A Bride of the Plains

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

A csárdás was in full swing. The compact group of dancers was crowded round the musicians' platform, for the csárdás can only be properly danced under the very bow—as it were—of the gipsy leader. The barn looked gaily lighted up with oil-lamps swinging down from the rafters above, and it had been most splendidly decorated for the occasion with festoons of paper flowers and tri-colour flags. Petticoats and ribbons were flying, little feet in red leather boots were kicking up clouds of dust.

There was no moon to-night, the sky was heavy with clouds, so the village street had been very dark. Erös Béla blinked as he entered the barn, so dazzling did the picture present itself to his gaze.

And there was such an atmosphere of merriment and of animation about the place that instinctively Béla's thoughts flew back to the dismal and dingy little tap-room whence he had just come, with a few drunken fellows sprawling in corners and Leopold Hirsch's ugly face leering out of the shadows.

Here everyone was gay and good-tempered. The gipsies scraped their fiddles till one would have thought their arms would break, the young people danced, the men shouted and sang. It was a pandemonium of giddiness and music and laughter.

And Béla, as he blinked and looked upon the scene, remembered that he had paid for it all. He had paid for the hire of the barn, the music and the lighting; he had paid for the lavish supper which would be served presently. And as he had had more silvorium to drink in the tap-room than was altogether good for the clearness of his brain, he fell to thinking that he ought now to be received and welcomed with all the deference which his lavishness deserved. He thought that the young people should have left off dancing when he appeared, and should have greeted him, as they would undoubtedly have greeted my lord the Count, had the latter deigned to come.

And what, after all, was my lord on such an occasion in comparison with the donor of the feast?

Even Elsa—though she must, of course, have seen him—did not stop in her senseless gyrations. She was dancing with Barna Móritz—the mayor's youngest son and a splendid dancer—and the two young people went on twirling and twisting and flirting and laughing just as if he—the real host—had not been there.

Enraged at all this indifference, this want of recognition of his dignity, he elbowed his way through the dense group of spectators which formed a phalanx round the dancers. The wide and voluminous petticoats of the women formed a veritable hedge through which he had to scramble and to push. As the people recognized him they gave him pleasant greetings, for the Hungarian peasant is by nature kindly and something of an opportunist; there was no occasion to quarrel openly with Erös Béla, who was rich and influential.

But he paid no heed either to the greetings or to the whispered comments that followed in their wake. He just felt that he was the master of this place, and he meant everyone else to know and acknowledge this fact. So he strode up to the czigány and ordered them peremptorily to draw this interminable csárdás to an end; it had lasted quite long enough, he said, and the girls looked a sight with their crimson, perspiring faces; he was not going to have such vulgar goings-on at any of his wedding feasts.

The gipsy leader never thought of disobeying, of course; it was the tekintetes úr (honoured gentleman) who was paying them for their work, and they had to do as they were told.