A Bride of the Plains

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

CHAPTER XXII

"I go where I shall be more welcome."

In the meanwhile, in the barn time had been flying along on the wings of enjoyment. Ever since six o'clock, when vespers were well over and the gipsies had struck up the first csárdás, merry feet had been tripping it almost incessantly.

It is amazing what a capacity the young Hungarian peasant—man or woman—has for footing the national dance. With intervals of singing and of gossiping these young folk in the barn had been going on for over three hours.

And they were not even beginning to get tired. To the Hungarian peasants, be it remembered, the csárdás is not merely a dance, though they enjoy the movement, of course, the exhilaration and the excitement of the music, just as all healthy young animals would enjoy gambolling on a meadow; there is a deeper meaning to these children of the plains in the sweet, sad strains of their songs and in the mazes and intricacies of their dance.

They put their whole life, their entire sentiment for country and sweetheart, in the music and in the dance, and the music and the dance give outward expression to their feelings, speak in the language of poetry which they feel well enough, but which their untutored tongue cannot frame.

A Hungarian peasant in sorrow or distress will probably, like his Western prototype, seek to drown his grief in drink; far be it from his chronicler's mind to suggest that his sentiments are more elevated than those of the peasantry of other nations, or his morality more sound. He will get drunk, too, like men of other nations, but he will do it to the accompaniment of music. The gipsy band must be there, when he is in trouble or in joy—one or two fiddles, perhaps a clarionet, always a czimbalom—just these few instruments to play his favourite songs. They don't ease his sorrow, but they help to soothe it by bringing tears to his eyes and softening the bitterness of his grief.

And in joy he will invariably dance; when he is in love he will dance, for the csárdás helps him to explain to the girl whom he loves exactly what he feels for her. And she understands. One csárdás will reveal to a Hungarian village maid the state of her lover's heart far more clearly than do all the whisperings behind hedges in more civilized lands.

It was in the csárdás five years ago that Elsa had learned from Andor how much he loved her; it was during the mazes of the dance that she was able to overcome her shyness and tell him mutely that she loved him in return.

And now it was in the csárdás that she was bidding farewell to-day to her girlhood and to the companions of her youth; to Jenö and Móritz, who had loved her ardently and hopelessly these past two years, and who must henceforth become to her mere friends. It was in the turns and the twirls, with the wild music marking step, that she conveyed all that there was in her simple heart of regret for the past and cheerful anticipation for the future.