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Updated: May 5, 2025
"I am 'mos' white," she explained, as if he were the only reasonable person present. "I lak be wit' white people." Here a titter passed over the native audience at what they considered her presumption. Bela's eyes flashed scorn on them. She forgot her terrors. "I am not one of these!" she cried. "I am white! I want marry a white man!"
Progress under the cruel handicap was still painfully slow. The wind was like a hand thrusting them back; but every gain brought them a little more under the lee of the land. If Bela's arms held out! He looked at her wonderingly. There was no sign of any slackening yet. "We not sink now," she said coolly. "Good!" cried Sam. In their mutual relief they could almost be friendly.
But facts are stubborn things, and while most of those present were still thrilling under the effect of this oath, the dry voice of District Attorney Andrews was heard for the first time, in these words: "Why, then, did you, on the night of Bela's death, stop on your way across the bridge to look back upon Dark Hollow and cry in the bitterest tones which escape human lips, 'Oliver! Oliver!
Backed with such a bargain, Béla's suit was bound to prosper. And yet, for another whole year, Elsa was obstinate. Irma had to resort to sterner measures, and in a country like Hungary, where much of the patriarchal feeling toward parents still exists, a mother's stern measures become very drastic indeed. A child is a child while she is under her parents' roof.
During his absence the other men had an uneasy time at Bela's hands. With all her haughty airs she did not relax any of her care of Husky. The others envied him his wound. Hour by hour he was visibly growing better. The fever had left him. He had got over his fear of Bela. Now, by a twisted course of reasoning, characteristic of him, he adopted a proprietary air toward her.
Both were extremely careful to conceal it, and in their efforts they had been successful. The orchestra was at the moment playing that plaintive Hungarian gypsy air, Bela's Valse Banffy, that sweet, weird song of the Tziganes which one hears everywhere along the Danube from Vienna to Belgrade.
Miss Mackall stood watching until they rounded the first bend. When she turned around, there stood Bela beside a big tree, a few feet to the side of the road. Evidently she had been hidden in the underbrush behind. Miss Mackall gasped in piteous terror and stood rooted to the spot. Bela's face was as relentless as a high priestess's. "I listen if you goin' tell him 'bout me," she said.
Elsa and Béla had paused outside the house of Hóhér Aladár who was the village justice of the peace and husband to Ilona, Béla's only sister. A mightily rich man was Hóhér Aladár, and Ilona was noted for being the most thrifty housewife in a country where most housewives are thrifty, and for being a model cook in a land where good cooks abound.
Bela's face was pale, and one hand was pressed to her breast to control the agitated tenant there. To be obliged to speak out before so many white people was a terrible ordeal for the girl of the lake. She suspected, too, that there would be some difficult questions to answer and there was no Musq'oosis to advise her. Alas, if she had taken his advice she would not have been here at all!
In a few hours from now the great vow would be spoken, the irrevocable knot tied which bound her to another man. Her troth was already plighted, her confession made to Pater Bonifácius in a few hours from now she would be Béla's wife, and if Andor did come back now, she must be as nothing to him, he as a mere distant friend. But probably he never would come back.
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