St. Peter's Umbrella Part 6

"I'll bet you a cigar, and we'll consider I've lost it."

And then he would offer the old professor, who was very fond of betting, one of his choicest cigars.

"I never had such a clever pupil before," the old professor used to say.

"I have had to teach very ordinary minds all my life, and have wasted my talents on them. A sad thing to say, sir. I feel like that nugget of gold which was lost at the Mint. You know the tale, sir? What, you have never heard it? Why, a large nugget of gold was once lost at the Mint.

It was searched for everywhere, but could not be found. Well, after a long examination of all the clerks, it turned out that the gold had been melted by accident with the copper for the kreutzers. You understand me, sir? I have been pouring my soul into two or three generations of fools, but, thank goodness, I have at last found a worthy recipient for my knowledge. Of course, you understand me, sir?"

But Pal Gregorics needed no spurring on in this case; he had fixed intentions as far as the boy was concerned, and folks were not far wrong when they (mostly in order to vex the other Gregorics) prophesied the end would be that Gregorics would marry Anna Wibra, and adopt her boy.

Kupeczky himself often said:

"Yes, that will be the end of it. Who will bet with me?"

It would have been the end, and the correct way too, for Gregorics was fond enough of the boy to do a correct thing for once in a way. But two things happened to prevent the carrying out of this plan. First of all Anna fell from a ladder and broke her leg, so that she limped all her life after, and who wants a lame wife?

The second thing was, that little Gyuri was taken ill very suddenly. He turned blue in the face and was in convulsions; they thought he would die. Gregorics fell on his knees by the side of the bed of the sick child, kissed his face and cold little hands, and asked despairingly:

"What is the matter, my boy? Tell me what hurts you."

"I don't know, uncle," moaned the child.

At that moment Gregorics suffered every pain the child felt, and his heart seemed breaking. He seized hold of the doctor's hand, and his agony pressed these words from him:

"Doctor, save the child, and I'll give you a bag full of gold."

The doctor saved him, and got the bag of money too, as Gregorics had promised in that hour of danger. (Of course the doctor did not choose the bag, Gregorics had one made on purpose.)

The doctor cured the boy, but made Gregorics ill, for he instilled suspicion into his mind by swearing that the boy's illness was the result of poison. Nothing could have upset Gregorics as much as this declaration. How could it have happened? Had he eaten any poisonous mushrooms? Gyuri shook his head. Well, what could he have eaten?

The mother racked her brains to find out what could have been the cause.

Perhaps this, perhaps that, perhaps the vinegar was bad, or the copper saucepans had not been quite clean? Gregorics shook his head sorrowfully.

"Don't talk nonsense, Anna," he said.

Deep down in his heart was a thought which he was afraid to put into words, but which entirely spoiled his life for him, and robbed him of sleep and appet.i.te. He had thought of his step-brothers; they had something to do with it, he was sure. There was an end to all his plans for adopting the boy, giving him his own name, and leaving him his fortune. No, no, it would cost Gyuri his life; they would kill him if he gave them the chance. But he did not intend to give them the chance. He trembled for the child, and hardly dared to love him. He started a new line of conduct, a very mad one too. He ordered the boy to address him as "sir" for the future, and forbade him to love him.

"It was only a bit of fun, you know, my allowing you to call me 'uncle.'

Do you understand?"

Tears stood in the boy's eyes, and seeing them old Gregorics bent down and kissed them away; and his voice was very sad as he said:

"Don't tell any one I kissed you, or you will be in great danger."

Precaution now became his mania. He took Kupeczky into his house, and the old professor had to be with the boy day and night, and taste every bit of food he was to eat. If Gyuri went outside the gates, he was first stripped of his velvet suit and patent leather shoes, and dressed in a ragged old suit kept on purpose, and allowed to run barefoot. Let people ask in the streets, "Who is that little scarecrow?" And let those who knew answer, "Oh, that is Gregorics's cook's child."

And, in order thoroughly to deceive his relations, he undertook to educate one of his step-sister's boys; took him up to Vienna and put him in the Terezianum, and kept him there in grand style with the sons of counts and barons. To his other nephews and nieces he sent lots of presents, so that the Gregorics family, who had never liked the younger brother, came at last to the conclusion that he was not such a bad fellow after all, only something of a fool.

Little Gyuri himself was sent away to school after a time; to Kolozsvar and then to Szeged, as far away as possible, so as to be out of reach of the family. At these times Kupeczky secretly disappeared from the town too, though he might as well have been accompanied by a drum and fife band, for not a soul would have asked where he was going.

Doubtless there was a lot of exaggeration in all this secrecy and precaution, but exaggeration had a large share in Gregorics's character.

If he undertook something very difficult he was more adventurous than the devil himself, and once his fear was overcome, he saw hope in every corner. His love for the child and his fear were both exaggerated, but he could not help it.

While the boy was pursuing his studies with success, the little man with the red umbrella was placing his money in landed estate. He said he had bought a large estate in Bohemia, and in order to pay for it had been obliged to sell his house in Vienna. Not long after he had built a sugar factory on the estate, upon which he began to look out for a purchaser for his Privorec estates. He soon found one in the person of a rich merchant from Ka.s.sa. There was something strange and mysterious in the fact of the little man making so many changes in his old age. One day he had his house in Besztercebanya transferred to Anna Wibra's name. And the little man was livelier and more contented than he had ever been in his life before. He began to pay visits again, interested himself in things and events, chattered and made himself agreeable to every one, dined with all his relations in turn, throwing out allusions and hints, such as, "After all, I can't take my money with me into the next world,"

and so on. He visited all the ladies who had refused him years ago, and very often went off by train, with his red umbrella under his arm, and stayed away for months and weeks at a time. No one troubled about him, every one said:

"I suppose the old fellow has gone to look after his property."

He never spoke much about his Bohemian estates, though his step-brothers were much interested in them. They both offered in turns to go there with him, for they had never been in Bohemia; but Gregorics always had an answer ready, and to tell the truth he did not seem to trouble himself much about the whole affair. Which was not to be wondered at, for he had no more possessions in Bohemia than the dirt and dust he brought home in his clothes from Carlsbad, where he spent a summer doing the cure.

The whole story was only trumped up to put his relations off the scent, whereas the truth was that he had turned all he had into money, and deposited it in a bank in order to be able to give it to the boy.

Gyuri's inheritance would be a draft on a bank, a bit of paper which no one would see, which he could keep in his waistcoat pocket, and yet be a very rich man. It was well and carefully thought out. So he did not really go to his estates, but simply to the town where Gyuri was studying with his old professor.

Those were his happiest times, the only rays of light in his lonely life; weeks in which he could pet the boy to his heart's content. Gyuri was a favorite at school, always the first in his cla.s.s, and a model of good behavior.

The old man used to stay for weeks in Szeged and enjoy the boy's society. They were often seen walking arm in arm on the banks of the Tisza, and when they and Kupeczky talked Slovak together, every one turned at the sound of the strange language, wondering which of the many it was that had been invented at the Tower of Babel.

When the last lesson was over, Gregorics was waiting at the gate, and the delighted boy would run and join him--though his comrades, who, one would have thought, would have had enough to occupy their thoughts elsewhere, teased him about the old man. They swore he was the devil in _propria persona_, that he did Gyuri Wibra's exercises for him, and that he had a talisman which caused him to know his lessons well. It was easy to be the first in his cla.s.s at that rate. There were even some silly enough to declare the old gentleman had a cloven foot, if you could only manage to see him with his boots off. The old red umbrella, too, which he always had with him, they thought must be a talisman, something after the style of Aladdin's lamp. Pista Paracsanyi, the best cla.s.sical verse writer, made up some lines on the red umbrella; which were soon learnt by most of the boys, and spouted on every possible occasion, in order to annoy the "head boy." But the poet had his reward in the form of a black eye and a bleeding nose, bestowed upon him by Gyuri Wibra, who, however, began to be vexed himself at the sight of the red umbrella, which made his old friend seem ridiculous in the eyes of his schoolfellows, and one day he broached the subject to the old gentleman.

"You might really buy a new umbrella, uncle."

The old gentleman smiled.

"What, you don't like my umbrella?"

"You only get laughed at, and the boys have even made verses about it."

"Well, my boy, tell your schoolfellows that 'all that glitters is not gold,' as they may have heard; but tell them, too, that very often things that do not glitter may be gold. You will understand that later on when you are grown up."

He thought for a bit, idly making holes in the sand with the umbrella, and then added:

"When the umbrella is yours."

Gyuri made a wry face.

"Thank you, uncle, but I hope you don't mean to give it me on my birthday instead of the pony you promised me?"

And he laughed heartily, upon which the old gentleman began to laugh too, contentedly stroking his mustache, consisting of half a dozen hairs. There was something strange in his laugh, as though he had laughed _inward_ to his own soul.

"No, no, you shall have your pony. But I a.s.sure you that the umbrella will once belong to you, and you will find it very useful to protect you from the wind and clouds."

Gyuri thought this great nonsense. Such old gentlemen always attached themselves so to their belongings, and thought such a lot of them. Why, one of his professors had a penholder he had used for forty years!

One episode in connection with the umbrella remained fixed in Gyuri's memory ever after. One day they rowed out to the "Yellow," as they call a small island situated just where the Maros and the Tisza met, and where the fishermen of Szeged cook their far-famed "fish with paprika"

(a kind of cayenne grown in Hungary, and much used in the national dishes). We read in Marton's famous cookery book that "fish with paprika" must only be boiled in Tisza water, and the same book says that a woman cannot prepare the dish properly.

Well, as I said before, the three of them rowed out to the "Yellow." As they were landing they struck against a sand heap, and Gregorics, who was in the act of rising from his seat, stumbled and lost his balance, and in trying to save himself from falling dropped his umbrella into the water, and the current carried it away with it.

"My umbrella, save it!" shouted Gregorics, who had turned as white as a sheet, and in whose eyes they read despair. The two boatmen smiled, and the elder one, slowly removing his pipe from his mouth, remarked laconically: