Midst the Wild Carpathians Part 4

"But how much, how much then?" they all cried together.

Andy got very red.

"Well--well, there is nothing at all!"

He said this in a broken voice, and with that he burst into a loud and long roar of laughter, and immediately after wept as if his heart would break.

The mind of Dame Apafi instantly grasped the whole truth.

"Speak, man!" cried she pa.s.sionately, seizing the fellow by the shoulder; "you have brought my husband back with you?"

Andy waved his fist behind him and nodded his head; he laughed and wept at the same time; but, to save his life, he could not have uttered a word.

Dame Apafi, with a sob and a cry of boundless joy, rushed to the door which already stood ajar. Some one had been waiting there and listening all the time; it was Michael Apafi, her long expected, often bewailed consort.

"Michael! my beloved husband!" cried the woman, trembling with emotion; and half swooning, half beside herself, she fell upon her husband's neck, murmuring unintelligible words of love, joy, and tenderness.

Apafi pressed her to his breast. She embraced him convulsively; no other sound was to be heard but a deep sobbing.

"Thou art mine!" she stammered, after a long pause, when the tempest of her emotion had somewhat subsided and she was more herself.

"I am thine," cried Apafi; "and I swear that nothing in the world shall ever tear me from thee again!"

"O G.o.d, what bliss!" cried Anna, raising her streaming eyes to heaven.

"What joy thou hast brought back to me!" she stammered once more, leaning on her husband and hiding her face in his bosom.

"And if the whole world were mine," continued Apafi, "even then I should not be rich enough to requite thy devotion. I take G.o.d to witness, that if I could call a kingdom my own I would give it thee, and think it but a beggarly recompense."

The joyful, loving pair, happy beyond all expression, were then left alone with their joy and happiness. Late into the night burned the taper in their window. How much, how endlessly much they had to say to one another!

CHAPTER III.

A PRINCE IN HIS OWN DESPITE.

A year had elapsed since Michael Apafi's return home. There was a great hubbub in the house at Ebesfalva. One team of horses had scarcely had time to rest, when off went another at full gallop along the high-road; the servants themselves were sent hither and thither; some great trouble had evidently visited the house, but for all that, not a glum or sorrowful face was to be seen.

To those who could question discreetly, it was presently whispered that the wife of Michael Apafi expected every moment to be delivered of a child.

Good Sir Michael never quitted the chamber of his suffering consort. The gossips said that the sight of her husband was a great consolation to the invalid lady, and that he never ceased whispering sweet, caressing words into her ear.

Suddenly a wild tumult filled the courtyard, and, to the great terror of the servants a.s.sembled there, four-and-twenty mounted Albanians, armed with swords and lances, and headed by a big-headed Turkish Aga, dashed up to the door.

"Is your master at home?" cried the Aga dictatorially to Andy, who stood rooted to the spot with fright. "For if he is," continued he, without waiting for an answer, "tell him to come here. I have something to say to him."--Andy still could not find his voice.--"If, however," proceeded the Turk emphatically, "if he won't come, I'll go and fetch him."

And with these words he sprang from his horse, and was crossing the threshold, when Andrew plucked up sufficient courage to stammer--"But, most gracious sir ..." The Turk turned savagely upon him.

"It were better, my son, if you did not chatter so much!" said he, and forthwith he plunged into the vestibule.

At that very moment Apafi, startled by the clatter of the sabres, came out of his wife's chamber. He was not a little alarmed when he found himself face to face with this unexpected guest.

"Are you Michael Apafi?" asked the Turk wrathfully.

"The same, at your service, gracious sir," returned Apafi meekly.

"Good! My master, his Highness, the famous Ali Pasha, commands you to instantly get into your carriage, and come to my lord's camp at Kis-Selyk without a single attendant."

"This is a pretty go," murmured Apafi to himself. "Pardon me, worthy Aga," added he aloud; "just now it is quite impossible for me to comply with your wish. My wife lies in the pangs of child-birth; the issues of life and death depend on the next five minutes. I cannot leave her now."

"Send for a doctor if your wife is ill; and recollect that to bring down the wrath of the ill.u.s.trious Pasha on your head is not the proper way to cure _her_."

"Grant me but one day, and then I don't care if I lose my head."

"You won't lose your head if you obey instantly; but otherwise I'll not answer for the consequences. Come! don't be a fool."

Anna heard in her chamber the dialogue that was going on outside, and anxiously called her consort. Apafi quitted the Aga and hastened to his wife.

"What is it?" asked the sufferer, much disturbed. How pale she was at that moment!

"Nothing, nothing, my darling! Some one has sent for me, but I don't mean to go."

But Lady Apafi had perceived the points of the Turkish lances through the rifts of the window-curtains, and she cried despairingly--

"Michael, they want to carry you off!" Then she clasped her husband convulsively to her heart. "I won't let you go, Michael! I won't lose you again. You shall not be dragged off into captivity. Rather let them kill me."

"Calm yourself, dear child," said Apafi soothingly. "I really don't know what they want me for. I have certainly done nothing to offend these good people. I suppose it is an attempt to levy black-mail. I'll satisfy them."

"Alas! I have an evil foreboding. My heart fails me. Some calamity threatens you," stammered the sick woman; then, bursting into a violent fit of sobbing, she threw herself on her husband's bosom. "Michael, I shall never see you again."

Meanwhile, the Aga outside began to feel bored, so he fell to hammering at the door, and cried--

"Apafi! hi! Apafi! come out! I may not enter your wife's chamber, for that would be an abomination to a servant of Allah; but if you don't come out at once I'll burn your house down."

"I'd better go, perhaps," said Apafi, trying to soothe his wife with kisses. "My refusal would only make matters worse for us. They are sure to let me go. I shall be back in the twinkling of an eye."

"I shall never see you again," gasped Anna. She was near to swooning.

Apafi took advantage of this momentary fainting fit, plucked up his courage, left his wife, and joined the Aga with streaming eyes.

"Well, sir, let us be off," said the Turk. "But surely you won't go without your sword, just as if you were some poor peasant," continued he fiercely. "Go back, I say; gird on your sword, and tell your wife that she need fear nothing."

Apafi returned to his room, and as he took down his large silver-embossed sword (it was hanging up on the wall right over the bed) he said cheerily to his wife--

"Look, now! there can scarcely be anything unpleasant in store for me, or they would not have bidden me buckle on my sword. Trust in G.o.d!"