A Bride of the Plains Part 17

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 Bela 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 my head for your old sweetheart.

. . . That is fair, I think, eh, Irma neni?" he added, turning to the old woman.

"Don't be foolish, Bela," 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 Bela, with ostentatious gaiety. "Here's Irma neni 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 neni, 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 neni, 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 neni 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 amiable to everyone; but Eros Bela was no fool: he knew quite well that his att.i.tude 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 Eros Bela 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 Bela'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 G.o.d's will.

Personally, Andor did not altogether believe that it was G.o.d'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.

CHAPTER XVI

"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 gla.s.ses 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 sc.r.a.ping 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, symbolic style, 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:

"A Maros vize folyik csendesen!"

"The waters of the Maros flow sluggishly--"

and it speaks of a broken-hearted lover whose sweetheart belongs to another. Andor had never cared for it before. He used to think it too sad, but now he understood it: it was attuned to his mood, and the soft sound of the instrument helped him to keep his ever-growing wrath in check, even while he was watching Elsa's pale, tearful face.

She had made pathetic efforts to remain cheerful and not to listen to Klara's strident voice and loud, continuous laughter. Bela had practically confined his attentions to the Jewess, and Elsa tried not to show how ashamed she was at being so openly neglected on this occasion.

She should have been the queen of the feast, of course; the bridegroom's thoughts should have been only for her; everyone's eyes should have been turned on her. Instead of which she seemed of less consequence almost than anyone else here. If it had not been for Andor, who sat next to her and who saw to her having something to eat and drink--it was little enough, G.o.d knows!--she might have sat here like a wooden doll.

Something of the respect which Eros Bela demanded as his own right encompa.s.sed her, too, already: the cordiality of the past seemed to have vanished. She was already something of a lady: "_ten's a.s.szony_"

(honoured madam), she would be styled by and by. And this foreknowledge, which she was gradually imbibing while everybody round her made merry, caused her almost as much sadness as Bela's indifference towards her. It seemed as if all brightness was destined to go out of her life after to-day, and it was with tear-filled eyes that she looked up now and again from her plate and gazed round upon the festive scene before her.

The whitewashed schoolroom, where on ordinary working days brown and grimy little faces were wont to pore laboriously over slates and books, presented now a very lively appearance.

Two huge trestle tables ran down its length, and thirty guests were seated on benches each side of these. The girls in all their finery wanted a deal of sitting-room, with their starched petticoats standing out over their hips, and their bare arms and necks shone with the vigorous application of yellow soap: and the smooth hair, fair and dark, had an additional l.u.s.tre after the stiff brushing which it had to endure. The matrons wore darker skirts and black silk handkerchiefs tied round their heads, ending in a bow under the chin: but everywhere ribbons fluttered and beads jingled, and the men had spurs to their high boots which gave a pleasing clinking when they clapped their heels together. Overhead, hung to the ceiling, were festoons of bright pink paper roses and still brighter green glazed calico leaves; the tables were spread with linen cloths, and literally threatened to break down under the weight of pewter dishes filled with delicacies of every sort and kind--home-killed meat and home-made sausages, home-made bread and home-grown wine. The Magyar peasant is an epicure. His rich soil and excellent climate give him the best of food, and though, when times are hard, he will live readily enough on maize bread and pumpkin, he knows how to enjoy a good spread when rich friends provide it for him.

And Eros Bela had done the feast in style. Nothing was stinted. You just had to sit down and eat your fill of roast veal or roast pork, of fattened capons from his farmyard or of fogas[4] from the river, or of the scores of dishes of all kinds of good things which stood temptingly about.

[Footnote 4: A kind of pike peculiar to Hungarian rivers.]

No wonder that spirits were now running high. The gipsy band was quite splendid, and presently Barna Moritz, the second son of the mayor--a smart young man who would go far--was on his feet proposing the health of the bride.

Well! Of course! One mugful was not enough to do honour to such a toast, they had to be refilled and then filled up again: wine was so plentiful and so good--not heady, but just a delicious white wine which tasted of nothing but the sweet-scented grape. Soon the bridegroom rose to respond, whereupon Feher Jeno, whose father rented the mill from my lord the Count, loudly desired that everyone should drink the health of happy, lucky Eros Bela, and then, of course, the latter had to respond again.

Elsa felt more and more every moment a stranger among them all.

Fortunately the innate kindliness of these children of the soil prevented any chaffing remarks being made about the silence of the bride. It is always an understood thing that brides are shy and nervous, and though there had been known cases in Marosfalva where a bride had been very lively and talkative at her "maiden's farewell" it was, on the whole, considered more seemly to preserve a semi-tearful att.i.tude, seeing that a girl on the eve of her marriage is saying good-bye to her parents and to her home.

The bridegroom's disgraceful conduct was tacitly ignored: it could not be resented or even commented on without quarrelling with Eros Bela, and that no one was prepared to do. You could not eat a man's salt and drink his wine and then knock him on the head, which it seemed more than one lad--who had fancied himself in love with beautiful Kapus Elsa--was sorely inclined to do.

Kapus Benko, in his invalid's chair, sat some distance away from his daughter, the other side of Klara Goldstein. Elsa could not even exchange glances with him or see whether he had everything he wanted.

Thus she seemed cut off from everyone she cared for; only Andor was near her, and of Andor she must not even think. She tried not to meet his gaze, tried hard not to feel a thrill of pleasure every time that she became actively conscious of his presence beside her.

And yet it was good to feel that he was there, she had a sense that she was being protected, that things could not go very wrong while he was near.

CHAPTER XVII

"I am here to see that you be kind to her."

Pater Bonifacius came in at about four o'clock to remind all these children of their duty to G.o.d.