They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [86]
On he went, swinging his arms and singing at the top of his voice just as if he had been on the stage … but, as he had forgotten the rest of the once risque little ballad, all that came out was ‘Tara tara, tara tara, tara tara tara …’
The supper had ended long before with everyone in a good mood: everyone, that is, except Pityu Kendy. At supper he had sat next to Margit Alvinczy, with whom he had fancied himself in love just as previously he had swooned after Adrienne.
Then he and his bosom friend Adam had been able to pour out their mutual but hopeless passion for Adrienne, discuss her heartlessness and bewail her cruelty while all the time enumerating her perfections. But since Adam had married Margit, Pityu had transferred his affections to his friend’s new wife – for somehow it seemed only natural to imitate him in everything even to pursuing another unattainable woman. And so it was now to Margit’s husband that he poured out his woes, complaining of his hopeless love in much the same words as they had both used previously in discussing her elder sister. And Adam just listened, serene in his own happiness, not minding at all that Pityu now sighed forlornly after his own wife. Nothing had changed. They still talked about the sadness of loving someone who scorned the adoring lover: only the object of adoration was not the same. Adam did not know the meaning of jealousy, but Margit’s reaction was quite different from that of her sister. Whereas Adrienne had treated Adam and Pityu as if they had been dolls incapable of real feeling and had teased them both with the same remote playfulness that she had treated all the other men who had run after her, and then promptly forgot them, Margit decided to take Pityu in hand and make a man of him. Principally she wanted to wean him from the bad habits of drinking and gambling. In so far as the gambling went, she succeeded; but the drinking was another matter. Here her influence failed.
That had been the source of some trouble during the ball. Pityu drank too much at the supper-table, and by the time they served the ices she had firmly turned her back on him. When the music of a csardas sounded from the ballroom upstairs and everyone started to get up, she turned back to Pityu and issued her orders.
‘You’re drunk again! Either stay here and stop drinking or go home! I don’t want to see you in the ballroom!’
With that she got up, gathering her skirt behind her, and ran up the stairs. In a few moments she had disappeared among the dancers. What could Pityu do? Nothing would induce him to stay alone in the deserted supper-room; so he went sadly to the cloakroom, collected his coat and headed for home.
Strangely enough, though his head was swimming from the quantity of brandy he had consumed, there was no trace of resentment in his muddled thoughts. What a woman she is! What an angel! But, oh, so cruel, so cruel! And he repeated the words to himself until he reached home.
None of the happy throng that went back to dance after supper had noticed that old Count Alvinczy was no longer among them nor had any idea that he had been taken ill.
Balint, who had been supping with Adrienne, escorted her upstairs with the others. When they arrived at the doors of the ballroom she left his arm and for a moment they stood side by side. Balint looked at her questioningly and almost imperceptibly she nodded. Her lips moved, but she said nothing that even he could have heard. Then she moved slowly on alone.
Balint remained at the head of the stairs until the last couple had come up from the supper-room. Then he hurried down, collected his fur coat and left on foot.
Chapter Five
IT WAS WELL AFTER MIDDAY. Through the wooden laths of the shutters the sunlight cast long narrow flame-coloured lines over the carpet, across the polished parquet floor and even vertically some way up the door. The room was filled with a golden radiance.
Balint awoke, rang for his valet and ordered his bath to be run. Then he closed his eyes again and sank into a half-slumber filled with tender