THE DYING SOLDIER'S BEQUEST.
It was dark when Richard recovered consciousness. At first the gloom
seemed to him like something dense and heavy pressing against his
head, and when he raised his hand he was surprised to find its
movement unimpeded by this thick, black substance.
"Oho!" he cried, discovering at length that his tongue was movable.
At his call a door opened and Mausmann's face looked in, lighted by a
lantern which he held in his hand.
"Well, are you awake at last?" asked the student, still wearing his
droll expression.
"Am I really alive?" asked the other.
"Hardly a scratch on you," was the cheerful reply. "You were only a
transient guest in the other world."
"But where am I now?"
"In the mill by the RAikos."
"Did we win the fight?" The questioner suddenly recalled the events of
the day just passed.
"Did we win, you ask. Isaszeg is ours, and the victory is complete."
At this Richard sprang to his feet.
"That's right!" cried Mausmann; "there's nothing the matter with
you,--a lump on your head, and a three-inch _solutio continuitatis_ of
the skin, that's all."
"And what of Otto Palvicz?"
"Ah, you handled him rather roughly. He is here too in the miller's
house, and the staff physician has charge of his case. His wound is
thought to be mortal, and he himself is prepared for the worst. His
first words to me, when I went to him, were, 'How is Baradlay?' And
when I told him you were out of danger, he asked me to take you to
him, as he had something important to say to you."
"If he wishes to see me, so much the better," rejoined Richard. "I
should have felt bound in any case to visit my wounded opponent. Let
us go to him now."
Otto Palvicz lay in a small room in the miller's dwelling. Seeing
Richard Baradlay enter, he tried to sit up, and requested that
something be put under his head to raise it. Then he extended his hand
to his visitor.
"Good evening, comrade," said he. "How goes it? You see I'm done for
this time. But don't take it to heart. It wasn't your sword that did
the mischief. I have a tough skull of my own, and it has stood many a
good whack. The good-for-nothing horses used me up with their hoofs.
There must be something wrong inside me, and I shall die of it. You
are not to blame; don't be at all concerned. We gave each other one
apiece, and we are quits. I have settled my accounts for this life,
but one debt remains." He grasped Richard's hand with feverish energy
and added, "Comrade, I have a child that to-morrow will be
fatherless." A flush overspread the dying man's face. "I will tell you
the whole story. My time is short. I must die, and I can leave my
secret only to a noble-hearted man who will know how to honour and
guard it. I was your enemy, but now I am good friends with everybody.
You have got the better of me, and are left to receive your old
enemy's bequest; it is your duty to accept it."
"I accept it," said Richard.
"I knew you would, and so I sent for you. I have a son whom I have
never seen, and never shall see. His mother is a high-born lady; you
will find her name in the papers that are in my pocketbook. She was
beautiful, but heartless. I was a young lieutenant when we first met.
We were both thoughtless and self-willed. My father was alive then,
and he would not consent to our marriage, although it would have
atoned for the indiscretion of an unguarded hour. Well, it can't be
helped now. Yet she needn't have torn a piece of her heart out, and
thrown it into the gutter. She, my wife before God and by the laws of
nature, went on a journey with her mother and came back again as a
maiden. I learned only that the hapless being sent into a world where
there are already too many of its kind, was a boy. What became of him,
I did not find out at the time. Later I won for myself a good station
in my military career, my father died, and I was independent; and, by
heaven, I would have married the woman if she could only have told me
where my child was. She besieged me with letters, she begged for an
interview, she used every entreaty; but to each of her letters I only
replied: 'First find my child.' I was cruel to her. She could have
married more than once; suitors were about her in plenty. 'I forbid
you to marry,' I wrote to her. 'Then marry me yourself,' she answered.
'First find my child,' I repeated. I tortured her, but she had no
heart to feel the infliction very keenly. She said she didn't know
what had become of the child. She had not tried to find it; nay, she
had taken the utmost pains to destroy all traces that could lead to
its discovery, either by herself or by another. But, nevertheless, I
found the clue. I spent years in the search. I came upon one little
baby footstep after another,--here a nurse, there a scrap of writing,
in another place a child's hood, and finally the end of the search
seemed at hand. But right there I am stopped; I must die."
The rough man's breast heaved with a deep sigh. The rude exterior
covered a tender heart. Richard listened attentively to every word.
"Comrade," said the dying soldier, "give me your hand, and promise
that you will do the errand I can no longer execute."
Richard gave his hand.
"In my pocketbook you will find papers telling where the persons are
who will help you to find the boy. He was, at last accounts, in the
care of a peddler woman in Pest. I learned this from a Vienna
huckster. But I failed to find the woman in Pest, as she had removed
to Debreczen. I could not follow her, but I learned that she had sent
the child to a peasant woman in the country. Where? She alone can
tell. Yet I learned this much from a girl that lived with her,--that
the peasant woman into whose care the boy was given, and who made a
business of taking such waifs, was often at the peddler woman's house,
and complained that she didn't receive enough money to pay for the
child's board. The woman lives poorly, I was told, and the boy goes
hungry, and in rags."
The speaker paused a moment, and his eyes filled with tears.
"But it is a pretty child," he resumed. "The peasant woman brought the
little fellow to town with her now and then, to prove that he was
alive; he can always be identified by a mole in the shape of a
blackberry on his breast. The peddler, out of pity and fondness for
the child, used to pay the woman a little money--so I was told--and in
that way the poor boy was kept alive. The mother has long ago
forgotten him. Comrade, I shall hear the child's cries even after I am
under the sod."
"Don't worry about him," said Richard, "he shall not cry."
"You'll find him, won't you? And there is money in my pocketbook to
support him until he grows up."
"I will hunt up the boy and take him under my care," promised the
other.
"Among my papers," continued the other, "you will find a formal
authorisation, entitling the child to bear my name. Yet he is never to
know who I was. Tell him his father was a poor soldier, and have him
learn an honest trade, Richard."
"You may rely on me, comrade Otto; I promise you to take care of the
boy as if he were my own brother's child."
A smile of satisfaction and relief lighted up the dying man's face.
"And comrade," he added, "this secret that I am confiding to you is a
woman's secret. Promise me, on your honour, that you will never betray
that woman. Not even to my son are you to tell the mother's name. She
is not a good woman, but let her shame be buried in my grave."
Richard gave his promise in a voice that testified how deeply he was
moved. The pale face before him grew yet paler, and ere many minutes
had passed the eyes that looked into his became glazed and fixed; the
wounded soldier had ceased to breathe.