The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Old House, by Cécile Tormay
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Title: The Old House
A Novel
Author: Cécile Tormay
Translator: Emil Torday
Release Date: September 19, 2021 [eBook #66344]
Language: English
Produced by: Paul Clark and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD HOUSE ***
_THE OLD HOUSE_
_A Novel_
_By_
CÉCILE TORMAY
TRANSLATED FROM THE HUNGARIAN BY
E. TORDAY
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1922 : : : : NEW YORK
Copyright, 1922, by
Robert M. McBride & Co.
_Printed in the
United States of America_
Published, September, 1922
CHAPTER I
1
It was evening. Winter hung white over the earth. Great snowflakes
crept over the snow towards the coach. They moved ghostlike over the
silent, treeless plain. Mountains rose behind them in the snow. Small
church towers and roofs crowded over each other. Here and there little
squares flared up in the darkness.
Night fell as the coach reached the excise barrier. Beyond, two sentry
boxes buried in the snow faced each other. The coachman shouted between
his hands. A drowsy voice answered and white cockades began to move
in the dark recesses of the boxes. The light of a lamp emerged from
the guard’s cottage. Behind the gleam a man with a rifle over his arm
strolled towards the vehicle.
The high-wheeled travelling coach was painted in two colours: the
upper part dark green, the lower, including the wheels, bright yellow.
From near the driver’s seat small oil lamps shed their light over the
horses’ backs. The animals steamed in the cold.
The guard lifted his lantern. At the touch of the crude light, the
coach window rattled and descended. In its empty frame appeared a
powerful grey head. Two steady cold eyes looked into the guard’s face.
The man stepped back. He bowed respectfully.
“The Ulwing coach!” He drew the barrier aside. The civil guards in the
sentry boxes presented arms.
“You may pass!”
The light of the coach’s lamps wandered over crooked palings, over
waste ground--a large deserted market--the wall of a church. Along the
winding lanes lightless houses, squatting above the ditches, sulked
with closed eyes in the dark. Further on the houses became higher.
Not a living thing was to be seen until near the palace of Prince
Grassalkovich a night-watchman waded through the snow. From the end
of a stick he held in his hand dangled a lantern. The shadow of his
halberd moved on the wall like some black beast rearing over his head.
From the tower of the town hall a hoarse voice shouted into the
quiet night: “Praised be the Lord Jesus!” and higher up the watchman
announced that he was awake.
Then the township relapsed into silence. Snow fell leisurely between
old gabled roofs. Under jutting eaves streets crept forth from all
sides, crooked, suspicious, like conspirators. Where they met they
formed a ramshackle square. In the middle of the square the Servites’
Fountain played in front of the church; water murmured frigidly from
its spout like a voice from the dark that prayed slowly, haltingly.
A solitary lamp at a corner house thrust out from an iron bracket
into the street. Whenever it rocked at the wind’s pleasure, the chain
creaked gently and the beam of its light shrunk on the wall till it
was no bigger than a child’s fist. Another lone lamp in the middle of
New Market Place. Its smoky light was absorbed by the falling snow and
never reached the ground.
Christopher Ulwing drew his head into his fur-collared coat. The
almanac proclaimed full moon for to-night. Whenever this happened, the
civic authorities saved lamp-oil; could they accept responsibility
if the heavens failed to comply with the calendar and left the town
in darkness? In any case, at this time of night the only place for
peaceful citizens was by their own fireside.
Two lamps alight.... And even these were superfluous.
Pest, the old-fashioned little town had gone to rest and the fancy came
to Christopher Ulwing that it was asleep even in day time, and that he
was the only person in it who was ever quite awake.
He raised his head; the Leopold suburb had been reached. The carriage
had come to the end of the rough, jerky cobbles. Under the wheels the
ruts became soft and deep. The breeze blowing from the direction of
the Danube ruffled the horses’ manes gently.
All of a sudden, a clear, pleasant murmur broke the silence. The great
life-giving river pursued its mysterious course through the darkness,
invisible even as life itself.
Beyond it were massed the white hills of Buda. On the Pest side an
uninterrupted plain stretched between the town and the river. In the
white waste the house of Christopher Ulwing stood alone. For well nigh
thirty years it had been called in town “the new house.” The building
of it had been a great event. The citizens of the Inner Town used to
make excursions on Sundays to see it. They looked at it, discussed it,
and shook their heads. They could not grasp why Ulwing the builder
should put his house there in the sand when plenty of building ground
could be got cheaply, in the lovely narrow streets of the Inner Town.
But he would have his own way and loved his house all the more. The
child of his mind, the product of his work, his bricks, it was entirely
his own. Though once upon a time....
While Christopher Ulwing listened unconsciously to the murmur of the
Danube, silent shades rose from afar and spoke to his soul. He thought
of the ancient Ulwings who had lived in the great dark German forest.
They were woodcutters on the shores of the Danube and they followed
their calling downstream. Some acquired citizenship in a small German
town. They became master carpenters and smiths. They worked oak and
iron, simple, rude materials, and were moulded in the image of the
stuff they worked in. Honest, strong men. Then one happened to wander
into Hungary; he settled down in Pozsony and became apprenticed to
a goldsmith. He wrought in gold and ivory. His hand became lighter,
his eye more sensitive than his ancestors’. He was an artist....
Christopher Ulwing thought of him--his father. There were two boys, he
and his brother Sebastian, and when the parental house became empty,
they too like those before them, heard the call. They left Pozsony on
the banks of the Danube. They followed the river, orphans, poor.
Many a year had passed since. Many a thing had changed.
Christopher Ulwing drew out his snuff box. It was his father’s work and
his only inheritance. He tapped it lightly with two fingers. As it sank
back into his pocket, he bent towards the window.
His house now became distinctly visible; the steep double roof, the
compact storied front, the mullioned windows in the yellow wall, the
door of solid oak with its semi-circular top like a pair of frowning
eyebrows. Two urns stood above the ends of the cornice and two caryatid
pillars flanked the door. Every recess, every protruding wall of the
house appeared soft and white.
Indoors the coach had been noticed. The windows of the upper story
became first light and then dark again in quick succession. Someone was
running along the rooms with a candle. The big oak gate opened. The
wheels clattered, the travelling box was jerked against the back of the
coach and all of a sudden the caryatids--human pillars--looked into the
coach window. The noise of the hoofs and the wheels echoed like thunder
under the archway of the porch.
The manservant lowered the steps of the coach.
A young man stood on the landing of the staircase. He held a candle
high above his head. The light streamed over his thick fair hair. His
face was in the shade.
“Good evening, John Hubert!” shouted Ulwing to his son. His voice
sounded deep and sharp, like a hammer dropping on steel. “How are the
children?” He turned quickly round. This sudden movement flung the many
capes of his coat over his shoulders.
The servant’s good-natured face emerged from the darkness.
“The book-keeper has been waiting for a long time....”
“Is everybody asleep in this town?”
“Of course I am not asleep, of course I am not----” and there was
Augustus Füger rushing down the stairs. He was always in a hurry, his
breath came short, he held his small bald head on one side as if he
were listening.
Christopher Ulwing slapped him on the back.
“Sorry, Füger. My day lasts as long as my work.”
John Hubert came to meet his father. His coat was bottle green. His
waistcoat and nankin trousers were buff. On his exaggeratedly high
collar the necktie, twisted twice round, displayed itself in elegant
folds. He bowed respectfully and kissed his father’s hand. He resembled
him, but he was shorter, his eyes were paler and his face softer.
A petticoat rustled on the square slabs of the dark corridor behind
them.
Christopher Ulwing did not even turn round. “Good evening, Mamsell. I
am not hungry.” Throwing his overcoat on a chair, he went into his room.
Mamsell Tini’s long, stiff face, flanked by two hair cushions covering
her ears, looked disappointedly after the builder; she had kept his
supper in vain. She threw her key-basket from one arm to the other and
sailed angrily back into the darkness of the corridor.
The room of Christopher Ulwing was low and vaulted. White muslin
curtains hung at its two bay windows. On the round table, a candle was
burning; it was made of tallow but stood in a silver candle-stick. Its
light flickered slowly over the checked linen covers of the spacious
armchairs.
“Sit down, Füger. You, too,” said Ulwing to his son, but remained
standing himself.
“The Palatine has entrusted me with the repair of the castle. I
concluded the bargain about the forest.” He took a letter up from the
table. Whatever he wanted his hand seized, his fist grabbed, without
hesitation. Meanwhile he dictated short, precise instructions to the
book-keeper.
Füger wrote hurriedly in his yellow-covered note book. He always
carried it about him; even when he went to Mass it peeped out of his
pocket.
John Hubert sat uncomfortably in the bulging armchair. Above the
sofa hung the portraits of the architects Fischer von Erlach and
Mansard, fine old small engravings. He knew those two faces, but took
no interest in them. He began to look at the green wall paper. Small
squares, green wreaths. He looked at each of them separately. Meanwhile
he became drowsy. Several times he withdrew the big-headed pin which
fastened the tidy to the armchair and each time restuck it in the same
place. Then he coughed, though he really wanted to yawn.
Füger was still taking notes. He only spoke when the builder had
stopped.
“Mr. Münster called here. His creditors are driving him into
bankruptcy.”
Christopher Ulwing’s look became stern.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
Füger shrugged his shoulders.
“I haven’t had a chance to put a word in....”
The builder stood motionless in the middle of the room. He contracted
his brows as if he were peering into the far distance.
Martin George Münster, the powerful contractor, the qualified
architect, was ruined. The last rival, the great enemy who had so many
times baulked him, counted no more. He thought of humiliations, of
breathless hard fights, and of the many men who had had to go down that
he might rise. He had vanquished them all. Now, at last, he was really
at the top.
With his big fingers he gave a contented twist to the smart white curl
which he wore on the side of his head.
Füger watched him attentively. Just then, the candle lit up the
builder’s bony, clean-shaven face, tanned by the cold wind. His hair
and eyebrows seemed whiter, his eyes bluer than usual. His chin, turned
slightly to one side and drawn tightly into an open white collar, gave
him a peculiar, obstinate expression.
“There is no sign of old age about him!” thought the little book-keeper,
and waited to be addressed.
“Mr. Münster lost three hundred thousand Rhenish guldens. He could not
stand that.”
Christopher Ulwing nodded. Meanwhile he calculated, cool and unmoved.
“I must see the books and balance sheet of Münster’s firm.” While he
spoke, he reflected that he was now rich enough to have a heart. A
heart is a great burden and hampers a man in his movements. As long
as he was rising, he had had to set it aside. That was over. He had
reached the summit.
“I will help Martin George Münster,” he said quietly, “I will put him
on his legs again, but so that in future he shall stand by me, not
against me.”
Füger, moved, blinked several times in quick succession under his
spectacles, as if applauding his master with his eyelids.
This settled business for Christopher Ulwing. He snuffed the candle.
Turning to his son:
“Have you been to the Town Hall?”
John Hubert felt his father’s voice as if it had gripped him by the
shoulder and shaken him.
“Are you not tired, sir?” As a last defence this question rose to his
lips. It might free him and leave the matter till to-morrow. But his
father did not even deem it deserving of an answer.
“Did you make a speech?”
“Yes....” John Hubert’s voice was soft and hesitating. He always spoke
his words in such a way as to make it easy to withdraw them. “I said
what you told me to, but I fear it did little good....”
“You think so?” For a moment a cunning light flashed up in Christopher
Ulwing’s eye, then he smiled contemptuously. “True. Such as we must
act. We may think too, but only if we get a great gentleman to tell
our thoughts. Nevertheless, I want you to speak. I shall make of you a
gentleman great enough to get a hearing.”
Füger bowed. John Hubert began to complain. “When I proposed to plant
trees along the streets of the town, a citizen asked me if I had become
a gardener. As to the lighting of the streets they said that drunkards
can cling to the walls of the houses. A lamp-post would serve no other
purpose.”
“That will change!” The builder’s voice warmed with great strong
confidence.
Young Ulwing continued without warmth.
“I told them of our new brickfields and informed them that henceforth
we shall sell bricks by retail to the suburban people. This did not
please them. The councillors whispered together.”
“What did they say?” asked Christopher Ulwing coldly.
John Hubert cast his eyes down.
“Well, they said that the great carpenter had always made gold out of
other people’s misery. The great carpenter! That is what they call you,
sir, among themselves, though they presented you last year with the
freedom of the city....”
Ulwing waved his hand disparagingly.
“Whatever honours I received from the Town Hall count for little. They
have laden me with them for their weight to hamper my movements, so
that I may let them sleep in peace.”
“And steal in peace,” said Füger, making an ironical circular movement
with his hand towards his pocket.
“Let them be,” growled the builder, “there is many an honest man among
them.”
The book-keeper stretched his neck as if he were listening intently,
then bowed solemnly and left the room.
Christopher Ulwing, left alone with his son, turned sharply to him.
“What else did you say in the Town Hall?”
“But you gave me no other instructions...?”
“Surely you must have said something more? Something of your own?”
There was silence.
Young Ulwing had a feeling that he was treated with great injustice.
Was not his father responsible for everything? He had made him a man.
And now he was discontented with his achievement. In an instant, like
lightning, it all flashed across his mind. His childhood, his years
in the technical school, much timid fluttering, nameless bitterness,
cowardly compromise. And those times, when he still had a will to
will, when he wanted to love and choose: it was crushed by his father.
His father chose someone else. A poor sempstress was not what Ulwing
the builder wanted. He wanted the daughter of Ulrich Jörg. She was
all right. She was rich. It lasted a short time. Christina Jörg
died. But even then he was not allowed to think of another woman, a
new life. “The children!” his father said, and he resigned himself
because Christopher Ulwing was the stronger and could hold his own more
vehemently. Unwonted defiance mounted into his head. For a moment he
rose as if to accuse, his jaw turned slightly sideways.
The old man saw his own image in him. He looked intently as if he
wanted to fix forever that beam of energy now flashing up in his
son’s eye. He had often longed for it vainly, and now it had come
unexpectedly, produced by causes he could not understand.
But slowly it all died away in John Hubert’s eyes. Christopher Ulwing
bowed his head.
“Go,” he said harshly, “now I am really tired.” In that moment he
looked like a weary old woodcutter. His eyelids fell, his big bony
hands hung heavily out of his sleeves.
A door closed quietly in the corridor with a spasmodic creaking. Ulwing
the builder would have liked it better if it had been slammed. But
his son shut every door so carefully. He could not say why. “What is
going to happen when I don’t stand by his side?” he shuddered. His
vitality was so inexhaustible that the idea of death always struck him
as something strange, antagonistic. “What is going to happen?” The
question died away, he gave it no further thought. He stepped towards
the next room ... his grandchildren! They would continue what the
great carpenter began. They would be strong. He opened the door. He
crossed the dining room. He smelt apples and bread in the dark. One
more room, and beyond that the children.
The air was warm. A night-light burned on the top of a chest of
drawers. Miss Tini had fallen asleep sitting beside it with her shabby
prayer book on her knees. The shadow of her nightcap rose like a black
trowel on the wall. In the deep recess of the earthen-ware stove water
was warming in a blue jug. From the little beds the soft breathing of
children was audible.
Ulwing leaned carefully over one of the beds. The boy slept there. His
small body was curled up under the blankets as if seeking shelter in
his sleep from something that came with night and prowled around his
bed.
The old man bent over him and kissed his forehead. The boy moaned,
stared for a second, frightened, into the air, then hid trembling in
his pillows.
Mamsell Tini woke, but dared not move. The master builder stood so
humbly before the child, that it did not become a salaried person to
see such a thing. She turned her head away and listened thus to her
master’s voice.
“I didn’t mean to. Now, don’t be afraid, little Christopher. It is I.”
The child was already asleep.
Ulwing the builder stepped to the other bed. He kissed Anne too. The
little girl was not startled. Her fair hair, like a silver spray, moved
around her head on the pillow. She thrust her tiny arms round her
grandfather’s neck and returned his kiss.
When, on the tips of his toes, Christopher Ulwing left the room, Miss
Tini looked after him. She thought that, after all, the Ulwings were
kindly people.
2
A glaring white light streamed through the windows into the room.
Winter had come over the world during the night and the children put
their heads together to discuss it. They had forgotten since last year
what winter was like.
Below, the great green water crawled cold between its white banks. The
castle hill opposite was white too. The top of the bastions, the ridges
of the roofs, the spires of the steeples, everything that was usually
sharp and pointed was now rounded and blunted by the snow.
The church tower of Our Lady belonged to Anne. The Garrison Church
was little Christopher’s. A long time had passed since the children
had divided these from their windows, and, because Christopher grew
peevish, Anne had also given him the shingled roof of the Town Hall
of Buda and the observatory on Mount St. Gellert. She only kept the
Jesuits’ Stairs to herself.
“And I’ll tell on you, how you spat into the clerk’s tumbler. No, no,
I won’t give it!” Anne shook her head so emphatically that her fair
hair got all tangled in front of her eyes. She would not have given the
Jesuits’ Stairs for anything in the world. That was the way up to the
castle, to Uncle Sebastian. And she often looked over to him from the
nursery window. In the morning, when she woke, she waved both hands
towards the other shore. In the evening she put a tallow candle on the
window-sill to let Uncle Sebastian see that she was thinking of him.
Then Sebastian Ulwing would answer from the other shore. He lit a small
heap of straw on the castle wall and through the intense darkness the
tiny flames wished each other good night above the Danube.
“The Jesuits’ Stairs are mine,” said Anne resolutely and went into the
other room.
The little boy sulked for some time and then followed her on tiptoe.
In the doorway he looked round anxiously. He was afraid of this room
though it was brighter than any other and Anne called it the sunshine
room. The yellow-checked wall paper looked sparkling and even on a
cloudy day the cherry-wood furniture looked as if the sun shone on it.
The chairs’ legs stood stiffly on the floor of scrubbed boards and
their backs were like lyres. That room was mother’s. She did not live
in it because she had gone to heaven and had not yet returned home, but
everything was left as it had been when she went away. Her portrait
hung above the flowered couch, her sewing-machine stood in the recess
near the window. The piano had been hers too and the children were
forbidden to touch it. Yet, Christopher was quite sure that it was full
of piano-mice, who at night, when everybody is asleep, run about in
silver shoes and then the air rings with their patter.
“Let us go from here,” he said trembling, “but you go first.”
There was nobody in grandfather’s room. Only some crackling from the
stove. Only the ticking of the marble clock on the writing table.
Suddenly little Christopher became braver. He ran to the stove. The
stove was a solid silver-grey earthenware column. On its top there was
an urn emitting white china flames, rigid white china flames. This was
beautiful and incomprehensible and Christopher liked to look at them.
He pointed to the brass door. Through the ventilators one could see
what was going on inside the stove.
“Now the stove fairies are dancing in there!”
In vain Anne looked through the holes; she could not see any fairies.
Ordinary flames were bobbing up above the cinders. The smoke slowly
twisted itself up into the chimney.
“Aren’t they lovely? They have red dresses and sing,” said the boy. The
little girl turned away bored.
“I only hear the ticking of the clock.” Suddenly she stood on tiptoe.
When she did so, the corners of her eyes and of her mouth rose
slightly. She too wanted to invent something curious:
“Tick-tack.... A little dwarf hobbles in the room. Do you hear?
Tick-tack....”
Christopher’s eyes shone with delight.
“I do hear.... And the dwarf never stops, does he?”
“Never,” said Anne convincingly, though she was not quite sure herself,
“he never stops, but we must not talk about it to the grown-ups.”
Christopher repeated religiously:
“The grown-ups must never know. And this is truly true, isn’t it?
Grandpa has said it too, hasn’t he?”
Anne remembered that grandpa never told stories about dwarfs and
fairies.
“Yes, Grandpa has said it,” the boy confirmed himself.
The whole thing got mixed up in Anne’s brain. And from that moment both
believed absolutely that their grandfather had said it and that it
was really a dwarf who walked in the room, hobbling with small steps,
without ever stopping. Tick-tack....
“Do you hear it?”
The peaceful silence of the corridor echoed the ticking of the clock.
It could even be heard on the staircase which sank like a cave from the
corridor to the hall. And then the dwarf vanished out of the children’s
heads.
The back garden was white and the roof looked like a hillside covered
with snow. Where the dragon-headed gargoyle protruded, the house turned
sharply and its inner wing extended into the deep back garden. Mr.
Augustus Füger lived there with his wife and his son Otto.
Mrs. Augustus Füger, Henrietta, was for ever sitting in the window and
sewing. At this very moment, her big bonnet was visible, looking like a
white cat on the window sill. Fortunately, she did not look out of the
window. The garden belonged entirely to the children. Theirs was the
winged pump of the well, theirs the circular seat round the apple tree.
Their kingdom.... In winter the garden seemed small, but in summer when
the trees were covered with leaves and the lilac-bushes hid the secret
places, it became enormous. Through its high wall a gate led to the
world’s end; a grilled gate which grown-ups alone were privileged to
open.
Sometimes Anne and Christopher would peep longingly for hours through
its rails. They could see the roof of the tool-shed, the tar boiler
and a motley of pieces of timber, beams, floorings, piles. What lovely
slides they would have made if only one could have got at them! The
old folks called this glorious, disorderly place, where rude big men
in leather aprons used to work, the timber yard. The children did not
approve of this name, they preferred “world’s end.” They liked it on
a summer Sunday best when all was quiet and the smell of the heated
timber penetrated the courtyard and even the house. Then one could
believe in the secret known to Christopher. It was not a timber yard at
all. The grown-ups had no business with it. It was beyond all manner
of doubt the playground of giant children who had strewn it with their
building bricks.
“And when I sleep, they play with them,” the boy whispered.
“One can’t believe that just now,” Anne answered seriously, “when
everything is so clear.”
Crestfallen, Christopher walked behind her in the snow. They only
stopped under the porch in front of a door bearing a board with the
inscription “Canzelei.”[A] This word sounded like a sneeze. It tickled
the children’s lips. It made them laugh.
Anne and Christopher knocked their shoulders together.
“Canzelei.... Canzelei!”
The door opened. The clerk appeared on the threshold. He was a thin
little man with a starved expression, wearing a long alpaca frock-coat;
when he walked, his knees knocked together. Anne knew something about
him. Grandpa had said it when he was in a temper: Feuerlein was stupid!
The only one among grown-ups of whom one knew such a thing beyond doubt.
The children looked at each other and their small cheeks swelled with
suppressed laughter; then, like snakes, they slid through the open door
into the office.
“He is stupid, though he is grown up,” Anne whispered into the boy’s
ear.
“And I will spit into his tumbler!” Now they laughed freely,
triumphantly.
Their laughter suddenly stopped.
Mr. Gemming, the draughtsman, had banged his triangular ruler down and
began to growl. Augustus Füger tugged the sleeve-protector he wore on
his right arm during business hours.
“Don’t grumble, Gemming. Don’t forget that one day he will be head of
the firm, won’t you, little Christopher? And you will sit in there
behind the great writing table?”
Christopher looked fearfully towards the door that led to his
grandfather’s office. In there? Always? Quiet and serious--even when he
wanted to play with his tin soldiers? With a shudder, he rushed across
the room. No, he would rather not set his foot here again; nasty place
that smelt of ink.
The door from which he had fled opened. Ulwing the builder showed a
strange gentleman through the room.
The little book-keeper began to write suddenly. Gemming dipped his
pencil into the inkstand. In the neighbouring room the pens scratched
and the children shrank to the wall. The strange gentleman stopped.
Anne saw his face clearly; it was fat and pale. Under his heavy double
chin the sail-like collar looked crushed.
“Thank you,” said the strange gentleman and cast his eyes down as
if he were ashamed of something. He held out a flabby white hand to
Christopher Ulwing. The hand trembled. His lips quivered too.
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Münster. It is just business....”
This was said by the builder under the porch, and they heard it in the
office.
Gemming began to shake the point of the pencil he had dipped in the
ink. Füger blinked and blinked. Both felt that Martin George Münster
had fallen from his greatness to their own level. He too was in
Ulwing’s service.
When the builder returned, his crooked chin settled snugly in his open
collar.
Suddenly he perceived the children.
“What are _you_ doing here?” He would have liked to sit down with them
on the heap of office books. Just for a minute, just long enough to let
their hands stroke his face. He took his repeater out of his pocket.
“It can’t be done.” He still had to settle with many people.
Contractors, timber merchants, masons, carters--they were all waiting
behind the grating, in the big room opening into the garden. And John
Hubert had already twice thrust his head through the door as if he
wanted to call him. He went on. But on the threshold he had to turn
back. “This afternoon we will go to Uncle Sebastian. We will take leave
of him before the floating bridge is removed.”
The children grinned with delight.
“We shall go in a coach, shan’t we?” asked the boy.
“We shall walk,” answered Ulwing drily; “the horses are needed to cart
wood!” And with that he slammed the door behind him.
“Walk,” repeated Christopher, disappointed. “I don’t like it. And I
won’t go. And I have a pain in my foot.”
He walked lamely, rubbing his shoulders against the wall. He moaned
pitiably. But Anne knew all the while that he was shamming.
CHAPTER II
The old man and the little girl walked slowly down to the banks of the
river. The little squares of the windows and the two figures under the
porch gazed for a long time after them. A cold snowy wind was blowing
from the white hills. Water mills floated on the Danube. Horses,
harnessed one in front of the other, dragged a barge at the foot of the
castle hill, and small dark skiffs moved to and fro in the stream, as
if Pest and Buda were taking leave of each other before the advent of
winter.
On the shore shipwrights were at work. When they perceived Christopher
Ulwing, they stopped and greeted him respectfully. A gentleman came in
the opposite direction; he too doffed his hat. Near the market place
ladies and gentlemen were walking. Everybody saluted Ulwing the builder.
Anne was proud. Her face flushed.
“Everybody salutes us, don’t they? Are there many people living here?”
“Many,” said her grandfather, and thought of something else.
“How many?”
“We can’t know that; the gentry won’t submit to a census.”
“And are there many children here?”
The builder did not answer.
“Say, Grandpa, you never were a child, were you?”
“I was, but not here.”
“Were you not always in our house, Grandpa?” asked the child,
indefatigable.
Ulwing smiled.
“We came from a great distance, far, far away, Uncle Sebastian and I.
By coach, as long as our money lasted, then on foot. In those days
the summers were warmer than they are now. At night we wandered by
moonlight....”
He relapsed into silence. His mind looked elsewhere than his eyes.
The fortress of Pest! Then the bastions and walls of Pest were still
standing. And he entered the city through one of its old gates.
“It was in the morning and the church bells were ringing,” he said deep
in thought.
Suddenly it seemed to him that he saw the town of times gone by, not as
a reality, but as an old, old fading picture. White bewigged citizens
in three-cornered hats were walking the streets. Carts suspended on
chains. Soldiers in high shakos. And how young and free the Danube was!
Its waters shone more brightly and its shore swarmed with ship-folk.
Brother Sebastian went down to the bank. He himself stopped and looked
at a gaudy, pretty barge, into which men were carrying bags across two
boards. They went on one, returned by the other. A clerk was standing
on the shore, counting tallies on a piece of wood for every bag. The
half-naked dockers shone with sweat. They carried their loads on their
shoulders just as their fore-fathers had carried them here on the
Danube for hundreds of years. The boards bent and swayed under their
weight. The clerk swore. “There are too few men.” He looked invitingly
at Christopher Ulwing. But Christopher did not touch the bags. His
attention was attracted by something in the sand which entered his eyes
like a pinprick, the glittering blade of an axe. He remembered clearly
every word he said. “Knock those two boards together. In an hour we can
slide the whole cargo into the barge.”
Down at the shore, brother Sebastian jumped into a boat. He pointed
with his staff towards Buda. He called his brother, waving his hand.
“I remain here,” was the determined answer, and he picked the axe up
from the sand.
The clerk watched him carefully and nodded approvingly. A few minutes
later, the bags slid speedily down the improvised slide, and the barge,
like a greedy monster, gulped them up into its maw.
The boat and brother Sebastian left the shore. They were already in the
middle of the Danube. The stream and the oars, chance and will, carried
his life into the opposite town. Christopher Ulwing remained in Pest.
Next day, he worked in the office of the ship-broker. Then he went into
the timber yard. Then further. Advancing. Rising. And the town grew
with him as if their fate had been one.
Vainly did Anne ask a thousand little questions; her grandfather did
not answer. He walked far behind his present self.
They reached the boat-bridge. Here too the men saluted. The collector
asked for no toll. At the bridge-head, the sentry presented arms.
“Why?” Anne had asked this question every time she had crossed the
bridge in her short life.
“They know me,” the builder answered simply.
What need was there for the children to know that he owned the bridge,
had contracted for the right of way over the river; that the many rafts
floating down the Danube were his as well as the land above them on the
banks.
The bridge trembled rhythmically. The stream rocked the boats. It
foamed, splashed, as if thirsty giant animals were lapping at the hulls
of the many chained little boats. Lamps stood near the pillars. In the
middle, a coloured spot above the water: the guardian saint of the
river, the carved image of St. John Nepomuk. Beneath it, people passed
to and fro, raising their hats.
Anne pointed to the saint: “People salute him too, even more than
Grandpa.” And she was a little envious.
When they reached the castle on the hill, the little girl began to
complain: “I am hungry.”
The stones of the narrow, snow-covered pavement clattered quietly under
the builder’s long, firm steps.
Around them decaying houses. Yellow, grey, green. Gilt “bretzels,”
giant keys, boots and horse-shoes dangled into the street from over the
tiny shops, suspended from brackets which were ornamented with spirals
of forged steel.
Above the shop of Uncle Sebastian, a big watch was hung. From far away
Anne recognised the immobile golden hands on its face. The tower of
Our Lady’s Church cast its shadow just up to it. It pointed into the
street like a black signpost. The house itself was probably older than
the others. Its upper storey protruded above the ground floor and was
supported by several beams above the pavement. On the bare wall, just
behind the clock-sign, an inscription, with curious flourishes, was
visible:
SEBASTIAN ULWING
CITY CLOCKMAKER
The shop was crowded. Neighbours, burghers from the castle, came here
every afternoon to warm themselves. Uncle Sebastian sat before his
little clockmaker’s table. He was silent. His white hair, smoothed
back from his forehead, fell on the collar of his violet tail-coat.
His figure was tall and bent. According to old fashion he wore
knee-breeches. On his heavy shoes the buckles were a little rusty; the
thick white stockings formed creases. When he perceived Anne, he began
to laugh. He caught her up in his arms and raised her high into the air.
“Where is little Christopher?”
“He has a pain in his foot,” said the master builder, bowing to the
company. Anne turned up her nose significantly. The children did not
think Uncle Sebastian belonged quite among the grown-ups. He understood
many things grandfather could not grasp. They put their heads together,
secretively, affectionately. Anne began to dangle her little legs in
the air and ask for gingerbread. Then she proceeded to investigate the
shop.
At the bottom of it a semi-circular window opened on a courtyard. A
deep leather armchair and a long table with curved legs stood in front
of the window. The table was covered with a lot of old rubbish. The
shelves too were laden with odds and ends. Watches and clocks covered
the grimy walls.
Near the table, a lady tried to sell a _repoussé_, silver, dove-shaped
loving-cup. Perceiving Christopher Ulwing, she curtseyed deeply.
“With your permission, I am Amalia Csik, from the Fisherman’s bastion.”
She wore a hat like a hamper. Everything on her was faded and shabby.
Anne noticed that whenever she moved a musty odour spread from her
clothes. In the shop nobody took any notice of this. All these people
were dressed differently from her grandfather.
“Even the little children are dressed in a modish way,” the lady said
disparagingly. “Of course, everything in Pest is different from what we
have in Buda.... We, here in the castle, are faithful to our own ways,
thank God. Are we not, your reverence?”
The castle chaplain nodded several times his yellow, bird-like head.
“I hear,” said the lady, “that they have started a fashion paper in
Pest.”
“Yes, and they print it in the same type as the prayer books,” grumbled
the chaplain.
The lady gave a deep sigh.
“Notwithstanding that the devil himself is the editor of fashion
papers.”
“Of all newspapers,” said the official censor of the Governor’s council
from beside the stove.
Christopher Ulwing raised one eyebrow in sign of derision. “Is it the
censor who says that?”
“It is I,” came the answer, emphatically, as if an incontrovertible
argument had been thrust into the discussion.
“Literary people in Pest have a different opinion,” grumbled the
builder.
“Perhaps it would be better not to drag them in. As censor, I am a
literary man myself....”
The builder was getting more and more impatient. The censor turned to
the chaplain.
“The written word must not serve the ideals of the individual but the
purposes of the State and Church.”
Christopher Ulwing went to the door. He would have liked to let a
little fresh air into the place. Suddenly he turned back angrily: “I
suppose, gentlemen, you only approve of mediocrity?”
“Well said, Mr. Builder. Nothing but the mediocre is useful to the
organization of the State. That which is above or below only causes
uncomfortable disorder.”
He did not himself know why, but, all of a sudden, Christopher’s
thoughts went to the bookshop of Ulrich Jörg in Pest. He remembered
the young authors who frequented it; their plans, their manuscripts,
detained in the censor’s sieve. All those ambitious hopes, new dreams
and awakening thoughts, younger than he, a little beyond his ken, but
which he loved as he loved his grandchildren.
He turned his back furiously on the censor and went to the bottom of
the room feeling that if he spoke he would say something rude.
The chaplain said with indignation:
“All those people from Pest are such rebels!”
The lady exclaimed suddenly: “There comes the wife of the Councillor of
the Governor’s council! She is wearing her silver-wedding hat!”
All thronged to the door. The shop became quite dark as the fat “Mrs.
Councillor” passed in front of it. The chaplain and the others took
their hats and followed her; let the people think they were in her
company. Quite a crowd for Buda, at least six people went down Tárnok
Street at the same time. Even the good lady with the big hat remembered
some urgent business. She quickly concluded the sale of the loving-cup,
bowed, and rushed after the others.
Christopher Ulwing came forward.
“What a bureaucratic air there is in Buda. I prefer your friends
who come after closing hours: the lame wood-carver and the old
spectacle-maker. Even if they do not carry the world forward, they
don’t attempt to push it back.”
Sebastian laughed good-naturedly:
“These too are good people, only different from you on the other side
of the river. We have time, you are in a hurry. You are for ever
wanting new-fashioned things. Somebody who reads newspapers told the
chaplain that your son spoke at the Town Hall. Now you want avenues,
lamps, brick-built houses.... What are we coming to?”
The builder looked deeply and calmly into his brother’s eyes.
“Brother Sebastian, we have to change or time will beat us.”
The clockmaker became embarrassed.
“Ah, but old things, old ways are so pleasant.”
Christopher Ulwing pointed to the loving-cup.
“This too is old, but this has a right to remain because it is
beautiful. Do you remember, our father too made some like this. The
time may come when you will get a lot of money for it. I should like to
buy it myself.”
Sebastian looked anxiously at his brother.
“Perhaps you won’t sell this either.” The builder again became
impatient. “You buy to do business, but when it comes to selling....”
The clockmaker took the dove-shaped cup into his hand. He held it
gently, tenderly, as if it were a live bird. Then he shook his head.
“No, not yet. I will sell it another day.”
“Why not now?”
“Because I want to look at it for some time,” said Sebastian gently, as
if he were ashamed of himself.
“That’s the way to remain poor. To keep everything that is old, avoid
everything that is new. Do you know, Brother Sebastian, you are just
the same as Buda....”
“And you are just like Pest,” retorted Sebastian modestly.
They smiled at each other quietly.
Anne meanwhile was playing at the tool table and dropping wheels and
watch-springs into the oil bottle.
Uncle Sebastian did not want to spoil her pleasure but watched every
movement of hers anxiously. When the child noticed that she was
observed, she withdrew her hand suddenly. She stared innocently at the
walls.
“I am bored,” she said sadly, “I don’t know what to do. Do tell me a
story.”
“I don’t know any to-day,” said Uncle Sebastian.
“You always know some for you read such a lot....” While saying this
she drew from the pocket of Uncle Sebastian’s coat a well-worn little
green book.
“Demokritos, or the posthumous writings of a laughing philosopher.”
This was Sebastian Ulwing’s favorite book.
“Here you are!” cried Anne, waving her prey triumphantly. “Now come
along, tell me a story.”
The clockmaker shook his head. It still weighed on his mind that he
and the builder could never understand each other. He was proud of his
brother. He felt his will, his strength, but that was wellnigh all he
knew about him. Had he rejoiced, had he suffered in life? Had he ever
loved, or did he have no love for anybody?... He thought of Barbara,
his brother’s dead wife, whom Brother Christopher had snatched from him
and taken to the altar, because he did not know that he, Sebastian,
had loved her silently for a long time. His forehead went up in many
wrinkles.... We human beings trample our fellow creatures under our
feet because we don’t know them.
Anne took his hand and wrung it slowly. “Do tell me a story, do!”
Inside, in front of the courtyard window, the builder turned the pages
of an old book.
Uncle Sebastian sat down and lifted Anne into his lap. Casting
occasional glances on his brother’s face, as if he were reading in it,
he began to tell his story.
“It happened a long, long time ago, even before I was born, in the
time of the Turkish Pasha’s rule. A gay city it was then, was Buda. In
every street shops dealing in masks and fancy dresses were opened. When
Carnival time came, folk used to walk a-singing in the streets of the
castle; old ones, young ones, in gaudy fancy dress, with little iron
lamps--such a crazy procession! The fun only stopped at the dawn of
Ash-Wednesday. All fancy dress shops were closed and bolted. All were
locked, except one in Fortune’s Street which remained open even after
Ash-Wednesday--all the year round.
“Singly, secretly, people went to visit it, at night, when the castle
gates had been closed and the fires at the street corners put out.
Among the buyers were some that had haughty faces. These bought
themselves humble-looking masks. The cruel men bought kind ones,
godless men pious ones, the stupid clever ones, the clever simple ones.
But the greatest number were those who suffered and they bought masks
which showed a laughing face. That is what happened. It is a true
story,” growled Uncle Sebastian, “and it is just as true that those who
once put a mask on never took it off again. Only on rare occasions did
it fall off their faces, on dark nights when they were quite alone, or
when they loved, or when they saw money....”
Again he looked at his brother’s face and then continued in a whisper:
“The business flourished. Kings, princes, beautiful princesses,
priests, soldiers, burghers, everybody, even the Town Councillors, went
to the shop. Its reputation had even spread down to the lower town.
People from the other side of the Danube came too. After a time, the
whole world wore masks. Nobody talked about it but all wore them and
the people forgot each other’s real faces. Nobody knows them any more.
Nobody....”
Uncle Sebastian didn’t tell any more and in the great silence the
ticking of the clocks became loud.
“I didn’t like that story,” said Anne, “tell me about naughty children
and fairies. That’s prettier....”
The clockmaker probably did not hear the child’s voice. He sat in his
low chair as if listening for someone’s steps, the steps of one who had
passed away. He thought of his tale, of his brother, of Barbara, of
himself.
The builder closed the book. He got up.
“Let us go. It is late.”
And the two Ulwings took leave of each other for the winter.
On the bridge over the Danube the sixteen lamps were already alight.
Their light dropped at equal distances into the river. The water played
for a time with the beams, then left them behind. It continued its way
in darkness towards the rock of St. Gellert’s Mount. Only the chill of
its big wet mass was perceptible in the night.
The snow began to fall anew. A light flared up here and there in the
window of a house near the shore. The sound of horns was audible on the
Danube.
On the bridge, Anne suddenly perceived her father. Young Ulwing walked
under the lamps with a girl. They were close together. When they saw
the builder and the child they separated rapidly and the girl ran in
haste to the other side of the bridge.
Christopher Ulwing called his son.
Leaning against the railing, John Hubert waited for them; he was for
ever leaning on something. When they reached him, he took hold of the
little girl’s free hand as if he wanted to put her between himself and
his father.
Anne was afraid. She felt that something was going on in the silence
over her head. She drew her shoulders up. The two men did not speak
for a long time to each other. They walked with unequal, apparently
antagonistic steps and dragged the trembling child between them.
It was Christopher Ulwing who broke the silence. He shouted angrily:
“You promised not to go to her while I was alive! Can’t I even trust
your word?”
“But, sir, don’t forget the child is here!”
“She won’t understand,” retorted the builder sharply.
Anne understood the words quite clearly, but what she heard did not
interest her. Her thoughts were otherwise engaged. She felt keenly
that two hands opposed to each other were pressing her on either side
and that some community of feeling had arisen between her father and
herself. They both feared someone who was stronger than they.
“I went to meet you, sir,” grumbled John Hubert, “and met her by chance
on the bridge.”
Christopher Ulwing stopped dead.
“Is that the truth?”
“I never told lies.” Young Ulwing’s voice was honest and sad. It
sounded as if he laid great weight on what he said because it had cost
him so dear.
The builder, still angry, drew out his snuff box. He tapped it sharply
and opened it.
For ever so long there had lived in this box a quaint old tune. It
woke at the blow and the snuff box began to play.
“Confound it,” exclaimed Christopher Ulwing, and tapped it again to
silence it, but the box continued to play.
The two men, as though they had been interrupted by a comic interlude,
stopped talking. The builder returned the box into his pocket. Anne
bent her head close to her grandfather’s coat. There was now a sound
in it as if a band of little Christopher’s tin soldiers were playing
prettily, delicately, far, far away.
Florian was waiting with a lantern at the bridgehead on the Pest side.
Many small lamps moved through the silence. Snow fell in the dark
streets.
But now Anne was leaning her tired head fully on her grandfather’s
pocket. “More!” she said gently over and over again and inhaled the
music of the snuff box just as Mamsell Tini breathed in the lavender
perfume from her prayer book.
CHAPTER III
Winter came many times. Summer came many times. The children did not
count them. Meanwhile an iron chain bridge had grown together from the
two banks of the Danube. Even when the ice was drifting it was not
taken to pieces; it was beautiful and remained there all the year.
The Town Council had planted rows of trees along the streets. Oil
lamps burnt in the streets at nightfall and the Ulwing house no longer
stood alone on the shore. The value of the ground owned by the great
carpenter had soared. Walls grew up from the sand. Streets started on
the waste land, stopped, went on again. Work, life, houses, brick-built
houses, everywhere.
Everything changed; only Ulwing the builder remained the same.
His clever eyes remained sharp and clear. He walked erect on the
scaffoldings, in the office, in the timber yard. He was a head taller
than anybody else. They feared him at the Town Hall and the contractors
hated him. He quietly went on buying and building and gradually the
belief became a common superstition that everything the great carpenter
touched turned into gold.
Indoors, in the quiet safe well-being of the house, the marble clock
continued to tick monotonously, but the children had long ago lost the
belief that it was a lame dwarf who hobbled through the rooms. For a
long time Christopher had even realized that there were no fairies.
His grandfather had told him so. He shouted at him and took him by the
shoulders:
“Do you hear, little one, there are no fairies to help us. Only
weaklings expect miracles, the strong perform miracles.”
Little Christopher often remembered his grandfather killing his
fairies. What a terrible, superior being he seemed to be! He felt
like crying; if there were no fairies, he wondered, what filled the
darkness, the water of the well, the flames? What lived in them? And
while he searched in bewilderment his eyes seemed to snatch for support
like the hands of a drowning man.
He grew resigned, however, and called the “world’s end” the timber
yard, just like any grown-up. Under his rarely moving eyelids his pale
eyes would look indifferently into the air. Only his voice showed signs
of disillusion whenever he imitated his seniors and spoke in their
language of doings once dear to him.
The years passed by and the magic cave under the wall of the courtyard
became a ditch, the terrifying iron gate an attic door and the stove
fairies ordinary flames. The piano mice too came to an end. When a
string cracked now and then in the house, Christopher opened his eyes
widely and stared into the darkness which had become void to him.
“Anne, are you asleep?”
“Yes, long ago.”
“I had such a funny dream ... of a girl. She raised her arms and leaned
back.”
“Go to sleep.”
Before Christopher’s eyes the darkness (forsaken by dwarfs and fairies
since he had given up believing in them) became incomprehensibly
populated. He saw the girl of whom he had dreamt, her face, her body
too. She was tall and slender, her bosom rigid, she lifted both her
arms and twisted her hair like a black mane round her head. Just like
the sister of Gabriel Hosszu before the looking-glass when he peeped at
her last Sunday through the keyhole.
“Anne....”
The boy listened with his mouth open. Everything was silent in the
house. Suddenly he pulled the blanket over his head. He began to tell
stories to himself. He told how the King wore a golden crown and lived
up on the hill in a white castle. It was never dark in the castle,
tallow candles burnt all the night. His bed was guarded by slaves,
slaves did his lessons for him, slaves brought a dark-eyed princess to
him. Chains rattled on the princess. “Take them off!” he commanded.
“You are free.” The princess knelt down at his feet and asked what she
should give him for his pardon. “Take your hair down and twist it up
again,” he said, said it quite simply and smiled. And the princess took
her hair down many times and many times twisted it up again.... He fell
asleep and still he smiled.
He got into the way of dreaming stories. If, while day-dreaming,
somebody addressed him unexpectedly, it made him jump and blush, as
though caught in the act of doing wrong. Then he would run to his
school books and try hard to do some work. He learned with ease; once
read, his lesson was learnt, but he could not fix his attention for any
time. Instead of that, he drew fantastic castles, girls and long-eared
cats on the margins of his copy book. While he was thus engaged, his
conscience was painfully active and reminded him incessantly that he
was expected to study the reign of King Béla III or the course of the
tributaries of the Danube. Perspiration appeared upon his brow. In
his terror he could not do his work. Every boy up to the letter U had
already been called up in school and he was sure that his turn would
come next day.
As he had expected, he was questioned and knew nothing. A fly buzzed
in the air. He felt as though it buzzed within his head. The boys
laughed. Gabriel Hosszu prompted aloud, Adam Walter held his book in
front of him, the master scolded. But, when the year came to an end,
nobody dared to plough the grandson of Ulwing the builder. Christopher
began to perceive that some invisible power protected him everywhere.
The master told him the questions of the coming examination. For a few
coloured marbles Gabriel Hosszu prompted him in Latin. For a half penny
little Gál, the hunchback, did his arithmetic homework.
“Things end by coming all right,” thought Christopher, when the
terrifying thought of school intruded while he drew cats or modelled
clay men in the garden instead of doing his homework.
“That boy can do anything he likes,” said old Ulwing, delighted with
Christopher’s drawings, and locked them carefully away in one of the
many drawers of his writing-table.
This frightened Christopher. What did the grown-up people want to do
with him? He lost his pleasure in drawing and gave up modelling clay
men in the courtyard. He became envious of Anne. She had little to
learn and nobody expected great things from her.
About this time Anne began to feel lonely. Her bewildered eyes seemed
in search of explanations. She grew fast and her silvery fair hair
became darker as if something had cast a shadow over it.
Mrs. Füger pushed her spectacles up into the starched frills of her
bonnet and looked at her attentively.
“Just now you held your head exactly as your mother used to. Dear good
Mrs. Christina!”
Hearing this, Anne, who stood in the middle of the back garden, leaned
her head still more sideways. However, it puzzled her that a person
who was still a child could possibly resemble somebody who was so very
old as to have gone to heaven. Mrs. Füger smiled strangely. In her old
mind, Anne’s mother, who had died young, could not age and remained
for ever so; while this young girl, who had no memory of her mother,
thought of her as incredibly old.
“Mrs. Christina was sixteen years old when young Mr. Ulwing asked
Ulrich Jörg for her hand. Sixteen years old. When she came here she
brought dolls with her too. She would have liked to play battledore and
shuttlecock with her husband in the garden. Every evening she would
slip in here and ask me to tell her stories.”
As if she had been called, Anne ran across Mrs. Henrietta’s threshold.
The house smelt of freshly scrubbed boards. Many preserve bottles stood
in a row on the top of the wardrobe. Now and then, the cracking of a
dry parchment cover would interrupt the silence. Anne crouched down on
a footstool and surveyed the room. It was full of embroidery. “Keys”
was embroidered in German character on the keyboard, “Sleep well” on a
cushion and “Brushes” on a bag.
“The Fügers must be very absent-minded people,” mused the little girl;
“it is obvious what all these things are meant for, and yet they have
to label them.”
Mrs. Henrietta sighed. She could sigh most depressingly. When she did
so, her nostrils dilated and she shut her eyes.
“Many a time did Mrs. Christina sit here and make me tell her ghost
stories. She loved to be frightened--like a child. She was afraid of
everything: of moths, of the cracking of the furniture, of the master’s
voice, of ghosts. At night she did not dare to cross the garden;
Leopoldine had to take her hand and go with her.”
“Leopoldine? Who was she?”
“My daughter.” Mrs. Füger’s eyes wandered over a picture hanging on the
wall of the bay window. It represented a grave with weeping willows,
made of hair, surrounded by an inscription in beads: “Love Eternal.”
“Is she in heaven too?”
“No. Never mention her. Füger has forbidden it.”
“Why?”
“Children must not ask questions.”
“Mamsell always gives the same answer and says God will whisper to me
what I ought to know. But God never whispers to me.”
“Mrs. Christina talked just like that. She too wanted to know
everything. When the maids cast fortunes with candle drippings she was
for ever listening to their talk. Then she blushed, laughed and sang
and played the piano. Then the men in the timber yard stopped work.”
Anne drew her knees up to her chin.
“Could she sing too?”
Mrs. Füger made a sign of rapture. “Sing? That was her very life. She
entered this place like a song, and left it like one. It rang through
the house and before we could grasp it, it was gone.”
The little girl did not hear the old lady’s last words. She was gone
and suddenly found herself in her mother’s room. She knelt down on the
small couch. There hung on the wall the portrait, which she had always
seen, but which she now examined for the first time.
The delicate water-colour represented a girl who seemed a mere child.
She looked sweet and timid. Her auburn hair, parted by a shining line
in the middle, was gathered by a large comb on the top of her head like
a bow; ringlets fell on the side of her face. The childish outline
of her shoulders emerged from a low-cut dress. Her hand held a rose
gracefully in an uncomfortable position.
Anne felt that if she came back she could talk to her about many things
of which Mamsell and all the others seemed ignorant. She thought of
the daughters of Müller the apothecary, of the Jörgs and the Hosszu
families, Gál the little hunchback, of the son of Walter the wholesale
linen-draper, the Münster children. All had mothers. Everybody--only
she had none.
And then, like a cry of distress, she spoke a word, but so gently that
she did not hear it, just felt it shape itself between her lips. Nearer
and nearer she bent to the picture and now she did hear in the silence
her own faint, veiled voice say the word which one cannot pronounce
without bestowing a repeated kiss on one’s lips in uttering it: “Mamma!”
She turned suddenly round. Something like a feeling of shame came over
her for talking aloud when there was nobody in the room, nothing but a
ray of the sun on the piano.
Anne slid down from the couch and opened the piano. It was dusty. She
stroked a key with her little finger. An unexpected sound rose from the
instrument, a warm clear sound like the flare of a tinder box. It died
down suddenly. She struck another key; another flare. She drew her hand
over many keys; many flares, quite a din. She put her head back and
stared upwards as if she saw the flaring little flames of the notes.
Somebody stroked her face. Her father.
“Would you like to learn to play the piano?”
She did not answer. It was without learning that she would have liked
to play and to sing, so beautifully that even the men in the timber
yard would lay down their work.
John Hubert became thoughtful.
“All the Jörgs were fond of music. Music was the very life of your
mother.”
Gently Anne opened her blue eyes with a green glitter in them.
“Yes,” she said with determination, “I want to learn.”
Next day, a gentleman of solemn appearance came to the house; his name
was Casimir Sztaviarsky. He was at that time the most fashionable
dancing and music master in town. He wore a coal-black wig, he walked
on the tip of his toes, he balanced his hips and received sixpence per
hour. He mentioned frequently that he was a descendant of Polish kings.
When he was angry he spoke Polish.
After her lessons, Anne learned many things from him. Sztaviarsky spoke
to her about Chopin, the citizens’ choir in Pest, Mozart, grandfather
Jörg who played the ’cello well and played the organ on Sundays in the
church of the Franciscan friars.
The little girl began to be interested in her grandfather Jörg to whom
she had not hitherto paid much attention. He was different from the
Ulwings. The children thought him funny and often looked at each other
knowingly behind his back while he was rubbing his hands and bowing
with short brisk nods to the customers of his bookshop.
Anne blushed for him. She did not like to see him do this and her
glance fell on grandfather Ulwing. He did not bow to anybody.
Ulrich Jörg’s bookshop was at the corner of Snake Street. A seat was
fixed in the wall near the entrance in front of which an apple tree
grew in the middle of the road. The passing carriages drove round it
with much noise.
Anne thrust her head in at the door. Ulwing the builder removed his
wide-brimmed grey beaver.
The perfume of the apple-blossom filled the shop. Grandfather Jörg
came smiling to meet them; he emerged with short steps from behind a
bookcase which, reaching up to the ceiling, divided the shop into two
from end to end. The front part was used by ordinary customers. Behind
the bookcase, shielded from the view of the street, some gentlemen sat,
mostly in Magyar costumes, on a sofa near a tallow candle and conversed
hurriedly, continuously.
They were more numerous than usual. A young man, wearing a dolman, sat
in the middle on the edge of the writing table. His neck stretched bare
from his soft open shirt collar. His hair was uncombed, his eyes were
wonderfully large and aflame.
For the first time in her life Anne realized how beautiful the human
eye could be. Then she noticed, however, that the young man’s worn-out
boots were battering the brass fittings of Grandfather Jörg’s writing
table while he was speaking and that his disorderly movements upset
everything within his reach. She thought him wanting in respect. So she
returned to the other side of the bookcase and resumed the reading of
the book her grandfather had chosen for her. It was about a Scotch boy
called Robinson Crusoe.
More people came to the shop. Nobody bought a book. And even the old
men looked as if they were still young.
The feverish, clumsy man behind the bookcase went on talking and at
times one could hear the heels of his boots knock against the brass
fittings. Anne did not pay any attention to what he said. The book
fascinated her. One word, however, did reach her ears several times
from behind. But the word did not penetrate her intellect. It just
remained a repeated sound.
In the middle of the shop stood a gentleman. He had a bony face and
he wore a beard only under his chin. And from the pocket of his tight
breeches a beribboned tobacco pouch dangled.
The man next to him urged him on. “You can speak out, we are among
ourselves.”
The man with a bony face showed a manuscript. “I have searched in vain
since this morning. People are afraid for their skins. There is not a
printer in Pest who dares set up this proclamation.”
Ulrich Jörg leaned over the paper. His bald head reflected the light
and the wreath of yellowish white hair round his ear moved in a funny
way.
“This is not a proclamation,” somebody whispered. “This means
revolution!”
Ulrich Jörg stretched out his hand.
“My printing works will see this through.” He said this so quietly and
simply, that Anne could not understand why all these gentlemen should
throng suddenly round him. But when she cast her eyes on him, he no
longer looked funny. His small eyes glittered under the white eyelashes
and his face resembled that of St. Peter in her little Bible.
Two boys rushed past the door. With shrill voices they shouted:
“Freedom!”
Anne recognised the word she had heard from behind the bookcase. Mere
boys clamoured for it too. How simple! Everybody wanted the same thing.
Freedom! Somehow it seemed to her that there was some connection
between that word and another. Youth! And yet another. Whatever was it?
She thought of the awkward youth’s feverish eye.
From the direction of the Town Hall people came running down the
street; artisans, women, students, servants. The actors of the German
theatre were among them too. Anne recognised the robber-knight and the
queen. The queen’s petticoat was torn.
“Hurray for the freedom of the press. Down with the censor!”
Ulwing the builder, who till then had seemed indifferent, nodded
emphatically. He thought of the censor at Buda, then he could not help
smiling to himself: from what a small angle does man contemplate the
world, the world that is so wide!
The pavement resounded with many hurried steps. More people came. They
too were running, gesticulating wildly, colliding with each other.
All of a sudden, a voice became audible outside, a voice like that of
spring, penetrating the air irresistibly.
Somebody spoke.
The bookshop became silent. The men rose. The voice came to fetch
them. The windows of the houses on the other side of the street were
opened. The voice penetrated the dwellings of the German burghers. It
filled the stuffy rooms, the mouldy shops, the streets, and whatever it
touched caught fire. This voice was the music of a conflagration.
Christopher Ulwing went to the door. He stopped at the threshold.
Behind him the whole shop began to move. Men thronged beside him into
the street. Ulrich Jörg hurried with short, fast steps side by side
with the big-headed shop assistant. All ran. The builder too, unable to
resist, began to run.
From the street he shouted back to Anne: “You stay there!”
The bookshop had become empty and the little girl looked anxiously
around; then, as if listening to music, she leaned her head against
the door-post. She could not see the speaker, he was far away. Only
the sound of his voice reached her ear, yet she felt that what now
happened was strangely new to her. A delightful shudder rippled down
her back. The voice made her feel giddy, it rocked her, called her,
carried her away. She did not resist but abandoned herself to it
and little Anne Ulwing was unconsciously carried away by the great
Hungarian spring which had now appealed to her for the first time.
When the invisible voice died away, the crowd raised a shout. A student
began to sing at the top of his voice in front of the shop. All at
once, the song was taken up by the whole street, a song which Anne
was to hear often in days to come. The student climbed the apple tree
nimbly and waved his hat wildly. His face was aflame; the branches
swayed under his weight and the white blossoms covered the pavement.
Anne would have liked to wave her handkerchief. She longed to sing
like the student. General, infinite happiness was floating in the air.
People embraced and ran.
“Freedom!”
A quaint figure approached down the street. He crawled along the walls
with careful, hesitating steps. He stopped every now and then and
looked anxiously around. His purple tail-coat fluttered ridiculously,
white stockings fell in thick folds over buckled shoes.
Anne felt embarrassed, afraid. She had never yet seen Uncle Sebastian
like this in the street, in Pest. Involuntarily, she shrank behind
the door. “Perhaps he won’t see me. Perhaps he will walk on....” And
the thought of the feverish eyes, and the word she had connected with
youth.... And the voice.... Uncle Sebastian was so old and so far away.
Anne cast her eyes down while the rusty buckles of a pair of clumsy
shoes came slowly nearer and nearer on the pavement.
The student in the tree roared with laughter.
“What sort of scarecrow is this? What olden times are a-walking?”
Anne became sad and tears rose to her eyes.
“He is mine!” She sobbed in despair and opened her arms towards the old
man.
Uncle Sebastian had noticed nothing of all this. He sat down on the
bench in front of the bookshop, put his hat on the ground and wiped his
forehead for a long time with his enormous gaudy handkerchief.
“I just came here in time. What an upheaval! What are we coming to!
What will be the end of this?”
Again Anne felt a wide gulf between herself and the old man, and she
moved all the closer up to him so that people who laughed at Uncle
Sebastian might know that they belonged together.
CHAPTER IV
Wind had removed the vernal glory of the apple tree in front of the
bookshop in Snake Street. Summer passed away too.
Anne leaned her forehead against the window pane. A sound came from
outside as if a drum were being beaten underground. The heavy steps of
the new national guard rang rhythmically along the ground. The house
heard it too and echoed it from its porch.
In those times soldiers were frequently seen from the window, and
when Mamsell Tini took Anne to the school of the English nuns, the
walls were covered with posters. Crowds gathered before them. People
stretched their necks to get a glimpse. Anne too would have liked to
stop, but not for anything in the world would Mamsell Tini let her do
so.
“A respectable person must never loiter in the streets.”
A boy stood on the kerb of the pavement.
“What is there on those posters?” Anne asked as she passed.
“War news ...” and the boy began to whistle. An old woman passed on the
opposite corner. She was wiping her eyes on the corner of her apron.
“War news....” Anne stared at the old lady and these words acquired a
sad significance in her mind.
At dinner she watched her grandfather and father attentively. They
talked of business and in between they were perfectly calm and ate a
hearty meal.
“Everybody is just the same as ever,” she reflected. “Perhaps the war
news is not true after all.” Suddenly all this was forgotten. Her
father just mentioned that the children would take dancing lessons
every Sunday afternoon in Geramb’s educational institute.
“It is a smart place,” said John Hubert. “Baron Szepesy’s young ladies
go there and Bajmoczy the Septemvir’s daughters.” He pronounced the
name “Bajmoczy” slowly, respectfully, and looked round to see the
effect it produced on his audience.
Next Sunday, Anne thought of nothing but the dancing school, even when
she was at Mass. She stood up, knelt down, but it meant nothing to her.
She traced with her finger the engraved inscription on the pew: “Ulwing
family.” And they alone were allowed to sit in this pew though it was
nearest the altar.
Gál, the wine merchant, stood there under the pulpit, and Mr. Walter
the wholesale linen merchant of Idol Street had no pew. Even the
Hosszu family sat further back than they, though they owned water mills
and the millers of the Danube bowed to them.
Anne classified the inhabitants of the parish according to their pews.
During the exhibition of the Host, while she smote her chest with her
little fist, she decided that her grandfather ranked before everybody
else.
All this time, Christopher Ulwing inclined his head and prayed
devoutedly.
When Anne looked up again, she saw something queer. Though turning
towards the altar, little Christopher was looking sideways. She
followed his eyes; her glance fell on Sophie Hosszu. Sophie leaned her
forehead on her clasped hands. Only the lovely outline of her face was
visible. Over her half-closed eyes her long black eyelashes lay in the
shade.... Christopher, however, now sat stiffly, with downcast eyes, in
the pew. Anne could scarcely refrain from laughing.
Later the hours seemed to get longer and longer and it appeared as if
that afternoon would never come to an end. The children became fidgety.
The maid brought some leather shoes from the wardrobe; Anne addressed
her reproachfully:
“Oh, Netti, don’t you know? To-day I am to wear my new prunella boots!”
Her apple-green cashmere frock was hanging from the window bolts. The
black velvet coat was spread on the piano. Since last year Anne had
occupied her mother’s former room. The nursery had become the boy’s
sole property. Christopher too was standing in front of the mirror.
He was parting his fair, white-glimmering hair on one side; it was so
soft it looked as if the wind had blown it sideways. He was pleased
with himself and while he bent his soft shirt collar over his shoulders
he started whistling. He never forgot a melody he had once heard. He
whistled as sweetly as a bird.
The rattle of wheels echoed under the porch. The two “pillar men”
glanced into the windows of the fast receding coach.
In Sebastian Square, in front of Baroness Geramb’s educational
institute, three coaches were waiting. On one of them a liveried
footman sat beside the coachman. This filled Christopher with envy. He
thought that it would be a good idea to bring Florian, too, next Sunday.
“Mind you don’t forget to kiss the ladies’ hands!” said John Hubert
while they crossed a murky corridor. Then a tall white-glazed door led
into a sombre dark room. Crooked tallow candles lit it up from the
top of the wardrobes. Their mild light showed Sztaviarsky, hopping on
tiptoe to and fro, and a row of little girls in crinolines and boys in
white collars. Between the wings of another door and in the adjoining
room ladies and gentlemen sat on uncomfortable chairs. Through
lorgnettes on long handles, they inspected each other’s children.
Christopher at once perceived Sophie Hosszu among the grown-up people.
Though Gabriel had told him she would be there, it gave him a shock.
“Go and kiss hands,” whispered John Hubert. The boy leant forward with
such zeal that he knocked his nose into the ivory hand of the Baroness
Geramb. He also kissed the other ladies’ hands. When he came to Sophie
he stared for a moment helplessly at the young girl. Sophie snatched
her hand away and laughed.
“But, Sophie!” said Baroness Geramb in her expiring voice and the
ringlets dangled on the side of her face. She was not pleased with her
former pupil. Christopher tripped over a hooped petticoat, and in his
embarrassment felt as if he wanted to cry.
In the other room, Sztaviarsky held the two tails of his alpaca evening
suit high up in his hands. He was showing one of the Bajmoczy girls how
to bow.
“Demoiselle Bertha, pray, pray, attention,” and then he murmured
something in Polish.
There was a commotion at the door. “Mrs. Septemvir” Bajmoczy went to
her daughter. Her silk dress rustled as it slid along the floor. She
was tall and corpulent; her head was bent backwards and she always
looked down on things.
This irritated Sztaviarsky all the more. He sucked his cheek in and
looked round in search of a victim. “Demoiselle Ulwing, show us how to
make a bow!”
“But I don’t know yet....” Anne said this very low, and had a feeling
as if the floor had caught hold of her heel. She could only advance
slowly on tiptoe. She bent her head sideways and her side ringlets
touched her shoulders. Her hand clung to her cashmere petticoat.
The silence was interrupted by Sztaviarsky’s voice:
“One.... Two ... complimentum.”
Meanwhile John Hubert sat solemnly on a high, uncomfortable chair and,
contrary to his habit, kept himself erect and never leaned back once.
It seemed to Anne that he nodded contentedly. Everybody nodded. How
good everybody was to her ... and she started to go to Bertha Bajmoczy.
But the Pole stopped her with a sign. The lesson continued.
Studies in school suffered seriously that week. Twice Christopher was
given impositions.
The Sundays passed.... In the Geramb educational institute’s cold,
sombre drawing room the children were already learning the gavotte.
It was towards the end of a lesson. The crooked tallow candles on
the top of the wardrobe had burnt nearly to the end. Sztaviarsky was
muttering Polish. Bertha Bajmoczy, wherever she stepped, tripped over
her own foot. All of a sudden, she began to weep. The young Baroness
Szepesy ran to her; Martha Illey stood in the middle of the room and
laughed wickedly; Anne had to laugh too. The boys roared.
“Mes enfants.... Silence!” Baroness Geramb’s voice was more expiring
than ever and her face was stern.
Silence was restored. Bertha wiped her eyes furiously. She happened to
look at Anne.
“Since she came here everything has gone wrong.”
Clemence Szepesy nodded and pinched her sharp nose. Anne paid no
attention to this. She looked at her father in surprise. He stood
beside Sophie Hosszu, leaning against the high, white panel of the
door. While he talked, he kept one of his hands stuck in his waistcoat,
which was adorned with many tiny flowers. With the other he now and
then smoothed his thick fair hair back from his brow which it bordered
in a graceful curve. He smiled. Until now Anne had never noticed that
her father was still a young man.
The dancing lesson was over. Walking down the poorly lit staircase, she
heard more talk behind her. Just where the curving staircase turned,
she was hidden from those coming from above.
“Her grandfather was an ordinary carpenter,” said Clemence Szepesy.
“_Par exemple_, what is that, a carpenter?”
“It’s the sort of fellow,” came the voice from above, “who worked last
spring on the beams of our attics.”
“Really such people ought not to be admitted into gentlefolks’
society.” It was Bertha’s voice.
At first, Anne did not realise whom they were discussing--only later.
How dared they speak like that of her grandfather! Of Ulwing, the
master builder! Of him who sat in the first pew in church and before
whom even the aldermen stood bare-headed!
She turned round sharply. Those behind found themselves suddenly face
to face with her. They slunk away to the balustrade. Anne gazed at
them bewildered, then her countenance became sad and scared. She had
just discovered something vile and dangerous that had been hitherto
concealed from her by those she loved. She was taught for the first
time in her short life that people could be wicked; she had always
thought that everybody was kind. Her soul had till then gone out with
open arms to all human beings without discrimination; now it felt
itself rebuffed.
On the drive home she sat silently in the coach. Her father spoke
of the Septemvir Bajmoczy and his family. He pronounced the name
respectfully, with unction. This irritated Anne at first. But her
father’s and her brother’s content pained her only for an instant.
She set her teeth and decided that she would not tell them what had
happened on the staircase. She felt sorry for them, more so than for
herself, and for the sake of their happiness and peace of mind she
charitably burdened her maiden soul with the heavy weight of her first
secret.
CHAPTER V
Sunday had come round again. Christopher went alone with his father to
the dancing lesson.
“I should like to stay at home,” said Anne, in her timid, veiled voice.
She looked so imploring that they let her have her way.
At the usual hour in the afternoon the bell sounded at the gate. Uncle
Sebastian stood between its pillars.
Anne ran to meet him. From his writing table the builder nodded his
head.
“Sit down.” He continued to write close small numbers into a
linen-bound book. He did not put his pen down till Netti appeared with
coffee on the parrot-painted tray. The steam of the milkcan passed
yellow through the light of the candle. The smell of coffee penetrated
the room. The two old men now talked of days gone by.
“Things were better then,” growled Uncle Sebastian every now and then,
without ever attempting to justify his statement. Meanwhile he dipped
big pieces of white bread into his coffee. He brushed the crumbs into
his hand and put them into his waistcoat pocket for the birds.
It struck Anne that her grandfather never spoke to Uncle Sebastian
as he spoke to adults, but rather in the way he had with her and
Christopher. At first he seemed indulgent, later he became impatient.
“So it was better then, was it?” And he told the tale of some noble
gentleman who had had one of his serfs thrashed half-dead because he
dared to pick flowers under the castle window for his bride. The girl
was beautiful. The gentleman looked at her and sent the serf to the
army against Buonaparte as a grenadier--for life.
“Nowadays, the noble gentlemen go themselves to war, and in our parts
they even share their land with their former serfs. Do you understand,
Sebastian? Without compulsion, of their own free will.”
“Are we noble too?” asked Anne from her corner of the check-covered
couch.
The two old men looked at each other. They burst into a good-humoured
laugh. The builder rose and took a much-worn booklet out of the writing
desk. On the binding of the book a double-headed eagle held the arms of
Hungary between its claws.
“This is my patent of nobility. I have sold neither myself nor anybody
else for it.”
Anne opened the book and spelt out slowly the old-fashioned writing:
“Pozsony. Anno Domini 1797.... Christopher Ulwing. Sixteen years old.
Stature: tall. Face: long. Hair: fair. Eyes: blue. Occupation: civil
carpenter.”
Anne blushed.
“That was I,” and the master builder put his hand on the passport.
Then, with quaint satisfaction, he looked round the room as if
exhibiting with his eyes the comfort he had earned by his labour. For
the first time Anne understood this look which she had observed on her
grandfather’s face on countless occasions.
“I am a free citizen,” said Christopher Ulwing. The words embellished,
gave power to his sharp, metallic voice. Unconsciously, Anne imitated
with her small head the old man’s gesture.
The thoughts of Sebastian Ulwing moved less quickly. They stuck at the
passport.
“Do you remember?...” These words carried the old men beyond the years.
They talked of the mail-coach which had overturned at the gate of
Hatvan. Of the mounted courier from Vienna, how they made him drunk at
the Three Roses Inn. The gunsmith, the chirurgeon and other powerful
artisans held him down while the bell-founder cut his pig-tail off
though there was a wire inside to curl it up on his back.
The builder got tired of this subject. He became serious.
“It was all pig-tails then. People wore them in their very brains.
Withal, times are better now....”
Sebastian Ulwing shook his head obstinately. Suddenly his face lit up,
as if he had found the reason for all his statements.
“We were young then.” He uttered this modestly and smiled. “My head
turns when I remember your putting shingles on the roof of the parish
church. You sat on the crest-beam and dangled your feet towards the
Danube. Wouldn’t you get giddy now if you were sent there!”
Anne, immobile, watched her grandfather’s hand lying near her on the
table. And as if she wanted to atone for the injury inflicted by the
strange girls, she bent over and kissed it.
“What’s that?” Christopher Ulwing withdrew his hand absent-mindedly.
Anne cast her eyes down, for she felt as if she had exhibited a feeling
the others could not understand.... Then she slipped unobserved out
of the room.... In the sunshine room a volume lay on the music chest.
On the green marbled cover were printed the words “Nursery Songs,”
surrounded by a wreath. On the first page a faded inscription,
Christina Jörg, Anno 1822. Anne sat down to the piano. Her small
fingers erred for some time hesitatingly over the keys. Then she began
to sing sweetly one of the songs:
Two prentice lads once wandered
To strange lands, far away....
Shy, untrained, the little song rose. Her voice, veiled when she
talked, rang out clear when she was singing. She herself was struck by
this difference and it seemed to her that till this moment she had been
mute all her life. She felt elated by the discovery of the power to
express herself without risking the mocking derision of the others; now
her grandfather would not draw his hand away from her.
Two prentice lads once wandered,
To strange lands, far away....
Uncle Sebastian rose from his armchair and carefully opened the
dining-room door. For a long time, the two old men listened....
Christopher came home from the dancing class. He rushed to Anne
noisily. His eyes gleamed with boyish delight. A faded flower was
stuck in his buttonhole. His hand went for ever up to the flower. He
talked and talked, leaning his elbows on the piano. Anne looked at
him surprised; she found him handsome. Half his face was hidden by
the curls of his girlish hair. His upper lip was drawn up slightly by
the upward bent of his small nose. This gave him a charming, startled
expression, not to be found in any other member of the Ulwing family.
Instinctively, Anne looked at her mother’s portrait....
In the evening when bedtime came, Christopher searched impatiently for
his prayer book. He could not find it. He hid the flower under his
pillow.
For a long time, he lay with open eyes in the dark. Once he whispered
to himself: “Little Chris, I hope to see you again soon,” and in doing
so he tried to imitate Sophie’s intonation. Then he drew his hand over
his head slowly, gently, just as Sophie had done while speaking to his
father.
He went into a peaceful rapture. He repeated the stroking, the words
“Little Chris....” He repeated it often, so often that its charm wore
off. It was his own voice he heard now, his own hand he felt. They
ceased to cause a pleasant tremor; tired out, he went to sleep over
Sophie’s flower.
When Ulwing the builder went next morning into the dining-room it was
still practically dark. He always got up very early and liked to take
his breakfast alone. A candle burned in the middle of the table and the
flickering of its flame danced over the china and was reflected in the
mirror of the plate chest. The shadows of the chair-backs were cast
high up on the walls.
Christopher Ulwing read the paper rapidly.
“Nonsense,” he thought. “Send an Imperial Commissioner with full powers
from Vienna? Why should they?” There was no other news besides that in
the newspaper, crowded though it was with small print. As if the censor
were at work again.
He carried the candle in his hand into the office. A big batch of
papers lay on the table. John Hubert’s regular, careful handwriting
was visible on all of them. The builder bent over his work, his pen
scratched spasmodically.
Facing him, the coloured map of Pest-Buda in its gilt frame became
lighter and lighter. The whitewashed wall of the room was covered with
plans. A couch stood near the stove and this was all covered with
papers.
Steps clattered outside in the silent morning. Occasionally the shadow
of a passing head fell on the low window and then small round clouds
ran over the paper under Christopher Ulwing’s pen. Others came and
went. Time passed. All of a sudden many furious steps began running
towards the Danube. The blades of straightened scythes sparkled in the
sun.
The servants ran to the gate.
“What has happened?”
A voice answered back:
“They have hanged the Imperial Commissioner on a lamp post!”
“No--they have torn him to pieces....”
“They stabbed him on the boat-bridge.”
“Is he dead?” asked a late-comer.
The builder put his pen down. He stared at the window as if an awful
face were grinning frightfully at him. “It has been coming for months.
Now it has happened....” Without any reason he picked up his writings
and laid them down again. He would have to get accustomed to this too.
His crooked chin disappeared stiffly in the fold of his open collar and
he resumed the addition of the numbers which aligned themselves in a
long column on the paper.
Outside they sang somewhere the song Anne had heard for the first time
from Grandfather Jörg’s shop. In the kitchen Netti was beating cream to
its rhythm. And in the evening, just as on any other day, the lamps on
the boat-bridge were lit, not excepting the one on which a man had died
that day. Its light was just as calm as the other’s. The streets spoke
no more of what had happened. In the darkness the Danube washed the
city’s bloody hand.
CHAPTER VI
On Saturday a letter came from Baroness Geramb. There would be no more
dancing classes.
All the light seemed to go from Christopher’s eyes.
“But why?” said he, and hung his head sadly.
“Dancing is unbecoming when there is a war on.”
“So it is true? The war has come,” thought Anne, but still it seemed to
her unreal, distant. Just as if one had read about it in a book. A book
whose one-page chapters were stuck up every morning on the walls of the
houses.
It was after Christmas. The Danube was invisible. A dense, sticky fog
moved on the window panes. Christopher ran out shivering into the dark
morning. As usual, he was late; he had to leave his breakfast and eat
his bread and butter in the street. He had no idea of his lesson.
Behind him Florian carried a lantern. On winter mornings he always lit
the boy’s way till he reached the paved streets.
On the pavement of the inner town a bandy-legged old man got in front
of Christopher. On one arm he had a large bundle of grimy papers while
a pot of glue dangled from the other. People in silent crowds waited
at the corners of the streets for him; when they had read the fresh
posters they walked away silent, dejected.
“What is happening? What do they want with us?” they asked.
People began to understand the grim realities of war; what was
happening now roused their understanding. They thronged in front of
the money-changers’ shops. Soldiers’ swords rattled on the pavement.
Everybody hurried as if he had some urgent business to settle before
nightfall.
Anne was at her music lesson when a huge black and yellow flag was
hoisted on a flagstaff on the bastions of Buda. In those times, flags
changed frequently.
“Freedom is dead,” said Sztaviarsky and cursed in Polish.
“Freedom!” Anne thought of the two feverish eyes. So it was for
freedom’s sake that there was a war? She now looked angrily on the
Croatian soldiers whom the Imperial officers had quartered on them.
The red-faced sergeant was eating a raw onion in the middle of the
courtyard. The soldiers, like clumsy big children, were throwing
snowballs. They trod on the shrubs, made havoc of everything. They
made a snow-man in front of the pump and covered the head with a red
cap like the one worn by Hungarian soldiers; then they riddled it with
bullets....
The snow-man had melted away. Slowly the lilac bushes in the garden
began to sprout. The Croatians were washing their dirty linen near the
pump. They stood half-naked near the troughs. The wind blew soapsuds
against their hairy chests.
All of a sudden an unusual bugle call was heard; it sounded like a cry
of distress. Anne ran to the window. Soldiers were running in front of
the house. In the courtyard the Croatians were snatching their shirts
from the trough and putting them on, all soaking. They rode off after
the rest and did not come back again.
A few days later, Anne dreamed at night that there was a thunderstorm.
Towards morning there was a sound in the room as if peas by the handful
were being thrown against the window panes--many, many peas. Later,
as if some invisible bodies were precipitated through the air, every
window of the house was set a-rattling.
“Put up the wooden shutters!” shouted the builder from the porch.
Christopher came breathlessly up the stairs. “School is closed!” His
pocket bulged with barley sugar and he was stuffing it into his mouth,
two pieces at a time.
John Hubert, who had run to school for Christopher, arrived behind
him. His lovely, well-groomed hair was hanging over his forehead and
the correct necktie had slipped to one side of his collar. Gasping he
called Florian and had the big gate locked behind him.
A candle was burning in the master builder’s room, deprived of daylight
by the shutters. Contrary to his habit, John Hubert, without waiting
this time to have a seat offered to him, sank limply into an armchair.
“Thank goodness you are all here,” he said, making a caressing movement
with his hand in the air. “I came along the shores of the Danube,” he
continued hoarsely. “There were crowds of people and they said that
the shells could not reach across the river. People from the shore sat
about on stones. One was eating bacon. He ate quite calmly and suddenly
he was without a head. For a time the corpse remained seated, and
everything was covered with blood....” Horrified, he covered his eyes
with his hand.
“So it was a shell that fell into the confectioner’s shop in Little
Bridge Street?” said Christopher, stuffing barley sugar into his mouth.
“The pavement was all covered with sweets as if the shop had been
turned inside out. The whole school filled its pockets for nothing.”
The builder smiled. Behind the barred gates life continued. John Hubert
put his necktie straight and sometimes in the course of the day forgot
completely what he had seen. When he sat down to meals, however, he
became pale. He pushed his plate aside.
From time to time, the window panes rattled. Woeful distant shrieks
flew over the roofs. They were followed by the anguish of numb
expectancy. People counted. The silence became crystalline and quivered
in the air.
“The shell has not burst!” They counted again, in helpless animal fear.
Whose turn would it be next? On the banks of the Danube a stricken
house howled out. Clouds of dust burst high up into the air. The sky
became red, the colour of bleeding flesh.
The wind blew a wave of hot air, heralding disaster, into the courtyard
of Ulwing the builder. Behind the locked gate nobody knew which
neighbouring house was expiring in a last hot breath.
The Fügers hid in the cellar. John Hubert and the children had moved
into the office, situated in the inner courtyard. The first floor
became empty, except for Christopher Ulwing who remained in his
bedroom, the single window of which opened into the deserted timber
yard.
“The house is strong,” said the builder to Mrs. Füger through the
cellar window. “I built the walls well.”
A furious crack came from the gate as if it had been flicked by a wet
towel of gigantic dimensions. The windows broke in a clatter. The house
shook to its foundations.
With frightened lamentations, people rushed out of the cellar. Little
Christopher’s snow-white lips became distorted. The builder frowned as
he used to do when contradicted by some fool. He went with long steps
to the gate.
“No, no,” shrieked Christopher, and began to sob spasmodically. But
old Ulwing listened to no one. He kicked the side door open. One of
the caryatids was without an arm. Under him lay a heap of débris of
crumbled whitewash and a huge hole gaped from the wall. The shell had
not exploded; it had stuck in the brickwork. The builder buttoned his
coat up so as to be less of a target and went to the front of the
house. He cast his eyes upwards. He contemplated the wrecked windows.
Foreign enemies had hurt his house in the name of their Emperor. He
turned quickly towards the Danube. The bridge of boats was aflame.
His bridge! He glanced at poor little Buda, from the heart of which
the sister town, defenceless Pest, was shot to death. The town and
Christopher Ulwing had been small and poor together; they had risen
together, they had become rich, and now they were wounded together.
He began to curse as he used to do when he was a journeyman carpenter.
Around him, there was no sign of life. Nothing moved in the streets.
Closed shops. Bolted doors. The town was a great execution ground. Like
men under sentence of death, the houses held their breath and were as
much abandoned in their misfortunes as human destinies. Now every
house lived only for itself, died only for itself. The glare of the
burning roofs was reflected in different windows. Sticky smoke crawled
along the walls. The bells of a church near the river tolled.
Rage and pain brought tears to Christopher Ulwing’s eyes while he
glanced over the grimy, falling houses. How many were his work! He
loved them all. He pitied them, pitied himself....
But this lasted only for a second. He clenched his fist as if to
restrain his over-flowing energy. He would be in need of it! The
muscles of his arm became convulsed and he felt these convulsions
reflected in his brain. If necessary, he would start afresh from the
very beginning. There was still time. There was still a long life
before him.
CHAPTER VII
Days passed by. The bombardment ceased. Frightened shapes emerged
from the cellars. Shrinking against the walls, they stared at the
conflagration and when they had to cross a street they rushed to the
nearest shelter.
The town waited with bated breath. In Ulwing’s house, anxiety became
oppressive.
Young Christopher did not get out of bed for a whole week. Sickly
fright left its impression on his face. In daytime he lay speechless in
a corner of the office. Fear prevented him from sleeping at night; and
then he would slink to the windows.
The black chestnut trees stood gravely in the back garden. Now and
then a distant flaring light would crown their summits with red. Their
leaves, like flattened bleeding fingers, moved towards the sky. Between
the bushes, something began to move. The pump handle creaked. A stable
lantern appeared on the ground; in its light stood men carrying water
to the attics. The builder was there too, working the pump handle in
his shirt sleeves; he was relieved occasionally by John Hubert, who,
however, wore a smart coat and white collar which shone in the dark.
Then all went away to rest. The courtyard became empty.
Christopher was again afraid. He grasped his neck. He felt as if some
fine strings were quivering in it; this had happened frequently since
the great clap had dealt the house a blow. In his brain the vision of
that incident cropped up incessantly. He wanted to push it away but
something reached into his brain and pulled it back.
He would have liked to go to Anne to tell her all about it. But would
she understand? He could not bear the idea of being laughed at. He
threw himself on his bed and pressed his head between his two hands.
Why could he not be like the others? Why had he to think forever of
things that the others could not understand?
In the next room, Anne lay sleepless too. Uncle Sebastian, living up
there in the castle, was never out of her mind since she had had a
glimpse of the spire of Our Lady’s church through the side door, opened
during the bombardment. The stairs felt cold under her feet and the
door-handles creaked loudly through the silent house. Crossing the
dining-room, she sank into a chair. She thought with terror of her
grandfather. If he had heard it? He would never let her do it, yet,
however much she was afraid, however much she trembled, it had to be
done.
She reached the piano. She listened again, lit the candle, but dared
not look round. Her teeth chattered pitifully while she opened the
shutter. The window was broken. What if the wind blew the candle out?
But the May night was deep and calm.
Anne felt in her arm a reminiscence of the old movement with which as a
child she used to wave to Uncle Sebastian across the Danube. She waved
her hand and closed the shutter behind the illuminated window.
Outside the window the light of the candle spread yellow into the night
as if attempting to go across the river on the errand on which it had
been sent.
In the mellow, shapeless darkness the castle formed a rigid compact
shadow. No lamps burned in its steep streets. The houses were mute and
fearful.
* * * * *
For days Sebastian Ulwing had not emerged from his shop. He spoke
to no one, knew of nothing. He lived on bread and read Demokritos.
Occasionally the gleam of torches came through the cracks in his door.
Their rigid beam made the round of the shop and then ran out again. The
heavy steps of soldiers resounded in the street. Sometimes the guns
spoke and the house shook.
On that evening everything was in expectant silence. It was about ten
o’clock. All of a sudden it seemed to Sebastian Ulwing that there had
been a knock at his door.
What happened? His heart began to beat anxiously and he thought of the
Ulwing’s house. He could not endure the doubt, took his hat, but turned
back at the threshold and, as he had done every evening, he walked
again all over the shop. He wound up all the clocks, looking at them as
if he were giving them food. Then, with his shaky helpless steps, he
crawled out into the street.
May was all over the deserted castle. The clockmaker began to hurry. He
raised his hat when he passed the church of Our Lady. He turned towards
the Fisherman’s bastion.
Beyond the wall, down below, the shore of Pest was black.
Sebastian Ulwing forced his eyes to find the direction of the Ulwing’s
house. He exclaimed softly. In the long row on the dark shore one
window was lit.... He knew it was for him. His old heart warmed with
gratitude.
Thoughtlessly, he leaned down and swept the rubbish together that
lay about his feet. He piled it up on the wall of the bastion; then
tenderly, with great care, he tore the title page from his “Demokritos,
or a Laughing Philosopher.” He took a match. He wanted to thank Anne
for the signal. The paper flared up, the rubbish caught fire and the
flame jumped up with a shining light.
Just then, the clockmaker felt himself kicked on the back. He heard a
shot and fell on his knees near the bastion. He grazed his chin against
the wall. Annoyed, he put his hand up to it. He felt sick. It occurred
then to him to look behind. Nobody was near. The window of one house
rattled. Under the church a light Austrian uniform disappeared in the
dark.
When nothing more was audible, Sebastian Ulwing held on to the stones
and got up. In front of the church he raised his hat again. Somehow,
he could not put it back on his head: it dropped out of his hand. He
looked sadly after it but did not bend down for it. For an instant
he leaned against the monument of the Holy Trinity. As if it were a
nail which had pegged down the square in the middle, only the monument
remained steady; the rest turned round him slowly, heaving all the time.
“I am giddy,” he thought and spat in disgust. He wanted to hurry,
because he had already taken many steps and was still in the square. He
felt like a man in a dream who wants to hurry on and remains painfully
on the same spot.
In the shadow of Tárnok Street he saw light uniforms. This sight,
like a painful recollection, pushed him forward. His shoulder rubbed
against the houses and suddenly he stumbled into the shop. The match
in his hand evaded the wick of the candle with cunning undisciplined
movements.
Sebastian Ulwing fell into the armchair. He closed his eyes. When he
opened them again, everything seemed to be in a haze. “They make worse
candles now than in olden times,” he reflected, then he felt suddenly
frightened. He was thirsty. Open the windows. Call somebody. He could
move his body but partially. He fell back into the armchair. The effort
covered his brow with sweat.
He seemed to hear the guns somewhere. What did that matter to him. All
that concerned others seemed to him strange and distant now.
To pray.... A child’s prayer came to his mind. He thought of the past
but it tired him as if it forced him to turn his head. Life was so good
and simple. That Barbara should have married Christopher was, after
all, the right thing.
A painful confusion went on in his brain. Without the slightest
continuity in his thoughts, he remembered that he owed the baker a
half-penny. He began to worry; he had just ordered a pair of shoes
at the bootmaker’s. “With bright buckles.” He had said that. Who was
going to buy these now? Then, for the first time, it struck him that
nobody wore shoes like that nowadays. Tears came to his eyes. Against
his will, his body fell forward. How rusty those buckles on his shoes
were ... the one on the left foot was getting rustier every minute.
Rust seemed to flow on it, red, dense. It was spreading over the white
stocking ... it flowed over the floor.
The candle burnt to the end. The flame flared up once more, looked
round, went out. The heavy smell of molten tallow filled the shop and
the head of Uncle Sebastian sank deeper and deeper between the leather
wings of the armchair....
* * * * *
Outside, with the coming day, the firing increased every moment.
But this wild thunder was not speaking to Pest. From the heights
of the hills of Buda red-capped soldiers bombarded the castle. The
Imperialists retorted hopelessly.
* * * * *
The dawn was gray and trembling.
No news penetrated the locked door of Ulwing’s house.
In the cellar Mrs. Füger was making bandages, with depressing sighs.
The little book-keeper sat on the top of a barrel and held his head
sideways, as if listening. At every detonation he banged his heel
against the barrel.
His son stared at him so rigidly that his short-sighted eyes became
contracted by the effort. He yawned with fatigue. Now, old Füger’s feet
struck the side of the barrel at longer and longer intervals. Only by
this did his son notice that the firing became less frequent; by and
by it stopped. Then once more the house shook. A last explosion rent
the frightful silence in twain and broken glass was hurled with loud
clatter from the windows.
“That was somewhere near!”
The builder could stand it no longer. He wanted to know what was
happening. He rushed up the stairs. In the green room he tore the
shutters deliberately open.
Opposite, the royal castle burned with a smoky flame and on the
bastion, beside the small white flag of the Imperialists, a tri-colour
was unruffled in the wind.
“Victory!” shouted Christopher Ulwing. His short ringing voice fell
like a blow from a hammer through the whole house.
Anne began to laugh.
“Do you hear, Christopher, we have won!”
When in the brightness of May the flag was unfurled on the bastion
of the castle and opened out like a bountiful hand, it scattered joy
from its folds. Its colours were repeated in Pest and Buda. Tricolours
answered from the houses, the windows, the attics, the roofs. Singing,
the people rushed toward the chain-bridge which resounded with the
irregular trampling of human feet. The tide swept Ulwing the builder
with it. He went to his brother. So much to tell! So much to ask!
From the other shore, the people of Buda came running. And on the
bridge over the Danube the two towns fell into each other’s arms.
At the foot of the hill there was a crush. A heavy yellow cart turned
into the road. A thin, yellow-faced man was on the driver’s seat. His
moustaches hung in a black fringe on either side of his mouth. The
cart was covered with canvas. The canvas was bespattered with dirty
red spots. Human legs and arms protruded from it, swaying helplessly
according to the movements of the cart.
The crowd had stopped singing. Men took their hats off. Those in front
shouted in horror at the driver.
The jerks caused a corpse to slip slowly from under the canvas.
Indifferent, the yellow coachman whipped his horses and the cart went
on at a greater speed. The corpse’s head now reached the ground. It
struck the protruding stones of the roadway, jumped up with a jerk, and
with glaring open eyes fell back into the street.
The crowd passed by in speechless horror.
Springless carts brought the wounded. The courtyards of decaying houses
were full of red-caps, bayonets. On the pavement, shiny blue flies
swarmed over a dead horse. From the ditch of the canal, the soles
of two boots protruded. Carts covered with canvas everywhere. Their
lifeless load swayed slowly in the sun.
Christopher Ulwing turned the corner of Holy Trinity Square. People
stood in front of the clockmaker’s shop. The first storey jutting over
the street cast a deep shadow in the glaring white sunshine.
The builder recognised Brother Sebastian’s friends. The lame
wood-carver leaned against the wall and wiped his eyes. The censor
was there too. He pressed his hand against his face as if he had a
toothache. Those behind him stood on tiptoe and stretched their necks.
When they perceived him they all took their hats off.
The chaplain’s pointed, bird-like face appeared in the open door. He
walked with important steps to meet the builder. He spoke at length,
with unction, pointed several times to the sky and shook his head
sideways.
The big bony hands of Christopher Ulwing clasped each other over his
chest, like two twisted hooks.
“How did it happen?”
Now they all stood round him and all talked at once. A curious,
old-fashioned lady bowed suddenly in the middle of the road.
“With your kind permission, I am Amalia Csik. I am entitled to speak.
They only heard it from me. You may remember I live on the Fisherman’s
bastion. Last night my husband felt unwell, because we hid in the
cellar. The air was bad. So I went up into our rooms for some medicine.”
The builder turned painfully towards the door of the shop. The people
stood in his way.
“Hurry up,” whispered the chaplain. The lady went on talking all the
faster.
“Pray imagine, I saw the whole thing from my window. Someone lit a
fire on the bastion. I recognised him at once: the clockmaker. I saw
his face, the flame just lit it up. Then a shot rang out. And the
clockmaker fell to the ground near the wall.”
Christopher’s heart contracted in anguish. His eyes reddened as if
smoke stung them. “Poor Brother Sebastian ...” and he could not help
thinking of Anne.
The lady sighed deeply.
“You may imagine I was frightened out of my wits. I flew back to the
cellar. There my husband explained everything. His reverence the
chaplain knows it too, so do the others; it is they who broke into the
shop after the siege.”
The builder started again towards the shop.
The chaplain made him a sign to stop. He again lifted his hand to
heaven. He spoke of the country. Of heroes. He turned his pointed
bird-face upward as if inspired.
“And greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his
life....”
“Why do you say that?” The builder thought he could not stand the voice
of the priest any longer.
The chaplain became more and more enthusiastic.
“The name of Sebastian Ulwing will live forever in our memory. Buda,
the grateful, will preserve the memory of its heroic martyrs.”
The builder shuddered. He wanted to speak, but, with an apostolic
gesture, the priest opened his arms to the assembled people.
“And do you who are brought here by your pious respect for a hero,
tell your children and your children’s children that it was a simple,
God-fearing clockmaker who with signals of fire called the relieving
Hungarian armies into the fortress, suffering death therefor by a
deadly bullet at the hands of the foe!”
He had grown sentimental over his own eloquence. The builder,
embarrassed, looked around him. Big coloured handkerchiefs were drawn.
People blew their noses noisily. Mrs. Amalia Csik stood in the middle
of the circle. She felt very important. She reiterated her story to
every new-comer:
“It happened like this....”
“He is the real hero, the hero of our street,” affirmed the gingerbread
maker from the next house. The baker too nodded and thought of the two
loaves for which Sebastian Ulwing owed him.
For a moment the builder stared helplessly into the priest’s bird-face.
He was frightened by what he had heard. He was agitated, as if by his
silence he had entered a fictitious credit dishonestly into his ledger.
He passed his hand over his forehead.
“Reverend Mr. Chaplain, allow me.... My poor brother Sebastian was a
peaceful citizen. He never took any interest in the ideals of the war
of Liberation. He kept carefully out of revolutionary movements....”
The priest pushed his open palm reprovingly into the air.
“Master-builder Ulwing, even the _humilitas christiana_ leaves you free
to receive with raised head the pious praise bestowed on your famous
brother.”
“Listen to me,” shouted Christopher Ulwing in despair. “It was an
accident. Believe me. You are mistaken....”
The crowd became hostile in its interruptions. Those behind murmured.
Amalia Csik began to fear for her present importance. She incited
the people furiously, as if this stranger from Pest had attempted to
deprive them of an honour due to them.
“He is so rich, and yet he left his brother poor. He never gave him
anything. Now he wants to deprive him of his memory.”
“We won’t let him!” shouted the bootmaker from Gentleman Street and
resolved not to claim from the builder the price of Sebastian Ulwing’s
buckle shoes.
The chaplain rebuked the builder severely:
“Nobody must grudge us the respect we pay to our hero!”
Christopher Ulwing’s honest face assumed a resigned expression. With a
sweeping movement of his hand he announced his submission. An entry had
been made in the books over which he had no control. After all, what
does it matter why a man is proclaimed a hero? To signal, at the risk
of one’s life, to a little girl, or to soldiers, what is the difference?
“I thank you,” he said, scarcely audibly. He took his hat off and,
slightly stooping, entered the shop. Outside, on the clock-sign,
sparrows were waiting for Brother Sebastian’s crumbs. Indoors two
candles burned. The silence was broken only by the ticking of the
clocks; it sounded like the beating of many hearts. The heart of him
who wound the clocks beat no more.
Night was falling when the builder descended from the castle.
“I shall come back for the night,” he said to the spectacle-maker and
the wood-carver, who had decided to sit up near their old friend. Then
he stepped out smartly, making an effort to keep his head erect, but
his eyes looked dimly upon the people. He walked as if nobody else
existed, as if he were quite alone. It occurred to him that throughout
all his life he had been alone. He did not mind; it was the cause of
his strength. To expect nothing from anybody, to lean on no one. But
what he felt now was something quite different. It was not the solitude
of strength, but that of old age. The house in Pozsony with its dark
corners; his mother’s songs; his father’s workshop; his youth ...
there was nobody left with him to whom these were realities. When a man
remains alone with the past, it is more painful than present solitude.
It came home to him what it meant, now that everyone had gone to whom
he could say: “Do you remember?”
Round him soldiers began to flow in. Rows of men, grimy with sweat and
smoke. The drums beat. The crowd followed on both flanks. The whole
road was singing.
In the windows of the houses handkerchiefs flickered like white flames.
Anne and Christopher had run to the window. Opposite, the sun had set
already behind the castle. The outline of Buda, spires, gables, showed
dark on the red sky. A black town on the top of the hill. On the bridge
over the Danube a dark stream of steel poured over to Pest ... soldiers
with fixed bayonets. They too received the sun on their backs and had
their faces in the shade.
Anne leaned out from the window.
At the head of the troops, the shape of a man dominated the floating
throng. The one in the red dolman. The leader.... His horse was
invisible. The living stream appeared to carry him over its head.
From the bridge end on the Pest side he looked back to the castle.
The outline of his features shone up clear and strong, with Buda as
its background. The sun, reflected violently from the glasses of his
spectacles, sent a vivid flame into the darkness.
“Do you see them?” shouted Anne and, looking at the leader she felt
as if in his face she saw all the faces that followed him in the
shade--the faces of the whole victorious army.
* * * * *
Ulwing the builder gently opened the front gate.
When Christopher heard that Uncle Sebastian was dead he began to
weep. His sobbing was audible in the corridor. Anne gazed rigidly,
tearlessly, in front of her.
“Shall I then see him never more?”
“Never.”
Her little face was convulsed. She shut her eyes for a moment. She
would have liked to be alone.
In the corridor, the Fügers were waiting with a miserable expression
on their faces. The builder nodded silently to them. He went down the
stairs. He wanted to be alone.
He stopped in the hall. A curious murmur was audible outside; it spread
through the air with a penetrating force as if it had risen from the
very foundation of things and beings, from between the roots of the
town. He recognised it. It was the outcry of joy and sorrow; the breath
of the town, and as Christopher Ulwing listened to it he felt keenly
that the breath of the town and his own were but one. He rejoiced with
the town. He wept with the town.... The hatred for those who had hurt
what was his own--his brother, his home, his bridge, so much of his
work--took definite shape in his heart.
As if facing a foe, he raised his head aggressively. His eye struck
a little tablet hanging on the opposite door, it bore the German
inscription:
CANZELEI.
His jaw turned aside. His steady hand snatched at the tablet and tore
it from its hooks. He took a mason’s pencil from his waistcoat. He
reflected for a second. Was it spelled in Hungarian with a T or a D?
Then, with vigorous strokes he wrote on the door[B]:
IRODA.
CHAPTER VIII
When on quiet Sunday afternoons the bell sounded at the door of
Ulwing’s house, a sudden silence fell over all in the green room.
Nobody mentioned it, yet each of them knew what came to the others’
minds. This hour was Uncle Sebastian’s hour.
Summer passed away. One morning, the bandy-legged little old man
emerged again from the dawn and silently pasted on the walls the last
pages of the great book.
Mamsell Tini protested in vain--Anne would stop. She read the poster.
“It is all over.”
She went on, saying never a word, and her imagination, restricted by
the walls of a town, ignorant of the free, limitless fields, showed her
a quaint picture. She saw in her mind a great square, something like
the Town Hall Market, but even larger than that. Around it, trees in
a row. Grass everywhere, red-capped soldiers lying motionless in the
grass. Her feverish eyes closed.
“It is all over....”
One evening, grandfather Jörg was arrested in his bookshop. He was
led, surrounded by bayonets, through the town. Many people were taken
like that in those times. Those who remained free spoke in whispers of
these things. Anne heard something about grandfather Jörg printing some
proclamation; that was why he had to go to prison. But nobody seemed
to know exactly what happened. The printing press was closed down by
the soldiers; the apple tree at the corner of Snake Street was cut down
and in the bookshop young Jörg had to place the bookshelf in such a way
that one could see from the street into the deepest recess of the shop.
It was many months before Ulrich Jörg was released. Meanwhile he had
turned quite old and tiny.
The town too looked as if it had aged. People got accustomed to that.
People will get accustomed to anything. The streets were full of
Imperial officers and quiet women in mourning.... Slowly the traces of
the bombardment disappeared. On Ulwing’s house, however, the mutilated
pillar-man remained untouched.
John Hubert disliked this untidiness.
“It has to stay like that!” growled the builder. He never told them why.
One day two students passed under the open window of the office. One of
the boys said: “This old house has got a national guardsman; look at
him, he has been to the war.”
The pen of Christopher Ulwing stopped abruptly. What? People had
already come to call his house old?
Where were those who shook their heads when he began to build here on
the deserted shore, on the shifting sands? Since then a town had sprung
up around him. How many years ago was it? How old was he himself? He
did not reckon it up; the thought of his age was to him like an object
one picks up by chance and throws away without taking the trouble to
examine. Annihilation disgusted him. He rebelled against it. He avoided
everything that might remind him of it. To build! To build! One could
kill death with that. To build a house was like building up life. To
draw plans; homes for life. To work for posterity. That rejuvenates man.
But the town had come to a standstill.
Ulwing the builder called his grandchildren into his room, and--a thing
he had never done before--he listened to their talk attentively. He
was painfully impressed by the discovery that among themselves they
spoke a language differing from that which they used with him. So the
difference between generations was great enough to give the very words
a different meaning! Were all efforts to draw them together vain?
He thought of those gone before him. They too must have known this.
They too must have kept it concealed. How many secrets there must be
between succeeding generations! And each generation takes its own
secrets with it to the grave, so that the following may live.
These were Christopher Ulwing’s hardest days. He built ruined houses up
anew. He built himself up anew too. And while he seemed more powerful
than ever, business men around him failed and complained.
“Building land will have to be sold; one can’t stick to things in these
times,” said the contractors and looked enquiringly at Christopher
Ulwing. “What was the great carpenter’s opinion?” But his expression
remained cold and immovable. Christopher Ulwing never opened the
conversation except when he had to give orders; otherwise he waited and
observed.
In the evening the window of the green room remained long alight. John
Hubert and Augustus Füger sat there in the cosy armchairs in the corner
and now young Otto Füger was present too, always respectful, always
inquisitive.
“These are bad times,” sighed the little book-keeper, “one hears of
nothing but bankruptcy.”
“One goes down, the other up,” growled the builder, “never say die.”
“During the revolution it was possible to expect better times,” said
John Hubert, “but at present....”
His father interrupted him.
“These things too will come to an end.”
“The question is, won’t these things end us first?”
“Not me and the town!” said the builder. “Do you hear Füger? Any
building land for sale by auction has to be bought up. The houses for
sale must be bought too. I have capital. I have credit. Everything must
be bought up. Within five years I will set the whole thing in order.”
“Five years....” John Hubert looked at his father. Time left no mark on
him.
Next day, Christopher Ulwing gave his grandson a book on architecture.
Woodcuts of churches and palaces were in the text.
“We shall build some like that, you and I, when you are an architect.”
“Write your name in it,” said John Hubert. “Where is the date? A
careful businessman never writes his name down without a date.”
“Businessman!” This word sounded bleak in young Christopher’s ears. He
looked down crestfallen and drew his mouth to one side. He had retained
this movement since the shell had struck the house.
As soon as he felt himself unobserved he put the book aside. He went to
Gál’s. It was still the little hunchback who did his mathematical work
for him. After that, he bent his steps to the Hosszu’s; he thought of
his Latin preparation.
Christopher had some time since been transferred to a private school so
as to receive his education in Hungarian. This was his grandfather’s
choice. His father approved of the school because it admitted only
boys of the best families. Christopher had new schoolmates. All were
children of nobles. They were not the kind that would have envied young
Müller, the apothecary’s son, the possession of his jars and bottles,
as the boys in Christopher’s old school used to do. They would not
have taken the slightest interest in gaudy strings and crude-coloured
pictures like those Adam Walter used to produce from his pockets in
playtime. They talked of horses, saddles, dogs. Practically every one
of them was country-bred and had only come to town for school.
Christopher continued none the less to go on Sundays to the Hosszu’s;
he saw Sophie rarely; but when the young lady happened to come
accidentally into Gabriel’s room, the boy would blush and dared not
look at her. But many were the times when he had gone a long way round
through Grenadier’s Street so that he might look up stealthily under
his hat to the windows of the Hosszu house.
One afternoon, when he turned into the street he saw his father going
in the same direction. He wore an embroidered waistcoat and walked
ceremoniously. The boy stopped, stared at him, then ran away suddenly.
Since the dancing lessons John Hubert had paid several visits to the
Hosszu’s.
An accident revealed to him the cause of his attraction. One day, on
taking his departure, he left a new yellow glove behind him. He turned
back on the stairs, but Sophie was already running after him. When
she handed him the glove, her hand felt warm. John Hubert perceived
suddenly that Sophie had lovely eyes and that her figure was slender.
After this, his visits to the Hosszu’s became still more frequent. Mrs.
Hosszu was knitting with two yard-long wooden needles near the window
and never looked up, but if Sophie spoke in whispers to John Hubert she
left the room hurriedly. Occasionally, she stayed out for a very long
time. Then she opened the door unexpectedly, quietly. And she would
look at the girl with a question in her eyes.
“Why does she look like that?” thought John Hubert and felt ill at ease.
That day it was Sophie’s father who came in instead of his wife.
Simon Hosszu was a toothless, red-faced man. One of his eyes watered
constantly for which reason he wore a gold earring in his left ear. He
spoke of everything quickly, plausibly. He never gave time for thought.
While John Hubert listened to him he quite forgot that the name of old
Hosszu had lately been mentioned with suspicion in business circles.
Hosszu owned water mills. The great steam mill did him considerable
damage. None the less, he spoke as if the water mills had a great
future before them. He got enthusiastic. In confidence he mentioned
brilliant strokes of business to be done--timber, plans of lime kilns.
A brewery. A paper mill....
“If I had capital, I should become a rich man.”
John Hubert was bewildered by his audacious plans. He loved money, and
the idea of presenting plans of his own to his father pleased him. He
raised his brows. He tried to retain it all in his memory. On leaving
he pressed the hand of Simon Hosszu warmly.
The anteroom was saturated with the smell of cooking. A dirty towel lay
on the table. Sophie snatched it up and hid it behind her back. John
Hubert took shorter leave of her than usual.
In the street he tried to think of Sophie’s pretty face, but the odour
of the kitchen and the dirty towel upset him unpleasantly. He began
to think of Simon Hosszu’s various plans. He could not understand
what they amounted to. Now that he presented Hosszu’s plans in his
own language they seemed less convincing. They became dim and risky.
He had to drop one after the other. The facts, no longer distorted by
eloquence, glared at him soberly in their real light.
After supper he remained alone with his father in the green room; they
spoke of various firms and enterprises; he beat round the bush for a
long time.
Christopher Ulwing watched his son attentively, with knitted brows.
When John Hubert mentioned the name of Simon Hosszu, the expectant
expression disappeared from the builder’s face. He leaned back in his
chair.
“Simon Hosszu is in a pretty bad way; he has exhausted his credit
everywhere,” and then he added, indifferently, as if speaking casually:
“It is curious, up to now he has spared us. I can’t understand what he
has in mind.”
John Hubert could not help thinking of Mrs. Hosszu, who knitted and
never looked up, who left the room and appeared unexpectedly in the
door. His father’s voice rang in his ear: what had they in mind?... And
Sophie? No, she was not in the conspiracy. He acquitted the girl in his
mind. He felt distinctly that she was very dear to him.
His bedroom was beyond that of the children. Everything there was as
perfectly in its place as the necktie on his collar. On the dressing
table, brushes, combs, bottles, jars, all arranged in order.
John Hubert counted the money in his purse. He thought how his most
cherished wishes had always been curbed. Now he burnt the natural
desire of a virile man, which in his case was mingled with the fear
of its imminent disappearance; the knowledge that the hours of his
manhood were already numbered sharpened his craving. He longed for
woman with an intensity of which youth is incapable. He wished for a
woman bending to his will, weaker than he, and the memory of a little
sempstress crossed his mind. How he had loved her, for his dominion
over her and.... Then Sophie’s image abruptly became confused with the
fading picture of the poor simple girl.
Without any continuity he thought of his children. “Would Sophie be a
good mother to them?” He asked himself in vain. He could not answer the
question. Mrs. Hosszu, the dirty towel, Simon Hosszu’s bad reputation,
his shady propositions, his dangerous plausibility.... That influence
frightened him and it became clear to him that henceforth his desire
would be restrained by two hostile forces, the builder’s will and his
own sober brain. In his mind’s eye he saw Sophie’s lovely shaded eyes
looking at him. They reproached him gently, just as the eyes of the
other girl had done on the day they parted. John Hubert felt a bitter
pain rend him from head to foot. The old pain, the pain of thwarted
hopes so familiar to him since his youth.
Past and present were all the same to him. He would not make a clean
cut between the two and he just had to continue to curb the aspirations
of his soul. The ray of light that had shone on him during the past few
months was now extinguished.
He proceeded to turn the key in his watch. He went on just as before.
Gently ticking time was again meaningless to him: work and compromise,
that was all. And as he looked up into the mirror, his face stared at
him, tired and old.
CHAPTER IX
The Inner Town was preparing to celebrate the centenary of the
chemist’s shop at the sign of the Holy Trinity. The invitations were
extended to distinguished members of neighbouring parishes.
A crowd gathered in front of the house of Müller, the chemist in
Servites’ Square, to get a glimpse of the arriving carriages. Through
the house a faint smell of drugs was noticeable. The stairs were
covered with a carpet. This put the guests into a festive mood. Under
the influence of the carpet Gál the wine merchant and his wife, who
lived on very bad terms with each other, went arm in arm up the stairs.
Just then Ulwing’s carriage stopped at the entrance. At the door the
chemist received his guests with many bows.
In the drawing-room new-fashioned paraffin lamps stood on the
mantelpiece in front of the mirror. The room was packed with many
crinolines. The guests’ faces were flushed. They spoke to each other in
low voices, solemnly.
The wife of the mayor diffused a strong perfume of lavender round the
sofa. Sztaviarsky’s worn-out wig appeared green in the light of the
lamps.
The Hosszu family arrived. Sophie had become thin and wore a dress
three years old. Christopher recognised the dress. He did not know why
but he became sad. With an effort he turned his head away. He did not
look at Sophie, he only felt her presence, and even that filled him
with delight.
The three Miss Münsters walked in through the door in order of size.
They were fat and pale. Broad blue ribbons floated from the bonnet
of Mrs. George Martin Münster. The last to come were the family of
Walter the wholesale linen-merchant. Silence fell over the company. The
beautiful Mrs. Walter was usually not invited to anything but informal
parties because the linen-merchant had raised her from the stage to his
respectable middle-class home. She had once been a singer in the German
theatre and this was not yet forgotten.
During dinner young Adam Walter was Anne’s neighbour. The crowded
dining-room was heavy with the smell of food. In the centre of the
table stood the traditional _croque-en-bouche_ cake.
Anne’s eyes chanced to fall on Christopher. He seemed strikingly pale
among the heavy, flushed faces. At the end of the table sat Sophie,
mute, broken. Twice she raised her glass to her lips. She did not
notice it was empty. Ignace Holt, the first assistant of the “Holy
Trinity” Chemist’s shop, leaned towards her obtrusively.
Adam Walter had watched Anne interestedly for some time without saying
a word. He thought her out of place in these surroundings. He found in
her narrow face a disquieting expression of youthful calm. It seemed
to the young man as if the warm colour of her hair, a shaded gold,
were spreading under her skin, invading her innocent neck. Her chin
impressed him as determined, a refined form of the chin of the Ulwings.
Her nose was straight and short. Her smile raised the corners of her
mouth charmingly.
He looked at her forehead. Her fine eyebrows seemed rather hard.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked involuntarily.
The girl looked at him surprised. The eyes of Adam Walter were just as
brown and restless as those of his beautiful mother. His brow was low
and broad with bulging temples. Anne had known him since her childhood,
but till now she had never spoken to him. All she knew about him was
that he had once gone to the same school as Christopher, that he was a
poor scholar and an excellent fiddler.
“Do you think that people confide their thoughts to strangers?”
“The brave do,” said young Walter. “I want to say everything that
passes through my mind. For example, that all these people here are
unbearably tedious. Haven’t you noticed it? Not one among them dares
say a thing that has not been said before. Not one does a thing his
father and mother haven’t done before him.”
Adam Walter felt that he had caught the girl’s attention and became
bolder.
“They have no sense whatever. If one of them is taller than the others
he must go about the world stooping so that no one shall notice it;
otherwise, for the sake of order, they might cut his head or his legs
off. They have to tread the well-worn path of common-places. Greatness
depends on official recognition. Please, don’t laugh. It is so. Just
now old Münster told Sztaviarsky that ‘The Vampire’ and ‘Robert le
Diable’ are the finest music in the world. Marschner and Meyerbeer.
Rossini the greatest of all. Poor Schubert too. That is a comfortable
doctrine. These composers can be admired without risk. They bear the
hallmark on them. It is a pity it should all be music for the country
fair. Schubert is like a spring shower. Many small drops, warm soft
drops. Is it not so? Why do you shake your head? You love Schubert. I
am sorry, very sorry. I only said all this to prove....”
He stopped. He stared into space.
“He exaggerates,” thought Anne, and repressed what came to her lips.
She thought of her grandfather who had built so much. And this young
man?... His words demolished whatever they touched.
“You exaggerate,” she said aloud. “I was taught that old age and those
who were before us ought to be respected.”
“That is not true,” said Adam Walter with warmth. “I hate every former
age because it stands in the way of my own. The past is a millstone
round our necks. The future is a wing. I want to fly!”
Anne followed his words bewildered. What she heard attracted and
repelled her. From her childhood, whenever anything came to her mind
which conflicted with her respect for men and things, she pushed it
aside as if she had seen something wicked. And this stranger bluntly
put into words what she too had felt, vaguely and timidly.
Adam Walter spoke of his plans. He would go abroad, to Weimar. He would
write his sonatas, his grand opera.
“What has been done up to now is nothing. What has been made is bad,
because it was made. One must create. Like God. Just like Him. Even the
clay has to be created anew.... Is it not so? The artist must become
God, otherwise let us become linen-merchants.”
His restless eyes shone quaintly. Anne remembered suddenly two distant
feverish eyes and a word that recalled the word “Youth.” All at once
she felt herself freer. She turned to Adam Walter. But the young man’s
thoughts must have wandered to another subject, for he drew his low
forehead furiously into wrinkles.
“Do you know that my father is ashamed of my mother’s art? And yet
how she sings when we are alone, she and I! When nobody hears her. My
father hides that lovely, imperishable voice behind his linens. And
this is your middle-class society. It only values what can be measured
by the yard and by the pound. These things hurt sorely.”
He looked up anxiously. “Did you say anything? No? I beg of you to
imagine she simply hides her voice. But perhaps you may not know. My
mother was a singer.”
Anne was embarrassed. Hitherto she had thought that was something to be
ashamed of.
Walter asked her rapidly:
“Of course, you sing too. Sztaviarsky told me. True. I remember. Of all
his pupils the most artistic. Are you going to be a singer?”
In the girl’s heart an instinctive protest rose against the suggestion.
“But why not?” Adam Walter’s voice became sad.
Anne did not realise that she answered the question by looking at Mrs.
Walter, living forever isolated among the others.
“I understand,” said the young man ironically, “your indulgence extends
only to the life of others, but is limited where your own is concerned.”
Anne knew that he spoke the truth. Her thoughts alone had been freed
to-day. Her movements were dominated and kept captive by something.
Perhaps the invisible power of ancient things and ancient men.
The room became suddenly silent. Somebody rose at the big table. It
was Gárdos, the wrinkled head-physician or “proto-medicus,” as he was
called. He knew of no other remedies for his patients but arnica,
emetics and nux vomica. Ferdinand Müller half-closed his eyes as if
expecting to be patted on the head.
Anne paid no attention to the proto-medicus’ account of the hundred
years’ history of the Müller family and the “Holy Trinity” shop.
She was toying with her own thoughts like a child who has obtained
possession of the glass case containing the trinkets.
Others spoke after Mr. Gárdos. The top of the _croque-en-bouche_ cake
inclined to one side. The dinner was over.
In the next room two Chemist’s assistants had erected a veiled tablet.
Sztaviarsky played some kind of march on the piano. The guests stood
in a semi-circle. Ferdinand Müller unveiled the mysterious tablet. A
murmur of rapture rose:
“What a charming, kind thought....”
Tears came to the eyes of the chemist. The admirers of his family and
the employees of his shop had surprised him with a new sign-board.
There shone the two gilt dates. Between them a century. Underneath,
a big white head of Æsculapius, bearing the features of Ferdinand
Müller, the chemist. Nothing was wanting; there were his side whiskers
and the wart on his left cheek. Only his spectacles had been omitted.
Anne and Adam Warner looked at each other.
They felt an irresistible desire to laugh and in this sympathy they
became friends over the heads of the crowd.
Sztaviarsky played his march at an ever-increasing speed. The
crinolines began to whirl round. Wheels of airy, frilly tarlatan, pink,
yellow, blue. Dancing had begun round the piano.
For a brief moment Sophie found herself pressed against the wall near
John Hubert. She raised her big, soft eyes to his, as if to ask him a
question. But she found something cold, final, in John Hubert’s looks.
The girl turned away. Her eyes fell on Christopher.
It seemed to the handsome tall boy that Sophie stroked his face across
the room. He looked at her sharply. The girl seemed again heartlessly
indifferent. Tired, Christopher went into the next room. There some old
gentlemen and bonnetted ladies were playing _l’hombre_ round a green
table. He went through Mr. Müller’s study. Then came a quiet little
room. Nobody was in it. The light of a white-shaded paraffin lamp was
reflected in a mirror. He threw himself into an easy chair and buried
his face in his hands. The sound of the piano knocked sharply against
his brain. At first this caused him pain. Then he remembered that the
sounds of this _valse_ reached Sophie too. They touched her hair, her
lips, her bosom. They had invaded her. It was from her that they came
still, a swaying, treble rhythm which mysteriously embraced the rhythm
of love. They came from her and brought something of her own self with
them.
Christopher leaned his head forward as if attempting to touch the sound
with his lips to kiss it. Yes, it was swaying music like that he felt
in his endless dreams. Similar rhythmical pangs wrought in him when he
imagined that Sophie would come to him at night, offering her love. He
hears her steps. Her breath is warm. Her bosom heaves and whenever it
rises, it touches his face.
“Little Chris....” Just like olden times. Just the same. “Now I
am dreaming. I must not breathe, or all will be over.” And in his
imagination she caressed him again.
“Little Chris....”
He started. This was reality. Sophie’s voice. Her breath.... And her
bosom heaved and touched his face.
“Do you still love me?” the girl asked.
In Christopher’s tired eyes despair was reflected. So she knows? So
she has always known what it has cost him such torture to hide? Then
why has she not been kinder to him? Why did she leave him to suffer so
much?
“Do you love me?”
“I always loved you,” said the boy and his voice came dangerously near
to a sob.
Sophie stroked him like a child requiring consolation.
“Poor little Chris.... And we are all just as poor.”
Suddenly her hand stopped on the boy’s brow, where his hair, like his
father’s, curved boldly over his forehead. He leant his head back and
with a maidenly abandon gave himself up to Sophie’s will. The girl
leaned over him. She looked at him for a long while, sadly as if to
take leave, then ... kissed his lips.
A kiss, long restrained, meant for another. And yet, the annihilation
of a childhood.
The boy moaned as if he had been wounded and with the first virile
movements of his arms drew the girl to him. Sophie resisted and pushed
him away, but from the threshold looked back to him with her big,
shaded eyes. Then she was gone. A feeling rose in Christopher as if she
had carried the world with her.
He went after her. When he passed the card players, he straightened
himself out so as to look all the taller, all the more manly. He could
not help smiling: they knew nothing. Nobody knew anything. He and
Sophie were alone in the secret and that felt just like holding her in
his arms among people who could not see.
They were still dancing in the drawing-room. Sophie danced with Ignace
Hold. Christopher could not quite understand how she could do such a
thing now. And she looked as if she had forgotten everything. Nothing
showed on her features, nothing. Women are precious comedians.
He looked at Hold. He turned with the girl in the usual little circle.
His short round nose shone. He breathed through his mouth. The points
of his boots turned up. On his waistcoat a big cornelian horse’s head
dangled, just on the spot where one of the buttons strained. “He is
sure to unbutton that one under the table.” Christopher felt inclined
to laugh. Then suddenly he thought of something else; he heard someone
talk behind his back. He began to listen.
“I should not mind giving him my daughter,” said Ferdinand Müller; “he
is wealthy and a God-fearing man. Those Hosszu people are lucky. They
are completely ruined. Miss Sophie isn’t quite young neither.”
Christopher smiled proudly, contemptuously. They knew nothing. He
sought for Sophie’s glance to find in it a sign of their union, their
mutual possession, from which all others were excluded.
But the girl was no longer among the dancers. Her absence made
everything meaningless. He had to think of the quiet little room.
“Our room” ... and he went toward it. He stopped dead in the door.
Sophie was standing there now too, just as before, on the same spot.
In front of her Mr. Hold. Christopher saw it clearly. He saw even the
tight button, the carved horse’s head on his waistcoat. Yet it appeared
to him an awful hallucination. The horse’s head dangled and touched
Sophie. Ignace Hold raised himself to the tip of his toes. He kissed
the girl’s lips.
Something went amiss in Christopher’s brain. He wanted to shriek, but
his voice remained a ridiculous groan. The floor sank a little and
then jumped up with a jerk. He felt sick as if he had been hit in the
stomach. With stiff jerky steps he re-crossed the rooms; he looked like
a drowning man seeking for something to cling to. In the drawing-room
he smiled with his lips drawn to one side.
“I have a headache,” he said in the ante-room to Müller the chemist.
When he reached the street, he began to run. He was in a hurry to get
to the Danube. He rushed unconsciously through a narrow lane. Under the
corner lamp he collided with something; he ran into a soft warm body.
His hat fell off.
“Is it you?” screeched a female voice and began to scold.
“For whom do you take me?” Christopher was painfully aware of the
proximity of the soft body. He stepped back and picked his hat up.
The girl began to laugh shamelessly. For a time she scrutinized
Christopher curiously. The boy’s suit was made of costly cloth. His
collar was clean. His necktie white. She tried to appear genteel.
“I was expecting my brother,” she whimpered. “I live here near the
fishmarket. Perhaps the young gentleman would see me home?”
“And your brother?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders. They were already walking side by
side through the narrow lane. They emerged under the rare lamps as if
ascending inclines of light. Then again they sank into darkness. Above
the roofs the narrow sky appeared like an inverted abyss with stars
at its bottom. Here and there a little light blinked indifferently,
strangely, from a window. Just like human beings gazing from stout,
safe walls on those excluded.
Christopher felt hopelessly alone. Even the sound of the girl’s steps
seemed foreign. The darkness was empty. All was falsehood behind the
doors and windows: purity, grace, kisses.... Tears ran down his cheeks.
The girl stopped in front of the door of a low house. Her expressionless
eyes looked into Christopher’s. She saw that he wept. It was a familiar
sight to her. At first they cry and are as docile as dogs. All that
alters later on.
She began to balance her hips and pressed against him.
“Come in....” Her voice was heavy and like a bird of prey. She
unexpectedly pressed her moist lips on the boy’s mouth.
With disgust Christopher thrust her back. The girl fell against the
door and knocked her head. But the boy did not care. He gripped his
lips with his hands. There ... just there, where he had felt Sophie’s
kiss before! Now there remained nothing of it. It had faded from his
lips. Something else had taken its place.... He began to run towards
the Danube. In his flight, he rubbed his hands against the walls as if
to wipe off the moist warmth clinging to his palms.
He pulled up sharply at the corner lamp. Again it all rushed to his
brain. He gave a cry and ran back. He wanted to strike the girl again,
strike her hard, to mete out vengeance for his disgust. Incredible
insults came to his mind, words which till then he did not know he
knew, dirty words like those used by the scum of the streets. Words!
They were blows too, blows meant for all womankind.
The girl was still standing in the door. Her body was leaning back. Her
arms were raised and she lazily put up her hair dishevelled by the blow.
Christopher stared at her with wide-open, maddening eyes. He looked at
her movements; she seemed to him a corpse which had regained movement
and had come back to life. How her bosom swelled under her raised
arms.... He staggered and whined and stretched out a defending hand.
The girl snatched at the proffered hand. She dragged Christopher in
through the door. The boy only felt that something had bereft him of
his free will. Something from which it was impossible to escape.
Two rows of dark doors appeared at the sides of the filthy courtyard.
Fragmentary, hideous laughter was audible behind one of them. A reddish
gleam filtered through a crack.
Christopher’s steps were insecure on the projecting cobbles. He stepped
into the open reeking gutter. He shuddered. He was full of awful
expectation, strained fear and tears of inexpressible pain.
The girl did not release his hand. She dragged him like her prey. At
the bottom of the courtyard a door creaked. The darkness of a stuffy
room swallowed them.
CHAPTER X
In a city night is never fully asleep. Somehow, it is forever awake.
Here and there it opens its eye in a window and winks. A door opens
with a gaping mouth. Steps are about. Their echo strikes the walls of
the houses and resounds to the neighbouring lane though no one walks
there.
The great river breathed heavily, coolly. The stars spent themselves in
the firmament. Christopher turned from the fishmarket to the embankment
of the Danube. Now and then he stopped, then he walked on wearily,
unsteadily under the slumbering houses. He went on, full of contempt.
Was that all? So the grown-ups’ great secret was no more than that? He
pulled his hat over his eyes. He was afraid of someone looking into
them.
Florian just opened the gate. His broom swished with uniform, equal
sounds over the stones of the pavement. When the servant had finished
and had retired to the house, Christopher slunk in unobserved by the
side entrance.
He looked anxiously for a minute towards the stairs. Candle-light
descended from above, step by step. He did not realize at once what it
meant. He only felt danger and hid in the wooden recess of the cellar
stairs.
Heavy, firm steps came downward. They came irresistibly and their
sound seemed to tread on him. He crouched down trembling. He saw his
grandfather. He was going to work. He carried a candle in his hand. His
shadow was of superhuman height on the white wall. He himself looked
superhuman to the shrinking boy. Under the porch his shadow extended.
It reached the courtyard. It continued over the wall. It must have
dominated the houses too, the whole town. Christopher looked after
it; he could not see its end and in his dark recess he felt himself
infinitely small and miserable beside the great shadow.
Staggering with exhaustion he stole upstairs. On tiptoe. Along the
corridor. One of the big stone steps was loose. He knew it well. He
avoided it like a traitor.
He stopped for a moment before Anne’s door. In the clear tranquillity
he felt as if some dirt stuck to his face, his hand, his whole body;
degrading, shameful dirt.
Later on, he lay for a long time with open eyes in the dark, as he used
to in olden times when he was still a child. The darkness was as empty
as his heart. What he had longed for was gone. All that remained in his
blood was disgust and fatigue.
He was waked by the noise of the clatter of heavy carts under the
porch. The steps of workmen were going towards the timber yard. Ulwing
the builder was not contented to buy land and houses. Now everything
was cheap. He bought building material from the ruined contractors.
Enormous quantities of timber, so that his firm might be ready when
work started.
Christopher took no interest in this. At this time nothing interested
him. Even when he heard that Sophie Hosszu had become the bride of
Ignace Hold he remained indifferent. He just thought of the cornelian
horse-head which dangled and touched Sophie.
A week passed away. Christopher spoke practically to nobody in the
house, but whenever he addressed Anne, his expression was sarcastic, as
if he wanted to vent on her his contempt for all that was woman. He had
never felt so strong and independent as now.
Then ... one night, like a re-opened wound, a soulless recollection
struck him. The recollection was all body. A female body.
The gloom of the night became populated. Figures approached, more and
more. The darkness became gradually a huge cauldron, in which bare arms
swarmed, soft outlines, white shoulders, vulgar female faces.
Next day, Christopher went towards the fishmarket. He recognised the
house. He knocked. And when he came away again from the girl he had
learned that for the future he would need money.
He thought of his grandfather, his father. He saw them working forever
and ever and they never seemed to spend any money. What were they doing
with it? They must have a lot. Strangers had told him so. Even the girl
with the bestial eyes knew it, as well as the others, those with the
painted faces who winked in such a way that only he saw it. How did
they know him? What did they want? Why do they emerge from their dirty
houses when he passes by? Why do they lie in wait for him at the street
corners? Wait, offer themselves and follow him obstinately.... And at
night when he wants to sleep their image comes. The room gets crowded.
They sit on his bed. They press him to give them their pay. But whence
is he to procure the money?
Suddenly he saw his grandfather before him, as he had seen him from the
cellar entrance. The great shadow at early dawn. He shrank. He blushed
for every one of his miserable thoughts. It was all dirt. He too was
going to work, hard, honestly, like the old ones. He would be kind to
everybody. Even to Anne he would be kind. And he would never again set
foot in the house of the girl with the bestial eyes.
But when the hour struck, he again became restless. To restrain
himself, he called to his mind the image of his grandfather going to
work. The image faded, became powerless and the frightful, hideous
force attracted him anew. On the stairs he realised that it was useless
to struggle; the fishmarket called him irresistibly.
Downstairs, in the porch, he found himself unexpectedly face to face
with Anne and his father. Anne had a bunch of fuchsias in her hand.
“Come with us to the cemetery, to Uncle Sebastian,” said the girl,
getting into the carriage.
Only when he was in the street did Christopher realise that he had
given no answer. He looked after them.
The carriage was disappearing in the direction of the Danube.
On the wooden pavement of the chain-bridge the sound of the wheels
became soft. The bridge swayed gently, in unison with the river as
if it had petrified over the Danube out of the elements of the water
and recalled its origin. Anne had the feeling that the bridge and the
river were but one and that the carriage was floating. Before her eyes
the sun played on the iron supports of the bridge as if they were the
strings of a giant harp. The sky looked ever so high and blue over the
castle hill. Beyond, on the old battlefield, dense grass had grown out
of the many deaths. Behind the acacia trees little double-windowed
middle-class houses were visible: arched green gates, steep roofs,
touching one another.
“How small everything is here....”
John Hubert looked up.
“One day a city may rise here too. Pest was not even as big as this
when your grandfather settled in it.”
In front of the carriage the geese fled with much gabbling in all
directions. Dogs barked. At the Devil’s ditch a shepherd played the
flute.
Anne looked about bewildered, thinking of an old toy of hers. The toy
was a farm. The goodwife was taller than the stable and stood on a
round disc. Trees, geese and the gooseherd all had round foundations.
Instinctively she looked at the shepherd’s feet and then laughed aloud.
The whole place seemed unreal to her.
Farther on in Christina-town the houses separated. They stood alone,
broad, gaudy, like peasant women, surrounded by kitchen gardens.
At the communal farm, they left the carriage. They continued on foot
towards the military cemetery. The citizens of Buda had buried Uncle
Sebastian there.
“Why?” asked Anne. “He was not a soldier.”
“But he was a hero,” answered John Hubert, though he had never been
quite able to understand Uncle Sebastian’s death. His father kept
silence about the details. On the other hand, the citizens in the
castle told confused stories of great deeds. He liked to believe what
they said because it flattered him. And whenever the exploits of the
clockmaker were mentioned, he observed modestly, but with satisfaction,
that the hero was one of his close relations. He grew used to the
honour thrust on him. He bore it with erected head as he wore his high
collars.
Anne remembered something. Three years ago, her grandfather had said
to her, looking fixedly into her eyes: “The citizens of the castle
consider Uncle Sebastian a hero. They may be mistaken. You are the only
person in the world who is sure not to be mistaken if you believe him
to be one.” She remembered it well. He said no more. But from that day
he, whom till then she had merely loved, became also the object of her
admiration and the hero of all around her.
The trees grew between the graves like a wood, a wood where people were
buried. Here it was not the graves that decided the trees’ position;
they had to take their places as the wood decided. And life here drew
abundant strength from death’s rich harvest. In many places the stone
crosses had fallen or sunk into the moss. A weeping willow drooped over
a crypt. It bent over it like a sylvan woman, whose green loose hair
covered a face which was doubtless weeping in the shade.
Anne prayed for a long time at Uncle Sebastian’s grave. Then they
went on in silence. Around some graves the gilt spearheads of low
railings sparkled in the grass. Railings, frontiers, even around the
dead, to separate those who loved each other, to isolate those whom
nobody loved. But Anne felt hopeful that in the ground, underneath the
obstructions erected by the living, the dead might stretch friendly
hands to each other.
On the hillside the graves ceased. Death vanished from between the
trees, life alone continued. The wood was their only companion in the
summer’s quietude.
On the edge of a small glen a straw hat lay on the grass. They looked
up surprised. A bare-headed young man stood in the glen turning towards
the sun. The approaching steps attracted his attention. His eyes were
brown. His gaze seemed darker than his eyes. He appeared vexed. Then
his eyes fell on Anne. Her small, girlish face tried hard to remain
serious, but her eyes were already laughing ironically and her lips
were on the verge of doing so. The stranger felt embarrassed.
John Hubert Ulwing raised his beaver, ruffled by the boughs. He asked
for the footpath leading to the communal farm.
The young man indicated the direction. His handsome, manly hand was
elegant and narrow. He wore an old seal ring with a green stone. He
walked a few steps with the Ulwings. When they reached the footpath, he
bowed in silence.
Anne nodded. The waves of her soft shepherdess hat of Florentine straw
threw for an instant a shadow over her eyes. She was rather sorry the
footpath had been so near. The steps behind her were already receding.
She bent down and picked a flower. Only now did she notice how many
flowers there were in the wood.
She hung her hat over her arm. One more, one more ... and the bunch
grew in her hand. A Canterbury bell gave itself up, root and all. The
roots, like infinitely small bird-claws, held on to the moist soil.
For the first time Anne smelt the perfume of the earth. And when the
carriage entered the porch between the two pillar men, it struck Anne
that this was the first occasion on which wild flowers had come into
the old house.
She met Christopher on the staircase. Her brother held his head rigid
and seemed to be listening. She too heard her grandfather’s voice. It
came from far away, from the timber yard.
Amidst heaps of dry chips a carpenter had lit a pipe. The builder was
just then inspecting the yard. He perceived the bluish little cloud of
smoke in the air at once. The blood rushed to his head. He threatened
the man with his fists. The carpenter, awestruck, knocked his pipe out
and stamped on the burning tobacco. Next to him, a journeyman began to
split a fine big oak beam; in his fright, he deviated from the right
angle.
Old Ulwing’s face became dark red with anger. He pushed the man aside
and snatched the axe out of his hand.
“Look here!” he shouted in a voice that made all the men surrounding
him stop work. Then, like a captive bird of steel, with a swing the axe
rose in his grip. The chips flew. The oak recognised its master and
split at his powerful will.
Christopher Ulwing forgot everything. His chest panted and inhaled the
savour of the oak. The inherited ancestral instincts and movements
revived; though displaced for a long time by strenuous intellectual
work and rendered superfluous by long prosperity, the gigantic strength
of his youth awoke again. There was nothing in the whole world but the
timber of the oak and himself. For a moment the men got a glimpse of
the great carpenter whose former strength was the subject of endless
and ever increasing tales, told by the old masters of the craft to the
younger generation.
They saw him for one moment, then something happened. The raised axe
fell out of his powerful hand and dropped helplessly through the air.
It fell to the ground. The builder grasped his forehead as if it had
been struck by the axe and he began to sway slowly, terribly, like an
old tower whose foundation gives way. Nobody dared touch him. Meanwhile
the workmen stared in amazement.
Füger was the first to regain his presence of mind. He tendered his
shoulder to his chief.
John Hubert ran as pale as death across the yard.
Supported by two powerful journeymen carpenters the master builder
staggered along. His bent arms were round the men’s necks. His elbows
were higher than his shoulders. The face of the old man looked sallow
and masklike between the youthful faces of the men, crimson with their
effort.
“Not there,” he said scarcely audibly when they tried to drag him to
his bed in his room. He pointed with his chin to the window. They
pushed an armchair in front of it.
Soon the shrivelled face of Gárdos, the proto-medicus, appeared in
the door. When he left the room, he made the gesture of respectful
submission which is only known to priests and physicians. Priests make
it at the altar, in the presence of God, physicians when they face
death.
“The children....” The builder made an effort to turn round. His
halting look went slowly round the room.
Christopher clung trembling to the edge of the table. He had a feeling
that if this great searching glance were to find him, it would strike
upon his pupils and press his eyeballs inwards. Everything shrank in
him. His body wanted to vanish into space.
So death was like this! He had never seen it yet, though he had guessed
that it hovered everywhere and whispered fear into men’s ears. It had
whispered to him too when he was a child and he had to hide under his
blankets or run out of the room when the candle went out. But then
he did not yet understand the sibilant voice and his fear went astray
among phantoms, deep silence and darkness. For all that, it had always
been death.
He saw the others near him in a haze. His father, Füger, Gemming and
Feuerlein. The pointed long face of Tini was there too. It moved
correctly, with an appearance of unreality, between the washstand
and the armchair. It came and went. A wet towel in her hand. In the
corridor the workmen. Subdued, heavy steps. Changing, frightened faces
in the door. One pressed against the other, as if looking into a pit.
Suddenly he perceived Anne. How pale she was. Yet she moved calmly.
Now she knelt down near the armchair and her face was clasped by two
waxy hands. A grey head bent over her and gave her a long look, a look
insufferably prolonged. If he were never to release her? If he were to
take her with him?
Christopher sobbed. Someone pushed him forward. Now he too was kneeling
near the armchair. Now, now.... The fading eyes had found him. Two
hands of wax reached searchingly into the air, the fingers stretched,
tried to grasp something.
The boy fell to the floor without a sound. He was not aware that he was
carried out of the room.
Slowly the room became dark. The steps of the priest interrupted the
solemn silence of the corridor. Steps came and went. The smell of
incense pervaded the porch. The choir-boy’s bell rang along the street.
He rang as if he were playing ball with the sounds while one house was
telling another the news:
“Ulwing, the master builder, is dying....”
There was a throng on the staircase. The heavy, syncopated breathing of
the builder was audible in the corridor. Upstairs in the room, anxious,
tearful faces leant over the armchair.
Since the priest had gone, Christopher Ulwing had opened his eyes no
more. He was speechless and in the silence his brain fought desperately
against annihilation. It was too early. He was not yet ready. He
rebelled against it. So many plans.... He wanted to say something. He
sought for words, but could find none.... The words leading to men
were lost.... Colours appeared suddenly between his eyes and the lids,
hard splints of colour, which seemed to drop into them, pressing on
his eyeballs. Yellow spots. Black rings. Red zigzags. Then he felt a
pleasant, restful weariness, just like long ago, when he was a child
and his mother carried him in her arms into his bed. And Brother
Sebastian ... they wandered together, quietly, without fatigue.... A
town becomes visible, church-towers, houses; much waste land, on which
he is going to build. It is morning and the church bells ring.
John Hubert bent over his father. He was still breathing. It seemed
that his lips moved.
“It is morning!” The builder said that so loud that they all looked to
the window.
Above the further end of the timber yard a wonderful gleam appeared.
Füger looked at his watch: it was not yet midnight.
The gleam spread every minute. Red dust and sparks; at first one or
two, then more and more.
The little book-keeper began to perspire. He recalled all of a sudden
to his mind a man with a leather apron, knocking his pipe out and
trampling on the burning tobacco. Now he remembered clearly the
workman’s heavy boots in the sawdust. With desperate self-accusation he
remembered that after that he had thought no more of the matter....
A man ran through the courtyard.
“Fire!”
The cry was repeated, every corner of the house re-echoed it. Under
the steep roof the walls became orange. An unnatural red glow spread.
Through the window panes light streamed suddenly into the rooms.
“Fire!”
Now they were shouting it in the street, persistently, sharply. Carts
were thundering towards the Danube.
John Hubert rushed to the door. At the threshold it looked as if
he were going to fall. He staggered and turned back. He began to
calculate, perspiring with fear. His brain added and multiplied
confusedly, intensely. The loss was gigantic. The quantity of timber
and building material was enormous. The firm might be shaken by it.
Helplessly he stared at his father. But in the armchair there sat but
the ghost of an old man, smiling like a mask into the light of the
conflagration. Nothing more could be expected from him. His knees began
to shake.
Anne was worn out and looked wearily towards the window. She did not
dare to move her head. Something was giving way behind her brow.
Black figures were starting up on the walls of the yard. They pumped
water on the fire. People were standing on the roofs of the opposite
houses too.
Sooty horrors staggered in the air near the tar boiler. A suffocating
smell of burning poured through the windows. The conflagration spread
with awful speed. It raced towards the wall of the back garden.
A burning pile collapsed in the timber yard.
In the ominous light of the rooms Tini and the maidservants were
gesticulating madly before the open cupboards.
Anne leaned against the wall. “They want to abandon the house, they
want to flee.”
“Save it, save it!” she shrieked with a bloodless face.
Augustus Füger dropped panting into the room. He brought news. Now he
was gone. Now he was back again.
The fire had reached the roof of the toolshed. The air quivered with
heat. Hoarse crackling, spasmodic hissing, mingled with the cries of
many human voices.
The half-closed eyes of the builder rarely moved. He heard, he saw
nothing that happened around him. He was mysteriously distant from all
that.
Under the window the wasted leaves shrivelled up with a dry crackling
sound. The pump in the courtyard creaked uniformly. A fire engine
started to spray the hot walls.
In that instant a heavy, clipped voice floated through the air, like a
round disc of metal....
Something passed over the face of Christopher Ulwing.
“The church bells! It is morning and the church bells ring.”
All looked at him awestricken. The hands of the builder gripped the
armchair. John Hubert and Florian supported him on either side.
“Let me go!” That was the shadow of his old voice. He did not know that
nobody obeyed him any more.
“To build ... to build....” His chin went all to one side and his body
straightened itself with a frightful effort. The dying Christopher
Ulwing towered by a whole head above the living....
Then, as if something inside him had given him a twist, he turned half
way round. John Hubert and the servant bent under his weight. In their
arms the builder was dead. He had died standing and the gleam of the
burning oak remained in his broken eyes.
New water carts arrived below. Bugles shrieked along the streets.
Ladders climbed into the red air.
Long, panting snakes began to work: the pumps spat flying water among
the flames. But the fire retreated reluctantly, slowly ... gradually it
collapsed with a hiss.
The alarm bell of Leopold’s Town went on shouting its clamour, asking
for help, calling, complaining. All parishes responded. The whole of
Pest was alarmed. Sooty débris floated in the air rent by the tolling
of bells. Smoke covered the yellow walls. The water from the pumps flew
down the window panes.
In that night the old house became really old.
CHAPTER XI
Ulwing the builder was carried out of the old house and the pillar-men
looked into the hearse. Following behind, the mitred abbot, lighted wax
candles, singing priests; the Mayor, the Town Councillors, the flags of
the guilds; a big dark mass moving slowly under the summer sky.
The whole town followed Christopher Ulwing bare-headed and wherever he
passed on his journey, the bells of many churches tolled. Then the door
of the house was closed. The great master, the great silence, remained
within.
It was on the day after the funeral that the new head of the Ulwing
business took his father’s seat for the first time at the writing-desk
in front of the barred ground-floor window. The house was still full
of the scent of incense, faded flowers and the cold smoke of the
conflagration.
Nobody moved at that early hour. John Hubert was quite alone. Several
times he put his hands quite unnecessarily up to his necktie, then, as
if he had been pushed forward, he fell over the table and wept silently
for a long time. He sat up only when he heard steps in the neighbouring
room. While wiping his eyes, he noticed that the china inkstand was
not in its usual place. The sand had been put on the wrong side too. He
made a mental effort and replaced everything as he used to see it in
his father’s time.
There was a knock at the door. He remembered that this little door,
through which people had come for decades, respectful, bowing, pale
and imploring to the powerful Christopher Ulwing, now led to him. He
raised his head with confidence, but only for an instant; then, as if
frightened by what life was going to demand from him, he lowered it
again.
Augustus Füger stood in front of him. He had a parcel of papers under
his arm.
John Hubert Ulwing hesitated. He would now have to make decisions,
unaided, all by himself.
“These matters have all been settled according to the orders of the
late master,” said the little book-keeper, and in his crinkled face the
corners of his mouth went down like those of a child ready to cry.
Absent-mindedly John Hubert signed his name. He wiped his pen and stuck
it into the glass full of shot, as his father was wont to do.
And so it was thenceforth. The business went its old way with the old
movements though around it little by little the world changed. New
men, new businesses rose. The head of the Ulwing firm did not change
anything and externally his very life became the same as his father’s.
He seemed to age daily. When he rested, he closed his eyes.
The damage caused by the fire and the last bad years of business
weighed heavily on his shoulders. He had to grapple with the
liquidation of grandiose purchases, various charges, old contracts,
and many other problems. These were all clear and simple to the old
builder; they remained mysterious to him. Their solution was lost for
ever with the cool, mathematical mind of the builder. With his bony,
large, ruthless hands the power of the house of Ulwing had departed.
John Hubert tried to remedy all troubles by economy. That was all his
individuality contributed to the business. Cheap tools. Cheap methods.
He even restricted the household expenses and every Sunday afternoon
looked through Mamsell Tini’s books himself. This done, he called his
son into the green room and spoke of economy.
Christopher sat with tired eyes, bored, in the armchair and paid no
attention. Absent-mindedly he extracted the big-headed pin from the
crocheted lace cover, and then, quite forgetting how it came into his
hand, threw it under the sofa.
Netti brought the coffee on the tray with the parrot pattern, and lit
the paraffin lamp. All of a sudden Christopher was there no more.
He did not care any more for Gabriel Hosszu, nor for little Gál. He
went to the technical high-school. He had an intrigue with an actress,
and the noble youths from the country estates, whose acquaintance he
had made in the private school, were his friends. He spoke with them
cynically about women. In a back room of the “Hunter’s Horn” Inn, he
watched them for hours playing cards.
He tried it one day himself. He lost.... He wanted to win his money
back. His pocket was empty, his groping hand only touched his
tobacco-box. He snatched it away. His grandfather had kept snuff in it.
He was ashamed of the idea that had occurred to him, and he thrust the
box back into his pocket.
A man with thin lips asked him from the other end of the table:
“Well?”
Christopher reached again into his pocket. “I shall win it all back and
never gamble again.” He drew out the box and banged it on the table.
The knock roused the box. In an old-fashioned, chirping way, it sang
the little song which it had learned about a hundred years ago from
Ulwing the goldsmith. It sang it just in the same way but nobody paid
any attention to it. When the music was over, Christopher had lost his
game.
In the stifling cigar smoke his breath became heavy. Voices. Sickly,
wine-reeking heat. A long grey hand removed the snuff-box from the
table.
Christopher rose. He just heard someone say behind his back: “He plays
like a gentleman.” He passed wearily beside the tables. He seemed
indifferent. Only in the street did he realise what had happened and
his heart shrank with the anguish of deep sorrow. Was he sorry for
himself or for the loss of the tobacco-box? He didn’t know. It had
belonged to his grandfather and now a stranger owned it.... How often
had he seen it in those bony old hands, which had been raised for a
blessing when they were stretched towards him in the hour of death.
He shuddered with torture and fear. “I am a scoundrel”; he repeated
this several times so as to shame himself. Then he made a solemn vow
that he would never touch cards any more. Never, never, again.... This
calmed him to some extent.
When he drew out his new leather case next day, he noticed that Anne
followed him with her eyes. He observed this several times. Impatient
anger rose in him.
His father left the room. Anne turned to him.
“Have you lost it?”
“Of course I have!” Christopher was glad to be able to speak out. He
felt relieved, he felt as though the responsibility for the whole thing
were lifted from his shoulders.
Anne hung her head.
“Do you know where you lost it?... Yes?...” Her eyes shone. “What if
you promised a reward to the finder?”
“That requires money,” said Christopher sadly.
Anne ran to her cupboard. She took a small box from under her linen.
“It is not much, just my presents. It has been accumulating slowly for
a long time. Little Chris, go quickly. It will be all right. Promise
the whole lot.”
Christopher was pleased and ashamed at the same time. He reached out
for Anne’s hand. But the young girl snatched it back. She stretched
herself up to the big boy and tendered her cheek. Christopher kissed it
and ran away.
Anne looked after him. How she loved her brother! Now, perhaps
Christopher understood all that she could not tell him. He lived for
ever among men and men are ashamed of feeling. To hide it they whistle
and look out of the window. She too had been brought up with these
ideas. She was taught that feeling is deep and great only so long as
it keeps mute and becomes at once petty and ridiculous when it raises
its voice; so pitiably petty that it makes one blush and run out of
the room. It must never be shown. Nor did the others in the house
ever display it, nobody but Uncle Sebastian, long, long ago. And yet
how intensely she longed now and then for somebody who would show her
affection.
Her eyes wandered to her mother’s portrait. If only she would drop that
painted rose from her hand! If only for once she would caress her! Only
once, one single once, when she was alone in the room ... so lonely ...
always alone. Since Adam Walter had gone away, nobody remained with
whom she could talk. A new song, a new book came now and then from him
in distant Weimar. Then silence again for weeks.
Aimlessly Anne went down the stairs, across the garden to the great
wall. Since the fire the timber yard had been removed to the end of
the town. Behind the fencing, where in olden times rude strong men in
leather aprons worked the timber, nothing was left but waste ground.
The memories of her young life came slowly, dimly at first, then they
raced in vivid crowds.
Sunday afternoons. Stories and Uncle Sebastian. The scent of newly-hewn
oak logs and her grandfather. Music, dreams, her mother’s portrait.
That was all. Years ... years of childhood.
She sat down on the seat round the apple tree and leaned her head
against the tree’s trunk.
The sky was green between the leaves. The apple tree was in blossom.
Her grandfather Jörg’s shop came to her mind. And a voice and a song.
How confused all this was. She thought suddenly of two feverish eyes,
but somehow saw them in Adam Walter’s face. Then Mrs. Walter.... The
voice of Bertha Bajmoczy and railings around men. Small iron railings
even in the cemetery. They ceased on a hill-side. A glen between the
trees. She might turn her face towards it. And from the foot-path why
should she not turn back, just simply look behind her without any
cause, when there was nobody left in the glen....
She looked up. She felt eyes resting on her: Otto Füger was standing
in the bushes. From her childhood she had known this shifty, obstinate
look. It was everywhere, over her father’s writing-table, in the porch,
sometimes even at night, outside, under the window.
The expression of the short-sighted eyes became at once persistent and
obsequious. Anne would have liked to cast it from her. She nodded and
went into the house.
In the evening, she sat up late for Christopher. He did not come.
This night seemed longer to her than any others, it whispered to her
anxious, fearful premonitions.
Next day, Christopher confessed to his sister that he had gambled and
lost. And Anne also learned that she would never see her grandfather’s
snuff-box again.
CHAPTER XII
It was still spring, but summer had already touched the Danube and in
the middle of the river the Palatine Island sprang into bloom like a
floating forest.
Anne had no presentiment that she went to meet her own summer when
one day she walked on the bank of the Danube towards the island.
Christopher, who accompanied her, had, as usual, been late. The party
they had arranged to join was nowhere to be found. They remained alone
on the shore, deliberating for a short time, and then made signs to the
ferryman. On the other shore a boat moved under the boughs which spread
over the water and was rowed slowly across the river.
People from town came to the pier. Anne heard approaching voices. One
person pronounced her name; another repeated it in astonishment.
“Anne Ulwing....”
She turned round reluctantly. Christopher raised his hat.
A boyish-looking slender girl came towards them along the grey pier.
“Don’t you recognise me?” she asked Anne. “Of course it is a long time
since we met. Do you remember?”
Now she remembered: it was Martha Illey.
“The dancing lessons....”
These words set Anne’s eyebrows rigid and hard. Martha Illey turned
quickly sideways: “Thomas!” and introduced her brother.
Anne saw a refined manly hand in the sun. It wore an old-fashioned
seal ring with a green stone. She looked up, but the man’s face seemed
quite strange to her. Then the recollection of her solitary meditations
vibrated through her and scared her. She felt that she was blushing.
Confusion passed over her countenance like a cloud. It was already
gone. Her charming smile raised the corners of her mouth ironically.
Thomas Illey laughed too but did not look quite sure of himself. The
sun, reflected from the water, trembled in his eyes. He turned to
Christopher.
“Your sister and I are not strangers to each other. She caught me one
day when I went out of town in search of sunlight, sunshine, trees and
earth. Even then she made fun of me....”
Underneath the pier the ferryman landed. Then the boat started with
them towards the island. Anne felt that all her troubles had remained
on shore and that she was light and free. The little craft floated in
molten gold and the oars stirred up gold too. And while the water
carried her, it also carried her thoughts away through its wonderful
glitter.
“I like to hear the Danube,” said Martha Illey. “Do you remember, Tom?
We used to listen to it at home. It murmurs just like the woods of
Ille.”
“I too love the Danube,” said Anne’s veiled voice. “My ancestors come
from somewhere near its sources. From the great forests....”
Christopher thought uncomfortably of woodcutters and, embarrassed,
kicked his sister to stop her from saying any more.
Anne smiled.
“They came thence, down on the banks of the river, as if the Danube
had called them.” She reflected for an instant and then added quietly:
“I have never yet heard the murmur of forests. It seems to me that the
river sings something. Always the same thing and when it comes to the
end of its song nobody can remember the beginning.”
Christopher looked attentively at the cut of Illey’s clothes. Where did
his tailor live? Then he observed his narrow shoes and hid his own feet
under the seat. He began to copy Illey’s gestures carefully. He also
imitated the modulation of his voice. He seemed so confident of himself
and so distinguished.
Illey looked over the water while he spoke:
“Who knows why this river is called the Blue Danube? It does not
carry the sky but the earth. How it turns up the soil and takes its
greenish-yellow colour from it....” He leant over the side of the
little boat; the water splashed up against the boat’s prow. “It reminds
you of the murmur of forests and of music,” he said smilingly, “to me
it sounds like cattle drinking.”
“Cattle?” Anne could not help laughing.
They reached the island. The ferryman caught hold of the bough of a
willow. The keel of the boat slid creaking into the gravelly shore.
The drooping twigs brushed Anne’s face. She caught at them with her
mouth and a green leaf remained between her teeth.
From the noisy, active brilliance of the river they entered moist green
quietude. The grass was high and soft, the trees drooped low; and under
them, in the dense shade, winged flakes of silver floated. Like a
small, buzzing bell of gold, a wild bee flew up into the air.
“We shall have to look for the others,” said Anne to her brother. She
became suddenly dispirited.
Christopher made a wry face. Martha insisted.
“Let us remain together,” said Thomas Illey. His voice had nothing
unusual in it, yet it had an effect on Anne as if it caught hold of
her and held her back. Now nobody thought any more of separation. Moss
yielded softly under their feet. The boughs, like waves, opened and
shut up again behind them.
“As if we walked at the bottom of a green lake....”
“The shade, too, is as cool as water.”
“This year summer was late. We had to wait a long time for it.”
“Ever so long. But now it has come at last.”
“It has come....” Anne said nothing more and looked suddenly sideways
at Illey. She felt uneasy. He seemed again quite strange to her. He
whom she had seen in the glen behind the cemetery had been handsomer
and more attractive. Thomas Illey’s sharp, lean face gave the lie to
her memory.
The trees became sparser. They came to a meadow. Illey took his hat
off. The sun shone on his face.
Anne stopped, her eyes became large and blue as if filled to the brim
with the sky and her memory melted for one instant into reality. Now
she could not understand how it had been possible for her to think that
Illey had been changed by her imagination. He was his own self ...
exactly like the one she had not forgotten. His dark hair shone. His
noble head curved in a fine line into his neck, like a thoroughbred’s.
Anne’s eyes caressed him timidly. That was not the broad muscular nape
of the Ulwings. The lords of Ille had never carried heavy loads.
She saw what she had believed was lost. And as she passed by his side,
she felt as if a ripple of trembling, happy laughter pervaded her and
rose to her lips and filled her eyes.
The restraint in her melted away. After all, they had known each other
for a long time. They had so much to tell each other.
Thomas Illey also talked more freely.
Anne learned that his parents were no longer living; that he was born
down south on the banks of the Danube, on the lands of Ille. Far
away, in a big country house where one’s footsteps echoed under old
portraits. The garden looked in through the windows. One could hear
the Danube and, in autumn mists, the horn of the chase. In the tillage
silver-white oxen with wide horns, behind them farmer serfs of Ille as
if all had risen from the furrow.
All this was foreign and curious to Anne, but she liked to listen to
Illey’s voice. Only gradually did she begin to feel that what he talked
about absorbed him entirely as if it dragged him away from her side on
the shady path. If that were true! If he really happened to go away!
She asked him spontaneously;
“But you will come back from there again?”
“Come back?” The man stopped for an instant. The glitter died away in
his eyes. “I can go there no more. Ille has ceased to be ours.”
Anne scarcely heard him. She knew only that he would not go away, that
he would stay here. Illey smiled again. He smiled in a queer, painful
way. The girl noticed this.
“What is the matter? Nothing.... Why do I ask? I thought a twig had hit
you.”
“Trees won’t hurt me.”
He spoke of the oaks of Ille. They stood in front of the house. They
soughed in the wind. They told each other something that the children
could not understand, just like the grown-ups when they talked Latin in
the drawing-room. Beyond the gate of the courtyard, a row of poplars
swayed in the wind. The poplars moved like plumes. At the bottom of the
garden there was a cherry tree with a swing on it. The ropes had cut
into the bark of a branch and left their mark forever.
The face of Thomas Illey became younger as he spoke. He looked at Anne.
“In the glen where we first met, there is a cherry tree too and it
resembles the one with the swing. Here is another.”
He pointed to a tree with his stick.
Till then they had apparently been eager to speak, as if wanting to
keep in touch though their ways had been wide apart. Now, however,
their voices failed; they had reached the present. The dense bushes hid
the other two from their sight. They perceived that they were alone.
The island was silent, as if spell-bound. And in the spell their looks
met timidly.
Time rested for an instant, then continued its flight.
The laughing face of Martha Illey peeped out of the dense leaves. She
waved a bunch of wild flowers over her head. Christopher had picked
them for her and she had arranged them so deftly that the very fields
could not have done better.
Anne looked at the nosegay. Then she cast her eyes down on her bosom:
she would have liked to wear a nosegay there, to take it home ... but
Thomas Illey gave her no flowers.
Around them the bushes entangled themselves into an impenetrable
wilderness. The path became mossy, reached some steps and disappeared.
Beneath, the worn-out centuries-old stairs; in the overgrown hollow,
gentle sacred ruins. Among the stones a gothic window. Green, cold
church walls; the ancient monastery of St. Margaret.
A low-flying bird was startled out of the princess’s cell. From the
road along the water voices became audible. There were people beyond
the ruins.
Anne recognised the chocolate-coloured umbrella of Mrs. Müller, the
chemist’s wife. It was an umbrella with a spring and was now tilted
to the side like a round fan. The old-fashioned beaver of Gárdos, the
proto-medicus, was visible too. So was Mrs. Gál’s chequered shawl and
the Miss Münsters’ forget-me-not hats.
“There they are!” said Anne. Christopher caught hold of her arm and
pulled her back.
On the road the excursionists walked in couples, panting, hot, as if
doing hard work.
Next to Ignace Hold his wife walked tired and weary. Sophie had become
ugly. Only her eyes were like of old, those beautiful soft eyes.
Christopher looked after her for a long time.
The side whiskers of the chemist floated in the breeze from the river.
Mrs. Ferdinand Müller was holding forth on the prospects of the
camomile crops. Little hunchback Gál, the mercenary wine-merchant,
complained that less wine was consumed now in Pest than of old.
“I want drunkards!” he shouted, and laughed at his sally.
Behind them two shop assistants carried a basket. Long-necked bottles
protruded from it.
Anne looked at Thomas Illey. She was struck by his height and
proportions. His face seemed elegant in its narrowness. She felt drawn
towards him.
“Let us go after them,” she said in a whisper, as if to appease her
conscience.
“Later on....” Christopher laughed and went in the opposite direction.
He began to talk of Art. He said he would like to be a painter. He
would paint a landscape, a wood. A fire would burn under the trees
and in the flames small, red-bodied fairies would sway. He would also
paint a high, white castle. On the top of a mountain, a high, solitary
mountain. On the bastion a white woman with shaded eyes would stand,
her hair alone would be black and float in the wind like a standard. He
changed his subject suddenly. He spoke of music: of Bach and Mozart.
Cleverly he managed to remain in his depth; then he started whistling
the tune of a _valse_, gently, sweetly. He casually mentioned that it
was his own composition.
He also spoke of travels, though he had never made a journey, of
architecture, of books he had never read, laughing in between with
childish boisterous laughter.
Anne looked upon him as if he were a conjurer. How amiable he could be
when he wanted to, and for the moment she saw in him the Christopher of
old, with his fair hair shining like silver, and his pale face.
Then again Thomas Illey alone was near Anne. At the upper point of the
island it felt like standing on an anchored ship. In front of them
a narrow pebbly strip of land, cutting the stream in two. The river
split. It ran down gurgling on both sides. Suddenly the water stopped
and the island began to move. The island had weighed anchor ... the
ship started carrying them towards the shoreless Infinite.
The sun sank behind the hills. Anne started and gazed after it.
“It is going....”
On the cool, glasslike sky the silver sickle of the new moon appeared.
They turned back, but they searched in vain for the excursionists.
Near the farm scraps of paper and empty long-necked bottles lay on the
downtrodden lawn.
The ferryman was waiting for them among the boughs. Christopher was
tired, weary of the rôle he had supported so long. He knew now that he
could do the trick if such were his pleasure. The magic of the ancient
name of Illey had worn off; he ceased to be impressed by the fact that
a bearer of it had once been Assistant Viceroy and talking to Illey
gave him no more satisfaction than talking to any of his usual club
friends.
Since they had got into the boat, Anne too had become silent. It was
the evening of a holiday and to-morrow would be a workaday again....
The bright smile died off her lips. She glanced back to the receding
island and, taking her gloves off, put a hand into the water as if to
caress the river. The ripple lapped at her hand.
Illey sat on the prow and looked into the water. In the faint, silvery
moonlight the rings glittered on Anne’s bony, boyish little hands. A
sapphire: a blue spark; a ruby: a drop of blood. The river could not
wash them off the girl’s finger.
“How the current draws,” said Anne. Half unconsciously Illey also
touched the water. And the Danube, the common master of the destinies
of remote German forests and great Hungarian plains, seemed for an
instant to try and sweep the hands of their children together.
The boat reached the shore.
CHAPTER XIII
The old house was in flower. Never before had so many roses blossomed
in the garden. Anne wanted it so. She carried the flowers into the
house and went, faintly smiling, from room to room. She looked at every
object curiously as if she were seeing it for the first time. The
furniture, the pictures, they all seemed different now; she looked at
them with different eyes, with the eyes of one for whom she waited. Had
not somebody said to her the other day, on the pier of the Danube, “Au
revoir....”
Since then she had not met Thomas Illey. And yet she had never taken so
many walks with Mamsell Tini. Sometimes she was quite tired and still
she wanted to go on, towards the pier on the Danube, through the inner
town. A clean-cut profile behind the window of a carriage rumbling by:
her heart rose. But no, it was another mistake. A slender form near the
corner; when it came nearer it was a stranger.
The days grew hot, the nights were close.
A window of the Ulwing’s house opened softly in the moist early
morning. The shadows were still deep on the front. Opposite, sunlight
was streaming golden over the castle hill, as if it shone through a
window of amber.
Anne leaned out into the clear sunrise. She looked towards the island.
When she turned back again the rays of the yellow morning sun had
reached the bottom of the hill and came floating across the Danube.
Steps approached. Tramping boots, the slap-slap of naked feet. At the
corner a three-storied building was under construction. The name of an
unknown contractor hung from the scaffolding. Shouts, hammering....
On the other side of the street another new house. That was built by
the Ulwings, but it made slow progress. Many houses.... Workmen poured
into the town from the countryside. The streets were loud with _patois_
talk. The old, fair, German citizens seemed to have disappeared.
A peasant girl in a bright-coloured petticoat passed under the window
beside a mason. The ample petticoat rustled pleasantly in unison with
the heavy footsteps of the man. Anne looked after them. “Lucky people,
they are together!” She thought of herself and remembered a dream. She
had dreamt it last night, though she had imagined that she had not
slept at all.
In her dream she walked a strange street by herself. That was unusual
and frightened her. Only one person was visible in the deserted street,
at the far end of it. She recognised him by his elegant, careless gait.
She followed him, faster and faster, but the distance between them
remained the same.
The street began to stretch and become longer and longer.
And he looked quite small, far, far away. She could not reach him
though by now she was running breathlessly. She wanted to shout to him
to stop, stretching her arms out after him.
She awoke. The dream had vanished, but in her heart there remained the
longing, urgent movement of her outstretched arms.
She looked at the portrait of her mother. Her mother was no longer older
than she; they were now of the same age, she and the scared-looking
child-woman. She had outlived her mother’s years. If she were here....
No, not even to her could she speak of this, to nobody, never.
She threw herself on to the couch and covered her face with her hands.
With half-shut eyes, she stared at the flowered linen cover. It began
to spread round her. It was linen no longer; it became a meadow, a
meadow all covered with flowers and someone was coming towards her
from the other end. She did not turn in his direction, yet she knew
that he was coming. Her heart beat violently. She raised her head in
astonishment. Everything was new, she herself was new. All of a sudden
she felt a desire to sing, sing out to the sunshine of something that
was greater than she, too great to be retained in her bosom.
To sing.... But the house was asleep. She alone was awake. That was
delightful ... to be alone. She felt an irrepressible smile on her
lips. “I love him ...” she whispered it softly, but she felt as though
in these words she had sung all her songs.
* * * * *
Downstairs the side entrance creaked gently. Christopher had just
come home. He looked round and then stole into the office, into the
room where his father used to work in the master-builder’s life time.
Since Christopher had somehow managed to pass through the technical
school, that was his place. Worn out, he leaned his elbows on the
writing-table. His shirt was crushed and his face looked crushed too.
Otto Füger came in to him, but he was unable to alter his despairing
attitude. Helplessly his mouth went sideways.
“What has happened?” asked the younger Füger.
Christopher looked up wearily. It was all the same to him who
questioned him and what he answered. At this moment he would have
confessed his misery even to Florian. He had to speak to somebody ...
it is a relief to speak.
The straight soft lips of Otto Füger’s mouth went wide apart. His eyes
became round. He had long suspected that Christopher gambled. But what
he had lost last night was more than he thought possible. Too much....
He steadied his staring features. He wanted to know all there was to
know.
“Is that all the trouble?”
Christopher looked at him suspiciously. He expected reproaches. That
was what he wanted; that would have shamed him, appeased him. It would
have relieved him of the weight of responsibility. Otto Füger felt that
he had been tactless. He put on a serious, worried expression.
“This is a misfortune. A great misfortune. If the late Mr. Ulwing
knew...!”
Yet, he could have said nothing more crushing. Christopher bent his
head.
“Don’t think ... I am not bad. I am only unlucky, damned unlucky.”
Young Füger walked up and down the room and seemed deep in thought
though he knew full well what he was going to say.
Christopher’s eyes followed his movements with painful attention.
“Help me,” he said hoarsely when silence became insufferable. “Help me,
for God’s sake; give me some advice.”
That was exactly what Otto Füger wanted. He looked round cautiously,
then stopped in front of his chief’s son.
“The name of Ulwing is good,” he whispered, “in Paternoster Street they
will lend on it whatever you want. What are letters of exchange for?
Of course, it’s wrong,” he added hastily, “but for once....”
“In Paternoster Street, at the money changer’s?” Christopher looked up
a little. “And my simple signature is sufficient? How is it I never
thought of it! Shall I go there?”
When Otto Füger was left alone, he took his spectacles off, breathed
on them and while he wiped them kept them quite close to his eyes. He
sat down to the writing-table. Slowly he began to draw on the blotter.
First he drew flourishes which became by degrees the letter U ...
Ulwing & Co. These were the words he wrote finally and he thought that
he would be the Co. He would work, but no more in the dark, no more for
others, like Augustus Füger, for whom he felt an intimate contempt. His
father had the nature of an old-fashioned servant, who grows old in the
yoke, remains a beggar for ever and works for another man’s pocket.
He effaced what he had written on the blotter and got up respectfully
from the table. John Hubert was crossing the room. The head of the firm
waved his hand amicably. Otto Füger wrinkled his eyebrows. “What an
old hand he has. The whole man is old. Won’t last long.” And he looked
after him with the slow, strangled hatred that is only felt by the poor
who have to sell their brains to enrich the rich.
“He can’t last long. And the other?...” He started anew writing on the
pad. Ulwing & Co. He wrote it many times and erased it carefully.
That afternoon Christopher brought Anne a small gold chain. He bought
Mamsell Tini a silver-plated statue of St. Anthony, gave Florian some
money and sent him to the circus. He was generous and whistled happily.
At the money changers’ in Paternoster Street everybody bowed
respectfully when he mentioned that his name was Christopher Ulwing.
They never asked for any security, nor did they make any enquiries. The
pen trembled slightly between his fingers, but the owl-faced little
clerk who presented the bill of exchange never noticed it.
Now he was going to pay all his debts. He began to count. How much
would there be left over? He owed money to two usurers in King Street.
He would take his watch out of pawn. He thought of the suspicious old
hag who waited for nightfall to open her door at the bottom of the
courtyard of a disreputable house. He had promised a bracelet to a
girl. Greater sums began to come to his mind. Many old debts he had
forgotten. He whistled no more. He tried to suppress the unpleasant
thoughts; they had no justification, for had he not plenty of money in
his pocket? Somehow he would manage to get his house in order. As for
cards, he would never touch them again.
Then he stared wearily into space; he felt irritated. He had lost all
faith in his own pledges. He had broken as many promises as he had
made. He must pledge his word to somebody else. Where was Anne?
Anne stood outside near the stairs and, leaning against the balustrade,
looked into the porch. She did not change her attitude when her brother
stepped beside her.
“What are you doing here?” asked Christopher to attract her attention.
He needed her, he wanted to speak to her. Now, at once, because later
on he might not have the courage to do so.
“Anne....”
The young girl turned round, but her look strayed beyond him.
“Somebody has come, the front door bell rang.” At this moment she lived
her own life so intently that her heart could not hear the silent cry
for help of the other life.
Christopher stopped near her for a little while, then he gave a short
whistle. The moment when he had decided to open his heart had passed.
He was rather pleased that he had not tied himself with embarrassing
promises. He remained free.
Anne scarcely noticed when he left her. She leaned again over the
balustrade. The corners of her eyes and lips rose imperceptibly. Her
small face took on a strange expectant expression.
And on that day he for whom Anne had waited really came.
They sat in the sunshine room, stiff, in a polite circle, as if a hoop
were on the ground between them.
Thomas Illey had brought his sister with him. Christopher was also
there and Anne imagined that they must all necessarily notice her
panting breath, and the blood forever rising to her cheeks.
She began to observe herself carefully, but found her voice natural,
her movements regular, as if someone else acted for her. She grew calm;
the confused sounds in her head turned into words. Thomas Illey’s voice
became distinct from the others and reached her like a touch.
It gave her a tremor. It attracted her irresistibly, she had to turn
her face to him. Illey’s eyes were shining and deep. Only for an
instant did he look so, then he seemed to make an effort and a cloud of
haughty reserve fell over the radiant warmth of his look, concealing it
from the rest of the world.
But Anne did not forget that look, when her father came up from his
office. Thomas Illey spoke to John Hubert only, who sat just as
solemnly on the thin-legged flowered chair as he did long ago besides
the Septemvir Bajmoczy in the drawing-room of Baroness Geramb.
They spoke of the city. Of new railways. Steamers for the Danube.
Building. Politics.
Anne did not understand much of this. In the Ulwing family national
politics only meant a good or bad business year. They were considered a
means or an obstruction, whereas to Illey they seemed interesting for
their own sake.
His sparse, tense speech became voluble.
“In vain they trample on us, in vain they throttle us,” he said and
his expression became hard. “The great freedom of the nomads is
the ancestral home of my race. We sprang from that. It cannot be
forgotten....”
Anne looked at him intensely and while she listened distant memories
came slowly from the twilight of her mind. Grandfather Jörg’s
former shop, feverish men and the mysterious powerful voice which,
unintelligible, had once carried her soul for a cause she could not
understand. Now it seemed to her that Thomas Illey gave words to the
voice and that she began to understand events of her childhood.
John Hubert too followed Illey’s word attentively and thought of his
father, Ulwing the builder. What he had done and felt for the town,
Illey felt for the country and would like to do for the whole country.
How was that possible?
He smiled soberly. “They are all the same, the Hungarian gentry.
Every one of them wants to save the whole country, yet if each of
them grappled with a small part of it, they would achieve more.” He
criticised his guest quietly within himself, yet listened to him with
pleasure, because his words roused confidence and his thoughts could
find support in the power of words.
“Do you really think it is possible that our economic life should ever
revive again?” John Hubert was now thinking of his business only. He
spoke of the price of timber, building material and labour conditions.
Martha smiled absent-mindedly in the corner of the flowered couch.
Christopher interrupted nervously but his father did not heed him.
Thomas Illey listened politely. Anne noticed that he glanced towards
the mantelpiece, at the clock under the glass globe. Frightened, she
followed his look. She had never yet seen the hand run so mischievously
fast. And she now had a foreboding of what the hours were to be to her
when she was without him.
She must say something to Illey before he went, something that would
bring him back again. She did not know that she got up, she did not
know that she went to the piano.
“Yes, sing something,” said Martha.
“Do sing!” cried Christopher, delighted to interrupt his father.
Anne glanced shyly at Illey. He looked imploringly. Their eyes met.
They were far from each other and yet the girl felt that she was
nearest to him and was going to say something to him, to him alone.
She did not know what. But under her hand Schubert’s music was already
rising from the piano.
“Greetings to thee, greetings to thee....”
Blood rose in a pale pink cloud to Anne’s temples. Her face became
radiantly beautiful, her pure youthful bosom rose and fell like a pair
of snowy, beating wings and her voice sounded clearly, rapturously,
like a deep, all-powerful passion. It expressed tears, triumphant
youth, the unconscious, glorious avowal of all her love.
Christopher looked at her in amazement. He had never heard his sober,
serious sister sing like that. All looked at Anne. Not one of them
understood what had happened, yet they felt a strange warm light thrill
through them.
“How beautiful she looks when she is singing!” thought Thomas Illey.
People do not see each other always, only now and then for a moment.
Thomas Illey saw Anne in this moment. He turned a little pale and
felt as if a hot caressing hand fanned the air near his face. He lost
control over his eyes and passionately they took possession of the girl.
Though Anne did not understand all that was in this look, it moved her
deeply.
Then the song came to an end. The following silence cooled Anne’s
soul. Her greenish blue eyes looked frigidly into the air, her eyelids
became immobile. When she turned to Illey her face was reserved,
impenetrable. She wanted to screen what she had shown of herself, as if
she were ashamed of it.
The others too assumed this ordinary expression. Everybody returned to
everyday soberness. Netti brought the lamp in. It was evening.
* * * * *
Before the week was over Thomas Illey called again at the old house. He
came alone, Martha had gone into the country.
“To the mother of her fiancé,” said Illey. “It is an old engagement.
The wedding will be in autumn. Then that worry will be over too.”
He said no more about it. On the whole he spoke little. Nor did Anne
say much, but the silence between them was bright and happy.
Tini’s knitting needles clattered rapidly underneath the lamp-shade;
and the expression of her long, stiff face was that of an elderly
person contemplating spring through the window.
Now and then Anne started, as if his look had called to her by name.
She smiled at Thomas over the embroidery screen, then bent her head
down again and the stones of her rings sparkled at regular intervals as
she drew the silk upwards.
John Hubert came up from the office. Mamsell Tini stuck her knitting
needles into the ball of wool. She got up. Her steps died away in the
corridor and John Hubert spoke again about business, the town and
building.
When this happened Anne began to hear the ticking of the clock. If only
once she could be alone with Thomas, she would go to the clock, push
its hand back and that would tell him all she dared not express in
words. But they were never alone. She could only speak to him when she
was singing.
Did he understand it? Did he like to hear it? She did not know. Illey
was different from everyone she had known hitherto. When their eyes met
in silence she felt herself quite near to him. When they spoke to each
other it seemed to her that they were far, far apart and that their
voices had to travel a great distance, the words being dulled on the
way.
Anne began to grow fond of silence which she could fill with the warmth
of her heart.
Summer passed away.
Thomas Illey came more and more frequently and stayed longer and
longer. John Hubert surrendered his evening stroll to remain in his
company. Tini produced the best china cups from the glass cupboard when
he was expected. Florian ran to open the door.
The days became shorter. Now and then Netti lit a fire in the stove.
One evening Illey was even more taciturn than usual.
Tini dropped her ball of wool. While she bent down for it Thomas turned
suddenly to Anne and said in a very low whisper:
“I shall soon leave Pest. Give me a word that I can carry with me.”
Mamsell was now sitting up again, stiff and straight, on her chair and
her knitting needles knocked each other diligently.
Anne’s hand had slid down from the embroidery frame and her eyes became
dull as if all their lustre had melted away.
“You are going?” Her voice was very dim.
“What did you say?” asked Miss Tini, absent-mindedly. She stuck one of
the knitting needles sideways into the knot of her hair and began to
count the stitches.
Illey watched with silent despair the slow-moving lips of Mamsell as he
impatiently twirled the old seal ring round and round.
“I am going to Martha’s wedding. I have some other business too, so who
knows when I can come back again.”
Anne looked at the ring and then lifted her eyes to Thomas. She would
have liked to tell him, implore him, to take her with him too, to abide
faithfully by her as he clung to that ring and never leave her alone
again.
“Come to-morrow with Christopher to the Palatine’s Island,” said Illey
suddenly. His voice became harsh and commanding. “We shall meet at the
pier.” Then he continued, more softly: “Do sing something....” He said
this as if to clear the air of the grating vibrations of his former
words.
“You really want me to?” Anne’s eyes blazed up. The dominating voice
had made her feel as though Thomas had laid hands on her, as though he
had bent her wrist with tender force. That unconscious delight of women
in the humiliations of love flashed through her. She blushed and asked:
“What do you like? Schubert, Mozart or Schumann?”
“The voice of Anne Ulwing,” answered Illey simply, looking straight
into her eyes.
When the song died away, Thomas rose.
“Au revoir,” said Anne, and her hand, like a little bird snuggling up
in its nest, took refuge in his strong, warm grip. They remained like
that for an instant. Then Anne was again alone. She ran back to the
piano.
Even now she was still singing for Thomas. She sent her voice after
him, to follow him down the stairs, to attend him part of the way.
Perhaps he would hear it and turn back.
She drew aside the muslin curtains of the window. Lamps were already
burning in the streets. Someone on the other side. Anne leant eagerly
forward.
It was Otto Füger.
For a short time the younger Füger remained standing there, and turned
his head in the direction whither Thomas Illey had gone.
From the office window a beam of light stretched to the street. In what
had once been the study of Ulwing the builder the green-shaded lamps
were lit up.
This evening John Hubert remained exceptionally long at his writing
desk. He sat there in a state of collapse and his colourless skin
formed two empty folds under his chin. His hand lay inert on a bundle
of papers which had been presented to him for signature.
He rose heavily. He was looking for the second time through the door
which led to the adjoining office. Once Augustus Füger used to work
there, but, since an attack of apoplexy had paralysed the little
book-keeper’s right arm, his son Otto occupied his place.
“Where can he be?” mused John Hubert, looking through the door into the
empty office.
He returned to his seat at the writing desk. His eyes gazed at the plan
of Pest-Buda, but he did not see anything of it. Every now and then
his head twitched, as if he sought to shake up behind his forehead the
dull, dense matter that refused to act. He sighed and desisted from the
effort. He shut his eyes. But now that he wanted to rest, his brain
became active and a whirling chaos moved about it. He thought suddenly
of Christopher.
Otto Füger entered quietly through the door. Cold rage was in his eye
and his lips were compressed and straight. But as soon as he came
within the light of the lamps he was already smiling.
John Hubert continued his reflections aloud:
“Somebody mentioned Christopher’s name to-day at the money-changer’s.
The clerk spoke of him behind the counter. When I turned to them they
caught their breath. I can’t understand it.” He looked anxiously at
young Füger. “Do you know anything?”
Otto Füger did not answer at once. At this moment he hated furiously
everybody living in that house. He hated the others because of Anne and
on account of that stuck-up Illey whose looks always passed above his
head. Now he had his chance to revenge himself on them for having been
born in the back-lodgings of an insignificant book-keeper, for being
poor and striving vainly. He looked humbly to the ground and feigned to
suffer from the painful necessity of his disclosures.
“It is hard on me to have to betray Mr. Christopher. I have always
tried to restrain him, I have implored him....”
“What is going on behind my back?” John Hubert’s voice bubbled out
heavily between his blanched lips.
When the whole truth was revealed to him, he repeated painfully:
“He gambles ... the whole town knows it.... He loses ... bills of
exchange?...” He asked terrified: “What is the amount?”
“One hundred and eighty thousand florins....”
For an instant, John Hubert straightened himself in the chair, then
his body collapsed slowly to one side. His high collar alone kept his
relaxed, waxy face in position. In a few minutes he had turned quite
old.
Otto Füger watched his chief cunningly. He judged from his altered
attitude what was the right thing to say.
“We must not despair, sir. At bottom Mr. Christopher is a good,
God-fearing young gentleman. It is all the fault of bad company. I
always told him so. Those young gentry fellows from the country preyed
on him. They have got rich Ulwing’s money. But don’t punish him, sir. I
beg of you, let me bear your anger, for have I not sinned more than he
for keeping it quiet?”
He hung his head penitently, as if expecting judgment.
“You are a good fellow, Otto,” said John Hubert, deeply touched.
“We will save the reputation of the firm,” young Füger said solemnly.
“As for Mr. Christopher, if I may venture to give advice, we shall have
to tear him from the tempters. Perhaps abroad....”
“Send him abroad? Yes,” John Hubert became suddenly determined. “That
was once the plan of my late father. You advise Frankfurt? All right,
let it be Frankfurt.”
The book-keeper had not expected to get his way so easily. He became
more enterprising.
“He had better go among unpretentious working-class people, till he
settles down. Meanwhile you might like to choose for Miss Anne some
level-headed business man as a husband; he might enter the firm as a
partner and relieve your mind, sir, of all the worries.”
That was a new hope. John Hubert pulled his necktie up. “A serious man
of business to stand by Christopher. Somebody belonging to the family.
Anne’s husband....” Thomas Illey’s image intruded unpleasantly on his
memory. “We must prevent them from meeting again.” Life had been so
exacting to him that now he would insist on getting his own back. He
had always been merciless to himself, now he would show no mercy to
others.
“Yes, that would free me from all care,” he murmured as if taking
counsel with himself. “Anne’s husband.... But who is it to be?”
Otto Füger smiled modestly. He took his spectacles off, breathed on
them and wiped them while holding them up to his left eye.
John Hubert, for reasons unknown to him, thought of the son of Martin
George Münster. Charles Münster would bring capital into the business,
he had brains....
He clapped Otto Füger on the shoulder.
“Thank you!”
Young Füger looked after him dejected. He had expected something else.
Next day Christopher left the old house. And at the pier of the Danube
Thomas Illey waited in vain for Anne.
White frost fell over the autumn roses in the garden.
CHAPTER XIV
Rain had collected in the gargoyle and gave off a hopeless gurgle as if
someone were sobbing under the steep double roof.
Out of doors the autumn evening fell sadly. On the window panes of the
sunshine room raindrops ran down like tears on a transparent grey face.
Silence reigned in the deserted old nursery. Since Christopher’s
departure Anne had been very lonely. She would often rise from the
work table during the afternoon and go quietly to the door. She opened
it quickly, nobody was there. She looked down into the depths of the
staircase. The house was silent. She decided to count up to a hundred,
then wait no longer. Twice she counted up to a hundred, and even after
that she looked back from the threshold.
At night when Netti lit the lamp and Florian bolted the front door,
Anne’s eyes more than once filled with tears. She felt a prisoner. Life
remained outside the walls of her prison. Again a useless day had drawn
to an end, that at its dawning had promised so generously. It tortured
her artfully while it lasted, and in the end achieved nothing.
Thomas Illey came no more.
Anne’s little face became quite pale and thin. She began to be afraid.
Perhaps Illey went to someone else now, perhaps he was angry? The last
time he saw her he asked her so earnestly to go the next day to the
Danube pier. And she could not go, could send no message, could not
write. Christopher had to leave and their father was very strict with
both of them.
“Why does he not come? Where is he?”
She pressed her face against the window pane. Whenever the front door
bell rang the blood rushed to her heart. She waited, then hung her head
wearily.
In the sunshine room the furniture began to whisper. The walls too
remembered. The door handle was familiar with Thomas’s hand. The shaded
lamp, the clock under the glass globe, they all told her that they had
seen him many times.
Anne turned her face away. The memories wounded her. She clasped her
hands in prayer for respite from her tortures.
Hours passed. Tini came in and started to read her fortune with cards.
“All your sorrows will come to an end, my little dove,” she said when
she finished her game.
“I have no sorrows,” answered the girl and tried to hold her head high.
John Hubert’s voice said:
“Anne, a visitor!”
Of late Charles Münster had often come to the house. In the evening he
sat comfortably in the green room, approving everything John Hubert
said, and when he could think of nothing to say, he carelessly twirled
the thumbs of his big, red hands.
Those hands annoyed Anne. They became embarrassed, blushed like human
faces, struggled, while Charles Münster remained placid and tedious in
his inordinately long Sunday coat.
“Why does he come?” wondered Anne wearily, while sitting opposite him.
One day she learned that too; Charles Münster had asked her father for
her hand.
“It is a very honourable proposal and very advantageous,” said John
Hubert to his daughter. “The house of Münster has a good reputation and
is serious. The young man is intelligent and owns some capital.”
Anne’s heart sank while she looked at him and then the blood rushed to
her face. All her life she had striven to repress her will; she had
always obeyed, but what she was now asked to do roused her to rebellion.
“No, never!” And her voice rang out like a hammer dropping on steel.
John Hubert was startled. That was the voice of Ulwing the builder.
“I spoke too soon,” he thought, vexed. “I ought to have waited a little
longer.”
Then he waited. Outside the snow was falling already.
In the next few weeks Anne’s face became more and more transparent.
She did not sleep at night. She sang no longer, nor did she laugh and
during the long evenings she sat silent in the green room, while her
father worked at the writing table with the innumerable drawers.
John Hubert had now to use spectacles for reading. He pushed them up
on his forehead and looked stealthily at Anne. Gradually he became
anxious. He thought of his own life. He had never been happy, had never
made anybody else happy.
“Are you ill?” he asked suddenly.
“No.”
“Have you any pain?”
Anne did not answer but her eyes asked him why he tortured her. John
Hubert bent down. He turned the pages of his ledger. Anne heard him
sigh anxiously.
“Have you had bad news from Christopher?” she asked, going to the
writing table. “No? Is it the business?... Speak to me about it, for I
too am an Ulwing.”
John Hubert closed the book in which he had been reckoning.
“You would not understand it.”
“But I could learn to....”
“You just go on embroidering, singing. You have no need to know about
business. It is not suitable for women. God has created you for other
ends.” But this sentence aroused his conscience. He became embarrassed.
“You have not yet forgotten Thomas Illey?” he whispered casting his
eyes down.
“I have not forgotten him.”
A few days later Grandfather Jörg came in the evening to take Anne to
a concert. In the carriage the old gentleman began to mention Charles
Münster.
“Is he too like all the others?” the girl thought and looked sadly at
her grandfather. Once he had been to prison for sympathizing with the
freedom of others; and now he spoke against his grandchild’s freedom.
In the concert hall the crowd was already large. Innumerable candles
burned in the gilt wooden chandelier. Their flames wove a peaceful
yellow light in the air. On the platform the piano stood open. The
orchestra was tuning up and this sounded like birds with sharp beaks
pecking at the stringed instruments.
A few reporters stood near the wall. Anne heard them agree in advance
as to what they would say in next day’s papers. In the stalls
well-known merchants from the inner town, wives of rich citizens,
officers in uniform, and right in front bejeweled ladies in huge
crinolines, noble gentlemen in Hungarian national costume.
The family of Müller the chemist nodded to them. The Münster daughters
were there too. In the back rows the newcomers moved their chairs.
Some laughed and cleared their throats, then suddenly, as if moved by
a common spring, all the heads turned towards the platform. Then all
became silent.
Anne glanced over the faces. The crowd seemed to her like an empty
vessel gaping towards the piano in expectation of being filled with
sounds and emotions. Her heart was full of her young distress and she
felt afraid that at the first sound her sufferings would overflow
through her eyes.
All of a sudden she became strangely restless, as if some one had
touched her from a distance. She turned her head quickly. The blood
throbbed in her veins as her look met the dark, sad eyes of Thomas
Illey. And the two glances united through space.
Waves surged between them. A wild tumult of cheers broke out. The round
of applause echoed like a thunderstorm from the walls.
The great artist stood on the platform, high above everybody. His long
white hair waved softly round his marble brow. He inclined his wiry
body before the homage.
Then the piano burst out under his hands. And the sounds sang, crept,
stormed furiously, coaxed voluptuously, and dissolved in a smile. The
artist with the marble brow conjured up harmonies from the piano that
had not existed before him and were not to be after him.
The crowd listened with bated breath, spellbound. And the music
continued like a swelling tide. Then it became tender like a dying
echo. It broke forth again with superb impetuosity. Sounds wrought
in fire rose and those who heard them lived the creative moments of
Beethoven, Sebastian Bach and Weber over again. These sublime moments
were resuscitated by the master whose playing was forever the begetting
of gods.
Anne Ulwing’s soul was carried on glowing wings by Beethoven’s
Appassionata to Thomas over the heads of the crowd. She felt that the
waves of the music swept them together and that they became swallowed
up in some boundless glittering veil.
The hall was delirious again. People stood up. Some rushed to the
platform and continued to applaud there.
The artist began to play a composition of his own. And then, as if his
marble countenance had been set aflame, fire shone on his brow, fire
streamed from his eyes and the creative artist wandered and was alone
by himself.
Anne turned towards the piano. This was different from anything she
had ever heard. Long-forgotten words recurred to her mind: “One has to
create like God. Even the clay has to be created anew.”
Applause rose again, but the clapping seemed more restrained. It was
addressed to the virtuoso, not to the creator.
“They don’t understand him,” said Anne disappointed.
“It is not yet safe to admire this music. It came too early ...” and
again the words of Adam Walter came to her mind.
Then everything was forgotten. Her eyes searched for Thomas in the
crowd thronging towards the exit. In the dust-laden heat of the
cloak-room people pushed each other. Under the porch the doors of the
carriages slammed. A hoarse voice shouted the names of the coachmen.
Anne saw Florian and made a sign to him. Ulrich Jörg was already in the
carriage.
“I should like to walk,” said the girl hurriedly. The old gentleman was
sleepy. The horses of the next carriage became restive in the cold. The
door banged. Anne felt herself free.
“Let us go....”
Florian’s broad, good-natured face turned to her for an instant in
wonder. Then he followed her obediently in the snow.
A motionless figure stood at the street corner under a lamp peering
into the windows of the passing carriages. Suddenly he looked no longer
towards the carriages. His dark sad eyes rested on Anne. He held his
hat low in his hand and snow fell on his thin face.
They clasped each other’s hands and the peace of their mind was like
the languid moment, still incredible, when a bodily pain has abruptly
ceased to torture.
The sound of rolling carriages spread in all directions. Occasional
laughter flared up among the human voices, dying away at a distance.
After that, only the snow was falling in slow, shiny flakes. By tacit
agreement they started, side by side, into the great whiteness.
Anne did not feel the cold. The furs slid down her bare shoulders and
her low shoes sank deep into the snow. Illey gazed at her in rapture,
then pulled himself together. He wanted to appear calm, but his voice
was strangely changed.
“When I saw the posters of the concert, I began to hope that we might
meet. It all happened more wonderfully than my wildest hopes.”
Anne too tried to control herself.
“So you really did not go for the music’s sake?” she asked in a
whisper, smiling.
“I never go to concerts,” said Illey candidly. “I don’t understand the
higher music.”
Anne turned to him anxiously:
“Then you did not understand what I sang to you?”
“I did not understand the music, but I understood her who produced it.”
Anne’s thought became confused. Till then she had thought that they
met, united in music.... And now Thomas told her that he did not
understand the only language which her soul, her blood could speak....
It did not matter, nothing mattered so long as he was here, if only he
could be at her side.
She drew her head back a little and with eyes half shut looked
longingly at Illey’s shoulders as though she would, by the intensity of
her regard, build a nest there for her little head.
Thomas began to walk at a noticeably slow pace. Then Anne too noticed
the snow-covered lamp in front of the Ulwings’ house.
“I have sought this moment for a long time,” said Illey quickly. “I was
seeking it on the island when I waited for you so long--till the stars
appeared and the ferryman lit a fire for the night. Next day I was
there too. I have pulled the bell at your door many times. I saw your
face through the window, I heard you play the piano, yet I was told you
were not in. Florian avoided my eyes when he said that. I understood.
It was not desired that I should come.”
“And I was expecting you.” There was so much suffering in Anne’s veiled
voice that all became clear to Illey.
At this moment they came in sight of the house. They stepped so slowly
that they remained practically on the same spot, yet the distance grew
smaller. The porch moved out of the wall and came to meet them rapidly,
dark through the glittering whiteness. The two pillar-men came with it
too. They leaned more and more from under the cornice and looked down
on them.
The porch stopped with a jerk. They had reached the end of the street.
Anne’s heart stood still with anguish. One more moment and they would
be together no more.
Florian dropped the latch key. He fumbled slowly, very slowly with his
hand in the snow and never looked up once while doing so.
Thomas Illey bent to Anne:
“We cannot live any more without each other,” and he kissed her hand.
Snow was falling slowly and through the snow-white veil they looked
silently into each other’s eyes.
When Anne walked up the stairs she took Thomas’s kiss with her lips
from her hand.
Next day she told her father all that had happened and when in the
afternoon the front door bell rang Florian opened the door with a broad
beaming face to Thomas Illey.
Anne heard his steps. The steps passed her door, along the corridor,
towards the green room.
Thomas Illey spoke little. His voice was serious and firm. John Hubert
listened to him standing and only offered him a seat when he had
finished.
“An honourable proposal....” This reminded him that he had used
the same words to Charles Münster. He laughed and then spoke out
conscientiously, as he had decided beforehand. He spoke of the loss
caused by the fire, of bad years of business. Of Anne’s dowry. His
voice became feeble:
“I am very sorry but I cannot withdraw any capital from the business.
The estate must remain undivided. This was decided by my late father. I
cannot depart from this.”
Illey waved his hand politely, disparagingly.
“This is not my affair. It concerns Miss Anne alone.”
John Hubert stared at him with undisguised astonishment. The charm
of the ancient name of Illey re-asserted itself on him: he no longer
leaned back in his armchair. He sat straight up solemnly and felt sorry
he had till now been so business-like.
“But what about the property of Ille,” he chose his words carefully, “I
understand that it is, unfortunately, in strange hands....”
Illey turned his head away. He realized that he had just been showing
off before the other and felt ashamed. This mild-eyed good old business
man reminded him of that which had attracted him at first to Anne. It
was no good denying it; in those times he thought that the Ulwings
were rich and that the ancestral property of Ille might again become
his own. He now tried to justify himself for those old thoughts by the
longing for the land of his forebears. There was one hope. He thrust it
aside.
John Hubert looked at him expectantly.
“Did Mr. Illey not think of buying the property back?”
Many a proud, disinterested word came to Illey’s mind. To rise above
everything, even above himself. To ask for nothing, only for Anne whom
he loved. He turned his sharp gentlemanly face to John Hubert. He
looked him straight in the eyes, as if making a vow:
“I think no longer of buying Ille back.”
John Hubert enquired politely after his family.
Thomas slowly turned the old seal ring on his finger. He began to speak
of his father. He died young of heart disease. His mother followed him.
Then the property got into the auctioneer’s hands. Only a swampy wood
remained. Nobody wanted that. And a little money. He wanted to learn
to work. This brought him to town. He wanted to regain possession of
the land through his own exertions. Had it not given them their name,
or had it not received its name from them? However it was, the land of
Ille and the Illeys had belonged to each other for nearly a thousand
years.
Thomas looked down wearily. He thought that the fate of the
Lord-Lieutenant’s grandchildren had overtaken him too.
“I studied law,” he said quietly, “like the rest of us; politics
absorbed me and I did not learn to work for money. That is in our
blood. It is only when work is done gratuitously that the Hungarian
nobility does not blush to work. Those of us who gave themselves for
money became bad men; the good ones were ruined.”
John Hubert nodded absent-mindedly. He was quite reassured now that he
had ascertained that Thomas Illey did not intend to withdraw Anne’s
dowry from the business. He proffered his hand to him.
“It is settled. You do not think of buying Ille back. You won’t meddle
with the business. Now we can look at the ledgers and the balance
sheet.”
Thomas smiled. He wanted to see nothing but Anne, and John Hubert
opened the door of the sunshine room to him. There everything was
bright and warm.
When the new spring made earth and sky bright and warm around the old
house, Mamsell Tini stuck a wreathed veil into Anne’s hair. Now, like a
white cloud, the veil floated through the old rooms, caressed the doors
and walls. Anne kissed her father.
“Thank you, father,” said the girl. “I am so happy.”
Tears came into the eyes of John Hubert. Life had no more joys in store
for him....
In the corridor stood old Füger, and Mrs. Henrietta in a starched
bonnet, and Mr. Gemming. Poor little Feuerlein, deeply stirred, wiped
his eyes. None bowed more respectfully to Thomas Illey than Otto Füger.
Above, high above the roofs, the bells clanged loud from the church
steeple of Leopold’s town, bells that had so often spoken of the
destinies of the Ulwings. And under the porch the two pillar-men looked
down into the flower-laden carriage.
The porch repeated once over the sound of the parting wheels, then the
house fell into silence. Anne carried her quiet laugh away with her on
her honeymoon. Everything became quiet, the men, the days.
* * * * *
John Hubert was quite alone. A letter from Christopher, one from Anne.
He read them both many times over, smiled and shut his eyes. Nowadays,
he was always sleepy. He looked at the clock. Too early to go to bed.
He walked up and down in the quiet rooms.
From the green room the light of the lamp reached the dining room. The
sunshine room received light from a lamp in the street which spread
over the ceiling. The old nursery was quite dark.
John Hubert folded his hands behind his back and walked slowly from
darkness into light, from light into darkness. He thought of his life.
It had been like that too, but now that he looked back on it there
seemed to have been more darkness than light.
He could not understand what made him think of this just now when his
head was weary enough. For an instant he intended sending for the
doctor. Then he felt too tired to do it.
While he slowly turned the key in his watch, he felt giddy, yet he put
all the various objects from his pocket into the alabaster tray. His
keys, his penknife and the cigar case embroidered with beads. This he
carried as a habit, having renounced smoking several years ago.
Next day was Sunday. He did not get out of bed. From time to time Tini
came in to ask if he wanted anything. He opened his eyes, nodded, but
said nothing.
Gárdos, the physician, reassured him.
“It will pass away; it is only a little overwork,” and prescribed nux
vomica.
“No, you must not write to the children.”
During the week John Hubert was up. On Sunday he again stayed in bed
and felt better there. A letter came from Anne. He smiled at it. So
there was one person in the world who owed him her happiness.... He
smoothed his blanket down and turned to the wall.
A loud buzzing woke him at night. His head turned, the bed turned, so
did the room. And he breathed with difficulty. He wanted to unbutton
his shirt collar, but did not succeed. He sat up suddenly and with his
accustomed movement put his hand several times to his neck as if to put
his necktie right.
Then he fell back and moved no more.
That night John Hubert Ulwing died, correctly, without much ado, just
as he had lived.
CHAPTER XV
The house was empty and silence nestled between its walls. It was
a memorable event for the corridor to hear the sound of steps. The
ticking of the marble clock resounded through all the rooms, no noise
impeding its progress.
Thus did Anne find the house when she came back with her husband from
the interrupted journey which was to remain in her memory like a broken
dream.
Days without thoughts. Gentle words. Pure, girlish fears. Then she
became accustomed to Thomas’s embraces. The news of her father’s death
roused her and she could dream her dream no more. It was gone for ever.
Another came.
Real life took its place and the first year passed away.
Slowly the peace of the old house became bright again. Now and then
the rooms began to laugh timidly. They stopped suddenly, ashamed of
themselves, as if remembering those who had left by the door never to
come back again.
Another year went by.
The yellow walls of the old house were warm in the sun. In the garden
the beds put forth blossom-laden rosebushes, climbing garlands of
roses.
The rooms now laughed freely with the rippling laughter of a child.
And the house smiled to itself, like some good old patriarch who has
regained youth.
At that time Anne sang some wonderful little songs. She had never
learned them, they came of themselves and their soothing rhythm was
like the rocking of a cradle. Then she lifted her son with that
mysterious movement, which is more exalted than the gesture of love, a
movement secretly known by her arms long ago. And she thought that it
was this that linked all humanity. An endless, blessed chain, a chain
wrought of women’s arms over the earth, beginning with the first woman
and to end with the last child.
“Mamma,” babbled little George. Anne repeated in whispers the word
which was bestowed on her, which she herself had never uttered to her
mother; she looked at the fading portrait of Mrs. Christina. She began
to listen. The street door opened. Steps came along the corridor....
“Thomas, I was longing for you!” She would have liked to say more,
something warmer. She wanted to tell him her love, but the words were
bashful and changed as they crossed her lips. She leaned towards her
husband, ready to be kissed.
Illey did not notice it; he was thinking of something else. He began to
read a letter.
“From home....”
“From home?... Is not this your home?” Anne’s head, held till now
sideways in a listening attitude, rose slowly.
Thomas saw nothing, heard nothing when Ille was in question. Everybody,
the old steward, the bailiff, the agent, the priest, anybody who was
in difficulties, came to him, as if he were still the landlord. He did
their errands and his eyes shone when he spoke of them.
Anne looked at him motionless. A feeling came over her of which she
could never rid herself whenever Thomas spoke of Ille. It seemed to her
that her husband abandoned her and went far away to some other place.
“Thomas,” she whispered, as if to recall him.
Illey smiled inattentively. He was still reading the letter. Anne’s
face became grave and cold. The tenderness which had till then flowed
bootlessly from her shrank back painfully into her heart.
“No, don’t go away. Come here. Read this....”
But Anne would not go nearer him. She held her head rigidly erect.
After the vain inclination to tenderness she hoped to regain the
balance in this way.
“It doesn’t matter, Thomas,” and animosity sounded in her voice,
“after all I don’t know those people of yours.”
“Why do you speak like that?” He looked at her reproachfully. Again
Anne’s voice baffled the hope in his soul, with which he thought
of Ille, which still gained, against his will, the upper hand over
him.... If he were to tell her everything, if he explained to her
that everything belonging to Ille was grown to his heart, that he
was craving for his land ... would she understand? The words shaped
themselves so intensely in his mind that he nearly heard them sound.
But they seemed abasing, as if they were begging. He felt that he could
never utter them.
In that moment Anne saw her husband’s countenance hard and frigid.
“Why are you angry, Thomas?” Her eyes wandered to the letter from
Ille. “Don’t you understand? It will all be empty talk. All this is so
strange to me.”
“You are right!” Illey gave a short reproachful laugh. It dawned on him
suddenly that Anne was strange to all that which lived so vividly in
his blood and his past. Strange, and perhaps she wanted to remain so.
While they were silent it seemed to both of them that they had drawn
further apart from each other, though neither of them had moved. Then
it was Thomas who turned away. Anne looked after him.
In the beginning, when they could not understand each other, they
forgot it in an embrace. Later on, the weak, helpless cry of a baby in
the next room was enough to remove everything from their minds and to
make them run to it side by side; before they had reached the door they
had grasped each other’s hands.
On this occasion each of them remained alone. The words he had spoken
weighed cold on Anne’s memory; those he had kept back made her anxious.
She played with her little son absent-mindedly. She fumbled idly in her
work-table’s drawers. She gave that up too. She wanted to go to her
husband, lean her head against his shoulders, and ask and answer till
there remained nothing between them that was obscure and uncertain.
But Thomas had visitors. From the green room the voice of gentlemen
reached the dining room and the smoke of their pipes pervaded the
place. They talked of the reconciliation of the King and the country,
of the coronation, of those who performed it, of Parliament, of great
national transformations.
Since the constitution had been re-established, Illey had entered the
service of the State; he worked in the Ministry of Agriculture. Anne
heard him in the adjoining room make some remarks on intensive culture.
How coolly and intelligently Thomas spoke, while her own heart was
still heavy and sore. Suddenly her husband’s laughter reached her ears
through the closed door. Her eyebrows stiffened and straightened, as if
she had been hurt....
It was about this time that Thomas Illey began to go shooting more
often. His friends who owned property in the country invited him. Down
there in Ille, in his swampy wood, game was plentiful. When he was free
from his office he took his gun and was off. Then he came home again
happy, with a sunburnt face.
In the green room arms stood in the old cupboard where Ulwing the
builder used to keep his plans. Above the couch the portrait of the
architects Fischer von Erlach and Mansard were replaced by English
prints of hunting scenes. Cartridges were kept in the small recesses of
the writing table with the many drawers. A finely wrought hunting knife
lay in front of the marble clock.
Anne sometimes felt that Thomas did not love the old house or the green
room or the cosy, well-padded good old furniture.
“I say, Anne, these chairs here stand round the table like fat
middle-class women in the market. They hold their arms akimbo and are
nearly bursting with health.”
He laughed quietly.
“Is it possible you cannot see how funny they are? At home, in Ille,
there is a similar armchair in the nursery. We called it ‘Frau Mayer’
and put a basket on its arm.”
Anne blushed a little and, disconcerted, looked at the chequered linen
covers.
“They insult us,” she said, as if speaking to the armchair, “though
we belong together....” She thought suddenly of the staircase in the
Geramb house, of Bertha Bajmoczy ... the old indignity ... the old
resentment. Then, as if her grandfather’s voice echoed in her memory,
“I am a free citizen.”
She raised her head. Her young neck bent back disdainfully.
“How beautiful you are, like this,” said Thomas and his voice altered.
The woman’s shoulder trembled. That was the old voice that thrilled
her like a touch. They looked at each other for a moment and then she
disappeared in Thomas’s embrace.
Anne felt that in her husband’s arms all her cares vanished, that she
herself passed away. Her head fell back, no longer with pride but with
that feminine movement which expresses the conquest of the conqueror.
“My love....”
They held each other for a long time tightly embraced and the silence
of rare and secret reunions came over them. When the silence broke, the
reunion was ended and they both withdrew into themselves.
Later in the day, Anne came running through the rooms with a telegram
and joy rang in her voice:
“From Christopher!”
“Is he still in Baden-Baden?” sneered Thomas.
“He is coming to-night.”
“It is time....”
Anne cast her eyes down sadly. She always felt some irritation in
Thomas’s voice when he spoke of Christopher and that pained her. It was
true that since their father’s death Christopher had travelled a great
deal, but Otto Füger sent him regular reports and when he was home he
worked.
Business must have been excellent. There was more luxury in the house
than ever. Christopher had replaced the old boards by parquet flooring.
Carpets were laid on the stairs and two pairs of horses stood in
the stable. A manservant served at table in Netti’s place. Florian
opened the gate in livery. Anne received as much money as she liked
for housekeeping, that was all she understood. But if Thomas was not
content, why did he keep silent? Surely it would have been his duty to
look through the business books. Why did he shrink from it?
Anne believed that he despised the business and, as in her mind the
business and the name of Ulwing were inseparable, she felt affronted by
her husband’s aloof indifference. In the beginning, she had frequently
raised the question with Thomas. He always maintained a repelling
silence.
She turned to him, but her husband, as if divining her thoughts,
anticipated her.
“Let us leave that alone, darling. I won’t interfere with the affairs
of the Ulwing business.” He thought of what her father had told him
when he asked for his daughter’s hand. A man must keep his word even
if he has not given it formally. He put his arms out and drew his wife
onto his knee.
“Let us stay together. I have to leave to-night, I am going shooting
to-morrow.”
Anne put her arms round Thomas’s neck. However much she desired it, she
would not ask her husband in words not to go away from her. But to-day
she knew something that was sure to retain him. She smiled into his
face.
“Do you know what day to-morrow is?”
Thomas became cheerful.
“Of course, Sunday. I can go to shoot.”
“The third anniversary of our wedding,” whispered Anne.
“Is that so? To-morrow?” Thomas’s eyes became affectionate with
grateful remembrance and he pressed his wife passionately to his
breast. He felt her slender body bend from his knee into his arms. Her
small, cool face, nestled close to his. Her hair smelt of violets. It
made him reel....
“He does not say he will stay at home,” thought Anne, “he never says
anything.” Her soul felt degraded by the caresses bestowed on her
body. “Never anything but this.... I don’t want it.” She pushed her
husband brusquely away and arranged her hair.
Thomas felt a cold void in his lap. For a moment he looked disconcerted
into the air, then he collected himself. His love was a request from a
man, not the humble supplication of a beggar. He frowned obstinately.
“When does your train start?” asked Anne, exhausting herself in the
effort to appear unaffected.
The woman’s voice appeared quite strange to Illey. “She does not ask
me to stay. She sends me away from her,” and his countenance became at
once dark and hostile from the memory of thwarted desire. He pulled out
his watch. He returned it to his pocket without looking at it. He began
to hurry. He made his guns ready. The cartridge bag exhaled something
left in it by the woods. The straps cracked delicately, just like out
there, when they rubbed together over one’s shoulders; and his thoughts
were no more in the room, but were wandering far afield over boundless,
free lands, under the shining sun.
Anne said no more and left the room.
In the evening, while putting her little son to sleep, she thought of
past anniversaries.... Since when had life changed so much between her
and Thomas? The change must have come slowly, she had not noticed it.
The child was asleep. Anne opened the door of the sunshine room and,
after a long time, unconsciously sat down to the piano. She did not
play, she did not sing, just leaned her head on it as if she were
leaning it on somebody’s shoulder.
When Christopher arrived he found his sister there near the mute
instrument.
Anne looked at her brother aghast. How he had changed of late. Clothes
of an English cut hung on his body. His once lovely hair with the
silver shine had thinned round his deep blue-veined temples. The light
eyelashes appeared heavy over his exhausted eyes.
“And Thomas, gone a-shooting?”
“Have you been ill?” asked Anne, sitting down opposite to him in the
dining room.
“What makes you think so? No, just a trifle.” Christopher ate hastily,
speaking all the time in a snatchy way. “There is nothing the matter
with me, only my nerves are bad just now when I shall stand most in
need of them. I want to achieve great things. I have learned many new
things. But they require nerve.”
He lit a cigar; the match moved queerly between his fingers. “In the
past life depended on the muscles of man, so development of muscles was
the principal aim of education. Now we have to rely for everything on
nerves, and nobody looks after them.” His mouth twitched slightly to
one side. “Tell me, Anne, do you feel sometimes as if strings quivered
in your neck high up to the brain?”
“No, I don’t feel that,” said Anne, and stared at him.
Christopher laughed, ill at ease.
“Nor do I feel it, I only heard it spoken of. A friend of mine ... you
know ... nerves.”
Anne pressed her folded hands convulsively, but her face remained calm.
“Tell your friend that he is ill and that he better attend to it at
once.”
Christopher blew the smoke into the air.
“The old ones had more resistance than we. Our generation received so
many shocks when young. Do you remember the shell striking the house?
And the fire ... those among us who were weak were broken by it, those
who were strong became stronger. You became stronger. You are lucky,
Anne, and it is good to be near you, you are so sure and cool.”
“Then do remain always near me, Christopher.”
“Yes. By the way, do you sometimes start up in terror at night? You
understand, one can’t ask these things from a stranger ... and do you
never feel when you are alone, that somebody is standing behind your
back? He stands near the wall and watches what you are doing.”
Anne looked horrified at her brother.
“But that is folly....”
“Stove-fairies and piano-mice,” said Christopher and smiled wearily
towards the green room. “And little George?” He laughed with forced
mirth, “he must be quite a little gentleman. I brought him a horse from
Paris. It has an engine inside, you wind it up like a clock and then it
runs. What wonders people invent nowadays!”
He began to speak of cities, countries ... of the French Emperor, the
Paris Stock Exchange, the dresses of the Empress Eugénie. All the time
he smoked one cigar after another; after a time weariness disappeared
from his voice and his eyes became livelier. When he went downstairs he
whistled. Anne heard it clearly but it did not reassure her.
Since his sister’s marriage Christopher had lived on the ground floor.
He had adapted two rooms of the old office which had been empty since
the business had dwindled.
Flowers stood on the chest of drawers in the deep vaulted room. He
knew Anne had put them there. It was she who had put the lace mat on
the night table. For an instant he felt happy at being home again and
gave orders to the servant not to wake him in the morning; he wanted
to sleep. Then he remembered that he had business on the morrow with
his book-keeper. He had signed many bills in blank during his journey,
so that Otto Füger might send him some money. He had lost incessantly
at Baden-Baden and his stay in Paris had made a serious breach in his
purse. To-morrow all that would have to be reckoned up. Hazy ignorance
was comfortable, but the reckoning day was loathsome.
He wanted to chase away unpleasant thoughts. They were like wasps,
returned to the attack, and stung him.
And the business? How had the various enterprises prospered while he
had been away? The weekly reports were in his valise. He had never
found time to read them through. It didn’t matter. He had studied the
Stock Exchange in Paris. People got rich there in one day. All that was
required was a cool head. One must not lose one’s nerve. How much money
he had seen! How much!
He extinguished the candle. He lay on his back with open eyes. For a
time his thoughts gave him a rest. The darkness was quite empty. How
many things had passed through his darknesses! Ancient fairies and
dwarfs. Sophie, his first love. Girls from the streets, actresses,
women, beautiful grand ladies, cold and indifferent in day time,
passionate and exacting at night. Enough. They interested him no more.
The only thing that mattered to him now was money, the mighty mass of
money which flows incessantly between the hands of men, like a great
dominating river, from one end of the world to the other. One had only
to dig a channel for the river and it would flow wherever one liked.
He saw it on the Paris Stock Exchange. How much money....
The darkness of Christopher’s night was suddenly empty no more.
Money!... That was the whole secret.... And he began to long for it as
he used to yearn in days gone by for women.
CHAPTER XVI
The hanging lamp over the table in the green room had been lit.
Anne’s hand fell slowly from the child’s cap she was crocheting.
She had been aware for a long time of the irregular sounds of
Christopher’s steps. Her brother walked restlessly up and down the
rooms. Occasionally he bumped into the open wings of doors, then again
he would make aimless, unnecessary circuits round the furniture.
Anne noticed that Thomas dropped the newspaper he was reading upon his
knees. He too was listening to the disordered steps.
Again Christopher came in collision with a door, then he stopped
nervously near the table.
“Land fetches a big price nowadays.” While he spoke he lit a cigar and
the smoke came in puffs from his lips. “It will never again fetch as
much. We ought to sell some of the building sites; we have too many; at
any rate I know of a better investment.”
Anne did not like the idea. She would have liked to keep everything as
it had been left to them by their grandfather.
“Our grandfather would be the first to exploit this exorbitant boom,”
said Christopher with unnecessary temper. “You don’t understand these
things, my dear.”
Anne sighed.
“You are right. Speak to Thomas about it.”
“To me?” Illey laughed frigidly. Looking at Christopher his expression
became haughty. “I understand that you gamble on the Stock Exchange and
that you win. Take care. It is always like that at the start and then
fortune turns. People only stop it when they have broken their necks.”
“You have to remain cool, nothing else,” growled Christopher, “one must
not lose one’s nerve. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with it. What is
your opinion about selling building sites?”
Thomas shrugged his shoulders.
“I have no opinion. I am unacquainted with the circumstances.” He was
aware that his obstinate reticence was nothing but the expression of
his disappointed hopes. Yet he could not alter it.
Christopher was delighted that everything went so smoothly. As a matter
of fact he had already sold some of the sites. Now that the deed was
done, he was given the required consent. He breathed more freely. He
would sell the old timber yard too. Otto Füger was a clever go-between.
Anne took up her work again. Thomas’s aloof indifference revolted her.
She had lost her confidence in Christopher. She suspected Otto Füger,
but she did not understand business. She had never been taught anything
but to sing, to embroider, to play the piano and to dance.
She decided that when her little girl was born, she would make her
learn everything that her mother did not know. And while still young,
she should be taught that people can never be entirely happy. She
would tell it to her simply, so that she could understand and not be
obliged later on to hug to herself something that nobody wants and
that is always unconsciously trampled on by those to whom it is vainly
proffered.
But the little girl, for whom Anne was waiting in the old house, never
came. In spring the second boy was born and he was christened Ladislaus
Thomas John Christopher in the old church, now rebuilt, at Leopold’s
town.
After that Anne was ill for a long time. The cold gleam, which had
formerly made her glance so hard, disappeared from her eye. The lines
of her fine eyebrows softened down. Her boyish bony little hands became
softer, more womanly.
Then she was about again, but the shadow of her sufferings remained on
her face.
Thomas was courteous and attentive. He brought her books. For hours he
read to her aloud, without stopping, as if driven; he seemed to fear
Anne’s gaze which his eye had to face when he put the book down. What
did this gaze want? Did it say anything, or ask, or beg, or command?
No, Anne wanted nothing more from him. The time was past when.... He
buried his face sadly in his hands.
* * * * *
Year by year Thomas became more taciturn and if Anne asked him
whether anything hurt him or if he had any worries, he shook his head
impatiently. No, there was nothing the matter with him; that was just
his Hungarian nature.
But when he took his son on his knee he told him tales of big forests,
an ancestral country house, an old garden. Fields, horses, harvests in
the glaring sun ... and his face became rejuvenated and he held his
head as of old, in the little glen, when he turned towards the sun.
Anne had become accustomed not to be told these things by her husband.
Nor did she mention Ille when letters in a female hand came thence and
one handwriting, with its shapeless, rustic characters, repeated itself
frequently. When once it happened that Otto Füger brought the mail up,
Anne found one of these letters on the piano. She took it into her hand
and the contact made her tremble. She had to struggle against herself;
was it pride, honesty, or cowardice? She put the envelope untouched on
Thomas’s table. She did not question him, she did not complain, but she
never spoke of Ille again.
From that time the name of this strange land became a ghost in the
house. They never pronounced it, but it was ever there between them.
It seemed to Anne that even now it was stealing, hostile, through the
silence, drawing Thomas away from her. Desperate fear possessed her;
she felt that she was going to be left alone in icy darkness with no
way out of it.
“Thomas,” she said imploringly, as if calling for help, “why can’t we
talk to each other?”
Illey raised his head from between his hands.
“Are you reproaching me with my nature again?”
Anne perceived impatient irritation in her husband’s voice.
“I did not mean it like that”; the woman stopped short as if a hand had
been put rudely before her mouth.
Night was pouring slowly into the sunshine room. They could not see
each other’s faces when Thomas began suddenly to listen; he seemed to
hear suppressed sobs.... No, it was imagination; his wife never cried.
They had been silent for such a long time that Anne had merely fallen
asleep in the corner of the couch. Illey rose and closed the door
noiselessly behind him.
During Anne’s illness Thomas had moved from the common bedroom into
the back room which had once belonged to Ulwing the builder. When she
improved, he did not himself know why, he remained there. His wife did
not oppose it and he was fond of the room. From the window he could
touch the leaves of the chestnut tree and after rain the smell of the
damp earth in the garden reached him.
He sat on the window sill. Outside, the trees whispered.
Thomas’s mind was gone from among the closed walls. Desire carried
his soul beyond the town. He strolled alone and was met by a breeze
smelling of rain. How he loved that! How he loved everything out of
doors: the smells, the colours, the sounds, the steaming bogs of
boiling summer, the frozen roads of winter, where one’s footsteps
ring and the branches crack as they fall. Then the wind rises from
the soughing reeds and life trembles over the world. In the furrows,
the water soaks into the ground. The wood resounds with the amorous
complaint of birds. Call ... answer. Do they always find their mate?
In his heart Thomas nearly felt the silence of the woods. The seed of
reproduction falls in this trembling, solemn peace. Birds float slowly
in the sunshine. When the hour of the crops comes, summer is there.
Harvest is in full swing everywhere and his blood is haunted with
inherited memories. How often, how often, he has stopped at the edge of
somebody else’s wheat-field and clenched his fist. Nowhere in the world
is anything growing for him.
This memory brought sad autumn weather to his mind. A deep sad fall
... and he comes in a mist towards the town. He comes like an escaped
convict brought back to his prison. Again the paved streets and narrow
strips of smoky sky. Office, blotches of ink, paper and the old house,
which is strange to him, and the lovely cold woman who does not
understand him.
Dim recollections stole upon him. Again he seemed to feel Anne’s two
little protesting hands on his breast and that unsympathetic look which
had more than once repelled his desire.
He stretched his hand out of the window towards the chestnut tree. He
picked a young shoot. The bough yielded itself easily, moist, fresh....
He thought of someone who had yielded herself as easily as the young
shoot. She had been bred there on his old land, the daughter of the
keeper in the swampy wood. Humble, as the former serf-girls had been
with his ancestors, pretty too, with laughing eyes. She never asked
what her master was brooding about, and yet she knew. The woods, the
meadows, she too thought of them and she sang of them with the very
voice of the earth. One did not need to listen, one could whistle, she
expected no praise. No more do the birds....
Thomas could not remember how it was at first that he desired the girl.
He simply wanted her, like the perfume of the woods, the soft meadows
under his feet. His inherited man-conscience did not reprove him. He
did not think there was any sin, any unfaithfulness in it, for he did
not love this girl. He really believed that he did not wrong Anne or
deprive her of anything to which she attached any importance.
He leaned again out of the window. He looked up to the sky. He would
see it to-morrow above the woods.... Then he reached for his hat. A
rare event with him, he longed to hear some gipsy music. He wanted to
be solitary, somewhere where the fiddle played for him alone.
He hesitated before Anne’s door. Should he go in? Perhaps she was still
asleep....
His steps sounded in the sunshine room. Anne jumped up. If Thomas were
to open the door she would throw herself into his arms ... but the
steps passed by.
She started to run after him, then stopped wearily before the
threshold. She would abase herself uselessly. And as she stood there
she remembered something. A dream. A desolated strange street. One
solitary person at the furthest end. Thomas ... and she runs after
him, but the distance does not become less. The street becomes longer.
Thomas seems always further and further away and she cannot reach
him....
She thought of her girlhood, the time full of promises. Was this to be
their realization? Would everything remain forever like this? Would
she and Thomas never come together again? Live with each other and look
at each other and remain strangers?
She shuddered as though she were cold.
Then she noticed that for a long time someone had been ringing the
front door bell. Who could it be? The old friends came no more to her.
Thomas was taciturn with them too. They may have thought it conceit
and all stayed away. The relations of the Illey family were avoided
by Anne. The voice of Bertha Bajmoczy stood between her and the
descendants of the old landlords.
A knock at the door. A lamp was burning in the corridor and the shape
of a man appeared in the opening.
It was Adam Walter.
“After all this time....” And Anne thought how wonderful it was that
the old friend should come back just this day when she felt her life so
poor and lonely. Joy came to her heart for a moment. It seemed to her
that her youth, her girlhood, had returned to her, with everything that
distance embellished.
Adam Walter was grave and serious like a man who has painful memories
to bury in himself. Yet his eyes followed Anne’s movements eagerly
while she reached to light the lamp. He longed and feared to see her
face again.
“She has suffered since I have seen her,” thought Adam Walter, “and it
has beautified her.” Anne’s veiled voice and her look broke open in
him a wound which he thought had long ago healed. He too remembered his
youth, when he went away from her all unsuspecting, when he worked,
when he dreamed. Then he heard that Anne had married and in the same
instant he realized that he loved her. He had loved her always.
She seemed strangely tall and slender to him. The flame flared up.
“To be here again with you ... it’s too good to be true.”
“You ought not to speak like that.” Anne smiled her old, young smile,
“or do you still say everything that passes through your mind? Do you
remember the Ferdinand Müllers? And the new sign, the white head of
Æsculapius? How we laughed....”
“In those times everything was different,” said Walter dryly.
Anne looked at him. “He too has become old. How hard his looks are,”
and the smile that had rejuvenated her vanished from her face.
And Walter’s voice became ironical.
“And I thought I would create like God, just like Him. Then my opera
failed, nobody wanted my sonatas. Nobody ... and now I am humbly
thankful to become assistant professor in the National Academy of
music.” He laughed lifelessly. “But perhaps it was bound to be like
that. When a man in his youth wants to become like God, he becomes
at least an assistant professor in the end; who knows that if he had
started with the ambition of becoming an assistant professor he would
have ended by becoming nothing at all.”
Anne looked sadly down. “So he too has failed to grasp what he reached
for. Does nobody grasp it?”
“Once upon a time we were all revolutionaries,” said Walter, “for is
not youth a revolution in itself? We are all borne to the executioner:
one for a thought, the other for a dream, and ... all of us for love.
It sounds mad, but it is so. Man must die many deaths in himself to
be able to live. I was just the same as the others and those that are
young to-day are as we were in old times. In its unlimited conceit
youth of every age believes that it has discovered the rising of the
sun and all youth shouts vehemently that its sun will never set. That
is as it ought to be. When the sun comes to set, the youth of another
age believes the same thing. Men drop out, but their faith remains in
others, and in others again, and that is the thing that matters.”
It seemed to Anne, that Adam Walter, who once, when he was young, had
guided her thoughts to freedom, now taught her the art of compromise.
Again Walter attempted to be ironical, but his voice failed him.
“Man is full of colours, brilliant colours, when he starts. They all
wear off. Only grey remains. The awful grey spreads and becomes greyer
and greyer till it covers the man and his life.”
“Oh, Walter, how sad all this is....”
“To me it is sad no more. I have got over it. Don’t be sorry for me,
please. Even for the grey people there are still some lovely things
in this world. The grey ones see other people’s colours. They alone
can see them truly. Since I have renounced creating myself, I enjoy
peacefully, profoundly, other people’s creations. Before, I was
aggressive and impatient, now I love even Schumann and Schubert, and
all those who have dreamed and who woke from their dreams.”
Anne sat with half-closed eyes, bent a little, and her pale hands were
interlocked over her knee.
“Have I grieved you?” asked Walter hesitatingly.
The woman shook her head.
“You have made me understand my own life....”
“So she is no happier than I am,” thought Walter, and for the moment he
felt irrepressibly reconciled to his fate. Then he was ashamed of the
feeling. He had no right to it. Anne was not to blame for his state of
mind. She knew nothing of it.
“Do sing something....”
She looked at him with large, beaming eyes. It was a long time since
anybody had said this to her.
They began to talk of music. And this changed them into their old
selves; they were boy and girl again, just as on Sundays in the old
days.
“Come again soon and bring your violin with you,” said Anne when they
took leave of each other. Then it struck her that neither of them had
mentioned Thomas.
Adam Walter and Thomas Illey never became friends. They met with
courteous rigidity. Adam Walter smiled disparagingly at Illey’s views,
while Illey’s mocking gaze tried to call Anne’s attention to the
musician’s ill-cut clothes and shapeless heavy boots.
It mattered little to Anne. The piano stood mute no more in the
sunshine room and a bright ray of light was cast on her life by the
revival of music, which indifference and want of appreciation had
silenced for so long. Its resurrection was her salvation. Her soul
ceased to be strangled by the torture of enforced silence; it found
relief and took flight on the wings of songs, attended, through many
quiet evenings, by Walter’s soul cast into the music of his violin.
Christopher looked in occasionally. He patted his old school-mate on
the back and whistled softly to the music while he ran through Stock
Exchange reports in the papers. Soon after his uneven steps passed
again through the corridor.
He could not find peace anywhere. Calculations swarmed in his head.
They appeared, but before he was able to grasp them they scattered and
vanished. He had no idea if he was winning or losing and he dared not
look at his accounts. Money became dearer and dearer. Banks restricted
their credit. Suspicious rumours from Vienna reached the Stock Exchange
of Pest. Quotations fluctuated and declined slowly, but he lacked the
resolution to wind up his transactions. He was still waiting, still
buying. He became intoxicated with the fascination of risks and blind
hopes. His nerves were in a constant state of tremulous tension. The
lust for gain became the torturing passion of his soul.
His grandfather had been the money’s conqueror, his father its guardian
and he, it seemed, was to become its adventurer. No matter, chance
helped adventurers.
His nights became very long. Restlessly, Christopher turned his head
from one side to the other on his hot pillow. He rose early. He was no
longer contented to send his agents on ’Change. He wanted to see the
confusion, hear the noise, feel the universal pulsation of money as
evinced in the excitement of the crowd.
He rushed through the office. Otto Füger had become manager with full
powers. He arranged the cover for speculations, he received and paid
out money in the name of the firm. Christopher had no time to see to
anything. In unbusinesslike handwriting he put his name to anything.
Then he rushed away, leaving the doors open behind him.
It was a lovely May morning.
At the Exchange in Dorothea Street brokers stood on the stairs and
transacted their business, leaning against the balustrade. Men stood
in small groups in the acid, stuffy air of the cloak-room. Subdued
talk was heard here and there. An old fat man with his hat perched on
the back of his head, passed wheat between his fingers from one hand
to the other. Near the window a red-haired broker held some crushed
maize in the palm of his hand. He lifted it up, now and then, and at
intervals pushed his tongue out between his yellow teeth. Scattered
grain crackled under people’s feet.
Doors banged in the big hall of the Stock Exchange. The lesser fry was
pushed back. There was a crush round the bankers’ boxes. Slowly the
masters of the Exchange arrived. People saluted them respectfully,
as if they were paid for it. The unimportant ones used to read their
faces, the gestures of their hands. The great ones looked indifferent,
though they were the men who held the secrets which mean money. Nervous
heads swayed round a fat, owl-like face. Those behind pressed eagerly
forward.
Near Christopher a red-eyed, seedy-looking man shrank to the wall.
A worn out, long, silk purse was in his hand. He began to suck the
ivory ring of the purse; people collided with him and the ring knocked
against his teeth; but he went on sucking it.
“I sell....”
“I buy ...” cries came from all sides like the shrieks of hawks.
Somebody’s hat fell on the floor ... it was trampled under foot. A
freckled hand waved a bundle of papers.
“I sell ...” it came denser and denser. The brokers of the big banks
shouted themselves hoarse. The noise increased. The stocks fell.
“Now ... now is the time to buy,” thought Christopher in deadly
excitement. His shrieks joined the general pandemonium.
“People’s Bank, ninety-two....”
“Eighty ...” bellowed a brute voice.
“Seventy-six....”
Arms rose. Hands moved from their wrists, flabby, like rags.
“Industrial Bank....”
“Credit Institute....”
“Forty-five ... forty-two.”
Faces were aflame. The gamble became a wildfire, roasting people’s
skins. Rumours spread through the hall. Nobody knew whence they came,
they simply were suddenly there and then scattered all over the place.
A deafening uproar followed. People blindly believed anything. Prices
fell. Somebody bought. Blind confidence returned.
“I buy....”
Unconfirmed news of disaster came again. The whole ’Change became
a whirlpool, as if it had been stirred round. Nobody knew what was
happening. Telegram forms flew over the place. Fists beat wildly on the
air.... Everything was upside down.
A man with sweaty face flew like an arrow into the crowd.
“There is a Black Saturday in Vienna! News has just arrived. There is a
slump all over Europe.” Quotations fell head over heel.
A big broker tried to stem the tide. It swept him away. It was all
over.... In a few seconds people, families, institutions, were ruined.
Lost were the easily-won fortunes of the day before, never seen by
those who owned them. Lost were the old fortunes amassed by the hard
work of several generations....
Christopher leaned his snow-white face against the wall. Near him, the
seedy-looking man continued mechanically to suck the ring of his purse.
He could not take his eyes off him. He stared at him while he was
ruined.
The brokers came panting. No, it was now impossible to sell anything.
What stood for money an hour ago had become a valueless scrap of paper.
The porter of the Stock Exchange rang the bell. The death-knell.
Christopher could only mumble. Nobody listened to him, his own agents
left him there. Only the weird man looked at him with funny, bloodshot
eyes.
Then strange faces passed quite near to his face. A sickening smell
of perspiration moved with them in the air. Christopher’s eyes became
rigid and glassy. Faces ... faces of a strange race. Some smiled pale
smiles. These had won. Everything would be theirs, it was only a
question of time. Theirs the gold, the town, the country.
And the grandson of Ulwing the builder, ruined, tottered through the
gates of the Stock Exchange among the new men.
Life became confused and dreary. After Black Saturday, the Stock
Exchange differences were enormous. No bright Sunday shone for
Christopher. He had to pay, and, as he had never reckoned, he attacked
Anne’s fortune too. This was a secret between Otto Füger and himself.
He said nothing of it to Thomas.
He clutched like a drowning man. He wanted to turn everything into
money. To hide the truth, to keep up appearances as long as possible
... fighting, lying. Sometimes Otto Füger whispered into his ears and
then he shrivelled up and looked horrified at the door.
“No, no, tell them to-morrow.... It cannot be done to-day!”
From day to day, from hour to hour, he kept things going and the
strings of his nerves tightened in his neck. To gain time, if only
minutes ... even a minute is a long time for a man clinging to his life.
Summer passed like this and then, in autumn, came the terrible wave
of bankruptcy affecting the whole building trade. The firm of Münster
became insolvent. Many of the new businesses went bankrupt. Christopher
alone kept himself still going and one afternoon he carried his last
hope to Paternoster Street.
No one took any notice of him in the office. One inferior clerk to
whom he told his name stared over his head. He had to wait a long time
before he entered the manager’s office.
The manager was reading a letter at his writing-table and seemed to
take no notice of his presence. Christopher could not help remembering
how different everything had been when he signed his first bill in
this same office. The smoky low room had disappeared and the business
occupied the whole building. It had become a bank.
His eyes were arrested by the fat, owl-like head of the all-powerful
manager. He recognised in him suddenly the little owl-faced clerk who
in those old times cringed humbly before him. The proportions of his
face had doubled since, and so had his body; there was scarcely room
enough for him in the armchair.
The director came to the letter’s end. He lowered his head like a bull
preparing to charge and his dull eyes looked suspiciously over his
spectacles at Christopher.
“I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Ulwing? Yes ... of course, of
course, I know the firm. A connection dating from our youth....
Once I happened to have the good fortune of meeting a certain old
Mr. Christopher Ulwing. Any relation of yours? A powerful man, a
distinguished man.”
“My grandfather....”
The manager became at once very polite. He offered Christopher a seat.
“Can I be of any service to you?”
Christopher was startled by this question, though he had naturally
expected it. He cast his eyes down, pale, suffering. He would have
liked to defer the answer. Until it was given there was still one last
hope. After that none might be left.
Owl-face moved the side-pieces of his gold-rimmed spectacles which made
an impression on his fleshy temples.
“I am at your orders,” he said a little impatiently, looking at the
clock on the wall.
Christopher made an effort.
“I want a loan.”
The manager at once became cold and haughty.
“Everybody wants one nowadays. Black Saturday has ruined many people.”
“I don’t deny that it has caused some temporary embarrassment to my
firm too....”
“I know,” said the manager drily.
The whole face of Christopher was anxiously convulsed.
“A short loan would help me considerably....”
“What security do you offer? The name of Ulwing?” Owl-face smiled,
“that I am afraid is no longer enough....”
“My books are at your disposal, allow me ...” stuttered Christopher. He
felt clearly that he was humiliating himself before a stranger, though
he knew but dared not confess to himself that it was useless. He also
knew that it was hopeless to argue and still he argued.
The manager looked coldly into his eyes.
“The Bank is carefully informed of everything.”
Christopher drew his head between his shoulders as if expecting a blow.
He twisted his mouth helplessly to one side.
“You came too late to me, much too late,” continued Owl-face. “Is it
not a fact that the house alone remains the property of the Ulwings?
It is true it could not be sold at present. Times are bad, but if I
remember aright the grounds are exceptionally large, well situated in
the middle of the town, and could bear a heavy mortgage.”
Christopher hung his head in desperation. The manager looked at him
over his spectacles expectantly. For an instant, kind, human pity
appeared in his eyes, then he sighed and dropped his hand with a heavy
movement on his knee.
“I can lend you money on the house. That is the only way I can do it.”
With a motion of his hand, Christopher waved the suggestion away. He
was in the mire, but he had strength enough to escape drowning in it.
He struggled no more with himself. He felt he could never touch the
house. At least let that be preserved clear for Anne. The house, the
dear old house....
The banker rose when he had shaken hands with Christopher and went with
him to the door.
“I was a great admirer of Mr. Ulwing the builder. I am sorry I cannot
oblige his grandson. Perhaps another time,” he added in a murmur, as if
he did not believe it himself.
Christopher smiled convulsively, painfully. Even when he reached the
street this smile remained on his face and tortured his features.
He caught hold of the corner of his mouth and pulled it downwards,
sideways.
He did not know where he went. He ran into people. An old gentleman
shouted at him angrily:
“Can’t you look out, young man?”
Christopher looked at him wearily. He thought how this old man was
younger than he, because he would live longer than he.
When he reached home, he threw himself on his bed. Curiously, he fell
asleep at once. The heavy dreams of exhaustion took possession of him.
Sweat ran from his brow.
When he woke, it was quite dark in the room. At first he knew not where
he was, nor what had happened. Then, with a shock, he remembered.
He moaned like a suffering animal that cannot tell its pains.... He
could stand solitude no more. Already he was on the threshold. On the
staircase he looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. He knocked timidly at
the door of the sunshine room.
“Anne, are you asleep?”
“Yes, a long time ago,” answered his sister inside. The door opened.
Anne tried to look gay, but her eyes were sad.
“Do you remember, Christopher, how often you asked that question in the
old times from your little railed bed?”
“And you answered then as you did now. Then too I was afraid.”
Anne looked him straight in the eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Christopher laughed curiously.
“Can’t I make a joke when I am merry? And what are you doing so late?”
He looked at the table. Under the shaded lamp lay account books and
bills.
“I have learnt about accounts,” said Anne wearily, “so many bills have
accumulated lately. The tradesmen worry me and I receive no money from
the office. I cannot understand why Otto Füger delays things like
this.” She stopped suddenly, thinking of something else. “Did you
hear?” and she began to run towards the nursery.
Christopher dragged his steps behind her.
On the chest of drawers a night-lamp was burning. In the deep recess of
the earthenware stove water was warming in a jug. Anne leaned over one
of the beds and her voice sounded softly in the silence of the room:
“Here I am....”
Christopher’s heart was touched by these three short words, which meant
so much. He too had, once upon a time, slept in the very same little
bed, he too had waked with a start, had been afraid, but no mother’s
voice came to say: “Here I am.” He had never known a light cool hand
caressing for caresses’ sake, two warm womanly arms embracing chastely,
nor the clear smile that has no design. He did not know her who
understands all and forgives all, and who says when one is miserable:
“Here I am!” Yet just that might have been enough to alter his life.
“They are lucky,” muttered Christopher as he went back to the sunshine
room. Anne, before shutting the door behind her, put a piece of paper
between the two wings. She never forgot that. The loose old doors had
glass panes and rattled if a carriage passed down below in the street;
this frightened little Ladislaus.
“This ought to be set right....”
Christopher sat in silence in the corner of the sofa with the many
flowers. He paid no attention. Under his motionless eyelids he looked
wearily all round the room. He noticed suddenly that Anne said nothing.
Why did she not speak? She would help him if she said something,
anything, words, ordinary matter-of-fact everyday words, which had a
sound, which lived and caught hold of his mind, which held him back if
only for a minute at the brink of the abyss which threatened him and
filled him with horror.
“Anne, tell me a story.”
She looked up from the little drawer into which she had locked her
bills.
“Tell you a story? What are you thinking about? How can I tell a story
who am living within four walls?” she smiled and put her hand on her
brother’s shoulder.
“Well, little Chris, once upon a time there was an old house: in that
house lived a woman who never could sleep her fill, because her two
sons waked her up early every morning....”
Christopher’s face twitched as he rose.
“You are right, let us go to sleep....” He bent down and kissed his
sister’s hand. “Good night, Anne, and....” He wanted to say something
more, but turned his head away with an effort and left the room.
In the corridor he stopped near the loose stone slab and tried it. It
was still loose. The ticking of the marble clock accompanied him once
more down the stairs.
In his deep, vaulted room a candle was burning, but the small flame
could not cope with the big room and left cavelike dark corners. A big
white spot attracted Christopher’s eyes. While he had been with Anne,
the servant had made his bed and his clothes for the morrow were lying
there ready on a chair. He could not bear this sight. To-morrow.... He
choked. In that moment a delicate crackling reached his ear. He turned
towards it.
The fire was burning in the stove and shone through the old tiles.
Christopher went up to it, leaned his hand on the stove and looked
through the ventilators. Small flames flickered among the logs. He
looked at them for some time with extraordinary interest, then raised
himself with a sigh.
Life had deprived him of everything. Whenever he inspected closely
things he believed in, he always found them to be delusions, just like
the stove fairies. He had been running after delusions too when he had
fallen. He had broken when he fell; it was useless to try to stand up
again; he could do it no more. Even if he could, what good would it be?
All the people he had come in contact with had broken a piece off his
soul, taken it with them and cast it away. Where was he to seek the
scattered pieces?... What was left to him was too little for life. A
little honour, very little. A little pity for Anne ... nothing else.
His hand slid from the stove. Why warm it now, it was no longer worth
while....
He went to the writing-table. Then, as if disgusted, he pushed the
papers away from himself. He turned back at the threshold. He threw a
packet of letters into the fire. He put his watch and his empty purse
on the table. No, he had nothing else on him.
In the garden the autumnal leaves rustled gently, as if somebody’s
teeth chattered in the dark. Christopher slunk with bent back out of
the gate ... only the two pillar-men looked after him.
“Just like a thief.” Somehow, he could not understand why, his
grandfather’s funeral came to his mind. The mayor, the city councillors,
the flags of the guilds. The priests sang and the bells tolled.... He
leaned back, then he went on with his unsteady, heavy steps.
The night was dense. In the mist the city looked like a reflection in
grey, murky water. The light of the gas lamps faded away into the air,
the walls of the houses faded, the people’s faces faded. With a shudder
Christopher turned up the collar of his coat.
He reached the Danube. He sought his way between the barrels and bags
of the docks. Then he sat down on the lowest step, put his arms around
his shins and leaned his forehead on his knees. He only wanted to rest
for an instant. Just for a short time.
He opened his eyes. Why did he wait? All that was worth waiting for had
gone.
In the damp air, the Danube seemed to rise.... It approached him with a
soft black movement. He shrank back instinctively, as if to escape, and
his hands clung in horror to the stones.
Suddenly this passed away. The great river became beautiful and calm.
The lamps of the shore dipped swaying stairs of fire into the deep. The
river ceased to be hostile to Christopher. It whispered to him and, as
if recognising him, it called him, as it had called the Ulwings of old.
The tired soul of Christopher responded to the appeal and his body
followed his soul.
After that he never came back again.
CHAPTER XVII
Things and events in which Christopher had had a hand passed slowly,
painfully into oblivion. Hope was exhausted and the old house awaited
no more the home-coming of the last Ulwing.
Anne knew everything.... The huge fortune of Ulwing the builder was
shattered before anybody had raised its gold to the sun. This fortune
had never shone and those still living only realized its immensity when
they saw its ruins.
Thomas choked when he told Anne the truth. He was horrified by the
words he had to pronounce, he feared he would break his wife’s heart.
Anne listened to him silently with bowed head, only her face became
deadly pale and her eyes turned dim like the eyes of one dangerously
ill.
“For a long time I have feared this would happen,” she whispered
gently, and straightened herself up with a great effort as if to face
the misfortune. She seemed suddenly taller than usual. Her expression
became clear and brave and the fine lines of her chin strong and
determined.
“Don’t spare me anything, Thomas. I want to know all.” After that she
only said that Christopher’s creditors were to be paid in full; she
would have no stain on the name of Ulwing.
During the period that followed, Anne bore her ruin with the same
dominating will power that Ulwing the builder had shown in building up
his fortune. Thomas Illey discovered in Anne something he had not known
hitherto. An incomprehensible strength exuded from her, the tenacious
strength of the woman, which can be greater among ruins than when it is
called upon to build.
Nobody ever heard her complain of the loss of her fortune, nor did
anybody ever see her weep. Only on the sides of her forehead a silvery
gleam began to appear in the warm, shaded gold of her hair.
Thomas Illey was now forced to concern himself with the Ulwing
business. He asked for leave from his official duties and in front of
the grated ground-floor window of the builder’s former office he worked
hard with his lawyer among the muddled books. He arranged matters with
the creditors, and the firm of Ulwing, known by three generations,
ceased to exist.
The small tablet was removed from the office door. The employés were
paid off. Of the ancient ones, only a few remained, old Gemming and Mr.
Feuerlein. The eyes of the clerk were very red when he took leave of
Anne. In the corridor, he turned back several times; he stopped on the
stairs; with knees knocking together he went round the garden and took
a white pebble with him as a keepsake.
When they had gone, Otto Füger alone remained in his place for the
liquidation. Thomas rang for him. He asked for explanations. Vague
excuses were the answer.
“He knows nothing about it,” thought Otto Füger and waited impatiently
for the hour when he would be free.
Illey appeared always cool. He did not grope, and never lost his head.
He listened quietly to the end and stuck his hands into his pockets
while Füger took leave with deep obeisances.
But he went unusually slowly up the stairs. When he turned from the
sordid details of the dissipation of this huge fortune, he was driven
to frenzy by the thought that an infinitely small portion of it would
have saved him the torture of his invincible longing for the lands of
Ille which had tarnished the years of his youth. He was wrung by a
bitterness that robbed him of speech when he came to face Anne.
She looked at him.
“Are you tired, Thomas?”
Illey shook his head and pressed his open hand for an instant to his
chest, as if something weighed on him in the left breast-pocket of his
coat.
Anne struggled silently with her thoughts. She was convinced that if
Thomas had made up his mind years ago to do the work he had done now,
Christopher might be alive, the firm might be alive, and the fortune
too.
They accused each other without exchanging a word. Only when a long
time had passed did they notice, both of them, that their silence had
become cold and horrible and that they could not alter it.
After a few days the lawyer stopped his visits. Thomas locked up the
business books and had the shutters fixed in the old study of Ulwing
the builder. He seemed quite calm now, only his face was thinner than
usual. In the outer office he stopped in front of Otto Füger and looked
motionlessly down on him.
The former book-keeper became embarrassed.
“Sad work,” he stuttered, while he took off his spectacles and wiped
them energetically, holding them near to his eyes.
“Scoundrel,” said Thomas Illey with imperturbable calm, “you did your
stealing cleverly.”
Otto Füger stared at him confounded. He was not prepared for this. His
lips parted, he wanted to protest.
Illey looked down on him from head to foot. He exclaimed:
“Clear out!” and, as Füger did not move, he gripped him by the
shoulders and without apparent effort, thrust him out of the door. The
spectacles had fallen to the ground; as if he would not touch them
with his hand for fear of pollution, Thomas pushed them with the tip of
his shoe to the threshold.
Otto Füger spoke excitedly under the porch:
“Defamation of character.... We shall meet again. Then we shall see.
I’ll have the law on you....”
He never did. It was not in his interest to make a scandal. He was a
rich man now.
* * * * *
In the old house life became quiet and economical. The offices on the
ground floor were let to strangers. The lodgings of Mrs. Henrietta
and the stables were transformed into a warehouse by a wine-merchant.
He built up the windows and doors towards the back garden and made an
entrance from the street. Horses and carriages passed to strangers. Of
the servants only Florian and Netti remained, and old Mamsell Tini, who
wiped clandestine tears from her long, rigid face.
Of late years the whole neighbourhood of the house had changed. In
place of the old timber yard strange apartment houses had risen
and their grimy walls looked hideously and impertinently into the
garden. Between the Ulwing house and the Danube a narrow street with
four-storey buildings. From her window Anne could no longer see the
lovely, wide river, the Castle hill, the spires, the Jesuits’ Stairs up
which she once used to climb to Uncle Sebastian. Morning came later to
the rooms than formerly. The houses opposite sent their shadows into
the windows. The sun shone into them no more and night fell earlier
than of old.
Anne thought often that if her grandfather were to come back he would
feel strange in his old town and would not find his way home.
The town grew rapidly and the years flew still faster. Everything
became faster than in the old times. Anne remembered how, when she was
a child, time passed smoothly, calmly, while now it rushed by as if it
went downhill.
Thomas had a high and influential post in his office. For a long time
the two boys had been going to school, and Anne, hearing their lessons,
learned more than she had known before.
In the garden the flowers began to bloom; the holidays came; then it
was again winter.
Christmas eve.
Not the former Christmas of childhood when all was wonder, when the
Christmas tree with shining candles was brought from woods beyond the
earth by angels above the snow-covered house tops. This was a Christmas
suitable for grown-up people, a sober Christmas.
The boys smiled at the old tales. They themselves had decorated the
tree the evening before. After supper they both felt sleepy and
gathered their presents quietly together in the sunshine room.
George had received a watch and books and a real gun from his father.
His mother had given building bricks to little Ladislaus.
“Hurry up. It is late,” said Thomas.
Sleep suddenly forsook the boys’ eyes. “Next Christmas I shall ask
for things to build a bridge with,” decided the smaller boy with true
childlike insatiability.
George shrugged his shoulders.
“If I were you I should ask for horses like those we saw in the shop
window the other day. When I was little they did not make such lovely
toys as they do now.”
“You are for ever thinking of horses,” retorted the little son. “I want
to build bridges. When I am grown up I shall build a bridge over the
Danube and get a lot of toll from everybody.”
“Don’t be silly,” said the elder, “as if one could not get rich with
horses!”
Thomas smiled and looked at his wife.
“They have got your grandfather’s fine blood in them.”
Anne looked after the boys. The younger was fair and blue-eyed like
the Ulwings. His bony little fist resembled his great-grandfather’s
powerful hand and when he got into a temper his jaw went to one side
and his eyes became cold.
“Yes, but their appearance and movements are yours, the shape of their
heads too,” said she, and, a thing she had not done for a long time,
she stroked Thomas’s head where it curved in such a noble, fine line
into his neck. She did it out of gratitude, because she loved his
blood in her sons. Then her hand slid into her husband’s shoulder and
an inordinate longing came over her to lean her forehead on it. But
what would Thomas think of it? After all these years? Perhaps he would
be astonished and misconstrue it? She blushed faintly and recovered
herself. She remembered that whenever she was seeking pure tenderness,
Thomas gave her something else. Men never understand women when they
ask them for something for their soul.
Anne stood a moment longer near her husband and then, as if overflowing
with feelings she could not express, she moved irresistibly towards the
piano.
“You want to sing?” asked Thomas, out of humour now. “Has not Adam
Walter promised to come? You will be able to have plenty of music then.”
Anne stopped and looked at him over her shoulder. The corners of her
eyes and lips rose slowly, sadly.
“Come and sit by me,” said Thomas, “let us talk.”
“Talk....” The word repeated itself on Anne’s lips like a lifeless
echo. Was not this word only a name, the name of something that never
came when called for?
They looked at each other enquiringly for a little, then there was
resigned silence. There had been so many short words and long silences
between them, during which they were going further and further apart,
retreating into their own souls instead of coming nearer to each
other, that they had to make a fresh start if they wanted to talk to
each other. A start from a painfully long distance and ... this was
Christmas eve.
“Do you hear?”
Anne shuddered and looked shiveringly towards the dark rooms.
A delicate sound repeated itself obstinately, like the sound of a tiny
drill working in the depth of things. It started over and over again.
For an instant it came from under the whitewash of the ceiling, then up
from the floor, from the windows, from the beams, from everywhere.
“Do you hear?” asked Thomas and his hands stopped in the air in the
middle of the movement.
“I have heard it for a long time.” Anne’s lips trembled while she tried
to smile. They both became silent again and the weevil continued its
work in the old house.
Thomas started when the steps of Adam Walter resounded from the
corridor. He went to meet him and took the violin case out of his hand.
“Welcome, dear troubadour,” then, as if he had himself noticed his
careless irony, he added: “Do sit down, my dear professor,” and offered
cigars to his guest.
“But of course, you want to make music. My wife has already started,
an hour ago, to air the piano.” He laughed quietly, looking mockingly
at the end of Walter’s necktie which pointed rigidly into the air
beside his white collar.
“What is the news in town?”
“I only see musicians,” said Walter with good-natured condescension,
“and they are fighting at present over the score of the artist Richard
Wagner’s Parsifal. They are coming to blows.”
“Do tell me, professor, do you really take those things seriously? Do
you consider Art something quite serious?”
Adam Walter wrinkled his low brow. He smiled with mocking forbearance.
Anne looked at him as if making a request that he should not continue
the subject. It was always painful to her when her husband talked of
these things. She found him on these occasions hopelessly inconsequent,
obstinately perverse. She did not like to see him like that.
“I know you are angry if I say so,” Thomas continued lightheartedly,
“but my Hungarian breed can see nothing in Art but an explanatory
imitation of Nature. We have no need of artists to stand between us and
living nature. Any shepherd or cowherd can see the sunset of the great
plain without the need of having its beauty worked into verses.”
Walter turned away as if he tried to escape Anne’s irresistible
imploring look. He wanted to answer, for he felt he ought to answer.
“I understand music only. I can speak of that alone. That is not an
explanatory imitation of nature, it is man’s only artistic achievement
which lives in him, and comes out of his very own self.”
“I think so too,” said Anne gently. “Every art represents what exists,
music alone creates what has never existed.”
“How they agree,” thought Thomas, vexed. Then, rather disdainfully:
“Do not the musicians learn from the reeds, the thunder, the wind, the
birds?”
“Nature only knows harmony and discord,” answered Adam Walter, “melody
has been created by man. Nature knows no melody.”
“Don’t say so, professor; have you never walked in the woods? Have you
never slept on the moss near a brook?”
Adam Walter shook his head.
“I am afraid we don’t understand each other.”
“It seems impossible,” said Illey. “You are one of those who like the
painted landscape more than the real, live country. I don’t want to
smell the violet in the scent bottle, but at the edge of the woods.”
Walter looked suddenly at Anne and then, as if comparing her with
Thomas.
“Mr. Illey, you seem to me like the music of the Tsigans.”
“Tsigan music,” repeated Anne thoughtfully, “and I, what am I?”
“You are a song by Schubert,” answered the musician.
“The two don’t fit well together.... Do light a cigar, professor. But,
of course, you want to make music.”
But that day Adam Walter did not draw his violin from its case. A small
nosegay was in it. It was meant for Anne, but it remained there too. He
took it away with him, out into the snow, back into the white Christmas
night.
When he came again he brought a larger bunch of flowers. It was a poor,
ungainly bunch wrapped up in a newspaper. He put it awkwardly on the
piano near Anne, and became more and more embarrassed.
“Please don’t thank me, it is not worth it. I thought of it quite by
chance.”
Something flashed into Anne’s face which resembled pain. She did not
hear Walter’s voice any more, she knew no more that he had brought
her flowers; all she remembered was that Thomas never, never gave her
flowers.
“Why? ...” and her hands raised doubtful, dreamy chords from the
piano. Her tender, meek face became unconsciously tragical. She began
to sing.... A deep question sang through her voice. The whole life
of a woman sobbed in it, complained, implored. It rent the heart, it
clamoured for the unattainable, the promises of past youth, the dream,
the realization.
Adam Walter became obsessed by the rapt womanly voice. He went to the
door, shut it carelessly, then leaned immobile against the wall.... He
stood there spellbound, even after the last sound had died away. He was
not in time to harden his features into calmness, and Anne understood
his expression, because she was suffering herself at the time. She
received with a grateful smile the tenderness which came to her....
They remained like that for an instant. Anne was the first to awake.
And as if she wanted to wake him, she looked towards the door.
“I closed it,” said Walter humbly, “in order that your voice should be
nobody’s but mine....”
Then he left and she gazed for a long time into the growing darkness.
Her tenderness, which she had thought long extinct, was now ablaze.
Thomas came in. Anne remembered that her husband was going to shoot and
knew he came to take leave.
“Has the troubadour gone?” Illey looked round the room. Suddenly he saw
the flowers on the piano. “Now he has started to bring you flowers?”
Anne looked at him.
“Do you know, Thomas, it has struck me that you never give me any
flowers.”
“You don’t think I am going to give you flowers grown on somebody
else’s land?” Illey laughed harshly and left the room without a kiss,
without a word of farewell.
They had never yet parted like this. Anne looked after him amazed.
“Have a good time!” she shouted and did not recognize her own voice. It
could be cold and indifferent.
When Thomas descended the stairs, the sound of Anne’s piano reached
him. A sad song echoed through the house.... He slammed the street door
furiously, as if he sought to slay the music. He looked up from the
cab. He suddenly remembered that Anne once used to look after him from
the window. Once ... a long time ago....
“She is probably pleased now when I go and she can live for her music.
That is what draws her and Adam Walter together.” He rejected roundly
the image of Walter. He did not want to think of him and Anne at the
same time, yet the two images would get mixed up in his brain and he
felt as if he had been robbed.
The sound of the cab had passed. In the twilight of the sunshine room
the music had broken off. Anne began to nurse the burning bitterness
with which she thought of her husband. Could he not see that she
suffered, that her smiles, her calm, her indifference were all his?
Did he not know her face was all a mummery? A mask ... fearfully she
raised her hand to her face as though she would snatch something from
it....
At that moment a dawning light glimmered in the depths of her mind,
mounting up through innumerable memories. An old, once meaningless
tale worked its way out slowly from oblivion. First she only saw the
setting: the small clockmaker’s shop, her grandfather in front of a
large, semi-circular window, the old hand of Uncle Sebastian, the
violet-coloured tail coat, the buckled shoes. She heard his voice
again. Broken, unconnected words came to her mind, reached her heart
... and then, suddenly, there was light.
“No, people don’t know what their neighbour’s real face is like....
Everybody wears a mask, nobody has the courage to take it off, nobody
dares to be the first because he cannot know whether the others will
follow his example, or stone him.”
Anne’s thoughts repeated in despair the words of the old story:
“Everybody wears a mask, everybody....” And perhaps the proud alone
were the charitable, for they wore the mask of silence.
“Thomas,” she uttered his name aloud, as of old, when their love began.
It seemed to her that she had found a torch which, on the dark road,
lit up her husband’s real face. She began to expect him, though she
knew he could not come back so soon. She waited for him through many
long hours. Next day too she waited.
Evening came. Adam Walter arrived and again brought some flowers in his
violin-case.
Anne became absent-minded and restless. The flowers only brought Thomas
to her mind. Adam Walter’s voice seemed strange to her and his ardent
glances irritated her. To-day not even music could bring them together.
While reading the music, Anne listened continually for sounds below. A
cab stopped at the door. Steps in the corridor. She rose involuntarily
and stretched her arms out as if she wanted to stop someone who passed
by.... The noise ceased outside and her arms felt weary.
Adam Walter watched her attentively and at the same time peered
relentlessly into his own mind. He too felt now what so many others had
suffered; he thought with physical pain of the other who was expected
and passed by.... An expression of despair passed over his face. Then,
as if sneering at himself, he raised his low brows and put his violin
aside.
She started and looked at him enquiringly.
“I can’t to-day.” Walter’s voice attempted to be harsh and repellent,
but his eyes were hopelessly sad.
Anne did not detain him when he started to go. She felt relieved; now
there was no more need to control her expression, her movements. She
ran towards her husband’s room.
Thomas stood with his back to the door in the middle of the room.
“So you no longer even come to see me?” she asked, and there was warmth
in her voice.
“I knew you had company. I wanted to be alone.”
Anne stepped back but she did not leave the room as she would have done
at any other time. Thomas started walking up and down. Several times he
touched his left breast pocket and pressed his open hand against his
chest. He stopped suddenly before Anne.
“I thank you for staying,” he said excitedly. “I must speak to you.”
Anne looked at him frightened. “Has anything happened to you?”
“No, nothing. Listen.... Ille is for sale.”
Thomas sat down on the window sill as if he were tired. He related
how he was shooting over the swampy wood. One of the beaters told him
that the property of Ille was again up for auction. Those to whom it
belonged were ruined and had left the place. He could not resist and he
walked all over the property, a thing he had never done before. An old
farm hand recognized him. He called him young master as in old times,
though his hair was turning grey. The bailiff recognized him too. And
he saw the big garden, the roof of the house, the free Danube, the
barn, the tree with the swing, whose bark still showed the marks of the
ropes.
“You understand, Anne, all this is for sale, cheap, it could be ours.
And there my life would have a purpose. You know, for the sake of
the boys.... A family survives only if it is rooted in the soil. It
is hopeless for a tree to cast its seeds on the pavements of cities;
lasting life is impossible there. The families of city folk are like
their houses and last but three generations. Country people are like
the earth. The earth outlives a house.... If only I could go home,
everything would be different.”
Astonishment disappeared from Anne’s face and an indescribable terror
appeared in its stead.
“And the house! We shall have to leave here!”
“Don’t be frightened,” said Thomas icily. “I do not want you to leave
the house for my sake. I never asked you for a sacrifice. Nor will I
now. But I can’t stand this any longer.”
Every word wounded Anne.
“Why do you hurt me like this?”
“So you would come with me?” He looked at her incredulously,
inquiringly. “Is it possible? You would come with me, to me, now when I
have grown old and your love for me has passed away?”
Anne smiled sadly.
“Don’t you think, Thomas, that the memories of the road we have trodden
together are as strong a tie as love?”
He again drew his hand over his left breast pocket and then let it
slip quickly to his waist as if it had been done accidentally.
This movement caused Anne some anxiety. She remembered that it had
become frequent lately. She thought no more of her troubles.
“What is the matter with you? What has happened?” She turned back the
frilly silk shade of the lamp with a rapid movement.
They looked at each other as if they had not met for a very long
time.... When did their ways part? When, for what word, for what
silence? Neither of them remembered. It must have been long ago and
since then they had walked through life side by side, without each
other.
Anne leaned over Thomas. It seemed to her that they had met at last on
the dark road and that she saw, through Uncle Sebastian’s story, into
the face she had never understood.
“You have suffered too, Thomas....” And as if he were her child she
took his head tenderly between her hands. She pressed it to her
bosom and gently stroked his grey-sprinkled hair, his wrinkles. She
wanted to ask forgiveness of Thomas for the marks left by their sad
misunderstandings. Every touch of her hand demolished one of the
barriers that had stood between them and had obstructed their vision.
“I have not been kind to you,” he said sadly, “I passed from your side
because I thought of nothing but of my craving for my land.”
“And I thought something quite different,” answered Anne, in a whisper.
“You said nothing and I am not one of those who can question. We both
kept silent and that was our misfortune. I see now that silence can
only cover things, but cannot efface them. Dear God, why did you not
tell me your heart’s desire? Why did you not speak while we were still
rich?”
Thomas took his wife’s hand and kissed it.
“I was afraid you would not understand. You understand me now--and it
is not too late.”
“But how could we buy Ille?” she asked anxiously.
“Do you remember that swampy wood? Once nobody wanted it, now I am
offered a good price for it. That would go some way and I might take
the present mortgage over.”
Anne’s eyes opened wide with fear. She thought of Christopher who had
been swallowed up by financial obligations.
“I shall work,” said Thomas and his voice became quite youthful, “and
pay off the debts.”
“Debts,” repeated Anne mechanically and the practical blood of Ulwing
the builder rose in her.
“No, Thomas, we don’t build on debts!” She said this with such force as
she had never before put into her speech with her husband.
Thomas stared at her darkly for an instant. Then his figure bent up in
a curious way and while he turned aside he made a gesture as if casting
something away.
This gesture went to Anne’s heart. In her despair, she must make
another effort, fight a last fight at the cost of any sacrifice. And
while her bewildered mind was seeking for a solution, her eye followed
her husband’s glance instinctively, through the window, to the garden
where, under the evening sky the steep roof descended near the gargoyle.
Both looked at it silently. The two wills were fighting no more against
each other and Anne felt with relief that they thought in unison. She
buried her face in her hands convulsively, as if pressing a mask on it,
a mask heavier than the old one, one she would have to bear now, for
ever, for the rest of her life. Then she looked up.
“We must sell the house.”
In that moment, within the ancient walls, a cord, strained for a long
time, suddenly snapped in great, invisible pain.
CHAPTER XVIII
Strange steps walked through the house, indifferent, careless steps.
They passed along the corridor and went up even to the attics. Down
in the courtyard bleak business voices bargained and depreciated
everything. They said that the ground alone had any value that could
be discussed. As for the building, it did not count--a useless old
chattel, no longer conforming to modern requirements.
Anne looked round as if fearing that the house might hear this. She
felt tempted to shout to the agents to clear out of the place and never
dare to come back again. Let old Florian lock the gate. Let the days be
again as secure as of old, when there was no fear that they must break
off their lives in the old house and have to continue elsewhere.
In the green room an agent knocked at the wall and laughed.
“Strong as a fortress. The pickaxe will have hard work with these old
bricks.”
Anne could listen no more. She moved herself to the furthest room
and hid so that Thomas might not look into her eyes. Why destroy her
husband’s bliss? He was so contented and grateful. He worked, planned,
discussed, bargained. At the auction Ille had fallen to him and his
eyes glistened marvellously when he spoke of it. “Soon our house at
home will be ready, and the farm too. Everything in its old place, the
furniture, the pictures, the servants, the bailiff, the agent, even the
old housekeeper. The crops are promising.... Are you pleased, Anne? You
rejoice with me, don’t you? The earth will produce for us.”
Feverishly, disorderly haste spoke in his voice, in his actions. Anne
was tired and slow; it took her a long time to go from one room to
another; there was so much to be looked at on her way....
Thomas prepared for re-union and counted the days impatiently; Anne
took leave and woke every morning with fear.
“Nothing has happened yet.” She looked round, and, being alone, she
repeated it aloud so that the walls might hear it.... Then again she
was frightened. “Perhaps to-day ... to-night....”
Then the day came.
A stranger walked with Thomas in the back garden. He trod on the flower
beds and turned his head several times towards the house. Anne saw
his owl-like face from the staircase window, watched his movements
anxiously. He too bargained and depreciated everything. She began to
hope: perhaps he would go away like the others, life would remain in
its old groove and the day which was to be the last day of all would
never come.
The owl-like face began to ascend under the vaults of the staircase and
smiled. It looked into the sunshine room. Vainly Anne fled from it; she
met it again in the green room.
The stranger, feeling quite at home, leaned now against the writing
table with the many drawers and said something to Thomas.
Anne did not understand clearly what was said, but she felt as if
a sharp, short blow had struck her brow. Her brain was stunned by
it. Thomas’s voice too reached her ear confusedly, but she saw with
despairing certitude that his countenance brightened.
When an hour later the banker from Paternoster Street left, the old
house was already his.
For days the dull pain behind Anne’s brow did not cease. Everything
that happened around her seemed unreal: the sudden departure of the
people from the ground floor, the packing up of everything all over the
house.
The time for delivery was short. The greatest haste was necessary.
The old pieces of furniture moved from their places, as clumsily,
painfully, as old people move from their accustomed corners. Below, in
front of the house, rattling furniture vans stopped now and then.
Anne looked out of the window. Barefooted, sweating men carried the
piano out of the door. The pampered household gods stood piled up in a
heap in the middle of the pavement, amidst the crowd of the street. A
man sat on the music chest. Christopher’s old desk lay upside down on
top of the chest of drawers, just like a dead animal, its four legs up
in the air.
In these days, Thomas travelled repeatedly from home, for he wanted
himself to supervise the placing of the furniture of the old house in
the manor house of Ille.
The boys were made noisy by their expectation of new and unknown
things. They spoke of Ille as if it were the realization of a fairy
tale--a fairy tale told by their father.
“They don’t cling to the old house,” thought Anne and felt lonely. She
liked best to be by herself. Then her imagination restored everything
to its old place in the dismantled rooms. The shapes of the furniture
were visible on the wall papers. The forsaken nails stretched out of
the walls like fingers asking for something. In the place of Mrs.
Christina’s portrait a weary shadow looked like a faded memory.
Another piece of furniture disappeared, then another.... The
writing-table with many drawers remained alone in the green room. Anne
drew the drawers out one by one. One contained some embroideries made
in cross-stitch. How ugly and sweet they were! She remembered them
well, she had made them for her grandfather. Then some clumsy old
drawings came into her hands, quaint castles, girls, big-eared cats;
two silvery, fair curls, in a paper, tied together; beneath them an old
distant date in her grandfather’s faded writing.
Whenever the clock struck she started and touched her forehead as if it
had struck her to hurry her on.
In another drawer she found a diploma of the Freedom of the Royal Free
City of Pest and a worn little book. On its cover a two-headed eagle
held the arms of Hungary between its claws.
... Pozsony. A. D. 1797, Christopher Ulwing ... civil carpenter....
While she turned the pages a faint, mouldy odour fanned her face. Her
memory searched hesitatingly:
“Two prentice lads once wandered
To strange lands far away.”
Suddenly the torpor of her brain was dispelled. Reality assumed its
merciless shape in her conscience. She had to leave here, everything
would be different.... Unchecked tears flowed down her cheeks.
She had no courage to pack the contents of the drawers, nor the heart
to have the open boxes nailed down. Anything that seemed final filled
her with horror.
Somewhere a door creaked. Anne woke to her helplessness. She pretended
to hurry and strained her efforts to hide her feelings before those she
loved.
The boys were preparing for their examinations. Thomas noticed nothing.
In the egotism of his own happiness he passed blindly beside Anne’s
shy, wordless pain. He was pleased with everything, only his wife’s
apathy irked him.
A half-opened drawer, an empty cupboard, could stop Anne for hours. In
her poor tortured brain memories alone had room. Everything spoke of
the past. Even in the attics she only met with memories.
Uncle Sebastian’s shaky winged armchair; the grimy engravings of
Fischer von Erlach and Mansard; the out of date coloured map of
Pest-Buda.... She took the map to the light of the attic window. For a
long time she contemplated the lines of the short crooked streets, the
Danube painted blue, the small vessels of the boat-bridge, the small
churches, the many empty building plots.
She could not find her way on the map. Over her childhood’s memories a
new big city had risen, had swallowed in its growth the old streets,
removed the markets, spread beyond the limits of the tattered map,
spread even beyond the cold, confident dreams of Ulwing the builder.
Wearily Anne went down the stairs and evening found her again immobile
in front of an open cupboard. She sat on the ground and on her knee lay
an old shrunken cigar case, embroidered with beads....
Steps approached from the adjoining room. She became attentive and
really wanted to be quick, but forgot that she was engaged in filling
an empty box and with rapid movements she instinctively returned
everything to its usual place in the cupboard.
Thomas stopped near her.
“What do you think, how much more time do you require?”
“There is still much to be done,” answered Anne guardedly. What it was
she could not have told.
“In a week the house has to be handed over,” muttered her husband
nervously.
Anne looked up at him.
The lamplight lit up Thomas’s face. How old and worn out he looked! His
well-shaped mouth seemed pitifully dry and between his cheek bones the
sunken crevices were darkened with purplish-blue shadows.
Anne thought her eyes deluded her and got up.
Thomas snatched at his chest and again made the ominous movement with
his hand. Anne could no longer believe that it was accidental. As if
to escape her maddening anxiety she flung herself into his arms and
pressed her head to his chest.
Thomas stood motionless as if he had lost consciousness. He breathed
heavily and stared anxiously into space above his wife’s head. His
heart beat faintly a rapid course, stumbled suddenly, and for an
instant there was an awful, cold silence in his chest.
Anne listened with bated breath. Under her head, the rapid irregular
gallop started again.
As if he had only then noticed his wife’s proximity, Thomas stretched
himself out and pushed her away impatiently. Anne remembered that this
was not the first time this had happened. The awful truth dawned on her.
“It is nothing,” he said and made an effort to laugh, but his laughter
died away under Anne’s pitiful look.
“Thomas, since when?”
“A long time ago.”
“For God’s sake, why did you not tell me?”
“I thought it would pass away at Ille.... Open the window. It is rather
worse to-day....” His face became ashen-grey, his eyes appealed for
help. With a single gesture he tore his shirt-collar open.
Anne flew through the room.
“Call the doctor! The doctor....”
It sounded all through the house when Florian slammed the street door.
Hours came and passed and left their marks on the faces of the people
in the old house. Thomas was already in bed. On the vaulted staircase
Anne talked for a long time with Dr. Gárdos, the son of the old
proto-medicus.
The doctor’s voice was strangled; his words scarcely reached Anne
and yet they annihilated everything around her. Had she not yet lost
enough? Was there no mercy for her?
Dr. Gárdos looked at her full of pity.
“Miracles might happen....”
The corners of Anne’s eyes drew up slowly and horror was in her
expression. She shivered and then went back through the corridor with
strained, stiff lips. When Thomas as in a dream reached for her hand,
she bent over him with her wan, crushed smile.
Dawn was slow to come and it was a long time before evening fell again.
Nothing altered in the house, only the day opened and closed its eyes.
Thomas lay motionless in his bed. Anne watched his every breath
anxiously, thought of the passing hours and of the day that drew
threateningly nearer, on which the house was to be surrendered.
She asked for delay. It was refused. She had to accept the advice of
young Doctor Gárdos.
The empty little lodgings in the house opposite ... there was no
choice, they must move there. They would have to rough it, there would
be room enough for a few days. For the doctor had told her, quite
calmly, that it was only a matter of a few days.
“So there are still miracles,” thought Anne. “Yes, it is only for a
short time and then ... everything will come right again.” She felt
relieved and thus the last day in the old house passed away.
It was evening. The two boys had already gone with Tini into the
lodgings opposite. Thomas slept. Anne and the old servant sat up with
him; they did not dare to look at each other.
The windows were open; in the corridor, near the wall, the marble clock
ticked, on the floor. The last thing left in the old house. Florian
insisted on carrying it over himself into the new lodgings.
Anne counted the strokes of the clock. “In three hours ... in two
hours....” She rose quietly, slid along the corridor, down the stairs.
In the back garden, between the high, ugly walls, the old chestnut
tree, the winged pump, the bushes were all still in their places ...
and one could rest on the circular seat of the apple tree. Everything
was as of old, even the ticking of the old clock came down into the
garden.
Anne leaned her head against the trunk of the tree; without taking her
eyes off Thomas’s window, she took leave of all things around her.
Suddenly, as if somebody’s speech had broken off in the act of saying
farewell, the silence became absolute. The clock had stopped.
Anne ran up the stairs. Now she remembered. Last night she had
forgotten the clock and now the butterfly pendulum, which she had seen
alive, lay dead between the marble pillars. She passed her hand wearily
over her brow. So the little dwarf had gone too! Had Time itself
forsaken the old house?
She opened the door of the green room. The candle light floated round
her up and down. Her steps echoed sharply from the empty walls.
She stopped in front of the tall white doors with the glass panes.
On the panel rising notches were visible. When they were children,
Christopher and she, their father had marked their growth every year.
She went further, trying the door-handles carefully. Some were meek
and obedient, others creaked and resisted. She knew them ... they had
had their say in her life. She knew the voice of everything in the
house. The windows spoke to her when they were opened; the board of the
threshold too had something to say beneath her tread, always the same
thing, ever since she could remember. But that was part of its destiny.
She slipped along the walls. She passed her hand over the faded
wallpaper, over the grey stove, even over the window sills. She put
the candle down and looked through the small panes of glass towards
the Danube, just like old times. But the fronts of the houses opposite
repelled her looks.
A carriage rattled through the street: it sounded like the crack
of a whip. Anne clung close to the walls and under the harmonizing
influence of the quiet night, the intimate physical contact brought
something suddenly home to her that had lived in her unconscious self
dimly unexpressed, for the whole of her existence. In that moment
she understood the bond that existed between her and the doomed old
house. The bricks under the whitewash, the beams, the arches, all were
creations of one single force and she felt herself one with them as if
she had grown from between the walls, as if she were just a chip of
them, a chip privileged to move and say aloud what they had to suffer
in silence.
She thought of the finished lives, continued in her who had survived
everybody. Mysterious memories of events she had never witnessed
invaded her mind. Grafts from memories treasured up by the house of the
Ulwings.
Since the clock had stopped, time ceased to exist for Anne. A painful
trembling of her own body brought her back to reality. The whole house
trembled. The bell rang in the hall.
Blood rushed to Anne’s benumbed heart. Her knees gave way as she
returned through the rooms. One after another she closed the doors
behind her, looking back all the time. Near the door of the nursery a
folded piece of paper lay on the floor. She picked it up and pressed
it carefully between the glazed wings, as she used to do, so that they
might not rattle when carriages passed below.
She only realized what she had done when the door-handle dropped back
to its place, when the door was closed, the door whose rattling would
wake no one any more. Anne sobbed aloud among the empty walls. The
rooms repeated her sob, one after the other, gently, more and more
gently....
The street door opened below. Dr. Gárdos’ commanding voice was audible
on the staircase. Two men followed him, carrying a stretcher on their
shoulders. Anne came face to face with them in the corridor. She
swayed, as if she had been hit on the chest, then she seemed quite
composed again. She opened the door and gently wakened her husband.
The stretcher, with Thomas on it, floated across the road in the early
dawn as over a narrow blue river. One shore, the habitual one, was the
old house, the other, the strange dark house, the strange new life in
which Anne felt she had no root.
She passed the gate quickly, with her head bent. Only in the middle of
the road did she stop and hesitate. She turned back suddenly.
The two pillar-men leaned out under the urns of the cornice. Their
stone eyes turned to her, as if they stared straight at her accusingly
and asked a question to which there was no answer.
Florian turned the big old key slowly in the door. For the last time,
the very last time....
CHAPTER XIX
The new inhabitants of the strange, small lodgings found everything
hostile and bleak in their new surroundings.
An open gas flame whistled in the narrow anteroom. The neglected doors
were shabby and the dark rooms only remembered people who had not cared
for them and were for ever moving on.
The first week passed by. Anne did not leave Thomas’s bedside and still
dreaded going to the window. All this time her soul lead a double life:
one for Thomas, one for the house.
After a sleepless night she could stand it no longer. She stole gently
to the window and bent hesitatingly, fearfully, forward.
She felt relieved. In the grey morning the old house still stood
intact.... She noticed for the first time that its yellow walls
stood further out than the other houses and that they obstructed the
road. She was shocked to realize how old and big it was. Its steep,
old-fashioned roof cast a deep shadow out of which the windows stared
at her with the pitiful gaze of the blind.
While she looked at them one by one, she never ceased listening to her
patient. Suddenly it seemed to her that Thomas’s breath had become
weaker. She glided back trembling. Henceforth this became Anne’s only
road. It was a short road but it embraced Anne’s whole life.
One morning a queer noise roused her from the sleep of exhaustion.
There was silence in the room, the noise came from the street. She rose
from the armchair in which she spent the nights and went on tiptoe to
the window.
Workmen stood in front of the old house. Some men rolled tarred poles
from a cart. The front door was open as if gaping for an awful shriek
of agony. A gap had formed between the tiles of the attics and men
walked upon the roof.
Anne covered her eyes. Had she to live through this? She could not run
away. She would have to see it all....
Thomas started up from a restless dream.
“What is it? What is happening?”
There was no word which could express what happened there, on the
other side of the street, or if there was one, Anne could not find it.
Without a word, she went back to the bed and drew her old sweet smile,
like a veil, over her face. She was overwrought, she drew the veil too
hard ... and it broke and covered her no more.
Thomas reached for her hand. In that instant he realised the immensity
of Anne’s sacrifice. Till now he had faith in himself and believed he
could attract his wife’s soul to what he loved. Illness had wrung this
hope from him and he felt ashamed, his pride suffered, that he should
have been the cause of Anne’s sudden sacrifice.
His dying eyes looked at her earnestly, with boundless love. Anne’s
back was turned to the light and while Thomas stroked her hand she
spoke of Ille. She planned....
Next day the post brought a little bag. It contained wheat ... golden
wheat from Ille. Thomas passed it slowly, pensively, between his
fingers and while the source of life flowed in poignant contrast
between his ghostly, lean hands, tears came to his eyes.
In these moments, in these days, under the cover of the worn torn smile
Anne’s face became old.
Out there, the roof of the old house was already gone and hemmed in
between scaffoldings; like a poor old prisoner, the yellow front was
waiting for its fate. To Anne’s imagining the house complained behind
its wooden cage and knew that it had been so surrounded only to be
killed.
The pickaxes set to work. The bricks slid shrieking down a slide
from the first floor. Labourers, Slovak girls, came and went on the
scaffolding and they too carried bricks on hods.
Every passing day saw the house grow smaller. The labourers tore holes
in the walls and left the rest to crumble down. That was the quickest
way.
The dull noise went to the marrow, and with every wall something fell
to pieces in Anne’s heart. It seemed to her that she became feebler
after every crash, that the efforts of generations collapsed in her
soul, great old efforts, with which the first Ulwings, the ancient
unknown ones, had all carried bricks for the builder--bricks for the
house.
She thought of her father. He kept the walls standing. And of
Christopher--he began to pull the building down. And now the end had
come.
The crevice grew alarmingly in the yellow wall. By and by the whole
front became one crevice. One could look into the rooms. From the
street people stared in and this affected Anne as if impertinent,
inquisitive strangers spied into the past of her private life.
Here and there the green wallpaper clung tenaciously to the ruins. A
round black hole glared in a corner from which the stove pipes had been
torn remorselessly: the tunnel of Christopher’s stove-fairies. In some
places the torn up floor boards hung in the air and the dark passages
of the demolished chimneys looked as if a sooty giant finger had been
drawn along the wall.
On the further side, the row of semi-circular windows in the corridor
became visible. The trees of the back garden stretched their heads and
looked out into the street. Then one day they stood there no longer.
When the heavy waggon drove jerkily with them through the gaping door,
Anne recognized each, one by one. On the top lay a crippled trunk and
the boards of the cracked, round seat spread from it in splinters.
Everything went quickly now; even the two pillar-men lay on their backs
on the pavement of the street. When evening came and the labourers had
gone, Anne snatched a shawl and ran down the stairs. She wanted to take
leave of the pillar-men. She bent down and looked into their faces. The
light of the street lamp which used to shine into the green room, lit
up the two stone figures. They looked as if they had died.
Steps approached from the street corner. Anne withdrew into the former
entrance. Two men came down the street. The elder stopped; his voice
sounded clear:
“Once this was the house of Ulwing the builder.”
The younger, indifferent, stepped over the head of one of the stone
figures.
“Ulwing the builder?” Suddenly he looked interestedly at the mutilated
walls.
“Ulwing? ... any relation of the clockmaker of Buda?”
“His brother.”
“I never heard that he had any family,” murmured the younger,
continuing his way, “Sebastian Ulwing did great things for our country.”
Anne looked after them. Was this all that remained of the Ulwing name?
Was the memory of his work already gone? The heroic death of Uncle
Sebastian, a doubtful legend, was that all that was remembered?
Men came again. Carriages, life, the noise of the town.
Anne went back, across the road, towards the strange house.
That night Thomas became very restless. He tossed from one side to the
other and asked several times if Anne was there. He did not see her,
though she sat at the side of the bed and held his hand in hers. She
held her head quite bravely, there was not a tear in her eyes. She did
not want Thomas to read his death sentence from her face.
In the morning Anne felt her hand tenderly pressed.
“Are you here?” asked the pallid, dying man. “All the time I was
waiting for you to be here.”
In a few moments Thomas’s features altered amazingly. A shadow fell
over them and Anne looked round vainly to find out whence it came. Yet
it was there and became darker and darker in the hollow of his eyes,
round his mouth.
“I am going now,” said Thomas, “don’t shake your head. I know....”
She could not answer nor could she restrain her tears any longer.
“Weep, Anne, it will do you good and forgive me if you can. I did not
understand you, that is what made your life so heavy at my side.” He
shut his eyes and remained a long time without moving; only his face
was now and again convulsed as if something sobbed within him. Then he
drew Anne’s head to his heart.
“Here ... close, quite close.... This was yours, yours alone....
Anne.... Anne....” repeated his voice further and further away,
“Anne....”
That was the last word, as if of all the words of life it were the only
one he wanted to take with him on the long, lone road.
Before night came Thomas Illey was no more.
That night Anne kept vigil between two dead. Her husband ... and the
old house.
When day broke somebody came into the room and flung his arms around
her. Her son. Thomas’s son.
Leaning on his arm Anne left the strange house behind Thomas’s coffin.
And the younger boy, fair and blue-eyed held her hand close and clung
to her.
Thomas was borne away. It was his wish to be buried in Ille. Anne and
the two boys went in a carriage through the town to the station.
It was a warm summer night. The gas lamps were already alight. Here
and there electric globes hung like glowing silver-blue drops from
their wires. Illuminated shops, show windows, large coffee houses with
glaring windows. Servites’ Place, Grenadier’s Street ... and on what
had once been the Grassalkovich corner an electric clock marked the
time.
The carriage turned a corner, the pavements on both sides swarmed with
pushing crowds. ’Buses, carriages, the hum of voices, glaring posters,
people. Many people, everywhere.
Further on there was a block in the traffic. The scaffoldings of
new-built houses encroached on the pavement. Damp smell of lime mixed
with the summer’s dust. Under the scaffoldings hurrying figures with
drawn-up shoulders. Sudden shouts. A jet of water sprayed the hot
pavement in a broad sheaf.
A mounted policeman lifted his white-gloved hand. For an instant
everything stopped, then the crowd became untangled and rolled on like
a stream.
Anne’s eyes passed vaguely over the signs of the shops. She found no
familiar name. The Jörgs, Münster, Walter, were nowhere. Other names,
other people. And the Ulwings?
A forgotten corner lamp, an old tree surviving in the row of young
trees bordering the streets, a condemned, quaint old house, uncouthly
timid among the powerful new buildings ... these might possibly know
something of Ulwing the builder but men knew him no more.
The carriage reached its destination. It stopped at the railway station.
In the smoky hall Florian and Mamsell Tini sat on the luggage.
Somewhere a bell was rung and a voice proclaimed the names of unknown
places that people went to ... lived in.
Anne, standing on the platform, saw a dark van coupled to the train.
They had to wait a long time ... the train started late. People came
hurrying. Only he who travelled in the black van to Ille was in no
hurry.
The furious bell sounded again.
Anne leaned out of her carriage door though she wanted to see no more;
all was over for her and far, far away. Her tired aimless look was
suddenly arrested.
Someone came to her, came to her out of the past ... from far away.
Adam Walter stopped in front of her carriage and, without a word,
uncovered himself. He stood still there near the line when the train
had gone. He looked long, long after the trail of smoke.
The long dark night dissolved into dawn and fields and trees....
Now and then little sentry huts appeared as if something white had been
flashed beside the rushing windows of the train. The barriers at the
crossings were like outstretched arms. Racing telegraph poles, signal
wires shining like silver. The shrubs rocked in the wind caused by
the train and the shadow of the smoke floated broad over the sunlit
cornfields.
Then all was reversed. The train stopped.
People had been waiting for a long time at the small station of Ille.
Blue spots, bright peasants’ petticoats, shining white chemisettes. All
the round holiday hats were doffed simultaneously like a flock of black
birds.
Bareheaded, dumb, the people of Ille stood before the wife of Thomas
Illey. Hard brown hands offered themselves and the tearful eyes looked
at her as if they had always known her.
“God brought you back home to us.” The deeply furrowed face of an old
peasant bent over her hand.
Those behind gathered round the boys. One peasant woman stroked George
Illey’s arm.
“Oh my sweet soul, you are just like your father.”
Anne looked round bewildered. She felt some strange new emotion. The
ground she stood on was the ground of Ille, the trees had grown from
it, the people too, everything was part of it, her sons, Thomas’s
memory....
A deep rustic voice said:
“Our master has come home.”
The crowd opened a way for the metal coffin, carried by four stalwart
youths to a cart. They placed it on a pile of oak boughs, then all
started behind it. At the cross roads the cart turned towards the
chapel. The carriage took the road through the row of poplars.
Anne’s eyes followed the cart. The wheels were invisible under the
branches hanging down from it. Rich green life carried death. The crown
of the oak carried Thomas Illey towards the cemetery.
The bell of the chapel called gently to heaven. The churches of the
villages responded in the distance. One told the other all over the
country, that the master of Ille had come home.
Along both sides of the road the poplars stood erect like a guard of
honour, full of old traditions. The carriage turned another corner and
pebbles flew up under the wheels. There, surrounded by oaks, stood
the old manor house of Ille, and in the cool white-washed hall steps
resounded under the portraits of ancient lords of Ille.
Anne started wearily, then suddenly stopped, deeply shocked. As though
the house had been prepared for a gay festival ... it was all decked
with flowers. Her eyes were hurt by the glare of the bright colours
and her pent-up sorrow moaned within her. She pressed her hands to her
bosom ... the flowers pained her.
“Why did you do it? Why? Just now?”
The old housekeeper left the row of women servants.
“It was the order of our good master. It was his will that every flower
should be picked when our mistress came home.”
In Anne’s pale, transparent face the corners of her eyes and lips rose
in silent pain. It was as though she gazed into a mysterious abyss of
which she had known nothing till this day. Now she saw Thomas’s soul,
now that he had given her every flower that had not grown on someone
else’s land. He was dead when he gave, but he gave....
If only one could answer those who are gone; if only one could speak
when speech is no more possible....
Anne remained alone in a small vaulted room. Above the couch of many
flowers hung the portrait of Mrs. Christina. The piano, the small
work-table were there too, and everything was in the same position as
it had been in the sunshine room.
She leaned her brow against the window railing and from among her old
household gods looked out into the new world. A verdant breath of the
large garden fanned her face. The trees whispered strange things to
each other.
Anne thought of the swing-tree and her gaze wandered over the garden
as if in search of it. Then she heard something call to her. It became
clearer and clearer. Beyond the trees, there spoke with quiet distant
murmur, a faithful old voice: the Danube ... the fate of the Ulwings.
The past spoke. This was all that was left to her; nothing more....
In that instant the tramp of strong young steps recalled her from the
past. Through the glaring summer sunlight her two sons came down the
gravelled path.
She looked at them and her head rose.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Canzelei = office (German).
[B] Iroda = office (in Magyar).
Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including inconsistent hyphenation.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
The following is a list of changes made to the original. The first
line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
Page 8
driving him into bankruptcy”
driving him into bankruptcy.”
Page 67
a wire inside to curl it up on his back.”
a wire inside to curl it up on his back.
Page 84
In the shadow of Tarnok Street he saw light
In the shadow of Tárnok Street he saw light
Page 189
lamp in front of the Ulwing’s house.
lamp in front of the Ulwings’ house.
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