Pretty Michal Part 3

This was a little blue silk cus.h.i.+on filled with the leaves of herbs beneficial against the plague, and inscribed with the following charm in letters of gold: "Longe, tarde cede, recede, redi!" which is really a very good charm, for it means that one should hasten away as far and as soon as possible from the place where the plague prevails, and not return for a long time after it is all over. This amulet the learned man had worn, fastened by a silken cord round his neck, night and day for years. Now, however, he said good-by to it, and the tears came into his eyes as he tied it round his daughter's white neck, and whispered tenderly:

"Never take it off, my dear, never take it off! It was your mother's."

Then the great scholar, after carefully observing the aspects of the seven planets, was very particular to calculate beforehand a day which, owing to a propitious conjunction, would be a very favorable day for traveling, for warfare, for the donning of new clothes, for courts.h.i.+ps, and for making visits and purchases.

He took leave of his son-in-law and his daughter on the previous evening, for the caravan was to depart before sunrise, while Orion was in the ascendant, at which time the learned man would already have surrendered his limbs to repose. Now, all the world knows that whoever is involuntarily aroused from his slumbers at such a time will wake up every day at the self-same hour for a whole year afterward and not be able to go to sleep again: such a contingency therefore was to be guarded against at any cost.

Pretty Michal wept long and sore when the time came to say good-by.

She wept for her good, affectionate father, for her flowers, her serving-maids, her little room which looked out upon the garden, her kitchen, bright with burnished copper vessels; but the ungrateful little thing did not weep very much for the learned books she left behind her, though, indeed, she could never cease to think of those with whom she had had her daily conversation for years.

Nay, she so managed as to leave behind her the whole sack-load of medicinal herbs collected with such wisdom, "Georgica Curiosa" to boot. Instead of that she took with her one of her fan-tailed pigeons, which she dexterously smuggled into her long pocket.

The amulet fastened round her neck she held in high honor, not because it was a febrifuge, but because it was the solitary memento of her mother which she possessed.

Her husband, also, was motherless. He, too, had never known a mother's love.

Perhaps, too, she shed a few tears as she threw behind the fire a certain carefully folded up bundle of papers. They were the billets-doux which had reached her through the aerial post. She held them tightly in her hand till the mules jangling their bells stood before the door. Longer than that she could not hold them. She fancied she had destroyed them when she had burnt them, but, alas!

the burning of those letters was only so much labor lost.

But joy always follows after sorrow.

Michal was going on a journey for the first time in her life. For the first time in her life she was to see field and forest beneath the open sky. Set in a frame of the most beautiful landscape, even her husband looked better than he had ever looked before. Never had she thought him so agreeable, and he cut quite a stately figure on horseback; indeed, she scarcely recognized him as the same being who used to trip so humbly after the professor with his books under his arm, for he could sing cheerily among the students who walked along by his side, and his merry laugh was heard from one end of the caravan to the other.

The city walls of Keszmar and the well-known mountains had long ago been left far behind, and Michal kept thinking to herself that she was now her own mistress, and that she had a master who was at the same time her slave. The house that she would henceforth call her home would have a very different appearance from the one she had just left. There would be no one to supervise or keep her in order; she would have no other monitor but her own conjugal virtue. She would be a model of a wife, upon whom all eyes should be fixed, and of whom people would say: "Try and be like that G.o.d-fearing lady, learn from her sobriety, decency, piety, frugality, and domestic economy; learn from her how to speak sensibly in four languages, and still more sensibly to keep silence." Thus she tried to discern, through the enigmatical gloom of the future, the joys and delights that her soul longed for, so as the better to accommodate herself to her new position.

She was the only woman in the whole company.

A driver had been a.s.signed to her, who was to lead her mule by the bridle whenever the path went through a brook or over a stone, and stimulate it whenever it had to clamber up the steep mountain-side.

He was an enigmatical Slovack lad, with bast shoes and a hat with a brim drawn deep down over his eyes. "Gee!" and "Whoa!" were the only sounds he ever uttered, and these were naturally addressed to the mule.

The character of the region had suddenly and completely changed.

Mountains, pine forests, and roaring waterfalls succeeded one another in rapid succession.

The numerous company sat them down on the fresh gra.s.s at the foot of a shady tree by the side of a purling brook, and everyone produced his knapsack, his wallet, or his flask. The wealthier of them shared their good fare with the students, who expressed their thankfulness by singing merry songs. There was one student who particularly distinguished himself by his facetiousness, and whom everyone called Simplex. He, too, introduces himself under that very name in his contemporary memoirs, from which we have borrowed many of the data of this our veracious history. He was an itinerant student, drummer, and trumpeter, and a wag and good fellow to boot. He soon succeeded in gaining Henry's goodwill, and he also favored the young bride with his company from time to time, taking the whip out of the hands of the sleepy driver and rating him soundly in Polish, which the other endured without a murmur.

The jests of Simplex put the company in high good-humor. Even Michal caught the contagion of the general merriment. The spicy, fresh air seemed to relieve her mind of sorrow.

Suddenly, on reaching the summit of a lofty mountain, another panorama unfolded itself before their eyes. The steep mountain wall was succeeded by a deep glen, and the tops of the huge pine trees ma.s.sed together below seemed to the naked eye to be a meadow of a wonderful green perpetually in motion. In the distance arose lofty rocks, piled one above the other and split up by chasms full of ice and snow. The path wound steeply down into this glen, where it was already night, and by the side of the path ran a mountain stream, which, pouring forth from the crevices of the granite rocks, plunged downward in a hundred glistening columns like a crystal organ.

But it was not this splendid sight, but another, very strange and very terrible, on the other side of the way, which riveted pretty Michal's attention.

In the crevice of a projecting rock a lofty stake had been firmly planted; on the top of the stake was a wheel, and on the wheel lay something distantly resembling the shape of a man. The hands and feet hung loosely down; the neck and skull were thrown backward and reclined half over the tire of the wheel. Large black birds swept slowly round and round, and though startled by the approaching hub-bub were not scared away.

It never so much as entered into pretty Michal's mind what this strange object could be, she had absolutely no name for it.

"What's that?" cried she with a shudder, involuntarily reining up her mule.

But Henry was not there to answer her question. He had ridden on in advance with the students, who had now begun to sing in order to cheer the caravan during its perilous descent into the glen.

"That is the sign-post of the glen," said the driver; "don't look in that direction, my lady!"

Michal turned her head toward the speaker, but she immediately felt that it would have been far better for her to have riveted her sorrowing gaze on that nameless, hideous object, than to have looked into the eyes of him who had just addressed her, for the sight of him filled her with unutterable anguish. Now for the first time she recognized him. The silent, ragged driver was Valentine Kalondai!

"By the five wounds of Christ, it is Valentine!" murmured Michal in a voice stifled with emotion.

"Then you have recognized me at last?"

"What do you want here?"

"To accompany you."

"Wherefore?"

"To serve you if you should need anything, to defend you if you should be in danger, and, finally, to find out whither they are taking you."

"Valentine," said the girl, withdrawing the reins of the mule from the youth's hand, "it is sin to act thus. You will disgrace us both.

I am dead to you now. If you have ever loved me, bury me! Bewail me as one who has died in the Lord. Make me not as one of those who will hereafter rise up and accuse you before G.o.d! I am now a married woman. I have plighted my troth to another. Not even for your sake will I lose my hope of salvation. I beseech you by the tender mercies of G.o.d not to pursue me. Remain here and forget that you ever saw me! Here, in this frightful glen, where I know not what awaits me, though I feel that it is full of horror, I cannot pray to G.o.d to protect me from all danger while you are by my side. I would not have the heart to go into those terrible depths if I felt myself laden with sin and perjury. If you love anything which belongs to me, oh, love my soul! If you would preserve me from harm, be jealous of my honor! Remain behind, I say, and follow me no further!"

The young man opened his lips to say something in reply, but not a word came forth, only a long-drawn sigh; a hot breath in the cold autumnal air was it, or, perhaps, a part of his very soul? Then he pulled his hat deeper down over his eyes and remained standing in the way, while Michal on her mule ambled further on.

"Jacky, my boy!" cried a jesting voice in the ear of the startled driver, and at the same time someone tapped him on the shoulder. It was Simplex, the merry trumpeter.

"How far you have dropped behind your mistress!"

"Yes, and I will drop back still further, friend Simplex. She has recognized me. She has driven me away. I have now but one favor to ask of you. If you are really my friend, prove it by doing me a great service. I cannot accompany her further. You do so in my stead. If any evil befall Michal, stand by her and save her. You have your wits about you and know the region thoroughly. Be near her as long as possible. Let me know how it befalls, be it good or evil.

You will find me at Ka.s.sa, in my mother's house."

Nowadays we should hurl back such a commission at the suggester's head. Nowadays everyone looks after himself, and no one is such a fool as to run after a woman whom a second person loves and a third person has married. But in former days men were different. Besides, they had not so much to do then as they have now, and a social law was then in force which has long since become obsolete, the law of friends.h.i.+p. It was not codified, yet its authority was universally deferred to and folios were written about it. This law of friends.h.i.+p gave a man the right to demand great things from his neighbor, and those who obeyed this law were bound together by stronger ties than any ties of kins.h.i.+p. We shall presently give many examples to show how much in those days the unwritten law of friends.h.i.+p was needed, a law pa.s.sed by no parliament, sanctioned by no monarch, enforced by no tribunal, yet everywhere valid and effectual.

The trumpeter, contemptuously dubbed Simplex, promised to do all that his friend required of him and gave him his hand upon it, whereupon he hastened to overtake the lady, who was now some distance ahead.

But Valentine Kalondai remained standing on the hillside listening till the clattering of the horses' hoofs had quite died away. Then he turned and walked slowly off, to the great joy of the crows and ravens, who so long as he stood there did not venture to resume their banquet beneath the gallows. Meanwhile Michal was trying to overtake her husband, who was well on in front surrounded by the merry students.

The road became rougher and rougher as it wound down into the valley. The broad, well-wooded mountain-sides confined it within a precipitously shelving glen. The brook zigzagged across it and tore out the rolling stones, so that the very mules had to pick their way cautiously along. At first the way wound among large blocks of stone, but presently it ended abruptly at a yawning chasm among the rocks. Here the mountain stream plunged, roaring and foaming, down into a dizzy depth. Beyond the bridge the path reappeared, but now it was confined more than ever between two steep rocky walls, down the smooth slaty sides of which the moisture trickled continually, diffusing a misty, cavernous sort of smell over the whole of the dark rocky defile, which was overshadowed by nodding pine trees. The mules no longer picked their way among rocks, but among bones. All around lay the skeletons of men and of horses inextricably mixed together.

"Is this a burial-ground?" asked Michal of her Henry, not without a shudder.

But Henry had no answer ready. He said that he had never been that way before; he had gone to Keszmar by another road over the mountain ridge, a road which you could only pa.s.s on foot. But Simplex was at hand and he explained the mystery of the bones strewing the way, as he had heard it during his wanderings in the mountains from the lips of his guides.

Many years ago, the troops of the Prince of Transylvania, with some Turkish auxiliaries, had blockaded a regiment of Imperial cavalry in this defile, and after breaking down the bridge leading to the glen had ma.s.sacred the whole lot without mercy. There was no place to bury the dead, and so they had lain there ever since. The students, from sheer mischief, now picked up two or three of the skulls and trundled them along the road. No doubt they were not the first who had amused themselves by playing bowls with dead men's bones.

"If Hafran were to catch you here, he and his merry men would play at bowls with your heads also," cried Simplex, without however either spoiling their good-humor or putting Michal in a better humor.

In the evening twilight they came to the kopanitscha, where it was advisable to stay the night. It consisted of a group of houses formed of the trunks of trees, surrounded by a palisade of sharp stakes, with loopholes at regular intervals. A low door, made of heavy beams, led into the palisade, where, as the neighing of horses promptly testified, other travelers had already arrived.

The door was opened to their knocking, and the first arrivals, among whom were the students and the young married couple, were admitted.

Far behind toiled the merchants and drivers with their cattle and heavily laden wagons, and last of all came the Polish n.o.bleman and his armed retainers.

There were enough barns and out-houses to accommodate them all. Hay for fodder and straw for bedding were also to be had in abundance.

The host was cooking flesh in a large caldron on an open hearth.