"Now we know," said I, "what was the cause of the extraordinary phenomenon of a happy bridegroom beginning to sob bitterly immediately after his marriage. It was his deserted wife and child that the poor fellow was thinking about."
"True, but don"t let your soup cool on that account. Would you like a little Parmesan with it?"
"Thank you, but I like it much better without."
"Wenceslaus Kvatopil liked his _with_ Parmesan."
Then we settled down to our soup.
"Wenceslaus Kvatopil always had a second serving of rice soup."
"Thank you, but I never take a second serving of any dish."
"I know that, and I also know that it is your habit to leave the best bit at the side of your plate."
"How did you come to know that?"
"I first observed it when I was a little girl and you sometimes came to dine with us. They say that it is a species of superst.i.tion; the t.i.t-bit placed at the side of the plate signifies that our distant true love is suffering from hunger."
"It is no superst.i.tion, but a simple rule of health to leave off eating and drinking while your appet.i.te is still at its best."
Thus we continued our dietetic discussions as if we had no other desire in the world than to live a ripe old age and be free from gout.
I have already mentioned that there was chopped-up chicken in the soup, and that portion of the chicken fell to Bessy"s lot which is known as the spur-bone.
Now, it is a well-known custom among young unmarried ladies in confidential conclave, when one of them gets such a spur-bone, for her to invite her fair colleague to crack the bone with her. One of them then takes one end of the spur-bone and the other takes the other end, and they pull away in different directions till the bone comes in two.
Whichever of them gets the spur portion will be married soonest. That is a fantastic sort of superst.i.tion, if you like.
Bessy laughed and said:
"When we ate our first dinner together, a spur-bone of this sort fell into my hands. I stretched it out towards Anna. "Pull," I said, "and see which of us is to have Kvatopil.""
"Then you got to be good friends pretty quickly?"
"Why shouldn"t we? Hadn"t we both the same husband? I naturally kept them here with me. I don"t know what would have become of them if I hadn"t taken them in. At this moment they haven"t got a farthing. They travelled the whole distance on coffee only. They had no other upper garments but what they were actually wearing on their bodies.... My first duty was to get them properly dressed. My clothes fitted the woman very well, and I bought some for the child in Kerepesi Street. But the little one had to take to her bed immediately, for she had a bad headache and was very feverish. I sent for a doctor, and he gave her some medicine which sent her to sleep. She and her mother have slept in my bed ever since, and I sleep on the sofa.--Won"t you have a little liver?"
"No, thank you. Pray, go on!"
"When the poor lady saw that I received her kindly, her heart melted; she fell upon my neck, and our tears flowed like spring showers. We knew that one of us would be the death of the other, but which was to be the victim? Then we quickly told each other our experiences of our common husband, and how we first met him. I could make a strange dramatic scene out of it.
"I inquired: "Come now, Anna, tell me, how did you first meet with Kvatopil, and how could you remain absent from him for thirteen years?"
Anna replied: "It is a strange story. Do you happen to know, Bessy, the history of the Cracow Republic?"
"I: "No, dear, I never heard of the poor thing."
"Anna: "Then you must know that it is a large Polish town where the Polish kings were formerly crowned and buried when they died. I am a native of that city. My father was a famous glove-maker in Cracow, whose goods were sold far and wide. Our town was the last free Polish Republic when Poland was finally part.i.tioned. Its territory consisted of twenty-two square miles.""
("Less than Debreczin," I interrupted.)
Bessy went on with Anna"s narrative:--
""When I was a little girl ten years of age a fresh Polish insurrection broke out. The united forces of the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians again put it down, and the care of the Cracow Republic was entrusted to Austria. The old Polish customs and a.s.semblies remained in force, but Austrian soldiers garrisoned the citadel continually. When I was sixteen years old my mother died, and I had to take her place behind the counter. Here I made the acquaintance of Kvatopil. He was a young sub-lieutenant, and he generally came to our shop to buy his gloves.
Would that he had stopped short at gloves! Can any one justly give a bad name to a young girl because she is confiding? I believed in him! And he really had such a good heart. When he saw that I had only to choose between shame and death, he went to my father and begged for my hand.
Naturally they gave us to each other. It was never the custom among the Poles when a girl married a soldier for her to go and ask permission first of all from the military authorities, and deposit a terribly big sum by way of caution-money; the priest simply united us without any questionings. We had not been man and wife a week when the Revolution again broke out. Cracow was the centre of the Polish rising. At first the Polish rebels fought with great success. I saw the Polish scythemen drive my husband"s cavalry regiment from one end of the street to the other. My husband had not even time to say good-bye to me."
""Then you are a Pole?" said I.
""Why shouldn"t I be?" replied Anna. "Surely I may be a Pole though I have a German name? Dark days followed. My little girl was born. Twice a day I felt bound to go to church--the first time to pray that my country might triumph, and the second time to pray that my husband might return to me. A mad idea, wasn"t it? Surely it is impossible for Deity even to grant two diametrically opposite prayers at the same time? My husband returned indeed to Cracow, but the Polish cause was crushed. The champions of freedom fled in all directions, and the garrison troops returned. It was a sad meeting. After that catastrophe Cracow ceased to be a republic, and was incorporated with the Austrian hereditary possessions as a simple city. My father wept, but I rejoiced because I had got my husband back. But very soon I was punished for my criminal joy. My husband informed me that things were going badly with us.
Hitherto the Austrian officers in Cracow had not been wont to ask the permission of their general to marry. Now, however, when Cracow had been joined to Austria, the military regulations of the rest of the empire had been extended to us, and a lieutenant"s wife had to pay down caution-money to the amount of 7,000 florins. My father was incapable of raising such a sum. He had another daughter besides me, and could not withdraw so large a sum from his business. Danger threatened us if my husband"s superiors discovered his marriage, for in such a case Kvatopil would have been degraded to the ranks. My father suggested that Kvatopil should quit the profession of arms and settle down to some sort of profession. But it was an impossible idea. Who would give employment in Cracow to an Austrian officer who had taken up arms against the Poles?
""Just about this time, too, Kvatopil was promoted to the rank of senior lieutenant. This at once inflamed our hearts with the joyous hope that he would rapidly scale the ladder of promotion, and we knew that if once he became a major he would not have to deposit his matrimonial caution-money, and we might then fearlessly publish the fact that we were man and wife. n.o.body knew of it hitherto except our friends and relations.
""So we agreed to keep it quiet, and immediately afterwards Kvatopil and his regiment were transferred to Hungary.
""Since the revolution broke out in Hungary I have heard nothing more of Kvatopil. I know not where he is, or what has become of him, or whether he is alive or dead: no tidings of him whatever. In times of war they make a mystery of the whereabouts of this or that regiment.
""Once we read from a bulletin that my husband"s regiment had taken part in a battle in the Banat. My poor father then resolved to go personally to the Banat and inquire of the colonel whether my husband was still alive. Just as he got there, they were burying the colonel with great pomp. He had died of typhus fever. He had been the witness of our marriage, and was the only one of the officers who knew anything about it. He had kept his secret well, for his officiating as a witness at an irregular ceremony might have cost him his place also. All that the lieutenant-colonel could tell us of Kvatopil was, that his company had been detached on some expedition, and had not come back. Possibly the Hungarian insurgents had eaten them all up.
""I could thus very well put on and wear mourning, and till the end of the war I heard not a word about my husband."
"So far spoke Anna; but now I began to speak.
""You didn"t hear of him, because all through the campaign he was closely invested in the besieged Temesvar with his company, and no news could come out of that place till the end of the year."
""But why couldn"t he let me hear from him when Temesvar was free again?
He could at least have written that he was still alive?"
""The cause of that is easy to find. So far as he was concerned, the whole campaign was sterile of glory. As a cavalry officer he was unable to be of any service to the besieged city. At the end of the campaign he still remained a senior lieutenant, whilst all the others had reached the rank of captain. Bitter disappointment was all that remained to him.
An officer who is pa.s.sed over is worse off than if he were dead. He cannot even say, "Thank G.o.d, I am still alive!""
""But subsequently? In all these latter years? Why didn"t he write to me all these three or four years, if but a line to say that he was still alive and thinking of me, and of the child whom he loved so much?"
""I can tell you the reason of that also," I said. "To save a frivolous comrade, he got into debt, and fell into the hands of unmerciful usurers, who immediately dragged him deeper into the mire. An officer in such a vexatious position is certainly not very much inclined to fetter himself with a wife and child as well. It is now not only the want of the caution-money which separates him from you, but also that nasty bog called Debt. This bog he cannot wade through. If under such circ.u.mstances he thinks of his wife and child, that only increases his despair. If he wrote you a letter at all, it would only contain these lines: "By the time you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist.""
"Anna was curious to know how far into debt Kvatopil had actually got. I immediately mentioned the neat little sum it amounted to.
"You should have seen what a long face my friend pulled.
"She asked me in consternation whether this immense load of debt still remained upon him.
"The situation was so droll that, despite all its bitterness, I couldn"t help laughing. I could read from the poor simple creature"s face that if I were to say to her, "My dear, sweet friend, debt is the one thing in this earth which the tooth of time never nibbles, Kvatopil"s bills still live" (this was quite true, but they were living in my strong box), she would have been capable, poor, unhappy lady! of taking her little girl by the hand and walking all the way back to Cracow. But I was sorry for the poor thing. I told her the pure naked truth. Four years long her husband had told her nothing of his goings on because of his creditors, but after that time because of me. I made his acquaintance; I did not know that he was married; I fell in love with him, and--offered him my hand. I was bound to acknowledge that he had hesitated to accept it. He made all sorts of excuses except the unexceptionable one that he had a wife already. But as he was already up to his eyes in hot water he had had no choice but to blow his brains out or commit bigamy. Apparently he had regarded the latter alternative as the less unpleasant one.
"Anna herself admitted that it was very much wiser of Kvatopil to have chosen the latter course. What a good, affectionate creature the woman was!
"I then satisfied her that I had paid off all worthy Kvatopil"s debts before his marriage. I even showed her the bills preserved in my strong box, explaining to her besides that they had now expired, but that I did not mean to proceed against Kvatopil for the amount in spite of our altered relations. At this the good soul fell down at my feet, shedding tears of grat.i.tude. She even kissed my knees, and a.s.sured me that she would bless my memory to the very day of her death. Ever since this comforting rea.s.surance on my part, her tender inclination for the beloved Kvatopil was perfectly re-established.
"I put the finishing touch to my kind-heartedness by describing to her the scene when Kvatopil, as bridegroom, fell to weeping bitterly after the wedding; there could be no doubt that those bitter tears were shed on account of his forsaken wife and daughter.
"This quite overcame poor Anna. "Look now, what a good heart poor Kvatopil has!" said she.