To those who could question discreetly, it was presently whispered that the wife of Michael Apafi expected every moment to be delivered of a child.
Good Sir Michael never quitted the chamber of his suffering consort. The gossips said that the sight of her husband was a great consolation to the invalid lady, and that he never ceased whispering sweet, caressing words into her ear.
Suddenly a wild tumult filled the courtyard, and, to the great terror of the servants assembled there, four-and-twenty mounted Albanians, armed with swords and lances, and headed by a big-headed Turkish Aga, dashed up to the door.
“Is your master at home?” cried the Aga dictatorially to Andy, who stood rooted to the spot with fright. “For if he is,” continued he, without waiting for an answer, “tell him to come here. I have something to say to him.”—Andy still could not find his voice.—“If, however,” proceeded the Turk emphatically, “if he won’t come, I’ll go and fetch him.”
And with these words he sprang from his horse, and was crossing the threshold, when Andrew plucked up sufficient courage to stammer—“But, most gracious sir. …” The Turk turned savagely upon him.
“It were better, my son, if you did not chatter so much!” said he, and forthwith he plunged into the vestibule.
At that very moment Apafi, startled by the clatter of the sabres, came out of his wife’s chamber. He was not a little alarmed when he found himself face to face with this unexpected guest.
“Are you Michael Apafi?” asked the Turk wrathfully.
“The same, at your service, gracious sir,” returned Apafi meekly.
“Good! My master, his Highness, the famous Ali Pasha, commands you to instantly get into your carriage, and come to my lord’s camp at Kis-Selyk without a single attendant.”
“This is a pretty go,” murmured Apafi to himself. “Pardon me, worthy Aga,” added he aloud; “just now it is quite impossible for me to comply with your wish. My wife lies in the pangs of childbirth; the issues of life and death depend on the next five minutes. I cannot leave her now.”
“Send for a doctor if your wife is ill; and recollect that to bring down the wrath of the illustrious Pasha on your head is not the proper way to cure her.”
“Grant me but one day, and then I don’t care if I lose my head.”
“You won’t lose your head if you obey instantly; but otherwise I’ll not answer for the consequences. Come! don’t be a fool.”
Anna heard in her chamber the dialogue that was going on outside, and anxiously called her consort. Apafi quitted the Aga and hastened to his wife.
“What is it?” asked the sufferer, much disturbed. How pale she was at that moment!
“Nothing, nothing, my darling! Someone has sent for me, but I don’t mean to go.”
But Lady Apafi had perceived the points of the Turkish lances through the rifts of the window-curtains, and she cried despairingly—
“Michael, they want to carry you off!” Then she clasped her husband convulsively to her heart. “I won’t let you go, Michael! I won’t lose you again. You shall not be dragged off into captivity. Rather let them kill me.”
“Calm yourself, dear child,” said Apafi soothingly. “I really don’t know what they want me for. I have certainly done nothing to offend these good people. I suppose it is an attempt to levy blackmail. I’ll satisfy them.”
“Alas! I have an evil foreboding. My heart fails me. Some calamity threatens you,” stammered the sick woman; then, bursting into a violent fit of sobbing, she threw herself on her husband’s bosom. “Michael, I shall never see you again.”
Meanwhile, the Aga outside began to feel bored, so he fell to hammering at the door, and cried—
“Apafi! hi! Apafi! come out! I may not enter your wife’s chamber, for that would be an abomination to a servant of Allah; but if you don’t come out at once I’ll burn your house down.”
“I’d better go, perhaps,” said Apafi, trying to soothe his wife with kisses. “My refusal would only make matters worse for us. They are sure to let me go. I shall be back in the twinkling of an eye.”
“I shall never see you again,” gasped Anna. She was near to swooning.
Apafi took advantage of this momentary fainting fit, plucked up his courage, left his wife, and joined the Aga with streaming eyes.
“Well, sir, let us be off,” said the Turk. “But surely you won’t go without your sword, just as if you were some poor peasant,” continued he fiercely. “Go back, I say; gird on your sword, and tell your wife that she need fear nothing.”
Apafi returned to his room, and as he took down his large silver-embossed sword (it was hanging up on the wall right over the bed) he said cheerily to his wife—
“Look, now! there can scarcely be anything unpleasant in store for me, or they would not have bidden me buckle on my sword. Trust in God!”
“I do, I do trust in Him,” she replied, convulsively kissing her husband’s hand and pressing it to her heaving bosom. Then she broke forth again into bitter lamentations. “Apafi, if I die, do not forget me.”
“Alas!” cried Apafi; then bitterly cursing his fate, he tore himself out of his consort’s arms, and wishing all Turks, born and to be born, at the bottom of the sea, rushed violently out of the room.
Then he threw himself into his carriage, and looked neither up nor down, but wrestled all the way with the one thought that if his wife were now to die, he would not be able to receive her parting words; and this thought conjured up before him a whole series of images each more lugubrious than the other.
He and his escort had scarcely left Ebesfalva a mile behind them when the Turks caught sight of a horseman dashing after them at full
