‘Why pretend you don’t know?’ said Abady roughly, extremely cross that such a mountebank should dare to mock him.
Simo was not in the least abashed. He gave a light laugh and then said, ‘Well, Mr Deputy, now you can see what a wicked, dishonest depraved lot they are, these men you are so anxious to protect!’
‘Of course I protect them and want justice for them. I won’t tolerate their being subject to extortion and blackmail; but neither will I tolerate their doing damage to my property. And what’s more I can understand that they know no better when for years the example set by their so-called betters has been just as bad! Grab, grab, grab, that’s all they know!’
The notary cleared his throat. He knew only too well that this last remark was directed at him but, determined not to show it, he now adopted an attitude of the utmost goodwill and co-operation.
‘This is a matter you can safely leave to me, my Lord,’ he said. ‘I will send a few gendarmes to reinforce your gornyiks. They’ll patrol the high valleys at night and they’ll arrest the men with the horns. Then your Lordship’s forest-manager and his men will be able to drive away the cattle with neither let nor hindrance. Always at your service. Naturally!’
‘I’ll think about it,’ answered Balint shortly, for though the idea was nothing if not logical he still did not want to have any dealings with Gaszton Simo. Also he was determined to be under no obligations to such a two-faced character of whose honesty he already had the gravest doubts.
‘As you wish,’ said Simo with a slight bow. The notary then lit a cigar. When the two men reached the road, Abady lifted his hat and said, ‘Good-day to you, Mr Notary!’ and turned his horse towards the mountain road.
‘I am taking the same road,’ said Simo. ‘I’m going up to Retyicel on business.’
‘I hope you didn’t take this long detour just to see me,’ said Balint. ‘Wouldn’t it have been much quicker for you through the Gyalu Botin?’
The notary laughed softly. ‘Maybe for that too,’ but he did not say more.
For a while they rode side by side without speaking. Then the notary said, ‘What’s the news from the great world of politics? My uncle the Chamberlain — you know who I mean — just returned from Budapest and he says there’s an alliance between the Constitution and Independence Parties, and that’s why Ferenc Kossuth has got the Grand Cross of the Leopold Order. Is it possible? Or did he have it already?’
‘It was awarded for arranging the commercial treaties,’ said Balint drily.
‘Well, well, well!’ Simo seemed to be pondering what he had just heard. ‘Fancy that! The son of the great Hungarian patriot sports a Habsburg decoration! It’s hardly credible. In BanffyHunyad they are all saying that he’s sold his soul for a peck of gold, but I defended him, of course,’ he added hurriedly. ‘After all, he is my chief!’ This last statement hardly rang true as Simo then went on to add a few critical remarks of his own. Still, as he still wished to seem loyal in front of such an influential person as Count Abady, he soon fell silent again. A little later, as Balint still rode on without saying anything, the notary returned to his original question. ‘This alliance,’ he said. ‘Do you think it’ll ever come about?’
There was little that Abady could say. Of course there had been discussions. The Independence Party members were using this project as their price for accepting the proposed reform of the voting qualifications; and indeed, such an alliance would have been of infinite value to the country since it would automatically bring to an end the constant secret struggle between the various parties forming the Coalition, that struggle which continued effectively to paralyse the government’s freedom of action. At present nothing could be decided without much bargaining and concessions by both sides. No serious advances were possible and the only measures to find an easy path through Parliament were those which enshrined the vote-hunting slogans that had been aired at the election booths. Even the great project for introducing universal suffrage was delayed by the jealousies and petty arguments of the party leaders.
‘I really have no idea,’ replied Abady after a long pause. ‘As I am not a member of any of the parties concerned, I know very little about it!’
The truth was that he did not want to discuss the matter at all, at least not until something definite had been decided. Personally he longed for the projected fusion of the two great parties to become a reality as he was sure that one immediate effect would be to remove all those loud-mouthed demagogues whose trumpeting of parochial nationalist slogans diverted any attention from the increasingly menacing turn of events in the great world outside Budapest and the boundaries of Hungary. This was a time when the nation desperately needed a strong and undivided government, especially now that a liberal constitution had been established in Turkey and the increasing power of revolutionary elements there might lead to serious disturbances in the neighbouring Balkan states. Simo, as if he had read Balint’s thoughts, himself suddenly switched to the Turkish question, though it was possible, thought Abady, that he only did this to show off the range of his political thinking.
‘Well, then, what do you think about the news from Turkey? What an extraordinary thing, eh? Perhaps now that they’ve got a constitution they’ll give us a hand against Austria, what? After all the Turks and the Magyars are brothers, or ought to be. Time was when we marched shoulder to shoulder against Vienna. Everyone was talking about it in the club at Banffy-Hunyad. There they were saying…’ and he drifted off into a lengthy discourse, quoting what Bocskay and Gabor Bethlen had written, and saying how the best solution to all their problems would be a great union between Turks and Hungarians which would soon bring the hated Austrians to their knees. It was a marvellous mixture of rhetoric and muddled thinking and Balint found himself growing more and more irritated by the folly and stupidity of it all. He could hardly wait to rid himself of the notary’s tiresome presence and so, seeing a barely passable path leading into the forest and thence through dangerously rocky places to the Prislop, he turned abruptly into it, thinking anything was better than having to listen to any more of this nonsense.
‘I turn off here! Goodbye to you!’ Balint said suddenly just as Simo was in mid-sentence, and plunged into the thicket, his men striding behind him.
Damned stuck-up aristocrat! said the Gyurkuca notary to himself as he rode on. In about fifteen minutes the road entered the dark forest. Here for a moment Simo stopped, looked around him carefully, undid the leather clasp of the holster that was strapped round his waist, and making sure that there was nothing to hinder him reaching for his gun, rode slowly into the shadow of the forest.
The path that Balint had chosen was not really suited to anyone on horseback. The little mountain ponies themselves could pass anywhere but the branches of the surrounding trees were so low that Balint found himself repeatedly lying flat in the saddle while even the horses had to duck their heads. Soon Balint decided to dismount and continue on foot.
As his pace was faster than that of the gornyik’s ponies he soon found that he had left them far behind and was walking alone in the great forest.
There were several tracks on the mountainside, all leading to the meadow on the Prislop, and soon Balint found that he had to choose between two of them, one above, one below the other. He chose the higher. Soon he emerged from the dense thicket of young pine saplings into a more open part of the timber forest where, among the more recently planted trees there were some older ones whose growth had become stunted in the rocky soil and whose branches were covered in moss. Here the sloping ground was dotted with burr-covered burdock while the young summer bramble shoots, now bright green but soon to be laden with blackberries, grew as thickly as if they had been planted by hand.