The woman fainted in his arms as the Turks entered his prison. Beldi beckoned Kucsuk Pasha to him. A sort of leaden, death-like hue had begun to spread over his face; he could scarce see with whom he was conversing. He laid his swooning wife in the arms of the Pasha, and stammered with barely intelligible words: "I thank you for your good will. Here is my wife--take her--back to her dungeon!"
The Turks, in speechless astonishment, lifted up the fainting woman, and left the dungeon without plaguing Beldi with any more questions.
Beldi stood stonily there as they went out, with open lips and a dull light in his eyes. When the last Turk had gone, and he saw his wife no longer, his head began to nod and droop down, and suddenly he fell p.r.o.ne upon the floor.
Kortovely, the old hound, began sorrowfully, bitterly, to whine.
At that moment Zulfikar entered the dungeon with the poisoned letter.
He was too late. Paul Beldi had already departed from this world.
When Ladislaus Szekely heard of Beldi"s death he gave a magnificent banquet, and when the company was at its merriest Zulfikar came rushing in.
"Come! out with those hundred ducats!" he whispered in the ear of Master Ladislaus Szekely.
"What do you mean?" cried Szekely in a voice flushed with wine. "Paul Beldi had a stroke; be content with what you have had already."
"Thou faithless dog of a giaour!" cried the renegade at the top of his voice so that everyone could hear him, "is this the way thou dost deceive me? Thou didst bargain with me for the death of Paul Beldi for two hundred ducats, and now thou wouldst beat me down by one half. Thou art a rogue meet for the hangman"s hands. Is it thus thou dost treat an honest man? I"ll not kill a man for thee another time until thou pay me in advance, thou faithless robber!"
The company laughed aloud at this scene, but Master Ladislaus Szekely seemed very much put out by the joke. "What are you talking about, you crazy fellow?" said he. "Who asked you to do anything? I never saw you in my life before!"
"What!" cried Zulfikar. "I suppose thou wilt deny next that thou didst write this letter to Paul Beldi!" and with that he gave Ladislaus Szekely the poisoned letter. He seized it, broke the seal, brushed away the dust, and ran his eye over it, whereupon he flung it at the feet of Zulfikar, exclaiming: "I never wrote that."
Then he beckoned to the servants to seize Zulfikar by the collar and pitch him into the street. But the renegade stood outside in front of the windows and began to curse Szekely before the a.s.sembled crowd for not paying him the price of the poison.
Inside the house the guests laughed more heartily than ever, and at last Szekely himself began to look upon the matter in the light of a joke, and laughed like the rest; but when he returned home to Transylvania he felt a pain in his stomach, and did not know what was the matter. He became deaf, could neither eat nor drink, and his bowels began to rot.
n.o.body could cure him of his terrible malady, till at last he fell in with a German leech, who persuaded him that he could cure him with the dust of genuine diamonds and sapphires. Ladislaus Szekely handed to the charlatan his collection of precious stones. He abstracted the stones from their settings, but ground up common stones instead of them in his medical mortar, and stampeded himself with the real stones, leaving Ladislaus Szekely to die the terrible death by poison which he had intended for Paul Beldi.
Paul Beldi they buried in foreign soil; none visited his grave. Only his faithful dog sat beside it. For eight days it neither ate nor drank. On the ninth day it died on the deserted grave of its master.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE FADING OF FLOWERS.
And now let us see what became of Aranka and Feriz.
At last they were beneath one roof together--this roof was a little better than the roof of a tomb, but not much, for it was the roof of a dungeon. They could only see each other through a narrow little window, but even this did them good. They were able to press each other"s hands through the iron bars, console each other, and talk of their coming joys and boundless happiness. The walls of the prison were so narrow, so damp, the narrow opening scarce admitted the light of day; but when the youth began to talk of his native land, Damascus, rich in roses, of palm-trees waving in the breeze, of warm sunny skies, where the housetops were planted with flowers, and the evergreens give a shade against the ever-burning sun, at such times the girl forgot her dungeon and fancied she was among the rose-groves of Damascus, and when the youth spoke of the future she forgot the rose-groves of Damascus and fancied she was in heaven.
Days and days pa.s.sed since the departure of Dame Beldi, and there were no news of her. Every day the spirits of the girl declined, every evening she parted more and more sadly with Feriz, and every morning he found it more and more difficult to comfort her. And now with great consternation the youth began to perceive that the girl was very pale, the colour of life began to fade from her round, rosy cheeks, and there was something new in the brightness of her eyes--it was no earthly light there which made him tremble as he gazed upon her. The youth durst not ask her: "What is the matter?" But the girl said to him:
"Oh, Feriz! I am dying here; I shall never see your smiling skies."
"I would rather see the sky black than thee dead."
"The sky will smile again, but I never shall. I feel something within me which makes my heart"s blood flow languidly, and at night I see my dead kinsfolk, and walk with them in unknown regions which I never saw before, and which appear before me so vividly that I could describe every house and every bush by itself."
"That signifies that thou wilt visit unknown regions with me."
"Oh, Feriz, I no longer feel any pleasure in those lands of yours, nor am I glad when I think of your palms, and as often as I see you darkness descends upon my soul, for I feel that I am going to leave you."
"Speak not so, joy of my existence. Grieve not G.o.d with thy words, for G.o.d is afflicted when the innocent complain."
"I am not complaining. I go from a bad into a good world, and there I shall see you in my dreams."
"But if this bad world should become better, and you lived happily in it?"
Aranka sadly shook her pretty, angelic head.
"That it is not necessary for this world to grow better you can see from the fact that the good must die while the wicked live a long time. G.o.d seeks out those that love Him, and takes them unto Himself, for He will not let them suffer long."
Feriz shuddered. What could have put these solemn, melancholy thoughts into the heart of this girl, this child? It was the approach of Death, the worm-bitten fruit ripens more quickly than the rest. Slow, creeping Death had seized upon the childish mind and made it speak like the aged--and sad it was to listen to its words.
"Cheer up," said Feriz, with an effort, skimming with his lips the girl"s white hand which she thrust out to him through the bars. "Thy mother will soon be here; thy father will sit on the throne of the Prince as he deserves; thou wilt be a Princess, and I will strive and struggle till I am high enough to sue for thee, and then I will lay my glory and renown at thy feet, and thou shalt be my bride, my queen, my guardian angel."
The girl shook her head sorrowfully.
"And we will walk along by the banks of the quiet streams in those ancient lands where not craft but valour rules, where the wise are only learned in the courses of the stars and the healing virtues of the plants, not in the science of the rise and fall of kingdoms. There from the window of my breeze-blown kiosk, which is built on the slopes of Lebanon, thou wilt view the whole region round about. Above, the shepherds kindle their fires in the blackness of the cedar forests; below, the mountain stream runs murmuring along, and all round about us the nightingale is singing, and what he singeth is the happiness of love. In the far distance thou seest the mirror of the great sea, and the white-sailed pleasure boat rocks to and fro on the transparent becalmed billows, and the moon looks down upon the limitless mirror, and a fair maiden sits in the pleasure-boat, and at her feet lies a youth, and both of them are silent, only a throbbing heart is speaking, and it speaks of the happiness of love."
A couple of tears dropped from the eyes of the girl--the future was so seductive--and that picture, that fair country, she did not seem to be regarding them from the earth, it seemed to her as if she was looking down upon them from the sky and regretting that she was forced to leave--the beautiful world.
Aranka adored her father. The man who was respected for his virtues by a whole kingdom was the highest ideal of his child. When Feriz began to speak of him, the girl"s face brightened, and at the recital of his heroic deeds the tears dried up in her flashing eyes; and when the youth told her how the great patriot would return, glorious and powerful, supported by the mightiest of monarchs, and how he would throw open the prison doors of his children and be parted from them no more, then a smile would gradually transfigure the girl"s face, and she would feel happy. And then she would steal apart into her own dungeon, and kneel down before her bed, and pray ardently that she might see her father soon, very soon.
And she was to see him before very long.
Paul Beldi"s body was now six feet deep in the ground, and his soul a star farther off in the sky--to see him one must go to him.
Paler and paler she became every day, her waking moments were scarcely different from her dreams, and her dreams from her waking moments. The provost-marshal now had compa.s.sion on the withered flower, and allowed it on the sunny afternoons to walk about on the bastions and breathe the fresh air. But neither moonlight nor fresh air could cure her now.
Frequently she would take the hand of Feriz Beg and press it to her forehead. "See how it burns, just like fire! Oh, if only I might live till my father comes. How he would grieve for me!"
Feriz Beg saw her wither from day to day, and still there was no sign of liberty. The youth used frequently to walk about the courtyard half a day at a time, like a lion in a cage, beating the walls with his forehead at the thought that that for which he had been striving his whole life long, and the possession whereof was the final goal of his existence, was drawing nearer and nearer to Death every hour, and no human power could hold it back!
The wife of the provost-marshal, a good, true woman, nursed the rapidly declining girl. Medical science was then of very small account in Transylvania; the sick had resort to well-known herbs and domestic remedies based on the experience of the aged; they trusted for the most part to our blessed mother Nature and the mercy of G.o.d.
The worthy woman did all she could, but her honest heart told her that the arrival of Aranka"s father, and the sooner the better, would do more good than all her remedies. That would transform the invalid, and joy would give her back her failing vital energy.
Feriz Beg had not been able to speak to Aranka for two days; the girl had suffered greatly during the night, and Feriz was condemned to listen to the moaning of his beloved, and to hear her in the delirium of fever through the prison windows without being able to go to her, without being able to wipe the sweat from her forehead, or put a gla.s.s of cold water to her lips, or whisper to her words of comfort, and had to be content with knowing that she was with those who carefully nursed her.
Oh, it is not to the dying that death is most bitter.