CHAPTER I._The Day of Wrath

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WORKS OF MAURUS JOKAI

HUNGARIAN EDITION

THE DAY OF WRATH

_Translated from the Hungarian_

_By_

R. NISBET BAIN

[Illustration: Publisher's logo]

NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE BIRD OF ILL-OMEN 11

II. THE HEADSMAN'S FAMILY 18

III. A CHILDISH MALEFACTOR 44

IV. A DIVINE VISITATION 56

V. THE UNBELOVED SON 62

VI. TWO FAMOUS PAEDAGOGUES 71

VII. A MAN OF IRON 93

VIII. THE POLISH WOMAN 121

IX. THE PLAGUE 175

X. A LEADER OF THE PEOPLE 189

XI. THE FIRST SPARK 210

XII. IN THE MIDST OF THE FIRE 236

XIII. THE LEATHER-BELL 25O

XIV. THE SENTENCE OF DEATH 264

XV. OIL UPON THE WATERS 277

XVI. 'TIS WELL THAT THE NIGHT IS BLACK 291

XVII. THE VOICE OF THE LORD 326

XVIII. THE READY-DUG GRAVES 336

PREFACE.

"Szomoru Napok" was written in the darkest days of Maurus Jokai's life,

and reflects the depression of a naturally generous and sanguine nature

bowed down, for a time, beneath an almost unendurable load of unmerited

misfortune. The story was written shortly after the collapse of the

Magyar Revolution of 1848-49, when Hungary lay crushed and bleeding

under the heel of triumphant Austria and her Russian ally; when,

deprived of all her ancient political rights and liberties, she had been

handed over to the domination of the stranger, and saw her best and

noblest sons either voluntary exiles, or suspected rebels under police

surveillance. Jokai also was in the category of the proscribed. He had

played a conspicuous part in the Revolution; he had served his country

with both pen and sword; and, now that the bloody struggle was over, and

the last Honved army had surrendered to the Russians, Jokai,

disillusioned and broken-hearted, was left to piece together again as

best he might, the shattered fragments of a ruined career.

No wonder, then, if to the author of "Szomoru Napok," the whole world

seemed out of joint. The book itself is, primarily, a tale of suffering,

crime, and punishment; but it is also a bitter satire on the crying

abuses and anomalies due to the semi-feudal condition of things which

had prevailed in Hungary for centuries, the reformation and correction

of which had been the chief mission of the Liberal Party in Hungary to

which Jokai belonged. The brutal ignorance of the common people, the

criminal neglect of the gentry which made such ignorance possible, the

imbecility of mere mob-rule, and the mischievousness of demagogic

pedantry--these are the objects of the author's satiric lash.

As literature, despite the occasional crudities and extravagances of a

too exuberant genius that has yet to learn self-restraint, "Szomoru

Napok" stands very high. It is animated by a fine, contagious

indignation, and its vividly terrible episodes, which appal while they

fascinate the reader, seem to be written in characters of blood and

fire. The descriptions of the plague-stricken land and the conflagration

of the headsman's house must be numbered among the finest passages that

have ever flowed from Jokai's pen. But the mild, idyllic strain, so

characteristic of Jokai, who is nothing if not romantic, runs through

the sombre and lurid tableau like a bright silver thread, and the

_denouement_, in which all enmities are reconciled, all evil-doers are

punished, and Gentleness and Heroism receive their retributive crowns,

is a singularly happy one.

Moreover, in "Szomoru Napok" will be found some of Jokai's most original

characters, notably, the ludicrous, if infinitely mischievous, political

crotcheteer, "Numa Pompilius;" the drunken cantor, Michael Korde, whose

grotesque adventure in the dog-kennel is a true _Fantasiestueck a la

Callot_; the infra-human Mekipiros; the half-crazy Leather-bell; and

that fine, soldierly type, General Vertessy.

R. NISBET BAIN.

_October_, 1900.

THE DAY OF WRATH.

CHAPTER I.

THE BIRD OF ILL-OMEN.

Whoever has traversed the long single street of Hetfalu will have

noticed three houses whose exterior plainly shows that nobody dwells in

them.

The first of these three houses is outside the village on a great green

hill, round which the herds of the village peacefully crop the pasture.

Only now and then does one or other of these quiet beasts start back

when it suddenly comes upon a white skeleton, or a bleached

bullock-horn, in the thickest patches of the high grass. The house

itself has no roof, and the soot with which years of heavy rains have

bedaubed the walls, points to the fact that once upon a time the place

was burnt out. Now, dry white stalks of straw wave upon the mouldering

balustrades.

The iron supports have been taken out of the windows, on the threshold

thorns and thistles grow luxuriantly. There is no trace of a

path--perhaps there never was one.

The land surrounding this house is full of all sorts of fragrant

flowers.

The second house stands in the centre of the village, and was the castle

of the lord of the manor. It is a dismal wilderness of a place. A stone

wall, long since fallen to pieces, separated it at one time from the

road. Now only a few fragments of this wall still stand upright, and the

wild jasmine creeps all over it, casting down into the road its

poisonous dark red cherries. The door lolls against its pillars, it

looks as if it had once upon a time been torn from its hinges and then

left to take care of itself. The house itself, indeed, is intact, only

the windows have been taken out and the empty spaces bricked in. Every

door, too, has been walled up, boards have been nailed over the

ventilators in the floor, the white stone staircase leading up to the

hall has been broken off and propped up against the wall, and the same

fate has befallen a red marble bench on the ground floor.

Here and there the cement has fallen away from the front of the house,

and layers of red bricks peep through the gap. In other places large

heaps of white stone are piled up in front of the building. In the rear

of it, which used to look out upon a garden, it is plain that a good

many of the windows have also been built in, and, to obliterate all

trace of them, the whole wall has been whitewashed. All round about many

fruit-trees seem to have been rooted up, and for three years running,

the caterpillar-host has fallen upon the remnant; nobody looks after

them, and they are left to perish one by one, consumed by yellow mould.

The third house is a little shanty at the far end of the village, shoved

away behind a large ugly granary, with its little yard full of reeds, in

the midst of which is a crooked, dilapidated pump. The panes of glass in

the lead-encased frames have been frosted over, the marl of the thatched

chimney is crumbling away, and the whole of the roof is of a beautiful

green, like velvet, due to the luxuriantly spreading moss.

It is thirty years since these three houses were inhabited.

In the little hut, on the reed-thatched roof of which the screech-owl

now lays its eggs, dwelt thirty years ago, a crazy old woman, they

called her Magdolna. She must have been for a long time out of her wits;

some said she had been born so, others maintained that the roof had

fallen right upon her head and injured her brain; others again affirmed

that the marriage of her only daughter with the hangman was the cause of

her mental aberration. There were some who even remembered the time when

this woman was rich and respected, and then suddenly she had become a

beggar, and subsequently a crazy beggar. Be that as it may, in those

days this old woman exercised a peculiar influence over the

superstitious peasantry.

A sort of awe-inspiring exaltation seemed to take possession of this

creature whenever she stood at the threshold of her hut, within the

walls of which she usually remained in a brown study insensible to her

surroundings for days together.

When, at such times of exaltation, she stepped forth into the street,

all the dogs in the village would fall a howling as they are wont to do

when the headsman goes his rounds. All who met her timidly shrunk aside,

for, not infrequently, she would foretell the hours of their death, and

cases were known in which her prophesies had come true. She could tell

at a single glance which of the young unmarried women did honour to

their _partas_[1] and which did not. She could read in the faces of the

children the names of their parents, and she often gave them names very

different from the names they bore. The maids and young married women of

the village therefore, not unnaturally, trembled before her.

[Footnote 1: _Parta_--head-dress of the young peasant maids.]

She recognised the stolen horse in front of the cart, and shouted to the

farmer who drove it: "You stole that, and it will be stolen back again!"

At other times she would sit in the church-door, lay her crutch across

the threshold, and wait to see who would dare to step across it. Woe

then to whomsoever had transgressed any of the commandments! All through

the summer the ague would plague him, his oxen would die, the tares

would choke his corn, his limbs would be racked with pleurisy, or he

would be nearly mauled to death in the village tavern.

Often she sat for hours at home, among her thorns and thistles, sobbing

and moaning, and at such times the common folks believed that the whole

district would be visited by a hailstorm. Sometimes she roamed about for

weeks, nobody knew where, nobody knew why, and during all that time the

hosts of grasshoppers, wood-lice, spiders, caterpillars, and other

Heaven-sent plagues, multiplied terribly throughout the land; but the

moment the old woman returned they all disappeared again in a day

without leaving a trace behind them.

At one time they fancied she was at the point of death.

She lay outside her hut close to the well and drank incessantly of its

water. At last she collapsed altogether, she could not even lift her

hands. The passers-by perceived that she was parched with thirst, was

wrestling with death, and yet could not die. If they had but given her a

drink of cold water, she would immediately have been freed from the

torments of life, but nobody durst approach to give her to drink. On

that same day the lightning thrice struck the village, and such a deluge

of rain descended that the water flooded the roads and invaded the

houses.

The next day there was nothing at all the matter with the old woman, but

she went about bowed down, shaking and leaning heavily on her crutch as

at other times.

When the spring of 1831 was passing away, all sorts of terrible

premonitory signs warned the people of the frightful visitation which

was about to befall humanity. Nature herself made the people anxious

and uncomfortable. There were showers of falling stars, it rained blood

in various places, death-headed moths flew about in the evenings,

wolves, tame and fawning like dogs, appeared in the village and let

themselves be beaten to death before the thresholds of the houses.

What was going to happen?--nobody could tell.

Everyone augured, feared, felt that mourning and woe were close at hand;

yes, everyone.

The trees made haste to put forth their blossoms, they made even greater

haste to produce their ripened fruit. All nature knew not what to do,

man least of all.

In those days when a single good word spoken in season, a single lucid

idea might have meant the saving of many lives, the sole prophet in the

whole country-side was this crazy old woman, who, in the dolorous

exaltation of her deranged mind, sometimes blindly blurted out things on

which the future was to impress the seal of truth. But, for the most

part, her multitudinous, ambiguous utterances might be interpreted this

way or that, according to the liking of her hearers, and obscured rather

than revealed the future.

When the summer came, with its terribly hot days, the woman's madness

seemed to culminate in downright frenzy, for whole nights together she

went shrieking through the village. The dogs crept forth from under the

gates to meet her, and she sat down beside them, put her arms round

their heads, and they would howl together in hideous unison. Then she

would go into the houses weeping and moaning, and would ask for a glass

of water, and would moisten her hands and her eyes therewith. In some of

the houses she would simply say: "Why don't you smoke the room out,

there's a vile odour of death in it;" in other places she would ask for

a Prayer Book, and would fold down the page at the Office of Prayers for

the Dead. Or she would send messages to the other world through people

who were on their legs hale and hearty, and would tell them not to

forget these messages.

"Get a cross made for you!" was her most usual greeting. And woe betide

the family into whose windows she cried: "Get two crosses made! Get

three made! One for yourself, one for your wife, one for each of your

sons and each of your daughters!"

The people lived in desperate expectation; they would have run away had

they known whither to run.

And what then were the wise and learned doing all this time, they who

knew right well that a mortal danger was approaching; for they had read

of its ravages, they had looked upon the very face of it in pictures,

they knew the pace at which it was travelling day by day--what did they

do to soothe the anguish of the people, and inspire them with confidence

in the tender mercies of God?

All they did was to have a cemetery ready dug for those who were to die

in heaps in the course of the year.