Part 33 (1/2)
”It is a dreadful world. How would the women manage to live if they couldn't chatter?”
”They could sew their children's clothes.”
”Perhaps you haven't heard that Petofi's widow has married again?”
Ah, that was indeed a murderous thrust! A calculated, well-aimed, poisonous dart where there was a weak joint in my coat of mail.
”What do you say?” cried I, in a perfect pa.s.sion.
”It is a fact known to everybody.”
”Petofi's wife! Then what has become of Petofi?”
”He fell at the battle of Segesvar.”
”Who saw him fall?”
”A Honved officer who testified to the fact. This was quite enough for his widow. She immediately went to the altar with another young writer, who was not perhaps such a knightly hero as your friend, but who is a pleasant young man in a good official position, moving in the best society, and who is able to a.s.sure his wife a comfortable existence.”
Every one of this woman's words went right through my heart.
Now, indeed, after years have elapsed, I can say that poor Julia did well to confide her fate to a good and worthy man. She had a child, and had duties towards that child. But at that moment a heavier blow could not have descended upon my head. The death of our martyrs, let it be never so cruel, was not nearly such terrible news to me as the news that the martyrs had been forgotten.
That any woman could ever forget Petofi! The woman whom the poet had encompa.s.sed with the rays of his soul of flame! That the poet should be able to make himself immortal to the whole world and not to her whom he had wors.h.i.+pped!
No doubt the widow was right, she will be blessed in the next world, and there Petofi himself will justify her--the righteous are always just; but to me this news seemed to open the very gates of h.e.l.l. If the gra.s.s can grow so quickly over my overthrown idol, what am I, I should like to know? A frog enclosed in a tree, whose calling it is to live for a hundred years--beneath the bark!
”I won't believe it! I won't believe it! I won't believe it!”
She laughed at me. ”Now wriggle away!” she seemed to say.
From the crown of my head to the heel of my foot I was full of bitterness. If such a thing as this could happen, why shouldn't that other thing happen, too? Why shouldn't another fallen writer forget the promise he had made to his wife, seize the hand of his former ideal, and fly away with her out into the world? That would be t.i.t for tat.
Her two eyes flamed as she looked at me and laughed. It was just as if she knew she had wounded me and would fain stir me up to vengeance.
She had destroyed my idol: belief in a woman's heart.
Women were all alike!
”No, no, no! My wife is not like other women.”
I sat down on the edge of the precipitous rock, made a speaking-trumpet of the palms of both hands, and called loudly down into the valley ”Wasa hoa!”
The echo repeated my words. And not long afterwards could be heard from below the proud refrain:--
”Whom he meets upon his way Him he cruelly doth slay; But if a pretty girl draw near, Ah, then what gayer cavalier!
Tremble and quake ye tongues that lie, And speak his name all whisp'ringly: Diavolo, diavolo, diavolo!”
As the song drew nearer, I packed up my traps and clasped my stick all ready to say good-bye.