Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

The telegram had been delivered early in the morning before his mother was awake, so Balint had plenty of time to work out some untruth that his mother would accept. Only one thing seemed plausible. Parliament had unexpectedly been recalled for 19th February, in three days’ time, and though there was no need for him to go, his mother would certainly believe him if he told her that he had been asked to return. It would only be for a few days, or a week, and then he would come back to bring her home.

Countess Roza listened in silence when Balint said that he had to leave at once for Budapest. Though her eyes filled with tears she said nothing to hold him back. At last she said: ‘All right, I’ll wait for your return. I know a few people here now so I shall not be too lonely. They’ll keep me company until you come back.’

Balint left the same evening.

WICKWITZ HAD TO RETURN to his regiment in the middle of October. He did not want to do so but it was forced upon him by a chain of unfortunate events. In August he received a letter from Tihamer Abonyi, Dinora’s husband, begging him to come back to Maros-Szilvas for a few weeks so as to get his horses ready for the races at Vasarhely and Szuk. Abonyi wrote that he had no faith in any other trainer. When Baron Egon told Mme Bogdan Lazar that he was going to accept this invitation she was not at all pleased, thinking that it was merely his excuse for going back to Dinora. Nitwit tried to convince her that she was being stupid as he really was going there only to train racehorses, but she wouldn’t believe him and threw him out.

That autumn the Miloths did not go either to Vasarhely or to Kolozsvar and this made it extremely difficult for Wickwitz to keep in touch with Judith. Occasionally he sent her a scribbled note — addressed naturally to Zoltan — just to make sure that the girl ‘stayed in form’; but as letter-writing bored him and he felt he was no good at it he soon realized that he’d better look for some girl near at hand in Brasso, or his affairs would never get settled. He had heard tell of the daughter of a textile millionaire, who was going to come out that winter, so he did everything he could to scrape acquaintance. It might well have worked, for the girl clearly liked him, but her family began to notice Wickwitz’s attentions and, as they had already decided that the girl should marry a cousin who had shares in the family firm, they took care to keep Baron Egon away from the house. This was serious, because Wickwitz had spent a lot of time in pursuing the girl, time that was now seen to have been wasted, and the date was not far off when Dinora’s promissory notes, which he had deposited with the banker at Nagy-Varad, would expire. The Privatbank Blau, as the money-lender so pretentiously styled himself, had recently been pressing for repayment and though, this had been done with a veneer of respect, Wickwitz was quite bright enough to detect the menace behind the polite phrases. Something had to be done very soon, for Wickwitz was haunted by two little words that seemed engraved in huge black letters in his brain: ‘Infam kasssiert’ — dishonourably discharged — cashiered’.

At the end of January Wickwitz was at his wits end and wrote a letter to Judith, who was now in Kolozsvar, which completely revived the girl’s now somewhat faded feelings for him. Adrienne had been right when she wrote to Balint that Judith seemed calmer and more at ease. This had come about because it was now some time since she had last seen the Austrian baron and, as her infatuation was largely based on the sacrifices that she would make to save that unhappy man, it needed the constant reminder of his presence to keep her love alive. Judith’s feeling for Egon Wickwitz was based on the belief that she alone could save that great but unfortunate man, who was the soul of honesty but in trouble through no fault of his own other than his helplessness when faced by the world’s duplicity. She it was who could keep him from eternal damnation, and so she loved him. Now, however, it seemed that for several months Wickwitz had no longer been threatened, and so the self-sacrificing element in Judith’s love had had nothing on which to feed. Without a battle to fight on his behalf her love had lost its heroic character. She remained true to him, but she was prepared to wait calmly for whatever the future might bring. This was how she felt; and so, deprived of the urgency and opposition that had made her so rebellious and determined, she had gradually learned once again how to laugh and joke and be merry.

In this new letter Wickwitz reverted to the trick that had been so successful when he first wooed her. Then the lie had been that he could have had Dodo Gyalakuthy if he had not fallen in love with Judith and felt it dishonourable to go on pursuing the heiress. Now he used the textile manufacturer’s daughter. He wrote that he had only begun that pursuit so as to free himself from his ‘obsession’ with Judith, an obsession that was not fair to her. But it was no good, there was no way he could rid himself of his deep love for her and therefore it was better that he should, must, kill himself and be done with it. He could not live without her and he could not bear to share his life with anyone else. In a few days his shame would be public knowledge, so that it was better that he should shoot himself now — it was the only solution. There was, of course, one other possibility, but he hardly dared mention it and wasn’t even sure he wanted it: it was that Judith should elope with him at once. However, he would never ask for such a sacrifice. He would rather choose death! For once it was a well-written letter, and it was written well because Wickwitz penned the words with very little hope and with real despair in his heart.

When Zoltan gave his sister Wickwitz’s letter she answered it at once, getting her brother to address the envelope and post it. She wrote: ‘I do want to save you. Come for me. From here it will be easy for usto run away together.’

Three days later Wickwitz’ reply arrived, full of humble gratitude … and a carefully worked out plan. ‘ We will go to Graz,’ he wrote, ‘and there we’ll be married in church. No civil wedding is necessary in Austria! ’ His mother would find them a priest. In a few days he would get leave and come for her.

Margit Miloth, who was sharing a room with her sister on the nursery floor of the Uzdy villa, noticed a change in Judith when she received Wickwitz’s first letter. She said nothing and she asked no questions but merely watched and saw Judith’s attempts to conceal her agitation and her sudden increase of nervousness. She also saw Zoltan hand over the second letter and again watched her sister carefully and noted where Judith hid it when she went to bed. Later, when Judith was asleep she got up, took the letter quietly from its hiding place and hurried down the servants’ staircase and along the passage to Adrienne’s apartments. In her long white nightgown she flitted down the dark corridor like a benevolent ghost.

Adrienne was in bed, reading. Margit sat down beside her and together they read Baron Egon’s letter. The next day Adrienne sent the telegram to Balint to call him back from Portofino.

Abady arrived in Budapest the evening before Parliament was due to reassemble. He decided not to go on to Kolozsvar until the next afternoon so that he would be able to attend the morning session. He knew from the newspapers that he had bought on his journey that this time there would be no adjournment but that Parliament would almost at once be dissolved by royal decree. This was contrary to all law and custom for it was part of the constitution that Parliament could not be dissolved until the budget had first been passed. Balint saw the whole manoeuvre as a violent step which would widen the rift between the Crown and Parliament and could lead to open rebellion. Anxiously, he went straight to the Casino so as to hear the latest news. The great hall and all the public rooms were filled with a large crowd all talking excitedly, even though this new move had come as no surprise to the people in the capital for, just as it had been at the beginning of the crisis, everyone already thought they knew what the government was planning and what the coalition party’s answer would be.