That Boy Of Norcott's

CHAPTER XXVI. IN HUNGARY

It still wanted several weeks of Christmas, and so I hastened off to Pesth and tried to acquire some little knowledge of Hungarian, and some acquaintance with the habits and ways of Hungarian life. I am not sure that I made much progress in anything but the csardas– the national dance, – in which I soon became a proficient. Its stately solemnity suddenly changing for a lively movement; its warlike gestures and attitudes; its haughty tramp and defiant tone; and, last of all, its whirlwind impetuosity and passion, – all emblems of the people who practise it, – possessed a strange fascination for me; and I never missed a night of those public balls where it was danced.

Towards the middle of December, however, I bethought me of my mission, and set out for Gross Wardein, which lay a long distance off, near the Transylvanian frontier. I had provided myself with one of the wicker carriages of the country, and travelled post, usually having three horses harnessed abreast; or, where there was much uphill, a team of five.

I mention this, for I own that the exhilaration of speeding along at the stretching gallop of these splendid juckers, tossing their wild names madly, and ringing out their myriads of bells, was an ecstasy of delight almost maddening. Over and over, as the excited driver would urge his beasts to greater speed by a wild shrill cry, have I yelled out in concert with him, carried away by an intense excitement I could not master.

On the second day of the journey we left the region of roads, and usually directed our course by some church spire or tower in the distance, or followed the bank of a river, when not too devious. This headlong swoop across fields and prairies, dashing madly on in what seemed utter recklessness, was glorious fun; and when we came to cross the small bridges which span the streams, without rail or parapet at either side, and where the deviation of a few inches would have sent us headlong into the torrent beneath, I felt a degree of blended terror and delight such as one experiences in the mad excitement of a fox-hunt.

On the third morning I discovered, on awaking, that a heavy fall of snow had occurred during the night, and we were forced to take off our wheels and place the carriage on sledge-slides. This alone was wanting to make the enjoyment perfect, and our pace from this hour became positively steeple-chasing. Lying back in my ample fur mantle, and my hands enclosed in a fur muff, I accepted the salutations of the villagers as we swept along, or blandly raised my hand to my cap as some wearied guard would hurriedly turn out to present arms to a supposed “magnate;” for we were long out of the beat of usual travel, and rarely any but some high official of the State was seen to come “extra post,” as it is called, through these wild regions.

Up to Izarous the country had been a plain, slightly, but very slightly, undulating. Here, however, we got amongst the mountains, and the charm of scenery was now added to the delight of the pace. On the fifth day I learned, and not without sincere regret, that we were within seven German miles – something over thirty of ours – from Gross Wardein, from which the Hunyadi Schloss only lay about fifty miles.

Up to this I had been, to myself at least, a grand seigneur travelling for his pleasure, careless of cost, and denying himself nothing; splendid generosity, transmitted from each postilion to his successor, secured me the utmost speed his beasts could master, and the impetuous dash with which we spun into the arched doorways of the inns, routed the whole household, and not unfrequently summoned the guests themselves to witness the illustrious arrival. A few hours more and the grand illusion would dissolve! No more the wild stretching gallop, cutting the snowdrift; no more the clear bells, ringing through the frosty air; no more the eager landlord bustling to the carriage-side with his flagon of heated wine; no more that burning delight imparted by speed, a sense of power that actually intoxicates. Not one of these! A few hours more and I should be Herr Owen, travelling for the house of Hodnig and Oppovich, banished to the company of bagmen, and reduced to a status where whatever life has of picturesque or graceful is made matter for vulgar sarcasm and ridicule. I know well, ye gentlemen who hold a station fixed and unassailable will scarcely sympathize with me in all this; but the castle-builders of this world – and, happily, they are a large class – will lend me all their pity, well aware that so long as imagination honors the drafts upon her, the poor man is never bankrupt, and that it is only as illusions dissolve he sees his insolvency.

I reached Gross Wardein to dinner, and passed the night there, essaying, but with no remarkable success, to learn something of Count Hunyadi, his habits, age, temper, and general demeanor. As my informants were his countrymen, I could only gather that his qualities were such as Hungarians held in esteem. He was proud, brave, costly in his mode of life, splendidly hospitable, and a thorough spoilsman. As to what he might prove in matters of business, if he would even stoop to entertain such at all, none could say; the very thought seemed to provoke a laugh.

“I once attempted a deal with him,” said an old farmerlike man at the fireside. “I wanted to buy a team of juchera he drove into the yard here, and was rash enough to offer five hundred florins for what he asked eight. He did not even vouchsafe me an answer, and almost drove over me the next day as I stood at the side of the gate there.”

“That was like Tassilo,” said a Hungarian, with flashing eyes.

“He served you right,” cried another. “None but a German would have offered him such a rudeness.”

“Not but he’s too ready with his heavy whip,” muttered an old soldier-like fellow. “He might chance to strike where no words would efface the welt.”

Stories of Hunyadi’s extravagance and eccentricity now poured in on all sides. How he had sold an estate to pay the cost of an imperial visit that lasted a week; how he had driven a team of four across the Danube on the second day of the frost, when a heavy man could have smashed the ice by a stamp of his foot; how he had killed a boar in single combat, though it cost him three fingers of his left hand, and an awful flesh wound in the side; and numberless other feats of daring and recklessness were recorded by admiring narrators, who finished by a loud Elyen to his health.

I am not sure that I went away to my bed feeling much encouraged at the success of my mission, or very hopeful of what I should do with this magnate of Hungary.

By daybreak I was again on the road. The journey led through a wild mountain pass, and was eminently interesting and picturesque; but I was no longer so open to enjoyment as before, and serious thoughts of my mission now oppressed me, and I grew more nervous and afraid of failure. If this haughty Graf were the man they represented him, it was just as likely he would refuse to listen to me at all; nor was the fact a cheering one that my client was a Jew, since nowhere is the race less held in honor than in Hungary.

As day began to decline, we issued forth upon a vast plain into which a mountain spur projected like a bold promontory beside the sea. At the very extremity of this, a large mass, which might be rock, seemed to stand out against the sky. “There, – yonder,” said the postilion, pointing towards it with his whip; “that is Schloss Hunyadi. There’s three hours’ good gallop yet before us.”

A cold snowdrift borne on a wind that at times brought us to a standstill, or even drove us to seek shelter by the wayside, now set in, and I was fain to roll myself in my furs and lie snugly down on the hay in the wagen, where I soon fell asleep; and though we had a change of horses, and I must have managed somehow to settle with the postilion and hand him his trink-geld, I was conscious of nothing till awakened by the clanking sound of a great bell, when I started up and saw we had driven into a spacious courtyard in which, at an immense fire, a number of people were seated, while others bustled about, harnessing or unharnessing horses. “Here we are, Herr Graf!” cried my postilion, who called me Count in recognition of the handsome way in which I had treated his predecessor. “This is Schloss Hunyadi.”

CHAPTER XXVII. SCHLOSS HUNYADI

When I had made known my rank and quality, I was assigned a room – a very comfortable one – in one wing of the castle, and no more notice taken of me than if I had been a guest at an inn. The house was filled with visitors; but the master, with some six or seven others, was away in Transylvania boar-shooting. As it was supposed he would not return for eight or ten days, I had abundant time to look about me, and learn something of the place and the people.

Schloss Hunyadi dated from the fifteenth century, although now a single square tower was all that remained of the early building. Successive additions had been made in every imaginable taste and style, till the whole presented an enormous incongruous mass, in which fortress, farmhouse, convent, and palace struggled for the mastery, size alone giving an air of dignity to what numberless faults would have condemned as an outrage on all architecture.

If there was deformity and ugliness without, there was, however, ample comfort and space within. Above two hundred persons could be accommodated beneath the roof, and half as many more had been occasionally stowed away in the out-buildings. I made many attempts, but all unsuccessfully, to find out what number of servants the household consisted of. Several wore livery, and many – especially such as waited on guests humble as myself – were dressed in blouse, with the crest of the house embroidered on the breast; while a little army of retainers in Jager costume, or in the picturesque dress of the peasantry, lounged about the courtyard, lending a hand to unharness or harness a team, to fetch a bucket of water, or “strap down” a beast, as some weary traveller would ride in, splashed and wayworn.

If there seemed no order or discipline anywhere, there was little confusion, and no ill humor whatever. All seemed ready to oblige; and the work of life, so far as I could see from my window, went on cheerfully and joyfully, if not very regularly or well.

If there was none of the trim propriety, or that neatness that rises to elegance, which I had seen in my father’s household, there was a lavish profusion here, a boundless abundance, that, contrasted with our mode of life, made us seem almost mean and penurious. Guests came and went unceasingly, and, to all seeming, not known to any one. An unbounded hospitality awaited all comers, and of the party who supped and caroused to-night, none remained on the morrow, nor, perhaps, even a name was remembered.

It took me some days to learn this, and to know that there was nothing singular or strange in the position I occupied, living where none knew why or whence I came, or even so much as cared to inquire my name or country.

In the great hall, where we dined all together, – the distinguished guests at one end of the table, the lesser notabilities lower down, and the menials last of all, – there was ever a place reserved for sudden arrivals; and it was rare that the meal went over without some such. A hearty welcome and a cordial greeting were soon over, and the work of festivity went on as before.

I was soon given to understand that, not only I might dispose of my time how I pleased, but that every appliance to do so agreeably was at my disposal, and that I might ride or drive or shoot or sledge, just as I fancied. And though I was cautious to show that my personal pretension were of the very humblest, this fact seemed no barrier whatever to my enjoyment of all these courteous civilities.

“We ‘re always glad when any one will ride the juckers,” said a Jäger to me; “they are ruined for want of exercise, and if you like three mounts a day, you shall have them.”

It was a rare piece of good luck for me that I could both ride and shoot. No two accomplishments could have stood me in such request as these, and I rose immensely in the esteem of those amongst whom I sat at table when they saw that I could sit a back-jumper and shoot a wood-pigeon on the wing.

While I thus won such humble suffrages, there was a higher applause that my heart craved and longed for. As the company – some five-and-twenty or thirty persons – who dined at the upper table withdrew after dinner, they passed into the drawing-rooms, and we saw them no more. Of the music and dancing, in which they passed the evening, we knew nothing; and we in our own way had our revels, which certainly amply contented those who had no pretensions to higher company; but this was precisely what I could not, do what I might, divest myself of. Like one of the characters of my old favorite Balzac, I yearned to be once more in the salon, and amongst ces épaules blanches, where the whole game of life is finer, where the parries are neater, and the thrusts more deadly.

An accident gave me what all my ingenuity could not have effected. A groom of the chambers came suddenly, one evening, into the hall where we all sat, to ask if any one there could play the new csardas called the “Stephan.” It was all the rage at Pesth; but no copy of it had yet reached the far East. I had learned this while at Pesth, and had the music with me; and of course, offered my services at once. Scarcely permitted a moment to make some slight change of dress, I found myself in a handsome salon with a numerous company. In my first confusion I could mark little beyond the fact that most of the persons were in the national costume, the ladies wearing the laced bodies, covered with precious stones, and the men in velvet coats, with massive turquoise buttons, the whole effect being something like that of a splendid scene in a theatre.

“We are going to avail ourselves of your talent at the piano, sir,” said the Countess Hunyadi, approaching me with a courteous smile. “But let me first offer you some tea.”