"But I tell you that she is jealous of Klara Goldstein!" he maintained.
"What nonsense!" protested the mother, while the blush[Pg 78] quickly fled from the young girl's cheeks, leaving them clear and bloodless.
"I tell you she is," he persisted, with wrathful doggedness; "she has been sullen and moody these last two days, ever since I insisted that Klara Goldstein shall be asked to-morrow to the farewell banquet and the dance."
"Well, I didn't see myself why you wanted that Jewess to come," said Irma dryly.
"That's nobody's business," he retorted. "I pay for the entertainment, don't I?"
"You certainly do," she rejoined calmly. "We couldn't possibly afford to give Elsa her maiden's farewell, and if you didn't pay for the supper and the gipsies, and the hire of the schoolroom, why, then, you and Elsa would have to be married without a proper send-off, that's all."
"And a nice thing it would have been! Whoever heard of a girl on this side of the Maros being married without her farewell to maidenhood. I am paying for the supper and for everything because I want my bride's farewell to be finer and grander than anything that has ever been seen for many kilomètres round. I have stinted nothing—begrudged nothing. I have given an ox, two pigs and a calf to be slaughtered for the occasion. I have given chickens and sausages and some of the finest flour the countryside can produce. As for the wine . . . well! all I can say is that there is none better in my lord's own cellar. I have given all that willingly. I did it because I liked it. But," he added, and once again the look of self-satisfaction and sufficiency gave way to his more habitual sinister expression, "if I pay for the feast, I decide who shall be invited to eat it."
Irma apparently had nothing to say in response. She shrugged her shoulders and continued to stir the stew[Pg 79] in her pot. Elsa said nothing either; obedient to the command of her future lord, she had faced him and listened to him attentively and respectfully all the while that he spoke, nor did her face betray anything of what went on within her soul, anything of its revolt or of its wounded pride, while the storm of wrath and of sneers thus passed unheeded over her head.
But Béla, having worked himself up into a fit of obstinate rage, was not content with Elsa's passive obedience. There had from the first crept into his half-educated but untutored and undisciplined mind the knowledge that though Elsa was tokened to him, though she was submissive, and gentle and even-tempered, her heart did not belong to him. He knew but little about love, believed in it still less: in that part of the world a good many men are still saturated with the Oriental conception of a woman's place in the world, and even in the innermost recesses of their mind with the Oriental disbelief in a woman's soul; but in common with all such men he had a burning desire to possess every aspiration and to know every thought of the woman whom he had chosen for his wife.
Therefore now, when in response to his rage and to his bombast Elsa had only silence for him—a silence which he knew must hide her real thoughts, he suddenly lost all sense of proportion and of prudence; for the moment he felt as if he could hate this woman whom he had wooed and won despite her resistance, and in the teeth of strenuous rivalry; he was seized with a purely savage desire to wound her, to see her cry, to make her unhappy—anything, in fact, to rouse her from this irritating apathy.
"I suppose," he said at last, making a great effort to recover his outward self-control, "I suppose that you ob[Pg 80]ject to my asking Klara Goldstein to come to your farewell feast?"
Thus directly appealed to by her lover, Elsa gave a direct reply.
"Yes, I do," she said.
"May I ask why?"
"A girl's farewell on the eve of her wedding-day," she replied quietly, "is intended to be a farewell to her girl friends. Klara Goldstein was never a friend of mine."
"She belongs to this village, anyway, doesn't she?" he queried, still trying to speak calmly. He had risen to his feet and stood with squared shoulders, legs wide apart, and hands buried in the pockets of his tightly-fitting trousers. An ugly, ill-tempered, masterful man, who showed in every line of his attitude that he meant to be supreme lord in his own household.
"Klara Goldstein belongs to this village," he reiterated with forced suavity, "she is my friend, is she not?"
"She may be your friend, Béla," rejoined Elsa gently, "and she certainly belongs to this village; but she is not one of us. She is a Jewess, not a Hungarian, like we all are."
"What has her religion to do with it?" he retorted.
"It isn't her religion, Béla," persisted the girl, with obstinacy at least as firm as his own; "you know that quite well. Though it is an awful thing to think that they crucified our Lord."
"Well! that is a good long while ago," he sneered; "and in any case Klara and Ignácz Goldstein had nothing to do with it."
"No, I know. Therefore I said that religion had nothing to do with it. I can't explain it exactly, Béla, but don't we all feel alike about that? Hungarians are Hungarians,[Pg 81] 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 Saturday, and their New Year's day is in September. Jewesses can't dance the csárdás 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, Béla," she now said passively.
"Of course the girl shall be asked, Béla," here interposed Irma néni, 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. Béla, 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 Béla, as sulky now as a bear with a sore head, refused to stay for supper.
[Pg 82]"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 néni," 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 attitude, 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 Erös Béla 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 principal witnesses on behalf of the most beautiful girl in the county.
These pleasant thoughts softened Bél
a's mood, and he drew his fiancée 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.
[Pg 83]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 God 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 Béla 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 appetite. 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.
* * *
[Pg 84]
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 paillasse 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 Béla 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[Pg 85] most dictatorial pronouncements 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 Erös Béla'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 Erös Béla's wedded wife, it would be no longer right to think of that last morning five years ago, of that final csárdás, 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 Béla 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[Pg 86] 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[Pg 87] 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 néni," 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 Béla had not set his heart on having her at the feast. He is so obstinate: once he has said a thing . . ."
"Béla'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 Bonifácius is coming after vespers," replied the girl.
[Pg 88]"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 Béla?"
"About him—yes."
"Hej, child! you must not take any notice of what folks say—it is only tittle-tattle. You must not mind it."
"I don't mind it, mother. I am sure that it is only tittle-tattle."
"Your father in bed?" asked Irma abruptly changing the subject of conversation.
"Yes."
"And you have been busying yourself, I see," continued the mother, looking round her with obvious disapproval, "with matters that do not concern you. I suppose Béla has been persuading you that your mother is incapable of keeping her own house tidy, so you must needs teach her how to do it."
"No, mother, nothing was further from my thoughts. I had nothing to do after I had cleared and washed up, and I wanted something to do."
"If you wanted something to do you might have got out your father's bunda" (big sheepskin cloak worn by the peasantry) "and seen if the moth has got into it or not. It is two years since he has had it on, and he will want it to-morrow."
"To-morrow?"
"Why, yes. I really must tell you because of the bunda, Jankó and Móritz and Jenö and Pál have offered to carry him to the feast in his chair just as he is. We'll put his bunda round him, and they will strap some poles to his chair, so that they can carry him more easily. They offered[Pg 89] to do it. It was to be a surprise for you for your farewell to-morrow: but I had to tell you, because of getting the bunda out and seeing whether it is too moth-eaten to wear."
While Irma went on talking in her querulous, acid way, Elsa's eyes had quickly filled with tears. How good people were! how thoughtful! Was it not kind of Móritz and Jenö and the others to have thought of giving her this great pleasure?
To have her poor old father near her, after all, when she was saying farewell to all her maidenhood's friends! And what a joy it would be to him!—one that would brighten him through many days to come.