Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 46

"Oh, accursed woman!" roared Daczo, threatening Lady Banfi with his fists, when he learnt that Banfi had made his escape. "'Tis all through you that Banfi has slipped through our fingers."

"Oh, Almighty G.o.d! I thank Thee!" stammered Margaret, with hands upraised to heaven.

The Szeklers, enraged at having let the husband escape, swung their weapons and rushed upon the wife to murder her.

"Let her die! Her blood be upon her own head!" they roared, with b.e.s.t.i.a.l rage.

"Kill me! Death will be welcome to me!" cried Margaret, kneeling down before them. "To die for him was my only wish. G.o.d be with me!"

"Be off with you!" cried Kornis, suddenly intervening, beating down the weapons of the Szeklers with his sword, and covering the kneeling lady with his body. "Shame on you! Would you kill a woman? Ye are worse than the Pagan Tartars. If you've let Banfi escape, run after him."

"We'll kill her! We'll kill her!" bellowed the Szeklers, and again they attempted to tear Kornis away from the lady.

"Eh! you d.a.m.ned beasts! Who commands here, I should like to know? Am I not your captain?"

"No!" bluntly replied a stiff-necked, bull-headed Szekler, twitching his bulky shoulders to and fro. "Our captain is Nicholas Bethlen, and he is not here."

"Then go and find him. But let me tell you that whoever does not instantly quit this room shall be beaten into a pulp."

Still the Szeklers persisted in remaining, and there is no knowing what they might not have done, had not one of the hindermost suddenly exclaimed--

"Let us go to Bonczhida!"

Thereupon all the others fell a-shouting--"To Bonczhida! to Bonczhida!"

and they withdrew, cursing horribly, and in the most chaotic confusion.

But Captain Kornis quietly put Lady Banfi into a carriage, and sent her to Bethlen Castle, which then belonged to Paul Beldi, hoping that Banfi would behave with a little more discretion when he heard that his wife was a prisoner.

Meanwhile, the Szekler rabble sent out against Banfi by order of the Prince had arrived at Bonczhida, and on showing the castellan the Prince's mandate, the gates were opened to them without the slightest contradiction. Daczo only left a portion of his band there, whom he strictly charged to arrest Banfi the moment he appeared, then with the rest he went on to ormenyes, where Banfi had another castle, to seek him there.

The Szeklers left behind at Bonczhida no sooner perceived themselves captainless, than they proceeded to make themselves perfectly at home in the occupied castle. At first indeed they only jostled each other in the hall and vestibules, but presently they began to insist that the private apartments should also be thrown open to them.

The castellan hesitated. He declared that there was no necessity for such a step, and begged the n.o.ble gentlemen to keep within their legal rights, whereupon the before-mentioned broad-shouldered, bull-headed rogue stepped forth, twirled his blonde moustache, which consisted of about nine hairs, and thrusting his pock-marked face close under the castellan's nose, exclaimed--

"What do you mean by that? You are a conspirator! You have robber-bands concealed in those rooms. Open the doors instantly, or we'll burn the house down!"

The castellan was very wroth, but he was also very frightened, so he threw open the rooms in order that the Szeklers might see with their own eyes that n.o.body was concealed there.

The Szeklers thereupon, with astonis.h.i.+ng conscientiousness, thoroughly explored every hole and corner, even looking into places where no one would ever have thought of hiding anything. They looked under and inside all the beds. They pulled out all the cupboards. They took the grates out bodily to see what was behind them. They pitched all the books out of the book-cases, and, after ransacking every room, came at last to Lady Banfi's bed-chamber.

"Look! look! There sits Banfi!" cried the bull-headed ringleader, recoiling at first before a lifelike portrait of the Baron, but immediately afterwards rus.h.i.+ng forward and gouging out one of its eyes with his spear. "And that pretty lady yonder is his wife, I suppose?"

asked he, pointing to another portrait by the side of the first. "Ai, ai, ai! We were like to have killed her a little while ago, not knowing that she was so pretty. Let us be off, comrades! This room we must leave untouched, for it belongs to that pretty lady," and with that he drove his comrades out, and wrote with a piece of charcoal on the white enamelled door, in letters each an ell long--"THIS IS THE PRETTY LADY'S CHAMBER."

"Why do you do that?" asked the castellan in some surprise.

"To prevent any fuddled blockhead from thrusting his nose in there, in case we all get drunk."

"But where will you all get the drink from, pray?" asked the castellan, more and more amazed.

"Nay, gossip! we must certainly have a peep at the cellars also, to see if anybody is lurking there."

"There you cannot go, and so I tell you once for all, unless you have brought petards with you under your coats of mail."

"What! Just say that again! I should like to hear it once more. Do you know, gossip, to whom you are speaking? My name is Firi Firtos, and if you speak a single word more, I'll chuck you over the house, so that you will fall to the ground in half-a-dozen pieces."

"Why bandy words with him?" cried a voice from the crowd. "Let us pitch the fellow out of the window."

The Szeklers did not wait to be told twice, but instantly raised the castellan into the air and threw him, despite his frantic struggles, out of the window. Luckily he fell on his feet, and took to his heels, to the great indignation of Firi Firtos, who seized all the cactus and hortensia plants that stood in the windows, and hurled them after him, pots and all, after which the whole mob rushed bellowing down to the cellars. Finding it impossible to open the large iron doors, they dragged forward huge casks, filled them with big stones, and sent them flying down the cellar steps, till at last the iron doors fell in with a tremendous crash.

The vast cellar was fitted with huge b.u.t.ts and barrels of every size and shape, and the Szeklers forthwith fell upon them and knocked the tops off with their morning-stars to see what was inside them. The costly wine poured out into the cellar. The Szeklers drank as only Szeklers can drink, and what they could not drink was simply wasted.

When they had all drunk as much as they could hold, the mob stormed up-stairs again, and while another batch took their place below, they forced their way into the state-rooms, rolled about on the costly divans and oriental carpets, hustled one another against the furniture and mirrors, and indulged in many other like pleasantries. Firi Firtos climbed on to a round ebony table in order to paint a moustache on the portrait of a mediaeval lady with a piece of charcoal, but some one else jerked the table from under him, and the merry wag fell cras.h.i.+ng down into a gla.s.s chest containing the family treasures. Mad with rage, he immediately began pitching about everything which came to hand: gorgeous gold pocals, silver plates, enamelled snuff-boxes, flew one after another at the heads of the Szeklers, who, entering into the joke, flung them all back at him with great spirit.

This was the signal for a general devastation. The mania for destruction is contagious. It needs but one to begin it, and the mob, as if rejoicing at the sight, is never so ready as when there is something to be pulled, torn, or smashed to bits. In an instant every piece of furniture was broken up and every bit of tapestry torn down. Splendid costumes, costly, fur-trimmed pelisses, gala-mantles--everything was torn to pieces. They ripped open the feather-beds, scattered the eider-down out of the windows, and bellowed to those who stood below--"It is snowing! it is snowing!" whereupon all the others came rus.h.i.+ng up to tear and pull to pieces what still remained whole.

They pulled up the fragrant jasmines by the roots to make posies of them, and cut up into neckties the delicate tapestries which Lady Banfi had worked with her own hands. Stealing gave the Szeklers no pleasure, it was destruction for its own sake that they found so delightful. Thus they threw to the ground a rare and costly clock which needed winding only once a year, broke it up, distributed the wheels and chains as buckles for their shoes, and melted the silver keys into bullets, which they fired off into the air.

Here too it was edifying to see how Firi Firtos tried to get at the bottom of everything. He took down an antique urn and stuck it on his head upside down by way of a helmet. A clock chain he wound round his loins as a girdle, and he danced about hugging in his arms a huge statue of Gutenberg, declaring that it would make an excellent scarecrow for the Somlyo vineyards.

The fragments of the broken furniture they piled up on the hearth, and made a great fire of the priceless ebony, mahogany, and palisander woods. The conflagration of a whole village would not have been half so costly.

Over this fire they hung, on a silver chain, a Corinthian amphora of exquisite workmans.h.i.+p by way of a kettle, filled it with finely-chopped mutton, and sent Firi Firtos out for beans, salt, and onions. He brought them instead green coffee beans, white powdered sugar, and the most costly tulip, amaryllis, and hyacinth bulbs, all of which they threw pell-mell into the kettle, with the natural consequence that the mess, when finished, was very nearly the death of them all, and the end of it was that they pitched Firi Firtos neck and crop into the courtyard.

The Szekler, mad with rage and unable to obtain any other satisfaction, rushed down to the cellars to drink himself dead drunk, but there all the hogsheads had already been staved in, and he waded in wine up to his middle. Looking about him, he perceived a door leading to a second cellar, broke it open with his axe, and was overjoyed to see by the light of the torch he held in his hand, a whole row of fresh casks. He immediately rushed upon the first of them, and knocking the top in, held the torch over it to see what was flowing out. It was _gunpowder_!

Luckily for him he was drunk, otherwise he would certainly have sent the castle and everything it contained the shortest way to heaven. "That's not good to drink!" thought he, and broke open the second cask; in that too there was powder, and in the third also, and he swore a terrible oath that if the fourth held the same thing he would hurl the torch into it holus bolus. In the fourth cask, however, there was honey, and shake it as much as he would, he could get nothing else out of it. At last he came upon a six-gallon cask, and, smelling the bung, inhaled a strong odour of spirits, which made him madder than ever, and seizing it by the spigot he raised it bodily from the ground and swallowed long draughts of the strong corn brandy, till over he fell backwards, cask and all.

There he wallowed about in the streaming honey; struggled laboriously to his feet again, stumbled a few steps further on, fell down into the gunpowder; rolled backwards and forwards in it for some time, and finally, all candied as he was, scrambled into the courtyard, and there the honey-and-powder-bedaubed form fell p.r.o.ne into the heaps of eider-down which covered the ground, and sprawled helplessly about till he was covered with plumage from the crown of his head to the soles of his jack-boots, and in this plight the grotesquely hideous creature crawled up stairs on all fours in amongst his carousing companions. The man no longer resembled any known beast of the Old or New Worlds. He was black and white all over: white where he was not black, and black where he was not white. Perhaps he had some distant resemblance to a polar bear with a hide of feathers instead of hair, but his roaring was like the roaring of a hippopotamus. It is therefore not surprising that when the Szeklers beheld this strange monster crawling towards them on all fours and bellowing loudly, they should take to their heels in terror, scatter to all points of the compa.s.s, and leave the flesh-filled kettle in the lurch. Most of them took the shortest but most dangerous way out of the window, exclaiming--"That is Banfi's devil! Here comes Banfi's devil!"

The Szekler, perceiving the success of his involuntary masquerade, sent after the fugitives a still more ghastly howl, took the amphora down from the chain, sat down with it in the middle of the parquetted floor, thrust both hands into it at once like a demon of the woods, and gobbled and roared alternately.

And these savage scenes took place in the very same chamber where, only a few days before, the delicate form of Dame Banfi had appeared among her jasmines and mimosas like a melancholy shade from fairyland which only listens with its soul and speaks with its eyes.

Meanwhile Denis Banfi, after breaking through the ambush laid for him at Koppad, began, as the noise of the pursuit gradually died away, to look about him in the star-bright night, and picked his way so carefully through woods and over stubble-fields that, at dawn of day, he saw before him the towers of Klausenburg.

Once rid of the terrors of pursuit, anger and revenge began to rage within him. He thought at first that this night attack was simply an audacious conspiracy of his private enemies concocted without the knowledge of the Prince, on the principle that an accomplished act is more easily justifiable than an act that has still to be accomplished.

But the attempt had not succeeded, and the escaped lion had both the will and the power to turn upon his pursuers and teach them respect for the laws.

In the plain before the town Banfi's troops were just going through their morning exercises when their leader came galloping up to them, pale, agitated, unarmed, and without either hat or mantle. His captains hastened towards him, aghast and curious.

"I've just escaped from a murderous a.s.sault," said Banfi, with a hoa.r.s.e voice and a heaving breast; "my enemies have treacherously fallen upon me. I have escaped them, but my wife is in their hands. I recognized the voices of Daczo and Kornis among my pursuers."

"Yes, and Daczo's name is embroidered on this saddle-cloth," said Michael Angel.

Banfi appeared much disturbed. His face was dark and troubled, as if neither the future nor the past was quite clear to him.