"The waters of the Maros flow sluggishly."
But even the bridegroom's unconventional and reprehensible conduct had
not the power to damp for long the spirits of the guests.
By the time the soup had been eaten and the glasses filled with wine,
the noise in the schoolroom had already become deafening, and no person
of moderate vocal calibre could have heard himself speak. The time had
come for everyone to talk at the top of his or her voice, for no one to
listen, and for laughter--irresponsible, immoderate laughter--to ring
from end to end of the room.
The gipsies were scraping their fiddles, blowing their clarionets and
banging their czimbalom with all the vigour of which they were capable.
They, at any rate, were determined to be heard above the din. The
leader, with his violin under his chin, had already begun his round of
the two huge tables, pausing for awhile behind every chair--just long
enough to play into the ear of every single guest his or her favourite
song.
For thus custom demands it.
There are hundreds and hundreds of Hungarian folk-songs, and to a
stranger's ear no doubt these have a great similarity among themselves,
but to a Hungarian there is a world of difference in each: for to him it
is the words that have a meaning. The songs are, for the most part,
love-songs, and all are written in that quaint, symbolic style, full of
poetic imagery, which is peculiar to the Magyar language.
When we remember that in the terrible revolution of '48, when these same
Hungarian peasant lads who composed the bulk of Kossuth's followers
fought against the Austrian army, and subsequently against the combined
armies of Russia and of Austria, when we remember that throughout that
terrible campaign they were always accompanied by their gipsy bands, we
begin to realize how great a part national music plays in the national
spirit of Hungary. The sweet, sad folk-songs rang in the fighting lads'
ears when they fell in their hundreds before the superior arms and
numbers of their powerful neighbours, they inspired them and urged them,
they helped them to win while they could, and to yield only when
overwhelming numbers finally crushed their powers of resistance. Gipsy
musicians fell beside the young soldiers, playing to them until the last
the songs that spoke to them of their village, their sweethearts and
their home. And the sweet, sad strains rang in the ears of the lads when
they closed their eyes in death.
And now when Andor--face to face with the first great sorrow of his
life--felt as if his heart must break under it, he loved to hear the
gipsy musician softly caressing the strings of his violin as he played
close to his ear the sweetest, saddest melody among all the sweet, sad
melodies in the Magyar tongue. It begins thus:
"A Maros vize folyik csendesen!"
"The waters of the Maros flow sluggishly--"
and it speaks of a broken-hearted lover whose sweetheart belongs to
another. Andor had never cared for it before. He used to think it too
sad, but now he understood it: it was attuned to his mood, and the soft
sound of the instrument helped him to keep his ever-growing wrath in
check, even while he was watching Elsa's pale, tearful face.
She had made pathetic efforts to remain cheerful and not to listen to
Klara's strident voice and loud, continuous laughter. Béla had
practically confined his attentions to the Jewess, and Elsa tried not to
show how ashamed she was at being so openly neglected on this occasion.
She should have been the queen of the feast, of course; the bridegroom's
thoughts should have been only for her; everyone's eyes should have been
turned on her. Instead of which she seemed of less consequence almost
than anyone else here. If it had not been for Andor, who sat next to her
and who saw to her having something to eat and drink--it was little
enough, God knows!--she might have sat here like a wooden doll.
Something of the respect which Erös Béla demanded as his own right
encompassed her, too, already: the cordiality of the past seemed to have
vanished. She was already something of a lady: "_ten's asszony_"
(honoured madam), she would be styled by and by. And this foreknowledge,
which she was gradually imbibing while everybody round her made merry,
caused her almost as much sadness as Béla's indifference towards her. It
seemed as if all brightness was destined to go out of her life after
to-day, and it was with tear-filled eyes that she looked up now and
again from her plate and gazed round upon the festive scene before her.
The whitewashed schoolroom, where on ordinary working days brown and
grimy little faces were wont to pore laboriously over slates and books,
presented now a very lively appearance.
Two huge trestle tables ran down its length, and thirty guests were
seated on benches each side of these. The girls in all their finery
wanted a deal of sitting-room, with their starched petticoats standing
out over their hips, and their bare arms and necks shone with the
vigorous application of yellow soap: and the smooth hair, fair and dark,
had an additional lustre after the stiff brushing which it had to
endure. The matrons wore darker skirts and black silk handkerchiefs tied
round their heads, ending in a bow under the chin: but everywhere
ribbons fluttered and beads jingled, and the men had spurs to their high
boots which gave a pleasing clinking when they clapped their heels
together. Overhead, hung to the ceiling, were festoons of bright pink
paper roses and still brighter green glazed calico leaves; the tables
were spread with linen cloths, and literally threatened to break down
under the weight of pewter dishes filled with delicacies of every sort
and kind--home-killed meat and home-made sausages, home-made bread and
home-grown wine. The Magyar peasant is an epicure. His rich soil and
excellent climate give him the best of food, and though, when times are
hard, he will live readily enough on maize bread and pumpkin, he knows
how to enjoy a good spread when rich friends provide it for him.
And Erös Béla had done the feast in style. Nothing was stinted. You just
had to sit down and eat your fill of roast veal or roast pork, of
fattened capons from his farmyard or of fogas[4] from the river, or of
the scores of dishes of all kinds of good things which stood temptingly
about.
[Footnote 4: A kind of pike peculiar to Hungarian rivers.]
No wonder that spirits were now running high. The gipsy band was quite
splendid, and presently Barna Móritz, the second son of the mayor--a
smart young man who would go far--was on his feet proposing the health
of the bride.
Well! Of course! One mugful was not enough to do honour to such a toast,
they had to be refilled and then filled up again: wine was so plentiful
and so good--not heady, but just a delicious white wine which tasted of
nothing but the sweet-scented grape. Soon the bridegroom rose to
respond, whereupon Fehér Jenö, whose father rented the mill from my lord
the Count, loudly desired that everyone should drink the health of
happy, lucky Erös Béla, and then, of course, the latter had to respond
again.
Elsa felt more and more every moment a stranger among them all.
Fortunately the innate kindliness of these children of the soil
prevented any chaffing remarks being made about the silence of the
bride. It is always an understood thing that brides are shy and nervous,
and though there had been known cases in Marosfalva where a bride had
been very lively and talkative at her "maiden's farewell" it was, on the
whole, considered more seemly to preserve a semi-tearful attitude,
seeing that a girl on the eve of her marriage is saying good-bye to her
parents and to her home.
The bridegroom's disgraceful conduct was tacitly ignored: it could not
be resented or even commented on without quarrelling with Erös Béla, and
that no one was prepared to do. You could not eat a man's salt and drink
his wine and then knock him on the head, which it seemed more than one
lad--who had fancied himself in love with beautiful Kapus Elsa--was
sorely inclined to do.
Kapus Benkó, in his invalid's chair, sat some distance away from his
daughter, the other side of Klara Goldstein. Elsa could not even
exchange glances with him or see whether he had everything he wanted.
Thus she seemed cut off from everyone she cared for; only Andor was near
her, and of Andor she must not even think. She tried not to meet his
gaze, tried hard not to feel a thrill of pleasure every time that she
became actively conscious of his presence beside her.
And yet it was good to feel that he was there, she had a sense that she
was being protected, that things could not go very wrong while he was
near.