When she had finished she felt dizzy. Nevertheless she folded the sheets and put them in an envelope and rang for her maid. When the woman came she found Adrienne standing erect, apparently quite calm.
‘Please take this at once and be sure that you give it only to him. To nobody else, you understand?’
The elderly, grey-haired Jolan curtsied and left the room and then, and only then did Adrienne dissolve in tears.
My dearest,
I have changed my mind Don’t come to me tonight! Or any other night. Never again! Never! This is a dreadful word I know, but the whole thing is impossible. I didn’t realize it until last night. I didn’t know. It was so good, so beautiful. Do understand. I know that you love me and I, too, love you, every day more and more and more, if that is possible, and I now know what it is to love, I know that … one day, sooner or later … the thing will happen and we will become true lovers. But now that is impossible, so impossible that if it ever happened I would have to kill myself. Please don’t be angry with me! Just think of what would follow. Think how impossible everything would be! I am that man’s wife, his possession, What could happen then? That I … with you … and him. Even now it is terrible with him. You know it. You’ve felt it and you have understood even better than if I had ever spoken about it … But if I became yours, then afterwards … if with you and then afterwards …? No! Never! Never that, I would rather die! There would be no other way for me. You would say that I should divorce. If I could have I’d have done it long before you came into my life. But I can’t! He clings to me, pinions me, holds me down — he will never let me go, never release me and if I breathed a word of all this to him he would kill me. Me, and you too, or anyone else. You know what he’s like. I don’t have to explain. He would kill in cold blood, and enjoy it, laughing as he did so. I can’t let all this happen, start all this off, bring about this, this nothing! Just think where it would lead us. Only to death, and what use would that be?
We must part. We must, there is no other way, no other way at all. You must go abroad. Please, I beg you! Don’t even try to see me again, not after this. Perhaps later, when we are both calmer — but, until then, no! I could never refuse you if I saw you again. I know it now and freely admit it. If you came I would yield at once … and it would be the end of me. I would die … I would have to…. after that I could only face death. Please have pity on me! I never meant to do you any harm I know now what I’ve done to you, so have pity on me, I beg you. If you could forget me, it would be the best for you. If this is to be our final goodbye it would be best for both of us. Try it, please try it! Perhaps it will be easier for you than for me, perhaps? I only had you, nothing else. It will be so difficult for me, still I do beseech you to go away and wherever you go remember me and keep me in your heart knowing that I shall love you always and knowing that you didn’t kill me because I came to love you …
I know that you’ll be strong enough to do this and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the sacrifice that you will make for my sake, a sacrifice I believe is just as great as mine. Know that I am filled with gratitude for having known your love and that I kiss your mouth as you have taught me and that I shall for ever be lying in your arms and listening to the beautiful things that you tell me and that you write for me and that I kiss you and that I am always … and forever … yours … and yours alone … But don’t kill me, I beg you … don’t kill me …
Two days later Balint was back in Portofino. He went there straight from Budapest without stopping except to change trains, hardly noticing the changing landscapes, the continuous rumbling of the carriages, the discomfort of two sleepless nights and two endless days. Everything was unreal to him compared with the throbbing of the pain he was feeling and the feverish visions conjured up by his imagination. He knew then that Adrienne had glimpsed something she had never before imagined or experienced and that from it she had recoiled in terror.
It was this last troubled look in Adrienne’s eyes that Balint saw most often in his mind as he fled away, back to the Riviera. He read and re-read Adrienne’s letter a hundred times and always he came to the same conclusion, that what he was doing was right and that there was no alternative but to do what she asked of him.
He had to obey her, give her up, go far away from where she was, disappear from her life. Poor, poor Addy! She had been right; there was no other way open to them.
At last, after driving along roads bordered by orange groves and gardens filled with spring flowers, azaleas and camellias, he arrived at the little hotel beside the bay. The colour of the sea was as blue as a picture postcard, and all around him nature seemed to mock his anguish by displays of healthy, luxuriant growth, as if telling him that the world was indifferent to his pain and, no matter who fell by the wayside, life still renewed itself annually and eternally.
Countess Roza received him in her room. She had been angry that he had stayed away so long, making her wait three whole weeks for his return and she was sure that the excuses he made in his one short letter were nothing more than awkward pretexts to conceal a truth he did not want to reveal. As she was getting ready to receive her son she decided to teach him a lesson and at every sound outside the room she glared balefully at the door with a carefully prepared expression of disapproval. When, however, the door finally opened and her son appeared, everything was changed in an instant. With one glance she saw in the tenseness of the young man’s face the expression of one who had been in hell. Countess Roza had never seen her son like this before. Looking at him, she knew at once that this was a man in torment and all her thoughts of his neglect of her vanished as if they had never been. She was flooded by a mother’s anxiety, ran to the door to greet him, lay her head on his shoulder, her tiny hands holding him closely to her, so moved that all she could say was: ‘My little one … my son … my own little boy…’
On their way back they stopped for two or three days at Milan, Verona and Venice; and wherever they went, to museums, palaces, picture galleries, to churches and in their hotel at mealtimes, Countess Abady discreetly studied her son. She asked no questions and she knew no details, apart from the fact that he had stayed longer than planned at Kolozsvar — and from the reports of the two housekeepers who had not failed to tell their mistress not only who was staying in town but also the fact that — Lord preserve them! — Count Balint seldom came home before dawn. Countess Roza had built up a picture for herself, a picture of what had been happening. She, of course, knew no details and mostly was far from the truth; but of one thing she was certain and that was that it was Adrienne, that wicked, wicked Adrienne, who was the reason for her son’s desperate unhappiness. It was she, that selfish, depraved, wicked woman, who had caused this terrible change in her beloved son; and the heart of the tyrannical old chatelaine of Denestornya was filled with hatred and the desire for vengeance on the creature who was responsible.
They arrived at Budapest at the end of March and there they parted, Countess Roza travelling on alone to Transylvania. Not for a moment did the old lady try to persuade her son to come with her. Not a word did she utter. Let him stay in Budapest, she had no need of him at home. She would go back to Denestornya, and later, when spring came, he would join her there. ‘Until then, my darling, you stay here and enjoy yourself. I’ll be all right. Don’t mind me!’ and she travelled on home alone, something she had never done before.