Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 45

That same day Teleki hastened with the subscribed league to Ladislaus Csaky, and from him to Haller, and from him to the Bethlens. As soon as they saw Beldi's name, they signed the doc.u.ment without more ado, for all of them hated Banfi.

In every case the wives intervened. Terrible scenes took place. Nowhere did Teleki escape scot-free. But the league was successfully carried through, and that was, after all, the main thing.

And thus it was that Transylvania dug her own grave.

CHAPTER IX.

CONSORT AND CONCUBINE.

Ever since that painful scene at Bonczhida, Lady Banfi had not met her husband. Fate so willed it that Banfi was constantly away from home; scarcely had he come back from the Diet of Fehervar when he was called away to Somlyo, where his troops stood face to face with the Turks.

During the few hours however that he remained at home, his wife had locked herself up from him; not even the domestics caught a glimpse of her face. She did not quit her chamber, and received no one.

One day both the spouses were invited to Roppad by a distant kinsman, one Gabriel Vitez, who knew nothing of their estrangement, to act as sponsors to his new-born son. To decline the invitation was impossible, and thus it came about that on the day in question, Lady Banfi coming from Bonczhida and her husband from Somlyo met together, to their mutual confusion, at the festive mansion of the Vitezes.

At the first meeting they instinctively shrank back from each other.

They had both indeed longed for such a meeting, but pride had kept them apart, and thus while their affection rejoiced at, their pride revolted against this chance encounter. Of course they let nothing of all this appear openly. In the presence of their friends they had so to conduct themselves that n.o.body might suspect that this meeting was anything but an everyday occurrence.

At the end of the banquet, which lasted far into the night, Master Gabriel Vitez took care that all his guests should be lodged with the utmost convenience. Husbands and wives and all the young girls had separate quarters, and the young men were accommodated in the hunting saloon. For Banfi and his spouse the garden pavilion had been reserved, which, being at some distance from the noisy courtyard, promised to be the quietest resting-place of all. The host, with the most distinguished courtesy, accompanied them thither himself.

It was now a long time since they had slept together under the same roof.

Before so many acquaintances they could not declare their estrangement, and had been compelled to accept the nice quarters provided for them by their amiable host, who insisted, despite their protests, in showing them the way; jested pleasantly with them for a time, and only left them to themselves after wishing them good-night some scores of times.

The pavilion consisted of two small adjoining rooms, such cosy little cribs, with quite an air of home about them. In one of them a merry fire was crackling and flickering on the hearth. In the corner a tall solemn clock was softly ticking. The brocade curtains of the large tester-bed were half drawn back, revealing behind them a comfortable, snow-white, downy expanse, on which lay, side by side, _two_ little pillows adorned with red ribbons.

In the other room, which was half lighted by the reflection of the fire, a couch was visible provided with a bear-skin covering and a single stag-skin bolster. In all probability no one had ever thought that it would be occupied.

Banfi looked sadly at his wife. Now that he was no longer free to approach her, he saw what a heaven he had possessed in that n.o.ble and lovely being. She stood before him with downcast eyes, so sorrowful and yet so mild.

In her heart, too, many traitorous thoughts pleaded for her husband; wounded pride, that unbending judge, was already beginning to waver. In a n.o.ble breast it is not hate but grief that takes the place of love.

Banfi drew nearer to his wife, seized her hand, and pressed it in his own. He felt that her hand trembled, but he also felt that it did not return his pressure.

He went still further. He tenderly pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead, cheeks, and lips. She suffered his caresses but did not return them. But if only she had looked up into her husband's eyes, she would have seen them glistening with two tears as sincere as ever repentant sinner shed.

Banfi, with a deep sigh, sat down in an armchair, still holding Margaret's hand in his own; it needed but a single tender word from his wife, and he would have flung himself at her feet and wept like a remorseful child. Instead of that, Dame Banfi, with self-denying affectation, said to her husband--

"Do you wish to remain in this room, and shall I go into the other?"

The icy tone of these words cut Banfi to the heart. His broad breast heaved a deep sigh, his eyes looked sorrowfully at Margaret's joyless face--to him a closed paradise. He rose gravely from his seat, pressed his wife's hand to his lips, whispered her a scarcely audible good-night, and tottered into the adjoining room, closing the door behind him.

Dame Banfi set about disrobing, but on casting a glance at the lonely couch, a painful feeling overcame her. She threw herself sobbing on the pillows, and then, finding no rest for her soul there, she stood up again, drew a chair in front of the fire, sat down, and burying her face in her hands indulged in brooding, melancholy, dreamy thoughts.

And can there be any greater grief than when the heart fights against its own conviction; when a woman can no longer conceal from herself that the ideal of her love, him whom, after G.o.d, she loves the most, is after all only a common, ordinary mortal?--that he whom she has loved so n.o.bly deserves nothing but her contempt? And yet she cannot but love him! She feels she ought to hate him, yet she cannot bear the thought of being without him. She would fain die for him, and the opportunity of dying will not come.

A single unlocked door separates her from him. They are only a few steps apart. How small the distance, and yet how great! She can hear him sighing. He too cannot sleep while he is so near to her whom he has so deeply wounded. What bliss it would be to traverse those few steps, to nestle side by side, to gratify each other's longings! But reconciliation is impossible; her heart yearns after it and recoils from it, loves and loathes at the same moment.

Oh! why can we not forget the Past? Why is it impossible to prevent Grief from grieving?

The lady fell a-thinking, a-dreaming.

It seemed to her as if she were talking to her husband in a vision--

"You said yourself that we ought to part while we still loved each other, while our hearts would bleed at the rupture. Then why don't you do it? Why do you sigh when you look at me? Why do you kiss me? Those sighs, those kisses are torture to me; they wound my heart. Let us part! It was your own wish."

The fire had burnt very low in the grate; over the ruddy embers a pale, ever-dwindling flame was feebly flickering to and fro, like the last thought of an extinguished pa.s.sion. All around the room was growing darker and darker; the light of the expiring embers barely lit up the form of the sorrowing lady who sat there, with her head buried in her hands, like a marble statue mourning over a tomb.

Suddenly, amid the silence of the night and of her own thoughts, it seemed to her as if whispering voices and stealthy footsteps were approaching the doors of the pavilion.

Lady Banfi really did hear these sounds; but she was like one but half-awakened from his first sleep, who hears but heeds not, who knows what is going on about him without regarding it.

The whispering was now audible close beneath the windows, and now and then it seemed to her as if the smothered clash of arms was mingling with it. In her dreamy state the lady fancied she had got up and bolted the door; but this was a delusion, the door remained ajar.

Then some one pressed the latch, and the creaking sound made Lady Banfi dream that her husband had come to her, and was speaking to her in a tearful, supplicating voice. She felt the terrors of nightmare strong upon her as she came within the magnetic influence of that shape. "Let us part, Banfi!" she would have said, but the words died away on her lips. Then the dream-shape whispered to her--"I am not Banfi, but the headsman!" and seized her hand.

At this cold touch Lady Banfi uttered a shriek and started up.

Two men stood before her with drawn swords. The lady looked into their faces with a shudder. Both were well known to her. One was Caspar Kornis, chief captain of the Maros district, the other John Daczo, chief captain of Csik, who now stood before her with menacing looks, and the points of their naked swords at her breast.

"Not a sound, my lady!" said Daczo grimly. "Where's Banfi?"

The lady, thus scared out of her first sleep, was scarcely able to distinguish the objects around her: terror made her dumb.

Suddenly she observed through the open door that the pa.s.sage was filled with armed men, whereupon her presence of mind seemed instantly and completely to return. She grasped at once the tremendous significance of the moment, and when Daczo, gnashing his teeth, again asked her where Banfi was, she bounded from her chair, ran to the door which separated her husband's chamber from her own, turned the key quickly round, and screamed with all her might--

"Banfi! Save yourself! They seek your life!"

Daczo ran forward to stop her mouth and s.n.a.t.c.h the key from her; but with singular presence of mind Lady Banfi had, in the meantime, thrown the key into the heart of the red-hot embers, and cried again--

"Fly, Banfi! Your enemies are here!"

Daczo tried to pick the key out of the fire, and burnt his fingers very badly in the attempt, whereupon, still more furious, he rushed upon the lady sword in hand to cut her down, but Kornis held him back.

"Softly, sir! We have no orders to kill the woman, nor would it be worthy of us; let us try rather to burst open the door as quickly as possible," and with that they both pressed their shoulders against the door, Daczo cursing and swearing, and calling upon all the devils in h.e.l.l to help him, while Lady Banfi on her knees prayed G.o.d to allow her husband to escape.

Banfi had gone to sleep at the same time as his wife. He too had had a tormenting dream. He fancied he was in prison, and the moment he heard Margaret's shriek, he sprang in terror from his couch, tore open the window of the pavilion, and without thinking what he was doing, leaped into the garden at a single bound. He looked hurriedly about him. The house was surrounded by armed Szeklers, and the rear of the garden was bounded by a broad ditch filled with greenish rain-water. Amongst the ma.s.ses of infantry stood here and there a group of grooms, holding by the bridles the chargers from which their masters had just dismounted.

Banfi had very little time for reflection, nor did he need much. Under cover of the darkness, he rushed swiftly upon the nearest groom, gave him a buffet which brought the blood in streams from his nose and mouth, sprang upon one of the vacant horses, and struck the spurs into its flanks.

The cry of the groom, who had fallen beneath the horse but still held on fast by the bridle, brought up to the spot a crowd of yelling Szeklers.

It immediately occurred to Banfi to put his hands into his saddle-pouches, where pistols were sure to be found, and the moment he felt the handles, he as quick as light sent two shots among the crowd which was pressing upon him from all sides, and taking advantage of the consequent hubbub and confusion, spurred his horse fiercely, till it reared and plunged and flew away with him through the garden. The groom still stuck to it like a leech, and allowed himself to be dragged along the ground, till at last his head came into collision with the stump of a tree and he fell back unconscious. Banfi thereupon galloped towards the ditch, and leaped it at a single bold bound; his pursuers, not daring to follow him that way, were obliged to make a long detour to reach the gates, thus giving Banfi a start of several hundred paces. His steed too, scared by the noise of the pursuit, had become half frantic, and Banfi gave him his head, and away they went over stock and stone, up hill and down dale, without aim or purpose.