Part 40 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+fting 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 s.h.i.+ning 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.