Then slowly, very slowly, it began to grow dark. There was a long black stripe all along the edge of the sky, which gradually bulged out into a sort of black veil, and as the infrequent stars twinkled forth in the pallid sky, this dark veil blotted them out one by one; it was just as if some mighty spirit-hand had drawn a crape curtain across a funeral vault bright with glittering lamps.
It was already midnight when Maria Kamienszka perceived the first roadside csárda[10] which, according to her calculations, lay midway between the county-town and Hétfala. In the midnight gloom and silence it was easier to distinguish distant sounds than to clearly recognise near objects.
[10] Inn.
It seemed to Maria as if she heard a medley of despairing yells and savage maledictions, and dimly discernible masses of men were moving up and down all round the house.
Instinctively she felt for the pistols in her saddle bow—there they were in their proper place.
In a few moments she was close up to the house and perceived clearly at last, with a tremor of horror, the spectacle that had long been engaging her attention.
Some hundreds of peasants, the dregs of the agricultural population, were swarming in and out of the csárda door, savagely singing and shouting. Two large casks had been planted in front of the house, their bottoms had been stoved in, and those of the mob who had got near enough were ladling out the brandy they contained in their hats. Some of these gentlemen could only keep their legs at all by leaning upon the object nearest to them. A white-bearded Jew had been tied to the leg of a chair placed between the two casks. The drunken mob was bestowing most of its attention upon him, and pulling out his beard hair by hair as they cross-examined him. The tortured victim was howling horribly, but would give his tormentors no answer, only from time to time he implored them to spare his innocent daughter. A childish shape, evidently a woman's, was lying across the threshold, and everyone going in and out of the door gave it a kick as he passed through. Fortunately she felt nothing more now.
Maria, full of indignation, spurred her horse right into the midst of the mob that was tormenting the old innkeeper, and exclaimed in a voice of virile assurance:
"What are you all doing here?"
The mob only first perceived the horse when it was right amongst them.