The Strange Story of Rab Raby Part 48

Towards evening his gaoler came to visit his cell, and Raby mastered his feelings sufficiently as far as to ask who it was they were burying.

The castellan read the real question in the prisoner's face as in an open book. It betrayed his one vulnerable point, and his tormentor was not slow to take advantage of his discovery.

So he wiped his eye hypocritically, and murmured in a sorrowful tone, "Alas, it is our beloved Fraulein Mariska, the head notary's daughter, that they are carrying to the grave. Heaven rest her soul!"

The prisoner uttered a sharp cry as if he had received his death-blow; then he burst into tears. Truly the dart had gone home this time, and nothing could ward it off. The gaoler laughed behind the prisoner's back; he had done better than the executioner for once!

But Raby bowed his head on his knees, and clasped his fettered hands in prayer for the soul that had so lately taken flight from this valley of tears. But had he known it, Raby was praying, not for the soul of Mariska, but for that of his wretched wife, for it was she whom they were bearing to the grave.

Fruzsinka had been, all unknown to him, a prisoner like himself, and this was the end. How she had come there we shall learn later, for meantime there are other factors in this strange history to be reckoned with, and Raby is still languishing in his dungeon.

CHAPTER XLVII.

Raby no longer dreaded the poisoned food that he expected his gaoler to bring him, but next morning, strange to say, Janosics appeared with empty hands and a malicious leer on his ill-favoured features.

"Do I have no food to-day?" asked the prisoner.

"Yes, indeed, my dear friend, from to-day you live like a prince. No more bread and water for you, but just a jolly good dinner of the best, and as much red wine as you like. And your fetters are to come off, and you are to be moved into better quarters. You know, I daresay, as well as I can tell you, what all this means."

Raby shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it means that to-day your death-sentence is to be formally approved in court, and that the scaffold is your destination. Till then, you are to be kept in the condemned cell, and have everything you like as befits a criminal under sentence of death, and enjoy yourself while you may."

It was too true, and no jest. The locksmith came and filed off the prisoner's fetters once more, and then the barber shaved him, but the closeness with which his hair was cut, signified only too clearly it was the "toilet of the condemned."

They did not stand on ceremony, but just carried Raby into the court (for he could not walk), to hear that the capital sentence against which he had previously appealed was now confirmed by the higher court, and that he must prepare to die forthwith.

He heard the decision with strange indifference, but all now he longed for, was that they should get it over as quickly as possible.

He was taken, not into his former cell, but into a small cheerful, well-warmed room, where a table stood spread with all the delicacies imaginable.

This was the "condemned cell," and to it many a kind-hearted housewife in those days was accustomed to send the pick of her larder, to provide a good dinner for those whose earthly meals were numbered--a form of charity at that time very much practised by the housekeepers of Pesth.

"Now, Raby, you can eat and drink to your heart's content," cried Janosics. "But it's no good trying to take any away with you, remember."

And the gaoler pushed the table to the couch, so as to be within the reach of the prisoner.

But Raby had no appet.i.te, and had other preoccupations than those of the table, to fill his mind just then.

Meanwhile, Raby's message had not been forgotten by the heyduke to whom he had entrusted it. Old Abraham had taken it to the Emperor who, he heard, was laid up sick in the capital, and it had been promptly read and acted upon. Three days later, Colonel Lievenkopp, just appointed the commandant at Pesth, sought out the governor, and demanded immediate audience on urgent matters of state.

He had, in fact, a message from the Emperor. "Thanks, Colonel, leave it there; I'll read it later on; there's no hurry," said his Excellency, airily, on receiving the imperial missive.

"Unfortunately, there is hurry, your Excellency! I have orders to have the mandate read in my presence."

The words staggered the governor. He, the virtual, if not the nominal ruler of Hungary, to be spoken to like this, and to have the law laid down in this fashion to him!

"Hoity-toity! I have other things to do! Suppose, too, I am not inclined to read it?"

"Then your Excellency will permit me to observe that I am empowered to proceed to extreme measures. In the event of your Excellency not reading that letter at once, I am commissioned to call in half a dozen officers of public health who are waiting outside, with a regimental surgeon, for the purpose of placing your Excellency in a strait-waistcoat, and escorting you to Vienna under surveillance--you will guess whither?"

The governor's face became crimson with rage.

"What do you say--For me, a strait-waistcoat? Me, the representative of the crown? Do you mean to say the Emperor said that, that he has written it? Impossible, man, impossible!"

And he tore the letter out of the envelope, and read its contents.

They were short, and his eyes became suddenly blood-shot as he read as follows:

"From to-day you are relieved of your office: make over your keys to the district commissioner at once.

"JOSEPH."

"And I have Mathias Raby to thank for this," groaned his Excellency.

"Possibly," said Lievenkopp drily, "for his Majesty has entrusted me with a patent for the Pesth magistracy, whereby he demands the instant release of Mr. Mathias Raby; in the case of non-obedience, by ten o'clock to-morrow, I am ordered to enforce its execution by a battery and a corresponding number of soldiers, and if the prisoner is not brought out, to storm the a.s.sembly House forthwith, and release Mr. Raby from captivity."

"Storm the a.s.sembly House?" stammered the magnate, dazed with the suggestion. "Stir up civil war just for the sake of one miserable culprit. Oh, that fellow will be the death of me!"

And the wretched man staggered as with a sudden blow, and blindly clung to a chair for support to prevent him from falling. He was blue in the face, his clenched hand still grasping the letter; it was the beginning of an apoplectic fit.

Lievenkopp hastened to send one of the secretaries for a doctor, but it was already too late; when the surgeon arrived to bleed him, the governor was beyond such help. Thus pa.s.sed one more actor in this memorable tragedy of Rab Raby.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

It is time to return to Frau Fruzsinka, and to explain how she had come to be a prisoner under the same roof as her husband.

When Fruzsinka found that Raby was, in spite of the efforts she had made to save him, a prisoner in Pesth, her rage and disgust knew no bounds.

The abandoned woman still carried on her miserable masquerade in man's attire, and as a pretended highwayman, continued to strike terror into the hearts of the countryside.

One night, however, she was taken with what seemed a sudden faintness, and seeking shelter in a peasant's hut, was betrayed by the owner to the heydukes, and carried off by her captors to the prison in Pesth. By the time she arrived there, she was evidently seriously ill, and appeared to be in a high fever, although it never occurred to the prison authorities that her malady might be infectious.

Janosics, who had hailed her arrival with ill-concealed delight, perceiving his prisoner wore a richly embroidered kerchief round her neck, proceeded to annex it, and bind it round his own. But this rough undressing, to which she was subjected as a culprit, was too much for Fruzsinka, and she soon betrayed her s.e.x by her tears at the rough treatment Janosics meted out to her.

As might be expected, the news soon spread that this was no highwayman, but a woman, and she too of n.o.ble family.

Tarhalmy recognised her at once, and he tingled with shame at the thought of Mathias Raby's wife being treated as a common felon. And the case of a woman of Fruzsinka's position being sent there was so rare that there was literally no provision for such prisoners in the building, and so it came to pa.s.s that the disused "archive-room," as it was called, the room where Mariska had been able to communicate with Raby, was that now appointed for Fruzsinka.

"You will be rewarded for this," gasped the wretched woman. "I shall not trouble you long, for I shall not live over to-morrow."