CHAPTER XXX
"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 schoolhouse 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.
CHAPTER XXXI
"What about me."
And time slipped by with murmurings of words that have no meaning save for one pair of ears. Andor talked fondly and foolishly, and Elsa mostly was silent. She had loved this walk over the stubble, and the plain had been in perfect peace save for the rumbling of the Maros, insistent and menacing, which had struck a chill to the girl's heart, like a presage of evil.
She tried to swallow her fears, chiding herself for feeling them, doing her best to close her ears to those rumbling, turbulent waters that seemed to threaten as they tumbled along on their way.
Gradually as they neared the village that curious feeling of impending evil became more strong: she could not help speaking of it to Andor, but he only laughed in that delightfully happy – almost defiantly happy – way of his, and for a moment or two she was satisfied.
But when at about half a kilomètre from home she caught sight of Klara Goldstein walking away from the village straight toward her and Andor, it seemed as if her fears had suddenly assumed a more tangible shape.
Klara looked old and thin, she thought, pathetic, too, in her plain black dress – she who used to be so fond of pretty clothes. Elsa gave her a hearty greeting as soon as she was near enough to her, and extended a cordial hand. She had no cause to feel well-disposed toward the Jewess, but there was something so forlorn-looking about the girl now, and such a look of sullen despair in her dark eyes, that Elsa's gentle nature was at once ready to forgive and to cheer.
"It is a long time since I have seen you, Klara," she said pleasantly.
"No wonder," said the other girl, with a shrug of her thin shoulders, "father won't let me out of his sight."
She had nodded to Andor, but by tacit consent they had not shaken hands. Klara now put her hands on her hips, and, like a young animal let free after days of captivity, she drew in deep breaths of sweet-scented air.
"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "it is good to be out again; being a prisoner doesn't suit me, I can tell you that."
"Your dear father seems to be very severe with you, Klara," said Elsa compassionately.
"Yes! curse him!" retorted the Jewess fiercely, as a savage, cruel look flashed through her sunken eyes. "He nearly killed me when he came home from Kecskemét that time – beat me like a dog – and now."
"Poor Klara!"
"I shouldn't have minded the beating so much. Among our people, parents have the right to be severe, and it is better to take a beating from your father than to be punished by the rabbi."
"Your dear father will forgive you in time," suggested Elsa gently.
She felt miserably uncomfortable, and would have given worlds to be rid of Klara. She couldn't think why the girl had stopped to talk to her and Andor: in fact she was more than sure that Klara had come out this evening on purpose to talk to her and to Andor; for now she stood deliberately in front of them both with arms crossed in front of her and defiant eyes fixed now upon one and now upon the other. Andor too was beginning to look cross and sullen; this meeting coming on the top of that lovely walk seemed like a black shadow cast over the radiance of their happiness, and this thin, tall girl, all in black, with black hair fluttering round her pale face, seemed like a big black bird of evil presage: her skirts flapped round her knees like wings and her voice sounded cold and harsh like the croaking of a raven.
But Elsa's kindly disposition did not allow her to be too obviously unkind to the Jewess. Perhaps after all the girl meant no harm, and had only run out now like a released colt, glad to feel freedom in the air around her and the vastness lying stretched out before her to infinity beyond. Perhaps she had only sought the company of the first-comers in order to get a small measure of sympathy. But now, though Elsa's gentle words should have softened her mood, she retorted with renewed fierceness:
"Curse him! I don't want his forgiveness! and if ever he wants mine – on his deathbed – he won't get it – even if he should die in torment for want of a kind word from me."
"Klara, you mustn't say that," cried Elsa, horrified at what she considered almost blasphemy. "Your father is your father, remember – and even if he has been harsh to you."
Klara interrupted her with a loud and strident laugh.
"If he has been harsh to me!" she exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you that he thrashed me like a dog, so that I was sick for days. But I wouldn't mind that so much. Bruises mend sooner or later, but it's that abominable marriage which will make me curse him to my dying day."
"Marriage?.. what marriage?."
"With a man I had never seen in my life until it was all settled. Just a man who is so ugly and so bad-tempered and so repugnant to every girl whom he knows that nobody would have him – but just a man who wanted a wife. The rabbi at Arad knew about him and he spoke about him to father – it seems that he is quite rich – and father has given me to him and I am to be married within a fortnight. Curse them! curse them all, I say! Oh! I wish I had the pluck to run away, or to kill myself or do something – but I am such an abominable coward – and I shall loathe to live in Arad in a tiny secondhand clothes shop, with that hideous monster for a husband – pointed at by everyone as the girl with a disgraceful story to her credit and sold to a creature whom no one else would have – in order to cover up a scandal."
Elsa was silent; her heart now was full of pity for the girl, who indeed was being punished far more severely than she deserved. It was clear that Klara was terribly resentful at her fate, and there was a look of vengeful rebellion in the glance which she threw on Elsa and Andor now.
Overhead there was flapping of wings – a flight of rooks cut through the air and there were magpies in their trail.
"Three for a wedding," said Andor with a forced laugh, trying to break the spell which – much against his will – seemed to have been suddenly cast over his happy spirits.
"One for sorrow, more like," retorted Klara.
"No, no, come!" he rejoined; "you must not look at it like that. There is always some happiness to be got out of married life. You are not very happy in your old home – you will like to have one of your own – a wedding is only the prelude to better things."
"That depends on the wedding, my friend," she sneered; "this one will be a finish, not a prelude – the naughty child, well whipped, sent out of mischief's way."
"I am sorry, Klara, that you feel it so strongly," he said more kindly.
"Yes," she retorted. "I dare say, my good man, you are sorry enough for me now, but you might have thought of all that, you know, before you played me that dirty trick."
"What do you mean?" he broke in quickly.
"Just what I say," she replied, "and no more. A dirty, abominable trick, I call it, and I cannot even show you up before the village – I could not even speak of you to the police officers. Oh, yes!" she continued more and more vehemently, as a flood of wrath and of resentment and a burning desire for getting even with Fate seemed literally to sweep her off her mental balance and cause her to lose complete control of her tongue, "oh, yes! my fine gentleman! you can go and court Elsa now, and whisper sweet love-words in her ears – you two turtle-doves are the edification of the entire village now – and presently you will get married and live happy ever afterwards. But what I want to ask you, my friend," she added, and she took a step or two nearer to him, until her hot and angry breath struck him in the face and he was forced to draw himself back, away from that seething cauldron of resentment and of vengeance which was raging before him now, "what I want to ask you is have you ever thought of me?"
"Thought of you, Klara?" he said quietly, even as he felt, more than saw, that Elsa too had drawn back a little – a step or two further away from Klara, but a step or two also further away from him. "Thought of you?" he reiterated, seeing that Klara did not reply immediately, and that just for one brief moment – it was a mere flash – a look of irresolution had crept into her eyes, "why should I be thinking about you?"
"Why, indeed?" she said with a wrathful sneer. "What hurt had I done to you, Andor, that is what I want to know. I was always friendly to you. I had never done you any wrong – nor did I do Elsa any wrong – any wrong, I mean, that mattered," she continued, talking more loudly and more volubly because Andor was making desperate efforts to stop and interrupt her. "Béla would only have run after another woman if I had turned my back on him. And then when you asked me to leave him alone, I promised, didn't I? What you asked me to do I promised… And I meant to keep my promise to you, and you knew it.. and yet you rounded on me like that.."
"Silence, Klara," he cried at the top of his voice as he shook the girl roughly by the shoulder.
But she paid no heed to him – she was determined to be heard, determined to have her say. All the bitterness in her had been bottled up for weeks. She meant to meet Andor face to face before she was packed off as the submissive wife of a hated husband – the naughty child, whipped and sent out of the way – she meant to throw all the pent-up bitterness within her, straight into his face – and meant to do it when Elsa was nigh. For days and days she had watched for an opportunity; but her father had kept her a prisoner in the house, besides which she had no great desire to affront the sneering looks of village gossips. But this evening was her opportunity. For this she had waited, and now she meant to take it, and no power on earth, force or violence would prevent her from pouring out the full phial of her venomous wrath.
"I will not be silent," she shrieked, "I will not! You did round on me like a cur – you sneak – you double-faced devil.."
"Will you be silent!" he hissed through his teeth, his face deadly pale now with a passion of wrath at least as fierce as hers.
But now Elsa's quiet voice interposed between these two tempestuous souls.
"No!" she said firmly, "Klara shall not be silent, Andor. Let go her arm and let her speak. I want to hear what she has to say."
"She is trying to come between you and me, Elsa," said Andor, who was trying to keep his violent rage in check. "She tried to come between you and Béla, and chose an ugly method to get at what she wanted. She hates you.. why I don't know, but she does hate you, and she always tries to do you harm. Don't listen to her, I tell you. Why! just look at her now!.. the girl is half mad."
"Mad?" broke in Klara, as with a jerky movement of her shoulders she disengaged herself from Andor's rough grasp. "I dare say I am mad. And so would you be," she added, turning suddenly to Elsa, "so would you be, if all in one night you were to lose everything you cared for in the world – your freedom – the consideration of your friends – the man who some day would have made you a good husband – everything, everything – and all because of that sneaking, double-faced coward."
"If you don't hold your tongue." cried Andor menacingly.
"You will kill me, won't you?" she sneered. "One murder more or less on your conscience won't hurt you any more, will it, my friend? You will kill me, eh? Then you'll have two of us to your reckoning by and by, me and Béla!"
"Béla!" the cry, which sounded like a protest – hot, indignant, defensive – came from Elsa. She was paler than either of the others, and her glowing, inquiring eyes were fixed upon Klara with the look of an untamed creature ready to defend and to protect the thing that it holds dear.
"Don't listen to her, Elsa," pleaded Andor in a voice rendered hoarse with an overwhelming apprehension.
He felt as if his happiness, his life, the whole of this living, breathing world were slipping away from him – as if he had suddenly woke up from a beautiful, peaceful dream and found himself on the edge of a precipice and unable, in this sudden rude awakening, to keep a foothold upon the shifting sands. There was a mist before his eyes – a mist which seemed to envelop Elsa more and more, making her slim, exquisite figure appear more dim, blurring the outline of her gold-crowned head, getting more and more dense until even her blue eyes had disappeared away from him – away – snatched from his grasp – wafted away by that mist to the distant land beyond the low-lying horizon.
Something in the agony of his appeal, something in the pathos of Elsa's defiant attitude must have struck a more gentle cord in the Jewess' heart. The tears gathered in her eyes – tears of self-pity at the misery which she seemed to be strewing all round her with a free hand.
"I don't think that I really meant to tell you, Elsa," she said more quietly, "not lately, at any rate. Oh, I dare say at first I did mean to hurt you – but a month has gone by and I was beginning to forget. People used to say of me that I was a good sort – it was the hurt that he did me that seems to have made a devil of me… And then – just now when I saw the other folk coming home in the procession and noticed that you and Andor weren't among them, I guessed that you would be walking back together arm-in-arm – and that the whole world would be smiling on you both, while I was eating out my heart in misery."
She was speaking with apparent calm now, in a dull and monotonous voice, her eyes fixed upon the distant line of the horizon, where the glowing sun had at last sunk to rest. The brilliant orange and blood-red of the sky had yielded to a colder crimson tint – it, too, was now slowly turning to grey.
Elsa stood silent, listening, and Andor no longer tried to force Klara to silence. What was the good? Fate had spoken through her lips – God's wrath, perhaps, had willed it so. For the first time in all these weeks he realized that perhaps he had committed a deadly sin, and that he had had no right to reckon on happiness coming to him, because of it. He stood there, dazed, letting the Jewess have her way. What did it matter how much more she said? Perhaps, on the whole, it was best that Elsa should learn the whole truth now.
And Klara continued to speak in listless, apathetic tones, letting her tongue run on as if she had lost control over what she said, and as if a higher Fate was forcing her to speak against her will.
"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, "that some kind of devil did get into my bones then. I wandered out into the stubble, and I saw you together coming from the distance. The sunlight was full upon you, and long before you saw me I saw your faces quite distinctly. There was so much joy, so much happiness in you both, that I seemed to see it shining out of your eyes. And I was so broken and so wretched that I couldn't bear to see Andor so happy with the girl who rightly belonged to Béla – the wretched man whom he himself had sent to his death."
"Whom he himself had sent to his death?" broke in Elsa quietly. "What do you mean, Klara?"
"I mean that it was young Count Feri who was to have come to see me that night. Father being away, he wanted to come and have a little chat and a bit of supper with me. There was no harm in that, was there? He didn't care to be seen walking in at the front door – as there's always such a lot of gossip in this village – so he asked me for the back-door key, and I gave it to him."