Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Fortunately enough the weather was so good that it might still have been summer. Partly because of this, and also, of course, because of the influx of visitors from abroad, it was to the Park Club that most people now went in the evenings. Here people would dine and entertain their friends; and here too grand balls were given almost every night. Sometimes, as this evening, it was only a small dance — a tancerli — so instead of opening up the large ballroom they danced in the inner dining-room on the first floor. In the big dining-room next door some people were still at table though it was quite late.

Abady arrived with two foreign couples, people he had first met when he was still a diplomat. Driving out to the club after the opera Abady had been worried that there might still be signs in the streets of the riots that that afternoon had followed the first socialist demonstration calling for the immediate reform of the voting qualifications. After the mass meeting held in the wide spaces of Arena Street a belligerent group had decided to go on to the Inner Town. Along Andrassy Street they went, but as soon as they had arrived at the corner of the Vorosmarty Street, there was a clash with a police cordon and they were beaten back by the drawn swords of officers on horseback. Abady was afraid that some sordid traces of the ensuing battle might still be there and so, ashamed for his country, he leaned out of the carriage window to look around. To his relief everything had been cleaned up; and if there were any armed guards still about they must have been so discreetly posted that no one would notice their presence.

The orchestra was playing waltzes in the inner room and so it was as a matter of course that they went there to dance after supper. Balint at once took one of his friends’ wives onto the floor but it was hardly a success since they were playing a Boston waltz and his visitor was quite unable to ‘reverse’ — an art, he reflected, that had only really been mastered by the Viennese and the Hungarians.

Balint tried his best for a few turns but soon stopped, feeling slightly dizzy as he had had to use more energy that usual to push his partner in the right direction. For a moment he leaned against a side table wiping his forehead, and as he did so his partner was whisked away by someone else.

He had only been there for a moment when, as softly as a bird alighting on a branch, a girl in a tulle dress stopped beside him and a familiar voice said, ‘Hello! Do you remember me?’

It was Lili Illesvary; but how she had changed! There was no sign of the layer of baby fat in which she had been enveloped only a year before. She seemed to have grown both taller and more slender and was no longer the chubby schoolgirl she had been when Balint had seen her at Jablanka. Now she was a girl ready for marriage with a smooth skin, slim neck and shoulders which might have been the model for a Greek statue. She must, too, have known herself how pretty she had become for when she smiled up at Balint her violet-coloured eyes and finely drawn mouth, whose soft outlines tempered the firm chin inherited from her Szent-Gyorgyi ancestors, were full of self-confidence.

‘Don’t you recognize me?’

‘But you must be Countess Lili!’ Balint could not conceal both his surprise at the beauty of the girl and also the pleasure it gave him. Lili understood him completely and so smiled all the more.

‘We were in Vienna for the Spring season,’ she said. ‘I never thought I could have danced so much. It must be almost a year since you last saw me. I was barely out of the schoolroom then!’

She spoke with such gentleness that Balint was again enchanted by the sweetness of that rather throaty voice which he had particularly noticed at Jablanka. Then she went on, ‘I’ve seen you recently at some of the big balls, perhaps a couple of times, but when you didn’t come over to speak to me I thought that maybe you hadn’t recognized me. Of course you may not even have seen me as there’s always such a crowd at those big “do” s. Anyhow, you don’t dance with young girls, do you? Only with married women, perhaps?’

It flashed through Balint’s mind that maybe she was referring to Adrienne, but Lili’s fine eyes shone with such genuine pleasure and candour that no one could imagine there was a grain of malice in what she said. Then she continued ‘… and then there’s always such a crush that all you can do is say hello to each other and dance away … like a machine!’

‘But you like to dance, don’t you?’ said Balint.

‘Oh yes, of course. But you, er, Count Balint …’ and he could hear in the hesitation that she was trying to decide if she should use his family name rather than the more familiar ‘Balint’. ‘You talked to me once or twice at Jablanka; and, you know, those are the memories that stay with you … the person with whom one seemed to hit it off.’

‘Of course. It was at the big shoot!’

‘Yes, then too, but also afterwards, when we were talking about Uncle Antal’s horses and you told me that you had a stud too. You said that all the mares had old Hungarian names.’

‘How well you remember it all!’

‘Of course I do. I could even tell you their names. If you like I’ll recite them all! You have no idea’, she said, taking him into her confidence, ‘how wonderful it is to be treated as a grown-up when you’re still really in the schoolroom.’ She said ‘schoolroom’ with as much disdain as if it had been decades since she had been anywhere near it. ‘Anyway, one always takes note of what people tell one.’

They went on chatting for a little time. The music stopped and though most people started to leave the room they went on talking. Then Lili looked around and saw that they were quite alone.

‘I’m sure they want to air the room,’ she said. ‘Would you like to take me to the buffet?’

They walked slowly back through the large dining-room, the drawing-room beside it, and the card-room; and, as they went, Balint looked hard at Lili and thought how amazing it was what effect a single season could have on a young woman. Barely a year before Lili had been still in her teens, awkward, gauche and unformed. Now, in the way she moved, spoke, looked around her, she had all the elegance and quiet dignity of an experienced woman. It would have taken years for a young man to have acquired such poise.

Lili had learned her lessons so well that it was with perfect self-confidence that she made her way through the crowded room, fan in hand and elbows held closely to her sides. Neither too fast nor too slow, she moved lightly between the groups of people gossiping or talking politics, between the couples engaged in flirting and behind the fat backs of elderly people sitting at cards. She never seemed to look where she was going but somehow skirted all obstacles without for a moment deviating from her course.

‘Shall I tell you a secret?’ she asked when they were standing beside the buffet table. ‘I think you’re going to be asked to Jablanka again this year. You mustn’t know anything about it, of course, but I’m telling you now so that you don’t go and accept any invitations for the first week in December.’

‘Thank you, Countess Lili. Did Uncle Antal say something about it?’

‘No! Nothing positive, but …’ and she turned away as if reaching for a cream cake. As she did so Balint just had time to notice that she was blushing. Blushing? Why should she blush at saying ‘nothing positive’?

There was, of course, a very good reason. Lili had just remembered the cunning she had had to employ to get Abady invited.

She had never herself said anything positive either; but every time she had been at Jablanka she had lost no opportunity of somehow inducing others to say something nice and complimentary about Balint Abady. The head Jäger — amazingly enough, for it was quite unjustified — had somehow been led into praising Balint’s skill with a gun; the stud groom had been slyly reminded how Count Abady had immediately recognized the best among the innumerable foals; and she herself, having cross-questioned Pfaffulus about Abady’s ancestors, had brought up the subject of his family tree in front of her uncle, knowing well that Count Antal set great store by such things and that noble birth and a long line of distinguished forebears were important elements in his approval or disapproval of other people.