Manasseh Part 33

"Villafranca. Peace has been concluded. The Hungarian battalion is to be disbanded, and its members allowed to return home."

This room, too, had its crucifix. It seemed to look down on Mana.s.seh with the same gentle reproof, and to say, "Have I failed you in your hour of trial?"

With the first ripening of the fruit in the Toroczko orchards, Mana.s.seh and his comrades were at home. Blanka came to meet her husband as far as Kolozsvar, bringing her little daughter Ilonka with her. Bela could not come, as he had just then a school examination. At the Borev bridge a splendid reception awaited the home-comers. A handsome little lad headed the receiving party, waving a flag.

"Who is that pretty boy?" Mana.s.seh asked his wife.

She laughed merrily, and rebuked him for not knowing his own son. But he had not seen the child for six years.

His brother Aaron, too, he hardly recognised, so gray had his hair turned under the anxieties of the past few years. The speech of welcome which the elder brother was to have delivered proved a total failure, owing to the emotion aroused in the orator's breast at sight of the returned wanderer. But the most affecting part of it all to Mana.s.seh was the appearance of his sister Anna. The poor girl, he could not fail to see, was sinking into an early grave.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A DAY OF RECKONING.

Victory had neither glossed over nor defeat buried from sight those dishonest army contracts. Louder and louder grew the murmurs against the fraud that had contributed so disastrously to the unhappy issue of the war, until at last a high military officer opened his mouth and declared, emphatically, "The parties responsible for such an outrage deserve to be hanged!"

Soon after this bold utterance a decree went forth for an investigation of the scandal and the condign punishment of the guilty ones. Confusion and panic followed in more than one family of exalted station. A n.o.bleman of proud lineage burnt all his papers and then opened the veins of his wrists with a penknife, and so escaped the ignominy of a trial in court. Another submitted to arrest, but no sooner saw his prison door closed upon him than he despatched himself by piercing his heart with a breast-pin. Two others vanished completely from sight and hearing the very day the edict was published, and never showed themselves afterward.

Benjamin Vajdar, black with guilt as he knew himself to be, chose the shrewder course of remaining in Vienna and calmly going about his business, with all the outward confidence of spotless innocence.

Suspicion is much like a watch-dog; it leaps upon the man who quails.

Prince Cagliari and the Marchioness Caldariva also remained quietly in the city, and even went so far as to forego their wonted sojourn at the seash.o.r.e when summer came. They seemed to have acquired a sudden extraordinary fondness for the Austrian capital.

But one day the expected happened to Benjamin Vajdar. He was called to the police bureau. The official who received him was an old friend of his who now gave signal proof of his friendliness.

"Benjamin Vajdar," said he, "you are ordered by the government to leave Vienna within twenty-four hours and go back to your native town, beyond which you are forbidden to stir."

This mandate was a surprise to Vajdar, who had expected to be arrested and tried, and had made his preparations accordingly. However, there was nothing to do but submit to the inevitable. Further particulars or explanations were denied him, except that he would find a special police officer placed at his service from that moment until he reached his destination,--which was a polite intimation that he was thenceforth under government surveillance, and that any attempt at flight would be frustrated.

He returned at once to his house, which adjoined that of the Marchioness Caldariva. Indeed, from his bedroom a secret pa.s.sage, already referred to, led into Rozina's boudoir; but the clock-door had seldom opened to the secretary of late. Toward seven o'clock in the evening he saw a closed carriage drive away from the next door.

"She is going to the opera," said he to himself as he watched the vehicle turn a corner and disappear. He donned hat and coat and sauntered after it, the emissary of the police always ten steps in the rear. Arrived at the opera-house, he purchased tickets for himself and his faithful attendant, and then made his way to the box of the marchioness.

Rozina received him with apparent cordiality and listened to his whispered account of what had befallen him.

"Have you talked this over with Prince Cagliari?" she asked.

"No, and I shall not," replied Vajdar, with significant emphasis. "This is his doing."

"What makes you think so, pray?" asked the marchioness, with an air of surprise. "Why should he plot the ruin of his own secretary and confidant?"

"You yourself are the cause," was the retort.

The beautiful woman bent her head still nearer to him. Even her cruel heart felt the compliment conveyed in this acknowledgment of her power.

"And what do you wish of me, my poor boy?" she murmured softly in his ear.

"I wish an interview with you after the opera--a strictly confidential interview."

"Very well. Come to me as soon as I get home, and I will admit you."

"No; you shall not turn me away so easily, with an empty promise."

"What, must I swear to you, then?"

"No, give me the little key, and I shall be sure of gaining admittance."

"I am almost afraid to trust you with it," objected the marchioness, with an arch look; "but still you shall have it--there! And now guard it well, and be discreet."

Vajdar kissed the hand extended to him and retired. The fair Cyrene turned again toward the stage and joined in the applause. One might have thought she was applauding the prima-donna; but no, she was applauding herself.

Benjamin Vajdar returned home, left the police officer quartered in his antechamber, and, with his servant's aid, began packing his trunks.

After that task was accomplished he waited impatiently for the close of the opera and Rozina's return. When his watch told him that he must have waited long enough, he pa.s.sed noiselessly through the secret pa.s.sage and opened the mysterious door in the tall clock at its farther end. The marchioness was not there. One hour, two hours, he waited in her boudoir, and still she failed to appear.

"Very well; so be it," said Vajdar to himself. "You thought to outwit me; we shall see which will outwit the other."

With that he opened the little writing-desk and took out the morocco-bound pocketbook which he seemed to know so well where to find.

A single glance at its contents satisfied him that the papers he desired were still there. He quickly pocketed his prize and then paused to look around for the last time at the dainty appointments of the luxurious apartment.

"Adieu, beautiful Cyrene, adieu, for ever!" he murmured, a smile of irony on his lips.

Stealthily he had come, stealthily he withdrew. He did not take the trouble to close the writing-desk, but he was careful to leave the little key sticking in the clock door, where its rightful owner would be sure to see it.

He found the police officer still awake and waiting for him. A cab was quickly summoned, and the two started on their journey to Transylvania.

When the Marchioness Caldariva entered her boudoir a little later, her eyes fell at once on her open writing-desk, and she perceived that the morocco pocketbook was gone. She laughed, but it was not a pleasant laugh to hear.

"Very good," said she, half aloud; "you would have it so, and I am not to blame."

Anna Adorjan hovered on the brink of the grave. She had heard that Benjamin Vajdar was charged with a penal offence, and she felt only too well convinced that if such a charge had been brought against him he must be guilty. If guilty, he would be sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and she would never see him return to his old home as she had once so confidently expected. She had nothing now to live for. Her dear brother Mana.s.seh was restored to his family, and she was ready to die.

"Brother," she gently entreated, as she lay on her bed of pain, "if he should by any chance ever come back to us, promise me to treat him as you would if I were still here. You will promise me that, won't you?"

A silent nod of Mana.s.seh's bowed head was her sufficient a.s.surance that her slightest wish would be respected.

"And even though he may never come back, I wish you to make my resting-place in the rocks large enough for two. Perhaps he will return sometime, when he sees his life drawing to a close, and he may be glad to find a place ready for him by my side. You will do as I wish in this matter, brother Mana.s.seh, will you not?"

Another nod of the bowed head.

The prediction uttered by Mana.s.seh, when his enemy lay in his power in the desolate church at St. George, was completely fulfilled. Though he would have infinitely preferred banishment to Siberia, Benjamin Vajdar was forced to return to Toroczko, to the very house where he had been reared, and there take up his abode as a state prisoner. The government made him a pitiful allowance of three hundred florins a year, to keep him from starving.