"Better jokes!" said the girl. "Anyway they didn"t sit here looking like stuck pigs. The painter especially was a very proper young fellow. If he had only been a hair"s breadth taller! As it was he just came up to my chin!"
"Did you measure yourselves then?"
"Rather! Why I taught him to dance csardas, and he jumped about like a two months old kid on the barn floor!"
"And the cowherd?" asked the man, "did he see you dancing with the German artist, and yet not wring his neck?"
"Wring his neck! Why they drank eternal friendship together!"
"Well, it is not my business. Get me some more wine, but better stuff than this vinegar. I shall have to come out with another old saying, "The fish is unhappy in the third water," for the third water should be wine."
"That"s a double insult to call my wine--water."
"Never mind," said the herdsman, "just get me a sealed bottle!"
Now it was the undoing of Sandor Decsi that he asked for a sealed bottle, one brought from the town, sealed with green wax, with a pink or blue label pasted on one side, covered with golden letters. Such wine is only fit for gentlefolk, or perhaps for people in the Emperor"s pay!
Klari"s heart beat loud and fast as she went into the cellar to fetch a bottle of this gentlefolk"s wine.
For, suddenly, the girl remembered about a gipsy woman, who had once told her fortune for some old clothes, and, out of pure grat.i.tude, had said this to her as well, "Should your lover"s heart grow cold, my dear, and you wish to make it flame again, that is easily managed, give him wine mixed with lemon juice, and drop a bit of this root called "fat mannikin" into it. Then his love will blaze up again, till he would break down walls to reach you!"
It flashed across the girl"s mind that now was the very moment to test the charm, and the roots, stumpy and black, like little round-headed, fat-legged mannikins, were lying safe in a drawer of her chest. In the olden days much was believed of this magic plant, how it shrieked when pulled from the ground, and that those who heard it died. How, at last, they took dogs to uproot it, tying them to it by the tail! How Circe bewitched Ulysses and his comrades with it. The chemist, who has another use for it, calls it "atropa mandragora." But how could the girl know that it was poisonous?
CHAPTER III.
Early, ere the dawn, the strangers at the Hortobagy inn started on their way.
This inn, though only a "csarda," or wayside house of call, was no owl-haunted, tumble-down, reed-thatched place, such as the painter had imagined, but a respectable brick building, with a shingle roof, comfortable rooms, and a capital kitchen and cellar quite worthy of any town. Below the flower garden, the Hortobagy river wound silently along, between banks fringed with reeds and willows. Not far from the inn, the high road crossed it on a substantial stone bridge of nine arches.
Debreczin folk maintain that the solidity of this bridge is due to the masons having used milk to slake their lime; jealous people say that they employed wine made from Hortobagy grapes, and that this drew it together.
The object of the early start was aesthetic as well as practical. The painter looked forward to seeing a sunrise on the puszta, a sight which no one, who has not viewed it with his own eyes, can form the slightest idea of. The practical reason was that the cattle to be sold could only be separated from the herd in the early morning. In spring, most of them have little calves, and at dawn, when these are not sucking, the herdsmen going in among the herd, catch those whose mothers have been selected and take them away. The mothers then follow of their own accord. A stranger would be gored to death by these wild creatures, who have never seen anyone but their own drovers, but to them they are quite accustomed.
So the strangers set off for those wild parts of the plain, where even the puszta dwellers need a guide, in a couple of light carriages. The two coachmen, however, knew the district, and needed no pilot. They therefore left the cowboy, who had been sent as guide, to amuse himself at the inn, he promising to overtake them before they reached the herd.
The artist was a famous landscape painter from Vienna, who often came to Hungary for the sake of his work, and who spoke the tongue of the people. The other Viennese was manager of the stables to the Moravian landowner, Count Engelshort. It would, perhaps, have been wiser to have sent some farmer who knew about cattle, for a lover of horses has little mind left for anything else. But he had this advantage over the rest of the staff, that he knew Hungarian, for when a lieutenant of Dragoons he had long been stationed in Hungary, where the fair ladies had taught him to speak it. Two of the Count"s drovers had been told off to escort him--strong, st.u.r.dy fellows, each armed with a revolver. As for the gentlemen from Debreczin, one was the chief constable, the other the worthy citizen from whose herd the twenty-four stock cows and their bull were to be selected.
Now, at the time of starting, the waning moon and the brightest of the stars were still visible, while over in the east dawn was already breaking.
The townsman, a typical Magyar, explained to the painter how the star above them was called "the wanderer"s lamp," and how the "poor lads," or "betyars," looking up at it, would sigh, "G.o.d help us," and so escape detection when stealing cattle. This quite enchanted the painter.
"What a Shakespearian idea," he said.
He grew more and more impressed with the endless vision of puszta, when, an hour later, their galloping steeds brought them where nothing could be seen save sky above and gra.s.s below, where there was not a bird or frog-eating stork to relieve the marvellous monotony.
"What tones! What tints! What harmony in the contrasts!"
"It"s all well enough," said the farmer, "till the mosquitoes and the horse-flies come."
"And that fresh, velvety turf, against those dark pools!"
"Those puddles there? "Tocsogo" as we call them."
Meanwhile, high above, sounded the sweet song of the lark.
"Ah, those larks; how wonderful, how splendid!"
"They"re thin enough now, but wait till the wheat ripens," replied the farmer.
Slowly the light grew, the purple of the sky melted into gold; the morning star, herald of the sun, already twinkled above the now visible horizon, and a rainbow-like iridescence played over the dewy gra.s.s, keeping pace with the movements of the dark figures. The horses, four to each carriage, flew over the pathless green meadow-land, till, presently, something began to show dark on the horizon--a plantation, the first acacias on the hitherto treeless puszta, and some bluish knolls.
"Those are the Tartar hills of Zam," explained the Debreczin farmer to his companions. "There stood some village destroyed by the Tartars. The ruins of the church still peep out of the gra.s.s, and the dogs, when they dig holes, sc.r.a.pe out human bones."
"And there, what sort of a Golgotha is that?"
"That," said the farmer, "is no Golgotha, but the three poles of the cattle wells. We are close to the herd."
They halted at the acacias, and there agreed to await the doctor who was to come jogging along from the Mata puszta, in his one-horse trap.
Meanwhile the painter made notes in his sketch-book, falling from ecstasy to ecstasy. "What subjects! What motives!" In vain his companions urged him to draw a fine solitary acacia, rather than a group of nasty old thistles! At last appeared the doctor and his gig, coming up from a slanting direction, but he did not stop, only shouted "Good morning" from the box, and then, "Hurry, hurry! before the daylight comes!" So after a long enough drive they reached "the great herd." This is the pride of the Hortobagy puszta--one thousand five hundred cattle all in one ma.s.s. Now all lay silent, but whether sleeping or not, who could tell? No one has ever seen cattle with closed eyes and heads resting on the ground, and to them Hamlet"s soliloquy, "To sleep, perchance to dream," in no wise applies.
"What a picture!" cried the painter, enchanted. "A forest of uplifted horns, and there in the middle the old bull himself with his sooty head and his wrinkled neck. The jet black litter surrounded by green pasture, the grey mist in the background, and, far away, the light of a shepherd"s fire! This must be perpetuated!"
Thereupon he sprang from the carriage, saying, "Please follow the others. I see the shelter, and will meet you there." So, taking his paint-box and camp-stool, and laying his sketch-book on his knees, he began rapidly jotting down the scene, while the carriage with the farmer drove on.
All at once, the two watch dogs of the herd, observing this strange figure on the puszta, rushed towards him, barking loudly. It was, however, not the painter"s way to be frightened. The dogs, moreover, with their white coats and black noses, fell into the scheme of colour.
Nor did they attack the man, peacefully squatting there, but when quite close to him, stood still. "What could he be?" Sitting down, they poked out their heads inquisitively at the sketch-book. "What was this?" The painter pursued the joke, for he daubed the cheek of the one with green, and the other with pink; and these attentions they seemed to find flattering, but when they by-and-by saw each other"s pink or green face, they fancied it was that of a strange dog, and took to fighting.
Luckily the "taligas," or wheel-barrow boy, came up at that moment. The taligas is the youngest boy on the place, and his duty is to follow the cattle with his wheel-barrow, and sc.r.a.pe up the "poor man"s peat" which they leave on the meadow. This serves as fuel on the puszta, and its smoke is alike grateful to the nose of man and beast.
The taligas rushed his barrow between the fighting dogs, separated and pursued them, shouting, "Get away there!" For the puszta watch-dog does not fear the stick, but of the wheel-barrow he is in terror.
The taligas was a very smart little lad, in his blue shirt and linen breeches worked with scarlet. He delivered the message entrusted to him by the gentlemen, very clearly. It was "that the painter should join them at the shelter, where there was much to sketch." But the striking picture of the herd was not yet completed.
"Can you run me along in your barrow?" asked the painter, "for this silver piece?"
"Oh, sir!" said the lad, "I"ve wheeled a much heavier calf than you!
Please step in, sir."
So utilising this clever idea, the painter gained both his ends. He got to the "karam," seated in the barrow, and managed to finish his characteristic sketch by the way.
Meanwhile the others had left their carriages, and were introducing the Vienna cattle buyer to the herdsman in charge. This man was an exceptionally fine example of the Hungarian puszta-dweller. A tall, strong fellow, with hair beginning to turn grey, and a curled and waxed moustache. His face was bronzed from exposure to hard weather, and his eyebrows drawn together from constant gazing into the sun.
By "Karam" is understood on the puszta that whole arrangement which serves as shelter against wind and storm for both man and beast. Wind is the great enemy. Rain, heat, and cold the herdsman ignores. He turns his fur-lined cloak inside out, pulls down his cap, and faces it, but against wind he needs protection, for wind is a great power on the plains. Should the whirlwind catch the herd on the pastures, it will, unless there be some wood to check them, drive them straight to the Theiss. So the shelter is formed of a planking of thick boards, with three extended wings into the corners of which the cattle can withdraw.
The herdsmen"s dwelling is a little hut, its walls plastered like a swallow"s nest. It is not meant for sleeping in, there is not room enough, but is only a place where the men keep their furs and their "bank." This is just a small calf"s skin with the feet left on, and a lock in place of the head. It holds their tobacco, red pepper, even their papers. Round the walls hang their cloaks, the embroidered "szur"