writing out here a piece of humour not transferable with the least
_esprit_ into English, though mighty funny in Magyar.) His mood
changed at once. He took my arm, a rare attention from him, and
we said no more till the Bridge was past, and the corner which
divided our lodgings by a street's breadth was reached. We said
"Good-night!... till tomorrow!"... the _házmester_ opened his door.
Imre waved his hand gaily and vanished.
* * * * *
I got to bed, concluding among other things that so far from
Imre's being homosexual--as Uranian, or Dionian-Uranian, or
Uranian-Dionian... or what else of that kind of juggling terminology
in homosexual analysis--my friend was no sort of an Uranistic example
at all. No! he was, instead, a thorough-going Dionian, whatever the
fine fusions of his sensitive and complex nature! A complete Dionian,
capable of warm friendship, yes--but a man to whom warm, even
passionate, friendship with this or that other man never could
transform itself into the bitter and burning mystery of Uranistic
Love,--the fittest names for which so often should be written Torment,
Shame, and Despair!
Fortunate Imre! Yet, as I said so to myself, altruistically glad for
his sake, I sighed... and surely that night I thought long, long
thoughts till I finally slept.
II.
MASKS AND--A FACE.
"My whole life was a contest since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marred
The gift....
"A silent suffering and intense....
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show....
Which speaks it in its loneliness.
BYRON
A couple of miles out of Szent-Istvánhely, one finds the fine old
seat, or what was such, of the Z... family, with its deserted chateau
and neglected park. The family is a broken and dispersed one. The
present owner of the premises lives in Paris. He visits them no
oftener, and spends no more for their care than he cannot help. The
park itself is almost a forest, so large it is and so stately are the
trees. Long, wide alleys wind through the acacias and chestnuts. You
do not go far from the very house without hares running by you, and
partridges and pheasant fluttering; so left to itself is the whole
demesne. Like most old estates near Szent-Istvánhely, it has its
legends, plentifully. One of these tales, going back to the days of
the Turkish sieges of the city, tells how a certain Count Z..., a
young soldier of only twenty-six years, during the investment of 1565,
was sitting at dinner, in the citadel, when word was brought that a
Turkish skirmishing-party had captured his cousin, to whom he was
deeply attached; and had cruelly murdered the young man here, in the
park of this same chateau, which during some days the lines of the
enemy had approached. The officer sprang up from the table. He held up
his sword, and swore by it, and Saint Stephen of Hungary, that he
would not put the sword back into its sheath, nor sit down to a table,
nor lie in a bed, till he had avenged his cousin's fate. He collected
a little troop--in an hour. Before another one had passed, he made a
sortie, under a pretext, toward his invaded estate. He forced its
defences. He drove out the enemy's post. He found and buried his
cousin's mutilated body. Then, before dawn, he himself was surprised
by a fresh force of Turks. He was shot, standing by his friend's
grave... in which he too eventually was buried. Their monument is
there to-day, with the story on it, beginning: "To The Unforgettable
Memory of _Z_... Lorand, and _Z_... Egon", after the customary Magyar
name-inversion.
The public was not admitted to this old bit of the Szent-Istvánhely
suburbs. But persons known to the caretakers were welcome. Lieutenant
Imre and I had been out there once before, with the more freedom
because a certain family-connection existed between the Z--s and the
N--s. So was it that about a week after the little incident closing
the preceding portion of this narrative, we planned to go out to Z....
for the end of the afternoon. A suburban electric tramway passed near
the gates.
For two days, I had been superstitiously.... absurdly... irresistibly
oppressed with the idea that some disagreeable thing was coming my
way. We all have such fits; sometimes justifiably, if often, thank
Heaven! proving them quite groundless. I had laughed at mine, with
Imre. I could think of no earthly reason for expecting ill to befall
me. To myself, I accounted for the mood as a simple reaction of
temperament. For, I had been extremely happy lately; and now there
was the ebb, not of the happiness, but of the hyper-sensitiveness to
it all. The balance would presently be found, and I would be neither
too glad nor too gloomy.
"But why.. _why_... have you found yourself so wonderfully happy
lately?" had asked Imre, curiously. "You haven't inherited a million?
Nor fallen in love?"
No--I had not inherited a million.......
It was on my way to the tram, to meet Imre, that same afternoon, that
I found, from my letters from England, why justly I should exclaim:
"My soul hath felt a secret weight,
A warning of approaching fate...."
I was wanted in London within four days! I must start within less than
twenty-four hours! A near relative was in uncertainty and anxiety as
to some special personal affairs. And not only was my entire programme
for the next few weeks completely broken up; worse still, was a
strong probability that I might be hindered from setting foot on the
Continent for indefinite time. In any case, a return to Hungary under
less than a full twelvemonth was not now to be thought-of.
With this fall of the proverbial bolt out of a clear sky, in the shape
of that letter in my pocket, from Onslow Square, I hurried toward the
tram and Imre. All my pleasure in the afternoon and in everything else
was paralyzed. Astonishing was it how heavy-hearted I had become in
course of glancing through that communication from Mrs L..., between
the Ipar-Bank and the street-corner.
Heavy-hearted? Yes, miserably heavy-hearted!...
Why so? Was it because of the worriments of Mrs. L...? Because I could
not loiter, as a travelling idler, in pleasant Szent-Istvánhely?--could
not go on studying Magyar there; and anon set out for the Herkules-Baths?
Hardly any of these were good and sufficient reasons for suddenly
feeling as if life were not worth living! that a world where
departings, and partings along with them, seemed to be the main reason
for one's comings and meetings, was a deceitful and joyless kind of
planet.
Well then, was my grey humour just because I was under the need of
shaking hands with Imre von N..., and saying, "A viszontlátásra!"
("Auf Wiedersehen!") or, more sensibly, saying to him "Goodbye?" Was
_that_ the real weight in my breast? I, a man--strong-willed, firm of
temper and character! Surely I had other friends, many and warm ones,
old ones, in a long row of places between Constantinople and London;
in France, Germany, Austria, England. O dear, yes!... there were A..,
and B..., and C... and so, on very decently through a whole alphabet
of amities. Why should I feel so fierce a hatred at this interrupting
of a casual, pleasant but not extraordinary intimacy, quite one
_de voyage_ on its face, between two men, who, no matter how
companionable, were of absolutely diverse races, unlike objects in
life and wide-removed environments?... who could not even understand
each other's mother-tongues? Why did existence itself seem so
ironical, so full of false notes, so capricious in its kindness... seem
allowed us that we might _not_ be glad in it as... Elsewhere? The reply
to each of these queries was close to another answer to another
question; that one which Imre von N... had asked,.. "And why, pray,
have you found yourself so wonderfully happy _lately_?" That I should
find myself so wonderfully unhappy now? Perhaps so.
Imre was at the tram, and in high spirits.
"We shall have a beautiful afternoon, my dear fellow.... Beautiful!" he
began. Then... "What the mischief is the matter with you? You look as
if you had lost your soul!"
In a few words, I told him of my summons North.
"Nonsense!" he exclaimed. "You are making a bad joke!"
"Unfortunately I never have been less able to joke in my life!
Tomorrow afternoon I must be off, as surely as Saint-Stephen's Crown
has the Crooked Cross."
Imre "looked right, looked left, looked straight before". For an
instant his look was almost painfully serious. Then it changed to an
amused bewilderment. "Well... sudden things come by twos! You have got
to start off for God knows where, tomorrow afternoon: I have got to be
up at dawn, to rush my legs off! For, about noon I go out by a pokey
special-train, to the Summer-Camp at P... And I must stay there five,
six, ten mortal days, drilling Slovaks, and other such cattle! No
wonder we have had a fine time of it here together! Too beautiful to
last! But, Lord, how I envy you! Won't you change places with me?
You're such an obliging fellow, Oswald! You go to the Camp: let me go
to London?"
At this moment, up came the tram. It was packed with an excursion-party.
We were hustled and separated during our leisurely transit. Imre met
some fair acquaintances, and made himself exceedingly lively company
to them, till we reached the Z... cross-road. We stepped out alone.
I did not break the silence as the noisy tram vanished, and the
country's quietness closed us in.
"Well?" said Imre, after fully five minutes, as we approached the
Z.... gateway.
"Well," I replied quite as laconically.
"Oh come, come," he began, "even if it is I routing out of bed by
sunrise tomorrow, to start in for all that P.. Camp drudgery, and you
to go spinning along in the afternoon to England... why, what of it! We
mustn't let the tragedy spoil our last afternoon. Eh?... Philosophy,
philosophy, my dear Oswald! I have grown so trained, as a soldier, to
having every sort of personal plan and pleasure, great or small,
simply blown to the winds on half-an-hour's notice, that I have ceased
to get into bad humour over any such contretemps. What profits it?
Life isn't at all a plaything for a good lot of us, more's the pity!
We've got to suffer and be strong; or else learn not to suffer. That
on the whole is decidedly preferable. Permit me to recommend it; a
superior article for the trade, patent applied for, take only the
genuine."
I was not in tune for being philosophic, in that moment. And, from the
very first words and demeanour with which Imre had received the
announcement that so cruelly preyed on my spirits, I was... shall I
write piqued--by what seemed to be his indifference; nay more, by his
complete nonchalance. Whether Imre as a soldier, or through possessing
a colder nature than I had inferred.... at least, colder than some
other natures... had indeed learned to sustain life's disagreeable
surprises with equanimity, was nothing now to me. Or, stay, it was a
good deal that just then came crosswise to my mood; so wholly
_intransigéant._ Angry irritation waxed hot in me all at once, along
with increasing bitterness of heart. It is edifying to observe what
successive and sheer stupidities a man will perpetrate under such
circumstances... edifying and pitiable!
"I don't at all envy you your philosophy, my dear friend," I said
sharply. "I believe a good deal in the old notion as to philosophic
people being pretty often unfeeling people... much too often. I think
I'd rather not become a stoic. Stoic means a stock. I'm not so far
along as you."
"Really? Oh, you try it and you'll like it... as the cannibals said to
the priest who had to watch them eat up the bishop. It is far better
to feel nothing than to feel unpleasant things too much... so much more
comfortable and cheap in the end.... _Ei_! you over there!" he called
out to a brown-skinned _czigány_ lad, suddenly appearing out of a
coppice, with something suspiciously like a snap-shot in his hand,
"don't you let the _házmester_ up at the house catch you with that
thing about you, or you'll get yourself into trouble! Young poacher!"
he added angrily... "those snap-shots when a gipsey handles them are as
bad as a fowling-piece. The devil take the little rascal! And the
devil take everything else!"
We walked down an alley in silence. Neither of us had ever been in
this sort of a mood till this afternoon. The atmosphere was a trifle
electric! Imre drew his sword and began giving slashes at trees and
weeds, an undesirable habit that he had, as we strolled onward.
Thought I, "A pleasing couple of hours truly we are likely to pass!"
I felt that I would better have stayed at home; to start my packing-up
for London. Then I pulled myself together. I found myself all at once
possessed of a decent stock of pride, if not "philosophy". I undertook
to meet Imre's manner, if not to match his sentiments. I began to
talk suavely of trifles, then of more serious topics... of wholly
general interests. I smiled much and laughed a little. I referred
to my leaving Szent-Istvánhely and him... more to the former
necessity... in precisely the neatest measure of tranquility and even
of humour. Imre's responsiveness to this delicate return for his own
indifference at once showed me that I had taken the right course not
to "spoil this last afternoon together".... probably the last such in
our lives!....
On one topic, most personal to Imre, I could speak with him at any
time without danger of its being talk-worn between us; could argue
with him about it even to forgetting any other matter in hand; if,
alas! Imre was ever satirical, or placidly unresponsive toward it.
That topic was his temperamental, obstinate indifference to making the
most of himself in his profession; to "going-on" in it, with all
natural energies or assumed ones. He was, as I have mentioned, a
perfectly satisfactory officer. But there it ended. He seemed to think
that he had done his duty, and must await such vague event as would
carry him, _motu proprio,_ further toward efficiency and distinction.
Or else, of all things foolish, not to say discreditable, he declared
he still would "keep his eyes open for a chance to enter civil
life"... would give himself up to some more or less aesthetic calling,
especially of a musical connection... become "free from this farce
of _playing_ soldier." He excused his plan by saying that his
position now was "disgracefully insincere." Insincere, yes; but not
disgraceful; and he was resting on his oars with the idea that he
ought not to try to row on, just when such conduct was fatal. A man
can remedy a good deal that he feels is an "insincere" attitude toward
daily life. And what is more, any worthy, any elevating profession,
and in the case of the soldier the sense of himself as a prop and
moral element in the State must not be insulted! The army-life even
if chosen merely from duty, and led in times of peace, is a good deal
like the marriage of respect. The man may never have loved the wife to
whom he is bound, he may never be able to love her, he may find her
presence lamentably _unsympathisch._ But mere self-respect and the
outward duty to her, and duty to those who are concerned in her honour
as in his, in her welfare as in his.... there comes in the unavoidable
and just demand! Honour and country are eloquent for a soldier,
always. It was on the indispensable, unwelcome, ever-postponed
_Hadiskolai_ course that, once more, this afternoon, I found myself
voluble with Imre. If I could not well speak of myself, I could of
him, in a parting appeal.
"You must go on! You have no right to falter now. For God's sake,
N.....! put by all these miserable dreams of quitting the service.
What in the world could you do out of it? You have plenty of time for
entertaining yourself with strumming and singing, and what not.
Everything is in your own hands. Oh, yes, I know perfectly well that
special help is needed to push one along fast... friends at court. But
you are not wholly without them. For your father's sake and yours!....
You have shown already what you can do! If you will only work a bit
harder! The War-School, Imre, the War-School! That must come. If you
care for your own credit, success... stop, I forbid you to sneer... get
into the School, hate it as much as you will!"
"I hate it! I hate it all, I tell you! I am sick of pretending to like
it. Especially just lately... more so than ever!"
"Very possibly. But what of that? Is there anything else in the wide
world that you feel you can do any better?... beginning such an
experiment at twenty-five years of age.... with no training for so much
as digging a ditch? Do you wish to become a dance-music strummer in
the Városliget? Or a second-class acrobat in the Circus Wulff? Or will
you throw off your uniform, to take flight to America... Australia... to
be a riding-master or a waiter in a restaurant, or a vagabond, like
some of the Habsburg arch-dukes? Imre, Imre! Instead be... a man! A man
in this, as in all else. You trifle with your certainty of a career.
Be a man in this matter!"
He sighed. Then softly, with a strange despair of life in his tone:
"Be a man? In this, as in _all_? God! how I wish I could be so."
"Wish you could be so! I don't know what you mean. A manlier fellow
one need not be! Only this damnable neglect of your career! You surely
wish to succeed in life?"
"I wish. But I cannot _will_..... Do not talk any more about it just
now. You can... _teremtette!_ you will write me quite enough about it.
You are exactly like Karvaly, once that topic comes into your mind!
Yes, like him to half-a-word... and I certainly am no match for either
of you."
"I should think," returned I, coldly, "that if you possess any
earnest, definite regard for such a zealous friend as Herr Karvaly, or
for _any_ true friend, you would prove it by just this very effort to
make the most of yourself... for their sakes if not for your own."
I waited a second or so, as we stood there looking across an opening
of the woodland. Then I added,--"For his sake, if not for--for such a
newcomer's sake as--mine. But I begin to believe that your heart does
not so easily stir really, warmly, as... as I supposed. At least, not
for me. Possibly for nobody, my dear N...! Odd--for you have so many
friends. I confess I don't see now just why. You are a strange fellow,
Imre. Such a row of contradictions!"
One, two... one, two... again was Imre walking along in silence, exactly
as on the evening when we came over the long Suspension Bridge in town
together. And once more was he whistling softly, as if either wholly
careless or buried in thought, those same two or three melancholy
notes of what I had discovered was a little Bakony peasant-song, "O,
jaj! az álom nelkül"--! ("Alas, I am sleepless,--I fear to dream!")
So passed more than an hour. We spoke less and less. My moods of
self-forgetfulness, of philosophy, passed with it. I could not
recover either.
We had made a detour around the lonelier portion of the park. The sun
was fairly setting as we came out before the open lawn, wide, and
uncropped save by two cows and a couple of farm-horses. There were
trees on either border. At farther range, was the long, low mansion,
three stories high, with countless white-painted _croisées_, and
lime-blanched chimneys; an odd Austro-Magyar-style dwelling, of
a long-past fashion, standing up solid and sharp against that
silver-saffron sky. Not a sign of life, save those slow-moving
beasts, far off in the middle of the lawn. No smoke from the
yet more removed old homestead. Not a sound, except a gentle
wind... melancholy and fitful. We two might have been remote, near
a village in the Siebenbürgen; not within twenty minutes of a great
commercial city.
Instead of going on toward the avenue which led to the exit--the hour
being yet early--we sat down on a stone bench, much beaten by weather.
A few steps away, rose the monument I have mentioned... "To the
Unforgettable Memory" of Lorand and Egon Z...
Neither Imre nor I spoke immediately; each of us was a trifle
leg-weary, I once more was sad and... angry. As we sat there, I read
over for yet another time... the last time?... those carved words which
reminded a reader, whether to his gladness of soul or dolour, that
love, a _love_ indeed strong as death, between two manly souls was no
mere ideal; but instead, a possible crown of existence, a glory of
life, a realizable unity that certain fortunate sons of men attained!
A jewel that others must yearn for, in disappointment and folly, and
with the taste of aloes, and the white of the egg, for the pomegranate
and the honeycomb! I sighed.
"Oh, courage, courage, my well beloved friend!" exclaimed Imre,
hearing the sigh and apparently quite misreading my innermost
thoughts. "Don't be downhearted again as to leaving Szent-Istvánhely
tomorrow; not to speak of being cheerful even if you must part from
your most obedient servant. Such is life!... unless we are born
sultans and kaisers... and if we are that, we must die to slow music
in the course of time."
I vouchsafed no comment. Could this be Imre von N...? Certainly I had
made the acquaintance of a new and extremely uncongenial Imre; in
exactly the least appropriate circumstances to lose sight of the
sympathetic, gentler-natured friend, whom I had begun to consider as
one well understood, and had found responsive to a word, a look. Did
all his closer friends meet, sooner or later, with this under-half of
his temperament--this brusqueness which I had hitherto seen in his
bearing with only his outside associates? Did they admire it... if
caring for him? Bitterness came over me in a wave, it rose to my lips
in a burst.
"It is just as well that one of us should show some feeling.... a
trifle... when our parting is so near."
A pause. Then Imre:
"The 'one of us', that is to say the only one, who has any 'feeling'
being yourself, my dear Oswald?"
"Apparently."
"Don't you think that perhaps you rather take things for granted? Or
that, perhaps, you feel too much? That is, in supposing that I feel
too little?"
My reply was quick and acid enough:
"Have you any sentiments in the matter worth calling by such a name,
at all? I've not remarked them so far! Are friends that love you and
value you only worth their day with you?... have they no real, lasting
individuality for you? Your heart is not so difficult to please as
mine; nor so difficult to occupy."
Again a brief interval. Imre was beating a tattoo on his braided cap,
and examining the top of that article with much attention. The sky
was less light now. The long, melancholy house had grown pallid
against the foliage. Still the same fitful breeze. One of the cows
lowed.
He looked up. He began speaking gravely... kindly.. not so much as if
seeking his words for their exactness, but rather as if he were
fearful of committing himself outwardly to some innermost process of
thought. Afraid, more than unwilling.
"Listen, my dear friend. We must not expect too much of one another in
this world... must we? Do not be foolish. You know well that one of the
last things that I regard as 'of a day' is _our_ friendship.. however
suddenly grown. No matter what you think now... for just these few
moments... when something disturbs us both... _that_ you know. Why, dear
friend! did I not believe it myself; had I not so soon after our
meeting believed it..... do you think I would have shown you so much of
my real self, happy or unhappy, for better or worse? Sides of my
nature unknown to others. Traits that you like, along with traits that
I see you do not like? Why Oswald, you understand _me_... the real
_me!_--better than anybody else that I have ever met. Because I wished
it... I hoped it. Because I--I could not help it. Just that. But you
see the trouble is that, in spite of all... you do not _wholly_
understand me. And... and the worst of the reason is that I am the one
most to blame for it! And I... I cannot better it now."
"When do we understand one another in this life of half-truths...
half-intimacies?"
"Yes... all too-often half... whether it is with one's wife, one's
mistress, one's friend! And I am not easy... ah, how I have had to
learn the way to keep myself so--to study it till it is a second
nature to me!--I am not easy to know! But, Oswald, Oswald, _ich kann
nicht anders, nein, nein, ich kann nicht anders!_"
And then, in his own language, dull and doggedly he added to
himself--"_Mit használ, mit használ az én nekem?_"--(What matters
it to _me_?)