The Village Notary Part 54

He crossed the meadow, and disappeared in the thicket which covers the banks of the Theiss.

When the domestics entered the attorney's room they found him dying.

There were no traces of a robbery. The wretched man's watch and purse lay on the bed.

"Robbers! Murderers!" cried the cook, who was the first to enter.

"Follow him!"

"Send for the doctor!"

"No, send for the curate!"

All was noise and confusion. Two of the men raised the attorney and laid him on the bed.

"Follow him!" gasped Mr. Catspaw, "Follow! My papers!"

"What papers?" said the cook.

"Tengelyi----" groaned the dying man.

His lips moved, but his voice was lost in a hoa.r.s.e rattle.

"I've caught him!" cried a haiduk from the corridor, as he dragged Jantshi, the Jewish glazier, into the room.

"That's the rascal!" said the haiduk. "That's him. He was hid in the chimney!"

"Oh, the villain!" cried the cook, pushing the reluctant Jew to Mr.

Catspaw's bed. "I say, your worship, that's the man!"

The attorney shook his head. His lips moved, but no sound was heard.

"But, sir, I'm sure it's he!" said the cook. "Give us a nod, sir!"

Again Mr. Catspaw shook his head. He seized the cook by the hand; he would have spoken, but it was in vain. With a convulsive motion of his body he stared round, and, falling back, breathed his last.

"I'd like to know what he meant?" said the cook, when they had bound the prisoner and locked him up in the cellar; "when I showed him the Jew, he shook his head."

"His last word," cried Mrs. Kata Cizmeasz, the female cook of the servant's hall, wiping her eyes, less from sorrow for Mr. Catspaw's death, than because she thought it was proper that women should weep on such occasions; "his last word was _Tengelyi_."

"Hold your silly tongue!" said the cook, with dignity; "it's blasphemous to say such a thing of Mr. Tengelyi!"

"Really," reiterated Mrs. Kata Cizmeasz, "it struck me that he said 'Tengelyi;' and when he could not speak, poor dear, he moved his lips, for all the world, as if to say 'Tengelyi' over again. When my poor husband, G.o.d rest his soul! was dying of the dropsy, he didn't speak by the day; but I looked at his mouth, and understood what he meant to say.

'Go away! Come here! Give me some water!' Any thing he'd like. I knew it all!" And she wiped her eyes.

"Bless that woman!" said the cook, appealing to the crowd of servants, "She'll be after accusing the notary of the murder. Did I ever!"

"Bless yourself!" retorted Mrs. Kata; "all I say is, that the attorney said 'Tengelyi' when we asked him who had done it? He said it with a clear voice. I heard it quite distinctly, and I'll take my oath on it!"

"Never mind! Who knows what he meant?"

"I am sure _I_ don't; all I say is, that the attorney----"

"Very well; leave it to the judge. Depend upon it, he'll come to know the truth of it, and you'll see that I'm in the right in saying as I do, that the Jew is the murderer," said the cook, angrily; and, turning to the two servants, he added, "Lock the door, and send for the judge!

Hands off! is the word in a place where a robbery or a murder has been committed."

CHAP. XIII.

After Mr. Catspaw had left the notary's house on that fatal night, Tengelyi's family, including Akosh and Vandory, settled peacefully down in Mrs. Ershebet's room, while the notary himself was engaged in writing letters. He was determined to recover his rights; and, thinking that some of his father's old friends might possibly a.s.sist him in establishing his t.i.tle, he was about to appeal to them to support him in his present extremity.

While thus employed, his attention was roused by a slight knock at the window. He got up, opened it, and looked out; but as nothing was visible in the darkness, he was just about to return to his work, when a letter was flung into the room. The notary was astonished; but his astonishment increased when, after unfolding the crumpled-up and soiled despatch, he read the following lines:--

"I am a man who owes you a large debt of grat.i.tude. I am accused of having stolen papers from your house, but this is a base and false accusation. The Jew, whom the sheriff's attorney bribed, was the thief. I took them from the Jew; however, the story is too long to tell. Meet me at the lime-tree, just by the ferry, at eleven o'clock; but not earlier. If it cost my life, I will put the papers in your hands before midnight!

"I entreat you, in the name of G.o.d, to come, and fear no harm! You have taken my wife and children under your roof, and I would give my life to serve you or any of your family. If you do not come, I know not what to do with the papers: I dare not enter the village; I must cross the Theiss this very night. Let me implore you to keep the meeting secret, and come alone. The county has set a price on my head; and if they get the least hint of my whereabouts, I am a dead man. I am in your hands.

"VIOLA."

The perusal of these lines was no easy task to the notary. "What shall I do?" said he. "If I do not follow the robber's advice, the papers will most probably be irrecoverably lost. If Viola leaves the county, he will take good care not to come back again; and he will destroy them if it be only in order that they should not be proofs against him. On the other hand, if it should be found out that I, a member of the law, and an honest man, had clandestine meetings with a robber, without delivering him up to justice, what a dreadful light it would place me in!" Spiteful things had already been said by his enemies, because he had taken Viola's wife and children into his house. Another man would most likely have thought it his duty and interest to go to the appointed place, though not alone, to arrest Viola, and thus at once to obtain his papers: but this proceeding would not accord with Tengelyi's disposition; he was incapable of such an act, whatever might have been its advantages.

Yet there were but those two alternatives. What to do he knew not. He paced the room, agitated by mingled feelings of duty and patriotism.

First he would yield to the robber's request; then, again, he would not.

Thus he continued resolving and wavering, till Mrs. Ershebet called him to supper.

The notary's absence and confusion during supper astonished and perplexed his family.

He burnt the letter after deciphering its contents, lest it should fall into other hands.

After supper was over, Vandory and Akosh took their leave. Mr. Tengelyi wished his wife and daughter good night; and, under the pretence of business, he hastened to his study. When alone, he gave himself up to a full contemplation of his situation. He resolved to see the robber.

"Inform against Viola? No, no; such a mean unmanly act I would not be guilty of! And how could I be so unjust to my wife and children as not to embrace this opportunity of establishing my rights? If he has my papers, so much the better! if not, then at least I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have neglected nothing to regain my property. It is not likely that this meeting should ever be known. What have I to fear if my conscience is unsullied?"

The clock was on the stroke of eleven, when the notary crept from his house into the garden. When he gained the open field adjoining the house, he struck off to the left, and in a few minutes he reached the path leading to the Theiss. It was a thorough November night. Not a star or even a drifting cloud could be seen; and so dark was it, that it required all the notary's care and knowledge of the way to carry him on without accident. The village was hushed in sleep, and he reached the spot without meeting any one.

In summer this place was one of the prettiest anywhere about. The lime-tree was of gigantic growth, and its wide-spreading branches afforded a delicious shade. The gra.s.s around it was of the freshest and purest green, and when other gra.s.s-plots were scorched up by the July sun, this place seemed to be fresher and greener than ever. Three sides of the meadow were hedged in and surrounded with bushes; on the unfenced side stood a few old trunks of trees, dropping their bare branches into the yellow Theiss, that washed their withered roots.

Mr. Tengelyi had spent many an hour under that tree with his friend, who, on such occasions, would exclaim that no spot was so charming as the banks of the Theiss; and that if the Turk's Hill were not there, the lime-tree alone would make Tissaret a beautiful place to live in.

Now this spot looks mournful and forsaken. The beautiful green plot is covered with sere and yellow leaves, and the night winds howl through the unclad branches of the n.o.ble linden; while the swelling waves of the Theiss lash its sombre banks.

The notary, wrapped in his bunda, walked dejectedly up and down; at times he stood still and listened. On a sudden he heard a rustling in the bush, but seeing no one near, he thought it a delusion, and continued walking, but now and then turning to look at the ferryman's hut, which was about two hundred yards distant, and in the kitchen of which a large fire sent its glaring and flickering shadows dancing on the black landscape.

It was half-past eleven, and yet Viola came not. Could he have changed his mind, or had any thing happened to prevent him? Perhaps he was scared by the hue and cry which had been raised after him.

Suddenly a cry of murder rang through the air. It came nearer.