LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

received the slightest injury, and besides, as examination afterwards proved, he had neither matches nor tinder with him; but Abonyi pretended to take the boast seriously and cried scornfully:

      "Better and better! You are a sly fellow! First you threaten me with murder, now with arson; keep on, run up a big reckoning, when the time for settlement comes, we will both be present."

      János now appeared and, with a very grave face, handed his master the revolver.

      "Now, my lad," Abonyi ordered, "run over to the town-hall, bring a pair of strong hand-cuffs and the little judge,[2] the rascal will be put in irons."

      Pista had again heard and remained silent because he had perceived that blustering and raging were useless. So he stood inside and Abonyi outside of the door, both gazing sullenly into vacancy in excited anticipation. The gardener, who was laying out a flower-bed which surrounded three sides of the fountain in the centre of the courtyard, had witnessed the whole scene from the beginning, but remained at his work, apparently without interest.

      The town-hall was only a hundred paces distant. In less than five minutes János returned with the beadle. Abonyi now retreated a few steps, aimed the revolver, and ordered the beadle to open the door. The bolt flew back, the sides of the folding door rattled apart, and Pista was seen on the threshold with his hideous, still horribly distorted face, the pitchfork yet in his right hand.

      "Forward, march!" Abonyi ordered, and the cartwright stepped hesitatingly out into the courtyard.

      "Put down the pitchfork, vagabond, it belongs to me," the nobleman again commanded.

      Pista cast a flashing glance at him and saw the muzzle of the revolver turned toward himself. He silently put down the fork and prepared to go.

      "Now the irons," Abonyi turned to his men, at the same time shouting to the gardener, "You fellow there, can't you come and help?"

      The gardener pretended not to hear and continued to be absorbed in his blossoming plants. But, at Abonyi's last words, Pista swiftly seized the pitchfork again, shrieking:

      "Back, whoever values his life! I'll go voluntarily, I need not be chained, I'm no sharper or thief."

      The coachman and the beadle with the handcuffs hesitated at the sight of the threatening pitchfork.

      "Am I parish-magistrate or not?" raged Abonyi, "do I command here or not? The vagabond presumes to be refractory, the irons, I say, or——"

      Both the servants made a hasty movement toward Pista, the latter retreated to the door of the coach-house, swinging the pitchfork, the beadle was just seizing his arm, when a shot was suddenly fired. A shrill shriek followed, and Pista fell backward into the barn.

      "Now he has got it," said Abonyi, in a low tone, but he had grown very pale. The coachman and the beadle stood beside the door as though turned to stone, and the gardener came forward slowly and gloomily.

      "See what's wrong with him," the nobleman ordered after a pause, during which a death-like silence reigned in the group.

      János timidly approached the motionless form lying in the shade of the barn, bent over it, listened, and touched it. After a short time he stood up again, and, with a terribly frightened face, said in a voice barely audible:

      "The hole is in the forehead, your honour, he doesn't move, he doesn't breathe, I fear"—then after a slight hesitation, very gently—"he is dead."

      Abonyi stared at him, and finally said:

      "So much the worse, carry him away from there—home—" and went slowly into the castle.

      The servants looked after him a few moments in bewilderment, then laid the corpse upon two wheels, which they placed on poles, and bore him off on this improvised bier. This time the gardener lent his aid.

      [1] A Hungarian office.

      [2] Hungarian name for beadle.

CHAPTER IV.

       Table of Contents

      When the men, accompanied by several children who were playing in the village street and had inquisitively joined the passing procession, appeared at the Molnárs' hut with their horrible burden, the beautiful Panna was standing in the kitchen, churning. At the sight of the lifeless form lying on the bier, she uttered a piercing shriek and dropped the stick from her hands, which fell by her side as though paralyzed. It was at least a minute before her body was again subject to her will and she could rush to the corpse and throw herself prone upon it.

      Meanwhile the men had had time to carry the dead form into the room adjoining the kitchen and set the bier upon the clay floor, after which they took to their heels as if pursued by fiends; at least János and the beadle did so; the gardener had remained to try to comfort the poor woman, so suddenly widowed, in the first tempest of her despair.

      Panna lay on her husband's dead body, wringing her hands and moaning: "Oh, God! oh, God!" sobbing until even the gardener, a stolid, weather-beaten peasant, and anything but soft-hearted, could not restrain his own tears. Not until after several minutes had passed did the young wife raise herself to her knees, and ask in a voice choked with tears, what all this meant, what had happened.

      "The master shot your Pista," replied the gardener in a tone so low that it was scarcely audible.

      "The master? Pista? Shot?" repeated Panna mechanically, absently, as if the words which she slowly uttered belonged to an unknown, incomprehensible language. She stared at the gardener with dilated eyes, and her lips moved without emitting any sound. At last, however, understanding of the present returned, and the words escaped with difficulty from her labouring breast: "Oh, God, oh, God, how could it happen? How could God permit such misery?" Again she was silent, while the gardener looked away and seemed to be examining the opposite house with the utmost attention through the panes of the little window.

      But Panna was beginning to think more clearly and to recover from the dull stupor into which the sudden shock had thrown her. Still kneeling beside the corpse, wringing her hands, and amid floods of tears, she began again:

      "The master shot my poor Pista from carelessness?"

      The gardener hesitated a moment, then he said:

      "Not from carelessness, poor woman."

      In an instant Panna was on her feet, stood beside the gardener at a single bound, grasped him by the shoulder, and said in a firm, harsh voice, while her tears suddenly ceased to flow: "Not from carelessness, you say? Then it was intentional?"

      The gardener nodded silently.

      "That is impossible, it cannot be, no innocent person is murdered, and I am certain that Pista has done nothing; he was the gentlest man in the world, he wouldn't harm a fly, he hadn't drunk a drop of wine in five years, he—Have no regard for me! Tell me everything, and may God reward you for remaining with me in this hour."

      The gardener could no longer withhold the truth, and acquainted her with the occurrence whose commencement the coachman János had described to him on the way, whose tragical close he himself had witnessed. Panna listened silently, never averting her eyes from the body during the entire story. In the midst of a sentence from the gardener, she suddenly uttered a shriek, and again threw herself upon the dead man.

      "Here, here is the hole!" she murmured. "Horrible! horrible!"

      Hitherto she had had before her eyes only a vague, shapeless, blood-stained vision, without being able to distinguish any details; now for the first time she had seen, amid the blood and oozing brains, the terrible wound in the forehead. But this interruption lasted only a moment, then Panna again stood beside the gardener and begged him to continue.

      He soon reached the catastrophe, which once more drew a scream, or rather a quickly suppressed, gasping sound, from the widow, and then closed with a few well-meant, but clumsy, words

Скачать книгу