The Day of Wrath

"He will die?"

"'Twould be good for his soul if he did die."

"What, is there then anything worse than death?"

"Yes, damnation!"

"You are raving. A child who four years ago was an angel in Heaven, a child only four years of age—damned!"

"It has sinned enough to suffice for a long life, enough to merit damnation."

"Then for such a sin there is no name among men."

"There is a name for it, terrible and accursed—the murder of a sister."

"Merciful God!—I will not hearken to you."

"Why do you ask me, then? I have told nobody. Go home, my lady, you cannot buy the mercy of God for money."

"And yet there must be something in it. He is repeatedly mentioning his sister's name. And—oh! what a look he has at such times!"

"I know it. His groaning can be heard outside in the street. If a poor man's child wailed like that they would pitch it down a well."

"Speak! How and where did it take place?"

"The children were playing outside, close to the pond, I was on the opposite side plucking healing plants. Suddenly the two children caught sight of a pretty flower on a high rock. They both hastened to the spot to pluck it. The girl was the quicker, and got there first, and when she had plucked the flower the lad began to quarrel with her, and as they struggled the little girl fell off the rock, her head struck against the hard root of a tree, and she remained motionless on the spot. All pale and frightened little Cain stood beside her, and gazed stupidly at the blood flowing from his sister's forehead. He saw that he had killed his sister, and in vain he begged and prayed her to awake again, in vain he pulled her about. Then he began to cry like one who is desperate, and ran towards the lake. I saw him gazing into the water, and he gazed into it for a long time, perhaps he thought of drowning himself. He shrank back from the face that stared at him from the surface of the water, his own distorted face. Slowly he crept back again, his face was as white as death, and his lips were blue. He gazed around him in every direction to see if anybody was looking. Then he suddenly put his arms round the lifeless body, and with a strength incredible in one so young he dragged it to a ditch which was thickly overgrown with bushes, and covered it over with leaves and branches. There was still some life in the little girl, for when the lad began stamping down the heaped-up leaves with his feet, she groaned aloud and said: 'Oh, Neddy, Neddy, don't bury me. Emma won't cry. Emma won't tell mamma!'"

"Oh! my poor little girl!"

"On hearing these words the boy took to his heels—he ran and ran till he fell down senseless in the wood. There some swine-herds found him as they were gathering beech-mast, and since then he has been plagued by a burning fever-fit."

"It is like a frightful nightmare."

"I tell you the truth, and such a thing is only what your family deserves—a murderer of his sister only four years old! Sins like yours are enough to hasten on the end of the world."

"And where, then, is the poor tiny little body of my innocent child?"

"I sought for it next day, but I could not find it. On the very day of the evil deed I durst not go there, for I was afraid they might think I killed her. Here and there among the bushes were fragments of a little pink frock. I also came across a tiny red slipper with a golden butterfly on it, and some gay ribbons which must have tied up her hair. I have often heard the wolves howl at night in that very place. They can tell perhaps where she is."

"Would that my son might die also!" cried the mother in the anguish of her despair.

"He would die even if you did not wish it. An old man might live perhaps with such a mental cancer, but it will destroy a child. Ah! there is no remedy against the worms that gnaw away at the soul."

"Will he be tormented for long?"

"If you do not wish to see his torments, stand by his bed when nobody else is by, cross yourself thrice, and repeat the words which his dying sister said to him: 'Don't bury me, Neddy! Little Emma won't cry!'—and then he will die."

"How his father will weep! It is his favourite child—he loved him better than the little girl."

"How his grandfather will weep! For he loved them both, and they were both his pets."

CHAPTER IV.

In one house, and one house only, nobody has gone to rest. Every living thing there is wakeful, from the master of the house to the watch-dog. It is the squire's house. All its windows are lit up and all its doors are locked.

In the room looking out upon the garden, the mother is alone with the sick child.

The child is delirious, he is gabbling terrible things, his features wear a different expression every instant.

And his mother understands every word of that mortal fever-born nightmare; she guesses at every thought which underlies all those varying expressions of countenance, the sight of whose horrible contortions are enough to make even the heart of a strong man break down.

How she must suffer!

He who takes poison dies a terrible death, his veins burst asunder one by one; his nerves and muscles strain and crack, his very marrow seems to be on fire. But, oh! what is all that compared to the death of a poisoned soul! A remedy may be found perhaps for bodily venom, but there is no remedy against spiritual venom. The grave may close upon the former, but never upon the latter. Both here and hereafter recollection and reprobation wait upon it.

God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the fourth generation. They graft the evil qualities of their blood upon their sons; one generation passes on its wickedness to the next; man is vitiated when he is born; he sins as soon as he is conscious of his existence and he dies accursed.

The sweat streamed from the child's temples; for the last three days he has had the mark of death upon him.

The doctors say he may live, but if he lives he will be weak-witted.

What a future for a four-year-old child! A burden to the world, a burden to himself, to live on for years after the mind is dead! To be an idiot for ever! It would be good for him if he could be made away with, surely.

Will God take him? Or is it the Divine Will that he should live on as an example of a living curse, as a witness of the Almighty's chastising arm?

Does he bear so much suffering by way of ransom for the sins of his father, his mother, and his grandfather?—or must the years of punishment be as many as the years of sin?

Who will be merciful enough to put an end to his sufferings?

His mother sits silent and watchful at the head of the bed.

No, she cannot do it!

After all she is his mother. The roots of that young flower are still but half detached from the soil of her heart. Death would be a benefit to him. Perchance it might be easier to forget him if he were under the sod. But man who does not endow with life, must not distribute death. Man must wait till the last of his allotted days has come.

And yet only a few words would bring it to pass.

The "death-bird" has whispered the magic spell, and Death will obey the summons.

Yet she lacks the courage to summon him at a time when the very foundations of the earth are trembling at the voice of Heaven's thunder!

Poor woman!

It is a marvel that she also is not mad. She cannot even weep now though her bosom heaves tumultuously—it were not good for a man to know her secret thoughts at this moment.

"They are calling me, they are calling me," stammers the child.... "Men without heads ... they are running after me ... the black dog is scratching up the ground ... the hand of the dead body is sticking out.... Poor Emma!"

The poor lady, all trembling, rose from her seat, very softly lest she should make a noise, she gets up, she cannot blow out the night lamp on the table, her breath is too feeble for that, she puts it out by casting it out of the room.

Then she approaches the window in the darkness to see whether the curtains are closely drawn, or whether anyone can look into the room from the outside. What a flashing past there was of fiery eyes amid the darkness of the night—Hah! What a blinding flash that was!—And then black darkness again.—No, nobody could see her—nobody—.

Can she make up her mind?

She goes slowly back to the bed. The lad is moaning fearfully. He is babbling dreadful words and his throat rattles painfully. "How blue...? her mouth ... how bloody ... her forehead ... poor little Emma."

The lady bends down over the bed. The ghost of a pale little face comes into sight now and then as the lightning flashes quiver past the windows.

Can she make up her mind?

"Poor little Emma," wails the lad.

This last pathetic wail was too much for her. The unhappy woman crossed herself three times and, in a dry, half-suffocated voice exclaimed: "Don't bury me, Neddy, little Emma won't cry!"

The lad uttered a cry like the scream of a wild bird when it is shot through the heart—then he drew a long deep sigh and was quite still.

"Oh!" cried the desperate mother, as if suddenly throwing off the oppressive influence of some magic trance, "help, help!" and like a mad creature she rushed towards the bell-rope which hung beside the hearth.

She seized the golden tassel, the bell rang out like a ghostly chime, when suddenly a fearful crash was heard, a thunderbolt came down the chimney, zig-zagging through the room like a fiery serpent, fusing the metal of the bell in its passage and flashing down the bell-rope to the golden tassel with a blinding glare, finally vanishing with a dull crackling sound.

The whole family rushed at once to the scene of this fearful crash.

With ghastly, frightened faces they came rushing in one by one, huddled up in sheets and counterpanes or whatever else came first to hand, like so many spectres in white mourning.

In the room lay two corpses, the mother and the child.

Bitter lamentations resounded through the house.

The father and the grandfather came hurrying along.

Howling and screaming like some wild beast never seen before, the father flung himself upon his dead, turning frantically from the mother to the child, and from the child to the mother, kissing and squeezing them constantly. And then he pressed them to his bosom and literally howled like one beyond the reach of the mercy of God.

But the grandfather groped his way along in silence, looking in his white nightdress and his dishevelled silvery locks like some spectral thing.

He could not speak. His palsied tongue could not utter a single cry for the relief of his agony. He knelt down in front of the dead bodies and raised his eyes aloft. Oh! how he strove to give expression to his grief, to utter one word, if only one, which might pierce Heaven itself. But he could not. He was dumb, his mouth moved as if it would speak, but his tongue was tied.

Oh! how much this family must have sinned, to suffer so much.

CHAPTER V.

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 Imré 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.

Imré 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 Imré, 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.

CHAPTER VI.

The schoolhouse was the vis-à-vis of Mr. Kordé's own private dwelling. It had never once been whitewashed since it was first built; but, on the other hand, it was richly adorned outside with the Christian names and the nicknames of all the urchins who had ever been inside its walls, names to which later generations of scholars had taken good care to add such distinguishing epithets as ass, swine, &c., &c. Those, moreover, who possessed a taste for art did not omit to paint on the wall, with red chalk, hussars, two-legged heads with six noses and one eye, large meerschaum pipes, &c., &c. Here and there, too, the remains of big black ink blots and red splodges, like hideous bunches of cherries, pointed to past combats in which inkpots had been hurled and fists used freely; these pictorial devices, however, were but fragmentary, as the various generations of students had from time to time dug large bits of mortar out of the walls with their nails to serve as sand for blotting their themes.

Inside the schoolroom the shapeless battered benches were also carved all over with names and emblems. The window panes had for the most part been broken to bits, and the gaps stuffed with closely written MS. torn out of old exercise books. Layers of dust met the eye everywhere, and there was a perfect network of dangling spiders' webs in all the corners.

Such, in all its beauty, was the academical emporium where Mr. Michael Kordé for thirty years had been in the habit of regularly dispensing science and slaps—with what result we shall see later on.

Worthy Mr. Kordé used regularly to return to his own honourable dwelling from the pot-house just when the night-watchmen were going home to sleep and the cocks were crowing in the morn, and at such times he would bellow forth ditties the whole way at the top of his voice to the accompaniment of the howling of all the watch-dogs in the village.

The object of this singing bout was to warn the honest tutor's better half that her lord was approaching, and give her time to open the street door for him.

On safely reaching home he would first of all knock his wife about a bit and break to pieces any odd articles which might stray into his hands, whereupon, after a little miscellaneous cursing and swearing, he would fling himself down upon the floor, light his pipe, fall asleep and snore like a wild hog.

Heaven only knows how it was that he did not burn his house over his head every day.

The following morning when the children assembled in the schoolhouse and began to kick up a most fearful din, the noble pædagogue would scramble to his feet, shake the straw out of his hair, smooth out his moustache, and gaze with a cannibalistic expression out of the attic window, not recognising for a moment exactly where he was.

After convincing himself by ocular demonstration that the schoolhouse had not taken wings unto itself and flown, but was still in the old place, he would shamble downstairs, stick a couple of canes under his arm, and go forth to teach.

His pupils meanwhile were engaged in frightful hand-to-hand combats with one another. There were scratched faces and bloody noses everywhere, and when the master entered he regularly found all the benches upset and everybody's hands tugging at his neighbour's hair.

The moment the facial portion of Mr. Michael Kordé stumbled against the door, the little rebels instantly disentangled themselves from one another and attempted to reach their proper places, whence the grand inquisitor hooked them out one by one, and thwacked the whole class in turn with his own honourable hand.

This little commotion used generally to chase slumber somewhat from his eyes, and when the lads had left off howling a bit, he would measure out to each of them a big slice of catechism, or a similar amount of Hübner's "Short questions in geography," to be repeated aloud till learnt by heart, whilst he himself adjourned to the pot-house. From this place of refuge he would send a message to the urchins later in the afternoon that they might go home.

Thereupon there was a general rush for the door (just as when a herd of swine reaches home, and every one tried to get through first) to an accompaniment of kicks, cuffs, and the tugging and tearing of clothes.

On Sundays the lads did their best to ferret out where the Lutheran children were playing ball. Then they all consulted together, and set off for the same place with stout sticks in their hands and their pockets crammed full of stones, and a battle royal forthwith would ensue between the youths of the rival creeds. When, then, Monday morning came round again Mr. Kordé conscientiously administered a dose of birch, previously soaked in salt water, to each one of his pupils who appeared in class with a swollen face or a damaged noddle.

On Sunday, moreover, he twice took them with him to church where, during the sermon, they either caught blue-bottles under the seats, or played at knucklebones, or (but this was only when they were particularly well behaved) lay down on the floor of the pews and slept like Christians.

And when they grew up and became full-blown louts, their actions still testified to the influence of the school in which they had been reared. Whoever was the most skilful farmyard pilferer in the village, whoever was the most thorough-paced loafer in the county, could infallibly be regarded as an ex-pupil of Mr. Kordé's.

Whoever was regularly chucked out of the pot-house every Sunday evening, whoever brought a broken pate home with him the oftenest, whoever spent most of his time in the village jail, would be he, you might be quite sure of it, who had picked up the rudiments of learning at the feet of Mr. Kordé.

Whoever lied and perjured himself most frequently, whoever could swallow most brandy at a gulp, whoever knocked his wife about the oftenest, whoever turned his father and mother out of doors, whoever was most slothful in business, whoever had the filthiest house, whoever was cruel to his horse, whoever sat in the stocks habitually, would be he, you might safely rely upon it, who had learnt the philosophy of life in the school of Mr. Kordé.

Thus for thirty years had he spread the blessings of science in Hétfalu and its environs.

The second instructor of the people was Thomas Bodza, a panslavist incarnate.

He had but little mind yet much learning. He was one of those men who remembered all he read without understanding it, a semi-savant and one of the most dangerous specimens of that dangerous class. Of him, I shall have occasion to speak presently.

One day Mr. Kordé had drunk himself into an unusual state of fuddle.

When I say unusual, I mean, that as early as midnight he did not know whether he was boy or girl, and took the starry firmament for a bass-viol.

He had made a little excursion with his friend the magistrate, Mr. Martin Csicseri, to a little tavern in the outlying vineyards to taste the new vintages, and there the two gentlemen got so drunk that they would have found it difficult to explain in what language they were conversing.

Finally they set off homewards, leaning heavily for support on each other's shoulders. His honour, Mr. Csicseri suddenly caught sight of a broad ditch by the roadside. He swore by heaven and earth that it was a nicely quilted bed, and there and then laid himself down in it and fell asleep.

For some time Mr. Kordé kept on pulling and tugging at him to get him out, first by an arm and then by a leg. However, so far from giving his friend any encouragement, Mr. Csicseri only rebuked his wife for putting such a low pillow beneath his head, and then, without pursuing the subject further, went off as sound asleep as a humming top.

So the cantor found himself all alone in a strange world.

In front of him lay the high road, and the village was only three hundred yards further on; but wine is a bad compass in a man's noddle, and never points north in the same direction two minutes together.

He resolved, therefore, to return to the inn among the vineyards. Acting straightway upon this noble resolve, he stumbled along totally unknown paths up hill and down dale; plunged through field after field of Indian corn; pursued his endless way through hemp grounds and fallow lands; scrambled on all fours through hedges and ditches, and finally forced his way through a vast morass in which he wallowed freely. In a sober condition he would have come to grief twenty times over, but Fate always protects the toper.

Then he strayed into a vast forest; zig-zagged through fens and coppices like an old dog-wolf; tore himself almost to ribbons among the sloe and blackberry bushes, and emerged at last at a ramshackle forest-keeper's hut, the door of which stood wide open.

By this time he bore not the slightest resemblance to man or beast.

In the courtyard a big, shaggy, lazy mastiff was shambling about, who, on perceiving a strange unknown four-legged animal (Mr. Kordé had ceased for a time to belong to the category: man) thus approaching him, sidled up to him with incomparable phlegm, and began sniffing at him all round.

Mr. Kordé forthwith collared the neck of the huge dog and began kissing him all over. "Dear friend, faithful old comrade," he cried, "what a long time it is since last we met! What! don't you recognise your old schoolfellow?"—whereupon the big dog in his extreme bewilderment sat down beside the ex-cantor on his haunches and was so astonished that he forgot to bark.

At this Mr. Kordé was completely overcome. Once more he warmly pressed the head of his so unexpectedly recovered friend to his bosom, and then shambled along with him into the courtyard. He pathetically complained to him on the way that he had been chucked out of his employment and was now a fugitive on the face of the earth, whereupon he fell to weeping bitterly and dried his tears with the mastiff's bushy tail.

The poor dog was so utterly taken aback that it could not recover from its astonishment. Once or twice it showed its white teeth and growled at the stranger, but it did not venture to hurt him. No doubt it thought that this strange animal might perhaps be able to bite better than itself.

Thus the two quadrupeds strolled comfortably together right into the courtyard. The dog stopped before his three-cornered kennel which Mr. Kordé interpreted as an invitation on the part of his respectful host for him to go in first, and, accepting the offer in the spirit of true courtesy, and with the deepest emotion, he squeezed himself into the narrow dog-kennel, while the dispossessed bow-wow squatted down at the entrance of his house with the utmost astonishment, unable satisfactorily to explain to himself by what right this strange wild beast usurped his ancestral holding.

Mr. Kordé, however, soon began to snore inside there so terrifically that the scared dog ran out into the middle of the courtyard and fell a-barking with all his might and main, as if he had been offered pitch for supper instead of meat.

As to what followed, it is extremely doubtful whether Mr. Kordé saw it all with his own eyes, or whether it was the dream of a drunken brain impressed so vividly on his memory by his imagination that subsequently he fancied it to be true.

The moon had gone down and there was a great commotion in the courtyard surrounding the forester's hut.

A lamp had been lit in the shelter of a shed, and a group of men was standing round it—pale, sinister figures, putting their heads closely together and listening attentively to a lean, lanky man in a cassock, who was reading a letter to them.

The reader was short-sighted, and as he spelt out the letter he put his face so near it as to quite cover his features.

"What the deuce is all this about?" thought Mr. Kordé to himself as he peeped through the crevices of the dog's dwelling-place, "what is my colleague, the myoptic schoolmaster doing here, and why is he burying his nose in that bit of paper?"

"I hasten to inform you," so read the man in the cassock, "that the hostile armies are already on the confines of the kingdom. What the object of the enemy is you know right well. He is coming to ravage the realm, wipe out the landed gentry, and divide their estates among the peasantry. What then shall we do? Our peasants are wrath with us for we have treated them very badly, and you, sir, in particular, have no cause to trust them. When you had your house built, as you well remember, you made your serfs work three weeks running for nothing. When you were a young man you ruined the domestic happiness of many a married peasant; you appropriated the communal lands to your own uses; you never bestowed a thought upon the parish church; once you gave the priest a good cudgelling; you kept a poor fellow in jail for four or five years and beat and shamefully treated him. When a poor man wanted to build him a house, you never gave him clay to make bricks with, nor rushes for the thatching of his roof. When lots of planks were rotting away in a corner of your courtyard, and two poor young fellows stole just enough of them to make a coffin for their father, you tied the pair of them up tight in the burning sun and beat their naked bodies with thorny sticks; one of them died a week afterwards of sun-stroke. On one occasion you injured the thigh of a neat-herd on your estate and he is a cripple to this day. When your sheep died of the murrain you hung up their hides to dry—in the schoolhouse. If all these things should now recur to the minds of your tenants, you will have, I fancy, rather a bad time of it. But the rest of us are in the same boat. We never gave a thought to the education of our people. They grew up, they grew old, and all they have ever learnt to know of life is its wretchedness; not one of them therefore has any reason to love us now. What can we do if it comes to an open collision with them? Five hundred thousand gentry against twenty times as many peasants! Why not one of our heads would remain for long in the place where God placed it. We must defend ourselves with the weapons of desperation. It is too late now to try and entice the common folk over to our side, as some of our set want to do who are now distributing no end of wine and corn among their underlings, building sick-houses for them, and putting the priests up to preaching sobriety to them, and the fear of God and due respect for the squire and his family. It is too late now for all that I say. We should only raise suspicions. We must summon Death to our assistance. In order to keep the people down by terror, therefore, we have resolved, in a secret conference, to establish cordons in the various counties and send patrols of soldiers in every direction to search and examine everybody passing to and fro. In this way we shall prevent the people from going from one village to another in large bodies, in fact we must keep them down in every possible way. I, therefore, send you by the bearer of this letter, on whom I can thoroughly rely, a box of powder which you are to scatter about in the barns, the fields, the pastures where the cattle feed, and especially in the wells from which the herdsmen draw water. The county authorities will take care that where this simple method does not do its work, the parish doctor shall compel the peasants to take this powder by force. At the same time we mean to make a great fuss, and spread the rumour that the plague is spreading from the neighbouring states, and will be mortal to many. You, meanwhile, will enclose a large plot of land on your estates, and make a churchyard of it. You may safely make the peasants a present thereof, as it will be mostly filled by them. Take out, by the way, the tongues of all the church-bells, that the number of the dead may not cause any commotion. You might also have prayers said in the church to avert the calamity, and at the same time scatter the powder broadcast. A separate cemetery must be dug lest the plague spread among the gentry. In this way we shall kill two birds with one stone: in the first place the peasantry will be sensibly diminished, and, taking the whole thing as a Divine visitation, will not have the spirit to rise up; and in the second place, the enemy hearing that the plague has broken out among us will fear to pitch his camp here lest it fare with him as it fared with King Sennacherib, who lost his whole army in a single night, as the Bible testifies.

"Believe me, my dear brother-in-law,

"Always affectionately yours,

"Ambrose Ligeti."

"The letter is addressed to the noble Benjamin Hétfalusy."

"Horrible, horrible!" cried two or three of the men, while the rest remained speechless with amazement.

"Softly, my friends!" said the rector soothingly. "We must do nothing hastily. So much is certain, however: they have designs upon our lives, and would wipe us clean out."

"Not a doubt of it, else why should they be so friendly towards us? Why should they distribute among us such a lot of food? We have never yet asked an alms from our masters, and hitherto they have snatched the food from our very mouths. If they caress us now it is because they fear us."

"Yes, they would destroy us. The other day they gave me a glass of brandy to drink at the tavern. I saw at once that it was not the usual sort of stuff, and, to make certain, I dipped a bit of bread in it and threw it to a dog, and he would not eat it."

"And why do the parsons preach so much about the scourge of God, the pestilence? Why we have never had a better promise of harvest than now. How do they know when Death will come? Only God can know beforehand whom He will destroy and whom He will keep alive."

"Suspend your judgments, my good friends," resumed the rector, with an affectation of benevolence, "you can see that the hand of God is over us all. He can work great wonders, and it is not impossible that these wonders will come. You can perceive from the signs of Heaven that great changes are about to come on the earth. On Good Friday a bloody rain fell near the hill of Mádi; not long ago a flaming sword was visible in the sky three nights running; everywhere about curious big fungi have shot up from the ground, which turn red or green immediately they are broken. Earth and sky seem to feel that the hand of God is about to press heavily upon us."

("Deuce take this instructor of the people for befooling them so!" thought Mr. Kordé in his dog-kennel.)

"Did you notice, my brothers, how the rats roamed all about the roads in broad daylight a fortnight ago, how they scuttled away from our landlords' granaries, and set out for another village, and how they stiffened and died in heaps on the way?"

"There you are!" shouted one wiseacre, "the corn in the granary was poisoned!"

("Plague take thee, thou clodpole!" growled the cantor in his hiding-place; "it was the rats that were poisoned, not the corn.")

"And we borrowed of that very corn a fortnight ago to last us till harvest time."

"Then now we'll pay them back with interest!" bellowed one of the rustics, fiercely flourishing a pitchfork.

("I'll swear that's one of my pupils, he is so pugnacious," thought the cantor to himself.)

"And I have already eaten bread made of that very corn, God help me!" cried another; "it is as blue as a toadstool when you break it in two."

("Lout! Tares and other rubbish were mixed up with it, and that made it look blue!")

"And after I had eaten it I felt like to bursting."

("Naturally, for your wife did not bake it sufficiently, and you stuffed it into your greedy jaws while it was still hot.")

"Yes, not a doubt of it, we have all been poisoned, we have eaten of Death."

"My friends, allow me to put in a word," said the benign rector. "You know that I have always desired your welfare; but look now! this mortal danger has appeared in other districts also, possibly it may be a Divine visitation. There are villages in which two or three deaths have occurred in every house, there are other places in which whole families down to the very last poor member thereof have followed one another to the grave. I know of a man who a short time ago had nine sons, now he has nine corpses with him in the house."

"The gentry have killed them also I'll be bound."

"It is so! What would God want with so many dead men?"

"Have patience for a moment, my friends. I don't want to defend the gentry, but I would not condemn anyone unjustly. If there be any truth in this fearful accusation, it will see the light of day sooner or later, and then the arm of God will not be straitened."

"Thanks for nothing, by that time the whole lot of us will be under the sod."

"Produce the fellow who brought this letter!"

Two stalwart rustics thereupon brought forward upon their shoulders a young fellow, bound and pinioned like a trapped wolf, and put him down in the midst of the mob.

"This is the bird who was carrying about the message of death!" cried the rebels, surrounding the poor wretch. And then one pulled his hair, and another tugged at his ears, and a third tweaked his nose, and everyone of them was delighted to have found a fresh object on which to wreak their furious cruelty.

And all the time the fellow ground his teeth together and said nothing.

It was poor Mekipiros. It was his mauled and bruised shape, his half-bestial face that they were torturing and tormenting. There is no sight more terrible than that of a tortured beast that cannot speak.

One of those who had brought him thither was the headsman's apprentice.

This fellow whispered some words in the ear of the rector, and then placed himself behind the back of the fettered monster. His face assumed an expression of cold pitilessness, he bit his lips as if he wanted blood, and screwed up his eyes.

"Harken now, my dear son!" said the rector in a gentle voice; "don't fancy we want to do you any harm, for of course how can you help what is written in this letter; but if you want to escape scot free, answer truly and without compulsion to the questions that I am about to put to you."

The headsman's 'prentice with twitching features gazed fixedly at the interrogated wretch.

"Who gave you this letter?" asked the rector.

Mekipiros sat there tied with cords so as to be almost bent double with his head between his knees, and did not seem to be aware that he was spoken to.

"Do you hear?" whispered the headsman's apprentice hoarsely, at the same time giving him a vicious pinch.

The monster set up a howl, which lasted only for an instant, then he was silent again, and his face did not change.

"Is it not true now, my dear son, that a gentleman gave you this letter?" asked the rector, giving the question another turn.

Mekipiros made no reply.

"I'll make you speak!" yelled his chief persecutor with gnashing teeth, and seizing his head between his muscular fists he shook it violently backwards and forwards. "I'll bring you to reason!"

The monster kept on howling so long as his hair was being tugged; his eyes vanished completely, his head seemed to have grown broader than it was long; but when they let his head go again he only grinned derisively and said nothing.

"My son, bethink you that we do not want to do you any harm if you confess everything, but, on the other hand, we shall have to chastise you unmercifully, as you well deserve, if you stubbornly remain silent—who gave you this letter?"

"Speak, you wretched dog! What were you told to say? Who gave you this letter?" hissed the headsman's apprentice in his ear.

"You gave it to me!" cried the wretch defiantly.

"Scoundrel!" thundered the other furiously, at the same time giving the prisoner a kick; "so you want to palm it off upon me, eh? Hie, there!—a rope!" The fellow's face was as white as the wall, perhaps with fear, perhaps with anger. The rector also grew pale for a moment.

"Yes, you put it into my hand and told me that I was to——"

"Hold your tongue, you wretched creature! Here we have a peasant cub just as ragged as anyone of us, and yet he takes it upon himself to ruin his own kith and kin; I caught him in the act of sprinkling a white powder in a well, and the water of that well is still bubbling and boiling from the virulence of the poison, and yet, as you see, he has the face to deny it all."

"It was you who put the powder in my pocket."

"Very good, I suppose you'll say next that I put this purse of gold in your pocket also? You are surprised, eh? You had better say you got it from me, we shall all believe you, of course. Naturally I have sacks and sacks of gold under my bed. The executioner pays his 'prentices with gold, of course, of course."

"You accursed villain!" cried an old peasant, "let him have the rope! String him up and let him swing!"

"No, my friends, we must not kill him, we have need of him, he must live because he knows so much."

"Then let him out with it."

"Oh, he will talk presently," said the headsman's 'prentice, and folding his arms he stood right in front of the defenceless wretch. "My lad," said he, "you know, don't you, that I have been the headsman's assistant these six years? You know, don't you, that I am accustomed to torture and kill man and beast in cold blood? You know the sort of smile with which I am wont to reply to the agonised despair of my victim, and the memory of it ought to make your brain freeze in your skull. Very well! Let me tell you that I am prepared to practice upon you all the refinements of my infernal handiwork if you do not say all I want you to?"

"I know nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I have forgotten all you taught me."

"You lying serpent! Do you mean to say, then, that I taught you anything? You can see, all of you, that this ripe gallows-tree blossom is determined at any cost to saddle me with his sins. I'll refreshen your memory for you," murmured the headsman's assistant, grinding his teeth. "Carry him over yonder under that plank. You must put out the lamp, for perchance anyone who caught sight of his face might feel sorry for him. Lay him on that block. Where is the rope? A bucket of water here in case he faints..."

From that moment the cantor saw nothing for the darkness, but all the more horrible, therefore, were the pictures which his imagination painted for him as it laid hold of the fragments of words and sounds which reached him at intervals from the outhouse.

The cold-blooded murmuring of the headsman's assistant.

The inquisitorial procedure of the rector.

The frantic cursing of the bystanders.

And from time to time a despairing howl uttered by the tortured monster, a howl which set the terrified dog a-barking, and made him scratch up the ground beneath the gate in order to make his escape.

The cantor began to shiver as with ague.

"The horrible beast won't confess," he heard a couple of furious voices say quite close to him.

"Don't howl like that, but answer my questions," hissed the rector, evidently losing patience.

"The wretched creature tires me out," grunted the executioner. "He bites his lips and smiles right in my face when his very bones are cracking."

"Speak the truth, and you shall be free. We will let you go."

"He's still laughing at me."

Then for some time could be heard a great bustle and clatter in the shed out yonder. There were sounds of hasty, yet cold-blooded preparations for completing something which ought to have been finished long before. There was a sound of running to and fro, of panting and puffing and straining.

And all this time the monster kept on laughing defiantly, though now and then he set up an unearthly howl, and then the whole assembly cursed him for an obstinate gallows-bird.

"Red-hot irons here!" yelled at last a voice of malignant fury, and immediately three of the boors set off running towards the stable. A few minutes later the cantor saw them hastening back to the shed, carrying flaming red objects, which scattered a long trail of sparks behind them.

"Will you confess?" sounded from within.

The monster yelled in the most ghastly manner, and then could be heard a savage gurgling sound For a few seconds the people inside the shed were silent, and then they could be heard whispering to each other with mingled surprise and amazement: "If the cub has not bitten his own tongue out!"

The cantor took advantage of the general consternation to crawl forth from his hiding-place in the darkness, slipped out through the hole scratched by the dog beneath the gate, and then set off running like one who runs down a steep mountain-side; he ran with his eyes fast closed, and early next morning he was found huddled up on the threshold of his own house in a state of collapse.

When he came to himself he sent for some worthy men of his acquaintance whom he could trust, and told them privately what he had seen, frequently hiding his face during his narration, as if to shut out the spectacle of the monster's bloody face.

But his acquaintances, after listening to his tale, only shook their heads, and remarked to one another, what a horrible thing it is when a man is so fond of wine that it takes more than three days to make him get sober again.

It occurred to nobody that there might be some truth in the matter after all. It was not the first time that Mr. Kordé had had visions of copper-nosed owls and other horrors.

"As if a man could believe everything that Mr. Kordé said!"

CHAPTER VII.

His acquaintances in general have the greatest confidence in him; his tenants allude to him gratefully, for he deals mercifully with them; the citizens regard him with respectful astonishment when, on the outbreak of a fire, he orders out his soldiers, and is himself the first to clamber to the top of the burning roof, distributing his commands in the midst of danger as if his life was worth no more than the life of any broken-down, invalided old soldier; the school children rejoice at the sight of him, for he is always sure to be in his place on the occasion of any public examination, to distribute sixpences and shillings to those scholars who give the best answers, and exhort them to hold up their heads and stand upright like good little men! When then, after this, they meet him in the street, the little fellows throw back their heads and stick out their chests so that it does you good to look at them. For the General dearly loves children. Very frequently they break his windows with their tops and balls, but he never scolds them for it, and always gives them back their playthings. "They are but children, let them play!" says he.

In society, too, he is a most agreeable, amusing man, polite and chivalrous towards ladies, and at public entertainments he distinguishes himself by his neat little speeches, which are always good-natured, very much to the point, and seasoned with attic salt of a piquant but not too pungent quality. He is merciful to the absurdities of his fellow-citizens; it is no business of his to impress them with any affectation of soldierly gravity or stiffness; and if at first sight his stern, clean-shaven face—the regulation countenance of soldiers of those days—keeps a timid stranger somewhat at a distance, he has only to open his mouth, and his beautifully pure Magyar accent and intonation prove to demonstration that, soldier as he is, he has remained a true son of his fatherland—and all hearts open to him at once.

But all this ceases at the gate of the barracks. Within the barrack courtyard there is an end to all friendship, kinsmanship, camaraderie, and patronage. He is no longer either a county magistrate or an honorary citizen. He has done with all those qualities which make up a man's social amiability. Here Vértessy is only a soldier, a rigorous, inexorable commandant, who never overlooks a blunder, and never leaves a fault unpunished.

As regards the good school children, you could give them no better encouragement than to say to them: "The General is coming and will pat you on the shoulder!" but there was nothing so terrible to the bad school children as to be threatened with the General if they did not learn their lessons. "You'll be sent to the General, and he will tap you from the shoulder to the heel and make another man of you in double-quick time," people used to say to them.

At any rate, so much is certain: the most stubborn, pig-headed louts, whom no school would keep at any price, when sent, despite the tears and protests of their fond mothers, to the General's establishment, used to return from thence in a couple of years or so as if transformed. They had become orderly, methodical, manly fellows, courteous, tractable, and as spick and span as if they had just been taken out of a band-box. As to what exactly happened to them during their manipulation in this same military band-box not one of them was ever known to allude in a boastful spirit; but the lay mind had a very strong suspicion that not much time was wasted inside the barracks in fine talking.

Moreover, the General used to have guilty soldiers tied up and well whipped without first stopping to inquire who their fathers might be. With him punishment was meted out with no regard for persons. It was the uniform, not the man who happened to be inside it, that he regarded. When his soldiers were drawn up in line he was quite blind to the fact that this man perhaps was the son of his old crony, or that man was the son of a county magistrate—sergeants, corporals, ensigns, and privates, these were the only distinctions he ever made. And if anybody tried to distinguish himself by appearing on parade in a dirty jacket, he had it well dusted for him there and then in a way the individual concerned was not likely to forget in a hurry.

Nor did the General ever allow anybody, no matter whom, to be exempted from service. The dear little gentlemen-cadets had to pace up and down when on guard, with seven-pound muskets across their shoulders, just like anybody else, though the hearts of their distinguished mammas almost broke at the sight, when they drove over in their fine coaches to see their darlings. Malingerers, again, had a fearful time of it with him. Such young gentlemen never wanted to go to the hospital more than once. Their distinguished mammas would scurry off to the General full of despair, and explain to him with tears in their eyes that this or that young exquisite lay mortally sick in the hospital, would he allow them to take their poor darlings home, or at least let them come to the hospital to nurse the invalids there, or send them nice tempting dishes from home, or tell the family doctor to call? No, nothing of the sort. The General used to receive them buttoned up to the chin, and nothing on earth could move him. The proper place for the fellow was the barrack-hospital, he would say, there he would receive proper treatment like any other of His Majesty's soldiers; the regimental surgeons had quite sufficient science to cure him. And it regularly happened that after a four or five days' course of a platter of coarse barley pottage, and half an ounce of plain black commissariat bread, the young gentleman was so completely cured of every bodily ailment that he had never the faintest wish ever afterwards to divert himself in the hospital, but preferred instead to attend to his daily duties.

Nor could his officers boast that he showed them any special indulgence. It was really terrible how he contrived to fill up their time all day long: instruction, regimental practice, writing, calculation, technical studies filled up every hour of the day. The smoking-rooms of the cafés and the civic promenades very rarely saw Vértessy's officers gathered together there. The officers had to know everything which the General asked them about, and were often obliged to work out for themselves, with the aid of their mother wit, the details of their extremely laconic instructions. Everyone knew, too, that he could not endure the slightest suspicion of cowardice; if an officer were insulted, he was obliged to fight in defence of his honour, or the regiment was made too hot to hold him. If, on the other hand, the townsmen got to know anything of the details of these duels, he would punish severely all the officers concerned in the affair, for he placed boastfulness on the same level as cowardice. Such severity had this good effect however, that the soldiers tried to live amicably with the townsmen as they knew very well that it would be impossible to keep dark a duel with any of the black-coated gentry, such an event was certain to be an object of common gossip in all four quarters of the town within twenty-four hours.

It was also a recognised fact throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom that the officers of Vértessy's regiment were all well instructed, orderly, serious men, and that this result was due entirely to the initiative of "the iron man," for this was the name most usually and very naturally applied to him.

And his face, figure, and expression, corresponded with the name. He was of a tall, straight, well-knit-together habit of body, with broad shoulders and a well-rounded chest. His head seemed almost too small for his extraordinary developed body, especially as the chestnut-brown hair was clipped quite short. His face was of a deep red, and shaved to the chin, but a pair of small well kept semicircular whiskers helped to give it character. His nose was straight, his mouth small; his eyes were grey and piercing. And everything on this face: nose, mouth, eyes, down to the smallest feature, seemed one and all to be under the most rigorous military discipline, not one of them was suffered to move without the General's command. When once his features are under orders to be coldly severe, the lips may not give expression to joy, the eyes may not be clouded with sorrow, the eyebrows may not contract with rage, or lead anyone to suspect, by so much as a twitch or a jerk, that anything in the world outside has the slightest influence upon the business he may happen to have on hand.

We may add that the General did not acquire this honourable title in times of peace. Formerly, beneath the walls of Dresden, when he was a lieutenant scarcely five-and-twenty years old, he had earned it by holding a position on the battle-field as stubbornly as if he had really been made of cast iron, whereby a totally defeated army corps was saved from the annihilating pursuit of the triumphant foe. Even the enemy's general had inquired on this occasion: "Who is that man of iron who will neither break nor bend?" That, then, was how he had won the epithet "iron."