"You will wait for me?"
But now it is all over, the final bar of the csárdás has been played,
the last measure trodden. From the railway station far away the sharp
clang of a bell has announced the doleful fact that in half an hour the
train will start for Arad, thence to Brassó, where the recruits will be
enrolled, ticketed, docketed like so many heads of cattle--mostly
unwilling--made to do service for their country.
In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that
has been left unsaid, so many kisses to exchange, so many promises,
protestations, oaths.
The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd
like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and
wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms,
over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands
will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of
smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.
The lads themselves--excited after the dance, and not quite as
clear-headed as they were before that last cask of Hungarian wine was
tapped in Ignácz Goldstein's cellar--feel the intoxication of the
departure now, the quick good-byes, the women's tears. A latent spirit
of adventure smothers their sorrow at leaving home.
The gipsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong; the crowd
breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and fathers with their sons
whisper in the dark corners of the barn. The father who did his service
thirty years ago gives sundry good advice--no rebellion, quiet
obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly
over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to
get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the
two besetting temptations that assail the Magyar peasant--let the
darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother's sake.
But the lad only listens with half an ear, his dark eyes roam around the
barn in search of the sweetheart; he wants one more protestation of love
from her lips, one final oath of fidelity.
Andor has neither father to admonish him, nor mother to pray over him;
the rich uncle Lakatos Pál, with whom he has lived hitherto, does not
care enough about him to hang weeping round his neck.
And Elsa has given her father and mother the slip, and joined Andor
outside the barn.
Her blue eyes--tired after fifteen hours of pleasure--blink in the glare
of the brilliant sun. Andor puts his arm round her waist and she,
closing her aching eyes, allows him to lead her away.
And now they are wandering down the great dusty high road, beneath the
sparse shade of the stunted acacias that border it. They feel neither
heat, nor dust, and say but little as they walk. From behind them,
muffled by louder sounds, come the sweet, sad strains of the Magyar
love-song, "Csak egy kis lány van a világon."
"There is but one girl in all the world,
And she is my own white dove.
Oh! How great must God's love be for me!
That He thought of giving you to me."
"Elsa, you will wait for me?" asked Andor, with deep, passionate anxiety
at last.
"I will wait for you, Andor," replied the girl simply, "if the good God
will give me the strength."
"The strength, Elsa, will be in yourself," he urged, "if only you love
me as I love you."
"Three years is such a long time!" she sighed.
"I will count the weeks that separate us, Elsa--the days--the hours----"
"I, too, will be counting them."
"When I come back I will at once talk with Pali bácsi--he is getting
tired of managing his property--I know that at times lately he has felt
that he needed a rest, and that he means to ask me to see to everything
for him. He will give me that nice little house on the Fekete Road, and
the mill to look after. We can get married at once, Elsa--when I come
back."
He talked on somewhat ramblingly, at times incoherently. It was easy to
see that he was trying to cheat sorrow, to appear cheerful and hopeful,
because he saw that Elsa was quite ready to give way to tears. It was so
hard to walk out of fairyland just when she had entered it, and found it
more beautiful than anything else in life. The paths looked so smooth
and so inviting, and fairy forms beckoned to her from afar; it all would
have been so easy, if only the good God had willed it so. She thought of
the many sins which--in her innocent life--she had committed, and for
which Pater Bonifácius had given her absolution; perhaps if she had been
better--been more affectionate with her mother, more forbearing with her
father, the good God would have allowed her to have this happiness in
full which now appeared so shadowy.
She fell to wishing that Andor had not been quite so fine and quite so
strong, that his chest had been narrower, or his eyesight less keen.
Womanlike, she felt that she would have loved him just as much and more,
if he were less vigorous, less powerful; and in that case the wicked
government would not want him; he could stay at home and help Pali bácsi
to look after his lands and his mills, and she could marry him before
the spring.
Then the pressure of his arm round her waist recalled her to herself;
she turned and met his glowing, compelling eyes, she felt that wonderful
vitality in him which made him what he was, strong in body and strong in
soul; his love was strong because his body was strong, as was his soul,
his spirit and his limbs, and she no longer wished him to be weak and
delicate, for then it would no longer be Andor--the Andor whom she
loved.
The clang of the distant bell chased away Elsa's last hovering dreams.
Andor did not hear it; he was pressing the girl closer and closer to
him, unmindful of his surroundings, unmindful that he was on the high
road, and that frequently ox-carts went by laden with people, and that
passers-by were hurrying now toward the railway station.
True that no one took any notice of this young man and maid; everyone
was either too much absorbed in the business of the morning, or too much
accustomed to these final scenes of farewell and tenderness ere the lads
went off for their three years' service, to throw more than a cursory
glance on these two.
"I love you, Elsa, my dove, my rose," Andor reiterated over and over
again; "you will wait for my return, will you not?"
"I will wait, Andor," replied the girl through her sobs.
"The thought of you will lighten my nights, and bring sunshine to my
dreary days. Every morning and every evening when I say my prayers, I
shall ask my guardian angel to fly over to yours, and to tell him to
whisper in your ear that I love you beyond all else on earth."
"We must part now, Andor," she said earnestly, "the second bell has gone
long ago."
"Not yet, Elsa, not yet," he pleaded; "just walk as far as that next
acacia tree. There no one will see us, and I want one more kiss before I
go."
She never thought to resist him, since her own heart was at one with his
wish, and he was going away so soon and for so long. So they walked as
far as the next acacia tree, and there he took her in his arms and
kissed her on the cheeks, the eyes, the lips.
"God alone knows, Elsa," he said, and now his own voice was choked with
sobs, "what it means to me to leave you. You are the one woman in the
world for me, and I will thank the good God on my knees every day of my
life for the priceless blessing of your love."
After that they walked back hand in hand. They had wandered far, and in
a quarter of an hour the train would be starting. It meant a week in
prison in Arad for any recruit to miss the train, and Andor did mean to
be brave and straight, and to avoid prison during the three years.
The gipsy musicians had carried their instruments over to the railway
station; here they had ensconced themselves in full view of the train
and were playing one after the other the favourite songs of those who
were going away.
When Andor and Elsa reached the station the crowd in and around it was
dense, noisy and full of animation and colour. A large batch of recruits
who had come by the same train from more distant villages had alighted
at Marosfalva and joined in the bustle and the singing. They had got
over the pang of departure from home half an hour or an hour ago; they
had already left the weeping mothers and sweethearts behind, so now they
set to with a will in true Hungarian fashion to drown regrets and stifle
unmanly tears by singing their favourite songs at the top of their rough
voices, and ogling those girls of Marosfalva who happened to be
unattached.
The captain in command, with his lieutenant, was pacing up and down the
station platform. He now gave a command to a couple of sergeants, and
the entraining began. Helter-skelter now, for it was no use losing a
good seat whilst indulging in a final kiss or tear. There was a general
stampede for the carriages and trucks; the recruits on ahead, behind
them the trail of women, the mothers with their dark handkerchiefs tied
round their heads, the girls with pale, tear-stained faces, their
petticoats of many colours swinging round their shapely hips as they
run, the fathers, the brothers.
Here comes Pater Bonifácius, who has finished saying his mass just in
time to see the last of his lads. He has tucked his soutane well up
under his sash, and he is running across the platform, his rubicund,
kindly face streaming with excitement.
"Pater! Pater! Here!"
A score of voices cry to him from different carriages, and he hurries
on, grasping each rough, hot hand as it is extended out to him.
"Bless you, my children," he cries, and the large, red cotton
handkerchief wanders surreptitiously from his nose to his eyes. "Bless
you and keep you."
"Be good lads," he admonishes earnestly, "remember your confession and
the holy sacraments! No drinking!"
"Oh, Pater!" comes in protesting accents all around him.
"Well! not more than is good for you. Abstinence on Fridays--a regular
confession and holy communion and holy mass on Sundays will help to keep
you straight before the good God."
There's the last bell! Clang! clang! In two minutes comes the horn, and
then we are off. The gipsies are playing the saddest of sad songs, it
seems as if one's heartstrings were being wrenched out of one's body.
"_There is but one girl in all the world!_"
For each lad only one girl!--and she is there at the foot of the
carriage-steps, a corner of her ribbon or handkerchief or cotton
petticoat stuffed into her mouth, to keep her from bursting into sobs.
The mothers now are dry-eyed and silent. They look with dull, unseeing
gaze on this railway train, the engine, the carriages, which will take
their lads away from them. Many have climbed up on the steps of the
carriages, hanging on to the handrails, so as to be near the lads as
long as possible. Their position is a perilous one, the sergeants as
well as the railway officials have to take hold of them by the waist and
to drag them forcibly down to the ground before they will give way.
It is the mothers who are the most obstinate. They cling to the
handrails, to the steps, even to the wheels--there will be a fearful
accident if they are not driven off by force. And they will yield only
to force; guards and porters take hold of them by the waist and drag
them away from their perilous positions.
They fight with stolid obstinacy; they will hang on to the train--they
are the mothers, you see!--and yet from where they are they cannot
always see their sons, herded in with forty or fifty other lads in a
truck, some standing, some squatting on the ground, or on the provision
baskets. But if you cannot see your son, it is always something to be on
the step of the train which is about to take him away.
The lads are all singing now at the top of their voices, but down below
on the platforms there is but little noise; the mothers do not speak,
because they are fighting for places on the steps of the
railway-carriages, where the boys are; they press their lips tightly
together, and when a guard or a porter comes to drag them away they just
hit out with their elbows--stolidly, silently.
The fathers and the other older men stand about in groups, leaning on
their sticks, talking in whispers, recounting former experiences of
entraining, or recruiting, of those abominable three years; and the
young girls--the sweethearts, the sisters, the friends--dare not speak
for fear they should break down and help to unman the lads.
Andor, by dint of fighting and obstinacy, has kept his place in the door
of one of the carriages; he sits on the floor, with his feet down on the
step below, and refuses to quit his position for anyone. Several lads
from the rear have tried to throw him out or to drag him in, but Andor
is mightily strong--you cannot move him if he be not so minded.
Elsa, sitting on the step lower down, is resting her elbow on his knee.
There is no thought of hiding their love for one another; let the whole
village know it, or the whole countryside, they do not care; they are
not going to deprive themselves of these last few minutes--these
heaven-born seconds, whilst their hands can still meet, their eyes can
speak the words which their lips no longer dare frame.
"I love you!"
"You will wait for me?"
In those few words lies all the consolation for the present, all the
hope of the future. With these words engraved upon heart and memory they
can afford to look more serenely upon these blank and dreary three
years.
It was as well to have spoken them; as well to have actually put into
words what they had already known in their hearts long ago. Now they can
afford to wait, and Andor will do it with confidence, he is a man and he
is free. He viewed the future as a master views his slave; the future is
his to do with what he likes, to mould, to shape in accordance with his
will.
The land which must one day be his, and Elsa his already! Andor almost
fell to wishing that the train would start quickly--so many seconds
would have been lived of those three intervening years.
Elsa tries to look as full of hope as he does; she is only a woman, and
the future is not hers to make at will. She is not the conqueror, the
lord and king of her own destiny; there are so many difficulties in the
path of her life which she would like to forget at this moment, so as
not to embitter the happiness which has come to her; there is her
shiftless mother and vagabond father, there is the pressure of poverty
and filial duty--it is easy for Andor--he is a man!
"You will wait for me, Elsa?" Andor asks for the twentieth time, and for
the twentieth time her lips murmur an assent, even though her heart is
heavy with foreboding.
There goes the horn!
"Elsa, my love, one more kiss," cries Andor, as he presses her closely,
ever more closely to his heart. "God bless you, my rose! You _will_ wait
for me?"
The engine gives a shrill whistle. All the men now--realizing the
danger--drag their women-folk away from the slowly-revolving wheels. The
gipsy musicians strike up the first spirited bars of the Rákóczy March,
as with much puffing and ponderous creakings and groanings the
heavily-laden train with its human freight steams away from the little
station.
"My son! my son!"
"Benkó! my son!"
"János!"
"Endre!"
A few heartrending cries as each revolution of the wheels takes the lads
a little further away from their homes.
"Elsa, you will wait for me?" comes as a final, appealing cry from
Andor.
He stands in the door of the carriage, which he holds wide open, and
through a mist of tears which he no longer tries to suppress he sees
Elsa standing there, quite still--a small image of beauty and of sorrow.
The sun glints upon her hair, it shines and sparkles like living gold;
her hands are clasped tightly together, and with her full, many-hued
petticoats round her slim waist and tiny red-shod feet she looks like a
flower.
The crowd below moves alongside of the train--for the first minute or so
they all keep up with it, close to the carriage at the door of which can
still be seen the head of son or brother or sweetheart. But now the
engine puts on more speed, the wheels revolve more quickly--some of the
crowd fall away, unable to run so fast.
Only the mothers try to keep up--the old women, some of them
bare-footed, stolid, looking straight before them--hardly looking at the
train, just running . . . alongside the train first of all, then they
must needs fall back--but still they run along the metals, even though
the train moves away so quickly now that soon even a mother could not
distinguish her son's head, like a black pin-point leaning out of the
carriage window.
So they run:--one or two women run thus for over a kilomètre, they run
long after the train has disappeared from view.
But Elsa stood quite still. She did not try to run after the train.
Through the noise of the puffing engine, the final cries of farewell,
through all the noise and the bustle, Andor's cry rose above all, his
final appeal to her to be true:
"Elsa! you will wait for me?"