CHAPTER XI
"After that, happiness will begin."
Pater Bonifácius' kindliness, his gentle philosophy and unquestioning faith exercised a soothing influence over Elsa's spirits. The one moment of rebellion against Fate and against God, before the arrival of the old priest, had been the first and the last.
There is a goodly vein of Oriental fatalism still lurking in the Hungarians: "God has willed it!" comes readily enough to their lips. Though this unsophisticated child of the plains suffered none the less than would her more highly-cultured sisters in the West, yet she was more resigned—in her humble way, more philosophical—accepting the inevitable with an aching heart, mayhap, but with a firm determination to make the best of the few shreds of happiness which were left to her.
Elsa had promised before God and before the whole village that she would marry Erös Béla on the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and after that single thought of rebellion, she knew that on the following Tuesday this would have to be just as surely as the day follows the night and the night the day.
Even that selfsame evening, after the Pater had gone and before she went to bed, she made her final preparations for the next three days, which were the turning-points of her life. To-morrow her farewell banquet: a huge feast in the big schoolroom, hired expressly for the occasion. Fifty people would sit down to that, they were the most intimate friends of the contracting parties, hers and Béla's, and her mother's. It is the rule that the bride's parents provide this entertainment, but Kapus Benkó and his wife had not the means for it, and Erös Béla, insisting upon a sumptuous feast, was ready enough to pay for this gratification of his own vanity.
After the banquet, dancing would begin and would be kept up half the night. Then the next morning was the wedding-day. The wedding Mass in the morning, then the breakfast, more dancing, more revelling, more jollification, also kept up throughout the night. For it is only on the day following, that the bridegroom goes to fetch his bride out of her home, to conduct her to his own with all the pomp and circumstance which his wealth allows. So many carts, so many oxen, so many friends in the carts, and so many gipsies to make music while the procession slowly passes up the village street.
All that was, of course, already arranged for. The banquet for to-morrow was prepared, the ox roasted whole, the pigs and the capons stuffed. Erös Béla had provided everything, and provided most lavishly. Fifty persons would sit down to the farewell banquet, and more like two hundred to the wedding-breakfast; the village was agog with excitement, gipsies from Arad had been engaged, my lord the Count and the Countess were coming to the wedding Mass! . . . how could one feeble, weak, ignorant girl set her will against this torrent?
Elsa, conscious of her helplessness, set to with aching heart, but unwavering determination to put the past entirely behind her.
What was the good of thinking, since Fate had already arranged everything?