A Bride of the Plains Part 12

"Are we, then," he asked softly, "such very important things in the scheme of G.o.d'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 G.o.d's way. Now who shall say which is the best way of being happy?

Who knows best? You or G.o.d?"

"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 Bonifacius 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 G.o.d."

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. Who knows?

Whereas now you are just going to be happy in G.o.d's way: you are going to do your duty by your mother and your father, and, above all, by your husband. You are going to fill your life by thoughts of G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 maize from one tiny, dried, yellow grain--that he has no inclination for petty casuistry, for arguments or philosophy. G.o.d'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 Bonifacius 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 Bonifacius 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 Bonifacius laid his hand upon the child's head in a gesture of unspoken benediction.

CHAPTER XI

"After that, happiness will begin."

Pater Bonifacius' kindliness, his gentle philosophy and unquestioning faith exercised a soothing influence over Elsa's spirits. The one moment of rebellion against Fate and against G.o.d, 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: "G.o.d 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 G.o.d and before the whole village that she would marry Eros Bela 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 most intimate friends of the contracting parties, hers and Bela's, and her mother's.

It is the rule that the bride's parents provide this entertainment, but Kapus Benko and his wife had not the means for it, and Eros Bela, 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 Ma.s.s 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.ses 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.

Eros Bela 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 Ma.s.s! . . . 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 pailla.s.se, 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 Bela which had the power to wound the susceptibilities of his fiancee.

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 fiancee's farewell?" she said. "You will despise your poor parents now, Elsa."

It was certainly an unusual thing under the circ.u.mstances; 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 Eros Bela 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 he might 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 remaining _soupcon_ of 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 Bela to his fiancee--gave a touch of barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders and breast, her st.u.r.dy 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 l.u.s.tily, "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."