"It is true."
By the time that Andor turned the corner of the house into the street,
he found that the news of his arrival had already spread through the
village like wildfire. Klara Goldstein's ready tongue had been at work
this past hour; she had quickly disseminated the news that the wanderer
had come home. She did not say that the malice and love of mischief in
her had caused her to say nothing to Andor about Elsa's coming wedding.
She merely told the first neighbour whom she came across that Lakatos
Andor had come back, just as she, for one, had always declared that he
would.
Andor's friends had assembled in the street in a trice; here was too
glorious an opportunity to shout and to sing and to make merry, to be
lightly missed. And Andor had always been popular before. He was doubly
so now that he had come back from America or wherever he may have been,
and had made a fortune there; he shook one hundred and fifty hands
before he could walk as far as the presbytery. The gypsies who had just
arrived by train from Arad were not allowed to proceed straight to the
schoolroom. They were made to pause in the great open place before the
church, made to unpack their instruments then and there, and to strike
up the Rákóczy March without more ado, in honour of the finest son of
Marosfalva, who had been thought dead by some, and had returned safe and
sound to his native corner of the earth.
It was with much difficulty that at last Andor succeeded in effecting
his escape and running away from the series of ovations which greeted
him when and wherever he was recognized. The women embraced him without
further ado, the men worried him to tell them some of his adventures
then and there. Above all, everyone wanted to hear how very much more
wretched, uncomfortable and God-forsaken the rest of the wide, wide
world was in comparison with Hungary in general and the village of
Marosfalva in particular.
The heartfelt, if noisy, greetings of his old friends had the effect of
soothing Andor's aching heart. The sight of his native village, the
scent of the air, the dust of the road acted as a slight compensation
for the heavy load of sorrow which otherwise would hopelessly have
weighed him down.
With a final wave of his hat he disappeared from the enraptured gaze of
his friends into the cool quietude of the presbytery garden. He stood
still for a moment behind a huge clump of tall sunflowers and gaudy
dahlias to recover his breath and rearrange his coat, which had been
mishandled quite a good deal by his friends in the excess of their joy.
From the other side of the low gate came the buzz of animated talk, his
own name oft-repeated, cries of surprise and of pleasure, when the news
reached some late-comers, and through it all the soft, pathetic murmur
of the gipsies' fiddles; they had lapsed from the inspiriting strains of
the Rákóczy March to one of the dreamy Magyar love-songs which suited
their own languid Oriental temperament far better than the martial
music.
But here, in the small presbytery garden, the world seemed to have
slipped back an hundred years or more. Perfect peace! the drowsing of
flies and wasps, the call of thrushes, the crackling of tiny twigs in
the branches of the old acacia tree in the corner! Only the flies and
the birds and the flowers seemed to live, and the air was heavy with the
pungent odour of the sunflowers.
Andor drew a long breath. He seemed suddenly to wake from a long, long
dream. It was just over five years ago that he had stood one morning
just like this in this little garden; the late roses had not then ceased
to bloom. It was the day before he had to leave Marosfalva in order to
become a soldier, and he had come after Mass to say a private good-bye
to the kind priest.
Now it seemed as if those five years were just one long dream--the
soldiering, the voyage across the sea, the two years in a strange,
strange land, all culminating in that awful cataclysm which had for ever
robbed him of happiness.
It seemed as if it _could_ not all be true, as if Elsa was even now
waiting for him to go out for a walk under the acacia trees as she had
done on that morning five years ago. Even now he pulled the bell as he
had done then, and now--as then--Pater Bonifácius himself came to the
door.
His old housekeeper had already brought the news to the presbytery of
Andor's home-coming, and the old Pater was overjoyed at seeing the
lad--now become so strong and so manly. He took Andor to his heart,
chiefly because he would not have the lad see the tears which had so
quickly come to his eyes.
"It is true then, Pater," said Andor, when he had followed the old man
into the little parlour all littered with papers and books. "It is true,
or you would not have cried when first you embraced me."
"What is true, my son?" asked the Pater.
"That Elsa is to marry Erös Béla to-morrow?"
"Yes, my son, that is true," said the priest simply.
And thus Andor knew that, at any rate, the hideous present was not a
dream.