THE HEADSMAN'S FAMILY.
The house of the headsman is surrounded by a stone wall, its door is
studded with huge nails, acacia trees rustle in front of it. Its windows
are hidden by a high fence. On its roof from time to time something
flap-flaps like a black flag; it is a raven which has chosen the roof of
that house as a refuge. No other animal likes the hangman. The dogs bay
at him, the oxen run bellowing out of his way, only the ravens
acknowledge him as their host. They are his own birds.
It is late in the evening, the sun has long since set, it may be about
nine or ten o'clock, and yet the sky is unusually bright. Everywhere a
strange reflected glare torments the eye of man. Not a cloud is visible;
there is not a star in the heavens, yet a persistent, murky yellowness
embraces the whole sky like a shining mist, as if the night, instead of
putting on her usual cinder-grey garment, had clothed herself in
flame-coloured weeds. Any sounds that may be audible seem as if they
come from an immeasurable distance, and are hollow and awe-inspiring.
Close to the horizon the pointed steeples of Hetfalu are visible, their
black outlines stand out in sharp contrast against the burning sky.
The whole district is empty and deserted. At other times, in the summer
evenings, one would have seen tired yet boisterous groups of peasants
returning home from working in the fields and hastening back to their
respective villages. The voice of the vesper bell would everywhere have
been resounding, the sweetly-sad songs of the good-humoured peasant
girls would have soothed the ear, mingled with the jingle of the bells
of the homeing kine, and the joyous barking of the dogs bounding on in
front of their masters. Now everything is dumb. The fields for the most
part lie fallow and overgrown by weeds and thistles, never seen before.
In other places the green wheat crop, choked by tares, has already been
mown down. Means of communication have everywhere been interrupted by
the sanitary cordons. The high road is covered with broad patches of
grass on both sides. Men hold handkerchiefs to their mouths and noses,
and do not trust themselves to breathe. The tongues of the bells have
everywhere been removed. At the end of every village stands a good-sized
four-cornered piece of ground surrounded by a ditch, and within it, here
and there, graves have been dug well beforehand.
Throughout this lonely wilderness the furious barking of a watch-dog
suddenly resounds, to which all the dogs in the distant village
instantly begin to respond. Two men are fumbling at the latch of the
headsman's door, and the chained dog within the courtyard, scenting a
stranger, gives him a hostile greeting.
"Who is there?" inquires from within an unpleasant, hoarsely screeching
voice, the owner whereof at the same time soothing the big dog which,
snarling fiercely, thrusts his nose between the door and the lintel, and
snaps from time to time through the opening.
"Open the door, Mekipiros, and don't bawl!" answers one of the new
arrivals, impatiently beating with his fists upon the door. "There's no
necessity for closing the door either, for who is likely to come? Even
if you left it wide open, nobody would stray in, I'll be bound, save
your pal, Old Nick, and here he is."
At this well-known voice the wolf-hound ceased to bark, and when the
door was opened leaped joyously upon the neck of the new-comer, whining
and sniffing.
"Send this filthy sea-bear to the deuce, Mekipiros, can't you? It's
licking my very nose off."
The person so addressed was a curious sport of nature. It was a
square-set creature dressed completely in women's clothes. Its features
were those of a semi-bestial type. It had an immense round head covered
with short, tangled, unkempt hair, a large broad mouth, a stumpy,
wide-spreading nose, a projecting forehead furrowed with deep wrinkles,
thick bushy eyebrows, and one half of the horny-skinned face was covered
by immature furry whiskers. And this masculine creature wore women's
clothes! On perceiving the new-comer, it seized the yelping dog, big as
a calf though it was, by the chain with a bony hand and hurled it
backwards, grinning and grunting all the time without any apparent
cause.
"Come! go in and don't stand staring aimlessly about," said the
new-comer turning to his comrade, who was standing in melancholy
amazement on the threshold, wrapped up in a large mantle, with a
broad-brimmed hat on his head.
The dog accompanied the guests as far as the door of his kennel,
sniffing all the time at the heels of the stranger, whilst the gabbling
Mekipiros tugged away at its chain. A hideous moustache had been painted
on the monster's lip either with blood or red chalk, and he tried to
call attention to it with extreme self-satisfaction.
"Is the master at home, or the missus, eh! Mekipiros?" inquired the
first-comer.
"The master is singing and the mistress is dancing," replied the
half-man with a bestial chuckle.
"Tell them that we have arrived, come! off you go, and look sharp about
it," and with that he gave a kick accompanied by a vigorous buffet to
the monster, who regarded him for a time with a broad grin, as if
expecting a repetition of the dose, and then plunged clumsily through
the kitchen door bellowing with mirth. Meanwhile the two men remained
outside in the courtyard.
One of them was a tall fair youth clad from head to foot in a greasy
leather costume. He had round washed-out features, a callous sort of
apathy played around his lips, and a cold indifference to suffering was
visible in his red-rimmed green eyes. What struck one most about him was
the furtive, prying expression of his face; he was evidently a spy by
nature, although he attempted to conceal his real character beneath a
mask of stupidity and absent-mindedness. But he pricked up his ears at
every word spoken in his presence. He reminded one of a snake which,
when captured, stiffens itself out and pretends to be dead, and will let
itself be broken in pieces before it will move.
The other youth was a pale-faced man, plainly a prey to the most
overwhelming depression. The ends of his little black moustache
straggled uncared for about the corners of his mouth, his hat was
pressed right down over his eyes. You could see at a glance that his
mind and his body were wandering miles apart from each other.
There they stood, then, in the courtyard of the headsman's house. The
appearance of this courtyard formed an overwhelming contrast with the
idea one generally pictures to one's self of such a place. A pretty
green lawn covered the whole courtyard, clinging to the walls were
creeping fig and apricot trees; in the background was a pretty vine;
heart-shaped flower-beds had been cut out of the lawn, and they were
full of fine wallflowers and the most fragrant sylvan flowers of every
species; further away stood melon beds, sending their far-reaching
shoots in every direction, red currant bushes, a weeping willow or two,
yellow rose bushes, myriad hued full-blown poppies--and little white
red-eyed rabbits were bounding all over the grass plot.
And yet this is the dwelling of the headsman.
"You can come in!" cried a strong, penetrating, sonorous woman's voice
from within, and the same instant Mekipiros bounded through the door
with his huge shaggy head projecting far in front of him. It was plain
that he had not quitted the room voluntarily, but in consequence of a
vigorous impulsion from behind.
The man in leather now shoved his melancholy comrade on in front of him,
and the headsman's door closed behind them.
It was a kitchen into which they had entered, in no way different from
the hearth and home of ordinary men. The plates and dishes shone with
cleanliness, everything was in apple-pie order, the fire flickered
merrily beneath the chimney, and yet--fancy was continually finding
something in every object reminiscent of blood-curdling circumstances.
That axe, for instance, stuck in a block in front of the fireplace? Two
years ago the executioner had beheaded a parricide--perchance 'twas on
that very block!
That rope, again, attached to that bucket, that curved piece of iron
glowing red in the fire, that heavy chain dangling down from the
chimney--who knows of what accursed horrible scenes they may not have
been the witnesses at some time or other? Yet, perhaps, there may be
nothing sinister at all about them; perhaps they are employed for quite
simple, honest, culinary purposes. Still, this is the headsman's house,
remember!
Here and there on the walls black spots are visible. What are they?
Blood, perhaps. One's eye cannot tear itself away from them; again and
again it goes back to them, and the mind cannot reconcile itself to the
thought: perchance this may be the blood of some beast, the blood of
some common fattened beast which man must kill that he may eat and
live--for is not this the dwelling of the headsman?
A woman is roasting and frying over the hearth, a tall, muscularly built
virago, to whose sinewy arms, dome-like breast, red shining cheeks, and
burning eyes, the flickering flames gave a savage, uncanny look; her
fine black locks are wound up in a large knot at the back of her head,
her large eyebrows have grown together, and the upper surface of her
red, swollen lips are amber-coloured with masculine down.
"Sit down!" she cries to the new arrivals with a rough growling voice.
"You are hungry, eh? Well, soon you shall have something to eat. There's
the table"--and she went on cooking and piling up the fire; as it roared
up the chimney it gave her red face an infernal expression. This was the
headsman's wife.
The melancholy youth sat down abstractedly at the table, the other
strode up to the hearth and began whispering to the woman, whilst from
time to time they cast glances at the stranger-guest.
The man's whispers were inaudible, but it was possible to catch every
word the woman said, for, try as she might, she could not soften down
her thunderous voice into a whisper.
"I know him," said she, "he will soon get used to this place.... Nobody
will look for him here.... Get away from here? How can he?"
Presently she placed a dish of boiled flesh before her guests. The pale
youth picked at his food slowly and sadly, the other attacked it with
ravenous haste, throwing a word over his shoulder to the woman the
while, or urging his comrade to eat, or flinging bones to the dog and
kicking him viciously in the ribs when he snapped them up.
"Can one have a word with the old man?" he inquired of the woman.
"Let him bide, the old man is plagued with his devils again. Don't you
hear how he sings? Why, he voices it as lustily as any Slovak student on
St Lucia's day."
And indeed from some room far away now came this verse of a well-known
hymn, sung in a deep vibrating voice full of a woeful, contrite
tremulousness:
"Oh, Lord, the number of our sins
And vileness, who shall purge?
Withhold the fury of Thy wrath,
Though we deserve its pouring forth,
And stay Thy chastening scourge!"
Melancholy, heart-rending was the sense of penitence conveyed by this
deep, vibrating, bell-like voice. A penitential hymn in the house of the
headsman!
The sad-faced youth shivered at the sound of this voice and seemed to
awake suddenly from out of a reverie. He passed his hand once or twice
across his forehead as if to rally his wits and reduce the chaos within
and around him to some sort of order, but gradually sank back again into
his former lethargy.
A short time afterwards the same hymn was heard again; but the voice of
the singer this time was not the sonorous, manly voice they had heard
before, it was a heavenly, pure, childlike voice which now began to
sing, full of the magic charm and sweetness of a crystal harmonica:
"Yet know we, Lord, whoso repents
And turns his heart to Thee,
Shall aye find favour in Thy sight;
Nor wilt thou hide from him Thy light,
Thy mercy he shall see."
Angels in Heaven could not have sung more sweetly than the voice that
sang this verse. Who could it be? An angel proclaiming remission of sins
in the house of the headsman!
"So the old cut-throat still keeps the girl under a glass case, eh?"
"He wants to bring her up as a saint on purpose to aggravate me, for he
knows very well that I never could endure anything of the saintly
sort."
"Apparently the old chap is stark staring mad."
"He is possessed by devils, I fancy. Last week three of his 'prentices
bolted because they could not stand his sanctimoniousness any longer.
Before dinner he would insist on reading to them out of the Bible for
half an hour at a stretch, and if any of them dared to laugh he flung
him out of doors like a puppy dog; you may imagine what a pretty figure
a headsman cuts who is always preaching about the other world, and
proclaiming the word of the Lord with his clenched fists."
"I'll be bound to say he has even taught Mekipiros to go down on his
hams."
"Ho, ho, ho! Call him in! Come hither, Mekipiros, you bear's cub, you!"
Mekipiros came in.
"Come hither, I would box your chaps. There, take that! What, still
grinning, eh? There's another then! Weep immediately, sirrah! can't you!
Pull a wry mug! So! Put your hands together! Cast down your eyes! So!
And now fire away!"
And the monster did indeed begin to recite a prayer. One might perhaps
have expected him to mumble something altogether unintelligible. But no!
He recited it to the end with a solemn voice, and his eyes remained cast
down the whole time. His face even began to assume a more human
expression, and when he came to the words which announced remission of
sins to the truly penitent sinner, two heavy tear-drops welled forth and
ran down his rough wrinkled face.
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the headsman's wife, and she smacked the forehead
of the suppliant repeatedly with the palm of her hand; "a lot of good
may it do you!"
Suddenly, like the rolling echo of a descending thunderbolt, a song of
praise uttered in an awe-inspiring voice from the adjoining room cut
short this inhuman mockery.
"Who thunders so loudly in the lurid heavens above?
What means this mighty quaking? Why doth the round earth move?"
At the same instant the boiling water overflowed from the caldron and
put the fire out, and they were all in darkness. There was a dead
silence, when suddenly a blast of wind caught the half-open door and
slammed it to violently, and in the dead silence that followed could be
heard something like the cry of a bird of ill-omen or the yell of a
maniac flying from the pursuit of his own soul: "Death!--a bloody
death--a death of horror!"
Gradually the last sounds of this voice died away in the distance. The
chained watch-dog sent a dismal howl after it.
And when the feeble light of the tallow candles shone again through the
darkness, it fell upon three shapes which had sunk upon their knees in
terror, the two 'prentices of the headsman, and the monster. But the
proud, defiant virago turned towards the elder of the 'prentices, and
looked him up and down contemptuously.
"Then you, too, are one of them, eh?" cried she.
"Did you not hear the cry of the death-bird?" stammered he.
"What are you afraid of? Tis only my half-crazy old mother."
* * * * *
At night the headsman's apprentices sleep on the floor of the loft. The
headsman himself has a room overlooking the courtyard; Mekipiros slept
in the stable outside with the watch-dog.
All was silent. Outside, the wind had died away, not the leaf of a tree
was stirring; one could distinguish the deep breathing of the sleepers.
At such times the lightest sound fills the sleepless watcher with fear.
Sometimes he fancies that a man hidden beneath the bed is slowly raising
his head, or that someone is lifting a latch, or the wind shakes the
door as if someone were rattling it from the outside. There is a humming
and a buzzing all around one. Night beetles have somehow or other lit
upon a piece of paper, and they crinkle it so that it sounds as if
someone were writing in the dark. Out in the street men seem to be
running to and fro and muttering hoarsely in each other's ears. The
church clocks strike one after another, thrice, four times--one cannot
tell how often. The time is horribly long and the night is an abyss of
blackness.
On a bed of straw, with a coarse coverlet thrown over them, the
headsman's two apprentices sleep side by side. Are they really asleep?
Can they sleep at all in such a place? Yet their eyes are closed. No,
one of them is not asleep. When he perceives that his comrade does not
move, he slowly pushes the coverlet from off him and creeps on all fours
into the inner room; there he lies down flat on his stomach and peeps
through a crevice in the rafters. Then he arises, creeps on tiptoe to
the chimney and knocks at the partition wall three times, then he climbs
down from his loft by means of a ladder, withdraws the ladder from the
opening, and whistles to the watch-dog to come forth. One can hear how
the chained beast scratches his neck, and growling and sniffing lies
down before the door of the loft.
Meanwhile the other apprentice has been carefully observing every
movement of his companion with half open eyes. Whenever the first riser
turns towards him he feigns to be asleep; but as soon as he takes his
eyes off him he opens his own eyes again and looks after him.
When the last sound has died away, he also arises from his sleepless
couch and looks through that crevice into the inner room through which
his comrade had looked before. It was easy to find, the ray of a lamp
pierced through the crevice in the beam, and that ray comes from the
hangman's bedroom.
Carefully he bends down and looks through this little peep-hole.
He sees before him a room furnished with the most rigorous simplicity.
Close to the wall stands a black chest, fastened with three locks; in
the middle of the room is a strong wooden table; further away are two
beds, a large one and a small one; there are also two armless
four-legged chairs; in the window recess are a few shabby books; above
the beds is a heavy blunderbuss. The pale light of the lamp falls upon
the table. Sitting beside it is a child reading out of the Bible. At the
feet of the child lies a man with his face pressed down to the ground.
The man is of mighty stature--a giant, and he lays down his head,
covered with a wildered shock of grey hair, at the feet of a child whose
beauty rivets the eye and makes the heart stand still.
It is a pretty little light-haired angel, twelve or thirteen years of
age, her hair is of a silvery lightness, like soft feather-grass or
moonbeams, her face is of a heavenly whiteness, she has the smile of an
angel. The smile of this white face is so unearthly, that neither joy
nor good-humour is reflected from it, but something of a higher order,
which the human heart is not pure enough to comprehend.
The old man lies there on the ground, with his fingers clutching his
grey locks, and the ground on which his face has rested is wet. But the
little girl, with hair like soft feather-grass, reads with a honey-sweet
voice verses full of mercy and pardon from the Holy Book. From time to
time her little fingers turn a leaf over, and whenever she comes to the
name of the Lord she raises gentle eyes full of devout reverence.
"Pray, pray, my angel, go on praying! God will hear thy words. Oh! thy
father is indeed a sinner, a great, great sinner!"
The child leant over him, kissed his grey head, and went on reading.
The old man fell a-weeping bitterly.
"Oh! thy father's hands are so bloody! Who can ever wash them clean? I
have killed so many men who never offended me, never did me any harm.
Oh! how they feared death! how sad they were as they waited for me! how
they looked and looked to see whether a white flag would not be hoisted
after all! Oh! how they begged and prayed, how they kissed my hands in
order that I might wait a moment, but one moment more--life was so sweet
to them, yes, so sweet! And yet I had to kill them. I murdered
them--because the law commanded it."
A deep and bitter sob choked the old man's voice.
"Who will answer for me when God asks in a voice of thunder: 'Who has
dared to deal out death--the prerogative of God alone?' Who will answer
for me, who will defend me, when my judges will be so many pale, cold
shapes, me in whose hands were Death and Terror? And if we meet together
above there--or, perchance, down below, we, the executioner and the
executed, and sit down at one table! oh! those bloody souls!--moving
about headless, perchance, even in the other world, oh! horrible,
horrible! To have to answer for the head of a man! And what if he were
innocent besides, what if the judge erred, and the blood of the
condemned cries out to Heaven for vengeance? Alas! oh, Mighty Heavenly
Father!"
The grey-headed giant writhed on the ground convulsively, and smote his
bosom with his clenched fists. One could now catch a glimpse of his
face. It was a hard, weather-beaten countenance, bronzed by the suns of
many a year, large patches of his beard were grizzled, but his eyebrows
were of a deep black. He was quite beside himself, every muscle writhed
and quivered.
The little girl knelt down beside him and tenderly stroked his
sweat-covered forehead, took his head into her lap, and did not seem to
fear him terrible as he looked--like one of the damned on the verge of
the grave.
The old man kissed the girl's hands and feet, and timidly, tenderly
embracing her with his large, muscular, tremulous arms, bent over her,
hid his face in her lap, and sobbing and groaning, spoke in a voice near
to choking--it was as though his very soul was bursting away from his
bosom along with these terrible words.
"Look, my little girl!--once the judges condemned a young man to
death--my God! there was no trace of a beard upon his face, so young was
he. For three days he was placed in the pillory, and everybody wept who
beheld him--the youth was accused of having murdered his father. He
could not deny that he slept in the same room, and a bloody knife was
concealed in the bed. In vain he said that he was innocent, in vain he
called God to witness--he must needs die. On the day when he was
beheaded, two women, weeping and wailing, and dressed in deep mourning,
ran beside the felon's car to the place of execution. One was his dear
mother, the other his loving sister. In vain they screamed that he was
innocent, that he ought not to die, and, even if he were guilty they
forgave him the mourning dresses they wore, though they were the
sufferers and had lost everything. It was useless, he must needs die.
When he sat down in front of me in the chair of death, and took off his
clothes, even then he turned to me and said: 'Woe is me that I must die,
for I am innocent.' I bound up his eyes. But my hand shook as I aimed
the blow at him, and the blood that spurted on to my hand burnt like
fire. Oh, my child! that blood was innocent. A year ago I executed a
notorious highwayman, and as I was ascending the ladder with him, he
turned and laughed in my face: 'Ha, ha!' cried he, 'it was in this very
place that you beheaded a fine young fellow whom they accused of having
murdered his father; it was I who killed that father of his and hid the
knife in his bed, and now hang me up and look sharp about it.' Oh, my
child, thou fair angel, beseech God that _He_ will let me forget those
words!"
"Go to sleep, go to sleep, my good father. God is good, God is wrath
with no man. Why dost thou weep? Thou art not a bad man, surely, else
thou wouldst not love me. Look now! Last summer two children went from
the village into the woods to pluck flowers, there Heaven's warfare
overtook them, and when they sought a refuge beneath a tree to avoid the
rain, the lightning struck both of them dead. Yet the lightning is God's
own weapon, and both the children were innocent. God knows wherefore He
gives life and death, we do not. Go to sleep, my good father! God is
everywhere near us, and turns away from nobody who lifts up his eyes
towards Him. Look, I see Him everywhere. He watches over me when I
sleep, He holds me by the hand when I walk in the darkness; I see Him if
I look up at the sky, I see Him when I cast down my eyes. He abandons
nobody. Kiss me and go to sleep!"
The big muscular man slowly struggled to his knees. He pressed the fair
child to his bosom and raised his hard rough face. He looked up, his
lips quivered, he seemed to be praying, and his tears flowed apace. Then
he stood up, and the little girl embraced his arm, that huge arm of his
like the trunk of a tree. Fumbling his way along, he allowed himself to
be led to his bed, and plunged down upon it fully dressed as he was.
After turning about restlessly for a moment or two, a loud snore like
thunder, which made the whole room vibrate, proclaimed that he had
fallen asleep at last. But his slumbers were restless and uneasy.
Frequently he would start and cry aloud as if in agony, or utter broken
unintelligible half sentences and groan horribly.
But the fair little girl extinguished the lamp before she got ready to
lie down herself. The pale light of the moon shone through the window
and made her face whiter, her hair more silvery than ever, as if by
enchantment. It shone right upon her snow-white bed. It shone upon her
soft eyebrows, her smiling face, upon her sweet lips as they tremulously
prayed.
So slumber came upon her in the shape of a snow-white moonbeam. With a
smiling face, hands clasped together, and praying lips, she fell
asleep--and her guardian angel stood at the head of her snow-white bed.
The youth had watched the whole scene through the rift in the door with
bated breath and great amazement. When he rose to his feet, he remained
for a long time, rapt in a brown study, leaning against the wall and
staring blankly before him, lost in wonder that two such different
beings should be slumbering together beneath the same roof.
He sighed deeply. In the stillness of the night it seemed to him as if
he heard the echo of his own sigh coming back to him in whispering
words. He listened attentively--he could plainly distinguish the deep
droning voice of the headsman's wife, which seemed to him to come from
somewhere below at the opposite end of the house.
He went in the direction of the voice, and when he came to the place
where his comrade had knocked thrice on the boards near the chimney, he
distinctly heard two people talking to each other in a low voice. It was
the headsman's wife and her lover.
The youth turned away full of loathing. Nevertheless, it soon occurred
to him that this tempestuous _tete-a-tete_ could have little to do with
love. The voice of the headsman's wife frequently arose in anger.
"Let him go to hell!" he heard her exclaim.
"Hush! hush!" murmured the young 'prentice, "somebody might overhear
us."
"Pooh! God and men both slumber now."
What could they be talking about? Whom did they want to harm? Such folks
had it not in them to love anyone. Woe to those whom they had cause to
remember!
So he crept softly to the spot and listened.
"If these people should rise they will not leave one stone upon
another," the headsman's apprentice was saying.
"And do you suppose they will rise up because you tell them to?"
"I have thought the matter well out. The common folks about here do not
love their masters, there is no reason why they should. Their lords have
kicked and cuffed and spat upon them, and treated them worse than dogs.
You have but to cast a burning fagot into the mass of discontent, and
it will flame up at once. Even the wisest among them who do know
something about it, are the most narrow-minded. If there be two versions
of a matter they always believe the most absurd one. I told them to be
on their guard against danger. I told them to look after their wells and
their granaries, as their masters wanted to poison them. When they asked
why? I told them that the whole kingdom was surrounded on every side by
enemies, and the gentry wanted to raise a pestilence in the kingdom to
keep the enemy out of it. At my words the common people at once became
suspicious, for they have heard for a long time that the gentry were
expecting a pestilence, and as this was the first explanation of the
prophesied epidemic that had come to their ears, they believed it at
once. Suspicion is contagious. And as the gentry have since had the
imprudence to order a separate graveyard to be dug for the corpses of
those who may die of the cholera (naturally in order to prevent the dead
bodies from spreading the contagion), the common folks have believed my
words as if I were a prophet, and quite expect that the gentry are going
to poison the poor people. The digging of the churchyard they take to be
a first move in that direction."
"Devilish clever of you, Ivan, I must say."
"And then don't forget the announcement of the Kassa doctors to the
effect that if the common folks will not take the salutary bismuth
powder voluntarily, it must be forced upon them, thrown into their
wells and scattered about their barns. It looks as if everyone was
intent upon playing into our hands."
"Does the young chap upstairs suspect anything?"
"I don't think so, but let us speak in a lower tone. I promised to hide
him here. He fancies he has shot his captain dead. He caught him with
his sweetheart and banged away at him; the man fell to the ground, but
he did not die. But the young fellow ran away and deserted his colours.
I have been persuading him to desert for a long time, as I had need of
him. This, in fact, is the third time he has deserted, and if they catch
him now they will undoubtedly string him up. Not a bad idea for him to
fly to the headsman's house, eh? They will seek him everywhere but under
the gallows-tree. And if they find him here, they won't have very much
more trouble with him, that's all."
"Ho, ho, ho! Suppose he were to hear you?"
And he did hear!
"You see, this was my object all along. I shall put his pursuers on his
track in any case, and they will capture him here and take him to
Hetfalu, where the court-martial will pronounce sentence of death, and
then have him exposed in the pillory. All the common folk about Hetfalu
love the youth as if he was their own son, but they hate his father like
the devil. It will be no very great masterpiece to stir up the people in
these troublous times, and when they see the young fellow led out to be
hanged they will be quite ready to seize their scythes and dung-forks,
set him free, raise him on their shoulders, and rush with him to the
castle of his father (who, by the way, has done his best to hound his
son to death), and level it with the ground, and there you have a
peasant revolt in full swing straight off."
"But will the lad consent to be put at the head of such an enterprise?"
"Never fear! Death is an awful prospect. There is no road, however
terrible, which a man will not take in order to avoid it. Besides, at
such times a man is not himself, but does everything almost
unconsciously, and thus our names will not appear in the business at
all; and if it is put down, he will be looked upon as the ringleader.
Not the shadow of a suspicion will fall upon us."
"Bravo, Ivan! I could kiss you for this."
"A more amazing popular rebellion than this will be has never been
known. From village to village the rumour will fly that his own son has
risen against his poisoner of a father at the head of the people, has
cut to pieces every member of his family, and levelled his ancestral
halls to the ground. He will be looked upon as a public avenger.
Horribly black rumours will be noised abroad all over the kingdom, and
at the tidings thereof the people will run downright mad with savage
fury, and the gentry will not know which way to turn to escape the
unforeseen danger which will suddenly break out at their very doors."
"You are the Devil's own son, Ivan; come and let me cuddle you."
The youth rose from the chimney-place trembling in every limb. He had
heard every word they said.
For an instant he remained standing there quite beside himself, half
mad, half senseless from sheer terror and amazement. Presently he began
to gaze about him with desperate alertness, like a wild beast that has
fallen into a trap and looks eagerly for a way out of it, rallying all
its powers for a final struggle, becoming resourceful and inventive in
proportion to its peril, and forgetting the very instinct of life in the
longing for freedom, at last gets to fear nobody and nothing. After
fruitless struggles it surrenders in despair, lies down, closes its
eyes, and the next instant once more begins the hopeless fight for
liberty.
The youth looked down through the opening in the floor. The ladder had
been removed, and in the courtyard below a big shaggy dog was slouching
surlily about and shaking its collar, and from time to time it would
tear at its skin with its teeth or worry its tail and bay at the moon.
And now there is a good sharp knife in the youth's hands. He sticks it
between his teeth and looks carefully around him. In case of need he
would have risked a fight with the dog, and perhaps killed it; but this
could not happen without a great deal of noise, and he wished, at any
price, to escape unnoticed.
The fence, too, surrounding the enclosure, was very high, how was he to
get over it? Nowhere could he see the ladder.
At the extreme end of the house, right opposite the windows of the
headsman's bedroom, was a large mulberry tree, whose wide-spreading
branches bent down over the roof of the house. With the help of these
branches one could easily get to the fence, and then a bold leap down
from the top of it would do the rest.
Like a panther escaping from its cage the young man crept along the
narrow window-ledge of the garret with his knife between his teeth.
Wriggling along on his belly he clutched hold of the ridge of the house,
and crawled cautiously on till he came to the branches of the
mulberry-tree, then he seized an overhanging branch, clambered up it and
scrambled to the very end of it--and all so quietly, without making the
least noise.
From the extreme edge of the branch, however, to the top of the fence he
had to make a timely spring, and in so doing overestimated the strength
of the branch on which he stood--with a great crash it broke beneath
him, and he remained clinging like grim death to the fence half-way up.
At the sound of the snapping branch the watch-dog became aware of the
fugitive, and rushed barking towards him; and while he was struggling
with all his might to scramble up to the top of the fence it seized him
by one of the tails of his coat and furiously tried to drag him down.
"Who is that?" a loud voice suddenly roared. The headsman had been
aroused by the noise outside his window, and was now looking down into
the courtyard. He there perceived a man quite unknown to him clambering
up the fence, while the dog was tugging away at him to bring him down.
"Ho, there! stop, whoever you are!" he thundered, and mad with rage he
seized the musket and took aim at the fugitive. His eyes were wild and
bloodshot.
Then a white hand lowered the weapon, and a clear ringing childish voice
from behind him exclaimed:
"Wilt thou slay yet again, oh, my father?"
The man's hand sank down. For a moment he was motionless, and his face
grew very pale. Then the calm look of self-possession came back to him.
He embraced the child who had pushed the gun aside. Then he took aim
once more. There was a loud report, and the watch-dog, without so much
as a yelp, fell to the ground stiff and stark. The fugitive with a final
effort leaped over the fence.