"I understand."

"No, you don't. It is none of those interventions which we see in romances and dramas, when a pretty woman goes to move a mighty tyrant with her tears, and sacrifice her charms to him as the price of the life and liberty of her persecuted husband. Oh no! my hero is no plagiarist!

His ideas are all original. He wants me to go to the mighty gentleman and tell him that the Debreczin expedition, which has given rise to the whole of this heroic poem, is not his '_crime_,' but mine. I was the gipsy leader who played before the Ban Jellachich, and then escaped. It was I who carried the despatch to the Hungarian Government. In a word: I am to sacrifice myself on his account!"

"Fie! fie! And still you love this man!"

"What am I to do? I have n.o.body but him in the wide world; and besides, he is such a droll, amusing character. All day long we are either fighting or frolicking, and it is this variation which makes life so charming."

But for all that, she flung herself on the ground and hid her face in the green moss. She was in such a good humour!

"Sha'n't we give our friend a signal to come out of his hole?"

"He is quite comfortable--don't disturb him."

"I wonder you don't hit upon the very obvious idea of putting an end to this pantomimic game of hide and seek. You have a foreign pa.s.sport. You could enter your friend in it under some such description as major-domo or travelling companion. You could take him with you to Naples or to Paris, and you could live without care on the interest of the fund deposited at the Vienna bank."

"I know that."

"Then why not do it?"

"Because I don't choose."

And as she said this she looked strangely at me with her enigmatically mysterious eyes, in which heaven and h.e.l.l were blended together like starlight in darkness!

CHAPTER XIV

THE DEMON'S BAIT

I said in the last chapter that the lady was looking straight into my eyes with the glance of Circe. Then she shrugged her shoulders, flung herself down beside the fire-ashes, and began to blow the cinders so as to entice a flame from the smouldering embers.

"It's useless to give advice to me, for I always do exactly the contrary. Let us rather have a chat together. What is your fate, now?"

"The fate of the grub when it is in its chrysalis."

"Then it was not without cause that I went to you that evening when you shut your door in my face? And yet I only said what I did because I feared that either the gibbet or suicide awaited you on the path you chose to take."

Here her voice trembled, her chin, her lips twitched convulsively, and her eyes filled with tears.

A lady in tears is dangerous!

I did _not_ hasten to dry her tears. On the contrary, I replied with cool cynicism:

"Every career has its own peculiar _maleficium_--drowning awaits the sailor, shooting the soldier; the doctor may fall a victim to an epidemic; the gla.s.s-maker suffers from caries; choke-damp kills the miner; and he who meddles with politics runs a chance of being hanged or guillotined."

"No, no! They shall not do it!" she cried hoa.r.s.ely, seizing my hand in both her own.

"I do not want them to do it," I said, "and that is why I am hiding myself here at the back of beyond."

"But how long is this to go on? What future do you see before you?"

"For the present I am like the convalescent beggar whose promenading does not go beyond the house-door. I thought of beginning a little farming in this valley and forgetting all my dreams of glory. I shall become an agriculturist."

"Very nice! And your wife?"

"She will join me."

"And you seriously think so? You think she'll come and settle down with you in a hut with a clay floor and a straw roof, like the one you are living in now."

"It's a palace compared with what we lived in in our Debreczin days.

When my wife did the cooking--for we had no servant--we loved each other better than ever. In a little house loving hearts are nearer to each other than in a large palace."

"It was possible then, no doubt. I have experienced the same thing. But this is quite different. When a man has such brilliant hopes, want is no affliction. It will be over soon, he thinks. But to enter upon misery with the knowledge that it will last till death, is beyond the power of resignation. And particularly with a woman! Believe me, I know my own s.e.x. Your wife, who now stands at the summit of her artistic fame, cannot quit her brilliant career. No! If you were an angel she could not."

I could not defend my point of view against her. Stern reality was on her side; on my side were only faith and imagination.

"I believe in my wife's promise to deliver me out of my difficult position."

"I can't imagine how. She cannot do what I can do for Balvanyossi--in other words, accuse herself and say: 'It was not he who proclaimed freedom on March 15th. It was not he who wrote those heart-stirring articles to the nation. It was not he who edited those newspapers; not he who went to battle with the armies; not he who inspired the Honveds at the siege of Buda: but I.' Your wife cannot take your fault on her shoulders."

I couldn't help laughing.

"I would not let her."

"But let us suppose that a great _artiste_, a renowned beauty, might perhaps manage by some means or other to procure an amnesty for her hidden husband" (and as she said this she discharged murderous, envenomed darts at me from the corners of her eyes), "what will be your subsequent lot when you return to Pest as a rebel amnestied at the intercession of his wife? The earth and the sky which you used to adore have vanished. No poet, no newspaper, no publisher: what will you do?

Will you enter a lawyer's office again to copy deeds, issue summonses, and serve writs at so much a day? Or will you translate comedies (under official protection) at fifty florins each for the National Theatre; or paint fashionable portraits of butchers' wives at five florins apiece?

Or, perhaps, you'll do nothing at all, but live simply under the wing of your wife as 'the actress's husband,' and see a woman bending beneath the load of sustaining a household--accomplishing the most exhausting work; coming home after her day's acting is over, tired to death, excited, unstrung. See her, poorly though she be, hurry from one provincial town to another, acting uncongenial parts, so as to sc.r.a.pe together a little money wherewith to satisfy the Jews with whom she has to haggle for the material for her costumes. And the husband must look on at all this with his arms folded, or, if he does anything at all, may perhaps paint the flowers for her costumes, which she herself will then sew on with her own hands."

"It will not last for ever--other times will come."

"Other times! You think other times will come, eh? Now, that is what I fear most of all. I know you well. You are not the sort of man who can content himself with the thought--what is past is over! You will never forget what you used to be, still less what you meant to be. The glory of fame is not forgotten as easily as a p.a.w.ned jewel. You will again fall into those straits from which you have been set free."

And the woman saw right into my soul. My face is so maladroit that it never could keep a secret. You can read my features like an open book.

When I am frightened, it is vain for me to pretend that I am plucky.

When I'm in a rage, it is useless for me to affect calmness--n.o.body is taken in by it. I cannot even haggle over a bargain properly, people can read from my face what I have to give. This woman could see where my soul was wandering in secret, far, far away, in a gloriously arisen Hungary of the future. And she regarded this talk of turning farmer as little more than the incoherent delirium of a fevered visionary.

"Let it be as you say," I said.... "If I live I will build a tower out of the ruins of my country's glory; if I die, my grave will become an altar. Vainly does this coward flesh of mine tremble in every nerve. I am neither a hero nor a giant. The report of a gun makes me tremble; I grow pale in the presence of death; grief draws tears from me--but I will not depart from my set path. If I cannot write under my own name, I will write under the name of my landlord's dog. I will be 'Sajo.'[87]

We'll bark if we can't speak, but we'll not be silent."

[Footnote 87: My works "_Forradalmi es csatakepek_," "_Bujdoso naploja_"

were written under the pseudonym _Sajo_.--JoKAI.]

The lady, in terror, seized me by both arms.

"For Heaven's sake, take care! A step backwards, and you'll fall over the rock."