Manasseh Part 16

Ciprianu had a handsome daughter, as tall as himself and with regular features of the old Roman cast. At her father's call she came out, lifted Blanka like a child from the carriage, and carried her into the house. It was a pleasant little abode, built of smoothly planed oak beams and planks. The kitchen, which served also as entrance hall, was as neat as wax and cheerfully adorned with brightly polished tinware.

The fire on the hearth was still smouldering, and it needed only a handful of shavings to make it blaze up and crackle merrily. The wall which separated the great fireplace from the next room was of glazed tiles, and thus the adjoining apartment was heated by the same fire that warmed the kitchen. Both the master of the house and his daughter were most cordial toward their guests. The father spread the table, while the girl put on the kettle and brought out the best that the house had to offer of food and drink, pressing the refreshments upon Blanka in words that sounded to her not unlike Italian, but were nevertheless quite unintelligible.

"They can both speak Hungarian," whispered Aaron, when father and daughter were out of the room for a moment, "but these are times when they choose to forget all tongues except their own."

Blanka soon learned that her hostess's name was Zen.o.bia. When they sat down to the table, Zen.o.bia made as if to kiss her fair guest's hand; Blanka, however, would not allow it, but embraced the young woman and kissed her on the cheek.

This act was noted by the father with no little pride and satisfaction.

Blanka could not understand his words; she could only guess his meaning by the gestures and the play of countenance with which a Wallachian knows so well how to convey his thoughts. Thus, when Ciprianu put his hand first to his head, then tapped Aaron on the shoulder, kissed his own fingers and then stretched them heavenward, made a motion with his head and raised his eyebrows, bowed low, stood erect again, thumped his bosom, and finally extended his great, muscular hands toward Blanka as if to caress her, she could not but infer that the Wallachian-Hungarian n.o.bleman was proud of the courtesy shown to his daughter.

After this bit of eloquent pantomime, Ciprianu turned and hastened out of the room and into the courtyard, whence he soon reappeared amid a great cackling of poultry. He brought with him, tied together by the feet, a c.o.c.k and a hen of that splendid breed that so strangely resembles, in head and neck, the proudest of Calcutta turkeys. This pair of fowls he presented to Blanka. She smiled her pleasure, and gladly accepted the gift, mindful of the new duties soon to be imposed upon her as a young housewife, and thinking that this present would be a welcome addition to her establishment. The generous host did not wait for his guest's thanks, but disappeared again from the room.

"Sister-in-law," said Aaron, "you little suspect the value of the present you have received. Even to his bishop Ciprianu has never given a c.o.c.k and a hen of this breed at one time. So now we can sleep soundly in this house, for we have a sure proof that you have won its master's heart. With Ciprianu's c.o.c.k and hen we can make our way unchallenged through the whole Wallachian army. They are as good as a pa.s.sport for us."

Blanka laughed, unaware of the full significance of his words. She was like a saint walking over red-hot coals without once singeing the hem of her robe.

Ciprianu's house was, as is usual among the Wallachian n.o.bility, well fitted for the reception of guests. Everything savoured of the householder's nationality, but comfort and abundance were everywhere manifest. Canopied beds were provided for all, only the master of the house, according to established custom, lay down before the kitchen door, wrapped in his sheepskin, and with his double-barrelled musket by his side. In an adjoining room stood two beds for Blanka and Zen.o.bia.

Aaron and Mana.s.seh were likewise given a chamber in common.

Curiously enough, one is often most wakeful when most in need of sleep.

All her surroundings were so strange to Blanka that she found herself wide awake and listening to the barking of the dogs, the occasional crowing of the c.o.c.ks, the snoring of the master of the house, and his frequent mutterings as he dreamed of fighting with thieves and housebreakers. Then her companion began to moan and sob in her sleep, and to utter disjointed sentences in Hungarian, of which she had so studiously feigned ignorance a few hours before. "Oh, dear Jonathan,"

she whispered, pa.s.sionately, "do not leave me! Kiss me!" Then she moaned as if in anguish.

Blanka could not compose herself to sleep. Only a wooden part.i.tion separated her from the room in which the two brothers slept. She could hear Mana.s.seh turning restlessly on his couch and muttering in his sleep as if in dispute with some one.

"No, I will not let you go!" she heard him exclaim. "You may plunge my whole country in blood, you may baptise my countrymen with a baptism of fire, but I will never despair of my dear fatherland. Your hand has girt it round about with cliffs and peopled it with a peaceful race. It is my last refuge, and thither I am carrying my bride. With your strong arm restore me to my beloved home. I will wrestle with you, fight with you; you cannot shake me off. I will not let you go until you have blessed me."

The fisticuffs and elbow-thrusts that followed must have all spent themselves on poor Aaron's unoffending person. At length the elder brother wearied of this diversion and aroused his bedfellow.

"With whom are you wrestling, brother?" he cried in the sleeper's ear.

"With G.o.d," returned Mana.s.seh.

"Like Jacob at Peniel?"

"Yes, and I will not let him go until he blesses me--like Jacob at Peniel."

"Take care, or he will put your thigh out of joint, as he did Jacob's."

"Let him, if it is his will."

With that Mana.s.seh turned his face to the wall, on the other side of which lay Blanka, who likewise turned her face to the wall, and so they both fell asleep.

And the Lord blessed them and spake to them: "I am Jehovah, almighty.

Increase and be fruitful. From your seed shall spring peoples and races; for you have prevailed with G.o.d, and shall prevail also with men."

CHAPTER XV.

BALYIKA CAVE.

The sun rises late in November. When Blanka awoke, every one else in the house was already up. Mana.s.seh met her with the announcement that their journey was thenceforth to be on horseback, at which she was as pleased as a child. So that explained why their carriage-horses had been saddled.

In the kitchen a plentiful breakfast stood ready,--hot milk, bacon spiced with paprika, snow-white mountain honey, long-necked bottles of spirits distilled from various fruits, cheeses rolled up in the fragrant bark of the fir-tree,--all of which was new to Blanka and partaken of by her with the keenest relish, to the great satisfaction of her host. What was left on the table by his guests he packed up and made them carry away with them, a.s.suring them it would not come amiss.

Zen.o.bia was to guide the travellers on their way. Blanka laughed with delight as she mounted her horse. At first she found it strange enough to sit astride like a man, but when she saw the stately Wallachian maiden thus mounted, she overcame her scruples and even thought it great fun. The little mountain horses were so steady and sure-footed that it was like being rocked in a cradle to ride one of them.

The two young women rode ahead, while the men lingered behind a moment to drink a stirrup-cup with their host, who would not let them go without observing this ceremony. Entering the forest, Blanka accosted her companion.

"Zen.o.bia, call me 'Blanka,' and speak Hungarian with me. You spoke it well enough in your sleep last night."

The Wallachian girl drew rein abruptly and crossed herself. "Holy Virgin!" she whispered, "don't lisp a word of what you heard me say, and don't ask me about it, either."

They rode on side by side up the slope of the mountain. Blanka was in high spirits. The turf was silvered with h.o.a.r frost, except here and there where the direct rays of the sun had melted it and exposed the gra.s.s beneath, which looked all the greener by contrast. A stately grove received the travellers. A silence as of some high-arched cathedral reigned, broken occasionally by the antiphony of feathered songsters in the trees overhead. A pair of wild peac.o.c.ks started up at the riders'

approach and alighted again at a little distance. The ascent became steeper. Horses bred in the lowlands must have long since succ.u.mbed to the strain put upon them, but Aaron's good mountain ponies showed not even a drop of sweat on their sleek coats.

Gaining the mountain top at length, the travellers saw before them a wild moor threaded by a narrow path, which they were obliged to follow in single file, Zen.o.bia taking the lead. The sun was high in the heavens when they reached the end of this tortuous path and found themselves at a point where their road led downward into the valley below. A venerable beech-tree, perhaps centuries old, marked this spot. It was the sole survivor of the primeval forest that had once crowned the height on which it stood. Held firm by its great, wide-reaching roots, which fastened themselves in the crannies of the rock, it had thus far defied the elements. Its trunk half hid a cavernous opening in the mountainside, before which lay a large stone basin partly filled with water.

"Here we will rest awhile, beside the Wonder Spring," said Zen.o.bia, leaping from her horse and loosening her saddle-girth. "We'll take a bite of lunch and let our animals graze; then later we will water them."

"How can we?" asked Blanka. "There is scarcely any water here."

"There will be enough before long," was the reply. "That is why we call it the Wonder Spring: every two hours it gushes out, and then subsides again."

Blanka shook her head doubtfully, and, as if to make the most of the water still remaining in the basin, she used her hand as a ladle and dipped up enough to quench the thirst of her pair of fowls--for her valuable present had not been left behind.

Meanwhile Aaron had spread the lunch on the green table-cloth provided by good dame Nature, and had begun to cut, with his silver-mounted clasp-knife, a generous portion for each traveller. But Blanka declared herself less hungry than thirsty.

"The saints have but to wish, and their desires are fulfilled," was Zen.o.bia's laughing rejoinder. "Even the barren rocks yield nectar. Hear that! The spring is going to flow in a moment."

A gurgling sound was heard from the cavernous opening behind the beech-tree, and presently an abundant stream of crystal-clear water burst forth, flooded the basin, and then went leaping and foaming over the rocks and down the mountainside into the ravine below. Blanka clapped her hands with delight at this beautiful appearance, and declared that if she were rich, she would build a house there and ask for no other amus.e.m.e.nt than to watch the spring when it flowed. She laughed like a happy child, and perhaps in all Transylvania, that day, hers was the only happy laugh that was heard.

Aaron gathered a heap of dry twigs and made a fire, at which he taught Blanka to toast bread and broil bacon,--accomplishments not to be despised on occasions like this.

In half an hour the spring ceased to flow. It stopped with a succession of m.u.f.fled, gurgling sounds from the depths of its subterranean channel, ending finally with gulping down the greater part of the water that had filled the basin. Then all was still once more.

Meanwhile something had occurred to trouble Blanka's happiness. Two or three wasps, of that venomous kind of which half a dozen suffice to kill a horse, lured from their winter quarters by the smell of food, were buzzing about her ears in a manner that spoiled all her pleasure. Aaron hastened to her a.s.sistance, and suspecting that the intruders had their nest in the hollow beech, he made preparations to smoke them out.

Setting fire to a bunch of dry gra.s.s, he inserted it in the hollow of the tree and confidently awaited results. A sound like the snort of a steam-engine followed, and presently flames were seen bursting from the top of the chimney-like trunk. The dry mould and dust of ages that had collected inside this shaft had now caught fire, like so much tinder, turning the whole tree in a twinkling into a mighty torch.

"Oh, what have you done?" cried Zen.o.bia, starting up. "Do you know that you have killed my father and set fire to the house that sheltered you last night?"

Blanka at first thought the girl was joking, but when she saw Aaron's vexed expression and Mana.s.seh's ruffled brow, she knew that the words must have a meaning that the others understood, though she did not.

"Quick!" exclaimed the Wallachian maiden. "Mount and away! You have not a moment to lose. I hasten back to my father. You can find your way down the mountain by following the bed of the brook. Night must not overtake you in this neighbourhood. Oh, Aaron, may G.o.d forgive you for what you have done this day!"

Out of the burning tree a pair of owls fluttered, blinded and panic-stricken, a family of squirrels scampered off to a place of safety, and a nest of serpents squirmed and wriggled away from that blazing horror. Yet neither owls nor squirrels nor serpents fled with more headlong haste than did our travellers. Zen.o.bia galloped back the way she had come, while the two men took Blanka between them and clattered down the rocky bed of the now nearly dry mountain torrent.