"What had Andor done?"
She waited for a moment with her ear glued to the front door until the
last echo of the men's footsteps had completely died away in the
distance, then she ran to the table. The tray was there, but no key upon
it. With feverish, jerky movements she began to hunt for it, pushing
aside bottles and mugs, opening drawers, searching wildly with dilated
eyes all round the room.
The key was here, somewhere . . . surely, surely Andor had not played
her false . . . he would not play her false . . . He was not that sort
. . . surely, surely he was not that sort. He had come back from his
errand--of course she had seen him just now, and . . . and he had said
nothing certainly, but . . .
Well! He can't have gone far; and her father wouldn't hear if she
called. She ran back to the door and fumbled at the latch, for her hands
trembled so that she bruised them against the iron. There! At last it
was done! She opened the door and peered out into the night. Everything
was still, not a footstep echoed from down the street. She took one step
out, on to the verandah . . . then she heard a rustle from behind the
pollarded acacia tree and a rustle amongst its leaves. Someone was
there!--on the watch!--Leopold!
She smothered a scream of terror and in a moment had fled back into the
room and slammed and bolted the door behind her. Now she stood with her
back against it, arms outstretched, fingers twitching convulsively
against the wood. She was shivering as with cold, though the heat in the
room was close and heavy with fumes of wine and tobacco: her teeth were
chattering, a cold perspiration had damped the roots of her hair.
She had wanted to call Andor back, just to ask him definitely if he had
been successful in his errand and what he had done with the key. Perhaps
he meant to tell her; perhaps he had merely forgotten to put the key on
the tray, and still had it in his waistcoat pocket; she had been a fool
not to come out and speak to him when she heard his voice in the
tap-room awhile ago. She had wanted to, but her father monopolized her
about his things for the journey. He had been exceptionally querulous
to-night and was always ready to be suspicious; also Béla had been in
the tap-room with Andor, and she wouldn't have liked to speak of the key
before Béla. What she had been absolutely sure of, however, until now
was that Andor would not have come back and then gone away like this, if
he had not succeeded in his errand and got her the key from Count Feri.
But the key was not there: there was no getting away from that, and she
had wanted to call Andor back and to ask him about it--and had found
Leopold Hirsch standing out there in the dark . . . watching.
She had not seen him--but she had felt his presence--and she was quite
sure that she had heard the hissing sound of his indrawn breath and the
movement which he had made to spring on her--and strangle her, as he had
threatened to do--if she went out by the front door.
Mechanically she passed her hand across her throat. Terror--appalling,
deadly terror of her life--had her in its grasp. She tottered across
the room and sank into a chair. She wanted time to think.
What had Andor done? What a fool she had been not to ask him the
straight question while she had the chance. She had been afraid of
little things--her father's temper, Erös Béla's sneers--when now there
was death and murder to fear.
What had Andor done?
Had he played her false? Played this dirty trick on her out of revenge?
He certainly--now she came to think of it--had avoided meeting her
glance when he went away just now.
Had he played her false?
The more she thought on it, the more the idea got root-hold in her
brain. In order to be revenged for the humiliation which she had helped
to put upon Elsa, Andor had chosen this means for bringing her to
everlasting shame and sorrow--the young Count murdered outside her door,
in the act of sneaking into the house by a back way, at dead of night,
while Ignácz Goldstein was from home; Leopold Hirsch--her tokened
fiancé--a murderer, condemned to hang for a brutal crime; she disgraced
for ever, cursed if not killed by her father, who did not trifle in the
matter of his daughter's good name. . . . All that was Andor's projected
revenge for what she had done to Elsa.
The thought of it was too horrible. It beat into her brain until she
felt that her head must burst as under the blows of a sledge-hammer or
else that she must go mad.
She pushed back the matted hair from her temples, and looked round the
tiny, dark, lonely room in abject terror. From far away came the shrill
whistle of the engine which bore her father away to Kecskemét. It must
be nearly half-past nine, then, and close on half an hour since she had
been left here alone with her terrors. Yet another half-hour and . . .
No, no! This she felt that she could not endure--not another half-hour
of this awful, death-dealing suspense. Anything would be better than
that--death at Leopold's hands--a quick gasp, a final agony--yes! That
would be briefer and better--and perhaps Leo's heart would misgive
him--perhaps . . . but in any case, anything _must_ be better than this
suspense.
She struggled to her feet; her knees shook under her: for the moment she
could not have moved if her very life had depended on it. So she stood
still, propped against the table, her hands clutching convulsively at
its edge for support, and her eyes dilated and staring, still searching
round the room wildly for the key.
At last she felt that she could walk; she tottered back across the room,
back to the door, and her twitching fingers were once more fumbling with
the bolts.
The house was so still and the air was so oppressive. When she paused in
her fumbling--since her fingers refused her service--she could almost
hear that movement again behind the acacia tree outside, and that
rustling among the leaves.
She gave a wild gasp of terror and ran back to the chair--like a
frightened feline creature, swift and silent--and sank into it, still
gasping, her whole body shaken now as with fever, her teeth chattering,
her limbs numb.
Death had been so near! She had felt an icy breath across her throat!
She was frightened--hideously, abjectly, miserably frightened. Death
lurked for her, there outside in the dark, from behind the acacia tree!
Death in the guise of a jealous madman, whose hate had been whetted by
an hour's lonely watch in the dark--lonely, but for his thoughts.
Tears of self-pity as well as of fear rose to the unfortunate girl's
eyes; convulsive sobs shook her shoulders and tore at her heart till she
felt that she must choke. She threw out her arms across the table and
buried her face in them and lay there, sobbing and moaning in her terror
and in her misery.
How long she remained thus, crying and half inert with mental anguish
and pain, she could not afterwards have told. Nor did she know what it
was that roused her from this torpor, and caused her suddenly to sit up
in her chair, upright, wide-awake, her every sense on the alert.
Surely she could not have heard the fall of footsteps at the back of the
house! There was the whole width of the inner room and two closed doors
between her and the yard at the back, and the ground there was soft and
muddy; no footstep, however firm, could raise echoes there.
And yet she had heard! Of that she felt quite sure, heard with that
sixth sense of which she, in her ignorance, knew nothing, but which,
nevertheless, now had roused her from that coma-like state into which
terror had thrown her, and set every one of her nerves tingling once
more and pulsating with life and the power to feel.
For the moment all her faculties seemed merged into that of hearing.
With that same sixth sense she heard the stealthy footsteps coming
nearer and nearer. They had not approached from the village, but from
the fields at the back, and along the little path which led through the
unfenced yard straight to the back door.
These footsteps--which seemed like the footsteps of ghosts, so
intangible were they--were now so near that to Klara's supersensitive
mind they appeared to be less than ten paces from the back door.
Then she heard another footstep--she heard it quite distinctly, even
though walls and doors were between her and them--she heard the movement
from behind the acacia tree--the one that stands at the corner of the
house, in full view of both the doors--she heard the rustle among its
low-hanging branches and that hissing sound as of an indrawn breath.
She shot up from her chair like an automaton--rigid and upright, her
mouth opened as for a wild shriek, but all power of sound was choked in
her throat. She ran into the inner room like one possessed, her mouth
still wide open for the frantic shriek which would not come, for that
agonizing call for help.
She fell up against the back door. Her hands tore at the lock, at the
woodwork, at the plaster around; she bruised her hands and cut her
fingers to the bone, but still that call would not come to her
throat--not even now, when she heard on the other side of the door, less
than five paces from where she lay, frantic with horror, a groan, a
smothered cry, a thud--then swiftly hurrying footsteps flying away in
the night.
Then nothing more, for she was lying now in a huddled mass, half
unconscious on the floor.