Part 53 (1/2)

By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to s.h.i.+ne through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning suns.h.i.+ne. She was no longer able to walk by herself, and they carried her out on to the bastions in an arm-chair.

It was a beautiful autumn morning, a sort of transparent light rested upon the whole region, giving a pale lilac blue to the sunlit scene.

Where the road wound down from the Szekler hills a light cloud of dust was visible in the morning vapour; it seemed to be coming from the direction of Szamosujvar.

”Ah! there is my mother coming!” whispered Aranka, with a smiling face.

The young Turk held his hand before his face and fixed his eagle eyes in that direction; and when for a moment the breeze swept the dust off the road, and a carriage on springs drawn by five horses appeared, he exclaimed with a beating heart:

”Yes, that is indeed the carriage in which they took away thy mother.”

Aranka was dumb with joy and surprise; she could not speak a word, she only squeezed Feriz Beg's hands and fixed her tearful eyes upon him with a grateful look.

The carriage seemed to be rapidly approaching. ”That is how people hasten who have something joyful to say,” thought Feriz, and then he began to fear less boundless joy might injure the life of his darling.

Soon the carriage arrived in front of the fortress and rumbled noisily over the drawbridge. Aranka, supported by the arm of Feriz, descended into the courtyard. They pressed onward to meet the carriage, and the smile upon her pallid face was so melancholy.

The gla.s.s door of the carriage was opened, and who should come out but Kucsuk Pasha.

There was nothing encouraging in his look; he said not a word either to his son or to the girl who clung to him, but the castellan was standing hard by, and he beckoned to him.

”In the carriage,” said Kucsuk, ”is the prisoner for whom I left my son as an hostage; take her back, and look well after her, for she is very ill.”

Dame Beldi lay in the carriage unconscious, motionless.

Aranka, paler than ever and trembling all over, asked:

”Where is my father?”

Kucsuk Pasha would have spoken, but tears came instead of words and ran down his manly face; silently he raised his hand, pointed upwards, and said, in a scarce audible voice: ”In Heaven!”

The gentle girl, like a plucked flower, collapsed at these words. Feriz Beg caught her moaning in his arms, she raised her eyes, a long sigh escaped her lips, then her beautiful lips drooped, her beautiful eyes closed, and all was over.

The beloved maiden had gone to her father in Heaven.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE SWORD OF G.o.d.

For some time past G.o.d's marvels had been multiplied over Transylvania.

No longer were they disquieting rumours which popular agitators invented for the disturbance of the public peace, but extraordinary natural phenomena whose rapid sequence stirred the heart of even the coldest sceptic.

One summer morning at dawn, after a clear night, an unusually thick heavy mist descended upon the earth, which only dispersed in the afternoon, spread over the whole sky in the shape of an endless black cloud, and there remained like a heavy motionless curtain. Not a drop of water fell from it, and at noonday in the houses it was impossible to see anything without a candle.

Towards evening every bird became silent, the flowers closed their calices, the leaves of the trees hung limply down. The people walking about outside began to complain of a stifling cough, and from that time forth the germs of every disease antagonistic to nature were seen in every herb, in every fruit; even the water of the streams was corrupted.

The hot blood of man, the earth itself was infected by a kind of epidemic, so that weeds never seen before sprang up and ruined the richest crops, and the strongest oaks of the forest withered beneath the a.s.sault of grey blight and funguses, and the good black soil of the fruitful arable land was covered with a hideous green mould.

For three whole days the sky did not clear. On the evening of the fourth day the stifling stillness was followed by a frightful hurricane, which tore off the roofs of the houses, wrenched the stars and crosses from the steeples of the churches, swept up the dust from the high-roads, caused such a darkness that it was impossible to see, and bursting open the willow trees, which had just begun to bloom, drove the red pollen before it in clouds, so that when the first big rain-drops began to fall they left behind them blood-red traces on the white walls of the houses. ”It is raining blood from Heaven!” was the terrified cry.