Part 41 (1/2)

”It is not true, is it?”

Nor did it occur to Andor to lie to her about it all; the thought of denial never for one moment entered his head. The fatalism peculiar to this Oriental race made the man scorn to s.h.i.+eld himself behind a lie.

Bela was now for ever silent; the young Count would scorn to speak! His own protestations in the ear of this loving, simple-minded girl, against the accusations of a woman of the despised race--jealous, bitter, avowedly half-crazy--needed only to be uttered in order to be whole-heartedly believed. But even the temptation to pursue such a course never a.s.sailed his soul. With the limitless sky above him, the vast immensity of the plains stretching out unbroken far away, with the land under his feet and the scent of the maize-stubble in his nostrils, he was too proud of himself as a man to stoop to such a lie.

So when Elsa spoke to him and asked him that one straight and firm question, he raised his head and looked straight into her tear-dimmed eyes.

”What, Elsa?” he asked quietly.

”That you let Bela go to his death--just like that--as Klara said . . .

that is not all true, is it?”

And as she returned his look--fearlessly and trustfully--she knew that the question which she had thus put to him was really an affirmation of what she felt must be the truth. But already Andor had raised his voice in hot and pa.s.sionate protest.

”He was a brute to you, Elsa,” he affirmed with all the strength of his manhood, the power of his love, which, in spite of all, would not believe in its own misery; ”he would have made you wretchedly unhappy . . . he . . .”

”You did do it, then?” she broke in quietly.

”I did it because of you, Elsa,” he cried, and his own firm voice was now half-choked with sobs. ”He made you unhappy even though you were not yet bound to him by marriage. Once you were his wife he would have made you miserable . . . he would have bullied you . . . beaten you, perhaps.

I heard him out under the verandah speaking to you like the sneering brute that he was. . . . And then he kissed you . . . and I . . . But even then I didn't give him the key. . . . Klara lied when she said that. I didn't urge him to take it, even--I did not speak about the key.

It was lying on the table where I had put it--he took it up--I did not give it him.”

”But you let him take it. You knew that he meant to visit Klara, and that Leopold was on the watch outside. Yet you let him go. . . .”

”I let him go. . . . I was nearly mad then with rage at the way he had treated you all day. . . . His taking that key was a last insult put upon you on the eve of your wedding day. . . . The thought of it got into my blood like fire, when I saw his cruel leer and heard his sneers.

. . . Later on, I thought better of it . . . calmer thoughts had got into my brain . . . reason, sober sense. . . . I had gone back to the presbytery, and meant to go to bed--I went out, I swear it by G.o.d that I went out prepared to warn him, to help him if I could. The whole village was deserted, it was the hour of supper at the barn. I heard the church clock strike the half-hour after ten. I worked my way round to the back of Goldstein's house and in the yard I saw Bela lying--dead.”

”And you might have raised a finger to save him at first . . . and you didn't do it.”

”Not at first . . . and after that it was too late. . . .”

”You have done a big, big wrong, Andor,” she said slowly.