A DAY OF RECKONING.
Victory had neither glossed over nor defeat buried from sight those
dishonest army contracts. Louder and louder grew the murmurs against the
fraud that had contributed so disastrously to the unhappy issue of the
war, until at last a high military officer opened his mouth and
declared, emphatically, "The parties responsible for such an outrage
deserve to be hanged!"
Soon after this bold utterance a decree went forth for an investigation
of the scandal and the condign punishment of the guilty ones. Confusion
and panic followed in more than one family of exalted station. A
nobleman of proud lineage burnt all his papers and then opened the veins
of his wrists with a penknife, and so escaped the ignominy of a trial in
court. Another submitted to arrest, but no sooner saw his prison door
closed upon him than he despatched himself by piercing his heart with a
breast-pin. Two others vanished completely from sight and hearing the
very day the edict was published, and never showed themselves afterward.
Benjamin Vajdar, black with guilt as he knew himself to be, chose the
shrewder course of remaining in Vienna and calmly going about his
business, with all the outward confidence of spotless innocence.
Suspicion is much like a watch-dog; it leaps upon the man who quails.
Prince Cagliari and the Marchioness Caldariva also remained quietly in
the city, and even went so far as to forego their wonted sojourn at the
seashore when summer came. They seemed to have acquired a sudden
extraordinary fondness for the Austrian capital.
But one day the expected happened to Benjamin Vajdar. He was called to
the police bureau. The official who received him was an old friend of
his who now gave signal proof of his friendliness.
"Benjamin Vajdar," said he, "you are ordered by the government to leave
Vienna within twenty-four hours and go back to your native town, beyond
which you are forbidden to stir."
This mandate was a surprise to Vajdar, who had expected to be arrested
and tried, and had made his preparations accordingly. However, there was
nothing to do but submit to the inevitable. Further particulars or
explanations were denied him, except that he would find a special police
officer placed at his service from that moment until he reached his
destination,--which was a polite intimation that he was thenceforth
under government surveillance, and that any attempt at flight would be
frustrated.
He returned at once to his house, which adjoined that of the Marchioness
Caldariva. Indeed, from his bedroom a secret passage, already referred
to, led into Rozina's boudoir; but the clock-door had seldom opened to
the secretary of late. Toward seven o'clock in the evening he saw a
closed carriage drive away from the next door.
"She is going to the opera," said he to himself as he watched the
vehicle turn a corner and disappear. He donned hat and coat and
sauntered after it, the emissary of the police always ten steps in the
rear. Arrived at the opera-house, he purchased tickets for himself and
his faithful attendant, and then made his way to the box of the
marchioness.
Rozina received him with apparent cordiality and listened to his
whispered account of what had befallen him.
"Have you talked this over with Prince Cagliari?" she asked.
"No, and I shall not," replied Vajdar, with significant emphasis. "This
is his doing."
"What makes you think so, pray?" asked the marchioness, with an air of
surprise. "Why should he plot the ruin of his own secretary and
confidant?"
"You yourself are the cause," was the retort.
The beautiful woman bent her head still nearer to him. Even her cruel
heart felt the compliment conveyed in this acknowledgment of her power.
"And what do you wish of me, my poor boy?" she murmured softly in his
ear.
"I wish an interview with you after the opera--a strictly confidential
interview."
"Very well. Come to me as soon as I get home, and I will admit you."
"No; you shall not turn me away so easily, with an empty promise."
"What, must I swear to you, then?"
"No, give me the little key, and I shall be sure of gaining admittance."
"I am almost afraid to trust you with it," objected the marchioness,
with an arch look; "but still you shall have it--there! And now guard it
well, and be discreet."
Vajdar kissed the hand extended to him and retired. The fair Cyrene
turned again toward the stage and joined in the applause. One might have
thought she was applauding the prima-donna; but no, she was applauding
herself.
Benjamin Vajdar returned home, left the police officer quartered in his
antechamber, and, with his servant's aid, began packing his trunks.
After that task was accomplished he waited impatiently for the close of
the opera and Rozina's return. When his watch told him that he must
have waited long enough, he passed noiselessly through the secret
passage and opened the mysterious door in the tall clock at its farther
end. The marchioness was not there. One hour, two hours, he waited in
her boudoir, and still she failed to appear.
"Very well; so be it," said Vajdar to himself. "You thought to outwit
me; we shall see which will outwit the other."
With that he opened the little writing-desk and took out the
morocco-bound pocketbook which he seemed to know so well where to find.
A single glance at its contents satisfied him that the papers he desired
were still there. He quickly pocketed his prize and then paused to look
around for the last time at the dainty appointments of the luxurious
apartment.
"Adieu, beautiful Cyrene, adieu, for ever!" he murmured, a smile of
irony on his lips.
Stealthily he had come, stealthily he withdrew. He did not take the
trouble to close the writing-desk, but he was careful to leave the
little key sticking in the clock door, where its rightful owner would be
sure to see it.
He found the police officer still awake and waiting for him. A cab was
quickly summoned, and the two started on their journey to Transylvania.
When the Marchioness Caldariva entered her boudoir a little later, her
eyes fell at once on her open writing-desk, and she perceived that the
morocco pocketbook was gone. She laughed, but it was not a pleasant
laugh to hear.
"Very good," said she, half aloud; "you would have it so, and I am not
to blame."
* * * * *
Anna Adorjan hovered on the brink of the grave. She had heard that
Benjamin Vajdar was charged with a penal offence, and she felt only too
well convinced that if such a charge had been brought against him he
must be guilty. If guilty, he would be sentenced to a term of
imprisonment, and she would never see him return to his old home as she
had once so confidently expected. She had nothing now to live for. Her
dear brother Manasseh was restored to his family, and she was ready to
die.
"Brother," she gently entreated, as she lay on her bed of pain, "if he
should by any chance ever come back to us, promise me to treat him as
you would if I were still here. You will promise me that, won't you?"
A silent nod of Manasseh's bowed head was her sufficient assurance that
her slightest wish would be respected.
"And even though he may never come back, I wish you to make my
resting-place in the rocks large enough for two. Perhaps he will return
sometime, when he sees his life drawing to a close, and he may be glad
to find a place ready for him by my side. You will do as I wish in this
matter, brother Manasseh, will you not?"
Another nod of the bowed head.
* * * * *
The prediction uttered by Manasseh, when his enemy lay in his power in
the desolate church at St. George, was completely fulfilled. Though he
would have infinitely preferred banishment to Siberia, Benjamin Vajdar
was forced to return to Toroczko, to the very house where he had been
reared, and there take up his abode as a state prisoner. The government
made him a pitiful allowance of three hundred florins a year, to keep
him from starving.
Thus it was, too, that Anna's words came true, and the man despised and
rejected of all the world sought refuge in the house where he had been
tenderly nurtured as a child. Thus did he return, vanquished in life's
battle, to have his wounds bound by the hands of those he had so
grievously wronged, and to beg a place in that family circle into which
he had done his utmost to bring sorrow and despair.
Manasseh met the police officer at the door, and heard his announcement
with perfect composure.
"We have no objection to raise," said he, "against the decree of the
government. Benjamin Vajdar was formerly a member of our family, and so
we must provide for him. The state allowance of twenty-five florins a
month we beg leave to refuse. In our iron works there is a bookkeeper's
position open to this man, and we shall ask him to assume its duties.
Indeed, we shall ourselves probably be the gainers by this arrangement,
as the keeping of our books has become too heavy a burden for my wife,
and she will be glad to be relieved. But enough of this at present;
to-morrow we will discuss the matter more at length. Meanwhile Mr.
Vajdar is welcome to our house."
Benjamin Vajdar's emotions can better be imagined than described. To
find himself called upon to lighten Blanka Zboroy's duties and to live
in constant sight of her happy home life, after all he had done in the
vain attempt to spoil that life, was more than he had counted on. He bit
his compressed lips till the blood ran. Opening the door of the chamber
into which he had been ushered, he hurried out to seek the freedom of
the open air and to set his confused thoughts in order. On his way his
attention was caught by an unexpected sight. Through an open door he had
a full view of a bier, on which rested a coffin, and in the latter, with
hands folded on her bosom, lay the woman he had most cruelly wronged. In
those clasped hands he saw a little picture wreathed in evergreen,--his
own likeness, which the dead girl had begged her family to bury with
her. Now, if never before, the unhappy man saw what a wealth of love he
had cast aside, a love that, even in death caused by his base desertion,
could forgive him his perfidy and carry his picture in a fond embrace
down to the grave. As his guardian angel, she would bear it with her up
to God's throne, and there plead his cause. Overcome at last by a flood
of anguish and remorse, the guilty man cried aloud in his despair and
fell prostrate beside the coffin, striking his head on its corner as he
sank unconscious to the floor.
Manasseh found him there and bore him back to his room. After putting
him to bed and ministering to his wants, he went out with Aaron to
prepare Anna's grave.
"We must make it wide enough for two," said he; "it was her wish."
When, after several hours of hard work, the two brothers returned home,
Manasseh went at once to his guest's room. Before his marriage this
chamber had been occupied by him, and he still used it occasionally for
writing. In his absence Vajdar had risen and seated himself at the desk.
Searching the drawer for writing-materials, he had come upon a sheet of
paper yellow with age, and written upon in ink now much faded. The
document proved to be a promissory note, but the signature was so
heavily scored through and through as to be hardly legible. Benjamin
Vajdar started violently as he took up the faded sheet and saw that the
man whom he had so feared and hated had, by his own voluntary act,
disarmed himself and put it out of his power to punish the fraud
practised upon him by his false friend. As if distrusting his own
constancy and the binding force of his promise to his sister, Manasseh
had, with a few strokes of his pen, rendered harmless what could
otherwise have been used as incriminating evidence against the forger.
On entering the room, Manasseh detected a peculiar odour in the air.
Benjamin Vajdar sat at the writing-desk, a morocco pocketbook open
before him. A half-finished letter lay under the writer's hand, but his
pen had ceased to move. His eyes met those of his host with a dull
stare.
"Don't come near me!" he cried, in warning. "Death is in this room!"
But Manasseh hurried to the window, threw it open, and then, snatching
up the pocketbook and the papers scattered over the desk, cast them all
into the fire that was burning on the hearth. Thus all the tell-tale
documents relating to certain fraudulent army contracts went up in
smoke, but not before they had done their deadly work on one, at least,
of the guilty men involved. Those papers had passed through the hands of
a second Lucretia Borgia, and not without reason had she applauded
herself that night at the opera when she permitted her dupe to extort
from her the little key which she wore in her bosom.
* * * * *
Many years of untroubled peace and happiness for the Adorjan family
followed these events. The children and grandchildren born to Manasseh
and Blanka grew up to call them blessed, the labours of the Toroczko
miners and iron-workers were prospered, and Heaven still smiles on the
humble homes of that happy valley.
THE END.