A Bride of the Plains Part 3

And now they are wandering down the great dusty high road, beneath the spa.r.s.e shade of the stunted acacias that border it. They feel neither heat, nor dust, and say but little as they walk. From behind them, m.u.f.fled by louder sounds, come the sweet, sad strains of the Magyar love-song, "Csak egy kis lany van a vilagon."

"There is but one girl in all the world, And she is my own white dove.

Oh! How great must G.o.d's love be for me!

That He thought of giving you to me."

"Elsa, you will wait for me?" asked Andor, with deep, pa.s.sionate anxiety at last.

"I will wait for you, Andor," replied the girl simply, "if the good G.o.d will give me the strength."

"The strength, Elsa, will be in yourself," he urged, "if only you love me as I love you."

"Three years is such a long time!" she sighed.

"I will count the weeks that separate us, Elsa--the days--the hours----"

"I, too, will be counting them."

"When I come back I will at once talk with Pali bacsi--he is getting tired of managing his property--I know that at times lately he has felt that he needed a rest, and that he means to ask me to see to everything for him. He will give me that nice little house on the Fekete Road, and the mill to look after. We can get married at once, Elsa--when I come back."

He talked on somewhat ramblingly, at times incoherently. It was easy to see that he was trying to cheat sorrow, to appear cheerful and hopeful, because he saw that Elsa was quite ready to give way to tears. It was so hard to walk out of fairyland just when she had entered it, and found it more beautiful than anything else in life. The paths looked so smooth and so inviting, and fairy forms beckoned to her from afar; it all would have been so easy, if only the good G.o.d had willed it so. She thought of the many sins which--in her innocent life--she had committed, and for which Pater Bonifacius had given her absolution; perhaps if she had been better--been more affectionate with her mother, more forbearing with her father, the good G.o.d would have allowed her to have this happiness in full which now appeared so shadowy.

She fell to wishing that Andor had not been quite so fine and quite so strong, that his chest had been narrower, or his eyesight less keen.

Womanlike, she felt that she would have loved him just as much and more, if he were less vigorous, less powerful; and in that case the wicked government would not want him; he could stay at home and help Pali bacsi to look after his lands and his mills, and she could marry him before the spring.

Then the pressure of his arm round her waist recalled her to herself; she turned and met his glowing, compelling eyes, she felt that wonderful vitality in him which made him what he was, strong in body and strong in soul; his love was strong because his body was strong, as was his soul, his spirit and his limbs, and she no longer wished him to be weak and delicate, for then it would no longer be Andor--the Andor whom she loved.

The clang of the distant bell chased away Elsa's last hovering dreams.

Andor did not hear it; he was pressing the girl closer and closer to him, unmindful of his surroundings, unmindful that he was on the high road, and that frequently ox-carts went by laden with people, and that pa.s.sers-by were hurrying now toward the railway station.

True that no one took any notice of this young man and maid; everyone was either too much absorbed in the business of the morning, or too much accustomed to these final scenes of farewell and tenderness ere the lads went off for their three years' service, to throw more than a cursory glance on these two.

"I love you, Elsa, my dove, my rose," Andor reiterated over and over again; "you will wait for my return, will you not?"

"I will wait, Andor," replied the girl through her sobs.

"The thought of you will lighten my nights, and bring sunshine to my dreary days. Every morning and every evening when I say my prayers, I shall ask my guardian angel to fly over to yours, and to tell him to whisper in your ear that I love you beyond all else on earth."

"We must part now, Andor," she said earnestly, "the second bell has gone long ago."

"Not yet, Elsa, not yet," he pleaded; "just walk as far as that next acacia tree. There no one will see us, and I want one more kiss before I go."

She never thought to resist him, since her own heart was at one with his wish, and he was going away so soon and for so long. So they walked as far as the next acacia tree, and there he took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheeks, the eyes, the lips.

"G.o.d alone knows, Elsa," he said, and now his own voice was choked with sobs, "what it means to me to leave you. You are the one woman in the world for me, and I will thank the good G.o.d on my knees every day of my life for the priceless blessing of your love."

After that they walked back hand in hand. They had wandered far, and in a quarter of an hour the train would be starting. It meant a week in prison in Arad for any recruit to miss the train, and Andor did mean to be brave and straight, and to avoid prison during the three years.

The gipsy musicians had carried their instruments over to the railway station; here they had ensconced themselves in full view of the train and were playing one after the other the favourite songs of those who were going away.

When Andor and Elsa reached the station the crowd in and around it was dense, noisy and full of animation and colour. A large batch of recruits who had come by the same train from more distant villages had alighted at Marosfalva and joined in the bustle and the singing. They had got over the pang of departure from home half an hour or an hour ago; they had already left the weeping mothers and sweethearts behind, so now they set to with a will in true Hungarian fashion to drown regrets and stifle unmanly tears by singing their favourite songs at the top of their rough voices, and ogling those girls of Marosfalva who happened to be unattached.

The captain in command, with his lieutenant, was pacing up and down the station platform. He now gave a command to a couple of sergeants, and the entraining began. Helter-skelter now, for it was no use losing a good seat whilst indulging in a final kiss or tear. There was a general stampede for the carriages and trucks; the recruits on ahead, behind them the trail of women, the mothers with their dark handkerchiefs tied round their heads, the girls with pale, tear-stained faces, their petticoats of many colours swinging round their shapely hips as they run, the fathers, the brothers.

Here comes Pater Bonifacius, who has finished saying his ma.s.s just in time to see the last of his lads. He has tucked his soutane well up under his sash, and he is running across the platform, his rubicund, kindly face streaming with excitement.

"Pater! Pater! Here!"

A score of voices cry to him from different carriages, and he hurries on, grasping each rough, hot hand as it is extended out to him.

"Bless you, my children," he cries, and the large, red cotton handkerchief wanders surrept.i.tiously from his nose to his eyes. "Bless you and keep you."

"Be good lads," he admonishes earnestly, "remember your confession and the holy sacraments! No drinking!"

"Oh, Pater!" comes in protesting accents all around him.

"Well! not more than is good for you. Abstinence on Fridays--a regular confession and holy communion and holy ma.s.s on Sundays will help to keep you straight before the good G.o.d."

There's the last bell! Clang! clang! In two minutes comes the horn, and then we are off. The gipsies are playing the saddest of sad songs, it seems as if one's heartstrings were being wrenched out of one's body.

"_There is but one girl in all the world!_"

For each lad only one girl!--and she is there at the foot of the carriage-steps, a corner of her ribbon or handkerchief or cotton petticoat stuffed into her mouth, to keep her from bursting into sobs.

The mothers now are dry-eyed and silent. They look with dull, unseeing gaze on this railway train, the engine, the carriages, which will take their lads away from them. Many have climbed up on the steps of the carriages, hanging on to the handrails, so as to be near the lads as long as possible. Their position is a perilous one, the sergeants as well as the railway officials have to take hold of them by the waist and to drag them forcibly down to the ground before they will give way.

It is the mothers who are the most obstinate. They cling to the handrails, to the steps, even to the wheels--there will be a fearful accident if they are not driven off by force. And they will yield only to force; guards and porters take hold of them by the waist and drag them away from their perilous positions.

They fight with stolid obstinacy; they will hang on to the train--they are the mothers, you see!--and yet from where they are they cannot always see their sons, herded in with forty or fifty other lads in a truck, some standing, some squatting on the ground, or on the provision baskets. But if you cannot see your son, it is always something to be on the step of the train which is about to take him away.

The lads are all singing now at the top of their voices, but down below on the platforms there is but little noise; the mothers do not speak, because they are fighting for places on the steps of the railway-carriages, where the boys are; they press their lips tightly together, and when a guard or a porter comes to drag them away they just hit out with their elbows--stolidly, silently.

The fathers and the other older men stand about in groups, leaning on their sticks, talking in whispers, recounting former experiences of entraining, or recruiting, of those abominable three years; and the young girls--the sweethearts, the sisters, the friends--dare not speak for fear they should break down and help to unman the lads.

Andor, by dint of fighting and obstinacy, has kept his place in the door of one of the carriages; he sits on the floor, with his feet down on the step below, and refuses to quit his position for anyone. Several lads from the rear have tried to throw him out or to drag him in, but Andor is mightily strong--you cannot move him if he be not so minded.

Elsa, sitting on the step lower down, is resting her elbow on his knee.

There is no thought of hiding their love for one another; let the whole village know it, or the whole countryside, they do not care; they are not going to deprive themselves of these last few minutes--these heaven-born seconds, whilst their hands can still meet, their eyes can speak the words which their lips no longer dare frame.

"I love you!"

"You will wait for me?"

In those few words lies all the consolation for the present, all the hope of the future. With these words engraved upon heart and memory they can afford to look more serenely upon these blank and dreary three years.

It was as well to have spoken them; as well to have actually put into words what they had already known in their hearts long ago. Now they can afford to wait, and Andor will do it with confidence, he is a man and he is free. He viewed the future as a master views his slave; the future is his to do with what he likes, to mould, to shape in accordance with his will.

The land which must one day be his, and Elsa his already! Andor almost fell to wishing that the train would start quickly--so many seconds would have been lived of those three intervening years.

Elsa tries to look as full of hope as he does; she is only a woman, and the future is not hers to make at will. She is not the conqueror, the lord and king of her own destiny; there are so many difficulties in the path of her life which she would like to forget at this moment, so as not to embitter the happiness which has come to her; there is her shiftless mother and vagabond father, there is the pressure of poverty and filial duty--it is easy for Andor--he is a man!