Debts of Honor | Page 9

had brought him, in stealth, and slinking; here we had
concealed him without any Christian ceremony, without psalm or toll
of bell; no priest's blessing followed him to his grave, as it follows even
the poorest beggar; and now here, in the house of the dead,
grandmother had cursed the departed, and anathematized the other
world, on whose threshold we stand, and in her mad despair was
knocking at the door of the mysterious country as she beat upon the
coffin-lid with her fist.
Now, in my mature age, when my head, too, is almost covered with
winter's snow, I see that our presence there was essential; drop by drop
we were to drain to the dregs this most bitter cup, which I would had
never fallen to our lot!
Grandmother fell down before the niche and laid her forehead upon the
coffin's edge; her long white hair fell trailing over her.
Long, very long, she lay, and then she rose; her face was no more
distorted, her eyes no longer filled with tears. She turned toward us and
said we should remain a little longer here.
She herself sat down upon the lowest step of the stone staircase, and
placed the lamp in front of her, while we two remained standing before
her.
She looked not at us, only peered intensely and continuously with her
large black eyes into the light of the lamp, as if she would conjure
therefrom something that had long since passed away.
All at once she seized our hands, and drew us toward her to the
staircase.
"You are the scions of a most unhappy house, every member of which

dies by his own hand."
So this was that secret that hung, like a veil of mourning before the face
of every adult member of our family! We continuously saw our elders
so, as if some mist of melancholy moved between us; and this was that
mist.
"This was the doom of God, a curse of man upon us!" continued
grandmother, now no longer with terrifying voice. Besides, she spoke
as calmly as if she were merely reciting to us the history of some
strange family. "Your great-grandfather. Job Áronffy, he who lies in
the first niche, bequeathed this terrible inheritance to his heirs; and it
was a brother's hand that hurled this curse at his head. Oh, this is an
unhappy earth on which we dwell! In other happy lands there are
murderous quarrels between man and man; brothers part in wrath from
one another; the 'mine and thine,'[3] jealousy, pride, envy, sow tares
among them. But this accursed earth of ours ever creates bloodshed;
this damned soil, which we are wont to call our 'dear homeland,' whose
pure harvest we call love of home, whose tares we call treason, while
every one thinks his own harvest the pure one, his brother's the tares,
and, for that, brother slays brother! Oh! you cannot understand it yet.
[Footnote 3: That is, the disputes as to the superiority of each other's
possessions, or as to each other's right to possession.]
"Your great-grandfather lived in those days when great men thought
that what is falling in decay must be built afresh. Great contention
arose therefrom, much knavery, much disillusion; finally the whole had
to be wiped out.
"Job's parents educated him at academies in Germany; there his soul
became filled with foreign freedom of thought; he became an
enthusiastic partisan of common human liberty. When he returned, this
selfsame idea was in strife with an equally great one, national feeling.
He joined his fortunes with the former idea, as he considered it the just
one. In what patriots called relics of antiquity he saw only the vices of
the departed. His elder brother stood face to face with him; they met on
the common field of strife, and then began between them the unending

feud. They had been such good brothers, never had they deserted each
other in time of trouble; and on this thorn-covered field they must
swear eternal enmity. Your great-grandfather belonged to the victorious,
his brother to the conquered army. But the victory was not sweet.
"Job gained a powerful, high position, he basked in the sunshine of
power, but he lost that which was--nothing; merely the smiles of his old
acquaintances. He was a seigneur, from afar they greeted him, but did
not hurry to take his hand; and those who of yore at times of meeting
would kiss his face from right and left, now after his change of dignity
would stand before him, and bow their greetings askance with cold
obeisance. Then there was one man who did not even bow, but sought a
meeting only that he might provoke him with his obstinate sullenness,
and gaze upon him with his piercing