Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Despite the growing evidence that the central European powers were gradually being encircled, at home in Budapest no one thought of anything but their own internal affairs. Justh made more speeches at Independence Party meetings up and down the country, but these, as might be expected, were principally concerned with domestic politics and the vexing question of an independent banking system. There was a high treason trial in Zagreb, with more than fifty accused, but it made more stir in the Paris papers than at home. At Schwechat near Vienna the harvest festival was spoilt by an orgy of bloodletting when Czechs and Germans decided that a riot was the way to settle their differences.

When Balint read all this it only enhanced his general feeling of bitterness without raising any feeling in him; he was totally engrossed in the agony of waiting.

He tried to do some work, so as to alleviate his self-enforced idleness. He drafted a report to the co-operatives’ central authority demonstrating that, as now formed, those co-operatives that incorporated the people in the mountains were not as effective as they should be, for the simple reason that the farmers seemed reluctant to make proper use of the new cheap credits that were available to them. Balint, of course, realized that even though the notary Simo might make a show of trying to recruit the men of the mountain into the co-operative, they, no doubt intimidated by other influences, kept away. The apparent failure of his efforts to help these people added to Balint’s growing frustration and bitterness.

As each successive August day crept by he wrote three letters to Adrienne telling her of his yearning, his love and his desire, nothing else. He said nothing to her, not a word, not a hint, of his plan to break with his mother whatever the doctor might say. He had decided to tell her only after it had already been done.

August drew to a close. It was already September and a week passed before there was any news. Then, after the long tedious days of waiting, a letter from Adrienne at last arrived, even more laconic than before, her words tinged with a new sadness — Uzdy’s condition had perhaps improved somewhat, Dr Kisch had stated, but not enough for him to be exposed to any emotional excitement. They would have to wait! Always wait! Wait!

The next day Balint went home to Transylvania. The time had come for him to act.

Early in the afternoon Roza Abady was sitting at her desk in the yellow drawing-room at Denestornya. For once she was alone. The bright sunlight outside was reflected in a myriad little points of light on the gilt bronze decorations of the furniture and lit up bright carmine spots on the red carpet.

The door opened and her son came in. He was paler than usual.

Countess Roza looked up, sitting very still. Then she too turned pale because she saw in his face that the moment she had dreaded for the past few weeks had now come. Her clear eyes looked at her son with cold determination.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then, still standing, his voice hoarse from emotion, Balint said, ‘I have to tell you, Mother, that I have decided to go ahead with the marriage I have already spoken to you about. This is why I have come … to tell you. I cannot go on like this, I have no choice.’

Roza Abady hardly moved except almost imperceptibly to stiffen the backbone in that small plump body. Sitting rigidly in her throne-like chair, she was like an old monarch dispensing justice, calm but unforgiving.

‘I have told you my view,’ she said. ‘You have made your choice, so there is nothing more to say.’

Her lips parted as if she would have liked to add something more; but she was unable to say another word. Then she lifted her arm, one finger pointing implacably towards the door.

Balint too would have liked to have said something, but he was too moved to speak. He bowed deeply and then walked slowly out of the room.

Gently he closed the door behind him and started to descend the stairs until he felt so giddy that he had to stop for a moment and steady himself on the baroque stone balusters. He was relieved that there was no one there to see him as he made his way to his room on the ground floor of one of the round towers. There he picked up his travelling bag, which he had packed just before going to see his mother, and took a last look round that beloved room, gazing for a brief moment through the window to that wonderful view over the park. How many times he had stood there never once realizing that the day would come when he would have to say goodbye! Then he turned away abruptly, crossed the hall and went down the shallow steps to the main entrance.

He got swiftly into his car which was already waiting and told the driver to drive to Kolozsvar. As they rumbled out across the great horseshoe court, Balint looked back just once, as they passed under the arch above which the stone Atlas bore the weight of the world upon his shoulders.

It was five days since Balint had come home to Denestornya and he had passed them in bidding a sad farewell to his beloved home. He went all over the castle, looking into all the rooms except his mother’s own suite.

In the big drawing-room on the first floor he caressed the four lead statues by Raphael Donner which graced the mirrored console tables and gazed at the pair of Chinese lacquer commodes which stood on each side of the doorway. Lightly he touched the elaborate rococo frame of the portrait of that Count Abady who had been Master of the Horse to the King, and let his eyes range over the tiers of old leather-bound volumes in the library. In the smoking room he looked intently at the faces of all those painted ancestors and in the old nursery he started the wall clock which once had made him laugh so much each time the cord was pulled and two tin frogs jumped out and started a battle which never seemed to come to an end.

Wherever he went there was not a room, not a sudden twist on a stair, not a piece of furniture that did not have for him a wealth of secret childhood memories.

He had walked down to the avenue of lime-trees where he had learned to ride, and felt the now ancient bark of the tree-trunk at which his first pony had so often shied and thrown him. He walked through the pine woods in the upper part of the park and wandered all over the Nagyberek — the Big Wood — that island where all alone during the summer holidays from his school in Vienna he had come to play Cowboys and Indians (he, of course, was always an Indian), Leather Jerkin and the Mohicans, and sometimes even dashing Hungarian hussars bent on some daredevil adventure.

In the paddocks he had fed sugar to the mares and patted their wide-eyed offspring that followed so closely behind. One by one he caressed his own horses and said to them a silent farewell. He tried to leave nothing out, for who knew that it might not be the last time that he would ever set eyes on everything that had always been most dear to him — until he had met Adrienne.

Who could tell if his mother would ever relent and forgive? And if she did not, might she not decide to leave Denestornya away from the family, thereby disinheriting him for ever? Balint remembered well the instructions that his dying father had written to guide his young widow in running the place after his death. In that thick copy-book in which Tamas Abady had also inscribed exactly how he had wanted his son brought up, there was a sinister paragraph in which the dying man had specified that if the eight-year-old boy did not survive, and if the widow did not remarry, she was not to will the lands and the Abady fortune to distant relatives but rather give it to some worthy foundation such as the University of Nagyenyed, in some fashion which would preserve the name of Abady.