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.