Part 31 (1/2)
”I understand.”
”No, you don't. It is none of those interventions which we see in romances and dramas, when a pretty woman goes to move a mighty tyrant with her tears, and sacrifice her charms to him as the price of the life and liberty of her persecuted husband. Oh no! my hero is no plagiarist!
His ideas are all original. He wants me to go to the mighty gentleman and tell him that the Debreczin expedition, which has given rise to the whole of this heroic poem, is not his '_crime_,' but mine. I was the gipsy leader who played before the Ban Jellachich, and then escaped. It was I who carried the despatch to the Hungarian Government. In a word: I am to sacrifice myself on his account!”
”Fie! fie! And still you love this man!”
”What am I to do? I have n.o.body but him in the wide world; and besides, he is such a droll, amusing character. All day long we are either fighting or frolicking, and it is this variation which makes life so charming.”
But for all that, she flung herself on the ground and hid her face in the green moss. She was in such a good humour!
”Sha'n't we give our friend a signal to come out of his hole?”
”He is quite comfortable--don't disturb him.”
”I wonder you don't hit upon the very obvious idea of putting an end to this pantomimic game of hide and seek. You have a foreign pa.s.sport. You could enter your friend in it under some such description as major-domo or travelling companion. You could take him with you to Naples or to Paris, and you could live without care on the interest of the fund deposited at the Vienna bank.”
”I know that.”
”Then why not do it?”
”Because I don't choose.”
And as she said this she looked strangely at me with her enigmatically mysterious eyes, in which heaven and h.e.l.l were blended together like starlight in darkness!
CHAPTER XIV
THE DEMON'S BAIT
I said in the last chapter that the lady was looking straight into my eyes with the glance of Circe. Then she shrugged her shoulders, flung herself down beside the fire-ashes, and began to blow the cinders so as to entice a flame from the smouldering embers.
”It's useless to give advice to me, for I always do exactly the contrary. Let us rather have a chat together. What is your fate, now?”
”The fate of the grub when it is in its chrysalis.”
”Then it was not without cause that I went to you that evening when you shut your door in my face? And yet I only said what I did because I feared that either the gibbet or suicide awaited you on the path you chose to take.”
Here her voice trembled, her chin, her lips twitched convulsively, and her eyes filled with tears.
A lady in tears is dangerous!
I did _not_ hasten to dry her tears. On the contrary, I replied with cool cynicism:
”Every career has its own peculiar _maleficium_--drowning awaits the sailor, shooting the soldier; the doctor may fall a victim to an epidemic; the gla.s.s-maker suffers from caries; choke-damp kills the miner; and he who meddles with politics runs a chance of being hanged or guillotined.”
”No, no! They shall not do it!” she cried hoa.r.s.ely, seizing my hand in both her own.
”I do not want them to do it,” I said, ”and that is why I am hiding myself here at the back of beyond.”
”But how long is this to go on? What future do you see before you?”
”For the present I am like the convalescent beggar whose promenading does not go beyond the house-door. I thought of beginning a little farming in this valley and forgetting all my dreams of glory. I shall become an agriculturist.”