For the Right

by Karl Emil Franzos

The mandatar could but take his leave, standing still a moment outside. It was the very spot where his unhappy victim, and now his implacable enemy, had first felt the sore pain of disappointed hope and helpless wrath--these same sensations now having him for their prey. The fear of death, which he had been able to hold at bay awhile with the vain expectation that the all-powerful State would hedge him round with safety, seized upon him afresh, tearing his cowardly heart to pieces. With tottering knees, and almost beside himself with rage and terror, he slunk away.

In one of the streets his eye was caught by a shop window exhibiting fire-arms. He entered and bought a double-barrelled pistol. "If I should have the misfortune of falling into his hands," he murmured, "I will at least save myself the worst of ignominy." But a voice in his heart gave him the lie directly. "Coward!" it said; "you would never dare it--never!"

Retribution for this man's crimes had begun before Taras lifted a finger against him, and his just terrors continued--nay, were added to hourly. The mandatar, even in his least cowardly moments, felt the situation to be most critical. While Taras lived, his returning to Zulawce was a movement in the direction of death; and there appeared to be every likelihood of Taras's continuing in life, while the authorities were bent on dealing with him "in due course," as the district governor had taken pains to point out. It seemed highly advisable, then, for Mr. Hajek to keep at a safe distance from Zulawce, and this was tantamount to his retiring from his stewardship, since the peasants, he knew, would never dream of rendering the slightest of their dues, be it tribute or labour, unless the mandatar were bodily present to make them. And if he got into arrears with the monthly payments to the Count, in Paris, this gentleman would not be long in dismissing him, without the least pity for his difficulties. It was preferable, then, to anticipate a dismissal. But how to make a living for the future? To be sure, he had improved the stewardship he was about to quit, putting by in that little black box of his a neat sum of several thousand florins in good Austrian securities, although he had never stinted himself of any personal luxury. Should he fall back upon these savings, leaving the country altogether and seeking a berth elsewhere? But in that case, not only this little capital would be endangered, but another and more precious one would also be lost, even the good name he had managed to acquire, and which he hoped to turn into a bait with which to land a fortune one of these days. Nor was this a mere illusion. Mr. Hajek was too sharp-witted to fool himself, and he really had come to enjoy a certain position at Colomea; for he was a man of the world and knew how to ingratiate himself with society, while even his worst enemy must admit he was an adept in the management of landed property. He knew, therefore, to what port he ought to run: he must look out for an heiress and become a landed proprietor himself. There were several eligible maidens, presumably willing to further his aims, with handsome sums in their pockets, if not Polish coronets on their brows. But all these hopes had vanished now; the successful mandatar might have proffered his suit in such quarters, but never the luckless culprit whose misdeeds had found him out. The one question for him was how to gain time, in order to make the best of his miserable fate.

Thus, by a strange coincidence of circumstances, the mere announcement of Taras's intentions had sufficed to ruin his enemy effectively; and the under-steward, returning on Tuesday with the precious black casket, found his master deeply dejected. Nor was his news calculated to rouse better hopes. "To tell the truth," said Boleslaw, "I brought away the worst impressions concerning the peasantry. Not an hour's further labour will they yield, and no tribute of any kind. Taras is a hero and a liberator in their eyes; and as for you, sir--I beg your pardon, but it is a fact--they are all delighted at the bare idea that he is going to hang you. I spoke with several of the villagers, and they all said the same thing."

"That will do," said the mandatar, faintly, and motioned him to go. Left alone, he sank into a chair, and involuntarily put his fingers round his throat. "There must be an end to this!" he cried. "I must shake off this business; I will have nothing more to do with these wretches."

And, going to his desk, he wrote a letter to the Count--it was his resignation. He folded the sheet, and put it into an envelope, which he sealed. But there he stopped, dipping his pen again and again without addressing the missive. "It might be premature after all," he murmured at last, throwing down the quill and snatching up his hat. "I ought not to act rashly, at least not before finding out the opinion of the town."

But if any one wished to know what the world thought at Colomea, he could not do better than repair to a certain wine-cellar, where the "daily news" of the place was almost sure to be present, gossipping away from early morning sometimes till the closing hour at midnight. This worthy was none other than Mr. Thaddeus de Bazanski, whose vicissitudes in life were a prolific source of entertainment to all the tipplers of the place. Mr. Thaddeus, by his own showing, was a man of consequence; but the jovial company listening to his tales somehow had agreed to call him Thaddy. Now Thaddy's history--of which he was most liberal--was of a curious kind, and never the same for two days running. On a Sunday he would have large possessions in Volhynia; and, being the last of an honourable name, he had fought the Russians gallantly, but was left for dead on the field of battle, after which he made his escape into Galicia. On Mondays he was the son of a Polish officer in French service, who had enjoyed the close friendship of Napoleon, and he had been a cadet at Vincennes; but, turning his back upon his brilliant prospects, he had entered the Polish army for love of his country--the rest being the same as on Sunday. On a Tuesday his name, de Bazanski, was merely an alias for prudence' sake, and he was really the scion of a princely house of Lithuania; but, having quarrelled with his family, who were of Russian tendencies, he had entered the Polish army--the rest the same as on Monday. On Wednesdays he had large possessions in the Ukraine, and in fact all the revolution of 1831 had been carried on with his money. Having been obliged to flee, he joined the Carbonari in Piedmont, and now lived in Galicia in order to be at hand when the great day of revenge should have dawned. On Thursdays, when the cellars would be specially well filled after the weekly meeting of the local board, Thaddy's history had quite a romantic origin. He was a natural son of Alexander I. and a Polish countess, spending his youth at the Court of St. Petersburg, petted by all, until he did his duty as the son of his mother, standing up boldly before his half-brother Nicolas and demanding of him a grant of liberty for poor Poland. He was refused, and then--the same as on Wednesday. On Fridays, when the place was but indifferently visited, he was just a poor brave nobleman, who had spent the best years of his life for the good of his country, and was ready to do so again; while on the Saturday his tale had an anti-semitic tinge. His father, on those days, having been one of the richest landowners of Masovia, had been so foolish as to allow his Jewish tenants to drop into arrears with their rents, till the family was nearly beggared. It was then that Thaddeus showed the stuff he was made of, evicting "those rascally Jews," and making front against the Russians at the same time; and he was now at Colomea endeavouring to work up those sad arrears. To be sure, he never had any success to tell of, but that might be because of his constantly changing his lawyer, who, it was observed, was mentioned by a different name every Saturday. For the rest, if any visitor of the cellars ever had forgotten what day of the week it might be, he had but to listen for a moment to Thaddy's tale in order to recover the lost thread of his time.

These varying accounts were calculated to lend an air of distinction to the narrator, but there were some whose shrewdness believed his fame to be spurious, and one or two wicked tongues had even asserted that his features bore a suspicious likeness to a loquacious barber they had known at Warsaw. Thaddy denounced this as a libel, boldly; but it was not so easy to accuse people of calumny when they added that his appearance, somehow, was not of the aristocratic military type! That was true enough, for there was nothing of the heroic about his mean little figure, and those greenish eyes, half cunning, half cowardly, peering away over a coppery nose for any good luck in his way. Of course he always appeared in the national costume; but the 'kantouche' was peculiarly long and ill-fitting, not because of any eccentric taste of his, but simply because nature had endowed Mr. Bogdan with a figure so utterly different from Thaddy's. His 'confederatka,' however, was his own--one of the strangest head-gears ever worn by mortal man. It probably had been high, stiff, and square originally, but it had collapsed to utter flabbiness, and it could not now be said to be of any colour, having faded to a mixture of all. Thaddy kept assuring his listeners that he wore this article on great anniversaries for the most patriotic of reasons, since it had covered his head at the famous battle of Ostrolenka. It certainly looked ancient enough to have seen even the Napoleonic wars; and if it had many holes, that no doubt was a proof of the many bullets which had threatened the head of its gallant wearer. As for the anniversaries, there were those who pretended to observe that the famous confederatka was seen rather often, in fact quite habitually, on Thaddy's head--but then, the history of Poland is so rich in events, that the year of the piously inclined is one long anniversary naturally.

As for the present employment of this national martyr, it was twofold; he ostensibly waited for the better days of Poland, gaining his livelihood meanwhile by entertaining the customers at the cellars with his gossip, and holding himself in readiness for any business in which an agent might be wanted who was not over squeamish in his views.

When Mr. Hajek, on that Tuesday afternoon, entered the cellars he found Thaddy alone, in his usual corner, sadly occupied with counting the flies on the various pictures adorning the room. He looked up, a gleam of satisfaction shooting across his countenance, and held out his hand, which cordiality, however, the new comer appeared not to observe. "Ha!" he cried, "what a strange coincidence; here I was just thinking of you, actually! There is a curious likeness between this excellent young man's fate--meaning yourself--and mine, I was saying."