"I shall never forget my home, dear mother," said Elsa earnestly, "and every filler which I earned and which helped to make my poor father comfortable was a source of happiness to me."
"Hm!" grunted the mother dryly, "you have not looked these past two years as if those sources of happiness agreed with you."
"I shall look quite happy in the future, mother," retorted Elsa cheerily; "especially when I have seen you and father installed in that nice house in the Kender Road, with your garden and your cows and your pigs and a maid to wait on you."
"Yes," said Irma navely, "Bela promised me all that if I gave you to him: and I think that he is honest and will keep to his promise."
Then, as Elsa was silent, she continued fussily:
"There, now, I think I had better go over to the schoolroom and see that everything is going on all right. I don"t altogether trust Ilona and her parsimonious ways. Such airs she gives herself, too! I must go and show her that, whatever Bela may have told her, I am the hostess at the banquet to-day, and mean to have things done as I like and not as she may choose to direct. . . . Now mind you don"t allow your father to disarrange his clothes. Moritz and the others will be here by about eleven, and then you can arrange the bunda round him after they have fixed the carrying-poles to his chair. We sit down to eat at twelve o"clock, and I will come back to fetch you a quarter of an hour before that, so that you may walk down the street and enter the banqueting place in the company of your mother, as it is fitting that you should do. And don"t let anyone see you before then: for that is not proper.
When you fix the bunda round your father"s shoulders, make all the men go out of the house before you enter the room. Do you understand?"
"Yes, mother."
"You know how particular Bela is that everything should be done in orderly and customary style, don"t you?"
"Yes, mother," replied Elsa, without the slightest touch of irony; "I know how much he always talks about propriety."
"Though you are not his wife," continued Irma volubly, "and won"t be until to-morrow, you must begin to-day to obey him in all things. And you must try and be civil to Klara Goldstein, and not make Bela angry by putting on grand, stiff airs with the woman."
"I will do my best, mother dear," said Elsa, with a quick short sigh.
"Good-bye, then," concluded Irma, as she finally turned toward the door, "don"t crumple your petticoats when you sit down, and don"t go too near the hearth, there is some grease upon it from this morning"s breakfast.
Don"t let anyone see you and wait quietly for my return."
Having delivered herself of these admonitions, which she felt were inc.u.mbent upon her in her interesting capacity as the mother of an important bride, Irma at last sailed out of the door. Elsa--obedient to her mother and to convention, did not remain standing beneath the lintel as she would have loved to do on this beautiful summer morning, but drew back into the stuffy room, lest prying eyes should catch sight of the heroine of the day before her state entry into the banqueting hall.
With a weary little sigh she set about thinking what she could do to kill the next two hours before Moritz and Jeno and those other kind lads came to take her father away. With the door shut the room was very dark: only a small modic.u.m of light penetrated through the solitary, tiny window. Elsa drew a chair close beside it and brought out her mending basket and work-box. But before settling down she went back into the sleeping-room to see that the invalid was not needing her.
Of course he always needed her, and more especially to-day, one of the last that she would spend under his roof. He was not tearful about her departure--his senses were too blunt now to feel the grief of separation--he only felt pleasantly excited, because he had been told that Moritz and Jeno and the others were coming over presently and that they meant to carry him in his chair, just as he was, so that he could be present at his daughter"s "maiden"s farewell." This had greatly elated him: he was looking forward to the rich food and the luscious wine which his rich future son-in-law was providing for his guests.
And now, when Elsa came to him, dressed in all her pretty finery, he loved to look on her, and his dulled eyes glowed with an enthusiasm which had lain atrophied in him these past two years.
He was like a child now with a pretty doll, and Elsa, delighted at the pleasure which she was giving him, turned about and around, allowed him to examine her beautiful petticoats, to look at her new red boots and to touch with his lifeless fingers the beads of solid gold which her fiance had given her.
Suddenly, while she was thus displaying her finery for the benefit of her paralytic father, she heard the loud bang of the cottage door.
Someone had entered, someone with a heavy footstep which resounded through the thin part.i.tion between the two rooms.
She thought it must be one of the young men, perhaps, with the poles for the carrying-chair; and she wondered vaguely why he had come so early.
She explained to the invalid that an unexpected visitor had come, and that she must go and see what he wanted; and then, half ashamed that someone should see her contrary to her mother"s express orders and to all the proprieties, she went to the door and opened it.
The visitor had not closed the outer door when he had entered, and thus a gleam of brilliant September daylight shot straight into the narrow room; it revealed the tall figure of a man dressed in town clothes, who stood there for all the world as if he had a perfect right to do so, and who looked straight on Elsa as she appeared before him in the narrow frame of the inner door.
His face was in full light. She recognized him in the instant.
But she could not utter his name, she could not speak; her heart began to beat so fast that she felt that she must choke.
The next moment his arms were round her, he kicked the outer door to with his foot, and then he dragged her further into the room; he called her name, and all the while he was laughing--laughing with the glee of a man who feels himself to be supremely happy.
CHAPTER XII
"It is too late."
And now there he was, as of old, sitting, as was his wont, on the corner of the table, his two strong hands firmly grasping Elsa"s wrists. She held him a little at arm"s length, frightened still at the suddenness of his apparition here--on this day--the day of her farewell feast.
When first he drew her to him, she had breathed his name--softly panting with excitement, "Andor!"
The blood had rushed to her cheeks, and then flowed back to her heart, leaving her pale as a lily. She did not look at him any more after that first glance, but held her head bent, and her eyes fixed to the ground.
Slowly the tears trickled down her cheeks one by one.
But he did not take his glowing, laughing eyes away from her, though he, too, was speechless after that first cry of joy:
"Elsa!"
He held her wrists and in a happy, irresponsible way was swinging her arms out and in, all the while that he was drinking in the joy of seeing her again.
Surely she was even more beautiful than she had ever been before. He did not notice that she was dressed as for a feast, he did not heed that she held her head down and that heavy tears fell from her eyes. He had caught the one swift look from her blue eyes when she first recognized him: he had seen the blush upon her cheeks then; the look and the blush had told him all that he wanted to know, for they had revealed her soul to him. Manlike, he looked no further. Happiness is such a natural thing for wretched humanity to desire, that it is so much easier to believe in it than in misery when it comes.
At last he contrived to say a few words.
"Elsa! how are you, my dove?" he said navely.
"I am quite well, thank you, Andor," she murmured through her tears.
Then she tried to draw her wrists out of his tenacious clutch.
"May I not kiss you, Elsa?" he asked, with a light, happy laugh--the laugh of a man sure of himself, and sure of the love which will yield him the kiss.
"If you like, Andor," she replied.
She could not have denied him the kiss, not just then, at any rate, not even though every time that his warm lips found her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, she felt such a pain in her heart that surely she thought that she must die of it.
After that he let her wrists go, and she went to sit on a low stool, some little distance away from him. Her cheeks were glowing now, and it was no use trying to disguise her tears. Andor saw them, of course, but he did not seem upset by them: he knew that girls were so different to men, so much more sensitive and tender: and so now he was only chiding himself for his roughness.
"I ought to have prepared you for my coming, Elsa," he said. "I am afraid it has upset you."
"No, no, Andor, it"s nothing," she protested.
"I did want to surprise you," he continued navely. "Not that I ever really doubted you, Elsa, even though you never wrote to me. I thought letters do get astray sometimes, and I was not going to let any accursed post spoil my happiness."
"No, of course not, Andor."
"You did not write to me, did you, Elsa?" he asked.