A Son of the People/Chapter 17

was with a beating heart, that András once again crossed the threshold of that house, where his pride had received so bitter a blow. He had never entered it, since the day, when a girlish face had stayed his vengeful hand, ready to return blow for blow. And now he wondered what the arrogant lord would have to say to him. That it was something of serious import, was, of course evident, or the Countess would never have stooped to address him; András guessed that my lord had some request to make to him, which his pride had probably put off from day to day for some time, till now it had become imperative.

Jankó had been waiting for András at the gates; another servant took charge of Csillag, while the old valet led the young peasant to that same room, where the stormy interview had lately taken place.

The lord of Bideskút was sitting there, smoking, when Jankó opened the door, to let András come in, but the peasant noticed that, as he entered, this time, the noble lord took the pipe out of his mouth, and said: “Isten hozta!” (God has brought you!) while pointing to a chair.

András saw, how very much altered Bideskúty was, since last year. He seemed altogether aged, though his hair was no greyer, nor his stature less upright, but his geniality seemed gone; there was an air of seriousness, of care round the eyes, and one or two deep lines were very apparent between the brows. András felt exceedingly sorry for this man, who seemed to have suffered so much for his folly.

“It is kind of you to come,” began Bideskúty a little nervously.

“I am here at your lordship’s command, with what can I be of service?”

“You will have guessed, by hearing the Tarna roaring out there, over my fields.”

“I know that your lordship is suffering a heavy loss, as already you did last year. I do not remember so terrible a flood, since I was a boy.”

“The loss to me is greater, than you think.”

"I am a farmer, my lord,” said András simply, “I know the value of every acre upon the lowland.”

Bideskúty thought, that the peasant purposely evaded giving him an opening for what he wanted to say. Never in all his life had he felt so absolutely at a loss of how to begin; he had never asked anyone anything, and, now, he was compelled to do it of a man, whom he despised as utterly beneath him, and yet whom, somehow, he could not manage to treat in the same way as he did Rosenstein, the Jew.

András waited quietly, while Bideskúty mopped his forehead and drew great clouds of smoke from his pipe.

“Have you suffered much, over at Kisfalu?” he asked at last. “As your Honour knows, there are very few fields in that direction belonging to Kisfalu; some of my maize is under water, but it won’t be a serious loss.”

“You are always lucky!” said Bideskúty envyingly.

“There are other sorrows, besides the loss of corn,” replied András quietly.

“That depends how much you lose,” said Bideskúty with growing vehemence; “if like me, you were to see two successive crops, entirely destroyed, through no fault of your own, leaving you nothing, not even a handful of corn to sow for the following year? What then? If like me, you saw ruin staring you in the face? What then? If every league of your land is mortgaged to beyond its value, with interest to pay far beyond what it can produce? What then? If your very house, in which for seven hundred years every one of your ancestors were born and have died, is about to pass into strangers’ hands? Then, Kemeny András, are there sorrows that are harder to bear!”

“No indeed, my lord,” said András kindly, “but such a terrible state of things is, thank God, not your own. True, your land is heavily mortgaged, no one knows that better than I; but I am not threatening to close upon you, dearly as I should love to call that part of it, on which I was born, my own. You talk of interest,” he added still very gently, “but however much you may have suffered in the two disasters, your land, thank God, still produces enough on which to feed yourself and your family and all your servants, and yet leave over a small surplus, which is but the just interest on the money you have had. As for this house, who threatens it? surely, not I. I hold no mortgage on it, and have already refused to take it as security, when I lent the money upon the Bideskút lands.”

“You use many pretty phrases,” said Bideskúty impatiently, “just now, you said you knew the value of every acre upon the lowland. Are you telling a lie, then, when you say, that on the few fields that do not lie underwater, I can grow enough wheat, to pay you the hundreds of thousands of measures, which you demand, and yet have enough with which to feed myself, and my family, and all my servants?”

“I am afraid your Honour is but a poor calculator; the measures of wheat, which you pay me annually, for the loan of the 850,000 florins, I lent you altogether do not amount to more than twenty thousand, and …”

“It is you who is a poor calculator," rejoined Bideskúty, “for I pay more than ten times that amount, which with the thousands of beasts. …”

“My lord," said András quietly, “do not let us wander any further, into these fantastic lands. I receive from your lordship in kind as interest for my money, what does not amount to more than three or four florins a year for every hundred I lent. You yourself signed the paper which I hold in my pocket; what I asked was more than fair, it was liberal; had I exacted the usurious interest you speak of, I could long ago have forced you to part with Kisfalu, to own which, is the dream of my life. But I do not understand usury, and that is why I am still the ‘bérlö’ (tenant) and not the owner of the land.”

“Not understand usury, man?” said Bideskúty in a rage, “are you drunk or mad? Am I dreaming, or are you telling lies? Does not that blood-sucking Jew bailiff of yours, exact from me every year, what now amounts to nearly two hundred thousand measures of wheat, some four hundred head of my best cattle, a thousand sheep and lambs, my fattest geese and poultry? and, in your name, give me neither rest nor respite, coming down upon me, a little more than a week after that terrible fire, exacting the few poor beasts, who had escaped from the flames, threatening me with the demand for the capital, unless I parted with the few stacks of corn left me by the cursed incendiaries, my only chance of sowing for the following year; and then actually offering me that self-same corn at an outrageous price, and offering to lend me the money with which to buy it, at usury worse than the last.”

Exhausted, the unfortunate man had sunk down in his chair, burying his face in his hands. Forgotten were his pride, his arrogance, when looking his own folly, his probable ruin in the face; it all seemed so hopeless, he felt like some wretched bird ensnared in a net, fighting against meshes which closed in on every side. András had become deathly pale; at first he had listened to the ravings of Bideskúty, as he would to those of a lunatic. But, gradually he realised in the man's broken accents, in his voice choked with sobs half of anger and half of appeal, that he was telling the bitter truth; he dimly felt that some terrible wrong had been committed, of which this foolish man had been the victim, a wrong, committed in his name—Kemény András—he, who had worshipped his own integrity, as he would a god.

Trembling, his hand sought the papers, which bore Bideskúty's signature; his eyes scanned the writing anxiously, as if in a vain desire to make them yield part of that hideous mystery.

“My lord,” he said as quietly as possible, after a long pause, “I do not think that we quite understand one another. That there is here some ugly mystery, of which Rosenstein has the key, seems to me evident; shall we try to understand each other first, before we make him tell us his share of the riddle?”

Bideskúty had succeeded in once more mastering himself. He saw his creditor’s face, looking so kindly, so honestly at him that, for once in his life, his heart whispered to him, to put his pride in his pocket, to trust that man, whom he affected to despise, and with a frank gesture, he stretched his hand out towards him.

András placed his own in it, then he said:

“Will your lordship tell me, as clearly as you can, what you believe to be your debt towards me?”

“I could not tell you, within a good many measures of wheat, but I know that you lent me altogether 950,000 florins.” “No, my lord, only 850,000 florins.”

“There were four loans altogether.” “Only three.”

“Three hundred thousand on Kisfalu; 300,000 on the lands of Bideskút, 250,000 on Zárda, and 100,000 on this house, the gardens and stables, and all its adjoining buildings.”

“This last loan I never made; it was no money of mine. When did your Honour borrow it?”

“Two days after the fire, last September.”

“Did Rosenstein say the money came from me?”

“Jews, whenever they lend money, always protest their own poverty, and speak of a friend, who is rich, and is the real lender. When I originally borrowed of Rosenstein, I did not believe that story. Later on … you told me, that it was your money I was borrowing … I never inquired further after that.”

“I understand. Will your Honour continue?”

“I do not know exactly, how much money interest I have agreed to pay. That dirty Jew always made me sign a paper; as if the word of a Hungarian nobleman was not as good as any paper.”

“These papers I have here,” said András, “is this your lordship’s signature?”

Bideskúty glanced at the papers, which Kemény was holding towards him.

“Yes,” he said, “that is my writing.”

“Does your lordship at all remember the amount of the interest you agreed to pay?”

“Not exactly … but …” “Was it at all like this?” said András, beginning to read from the paper, “I owe you 300,000 florins in gold. For this, until I repay it in full, I promise to pay you interest every year, one hundred head of cattle, of which there shall be ten bulls and ninety cows, and five thousand hectolitres of wheat. …”

Bideskúty shook his head. “On that first loan, I have paid now every year, since over five years, fifty thousand measures of wheat, some two hundred head of cattle, and sheep, and I don’t know how much poultry.”

“But why did your lordship do it? when you only agreed to pay five thousand measures of wheat, and a hundred head of cattle?”

“I tell you, man, that from the first Rosenstein demanded the usurious interest, in the name of his friend, who I suppose was yourself; that he would not let me have the money, without I signed his cursed papers, promising to pay his outrageous demands.”

“Papers? Were there more than one?”

“I think, I always signed two, every time I received the money. I don’t quite remember …” said Bideskúty, with exasperating vagueness.

“But your lordship must have seen what you wrote; you must have read what you put your name to.”

“May the devil get into the cursed things! I never read them, I tell you.”

“Never read them?”

András was fairly staggered. In his careful, thrifty, peasant mind, such negligence was nothing short of criminal. Clearly the Jew had had an easy game, with this careless, shiftless spendthrift, who seemed utterly ignorant of the value of all he was so casually signing away, with a flourish of his pen, without deigning even to glance at that, to which he had put his name. It seemed to András almost incredible, and just for a moment, he doubted whether Bideskúty was not playing some game, too deep for his peasant mind to fathom. But Bideskúty looked so puzzled himself, so wretched and hopeless, that András felt truly sorry for him.

“Then, your lordship sent for me to-day? …”

“To ask you, if you cannot forego some of that interest,” interrupted Bideskúty again nervously, “I thought you could easily do that without losing very much by it.”

“Indeed, my lord, had I ever done so dishonourable a thing, as to extort usury like that from you,” said András with a smile, “I would well have deserved that blow on the head, eight months ago, the scar of which I still bear. I see clearly now that that confounded Jew, has used my money and my name, to practise the most villainous usury upon you, and that—your lordship must pardon me for saying this—you allowed yourself to be robbed in a most careless manner.”

“What could I do? I wanted the money.”

“Your lordship knows best, what you wanted it for. No good has come of the money, and your lordship is suffering deeply for some unfortunate follies.”

“You have no right to speak to me like that. I allow no one to condemn my actions. Certainly not such as you …”

“Do not let us quarrel again, noble lord,” said András, who this time was determined not to lose his temper, “but rather let us see which way, it will be best for me to help your Honour. I can of course get the other papers out of the hands of that cursed Jew, those I mean, which deal with loans, I actually did make.”

“What will you do with them?” asked Bideskúty, still suspiciously.

“Destroy them,” replied András simply. “Unfortunately it is not in my power to force Rosenstein to give you back all that he has extorted from you. I can. thrash him to within an inch of his life,” he added, “but that would do no good.”

“All that is not the worst,” said Bideskúty with a sigh, “what is gone is gone. I can pay neither interest nor principal of that last loan; the delay you and Rosenstein have granted me expires this week: I have not a groat in the world, my best land is under water, my beasts have not yet recovered from the fearful shock and terrors of that awful night in September, and my beautiful house of Bideskút, where I was born, and had hoped to die, will fall into the hands of a stranger—yours—Rosenstein’s—” added the poor man, ready again to break down. “What difference does it make to me, whether it is Jew or peasant, that drives me from my home?”

“Your lordship does not remember what you signed, in connection with the loan on this house?”

“I tell you, man, I never read what I signed!”

“Yes, I know,” said András with an impatient sigh, “but you must have some sort of idea as to what money you are actually owing at this moment, upon that one loan and the interest.” “I know that the money I had was 100,000 florins, that there is some outrageous interest due on it, of which I have not paid one measure of wheat or one head of cattle; and that with my early crops under water, I see absolutely no chance of ever paying, neither that, nor anything I owe you.”

“We will talk about your debt to me, later on, when we have satisfied Rosenstein, and made your house secure from his clutches. I have not the money with me to-day, but I will see him to-morrow, and have a look at all the papers he holds. We can both only pray, my lord, that I shall be able to buy them at a reasonable figure. I am not made of money,” added András, smiling, “as your Honour has often said; thank God, however, I have enough yet to let you be in my debt, with regard to the house instead of in the Jew’s, and I can assure your lordship, that I will never be hard upon you, in the matter of the interest.” Bideskúty seemed hardly to realize the enormous service which the young peasant, was thus quietly offering to render him. For the last few months his situation had appeared to him so hopeless, he had brooded so deeply and so darkly over his inevitable ruin, that the glimmer of hope, which this man, so unostentatiously held out to him, appeared too faint to penetrate through the dreary veil of his misery.

“Whatever interest you wanted,” he said dejectedly, “I could not pay you, while fire and water fight alternately against me.”

“I told your lordship that I would not be hard.” “Do you wish to humiliate me, by conferring favours upon me?” said Bideskúty, fretfully.

“I have no wish to humiliate any one, being only a peasant, myself,” said András, with a pride which at least equalled Bideskúty’s own, as he drew up his tall figure to the full height, and looked the lord of Bideskút straight in the face. “Your lordship has asked me to help you. You know best if you can accept the only help I can suggest without losing your dignity.”

“Thinking you were my creditor, I only asked for time. I do not see why you should part with your money to help me.”

“I am a single man, my lord,” said András, with inexpressible sadness, “my dear mother and I have enough to feed ourselves and all those who ask us to feed them; I have no desire to save, and we must all try to help one another on this beautiful lowland of ours, so that it remains fruitful and prosperous, such as God created it.” Bideskúty had rested his elbow on the table, and hidden his face in his hands, so that the peasant could not see how deeply he felt his present position, how humbled he really was in his pride at being so absolutely bounden to one beneath him, to one who was quietly giving him the most serious lesson, he had ever had in his life. He felt very like a chidden child, still obstinately shutting his eyes to the fact that nothing but his own folly, had brought him to the verge of ruin, and looking on all his misfortunes as the relentless hand of fate.

There was a long silence between the two men; András waited till Bideskúty had composed himself, and after a while, he said:

“Have I your lordship’s permission to see Rosenstein to-morrow?”

“Yes! … Yes!” said Bideskúty hurriedly, “I am grateful to you, friend … yes, very grateful, … and … you need not fear … I will repay you all soon … very soon … you are placing your money on good security. … Next year my mill will be at work …”

“We can easily talk of that later on,” said András, gently, “if your lordship will allow me, now I will go; my mother will be waiting for our Easter meal, and the roads are muddy towards Kisfalu.”

“Oh! Ah! Yes! Yes!” added Bideskúty, nervously, “but … but … will you not … break the bread with us? … with me … I mean … for, of course, the Countess. …”

András had looked with some amusement at the poor man struggling through this evidently most uncordial invitation. He was far too shrewd not to guess how unwelcome a guest, he really would be at the noble lord’s table, and far too proud to avail himself of Bideskúty’s sense of obligation towards him. He had risen to his feet, and in his great mantle, with his tall, broad stature he seemed to tower in his pride, above the unfortunate nobleman, with his seven centuries of ancestry.

“I thank your Honour,” he said, “but, if you will allow me, I will join my mother at our own midday meal. My two little servants would be sad to see my empty chair on Easter Sunday, and I would not like to be the cause of the noble Countess being forced to eat the blessed meats apart from her lord.”

“Will you come to me, after you have seen Rosenstein to-morrow?” asked Bideskúty, evidently much relieved.

“I will certainly bring you the papers, at once. You will be glad to see them destroyed,” said András, preparing to take his leave.

For a moment Bideskúty hesitated. The guest who had come to the rescue, when all seemed lost, and who had staved off the ruin, which had been knocking at the door, was about to depart. Surely the laws of hospitality demanded that he should be accompanied to the gates, that the stirrup cup should be handed to him by his host, before he rode away.

András re-adjusted his mantle, over his broad shoulders, tightened his belt, took up his cap, and bowed to the lord of Bideskút. Gyuri again put out his hand, which the peasant grasped, after an imperceptible moment of hesitation … then, the next instant he was gone, his steps echoing on the flagstones of the hall, and it was old Jankó who offered the peasant the stirrup-cup, which András refused; whilst from the room above, Bideskúty watched his creditor with a puzzled look on his face.