They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [161]
On the last day of October he slipped and struck his back against the bedpost. The injury sparked off an attack of pleurisy which soon affected his lungs. In three days he was dead.
He was buried at Varalmas, where his own mad father had been interred. It was after this that Adrienne decided to visit her daughter.
It was still necessary in those days to do nothing which might cause tongues to wag and so Balint left before her, having arranged that they should meet in Salzburg and only from there go on to Switzerland together. They did this principally because it would not have been thought seemly, despite the circumstances, for Adrienne to have travelled alone with a man during the first weeks of mourning. They used the opportunity to talk over their future together. Adrienne was insistent that they should wait until the year’s official mourning was at an end before they married. This, she felt, was for the sake of her daughter who would never afterwards wonder why her mother had not waited for the customary period. Balint felt obliged to agree.
In spite of the reason for this voyage it turned out to be like a honeymoon. Here, for the first time, they were alone, with no fear of discovery or exposure, and happy in the knowledge that their future together was at long last assured.
Balint’s only regret was that his mother had not lived to see how things had turned out. He knew that she would no longer have opposed his marriage to Adrienne but, on the contrary, would have rejoiced with him. He remembered how sweet and welcoming she had been to Adrienne that time they had so unexpectedly met at Gerbeaud’s. He knew that his mother would have approved.
Balint had chosen a small pension on the edge of the lake. It had only twenty rooms and had been converted from the country retreat of some patrician family from Geneva who had had it built at the end of the 18th century and named it, after the fashion of those days, ‘Monbijou’. The name had been kept, and suited it well. It was designed in the French manner, elegant and stylish, and typical of the sort of modest, but not too modest, retreat built by the wealthy of those days. The house faced the lake. In front of it a wide lawn sloped gently down to the water’s side and it was backed by giant oak-trees. Across the lake the mountains rose, a wild jumble of rocky crags above which, whenever the clouds parted, could be seen the snow-covered triangular peak of Mont Blanc. This seemed to float so high in the sky that it was difficult to imagine that it was anywhere attached to the earth.
There they stayed for eight days, eight days of quiet joy and happiness far removed from the impassioned fever of their first coming together in Venice when every minute of that month of frenzied love-making had to be made the most of as both of them feared that any one of those days might have been their last on earth. Then every dawn might have heralded a parting made final by death. Now all was different. They lived together beside the lake in calm intimacy … and in the happy promise that soon they would never again be parted.
They made all sorts of plans, reaching out many, many years ahead. They would have a quiet wedding with only two witnesses, no one else. Some modernization would have to be done at Denestornya; electricity installed and two new bathrooms, one for Adrienne and the other … the other for the future when their son, who had not been spoken of by them for a long time, not since Uzdy’s madness, would then at long last have become a reality. This, they now felt, was sure; and the child would be the crown of their love, a descendant who would be the living proof of their enduring will to live.
Chapter Two
AFTER THE MEETING Balint went to a concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to hear one of the Beethoven symphonies.
It was quite late when the concert was over and Balint hurried to get to Sacher’s before midnight when the public dining-room