Timar's Two Worlds. Mór Jókai

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СКАЧАТЬ brings you near us, and rest for a night under this peaceful roof. Sit down by me on the doorstep, and listen to the story of our house."

CHAPTER VIII.

       THE HISTORY OF THE ISLANDERS.

       Table of Contents

      "Twelve years ago we lived in Pancsova, where my husband held a municipal office. His name was Bellovary; he was young, handsome, and honest, and we loved each other dearly. I was then two-and-twenty and he was thirty.

      "I bore him a daughter, whom we called Noémi. We were not rich, but well off; he had his post, a pretty house, and a splendid orchard and meadow. I was an orphan when we married, and brought him some money; we were able to live respectably.

      "My husband had a friend, Maxim Krisstyan, of whom he was very fond. The man who has just been here is his son, who was then thirteen, a dear, handsome, clever boy. When my little daughter was still a baby, the fathers already began to say they would make a pair, and I was glad when the boy took the little thing's hand and asked her, 'Will you be my wife?' at which the child laughed merrily.

      "Krisstyan was a grain dealer without having ever learned regular business, but was like the speculators in a small way, who catch hold of a rope behind the great wholesale dealers, and go blindly in their wake. If the speculation succeeds, well and good; if not, they are ruined. As he always won, he thought there was nothing easier than mercantile transactions. In the spring he went round to see the crops, and made contracts with the large dealers for the grain to be delivered to them after the harvest. He had a regular customer in the wholesale merchant of Komorn, Athanasius Brazovics, who made large advances to him every spring for grain which he was to deliver in autumn at the price settled in advance, on board ship. This was a lucrative affair for Krisstyan; but I have often thought since that it was not so much trade as a game of chance, when one sells what does not yet exist. Brazovics advanced large sums to Krisstyan, and as the latter had no real property, security was required of him. My husband went surety for him gladly—was he not a landowner and Krisstyan's friend? Krisstyan led an easy life; while my good man sat for hours bent over his desk, the other was at the café, smoking his pipe and chatting with tradespeople of his own sort. But at last God's scourge alighted on him. The year 1819 was a terrible year; in the spring the crops looked splendid over the whole country, and every one expected cheap prices. In the Banat a merchant was lucky if he could make a contract for delivery of grain at four gulden a measure. Then came a wet summer—for sixteen weeks it rained every day; the corn rotted on its stem. In places reputed as a second Canaan, famine set in, and in autumn the price of grain rose to twenty gulden a measure: and even so there was none to be had, for the landowners kept it for seed."

      "I remember it well," Timar interrupted. "I was then just beginning my career as a ship's captain."

      "Well, in that year, it happened that Maxim could not fulfill the contract he had concluded with Athanasius Brazovics; the difference he had to cover made an enormous sum. What did he do then? He collected his outstanding debts, got loans from several credulous people, and disappeared in the night from Pancsova, taking his money with him, and leaving his son behind.

      "He could easily do it; his whole property consisted of money, and he left nothing for which he cared. But what is the good of all the money in the world if it can make a man so bad as to care for nothing else? His debts and liabilities rested on the shoulders of those who had been his good friends, and stood security for him, and among these was my husband.

      "Then came Athanas Brazovics, and required from the sureties the fulfillment of the contract. It was true that he had advanced money to the absconding debtor, and we offered to pay it back: we could have sold half our property, and so met the obligation. But he would not hear of it, and insisted on the fulfillment of the contract; it was not how much money he had lost, but what sums we were bound to pay him. Thus he made five-fold profits; his contract gave him the right to do so. We begged and entreated him to be content with smaller gain—for it was only a question of more or less gain, not of loss—but he was inflexible; he required from the sureties the satisfaction of his claims in full. What is the use, say I, of faith and religion, and all Christian and Jewish churches, if it is permitted to make such a demand?

      "The affair came before the court; the judge gave sentence that our house, our fields, our last farthing, should be distrained, sealed and put up to auction.

      "But what is the use of the law, a human institution, if it can be possible that people should be brought to beggary by a debt of which they have never had a groschen, and fall into misery for the benefit of a third, who rises laughing from the ground?

      "We tried everything to save ourselves from utter ruin. My husband went to Ofen and Vienna to beg an audience. We knew the artful deceiver who had escaped with his money was living in Turkey, and begged for his extradition, that he might be brought here to satisfy those who had presented claims against him; but we were told that there was no power to do so. Then what is the use of the emperor, the ministers, the authorities, if they are not in a position to extend protection to their subjects in distress? After this fearful blow, which brought us all to beggary, my poor husband one night sent a bullet through his head. He would not look on the misery of his family, the tears of his wife, the pale, starved face of his child, and fled from us into the grave.

      "But what is a husband good for, if, when he falls into misfortune, he knows no other outlet than to quit the world himself, and leave wife and child alone behind?

      "But the horrors were not yet at an end. I was a beggar and homeless; now they tried to make me an infidel. The wife of the suicide begged her pastors in vain to bury the unhappy man. The dean was a strict and holy man, for whom the laws of the Church were the first thought. He denied my husband a decent burial, and I had to look on while the dear form of my adored one was carried by the knacker's cart to be hastily buried in a corner of a church-yard. What are the clergy for, if they can not relieve us of such misery as that? What is the whole world about?

      "Only one thing was left; they drove me to kill myself and my child, both at once. I wrapped a shawl round the child at my breast, and went with it to the river bank.

      "I was alone. Three times I went up and down to see where the water was deepest. Then something plucked my dress and drew me back. I looked round. Who was it? The dog here—of all living beings the only friend left to me.

      "It was on the shore of the Ogradina Island that this happened. On this island we had a beautiful fruit-garden and a little summer-house; but there too the official seal had been affixed to every door, and I could only go through the kitchen and out under the trees. Then I sat down by the Danube and began to reflect. What, am I, I, a human being, a woman, to be worse than an animal! Did one ever see a dog drown its young and then kill itself? No, I will not kill either myself or my child; I will live and bring it up. But how? Like the wolves or the gypsy woman, who have no home and no food. I will beg—beg of the ground, the waters, the wilderness of the forest; only not of men—never!

      "My poor husband had told me of a little island which had been formed some fifty years ago in the reed-beds near Ogradina; he often went shooting there in autumn, and spoke much of a hollow rock in which he had sought shelter from bad weather. He said, 'The island has no master; the Danube built it up for no one; the soil, the trees, the grass which grow on it belong to no one.' If it is ownerless, this island, why should not I take possession of it? I ask it of God, I ask it of the Danube. Why should they refuse it? I will raise fruit there. How? and what fruit? I do not know, but necessity will teach me.

      "A boat remained to me which the officer had not noticed, and which, therefore, had not been seized. Noémi, Almira and I got into СКАЧАТЬ