Chapter I: The Tactless Member of the Family

Many years before our story begins, there lived in Besztercebanya a man of the name of Pal Gregorics, who was always called a tactless man, whereas all his life was spent in trying to please others. Pal Gregorics was always chasing Popularity, and instead of finding it came face to face with Criticism, a much less pleasing figure. He was born nine months after his father's death, an act of tactlessness which gave rise to plenty of gossip, and much unpleasantness to his mother, who was a thoroughly good, honest woman. If he had only arrived a little earlier ... but after all _he_ could not help it. As far as the other Gregorics were concerned, he had better not have been born at all, for of course the estates were cut up more than they would otherwise have been.

The child was weak and sickly, and his grown-up brothers always hoped for his death; however, he did not die, but grew up, and when of age took possession of his fortune, most of which he had inherited from his mother, who had died during his minority and left him her whole fortune; whereas the children of the first wife only had their share of the father's fortune, which, however, was not to be sneered at, for old Gregorics had done well in the wine trade. In those days it was easier to get on in that line than it is now, for, in the first place, there was wine in the country, and in the second place there were no Jews. In these days there is plenty of Danube water in the wine-cellars, but not much juice of the grapes.

Nature had blessed Pal Gregorics with a freckly face and red hair, which made people quote the old saying, "Red-haired people are never good."

So Pal Gregorics made up his mind to prove that it was untrue. All these old sayings are like pots in which generations have been cooking for ages, and Pal Gregorics intended to break one of them. He meant to be "as good as a piece of bread, and as soft as butter, which allows itself to be spread equally well on white bread or black." (This is a favorite phrase among the peasants, when describing a very good man.)

And he was as good a man as you could wish to see, but what was the good of it? Some evil spirit always seemed to accompany him and induce people to misunderstand his intentions.

The day he came back from Pest, where he had been completing his studies, he went into a tobacconist's shop and bought some fine Havanas, which at once set all the tongues in Besztercebanya wagging.

"The good-for-nothing fellow smokes seven-penny cigars, does he? That is a nice way to begin. He'll die in the workhouse. Oh, if his poor dead father could rise from his grave and see him! Why, the old man used to mix dry potato leaves with his tobacco to make it seem more, and poured the dregs of the coffee on it to make it burn slower."

Pal Gregorics heard that he had displeased the good townsfolk by smoking such dear cigars, and immediately took to short halfpenny ones. But this did not suit them either, and they remarked:

"Really, Pal Gregorics is about the meanest man going, he'll be worse than his father in time!"

Gregorics felt very vexed at being called mean, and decided to take the very next opportunity to prove the contrary. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a ball, given in aid of a hospital, and of which the Mayoress of the town was patroness. The programme announced that though the tickets were two florins each, any larger sum would be gratefully accepted. So Pal Gregorics gave twenty florins for his two-florin ticket, thinking to himself "They shan't say I am mean this time."

Upon that the members of the committee put their heads together and decided that Pal Gregorics was a tactless fellow. It was the greatest impertinence on his part to outbid the Mayor, and a baron to boot! Baron Radvanszky had given ten florins for his ticket, and Gregorics throws down twenty. Why, it was an insult! The son of a wine merchant! What things do happen in the nineteenth century, to be sure! Whatever Pal Gregorics did was wrong; if he quarrelled with some one and would not give in, they said he was a brawler; and if he gave in, he was a coward.

Though he had studied law, he did nothing particular at first, only drove to his estate a mile or two out of the town and spent a few hours shooting; or he went for a few days to Vienna, where he had a house inherited from his mother; and the rest of his time he spent in Besztercebanya.

"Pal Gregorics," they said, "is a lazy fellow; he does nothing useful from one year's end to the other. Why are such useless creatures allowed to live?"

Pal heard this too, and quite agreed with them that he ought to get some work to do, and not waste his life as he was doing. Of course, every one should earn the bread they eat. So he looked for some employment in the town. That was enough to set all the tongues wagging again. What? Gregorics wanted work in the town? Was he not ashamed of himself, trying to take the bread out of poor men's mouths, when he had plenty of cake for himself? Let him leave the small amount of employment there was in the town to those who really needed it. Gregorics quite understood the force of this argument, and gave up his idea. He now turned his thoughts toward marriage, and determined to start a family; after all that was as good an occupation as any other.

So he began to frequent various houses where there were pretty girls to be met, and where he, being a good match, was well received; but his step-brothers, who were always in hopes that the delicate little man would not live long, did their best to upset his plans in this case too. So Pal Gregorics got so many refusals one after the other, that he was soon renowned in the whole neighborhood. Later on he could have found many who would have been glad of an offer from him, but they were ashamed to let him see it. After all, how could they marry a man whom so many girls had refused?

On the eve of St. Andrew's any amount of lead was melted by the young girls of the town, but not one of them saw in the hardened mass the form of Gregorics. In fact, none of the young girls wanted to marry him. What they looked for was romance, not money. Perhaps some old maid would have jumped at his offer, but between the young maids and the old maids there is a great difference--they belong to two different worlds. The young girls were told that Pal Gregorics spat blood, and of course, the moment they heard that, they would have nothing more to do with him, so that at his next visit their hearts would beat loudly, but not in the same way they had done last time he drove up in his coach and four. Poor Gregorics! What a pity! The horses outside may paw the ground, and toss their manes as much as they like, what difference does it make? Pal Gregorics spits blood! Oh, you silly little Marys and Carolines. Of course Pal Gregorics is an ugly, sickly man, but think how rich he is; and after all, he only spits his own blood. So what can it matter to you?

Believe me, Rosalia, who is ten years older than you, would not be such a silly little goose, if she had your chances, for she is a philosopher, and if she were to be told that Pal Gregorics spits blood she would only think to herself, "What an interesting man!" And aloud she would say, "I will nurse him." And deep down in her mind where she keeps the ideas that cannot be put into words, which, in fact, are hardly even thoughts as yet, she would find these words, "If Gregorics spits blood already, he won't last so very long."

You silly little girls, you know nothing of life as yet; your mothers have put you into long dresses, but your minds have not grown in proportion. Don't be angry with me for speaking so plainly, but it is my duty to show my readers why Pal Gregorics did not find a wife among you. The reason is a simple one. The open rose is not perfectly pure; bees have bathed in its chalice, insects have slept in it. But in the heart of an opening bud, not a speck of dust is to be found.

That is why Pal Gregorics was refused by so many young girls, and by degrees he began to see that they were right (for, as I said before, he was a good, simple man), marriage was not for him, as he spat blood; for after all, blood is one of the necessaries of life. When he had once made up his mind not to marry, he troubled his head no more about the girls, but turned his attention to the young married women. He had beautiful bouquets sent from Vienna for Mrs. Vozary, and one fine evening he let five hundred nightingales loose in Mrs. Muskulyi's garden. He had the greatest difficulty in getting so many together, but a bird-fancier in Transylvania had undertaken to send them to him. The beautiful young woman, as she turned on her pillows, was surprised to hear how delightfully the birds were singing in her garden that night.

He had no success with the young married women either, and was beginning to get thoroughly sick of life, when the war broke out. They would not take him for a soldier either, they said he was too small and thin, he would not be able to stand the fatigues of war. But he wanted to do something at any cost.

The recruiting sergeant, who was an old friend of his, gave him the following advice:

"I don't mind taking you if you particularly wish to work with us, but you must look out for some occupation with no danger attached to it. The campaign is fatiguing; we'll give you something in the writing business."

Gregorics was wounded in his pride.

"I intend accepting only the most dangerous employment," he said; "now which do you consider the most dangerous?"

"Why, that of a spy," was the answer.

"Then I will be a spy."

And he kept his word. He dressed himself as one of those vagrants of whom so many were seen at that time, and went from one camp to the other, carrying information and letters. Old soldiers remember and still talk of the little old man with the red umbrella, who always managed to pass through the enemy's camp, his gaze as vacant as though he were unable to count up to ten. With his thin, bird-like face, his ragged trousers, his battered top-hat, and his red umbrella, he was seen everywhere. If you once saw him it was not easy to forget him, and there was no one who did not see him, though few guessed at his business. Some one once wrote about him: "The little man with the red umbrella is the devil himself, but he belongs to the better side of the family."

In the peaceful time that succeeded the war, he returned to Besztercebanya, and became a misanthrope. He never moved out of his ugly, old stone house, and thought no more of making a position for himself, nor of marrying. And like most old bachelors he fell in love with his cook. His theory now was to simplify matters. He needed a woman to cook for him and to wait on him, and he needed a woman to love; that means two women in the house. Why should he not simplify matters and make those two women one? Anna Wibra was a big stout woman, somewhere from the neighborhood of Detvar. She was a rather good-looking woman, and used to sing very prettily when washing up the plates and dishes in the evening. She had such a nice soft voice that her master once called her into his sitting-room, and made her sit down on one of the leather-covered chairs. She had never sat so comfortably in her life before.

"I like your voice, Anna; sing me something here, so that I can hear you better."

So Anna started a very melancholy sort of song, "The Recruit's Letter," in which he complains to the girl he loves of all the hardships of war.

Gregorics was quite softened by the music, and three times he exclaimed: "What a wonderful voice!" And he kept moving nearer and nearer to Anna, till all at once he began to stroke her cheek. At this she turned scarlet, and jumped up from her chair, pushing him away from her.

"That's not in my contract, sir!" she exclaimed.

Gregorics blushed too.

"Don't be silly, Anna," he said.

But Anna tossed her head and walked to the door.

"Don't run away, you stupid, I shan't eat you."

But Anna would not listen, and took refuge in her kitchen, from which she was not to be coaxed again that evening.

The next day she gave notice to leave, but her master pacified her by the gift of a golden ring, and a promise never to lay a finger on her again. He told her he could not let her go, for he would never get any one to cook as well as she did. Anna was pleased with the praise and with the ring, and stayed, on condition that he kept his promise. He did keep it for a time, and then forgot it, and Anna was again on the point of leaving. But Gregorics pacified her this time with a necklace of corals with a golden clasp, like the Baronesses Radvanszky wore at church. The necklace suited her so well, that she no longer thought of forbidding her master to touch her. He was rich enough, let him buy her a few pretty things.

In fact, the same afternoon she paid a visit to the old woman who kept a grocer's shop next door, and asked whether it would hurt very much to have her ears pierced. The old woman laughed.

"Oh, you silly creature," she said, "you surely don't want to wear earrings? Anna, Anna, you have bad thoughts in your head."

Anna protested and then banged the door behind her, so that the bell fastened to it went on ringing for some moments.

Of course she wanted some earrings, why should she not have some? God had given her ears the same as to all those grand ladies she saw at church. And before the day was over she had found out that it would hardly hurt her at all to have her ears pierced.

Yes, she wanted to have some earrings, and now she did all she could to bring Gregorics into temptation. She dressed herself neatly, wore a red ribbon in her hair, in fact, made herself thoroughly irresistible. Gregorics may have been wily enough to be a spy for a whole Russian and Austrian army, but a woman, however simple, was far deeper than he.

Next Sunday she went to church with earrings in her ears, much to the amusement of the lads and lasses of the town, who had long ago dubbed her "the Grenadier." And in a few weeks' time the whole town was full of gossip about Gregorics and his cook, and all sorts of tales were told, some of them supremely ridiculous. His step-brothers would not believe it.

"A Gregorics and a servant! Such a thing was never heard of before!"

The neighbors tried to pacify them by saying there was nothing strange in the fact, on the contrary it was quite natural. Pal Gregorics had never done things correctly all his life. How much was true and how much false is not known, but the gossip died away by degrees, only to awaken again some years later, when a small boy was seen playing about with a pet lamb in Pal Gregorics's courtyard. Who was the child? Where did he come from? Gregorics himself was often seen playing with him. And people, who sometimes out of curiosity looked through the keyhole of the great wooden gates, saw Gregorics, with red ribbons tied round his waist for reins, playing at horses with the child, who with a whip in his hand kept shouting, "Gee-up, Raro." And the silly old fellow would kick and stamp and plunge, and even race round the courtyard. And now he was rarely seen limping through the town in his shabby clothes, to which he had become accustomed when he was a spy, and under his arm his red umbrella; he always had it with him, in fine or wet weather, and never left it in the hall when he paid a visit, but took it into the room with him, and kept it constantly in his hand. Sometimes the lady of the house asked if he would not put it down.

"No, no," he would answer, "I am so used to having it in my hand that I feel quite lost without it. It is as though one of my ribs were missing, upon my word it is!"

There was a good deal of talk about this umbrella. Why was he so attached to it? It was incomprehensible. Supposing it contained something important? Somebody once said (I think it was Istvan Pazar who had served in the war), that the umbrella contained all sorts of notes, telegrams, and papers written in his spying days, and that they were in the handle of the umbrella, which was hollow. Well, perhaps it was true.

The other members of the Gregorics family looked with little favor on the small boy in the Gregorics's household, and never rested till they had looked through all the baptismal registers they could lay hands on. At last they came upon the entry they wanted, "Gyoergy Wibra, illegitimate; mother, Anna Wibra."

He was a pretty little fellow, so full of life and spirits that every one took a fancy to him.