"Only this," he replied, "that while that monkey-faced dog of a Christian was whispering to you just now, I know that the key was hanging on its usual peg, but I heard something about 'supper' and about 'ten o'clock.' May he break his neck, I say, and save me the job. Then he ordered me out of the room. Oh! I guessed! I am no fool, you know! When I came back I looked into your father's room—the key was gone, and I knew. And what I say is, why can't he come in by the front door like a man, if he has nothing to hide? Why must you let him come in like a thief by a back-door, if you have nothing to be ashamed of? The tap-room is open to anybody. Anybody can walk in and get a drink if they want to. Then why this whispering and this sneaking?"
He was working himself up to a greater and ever greater passion of fury. He kept his voice low because he didn't want Ignácz Goldstein to hear—not just yet, at any rate—for Ignácz was a hard man and a stern father, and God only knew what he might not do if he was roused. Leopold did not want Klara hurt—not yet, at any rate—not until he was quite sure that she meant to play him altogether false. She was vain and frivolous, over-fond of dress and of queening it over the peasant girls of the village, but there was no real harm in her. She was immensely flattered by the young Count's attentions and over-ready to accept his presents in exchange for kisses and whisperings behind closed doors, but there was no real harm in her—so at least Leopold Hirsch kept repeating to himself time and again, whenever jealousy gnawed at his heart more roughly than he could endure.
Just now that torment was almost unbearable, and the passion of fury into which he had worked himself blinded him momentarily to the dull, aching pain. Klara, as he spoke thus hoarsely, and brought his contorted face closer and closer to hers, had gradually shrunk more and more into the corner of the room, and there she remained now, flattened against the wall, her wide-open, terror-filled eyes fixed staringly upon this raving madman.
"You asked just now," he continued, in the same hoarse, guttural whisper, which seemed literally to be racking and tearing his throat as it came, "what the back-door key had to do with my not going to meet my brother at Fiume. Well! It has this much to do with it, that you happen to be my tokened wife, that you happen to be of my race and of my blood, a sober, clean-living Jewess, please God, and not one of those frivolous, empty-headed Christian girls—you are that now, I know; if you were not I would kill you first and myself afterwards: therefore, if to-night I catch a thief—any thief, I don't care who he is—sneaking into this house by a back door when you happen to be here alone and seemingly unprotected, if I catch any kind of thief or malefactor, I say . . ."
He paused, and she, through teeth that chattered, contrived to murmur:
"Well? What do you say? Why don't you go on?"
"Because you understand," he said, with calm as sudden and as terrible as his rage had been awhile ago. "I am not a Christian, you know, nor yet a gentleman. I cannot walk up either to my lord's castle or to one of these Christian Magyar peasants and strike him in the face for trying to rob me of that which is more precious to me than life. I am a Jew . . . a low-born, miserable Jew, whose whole race, origin and upbringing are despicable in the sight of the noble lords as well as of the Hungarian peasantry. Just a wretched creature whom one orders to hold one's horse, to brush one's boots, to stand out of one's way, anyhow; but not to meet as man to man, not to fight openly and frankly for the woman whom one loves. Well! You happen to be a Jewess too, and tokened to a Jew, and if either my lord or one of these d——d Magyar peasants chooses to come sneaking round you like a thief in the night, well . . ."
He paused, and from the pocket of his shabby trousers he half drew out a long, sheathed hunting-knife, and then quickly hid it again from her sight.
Klara smothered a desperate cry of terror. Leopold now turned his back on her; he went up to the table and seizing a carafe of water, he poured himself out a huge mugful and drank it down at a draught. The edge of the mug rattled against his teeth, his hand was trembling so that half the contents were poured down on his clothes. He did not look again on Klara, but having put the mug down, he passed his hand once or twice across his forehead as if to chase away some of those horrible thoughts which were still lurking in his brain.
Then he took his cigarette-case out of his pocket, selected a cigarette, struck a match and lit it, still avoiding Klara's fixed and staring gaze.