A Bride of the Plains Part 38

"But just tell me for certain, Elsa . . . so that I shouldn't have to torment myself in the meanwhile . . . just tell me for certain that one day . . . in the far-distant future if you like, but one day . . . say that you will marry me."

"Some day, Andor, I will marry you if G.o.d wills," she said simply.

"Oh! But of course He will!" he rejoined airily, "and we will be married in the spring--or the early summer when the maize is just beginning to ripen . . . and we'll rent the mill from Pali bacsi--shall we, Elsa?"

"If you like, Andor."

"If I like!" he exclaimed. "If I like! The dear G.o.d love me, but I think that if I stay here much longer I shall go off my head. . . . Elsa, you don't know how much I love you and what I would not do for your sake.

. . . I feel a different man even for the joy of sitting here and talking to you and no one having the right to interfere. . . . And I would make you happy, Elsa, that I swear by the living G.o.d. I would make you happy and I would work to keep you in comfort all the days of my life. You shall be just as fine as Eros Bela would have made you--and besides that, there would be a smile on your sweet face at every hour of the day . . . your hands would be as white as those of my lady the Countess herself, for I would have a servant to wait on you. And your father would come and live with us and we would make him happy and comfortable too, and your mother . . . well! your mother would be happy too, and therefore not quite so cantankerous as she sometimes is."

To Andor there was nothing ahead but a life full of sunshine. He never looked back on the past few days and on the burden of sin which they bore. Bela had been a brute of the most coa.r.s.e and abominable type; by his monstrous conduct on the eve of his wedding day he had walked to his death--of his own accord. Andor had _not_ sent him. Oh! he was quite, quite sure that he had not sent Bela to his death. He had merely forborn to warn him--and surely there could be no sin in that.

He might have told Bela that Leopold Hirsch--half mad with jealousy--was outside on the watch with a hunting-knife in his pocket and murder in his soul. Andor might have told Bela this and he had remained silent.

Was that a sin? considering what a brute the man was, how his action that night was a deadly insult put upon Elsa, and how he would in the future have bullied and browbeaten Elsa and made her life a misery--a veritable h.e.l.l upon earth.

Andor had thought the problem out; he had weighed it in his mind and he was satisfied that he had not really committed a sin. Of course he ought before now to have laid the whole case before Pater Bonifacius, and the Pater would have told him just what G.o.d's view would be of the whole affair.

The fact that Andor had not thought of going to confession showed that he was not quite sure what G.o.d--as represented by Pater Bonifacius--would think of it all; but he meant to go by and by and conclude a permanent and fulsome peace treaty with his conscience.

In the meanwhile, even though the burden of remorse should at times in the future weigh upon his soul and perhaps spoil a little of his happiness, well! he would have to put up with it, and that was all!--Elsa was happy--one sight of her radiant little face was enough for any fool to see that an infinite sense of relief had descended into her soul. Elsa was happy--freed from the brute who would have made her wretched for the rest of her life; and surely the good G.o.d, who could read the secret motives which lay in a fellow's heart, would not be hard on Andor for what he had done--or left undone--for Elsa's sake.

CHAPTER x.x.x

"Kyrie eleison."

But the daily routine of everyday life went on at Marosfalva just as it had done before the double tragedy of St. Michael's E'en had darkened the pages of its simple history.

The maize had all been gathered in--ploughing had begun--my lord and his guests were shooting in the stubble. The first torrential rain had fallen and the waters of the Maros had begun to swell.

Gossip about Eros Bela's terrible end and Leopold Hirsch's suicide had not by any means been exhausted, but it was supplemented now by talk of Lakatos Pal's wealth. The old man had been ailing for some time. His nephew Andor's return had certainly cheered him up for a while, but soon after that he seemed to collapse very suddenly in health, like old folk do in this part of the world--stricken down by one or other of the several diseases which are engendered by the violent extremes of heat and cold--diseases of the liver for the most part--the beginning of a slowly-oncoming end.

He had always been reputed to be a miser, and those who were in the know now averred that Andor had found several thousand florins tucked away in old bits of sacking and hidden under his uncle's straw pailla.s.se. Pali bacsi was also possessed of considerable property--some land, a farm and the mill; there was no doubt now that Andor would be a very rich man one of these days.

Mothers with marriageable daughters sighed nevertheless in vain. Andor was not for any of them. Andor had eyes only for Elsa. He had become an important man in the village now that his uncle was so ill and he was left to administer the old man's property; and he took his duties very earnestly in the intervals of courting Kapus Elsa.

As to this no one had cause to make any objection. They had loved one another and been true to one another for five years; it was clearly the will of the good G.o.d that they should come together at last.

And now October was drawing to its close--to-day was the fourth Sunday in the month and one of the numerous feasts of our Blessed Lady, one on which solemn benediction is appointed to be sung in the early afternoon, and benediction is followed by a procession to the shrine of the Virgin which stands on the roadside on the way to Saborso some two kilometres distant from Marosfalva. It is a great festival and one to which the peasantry of the countryside look forward with great glee, for they love the procession and have a great faith in the efficacy of prayer said at the shrine.

Fortunately the day turned out to be one of the most glorious sunshiny days which mid-autumn can yield, and the little church in the afternoon was crowded in every corner. The older women--their heads covered with dark-coloured handkerchiefs, occupied the left side of the aisle, the men crowded in on the right and at the back under the organ loft. Round about the chancel rail and steps the bevy of girls in gayest Sunday dresses looked like a garden of giant animated flowers. When the s.e.xton went the round with the collecting-bag tied to the end of a long pole, he had the greatest difficulty in making his way through the maze of many-hued petticoats which, as the girls knelt, stood all round them like huge bells, with their slim shoulders and small heads above looking for all the world like the handles.

The children were all placed in the chancel to right and left of the altar, solemn and well-behaved, with one eye on the schoolmistress and the other on the Pater.

After the service the order of procession was formed, inside the church: the children in the forefront with banner carried by the head of the school--a st.u.r.dy maiden on the fringe of her teens, very proud to carry the Blessed Virgin's banner. She squared her shoulders well, for the banner was heavy, and the line of her young hips--well accentuated by the numerous petticoats which a proud mother had tied round her waist--gave a certain dignity to her carriage and natural grace to her movements.

Behind the children came the young girls--those of a marriageable age whom a pious custom dedicates most specially to the service of Our Lady.

Their banner was of blue silk, and most of them were dressed in blue, whilst blue ribbons fluttered round their heads as they walked.

Then came Pater Bonifacius under a velvet-covered dais which was carried by four village lads. He wore his vestments and carried a holy relic in his hands; the choir-boys swinging their metal censers were in front of him in well-worn red ca.s.socks and surplices beautifully ironed and starched for the occasion.

In the rear the crowd rapidly closed in; the younger men had a banner to themselves, and there were the young matrons, the mothers, the fathers, the old and the lonely.

The s.e.xton threw open the doors, and slowly the little procession filed out. Outside a brilliant sunshine struck full on the whitewashed walls of the little schoolhouse opposite. It was so dazzling that it made everybody blink as they stepped out from the semi-dark church into this magnificent flood of light.

In the street round the church a pathetic group awaited the appearance of the procession, those that were too old to walk two kilometres to the shrine, those who were lame and those who were sick. Simply and with uninquiring minds, they knelt or stood in the roadway, content to watch the banners as they swung gaily to the rhythmic movements of the bearers, content to see the holy relics in the Pater's hand, content to feel that subtle wave of religious sentiment pa.s.s over them which made them at peace with their little world and brought the existence of G.o.d nearer to their comprehension.

Slowly the procession wound its way down the village street. Pater Bonifacius had intoned the opening orisons of the Litany:

"Kyrie eleison!"

And men and women chanted the response in that quaintly harsh tone which the Magyar language a.s.sumes when it is sung. The brilliant sunlight played on the smooth hair of the girls, the golds, the browns and the blacks, and threw sharp glints on the fluttering ribbons of many colours which a light autumn breeze was causing to dance gaily and restlessly.

The whole village was hushed save for the Litany, the clinking of the metal chains as the choir-boys swung the censers and the frou-frou of hundreds of starched petticoats--superposed, brushing one against the other with a ceaseless movement which produced a riot of brilliant colouring.

Soon the main road was reached, and now the vast immensity of the plain lay in front and all round--all the more vast and immense now it seemed, since not even the nodding plumes of maize or tall, stately sunflowers veiled the mystery of that low-lying horizon far away.

Nothing around now, save that group of willow trees by the bank of the turbulent Maros--nothing except the stubble--stumps of maize and pumpkin and hemp, and rigid lines of broken-down stems of sunflowers, with drooping, dead leaves, and brown life still oozing out of the torn stems.

And in the immensity, the sweet, many-toned sounds of summer--the call of birds, the quiver of growing things, the trembling of ripening corn--has yielded to the sad tune of autumn--a tune made up of the hushed sighs of dying nature, as she sinks slowly and peacefully into her coming winter's sleep. The swallows and the storks have gone away long ago. They know that in this land of excessive heat and winter rigours, frost and snow tread hard on the heels of a warm, autumnal day.

Only a flight of rooks breaks the even line of the sky; their cawing alone makes at times a weird accompaniment to the chanting of the Litany. And the Maros--no longer sluggish--now sends her swollen waters with a dull, rumbling sound westward to the arms of the mother stream.

Silence and emptiness!

Nothing except the sky, with its unending panorama of ever-varying clouds, and its infinite, boundless, mysterious horizon, which enfolds the world of the plains in a limitless embrace. Nothing except the stubble and the sky, and far, very far away, a lonely cottage, with its surrounding group of low, mop-head acacias, and the gaunt, straight arm of a well pointing upwards to the sun.

And through the silent, vast immensity the little procession of village folk, with banners flying and quaint, harsh voices singing the Litany, winds its way along the flat, sandy road, like a brightly-coloured ribbon thrown there by a giant hand, and made to flutter and to move by a giant's breath.

Presently the shrine came in sight: just a dark speck at first in the midst of the great loneliness, then more and more distinct--there on the roadside--all by itself without a tree near it--lonely in the bosom of the plain.

The procession came to a halt in front of it, and two hundred pairs of eyes, brimful with simple faith and simple trust, gazed in reverence on the nave wax figure behind the grating, within its throne of rough stone and whitewash. It was dressed in blue calico spangled with tinsel, and had a crown on its head made of gilt paper and a veil of coa.r.s.e tarlatan. Two china pots containing artificial flowers were placed on either side of the little image.

It was all very crude, very rough, very nave, but a fervent, unsophisticated imagination had endowed it with a beauty all the more real, perhaps, because it only existed in the hearts of a handful of ignorant children of the soil. It made Something seem real to them which otherwise might have been difficult to grasp; and now when Pater Bonifacius in his gentle, cracked voice intoned the invocations of the Litany, the "Salus infirmorum" and "Refugium peccatorum" and, above all, the "Consolatrix afflictorum" the response "Ora pro n.o.bis" came from two hundred trusting hearts--praying, if not for themselves, then for those who were dear to them: the infirm, the sinner, the afflicted.

And among those two hundred hearts none felt the need for prayer more than Andor and Elsa. They had left affliction behind them, they stood upon the threshold of a new life--where happiness alone beckoned to them, and sorrow and parting lay vanquished behind the gates of the past. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this happiness which beckoned so near now, there was a tinge of sadness in their hearts, that sadness which always comes with joy once extreme youth has gone by . . . the sadness which hovers over finite things, the sense of future which so quickly becomes the past.

From where Andor stood, holding the dais above Pater Bonifacius' head, he could see Elsa's smooth, fair head among the crowd of other girls.

She had tied her hair in at the nape of the neck with a bit of blue ribbon, leaving it to fall lower down in two thick plaits well below her waist. She looked like a huge blue gentian kissed by the sun, for her top petticoat was of blue cotton, and her golden head seemed like the sweet-scented stamen.

Andor thought that he could hear her voice above that of everyone else, and when Pater Bonifacius intoned the "Regina angelorum" he thought that indeed the heavenly Queen had no fairer subject up there than Elsa.

When the little procession was once more ready to return to the village, the bearers of the dais were relieved by four other lads, and Andor found the means, during the slight hubbub which occurred while the procession was being formed, of working his way close to Elsa's side.

It was not an unusual thing for young men and girls who had much to say to one another to fall away from the procession on its way home, and to wander back arm in arm through the maize-fields or over the stubble, even as their shadows lengthened out upon the ground.

Andor's hand had caught hold of Elsa's elbow, and with insistent pressure he kept her out of the group of her companions. Gradually the procession was formed, and slowly it began to move, the banners fluttered once more in the breeze, once more the monotonous chant broke the silence of the plain.