THE MIKALAI CSÁRDA
From Hidvár to Gyula Fehervár is a good day's journey, even with the
best horses and in the best weather; in the rainy season the mountain
streams make the journey still longer. Fortunately, exactly half-way
lies the Mikalai _csárdá_, in which dwells a good honest Wallachian
gentleman who also follows the profession of innkeeper. In these mining
regions there are no Jews, all the inns and _csárdás_ are in the hands
of the Armenians and Wallachs: the people are content with them and the
Hungarian gentry like them.
Young Makkabesku had built up his den in a most picturesque situation
beside a stream gushing down from among the mountains and forming a
waterfall close to the very house. This stream possessed the peculiar
property of turning to stone every leaf and twig which fell into it,
even the branches of the trees hanging over it were turned into pretty
white petrifactions so far as the water was able to reach them.
Domnul Makkabesku did not carry on the business of inn-keeper for the
sake of gain (he would not have been able to make a living out of it if
he had tried), but from sheer goodheartedness and good-fellowship. His
charges therefore were extremely moderate. A traveller on foot who asked
for a night's lodging, had to pay twopence, a traveller on horseback a
shilling; if he required wine and brandy for supper as well, still he
was only charged a shilling. Who would go to the trouble of totting up
extra figures for trifles of that sort? A carriage and four was not
taxed at all, those who came in it paid what they chose. If anybody did
not ask what he had to pay but simply shook hands and went on his way,
mine host simply wished him a happy journey and never said a word about
his account.
For Makkabesku was a proud man in his way and thought a great deal of
his gentility. He expected to be addressed as "Domnule!"[32] and was
delighted when his guests took notice of his coat of arms hanging up in
the guest chamber,--to-wit, a black bear with three darts in its
heel--and enquired as to its meaning; when he would explain that that
black bear with the three darts which was also painted on a sheet of
lead and swung backwards and forwards in front of the house between two
iron rods was not a sign-board, but his family crest.
[Footnote 32: Sir.]
Late one afternoon Baron Leonard Hátszegi might have been seen on foot
crossing the bridge which led to the Mikalai _csárdá_, and entering its
courtyard. He came on foot with a small box under his arm and his
double-barrelled gun across his shoulder. Makkabesku greeted him from
the verandah while he was still a long way off.
"God be with your lordship! Is anything amiss that your lordship comes
on foot?"
"Yes, at that cursed _tyira lupului_[33] the axle of my coach gave way.
I have always said that that bad bit of road ought to be seen to, this
is at least the sixth time that this accident has befallen me."
[Footnote 33: Wolf-corner.]
"God is the cause thereof, your lordship. Whenever the stream overflows
it damages the road."
"That is no consolation for me. My fellows are struggling with the coach
yonder and cannot set it upright again, so badly damaged it is. It is a
good job I was driving my own horses, for otherwise my neck might have
been broken. As it is one of my heydukes has sprained his hand. Send
help to them at once, or they are likely to remain there all night.
Where's your little girl?"
"Ah, my lord! your lordship will always be having your little
joke.--Flora, come hither!"
A pretty little maid came out of the inn at these words, and smiled upon
the nobleman with a face toasted red by the kitchen fire.
"Take his lordship's gun and little box and carry them into the
guest-room!"
"Well, my little girl! how are you? not married yet, eh?" said the
baron, pinching her round red cheeks whilst the wench took his box.
"Heh, but 'tis heavy!" she gasped, as if she were quite frightened at
the weight of the box. "Won't the gun go off?"
"Don't turn your fiery eyes upon it, or else it might--eh, grandpapa,
what do you say?"
"Come, Flora, go in, go in! His lordship is always in such capital
spirits. Even when his carriage comes to grief he will have his joke all
the same."
The point of the joke was that Makkabesku was a man not much beyond
forty though there were flecks of grey on the back of his head here and
there. The girl, on the other hand, was scarcely sixteen when the
Roumanian gentleman took her to wife. Leonard therefore always made a
point of aggravating the innkeeper by pretending to believe that his
wife was his daughter and by regularly asking him, as if he were her
grandfather, when he intended to get his granddaughter married.
"You need not send help to my carriage, after all," said Hátszegi, after
due reflection; "for, by and by I'll see to that myself. I am going back
that way. But I should like you to place that little box in some safe
place for the time being. It contains 4,000 ducats and that is no
trifle."
"Huh! my lord!" cried the innkeeper clapping the back of his head with
both hands, as if he feared it was already about to fall off backwards.
"Your lordship dares to carry so much gold about with you and stroll so
carelessly about in these parts!"
"Carelessly!--what do you mean? I cannot wheel them in front of me on a
barrow can I? I want to pay them into my account at Fehervár the day
after to-morrow; I have payments to make. That is why I carry them about
with me."
"I only meant to say that it is dangerous to go about alone with so much
money."
"I am not in the habit of going about with an escort."
"The more's the pity, Domnule. These parts are panic-stricken, since
Anicza betrayed the coiners in the Lucsia Cavern, we have been saddled
with a whole heap of calamities. A lot of poor fools and a heap of
treasure were captured, but the head of the band, Fatia Negra, was
suffered to escape. And now, furious at his loss of treasure, he
blackmails the whole region. Nobody is safe here now,--only the day
before yesterday he stopped and robbed the royal mails on the King's
highroad."
"Ho, ho! If he takes to those games, he'll soon get his teeth broken. He
won't venture to touch me though, I'll be bound."
"I don't know about that Domnule. He wears a mask and therefore has no
need to blush or blanch at anything."
"Does he ever look in here, or has he ever lodged with you?"
"No, my lord, I can safely say that he has never been here, to my great
astonishment I must confess. For a great many gentlemen call here and
many paths lead hitherward."
"Don't you keep arms in your house?"
"Why should I? I have not enough money to make it worth Fatia Negra's
while to rob me. Besides, it is a great mistake to resist him. Juon Tare
actually had him in his hands, yet what was the result? He goes about
now a blind beggar. Anicza betrayed him and brought down the soldiers
upon him, yet what did _she_ get by it? _He_ vanished under the earth,
but she reduced her old father to poverty and is now sitting with all
her acquaintances in the dungeons of Gyula Fehervár!"
"Fear nothing! At any rate no ill can befall you while I go to my
coachman and come back again. Lock this casket in your wall-cupboard in
the meantime, and keep the key yourself."
"Nay, let your lordship keep it rather. I don't want it to be said that
I knew anything about it."
So Makkabesku locked up the casket in the huge wall-closet which greatly
resembled a large standing clock case and in which were his diploma of
nobility and all his domestic treasures. The key of the locked closet he
returned to his guest. Then by way of extra precaution, he locked the
room as well and forced that key also upon the Baron.
"Domnule," he added, when he saw that Hátszegi was determined to return
to his wrecked coach. "I can only say that I should be very glad if
your lordship would not go. The servants will be quite able to bring the
carriage along."
"That they cannot: the whole lot of them are mere boors who have never
seen a carriage with an iron axle."
"Let me go then, and your lordship remain here."
"I suppose you want me, then, to show your daughter how to cook?"
The innkeeper's eyebrows contracted at these words; his desire to go
visibly subsided.
"But suppose I am afraid of being left alone in the house with so much
money?"
"Come, come, wretched man!" cried Hátszegi at last losing all patience,
"you don't suppose that your blockhead of a bandit is lying in wait for
me, do you? Look you now! I'll leave you my gun. Take it in your hand
and plant yourself there before the door. Bring out a chair, if you
like, and sit down on it. Pull down the hammers of both barrels and hold
your thumb on them and your index finger on the trigger. The left barrel
is filled with ten buckshot and you can be quite sure that whoever
approaches you from the lower end of this passage will inevitably get
five in his body,--and five of them is enough for anybody. The second
barrel, the right one I mean, is loaded with a bullet which we generally
keep in reserve for a wild beast, at the last moment, at six paces; at
that distance any child could kill a giant. Don't be afraid, if he wore
a coat of mail, it would go through it, for that bullet has a steel
point and would perforate a leaden door. Come, you are not afraid now,
surely?"
Makkabesku certainly felt a great stream of courage flow into his heart
at the knowledge that he held in his hand a weapon which could kill the
most terrible of men twice over.
"But what about your lordship?" he enquired.
"Oh, I've got two revolvers in my pocket."
And with that, gaily whistling, Hátszegi strode down the long passage
and peeped into the kitchen, on his way out, to exchange a word or two
with the fair young cook.
"Look ye, my daughter, have supper ready by my return, and take care not
to over-salt the soup!" and then with the nonchalance becoming his
station he sauntered across the bridge again into the highroad, followed
all the way by the eyes of Makkabesku.--"What a gallant fellow it is!"
reflected the Roumanian.
The innkeeper did not count courage among his virtues. He was a
peace-loving soul who detested the very idea of a brawl. Even when he
sat down to drink, it was always inside a room with a locked door, for
on one occasion, when he had got drunk in public, the wine had instilled
within him such unwonted audacity that he had got his skull broken in
two places in consequence. After that he avoided all such occasions of
heroism.
For such folks who have nothing to do with firearms as a rule, there is
a peculiar charm in suddenly holding a loaded weapon in their hands.
Valour and a sudden access of pugnacity combine to put them in a
condition of perpetual fever. A strange longing arises within them to
make use of their weapon. Once or twice Makkabesku raised his gun to his
cheek and made a target of a fly on the wall. At the end of the
vestibule facing him was an old Roman image, the head and bust of an
Emperor, which had been unearthed in the neighbourhood of the house when
the foundations had been laid, and had been adopted forthwith as a
family relic. If this old imperial figurehead had been an enemy, let us
say the famous robber of the district, our marksman felt that he could
easily have shattered his skull for him.
The sun was now slowly descending from the sky, and the lower it sank,
the less golden and the more purple grew the light which it threw upon
the ancient monument opposite, till the shadow of an adjacent column
fell softly across it and hid it half from view.
Suddenly it seemed to Makkabesku as if he saw the shadow of a human head
moving beside the shadow of the column.
The breath died away on his lips--someone was lurking there!
"Who is there?" he cried, in a voice half choked with terror. The same
instant there stood before him at the opposite end of the
corridor--Fatia Negra!
Yes, there the figure was just as it had been described to him,
enfolded in a black atlas mantle, with a black mask across its face.
"Stay where you are, don't come here!" cried the armed Makkabesku, in an
agony of terror, "or I'll shoot you through," and as the mask continued
to advance, he hurriedly fired off the left barrel of the gun.
The smoke of the powder cleared away, Fatia Negra stood there unwounded,
he was coming nearer and nearer!
Ah, those little shots could not hurt him, of course--but now he shall
have the bullet with the steel point.
As the first shot was fired, Makkabesku's wife came running out of the
kitchen and came face to face with the robber. He immediately seized her
arm with his muscular hand and flung her back into the kitchen the door
of which he locked upon her.
Mr. Makkabesku permitted all this to go on before his very eyes, but he
had raised the gun and held it firmly pressed against his cheek, he
wanted the robber to draw nearer still that he might make quite sure of
him.
When there were only three yards between them he aimed right at the
middle of the intruder, pressed the trigger of the gun and the right
barrel also exploded.
Yet the report was followed by no death cry--and Fatia Negra still stood
in front of him unscathed.
Paralyzed with terror Makkabesku continued to hold the discharged gun
in front of him as if he expected it to go off again of its own accord;
but Fatia Negra, catching hold of the end of the gun with one hand,
wrenched it out of the innkeeper's grasp and brought down the butt of it
so violently on the top of his head that he collapsed in a senseless
condition.
After that nobody knew what happened.
When Hátszegi and his servants arrived with the patched-up carriage,
Makkabesku was still lying on the ground unconscious, his wife was
thundering at the locked door, the door of the guest chamber was smashed
and the cupboard in the wall had been broken into and pillaged.
Curiously enough, while not one of the innkeeper's relics was missing,
Hátszegi's box with the 4,000 ducats had disappeared. A little later it
was found in the bed of the stream--empty of course.
Makkabesku was a very long time coming to, but he contrived at last, in
a very tremulous voice, to tell Hátszegi the somnambulistic case of the
double shots, nay he called Heaven to witness that Fatia Negra had
caught the bullets in his hands as if they were flies.
"You're a fool," cried Hátszegi angrily. "I suppose you fired above his
head on both occasions."
"But then you ought to see the marks of the bullets on the opposite
wall."
And it was a fact that, look as they might, they found no trace of a
bullet on the walls or anywhere else.