Part 9

But there Imre stopped! He bound his warm heart in a chain, he vowed indifference to the whole world, he assisted no advances of warm, particular regard from any comrade. He became that friend of everybody in general who is the friend of nobody in particular! He lived in a state of perpetual defence in his regiment, and in whatever else was social to him in Szent-Istvánhely. So surely as he admired another man--would gladly have won his generous and virile affection--Imre turned away from that man! He covered this morbid state of self-inclusion, this solitary life (such it was, apart from the relatively short intimacy with Karvaly) with laughter and a most artistic semblance of brusqueness; of manly preoccupation with private affairs. Above all, with the skilful cultivation of his repute as a Lothario who was nothing if not sentimental and absorbed in--woman! This is possibly the most common device, as it is the securest, on the part of an Uranian. Circumstances favoured Imre in it; and he gave it its full show of honourable mystery. The cruel irony of it was often almost humorous to Imre.

"... They have given me the credit of being the most confirmed rake in high life... think of that! I, and in high life!.. to be found in town. The less they could trace as ground for it, why, so much the stronger rumours!.. you know how that sort of a label sticks fast to one, once pinned on. Especially if a man _is_ really a gentleman and holds his tongue, ever and always, about his intimacies with women. Why, Oswald, I have never felt that I could endure to be alone five minutes with any woman... I mean in--_that_ way! Not even with a woman most dear to me, as many, many women are. Not even with a wife that loved me. I have never had any intimacies--not one--of _that_ sort... Merely semblances of such! Queer experiences I've tumbled into with _them_, too! You know."

Oh, yes... I knew!

Part of Imre's exaggerated, artificial bearing toward the outer world was the nervous shrinking from commonplace social demonstrativeness on the part of his friends. To that mannerism I have already referred. It had become a really important accent, I do not doubt, in Imre's acting-out of a friendly, cheerful, yet keep-your-distance sort of personality. But there was more than that in it. It was a detail in the effort toward his self-transformation; a minor article in his compact with himself never to give up the struggle to "_cure_" himself. He was convinced that this was the most impossible of achievements. But he kept on fighting for it. And since one degree of sentiment led so treacherously to another, why, away with all!

"But Imre, I do not yet see why you have not trusted me sooner. There have been at least two moments in our friendship when you could have done so; and one of them was when.. you _should_!"

"Yes, you are right. I have been unkind. But then, I have been as unkind to myself. The two times you speak of, Oswald... you mean, for one of them, that night that we met Clement... and spoke about such matters for a moment while we were crossing the Lánczhid? And the other chance was after you had told me your own story, over there in the Z... park?"

"Yes. Of course, the fault is partly mine--once. I mean that time on the Bridge... I fenced you off from me--I misled you--didn't help you--I didn't help myself. But even so, you kept me at sword's length, Imre! You wore your mask so closely--gave me no inch of ground to come nearer to you, to understand you, to expect anything except scorn--our parting! Oh, Imre! I have been blind, yes! but you have been dumb."

"You wonder and you blame me," he replied, after busying himself a few seconds with his own perplexing thoughts. "Again, I say 'Forgive me.' But you must remember that we played at cross-purposes too much (as I now look back on what we said that first time) for me to trust myself to you. I misunderstood you. I was stupid--nervous. It seemed to me certain, at first, that you had me in your mind--that I was the friend you spoke of--laughed at, in a way. But after I saw that I was mistaken? Oh, well it appeared to me that, after all, you must be one of the Despisers. Gentler-hearted than the most; broader minded, in a way; but one who, quite likely, thought and felt as the rest of the world. I was afraid to go a word farther! I was afraid to lose you. I shivered afterward, when I remembered that I had spoken then of what I did. Especially about that man... who cared for me once upon a time... in that way... And so suddenly to meet Clement! I didn't know he was in Szent-Istvánhely; the meeting took me by surprise. I heard next morning that his mother had been very ill."

"But afterwards, Imre? You surely had no fear of what you call 'losing' me then? How could you possibly meet my story--in that hour of such bitter confidence from me!--as you did? Could come no further toward me? When you were certain that to find you my Brother in the Solitude would make you the nearer-beloved and dearer-prized!"

"That's harder for me to answer. For one reason, it was part of that long battle with myself! It was something against the policy of my whole life!... as I had sworn to live it for all the rest of it... before myself or the world. I had broken that pledge already in our friendship, such as even then it was! Broken it suddenly, completely... before realizing what I did. The feeling that I was weak, that I cared for you, that I was glad that you sought my friendship... ah, the very sense of nearness and companionship in that... But I fought with all _that,_ I tell you! Pride, Oswald!... a fool's pride! My determination to go on alone, alone, to make myself sufficient for myself, to make my punishment my tyrant!--to be martyred under it! Can you not understand something of that? You broke down my pride that night, dear Oswald. Oh, _then_ I knew that I had found the one friend in the world, out of a million-million men not for me! And nevertheless I hung back! The thought of your going from me had been like a knife-stroke in my heart all the evening long. But _yet_ I could not speak out. All the while I understood how our parting was a pain to you--I could have echoed every thought that was in your soul about it!... but I would not let myself speak one syllable to you that could show you that I cared! No!... _then_ I would have let you go away in ignorance of everything that was most myself... rather than have opened that life-secret, or my heart, as we sat there. Oh, it was as if I was under a spell, a cursed enchantment that would mean a new unhappiness, a deeper silence for the rest of my life! But the wretched charm was perfect. Good God!... what a night I passed! The mood and the moment had been so fit... yet both thrown away! My heart so shaken, my tongue so paralyzed! But before morning came, Oswald, that fool's hesitation was over. I was clear and resolved, the devil of arrogance had left me. I was amazed at myself. You would have heard everything from me that day. But the call to the Camp came. I had not a moment. I could not write what I wished. There was nothing to do but to wait."

"The waiting has done no harm, Imre."

"And there is another reason, Oswald, why I found it hard to be frank with you. At least, I think so. It is--what shall call it?--the psychic trace of the woman in me. Yes, after all, the woman! The counter-impulse, the struggle of the weakness that is womanishness itself, when one has to face any sharp decision... to throw one's whole being into the scale! Oh, I know it, I have found it in me before now! I am not as you, the Uranian who is too much man! I am more feminine in impulse--of weaker stuff... I feel it with shame. You know how the woman says 'no' when she means 'yes' with all her soul! How she draws back from the arms of the man that she loves when she dreams every night of throwing herself into them? How she finds herself doing, over and over, just that which is _against_ her thought, her will, her duty! I tell you, there is something of _that_ in me, Oswald! I must make it less... you must help me. It must be one of the good works of your friendship, of your love, for me. Oh, Oswald, Oswald!... you are not only to console me for all that I have suffered, for anything in my past that has gone wrong. For, you are to help me to make myself over, indeed, in all that _is_ possible, whatever cannot be so."

"We must help each other Imre. But do not speak so of woman, my brother! Sexually, we may not value her. We may not need her, as do those Others. But think of the joy that they find in her to which we are cold; the ideals from which we are shut out! Think of your mother, Imre; as I think of mine! Think of the queens and peasants who have been the light and the glory of races and peoples. Think of the gentle, noble sisters and wives, the serene, patient rulers of myriad homes. Think of the watching nurses in the hospitals... of the spirits of mercy who walk the streets of plague and foulness!... think of the nun on her knees for the world...!"

The shadows in the room were almost at their deepest. We were still sitting face to face, almost without having stirred since that moment when I had quitted his side so suddenly--to divine how much closer I was to be drawn to him henceforth. Life!--Life and Death!--Life--Love--Death! The sense of eternal kinship in their mystery.... somehow it haunted one then! as it is likely to do when not our unhappiness but a kind of over-joy swiftly oppresses us; making us to feel that in some other sphere, and if less grossly "set within this muddy vesture of decay," we might understand all three... might find all three to be one! Life--Love--Death!...

"Oswald, you will never go away from me!"

"Imre, I will never go away from thee. Thy people shall be mine. Thy King shall be mine. Thy country shall be mine,--thy city mine! My feet are fixed! We belong together. We have found what we had despaired of finding... 'the friendship which is love, the love which is friendship'. Those who cannot give it--accept it--let them live without it. It can be 'well, and very well' with them. Go they their ways without it! But for Us, who for our happiness or unhappiness cannot think life worth living if lacking it... for Us, through the world's ages born to seek it in pain or joy... it is the highest, holiest Good in the world. And for one of us to turn his back upon it, were to find he would better never have been born!"......

* * * * *

It was eleven o'clock. Imre and I had supped and taken a stroll in the yellow moonlight, along the quais, overlooking the shimmering Duna; and on through the little Erzsébet-tér where we had met, a few weeks ago--it seemed so long ago! I had heard more of Imre's life and individuality as a boy; full of the fine and unhappy emotions of the uranistic youth. We had laughed over his stock of experiences in the Camp. We had talked of things grave and gay.

Then we had sauntered back. It was chance; but lo! we were on the Lánczhid, once more! The Duna rippled and swirled below. The black barges slumbered against the stone _rakpartok._ The glittering belts of the city-lights flashed in long perspectives along the wide river's sweeping course and twinkled from square to square, from terrace to terrace. Across from us, at a garden-café, a cigány orchestra was pulsating; crying out, weeping, asking, refusing, wooing, mocking, inebriating, despairing, triumphant! All the warm Magyar night about us was dominated by those melting chromatics, poignant cadences--those harmonies eternally oriental, minor-keyed, insidious, nerve-thrilling. The arabesques of the violins, the vehement rhythms of the clangorous czimbalom!.... Ah, this time on the Lánczhid, neither for Imre nor me was it the sombre Bakony song, "O jaj! az álom nelkül"--but instead the free, impassioned leap and acclaim,--"Huszár legény vagyok!--Huszár legény vagyok!"

We were back in the quiet room, lighted now only by the moon. Far up, on the distant Pálota heights, the clear bell of Szent-Mátyás struck the three-quarters. The slow notes filled the still night like a benediction, keyed to that haunting, divine, prophetic triad, Life--Love--Death! Benediction threefold and supreme to the world!

"Oh, my brother! Oh, my friend!" exclaimed Imre softly, putting his arm about me and holding me to his heart. "Listen to me. Perhaps.. perhaps even yet, canst thou err in one, only one thought. I would have thee sure that when I am with thee here, now, I _miss_ nothing and no one--I seek nothing and no one! My quest, like thine, is over!... I wish no one save thee, dear Oswald, no one else, even as I feel thou wishest none save me, henceforth. I would have thee believe that I am glad _just_ as thou art glad. Alike have we two been sad because of our lonely hearts, our long restlessness of soul and body, our vain dreams, our worship of this or that hope--vision--which has been kept far from us--it may be, overvalued by us! We have suffered so much thou and I!... because of what never could be! We shall be all the happier now for what is real for us... I love thee, as thou lovest me. I have found, as thou hast found, 'the friendship which is love, the love which is friendship.'... Come then, O friend! O brother, to our rest! Thy heart on mine, thy soul with mine! For us two it surely is... Rest!"

"Truth? What is truth? Two human hearts Wounded by men, by fortune tried. Outwearied with their lonely parts. Vow to beat henceforth side by side."*

THE END.

*Matthew Arnold

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Obvious printing errors have been silently corrected throughout. Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved, and some irregular and non-standard formatting and punctuation has likewise been retained.