SECRET VISITORS.
Soon came winter. The cold, frosty, snow-laden season began; nothing but
white forests, white fields, are to be seen in every quarter of the
level _Alföld_, and as early as four o'clock in the afternoon the
dark-grey, lilac-coloured atmosphere begins to envelope the horizon all
round about, rising higher and higher every moment, till at last the
very vault of heaven is reached, and it is night. Only the snowy
whiteness of the plain preserves some gleam of light to the landscape.
Pale fallow stripes appear to have been drawn across the snowy expanse;
they are the tracks of the sledges, stretching from one village to
another.
Kárpáthy Castle seemed to make the uniform monotonous landscape still
more melancholy. At other times the windows, of an evening, shed their
light far and wide, and merry groups of sportsmen bustled about the
well-filled courtyard; but now, scarcely more than a gleam of light was
to be seen in two or three of the windows, and only the blue smoke of
the chimneys showed that it was still inhabited.
Alone on these dun-coloured roads, in the fall of the long winter
evening, a peasant's sledge, without bells, might have been seen gliding
along through that featureless, semi-obscure wilderness towards Kárpáthy
Castle.
In the rear of the sledge sat a man wrapped in a simple mantle; in
front, a peasant, in a sheepskin _bunda_, was driving the two lean
horses.
The sitter behind frequently stood up in the sledge, and swept the plain
on every side, as if he were in search of something. The preserves of
the Kárpáthy estate loomed darkly before him, and by the time they
reached a ramshackle old wooden bridge, the visitor perceived what he
sought.
"Those are pine-trees, are they not?" he inquired of the coachman.
"Yes, young sir; one can recognize them from a distance, for they are
still green when the others have shed their leaves."
They were the only trees of the sort in the whole region. They had all
been planted in Squire John's time.
"Here we will stop, old comrade. You return to the wayside _csárda_; I
will take a turn about here alone. I shall not be longer than an hour
away."
"It would be as well were I to accompany you, young sir, if you mean to
take a stroll, for wolves are wont to wander hither."
"It is not necessary, my good friend, I am not afraid."
And with that the stranger dismounted from the sledge, and, taking his
axe in his hand, directed his way through the snowy field to the spot
where the pines stood out darkly against the snow-white plain.
What was beneath those pines?
The family vault of the Kárpáthys, and he who came to visit it at that
hour was Alexander Boltay.
The young artisan had heard from Teresa on her return home that Fanny
was dead. The great lady had been lowered into her tomb for the worms
just as the wife of the poorest artisan might have been, and her tomb
was perhaps still more neglected than the tomb of the artisan's wife
would have been.
Then Alexander opened his heart to the old people. He meant, he said, to
make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the dead dear one whom he worshipped
both in life and in death, and to whom, now that she was under the
ground, he might confess his love, he had as much right now to her
death-cold heart as anybody else in the world. The two old people did
not attempt to dissuade him; let him go, they thought; let him take his
sorrow there and bury it; perchance he will be lighter of heart when he
has wept himself out there.
In the ice-bound season the young man set out, and from the description
which Teresa gave him, he recognized the funereal pine-grove which John
Kárpáthy had had planted round the family vault, in order that there it
might be green when everything else was white and dead.
He quitted the sledge, and cut across the plain, while the driver
returned to the wayside _csárda_.
Meanwhile a pair of horsemen might have been seen slowly approaching
from the opposite direction. One of them was a little in the rear of the
other, and led four hardy hounds in a long leash.
"I see the trail of a fox, Martin," said the foremost horseman, calling
the attention of the one behind to the trail. "We can easily track him
through the fresh snow if we look sharp, and can catch him up before we
reach Kárpátfalva."
The groom appeared to confirm his master's assertion.
"Follow the trail as straight as you can, and hand over two of the
hounds to me while I make a circuit of the wood yonder."
With that he took over two of the dogs, and sending his escort on in
front, turned aside, slowly wading through the snow. But the moment his
man was out of sight, he suddenly changed his direction, and strode
rapidly towards the pine grove.
On reaching the trench which surrounded it, he dismounted, tied his
horse to a bush and the dogs to his saddle bow and waded across the
narrow ditch. By the light of the snow it was easy to find his goal.
A large white marble monument arose by the side of a green tree, on the
top of it was the sad emblem of death, an angel with an inverted torch.
The horseman stood alone before the monument--this visitor was Rudolf.
Thus both of them had come at the same time, and it was the will of Fate
that they should meet there before the tomb.
Rudolf hastened confidently towards the white colonnaded monument and
stood rooted to the ground with amazement on perceiving the figure of a
man, apparently in a state of collapse, half sitting, half kneeling on
the pedestal. But the man was equally amazed to see him there.
Neither recognized the other.
"What are you doing here, sir?" asked Rudolf, who was the first to
recover his composure, drawing nearer to the pedestal.
Alexander recognized the voice, he knew that it was Rudolf, and could
not understand why he should have come to that place at that hour.
"Count Szentirmay," he said gently, "I am that artisan to whom you
showed a kindness once upon a time; be so good as to show yet another
kindness to me by leaving me here alone and asking no questions."
Then Rudolf recognized the young man, and it suddenly flashed across his
mind that the dead woman before she became Dame Kárpáthy had been
engaged to a poor young artisan who had so bravely, so chivalrously,
exposed himself to death for her sake.
Now he understood everything.
He took the young man's hand and pressed it.
"You loved this lady? You have come hither to mourn over her?"
"Yes, sir. There's nothing to be ashamed of in that. One may love the
dead. I loved that woman, I love her now, and I shall never love
another."
Rudolf's heart went out to the young man.
"You remain here," he said, "I will leave you to yourself. I will wait
in the cemetery outside, and if I can be of any service to you command
me."
"Thank you, sir, I will go too; I have done what I came here to do."
The name of the dear departed was inscribed on the tomb in golden
letters, and these letters gleamed forth in the light of the snow:
"Madame Kárpáthy, _nee_ Fanny Meyer."
The young artisan removed his cap, and with the same respect, the same
reverence with which one touches the lips of the dead, he kissed every
letter of the word "Fanny."
"I am not ashamed of this weakness before you," said Alexander, standing
up again, "for you have a noble heart, and will not laugh at me."
Rudolf answered nothing, but he turned his head aside. God knows why,
but he could not have met the young man's eyes at that moment.
"And now, sir, we can go."
"Where will you spend the night? Come with me to Szentirma!"
"Thank you; you are very good to me, but I must return this very hour.
The moon will soon be up, and there will be light enough to see my way
by. I must make haste, for there's lots for me to do at home."
He could not prevail upon him; a man's sorrow has no desire to be
comforted.
Rudolf accompanied him to the wayside _csárda_, where the sledge was
awaiting him. He could not restrain himself from warmly pressing the
artisan's hand and even embracing him.
And Alexander did not guess the meaning of that warm grasp, or why this
great nobleman was so good to him.
Shortly afterwards the sledge disappeared in the darkness of the night
by the same road by which it had come. Rudolf returned to the
pine-trees, and paid another visit to the white monument. There he stood
and thought of the woman who had suffered so much, and who, perhaps, was
thinking of him there below. Her face stood before him now as it had
looked when she had followed with her eyes the rejected amaranth; as it
had looked when she galloped past him on her wild charger; as it had
looked when she had hidden it on his bosom in an agony of despairing
love, in order that there she might weep out her woe, amidst sweet
torture and painful joy, that secret woe which she had carried about
with her for years. And when he thought on these things, his fine eyes
filled with tears.
He noticed the imprints of the knees of the departed youth, where he had
knelt on the pedestal of the monument in the snow, and he fell
a-thinking.
Did not this woman, who had so suffered, lived and died, deserve as
much? And he himself bent his knee before the monument.
And he read the name. Like a spectral invitation, those five letters,
F-a-n-n-y, gleamed before him so seductively.
For a long time he remained immersed in his own reflections, and
thought--and thought--
At last he bent down and kissed the five letters one after another,
just as the other young fellow had done.
Then he flung himself on his horse. His errant groom, not finding his
master, was impatiently blowing his horn in every direction. Rudolf soon
came up with him, and half an hour later they were in the courtyard of
John Kárpáthy's castle. Kárpáthy had invited Rudolf to hasten to him
that very night.