Kitabı oku: «The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life», sayfa 24

"I won't call! I won't make a noise!" said Mr. Catspaw, while an ashy paleness spread over his features. "I know you are the last man to hurt me, good Mr. Viola! Do you come for money? I am a poor man, but you are welcome to all I have. No thanks! I am happy to oblige you!"

"I am the last man to hurt you!" said the robber, giving the attorney a look which made his blood creep. "Am I indeed? Don't you think bygones are bygones with me! Not your agony, not all the blood in your veins, can pay me for what you've done to me and mine!"

"You are mistaken, my dear sir; indeed you are – ;" the attorney cast a despairing look around him; "I am not – "

"Who?" said Viola, sternly. "Who was it made me a robber? Who was it that drove me forth, like a beast of the forest, while my wife and children were cast as beggars on the world? Say it was not you! Say it was not you who wrote my doom! Say it was not you who would have drunk my blood! Say it is not you who are my curse and my enemy! – "

"I'll give you my all, – I'll give you all I have! I've a couple of hundreds of Mr. Rety's money too, and you are welcome to them, though I shall have to refund them, and – "

"I don't want your money!" said Viola, scornfully. "I want the papers you stole from the notary."

"The papers?" said the attorney, with a look of profound astonishment; "what papers does it please you to mean, my dear Mr. Viola?"

"I mean the papers which you took away when they bound me. If you don't give them up this minute, you'll never rise from this bed."

The robber's tone showed Mr. Catspaw that it was dangerous to trifle with him. He replied, —

"Yes, I had them! You are right, I took them from you; but I lament to say I was rash enough to burn them on the spot. That's the truth of it. I would not tell you a lie, no! not for the world; for you know all and everything."

"If so, tell your lies to others. I know that you keep the papers in this room, and that you've offered them to Lady Rety for fifty thousand florins."

"Who can have told you that?" cried Mr. Catspaw, as a suspicion flashed through his mind that Viola might possibly be hired by Lady Rety; "who? who?"

"Never you mind who it was?" said Viola, dryly; "if you think your life of less value than fifty thousand florins, I'll show you in an instant how little I care for it."

"But do tell me!" cried the attorney, "do tell me who told you that the papers are in my room? – who has sent you?"

"Silence!" and the robber flung his bunda back; "get up! give me the papers, unless – "

Mr. Catspaw rose and walked to his desk. Viola stood quietly by, watching him.

The attorney's hands trembled as he produced the papers. They were in two bundles, and among them were some letters of Tengelyi's, which the Jew had abstracted with the rest.

"Here they are!" said Mr. Catspaw, with a hoarse voice; "you know their value. Ask whatever you please – "

"I don't want your money, keep it!" said the robber, advancing to seize the packet; when the attorney recollected that he kept a loaded pistol in the desk.

Yielding to an impulse of mad despair, he seized it and presented it at Viola.

The robber's eyes shot fire as he saw the weapon. He made a rush; the attorney fell, and the pistol was in Viola's hands.

That movement sealed Mr. Catspaw's doom. Viola was not cruel. He had an instinctive aversion to the shedding of blood. If Mr. Catspaw had given up the papers without resistance, he would have been safe; but the treachery of the action and the struggle inflamed the robber's wilder passions.

"Pity!" screamed Mr. Catspaw, as Viola seized him by the throat.

"Did you pity me when Susi begged for grace, when you wrote my death-warrant?"

The attorney's face grew black, his eyes started from his head; but his despair gave him strength. When he saw the robber's knife descending, he caught it in his hands.

There was a noise in the house. Steps were heard. The attorney's cries had roused the servants.

Viola made a violent movement. Again, and again, and again was the broad steel buried in the breast of his victim. Then, seizing the papers with his bloody hands, he rushed from the room and reached the yard, where he was met by the coachman and another servant. They pursued him.

He crossed the meadow, and disappeared in the thicket which covers the banks of the Theiss.

When the domestics entered the attorney's room they found him dying. There were no traces of a robbery. The wretched man's watch and purse lay on the bed.

"Robbers! Murderers!" cried the cook, who was the first to enter. "Follow him!"

"Send for the doctor!"

"No, send for the curate!"

All was noise and confusion. Two of the men raised the attorney and laid him on the bed.

"Follow him!" gasped Mr. Catspaw, "Follow! My papers!"

"What papers?" said the cook.

"Tengelyi – " groaned the dying man.

His lips moved, but his voice was lost in a hoarse rattle.

"I've caught him!" cried a haiduk from the corridor, as he dragged Jantshi, the Jewish glazier, into the room.

"That's the rascal!" said the haiduk. "That's him. He was hid in the chimney!"

"Oh, the villain!" cried the cook, pushing the reluctant Jew to Mr. Catspaw's bed. "I say, your worship, that's the man!"

The attorney shook his head. His lips moved, but no sound was heard.

"But, sir, I'm sure it's he!" said the cook. "Give us a nod, sir!"

Again Mr. Catspaw shook his head. He seized the cook by the hand; he would have spoken, but it was in vain. With a convulsive motion of his body he stared round, and, falling back, breathed his last.

"I'd like to know what he meant?" said the cook, when they had bound the prisoner and locked him up in the cellar; "when I showed him the Jew, he shook his head."

"His last word," cried Mrs. Kata Cizmeasz, the female cook of the servant's hall, wiping her eyes, less from sorrow for Mr. Catspaw's death, than because she thought it was proper that women should weep on such occasions; "his last word was Tengelyi."

"Hold your silly tongue!" said the cook, with dignity; "it's blasphemous to say such a thing of Mr. Tengelyi!"

"Really," reiterated Mrs. Kata Cizmeasz, "it struck me that he said 'Tengelyi;' and when he could not speak, poor dear, he moved his lips, for all the world, as if to say 'Tengelyi' over again. When my poor husband, God rest his soul! was dying of the dropsy, he didn't speak by the day; but I looked at his mouth, and understood what he meant to say. 'Go away! Come here! Give me some water!' Any thing he'd like. I knew it all!" And she wiped her eyes.

"Bless that woman!" said the cook, appealing to the crowd of servants, "She'll be after accusing the notary of the murder. Did I ever!"

"Bless yourself!" retorted Mrs. Kata; "all I say is, that the attorney said 'Tengelyi' when we asked him who had done it? He said it with a clear voice. I heard it quite distinctly, and I'll take my oath on it!"

"Never mind! Who knows what he meant?"

"I am sure I don't; all I say is, that the attorney – "

"Very well; leave it to the judge. Depend upon it, he'll come to know the truth of it, and you'll see that I'm in the right in saying as I do, that the Jew is the murderer," said the cook, angrily; and, turning to the two servants, he added, "Lock the door, and send for the judge! Hands off! is the word in a place where a robbery or a murder has been committed."

CHAP. XIII

After Mr. Catspaw had left the notary's house on that fatal night, Tengelyi's family, including Akosh and Vandory, settled peacefully down in Mrs. Ershebet's room, while the notary himself was engaged in writing letters. He was determined to recover his rights; and, thinking that some of his father's old friends might possibly assist him in establishing his title, he was about to appeal to them to support him in his present extremity.

While thus employed, his attention was roused by a slight knock at the window. He got up, opened it, and looked out; but as nothing was visible in the darkness, he was just about to return to his work, when a letter was flung into the room. The notary was astonished; but his astonishment increased when, after unfolding the crumpled-up and soiled despatch, he read the following lines: —

"I am a man who owes you a large debt of gratitude. I am accused of having stolen papers from your house, but this is a base and false accusation. The Jew, whom the sheriff's attorney bribed, was the thief. I took them from the Jew; however, the story is too long to tell. Meet me at the lime-tree, just by the ferry, at eleven o'clock; but not earlier. If it cost my life, I will put the papers in your hands before midnight!

"I entreat you, in the name of God, to come, and fear no harm! You have taken my wife and children under your roof, and I would give my life to serve you or any of your family. If you do not come, I know not what to do with the papers: I dare not enter the village; I must cross the Theiss this very night. Let me implore you to keep the meeting secret, and come alone. The county has set a price on my head; and if they get the least hint of my whereabouts, I am a dead man. I am in your hands.

"Viola."

The perusal of these lines was no easy task to the notary. "What shall I do?" said he. "If I do not follow the robber's advice, the papers will most probably be irrecoverably lost. If Viola leaves the county, he will take good care not to come back again; and he will destroy them if it be only in order that they should not be proofs against him. On the other hand, if it should be found out that I, a member of the law, and an honest man, had clandestine meetings with a robber, without delivering him up to justice, what a dreadful light it would place me in!" Spiteful things had already been said by his enemies, because he had taken Viola's wife and children into his house. Another man would most likely have thought it his duty and interest to go to the appointed place, though not alone, to arrest Viola, and thus at once to obtain his papers: but this proceeding would not accord with Tengelyi's disposition; he was incapable of such an act, whatever might have been its advantages.

Yet there were but those two alternatives. What to do he knew not. He paced the room, agitated by mingled feelings of duty and patriotism.

First he would yield to the robber's request; then, again, he would not. Thus he continued resolving and wavering, till Mrs. Ershebet called him to supper.

The notary's absence and confusion during supper astonished and perplexed his family.

He burnt the letter after deciphering its contents, lest it should fall into other hands.

After supper was over, Vandory and Akosh took their leave. Mr. Tengelyi wished his wife and daughter good night; and, under the pretence of business, he hastened to his study. When alone, he gave himself up to a full contemplation of his situation. He resolved to see the robber. "Inform against Viola? No, no; such a mean unmanly act I would not be guilty of! And how could I be so unjust to my wife and children as not to embrace this opportunity of establishing my rights? If he has my papers, so much the better! if not, then at least I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have neglected nothing to regain my property. It is not likely that this meeting should ever be known. What have I to fear if my conscience is unsullied?"

The clock was on the stroke of eleven, when the notary crept from his house into the garden. When he gained the open field adjoining the house, he struck off to the left, and in a few minutes he reached the path leading to the Theiss. It was a thorough November night. Not a star or even a drifting cloud could be seen; and so dark was it, that it required all the notary's care and knowledge of the way to carry him on without accident. The village was hushed in sleep, and he reached the spot without meeting any one.

In summer this place was one of the prettiest anywhere about. The lime-tree was of gigantic growth, and its wide-spreading branches afforded a delicious shade. The grass around it was of the freshest and purest green, and when other grass-plots were scorched up by the July sun, this place seemed to be fresher and greener than ever. Three sides of the meadow were hedged in and surrounded with bushes; on the unfenced side stood a few old trunks of trees, dropping their bare branches into the yellow Theiss, that washed their withered roots.

Mr. Tengelyi had spent many an hour under that tree with his friend, who, on such occasions, would exclaim that no spot was so charming as the banks of the Theiss; and that if the Turk's Hill were not there, the lime-tree alone would make Tissaret a beautiful place to live in.

Now this spot looks mournful and forsaken. The beautiful green plot is covered with sere and yellow leaves, and the night winds howl through the unclad branches of the noble linden; while the swelling waves of the Theiss lash its sombre banks.

The notary, wrapped in his bunda, walked dejectedly up and down; at times he stood still and listened. On a sudden he heard a rustling in the bush, but seeing no one near, he thought it a delusion, and continued walking, but now and then turning to look at the ferryman's hut, which was about two hundred yards distant, and in the kitchen of which a large fire sent its glaring and flickering shadows dancing on the black landscape.

It was half-past eleven, and yet Viola came not. Could he have changed his mind, or had any thing happened to prevent him? Perhaps he was scared by the hue and cry which had been raised after him.

Suddenly a cry of murder rang through the air. It came nearer.

"Good God!" cried the notary; "can it be that Viola is taken?" And to escape being seen in this questionable place, and at such a time, too, he hastened back to the village.

A few minutes after the notary's departure, Viola broke through the hedge. A parcel of papers was in his hand. One moment he stood still – one moment he cast an anxious and half-desponding look around him. But the man whom he sought was not there. The avenger of blood was at his heels. He leapt down the bank, stepped into a boat which lay hid among the willows; and the lusty strokes of his oars were drowned in the shouts of his pursuers.

"Here he is! That's the place he went in! At him, boys!" cried they, as they rushed into the open space. But here they were at fault. They had lost the track of him they were pursuing. Their clamours roused the old ferryman in his hut. Ferko, the coachman, who led the crowd of servants and peasants from the house, approached, and the ferryman, coming up, asked what was the matter, and whether some one had stolen a horse.

"No, no!" cried the coachman. "Our attorney has been killed, and we have pursued the murderer to this spot. We saw him a minute ago. He's hid in the bush, here; help us to find him. He must be here!"

"The Lord have mercy on us! What, the attorney killed! Well, after all there's not much harm done. But you are far out if you think to find him here. He is in the village by this time! A few minutes before we heard the row here, a man walked very fast by our house to the village. You heard the footsteps, Andresh, didn't you?"

"That's him! that's him! Quick! Go after him!" shouted the coachman; and, without waiting to hear the young man's reply, he darted off precisely in the same direction which the notary had taken on his way home.

"He is not here! He has made for the village, it's plain enough!" said the ferryman, as he with difficulty hobbled after the party.

As the hounds follow the scent, so the coachman and his companions followed the foot-marks. "What's this?" exclaimed Ferko, stooping to pick up a stick which lay on the ground. "It's a stick; a gentleman's walking-stick, too. It's a tshakany²⁸; no doubt the robber has stolen it somewhere!"

They traced the foot-marks up to the hedge of the notary's garden. The coachman walked round it.

"The devil take it!" cried he; "the foot-marks end here."

The others snatched the lantern from his hand, and eagerly looked for a continuation of the foot-marks.

It was no use; the track which had continued up to that point was lost. They were again at fault.

"Surely the earth can't have swallowed him!" said the ferryman.

"Perhaps he's hid on the other side of the hedge," said the coachman: "stay here; I'll jump over and see."

"No, no! don't do that!" cried the ferryman, pulling Ferko back; "that's the way to get a knock on the head. What does it matter to us if the attorney is killed? For my part, I wished him to the devil last summer; he won't come down upon me now for a hundred and fifty florins a year!"

But the coachman, though not stimulated to follow Viola from any love to Catspaw, paid no attention to this advice, and bounded over the fence.

He returned soon afterwards, declaring that all trace of the robber was lost; and they were just about to return home, when the ferryman's son came running to inform them that he had discovered some fresh foot-marks on the garden path. They all ran to the garden gate, which was open, and found the continuation of the foot-marks which they had so suddenly and mysteriously lost. They were distinctly traced up to the very door of the house.

"He is in the notary's house, or perhaps he is in the shed," said Ferko, in the tone of a man who, when he has came to a certain point, will hazard all. "Let us enter."

"What!" said the ferryman, seizing him by the coat; "you don't think of looking in Mr. Tengelyi's house for a murderer, do you?"

"And why not?" retorted Ferko.

"Don't you know it would not be the first time robbers have been in this house? It's here young Mr. Akosh was shot at!"

"But you forget," answered the ferryman, "that this house is a nobleman's!"

"What do we care for that? We are in search of Viola. Moreover, did we not ransack the house with the justice at our head?"

"That's different," said the ferryman; "they were gentlemen, – we are not. They would kick us out of doors."

"Well, we'll see about that. I am Lady Rety's coachman, and have the honour of wearing her livery. I should like to see the notary kick me!"

And Ferko tore himself from the grasp of the ferryman, and rushed into the house, accompanied by the men who came from the Castle.

The old man remained outside, heartily praying that the servants of the place would seize Ferko and his companions, and give them a thorough whipping.

However bold the coachman might have felt in entering the house, he was penitent and abashed when Mr. Tengelyi, who had only just come in, and had not had time to throw off his bunda, stepped out of his room, and said, in a commanding voice, "What do you want here?"

For a moment they stood speechless; but when, gradually regaining confidence, Ferko told the notary that Mr. Catspaw had been murdered, and that they had traced the robber's footsteps up to his door, Mr. Tengelyi became much distressed. He thought of Viola's letter, and could not doubt for a moment that the outlaw had perpetrated this dreadful act to gain possession of the papers. Perhaps he was, though unconsciously, the cause of the murder. This thought made the notary shudder. The coachman and his companions remarked the effect their news produced upon him, and looked amazed at each other, while Tengelyi stood motionless, with the candle trembling in his hand. By degrees he regained his self-possession, and began to inquire how the murder was committed? when? and where?

"We followed the robber to the banks of the Theiss, where we suddenly lost him," said the coachman, casting occasional glances at the notary's boots, which were covered with mud, and at his companions; "from there we have traced his footsteps to your house."

"I beg your pardon," said the ferryman, stepping forward; "we have found foot-marks leading to this place, it is true; but whether they are the robber's marks or not, I cannot say. And you know I said we ought not to enter this house, that it was a nobleman's curia, but – "

"You are mad!" said the notary, with indignation. "If you think a murderer is secreted in my house, search, and leave no corner unexamined!"

The inmates became alarmed by the noise; and Ershebet and Vilma got up and hastily dressed themselves; while the notary, with a lantern in his hand, led the way into every room and nook of his house, until they were convinced that the robber was not there.

"Did you see," said Ferko to the ferryman, holding him back; "did you see how he trembled when I mentioned the murder of the attorney?"

"Of course I did. Do you think I am blind?"

"And his boots too were up to the ankles in mud," continued Ferko.

"That's no wonder, in such weather as this," answered the ferryman; "ours are nearly up to the knees in mud."

"By God! If I had not known him these ten years, I would – "

"You don't mean to say that you suspect the notary of the murder of Catspaw, do you?" demanded the ferryman, with warmth.

"If nobody else had been in the house, upon my soul I'd believe it!"

"You are a fool, Ferko!" exclaimed the old man, turning round in the direction of the Castle, whither all the others repaired in silence.

During the search Mr. Tengelyi had been summoned in great haste to the Castle.