"I have heated myself a little on that steep staircase of yours," she said.

She blamed the staircase for that flaming face of hers.

It then occurred to me that it would only be polite to ask my fair visitor to take a seat. I offered her the sofa.

"Oh, dear, no! That's only for ladies! This will do quite well enough for me." And with that she sat down on my trunk, and put down her basket beside it. "I really am quite tired. I have travelled by the corn-boat as far as Vacz,[33] and thence I have walked all the way to Pest."

[Footnote 33: Waitzen.]

"But you could have gone by steamer?"

"But my master[34] could not give me steamboat fare. We are poor people.

Look! this is my whole provision for the journey."

[Footnote 34: _i.e._, husband.]

And with that she lifted the lid of the basket, and showed me what was inside it: a piece of black bread, and something wrapped up in greasy paper--a piece of cheese possibly, and a garlic-seasoned sausage.

"I must keep this for my return journey."

The cynicism of the proceeding revolted me.

"But now, if you please, I should very much like to know what's the meaning of it all. Is it a practical joke you are playing upon me?"

"Oh, no! certainly not! Pray don't suppose that I have dressed up on your account. I am now a real peasant woman, and such I mean to remain.

It is a serious thing for me, I can tell you, and I've come to you, not that you may write about it in your paper, but that you may give me advice."

"_I_ give _you_ advice?"

"Certainly! Whom else should I ask? The whole world condemns and tramples upon me, and yet I have offended n.o.body, not even in thought.

You are the only one I have injured, bitterly injured, so it is from you that I must seek protection."

Woman's logic with a vengeance! I stood up in front of her, leaning on the edge of the table. I was contriving all the time to prevent her from seeing the portrait I was painting.

"I'll begin from the very beginning," continued the lady, lowering her long eyelashes. "I was married. So much you know. We gave a splendid banquet. The whole town, half the county was there. I fancy they described it in the newspapers; and why shouldn't they, when the richest, best-known, and most handsome girl in the town was married to the ideal cavalier? The lady brought a dowry of 100,000 florins, and the gentleman conveyed his bride to his ancestral castle in a carriage drawn by four fiery horses. The universal envy was a more piquant grace to the meal than the benediction of the priest. The gentlemen envied the bridegroom, and the ladies envied the bride, and every one was forced to say: 'A couple made for each other.' Alas! the only joy which remained in my heart when I came out of church and looked among the crowd was the thought, 'Ah! you all envy me, I know!'

"We went straight from church to my husband's castle," continued Bessy.

"Thirty carriages escorted us. I counted them. A splendid banquet followed. That day I changed my dress four times. The fifth time I put on a lace _neglige_, and the bridesmaids led me to the bridal chamber.

This room was a veritable masterpiece of upholstery. A Vienna furnisher had decorated it most elaborately. I couldn't sleep all night. The voice of the ba.s.s viol and the clarionet resounded in my ears from the banqueting-room, and the noise and uproar of the guests also. I did not see my husband till the morning. Then the guests began to disperse. Only now and then did a cracked and piping voice mingle with the frantic music of the gipsies. Then it was that my husband appeared before me, and a pitiable object he looked. He called me his darling little sister, and asked me if I could tell him where he lived. Then he undressed himself on the sofa and talked such nonsense that at last I couldn't help laughing. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'I suppose this is always the way when they take leave of their bachelordom.' Then sleep overcame me and I dreamed the silliest stuff. _You_ were continually in my dreams.

But why mention such things now?"

With that she readjusted the kerchief which was tied around her head-dress and proceeded:--

"It was afternoon when I awoke. I must have wept a great deal in my dreams, for the pillow on which my head lay was quite wet. My husband was no longer reposing on the sofa, but sprawling on the floor like a stuffed frog. It cost me a great deal of trouble to shake him into life again. It was a still greater effort to make him understand in what part of the world he was, and in what relations we stood to each other here below. After that he insisted upon my crawling with him under the sofa, and when I wouldn't hear of it, he began to cry like a child, and demanded a pistol from me that he might blow his brains out. Then I brought a washing-basin and washed his face for him, and ducked it once or twice in cold water. He roared like a baby who is being tubbed, but finally recovered his spirits, and allowed himself to be raised from the ground. Then he drank out of the water-jug, and his eyes opened, but they were as tiny as a mole's, and I now perceived for the first time that they were a little crooked."

During this narration Bessy laughed and laughed again.

"What a sight the fellow did look! his hair all rumpled, his moustache all askew, his clothes soiled and tousled. He had to be dressed all over again. I began to scold him a little, 'A pretty condition of things, I must say!' To which he replied that I ought to have seen his comrades, Nusi, and Lenezi, and Blekus, and how _they_ had been settled. They had all fallen under the table, and he had remained the victor. And he yawned so much as he told me this, that I had to beg him not to swallow me. At last I got him to sit down on a chair while I did his hair for him, and he meanwhile howled and swore continually that every single hair pained him as much as if devils were tweaking him with iron pincers."

Again the lady stopped to laugh.

"That's quite a novel state of things to you, eh? A person who becomes the bride of an out-and-out dandy must expect to see something extraordinary. But perhaps there was nothing extraordinary in it after all. And now the banquet was resumed, commencing with a pick-me-up. I presided at the table with a turban on my head. All our guests were still drunk. I had to listen to very peculiar anecdotes. At such times the best man is he who can pay the new bride the compliment which will make her blush the most. The lady guests had all departed in the morning, and had come to bid me good-bye one by one. They all wept over me--it is the usual thing. I was the only lady left, and glad was I when I managed to get away from the gentlemen. I think that they had been awaiting my withdrawal; they could then continue their interrupted pastime. Again I could not sleep; my head was throbbing. For the first time in my life I recognised the existence of the headache, that frightful curse of feminine nerves which I had hitherto always put down to affectation or imagination. How good it would have been for me if some one had laid a cool, refreshing hand upon my temples! Perhaps a single word of comfort would have relieved my pangs! I waited for it in vain. I sent a message. He never came to me. Suddenly, while an oppressive dream was benumbing my pain, a h.e.l.lish uproar awoke me. I fancied that Pandemonium had been let loose. It was only my husband, but he had brought with him the whole of his drunken crew. I saw before me a whole legion of them, with guffawing, sardonic, lascivious, distorted faces, and amongst them my husband, with the grin of a satyr on his idiotic face. I rose in terror from my bed, cast my counterpane around me, fled into my waiting-maid's room, and barricaded myself behind the door. There he thumped and thundered for some time. I threatened to throw myself out of the window if he broke in by force. Thereupon some of his comrades, in whom a little human feeling still remained, contrived to drag him away, though not without difficulty. Then followed a little sulky squabble on both sides. I wouldn't leave my room for four-and-twenty hours; he wouldn't come to me. The noise that he made over head was sufficient evidence to me that he hadn't committed suicide in the meantime. The third day was pa.s.sed by the bridal guests in a more profitable occupation. They played at cards. The table, vigorously punched by their fists, proclaimed their handiwork aloud. It was like blacksmiths' apprentices pounding iron on the anvil with sledgehammers. Only in the morning did 'my lord and master' turn up while I was still only half-dressed. He was sober then, and, what is more, ill-tempered. His loss at cards was mirrored in his face like a guilty conscience. He frankly told me all about it. He had been peppered finely, and his comrades were vile curs.... Such was my wedding."

Bessy covered her face with both her hands. Was she laughing? Was she weeping? I cannot say.

All at once she asked me, "Did you ever play at cards?"

"Yes, but only for copper coins."

"It's all one. You ought not to waste your time with it."

"Well, really, I only spend that time on it which I do not know how to employ otherwise, the time when I am tired of work, and want a rest from thinking. Cards are very good things at such times."

"Then what a pity girls also do not learn the science of card-playing at school, just as they learn to find out towns on maps, or gather the properties of exotic plants and animals from zoological alb.u.ms; then at least a newly-married bride would understand why it is necessary to subtract so much from her heritage to sacrifice it to such mythological deities as _skiz_ and _pagat_.[35] ..."

[Footnote 35: Terms used in Tarok.]

Meanwhile I didn't interrupt her, but remained standing and looking at her with my hands resting on the table. This seemed to put her out.

"Why don't you smoke a cigar? Don't mind me."

"I would only remind you that you used always to make fun of me because I didn't smoke."

"True. Smoking becomes a man. A cigar or a pipe makes his face so cosy-looking. Just look at any man who hasn't a pipe stuck into his mouth, and tell me if he doesn't look like a judge p.r.o.nouncing judgment, or a priest shriving a penitent? Believe me, that one of the reasons why I was faithless to you was that you didn't smoke. Well, at any rate, I have got my reward for it.

"Now, Muki used to suck Havannahs all day. Yes, nothing but Havannahs; but Gyuricza smokes the coa.r.s.est tobacco, and even chews pigtail."

I burst out laughing; I couldn't help it. In what ways are a woman's graces gained! No, I wouldn't chew pigtail if the favour of the G.o.ddess Melpomene herself depended on it.

"I will not weary you with our diversions at Paris. There, I perceived, it is the common practice for husband and wife to take their pleasures apart. My husband did no more than what other husbands do. It is not good form to ask a husband who returns home at dawn where he has been.

Besides, Muki, with perfect candour, informed me all about these places of public entertainment and the joys of _les pet.i.ts soupers_; once he took me with him to these delights--I didn't ask to go again.... I was very glad when the season was over and we returned to our village, and after all the bustling diversions, flirtations, visitings and boredom, I could once more be alone and fill my straw hat with forget-me-nots on the banks of the river, as of old on the island. You remember my visit to your rustic hut, don't you? You remember the golden thrushes who used to speak to you? To you they said, 'Silly boy! silly boy!' to me they cried, 'What's the good! what's the good!' On returning to his estates my husband became quite another man: you would have said that he was a changeling. The dainty dandy became an enthusiastic agriculturist. He was up early, on horseback all day, went from one _puszta_ to another, and brought home ears of barley in his hat. The only things he talked about at home were sheepshearing and the diseases of horned cattle. He had a stud and a neat-herd, and of the latter he appeared to be particularly proud. Sometimes he drove me all over his demesne in a light gig. A fine demesne it was. You might drive about it the whole day and not see the whole of it. He showed me his herds. He told me that herds like them were not to be had in the whole kingdom. I didn't understand it. All that I could see was that the oxen had very large horns. But the form of the herdsman really did surprise me. He was a veritable ancient-hero sort of a man, such as we imagine the primeval Magyars to have been who wandered hither out of Asia. His bronzed face beamed with health, his thick black hair whipped his shoulders with its greasy curls, and add to that his sun-defying glance, his stately bearing, his long mantle embroidered with tulips and cast lightly across his shoulder. His white linen garment fluttered in the breeze, and when he raised his arm to take off his cap, the loose fluttering short sleeves fell right back and revealed an arm like the arm of the figure of an athlete cast in bronze. 'Why, Peter,' said I, 'is it with you that your master is wont to wrestle?' The Hercules, thus addressed, timidly cast down his eyes and said: 'Yes!' 'But how on earth is your master ever able to throw you?' At this question, Peter Gyuricza shifted his mantle from one shoulder to the other, and twisting his moustache, replied: 'As often as his Excellency throws me I get five florins.' So that was the secret of Muki's acrobatic triumphs. After that, the herdsman conducted us to the great summer farm, which was a good distance from the hut where the calves are put to rest at midday. There, a savoury luncheon, prepared by the wife of the herdsman, awaited us.

She was a buxom, smart young woman, with roguish eyes and radiating eyebrows, all life and freshness, a true blossom of the _puszta_.[36] I caught myself looking repeatedly in the mirror, and making comparisons between her face and my own. After luncheon we went all round the farm, and the herdsman's wife guided us from stable to stable. A thorn got into my foot through my slipper. The herdsman's wife bobbed down and drew the thorn out. 'You don't feel the thorn now, do you?' she asked, flashing a look upon me. 'I do not feel it in my foot,' I replied."

[Footnote 36: _i.e._, a true heath-flower.]

Bessy paused for a moment, and smoothed her brows with both hands as if to refresh her memory.

"I took another sort of thorn away with me. I began to be suspicious of the grand economical zeal of my husband. Such a.s.siduity was not natural.

Early one morning he again took horse, called to his greyhounds, and told me not to wait for him to dinner, he would not be home till evening. A certain instinct would not let me rest. I went out into the garden, right to the boundary fence and into the stubble beyond, and then I went on foot into the _puszta_, through the turnip fields and the Indian corn. n.o.body saw me. The vesper-bell was ringing in the village when I entered the courtyard of the herdsman. In the stubble I saw the two dogs hunting a hare on their own account. Truly, a c.o.c.kney sportsman who allows his dogs to win their own meat like that! I whistled to them, they recognised me and came leaping around me. 'Where's your master?'

The dogs understood me. They began yelping and barking, and darted on before me helter-skelter, with their heads between their legs as if to give me to understand that they would lead me to the spot if I followed them. They made straight for the hut. No doubt they fancied they were doing something very knowing. When I marched in at the door the little servant exclaimed, 'Good gracious!' and let fall the wooden trencher in which she was kneading some dough with a large pot-ladle, and when I advanced towards the dwelling-room door, she stood in my way, and said, 'Please don't go in now!' I boxed her ears for her, first on the right side and then on the left, pushed her into a cupboard and locked the door upon her. Then I opened the door of the dwelling-room. There was n.o.body there. But the door of a little side room, which in peasants'

houses is, as a rule, always open, was closed. On the table, however, I perceived my lord's hat and his riding-whip. I made no disturbance. The clothes of the herdsman's wife lay in a heap on a bench. I took off my clothes and put on hers carefully, one by one. I was just as you see me now."

She stood up before me and turned herself round that I might have a better look at her.

"Then I went into the outer hut again, and picked the ladle from the floor which the maid had let fall in her terror. It was a mess of bacon dumplings that she had been engaged upon. I kneaded the dough for the dumplings, I made twelve beautiful little round ones out of it, boiled them, beat up a nice garlic sauce with them, and poured the whole lot of it into a varnished jug, first tasting to see that it was not over salted. Then I tied up the jar in my kerchief, and set off with it towards the pasturage. But another idea also occurred to me. I concealed behind my ap.r.o.n my husband's riding whip that was reposing on the table, and took it away with me.

"The pasturage is pretty far from the hut. It was somewhat late when I arrived there. The herdsman was quite impatient, and had climbed up a 'look-out' tree, and when he saw my striped dress and bright red kerchief, he began to bawl out, 'Hillo! Come along, can't you! I'll give you what for! I'll teach you something, you cursed blockhead! What have you done with my dinner? A pretty time when they're already ringing vespers in the village. I suppose you've been carrying on with his honour again? Let me catch you at it, that's all, and I'll tickle your hide for you with my whip.' When I got up to him and lifted the kerchief from my head, he stopped short with his mouth open. 'Well, I never! if it isn't her ladyship!'--'True, Peter!' said I. 'I've cooked your dinner for you, and now you see I've brought it to you. Your wife cannot come.

She's learning French from my husband. I've also brought with me my husband's whip. I found it on your table. You may flog with it whomever you like, either me or your wife.'"