Well! Of course! One mugful was not enough to do honour to such a toast, they had to be refilled and then filled up again: wine was so plentiful and so good—not heady, but just a delicious white wine which tasted of nothing but the sweet-scented grape. Soon the bridegroom rose to respond, whereupon Fehér Jenö, whose father rented the mill from my lord the Count, loudly desired that everyone should drink the health of happy, lucky Erös Béla, and then, of course, the latter had to respond again.
Elsa felt more and more every moment a stranger among them all. Fortunately the innate kindliness of these children of the soil prevented any chaffing remarks being made about the silence of the bride. It is always an understood thing that brides are shy and nervous, and though there had been known cases in Marosfalva where a bride had been very lively and talkative at her "maiden's farewell" it was, on the whole, considered more seemly to preserve a semi-tearful attitude, seeing that a girl on the eve of her marriage is saying good-bye to her parents and to her home.
The bridegroom's disgraceful conduct was tacitly ignored: it could not be resented or even commented on without quarrelling with Erös Béla, and that no one was prepared to do. You could not eat a man's salt and drink his wine and then knock him on the head, which it seemed more than one lad—who had fancied himself in love with beautiful Kapus Elsa—was sorely inclined to do.
Kapus Benkó, in his invalid's chair, sat some distance away from his daughter, the other side of Klara Goldstein. Elsa could not even exchange glances with him or see whether he had everything he wanted. Thus she seemed cut off from everyone she cared for; only Andor was near her, and of Andor she must not even think. She tried not to meet his gaze, tried hard not to feel a thrill of pleasure every time that she became actively conscious of his presence beside her.
And yet it was good to feel that he was there, she had a sense that she was being protected, that things could not go very wrong while he was near.
CHAPTER XVII
"I am here to see that you be kind to her."
Pater Bonifácius came in at about four o'clock to remind all these children of their duty to God.