"After that, happiness will begin."
Pater Bonifácius' kindliness, his gentle philosophy and unquestioning faith exercised a soothing influence over Elsa's spirits. The one moment of rebellion against Fate and against God, before the arrival of the old priest, had been the first and the last.
There is a goodly vein of Oriental fatalism still lurking in the Hungarians: "God has willed it!" comes readily enough to their lips. Though this unsophisticated child of the plains suffered none the less than would her more highly-cultured sisters in the West, yet she was more resigned—in her humble way, more philosophical—accepting the inevitable with an aching heart, mayhap, but with a firm determination to make the best of the few shreds of happiness which were left to her.
Elsa had promised before God and before the whole village that she would marry Erös Béla on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and after that single thought of rebellion, she knew that on the following Tuesday this would have to be just as surely as the day follows the night and the night the day.
Even that selfsame evening, after the Pater had gone and before she went to bed, she made her final preparations for the next three days, which were the turning-points of her life. To-morrow her farewell banquet: a huge feast in the big schoolroom, hired expressly for the occasion. Fifty people would sit down to that, they were the most intimate friends of the contracting parties, hers and Béla's, and her mother's. It is the rule that the bride's parents provide this entertainment, but Kapus Benkó and his wife had not the means for it, and Erös Béla, insisting upon a sumptuous feast, was ready enough to pay for this gratification of his own vanity.
After the banquet, dancing would begin and would be kept up half the night. Then the next morning was the wedding-day. The wedding Mass in the morning, then the breakfast, more dancing, more revelling, more jollification, also kept up throughout the night. For it is only on the day following, that the bridegroom goes to fetch his bride out of her home, to conduct her to his own with all the pomp and circumstance which his wealth allows. So many carts, so many oxen, so many friends in the carts, and so many gipsies to make music while the procession slowly passes up the village street.
All that was, of course, already arranged for. The banquet for to-morrow was prepared, the ox roasted whole, the pigs and the capons stuffed. Erös Béla had provided everything, and provided most lavishly. Fifty persons would sit down to the farewell banquet, and more like two hundred to the wedding-breakfast; the village was agog with excitement, gipsies from Arad had been engaged, my lord the Count and the Countess were coming to the wedding Mass! . . . how could one feeble, weak, ignorant girl set her will against this torrent?
Elsa, conscious of her helplessness, set to with aching heart, but unwavering determination to put the past entirely behind her.
What was the good of thinking, since Fate had already arranged everything?
She went to bed directly after the Pater went away, because there was no more candle in the house, and because her mother kept calling querulously to her; and having stretched her young limbs out upon the hard paillasse, she slept quite peacefully, because she was young and healthy and did not suffer from nerves, and because sorrow had made her very weary.
And the next morning, the dawn of the first of those all-important three days, found her busy, alert, quite calm outwardly, even though her cheeks had lost something of their rosy hue, and her blue eyes had a glitter in them which suggested unshed tears.
There was a lot to do, of course: the invalid to get ready, the mother's dressing to see to, so that she should not look slovenly in her appearance, and call forth some of those stinging remarks from Béla which had the power to wound the susceptibilities of his fiancée.
Irma was captious and in a tearful humour, bemoaning the fact that she was too poor to pay for her only daughter's farewell repast.
"Whoever heard of a bridegroom paying for his fiancée's farewell?" she said. "You will despise your poor parents now, Elsa."
It was certainly an unusual thing under the circumstances; the maiden's farewell to the friends of her girlhood, to their parents and belongings, is a great event in this part of the world in connection with the wedding festivities themselves, of which it is the precursor. The parents of the bride invariably provide the entertainment, and do so in accordance with their means.
But Erös Béla was a proud man in the county: he would not hear of any festival attendant upon his marriage being less than gorgeous and dazzling before the eyes of the whole countryside. He chose to pay the piper, so that he might call the tune, and though Elsa—wounded in her own pride—did her best to protest, she was overruled by her mother, who was only too thankful to see this expensive burden taken from off her shoulders.
Kapus Irma was a proud mother to-day, for as Elsa finally stood before her, arrayed in all her finery for the coming feast, she fully justified her right to be styled "the beauty of the county."
A picture she looked from the top of her small head, with its smooth covering of fair hair, yellow as the ripening corn, to the tips of her small, arched feet, encased in the traditional boots of bright crimson leather.
Her fair hair was plaited closely from the crown of her head and tied up with strands of red, white and green ribbons, nor did the hard line of the hair drawn tightly away from the face mar the charm of its round girlishness. It gave it its own peculiar character—semi-oriental, with just a remaining soupçon of that mysterious ancestry whose traditions are lost in the far-off mountains of Thibet.
The tight-fitting black corslet spanned the girlish figure, and made it look all the more slender as it seemed to rise out of the outstanding billows of numberless starched petticoats. Necklace and earrings made of beads of solid gold—a present from Béla to his fiancée—gave a touch of barbaric splendour to this dainty apparition, whilst her bare shoulders and breast, her sturdy young arms and shapely, if toil-worn, hands made her look as luscious a morsel of fresh girlhood as ever gladdened the heart of man.
Irma surveyed her daughter from head to foot with growing satisfaction. Then, with a gesture of unwonted impulse, she took the young girl by the shoulders and, drawing her closely to her own bony chest, she imprinted two sounding kisses on the fresh, pale cheeks.
"There," she said lustily, "your mother's kiss ought to put some colour in those cheeks. Heigho, child!" she added with a sigh, as she wiped a solitary tear with the back of her hand, "I don't wonder you are pale and frightened. It is a serious step for a girl to take. I know how I felt when your father came and took me out of my mother's house! But for you it is so easy: you are leaving a poor, miserable home for the finest house this side of the Maros and a life of toil and trouble for one of ease! To-day you are still a maid, to-morrow you will be a married woman, and the day after that your husband will fetch you with six carts and forty-eight oxen and a gipsy band and all his friends to escort you to your new home, just as every married woman in the country is fetched from her parents' home the day after she has spoken her marriage vows. After that your happiness will begin: you will soon forget the wretched life you have had to lead for years, helping me to put maize into a helpless invalid's mouth."
"I shall never forget my home, dear mother," said Elsa earnestly, "and every fillér which I earned and which helped to make my poor father comfortable was a source of happiness to me."
"Hm!" grunted the mother dryly, "you have not looked these past two years as if those sources of happiness agreed with you."
"I shall look quite happy in the future, mother," retorted Elsa cheerily; "especially when I have seen you and father installed in that nice house in the Kender Road, with your garden and your cows and your pigs and a maid to wait on you."
"Yes," said Irma naïvely, "Béla promised me all that if I gave you to him: and I think that he is honest and will keep to his promise."
Then, as Elsa was silent, she continued fussily:
"There, now, I think I had better go over to the schoolroom and see that everything is going on all right. I don't altogether trust Ilona and her parsimonious ways. Such airs she gives herself, too! I must go and show her that, whatever Béla may have told her, I am the hostess at the banquet to-day, and mean to have things done as I like and not as she may choose to direct. . . . Now mind you don't allow your father to disarrange his clothes. Móritz and the others will be here by about eleven, and then you can arrange the bunda round him after they have fixed the carrying-poles to his chair. We sit down to eat at twelve o'clock, and I will come back to fetch you a quarter of an hour before that, so that you may walk down the street and enter the banqueting place in the company of your mother, as it is fitting that you should do. And don't let anyone see you before then: for that is not proper. When you fix the bunda round your father's shoulders, make all the men go out of the house before you enter the room. Do you understand?"
"Yes, mother."
"You know how particular Béla is that everything should be done in orderly and customary style, don't you?"
"Yes, mother," replied Elsa, without the slightest touch of irony; "I know how much he always talks about propriety."
"Though you are not his wife," continued Irma volubly, "and won't be until to-morrow, you must begin to-day to obey him in all things. And you must try and be civil to Klara Goldstein, and not make Béla angry by putting on grand, stiff airs with the woman."
"I will do my best, mother dear," said Elsa, with a quick short sigh.
"Good-bye, then," concluded Irma, as she finally turned toward the door, "don't crumple your petticoats when you sit down, and don't go too near the hearth, there is some grease upon it from this morning's breakfast. Don't let anyone see you and wait quietly for my return."
Having delivered herself of these admonitions, which she felt were incumbent upon her in her interesting capacity as the mother of an important bride, Irma at last sailed out of the door. Elsa—obedient to her mother and to convention, did not remain standing beneath the lintel as she would have loved to do on this beautiful summer morning, but drew back into the stuffy room, lest prying eyes should catch sight of the heroine of the day before her state entry into the banqueting hall.
With a weary little sigh she set about thinking what she could do to kill the next two hours before Móritz and Jenö and those other kind lads came to take her father away. With the door shut the room was very dark: only a small modicum of light penetrated through the solitary, tiny window. Elsa drew a chair close beside it and brought out her mending basket and work-box. But before settling down she went back into the sleeping-room to see that the invalid was not needing her.
Of course he always needed her, and more especially to-day, one of the last that she would spend under his roof. He was not tearful about her departure—his senses were too blunt now to feel the grief of separation—he only felt pleasantly excited, because he had been told that Móritz and Jenö and the others were coming over presently and that they meant to carry him in his chair, just as he was, so that he could be present at his daughter's "maiden's farewell." This had greatly elated him: he was looking forward to the rich food and the luscious wine which his rich future son-in-law was providing for his guests.
And now, when Elsa came to him, dressed in all her pretty finery, he loved to look on her, and his dulled eyes glowed with an enthusiasm which had lain atrophied in him these past two years.
He was like a child now with a pretty doll, and Elsa, delighted at the pleasure which she was giving him, turned about and around, allowed him to examine her beautiful petticoats, to look at her new red boots and to touch with his lifeless fingers the beads of solid gold which her fiancé had given her.
Suddenly, while she was thus displaying her finery for the benefit of her paralytic father, she heard the loud bang of the cottage door. Someone had entered, someone with a heavy footstep which resounded through the thin partition between the two rooms.
She thought it must be one of the young men, perhaps, with the poles for the carrying-chair; and she wondered vaguely why he had come so early.
She explained to the invalid that an unexpected visitor had come, and that she must go and see what he wanted; and then, half ashamed that someone should see her contrary to her mother's express orders and to all the proprieties, she went to the door and opened it.
The visitor had not closed the outer door when he had entered, and thus a gleam of brilliant September daylight shot straight into the narrow room; it revealed the tall figure of a man dressed in town clothes, who stood there for all the world as if he had a perfect right to do so, and who looked straight on Elsa as she appeared before him in the narrow frame of the inner door.
His face was in full light. She recognized him in the instant.
But she could not utter his name, she could not speak; her heart began to beat so fast that she felt that she must choke.
The next moment his arms were round her, he kicked the outer door to with his foot, and then he dragged her further into the room; he called her name, and all the while he was laughing—laughing with the glee of a man who feels himself to be supremely happy.