Then everyone enters his house, shuts the door behind him, and puts out the fire; the sheepdogs hold long dialogues in the village streets; the crescent moon rises; the night watchman begins to cry the hours in long-drawn rhythm; the others sleep and do not hear his golden saws. Only in one window of the manor-house a light is shining. There someone still is up.
The watchers are a grey-haired, venerable dame and a much younger serving-maid. The old lady is reading from a worn-out psalter, every line of which she already knows by heart; the serving-maid, as if not content with a long day’s work, has sat herself down to her distaff, and draws long threads out of the silky flax which she heckled yesterday and carded today.
“Go to bed, Clara,” said the old woman kindly, “it is enough if I remain up. Besides, you have to rise early tomorrow morning.”
“I could not sleep till our mistress has returned,” replied the girl, continuing her work. “Even when all the men are in, I always feel so frightened till she has come home, but when once she is here, I feel as safe as if we were behind the walls of a fortress.”
“Quite right, my child; she is, indeed, worth many men. Shame upon it that the cares and anxieties which it behoves a man to bear should rest upon her shoulders! She has to look after the whole of this vast household, and, as if that were not enough, she must needs farm the estates of her sisters, the ladies Banfi and Teleki. How many lawsuits must she not carry on with this neighbour and with that! But they’ve met their match in her, I’ll warrant. She appears in person before the judges and pleads so shrewdly, that our best advocates might take lessons from her. And then, too, when my Lord Banfi came capering hither with his killing ways, some little time ago, fancying that our gracious lady was one of your straw-widows, how she sent him away with a flea in his ear! The worthy gentleman did not know whether he stood on his head or his heels, and yet he is one of the chief men in the land! And afterwards, too, when, out of revenge, he saddled us with that freebooter of a captain and his landsknechts, don’t you recollect how our lady had them all flogged out of the village, and how the rascals took to their heels when they saw our gracious mistress herself march out against them, blunderbuss in hand?”
“Would that they had not scampered off quite so quickly,” interrupted the girl, with a burst of enthusiasm. “I’d have laid the poker about their ears, I warrant you.”
“Hark’e, Clara! when a woman has been forced to keep house alone for so long a time, and to defend herself and family by the might of her own arms, she comes at last to feel herself a man all over. That is why our mistress looks as stern as if she had never been a girl.”
“But tell me, Aunt Magdalene,” returned the girl, drawing her chair nearer, “shall we never see master again?”
“Alas! God only knows,” replied the old dame, sighing. “How can I tell when the poor fellow will be released from his captivity? I always had a presentiment that it would come to this, and I said so, but no one heeded me. It happened in this wise. In the days when our Prince George7 of blessed memory, not content with his own land, must needs set out to conquer Poland at the head of the Hungarian chivalry, our good master, Sir Michael, went with him. Oh, how I tried—and our lady too—to keep him back. They were a newly-wedded couple then, and the good gentleman himself had little heart for war—he always preferred to sit at home among his books, his water-mills, and his fruit trees—but honour called him and he went. I begged him to at least take my son Andy with him. God gave me that thought, for otherwise we should never have heard again of our gracious master, for when his Highness, our Sovereign Prince George, beheld the bestial hordes of Tartars marching out against him, he himself galloped off home, leaving his nobility captives in the hands of the heathen, who dragged them off in fetters to Tartary. My son Andy, who was of no use to them, for he was badly wounded in the
