Miklós Bánffy - They Were Found Wanting

Even this did not disconcert Gazsi. He just tied a white board on his back with the words ‘I KICK!’ so that anyone who came up behind him should be warned.

The Master rode a wide circle round the meadow to see who out that morning, and then stopped to greet the ladies. Without even glancing in Uncle Ambrus’s direction he gave the sign to move off and led the way over the road and across the railway tracks. Behind the hounds rode the whips and behind them the stallions with their soldier riders. A little further back rode the two young Laczok boys in the charge of their father’s head groom. Countess Laczok, who had made the Master responsible for their safety, stood up in her carriage and waved to them to pass by her; but the two youngsters already had their hands full keeping their mounts from crowding the riders ahead of them and could not have left the field even if they had wanted to. It was enough to keep behind Baron Gazsi and Aron Kozma and nothing could take that joy from them.

Once over the track the field split into two, half the riders going to the left of the pack along the banks of the river, the rest beside the railway line. In front of them the flat meadows of the Szamos valley stretched northwards, and across these meadows rode the hunt, hoping to put up a hare either from the meadows themselves or from the ploughed fields on either side — or even from among the corn stalks in those fields not yet ploughed. And as soon as the riders had gone past, the carriages too moved off, following the hunt from the road which skirted the meadows.

Margit said goodbye to Dodo and got down from the car. She looked around to see where Adam had driven their beautiful carriage.

The carriage was there, a little way off; but where was Adam? There was no sign of him. She looked around again and soon saw that he had joined the group at Uncle Ambrus’s. She ran towards him and was about to call out when she saw that her fiancé, who was standing with his back to her, was noisily toasting the others with a beaker of champagne and brandy, while Ambrus, Akos Alvinczy and Joska Kendy cheered him on.

Margit was filled with rage. How could he break his word to her like that! There he was, drinking again as soon as her back was turned! In a flash she decided to punish him. She would show him! And, as all the adventure-loving blood of the Miloths rose in her, she ran across to where Joska’s famous four-in-hand was standing nearby, jumped up into the driving seat and called over to that dashing gentleman-driver, ‘Joska! Take me after the hunt! Across the fields. I dare you!’

‘Of course I dare!’ cried Joska, as he ran over, and jumped up beside her. An almighty crack of the whip and away they dashed.

Only then did Adam grasp what was happening. Dimly coming to his senses he stammered, ‘M-M-Margit! I only … Oh, Margit! Margit!’

But Joska’s dappled greys were already far away. They did not remain on the road for long, but bumped across the railway tracks and into the meadows behind the hunt. No other carriage could have been driven like that, but then Joska’s wagon was no elegant gentleman’s carriage but a strongly-built farm cart, low on the ground and slung on iron chains rather than delicate springs. It could be driven across bumps and ditches without coming to harm.

Hardly had they crossed the rail tracks when from far below by the river bank came the cry ‘Tally-ho!’

By the time Adam had recovered his senses, dashed across to his own carriage and galloped some way up the road, the hunt was well away below him and the field streaming off into the distance.

As was only to be expected, the hare did not run straight along the valley to amuse the carriage trade above but soon cut off in a sharp turn up the hillside. The pack of harriers were in full cry behind him and after them the Master, the Whips, the soldiers, the Laczok boys and the rest of the field. The hare ran quickly across the railway line and, about two miles from the meadow where the meet had been held, crossed the road in front of the following carriages and disappeared up the bare hills to the left.

And behind them all came Joska and Margit in the four-in-hand at full tilt. Adam was in a terrible state. For a moment he had a wild hope that they would stop when they reached the road, but that was not the way of Joska. As if he were the Devil himself he set the horse diagonally at the uneven hillside and raced away after the last of the riders. All Adam could do was watch them helplessly as the low-slung wagon careered wildly as it followed old cart-tracks and cattle-crossings, and slithered its way across the dried-out yellow clay hillside. In a few moments they too were at the top where the hunt had just disappeared and then, after galloping briefly along the crest of the hill, they also disappeared from view.

In his distress Adam for one moment even thought of chasing after them, but he quickly reflected that his delicate American chariot would be broken to pieces before he had gone fifty yards up that terrible rough hillside. He looked around for a horse he could borrow but there was none there not harnessed to some carriage or other. And what’s more there was no one there capable of holding his high-spirited pair of horses if they decided to bolt, for the little stable-lad clinging precariously to the jump-seat could barely hold their heads when he left the carriage. And so he was chained to that elegant carriage, which was as showy as Dodo’s new motor and as useless except on the tarred road, forced to sit up there for all to see, unable to lift a finger to help his bride and made to watch whatever might happen with his heart beating hard and his head full of fear and anger and shame.

It might perhaps have been less cruel if after they had disappeared over the crest of the hill he could have imagined a halt in the chase and Joska’s horrible juggernaut being peacefully trotted along some country lane. But this was not to be. The hare, as they are apt to do, cut a circle and now reappeared running fast horizontally along the precipitous sides of the hill, with the pack in close pursuit and behind it the Master, the Whips and the entire field — with the soldiers still riding formally in a close-knit row. And there, barely a hundred yards in the rear, raced those four dapple-greys, firstly downhill with Joska’s wagon skidding after them, then horizontally over gorse and hawthorn bushes, lurching over stream-beds and goat-paths, tilting first in one direction and then in the other and all the time, with pipe clenched in his mouth, that dreadful Joska, reckless of everything except the chase and the reins in his hands, in full sight of Adam, and beside him young Margit with her hat on her shoulders, her hair loose and flying in the wind, holding hard to the seat with her hands but laughing and happy, happy, happy …

But Adam had never been so unhappy in his whole life.

As the hunt streamed across the railway tracks and crossed the road before climbing up the steep hillside on the other side, they passed in front of a half-covered open carriage which was being driven towards Apahida. In it sat Laszlo Gyeroffy who, after a day spent at his home at Kozard, was now returning to Mrs Lazar’s house at Dezmer.

Now, seeing riders in their full hunting panoply of pink and dark green, he remembered that it was St Hubert’s day and that, round the next bend in the road, he would surely meet everybody from his own world, that light-hearted, pleasure-seeking, hard-drinking world that he had shunned ever since the day of the Spring bazaar. The succeeding months had at first been a time of increasing deprivation and degradation. Then he had met Mrs Lazar, started leading a normal orderly life again, begun to work by helping her to run her substantial estates, and by now was feeling almost happy and at ease. He certainly had no desire to encounter any of those former friends who all knew his story.