To Valentine Kalondai it seemed as if everything was turning round and round. He staggered, and would have fallen if Simplex had not seized him by the arm and led him away. n.o.body heeded them. During this horrible scene many others, even among the soldiers, had fallen senseless to the ground.

CHAPTER XXIII.

In which it is shown not only that Satan is the author of all evil, but also that the grisly witches, his handmaidens, are always ready with their malicious practices to plunge poor mortals into utter destruction.

Barbara Pirka had run straight home to the lonely house that stood outside the walls of Zeb. She knew all the short cuts across the mountains, so that she could have given a horseman an hour's start and yet have beaten him easily. Night made no difference to her. She never lost herself, and wandered fearlessly through the wilderness in company with the will-o'-the-wisps and other evil spirits, with whom she manifestly stood on the most friendly terms.

The morning light found her at the Girjo kopanitscha. Here the wife of the kopanitschar of Hamar kept house alone. Her husband, after capturing Janko, had turned her out of doors, and then enlisted in the county militia. What else, then, could his wife do but turn witch? She had already began her novitiate in the school of Barbara Pirka.

"Well, Annie!" cried Barbara on entering, "what do you think?

To-day, to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, three livelong days, is Janko to be tormented. To-night, however, I bring you guests.

Make ready a good supper. We shall have music, too, and will hold a wake in Janko's honor."

With that she gave the kopanitschar's wife a ducat to provide supper, and then taught her the diabolical art of tying knots in the entrails of absent foes, so that they may pine away and perish miserably. That very night, all the headsman's apprentices were seized with cramps in the stomach, and if this was not caused by the quant.i.ties of sour wine which they had been drinking all day it was certainly due to the malpractices of the two hags.

All this time the young wife was sitting in the upper story of the headsman's house, absolutely alone. Only two of the apprentices were left behind to look after the premises, and they took it in turns to keep watch in the tower and guard the drawbridge.

The lonely house was well protected against every attack. Pointed stakes, planted at the bottom of the moat encircling the walls, made it impossible for anyone to swim over. The narrow windows of the ma.s.sive walls were guarded by strong iron palings and iron cas.e.m.e.nts, and two gigantic dogs, which would have tackled the most strongly armed intruder, ran loose in the courtyard. Both apprentices were armed with muskets, the barrels of which were so large that one could have fired whole handfuls of lead out of them if necessary.

The young wife was left at home when everyone went to the b.l.o.o.d.y procedure at Eperies. She, indeed, had not the slightest wish to go with them. Her soul died away within her at the very thought of the frightful things which had such a horrible attraction for other women. But her husband, too, had no wish to take her. He was far too jealous of her, and however kindly the young woman might treat him, he felt that it was deception, every bit of it, and did not trust her. Besides, he feared that Valentine Kalondai might be among the crowds which flocked from every quarter toward Eperies.

Barbara Pirka was charged to remain at home, and on no account quit the house till they all returned. The doorkeepers, too, were to let no one in or out, not even Pirka.

As if it were possible to keep a witch under lock and key! She was at Eperies before the vihodar and his company, although she did not set out till an hour later.

Michal had told Pirka that she should not require her during her husband's absence, and might therefore leave her to herself. She could cook what she wanted; she had learnt to do so at home. In the kitchen was a well from which she could draw water by means of a windla.s.s, an iron chain, and two buckets, so she had no occasion to go down into the courtyard for water. She could therefore lock all the doors behind her (the trellised door leading to the staircase as well as the door closing the corridor), and when at night she had also barred and bolted the heavy oaken door of the kitchen, she felt herself quite secure against all human violence.

All the more defenseless was she against those things which cannot be kept out by bolts and bars.

When the ordinary sounds of day had died away in the house, when the heavy tread of jack-boots, the rough voices, the filthy jests, the hoa.r.s.e curses of the drunken roysterers, had grown dumb, then the intervening silence brought with it those invisible beings who announce their presence in whispers, sighs, and groans. In every corner she fancied she saw a victim whose blood had grown dry on the hands of the inhabitants of that house. She fancied they came forth to demand back from her their dissevered lives, to claim for their freezing limbs the clothes which the hangman had inherited from them. Every shadow appeared to beckon to her. Lifeless objects became animated and spoke to her. Behind her back she heard a perpetual whimpering and sobbing, and when she stirred the fire the moist logs spat and spluttered. There was a buzzing all around her like the whirring of c.o.c.kchafers. When the wind arose, there was a howling and groaning all through the house as if whole hosts of spirits were haunting it, and they entered visibly into the dreams of the poor agonized lady, and drove her toward dizzy abysses with their grotesquely hideous faces and mutilated figures.

When, however, she had scared away these imaginary specters, the cold and dreary horror of reality swept before her mind in a still more terrible shape.

What sort of a life was she leading? She was chained to a man whom she loved not when she first married him, but whose very presence filled her now with fear and loathing. She had been deceived, most cruelly deceived. She had been shut out of the world forever, and chained alive to the open gate of h.e.l.l, where all who entered in mocked and gibbered at her with their decapitated heads. She was without hope, without the prospect of ever escaping from her prison, of ever seeing her fate take a favorable turn, of ever having her woes alleviated. She was tortured by the thought that her father had forgotten her; but what agonized her still more was the reflection that her lover was thinking of her even now, knowing nothing of her misery, fancying her happy, and cursing and adoring her at the same time.

Then there came to her those evil thoughts which are far more terrible than all the pale specters of the tomb and the scaffold--doubt in a heavenly Providence, rebellion against human morality and human justice. The custom which gave a father a right to dispose of the destiny of his child revolted her. She cursed the altar before which a man and a woman are bound together with inseparable chains. She hated human society, which stifles the longings of the heart in the name of respectability. She grew dimly conscious that despair might make her wicked, very wicked.

She began to be afraid of herself.

At night she dared not, and indeed had no desire to sleep in her bedroom. She loathed the marriage bed, and made for herself a sort of couch in the kitchen. The kitchen was her most secure asylum. All night long she kept a roaring fire (she could not bear to remain in the dark) and on the fire she placed pots of water which she kept continually boiling. She had no weapons, and even if she had had them what use would they have been in her weak hands? But she thought herself quite capable of drenching with boiling water any man who dared to approach her.

She had now been shut up alone for five days, and the frightful solitude had made her very nervous. Solitary confinement is the worst of all torments, it is worse than hunger. She would have felt much more comfortable if Pirka had been with her. Even the witch's words, with all their devilish insinuations, were better than the eternal, ghostly gibbering of the crackling logs, this piping and squeaking through doors and window crevices, and this howling in the chimney when the wind blew.

On the fifth morning, as she was turning the windla.s.s in order to draw water from the kitchen well, the words escaped her:

"Oh, that the devil would bring Pirka hither!"

Scarcely had she said it, when she perceived that the windla.s.s began to turn round of its own accord, and from out of the ascending bucket rose the bristly, angular form of Barbara Pirka.

Michal cried:

"Jesus, Maria!" and shrieked aloud for terror.

But Pirka laughed, and said to her:

"Ha, ha! my pretty little lady! You can't lock out a witch you see.

A witch can find her way in through any loophole."

Michal really believed that Pirka had come straight out of the water, although her clothes and boots were quite dry.

"Eh, what great supper are we getting ready yonder!" cried Pirka, catching sight of the army of pots on the hearth. Then she looked into them all, one after the other. "Water, water, nothing but boiling water. Well, well! let us put something into one of them that we may have a little good broth."

With that she took out of her knapsack a handful of sc.r.a.ps of paper, and threw them into the boiling water.

"These are names clipped out of the perpetual almanac," whispered she to Michal, with a grin. "The first that comes to the surface will be the name of our beloved."

Then she took a ladle, and fished out the first piece of paper which appeared on the surface of the boiling water. Michal, she said, was to see what was written on it.

Michal took the sc.r.a.p, and read aloud the name:

"Valentine!"

In her terror she threw it back into the flames.

But the flames, so far from consuming the wet sc.r.a.p of paper, tossed it up into the air, and the name of the beloved one flew up the chimney with the smoke.

"It won't burn, ladykin!" laughed Pirka. "Hocus-pocus! there it is again!"

And now she had another sc.r.a.p of paper in her hand, on which was also written the word, Valentine!

"Well, and how has my little lady been amusing herself all this time?" asked Pirka, stroking pretty Michal's hands. "Has she not been wishing that her Pirka was with her again?"

Michal could not deny that she had.

"But those who believe in what the cards say," pursued Pirka, somewhat irrelevantly, "must pay for it, and those who do not believe must also pay, ay, and much more dearly too."

"Let us see!"

Michal crouched down beside Pirka on the mat, where the witch had spread the cards.

"Oh, oh! Great things are in store for us," began Pirka, pointing to the cards. "This here is the old vihodar, and that yonder is his son. Look, there's a coffin. Death threatens the old vihodar. The robbers will kill him."

"What nonsense," interrupted Michal.

"I don't say it. The cards say it. Victory and might await the young master. He kills the robber, and will be promoted to his father's place."