As the crowd passed by, scrambling in their excitement, starched petticoats crumpled, many a white shirt stained with wine, hot, perspiring and panting, a contemptuous smile lingered round her thin lips, and from time to time she made a remark to Béla—always in German, so that the village folk could not understand. But Andor, who had learned more than his native Hungarian during his wanderings abroad, heard these sneering remarks, and hated the girl for speaking them, and Béla for the loud laugh with which he greeted each sally.
Now she held out her small, thin hand to Elsa.
"Your good health, my dear Elsa!" she said indifferently.
After an obvious moment of hesitation, Elsa put her toil-worn, shapely little hand into the gloved one for an instant and quickly withdrew it again. There was a second or two of silence. Klara did not move: she was obviously waiting for the invitation which had been extended to everyone else.
[Pg 151]A little nervously she began toying with her parasol.
"The glass is going up; you will have fine weather for your wedding to-morrow," she said more pointedly.
"I hope so," said Elsa softly.
Another awkward pause. Andor, who stood in the doorway watching the little scene, saw that Béla was digging his teeth into his underlip, and that his one eye had a sinister gleam in it as it wandered from one girl to the other.
"May the devil! . . ." began Klara roughly, whose temper quickly got the better of her airs and graces. "What kind of flea has bitten your bride, Béla, I should like to know?"
"Flea?" said Béla with an oath, which he did not even attempt to suppress. "Flea? No kind of a flea, I hope. . . . Look here, my dove," he added, turning to Elsa suddenly, "you seem to be forgetting your duties—have you gone to sleep these last five minutes?—or can't you see that Klara is waiting."
"I can see that Klara is waiting," replied Elsa calmly, "but I don't know what she can be waiting for."
She was as white as the linen of her shift, and little beads of sweat stood out at the roots of her hair. Andor, whose love for her made him clear-sighted and keen, saw the look of obstinacy which had crept round her mouth—the sudden obstinacy of the meek, which nothing can move. He alone could see what this sudden obstinacy meant to her, whose natural instincts were those of duty and of obedience. She suffered terribly at this moment, both mentally and physically; the moisture of her forehead showed that she suffered.
But she had nerved herself up for this ordeal: the crushed worm was turning on the cruel foot that had trod[Pg 152]den it for so long. She did not mean to give way, even though she had fully weighed in the balance all that she would have to pay in the future for this one moment of rebellion.
Parents first and husbands afterwards are masterful tyrants in this part of the world; the woman's place is to obey; the Oriental conception of man's supremacy still reigns paramount, especially in the country. Elsa knew all this, and was ready for the chastisement—either moral, mental or even physical—which would surely overtake her, if not to-day, then certainly after to-morrow.
"You don't know what Klara is waiting for?" asked Béla, with an evil sneer; "why, my dove, you must be dreaming. Klara won't come to our church, of course, but she would like to come to the ball presently, and to-morrow to our wedding feast."
A second or perhaps less went by while Elsa passed her tongue over her parched lips; then she said slowly:
"Since Klara does not go to our church, Béla, I don't think that she can possibly want to come to our wedding feast."
Béla swore a loud and angry oath, and Andor, who was closely watching each player in this moving little drama, saw that Klara's olive skin had taken on a greenish hue, and that her gloved hands fastened almost convulsively over the handle of her parasol.
"But I tell you . . ." began Béla, who was now livid with rage, and turned with a menacing gesture upon his fiancée, "I tell you that . . ."
Already Andor had interposed; he, too, was pale and menacing, but he did not raise his voice nor did he swear, he only asked very quietly:
"What will you tell your fiancée, man? Come! What[Pg 153] is it that you want to tell her on the eve of her wedding day?"
"What's that to you?" retorted Béla.
In this land where tempers run high, and blood courses hotly through the veins, a quarrel swiftly begun like this more often than not ends in tragedy. On Andor's face, in his menacing eyes, was writ the determination to kill if need be; in that of Béla there was the vicious snarl of an infuriated dog. Klara Goldstein was far too shrewd and prudent to allow her name to be mixed up in this kind of quarrel. Her reputation in the village was not an altogether unblemished one; by a scandal such as would result from a fight between these two men and for such a cause she might hopelessly jeopardize her chances in life, even with her own people.
Her own common sense, too, of which she had a goodly share, told her at the same time that the game was not worth the candle: the satisfaction of being asked to the most important wedding in the village, and there queening it with her fashionable clothes and with the bridegroom's undivided attention over a lot of stupid village folk, would not really compensate her for the scandal that was evidently brewing in the minds of Andor and of Elsa.
So she preferred for the nonce to play the part of outraged innocence, a part which she further emphasized by the display of easy-going kindliness. She placed one of her daintily-gloved hands on Béla's arm, she threw him a look of understanding and of indulgence, she cast a provoking glance on Andor and one of good-humoured contempt on Elsa, then she said lightly:
"Never mind, Béla! I can see that our little Elsa is a trifle nervy to-day; she does me more honour than I deserve by resenting your great kindness to me. But bless[Pg 154] you, my good Béla! I don't mind. I am used to jealousies: the petty ones of my own sex are quite endurable; it is when you men are jealous that we poor women often have to suffer. Leopold Hirsch, who is courting me, you know, is so madly jealous at times. He scarce can bear anyone to look at me. As if I could help not being plain, eh?"
Then she turned with a smile to Elsa.
"I don't think, my dear," she said dryly, "that you are treating Béla quite fairly. He won't let you suffer from his jealousies; why should you annoy him with yours?"
Another glance through her long, dark lashes on both the men, and Klara Goldstein turned to go. But before she could take a step toward the door, Béla's masterful hand was on her wrist.
"What are you doing?" he asked roughly.
"Going, my good Béla," she replied airily, "going. What else can I do? I am not wanted here now, or later at your feast; but there are plenty in this village and around it who will make me welcome, and their company will be more pleasing to me, I assure you, than that of your friends. We thought of having some tarok[5] this evening. Leopold will be with us, and the young Count is coming. He loves a gamble, and is most amusing when he is in the mood. So I am going where I shall be most welcome, you see."
[5] A game of cards—the source of much gambling in that part of Europe.
She tried to disengage her wrist, but he was holding her with a tight, nervous grip.
"You are not going to do anything of the sort," he muttered hoarsely; "she is daft, I tell you. Stay here, can't you?"
"Not I," she retorted, with a laugh. "Enough of your[Pg 155] friends' company, my good Béla, is as good as a feast. Look at Elsa's face! And Andor's! He is ready to eat me, and she to freeze the marrow in my bones. So farewell, my dear man; if you want any more of my company," she added pointedly, "you know where to get it."
She had succeeded in freeing her wrist, and the next moment was standing under the lintel of the door, the afternoon sun shining full upon her clinging gown, her waving feathers and the gew-gaws which hung round her neck. For a moment she stood still, blinking in the glare, her hands, which trembled a little from the emotion of the past little scene, fumbled with her parasol.
Béla turned like a snarling beast upon his fiancée.
"Ask her to stop," he cried savagely. "Ask her to stop, I tell you!"
"Keep your temper, my good Béla," said Klara over her shoulder to him, with a laugh; "and don't trouble about me. I am used to tantrums at home. Leo is a terror when he has a jealous fit, but it's nothing to me, I assure you! His rage leaves me quite cold."
"But this sort of nonsense does not leave me cold," retorted Béla, who by now was in a passion of fury; "it makes my blood boil, I tell you. What I've said, I've said, and I'm not going to let any woman set her will up against mine, least of all the woman who is going to be my wife. Whether you go or stay, Klara, is your affair, but Elsa will damn well have to ask you to stay, as I told her to do; she'll have to do as I tell her, or . . ."
"Or what, Béla?" interposed Andor quietly.
Béla threw him a dark and sullen look, like an infuriated bull that pauses just before it is ready to charge.
"What is it to you?" he muttered savagely.
"Only this, my friend," replied Andor, who seemed as[Pg 156] calm as the other was heated with passion, "only this: that I courted and loved Elsa when she was younger and happier than she is now, and I am not going to stand by and see her bullied and brow-beaten by anyone. Understand?"
"Take care, Béla," laughed Klara maliciously; "your future wife's old sweetheart might win her from you yet."
"Take care of what?" shouted Béla in unbridled rage. He faced Andor, and his one sinister eye shot a glance of deadly hatred upon him. "Let me tell you this, my friend, Lakatos Andor. I don't know where you have sprung from to-day, or why you have chosen to-day to do it . . . and it's nothing to me. But understand that I don't like your presence here, and that I did not invite you to come, and that therefore you have no business to be here, seeing that I pay for the feast. And understand too that I'll trouble my future wife's sweetheart to relieve her of his presence in future, or there'll be trouble. And you may take that from me, as my last word, my friend. Understand?"
"What an ass you are, Béla!" came as a parting shot from Klara, who had succeeded in opening her parasol, and now stood out in the open, her face and shoulders in shadow, looking the picture of coolness and of good-temper.
"Andor," she added, with a pleasing smile to the young man, "you know your way to Ignácz Goldstein's. Father and I will be pleased to see you there at any time. The young Count will be there to-night, and we'll have some tarok. Farewell, Béla," she continued, laughing merrily. "Don't worry, my good man, it's not worth losing your temper about trifles on the eve of your wedding-day. And bless your eyes! I don't mind."
Then she swept a mock curtsy to Elsa.
[Pg 157]"Farewell, my pretty one. Good luck to you in your new life."
She nodded and was gone. Her rippling laugh, with its harsh, ironical ring was heard echoing down the village street.
"Call her back!" shouted Béla savagely, turning on his fiancée.
She looked him straight in that one eye which was so full of menace, and said with meek but firm obstinacy:
"I will not."
"Call her back," he exclaimed, "you . . ."
He was almost choking with rage, and now he raised his clenched fist and brandished it in her face.
"Call her back, or I'll . . ."
But already Andor was upon him, had seized him by collar and wrist. He was as livid as the other man was crimson, but his eyes glowed with a fury at least as passionate.
"And I tell you," he said, speaking almost in a whisper, very slowly and very calmly, but with such compelling power of determination that Béla, taken unawares, half-choked with the grip on his throat, and in agonized pain with the rough turn on his wrist, was forced to cower before him, "I tell you that if you dare touch her . . . Look here, my friend," he continued, more loudly, "just now you said that you didn't know where I'd sprung from to-day, or why I chose to-day in which to do it. Well! Let me tell you then. God in Heaven sent me, do you see? He sent me to be here so as to see that no harm come to Elsa through marrying a brute like you. You have shown me the door, and I don't want to eat your salt again and to take your hospitality, for it would choke me, I know . . . but let me tell you this much, that if you[Pg 158] bully Elsa . . . if you don't make her happy . . . if you are not kind to her . . . I'll make you regret it to your dying day."
He had gradually relaxed his hold on Béla's throat and wrist, and now the latter was able to free himself altogether, and to readjust his collar and the set of his coat. For a moment it almost seemed as if he felt ashamed and repentant. But his obstinate and domineering temper quickly got the better of this softened mood.
"You'll make me regret it, will you?" he retorted sullenly. "You think that you will be allowed to play the guardian angel here, eh? with all your fine talk of God in Heaven, which I am inclined to think even the Pater would call blasphemy. I know what's at the back of your mind, my friend, don't you make any mistake about that."
"You know what's at the back of my mind?" queried Andor, with a puzzled frown. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Béla, with a return to his former swagger, "that you have been saying to yourself this past half-hour: 'Oho! but Elsa is not married yet! The vows are not yet spoken, and until they are I still have my chance.' That's what you have been saying to yourself, eh, Mr. Guardian Angel?"
"You d——d liar!"
"Oh! insulting me won't help you, my friend. And I am not going to let you provoke me into a fight, and kill me perhaps, for no doubt that is what you would like to do. I am not going to give Elsa up to you, you need not think it; and you can't take her from me, you can't make her break her solemn promise to me, without covering her with a disgrace from which she would never recover. You know what happened when Bakó Mariska broke off her marriage on the eve of her wedding-day, just because La[Pg 159]jos had got drunk once or twice? Though her mother whipped her for her obstinacy, and her father broke his stick across her shoulders, the whole countryside turned against her. They all had to leave the village, for no one would speak to Mariska. A scandal such as that the ignorant peasants round about here will never forgive. Mariska ultimately drowned herself in the Maros: when she no longer could stand the disgrace that pursued her everywhere. When you thought that to make a girl break off her engagement the day before her wedding was such an easy matter, you had not thought of all that, had you, my friend?"
"And when you thought of frightening me by all that nonsensical talk," retorted Andor quietly, "you had not thought perhaps that there are other lands in the world besides Hungary, and that I am not quite such an ignorant peasant as those whom you choose to despise. But you have been wasting your breath and your temper. I am not here to try and persuade Elsa into doing what she would think wrong; but I am here to see that at least you be kind to her."
"Pshaw!" ejaculated Béla, with a contemptuous snap of his fingers.
"Oh! you need not imagine that I wouldn't know how you treated her. I would know soon enough. I tell you," he continued, with slow and deliberate emphasis, "that what you do to her I shall know. I shall know if you bully her, I shall know if you make her unhappy. I shall know—and God help you in that case!—if you are not kind to her. Just think in future when you speak a rough word to her that Lakatos Andor will hear you and make you pay for every syllable. Think when you browbeat her that Lakatos Andor can see you! For I will see you, I[Pg 160] tell you, in spite of your turning me out of your house, in spite of your fences and your walls. So just you ask her pardon now for your roughness, kiss her little hand and take her to vespers. But take this from me, my friend, that if you ever dare raise your hand against your wife I'll pay you out for it, so help me God!"
He had sworn the last oath with solemn earnestness. Now he turned to Elsa and took her cold little hand in his and kissed her trembling finger-tips, then, without another look on the man whom he hated with such an overwhelming and deadly hatred, he turned on his heel and fled precipitately from the room.
Béla stood sullen and silent for a moment after
he had gone. Wrath was still heating his blood so that the veins in his forehead stood up like cords. But he was not only wrathful, he also felt humiliated and ashamed. He had been cowed and overmastered in the presence of Elsa. His swagger and domineering ways had availed him nothing. Andor had threatened him and he had not had the pluck or the presence of mind to stand up to that meddling, interfering peasant.
Now it was too late to do anything; the thoughts of retaliation which would come to his mind later on had not yet had the time to mature. All that he knew was that he hated Andor and would get even with him some day; for Elsa he felt no hatred, only a great wrath that she should have witnessed his humiliation and that her obstinacy should have triumphed against his will. The same pride in her and the same loveless desire was still in him. He did not hate her, but he meant to make her suffer for what he had just gone through. To him matrimony meant the complete subjection of the woman to the will of her lord; for every rebellion, for every struggle against that[Pg 161] subjection she must be punished in accordance with the gravity of her fault.
Elsa had caused him to be humiliated, and it was his firm resolve to humiliate her before many hours had gone by. Already a plan was forming in his brain; the quietude of vespers would, he thought, help him to complete it.
Outside, the lads and maids were loudly demanding the appearance of the bride and bridegroom: the vesper bell had long ago ceased its compelling call. Erös Béla offered his silent fiancée his arm. She took it without hesitation, and together they walked across the square to the church.
* * *
[Pg 162]
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.