Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

For how long did Balint pour out his feelings? Neither of them could have said. Adrienne listened, silent and motionless, seeming to respond to the music of the words rather than to their meaning. But when the man’s lips pressed deeper into the curve of her elbow, she suddenly came alive again. She pulled her arm away violently and jumped up.

‘So! Even you! You want only that! You, of all people, only that! I thought I had a friend, but I have no one, no one!’

She looked at him with hatred and, straightening her slim back, started to walk stiffly away.

‘Addy! Please, Addy! Forgive me!’

But she just went on, her head held high, her whole body rigid with anger and hurt. They walked back to the house in silence, side by side but worlds apart. Abady left that afternoon.

Trying not to show his hurt, he said lengthy goodbyes to all the family. He shook hands warmly with Adrienne’s father, with the girls, the old French governess and with Zoltan; and he tried hard to have a few words with Adrienne herself. His eyes followed her wherever she went, meek with humility, silently begging forgiveness. But she avoided all contact until, just before he was due to enter his carriage and she could no longer remain completely aloof, she allowed him merely to kiss her fingertips. Then she swiftly pulled her hand away and turned back into the house without looking at him.

As the carriage moved off, he looked back to the veranda. Judith and Margit waved back gaily; but Adrienne was nowhere to be seen.

They drove slowly down the steep slope to the road by the lake, the same road by which, gay, carefree and full of hope, he had arrived only the day before. Today his heart seemed to beat in his throat.

He felt that he had lost Adrienne for ever.

WHEN LASZLO GYEROFFY returned to his two-roomed furnished flat in Budapest he started to work in earnest and hardly ever went out. It was a modest little apartment that his guardian, old Carrots, had found for him when he had transferred from the University of Kolozsvar to the Academy of Budapest a few months before. There was just a small living-room with two windows giving onto the garden of the Museum and an even smaller bedroom that looked into the dark courtyard behind. The furniture was worn and shabby, typical of that to be found in the sort of small furnished flats whose rents could be afforded by students. Laszlo had brought with him only two things of his own; a photograph of his father in Hungarian costume taken when he was an usher in the Coronation in 1867, and his guns in a fine leather case which had been placed on the chest of drawers. A drawing board placed on one of the window-sills served as a writing desk.

Laszlo had taken his cousin Balint’s advice to heart. While they had been together in Vasarhely, and in the train until they separated at Maros-Ludas, Balint had tried hard to make Laszlo understand the problems he would have to face now that he had chosen music as a career, problems that would never be solved unless Laszlo contrived to be freed of his debts. Balint advised and, because he loved and admired his cousin, Laszlo had listened and was now trying hard to put that advice into practice. He worked hard, he cut himself off from all social life and he was determined as soon as possible to catch up with the other students who had entered the Academy of Music immediately they had received their baccalaureate.

The experience of the last year had had an important effect on Laszlo, who, deeply ambitious, had resented finding himself no longer among the leading students. To be second-best was hateful to him.

The few weeks he had stayed in Transylvania before returning to Budapest had been spent in raising money. As his guardian refused point-blank to accept Laszlo’s ideas about the forests, and because he had only a short time available before he had to be back in Budapest to register at the Academy, he had mortgaged the property along the banks of the Szamos river that he had inherited from his father. He had only been able to raise a few thousand florins more than he owed to the money-lenders, but at least he now had something in hand and could live, without worrying and without having always to apply cap-in-hand to his guardian for every penny he needed.

He told nobody of his return to Budapest, not even his Kollonich or Szent-Gyorgyi relations. He did not go near the Casino, of which he had become a member in the spring, in case the news of his presence in Budapest would get around the town; and when he went to concerts in the evening he sat in the gallery so as to be sure he would not be seen by anyone who knew him. In the daytime he studied, went to classes and ate his meals in the sort of small eating houses only frequented by students.

If the mornings were beautiful, so were the evenings. Sometimes, when Laszlo returned to his little flat after supper, and before his newfound discipline sent him to bed so as to be ready to rise early the next morning, he would go to the window and gaze out over the tranquil gardens of the museum. He did not do this often because, he knew not why, it reminded him of the carefree, frivolous life he had led as a law student. It made him hanker after the life to be led in the country. But it was not of Transylvania that he thought, nor of the little country house of Szamos-Kozard that his father had started to build but never finished and which he had never known. Nor was it for the Transylvania of his barely-remembered childhood that he longed; rather it was for Nyitra, the Szent-Gyorgyis’ country place, where the sugar-beet fields were rich in coveys of pheasants waiting to be shot, and the woods of the lower Carpathians filled with wild boar to be stalked. Even better, how wonderful it would be to find oneself at Simonvasar, the Kollonich place in Veszprem. That would be the best. How marvellous to ride over the soft Veszprem hills with his Kollonich cousins, with Klara, to play tennis with her and the boys and, in the evenings, to play the piano to her in the long dark music-room, weaving long romantic fantasias to which she would listen in silence with dilated eyes, drinking in every sound of the music he was creating just for her. That would be the most wonderful of all.

One Sunday, completely immersed in his studies, Laszlo worked from midday until it was almost dark and even in the light of the window embrasure it became hard to see clearly enough to read. Still Laszlo did not break his concentration until, all at once, the doorbell rang … and rang again and again, four or five times. Laszlo, angry at being interrupted, got up at last to open the door. Two of his Kollonich cousins, Peter and Niki, erupted into the little room.

‘So here you are! Why have you been hiding like this! When did you get back! Anyhow, we’ve caught you now!’ Shaking his hand, slapping his shoulders, and both talking at once, they filled the little room with their high spirits and good fellowship. With their English-made clothes, their well-brushed hair and general air of ease and elegance, Laszlo felt that his cousins put to shame the shabbiness of his little student’s lodging. He was glad it was so dark that they could hardly see it, and he weakly resolved to move and have his own furniture brought to Budapest. Why should he feel ashamed when his relations dropped in unexpectedly?

‘This is preposterous,’ said the oldest, Peter, a chubby young man with very fair hair. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over Transylvania, sending wires everywhere, and here you are all the time!’

While Peter was a full brother to Klara, being the son of Prince Kollonich by his first, Trautenbach, wife; his half-brother Niki was so much a Gyeroffy in looks that he could have been Laszlo’s brother. Peter went on: ‘Even at the Casino no one had heard of you. We wired to Balint, who told us you’d left ages ago. What’s this all about. What’s the big secret?’