Unlike most of the young men here to-night, who wore the characteristic costume of the countryside--full, white linen shirt and trousers, broad leather belt, embossed and embroidered and high leather boots, Bela was dressed in a town suit of dark-coloured cloth, cut by a provincial tailor from Arad. He was short of stature, though broad-shouldered and firmly knit, but his face was singularly ugly, owing to the terrible misfortune which had befallen him when he lost his left eye. The scar and hollow which were now where the eye had once been gave the whole face a sinister expression, which was further accentuated by the irregular line of the eyebrows and the sneer which habitually hovered round the full, hard lips.
Bela was not good to look on; and this is a serious defect in a young man in Hungary, but he was well endowed with other attributes which made him very attractive to the girls. He had a fine and lucrative position, seeing that he was his Lordship"s bailiff, and had an excellent salary, a good house and piece of land of his own, as well as the means of adding considerably to his income, since his lordship left him to conclude many a bargain over corn and plums, and horses and pigs. Eros Bela was rich and influential. He lived in a stone-built house, which had a garden round it, and at least five rooms inside, with a separate kitchen and a separate living-room, therefore he was a very eligible young man and one greatly favoured by mothers of penniless girls; nor did the latter look askance on Bela despite the fact that he had only one eye and that never a pleasant word escaped his lips.
Even now he was looking on at the dancing with a heavy scowl upon his face. The girl near him--she with the dark, Oriental eyes and the thin, hooked nose, Klara Goldstein the Jewess--gave him a nudge with her brown, pointed elbow.
"I wouldn"t let Andor see the temper you are in, my friend," she said, with a sarcastic little laugh; "we don"t want any broken bones before the train goes off this morning."
"There will be broken bones if he does not look out," muttered the other between his teeth, as he drew a tightly clenched fist from his pocket.
"Bah! why should you care?" retorted Klara, who seemed to take an impish delight in teasing the young man, "you are not in love with Elsa, are you?"
"What is it to you?" growled Bela surlily.
"Nothing," she replied, "only that we have always been friends, you and I--eh, Bela?"
And she turned her large, l.u.s.trous eyes upon him, peering at him through her long black lashes. She was a handsome girl, of course, and she knew it--knew how to use her eyes, and make the men forget that she was only a Jewess, a thing to be played with but despised--no better than a gipsy wench, not for a Hungarian peasant to look upon as an equal, to think of as a possible mate.
Bela, whose blood was hot in him, what with the wine which he had drunk and the jealous temper which was raging in his brain, was nevertheless sober enough not to meet the languorous glances which the handsome Jewess bestowed so freely upon him.
"We are still friends--are we not, Bela?" she reiterated slowly.
"Of course--why not?" he grunted, "what has our friendship to do with Andor and Elsa?"
"Only this: that I don"t like to see a friend of mine make a fool of himself over a girl who does not care one hairpin for him."
Bela smothered a curse.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"Everyone knows that Elsa is over head and ears in love with Andor, and just won"t look at anyone else."
"Oho!" he sneered, "everyone knows that, do they? Well! you can tell that busy-body everyone from me that before the year is out Kapus Elsa will be tokened to me, and that when Andor comes back from having marched and drilled and paced the barrack-yard he will find that Kapus Elsa is Kapus no longer, but Eros, the wife of Eros Bela, the mother of his first-born. To this I have made up my mind, and when I make up my mind to anything, neither G.o.d nor the devil dares to stand in my way."
"Hush! hush! in Heaven"s name," she protested quickly, "the neighbours will hear you."
He shrugged his shoulders, and murmured something very uncomplimentary anent the ultimate destination of those neighbours.
Some of them certainly had heard what he said, for he had not been at pains to lower his voice. His riches and his position had made him something of an oracle in Marosfalva, and he held all the peasantry in such contempt that he cared little what everyone thought of him. He therefore remained indifferent and sulky now whilst many glances of good-humoured mockery were levelled upon him.
No one, of course, thought any the worse of Eros Bela for desiring the beauty of the village for himself--he was rich and could marry whom he pleased, and that he should loudly and openly proclaim his determination to possess himself of the beautiful prize was only in accordance with the impulsive, hot-headed, somewhat bombastic temperament of the Magyars themselves.
Fortunately those chiefly concerned in Eros Bela"s loudly spoken determination had heard nothing of the colloquy between him and the Jewess. The wild, loud music of the csardas, their own gyrations and excitement, shut them out entirely from their surroundings.
Their stamping, tripping, twirling feet had carried them into another world altogether; Ignacz Goldstein"s barn had become a fairy bower, they themselves were spirits living in that realm of bliss; there was no longer any impending separation, no military service, no blank and desolate three years! Andor, his arm tightly clasped round Elsa"s waist, his head bowed till his lips touched her bare shoulder, contrived to whisper magic words in her ear.
Magic words?--simple, commonplace words, spoken by myriads of men before and since into myriads of willing ears, in every tongue this earth hath ever known. But to Elsa it seemed as if the Magyar tongue had never before sounded so exquisite! To her the words were magic because they wrought a miracle in her. She had been a girl--a child ere those words were spoken. She liked Andor, she liked her father and her mother, little Emma over the way, Mari neni, who was always kind. She had loved them all, been pleased when she saw them, glad to give them an affectionate kiss.
But now, since that last csardas had begun, a strange and mysterious current had gone from Andor"s arm right through her heart; something had happened, which caused her cheeks to glow with a fire other than that produced by the heat of the dance and made her own hands tremble when they rested on Andor"s shoulder. And there was that in his look which made her eyes burn and fill with tears.
"You are beautiful, Elsa! I love you!"
She could not answer him, of course; how could she, when she felt that her throat was choked with sobs? Yet she felt so happy, so happy that never since the day of her first communion, when Pater Bonifacius had blessed her and a.s.sured her that her soul was as white as that of an angel--never since then had she known such perfect, such absolute happiness. She could not speak, she almost thought once that she was going to faint, so strange was the thrill of joy which went right through her when Andor"s lips rested for one brief, sweet moment upon her shoulder.
And now the lights are burning low, the gipsies sc.r.a.pe their fiddles with a kind of wild enthusiasm, which pervades them just as much as the dancers. Round and round in a mad twirl now, the men hold the girls with both hands by the waist, the girls put a hand on each of their partner"s shoulders; thus they spin round and round, petticoats flying, booted feet stamping the ground.
The young faces are all hot and streaming, quick breaths come in short, panting gasps from these young chests. The spectators join in the excitement, the men stamp and clap their heels to the rhythm of the dance, the women beat their hands one against the other to that same wild, syncopated measure. Old men grasp middle-aged women round the waist; smiling, self-deprecatingly they too begin to tread; Hej! "Tis not so long ago we were young too, and that wild Hungarian csardas fires the blood until it glows afresh.
Everyone moves, every body sways, it is impossible to keep quite still while that intoxicating rhythm fills the air.
Only Klara the Jewess stands by, stolid and immovable; the Magyar blood is not in her, hers is the languorous Oriental blood, the supple, sinuous movements of the Levant. She watches this baccha.n.a.lian whirligig with a sneer upon her thin, red lips. Beside her Eros Bela too is still, the scowl has darkened on his face, his one eye leers across the group of twirling dancers to that one couple close to the musicians"
platform.
In the noise that goes on around him he cannot, of course, hear the words which Andor speaks, but he sees the movements of the young man"s lips, and the blush which deepens over Elsa"s face. That one eye of his, keener than any pair of eyes, has seen the furtive kiss, quick and glowing, which grazed the girl"s bare shoulder, and noted the quiver which went right through the young, slender body and the look that shot through the quickly-veiled blue eyes.
He was only a peasant, a rough son of the soil, whose temperament was hot with pa.s.sion and whose temper had never known a curb. He had never realized until this moment how beautiful Elsa was, and how madly he loved her. For he called the jealous rage within by the sacred name of love, and love to a Magyar peasant is his whole existence, the pivot round which he frames his life, his thoughts of the present, his dreams of the future.
The soil and the woman!--they are his pa.s.sions, his desires, his religion--to own a bit of land--of Hungarian land--and the woman whom he loves. Those two possessions will satisfy him--beyond these there is nothing worth having--a plough, of course--a hut wherein to sleep--an ox or two, perhaps--a cow--a horse.
But the soil and the woman on whom he has fixed his love--we"ll call it love . . . he certainly calls it so--those two possessions make the Hungarian peasant more contented than any king or millionaire of Western civilization.
Eros Bela had the land. His father left him a dozen kataszter (land measure about two and three-quarter acres) or so; Elsa was the woman whom he loved, and the only question was who--he or Andor--would be strong enough to gain the object of his desire.
CHAPTER III
"You will wait for me?"
But now it is all over, the final bar of the csardas has been played, the last measure trodden. From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell has announced the doleful fact that in half an hour the train will start for Arad, thence to Bra.s.so, where the recruits will be enrolled, ticketed, docketed like so many heads of cattle--mostly unwilling--made to do service for their country.
In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid, so many kisses to exchange, so many promises, protestations, oaths.
The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.
The lads themselves--excited after the dance, and not quite as clear-headed as they were before that last cask of Hungarian wine was tapped in Ignacz Goldstein"s cellar--feel the intoxication of the departure now, the quick good-byes, the women"s tears. A latent spirit of adventure smothers their sorrow at leaving home.
The gipsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong; the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and fathers with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the barn. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice--no rebellion, quiet obedience, no use complaining or grumbling, the three years are quickly over. The mother begs her darling not to give way to drink, and not to get entangled with one of the hussies in the towns; women and wine, the two besetting temptations that a.s.sail the Magyar peasant--let the darling boy resist both for his sorrowing mother"s sake.
But the lad only listens with half an ear, his dark eyes roam around the barn in search of the sweetheart; he wants one more protestation of love from her lips, one final oath of fidelity.
Andor has neither father to admonish him, nor mother to pray over him; the rich uncle Lakatos Pal, with whom he has lived hitherto, does not care enough about him to hang weeping round his neck.
And Elsa has given her father and mother the slip, and joined Andor outside the barn.
Her blue eyes--tired after fifteen hours of pleasure--blink in the glare of the brilliant sun. Andor puts his arm round her waist and she, closing her aching eyes, allows him to lead her away.