By the time that Balint had taken leave of his mother it was already quite late and when he arrived at the ball they had just finished the second quadrille and were striking up for the last waltz before supper. He entered the great hall of the Assembly Rooms and, slipping past the group of men who clustered round the door, kissed the hands of the old ladies sitting nearby. He did not stay there long — too many couples came bumping into him as they waltzed by — but, glancing round the room until he caught a glimpse of Adrienne, who was now dancing with Pityu Kendy, he moved on to the next room where a group of older men were clustered round the fireplace talking politics while they waited for supper. Balint, fresh from Budapest and presumed to be fully informed as to what was going on, was given a warm welcome. Everyone hoped that he would confirm their own ideas and prophecies, and turned to him to judge who was in the right. The first were Abonyi, who declared that the only hope lay in a Government under Andrassy’s leadership; and fat lisping Kamuthy, who cried that ‘thith wath treathen and everyone who doth not demand Perthonal Union’ ith a traitor to hith country’. Kamuthy’s fat cheeks were red with excitement.
‘Yeth, yeth, we accept only Perthonal Union!’ he shouted as if his was the only voice that mattered. Since running for Parliament, his self-confidence had grown enormously, even though he had lost the seat by a small margin.
‘Why didn’t you come skating that day?’ asked Adrienne.
Balint guessed that she had waited until they were alone before asking this question. They had danced several times, met more than once at the buffet and sat together at one of the large tables with some of the younger dancers. Only now, he noticed, did she ask this question when the csardas, which was always the first dance after the supper break, had started and most of the others had gone back to the ballroom.
Adrienne asked the question simply, not in anger or resentment, but in much the same tone and with the same smile as when she had sat talking gaily with Adam and Pityu at supper. It was an ironic smile, only mildly provocative, and as the tone of her voice had in no way changed since the light-hearted chatter at supper Balint realized that the real significance of her query lay in the fact that she had waited until then to ask it.
‘That afternoon? Before I went out to our forests?’
‘Yes. You never came! I waited a long time, and was late getting home, just because of you!’
She was still smiling, but her eyes were grave, with the calm gravity of a lioness in repose.
Bending towards her, and looking deeply into those strange onyx eyes, Balint said, very slowly: ‘I was there.’
‘You were? But then why …?’
‘Why? I watched you for a long time, and you seemed different, a new Addy, someone I’d never seen before. I saw you immediately I passed the entrance, but I couldn’t come any closer. I just had to watch. You seemed to be someone I didn’t know, a stranger, not my Addy at all, but someone different.’
‘Different? In what way someone not myself?’ Her smile faltered as she caught the intensity in Balint’s voice.
‘You showed me something I’d never seen before, a new side to yourself … Besides those others were there. I couldn’t intrude, I could only stand and watch. You were so beautiful …’ Then, so as not to sound too commonplace, he added: ‘… so beautiful to watch. Suddenly I felt that I saw many things that I’d never seen before — things about you that I’d sensed and wondered about, but which had never been clear to me. It was the way you moved.’
‘While skating?’
‘Maybe it was the skating that showed me. But it was in the way you moved that I sensed an Addy driven across the ice, by an uncontrollable force of nature, swept along by a power greater than herself, yearning, searching for something … something outside herself …’ He looked steadily into her face, his whole expression a question.
‘Oh no!’ said Adrienne lightly, her dark brows contracting somewhat. ‘I’m not searching for anything!’ Then she smiled again, thinking back to the evening on the ice. ‘But, you know, AB, when I’m skating I’m not myself. I go crazy with the movement, I think of nothing else. I just want to go faster and faster, more and more! Oh, how wonderful never to stop!’
‘That’s what I saw, that’s what I sensed, something inside you that had to break out, that needed only the vortex of speed, something from deep down surging from depths you knew nothing of, an unconscious urge that had to be obeyed no matter where it led you. When I was up in the mountains I sat alone by a great fire whose flames erupted into the sky, seemingly impelled by a power that would never be quenched. Was that real, or was it just the effect of the colour and the light? Could it be explained by a chemical formula? Where did the impulse come from which made the fire seem like a volcano, which made the leaping flames seem to reach out for an unknown, infinitely unobtainable goal? Where does it come from, this urge to run, to fly, to strain after achievement without even asking what it is one is seeking to achieve? Nobody can answer this question. You can only feel that it’s there, true and eternal in all of us. And look,’ he added playfully, ‘what a coincidence! You’re wearing a flame-coloured dress!’
Adrienne laughed. ‘Don’t think I was aware of all this; and it isn’t just for you, AB!’
‘Of course, but I am a part of it all the same. There is a connection, for you as well as for me, even if you weren’t thinking of me when you chose the dress, even if you weren’t thinking of anybody. You had an impulse that made the choice for you, just as in all nature where natural impulses further nature’s own purposes. That impulse made you choose this dress, just this one, no other — perhaps because you like it and know it suits your dark hair and white skin. Be honest; didn’t you think, when you put it on, that all the men’s heads would turn and that all the women would be jealous?’
‘And how do you know I didn’t think of you when I chose it?’
Adrienne intentionally threw out this flirtatious remark in the same tone with which she had chatted with her other admirers at the ball, consciously trying to diminish the tension that was building up between them, to trivialize a conversation that had by now gone beyond the superficial. It was not so much Balint’s words but the intensity with which he spoke that impressed and at the same time confused her. Balint’s voice, so warm and passionate, expressing everything that normally she tried to avoid, disturbed her because, for once she felt herself moved and, instead of resenting it, had even felt a kind of warm response when he had dared to speak of something so personal as her skin … her skin!
Balint refused to notice her change of tone. Once more he looked into her eyes, then asked: ‘Have you read Bölsche?’
‘Yes! It’s a wonderful book. Why?’
‘Bölsche has written everything I’m trying to say. In springtime all nature’s creatures put on ornament and parade themselves. Members of the same species vie with each other to become the most beautiful, the most desirable. This isn’t planned, it’s instinctive, emanating from some unconscious inner command from … well … Lebensbejahung if you will. Look at me!’ he went on jokingly. ‘When I tied my white tie tonight, wasn’t I doing the same as the cock pheasant in spring when he grows two extra little feathers on each side of his head?’
‘You always refer to animals, but we’re not animals!’
‘Of course we’re not. And more’s the pity, because unlike them we add so much extra to what in animals is pure and natural. All the noblest motivation exists in animals; motherhood, defence of the nest, of the young, even of the community. It’s all there in nature without having to be taught. It comes from instinct, not from big words and impressive phrases. A kingfisher will risk his life to distract a polecat from the young in the nest; a roebuck confronts a wolf that snaps at the new-born faun; and the young hinds select a stag bull not because he is rich or well born or because their mothers choose for them, but because he is the one, and the only one, they fancy.’