"What about me."
And time slipped by with murmurings of words that have no meaning save
for one pair of ears. Andor talked fondly and foolishly, and Elsa mostly
was silent. She had loved this walk over the stubble, and the plain had
been in perfect peace save for the rumbling of the Maros, insistent and
menacing, which had struck a chill to the girl's heart, like a presage
of evil.
She tried to swallow her fears, chiding herself for feeling them, doing
her best to close her ears to those rumbling, turbulent waters that
seemed to threaten as they tumbled along on their way.
Gradually as they neared the village that curious feeling of impending
evil became more strong: she could not help speaking of it to Andor, but
he only laughed in that delightfully happy--almost defiantly happy--way
of his, and for a moment or two she was satisfied.
But when at about half a kilomètre from home she caught sight of Klara
Goldstein walking away from the village straight toward her and Andor,
it seemed as if her fears had suddenly assumed a more tangible shape.
Klara looked old and thin, she thought, pathetic, too, in her plain
black dress--she who used to be so fond of pretty clothes. Elsa gave her
a hearty greeting as soon as she was near enough to her, and extended a
cordial hand. She had no cause to feel well-disposed toward the Jewess,
but there was something so forlorn-looking about the girl now, and such
a look of sullen despair in her dark eyes, that Elsa's gentle nature was
at once ready to forgive and to cheer.
"It is a long time since I have seen you, Klara," she said pleasantly.
"No wonder," said the other girl, with a shrug of her thin shoulders,
"father won't let me out of his sight."
She had nodded to Andor, but by tacit consent they had not shaken hands.
Klara now put her hands on her hips, and, like a young animal let free
after days of captivity, she drew in deep breaths of sweet-scented air.
"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "it is good to be out again; being a
prisoner doesn't suit me, I can tell you that."
"Your dear father seems to be very severe with you, Klara," said Elsa
compassionately.
"Yes! curse him!" retorted the Jewess fiercely, as a savage, cruel look
flashed through her sunken eyes. "He nearly killed me when he came home
from Kecskemét that time--beat me like a dog--and now . . ."
"Poor Klara!"
"I shouldn't have minded the beating so much. Among our people, parents
have the right to be severe, and it is better to take a beating from
your father than to be punished by the rabbi."
"Your dear father will forgive you in time," suggested Elsa gently.
She felt miserably uncomfortable, and would have given worlds to be rid
of Klara. She couldn't think why the girl had stopped to talk to her and
Andor: in fact she was more than sure that Klara had come out this
evening on purpose to talk to her and to Andor; for now she stood
deliberately in front of them both with arms crossed in front of her and
defiant eyes fixed now upon one and now upon the other. Andor too was
beginning to look cross and sullen; this meeting coming on the top of
that lovely walk seemed like a black shadow cast over the radiance of
their happiness, and this thin, tall girl, all in black, with black hair
fluttering round her pale face, seemed like a big black bird of evil
presage: her skirts flapped round her knees like wings and her voice
sounded cold and harsh like the croaking of a raven.
But Elsa's kindly disposition did not allow her to be too obviously
unkind to the Jewess. Perhaps after all the girl meant no harm, and had
only run out now like a released colt, glad to feel freedom in the air
around her and the vastness lying stretched out before her to infinity
beyond. Perhaps she had only sought the company of the first-comers in
order to get a small measure of sympathy. But now, though Elsa's gentle
words should have softened her mood, she retorted with renewed
fierceness:
"Curse him! I don't want his forgiveness! and if ever he wants mine--on
his deathbed--he won't get it--even if he should die in torment for want
of a kind word from me."
"Klara, you mustn't say that," cried Elsa, horrified at what she
considered almost blasphemy. "Your father is your father, remember--and
even if he has been harsh to you . . ."
Klara interrupted her with a loud and strident laugh.
"If he has been harsh to me!" she exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you that he
thrashed me like a dog, so that I was sick for days. But I wouldn't mind
that so much. Bruises mend sooner or later, but it's that abominable
marriage which will make me curse him to my dying day."
"Marriage? . . . what marriage? . . ."
"With a man I had never seen in my life until it was all settled. Just a
man who is so ugly and so bad-tempered and so repugnant to every girl
whom he knows that nobody would have him--but just a man who wanted a
wife. The rabbi at Arad knew about him and he spoke about him to
father--it seems that he is quite rich--and father has given me to him
and I am to be married within a fortnight. Curse them! curse them all, I
say! Oh! I wish I had the pluck to run away, or to kill myself or do
something--but I am such an abominable coward--and I shall loathe to
live in Arad in a tiny secondhand clothes shop, with that hideous
monster for a husband--pointed at by everyone as the girl with a
disgraceful story to her credit and sold to a creature whom no one else
would have--in order to cover up a scandal."
Elsa was silent; her heart now was full of pity for the girl, who indeed
was being punished far more severely than she deserved. It was clear
that Klara was terribly resentful at her fate, and there was a look of
vengeful rebellion in the glance which she threw on Elsa and Andor now.
Overhead there was flapping of wings--a flight of rooks cut through the
air and there were magpies in their trail.
"Three for a wedding," said Andor with a forced laugh, trying to break
the spell which--much against his will--seemed to have been suddenly
cast over his happy spirits.
"One for sorrow, more like," retorted Klara.
"No, no, come!" he rejoined; "you must not look at it like that. There
is always some happiness to be got out of married life. You are not very
happy in your old home--you will like to have one of your own--a wedding
is only the prelude to better things."
"That depends on the wedding, my friend," she sneered; "this one will
be a finish, not a prelude--the naughty child, well whipped, sent out of
mischief's way."
"I am sorry, Klara, that you feel it so strongly," he said more kindly.
"Yes," she retorted. "I dare say, my good man, you are sorry enough for
me now, but you might have thought of all that, you know, before you
played me that dirty trick."
"What do you mean?" he broke in quickly.
"Just what I say," she replied, "and no more. A dirty, abominable trick,
I call it, and I cannot even show you up before the village--I could not
even speak of you to the police officers. Oh, yes!" she continued more
and more vehemently, as a flood of wrath and of resentment and a burning
desire for getting even with Fate seemed literally to sweep her off her
mental balance and cause her to lose complete control of her tongue,
"oh, yes! my fine gentleman! you can go and court Elsa now, and whisper
sweet love-words in her ears--you two turtle-doves are the edification
of the entire village now--and presently you will get married and live
happy ever afterwards. But what I want to ask you, my friend," she
added, and she took a step or two nearer to him, until her hot and angry
breath struck him in the face and he was forced to draw himself back,
away from that seething cauldron of resentment and of vengeance which
was raging before him now, "what I want to ask you is have you ever
thought of me?"
"Thought of you, Klara?" he said quietly, even as he felt, more than
saw, that Elsa too had drawn back a little--a step or two further away
from Klara, but a step or two also further away from him. "Thought of
you?" he reiterated, seeing that Klara did not reply immediately, and
that just for one brief moment--it was a mere flash--a look of
irresolution had crept into her eyes, "why should I be thinking about
you?"
"Why, indeed?" she said with a wrathful sneer. "What hurt had I done to
you, Andor, that is what I want to know. I was always friendly to you. I
had never done you any wrong--nor did I do Elsa any wrong--any wrong, I
mean, that mattered," she continued, talking more loudly and more
volubly because Andor was making desperate efforts to stop and interrupt
her. "Béla would only have run after another woman if I had turned my
back on him. And then when you asked me to leave him alone, I promised,
didn't I? What you asked me to do I promised. . . . And I meant to keep
my promise to you, and you knew it . . . and yet you rounded on me like
that. . . ."
"Silence, Klara," he cried at the top of his voice as he shook the girl
roughly by the shoulder.
But she paid no heed to him--she was determined to be heard, determined
to have her say. All the bitterness in her had been bottled up for
weeks. She meant to meet Andor face to face before she was packed off as
the submissive wife of a hated husband--the naughty child, whipped and
sent out of the way--she meant to throw all the pent-up bitterness
within her, straight into his face--and meant to do it when Elsa was
nigh. For days and days she had watched for an opportunity; but her
father had kept her a prisoner in the house, besides which she had no
great desire to affront the sneering looks of village gossips. But this
evening was her opportunity. For this she had waited, and now she meant
to take it, and no power on earth, force or violence would prevent her
from pouring out the full phial of her venomous wrath.
"I will not be silent," she shrieked, "I will not! You did round on me
like a cur--you sneak--you double-faced devil. . . ."
"Will you be silent!" he hissed through his teeth, his face deadly pale
now with a passion of wrath at least as fierce as hers.
But now Elsa's quiet voice interposed between these two tempestuous
souls.
"No!" she said firmly, "Klara shall not be silent, Andor. Let go her arm
and let her speak. I want to hear what she has to say."
"She is trying to come between you and me, Elsa," said Andor, who was
trying to keep his violent rage in check. "She tried to come between you
and Béla, and chose an ugly method to get at what she wanted. She hates
you . . . why I don't know, but she does hate you, and she always tries
to do you harm. Don't listen to her, I tell you. Why! just look at her
now! . . . the girl is half mad."
"Mad?" broke in Klara, as with a jerky movement of her shoulders she
disengaged herself from Andor's rough grasp. "I dare say I am mad. And
so would you be," she added, turning suddenly to Elsa, "so would you be,
if all in one night you were to lose everything you cared for in the
world--your freedom--the consideration of your friends--the man who some
day would have made you a good husband--everything, everything--and all
because of that sneaking, double-faced coward."
"If you don't hold your tongue . . ." cried Andor menacingly.
"You will kill me, won't you?" she sneered. "One murder more or less on
your conscience won't hurt you any more, will it, my friend? You will
kill me, eh? Then you'll have two of us to your reckoning by and by, me
and Béla!"
"Béla!" the cry, which sounded like a protest--hot, indignant,
defensive--came from Elsa. She was paler than either of the others, and
her glowing, inquiring eyes were fixed upon Klara with the look of an
untamed creature ready to defend and to protect the thing that it holds
dear.
"Don't listen to her, Elsa," pleaded Andor in a voice rendered hoarse
with an overwhelming apprehension.
He felt as if his happiness, his life, the whole of this living,
breathing world were slipping away from him--as if he had suddenly woke
up from a beautiful, peaceful dream and found himself on the edge of a
precipice and unable, in this sudden rude awakening, to keep a foothold
upon the shifting sands. There was a mist before his eyes--a mist which
seemed to envelop Elsa more and more, making her slim, exquisite figure
appear more dim, blurring the outline of her gold-crowned head, getting
more and more dense until even her blue eyes had disappeared away from
him--away--snatched from his grasp--wafted away by that mist to the
distant land beyond the low-lying horizon.
Something in the agony of his appeal, something in the pathos of Elsa's
defiant attitude must have struck a more gentle cord in the Jewess'
heart. The tears gathered in her eyes--tears of self-pity at the misery
which she seemed to be strewing all round her with a free hand.
"I don't think that I really meant to tell you, Elsa," she said more
quietly, "not lately, at any rate. Oh, I dare say at first I did mean to
hurt you--but a month has gone by and I was beginning to forget. People
used to say of me that I was a good sort--it was the hurt that _he_ did
me that seems to have made a devil of me. . . . And then--just now when
I saw the other folk coming home in the procession and noticed that you
and Andor weren't among them, I guessed that you would be walking back
together arm-in-arm--and that the whole world would be smiling on you
both, while I was eating out my heart in misery."
She was speaking with apparent calm now, in a dull and monotonous voice,
her eyes fixed upon the distant line of the horizon, where the glowing
sun had at last sunk to rest. The brilliant orange and blood-red of the
sky had yielded to a colder crimson tint--it, too, was now slowly
turning to grey.
Elsa stood silent, listening, and Andor no longer tried to force Klara
to silence. What was the good? Fate had spoken through her lips--God's
wrath, perhaps, had willed it so. For the first time in all these weeks
he realized that perhaps he had committed a deadly sin, and that he had
had no right to reckon on happiness coming to him, because of it. He
stood there, dazed, letting the Jewess have her way. What did it matter
how much more she said? Perhaps, on the whole, it was best that Elsa
should learn the whole truth now.
And Klara continued to speak in listless, apathetic tones, letting her
tongue run on as if she had lost control over what she said, and as if a
higher Fate was forcing her to speak against her will.
"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, "that some kind of devil did get
into my bones then. I wandered out into the stubble, and I saw you
together coming from the distance. The sunlight was full upon you, and
long before you saw me I saw your faces quite distinctly. There was so
much joy, so much happiness in you both, that I seemed to see it shining
out of your eyes. And I was so broken and so wretched that I couldn't
bear to see Andor so happy with the girl who rightly belonged to
Béla--the wretched man whom he himself had sent to his death."
"Whom he himself had sent to his death?" broke in Elsa quietly. "What do
you mean, Klara?"
"I mean that it was young Count Feri who was to have come to see me that
night. Father being away, he wanted to come and have a little chat and a
bit of supper with me. There was no harm in that, was there? He didn't
care to be seen walking in at the front door--as there's always such a
lot of gossip in this village--so he asked me for the back-door key, and
I gave it to him."
"Well?"
"Leopold missed the key later on, and guessed I had given it to Count
Feri. He was mad with jealousy and threatened to kill anyone who dared
come sneaking in round the back way. He wouldn't let me out of his
sight--and threatened to strangle me if I attempted to go and get the
key back from Count Feri. I was nearly crazy with fear. Wouldn't you
have been," she added defiantly, "if you had a madman to deal with and
no one near to protect you?"
"Perhaps," replied Elsa, under her breath.
"Then Andor came into the tap-room. With soft words and insinuating
promises he got me to tell him what had happened. I didn't want to at
first--I mistrusted him because of what had happened at the banquet--I
knew that he hated me because of you."
"It is not true," broke in Andor involuntarily.
"Let her tell her story her own way," rejoined Elsa, with the same
strange quiet which seemed now to envelop her soul.
"There's nothing more to tell," retorted Klara. "Nothing, at any rate,
that you haven't guessed already. I told Andor all about Count Feri and
the key, and how terrified I was that Leopold would do some deadly
mischief. He offered to go to the castle and get the key away from the
young Count."
"Well?"
"Well! Andor was in love with you, wasn't he?" she continued, speaking
once more with vehemence; "he wanted you, didn't he? And he hated Béla
having you. He hated me, too, of course. So he got the key away from
Count Feri, and later on, after you had followed Béla almost to the
tap-room and you had some words with him just outside . . . you
remember?"
"Yes."
"Andor had the key in his pocket then--and he gave it to Béla. . . ."
There was silence for awhile now--that silence which falls upon the
plain during the first hour after sunset--and which falls upon human
creatures when destiny has spoken her last word. In the village far away
the worshippers had gone back into the church, all sound of chanting and
praying had died away behind its walls; there was no flight of birds
overhead, nor call of waterfowl from the bank of the stream, the autumn
breeze had gone to rest with the sun, the leaves of acacias and willows
lay still, and even the turbulent waters of the Maros seemed momentarily
hushed.
"Is that true, Andor?"
It was Elsa's voice that spoke, but the voice sounded muffled and dull,
as if it came from far away or from out the depths of the earth. Then,
as Andor made no reply, but gazed on Elsa in mute and passionate appeal,
like a man who is drowning would gaze on the shore which he cannot
reach, Klara said slowly:
"Oh! it's true enough. You cannot deny it, can you, Andor? You wanted
your revenge on me, and you wanted to be rid of Béla--you wanted Elsa
for yourself, but you didn't care one brass fillér what would become of
me after that. You left me without a thought, lonely and unprotected,
knowing that a madman was prowling outside, ready to kill me or any man
who came along. You gave Béla that key, didn't you? . . . and told him
nothing about Leopold--and you didn't care what became of me, so long as
you got rid of Béla and could have Elsa for yourself."
"And now you have had your say, Klara," said Andor, breaking with a
mighty effort the spell of silence which had held him all this while;
"you have made all the mischief that you wanted to make. Suppose you
leave us alone now . . . Elsa and me . . . alone with the misery which
you have created for us."
Then, as for a moment she didn't move, but looked on him through
narrowed lids and with a sneer, half of pity and half of triumph, he
continued with a sudden outburst of fierceness:
"Well! you have had your say! . . . Why don't you go?"
Klara shrugged her shoulders and said more lightly:
"Oh, very well, my friend, I'll go. . . . Good-bye, Elsa," she added,
with sudden earnestness. "I don't suppose that you want to shake hands
with me--and I dare say it's no use asking you to think kindly of
me--but I wish you would try and believe that I am sorry I lost myself
as I did. I don't think that I ever would have told you if I hadn't seen
_him_ looking so happy and so complacent after the horrible, dirty trick
which he played me. People used to say that I had a good heart, but, by
the Almighty, I declare that I seem to have lost my head lately. That's
what I say, Elsa. It's all very well, but what about me? What had I
done?--and now, look at my life! But don't you fret about him or any
other man. Take my word for it, men are not worth it."
And having said that she turned on her heel and slowly walked away,
leaving behind her an ocean of desolation. She walked away--with a slow,
swinging stride, one hand on her hip, her head thrown back.
For a long time her darkly-clad figure was silhouetted against the
evening sky, a speck of blackness upon the immensity around. Elsa
watched her go, watched that tiny black speck which, like the locust
which at times devastates the plains, had left behind it an irreparable
trail of misery.