THE UNBELOVED SON.
The day dawned slowly and, as it seemed, with great difficulty. The
morning was cold and cloudy as is often the case after a tempestuous
night.
There was a great bustling about in the house of mourning. A bier and a
coffin had to be made, and the dead clothed in their funeral finery. The
old squire wished the funeral to be a splendid one.
The courtyard had been swept clean. Every household tool and implement
of labour had been removed out of the way. They were preparing to keep
one of those days of sad and solemn observance which must befall every
household at some time or other.
At such times the street door is kept wide open. Let the country folks
come in and look upon the dead, let them learn from the sight that Death
is the judge of the gentry as well as of the serfs; let them see how the
rich can be splendid even after death, how they embellish their coffins,
how they fasten them with golden nails, how they embroider their palls
with patterns of roses and gold filagree, how they spread the bed of
death itself with the finest white watered silk and perfume it with the
most fragrant balm.
Yet that fragrant balm cannot stifle the smell of the charnel house.
Here, too, men must hold their handkerchiefs to their mouths as they do
before the corpses of the poor.
For Death is a just judge.
A ragged man passes through the door. He is soaked through and through
with mud and dirt, it was clear that no roof had covered his head during
last night's tempest. His feet peeped from out of his boots, his damp
hair seemed glued to his temples, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks were
mere bone, his lips were blue and hollow.
He entered the courtyard falteringly like one who would steal something
but does not know how to set about it, and there he stood at the
entrance of the hall, leaning against the lintel, with eyes cast down
upon the ground.
The dogs approached him, sniffed at his clothes all round, and began to
growl at him.
Only one dog, an old boar-hound, would not be satisfied with sniffing
impatiently among the others, but rushed upon the stranger, placed its
two front paws upon him, licked his limp hand, and began joyously
barking at him.
At this the major-domo, a sunburnt old man with a white moustache drew
near, gave the speechless stranger a large piece of bread, and bade him
go about his business.
"In God's name take yourself off," said he, "don't stand here in the
way of everybody that comes out or goes in."
The new-comer did not move, but kept on looking straight in front of
him, his chin and his lips trembled as if he were keeping back by force
a torrent of tears.
The major-domo did not notice this, but the old dog kept leaping up at
the stranger's hand, and yelped and yapped so persistently that it was
plain he wanted to say something.
"Come, stir your stumps and look sharp about it, my good fellow, and
don't set all our dogs barking for nothing," said the major-domo, and
with that he seized the vagabond's hand and turned him round.
And now he saw his face for the first time.
The tears streamed from the eyes of the ragged man, sobbing and weeping
he turned to the wall and hid his face.
The old servant stood there dumbfounded. At first he would not believe
his eyes, then at last he clapped his hands together and exclaimed:
"Why, if it is not young Master Imre himself. Good Heaven!" and deeply
agitated he approached the young man and began to soothe him, finally
falling upon his neck and weeping along with him.
"Nobody recognises me," sobbed the youth, whose left hand was bleeding
badly. He had hurt himself somewhat severely when he leaped over the
fence of the headsman's house.
"Oh, why have you come home just at this time?" lamented the old
servant, "if only it had been any other day in the whole year but this;
this house is a sad dwelling-place just now, there are two corpses in
it."
"Who has died then?"
"Mistress Leonora and little Ned. How they are all weeping within
there."
"I shall be the third."
The servant was silent. Perhaps he thought to himself: "Nobody will weep
for you."
"I have deserted from my regiment a third time."
"Oh dear, oh dear! And why have you come home again?"
"I wanted to speak to my father once for all."
"From henceforth your father will speak to nobody but the Lord God."
"I don't ask him to be kind to me. I want to tell him that Death is very
near him, and he must try to avoid it."
"Methinks the poor old man would rather seek out death than fly from it;
but you may be seen and recognised here, young master, and taken
away--and then..."
"They will hang me up, eh? Don't be afraid. The pistol with which I shot
the captain is loaded, one shot will be sufficient to save me from the
gallows-tree--show me where my father is."
"Go, then! Where the mourning is loudest there will you find him."
The youth went in the direction indicated and entered the room.
The room was wholly darkened, the mirrors and pictures were draped in
black; in the midst of it stood two coffins, within which lay two pallid
shapes like wax figures.
It was impossible to recognise them.
On a candelabra beside the coffins burnt four large wax candles, and a
gilded crucifix had been placed on a little table right opposite.
Kneeling at the foot of the dead was a white-haired man. He glanced now
at the one now at the other of the departed, and from time to time would
press his clenched hands to his lips and moan softly like one in a
troubled sleep.
It was a heart-breaking sight--this old white-haired man crushed beneath
the hand of God, moaning like some wild beast dedicated to death, but
unable to utter a word or shed a tear.
When God visits His people with affliction He also gives them tears that
they may weep out their sorrow, and power of speech that they may talk
of their griefs and so find relief, but even these things were denied to
this old man. There he knelt, scourged by the wrath of God, humbled to
the very earth, like a withered branch which stiffens into dry
lifelessness without complaint.
The young man, groping his way along, with his soul benumbed with
sorrow, approached the old man, and gently, noiselessly knelt down by
his side.
The old man regarded him stupidly, and for some time seemed to be
wondering who it was. He could not speak, for, though still alive, Death
had already mastered his tongue, and his son fancied he did not
recognise him. Perchance it was impossible to recognise that haggard
distorted face, that ragged garb, those dishevelled locks.
"I am your son whom you drove away, and who will soon be your dead son
too," he exclaimed, with deep emotion, trying to seize the old man's
hand that he might kiss it.
But the old man drew back his hand with horror. One could see loathing
in the expression of his face, just as if the Devil had extended his
hand to him in the moment of his most sacred sorrow.
"I deserve your disgust, your repudiation. I sinned grievously against
you. You have grown grey betimes because of me. But all this shall be
atoned for by a death, my death. You never loved me, you drove me away
from your house as you would never have driven a dog, you let me perish
in want and wretchedness; from my childish years upwards I have never
had a good word from you, had it been otherwise things might have been
very different. Those whom you loved God took away from you, those you
did not love you drove away yourself, and now you are alone in the
world."
The old man signified to him in dumb show that he was to say no more.
"I have not come hither to ask anything of you, so short will be the
remaining period of my life that I shall want no provision for the way.
I only want to reveal to you a horrible diabolical plot which threatens
your grey head, your family, and perhaps your very house. My father, in
ten minutes' time I shall have ceased to live, and no more words of mine
will ever trouble your soul again, do not repulse me in the very hour of
my death!"
The old man slowly rose from his knees, surveyed his tatterdemalion son
from head to foot with infinite contempt, and his lips moved and
quivered as if they would have said something, but not a word fell from
them.
The son did not know that his father had had a stroke and could not
speak.
"Have you not one word for me?--bad or good, a curse or a blessing? Only
a single word, father! before you see me die!" and he dragged himself on
his knees to the feet of the old man, who supported himself tremulously
against the altar that had been placed opposite the two coffins, his
hair seemed to rise, his eyes started from his head. Then he seized the
heavy gilded crucifix and slowly raised it aloft in his right hand as if
he would have stricken to the earth with it his own son who knelt there
embracing his knees.
During this painful scene the door opened, the clash of the butt ends of
muskets brought sharply to the ground was heard, and a corporal and
three soldiers appeared on the scene.
Imre looked round at this noise. For an instant his face turned deadly
pale; behind the backs of the soldiers he perceived the grinning face of
his evil angel, the headsman's 'prentice. He felt that he was lost.
He glanced around him. Whither should he flee for refuge? Close beside
him were two corpses with cold unsympathetic faces--and there was also a
third, a living face, still colder, still more unsympathetic than the
faces of the dead, living and yet not loving, the face of his own father
who still stood there with the large heavy crucifix in his uplifted
fist.
The corporal approached the youth and seized him by the collar. What did
it matter to him that the culprit was standing beside two corpses
covered with a funeral pall? what did he care about the painfulness of
the scene? Naturally he only saw before him a deserter, a deserter whom
it was his duty to arrest.
At this the youth grew absolutely desperate, and at the same time the
instinct of self-preservation arose within him. In one magical moment
there flashed through his mind all the horrors which the future had in
store for him--the cold dungeon wall, the narrow barred windows, the
heavy rattling chain, the court-martial, the reading of the sentence,
the pillory, the gaping crowd, the white shirt worn by the condemned,
the man of death, the executioner, with a Prayer Book in one hand and a
cord in the other, the ignominious death, the black carrion crows----
"Ah!" he roared in despair, and with the iron strength of frenzy he tore
himself loose from the grasp of the corporal who fell prone into the
fireplace with a fearful crash.
"Whoever touches me is a dead man!" screamed Imre, with a voice full of
fury and defiance, and tearing open his vest he drew forth with one hand
a dagger and with the other a large hussar pistol. The broken-winged
young eagle had turned upon its pursuers, hacking at them with its
wounded beak and flapping its still uninjured pinion in their faces.
The soldiers began to fall back before the infuriated youth, who, with
bloodshot eyes and foaming mouth, followed hard upon them, and either
from fear or compassion opened a way before him.
Then the white-headed old man seized from behind the youth's murderous
uplifted arms, and held him back.
When the young man felt the touch of those cold tremulous hands upon his
arm, he let fall the weapons from both his own hands, his arms fell down
benumbed by his side, his whole body collapsed; nerveless and swooning
he sank in a heap upon the ground. The soldiers lifted him upon their
shoulders, removed him from the room, put fetters upon his hands and
feet, and carried him off.
The old man looked coldly after them. When they had gone, he again knelt
down close to the two coffins, his white locks falling about his face,
raised his clasped hands to his tremulous but impotent lips, and kept
gazing, gazing fixedly first at one of his dear departed and then at the
other.
Not a tear, not a single tear fell from his eyes.