The old house was in flower. Never before had so many roses blossomed in the garden. Anne wanted it so. She carried the flowers into the house and went, faintly smiling, from room to room. She looked at every object curiously as if she were seeing it for the first time. The furniture, the pictures, they all seemed different now; she looked at them with different eyes, with the eyes of one for whom she waited. Had not somebody said to her the other day, on the pier of the Danube, “Au revoir....”
Since then she had not met Thomas Illey. And yet she had never taken so many walks with Mamsell Tini. Sometimes she was quite tired and still she wanted to go on, towards the pier on the Danube, through the inner town. A clean-cut profile behind the window of a carriage rumbling by: her heart rose. But no, it was another mistake. A slender form near the corner; when it came nearer it was a stranger.
The days grew hot, the nights were close.
A window of the Ulwing’s house opened softly in the moist early morning. The shadows were still deep on the front. Opposite, sunlight was streaming golden over the castle hill, as if it shone through a window of amber.
Anne leaned out into the clear sunrise. She looked towards the island. When she turned back again the rays of the yellow morning sun had reached the bottom of the hill and came floating across the Danube.
Steps approached. Tramping boots, the slap-slap of naked feet. At the corner a three-storied building was under construction. The name of an unknown contractor hung from the scaffolding. Shouts, hammering.... On the other side of the street another new house. That was built by the Ulwings, but it made slow progress. Many houses.... Workmen poured into the town from the countryside. The streets were loud with patois talk. The old, fair, German citizens seemed to have disappeared.
A peasant girl in a bright-coloured petticoat passed under the window beside a mason. The ample petticoat rustled pleasantly in unison with the heavy footsteps of the man. Anne looked after them. “Lucky people, they are together!” She thought of herself and remembered a dream. She had dreamt it last night, though she had imagined that she had not slept at all.
In her dream she walked a strange street by herself. That was unusual and frightened her. Only one person was visible in the deserted street, at the far end of it. She recognised him by his elegant, careless gait. She followed him, faster and faster, but the distance between them remained the same.
The street began to stretch and become longer and longer.
And he looked quite small, far, far away. She could not reach him though by now she was running breathlessly. She wanted to shout to him to stop, stretching her arms out after him.
She awoke. The dream had vanished, but in her heart there remained the longing, urgent movement of her outstretched arms.
She looked at the portrait of her mother. Her mother was no longer older than she; they were now of the same age, she and the scared-looking child-woman. She had outlived her mother’s years. If she were here.... No, not even to her could she speak of this, to nobody, never.
She threw herself on to the couch and covered her face with her hands. With half-shut eyes, she stared at the flowered linen cover. It began to spread round her. It was linen no longer; it became a meadow, a meadow all covered with flowers and someone was coming towards her from the other end. She did not turn in his direction, yet she knew that he was coming. Her heart beat violently. She raised her head in astonishment. Everything was new, she herself was new. All of a sudden she felt a desire to sing, sing out to the sunshine of something that was greater than she, too great to be retained in her bosom.
To sing.... But the house was asleep. She alone was awake. That was delightful ... to be alone. She felt an irrepressible smile on her lips. “I love him ...” she whispered it softly, but she felt as though in these words she had sung all her songs.
Downstairs the side entrance creaked gently. Christopher had just come home. He looked round and then stole into the office, into the room where his father used to work in the master-builder’s life time. Since Christopher had somehow managed to pass through the technical school, that was his place. Worn out, he leaned his elbows on the writing-table. His shirt was crushed and his face looked crushed too.
Otto Füger came in to him, but he was unable to alter his despairing attitude. Helplessly his mouth went sideways.
“What has happened?” asked the younger Füger.
Christopher looked up wearily. It was all the same to him who questioned him and what he answered. At this moment he would have confessed his misery even to Florian. He had to speak to somebody ... it is a relief to speak.
The straight soft lips of Otto Füger’s mouth went wide apart. His eyes became round. He had long suspected that Christopher gambled. But what he had lost last night was more than he thought possible. Too much.... He steadied his staring features. He wanted to know all there was to know.
“Is that all the trouble?”
Christopher looked at him suspiciously. He expected reproaches. That was what he wanted; that would have shamed him, appeased him. It would have relieved him of the weight of responsibility. Otto Füger felt that he had been tactless. He put on a serious, worried expression.
“This is a misfortune. A great misfortune. If the late Mr. Ulwing knew...!”
Yet, he could have said nothing more crushing. Christopher bent his head.
“Don’t think ... I am not bad. I am only unlucky, damned unlucky.”
Young Füger walked up and down the room and seemed deep in thought though he knew full well what he was going to say.
Christopher’s eyes followed his movements with painful attention.
“Help me,” he said hoarsely when silence became insufferable. “Help me, for God’s sake; give me some advice.”
That was exactly what Otto Füger wanted. He looked round cautiously, then stopped in front of his chief’s son.
“The name of Ulwing is good,” he whispered, “in Paternoster Street they will lend on it whatever you want. What are letters of exchange for? Of course, it’s wrong,” he added hastily, “but for once....”
“In Paternoster Street, at the money changer’s?” Christopher looked up a little. “And my simple signature is sufficient? How is it I never thought of it! Shall I go there?”
When Otto Füger was left alone, he took his spectacles off, breathed on them and while he wiped them kept them quite close to his eyes. He sat down to the writing-table. Slowly he began to draw on the blotter. First he drew flourishes which became by degrees the letter U ... Ulwing & Co. These were the words he wrote finally and he thought that he would be the Co. He would work, but no more in the dark, no more for others, like Augustus Füger, for whom he felt an intimate contempt. His father had the nature of an old-fashioned servant, who grows old in the yoke, remains a beggar for ever and works for another man’s pocket.
He effaced what he had written on the blotter and got up respectfully from the table. John Hubert was crossing the room. The head of the firm waved his hand amicably. Otto Füger wrinkled his eyebrows. “What an old hand he has. The whole man is old. Won’t last long.” And he looked after him with the slow, strangled hatred that is only felt by the poor who have to sell their brains to enrich the rich.
“He can’t last long. And the other?...” He started anew writing on the pad. Ulwing & Co. He wrote it many times and erased it carefully.
That afternoon Christopher brought Anne a small gold chain. He bought Mamsell Tini a silver-plated statue of St. Anthony, gave Florian some money and sent him to the circus. He was generous and whistled happily.
At the money changers’ in Paternoster Street everybody bowed respectfully when he mentioned that his name was Christopher Ulwing. They never asked for any security, nor did they make any enquiries. The pen trembled slightly between his fingers, but the owl-faced little clerk who presented the bill of exchange never noticed it.
Now he was going to pay all his debts. He began to count. How much would there be left over? He owed money to two usurers in King Street. He would take his watch out of pawn. He thought of the suspicious old hag who waited for nightfall to open her door at the bottom of the courtyard of a disreputable house. He had promised a bracelet to a girl. Greater sums began to come to his mind. Many old debts he had forgotten. He whistled no more. He tried to suppress the unpleasant thoughts; they had no justification, for had he not plenty of money in his pocket? Somehow he would manage to get his house in order. As for cards, he would never touch them again.
Then he stared wearily into space; he felt irritated. He had lost all faith in his own pledges. He had broken as many promises as he had made. He must pledge his word to somebody else. Where was Anne?
Anne stood outside near the stairs and, leaning against the balustrade, looked into the porch. She did not change her attitude when her brother stepped beside her.
“What are you doing here?” asked Christopher to attract her attention. He needed her, he wanted to speak to her. Now, at once, because later on he might not have the courage to do so.
“Anne....”
The young girl turned round, but her look strayed beyond him.
“Somebody has come, the front door bell rang.” At this moment she lived her own life so intently that her heart could not hear the silent cry for help of the other life.
Christopher stopped near her for a little while, then he gave a short whistle. The moment when he had decided to open his heart had passed. He was rather pleased that he had not tied himself with embarrassing promises. He remained free.
Anne scarcely noticed when he left her. She leaned again over the balustrade. The corners of her eyes and lips rose imperceptibly. Her small face took on a strange expectant expression.
And on that day he for whom Anne had waited really came.
They sat in the sunshine room, stiff, in a polite circle, as if a hoop were on the ground between them.
Thomas Illey had brought his sister with him. Christopher was also there and Anne imagined that they must all necessarily notice her panting breath, and the blood forever rising to her cheeks.
She began to observe herself carefully, but found her voice natural, her movements regular, as if someone else acted for her. She grew calm; the confused sounds in her head turned into words. Thomas Illey’s voice became distinct from the others and reached her like a touch.
It gave her a tremor. It attracted her irresistibly, she had to turn her face to him. Illey’s eyes were shining and deep. Only for an instant did he look so, then he seemed to make an effort and a cloud of haughty reserve fell over the radiant warmth of his look, concealing it from the rest of the world.
But Anne did not forget that look, when her father came up from his office. Thomas Illey spoke to John Hubert only, who sat just as solemnly on the thin-legged flowered chair as he did long ago besides the Septemvir Bajmoczy in the drawing-room of Baroness Geramb.
They spoke of the city. Of new railways. Steamers for the Danube. Building. Politics.
Anne did not understand much of this. In the Ulwing family national politics only meant a good or bad business year. They were considered a means or an obstruction, whereas to Illey they seemed interesting for their own sake.
His sparse, tense speech became voluble.
“In vain they trample on us, in vain they throttle us,” he said and his expression became hard. “The great freedom of the nomads is the ancestral home of my race. We sprang from that. It cannot be forgotten....”
Anne looked at him intensely and while she listened distant memories came slowly from the twilight of her mind. Grandfather Jörg’s former shop, feverish men and the mysterious powerful voice which, unintelligible, had once carried her soul for a cause she could not understand. Now it seemed to her that Thomas Illey gave words to the voice and that she began to understand events of her childhood.
John Hubert too followed Illey’s word attentively and thought of his father, Ulwing the builder. What he had done and felt for the town, Illey felt for the country and would like to do for the whole country. How was that possible?
He smiled soberly. “They are all the same, the Hungarian gentry. Every one of them wants to save the whole country, yet if each of them grappled with a small part of it, they would achieve more.” He criticised his guest quietly within himself, yet listened to him with pleasure, because his words roused confidence and his thoughts could find support in the power of words.
“Do you really think it is possible that our economic life should ever revive again?” John Hubert was now thinking of his business only. He spoke of the price of timber, building material and labour conditions.
Martha smiled absent-mindedly in the corner of the flowered couch. Christopher interrupted nervously but his father did not heed him.
Thomas Illey listened politely. Anne noticed that he glanced towards the mantelpiece, at the clock under the glass globe. Frightened, she followed his look. She had never yet seen the hand run so mischievously fast. And she now had a foreboding of what the hours were to be to her when she was without him.
She must say something to Illey before he went, something that would bring him back again. She did not know that she got up, she did not know that she went to the piano.
“Yes, sing something,” said Martha.
“Do sing!” cried Christopher, delighted to interrupt his father.
Anne glanced shyly at Illey. He looked imploringly. Their eyes met. They were far from each other and yet the girl felt that she was nearest to him and was going to say something to him, to him alone. She did not know what. But under her hand Schubert’s music was already rising from the piano.
“Greetings to thee, greetings to thee....”
Blood rose in a pale pink cloud to Anne’s temples. Her face became radiantly beautiful, her pure youthful bosom rose and fell like a pair of snowy, beating wings and her voice sounded clearly, rapturously, like a deep, all-powerful passion. It expressed tears, triumphant youth, the unconscious, glorious avowal of all her love.
Christopher looked at her in amazement. He had never heard his sober, serious sister sing like that. All looked at Anne. Not one of them understood what had happened, yet they felt a strange warm light thrill through them.
“How beautiful she looks when she is singing!” thought Thomas Illey.
People do not see each other always, only now and then for a moment. Thomas Illey saw Anne in this moment. He turned a little pale and felt as if a hot caressing hand fanned the air near his face. He lost control over his eyes and passionately they took possession of the girl.
Though Anne did not understand all that was in this look, it moved her deeply.
Then the song came to an end. The following silence cooled Anne’s soul. Her greenish blue eyes looked frigidly into the air, her eyelids became immobile. When she turned to Illey her face was reserved, impenetrable. She wanted to screen what she had shown of herself, as if she were ashamed of it.
The others too assumed this ordinary expression. Everybody returned to everyday soberness. Netti brought the lamp in. It was evening.
Before the week was over Thomas Illey called again at the old house. He came alone, Martha had gone into the country.
“To the mother of her fiancé,” said Illey. “It is an old engagement. The wedding will be in autumn. Then that worry will be over too.”
He said no more about it. On the whole he spoke little. Nor did Anne say much, but the silence between them was bright and happy.
Tini’s knitting needles clattered rapidly underneath the lamp-shade; and the expression of her long, stiff face was that of an elderly person contemplating spring through the window.
Now and then Anne started, as if his look had called to her by name. She smiled at Thomas over the embroidery screen, then bent her head down again and the stones of her rings sparkled at regular intervals as she drew the silk upwards.
John Hubert came up from the office. Mamsell Tini stuck her knitting needles into the ball of wool. She got up. Her steps died away in the corridor and John Hubert spoke again about business, the town and building.
When this happened Anne began to hear the ticking of the clock. If only once she could be alone with Thomas, she would go to the clock, push its hand back and that would tell him all she dared not express in words. But they were never alone. She could only speak to him when she was singing.
Did he understand it? Did he like to hear it? She did not know. Illey was different from everyone she had known hitherto. When their eyes met in silence she felt herself quite near to him. When they spoke to each other it seemed to her that they were far, far apart and that their voices had to travel a great distance, the words being dulled on the way.
Anne began to grow fond of silence which she could fill with the warmth of her heart.
Summer passed away.
Thomas Illey came more and more frequently and stayed longer and longer. John Hubert surrendered his evening stroll to remain in his company. Tini produced the best china cups from the glass cupboard when he was expected. Florian ran to open the door.
The days became shorter. Now and then Netti lit a fire in the stove.
One evening Illey was even more taciturn than usual.
Tini dropped her ball of wool. While she bent down for it Thomas turned suddenly to Anne and said in a very low whisper:
“I shall soon leave Pest. Give me a word that I can carry with me.”
Mamsell was now sitting up again, stiff and straight, on her chair and her knitting needles knocked each other diligently.
Anne’s hand had slid down from the embroidery frame and her eyes became dull as if all their lustre had melted away.
“You are going?” Her voice was very dim.
“What did you say?” asked Miss Tini, absent-mindedly. She stuck one of the knitting needles sideways into the knot of her hair and began to count the stitches.
Illey watched with silent despair the slow-moving lips of Mamsell as he impatiently twirled the old seal ring round and round.
“I am going to Martha’s wedding. I have some other business too, so who knows when I can come back again.”
Anne looked at the ring and then lifted her eyes to Thomas. She would have liked to tell him, implore him, to take her with him too, to abide faithfully by her as he clung to that ring and never leave her alone again.
“Come to-morrow with Christopher to the Palatine’s Island,” said Illey suddenly. His voice became harsh and commanding. “We shall meet at the pier.” Then he continued, more softly: “Do sing something....” He said this as if to clear the air of the grating vibrations of his former words.
“You really want me to?” Anne’s eyes blazed up. The dominating voice had made her feel as though Thomas had laid hands on her, as though he had bent her wrist with tender force. That unconscious delight of women in the humiliations of love flashed through her. She blushed and asked:
“What do you like? Schubert, Mozart or Schumann?”
“The voice of Anne Ulwing,” answered Illey simply, looking straight into her eyes.
When the song died away, Thomas rose.
“Au revoir,” said Anne, and her hand, like a little bird snuggling up in its nest, took refuge in his strong, warm grip. They remained like that for an instant. Then Anne was again alone. She ran back to the piano.
Even now she was still singing for Thomas. She sent her voice after him, to follow him down the stairs, to attend him part of the way. Perhaps he would hear it and turn back.
She drew aside the muslin curtains of the window. Lamps were already burning in the streets. Someone on the other side. Anne leant eagerly forward.
It was Otto Füger.
For a short time the younger Füger remained standing there, and turned his head in the direction whither Thomas Illey had gone.
From the office window a beam of light stretched to the street. In what had once been the study of Ulwing the builder the green-shaded lamps were lit up.
This evening John Hubert remained exceptionally long at his writing desk. He sat there in a state of collapse and his colourless skin formed two empty folds under his chin. His hand lay inert on a bundle of papers which had been presented to him for signature.
He rose heavily. He was looking for the second time through the door which led to the adjoining office. Once Augustus Füger used to work there, but, since an attack of apoplexy had paralysed the little book-keeper’s right arm, his son Otto occupied his place.
“Where can he be?” mused John Hubert, looking through the door into the empty office.
He returned to his seat at the writing desk. His eyes gazed at the plan of Pest-Buda, but he did not see anything of it. Every now and then his head twitched, as if he sought to shake up behind his forehead the dull, dense matter that refused to act. He sighed and desisted from the effort. He shut his eyes. But now that he wanted to rest, his brain became active and a whirling chaos moved about it. He thought suddenly of Christopher.
Otto Füger entered quietly through the door. Cold rage was in his eye and his lips were compressed and straight. But as soon as he came within the light of the lamps he was already smiling.
John Hubert continued his reflections aloud:
“Somebody mentioned Christopher’s name to-day at the money-changer’s. The clerk spoke of him behind the counter. When I turned to them they caught their breath. I can’t understand it.” He looked anxiously at young Füger. “Do you know anything?”
Otto Füger did not answer at once. At this moment he hated furiously everybody living in that house. He hated the others because of Anne and on account of that stuck-up Illey whose looks always passed above his head. Now he had his chance to revenge himself on them for having been born in the back-lodgings of an insignificant book-keeper, for being poor and striving vainly. He looked humbly to the ground and feigned to suffer from the painful necessity of his disclosures.
“It is hard on me to have to betray Mr. Christopher. I have always tried to restrain him, I have implored him....”
“What is going on behind my back?” John Hubert’s voice bubbled out heavily between his blanched lips.
When the whole truth was revealed to him, he repeated painfully:
“He gambles ... the whole town knows it.... He loses ... bills of exchange?...” He asked terrified: “What is the amount?”
“One hundred and eighty thousand florins....”
For an instant, John Hubert straightened himself in the chair, then his body collapsed slowly to one side. His high collar alone kept his relaxed, waxy face in position. In a few minutes he had turned quite old.
Otto Füger watched his chief cunningly. He judged from his altered attitude what was the right thing to say.
“We must not despair, sir. At bottom Mr. Christopher is a good, God-fearing young gentleman. It is all the fault of bad company. I always told him so. Those young gentry fellows from the country preyed on him. They have got rich Ulwing’s money. But don’t punish him, sir. I beg of you, let me bear your anger, for have I not sinned more than he for keeping it quiet?”
He hung his head penitently, as if expecting judgment.
“You are a good fellow, Otto,” said John Hubert, deeply touched.
“We will save the reputation of the firm,” young Füger said solemnly. “As for Mr. Christopher, if I may venture to give advice, we shall have to tear him from the tempters. Perhaps abroad....”
“Send him abroad? Yes,” John Hubert became suddenly determined. “That was once the plan of my late father. You advise Frankfurt? All right, let it be Frankfurt.”
The book-keeper had not expected to get his way so easily. He became more enterprising.
“He had better go among unpretentious working-class people, till he settles down. Meanwhile you might like to choose for Miss Anne some level-headed business man as a husband; he might enter the firm as a partner and relieve your mind, sir, of all the worries.”
That was a new hope. John Hubert pulled his necktie up. “A serious man of business to stand by Christopher. Somebody belonging to the family. Anne’s husband....” Thomas Illey’s image intruded unpleasantly on his memory. “We must prevent them from meeting again.” Life had been so exacting to him that now he would insist on getting his own back. He had always been merciless to himself, now he would show no mercy to others.
“Yes, that would free me from all care,” he murmured as if taking counsel with himself. “Anne’s husband.... But who is it to be?”
Otto Füger smiled modestly. He took his spectacles off, breathed on them and wiped them while holding them up to his left eye.
John Hubert, for reasons unknown to him, thought of the son of Martin George Münster. Charles Münster would bring capital into the business, he had brains....
He clapped Otto Füger on the shoulder.
“Thank you!”
Young Füger looked after him dejected. He had expected something else.
Next day Christopher left the old house. And at the pier of the Danube Thomas Illey waited in vain for Anne.
White frost fell over the autumn roses in the garden.