He was only a peasant, a rough son of the soil, whose temperament was hot with passion and whose temper had never known a curb. He had never realized until this moment how beautiful Elsa was, and how madly he loved her. For he called the jealous rage within by the sacred name of love, and love to a Magyar peasant is his whole existence, the pivot round which he frames his life, his thoughts of the present, his dreams of the future.
The soil and the woman!—they are his passions, his desires, his religion—to own a bit of land—of Hungarian land—and the woman whom he loves. Those two possessions will satisfy him—beyond these there is nothing worth having—a plough, of course—a hut wherein to sleep—an ox or two, perhaps—a cow—a horse.
But the soil and the woman on whom he has fixed his love—we'll call it love . . . he certainly calls it so—those two possessions make the Hungarian peasant more contented than any king or millionaire of Western civilization.
Erös Béla had the land. His father left him a dozen kataszter (land measure about two and three-quarter acres) or so; Elsa was the woman whom he loved, and the only question was who—he or Andor—would be strong enough to gain the object of his desire.
CHAPTER III
"You will wait for me?"
But now it is all over, the final bar of the csárdás has been played, the last measure trodden. From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell has announced the doleful fact that in half an hour the train will start for Arad, thence to Brassó, where the recruits will be enrolled, ticketed, docketed like so many heads of cattle—mostly unwilling—made to do service for their country.
In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid, so many kisses to exchange, so many promises, protestations, oaths.