"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
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 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 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.
"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 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.
Oh! people were good! It was monstrously ungrateful to be unhappy when
one lived among these kind folk.
"Where is the bunda, mother?" she asked eagerly. "I'll see to it at
once. And if the moths are in it, why I must just patch the places up so
that they don't show. Where is the bunda, mother?"
Irma thought a moment, then she frowned, and finally shrugged her
shoulders.
"How do I know?" she said petulantly; "isn't it in your room?"
"No, mother. I haven't seen it since father wore it last."
"And that was two years ago--almost to a day. I remember it quite well.
It was quite chilly, and your father put on his bunda to go down the
street as far as the Jew's house. It was after sunset, I remember. He
came home and went to bed. The next morning he was stricken. And I put
the bunda away somewhere. Now wherever did I put it?"
She stood pondering for a moment.
"Under his paillasse?" she murmured to herself. "No. In the cupboard?
No."
"In the dower-chest, mother?" suggested Elsa, who knew of old that that
article of furniture was the receptacle for everything that hadn't a
proper place.
"Yes. Look at the bottom," said Irma placidly, "it might be there."
It was getting dark now. Through the open door and the tiny hermetically
closed windows the grey twilight peeped in shyly. The more distant
corner of the little living-room, that which embraced the hearth and the
dower-chest, was already wrapped in gloom.
Elsa bent over the worm-eaten piece of furniture: her hands plunged in
the midst of maize-husks and dirty linen, of cabbage-stalks and
sunflower-seeds, till presently they encountered something soft and
woolly.
"Here is the bunda, mother," she said.
"Ah, well! get it out now, and lay it over a chair. You can have a look
at it to-morrow--there will be plenty of time before you need begin to
dress," said Irma, who held the theory that it was never any use doing
to-day what could conveniently be put off until to-morrow.
"Mayn't I have a look at it now, mother?" asked Elsa, as she struggled
with the heavy sheepskin mantle and drew it out of the surrounding
rubbish; "the light will hold out for another half-hour at least, and
to-morrow morning I shall have such a lot to do."
"You may do what you like while the light lasts, my girl, but I won't
have you waste the candle over this stupid business. Candle is very
dear, and your father will never wear his bunda again after to-morrow."
"I won't waste the candle, mother. But Pater Bonifácius is coming in to
see me after vespers."
"What does he want to come at an hour when all sensible folk are in
bed?" queried Irma petulantly.
"He couldn't come earlier, mother dear; you know how busy he is always
on Sundays . . . benediction, then christenings, then vespers. . . . He
said he would be here about eight o'clock."
"Eight o'clock!" exclaimed the woman, "who ever heard of such a
ridiculous hour? And candles are so dear--there's only a few centimètres
of it in the house."
"I'll only light the candle, mother, when the Pater comes," said Elsa,
with imperturbable cheerfulness; "I'll just sit by the open door now and
put a stitch or two in father's bunda while the light lasts: and when I
can't see any longer I'll just sit quietly in the dark, till the Pater
comes. I shall be quite happy," she added, with a quaint little sigh, "I
have such a lot to think about."
"So have I," retorted Irma, "and I shall go and do my thinking in bed. I
shall have to be up by six o'clock in the morning, I expect, and anyhow
I hate sitting up in the dark."
She turned to go into the inner room, but Elsa--moved by a sudden
impulse--ran after her and put her arms round her mother's neck.
"Won't you kiss me, mother?" she said wistfully. "You won't do it many
more times in my old home."
"A home you have often been ashamed of, my child," the mother said
sullenly.
But she kissed the girl--if not with tenderness, at any rate with a
curious feeling of pity which she herself could not have defined.
"Good-night, my girl," she said, with more gentleness than was her wont.
"Sleep well for the last time in your old bed. I doubt if to-morrow
you'll get into it at all, and don't let the Pater stay too long and
waste the candle."
"I promise, mother," said Elsa, with a smile; "good-night!"