Black Diamonds Part 34

And he fell to cursing both Germans and Hungarians, until the widow Belenyi implored him not to shriek so loud, else he would be heard, and, G.o.d help us all! hanged.

"Let them hear, then! Let them hang me! I don't care. I shall go to the market-place and tell them to their faces they are robbers, and if they won't hang me I'll hang myself. I am only considering whether I shall suspend myself from the pump-handle or from the steeple of the tower."

The widow besought him, for Heaven's sake, not to do such a terrible deed.

"And what's to become of me? Am I to go round with a hat and beg for a penny? Here, these are my last halfpence."

He drew a few coins from his pocket, and began to weep piteously; his tears flowed in streams. The poor woman tried her best to console him.

She begged him not to despair; the butcher and the baker knew him, and would trust him. She was tempted to offer him a piece of twenty groschen.

"Oh, you will soon see!" sobbed the old man. "Come to-morrow morning early, and you will see me hanging from a hook in the pa.s.sage. I couldn't survive this!"

What could she do? The poor soul carried her Hungarian bank-notes to the commander, and saw them consumed in the market-place.

Oh, it was a laughable joke! To this day when people talk of it their eyes fill with tears.

For the widow, and many like her, there followed months and years of grinding poverty. She had lost all the capital saved for her by her father; there remained nothing but the house. The front rooms she let as a shop, and in the back she lived and eked out her miserable income as best she could.

For a long time she looked with a frightened gaze at her neighbor's pa.s.sage, expecting to see the old man hanging from an iron hook; but she was spared this sight. The old man had no notion of ending his days. He had certainly lost a few thousand gulden, but these were only the chaff; the corn was safe. He had a secret hiding-place to which he could have access by a secret pa.s.sage underneath his house; the cellar was, in fact, underneath the water. A mason from Vienna had built it for him, and the people of the town knew nothing of it. The cellar was full of casks, and every cask was full of silver; the old man's cellar concealed a treasure. By means of secret machinery constructed in his bedroom the owner was able by touching a spring to open a sluice concealed in the bed of the stream, and thus in a few minutes to submerge his cave. No robber could have penetrated there. All the gold and silver pieces which came into Csanta's hand found their way to this subterranean hiding-place, and never saw the light of day again.

Meantime his neighbor, the widow, suffered the grip of poverty; she sewed her fingers to the bone to keep things together and to earn their daily bread. The gold pieces Ivan had given she wouldn't have touched even to save herself from starvation; they were used for the purpose for which he gave them--for Arpad's musical education, and musical instruction was so dear. The child was a genius.

But living grew dearer, work harder to get. The widow was forced to get a loan upon the house; she asked her neighbor, and he gave it readily. The loan grew and grew until it reached a good sum of money, and then Csanta asked it back. Frau Belenyi was not able to refund, and the old man inst.i.tuted proceedings, and as he was the only mortgagee he got it for one-quarter its real value. The amount over and above the debt and the costs were handed to the widow, and there was nothing left but to leave. Madame Belenyi took her son to Vienna, to begin in earnest his artistic education.

The old Greek possessed the whole street; there was no one left to annoy him in his immediate neighborhood; he suffered neither from children, dogs, or birds. And his treasure increased more and more.

The casks which filled the cellar that lay beneath the water were filled to overflowing, and the contents were always silver.

One day Csanta received a visit. It was an old acquaintance, a banker from Vienna, whose father had been a friend of the old man's, and at whose counting-house he could always get exchange for his bank-notes and other little accommodations. The visitor was Felix Kaulmann.

"To what circ.u.mstance do I owe the honor? What good news do you bring me?"

"My worthy friend, I shall not make any preamble. Time is precious to you, as it is to me, and therefore I go straight to the point. By the authorization of the Prince of Bondavara I have been placed at the head of a joint-stock company, who have just started some gigantic coal-works, whose capital has risen from ten millions to eight hundred and twenty millions."

"That is eighty-two millions more than you would require."

"The money is the least part. What I stand in need of is well-known men for the administration, for the result of the whole undertaking rests upon the zeal, the capability, the intelligence of the governing body."

"Well, such men are not difficult to find if there is a prospect of a good dividend."

"The dividend is not to be despised. The bonus to each member of the administration will be, yearly, five or six thousand gulden."

"Really? What a nice income!--a stroke of luck for those who are chosen."

"Well, I have chosen you for a member, my worthy friend."

"An honor, a great honor for me; but how much must I put down before I am admitted?"

"Neither before nor after shall you be asked to put down anything. The only condition is that every member of the administration must hold one thousand shares."

"That means paying in a deal of money, my young friend."

"I didn't say a word of paying in; I only spoke of holding."

"But, my young friend, although I am only a provincial merchant in a small way, I know that, so far as money is in question, to subscribe is another word for payment."

"With this exception--if both subscriptions equalize one another. Ah, I see you do not like even a question of subscribing. Well, listen. We will suppose that you take one thousand shares in my coal company, and at the same time I give you an undertaking to take over one thousand shares at par from _you_; in this way we are even, and neither of us loses a shilling."

"Hem! But what is the necessity for such a joke?"

"I will be frank with you. The world has its eyes fixed upon the actions of important men; if these stir in any affair, the others stir likewise. If on 'change it is known that you, my worthy friend, have bought a thousand shares, a hundred small speculators will immediately invest in shares. In this way you secure to yourself a sinecure which will give you five or six thousand gulden, and I will secure for my undertaking a splendid future. Now, have I not spoken the truth?"

"H'm! I will consider the affair. Meet me to-morrow at the restaurant."

Csanta spent all the morning in the restaurant; he listened to all that was said of the Bondavara speculation, and came to the conclusion that he would risk nothing, since all danger was covered by Kaulmann's bond. When Felix arrived he had made up his mind.

"Good! I shall draw the shares; but none of them shall hang round my neck, for I don't like paper. Paper is only paper, and silver is always silver."

"Don't be afraid, my friend, I shall retain all shares for myself. I deposit the caution for you, and I pay the instalments."

Felix completely satisfied the old Greek as to his upright intentions in the matter of the shares, and left in his hands the undertaking in which he pledged himself to take them over at par.

Now began the manuvre behind the scenes. The agents, the makers of books, the brokers rushed in; the Bondavara shares rose rapidly. The syndicate had, all this time, never given a share into any one's hand.

The bears had not yet begun to dance. Herr Csanta had become a student of the newspapers. True, his eyes never left one column, but that contained for him the tree of all knowledge; it spoke golden truth.

With amazement he read how every day the value of the Bondavara shares increased. The profit grew higher and higher; it went up in leaps and bounds; sixteen, eighteen, at last twenty gulden over par. Those who had put down two hundred thousand gulden had won in two weeks twenty thousand gulden. A splendid speculation, indeed, in less than a fortnight to make a fortune! Compare the case of an honest, hard-working usurer like himself. What difficulties he had to go through to extract twenty per cent. out of his miserable clients! The work was hardly worth the gain; the fatigue of trapping some silly idiot, the odium and hatred incurred by exacting his rights from some miserable beggar with a family, or taking the pillow from under the head of a dying man; these things go against the grain, but they must be done if you want to fill your cellar with silver coins. And here a wretched, good-for-nothing speculator, by merely a stroke of the pen, makes in two short weeks a fortune. Luck is not evenly meted out to mortals.

The time had come when Felix Kaulmann could demand from Csanta the thousand shares upon which he could now make a profit of twenty thousand gulden. No honest man could allow such an iniquitous robbery of his rights, or, at least, not without making a struggle. It is only a fool who allows himself to be made a tool of. A man may steal for himself; to rob the widow and the orphan to fill another man's purse, that is wicked and immoral.

When Felix Kaulmann came again to the town of X----, the old Greek received him with great ceremony and seeming cordiality.

"I hope you bring good news, my dear young friend," he said, clasping Kaulmann's hand in his.

"I have come about that little business of the shares," returned Felix, with the air of a man of business. "You remember our agreement?"

"What shares do you mean? Oh, the Bondavara! Is it pressing?"

"Yes, for the first instalment of interest is now due; two gulden each bond, which, as the shares are in my name, will make an addition to my savings."

"Oh, so you intend to call in the shares?"

"But that was our agreement."

"And if I do not wish to surrender more than five hundred?"

Kaulmann drew in his lips. "Well, I suppose I should be content."

"And if I do not wish to surrender any of the shares?"

Kaulmann looked at him uneasily. "Sir," he said, "I thought I was dealing with an honest man. Besides, you forget I gave you a written agreement."