Part 73 (2/2)
”He's come to be an honest man,” thought he; ”why should I remind him of his former misfortune? I dare say they won't hang Mr. Tengelyi; but as for Viola, I'm not at all sure whether they'll stick to their word when they have him in their power. His wife will despair, and his children come to be little vagabonds; and who will be the cause of all this misery but I, who am now trying to entrap him, for all the world like one of those d--d spies whom we used to hang in France!”
Old Janosh had but one comfort amidst these distressing reflections. He might indeed find Viola; but there was no necessity which forced him to give him up to the county magistrates: and, after all, was it not possible, in conversing with Viola, that they might find out a means of liberating the notary without any prejudice to the late robber's life and liberty?
”For,” said Janosh, ”G.o.d knows he has suffered enough! and his children, bless them! they are such fine creatures, and so loving. I wouldn't harm them; no, not for the world!”
As for the object of old Janosh's search, it was he who, under the a.s.sumed name of a brother to Ishtvan, the herdsman of Kishlak, inhabited the tanya to which Gatzi's friend had promised to conduct the two adventurers. The outlaw's place of refuge was not quite so large and commodious as his farm-house at Tissaret; but it was as favourable a specimen of a tanya as a man of Viola's character and habits might wish to see. The roof was made of reeds, and afforded a shelter against the rain; the walls were newly washed, and shone hospitably over the dun and desolate heath. The tanya was built on a slope of the mountains, which, forest-crowned, extended in the rear; and in front lay the immense plain, dotted with flocks and herds of cattle and horses, with here and there a steeple rising on the far horizon. Near the house was a stable and some haystacks; and close to the threshold lay a couple of large fierce wolf-hounds, basking in the rays of the sun.
Viola might have been happy. He had found a place of refuge: he was removed from all social intercourse; and this is, in itself, a blessing for the persecuted and maligned. He might have been happy, if our happiness or misery were not at least quite as much depending on the past as it is on the present. Viola's recollections were most gloomy.
His mind was saddened by the thought that he was compelled to leave the scenes of his former life. An exile from the place of his birth, he languished and grieved quite as much as men of better education do, when fate compels them to fly from their own country. The lower cla.s.ses cling, not only to their country, but also to the place of their birth.
Their lives lie within a narrower circle; and, however great his patriotism, a peasant's love for his _home_ is still greater. With some it is a predominant feeling; with others it is a madness. His real country, his real fatherland, is the village in which he saw the light,--the narrow spot of earth on which he pa.s.sed his earliest years.
If you remove him from that place, he finds little consolation in the thought that his new abode is still on Hungarian soil, that his country's language is still spoken around him. He sighs for his birth-place, for the humble roof of his parents, for the fields in which he used to work, for the trees in the shade of which he took his rest.
His reminiscences are not national, but local; his sphere of interest and action is limited to the confines of his parish. And even if this were not the case, is not our life a totality? Can we separate the past from the present, or the present from the future? Are not our joys bound up in remembrance and hope? And what was there in Viola's past, what was there in his future, to cheer him up, and to nerve him amidst the sorrows of life?
Could he ever forget the injustice and cruelty of mankind? Could he forget that they had hunted him like a beast of the forest? And, worse than all, could he forget his own deeds? the blood he had shed,--the blood which still clung to his trembling hands? How could he hope for happiness? The future lowered over him like a pall. His name was, indeed, unknown in that part of the country. His master, and the people with whom he had dealings, took him for a brother of the Gulyash of Kishlak; but what guarantee had he for his safety? The arrival of any of his former a.s.sociates, the discovery of his having come to the county with a false pa.s.sport, was sure to divulge his real name, and deliver him into the hands of justice. Every stranger who approached the tanya made him tremble. He trembled to think that his own boy might betray the secret of his father's guilt. But still, he could have borne all this.
He might have inured his heart to sorrow and anxiety if his wife had been happy, if the love of his children had withdrawn his mind from the remorse and fear in which it lay shrouded.
Fate willed it otherwise!
Susi wanted but little for happiness. To love, was her vocation. She had no wish but to live with her husband and her children, to devote herself to them, to care, labour, and pray for them. Her heart was made to resist the blows of fate, if they failed to strike at that one tender point. When she knew of her husband's liberation,--when she took her children to their new home, she felt as if there was nothing to wish for, or to hope; and all her past sufferings were lost in the feeling of happiness which pervaded her mind. To live far away from mankind, removed from the scene of her former sufferings,--to live a new life, lonely and unknown,--had been her wish for many years; and that wish was now realised. She knelt down at the threshold of her new tanya, and wept and prayed with a grateful heart. She had nothing to ask for, nothing to desire!
But her happiness was of short duration. Her younger child was weak and sickly. Its little face had that expression of sadness which, in children, is a sure sign of suffering and disease.
”How could it be otherwise?” said Susi; ”sorrow was its first food. My tears have effaced its smiles, and ever since it opened its soft blue eyes it has seen nothing but grief and sorrow. The poor child cannot help being sad!”
The unsettled life which Susi had latterly been compelled to lead, and which the infant had shared with her; the cold autumnal air to which it was exposed; and last, not least, the fatigue and exposure of the journey to their place of refuge, had a fatal effect upon the tender health of the child. So long as the excitement continued, and while she had to tremble for the safety of her husband, Susi took no heed of its altered appearance; but a few days after their meeting in the tanya, she became alive to the danger which threatened the infant's life. To see and despair of all hope was one and the same thing. After some days of maddening anxiety, the child died, and a little grave near the tanya was all that remained of so much sorrow and so much love.
The child's death struck a deeper blow to Susi's heart, from the circ.u.mstance of its occurring in the very first week of her new-found repose; but when she remarked her husband's sadness, who, still depressed by the late events, considered the death of his youngest born as a harbinger of the approach of avenging fate, she felt that Viola wanted to be cheered and comforted, and her love for him conquered the grief of her mother's heart.
”Who knows,” said she, ”whether the child is not all the better off for leaving this world of sorrow; and perhaps this misfortune has been sent to us, to prevent our becoming too presumptuous in our happiness? And, after all, have we not Pishta, and does he not grow up to be a fine bold fellow, like his father?”
But in January little Pishta was seized with the fever. His mother's anxiety, her watchfulness, her care, the smiles of comfort from her breaking heart, and her secret tears and wailings,--all,--all could not prevail against the stern decree of fate; and after three long weeks, Pishta was buried by the side of his little brother, and Susi felt that there was nothing in the world that could make her happy.
She complained not; she spoke not of her misfortune; she strove to hide her grief from her husband: but the forced smile on her pale face, the rebellious sigh which _would_ break forth, the trembling of her voice, when an accident, when
”The wind, a flower, a tone of music”
reminded her of her children, and her turning away to hide the tears which _would_ bedew her cheeks, spoke more plainly than any wailing and mourning by which the wretched woman might have given vent to her grief.
Viola loved his wife too warmly to be deceived by her seeming calmness; his keen eye found the traces of secret tears upon her face; he understood her wordless woe, and his heart was a prey to the bitterness of sorrow. To love, to see the loved one suffering, and to feel that we cannot do any thing to lessen her grief, is a bitter feeling indeed; and Viola felt as if fate had saved his life, only for him to drain the cup of misfortune to the very dregs.
”Wretched man that I am!” cried he, as he stood alone on the heath; ”after all my sufferings, must I live to see this day? If I had suffered for my crimes, G.o.d would perhaps have pitied my children; but now His hand strikes me in them! There is blood on my hands,--but is it Susi's fault? Are my little ones guilty? Father in heaven! what have they done, that Thy wrath should pursue them?”
Thus lost in the bitterness of his grief, he sat on the hill near his house, when his attention was attracted by the violent barking of his dogs, and as he looked in the direction of the tanya, he beheld a stranger approaching him. Viola lived in solitude; the Gulyash of Kishlak had only called on him once since he dwelled in the tanya, and the herdsmen and outlaws of the county were by no means inclined to cultivate the acquaintance of their new neighbour, for a few unsuccessful attempts had convinced them of his reluctance to join them in their illicit doings. No wonder, then, that the approach of a stranger attracted Viola's attention. But his astonishment pa.s.sed all bounds when he recognised the sheriff's hussar, and when the latter called him by his real name, a name which he had not heard for many months.
At some distance from the tanya, Janosh had thanked his guide for his trouble, and sent him and Gatzi back, for he wished to speak to Viola freely and without being interrupted. The latter could hardly trust his own eyes, when he saw the old soldier, who used to be a pattern of neatness, attired in a peasant's dress, travel-stained, and with his hair and beard neglected.
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