak.
The gypsy woman kissed his hand and thanked him. But Mistress Boris saw
the moment had arrived for a ministerial process against this abuse of
royal prerogative; so she came out from the kitchen, a pan in one hand,
a cooking-spoon in the other.
She began her invective with the following Magyar "_quousque tandem_!"
"The devil take your insatiable stomachs! When were they ever full? When
did I ever hear you say 'I've eaten well, I'm satisfied!' I don't know
what has come over the master, that, ever since he became a married man,
he has nothing better to do with his income than to stuff gypsies with
it!"
"Don't listen to her, Marcsa," said the pious man softly, "that's a way
she has. Come this evening, and you shall have your sucking pig."
"Sucking pig!" exclaimed Mistress Boris. "I should like to know where
they'll find a sucking pig hereabouts. As if all those the two sows had
littered were not already devoured!"
"There is one left," said Sarvoelgyi coolly, "one that is continually in
the way all over the place."
"Yes, but that one I shall not give," protested Mistress Boris. "I
shan't give it up for all the gypsies in the world. My little tame
sucking pig which I brought up on milk and breadcrumbs. They shan't
touch that. I won't give up that!"
"It is enough if I give it," said Sarvoelgyi, harshly.
"What, you will make a present of it? Didn't you present me with it in
its young days, when it was the size of a fist? And now you want to take
it back?"
"Don't make a noise. I'll give you two of the same size in place of it."
"I don't want any larger one, or any other one: I am no trader. I want
my own sucking pig; I won't give it up for a whole herd,--the little one
I brought up myself on milk and bread-crumbs! It is so accustomed to me
now that it always answers my call, and pulls at my apron: it plays
with me. As clever, as a child, for all the world as if it were no pig
at all, but a human being."
Mistress Borcsa burst into tears. She always had her pet animals, after
the fashion of old servants, who, being on good terms with nobody in the
world, tame some hen or other animal set aside for eating purposes, and
defend its life cleverly and craftily; not allowing it to be killed;
until finally the merciless master passes the sentence that the favorite
too must be killed. How they weep then! The poor, old maid-servants
cannot touch a morsel of it.
"Stop whining, Borcsa!" roared Sarvoelgyi, frowning. "You will do what I
order. The pig must be caught and given to Marcsa."
The pig, unsuspicious of danger, was wandering about in the courtyard.
"Well, _I_ shall not catch it," whimpered Mistress Boris.
"Marcsa'll do that."
The gypsy woman did not wait to be told a second time: but, at once
taking a basket off her arms, squatted down and began to shake the
basket, uttering some such enticing words as "_Pocza, poczo, net, net!_"
Nor was Mistress Borcsa idle: as soon as she remarked this device, she
commenced the counteracting spell. "Shoo! Shoo!"--and with her pan and
cooking-spoon she tried to frighten her _protege_ away from the vicinity
of the castle, despite the stamping protests of Sarvoelgyi, who saw open
rebellion in this disregard for his commands.
Then the two old women commenced to drive the pig up and down the yard,
the one enticing, the other "shooing," and creating a delightful uproar.
But, such is the ingratitude of adopted pigs! The foolish animal,
instead of listening to its benefactor's words and flying for protection
among the beds of spinach, greedily answered to the call of the charmer,
and with ears upright trotted towards the basket to discover what might
be in it.
The gypsy woman caught its hind legs.
Mistress Borcsa screamed, Marcsa grunted, and the pig squealed loudest
of all.
"Kill it at once to stop its cries!" cried Sarvoelgyi. "What a horrible
noise over a pig!"
"Don't kill it! Don't make it squeal while I am listening," exclaimed
Borcsa in a terrified passion: then she ran back into the kitchen, and
stopped her ears lest she should hear them killing her favorite pig.
She came out again as soon as the squeals of her _protege_ had ceased,
and with uncontrollable fury took up a position before Sarvoelgyi. The
gypsy woman smilingly pointed to the murdered innocent.
Mistress Borcsa then said in a panting rage to Sarvoelgyi:
"Miser who gives one day, and takes back--a curse upon such as you!"
"Zounds! good-for-nothing!" bawled the righteous fellow. "How dare you
say such a thing to me?"
"From to-day I am no longer your servant," said the old woman, trembling
with passion. "Here is the cooking-spoon, here the pan: cook your own
dinner, for your wife knows less about it than you do. My husband lives
in the neighboring village: I left him in his young days because he beat
me twice a day; now I shall go back to the honest fellow, even if he
beat me thrice a day."
Mistress Borcsa was in reality not jesting, and to prove it she at once
gathered up her bed, brought out her trunks, piled all her possessions
onto a barrow, and wheeled them out without saying so much as "good
bye."
Sarvoelgyi tried to prevent this wholesale rebellion forcibly by seizing
Mistress Borcsa's arm to hold her back.
"You shall remain here: you cannot go away. You are engaged for a whole
year. You will not get a kreutzer if you go away."
But Mistress Borcsa proved that she was in earnest, as she forcibly tore
her arm from Sarvoelgyi's grasp.
"I don't want your money," she said, wheeling her barrow further. "What
you wish to keep back from my salary may remain for the
master's--coffin-nails."
"What, you cursed witch!" exclaimed Sarvoelgyi. "What did you dare to say
to me?"
Mistress Borcsa was already outside the gate. She thrust her head in
again, and said:
"I made a mistake. I ought to have said that the money you keep from me
may remain--to buy a rope."
Sarvoelgyi, enraged, ran to his room to fetch a stick, but before he came
out with it, Mistress Borcsa was already wheeling her vehicle far away
on the other side of the street, and it would not have been fitting for
a gentleman to scamper after her before the eyes of the whole village,
and to commence a combat of doubtful issue in the middle of the street
with the irritated Amazon.
The nearest village was not far from Lankadomb; yet before she reached
it, Mistress Borcsa's soul was brimming over with wrath.
Every man would consider it beneath his dignity to submit tamely to such
a dishonor.
As she reached the village of her birth, she made straight for the
courtyard of her former husband's house.
Old Kolya recognized his wife as she came up trundling the squeaking
barrow, and wondering thrust his head out at the kitchen door.
"Is that you, Boris?"
"It is: you might see, if you had eyes."
"You've come back?"
Instead of replying Mistress Boris bawled to her husband.
"Take one end of this trunk and help me to drag it in. Take hold now. Do
you think I came here to admire your finely curled moustache?"
"Well, why else did you come, Boris?" said the old man very
phlegmatically, without so much as taking his hand from behind his back.
"You want to quarrel with me again, I see; well, let's be over with it
quickly: take a stick and beat me, then let us talk sense."
At this Kolya took pity on his wife and helped her to drag the trunk in.
"I am no longer such a quarreller, Boris," he answered. "Ever since I
became a man with a responsible position I have never annoyed anyone. I
am a watchman."
"So much the better: if you are an official, I can at any rate tell you
what trouble brought me here."
"So it was only trouble drove you here?"
"Certainly. They robbed and stole from me. They have taken away my
yellow-flowered calico kerchief, a red 'Home-sweet-Home' handkerchief,
which I had intended for you, a silver-crossed string of beads, twelve
dollars, ten gold pieces, twenty-two silver buttons, four pairs of
silver buckles, and a scolloped-eared, pi-bald, eight-week-old pig...."
"Whew!" exclaimed Kolya as he heard of so much loss. "This is a pretty
business. Well, who stole them?"
"No one else than the cursed gypsy woman Marcsa, who lives here in this
village."
"We shall call her to account as soon as she appears."
"Naturally. She went there while I was weeding in the garden; she
prowled about and stole."
"Well I'll soon have her by the ears, only let her come here."
Not a word of the whole story of the theft was true: but Mistress Boris
reasoned as follows:
"You must come here first, gypsy woman, with that scolloped-eared pig:
if they find it in your possession, they will put you in jail, and ask
you what you did with the rest. Whether your innocence is proved or not,
the pig-joint will in the meanwhile become uneatable, and won't come
into your stomachs. You may say you got it as a present,--no one will
believe you, and the magistrate will not order such a gentleman as
Sarvoelgyi to come here and witness in your favor."
Kolya allowed himself to be made a participant in his wife's anger, and
went at once to inform the servants of the magistrate, who was sitting
in the village.
Towards evening Kolya, in ambush at the end of the village, spied the
gypsy woman as she came sauntering by Lankadomb, carrying on her arm a
large basket as if it were some great weight.
Kolya said nothing to her, he merely let her pass before him, and
followed her on the other side of the street, until she reached the
middle of the market-place, where many loiterers sauntered and listened
to the tales of his wife.
"Halt, Marcsa!" cried Kolya, standing in the gypsy woman's way.
"What do you want?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders.
"What have you in your basket?"
"What should I have? A pig which you shall not taste, is in it."
"Of course. Has not the pig scolloped ears?"
"Suppose it has?"
"You speak lightly. Let me look at the pig."
"Well look--then go blind. Have you never seen such an animal? Have a
look at it."
The gypsy woman uncovered the basket, in which lay the unhappy victim,
reposing on its stomach, its scolloped ears still standing up straight.
A crowd began to collect round the disputants.
Mistress Boris burst in among them.
"There it is! That was my pig!"
"As much as the shadow of the Turkish Sultan's horse was yours. Off with
you: don't look at it so hard, else you will be bewitched by it and your
child will be like it."
The loiterers began to laugh at that; they were always ready to laugh at
any rough jest.
The laughter enraged Kolya: he seized the much-discussed pig's hind legs
and before the gypsy woman could prevent him, had torn it out of the
basket.
But the pig was heavier than such animals are wont to be at that age,
so that Kolya bumped the noble creature's nose against the ground.
As he did so a dollar rolled out of the pig's mouth.
"Oho!--the thalers are here too!"
At these words the gypsy woman took up her basket and began to run away.
When they seized her, she scratched and bit, and tried her best to
escape, till finally they bound her hands behind her.
Kolya was beside himself with astonishment.
There was quite a heap of silver money sewn into that pig. Loads of
silver.
Mistress Boris herself did not understand it.
This must be reported to the magistrate.
Kolya, accompanied by a large crowd, conducted Marcsa to the
magistrate's house, where the clerks, pending that official's arrival,
took the accused in charge, and shut her up in a dark cell, which had
only one narrow window looking out on the henyard.
When the magistrate returned towards midnight, only the vacant cell was
there without the gypsy woman. She had been able to creep out through
the narrow opening, and had gone off.
The magistrate, when he saw the "_corpus delicti_," was himself of the
opinion that the pig was in reality Mistress Boris's property, while the
money that had been hidden in its inside must have come also from
Sarvoelgyi's house. There might be some great robbery in progress yonder.
He immediately gave orders for three mounted constables to start off for
Lankadomb; he ordered a carriage for himself, and a few minutes after
the departure of the constables, was on his way in their tracks with his
solicitor and servant.
* * * * *
The spider was already sitting in its web.
As night fell, Sarvoelgyi hastened the ladies off to bed, for they were
going to leave for Pest and so had to wake early.
When all was quiet in the house, he himself went round the yard and
locked the doors: then he closed the door of each room separately.
Finally he piled his arms on his table--two guns, two pistols, and a
hunting-knife.
He was loath to believe the old gossip. Suppose Kandur should, in the
course of his feast of blood be whetted for more slaughter, and wish to
slice up betrayer after betrayed?
In the presence of twelve robbers, he could not even trust an ally.
The night watchman had already called "Eleven."
Sarvoelgyi was sitting beside his window.
The windows were protected on the street side by iron shutters, with a
round slit in the middle, through which one could look out into the
street.
Sarvoelgyi opened the casements in order to hear better, and awaited the
events to which the night should give birth.
It was a still warm evening towards the end of spring.
All nature seemed to sleep; no leaf moved in the warm night air: only at
times could be heard a faint sound, as if wood and field had shuddered
in their dreams, and a long-drawn sigh had rustled the tops of the
poplars, dying away in the reed-forest.
Then, suddenly, the hounds all along the village began to bay and howl.
The bark of a hound is generally a soothing sound; but when the vigilant
house-guard has an uneasy feeling, and changes his bark to a long
whining howl, it inspires disquietude and anxiety.
Only the spider in the web rejoiced at the sound of danger! They were
coming!
The hounds' uproar lasted long: but finally it too ceased; and there
followed the dreamy, quiet night, undisturbed by even a breath of wind.
Only the nightingales sang, those sweet fanciful songsters of the night,
far and near in the garden bushes.
Sarvoelgyi listened long--but not to the nightingale's song. What next
would happen?
Then the stillness of the night was broken by an awful cry as when a
girl in the depth of night meets her enemy face to face.
A minute later again that cry--still more horrible, more anguished. As
if a knife had been thrust into the maiden's breast.
Then two shots resounded:--and a volley of oaths.
All these midnight sounds came from above Topandy's castle.
Then a sound of heavy firing, varied by noisy oaths. The spider in the
web started. The web had been disturbed. The stealthy attack had not
succeeded.
Yet they were many--they could surely overcome two. The peasants did not
dare to aid where bullets whistled.
Then the firing died away: other sounds were heard: blows of crowbars on
the heavy door: the thunder of the pole-axe on the stone wall, here and
there a single shot, the flash of which could not be seen in the night.
Certainly they were firing in at doors and out through windows. That was
why no flash could be seen.
But how long it lasted! A whole eternity before they could deal with
those two men! From the roots of Sarvoelgyi's sparse hair hot beads of
sweat were dripping down.
Not in yet? Why cannot they break in the door?
Suddenly the light of two brilliant flashes illuminated the night for a
moment: then two deafening reports, that could be produced only by a
weapon of heavy calibre. So easy to pick out the dull thunder roar from
those other crackling splutterings that followed at once.
What was that? Could they be fighting in the open? Could they have come
out into the courtyard? Could they have received aid from some
unexpected quarter?
The crack of fire-arms lasted a few minutes longer. Twice again could be
heard that particular roar, and then all was quiet again.
Were they done for already?
For a long time no sound, far or near.
Sarvoelgyi looked and listened in restless impatience. He wished to
pierce the night with his eyes, he wished to hear voices through this
numbing stillness. He put his ear to the opening in the iron shutter.
Some one knocked at the shutter from without.
Startled, he looked out.
The old gypsy woman was there: creeping along beside the wall she had
come this far unnoticed.
"Sarvoelgyi," said the woman in a loud whisper: "Sarvoelgyi, do you hear?
They have seized the money: the magistrate has it. Take care!"
Then she disappeared as noiselessly as she had come.
In a moment the sweat on Sarvoelgyi's body turned to ice. His teeth
chattered from fever.
What the gypsy woman had said was, for him, the terror of death.
The most evident proof was in the hands of the law: before the awful
deed had been accomplished, the hand that directed it had been betrayed.
And perhaps the terrible butchery was now in its last stage. They were
torturing the victims! Pouring upon them the hellish vengeance of
wounded wild beasts! Tearing them limb from limb! Looking with their
hands that dripped with blood among the documents for the letter with
five seals.
Already all was betrayed! Fever shook his every limb. Why that great
stillness outside? What secret could this monstrous night hide that it
kept such silence as this?
Suddenly the silence was broken by a wild creature's howl.
No it was no animal. Only a man could howl so, when agony had changed
him to a mad beast, who in the fury of his pain had forgotten human
voice.
The noise sounded first in the distance, beyond the garden of the
castle, but presently approached, and a figure of horror ran howling
down the street.
A figure of horror indeed!
A man, white from head to foot.
All his clothes, every finger of his hand, was white: every hair of his
head, his beard, moustache, his whole face was white, glistening,
shining white, and as he ran he left white footsteps behind him.
Was it a spirit?
The horror rushed up to Sarvoelgyi's door, rattling the latch and in a
voice of raving anger began to howl as he shook the door.
"Let me in! Let me in! I am dying!"
Sarvoelgyi's face, in his agony of terror, became like that of a damned
soul.
That was Kandur's voice! That was Kandur's figure. But so white!
Perhaps the naked soul of one on the way to hell?
The horrible figure thundered continuously at the door and cried:
"Let me in! Give me to drink! I am burning! Bathe me in oil! Help me to
undress! I am dying! I am in hell! Help! Drag me out of it!"
All through the street they could hear his cries.
Then the damned soul began to curse, and beat the door with his fist,
because they would not open to him.
"A plague upon you, cursed accomplice. You shut me out and won't let me
in? Thrust me into the tanpit of hell and leave me there? My skin is
peeling off! I am going blind! An ulcer upon your soul!"
The writhing figure tore off his clothes, which burned his limbs like a
shirt of Nessus, and while so doing the hidden silver coins he had
received from Sarvoelgyi fell to the ground.
"Devil take you, money and all!" he shouted, dashing the coins against
the door. "Here's your cursed money! Pick it up!"
Then he staggered on, leaning against the railing and howling in pain:
"Help! Help! A fortune for a glass of water! Only let me live until I
can drag that fellow with me! Help, man, help!"
A deathly numbness possessed Sarvoelgyi. If that figure of horror were no
"spirit," he must hasten to make him so. He would betray all. That was
the greatest danger. He must not live.
He could not see him from the window. Perhaps if he opened the shutters,
he could fire at him. He was a highwayman: who could call Sarvoelgyi to
account for shooting him? He had done it in self-defence.
If only his hands would not tremble so! It was impossible to hit him
with a pistol except by placing the barrel to his forehead.
Should he go out to him?
Who would dare to go out to meet that demon face to face? Could the
spider leave its web?
While he hesitated, while he struggled to measure the distance from door
to window and back, a new sound was heard in the street:--three horsemen
came trotting up from the end of the village, and in them Sarvoelgyi
recognized, from their uniforms, the country police.
Then the bell began to ring, and the peasants came out of their doors,
armed with pitchforks and clubs: noisy crowds collected. In their midst
were one or two bound figures whom they drove forward with blows: they
had seized the robbers.
The battle was irremediably lost. The chief criminal saw the toils
closing in on him but had no time to make his escape.