How Women Love Part 8

It was about two o'clock in the morning. She asked the peasant to drive to the corner of a certain street, where the doctor whom she wanted, lived; when she reached the desired place she got out, gave her driver another florin, and said:

"Neighbour, go into a tavern and let your horses rest. You can ride home whenever you choose; I will ask the doctor to drive out in his own carriage and to take me with him; we shall get there several hours earlier with his fresh horses, than with your tired nags, which could not turn back at once."

"You're right there," replied the peasant, somewhat drowsily, bade her good-night, and drove off at a walk. In a few minutes the waggon was out of sight and hearing.

Panna now moved with rapid steps through several streets, which were alternately flooded with bright moonlight and shrouded in darkness, until she stood before the county jail. This is a barrack-like structure, whose plain front has for its sole architectural ornament two pairs of columns, which flank the main entrance on both sides.

Panna entered the narrow s.p.a.ce between the two columns at the left, and sat down with her back resting against the fluted shaft at the stone base of the pillar, whose shadow completely concealed her.

She was very weary and exhausted; the tempest of thoughts in her brain were followed by fatigue and a dull stupor; the silence, the darkness, the warmth of the shawl wrapped closely around her, the motionless position which her narrow hiding-place required, exerted a drowsy influence, and she soon sank into a torpor which imperceptibly pa.s.sed into an uneasy, agitated half slumber, visited by terrible dreams.

Panna saw horrible shapes dancing around her, which grasped her with their icy hands and dragged her away; sometimes it seemed as if her brother was brought out and a bullet fired into his head; while she was trying anxiously to find the wound, it was not her brother, but Pista, who lay there with the hole in his forehead; she wailed aloud and the dead man rose, seized a brick, and dashed it on her head so that she fell bleeding; then again it seemed as though it was not she who lay on the ground in a pool of blood, but Abonyi, who still held the smoking revolver in his rigid hand; so the frightful dream faces blended in terrible, spectral changes, one horrible visage drove out another, till Panna, with a low cry of fear, suddenly started from her troubled sleep. A heavy hand had grasped her by the shoulder, and a harsh voice shouted unintelligible words into her ear.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a policeman standing before her, shaking her and asking what she was doing here. Panna was terribly startled for a moment, but she quickly regained her presence of mind, and said:

"My husband is in the jail and will be released early in the morning; so I came here to wait for him."

"Why, my dear woman, you can't stay here," replied the policeman; "find a night's lodging, and in the morning you can be here in ample time to meet your husband."

"Oh, do let me stay here, I don't know anybody in the city, where am I to go now in the night, it will surely be morning in two or three hours," pleaded Panna, at the same time drawing from her pocket a florin, one of the last she had left, which she slipped into the hand of the guardian of order. After this argument the latter evidently discovered that it would be no very serious crime if a beautiful young woman waited in front of the jail, on a warm, moon-lit night in May, for her husband's release, for, with an incomprehensible mutter, he pursued his round, on which, during the next two hours, he repeatedly pa.s.sed Panna without troubling himself any farther about her.

All fatigue had now left the watcher and, after this disturbance, she did not close her eyes a second time. She was once more calm and strong, and constantly repeated in her mind that she was about to do a good, needful work, pleasing to G.o.d. The moon had set, it was growing noticeably cool, day was dawning in the east; she shivered, a slight tremor ran through her whole frame, yet she remained motionless on her stone seat. Gradually the light grew brighter and brighter, the great city gave the first signs of awakening, a few sleepy-looking people began to pa.s.s with echoing footsteps through the street, now and then a carriage drove by, the matin bells pealed from the church steeples, and the first rays of the rising sun flooded the roofs of the surrounding houses with ruddy gold. Just at that moment a carriage rolled around the corner, drove in a sharp curve to the door of the jail, and stopped. Panna pressed farther back into her niche and hid her face in her shawl. She had recognized Janos and an open carriage owned by Abonyi.

The driver, who had not noticed the dark figure between the pillars, sprang from his box, blanketed the steaming horses, and gave them some bags of oats. Meanwhile the door of the jail had opened, for it was five o'clock; a heiduck came out, yawning and stretching, and asked Janos:

"For whom are you waiting so early, Brother?"'

"For my master, Herr von Abonyi, who will come presently."

"Yes, yes, you are to fetch his lordship; well, if you wish, I'll go in and tell the gentleman that you're here."

"Do, we'll get away sooner."

The man vanished inside the building and Janos busied himself industriously with his horses, while whistling a little song. It was not ten minutes before steps and voices were heard in the doorway.

Janos raised his cap, called: "At your service," and sprang on the box.

Two men appeared on the threshold, both looking as though they had been up all night--Abonyi and the steward.

"Cordial thanks and farewell till you see me in Kisfalu!" cried Abonyi, shaking hands with his companion.

"Good-bye until then! And in Kisfalu I'll give you revenge for the trifle you lost to-night."

"If my coachman hadn't come so early, I would have won it all back again."

"Why," said the steward, "if you feel inclined, you can come back and play on comfortably."

"Thank you, I've had quite enough of your hospitality for the present,"

replied Abonyi, and both laughed heartily, after which they again shook hands with each other.

The steward, who was shivering, turned back, and Abonyi prepared to get into the carriage. At the moment when he had one foot on the step and was half swinging in the air, without any firm hold, Panna sprang out, threw her whole weight upon Abonyi, dragged him to the ground with her, and, almost while falling, with the speed of lightning struck him repeatedly in the breast with a long, sharp, kitchen knife, which she had had in her bosom.

All this had been the work of a few instants. Abonyi had scarcely had time to utter a cry. Janos sat mute with bewilderment on the box, staring with dilated eyes at the two figures on the ground; the steward turned at the shriek and stood as though spell-bound by the spectacle which presented itself. Abonyi lay gasping, with his blood pouring from several wounds; Panna had straightened herself and, throwing down the b.l.o.o.d.y knife, stood quietly beside her victim. Instantly a great outcry arose, Janos sprang from the carriage and went to the a.s.sistance of his unconscious and evidently dying master, the steward rushed up to Panna and grasped her by the arm, which she permitted without resistance, a number of heiducks appeared, Panna was dragged into the doorway, and a flood of curses and threats was poured upon her. While Abonyi was carried into the guard-room under the entrance and laid on a wooden-table, where he drew his last breath before a physician could be summoned, a mult.i.tude of violent hands dragged Panna, amid fierce abuse, into the courtyard, while the steward shouted loudly:

"Lads! Bring chains for this monster! Chains I say, put irons on her hands and feet."

Then Panna who, hitherto, had not opened her lips, cried in a resonant voice, while a strange smile hovered about her quivering lips:

"Why, my dear sir, how long have you used chains? Wouldn't you rather play a game of cards with me?"

The steward's face flushed scarlet, he shrieked a few orders to his men in a shrill tone, and rushed back into the guard-room to Abonyi.

Panna was shoved rather than led down the steps of a flight of cellar stairs and thrust into a dark, stifling cell, where handcuffs were put on. During this proceeding, she made many sneering speeches:

"Give me a handsomely furnished room, too, like the one the n.o.bleman had! And who will wait on me here?"

"Silence, witch!" cried the heiduck who was chaining her. "The executioner will wait on you when he makes you a head shorter."

"The executioner? Fool, what nonsense you are talking! No executioner will touch me. At the utmost I shall get three months imprisonment.

If six months is the sentence given for the murder of an innocent man, surely one can't get more than three for killing a murderer."

At last Panna was left alone and the iron doors of her cell closed with an echoing sound. The crime naturally created the utmost excitement in the county jail; officials and employees talked of nothing else, and after learning from Janos who the criminal was, the opinion was generally expressed that she must be crazy. Before the examining magistrate, who was informed of the b.l.o.o.d.y deed in the course of the forenoon, gave Panna an examination, he sent a physician to see her and give an opinion of her mental condition.

The doctor found the young widow lying on the bench, deadly pale and utterly exhausted. She had spent all the power of her soul in the horrible resolve and its execution, and was now as gentle and tearful as a frightened child. She entreated the physician to have the irons taken off; she could not bear them, she would be perfectly quiet; and when he promised this she also besought him to write to her father, whose address she gave, in her place. She begged the latter's forgiveness for what she had done; she could not help it, there must be justice for gentlemen as well as for peasants. If there was no justice the world could not exist, everything would be topsy-turvy, and people would kill one another in the public streets just as the wild beasts did in the woods. She, too, would atone for the sin she had committed that day, and that would be perfectly just. She also sent a message to the gardener, thanking him for all the kindness and love which he had shown her, and hoping that he might have a happier life than Fate had allotted to her.

The physician talked with her some time longer, and received quiet, rational, somewhat timid replies. At last he went away shaking his head, evidently not knowing what to think of this singular woman, but he succeeded in having the handcuffs removed, and faithfully wrote the letter, as he had promised to do.

Panna was to be brought before the examining magistrate for the first time on the following morning. When the jailer opened the door of the cellar cell, he started back in horror. From the grating in the little window, high up in the stone wall, dangled a rigid human form. Panna had hung herself in the night by tying the strings of her skirt together.

PRINCE AND PEASANT.

The first regiment of dragoon-guards had been waiting idly behind a screen of low bushes in a shallow hollow for more than an hour, to receive the order to advance.

It was an interesting point in the s.p.a.cious battle-field of Metz, and an important period in that day of August 16th, 1870, which paved the way for the ultimate prevention of Bazaine's breaking through to Verdun. By rising in the stirrups, or ascending one of the numerous shallow ridges which intersected the meadow, a charming view appeared.

A few hundred paces in the rear lay the little village of Vionville with its slender church-steeple, from whose top floated the flag of the red cross. Several roads bordered with poplars diverged from the hamlet, crossing in straight lines the broad, undulating meadow. In the foreground was a tolerably steep declivity, which at this moment formed the boundary of the German lines. Northward and southward, as far as the eye could reach, extended a ravine several hundred feet wide, at whose bottom a little stream had worn a narrow, winding channel. The western slope was tolerably gentle, the opposite one, on the contrary, was somewhat steep. Beyond stretched a bare plain, with a few church steeples and white buildings, in the distant background.

Here the French were apparently drawn up in considerable force.

On the crest of the German hill several batteries were mounted, which maintained a rapid fire with bombs. Small bodies of infantry lay on the ground a short distance in the rear of the artillery. Still farther back was the regiment of dragoons, each man with his horse's bridle wound around his arm, waiting with weary, somewhat stolid faces, for orders. The battle had evidently been at this point some time.

Nearly all the enemy's sh.e.l.ls fell into the ravine, few reached the level ground on the German side, and they, too, thus far, had effected no special injury. Only a broken gun-carriage and two or three holes in the earth which, surrounded by a loose wall of yellow clay, looked like new-made graves, lent the plain something of the character and local colouring of a battle-field. The ear had a larger share in the mighty work of the day than the eye. From the sides, the front, the rear, everywhere, cannon thundered, at a short distance on the right echoed the rattle of a sharp fire of musketry, while the terrible, ceaseless roar which filled the air alternately swelled and sank, like the rising and falling flood of melody of a vast orchestra, during the storm of the pastoral symphony.

A number of officers had a.s.sembled on a little mound in front of the regiment of dragoons, whence they were attentively watching the French.

Among them a major stood smoking a cigarette and gazing dreamily into vacancy. He was a man a little under thirty, with a slender figure, somewhat above middle height, and a pale, narrow face, to which cold grey eyes, and a scornful expression resting upon the colourless lips shaded by a blond mustache inclining to red, lent a stern, by no means winning expression. In this environment of human beings, amid these excited young men with their healthful, sunburnt faces, he, with his impa.s.sive, reserved expression and somewhat listless bearing, looked strangely weary and worn. A woman's eye gazing at the group of officers would scarcely have regarded him with favour; a man's would have singled him out as the most intellectual of them all.

Removing his helmet and wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his handkerchief, he displayed a head on which the hair was already growing thin and, at the same time, a well-kept, aristocratic hand, with long, thin, bloodless fingers. His whole appearance, even in the levelling uniform, revealed a man of exalted rank. And, in fact, this officer was Prince Louis of Hochstein-Falkenburg-Gerau, the head of a non-reigning line of a German princely race.

Orphaned at an early age, he found himself at eighteen when, by the rules of his House, he attained his majority, in the unrestricted possession of a yearly income of several millions. From his mother, a very fine musician, he inherited artistic tastes and a keen appreciation of the beautiful; from his haughty and somewhat eccentric father a rugged, independent nature, which found every external constraint intolerable and wished to obey only the law of its own will.

It requires little power of imagination to picture how the world looks to the eyes of a young, immensely wealthy scion of royalty. The court treated Prince Louis with marked distinction, the ladies petted him, gentlemen showed him the most flattering attention.