Béla 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. Erös Béla 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 Béla 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 Béla surlily.
"Nothing," she replied, "only that we have always been friends, you and I – eh, Béla?"
And she turned her large, lustrous 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.
Béla, 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, Béla?" 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."
Béla 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 Erös, the wife of Erös Béla, the mother of his first-born. To this I have made up my mind, and when I make up my mind to anything, neither God 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 Erös Béla 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 Erös Béla's loudly spoken determination had heard nothing of the colloquy between him and the Jewess. The wild, loud music of the csárdás, their own gyrations and excitement, shut them out entirely from their surroundings.
Their stamping, tripping, twirling feet had carried them into another world altogether; Ignácz 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 néni, 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 csárdás 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 Bonifácius had blessed her and assured 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 scrape 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 csárdás 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 bacchanalian whirligig with a sneer upon her thin, red lips. Beside her Erös Béla 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,