The carriage stopped at the Miloth’s town house. Briefly wishing Adrienne goodnight and saying they’d see her again that evening, the girls hurried indoors.
Over the freshly fallen snow Adrienne’s carriage moved silently as it made its way along the Monostor road. Even the hoofbeats of the horses were muffled to a mysterious murmur.
Finally they turned into the forecourt of the Uzdy villa, a large two-storeyed house flanked by long low wings which were fronted by glazed galleries to keep out the cold. The carriage stopped at the entrance to the wing on the right, where the young Uzdys lived. Only the old countess, Pal Uzdy’s mother, lived in the main house with Adrienne’s little daughter and her nanny. At this moment however the old countess and her grandchild were not there; they had left Kolozsvar for Meran ten days before.
The house was an old one dating from the eighteenth century, with tall rooms and long windows. The wing where Adrienne and her husband had their rooms, though the windows had a marvellous view across the park to the river, must originally have been designed as servants’ quarters for, with one exception, all the rooms were small and linked by a long narrow vaulted gallery. The exception, right at the end of the wing, was a large room which Adrienne had furnished as a drawing-room. It had once been the kitchen where meals could be prepared for a hundred people.
The entrance to Adrienne’s apartment was in the centre of the glassed-in gallery and, as she hurried inside, the carriage turned and drove out again through the entrance gates as the stable-yard and coach-house were reached through a separate gate further along the main road.
As she went towards her room, Adrienne glanced at the windows of her husband’s room which also led off the gallery. The door was open and the place was obviously being aired. This surprised her, for Uzdy was not usually an early riser.
‘Is the Count already up?’ she asked the maid who was carrying the basket of favours and flowers, an elderly grey-haired little woman who had once been her nanny, ‘… or didn’t he go to bed at all?’
‘His Lordship didn’t go to bed, my lady. He just changed his clothes and left for Almasko before dawn.’
Adrienne was not altogether surprised at this news since Uzdy often came and went unexpectedly without telling anyone of his plans in advance. He kept a post-chaise always ready in town, and a four-horse carriage at his farm in Szentmihaly, halfway to Almasko. By doing so he could make the trip quickly, only stopping long enough to change the horses, without having to make arrangements in advance. He liked to arrive unannounced: it kept everyone on their toes! Adrienne said nothing, but a close observer could have told from the way her body relaxed that she was relieved to hear the news.
‘Just put the flowers in water, Jolan, and don’t wake me ’til five. I want to sleep. You can go now, I don’t want anything.’ Adrienne always dressed and undressed herself. She did not like having people hovering round her.
‘I’ll bring in the breakfast,’ said the old nanny.
The big room was bathed in light, sun streaming in through the three long windows which gave over the park, casting over the white painted walls a faintly bluish tinge from the reflection of the snow. It was the same shade as the colour of the shadows on the outside of the house here in Kolozsvar and on the banks of the Szamos.
Adrienne moved over to the tall french doors that looked over the park and leant against the moulded window-frame, her mind devoid of thought, her eyes narrowed in the blinding morning light. She stood there staring outside but seeing nothing, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. She did not hear her maid come with the breakfast, nor her murmured farewell when she left. For a long time she stood there, weary with a faintly sensuous languor that kept her from thinking of what had happened that evening. Everything was in a hazy confusion in her mind, but a confusion tinged with nameless happiness.
A sudden sound recalled her to herself: it was the crack of a burning log in the fireplace which had fallen into the centre of the fire. Adrienne turned to look and, as she did so, the sight of the flames reminded her of what Balint had said about her dress. Slowly she looked down at her bare arms and shoulders and half-concealed breasts, and at the shimmering panels of silk that flowed from them down to the floor. In the brilliant sunlight she felt naked and exposed. Turning quickly she almost ran through the dark bedroom into the bathroom beyond and undressed. Her movements were automatic and when, a few moments later, she returned to the bedroom and lay down, she thought that she would certainly not be able to sleep. Somehow she did not even want to, for in this unusual feeling of being remote from all thought, all reality, there was a sort of magic which Adrienne would have liked to go on for ever. She lay with her eyes open, the only light in the darkened room coming from narrow spaces where the closed shutters did not quite meet. It was only a few minutes before she sank into a deep dreamless sleep which wiped away every image, thought and memory.
Adrienne awoke as three o’clock struck on the church clock in the town nearby. For a few seconds she stared into the darkness before being gripped by a nameless fear. She did not know why, but she was so terrified that she sat up looking wildly around her and clutching her knees tightly to her chin.
What was it? What had happened at the ball?
And then it all came back to her quite clearly. As she slept the impressions of the evening, which had been so confused and vague when she went to bed, had sorted themselves out in her mind. Everything now fell into place with a clarity that appalled her. Repeating to herself the astonishing words, ‘I am in love! In love! In love!’, all the consequences of this reared up in her. It wasn’t possible. She had a husband, a child. She couldn’t. She was tied, bound to the duty that she herself had chosen and husband she had accepted. She was no longer free, so what could it all come to? Balint’s love was no mere Schwärmerei, no little girl’s crush, brought on by propinquity and moonshine. In his words rang the deep sincerity of a real emotion, not the light cajolery of mere flirtation. He wanted her … and there would be no bargaining.
With an aching heart Adrienne realized that she had not only listened to everything that Balint had had to say, but that she had also accepted it. Not in so many words, of course, for she herself had hardly spoken, but with her eyes and her expression as she listened to him, with her body when she danced with him, in her silent acquiescence to his words, her acceptance of his hand twined in hers, and with the pressure of her fingers when he kissed her palm on the steps. She had never for a moment held back, resisted, never protested or rebuked him or even given the smallest indication that his ardent demands were not welcome and might not be accepted.
Adrienne shuddered to think how far she had let him go, she who had never allowed Adam Alvinczy or Pityu Kendy to sit too closely beside her or to hold her tightly when they danced, and who had always frozen anyone into silence if they dared to flirt too outrageously or make even the mildest allusion to sexuality between men and women. Of course it had been easy with the others. Their attentions were all play-acting. Even if Pityu and Adam fancied themselves in love with her, she treated such attentions as a joke, to be shrugged off as lightly. It was easy because it meant nothing. With such friends she did not care, so she played with them as if they were outsize dolls made only for her amusement. If they tried to go further and tell her of their feelings with tears in their eyes, pleading to be taken more seriously, she only joked with them the more and teased them and made fun of them with careless coquetry.
And now?
Last night she had given everything to Balint that she had denied the others. She saw herself listening, captivated by the magic of his words and the strength of his passion. How sweetly what he had said had sounded in her ears, how welcome, how fascinating. And she had not flinched at the passion, the desire, which pulsated through everything he had said. His yearning for her could not be disguised. His meaning was so clear, so direct, that even when they had exchanged nothing but otherwise meaningless banalities, his words had only reflected his desire to love her. It was obvious what he was speaking of when he told her about the fire or the waterfall and his voice, so low and seemingly devoid of passion, and his look, which gave a new significance to otherwise innocent words, rang with the force of his inner feelings. Finally, when after a long pause he had said, ‘I love you, Addy!’, had she tried to stop him uttering the words that should never have been said? No! On the contrary she had drunk in his words with silent joy, sitting there with her hand in his, her heart beating; it had been as if they were alone in the world and existed only for each other. Lying now in her darkened room she stretched languorously at the memory of those magic moments until, all at once, she seemed to come to her senses, alert and conscious of a reality which almost made her jump out of bed. Adrienne shuddered as she realized what little Dinora must have seen in her face. What had she said? That Balint was ‘sweet and good’, that she ‘recommended him’! How shameful! And with horror she suddenly grasped the appalling implication.