"Then, as now, may God protect you."
The bunda was very heavy. Elsa dragged it over her knee, and sat down on
a low stool in the open doorway. She had pulled the table a little
closer, and on it were her scissors, needles and cotton, as well as the
box of matches and the candle which she would be allowed to light
presently when Pater Bonifácius came.
The moth certainly had caused many ravages in the sheepskin cloak--there
were tiny holes everywhere, and the fur when you touched it came out in
handfuls. But as the fur would be turned inwards, that wouldn't matter
so much. The bunda was quite wearable: there was just a bad tear in the
leather close to the pocket, which might show and which must be mended.
Elsa threaded her needle, and began to hum her favourite song under her
breath:
"Nincsen annyi tenger csillag az égen
Mint a hányszor vagy eszembe te nékem."
"There are not so many myriads of stars in the sky as
the number of times that my thoughts fly to thee!"
She was determined not to think any more of the past. In a few hours now
that chapter in her life would be closed, and it was useless and wicked
to be always thinking of the "might-have-been." Rather did she set
herself resolutely to think of the future, of that part of it, at any
rate, which was bright. There would be her mother installed in that
comfortable house on the Kender Road, and with a nice bit of land and
garden round in which to grow vegetables and keep some poultry. There
would be her three cows and the pigs which Béla was giving her, and
which he would graze on his own land.
Above all, there would be the comfortable bed and armchair for the sick
man, and the little maid to wait upon him.
There was so much, so much to be thankful for! And since God chose to
take Andor away, what else was there to live for, save to see her mother
and father contented?
The light was going fast. Elsa had made a splendid job of that one
pocket. The other, too, wanted a stitch. It was very badly torn--if only
the feeble light would hold out another ten minutes . . . that hole,
too, would be securely mended.
With the splendid disregard of youth for its most precious gift, Elsa
strained her eyes to thread her needle once more.
She tackled the second pocket of the shabby bunda. There was a long tear
at the side, as if the wearer's hand had missed the actual pocket and
been thrust carelessly or roughly through the leather.
Elsa put her hand through the hole, too, to see the extent of the
mischief. Yes! that was it, her father must more than once have missed
the pocket and put his hand into the hole, making it bigger and bigger.
Why! there was a whole lot of rubbish deep down inside the lining. Elsa
drew out an empty tobacco-pouch, a bit of string, a length of tinder,
and from the very bottom, where it lay in a crinkled mass, a ball of
crumpled paper.
This she smoothed out, holding it over her knee. It was a letter--one
which must have been delivered on the very day when her father last wore
the bunda. The envelope had not been broken: old Kapus hadn't had time
to read his letter, the last which he had received before living death
encompassed him. The tears gathered in Elsa's eyes at thought of her
father handling this very letter with shaking yet still living hands:
now they were incapable even of gripping this tiny piece of paper.
But then--two years ago, her mother said it was, almost to a day when
last he wore the bunda--then he had received the letter from the postman
and evidently thrust it into his pocket, meaning to read it at some more
convenient time.
The peasants of that part of the world have never quite lost their
distrust of railways, of telegrams, and even of letters--they are
half-afraid of them all, afraid with that vague, unreasoning fear which
animals have for things they see yet cannot understand.
Elsa handled this unopened letter with something of that same fear. She
did not think at first of looking at the superscription. Who could have
been writing to her father two years ago? He had no rich friends who
could afford to spend money on note-paper and stamps. There was no news
in the great outer world which someone could have wished to impart to
him. The light indeed was very dim before Elsa, sitting here with the
old bunda on her knee, thought of looking more closely at the envelope.
She bent down and out toward the light, trying to decipher the writing.
The letter was addressed to her.
Oh! it was quite clear!
"Tekintetes Kapus Elsa kisasszonynak."
It was quite, quite clearly written. The letter was addressed to her.
The postman had brought it here two years ago: her father had taken it
from him and thrust it into the pocket of his bunda, meaning to give it
presently to his daughter.
But that evening perhaps he forgot it altogether: he had been drinking
rather heavily of late. And the next day he was stricken down with
paralysis, his tongue refused him service, and he no longer could tell
his daughter--as no doubt he wanted to do--that a letter had come for
her and that it was in the pocket of his bunda.
And the bunda was thrust away into the dower-chest with the husks of
maize and the cabbage-stalks, and it had never been taken out until
to-night--the eve of Elsa's wedding-day.
She tore open the envelope now with fingers that trembled slightly. The
light was very dim, and where the glorious sunset had been such a little
while ago there was only the dull grey canopy of an overcast sky. But
Elsa could just make out the writing: already her eye had wandered to
the signature, "your ever-devoted Andor." The message seemed to come to
her as from the grave, for she thought that these were probably Andor's
last words to her, penned just before he died in that awful hospital in
Bosnia.
"My sweet dove!" she read. "This is to tell you that I
am well: although it has been a close fight between
life and death for me. But I did so want to live, my
sweetheart, for I have you to look forward to in life.
I have been at death's door, and I believe that the
doctor here, before he went away one evening, signed
the paper to say that I was dead. But that same night I
took a turn for the better, and it was wonderful how
soon I was up again. I'll tell you all about it some
day, my love, some day when I come to claim your
promise that you would wait for me. Because, dear
heart, while I have been ill I have been thinking very
seriously. I have not a silver florin to bless myself
with: how can I come and dare to ask you to be my wife?
Your father and mother would kick me out of their
house, they would forbid me to see you; they would part
you from me, my dear, beautiful angel, and I should
feel that it was just. I--a good-for-nothing, penniless
lout, daring to approach the queen of beauty, the most
exquisite girl on God's earth. I have thought it all
over, dear heart, and all will be well if you will be
true to me--if you will wait for me another two years.
Oh! I do not ask you to do it, I am not worthy of your
love. Who am I, that you should keep yourself for
me?--but I will pray to God night and day that He may
not take away your love from me. I am going to America,
dear heart, with an English gentleman who has been very
kind to me. He was the English Consul at Cettinje, and
when there were so many of us--Hungarian lads--lying
sick of that awful cholera in the hospital at
Slovnitza, his wife, a sweet, kind lady, used to come
and visit us and cheer us up. She was very ugly and had
big teeth and no waist, but she was an angel of
goodness. She took some interest in me, and once when I
was still very weak and ill I told her about you, about
our love and what little hope I had of ever winning
you, seeing that I was penniless. She was greatly
interested, and when I was finally allowed to leave the
hospital, she told me to come and see her husband, the
English Consul. Well! dear heart, this kind gentleman
is sending me out to a farm which he possesses in a
place called Australia--I think that it is somewhere in
America, but I am not sure. When I get there I shall
receive more wage in one week than our alföld labourers
get in three months, and it will all be good money, of
which I can save every fillér, because my food and
housing will be given to me free, and the kind English
lady--may the Virgin protect her, despite her large
teeth and flat chest--gave me a whole lot of clothes to
take with me. So every fillér which I earn I can save,
and I reckon that in two years I shall have saved two
thousand florins" (about £160) "and then I shall come
home. If I still find you free, my dove--which I pray
to God I may do--we can get married at once. Then we'll
rent the Lepke farm from Pali bácsi, as I shall have
plenty of money for the necessary security, and if we
cannot make that pay and become rich folk within three
years, then I am not the man whom I believe myself to
be.
"But, my darling love, do not think for a moment that I
want to bind you to me against your will. God only
knows how deeply I love you; during the last three
years the thought of you has been the sunshine of my
days, the light of my nights. If, when you have
received and pondered over this letter, you send me a
reply to say that you still love me, that you will be
true to me and will wait for my return, then you will
change my world into a paradise. No work will be too
hard, no difficulty too great to surmount, if it will
help me the sooner to come back to you. But if, on the
other hand, you tell me or leave me to guess that I am
a fool for thinking that you would waste your beauty
and your sweetness on waiting for a good-for-nothing
scamp like me, why, then, I shall understand. I shall
go out to America--or wherever that place called
Australia may be--but maybe I shall never come back.
But I should never curse you, dear heart, I should
never cease to love you: I should quite understand.
"I have got one of the nurses at the hospital to write
this letter for me, to put my rough words into good
Hungarian and to write down my thoughts in a good,
clear hand. That is how it comes to be so well written.
You know I was never much of a hand with a pen and
paper, but I do love you, my dove! My God, how I love
you.
"The nurse says that Australia is not in America at
all--that it is a different place altogether. Well! I
do not care where it is. I am going there because there
I can earn one hundred florins a month, and save enough
in two years to marry you and keep you in comfort. But
I shall not see you, my dove, before I go: if I saw you
again, if I saw Hungary again, our village, our alföld,
Heaven help me! but I don't think I would have the
heart to go away again.
"Farewell, dear heart, I go away full of hope. We go
off next week in a big, big ship from here. I go full
of sadness, but if you do want me to come back just
write me a little letter with the one word 'Yes,' and
address it as above. Then will my sadness be changed to
heavenly joy and hope. But if it is to be 'No,' then
tell me so quite truly, and I will understand.
"Then, as now, may God protect you, my dove, my heart,
"Your ever-devoted
"ANDOR."
The letter fell out of Elsa's hands on to her knee. She took no heed of
it, she was staring out into the immensity far away, into the
fast-gathering gloom. Two years ago! Two years of sorrow and vain
regrets which never need have been. One word from her father or from the
postman, the feel of crisp paper in her father's bunda when it was put
away two years ago, and the whole course of her life would have been
changed.
The village street behind her was silent now, even the footsteps of
belated folk hurrying to their homes sent up no echo from the soft,
sandy ground. And before her the fast-gathering night was slowly
wrapping the plain in its peace-giving shroud. Inside the cottage all
was still: mother and father lay either asleep or awake thinking of the
morrow.
A great, heavy sob shook the young girl's vigorous young frame. It
seemed too wantonly cruel, this decree of Fate which had withheld from
her the light of her life. How easy it would have been to wait! How
swiftly these two years would have flown past. Her heart would have kept
young--waiting for Andor and for happiness, whereas now it was numb and
unsentient, save for a feeling of obedience and of filial duty, of pity
for her mother and father, and of resignation to her future state.
Indeed Fate was being wantonly cruel to her to the last in thus putting
before her eyes a picture of the might-have-been just when it was too
late. In a few hours from now the great vow would be spoken, the
irrevocable knot tied which bound her to another man. Her troth was
already plighted, her confession made to Pater Bonifácius--in a few
hours from now she would be Béla's wife, and if Andor did come back now,
she must be as nothing to him, he as a mere distant friend.
But probably he never would come back. He received no reply to his fond
letter of farewell, not one word from her to cheer him on his way. No
doubt by now he had made a home for himself in that far distant land.
Another woman--a stranger--revelled in the sunshine of his love, while
Elsa, whose whole life had been wrapped up in him, was left desolate.
For a moment a wild spirit of revolt rose in her. Was it too late, after
all? Was any moment in life too late to snatch at fleeing happiness? Why
shouldn't she run away to-night--now?--find that unknown country, that
unknown spot where Andor was? Surely God would give her strength! God
could not be so unjust and so cruel as men and Fate had been!
Pater Bonifácius, turning from the street round the angle of the
cottage, found her in this mood, squatting on the low stool, her elbows
on her knees, her face buried in her hands. He came up to her quite
gently, for though his was a simple soul it was full of tenderness and
of compassion for the children of these plains whom God had committed
into his charge.
"Elsa, my girl," he asked softly, "what is it?"