Part 36 (1/2)

She had placed the storm-lantern in the corner, and this she left alight. It threw a feeble, yellowish glimmer round the room; after a few moments, when her eyes were accustomed to this semi-gloom, she found that she could see every familiar object quite distinctly; even the shadows did not seem impenetrable, nor could ghosts lurk in the unseen portions of the tiny room.

Of course there was no hope of sleep--Klara knew well the moment that she looked on the dead man's face, that she would always see it before her--to the end of her days. She saw it now, quite distinctly--especially when she closed her eyes; the moonlit yard, the shadow that fell from the tall sunflowers, and the huddled, dark ma.s.s on the ground, with the turned-up face and the sightless eyes. But she was not afraid; she only felt bitterly resentful against Andor, who, she firmly believed, had played her an odious trick.

She almost felt sorry for Leopold, who had only sinned because of his great love for her.

CHAPTER XXVIII

”We shall hear of another tragedy by and by.”

And so in Marosfalva there was no wedding on the festival day of S.

Michael and All Angels; instead of that, on the day following, there was a solemn Ma.s.s for the dead in the small village church, which was full to overflowing on that great occasion.

Eros Bela had been found--out in the open--murdered by an unknown hand.

Feher Karoly and his brother, who lived down the Fekete Road, had taken a cut across the last maize-field--the one situated immediately behind the inn kept by Ignacz Goldstein, and they had come across Bela's body, lying in the yard, with face upturned and eyes staring up sightlessly at the brilliant blue sky overhead.

It was then close on eight o'clock in the morning. The dancing in the barn had been kept up till then, even though the two most important personages of the festive gathering were not there to join in the fun.

The bridegroom had not been seen since his brief appearance an hour or two before supper, and Elsa had only just sat through the meal, trying to seem cheerful, but obviously hardly able to restrain her tears. After supper, when her partner sought her for the csardas, she was nowhere to be found. Kapus Irma--appealed to--said that the girl was fussy and full of nerves--for all the world like a born lady. She certainly wasn't very well, had complained of headache, and been allowed by her mother to go home quietly and turn into bed.

”She has another two jolly days to look forward to,” Irma neni had added complacently. ”Perhaps it is as well that she should get some rest to-night.”

Ah, well! it was a queer wedding, and no mistake! The queerest that had ever been in Marosfalva within memory of man. A bride more p.r.o.ne to tears than to laughter! A bridegroom surly, discontented, and paying marked attentions to the low-down Jewess over at the inn under his future wife's very nose!

It was quite one thing for a man to a.s.sert his own independence, and to show his bride at the outset on whose feet the highest-heeled boots would be, but quite another to flout the customs of the countryside and all its proprieties.

When, after supper, good and abundant wine had loosened all tongues, adverse comments on the absent bridegroom flowed pretty freely. This should have been the merriest time of the evening--the merriest time, in fact, of all the three festive days--the time when one was allowed to chaff the bride and to make her blush, to slap the lucky bridegroom on the back and generally to allow full play to that exuberance of spirits which is always bubbling up to the surface out of a Magyar peasant's heart.

No doubt that Bela's conduct had upset Elsa and generally cast a gloom over the festive evening. But the young people were not on that account going to be done out of their dancing; the older ones might sit round and gossip and throw up their hands and sigh, but that was no reason why the gipsies should play a melancholy dirge.

A csardas it must be, and of the liveliest! And after that another and yet another. Would it not be an awful pity to waste Eros Bela's money, even though he was not here to enjoy its fruits? So dancing was kept up till close on eight o'clock in the morning--till the sun was high up in the heavens and the bell of the village church tolled for early Ma.s.s.

Until then the gipsies sc.r.a.ped their fiddles and banged their czimbalom almost uninterruptedly; hundreds of sad and gay folk-songs were sung in chorus in the intervals of dancing the national dance. Cotton petticoats of many hues fluttered, leather boots--both red and black--clinked and stamped until the morning.

Then it was that the merry company at last broke up, and that Feher Karoly and his brother took the short cut behind the inn, and found the bridegroom--at whose expense they had just danced and feasted--lying stark and stiff under the clear September sun.

They informed the mayor, who at once put himself in communication with the gendarmerie of Arad: but long before the police came, the news of the terrible discovery was all over the village, and there was no thought of sleep or rest after that.

Worried to death, perspiring and puzzled, the police officers hastily sent down from Arad had vainly tried to make head or tail of the ma.s.s of conflicting accounts which were poured into their ears in a continuous stream of loud-voiced chatter for hours at a stretch: and G.o.d only knows what judicial blunders might have been committed before the culprit was finally brought to punishment if the latter had not, once for all, himself delivered over the key of the mystery.

Leopold Hirsch had hanged himself to one of the beams in his own back shop. His a.s.sistant found him there--dead--later in the day.

As--by previous arrangement--the whole village was likely to be at Elsa Kapus' wedding, there would not have been much use in keeping the shop open. So the a.s.sistant had been given a holiday, but he came to the shop toward midday, when the whole village was full of the terrible news and half the population out in the street gossiping and commenting on it--marvelling why his employer had not yet been seen outside his doors.

The discovery--which the a.s.sistant at once communicated to the police--solved the riddle of Eros Bela's death. With a sigh of relief the police officers adjourned from the mayor's parlour, where they had been holding their preliminary inquiries, to the castle, where it was their duty to report the occurrence to my lord the Count.

At the castle of course everyone was greatly surprised: the n.o.ble Countess raised her aristocratic eyebrows and declared her abhorrence of hearing of these horrors. The Count took the opportunity of cursing the peasantry for a quarrelsome, worrying lot, and offered the police officers a snack and a gla.s.s of wine. He was hardly sorry for the loss of his bailiff, as Eros Bela had been rather tiresome of late--b.u.mptious and none too sober--and his lords.h.i.+p anyhow had resolved to dispense with his services after he was married. So the death really caused him very little inconvenience.