The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life

"But I do ask it!" protested Mrs. Tengelyi. "I give him my daughter; and I have a right to ask – "

"Not an impossibility, I trust!" said Mr. Catspaw, with a smile. "If Akosh were of our own standing in society, your wish to monopolise him would be natural; but in the higher spheres of life such a desire is perfectly ridiculous. What would the world say, if a gentleman of his rank were to confine his attentions to his lady!"

"I trust you do not insinuate any thing disreputable against Akosh – "

"Disreputable? No; indeed not! He has some mistresses; but – "

"Mistresses!" screamed Mrs. Tengelyi.

"Well! and what of that?"

"What, indeed!" cried Mrs. Tengelyi, utterly forgetful of who it was, to whom she spoke. "If he were capable of having but one mistress, now that he has told my daughter, at least a hundred times, that he loves her alone, why it were infamous, despicable, – "

"But I assure you it is wrong to attach any importance to that kind of thing!"

"But I do! Rather than permit such doings – "

"My dear, good Mrs. Ershebet," whispered the attorney, drawing still closer to her; "I know your views of life; and, as your friend and sincere well-wisher, I feel bound to express my opinion that Akosh will never be what you expect him to be. He is a young gentleman of great talents, of energy, hot temper, business habits; he is all that, and more; but he is neither faithful nor constant in love. If you desire a constant son-in-law," he added, seizing her hand, "I can tell you of one."

Mrs. Tengelyi looked at him in hopeless bewilderment.

"Yes, dearest Mrs. Ershebet!" continued Mr. Catspaw, with increasing pathos; "I know a man of tried constancy, of unbounded devotion! a man, indeed, who cannot vie with Akosh in splendour, but in whose arms Vilma is sure to find that tranquil happiness whose value she knows so well how to appreciate. I, madam, – I am ready to take young Rety's place!"

"You, Mr. Catspaw!" cried Mrs. Ershebet, holding up her hands.

"Why not?" said the good man, brimful of kindness. "I am not quite the boy I was when I proposed for you; but I'm not an old man, eh? I am a man in the prime of life, a man of substance, dear Ershebet. What I offer is more than a competence. I've a hundred and fifty thousand florins, if I have a penny. If Vilma marries me, there will be no more questioning about Tengelyi's nobility; indeed, the Retys would be happy to make me a handsome cession of land. And as for that little affair with Akosh, you know I am by far too sensible and indulgent – "

While he was engaged in enumerating the advantages of an alliance between him and Vilma, the attorney had neglected to watch Mrs. Tengelyi's features, and to mark the unmistakeable expression of scorn and disgust which they bore. He was not, therefore, at all prepared for the scene which ensued, when the insulted mother rose and told him to leave the house instantly. He would have spoken, explained, excused himself, and what not! but Mrs. Tengelyi would not allow him to speak, and, to make bad worse, the door opened at this very critical moment, and Tengelyi entered the room.

"What do you want here?" said the notary, with an awful frown.

Mrs. Ershebet cut off the attorney's reply by a circumstantial account of Mr. Catspaw's proposal, in the course of which she commented on that worthy gentleman's behaviour in severe and, indeed, pungent terms.

"Be off! and never again dare to show your impudent face in my house!" said the notary, in reply to Mr. Catspaw's offer; but that gentleman, who, on seeing the notary, had expected no less than that the latter would assault him on the spot, was misled by this seeming moderation. He thought it a duty he owed to himself to make the best of so favourable an opportunity, and launching forth into protestations of his unlimited friendship for the Tengelyi family, he was just in the act of venting his admiration and love of the notary, when the latter addressed him very unceremoniously, —

"Get out, sir! If you don't, I'll kick you!"

"But, sir, please to give me a moment's hearing! Indeed, sir, this is not the way you ought to treat my offer! If Vilma – "

"Don't presume to mention her, you miscreant!" cried Mr. Tengelyi. "You my daughter's husband? You! – a robber, a thief?"

The noise of the altercation brought Vilma and the Liptaka into the room, and the passers-by in the street stopped at the window and listened. Mr. Catspaw was of opinion that the presence of so many witnesses would prevent the notary from proceeding to acts of bodily violence; and, moreover, he was aware that his dignity would not allow him to submit to Tengelyi's insulting language. To talk big was not only safe, but prudent.

"This is too bad!" screamed he. "I'll make you repent it, sir!"

"Repent it?" shouted Tengelyi.

"Yes, repent it, if you please, my dear notary! Perhaps you are not aware that you are not a nobleman?"

"Reptile! dost thou dare to remind me of thy villany?" cried the notary, raising his stick, in spite of the endeavours of his wife and daughter, who sought to restrain him.

"Though I condescend to propose for your daughter, you ought not to forget the difference between your rank and mine!"

"It's the difference between an honest man and a rascal!" cried Tengelyi, still struggling to disengage his arm from the grasp of Mrs. Ershebet.

Mr. Catspaw saw clearly that the delay of another minute would prove dangerous. He retreated, and reached the door just when Tengelyi, whose fury brooked no restraint, broke from those who held him, and rushed in pursuit of him.

"God knows but I'll be the death of that fellow!" said the notary, as he returned to his house, accompanied by Vandory and Akosh, who luckily met him as he was running after the attorney. Exhausted with his passion, he flung himself on a chair; and though his wife, Vandory, and Akosh assured him that Mr. Catspaw was beneath an honest man's notice, a considerable time elapsed before he regained his usual equanimity. The witnesses of the scene, too, were greatly excited and interested; and a report was spread, by some, that Mr. Catspaw had been beaten and kicked, and by others, that Tengelyi would have killed the attorney, but for the flight of the latter.

While these and sundry other rumours on the subject of his danger were spreading in Tissaret, the worthy Mr. Catspaw reached his apartments in safety, though by no means in an enviable mood.

"What a confounded fool I've made of myself!" said he. "Propose for the girl, indeed! curse me, I'm a victim to that silly attachment of mine for the Retys. Would they have given me a penny more for marrying her? No. They cannot help giving me fifty thousand florins, but they won't give me a farthing more. And even if I were to prevent young Rety's marriage, his ungrateful mother would never forgive me. She'll never get over those money matters. Curse her! She'd skin a flint! But who the deuce could have thought that the woman wouldn't let me speak, and that Tengelyi would come home? And he insulted me! – publicly! – before everybody did he insult me, and I cannot even retaliate upon him! I dare not offend that puppy Akosh; for, after all, I don't see what I can do, except giving him Tengelyi's documents, and a few of Vandory's letters. It's a good plan, and it will protect me against being prosecuted. But before doing this I must have the bills in my pocket."

But even this resolution did not quite conquer Mr. Catspaw's apprehensions; for did not Akosh hate him? and might not the young man institute proceedings against him? No! he would bind Akosh by his word of honour, – these young men are so full of prejudice! "And besides, he cannot inform against me, without dishonouring his own name. His mother-in-law is too much mixed up with the affair," muttered the attorney, as he lighted a candle and sat down to examine Vandory's papers.

It was almost eleven o'clock when he finished his labours. He took a few of the letters, put them in an envelope, and placed them in a secret corner of his desk. His examination of the letters had satisfied him that the Retys could not think of braving the publicity of a court of justice. This discovery put him into the best of tempers.

"Capital!" said he, rubbing his hands; "in a few days I shall have fifty thousand florins, and by communicating the affair to Akosh, I can foil any plans of revenge which this woman may have against me. I'm worth two hundred thousand florins! At last I know what I've lived for!" And he prepared to lock the door. He turned the key and tried the door, but it remained open. He tried it again, but without success. Mr. Catspaw shook his head. Something must be the matter with the lock. He thought of bolting the door; but the bolt would not move.

"What the deuce can be the matter?" said he, after another unsuccessful attempt.

He recollected that since Akosh, Etelka, and the Retys were gone, he was quite alone in that part of the house; and so much had his mind of late been occupied with robbers and robberies, that he became uneasy at the thought of passing the night alone and with open doors; and while he thought of it, it struck him that something moved in the stove. He approached it and listened.

"I am a fool!" said he at last; "if I can't lock the door, it's because the lock's used up; and as for the bolt, why I've never moved it. It ought to be rusty by this time!" He went to bed, still thinking of the most profitable plan of investing his money, when a slight noise interrupted his train of agreeable thoughts. Steps were heard on the stairs. They were soft and cautious, like the steps of one who wishes to escape detection. Mr. Catspaw heard them distinctly. They approached from the stairs, and crept along the corridor to his room. He was just about to leave his bed when the door was softly opened, and a man, wrapped up in a bunda, entered the room.

"Viola!" said Mr. Catspaw, with a trembling voice, for the shout which he wished to raise died in his throat. His hair stood on end; his jaws shook.

"It's well you know me!" said the outlaw, as he advanced to the attorney's bed. "If you call for help, you are a dead man! Besides, it's no use calling; nobody will hear you."

"I won't call! I won't make a noise!" said Mr. Catspaw, while an ashy paleness spread over his features. "I know you are the last man to hurt me, good Mr. Viola! Do you come for money? I am a poor man, but you are welcome to all I have. No thanks! I am happy to oblige you!"

"I am the last man to hurt you!" said the robber, giving the attorney a look which made his blood creep. "Am I indeed? Don't you think bygones are bygones with me! Not your agony, not all the blood in your veins, can pay me for what you've done to me and mine!"

"You are mistaken, my dear sir; indeed you are – ;" the attorney cast a despairing look around him; "I am not – "

"Who?" said Viola, sternly. "Who was it made me a robber? Who was it that drove me forth, like a beast of the forest, while my wife and children were cast as beggars on the world? Say it was not you! Say it was not you who wrote my doom! Say it was not you who would have drunk my blood! Say it is not you who are my curse and my enemy! – "

"I'll give you my all, – I'll give you all I have! I've a couple of hundreds of Mr. Rety's money too, and you are welcome to them, though I shall have to refund them, and – "

"I don't want your money!" said Viola, scornfully. "I want the papers you stole from the notary."

"The papers?" said the attorney, with a look of profound astonishment; "what papers does it please you to mean, my dear Mr. Viola?"

"I mean the papers which you took away when they bound me. If you don't give them up this minute, you'll never rise from this bed."

The robber's tone showed Mr. Catspaw that it was dangerous to trifle with him. He replied, —

"Yes, I had them! You are right, I took them from you; but I lament to say I was rash enough to burn them on the spot. That's the truth of it. I would not tell you a lie, no! not for the world; for you know all and everything."

"If so, tell your lies to others. I know that you keep the papers in this room, and that you've offered them to Lady Rety for fifty thousand florins."

"Who can have told you that?" cried Mr. Catspaw, as a suspicion flashed through his mind that Viola might possibly be hired by Lady Rety; "who? who?"

"Never you mind who it was?" said Viola, dryly; "if you think your life of less value than fifty thousand florins, I'll show you in an instant how little I care for it."

"But do tell me!" cried the attorney, "do tell me who told you that the papers are in my room? – who has sent you?"

"Silence!" and the robber flung his bunda back; "get up! give me the papers, unless – "

Mr. Catspaw rose and walked to his desk. Viola stood quietly by, watching him.

The attorney's hands trembled as he produced the papers. They were in two bundles, and among them were some letters of Tengelyi's, which the Jew had abstracted with the rest.

"Here they are!" said Mr. Catspaw, with a hoarse voice; "you know their value. Ask whatever you please – "

"I don't want your money, keep it!" said the robber, advancing to seize the packet; when the attorney recollected that he kept a loaded pistol in the desk.

Yielding to an impulse of mad despair, he seized it and presented it at Viola.

The robber's eyes shot fire as he saw the weapon. He made a rush; the attorney fell, and the pistol was in Viola's hands.

That movement sealed Mr. Catspaw's doom. Viola was not cruel. He had an instinctive aversion to the shedding of blood. If Mr. Catspaw had given up the papers without resistance, he would have been safe; but the treachery of the action and the struggle inflamed the robber's wilder passions.

"Pity!" screamed Mr. Catspaw, as Viola seized him by the throat.

"Did you pity me when Susi begged for grace, when you wrote my death-warrant?"

The attorney's face grew black, his eyes started from his head; but his despair gave him strength. When he saw the robber's knife descending, he caught it in his hands.

There was a noise in the house. Steps were heard. The attorney's cries had roused the servants.

Viola made a violent movement. Again, and again, and again was the broad steel buried in the breast of his victim. Then, seizing the papers with his bloody hands, he rushed from the room and reached the yard, where he was met by the coachman and another servant. They pursued him.

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 hoarse 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, God 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 assist him in establishing his title, 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 gratitude. 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 God, 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 grass around it was of the freshest and purest green, and when other grass-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 noble 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.

"Good God!" cried the notary; "can it be that Viola is taken?" And to escape being seen in this questionable place, and at such a time, too, he hastened back to the village.

A few minutes after the notary's departure, Viola broke through the hedge. A parcel of papers was in his hand. One moment he stood still – one moment he cast an anxious and half-desponding look around him. But the man whom he sought was not there. The avenger of blood was at his heels. He leapt down the bank, stepped into a boat which lay hid among the willows; and the lusty strokes of his oars were drowned in the shouts of his pursuers.