'TIS WELL THAT THE NIGHT IS BLACK.
At the Castle of Hetfalu everyone was quietly sleeping. None had any
thought of that black spectre which is the enemy of all living
creatures, which constrains the huge watch-dog to dig up graves with his
hind feet, which bids the night owl utter her dismal notes on the
housetop alongside of the creaking weather-cock, which sends into the
vestibules and corridors its living visiting-cards in the shape of those
large, black, night-moths with pale skull-like effigies painted on their
backs as upon tombs, beneath whose feet the furniture creaks and
crackles, which makes that tiny invisible beetle hidden between the
boards of the beds begin tick-tick-ticking like a fairy watch, eleven
times in succession, by way of showing that the witching hour of night
is close at hand.
Oh! there is such a great unanimity among these dumb creatures of the
night and darkness.
The wind blew gloomy-looking clouds before it across the sky, clouds
which hastened away from that district; which jostled one another as
they scudded along, some high, some low, and kept on changing their
shapes as if they feared lest something might catch them there. Some of
them had blood-red linings from the flames of distant conflagrations,
and these flew rapidly along, trying to force their way through in
advance of the rest; but these others sped along still faster, lest
they, too, should be enkindled.
And in the darkness disorderly masses of men might have been dimly seen
assembling in the roads and stealthily proceeding towards the castle. In
the tap-room of the _csarda_ evil counsellors are discussing the
destruction of all the dwellers in the castle.
Three separate opinions are fighting for the supremacy. Numa Pompilius
is in favour of an open, heroic attack, as became the _epigoni_ of the
valiant Sarmatians; with battering-rams, ballistas, and other classical
instruments of warfare, he would have fought breast to breast, eye to
eye with the foe.
Ivan, on the other hand, is more practical. He knows his own people
better, and anticipates much greater success from an insidious surprise
in which the warriors shall stealthily crawl over walls and through
windows upon the unguarded and unsuspecting garrison, and massacre them
in their dreams.
The wife of the headsman sits on the table opposite the two
commanders-in-chief with a mocking smile upon her lips, and her huge
muscular arms crossed over her bosom. From time to time she utters a
scornful laugh and grunts disapprovingly.
"Do what you like," she said at last, "neither of you knows anything
about it. The buffalo-catcher would proceed cautiously and the cripple
would run like a 'bull' at the gate."
"And what would you do, I should like to know," snarled Ivan.
"I know something, and I know how to keep it to myself. When you two
have made a mess of it, then I shall come forward."
The commanders began to be jealous of her influence. The first success
always wins the heart of the mob, they must make sure of that anyhow.
"Call in the Leather-bell," cried Ivan to the doorkeepers.
The old fellow was shoved in.
"The castle watch-dogs know you, don't they?" he was asked.
"Know me? of course they do," replied the worthy man. "Why, I brought up
Tisza and Farkas myself. I give them bread every day. Why, they sniff my
pockets even now whenever I go along there."
"They know you still better, you knacker you, I'll be bound," said Dame
Zudar to Ivan derisively.
Ivan caught up a knife from the table and would have stuck the woman
with it had not Thomas Bodza stayed his hand. He did not like these
squabbles at all.
"This is not the time for wrangling," said he.
Only very reluctantly did Ivan allow himself to be pacified and induced
to continue the conversation.
"Here in this handkerchief are some pieces of meat, do you think you can
get the dogs to take them with soft words?"
"Why not? I have only to call them by name, and they will come to the
doors of their kennels and eat it out of my very hands."
"Then look sharp and set about it."
The Leather-bell was such a good fellow that he was never able to resist
the slightest command. He accepted the commission, although he knew very
well that the dogs would be poisoned. He consoled himself with the
reflection, however, that nobody had told him so beforehand.
"But look here, gentlemen, you don't want to do his honour, the squire,
any harm?" he inquired of Ivan, with a foolishly smiling face.
"No, old 'un, no."
"Nor the young squire either?"
"No, nor him either, not for all the world."
"Nor the heyduke? He is my godson, you know."
"No, nor him either, old 'un, but do look sharp."
"You only want to find out whether there is poison in the castle or not,
don't you?"
"Yes, yes. Devil take the fellow! Be off, or I'll knock some of your
teeth down your throat."
And the poor Leather-bell scuttled off.
"And now bring Mekipiros hither!"
They dragged the poor half-idiotic creature into the room. His thick,
bristly hair hung right over his eyes. He was grinning and evidently in
a good humour. But he could speak no longer, of course, since he had
lost his tongue; whatever they said to him he could only reply:
"Hamamama!"
This with him was the expression of happiness and contentment, both
question and answer.
"Mekipiros! come hither and drink," cried Ivan, holding to his mouth a
straw-covered pitcher full of spirit, which he to whom it was offered
did not remove from his lips till it was quite empty. Then he returned
it to Ivan with a joyful "Hamamama!"
"Look now, blockhead! You can climb up a rope anywhere, can't you?"
"Hamamamama!"
"All right, I'm not deaf! You can scale the roof of a house by means of
a rope then?"
The hideous monster rubbed his hands with joy at the proposal.
"And then you will drag me up after you by means of the same rope, do
you understand?"
The dwarfish abortion rushed with a howl of joy at Ivan, caught the
fellow round the knee, raised him high in the air, and leapt up and down
with him, by way of showing that he was as light as a bag of feathers,
till Ivan, by dint of shouting and pummelling, contrived to free himself
from the creature's grasp.
"The fellow has the strength of an ox," said he to Thomas Bodza,
seizing the thick-set creature by the hair, and lugging him hither and
thither, which appeared to infinitely delight the speechless monster.
Whenever he succeeded in getting hold of one of Ivan's hands he covered
it with kisses, whereupon the other, with an air of disgust, kept
rubbing them on the tails of his coat, as if he could not wipe them
sufficiently.
"He will do very well as food for their guns," whispered Ivan. "If the
people in the castle hear a noise, and guess our subterfuge, they will
shoot Mekipiros, for we will send him on in front. Why, even with a
couple of bullets in his body the fellow will be able to scramble up the
wall. He's like a toad."
Meanwhile the Leather-bell returned and announced that the dogs had
gobbled up all the meat thrown to them.
"Oh, they made no bones about it," cried he.
"Then we can go," said Ivan, thrusting a rusty military pistol into his
breast-pocket.
Dame Zudar hastened towards her matted waggon and leaped upon the
box-seat. For a moment a long, sharp knife flashed betwixt her hands,
and she peered at it closely to make sure that its edge was all right,
immediately afterwards it vanished again nobody knew whither. Then she
laid hold of her whip and lashed up the horses.
The road they followed passed by the hut of the Death-Bird. The old
witch was huddled up in her doorway, and began counting those who
passed, marking them off one by one, with her crutch: "One, two,
three--One, two, three."
She never went beyond three, therefore every third was a marked man.
When her daughter passed by with the rector and Ivan she laughed aloud.
"Ha, ha, ha! A splendid company truly! A schoolmaster, a headsman's
apprentice, and a nice young bride! Whither are you going such a dark
night? A splendidly dark night! Just the night for thieves and
murderers; just the night for those intent on rapine and burning! On you
go! On you go! Worry the great gentry, root out your landlords, and
after that fall yourselves into the hands of the headsman! The less
people there are in the world the nicer it will be."
None of the rioters durst molest her though she stood right in their
way, and spoke so that everyone could hear her. They all took care to
give her a wide berth.
Thomas Bodza distributed his people along the road, and occupied every
exit from the castle. One detachment he hid behind a haystack, with
another he seized the beehives, and with a third the distillery. The
servants who lived outside he overcame after a short resistance, and
then bound them tightly and locked them up.
Inside the castle nobody was yet aware of what was going on outside. Not
a single servant slept there. The young squire, in his terror of the
epidemic, would not suffer one of them to sleep in the castle, the only
people inside there besides himself were old Hetfalusy and the doctor.
Ivan then chose out six of the bravest of his followers, amongst them
the watchman in whose sylvan hut they had held their secret meetings,
Hamza, the sexton, and Mekipiros, whose mouth they had to gag, to
prevent him from uttering his eternal "Hamamama!"
Poor Mekipiros! A little while ago he was able to pray, now he could not
utter an intelligible word!
It was not difficult to get into the courtyard. The Leather-bell opened
the gate for them. Inside the dogs were lying near the well stiff and
stark, nothing had betrayed the venture.
And now Ivan produced a long strong rope, and tied on to it a lot of
pack-thread, at the end of which a heavy piece of lead was fastened.
Round the roof of the castle ran a metal gutter, which terminated at the
corners in old-fashioned dolphins. On to one of such dolphins Ivan threw
the pack-thread noose, and seizing hold of the re-descending lead
plummet, hoisted up the rope likewise. It was really a capital idea.
Mekipiros was to clamber up the rope, he knew the trick of it. He was to
be the _anima vilis_ by means of whom they were to find out whether the
folks in the castle were asleep or not.
When he got to the top he was to pull up Ivan after him, and then the
united strength of the pair of them would do the same by the others.
They would then creep into the castle through the attics and open the
doors, which were locked on the inside, to admit their comrades.
Nothing could have been more circumspectly conceived.
When the rope was firmly fastened to the top of the gutter Ivan hurried
up Mekipiros and shoved the free end of the rope into his hand.
The little monster did not trust himself to shout but expressed his
satisfaction in a lowly murmured "Hamamamama!"
The next moment he was clambering up the rope like a strange sort of
huge spider, climbing rapidly higher and higher with agile hands and
feet, occasionally he even helped himself along with his teeth. In a few
moments he was sitting on the back of the copper dolphin, delighted to
have found a steed in a monster similar to himself, and from thence he
shouted: "Hu, hu, hu!" like an owl.
"Will you shut up!" called Ivan, in a voice of suppressed fury. "The
beast will betray us! Haul up, can't you?"
Ivan clutched hold of the rope with both hands.
Mekipiros with vigorous tugs hoisted him upwards, hauling up the rope
with his short arms as easily as if there were no weight attached to it.
"How I wish he would let him fall," murmured Dame Zudar to herself.
Thomas Bodza had much the same sort of wish in his own heart. Each of
them had his or her particular reasons for wishing Ivan's plan to fail.
But Mekipiros did not let him drop. He hoisted him up right on to the
roof and helped him to climb up on to the metal gutter.
Ivan scarce felt his feet once more, however, when, instead of
expressing his gratitude, he expended his pent-up rage on his companion.
"You mad bullock, you, why did you roar out just now, eh?" he whispered
in the ear of Mekipiros, and he viciously tugged at the stunted
monster's bristly hair with one hand, at the same time holding his other
hand before his mouth to prevent him from screaming out.
At that same instant Mekipiros turned upon Ivan with flashing eyes,
seized him round the thighs and holding him fast embraced, hauled him
along the roof. For a second the pair of them tottered on the very edge
of the gutter, but then Ivan clutched the metal cornice and held on to
it convulsively with both hands.
"Hamama, hamama, hamama!" howled the enraged monster. Like a heavy load
of sin, he hung on to the legs of his prey, squeezing his knees together
in an iron embrace, worrying his enemy's calves with his teeth, kicking
and cuffing him, and striving to hurl him into the abyss below.
Ivan was fairly mad with terror.
"Help!" he roared, in a voice capable of arousing the Seven Sleepers,
"help! He is killing me!"
"I knew what would be the end of it!" cried Dame Zudar, gnashing her
teeth. "The poltroon is betraying us himself. Let him perish if he does
not know how to live."
"Scoundrel!" Bodza shouted to him. "What! cannot you die speechless like
a Julius Caesar? And when the common cause demands that you should keep
silence too! Fie upon you, I say!"
Ivan, in his desperation, writhed over the gulf beneath him, and
forgetting everything but the horrible death awaiting him, bellowed
hoarsely to those standing below:
"Help, for the love of Christ. Men, I say! do not let me perish! I am
falling! I am dying. Woe is me! Spread straw underneath, can't you? Hold
a carpet below me! Mercy, mercy! Let me go, Mekipiros! I beseech you,
for God's sake, let me go!"
But it was no part of Mekipiros' plan to plunge down to the ground all
by himself. For the last hour or so he had been joyfully awaiting this
sweet moment, for this he had laughed, for this he had frisked about so
uproariously. He was unable to conceal his delight. If only he could be
alone with his tormentor at that giddy height, suddenly seize him, and
hurl him down with himself from the roof, fly for a few seconds through
the air, and then lie stretched upon the earth in a smashed and broken
mass, so that it would be impossible to distinguish the one from the
other--ah! then how happy he would be!
And--better than that even--his victim had clutched hold of something in
the very act of falling, and so the delicious moment was indefinitely
prolonged! He heard how his prey roared for help, saw how he writhed
convulsively in the desperate hope of saving himself, how half out of
his mind he even begged him, Mekipiros! for life: "Mekipiros, dear good
Mekipiros, let me go, and plunge down alone!"
"Hamamama! hamamama!" gurgled the monster with a grim cruel voice, and
he kicked the wall with his feet to make Ivan let go the quicker, and
buried his scanty teeth in the fleshy legs of his victim, and worried
him like a dog.
"Mercy, mercy! Help! I can hold out no longer!" gasped Ivan, his sinews
beginning to stretch beneath the pressure of the double load. No help
was possible. Those standing below cursed him for rousing the castle
with his shouts. The narrow edge of the gutter was gradually slipping
through his nerveless fingers. And now one hand relaxed its hold, and
only by a last convulsive effort did he manage to hold on for a few
seconds by the other.
"Hamamama!" screeched the monster, and then a yell, as of the lost,
resounded from height to depth, and a huge round, black, writhing, coil
came bounding rapidly to the ground, and there, the next instant, lay a
mangled mass of flesh, in which perhaps at one time two souls had dwelt.
"And now let us see what the next can do," growled Dame Zudar, leaning
nonchalantly back in her waggon, and crossing her arms over her breast
like an impatient singer at a concert who waits for his turn in the
programme to come while his colleagues are boring the public to death
with their dismal performances.
At Ivan's first howl two lights had become visible in the two corner
chambers of the castle, and presently both of these lights were observed
hastening to the central hall only, a few moments later, to be
extinguished. Then the iron shutters were banged down with a crash, only
one square piece in the middle still remained raised.
The besieged were on their guard.
Now, Numa Pompilius, you have a fine field before you for the race of
glory. Advance! put your ladders to the walls, hurl your beams against
the foe, sling your stones against the roof, begin the struggle, and
inspire the combatants with martial fury! Let shouts and yells and
curses supply the place of thundering artillery! The enemy is aroused
and expectant!
"Forward, ye heroes! The hour of the red dawn of our day of triumph is
at hand. Victory to the valiant!"
The excited mob heard not a word of this classical appeal, its ears were
too full of its own howlings, as it pressed into the courtyard.
Then from that window square, which had remained uncovered by the
shutter, a shot resounded, at whose sharp report the hideous hubbub
suddenly grew dumb, and during the lull a strong manly voice addressed
the rioters:
"That was only a blank shot. If you do not instantly leave the courtyard
we will fire among you with bullets."
"Let us depart hence, my noble patriots, let us depart!" stammered the
Leather-bell. "It is Squire Szephalmi who commands it. It is not well to
play games with him. He has a lot of six-barrelled firearms inside with
three bullets in each barrel. A mischief may befall some of us else. We
have wives and children at home. Let us go home, my dear fellow
patriots. Early to-morrow morning we will send a deputation."
The greater part of the mob shared this good opinion, and began to show
their respect for firearms by clearing out of the courtyard.
But Numa Pompilius, full of the fury of despair, barred the way against
his retreating host.
"Miserable, cowardly deserters! What! a single blank shot is sufficient
to turn you back! Holus-bolus, 'sicut examen apum,' ye decamp at the
word of a single foe! Fie, fie upon you, ye dregs, ye sweepings of
humanity!"
The bellicose commander spat in his disgust at the fugitives again and
again, and overwhelmed them with all sorts of choice epithets. Finally
he snatched up an axe, and declared that if nobody else stirred he would
go and batter down the door of the castle single-handed.
But the Leather-bell threw his arms round the body of the enthusiastic
hero lest he should hazard his life in so perilous an enterprise. Nay,
he would not even let him enter the courtyard, but went so far as to
seize the axe he held in his hand regardless of the kicks and cuffs he
received during the struggle.
Dame Zudar laughed scornfully at this tragicomical scene.
"Why don't some other of you fellows hold him back too?" she cried. "He
likes nothing better than not to be let go. Don't you see what a
business he makes of it to rid himself of that feeble old man, whom he
could throw to the ground with half a hand if he had a mind to. Get out
of my way, will you? Men are out of place in a joke of this sort. My
mother was a witch and I'm one also. Do you know that I can open every
door before you with a single word. All you have got to do is to sharpen
your knives."
And with that she opened the wicker covering of her waggon, which
hitherto had been kept tightly closed, and as easily, as if she only
held a down cushion in her hand, she hauled forth little Elise.
The child's hands were tied in front of her, and her head was completely
enveloped in a thick woollen wrapper so that she could neither see nor
cry out.
Dame Zudar removed the wrapper from the little girl's head, and ordered
her to stand upright.
Then she produced a half burnt wax taper, the relic of some past
funeral, lit it, and placed it between the child's fettered fingers.
"The woman is not quite right," growled shaggy-headed Hanak. "She lights
a candle so that they may be better able to fire among us."
"Have no fear, shaggy pate. They will not fire at you. Go and huddle
behind the doorpost if you like. _I_ mean to go alone into the
courtyard, and will draw the snake out of its hole with my bare hand."
The besiegers did not need much persuasion to hide themselves. When Dame
Zudar passed through the gate with the child, everyone, not excepting
Thomas Bodza, hastened to make himself scarce.
The child she sent on in front with the lighted taper sticking between
its fettered fingers. She followed close behind. She had no fear of
bullets now.
When they came in front of the open square in the shutter, she made the
child stop, and bade it kneel down.
Then with a loud resounding voice she shouted up at the windows:
"Old Hetfalusy, are you there? Young Szephalmi, are you there?"
There was no answer.
"It is of no use denying yourselves. I am here to carry on my process
against you. It is the old, old suit in which my father lost his life
and my mother her reason. I have also brought along with me a tribunal
which cannot be corrupted. _I_ am now the stronger party."
"Take yourself off!" a hoarse, broken voice suddenly cried from the
window; it very much resembled old Hetfalusy's.
"Oh, I'm to take myself off, eh!" cried the virago defiantly. "Am I not
standing then on my own ground? Is not this corner of the house whose
windows I am now rattling, built on the plot of ground belonging to my
forefathers? Is not this ground my own? Are not these very stones, these
very blades of grass on which I now trample, mine, mine, mine?"
"It may very easily be yours for ever, you wretched creature," said
another voice, the voice of the younger squire. "If you do not go away,
you shall die on the very spot."
The barrel of a gun flashed between the shutters, and the headsman's
wife could see that it was pointed straight at her heart.
Quickly she pulled the little girl towards her.
"Aim away, Szephalmi!" she cried. "I have even taken the trouble to
bring a light that you may see to aim straight."
And with that she snatched the candle from between the child's fingers,
and held it so that it lit up her face.
"Look now! A pretty child, ain't she? Those blue eyes, those soft lips
resemble someone you loved very much at one time, don't they? It would
be a shame, wouldn't it, to make this tender, slender shape a target for
bullets, wouldn't it?"
The barrel of the gun sank slowly down.
"How do you suppose now, Szephalmi," continued the virago, her face
radiant with infernal malice, "how do you suppose now that the
headsman's wife managed to get hold of this gentle cherub, who is as
much like her as an angel is to a devil?"
"Woman!" hissed someone from within, though whether it was the old man
or the young it was impossible to say.
Dame Zudar drew nearer, she now went right up to the window.
"You would like me to speak in a lower key, no doubt? Well, I may do
that. You see how close I am standing to you, you could touch my body
with the barrel of your musket. But you _won't_ touch me, I know, for
now it is I who am the destroyer."
And with that she laid her large, broad, muscular palm on the little
girl's tender shoulder.
"This child is now eight years old. When she was born her father cursed
her, her mother kicked her out, and her nurse confided her to a she-wolf
that she might either kill it or bring it up along with her own
whelps--which is much about the same thing. It is the foolish old story,
the old grey wolf carried off the brat and brought it up; the old
headsman nourished the innocent little girl, and defended her against
all the wild beasts of the forest. Do I make the fable quite clear to
you?"
A stifled moan was the sole reply.
"And then Heaven's lightning descended upon your house, misfortune was a
constant visitor upon you, you soon had a pair of corpses under your
roof, and there was no end to your affliction. Now I should say that
that looked very much like a curse upon you.
"Yes, a curse pursued your family. When you had securely fastened the
door behind you, you used to weep and wail like any beggar; yes, and no
beggar at your door would have thanked you for the chance of exchanging
his lot with yours."
To this there was no reply from behind the window.
The defiant features of the virago were illuminated by the candle which
the child now held again in her hand. She seemed to cast a dark shadow
upon the very night around her--the darkest of dark shadows.
And now she went right up to the window so that she could actually
whisper through it.
"Come, throw down your weapons, ye great and haughty gentlemen, for they
are no longer a defence to you. Something very evil is going to happen
to-night, for I have not come to you for nothing, I can tell you."
And with that she drew from beneath the kerchief covering her breast the
knife sharpened to a keen point, whose edge she had tested so carefully
a short time before.
"Do you see my key?" cried she. "This is the key to your hearts, this is
the key to the doors of your palaces. This knife will pare down your
pride and humble you to the dust beneath my feet. You could shoot me
dead as I stand here I know, though that would be no very great
master-stroke. But the same instant in which I fell, my mother, the old
witch, would stand behind my back and would shout to the infuriated mob
with all the force of her lungs, and tell them whose this child is, and
then do you know in whose heart this knife would be plunged first of
all?"
A sort of painful wail came from below the dark window, like the sounds
that are heard in a deserted, dilapidated old fortress where the whole
building is ever sighing and moaning, and none can tell whence the noise
comes.
During the virago's muttered discourse the bolder spirits among the mob
had gradually flitted back again into the courtyard. They perceived that
the headsman's wife was not afraid, and this of itself gave them
courage. Some of them even drew near to the threshold of the house,
where they pricked up their ears and did their best to catch something
of what the woman was talking about so mysteriously. It might be worth
their while to hear.
Dame Zudar began sharpening the knife against the stone ledge of the
castle window.
"I give you three minutes to think it over," she now exclaimed aloud.
"If you then say: let there be bloodshed! bloodshed there shall be."
And with that she turned back to the child.
There she stood in front of the castle threshold, with the heavenly
resignation of a martyr on her pale, innocent face. She appeared to be
quite undisturbed by the dreadful scene before her. The thought that she
was now about to die absorbed all her faculties.
"Kneel down!" cried the virago coldly.
The child took her at her word, and knelt down on the lowest of the
flight of steps.
"Pray, if you have a mind that way."
The child devoutly raised her eyes to Heaven, and holding the lighted
candle in front of her in her tiny hands, began to sing this verse of a
hymn:
"The Lord my God, I praise and bless,
For He hath heard my soul's distress,
And hath inclined His ear to me
Who love Him through eternity."
To many it seemed, while the child's quavering voice was intoning the
sad melody, as if, either from the midst of the crowd, or from some
corner close at hand, a man's voice was accompanying the tone in a
subdued voice, dwelling upon the final notes, as they do in church.
Who could it be?
None could say whence the accompanying voice proceeded.
A cold shudder ran down Dame Zudar's back. It was the voice of the
headsman!
But what a mad idea! Men no longer come forth unhurt from the midst of
the fire, as did the three holy children in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.
So she strengthened her heart, marched up to the door, and began
thundering upon it with her fists.
"The three minutes for consideration is now up. My old enemy and my
young enemy, you must now open the door and come forth."
The crowd waited in hushed suspense for what would come next.
Why did not the people inside fire beneath the sure protection of their
stronghold? What spell had this woman cast over them? Had she really the
power, then, to break through bolts and bars with a mere word, a mere
look?
"One, two, three!"
Still not a sound.
Then the virago, with a haughty look, turned towards the people, and
addressed them with a penetrating voice:
"If they won't speak I will. Friends and comrades, these bigwigs here
have sworn our ruin. They want to root out the whole lot of us, why,
then, should we have mercy on them? Now, however, it is not we who are
in their power, but they who are in ours. Their own sins have delivered
them into my hands. You know, and the whole world knows, that that
stuck-up gentleman yonder, Szephalmi, Esq., once upon a time exposed his
firstborn child. He cast it forth in the wilderness, cast it forth among
the wild beasts, because he feared the shame of it forsooth!--ha, ha,
ha! Has a poor man ever done the like of that? Aye, and it was a poor
man who found the child, it was a poor man who had compassion on the
little outcast thrown in his way, it was a poor man who brought it up as
if it were his own child. And now, if you please, these high and noble
gentlemen cast poison into the wells of the poor man that they may
destroy him, root and branch."
The mob listened to these murderous words with ever increasing
eagerness.
At the same time it did not escape Dame Zudar's attention that a key had
been put into the iron door of the castle from the inside, and that it
was being turned softly.
So now she fell a-shouting more noisily than ever.
"Before you kneels the foster-daughter of the headsman's wife. Who was
that child's mother? who gave her to the headsman's wife? Her mother, I
tell you, was a great lady, none other than Benjamin Hetfalusy's
daughter, whom the wrath of God smote down together with that little
murderer, her infant son. I nourished and brought up that child, and
what thanks did I get for it? Only this: that these bigwigs have
determined to kill us all by poisoning our meat and drink, that they may
thereby bury their shameful secret. But I declare their design aloud, so
that every man may know it. This girl is Hetfalusy's grand-daughter.
This girl is in our power, and if these fine gentlemen so much as
crumple a single hair of any of your heads, I will plunge this knife
into the child's heart."
A confused, savage murmur ran through the mob at these grim words, which
seemed to intoxicate the hearts of all who heard them with a fiendish
cruelty.
And Dame Zudar, listening attentively, heard the key turn in the door a
second time.
She was well prepared for what would follow.
She now stepped behind the child, wound its beautiful blonde tresses
round her left hand, and with her right grasped the handle of the knife
convulsively.
"Oh, God, my God!" cried Elise's bell-like voice.
At that same instant the iron door opened wide, and between its receding
wings stood a spectre--a spectre was the only name for it, as it had no
resemblance to anything human.
A pale face, like the face of one arisen from the tomb, white
dishevelled hair clinging round his temples and hanging over his
bloodshot eyes. He had wrapped a long mantle over his white night-dress
which fluttered about him like the wings of a bat.
It was old Hetfalusy.
In each hand he held a loaded pistol, and as the opening door groaned on
its hinges he cried in a hoarse voice:
"Here I am, but whoever dares to lay a hand upon the girl, him will I
shoot first and the girl afterwards."
But it was a threat which excited little terror, his hands trembled so
and his eyes were scarce able to see what was before them.
Nobody followed him. He passed through the door alone.
The Leather-bell, however, was so terrified lest he should carry out his
threat that he threw himself at the old man's feet, and embracing his
knees, piteously besought him:
"Master, master, oh, my dear master! don't fire, for God's sake! Lay
down your pistols. I assure you that nobody here will hurt you."
"Will ye swear, then, that you will do the child no harm?" gasped old
Hetfalusy.
"Put down your weapons!" cried the rioters.
"Swear that you will not harm her in any way, and then I will put them
down."
"Very well, we swear!" cried some in the rear of the crowd.
"Let that woman swear too," said Hetfalusy, pointing at Dame Zudar with
a shaking hand. None of them did he hold in such horror as her.
The virago smiled and twiddled the knife between her fingers. Craftily
lowering her eyes, and casting a side-long glance at the old man, she
replied:
"And by whom, then, am I to swear?"
"By the name of God, the living God."
"But what shall I swear?"
"Swear that neither you yourself, nor any of your companions, will do
this child any harm, whosoever child she is, and whether what you allege
concerning her be true or not."
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing."
"Would you not save your own grey hairs from being crumpled then?"
"May the Almighty dispose of me as it seemeth Him good."
"Then I will take the oath," cried the virago, and, raising her muscular
right arm heavenwards, she cried:
"No harm shall come to the child, so help me, God!"
Then Hetfalusy calmly surrendered his pistols to the Leather-bell, who
politely kissed his hand for so doing, and straightway fired the pistols
off in the air, so that they might do no harm to anyone.
The same instant the blaspheming mob fell upon the defenceless squire,
tore at his grey locks and impotent limbs, and hurled him to the ground.
"Smash him, kill him, the poison-mixer!" resounded from every side, and
the bloodthirsty cowards rushed furiously from their hiding-places with
cudgels and flails, to the spot where the defenceless old squire was
lying.
The worthy Leather-bell had not another word to say, but he cast himself
at full length upon the prostrate gentleman, and, tightly embracing his
frail figure, defended him with his own body from the first onset of the
raging mob.
In vain they pummelled, in vain they kicked him, his self-sacrificing
back endured everything, and patiently received the beating intended for
his master.
The poor fellow, after all, would really have been a very good man if
only he had not been so very simple.
"Clear out, will you!" cried Dame Zudar and Thomas Bodza simultaneously,
"we must not kill him. We want to get something out of him, so he must
live. Let no one hurt him, then, till he has received his sentence."
At last the two ringleaders succeeded in clearing away the furious mob
from the mauled and trampled body of the squire. Then they raised him
from the ground, tied his hands together, and fastened him tightly by
one lean arm to the trellised gate of the castle. Blood oozed from the
old man's limbs beneath the pressure of the rough cord, yet, with not so
much as a groan did Benjamin Hetfalusy betray the torture he was
suffering.
* * * * *
And thou, oh, man, in thy fiery pit, art thou still singing thy hymns
below there, art thou still testing the edge of thy sword with the tips
of thy fingers, just as if it were the string of some sad and delicate
musical instrument, which can give forth but one voice, and that the
voice of a sad, sad song?
The heat of the collapsed dwelling was now penetrating to the cellar
below, and the straitened prisoner began to bethink him of some other
place of refuge.
Instead of the fierce crackle of the flames which had met his ear
hitherto, he now could only hear a monotonous flickering as of expiring
embers, and this lasted for a long time, when suddenly a fresh noise
attracted his attention.
Not far from his hiding-place something began to sound like the voice of
a wind-clapper. At first it went clap! clap! clap! very rapidly, but
gradually the strokes grew slower and slower, tapering down at last to
single beats at long intervals.
Whoever has attentively watched the doors of a metal furnace, will know
at once how that sound arises. When the heat of the fire which has
expanded the metal begins to decrease, the expanded fibres of the metal
suddenly begin to contract and give forth a snapping sound as of metal
strings violently torn asunder.
The iron door of the cellar was, in fact, loudly calling the attention
of the master of the house to the fact that the fire had reduced all the
brushwood piled round the house into red-hot embers, and it was
therefore high time for him to seek another asylum.
Peter Zudar seized a large measure of beer, approached the door, and
flung the malt liquid all over it.
Ha! how loudly the glowing metal hissed and spluttered at the contact of
the cold fluid, as if laughing with joy at the artful scheme which it
and the master together had devised for the latter's deliverance.
The iron door was far too burning hot to be opened with the naked hand,
but the blood-red glare visible behind it made it pretty certain that
the lead-soldering had long ago melted away, and it therefore only
needed a vigorous kick to wrench it off its hinges.
Peter Zudar listened attentively. Not a soul was stirring. There was
indeed no reason why anyone should linger any longer in that wretched
place.
Impatience spurred him on to action. He began to lift the door from its
hinges with the help of a heavy crowbar. It gave way sooner than he had
anticipated, and fell at full length on the smoking embers in front of
it, bridging over the fiery stream from one bank to the other.
With a single bound Peter Zudar leaped over the door, and sped away from
the burning house like a madman.
It was dark, nobody saw him. In his way stood huge thistles,
prickly-headed vegetable monsters, and Peter Zudar mowed them all down
with his headsman's sword just as if they had been so many condemned
malefactors, or as if he were a frolicsome lad waging fierce war with a
wooden sword against the whole evil host of weeds. Anybody who had seen
him would have taken him for a lunatic.
He only came to himself when the barking of a dog struck upon his ear;
he knew then that he was on the borders of the village, and close to the
nearest houses.
Then he began slowly to compose himself, the cool night air was soothing
his troubled brain. He now commenced to recollect what had happened to
him during the last few hours. The riot, the seizure of the child, the
house burnt over his head, the agony he had endured in the cellar--all
these things flashed like vivid pictures before his mind again.
But what had become of the child? What did they want to do with her? To
kill her perhaps?--these were his first thoughts. Then he began to
consider how he might discover her whereabouts and rescue her. Vengeance
was the last thing he thought of.
He had no suspicion as to whom the raging mob had risen against. He
fancied that the child was the pivot of the whole ghastly affair. He was
persuaded all along that they had sought her death, and would murder
her, and the idea of such a thing was all the more terrible to him
because he did not know the reason why. So much, however, he did know,
that his own wife was the person most to be feared.
He was fully sensible that there was no time to lodge a complaint with
the magistrate, the priest, or the local court, and await a heavy
sentence. This was a peculiar case in which the headsman himself must
investigate, condemn, and execute the sentence--and was not the sword of
Justice already in his hands?
And as he stood there, leaning against a fence, in a brown study, it
seemed to him as if he heard from the midst of the village the very hymn
which he had sung so often with his darling before their evening repose:
"The Lord, my God, I praise and bless."
He listened attentively. It was no delusion. They were really the words
of the hymn, the child's voice was really singing them.
At first he fancied that his darling was in some other world, and was
speaking to him from the Kingdom of Heaven, and he lifted up his voice
likewise, and sang back again, his deep sonorous voice sounding like a
magnified echo of the bell-like childish voice.
Subsequently, however, it occurred to him that perhaps the child was
locked up somewhere, and wanted to let him know where she was by singing
the hymn.
Suddenly there arose a hideous shout from the courtyard of the castle,
the inarticulate roar of hundreds and hundreds of savage men, whose very
throats seemed to thirst for blood.
At that same instant Hetfalusy had surrendered his arms to his
assailants.
Peter Zudar lost not another instant in reflection, but turned up his
shirt-sleeves, smoothed away his hair from his eyes, and rushed towards
the castle.
A long lane separated him from the residential part of the mansion, but
not choosing to follow it along its whole length, he waited till he saw
the pinnacles of the castle, and then took a short cut over hedge and
ditch, dashing along straight before him heedless of everything.
* * * * *
The infuriated mob which, after being cowed by the mere show of
resistance, became all the more brutal at the first symptom of
surrender, after Hetfalusy had laid down his arms, was able to glut its
brutal rage, at will, on the old gentleman who had thus become its
victim.
But it was lost labour.
What satisfaction can there be in the torturing of a withered stump
which is dumb to all outrage?--it is as fruitless a business as flogging
a corpse!
The old squire did not demean himself by a single outcry of pain.
When they wanted him to confess that the gentry had banded together to
extirpate the peasantry, he coldly replied:
"That is not true."
Every denial on his part was followed by inhuman tortures. But they were
but tormenting a frigid skeleton insensible to pain, who only replied,
again and again:
"That is not true!"
The invading mob, after breaking everything in the castle it could lay
its hands upon, began searching for young Szephalmi and the doctor.
They must have hidden well, for nowhere could they be found. The mob
turned all the rooms upside down, and yet it could not find them.
The old man must certainly know where they were stowed away.
But Hetfalusy would not betray his son-in-law or the doctor.
Amongst his executioners shaggy Hanak particularly distinguished himself
by his fiendish ingenuity, but the squire only remarked to him in a
gentle voice:
"Do you recollect, Hanak, how last year, you were bedridden, and I
supported your whole family? And when your biggest lad was taken by the
recruiting sergeant, did I not buy him out? And when the hail destroyed
your crops, did I not give you the corn on which you and your whole
family lived comfortably during the winter?"
But at this mild reproach, stubbly Hanak only wiped his bloody mouth,
and bellowed with bestial pride:
"There's no Hanak here! I'm Hanak no longer. I'm a rebel patriot, that's
what I am!"
The poor Leather-bell was quite unable to help his master. He could only
implore the rioters to torture him if they liked rather than Hetfalusy.
He knew he was the cause of it all because he had talked about the
poison. He wished now that he had eaten of the poison and died.
Dame Zudar, meanwhile, had been regarding the sufferings of her mortal
foe with devilish enjoyment.
There she stood, her arms folded across her breast, facing her enemy,
whose warm blood frequently spurted over her face.
"'Tis no good hurting him that way," she murmured to herself. "A boor
howls if you nip him, this sort only holds his tongue just as if he had
a soul different from the others...."
"This was the very spot where you made my father bleed," she cried. "Do
you recollect Dudoky, eh? There he lay, where you lie now, and you stood
beside him, as I now stand beside you, and revelled in it. But my father
wept and howled beneath his torments while you only keep silent. I
could not bear to look on, I ran away and hid myself in my room, but
there also I kept on hearing his shrieks. I heard them through two thick
walls. Twenty years have passed since then, and through those twenty
years I still hear him. I want to hear you weep too, and not mock your
executioners by putting on a stone-cold face like that. Yes, you shall
weep, you shall entreat. I will not be happy till I see your eyes full
of tears."
Hetfalusy regarded the fury contemptuously, and knitted his lips.
And then he called her a name, a low, degrading name, the worst of all
names that a man can call a woman.
With a hiss of rage the virago rushed upon him with the frantic idea of
plunging her knife in his heart.
But nay, not so.
Her face was white with fury, her whole frame trembled.
"I became that all through you!" she gasped with husky rage. "But you
will not mock me for it much longer. Do you see your grandchild here in
my power?"
"You swore you would not hurt her."
"I swore I would not kill her, but I will make her what I was. By Heaven
and Earth and all the torments of Hell, I swear I will do it."
"Woman!" stammered Hetfalusy, and his face lost at last its expression
of stony endurance.
"Ha-ha!" cried the virago, with a laugh like the howl of a wild beast.
"The last scion of the house of Hetfalusy will do credit to a house of
ill-fame. Look how lovely she is! Look at her face, her figure, her
eyes! As innocent as an angel too! Ah! you are weeping now, are you? But
you will have to weep tears of blood, you accursed old wretch, for what
I say I mean to do!"
"Woman, if you believe in God----" began the old man, writhing to free
himself from his bonds.
"I don't!" the woman yelled back defiantly. "There is no God!"
At that same instant her head leaped so suddenly into the air that her
body remained standing upright, three long jets of blood at the same
time shooting up from between her vacant shoulders. Her two hands still
fumbled about in the air as if they would have drawn back the uttered
blasphemy and defended her against this terrible judgment, and then the
whole figure collapsed in the direction of the fallen head, which lay
with its face turned heavenwards, and its mouth gaping open, as if
longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy
or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power
of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids
over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in
the dream of death.
And above the condemned sinner towered the form of the avenger of
sin--the headsman.