Part 5 (1/2)
Grandmother was staring before her, with the ecstatic smile of madness.
Oh! I was so frightened that even now my mind wanders at the remembrance.
This smile of madness is so contagious! Slowly nodding with her gray head, she again fell all in a heap. It was apparent that some time must elapse before this recollection, once risen in her mind, could settle to rest again. After what seemed to us hours she slowly raised herself again and continued her tragic narrative.
”He was already the fourth dweller in this house of temptations.
”After his death his brother Kalman came to join our circle. To the end he remained single; very early in life he was deceived, and from that moment became a hater of mankind.
”His gloom grew year by year more incurable; he avoided every distraction, every gathering; his favorite haunt was this garden--this place here. He planted the beautiful juniper-trees before the door; such trees were in those days great rarities.
”He made no attempt to conceal from us--in fact, he often declared openly to us that his end could be none other than his brothers' had been.
”The pistol, with which akos had shot himself, he kept by him as a souvenir, and in sad jest declared it was his inheritance.
”Here he would wander for hours together in reverie, in melancholy, until the falling snow confined him to his room. He detested the winter greatly. When the first snowflake fell, his ill-humor turned to the agony of despair; he loathed the atmosphere of his rooms and everything to be found within the four walls. We so strongly advised him to winter in Italy, that he finally gave in to the proposal. We carefully packed his trunks; ordered his post-chaise. One morning, as everything stood ready for departure, he said that, before going for this long journey, he would once again take leave of his brothers. In his travelling-suit he came down here to the vault, and closed the iron door after him, enjoining that no one should disturb him. So we waited behind; and, as hour after hour pa.s.sed by and still he did not appear, we went after him. We forced open the closed door, and there found him lying in the middle of the tomb--he had gone to the country where there is no more winter.
”He had shot himself in the heart, with the same pistol as his brother, as he had foretold.
”Only two male members of the family remained: my son and the son of akos. Lorincz--that was the name of akos' son--was reared too kindly by his poor, good mother; she loved him excessively, and thereby spoiled him. The boy became very fastidious and sensitive. He was eleven years old when his mother noticed that she could not command his obedience.
Once the child played some prank, a mere trifle; how can a child of eleven years commit any great offence? His mother thought she must rebuke him. The boy laughed at the rebuke; he could not believe his mother was angry; then, in consequence, his mother boxed his ears. The boy left the room; behind the garden there was a fishpond; in that he drowned himself.
”Well, is it necessary to take one's life for such a thing? For one blow, given by the soft hand of a mother to a little child, to take such a terrible revenge! to cut the thread of life, which as yet he knew not; How many children are struck by a mother, and the next day received into her bosom, with mutual forgiveness and a renewal of reciprocal love?
Why, a blow from a mother is merely one proof of a mother's love. But it brought him to take his life.”
The cold perspiration stood out in beads all over me.
That bitterness I, too, feel in myself. I also am a child, just as old as that other was; I have never yet been beaten. Once my parents were compelled to rebuke me for wanton petulance; and from head to foot I was pervaded through and through by one raving idea: ”If they beat me I should take my own life.” So I am also infected with the hereditary disease--the awful spirit is holding out his hand over me; captured, accursed, he is taking me with him. I am betrayed to him! Only instead of thras.h.i.+ng me, they had punished me with fasting fare; otherwise, I also should already be in this house.
Grandmother clasped her hands across her knees and continued her story.
”Your father was older at the time of this event--seventeen years of age. Ever since his birth the world has been rife with discord and revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where death with a scythe in both hands was cutting down the ranks of the armed warriors; thither, where the children of weeping mothers were being trampled on by horses'
hoofs; thither, thither, where they were casting into a common grave the mangled remains of darling first-borns; only not hither, not into this awful house, into these horrible ranks of tempting spectres! Yes, I rejoiced when I knew that he was standing before the foe's cannons; and when the news of one great conflict after another spread like a dark cloud over the country, with sorrowful tranquillity, I lay in wait for the lightning-stroke which, bursting from the cloud, should dart into my heart with the news: 'Thy son is dead! They have slain him, as a hero is slain!' But it was not so. The wars ceased. My son returned.
”No, it is not true; don't believe what I said,--'If only the news of his death had come instead!'
”No; surely I rejoiced, surely I wept in my joy and happiness, when I could clasp him anew in my arms, and I blessed G.o.d for not having taken him away. Yet, why did I rejoice? Why did I triumph before the world, saying, 'See, what a fine, handsome son I have! a dauntless warrior, fame and honor he has brought home with him. My pride--my gladness? Now they lie here! What did I gain with him--he, too, followed the rest! He, too! he, whom I loved best of all--he whose every Paradise was here on earth!”
My brother wept; I s.h.i.+vered with cold.
Then suddenly, like a lunatic, grandmother seized our hands, and leaped up from her sitting-place.
”Look yonder! there is still _one_ empty niche--room for _one_ coffin.
Look well at that place; then go forth into the world and think upon what the mouth of this dark hollow said.
”I had thought of making you swear here never to forsake G.o.d, never to continue the misfortunes of this family; but why this oath? That some one should take with him to the other world one sin more, in that in the hour of his death he forswore himself? What oath would bind him who says: 'The mercy of G.o.d I desire not'?
”But instead, I brought you here and related you the history of your family. Later you shall know still more therefrom, that is yet secret and obscure before you. Now look once more around you, and then--let us go out.