Eyes Like the Sea Part 34

I don't know what I said. I wouldn't believe she was there till I had caught her in my arms and embraced her tightly.

'Tis true, 'tis true, 'tis true--loyalty, love, sweet remembrance still belong to this world!

She told me afterwards--very briefly--how ill she had been. She had wanted to come before, but couldn't; as it was, she had left Pest by stealth, and had come with a pa.s.sport made out under a false name. She had suffered much on the way. She had gone astray in the snowstorm in the beech woods, and it had been as much as she could do to find her way again. She had been terrified by the wolves, whose howls even now resounded from the woods.

And all the while I suffered the mental torture of a man who hears the person who _is_ talking to him and the person who _has been_ talking to him at the same time. I saw the one figure and I saw the other also.

Our good host, worthy Beno Csanyi, as he sat by the table, kept on mumbling in his beard: "That's something like a woman--that _is_ a wife, if you like!"

Well, now that we are both together again, what does it all matter?

Yes, but how long shall we be together again?

My wife must go back the day after to-morrow. Only grudgingly had the director of the theatre allowed her a four days' leave. On the fifth day she must play.

But my captivity was soon to draw to a close.

My wife took a carefully concealed piece of paper from her breast; it was a tiny little grey schedule, but that little schedule was in those days a great treasure. It was the guarantee of my liberation--a Comorn pa.s.sport.

It was a very simple method of deliverance, as simple as the egg of Columbus.

When the fortress of Comorn capitulated, each of the officers of the garrison there received a pa.s.sport which guaranteed his life and liberty, and also dispensed him from enrolment in the Austrian army. My wife managed to procure me such a pa.s.sport in the simplest way in the world. There was a brother of Szigligeti's in the Comorn garrison, Vincent Szathmary (Szathmary was their family name), who wrote my name down in the list of the capitulating officers as a Honved lieutenant, and handed the pa.s.sport bearing my name to my wife.

This was the reason why I was obliged to remain in concealment in the meantime.

Thus my dove had brought me two leaves of the olive-branch, namely, life and liberty; but how about the third? I had still to wait for that. I was not free to come forth till I got it. I should have to wait till she came back for me a second time. I no longer ran any risk of being condemned, but I might still run the risk of being interned at my native place, Comorn, and that would have been a fresh torment for me.

Then my wife asked me: "Have you been thinking of me also all this time?"

And if I had not been able to answer, "Always of thee!" and if, while saying this, I had not been able to look her honestly in the face, she would have been amply justified in tearing the pa.s.sport to pieces and flinging the fragments in my face.

CHAPTER XV

MARVELS NOT TO BE SEEN FOR MONEY

It was now four years since I had made friends with the beech woods. For two years I was "Sajo," but after that I was again able to practise the art of letters in my own name.

My wife and I saw n.o.body, and n.o.body came to see us. We had both of us quite enough to do without paying visits. My wife was an actress, and I an author. And let n.o.body suppose that actresses and authors live in the land of c.o.c.kaigne.[88] Both have very hard work to do, and rest is their dearest recreation.

[Footnote 88: Lit., a sky full of fiddles.]

Unfortunately I was engaged in publis.h.i.+ng and editing. Nominally, indeed, the director of the National Theatre was the responsible editor and publisher of the belle-lettristic and artistic journal _Delibab_, for my name was still under police supervision; but, in reality, I wrote and edited the whole paper, corrected the proofs, and folded up, directed, and despatched the copies of it to the subscribers--and got into trouble for it besides.

My only a.s.sistant was a worthy, semi-rustic, very p.r.o.nounced Hungarian lad, called Coloman Iglodi, who had served as lieutenant under the banner of the red-capped Honveds in our Utopian days.[89] At the battle of Tarczal he had received three bullets, one in the face, the second in the arm, and the third in the leg, and these wounds he had to thank for his dismissal as a genuine invalid. So he joined me as messenger, secretary, and door-keeper, and a worthy, honest fellow he was.

[Footnote 89: _i.e._, during the war.]

One afternoon "clerk Coloman" (that was his familiar epithet) opened the door of my working-room. "I beg pardon, sir," said he, "but a cuira.s.sier is here."

"What sort of a cuira.s.sier?"

"A senior lieutenant."

"What does he want with me, I wonder?"

In the fifties the visit of an officer was tantamount to a challenge.

Those were the days of the famous political duels in which Coloman Tisza,[90] Julius Szapary,[91] and Francis Beniczky fought with the delegated officers.

[Footnote 90: The late Prime Minister of Hungary and leader of the Liberal party there.]

[Footnote 91: The present Prime Minister.--Since this note was written, Szapary has given way to Weckerle.]

"Admit him!"

"Call me, please, if necessary," said clerk Coloman confidentially, making at the same time a significant movement with the paper-knife.

Then the visitor entered.

In figure he was half a head taller than me at the very least. He was a strong, broad-shouldered fellow. His bony face wore quite a stony expression by reason of a powerful eagle nose and a broad double chin.

On the other hand this sternness was somewhat contradicted by a pair of honest, bright-blue eyes, a little mouth, and offensively light hair, though his eyebrows, moustache, and whiskers were even lighter.

My visitor, as he advanced from my door to my writing-table, took those three short mazurka steps which, with men, are generally the preliminaries to a military salute; he held, close pressed to his thigh, his beautiful helmet, with the golden lions and the black-yellow plumes; and when he stood in front of me, he clashed his spurs together and introduced himself in Hungarian.

"I am Wenceslaus Kvatopil, senior lieutenant of dragoons."

He had the peculiar habit of accompanying every word with an explanatory movement of his hand, so that a stone-deaf person could have understood perfectly what he meant. The deprecatory movement of his hand meant--Wenceslaus Kvatopil; the indication of the twin stars on his collar meant that he was a lieutenant; the slight elevation of his helmet signified that he was a dragoon, and the simultaneous sweep of the hand towards his breast gave me to understand that he was _not_ a cuira.s.sier.

"I am glad to see you," I said; "how can I be of service?"

"I should like to have a long conversation with you, sir, if you will let me."

At this I would have offered him a chair, but on no account in the world would he suffer me to do so, but helped himself to one, and then once more apologised for the trouble he was giving before he sat down opposite to me.

I begged him to address me in German, as I was quite capable of making myself understood in that tongue.

"No! no! En _akarom_ magyariul beszelni"[92]--and at the same time he made as though he were ducking the head of a refractory urchin in a basin of soapsuds.

[Footnote 92: "I want to talk in Hungarian."]

"_Akarok_," I good-humouredly corrected him.

"No! no! _Akarok_ is the _indefinite_ mood, _akarom the definite_ mood; and I want to speak Hungarian _definitely_."

I was forced to acknowledge to myself that his logic was stronger than his grammar.