Part 31 (1/2)
”You are too pretty, my dove, to put on those modern airs of emanc.i.p.ated womanhood. If you only knew how much better you please me like this, than when you try to argue with me, you would always use your power over me, you little goose.”
She made no reply, for, despite the warm woollen shawl round her shoulders, she had suddenly felt cold, and a curious s.h.i.+ver had gone right through her body, even whilst her future lord did kiss her. But no doubt it was because just then an owl had hooted in the poplar trees far away.
”You are coming back then, Bela?” she asked, after a few seconds of silence and with enforced cheerfulness.
”I'll think about it,” he said condescendingly.
”But . . .”
”There, now, don't begin again,” he broke in impatiently. ”Haven't I said that I'll think about it? You run back to your mother now. I may come later--or I may not. But if you bother me much more I certainly won't. If I come, I come of my own free will; there's no woman living who has ever persuaded me to do anything against my will.”
And without vouchsafing her another word or look, without deigning to see her safely on her way back to the barn, he turned leisurely on his heel, and mounting the steps of the verandah before him, he presently pushed open the tap-room door and disappeared within.
CHAPTER XXIV
”If you loved me.”
Elsa stood for a moment quite still there in the dark, with the silence of the night and all its sweet sounds encompa.s.sing her, and the scent of withered flowers and slowly-dying leaves mounting to her quivering nostrils.
What did it all mean? What did life mean? And what was the meaning of G.o.d? She, the ignorant, unsophisticated peasant girl, knew nothing save what Pater Bonifacius had taught her, and that was little enough--though the little was hard enough to learn.
Resignation to G.o.d's will; obedience to parents first and to husband afterwards; renunciation of all that made the days appear like a continual holiday and filled the nights with exquisite dreams!
But if life only meant that, only meant duty and obedience and resignation, then why had G.o.d made such a beautiful world, why had He made the sky and the birds and the flowers, the nodding plumes of maize and the tiny, fleecy clouds which people the firmament at sunset?
Was it worth while to deck this world in such array if the eyes of men were always to be filled with tears, and their backs bent to their ever-recurring tasks?
A heavy sigh escaped from the girl's overburdened heart: the riddle of the universe was too hard an one for her simple mind to solve. Perhaps it was best after all not to think of these things which she was too ignorant to understand. She looked at the door of the tavern through which Bela had gone. He had left it wide open, and she caught a glimpse of him now as he sat at one of the tables, and leaning his elbow on it, rested his chin in his hand.
Then, with another little sigh, she was just turning to go when the sound of her name spoken in a whisper and quite close to her sent her pulses quivering and made her heart beat furiously.
”Elsa! Wait a moment!”
”Is that you, Andor?” she whispered.
”Yes. I came up just now and heard your voice and Bela's. I waited on the off-chance of getting a word with you.”
”I mustn't stop, Andor. Mother will be wondering.”
”No, she won't,” he retorted with undisguised bitterness. ”The mother who sent you on this abominable and humiliating errand won't worry much after you.”
”No one seems to worry much about me, do they, Andor?” she said, a little wistfully.
He drew a little closer to her, so close that he could feel her shoulder under the shawl quivering against his arm. Her many petticoats brushed about his s.h.i.+ns, and he could hear her quick, warm breath as it came and went. He bent his head quite close to her, as he had done that day, five years ago, in the mazes of the csardas, and now--as then--his lips almost touched her soft young neck.
”Then why should you worry about them, Elsa?” he whispered slowly in her ear. ”Why shouldn't you let them all be?”