"Kyrie eleison."
But the daily routine of everyday life went on at Marosfalva just as it
had done before the double tragedy of St. Michael's E'en had darkened
the pages of its simple history.
The maize had all been gathered in--ploughing had begun--my lord and his
guests were shooting in the stubble. The first torrential rain had
fallen and the waters of the Maros had begun to swell.
Gossip about Erös Béla's terrible end and Leopold Hirsch's suicide had
not by any means been exhausted, but it was supplemented now by talk of
Lakatos Pál's wealth. The old man had been ailing for some time. His
nephew Andor's return had certainly cheered him up for a while, but soon
after that he seemed to collapse very suddenly in health, like old folk
do in this part of the world--stricken down by one or other of the
several diseases which are engendered by the violent extremes of heat
and cold--diseases of the liver for the most part--the beginning of a
slowly-oncoming end.
He had always been reputed to be a miser, and those who were in the know
now averred that Andor had found several thousand florins tucked away in
old bits of sacking and hidden under his uncle's straw paillasse. Pali
bácsi was also possessed of considerable property--some land, a farm and
the mill; there was no doubt now that Andor would be a very rich man one
of these days.
Mothers with marriageable daughters sighed nevertheless in vain. Andor
was not for any of them. Andor had eyes only for Elsa. He had become an
important man in the village now that his uncle was so ill and he was
left to administer the old man's property; and he took his duties very
earnestly in the intervals of courting Kapus Elsa.
As to this no one had cause to make any objection. They had loved one
another and been true to one another for five years; it was clearly the
will of the good God that they should come together at last.
And now October was drawing to its close--to-day was the fourth Sunday
in the month and one of the numerous feasts of our Blessed Lady, one on
which solemn benediction is appointed to be sung in the early afternoon,
and benediction is followed by a procession to the shrine of the Virgin
which stands on the roadside on the way to Saborsó some two kilomètres
distant from Marosfalva. It is a great festival and one to which the
peasantry of the countryside look forward with great glee, for they love
the procession and have a great faith in the efficacy of prayer said at
the shrine.
Fortunately the day turned out to be one of the most glorious sunshiny
days which mid-autumn can yield, and the little church in the afternoon
was crowded in every corner. The older women--their heads covered with
dark-coloured handkerchiefs, occupied the left side of the aisle, the
men crowded in on the right and at the back under the organ loft. Round
about the chancel rail and steps the bevy of girls in gayest Sunday
dresses looked like a garden of giant animated flowers. When the sexton
went the round with the collecting-bag tied to the end of a long pole,
he had the greatest difficulty in making his way through the maze of
many-hued petticoats which, as the girls knelt, stood all round them
like huge bells, with their slim shoulders and small heads above looking
for all the world like the handles.
The children were all placed in the chancel to right and left of the
altar, solemn and well-behaved, with one eye on the schoolmistress and
the other on the Pater.
After the service the order of procession was formed, inside the church:
the children in the forefront with banner carried by the head of the
school--a sturdy maiden on the fringe of her teens, very proud to carry
the Blessed Virgin's banner. She squared her shoulders well, for the
banner was heavy, and the line of her young hips--well accentuated by
the numerous petticoats which a proud mother had tied round her
waist--gave a certain dignity to her carriage and natural grace to her
movements.
Behind the children came the young girls--those of a marriageable age
whom a pious custom dedicates most specially to the service of Our Lady.
Their banner was of blue silk, and most of them were dressed in blue,
whilst blue ribbons fluttered round their heads as they walked.
Then came Pater Bonifácius under a velvet-covered dais which was carried
by four village lads. He wore his vestments and carried a holy relic in
his hands; the choir-boys swinging their metal censers were in front of
him in well-worn red cassocks and surplices beautifully ironed and
starched for the occasion.
In the rear the crowd rapidly closed in; the younger men had a banner to
themselves, and there were the young matrons, the mothers, the fathers,
the old and the lonely.
The sexton threw open the doors, and slowly the little procession filed
out. Outside a brilliant sunshine struck full on the whitewashed walls
of the little school-house opposite. It was so dazzling that it made
everybody blink as they stepped out from the semi-dark church into this
magnificent flood of light.
In the street round the church a pathetic group awaited the appearance
of the procession, those that were too old to walk two kilomètres to the
shrine, those who were lame and those who were sick. Simply and with
uninquiring minds, they knelt or stood in the roadway, content to watch
the banners as they swung gaily to the rhythmic movements of the
bearers, content to see the holy relics in the Pater's hand, content to
feel that subtle wave of religious sentiment pass over them which made
them at peace with their little world and brought the existence of God
nearer to their comprehension.
Slowly the procession wound its way down the village street. Pater
Bonifácius had intoned the opening orisons of the Litany:
"Kyrie eleison!"
And men and women chanted the response in that quaintly harsh tone which
the Magyar language assumes when it is sung. The brilliant sunlight
played on the smooth hair of the girls, the golds, the browns and the
blacks, and threw sharp glints on the fluttering ribbons of many colours
which a light autumn breeze was causing to dance gaily and restlessly.
The whole village was hushed save for the Litany, the clinking of the
metal chains as the choir-boys swung the censers and the frou-frou of
hundreds of starched petticoats--superposed, brushing one against the
other with a ceaseless movement which produced a riot of brilliant
colouring.
Soon the main road was reached, and now the vast immensity of the plain
lay in front and all round--all the more vast and immense now it seemed,
since not even the nodding plumes of maize or tall, stately sunflowers
veiled the mystery of that low-lying horizon far away.
Nothing around now, save that group of willow trees by the bank of the
turbulent Maros--nothing except the stubble--stumps of maize and pumpkin
and hemp, and rigid lines of broken-down stems of sunflowers, with
drooping, dead leaves, and brown life still oozing out of the torn
stems.
And in the immensity, the sweet, many-toned sounds of summer--the call
of birds, the quiver of growing things, the trembling of ripening
corn--has yielded to the sad tune of autumn--a tune made up of the
hushed sighs of dying nature, as she sinks slowly and peacefully into
her coming winter's sleep. The swallows and the storks have gone away
long ago. They know that in this land of excessive heat and winter
rigours, frost and snow tread hard on the heels of a warm, autumnal day.
Only a flight of rooks breaks the even line of the sky; their cawing
alone makes at times a weird accompaniment to the chanting of the
Litany. And the Maros--no longer sluggish--now sends her swollen waters
with a dull, rumbling sound westward to the arms of the mother stream.
Silence and emptiness!
Nothing except the sky, with its unending panorama of ever-varying
clouds, and its infinite, boundless, mysterious horizon, which enfolds
the world of the plains in a limitless embrace. Nothing except the
stubble and the sky, and far, very far away, a lonely cottage, with its
surrounding group of low, mop-head acacias, and the gaunt, straight arm
of a well pointing upwards to the sun.
And through the silent, vast immensity the little procession of village
folk, with banners flying and quaint, harsh voices singing the Litany,
winds its way along the flat, sandy road, like a brightly-coloured
ribbon thrown there by a giant hand, and made to flutter and to move by
a giant's breath.
Presently the shrine came in sight: just a dark speck at first in the
midst of the great loneliness, then more and more distinct--there on the
roadside--all by itself without a tree near it--lonely in the bosom of
the plain.
The procession came to a halt in front of it, and two hundred pairs of
eyes, brimful with simple faith and simple trust, gazed in reverence on
the naïve wax figure behind the grating, within its throne of rough
stone and whitewash. It was dressed in blue calico spangled with tinsel,
and had a crown on its head made of gilt paper and a veil of coarse
tarlatan. Two china pots containing artificial flowers were placed on
either side of the little image.
It was all very crude, very rough, very naïve, but a fervent,
unsophisticated imagination had endowed it with a beauty all the more
real, perhaps, because it only existed in the hearts of a handful of
ignorant children of the soil. It made Something seem real to them which
otherwise might have been difficult to grasp; and now when Pater
Bonifácius in his gentle, cracked voice intoned the invocations of the
Litany, the "Salus infirmorum" and "Refugium peccatorum" and, above all,
the "Consolatrix afflictorum" the response "Ora pro nobis" came from two
hundred trusting hearts--praying, if not for themselves, then for those
who were dear to them: the infirm, the sinner, the afflicted.
And among those two hundred hearts none felt the need for prayer more
than Andor and Elsa. They had left affliction behind them, they stood
upon the threshold of a new life--where happiness alone beckoned to
them, and sorrow and parting lay vanquished behind the gates of the
past. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this happiness which beckoned
so near now, there was a tinge of sadness in their hearts, that sadness
which always comes with joy once extreme youth has gone by . . . the
sadness which hovers over finite things, the sense of future which so
quickly becomes the past.
From where Andor stood, holding the dais above Pater Bonifácius' head,
he could see Elsa's smooth, fair head among the crowd of other girls.
She had tied her hair in at the nape of the neck with a bit of blue
ribbon, leaving it to fall lower down in two thick plaits well below her
waist. She looked like a huge blue gentian kissed by the sun, for her
top petticoat was of blue cotton, and her golden head seemed like the
sweet-scented stamen.
Andor thought that he could hear her voice above that of everyone else,
and when Pater Bonifácius intoned the "Regina angelorum" he thought that
indeed the heavenly Queen had no fairer subject up there than Elsa.
When the little procession was once more ready to return to the village,
the bearers of the dais were relieved by four other lads, and Andor
found the means, during the slight hubbub which occurred while the
procession was being formed, of working his way close to Elsa's side.
It was not an unusual thing for young men and girls who had much to say
to one another to fall away from the procession on its way home, and to
wander back arm in arm through the maize-fields or over the stubble,
even as their shadows lengthened out upon the ground.
Andor's hand had caught hold of Elsa's elbow, and with insistent
pressure he kept her out of the group of her companions. Gradually the
procession was formed, and slowly it began to move, the banners
fluttered once more in the breeze, once more the monotonous chant broke
the silence of the plain.
But Elsa and Andor had remained behind close beside the shrine. She had
yielded to his insistence, knowing what it was that he meant to say to
her while they walked together toward the sunset. She knew what he
wanted to say, and what he expected her to promise, and he knew that at
last she was ready to listen, and that she would no longer hold her
heart in check, but let it flow over with all the love which it
contained, and that she was ready at last to hold up to him that cup of
happiness for which he craved.
One or two couples had also remained behind, but they had already
wandered off toward the bank of the Maros. Elsa had knelt down before
the crude image of the "Consoler of the afflicted;" her rosary was wound
round her fingers, she prayed in her simple soul, fervently,
unquestioningly, for happiness and for peace.
Then, when the little procession in the distance became wrapped in the
golden haze which hung over the plain, and the chanting of the Litany
came but as a murmur on the wings of the autumn breeze, she took Andor's
arm, and together they walked slowly back toward home.
The peace which rests over the plain enveloped them both; from the sky
above the last vestige of cloud had been driven away by the breeze, and
far away on that distant horizon where lay the land of the unknown the
sun was slowly sinking to rest.
Like a huge, drooping rose it seemed--its rays like petals falling away
from it one by one. Mute yet quivering was the plain around, pulsating
with life, yet silent in its autumnal agony. From far away came the
sweet sound of the evening Angelus rung from the village
church--distant and soft, like a sound from heaven or like an echo of
some beautiful dream.
And these two were alone with the sunset and with the stubble--alone in
this vastness which is so like the sea--alone--two tiny, moving black
specks with a background of radiance and a golden haze to envelop them.
In this immensity it seemed so much more easy to speak of love--for love
could fill the plain and find room for its own immensity in this
vastness which knows no trammels. To Andor and Elsa it seemed as if at
last the plain had revealed its secret to them, had lifted for them that
veil of mystery which wraps her up all round where earth and sky meet in
the golden distance beyond.
They knew suddenly just what lay behind the veil, they knew if it were
lifted what it was that they would see--the land of gold was the land of
love, where men and women wandered hand in hand, where sorrow was a
dwarf and grief a cripple, since love--the Almighty King of the unknown
land--had wounded them and vanquished them both.
And they, too, now wandered toward that land, even though it still
seemed very far away. To the accompaniment of the Angelus bell they
wandered, with the distant echo of the chanted Litany still ringing in
their ear. The plain encompassed her children with her all-embracing
peace, and she gave them this one supreme moment of happiness to-day,
while the setting sun clothed the horizon with gold.