A Bride of the Plains Part 40

"Will you be silent!" he hissed through his teeth, his face deadly pale now with a pa.s.sion 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 Bela, 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 Bela!"

"Bela!" 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 hoa.r.s.e 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--s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 att.i.tude 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--G.o.d'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 Bela--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 Bela having you. He hated me, too, of course. So he got the key away from Count Feri, and later on, after you had followed Bela 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 Bela. . . ."

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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sionate appeal, like a man who is drowning would gaze on the sh.o.r.e 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 Bela--you wanted Elsa for yourself, but you didn't care one bra.s.s filler 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 Bela 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 Bela 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

"The land beyond the sunset."

And now the shadows of evening were slowly invading the plains. The autumn wind, lulled for a time to rest with the setting of the sun, had sprung up in angry gusts, lashing up clouds from the southwest and sending them to tear along and efface the last vestige of the evening crimson glow.

Elsa and Andor had both remained quite still after Klara left them; yet Elsa--like all simple creatures who feel acutely--was longing to run and let the far horizon, the distant unknown land, wrap and enfold her while she thought things out for herself, for indeed this real world--the world of men and women, of pa.s.sions and hatred and love--was nothing but a huge and cruel puzzle. She longed for solitude--the solitude which the plains can offer in such absolute completeness--because her heart was heavy and she felt that if she were all alone she might ease the weight on her heart in a comforting flow of tears.

But this would not have been kind to Andor. She could not leave him now, when he looked so broken down with sorrow and misery and doubt. So, after a little while, when she felt that if she spoke her voice would be quite steady, she said gently:

"It is not all true, is it, Andor?"

She could not--she would not believe it all true--not in the way that Klara had put it before her, with all its horrible details of callousness and cowardice. For more years than she could remember she had loved and trusted Andor--she had known his simple, loyal nature, his kind and gentle ways--a few spiteful words from a jealous woman were not likely to tear down in a moment the solid edifice of her affection and her confidence. True! his silence had told her something that was a bitter truth; his pa.s.sionate rage against Klara had been like a cruel stab right into her heart--but even then she wanted the confirmation which could only come from his own lips--and for this she waited when she asked him, quite simply, altogether trustingly: