Miklós Bánffy - They Were Counted

The door opened, and Klara came in, freshly bathed, in deep décolleté , all pink and sweet-smelling.

‘You have asked for me, Mama?’ she said, and sat down opposite her.

Klara was very fond of her stepmother, who was the only mother she had ever known, her own dying at her birth. She had been two years old when her father had married again and this handsome dark-haired lady, ‘Mama’ in her earliest memories, though she could be severe, had always been kind to her, perhaps even more so than she had been to her own children.

‘My sweet!’ When she was angry the princess invariably began with this endearment. ‘Why are you neglecting Montorio? Oh, yes you have! You’ve been avoiding him all the afternoon.’

‘Mama, I didn’t avoid him. It just happened, really! Anyway I did spend some time at his stand.’

She hesitated; then seeing her stepmother’s stern look, she faltered and gave herself away. ‘I … Anyway I’ll be sitting next to him at dinner tonight. I thought that would be enough!’

‘You will sit next to him at dinner because I arranged it like that, even though your Uncle Antal could take offence as it should really be Magda’s place, not yours. Montorio knows this perfectly well, so it makes it worse that you neglect him and don’t even seem to notice his presence. Don’t deny it! You made a point of avoiding him at the shoot, and that’s a fact!’ She paused, and then went on: ‘You avoided him most conspicuously. You went to everyone else, even to Laci! This is absurd! To Laci, throughout the whole of the last beat and that a double one, and Montorio was next to him. It couldn’t have been more obvious and more insulting! You cold-shouldered the man who only came here for your sake and who had even asked your father for an invitation so that he could meet you.’

The girl’s ocean-grey eyes darkened. That scoundrel Niki must have sneaked, she thought, and she remembered all her grievances against him throughout her childhood, how he had invariably told tales about her to the governesses and to her stepmother. All these old sadnesses now rose up to reinforce her present distress and she replied, her voice hardening:

‘Every move I make,’ but here she paused as she did not want to go on ‘your spies report to you’, so she changed it to ‘Every move I make is difficult to explain.’

Just for a moment storm clouds had seemed to gather between the two women; but these were dispelled when Klara changed what she had been going to say.

Princess Agnes said drily: ‘That’s why I have to think for both of us!’ Now she changed her tone. The time for harshness was past. The girl had realized that she could not pull the wool over her stepmother’s eyes and that was enough. Now was the time for frankness and common-sense. In a friendly and down-to-earth manner the princess started to explain what an eminently satisfactory choice Montorio would be. She enumerated his virtues, how nice he was, how he had no vices like drink or gambling, how he worked hard managing his family’s vast estates in Carinthia. She spoke of his great town house in Vienna on the Herrenstrasse, of his close relationship to the most important families, how his mother was a real Bourbon and not one of those trumped-up morganatic branches that gave themselves such airs. Their ages were right, too, Montorio being only thirty-two. It was rare in life to find, just at the right moment, a parti so suitable in every way. She ended up:

‘Your father will give you an ample dowry so you wouldn’t be dependent on your husband. Really, Klara, everything would be for the best! Why you’d be the first lady of Vienna!’

Klara got up, turned away slightly and walked a few steps. She was searching for an answer that would sound convincing.

‘Yes, Mama. Everything you say is true, of course, but somehow … well, I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘Somehow, in spite of all that … I don’t want it!’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Somehow …’ and she spread out her arms in a wide gesture, wiggling her fingers in the air as if trying to clutch at the right word to express the confusion of her thoughts, ‘Somehow I’m just not interested.’

The princess moved her still beautiful if somewhat massive shoulders in a little shrug of disdain. ‘Not interested? Why not, may I ask? He is very elegant and very handsome. What’s more, he’s in love with you!’

‘Perhaps … but I’m not interested,’ repeated the girl, happy to have found even this inadequate reply.

‘Strange! Almost unnatural in the young healthy girl!’ Then, as a new suspicion crossed her mind, ‘You’re not in love with anyone else, are you? Then I’d understand.’

‘Oh, no, Mama. How could you?’ replied Klara, a little too quickly, and then, to correct the impression such a swift denial might have, she went on, ‘but I could never decide … I wouldn’t want to decide, not so quickly and so suddenly. It’s such a great decision!’

‘But you don’t have to decide yet! Of course not! But in the mean time do show just a little interest. Keep him warm. I don’t have to tell you that he’ll only propose when you want him to. That always depends on us women!’ And she laughed softly, with feminine superiority. Then she rose and went to her stepdaughter, put her arms round her and kissed her. Her voice became warm and cajoling:

‘My darling little Klara! I only want the best for you when I tell you these things. You must remember that such a chance as this doesn’t come twice. Young men today don’t seem to think much of marriage; they’re getting almost cunning, and if you miss this chance? You’re past twenty-three, don’t forget, and it’s high time you were married. Isn’t it so, my little Klara?’

Her last words were spoken softly and lightly, but they were meant to tell. And her laugh, equally light, was as full of warning as it was of practical feminine wisdom.

Klara blushed but did not answer.

‘You promise you’ll be nice to him?’

‘All right! I promise! Only that! Nothing more.’ Her hand turned the knob and as she went out the princess called after her:

‘Your father wants this very much too!’

Klara went out and closed the door. The older woman’s last words had spoiled in an instant any effect that their talk might have had, because Klara knew from long experience that her father only did what his wife wanted and that everything always happened in the way the princess had decided; though by that time the prince had usually decided it was what he had always wanted. What worried Klara was that if her father did not get what he had come to believe was his own will he could become very angry indeed.

Why must she menace me with Papa? thought Klara mutinously as she descended the stairs, though by the time she reached the bottom step she had consoled herself with the thought that she had only promised to tolerate Montorio’s courting. She had not bound herself to anything that might affect … No! She could not harm anyone by that!

And so that evening, she flirted lightly with Montorio at dinner and afterwards: and on the last two days of the shoot she often went to stand beside him.

But she did not allow things to go any further.

ON THE AFTERNOON OF THE THIRD DAY Balint found himself at the end of the line. It was a quiet stand with few birds coming his way, and it was where he nearly always found himself for, as a comparatively near relation, second cousin to the hostess, and an indifferent shot, he had no claims to a better place and he was not needed to ‘help’ the guests of honour.

Although the beaters were rattling away furiously in the distance the birds were all being directed to the far end of the line where guns were going off as rapidly as in battle. Where Balint stood only a few wise old cocks moved quietly about in the brush having discovered that they should never run in the direction they were being herded and, above all, that they should never leave the ground. They strutted in two’s and three’s not far from Balint, only occasionally putting out their emerald-green necks, waiting for a good moment to run to the next block of cover.