‘How hateful! How mean! How vile I am! Now AB himself must believe that I’d be willing … with him … Oh, that revolting act! He’s a right to believe…’ Even in thought she couldn’t bring herself to put her revulsion into words.
Adrienne was filled with horror. It was not only that the situation was so complicated, that she was a married woman who had given herself irrevocably to a man she did not love and who would never let her go, not only because of their child but also because, in his disgusting way, he loved her. Neither was it the thought of the social consequences, the menace of shame and exposure she would risk by falling in love with him. No! There was something much deeper in her woman’s consciousness that tore at her nerves and demanded, loath as she was, to be faced and accepted, a truth from which she recoiled with every fibre of her being. She had married without love, without even thought of love. She had longed to be free of her parents’ house; and when Pali Uzdy had courted her even he had not spoken of love but only of his loneliness, his desire for a partner in his work and his life, his longing for someone to help and support him. Their desires met and merged, seemed mutual, compatible. He had kissed her only once before their marriage, a brief passionless embrace under her ear, on her neck, at the moment she had accepted him, and he had released her quickly. Now, knowing him better, Adrienne realized that this was probably because he knew that he could not control himself. When, after the marriage ceremony, they had travelled by carriage to Almasko, and throughout the evening until it had been time to go to bed, he had maintained always his easy, calm, friendly manner though — or was it only afterwards that she had been conscious of it? — in his eyes had lurked the same watchful glitter as that with which a beast of prey would stalk its victim.
The memory of that night still made her sick with fear and disgust. She had gone to bed, nervous and frightened, but nothing had prepared her for the horror that followed. As soon as Uzdy had come to her bed he had flung himself upon her, tearing at her with his hands, his teeth clenched in mindless passion as he assaulted her and, brutally forcing her legs apart, entered her with all the power of a battering ram. He subjugated her, defamed her, taking his pleasure how and when he wished, with never a word of tenderness or thought for his victim — and he went on until morning when he abruptly left her without a word as dawn began to show through the curtains. And every time since it had been the same. Never once did Uzdy make the smallest attempt to arouse in his wife any tenderness, to awaken any response to his passion, to allay her fear. He seemed, on the contrary, to glory in the terror that he must have sensed in her, as if, by some atavistic instinct, he himself was only aroused by resistance in the female. From that very first night, whenever Adrienne had seen that tell-tale glitter in her husband’s eye, she had felt as if she were being stalked by hired assassins.
Lying now in her room as the afternoon light was fading the memory of these scenes came back to her so vividly that her soul cringed with disgust. This loathsome memory was all that Adrienne had ever experienced of love, and now she was filled with dread at the thought that this was what Balint would wanted of her and, what was worse, what she herself had allowed him to expect.
How could she have given Balint hope that she, of all people, would ever permit him to do this to her? She must stop it at once. She must not cheat him or lead him on. She must put an end to this terrible situation before this strange love for him that she felt welling up in her drove her unconsciously into his arms. She knew that this would happen, and she knew too that if it did she would hate him for ever. If she were to preserve her love for him she must act at once and, though she had barely realized that this was her real motive, she made a swift decision. Jumping out of bed, she hurried into the drawing-room, stumbling through the growing darkness to her desk. The clock struck a quarter after four. There was so little time! On a leaf of paper she wrote: ‘I have a bad headache and slight fever. Can’t take you to the ball. Get someone else. Love.Addy.’ Slipping the note into an envelope, she addressed it to Judith Miloth, marking it ‘Urgent. Deliver at once’. Then she went back into her bedroom, lit a candle, got back into bed and rang for her maid.
‘Please have this sent at once to my sister Judith,’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t her Ladyship like something to eat? It’s ready…’
‘No. No, I don’t want anything. Wait! A little beef-tea. I think I have a temperature!’ Adrienne realized that she had better start playing her part at home if she did not want her servants inadvertently to betray her.
When the soup was brought she drank it swiftly and went to sleep. Soon after seven she was woken again by the arrival of her sisters, both already dressed for the ball, hoping that they could persuade her to go with them.
‘Do come, Addy! It will be so boring with Papa, and we can’t find anyone else so late. You’re not really ill, are you? Not too ill to come with us? Please, Addy!’ They both spoke at once and Mlle Morin, who had come with them, added her own plaintive soprano warblings.
Adrienne lay back looking coldly at them from the mountain of lace-edged pillows. She did not reply, thankful that her face could hardly be seen in the faint candle-light. Judith went on: ‘Papa is cross as pie, and there really isn’t anyone else!’ Then, very determinedly, she said, ‘I absolutely must go tonight. I’m engaged for supper.’
With a knowing smile Margit asked: ‘Have you taken any aspirin?’
Adrienne hated lying, so she just said, rather crossly ‘Do go now and leave me alone!’
Margit looked back from the door and asked, ‘Who were you having supper with? I’ll take him over if you like. I haven’t got anyone.’
Adrienne did not answer, but she gave her youngest sister such an angry look that Margit hurriedly left the room and closed the door behind her.
Adrienne counted the chimes as the church clock struck, first eight, then half past, then nine o’clock. Now they must be dining. Half past nine. Ten o’clock. Now they would be striking up the csardas, and if she had gone to the ball, she would have been alone with him as she had on the previous day. Could it have only been yesterday?