The Baron's Sons Part 29

His own stroke, however, descending like a thunderbolt from heaven, was more effective. Cleaving the helmet of the cuira.s.sier major, it left a gaping wound on his skull.

No sooner had the two champions fallen than there followed a furious conflict over their bodies, each side striving to rescue its fallen hero. Old Paul, who had spurred his horse after his master, sprang from his saddle and threw himself on Richard's body. The hoofs of trampling steeds soon stamped the life out of the faithful servant, but he had succeeded in saving the one being in this world whom he loved. With unselfish affection, he had shielded his dear master and cheerfully laid down his life for him.

At that moment the sound as of an approaching army fell on the ear.

What did it mean? The woods were ringing with the battle-cry, "_eljen a haza!_"[4] The Hungarian reserve corps had arrived and was pushing to the front. Its batteries opened fire on the enemy, and the militia battalions drove the foe out of the woods. The battle was at last decided. The Austrian trumpeters sounded the retreat, and the battle-field was left deserted, except for the dead and the wounded.

When the Hungarians sent out to gather them up, Otto Palvicz was found to be still alive.

[Footnote 4: Long live our country!]

CHAPTER XX.

THE DYING SOLDIER'S BEQUEST.

It was dark when Richard recovered consciousness. At first the gloom seemed to him like something dense and heavy pressing against his head, and when he raised his hand he was surprised to find its movement unimpeded by this thick, black substance.

"Oho!" he cried, discovering at length that his tongue was movable.

At his call a door opened and Mausmann's face looked in, lighted by a lantern which he held in his hand.

"Well, are you awake at last?" asked the student, still wearing his droll expression.

"Am I really alive?" asked the other.

"Hardly a scratch on you," was the cheerful reply. "You were only a transient guest in the other world."

"But where am I now?"

"In the mill by the Rakos."

"Did we win the fight?" The questioner suddenly recalled the events of the day just pa.s.sed.

"Did we win, you ask. Isaszeg is ours, and the victory is complete."

At this Richard sprang to his feet.

"That's right!" cried Mausmann; "there's nothing the matter with you,--a lump on your head, and a three-inch _solutio continuitatis_ of the skin, that's all."

"And what of Otto Palvicz?"

"Ah, you handled him rather roughly. He is here too in the miller's house, and the staff physician has charge of his case. His wound is thought to be mortal, and he himself is prepared for the worst. His first words to me, when I went to him, were, 'How is Baradlay?' And when I told him you were out of danger, he asked me to take you to him, as he had something important to say to you."

"If he wishes to see me, so much the better," rejoined Richard. "I should have felt bound in any case to visit my wounded opponent. Let us go to him now."

Otto Palvicz lay in a small room in the miller's dwelling. Seeing Richard Baradlay enter, he tried to sit up, and requested that something be put under his head to raise it. Then he extended his hand to his visitor.

"Good evening, comrade," said he. "How goes it? You see I'm done for this time. But don't take it to heart. It wasn't your sword that did the mischief. I have a tough skull of my own, and it has stood many a good whack. The good-for-nothing horses used me up with their hoofs.

There must be something wrong inside me, and I shall die of it. You are not to blame; don't be at all concerned. We gave each other one apiece, and we are quits. I have settled my accounts for this life, but one debt remains." He grasped Richard's hand with feverish energy and added, "Comrade, I have a child that to-morrow will be fatherless." A flush overspread the dying man's face. "I will tell you the whole story. My time is short. I must die, and I can leave my secret only to a n.o.ble-hearted man who will know how to honour and guard it. I was your enemy, but now I am good friends with everybody.

You have got the better of me, and are left to receive your old enemy's bequest; it is your duty to accept it."

"I accept it," said Richard.

"I knew you would, and so I sent for you. I have a son whom I have never seen, and never shall see. His mother is a high-born lady; you will find her name in the papers that are in my pocketbook. She was beautiful, but heartless. I was a young lieutenant when we first met.

We were both thoughtless and self-willed. My father was alive then, and he would not consent to our marriage, although it would have atoned for the indiscretion of an unguarded hour. Well, it can't be helped now. Yet she needn't have torn a piece of her heart out, and thrown it into the gutter. She, my wife before G.o.d and by the laws of nature, went on a journey with her mother and came back again as a maiden. I learned only that the hapless being sent into a world where there are already too many of its kind, was a boy. What became of him, I did not find out at the time. Later I won for myself a good station in my military career, my father died, and I was independent; and, by heaven, I would have married the woman if she could only have told me where my child was. She besieged me with letters, she begged for an interview, she used every entreaty; but to each of her letters I only replied: 'First find my child.' I was cruel to her. She could have married more than once; suitors were about her in plenty. 'I forbid you to marry,' I wrote to her. 'Then marry me yourself,' she answered.

'First find my child,' I repeated. I tortured her, but she had no heart to feel the infliction very keenly. She said she didn't know what had become of the child. She had not tried to find it; nay, she had taken the utmost pains to destroy all traces that could lead to its discovery, either by herself or by another. But, nevertheless, I found the clue. I spent years in the search. I came upon one little baby footstep after another,--here a nurse, there a sc.r.a.p of writing, in another place a child's hood, and finally the end of the search seemed at hand. But right there I am stopped; I must die."

The rough man's breast heaved with a deep sigh. The rude exterior covered a tender heart. Richard listened attentively to every word.

"Comrade," said the dying soldier, "give me your hand, and promise that you will do the errand I can no longer execute."

Richard gave his hand.

"In my pocketbook you will find papers telling where the persons are who will help you to find the boy. He was, at last accounts, in the care of a peddler woman in Pest. I learned this from a Vienna huckster. But I failed to find the woman in Pest, as she had removed to Debreczen. I could not follow her, but I learned that she had sent the child to a peasant woman in the country. Where? She alone can tell. Yet I learned this much from a girl that lived with her,--that the peasant woman into whose care the boy was given, and who made a business of taking such waifs, was often at the peddler woman's house, and complained that she didn't receive enough money to pay for the child's board. The woman lives poorly, I was told, and the boy goes hungry, and in rags."

The speaker paused a moment, and his eyes filled with tears.

"But it is a pretty child," he resumed. "The peasant woman brought the little fellow to town with her now and then, to prove that he was alive; he can always be identified by a mole in the shape of a blackberry on his breast. The peddler, out of pity and fondness for the child, used to pay the woman a little money--so I was told--and in that way the poor boy was kept alive. The mother has long ago forgotten him. Comrade, I shall hear the child's cries even after I am under the sod."

"Don't worry about him," said Richard, "he shall not cry."

"You'll find him, won't you? And there is money in my pocketbook to support him until he grows up."

"I will hunt up the boy and take him under my care," promised the other.

"Among my papers," continued the other, "you will find a formal authorisation, ent.i.tling the child to bear my name. Yet he is never to know who I was. Tell him his father was a poor soldier, and have him learn an honest trade, Richard."

"You may rely on me, comrade Otto; I promise you to take care of the boy as if he were my own brother's child."

A smile of satisfaction and relief lighted up the dying man's face.

"And comrade," he added, "this secret that I am confiding to you is a woman's secret. Promise me, on your honour, that you will never betray that woman. Not even to my son are you to tell the mother's name. She is not a good woman, but let her shame be buried in my grave."

Richard gave his promise in a voice that testified how deeply he was moved. The pale face before him grew yet paler, and ere many minutes had pa.s.sed the eyes that looked into his became glazed and fixed; the wounded soldier had ceased to breathe.

CHAPTER XXI.

SUNLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.

The poplar trees on Koros Island are clothing themselves with green, while yellow and blue flowers dot the turf. The whole island is a veritable little paradise. It forms the summer residence of a family of wealth and taste. On the broad veranda, which is shaded from the morning sun by a damask awning, stands a cradle hung with dainty white curtains; and in the cradle sleeps a little baby. In a willow chair at the foot of the cradle sits the mother, in a white, lace-trimmed wrapper, her hair falling in natural curls over her shoulders and bosom. A young man sits before an easel opposite the lady, and paints her miniature, while at the other end of the veranda a three-year-old boy is engaged in coaxing a big Newfoundland dog to serve as pony to his little master.

This young mother and these children are odon Baradlay's wife and children, and the young man is his brother Jeno. Without Jeno to bear her company, the young wife might lose her reason, thinking of her absent husband, imagining his perils, and waiting weeks for any news from him. Jeno knows how to dispel her fears: for every anxiety he has an antidote, and when all else fails he rides to the next town and brings back cheering tidings--in which, alas, there may be but few words of truth.