They Were Found Wanting (65 page)

Adrienne looked up at him anxiously, enquiringly.

‘I just mean to say that my late brother-in-law was mad and we had better not forget that when dealing with his son. It is that fact that makes it so easy for me to accept everything you’ve told me, and, perhaps, some of the things you haven’t; and it is that we have to guard against. We must remember what might happen – though of course it might not; but we must make sure that you … and maybe someone else … are properly protected.’

For a moment Adrienne was startled, for it was clear that he was referring to some other love and yet she had said nothing except that she wanted to make a new life for herself as soon as she was free. She realized that here was a man of clear-sight whose instinct could be trusted, a man for whom all human frailty was natural. Then, seeing the effect of his last words, he added light-heartedly, ‘Tea-time! I can’t think why it isn’t already on the table,’

He heaved himself up, and even though the bell was within reach and he only had to ring it when he wanted something, he stumped off into the house.

Adrienne remained alone, leaning on the balustrade and
gazing
into the distance. How sympathetic the old fellow was, she thought. How ready to help, to be kind and useful. How tactfully he had let her know that he had understood what could not be said, how he had himself introduced the one subject that must not be mentioned, her love for Balint.

Was it possible that he had heard something of it? Could he possibly have known that she was in love and that the man she loved was Balint? It seemed hardly possible, for even though she never discouraged the old ladies from gossiping about her she had seen to it that it had always been that group of young men like Adam Alvinczy and Pityu, and the egregious Uncle Ambrus, who had given rise to their talk; Balint, she was sure, had never been mentioned.

No, no! It couldn’t be. Old Absolon could not have known
anything
definite; and his words must have sprung simply from his deep knowledge of life, from the wisdom of the truly tolerant.

She was absorbed in these thoughts as she looked down over the spring flowers in the beds below her.

The sloping garden had been made in horizontal terraced beds each about five paces wide. In each there was now a mass of tulips and narcissus in full flower and at the sides there were
standard
roses, as tall as small trees, which were just coming into bud. The garden was symmetrical and was bounded on three sides by clumps of lilac and on the fourth by the house. The
garden
was like those in French chateaux of the eighteenth century and had presumably been laid out when the old fortified slope had been terraced and the baroque manor-house, with its high double roof and stuccoed ceilings, erected in a style so much more sophisticated than the rough-hewn portico and the simple
outbuildings
the other side of the courtyard.

It was a sheltered garden, peaceful and smiling, and it seemed to reflect the tranquil personality of its very singular owner. And yet it could hardly be he who lavished all that care upon it, though it was obvious that someone did, for it was laid out with skill and a most individual taste.

How gardens could betray their creators, reflected Adrienne as she thought back to the one at Almasko where Uzdy would not allow a single flower, and where the lawns were so carefully cut and weeded that not even a daisy dared open its petals!

‘Excuse me, my Lady. Tea is on the table,’ said a voice behind her.

It was Marisko, who gestured to the table where the meal had been laid. It was a feast, with a splendid
Kuglhopf
cake, biscuits and hot scones in covered silver dishes, and several kinds of cold meats. Next to the teapot was a large jug of coffee, with some
buffalo
milk; for though Absolon himself drank only china tea Marisko had thought that perhaps this unknown lady might
prefer
coffee. She offered Adrienne a chair. ‘Please to sit, my Lady.’

Adrienne sat down but did not eat. ‘I’ll wait for my uncle,’ she said.

‘Don’t do that, my Lady,’ said the housekeeper. ‘You see the Master is telephoning to someone and it may take some time. He would be very angry with me if I didn’t make you start without him,’ she added with an indulgent maternal smile. She
pronounced
the word ‘Master’ as if it were written in capital letters.

Adrienne, when she heard that Absolon drank tea, chose
coffee
, for she realized that it had been made specially for her and would otherwise be wasted. Marisko stood at a slight distance, leaning silently against the door-post. Her rounded peasant’s body was well-formed and was set off by the simple grey bodice and skirt worn by the prosperous countrywomen of the district. She looked kind and sympathetic. Adrienne liked her at once and, as she knew that Marisko had been her uncle’s mistress for many, many years, she wished to be friendly and so started to chat with her. At first she just praised the cakes and then the
wonderful
display of spring flowers beneath the terrace. Marisko had answered all Adrienne’s questions briefly and with a correct smile, but it was clearly only out of politeness.

‘And who looks after the garden?’ asked Adrienne. ‘I’ve rarely seen anything so pretty, and so well laid-out.’

‘Ah, my Lady, that’s one of
my
jobs,’ and Adrienne’s obvious appreciation softened her hitherto somewhat reserved manner and she became quite talkative.

She had learned about gardening, she said, from an old man of eighty who had worked all his life as gardener at Borbathjo but who had been retired for years when she first arrived. She loved the work, especially as the Master, though he’d never say so, was very fond of flowers. She’d found the gardens, oh, very neglected, almost abandoned, but she’d soon put a stop to that, she couldn’t stand such neglect and laziness … and then suddenly she fell silent, alarmed at the thought that she might be stepping out of her place. Silence, she thought, was more appropriate for housekeepers.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ suggested Adrienne. ‘It would be much less, less awkward … for us both,’

‘Oh, no! Not for the world! I really could not, my lady. I’m not used … I could never get used to that!’

Marisko spoke nothing but the truth. She never sat when meals were served, not even when alone with her master. She would bring in the tea, serve it and leave the room. At lunch-time or dinner she would stand by the sideboard like a butler of the old school and keep an eye on the footmen who served the meal. She herself never ate with Absolon but retired to the kitchen when he had finished. When everything had been washed up and put in its proper place by the cook and the maids, then and only then, and also if there were no visitors, would she rejoin her
master
and sit with him quietly and diligently getting on with some embroidery, crochet-work, knitting or even just doing the
mending
. This was how the countrywomen behaved, as she
remembered
from her childhood in her father’s house.

If Absolon was in the mood and felt like talking she would answer most eagerly; and she loved to listen, time and again, to all his traveller’s tales. Even so she would never start a conversation, not even about how the estate was run, though it had been she who organized everything so efficiently and who gave the farm manager his instructions. All this she did with care and
intelligence
, which was just as well as old Absolon knew nothing of such matters and never bothered his head about them. Perhaps he imagined that there was not much to be done as the Borbathjo property was comparatively small – only a few hundred acres – and because his fortune all came from the husbanding of the Absolon forests, which was done by a qualified manager.

Marisko disappeared as soon as Absolon came back.

The sun began to set, sinking behind the distant mountain peaks. A golden glow spread over the landscape and the light fleecy clouds were tinged with pink in the pale-green sky. The shadows on the nearby hillside glowed yellow as if lit by some
hidden
fire and even the whitewashed walls of the veranda turned deep orange.

A cold breeze got up, as it always did here at the foot of the Gorgeny mountains when the sun went down, and the spring
evenings
were surprisingly cool.

‘We’d better go in now,’ said Absolon. ‘It isn’t good to stay too long out of doors!’ He said this only out of concern for his niece. With his iron constitution he could have stayed there until midnight without coming to any harm.

Inside the house the rooms were ablaze with light, for Absolon had ordered that all the gas-lamps and chandeliers should always be lit at dusk. In this way he resembled those nomadic chieftains who would live for months in the desert in the greatest simplicity but when they came to Samarkand, or Peking, or Isfahan, and settled there, had to be surrounded by every luxury the age provided.

Absolon’s house too showed the same oriental taste. The walls were whitewashed and the age-old wide floorboards scoured until the knots stood out. But they were covered with the rarest of Eastern carpets, some of them made of silk and interwoven with golden threads. Divans were strewn with silken fabrics from Bokhara and cushions covered with Chinese embroidery, each one a miracle of skill and beauty. Absolon rarely sat on them
himself
, though he did occasionally lie down and take a brief nap there on sultry afternoons in summer.

His favourite seat was an ordinary bentwood Thonet armchair whose air of practical simplicity seemed quite out of place among all that sophisticated luxury; but then Absolon was concerned only with comfort and not with impressing visitors with the purity of his taste.

The walls of the large drawing-room, under the baroque
plaster
scrolls on the ceiling, were hung with more hunting trophies. These were the best in his collection, unlike the massed legion out on the entrance portico. What hung here were real treasures and some were so rare or so exceptionally large that their equal was nowhere else to be found, though Absolon had never
bothered
to advertise the fact; these were his private solace, not
symbols
of achievement to dazzle the world.

There were the heads of three gigantic mountain-goats from Kuen-Lun, a mountain ram from the high Pamir plateau, some weirdly-shaped yaks’ horns, and the stuffed neck and head of a wild camel which was already slightly moth-eaten. These bizarre trophies were placed sparsely on the white walls of the great room. Two other objects stood out, perhaps because they were not also the harvest of far-flung hunting forays.

One was a small and now faded photograph. ‘This,’ said Absolon, ‘was Przewalski, the famous Asian explorer, and
standing
next to him in Tartar dress, that’s me. A Russian officer took us together in Kotan. It’s one of my most treasured souvenirs.’

The other object was more spectacular. It was an exceptionally long sword, beautifully wrought and decorated. It was hung
horizontally
above a sofa in the middle of the wall. Adrienne had exclaimed with astonishment when she first saw it.

‘Yes, it is a good one,’ said Absolon modestly. Then he laughed and said, ‘I don’t know of another like it, even in the East. Wait a moment, I’ll take it down.’

He unhooked it from the wall and handed it to his guest.

The sword was purely ornamental and was more than four feet long and completely straight. The hilt and the mounts of the scabbard were of enamelled gold studded with precious stones and between the metalled parts the rest was covered with
cherry-coloured
velvet, so vivid that if there had not been some slight signs of wear anyone would have taken it for new.

‘How beautiful!’ cried Adrienne and then repeated the word ‘beautiful’ several times.

The old man beamed with pleasure. His Tartar-like face was again creased with laughter as he said, ‘You’ve seen nothing yet! Look at the blade! There’s nothing in the world like it!’

He leaned forward and took the sword from Adrienne and,
balancing
it on his arm, drew out the blade.

What the old man had said was indeed true: the blade was even more beautiful than its case. Near the hilt the steel had been inlaid with a lattice-pattern in gold and its whole length was decorated with an inscription, also in gold, and the letters were interspersed with inset rubies so placed that they looked for all the world like drops of blood.

When they had both looked at it for some time Absolon put it back on the wall and then started to tell its tale.

‘Legend has it,’ he said, ‘that it once belonged to Tamberlane. This might be true, but the old paper I was able to see said
nothing
about it. Of course the man from whom I had it had himself acquired it in no very straightforward fashion, for it seems that his father had somehow extracted it from Timur’s tomb.

‘How did I get it? That’s another story. It’s true that I did not buy it, indeed I never have had the money to spend on such a treasure. Anyway the Kirgiz nomads would never sell such a valuable possession. Camels, women, horses, yes; but not
weapons
ever, they are heirlooms. No, I got this from Alp-Arslan Beg who had been my friend for some years. It’s quite a story. His tribe lived on the northern slopes of the Pamirs and in one of his frequent wars with his neighbours he was wounded and three of his sons had been killed. Only one boy remained alive, a
three-year
-old child. Prince Arslan fled to the mountains with him and his women, and there they were again attacked, this time by Kashmiri bandits. Arslan was wounded again, and the boy, and his mother, with the other women and all their remaining
possessions
, were carried off. I came upon him the next day – it was just after I had shot that big ram over there – and found his camp almost totally destroyed.