Part 37 (1/2)
”Why prosecute my son?” said mother, tremblingly. ”Is it possible to eternally ruin anyone for a mere schoolboy escapade?”
”Not one but many 'schoolboy escapades' justify me in my action: it is not merely in my official capacity that I am bound to prosecute him.”
As he said this, Balnokhazy fixed his eyes sharply upon me: I did not wince before him. I knew I had the right and the power to withstand his gaze. Soon my turn would come.
”What?” asked mother. ”What reason could you have to prosecute him?”
Balnokhazy shrugged his shoulders more than ever, bitterly smiling.
”I scarcely know, in truth, how to tell you this story, if you don't know already. I thought you were acquainted with all the facts. He who told you the news of the young man's disappearance, wrote to you also the reasons for it.”
”Yes,” said mother, ”I know all. The misfortune is great: but there is no ignominy.”
”Indeed?” interrupted Balnokhazy, drawing his shoulders derisively together: ”I did not know that such conduct was not considered ignominious in the provinces. Indeed I did not. A young man, a law student, a mere stripling, shows his grat.i.tude for the fatherly thoughtfulness of a man of position,--who had received him into his house as a kinsman, treating him as one of the family,--by seducing and eloping with his wife, and helping her to break open his money-chest, and steal his jewelry, disappearing with the shameless woman beyond the confines of the country. Oh, really, I did not know that they did not consider that a crime deserving of prosecution!”
Poor mother was shattered at this double accusation, as if she had been twice struck by thunder-bolts, and deadly pale clutched at grandmother's hand. The latter had herself in this moment grown as white as her grizzled hair. She took up the conversation in mother's place, for mother was no longer capable of speaking.
”What do you say? Lorand a seducer of women?”
”To my sorrow, he is. He has eloped with my wife.”
”And thief?”
”A harsh word, but I can give him no other name.”
”For G.o.d's sake, gently, sir!”
”Well, you can see that hitherto I have behaved very quietly. I have not even made a noise about my loss: yet, besides the destruction of my honor, I have other losses.
”This faithless deed has robbed me and my daughter of 5,000 florins.[53]
If the matter only touched me, I would disdain to notice it: but that sum was the savings of my little daughter.”
[Footnote 53: Above 415--$2,000.]
”Sir, that sum shall be repaid you,” said grandmother, ”but I beg you not to say another word on the subject before this lady. You can see you are killing her with it.”
As she was speaking, Balnokhazy gazed intently at me, and in his gaze were many questions, all of which I could very well have answered.
”I am surprised,” he said at last, ”that these revelations are entirely new to you. I thought that the same person who had acquainted you with Lorand's disappearance, had unfolded to you therewith all those critical circ.u.mstances, which caused his disappearance, seeing that I related all myself to that person.”
Now mother and grandmother too turned their gaze upon me.
Grandmother addressed me: ”You did not write a word about all this to us.”
”No.”
”Nor did you mention a word about it here when we arrived.”
”Yet I told it all myself to my nephew.”