A Bride of the Plains Part 39

But Elsa and Andor had remained behind close beside the shrine. She had yielded to his insistence, knowing what it was that he meant to say to her while they walked together toward the sunset. She knew what he wanted to say, and what he expected her to promise, and he knew that at last she was ready to listen, and that she would no longer hold her heart in check, but let it flow over with all the love which it contained, and that she was ready at last to hold up to him that cup of happiness for which he craved.

One or two couples had also remained behind, but they had already wandered off toward the bank of the Maros. Elsa had knelt down before the crude image of the "Consoler of the afflicted;" her rosary was wound round her fingers, she prayed in her simple soul, fervently, unquestioningly, for happiness and for peace.

Then, when the little procession in the distance became wrapped in the golden haze which hung over the plain, and the chanting of the Litany came but as a murmur on the wings of the autumn breeze, she took Andor's arm, and together they walked slowly back toward home.

The peace which rests over the plain enveloped them both; from the sky above the last vestige of cloud had been driven away by the breeze, and far away on that distant horizon where lay the land of the unknown the sun was slowly sinking to rest.

Like a huge, drooping rose it seemed--its rays like petals falling away from it one by one. Mute yet quivering was the plain around, pulsating with life, yet silent in its autumnal agony. From far away came the sweet sound of the evening Angelus rung from the village church--distant and soft, like a sound from heaven or like an echo of some beautiful dream.

And these two were alone with the sunset and with the stubble--alone in this vastness which is so like the sea--alone--two tiny, moving black specks with a background of radiance and a golden haze to envelop them.

In this immensity it seemed so much more easy to speak of love--for love could fill the plain and find room for its own immensity in this vastness which knows no trammels. To Andor and Elsa it seemed as if at last the plain had revealed its secret to them, had lifted for them that veil of mystery which wraps her up all round where earth and sky meet in the golden distance beyond.

They knew suddenly just what lay behind the veil, they knew if it were lifted what it was that they would see--the land of gold was the land of love, where men and women wandered hand in hand, where sorrow was a dwarf and grief a cripple, since love--the Almighty King of the unknown land--had wounded them and vanquished them both.

And they, too, now wandered toward that land, even though it still seemed very far away. To the accompaniment of the Angelus bell they wandered, with the distant echo of the chanted Litany still ringing in their ear. The plain encompa.s.sed her children with her all-embracing peace, and she gave them this one supreme moment of happiness to-day, while the setting sun clothed the horizon with gold.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

"What about me."

And time slipped by with murmurings of words that have no meaning save for one pair of ears. Andor talked fondly and foolishly, and Elsa mostly was silent. She had loved this walk over the stubble, and the plain had been in perfect peace save for the rumbling of the Maros, insistent and menacing, which had struck a chill to the girl's heart, like a presage of evil.

She tried to swallow her fears, chiding herself for feeling them, doing her best to close her ears to those rumbling, turbulent waters that seemed to threaten as they tumbled along on their way.

Gradually as they neared the village that curious feeling of impending evil became more strong: she could not help speaking of it to Andor, but he only laughed in that delightfully happy--almost defiantly happy--way of his, and for a moment or two she was satisfied.

But when at about half a kilometre from home she caught sight of Klara Goldstein walking away from the village straight toward her and Andor, it seemed as if her fears had suddenly a.s.sumed a more tangible shape.

Klara looked old and thin, she thought, pathetic, too, in her plain black dress--she who used to be so fond of pretty clothes. Elsa gave her a hearty greeting as soon as she was near enough to her, and extended a cordial hand. She had no cause to feel well-disposed toward the Jewess, but there was something so forlorn-looking about the girl now, and such a look of sullen despair in her dark eyes, that Elsa's gentle nature was at once ready to forgive and to cheer.

"It is a long time since I have seen you, Klara," she said pleasantly.

"No wonder," said the other girl, with a shrug of her thin shoulders, "father won't let me out of his sight."

She had nodded to Andor, but by tacit consent they had not shaken hands.

Klara now put her hands on her hips, and, like a young animal let free after days of captivity, she drew in deep breaths of sweet-scented air.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "it is good to be out again; being a prisoner doesn't suit me, I can tell you that."

"Your dear father seems to be very severe with you, Klara," said Elsa compa.s.sionately.

"Yes! curse him!" retorted the Jewess fiercely, as a savage, cruel look flashed through her sunken eyes. "He nearly killed me when he came home from Kecskemet that time--beat me like a dog--and now . . ."

"Poor Klara!"

"I shouldn't have minded the beating so much. Among our people, parents have the right to be severe, and it is better to take a beating from your father than to be punished by the rabbi."

"Your dear father will forgive you in time," suggested Elsa gently.

She felt miserably uncomfortable, and would have given worlds to be rid of Klara. She couldn't think why the girl had stopped to talk to her and Andor: in fact she was more than sure that Klara had come out this evening on purpose to talk to her and to Andor; for now she stood deliberately in front of them both with arms crossed in front of her and defiant eyes fixed now upon one and now upon the other. Andor too was beginning to look cross and sullen; this meeting coming on the top of that lovely walk seemed like a black shadow cast over the radiance of their happiness, and this thin, tall girl, all in black, with black hair fluttering round her pale face, seemed like a big black bird of evil presage: her skirts flapped round her knees like wings and her voice sounded cold and harsh like the croaking of a raven.

But Elsa's kindly disposition did not allow her to be too obviously unkind to the Jewess. Perhaps after all the girl meant no harm, and had only run out now like a released colt, glad to feel freedom in the air around her and the vastness lying stretched out before her to infinity beyond. Perhaps she had only sought the company of the first-comers in order to get a small measure of sympathy. But now, though Elsa's gentle words should have softened her mood, she retorted with renewed fierceness:

"Curse him! I don't want his forgiveness! and if ever he wants mine--on his deathbed--he won't get it--even if he should die in torment for want of a kind word from me."

"Klara, you mustn't say that," cried Elsa, horrified at what she considered almost blasphemy. "Your father is your father, remember--and even if he has been harsh to you . . ."

Klara interrupted her with a loud and strident laugh.

"If he has been harsh to me!" she exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you that he thrashed me like a dog, so that I was sick for days. But I wouldn't mind that so much. Bruises mend sooner or later, but it's that abominable marriage which will make me curse him to my dying day."

"Marriage? . . . what marriage? . . ."

"With a man I had never seen in my life until it was all settled. Just a man who is so ugly and so bad-tempered and so repugnant to every girl whom he knows that n.o.body would have him--but just a man who wanted a wife. The rabbi at Arad knew about him and he spoke about him to father--it seems that he is quite rich--and father has given me to him and I am to be married within a fortnight. Curse them! curse them all, I say! Oh! I wish I had the pluck to run away, or to kill myself or do something--but I am such an abominable coward--and I shall loathe to live in Arad in a tiny secondhand clothes shop, with that hideous monster for a husband--pointed at by everyone as the girl with a disgraceful story to her credit and sold to a creature whom no one else would have--in order to cover up a scandal."

Elsa was silent; her heart now was full of pity for the girl, who indeed was being punished far more severely than she deserved. It was clear that Klara was terribly resentful at her fate, and there was a look of vengeful rebellion in the glance which she threw on Elsa and Andor now.

Overhead there was flapping of wings--a flight of rooks cut through the air and there were magpies in their trail.

"Three for a wedding," said Andor with a forced laugh, trying to break the spell which--much against his will--seemed to have been suddenly cast over his happy spirits.

"One for sorrow, more like," retorted Klara.

"No, no, come!" he rejoined; "you must not look at it like that. There is always some happiness to be got out of married life. You are not very happy in your old home--you will like to have one of your own--a wedding is only the prelude to better things."

"That depends on the wedding, my friend," she sneered; "this one will be a finish, not a prelude--the naughty child, well whipped, sent out of mischief's way."

"I am sorry, Klara, that you feel it so strongly," he said more kindly.

"Yes," she retorted. "I dare say, my good man, you are sorry enough for me now, but you might have thought of all that, you know, before you played me that dirty trick."

"What do you mean?" he broke in quickly.

"Just what I say," she replied, "and no more. A dirty, abominable trick, I call it, and I cannot even show you up before the village--I could not even speak of you to the police officers. Oh, yes!" she continued more and more vehemently, as a flood of wrath and of resentment and a burning desire for getting even with Fate seemed literally to sweep her off her mental balance and cause her to lose complete control of her tongue, "oh, yes! my fine gentleman! you can go and court Elsa now, and whisper sweet love-words in her ears--you two turtle-doves are the edification of the entire village now--and presently you will get married and live happy ever afterwards. But what I want to ask you, my friend," she added, and she took a step or two nearer to him, until her hot and angry breath struck him in the face and he was forced to draw himself back, away from that seething cauldron of resentment and of vengeance which was raging before him now, "what I want to ask you is have you ever thought of me?"

"Thought of you, Klara?" he said quietly, even as he felt, more than saw, that Elsa too had drawn back a little--a step or two further away from Klara, but a step or two also further away from him. "Thought of you?" he reiterated, seeing that Klara did not reply immediately, and that just for one brief moment--it was a mere flash--a look of irresolution had crept into her eyes, "why should I be thinking about you?"

"Why, indeed?" she said with a wrathful sneer. "What hurt had I done to you, Andor, that is what I want to know. I was always friendly to you. I had never done you any wrong--nor did I do Elsa any wrong--any wrong, I mean, that mattered," she continued, talking more loudly and more volubly because Andor was making desperate efforts to stop and interrupt her. "Bela would only have run after another woman if I had turned my back on him. And then when you asked me to leave him alone, I promised, didn't I? What you asked me to do I promised. . . . And I meant to keep my promise to you, and you knew it . . . and yet you rounded on me like that. . . ."

"Silence, Klara," he cried at the top of his voice as he shook the girl roughly by the shoulder.

But she paid no heed to him--she was determined to be heard, determined to have her say. All the bitterness in her had been bottled up for weeks. She meant to meet Andor face to face before she was packed off as the submissive wife of a hated husband--the naughty child, whipped and sent out of the way--she meant to throw all the pent-up bitterness within her, straight into his face--and meant to do it when Elsa was nigh. For days and days she had watched for an opportunity; but her father had kept her a prisoner in the house, besides which she had no great desire to affront the sneering looks of village gossips. But this evening was her opportunity. For this she had waited, and now she meant to take it, and no power on earth, force or violence would prevent her from pouring out the full phial of her venomous wrath.

"I will not be silent," she shrieked, "I will not! You did round on me like a cur--you sneak--you double-faced devil. . . ."