She thought it must be one of the young men, perhaps, with the poles for the carrying-chair; and she wondered vaguely why he had come so early.
She explained to the invalid that an unexpected visitor had come, and that she must go and see what he wanted; and then, half ashamed that someone should see her contrary to her mother's express orders and to all the proprieties, she went to the door and opened it.
The visitor had not closed the outer door when he had entered, and thus a gleam of brilliant September daylight shot straight into the narrow room; it revealed the tall figure of a man dressed in town clothes, who stood there for all the world as if he had a perfect right to do so, and who looked straight on Elsa as she appeared before him in the narrow frame of the inner door.
His face was in full light. She recognized him in the instant.
But she could not utter his name, she could not speak; her heart began to beat so fast that she felt that she must choke.
The next moment his arms were round her, he kicked the outer door to with his foot, and then he dragged her further into the room; he called her name, and all the while he was laughing—laughing with the glee of a man who feels himself to be supremely happy.
"It is too late."
And now there he was, as of old, sitting, as was his wont, on the corner of the table, his two strong hands firmly grasping Elsa's wrists. She held him a little at arm's length, frightened still at the suddenness of his apparition here—on this day—the day of her farewell feast.
When first he drew her to him, she had breathed his name—softly panting with excitement, "Andor!"
The blood had rushed to her cheeks, and then flowed back to her heart, leaving her pale as a lily. She did not look at him any more after that first glance, but held her head bent, and her eyes fixed to the ground. Slowly the tears trickled down her cheeks one by one.
But he did not take his glowing, laughing eyes away from her, though he, too, was speechless after that first cry of joy:
"Elsa!"
He held her wrists and in a happy, irresponsible way was swinging her arms out and in, all the while that he was drinking in the joy of seeing her again.
Surely she was even more beautiful than she had ever been before. He did not notice that she was dressed as for a feast, he did not heed that she held her head down and that heavy tears fell from her eyes. He had caught the one swift look from her blue eyes when she first recognized him: he had seen the blush upon her cheeks then; the look and the blush had told him all that he wanted toknow, for they had revealed her soul to him. Manlike, he looked no further. Happiness is such a natural thing for wretched humanity to desire, that it is so much easier to believe in it than in misery when it comes.
At last he contrived to say a few words.
"Elsa! how are you, my dove?" he said naïvely.
"I am quite well, thank you, Andor," she murmured through her tears.
Then she tried to draw her wrists out of his tenacious clutch.
"May I not kiss you, Elsa?" he asked, with a light, happy laugh—the laugh of a man sure of himself, and sure of the love which will yield him the kiss.
"If you like, Andor," she replied.
She could not have denied him the kiss, not just then, at any rate, not even though every time that his warm lips found her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, she felt such a pain in her heart that surely she thought that she must die of it.
After that he let her wrists go, and she went to sit on a low stool, some little distance away from him. Her cheeks were glowing now, and it was no use trying to disguise her tears. Andor saw them, of course, but he did not seem upset by them: he knew that girls were so different to men, so much more sensitive and tender: and so now he was only chiding himself for his roughness.
"I ought to have prepared you for my coming, Elsa," he said. "I am afraid it has upset you."
"No, no, Andor, it's nothing," she protested.
"I did want to surprise you," he continued naïvely. "Not that I ever really doubted you, Elsa, even though you never wrote to me. I thought letters do get astray sometimes, and I was not going to let any accursed post spoil my happiness."
"No, of course not, Andor."
"You did not write to me, did you, Elsa?" he asked.
"No, Andor. I did not write."
"But you had my letter? . . . I mean the one which I wrote to you before I sailed for Australia."
"The postman," she murmured, "gave it to father when it came. Then the next day father was stricken with paralysis; he never gave it to me. Only last night . . ."
"My God," he broke in excitedly, "and yet you remained true to me all this while, even though you did not know if I was alive or dead! Holy Mother of God, what have I done to deserve such happiness?"
Then as she did not speak—for indeed the words in her throat were choked by her tears—he continued talking volubly, like a man who is intoxicated with the wine of joy:
"Oh! I never doubted you, Elsa! But I had planned my home-coming to be a surprise to you. It was not a question of keeping faith, of course, because you were never tokened to me, therefore I just wanted to read in your dear eyes exactly what would come into them in the first moment of surprise . . . whether it would be joy or annoyance, love or indifference. And I was not deceived, Elsa, for when you first saw me such a look came into your eyes as I would not exchange for all the angels glances in Paradise."
Elsa sighed heavily. She felt so oppressed that she thought her heart must burst. Andor's happiness, his confidence made the hideous truth itself so much more terrible to reveal. And now he went on in the same merry, voluble way.
"I went first to Goldstein's this morning. I thought Klara would tell me some of the village gossip to while away the time before I dared present myself here. I didn't want Pali bácsi or anybody to see me before I had come to you. I didn't want anybody to speak to me before I had kissed you. The Jews I didn't mind, of course. So I got Klara to walk with me by a round-about way through the fields as far as this house; then I lay in wait for a while, until I saw Irma néni go out. I wanted you all to myself at once . . . with no one by to intercept the look which you would give me when first you recognized me."
"And . . . did Klara tell you anything?" she murmured under her breath.
"She told me of uncle Pali's illness," he said, more quietly, "and how he seemed to have fretted about me lately . . . and that everyone here thought that I was dead."
"Yes. What else?"
"Nothing else much," he replied, "for you may be sure I would not do more than just mention your sweet name before that Jewess."
"And . . . when you mentioned my name . . . did she say anything?"
"No. She laughed rather funnily, I thought. But of course I would not take any notice. She had always been rather jealous of you. And now that I am a rich man . . ."
"Yes, Andor?"
"When I say a rich man," he said, with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders, "I only mean comparatively, of course. I have saved three thousand crowns"—(about £120)—"not quite as much as I should have liked; but things are dear out there, and there was my passage home and clothes to pay for. Still! three thousand crowns areenough to pay down as a guarantee for a really good farm, and if Klara Goldstein spoke the truth, and Pali bácsi is really so well disposed toward me, why, I need not be altogether ashamed to present myself before your parents. Need I, my dove?"
"Before my parents?" she murmured.
"Why, yes," he said, as he rose from the table now and came up quite close to her, looking down with earnest, love-filled eyes on the stooping figure of this young girl, who held all his earthly happiness in her keeping; "you knew what I meant, Elsa, did you not, when I came back to you the moment that I could, after all these years? It was only my own poverty which kept me from your side all this long while. But you did not think that I had forgotten you, did you, Elsa?—you could not think that. How could a man forget you who has once held you in his arms and kissed those sweet lips of yours? Why, there has not been a day or night that I did not think of you. . . . Night and day while I worked in that land which seemed so far away from home. Homesick I was—very often—and though we all earned good money out there, the work was hard and heavy; but I didn't mind that, for I was making money, and every florin which I put by was like a step which brought me nearer to you."
"Andor!"
The poor girl was almost moaning now, for every word which he spoke was like a knife-thrust straight into her heart.
"Being so far away from home," he continued, speaking slowly and very earnestly now, in a voice that quivered and shook with the depth of the sentiment within him, "being so far away from home would have been like hell to me at times. I don't know what there is, Elsa, aboutthis land of Hungary! how it holds and enchains us! but at times I felt that I must lie down and die if I did not see our maize-fields bordered with the tall sunflowers, our distant, low-lying horizon on which the rising and the setting sun paints such glowing colours. This land of Australia was beautiful too: there were fine fields of corn and vast lands stretching out as far as the eye could reach; but it was not Hungary. There were no white oxen with long, slender horns toiling patiently up the dusty high roads, the storks did not build their nests in the tall acacia trees, nor did the arms of distant wells stretch up toward the sky. It was not Hungary, Elsa! and it would have been hell but for thinking of you. The life of an exile takes all the life out of one. I have heard of some of our Hungarian lads out in America who get so ill with homesickness that they either die or become vicious. But then," he added, with a quick, characteristic return to his habitual light-hearted gaiety, "it isn't everyone who is far from home who has such a bright star as I had to gaze at in my mind . . . when it came night time and the lights were put out . . ."
"Andor!" she pleaded.
But he would not let her speak just then. He had not yet told her all that there was to say, and perhaps the innate good-heartedness in him suggested that she was discomposed, that she would prefer to sit quietly and listen whilst she collected her thoughts and got over the surprise of his sudden arrival.
"Do you know, Elsa," he now said gaily, "I chalked up the days—made marks, I mean, in a book which I bought in Fiume the day before we sailed. Seven hundred and thirty days—for I never meant to stay away more than two years; and every evening in my bunk on board ship and afterwards in the farm where I lodged, I scratchedout one of the marks and seemed to feel myself getting a little bit nearer and then nearer to you. By the Saints, my dove," he added, with a merry laugh, "but you should have seen me the time I got cheated out of one of those scratches. I had forgotten that accursed twenty-ninth of February last year. I don't think that I have ever sworn so wickedly in my life before. I had to go to Melbourne pretty soon, I tell you, and make confession of it to the kind Pater there. And then . . ."
He paused abruptly. The laughter died upon his lips and the look of gaiety out of his eyes, for Elsa sat more huddled up in herself than before. He could no longer see her face, for that was hidden in her hands, he only saw her bowed shoulders, and that they were shaking as if the girl had yielded at last to a paroxysm of weeping.
"Elsa!" he said quietly, as a puzzled frown appeared between his brows, "Elsa! . . . you don't say anything . . . you . . . you . . ."
He passed his rough hand across his forehead, on which rose heavy beads of perspiration. For the first time in the midst of his joy and of his happiness a hideous doubt had begun to assail him.
A hideous, horrible, poison-giving doubt!
"Elsa!" he pleaded, and his voice grew more intense, as if behind it there was an undercurrent of broken sobs, "Elsa, what is the matter? You are not going to turn your back on me, are you? Look at me, Elsa! look at me! You wouldn't do it, would you . . . you wouldn't do it? . . . The Lord forgive me, but I love you, Elsa . . . I love you fit to kill."
He was babbling like a child, and now he fell on his knees beside that low stool on which she sat hunched up, a miserable bundle of suffering womanhood. He hid hisface in her petticoats—those beautiful, starched petticoats that were not to be crumpled—and all at once his manliness broke down in the face of this awful, awful doubt, and he sobbed as if his heart would break.
"Andor! Andor!" she cried, overwhelmed with pity for him, pity for herself, with the misery and the hopelessness of it all. "Andor, I beg of you, pull yourself together. Someone might come . . . they must not see you like this."
She put her hand upon his head and passed her cool, white fingers through his hair. The gentle, motherly gesture soothed him: her words brought him back to his senses. Gradually his sobs were stilled; he made a great effort to become quite calm, and with a handkerchief wiped the tears and perspiration from his face.
Then he rose and went back to the table, and sat down on the corner of it as he always liked to do. The workings of his face showed the effort which he made to keep his excitement and those awful fears in check.
"You are quite right, Elsa," he said calmly. "Someone might come, and it would not be a very fine home-coming for Lakatos Andor, would it? to be found crying like an infant into a woman's petticoats. Why, what would they think? That we had quarrelled, perhaps, on this my first day at home. God forgive me, I quite lost myself that time, didn't I? It was foolish," he added, with heartbroken anxiety, "wasn't it, Elsa?"
"Yes, Andor," she said simply.
"It was foolish," he reiterated, still speaking calmly, even though his voice was half-choked with sobs, "it was foolish to think that you would turn your back on a fellow who had just lived these past five years for you."
"It isn't that, Andor," she murmured.
"It isn't that?" he repeated dully, and once more the frown of awful puzzlement appeared between his dark, inquiring eyes. "Then what is it? No, no, Elsa!" he added quickly, seeing that she threw a quick look of pathetic anxiety upon him, "don't be afraid, my dove. I am not going to make a fool of myself again. You . . . you are not prepared to marry me just now, perhaps . . . not just yet?—is that it? . . . You have been angry with me. . . . I am not surprised at that . . . you never got my letter . . . you thought that I had forgotten you . . . and you want to get more used to me now that I am back . . . before we are properly tokened. . . . Is that it, Elsa? . . . I'll have to wait, eh?—till the spring, perhaps . . . till we have known one another better again . . . then . . . perhaps . . ."
He was speaking jerkily, and always with that burning anxiety lurking in the tone of his voice. But now he suddenly cried out like a poor creature in pain, vehemently, appealingly, longing for one word of comfort, one brief respite from this intolerable misery.
"But you don't speak, Elsa! . . . you don't speak. . . . My God, why don't you speak?"
And she replied slowly, monotonously, for now she seemed to have lost even the power of suffering pain. It was all so hopeless, so dreary, so desolate.
"I can never marry you, Andor."
He stared at her almost like one demented, or as if he thought that she, perhaps, had lost her reason.
"I can never marry you," she repeated firmly, "for I am tokened to Erös Béla. My farewell banquet is to-day; to-morrow is my wedding day; the day after I go to my new home. I can never marry you, Andor. It is too late."
She watched him while she spoke, vaguely wondering within her poor, broken heart when that cry of agony would escape his lips. His face had become ghastly in hue, his mouth was wide open as if ready for that cry; his twitching fingers clutched at the neckband of his shirt.
But the cry never came: the wound was too deep and too deadly for outward expression. He said nothing, and gradually his mouth closed and his fingers ceased to twitch. Presently he rose, went to the door, and pulled it open; he stood for a moment under the lintel, his arm leaning against the frame of the door, and the soft September breeze blew against his face and through his hair.
From far away down the village street came the sound of laughter and of singing. The people of Marosfalva were very merry to-day, for it was Kapus Elsa's wedding time and Erös Béla was being lavish with food and wine and music. Nobody guessed that in this one cottage sorrow, deep and lasting, had made a solemn entry and never meant to quit these two loving hearts again.
"He must make you happy."
Andor shut the door once more. He did not want the people of the village to see him just now.
He turned back quietly into the room, and went to sit at his usual place, across the corner of the table. Elsa, mechanically, absently, as one whose mind and soul and heart are elsewhere, was smoothing out the creases in her gown made wet by Andor's tears.
"How did it all come about, Elsa?" he asked.
"Well, you know," she replied listlessly, "since Klara Goldstein told you—that everyone here believed that you were dead. I did not believe it myself for a long time, though I did think that if you had lived you would have written to me. Then, as I had no news from you . . . no news . . . and mother always wished me to marry Béla . . . why! I thought that since you were dead nothing really mattered, and I might as well do what my mother wished."
"My God!" he muttered under his breath.
"We were so poor at home," she continued, in that same listless, apathetic voice, for indeed she seemed to have lost all capacity even for suffering, "and father was so ill . . . he wanted comfort and good food, and mother and I could earn so very little . . . Béla promised mother that nice house in the Kender Road, he promised to give her cows and pigs and chickens. . . . What could I do? It is sinful not to obey your parents . . . and it seemed so selfish of meto nurse thoughts of one whom I thought dead, when I could give my own mother and father all the comforts they wanted just by doing what they wished. . . . I had to think of father and mother, Andor. . . . What could I do?"
"That is so, Elsa," he assented, speaking very slowly and deliberately. . . . "That is so, of course . . . I understand . . . I ought to have known . . . to have guessed something of the kind at any rate. . . . My God!" he added, with renewed vehemence, "but I do seem to have been an accursed fool!—thinking that everything would go on just the same while I was weaving my dreams out there on the other side of the globe. . . . I ought to have guessed, I suppose, that they wouldn't leave you alone . . . you the prettiest girl in the county. . . ."
"I held out as long as I could. . . . But I felt that if you were dead nothing really mattered."
"My poor little dove," he whispered gently.
Gradually he felt a great calmness descending over him. It was her helplessness that appealed to him, the pathos of her quiet resignation: he felt how mean and unmanly it would be to give way to that rebellious rage which was burning in his veins. Three years under the orders of ofttimes brutal petty officers had taught him a measure of self-restraint; the two further years of hard, unceasing toil under foreign climes, the patient amassing of florin upon florin to enable him to come back and claim the girl whom he loved, had completed the work of changing an irresponsible, untrammelled child of these Hungarian plains into a strong, well-balanced, well-controlled man of a wider world. His first instinct, when the terrible blow had been struck to all his hopes and all his happiness, had been the wild, unreasoning desire to strike back, and to kill. Had he been left to himself just then and then found himselfface to face with the man who had robbed him of Elsa, the semi-civilization of the past five years would have fallen away from him, he would once more have relapsed into the primeval, unfettered state of his earlier manhood. The crude passions of these sons of the soil are only feebly held in check by the laws of their land: at times they break through their fetters, and then they are a law unto themselves.
But Andor loved Elsa with a gentler and purer love than usually dwells in the heart of a man of his stamp. He had proved this during the past five years spent in daily, hourly thoughts of her. Now that he found her in trouble, he would not add to her burden by parading his own before her.
Manlike, his first thought had been to kill, his second to seize his love with both arms and to carry her away with him, away from this village, from this land, if need be. After all, she was not yet a wife, and the promise of marriage is not so sacred nor yet so binding as a marriage vow.
He could carry her away, leaving the scandal-mongers to work their way with her and him: he could carry her to that far-off land which he knew already, where work was hard and money plentiful, and no one would have the right to look down on her for what she had done. But seeing her there, looking so helpless and so pathetic, he knew, by that unerring intuition which only comes to a man at such times as this, that such a dream could never be fulfilled. The future was as it was, as no doubt it had been pre-ordained by God and by Fate: nothing that he could do or say now would have the power to alter it. Tradition, filial duty and perhaps a certain amount of womanly weakness too, were all ranged up against him; but filialduty would fight harder than anything else and would remain the conqueror in the end.
The relentless hand of the Inevitable was already upon him, and because of it, because of that vein of Oriental fatalism which survives in every Hungarian peasant, the tumult in his soul had already subsided, and he was able to speak to Elsa now with absolute gentleness.
"So to-day is your maiden's farewell, is it?" he asked after awhile.
"Yes! It must be getting late," she said, as she rose from the low stool and shook out her many starched skirts, "mother will be back directly to fetch me for the feast."
"It will be in the schoolroom, I suppose," he said indifferently.
"Yes. And some of the lads are coming over presently to fetch father. They have arranged to carry him all the way. Isn't it good of them?"
"To carry him all the way?" he asked, puzzled.
"Father has not moved for two years," she said simply; "he was stricken with paralysis, you know."
"Ah, yes! Klara told me something about that."
"So in order to give me the pleasure of having father near me at my farewell feast, Móritz and Jenö and Imre and Jankó are going to fasten long poles to his chair and carry him to the schoolroom and back. Isn't it good of them? And I think they mean to do the same thing to-morrow and carry him to church. We are going to put his bunda round his shoulders. He has not worn his bunda for two years. . . . It was yesterday, when I took it out in order to mend it, that I found the letter which you wrote me from Fiume. It had slipped between the pocket and the lining and . . ."
"And are you happy, Elsa?" he broke in abruptly.
She hesitated almost imperceptibly for a moment, then she said quietly:
"Yes, Andor. I am fairly happy."
"Béla?" he asked again. "Is he fond of you?"
"I think so."
"You are not sure?"
"Oh, yes!" she said more firmly, "I am quite sure."
"He hasn't taken to drinking, has he? . . . He was a little inclined that way at one time."
"Oh!" she said, with a shrug of her shoulders, "I don't think that he drinks more than other fellows of his age."
She went over to the window and somewhat ostentatiously, he thought, began turning over the contents of her work-box. There was something in her attitude now which worried him, and she seemed more determined than ever not to look him straight in the face.
"Elsa! I shall think the worst if you tell me nothing," he said firmly.
"There is nothing to tell, Andor."
"Yes, there is," he persisted; "there is something about Béla which makes you unhappy and which you won't tell me. . . . Now, listen to me, Elsa, for I mean every word which I am going to say . . . I can bring myself to the point of seeing you married to another man and happy in your new home, even though my own heart will break in the process . . . but what I could never stand would be to see you married to another man and made unhappy by him. . . . So if you won't tell me what is on your mind with regard to Béla, I will pick a quarrel with him this afternoon, and kill him if I can."
"Don't talk so wildly, Andor," she said, as she turned and faced him, for she was a little frightened at hisearnestness and knew that he had it in him to act just as he said he would. "The whole thing is only foolishness on my part, I know."
"Then there is something?" he persisted obstinately.
"Well!" she said, after a little more hesitation, "it's only that he will go hanging about at the Goldsteins' all the time."
"Oh! it's Klara, is it?"
"I can't bear that girl," said Elsa, with sudden vehemence.
He looked at her keenly.
"You are jealous, Elsa," he said. "Is it because you love Béla?"
"I don't like his hanging round Klara," she replied evasively.
He rose from the table, drawing in his breath as he did so, with a curious hissing sound; perhaps the pain which he felt now was harder to bear even than that caused by the first crushing blow. The Inevitable had indeed placed its cruel hand upon his happiness; not all the boundless wealth of his love, of his will and of his daring could ever give Elsa back to him again.
"I had better go now, I suppose," he said.
"Mother will be here directly," she replied, "won't you see her?"
"Not just yet, I think. I thought of asking Pater Bonifácius if he could give me a bed for a night. Pali bácsi might not be ready for me yet."
"But you will come to my farewell feast?" asked Elsa, with that unconscious cruelty of which good women are so often capable.
"If you wish it, Elsa," he replied.
"I do wish it," she said, "and everyone will be so happyto see you. They would think it strange if you did not come, for everyone will know by then that you have returned."
"Then I will come," he concluded.
He went up to her and held out his hand; she put her own upon it. Of course he did not ask for a kiss; he had no longer a right to that. Somehow, in the last few moments a barrier seemed to have sprung up between him and her which had obliterated all the past. He was a stranger now to her and she to him; that day five years ago was as if it had never been. Béla and her plighted troth to him stood now between Andor and that past which he must forget.
But as he stood now holding her hand, he looked at her earnestly, and her blue eyes, dimmed but serene, met his own gaze without flinching.
"The past, Elsa," he said, "is done with. Henceforth we shall be nothing to one another. You will forget me easily enough. . . . I wish that I had never come back to disturb the peace which I see is rapidly spreading over your life. My only wish now is that with you it should be peace. My heart has already given you up to Béla—but not unconditionally, mind. . . . He must make you happy . . . I tell you that he must," he reiterated, almost fiercely. "If he does not, he will have to reckon with me. Heaven help him, I say, if he is ever unkind to you. . . . I shall see it, I shall know it. . . . I shall not leave this village till I am assured that he means to be kind—that heiskind to you, even though my heart should break in remaining a witness to your happiness."
He stooped, and with the innate chivalry peculiar to the Hungarian peasantry, he kissed the small, cold hand which trembled in his grasp: he kissed it as a noble lord wouldkiss the hand of a princess. Then, without looking on her again, he walked quietly out of the house, and Elsa was alone with yet another bitter-sweet memory to add to her store of regrets.
"It is true."
By the time that Andor turned the corner of the house into the street, he found that the news of his arrival had already spread through the village like wildfire. Klara Goldstein's ready tongue had been at work this past hour; she had quickly disseminated the news that the wanderer had come home. She did not say that the malice and love of mischief in her had caused her to say nothing to Andor about Elsa's coming wedding. She merely told the first neighbour whom she came across that Lakatos Andor had come back, just as she, for one, had always declared that he would.
Andor's friends had assembled in the street in a trice; here was too glorious an opportunity to shout and to sing and to make merry, to be lightly missed. And Andor had always been popular before. He was doubly so now that he had come back from America or wherever he may have been, and had made a fortune there; he shook one hundred and fifty hands before he could walk as far as the presbytery. The gypsies who had just arrived by train from Arad were not allowed to proceed straight to the schoolroom. They were made to pause in the great open place before the church, made to unpack their instruments then and there, and to strike up the Rákóczy March without more ado, in honour of the finest son of Marosfalva, who had been thought dead by some, and had returned safe and sound to his native corner of the earth.
It was with much difficulty that at last Andor succeeded in effecting his escape and running away from the series of ovations which greeted him when and wherever he was recognized. The women embraced him without further ado, the men worried him to tell them some of his adventures then and there. Above all, everyone wanted to hear how very much more wretched, uncomfortable and God-forsaken the rest of the wide, wide world was in comparison with Hungary in general and the village of Marosfalva in particular.
The heartfelt, if noisy, greetings of his old friends had the effect of soothing Andor's aching heart. The sight of his native village, the scent of the air, the dust of the road acted as a slight compensation for the heavy load of sorrow which otherwise would hopelessly have weighed him down.
With a final wave of his hat he disappeared from the enraptured gaze of his friends into the cool quietude of the presbytery garden. He stood still for a moment behind a huge clump of tall sunflowers and gaudy dahlias to recover his breath and rearrange his coat, which had been mishandled quite a good deal by his friends in the excess of their joy.
From the other side of the low gate came the buzz of animated talk, his own name oft-repeated, cries of surprise and of pleasure, when the news reached some late-comers, and through it all the soft, pathetic murmur of the gipsies' fiddles; they had lapsed from the inspiriting strains of the Rákóczy March to one of the dreamy Magyar love-songs which suited their own languid Oriental temperament far better than the martial music.
But here, in the small presbytery garden, the world seemed to have slipped back an hundred years or more.Perfect peace! the drowsing of flies and wasps, the call of thrushes, the crackling of tiny twigs in the branches of the old acacia tree in the corner! Only the flies and the birds and the flowers seemed to live, and the air was heavy with the pungent odour of the sunflowers.
Andor drew a long breath. He seemed suddenly to wake from a long, long dream. It was just over five years ago that he had stood one morning just like this in this little garden; the late roses had not then ceased to bloom. It was the day before he had to leave Marosfalva in order to become a soldier, and he had come after Mass to say a private good-bye to the kind priest.
Now it seemed as if those five years were just one long dream—the soldiering, the voyage across the sea, the two years in a strange, strange land, all culminating in that awful cataclysm which had for ever robbed him of happiness.
It seemed as if itcouldnot all be true, as if Elsa was even now waiting for him to go out for a walk under the acacia trees as she had done on that morning five years ago. Even now he pulled the bell as he had done then, and now—as then—Pater Bonifácius himself came to the door.
His old housekeeper had already brought the news to the presbytery of Andor's home-coming, and the old Pater was overjoyed at seeing the lad—now become so strong and so manly. He took Andor to his heart, chiefly because he would not have the lad see the tears which had so quickly come to his eyes.
"It is true then, Pater," said Andor, when he had followed the old man into the little parlour all littered with papers and books. "It is true, or you would not have cried when first you embraced me."
"What is true, my son?" asked the Pater.
"That Elsa is to marry Erös Béla to-morrow?"
"Yes, my son, that is true," said the priest simply.
And thus Andor knew that, at any rate, the hideous present was not a dream.
"That is fair, I think."
An hour later, Andor was in the street with the rest of the village folk, watching Elsa as she walked up toward the schoolroom in the company of her mother. Her fair hair shone like the gold beads round her neck, and her starched petticoats swung out from her hips as she walked.
She held her head a little downcast; people thought this most becoming in a young bride; but Andor, who stood in the forefront of the spectators as she passed, saw that she held her head down because her cheeks were pale and her eyes swollen with tears.
Irma néni walked beside her daughter with the proud air of a queen, and on ahead Barna Móritz, the mayor's second son, Fehér Jenö, whose father worked the water-mill on the Maros, and two other sturdy fellows were carrying the bride's paralysed father shoulder high in his chair.
Just as the little procession halted for a moment before entering the white washed school-house, Erös Béla, the bridegroom and hero of the hour, appeared, coming from the opposite direction, and with Klara Goldstein, the Jewess, upon his arm.
Klara—arrayed in fashionable town garments, with a huge hat covered in feathers, a tight modern skirt that forced her to walk with mincing steps, high-heeled shoes, open-work stockings and gloves reaching to the elbow—was indeed a curious apparition in amongst these peasantgirls, with their bare heads and high red-leather boots and petticoats standing round them like balloons.
Andor frowned heavily when he caught sight of her; he had seen that Elsa's pale cheeks had become almost livid in hue and that her parted lips trembled as if she were ready to cry.
The looks that were cast by the village folk upon the Jewess were none too kindly, and there were audible mutterings of disapproval at Erös Béla's conduct; but neither looks nor mutterings disconcerted Klara Goldstein in the least. She knew well enough that envy of her fashionable attire bore a large share in the ill-will which was displayed against her, and the handsome Jewess, who so often had to bear the contempt and the sneers of these Magyar peasants whom she despised, was delighted that Erös Béla's admiration for her had induced him to give her an opportunity of queening it for once amongst them all.
She felt that she shone in her splendour in comparison with the pale-faced bride in all her village finery. She carried a sunshade and a reticule, her dark hair was arranged in frisettes under her broad-brimmed hat; she knew that the men were casting admiring glances on her, and in any case, for the moment, she was the centre of universal observation.
Whilst some of the young men were engaged in carrying old Kapus into the house, a proceeding which kept the festive throng waiting outside, she tripped up daintily to Elsa, and said in soft, cooing tones:
"It was kind of you, my dear Elsa, to include me among your personal friends on such an important occasion. As the young Count was saying to me only last night, 'You will give Irma néni and little Elsa vast pleasure by your presence at the child's maiden's farewell, and mind youwear that lovely hat which I admire so much.' So affable, the young Count, is he not? He told me that nothing would do but when I get married he must come himself to every feast in connection with my wedding."
But once she had delivered these several little pointed shafts, Klara Goldstein was far too clever to wait for a retort. Before Elsa, whose simple mind was not up to a stinging repartee, could think of something indifferent or not too ungracious to say, the handsome Jewess had already spied Andor's face among the crowd.
"There is the hero of the hour, Béla," she said, turning to the bridegroom, who had stood by surly and defiant; "these past five years have not changed him much, eh? . . . Your future wife's old sweetheart," she added, with a malicious little laugh; "are you not pleased to see him?"
Then, as Béla somewhat clumsily, and with a pretence at cordiality which he was far from feeling, went up to Andor and held out his hand to him, Klara continued glibly:
"Poor old Andor! he is a trifle glum now. I never told him that his sweetheart was getting married to-morrow. Never mind, my little Andor," she added, turning her expressive dark eyes with a knowing look upon the young man; "there is more fish in the Maros than has come out of it. And I thought that you would prefer to get the truth direct from our pretty Elsa!"
"I think you did quite right, Klara," said Andor indifferently.
But in the meanwhile Béla had contrived to come up quite close to Elsa, and to whisper hurriedly in her ear:
"A bargain's a bargain, my dove!—you behave amiably to Klara Goldstein and I will keep a civil tongue in myhead for your old sweetheart. . . . That is fair, I think, eh, Irma néni?" he added, turning to the old woman.
"Don't be foolish, Béla," retorted Kapus Irma dryly. "Why you should be for ever teasing Elsa, I cannot think. You must know that all girls feel upset at these times, and as like as not you'll make her cry at her own feast. And that would be a fine disgrace for us all!"
"Don't be afraid, mother," said Elsa quietly; "I don't feel the least like crying."
"That's splendid," exclaimed Béla, with ostentatious gaiety. "Here's Irma néni trying to teach me something about girls. As if I didn't know about them all that there is to know. Eh, Andor, you agree with me, don't you?" he added, turning to the other man. "We men know more about women's moods and little tempers than their own mothers do. What? Now, Irma néni, take your daughter into the house. There is a clatter of dishes and bottles going on inside there which is very pleasant to the stomach. Miss Klara, will you honour me by accepting my arm? Friends, come in all, will you? All those, I mean, whom my wife that is to be has invited to her last girlhood's entertainment. Irma néni, do lead the way. Elsa looks quite pale for want of food—she had her breakfast very early, I suppose, and got tired dressing for this great occasion. Andor, you shall sit next to Elsa if you like. . . . You must have lots to tell her. Your adventures among the cannibals and the lions and tigers. . . . Eh? . . . And Irma néni shall sit next to you on the other side, and don't let her have more wine than is good for her. Whew! but it is hot already! Come along, friends. By thunder, Klara, but that is a fine hat you have got on."
He talked on very volubly and at the top of his voice, making ostentatious efforts to appear jovial and amiableto everyone; but Erös Béla was no fool: he knew quite well that his attitude toward his bride and toward Klara the Jewess was causing many adverse comments to go round among his friends. But he was in a mood not to care. He was determined that everyone should know and see that he was the master here to-day, just as he meant to be master in his house throughout the years to come. Like every self-enriched peasant, he attached an enormous importance to wealth, and was inclined to have a contempt for the less fortunate folk who had not risen out of their humble sphere as he had done.
His wealth, he thought, had placed him above everyone else in Marosfalva, and above the unwritten laws of traditions and proprieties which are of more account in an Hungarian village than all the codes framed by the Parliament which sits in Budapesth. He was proud of his wealth, proud of his education, his book-learning and knowledge of the world, and reckoned that these gave him the right to be a law unto himself. His naturally domineering and masterful temperament completed his claim to be considered the head man of Marosfalva.
The Hungarian peasants are ready enough to give deference where deference is exacted, but, having given it, their cordial friendship dies away. They acknowledged a social barrier more readily, perhaps, than any other peasantry in Europe, but having once acknowledged it, they will not admit that either party can stand on both sides of it at one and the same time.
So now, though Erös Béla was flouting the local traditions and proprieties by his attentions to Klara Goldstein, no one thought of openly opposing him. Everyone was ready enough to accept his actions, as they would those of their social superiors—the gentlemen of Arad, the Pater,my lord the Count himself, but they were not ready to accept his cordiality nor to extend to him their simple-minded and open-hearted friendship.
The presence of the Jewess did not please them—she was a stranger and an alien—she looked like a creature from another world with her tight skirts, high-heeled shoes and huge, feathered hat. No one felt this more keenly than Andor, whose heart had warmed out—despite its pain—at sight of all his friends, their national costumes, their music, their traditions—all of which had been out of his life for so long.
He felt that Klara's presence on this occasion was in itself an outrage upon Elsa, even without Béla's conspicuously unworthy conduct. Elsa, with her tightly-plaited hair, her balloon skirts and bare neck and arms, looked ashamed beside this fashionable apparition all made up of billowy lace and clinging materials.
Andor cursed beneath his breath, and ground his heel into the dust in the impotency of his rage. He tried to remember all that the Pater had said to him half an hour ago about forbearance and about God's will.
Personally, Andor did not altogether believe that it was God's will that Elsa should be married to a man who would neither cherish her nor appreciate her as she deserved to be: and it was with a heart weighed down with foreboding as well as with sorrow that he followed the wedding party into the school-house.
"The waters of the Maros flow sluggishly."
But even the bridegroom's unconventional and reprehensible conduct had not the power to damp for long the spirits of the guests.
By the time the soup had been eaten and the glasses filled with wine, the noise in the schoolroom had already become deafening, and no person of moderate vocal calibre could have heard himself speak. The time had come for everyone to talk at the top of his or her voice, for no one to listen, and for laughter—irresponsible, immoderate laughter—to ring from end to end of the room.
The gipsies were scraping their fiddles, blowing their clarionets and banging their czimbalom with all the vigour of which they were capable. They, at any rate, were determined to be heard above the din. The leader, with his violin under his chin, had already begun his round of the two huge tables, pausing for awhile behind every chair—just long enough to play into the ear of every single guest his or her favourite song.
For thus custom demands it.
There are hundreds and hundreds of Hungarian folk-songs, and to a stranger's ear no doubt these have a great similarity among themselves, but to a Hungarian there is a world of difference in each: for to him it is the words that have a meaning. The songs are, for the most part, love-songs, and all are written in that quaint, symbolicstyle, full of poetic imagery, which is peculiar to the Magyar language.
When we remember that in the terrible revolution of '48, when these same Hungarian peasant lads who composed the bulk of Kossuth's followers fought against the Austrian army, and subsequently against the combined armies of Russia and of Austria, when we remember that throughout that terrible campaign they were always accompanied by their gipsy bands, we begin to realize how great a part national music plays in the national spirit of Hungary. The sweet, sad folk-songs rang in the fighting lads' ears when they fell in their hundreds before the superior arms and numbers of their powerful neighbours, they inspired them and urged them, they helped them to win while they could, and to yield only when overwhelming numbers finally crushed their powers of resistance. Gipsy musicians fell beside the young soldiers, playing to them until the last the songs that spoke to them of their village, their sweethearts and their home. And the sweet, sad strains rang in the ears of the lads when they closed their eyes in death.
And now when Andor—face to face with the first great sorrow of his life—felt as if his heart must break under it, he loved to hear the gipsy musician softly caressing the strings of his violin as he played close to his ear the sweetest, saddest melody among all the sweet, sad melodies in the Magyar tongue. It begins thus: