They Were Divided (19 page)

Though he was a trifle late Wuelffenstein managed somehow to get to the train on time. He was wearing what might have been a white turban on his head and his suddenly swollen nose was
decorated
with a wide Leukoplast dressing.

He was in a thoroughly bad temper for young Kamuthy had not only opened up his scalp but also slashed him on the nose, which was far more humiliating. Stupid ass! thought Fredi. Dwarfish little beast!

It so happened that, on the command to attack, Wuelffenstein, awkward as some tall men sometimes are, swung out his
sword-arm
in a wide arc, and little Isti, like an enraged hamster, had jumped in, hit him on the nose with his sword-hilt and given him a nasty slash on the forehead which had needed eight stitches to patch up. But that was not the end of it. The worst moment came when Fredi’s nose started to bleed and that was when the fight was stopped, though not the nosebleed which continued
ignominiously
until the flow had been stemmed by two huge wads of
cotton
-wool which nearly suffocated him. Now he could only breathe through his mouth and he was racked with anxiety as to how he would look the following day with his nose all black and blue. It was a dreadful thought.

It did not help Fredi’s good humour that the Comte d’Eu, instead of going at once to his grand sleeping compartment, insisted on waiting on the platform for Fredi to arrive, and when he did plied him with such solicitous enquiries that Fredi was forced to go into endless untrue explanations to excuse the
condition
he found himself in, for it would hardly have done for the general-secretary of the Anti-Duelling League to admit to having settled an affair of honour with sabres on the very evening that the league had held its first meeting in Kolozsvar. Up in smoke would have gone Fredi’s pride in his new royal acquaintance, gone the dreams of success in the exclusive drawing-rooms of the Faubourg St Germain, gone the thought of royal protection.
Fredi’s snobbish little soul had been seduced by the thought of meeting grand French duchesses in Legitimist salons, and being on nodding terms with rich manufacturers of champagne; and he knew only too well that none of this would ever happen if it were known what he had been up to that night, which it well might if Bogacsy had not insisted on accompanying Fredi to the station.

But Bogacsy was there with him, for it was the belligerent little ex-major’s pride that he took his duties as second with deadly
seriousness
and would never abandon them until the affair was over and done with. This was especially true today when he could add his own flourish of mockery to the whole ridiculous affair. When he found the anti-duelling prince still on the platform at the station, old Bogacsy was overjoyed and his black-pudding moustache fairly bristled with pride. Though his German
pronunciation
was appalling, he was still able to give the prince an adroit and acceptable explanation for Fredi’s appearance, declaring that his good friend Wuelffenstein had tripped on the Casino stairs, fallen against the balustrade, damaged his forehead and broken his nose.

‘
Iss
grosze
Maleur,
Hohayt,
iss
grosze
Maleur
…’ which even the prince managed to grasp meant ‘What bad luck, Highness, what bad luck!’ Bogacsy repeated this several times, bowing each time so deeply that it was possible no one saw the triumph in his eyes.

Only when the train had rumbled out of sight did he straighten up. Then he gave an extra twirl to his moustaches and marched off the platform as if he were Caesar and had just conquered Gaul.

A
DRIENNE GAME BACK TO KOLOZSVAR
at the beginning of November. She arrived on the early morning express from Budapest, but that was only the end of her journey for before that she had been both to Lausanne in Switzerland and to Meran in South Tyrol. Adrienne had gone to Lausanne to visit her daughter Clemmie, who had been sent to the same boarding school that Adrienne herself had attended. She had found to her relief that some of her old teachers were still there and that they seemed to be just as wise and clever and sympathetic as she remembered them. The head-mistress was now Madame
Laurent, who had just started her career when Adrienne had been a pupil and who had always seemed to Adrienne to be more of a friend than a teacher. It was because Madame Laurent had taken over the school that Adrienne had decided to send  Clemmie there, for she had every confidence in the wisdom and understanding of children’s needs that Madame Laurent had always possessed. Now that her daughter had been there six months Adrienne had been to see her and also to discuss with her old friend what could be done with a child who had such a
strangely
withdrawn and unfriendly nature. Madame Laurent had explained the little girl’s problems with such clarity that Adrienne, who had been worried and perplexed, now began to understand more clearly what was needed.

She had been thinking about this for most of the journey home. First of all she had reviewed all that had happened to make her take that painful decision to send her daughter to a school that was so far away from her mother. She knew it had been for the best and that there had not really been any other choice.

Until her husband had finally gone mad the child’s
grandmother
had brought her up. Adrienne had been allowed no say whatever in little Clemmie’s upbringing. She had even had to fight with her husband and mother-in-law to be allowed to nurse her when she had measles. The girl had been ill for an unusually long time and when some months had passed Adrienne had come to believe that in reality the little girl did love her mother but had been made to hide her affection because of the iron will of old Countess Clémence. She had been mistaken. When Pal Uzdy finally had had to be removed to the madhouse the emotional shock had completely broken the old lady who stayed in her own room, as motionless as a living statue, staring with unseeing eyes straight ahead of her and hardly ever speaking let alone taking any interest in whatever happened around her. She had
withdrawn
into herself and everyone else had been kept at a distance; not only Adrienne, whom she had always hated, but also her grandchild whom she was thought to have loved. When the child had been brought in to see her, she had just gestured for them to take her out again, and it had then been clear to Adrienne that  Clemmie must be removed from Almasko as soon as possible. Two days later the French governess and English nanny had brought her to the Uzdy villa outside Kolozsvar.

Soon afterwards Countess Clémence also left Almasko. With
Maier and her elderly maid she took off for her villa at Meran and had been there ever since. She never wrote and any news that Adrienne had of her came from the servants when they wrote to thank her for the monthly cheque that Adrienne sent them.

For the first time since her birth Adrienne’s daughter belonged solely to her mother.

For a little while Clemmie had been her only joy, for their
coming
together coincided with Adrienne’s second separation from Balint, a separation that she then believed was for ever. And so Adrienne lavished on the child all the love of which she was
capable
, for she felt that now there was no one else. She spent all her time with her, and tried hard to win her love.

She did not succeed.

From the moment that it was clear that the grandmother was no longer there all signs of love for her mother also vanished. Those little shows of affection that had so heartened Adrienne while Clemmie was recovering from measles were seen no more, and it was not long before Adrienne had realized with a pang that what she had taken as a growing love for her mother had been nothing more than the child’s desire to vex her grandmother.

Until Countess Clémence had left for Meran the little girl had always lived with her in the main house whenever the family had been in Kolozsvar. As soon as she had gone Adrienne moved her into Pal Uzdy’s rooms in the one-storey wing next to her own bedroom. They were large rooms filled with light and air, but though her mother soon fixed them up as a nursery suite filled with expensive dolls and other toys, Clemmie ignored them all and never played with them. The most beautiful, an engaging and tempting clown, had barely been glanced at as it sat under the Christmas tree and when finally it had been picked up and given to her, the child had solemnly offered her polite thanks – as she had with every other toy given to her – picked it up and placed it at once on the nursery shelves along with all the others: and there they had stayed, lined up in exact order. If they were picked up when the room was dusted and not replaced exactly in line as they had been Clemmie would at once pick them up and replace them carefully in their proper place. Otherwise she never touched them. They simply did not interest her.

However she did show interest in reading and so was given all the best children’s books that Adrienne could lay her hands on – the volumes of the
Bibliothèque
Rose,
Alice
in
Wonderland,
and many others. These too she would accept coolly and always thanked
her mother with formal politeness, though never with any sign of joy or pleasure. Once a box of coloured pencils had somehow inadvertently got among the other presents and, though she gave no sign of interest at the time, after a few days Adrienne noticed that whenever Clemmie had a spare moment she would get out the pencils and start making strange designs with them. She never made any attempt at figures – the sort of awkward men and animals that other children did – but instead would carefully and deliberately draw exaggerated coloured contour lines around the capital letters of her books, contours that were filled in with backgrounds of blue, red or green and which were sometimes three times as large as the original letters. Sometimes she would add meticulously drawn hatching to give solidity and depth, and here and there would add a huge eye or some horns. A little later she started doing similar drawings in her school copybooks, all just as precise and careful as if they had been part of her school work. However, if someone called her she would put it down at once, as if she had no real interest in it, and if her mother tried to make some light-hearted comment, or enquire why she was doing it and what it meant, the child would merely reply with cold indifference ‘I just do it’ or ‘It doesn’t mean anything’ or even, with studied politeness, ‘I don’t know why, I just do it!’

Clemmie never said anything about herself or her feelings. She never confided in anyone and it seemed as if nothing ever
stirred
her heart. She was never anything but polite and well-
mannered
; but she was always reserved and distant. The expression on her pretty, slightly Tartar-like features never changed and she always kept her brown eyes half closed, as if she were being
careful
not to reveal anything of herself. Her hair was very black and straight, just like her father’s; and indeed she seemed to be completely Pal Uzdy’s daughter not only in physical resemblance but also in character. In her there was nothing of her mother and nothing of that robust joy of life that characterized her mother’s family.

For nearly a year Adrienne fought hard to find the way to her daughter’s heart. She fought with love and tenderness and she sacrificed every minute of every day to gain her daughter’s love and confidence. Eventually Adrienne realized that all these months of emotional struggle and effort had produced no result at all except perhaps to make matters worse between them. Everything she had done had been in vain and it seemed as if in some way it was those same efforts, that constant care and constant
attention, that had somehow provoked even more withdrawal on her daughter’s part. Adrienne could not put her finger on whatever it was that was wrong: she could sense it but she could find no reason.

It was then that she had made the painful decision to separate herself from little Clemmie and send her to school in Lausanne.

Now, coming back from her first visit to her daughter, she knew that it had been a wise decision, and not only because for the first time Clemmie had seemed pleased to see her mother; she had also shown signs of real affection. It had clearly done her good to be among girls of her own age who enjoyed life and played boisterously all around her.

What the head-mistress had reported to her had been
reassuring
, even if not completely so.

Clemmie, she had been told, was an excellent pupil, obedient and industrious. At first, the head-mistress said, she had been worried that, although always polite, Clemmie had been
exceptionally
unfriendly towards the other girls, but this had gradually begun to disappear, especially after she had begun to take part in the school sports. The girl had been taught tennis, rowing and a number of other ball-games and, so as to put her more at her ease, she had been given five companions of her own age and it had been with the same five that all the games were played. These other girls had been specially picked because they were quiet and well-behaved and even-tempered. Clemmie played
tennis
with them, rowed with them and indeed spent most of her
leisure
time with the same little band. And, if this companionship had not actually ripened into real friendship, it was still
companionship
and the girl certainly seemed to get on well with her new little circle. In this she was helped by the fact that she was more intelligent than the others and this, together with her reserved manner, made the others – all naturally affectionate girls – look up to her as their leader and try to win her affection.

‘Normally,’ said the head-mistress, ‘I do all I can to prevent the formation of little clans among my pupils, but here, for once, I encouraged it. There seemed to be no other way if your
daughter
Clémence was not to start shutting herself off completely from the others … and that would have been really bad for her … most harmful.’

Madame Laurent was silent for a moment or two. Then she added,
‘Car
naturellement
c’est
une
enfant
assez
difficile
–
of course she is naturally rather a difficult child.’

It was just this sentence that had worried Adrienne, for it had seemed to point to the possibility of an innate, inherited, danger. Then Madame Laurent went on: ‘I firmly believe,’ she had said with quiet confidence, ‘that with constant attention and a lot of patience we will be able to bring her to a state of mind in which she will be able to cope properly with adult life. I am glad that you brought her to us so young.’

For Adrienne these last words had been a real encouragement and even more so because before she had brought Clemmie to Lausanne she had written fully to Madame Laurent telling her the whole story of the Uzdy family, of Pal Uzdy’s madness, of Countess Clémence’s decline into silence and melancholia and every detail that could in any way be of use to her.

Adrienne had not come straight home. On the way she had
changed
trains at Innsbruck and gone to Meran.

She had gone with a heavy heart, but she had gone because she considered it her duty to take care of old Countess Uzdy. It did not matter to her that the old woman had hated her from the day she had married her son, nor that she herself had detested her mother-in-law just as heartily during all those years that they had been forced to live in the same house as undeclared but
nonetheless
implacable enemies. Now that Adrienne was the only stable element left in the wreck of that sad family she knew she must put all her personal feelings and resentments aside and see to it that the old lady was properly looked after and lacked for nothing. Before leaving Transylvania she had written to the Uzdys’ old retainer Maier, who had gone with Countess Clémence to Meran, to say that she would be coming, and she had also sent a telegram when she left Lausanne. So, when she arrived at noon, the old man was on the platform to meet her.

Maier had not changed since those traumatic days when she had last seen him. It was as if neither time nor tragedy could touch him. He was still the same powerfully-built, stocky man with a clear complexion, calm expression and intelligent eyes that she had always known. Now he must be over seventy, for his service with the Uzdy family had started when, as a fully
qualified
nurse, he had come to Almasko to look after Pal Uzdy’s poor mad father. After his death he had stayed on until Pal Uzdy himself had been taken away hopelessly insane and now, for the last year and a half, he had looked after the old countess. She was the third member of that unhappy family to be served by him
with a devotion and discretion that was almost saintly.