The Strange Story of Rab Ráby. Mór Jókai
one can find it, in the lining of my cap. There it will be safe enough. Besides, Gyöngyöm Miska is just now prowling about the county of Somogy. Captain Lievenkopp himself, with all his dragoons, would hardly succeed in driving him into our neighbourhood."
"Ah, well, I only say, look after your gold pieces!"
The president laughed contemptuously. Lievenkopp was, it was well known, one of Fräulein Fruzsinka's admirers.
The president and the judge drove together as far as the next post station, where their ways parted, and meantime chatted amicably.
"Isn't our hostess a charming person?" began the president as they left the inn.
"I don't say she isn't."
"I must admit you certainly show your good taste in that quarter."
"Surely only like any other?"
"Come, come, what avails evasion? When I look into the fair lady's eyes I don't see the expression there, you do. Can you deny it?"
"Well, and if I have looked into her eyes, what of it?"
"Oh, we know all about that. Everyone knows that you and the lady of the house were carrying on a flirtation whilst the sessions were going on."
"Did I flirt?"
"Most emphatically you did. I know everything. Last night, when I went to my room, I heard voices through the door of our hostess' boudoir. I waited in order to listen, and sure enough it was the prefect who was holding forth angrily about you against a shrill high-pitched voice, which was obviously that of your Fräulein Fruzsinka. Thereupon, the lady retorted that there was an understanding between you, and that the affair was quite serious."
"Bah! As if I meant to marry every girl to whom I have made a declaration," laughed the judge.
"Aha, that would be quite as difficult to bring about as if Fräulein Fruzsinka wished to marry all those who had courted her. It cuts both ways. Yet she is a charming girl! If she could only find some good man who would marry her. Why not you, eh?"
"Most certainly not. For if someone else marries her, I am certain that she will be true to me. But if I, and not anyone else, wed her, then sure enough she'll deceive me every day."
"But if you don't mean to, then it were surely a great mistake, besides a mere quibble of words, to leave in the fair lady's hands a pledge that could be legally produced as argument for the plaintiff."
"What do you mean?"
"Tut, tut. I haven't presided twenty years for nothing in criminal law; I understand what tokens mean. What happened in the little ante-room? What has the defendant to urge on his behalf?"
"Why, I only superintended the carrying out of the law from the window."
"And in the intervals taught your hostess how to conjugate the verb amo, to love, eh?"
"Stated but not proven—but if it were so?"
"Consequently, the lady may be justified in urging: 'If he really and truly loves me, let him give me a love token, a lock of his hair.'"
"Why not?"
"Exactly—now you stand convicted! Need I remind you that you only sought a pair of scissors to cut off a curl of your hair, and while you did that, your lady-love registered the blows for you as your locum tenens. Yet you were giving the most dangerous blow of all to the guileless loving heart which beat under your gift, for Fräulein Fruzsinka hid the curl in her locket, and when we came away, I noted how she leaned out of the window and kissed the locket over and over again. Is the impeachment sufficient?"
"No, I won't admit it is. It's based on a false premise. Up to the time when I went for the scissors, I grant you it was a sound one, but here the facts alter. As I stood before the looking-glass, with the scissors in my hand, who should come in but the Fräulein's' little black poodle, and as usual he put out his fore paws caressingly. Thereupon, a brilliant idea struck me. The hair curled as well round the poodle's neck as it did on my head. No sooner said than done. The Fräulein wasn't looking; she was too busy with the sessions, so quickly nipping off a superfluous curl from the dog's neck, I slipped it into my lady's soft hand; into her locket it goes forthwith. But don't betray me! For if the Fräulein knew it, she would poison us all at the next dinner."
Mr. Valentine Laskóy was not given to groundless merriment, but he could not fail to see the point of this jest; first that one of the dog's curly locks had been transferred to the locket, and secondly, that it had been kissed with transport by the owner. And thereupon he burst into such a guffaw of laughter that the horses thought it was a volcanic eruption, and began to shy and rear accordingly, so that the coachman and the heyduke with him could not bring them to a standstill on the bridge before the post-house, and the passengers were all but sent flying from their seats. But at this point Mr. Laskóy had to get out to await the companions he had left behind, who were coming on in the coach.
"But don't say a word to anyone," was the judge's parting injunction to his companion.
"Trust me! But, all the same, whenever I see a black poodle I shall laugh at the thought."
And off went the judge, for his time was up.
At the bridge, where the roads branched off, Laskóy waited for the coach to come up.
But what a time the coach was coming, to be sure! He could not imagine what had happened to it. It was past mid-day, his ever-growing hunger made the delay of the diligence all the more wearisome. But in spite of it all, he waited patiently.
At last the famous vehicle came in sight, but only slowly, although the road was quite good. What could have happened?
CHAPTER IV.
Now what had really happened to the coach was that it had lost one of the big screws out of the hind wheel, so that the latter had come off. For a whole hour had they hunted for the screw without success, and then they tried to get on without it, but that was a difficult business. If a peasant loses a wheel-nail, he can easily find a substitute; the screw of a coach, however, is not so easily replaced. What straps and ropes they had to hand were knotted and wound round the axle, but the quickly rotating nave had in a few minutes torn all to shreds, and would not go round properly, much to the detriment of the horses who now had to drag the lumbering conveyance with a wheel that would not work, through the tough, sticky morass, which made the way much more toilsome.
Not that this affected the merry mood of the president as he took his place inside. Every now and again he whistled for sheer lightness of heart.
"Fire away, there!" he cried to the driver.
But the driver was not equal to the task, as he urged his steeds over the morass through which the four slow old hacks dragged the rickety vehicle with its broken-down wheel.
Meanwhile, on a hillock which rose tolerably steep from the roadside, waited a horseman mounted on a strong wiry beast, that stood with his muzzle snuffing the ground like a setter scenting the trail, with watchful eyes and pricked ears, but so still that he did not even brush off the flies that settled on his withers and flanks. The man himself in the saddle was equally motionless; he was dark and hawk-eyed, with curly hair, and a tapering pointed moustache. He wore a peasant's garb that was scrupulously fine of its kind, his countryman's cloak being richly embroidered, and his sleeves frilled with wide lace. In his cap he wore a cluster of locks of women's hair and a knot of artificial flowers; at his girdle gleamed a pair of silver inlaid Turkish pistols, while from the pommel of his saddle hung another, double-barrelled, and in his right hand he carried an axe. An alder-bush had hidden the stranger up till now, so that he could not be seen by the coaching party till he himself hailed them.
"Now you traitor, you knave, are you going to stop or not?"
Was the coachman going to stop?