The Pobratim Part 38

"Oh! it's against etiquette. But if you like, I'll carry you to her."

"All right, it's a bargain."

At nightfall they set out on their journey, and they got to the cave early on the following day.

The young girl, seeing the hermit, ran down the hill to meet him.

"Well, father," said she, with glistening eyes, flushed cheeks, parted lips, and panting breast, "and my husband, where is my husband?"

"Here," said the anchorite; and he took the Rat out of his wallet.

"Here he is; allow me to introduce to you a husband mightier than the Moon, more powerful than the Sun, stronger than the Clouds, more valiant than the Simoon, greater than the high Mountain; in fact, a husband well worthy of you, my daughter."

The eyes of the young girl opened wider and wider in mute astonishment.

"He's a fine specimen of his kind, isn't he?"

"I daresay he is," said she, surveying him with the eye of a connoisseur; "and cooked in honey, he'd be a dainty bit."

"And he's a hermit, into the bargain."

"But," added the girl, ruefully, "if you intended me to marry a rat, was it not quite useless to have turned me into a woman?"

The hermit stroked his beard, pensively, for a while, and was apparently lost in deep meditation.

"My daughter," replied he, after a lengthy pause, "your words are Gospel; I have never thought of all this till now; you see clearly that 'the ways of Providence are not our ways.'"

Thereupon, the old man fell on his knees, for he felt himself rebuked; he prayed long and earnestly that his daughter might once more be changed into a mouse. And, lo and behold! his prayer was granted; nay, before he had got up from his knees and looked around, the girl had dwindled into her former shape, evidently well pleased with the change.

Anyhow, the anchorite was comforted in his loneliness, for he had always meant well towards her; moreover, he felt sure that if the newly-married couple ever had children, the little mice would be so well brought up, that they would scrupulously refrain from eating lard on fast days.

Then the hermit, tired with his journey, went and lay down on his bed of moss, dropped off to sleep, and never woke again on earth.

At dusk, Radonic took leave of the learned and hospitable _kaludgeri_, and went back to town. He reached the gate when the shadows of the night had already fallen upon the earth. Although he fancied that everyone he met stared at him, still many of his acquaintances pa.s.sed close by him without recognising him.

At last he crossed the whole of the town and got to his house. The door being slightly ajar, he thought Milena must be at home. He glided in on tiptoe, his _opanke_ hardly making the slightest noise on the stone floor. There was no fire on the hearth, no light to be seen anywhere. Milena was not in the front room, nor in any of the others. Where could she have gone, and left the front door open?

Surely she would be back in a few moments? He crouched in a corner and waited, but Milena did not make her appearance.

As it was quite dark, he groped to the cupboard, found the loaf, cut himself a slice, then managed to lay his hand on the cheese. As he ate, he almost felt like a burglar in his own house. The darkness really unnerved him, and yet he was inured to watch in the night on board his s.h.i.+p; now, however, the hand of Time seemed to have stopped.

The bread was more than tough, the cheese was dry; so he could hardly manage to gulp the morsels down. Unable to find the _bukara_, he went into the cellar and took a long draught of heady wine.

Returning upstairs, he again crouched in a corner. Milena had not come back; evidently, she had gone to Mara's, as he had told her to.

Sitting there in the darkness, watching and waiting, with the purpose of blood on his mind, time hung wearily upon him. The wine had somewhat cheered him, but now drowsiness overpowered him. To keep himself from falling asleep, he tried to think. Though he was not gifted with a glowing imagination, still his mind was full of fancies, and one vision succeeded another in his overheated brain.

His past life now began to flit before his eyes like scenes in a peep-show. A succession of ghosts arose from amidst the darkness and threatened him. One amongst them made him shudder. It was that of a beautiful young woman of eighteen summers standing on the seash.o.r.e, waiting for a sail.

Many years ago, when he was only a simple sailor, he had been wrecked on the coasts of Sicily. A poor widow had given him shelter, and in return for her kindness, what had he done? This woman had three daughters; the eldest was a beautiful girl of eighteen, the other two were mere children. For months these poor creatures toiled for him and fed him. Then he married the girl under a false name with the papers belonging to one of the drowned sailors. Although he had married her against his will--for she was a Catholic and did not belong to the Orthodox faith--still he intended doing what was right--bring her to his country, and re-marry her according to the rites of his own Church. But time pa.s.sed; so he confessed, gave alms to the convent, obtained the absolution, and was almost at peace with himself. Probably, she had come to the conclusion that he had been swallowed up by the hungry waves, and she had married a man of her own country; so his child had a father. Still, since his marriage, the vision of that woman often haunted him.

Anyhow, he added bitterly to himself, although a Catholic, she had loved him. Milena, a true believer, had never cared for him. And now he remembered the first time he had seen Milena; how smitten he had been by her beauty, how her large eyes had flashed upon him with a dark and haughty look. She had disliked him from the first, but what had he cared when he had got her father into his hands? for when the proud Montenegrin owed him a sum which he could not pay at once, he had asked him for the hand of his daughter.

Instead of trying to win her love, he had ill-treated her from the very beginning; then, seeing that nothing could daunt her, he had often feared lest he should find his house empty on returning home.

All at once the thought struck him that now she had run away with Vranic. She had, perhaps, confided the whole truth to him, and they had escaped together. He ground his teeth with rage at that thought.

No, such a thing could not be, for she hated Vranic.

"Aye, it is true she hates him, but does she not hate me as much?" he said to himself; "fool that I was not to have thought of this before.

Vranic is not handsome; no one can abide him. Still, he clings to women in a way that it is almost impossible to get rid of him.

Anyhow, if they have gone away together, I swear by the blessed Virgin, by St. Nicholas, and by St. Cyril and Method that I shall overtake them; nay," said he, with a fearful oath, "even if they have taken refuge in G.o.d's own stomach, I shall go and drag them out and take vengeance on them, as a true Slav that I am. Still, in the meantime, they have, perhaps, fooled me, and I am here waiting for them." And, in his rage, he struck his head against the wall.

"Trust a woman!" thought Radonic; "they are as skittish as cats, slippery as eels, as false as sleeping waters. Why, my own mother cheated me of many a penny, only for the pleasure of h.o.a.rding them, and then leaving them to me after her death. Trust a woman as far as you can see her, but no farther," and then he added: "Yes, and trust thy friend, which is like going to pat a rabid dog.--What o'clock is it?" he asked himself.

He was always accustomed to tell the time of the day to a minute, without needing a watch, but now he had lost his reckoning.

It was about six o'clock when he came back home; was it nine or ten now?

He durst not strike a light, for fear of being seen from without and spoiling his little game. He waited a little more.

The threatening shadows of the past gathered once more around him.

All at once he heard some words whispered audibly. It was the curse of the boy he had crippled for life. He shuddered with fear. In his auto-suggestion he, for a moment, actually fancied he had heard those words. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and tried to think of pleasanter subjects.

A curse is but a few idle words; still, since that time, not a decent seaman had ever sailed with him.

He could not bear the oppressive darkness any longer; peopled as it was with shadows, it weighed upon him. He went into the inner room, lit a match, looked at his watch.

It was not yet nine o'clock. Time that evening was creeping on at a sluggish pace.

"Surely," he soliloquised, "if Vranic is coming he cannot delay much longer." After a few seconds he put out the light and returned to the front room.

Soon afterwards, he heard a bell strike slowly nine o'clock in the distance; then all was silence. The house was perfectly still and quiet, and yet, every now and then, in the room in which he was sitting, he could hear slight, unexplainable noises, like the soft trailing of garments, or the shuffling of naked feet upon the stone floor; stools sometimes would creak, just as if someone had sat upon them; then small objects seemed stealthily handled by invisible fingers.

He tried to think of his business, always an engrossing subject, not to be overcome by his superst.i.tious fears. He had been a shrewd man, he had mortgaged his house for its full value to Vranic himself to buy the mythical cargo. Now that all his wealth was in bank-notes, or in bright and big Maria Theresa dollars, he was free to go whithersoever he chose.

Still, it was vexing to think that if he killed that viper of a Vranic, as he was in duty bound to do, he would have to flee from his native town, and escape to the mountains, at least till affairs were settled. It was a pity, for now the insurance society would make a rich man of him, so he might have remained comfortably smoking his pipe at home, and enjoying the fruits of many years' hard labour.

A quarter-past nine!

He began to wonder whether Milena--not seeing him come to fetch her --would return home. Surely more than one young man would offer to see her to her house. This thought made him gnash his teeth with rage.

When once the venom of jealousy has found its way within the heart of man, it rankles there, and, little by little, poisons his whole blood.

And again he thought: "That affair of Uros and Milenko has never been quite clear; Vranic was false, there was no doubt about it; still, it was not he who had invented the whole story. Had he not been the laughing-stock of all his friends?"

Half-past nine!

How very slowly the hours pa.s.sed! If he could only do something to while away the time--pace up and down the room, as he used to do on board, and smoke a cigarette; but that was out of the question.