The Pobratim Part 58

"If you intend to speak of Milena," said Bellacic, interrupting the judge, "you must remember that the evening upon which your brother was killed she was spending the evening----"

"At your house? No!" said Vranic, with a scornful laugh, shrugging his shoulders again.

"Come, come," said one of the jury; "let's settle the _karvarina_."

"Besides," added another arbitrator, ingenuously, "Radonic has been put to the expense of more than fifty goats. Until now, no man has ever----"

"Oh, I see!" interrupted the tailor, with a withering sneer; "he has bribed the few friends my poor brother had, so now even those have turned against him."

Oaths, curses, threats were uttered by the twenty-four men, and the younger and more hasty ones instinctively sought the handles of their daggers.

"Gentlemen," said Bellacic, "supper is ready; the two men have sworn to be friends----"

"I've sworn nothing at all," muttered the tailor, between his teeth.

"Let us sit down," continued the master of the house, "and try to forget our present quarrels; we'll surely come to a better understanding when cakes flowing with honey and sweet wine are brought on the table."

They now carried in for the feast several low, stool-like tables, serving both as boards and dishes. On each one there was a whole roasted lamb, resting on a bed of rice. Every guest took out his dagger and carved for himself the piece he liked best or the one he could easiest reach, and which he gnawed, holding the bone as a handle, if there was one, or using the flat, pancake-like bread--the _chupatti_ of the Indians, the flap-jacks of the Turks--as plates.

Soon the wooden _bukaras_ were handed around, and then all ill-humour was drowned in the heady wine of the rich Dalmatian soil. After the lambs and rice, big sirloins of beef and huge tunny-fish followed in succession, then game, and lastly, pastry and fruit.

After more than two hours of eating and drinking, with interludes of singing and shouting, the meal at last came to an end. The gentlemen of the jury, whose brains had been more or less muddled from the day before, were now, almost without any exception, quite drunk. As for the guests, some were jovial and boisterous, others tender and sentimental. Radonic's face was saturnine; Markovic, who was always loquacious, and who spoke in Italian when drunk, was making a long speech that had never had a beginning and did not seem to come to an end; and the worst of it was that, during the whole time, he clasped tightly one of the _bukaras_, and would not relinquish his hold of it.

As for Vranic and his younger brother, they had both sunk down on the floor sulky and silent. The more they ate and drank, the more weazened and wretched they looked, and the expression of malice on their angry faces deepened their wrinkles into a fiendish scowl.

"I think," said the elder brother, "it is time all this was over, and that we should be going."

"Going?" exclaimed all the guests who heard it. "And where do you want to go?"

"Oh, if he isn't comfortable, let him go!" said one of the arbitrators. "I'm sure I don't want to detain him; his face isn't so pleasant to look at that we should beg him to stay--no, nor his company either."

"Oh, I daresay you would like to get rid of me, all of you!"

"Well, then, shall we wind up this business?" said the judge of the _karvarina_, putting his hand on Radonic's shoulder.

"I am quite ready," said he.

Thereupon he drew forth his leather purse and took out several Maria Theresa dollars.

"Shall we make it five instead of one?" he asked, spreading out the new and s.h.i.+ning coins on his broad palm. "Now, tell me, tailor, if I am n.i.g.g.ardly with my money?" he added, handing the sum to Vranic.

The tailor seized the dollars and clenched his fist; then, with a scowl:

"I don't want any of your charity," he hissed out in a shrill treble.

"Five are almost worth six goats, and my brother is worth but one.

Here, take your money back; distribute it among the arbitrators, to whom you have been so generous. No, _heyduk_, you are not n.i.g.g.ardly; but, then, what are a few dollars to you? a shot of your gun and your purse is full. Thanks all the same, I only want my due. No robber's charity for me." And with these words he flung the five dollars in Radonic's face.

The sharp edge of one of the coins struck Radonic on the corner of the eye, just under the brow, and the blood trickled down. All his drunkenness vanished, his gloomy look took a fierce expression, and with a bound he was about to seize his antagonist by the throat and strangle him as he had done his brother; but Vranic, who was on his guard, lifted up the knife he had received from the murderer a few hours before, and quick as lightning struck him a blow on his breast.

"This is my _karvarina_," said he; "tooth for tooth, eye for eye, blood for blood."

The blow had been aimed at Radonic's heart, but he parried it and received a deep gash in the fore-part of his arm.

A scuffle at once ensued; some of the less drunken men threw themselves on Vranic, others on Radonic.

"Sneak, traitor, coward!" shouted the chief arbitrator, striking Vranic in the face and almost knocking him down; "how dare you do such a thing after having begged us to settle the _karvarina_ for you?"

"And you've settled it nicely, indeed; gorged with his meat, drunk with his wine, and your purses filled with his money."

"Liar!" shouted the men of the jury.

"Out of my house, you scorpion, and never cross its threshold again."

"I go, and I'm only too glad to be rid of you all;--but as for you,"

said Vranic to Bellacic, "had it not been for you, all this would not have happened."

"What have I to do with it?"

"Did you not come to beg me to make it up? But I suppose you were anxious to have the whole affair hushed up as quickly as possible."

"Fool!" answered Bellacic.

"Oh, Milena is not always at your house for nothing!"

"What did he say?" asked Radonic, trying to break away from the hands of the men who were holding him, and from Mara Bellacic, who was bandaging up his wound.

"What do you care what he said?" replied Bellacic; "his slander only falls back upon himself, just as if he were spitting in the wind; it can harm neither you nor Milena."

"Oh, we shall meet again!" cried Radonic.

"We shall certainly meet, if ever you escape the Turkish gallows, or the Austrian prisons."

And as he uttered these last words, he disappeared in the darkness of the road.

CHAPTER XV

A COWARD'S VENGEANCE

When the _pobratim_ returned to Budua they found the whole town divided into two camps, and, consequently, in a state of open war.

Since the evening of the _karvarina_ two parties had formed themselves, the Vranites and the Radonites. The first, indeed, were few, and did not consist of friends of Vranic, but simply of people who had a grudge, not only against Radonic, but against Bellacic and the twenty-four men of the jury, who were accused of peculation. On the whole, public opinion was bitter against the tailor, for, after having made peace with his enemy, he had tried to murder him; then --as if this had not been enough--he had gone on the morrow and given warning to the police that Radonic, who had cowardly murdered his brother, had returned to Budua, and was walking about the streets unpunished; moreover, that the _heyduk_ had threatened to murder him, so he came to appeal for protection.

This happened when Budua had just been incorporated with the Austrian empire, and the people, jealous of their customs, looked upon the protection of the government as an officious intermeddling with their own private affairs, and strongly resented their being treated as children unable to act for themselves.

Although a few crimes had been left unpunished, simply not to rouse at once the general feeling against its present masters, still the new jurisdiction was bent upon putting a stop to the practice of the _karvarina_; and to make this primitive country understand that, under a civilised form of government, people paid taxes to be protected by wise and just laws; therefore, it was the duty of a well-regulated police to discover and punish equitably all offences done to any particular man.