Part 32 (2/2)
”'Tis well thou canst trust a woman to look after a woman.”
With that he backed out of the room, blessing all four corners of it as he went, and in the gateway distributed with great condescension to every one of the servants who had done anything for him some money ingeniously twisted up in pieces of paper (which, by the way, were found to contain a half-penny each when at last unfolded), and sitting in his mat-covered carriage, gave strict orders to the coachman not to look back till he saw the citadel of Buda.
But Ha.s.san the same hour sent for his goldsmith, and bade him prepare immediately a silver chain, four yards long, with golden shackles at each end, for Azrael and Mariska. The goldsmith took the measure of the hands of the two damsels, and brought in the evening a chain made of beaten silver, whose shackles were fastened by masterly-constructed padlocks, which Ha.s.san himself fastened on the hands of the damsels, thrusting the key which opened the padlocks into his girdle, which he tapped a hundred times a day to discover whether it was still there or not. Then he dismissed the pair of them into Azrael's dormitory. Mariska endured everything--the chain, the shame, and rough words--for the privilege of being able to embrace her child. She lay down content on the carpets as far from Azrael as the chain would permit it, and folding her hands above the baby's innocent head, prayed with burning devotion to the G.o.d of mercy, and calmly went to sleep holding the child in her arms.
A little beyond midnight the child began softly wailing. At the first sound of its crying Mariska awoke, and as she moved her hand the chain rattled. Azrael was instantly alert.
”Hast thou had evil dreams?” inquired the odalisk of Mariska; ”the rattling of the chain aroused me.”
”The weeping of my child awoke me,” said Mariska softly; and drawing the little one to her bosom, as it embraced its mother's beautiful velvet breast with its chubby little finger, and drank from the sweetest of all sources the draught of life, the young mother gazed upon it with unspeakable joy, smiled, laughed, caught the child's rosy little fingers in her mouth, and implanted resounding kisses on its rosy, chubby cheeks. She had no thought at that moment for chain and dungeon.
Azrael felt in her heart the torments of the demons--it was that jealousy which those who are rocked in the lap of happiness feel at the sight of a luckless wretch who is happier than they are in spite of all his wretchedness.
”Wherefore dost thou rejoice?” she asked, gazing upon the lady with the eyes of a serpent.
”Because my child is with me.”
”But the whole world has abandoned thee.”
”It is more to me than the whole world.”
”More than thy husband?”
Mariska reflected for a moment, and then, instead of replying, hugged the child still closer to her bosom and imprinted a kiss upon its forehead.
”Wert thou ever a mother?” she asked Azrael in her turn.
”Never,” stammered the odalisk, and involuntarily her bosom heaved beneath a sigh.
It was plain from the face of Mariska how much she pitied this poor woman. Azrael perceived the look, and it wounded her that she should be pitied.
”Dost thou not know that both of you must die?” she asked with a darkened countenance.
”I am ready.”
”And art thou not terrified at the thought? They will strangle thy child with a silken cord, and hang it dead upon thy breast, and then they will strangle thee likewise, and put you both in the grave, in the cold earth.”
”We shall see each other in a better world,” said Mariska with fervent devotion.
”Where?” inquired the astounded Azrael.
Mariska, with holy confidence, raised her little one in her arms, and, lifting her eyes, said: ”G.o.d will take us unto Himself.”
”And what need hath G.o.d of you?”
”He is the Father of those who suffer, and in the other world He rewards those who suffer grief here below.”
”And who told thee this?”
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