Kitabı oku: «A Bride of the Plains», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XVIII

"I must punish her."

The little village inn kept by Ignácz Goldstein was not more squalid, not more dark and stuffy, than are the village inns of most countries in Europe. Klara did her best to keep the place bright and clean, which was no easy matter when the roads were muddy and men brought in most of the mud of those roads on their boots, and deposited it on the freshly-washed floors.

The tap-room was low and narrow and dark. Round the once whitewashed walls there were rows of wooden benches with narrow trestle tables in front of them. Opposite the front door, on a larger table, were the bottles of wine and silvorium,⁶ the jars of tobacco and black cigars, which a beneficent government licensed Ignácz Goldstein the Jew to sell to the peasantry.

The little room obtained its daylight mainly from the street-door when it was open, for the one tiny window – on the right as you entered – was not constructed to open, and its dulled glass masked more of daylight than it allowed to filtrate through.

Opposite the window a narrow door led into a couple of living rooms, the first of which also had direct access to the street.

The tap-room itself was always crowded and always busy, the benches round the walls were always occupied, and Klara and her father were never allowed to remain idle for long. She dispensed the wine and the silvorium, and made herself agreeable to the guests. Ignácz saw to the tobacco and the cigars. Village women in Hungary never frequent the public inn: when they do, it is because they have sunk to the lowest depths of degradation: a woman in drink is practically an unknown sight in the land.

Klara herself, though her ways with the men were as free and easy as those of her type and class usually are, would never have dreamed of drinking with any of them.

This evening she was unusually busy. While the wedding feast was going on lower down in the village, a certain number of men who liked stronger fare than what is usually provided at a "maiden's farewell" dance, as well as those who had had no claim to be invited, strolled into the tap-room for a draught of silvorium, a gossip with the Jewess, or a game of tarok if any were going.

Ignácz Goldstein himself was fond of a game. Like most of his race, his habits were strictly sober. As he kept a cool head, he usually won; and his winnings at tarok made a substantial addition to the income which he made by selling spirits and tobacco. Leopold Hirsch, who kept the village grocery store, was also an inveterate player, and, like Goldstein, a very steady winner. But it was not the chance of a successful gamble which brought him so often to the tap-room. For years now he had dangled round Klara's fashionable skirts, and it seemed as if at last his constancy was to be rewarded. While she was younger – and was still of surpassing beauty – she had had wilder flights of ambition than those which would lead her to rule over a village grocery store: during those times she had allowed Leopold Hirsch to court her, without giving him more than very cursory encouragement.

As the years went on, however, and her various admirers from Arad proved undesirous to go to the length of matrimony, she felt more kindly disposed toward Leo, who periodically offered her his heart and hand, and the joint ownership of the village grocery store. She had looked into her little piece of mirror rather more closely of late than she had done hitherto, and had discovered two or three ominous lines round her fine, almond-shaped eyes, and noted that her nose showed of late a more marked tendency to make close acquaintance with her chin.

Then she began to ponder, and to give the future more serious consideration than she had ever done before. She ticked off on her long, pointed fingers the last bevy of her admirers on whom she might reasonably count: the son of the chemist over in Arad, the tenant of the Kender Road farm, the proprietor of the station cabs, and there were two or three others; but they were certainly falling away, and she had added no new ones to her list these past six months.

Erös Béla's formally declared engagement to Kapus Elsa had been a very severe blow. She had really reckoned on Béla. He was educated and unconventional, and though he professed the usual anti-Semitic views peculiar to his kind, Klara did not believe that these were very genuine. At any rate, she had reckoned that her fine eyes and provocative ways would tilt successfully against the man's racial prejudices.

Erös Béla was rich and certainly, up to a point, in love with her. Klara was congratulating herself on the way she was playing her matrimonial cards, when all her hopes were so suddenly dashed to the ground.

Béla was going to marry that silly, ignorant peasant girl, and she, Klara, would be left to marry Leopold after all.

Her anger and humiliation had been very great, and she had battled very persistently and very ably to regain the prize which she had lost. She knew quite well that, but for the fact that she belonged to the alien and despised race, Erös Béla would have been only too happy to marry her. His vanity alone had made him choose Kapus Elsa. He wanted the noted beauty for himself, because the noted beauty had been courted by so many people, and where so many people had failed he was proud to succeed.

Nor would he have cared to have it said that he had married a Jewess. There is always a certain thought of disgrace attached to such a marriage, whether it has been contracted by peer or peasant, and Erös Béla's one dominating idea in life was to keep the respect and deference of his native village.

But he had continued his attentions to Klara, and Klara had kept a wonderful hold over his imagination and over his will. She was the one woman who had ever had her will with him – only partially, of course, and not to the extent of forcing him into matrimony – but sufficiently to keep him also dangling round her skirts even though his whole allegiance should have belonged to Elsa.

The banquet this afternoon had been a veritable triumph. Whatever she had suffered through Béla's final disloyalty to herself, she knew that Kapus Elsa must have suffered all through the banquet. The humiliation of seeing one's bridegroom openly flaunting his admiration for another woman must have been indeed very bitter to bear.

Not for a moment did Klara Goldstein doubt that the subsequent scene was an act of vengeance against herself on Elsa's part. She judged other women by her own standard, discounted other women's emotions, thoughts, feelings, by her own. She thought it quite natural that Elsa should wish to be revenged, just as she was quite sure that Béla was already meditating some kind of retaliation for the shame which Andor had put upon him and for Elsa's obstinacy and share in the matter.

She had not spoken to anyone of the little scene which had occurred between the four walls of the little schoolroom: on the contrary she had spoken loudly of both the bridegroom's and the bride's cordiality to her during the banquet.

"Elsa wanted me to go to the dancing this evening," she said casually, "but I thought you would all miss me. I didn't want this place to be dull just because half the village is enjoying itself somewhere else."

It had been market day at Arad, and at about five o'clock Klara and her father became very busy. Cattle-dealers and pig-merchants, travellers and pedlars, dropped in for a glass of silvorium and a chat with the good-looking Jewess. More than one bargain, discussed on the marketplace of Arad, was concluded in the stuffy tap-room of Marosfalva.

"Shall we be honoured by the young Count's presence later on?" someone asked, with a significant nod to Klara.

Everyone laughed in sympathy; the admiration of the noble young Count for Klara Goldstein was well-known. There was nothing in it, of course; even Klara, vain and ambitious as she was, knew that the bridge which divided the aristocrat from one of her kind and of her race was an impassable one. But she liked the young Count's attentions – she liked the presents he brought her from time to time, and relished the notoriety which this flirtation gave her.

She also loved to tease poor Leopold Hirsch. Leo had been passionately in love with her for years; what he must have endured in moral and mental torture during that time through his jealousy and often groundless suspicions no one who did not know him intimately could ever have guessed. These tortures which Klara wantonly inflicted upon the wretched young man had been a constant source of amusement to her. Even now she was delighted because, as luck would have it, he entered the tap-room at the very moment when everyone was chaffing her about the young Count.

Leopold Hirsch cast a quick, suspicious glance upon the girl, and his dull olive skin assumed an almost greenish hue. He was not of prepossessing appearance; this he knew himself, and the knowledge helped to keep his jealousy and his suspicion aflame.

He was short and lean of stature and his head, with its large, bony features, seemed too big for his narrow shoulders to carry. His ginger-coloured hair was lank and scanty; he wore it – after the manner of those of his race in that part of the world – in corkscrew ringlets down each side of his narrow, cadaverous-looking face.

His eyes were pale and shifty, but every now and then there shot into them a curious gleam of unbridled passion – love, hate or revenge; and then the whole face would light up and compel attention by the revelation of latent power.

This had happened now when a fellow who sat in the corner by the window made some rough jest about the young Count. Leopold made his way to Klara's side; his thin lips were tightly pressed together, and he had buried his hands in the pockets of his ill-fitting trousers.

"If that accursed aristocrat comes hanging round here much more, Klara," he muttered between set teeth, "I'll kill him one of these days."

"What a fool you are, Leopold!" she said. "Why, yesterday it was Erös Béla you objected to."

"And I do still," he retorted. "I heard of your conduct at the banquet to-day. It is the talk of the village. One by one these loutish peasants have come into my shop and told me the tale – curse them! – of how the bridegroom had eyes and ears only for you. You seem to forget, Klara," he added, while a thought of menace crept into his voice, "that you are tokened to me now. So don't try and make a fool of me, or."

"The Lord bless you, my good man," she retorted, with a laugh, "I won't try, I promise you. I wouldn't like to compete with the Almighty, who has done that for you already."

"Klara." he exclaimed.

"Oh! be quiet now, Leo," she said impatiently. "Can't you see that my hands are as full as I can manage, without my having to bother about you and your jealous tempers?"

She elbowed him aside and went to the counter to serve a customer who had just arrived, and more than a quarter of an hour went by before Leopold had the chance of another word with her.

"You might have a kind word for me to-night, Klara," he said ruefully, as soon as a brief lull in business enabled him to approach the girl.

"Why specially to-night?" she asked indifferently.

"Your father must go by the night train to Kecskemét," he said, with seeming irrelevance. "There is that business about the plums."

"The plums?" she asked, with a frown of puzzlement, "what plums?"

"The fruit he bought near Kecskemét. They start gathering at sunrise to-morrow. He must be there the first hour, else he'd get shamefully robbed. He must travel by night."

"I knew nothing about it," rejoined Klara, with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. "Father never tells me when he is going to be away from home."

"No!" retorted Leopold, with a sneer, "he knows better than to give all your gallants such a brilliant opportunity."

"Don't be a fool, Leo!" she reiterated with a laugh.

"I don't give any of them an opportunity, either," resumed the young man, while a curious look of almost animal ferocity crept into his pale face. "Whenever your father has to be away from home during the night, I take up my position outside this house and watch over you until daylight comes and people begin to come and go."

"Very thoughtful of you, my good Leo," she rejoined dryly, "but you need not give yourself the trouble. I am well able to look after myself."

"If any man molested you," continued Leopold, speaking very calmly, "I would kill him."

"Who should molest me, you silly fool? And anyhow, I won't have you spying upon me like that."

"You must not call it spying, Klara. I love to stand outside this house in the peace and darkness of the night, and to think of you quietly sleeping whilst I am keeping watch over you. You wouldn't call a watchdog a spy, would you?"

"I know that to-night I shan't sleep a wink," she retorted crossly, "once father has gone. I shall always be thinking of you out there in the dark, watching this house. It will make me nervous."

"To-night." he began, and then abruptly checked himself. Once more that quick flash of passion shot through his pale, deep-set eyes. It seemed as if he meant to tell her something, which on second thoughts he decided to keep to himself. Her keen, dark eyes searched his face for a moment or two; she wondered what it was that lurked behind that high, smooth forehead of his and within the depths of that curiously perverted brain.

Before she had time, however, to question him, Erös Béla made noisy irruption into the room.

He was greeted with a storm of cheers.

"Hello, Béla!"

"Not the bridegroom, surely?"

"Who would have thought of seeing you here?"

While Leopold Hirsch muttered audibly:

"What devil's mischief has brought this fellow here to-day, I wonder?"

Béla seemed in boisterous good-humour – with somewhat ostentatious hilarity he greeted all his friends, and then ordered some of Ignácz Goldstein's best wine for everybody all round.

"Bravo, Béla!" came from every side, together with loud applause at this unexpected liberality.

"It is nice of you not to forget old friends," Klara whispered in his ear, as soon as he succeeded in reaching her side.

"Whew!" he ejaculated with a sneer, "you have no idea, my good Klara, how I've been boring myself these past two hours. Those loutish peasants have no idea of enjoyment save their eternal gipsy music and their interminable csárdás."

"For a man of your education, Béla," said Klara, with an insinuating smile, "it must be odiously dull. You would far rather have had a game of cards, wouldn't you now?"

"I would far rather have had you at that infernal dance, so as to have had somebody to talk to," he retorted savagely.

"Oh!" she said demurely, "that would never have done. Elsa must have such a lot to say to you herself. It would not be seemly for me to stand in the way."

"Elsa, as you know, has that silly csárdás on the brain. She has been dancing ever since six o'clock and has only given me about ten minutes of her company. She seems to belong to-night to every young fool that can dance, rather than to me."

"Ah well! When you are married you can stop all that, my good Béla. You can forbid your wife to dance the csárdás, you know. I know many men who do it. Then Elsa will learn to appreciate the pleasure of your conversation. Though she is no longer very young, she is still very ignorant. You will have to educate her.. bring her up to your own level of intelligence and of learning. In the meanwhile, do sit down and drink with those who, like yourself, have come here for an hour or two to break the monotony of perpetual czigány music and dancing."

She busied herself with drawing the corks of a number of bottles, which she then transferred from the end of the room where she stood to the tables at which sat her customers; she also brought out some fresh glasses. Béla watched her for a moment or two in silence, unconscious of the fact that he, too, was being watched by a pair of pale eyes in which lurked a gleam of jealousy and of hate. Suddenly, as Klara brushed past him carrying bottles and glasses, he took hold of her by the elbow and drew her close to him.

"These louts won't stay late to-night, will they?" he whispered in her ear.

"No, not late," she replied; "they will go on to the barn in time for the supper, you may be sure of that. Why do you ask?"

"I will have the supper served at ten o'clock," he continued to whisper, "but I'll not sit down to it. Not without you."

"Don't be foolish, Béla," she retorted. But even as he spoke, a little gleam of satisfaction, of gratified vanity, of anticipatory revenge, shot through her velvety dark eyes.

"I warned Elsa," he continued sullenly; "I told her that if you were not at the feast, I should not be there either. She has disobeyed me. I must punish her."

"So?" she rejoined, with an acid smile. "It is only in order to punish Elsa that you want to sup with me?"

"Don't be stupid, Klara," he retorted. "I'll come at ten o'clock. Will you have some supper ready for me then? I have two or three bottles of French champagne over at my house – I'll bring them along. Will you be ready for me?"

"Be silent, Béla," she broke in hurriedly. "Can't you see that that fool Leo is watching us all the time?"

"Curse, him! What have I got to do with him?" muttered Béla savagely. "You will be ready for me, Klara?"

"No!" she said decisively. "Better make your peace with Elsa. I'll have none of her leavings. I've had all I wanted out of you to-day – the banquet first and now your coming here… It'll be all over the village presently – and that's all I care about. Have a drink now," she added good-humouredly, "and then go and make your peace with Elsa.. if you can."

She turned abruptly away from him, leaving him to murmur curses under his breath, and went on attending to her customers; nor did he get for the moment another opportunity of speaking with her, for Leopold Hirsch hovered round her for some considerable time after that, and presently, with much noise and pomp and circumstance, no less a personage than the noble young Count himself graced the premises of Ignácz Goldstein the Jew with his august presence.

CHAPTER XIX

"Now go and fetch the key."

He belonged to the ancient family of Rákosy, who had owned property on both banks of the Maros for the past eight centuries, and Feri Rákosy, the twentieth-century representative of his mediæval forbears, was a good-looking young fellow of the type so often met with among the upper classes in Hungary: quite something English in appearance – well set-up, well-dressed, well-groomed from the top of his smooth brown hair to the tips of his immaculately-shod feet – in the eyes an expression of habitual boredom, further accentuated by the slight, affected stoop of the shoulders and a few premature lines round the nose and mouth; and about his whole personality that air of high-breeding and of good, pure blood which is one of the chief characteristics of the true Hungarian aristocracy.

He did little more than acknowledge the respectful salutations which greeted him from every corner of the little room as he entered, but he nodded to Erös Béla and smiled all over his good-looking face at Klara, who, in her turn, welcomed him with a profusion of smiles which brought a volley of muttered curses to Leopold Hirsch's lips.

While he held her one hand rather longer than was necessary she, with the other, took his hat from him, and then, laughing coquettishly, she pointed to a parcel which was causing the pocket of his well-cut Norfolk jacket to bulge immoderately.

"Is that something for me?" she asked.

"Of course it is," he replied lightly; "I bought it at the fair in Arad for you to-day."

"How thoughtful of you!" she said, with a little sigh of pleasure.

"Thoughtful?" he retorted, laughing pleasantly. "My good Klara, if I hadn't thought of you I would have died of boredom this afternoon. Here, give me a glass of your father's best wine and I'll tell you."

He sat down with easy familiarity on the corner of the table which served as a counter. Klara, after this, had eyes and ears only for him. How could it be otherwise, seeing that it was not often a noble lord graced a village tap-room with his presence. Conversations round the room were now carried on in whispers; tarok cards were produced and here and there a game was in progress. Those who had drunk overmuch made themselves as inconspicuous as they could, drawing themselves closely against the wall, or frankly reclining across the table with arms outstretched and heads buried between them out of sight.

An atmosphere of subdued animation and decorum reigned in the place; not a few men, oppressed by their sense of respect for my lord, had effected a quiet exit through the door, preferring the jovial atmosphere of the barn, from whence came, during certain hushed moments, the sounds of music and of laughter.

The young man – whose presence caused all this revulsion in the usually noisy atmosphere of the tap-room – took no heed whatever of anything that went on around him: he seemed unconscious alike of the deference of the peasants as of the dark, menacing scowl with which Leopold Hirsch regarded him. He certainly did not bestow a single glance on Erös Béla who, at my lord's appearance, had retreated into the very darkest corner of the room. Béla did not care to encounter the young Count's sneering remarks just now – and these would of a certainty have been levelled against the bridegroom who was sitting in a tap-room when he should have been in attendance on his bride. But indeed my lord never saw him.

To this young scion of a noble race, which had owned land and serfs for centuries past, these peasants here were of no more account than his oxen or his sheep – nor was the owner of a village shop of any more consequence in my lord's eyes.

He came here because there was a good-looking Jewess in the tap-room whose conversation amused him, and whose dark, velvety eyes, fringed with long lashes, and mouth with full, red lips, stirred his jaded senses in a more pleasant and more decided way than did the eyes and lips of the demure, well-bred young Countesses and Baronesses who formed his usual social circle.

Whether his flirtation with Klara, the Jewess, annoyed the girl's Jew lover or not, did not matter to him one jot; on the contrary the jealousy of that dirty lout Hirsch enhanced his amusement to a considerable extent.

Therefore he did not take the trouble to lower his voice now when he talked to Klara, and it was quite openly that he put his arm round her waist while he held his glass to her lips – "To sweeten your father's vinegar!" he said with a laugh.

"You know, my pretty Klara," he said gaily, "that I was half afraid I shouldn't see you to-day at all."

"No?" she asked coquettishly.

"No, by gad! My father was so soft-hearted to allow Erös a day off for his wedding or something, and so, if you please, I had to go to Arad with him, as he had to see about a sale of clover. I thought we should never get back. The roads were abominable."

"I hardly expected your lordship," she said demurely.

To punish her for that little lie, he tweaked her small ear till it became a bright crimson.

"That is to punish you for telling such a lie," he said gaily. "You know that I meant to come and say good-bye."

"Your lordship goes to-morrow?" she asked with a sigh.

"To shoot bears, my pretty Klara," he replied. "I don't want to go. I would rather stay another week here for you to amuse me, you know."

"I am proud." she whispered.

"So much do you amuse me that I have brought you a present, just to show you that I thought of you to-day and because I want you not to forget me during the three months that I shall be gone."

He drew the parcel out of his pocket and, turning his back to the rest of the room, he cut the string and undid the paper that wrapped it. The contents of the parcel proved to be a morocco case, which flew open at a touch and displayed a gold curb chain bracelet – the dream of Klara Goldstein's desires.

"For me?" she said, with a gasp of delight.

"For your pretty arm, yes," he replied. "Shall I put it on?"

She cast a swift, apprehensive glance round the room over his shoulder.

"No, no, not now," she said quickly.

"Why not?"

"Father mightn't like it. I'd have to ask him."

"D – n your father!"

"And that fool, Leopold, is so insanely jealous."

"D – n him too," said the young man quietly.

Whereupon he took the morocco case out of Klara's hand, shut it with a snap and put it back into his pocket.

"What are you doing?" cried Klara in a fright.

"As you see, pretty one, I am putting the bracelet away for future use."

"But." she stammered.

"If I can't put the bracelet on your arm myself," he said decisively, "you shan't have it at all."

"But."

"That is my last word. Let us talk of something else."

"No, no! We won't talk of something else. You said the bracelet was for me."

She cast a languishing look on him through her long upper lashes; she bared her wrist and held it out to him. Leopold and his jealousy might go hang for aught she cared, for she meant to have the bracelet.

The young man, with a fatuous little laugh, brought out the case once more. With his own hands he now fastened the bracelet round Klara Goldstein's wrist. Then – as a matter of course – he kissed her round, brown arm just above the bracelet, and also the red lips through which the words of thanks came quickly tumbling.

Klara did not dare to look across the room. She felt, though she did not see, Leopold's pale eyes watching this little scene with a glow in them of ferocious hate and of almost animal rage.

"I won't stay now, Klara," said the young Count, dropping his voice suddenly to a whisper; "too many of these louts about. When will you be free?"

"Oh, not to-day," she whispered in reply. "After the fair there are sure to be late-comers. And you know Erös Béla has a ball on at the barn and supper afterwards.."

"The very thing," he broke in, in an eager whisper. "While they are all at supper, I'll come in for a drink and a chat… Ten o'clock, eh?"

"Oh, no, no!" she protested feebly. "My father wouldn't like it, he."

"D – n your father, my dear, as I remarked before. And, as a matter of fact, your father is not going to be in the way at all. He goes to Kecskemét by the night train."

"How do you know that?"

"My father told me quite casually that Goldstein was seeing to some business for him at Kecskemét to-morrow. So it was not very difficult to guess that if your father was to be in Kecskemét to-morrow in time to transact business, he would have to travel up by the nine o'clock train this evening in order to get there."

Then, as she made no reply, and a blush of pleasure gradually suffused her dark skin, lending it additional charm and giving to her eyes added brilliancy, he continued, more peremptorily this time:

"At ten o'clock, then – I'll come back. Get rid of as many of these louts by then as you can."

She was only too ready to yield. Not only was she hugely flattered by my lord's attentions, but she found him excessively attractive. He could make himself very agreeable to a woman if he chose, and evidently he chose to do so now. Moreover Klara had found by previous experience that to yield to the young man's varied and varying caprices was always remunerative, and there was that gold watch which he had once vaguely promised her, and which she knew she could get out of him if she had the time and opportunity, as she certainly would have to-night if he came.

Count Feri, seeing that she had all but yielded, was preparing to go. Her hand was still in his, and he was pressing her slender fingers in token of a pledge for this evening.

"At ten o'clock," he whispered again.

"No, no," she protested once more, but this time he must have known that she only did it for form's sake and really meant to let him have his way. "The neighbours would see you enter, and there might be a whole lot of people in the tap-room at that hour: one never knows. They would know by then that my father had gone away and they would talk such scandal about me. My reputation."

No doubt he felt inclined to ejaculate in his usual manner: "D – n your reputation!" but he thought better of it, and merely said casually:

"I need not come in by the front door, need I?"

"The back door is always locked," she remarked ingenuously. "My father invariably locks it himself the last thing at night."

"But since he is going to Kecskemét." he suggested.

"When he has to be away from home for the night he locks the door from the inside and takes the key away with him."

"Surely there is a duplicate key somewhere?."

"I don't know," she murmured.

"If you don't know, who should?" he remarked, with affected indifference. "Well! I shall have to make myself heard at the back door – that's all!"

"How?"

"Wouldn't you hear me if I knocked?"

"Not if I were in the tap-room and a lot of customers to attend to."

"Well, then, I should hammer away until you did hear me."

"For that old gossip Rézi to hear you," she protested. "Her cottage is not fifty paces away from our back door."

"Then it will have to be the front door, after all," he rejoined philosophically.

"No, no! – the neighbours – and perhaps the tap-room full of people."

"But d – n it, Klara," he exclaimed impatiently, "I have made up my mind to come and spend my last evening with you – and when I have made up my mind to a thing, I am not likely to change it because of a lot of gossiping peasants, because of old Rézi, or the whole lot of them. So if you don't want me to come in by the front door, which is open, or to knock at the back door, which is locked, how am I going to get in?"

"I don't know."

"Well, then, you'll have to find out, my pretty one," he said decisively, "for it has got to be done somehow, or that gold watch we spoke of the other day will have to go to somebody else. And you know when I say a thing I mean it. Eh?"

"There is a duplicate key," she whispered shyly, ".. to the back door, I mean."