The Strange Story of Rab Raby Part 16

You shrink at being confronted with the prefect, because the least morsel of the pitch which sticks to him may perchance darken the tip of your little finger, but you do not blush that I may stand before the Emperor and say: 'Sire, here is my wife, with whose paint I have daubed the prefect white.'"

Frau Fruzsinka at this changed her point of attack.

"Remember," she urged, "that if we fly in the face of my uncle, we risk losing a considerable property."

Now it was Raby's turn.

"You fear the prospect of losing the property, but I tremble at the chance of your possessing it."

"I do not understand," faltered his wife.

"I quite believe you," returned Raby bitterly.

Fruzsinka dared not pursue this tack further, it was time to try another. She threw herself on her husband's neck, and gazed with those wonderful eyes of hers straight into his.

"Raby, did we swear that we would make the people, or ourselves happy, which was it, dear?"

At those words, and that glance, Raby's heart softened.

What can one advance to those most unanswerable of arguments?

Who will blame Mathias Raby if he weakly gave way then, as many a strong man had done before him, and threw his half-packed bag into a corner.

And as the temptress had gone so far, now she proceeded still further:

"Now I'll unpack for you," she cried merrily.

Thereupon, she took the hunting-pouch from the wall and carefully filled it with savoury spiced meat and flaky white bread; then she deftly replenished the flask with wine, and cried: "Now go and enjoy yourself!

Don't stay mewed up in the house. You are bothered; well, go and get some sport, and let the fresh air blow the cobwebs away."

And so saying, she helped him on with his shooting coat, and handed him his gun, and so it fell out that Raby hung up his sword and knapsack, and went neither to Tyrnau nor to Vienna, but just into the copse to try and shoot hares. He heard behind him, as he left the house, the merry song his wife was warbling to herself.

As he sauntered along the street, it occurred to him that up till now he had not met one of his former acquaintances in the town, nor seen a single one of his old schoolmates.

But just then, he ran on to a townsman, whose wasted bent frame and dejected air did not prevent Raby from recognising him as one of his old contemporaries. The man wore a leathern ap.r.o.n, and carried carpenters'

tools. He returned Raby's greeting politely and was about to shuffle past him. But the latter stopped him.

"Dacso Marczi! Is it possible? Are you really Marczi? And won't you just wait that we may have a word together; it is so long since we have met."

And he seized the limp hand of the stranger and held it fast.

"Oh, I am indeed glad to see your worship again," returned his new-found friend.

"Never mind 'my worship,' you can leave him out of it," said Raby.

"Didn't we sit beside each other at school, and you would pa.s.s me without a word? Tell me how things are going with you?"

The man looked round to left and right, and in his eyes there lurked a nameless fear.

"Well, as far as that goes," he began, "but don't let us talk here, it is not wise to discuss these things in the street."

Raby dropped his hand. "Ah, you are afraid suspicion may rest on you if you are seen talking to me!"

"It is not that. But I fear, on the contrary, that it might be unpleasant for you, if you were seen talking to a mere carpenter. I am just going to look after my mates in the lower town who are putting new joists to the burned houses. May Heaven bless your efforts to help the poor people!" added the man in a lower voice.

"Good, I'll go with you," said Raby, "it's all the same to me which way I take."

"But don't let yourself be drawn into talk with them. They are always ready to complain, and there are always people ready to repeat all that is said."

So they walked together down the street--the dapper sportsman, and the working-man in his leather ap.r.o.n.

Raby well remembered the houses they pa.s.sed, and their owners, and asked after the latter.

"Yes, they all live there still, but the houses no longer belong to them. The magistrate has bought one, the notary another, and Peter Paprika a third. The original owners are only there as tenants, and now they have put an execution in the houses."

"And wherefore?"

"For what was owing for t.i.thes."

"And is old Sajtos still there, who used to be so good to us boys when we came home from school?"

"Yes, indeed, you may see her any Sunday at the church door begging."

"Sajtos begging? Why she was quite a well-to-do woman. What has happened to her?"

"Oh, the old story, 'bad times.' There are many more who have come to beggary in the same way. Just go any Sunday morning past the door of the Catholic church, where the beggars congregate, and you will see plenty of your old acquaintances," said Marczi sorrowfully.

"But what has brought them to it?"

And Marczi told him many a sad record of oppression and misery that wrung Raby's heart as he listened.

But now they had arrived at the lower town, where the ruins of the forty houses burned out in the great fire still stood. The streets hereabouts were nearly a mora.s.s and all but impa.s.sable.

The men who were commencing to put the roofs on, greeted Raby timidly, as if half afraid, and they quickly drove indoors the women who stood furtively about in the surrounding courts. Raby's questions they only answered with the greatest caution, fencing with his enquiries as to why the work of restoration had been so long delayed. Marczi drew him away.

"They will never tell you where the shoe pinches," he said, "whatever bait you offer; they know too well what the end for them would be. You would listen to their grievance and then retail it to the Emperor. He would send to the town council to know why his subjects' wrongs were not redressed? Thereupon the complainants would be arrested, get twenty strokes with the lash, and the Kaiser would be told the grievances of his subjects were amended. Oh, our people know better than to complain!

At no price would they confess why their houses are yet unfinished, or how much of the compensation is still owing."

"Surely their wrongs cry aloud to Heaven," said Raby indignantly. "I only wish I could get doc.u.mentary evidence of it!"

"Well, they won't give it to you, but if you really wish it, I could get you many such testimonies by to-morrow, and bring them to your house."

"And are you not afraid of the authorities being angry with you?"

"I? What does their anger matter to me, I don't need them, but they can't do without me. I've got them too much in my power. Listen, for you are an honest man, to no other would I venture to say it. One day they summoned me to bring my masons' tools to the Town Hall. No sooner had I arrived, than they bid me go to the secret pa.s.sage with the notary, which only he and I know of; the aperture was made during the Turkish rule, and except the notary and the Rascian 'pope,' no one knows the whereabouts. I had to wall up the opening."

"So you know the entrance to the room which contains the secret treasure?"

"Yes, indeed, I know it; I have so managed it that no one save the notary shall ever be able to find it again."