A Bride of the Plains Part 25

"By the Lord, Leo!" she said, with a little forced laugh, "you have given me the creeps, looking as you do. How dare you frighten me like that? With your clenched hands, too, as if you wanted to murder me.

There, now, don't be such a silly fool. You have got a long journey before you; it's no use making yourself sick with jealousy just before you go."

"I am not going on a journey," he said, in a toneless, even voice, which seemed to come from a grave.

"Not going?" she said, with a frown of puzzlement. "You were going to Fiume to meet your brother, don't you remember? The ship he is on is due in the day after to-morrow. If you don't start to-night you won't be able to catch the express at Budapesth to-morrow."

"I know all that," he said, in the same dull, monotonous tone; "I am not going, that's all."

"But . . ."

"I have changed my mind. Your father is going away. I must watch over you to see that no one molests you. Thieves might want to break in . . .

one never knows . . . anyhow, my brother can look after himself . . . I stay to look after you."

For a moment or two she stood quite still, her senses strained to grasp the meaning, the purport of the present situation--this madman on the watch outside--the young Count, key in hand, swaggering up to the back door at ten o'clock, when most folk would be at supper in the barn, her father gone, the village street wrapped in darkness!

Leopold, by a violent and sudden effort, had regained mastery over the muscles of his face and hands, these no longer twitched now, and he answered her look of mute inquiry with one of well-feigned quietude.

Only his breath he could not control, it pa.s.sed through his throat with a stertorous sound, and every now and then he had to pa.s.s his tongue over his dry, cracked lips.

Thus they stood for a moment eye to eye; and what she read in his glance caused a nameless fear to strike at her heart and to paralyse her will. But the next instant she had recovered her presence of mind. With quick, febrile movements she had already taken off her ap.r.o.n and with her hands smoothed her unruly dark hair. Then she made for the door.

Less than a second and already he had guessed her purpose: before she could reach the door he had his back against it and his nervy fingers had grasped her wrist.

"Where are you going?"

"Out," she said curtly.

"What for?"

"That's none of your business."

"What for?" he reiterated hoa.r.s.ely.

"Let go my wrist," she exclaimed, "you are hurting me."

"I'll hurt you worse," he cried, in a broken voice, "if you cross this threshold to-night."

But he released her wrist, and she, wrathful, indignant, terrified, retreated to the other end of the room.

"Go out by the back door," he sneered, "if you want to go out. You have the key, haven't you?"

"My father . . ." she began.

"Yes!" he said. "Go and tell your father that I, Leopold Hirsch, your affianced husband, am browbeating you--making a scene, what?--because you have made an a.s.signation with my lord the young Count, here--at night--under your father's roof--under the roof of a child of Israel!

You! An a.s.signation with a dirty Christian! . . . Bah! Go and tell your father that! And he will thrash you to within an inch of your life! We are Jews, he and I, and hold the honour of our women sacred--more sacred than their life!"

"Don't be a fool, Leopold," she cried, feeling that indeed, between her father and this madman, her life had ceased to be safe. She looked round her helplessly. Three or four besotted fools lying helpless across the tables, and all the village dancing and making merry some two hundred metres away, her father--implacable, as she well knew, where her conduct was concerned--and this madman ready to kill to satisfy his l.u.s.t of vengeance and of hate--she felt that indeed, unless Heaven performed a miracle, here was the beginning of an awful, an irredeemable tragedy.

"Leopold, don't be a fool," she reiterated, trying with all her might not to appear frightened or scared or confused. "I have promised Kapus Elsa to go to her dance for half an hour. I had forgotten all about it.

I must go now."

"Go and change your dress, then," he retorted with a sneer, "then you can go out by the back way. You have put the key away somewhere, haven't you? You know where it is."

"You are mad about doors to-night. I tell you I am going out now, by that front door--at once."

"And I tell you," he said, slowly and deliberately, "that if you cross the front door step I will call your father and tell him that you go and meet your lover--a Christian lover--the young Count--who would as soon think of marrying you as he would a n.i.g.g.e.r or a kitchen s.l.u.t. Before you will have reached the high road your father and I will be on your heels, and either he or I will strangle you ere you come within sight of my lord's castle."

"You are mad!" she cried. "Or else an idiot."

"Better look for that back-door key," he retorted.

"What has the back-door key to do with it?" she asked sullenly.

"Only this," he replied, "that while that monkey-faced dog of a Christian was whispering to you just now, I know that the key was hanging on its usual peg, but I heard something about 'supper' and about 'ten o'clock.' May he break his neck, I say, and save me the job. Then he ordered me out of the room. Oh! I guessed! I am no fool, you know!

When I came back I looked into your father's room--the key was gone, and I knew. And what I say is, why can't he come in by the front door like a man, if he has nothing to hide? Why must you let him come in like a thief by a back-door, if you have nothing to be ashamed of? The tap-room is open to anybody. Anybody can walk in and get a drink if they want to.

Then why this whispering and this sneaking?"

He was working himself up to a greater and ever greater pa.s.sion of fury.

He kept his voice low because he didn't want Ignacz Goldstein to hear--not just yet, at any rate--for Ignacz was a hard man and a stern father, and G.o.d only knew what he might not do if he was roused. Leopold did not want Klara hurt--not yet, at any rate--not until he was quite sure that she meant to play him altogether false. She was vain and frivolous, over-fond of dress and of queening it over the peasant girls of the village, but there was no real harm in her. She was immensely flattered by the young Count's attentions and over-ready to accept his presents in exchange for kisses and whisperings behind closed doors, but there was no real harm in her--so at least Leopold Hirsch kept repeating to himself time and again, whenever jealousy gnawed at his heart more roughly than he could endure.

Just now that torment was almost unbearable, and the pa.s.sion of fury into which he had worked himself blinded him momentarily to the dull, aching pain. Klara, as he spoke thus hoa.r.s.ely, and brought his contorted face closer and closer to hers, had gradually shrunk more and more into the corner of the room, and there she remained now, flattened against the wall, her wide-open, terror-filled eyes fixed staringly upon this raving madman.

"You asked just now," he continued, in the same hoa.r.s.e, guttural whisper, which seemed literally to be racking and tearing his throat as it came, "what the back-door key had to do with my not going to meet my brother at Fiume. Well! It has this much to do with it, that you happen to be my tokened wife, that you happen to be of my race and of my blood, a sober, clean-living Jewess, please G.o.d, and not one of those frivolous, empty-headed Christian girls--you are that now, I know; if you were not I would kill you first and myself afterwards: therefore, if to-night I catch a thief--any thief, I don't care who he is--sneaking into this house by a back door when you happen to be here alone and seemingly unprotected, if I catch any kind of thief or malefactor, I say . . ."

He paused, and she, through teeth that chattered, contrived to murmur:

"Well? What do you say? Why don't you go on?"

"Because you understand," he said, with calm as sudden and as terrible as his rage had been awhile ago. "I am not a Christian, you know, nor yet a gentleman. I cannot walk up either to my lord's castle or to one of these Christian Magyar peasants and strike him in the face for trying to rob me of that which is more precious to me than life. I am a Jew . . . a low-born, miserable Jew, whose whole race, origin and upbringing are despicable in the sight of the n.o.ble lords as well as of the Hungarian peasantry. Just a wretched creature whom one orders to hold one's horse, to brush one's boots, to stand out of one's way, anyhow; but not to meet as man to man, not to fight openly and frankly for the woman whom one loves. Well! You happen to be a Jewess too, and tokened to a Jew, and if either my lord or one of these d----d Magyar peasants chooses to come sneaking round you like a thief in the night, well . . ."

He paused, and from the pocket of his shabby trousers he half drew out a long, sheathed hunting-knife, and then quickly hid it again from her sight.

Klara smothered a desperate cry of terror. Leopold now turned his back on her; he went up to the table and seizing a carafe of water, he poured himself out a huge mugful and drank it down at a draught. The edge of the mug rattled against his teeth, his hand was trembling so that half the contents were poured down on his clothes. He did not look again on Klara, but having put the mug down, he pa.s.sed his hand once or twice across his forehead as if to chase away some of those horrible thoughts which were still lurking in his brain.

Then he took his cigarette-case out of his pocket, selected a cigarette, struck a match and lit it, still avoiding Klara's fixed and staring gaze.

"I'll go and smoke this outside," he said quietly. "I can see both doors from the corner. When you have found that back-door key you may go to Elsa Kapus' wedding feast, but not before."

He took a final look round the room, and his eyes, which had once more become dull and pale, rested with an infinite look of contempt upon the two or three besotted drunkards who, throughout this scene, had done no more than open and blink a sleepy eye.

"Shall I turn these louts out for you now?" he asked.

"No, no," she replied mechanically, "let them have their sleep. When they wake they'll go away all right."

Just then the outer door was opened and Lakatos Andor's broad figure appeared upon the threshold. Leopold Hirsch gave him a nod, and without another look on Klara, he strode out into the night.