Debts of Honor Part 89

"Csicsa sent to say he will come with his twelve musicians this evening: he begs you to pay him in advance as the musicians must hire a conveyance--then," she continued, dropping her voice to a tone of jesting flattery,--"a little suckling pig for supper, if possible."

"Very well, Marcsa," said Sarvolgyi, with polite gentility. "Everything shall be in order. Come here towards evening. You shall get payment and sucking pig too."

Yet this overflowing magnanimity was not at all in conformity with the well-established habits of the devotee. Close-fisted n.i.g.g.ardliness displayed itself in his every feature and warred against this unnatural outbreak.

The gypsy woman kissed his hand and thanked him. But Mistress Boris saw the moment had arrived for a ministerial process against this abuse of royal prerogative; so she came out from the kitchen, a pan in one hand, a cooking-spoon in the other.

She began her invective with the following Magyar "_quousque tandem_!"

"The devil take your insatiable stomachs! When were they ever full? When did I ever hear you say 'I've eaten well, I'm satisfied!' I don't know what has come over the master, that, ever since he became a married man, he has nothing better to do with his income than to stuff gypsies with it!"

"Don't listen to her, Marcsa," said the pious man softly, "that's a way she has. Come this evening, and you shall have your sucking pig."

"Sucking pig!" exclaimed Mistress Boris. "I should like to know where they'll find a sucking pig hereabouts. As if all those the two sows had littered were not already devoured!"

"There is one left," said Sarvolgyi coolly, "one that is continually in the way all over the place."

"Yes, but that one I shall not give," protested Mistress Boris. "I shan't give it up for all the gypsies in the world. My little tame sucking pig which I brought up on milk and breadcrumbs. They shan't touch that. I won't give up that!"

"It is enough if I give it," said Sarvolgyi, harshly.

"What, you will make a present of it? Didn't you present me with it in its young days, when it was the size of a fist? And now you want to take it back?"

"Don't make a noise. I'll give you two of the same size in place of it."

"I don't want any larger one, or any other one: I am no trader. I want my own sucking pig; I won't give it up for a whole herd,--the little one I brought up myself on milk and bread-crumbs! It is so accustomed to me now that it always answers my call, and pulls at my ap.r.o.n: it plays with me. As clever, as a child, for all the world as if it were no pig at all, but a human being."

Mistress Borcsa burst into tears. She always had her pet animals, after the fashion of old servants, who, being on good terms with n.o.body in the world, tame some hen or other animal set aside for eating purposes, and defend its life cleverly and craftily; not allowing it to be killed; until finally the merciless master pa.s.ses the sentence that the favorite too must be killed. How they weep then! The poor, old maid-servants cannot touch a morsel of it.

"Stop whining, Borcsa!" roared Sarvolgyi, frowning. "You will do what I order. The pig must be caught and given to Marcsa."

The pig, unsuspicious of danger, was wandering about in the courtyard.

"Well, _I_ shall not catch it," whimpered Mistress Boris.

"Marcsa'll do that."

The gypsy woman did not wait to be told a second time: but, at once taking a basket off her arms, squatted down and began to shake the basket, uttering some such enticing words as "_Pocza, poczo, net, net!_"

Nor was Mistress Borcsa idle: as soon as she remarked this device, she commenced the counteracting spell. "Shoo! Shoo!"--and with her pan and cooking-spoon she tried to frighten her _protege_ away from the vicinity of the castle, despite the stamping protests of Sarvolgyi, who saw open rebellion in this disregard for his commands.

Then the two old women commenced to drive the pig up and down the yard, the one enticing, the other "shooing," and creating a delightful uproar.

But, such is the ingrat.i.tude of adopted pigs! The foolish animal, instead of listening to its benefactor's words and flying for protection among the beds of spinach, greedily answered to the call of the charmer, and with ears upright trotted towards the basket to discover what might be in it.

The gypsy woman caught its hind legs.

Mistress Borcsa screamed, Marcsa grunted, and the pig squealed loudest of all.

"Kill it at once to stop its cries!" cried Sarvolgyi. "What a horrible noise over a pig!"

"Don't kill it! Don't make it squeal while I am listening," exclaimed Borcsa in a terrified pa.s.sion: then she ran back into the kitchen, and stopped her ears lest she should hear them killing her favorite pig.

She came out again as soon as the squeals of her _protege_ had ceased, and with uncontrollable fury took up a position before Sarvolgyi. The gypsy woman smilingly pointed to the murdered innocent.

Mistress Borcsa then said in a panting rage to Sarvolgyi:

"Miser who gives one day, and takes back--a curse upon such as you!"

"Zounds! good-for-nothing!" bawled the righteous fellow. "How dare you say such a thing to me?"

"From to-day I am no longer your servant," said the old woman, trembling with pa.s.sion. "Here is the cooking-spoon, here the pan: cook your own dinner, for your wife knows less about it than you do. My husband lives in the neighboring village: I left him in his young days because he beat me twice a day; now I shall go back to the honest fellow, even if he beat me thrice a day."

Mistress Borcsa was in reality not jesting, and to prove it she at once gathered up her bed, brought out her trunks, piled all her possessions onto a barrow, and wheeled them out without saying so much as "good bye."

Sarvolgyi tried to prevent this wholesale rebellion forcibly by seizing Mistress Borcsa's arm to hold her back.

"You shall remain here: you cannot go away. You are engaged for a whole year. You will not get a kreutzer if you go away."

But Mistress Borcsa proved that she was in earnest, as she forcibly tore her arm from Sarvolgyi's grasp.

"I don't want your money," she said, wheeling her barrow further. "What you wish to keep back from my salary may remain for the master's--coffin-nails."

"What, you cursed witch!" exclaimed Sarvolgyi. "What did you dare to say to me?"

Mistress Borcsa was already outside the gate. She thrust her head in again, and said:

"I made a mistake. I ought to have said that the money you keep from me may remain--to buy a rope."

Sarvolgyi, enraged, ran to his room to fetch a stick, but before he came out with it, Mistress Borcsa was already wheeling her vehicle far away on the other side of the street, and it would not have been fitting for a gentleman to scamper after her before the eyes of the whole village, and to commence a combat of doubtful issue in the middle of the street with the irritated Amazon.

The nearest village was not far from Lankadomb; yet before she reached it, Mistress Borcsa's soul was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with wrath.

Every man would consider it beneath his dignity to submit tamely to such a dishonor.

As she reached the village of her birth, she made straight for the courtyard of her former husband's house.

Old Kolya recognized his wife as she came up trundling the squeaking barrow, and wondering thrust his head out at the kitchen door.

"Is that you, Boris?"

"It is: you might see, if you had eyes."

"You've come back?"

Instead of replying Mistress Boris bawled to her husband.

"Take one end of this trunk and help me to drag it in. Take hold now. Do you think I came here to admire your finely curled moustache?"