Besides the church and the tile-roofed town hall built of stone, the
main street of Kisfalu contained only one edifice of any pretension,
the manor or, as it is called in Hungary, "the castle" of Herr von
Abonyi. It was really a very ordinary structure, only it had a second
story, stood on an artificial mound, to which on both sides there was a
very gentle ascent, and above the ever open door was a moss-grown
escutcheon, grey with age, on which a horseman, with brandished sword,
could be discerned in vague outlines, worn by time and weather.
The owner of this mansion, Herr von Abonyi, was a bachelor about fifty
years old.
His family had lived more than three hundred years on their ancestral
estates, which, it is true, were now considerably diminished, and he
was connected by ties of blood or marriage with all the nobility in the
county of Pesth. Up to the year 1848 the whole village of Kisfalu,
with all its peasants, fields, and feudal prerogatives (such as mill,
fish, tavern and other privileges) belonged to the Abonyis, and the
present lord, Carl von Abonyi, came from that gloomy time, termed--I
know not why--"patriarchal," when the peasant had no rights, and the
nobleman dwelt in his castle like a little god, omnipotent,
unapproachable, only not all-wise and all-good, walked through his
village whip in hand, like an American "Massa," and dealt the peasant a
blow across the face if he did not bow humbly and quickly enough,
ordered the village Jew to be brought to the manor, stretched on a
bench by two strong lackeys (called in Hungary heiducks) and soundly
thrashed whenever he felt a desire for cheap amusement; regarded the
women of the village, without exception, as his natural harem, spent
his days and nights in immoderate feasting and wild drinking, derived
all his education from the Bible with 32 leaves (the number of cards
contained in the pack commonly used in the country), and only displayed
to ladies of his own station a certain romantic chivalry, which was
manifested in rude brawling with real or imaginary rivals, unrestricted
duelling on the most trivial pretext, exaggerated gallantry and ardent
homage, serenades which lasted all night long under the windows of the
favoured fair, and similar impassioned, but tasteless eccentricities.
At the present time all this has certainly greatly changed, but many of
the nobles who, in the year 1848, the period of the vast
transformation, had partly or wholly attained maturity, could not or
would not adapt themselves wholly to the new era; in their inmost
hearts they still consider themselves the sovereign lords of the soil
and its inhabitants, and it is with rage and gnashing of teeth that
they force themselves not to display this feeling in words and deeds at
every opportunity.
Abonyi, an only son, was a lieutenant in the Palatine Hussars, when the
revolution of 1848 broke out. He at once joined the honveds with his
troop and, in their ranks, performed, until the close of the war for
freedom, prodigies of daring on every battle field, rising, in spite of
his youth, within less than eleven months, to the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. After the disaster of Vilagos, he fled from the
country and spent several years in Turkey as a cavalry officer. In
1860, he again returned home and took possession of his estates, which
since his father's death, occurring meanwhile, had been managed by a
legally appointed trustee. What wrath and raging there was! The
regulation of property-ownership had been executed during the
trusteeship, and as Abonyi believed, with outrageous curtailment and
robbery of the lords of the estate. The best, most fertile fields--so
he asserted--had been allotted to the parish, the most sandy, barren
tracts of the land to him; the parish had the beautiful oak forest,
which had already been shamefully ravaged, he, on the other hand,
received the reed-grown, marshy border of the stream; in the division
of the pasturage the peasants had the easily cultivated plain, which
was therefore at once ploughed by the new owners, he, on the contrary,
the gravelly, steep hillside; in short, he was almost insane with rage
when he first saw what the commission had made of his land, and the
trustee who had unresistingly agreed to all these unjust acts would
have fared badly, if he could have laid hands upon him the first time
he went to inspect the bounds of the parish. There was nothing for him
to do, however, except to adapt himself to the new state of affairs as
well as he could; for nothing could be accomplished by indictments,
because the trustee had possessed full legal authority to act, and
everything had been done in strict accordance with the law. Far less
could he hope to effect anything by violence, since peasants understand
no jesting if their beloved acres are touched, and, at the first sign
of any intention on his part to disturb their possessions, would
quickly have set fire to his house and, moreover, tattooed on his body,
with the tines of a pitchfork, a protest to which a counter-plea would
scarcely have been possible. Only he could never carry self-control
and composure so far that, after nearly twenty years' habitude, he did
not become furiously excited at the sight of certain pieces of land,
and experience something akin to a paroxysm of longing to shoot, like a
mad dog, the first peasant who came in his way.
The disposition to command, which he had indulged from childhood, he
was unwilling even now to renounce. Under existing circumstances his
name and property alone would certainly no longer permit him to indulge
this habit, so he sought an office. When the Austrian magistrates were
removed in Hungary and the ancient county government restored, Abonyi
had only needed to express the wish, and the "congregation" of the
county, which consisted almost exclusively of his relatives and
friends, elected him president of the tribune[1] of his district.
Now he could imagine himself transported back to the fine old feudal
times before the March revolution. The peasants were again obliged to
raise their hats humbly to him, his hand dispensed justice and mercy,
the ancestral rod was brandished at his sign, and the whipping bench, a
pleasing symbol of his power, always stood ready below the windows of
his castle. When he drove through the country on official business or
pleasure, his carriage was drawn by four horses with a harness hung
with bells; if a peasant's cart was in the way and did not hasten at
the sound of the familiar little bells to move out, the heiduck in
coloured livery, with a sword at his side, sitting by the driver,
shouted an order and an oath to the laggard, and the coachman, while
dashing by, dealt the disrespectful loiterer a well-aimed blow. He
might even fare still worse if the humor happened to seize the grandee
in the spring carriage.
It would no longer do to get the village Jew and have him flogged for
pastime on long afternoons; but there were still gipsies who were
summoned to the castle to make sport for the noble lord. They played
their bewitching melodies, and if he was filled with genuine delight,
he gave the fiddlers, right and left, an enthusiastic slap in the face
which echoed noisily, then took a banknote from his pocket-book, spit
upon it and clapped it on the swollen cheeks of the howling gipsies,
whereupon they again grinned joyfully and played on with two-fold
energy.
Although Abonyi was a pattern magistrate, at the second election, which
according to the old county system, occurred every three years, he
suffered defeat. Political party considerations and government
influence sustained another candidate. So Abonyi was again relegated
to private life, but his birth and the office he had filled gave him
sufficient personal distinction to induce his village, immediately
after, to compensate him in some degree for his overthrow by a
unanimous election to the position of parish magistrate.
This gentleman, with whose course of life and prominent personal
characteristics we are now familiar, went one hot August afternoon to
the stables, which formed the back of the courtyard, to inspect the
horses and carriages, as was his custom.
Abonyi was in a very bad humour that day, for there had been a violent
dispute with the harvesters, who cut and threshed on shares, and who
had claimed more grain for their portion than seemed just to the owner
of the estate. It did not improve his mood to find that his favourite
saddle-horse had its right hind fetlock badly swollen and could not be
used for a week. So he entered the coach-house, half of which,
separated by a board-partition, served for a hay-loft.
The first thing on which his eye fell here was a man lying stretched
comfortably on the straw, snoring. He recognized in the sluggard
"hideous Pista," who had been summoned to the castle that morning to
put new spokes into some broken carriage-wheels. The work he had
commenced, a chaos of naves, spokes, fellies, tires, and a variety of
tools, lay in a heap beside him, but he was sleeping the sleep of the
just.
It needed nothing more to fan Abonyi's secret rage into a blaze of
fury, and he shouted fiercely:
"Devil take you, you idler, will you get off of my hay?"
Pista, evidently not fully roused by the call, merely grunted a little
in his dream and turned over to continue his nap. But the other could
now control himself no longer, and dealt the recumbent figure a violent
kick, roaring:
"Up, I say, up, you gallows-bird, you're paid for working, not for
snoring!"
Pista, with a sudden spring, stood on his feet, and was instantly wide
awake. Looking angrily at the brutal intruder with his one eye, he
said in a voice quivering with suppressed anger: "I'm not working for
you by the day, but by the job, and if I sleep, I do it at my own loss,
not yours. Besides, I don't remember that I ever drank the pledge of
brotherhood with you."
Abonyi threw up his head, his face growing crimson as if he had
received a blow on the cheek.
"What," he shrieked, "does the rascal dare to insult me under my own
roof? I'll teach you at once who I am, and who you are." And he
raised the riding-whip which he usually carried, to deal Pista a blow.
The latter's kindly, free peasant blood began to boil. Taking a step
backward, he grasped a pitchfork lying within reach of his hand, and
hissed through the gaps in his teeth, as he brandished the weapon of
defence:
"Woe betide you if you touch me! I'll run the fork into you, as true
as God lives!"
Abonyi uttered a fierce imprecation and hastily retreated three paces
to the door, where he called back to the cartwright, who still
maintained his threatening attitude: "This will cost you dear, you
scoundrel!" and before Pista could suspect what his enemy meant to do,
the latter had shut the door and bolted it on the outside.
Pista's first movement was to throw himself against the door to burst
it open with his shoulder, but he paused instinctively as he heard
Abonyi's voice, shouting loudly outside.
"Janos," called the latter to the coachman, who stood washing the
horses' harnesses beside the coach-house door, "go up to my chamber and
bring me down the revolver, the one on the table by the bed, not the
other which hangs on the wall!"
Janos went, and stillness reigned in the courtyard. Now the prisoner's
rage burst forth. "Open! open!" he roared, drumming furiously on the
oak-door. Abonyi, who was keeping guard, at first said nothing, but as
the man inside shouted and shook more violently, he called to him: "Be
quiet, my son, you'll be let out presently, not to your beautiful wife,
but to the parish jail."
"Open!" yelled the voice inside again, "or I'll set fire to the hay and
burn down your flayer's hut."
This was an absurd, ridiculous threat, for in the first place Pista, if
he had really attempted to execute it, would have stifled and roasted
himself before the mansion received the slightest injury, and besides,
as examination afterwards proved, he had neither matches nor tinder
with him; but Abonyi pretended to take the boast seriously and cried
scornfully:
"Better and better! You are a sly fellow! First you threaten me with
murder, now with arson; keep on, run up a big reckoning, when the time
for settlement comes, we will both be present."
Janos now appeared and, with a very grave face, handed his master the
revolver.
"Now, my lad," Abonyi ordered, "run over to the town-hall, bring a pair
of strong hand-cuffs and the little judge,[2] the rascal will be put in
irons."
Pista had again heard and remained silent because he had perceived that
blustering and raging were useless. So he stood inside and Abonyi
outside of the door, both gazing sullenly into vacancy in excited
anticipation. The gardener, who was laying out a flower-bed which
surrounded three sides of the fountain in the centre of the courtyard,
had witnessed the whole scene from the beginning, but remained at his
work, apparently without interest.
The town-hall was only a hundred paces distant. In less than five
minutes Janos returned with the beadle. Abonyi now retreated a few
steps, aimed the revolver, and ordered the beadle to open the door.
The bolt flew back, the sides of the folding door rattled apart, and
Pista was seen on the threshold with his hideous, still horribly
distorted face, the pitchfork yet in his right hand.
"Forward, march!" Abonyi ordered, and the cartwright stepped
hesitatingly out into the courtyard.
"Put down the pitchfork, vagabond, it belongs to me," the nobleman
again commanded.
Pista cast a flashing glance at him and saw the muzzle of the revolver
turned toward himself. He silently put down the fork and prepared to
go.
"Now the irons," Abonyi turned to his men, at the same time shouting to
the gardener, "You fellow there, can't you come and help?"
The gardener pretended not to hear and continued to be absorbed in his
blossoming plants. But, at Abonyi's last words, Pista swiftly seized
the pitchfork again, shrieking:
"Back, whoever values his life! I'll go voluntarily, I need not be
chained, I'm no sharper or thief."
The coachman and the beadle with the handcuffs hesitated at the sight
of the threatening pitchfork.
"Am I parish-magistrate or not?" raged Abonyi, "do I command here or
not? The vagabond presumes to be refractory, the irons, I say, or----"
Both the servants made a hasty movement toward Pista, the latter
retreated to the door of the coach-house, swinging the pitchfork, the
beadle was just seizing his arm, when a shot was suddenly fired. A
shrill shriek followed, and Pista fell backward into the barn.
"Now he has got it," said Abonyi, in a low tone, but he had grown very
pale. The coachman and the beadle stood beside the door as though
turned to stone, and the gardener came forward slowly and gloomily.
"See what's wrong with him," the nobleman ordered after a pause, during
which a death-like silence reigned in the group.
Janos timidly approached the motionless form lying in the shade of the
barn, bent over it, listened, and touched it. After a short time he
stood up again, and, with a terribly frightened face, said in a voice
barely audible:
"The hole is in the forehead, your honour, he doesn't move, he doesn't
breathe, I fear"--then after a slight hesitation, very gently--"he is
dead."
Abonyi stared at him, and finally said:
"So much the worse, carry him away from there--home--" and went slowly
into the castle.
The servants looked after him a few moments in bewilderment, then laid
the corpse upon two wheels, which they placed on poles, and bore him
off on this improvised bier. This time the gardener lent his aid.
[1] A Hungarian office.
[2] Hungarian name for beadle.