A Bride of the Plains Part 9

"No, I know. Therefore I said that religion had nothing to do with it. I can't explain it exactly, Bela, but don't we all feel alike about that?

Hungarians are Hungarians, and Jews are Jews, and there's no getting away from that. They are different to us, somehow. I can't say how, but they are different. They don't speak as we do, they don't think as we do, their Sunday is Sat.u.r.day, and their New Year's day is in September.

Jewesses can't dance the csardas and Jews have a contempt for our gipsy music and our songs. They are Jews and we are Hungarians. It is altogether different."

He shrugged his shoulders, unable apparently to gainsay this unanswerable argument. After all, he too was a Hungarian, and proud of that fact, and like all Hungarians at heart, he had an unexplainable contempt for the Jews. But all the same, he was not going to give in to a woman in any kind of disagreement, least of all on a point on which he had set his heart. So now he shifted his ground back to his original dictum.

"You may talk as much as you like, Elsa," he said doggedly, "but Klara Goldstein is my friend, and I will have her asked to the banquet first and the dance afterwards, or I'll not appear at it myself."

"That's clear, I hope?" he added roughly, as Elsa, in her habitual peace-loving way, had made no comment on that final threat.

"It is quite clear, Bela," she now said pa.s.sively.

"Of course the girl shall be asked, Bela," here interposed Irma neni, who had no intention of quarrelling with her wealthy son-in-law. "I'll see to it, and don't you lose your temper about it. Here! sit down again. Elsa, bring your father's chair round for supper. Bela, do sit down and have a bite. I declare you two might be married already, so much quarrelling do you manage to get through."

But Bela, as sulky now as a bear with a sore head, refused to stay for supper.

"I can't bear sullen faces and dark looks," he said savagely. "I'll go where I can see pleasant smiles and have some fun. I must say, Irma neni," he added by way of a parting shot, as he picked up his hat and made for the door, "that I do not admire the way you have brought up your daughter. A woman's place is not only to obey her husband, but to look cheerful about it. However," he added, with a dry laugh, "we'll soon put that right after to-morrow, eh, my dove?"

And with a perfunctory attempt at a more lover-like att.i.tude, he turned to Elsa, who already had jumped to her feet, and with a pleasant smile was holding up her sweet face to her future lord for a kiss.

She looked so exquisitely pretty then, standing in the gloomy half-light of this squalid room, with the slanting golden sunshine which peeped in through the tiny west window outlining her delicate silhouette and touching her smooth fair hair with gold.

Vanity, self-satisfaction, and mayhap something a little more tender, a little more selfless, stirred in the young man's heart. It was fine to think that this beautiful prize--which so many had coveted--was his by right of conquest. Even the young lord whose castle was close by had told Eros Bela that he envied him his good luck, whilst my lord the Count and my lady the Countess had of themselves offered to be present at the wedding and to be the princ.i.p.al witnesses on behalf of the most beautiful girl in the county.

These pleasant thoughts softened Bela's mood, and he drew his fiancee quite tenderly to him. He kissed her on the forehead and on the cheeks, but she would not let him touch her lips. He laughed at her shyness, the happy triumphant laugh of the conqueror.

Then he nodded to Irma and was gone.

"He is a very good fellow at heart," said the mother philosophically, "you must try and humour him, Elsa. He is very proud of you really, and think what a beautiful house you will have, and all those oxen and pigs and a carriage and four horses. You must thank G.o.d on your knees for so much good fortune; there are girls in this village who would give away their ears to be standing in your shoes."

"Indeed, mother dear, I am very, very grateful for all my good fortune,"

said Elsa cheerfully, as with vigorous young arms she pulled the paralytic's chair round to the table and then got him ready for his meal.

After which there was a moment's silence. Elsa and her mother each stood behind her own chair: the young girl's clear voice was raised to say a simple grace before a simple meal.

The stew had not been put on the table, since Bela did not stay for supper. It would do for to-morrow's dinner, and for to-night maize porridge and rye bread would be quite sufficient.

Elsa looked after her father and herself ate with a hearty, youthful appet.i.te. Her mother could not help but be satisfied that the child was happy.

The philosophy of life had taught Kapus Irma a good many lessons, foremost among these was the one which defined the exact relationship between the want of money and all other earthly ills. Certainly the want of money was the father of them all. Elsa in future would never feel it, therefore all other earthly ills would fall away from her for lack of support.

It was as well to think that the child realized this, and was grateful for her own happiness.

CHAPTER VIII

"I put the bunda away somewhere."

Kapus Irma went out after supper to hold a final consultation with the more influential matrons of Marosfalva over the arrangements for to-morrow's feast. Old Kapus had been put to bed on his pailla.s.se in the next room and Elsa was all alone in the small living-room. She had washed up the crockery and swept up the hearth for the night; cloth in hand, she was giving the miserable bits of furniture something of a rub-down and general furbishing-up: a thing she could only do when her mother was away, for Irma hated her to do things which appeared like a comment on her own dirty, slatternly ways.

Cleanliness, order and a love of dainty tidiness in the home are marked characteristics of the true Hungarian peasantry: the cottages for the most part are miracles of brightness, brightly polished floors, brightly polished pewter, brightly covered feather pillows. Kapus Irma was a notable exception to the rule, and Elsa had often shed bitter tears of shame when one or other of her many admirers followed her into her home and saw the squalor which reigned in it--the dirt and untidiness. She was most ashamed when Bela was here, for he made sneering remarks about it all, and seemed to take it for granted that she was as untidy, as slovenly as her mother. He read her long lectures about his sister's fine qualities and about the manner in which he would expect his own wife to keep her future home, and made it an excuse for some of his most dictatorial p.r.o.nouncements and rough, masterful ways.

But to-night even this had not mattered--though he had spoken very cruelly about the hemp--nothing now mattered any more. To-day she had been called for the third time in church, to-morrow evening she would say good-bye to her maidenhood and take her place for the last time among her girl-friends: after to-morrow's feast she would be a matron--her place would be a different one. And on Tuesday would come the wedding and she would be Eros Bela's wedded wife.

So what did anything matter any more? After Tuesday she would not even be allowed to think of Andor, to dream that he had come back and that the past two dreadful years had only been an ugly nightmare. Once she was Eros Bela's wedded wife, it would be no longer right to think of that last morning five years ago, of that final csardas, and the words which Andor had whispered: above all, it would no longer be right to remember that kiss--his warm lips upon her bare shoulder, and later on, out under the acacia tree, that last kiss upon her lips.

She closed her eyes for a moment; a sigh of infinite regret escaped through her parted lips. It would have been so beautiful, if only it could have come true! if only something had been left to her of those enchanted hours, something more tangible than just a memory.

Resolutely now she went back to her work; for the past two years she had found that she could imagine herself to be quite moderately happy, if only she had plenty to do; and she did hope that Bela would allow her to work in her new home and not to lead a life of idleness--waited on by paid servants.

She had thrown the door wide open, and every now and then, when she paused in her work, she could go and stand for a moment under its narrow lintel; and from this position, looking out toward the west, she could see the sunset far away beyond where the plain ended, where began another world. The plumed heads of the maize were tipped with gold, and in the sky myriads and myriads of tiny clouds lay like a gigantic and fleecy comet stretching right over the dome of heaven above the plain to that distant horizon far, far away.

Elsa loved to watch those myriads of clouds through the many changes which came over them while the sun sank so slowly, so majestically down into the regions which lay beyond the plain. At first they had been downy and white, like the freshly-plucked feathers of a goose, then some of them became of a soft amber colour, like ripe maize, then those far away appeared rose-tinted, then crimson, then glowing like fire . . .

and that glow spread and spread up from the distant horizon, up and up till each tiny cloud was suffused with it, and the whole dome of heaven became one fiery, crimson, fleecy canopy, with peeps between of a pale turquoise green.

It was beautiful! Elsa, leaning against the frame-work of the door, gazed into that gorgeous immensity till her eyes ached with the very magnificence of the sight. It lasted but a few minutes--a quarter of an hour, perhaps--till gradually the blood-red tints disappeared behind the tall maize; they faded first, then the crimson and the rose and the gold, till, one by one, the army of little clouds lost their glowing robes and put on a grey hue, dull and colourless like people's lives when the sunshine of love has gone down--out of them.

With a little sigh Elsa turned back into the small living-room, which looked densely black and full of gloom now by contrast with the splendour which she had just witnessed. From the village street close by came the sound of her mother's sharp voice in excited conversation with a neighbour.

"It will be all right, Irma neni," the neighbour said, in response to some remark of the other woman. "Klara Goldstein does not expect our village girls to take much notice of her. But I will say that the men are sharp enough dangling round her skirts."

"Yes," retorted Irma, "and I wish to goodness Bela had not set his heart on having her at the feast. He is so obstinate: once he has said a thing . . ."

"Bela's conduct in this matter is not to be commended, my good Irma,"

said the neighbour sententiously; "everyone thinks that for a tokened man it is a scandal to be always hanging round that pert Jewess. Why didn't he propose to her instead of to Elsa, if he liked her so much better?"

"Hush! hush! my good Mariska, please. Elsa might hear you."

The two women went on talking in whispers. Elsa had heard, of course, what they said: and since she was alone a hot blush of shame mounted to her cheeks. It was horrid of people to talk in that way about her future husband, and she marvelled how her own mother could lend herself to such gossip.

Irma came in a few minutes later. She looked suspiciously at her daughter.

"Why do you keep the door open?" she asked sharply, "were you expecting anybody to come in?"

"Only you, mother, and Pater Bonifacius is coming after vespers,"

replied the girl.

"I stopped outside for a bit of gossip with Mariska just now. Could you hear what she said?"

"Yes, mother. I did hear something of what Mariska said."

"About Bela?"

"About him--yes."

"Hej, child! you must not take any notice of what folks say--it is only t.i.ttle-tattle. You must not mind it."