Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

It was one of Antal Szent-Gyorgyi’s guiding principles that he would never accept a favour, except from a close personal friend, without returning it in full measure. And if the donor was a stranger, or someone socially inferior, then the recompense must be all the more generous lest there be the slightest suspicion that Count Antal remained in their debt. Since it was not possible to offer Slawata a tip he had been invited to the shoot. Szent-Gyorgyi would far rather have paid out any amount of mere money!

However, having once decided to do it, it was done in style. Slawata was treated as the guest of honour and given the best position, at one of the ends of the line, for it was one of the peculiarities of hares that they would run along the line of the beaters, out of range of the guns until they reached the end of the line where they would come straight towards the last gun. This place was therefore the most sought-after for here there was always more game to shoot. Slawata was known to be a weak shot and so young Louis Kollonich, who was very good indeed, had been posted next to him as Eckhalter — or corner guard — with strict instructions to ‘help’ the guest of honour by shooting first at anything that came that way.

‘Don’t let anything past!’ called the host to his nephew as he passed by in his carriage and winked at him from an otherwise expressionless face. Then he drove on past his son Toni to his place at Number Four. Countess Beredy, who had been sitting beside him in the carriage, started to get down when he did but Count Antal, speaking in English, called back to her, ‘No! No! You go on!’ and gestured to the coachman to continue. Fanny smiled back indulgently. Many months after Laszlo Gyeroffy had left her she had started an affair with Antal Szent-Gyorgyi. For Fanny this was an innovation since hitherto her lovers had all been young men. However, after the shock of her desertion by Laszlo, who was the only one she had truly loved, she did not feel like starting a new relationship with anyone else young and unreliable. The few words that Laszlo had sent her — ‘Thank you for everything …’ — just that, scribbled on the back of a visiting card — still made her heart contract with pain each time she thought of them; and it was for this reason that she had finally responded to the silent courtship of this man of fifty. Szent-Gyorgyi was tall and elegant, like a well-bred greyhound, a man of the world who would hold no surprises for her. She needed someone in her life — for she and her husband had led separate lives for a long time — and she had been almost a year without anyone when she decided to accept Szent-Gyorgyi as her lover. It was a calm relationship which brought both of them solace and joy with none of the pangs and complications of a passion. Count Antal was a careful man, for he still lived in friendly companionship with his ageing wife Elise; and for both of them caution was necessary, not the least for Fanny since she knew only too well that ‘my lord Beredy’ — as she ironically called him whenever she happened to think of him — would be only too happy to throw her out and divorce her if she gave him the opportunity. He had made this perfectly clear to her many years before, and ever since she had been very, very careful. Only with Laszlo had she taken any risks, but then she had been a little light-hearted …

‘At least with this one I won’t have to worry about causing any scandal!’ she thought, and smiled to herself.

This was the third day of Fanny’s visit to Jablanka. When she had first arrived she had thought that she had been asked so that her host would be able to come to her at night. This would have been easy and agreeable and such a pleasure to be able to make love freely and at leisure instead of going through all that performance of stolen meetings, dressing and undressing and watching the clock in the little garconnière in Budapest! But it was not to be. She was mistaken. On the first night he did not come, nor on the second, and when she had asked him why, he had replied that it was too dangerous, someone might see him … the servants … the risk …! Who knows what might not happen? ‘No! No! It’s no good, not here!’ he had said in English, whereupon Fanny had decided to become better acquainted with the lie of the land. She started to make a tour of the vast house. If anyone had asked her what she was doing she was going to say that she was looking for her maid.

The castle of Jablanka had been built round a huge symmetrical square courtyard on all four sides of which was a two-storeyed vaulted gallery off which opened all the rooms as in old monasteries. And this, indeed, is what it had once been. The Szent-Gyorgyi family, who then still lived in the now ruined fortress on the crags above, had had it built for the Pauline monks in the first years of the eighteenth century. In 1780, when the order was dissolved, the Emperor Joseph gave the building back to its original founders as they were considered gut gesinnt — well disposed — to the Habsburgs, of course. It was at this time the ancestors of Count Antal decided that the vast monastery would make better living quarters than the medieval fortress and moved in. The monks’ oratory, now the castle chapel, was situated on the first floor directly opposite the main entrance and to this day the wings on each side were known as ‘on the right of the chapel’ or ‘on the left of the chapel’. The reception rooms were all on the first floor on the front of the building, looking south over the plain. The exterior of the great house had been left exactly as it had always been, austere and plainly whitewashed. Inside a few smaller cells had been joined together to make larger rooms and the corridors had been lavishly decorated with the heads of roebuck and other game.

Fanny started off from her room which was the furthest from the chapel in the left-hand wing. The next door led to her bathroom and after that there was a little staircase. Then followed door after door, each carved from precious woods, inlaid with the sort of elaborate motifs beloved of ecclesiastics. On each door was a little brass frame holding a card with the name of the guest to whom the room had been allocated. After two that were empty Fanny found that the third bore her brother’s name, Wuelffenstein, and after that Abady. Round the corner the first name was Warday’s and then Slawata. After this there was a double stair and at its head the monumental doorway which led to the chapel, then more doors which opened on the Szent-Gyorgyi boys’ rooms and that of the young Louis Kollonich. Round the next corner the rooms were family apartments — this was the ‘right of the chapel’ side — and finally, with windows that must be on the eastern of the building, to Countess Szent-Gyorgyi’s own apartments.

Fanny did not go as far as this but turned back.

As she did so she noticed Klara Kollonich’s name on one of the doors. So she did not share a room with her husband, thought Fanny, who wondered for a moment until she remembered that Klara was in the last stages of her pregnancy and that she had heard her hostess say that they would put her in her old room so as to be where her aunts and cousins could look after her properly. Nothing very interesting here! thought Fanny and she went back to where she had started and descended the small stair near her room. Here too was a wide corridor hung with antlers and other game trophies, hundreds of them clustered on the white-washed walls.

Fanny walked slowly and cautiously along towards the main staircase, cautiously because she had heard that Count Antal’s smoking-room was to be found somewhere there. She did not have to go far. The second door was open and she saw at once that this was the host’s bedroom. On the vast bed several different sets of shooting clothes had been laid out for the count to choose from, and his valet was now busy putting them back on their hangers. Luckily he was standing with his back to the door and so did not see her looking in. As the second door was the bedroom Fanny at once assumed that the first was probably that of the adjoining bathroom, as on the floor above. Therefore if Szent-Gyorgyi wanted to come up to her all he had to do was to slip out of his rooms and up the little stair beside them; and it would be the same if he wanted her to come to him. No one would be likely to notice them. Why! she thought. Nothing would be easier! All she had to do was to be careful while in the corridor for no one could possibly catch sight of her on the little stairway which had walls on both sides. She decided that as soon as she saw him she would suggest coming down that night. That would certainly be the best. Perhaps Antal was afraid of catching cold in the corridors — men were so delicate! — and that perhaps had been why he had not come to her. Fanny’s mouth widened in a knowing smile.