The young lady continued her story:—
"When I heard your mother saying these words, I was possessed with fresh horror. It never occurred to me that you had an elder brother who was the guardian of the orphan wards of the town, and that his proper place then was in the Town Hall, with the roof blazing over his head, trying to save the property of the orphans. I dared not go along that side of the street; I crossed over to the other side. Suppose she were to seize me also and ask: 'What have you done with my son? But for those accursed, colour-shifting eyes of yours, he would now be beside me, he would never have left me all alone!' I dared not, I dared not meet her eye. I would rather endure the sight of my own mother's angry face than the tearful look of your mother. I hid my face in my hands, and hurried past."
She could say no more. She let her face fall on my breast, and sobbed aloud.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT
When she again lifted up her face, her eyes were like a somnambulist's gazing fixedly in the moonlight. They appeared absolutely dark-blue, so much were the irises distended. Her voice was quite low.
"The whole picture is still vividly before my eyes. The greater part of the town was in flames. It must have been evening. The sound of the clock in the Calvinist church tower mingled with the peal of the alarm-bells. The clock struck eight, the alarm-bells five. The people counted the strokes: exactly thirteen. The sun shone no longer, but the whole vault of heaven was alight; the fiery reflection of the thick clouds of smoke made a hellish daylight, and in the midst of this terrible illumination, like some dread idol, rose the tower of the Calvinist church, with its large copper roof, and its spire with the great gold ball and star. Star and ball glowed like phantoms from the world beyond the grave. The crackling of the fire roared down the howling of the beasts and the cries of ten thousand terrified men. In that part of the town where the carters dwelt, carts, horses and oxen, and their owners were all huddled together in one dense mass. To move was an impossibility. Then upon this howling, cursing, blaspheming multitude came pouring that mass of men which had fought its way from the banks of the Danube through the burning town, with the terrifying cry, 'The enemy has attacked the town!' By this time the alarming rumour had gained such proportions that there were those who said they had actually seen the enemy's soldiers entering the town. 'They are burning, they are plundering—fly! fly!' Some even exclaimed, 'They are about to bombard the captured town from the fortress!' All at once the whole street, as far as the Waag bridge, was filled with flying vehicles. In my terror I had clutched hold of the mud-splasher of one of these vehicles as it came tearing along, and ran along after it till there was scarcely a breath left in my body. My light buskins were completely worn off my feet and full of gravel. I had no time to stop and empty them. This particular carriage had excellent horses in it, and the coachman did not spare his whip. Two women, dressed in peasants' hoods, were sitting in this carriage. I was astonished that they should wrap themselves up so closely in their hoods, and cover their heads with big kerchiefs, when such an infernal heat was blazing all around us, from the earth, from the sky, and from every side of us.
"The coachman reached the Waag bridge safely before the other fugitive carriages had blocked up the way. At the entrance they had to stop, for there the custom-house officers demanded the bridge-tolls. That the whole town was in flames mattered not a button to them, all they wanted was their tolls. One of the women handed them an Austrian bank-note for 100 florins. The toll-collector could not give change. A queer sort of peasant woman, truly, who had no smaller change than a bank-note for 100 florins! While they were haggling about it, it occurred to me that I was now wearing my genteel clothes, and that in the pockets there was sure to be a silver tizes[76] for any beggar I might chance to meet on my way. So I went up and said to the peasant women: 'I've got a tizes which I'll give to the toll-collector; all that I ask is that you will take me in your carriage—there's room for me beside the coachman. I don't mind where you take me.' At this, one of the women called to the coachman: 'Don't let that girl get up, we won't have her.' Then they told the toll-collector that he might keep the 100-florin note if he couldn't give them change, if only he would let their coachman go on. I was horrified at such inhumanity. What a heartless woman it must be who, in such a time of peril, could refuse a fugitive girl a place in her carriage, and who, rather than do so, preferred to sacrifice a bank-note for 100 florins, peasant though she was! In my indignation I tore the big muffling clout from the head of the peasant woman and discovered her face. And now my blood froze to ice. I recognised my own mother! 'Mother, dear mother!' I cried, 'don't you know me? I am your own little girl, Bessy!' Then my mother, pulling up the collar of her mantle over her face, said, in a simulated peasant voice: 'Be off! Don't bother us! I don't know the girl. I'm not your mother. Let go my kerchief!'
[76] The tenth part of a florin.