"I don"t mind it, mother. I am sure that it is only t.i.ttle-tattle."
"Your father in bed?" asked Irma abruptly changing the subject of conversation.
"Yes."
"And you have been busying yourself, I see," continued the mother, looking round her with obvious disapproval, "with matters that do not concern you. I suppose Bela has been persuading you that your mother is incapable of keeping her own house tidy, so you must needs teach her how to do it."
"No, mother, nothing was further from my thoughts. I had nothing to do after I had cleared and washed up, and I wanted something to do."
"If you wanted something to do you might have got out your father"s bunda" (big sheepskin cloak worn by the peasantry) "and seen if the moth has got into it or not. It is two years since he has had it on, and he will want it to-morrow."
"To-morrow?"
"Why, yes. I really must tell you because of the bunda, Janko and Moritz and Jeno and Pal have offered to carry him to the feast in his chair just as he is. We"ll put his bunda round him, and they will strap some poles to his chair, so that they can carry him more easily. They offered to do it. It was to be a surprise for you for your farewell to-morrow: but I had to tell you, because of getting the bunda out and seeing whether it is too moth-eaten to wear."
While Irma went on talking in her querulous, acid way, Elsa"s eyes had quickly filled with tears. How good people were! how thoughtful! Was it not kind of Moritz and Jeno and the others to have thought of giving her this great pleasure?
To have her poor old father near her, after all, when she was saying farewell to all her maidenhood"s friends! And what a joy it would be to him!--one that would brighten him through many days to come.
Oh! people were good! It was monstrously ungrateful to be unhappy when one lived among these kind folk.
"Where is the bunda, mother?" she asked eagerly. "I"ll see to it at once. And if the moths are in it, why I must just patch the places up so that they don"t show. Where is the bunda, mother?"
Irma thought a moment, then she frowned, and finally shrugged her shoulders.
"How do I know?" she said petulantly; "isn"t it in your room?"
"No, mother. I haven"t seen it since father wore it last."
"And that was two years ago--almost to a day. I remember it quite well.
It was quite chilly, and your father put on his bunda to go down the street as far as the Jew"s house. It was after sunset, I remember. He came home and went to bed. The next morning he was stricken. And I put the bunda away somewhere. Now wherever did I put it?"
She stood pondering for a moment.
"Under his pailla.s.se?" she murmured to herself. "No. In the cupboard?
No."
"In the dower-chest, mother?" suggested Elsa, who knew of old that that article of furniture was the receptacle for everything that hadn"t a proper place.
"Yes. Look at the bottom," said Irma placidly, "it might be there."
It was getting dark now. Through the open door and the tiny hermetically closed windows the grey twilight peeped in shyly. The more distant corner of the little living-room, that which embraced the hearth and the dower-chest, was already wrapped in gloom.
Elsa bent over the worm-eaten piece of furniture: her hands plunged in the midst of maize-husks and dirty linen of cabbage-stalks and sunflower-seeds, till presently they encountered something soft and woolly.
"Here is the bunda, mother," she said.
"Ah, well! get it out now, and lay it over a chair. You can have a look at it to-morrow--there will be plenty of time before you need begin to dress," said Irma, who held the theory that it was never any use doing to-day what could conveniently be put off until to-morrow.
"Mayn"t I have a look at it now, mother?" asked Elsa, as she struggled with the heavy sheepskin mantle and drew it out of the surrounding rubbish; "the light will hold out for another half-hour at least, and to-morrow morning I shall have such a lot to do."
"You may do what you like while the light lasts, my girl, but I won"t have you waste the candle over this stupid business. Candle is very dear, and your father will never wear his bunda again after to-morrow."
"I won"t waste the candle, mother. But Pater Bonifacius is coming in to see me after vespers."
"What does he want to come at an hour when all sensible folk are in bed?" queried Irma petulantly.
"He couldn"t come earlier, mother dear; you know how busy he is always on Sundays . . . benediction, then christenings, then vespers. . . . He said he would be here about eight o"clock."
"Eight o"clock!" exclaimed the woman, "who ever heard of such a ridiculous hour? And candles are so dear--there"s only a few centimetres of it in the house."
"I"ll only light the candle, mother, when the Pater comes," said Elsa, with imperturbable cheerfulness; "I"ll just sit by the open door now and put a st.i.tch or two in father"s bunda while the light lasts: and when I can"t see any longer I"ll just sit quietly in the dark, till the Pater comes. I shall be quite happy," she added, with a quaint little sigh, "I have such a lot to think about."
"So have I," retorted Irma, "and I shall go and do my thinking in bed. I shall have to be up by six o"clock in the morning, I expect, and anyhow I hate sitting up in the dark."
She turned to go into the inner room, but Elsa--moved by a sudden impulse--ran after her and put her arms round her mother"s neck.
"Won"t you kiss me, mother?" she said wistfully. "You won"t do it many more times in my old home."
"A home you have often been ashamed of, my child," the mother said sullenly.
But she kissed the girl--if not with tenderness, at any rate with a curious feeling of pity which she herself could not have defined.
"Good-night, my girl," she said, with more gentleness than was her wont.
"Sleep well for the last time in your old bed. I doubt if to-morrow you"ll get into it at all, and don"t let the Pater stay too long and waste the candle."
"I promise, mother," said Elsa, with a smile; "good-night!"
CHAPTER IX
"Then, as now, may G.o.d protect you."
The bunda was very heavy. Elsa dragged it over her knee, and sat down on a low stool in the open doorway. She had pulled the table a little closer, and on it were her scissors, needles and cotton, as well as the box of matches and the candle which she would be allowed to light presently when Pater Bonifacius came.
The moth certainly had caused many ravages in the sheepskin cloak--there were tiny holes everywhere, and the fur when you touched it came out in handfuls. But as the fur would be turned inwards, that wouldn"t matter so much. The bunda was quite wearable: there was just a bad tear in the leather close to the pocket, which might show and which must be mended.
Elsa threaded her needle, and began to hum her favourite song under her breath:
"Nincsen annyi tenger csillag az egen Mint a hanyszor vagy eszembe te nekem."
"There are not so many myriads of stars in the sky as the number of times that my thoughts fly to thee!"
She was determined not to think any more of the past. In a few hours now that chapter in her life would be closed, and it was useless and wicked to be always thinking of the "might-have-been." Rather did she set herself resolutely to think of the future, of that part of it, at any rate, which was bright. There would be her mother installed in that comfortable house on the Kender Road, and with a nice bit of land and garden round in which to grow vegetables and keep some poultry. There would be her three cows and the pigs which Bela was giving her, and which he would graze on his own land.
Above all, there would be the comfortable bed and armchair for the sick man, and the little maid to wait upon him.