After a brief consultation we determined that, leaving two gentlemen in charge of the invalid, some of us should go on with the miscreant priest as guide, sending back a horse and some restoratives to the spot. This plan proved successful; for after about three-quarters of an hour more of clambering and climbing, we reached the forest edge, and found our guides waiting for us and much perplexed at our nonappearance.
“The devil take the popa!” was their hearty and unanimous exclamation when we had related our adventure; “who could be fool enough to follow the priest? Did we not know that it was bad-luck even to meet a popa?” they asked us pityingly; and certainly, under the circumstances, we felt inclined for once to attach some weight to popular superstition, and inwardly to resolve never again to trust ourselves to the guidance of a Roumanian popa.
[CHAPTER LIV.]
LA DUS AND BISTRA.
This first taste of the delights of a Transylvanian mountain excursion had but stimulated our desire for more enjoyment of the same kind. After revelling so unrestrainedly in the pure mountain air, it was not possible to settle down at once to the monotony of every-day life. Some touch of the restless, roving spirit of the gypsies had come over me, and I began to understand that the life they lead might have a fascination nowhere else to be found. I positively hungered for more air, more sunshine, for deeper draughts of the pine wood fragrance, further revelations of the mountain wonders. I could not afford to waste the very last days of this glorious summer weather cooped up within narrow streets; and as one or two of my late companions were of the same way of thinking, another expedition was speedily resolved upon.
It was, however, not without difficulty that we organized this second excursion, which could not possibly be attempted by two ladies without at least an equal number of gentlemen. Especially if there were going to be any more fainting-fits, a second protector was an imperative necessity; and who could tell (women being proverbially incalculable in their doings) whether we might not both select the self-same moment for swooning away? As yet only one of the stronger sex had been secured, and a second seemed to be nowhere forthcoming. As I before remarked, it is no easy matter to find a person with exactly the requisite qualifications for a mountaineering companion, and I am inclined to believe that Diogenes must have been contemplating some such ascent when he ran about the streets of Athens with a lantern. We had gone over the list of our dearest friends, and had rejected most of them, feeling convinced that we should get to detest them in the course of the first forty-eight hours. Of those few who remained some were unwell and others unwilling; some had no time and others no boots; the cavalry officers rarely cared to walk at all, and infantry officers were of opinion that they had quite enough walking already in their usual routine of military duty; and it is mournful to have to record that out of a population of about twenty-two thousand inhabitants, not another man could be found both willing and able to walk up a hill with a couple of ladies.
Our plan, therefore, seemed doomed to dire disappointment, when a bright thought struck me—the very brightest I ever had. Besides the population of 13,000 Germans, 3737 Roumanians, 2018 Magyars, 238 Jews and Armenian gypsies, and 443 infants, shown by the latest statistical return of the town, Hermanstadt could boast of something else—namely, one Englishman; and on this one solitary countryman all my hopes were accordingly fixed.
The gentleman in question, who had made his appearance here some months previously along with his wife and child, had long been a source of deep and perplexing interest to the inhabitants of Hermanstadt. None of them knew his name, and no name was required, “Der Engländer” being sufficient to describe the fabulous stranger who had found his way to these remote regions. No one spoke of him in any other way, and his bills and parcels were sent to him invariably addressed to “Der Engländer.” His wife and his hat, his umbrella and his stockings, his boots and his baby, were as many sources of puzzling conjecture to these worthy people, who regarded him with all the deeper suspicion just because the life he led was so apparently harmless.
What had brought him to this out-of-the-way corner of Europe? was the question which troubled many a Saxon mind; and more than one was of opinion that he was a British spy sent by Mr. Gladstone for the express purpose of studying the military resources of the country and corrupting the population. No one would, I think, have been much surprised if some dark crime had been brought home to him, or if a supply of nitro-glycerine had been found concealed in the baby’s perambulator—the two most suspicious circumstances about him being, that he had occasionally been seen looking on at the military parade, and had an uncanny habit of taking long walks in the country. It was, however, precisely this last ominous symptom which had directed my thoughts to him on this occasion; and having formed a slight acquaintance with Mr. P—— and his wife, I felt sure that he would prove equal to the occasion.