Part 74 (1/2)

While the others were engaged with their own happiness, the old lady took Lorand's hand and, without a word of ”whither,” they went down together to the garden, to the stream flowing beside the garden: to the melancholy house built on the bank of the stream.

Ten years had pa.s.sed and the creeper had again crawled over the crypt door: the green leaves covered the motto. The two juniper trees had bowed their green branches together over the cupola.

They stayed there, her head leaning on his bosom.

How much they must have said to one another, tacitly, without a single word! How they must have understood each other's unspoken thoughts!

Deep silence reigned around: but within, inside the closed, rusted, creeper-covered door, it seemed as if someone beckoned with invisible finger, saying to the elder boy, ”one great debt is not yet paid.”

One hour later they returned to the house, where they were welcomed by boisterous voices of noisy gladness--master and servant were all merry and rejoicing.

”I must hasten on my way,” said Lorand to his mother.

”Whither?”

”Back to Lankadomb.”

”You will bring me a new joy.”

”Yes, a new joy for you, mother,--and for you, too,” he said pressing his grandmother's hand.

She understood what that handclasp meant.

The murderer lived still.--The account was not yet balanced! Lorand kissed his happy relations. The old lady accompanied him to the carriage, where she kissed his forehead.

”Go.”

And in that kiss there was the weight of a blessing that urged him to his difficult duty.

”Go--and wreak vengeance.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAD JEST

Let us leave the happy ones to rejoice.

Let us follow that other youth, in whom all that sweet strength for action, which might have brought a mutually-loving heart into the ecstasy of happiness, had changed into a bitter pa.s.sion, capable of driving a mutually-hating soul to destruction.

It was evening when he reached Lankadomb.

Topandy was already very impatient. Czipra informed him she would not give Lorand even time to rest himself, but took him at once with her to the laboratory, where they had been wont to be together, to study alone the mysteries of mankind and nature.

The old fellow seemed to be in an extraordinarily good humor, which in his case was generally a sign of excitement.

”Well, my dear boy,” he said, ”I have succeeded in getting myself tangled up in a mess. I will explain it to you. I have always desired to make the acquaintance of the county prison by reason of some meritorious stupidity; so finally I have committed something which will aid my purpose.”

”Indeed?”