A Bride of the Plains Part 35

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 ma.s.s, half unconscious on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVII

"The shadow that fell from the tall sunflowers."

How Klara Goldstein spent that terrible night she never fully realized.

After half an hour or so she dragged herself up from the floor. Full consciousness had returned to her, and with it the power to feel, to understand and to fear.

A hideous, awful terror was upon her which seemed to freeze her through and through; a cold sweat broke out all over her body, and she was trembling from head to foot. She crawled as far as the narrow little bed which was in a corner of the room, and just managed to throw herself upon it, on her back, and there to remain inert, perished with cold, racked with shivers, her eyes staring upwards into the darkness, her ears strained to listen to every sound that came from the other side of the door.

But gradually, as she lay, her senses became more alive; the power to think coherently, to reason with her fears, a.s.serted itself more and more over those insane terrors which had paralysed her will and her heart. She did begin to think--not only of herself and of her miserable position, but of the man who lay outside--dying or dead.

Yes! That soon became the most insistent thought.

Leopold Hirsch, having done the awful deed, had fled, of course, but his victim might not be dead, he might be only wounded and dying for want of succour. Klara--closing her eyes--could almost picture him, groaning and perhaps trying to drag himself up in a vain endeavour to get help.

Then she rose--wretched, broken, terrified--but nevertheless resolved to put all selfish fears aside and to ascertain the full extent of the tragedy which had been enacted outside her door. She lit the storm-lantern, then, with it in her hand, she went through the tap-room and opened the front door.

She knew well the risks which she was running, going out like this into the night, and alone. Any pa.s.ser-by might see her--ask questions, suspect her of connivance when she told what it was that she had come out to seek in the darkness behind her own back door. But to this knowledge and this small additional fear she resolutely closed her mind.

Drawing the door to behind her, she stepped out on to the verandah and thence down the few steps into the road below.

A slight breeze had sprung up within the last half-hour, and had succeeded in chasing away the heavy banks of cloud which had hung over the sky earlier in the evening.

Even as Klara paused at the foot of the verandah steps in order to steady herself on her feet, the last filmy veil that hid the face of the moon glided ethereally by. The moon was on the wane, golden and mysterious, and now, as she appeared high in the heaven, surrounded by a halo of prismatic light, she threw a cold radiance on everything around, picking out every tree and cottage with unfailing sharpness and casting black, impenetrable shadows which made the light, by contrast, appear yet more vivid and more clear.

All around leaves and branches rustled with a soft, swishing sound, like the whisperings of ghosts, and from the plains beyond came that long-drawn-out murmur of myriads of plume-crowned maize as they bent in recurring unison to the caress of the wind.

Klara's eyes peered anxiously round. Quickly she extinguished her lantern, and then remained for a while clinging to the wooden bal.u.s.ters of the verandah, eyes and ears on the alert like a hunted beast. Two belated csikos[7] from a neighbouring village were pa.s.sing down the main road, singing at the top of their voices, their spurred boots clinking as they walked. Klara did not move till the murmur of the voices and the clinking of metal had died away and no other sound of human creature moving or breathing close by broke the slumbering echoes of the village.

[Footnote 7: Herdsmen in charge of foals.]

Only in the barn, far away, people were singing and laughing and making merry. Klara could hear the gipsy band, the sc.r.a.ping of the fiddles and banging of the czimbalom, followed now and then by one of those outbursts of jollity, of clapping of mugs on wooden tables, of banging of feet and shouts of laughter which characterize all festive gatherings in Hungary.

Cautiously now Klara began to creep along the low wall which supported the bal.u.s.trade. Her feet made no noise in the soft, sandy earth, her skirts clung closely to her limbs; at every minute sound she started and paused, clinging yet closer to the shadow which enveloped her.

Now she came to the corner. There, just in front of her was the pollarded acacia, behind which the murderer had cowered for an hour--on the watch. The slowly withering leaves trembled in the breeze and their soughing sounded eerie in the night, like the sighs of a departing soul.

Further on, some twenty paces away, was old Rezi's cottage. All was dark and still in and around it. Klara had just a sufficient power of consciousness left to note this fact with an involuntary little sigh of relief. The murderer had done his work quickly and silently; his victim had uttered no cry that would rouse the old gossip from her sleep.

When Klara at last rounded the second corner of the house and came in full view of the unfenced yard in the rear, she saw that it was flooded with moonlight. For a moment she closed her eyes, for already she had perceived that a dark and compact ma.s.s lay on the ground within a few feet of the back door. She wanted strength of purpose and a mighty appeal to her will before she would dare to look again. When she reopened her eyes, she saw that the ma.s.s lay absolutely still. She crept forward with trembling limbs and knees that threatened to give way under her at every moment.

Now she no longer thought of herself; there was but little fear of anyone pa.s.sing by this way and seeing her as she gradually crawled nearer and nearer to that inert ma.s.s which lay there on the ground so rigid and silent. Beyond the yard there were only maize-fields, and a tall row of sunflowers closed the place in as with a wall. And not a sound came from old Rezi's cottage.

Klara was quite close to that dark and inert thing at last; she put out her hand and touched it. The man was lying on his face; just as he had fallen, no doubt; with a superhuman effort she gathered up all her strength and lifted those hunched-up shoulders from the ground. Then she gave a smothered cry; the pallid face of Eros Bela was staring sightlessly up at the moon.

Indeed, for the moment the poor girl felt as if she must go mad, as if for ever and ever after this--waking or sleeping--she would see those gla.s.sy eyes, the drooping jaw, that horrible stain which darkened the throat and breast. For a few seconds, which to her seemed an eternity, she remained here, crouching beside the dead body of this unfortunate man, trying in vain in her confused mind to conjecture what had brought Bela here, instead of the young Count, within the reach of Leopold's maniacal jealousy and revenge.

But her brain was too numbed for reasoning and for coherent thought. She had but to accept the facts as they were: that Eros Bela lay here--dead, that Leopold had murdered him, and that she must save herself at all costs from being implicated in this awful, awful crime!

At last she contrived to gather up a sufficiency of strength--both mental and physical--to turn her back upon this terrible scene. She had struggled up to her feet and was turning to go when her foot knocked against something hard, and as--quite mechanically--her eyes searched the ground to see what this something was, she saw that it was the key of the back door, which had evidently escaped from the dead man's hand as he fell.

To stoop for it and pick it up--to run for the back door, which was so close by--to unlock and open it and then to slip through it into the house was but the work of a few seconds--and now here she was once again in her room, like the hunted beast back in its lair--panting, quivering, ready to fall--but safe, at all events.

No one had seen her, of that she felt sure. And now she knew--or thought she knew--exactly what had happened. Lakatos Andor had been to the castle; he had seen my lord and got the key away from him. He wanted to ingratiate himself with my lord and to be able to boast in the future that he had saved my lord's life, but evidently he did mean to have his revenge not only on herself--Klara--but also on Eros Bela for the humiliation which they had put upon Elsa. It was a cruel and a dastardly trick of revenge, and in her heart Klara had vague hopes already of getting even with Andor one day. But that would come by and by--at some future time--when all this terrible tragedy would have been forgotten.

For the present she must once more think of herself. The key was now a precious possession. She went to hang it up on its accustomed peg. Even Leopold--if he stayed in the village to brazen the whole thing out--could not prove anything with regard to that key. Eros Bela might have been a casual pa.s.ser-by, strolling about among the maize-fields, not necessarily intent on visiting Klara at dead of night. The key was now safely on its peg; who would dare swear that Eros Bela or anyone else ever had it in his possession?

In fact, the secret rested between five people, of which she--Klara--was one and the dead man another. Well, the latter could tell no tales, and she, of course, would say nothing. Already she had determined--even though her mind was still confused and her faculties still numb--that ignorance would be the safest stronghold behind which she could entrench herself.

There remained Leo himself, the young Count, and, of course, Andor.

Which of these three would she have the greatest cause to fear?

There was Leo mad with jealousy, the young Count indifferent, and Andor with curious and tortuous motives in his heart which surely he would not wish to disclose.

She had a sufficiency of presence of mind to go out and fetch the storm-lantern from where she had left it at the foot of the verandah steps. A pa.s.ser-by who saw her in the act wished her a merry good-night, to which she responded in a steady voice. Then she carefully locked the front door, and finally undressed and went to bed. There was no knowing whether some belated wayfarer might not presently come on the dead man lying there in the yard: and having roused the neighbours, the latter might think of calling on Ignacz Goldstein for spirit or what not. It was not generally known that Ignacz Goldstein was from home, and if people thumped loudly and long at her door, she must appear as if she had just been roused from peaceful sleep.

She felt much more calm and fully alive, above all, to her own danger.

That kind of superst.i.tious, unreasoning terror which had a.s.sailed her awhile ago had almost entirely left her. She seemed more composed, more sure of herself, now that she had been out in the yard and seen the whole _mise en scene_ of the tragedy, which before that she had only vaguely imagined.

But what she felt that she could not do was to lie here alone in the dark, with only the silvery light of the moon creeping in weirdly through the dulled panes of the tiny window. So she picked up her black skirt, and stuffed it into the narrow window embrasure, until not a ray of light from within could be seen to peep through on the other side.