Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene
Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'. He had spent a small
fortune in the purchase of flowers. Margit would croon over them, but
Rozsi, with a sober “Many tanks!” as if they were her right, would look
long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her hair. Swithin ceased
to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they did. One evening he
found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale, dishevelled-looking
person.
“Our friend Mr. Forsyte—Count D....,” said Boleskey.
Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!' And with an
ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat. But when he
had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps. Rozsi came
running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up to her breast
as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round she saw him.
Swithin caught her arm. She slipped away, and her face seemed to bubble
with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps, stopped, looked at
him across her shoulder, and fled on up the stairs. Swithin went out
bewildered and annoyed.
'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking. During these three
weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he were being
made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he was doing
there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning as if he
wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window, his cigar,
half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring at the wall.
'Enough of this!' he thought every morning. Twice he packed fully—once
he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following
day. What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have
said. He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in
her face—she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything
about her threatened the very fetishes of his existence. And Boleskey!
Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and
mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte. To talk with the
fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place
in the light of day. Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!
'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of all
this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of
despair, irritated him. “Morbid beggar!” he would mutter; “thank God
I haven't a thin skin.” And proud too! Extraordinary! An impecunious
fellow like that! One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home
drunk. Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to
undress, and stayed until he was asleep. 'Too much of a good thing!'
he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!' It was after this that he
ordered his travelling carriage. The other occasion on which he packed
was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked
chicken bones with her fingers.
Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues—rows of half-heroic
men carrying off half-distressful females—he would spend an hour
pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after
Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual. It was a
morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its
yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and
plums. When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting
there but Rozsi—“Good-morning,” he stammered; “you knew this was my seat
then?”
Rozsi looked at the ground. “Yes,” she answered.
Swithin felt bewildered. “Do you know,” he said, “you treat me very
funnily?”
To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away. It took him a minute to
recover. There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook
her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.
“You shouldn't have done that,” he said; “you shouldn't have run away
from me, you know.”
Rozsi laughed. Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her seized
him. He walked some way before he said, “Will you have the goodness to
tell me what you came to that seat for?”
Rozsi flashed a look at him. “To-morrow is the fete,” she answered.
Swithin muttered, “Is that all?”
“If you do not take us, we cannot go.”
“Suppose I refuse,” he said sullenly, “there are plenty of others.”
Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along. “No,” she murmured, “if you do not
go—I do not wish.”
Swithin drew her hand back within his arm. How round and soft it was!
He tried to see her face. When she was nearly home he said goodbye, not
wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her. He watched till she
had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to the Mirabell Garden.
When he came to where she had been sitting, he slowly lighted his cigar,
and for a long time after it was smoked out remained there in the silent
presence of the statues.