"If you loved me."
Elsa stood for a moment quite still there in the dark, with the silence of the night and all its sweet sounds encompassing her, and the scent of withered flowers and slowly-dying leaves mounting to her quivering nostrils.
What did it all mean? What did life mean? And what was the meaning of God? She, the ignorant, unsophisticated peasant girl, knew nothing save what Pater Bonifácius had taught her, and that was little enough—though the little was hard enough to learn.
Resignation to God's will; obedience to parents first and to husband afterwards; renunciation of all that made the days appear like a continual holiday and filled the nights with exquisite dreams!
But if life only meant that, only meant duty and obedience and resignation, then why had God made such a beautiful world, why had He made the sky and the birds and the flowers, the nodding plumes of maize and the tiny, fleecy clouds which people the firmament at sunset?
Was it worth while to deck this world in such array if the eyes of men were always to be filled with tears, and their backs bent to their ever-recurring tasks?
A heavy sigh escaped from the girl's overburdened heart: the riddle of the universe was too hard an one for her simple mind to solve. Perhaps it was best after all not to think of these things which she was too ignorant to understand. She looked at the door of the tavern through which Béla had gone. He had left it wide open, and she caught a glimpse of him now as he sat at one of the tables, and leaning his elbow on it, rested his chin in his hand.
Then, with another little sigh, she was just turning to go when the sound of her name spoken in a whisper and quite close to her sent her pulses quivering and made her heart beat furiously.
"Elsa! Wait a moment!"
"Is that you, Andor?" she whispered.
"Yes. I came up just now and heard your voice and Béla's. I waited on the off-chance of getting a word with you."
"I mustn't stop, Andor. Mother will be wondering."
"No, she won't," he retorted with undisguised bitterness. "The mother who sent you on this abominable and humiliating errand won't worry much after you."
"No one seems to worry much about me, do they, Andor?" she said, a little wistfully.
He drew a little closer to her, so close that he could feel her shoulder under the shawl quivering against his arm. Her many petticoats brushed about his shins, and he could hear her quick, warm breath as it came and went. He bent his head quite close to her, as he had done that day, five years ago, in the mazes of the csárdás, and now—as then—his lips almost touched her soft young neck.
"Then why should you worry about them, Elsa?" he whispered slowly in her ear. "Why shouldn't you let them all be?"
"Let them all be?" she said. "But everyone will be wondering if I don't go back—at least for supper."
"I don't mean about the dance and the supper, Elsa," he continued, still speaking in a whisper and striving to subdue the hoarseness in his voice which was engendered by the passion which burned in his veins, "I don't only mean to-night. I mean . . . for good." . . .
"For good?" she repeated slowly.
"Let me take you away, Elsa," he entreated, "away from here. Leave all these rough, indifferent and selfish folk. Come out with me to Australia, and let all these people be."
At first, of course, she didn't understand him; but gradually his meaning became clear and she gave one long, horrified gasp.
"Andor! How can you?"
"It has been borne upon me, Elsa, these hours past, that I am a coward and a villain to let you go on with this miserable life. Nay! it's worse than that, for your future life with that bully, that brute, will be far more wretched than you have any idea now. He doesn't care for you, Elsa—not really—not as I care for you, not as you—the sweetest, gentlest, purest woman in the world—should be cared for and cherished. He doesn't love you, Elsa, he doesn't even really want you—not as I want you—I, who would give my life, every drop of my blood, to have you for myself alone!"
Gradually, as he spoke, his arms had clasped round her, his passionate whispers came in short gasps to her ear. Gently now she disengaged herself.
"But I am tokened to Béla, Andor," she said gently. "To-morrow is my wedding day. I have made my confession. Pater Bonifácius has prepared me for Holy Communion. My word is pledged to Béla."
"He doesn't love you, Elsa, and he is not your husband yet. Your pledged word does not bind you before God. To-day you are still free. You are free until you have sworn before the altar of God. Elsa! Béla doesn't want you, he doesn't love you. And I love you and want you with my whole heart and soul."
"Don't speak like that, Andor, don't," she almost pleaded. "You must know how wrong it is for you to speak and for me to listen."
"But I must speak, Elsa," he urged, "and you have got to listen. We could get away now, Elsa, to-night, by the nine-twenty train. Over at the barn no one would know that you had gone until it got too late to run after you. Never mind about your clothes. I have plenty of money in my pocket, and to-morrow when we get to Budapesth we can get what you want. By the next day we should be in Fiume, and then we would embark on the first ship that is outward bound. I know just how to manage, Elsa. You would have nothing to do, nothing to think of, but just give yourself over into my keeping. You are a free woman, Elsa, bound to no one, and the first opportunity we had we would get married. Out there in Australia I can get plenty of work and good pay: we shouldn't be rich, Elsa—not as rich as you would be if you married Erös Béla, but by God I swear that we would be happy, for every minute of my life would be devoted to your happiness."
All the while that he spoke she had made persistent efforts to disengage herself from his grasp. She felt that she must get away from him, away from his insinuating voice, from the ardour of those whispered words which seemed to burn into her very soul. The very night seemed to be in league with him, the darkness and the silence and all those soft sounds of gently-murmuring river and calls of birds and beasts, and the fragrance of dying flowers which numbed the senses and obliterated the thought of God, of duty and of parents.
"No, no, Andor," she murmured feebly, "you have no right to speak like that. I am tokened to Béla. I have sworn that I would be his wife. My hand was in his and the Pater blessed us; and it was after Holy Communion and when Christ Himself was in my heart! And there is mother too and father, the house which Béla promised them, the oxen and the pigs, a maid to look after father. Mother would curse me if I cheated her of all that now."
"When we are settled in Australia," he pleaded earnestly, "we will write to your parents and send them money to come out and join us."
"Father is paralysed. How could he come? And mother would curse me. And a mother's curse, Andor, is registered by God."
"Elsa, if you loved me you would leave father and mother and come with me."
"Then perhaps I do not love you, Andor," she said slowly, "for I could not bear my mother's curse, I could not break the pledge which I swore after Holy Communion! I could not commit so great a sin, Andor, not even for your sake, for if I did remorse would break my heart, and all your love for me would not compensate me for the sin."
And before he could say another word, before his arms could once more close round her or his trembling hands clutch at her fluttering petticoats, she was gone—vanished out of his grasp and into the darkness, and only the patter of her little feet broke the silence of the night.