St. Peter's Umbrella Part 23

"This way, this way, my dear young lady. That is our house over there.

Only a few more steps, my dear madame. Oh, the dog won't bite you. Go away, Garam! We shall be there directly. You will see what a good bed I will give you to sleep in to-night; such pillows, the softest you can imagine!"

It made no difference to her that Madame Krisbay did not understand a word of what she was saying. Many women talk for the sake of talking.

Why should they not? They are probably afraid a spider might spin its web before their mouth.

"It hurts you, does it not? But it will hurt still more to-morrow; that is always the way with a bruise of that kind. Why, you will feel it in two weeks' time."

Then, casting a sly glance at the pair walking in front:

"They make a handsome couple, don't they?"

It was not far to the Mravucsans' house, and it would have been nearer still if there had not been an immense pool of water just in front of the Town Hall, to avoid which they had to go a good bit out of their way. But this pool was a necessity, for all the geese and ducks in the village swam on it, the pigs came and wallowed in the mud round it, and last, but not least, the firemen took their water from here in case of fire. Oh, I forgot to say that all the frogs from the whole neighborhood had taken up their abode in it, and gave splendid concerts to the villagers.

So, as I said before, they needed the pool and gladly put up with its presence, and it was considered common property. Once a civil engineer had been sent there by the county authorities, and he had called their attention to the fact that the pool ought to be filled up; but they just laughed at him, and left it as it was.

So now they had to go right round the pool to the "hotel," which strangers always named the "Frozen Sheep," in reference to the story I mentioned before. The gypsies were still playing inside, and outside several couples were turning in time to music, and some peasants were standing about drinking their gla.s.s of "palinka" (a kind of brandy), while a wagoner from Zolyom sat alone at a table drinking as hard as he could. He was already rather drunk, and was keeping up a lively conversation all by himself, gazing now and then with loving eyes at the lean horse harnessed to his cart, and which, with drooping head, was awaiting his master's pleasure to move on.

"My neighbor says," philosophized the wagoner aloud, "that my horse is not a horse. And why is it not a horse, pray? It was a horse in the time of Kossuth! What? It can't draw a load? Of course not, if the load is too heavy. It is thin, is it? Of course it is thin, for I don't give it any oats. Why don't I give it any? Why, because I have none, of course.

What's that you say? The other day it couldn't drag my cart? No, because the wheel was stuck in the mud. My neighbor is a great donkey, isn't he?"

Upon which, up he got, and stumbled over to the dancers, requesting them to give their opinion as to whether his neighbor was a donkey or not.

They got out of his way, so, like a mad dog, which sees and hears nothing, the wagoner rushed upon Madame Krisbay.

"Is mine a horse, or is it not?"

Madame was frightened, and the smell of brandy, which emanated from the good man, made her feel faint.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she murmured, "what a country I have come to!"

But Mrs. Mravucsan, gentle as she was generally, could also be energetic if necessary.

"I don't know if yours is a horse or not," she said, "but I can tell you you're a drunken beast!"

And with that she gave him a push which sent him rolling over on his back. He lay there murmuring:

"My neighbor says my horse is blind in one eye. Nonsense! He can see the road just as well with one eye as with two."

Then up he got, and began to follow them, and Madame Krisbay, leaving go of Mrs. Mravucsan's arm, and in her fright forgetting her wounded shoulder, took to her heels and ran. The dancers seeing her went into fits of laughter at the pair of thin legs she showed.

"How on earth can she run so fast with such thin legs?" they asked each other.

Still more surprised were Veronica and Gyuri (who had seen nothing of the incident with the wagoner); they could not imagine why the sick woman was running at the top of her speed.

"Madame! madame! What is the matter?"

She gave no answer, only rushed to the Mravucsans' house, where she again had a fright at the sight of three enormous watch-dogs, who received her with furious barks. She would have fallen in a faint on the floor, but at that moment Mravucsan appeared on the scene to receive his guests, so she fell into his arms instead. The good mayor just held her quietly, with astonished looks, for he had never yet seen a fainting woman, though he had heard they ought to be sprinkled with water, but how was he to go for water? Then he remembered he had heard that pinching was a good remedy, that it would, in fact, wake a dead woman; but in order to pinch a person, she must have some flesh, and Madame Krisbay had nothing but bones. So he waited with Christian patience till the others arrived on the scene, and then gave her up to their tender mercies.

"Phew!" he breathed, "what a relief!"

Intellectual Society in Babaszek

PART IV

CHAPTER I.

THE SUPPER AT THE MRAVUCSaNS'

I am not fond of drawing things out to too great a length, so will only give a short description of the Mravucsans' supper, which was really excellent, and if any one were discontented, it could only have been Madame Krisbay, who burned her mouth severely when eating of the first dish, which was lamb with paprika.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "something is p.r.i.c.king my throat!"

But the pudding she found still less to her taste (a plain paste rolled out very thin, and cut into squares, boiled and served up with curds and whey, and small squares of fried bacon).

"_Mon Dieu!_" she said, "it looks like small bits of wet linen!"

Poor Mrs. Mravucsan was inconsolable at her guest's want of appet.i.te.

"It is such a disgrace for me," she said.

Then it occurred to her to offer her some of her preserved fruit, and to this madame seemed to take a fancy, for she finished up the dish, and in proportion as her hunger was appeased, her liking for her surroundings increased.

She had the Lutheran clergyman, Samuel Rafanidesz, on her right, and the schoolmaster, Teofil Klempa, on her left, and to them was deputed the task of entertaining the unfortunate foreigner. Their invitations had been put in this form:

"You _must_ come, for there is to be a German lady at supper, whom you are to entertain."

And they did all they could to prove to the rest of the company how much at ease they were in good German society.

Madame Krisbay seemed very contented with her neighbors, especially when she discovered that the Rev. Samuel Rafanidesz was a bachelor. What! did clergymen marry there? (Perhaps, after all, she had not come to such a bad country!)

The schoolmaster was a much handsomer man, but he was older, and was, besides, married. He had an intelligent face, and a long, flowing black beard; he had, too, a certain amount of wit, which he dealt out in small portions. Madame Krisbay smiled at his sallies. Poor woman! She would have liked to have laughed at them, but did not dare to, for her throat was still burning from the effects of that horrid paprika. Now and then her face (which was otherwise like yellow wax) got quite red from the efforts she made to keep from coughing, which, besides being the forerunner of old age, she also considered very demeaning.

"Don't mind us, my dear," called out the mayor's wife, "cough away as much as you like. A cough and poverty cannot be hidden."

Madame began to feel more and more at home, for, as it turned out, the clergyman had been at school at Munich, and could tell a lot of anecdotes of his life there, in the Munich dialect, much to madame's delight. The Rev. Samuel Rafanidesz did not belong to the stiff, unpleasant order of clergymen, and there was a Slovak sentence composed by Teofil Klempa, often repeated by the good people of Babaszek, which bore reference to him, and which, if read backward, gave his name: "Szedi na fare, Rafanidesz" ("Stay in your parish, Rafanidesz".) But he never took this advice, and had already been sent away from one living (somewhere in Nograd) because of an entanglement with some lady in the parish. Mrs. Mravucsan knew the whole story, and even the lady, a certain Mrs. Baho. She must have been a silly woman, for it was she herself who let the cat out of the bag, to her own husband too; and she was not a beauty either, as we can see from Mrs. Mravucsan's words:

"Rafanidesz was a fool. You should never ask a kiss from an ugly woman, nor a loan from a poor man, for they immediately go and boast of it."

Thus Mrs. Mravucsan. It is true she added:

"But if any one were to call me as a witness, I should deny the whole thing."

So you see, I can't stand good for the truth of it either. But that is neither here nor there.