Part 24 (2/2)
Old Jova reached them in a state of exhaustion, and Gryllus also seemed ready to drop.
”Go no further, sir!” cried the terrified servant, ”I have come all the way without stopping from Szamosujvar where the Prince is staying. I laid your request before him. 'For G.o.d's sake!' cried the Prince, clasping his hands together, 'don't let your master come here, or he'll ruin the whole lot of us. Olaj Beg has just come hither with the Sultan's command that if the Prince of Moldavia comes here he is to be handed over.'”
The Prince gazed gloomily in front of him, his lips trembled. Then he turned his face round and shading his eyes with his hand, gazed away into the distance. On the same road by which he had come a cloud of dust could be seen rapidly approaching.
”Those are our pursuers,” he moaned despairingly; ”there is nothing for it but to die.”
”Nay, my master. Over yonder is a mountain path which can only be traversed on foot. With worthy Szeklers or Wallachs as our guides we may get all the way to Poland through the mountains. Why not take refuge there?”
”And my wife?” asked the Prince, looking round savagely and biting his lips in his distress; ”she cannot accompany me.”
All this time Mariska had remained, benumbed and speechless, gazing at her husband--her heart, her mind, stood still at these terrible tidings; but when she heard that her husband could be saved without her, she plunged out of the carriage and falling at his feet implored him, sobbing loudly, to fly.
”Save yourself,” she cried; ”do not linger here on my account another instant.”
”And sacrifice you, my consort, to their fury?”
”They will not hurt me, for they do not pursue an innocent woman. G.o.d will defend me. You go into Transylvania; there live good friends of mine, whose husbands and fathers are the leading men in the State; there is the heroic Princess, there is the gentle Beldi with her angel daughter, there is Teleki's daughter Flora--we swore eternal friends.h.i.+p together once--they will mediate for us; and then, too, my rich father will gladly spend his money to spare our blood. And if I must suffer and even die, it will be for you, my husband. Save yourself! In Heaven's name I implore you to depart from me.”
Ghyka reflected for a moment.
”Very well, I will take refuge in order to be able to save you.”
And he pressed the pale face of his wife to his bosom.
”Make haste,” said Mariska, ”I also want to hasten. If die I must--I would prefer to die among Christians, in the sight of my friends and acquaintances. But you go on in front, for if they were to slay you before my eyes, it would need no sword to slay me; my heart would break from sheer despair.”
”Come, sir, come!” said the old courier, seizing the hand of the Prince and dragging him away by force.
Mariska got into the carriage again, and told the coachman to drive on quickly. The Prince allowed himself to be guided by the old courier along the narrow pa.s.s, looking back continually so long as the carriage was visible, and mournfully pausing whenever he caught sight of it again from the top of some mountain-ridge.
”Come on, sir! come on!” the old servant kept insisting; ”when we have reached that mountain summit yonder we shall be able to rest.”
Ghyka stumbled on as heavily as if the mountain was pressing on his bosom with all its weight. He allowed himself to be led unconsciously among the steep precipices, clinging on to projecting bushes as he went along. G.o.d guarded him from falling a hundred times.
After half an hour's hard labour they reached the indicated summit, and as the courier helped his master up and they looked around them, Nature's magnificent tableau stood before them; and looking down upon a vast panorama, they saw the tiny winding road by which his wife had gone; and, looking still farther on, he perceived that the carriage had just climbed to the summit of a declivity about half a league off.
Ah! that sight gave him back his soul. He followed with his eyes the travelling coach, and as often as the coach ascended a higher hill, it again appeared in sight, and it seemed to him as if all along he saw inside it his wife, and his face brightened as he fancied himself kissing away her tears.
At that instant a loud uproar smote upon his ears. At the foot of the steep mountain, on the summit of which his wife had just come into sight again, he saw a troop of hors.e.m.e.n trotting rapidly along. These were the pursuers. They seemed scarcely larger than ants.
Ah! how he would have liked to have trampled those ants to death.
”You would pursue her, eh? Then I will stop you.”
And with these words seizing a large grey rock from among those which were heaped upon the summit, he rolled it down the side of the mountain just as the Turks had reached a narrow defile.
With a noise like thunder the huge ma.s.s of rock plunged its way down the mountain-side, taking great leaps into the air whenever it encountered any obstacle. Ah! how the galloping rock plunged among the terrified hors.e.m.e.n--only a streak of blood remained in its track, horses and hors.e.m.e.n were equally crushed beneath it.
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