She was tall and still beautiful, even though her dark hair was streaked with grey and her once radiantly pink complexion was now touched here and there with tiny dark-brown liver spots. She wore a tea-gown in the English fashion, the neck and sleeves sewn with festoons of old lace which set off her still beautiful hands and arms. Although the garment was loose and flowing she sat so erect that it was obvious that she also wore a tightly-laced corset.
At the princess’s side sat one of the principal guests, Field Marshal Count Kanizsay, who commanded the national cavalry regiments, a heavy old man who had been a hero of the Bosnian occupation. He came from an ancient Hungarian family and was descended from the Kanizsay who fell with Zrinyi at the siege of Szigetvar. His ancestors had played a great part in the wars against the Turks, always serving the Habsburg interests, and in recognition of this service the Kanizsay coat of arms bore the motto Perpetuus in Komarvar and the head of the family was made hereditary military governor of that little Bosnian fortress. In spite of his family’s great national past the old soldier only spoke broken Hungarian, having spent all his life in German-speaking regiments of the Austro-Hungarian army. Although the field marshal had long retired from active service he always wore uniform, a grey tunic with a collar of gold braid, countless medal ribbons and one order, the Maria Theresia Cross, gleaming white on his still powerful chest.
Sitting on the silken sofa on her hostess’s left was the wife of the field marshal, a massive, boring old German lady who was very conscious of her own importance in being related to the Wittelsbachs by a morganatic marriage; and the Countess Lubianszky, who had brought her two pretty daughters with her from Somogy. Opposite them sat the young and beautiful Countess Beredy, the lovely Fanny, who was obliged by her rank to seat herself with the old ladies even though she longed to be in the red salon with the young.
The hostess and her principal guests sat in a circle round the tea table, where everything from the silver to the hot muffins and thin sandwiches was arranged in the fashionable English style. Beside the door to the adjoining salon the butler, Szabo, stood motionless with the face of a Roman emperor, together with a bearded man in the livery of a Kollonich Jäger. Two tall footmen in tailcoats served the guests, moving from one to another as silently as shadows.
At a second table sat Klara and her two brothers, her cousins Stefi and Magda Szent-Gyorgyi, the two Lubianszky girls and a somewhat older young man, Fredi Wuelffenstein, who was Fanny Beredy’s younger brother.
As Laszlo and Balint had passed through the red salon, and again as they had greeted their hostess and the others present, Laszlo could not help noticing his cousin’s calm assurance. Though every bit as polite and deferential as the occasion demanded, every movement, every word showed that he belonged to these circles; that he knew himself to be in every way their equal and in no way an intruder. Laszlo watched him with envy, wondering if he had acquired this air of smooth distinction while en poste abroad, and wondering too if he could ever attain the same ease, he to whom every greeting, every nod and handshake seemed fraught with condescension, as if he were no more than a humble serf tolerated by consciously superior beings.
He knew he had no reason for this sense of inferiority; no one present was better born than he, indeed his own family was older than theirs, the Gyeroffys having been noble in the Middle Ages; and his own estate, though small and only bringing him a modest measure of independence, was an ancient freehold rather than a modern donation from the crown. He knew, too, that the grandeur of the Kollonich family dated only from the end of the seventeenth century when one of them had become a cardinal, while the great wealth they now displayed, indeed everything they owned — the great castle and estate, the palaces in Budapest and Vienna — had all been purchased by his cousins’ grandmother, the daughter of a banker called Sina, a Greek who had spent his life polishing the seat of his office desk. Why then, he wondered, did he, the descendant of conquering Magyar warlords, feel that his relations were grander, better, more distinguished, than he?
All these thoughts vanished the instant that he held Klara’s soft hand in his and when he looked into her wide-open greenish-grey eyes and saw her warm smile of happiness and welcome.
After exchanging a few words of polite conversation with everyone in the room, Balint Abady, who had not been at Simonvasar for several years, asked where he could find his host. Uncle Louis was in the smoking-room, replied Stefi, as their aunt did not allow cigars in her drawing-room. Indeed since the state rooms had been redecorated, Stefi went on in a low voice, Aunt Agnes hardly tolerated even cigarettes.
Passing through a side door Balint and Laszlo went down a long, wide carpeted corridor which followed the horseshoe curve of one of the castle’s side wings. At last, at the far end, they reached the smoking-room, a vast tobacco-coloured apartment whose walls were covered with hunting trophies, stuffed heads of deer, chamois, wild boar, bear and buffalo, and countless sets of antlers on shield-shaped plaques of polished mahogany. The furniture, in contrast to that of his wife’s rooms, was heavy, comfortable, even shabby, with plenty of deep leather-covered chairs and ancient sofas.
Uncle Louis cared nothing for fashion and when the Princess Agnes had spent a fortune in redecorating every other room in the castle he had allowed her her way providing that his own comfortable room was left untouched.
Three men sat at ease in a corner of the vast, barely lit apartment. They were the host, a chubby man of middle height dressed in Austrian hunting clothes with a pair of carpet slippers on his feet; his brother-in-law, Antal Szent-Gyorgyi, beside him; and, sprawled in an ancient armchair facing them, the huge form of Pali Lubianszky. The prince was telling a seemingly endless and complicated story about an incident during the last deer stalk, and Pali Lubianszky was having difficulty in concealing his impatience.
With every turn and twist of the story the host made sweeping gestures, imitating now the spread of the great antlers of the red deer, now the warning snorts and nervous movements of the fawns; and with every gesture he heaved himself from side to side so that the springs creaked under him, and with every sound it made it seemed as if the chair would collapse, as indeed it often had. Antal Szent-Gyorgyi looked silently on with a faint ironic smile as if that were what he was hoping would happen.
The two brothers-in-law were extreme opposites — a greyhound and a pug. Szent-Gyorgyi was tall and thin, with a long narrow face and bluish-grey hair; Kollonich was fair with a round face, a tiny nose and small eyes almost buried in the fat of his cheeks, and he wore a moustache and a short round beard like the Emperor’s. Beneath Szent-Gyorgyi’s acquiline beak was a thin moustache clipped in the English style.
Lubianszky did not conceal his pleasure when Balint and Laszlo came in, partly because it put an end to Prince Louis’ stalking tale — and sportsmen are rarely interested in any stories but their own — but principally because he was deeply interested in politics and wanted to hear from Balint the truth about the recent developments in Budapest, of which until now he knew only what he had read in the newspapers. Szent-Gyorgyi was also interested, but from a less nationalistic point-of-view, being a court official, Master of the Horse to the Emperor, and a natural courtier.
The prince lit a new cigar as the others started to ply Balint with questions about what had happened in Parliament. Had he been present? What was the real truth? Who had said what? He must stay with them, sit down and recount all he knew.