Eyes Like the Sea — 23 - Chapter 18, part 1
How my heart beat when I set forth on my expedition!
On the way from my dwelling to Bessy's lodgings my ill fate brought me face to face with all the veteran actresses of the National Theatre, and they all stopped me and asked where I was going.
They all remarked that I was very stylishly got up, and they all shook their fingers at me, and said: "Fie, fie!
you straw-widower!"
The devil must really have been in me to make me take the trouble to have my hair so prettily frizzled.
I was just about to dash hastily up the staircase of Bessy's dwelling, when whom should I run into but Tóni Sági.
It only needed that.
He came from the same town as I did, was a common friend of all my friends, and was about as reticent of news as a town-crier.
"Your servant, friend!
Why, you're quite a stranger.
I've just come from Bessy.
The young lady is in a very bad humour.
She as good as pitched me out of doors.
She must be expecting some one.
Perhaps you are the very man, eh?"
It was all up with me now!
To-morrow every newspaper in the town will report my visit here.
For "quod licet _bovi_, non licet _Jovi_."
If I were to turn back now, it would only make matters worse.
I hastened up the steps.
Bessy lived on the third floor....
To get to her rooms I had to follow the open corridor which led down to the courtyard.
I passed on my way the lodgings of a milliner, a female pawnbroker, and a lady who supplied families with servant-maids, and all three poked their heads out of their windows and watched me disappear.
On reaching Bessy's number, I found, tugging at the bell-rope, a red-peluched young coxcomb.
The door was about a fourth part open, and the face of the vicious looking cook was protruding out of it.
She dismissed the visitor with curt ceremony.
"My mistress is not at home!"
We nearly trod each other's spurs off as we cannoned against each other in the narrow corridor.
A minute afterwards the countenance of the self-same cook, rounded into complete amiability, again appeared, and she said to me: "Would you do us the honour to walk in?"
And she held the door wide open for me.
You should have seen the face which my red furbelowed gentleman made at this.
It was not enough for him to open his eyes and mouth at me; he stuck his _pince-nez_ on the bridge of his nose as well.
That will mean a duel for me to-morrow.
Meantime, however, I was master of the situation.
I had to go through the kitchen to get to Bessy's room.
The kitchen was also the ante-chamber; you hung up your overcoat there.
Her cook was her only servant, parlour-maid, chamber-maid, everything.
"Would you kindly walk into the saloon?"
urged the servant.
"But announce me beforehand.
Here's my card."
"Beg pardon, but I can't take it; both my hands are doughy."
(She was in the middle of kneading some dough cake or other with butter.
) "Would you kindly put your card between my teeth?"
Thus, like a retriever, she carried in my card between her teeth.
A
moment afterwards she cried: "Come in now, please!"
I entered the room which the servant had called a saloon.
Nobody was there.
I looked around me.
I found nothing there of the luxurious splendour which had surrounded the young lady formerly in her mother's house; but for all that everything was neat and pretty.
Embroideries, a music-stand with songs upon it, and a fiddle, flower-pots, a cage with exotic birds, Wallachian _Katrinczas_,[107] Szekler pottery, a few handsomely bound books--all these were so disposed as to fill the mind with a sense of refined elegance combined with the utmost simplicity.
[Footnote 107: Aprons.
] A curtained door led from the saloon into another room--possibly a bed-chamber.
In a few minutes this door opened and the fair lady fluttered in.
It did not escape my attention that the moment she entered she turned her head on one side, and contracted her eyebrows as if to bid some one else remaining behind there to keep quiet.
The momentary opening of the door also permitted me to see that in the direction in which she had looked was a tall tester bed with the curtains drawn close.
The moment, however, that she had shut the door behind her and turned towards me, the face of the lovely lady became all amiability.
She hastened up to me and pressed my hand.
"It was very nice of you to come and see me.
Don't be angry with me for giving you the trouble."
The lady was now more amiable than ever.
She was in the simplest stay-at-home toilet.
The only ornament on her head was her own bright silky hair, twisted up into a knot and tied at the top with a ribbon.
She looked just as she was ten years before, a little girl of sixteen.
Her whole being recalled to me her childish days.
There was the same candid, guileless look; those open eyes through which you could read into her very soul; the same artless mouth.
She invited me to sit down.
She took my hat and laid it on the table.
"I suppose you'll remain to dinner?
I have told the cook to prepare your favourite dish."
"Then you know what it is?"
"Why, of course!
_Beans with pig's ear.
_ Why, all your admirers throughout the kingdom know that."
I had now good reason to be proud!
My nation, then, has some regard for me, after all.
To others it presents _bays_, to me--_beans_.
[108] [Footnote 108: In Hungarian the resemblance is closer still, _babo_ meaning bean, and _babér_, laurel.
] "In that case I'll remain," I said.
"In Kvatopil's time I was never permitted to cook beans, for he maintained that they make a man stupid."
"On the contrary.
Pythagoras assures us that the bean contains the same component parts as the human brain."
Having thus rehabilitated the bean, I reverted to the real motive of my visit there.
"I should have come to visit you to-day even without a special invitation."
"Was there any special reason, then, why I should occupy a place in your thoughts?"
"I have received a letter from Italy, the contents of which will greatly interest you."
At these words she looked at me as coldly as if she had become an alabaster statue.
"Interest _me_?"
"So I believe.
On the 20th instant there was a battle on the Mincio, at which your husband distinguished himself."
"Really?"
said the lady mechanically.
("Really?"
--In that tone?
It was rather odd.
However, I went on.
) "Nay, in the heat of the combat he was even wounded."
(I calculated surely on the dramatic effect of these words.
I fancied that the tender spouse would leap to her feet, pale, ready to faint, wringing her hands, till at last, amidst sobs, the name of the adored husband would burst forth from her lips: "Oh!
my Wenceslaus!
Oh!
my Kvatopil!"
But she did not so much as turn her head round.
) "Indeed?"
she said, with complete _sangfroid_.
Just as if it were an every-day occurrence for a beloved husband to be wounded in battle.
I was offended.
Such ungrateful indifference I had never met with before.
How was I to go on?
I had calculated that when the despairing consort had wept and sobbed her fill, I should hasten to console her.
"It is true," said I, "that his wound is not sufficiently dangerous to prevent him from continuing in the field."
"I can easily believe it," replied the lady, with a shrug of the shoulders.
Now this was a want of feeling worthy of an alligator!
Surely she had the nerves of a rhinoceros!
I was not prepared for this reception.
"I can easily believe it!"
Was that all?
Well, then, if our tender feelings are so hermetically sealed, we must try what more drastic means will do.
We must appeal to other sentiments.
Vanity, for instance, is a sentiment which never can be blunted.
So I moved forward my heavy artillery.
"Lieutenant Kvatopil," I said, "was called to the front and made a captain straight off for heroic valour in the field."
But even at this the lovely lady did not fling herself on my neck.
She did not even utter a sound, but contracted the corners of her mouth.
What did that mean?
When you tell a lieutenant's wife that from to-day she has a right to the title Mrs. Captain; that every one who meets her in the street and congratulates her will address her as, "Frau Rittmeisterin," while the other lieutenants' wives naturally burn with secret envy; that she may now print her corresponding rank on her visiting cards--when you tell her all this, and even then no impression is produced, and the cherry lips do _not_ expand with joy, revealing the sparkling, pearly teeth and the dimples on the sunbright face; when, instead of that, she purses up her mouth so nastily and gives herself a double chin--what _are_ you to think?
There is nothing so hideous as a pretty woman with a double chin.
A double chin makes a woman look absolutely old.
I was quite confused.
What am I to do to amuse her now?
Should I talk about the weather?
"May I congratulate you?"
I said, seizing her hand.
But not only did she _not_ press my hand in return, as she ought to have done; on the contrary, she irritably drew it back and turned aside her head.
Suddenly a light flashed through my brain, a light kindled by my immeasurable self-conceit.
"Why go on praising the distant husband," said I to myself, "when you yourself are present?
Do you think she invited you to dinner to sing the praises of Wenceslaus Kvatopil?"
I drew my chair nearer to the sofa on which Bessy was sitting, and airily passed my hand through my frizzled locks.
Bessy observed the movement, and quickly turned her face towards me.
A
mocking smile suddenly lighted up her face, a smile from which a man can read a whole chapter in a moment.
That is something like stenography.
"Ha, ha, sir!
then we have come thither with that thought, have we?
We have had our hair frizzled, eh?
We have decked ourselves out to be irresistible, I know?"
A thousand mocking fish-tailed nixies were wriggling about in those sea-like eyes.
It was a murderous sort of smile.
I was conscious of having been taken down pretty considerably.
Here was I (quite contrary to my usual custom) tricked and furbished up like a "_petit maître_," while she, the lady, received me in her simplest barracan house-dress, without any finery, and with a smile she discharged at me the saying of the great poet: "O Vanity!
thy name is woman!"
But why, then, had she sent for me?
Why had she driven away one visitor and denied herself to another if not for my sake?
Perhaps for the sake of a third party who had already arrived?
When she came out of her boudoir she seemed to me to be signalling with her eyebrows at some one.
I quickly pulled myself together.
I fancy I must have been very red in the face, and I certainly had good reason to be ashamed of myself.
I saw that I had not been able to reap laurels in the _rôle_ of Don Juan, so I began to take up the part of Tartuffe.
Let us play the righteous judge!
"Perhaps I have not come at a very convenient time?"
"On the contrary, I _asked_ you to come at this time."
"On a serious business, eh?"
"A serious business for me."
"But isn't what I've just been saying to you serious?"
"Apparently."
"Yet you received it with a very queer face."
"I listened seriously enough."
"But the affair had its cheerful aspect also, surely?"
The fair dame made a contemptuous clicking with her tongue.
"Don't you feel any interest, then, in Kvatopil's heroism, wounds, distinction, and promotion?"
"No!"
she replied resolutely, almost snapping my sentence in two.
Her eyes sparkled like burning naphtha lakes.
"No?"
I repeated, in my amazement.
"You take no interest in your husband's fate whether it be bad or good?
You feel neither hot nor cold on the subject?"
"No!"
("No!"
again).
"But you parted in the greatest affection when he went to the wars?"
"True."
"And it is scarcely a month since then."
"Only twenty-nine days, I've counted them."
"And meanwhile winter has come?"
"It has."
After that she began to laugh maliciously.
She leaped to her feet and rumpled my frizzly hair with her fingers.
"Let's leave the matter till after dinner; then I'll tell you everything.
But don't let us spoil a good dinner in the meantime.
You are quite horrified at me now, and fancy that I've laid a trap for you.
You will see later on that this serious business of mine is not a joke.
Let us leave it till after the black coffee."
I revived again.
The lady was capricious, and it suited her.
"I was determined to give you a good dinner.
I owe you your revenge.
It is a long time since we dined together.
Last time I was your guest.
Don't you remember?
At the Pagan Altar.
I never ate so heartily.
What splendid toast you had!
And the bacon, too, broiled on a stick!
Why, I've got the taste of that good red pepper of yours in my mouth to this day!
And now I mean to give you hospitality that you will remember for a long time!"
This again was delightfully reassuring!
She was of the true cat species--she purrs and fondles, but one must be continually on one's guard against her claws.
"Come now, help me to lay the table!
My cook has enough to do without that."
So I had to help her lay the table, for the saloon was the dining-room also.
One had only to remove the books, porcelain vases, and china knick-knacks from the table in front of the sofa, and then cover it with the table-cloth.
I was curious to see how many she would lay for.
Only for two.
Two plates, two knives, forks and spoons, and two glasses.
But how about that third person, that person in the bedroom yonder?
Or had I rightly interpreted that peculiar expression of hers?
I was beginning to think the whole thing was pure hallucination on my part.
Suddenly the scraping of a cautiously-moved chair sounded from the boudoir.
I saw that the lady was considerably put out, and felt decidedly uncomfortable.
She wrathfully pressed her lips together.
"Have you any one in the next room?"
I inquired, in a stern, judicial voice.
"I have!"
she replied defiantly.
"Madame!"
I exclaimed, in virtuous high dudgeon.
"Would you like to know who _is_ inside?"
she cried, in an offended tone.
"Oh, dear, no!
I'm not a bit curious," said I, and began looking about for my hat and stick.
"But I _wish_ you to know," she cried indignantly, barring my way, and, seizing my hand, she led me to the door of the bedroom, and hastily flung it open.
In the room a blonde young lady stood before me gazing at me with wondering large blue eyes.
Bessy introduced this lady to me.
"Madame Wenceslaus Kvatopil, from Cracow."
Then she pulled aside the bed-curtains, and on the bed was lying a little girl about eleven years of age.
"This is Wenceslaus Kvatopil's daughter.
Poor things!
let us leave them alone!"
For at least a minute I felt as if some magic power were whirling me round and round the globe with it from the North Pole to the Equator, and back again.
How I got out of that room into the other I really cannot say.
Before me continually were the faces of that large-eyed, timid-looking woman and the little girl.
I heard the sound of weeping behind me.
It was Bessy.
She had hidden her face in her hands, and was sobbing.
"Oh, how I loved that man!
How good, how perfect I thought him!
I
fancied him a model man!
Even now I cannot accuse him.
It was not his fault, but mine alone.
His sin is my crime.
Oh, what folly!
Let us speak of the situation seriously.
You know now, I suppose, why I wanted to see you.
I wished to ask your advice."
I sat down beside her.
Bessy dried her eyes, and then began to speak quite soberly.
"The whole world judges me wrongly.
They fancy I am full of levity.
But if anything pains me, the pain lasts a long, long time.
Since _he_ went away I have been nowhere, and seen nobody.
If any of my old acquaintances came to see me, I told them that the whole place was topsy-turvy, and there was not even a chair to sit down upon.
My servant had orders to say to every one who called--_with one exception_--that I was not visible.
Who was this exception?
Yourself!
She could easily guess whom I meant, and if she didn't guess it, it didn't much matter.
When _he_ had to go away so suddenly, he was in a very tender mood.
He wanted to make me swear that I would not be faithless while he was away.
He even brought me a crucifix for the purpose, and when he saw that I laughed at him, he besought me, if I really must deceive him, at least not to bestow my favours upon the first ragamuffin that turned up;
nay, he even took the trouble to indicate a worthy man to me, of whom he could not be jealous; whereupon I told him, very seriously, that the man he meant was capable of _killing_ anybody who stood in the way of _his_ love, but was altogether incapable of _filching_ love from anybody else!"
(At this my face grew very red indeed.
) "Then he suddenly assumed a mystic mood, he knew my weak side.
He said: 'If you deceive me for the sake of any other man, at that same moment I shall die.
Day and night I stand where death is meted out every instant, and the moment a kiss from your lips touches the lips of another man, at that self-same moment, I say, the bullet which is lying in wait for me will fly straight to my heart!'
A horrible saying!
It would not let me sleep, and rose up before me in my dreams.
When one or other of my lady friends came to visit me and we fell a-chatting and began to laugh and joke, a sort of cold shiver would suddenly run all down my body.
While I am smiling, I thought, perhaps he is dying a death of torments beneath the horses' hoofs.
Every savoury morsel sticks in my throat when I think--perhaps he is now suffering hunger and thirst; and when the blast shakes my windows, I think--now he is standing defenceless amidst the tempest and freezing.
And I unable to protect him!
"In short, this threat of his made me quite a somnambulist.
At last I denied myself even to my lady friends.
I became quite morbid.
I fancied I had no right to be gay.
Ten times a day I went to the crucifix by which he had wished me to swear and knelt down before it to pray.
I made all sorts of vows provided he were preserved and brought back safely to me.
And yet I am a Calvinist!
But that crucifix was _his_.
He remained faithful to it through all his change of faith.
In fact, I was in a fair way of becoming a Pietist.
I began to think a life of virtue very beautiful.
I should very much have liked to see you now and again, if only to show you that I could be just as moral as you.
I would have praised your wife to you, and you would have returned the compliment by praising my husband.
This would have been my ambition."
It was the cook who interrupted this burst of feeling.
"Shall I bring in the stew, madame?"
"Yes, bring it in, if it is ready."
Then she turned to me to explain the circumstances of the case.
