Strange steps walked through the house, indifferent, careless steps. They passed along the corridor and went up even to the attics. Down in the courtyard bleak business voices bargained and depreciated everything. They said that the ground alone had any value that could be discussed. As for the building, it did not count—a useless old chattel, no longer conforming to modern requirements.
Anne looked round as if fearing that the house might hear this. She felt tempted to shout to the agents to clear out of the place and never dare to come back again. Let old Florian lock the gate. Let the days be again as secure as of old, when there was no fear that they must break off their lives in the old house and have to continue elsewhere.
In the green room an agent knocked at the wall and laughed.
“Strong as a fortress. The pickaxe will have hard work with these old bricks.”
Anne could listen no more. She moved herself to the furthest room and hid so that Thomas might not look into her eyes. Why destroy her husband’s bliss? He was so contented and grateful. He worked, planned, discussed, bargained. At the auction Ille had fallen to him and his eyes glistened marvellously when he spoke of it. “Soon our house at home will be ready, and the farm too. Everything in its old place, the furniture, the pictures, the servants, the bailiff, the agent, even the old housekeeper. The crops are promising.... Are you pleased, Anne? You rejoice with me, don’t you? The earth will produce for us.”
Feverishly, disorderly haste spoke in his voice, in his actions. Anne was tired and slow; it took her a long time to go from one room to another; there was so much to be looked at on her way....
Thomas prepared for re-union and counted the days impatiently; Anne took leave and woke every morning with fear.
“Nothing has happened yet.” She looked round, and, being alone, she repeated it aloud so that the walls might hear it.... Then again she was frightened. “Perhaps to-day ... to-night....”
Then the day came.
A stranger walked with Thomas in the back garden. He trod on the flower beds and turned his head several times towards the house. Anne saw his owl-like face from the staircase window, watched his movements anxiously. He too bargained and depreciated everything. She began to hope: perhaps he would go away like the others, life would remain in its old groove and the day which was to be the last day of all would never come.
The owl-like face began to ascend under the vaults of the staircase and smiled. It looked into the sunshine room. Vainly Anne fled from it; she met it again in the green room.
The stranger, feeling quite at home, leaned now against the writing table with the many drawers and said something to Thomas.
Anne did not understand clearly what was said, but she felt as if a sharp, short blow had struck her brow. Her brain was stunned by it. Thomas’s voice too reached her ear confusedly, but she saw with despairing certitude that his countenance brightened.
When an hour later the banker from Paternoster Street left, the old house was already his.
For days the dull pain behind Anne’s brow did not cease. Everything that happened around her seemed unreal: the sudden departure of the people from the ground floor, the packing up of everything all over the house.
The time for delivery was short. The greatest haste was necessary.
The old pieces of furniture moved from their places, as clumsily, painfully, as old people move from their accustomed corners. Below, in front of the house, rattling furniture vans stopped now and then.
Anne looked out of the window. Barefooted, sweating men carried the piano out of the door. The pampered household gods stood piled up in a heap in the middle of the pavement, amidst the crowd of the street. A man sat on the music chest. Christopher’s old desk lay upside down on top of the chest of drawers, just like a dead animal, its four legs up in the air.
In these days, Thomas travelled repeatedly from home, for he wanted himself to supervise the placing of the furniture of the old house in the manor house of Ille.
The boys were made noisy by their expectation of new and unknown things. They spoke of Ille as if it were the realization of a fairy tale—a fairy tale told by their father.
“They don’t cling to the old house,” thought Anne and felt lonely. She liked best to be by herself. Then her imagination restored everything to its old place in the dismantled rooms. The shapes of the furniture were visible on the wall papers. The forsaken nails stretched out of the walls like fingers asking for something. In the place of Mrs. Christina’s portrait a weary shadow looked like a faded memory.
Another piece of furniture disappeared, then another.... The writing-table with many drawers remained alone in the green room. Anne drew the drawers out one by one. One contained some embroideries made in cross-stitch. How ugly and sweet they were! She remembered them well, she had made them for her grandfather. Then some clumsy old drawings came into her hands, quaint castles, girls, big-eared cats; two silvery, fair curls, in a paper, tied together; beneath them an old distant date in her grandfather’s faded writing.
Whenever the clock struck she started and touched her forehead as if it had struck her to hurry her on.
In another drawer she found a diploma of the Freedom of the Royal Free City of Pest and a worn little book. On its cover a two-headed eagle held the arms of Hungary between its claws.
... Pozsony. A. D. 1797, Christopher Ulwing ... civil carpenter....
While she turned the pages a faint, mouldy odour fanned her face. Her memory searched hesitatingly:
“Two prentice lads once wandered
To strange lands far away.”
Suddenly the torpor of her brain was dispelled. Reality assumed its merciless shape in her conscience. She had to leave here, everything would be different.... Unchecked tears flowed down her cheeks.
She had no courage to pack the contents of the drawers, nor the heart to have the open boxes nailed down. Anything that seemed final filled her with horror.
Somewhere a door creaked. Anne woke to her helplessness. She pretended to hurry and strained her efforts to hide her feelings before those she loved.
The boys were preparing for their examinations. Thomas noticed nothing. In the egotism of his own happiness he passed blindly beside Anne’s shy, wordless pain. He was pleased with everything, only his wife’s apathy irked him.
A half-opened drawer, an empty cupboard, could stop Anne for hours. In her poor tortured brain memories alone had room. Everything spoke of the past. Even in the attics she only met with memories.
Uncle Sebastian’s shaky winged armchair; the grimy engravings of Fischer von Erlach and Mansard; the out of date coloured map of Pest-Buda.... She took the map to the light of the attic window. For a long time she contemplated the lines of the short crooked streets, the Danube painted blue, the small vessels of the boat-bridge, the small churches, the many empty building plots.
She could not find her way on the map. Over her childhood’s memories a new big city had risen, had swallowed in its growth the old streets, removed the markets, spread beyond the limits of the tattered map, spread even beyond the cold, confident dreams of Ulwing the builder.
Wearily Anne went down the stairs and evening found her again immobile in front of an open cupboard. She sat on the ground and on her knee lay an old shrunken cigar case, embroidered with beads....
Steps approached from the adjoining room. She became attentive and really wanted to be quick, but forgot that she was engaged in filling an empty box and with rapid movements she instinctively returned everything to its usual place in the cupboard.
Thomas stopped near her.
“What do you think, how much more time do you require?”
“There is still much to be done,” answered Anne guardedly. What it was she could not have told.
“In a week the house has to be handed over,” muttered her husband nervously.
Anne looked up at him.
The lamplight lit up Thomas’s face. How old and worn out he looked! His well-shaped mouth seemed pitifully dry and between his cheek bones the sunken crevices were darkened with purplish-blue shadows.
Anne thought her eyes deluded her and got up.
Thomas snatched at his chest and again made the ominous movement with his hand. Anne could no longer believe that it was accidental. As if to escape her maddening anxiety she flung herself into his arms and pressed her head to his chest.
Thomas stood motionless as if he had lost consciousness. He breathed heavily and stared anxiously into space above his wife’s head. His heart beat faintly a rapid course, stumbled suddenly, and for an instant there was an awful, cold silence in his chest.
Anne listened with bated breath. Under her head, the rapid irregular gallop started again.
As if he had only then noticed his wife’s proximity, Thomas stretched himself out and pushed her away impatiently. Anne remembered that this was not the first time this had happened. The awful truth dawned on her.
“It is nothing,” he said and made an effort to laugh, but his laughter died away under Anne’s pitiful look.
“Thomas, since when?”
“A long time ago.”
“For God’s sake, why did you not tell me?”
“I thought it would pass away at Ille.... Open the window. It is rather worse to-day....” His face became ashen-grey, his eyes appealed for help. With a single gesture he tore his shirt-collar open.
Anne flew through the room.
“Call the doctor! The doctor....”
It sounded all through the house when Florian slammed the street door.
Hours came and passed and left their marks on the faces of the people in the old house. Thomas was already in bed. On the vaulted staircase Anne talked for a long time with Dr. Gárdos, the son of the old proto-medicus.
The doctor’s voice was strangled; his words scarcely reached Anne and yet they annihilated everything around her. Had she not yet lost enough? Was there no mercy for her?
Dr. Gárdos looked at her full of pity.
“Miracles might happen....”
The corners of Anne’s eyes drew up slowly and horror was in her expression. She shivered and then went back through the corridor with strained, stiff lips. When Thomas as in a dream reached for her hand, she bent over him with her wan, crushed smile.
Dawn was slow to come and it was a long time before evening fell again. Nothing altered in the house, only the day opened and closed its eyes.
Thomas lay motionless in his bed. Anne watched his every breath anxiously, thought of the passing hours and of the day that drew threateningly nearer, on which the house was to be surrendered.
She asked for delay. It was refused. She had to accept the advice of young Doctor Gárdos.
The empty little lodgings in the house opposite ... there was no choice, they must move there. They would have to rough it, there would be room enough for a few days. For the doctor had told her, quite calmly, that it was only a matter of a few days.
“So there are still miracles,” thought Anne. “Yes, it is only for a short time and then ... everything will come right again.” She felt relieved and thus the last day in the old house passed away.
It was evening. The two boys had already gone with Tini into the lodgings opposite. Thomas slept. Anne and the old servant sat up with him; they did not dare to look at each other.
The windows were open; in the corridor, near the wall, the marble clock ticked, on the floor. The last thing left in the old house. Florian insisted on carrying it over himself into the new lodgings.
Anne counted the strokes of the clock. “In three hours ... in two hours....” She rose quietly, slid along the corridor, down the stairs. In the back garden, between the high, ugly walls, the old chestnut tree, the winged pump, the bushes were all still in their places ... and one could rest on the circular seat of the apple tree. Everything was as of old, even the ticking of the old clock came down into the garden.
Anne leaned her head against the trunk of the tree; without taking her eyes off Thomas’s window, she took leave of all things around her.
Suddenly, as if somebody’s speech had broken off in the act of saying farewell, the silence became absolute. The clock had stopped.
Anne ran up the stairs. Now she remembered. Last night she had forgotten the clock and now the butterfly pendulum, which she had seen alive, lay dead between the marble pillars. She passed her hand wearily over her brow. So the little dwarf had gone too! Had Time itself forsaken the old house?
She opened the door of the green room. The candle light floated round her up and down. Her steps echoed sharply from the empty walls. She stopped in front of the tall white doors with the glass panes. On the panel rising notches were visible. When they were children, Christopher and she, their father had marked their growth every year. She went further, trying the door-handles carefully. Some were meek and obedient, others creaked and resisted. She knew them ... they had had their say in her life. She knew the voice of everything in the house. The windows spoke to her when they were opened; the board of the threshold too had something to say beneath her tread, always the same thing, ever since she could remember. But that was part of its destiny.
She slipped along the walls. She passed her hand over the faded wallpaper, over the grey stove, even over the window sills. She put the candle down and looked through the small panes of glass towards the Danube, just like old times. But the fronts of the houses opposite repelled her looks.
A carriage rattled through the street: it sounded like the crack of a whip. Anne clung close to the walls and under the harmonizing influence of the quiet night, the intimate physical contact brought something suddenly home to her that had lived in her unconscious self dimly unexpressed, for the whole of her existence. In that moment she understood the bond that existed between her and the doomed old house. The bricks under the whitewash, the beams, the arches, all were creations of one single force and she felt herself one with them as if she had grown from between the walls, as if she were just a chip of them, a chip privileged to move and say aloud what they had to suffer in silence.
She thought of the finished lives, continued in her who had survived everybody. Mysterious memories of events she had never witnessed invaded her mind. Grafts from memories treasured up by the house of the Ulwings.
Since the clock had stopped, time ceased to exist for Anne. A painful trembling of her own body brought her back to reality. The whole house trembled. The bell rang in the hall.
Blood rushed to Anne’s benumbed heart. Her knees gave way as she returned through the rooms. One after another she closed the doors behind her, looking back all the time. Near the door of the nursery a folded piece of paper lay on the floor. She picked it up and pressed it carefully between the glazed wings, as she used to do, so that they might not rattle when carriages passed below.
She only realized what she had done when the door-handle dropped back to its place, when the door was closed, the door whose rattling would wake no one any more. Anne sobbed aloud among the empty walls. The rooms repeated her sob, one after the other, gently, more and more gently....
The street door opened below. Dr. Gárdos’ commanding voice was audible on the staircase. Two men followed him, carrying a stretcher on their shoulders. Anne came face to face with them in the corridor. She swayed, as if she had been hit on the chest, then she seemed quite composed again. She opened the door and gently wakened her husband.
The stretcher, with Thomas on it, floated across the road in the early dawn as over a narrow blue river. One shore, the habitual one, was the old house, the other, the strange dark house, the strange new life in which Anne felt she had no root.
She passed the gate quickly, with her head bent. Only in the middle of the road did she stop and hesitate. She turned back suddenly.
The two pillar-men leaned out under the urns of the cornice. Their stone eyes turned to her, as if they stared straight at her accusingly and asked a question to which there was no answer.
Florian turned the big old key slowly in the door. For the last time, the very last time.…