They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  The princess was pursuing the train of thought that had begun the moment that Montorio had so icily taken his leave of her.

  What had happened? Something must have happened. Montorio had danced the quadrille with Klara so he must have had supper with her. He must have proposed at the table and been refused. That must be it! Nothing else would explain that angry glint in his eyes. This girl! This stupid, stubborn girl who could give up the chance of a husband who had everything, good looks, money, health, high rank. To refuse such a parti, she must be mad! Unless there was someone else? But who? Of course! She must have been blind! For Laci, that little nobody, Laci, her own despised nephew! It must be. Hadn’t they sat together at supper throughout the whole Carnival? How naïve they must be if they thought that no one would notice!

  These had been Princess Agnes’s first thoughts as she watched Montorio leave the club. After he had gone she went up to the ballroom and, as she had expected, there she found that Klara and Laszlo were dancing together, It was clear that they had eyes only for each other and that Klara was totally absorbed in her partner.

  Now the princess found herself obliged to hide her thoughts and sit down with other mothers who were watching the dancing. To these she smiled and made polite conversation, to others she waved with friendly condescension and she chatted languidly with the elderly gentlemen whose families had forced them to attend the ball. No one must notice anything was wrong, and it was especially important to her that her sister Elise, the wife of Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, should not see her agitation. Elise was sitting beside her, calm and benign, but even she, with her great position, would not understand her sister’s distress. Elise was luckier than she was. She, too, had made a brilliant marriage but it had been a love-match and it had made her very happy. Szent-Gyorgyi was very different from Kollonich – the ‘good Louis, as she used deprecatingly to speak of her husband – for his manner was so autocratic, scornful and proud that everyone was afraid of him and his wife had been immediately accepted not only because of his unassailable social position but also because he expected it. On the other hand Kollonich was so good-natured that he noticed nothing, not even that his wife had had to struggle to be accepted into the top ranks of Hungarian society. He had been no help to her. How she had to work and plan and fight to get where she now was! And now Klara had to ruin it all and make a fool of her! It was unbearable and a sense of irritation kept sweeping over her in such waves that she had to struggle hard to control herself and maintain that calm, regal air that she always adopted when in the presence of others.

  More and more she noticed little details which annoyed and irritated her. She saw that Klara was wearing a yellow carnation pinned to her dress. It was obviously Laci’s flower. He always wore yellow carnations and had them made up in corsages for his partners. So she had only to pick out one of those! How easy, but how despicable to give oneself away like that! How stupid! Did the girl have no pride?

  And then she thought of her letters to Montorio’s mother in which she had written her flattering praises of the son in such terms that they could equally be read either as the reaction of the whole family or that of Klara in particular. Of course the Montorios must have taken these letters as assurance of Klara’s complaisance; but even if they had Montorio himself need not have been so stupidly maladroit. What on earth had he thought he was doing to arrive in the morning and propose the same evening with no preparation, no subtlety, no courting? Why couldn’t he have consulted her, asked her advice, got her to prepare the ground? What a fool he had been! Well, the damage was done now and no doubt he was already blaming her, pretending that he had been misled! She was sure he was dimwitted enough to do just that!

  These thoughts led her swiftly to an even more disconcerting idea. The next day Montorio would be home in Vienna and would report all this at once to his mother, who no doubt would think of her in the same way as the son so obviously now did. And, of course, the result would be that the next time they met the Princess Visconti-Montorio, backed by the pride of her Bourbon-Modena blood, would snub the Princess Kollonich, as she had before, wrinkling her nose at her from the oh-so-desirable height of the ‘Olympus’. It was insufferable! It was all Klara’s fault, and it hurt!

  How it hurt! All the more so because, being no fool, she knew that there was more than a little truth in what they might think. She knew that she had misled the Montorios, even if she had done it from the best motives, fully believing in her ability to carry it all off. They had every right to feel aggrieved and cross. Of course she would have succeeded if Montorio had not rushed everything, as stupid young men were so apt to do.

  The supper-csardas came to an end and was replaced by a waltz. Klara and Laszlo continued dancing together, the girl’s waist melting into her lover’s arms. Both had their eyes almost closed like sleep-walkers. This, thought the princess, is too much. It was unbearable, indecent! She waited until the music stopped, and then waved to her stepdaughter:

  ‘My sweet, let’s go home! I’m very tired today!’

  My sweet! Klara knew that phrase of old: the princess always used it when she was angry about something. Could she have guessed that she had turned down Montorio?

  ‘Why, of course, Mama! Let’s go,’ she replied good-humouredly, for her conscience was not clear. They descended the stairs and put on their wraps without speaking. Both maintained the silence as they sat together in the carriage.

  As the majestic équipage wended its way slowly back to the Kollonich Palais all the fragmentary thoughts that had tormented the princess in the brightly-lit rooms of the Park Club returned with redoubled force. Clip-clop! Clip-clop! the horses’ hoofs resounded on the uneven surface of the streets like hammer-blows on the coffin of her ambitions. Clip-clop! Clip-clop! The sound was unendurable. It seemed as if they would never reach home.

  The princess’s thoughts went back to her youth when the Gyeroffy sisters, Agnes and her younger sister, Elise, first moved to Budapest from Transylvania. Their father, Count Tamas Gyeroffy, had just been elected a member of Parliament. The girls were chaperoned by their mother. Both were beautiful, well-educated – they even spoke English, which was rare in those days – and excellent dancers; yet they were not popular, not at all the success they had been so sure would be theirs when they came to the capital.

  In Transylvania they had been among the first wherever they went, but here they were treated as unwelcome intruders of no importance, almost as ‘foreigners’. The Budapest dowagers, if they spoke to them at all, did so condescendingly with a patronizing air they did nothing to hide. It had been a deeply humiliating experience and it had lasted the whole of their first Carnival season. Later came a stroke of good luck. At Balatonfured Agnes had met Louis Kollonich, who was still in mourning for his first wife. The ‘good Louis’ had fallen in love with her, abandoned his mourning and proposed to her four days later. She had accepted him. And why not? Of course she had not been in love with the chubby-faced widower, but she could not resist the opportunity of becoming the Princess Kollonich and queening it over all those snooty girls in Budapest who had looked down their noses at her when she first arrived. She imagined that this marriage, like a magic wand, would waft her instantly to the highest peaks. But, and this was Agnes’s second great disappointment, somehow the magic wand had not worked. Although she became Princess Kollonich – after quite a short engagement – many of the dowagers and their daughters still continued to hold aloof and regard her de haut en bas. Some even went so far as to make sly and spiteful allusions to her Transylvanian birth. ‘Lots of bears where you come from, aren’t there? Anything else? Really?’

  They made great play in finding it difficult to pronounce her name, even though it was of ancient Hungarian origin. ‘Was ist das für ein Name – What sort of a name is that?’ They had been horrid, and she had never forgotten it. She knew that the fault was partly her own. She had developed such an inferiority complex, such a deep conviction that these Hungarian aristocrats really wer
e her superiors, and that she herself was inferior and second-rate, that she antagonized everyone by her air of grandeur. She had adopted quite consciously a proud and disdainful manner, her head held high, one or two fingers held out when they came to greet her; but inside she was quaking with terror and lack of confidence, unsure of herself, praying that someone would be nice to her, and she would be exaggeratedly pleased if anyone was.

  This had been the real reason why her acceptance had come so slowly, for it was not until more than ten years had passed – ten years of struggle, hard work and humiliation – that she had begun to feel secure. During these years the Princess Agnes had thought of little but the battle for social recognition and, because she felt that she had been judged and disliked without valid reason, her whole conception of life – and especially society life – had been soured and coloured by the conviction that nothing, nothing in the world, mattered so much as social success. And at last success came, and she realized that the battle had been won. But, as with mountain-climbers, one reaches one peak only to discover that there is another, even higher, behind it. For the Princess Agnes, though she might have become the uncrowned queen of Budapest society, there was now an even greater obstacle to be surmounted. The next step was to be accepted at court.

  If once she obtained social recognition by the ‘Olympus’ in Vienna she would be fully revenged on the ladies who had caused her such misery in Budapest: for then it would be they who could be treated as provincial upstarts! This would be her ultimate trump-card, and once played she would take precedence over them all in the most exclusive, rank-conscious group in the whole world. She, the despised Transylvanian, would be so far above them that she would at long last be able to relax knowing that all her ambitions had been achieved. And she could have done it! The Montorio marriage would have been the master-key to all those doors that had been shut to her for so long.

  And now it was all over, finished! Why? Because her two-faced nephew Laci, that devious little nobody, had come sniffing round Klara and turned her head. He was a cunning little trouble-maker; that was the word for him – trouble-maker. He had taken advantage of the hospitality and the protection she had offered the unprotected orphan; and this is how he had repaid her endless kindness. Why, she had treated little Laci as if he had been her own son ever since, at the age of eighteen months, he had been abandoned by his mother, Julie Ladossa, the depraved woman who had left her brother and run off with an adventurer.

  Clip-clop! Clip-clop! All her painful memories surged upwards until she felt her head would burst.

  Julie! That scheming whore, Julie Ladossa! As the name came into her head the whole sad, disreputable scandal – the one great tragedy of her family – came back to her.

  One day Julie had driven away from Szamos-Kozard in her pony-trap, with God knows who, and three days later they had found her husband, Agnes’s brother, poor Mihaly Gyeroffy, dead in the woods, shot by his own gun after carefully arranging it to look like an accident. That at least had had style, and that had been Agnes’s only consolation. Now the Princess reflected that Laci, the son of that shameless creature, took entirely after his mother. He looked like her, with those strange eyebrows which nearly met in the middle; and it was from her that he inherited his talent for music for had it not been her hated sister-in-law’s artistic tendencies that had fanned her wickedness and irresponsibility? The Princess thought only of Laci’s eyebrows as recalling his mother’s looks, as indeed they did, but the truth was that no one could mistake him for anything but a Gyeroffy. If he resembled anyone it was his aunts Agnes and Elise and, indeed, he was far more like herself than her own sons by the ‘good Louis’. But at this moment she only felt that she hated him, that he was ungrateful and disrespectful. He had carried off her little Klara, her own Klara, when she would willingly have arranged for him a good marriage with a substantial dowry that would have kept him in comfort!

  Perhaps, after all, everything was not lost. Perhaps it was nothing more than a passing fancy on Klara’s part. Perhaps things could still be fixed and there had only been some minor little disagreement between Klara and the prince? Though deep down she did not believe this, Princess Agnes decided she would do what she could to retrieve the situation. In the morning she would send for Klara and have it out with her.

  The carriage arrived at the covered portico of the Kollonich Palais. After the footman had opened the carriage doors and let down the steps, he had first to remove the long basket of flowers that lay on the carriage floor at the ladies’ feet – this was Klara’s cotillion prize, and it was filled with multi-coloured little bouquets that represented the homage of the young men to their partners. On top, larger and showier than all the others, lay Laszlo’s bunch of saffron-coloured carnations from which Klara, at the ball, had picked a flower to pin on her corsage as a sign for all to see of her bondage to Laci. At the sight of it Princess Agnes could easily have lost her temper and exploded with rage. Mercifully, there were many steps to mount before arriving at the door and so she had time to control herself sufficiently to say goodnight calmly and dispassionately to her errant stepdaughter. She even kissed her on the forehead, as she always did at this moment, before turning away and moving slowly in the direction of her apartments. She was careful not to say anything about the next day lest something in her voice should betray her anger.

  It was nearly twelve o’clock the next morning when Klara’s maid, Ilus, came to her and said: ‘Her Grace would like to see you, my Lady!’ The girl spoke timidly and then stood back against the doorway to let Klara pass.

  Alarmed, Klara, accompanied by the girl, went towards her stepmother’s rooms. She was sure that the princess would now demand an explanation and the moment so long dreaded, when she would have to tell the truth about her feelings, would now be forced upon her. She had thought about it most of the night, lying awake filled with anxiety and wondering how she would explain herself. She regretted now that she had not told her stepmother everything months before, voluntarily revealing what was in her heart. Of course she had always imagined that it would be she who would choose the moment, never thinking that one day she would be summoned to account for herself as if she were a criminal arraigned before a court of justice, or a child accused of petty theft. Face to face with her stepmother, what could she say? Perhaps she could avoid the subject altogether? No, that would never be possible. Mama Agnes was far too direct and once a subject was raised between them there would be no getting away from it. Very well then, if there had to be a battle there would be a battle, and even though at a disadvantage she would fight to the last for the right to remain true to her own feelings and faithful to the man she loved. All she had to do was to remain steadfast. It would not be easy because Mama Agnes would never understand – and if she did not understand she would not forgive either. But perhaps all was not lost. After all, Papa loved her, and when his first rage was over things always got better!

  Klara was excited, but feeling she needed a few moments to get herself fully under control before she was subjected to the princess’ questioning, she turned to the maid and said: ‘Ilus, why are you always so sad these days?’ She did not know why she had said this. It had not occurred to her before but as she spoke she realized that it was true and that for some time the girl had not been her normal carefree self. How odd that she should only have noticed it when she was in trouble herself.

  The little maid glanced briefly up at her mistress and then lowered her eyes and said shyly: ‘I’m not, my lady, truly I’m not!’ but her eyes contradicted her denial. ‘People are wicked!’ she added unexpectedly.

  Klara was startled and, feeling a sudden rush of kinship for the girl, said: ‘Are you in love, Ilus?’

  ‘Oh, no! How could I be? Oh, no! Not that, my lady!’ The girl blushed and her eyes looked even sadder.

  Klara put her hand up to the girl’s face and gently stroked it, feeling how good it was to have a friend who shared her longing and her distress. It made her feel s
tronger merely to know that someone else was suffering. Straightening up Klara pulled herself together and walked boldly towards the door of her stepmother’s apartments.

  The Princess Agnes’s bedroom in Budapest was much the same as her room in the country, the only difference being that whereas at Simonvasar everything was gold in colour, here it was all pink. Here too a sofa stood at the foot of the bed and from it the Princess would administer justice. She was seated on it now, looking stern.

  ‘Sit down, my dear,’ she said, pointing to a chair opposite her, ‘I want to ask you something.’ Klara sat down and waited. After a few moments’ silence the Princess said directly: ‘What happened yesterday between you and Montorio?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Klara. ‘Nothing really …!’

  Princess Agnes raised one eyebrow in obvious disbelief. Narrowing her eyes she waited silently for Klara to say something more, knowing that if she said nothing the girl was sure to go on.

  ‘… only that after supper he asked me to go with him into the garden and I didn’t want to.’

  ‘And?’

  The girl twisted her fingers together nervously. ‘That’s all ... only that also … well, it might not have been proper …’

  Princess Agnes shrugged her shoulders and for a moment there was a hint of an ironic smile on her lips. ‘Was that the only reason? Really?’ The coldness in her voice showed her contempt for an obvious lie.

  ‘Yes, and because I didn’t want …’