A Bride of the Plains Part 19

"What is it to you?" he muttered savagely.

"Only this, my friend," replied Andor, who seemed as calm as the other was heated with pa.s.sion, "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, Bela," laughed Klara maliciously; "your future wife's old sweetheart might win her from you yet."

"Take care of what?" shouted Bela 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 a.s.s you are, Bela!" 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 Ignacz 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, Bela," 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.

"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 Bela savagely, turning on his fiancee.

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 pa.s.sionate.

"And I tell you," he said, speaking almost in a whisper, very slowly and very calmly, but with such compelling power of determination that Bela, 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. G.o.d 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 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 Bela'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 G.o.d 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 Bela, 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 Bako Mariska broke off her marriage on the eve of her wedding-day, just because Lajos 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!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bela, 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 G.o.d 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 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 G.o.d!"

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.

Bela 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 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. Eros Bela offered his silent fiancee his arm. She took it without hesitation, and together they walked across the square to the church.

CHAPTER XVIII

"I must punish her."

The little village inn kept by Ignacz 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 Ignacz Goldstein the Jew to sell to the peasantry.

[Footnote 6: A highly alcoholic, very raw gin-like spirit distilled from a special kind of plum.]

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 gla.s.s 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. Ignacz 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 cla.s.s 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.

Ignacz 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 fas.h.i.+onable skirts, and it seemed as if at last his constancy was to be rewarded. While she was younger--and was still of surpa.s.sing 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 owners.h.i.+p 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.

Eros Bela's formally declared engagement to Kapus Elsa had been a very severe blow. She had really reckoned on Bela. 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.

Eros Bela 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.