CHAPTER IX
BEAUTIFUL ILONKA
Thundering gallop outside, shouting, yelling and laughter, proclaim the arrival of the carriages from Gyöngyös railway station. In a moment the huge house is filled as with a crowd. Groups of young girls fluttering like chickens round their mamas, portly papas mopping their beading foreheads—for the sun is grilling on this August day—maids, valets and couriers seeking and finding their sweethearts they had left last year, stealing kisses, exchanging “Isten hoztas” (God has brought you), till the hall, the stairs and passages would seem to a sober-minded Englishman a very pandemonium, peopled with semi-lunatics.
The hostess has to find an amiable word for all: one of praise for the beauty of every girl, of admiration for the bearing of every young man; compliments to the mamas and papas on the charms of their progeny. As for Bideskúty, the host, he is laughingly assailed on ail sides by inquiries after his machines and his mills: the laughing-stock of all these easy-going, prosperous, aristocratic sons of the Hungarian soil. Surely it is folly to talk of improving a land that produces so much prosperity, that yields such boundless hospitality.
The young girls, with becoming shyness, keep close to their mama’s petticoats; each comes forward in the approved fashion to kiss the Countess Irma's hand, and receive a friendly tap on the blushing cheek. The young men clap their heels together, and make the most military of salutes. Most of them are still in the “one year’s volunteer’s” uniform of some cavalry regiment; some show by their more serious manner, and the foreign cut of their clothes, that they are preparing for the diplomatic service: others in rough homespuns, and tight-fitting Hungarian breeches and shiny leather boots, intend, obviously, to serve neither country nor government, but to stay at home, as their fathers have done, and superintend the tilling of the land that will become their own.
“But where is Ilonka?” is the general question that comes from every side; while Kantássy, with the privilege of an old friend, and a noted wag, declares that he will go and fetch her, even if she is still in her bath.
The Countess Kantássy has just time to protest; “In Heaven’s name, Jenö, do be careful how you speak!” and to note with satisfaction that the innocent ears of her daughters have been spared their father’s profligate talk, when a merry peal of laughter is heard from the garden below, and old Baron Palotay, who is a near relative, playfully rushes to one of the windows, and pulls the curtains to.
“Only for money!” he declares. “The sight is worth a florin a piece.
And indeed the picture outside was worth a heavy price to see. In a simple white muslin dress, her fair hair tied in a graceful knot at the back of her tiny head, her wide-brimmed hat fallen down her back, thus framing the daintiest face that ever smiled on mankind, Ilonka was plucking a few roses, her only ornaments, and tying them in a knot for her belt. No wonder the younger men crowded to the windows to watch the dainty apparition, no wonder the mamas looked envyingly at the fairest among the fair, no wonder the Countess Irma, with characteristic pride, looked triumphantly at her female guests, and musingly at the group of men, from which she would have no difficulty in selecting a most suitable parti .
Five minutes later the radiant apparition, followed by the three Kantássy girls, whose by no means despicable beauty acted but as a foil to her own charms, came in fresh and rosy, as merry as a lark, conscious of her own beauty, like a very little queen, gladdening her courtiers with her presence.
“An old uncle’s privilege, my dear,” asserted old Palotay, as he imprinted a kiss on the pretty girl’s cheeks, and all the young men looked as if they wished their hair would suddenly turn white, and earn them the same coveted privilege.
But Ilonka smiled and curtsied to all with equal grace, kissed the fat or lean hands of the elder ladies, allowed, smiling, every elderly man to kiss her pretty cheek. Only the sharp eyes of her mother noted the scarcely perceptible blush, the faint quiver of the delicate eyelid, the softly whispered “God has brought you!” when she first caught sight of Madách Feri.
He was a young man who still wore the one year’s volunteer’s uniform of a Hussar regiment; tall and slenderly built, he looked exceedingly handsome in the tight-fitting tunic and scarlet breeches that made a bright patch of colour beside Ilonka's white gown. But his father had wasted his son’s patrimony in over-lavish hospitality; the ancestral home had fallen into the hands of the Jews, and the Madách lived in a small house at Kecskemét, and could not afford to put their son into the diplomatic service. There had been some talk of his marrying the daughter of a rich Viennese merchant. But most unaccountably, the young man seemed obstinate, and old Count Madách apparently had no influence over his son, and allowed him to remain single when a rich marriage, which would have retrieved the fallen fortunes, and regilt the ancestral coronet, should have been contracted long ago. Feri was said to have a leaning for the army, which was not considered a very aristocratic profession for a descendant of the ancient family of Madách, whose ancestry was lost in the mazes of the Tartar invasion. No wonder, therefore, that Countess Irma frowned when she noted her daughter’s blush, and heard the tone of that “Isten hozta” (God be with you), so sweet and so heartfelt. Ilonka, however, unconscious of the gathering storm, stood happy and blushing now, laughing merrily, promising dances for this evening’s ball, and agreeing to innumerable riding, boating and fishing parties for the next few days.
Five minutes later, the big hall clock strikes the hour of two, and punctual to the minute old Jankó opens the doors, and announces that the Countess is served.
All are equal in this hospitable house, there is no formula of etiquette or precedence; jovially the host and hostess show the way, and young and old, with much laughter and pleasant anticipation, file into the dining-hall. Already the gipsy band is stationed at one end; as the guests come in, they start the merriest csárdás, and keep it up till everyone has found the place they wanted most, next to the person near whom they would prefer to sit.
At the head of the table, the good-looking face of the host beams delighted on his guests; whilst at the opposite end, the Countess, enthroned like a queen, listens to the various compliments on the beauty of her table decorations, the size of her fruit, the picturesqueness of her garden. Perhaps she is aware, that half the flattering speeches are but the usages of a flowery language, the custom of the country; she has to do the same when she, in her turn, visits her neighbours, although she may be convinced that all her arrangements, her household, and her cuisine are superior to those of every other mortal in the world. Still flattery is pleasant to listen to, when one is convinced that, in any case, it falls far beneath the reality.
Well out of sight of her mother, Ilonka sits, blushing and happy. Feri has, with wonderful tactics, secured a seat next to her, and, with delight, the young people can look forward to sitting side by side for at least three hours; for, surely all that food and drink will take their elders some time to consume. With a loud “Eljen!” (Long live!) directed with full glasses towards the host and hostess, the company have fallen to; and for fully five minutes, while the first hunger is appeased with a plateful of steaming soup, nought interrupts the merry music of the czigány, save the clink of glasses, and of silver spoons.
The servants go round briskly to fill and refill the glasses as they become rapidly empty; and after the first few minutes the tongues are loosened again.
Poor Bideskúty has to endure a vigorous attack from every side on the eternal subject of his new mill and machinery. Obstinate, he holds his ground, propounds his theories of which he himself is not very clear. The entire bevy of his older guests, all in his own rank of life, and most of them prosperous, rich landowners, prophesy the most dire disasters, which are sure to befall him, if he persist in his new-fangled notions, brought from abroad, from the blowing up of the infernal machine, by the revengeful flames of heaven, to the revolt of the entire peasantry against these inventions of the devil. The idea of any improvement in the way, in which many generations had carried on their farming, was, to these Magyar nobles, nothing short of the ravings of a lunatic; it was an unheard-of precedent in the history of the Hungarian lowlands.
But the lord of Bideskút had nursed his fad, ever since, a young boy, his father had first tried to drive it out of his head; fostered by opposition, it had grown to a conviction. He was sanguine of success. In order to pander to his craze originally he had dipped pretty deeply in borrowed coffers; now, like the true gambler, he staked more and more, secure in the conviction that, ultimately, fortune would be his, a boundless fortune, built on the secure foundation of his highly-improved produce, obtained at a minimum cost of time and labour.
Bideskúty had with infinite patience perused a number of heavy books which he had sent for from Budapesth, and had persuaded himself that he was thoroughly imbued with the progressive notions of Western countries. In imagination he saw himself the recognised authority, on matters agricultural, from the confines of Poland to the shores of the Lajtha, From the perusal of those heavy books he had gathered, with an infinitesimal and somewhat addled quantity of knowledge, a certain desire for something different to his present mode of life; he began to dream of riches; he who came from a race that were content to live from the product of the soil, began to have vague, undefined longings for other luxuries, besides that of fine white bread and rich old wines; the word “progress” was just beginning to have a distinct though still obscure meaning for him, and he was beginning to realise that the life of a Hungarian noble on his estate might perhaps be better filled than by watching his corn grow, or breaking wild horses into harness. Sometimes the original old man would crop up, as when he found amusement in terrorising Rosenstein, but, on the whole, a vague feeling of his dignity as a man lurked in his mind beside the empty pride of ancestry.
At the further end of the table, Ilonka had at last broken the happy silence.
“They told me you were not coming,” she said, after they each had eaten their soup.
“But you knew better,” he rejoined.
“Well, I did not know. I heard you had been to Budapesth for the carnival, and I thought …”
“You could not have thought anything, but that you are fairer than the most beautiful girl I could meet anywhere, and that whenever I looked at a pretty face, in Budapesth, I thought all the more of you.”
“You thought of me?” she said with playful astonishment.
“You know I did, Ilonka,” said the young man with suppressed passion, “you know I …”
“Hush! hush!” she said nervously, “mama is looking, and I am sure Madame de Kantássy can hear.”
He had perforce to whisper very low, so low that not even the flies could hear as they buzzed lazily overhead. But Ilonka must have heard something, something that made her blush, and cast her blue eyes down on her plate. It was very pleasant to be talking thus, to be nibbling slily at the forbidden fruit, whilst mama’s eyes had perforce to wander everywhere, and the noise of talk and laughter, and that of the gay czigány band, drowned the sound of the young man’s whispered words.
“I shall pass my officer’s examination next month, Ilonka,” said Fed, tentatively.
“Yes?”
“And then I shall pray for another war against the Prussians.”
“Why? you might have to go and get killed.”
“Yes, I might,” he said, smiling, “that certainly would be a most complete solution of the difficulty. But, if I lived to do something great, enormous, which would draw the attention of my country on my poor self, then, perhaps …”
“Yes,” she said, “then … perhaps.”
They both lapsed into silence, and from Ilonka’s eyes a tear fell down on the bunch of roses in her belt.
“Perhaps!” They both knew what a vague word that was; they both felt that however great their love, however deep their sorrow, their whole fate and happiness depended on that problematical “perhaps,” the consent of the parents, without which no well-born girl in Hungary could marry, slave as she is to their old-fashioned whims, their considerations of rank and wealth, all the glitter which is necessary to the old, and seems so paltry, so tawdry to the young.
“Ilonka, you have made me very happy,” said the young man, after a slight pause.
“Happy? How?” she asked innocently.
“By saying ‘perhaps.’”
The servants were handing round the meat, the fruit, the salads. All round them was noise, gaiety, loud laughter, sometimes coarse jest. These two sat, like tiny birds hidden beneath overhanging boughs, secure from storm and stress of weather without, content to steal a few glances from each other’s eyes, to snatch a word of what lay nearest to their heart, in the intervals of evading the prying eyes of their elders.
“Beautiful Ilonka is very silent over there,” came in loud, laughing accents from the furthest end of the table, and old Kantássy, boisterous and good-humoured, raised an overflowing glass of wine high above his head.
“I drink to the prettiest girl on the lowlands,” he added, rising. “Beautiful Ilonka, to your bright eyes, to your pink cheeks, and your merry laugh, which I have not heard this last half-hour.”
This was an excuse for refilling the glasses, and all the young people got up, and walked round to where Ilonka was sitting, blushing to the very roots of her hair, and touched glasses with her, and said, “Eljen!” (Long live!), the young girls all kissed her, the young men looked as if they wanted to, the old ones took leave without permission; and so the hubbub lasted for quite a long time, everyone’s attention being drawn to Ilonka, so that the one topic of conversation which interested her was perforce interrupted during that time.
Presently, however, young Bartócz, who was just out of the Oriental Academy, and was going into the diplomatic service, rose to make an elaborate speech in honour of the hostess’s birthday. Everyone was deeply interested, and Ilonka had occasion to whisper sadly:
“It is not much use thinking of it, mama will never consent.”
“What do you think your father will say, Ilonka?”
She shook her pretty head wisely.
“Papa is too much worried with his machines, and his arguments with the peasants; he will listen to anything mama says, in order to have peace at home.”
“Ilonka, I wish we had lived many hundred years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because, then, I could have come on Kópé's back, in the middle of the night, and climbed the walls of Bideskút with the aid of a rope and carried you away with me by force, in spite of mother and father and everybody. Money did not matter in those days, nor family either. All were equal, and a man could marry whom he loved.”
“Yes, that must have been nice not to have had to ask mama, whom one may love.”
“You cannot ask that now, Ilonka,” he corrected seriously; “nobody can dictate to you as to whom you should love.”
“What is the use of loving,” she rejoined innocently, “if you may not marry whom you love.”
“There is much joy to me, Ilonka, in loving you, even though …”
“Hush! hush! I am sure mama is looking this way.”
The young man from the Oriental Academy had finished speaking; once more the ceremony had to be gone through of touching glasses with the hostess, and wishing her a happy birthday. Ilonka was obliged, like everyone else, to go up to her mother, to kiss her hand, and speak a short speech of felicitations. Her young heart, still only half understanding the emotions that threatened to fill it, went out for one moment to the mother who held her whole fate in her hands. When she had wished her pretty birthday wish, instead of demurely kissing her mother’s hand, she threw her arms impetuously round her neck and asked for a loving kiss.
“Ilonka, my child, you will crush your dress,” said the Countess Irma, reprovingly.
And Ilonka, vaguely feeling as if she had done something wrong, something she knew not what went back to her place quite shy and tearful.