Макс Нордау - How Women Love

Panna shrunk from the touch of his fat fingers, brushed them off, and said:

"Tell him it is all very well and we will see."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

The priest departed with an unctuous farewell, and left Panna alone. She remained motionless in the same position, with bent head, her hands resting nervelessly in her lap, her eyes staring into vacancy. So her father found her when, half an hour after, he returned from the parish tavern. When she saw him, she started from her stupor, rushed to him, and exclaimed amid a violent flood of tears:

"Father, it was all in vain, there is no justice on earth."

In reply to the astonished old man’s anxious questions, she told him, for the first time, the story she had hitherto kept secret of her petition to the king, and the pitiful result of this final step.

Her father listened, shaking his head, and said:

"You see if, instead of acting on your own account, you had first asked my advice, you would have saved yourself this fresh sorrow. I could have told you that you would have accomplished nothing with the king."

Now, for the first time in many weeks, the old man again began to speak of the matter which had never ceased to occupy Panna’s whole mind. He was choleric, and capable of a hasty deed of violence when excited, but he was not resentful; he was not the man to cherish anger long, and had already gained sufficient calmness to view Abonyi’s crime more quietly and soberly. He represented to his daughter that it would be folly to demand the nobleman’s life from the king in exchange for Pista’s.

Panna answered sullenly that she did not perceive the folly; did her father think that a peasant’s life was less valuable than a gentleman’s?

"That isn’t the point now. You must consider that the master did not kill your Pista intentionally."

"Stop, Father, don’t tell me that. He did kill him intentionally. I don’t care whether the purpose existed days or minutes before, but it was there; else he would not have sent for the revolver, he would not have aimed the weapon, touched the trigger, or discharged it."

"Even admitting that you are right, he has been punished for it."

Panna laughed bitterly. "Six months! Is that a punishment?"

"For a gentlemen like him, it’s a heavy one. And he will provide for you."

"Do you, too, talk as the priest does, father? You ought to know me better. Do you really believe that I would bargain over Pista’s life for beggerly alms? I should be ashamed ever to pass the churchyard where the poor fellow lies."

"You are obstinate, Panna. I see very plainly where you are aiming. You always say you want justice, but it seems to me that what you want is vengeance."

Panna had never made this distinction, because she was not in the habit of analyzing her feelings. But when her father uttered the word, she reflected a moment, and then said: "Perhaps so."

Yet she felt that it really was not vengeance which she desired, and she instantly added:

"No, Father, you are not exactly right, it is not revenge. I should no longer be enraged against Herr von Abonyi if I could believe that the law, which punished what he has done with six months' imprisonment, would for instance have punished you also with six months, if you had committed the same crime. But it cannot be the law, or they would not have shot Marczi for his little offence, you would not have been imprisoned three months for a few innocent blows. It is easy to tell me that the case is different. Or is there perhaps a different law for peasants and for gentlemen? If that is so, then the law is wicked and unjust, and the peasants must make their own."

The old man did not notice the errors and lack of logic in Panna’s words, but he was probably startled by her gloomy energy.

"Child, child," he said, "put these thoughts out of your head. I have done so too. If I could have laid hands on the murderer at first—may God forgive me—I believe that Pista would not have been buried alone. But now that is over, and we must submit. After all, six months' imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can’t even swear, to say nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical jailers—a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."

Panna made no reply, and the conversation stopped; but her father’s last words had not failed to make a deep impression upon her imagination. She clung to the pictures he had conjured before her mind; she found pleasure in them, painted them in still more vivid hues, experienced a degree of consolation in them. While she was working in the house, her thoughts were with Abonyi in his prison; she saw him in the degrading convict-dress, with chains on his feet, as she had so often found her father when she visited him in jail; there he sat in a little dusky cell on a projecting part of the wall, eating from a wooden bowl filled with a thin broth, repulsive in appearance and smell and biting pieces of earth-colored bread as hard as a brick; the cell was impregnated with horrible odours; the bare stone flags of the floor were icy cold; a ragged, dirty sack of straw, and a thin, tattered coverlet swarming with vermin covered the bench in the corner; in the morning the prisoner, like the others, was obliged to clean his cell and work at things whose contact sickened him; at noon he walked up and down the prisonyard, amid thieves and robbers, who jeered at and insulted the great gentleman; the jailers assailed him with rough words, perhaps even blows—yes, perhaps, her father was right, possibly Abonyi might have been better off lying in the grave than enduring the disgrace and hardships of the prison.

She gave herself up to these ideas, which almost amounted to hallucinations, with actual delight; she even spoke of them, told the neighbours about them as if they were facts which she had witnessed, and when, early in February, a peasant who had been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in the county jail for horse-stealing, was released and returned to Kisfalu, Panna was one of the first who visited him and asked if he had seen Abonyi in the county prison.

"Why, of course," replied the ex-convict, grinning.

Panna’s eyes sparkled.

"You went to walk in the yard with him? They probably put him in chains?"

"You are talking nonsense, neighbour," said the peasant. "He wore no chains, and did not go into the yard with us. If I saw him, it’s because I waited on him."

"Waited? You waited on him?"

"Certainly. Surely you don’t suppose that he is treated like one of us! He lives in a pretty room, has his meals sent from the hotel, goes in and out freely during the day, and is only locked up at night for form’s sake; he wears his own clothing and is served by the other prisoners; we all tried to get the place, for he pays like a lord. Hitherto, he hasn’t found it very tiresome, for people came to see him every day and, when there were no visitors, he played cards with the steward. They say that, on New Year’s Eve, he lost 140 florins to him; it gave us something to talk about for a week."

During this story Panna remained rigid and speechless, listening with her mouth wide open, without interrupting, and when the peasant paused she sat still a short time, as if her thoughts were far away, and then went out like a sleep-walker, leaving the man staring after her in astonishment at her strange behaviour.

From this hour she was a different person. She was no longer seen to smile, she scarcely spoke, did not open her lips all day, and avoided meeting people’s eyes, even her own father’s. When the gardener came to visit her, she evaded him if possible, and if she could not do that, sat by his side and let him talk while she gazed into vacancy. When, one Sunday afternoon, the priest again appeared in the hut, probably to renew his attempt at reconciliation, she darted out of the door like a will-o'-the-wisp the instant she saw him, leaving the amazed and disconcerted pastor alone in the room.