When the baroness appeared at the dinner-table, she was attired simply, yet with a certain elegance. She wore a plain black silk gown, with no other ornamentation save the string of genuine pearls about her throat. The sombre hue of her gown signified mourning; the gems represented tears; but her manner was by no means in keeping with either; she was cheerful, even gay. But laughter very often serves to mask a sorrowful heart.
“Thy place is here by my side,” said the baroness, mindful of the “thee-and-thou” compact with Herr Bernat.
The vice-palatine, remembering his spouse, sought to modify the familiarity.
“I forgot to tell you, baroness,” he observed, as he seated himself in the chair beside her own, “that with us in this region ‘thou’ is used only by children and the gypsies. To those with whom we are on terms of intimacy we say ‘he’ or ‘she,’ to which we add, if we wish, the words bácsi, or hugom, which are equivalent to ‘cousin.’ ”
“And do you never say ‘thou’ to your wife?”
“To her also I say ‘she’ or ‘you.’ ”
“What a singular country! Well, then, Bernat bácsi, if it pleases ‘him,’ will ‘he’ sit here by me?”
Baroness Katinka understood perfectly how to conduct the conversation during the repast—an art which was not appreciated by her right-hand neighbor, Herr Mercatoris. The learned gentleman had bad teeth, in consequence of which eating was a sort of penitential performance that left him no time for discourse.
But the doctor and the vice-palatine showed themselves all the more willing to share the conversation with their hostess.
“The official business was satisfactorily arranged without me, was it not, Bernat bácsi?” after a brief pause, inquired the baroness.
“Not altogether. We are like the gypsy who said that he was going to marry a countess. He was willing, and all that was yet necessary was the consent of a countess. Our business requires the consent of a baroness—that is, of Katinka hugom.”
“To what must I give my consent?”
“That the conditions relating to the Nameless Castle shall continue the same as heretofore.”
“Nameless Castle?—Conditions?—What does that mean? I should like very much to know.”
“Katinka hugom can see the Nameless Castle from the terrace out yonder. It is a hunting-seat that was built by a Markoczy on the shore of Lake Neusiedl, on the site of a primitive pile-dwelling. Three years ago, a gentleman from a foreign country came to Fertöszeg, and took such a fancy to the isolated house that he leased it from the baron, the former owner, on condition that no one but himself and servants should be permitted to enter the grounds belonging to the castle. The question now is, will Katinka hugom consent to the conditions, or will she revoke them?”
“And if I should choose to do the latter?” inquired the baroness.
“Then your ladyship would be obliged to give a handsome bonus to the lessee. Shall you revoke the conditions?”
“It depends entirely on the sort of person my tenant proves to be.”
“He is a very peculiar man, to say the least—one who avoids all contact with his fellow-men.”
“What is his name?”
“I don’t think any one around here knows it. That is why his residence has been called the Nameless Castle.”
“But how is it possible that the name of a man who has lived here three years is not known?”
“Well, that is easily explained. He never goes anywhere, never receives visitors, and his servants never call him anything but ‘the count.’ ”
“Surely he receives letters by post?”
“Yes, frequently, and from all parts of the known world. Very often he receives letters which contain money, and for which he is obliged to give a receipt; but no one has yet been able to decipher the illegible characters on the letters addressed to him, or those of his own hand.”
“I should think the authorities had a right to demand the information?”
“Which authorities?”
“Why—’he,’ Bernat bácsi.”
“I? Why, what business is it of mine?”
“The authorities ought to inquire who strangers are, and where they come from. And such an authority is ‘he’—Bernat bácsi!”
“Hum; does ‘she’ take me to be a detective?”
“But you surely have a right to demand to see his passport?”
“Passport? I would rather allow myself to be thrown from the window of the county-house than demand a passport from any one who comes to Hungary, or set my foot in the house of a gentleman without his permission!”
“Then you don’t care what people do here?”
“Why should we? The noble does as he pleases, and the peasant as he must.”
“Suppose the man in the Nameless Castle were plotting some dreadful treason?”
“That would be the affair of the king’s attorney, not mine. Moreover, nothing whatever can be said against the tenant of the Nameless Castle. He is a quiet and inoffensive gentleman.”
“Is he alone? Has he no family?”
“That the Herr Justice is better able to tell your ladyship than am I.”
“Ah! Then, Herr Hofrichter,” inquired the lady of the manor, turning toward the justice, “what do you know about this mysterious personage? Has he a wife?”
“It seems as if he had a wife, your ladyship; but I really cannot say for certain if he has one.”
“Well, I confess my curiosity is aroused! How is it possible not to know whether the man is married or not? Are the people invisible?”
“Invisible? By no means, your ladyship. The nameless count and a lady drive out every morning at ten o’clock. They drive as far as the neighboring village, where they turn and come back to the castle. But the lady wears such a heavy veil that one can’t tell if she be old or young.”
“If they drive out they certainly have a coachman; and one might easily learn from a servant what are the relations between his master and mistress.”
“Yes, so one might. The coachman comes often to the village, and he can speak German, too. There is a fat cook, who never leaves the castle, because she can’t walk. Then, there are two more servants, Schmidt and his wife; but they live in a cottage near the castle. Every morning at five o’clock they go to the castle gate, where they receive from some one, through the wicket, orders for the day. At nine o’clock they return to the gate, where a basket has been placed for the things they have bought. But they never speak of the lady, because they have never seen her face, either.”
“What sort of a man is the groom?”
“The people about here call him the man with the iron mouth. It is believed the fat cook is his wife, because he never even looks at the girls in the village. He will not answer any questions; only once he condescended to say that his mistress was a penniless orphan, who had nothing, yet who got everything she wanted.”
“Does no one visit them?”
“If any one goes to the castle, the count alone receives the visitor; the lady never appears; and no one has yet had courage enough to ask for her. But that they are Christians, one may know from their kitchen: there is always a lamb for dinner on Easter; and the usual heiligen Stritzel on All Saints’. But they never go to church, nor is the pastor ever received at the castle.”
“What reason can they have for so much mystery, I wonder?” musingly observed the baroness.
“That I cannot say. I can furnish only the data; for the deductions I must refer your ladyship to the Herr Doctor.”
“Ah, true!” ejaculated her ladyship, joining in the general laughter. “The doctor, to be sure! If you are the county clock, Herr Doctor, surely you ought to know something about our mysterious neighbors?”
“I have two versions, either of which your ladyship is at liberty to accept,” promptly responded the doctor. “According to the first ‘authentic’ declaration, the nameless count is the chief of a band of robbers, who ply their nefarious trade in a foreign land. The lady is his mistress. She fell once into the hands of justice, in Germany, and was branded as a criminal on her forehead. That accounts for the heavy veil she always wears—”
“Oh, that is quite too horribly romantic, Herr Doctor!” interrupted the baroness. “We cannot accept that version. Let us hear the other one.”
“The second is more likely to be the true one. Four years ago the newspapers were full of a remarkable abduction case. A stranger—no one knew who he was—abducted the wife of a French officer from Dieppe. Since then the betrayed husband has been searching all over the world for his runaway wife and her lover; and the pair at the castle are supposed to be they.”
“That certainly is the more plausible solution of the mystery. But there is one flaw. If the lovers fled here to Fertöszeg to escape pursuit, the lady has chosen the very worst means to remain undiscovered. Who would recognize them here if they went about in the ordinary manner? The story of the veil will spread farther and farther, and will ultimately betray them to the pursuing husband.”
By this time the reverend Herr Mercatoris had got the better of his bad teeth, and was now ready to join the conversation.
“Gentlemen and ladies,” he began, “allow me to say a word about this matter, the details of which no one knows better than myself, as I have for months been in communication with the nameless gentleman at the castle.”
“What sort of communication?”
“Through the medium of a correspondence, which has been conducted in quite a peculiar manner. The count—we will call him so, although we are not justified in so doing, for the gentleman did not announce himself as such—the count sends me every morning his copy of the Augsburg ‘Allgemeine Zeitung.’ Moreover, I frequently receive letters from him through Frau Schmidt; but I always have to return them as soon as I have read them. They are not written in a man’s hand; the writing is unmistakably feminine. The seal is never stamped; only once I noticed on it a crest with three flowers—”
“What sort of flowers?” hastily interposed the baroness.
“I don’t know the names of them, your ladyship.”
“And what do you write about?” she asked again.
“The correspondence began by the count asking a trifling favor of me. He complained that the dogs in the village barked so loud; then, that the children robbed the birds’ nests; then, that the night-watchman called the hour unnecessarily loud. These complaints, however, were not made in his own name, but by another person whom he did not name. He wrote merely: ‘Complainant is afraid when the dogs bark.’ ‘Complainant loves birds.’ ‘Complainant is made nervous by the night-watchman.’ Then he sent some money for the owners of the barking dogs, asking that the curs be shut indoors nights; and some for the children, so they would cease to rob the birds’ nests; and some for the watchman, whom he requested to shout his loudest at the other end of the village. When I had attended to his requests, he began to send me his newspaper, which is a great favor, for I can ill afford to subscribe for one myself. Later, he loaned me some books; he has the classics of all nations—the works of Wieland, Kleist, Börne, Lessing, Locke, Schleiermacher. Then we began to write about the books, and became entangled in a most exciting argument. Frau Schmidt, who was the bearer of this exchange of opinions, very often passed to and fro between the castle and the parsonage a dozen times a day; and all the time we never said anything to each other, when we happened to meet in the road, but ‘good day.’ From the letters, however, I became convinced that the mysterious gentleman is neither a criminal, nor a fugitive from justice, nor yet an adventurous hero who abducts women! Nor is he an unfortunate misanthrope. He is, on the contrary, a philanthropist in the widest sense—one who takes an interest in everything that goes on about him, and is eager to help his suffering fellows. In a word, he is a philosopher who is happy when he is surrounded by peace and quiet.”
The baroness, who had listened with interest to the reverend gentleman’s words, now made inquiry:
“How does this nameless gentleman learn of his poor neighbors’ needs, when neither he nor his servants associate with any one outside the castle?”
“In a very simple manner, your ladyship. He has a very powerful telescope in the tower of the castle, with which he can view every portion of the surrounding region. He thus learns when there is illness or death, whether a house needs repair; and wherever anything is needed, the means to help are sent to me. On Christmas he has all the children from the village up at the castle, where he has a splendid Christmas tree with lighted tapers, and a gift for every child,—clothes, books, and sweets,—which he distributes with his own hand. I can tell you an incident which is characteristic of the man. One day the county arrested a poor woman, the wife of a notorious thief. The Herr Vice-palatine will remember the case—Rakoncza Jutka, the wife of the robber Satan Laczi?”
“Yes, I remember. She is still in prison,” assented the gentleman referred to.
“Yes. Well, she has a little son. When the mother was taken to prison, the little lad was turned away from every door, was beaten and abused by the other children, until at last he fled to the marshes, where he ate the young shoots of the reeds, and slept in the mire. The nameless count discovered with his telescope the little outcast, and wrote to me to have him taken to Frau Schmidt, where he would be well taken care of until his mother came back.”
By this time the tears were running down the baroness’s cheeks.
“Poor little lad!” she murmured brokenly. “Your story has affected me deeply, Herr Pastor.”
Then she summoned her steward, and bade him fill a large hamper with sweets and pasties, and send it to Frau Schmidt for the poor little boy. “And tell Frau Schmidt,” she added, “to send the child to the manor. We will see to it that he has some suitable clothes. I am delighted, reverend sir, to learn that my tenant is a true nobleman.”
“His deeds certainly proclaim him as such, your ladyship.”
“How do you explain the mystery of the veiled lady?”
“I cannot explain it, your ladyship; she is never mentioned in our correspondence.”
“She may be a prisoner, detained at the castle by force.”
“That cannot be; for she has a hundred opportunities to escape, or to ask for help.”
Here the surveyor managed to express his belief that the reason the lady wore a veil was because of the repulsiveness of her face.
At this, a voice that had not yet been heard said, at the lower end of the table:
“But the lady is one the most beautiful creatures I ever saw—and quite young.”
Every eye was turned toward the speaker.
“What? Audiat? How dares he say such a thing?” demanded the vice-palatine.
“Because I have seen her.”
“You have seen her? When did you see her? Where did you see her—her whom no one yet has seen?”
“When I was returning from college last year, per pedes apostolorum, for my money had given out, and my knapsack was empty. I was picking hazelnuts from the bushes in the park of the Nameless Castle, when I heard a window open. I looked up, and saw in the open sash a face the like of which I have never seen, even in a picture.”
“Ah!” ejaculated the baroness. “Tell us what is she like. Come nearer to me.”
The clerk, however, was too bashful to leave his place, whereupon the baroness rose and took a seat by his side.
“She has long, curling black hair,” he went on. “Her face is fair as a lily and red as a rose, her brow pure and high, with no sign of the branding-iron. Her mouth is small and delicate. Indeed, her entire appearance that day was like that of an angel looking down from heaven.”
“Is she a maid or a married woman?” inquired one of the company.
A maid, in those days, was very easily distinguished from her married sister. The latter was never seen without a cap.
“A young girl not more than fifteen, I should say,” was the reply. “A cap would not suit her face.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Bernat bácsi. “And this enchanting fairy opened the window to show her lovely face to Audiat!”
“No; she did not open the window on my account,” retorted the young man, “but for the beasts that were luckier than I—for four cats that were playing in the gutter of the roof; a white one, a black one, a yellow one, and a gray one; and all of them scampered toward her when they heard her call.”
“The cats are her only companions—that much we know from the servants,” affirmed the justice.
The laurels which his clerk had won made the vice-palatine jealous.
“Audiat,” he said, in a reproving tone, “you ought to learn that a young person should speak only when spoken to; indeed,—as the learned Professor Hatvani says,—even then it is not necessary to answer all questions.”
But the company around the dinner-table did not share these views. The clerk was assailed on all sides—very much as would have been an aëronaut who had just alighted from a montgolfier—to relate all that he had seen in those regions not yet penetrated by man. What sort of gown did the mysterious lady wear? Was he certain that she had no cap on? Was she really no older than fifteen years?
The vice-palatine at last put an end to his clerk’s triumph.
“Tut, tut! what can you expect to learn from a mere lad like him?—when he saw her only for an instant! Just wait; I will find out all about this nameless gentleman and lady.”
“Pray how do you propose to accomplish that?” queried the baroness, who had returned to her former seat.
“I shall go to the Nameless Castle.”
“Suppose you are not permitted to enter?”
“What? I, the vice-palatine, not permitted to enter? Wait; I will explain my plan to you over the coffee.”
When the time came to serve the black coffee, the amiable hostess suggested that it would be pleasant to enjoy it in the open air; whereupon the company repaired to the veranda where, on several small tables, the fragrant mocha was steaming in the cups. Here the baroness and the vice-palatine seated themselves where they could look directly at the Nameless Castle; and Herr Bernat Görömbölyi proceeded to explain how he intended to take the castle without force—which was forbidden a Hungarian official.
Then the two ladies withdrew to make their toilets for the evening; and the gentlemen betook themselves to the smoking-room, to indulge in a little game of chance, without which no “installation” ceremony would have been complete.