They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [183]
Adrienne did not arrive until after four o’clock.
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t start when I wanted to. Clemmie was so restless that I had to wait until she calmed down.’
She was very pale. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and she was worn out after a succession of sleepless nights. She had lost weight and the skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones. Her chin seemed sharper, perhaps because she was so much thinner, perhaps because of what she had decided she must tell him. She seemed unusually solemn, and her manner was distant.
They sat down facing each other at one of the tables on the terrace.
‘What is it … what is it you have to tell me?’ asked Balint hesitantly. He felt so self-conscious that he could hardly get out the words.
Adrienne’s eyes opened wide and her golden irises gazed straight at Balint. After a few moments’ silence she started to speak, very slowly: ‘We can never get married! I have to take back my promise.’
‘But that is ridiculous!’ he cried, almost jumping out of his seat.
‘Wait a minute! You must let me explain.’
‘Explain? How can you explain such a thing?’
‘Be patient with me, Balint … and please don’t interrupt, it’s difficult enough without that!’
Clemmie, she said, had been brought up to the sanatorium at Montana after her first hæmorrhage. She had needed careful round-the-clock nursing and had to be watched every minute of the day and kept to a strict régime of meals and rest-times and lying in the sun. It had not been easy for the little girl was wilful and rebellious and would not listen to anyone except her mother. The doctors and nurses alone could do nothing with her if her mother was not there beside them. It seemed that the girl had confidence only in her. At first she had even been suspicious of Adrienne, but as her condition had improved so had her trust in her mother.
After a while it had seemed that the child was getting better. She had put on weight and her recurrent fevers had diminished and they had even said that maybe soon she would be able to come down to a milder climate. Then came a second haemorrhage. A new lesion had opened on the other side of the lung. This was usually fatal and Adrienne had been told that if she left the sanatorium the child would be dead in a few weeks. It would be by staying where she was and strictly obeying the doctors’ orders that her life could be prolonged. If she did that then she might live for a few years – perhaps five or six, perhaps ten or even twelve – but no more. That was the verdict of the specialist, and everything that Adrienne had read told her the same thing. And even this would only be if she stayed in the high mountains with the most expert nursing.
‘So you see what the situation is. I have to make a choice and it is only natural that I should choose to stay with my child.’
‘But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t marry? Why should all this stand in our way? I’d stay up here with you if I had to.’
Adrienne interrupted him.
‘You know that is absurd!’ she said. ‘For you to give up everything, all your work, your home, everything that you have created and live for … just to live up here moving from one sanatorium to another. It’s impossible! I wouldn’t accept it! I couldn’t!’
‘Why not, if I wanted it?
‘No! Never! Not that!’
Adrienne now started speaking more softly, and as she did so she reached across the table and took Balint’s hand in hers.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘There are other things too, things we have to think about if we marry and live together here. We’d still have the same awful worry, always fearing what we both crave for, what our bodies crave for! I could never go on like that! Could I give birth to your child here? Here, surrounded by all these consumptives?’
Balint bowed his head without saying anything. For a while he gazed out over the valley. Then he