A Bride of the Plains Part 34

"I wonder, then, he didn't wait to say good-bye to me."

"Perhaps he'll meet you at the station."

"Perhaps he will. Now then, gentlemen," added the old Jew as he once more turned to the two men.

Indeed Andor felt that the spell had been lifted from him. He was quite calm now, and that feeling of being in dreamland had descended still more forcibly upon his mind.

"You have nothing more to say to me, have you, my good Andor?" said Bela, with a final look of insolent swagger directed at his rival.

"No," replied Andor slowly and deliberately. "Nothing."

"Then good-night, my friend!" concluded the other, with a sarcastic laugh. "Why not go to the barn, and dance with Elsa, and sup at my expense like the others do? You'll be made royally welcome there, I a.s.sure you."

"Thank you. I am going home."

"Well! as you like! I shall just look in there myself now for half an hour--but I am engaged later on for supper elsewhere, you know."

"So I understand!"

"Gentlemen! My dear friends! I shall miss my train!" pleaded old Ignacz Goldstein querulously.

He manoeuvred the two men toward the door and then prepared to follow them.

"Klara!" he called again.

"Coming, father," she replied.

She came running out of the room, and as she reached the door she called to Andor.

"Andor, you have not said good-night," she said significantly.

"Never mind about that now," said Ignacz Goldstein fretfully, "I shall miss my train."

He kissed his daughter perfunctorily, then said:

"There's no one in the tap-room now, is there? I didn't notice."

"No," she replied, "no one just now."

"Then I'd keep the door shut, if I were you. I'd rather those fellows back from Arad didn't come in to-night. The open door would attract them--a closed one might have the effect of speeding them on their way."

"Very well, father," she said indifferently, "I'll keep the door closed."

"And mind you push all the bolts home to both the doors," he added sternly. "A girl alone in a house cannot be too careful."

"All right, father," she rejoined impatiently, "I'll see to everything.

Haven't I been alone like this before?"

The other two men were going down the verandah steps. Goldstein went out too now and slammed the door behind him.

And Klara found herself alone in the house.

CHAPTER XXVI

"What had Andor done?"

She waited for a moment with her ear glued to the front door until the last echo of the men's footsteps had completely died away in the distance, then she ran to the table. The tray was there, but no key upon it. With feverish, jerky movements she began to hunt for it, pus.h.i.+ng aside bottles and mugs, opening drawers, searching wildly with dilated eyes all round the room.

The key was here, somewhere . . . surely, surely Andor had not played her false . . . he would not play her false . . . He was not that sort . . . surely, surely he was not that sort. He had come back from his errand--of course she had seen him just now, and . . . and he had said nothing certainly, but . . .

Well! He can't have gone far; and her father wouldn't hear if she called. She ran back to the door and fumbled at the latch, for her hands trembled so that she bruised them against the iron. There! At last it was done! She opened the door and peered out into the night. Everything was still, not a footstep echoed from down the street. She took one step out, on to the verandah . . . then she heard a rustle from behind the pollarded acacia tree and a rustle amongst its leaves. Someone was there!--on the watch!--Leopold!

She smothered a scream of terror and in a moment had fled back into the room and slammed and bolted the door behind her. Now she stood with her back against it, arms outstretched, fingers twitching convulsively against the wood. She was s.h.i.+vering as with cold, though the heat in the room was close and heavy with fumes of wine and tobacco: her teeth were chattering, a cold perspiration had damped the roots of her hair.

She had wanted to call Andor back, just to ask him definitely if he had been successful in his errand and what he had done with the key. Perhaps he meant to tell her; perhaps he had merely forgotten to put the key on the tray, and still had it in his waistcoat pocket; she had been a fool not to come out and speak to him when she heard his voice in the tap-room awhile ago. She had wanted to, but her father monopolized her about his things for the journey. He had been exceptionally querulous to-night and was always ready to be suspicious; also Bela had been in the tap-room with Andor, and she wouldn't have liked to speak of the key before Bela. What she had been absolutely sure of, however, until now was that Andor would not have come back and then gone away like this, if he had not succeeded in his errand and got her the key from Count Feri.

But the key was not there: there was no getting away from that, and she had wanted to call Andor back and to ask him about it--and had found Leopold Hirsch standing out there in the dark . . . watching.

She had not seen him--but she had felt his presence--and she was quite sure that she had heard the hissing sound of his indrawn breath and the movement which he had made to spring on her--and strangle her, as he had threatened to do--if she went out by the front door.

Mechanically she pa.s.sed her hand across her throat. Terror--appalling, deadly terror of her life--had her in its grasp. She tottered across the room and sank into a chair. She wanted time to think.

What had Andor done? What a fool she had been not to ask him the straight question while she had the chance. She had been afraid of little things--her father's temper, Eros Bela's sneers--when now there was death and murder to fear.

What had Andor done?

Had he played her false? Played this dirty trick on her out of revenge?

He certainly--now she came to think of it--had avoided meeting her glance when he went away just now.

Had he played her false?

The more she thought on it, the more the idea got root-hold in her brain. In order to be revenged for the humiliation which she had helped to put upon Elsa, Andor had chosen this means for bringing her to everlasting shame and sorrow--the young Count murdered outside her door, in the act of sneaking into the house by a back way, at dead of night, while Ignacz Goldstein was from home; Leopold Hirsch--her tokened fiance--a murderer, condemned to hang for a brutal crime; she disgraced for ever, cursed if not killed by her father, who did not trifle in the matter of his daughter's good name. . . . All that was Andor's projected revenge for what she had done to Elsa.

The thought of it was too horrible. It beat into her brain until she felt that her head must burst as under the blows of a sledge-hammer or else that she must go mad.

She pushed back the matted hair from her temples, and looked round the tiny, dark, lonely room in abject terror. From far away came the shrill whistle of the engine which bore her father away to Kecskemet. It must be nearly half-past nine, then, and close on half an hour since she had been left here alone with her terrors. Yet another half-hour and . . .

No, no! This she felt that she could not endure--not another half-hour of this awful, death-dealing suspense. Anything would be better than that--death at Leopold's hands--a quick gasp, a final agony--yes! That would be briefer and better--and perhaps Leo's heart would misgive him--perhaps . . . but in any case, anything _must_ be better than this suspense.

She struggled to her feet; her knees shook under her: for the moment she could not have moved if her very life had depended on it. So she stood still, propped against the table, her hands clutching convulsively at its edge for support, and her eyes dilated and staring, still searching round the room wildly for the key.

At last she felt that she could walk; she tottered back across the room, back to the door, and her twitching fingers were once more fumbling with the bolts.

The house was so still and the air was so oppressive. When she paused in her fumbling--since her fingers refused her service--she could almost hear that movement again behind the acacia tree outside, and that rustling among the leaves.