Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Whether anyone believed this was another question; Balint certainly did not. Everything he knew about the personality and views of the Heir to the throne, and everything that Slawata had told him in confidence several years before, affirmed the truth of the reports. Nevertheless he tried hard not to think about the matter and meekly to accept the official denial, for in this way he was able to turn aside from what in other times would have filled him with alarm because of its dire implications for the country’s future. To have worried now about the Heir’s complicated plots would have torn him away from that one personal problem that needed his whole attention.

The time had come when he would have to tell his mother that he would soon be married. The problem was how and when to do it.

That it would be painful for them both was certain. He need not do anything until the news came from Almasko, but then he would have to act at once, for afterwards he knew that he would not be able to remain more than an hour in the same house with his mother. He knew her so well; and what she once said with such firmness she never went back on. When she heard that the marriage with Adrienne was not only certain but imminent she would act as if her son had died and this she would maintain, if not forever, certainly for a very, very long time. Only if the longed-for grandchild was born, and then, if it were a boy, an heir to her name and to Denestornya — only then, might she begin to relent and possibly forgive.

Balint realized that it was now, during these few days at home, that he had to make all his preparations.

First of all it was clear that he could not be with Adrienne either here or at Kolozsvar, for they could not live together in the same town as Countess Roza. The only answer was Budapest, where things would not be so obvious and the irregularity of their situation, even if only temporary, would not be so painful for either of them. He would therefore have to take a flat there.

Next it was clear that he would no longer receive the allowance that his mother had made him since he first joined the diplomatic service. It was only too probable that Countess Roza would stop it at once. His salary as a Member of Parliament was negligible, not that he was really in need of it for he was entitled to receive that part of the Abady inheritance that came from his grandfather, Count Peter, his father’s father. Until now this had never been administered separately, for the entire estate income had been paid directly to his mother and Balint had had no reason to want anything different. The twin properties of Denestornya had been thought of as one ever since they had been reunited by his parents’ marriage, while the forestlands in the mountains, of which Balint had inherited a quarter share from his father, had never been divided either.

Even if it did not amount to a great deal, he still had an income on which he would be able to live. Since Balint had reorganized the husbandry of the forests some years before, at which time he had made some profitable contracts with an Austrian timber merchant from Vienna, they had begun to bring in more money, and Balint knew that he could count on some 20,000 crowns annually.

It was possible that there might be something else too, for he remembered that his grandfather had also possessed some property in the lower Jara valley. This was now let, but as it belonged legally only to him he would be able to claim the annual rental, whatever it was.

Then there was the question of his grandfather’s furniture, which had all been stored in some unused rooms at Denestornya, ever since Countess Roza had allowed Azbej to move into the old manor-house where his grandfather had lived. He remembered well the huge desk made of root-wood, but of the rest he only had the haziest memories. Of course lists had been made before the house had been emptied for Azbej, and his mother had often referred to an inventory having been taken; but where was it?

Balint searched the library and when he did not find it he realized that it must be in Azbej’s office in the old manor-house below the church. He would have to go there and ask him for it.

These thoughts were occupying Balint’s mind as he sat on the covered veranda drinking tea with his mother. He tried hard to give her the impression that he was absorbed only by the newspapers, from which he kept reading aloud passages he thought might interest her; but in reality he was thinking only of his own problems.

Countess Roza, too, nodded approval or surprise at whatever her son read out, but she wasn’t paying any attention either. All she noticed was the remote, closed expression on her son’s face; and the more she saw how worried he looked, the more she was convinced that the day of that accursed wedding was approaching and that soon she would lose the only and the last person she loved.

Balint unhooked the key of the cemetery from the nail on which it hung at the bottom of the staircase, and hurried down the path on the west side of the hill on which the castle had been built. He passed swiftly the now sizeable fir-trees that grew beside the worn stone steps on the path until he arrived at the gate below. As he went he recalled that day a year before when he had gone with his mother to Communion on the Day of the New Bread. Then he had been buoyed up with hope and confident that he would be able to arrange amicably the matter of his marriage.

It was then that he had vowed to bring order into his life.

The disappointment when he discovered his mother’s determined opposition now overwhelmed him again and almost dispelled the distaste with which he revisited the house where his beloved grandfather had lived.

He had not been there since the old man’s death. By the time that Balint, then a fifteen-year-old schoolboy at the Theresianum, had got home from Vienna, Count Peter was already lying on his bier in the main aisle of the little family church. After that his rooms had been locked and when, years later, Countess Roza had emptied them to make room for Azbej, Balint had always managed to avoid going to see the garden, the wide porticoed veranda and the rooms where, in his imagination, the old man lived still.

Today, however, he had to go there; he had no choice.

The door out of the cemetery opened with difficulty and the rusted lock screeched. Inside the manor-house garden the once immaculate path was almost submerged with weeds. This was the way he had come with his mother, every Sunday after church, to lunch with Count Peter. The lilac bushes on each side were now so neglected and overgrown that there was hardly room to pass between them. Balint began to hate it all; and it was worse when he reached the garden itself. All his grandfather’s once lovingly-tended roses had disappeared and only here and there was to be seen a fallen stem surrounded by suckers. On the house itself only one undernourished climbing rose was still there, the rest obviously having died.

Balint’s worst disappointment was the sight of the house itself. The four Greek columns of the portico, which had once been bright with clean whitewash, had been gaudily covered in shiny green paint to resemble marble. On the ceiling had been daubed some crude butterflies, birds and clouds, and on both sides of the main door were coarse murals, one of Fiume and the other of Naples with Vesuvius belching smoke.

In front of this motley background, lying on a straw bed covered with fireman’s-red coloured cushions, was a fat slatternly little woman wearing a half-open dressing-gown covered in velvet peonies. With her were two children asleep, one at the breast and the other lying on her knees, while a third was sitting on the floor trying to eat a pear from a basket that had been left there.