Part 14 (1/2)

”No, Andor. I did not write.”

”But you had my letter? . . . I mean the one which I wrote to you before I sailed for Australia.”

”The postman,” she murmured, ”gave it to father when it came. Then the next day father was stricken with paralysis; he never gave it to me.

Only last night . . .”

”My G.o.d,” he broke in excitedly, ”and yet you remained true to me all this while, even though you did not know if I was alive or dead! Holy Mother of G.o.d, what have I done to deserve such happiness?”

Then as she did not speak--for indeed the words in her throat were choked by her tears--he continued talking volubly, like a man who is intoxicated with the wine of joy:

”Oh! I never doubted you, Elsa! But I had planned my home-coming to be a surprise to you. It was not a question of keeping faith, of course, because you were never tokened to me, therefore I just wanted to read in your dear eyes exactly what would come into them in the first moment of surprise . . . whether it would be joy or annoyance, love or indifference. And I was not deceived, Elsa, for when you first saw me such a look came into your eyes as I would not exchange for all the angels glances in Paradise.”

Elsa sighed heavily. She felt so oppressed that she thought her heart must burst. Andor's happiness, his confidence made the hideous truth itself so much more terrible to reveal. And now he went on in the same merry, voluble way.

”I went first to Goldstein's this morning. I thought Klara would tell me some of the village gossip to while away the time before I dared present myself here. I didn't want Pali bacsi or anybody to see me before I had come to you. I didn't want anybody to speak to me before I had kissed you. The Jews I didn't mind, of course. So I got Klara to walk with me by a round-about way through the fields as far as this house; then I lay in wait for a while, until I saw Irma neni go out. I wanted you all to myself at once . . . with no one by to intercept the look which you would give me when first you recognized me.”

”And . . . did Klara tell you anything?” she murmured under her breath.

”She told me of uncle Pali's illness,” he said, more quietly, ”and how he seemed to have fretted about me lately . . . and that everyone here thought that I was dead.”

”Yes. What else?”

”Nothing else much,” he replied, ”for you may be sure I would not do more than just mention your sweet name before that Jewess.”

”And . . . when you mentioned my name . . . did she say anything?”

”No. She laughed rather funnily, I thought. But of course I would not take any notice. She had always been rather jealous of you. And now that I am a rich man . . .”

”Yes, Andor?”

”When I say a rich man,” he said, with a careless shrug of his broad shoulders, ”I only mean comparatively, of course. I have saved three thousand crowns”--(about 120)--”not quite as much as I should have liked; but things are dear out there, and there was my pa.s.sage home and clothes to pay for. Still! three thousand crowns are enough to pay down as a guarantee for a really good farm, and if Klara Goldstein spoke the truth, and Pali bacsi is really so well disposed toward me, why, I need not be altogether ashamed to present myself before your parents. Need I, my dove?”

”Before my parents?” she murmured.

”Why, yes,” he said, as he rose from the table now and came up quite close to her, looking down with earnest, love-filled eyes on the stooping figure of this young girl, who held all his earthly happiness in her keeping; ”you knew what I meant, Elsa, did you not, when I came back to you the moment that I could, after all these years? It was only my own poverty which kept me from your side all this long while. But you did not think that I had forgotten you, did you, Elsa?--you could not think that. How could a man forget you who has once held you in his arms and kissed those sweet lips of yours? Why, there has not been a day or night that I did not think of you. . . . Night and day while I worked in that land which seemed so far away from home. Homesick I was--very often--and though we all earned good money out there, the work was hard and heavy; but I didn't mind that, for I was making money, and every florin which I put by was like a step which brought me nearer to you.”

”Andor!”

The poor girl was almost moaning now, for every word which he spoke was like a knife-thrust straight into her heart.

”Being so far away from home,” he continued, speaking slowly and very earnestly now, in a voice that quivered and shook with the depth of the sentiment within him, ”being so far away from home would have been like h.e.l.l to me at times. I don't know what there is, Elsa, about this land of Hungary! how it holds and enchains us! but at times I felt that I must lie down and die if I did not see our maize-fields bordered with the tall sunflowers, our distant, low-lying horizon on which the rising and the setting sun paints such glowing colours. This land of Australia was beautiful too: there were fine fields of corn and vast lands stretching out as far as the eye could reach; but it was not Hungary.

There were no white oxen with long, slender horns toiling patiently up the dusty high roads, the storks did not build their nests in the tall acacia trees, nor did the arms of distant wells stretch up toward the sky. It was not Hungary, Elsa! and it would have been h.e.l.l but for thinking of you. The life of an exile takes all the life out of one. I have heard of some of our Hungarian lads out in America who get so ill with homesickness that they either die or become vicious. But then,” he added, with a quick, characteristic return to his habitual light-hearted gaiety, ”it isn't everyone who is far from home who has such a bright star as I had to gaze at in my mind . . . when it came night time and the lights were put out . . .”

”Andor!” she pleaded.

But he would not let her speak just then. He had not yet told her all that there was to say, and perhaps the innate good-heartedness in him suggested that she was discomposed, that she would prefer to sit quietly and listen whilst she collected her thoughts and got over the surprise of his sudden arrival.

”Do you know, Elsa,” he now said gaily, ”I chalked up the days--made marks, I mean, in a book which I bought in Fiume the day before we sailed. Seven hundred and thirty days--for I never meant to stay away more than two years; and every evening in my bunk on board s.h.i.+p and afterwards in the farm where I lodged, I scratched out one of the marks and seemed to feel myself getting a little bit nearer and then nearer to you. By the Saints, my dove,” he added, with a merry laugh, ”but you should have seen me the time I got cheated out of one of those scratches. I had forgotten that accursed twenty-ninth of February last year. I don't think that I have ever sworn so wickedly in my life before. I had to go to Melbourne pretty soon, I tell you, and make confession of it to the kind Pater there. And then . . .”