"I am here to see that you be kind to her."
Pater Bonifácius came in at about four o'clock to remind all these
children of their duty to God.
To-day was the vigil of St. Michael and All Angels, there would be
vespers at half-past four, and the bride and bridegroom should certainly
find the time to go to church for half an hour and thank the good God
for all His gifts.
The company soon made ready to go after that. Everyone there intended to
go to church, and in the meanwhile the gipsies would have the remnants
of the feast, after which they would instal themselves in the big barn
and dancing could begin by about six.
Bride and bridegroom stood side by side, close to the door, as the
guests filed out both singly and in pairs, and as they did so they shook
each one by the hand, wished them good health after the repast, and
begged their company for the dancing presently and the wedding feast on
the morrow. Once more the invalid father, hoisted up on the shoulders of
the same sturdy lads, led the procession out of the school-house, then
followed all the guests, helter-skelter, young men and maids, old men
and matrons.
The wide petticoats got in the way, the men were over bold in squeezing
the girls' waists in the general scramble, there was a deal of laughing
and plenty of shouting as hot, perspiring hands were held out one by one
to Elsa and to Béla, and voices, hoarse with merriment, proffered the
traditional "_Egésségire!_" (your very good health!), and then, like so
many birds let out of a cage, streamed out of the narrow door into the
sunlit street.
Andor had acquitted himself of the same duty, and Elsa's cool little
hand had rested for a few seconds longer than was necessary in his own
brown one. She had murmured the necessary words of invitation for the
ceremonies on the morrow, and he was still standing in the doorway when
Klara Goldstein was about to take her leave.
Klara had stayed very ostentatiously to the last, just as if she were
the most intimate friend or an actual member of the family; she had
stood beside Béla during the general exodus, her small, dark head,
crowned with the gorgeous picture hat, held a little on one side, her
two gloved hands resting upon the handle of her parasol, her foot in its
dainty shoe impatiently tapping the ground.
As the crowd passed by, scrambling in their excitement, starched
petticoats crumpled, many a white shirt stained with wine, hot,
perspiring and panting, a contemptuous smile lingered round her thin
lips, and from time to time she made a remark to Béla--always in German,
so that the village folk could not understand. But Andor, who had
learned more than his native Hungarian during his wanderings abroad,
heard these sneering remarks, and hated the girl for speaking them, and
Béla for the loud laugh with which he greeted each sally.
Now she held out her small, thin hand to Elsa.
"Your good health, my dear Elsa!" she said indifferently.
After an obvious moment of hesitation, Elsa put her toil-worn, shapely
little hand into the gloved one for an instant and quickly withdrew it
again. There was a second or two of silence. Klara did not move: she was
obviously waiting for the invitation which had been extended to everyone
else.
A little nervously she began toying with her parasol.
"The glass is going up; you will have fine weather for your wedding
to-morrow," she said more pointedly.
"I hope so," said Elsa softly.
Another awkward pause. Andor, who stood in the doorway watching the
little scene, saw that Béla was digging his teeth into his underlip, and
that his one eye had a sinister gleam in it as it wandered from one girl
to the other.
"May the devil! . . ." began Klara roughly, whose temper quickly got the
better of her airs and graces. "What kind of flea has bitten your bride,
Béla, I should like to know?"
"Flea?" said Béla with an oath, which he did not even attempt to
suppress. "Flea? No kind of a flea, I hope. . . . Look here, my dove,"
he added, turning to Elsa suddenly, "you seem to be forgetting your
duties--have you gone to sleep these last five minutes?--or can't you
see that Klara is waiting."
"I can see that Klara is waiting," replied Elsa calmly, "but I don't
know what she can be waiting for."
She was as white as the linen of her shift, and little beads of sweat
stood out at the roots of her hair. Andor, whose love for her made him
clear-sighted and keen, saw the look of obstinacy which had crept round
her mouth--the sudden obstinacy of the meek, which nothing can move. He
alone could see what this sudden obstinacy meant to her, whose natural
instincts were those of duty and of obedience. She suffered terribly at
this moment, both mentally and physically; the moisture of her forehead
showed that she suffered.
But she had nerved herself up for this ordeal: the crushed worm was
turning on the cruel foot that had trodden it for so long. She did not
mean to give way, even though she had fully weighed in the balance all
that she would have to pay in the future for this one moment of
rebellion.
Parents first and husbands afterwards are masterful tyrants in this part
of the world; the woman's place is to obey; the Oriental conception of
man's supremacy still reigns paramount, especially in the country. Elsa
knew all this, and was ready for the chastisement--either moral, mental
or even physical--which would surely overtake her, if not to-day, then
certainly after to-morrow.
"You don't know what Klara is waiting for?" asked Béla, with an evil
sneer; "why, my dove, you must be dreaming. Klara won't come to our
church, of course, but she would like to come to the ball presently, and
to-morrow to our wedding feast."
A second or perhaps less went by while Elsa passed her tongue over her
parched lips; then she said slowly:
"Since Klara does not go to our church, Béla, I don't think that she can
possibly want to come to our wedding feast."
Béla swore a loud and angry oath, and Andor, who was closely watching
each player in this moving little drama, saw that Klara's olive skin had
taken on a greenish hue, and that her gloved hands fastened almost
convulsively over the handle of her parasol.
"But I tell you . . ." began Béla, who was now livid with rage, and
turned with a menacing gesture upon his fiancée, "I tell you that . . ."
Already Andor had interposed; he, too, was pale and menacing, but he did
not raise his voice nor did he swear, he only asked very quietly:
"What will you tell your fiancée, man? Come! What is it that you want
to tell her on the eve of her wedding day?"
"What's that to you?" retorted Béla.
In this land where tempers run high, and blood courses hotly through the
veins, a quarrel swiftly begun like this more often than not ends in
tragedy. On Andor's face, in his menacing eyes, was writ the
determination to kill if need be; in that of Béla there was the vicious
snarl of an infuriated dog. Klara Goldstein was far too shrewd and
prudent to allow her name to be mixed up in this kind of quarrel. Her
reputation in the village was not an altogether unblemished one; by a
scandal such as would result from a fight between these two men and for
such a cause she might hopelessly jeopardize her chances in life, even
with her own people.
Her own common sense, too, of which she had a goodly share, told her at
the same time that the game was not worth the candle: the satisfaction
of being asked to the most important wedding in the village, and there
queening it with her fashionable clothes and with the bridegroom's
undivided attention over a lot of stupid village folk, would not really
compensate her for the scandal that was evidently brewing in the minds
of Andor and of Elsa.
So she preferred for the nonce to play the part of outraged innocence, a
part which she further emphasized by the display of easy-going
kindliness. She placed one of her daintily-gloved hands on Béla's arm,
she threw him a look of understanding and of indulgence, she cast a
provoking glance on Andor and one of good-humoured contempt on Elsa,
then she said lightly:
"Never mind, Béla! I can see that our little Elsa is a trifle nervy
to-day; she does me more honour than I deserve by resenting your great
kindness to me. But bless you, my good Béla! I don't mind. I am used to
jealousies: the petty ones of my own sex are quite endurable; it is when
you men are jealous that we poor women often have to suffer. Leopold
Hirsch, who is courting me, you know, is so madly jealous at times. He
scarce can bear anyone to look at me. As if I could help not being
plain, eh?"
Then she turned with a smile to Elsa.
"I don't think, my dear," she said dryly, "that you are treating Béla
quite fairly. He won't let you suffer from his jealousies; why should
you annoy him with yours?"
Another glance through her long, dark lashes on both the men, and Klara
Goldstein turned to go. But before she could take a step toward the
door, Béla's masterful hand was on her wrist.
"What are you doing?" he asked roughly.
"Going, my good Béla," she replied airily, "going. What else can I do? I
am not wanted here now, or later at your feast; but there are plenty in
this village and around it who will make me welcome, and their company
will be more pleasing to me, I assure you, than that of your friends. We
thought of having some tarok[5] this evening. Leopold will be with us,
and the young Count is coming. He loves a gamble, and is most amusing
when he is in the mood. So I am going where I shall be most welcome, you
see."
[Footnote 5: A game of cards--the source of much gambling in that part
of Europe.]
She tried to disengage her wrist, but he was holding her with a tight,
nervous grip.
"You are not going to do anything of the sort," he muttered hoarsely;
"she is daft, I tell you. Stay here, can't you?"
"Not I," she retorted, with a laugh. "Enough of your friends' company,
my good Béla, is as good as a feast. Look at Elsa's face! And Andor's!
He is ready to eat me, and she to freeze the marrow in my bones. So
farewell, my dear man; if you want any more of my company," she added
pointedly, "you know where to get it."
She had succeeded in freeing her wrist, and the next moment was standing
under the lintel of the door, the afternoon sun shining full upon her
clinging gown, her waving feathers and the gew-gaws which hung round her
neck. For a moment she stood still, blinking in the glare, her hands,
which trembled a little from the emotion of the past little scene,
fumbled with her parasol.
Béla turned like a snarling beast upon his fiancée.
"Ask her to stop," he cried savagely. "Ask her to stop, I tell you!"
"Keep your temper, my good Béla," said Klara over her shoulder to him,
with a laugh; "and don't trouble about me. I am used to tantrums at
home. Leo is a terror when he has a jealous fit, but it's nothing to me,
I assure you! His rage leaves me quite cold."
"But this sort of nonsense does not leave me cold," retorted Béla, who
by now was in a passion of fury; "it makes my blood boil, I tell you.
What I've said, I've said, and I'm not going to let any woman set her
will up against mine, least of all the woman who is going to be my wife.
Whether you go or stay, Klara, is your affair, but Elsa will damn well
have to ask you to stay, as I told her to do; she'll have to do as I
tell her, or . . ."
"Or what, Béla?" interposed Andor quietly.
Béla threw him a dark and sullen look, like an infuriated bull that
pauses just before it is ready to charge.
"What is it to you?" he muttered savagely.
"Only this, my friend," replied Andor, who seemed as calm as the other
was heated with passion, "only this: that I courted and loved Elsa when
she was younger and happier than she is now, and I am not going to stand
by and see her bullied and brow-beaten by anyone. Understand?"
"Take care, Béla," laughed Klara maliciously; "your future wife's old
sweetheart might win her from you yet."
"Take care of what?" shouted Béla in unbridled rage. He faced Andor, and
his one sinister eye shot a glance of deadly hatred upon him. "Let me
tell you this, my friend, Lakatos Andor. I don't know where you have
sprung from to-day, or why you have chosen to-day to do it . . . and
it's nothing to me. But understand that I don't like your presence here,
and that I did not invite you to come, and that therefore you have no
business to be here, seeing that I pay for the feast. And understand too
that I'll trouble my future wife's sweetheart to relieve her of his
presence in future, or there'll be trouble. And you may take that from
me, as my last word, my friend. Understand?"
"What an ass you are, Béla!" came as a parting shot from Klara, who had
succeeded in opening her parasol, and now stood out in the open, her
face and shoulders in shadow, looking the picture of coolness and of
good-temper.
"Andor," she added, with a pleasing smile to the young man, "you know
your way to Ignácz Goldstein's. Father and I will be pleased to see you
there at any time. The young Count will be there to-night, and we'll
have some tarok. Farewell, Béla," she continued, laughing merrily.
"Don't worry, my good man, it's not worth losing your temper about
trifles on the eve of your wedding-day. And bless your eyes! I don't
mind."
Then she swept a mock curtsy to Elsa.
"Farewell, my pretty one. Good luck to you in your new life."
She nodded and was gone. Her rippling laugh, with its harsh, ironical
ring was heard echoing down the village street.
"Call her back!" shouted Béla savagely, turning on his fiancée.
She looked him straight in that one eye which was so full of menace, and
said with meek but firm obstinacy:
"I will not."
"Call her back," he exclaimed, "you . . ."
He was almost choking with rage, and now he raised his clenched fist and
brandished it in her face.
"Call her back, or I'll . . ."
But already Andor was upon him, had seized him by collar and wrist. He
was as livid as the other man was crimson, but his eyes glowed with a
fury at least as passionate.
"And I tell you," he said, speaking almost in a whisper, very slowly and
very calmly, but with such compelling power of determination that Béla,
taken unawares, half-choked with the grip on his throat, and in agonized
pain with the rough turn on his wrist, was forced to cower before him,
"I tell you that if you dare touch her . . . Look here, my friend," he
continued, more loudly, "just now you said that you didn't know where
I'd sprung from to-day, or why I chose to-day in which to do it. Well!
Let me tell you then. God in Heaven sent me, do you see? He sent me to
be here so as to see that no harm come to Elsa through marrying a brute
like you. You have shown me the door, and I don't want to eat your salt
again and to take your hospitality, for it would choke me, I know . . .
but let me tell you this much, that if you bully Elsa . . . if you
don't make her happy . . . if you are not kind to her . . . I'll make
you regret it to your dying day."
He had gradually relaxed his hold on Béla's throat and wrist, and now
the latter was able to free himself altogether, and to readjust his
collar and the set of his coat. For a moment it almost seemed as if he
felt ashamed and repentant. But his obstinate and domineering temper
quickly got the better of this softened mood.
"You'll make me regret it, will you?" he retorted sullenly. "You think
that you will be allowed to play the guardian angel here, eh? with all
your fine talk of God in Heaven, which I am inclined to think even the
Pater would call blasphemy. I know what's at the back of your mind, my
friend, don't you make any mistake about that."
"You know what's at the back of my mind?" queried Andor, with a puzzled
frown. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Béla, with a return to his former swagger, "that you have
been saying to yourself this past half-hour: 'Oho! but Elsa is not
married yet! The vows are not yet spoken, and until they are I still
have my chance.' That's what you have been saying to yourself, eh, Mr.
Guardian Angel?"
"You d----d liar!"
"Oh! insulting me won't help you, my friend. And I am not going to let
you provoke me into a fight, and kill me perhaps, for no doubt that is
what you would like to do. I am not going to give Elsa up to you, you
need not think it; and you can't take her from me, you can't make her
break her solemn promise to me, without covering her with a disgrace
from which she would never recover. You know what happened when Bakó
Mariska broke off her marriage on the eve of her wedding-day, just
because Lajos had got drunk once or twice? Though her mother whipped
her for her obstinacy, and her father broke his stick across her
shoulders, the whole countryside turned against her. They all had to
leave the village, for no one would speak to Mariska. A scandal such as
that the ignorant peasants round about here will never forgive. Mariska
ultimately drowned herself in the Maros: when she no longer could stand
the disgrace that pursued her everywhere. When you thought that to make
a girl break off her engagement the day before her wedding was such an
easy matter, you had not thought of all that, had you, my friend?"
"And when you thought of frightening me by all that nonsensical talk,"
retorted Andor quietly, "you had not thought perhaps that there are
other lands in the world besides Hungary, and that I am not quite such
an ignorant peasant as those whom you choose to despise. But you have
been wasting your breath and your temper. I am not here to try and
persuade Elsa into doing what she would think wrong; but I am here to
see that at least you be kind to her."
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Béla, with a contemptuous snap of his fingers.
"Oh! you need not imagine that I wouldn't know how you treated her. I
would know soon enough. I tell you," he continued, with slow and
deliberate emphasis, "that what you do to her I shall know. I shall know
if you bully her, I shall know if you make her unhappy. I shall
know--and God help you in that case!--if you are not kind to her. Just
think in future when you speak a rough word to her that Lakatos Andor
will hear you and make you pay for every syllable. Think when you
browbeat her that Lakatos Andor can see you! For I _will_ see you, I
tell you, in spite of your turning me out of your house, in spite of
your fences and your walls. So just you ask her pardon now for your
roughness, kiss her little hand and take her to vespers. But take this
from me, my friend, that if you ever dare raise your hand against your
wife I'll pay you out for it, so help me God!"
He had sworn the last oath with solemn earnestness. Now he turned to
Elsa and took her cold little hand in his and kissed her trembling
finger-tips, then, without another look on the man whom he hated with
such an overwhelming and deadly hatred, he turned on his heel and fled
precipitately from the room.
Béla stood sullen and silent for a moment after he had gone. Wrath was
still heating his blood so that the veins in his forehead stood up like
cords. But he was not only wrathful, he also felt humiliated and
ashamed. He had been cowed and overmastered in the presence of Elsa. His
swagger and domineering ways had availed him nothing. Andor had
threatened him and he had not had the pluck or the presence of mind to
stand up to that meddling, interfering peasant.
Now it was too late to do anything; the thoughts of retaliation which
would come to his mind later on had not yet had the time to mature. All
that he knew was that he hated Andor and would get even with him some
day; for Elsa he felt no hatred, only a great wrath that she should have
witnessed his humiliation and that her obstinacy should have triumphed
against his will. The same pride in her and the same loveless desire was
still in him. He did not hate her, but he meant to make her suffer for
what he had just gone through. To him matrimony meant the complete
subjection of the woman to the will of her lord; for every rebellion,
for every struggle against that subjection she must be punished in
accordance with the gravity of her fault.
Elsa had caused him to be humiliated, and it was his firm resolve to
humiliate her before many hours had gone by. Already a plan was forming
in his brain; the quietude of vespers would, he thought, help him to
complete it.
Outside, the lads and maids were loudly demanding the appearance of the
bride and bridegroom: the vesper bell had long ago ceased its compelling
call. Erös Béla offered his silent fiancée his arm. She took it without
hesitation, and together they walked across the square to the church.