"They are Jews and we are Hungarians."
But what of Elsa during this time? What of the sorrow, the alternating hope and despair of those weary, weary months? She did not say much, she hardly ever cried, but even her mother—hard and unemotional as she was—respected the girl's secret for awhile, after the news was brought into the cottage that Andor was really dead.
Erös Béla had brought the news, and Elsa, on hearing it thus blurted out in Béla's rough, cruel fashion, had turned deathly pale, ere she contrived to run out of the room and hide herself away in a corner, where she had cried till she had made herself sick and faint.
"Have you been blind all these years, Irma néni?" Erös Béla had said with his habitual sneer, when Irma threw up her bony hands in hopeless puzzlement at her daughter's behaviour. "Did you not know that Elsa has been in love with Andor all along?"
"No," said Irma in her quiet, matter-of-fact tone, "I did not know it. Did you?"
"Of course I did," he replied dryly; "but I have also known for the past six months that Andor was dead."
"You knew it?" exclaimed Irma with obvious incredulity.
"I have told you so, haven't I?" he retorted, "and I am not in the habit of lying."
"But how did you come to know it?"
"When he did not return last September I marvelled what had happened; I wonder no one else did. Then, when Lakatos Pál first became ill—long even before he confided in Pater Bonifácius—I made inquiries at the War Office and found out the truth."
"Whatever made you do that?" asked Irma, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Andor wasn't anything to you."
"Perhaps not," replied Béla curtly; "but, you see, I was afraid that Pali bácsi would die and that Andor would come back and find himself a rich man. I should have lost Elsa then, so I was in a hurry to know."
Irma once more shrugged her shoulders in her habitual careless, shiftless way—shelving, as it were, the whole responsibility of her life, her fate, and her daughter upon some other power than her own will. She cared nothing about these intrigues of Béla's or of anyone else; she only wanted Elsa to make a rich marriage, so that she—the mother—might have a happy, comfortable, above all leisurely, old age.
But she had enough common sense to see that Elsa laboured under the weight of a very great sorrow, and while the girl was in such a condition of grief it would be worse than useless to worry her with suggestions of matrimony. Girls had been known to do desperate things if they were overharassed, and Kapus Irma was no fool; she knew what she wanted, and her instinct, coupled with her greed and cupidity, showed her the best way to get it.
So she left Elsa severely alone for a time, left her to pursue her household duties, to look after her father, to wash and iron the finery of the more genteel inhabitants of Marosfalva—the schoolmistress' blouses, Pater Bonifácius' surplices. Erös Béla continued in his unemotional attentions to her—he was more sure of success than ever.His words of courtship were the drops of water that were ultimately destined to wear away a stone.
Elsa, lulled into security by her mother's placidity and Béla's apparent simple friendship, hardly was conscious of the precise moment when the siege against her passive resistance was once more resumed. It was all so gradual, so kind, so persuasive: and she had so little to look forward to in the future. What did it matter what became of her?—whom she married or where her home would be? She saw more of Erös Béla than she did of anyone else, for Erös Béla was undoubtedly Irma's most favoured competitor. Elsa knew that he was of violent temperament, dictatorial and rough; she knew that he was fond of drink, and of the society of Klara Goldstein, the Jewess, but she really did not care.
She had kept her promise to Andor, she had waited for him until she knew that he never, never could come back; now she might as well obey her mother and put herself right with God, since she cared so little what became of her.
And the beauty of Marosfalva was tokened to Erös Béla in the spring of the following year, and presently it was given out that the wedding would take place on the feast of Holy Michael and All Angels at the end of September. Congratulations poured in upon the happy pair, rejoicings were held in every house of note in the village. Everyone was pleased at the marriage, pleased that the noted beauty would still have her home in Marosfalva, pleased that Erös Béla's wealth would all remain in the place.
And Elsa received these congratulations and attended these rejoicings with unvarying equanimity and cheerfulness. There was nothing morbid or self-centred in the girl's attitude. People who did not know—and no onereally did—and who saw her at mass on Sundays or walking arm-in-arm with Béla in the afternoons would say that she was perfectly happy. Not a radiant bride certainly, not a typical Hungarianmenyecskewhose laughter echoes from end to end of the village, whose merry voice rings all the day, and whose pretty bare feet trot briskly up and down from her cottage to the river, or to the church, or to a neighbour's house, but an equable, contented bride, a fitting wife for a person of such high consideration as was Erös Béla.
Her manner to him was always equally pleasant, and though the young pair did not exchange very loving glances—at any rate not in public—yet they were never known to quarrel, which was really quite remarkable, seeing that Béla's temper had not improved of late.
He was giving way to drink more than he used to, and there were some ugly rumours about my lord the Count's dissatisfaction with his erstwhile highly-valued bailiff. Many people said that Béla would get his dismissal presently if he did not mend his ways; but then he very likely wouldn't care if he did get dismissed, he was a rich man and could give his full time to cultivating his own land.
This afternoon, while he was talking with Irma and sullenly watching his future wife, he appeared to be quite sober, until a moment ago when unreasoning rage seized hold of him and he shouted to Elsa in a rough and peremptory manner. After that, his face, which usually was quite pallid, became hotly flushed, and his one seeing eye had a restless, quivering look in it.
Nor did Elsa's placid gentleness help to cool his temper. When he shouted to her she turned and faced him, and said with a pleasant—if somewhat vague smile:
"Yes, Béla, what is it you want?"
"What is it I want?" he muttered, as he sank back into his chair, and resting his elbows on the table he buried his chin in his hands and looked across at the girl with a glowering and sullen look; "what is it I want?" he reiterated roughly. "I want to know what has been the matter with you these last two days?"
"Nothing has been the matter with me," she replied quietly, "nothing unusual, certainly. Why do you ask?"
"Because for the last two days you have been going about with a face on you fit for a funeral, rather than for a wedding. What is it? Let's have it."
"Nothing, Béla. What should it be?"
"I tell you there is something," he rejoined obstinately, "and what's more I can make a pretty shrewd guess what it is, eh?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said simply.
"I mean that the noted beauty of Marosfalva does me the honour of being jealous. Isn't that it, now? Oh! I know well enough, you needn't be ashamed of it, jealousy does your love for me credit, and flatters me, I assure you."
"I don't know what you mean, Béla," she reiterated more firmly. "I am neither jealous nor ashamed."
"Not ashamed?" he jeered. "Oho! look at your flaming cheeks! Irma néni, haven't you a mirror? Let her see how she is blushing."
"I don't see why she should be jealous," interposed Irma crossly, "nor why you should be for ever teasing her. I am sure she has no cause to be ashamed of anything, or of being jealous of anyone."
"But I tell you that she is jealous of Klara Goldstein!" he maintained.
"What nonsense!" protested the mother, while the blushquickly fled from the young girl's cheeks, leaving them clear and bloodless.
"I tell you she is," he persisted, with wrathful doggedness; "she has been sullen and moody these last two days, ever since I insisted that Klara Goldstein shall be asked to-morrow to the farewell banquet and the dance."
"Well, I didn't see myself why you wanted that Jewess to come," said Irma dryly.
"That's nobody's business," he retorted. "I pay for the entertainment, don't I?"
"You certainly do," she rejoined calmly. "We couldn't possibly afford to give Elsa her maiden's farewell, and if you didn't pay for the supper and the gipsies, and the hire of the schoolroom, why, then, you and Elsa would have to be married without a proper send-off, that's all."
"And a nice thing it would have been! Whoever heard of a girl on this side of the Maros being married without her farewell to maidenhood. I am paying for the supper and for everything because I want my bride's farewell to be finer and grander than anything that has ever been seen for many kilomètres round. I have stinted nothing—begrudged nothing. I have given an ox, two pigs and a calf to be slaughtered for the occasion. I have given chickens and sausages and some of the finest flour the countryside can produce. As for the wine . . . well! all I can say is that there is none better in my lord's own cellar. I have given all that willingly. I did it because I liked it. But," he added, and once again the look of self-satisfaction and sufficiency gave way to his more habitual sinister expression, "if I pay for the feast, I decide who shall be invited to eat it."
Irma apparently had nothing to say in response. She shrugged her shoulders and continued to stir the stewin her pot. Elsa said nothing either; obedient to the command of her future lord, she had faced him and listened to him attentively and respectfully all the while that he spoke, nor did her face betray anything of what went on within her soul, anything of its revolt or of its wounded pride, while the storm of wrath and of sneers thus passed unheeded over her head.
But Béla, having worked himself up into a fit of obstinate rage, was not content with Elsa's passive obedience. There had from the first crept into his half-educated but untutored and undisciplined mind the knowledge that though Elsa was tokened to him, though she was submissive, and gentle and even-tempered, her heart did not belong to him. He knew but little about love, believed in it still less: in that part of the world a good many men are still saturated with the Oriental conception of a woman's place in the world, and even in the innermost recesses of their mind with the Oriental disbelief in a woman's soul; but in common with all such men he had a burning desire to possess every aspiration and to know every thought of the woman whom he had chosen for his wife.
Therefore now, when in response to his rage and to his bombast Elsa had only silence for him—a silence which he knew must hide her real thoughts, he suddenly lost all sense of proportion and of prudence; for the moment he felt as if he could hate this woman whom he had wooed and won despite her resistance, and in the teeth of strenuous rivalry; he was seized with a purely savage desire to wound her, to see her cry, to make her unhappy—anything, in fact, to rouse her from this irritating apathy.
"I suppose," he said at last, making a great effort to recover his outward self-control, "I suppose that you object to my asking Klara Goldstein to come to your farewell feast?"
Thus directly appealed to by her lover, Elsa gave a direct reply.
"Yes, I do," she said.
"May I ask why?"
"A girl's farewell on the eve of her wedding-day," she replied quietly, "is intended to be a farewell to her girl friends. Klara Goldstein was never a friend of mine."
"She belongs to this village, anyway, doesn't she?" he queried, still trying to speak calmly. He had risen to his feet and stood with squared shoulders, legs wide apart, and hands buried in the pockets of his tightly-fitting trousers. An ugly, ill-tempered, masterful man, who showed in every line of his attitude that he meant to be supreme lord in his own household.
"Klara Goldstein belongs to this village," he reiterated with forced suavity, "she is my friend, is she not?"
"She may be your friend, Béla," rejoined Elsa gently, "and she certainly belongs to this village; but she is not one of us. She is a Jewess, not a Hungarian, like we all are."
"What has her religion to do with it?" he retorted.
"It isn't her religion, Béla," persisted the girl, with obstinacy at least as firm as his own; "you know that quite well. Though it is an awful thing to think that they crucified our Lord."
"Well! that is a good long while ago," he sneered; "and in any case Klara and Ignácz Goldstein had nothing to do with it."
"No, I know. Therefore I said that religion had nothing to do with it. I can't explain it exactly, Béla, but don't we all feel alike about that? Hungarians are Hungarians,and Jews are Jews, and there's no getting away from that. They are different to us, somehow. I can't say how, but they are different. They don't speak as we do, they don't think as we do, their Sunday is Saturday, and their New Year's day is in September. Jewesses can't dance the csárdás and Jews have a contempt for our gipsy music and our songs. They are Jews and we are Hungarians. It is altogether different."
He shrugged his shoulders, unable apparently to gainsay this unanswerable argument. After all, he too was a Hungarian, and proud of that fact, and like all Hungarians at heart, he had an unexplainable contempt for the Jews. But all the same, he was not going to give in to a woman in any kind of disagreement, least of all on a point on which he had set his heart. So now he shifted his ground back to his original dictum.
"You may talk as much as you like, Elsa," he said doggedly, "but Klara Goldstein is my friend, and I will have her asked to the banquet first and the dance afterwards, or I'll not appear at it myself."
"That's clear, I hope?" he added roughly, as Elsa, in her habitual peace-loving way, had made no comment on that final threat.
"It is quite clear, Béla," she now said passively.
"Of course the girl shall be asked, Béla," here interposed Irma néni, who had no intention of quarrelling with her wealthy son-in-law. "I'll see to it, and don't you lose your temper about it. Here! sit down again. Elsa, bring your father's chair round for supper. Béla, do sit down and have a bite. I declare you two might be married already, so much quarrelling do you manage to get through."
But Béla, as sulky now as a bear with a sore head, refused to stay for supper.
"I can't bear sullen faces and dark looks," he said savagely. "I'll go where I can see pleasant smiles and have some fun. I must say, Irma néni," he added by way of a parting shot, as he picked up his hat and made for the door, "that I do not admire the way you have brought up your daughter. A woman's place is not only to obey her husband, but to look cheerful about it. However," he added, with a dry laugh, "we'll soon put that right after to-morrow, eh, my dove?"
And with a perfunctory attempt at a more lover-like attitude, he turned to Elsa, who already had jumped to her feet, and with a pleasant smile was holding up her sweet face to her future lord for a kiss.
She looked so exquisitely pretty then, standing in the gloomy half-light of this squalid room, with the slanting golden sunshine which peeped in through the tiny west window outlining her delicate silhouette and touching her smooth fair hair with gold.
Vanity, self-satisfaction, and mayhap something a little more tender, a little more selfless, stirred in the young man's heart. It was fine to think that this beautiful prize—which so many had coveted—was his by right of conquest. Even the young lord whose castle was close by had told Erös Béla that he envied him his good luck, whilst my lord the Count and my lady the Countess had of themselves offered to be present at the wedding and to be the principal witnesses on behalf of the most beautiful girl in the county.
These pleasant thoughts softened Béla's mood, and he drew his fiancée quite tenderly to him. He kissed her on the forehead and on the cheeks, but she would not let him touch her lips. He laughed at her shyness, the happy triumphant laugh of the conqueror.
Then he nodded to Irma and was gone.
"He is a very good fellow at heart," said the mother philosophically, "you must try and humour him, Elsa. He is very proud of you really, and think what a beautiful house you will have, and all those oxen and pigs and a carriage and four horses. You must thank God on your knees for so much good fortune; there are girls in this village who would give away their ears to be standing in your shoes."
"Indeed, mother dear, I am very, very grateful for all my good fortune," said Elsa cheerfully, as with vigorous young arms she pulled the paralytic's chair round to the table and then got him ready for his meal.
After which there was a moment's silence. Elsa and her mother each stood behind her own chair: the young girl's clear voice was raised to say a simple grace before a simple meal.
The stew had not been put on the table, since Béla did not stay for supper. It would do for to-morrow's dinner, and for to-night maize porridge and rye bread would be quite sufficient.
Elsa looked after her father and herself ate with a hearty, youthful appetite. Her mother could not help but be satisfied that the child was happy.
The philosophy of life had taught Kapus Irma a good many lessons, foremost among these was the one which defined the exact relationship between the want of money and all other earthly ills. Certainly the want of money was the father of them all. Elsa in future would never feel it, therefore all other earthly ills would fall away from her for lack of support.
It was as well to think that the child realized this, and was grateful for her own happiness.
"I put the bunda away somewhere."
Kapus Irma went out after supper to hold a final consultation with the more influential matrons of Marosfalva over the arrangements for to-morrow's feast. Old Kapus had been put to bed on his paillasse in the next room and Elsa was all alone in the small living-room. She had washed up the crockery and swept up the hearth for the night; cloth in hand, she was giving the miserable bits of furniture something of a rub-down and general furbishing-up: a thing she could only do when her mother was away, for Irma hated her to do things which appeared like a comment on her own dirty, slatternly ways.
Cleanliness, order and a love of dainty tidiness in the home are marked characteristics of the true Hungarian peasantry: the cottages for the most part are miracles of brightness, brightly polished floors, brightly polished pewter, brightly covered feather pillows. Kapus Irma was a notable exception to the rule, and Elsa had often shed bitter tears of shame when one or other of her many admirers followed her into her home and saw the squalor which reigned in it—the dirt and untidiness. She was most ashamed when Béla was here, for he made sneering remarks about it all, and seemed to take it for granted that she was as untidy, as slovenly as her mother. He read her long lectures about his sister's fine qualities and about the manner in which he would expect his own wife to keep her future home, and made it an excuse for some of hismost dictatorial pronouncements and rough, masterful ways.
But to-night even this had not mattered—though he had spoken very cruelly about the hemp—nothing now mattered any more. To-day she had been called for the third time in church, to-morrow evening she would say good-bye to her maidenhood and take her place for the last time among her girl-friends: after to-morrow's feast she would be a matron—her place would be a different one. And on Tuesday would come the wedding and she would be Erös Béla's wedded wife.
So what did anything matter any more? After Tuesday she would not even be allowed to think of Andor, to dream that he had come back and that the past two dreadful years had only been an ugly nightmare. Once she was Erös Béla's wedded wife, it would be no longer right to think of that last morning five years ago, of that final csárdás, and the words which Andor had whispered: above all, it would no longer be right to remember that kiss—his warm lips upon her bare shoulder, and later on, out under the acacia tree, that last kiss upon her lips.
She closed her eyes for a moment; a sigh of infinite regret escaped through her parted lips. It would have been so beautiful, if only it could have come true! if only something had been left to her of those enchanted hours, something more tangible than just a memory.
Resolutely now she went back to her work; for the past two years she had found that she could imagine herself to be quite moderately happy, if only she had plenty to do; and she did hope that Béla would allow her to work in her new home and not to lead a life of idleness—waited on by paid servants.
She had thrown the door wide open, and every nowand then, when she paused in her work, she could go and stand for a moment under its narrow lintel; and from this position, looking out toward the west, she could see the sunset far away beyond where the plain ended, where began another world. The plumed heads of the maize were tipped with gold, and in the sky myriads and myriads of tiny clouds lay like a gigantic and fleecy comet stretching right over the dome of heaven above the plain to that distant horizon far, far away.
Elsa loved to watch those myriads of clouds through the many changes which came over them while the sun sank so slowly, so majestically down into the regions which lay beyond the plain. At first they had been downy and white, like the freshly-plucked feathers of a goose, then some of them became of a soft amber colour, like ripe maize, then those far away appeared rose-tinted, then crimson, then glowing like fire . . . and that glow spread and spread up from the distant horizon, up and up till each tiny cloud was suffused with it, and the whole dome of heaven became one fiery, crimson, fleecy canopy, with peeps between of a pale turquoise green.
It was beautiful! Elsa, leaning against the frame-work of the door, gazed into that gorgeous immensity till her eyes ached with the very magnificence of the sight. It lasted but a few minutes—a quarter of an hour, perhaps—till gradually the blood-red tints disappeared behind the tall maize; they faded first, then the crimson and the rose and the gold, till, one by one, the army of little clouds lost their glowing robes and put on a grey hue, dull and colourless like people's lives when the sunshine of love has gone down—out of them.
With a little sigh Elsa turned back into the small living-room, which looked densely black and full of gloom nowby contrast with the splendour which she had just witnessed. From the village street close by came the sound of her mother's sharp voice in excited conversation with a neighbour.
"It will be all right, Irma néni," the neighbour said, in response to some remark of the other woman. "Klara Goldstein does not expect our village girls to take much notice of her. But I will say that the men are sharp enough dangling round her skirts."
"Yes," retorted Irma, "and I wish to goodness Béla had not set his heart on having her at the feast. He is so obstinate: once he has said a thing . . ."
"Béla's conduct in this matter is not to be commended, my good Irma," said the neighbour sententiously; "everyone thinks that for a tokened man it is a scandal to be always hanging round that pert Jewess. Why didn't he propose to her instead of to Elsa, if he liked her so much better?"
"Hush! hush! my good Mariska, please. Elsa might hear you."
The two women went on talking in whispers. Elsa had heard, of course, what they said: and since she was alone a hot blush of shame mounted to her cheeks. It was horrid of people to talk in that way about her future husband, and she marvelled how her own mother could lend herself to such gossip.
Irma came in a few minutes later. She looked suspiciously at her daughter.
"Why do you keep the door open?" she asked sharply, "were you expecting anybody to come in?"
"Only you, mother, and Pater Bonifácius is coming after vespers," replied the girl.
"I stopped outside for a bit of gossip with Mariska just now. Could you hear what she said?"
"Yes, mother. I did hear something of what Mariska said."
"About Béla?"
"About him—yes."
"Hej, child! you must not take any notice of what folks say—it is only tittle-tattle. You must not mind it."
"I don't mind it, mother. I am sure that it is only tittle-tattle."
"Your father in bed?" asked Irma abruptly changing the subject of conversation.
"Yes."
"And you have been busying yourself, I see," continued the mother, looking round her with obvious disapproval, "with matters that do not concern you. I suppose Béla has been persuading you that your mother is incapable of keeping her own house tidy, so you must needs teach her how to do it."
"No, mother, nothing was further from my thoughts. I had nothing to do after I had cleared and washed up, and I wanted something to do."
"If you wanted something to do you might have got out your father's bunda" (big sheepskin cloak worn by the peasantry) "and seen if the moth has got into it or not. It is two years since he has had it on, and he will want it to-morrow."
"To-morrow?"
"Why, yes. I really must tell you because of the bunda, Jankó and Móritz and Jenö and Pál have offered to carry him to the feast in his chair just as he is. We'll put his bunda round him, and they will strap some poles to his chair, so that they can carry him more easily. They offeredto do it. It was to be a surprise for you for your farewell to-morrow: but I had to tell you, because of getting the bunda out and seeing whether it is too moth-eaten to wear."
While Irma went on talking in her querulous, acid way, Elsa's eyes had quickly filled with tears. How good people were! how thoughtful! Was it not kind of Móritz and Jenö and the others to have thought of giving her this great pleasure?
To have her poor old father near her, after all, when she was saying farewell to all her maidenhood's friends! And what a joy it would be to him!—one that would brighten him through many days to come.
Oh! people were good! It was monstrously ungrateful to be unhappy when one lived among these kind folk.
"Where is the bunda, mother?" she asked eagerly. "I'll see to it at once. And if the moths are in it, why I must just patch the places up so that they don't show. Where is the bunda, mother?"
Irma thought a moment, then she frowned, and finally shrugged her shoulders.
"How do I know?" she said petulantly; "isn't it in your room?"
"No, mother. I haven't seen it since father wore it last."
"And that was two years ago—almost to a day. I remember it quite well. It was quite chilly, and your father put on his bunda to go down the street as far as the Jew's house. It was after sunset, I remember. He came home and went to bed. The next morning he was stricken. And I put the bunda away somewhere. Now wherever did I put it?"
She stood pondering for a moment.
"Under his paillasse?" she murmured to herself. "No. In the cupboard? No."
"In the dower-chest, mother?" suggested Elsa, who knew of old that that article of furniture was the receptacle for everything that hadn't a proper place.
"Yes. Look at the bottom," said Irma placidly, "it might be there."
It was getting dark now. Through the open door and the tiny hermetically closed windows the grey twilight peeped in shyly. The more distant corner of the little living-room, that which embraced the hearth and the dower-chest, was already wrapped in gloom.
Elsa bent over the worm-eaten piece of furniture: her hands plunged in the midst of maize-husks and dirty linen of cabbage-stalks and sunflower-seeds, till presently they encountered something soft and woolly.
"Here is the bunda, mother," she said.
"Ah, well! get it out now, and lay it over a chair. You can have a look at it to-morrow—there will be plenty of time before you need begin to dress," said Irma, who held the theory that it was never any use doing to-day what could conveniently be put off until to-morrow.
"Mayn't I have a look at it now, mother?" asked Elsa, as she struggled with the heavy sheepskin mantle and drew it out of the surrounding rubbish; "the light will hold out for another half-hour at least, and to-morrow morning I shall have such a lot to do."
"You may do what you like while the light lasts, my girl, but I won't have you waste the candle over this stupid business. Candle is very dear, and your father will never wear his bunda again after to-morrow."
"I won't waste the candle, mother. But Pater Bonifácius is coming in to see me after vespers."
"What does he want to come at an hour when all sensible folk are in bed?" queried Irma petulantly.
"He couldn't come earlier, mother dear; you know how busy he is always on Sundays . . . benediction, then christenings, then vespers. . . . He said he would be here about eight o'clock."
"Eight o'clock!" exclaimed the woman, "who ever heard of such a ridiculous hour? And candles are so dear—there's only a few centimètres of it in the house."
"I'll only light the candle, mother, when the Pater comes," said Elsa, with imperturbable cheerfulness; "I'll just sit by the open door now and put a stitch or two in father's bunda while the light lasts: and when I can't see any longer I'll just sit quietly in the dark, till the Pater comes. I shall be quite happy," she added, with a quaint little sigh, "I have such a lot to think about."
"So have I," retorted Irma, "and I shall go and do my thinking in bed. I shall have to be up by six o'clock in the morning, I expect, and anyhow I hate sitting up in the dark."
She turned to go into the inner room, but Elsa—moved by a sudden impulse—ran after her and put her arms round her mother's neck.
"Won't you kiss me, mother?" she said wistfully. "You won't do it many more times in my old home."
"A home you have often been ashamed of, my child," the mother said sullenly.
But she kissed the girl—if not with tenderness, at any rate with a curious feeling of pity which she herself could not have defined.
"Good-night, my girl," she said, with more gentleness than was her wont. "Sleep well for the last time in yourold bed. I doubt if to-morrow you'll get into it at all, and don't let the Pater stay too long and waste the candle."
"I promise, mother," said Elsa, with a smile; "good-night!"
"Then, as now, may God protect you."
The bunda was very heavy. Elsa dragged it over her knee, and sat down on a low stool in the open doorway. She had pulled the table a little closer, and on it were her scissors, needles and cotton, as well as the box of matches and the candle which she would be allowed to light presently when Pater Bonifácius came.
The moth certainly had caused many ravages in the sheepskin cloak—there were tiny holes everywhere, and the fur when you touched it came out in handfuls. But as the fur would be turned inwards, that wouldn't matter so much. The bunda was quite wearable: there was just a bad tear in the leather close to the pocket, which might show and which must be mended.
Elsa threaded her needle, and began to hum her favourite song under her breath:
"Nincsen annyi tenger csillag az égenMint a hányszor vagy eszembe te nékem."
"Nincsen annyi tenger csillag az égenMint a hányszor vagy eszembe te nékem."
"There are not so many myriads of stars in the sky as the number of times that my thoughts fly to thee!"
"There are not so many myriads of stars in the sky as the number of times that my thoughts fly to thee!"
She was determined not to think any more of the past. In a few hours now that chapter in her life would be closed, and it was useless and wicked to be always thinking of the "might-have-been." Rather did she set herself resolutely to think of the future, of that part of it, at any rate,which was bright. There would be her mother installed in that comfortable house on the Kender Road, and with a nice bit of land and garden round in which to grow vegetables and keep some poultry. There would be her three cows and the pigs which Béla was giving her, and which he would graze on his own land.
Above all, there would be the comfortable bed and armchair for the sick man, and the little maid to wait upon him.
There was so much, so much to be thankful for! And since God chose to take Andor away, what else was there to live for, save to see her mother and father contented?
The light was going fast. Elsa had made a splendid job of that one pocket. The other, too, wanted a stitch. It was very badly torn—if only the feeble light would hold out another ten minutes . . . that hole, too, would be securely mended.
With the splendid disregard of youth for its most precious gift, Elsa strained her eyes to thread her needle once more.
She tackled the second pocket of the shabby bunda. There was a long tear at the side, as if the wearer's hand had missed the actual pocket and been thrust carelessly or roughly through the leather.
Elsa put her hand through the hole, too, to see the extent of the mischief. Yes! that was it, her father must more than once have missed the pocket and put his hand into the hole, making it bigger and bigger. Why! there was a whole lot of rubbish deep down inside the lining. Elsa drew out an empty tobacco-pouch, a bit of string, a length of tinder, and from the very bottom, where it lay in a crinkled mass, a ball of crumpled paper.
This she smoothed out, holding it over her knee. It wasa letter—one which must have been delivered on the very day when her father last wore the bunda. The envelope had not been broken: old Kapus hadn't had time to read his letter, the last which he had received before living death encompassed him. The tears gathered in Elsa's eyes at thought of her father handling this very letter with shaking yet still living hands: now they were incapable even of gripping this tiny piece of paper.
But then—two years ago, her mother said it was, almost to a day when last he wore the bunda—then he had received the letter from the postman and evidently thrust it into his pocket, meaning to read it at some more convenient time.
The peasants of that part of the world have never quite lost their distrust of railways, of telegrams, and even of letters—they are half-afraid of them all, afraid with that vague, unreasoning fear which animals have for things they see yet cannot understand.
Elsa handled this unopened letter with something of that same fear. She did not think at first of looking at the superscription. Who could have been writing to her father two years ago? He had no rich friends who could afford to spend money on note-paper and stamps. There was no news in the great outer world which someone could have wished to impart to him. The light indeed was very dim before Elsa, sitting here with the old bunda on her knee, thought of looking more closely at the envelope.
She bent down and out toward the light, trying to decipher the writing.
The letter was addressed to her.
Oh! it was quite clear!
"Tekintetes Kapus Elsa kisasszonynak."
It was quite, quite clearly written. The letter was addressed to her. The postman had brought it here two years ago: her father had taken it from him and thrust it into the pocket of his bunda, meaning to give it presently to his daughter.
But that evening perhaps he forgot it altogether: he had been drinking rather heavily of late. And the next day he was stricken down with paralysis, his tongue refused him service, and he no longer could tell his daughter—as no doubt he wanted to do—that a letter had come for her and that it was in the pocket of his bunda.
And the bunda was thrust away into the dower-chest with the husks of maize and the cabbage-stalks, and it had never been taken out until to-night—the eve of Elsa's wedding-day.
She tore open the envelope now with fingers that trembled slightly. The light was very dim, and where the glorious sunset had been such a little while ago there was only the dull grey canopy of an overcast sky. But Elsa could just make out the writing: already her eye had wandered to the signature, "your ever-devoted Andor." The message seemed to come to her as from the grave, for she thought that these were probably Andor's last words to her, penned just before he died in that awful hospital in Bosnia.
"My sweet dove!" she read. "This is to tell you that I am well: although it has been a close fight between life and death for me. But I did so want to live, my sweetheart, for I have you to look forward to in life. I have been at death's door, and I believe that the doctor here, before he went away one evening, signed the paper to say that I was dead. But that same night I took a turn for the better, and it was wonderful how soon I was up again. I'll tell you all about it some day, my love, some day when I come to claim your promise that you would wait for me. Because, dear heart, while I have been ill I have been thinking very seriously. Ihave not a silver florin to bless myself with: how can I come and dare to ask you to be my wife? Your father and mother would kick me out of their house, they would forbid me to see you; they would part you from me, my dear, beautiful angel, and I should feel that it was just. I—a good-for-nothing, penniless lout, daring to approach the queen of beauty, the most exquisite girl on God's earth. I have thought it all over, dear heart, and all will be well if you will be true to me—if you will wait for me another two years. Oh! I do not ask you to do it, I am not worthy of your love. Who am I, that you should keep yourself for me?—but I will pray to God night and day that He may not take away your love from me. I am going to America, dear heart, with an English gentleman who has been very kind to me. He was the English Consul at Cettinje, and when there were so many of us—Hungarian lads—lying sick of that awful cholera in the hospital at Slovnitza, his wife, a sweet, kind lady, used to come and visit us and cheer us up. She was very ugly and had big teeth and no waist, but she was an angel of goodness. She took some interest in me, and once when I was still very weak and ill I told her about you, about our love and what little hope I had of ever winning you, seeing that I was penniless. She was greatly interested, and when I was finally allowed to leave the hospital, she told me to come and see her husband, the English Consul. Well! dear heart, this kind gentleman is sending me out to a farm which he possesses in a place called Australia—I think that it is somewhere in America, but I am not sure. When I get there I shall receive more wage in one week than our alföld labourers get in three months, and it will all be good money, of which I can save every fillér, because my food and housing will be given to me free, and the kind English lady—may the Virgin protect her, despite her large teeth and flat chest—gave me a whole lot of clothes to take with me. So every fillér which I earn I can save, and I reckon that in two years I shall have saved two thousand florins" (about £160) "and then I shall come home. If I still find you free, my dove—which I pray to God I may do—we can get married at once. Then we'll rent the Lepke farm from Pali bácsi, as I shall have plenty of money for the necessary security, and if we cannot make that pay and become rich folk within three years, then I am not the man whom I believe myself to be."But, my darling love, do not think for a moment that I want to bind you to me against your will. God only knows how deeply I love you; during the last three years the thought of you has been the sunshine of my days, the light of my nights. If, when you have received and pondered over this letter, you send me a reply to say that you still love me, that you will be true to me and will wait for my return, then you will change my world into a paradise. No work will be too hard, no difficulty too great to surmount, if it will help me the sooner to come back to you. But if, on the other hand, you tell me or leave me to guess that I am a fool for thinking that you would waste your beauty and your sweetness on waiting for a good-for-nothing scamp like me, why, then, I shall understand. I shall go out to America—or wherever that place called Australia may be—but maybe I shall never come back. But I should never curse you, dear heart, I should never cease to love you: I should quite understand."I have got one of the nurses at the hospital to write this letter for me, to put my rough words into good Hungarian and to write down my thoughts in a good, clear hand. That is how it comes to be so well written. You know I was never much of a hand with a pen and paper, but I do love you, my dove! My God, how I love you."The nurse says that Australia is not in America at all—that it is a different place altogether. Well! I do not care where it is. I am going there because there I can earn one hundred florins a month, and save enough in two years to marry you and keep you in comfort. But I shall not see you, my dove, before I go: if I saw you again, if I saw Hungary again, our village, our alföld, Heaven help me! but I don't think I would have the heart to go away again."Farewell, dear heart, I go away full of hope. We go off next week in a big, big ship from here. I go full of sadness, but if you do want me to come back just write me a little letter with the one word 'Yes,' and address it as above. Then will my sadness be changed to heavenly joy and hope. But if it is to be 'No,' then tell me so quite truly, and I will understand."Then, as now, may God protect you, my dove, my heart,"Your ever-devoted"Andor."
"My sweet dove!" she read. "This is to tell you that I am well: although it has been a close fight between life and death for me. But I did so want to live, my sweetheart, for I have you to look forward to in life. I have been at death's door, and I believe that the doctor here, before he went away one evening, signed the paper to say that I was dead. But that same night I took a turn for the better, and it was wonderful how soon I was up again. I'll tell you all about it some day, my love, some day when I come to claim your promise that you would wait for me. Because, dear heart, while I have been ill I have been thinking very seriously. Ihave not a silver florin to bless myself with: how can I come and dare to ask you to be my wife? Your father and mother would kick me out of their house, they would forbid me to see you; they would part you from me, my dear, beautiful angel, and I should feel that it was just. I—a good-for-nothing, penniless lout, daring to approach the queen of beauty, the most exquisite girl on God's earth. I have thought it all over, dear heart, and all will be well if you will be true to me—if you will wait for me another two years. Oh! I do not ask you to do it, I am not worthy of your love. Who am I, that you should keep yourself for me?—but I will pray to God night and day that He may not take away your love from me. I am going to America, dear heart, with an English gentleman who has been very kind to me. He was the English Consul at Cettinje, and when there were so many of us—Hungarian lads—lying sick of that awful cholera in the hospital at Slovnitza, his wife, a sweet, kind lady, used to come and visit us and cheer us up. She was very ugly and had big teeth and no waist, but she was an angel of goodness. She took some interest in me, and once when I was still very weak and ill I told her about you, about our love and what little hope I had of ever winning you, seeing that I was penniless. She was greatly interested, and when I was finally allowed to leave the hospital, she told me to come and see her husband, the English Consul. Well! dear heart, this kind gentleman is sending me out to a farm which he possesses in a place called Australia—I think that it is somewhere in America, but I am not sure. When I get there I shall receive more wage in one week than our alföld labourers get in three months, and it will all be good money, of which I can save every fillér, because my food and housing will be given to me free, and the kind English lady—may the Virgin protect her, despite her large teeth and flat chest—gave me a whole lot of clothes to take with me. So every fillér which I earn I can save, and I reckon that in two years I shall have saved two thousand florins" (about £160) "and then I shall come home. If I still find you free, my dove—which I pray to God I may do—we can get married at once. Then we'll rent the Lepke farm from Pali bácsi, as I shall have plenty of money for the necessary security, and if we cannot make that pay and become rich folk within three years, then I am not the man whom I believe myself to be.
"But, my darling love, do not think for a moment that I want to bind you to me against your will. God only knows how deeply I love you; during the last three years the thought of you has been the sunshine of my days, the light of my nights. If, when you have received and pondered over this letter, you send me a reply to say that you still love me, that you will be true to me and will wait for my return, then you will change my world into a paradise. No work will be too hard, no difficulty too great to surmount, if it will help me the sooner to come back to you. But if, on the other hand, you tell me or leave me to guess that I am a fool for thinking that you would waste your beauty and your sweetness on waiting for a good-for-nothing scamp like me, why, then, I shall understand. I shall go out to America—or wherever that place called Australia may be—but maybe I shall never come back. But I should never curse you, dear heart, I should never cease to love you: I should quite understand.
"I have got one of the nurses at the hospital to write this letter for me, to put my rough words into good Hungarian and to write down my thoughts in a good, clear hand. That is how it comes to be so well written. You know I was never much of a hand with a pen and paper, but I do love you, my dove! My God, how I love you.
"The nurse says that Australia is not in America at all—that it is a different place altogether. Well! I do not care where it is. I am going there because there I can earn one hundred florins a month, and save enough in two years to marry you and keep you in comfort. But I shall not see you, my dove, before I go: if I saw you again, if I saw Hungary again, our village, our alföld, Heaven help me! but I don't think I would have the heart to go away again.
"Farewell, dear heart, I go away full of hope. We go off next week in a big, big ship from here. I go full of sadness, but if you do want me to come back just write me a little letter with the one word 'Yes,' and address it as above. Then will my sadness be changed to heavenly joy and hope. But if it is to be 'No,' then tell me so quite truly, and I will understand.
"Then, as now, may God protect you, my dove, my heart,
"Your ever-devoted
"Andor."
The letter fell out of Elsa's hands on to her knee. She took no heed of it, she was staring out into the immensity far away, into the fast-gathering gloom. Two years ago! Two years of sorrow and vain regrets which never need have been. One word from her father or from the postman, the feel of crisp paper in her father's bunda when it was put away two years ago, and the whole course of her life would have been changed.
The village street behind her was silent now, even the footsteps of belated folk hurrying to their homes sent up no echo from the soft, sandy ground. And before her the fast-gathering night was slowly wrapping the plain in its peace-giving shroud. Inside the cottage all was still: mother and father lay either asleep or awake thinking of the morrow.
A great, heavy sob shook the young girl's vigorous young frame. It seemed too wantonly cruel, this decree of Fate which had withheld from her the light of her life. How easy it would have been to wait! How swiftly these two years would have flown past. Her heart would have kept young—waiting for Andor and for happiness, whereas now it was numb and unsentient, save for a feeling of obedience and of filial duty, of pity for her mother and father, and of resignation to her future state.
Indeed Fate was being wantonly cruel to her to the last in thus putting before her eyes a picture of the might-have-been just when it was too late. In a few hours from now the great vow would be spoken, the irrevocable knot tied which bound her to another man. Her troth was already plighted, her confession made to Pater Bonifácius—in a few hours from now she would be Béla's wife, and if Andor did come back now, she must be as nothing to him, he as a mere distant friend.
But probably he never would come back. He received no reply to his fond letter of farewell, not one word from her to cheer him on his way. No doubt by now he had made a home for himself in that far distant land. Another woman—a stranger—revelled in the sunshine of his love, while Elsa, whose whole life had been wrapped up in him, was left desolate.
For a moment a wild spirit of revolt rose in her. Was it too late, after all? Was any moment in life too late to snatch at fleeing happiness? Why shouldn't she run away to-night—now?—find that unknown country, that unknown spot where Andor was? Surely God would give her strength! God could not be so unjust and so cruel as men and Fate had been!
Pater Bonifácius, turning from the street round the angle of the cottage, found her in this mood, squatting on the low stool, her elbows on her knees, her face buried in her hands. He came up to her quite gently, for though his was a simple soul it was full of tenderness and of compassion for the children of these plains whom God had committed into his charge.
"Elsa, my girl," he asked softly, "what is it?"
"The best way of all."
Pater Bonifácius had placed his kindly hand on the girl's hunched-up shoulders, and there was something in his touch which seemed to soothe the wild paroxysm of her grief. She raised her tear-stained face to his, and without a word—for her lips were shaking and she could not have spoken then—she handed him Andor's letter.
"May I go in," he asked, "and light the candle? It is too dark now to read."
She rose quickly, and with an instinctive sense of respect for the parish priest she made hasty efforts to smooth her hair and to wipe her face with her apron. Then she turned into the room, and though her hand still trembled slightly, she contrived to light the candle.
The old priest adjusted his horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose and drew a chair close to the light.
He sat down and read Andor's letter through very slowly. When he had finished, he handed it back to Elsa.
"God's ways, my child, are mysterious," he said, with a short sigh; "it is not for us to question them."
"Mysterious?" exclaimed the girl, with passionate wrath; "I call them cruel and unjust, pater! What have I done, that He should have done this to me? Andor loved me and I loved him, he wrote me a letter full of love, begging for a word from me to assure him that I would always love him and that I would wait for him. Why was that letter kept from me? Why was I not allowed toreply to it? My father would not have kept the letter from me, had he not been stricken down with paralysis on the very day when it came. It is God who kept my happiness away from me. It is God who has spoilt my life and condemned me to regrets and wretchedness, when I had done nothing to deserve such a cruel fate!"
"It is God," interposed the priest gently, "who even at this moment forgives an erring child all the blasphemy which she utters."
Then, as Elsa, dry-eyed and with quivering lips, still looked the personification of revolt, he placed his warm, gentle hands upon hers and drew her a little closer to him.
"Are we, then," he asked softly, "such very important things in the scheme of God's entire creation that everything must be ordered so as to suit us best?"
"I only wanted to be happy," murmured Elsa, in a quivering voice.
"You only wanted to be happy in your own way, my child," rejoined the priest, as he patted her hands tenderly, "but it does not happen to have been God's way. Now who shall say which is the best way of being happy? Who knows best? You or God?"
"If the postman had given me the letter, and not to father," she murmured dully, "if father had not been stricken down with illness the very next day, if I had only had this letter two years ago, instead of to-day . . ."
And the sentence was left unfinished, broken by a bitter sigh of regret.
"If it all had been as you say, my child," said Pater Bonifácius kindly, "then you might perhaps have been happy according to your own light, whereas now you are going to be happy in accordance with that of God."
She shook her head and once more her eyes filled with tears.
"I shall never be happy again," she whispered.
"Oh, yes, you will, my dear," retorted the kindly old man, whose rugged face—careworn and wrinkled—was lit up with a half-humorous, wholly indulgent smile; "it is wonderful what a capacity for happiness the good God has given to us all. The only thing is that we can't always be happy in our own way; but the other ways—if they are God's ways—are very much better, believe me. Why He chose to part you from Andor," he added, with touching simplicity, "why He chose to withhold that letter from you until to-night, we shall probably never know. But that it was His way for your future happiness, of that I am convinced."
"There could have been no harm this time, Pater, in Andor and I being happy in our way. There could be no wrong in two people caring for one another, and wanting to live their lives together."
"Ah! that we shall never know, my child. The book of the 'might-have-been' is a closed one for us. Only God has the power to turn over its pages."
"Andor and I would have been so happy!" she reiterated, with the obstinacy of a vain regret; "and life would have been an earthly paradise."
"And perhaps you would have forgotten heaven in that earthly paradise; who knows, your happiness might have drawn you away from God, you might have spent your life in earthly joys, you might have danced and sung and thought more and more of pleasure, and less and less of God. Who knows? Whereas now you are just going to be happy in God's way: you are going to do your duty by your mother and your father, and, above all, by yourhusband. You are going to fill your life by thoughts of God first and then of others, instead of filling it with purely selfish joys. You are going to walk up the road of life, my child, with duty to guide you over the roughnesses and hard stones that will bestrew your path: and every roughness which is surmounted, every hardship which is endured, every sacrifice of self which is offered up to One who made the greatest possible sacrifice for us all, will leave you happier than before . . . happier in God's way, the best way of all."
He talked on for a long while in this gentle, heartfelt way, and gradually, as the old man spoke, the bitterness and revolt died out of the simple-minded child's heart. Hers, after all, was a simple faith—but as firmly rooted within her as her belief in the sunshine, the alternating days and nights, the turns of the season. And the kind priest, who after life's vicissitudes had found anchorage in this forlorn village in the midst of the plains, knew exactly how to deal with these childlike souls. Like those who live their lives upon the sea, the Hungarian peasant sees only immensity around him, and above him that wonderful dome which hides its ineffable mysteries behind glorious veils of sunset and sunrise, of storm and of fantastic clouds. The plain stretches its apparently limitless expanse to a distance which he—its child—has never reached. Untutored and unlearned, he does not know what lies beyond that low-lying horizon into whose arms the sun sinks at evening in a pool of fire.
Everything around him is so great, so vast, so wonderful—the rising and setting of the sun, the stars and moon at nights, the gathering storms, the rainfalls, the sowing of the maize and the corn, the travail of the earth and the growing and developing of the stately heads of maizefrom one tiny, dried, yellow grain—that he has no inclination for petty casuistry, for arguments or philosophy. God's work is all that he ever sees: the book of life and death the only one he reads.
And because of that simple faith, that sublime ignorance, Elsa found comfort and peace in what Pater Bonifácius said. I will not say that she ceased to regret, nor that the grief of her heart was laid low, but her heart was soothed, and to her already heavy sorrow there was no longer laid the additional burden of a bitter resentment.
Then for awhile after he had spoken the priest was silent. No one knew better than he did the exact value of silence, whilst words had time to sink in. So they both remained in the gloom side by side—he the consoler and she the healed. The flickering candle light played curious and fantastic tricks with their forms and faces, lighting up now and then the wrinkled, wizened face of the old man, with the horn-rimmed spectacles perched upon his nose, and now and then the delicate profile of the girl, the smooth, fair tresses and round, white neck.
"Shall we not say a little prayer together?" whispered Pater Bonifácius at last, "just the prayer which our dear Lord taught us—Our Father which art in heaven . . ."
Slowly the young girl sank on her knees beside the gentle comforter; her fair head was bowed, her face hidden in her hands. Word for word now she repeated after him the sublime invocation taught by Divine lips.
And when the final whispered Amen ceased to echo in the low, raftered room, Pater Bonifácius laid his hand upon the child's head in a gesture of unspoken benediction.
"After that, happiness will begin."
Pater Bonifácius' kindliness, his gentle philosophy and unquestioning faith exercised a soothing influence over Elsa's spirits. The one moment of rebellion against Fate and against God, before the arrival of the old priest, had been the first and the last.
There is a goodly vein of Oriental fatalism still lurking in the Hungarians: "God has willed it!" comes readily enough to their lips. Though this unsophisticated child of the plains suffered none the less than would her more highly-cultured sisters in the West, yet she was more resigned—in her humble way, more philosophical—accepting the inevitable with an aching heart, mayhap, but with a firm determination to make the best of the few shreds of happiness which were left to her.
Elsa had promised before God and before the whole village that she would marry Erös Béla on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and after that single thought of rebellion, she knew that on the following Tuesday this would have to be just as surely as the day follows the night and the night the day.
Even that selfsame evening, after the Pater had gone and before she went to bed, she made her final preparations for the next three days, which were the turning-points of her life. To-morrow her farewell banquet: a huge feast in the big schoolroom, hired expressly for the occasion. Fifty people would sit down to that, they were the mostintimate friends of the contracting parties, hers and Béla's, and her mother's. It is the rule that the bride's parents provide this entertainment, but Kapus Benkó and his wife had not the means for it, and Erös Béla, insisting upon a sumptuous feast, was ready enough to pay for this gratification of his own vanity.
After the banquet, dancing would begin and would be kept up half the night. Then the next morning was the wedding-day. The wedding Mass in the morning, then the breakfast, more dancing, more revelling, more jollification, also kept up throughout the night. For it is only on the day following, that the bridegroom goes to fetch his bride out of her home, to conduct her to his own with all the pomp and circumstance which his wealth allows. So many carts, so many oxen, so many friends in the carts, and so many gipsies to make music while the procession slowly passes up the village street.
All that was, of course, already arranged for. The banquet for to-morrow was prepared, the ox roasted whole, the pigs and the capons stuffed. Erös Béla had provided everything, and provided most lavishly. Fifty persons would sit down to the farewell banquet, and more like two hundred to the wedding-breakfast; the village was agog with excitement, gipsies from Arad had been engaged, my lord the Count and the Countess were coming to the wedding Mass! . . . how could one feeble, weak, ignorant girl set her will against this torrent?
Elsa, conscious of her helplessness, set to with aching heart, but unwavering determination to put the past entirely behind her.
What was the good of thinking, since Fate had already arranged everything?
She went to bed directly after the Pater went away,because there was no more candle in the house, and because her mother kept calling querulously to her; and having stretched her young limbs out upon the hard paillasse, she slept quite peacefully, because she was young and healthy and did not suffer from nerves, and because sorrow had made her very weary.
And the next morning, the dawn of the first of those all-important three days, found her busy, alert, quite calm outwardly, even though her cheeks had lost something of their rosy hue, and her blue eyes had a glitter in them which suggested unshed tears.
There was a lot to do, of course: the invalid to get ready, the mother's dressing to see to, so that she should not look slovenly in her appearance, and call forth some of those stinging remarks from Béla which had the power to wound the susceptibilities of his fiancée.
Irma was captious and in a tearful humour, bemoaning the fact that she was too poor to pay for her only daughter's farewell repast.
"Whoever heard of a bridegroom paying for his fiancée's farewell?" she said. "You will despise your poor parents now, Elsa."
It was certainly an unusual thing under the circumstances; the maiden's farewell to the friends of her girlhood, to their parents and belongings, is a great event in this part of the world in connection with the wedding festivities themselves, of which it is the precursor. The parents of the bride invariably provide the entertainment, and do so in accordance with their means.
But Erös Béla was a proud man in the county: he would not hear of any festival attendant upon his marriage being less than gorgeous and dazzling before the eyes of the whole countryside. He chose to pay the piper, so that hemight call the tune, and though Elsa—wounded in her own pride—did her best to protest, she was overruled by her mother, who was only too thankful to see this expensive burden taken from off her shoulders.
Kapus Irma was a proud mother to-day, for as Elsa finally stood before her, arrayed in all her finery for the coming feast, she fully justified her right to be styled "the beauty of the county."
A picture she looked from the top of her small head, with its smooth covering of fair hair, yellow as the ripening corn, to the tips of her small, arched feet, encased in the traditional boots of bright crimson leather.
Her fair hair was plaited closely from the crown of her head and tied up with strands of red, white and green ribbons, nor did the hard line of the hair drawn tightly away from the face mar the charm of its round girlishness. It gave it its own peculiar character—semi-oriental, with just a remainingsoupçonof that mysterious ancestry whose traditions are lost in the far-off mountains of Thibet.
The tight-fitting black corslet spanned the girlish figure, and made it look all the more slender as it seemed to rise out of the outstanding billows of numberless starched petticoats. Necklace and earrings made of beads of solid gold—a present from Béla to his fiancée—gave a touch of barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders and breast, her sturdy young arms and shapely, if toil-worn, hands made her look as luscious a morsel of fresh girlhood as ever gladdened the heart of man.
Irma surveyed her daughter from head to foot with growing satisfaction. Then, with a gesture of unwonted impulse, she took the young girl by the shoulders and, drawing her closely to her own bony chest, she imprinted two sounding kisses on the fresh, pale cheeks.
"There," she said lustily, "your mother's kiss ought to put some colour in those cheeks. Heigho, child!" she added with a sigh, as she wiped a solitary tear with the back of her hand, "I don't wonder you are pale and frightened. It is a serious step for a girl to take. I know how I felt when your father came and took me out of my mother's house! But for you it is so easy: you are leaving a poor, miserable home for the finest house this side of the Maros and a life of toil and trouble for one of ease! To-day you are still a maid, to-morrow you will be a married woman, and the day after that your husband will fetch you with six carts and forty-eight oxen and a gipsy band and all his friends to escort you to your new home, just as every married woman in the country is fetched from her parents' home the day after she has spoken her marriage vows. After that your happiness will begin: you will soon forget the wretched life you have had to lead for years, helping me to put maize into a helpless invalid's mouth."
"I shall never forget my home, dear mother," said Elsa earnestly, "and every fillér which I earned and which helped to make my poor father comfortable was a source of happiness to me."
"Hm!" grunted the mother dryly, "you have not looked these past two years as if those sources of happiness agreed with you."
"I shall look quite happy in the future, mother," retorted Elsa cheerily; "especially when I have seen you and father installed in that nice house in the Kender Road, with your garden and your cows and your pigs and a maid to wait on you."
"Yes," said Irma naïvely, "Béla promised me all that if I gave you to him: and I think that he is honest and will keep to his promise."
Then, as Elsa was silent, she continued fussily:
"There, now, I think I had better go over to the schoolroom and see that everything is going on all right. I don't altogether trust Ilona and her parsimonious ways. Such airs she gives herself, too! I must go and show her that, whatever Béla may have told her, I am the hostess at the banquet to-day, and mean to have things done as I like and not as she may choose to direct. . . . Now mind you don't allow your father to disarrange his clothes. Móritz and the others will be here by about eleven, and then you can arrange the bunda round him after they have fixed the carrying-poles to his chair. We sit down to eat at twelve o'clock, and I will come back to fetch you a quarter of an hour before that, so that you may walk down the street and enter the banqueting place in the company of your mother, as it is fitting that you should do. And don't let anyone see you before then: for that is not proper. When you fix the bunda round your father's shoulders, make all the men go out of the house before you enter the room. Do you understand?"
"Yes, mother."
"You know how particular Béla is that everything should be done in orderly and customary style, don't you?"
"Yes, mother," replied Elsa, without the slightest touch of irony; "I know how much he always talks about propriety."
"Though you are not his wife," continued Irma volubly, "and won't be until to-morrow, you must begin to-day to obey him in all things. And you must try and be civil to Klara Goldstein, and not make Béla angry by putting on grand, stiff airs with the woman."
"I will do my best, mother dear," said Elsa, with a quick short sigh.
"Good-bye, then," concluded Irma, as she finally turned toward the door, "don't crumple your petticoats when you sit down, and don't go too near the hearth, there is some grease upon it from this morning's breakfast. Don't let anyone see you and wait quietly for my return."
Having delivered herself of these admonitions, which she felt were incumbent upon her in her interesting capacity as the mother of an important bride, Irma at last sailed out of the door. Elsa—obedient to her mother and to convention, did not remain standing beneath the lintel as she would have loved to do on this beautiful summer morning, but drew back into the stuffy room, lest prying eyes should catch sight of the heroine of the day before her state entry into the banqueting hall.
With a weary little sigh she set about thinking what she could do to kill the next two hours before Móritz and Jenö and those other kind lads came to take her father away. With the door shut the room was very dark: only a small modicum of light penetrated through the solitary, tiny window. Elsa drew a chair close beside it and brought out her mending basket and work-box. But before settling down she went back into the sleeping-room to see that the invalid was not needing her.
Of course he always needed her, and more especially to-day, one of the last that she would spend under his roof. He was not tearful about her departure—his senses were too blunt now to feel the grief of separation—he only felt pleasantly excited, because he had been told that Móritz and Jenö and the others were coming over presently and that they meant to carry him in his chair, just as he was, so that he could be present at his daughter's "maiden's farewell." This had greatly elated him: he was looking forward to the rich food and the luscious wine which his rich future son-in-law was providing for his guests.
And now, when Elsa came to him, dressed in all her pretty finery, he loved to look on her, and his dulled eyes glowed with an enthusiasm which had lain atrophied in him these past two years.
He was like a child now with a pretty doll, and Elsa, delighted at the pleasure which she was giving him, turned about and around, allowed him to examine her beautiful petticoats, to look at her new red boots and to touch with his lifeless fingers the beads of solid gold which her fiancé had given her.
Suddenly, while she was thus displaying her finery for the benefit of her paralytic father, she heard the loud bang of the cottage door. Someone had entered, someone with a heavy footstep which resounded through the thin partition between the two rooms.