Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

‘Just my luck!’ he said ruefully‚ in his old mock plaintive manner. ‘First the fox and now the cow! Why, I might be a fr-r-rog‚’ and he started to croak away sadly. Everyone laughed because the contrast between Gazsi’s great beak-like nose and the frog-like croaking was so absurd.

Still laughing, and with the little cow in their midst, they moved on uphill until they reached the garden door of the manor. Then they led their prize up the shadowy paths to the coach house and put her in one of the empty horse boxes. Zoltan, who knew where everything was kept, threw in a bushel of fodder and they all stole out taking care not to wake the coachman who was asleep on his own bed of straw. They went so silently that not for a moment were the man’s healthy snores interrupted.

‘What on earth can the time be?’ asked Adrienne, as they all stood together in the moonlight in front of the house. And when Akos Alvinczy replied that it was half-past eleven, she glanced at Abady and said, ‘Time for a good sleep! Goodness, I’m tired after all that running about!’

They said goodnight on the veranda that ran the whole length of the house and, still laughing at their adventure, started to go to their rooms. Under the vine-covered trellis it was so dark that only Margit noticed that when Addy arrived at the door of her room she stopped for a moment and looked back briefly before disappearing inside. By this time the only ones left were Adam, whose back was turned, and Abady. Then they too turned as if to go to their own rooms.

In a few moments all was silence, mysterious and profound. All that could be heard, from far, far away, was an occasional note from the gypsy band’s bass viol whose distant rhythm sounded like a man’s heart beating in joyous expectation.

It was ten o’clock before everyone started to gather at the breakfast table and the news from the village of the bizarre consequences of the night’s adventure had already reached the house.

The dining-room was between the main living-rooms and the kitchen quarters. There were doors at each end of the room and as a succession of servants — the footmen, the butler and maids — passed through, so each of them brought more news until by midday the full story was known.

At dawn the watchman’s wife had risen to milk the cow and, finding that it was nowhere to be seen, had rushed back into the house to wake her husband and give him the dreadful news. Dumbfounded, they had together stared into the empty shed and then the curses began. ‘Stolen, God damn it! Stolen! But who did it, in God’s name?’

Chacha, the gypsy potter whose hut was just across the road, was the first to hear the news and the first to bear the brunt of the watchman’s wrath, who at once accused the poor man, with horrible curses, of being responsible for the theft. Chacha just shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Then the watchman’s wife remembered that it was market day in Sarmas and that there would be another market, in two days’ time, at Regen. Perhaps itinerant salesmen, who often drove their cattle that way as it was a shortcut across the mountains, had passed in the night? They could have stolen the cow! Surely it must be them! So she urged her husband to hurry after them so as to catch them before they arrived. The man grabbed his stick and rushed off to Sarmas which was ten kilometres away; the woman, sobbing and whimpering, limped up the crest of the Ormenyes in case she could see something, but she came back crestfallen and it was noon before they had both returned empty-handed.

By then the news of the theft had spread throughout the village and, as it was Sunday and there was no work to do, a group of villagers had collected in front of the watchman’s house, bewailing the loss and eager to be the first to hear what had happened.

Why, they lamented, their cattle were not even safe in their own houses! This was a dreadful thing, unheard-of, appalling! Everyone at once thought of their own possessions and this made them ever more sympathetic to the watchman who was sorrowfully repeating his sad tale, over and over again, to each newcomer who arrived. Meanwhile his wife, keening as for the dead, kept up a continual wailing chant: ‘Vaiii! Vaiii! My poor Jambor! Vaiii! You were so beautiful, so lovely! My poor Jambor!’ calling out the beast’s Hungarian name because even in Romanian villages in Transylvania all animals were given Magyar names.

From his hut the gypsy then called out softly that of course he didn’t know but that it was possible that the cow was up at the manor-house. Chacha had been the dark shadow that Adrienne and her friends had not noticed.

General astonishment. What was this the man was saying? What on earth could he mean? The watchman bellowed out furiously‚ ‘So now you tell me‚ you bastard?’

There was a roar of laughter for everyone at once grasped that the whole affair was nothing more than a joke, a trick played on the watchman to show him up as being so lazy that he whose job it was to guard the village could have his own possessions removed from under his very nose, indeed from his own backyard! And the more they thought about it the more they laughed. And at this moment their mirth got completely out of hand for just up the road the cow itself appeared‚ led by Zoltan and driven from behind by one of the Miloth stable-lads.

Up at the manor old Rattle, who always got up late, had just heard about the affair and stormed into the dining-room, roaring like a bull and shouting, ‘So my house is turned into a nest of thieves and robbers, is it? Shame on you all, to bring dishonour on my grey hairs! My honest house a receiver’s den, a dirty receiver’s den!’ he shouted as he rushed into the dining-room where his daughters and their guests were still chuckling over the news that the watchman had run all the way to Sarmas while his wife had climbed almost as far as Ormenyes. ‘Off with you, you rascal!’ he bellowed at his son. ‘Go hang your head in shame and take the poor beast back at once. Yes, you, at once I say, or I’ll break every bone in your body!’ and he lunged at young Zoltan with his stick — just as the boy was making for the door. Then he turned back, shaking with laughter, and said, ‘All right, you blackguards, how did you do it? Tell me all about it, my dears. Come on, tell me!’

He sat down at the table, spread a thick slice of bread and butter with honey and, his moustaches dripping, munched away as he listened eagerly to their tale. Still eating, he nodded and swallowed and let out great roars of laughter as they told him what had happened. This went on until it was nearly time for lunch. Only old Mademoiselle Morin, the sour-faced old governess, sat grimly at the end of the table and, every now and again, repeated, ‘ Oh, ces enfants! Oh, ces terribles enfants !’ because even after more than twenty years in the house, her spinsterish nature, soured by a bad digestion, had never learned to appreciate the pranks of her former charges.

After lunch everyone went their own ways. Rattle, tired out by the previous evening’s dancing, decided to have a nap. Zoltan‚ Akos, Gazsi and Ida went down to the lake to look at the wild duck, and Margit and Adam, with Adrienne and Abady behind them, went walking in the garden.