Part 2

So had its course my breaking into an acquaintance... no, let me not use as burglarious and vehement a phrase, for we do not take the Kingdom of Friendship by violence even though we are assured that there is that sort of an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven--so was my passing suddenly into the open door of my intimacy (as it turned out to be) with Lieutenant Imre von N..... It was all as casual as my walking into the Erzsébet-tér Café. That is, if anything is casual. I have set down only a fragment of that first conversation; and I suspect that did I register much more, the personality of Imre would not be significantly sharpened to anyone, that is to say in regard to what was my impression of him then. In what I have jotted, lies one detail of some import; and there is shown enough of the swift confidence, the current of immediate mutuality which sped back and forth between us. "_Es gibt ein Zug, ein wunderliches Zug_"... declares Grillparzer, most truthfully. Such an hour or so.... for the evening was drawing on when we parted..... was a kindly prophecy as to the future of the intimacy, the trust, the decreed progression toward them, even through our--reserves.

We met again, in the same place, at the same hour, a few days later; of course, this time by an appointment carefully and gladly kept. That second evening, I brought him back with me to supper, at the Hotel L--, and it was not until a late hour (for one of the most early-to-bed capitals of Europe) that we bade each other good-night at the restaurant-door. By the by, not till that evening was rectified a minor neglect.... complete ignorance of one another's names! The fourth or fifth day of our ripening partnership, we spent quite and entirely together; beginning it in the same coffee-house at breakfast, making a long inspection of Imre's pleasant lodging, opposite my hotel, and of his music-library; and ending it with a bit of an excursion into one of Szent-Istvánhely's suburbs; and with what had already become a custom, our late supper, with a long aftertalk. The said suppers by the by, were always amusingly modest banquets. Imre was by no means a valiant trencher-man, though so strong-limbed and well-fleshed. So ran the quiet course of our first ten days, our first two weeks, a term in which, no matter what necessary interruptions came, Lieutenant Imre von N.... and I made it clear to one another, though without a dozen words to such effect, that we regarded the time we could pass together as by far the most agreeable, not to say important, matter of each day. We kept on continually adjusting every other concern of the twenty-four hours toward our rendezvous, instinctively. We seemed to have grown so vaguely concerned with the rest of the world, our interests that were not in common now abode in such a curious suppression, they seemed so colourless, that we really appeared to have entered another and a removed sphere inhabited by only ourselves, with each meeting. As it chanced, Imre was for the nonce, free from any routine of duties of a regimental character. As for myself, I had come to Szent-Istvánhely with no set time-limit before me; the less because one of the objects of my stay was studying, under a local professor, that difficult and exquisite tongue which was Imre's native one, though, by the way, he was like so many other Magyars in slighting it by a perverse preference. (For a long time, we spoke only French or German when together.) So between my sense of duty to Magyar, and a sense, even more acute, of a great unwillingness to leave Szent-Istvánhely--it was growing fast to something like an eighth sense... I could abide my time, or the date when Imre must start for certain annual regimental maneuvers, down in Slavonia. With reference to the idle curiosity of our acquaintances as to this so emphatic a state of dualism for Imre and myself.... such an inseparable sort of partnership which might well suggest something...

... "too rash, too unadvised, too sudden, Too like the lightening which doth cease to be Ere one can say 'It lightens'"...

... why we were careful. Even in one of the countries of Continental Europe where sudden, romantic friendship is a good deal of a cult, it seems that there is neither wisdom nor pleasure in wearing one's heart on one's sleeve. Best not to placard sudden affinities; between soldiers and civilists, especially. It was Imre von N.... himself who gave me this information, or hint; though not any clear explanation of its need. But he and I not only kept out of the most frequented haunts of social and military Szent-Istvánhely thenceforth, but spoke (on occasion) to others of my having come to the place especially to be with Imre, again,--"for the first time in three years", since we had become "acquainted with each other down in Sarajevo, one morning"--during a visit to the famous Husruf-Beg Mosque there! This easy fabrication was sufficient. Nobody questioned it. As a fact, Imre and I, when comparing notes one afternoon had found out that really we had been in Sarajevo at the exact date mentioned. "The lie that is half a truth is ever".... the safest of lies, as well as the convenientest one.

Now of what did two men thus insistent on one another's companionship, one of them some twenty-five years of age, the other past thirty, neither of them vapourous with the vague enthusiasms of first manhood, nor fluent with the mere sentimentalities of idealism.... of what did we talk, hour in and hour out, that our company was so welcome to each other, even to the point of our being indifferent to all the rest of our friends round about?.... centering ourselves on the time _together_ as the best thing in the world for us. Such a question repeats a common mistake, to begin with. For it presupposes that companionship is a sort of endless conversazione, a State-Council ever in session. Instead, the _silences_ in intimacy stand for the most perfect mutuality. And, besides, no man or woman has yet ciphered out the real secret of the finest quality, clearest sense, of human companionability--a thing that often grows up, flower and fruit, so swiftly as to be like the oriental juggler's magic mango-plant. We are likely to set ourselves to analyzing, over and over, the externals and accidence... the mere inflections of friendships, as it were. But the real secret evades us. It ever will evade. We are drawn together because we are drawn. We are content to abide together just because we are content. We feel that we have reached a certain harbour, after much or little drifting, just because it is for _that_ haven, after all, that we have been moving on and on; with all the irresistible pilotry of the wide ocean-wash friendly to us. It is as foolish to make too much of the definite in friendship as it is in love--which is the highest expression of companionship. Friendship?--love? what are they if real on both sides, but the great Findings? Grillparzer... once more to cite that noble poet of so much that is profoundly psychic... puts all the negative and the positive of it into the appeal of his Jason..

"In my far home, a fair belief is found, That double, by the Gods, each human soul Created is... and, once so shaped, divided. So shall the other half its fellow seek O'er land, o'er sea, till when it once be found, The parted halves, long-sundered, blend and mix In one, at last! Feel'st thou this _half_-heart? Beats it with pain, divided, in thy breast? O... come!"

As a fact, my new friend and I had an interesting range of commonplace and practical topics, on which to exchange ideas. Sentimentalities were quite in abeyance. We were both interested in art, as well as in sundry of the less popular branches of literature, and in what scientifically underlies practical life. Moreover, I had been longtime enthusiastic as to Hungary and the Hungarians, the land, the race, the magnificent military history, the complicated, troublous aspects of the present and the future of the Magyar Kingdom. And though I cannot deny that I have met with more ardent Magyar patriots than Imre von N... for somehow he took a conservative view of his birth-land and fellow-citizens--still, he was always interested in clarifying my ideas. Again, contrary-wise, Lieutenant Imre was zealous in informing himself on matters and things pertaining to my own country and to its system of social and military life, as well as concerning a great deal more; even to my native language, of which he could speak precisely seven words, four of them too forcible for use in general polite society. Never was there a quicker, a more aggressively intelligent mind than his; the intellect that seeks to take in a thing as swiftly yet as fully as possible.... provided, as Imre confessed, with complete absence of shame, the topic "attracted" him. Fortunately, most interesting topics did so; and what he learned once, he learned for good and all. I smile now as I remember the range, far afield often, of our talks when we were in the mood for one. I think that in those first ten days of our intercourse we touched on, I should say, a hundred subjects--from Árpád the Great to the Seventh Symphony, from the prospects of the Ausgleich to the theory of Bisexual Languages, from Washington to Kossuth, from the novels of Jókai to the best _gulyás_, from harvesting-machines, drainage, income-taxes, and whether a woman ought to wear earrings or not, to the Future State! No,--one never was at a loss for a topic when with Imre, and one never tired of his talk about it, any more than one tired of Imre when mute as Memnon, because of his own meditations, or when he was, apparently, like the Jolly Young Waterman, "rowing along, thinking of nothing at all."

* * * * *

And besides more general matters, there was... for so is it in friendship as in love... ever that quiet undercurrent of inexhaustible curiosity about each other as an Ego, a psychic fact not yet mutually explained. Therewith comes in that kindly seeking to know better and better the Other, as a being not yet fully outlined, as one whom we would understand even from the farthest-away time when neither friend suspected the other's existence, when each was meeting the world _alone_--as one now looks back on those days... and was absorbed in so much else in life, before Time had been willing to say, "Now meet, you two! Have I not been preparing you for each other?" So met, the simple personal retrospect is an ever new affair of detail for them, with its queries, its concessions, its comparisons. "I thought that, but now I think this. Once on a time I believed that, but now I believe this. I did so and so, in those old days; but now, not so. I have desired, hoped, feared, purposed, such or such a matter then; now no longer. Such manner of man have I been, whereas nowadays my identity before myself is thus and so." Or, it is the presenting of what has been enduringly a part of ourselves, and is likely ever abide such? Ah, these are the moods and tenses of the heart and the soul in friendship! more and more willingly uttered and listened-to as intimacy and confidence thrive. Two natures are seeking to blend. Each is glad to be its own directory for the newcomer; to treat him as an expected and welcomed guest to the Castle of Self, while yet something of a stranger to it; opening to him any doors and windows that will throw light on the labyrinth of rooms and corridors, wishing to keep none shut.... perhaps not even some specially haunted, remote and even black-hung chamber. Guest? No, more than that, for is it not the tenant of all others, the Master, who at last, has arrived!

Probably this is the best place in my narrative to record certain particularly personal aspects of Lieutenant Imre, though in giving them I must draw on details and impressions that I gained gradually--later. During even that earlier stage of our friendship, he insisted on my going with him to his father's house, to meet his parents. From them, as from two or three of his officer-friends with whom I occasionally foregathered, when Imre did not happen to be of the party of us, I derived facts--side-lights and perspectives--of use. But the most part of what I note came from Imre's tendency toward introspection; and from his own frank lips.

He had been a singularly sensitive, warm-hearted boy, indeed too high-strung, too impressionable. He had been petted by even the merest strangers because of his engaging manners and his peculiarly striking boyish beauty. He had not been robust as a lad (though now superbly so) with the result that his schooling had been desultory and unsystematic. "And I wanted to study art, I didn't care what art... music, painting, sculpture, perhaps music more than anything... I hated the army! But my father--his heart was set on my doing what the rest of us had done... I was the only son left.. it had to be." And however little was Imre at heart a soldier, he had made himself into a most excellent officer. I soon heard that from all his comrades whom I met; and I have heard it often since those days in Szent-Istvánhely. His sense of his personal duty, his pride, his filial affection, his feeling toward his King, all contributed toward the outward semblance that was at least so desirable. He had already been highly commended; probably promotion would soon come. He had always won cordial words from his superiors. Loving not in the least the work, he played his unwelcome part well and manly, so that not more than half a dozen individuals could have been sure that Imre von N... _hadnagy_, would have doffed gladly, at any minute, the King's Coat for a blouse. Ambition failed him, alas! just because he was at heart indifferent to the reward. But he ran the race well. And for the matter of ambition the advancement in the Magyar service is as deliberate as in other armies in peace-times. Imre needed much stronger influence than what was at his request, to hurry him beyond a lieutenancy.

With only one such contest in his soul, no wonder that Imre led his life in Szent-Istvánhely so much to himself, however open to others it seemed to be. Yet whatever depressed him, he was determined not to be a man of moods to the cynical world's eyes. As a fact he was so happily a creature of buoyant temperament, that his popularity was not surprising, on the basis of comrade-intercourse and of the pleasantly superficial side of a regimental life. Every man was Imre's friend! Every woman was, such, that I ever heard speaking of him, or spoken-of along with his name. The paradox of living to oneself while living with everyone, the doors of an individuality both open and shut, could no farther go than in his instance.

How fully was I to realize that, in a little time!

As to physique, Imre had fulfilled in his maturity the promise of his boyhood. He was called "Handsome N...", right and left; and he deserved the sobriquet. Of middle height, he possessed a slender figure, faultless in proportions, a wonder of muscular development, of strength, lightness and elegance. His athletic powers were renowned in his regiment. He was among the crack gymnasts, vaulters and swimmers. I have seen him, often, make a standing-leap over an ordinary library-table, to land, like a cat, on the other side. I have seen him, half-a-dozen times, spring out of a common barrel into another one placed beside it, without touching his hands to either. He could hold out a heavy garden-chair perfectly straight, with one hand; break a stout penholder or leadpencil between his second and third fingers; and bend a thick, brass curtain-rod by his leg-muscles. He frequently swam directly across the wide Duna, making nothing of its cross-currents at Szent-Istvánhely. He was a consummate fencer, and a prize-shot. He could jump on and off a running horse, like a vaquero. Yet all this force, this muscular address, was concealed by the symmetry of his graceful, elastic frame. Not till he was nude, and one could trace the ripple of muscle and sinew under the fine, hairless skin, did one realize the machinery of such strength. I have never seen any other man--unless Magyar, Italian or Arab--walk with such elasticity and dignity. It was a pleasure simply to see Imre cross the street.

His head, a small, admirably shaped one, with its close-cut golden hair, carried out his Hellenic exterior. For it was really a small head to be set on such broad shoulders and on as well-grown a figure. As to his face (generally a detail of least relative importance in the male type), I do not intend to analyze retrospectively certainly one of the most engaging of manly countenances that I have ever looked upon. The actual features were delicate enough, but without womanishness. Imre was not a pretty man; but a beautiful man. And the mixture of maturity and of almost boyish youth, the outlook of his natural sincerity and warmth of nature, his self-unconsciousness and self-respect... these entered into the matter of his good looks, quite as much as his merely technical beauty. I did not wonder that not only the women in Szent-Istvánhely but the street-children, aye, the very dogs and cats it seemed to me, would look at him with friendly interest. Those lustrous hazel eyes, with the white so clear around the pupils... the indwelling laughter in them that nevertheless could be overcast with so penetrating a seriousness...! It seems to me that now, as I write, I meet their look. I lay down my pen for an instant as my own eyes suddenly blur. Yet why? We should find tears rising for a living grief, not a living joy!

United with all this capital of a man's physical attractiveness was Imre's extraordinary modesty. He never seemed to think of his appearance for so much as two minutes together. He never glanced into a mirror when he happened to pass near that piece of furniture which seems to inflict a sort of nervous disease of the eyes... occasionally also of the imagination... on the average soldier of any rank and uniform, the world round. "Thanks... but I don't trouble myself much about looking-glasses, when I've once got my clothes on my back and am certain that my face isn't dirty!" was his reply to me one morning when I gave him an amused look because he had happened to plant his chair exactly in front of the biggest pier-glass in the K... Café. He never posed; never fussed as to his toilet, nor worried concerning the ultrafitting of his clothes, nor studied with anxiety details of his person. One day, another officer was lamenting the melancholy fact that baldness was gaining ground slyly, pitilessly, on the speaker's hyacinthine locks. He gave utterance to a sorrowful envy of Imre. "Pooh, pooh," returned Imre, _hadnagy,_ scornfully, "It's in the family... and such a convenience in warm weather! I shall be bald as a cannon-shot by the time I am thirty!" He detested all jewellery in the way of masculine adornments, and wore none: and his civilian clothing was of the plainest.

* * * * *

The making-up of every man refers, or should do so, to a fourfold development... his physical, mental, moral and temperamental equipment, in which last-named class we can include the aesthetic individuality. The endowment of Imre von N... as to this series was decidedly less symmetrical than otherwise. In fact, he was a striking example of contradictions and inequations. He had studied hardest when in his school-courses just what came easiest... with the accustomed results of that sort of process. He was a bad, a perversely bad mathematician; an indifferent linguist, simply because he had found it "a hideous job to learn all those complicated verbs"; an excellent scholar in history; took delight in chemistry and in other physical sciences; and though so easily plagued by a simple sum in decimals, he had a passion for astronomy, and he knew not a little about it, at least theoretically. Physical science appealed to him, curiously; his small library was two-thirds full of books on those topics. He loved to read popular philosophy and biography and travel. For novels, as for poetry, he cared almost nothing. He would spare no pains to get to the bottom of some subject that interested him, a thing that "bit" him, as he called it; short of actually setting himself down to the calm and applicative study of it! Tactics did he, somehow deliberately learn; grimly, angrily, but with success. They were indispensable to his professional credit. Such a result showed plainly enough that he lacked resolution, concentration as a duty, but did not lack capability. Many a sound lecture from myself, as from other friends, including particularly, as I found out, from the much-married Karvaly, did Imre receive respecting this defect. A course in training in the Officers' Military School (_Hadiskola_) was involved in the difficulty, or perversity, so in evidence. This _Hadiskola_ course is an indispensable in such careers as Imre's sort should achieve, willing or unwilling. When a young officer is so obstinately cold to what lies toward good work in the _Hadiskola,_ and in his inmost soul desires almost anything rather than becoming even an major... why, what can one say severe enough to him?

Yet, with reference to what might be called Imre's aesthetic self-expression, I wish to record one thing at variance with much which was negative in him. At least it was in contradiction to his showing such modest "literary impulses", and to his relative aversion to belles-lettres, and so on. When Imre was deeply stirred over something or other that "struck home", by some question to open the mountains of innermost feeling in him, it was remarkable with what exactitude,--more than that, what genuine emotional eloquence of phrase--he could express himself! This even to losing that slight hesitancy of diction which was an ordinary characteristic. I was often surprised at the simple, direct beauty, sometimes downright poetic grace, in his language on such unexpected occasions. He seemed to become tinged with quite another personality, or to be following, in a kind of trance, the prompting of some voice audible to him only. I shall hardly so much as once attempt conveying this effect of sudden "_ihletés_", even in coming to the moments of our intercourse when it surged up. It must in most part be taken for granted; read between the lines now and then. But... one must be mindful of its natural explanation. For, after all, there was no miracle in it. Imre was a Magyar; one of a race in which sentimental eloquence is always lurking in the blood, even to a poetic passion in verbal utterance that is often out of all measure with the mere formal education of a man or a woman. He was a Hungarian: which means among other things that a cowherd who cannot write his name, and who does not know where London is, can be overheard making love to his sweetheart, or lamenting the loss of his mother, in language that is almost of Homeric beauty. It is the Oriental quality, ever in the Magyar; now to be admired by us, now disliked, according to the application of the traits. Imre had his full share of Magyarism of temperament, and of its impromptu eloquence; taking the place of much of a literal acquaintance with Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and all the rhetorical and literary Parnassus in general.