Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Magda offered a ring to be Jenkins, and the two leaders were Lili and Balint.

They were sitting facing each other across the table. Lili was wearing a light summer dress with rather short but wide sleeves of broderie anglaise and through the many little embroidered holes in the material could be caught glimpses of the pink skin of her arms and shoulders. The dress was suitable only for a young girl and was almost childish in its virginal whiteness — but was far more arousing than any sophisticated décolletée.

At first Balint hardly noticed. Slowly, however, indeed every time that Lili lifted her hands in some gesture to show everyone the ring and the wide sleeves slid back on her bare arms, he found himself flooded by a strange magic. It was as if she sat there before him clad only in a wedding shift, her flesh barely covered by fine gossamer, smiling expectantly and looking at him with some unspoken question in her eyes. Even Balint knew that this was no game, no meaningless attempt at flirtation but was rather the eternal urge of the female to attract and to lure. Everything about her told him the same story. Her petal-like skin with its elusive scent, the slightly parted lips, the dress falling in soft folds around the infinitely desirable curves of her firm breasts: this was no trivial, shallow game but rather the subconscious display of the finest weapons in a woman’s armoury of attraction.

Balint felt a twinge of guilt at having sensed it, and guilty too at finding himself aroused by desire and yet being unable, in spite of the laughter and simplicity of the childish nursery game, to free himself of it.

This was the only time when, for a brief moment, he was made to forget the agony of waiting which otherwise totally engrossed him. He could think of nothing but when he would get news from home and discover what had happened at Almasko.

Balint heard with indifference what was happening in the great world around him. Whereas a month or two before, during the long winter months, worry about the possibility of war and the fate of his beloved country could make him forget his private worries, this was no longer true. The deepening political crisis at home — Wekerle’s resignation, Lukacs’s embarrassed handing-in of the royal commission, the King’s insistence on a new coalition, new rifts between Kossuth and Justh — and alarming news from abroad with Sir Edward Grey’s depressing analysis of the international dissensions, the menacing build-up of the British Fleet, the Eulenburg scandal and the sudden resignation of the Chancellor Bülow, now all seemed so trivial to Balint that he barely took any of it in.

On the other hand not a day passed without him becoming more and more anxious about Adrienne.

In her last letter she had said that soon the doctor from Regen would turn up with old Absolon and so at any moment the great decision should be made. Balint now felt he must return so as to be within reach, when their fate was decided. In this way he would get the news more quickly and would be on the spot if she needed help. He could get over to Almasko in no time in his new car, and could whisk her away to safety if she felt in any danger from her husband. Balint felt he must be ready for anything, and for that he had to be at home.

On July 9th he made up his mind to go as soon as possible. It was late afternoon and too late to send a telegram to Denestornya, because it could hardly get delivered before he would be there himself. It did not really matter, for he was sure to find some little horse-drawn gig or fiacre at the station at Aranyos-Gyeres. At eight in the morning he got down from his sleeper and was surprised to notice that the express did not leave again at once but remained stationary at a side platform. In front of the booking office the station-master was standing, white gloved and in full formal uniform. With him was his assistant, similarly dressed, and both looked nervous and unhappy. Uniformed railway staff were running about in all directions, checking the points, and two constables were marching officiously up and down and ordering everyone to keep off the platform.

‘What’s going on?’ Balint asked as he shook hands with the old station-master. As he did so one of the constables was unceremoniously pushing Balint’s porter out of the way. ‘What’s all this about then?

‘The Heir’s private train is due to pass through in a few minutes. It has already signalled and we have strict orders to clear the station of everyone but the railway staff. Please forgive me …’ and he trailed off clearly embarrassed at having to treat Count Abady in this fashion, for he had known the family all his life as it was the station for Denestornya. Then he accompanied Balint to the exit; even for the noble Count himself he could not disobey orders from so high a source.

A few moments later Balint had got into a small one-horse cart, and was nearly clear of the village, when from the bridge over the river came the rumbling sound of an approaching train. From the engine came a discreet whistle, then there was the scream of brakes and the train started to slow down. At the platform it stopped, but only for an instant, and then, quickly gathering speed, trundled off in the direction of the mountains.

Balint did not pause to wonder why Franz-Ferdinand’s train had stopped, if only for an instant, at such an obscure wayside station. Neither did any of the other passengers who had been herded like cattle into the waiting-room. But if someone had noticed and had thought fit to alert one of the more chauvinist of the Budapest papers, there would have been screaming headlines and a big political row. The reason was that the person for whom the train had been halted, and who had hurried discreetly out of the station-master’s office and through the already opened door of one of the saloon-cars, was none other than Aurel Timisan, the champion of the rights of the large Romanian minority in Hungarian Transylvania.

The Werkstadt — the Archduke’s private office in the Belvedere Palace — had been in secret contact with Timisan, as it was with many of the other minority leaders, for many months. It was someone from there that had given Timisan orders to join the train at Aranyos-Gyeres, sent him his travel papers and ensured that the station should be cleared so that no one should see him climb aboard. A few stations later the process was reversed and he left the train still unnoticed. He had just had time to hand over the lists of names that the Heir’s principal private secretary had demanded.

The next day, in the Romanian town of Sinaia, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand received a group of political exiles. They were the leaders of most of the ethnic minorities of the far-flung Habsburg empire, that empire over which he expected soon to rule. While he was assuring these good men of his goodwill and future patronage, a band of students tore through the elaborately decorated streets of the little spa, tore down all the Hungarian flags, those symbols of the independence of the Monarchy’s sister country, and trampled them in the mud.

BALINT READ ABOUT THE RIOT at Sinaia at tea-time at Denestornya, when the Budapest morning papers arrived. At the same time the midday edition of the Kolozsvar paper arrived carrying an official denial on its front page. This declared that absolutely nothing had happened; the Archduke had received no one and no insults had been offered to the Hungarian flag. The previous day’s report was based on a most regrettable mistake — or so announced the official spokesman of the Palace.