Part 71 (2/2)

”Sir, you are a Christian, who believes in G.o.d, and in those who are saints: tell me, is there any torture of h.e.l.l that could be punishment enough for so ruining a youth?”

Sarvolgyi tremblingly strove to raise himself on his quivering hand. He thought his last hour had come.

”There is none!” answered Desiderius to himself. ”This fellow kept his hatred till the last day, and when the final anniversary came, he actually sought out his victim to remind him of his awful obligation.

Oh, sir, perhaps you do not know what a terrible fatality there is in this respect in our family? So died grandfather, so it was that our dearly loved father left us; so good, so n.o.ble-hearted, but who in a bitter moment, amidst the happiness of his family turned his hand against his own life. At night we stealthily took him out to burial.

Without prayer, without blessing, we put him down into the crypt, where he filled the seventh place; and that night my grandmother, raving, cursed him who should occupy the eighth place in the row of blood-victims.”

Sarvolgyi's face became convulsed like that of a galvanized corpse.

Desiderius thought deep sympathy had so affected the righteous man and continued all the more pa.s.sionately:

”That fellow, who knew it well, and who was acquainted with our family's unfortunate ill-luck, in cold blood led his friend to the eighth coffin, to the cursed coffin--with the words 'Lie down there in it!'”

Sarvolgyi's lips trembled as if he would cry ”pity: say nothing more!”

”He went with him down to the gate of death, opened the dark door before him, and asked him banteringly 'is the pistol loaded?' and when Lorand took his place amid the revellers: bade him fulfil his obligation--the perjured hound called him to his obligation!”

Sarvolgyi, all pale, rose at this awful scene:--for all the world as if Lorincz aronffy himself had come to relate the history of his own death to his murderer.

”Then I seized Lorand's arm with my one hand, and with the other held before the wretch's eyes the evidence of his cursed falseness. His evil conscience bade him fly. I reached him, seized his throat....”

Sarvolgyi in abject terror sank back in his chair, while Madame Balnokhazy, rus.h.i.+ng from the window, pa.s.sionately cried ”and killed him?”

Desiderius, gazing haughtily at her, answered calmly: ”No, I merely cast him out from the society of honorable men.”

To Lorand it was a savage pleasure to look at those three faces, as Desiderius spoke. The dumb pa.s.sion which inflamed Madame Balnokhazy's face, the convulsive terror on the features of the fatal adversary, strove with each other to fill his heart with a great delight.

And Melanie? What had she felt during this narration, which made such an ugly figure of the man to whom fate allotted her?

Lorand's eyes were intent upon her face too.

The young girl was not so transfixed by the subject of the tale as by the speaker. Desiderius in the heat of pa.s.sion, was twice as handsome as he was otherwise. His every feature was lighted with n.o.ble pa.s.sion. Who knows--perhaps the beautiful girl was thinking it would be no very pleasant future to be the bride of Gyali after such a scandal! Perhaps there returned to her memory some fragments of those fair days at Pressburg, when she and Desiderius had sighed so often side by side.

That boy had been very much in love with his beautiful cousin. He was more handsome and more spirited than his brother. Perhaps her thoughts were such. Who knows?

At any rate, it is certain that when Desiderius answered Madame's question with such calm contempt--”I cast him out, I did not kill him,”--on Melanie's face could be remarked a certain radiance, though not caused by delight that her fiance's life had been spared.

Lorand remarked it, and hastened to spoil the smile.

”Certainly you would have killed him, Desi, had not your good angel, your dear f.a.n.n.y, luckily for you, intervened, and grasped your arm, saying 'this hand is mine. You must not defile it.'”

The smile disappeared from Melanie's face.

”And now,” said Desiderius, addressing his remarks directly to Sarvolgyi; ”be my judge, sir. What had a man, who with such sly deception, with such cold mercilessness, desired to kill, to destroy, to induce a heart in which the same blood flows as in mine--to commit a crime against the living G.o.d, what, I ask, had such a man deserved from me? Have I not a right to drive that man from every place, where he dares to appear in the light of the sun, until I compel him to walk abroad at night when men do not see him, among strangers who do not know him;--to destroy him morally with just as little mercy as he displayed towards Lorand?--Would that be a crime?”

”Great Heavens! Something has happened to Mr. Sarvolgyi,” cried Madame Balnokhazy suddenly.

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