They Were Counted (19 page)

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.

W
HEN 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?’

‘You see, I was right! I said he’d gone to ground and we’d have to dig him out,’ said Niki, who loved to use old Hungarian hunting language since the rest of his family, in his view, had become too Germanized.

‘I’m working hard, that’s all. I’m studying.’

‘Nonsense! That’s no excuse! One always passes examinations one way or another,’ said Peter, who then, to show off his use of fashionable English, continued, ‘besides, that’s no reason to “cut” us. Anyhow now we’ve caught you, I’ll tell you why we’ve been looking for you. Our first shoot’s next week. The guests arrive on the 20th, for three days as usual. You’ve got to come!’

Laszlo demurred. He used all the arguments that Balint had
rehearsed
for him; he couldn’t leave his studies, he said, and he started going into lengthy detail about his work, but his cousins remained unimpressed. To their way of thinking music or any other studies were only of secondary importance. You could pass the time studying, and maybe you could learn something useful, after a fashion, but a pheasant shoot, one of the best in the
country
and which only lasted three days – to miss that was
incomprehensible
. Unless there were some other, unspoken reason. It was Niki who gave voice to the only plausible explanation, ‘To be sure, there’s a woman behind this! Don’t deny it, Laszlo. Give us a week and we’ll find out who she is!’

‘You just have to come,’ insisted Peter. ‘It’s unthinkable that you shouldn’t be with us for the first shoot of the season. Papa would be very hurt if you let us down, especially this year when all the important guests are terrible shots! What’s more, with Louis up at Oxford with Toni Szent-Gyorgyi, there’ll be no good shots from the family except for us and Uncle Antal. Balint’s
coming
but he’s not much use with a gun. The bags will be a disaster without you. We’ve got to net at least two thousand brace, or Father will blame us for a rotten shoot. It’s unthinkable that you should let us down.’

They argued for a long time, the Kollonich cousins asking what sort of a friend and cousin he was who could abandon them just when they needed him most? And in the end Laszlo yielded, as much to his own secret desires as to the entreaties of his cousins. But he insisted that he couldn’t stay a minute more than three days.

As Peter and Niki took their leave they tried to tempt Laszlo into going with them, but Gyeroffy remained firm. He absolutely had to get up in the morning and so, defeated but content, the two cousins took themselves off happy that Laszlo had agreed to come.

When they had gone Laszlo lit the lamps and tried once again to settle to his studies, but the theories of point and counterpoint blurred before his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he could not concentrate: serious study eluded him. At last he gave up and went over to the gun-case on the chest of drawers. It was a long, smooth case of fine leather with brass corner-guards and a patent lock. The case, with its fine pair of triggerless Purdys inside, had been the unexpectedly lavish Christmas present from his two aunts three years before. On the butt of each gun was a small golden disk engraved with the Gyeroffy arms, and on the outside of the case, embossed on the leather, was his name, with a small spelling mistake: ‘Count Ladislas Gieroffy’.

Laszlo took out one of the guns and, as he put it together, he thought how easily it handled, how beautifully it was made, like a fine clock. He peered through the long gleaming barrels, cocked the gun for the pleasure of hearing that easy, precise click. What a clean sound! After gently handling the gun for some time he
dismantled
it and put it lovingly back in its case.

Then he went for a long solitary walk along the banks of the Danube.

 

On the 19th Laszlo travelled to Simonvasar with Balint Abady, who had come to the capital for some political meetings.

They arrived in the late afternoon, after a slow carriage drive which seemed even longer than the ten kilometres from the
station
to the castle because the road was so bad. The reason for this was that Prince Kollonich was always on such bad terms with whatever government was in power in the county that he rarely ever communicated with the authorities in the county town and then only through his land agent.

The carriage finally entered the forecourt of the castle, turned a half circle round the horseshoe-shaped carriage way, and drew up under the columned entrance. As they entered the house two statuesque footmen helped them out of their fur coats and a third, dressed in the blue tailcoat of the Kollonich livery, led them through the huge library, with its tall cupola-shaped roof, through the vast red drawing-room with its five windows, where some of the younger guests were already assembled, and finally through double doors into the corner saloon where the Princess Agnes always received her guests. This salon was one and a half floors high, like the library through which they had just passed but, unlike the library which was lined with tier upon tier of beautifully bound books, it was decorated with coloured stucco in light relief: all pastel colours, butter-yellow, pale lilac and a mint green simulated marble, all in the purest Empire style, even though the castle, designed by the great architect, Pollak, creator of the National Museum, had only been finished at the end of the sixties.

The princess received the new arrivals with her usual warmth and kindliness. She stroked Laszlo’s head as he bent to kiss her hand. Though she was as ever, extremely gracious, she never made it easy to forget that she was, after all, a very great lady whose every kind word was a gift and to kiss whose hand was a privilege.

She was tall and still beautiful, even though her dark hair was streaked with grey and her once radiantly pink complexion was now touched here and there with tiny dark-brown liver spots. She wore a tea-gown in the English fashion, the neck and sleeves sewn with festoons of old lace which set off her still beautiful hands and arms. Although the garment was loose and flowing she sat so erect that it was obvious that she also wore a tightly-laced corset.