The Yellow Rose Part 3

"Well, dear! You are quite aware of your own good looks!" she said, "You wouldn't laugh for the world, would you? Why it would squeeze up your two black eyes, and make your two red lips quite crooked, and all your beauty would be spoiled!"

"Debreczin town does not pay me for being beautiful."

"But I do. Wasn't my payment big enough for you?"

"It was. There was even enough for another person left over."

"Are you beginning again? All about that one yellow rose? Are you so jealous of your comrade then, your own close companion? How could he help himself, poor fellow? If a gallant of the town feels his heart aching for a rose, why he has the whole flower garden to choose from, full of all sorts and shades of roses--red, pink, yellow, and cream! But how does the song go?

"'Only the peasant maid can still The peasant's heart in good and ill!'"

"So you take his part?"

"Well, whose fault is it? The girl's who sings, 'An' he knew he could, An' he knew it still he would,' or the man's who listens and understands?"

"Do you take the blame then?"

"You said you would forgive me everything."

"I will keep my word."

"And love me again?"

"Later."

"Ah! it's a big word that 'later,'" said the girl.

"I love you now."

"As you have shown me."

The csikos rose from the table, stuck the short pipe into the wide brim of his hat, and going to the girl, put his arms round her, gazing, as he spoke, into her large dark eyes.

"My darling, you know there are two kinds of fever--the hot and the cold. The hot is more violent, but the cold lasts longer; the one pa.s.ses quickly, the other returns again and again. But I will just speak plainly, and not mince matters. Mine was the fault, for if I had not breathed on my yellow rosebud, it would not have opened, and others would not have found out the sweet scent which has brought all the wasps and moths. I do love you indeed, but differently now, with the constancy of the cold sort of fever. I will deal as truly by you as thine own mother, and as soon as I am made head herdsman we will go to the priest and live faithfully together ever afterwards. But if I find anyone else fluttering around, then G.o.d help me, for were he my father's own son, I will crack his head for him. Here's my hand on it." He stretched out his hand to the girl, and she, in answer, pulled out her golden ear-rings, placing them in his open palm.

"But, dearest, wear them," he insisted, "if as you say they are my silver ones gilded, and I must believe you!"

So she put them back in her ears, and in so doing she put something back in her heart that had lain hidden there till now. Somehow this sort of love, likened to the s.h.i.+vering stage of fever, was not altogether to her taste. She understood the burning fit better.

Next the girl, after reflecting, slipped the cloak from the herdsman's neck and hung it up behind the lattice of the bar, as she was accustomed to take the coats of customers in pledge, who could not pay their reckoning.

"Don't hurry," she said, "there is time. The Vet can't possibly be back at the Mata Farm before noon, because he must examine all the cattle that are sold, and write a certificate for each. You will only find his old housekeeper, and here you are safe and dry. Neither the storm can drench you, nor your sweetheart's tears. Look how glad your last words have made me! They will be in my head all day long."

"And see how far away I thought of those last words, since I have brought you a present. It is in my cloak sleeve yonder, go and fetch it out."

Many things were in that sleeve--steel, flint, and tinder, tobacco pouch, money bag, and among it all the girl discovered a new packet, done up in silver paper. When it was unfolded, and she beheld a comb of yellow tortoise-sh.e.l.l, her face beamed with happiness.

"This is for _me_?"

"Whom _else_?"

Now when a peasant maid twists her plait of hair round a comb, it means she is betrothed, has a lover of her own, and is "ours" no longer. Nor can she any more sing the song about "I know not whose darling am I."

Standing before the mirror, Klari "did up" her hair in a knot round the comb, and then she looked prettier than ever.

"Now you shall kiss me," she said. She offered the kiss herself in fact, stretching out her arms, but the man held her back.

"Not yet," he said, "I will be hot presently, but I am still s.h.i.+vering."

It was a rebuff, and the girl drew her brows together, for she felt shamed, and besides something burned in her heart. However, she only tried harder to be loving and gentle, love and anger meanwhile striving madly together in her heart--anger just because of the love.

"Shall I sing your favourite song," she asked, "while the fish is roasting?"

"If you like."

She went to the fireplace, took a fish out of a big barrel full of the Hortobagy fish, called "Karasz," slashed it with a kitchen knife on both sides, sprinkled it well with salt and pepper, and sticking a skewer through it, placed it beside the red hot embers. Then she sang in her sweet, clear voice:

"Ho! good dame of the Puszta Inn, Bake me fish, bring lemon and wine, Set your wench on the watch without, Bid her tell what she sees in time."

The song has a fascination of its own, bringing visions of the endless puszta with the mirage overhanging its horizon, and echoes, too, of the lone shepherd's pipe, and the sad sounding horn of the herdsman.

Besides, is not the whole romance of the "betyars'," the puszta robbers', life contained in the words:

"Set your wench on the watch without, Bid her tell what she sees in time"?

As soon as the fish was browned enough, the girl brought it to the csikos. Never is this dish eaten otherwise than by holding the end of the spit in the fingers, and picking off the fish with a pocket knife.

It tastes best like that, and a girl cannot show her love for her sweetheart more distinctly than by roasting him a fish on the spit. Then what a delight it is to watch him enjoying the work of her hands!

Meanwhile Klari went on singing:

"'Nine gendarmes and their weapons flas.h.!.+'

Cries the girl in her frightened haste; But the betyar gallops his swift bay steed Where the mirage plays o'er the boundless waste."

Once, when they sang this together, at the line "gallops his swift bay steed," the herdsman would throw up his cap to the rafters, and bring down his fist with a crash on the table.

But now he did not heed it.

"Don't you care for the song nowadays?" asked the girl. "Even that doesn't please you?"

"Why should it? I'm no 'betyar,' and have nothing to do with thieves.

Gendarmes are honest men, and do their duty. As for a good-for-nothing 'betyar,' he sets a girl to watch outside, and as soon as he sees so much as the tip of a gendarme's helmet, he is off and away, 'O'er the boundless waste,' leaving fish and wine and all behind him. And he shouts it out in his own praise too! The cowardly thief!"

"Well, you _have_ changed since you ate the Emperor's bread!"

"I've not changed, but the times. You can turn a coat inside out if you like. After all it is only a coat. A bunda--fur-lined cloak--is always a bunda."

"And do you know," said the girl, "the greatest insult a man can pay his sweetheart is to quote a worn-out old saw like that----"

"But if I know none better! Perhaps the gentlemen from Moravia, who were here last night, had newer jokes to amuse you with?"