""But how?" inquired Rengetegi, immensely delighted.
""That I shall not tell you. I"ve been turning the matter over for some time. You have only a pa.s.sive part to play here. You hide yourself in the village of Izsa, which the enemy has not occupied, because it lies within the range of the guns of the fortress, and wait for me there till I return from Debreczin with the answer of the Government.""
"And Rengetegi actually accepted the proposal?" I inquired. I now began to admire this woman.
"He jumped at it. He gave me soul-stirring examples of the heroic women of history, who had gone to the wars along with their husbands.... He vowed that if I ever returned in safety from my mission he would henceforth call me "Queen Zen.o.bia."
"By the evening of the same day I was ready for the enterprise. I made Rengetegi dye his hair, moustache, and beard black, so that it was almost impossible to recognise him."
"So that was your idea!" I cried.
"Then I stowed him away in a peasant"s hut at Heteny, with strict instructions not to emerge from his prison till I tapped at the door.
Next I set to work to thoroughly disguise my own person. I was to be the leader of a gipsy band. Ah! if you could only have painted my portrait!
Then, indeed, I really was lovely! I smeared my face with the juice of green walnut-sh.e.l.ls till it was so black that I could pa.s.s for a gipsy among the gipsies themselves; I clipped my hair till it only reached down to my shoulders; I put on a jacket which some gentleman or other had worn threadbare before giving it away; hose that certainly were never intended for me, and a shirt that had never been washed: and so I transformed myself into as filthy a shape as ever led a wandering gipsy band."
Here I could not forbear from pressing her hand. What sacrifices will not a woman make for her country and for her lover!
"But all this was a mere joke to what followed. I now had to get together a band. If they catch a gipsy alone they arrest him as a spy; but if he be one of a quartet he may go on his way rejoicing. I provided myself with a violoncellist, a clarinet-player, and a contra-ba.s.s. It was easy to persuade them to quit the bombarded town, into which the gentry who had robbed them of their poor hovels had forced them to go.
Bread and meat were getting dearer and dearer, and there was nothing to be earned. Who had the heart to pay for music amidst such a frightful carnival?
"Thus, with my little band of three, I set out upon my long and uncertain journey on foot. Gipsies only ride in sledges when a magnate sends for them, and there was no such magnate in the whole district. If on our way we fell in with a cart laden with dried reeds taken out of the swamps for firewood, we would ask for a lift in it. But our legs nearly froze there, and we were glad to get down again and walk.
"In the very first village we came to, O-Gyalla, we fell in with a division of the Austrian investing army, German cuira.s.siers. The patrol brought us to the major in command. He was indeed a merciless personage.
He roared at us, and asked us how we dared to leave the town. We naturally did not understand a word of German, and all four of us, in true gipsy fashion, began to raise objections at the same time: we could not remain in the town, the Honveds posted us right in front of the bombs, and made us play music at the very top of the bastions; all the cannons had fired at us, and that was a thing that gipsies couldn"t stand. "_Was sagen die Spitzbuben?_" inquired the major of his auditor.
The auditor understood Hungarian, and expounded unto him: "Nix da, you rascals! You are spies, and must be searched. Come! you must undress."
I was not a little alarmed, I can tell you. Not on account of the despatches I had with me, I had put them in a place where they couldn"t be found; but they would discover that I was a woman, and that while my face and hands were gipsy, the rest of me was European--and then I should be lost. I hastily said something to the gipsies, and in an instant they out with their instruments and rattled off _con fuoco_ the fine hymn "_Gott erhalte!_" At this the frosty face of the old martinet thawed somewhat. "Well, well, you rascals," said he, "as you know what"s proper and decent, I won"t have you flogged this time, but be off at once and don"t remain in the village here. You mustn"t play here for anybody. Whoever has an itch for dancing just let him tell me, and I"ll give him dancing enough. There"s the whipping-post!" Now the clarinet-player was a merry wag, and could not hide his light. "Devil bless your honour," said he, "you pay with big bank-notes." "_Was sagt der Karl?_" asked the major. He says, "Gott soll segnen den grossen Herren, der zahlt mit grossen _Bank_[78]-noten!" At this his honour also laughed. "But for all that you must pack yourselves off at once. You mustn"t stop till you reach Ersekuvar, but there you may play as long as you like." We kissed his hands and feet, and asked him to let us stay the night there. We were half frozen, we said. We had not a morsel in our stomachs: for a whole week we had only eaten ice and drunk water.
But he knew no pity. They blindfolded us, packed us into a sledge, and a patrol of horse escorted us out of the village. Now, of course, it was my very dearest desire to get as soon as possible beyond the iron girdle by which the besieged fortress was girt about. If only he can get out into the wide world, the gipsy has no fear of going astray. He can fiddle his way through the whole of Europe if only he gives his mind to it. And so we made our way along the Danube, from one town to the other, and enjoyed to the full all the romantic adventures of a wandering gipsy"s life which abound in winter especially."
[Footnote 78: "G.o.d bless the great gentleman, he pays with big _bang_-notes!"--a poor jest.]
"But," interrupted I, "didn"t you come across Gorgey"s Hungarian army, under whose protection you might have continued your journey?"
"Of course I did, but my instructions were to deliver my despatches to the head of the Hungarian Government, and n.o.body else, not even to a general. It is true that I might have gone on farther with the gallant Magyar army, where gipsy-music is always heartily welcomed. The Honveds, too, never lose their good humour; but, on the other hand, the main Magyar army was going towards Slavonia, whereas it was my object to get to Debreczin as soon as possible. So there was nothing for it but to go straight through the enemy"s lines till we reached the banks of the Theiss, when we could be once more in a friendly world."
"But where did you conceal the despatches?" I asked.
"I stuck them inside the belly of my fiddle. Who would break the fiddle of a poor gipsy with which he earns his daily bread? The money we earned in one town was sufficient to hire a sledge to convey us to the next.
Gipsies dwell on the skirts of every town. We made ourselves at home there, and they never asked us whence we came; but if we were cross-examined at any place, then we lied to such a degree that the difficulty was to find anybody to believe us. You recollect what a terrible winter it was last year?"
"I remember it very well. I was out all through it with my wife," I said.
"How fine it would have been had we run across each other unexpectedly.
I would have played a nocturne beneath your window. Ha, ha, ha!--The bitterest stage of the journey was from Kecskemet to the Theiss. There lay Jellachich,[79] with all his army, occupying the towns of the great Hungarian plain one after the other. Here we had to creep through as best we could. As for me, I had the good fortune to play every evening before his Excellency the valiant Ban. He was very pleased with me. With my little band I managed to play the famous Croatian march, "_Szlava, szlava, mu, mu, mu, Jelacsicsu nas omu_," in quite a superior manner. I also knew the tune of the fine "Kolo" dance, and absolutely won his Excellency"s heart with the melodious "f.a.n.n.y Schneider" polka. I might say that I was really quite spoiled. There was plenty of money and wine, and, despite my black face and my predominating odour of garlic, the enthusiasm rose so high that all the officers kissed me one after the other."
[Footnote 79: The Ban of Croatia, who sided with the Austrians against Hungary.--TR.]
Bessy had no sooner uttered these words than she buried her face in her hands. Again I came to her rescue.
"Those kisses don"t count; you were a man then."
"It was quite a gipsy paradise, but the mischief was we did not know how to escape from it. The chivalrous Ban told us not to try to run away, for in that case he would court-martial and shoot the lot of us. At night, when our duties were done, he locked us up in a little out-house, and placed an armed sentry before the door.
"One night we escaped up the chimney and over the roof of the neighbouring house; that is to say, three of us managed to get away, I and the clarinet-player and the contra-ba.s.s. The violoncello, however, could not be got out of the chimney, and the violoncellist declared that he would rather be stretched on the rack than leave his instrument in the lurch. So there we left him--to pay the piper. Besides, I had now not much need of my band; the Theiss was only a four hours" journey off.
"I had heard from the officers that in the willow woods of the Theiss, in the neighbourhood of the "Szikra" inn, some Hungarian guerillas were encamping. If only we could get among them!
"It was a good thing for us that sentinel duty was very laxly ordered in the camp of the Ban of Croatia. At the end of the town was a _putri_, or semi-subterranean clay hut of the kind in which field-labourers pa.s.s the night during the summer. The soldiers who had been sent out on forepost duty were sitting in this hut, and their muskets were all leaning against the door. One of the gipsies said: "Let us steal the muskets!"
The other said: "Steal your grandfather; I play with clarinets, not with muskets." I urged them to press forward. We were near to the sand-hills.
Before us lay a savage, rugged plain, where one sand-hill followed hard upon another. Some of these hills were half hollowed out by the wind, and the hollows between them spa.r.s.ely dotted with dwarf fir-trees. A ghostly region. The sides of these sand-hills were white, and the snow-fall on the top of them was still whiter; and every tree-trunk there is also white with its pendant branches[80] bending down beneath the h.o.a.r-frost. We dodged up and down among these sand-hills, turning aside from the regular high road so that we might crouch down in case we were pursued. Along the whole length of the plain the broom of the wind swept our footprints over with snow.
[Footnote 80: To-day this former waste of shifting sand-hills has been converted into a splendid vineyard, which the Hungarian Government has planted with vines from America proof against the _Phylloxera_.--JoKAI.]
""If only we don"t come across wolves!" said the contra-ba.s.s, with chattering teeth.
""How can they be here when so many soldiers are about?" said I, by way of encouragement.
""Nay, but they like to prowl about camps, because carrion is always to be found there."
"Where the sand-hills ended, a far-extending flat began, and in the distance was a direful-looking object, resembling a ruin. A light mist covered the whole district, in which mist every object seemed as large again; the full moon shone wanly, like a huge broad halo in the misty heavens."
Here I explained to Bessy that this district was the famous plain of Alpar, where the ancient Magyars fought the decisive battle against Zalan, which gave them possession of the land; the ruin was the wall of the desert church of St. Laurence.
"Indeed! and I may add that this desert is memorable to me also. While we were waddling along as fast as we could, with our short mantles turned against the wind, the contra-ba.s.s, who was going on leisurely in front, exclaimed:
""Devil take all these crows! Why don"t they all go to sleep in the tower of the Calvinist church?"
"I inquired why the crows ought to go to sleep on the top of the Calvinist church of all places in the world.
""Let the Calvinist crow stick to the top of the Calvinist church, and the Papist crow to the top of the Papist church, as is meet and right,"
he explained.
"I did not understand this sectarian distinction among crows, but the gipsy made it quite plain to me.
""One sort of crow is ashen grey, another sort black. The grey sort eats no flesh, but only grain; that is the Papist crow. The black sort lives on flesh, whether it be earthworms or fallen horse; that is the Calvinist crow, for it keeps no fast-days."
"Then he called my attention to the fact that on the hill there straight before us, a whole army of crows was making a great commotion. At one moment they rose high into the air with loud croakings, at another they descended upon the self-same spot from which they had risen. "There must be carrion," he said.
"When we got to the top of the hill, we saw, to our great consternation, that the evil foreboding of the gipsy was correct.
"On the highway below, by the side of the ditch, lay a big black ma.s.s, the carcase of a fallen horse, and fighting over what remained of it was a whole army of crows and ravens and five large _wolves_.
"We were about five hundred paces from the terrible beasts.
"They immediately perceived us, and, leaving the carcase, forthwith began scudding towards us, spurring each other on with their nasty short sharp yelps.
""Alas, alas! It is all up with us now!" wailed the contra-ba.s.s. "The wolves will eat us up."
"Even in that hour of mortal peril the clarinetist was true to his gipsy humour. "Then we shall have a very queer shape at the resurrection,"