Part 5 (2/2)

Elsa was walking beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm, as was fitting for a girl who was tokened and would be a bride within the week: she walked with head bent, her eyes fixed upon the ground. She made no immediate reply to her fiance's self-satisfied peroration, and her silence appeared to annoy him, for he continued with some acerbity:

”Don't you care to hear what I did on Andor's behalf?”

”Indeed I do, Bela,” she said gently, ”it was good of you to worry about him--and you so busy already.”

”I did what I could,” he rejoined mollified. ”Old Lakatos Pal has hankered after him so, though he cared little enough about Andor at one time. Andor was his only brother's only child, and I suppose Pali bacsi[3] was suddenly struck with the idea that he really had no one to leave his h.o.a.rdings to. He was always a fool and a lout. If Andor had lived it would have been all right. I think Pali bacsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity,” he added, with a shrug of the shoulders. ”If a peasant of Marosfalva had it it would do good to the commune.”

[Footnote 3: See footnote on p. 22.]

”I am sure if Andor had lived to enjoy it he would have spent it freely and done good with it to everyone around,” she said quietly.

”He would have spent it freely, right enough,” he retorted dryly, ”but whether he would have done good to everyone around with it--I doubt me . . . to Ignacz Goldstein, perhaps . . .”

”Bela, you must not say that,” she broke in firmly; ”you know that Andor never was a drunkard.”

”I never suggested that he was,” retorted Bela, whose square, hard face had become a shade paler than before, ”so there is no reason for my future wife to champion him quite so hotly as you always do.”

”I only spoke the truth.”

”If someone else spoke of me a hundred times more disparagingly than I ever do of Andor would you defend me as warmly, I wonder, as you do him?”

”Don't let us quarrel about Andor,” she rejoined gently, ”it does not seem right now that he is dead.”

CHAPTER V

”Love will follow.”

They had reached the small cottage where old Kapus and his wife and Elsa lived. It stood at the furthest end of the village, away from the main road, and the cool meadows beside the Maros, away from the church and the barn and all the brightest spots of Marosfalva. Built of laths and mud, it had long ago quarrelled with the whitewash which had originally covered it, and had forcibly ejected it, showing deep gaps and fissures in its walls; the pots and jars which hung from the overhanging thatch were all discoloured and broken, and the hemp which hung in bundles beside them looked uneven and dark in colour, obviously beaten with a slipshod, careless hand.

Such a contrast to the house of Hoher Aladar--the rich justice of the peace and of Ilona his wife! Elsa knew and expected that the usual homily on the subject would not fail to be forthcoming as it did on every Sunday afternoon; she only wondered what particular form it would take to-day, whether Bela would sneer at her and her mother for the tumble-down look of the verandah, for the bad state of the hemp, or the coating of dirt upon the earthenware pots.

But it was the hemp to-day.

”Why don't you look after it, Elsa?” said Bela roughly, as he pointed to the tangled ma.s.s of stuff above him, ”your mother ruins even the spa.r.s.e crop which she has.”

”I can't do everything,” said Elsa, in that same gentle, even voice which held in its tones all the gamut of hopeless discouragement; ”since father has been stricken he wants constant attention. Mother won't give it him, so I have to be at his beck and call. Then there is the was.h.i.+ng . . .”

”I know, I know,” broke in Bela with a sneer, ”you need not always remind me that my future wife--the bride of my lord the Count's own bailiff--does menial work for a village schoolmistress and a snuffy old priest!”

Elsa made no reply. She pushed open the door of the cottage and went in; Bela followed her, muttering between his teeth.

The interior of Kapus Benko's home was as squalid, as forlorn looking as its approach; everywhere the hand of the thriftless housewife was painfully apparent, in the blackened crockery upon the hearth, in the dull, grimy look of the furniture--once so highly polished--in the tattered table-cloth, the stains upon the floor and the walls, but above all was it apparent in the dower-chest--that inalienable pride of every thrifty Hungarian housewife--the dower-chest, which in Ilona's cottage was such a marvel of polish outside, and so glittering in its rich contents of exquisite linen. But here it bore relentless if mute testimony to the s.h.i.+ftless, untidy, disorderly ways of the Kapus household. For instead of the neat piles of snow-white linen it was filled with rubbish--with husks of maize and mouldy cabbage-stalks, thrown in higgledy-piggledy with bundles of clothes and rags of every sort and kind.

It stood close to the stove, the smoke of which had long ago covered the wood with soot. The lid was thrown open and hung crooked upon a broken hinge.

When Elsa entered the cottage with Eros Bela her mother was busy with some cooking near the hearth, and smoke and the odour of _gulyas_ (meat stew) filled the place. Close to the fire in an armchair of polished wood sat old Kapus Benko, now a hopeless cripple. The fate which lies in wait in these hot countries for the dissolute and the drunkard had already overtaken him. He had had a stroke a couple of years ago, and then another last summer. Now he could not move hand or foot, his tongue refused him service, he could only see and hear and eat. Otherwise he was like a log: carried from his pallia.s.se on which he slept at night to the armchair in which he sat all day. Elsa's strong young arms carried him thus backwards and forwards, she ministered to him, nursed him, did what cheering she could to brighten his days that were an almost perpetual night.

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