CHAPTER VIII
FIRST ARRIVALS
“I think, after all, I will wear my blue sash and bows, Róza, the pink will make me look so pale. Oh, dear! oh, dear! how late it is! I have heard the czigány tune up half an hour ago; I shall never get dressed to-day.”
And the little maid rushed hither and thither, bustling round her young mistress, changing the blue sash for the pink, then, back again to the blue, arranging a stray golden curl, putting a stitch here and there, eager, excited and proud. Proud of such a mistress, the prettiest heiress in the lowlands. Bideskúty Ilonka, then barely seventeen, was reputed to be the beauty of the countryside, the fairest in that land where all women are fair, with the graceful, yet full figure of the Hungarian race, the peach-like skin, the golden hair, and forget-me-not eyes, that are calculated to drive any inflammable Magyar heart to despair. Since, according to the noble hostess of Bideskút, it is the duty of every aristocratic Hungarian girl to be beautiful, Ilonka certainly fulfilled that duty to absolute perfection, and the Countess, her mother, had little fear but that her daughter would fulfil her other duty with equal perfection, and make the most suitable marriage her and motherly heart could desire.
Downstairs the agitation was becoming positively electrical. The Countess herself, in the tight-fitting silk dress, that had formed part of her trousseau, and had passed through many stages of promiscuous, and antiquated attempts at modernisation, was giving her final look round to the gorgeously laid out table in the big hall. The heavy oak buffet, which stood the whole length of the hall, almost broke down under the weight of the huge dishes of meat and fish of every description, that filled each available corner, whilst the two horse-shoe tables literally creaked beneath the enormous baskets of grapes and melons, which threw a penetrating scent around.
Gigantic bottles of wine stood ready to hand, between each of two guests, and a couple of huge casks on tall trestles, each side of the buffet, were ready tapped, in case the bottles did not prove sufficient. The valets in their best tight-fitting Magyar frock coats, and still tighter breeches, with boots of the shiniest leather, lined the lower hall below, awaiting the arrivals. Outside a band of czigány, the czimbalom player in the middle, the leader well to the fore, had turned ready to strike up the Rákózy march directly the distant cracking of a whip would announce the first arrival.
The Countess Irma expected one or two of the nearer neighbours in time for mid-day dinner: they would come in their own coaches all the way, from either side of the Tarna. Bideskút had supplied the relays for those of the guests who came from a considerable distance, and, already the day before, carriages had gone off in every direction, from which the main road branched off, and visitors might be expected to arrive; whilst the smartest coaches harnessed with the pick of the Bideskút stables had been sent overnight to Gyöngyös, to bring from the railway station there those, who from the still more distant counties were obliged to travel by train. These would mostly be the younger and smarter people, who had been to Budapesth, or even to Vienna, and had become accustomed to those terrible inventions of Satan, akin to Bideskúty's threshing machines, the railway trains. All older people preferred the mode of travelling, that had been good enough for their fathers and their grandfathers—the cumbersome but comfortable barouche harnessed with four sure-footed Hungarian horses from their own herds, who did not rush along at devilish speed on metal tracks, which surely never were forged anywhere, but in Satan’s own workshop.
Huzza! Hurrah! The distant shouts, the thundering gallop of horses, and clinking of harness, announced about eleven o’clock the first arrivals. “Tune up, czigány!” thunders Bideskúty’s voice from an upper window, and at a sign from the leader, the czimbalom starts the opening bars of that most inspiriting Rádóczy march. … Here they come! the Kantássys, the nearest neighbours, who only live some twenty leagues away, and have driven over, in two carriages full; they are a large family, and bring several servants. Intensely Magyar in character is their turn-out, their coachmen and grooms wearing the national costume, full white lawn trousers and sleeves that flutter in the wind, short, gaily-embroidered leather jacket, round cap, and shiny boots. With the most dexterous precision the driver guides his fiery team of five Hungarian horses, three leaders and two wheelers, through the wide open gates of Bideskút, to a perfect standstill before the door. Their brilliant red leather harness, with their quaint tassels, and shiny brass bosses, glitters and jingles in the hot mid-day air. Three prettily dressed girls, two young men, the portly Count Kantássy, and his thin, sour-looking wife, all step out of the big coaches, and find their way, chattering, eager and excited, through the hall, and up the stairs past the Hun warrior’s frowning statue.
“Isten hozta!” (God has brought you), many handshakes and kisses are exchanged, as Jankó solemnly opens the sitting-room door where Bideskúty and his wife await their guests.
“Why, Mariska, how tall you have grown! and, Sarolta, I would not have known you, and little Emmike is growing a pretty girl after all!” says the hostess, as each of the young girls, with a little curtsey, comes up daintily to kiss her hand.
The Countess Kantássy’s eldest daughter, and her own Ilonka, were of an age, and decidedly likely to be rival beauties; but Countess Irma noted with satisfaction, that Mariska had two pimples on her forehead, which showed very conspicuously, though her mother had made her bring a curl right down on purpose to hide them.
The girls stand aside, modest and blushing, while their parents talk; the mothers, after the first few remarks on the subject of the bad roads, are already discussing the probable partis in view; the fathers expatiating on the perfection of the harvest this year, and the promise of a glorious vintage.
“I cannot tell you, my dear,” whispers Countess Kantassy, volubly, “how much Bartócz Zsiga admires Mariska; he would in every way be a suitable parti for her, but unfortunately he is, as you know, in the diplomatic, and in France and in England he has gathered a notion that girls ought to do other things, besides looking pretty. I believe those foreign girls are terribly forward; some of them read novels, and go out by themselves. Thank goodness! there is nothing of the sort about Mariska; she is as modest and innocent as ever I could wish.”
“She is indeed a pretty girl!” says the hostess, with a decided want of conviction, “and Bartócz Zsiga would be an excellent parti for her. Of course, you know that we have refused him for Ilonka.”
“You surprise me, my dear," replied the Countess, with some acidity. “I should have thought that Ilonka was not at all his style. Only the other day he was saying that he thought she was too fair. Don’t you think so yourself? No? Ah, well! perhaps you may be fortunate in finding a man, who admires that pale complexion; I found that Mariska’s pink cheeks were immensely admired.”
“Ilonka, so far, has never lacked admirers,” rejoins the hostess, sweetly; “indeed, we find it quite an occupation to refuse marriage proposals for her, she has so many.”
“Well, you see, dearest,” retorts the Countess Kantássy, as a parting shot, “she is an only child, and men know, that she will inherit the whole of Bideskút and Kisfalu, and that she will have Zárda as a dowry. … But where is the dear child?” she adds, feeling that, perhaps, the conversation was becoming uncomfortable. “Mariska, my child, I feel sure Countess Irma will allow you to go to Ilonka, who must have finished dressing; you will be glad to see each other.”
“Yes, mama!”
“Sarolta and Emmike may go too.”
“Yes, mama.”
And the three girls, glad to get away from the overawing presence of their elders, prepared to leave the room.
“Stay, Mariska! you may all three take off your hats and gloves, and arrange your hair, before you come down again.”
“Yes, mama!”
And like little birds out of their cage, the three girls, making an old-fashioned curtsey, fluttered out of the room.
“They are charming!” says the hostess, condescendingly.
“I think they are very well brought up,” admits the fond mother, proudly.
“My good friend,” here breaks in the stentorian voice of the portly Count Kantássy, “believe me, your craze about those absurd machines is absolutely without common sense. Did not your father and my father, your grandfather and my grandfather, sow and reap the finest corn in the world, and grind it into the whitest flour, without the help of those outlandish inventions? What do you hope to get with them? except to fall into the hands of the Jews; for those things cost money, which, so far, thank God! none of us have had any need of.”
“My dear fellow, in England …” began Bideskúty with a wise expression of face.
“Hey! do not talk to me about that accursed country. What do I know about it? except that it is near the sea, that their corn is coarser than that which we give to our pigs, and that they make wine out of gooseberries? I ask you what can they know about corn? or about grapes? Why the devil don’t they produce it, with their inventions of Satan?”
“Think of the labour, and the fatigue it will save!”
“Whose labour? whose fatigue? That of the lazy, good-for-nothing peasant. You give him more leisure to enrich himself, till he will own more land than we do, and drive us nobles out of our homes, very much like those cursed Jews are beginning to do. As long as you make the peasant work for you, and give him no wages and plenty of kicks, he will respect and fear you. Give him time to work for himself, to become rich, to own big lands, and he will begin to think that he is your equal, and want to kneel beside you at church in your pew, and think that his son can marry your daughter.”
“There is no difficulty in keeping the peasant in his proper place, even the rich ones; now, there is Kemény András, who rents my farm at Kisfalu. That man is reputed to own some four or five millions of money, which his miserly old father is said to have left in wine barrels, and yet he is perfectly content to rent Kisfalu from me; and I am sure, whenever I meet him, he always most politely takes his cap off to me, as his ground landlord.”
“And you mean to tell me that there is a peasant on your estate who owns millions of money? Somebody has been stuffing you up with fairy tales, my friend.”
“It is no fairy tale, though the amount may be a trifle exaggerated; he certainly has a very great deal of money, and does a good trade, I am told, with his beasts and his wine.”
“Well, then, I call it confoundedly impudent of a peasant to be so rich. I wonder he has not offered to buy some of your land from you!”
“No, he has never done that. Some people think he does quiet moneylending on his own account, but that I cannot say. I have never had anything to do with him.”
“No, but I suppose you have a Jew or two with whom you deal?” suggested Count Kantássy, with a loud laugh, “Those confounded mills must have cost a pot of money.”
“Yes, they have,” said poor Bideskúty, shaking his head at the remembrance of the ruinous transaction he concluded yesterday; “and those confounded Jews charge such terrible percentage. I soon shall not have enough flour of my own to provide this house with bread. I should not mind if that miserly Kemény András would buy a bit of land from me.”
“Has he never asked you to sell him Kisfalu?”
“Never, that I know of; that is the curious thing about it all. I often wish he would, because, of course, I cannot offer the property to him.”
“He seems to be sensible enough to know his own place,” retorted the Count; “a peasant indeed! owning that beautiful Kisfalu.”
“He has, in any case, plenty of money. What he does with it I cannot imagine. After all, the dream of every peasant ever since they were made free is to own a bit of land all his own.”
“A piece of land, his own?” rejoins the irate Count. “My good Bideskúty, where in the world have you picked up those new-fangled notions? Do they come across from England, together with those God-forsaken machines? Because if so, believe me, let the whole lot sink to the bottom of the sea, together with that beer-producing country, which may the devil take away. Their own indeed! Time was, when I was a youngster, when let alone the land, but even their lazy, good-for-nothing bodies belonged to the nobles, they and their sons, ay, and their daughters too! And now you talk of their owning land, their becoming rich! Preposterous!”
And the fat old Count, portly and apoplectic, turned away in disgust from his friend who held such ridiculous notions, in order to appeal to the lady who had begun life by stating that “humanity began with the Barons," and from whom, therefore, he was always sure of warm support.
“Whom do you expect to-day?” asked Countess Kantássy, throwing herself nobly in the breach. She was not quite sure whether her husband’s last remark was altogether good form, and thought a change of conversation would be beneficial.
“We expect most of our guests, who come by train. The Egregyis, I think, are sure to drive, for you know Aunt Irma has never been on the railway in her life; they might not arrive till to-morrow, as the roads have been very bad all the way. But the Bartócz, the Madács, the Palotays, and two or three more, will be here almost directly. I believe the train comes in some time during the morning,” she added vaguely; “it usually has a long wait at Palota, for the Baroness is never ready, and they always wait for her.”
“I do believe here they are!” says Bideskúty with delight, sure now to escape another assault from his friend on the subject of his beloved machines.