Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Since Countess Miloth’s death the garden had been almost abandoned; the lilac bushes were untrimmed and the lawns were covered in weeds. As they followed a winding path Adam, to his disappointment, found himself once again alone with Margit whom he still thought of as a mere child. He was angry because he had only come to Mezo-Varjas to see Adrienne and had hoped, during his afternoon walk, once again to pour out to her all his adoration and love. Perhaps, persuaded by his eloquence, by the beautiful phrases he had planned in advance, she might at last be persuaded to take him seriously.

He looked sadly at Margit. ‘You see‚’ he cried. ‘She’s avoiding me. She won’t even hear what I have to say. Oh, I’m the unhappiest man in the world. If only I could tell her all my sorrows!’

Margit put her hand on the young man’s arm. ‘Well, you can tell me, you know. I’m your friend, a good friend, and I’m a very good listener‚’ and she led him away from the garden, through the park and up to an old wooden bench on a hilltop which overlooked the village and the abandoned Protestant cemetery.

Adam now poured out his heart as he once more went over all that he felt for Adrienne, how in the past she had seemed to listen to him sympathetically. Of course it was true that she had always teased him and joked about his declarations of love, but that had not mattered because his feelings for her were so true and beautiful and all he had wanted was to be allowed to adore her, to kneel before her without touching even the hem of her skirt. He knew he was not worthy of her but all he wanted was the chance to talk to her and show her what was in his heart. And now not even that was possible for she always cut him short and stopped him before he had got a word out. She wouldn’t even give him the chance to speak — even though that would be the only consolation possible for his hopeless sorrowing heart.

Young Margit was a wonderfully sympathetic confidante. She seemed to understand every nuance of what was in Adam’s heart as she cleverly led him on to bare his soul to her. And she seemed, too, to share his sorrow, saying how cruel it was of Adrienne and asking how she could possibly allow herself to be so cold and merciless. Adrienne was beautiful, of course, oh yes, very beautiful, but she could have no heart if she could so torment someone like Adam, someone so true and lacking in guile or deceit. Oh, how could she cause so much pain? And so she went on, comforting the lovesick young man, stroking his shoulders and lending him her minute lace handkerchief when he had to brush away his tears.

They sat on the bench until it was almost dark and for Margit it was time well spent. Adam felt happier than he had for days because at last he had been able to tell everything that was in his heart to such a sweet, selfless girl. It was like talking to the sympathetic sister he had never had, whose hands he could squeeze in sympathy and with whom he could share his tears and his sadness. Although they had often talked of all this before it had never been so good as today on the bench on the hilltop. As they walked back to the house Margit suggested that perhaps he would like to write to her, especially if he was far away and needed some relief for his aching heart. Wouldn’t that be a help to him, she said, a comfort in his loneliness? And he agreed that it would.

Adrienne and Balint, in order to escape from the other two, turned off the path at the angle of the manor-house and continued to the end of a long side wing. This was where Judith Miloth had lived since her mind had become clouded and they had brought her home. Next to the house was the wire fence of the poultry yard that Adrienne had had made for her sister when she discovered that the girl took pleasure in looking after small animals.

On the sunny side there was a double row of chicken coops and next were several separate little houses for broody hens. A little further on was a low hut to house the rabbits in front of which a clay floor had been laid. Further on still there was a pile of sand which was renewed each month by a cart sent up from the Maros. This was necessary because no sand was to be found in the high prairie-lands and the health of the chickens depended on it. Once, before Adrienne had organized this, some epidemic had broken out, the hens had died and Judith had cried for days on end.

There was a narrow path between the fence and the lilac bushes and along this Adrienne led Balint in single file. From here he caught his first sight of Judith whom he had not seen since she had been brought home from Venice a year and a half before.

The girl was sitting on the ground. A black kerchief covered her hair and was tied under her chin like the peasant girls’. She wore a wide blue cotton apron which was spattered with whitish chicken droppings as were her hands. On the ground beside her was a metal scraper with which she had just cleaned the clay floor of the chicken run. Around her was a cluster of rabbits greedily munching on the lettuce leaves she had just given them. As she sat there Judith with one hand flung out handfuls of feed to the chickens while with the other she nursed a crippled chick which had been born lame.

‘Eat, my little one,’ she was murmuring. ‘Go on, eat! No one will harm you here. It’s good, isn’t it? Eat, little one, eat!’

Judith only spoke to her animals; to people she hardly opened her mouth.

The old maidservant who looked after her was standing at the door of her room and, as Adrienne passed by, she called out, ‘Kiss your hand, my Lady.’

As the old woman spoke Judith looked up. Seeing only Adrienne at first her expression did not change; but the moment she saw that Abady was with her, and lifted his hat in polite greeting, her face was contorted with horror and she looked at him with a mixture of surprise and terror, her eyes opened wide with shock. Her thin lips opened, as she straightened up, hands hanging loosely at her sides. She only looked at him for a few seconds but it seemed to him that perhaps she was, however uncertainly, recalling the moment when he had brought her home after she had been abandoned by the man she loved.

Abady too was thinking of that moment when he had found her alone at the railway station at Kolozsvar, waiting for the man she loved, that scoundrel Wickwitz with whom she had planned to elope to Austria but who had fled across the Romanian border the night before without even troubling to send her word. He remembered well the terrified expression on her face, like some caged wild bird, when he had stepped up to her just after the Budapest express had already left and told her that she was waiting in vain. Today, for a brief instant, he saw in her face that same expression, but it remained there only briefly and then the vacant look returned, empty and blind as it had been ever since that second shock which had broken her completely, when an unknown woman had sent her all the letters she had written to Wickwitz.

Now Judith lived shut away in these rooms in a remote corner of her father’s house. She lived there like a shadow. She was alive but she might have been dead. She was still beautiful, but she was paler than before, and thinner, and her glance held no more meaning than the unblinking stare of a wild animal.

Adrienne and Balint walked on without speaking. They had both been upset by the sight of Judith.

When they had been wandering in the orchard for a while Balint started to speak, and as so often happened between them, he said exactly what was in her mind too.