Part 4

Again silence. One-two, one-two--on we went, step and step, over the resonant, deserted bridge. I had an impression that Imre turned his head, looking sharply at me in the fluttering gas-light... then glancing quickly away. I had other thoughts, far, far removed from him! I had well-nigh forgot when I was!--forgot him, forgot Szent-Istvánhely........!

But now he laughed out, too, as if in angry derision.

"I say! I knew such a fellow, too.. two or three years ago. And I beg to tell you that he fell in love with.. me! No less! He was absolutely _bódult_ over your humble servant. Did you ever!"

"Really? What did you do? Slap his face, and give him the address of a... doctor of nervous diseases?"

"Oh, Lord, no! I merely declined with thanks the.... honour of his farther acquaintance. I told him never to speak me. He left town. I had rather liked him. But I heard he had been compromised already. I have no use for that particular brand of fool!"

Are there perverse demons, demons delighting to make mortal men blunderers in simplest word and action... that haunt the breezy Lánczhíd in Szent-Istvánhely? If so, some of us would better cross that long bridge in haste and solitary silence after nightfall. For:

"You surprise me," I said lightly. I was thinking of one of his own jests as well of his unbelief in his personal attractions. "How inconsistent for _you_! Now _you_ are just the very individual I should suspect!...... yes, yes, I _am_ surprised!"

To my astonishment, Imre stopped full in his steps, drew himself up, and faced me with instant formality.

"Will you be so good as to tell me _why_ you are surprised?" asked he, in a tone that was--I will not write sharp, but which suggested to me immediately that I had spoken mal-à-propos or misleadingly; the more so in view of what Imre had mentioned of his _ex professio_ and personal sensitiveness to the general topic. "Do you observe anything particularly womanish--abnormal--about me, if you please?"

Now, as it happened my remark, as I have said, was made in consequence of an impersonal and amusing incident, which I had supposed Imre would at once remember.

"Womanish? Abnormal? Certainly not. But you seem to forget what you yourself said to Captain Molten this afternoon... in the billiard-room... about the menage-cooks... don't you remember?"

Imre burst into laughter. He remembered! (There is no need of my 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."