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 God.
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 glass 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.
By the morning the fever left her. The rising sun was just beginning to shine through the narrow round window and the sick girl begged to be carried out into the open air and the warm morning sunshine. She was no longer able to walk by herself, and they carried her out on to the bastions in an armchair.
It was a beautiful autumn morning, a sort of transparent light rested upon the whole region, giving a pale lilac blue to the sunlit scene. Where the road wound down from the Szekler hills a light cloud of dust was visible in the morning vapour; it seemed to be coming from the direction of Szamosújvár.
“Ah! there is my mother coming!” whispered Aranka, with a smiling face.
The young Turk held his hand before his face and fixed his eagle eyes in that direction; and when for a moment the breeze swept the dust off the road, and a carriage on springs drawn by five horses appeared, he exclaimed with a beating heart:
“Yes, that is indeed the carriage in which they took away thy mother.”
Aranka was dumb with joy and surprise; she could not speak a word, she only squeezed Feriz Beg’s hands and fixed her tearful eyes upon him with a grateful look.
The carriage seemed to be rapidly approaching. “That is how people hasten who have something joyful to say,” thought Feriz, and then he began to fear less boundless joy might injure the life of his darling.
Soon the carriage arrived in front of the fortress and rumbled noisily over the drawbridge. Aranka, supported by the arm of Feriz, descended into the courtyard. They pressed onward to meet the carriage, and the smile upon her pallid face was so melancholy.
The glass door of the carriage was opened, and who should come out but Kucsuk Pasha.
There was nothing encouraging in his look; he said not a word either to his son or to the girl who clung to him, but the castellan was standing hard by, and he beckoned to him.
“In the carriage,” said Kucsuk, “is the prisoner for whom I left my son as an hostage; take her back, and look well after her, for she is very ill.”
Dame Béldi lay in the carriage unconscious, motionless.
Aranka, paler than ever and trembling all over, asked:
“Where is my father?”
Kucsuk Pasha would have spoken, but tears came instead of words and ran down his manly face; silently he raised his hand, pointed upwards, and said, in a scarce audible voice: “In Heaven!”
The gentle girl, like a plucked flower, collapsed at these words. Feriz Beg caught her moaning in his arms, she raised her eyes, a long sigh escaped her lips, then her beautiful lips drooped, her beautiful eyes closed, and all was over.
The beloved maiden had gone to her father in Heaven.
XXVII
The Sword of God
For some time past God’s marvels had been multiplied over Transylvania. No longer were they disquieting rumours which popular agitators invented for the disturbance of the public peace, but extraordinary natural phenomena whose rapid sequence stirred the heart of even the coldest sceptic.
One summer morning at dawn, after a clear night, an unusually thick heavy mist descended upon the earth, which only dispersed in the afternoon, spread over the whole sky in the shape of an endless black cloud, and there remained like a heavy motionless curtain. Not a drop of water fell from it, and at noonday in the houses it was impossible to see anything without a candle.
Towards evening every bird became silent, the flowers closed their calices, the leaves of the trees hung limply down. The people walking about outside began to complain of a stifling cough, and from that time forth the germs of every disease antagonistic to nature were seen in every herb, in every fruit; even the water of the streams was corrupted. The hot blood of man, the earth
